Evil Brunette Twin

Now which one dyes?

Having an Evil Twin can be a bitch, they can ruin your life and commit acts of evil, and leave you to take the blame, or simply steal your identity. Occasionally, there are ways to differentiate the good twin and the bad twin, one common way to use this in fiction is to have the good twin have light hair (usually, but not necessarily, blonde, and occasionally red) and the wicked twin have darker hair (often, but not always, black). Usually, an Evil Brunette Twin will don a wig to create any mistaken identity (and removing said wig is an easy way to expose them). Is obviously a visual cue for the audience so they can tell which is which.

Occasionally, works will reverse the usual set-up, and reveal that a brunette villain has a nicer light-haired twin, though this technically plays the trope straight.

A Sub-Trope of Evil Twin. See also Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold, Hair-Contrast Duo, and Dark Is Evil.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Maid-Sama!: Gerald Walker to Takumi Usui. They're not twins, but look identical except for their hair color. Gerald despises Takumi because he thinks their mother favored him over him.
• Naruto: In Naruto Road To Ninja, the sixth Shippuden movie, Naruto's evil counterpart turns out to have black hair. The other counterparts, who are not evil, have the same hair as the originals. However after the real culprit, Tobi, is defeated, Naruto's counterpart becomes blond and probably good again, since he was under Tobi's control.
• Raven-haired Queen Nehelenia is the Evil Twin of Queen Serenity in the original Sailor Moon manga. Fanon often attributes them to be sisters, but this is unconfirmed. Their connection is written out in the first anime adaptation, where Nehelenia was the Queen of another unrelated kingdom before she went crazy.
  • According to Word of God, it was intended to have Queen Serenity and Queen Beryl be played by the same actress in the failed Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon project, possibly making them sisters.
• In Queen Millennia, Selene is the darker-haired sister of the protagonist and was the antagonist for the first half of the show. Though this is subverted as the rest of the cast eventually switch sides to her point of view.
• Inverted in PandoraHearts. The black-haired Alice is the heroic twin to the deranged Will of the Abyss, who has white hair. It's actually more complicated than that, as both sisters are good — the White-haired Alice is malicious only because she shattered her own memories to save her sister and Oz, and has been reduced to a Psychopathic Manchild state. When her mind is intact, she's gentle and kind-hearted in comparison to Alice's more boisterous nature.

Comic Books

• The original Betty and Veronica once parodied this trope.◊ Considering that they are essentially blonde/brunette versions of each other, some Archie stories employ this trope. Despite popular belief, whether Betty or Veronica is the good or bad one, or if there even is a good or bad one, varies by the story; it is very telling that they are wearing the reverse costumes in the aforementioned picture.
• Power Girl once fought an evil black-haired clone of herself named "Divine".
• Smurfette has one among the Grey Smurfs in The Smurfs story "The Smurf Menace".
• Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade had Belinda Zee, a dark-haired Kryptonite clone of Linda who acted as an Alpha Bitch.
• Inverted with Vampirella and Draculina. Vampi, the heroic sister, has black hair while Draculina, the evil one, has blonde hair.
• An invertion occurs in a story of Wonder Woman (Rebirth) where Diana meets an evil blonde version of her mother Hippolyta from a mirror dimension called Dimension Chi. In an interesting case, this evil Hippolyta and the dimension she occupies aren't a result of a villain creating them but Hippolyta herself as she wanted to use a ritual to see if being a mother and a queen at the same time was a good choice but accidentally created the evil Hippolyta and her dimension when Diana interrupted the ritual.
• In X-Men comics, the heroic Beast's evil counterpart from an alternate timeline is easily distinguishable for two reasons: unlike "our" Beast, he never got further mutated into a cat person, so he still looks like an ape person; and two, he... has darker fur for some reason, earning him the name Dark Beast (along with being, y'know, sadistically evil).

Film - Animated

• Vanessa for Ariel, Disney's The Little Mermaid, is a magically induced trope example of this trope. They actually look like each other, but Vanessa's constant scowling makes this less obvious.
  • Ironically, Ursula was originally meant to have been Ariel's aunt, so it is tempting to think Ursula may have actually resembled Ariel in her youth.
  • Most adaptations of The Little Mermaid make use of this trope, with the temple princess being a dark-haired version of the titular mermaid, though whether the princess is a villain or an innocent player varies by adaption.
• Daria's cousin Hildegarde from The Princess and the Pea.
• Santa's Magic Crystal: Santa Claus's evil twin Basil has a black beard in contrast to Santa's white beard.

Film - Live-Action

• In the Spanish fairy tale film, Blancaflor La Hija Del Diablo, a young man named Martin makes a Deal with the Devil and ends up trapped in the underworld. He encounters the demon's two daughters, the lovely, blonde Blancaflor (White Flower) and the evil, raven-haired Sombragris (Grey Shadow), who are naturally played by the same actress. Blancaflor helps him escape and they plan to marry, but Sombragris tries to take her place.^note Notably, Sombragris is a Canon Foreigner to the original fairy tale. While the hero has to distinguish Blancaflor from her sisters, and later loses his memory and almost marries another princess, neither characters were particularly villainous.

Literature

• Angela and Diabola is about a pair of twin girls, one pure good and one pure evil. The good twin, Angela, has Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold, while the Evil Twin, Diabola, has "puce" hair (purplish auburn), making her both an example of this trope and an Evil Redhead.

Live Action TV

• Cousin Serena on Bewitched is arguably the Trope Maker. Though whether she was mischievous or truly wicked depended on the episode, Serena was antagonistic, and often indulged in pretending to be Samantha.
• Section-Leader Elizabeth Shaw, the Mirror Universe version of Dr Liz Shaw in the Doctor Who story "Inferno", had a brunette bob, in contrast with the regular Liz's shoulder-length blonde hair.
• Gilligan's Island had an episode "All About Eva", where a woman named Eva, who resembles a nerdy black-haired version of Ginger, comes to the island. The castaways befriend her and make her over, leading her to resemble Ginger. In the end of the episode, she not only abandons the castaways to return home, but steals Ginger's life!
  • Though canon says she was eventually found out. By the time Ginger and the others returned in 1979, there was no mention of Eva and Hollywood wanted the real thing back.
• An episode of That Girl has Ann encounter a doctor who looks exactly like her boyfriend Donald, except with black hair and glasses. Initially, it appears to be all in her head until her father confirms he thinks they look alike, too. Evil might be a stretch but he's a swinger who tries to have an affair with Ann and he goes so far to disguise himself as Donald to trick Ann into kissing him. The fact that the rather dark-haired Donald is suddenly addressed as "blonde" really showcases how much this trope was in mind.
• Jeannie's Sister (who was also named Jeannie) from I Dream of Jeannie, obviously inspired by Serena, is one of the more well-known examples of this trope. Like Serena, her most common scheme was pretending to be the good Jeannie. Despite popular belief, while sisters, they were not literally twins, though the show went back and forth on which one was younger.
• Inverted on Orphan Black, where the brunette clones Sarah, Cosima, Alison, Beth, and MK are among the protagonists while the blonde Rachel is one of the primary antagonists, her hair style and fashion sense used to give off a Rich Bitch vibe. The bleached-blonde Helena starts off as evil, though she undergoes a Heel–Face Turn. Krystal (good and blonde) breaks the pattern, possibly because it's overridden by another trope in her case.
• Inverted once with The Patty Duke Show, where Patty and Cathy are revealed to have a third lookalike, yet fair-haired, cousin named Betsy (who was of course Duke in a blonde wig). While somewhat sympathetic, Betsy spent the episode scheming to convince Cathy to return home so she could take her place. She also stole Cathy's date early in the episode.
• Narrowly inverted with Vicki and Vanessa on Small Wonder. According to Word of God, Vanessa was originally going to wear a blonde wig, but it was dropped when it was realized her main shtick was posing as Vicki anyway.
• Seen in Jane the Virgin. Blonde main character and sometime antagonist Petra has an evil brunette twin Anezka. They are identical except for their different hair colours.
• In Anger Management, Jordan is the smarter educated twin and has blonde hair, while her twin sister Jessica dyes her hair dark, dons breast implants, and works as a cosmetics salesperson. Jessica sleeps with all of Jordan's boyfriends, friends, and her husband, leading Jordan to divorce and into psychiatric treatment.
• Inverted on The Flash (2014), where Caitlin has brown hair, while her Earth-2 counterpart Killer Frost has platinum blonde hair that sometimes looks white. Later on, Caitlin herself becomes Killer Frost as a split personality and her hair turns the same colour, which then goes back to brown when she becomes Caitlin again, implying that her Earth-2 counterpart was a case of Power Dyes Your Hair.
• Invoked in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend when Rebecca tries to go through an evil transformation and signals this with her appearance by dyeing her hair dark brown, and wearing white "'cause it's ironic."
• Invoked in Star Trek: Voyager in episode "Author Author" with captain Janeway's fictionalised dark-haired evil version in The Doctor's holonovel.

Music

• The Murder Ballad 'The Twa Sisters' has the older, dark haired sister drown the younger golden haired sister out of envy over her relationship with a handsome knight.

Music Videos

• Mariah Carey used this trope in her "Heartbreaker" video. The evil lookalike, Bianca, tried to steal Mariah's boyfriend in the video. While the implication is that the boyfriend was cheating on Mariah, it is tempting to think that it was just a case of Mistaken Identity.
  • Parodied, among other things, in this MadTv skit
• Nicki Minaj made use of this in her "Va Va Voom" video, in a parody of Sleeping Beauty, playing a red-haired princess and a black-haired witch.
• Taylor Swift made use of this in her video for "You Belong With Me," contrasting the blond Cinderella-esque heroine contending with a brunet Alpha Bitch.
• Avril Lavigne did a very interesting case in her infamous "Girlfriend" video. A black haired bully tries to steal a red-haired lookalike's boyfriend, and ultimately wins. Word of God is that the black haired girl is evil and the red-haired girl is good, making the former a Villain Protagonist and the later is a Hero Antagonist. Make of that what you will. Added to that, Lavigne also plays a blonde narrator of sorts.
• In a rare male example, Chris Martin used this in Coldplay's video for "Magic". He not only played the hero of the video, but also the Stage Magician mixed with Dastardly Whiplash villain of the video.
• Inverted in Eminem's mythology - the good Marshall is dark-haired, while the evil Slim Shady (more of an Enemy Within but often referred to as his 'evil twin') is blond - being Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon. This occasionally turns up in videos where the two of them interact directly:
  • In the video for "When I'm Gone", Slim is performing on tour, blond and in a black suit, having abandoned his family and mental health to pursue fame. Dark-haired Marshall, in casual clothes, faces him down and punches the mirror, as the lyrics of the song describe Slim shooting himself in the head.
  • The lyric video for "Framed" cuts back and forth between a blond Slim Shady performing a string of gruesome murders, and the dark-haired Marshall taking the rap for it. The video ends with Slim giving a Slasher Smile, realising he's got away with it.
  • The trailer for the 2022 Super Bowl show opens with a dark-haired, bearded, middle-aged Eminem Battle Rapping against a blond, mid-20s Slim Shady, hurling holographic lyrics at each other.
  • Weirdly played straight in Eminem's in-story appearance in the Chapter 4 Finale of Fortnite, in which the young, blond Eminem appears in a heroic role and rapping "Lose Yourself", and the middle-aged, dark-haired Eminem appears as the monstrous Slim Shady and raps "Godzilla". The skins play this straight, though, labelling the blond as Slim Shady and the brunette as Eminem.

Newspaper Comics

• Joked about in Retail: when Cooper starts dating Marla's blond Identical Stranger Zoe again, he jokes that Zoe is Marla's good twin. Marla takes offense.
  Marla: Why am I the evil twin?
  Cooper: You're the brunette. It's the female Evil Twin equivalent of the goatee. Everybody knows that.

Video Games

• The third Aveyond series features a pair of mysterious twins named Uma and Nox. The former is a White Magician Girl with Mystical White Hair and is described as the good twin, while the black-haired Nox is described as the wicked one.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Vanitas is this to both Sora (whom he resembles) and Ventus (from whom he was created).
  • Xion to Kairi, though she is a zigzagged example. While a member of the mostly villainous Organization XIII, Xion herself is not evil per se, though the player is forced to fight her when she commits Suicide by Cop at the end of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. In Kingdom Hearts III, she appears again as part of the organization and made to fight with Kairi, until a painful revelation causes her to switch sides.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces has The Stoic dark brown-haired Material-S/Stern the Destructor and the blue-haired Blood Knight Material-L/Levi the Slasher, the Evil Twins of the light brown-haired Nanoha and the blonde Fate, though they've gone through a Heel–Face Turn by the The Gears of Destiny sequel. Material-D/Lord Dearche inverts this though: she has light grey hair compared to her good counterpart Hayate's brunette.
• Inverted in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney where it's the brunette twin Iris who's the benevolent one and the red-haired Dahlia who's a total Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
• Zig-zagged in Double Dragon: Billy's always The Hero while Jimmy goes through a Heel–Face Revolving Door, yet every game changes who's the blond and who's the brunette.
• Deadly Premonition has an example that isn't quite inverted or played straight. The two Francis Morgan personae, York and Zach, Zach being the "real" one, are differentiated by York's black hair and Zach's white hair. Neither can be said to be evil, though.

Webcomics

• In Shotgun Shuffle, the protagonist, Ellie, has a darker-haired twin, Cinnamon, who is arguably the most "evil" of the seven sisters. (None of them are terribly "good", though, and Word of God says that each of them represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins.)

Western Animation

• Glinda the Good Witch, a red head, is given an evil black-haired lookalike sister, Melinda the Mean, in Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz
• Lady Kale, the main villain of Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders is the evil dark-haired sister of the heroine's mother, the good Queen Anya. "Revenge of the Dark Stone" even sees Kale disguise herself as Anya using a veil.
• In Adventures of the Gummi Bears recurrent villain Duke Igthron is actually this of his twin blonde brother Sir Victor, the exact opposite of Igthorn, Sir Victor is a heroic noble and faithful knight. Another episode has a French Jerk princess who is like the evil version of Princess Calla, but brunette (although she gets better in a latter episode).
• Cousin Sunny for Gwen on Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Sunny's human form was later shown to be an illusion, so it is unclear if she intentionally made herself resemble Gwen or if it was her default form.
  • Inverted with Ben and Albedo from the same series.
• Krystella and Jycella from Chaotic., literally play this straight, but, unusually, the villainous Krystella is the one introduced first, and her nicer twin is introduced later.
• Word of God confirmed that had The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy spin-off "Underfist" been successful, Eris would have been split into a good blonde Eris and an evil black-haired Eris (to compensate for her love of Hoss making the original Eris good). While the two never made a proper appearance in the "Underfist" special, both Good Eris and Bad Eris can be seen in the end credits.
• Cousin Damina on The New Archie/Sabrina Hour was a raven-haired version of the good witch Sabrina. Unlike most examples, Damina never got the chance to exploit their resemblance.
• Starfire and Blackfire on Teen Titans, though this does not apply to their comic book versions. They're not twins, though and Blackfire is the older of the two. They also have different eyes, though this didn't stop Blackfire from trying to steal Starfire's identity and set Starfire up for her crimes.
• While their resemblance may be limited to the series' art-style, there is also Kim & Shego in Kim Possible.
• Gigi Grant, a genie from Monster High, has one in her Evil Twin, Whisp. Considering they're genies, it is possibly a shout-out to I Dream of Jeannie.
• Wendy the Good Little Witch had one in her one-shot rival, Wildcat.
• Inverted in Ugly Americans where Callie creates an evil blonde clone of Mark in a complicated attempt to win a bowling tournament. Proving his evil nature, he keeps the real Mark locked in a closet, kills Tad, and cripples Grimes. Notably, his hair is said to be naturally brown like the real Mark's, but he colored it at Callie's request.
• In the 2017 reboot of the Wacky Races, Penelope Pitstop has a dark-haired twin sister named Pandora Pitstop. True to her Evil Twin persona, Pandora's personality and hair color are a stark contrast from her twin sister.

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