In Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Duke Igthorne had a Spot the Imposter situation with Princess Calla magically disguised as himself and Zummi had just magically altered his voice to give it a much higher pitch so the Ogres could not tell them apart by their voices. To prove his identity, Igthorn proposed a nastiness contest in which the one who was nastier to the Ogres would be the real Igthorn.
Avatar: The Last Airbender has never been subtle about this. Its first season quickly introduced rivals Prince Zuko and Admiral Zhao, the latter whom was eviler than the former. With Zhao's Karmic Death in the season finale and Zuko's cemented status as an Anti-Villain, it became a subject of great debate as to which Season 2 villain would prove the most threatening: Ozai's Dragon Princess Azula, or the Evil Chancellor Long Feng (most bets were against a Power Trio of teenaged girls). The two eventually teamed up in the second season finale, each planning to double-cross the other, but the charismatic and sociopathic princess ended up the unequaled victor, which she made clear Break Them by Talking style.
One of the misapplied examples is where Zuko outs himself as the heir to the Fire Lord to a village wrecked by the Earth Kingdom 'soldiers'. Zuko's banishment is pretty popular out there. However, the exile itself was Ozai showing Zuko how much worse he is.
Happens occasionnally in all series of the Ben 10 franchise:
In the original series, the Season 2 finale has Kevin 11 finding and freeing Vilgax to help him find and kill Ben. This is quick to end up with the two fighting each other (and Vilgax owning Kevin). They eventually team up, but Kevin then attempts to betray Vilgax, which results in both of them ending up trapped in the Null Void. Basically, their attempts to prove who's eviler than whom ends up their downfall.
Hex ended up being betrayed by his niece and Bastard Understudy Charmcaster in her debut appearance.
Surprisingly averted for most of the Highbreed story arc in Ben 10: Alien Force, despite the Highbreeds being basically Nazi aliens, and as such technically enemies to everybody. The only villain who ended up fighting them however was Darkstar, who is portrayed as irredeemable.
Season 3, on the other hand, has a quite impressive fight between Vilgax and Ghostfreak, with the latter beating out the former.
Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: Season 1 has Aggregor vs Adwaita (though he manipulated him and attacked him from behind rather than fighting him directly), and later Aggregor vs Kevin 11; Season 2 had a brief Charmcaster vs Adwaita and, eventually, a melee between the Forever Knight, Diagon and Vilgax. Vilgax wins.
While Zurg is an Evil Emperor and Card-Carrying Villain, when he tries working with an evil Buzz Lightyear from the Mirror Universe, he is quickly reduced to a sycophantic, eager-to-please nervous wreck, afraid of being seen as "soft" by his new partner. The same goes for the Mirror Universe!Zurg, who "found himself in a new line of work" note the burger guy at Cosmo's after evil Buzz rose to power.
Zurg is also on the receiving end of this when NOS-4-A2 comes up with a plan to turn everyone in the galaxy into robots to feast upon. With XL getting him past Zurg's defense systems, NOS-4-A2 then vampirizes the Hornet troopers and leaves Zurg on his own. Overwhelmed, Zurg opts to outright evacuate from the planet. It gets to the point where he recognizes his only chance to regain his throne is for Buzz to beat NOS-4-A2.
Captain N: The Game Master: The villains spend "Quest for the Potion of Power" trying to restore Ganon to his former glory so that they can use him to conquer all of Video Land. However, once he's back in action, he makes it clear he won't be Demoted to Dragon and that he'll conquer Video Land all by himself. Mother Brain's attempt to protest this turn of events goes very poorly.
In Operation: Z.E.R.O., Grandfather's first act after getting his memories back is to banish Father for being too ineffectual and not evil enough. Though it's heavily implied that Father is actually stronger than Grandfather — he just suffers from a severe lack of self-confidence and major "Well Done, Son" Guy issues. Ironically enough, of Grandfather's two sons, Monty Uno, a.k.a. Numbah Zero was the favorite.
Grandfather's second act is to proclaim his intention to zombify the children of the world to forcibly bind them to his will — but not before he does the same to every recurring villain in the series.
A lighthearted and hilarious example occurs in "Operation: A.W.A.R.D.S." The nominees for best villain of the year are Father (who is favored to win), Mr. Boss, Grandma Stuffum, and Stickybeard. Unfortunately, after Numbuh One (who they intended to use as the reward) is rescued by the rest of Sector V, the four villains get into a fight over who should win, and when Knightbrace actually opens the envelope to announce the winner, a bomb set by the heroes goes off, preventing anyone from knowing who the winner is. (The fight between the four continues into the end credits.)
When the original Negaduck becomes supercharged as an energy-throwing, telekinetic Person of Mass Destruction, his creator Megavolt is looking forward to all the crimes they'll commit together. Negaduck scoffs at him and says that committing crimes is small potatoes, but complete destruction of everything is what he's really into.
While Quackerjack himself is a Villainous Harlequin, he's far more comedic and ineffectual than the Monster Clown Paddywhack, who is an intangible demon who feeds on fear. Eventually, Paddywhack puts Quackerjack in his place and seals him inside his own magic box.
In the crossover episode between Superman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures, Lex Luthor discovers that making a deal with The Joker, and then trying to betray the Monster Clown when the latter failed to kill Superman for him, is a very bad idea. It results in Joker taking Lex hostage, and then using a LexCorp developed bomber to attack Metropolis, specifically destroying buildings owned by Luthor. Which, as pointed out by Superman, apparently make up around half of all the buildings in Metropolis.
While Darkseid doesn't show up anywhere near as much as most other villains like Lex Luthor or Gorilla Grodd, when he does show up, there is no question as to the Big Bad is. Even Brainiac falls before him.
"Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!" handily demonstrates that the titular character is far more disturbing and sadistic than prominent Rogues Gallery members Flintheart Glomgold and Mark Beaks given how disturbed they are by his antics.
Also played for laughs when aspiring Con Man in training Louie tries to team up with his Uncle Scrooge Friendly Enemy and Old FlameGoldieO'Gilt for a scheme only for her to immediately backstab him and rob him blind.
Louie: How did this go so wrong so quickly?! Goldie: Rule number one, kid. If you want to pick a pocket, you gotta get close. Better luck next time, rookie. Louie: Rookie?! I'll have you know I am the evil triplet, OK!? Goldie: Sure, you're the scariest bunny in the pet shop.
In "Glomtales", it's a Running Gag that everyone considers Magica de Spell to be Scrooge McDuck's greatest enemy and the leader of the Villain Team-Up, which frustrates Glomgold to no end.
Scrooge: I knew this day would come... Magica's grand revenge! Glomgold: I'm clearly standing in front!
In Dungeons & Dragons (1983), Venger and Tiamat were at each other's throats just as often as they fought the heroes.
Speaking of D&D, in ReBoot, Megabyte and Hexadecimal could be considered Lawful Evil and Chaotic Neutral. They were constantly trying to get one over on each other, and it was revealed near the end of the second season that they were, in fact, siblings. In the end, Megabyte took over Mainframe, while Hexadecimal did a Heel–Face Turn and Heroic Sacrifice. A subversion occurs with Daemon, who is more powerful than both of them, yet not very evil at all and considers her apocalyptic goal to be "bringing peace to the net".
Played for laughs in an episode of Evil Con Carne where the title character tries to form a Legion of Doom; the plan falls apart because everyone at the meeting claims that he or she is the most evil and the most fit to lead the group.
The Italian series Farhat: Il Principe del Deserto has a magnificent example, done by the Big Bad, the demon Egokhan, to The Dragon Rashid as a warning against betraying him:
Egokhan: You are cunning, evil and treacherous, but I am Egokhan, don't ever forget it.
Later in the same episode, Egokhan catches Rashid betraying him, and he gives us this gem...
Egokhan: You don't understand, you don't want to understand. You mortals are nothing! You are just pawns that can be sacrificed for the one great design, my only, absolute, uncontested, all-powerfulmight! I tried to make you understand, I warned you to be loyal, but you refused to understand! So now I shall punish you. (Egokhan sets on fire Rashid's skyscraper and the whole town to burn the MacGuffin Rashid was supposed to destroy)
Gravity Falls; Preston Northwest is your typical rich Smug Snake. In the Season 2 finale, he asks Bill Cipher if he can join in on the Apocalypse. Bill thought it would be funnier to rearrange Preston's face instead.
This is the relationship every member of the Heinous family has with their offspring. When Lucius VI is unfrozen, the first thing he does is chastise Lucius VII for not making everyone miserable enough.
In "Heloise's Rival", a girl named Mean Jean comes to Miseryville and challenges Heloise to a "mean-off." Heloise wins.
Heloise in general is shown to be far more evil and better at making people miserable than her boss Lucius Heinous VII, who is an ineffectual Big Bad Wannabe with delusions of grandeur. Many episodes have Heloise outsmarting and humiliating Lucius with one of his own misery-making schemes. However, she's happy enough with being Lucius' employee that she will never take Miseryville and Misery Inc. from him.
Kaeloo: Mr. Cat and Olaf both greatly despise each other, despite both being villains. Olaf is much eviler than Mr. Cat since Mr. Cat does care about the heroes deep down whereas Olaf doesn't and wants them dead.
Ron's Superpowered Evil Side is this to effectively every other villain in the show. The first time he turned evil in "Bad Boy", not only is he a far better villain and scientist than Drakken ever was, he also cowed Shego into obedient submission and captured and nearly defeated Kim. The second time, in "Stop Team Go", he ruthlessly mows down an army of evil Wego clones, then tries to hijack the Attitudinator to complete his own plan, which completely blows Electronique's out of the water: turning Kim evil.
Tarrlok has always been a bit of a dick and definitely a villain. Too bad Amon's better. In terms of historical parallels, Tarrlok was the fascist to Amon's communist, which fits the theme of two extremes quite nicely. It should be noted that it was revealed that Tarrlok was Amon's younger brother, and that of the two, he's the one who redeemed himself in the long run.
In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Lord Tirek proves to be worse than Discord, bullying the former chaos spirit and stealing all his magic when Discord is no longer useful.
In "School Raze, Part 2", when Chancellor Neighsay takes control of the school Cozy Glow is better at manipulation than him and easily turns the other students against Neighsay and getting control of the school for herself.
Come "The Ending of The End", Part 1", the above example is subverted when Grogar turns out to be Discord in disguise, and has his chaos magic drained by Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow. Furthermore, the front he put up was intended to boost Twilight's morale for her coronation; what he didn't anticipate was the villains finding a way to turn the tables in their favor.
Doofenshmirtz goes through this three times, first when Agent P gets reassigned to the Regurgitator, making the OWCA drop Doofenshmirtz down to a "minor threat". He's extremely offended by this and decides to take care of it... only to realize how bad the Regurgitator really is, and starts working for him (hey, the job came with maternity leave). Being as incompetent as he is, his incompetence actually defeats the Regurgitator, puts him in jail and his threat level goes back to normal.
Later said word for word by Doofenshmirtz to his more evil counterpart (Doofenshmirtz-2) in Across the 2nd Dimension, due to the latter's actual competence in doing evil and maintaining his rule of his Tri-State Area for 5 years.
Later said in Phineas And Ferb Save Summer, where Aloyse von Roddenstein (or Rodney for short) happens to be far worse than Doof-2 and the Regurgitator combined, as he created a machine that will send the Earth into a new Ice Age, something which everyone is completely horrified to hear about; even Doofenshmirtz openly objects to Rodney's plot, knowing that it will endanger the entire world population.
Mojo Jojo and Him end up in this kind of contest, attempting to show the Rowdyruff Boys who's the better father. In the end, the Boys decide they're both pathetic and go out to fight the Powerpuff Girls on their own. (The most ironic thing about this episode is, the Girls don't appear at all.)
Also, the girls were once defeated by an alien, who was using some of Mojo's ideas. When Mojo realized the alien was actually achieving everything he always wanted to, he went berserk, beat the tar out of him, and forced him to admit that he's more evil. Only for the townsfolk, the PPG, and the narrator to all laud him as a hero, to his chagrin.
The Raccoons: Milton Midas is pretty much the pre-Character Development version of Cyril Sneer, but without any redeeming qualities. As bad and unethical Cyril's actions were, even he had standards, Milton's dealings were outright criminal.
In one episode of Rugrats, the babies are tired of Angelica bullying them, so they leave her to play with a kid named Josh, who acts nice at first but then turns out to be even worse, and in the end, they have to be rescued by Angelica.
In Shadow Raiders, Blokk and Lamprey were constantly vying for power as the Beast Planet's sole Dragon, even though they served the same master both functioned as Big Bads. Blokk was overt and militaristic, Lamprey used subtle political manipulations to destroy target worlds from within. Eventually, Blokk was killed in battle and Lamprey may have survived the season 2 battle. Being just parts of The Beast, they can just be replace.
The Simpsons: Bart is an infamous troublemaker, but he learns he can't hold a candle to Jessica Lovejoy. Before the episode, she was kicked out of boarding school. During the episode, she steals from the collection plate, which appalls Bart, and frames him for it.
Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Ludo and Toffee. Toffee has bigger plans for Star and Queen Moon while Ludo has ever barely managed to obtain Star's wand. His scheme is so good he possesses Ludo's body/half of Star's wand without Ludo knowing it.
End of Season 1 Toffee wins Ludo's castle and minions by simple persuasion. Marco later relates Toffee to a lawyer.
In Season 5 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Darth Maul ends up on both ends of this trope. Alongside Pre Viszla's Death Watch, Maul conquers Mandalore. When Viszla betrays and imprisons him, Maul challenges Viszla and defeats him in single combat, leaving Maul the uncontested ruler of Mandalore. However, this attracts the attention of Darth Sidious, who is less than pleased at his competition. One Curb-Stomp Battle later, Maul is reduced to cowering and pleading while Sidious taunts him between bouts of Force lightning.
In the conclusion of the storyline of the fourth season of Teen Titans (2003), Robin forms an uneasy alliance with Slade, after Slade convinces him that Trigon is a far greater evil (which Robin really can't deny). Later, however, Slade proves that he's still a contender when he faces Trigon's demonic guardian:
Demon: Fool. You cannot defeat pure evil! Slade: Yeah? Well... I'm not such a nice guy myself.
World Tour gives us this little gem from Alejandro:
Alejandro: ...because compared to me, Heather's a saint.
And Alejandro himself is less evil compared to Chris.
And every single villain in the series to date (yes, even Chris) are saints compared to Mal in All Stars, lampshaded by former Big Bad Alejandro.
Alejandro: But I am not the true villain, a greater evil is lurking.
Also this line.
Alejandro: Mal doesn't belong in juvie. HE BELONGS IN JAIL!
Pahkitew Island brings us the villainous duo of Max and Scarlett. Max is a Card CarryingHarmless Villain who declares Scarlett to be his sidekick, only for her to actually be stringing him along to take attention away from herself. When Scarlett finally reveals her true colors by holding the remaining contestants hostage on the soon-to-explode island, Max is left sucking his thumb in a Troubled Fetal Position.
This is done with a rare subtlety in Beast Wars amongst the Predacons, with a nice contrast between Megatron and Tarantulas. Rather than fighting outright, the two do the best to bend the other to their own purposes. Don't think for a second that it's just between the two of them. Blackarachnia's also a major player, and other contenders come and go from the game over the course of the series, but that'd be telling.
Starscream and Megatron acted like this all the time in G1 (and any number of alternate continuities). In general, the Autobots always teamed up with Megatron after he'd inevitably been betrayed by Starscream, because, while often more cowardly and incompetent as an actual leader than Megatron, Starscream's ambition was limitless.
Turtles Forever: The 2003 Shredder is this when compared with his 1987 counterpart and Krang. At first, 1987 Shredder hoped they could form a Big Bad Duumvirate with him... then he discovered Ch'rell was murderously violent and Karai's involvement allowed him to take over the Technodrome, and all of 1987 Shredder/Krang's assets, upgrade them to his own means, and use them in a plan to destroy the Multiverse. The 2003 Shredder considers the '87 villains incompetent and worthless, and eventually has them imprisoned when he can't stand them any longer (except Bebop and Rocksteady, who he allows to serve him....BIG mistake.)
Wander over Yonder: Lord Dominator, as such she's described by the series creator as a better hater than Lord Hater.
Hell, her Villain Song (directed at Lord Hater, no less!) is called "I'm The Bad Guy".
Carl the Evil Cockroach Wizard and his brother Herman get along just as badly as the two main protagonists. Carl retains magical abilities and makes use of planned out schemes, while Herman retains colossal strength (contrasts with his ant-like size) and prefers to use brute strength to achieve victory. Naturally, the two have worked together (albeit forcibly) on occasion to take on Yin and Yang, but their extreme dislike of being within two feet of each other always leads to their failure.
Played with with Carl and the Night Master - Carl helped the heroes defeat the Night Master, because he stole Carl's idea to blot out the suns. Initially, Carl insisted he didn't care and had gotten over such things. Then Yin and Yang pressed his Berserk Button by claiming the Night Master would say he stole the idea from Herman, not Carl.
