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Often a subset of Bizarro Universe, it is an Alternate Universe where Good and Evil characterisations are reversed, but is otherwise the same as the "real" universe - except where logically derived from this change in morality.
Occasionally, some other characteristic is reversed. Contrast with Dark World. The hero in the Mirror Universe functions as the Evil Twin
From the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror". In homage to this episode, it's common for an evil mirror equivalent have a goatee beard.
Examples:
- Doctor Who also did a variation of this in "Inferno" where the Doctor was transported to a world where Britain was a military dictatorship and the UNIT characters were all evil. The location and plot were the same (an attempt to drill into the Earth's mantle), but penetration was reached and the world was destroyed. The Doctor was able to escape in time and warn the normal world of the consequences.
- South Park parodied the Star Trek episode with their own Mirror Universe, from which visited an alternate Cartman. Exactly like the alternate Spock in "Mirror, Mirror", the alternate Cartman was bearded -- but being the moral opposite of the "real" Cartman, he was of course kind, soft-spoken, polite and gentle.
- One of the many, many sphere malfunctions in Seven Days, rather than sending Parker into a Mirror Universe, actually inverted the real universe (Since the existence of parallel universes was disallowed by the show's Applied Phlebotinum), changing Never Never Land into the seat of a tyrannical dictatorship, Ramsey into a spaced-out hippie, and reversing all writing. Parker, being morally ambiguous to begin with, was immune.
- Comics do this all the time. The DCU had "Earth-3", wherein Ultraman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick, Power Ring, and Owlman were the evil duplicates of Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Batman, and Lex Luthor was the only superhero the world had.
- Exiles, of the Marvel Universe, had an issue where Galactus restored worlds instead of eating them, and the Silver Surfer was a power-hungry despot who had destroyed his own homeworld.
- Comics, subverted : In the short story "Work Ethic" found in Grimjack #40, heroes from a world in which there is only pure good and pure evil, the heroes always win, get transported a mirror dimension where there is shades of gray between good and evil. Thus, since they see that everything is not purely good, they begin to destroy the entire town of Cynosure until Cynosure's protector sends the hero back to their own dimension.
- The World's Greatest Superfriends had such an episode, "Universe of Evil", which has its own Wikipedia entry
.
- Subverted in Stargate SG-1. A whole shipload of alternate SG-1 teams from various universes arrives. One team ends up hijacking the Prometheus. Mitchell says to his double, "You don't have beards, so I know you're not from the Evil Twin Universe". It turns out that this particular team comes from a universe in which Earth does not have a working Zero Point Energy module and needs one to power their defenses. So out of desperation they've contrived the conditions that caused the dimensional travel so they can steal someone else's. You'd think they'd just get all the Samanthas to work on the problem.
- Webcomic example: In this strip
of Dinosaur Comics, where every comic is the same six images every time, an early story arc involves a mirror universe that is the same six panels... mirrored. Also, every character has goatees.
- City Of Heroes has the "Praetorians", evil world-conquering versions of the "normal" world's main heroes. Of course, it's up to the player character(s) to defeat them and ensure that they don't extend their conquests to other worlds.
- They have a Greek name, and Tyrant wears Greek-style armor, because of a legendary Real Life incident: when told of the existence of alternate universes, Alexander the Great wept: "So many worlds, and we have not yet conquered one."
- The same game featured the "Amerika Korps", who were from an Alternate History where, you guessed it, Hitler conquered and occupied the US.
- Charmed had a Polar Opposite World, where good and evil were reversed.
- The Star Trek Mirror Universe started out (in the Star Trek The Original Series that introduced it) as identical to the main universe, except that for the moral inversion between the Federation characters and their evil Empire counterparts. When the Mirror Universe was revisited in Star Trek Deep Space Nine, the correspondences were less straightforward -- the Empire had been overthrown, humans were downtrodden slaves, and the station was run by Kira's evil counterpart.
- When the prequel series Enterprise revisited it in "In A Mirror Darkly," it also completely changed its opening credits' entire mood from "Vapid Naive Hope" to "War! Conquest! Exploding Frickin Laser Beams!" And then someone declares themselves new ruler of the Empire.
- The recent sets of Magic: The Gathering involve a plane that transforms back and forth between its mirror opposites. Lorwyn is a bright, cheery world of eternal summer and daylight, filled with the stuff of whimsical fairytales. Then the world is abruptly transformed into Shadowmoor, stuck in perpetual twilight, and filled with the stuff of the Grimm brothers. Most inhabitants change with it, believing that they've always lived in whichever world it is (which could bring with it all kinds of metaphysical uncertainty about just how often the world changes its nature).
- Swat Kats The Radical Squadron had a few episodes where the titular team gets warped to a dimension where they're evil.
- Transformers: Shattered Mirror, where the Heroic Decepticons are fighting to protect Earth and Cybertron from the powermongering of the Evil Autobots. "Till All are Gone..."
- Megas XLR has a version of this in its two-part "Rear View, Mirror Mirror" storyline. In this timeline, main character Coop abandoned the titular Megas shortly defeating the series' [[Big Bad]] - losing his mind as boredom and battlelust sank in, culminating in the conquest of earth and several solar systems. Coop seems more offended at his alternate self being athletic and muscular (as opposed to...large) rather than evil, though.
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