Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
|
My evil twin, bad weather friend
I know someday I'll meet him
But I don't know where or when
Superheroes and evil twins go together like peanut butter and... evil peanut butter!
Scheming Lookalike? Scheming Lookalike? It's an EVIL TWIN!
--Jay Leno on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, talking about a Dynasty plotline
Take a popular character and introduce us to the evil version of this character. Naturally, it's a favorite Soap Opera device. It's also very prevalent in genre shows, where the events may happen in an Alternate Universe: for example, the Wishverse in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, or the Star Trek Mirror Universe.
It's worth noting that in the overwhelming majority of cases the twin is evil; only rarely does an evil character suddenly find themselves contending with a good twin, and in those cases the good version is often simpleminded or purely comic. (See Good Is Impotent)
Often, in science fiction, the Evil Twin is created from the original character by Applied Phlebotinum. Most of the time, this results in a "Good Twin" and "Evil Twin", neither of which are complete entities on their own. (See Starfish Character for examples of this.)
... Though other times, it is a case of "Real Twin" vs "Evil Duplicate" as in an episode of Seven Days, where Parker is duplicated. This episode distinguishes itself in that the Good Twin is ultimately killed. In a double-reversal, the Evil Twin is then split again to create a new Good Twin.
A goatee or other beard is a staple of Evil Twins everywhere. This comes from the Star Trek The Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror", in which the evil duplicate of Spock is distinguished only by the fact that he has a beard. It is common for parodies of Evil Twin to use a beard as a distinguishing characteristic, in some cases even when they shouldn't be able to grow facial hair - for example, Flexo in Futurama or Cartman in South Park.
Sci-Fi versions usually wind up playing Spot the Imposter.
Compare Evil Counterpart and Enemy Without, and see also Doppelganger. For the situation where the original character pretends to be the Evil Twin, see I Am He As You Are He. When multiple characters' Evil Twins team up, they become The Psycho Rangers.
If they are literal twins, they might be Cain And Abel and/or Separated At Birth, but an Evil Twin need not be a relative of the original, and a separated pair doesn't necessarily include an evil one.
Examples:
Western Animation
- In Family Guy, Lois confronts two Peters on a rooftop. They both make claims to be the genuine article, and she finally shoots one. As she hugs the injury-free Peter his face pops off to reveal robotic insides. She asks "What was that?" to which he quickly replies "Nothing", and the scene cuts away.
- Kim Possible subverted this in the episode "The Ron Factor". The leader of the Global Justice Network, Doctor Director, is shown to have an evil twin named Gemini. An evil fraternal twin, of opposite gender and vastly different appearance, but with an almost identical eyepatch.
- The Kids Next Door episode "Op POOL" features evil twins from a Mirror Universe, including a goateed Numbuh Four.
- In one of The Simpsons Halloween specials, Bart finds he has an evil twin, who's been locked in the attic and fed with fish heads his whole life. This is subverted at the end of the episode where we discover that Bart is, and has always been, the evil twin ("oh, don't look so shocked").
- This was effectively parodied in the South Park episode "Spookyfish", in which Cartman's Evil Twin was soft spoken, considerate, and generous, so Stan and Kyle try to send the "real" Cartman back to the Alternate Universe instead.
- Another episode had Stan cloned. Despite having one arm longer than the other, a giant head, and only saying, "Me Stan, bah-chewy-chomp, bah-chewy-chomp, bah-chewy-chomp," everyone thought it was him when it escaped and went on a rampage.
- The images above come from Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends, episode "Squeeze the Day", as Bloo finds a magic marker and starts to play. Notice the stylish Evil Goatee.
- Futurama also did a subversion of this trope, where it turned out Bender, as opposed to his "twin" Flexo (another robot of the same model, except with a goatee), had stolen a beauty pageant crown. However, Flexo ended up taking the blame for everything.
- The animated DC Comics universe, particularly Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League, has made extensive use of the evil twin concept.
- In Superman, Superman encounters his "Bizarro" counterpart, a degenerate clone created by Lex Luthor. In another episode, Lois Lane finds herself in an alternate universe where her death resulted in Superman becoming an unhinged tyrant.
- Justice League featured another good-guys-turned-bad alternate universe where, after Flash's death, the "Justice Lords" crossed the line by executing Luthor and taking over the world.
- Batman faced a robotic evil twin of himself in Batman The Animated Series.
- In Gargoyles, Xanatos had Goliath cloned as one of his attempts to get his very own gargoyle underling. The clone proved to be more self-serving than evil; but it's telling that the normally unflappable Xanatos was visibly bothered by what a cunning and amoral Goliath was capable of, and it put him off the "personal gargoyle" idea for good. The clone - who went on to become an Oedipus Rex - was unoriginally named "Thailog"; when asked why they didn't name him "Htailog" the writers joked that Keith David (voice actor for both) was a scary guy, and they didn't want to see his reaction at having to pronounce it.
- The short lifespan of Megas XLR still had enough time to introduce Coop to an evil Alternate Universe version of himself, in the two-parter "Rearview Mirror, Mirror".
- In Darkwing Duck, there's the the recurring villain Negaduck (II), his evil Mirror Universe counterpart. (Negaduck (I), DWD's "evil side" who was merged back into him by the end of the episode, is more of an Enemy Without.)
- Averted in Frisky Dingo. When the Xtacles find Xander Crews' mentally retarded twin brother and cure his condition with "brain chemical", he quickly becomes evil and swears revenge on Xander Crews until he is promptly shot in the head by one of the Xtacles. The Xtacle then explains that the entire "evil twin" thing made the plot far too complicated for its own good and the rest of the Xtacles agree.
- In The Venture Brothers, Dr. Venture himself can be considered the evil twin to his brother Jonas Jr., whom he consumed in the womb. While Jonas Jr. is meant to be the true heir to Jonas Sr. and is the superior scientist, Rusty is a failed scientist who has shown himself to be amoral, having created a Joy Can out of an orphan's heart and a Frankensteins Monster out of a Punch Clock Villain that his bodyguard killed as well as being generally a horrid father who seems to show mostly disdain for his own sons (though this might be related to the fact that they are shown to be Too Dumb To Live at times).
- Comically subverted in the cartoon Earthworm Jim. In an episode when Evil Jim, the titular character's Evil Twin, tired of being the only Evil Twin in the universe, used a Negative Synthesizer to create evil versions of Earthworm Jim's sidekicks. However, halfway through the episode the Synthesizer accidentally creates good twins of all of the series' recurring villains, including this most humourous exchange:
Good The Cat: I am Good the Cat. Would you be my friend?
Evil The Cat: I think not. Instead, I will destroy you with an acid furball.
Good The Cat: Then I will neutralize it with an antacid furball.
<both cough up furballs, which collide in midair and dissipate>
Evil The Cat: Curses!
Good The Cat: Kisses!
- Fairly Oddparents has the Crimson Chin's (voiced by Jay Leno) evil Mirror Universe twin Nega Chin (also voiced by Jay Leno), who appeared in the episodes Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad Meet The Crimson Chin and The Big Superhero Wish. In the Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad episode he brought all his villain pals out of the comic, at the end he gets defeated by several versions of the chin (all voiced by Jay Leno).
- The Tick has Mucus Tick, an evil clone created by inter-dimensional horror Thrakkazog from a tissue, or rather Kleenex, sample taken from The Tick when he had a cold. Mucus Tick was, appropriately, green and amorphous. The sample was taken from a clone of Arthur, which among its most telling features is that it could only say, "Me Arthur." The Tick considered that a rather compelling argument when it came time to determine which one was real.
- Furthermore, Arthur seems to have an entire race of evil clones in an alien species called the What that coincidentally dresses exactly like him, has a language consisting entirely of the word "What," and literally worship nothing to the point of wanting to destroy everything.
- Arguably, Tick also has "Barry Tick," who is similar only in theme and wind up fighting each other over who gets to use their name.
- In one episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Grim takes Billy and Mandy into a shadow world where their shadows manifests as their opposites. Mandy meets her good double, while Billy meets his stupid double. And no, that's not a typo. The stupid Billy spends much of the episode barking like a sea lion.
- Gadget's lookalike, Lahwhinie, from the Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" is considered by many to be Gadget's evil twin. How or even if the two characters are related is a subject of debate amongst fans of the show.
- This troper prefers to go with the half-sister theory.
Anime
- Yuuna's evil twin in Maburaho was magic-derived.
- Evil robotic Angels appeared in Galaxy Angel Moonlit Lovers, after an evil robot Tact appeared in the first game. Strangely, the fake Angels were the only villains to be kept in the Galaxy Angel anime, and they only appeared for one episode.
- Gundam SEED featured Rau Le Creuset, an unstable clone of secondary character Mu La Flaga's father. While they initially don't seem similar, when Rau removes his mask, he reveals his identical face. Rau's feelings that his existence was an abomination and nihilism about humanity in general led him to attempt to wipe out all of humanity, Coordinator and Natural both.
- Monster has the titular Johan Liebert, fraternal twin of Anna Liebert (Nina Fortner).
- Magic Knight Rayearth 2 has Nova, evil twin to titular protagonist Shidou Hikaru. Extremely bi-polar (which is putting it kindly as she switches constantly back and forth between cutesy, loving little child and homicidal psychopath personalities), and bat-shit insane. Created at the very instant that Hikaru and her fellow Knights were transported back to earth at the end of the first story, Nova is actually a small portion of Hikaru's soul given a separate existence and consciousness of its own. Hikaru couldn't cope with all the crushing negative emotions and thoughts brought on by the trauma induced by the first story's ending, and thus her body expelled them all along with a bit of her being, which was given a life of its own via Cefiro's "willpower=reality" system of existence.
- Subverted in a stand-alone episode of The Slayers. A villain uses an enchanted mirror to create dark duplicates of his victims, including main characters Lina and Naga. The clones are supposed to be the "reverse" of the originals - which, to the bad guy's surprise, means the copies are meek, modest and peaceful, not evil.
- Throughout Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, there are sinister flashes of another Syaoran floating in a tank of water in the villain's base, who seems to be "influencing" the Syaoran who is traveling with the good guys. In the manga, the truth is revealed. The Syaoran in the tank is the "original" Syaoran, and the one traveling with them is really a heartless clone whose emotions were inspired by psychic connection. Upon the good Syaoran's release, our Evil Twin Syaoran succumbs to his programming.
- Knives in Trigun and Cain in TrinityBlood. Apparently, being a guy who's the hero's evil twin means being a genocidal psycho and having a brother complex the size of the Empire State Building.
- Subverted in Chobits. Freya, Chii's sister, at first glance appears to be Chii's dark side/evil twin/dark thoughts, The Enemy Within or just the highly-knowledgable Split Personality to Chii's innocence, but actually turns out to be looking out for Chii's safety, supplying her with information and intervening in preserving Chii when necessary.
Comic Books
- The entire Bizarro World in the Pre Crisis Superman mythos can be considered a form of Evil Twin by Applied Phlebotinum, though it slowly changed from "evil opposite" to "goofy opposite".
- The Marvel Comics series Exiles inverts this. The reality-hopping team of the title need to defeat the evil Hyperion... so they fetch two good versions of him from other universes.
- Comic inversion: In Calvin And Hobbes, Calvin once made a perfect copy of himself to do his work for him, only to find out that his double was even more troublesome than the original, since he realized that he could commit any mischief and the original would get all the blame. A later storyline had Calvin making a duplicate of only his good side... who among other things starts trying to make friends with the girl next door Calvin's always trying to humiliate. Calvin confronts his good counterpart and provokes him into a fight. Angered, Calvin's Good Side decides that he's going to "tear [Calvin] limb from-", and promptly disappears with the exclamation "Oops, I had an evil thought!" Hobbes then declares: "Another casualty of Applied Metaphysics."
- The DCU has Earth-3, a Mirror Universe of Evil Twins, including Alexander Luthor, the good twin of Lex Luthor.
- Subverted in the comic book Hellblazer, in which it is revealed that the series's star, John Constantine is the 'evil' twin, having strangled his brother in the womb with his own umbilical cord. He later crossed over to a parallel universe, where his brother had become an incredibly powerful and celebrated magus.
- This editor has been told that John DIDN'T kill his brother, but it was the result of his dad trying to abort the boys with a wire hanger. His dad blamed it on John.
- In the comic book Gold Digger, the two main characters (Gina and her adopted were-cheetah sister, Brittany) accidentally create a clone of themselves that shares traits from both of them, including their memories, in an attempt to remove a curse from themselves. After several battles with the clone, Gina realizes that the reason the clone is trying to kill them is because the curse is inhabiting the clone, motivating its irrational desire to kill them. Her father, an arch-mage, happens to show up in time to dispel the curse, and the clone is invited to join the family and given the name Brianna (a portmanteau of Brittany and Gina).
- Later on, the Djinn Madrid uses magics to disguise herself as Gina so well she can fool empaths. This backfires though, erasing her original form, and since then, Madrid has been slowly overwritten by Gina, to the point that a future version of herself traveled to the edge of existence and beyond to save her 'baby sister'
- In Archie Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as having Shadow, and various Metal Sonics, there were the Anti-Freedom Fighters, from another dimension. Anti-Sonic later became Scourge.
- The Flash (Barry Allen version) had an Evil Twin in the form of Eobard Thawne, who had plastic surgery to resemble him, and then travelled back from the 25th century to become Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash. A later Ret Con would reveal that Zoom was descended from Malcom Thawne, aka Cobalt Blue, who really was Barry's estranged twin brother but had completely different powers.
- In the 30th century Eobard's descendent created Inertia, a clone of Barry's (and his own) grandson Impulse, and sent him back in time to fight his counterpart.
- Pretty much every member of the X-Men has had at least one Evil Twin at some point, thanks to any or all of alternate realities, android duplicates, Skrulls and insane geneticists with a thing about cloning. Among the more notable examples...
- Beast's evil twin from an alternate dimension, known as the Dark Beast, made his way into the mainstream universe and has been a recurring villain since the 1990s. Beast also had at least two other Evil Twins, but they didn't last.
- Joseph was a much younger 'copy' of Magneto. Since at the time Magneto was villainous and Joseph was an X-Man, he counts as a Good Twin.
- At one point half the team was replaced by the shape-shifting aliens known as Skrulls (this was back before everyone was doing it). While most of them remained in captivity while their doubles were running around making trouble, the story culminated in Professor X handing a simultaneous physical and mental beatdown to his double. While naked.
Film
- In the superhero comedy movie Sky High, one of the teachers tries to set up a colleague on a blind date with his girlfriend's sister. "What if I said it's not just her twin? It's her evil twin." "This Friday, you say?"
- The Movie of The Magic Roundabout introduces Zebedee's Evil Twin, the ice-wizard Zeebad who was imprisoned under the Roundabout itself. This would probably qualify it for Dis Continuity were it not for Tom Baker's wonderful Large Ham voice role.
Television
- From Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Vampire Willow in "The Wish" and "Dopplegangland".
- And the trope was later subverted in The Replacement. A demons spell, meant for Buffy hits Xander instead, splitting him in two. He spends the rest of the episode tracking his twin while the twin interacts with his friends and makes various changes to his life. At the end its revealed That the blast doesnt split you into Good/Bad but only into Strong/Weak. The Xander that everyone thought was the "Good" Xander was actually the "Weak" one and the "Strong" one wasn't doing anything harmful to his life and was actually improving it. The demons plot hinged on the fact that if one of the twins was killed, both would die. He'd planned to split Buffy into a slayer powered version and a weak human version, then kill the human version.
- Lois And Clark had Lois's evil twin, who was a clone.
- Data has an evil twin, Lore, in Star Trek The Next Generation, and a "stupid twin", B4, in Star Trek: Nemesis.
- As does William Riker, thanks to a transporter malfunction, although his twin was not so much evil as misguided, and was not even that in his first appearance.
- In The Dukes Of Hazzard episode "Baa Baa White Sheep" we meet Boss Hogg's good twin, Abraham Lincoln Hogg, who dresses in a black outfit, complete with stovepipe hat, that matches Boss Hogg's white one. It helps to know that Boss's given initials stand for "Jefferson Davis".
- Similarly, Fantasy Island once revealed that Mr. Roarke and Tattoo had their own evil (non-identical) twins, who wore black suits with white ties, and had British Accents.
- Red Dwarf's episode "Demons and Angels" triplicated the ship and its inhabitants into normal, good, and evil versions.
- The 1970s science fiction parody series Quark also hit this trope in an episode called "The Good, The Bad, and the Ficus". Spock-like Ficus, being a plant, had no morality to invert when the crew of the ship was duplicated.
- On a Saturday Night Live "Frankenstein, Tonto, and Tarzan" sketch, Frankenstein is kidnapped and replaced by his brother:
Tonto: Frankenstein seem different.
Frankenstein's Evil Brother: Why that's utterly preposterous! Away, you inconsiderate reprobate! [Sips a sherry]
- This trope is parodied in another Saturday Night Live skit one which is titled Jay's Evil Twin, in it....Leno uses a fake moustache to determine if his date (Joan Cusack) will put out- his evil twin Wade.
Jay's Evil Twin: What's the matter, baby? Still got your clothes on? [ releases an evil laugh as he shakes the beer can ]
Kate: Oh, uh.. I don't want that beer.. I.. no, thank you, Jay.
Jay's Evil Twin: [ releases an evil laugh ] Wet t-shirt contest, baby? [ pulls the tab on the beer can, gushing beer all over Kate's clothes ]
Kate: Why! You're not Jay! You're Wade, his evil twin!
Jay's Evil Twin: [ releases an evil laugh ] Jay - that little weasel! That sniveling druid! What kind of a man would read "Our Bodies Ourselves"? I've got my own version of that book, baby - it's called "Your Body Myself!" [ releases an evil laugh ]
Kate: Ohhh, that's evil! You're an evil, evil man! [ runs quickly out of the apartment ]
Jay Leno: [ releases an evil laugh, as he peels the fake moustache off his upper lip ] You know.. I had a hunch that dame wasn't going to come across on the first date. You know, this evil twin thing works every time - I could have blown three hours and who knows how much dough on that girl. But, anyway.. [ checks his watch ] My God, it's still early.. I can still go to Hef's place, maybe meet somebody else there. See you later. [ releases evil laugh as he exits the apartment]]
- Knight Rider, a show with only three regular human characters, featured four evil twins; KITT, whose prototype KARR appeared in "Trust Doesn't Rust" and "KITT vs KARR", Michael, whose surgically reconstructed face was revealed to be based on the long-lost Garth in "Goliath" and "Goliath Returns", Bonnie has an imposter wearing a Latex Perfection disguise in "KITTnapped", and Devon, who had a surgically reconstructed duplicate in "Knight of the Juggernaut". A script commissioned but never produced was to introduce yet another "evil twin", Devon's unscrupulous, though not actually evil, twin brother.
- Lexx, presumably due to casting limitations, featured an endless supply of twins, some good, some evil. In a bit of Lampshade Hanging, the characters theorized that there were only a finite number of archetypes for human appearances.
- Sliders featured numerous evil twins, including one case where there is a No Ending in which one of the regulars may have been permanently replaced by his twin.
- Col. Carter from Stargate SG-1 had an evil replicator version of herself, Replicator Carter (Replicarter) who nearly takes over the entire galaxy.
- Alton Brown's evil twin, B.A., is a recurring character on Good Eats, usually to provide contrast as Alton and B.A. make sweet and spicy varieties of the same dish. Despite that B.A. is "evil", and has been in and out of jail numerous times, Alton and B.A. seem to get along relatively well. Of course, this might be because B.A.'s also The Voiceless, and Alton provides the running commentary on anything B.A. makes.
- In Star Trek Voyager, the Emergency Medical Hologram on the Evil Counterpart ship U.S.S. Equinox has had his "ethical subroutines" removed, making him an Evil Twin of the Doctor on Voyager.
- Smallville had a couple of Evil Twin variants - Bizarro Clark, of course, whose distinguishing characteristic was that he'd wear the opposite jacket/shirt combo (red jacket/blue shirt if Clark's got a blue jacket/red shirt, etc.) and no one noticed. Also, in the episode "Onyx", Lex Luthor is split into a Good Lex and a Crazy/Evil Lex.
- The season-long "Family Secret" arc on Sabrina The Teenage Witch ends with the revelation that every member of the Spellman family has an evil twin. Sabrina is then subjected to a series of tests to determine whether she or "Katrina" is the evil one. (Hint: It's Katrina). The loser is sent off to the Otherworld Twin Cities.
- So Weird: "Pen Pal": Random supernatural occurrences cause Annie to come face-to-face with a parallel universe counterpart who has fallen in with a bad crowd, and thereby turned "evil" (Well, goth and rebellious. This being a Disney show, the two are more or less synonymous).
- Popular had Bobbi and Jessie Glass working at Kennedy High (as well as their brother Rock). Bobbi and Rock were notoriously mean and unpleasant, while Jessie the nurse seemed a bit nicer, comparatively speaking. And yet, in the first season finale, Jessie plotted to kill her twin and frame all of Bobbi's sophomore biology class for the murder. Who's the mean one now?
- The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in the 90's had Jay playing different characters such as Iron Jay and Beyondo. The character of his that fits right in this trope is Evil Jay who appears at every full moon.
- And years before that, Jay Leno satirized the entire 'evil twin' trope when a guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Leno had a marked-up TV Guide and showed what seemed like a dozen 'evil twin' themed shows for that one week. There was one on Hawaii Five-O, a host this troper can no longer remember, and finally the bit wrapped with Dynasty, which had Crystal replaced with her 'scheming lookalike', leading to the third quote at the top of this page. This trope is so endemic in television that perhaps we should be asking which shows never did it.
- A two-part episode of The Incredible Hulk introduced viewers to another Hulk, created by a similar process to the one that transformed David Banner - but even more wild than the one we know, and actively malevolent and murderous.
- Out Of This World: Evie splits herself in order to attend a party while also writing a speech about the evils of school uniforms (Specifically, bright yellow dresses with blue baseball caps, and breeches for the boys). Unsurprisingly, the process results in a serious Evie and a reckless Evie. The serious Evie is portrayed as the "real" one, at least until Serious-Evie tries to give her speech and discovers that she's now in favor of the dress code. Troy attributes their eventual recombination to The Power Of Love, which is kind of Squickworthy if you think too hard about it.
Video Games
- In the Sonic The Hedgehog video games, Sonic has had a number of evil robotic duplicates -- the number of characters involved is unclear, but at least five different bodies have been used. In addition, the sometimes-evil character Shadow is very similar to Sonic in appearance and abilities.
- Happened in the comics, too, more times than this editor cares to count. The first instance might have been in Sally's miniseries.
- The Archie comics Sonic has an evil duplicate from an alternate universe who's been in the comics for a long time. Originally referred to as Evil Sonic, he renamed himself "Scourge" after absorbing energy from the Master Emerald.
- Devil May Cry has Vergil, who despises his humanity and does questionable things to assuage his power cravings, unlike Dante who dislikes his demonic heritage and fights demonic incursions.
- This was the whole point of the series Two : The evil one is the first to discover he has a twin, and frames him for his own crimes.
- In First Among Sequels, Thursday Next faces her fictional adaptation.
- Wario from the Super Mario Bros games is Mario's evil twin, a malicious, greedy egotist to Mario's more peaceful, fair and modest nature. His origin is not known other than him being a childhood friend of Mario, but the most commonly accepted story is that he was jealous of Mario's fame and was bullied by him as a child. Wario has since moved away from being one of Mario's antagonists and instead wants to gather fame and fortune for himself.
- Mario's brother Luigi got his own "evil twin" in the form of Waluigi. He was created mainly as a partner for Wario in the Mario Tennis games and has since taken part in many other party/all-star Mario games. Waluigi is disliked by many fans, considering him an unessential tag-along, but he still has his fans and sympathizers who want to see him take on larger roles to make him more than just an extra character on the selectable roster of the next Mario Party.
- Another evil twin of sorts appears in Super Mario Sunshine where an evil "Shadow Mario" is ruining Mario's good name by spreading graffiti and monsters with his magic paintbrush. He is shaped exactly like Mario, but his body is made of liquid and he has glowing red eyes. However he turns out to simply be a child of Bowser's in disguise.
- The plot of Metal Gear Solid is all about this. The protagonist and his maniacal twin are the products of research into "soldier genes". The hero, Snake, was supposedly modified to have the strongest possible soldier phenotype, and the maniacal Liquid Snake was meant to be the weakest. It's subverted twice:
- At the end of the first game, it's revealed that Liquid was actually the superior twin.
- And Metal Gear Solid 2 reveals a third 'twin', also not very nice.
- In World Of Warcraft, players that use a transporter to Gadgetzan can be turned into their evil twin. Blizzard neglected to add goatees to the character models, unfortunately.
- A common theme in Zone Of The Enders: The main player's Humongous Mecha with a decidedly intelligent AI whose cockpit he ends up in is always part of a pair created for a specific purpose. Guess where the other one ends up?
- In Silent Hill 3, Heather meets and fights her twin, which appears to be incarnate Memories of Alessa, as Heather and Alessa are basically the same person (nuances exist, however).
- A bit of a reversal from the Nights Into Dreams series. The titular character is the good twin of a pair of nightmares.
- Done in No More Heroes when the well dressed Irish-brogue accented swordsman Henry says he's your twin brother...in the last three minutes of the game. Plus, considering how the Touchdown/Crystel/Whatever brothers behave it's hard to tell which one is evil. Also, it is probably the greatest parody of Dante and Vergil you'll ever see.
- Samus Aran of the Metroid series has had two, both resulting from having her suit invaded by evil alien substances: the SA-X of Metroid Fusion, and Dark Samus of the Prime trilogy.
- In the F Zero series, there's Blood Falcon, who was literally cloned from Captain Falcon, and wears the exact same clothes in a different color. In a nice touch, however, their racing machines are rather different.
- Super Robot Wars Original Generation example: Beowulf, Kyosuke's Shadow Mirror counterpart. In OG 2, he is portrayed to be pretty much identical and as heroic as Kyosuke. But in Original Generations, it's revealed that he's possessed by Einst, a total sociopath obsessing on the world's destruction and rebirth, and just plain evil, perhaps as an after effect that Kyosuke in the Shadow Mirror has no Excellen to balance it out ( Excellen was killed in the dimension and rebuilt into Lemon). Needless to say, this Evil Twin makes the Shadow Mirrors look like good guys.
- Mona Sax, the "knockout femme fatale" of Max Payne, introduces herself as the "evil twin" of Lisa Punchinello, the Don's wife. Lisa is killed by the Don near the end of the second act, and Mona shows up later during the final assault on the Aesir building, where she does a Heel Face Turn and apparently dies, only to show up again in the sequel, in which she plays a major role as Max's partner/love interest.
- In all three episodes of Apogee's Monster Bash you end up having to fight Johnny Dash's evil twin. These fights are somewhat harder than most enemies partly because the evil twin can take more damage than most monsters and partly because the evil twin uses the exact same sprite graphics as the player's character, making things confusing at times.
Webcomics
- The Sister arc of webcomic El Goonish Shive has main character Elliot get cursed to turn female, then touch a magical diamond which separates him into his normal male self, and a female version, named Ellen, who has all of the same memories, experiences, etc. Believing that she's the embodiment of his curse, and thus will disappear when it wears off, in less than a month, she goes crazy and tries to become his evil twin, in a desperate attempt to gain some sort of identity. She was wrong about disappearing, and wasn't so good at the evil twin thing. She now lives as Elliot's twin sister, joins the cast, and is accepted by Elliot's friends and family against the initial predictions of others. An extremely rare case of a "clone" getting a happy ending.
- Webcomic example: Good old-fashioned separated-at-birth actual twin Nale in The Order Of The Stick. He's the head of the Quirky Mini Boss Squad (but not The Dragon, oddly enough), while his good twin Elan is a comically inept bard. Further, the members of his "Linear Guild" were deliberately chosen by Nale to be "evil opposites" of the rest of the good guys.
- In Gaming Guardians, Ultima was a doppelganger-demon who was permanently empowered by Scarlet Jester with a copy of Radical's powers, which also caused her default form to become a duplicate of Radical.
- Depending on how you look at things, April in College Roomies From Hell could be considered to be her 'sister' June's evil duplicate.
- Subverted in the webcomic Melonpool
 , in which the duplicate, Ralphie, is the good one. Also, the Melonpool/It's Walky! Cross Over used the Dup-o-matic on an opposing army, who then immediately began fighting amongst each other. This crossover led to the creation of 'Anti-Joyce', who was the opposite of Joyce in that she was sexually active, rather than prudish. Interestingly, the storylines would have long-term consequences in both series: Ralphie joining the crew in Melonpool, while the murder of Anti-Joyce in It's Walky! would lead to serious psychological (and later, legal) problems for the original.
Literature
- In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan book series: After the very distinctive-looking Miles Vorkosigan claims (as a coverup for his secret identity) that he has a clone running around, it turns out he does have one. Who's been trained to take his life over. Turns out the twin, Mark, isn't necessarily born evil, just brainwashed (plus has Split Personality, with the personalities generally being pretty dark).
- In William Sleator's The Duplicate, the clone isn't really evil, just resentful of being treated as a clone (he has all the memories of the original, so he believes he is the original). However, this leads him to make another clone, who really is evil (or at least not exactly sane).
- Parodied in the webfiction Whateley Universe. In one novel, Jade Sinclair tries to fix her Exemplar problem that's keeping her looking like an eleven-year-old boy. She uses massively superpowered Tennyo as a model. Jinn Sinclair gets the upgrade.. even though Jinn is only a PK copy of Jade, currently inhabiting some ground chalk. In a rare Genre Savvy moment for the Sinclair girls, Jinn pretends to be a clone of Tennyo, and (of course) insists that she is real and the real Tennyo is fake. No one is fooled. I mean, she's physically composed of ground chalk at the time.
- In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next : First Among Sequels, Thursday is asked to train two fictional versions of herself as Jurisfiction agents. one of them ends up turning evil.
- Subverted in Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code, where the villain of the book, Jon Spiro, is the evil twin. His brother is a normal guy used as a decoy. He doesn't even get any dialogue, he just sleeps..
Real Life
- This troper has an accquaintance whose husband bears a marked, close, disturbing resemblance to Cillian Murphy- except slightly taller and most tellingly of all, with sinister facial hair. No word on whether he's more or less diabolically wicked than his real world counterpart- though privately, I hope he's actually the good twin and it's Cillian meticulously plotting our downfall from behind a mask of attractive Irish charm. His wife resembles a petite, Catholic Ziva.
New Media
|
|
