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"Aw, and I thought we were so close... So nice to finally meet you, face to face!"
Bad Ash: I'm Bad Ash! And you're Good Ash! You're a goody-little-two-shoes! Good Ash: Good, Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.
When someone's inner darkness doesn't quite take over someone, but it does "escape" their body and rampage around. Fighting someone else's Enemy Without is tricky, as often it will either kill the person projecting it if it dies, or it will just resurrect itself until the actual darkness in the hero's heart is dealt with by the hero themselves.
Often symbolically represents repression, and the hero's refusal to acknowledge the darkness within or some other aspect of themselves. Victory is achieved half the time via "reintegrating" with it. Occasionally, however, it can be seen as representing some other inner demon, and thus, rather than being reintegrated, it must be abandoned, purged, or confronted and conquered. It's generally obvious which one in context, though the first one tends to be more popular.
Sometimes this battle will occur inside someone's own head in a dreamscape, making it both the Enemy Within and the Enemy Without at the same time.
This trope is very similar to both The Heartless and Starfish Character. It is distinguished from The Heartless by having some personal connection to the person/people it was created from, and from Starfish Character by leaving behind a clearly-defined original character.
See also: Evil Twin, Enemy Within, Shadow Archetype, Ghost In The Machine. The "evil" is usually a characters Dream Mirror.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- In Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita, Kaos's backstory is that Den was originally Kaos's evil impulses that occasionally surfaced to do evil things, and Kaos's father, Desty Nova, found a way to pull Den out and give him a body of his own, leaving Kaos free of Den's influence.
- In Magic Knight Rayearth, Nova was the suppression of Hikaru's hatred for herself, given physical form by the magic of Cephiro.
- Subversion: Madlax was a benign version of this; in this case, she was the sublimated desire of a young girl to kill her Brainwashed And Crazy father in self-defense. Uniquely, she grew up on her own without too many defects, as a relatively friendly mercenary in a war-torn land.
- In Animerica, Kiyone's Enemy Within becomes this in Season 3, having "escaped" his body when he felt remorse over Yumi's death (she gets better) but finds his way back when his good side was just broken out of his Driven To Suicide state and accepted Ron's words, angrily refusing to let him perform a Heel Face Turn. He attempts to give him another Hannibal Lecture, but is promptly told to shut up by his good side, telling him that he no longer has a purpose to be evil and wants to change for the better. This, followed by the power that the "true" Golem unlocks within him, triggers one of the best Crowning Momentof Awesome in the series.
- In Bleach Ichigo has to battle his own mirror self inside a dreamscape.
- It's mentioned later on that forcing a Shingami's zanpaktou to manifest, then submit to you, is a required technique for accessing the second release.
- In a possible subversion, Piccolo from Dragonball began his existence as Kami's cast-off evil side. Through the course of Dragonball Z, he exhibits more and more heroic qualities, eventually going so far as to re-integrate himself with Kami for a much-needed power boost.
- The original Piccolo died and his SON is the one who merged with Kami.
- Sort of. Piccolo Jr could just as accurately be described as the original Piccolo's reincarnation.
- Played fairly straight with Majin Buu. His evil side comes out, fights him, then turns him into chocolate and eats him.
- This is part of the plot of the anime Seven Of Seven. The main character, Nana, is an ordinary schoolgirl who finds herself with six alter egos representing different aspects of her personality (hot-headed Nanappe, cheerful Nanacchi, sensitive crybaby Nanarin, lazy and laid-back Nanakko, intellectual Nanasama, and eccentric Nanapon) after messing with one of her inventor uncle's experiments.
- An episode of Keroro Gunsou is a direct spoof of Seven of Seven: Giroro acquires a sextet of alter-egos representing parts of his personality. The gag is, only one is obviously part of him (his "inner soldier"), and the others much less so, like his inner coward, his romantic side, and his feminine and poetic sides, the last two female!
- This happens twice and in two variations in Ranma 1/2. The first time Ranma was split into his female (and evil) self and his male (and normal) self. The second time he found a way to physically fight his shadow, and inevitably, the shadow turned out to be slightly evil because it lacked a superego.
- Both the cases are present only in the anime version. In the manga this trope is not used (More precisely, in an episode there is a double of a female Ranma; but she is not a double but a ghost that, being sealed in a mirror, manifests herself looking as a female Ranma).
- The corrupted self-defense program that separated from the Book of Darkness once Hayate became its master in the second season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. It was even explicitly called the "darkness of the Book of Darkness" by Hayate.
- Subverted in the Touhou doujin Remily the Strange. When Remilia looks into a cursed mirror, it creates a doppleganger that's supposed to represent the victim's repressed evil. However, Remilia is already completely evil, so the doppleganger ends being extremely timid and "spaced out".
- Fate Stay Night: While not split in double-personalities, Emiya Shirou (who optimistically believes in his ideal to be a superhero who saves everybody) is definitely a foil to himself: as Archer, his jaded and bitter future self, was betrayed and disillusioned by following this ideal to the end. The sheer contrast between Archer and Shirou forces him to acknowledge the flaws in his ideal, as Archer himself is proof that following it blindly while ignoring the reality of things will only harm himself.
- More related to this troupe is Nanaya Shiki during Melty Blood. Though, in a sense, he can still be considered a kinda of alternate "what if" version of Tohno Shiki.
- In the animated adaptation of Samurai Deeper Kyo, this was Onime no Kyo's revised origin; he was essentially the fighting instinct within the soul of Mibu Kyoshiro, distilled into a separate and powerful body the Mibu created. Onime no Kyo then became an actual person, as opposed to merely the nickname of the Blood Knight Mibu Kyoshiro.
Comic Books
- Professor X has attacked the X-Men via this method on a few occasions; once in the 90s cartoon, and several times in the comics, most notably as a fusion of his and Magneto's darkness, Onslaught.
- Marvel Universe character The Sentry's arch-nemesis, The Void, is his own personal Enemy Without. It's implied that the incident which caused The Sentry to be erased from the minds of the Marvel Universe's populace for about 30 years was a failed attempt at re-integration.
- In the UK's Sonic the Hedgehog comic series (not the same as the Archie one), Sonic lost control when he turned into Super Sonic, becoming interested only in causing as much destruction as he could. Eventually, Super was split from Sonic, becoming a recurring antagonist in his own right, and later a pacifistic protagonist who knew nothing of his past or name and fearing having to use his powers to help people because of his Superpowered Evil Side.
- Shade, the Changing Man's Enemy Within, Hades, thanks to the power of madness, became an Enemy Without and an Ensemble Dark Horse in the same story arc. He also seemed to become less threatening and more helpful, so perhaps it's for the best that he vanished the scene before Spikeification set in.
- In an issue of the 2001 revamp of Doom Patrol, every member of the team is subjected to their own personal Hell. Deadpan Snarker Flash Forward, or Negative Man, is faced with eternity alone with nobody but another one of himself for company.
- In the Mirage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, Casey's darker instincts, which had been personified in his mind into a darker, spikier version of himself, came to live when they took over the body of a shape-shifting comedian. Fighting ensued.
Film
Literature
- This is the premise for most of A Wizard of Earthsea.
- The Yamiko in Sailor Nothing (also The Heartless).
- In Thursday Next, Thursday's adventures eventually inspire a book series, with the books' interpretations of Thursday appearing in the fictional Bookworld. The Thursday of the first four books is a leather-wearing pastiche of Badass Anti Hero cliches, who eventually just decides to turn evil. Interestingly, after these four books the writers decided to go in the opposite direction so there's also a Thursday who's a touchy-feely Granola Girl. This gives the impression that she's become a Starfish Character, except that the real Thursday is still around and is demonstrably the only one from the Real World.
Live Action TV
- He also appears at the end of the episode, repeating the line and snapping his fingers with a big smile on his face.
- An episode of Angel serves as a perfect example of the dreamscape variety. Faith (through methods and because of reasons that are both too complicated to explain) ends up inside Angel's head and meets Angelus (Angel's Enemy Within) there as well as Angel. This culminates in a battle between Angel and Angelus achieved by carefully choreographed fight scenes with David Boreanaz and a split screen. It was quite impressive.
Tabletop Games
- In Mage The Awakening, it is possible (although not wise) for a mage to bring some aspect of his personality (usually his personal Vice) into reality in a physical body. Doing so frees the mage of that personality aspect, but having a mage's Pride or Wrath walking around doing stuff isn't usually a good thing.
- Similarly, Vampire The Requiem recently introduced the idea of "Hollow" Embraces — vampires who were Embraced post-mortem. They have the traditional vampiric trait of not having any reflection and not appearing on film, whereas other vampires just show up blurry. Thing is, that reflection is now a separate being. And it hates them.
- And in Fading Suns, this is what happens if a psychic behaves very badly.
Video Games
Webcomics
- An interesting variation is found in 8-Bit Theater, where during the main characters' trip into the Castle Of Ordeals, the only thing evil enough on the Castle's record to represent Black Mage's sins is... himself
 , who becomes more powerful as Black Mage reminds the doppelgänger of a few sins the Castle forgot to add. In typical fashion, Black Mage stabs the manifestation in the back of the head. Then absorbs its energy to avoid the catharsis of literally killing his own evil. Then has sex with the corpse.
- The last part of that is only implied, rather than explicitly shown, though.
- In The Wotch, Anne once tries to create helper duplicates, and is Genre Savvy enough to make sure none of them believe they're the original or decide they'd rather stay separate. Something goes wrong with it anyway, and each copy is a different aspect of her personality (often simply wearing a different color, though a few take on forms from previous arcs, such as her courage being a Batgirl-based hero, and her curiosity being a Cat Girl.) The villains talked her anger, frustrated with having been kept from acting by the rest of Anne's personality, into refusing to return and trying to get rid of the others.
- After a crossover with Melonpool, It's Walky! introduced Anti-Joyce, a slutty duplicate of Joyce supposedly created from her repressed libido via the Dupe-O-Matic. She was killed by the original shortly afterward.
- The Wraith in the Aiden and Bronwyn arc of Misfile was apparently an amalgamation of the negative parts of their love, or something...
- The exact nature of Xero in Suicide For Hire isn't quite clear, though he's definitely spawned from Arcturus' dark side. Arcturus describes arm-wrestling with Xero as a "metaphorical battle", implying it's taking place only in his imagination, and nobody else can see Xero, but Arcturus holds conversations with him out loud (much to the confusion of the waitress who sees him talking to himself and can't hear the replies). The strongest evidence that Xero has some kind of tangible form is that items of clothing Xero was seen wearing, which Arcturus doesn't own, keep turning up in places he's recently been.
Web Original
- This was attempted in Survival Of The Fittest version two, but didn't work out. The character Walter Smith was originally made in the pregame with the concept of him being the manifestation of Jack Bexley's dark side, as Jack was also a politician's child but, while he did not let himself be corrupted as Walter was, still had part of him that was like that. The plan was that they'd be bitter rivals, and Jack would eventually kill Walter in a fight late in the game as a symbol of finally getting rid of that side of his personality. Unfortunately, Jack's handler left the site and never put Jack into the game, leaving the storyline in the air and Walter as a pure evil villain without any of the symbolism.
Western Animation
- In Ben 10, Ben's Ghostfreak form is revealed near the end of the second season to be bad news... After Ben loses control, Ghostfreak winds up separated from Ben's body and on his own, chasing Ben and possessing others for the remainder of the episode, trying to get back to Ben's body and take over. One of the examples where "re-integrating" the Enemy Without would be a very bad idea.
- Then again... (Near the end of the third season, a copy of the "true" (sunlight-vulnerable) Ghostfreak ends up on the Omnitrix. Whether this copy contains Ghostfreak's personality remains to be seen).
- Well, Ghostfreak himself said that his race, the Ectonurites, retain memory within the tiniest strand of DNA, so, yeah, it's probable that this is true, and that the writers just forgot.
- In Samurai Jack, Aku realizes that none of his forces are as strong as Jack is... so he creates an Evil Twin of Jack, made of Jack's anger and fury, to take him out. Naturally, Jack wins when he accepts it and doesn't fight back.
- In Darkwing Duck, the first episode ever written with a character called "Negaduck" was not truly starring the recurring Evil Twin Alternate Universe Negaduck that came to spearhead the Fearsome Five in later days. This Negaduck was the accidental byproduct of an invention Megavolt called "the tron-splitter", which was designed to separate an object into its component "positrons and negatrons", and then later re-merge them. A locked door, thus separated, would leave an empty doorway Megavolt could simply stroll through, and once re-merged without ever being unlocked, there would be no sign of tampering for the CSI squad to analyze. Things start going wrong when Darkwing catches him red-handed, and in the ensuing fight, Megavolt turns the tron-splitter on DW. DW's good side turns out, much like Captain Kirk, to lack the necessary sock-pow forthrightness that makes for a quack-fu action hero, while his evil side is unhesitantly violent, and goes on a fearsome rampage. Later, it is discovered that the tron-splitter can "galvanize" a tron-pure subject, imparting functionally limitless super powers. As always, the solution is to re-merge the two before the Enemy Without destroys everything. Also includes an instance of Spot The Imposter, early on after the split.
- As implied, this is all a comedic rehash of an episode of the original Star Trek in which a transporter accident splits Captain Kirk in two.
- In Justice League Unlimited's third season, Shadow Thief was revealed to be Hawkman's Enemy Without.
- In the South Park episode "Fourth Grade," Mr. Garrison has a face-off with his "Gay Side" in a direct parody of the cave in The Empire Strikes Back. He loses.
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