Fandom Rivalry / Inter-Media

• Star Trek vs. Star Wars was once the classic example. The film Fanboys even has a Gangs of New York style battle between the two. Nowadays, while the rivalry hasn't fully died out, it is largely a shell of what it once was, for nasty fandom rivalries have developed within both groups that have overshadowed this once famous feud. Within Star Wars, an enormous divide has been created between Prequel fans, OT fans, and Sequel fans, and each group will not hesitate to try and point out the faults of the other two, to the point where Star Wars fans have become one of the most infamous and toxic fandoms after the Sequels, especially The Last Jedi. The release of The Last Jedi shattered the fandom which was already fractured due to the Prequels. Disagreements between OT and Prequel fans also tended to be more civil, no matter how deep the divide, than the disagreements of both with Sequel fans today, with greater tendencies of mudslinging. Star Trek fans have not developed notoriety of quite the same level, but it's still divided as well, with Prime Timeline and Kelvin Timeline fans going at it, and to a lesser extent, with Deep Space Nine or Enterprise going against everyone else. And then Discovery came out and only fractured the Trek fanbase further.
  • And even before either fandom truly gave in to infighting, there has always been the classic Kirk versus Picard war.
  • Stargate-verse has watched from the sideline as all of this gone down.
  • There's a sizable group of fans that just like Deep Space 9, and the Battlestar Galactica reboot (making them more like Ronald Moore fans). Their answer to the above Versus debate would be: The Sisko, and his Mother F***ing Pimp Hand!
  • In 2002, Attack of the Clones came in third at the annual box office, the first time a Star Wars film was not number one at the box office (and the only time for 16 years, until Solo came out and outright flopped). Coupled with complaints about the prequel trilogy in general, fans of the franchise got hostile about the flaws of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Spider-Man.
    • Lampshaded by Clerks II. And of course they called the Tolkien fans gay, ignoring their own fandom's huge Obi-Wan/Anakin and Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon fandoms.
  • A really weird one to be sure, but there's a schism between Trek fans (more pronounced with older ones, but young ones are in the ranks as well) and Japanese Media, especially Anime. It is not an unusual occurrence for a Star Trek fan who likes Japanese media to be slammed for liking Tentacle Hentai and accusations run wild about moral issues. Pokémon: The Series and Dragon Ball Z get it the worst, accused of encouraging animal cruelty and violence. Most of the strife is internal, among fans of both media sources and opposers among the Trekkers, but it's still weird, considering Trek has a modest Japanese fandom and even a decently popular Manga.
  • Enemy Mine: George Takei wants ''Trek'' and ''Wars'' (as well as Buffy and Blade) fans to forge a "Star Peace", and unite against The Twilight Saga.
  • Exploited by Star Wars Legends author Michael Stackpole. After Bantam Spectra lost the novel license to Del Rey, Stackpole was tapped to be the continuity wonk on the planning committee for The New Jedi Order. He's said in convention panels that whenever he needed to kill a really terrible idea, he found it was effective to say something along the lines of, "Yeah! That was so cool when they did it on Star Trek!"
  • For the record, there was no bad blood between the creators of the two franchises. In 1986, Gene Roddenberry declared that, "I like Star Wars. It was young King Arthur growing up, slaying the evil emperor, finally." For his part, George Lucas has said that, "Star Trek softened up the entertainment arena, so that Star Wars could come along and stand on its shoulders." Here's them meeting in 1987.
• The rivalry between Disney and Studio Ghibli among the fanbases is pretty intense, passionate and often one-sided on the par of Ghibli fans. For one, fans of Studio Ghibli dislike the idea of always being called the 'Disney of the East' as it denigrates the achievements of Ghibli as an 'imitation' when it is not. Likewise, Studio Ghibli fans also look down on Disney for a number of reasons that has relevant critiques. Their critiques includes:
  • Ghibli fans feel that Studio Ghibli is objectively more mature and complex in its themes than Disney films, and even the more 'kid-friendly' releases is far more nuanced than their Disney counterparts. This makes the characterisation of Ghibli more realistic and down-to-earth than their Disney counterparts, and that Ghibli isn't afraid to show some violence.
  • As far as themes goes, Ghibli fans look down on what they percieve as Disney's Black-and-White Morality as not only juvenile, but teaches children the wrong lessons that people are entrenched as 'good' or 'bad' from the get-go. Likewise, they view Disney's ethos as too materialistic for their apetite (The over-emphasis that royalty=good and wanting the ideal 'prince/life/family' is prevalent in older Disney films). Ghibli fans on the other hand, view Ghibli's themes to be far more appropriate due to its Grey-and-Gray Morality, as well as its emphasis on the acceptance of imperfection, nature and humility.
  • Ghibli fans dislike how corporate Disney has become, feeling that recent Disney films feel more like soulless cash-grabs whereas Studio Ghibli overall, stayed true to its ethos.
  • Ghibli fans did not like the way Disney abandoned its traditional hand-drawn animation department and felt that Disney lost a lot of magic. The failure of Earwig and the Witch only reinforce the notion that Ghibli should never venture into 3D animation.
  • Ghibli fans view the 3D remakes of Disney with a level disdain and disgust as it partains the aforementioned corporate Disney which Ghibli fans look down upon.
  • Likewise, Ghibli fans loathe how Disney essentially popularise the concept that "Cartoons are for Kids!"-mentality when animation can also be for adults too. It is that mentality that led to the absolute butchering of the North American Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind adaptation.
  • Taken together, Ghibli fans fear and hate the idea of Disney potentially buying out Ghibli which thankfully has not happened, given the severe culture clash and differences in ethos. As Ghibli fans dislike the idea of Disney 'dumbing down' their audience being transplanted to Ghibli. This fear is not unabated, as early on, Disney or shall we say, Harvey Weinstein did try to interfere with Ghibli's films to accomadate Western sensibilities. This obviously caused massive mistrust between Ghibli fans towards Disney.
• Very old-school Dune fans (from the pre-movie or Lynch-movie eras) tend to have a pretty intense disdain for Star Wars (as a few other trope entries may illustrate); these fans tend to see SW as highly derivative of Dune, bordering almost on plagarism and changing just enough to qualify as legal.^note During the initial release of Star Wars beginning in the summer of '77, Dune jokes were common (and sometimes quite loud) in the audience. (It was Return of the Jedi that really did it - prior to Jedi the comparisons were more specious, but with the return to Tatooine, ol' George just couldn't keep the sandworm in his pants and the similarities became a lot more pronounced.) Younger fans from later eras tend not to care as much, though, having grown up with both works.
• If this thread is any indication, there seems to be one of these between Batman: The Brave and the Bold and The Dark Knight Trilogy.
  • Fans of Batman: Arkham Asylum tend to be venomous towards The Dark Knight.
  • Those nostalgic Tim Burton fans who still prefer Michael Keaton (and who depict Christian Bale as incomprehensible and Heath Ledger as ugly) vs. The Dark Knight fans (who depict Keaton as wimpy looking and Jack Nicholson as unrealistic)— and then you have those who hate anything after the 60s series.
    • Of course, there's always Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill.
  • Fans of the 90's cartoon show tend to accuse people who came into the fandom because of the Nolan films of being bandwagon fans. Not that Nolan fans are completely innocent - they can be pretty snobby about how "unrealistic" all the other incarnations are.
    • One could say it all comes down to which Joker you prefer. Few people seem to realize that this is The Joker we're talking about, and he could very well be both.
  • Which is the best Batman movie? Batman: Mask of the Phantasm or The Dark Knight?
• Anime fans vs. Western Animation fans. Though there are plenty of people who enjoy both, the fan dumb on both sides likes to pretend that is not the case. Fans of the former accuse fans of the latter of being no better than babies for liking obnoxious Bowdlerised (or excessively vulgar for mature series) comedies with crude and unappealing artstyles, annoying and senseless storytelling, and increasingly terrible animation. Fans of the latter accuse the former medium of having bland and cookie-cutter character designs and awful animation, boring and drawn-out wangst-filled stories (with gratuitous amounts of gore and often underaged porn), and an obnoxious fanbase with a hopelessly pathetic fetish for Japanese culture.
  • Another level of silly is added in that both Anime and Western studios are known for outsourcing their animation to South Korea^± In the 1980's and early 1990's, American studios often outsourced to Japan itself; this changed when Japan became too expensive, meaning that some examples of either one were animated by studios that produce the other. Also, all animation is called "anime" in Japan.^note  Ironically, a few in Japan have taken to distinguishing their own cartoons with the long since fallen-out-of-favour term "Japanimation". That said, most children's western animation would be likely considered kodomomuke in Japan rather than for the Shōnen/Shoujo demographic, although this is changing as more and more kids-oriented western animation borrow their storytelling inspiration from Shōnen/Shoujo anime.
    • Speaking of outsourced animation, the rivalry extends to some animation historians too: There are some rather thick books on animation history whose only mention of Japan in these books are how companies like Hanna-Barbera used to outsource in-between animation to them. Anime is completely ignored in these books and are written as if it never existed.
  • There are some anime fans who are incredibly bitter about Steven Universe and its fans, which came about, ironically, because there are so many anime fans who are also fans of Steven Universe. The high crossover between fandoms resulted in a lot of Steven Universe discussion at anime sites and social media and Steven Universe cosplay at conventions, causing anime fans who weren't interested in Steven Universe to become very annoyed.
  • Another Western series that commonly gets this treatment is RWBY.
• American-style comic books vs. Manga, though, like the anime vs. Western animation example above, there are lots of people who like both. Manga has also influenced Western comics the same way anime has influenced Western animation. However, western comic book fans will come to the aid of manga fans should the manga fandom find itself in trouble: When the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund defended Christopher Handley in a case involving obscene content in manga, nearly all of the CBLDF's backing came from western comic book fans.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing
• Warhammer 40,000 versus StarCraft is a can of worms that no sane man opens. Naturally, it crops up on a regular basis on forums. In the same vein, Warhammer versus Warcraft. What doesn't help is the Urban Legend of Zelda floating around the internet that says the Blizzard Entertainment works were blatant rip-offs of the Games Workshop IPs.
  • StarCraft vs. Supreme Commander vs. Command & Conquer 3.
    • It's Older Than They Think, starting back with 'StarCraft' vs. Total Annihilation vs. Command & Conquer.
  • There has also developed one between 40K and Halo, specifically on the topic of Space Marines vs. SPARTANs.
  • With My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, of all things. Just look at this◊ and this◊.
  • A more obscure but still noticable and lopsided example is Warhammer 40,000 versus Xeelee Sequence. This largely dwells on which is more 'grimdark' and 'overpowered'. Even though Warhammer has a much larger fanbase, it often ends with Warhammer 40,000 being stomped flat on every category. Given the reputation of the 40k fanbase of always shoving how 'overpowered' their franchise is to other sci-fi universes to the point of derailment, certain fanbases find a bit of catharsis when it is 40k's turn of being bullied by a much powerful and much meaner series.
• It could be seriously hazardous to your health to compare the merits of Stargate the movie to Stargate SG-1. Seems to be less beef between fans of SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.
  • And between them and Stargate Universe. Why can't we get along!?
• For a brief time, fans of the Pokemon anime vs. Rugrats fans. When the popular Pokémon anime lost the 1999 Kid's Choice Award for Favorite Cartoon to perennial winners Rugrats, Pokéfans accused Nickelodeon of rigging the votes so their money-maker at the time would always win.
• Animaniacs vs. Power Rangers became incredibly heated on Usenet, due to a simple timeslot conflict.
  • Ditto Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) fans, if not even more so since SatAM was cut short after the second season's twist ending, partially because it lost the timeslot conflict to Power Rangers, which Fox Kids intentionally instigated (other major culprits included ABC affiliates preempting Sonic and other shows for weekend newscasts, and Disney buying ABC and cancelling everything to make room for their own shows— it turned out well in some respects, as this allowed ReBoot to shed ABC's restrictive policies, while Disney would create the acclaimed One Saturday Morning block a couple years after). The young fans did not understand what happened then, but when they learned the reason later in life it turned them bitter.
• Gargoyles vs. Power Rangers in most markets, Gargoyles was up against Power Rangers in the ratings wars. Power Rangers won, and so Gargoyles fans believe their intelligent, character-driven, highly literate, William Shakespeare-celebrating show was defeated by the bad acting, cheap props, and poor writing designed to appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator.
  • In cases of corporate irony, Sonic, Gargoyles and PR all had some ties to Disney— for Sonic, despite Disney cancelling them they distributed SatAM on video due to a pre-existing deal with DiC, who themselves were owned by ABC when Disney bought them (and were sold off by 2000). PR was purchased by Disney with the assets of Fox Kids/Fox Family in 2001, and ended up being rerun alongside Gargoyles on Toon Disney / Jetix until PR was sold back to Haim Saban in 2018.
• The Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom got into a bit of a snit when it was announced that the Live-Action Adaptation would just be called The Last Airbender due to the release of James Cameron's Avatar. Both fandoms claim that the title "Avatar" exemplifies their work of fiction better (the original, spiritual meaning of "avatar" versus the new, technological meaning which is derived from the original).
  • It doesn't help that they both use the same Fan Community Nickname.
  • This was exacerbated when it turned out the Airbender sequel series The Legend of Korra would also use "The Last Airbender" as a supertitle, though it's a case of Artifact Title. After complaints, it was dropped.
  • A:TLA versus Naruto used to be popular but has mostly died out. They're both action cartoons aimed at elementary school aged boys with similarly aged, bright eyed Kid Hero protagonists and were popular in the mid-to-late 2000s. It was common for people to say A:TLA copied Naruto or compare Naruto to Aang or Sasuke to Zuko.
• There's one between fans of the Resident Evil games vs. fans of the films. At first there was cross pollination, but after a while they became separate fan bases.
• Lord of the Rings. Do you prefer the overly long meandering book or the pointlessly butchered films?
  • There is also a strong rivalry between the movies and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in terms of who respects the lore the most and who doesn't. The fans of the movie accuse the tv show of straying too much from the source material and bringing modern problems to a work of a man who always hated allegories, while the other side always points out that those accusation border on double standards when Peter Jackson invented new storylines despite his claims to not bring his modern views into an atemporal world.
• Oh, Broken Base, thy name is Star Wars.
  • Original trilogy-only fans vs. prequel fans.
  • The theatrical cut vs. the Special Edition.
  • Fans who don't like the Star Wars Expanded Universe vs. those who do.
  • Fans who preferred the Bantam novels vs. those who preferred the Del Rey novels.
  • Fans who preferred Star Wars (Marvel 1977) vs. fans who liked any other Star Wars comic.
  • Rebel fans vs. Imperial fans.
  • Jedi fans vs. Mandalorian fans. Karen Traviss pretty much started this rivalry.
  • And now there's Star Wars: The Clone Wars vs. basically the entire rest of the Expanded Universe^note This stems from the fact that The Clone Wars is a higher "level" of continuity than most other EU sources, thus, if there's a contradiction, the other source is rendered invalid. The problem results from the other sources being as many as two decades older than the show, with the sizable and loud fanbases you'd expect from something that old..
  • Star Wars Legends versus Disney's sequel trilogy and anthology films.
• Game of Thrones fans vs. Star Wars fans is an odd one. There wasn't much of a feud until the former concluded, where fans of GoT disappointed with the last season found their criticisms of it eerily similar to those of Star Wars fans who hated The Last Jedi. Specifically, the GoT fans started to consider TLJ to be full of lazy writing in the name of "subverting expectations" and some of the show's fans even blame the TLJ for convincing the showrunners that they could get away with the eighth season. The Last Jedi fans generally argue back that the GoT fans are just looking for a target to vent their anger on.
• Though it would fit more in a toy section, the BIONICLE vs. Hero Factory debate is something that has rocked fan sites of either line, especially places like BZPower, with many fans accusing the latter of having been an inferior replacement. The debate has even caused people to question administrative bias in certain forums! Of course, there is probably another part of the spectrum we overlooked. Depending on who you ask, the rift has either divided or lessened with the short-lived BIONICLE (2015) reboot, which utilized many Hero Factory building elements. The LEGO Star Wars buildable figures represent another side to this, with many fans of the former two bashing it for filling in the slot of LEGO's action figure theme and seemingly drowning out their in-house themes. Other similar lines like Slizer or RoboRiders are normally spared of such debates, probably because they're older, more obscure and had little if any media presence.
• The Stargate fandom seems on the verge of declaring war on all of Professional Wrestling, largely because the Sci Fi Channel's contract with WWE essentially forced Stargate Universe to move from Fridays, which held the Stargate-verse shows for over a decade, to Tuesdays, where it had much worse viewership, leading to its cancellation.
  • There is also a rivalry between fans of Stargate SG-1, and those who prefer the slightly differing continuity of the film.
  • The Fandom rivalry on /co/ between the two seems to be dying down however as the rest of /co/ utterly despises them and forces them to post in "general threads" so they don't clog up the whole board. Many fans tend to stay out of the generals though, as they're usually filled with Rule 34.
• Scandinavia and the World and Hetalia: Axis Powers share a bit of a friendly rivalry with each other, seeing as many of their fans are actually fans of both and find the two series good complements to each other.
  • There is a straight rivalry with them and Polandball fans, who accuse Hetalia and SatW of airbrushing and sugarcoating certain dark chapters of history (and the less said of the two series' boatloads of Ho Yay, the better). Hetalia and SatW fans in turn accuse Polandball fans of having unsavory politics (the fact that it's easy for anyone to use the designs to make their own comics doesn't help), for being unoriginal and unimaginative, and being culturally insensitive.
• Battletech fans versus Mechwarrior fans. This epic debate practically typifies the huge legal (and fandom) schisms that happened in the late Nineties. As multiple companies who owned parts of a single universe decided they wanted the whole cash cow for themselves, they took their parts and retreated into their holes, trying to wait the others out. As this happened with many universes, the BattleTech companies decided to all try this at once, leading to a cold war which rages today, and further ties in with SuperDimensionFortressMacross calling BattleTech a legal ripoff, and has locked the universe in perpetual progression hiatus. Either way, the BattleTech Fans say the Mechwarrior series is a claptrap videogame translation of a complex and dynamic Tabletop Game, while Mechwarrior Fans insist that BattleTech is a crappy and dated anime ripoff. Neither side will pause for one second to consider that Mechwarrior is the name of the BattleTech videogame line. This strange Broken Base stems from the decay of the now derelict universe (and fanbase) over the course of a decade. This has actually garnered legal attention, as the huge paper war (over who has which rights on what aspects of both games' universe) has led the fandoms supporting the different companies, and even specific bundles of copyright-held fluff regardless of ownership!
  • This only gets worse when you realize that if either half of the Broken Base wants their franchise to progress, they will need to work together to provide a demand for the game, which will then force one side of the legal battle to give up their death-grip in exchange for royalties on their rights.
    • Oh the Nineties, they were a simpler, more naive time.
• Fans of Pokémon: The Series vs fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic for the title for biggest Periphery Demographic. This particular rivalry all started around early 2014, when Twitch Plays Pokémon took the internet by storm and stole Friendship is Magic's's thunder as the hot and popular thing on the internet, which MLP had a iron grip on for years prior. The two fandoms don't clash often, but have made themselves known to each other.
• BattleTech fans vs anime-style Humongous Mecha fans - ironic considering some of BattleTech's original designs came from Fang of the Sun Dougram and Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
• Fans of Bakugan vs. fans of Transformers: Animated. TFA fans despise Bakugan for its negative effects on the initial run of Transformers Animated; Bakugan fans strike back by claiming TFA's inferiority. The arguments about the rival toylines are far more heated than those of the animated series.
• Fans of The Lion King (1994) versus fans of Kimba the White Lion due to claims that The Lion King ripped off Kimba. Now, long after the plagiarism accusations surfaced, it's unlikely anyone at Disney would admit that Kimba inspired TLK because of the sheer vitriol spewed at them for continually denying even the suggestions that it was merely inspired by Kimba and not a rip-off. Also, it's probably very likely that fans of The Lion King would also be fans of Kimba if Kimba's Fan Dumb hadn't given their own show such a bad name - both are good stories, although, The Lion King took some key liberties - for one thing - the presence of humans, the show often deals with greedy or well-meaning but otherwise ignorant humans encroaching on Kimba's kingdom - The Lion King has no humans at all.
• Touhou Project fans and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fans clash quite often, usually when the quality of fanworks are compared.
  • Touhou fans tend to be offended at being compared with "Bronies" usually.
  • Touhou fans are also at odds with KanColle fans for making Touhou fanartists draw more Kancolle-related fan art to their detriment.
• Sonic the Hedgehog fans and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fans are notorious for clashing very frequently on each other's fansites. At one point, there was so much hate on both sides that Equestria Daily eventually temporarily immediately disqualified any Sonic crossover art from being featured within it's "Drawfriend" entries due towards the complaints they got from it. On the other side of the coin, when Sonic Boom was revealed to have Friendship Is Magic writer Dave Polsky on board, the Sonic fandom raged to the point of outright disowning the Sonic Boom spinoff entirely (yes, the hatred is that strong).^note  Admittedly this had as much, if not more, to do with concerns that Boom would be doubling down on the Denser and Wackier nature of Sonic Colors and it's successors instead of returning to a more straightforward action/adventure direction as promised. Concerns which turned out to be well founded. It's been commonly theorized that the reputations of both fandoms have much overlap, and both fandoms clash in an effort to distance themselves from each other: Bronies are trying to avoid the bad reputation of the Sonic fanbase, while the Sonic fanbase, already notorious, is just trying to salvage what rep it has left from the Bronies, who were quickly developing their own dubious reputation.
  • Though there is an isolated contingent of fans who get along just fine (often playing up the similarities between both series' characters in fan art ie Sonic and Rainbow Dash, Knuckles and Applejack, among others), a majority of the Sonic fanbase do not get along well with and take offense to being compared to bronies. Likewise, the more vocal bronies do not get along with the Sonic fanbase at all either.
• For that matter, there is a contingent of Sonic the Hedgehog fans ready to pick a fight with almost any other fandom. This is most easily spotted when discussion of other things pop up on Sonic sites. They will rage at fans of Frozen (2013), The Simpsons, The Walking Dead (2010), Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe—whatever isn't Sonic, they will insult fans of it without provocation. To these people, the Sonic fandom has a rivalry with nearly all other fandoms. The only one exempt so far is Batman: The Animated Series. This might be more attributed to the Sonic franchise's legendary Broken Base though: Put enough Sonic fans together in one place, and you'll find at least one person who dislikes whatever the non-Sonic thing is that's being discussed and willing to grumble and complain about it to the people who like it.
• As noted on this page and then some, a small section of the fandom of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic would pick a fight with any franchise that isn't their beloved animated colorful horses. This has blown up to a scale that is just as bad as the Sonic fandom.
• Disney fans and Marvel Comics fans found themselves in confrontation after Disney bought Marvel in 2009. Marvel fans panicked and worried that Disney was going to ruin Marvel through Disneyfication, and Disney fans made the general complaint that by purchasing Marvel, Disney was continuing to move away from its core businesses and turning into another MegaCorp. The complaining died down considerably on both sides after the release of Disney's first in-house Marvel movie The Avengers in 2012, though it picked up again somewhat on the Disney side later that year when Disney purchased Lucasfilm (while also, as noted above, causing even more fractures in the infamously fractured Star Wars fandom).
• Within the MCU itself, there are the Agents of SHIELD fans vs. the fans of the Netflix shows. The Netflix shows are much Darker and Edgier from SHIELD and most of the MCU films, so this was bound to happen. Also arguments over whether or not the Netflix shows characters should be put into MCU films. Eventually this same argument ironically started again with whether or not SHIELD characters should be in MCU films. Also whether or not ANY of the none Disney+ shows are canon or not.
• There was a fairly heated Fandom War between Homestuck and Hetalia: Axis Powers for a while in the late 00's. It's cooled down ever since members of both fandoms began complaining about the pointlessness of the whole thing, and now the two fandoms are basically BFFS.
  • Homestuck General has also had major rivalries with My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Gravity Falls, and, to a much lesser extent, Adventure Time, as these are all some of the bigger General Threads (or former generals, in the case of FiM) on /co/. The rivalry with the FIM fandom has since cooled down after Hussie put a Rainbow Dash poster in Dirk's bedroom and had Dirk express an unironic fondness for her.
  • The Homestuck and Danganronpa fanbases hold some animosity towards one another, partly because the Danganronpa fandom started picking up steam around the same time Homestuck went on a lengthy hiatus. This resulted in Homestuck being given credit for Danganronpas popularity and the Danganronpa fandom being treated as an outcrop of temporary refuge for bored Homestuck fans, which annoyed DR fans who like the franchise in its own right. (The Homestuck fandom has a similar relationship with OFFs fandom, but there's less resentment there.)
• Paul fans seem to have an intense hatred for the Scott Pilgrim franchise, for the sole fact that it has "too many video game Shout-Outs, pee jokes, and homosexual jokes". Never mind the fact that Paul had a lot of those same things (although with sci-fi shout-outs rather than video game ones), a Scott Pilgrim: Odds and Ends book can be seen in the comic book shop, and Simon Pegg has stated that he is a big fan of the Scott Pilgrim franchise.
• In Japan, there is a fairly persistent rivalry between fans of Kamen Rider Ryuki and Fate/stay night. Both shows being quite mature despite working within a medium typically aimed for children, while sharing the similarities of having a plot based on a battle royale between a number of combatants, there have been accusations by both sides of one show ripping off the other.
  • Of course then you have Gen Urobuchi, a good friend of Kinoko Nasu as well as the co-author of Fate/Zero, who's a self-professed fan of Ryuki.
• The rivalry between Flocks (Angry Birds) and Bronies (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic), both engaged in a war both online and offline for population dominance. Flocks have (more like had as of 2016) their popularity through merchandise and Bronies more through online activity, and both want some of what the other's got.
• Book Wicked vs. Musical Wicked, and both versions against Oz the Great and Powerful. Which is the best story? Which works best as a prequel to the 1939 film? Which is the best portrayal of the Witch of the West? Despite all being Oz prequels (and one being an adaptation, no less) they're all wildly different stories that tend to attract different kinds of fans, who all want their choice to be the "best" or "true" Oz prequel. The constant rumors of a Wicked film adaptation and arguments over whether it should be based on the novel or the musical don't help matters. If it's ever made, it'll probably end up here too.
• Man of Steel:
  • Henry Cavill fans vs. Tom Welling fans and Brandon Routh fans over who is the preferred live-action Superman, with Christopher Reeve-only fans against them all.
  • It's also lumped in with the rivalry between fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and fans of Nolan's Batman trilogy and other DC movies - especially since Man of Steel kickstarted a DC Cinematic Universe just like Iron Man did for Marvel, and like Green Lantern (2011) was supposed to do.
• Arrowverse:
  • Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been getting hate non-stop from fans of DC's Arrow, largely as an extension of the Marvel/DC rivalry. Generally, one will argue that the other had weak opening episodes, poor dialogue, poor acting/characters, and its handling of a specific group is very poor and leads to Unfortunate Implications ^note Notably, Arrow has been criticized for its handling of female characters, which AOS has been praised for handling well, while AOS has been criticized for its handling of African-Americans, while Arrow has been praised for its handling of such; both, though, have came under flack for killing off their only LGBT characters , while the other will make these same criticisms about them.
    • This, in turn, also extents to the Arrow spin off, The Flash, Gotham, and Constantine, vs Marvel's Agent Carter and the Netflix-Original shows.
  • DC alone has created a rivalry once it was revealed that their movie universe would be totally separate from their TV universe, confirmed when new actors were revealed to play the movie versions of The Flash and the Suicide Squad's Deadshot (the fact that the announcement of Movie-Flash was revealed two weeks after the premiere of TV-Flash did not go over well, giving the implication they didn't care about the TV show, with several people calling DC out for their bone-headed timing.) Alongside the simple "which is better" debate and grumbling about having the TV actors play the film version of the characters, it's also created a rift between people who like the idea since it means neither property will be limited by the events of the other (a common argument about Agents of SHIELD is that it's boxed in by what's happening in the movies) while others feel like it's a massive example of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, since some already feel like DC is trying to do too much too fast, with confirmed appearances by Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and Aquaman in Batman V. Superman, and not taking advantage of the years of planning and world-building that has been done in their TV shows (by the release of Batman v. Superman, in 2016, Arrow and The Flash will have been on the air for a combined six years of universe-building, which could take some of the pressure off their films.) The rivalry only intensified when DC forced Arrow to kill off or write out characters who will appear in Suicide Squad (2016).
  • The "movie vs TV" rivalry now involves the Titans (2018) and Doom Patrol (2019). Although both the Zack Snyder's DCEU movies and the Titansverse shows are Darker and Edgier adaptations of DC Comics, the former is panned by critics while the latter is universally acclaimed. Then there's the fact that the DCEU Cyborg movie has been shelved while Cyborg himself has become a regular on Doom Patrol (2019). Likewise, Ryan Potter had campaigned to play Tim Drake in the solo Batman film and those who support the idea are worried that his role as Beast Boy on Titans (2018) will prevent him from playing a part in the films.
• In recent years, there's been an interesting one brewing—with Superman's voice actors and because both men initially voiced the same version of the character: namely between fans of Tim Daly and George Newbern as to who's the definitive voice actor for Superman. Both men voiced the DC Animated Universe version of the Man of Steel, with Daly voicing the character in Superman's solo show and Newbern replacing him in Justice League. While Newbern did improve in Season 2 and Unlimited, and fans warmed up to him, Newbern started off rocky and hence was a Replacement Scrappy for Daly. However, while Daly's version of Superman still has its fans, Newbern has seen an upsurge in popularity in recent years because of Superman vs. the Elite and the Injustice series, with many fans now preferring Newbern over Daly because of his performances in those projects. Of course, there's a third contingent that likes both men equally.
• Due to Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) and Shin Nihon Kikaku sharing the same initials, the AoT and SNK (Playmore) fandoms seem to have acquired a bit of a rivalry on Tumblr due to the "snk" tag^note Note that on the vast majority of social media sites, tags are case-insensitive, thus it makes no difference to use #SnK rather than #snk or #SNK becoming comprised of almost nothing but AoT posts.
• Pinball fans became angry against video games and how they took over arcades in the mid-'80s, mostly displacing the pinball tables they loved. Meanwhile, the new audiences brought in by these arcade video games had little interest in pinball and viewed pinball fans as whiny geeks stuck in the past. As the years went by, the rivalry became bitter as pinball companies continued to struggle through The '90s while video game companies thrived, as video game companies successfully transitioned to home consoles leaving pinball companies stuck with the dwindling arcade scene in North America, and as every major manufacturer of pinball tables closed shop by 1999 except Stern Pinball. Fans of video games and fans of pinball are still practically on non-speaking terms, when video game fans are aware that pinball fandom exists at all.
  • There seems to be one exception though: Famous console case modder Ben Heckendorn.
• Will November 23, 2013, be remembered in history as 1D Day or as the Day of the Doctor? One Direction fans and Doctor Who fans are willing to trash each other for "ownership" of that momentous day.
  • Averted in two instances. Apparently, as long as you don't try to claim it as anything other than The Day of the Doctor, the Whovians will leave you alone:
    • Stuart Ashen and Jonti Picking (creator of Weebl & Bob) have announced a 24-hour charity stream for StickAid which coincided with the Day of the Doctor. However there are no news of Whovians going ballistic on this one- the fact that it's an event for charity and that they didn't try to claim that it was their day helped.
    • The event also happened on the same day as the season 4 premiere of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Despite the anticipation of some whovians^note while Bronies generally get along well with Whovians, some Whovians do not get along with bronies for the same reason as many of the other fandoms who do not like bronies or FiM. On the other hand there are those obnoxious bronies who seek to find war with any fandom not FiM., no wars between bronies and whovians broke out. The fact that there's a fandom overlap and that the bronies did not try to claim this as their day, and that both shows aired at completely different times that did not overlap, helped. This is good as both shows have a very large and vocal fanbase, and the Internet would suffer if a war did break out.
  • Things may have died down a bit when on 1DDay, Matt Smith and other Doctor Who cast members appeared via video link to talk to the One Direction boys. The boys have also gone on record saying they're massive Doctor Who fans.
• Cracked shouldn't have posted that one video demanding the retirement of Doctor Who. Satire or not, the video did not go down well with a lot of Whovians- Whoops. It got worse when bronies decided to join in the fray bashing the whovians.
• Between Justin Bieber fans and Supernatural fans after Jared Padalecki sent a tweet commenting on Bieber's alleged drug possession.
• Thanks to a M.U.G.E.N video on YouTube, a minor rivalry between Eternal Champions and Vocaloid exists.
• Hardcore fans of film and television tend not to be fans of video games (excluding mobile games), and though less prevalent, the inverse also holds true. Because said hardcore fans of film and television are the ones most likely to get into Hollywood, this dislike of video games is at least partially responsible for Pac Man Fever: As their knowledge base for video games is often so small, attempts to do research range from tough (due to not being able to understand or visualize what they're reading) to unbearable (for those who are repulsed even thinking about video games). That being said, most are not above turning down free advice from someone on staff who does know a lot about video games.
• The Historic European Martial Arts and Western Martial Arts community has gained some notoriety for getting into scrapes with related and superficially similar hobbies.
  • First of all: HEMA practicioners vs. Re-enactors. Martial artists want their art to be recognised as such and consider the fact that they are lumped in with re-enactors to be a stumbling block on every step, while re-enactors don't understand why someone would want to just fight, when one could dress up and research too.
  • HEMA practicioners vs. SCAdians. HEMA practicioners deride SCA fencing for being "basically LARP" and hate the fact that SCAdians will usually use "learned from experience"-SCA styles rather than researching historic styles, and that even the ones that do the research tend to ignore things that are both historically correct and effective for being insufficiently "cool" (i.e. like the movies). Meanwhile, SCAdians consider HEMA practicioners to be the worst kind of period Nazi, and think they take competitions WAY too seriously.
  • HEMA vs. Battle Of The Nations. According to BotN fighters, HEMA is for people who like posing and walking on their tip-toes, and can't take a hit. According to HEMA practicioners, BotN is an a-historic kludge of submission wrestling and boxing in armour that tries to pass itself off as "real medieval fighting", has no concern for historic correctness or use of proper technique, and in general a sport for gorillas who like to fight but can't be bothered to learn to do it properly.
  • HEMA vs. Olympic fencing. HEMA practicioners tend to see sport fencing as a foppish, dumbed-down, oversimplified remnant of already simplified late forms of fencing that has nothing to do with actual swordfighting, further aggravated by cluelessness of some Olympic fencers about the history of European fencing. In turn, Olympic fencers see HEMA practicioners as a particularly pretentious part of the reenactment community (if they know of their existence at all).
    • Within the HEMA/WMA community, there are also some intense rivalries:
    • HEMA Alliance vs. ARMA. ARMA members consider HEMA Alliance to be a disorganised, rambling mess of fighters with no coherent approach to training or style. HEMA Alliance thinks ARMA is a cult-like circlejerk filled with primadonnas who are still sore about not being the only game in town any more. The divide isn't exactly made better by the fact that HEMA Alliance was founded by Jake Norwood, a former high-ranking ARMA member who was being groomed for a leadership role in that organization before having a massive falling out with the then-current leadership.
    • Historians vs. Tournament jocks. Historians want to preserve styles as written, and will train things that have no use in tournament, will often focus on learning the intricacies of a single manual, and will often obsess over what would and wouldn't work in fights to the death with sharp blades. Tournament jocks consider the ability to win tournaments the be-all and end-all of all training, and will gladly incorporate techniques from a variety of sources (often including non-European martial arts) and ignore everything that doesn't work in a fencing circle.
• Korean Manhwa/Webtoons vs Japanese Manga vs Chinese Manhua. Non-fans tend to group them together as 'manga' but fans hate that.
• Sports fans, in general, versus anything geeky, likely an extension of jocks vs. nerds in school. There was one year, for instance, that the X-Games was held on the same days as Anime Expo and right across the street from each other. Frustration and tension ran so high that the X-Games staff decided to never host at the same time as Anime Expo.
  • Real-life sports vs. sports games, which often boils down to "why play a video game of it when you can play the real thing?" vs. "I don't have the social connections, physical shape, type of playing field needed for it, etc. to actually play sports."
• Idol series fans are known for feuding with each other, with the most well-known example being the rivalry between the fanbases of Love Live! and The Idolmaster. Viga of Idols of Anime has referred to the 2010s as the "Idol Sengoku Jidai, and the rivalry encompasses both RL and animated idol groups.
• For a while, Undertale and the vast majority of GameFAQS, due to the recent "Best Game Ever" poll. Undertale's fanbase decided en masse to get the game to the finals, where it went up against games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, making the game rather unpopular to the GameFAQs community. This sentiment only grew greater when Undertale actually managed to win.
  • Two years before Undertale, both Reddit and League of Legends earned vitriol from the site (the GameFAQs Contests board, aka "Board 8", in particular) once r/LOL decided to push Draven to victory in a Character Battle. The vitriol was even higher, because while Undertale was just fans who loved their game, Draven was a Hostile Show Takeover by a Zerg Rush who wanted to force their memetic character onto the site.
• There was some pretty nasty feuding between Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator Salvation at the time both works came out, as to which of them was the legitimate primary representative of the Terminator franchise. Much of the hostility was down to the very different styles of the works, with Sarah Connor Chronicles fans dismissing Salvation fans as lowbrow fanboys who only wanted to see Stuff Blowing Up and Salvation fans claiming that Sarah Connor Chronicles fans were pretentious feminists who were only pretending to like the series because they thought it was politically correct. Another flashpoint was the clear canon incompatibility of the two, with Sarah Connor Chronicles explicitly retconning Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines out of existence while Salvation continued from it.
• The Walking Dead: The TV show fans vs Fans of the Telltale game. Usually over which is the better interpretation of the comics. Though the game is supposed to be in the comic series continuity.
• After The Muppets (2015) got cancelled because of Disney's television channels having slumping ratings due to the popularity of said show, Muppet fans have a strong hatred for Teen Titans Go!, claiming it is one of the worst kids' shows on TV. Fans of Teen Titans Go!, on the other hand, see The Muppets as a show only very young children would watch, when in reality, it was made for adults.
  • History repeated itself when Girl Meets World, another Disney show, got cancelled due to it being in competition timeslot-wise with new episodes of Teen Titans Go!.
• In the early 2000's, there was a war between fans of the English dub of Sailor Moon and SpongeBob SquarePants ^note  and to a lesser extent The Fairly Oddparents fans. According to Save Our Sailors, SpongeBob's defeat of Sailor Moon in the ratings lead to the show's cancellation by both Cartoon Network and YTV, causing the Sailor Moon fans to have a strong dislike for SpongeBob. It didn't help that YTV put SpongeBob in Sailor Moon's former timeslot during The Zone that it had stayed in for eight years.
• Tokusatsu fans vs. Anime fans. Fans of the latter often dismiss the former as "Power Rangers shit", angering fans of the former — many of whom are quick to point out that many popular modern anime series draw heavy influence from major Toku franchises. Of course, Toku fans are also not very happy about how anime managed to outstrip Toku in international popularity, as they feel it is responsible for the genre's lack of success outside of Japan.
• Peepo Choo begins with an in-universe depiction, with a brawl in a comic shop between superhero comic fans and manga fans, both of which are depicted as equally ridiculous.
• Pretty Cure fans have this with Frozen (2013), because the popularity of the latter caused Pretty Cure's toy sales to drop from 2014-2017, to the point where people joke that Frozen II will make 2020's incarnation have poor merchandise sales. However, many fans seem to ignore that other franchises contributed to the decline during that time period and not just Frozen. In response, HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! got a massive ire from the Frozen fandom as a Take That! to the Precure fandom.
• In The New '20s, a massive community of stans vouched heavily for their favourite... anything, really. Common subjects of debate include Nicki Minaj, K-pop groups such as BTS and Loona, and YouTubers such as Dream and the Dream SMP, though parts of the latter have attempted to distance themselves from Dream himself to focus on the roleplay aspect of the server. These groups frequently argue with each other about which obsession is the best, and there have been multiple instances of doxxing and harrassment between groups. Though extremely heated fandoms existed before, the combination of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the increased time spent online by young teenagers led to an explosion of extreme stan behaviour.
• Jurassic Park vs Prehistoric Planet. Jurassic World Dominion and Prehistoric Planet released close together and it resulted in a lot of arguments over cool looking movie dinosaurs vs accurate depictions.
• A weird case of Metallica fans vs. Love Live! fans existed on some music forums prior, due to the anime overtaking the Thrash Metal band in popularity in music forums (and Lulu by latter certainly didn't help), causing the Metallica fans to be bitter towards Love Live! and a rivalry has ensured. Metalheads in general vs. Love Live! fans sometimes flares up (with shades of Rock is Authentic, Pop is Shallow), which is utterly pointless as the latter also includes some Heavy Metal-inspired songs.
• Japanese anime fans vs. Chinese donghua fans. Many call the latter 'anime', which pisses the fans off.
• There's one between The Super Mario Bros. Movie from Illumination Entertainment and the earlier live-action Super Mario film, which is simply called Super Mario Bros. The public opinion is that Illumination's Super Mario Bros. Movie is much better due to being more accurate to the games, while the live-action one is considered So Bad, It's Good at best due to its Adaptation Deviation. There are some unironic fans in the cult following of the live-action one that like that one better specifically because of the adaptation deviation and accuse the Illumination one of being "too safe".