Trickster

In mythology, folklore and the study of religion, a trickster is "a character in a story who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior." The figure may be a god, a spirit, a human or an anthropomorphised animal; Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World describes the trickster as a "boundary-crosser" who makes trouble by crossing and breaking both physical and societal rules, and tricksters can be "cunning or foolish or both." The roll call runs across cultures: Loki and Hermes, Anansi, Coyote and Raven, Br'er Rabbit, Sun Wukong, Reynard the Fox.

In modern literature the trickster survives as a character archetype, "not necessarily supernatural or divine," often a catalyst whose schemes cause everyone else's discomfiture while leaving the trickster untouched: Shakespeare's Puck, the Cheshire Cat, Bugs Bunny, Jack Sparrow. For novelists the figure is a plot generator, useful as a foil who exposes what the other characters value, and as an antagonist no plan survives.