Corrupted Character Copy / Marvel Universe

Marvel Universe

Corrupted Character Copies from this Shared Universe setting.

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Comic Books

• The Avengers
  • Clint Barton/Hawkeye and Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver started out as copies of Green Arrow and The Flash who just so happened to be villains (Hawkeye made the mistake of falling for the Black Widow, who started out as The Baroness, while Quicksilver was part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants). In time, they would go their own way and later joined the Avengers (although Quicksilver has since gone back to being this to an extent as of House of M and Son of M.)
  • Subverted with the Great Society from The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) despite being clear expies of Justice League, they don’t really display any overtly despicable traits (besides some of them such as Flash-expy Boundless being a sneering jerk) and are indeed real heroes like the JL. They only occupy a Hero Antagonist role against The Illuminati due the Incursion forcing both parties into conflict, first triggered by perennial douchebag and Token Evil Teammate Namor attacking Batman-expy The Rider. The only one of the Great Society who plays this straight is The Norn, a Doctor Fate pastiche who stole magical items to become powerful rather being powerful himself. And if that wasn’t enough, Norn’s real form after Doctor Strange strips him of power is a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of Harry Potter—though unlike the real Harry, he’s no real wizard and is just a kid who faked his way into becoming a sorcerer.
• X-Men
  • X-Men foes the Imperial Guard of the Shi'ar were meant to be more antagonistic analogues to DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes. The Imperial Guard’s leader Gladiator who is even more of a pastiche of Superman than Hyperion and Sentry. Like Supes Gladiator is a powerful alien with a mostly red outfit including Badass Cape and Chest Insignia, he’s essentially the last of his kind, his real name is a portmanteau of both Superman’s Kryptonian and Earth names: “Kallark“, he’s very often only as Strong as They Need to Be like the Man of Steel and Gladiator was even named after the book that directly influenced Superman’s creators. However unlike Superman, Gladiator is a haughty jerkass and while not overtly villainous he’s still a superpowered jingoistic bully compared to the idealistic hero that is Supes.
  • X-Men villains The Brood were a corrupted character copy of the xenomorph monster from Alien, taking what the film presented as a wild animal following its reproductive and survival instincts and turning it into an entire society built around exploitation and torture of other species whose leaders not only force the masses to partake in but force them to enjoy it. The Brood were so effective that aspects of them actually got copied back into the original monster for Alien's sequels. However, Planet Hulk shows that despite their reproductive method being problematic for other species, Brood isolated from the main society can be perfectly decent individuals otherwise. Far more agreeable than the original monster could ever be when left to its own devices.
• The Squadron Supreme, Marvel's resident Justice League expies undergo this a lot, to the point it contributes to the Let's You and Him Fight during the JLA/Avengers crossover, as The Avengers see the similarities between the League and Squadron Supreme before anything, and conclude if the majority of the public loves these guys the majority of the public must be brainwashed by them.
  • The 1985 Squadron Supreme predates Kingdom Come, the Justice Lords, Injustice, and even The Authority's Coup d'Etat story — yet also features the same premise of a major catastrophe being inflicted upon the world and the majority of its resident superhero team goes off the deep end trying to fix things, to the point, that their former teammates now oppose them. That said, it doesn't go as far as the below-mentioned later incarnations — aside from turning Golden Archer, the team's Green Arrow expy, into a rapist. In fact, much like the Kingdom Come version of the JLA, the Authority, the Regime version of the Flash and Green Lantern, and even the Justice Lords' Batman, the Squadron has a Heel Realization about what they've become and decide to set things right.
  • Supreme Power takes the Squadron and runs them in this direction, the end result being a group of Anti Heroes at best.
    • Hyperion is Superman raised by government agents at the height of the Cold War instead of a loving couple from Kansas, and (unsuccessfully) brainwashed to be the ultimate patriot. Beware the Superman is in full effect.
    • Power Princess is Wonder Woman with no morals to speak of, honestly believing humanity is an inferior species and it is her and Hyperion's right to rule them. She drains one man's life force to restore herself to a beautiful princess from a withered corpse, then the man's mother— who was on her knees worshiping Zarda as the comeuppance Man's World deserves— because Zarda still had a gray hair.
    • Doctor Spectrum is Green Lantern as a government secret agent and assassin who left behind almost every shred of empathy and morality a long time ago. The gem that gives him his powers is Loyal Phlebotinum... to Hyperion, not Doc, meaning that the hope that Doc Spectrum could stop Hyperion if necessary was dead aborning.
    • Amphibian (Aquaman) was abandoned in the ocean as a baby because her parents found her appearance disgusting. Living all on her own in the ocean, she's a Cute Monster Innocent Fanservice Girl and a genuinely kind person, but she just doesn't get humanity or the world outside the ocean, leading to a few accidental deaths.
    • Nighthawk is Batman as a wealthy racist black man with a gigantic chip on his shoulder. On the trail of a super-powered serial killer who's killed several black prostitutes, Nighthawk tells Hyperion that if the killer had been going after white, middle-class female twentysomethings, Hyperion would have been all over it ages ago. Never mind that the first time they met, Hyperion specifically mentioned he saw Nighthawk ignoring violent crimes because the victims weren't black, only to jump in the second a black person was the target.
    • Emil Burbank is Lex Luthor if you make him somehow even more insufferable, sandblast any and all slightly likable traits off of him, and make him a serial sexual predator.
  • Heroes Reborn (2021) shows that the Squadron Supreme haven't gotten any better. If anything, they're even worse than their Supreme Power counterparts since the Squadron are puppets of Mephisto, blindly loyal to the American government morality be damned, and cause plenty of collateral damage with zero regard for innocent life.
    • Hyperion is what Superman would be if A) he decided the third part of "truth, justice, and the American way" was more important than the other two and B) he let his power get to his head. While some people see him as most folks see the Big Blue Boy Scout, those who actually know him are well aware he's a self-righteous jingoistic jerk. This is especially prominent in the one-shot Peter Parker the Amazing Shutterbug where it's revealed he accidentally killed Aunt May by throwing a billboard at a villain and destroying the building she was in at the same time, and never even bothered to help clean up. Superman cares deeply about civilians and it kills him when even one person meets an untimely end on his watch. Similarly, Supes treats his "pal" and photographer as a close friend and colleague, and Jimmy is deeply attached to and protective of him in turn. Hyperion is dismissive of Peter (while oddly still viewing him as a friend) and Peter resents Hyperion big-time, keeping it secret because he lacks the power to stand up to him.
    • Blur is The Flash who's dealing with a serious case of Blessed with Suck. His brain is firing on all cylinders due to his Super-Speed, to the point where he owns forty-eight TVs and God knows how many other devices just to keep himself from going insane from boredom. It's also given him, in his own words, "the attention span of a hummingbird on meth", which very nearly costs him his soul when he gets distracted while livestreaming his own fight.
    • Doctor Spectrum is the answer to the question, "What if Green Lantern hated aliens with a nightmarishly burning passion?" And he is very vocal about his hatred of them: he turned the head of a Celestial into a prison for all of his enemies (with plans to execute them all once he gets around to it), regards every extraterrestrial being as inbred freaks, and even invokes Manifest Destiny as justification for everything he does.
    • Power Princess is Wonder Woman with an upbringing akin to Vikings as opposed to DC's Amazons. She's incredibly violent, couldn't care less about civilians, is such an alcoholic she took Lady Liberty for her drinking room and the Siege Perilous to top off her martinis, and just about every enemy she's ever had is either dead or Taken for Granite and placed in her sculpture garden (also at Liberty Island).
    • Nighthawk is what happens to Batman when you cut him off from the rest of the Bat-family/Justice League and strip him of his nobility. The death of his partner Falcon destroyed most of his idealism and turned him into a borderline-Rabid Cop, which would make him somewhat sympathetic were it not for his Secretly Selfish streak and massive superiority complex. He admits in his spotlight issue that he only lets his enemies live so they can escape and he can keep beating the tar out of them, he was at the heart of Civil War in this world over the fact that both he and Hyperion loved Power Princess, and at the end of the event, he sets out to return the world to the reality he knows under the pretense of it being better than the real world, but it's actually so he can go back to a place where he was feared and respected.
• Spider-Man
  • Marvel Knights: Spider-Man: Ethan Edwards is another Marvel Comics sendup of Superman, a Skrull who was sent to Earth from his dying world, raised by a kindly couple in midwest America, became the star reporter of the Daily Bugle in his civilian identity (which didn't last long) while becoming a Nigh-Invulnerable Flying Brick in his costumed identity. Unfortunately, he's also a Hot-Blooded Failure Hero who has a Freak Out when he discovers he's an alien. Spider-Man convinces him to keep using his powers for good, but he comes to believe destroying The Avengers, who lack Spider-Man at the time, is a good thing because Hercules killed a Skrull god to stop Secret Invasion (2008).
  • Venom: Lethal Protector (2022): Dr. Dana Harwood is a reference to Dr. Dora Skirth from the 2018 Venom movie, being a dark-haired glasses-wearing scientist working for Carlton Drake and threatened with death — or worse — if she fails him. However, while Dr. Skirth was a sympathetic character, Dr. Harwood is arrogant and condescending.
• Moon Knight is basically what Batman would be if Bruce Wayne wasn't possibly an insane masochistic Triple Shifter but flat out delusional, incurably violent Knight Templar with only a few token nods taken towards his own self preservation, to the point he has no concept of stealth. Moonknight's still an ultimately good, if needlessly dangerous crime fighter however, motivated by what he sees as past moral failings as a mercenary.
• The Sentry is the all-powerful Silver Age Superman—only as a complete neurotic mess who needs a supercomputer to tell him what crisis to respond to and is saddled with an Ax-Crazy Superpowered Evil Side that commits an act of evil for every act of good that the Sentry does.
• Artume, a villain from The Incredible Hercules is an obvious take-off on Wonder Woman. Like Diana, she's the daughter of Hippolyta, who is an Amazon, and was animated from lifeless material (stone rather than clay). Also like Diana, she rebels against her mother. Unlike Diana, she's a treacherous megalomaniac, and her version of being an Amazon involves taking Does Not Like Men to genocidal levels. For extra points, both characters are named after the same goddess (the Greek Artemis/Roman Diana).
• The Sensational She-Hulk: Clark Finark is this to Superman. He once ran a campaign for a midwest congressional seat. Unfortunately, Finark's opponent discovered that Finark's birth certificate stated he was from the planet Veegwal ^note Loopner suggests his parents were on an acid trip when they put that information down on the certificate. Finark's campaign imploded and he blamed his image consultant, Lexington Loopner for his misfortune.
• Young Avengers: America Chavez in concept is Wonder Woman if spoiled by her mothers in paradise, who left her home not to return a stranded soldier and bring peace to his warring world but out of a desire to find fame and glory, and is motivated more by boredom than love, to the point she briefly stops helping people altogether until their problems become interesting enough, becoming a homeless Rummage Sale Reject until something motivates her enough to care again. Chavez does become more altruistic over time, however.

Films

• Spider-Man: Spider-Verse
  • The Spot from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is one to Deadpool. Both are the result of science experiments gone awry, have a relationship with Spider-Man, walk a fine line between eccentric and crazy and can see beyond the scope of their worlds (Deadpool breaks the fourth wall, the Spot can access the Multiverse). While Deadpool has very loose morals, he's at least on friendly terms with Peter Parker, while the Spot demands to be taken seriously as an arch-enemy to Miles Morales.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • Thor: Ragnarok: Hela Odinsdottir is in many ways an evil riff on Galadriel. Like Galadriel she comes from a mighty and “divine” bloodline with her great power only rivalled by her brother (Finrod for Galadriel, Thor for Hela) and they both wield some powerful light/flame based artefact (the light of Eärendil's star and Eternal Flame respectively). Except while Galadriel is textbook Light Is Good, Hela is Dark Is Evil and provides an answer to “what if she took the Ring?” with Hela matching the “beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night!” description Galadriel gives to Frodo pretty well. All helped by the fact they’re both played by the same actress.
  • In Spider-Man: Homecoming we have Adrian Toomes a Badass Normal living a dual life dressing up at night as a winged creature and fights using gadgets and whom at some points is seen perching on rooftops or silhouetted by the moon and he’s played by Michael Keaton. Except rather than being a heroic billionaire vigilante like The Dark Knight, he’s a greedy working class criminal and villain of the film.
  • Eternals: Ikaris is a flawed and antagonistic take off of Superman, being in many ways similar to the DC Extended Universe Supes but with his Darker and Edgier traits taken to a greater extreme to the point of being an antagonist. Like Clark Ikaris is a Flying Brick with Eye Beams who has a loyal dark haired wife and is by the most powerful member of their respective superpowered groups. However Ikaris flips Superman’s role as Earth’s protector on its head as he only safeguards Earth in order to make sure a Celestial can be birthed from it, destroying humanity in the process. Although he does have a Heel Realisation.

Live-Action TV

• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Oeznik is Alfred Pennyworth if he worked for a villain instead of a hero.
• Wanda Maximoff herself in WandaVision is what happens if you take Samantha from Bewitched or Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie and turn them into a Stepford Smiler Broken Bird who has Jumped Off The Slippery Slope and using their great power to trap people in Stepford Suburbia to escape their grief.

Western Animation

• Iron Man: Armored Adventures: Blizzard is a power-armoured, disfigured supervillain with an icy theme, freeze-ray and a past as a disgruntled cryonicist seeking retribution against a Corrupt Corporate Executive he used to work for, Blizzard is Armoured Adventures' answer to the DCAU's Mr. Freeze. Though unlike Freeze, Gill is faking a sympathetic backstory and said Executive was fully justified in shutting him down, due to Gill being a nut job.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: This version of Norman Osborn is a corrupt version of Greg Wiesman's creation David Xanatos, being a prideful and Machiavellian businessman who is a master at pulling the strings of others to further his own gains. This version of Norman is basically Xanatos if he were bereft of any redeeming qualities, namely his affable conduct and capacity to care for others. The best example is how they treat their respective sons: while Xanatos is willing to swallow his own pride by begging the Gargoyles to save his son Alexander, Norman treats his son Harry terribly and goes as far as to frame him as the Green Goblin to save his own skin.

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