The Psycho Rangers / Video Games

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• Alter Echo pits the heroic shaper Nevin and his teammates, the gruff gun-toting Stome and the blade-wielding Action Girl Arana against the evil shaper Paavo and his bodyguards, the idiotic gun-toting Gherran and the blade-wielding Psycho for Hire Kess.
• Jon Irenicus in Baldur's Gate II is powerful enough to create a group of identical copies of your party with one spell, although they are relatively easily defeated because they lack many of the originals' more special powers.
• In Battle Realms the Serpent clan is the yin counterpart of the yang Dragon clan.
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has a Boss Battle against simalucra of Trevor, Grant and Sypha, who were Alucard's companions in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. The fake Sypha can also resurrect the fake Trevor as a zombie. This same trio of fake vampire hunters reappears in the Nest of Evil in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.
• The Praetorians in City of Heroes are the evil other-universe counterparts of the Freedom Corps heroes.
  • The first of the new Positron Task Forces introduced in Issue 17: Dark Mirror, feature a team of "shadow simulacra" of the Player Party. Issue 17 in general revolves around doubles of the Player Character.
• The commanders of Ruin match up against the Savior class in this manner in Duel Savior Destiny. Shezar against Berio, Mudou against Kaede, Imnity against Rico and Lobelia against Nanashi or to be more accurate against Rubinas, Nanashi's alternate self. Lily and Mia are largely left out of this equation since they actually seem to match up against Muriel and Taiga instead. The Big Bad goes against Taiga, of course.
• The Dark Aeons from Final Fantasy X are evil versions of all the Aeons that can be obtained in the game and boast higher HP, super powerful attacks and evil colour schemes. Though they are fought separately, the Dark Magus Sisters are fought together thus invoking the trope. Your normal Aeons will take on the appearances of the Dark Aeons at the end when Yu Yevon possesses them. They reappear in the sequel as possessed once again.
• The Warriors of Darkness in Final Fantasy XIV act as dark version of the player character and their Scion companions and they use classes and abilities that the player can use as well. The dark counterparts fight for the Ascians and aim to kill the player character to achieve their goal in "restoring the balance". Though it turns out that the Warriors of Darkness aren't actually evil and were just really desperate to save their own world, thus they were tricked by Elidibus into thinking that killing the player character would save their world.
• The Hell Hounds in Galaxy Angel, a group of mercenaries that just happened to have a grudge or other fixation with each of the specific Moon Angels. In the second game, they were replaced by actual robot duplicates of the Angels, foreshadowed by the brief presence of a robotic Tact in the first game. The fake Angels were the only villains to carry over to the Galaxy Angel anime, although they only appeared for one episode.
• Hexen has Zedek, Traductus, and Menelkir, a trio of Dragons who are clones of the three player character classes. Each uses the most powerful weapon of his class
• The ASIC's Four Felons in Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 can be considered as the Psycho Rangers to the CPU Candidates. CFW Magic and CFW Judge act opposite Nepgear, the former for being the one who held Nepgear and the CPUs hostage, the latter for being the first actual enemy for Nepgear to fight. CFW Brave acts opposite Uni, even arguing with her about happiness gained from playing illegally-obtained games, especially in the case of children doing such a deed. CFW Trick acts opposite Rom and Ram due to his unhealthy obsession with children.
• The Handsome Men in killer7 are an obvious evil parody of the Super Sentai.
  • Who in turn are the Psycho Rangers to the Killer 7. The eventual fight against them is even a series of Mirror Matches with the Handsome Men wielding the same weapons (and Handsome Red even getting in a wheelchair to fight Harman) as the eponymous team.
  • In a much darker version of the trope, the seven Black Smiles spawned by Greg Nightmare. Ignoring the killer8 mode, there's one Smile for each Smith. Rather than being parodies or knockoffs, they're all identical and do nothing but laugh, walk up to each Smith, and blow them up in one shot. By the time you get to Garcian, everyone else is dead for good. Thankfully, Garcian can pick up Nightmare's weapon (which is revealed to actually belong to Garcian), which is the only thing capable of killing the Black Smiles and Nightmare himself.
• The King of Fighters: The Orochi Team itching to awaken their titular god and destroy the world have similar powers to that of the Japan Team - Chris and Kyo are young pyrokinetics, Shermie and Benimaru are flamboyant electrocutioners, and Yashiro and Goro are big, hulking, grappling ground-movers.
• The Delilias Family in Legend of Legaia is this to the player party. This is particularly emphasized in that the fight against them is composed of three consecutive one-on-one fights against each member's counterpart. First, Gala faces Che; both have the highest HP and ATK, but are slow and can't chain many attacks. Next, Noa fights Lu; both are Fragile Speedsters, the only female on the team, and use quick-chaining attacks. Finally, Vahn combats Gi; both are the leaders of their team and are the most balanced members statistically — they both are also primarily of the Fire element.
• The Materials of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable, three ancient, immortal Magitek programs who based their forms and abilities on the three Aces (Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate) that defeated the Darkness of the Book of Darkness. This being Nanoha, they eventually get befriended when they turned out to not be as evil as they first appeared.
• Mortal Kombat X: After being Reforged into a Minion by Shinnok and Quan Chi, the revenants serve as their primary enforcers against the forces of Raiden and those of Kotal Kahn, the new ruler of Outworld. Though retaining their original memories despite being brainwashed, the revenants loyally serve Shinnok, feeling better committing evil deeds on his behalf.
  • The game's sequel, Mortal Kombat 11, features some time travel shenanigans that result in the past versions of several characters being brought to the present. This naturally leads to some of the past heroic characters (Liu Kang, Kung Lao, and Jade in the base game, later followed by Nightwolf in the additional DLC story) encountering and subsequently fighting directly against their own present evil revenant versions. The opposite happens with Scorpion, whose past version is an evil revenant who pulls a Heel–Face Turn after being defeated in battle by his own present (redeemed and restored to human) version.
• Nintendo Wars has the Black Hole army, with Hawke for Andy or Eagle (the first because both heal their own men and have no weaknesses, the second because of their names and appearance), Flak for Max (both are very formidable in a straight fight), Lash for Sonja (both have abilities related to terrain and are intelligent young girls), Adder for Grit (again mainly going by appearance, but both aren't particularly trustworthy and have similar tastes in clothing) and, arguably, Sturm for Olaf (skilled in slowing terrain, with "hurt everybody" CO powers).
• The Masked Circle, led by Joker, in Persona 2 Innocent Sin are this to the main characters Tatsuya, Lisa, Eikichi and Maya. It's not readily apparent, but as the game goes on, it becomes clear that Joker based the Masked Four off of the four children that he played with as a child who later grew up to be the main protagonists. For bonus points, the five children were originally wearing Choujin Sentai Jetman inspired masks. In-game, only King Leo and Prince Taurus are fought; Lady Scorpio is an optional boss and Queen Aquarius simply cannot be fought.
• Sailor Moon: Another Story introduced a plot "between" seasons of the anime, and had the Opposito Senshi, evil counterparts to the Sailor Team named after Babylonian and Mesopotamian gods (which, in turn, were the names of the corresponding planets in those cultures). Despite appearing almost to be twins of the Senshi, the game passes off their similar appearances and corresponding names as a coincidence.
  • Sin is Sailor Moon's counterpart (named for the Babylonian god of the moon, Sin, not the English word "sin").
  • Nabu, named for the Mesopotamian god of Wisdom, is the brainy Sailor Mercury's counterpart.
  • Nergal, named for the Mesopotamian god of war, is the counterpart of Sailor Mars.
  • Marduk, Sailor Jupiter's counterpart, is named for the leader of the Babylonian gods.
  • Ishtar, in addition to being a bad movie, was the Babylonian goddess of love, and a fitting name for Sailor Venus' counterpart.
• Vize, Faina and Anita in Skies of Arcadia Legends, a trio of traveling entertainers who end up impersonating the main trio to get rich. After the real deal beats some sense into them, they turn over a new leaf and go back to their entertainment gig, becoming professional impersonators.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog games play with this trope a few times.
  • They had a set of Psycho Rangers as early as the Saturn era. In Sonic R, there were Metal Sonic, Metal Knuckles and the Tails Doll whom Robotnik created to give Sonic and friends a hard time.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, Team Dark consisted of Shadow, Eggman and Rouge: three villains with the same powers and move sets as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles respectively. They'd return with some adjustments as an Anti-Hero Team in Sonic Heroes: Rouge moved from Knuckles' counterpart to Tails', and Eggman was replaced by new character Omega, who filled the "Anti-Knuckles" slot.
  • Similarly the Babylon Rogues in Sonic Riders, with Jet being an even more arrogant "Anti-Sonic", Wave being the intelligent "Anti-Tails", and the big, hulking Storm being the "Anti-Knuckles".
• Star Wolf in Star Fox, though mostly in Star Fox 2 and Star Fox 64. Wolf O'Donnell is the leader, and the team is named after him, like Fox McCloud. Also, both the wolf and the fox are canines. Leon Powalski is implied to have had run-ins with Falco Lombardi in the past, probably when the latter was still a gang member. Pigma Dengar was a member of the original Star Fox team, like Peppy Hare, and Andrew Oikony seems to have some technological background, similar to Slippy Toad. In later games, the team was splintered; currently, only Wolf and Leon remain, and their newest member, Panther Caroso, serves as a Psycho Ranger to Krystal, Star Fox's own new recruit. They are also particularly attractive and "exotic" characters, making this trope more prominent. And it helps that Panther instantly develops a crush on Krystal as well.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Count Bleck and his minions from Super Paper Mario fit into this trope surprisingly well: Bleck is the Big Bad and opposes Mario, Dimentio is The Dragon and opposes Luigi, O'Chunks is The Brute and opposes Bowser, and Mimi opposes Peach. In Castle Bleck, you even split off for one-on-one battles with each. Nastasia is the supportive Evil Genius who vies for Bleck's affection, reminiscent of Tippi's role for the heroes, but the two never really interact that much during the story. Mr. L is something of a freebie because of how short-lived his time with the team was.
  • The Axem Rangers in Super Mario RPG, being an obvious parody of the concept of a sentai team. Each member is a counterpart to your party with each Ranger specializing in different abilities that are similar to your own and also inheriting similar weaknesses. Axem Red (Mario) is a Jack of All Stats, Axem Green (Mallow) is a Squishy Wizard, Axem Black (Geno) is a Fragile Speedster, Axem Yellow (Bowser) is a Mighty Glacier and Axem Pink (Toadstool) is a Combat Medic.
• Super Robot Wars Z: Special Disk gives us "Death Squad 13", Edel Bernal's attempt at forming a ZEUTH-style Ragtag Bunch of Misfits. It begins as a unit composed of Phantom Pain and Titans members under the orders of Neo Roanoke, then gains more members from mercenaries like Timp or Jason Beck, and others like the Frost Brothers and Gym tagging along for fun. It doesn't work nearly as well (most members are nuts, after all) and the squad ends up disbanded without ever meeting ZEUTH in combat once.
• The God-Generals of the Order of Lorelei in Tales of the Abyss. All but one of the God-Generals are a clear Evil Counterpart of one of the party members, be it by abilities or role, personal relationships, or both: Asch to Luke, Legretta to Tear, Arietta to Anise, Dist to Jade, and Largo to Natalia. However, despite some initial Red Herring comparisons, the last God-General, Sync, is actually the counterpart to Fon Master Ion, not the last party member, Guy. His counterpart turns out to be the God-Generals' leader, Van.
  • To drive the point further, the counterparts actually share certain artes with the party members. Some of them are justified, as Legretta personally trained Tear, Luke and Asch had the same mentor, and Anise and Arietta were both trained to be the Fon Master Guardian. But when you have Largo shooting a giant electric beam from his scythe/axe...
    • Sync manages to share his Akashic Torment Mystic Arte with his counterpart despite Ion not even being playable. It's not named as such, but the animation is recognizable in Ion's extension to Luke's Radiant Howl Mystic Arte.
• Tales of Xillia has the Chimeriad, King Gaius' elite bodyguard. Each member is a counterpart to one of the supporting party members. Jiao and Elize, Wingul and Rowen, Presa and Alvin, and Agria and Leia.
• Team Fortress 2' plays with this, as savage Builder's League United (BLU) forces are a carbon copy of noble Reliable Excavation Demolition (RED) armies created to snatch corporate and industrial dominance away. But the truth is both sides are a bunch of vile lunatics that are fighting over worthless gravel pits. The conflict would be horrible if it weren't screamingly funny.
  • More straightforward examples exist with the Robot Army, an army of robotic knockoffs of the mercs made by Gray Mann. As the Mercs have a few redeeming qualities and the robots don't, well...
  • The comics show that the mercs from Team Fortress Classic are working under Gray Mann (commanding the robot faction).
• In Ultima IV, the final fight is against the "evil yous", a team of evil copies of your party.
• In Ultraman Fighting Evolution Rebirth, a trio of evil Ultras are introduced. Chaosroid U, a clone of Ultraman, Chaosroid S, a copy of Ultraseven, and Chaosroid T, Taro's counterpart. While they're fought one by one by their counterparts, they attack Nebula M78 as a team and capture two important artifacts of the Ultras, Chaosroid S stealing the Ultra Key and Chaosroid T steals the Ultra Bell while Chaosroid U comes close to stealing the Plasma Spark. In addition to the powerful weapons they steal, S has the ability to split his Eye Slugger into a huge number of weapons and Chaosroid U is more powerful than Ultraman, until the Plasma Spark reenergizes him and let's him blow U away with the Giga Specium Beam.
• Warframe features the Stalker's Acolytes, six other Warframe users all as twisted as the Stalker himself. Though nowhere near as formidable as the Stalker, they can still give players a difficult time, but managing to take them down will often yield special Mods.
• The Cocytus members in Wild ARMs 2 are three-fifths of the way there — Brad and Ptolomea as ex-military heavies, Tim and Caina as underage summoners, Lilka and Antenora as more traditional, more female fireball-slingers — but the other two in each group don't quite fit, since Kanon has a very different feel than Judecca, and enemy leader Vinsfield is an obvious Evil Counterpart for the PCs' Mission Control, Irving.
  • There's also the villains of Wild ARMs 5. Everyone has a rival character that acts as an opposite to them. Light-hearted and idealistic leader Dean has the defeated dog of the villains Nightburn, The Heart Rebecca ends up rivals with Persephone, family man Greg fights his family's killer and Ax-Crazy Kartikeya, Avril has story reasons for rivaling dark leader Volsung, small but heavily armed Carol fights against her former caregiver and muscular Elvis and Chuck rivals the surprisingly noble Fereydoon.
• The Wonderful 101 has Prince Vorkken, Chewgi, and the other 98 anonymous members of the Guyzoch, who mimic the Wonderful 100's ability to Unite Morph and Multi-morph, and have their own variation of Unlimited Form. Two subversions in that aside from Vorkken's slight visual resemblance to Wonder Red, that's where the similarities end (Chewgi is a counterpart to nobody), and eventually they join your side.
• Mutons in the old (and new) XCOM have been described as this, an alien SEAL Team Six to combat your own troops.
• The X-Wing games tend to do this. Especially X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, since some training exercises come both in Rebel and Imperial versions: Z-95 Headhunters correspond to TIE fighters, X-wings to TIE interceptors, Y-wings to TIE bombers, and B-wings to TIE defenders.

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