The Rival / Real Life

Famous rivalries, where either of the two sides can be considered The Rival, depending on your point of view.

Actors

• Joan Fontaine vs. Olivia de Havilland. Rival Golden Age movie stars who fought over Oscars, and were rival sisters to boot. Both of them remained spiteful up until Fontaine's death in 2013.

• Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Laurel and Chaplin both performed in the same music hall company. Laurel got a reputation for imitating Chaplin almost perfectly, which didn't please Chaplin at all. Later Chaplin went into movies and became the most famous film star of all time. Laurel expected Chaplin to give him a phone call later on, but this never happened. As a result, Laurel had to struggle another 15 years before he made it big with partner Oliver Hardy. Chaplin mentioned Laurel only briefly in his autobiography.

• Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, though it's more of a Friendly Rivalry since both are good friends and have co-starred with each other in The Expendables films.

• Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi are alleged to have had a pretty bitter rivalry. It's supposed to have started when Bela turned down the role of Frankenstein's monster for being "undignified", only for Karloff to win national acclaim for taking the role. Karloff went on to repeatedly upstage Bela while the latter's career went increasingly downhill.
• Denzel Washington and Wesley Snipes during the 90s, when both were competing to be hollywood's leading African American male. It got to the point that Washington, known for drama at the time, starting taking on action roles like Snipes, just to prove that can also do them. His earlier attempts like Virtuosity didn't land at the box office, but he has since gotten better. While Snipes movie career would reach its peak with the Blade film series.

Artists

• Michelangelo Buonarroti and Leonardo da Vinci. They held a painting contest to see who was better, but due to outside interference neither ever finished their painting.
• Eugene Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, two French painters from the 19th century who represented the more emotive, turbulent Romanticism and the carefully crafted neoclassicism respectively. Delacroix himself was very merciless to the works of Ingres; he recorded seeing Ingres's exhibition in his journal and said: "The dominating thing in it, to a great degree, is the ridiculous; it is the complete expression of an incomplete intelligence; effort and pretension are everywhere; there is not a spark of naturalness in it." Surprisingly, the two accidentally met at the steps of the French Institute later in their careers. Ingres held out his hand, which Delacroix shook amicably.

Authors

• Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal shared a lifelong rivalry. One time the encounter between them turned physical and Mailer punched out Vidal on the floor. Vidal had the last laugh however, by saying: "Words fail Norman Mailer yet again."
• The rivalry between Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa also turned brutal. Vargas Llosa once gave him a black eye. A photograph of this was published in 2007. Ideologically they were also different; García Márquez was left-wing and Vargas Llosa right-wing.

• Hugo Claus and Harry Mulisch also had an envious relationship with each other, where they tried to surpass each others' literary status and success with each new novel. They were friends, but still rivals at the same time.
• William Shakespeare may have been perceived as a rival by other Elizabethan playwrights, but it was likely one-sided on their part, and not his (since we know nothing about the guy).
  • One of the earliest contemporary allusions to him was a pamphlet by dramatist Robert Greene that called him "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers", i.e. a Stratford-born poseur who comes to London and thinks he can write as best as the rest of them.
  • His real Friendly Rivalry might have been with Ben Jonson, the self-aggrandizing but brilliant comic playwright of such works as The Alchemist and Volpone. Records show that Shakespeare's company often put Jonson's plays and Shakespeare acted in his plays and vice versa. Most famously, years after Shakespeare's death, the famous First Folio has the famous Ben Jonson write an Essay of Dedication for Shakespeare where he admits that he's an all-time great playwright but can't resist a dig about how Shakespeare knew "little Latin and less Greek" as opposed to, you know, him.
  • Shakespearean scholars often believe that the Bard felt that Christopher Marlowe was his Always Someone Better (a man who, according to conspiracy theories fakes his death and was the true author of Shakespeare's plays but leaving that aside). Marlowe was 29 when he died but was already the most popular and influential tragedian of his day. Shakespeare's plays constantly made allusions to his work, and he is considered Shakespeare's greatest influence, and maybe his mentor (recent works credit Marlowe and Shakespeare with joint authorship on the early Henry VI).

Cartoonists, comic strip artists and animators

• Walt Disney and Max and Dave Fleischer. The Fleischers were the studio in the 1920s and worked on many innovations like synchronized sound and three-dimensional backgrounds that Disney perfected and got credit for. Disney, located in Hollywood, favored realism, while the Fleischers, located in New York City, preferred surrealism. Eventually the Fleischer films suffered because not only was Disney able to lure away key talent because as film historian Leonard Maltin said "Fleischers' interests were mechanical not artistic", but only because their distributor Paramount forced them to start imitating Disney. In the end the Fleischers lost their studio because of poor business decisions like moving their studio to Miami, Florida which in the 1930s was a backwater town away from the talent hub of NYC which was financed entirely from a loan from Paramount. The failures of the Fleischers' feature films meant they couldn't pay back the loan and Paramount ousted the brothers and took control of their studio. By contrast Disney made sure he was in control of his studios, not his distributors he had three: Pat Powers, United Artists, and RKO before he decided to do it himself. He also had the benefit of having his brother Roy to act has his business-savvy partner to take care of financing from the Bank of America.
• Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett had a bitter rivalry going on. Jones claimed that Clampett was a egomaniac who took credit for stuff that he didn't invent in the first place and during book signings he even gave fans a list with all the stuff Clampett said, personally debunked and signed by both him and Tex Avery. Jones didn't even mention Clampett in his autobiography.
• Matt Groening (The Simpsons), Trey Parker & Matt Stone (South Park) and Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) are all each others' rivals, though they do show some respect at times for each others' work. Between South Park and Family Guy, however, the rivalry is very bitter.
• Hergé (Tintin) felt threatened by the success of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's Asterix. In terms of commercial and artistic success they were certainly equals. Though Hergé did provide a shout-out to Asterix in his final album Tintin and the Picaros where a man dressed like the Gaulish warrior can be seen in the crowd. Goscinny and Uderzo returned the nod by having Thompson and Thomson have a cameo in Asterix in Belgium, which ironically would also turn out to be the final Asterix album for Goscinny who died during the making of the album.
• Willy Vandersteen (Suske en Wiske) and Marc Sleen (Nero). Both were the best known and commercially best-selling comic strip artists in Flanders from the 1940s until the 1960s. After 1965 however Vandersteen soon eclipsed him because he had several successful series in syndication, drawn by his studio which also sold well in other countries, especially the Netherlands. Sleen on the other hand had dropped all his other series in favor of Nero because he had to do all the work alone. His comics only sold well in Flanders, though they had some cult success in Wallonia and the Netherlands too, but his stories became less interesting for children, while he refused to sell out which made his series only sell well among adults from that point on.
• Comic book writer Dan Slott (best known for his divisive run as Spider-Man writer) vs. Bleeding Cool founder Rich Johnston. This rivalry further increased in November 2016 when the latter reported that Slott deleted his Twitter account after a major rhetoric, but it turns out that Slott's Twitter account wasn't deleted at all. However, both Slott and Johnston have become more of a Vitriolic Best Buds but the former now holds a grudge at current Bleeding Cool writer Jude Terror, who is no stranger to controversy like Slott, see the update of this article, written by Terror.
• Eiichiro Oda (One Piece) and Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto). Though it's very much a Friendly Rivalry, and they respect each other's work. In one interview, Oda cited the publication of Naruto as incentive for him to make One Piece that much better, while Kishimoto already considered Oda a legend by the time he started his own series.

Companies

• Disney animation vs. Warner Bros. animation during the 1940s and 1950s, and then again in the 1990s. In the 1930s it was Disney vs. the Fleischers, and in the 1980s it was Disney vs. Don Bluth. In the 2000s, DreamWorks Animation was Disney's main rival. By the end of the 2010s, the competition is largely Dreamworks and its sister studio Illumination Entertainment.
• Coca-Cola and Pepsi
• Playboy and Hustler
• The Belgian comic book magazines Tintin and Spirou & Fantasio. And their publishers, Casterman and Dupuis.
• MSNBC vs FOX News, for the title of the news network with the most loudmouthed/opinionated/rude/biased/partisan prime time lineup. With the most public fight being that between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly.
  • Got so bad that both channels allegedly tried to make a truce, which didn't last long.
• In the U.S., Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus versus Cirque du Soleil — the two biggest circus companies in the world, each with a distinctive approach to the form. Ringling was "traditional", with up to three tours that crisscrossed the country and are relaunched with new acts and themes every one-to-two years; Cirque is "contemporary", with each show a unique, theme-driven piece of theater that can run for years on end. Also, the former used live animals and the latter does not, with the exception of some doves in Criss Angel BeLIEve. Because Cirque shows are usually performed under tents in big cities and Ringling Bros. traveled the broader arena circuit, this rivalry was largely one of style (though Ringling attempted a Cirque-style tour, Barnum's Kaleidoscape, at the end of The '90s) until Cirque started adapting older shows for arenas in 2007. Cirque ultimately won — Ringling Bros. closed up shop in 2017, citing too-high operating costs and a decade of slumping ticket sales that cratered in 2016 when, bowing to pressure from animal rights activists, they retired elephants from their menagerie. Ringling Bros. did announce a return in 2022, with shows starting in 2023, but the new Ringling will operate more like Cirque, with no animals.
• Online magazines Slate and Salon can be considered this, having different stances, editorial positions despite both being generally liberal (though Salon leans considerably more into the left-wing). Both sites have also included among their ranks some major pundits and journalists (such as Christopher Hitchens for Slate and Glenn Greenwald for Salon), adding even more fuel to the rivalry.
• The Polish computer game magazines Top Secret and Secret Service. The latter was made up of the old Top Secret personnel who all left in 1993 to start their own mag. Both magazines occasionally put in very thinly veiled Take Thats at each other.
• Marvel vs. DC Comics, which since 2009 is an extension of the Disney vs. Warner Bros. rivalry.
• In the Philippines, TV networks ABS-CBN and GMA, both of which control most of local TV and radio stations, as well as publications and overseas outlets. The rivalry between the two goes back from their humble beginnings, though with the recent entry of TV5 as a major competitor, the situation has slightly changed.
• McDonald's vs. Burger King.
• Rangerboard vs. Rangercrew, both forums related to Power Rangers.
• Disney Channel and Nickelodeon are the epitome of this. Throughout The '90s, the latter dominated the kids' television market with programming such as Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy, All That, The Secret World of Alex Mack, and Are You Afraid of the Dark?. By the Turn of the Millennium however, the former (which started as a premium channel in 1983) had slowly but gradually changed its format to become a more basic cable network. Luckily for Disney Channel, they had a wide variety of content that would put them on the map, such as Lizzie McGuire, That's So Raven, The Proud Family, Kim Possible, Hannah Montana, and made-for-TV movies like High School Musical. It's no surprise that by the mid-2000s, both Nickelodeon and Disney Channel would become rivals. Animation wise, Cartoon Network was also a primary rival to both networks. However, their ratings have never exactly reached the same heights of success that Nick and Disney have.
• Facebook vs. MySpace originally, now it's Facebook vs. Twitter, though it can be expanded to include Tumblr.
• Ford and General Motors - mainly Chevy. It was a lot fiercer when Asian cars were curiosities and NASCAR drivers ran actual factory cars, but the two companies still look at Mustang vs. Camaro as a battle, and poke heavily at each other when advertising pickup trucks. Many of their customers would still rather push their own preferred brand up a hill than drive the other.
• From the video game industry:
  • Nintendo vs. Sega (later replaced by Microsoft) vs. Sony, AKA the Console Wars.
  • Sega vs. Bandai Namco Entertainment was another one, due to both companies having a foothold in the arcades, while also delving into the same genres with their games (Tekken vs. Virtua Fighter, Ridge Racer vs. Daytona USA, etc.), and for being on opposite consoles in terms of console wars, due to Namco's exclusive support for Sony...at least until Soulcalibur was released as a launch title for the Sega Dreamcast.
  • Capcom vs. SNK is a notable rivalry, due to both of them competing in the fighting game genre with Street Fighter and The King of Fighters. So much so that the two eventually clashed officially.
  • Squaresoft vs. Enix, due to both of them owning the biggest JRPG franchises, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest respectively. At least, until they merged to become Square Enix.
  • EA Sports vs. 2K Sports. EA also shares a rivalry with Activision, and this can be seen in the franchises they publish (Call of Duty vs Battlefield, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater vs. Skate, Guitar Hero vs. Rock Band, Destiny vs. Titanfall).
  • BioWare vs. Bethesda vs. CD Projekt, due to their games all being influential in the WRPG genre.
• In Europe, where European Union law required the liberalisation of access to railway infrastructure, it is common for a publicly-owned railway company to have a privately-owned rival on specific long-distance routes.
  • In Italy, Trenitalia Frecciarossa (public) vs. Italo (private) kicked off this trend, with both companies offering often directly competing high-speed services across the nation. Italo was originally pitched as a more luxurious experience, but the competition led to both companies offering a more diverse range of service types to the point where they're now directly comparable.
  • The Paris to Milan route also features a rivalry between France's SNCF and Italy's Trenitalia, with SNCF opting for more local stops while Trenitalia created a more traditional intercity service. Trenitalia's route notably travels directly between Paris and Lyon, making it a major competitor for SNCF services between those two cities as well.
  • In Austria, OBB Railjet (public) vs. Westbahn (private) on the Vienna to Munich route. Railjet is more luxurious and long-distance oriented, while Westbahn is more budget friendly and makes more regular stops.
  • Private railway operators that offer a service inspired by budget airlines popped up in the 2010's, with Ouigo (a subsidiary of SNCF) and Flixtrain (a subsidiary of Flixbus) being the two biggest ones. In the early 2020's, Spain became noteworthy for having three operators offering similar low-cost high-speed services open up shop around the same time: Ouigo España (once again from SNCF), Avlo (a subsidiary of Spanish national operator Renfe), and Iryo (owned by regional airline Air Nostrum with support from Trenitalia), suddenly making Spain's railway network one of the most fought-over in the world.

Locations

• Most neighbouring towns, cities and countries have a rivalry going on.
• During and after the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union / Russia have been rivals.
• China and Japan. Also, Japan and South Korea.
• The United Kingdom and France (sometimes Germany too). Historically, England and France were like this a great deal, fighting a number of wars against each other all the way up to the 1800s. However, they've stopped since World War I broke out. These days, it's mostly sporting rivalries that the British media plays up to.
• France and Germany
• Greece and Turkey, all the way back to The Trojan War.
• Michigan and Ohio. Both states are still a little miffed over Toledo.
  • This creates a strange problem every year for fans of Michigan State University's sports teams: on one hand, Michigan State's biggest rival is the University of Michigan, but on the other hand, Michigan's great rival (as mentioned above) is Ohio State. The great majority of MSU students/fans are from Michigan, raised on a diet of hatred for everything related to Ohio. The result is that a perpetual debate in East Lansing is whether one should root for Ohio State or Michigan when they face each other. Consensus is somewhere around Henry Kissinger's observation about the Iran–Iraq War: "Too bad they can't both lose."
    • A similar situation can be seen with North Carolina State University: NC State's big rivals are the Univserity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but UNC views Duke University much more as their mortal enemy.
• Within the USA:
  • Chicago and New York City. Boston and New York and Philadelphia and New York as well.
  • California and Texas, mainly due to being on opposite ends of the political spectrum.
  • The East Coast and the West Coast of the United States is another big rivalry.
• The Canadian version of the above is Toronto and Montreal. Within the western province of Alberta, you have Calgary and Edmonton.
• Lancashire-Yorkshire.
• Italy and Austria-Hungary, historically. Also, Subverted between Italy and France: often enough they have acted as this, but when World War I provided the chance for them to fight Italy stayed neutral until they got a chance to join the war on France's side (incidentally, that meant fighting Austria-Hungary), and when Benito Mussolini got around to actually declare war and announced it the Italian people booed him (they had cheered him on announcing the war, but changed their mind when he specified against who), and the Italian and French soldiers had an unwritten agreement amounting to the Italians advancing, getting shot at, firing back a couple salvoes and then retreating.
• Italy and Yugoslavia, the latter replaced by Slovenia and Croatia after the break-up, due to various events that happened between 1918 and 1960.
• Sydney and Melbourne. The two biggest cities, the rivalry really picked up over which should be capital after Australia became a Federation (the government simply decided to found the city of Canberra in between the two, although both Sydneysiders and Melburnians consider their city as the true capital), and now compete in virtually everything; finance, culture, sports, importance, you name it.
  • Averted, however, between the two AFL teams, the Sydney Swans and the Melbourne Demons.^Context (1) The Sydney Swans were originally the South Melbourne Swans. (2) Melbourne represents only the area immediately surrounding the city centre; it's only one of nine AFL teams in Melbourne. Ten if you count Geelong as being a Melbourne team. (3) Loyalties in Sydney are now split as well, with the Greater Western Sydney Giants now in the league. (4) Neither team is, shall we say, noted for its fanatical support.
• In terms of Theme Parks, the most known rivalry is between Disney Theme Parks and Universal Studios. Especially when it comes to their parks in Florida and Japan. Regionally, Six Flags and Cedar Fair Entertainment are the two dominant forces in the industry.

Institutions

• The University of Oxford and The University of Cambridge, ever since the 13th century, most famously manifests in the annual boat race between the two schools.
• Similarly (if less old), The Royal Academy of Music and The Royal College of Music; unlike Oxbridge they don't have a specific contest, but expect at least one representative from each to reach the latter rounds of music competitions. Each institution has been known to jokingly refer to the other as That Other Place.
• University College London (UCL) and King's College London also have a similar rivalry.
• The University of Essex and the University of East Anglia, both being younger 60s-era plate-glass universities, have a less noteworthy, but still quite serious academic and sporting rivalry.
• Across the ocean, there's Yale and Harvard in America and Queen's and McGill in Canada. Also, MIT and Caltech.
• University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin have their own boat race, presumably in parody of the Oxbridge one. Both unis famously dislike each other, UCD being formerly 'Catholic University of Ireland' and Trinity being famously Protestant has an unfortunate role in this hatred.
• Army and Navy, in several areas.
• University of Kentucky and University of Louisville. Sheer, undiluted hatred in the Bluegrass State.

Musicians

• Averted in the case of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart vs. Antonio Salieri, who were friends in real life. The rivalry was made up by in a play by Pushkin long after both men were dead.
• Played straight with George Frederic Handel and Domenico Scarlatti, two virtuoso megastars of the Baroque keyboard. It was later conceded that Handel was the more accomplished organist and Scarlatti the superior harpsichordist. Interestingly, Johann Sebastian Bach, the other obvious candidate for this trope knew Handel by reputation only; the two maestros famously never met at all.
• Maria Callas vs. Renata Tabaldi. Two polar opposite opera singers, they did manage to work together in the end.
• As of late, the media's been setting up Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus as this.
  • Considering Taylor Swift was in Miley Cyrus' Hannah Montana movie, this is not very likely. Taylor and Katy Perry, however, was the real deal as Swift dissed Perry in her song "Bad Blood" until both reconciled in 2018 with Perry appearing in Swift's music video for "You Need to Calm Down" a year later.
• At one time, many fans always pitted Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams as to who was the better composer although both were good friends in real life (Goldsmith even stated that Williams deserved his Oscar win for Jaws, although one of the defeated scores was The Wind and the Lion... by Goldsmith!).
• Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Childhood friends who both gained a reputation for making groundbreaking bizarre avant-garde music. It was Zappa himself who started off Beefheart's career by having him record his voice in his studio. Beefheart tried his own career, but by 1969 he felt disillusioned about the Executive Meddling and lack of album sales. Zappa produced his next album Trout Mask Replica and gave him total creative freedom, but the record hardly sold and Beefheart blamed Zappa for this. For years they remained bitter towards each other until Beefheart found himself broke and contractually unable to record anything. Zappa took him up for the Bongo Fury (1975) tour, until they once again had a falling out. Only when Zappa fell terminally ill with cancer in the 1990s did the two friends reconcile.
• The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, though the rivalry was more among their fans than the bands themselves.
• Michael Jackson and Prince during the 1980s. Near the end of the decade, however, Jackson felt more threatened by Madonna, whom he didn't consider to be musically talented at all.
  • He and Paul McCartney also had a falling out after Jackson bought up the rights to the entire Beatles catalogue.
• Blur and Oasis.
• Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.
• The media tried to set up such a thing with Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, but the two never had any trouble with each other. Mariah and Madonna, however, is the real deal.
  • Mariah's also had mad beef with Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj and to a much lesser extent Christina Aguilera.
• Averted for Miley Cyrus vs. Selena Gomez as both are actually good friends. Their fans, on the other hand... aren't.
  • It's also averted for Cyrus vs. Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande as Cyrus is also good friends with both of them.
• Madonna vs. Lady Gaga, especially to the point that the former criticised the latter's "Born This Way" and calling it reductive, though the two ended the beef in 2019.
• Drake vs. Meek Mill. Fortunately, the two ended their rivalry in 2018 with Drake collaborating with Mill on the song "Going Bad".
• Nicki Minaj vs. Lil' Kim and most recently, Cardi B.
• Justin Bieber vs. Shawn Mendes, though it's more between their fans than themselves as they collaborated with the song "Monster" in 2020.
• Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby used to trade insults over live radio broadcasts. When JFK snubbed Frank's campaign support and cancelled a visit to his house, choosing to make a public appearance with Bing instead, Frankie flew into a rage and severed any ties to Kennedy or the entire Democratic Party.
  • Sinatra had a bit of ire for Elvis Presley, too. Like a lot of people in his generation, he was highly disdainful of rock music, and once accused Elvis' music of corrupting the youth. Elvis' opinion of Frank is less clear, and they still sang together at least once.
• Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were the epitome of the 1990s East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry. Former friends who fell out for a number of reasons, the situation was exacerbated by them working for the rival Death Row and Bad Boy record labels, and being associated with the rival Bloods and Crips street gangs.
• Claude François and Johnny Hallyday. Outside of the Disco vs Rock & Roll thing in France in The '70s, their personalities clashed heavily.

Politicians

• Most political parties are each other's rivals.
• During the Cold War the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. were each other's rivals.
• Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative) vs. William Gladstone (Liberal), considered to be one of the most famous of political rivalries, lasting a decade and a half. Two consummate politicians who loathed each other, clashed over the post of the British prime minister. (Gladstone served longer as PM.)
• Aaron Burr vs. Alexander Hamilton. Ended in a duel, Hamilton was killed, and the resulting public outcry destroyed Burr's political career.
• Miyamoto Musashi vs. Sasaki Kojiro. Both were legendary swordsmen from the Warring States period of Japanese history. Their duel at Ganryujima, where Musashi killed Kojiro with a BFS fashioned from a boat's oar, is particularly famous.
  • Another famous rivalry from the same era was between Takeda Shingen, the Tiger of Kai, and Uesugi Kenshin, the Dragon of Echigo. While countless stories portray this rivalry as being one of the utmost respect between the two (even suggesting that the two were great friends when their nations were not at war), this probably originated sometime in the Edo period; Kenshin is recorded to have quite strongly hated Shingen.
• Australian Politics has this in spades, particularly in recent years and especially within the main political parties. Notable examples from the Liberal side include John Gorton vs. William McMahon, Billy Snedden vs. Malcolm Fraser, Fraser vs. Andrew Peacock, Peacock vs. John Howard, Howard vs. Peter Costello, and Malcolm Turnbull vs. Tony Abbott. Notable examples from the Labor side also include Andrew Fisher vs. Billy Hughes, Arthur Calwell vs. Gough Whitlam, Whitlam vs. Jim Cairns, Bill Hayden vs. Bob Hawke, Hawke vs. Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd vs Julia Gillard, and Bill Shorten vs. Anthony Albanese.
• Two Canadian Fathers of Confederation, George Brown and John A. Macdonald, were rivals. Brown, the founder of the Globe and Mail, was much fiercer in the rivalry; his quest for power was ultimately fruitless (in other words, he was appointed a member of the Senate), whereas Macdonald was knighted and served as Prime Minister for 19 years. Brown got a college named after him, though. (One of the reasons Brown didn't succeed, though, was that he wasn't given the chance: he was assassinated.)
• A number of leaders of the Liberal and Conservative parties of Canada fall into this trope, most famously John G. Diefenbaker (Conservative leader 1956-67, PM 1957-63) and Lester B. Pearson (Liberal leader 1958-68, PM 1963-68). The two men were extremely intelligent, accomplished individuals who were able to be civil to one another.
  • Others include Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Sir Robert Borden, W.L. Mackenzie King and Arthur Meigen, Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark, and John Turner and Brian Mulroney.
• Pierre Trudeau (prime minister of Canada, and also father of the current PM Justin Trudeau) vs. René Lévesque (leader of Parti Québécois, a mainstream political party advocating for the separation of Québec). The duo fought bitterly over ten years over the independence of Québec. The rivalry culminated during the drafting of the Canadian constitution; Trudeau, fearing the trouble Lévesque might cause, had to trick Lévesque by waiting until he was asleep before starting the backroom deals that would ultimately produce the document. Lévesque and the province of Québec never forgave the trick; they still have not signed the constitution.
• Josef Stalin vs. Leon Trotsky. Some argue that Trotsky would have made a better leader, but Stalin won the argument by having a ice axe stuck in Trotsky's head.
  • Appositely summarised by comedian Yakov Smirnoff thus:
  The two most powerful men in Russia are Stalin and the last man who spoke to him.
  • Revisionist historians, working from newly released archival evidence, have argued that Stalin actually was the better leader, and that Trotsky lost because he simply was not as politically savvy. His account of Stalin's rise to power is regarded as smear, insofar as it portrays him as a political non-entity of average ability who achieved power through sinister Obstructive Bureaucracy, and that the real Stalin was a multi-talented planner.
• It's often joked, though with much substance, that the true bitterest enemies and rival generals of World War II were General George Patton and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
• There was a legend in the Army of the Potomac that McClellan and AP Hill had been rivals for the same girl and she had married McClellan. When they were hard pressed the soldiers said, "Why didn't you marry him?"
  • It's true. McClellan only won Mary's hand because her father forbade her from marrying Hill as he was a career officer. McClellan, on the other hand, was expected to retire from the army soon and dedicate himself to the administration of the family fortune and industrial businesses. Unfortunately he did not retire soon enough and made the Union Army suffer through his incompetence for a good while.
• Otto von Bismarck vs Ludwig Windhorst (leader of the German Centre Party). Windhorst was by far the ablest and most dangerous critic of Bismarck's policy. The iron chancellor said once: "Everyone must have someone to love and someone to hate. I have my wife to love and Windhorst to hate."
• Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterand are the two men most responsible for defining postwar France. They were also ideological opposites, with de Gaulle on the center-right and Mitterand on the left. While de Gaulle defeated Mitterand in the 1965 national election, Mitterand outlived de Gaulle and went on to be France's longest-serving President.

Scientists

• Isaac Newton vs. Gottfried Leibniz. Clashed over who actually discovered calculus (now most agree that Newton came up with the idea first, but Leibniz probably came up with calculus independently from Newton). The rivalry was mostly one sided, with Newton and the UK treating Leibniz as a personal insult. This resulted in British mathematicians refusing to acknowledge developments in math from the rest of Europe, ultimately holding up British mathematics for about a century.
  • Newton and Robert Hooke were also rivals, probably even more so than Newton and Leibniz.
    • It began when Newton presented his first paper on the nature of light. He argued that light was composed of particles and that white light was made up of all colours of light in the spectrum. Hooke attacked these conclusions and Newton's methods viciously, believing that light travelled in waves. Newton responded in anger and became very defensive. They became so antagonistic towards each other that Newton threatened to leave the Royal Society.
    • Hooke accused Newton of plagiarizing his ideas about gravitation because he had suggested to the latter in a series of letters that it was a universal force that and an inverse squared relationship with distance between two bodies. However, it was Newton that mathematically proved it. Newton grew furious and disputed Hooke's claim that he would never have come up with the relationship alone. He removed from his book all references made to Hooke and his ideas on gravitation before publishing.
    • There was likely a large amount of jealousy involved on both parts. Initially, Hooke was taken much more seriously than Newton and had access to more resources due to his large contributions to science before Newton. Hooke also didn't have the ability to do the math necessary to prove gravitation like Newton did, and as time progressed, Newton's fame increased while Hooke faded from prominence.
• Thomas Edison vs. Nikola Tesla. Fought over the early electricity market, especially over whether power should be supplied as direct (Edison) or alternating (Tesla) current. Edison undertook a particularity vicious smear campaign against Tesla, which resulted in Tesla being pushed off public life and dying penniless and alone. Although Tesla has now been vindicated in that alternating current was better for transmission of electricity (if Edison had won, the electrical grid would have been so complex that electricity would probably never have replaced steam power as the driver of modern society).
  • Edison also had a rivalry with Joseph Swan over who invented the electric light bulb. This, however, was ultimately amicably resolved when they agreed to set up a joint company.
• Joseph Priestley vs. Antoine Lavoisier. One of the first ever rivalries over science, Priestley once sent a spy to steal Lavoisier's research on gases.
• Richard Dawkins and Stephen J. Gould over the idea of gradual evolution or punctuated evolution.
• Pioneer paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. In their case, it got so ugly that their rivalry was nicknamed "The Bone Wars." Highlights of the Bone Wars included such petty tactics as stealing each other's fossils, attacking each others' professional reputations, and destroying each other's dig sites to prevent the other from getting credit for their discoveries. The war ended when they had both bankrupted themselves from all their underhanded endeavors.
• Louis Pasteur vs. Robert Koch. They were the two greatest bacteriologists of the 19th century, whose work gained the germ theory of disease widespread consensus in the study of medicine. They also hated each others' guts: beyond their conflicting nationalities, they were constantly trying to one-up each other professionally. Pasteur had proven one of Koch's earlier theories that the properties of bacterial species were unalterable was wrong and, thanks to a mistranslated term from French to German, came off as insulting Koch's research. Koch did not take it sitting down, and responded by mocking Pasteur's work on anthrax. Their rivalry practically split the field of immunology in half, with rival institutions founded in each of their names.

Other

• Competitive eaters Takeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut.
• Diogenes and Plato were known for their rivalry, as Diogenes was known to debunk Plato's ideas through mockery. For example, when Plato claimed that man was "a featherless biped", Diogenes plucked a chicken and threw it into one of Plato's lectures, stating "Behold, I've brought you a man!" This caused Plato to revise the definition and say that man is "A featherless biped with broad flat nails."
• Ike Perlmutter and Kevin Feige who happened to work for the same company Marvel. Perlmutter ran Marvel Entertainment overall, while Feige is in charge of Marvel Studios. Perlmutter was known for dismissing Feige's ideas for films like Black Panther and Captain Marvel in favor of his own — specifically an Inhumans movie. It got to the point, where Feige got fed up with Perlmutter and eventually complained about it to Disney who restructured the company so Feige would report directly to them, bypassing Perlmutter completely. In response, Feige dropped plans for the Inhumans film, so Perlmutter responded by pushing for an Inhumans TV show since he still sway over the TV division. The result was that Inhumans was massive flop with critics and viewers, while Black Panther and Captain Marvel became two of the most successful Marvel movies, each making over $1BN worldwide. The Marvel Television department was merged with the main Marvel Studios branch in 2019, bringing those projects under Feige's control, and Perlmutter was eventually laid off in March 2023.
• In the billionaires' world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO, as well as now-Twitter Chairman Elon Musk has become this to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While the rivalry between them has been shed to light with Musk entering into the social media business by acquiring Twitter, it gets further intensified when Musk challenges Zuck to a cage fight which Zuck has reportedly agreed. To take this a step further, Zuck launches Threads, Meta's take on a Twitter-style platform as a complement to Instagram, which Musk has reportedly filed copyright lawsuits for. In addition to that, both are well-known to be political opposites based on how they've run their platforms: Zuck has leaned more towards the left, whereas Musk has openly favored the right.

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