top 10 anime betrayals

01

Judas Iscariot

Thirty silver coins, a prearranged kiss in a moonlit garden, and a civilization's entire moral vocabulary for treachery was set. Judas Iscariot handed over one man and poisoned his own name for two thousand years.

02

Night of the Long Knives

On the night of June 30, 1934, Hitler ordered SS squads to shoot SA commanders in their beds and hotel rooms. Ernst Röhm, his oldest political ally, was offered a pistol to spare himself — and refused.

03

Sejanus

Sejanus ran the Roman Empire as Tiberius's viceroy for a decade — then a single letter from the emperor, read aloud in the Senate, ended it. The Roman crowd tore his body apart in the street before nightfall.

04

Robert Hanssen

Robert Hanssen attended Mass every morning, carried a rosary, and sold the FBI's deepest secrets to Moscow for 22 years. He betrayed at least three Soviet double agents who were subsequently executed.

05

Ephialtes of Trachis

A local man named Ephialtes led Xerxes's Persian army along a mountain goat path that encircled Thermopylae's defenders from the rear. Three hundred Spartans and their allies died; Greece nearly fell on the information of one man.

06

Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold — wounded twice in American service, the hero of Saratoga — negotiated the surrender of West Point to the British for £20,000 and a military commission. His handler, Major John André, was caught with the plans in his boot.

07

Aldrich Ames

Aldrich Ames ran the CIA's Soviet counterintelligence division while methodically selling its agent roster to Moscow. Within a year of his first data dump in 1985, at least ten CIA assets inside the Soviet Union were executed.

08

Kim Philby

Kim Philby headed British intelligence's anti-Soviet section while simultaneously reporting to Moscow Centre. For nine years he sat across the table from the people hunting his handler — and warned Soviet networks whenever they got close.

09

Mir Jafar

At the Battle of Plassey in 1757, Bengali commander Mir Jafar kept 45,000 soldiers idle while Clive's 3,000 British troops routed the Nawab. In exchange, he was installed as Nawab — and Britain began absorbing a continent.

10

Vidkun Quisling

Vidkun Quisling seized the Norwegian government by radio announcement on the night of Germany's 1940 invasion. He was executed by firing squad in 1945 — and his surname had already entered the dictionary as the universal word for traitor.