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Wendy: I'm in the mirror universe. ... A parallel universe where everyone who's good is evil, and evil is good. It's like that episode of Star Trek where Spock had a goatee and Chekov tried to —
Mirror Pip: Star Trek. You mean the sci-fi series from the Sixties starring the great George Takei?
Wendy: It is an evil universe.
The Middleman, "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome"

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. As an example, in Bizarro Universe, the Earth is a cube. In the mirror universe, the earth is a sphere, but the Mirror Self of The Brigadier has a cool eyepatch.

The hero in the Mirror Universe functions as the Evil Twin. The Five-Man Band becomes The Psycho Rangers. Expect the loyal soldier to become a blithering coward, the backstabbing bastard to become a peaceful negotiator, and the bridge bunny who normally gets no lines to become a trash-talking, lingerie-wearing, gun-toting, bisexually hyperactive ball of unleashed id. Oh, and expect them to stab each other in the back constantly so they can one-up each other for power.

These mirror worlds tend to get popular with the fanbase, who'll eagerly come up with alternate versions of any character not yet shown, and as a result it'll often get returned to and expanded upon to please them. The status quo in the mirror universe is more likely to change than the original one, probably because the writers are allowed to do it.

The Trope Codifier is the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror." In homage to this episode, it's common for an evil mirror equivalent to have a goatee beard.

Contrast with Dark World (though there are some cases where these two overlap). Not to be confused with Mirror World or Mirror Character.


Example subpages:


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann performs this in Parallel Works 4, where the Beastmen are being oppressed by Kamina, and Viral is The Hero, it actually makes Kamina look legitimately evil.
  • Happened in one episode in Doraemon when Doraemon and Nobita enter and explore a mirror universe and interact with their counterparts. This universe is literally mirrored of having mirrored writing and east is west. Other differences include reversed gender roles showing Nobita's mom as the breadwinner, all males dressed as females, and different teachings in school. Nobita and his counterpart decide to swap roles for a day.
  • The movie Naruto the Movie: Road to Ninja from Naruto Shippuden seems based on this concept. But it is actually a incomplete version of Infinite Tskuyomi that Tobi created, a Genjutsu world influenced by the minds of whoever go transported to it with most characters exhibiting the reverse of their normal personalities. Ex. Ino becomes a prude, Shino hates bugs, etc. When Naruto and Sakura end up in the Genjutsu World, it acts on their fantasies by creating a reality where Sakura's parents sacrificed themselves for Konoha instead of Naruto's and the Akatsuki are heroes under Itachi's leadership.
    • Tenten ends up in another version of this reality in the Infinite Tskuyomi Madara casts.
  • An episode of Pokémon the Series: XY has Ash travel into one when his Mirror Counterpart grabbed his Pikachu. The mirror counterparts of the main cast all have opposite characteristics: Ash is timid, and Pikachu is always attacking Team Rocket, who are celebrated heroes, Clemont is athletic and relies on magic, Bonnie is mature and ladylike, and Serena is aggressive.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Apparently, of the 12 universes that exist, they come in pairs, with each having a mirror version of it. In a twist though, the heroes' home universe, the 7th, appears to be the "evil twin" universe of the 6th. In the 6th Universe, the Saiyans are a peaceful race of selfless heroes while Freeza's counterpart is a planet-trading pirate, except that he puts on a friendly face to the public and is known as a great hero. On the other hand, 6th Universe humanity was apparently so warlike that they annihilated Earth long ago, and its God of Destruction, Champa, is more polite but also somewhat more malevolent than Beerus.
  • An episode of Kujira no Josephina has Santi reaching his home (turn into a scary mansion) after school but in some sort of Alternate Universe where everyone is an evil creepy version of his family.
  • One arc of Fairy Tail takes place in the parallel world Edolas, which is populated by opposite versions of the cast. For example, Edolas Lucy is an aggressive and stern woman, Edolas Natsu is a timid boy that enjoys driving (A contrast to main Natsu's motion sickness), and Edolas Gray bundles himself up in layer of clothes and constantly proclaims his love to Juvia (A reverse of their Earthland selves).
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, there are three separate worlds besides the Standard Dimension: The Xyz Dimension, the Synchro Dimension, and the Fusion Dimension. But only Yuya and his friend Yuzu each have a counterpart in those worlds, totaling up to four pairs.
    • Yuri, Yuya's counterpart from the Fusion Dimension, is his opposite in every way. His ace, Starve Venom Fusion Dragon is also presented as a malevolent and evil counterpart to Yuya's Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon. He even sports a counterpart to Yuya's Smile World card: Ridicule World, which prevents the opponent from attacking while creating sinister shadows that laugh and mock them.

    Card Games 
  • There is a set of Magic: The Gathering involving 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).
    • Also, Time Spiral block revealed several, including a consistent one in which Mirri instead of Crovax became the vampire evincar of Rath. Also the first male angel in Magic history.
  • In the lore of Sentinels of the Multiverse there's the Inverseverse, an alternate universe where everyone who's good is evil and everyone who's evil is good. And Anubis... is still kind of a jerk. Though in a different way. The Action Hero Stuntman and Ivana Ramonat Luminary variant cards are from this universe.

    Comic Books 
  • Comics do this all the time. The DCU has its "anti-matter" Earth, wherein Ultraman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick, Power Ring, and Owlman (the Crime Syndicate of Amerika) are the evil duplicates of Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and Batman (the Justice League of America), and Lex Luthor was the only superhero left in the world. A later story introduced the Justice Underground, a team of heroes led by The Riddler's counterpart, the Quizmaster, and based on the various evil groups faced by the Justice League (such as the Legion of Doom, the Injustice Gang/League, and the Secret Society of Supervillains). Other members of the group included Sir Solomon Grundy (a dapper and intelligent Solomon Grundy), General Grodd (Gorilla Grodd), Lady Sonar (Sonar), Q Ranger (Major Force) and a heroic version of Star Sapphire. Following Riddler's temporary Heel–Face Turn, Quizmaster had a temporary Face–Heel Turn in Trinity (2008).
    • Forever Evil (2013) and its lead-up introduced two new Crime Syndicate members: Atomica, an evil version of The Atom, Grid, an evil version of Cyborg and Sea King, an evil version of Aquaman. Owlman was also assisted by the Outsider, an evil version of Batman's Battle Butler Alfred.
    • Owlman and Talon, Batman and Robin's counterparts from Earth-3, the Evil Counterpart Universe.
      • Talon takes it further by being a Legacy Character. The Talon who seems to be a direct counterpart to Tim Drake actually took a Heel–Face Turn and ended up joining the Teen Titans alongside Tim before being murdered and given back to Owlman in individually wrapped pieces.
    • DC Year of the Villain introduces Sky Tyrant, Hawkman's Earth-3 counterpart.
    • The trope originated in the Silver Age with Earth-3, which was destroyed in Crisis on Infinite Earths but was restored later in 52; the antimatter universe was based on this concept. Since the New 52, Earth-3 has effectively become the DCU's primary mirror.
    • Grant Morrison's JLA: Earth-2, the graphic novel that re-introduced the "anti-matter" version of the Crime Syndicate, deconstructed the trope: even the Theory of Narrative Causality was reversed in the mirror universe, so the Justice League's attempt to save it was as doomed as the Syndicate's attempt to conquer The DCU.
    • Power Ring is an interesting example. Since Hal Jordan was Earth-1's only Green Lantern at the time, Power Ring was originally a Mirror Universe version of Hal. However, as time has gone on and multiple heroes have used the Green Lantern name, the Syndicate's Power Ring has been altered a few times to resemble later Green Lanterns like Kyle Rayner and John Stewart. During the "Syndicate Rules" storyline, Power Ring was even given an in-universe Race Lift changing him from a blonde white man to a bald African-American man to reflect John replacing Kyle as the Justice League's primary Green Lantern, with the new look explained as a Cosmic Retcon caused by the destruction and rebirth of the Antimatter Universe during JLA/Avengers. Then, following Hal Jordan's resurrection during Green Lantern: Rebirth, Power Ring changed back into a Hal analogue, with Ultraman even remarking on the sudden change.
    • Young Justice (2019) Issue #8 introduces the team's Earth-3 counterparts: Amaxon Thunder for Wonder Girl, Luthor-El for Superboy, Speed Zone for Impulse, Hack for Teen Lantern, Hex for Jinny Hex and Drake for Tim Drake. We never meet Amethyst's counterpart as she apparently overslept and missed the fight.
    • The 2021 Crime Syndicate mini-series introduces a new take on the team that explores Earth-3 in greater detail. The core group once again includes Ultraman, Superwoman, Emerald Knight (the renamed Power Ring, who is now a John Stewart analogue once again), Johnny Quick, and Atomica, while Earth-3's Vixen and Red Star counterparts appear for the first time.
      • The animated Justice League also had the Justice Lords universe - a variation on the regular DCAU in which the death of The Flash resulted in the League/Lords becoming a totalitarian dictatorship. The arc began life as a movie about the Crime Syndicate but was retooled to a more iron-fisted Justice League. Without explicit ties to any past work, the original idea finally saw light years later as Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, which applied the concept to a large amount of Justice League characters. In addition to the primary Crime Syndicate members, Mirror Universe versions of Martian Manhunter, Hawkgirl, Green Arrow, the Marvel Family, Justice League Detroit, The Outsiders and others are also seen. A heroic version of The Joker called the Jester shows up at the beginning, while the American president is Slade Wilson.
    • The idea is also used with the Injustice Syndicate in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. In addition to Owlman, the group includes Scarlet Scarab (Blue Beetle, specifically the Jaime Reyes version), Barracuda (Aquaman), Blaze (Fire), Blue Bowman (Green Arrow), Dyna-Mite (the Atom, specifically the Ryan Choi version), Rubber Man (Plastic Man) and Silver Cyclone (Red Tornado). Their enemies are the Justice Underground, whose ranks include the Red Hood (the Joker), Yellow Lantern (Sinestro), General Grodd (Gorilla Grodd), and unnamed heroic versions of C and D-list villains like Clock King, Kite-Man and Gentleman Ghost.
    • A similar universe appears in Injustice: Gods Among Us, where Superman became evil and totalitarian after the Joker tricked him into killing Lois Lane.
    • The Multiversity introduced two pulp-themed parallel universes, where one is the Mirror Universe to the other.
    • Superboy (1994): Black Zero, an evil alternate of Superboy, comes from an earth where Donovan and Westfield got their way and were able to control Superboy and most of the world's heroes were slaughtered and replaced with twisted Cadmus created and controlled clones.
    • Issue #48 of Teen Titans Go!, the tie-in comic to the Teen Titans cartoon, revealed that new electricity-based Titan Kilowatt was from an alternate universe, and Raven used her powers to help him go back to his world, but something went wrong and he was accidentally transported to a universe where the Teen Titans are instead the villainous Teen Tyrants. Mythology Gags abound as Evil Robin, Speedy, and Aqualad are referred to as "Red Robin", "Arsenal", and "Tempest"; Evil Starfire and Raven are called "Blackfire" and "Red Raven". Their enemies are the Brotherhood of Justice, the Good Counterparts of the Brotherhood of Evil.
    • Also, most of these incarnations have Alexander Luthor as the good version of the main Lex Luthor, contrasting the Crime Syndicate. This is averted in Forever Evil (2013) however with a Luthor as bad as his mainstream counterpart, since this Earth-3 lacks good, period.
    • There's The Batman who Laughs, the Laughing Mad Evil Twin of Batman from an Alternate Universe where he was poisoned with Joker Gas, went insane, and massacred the Bat-Family, turning into a terrifying supervillain. Worse still, The Batman who Laughs has all of good Batman's Crazy-Prepared skills, making him all the more dangerous. Ironically it takes an Enemy Mine situation between both Batman and The Joker to bring The Batman who Laughs down.
    • One issue of Tiny Titans saw Talon try and summon a group of evil Tiny Titans from an alternate dimension. Despite his insistence that this trope should be in play, however, it ends up subverted — the alternate Titans are nigh-identical to the main universe Titans, with the only big differences being their names (sans Robin's counterpart, who also goes by Robin) and the colors of their costumes (in their universe, red and yellow are evil colors while green and purple are hero colors).
  • 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. The first issue of Exiles was in a universe where Magneto was the benevolent teacher who wanted mutants and humans to live in harmony, and Professor X believed there could only be peace when humanity was eradicated.
    • The Age of Apocalypse has elements of this trope; Magneto leads La Résistance - including a Good Is Not Nice version of Sabretooth and a version of Colossus who is a psychotic Anti-Hero - and there is a human resistance including a heroic Doctor Doom and Sentinels actually protecting mankind, versus a dystopic mutant tyranny whose ranks include Cyclops and his brother Havok as well as Beast, now known as Dark Beast, as well as a new character called Abyss who was later introduced into the mainstream comics as a heroic character. However, though Dark Beast is a cruel and sadistic Mad Scientist and a despicable piece of work, Cyclops is just an Anti-Villain who does a Heel–Face Turn, and as the title suggests this is a world where recurring X-Men villain Apocalypse has achieved world domination and if anything has actually gotten worse; other villains like Mister Sinister merely serve as his minions and are still evil, while most heroes and villains from other parts of the Marvel Universe didn't change sides, they were just killed when Apocalypse nuked the United States and started purging humanity.
    • Played with in the Marvel Zombies universe; the heroes are all evil, but only because they succumbed to a Zombie Apocalypse and proceeded to devour most of the human race, though they are sentient zombies who take sadistic pleasure in ripping their meals apart. Magneto and Doctor Doom show up as their enemies and help rescue survivors, but mostly in the context of them being Noble Demon types who object to rampaging malevolent zombies wiping out the entire universe. The cause of mutant supremacy doesn't matter much when most mutants and non-mutants have made peace with each other and decided just to eat everyone else.
    • The Thanos Imperative features the Cancerverse, a universe where Death has been wiped out by four powerful demons called the Many-Angled Ones, including Doctor Strange villain Shuma-Gorath (like the other three, a unique multiversal entity — it has no good twin anywhere in the multiverse). Life has become pollution and is spiraling out of control, and every living thing in the universe is Brainwashed and Crazy and are fanatically devoted to worshipping the evil entities, though non-living beings like the Vision (a robot) are immune and still heroic. Thus, in this universe hero teams like The Avengers are the servants of evil gods, though presumably so is every living villain as well.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): It has a Mirror Universe, called variously "The Reverse Universe", "Anti-Mobius", and "Moebius". In it Dr. Robotnik/Kintobor is a Kindly Vet, while the Freedom Fighters fight against freedom, having overthrown the previous monarch. The Anti-Freedom Fighters (name later changed to the Suppression Squad) all dress in black leather, and acted like a bunch of juvenile delinquents until Anti-Sonic became "Scourge" and conquered Moebius.
    • The interference from the heroes' world has caused the parallels to break down a bit; Scourge has been turned green and hooked up with Fiona Fox for a while, Anti-Bunnie has pulled a Heel–Face Turn and wears Omega Armor instead of being a Cyborg (anti-Rotor is the cyborg) and anti-Antoine briefly posed as his good counterpart. Basically the status quo for the mirror world gets altered more often than the main one. Oh, and Miles Prower even has the goatee.
      • Sonic has a direct evil double in the form of Scourge the Hedgehog. Unlike Shadow, who often acts as a foil to Sonic, and Metal Sonic, which is a robot built to serve Dr. Eggman's diabolical purposes, Scourge is literally an evil counterpart: He is Sonic from a parallel dimension, where the protagonists and villains switch roles. In the early days of the comic, Scourge was simply known as "Anti-Sonic" and was identical to Sonic save for sunglasses, a black leather jacket, and a Jerkass attitude. However, after some vocal exchange with Sonic, Anti-Sonic became shaken up by the thoughts and sought to make himself stand out. To that end, he attempted to hijack the Master Emerald. The result was becoming green, getting some scars on his chest and a form of rebirth. This is where he christened himself Scourge the Hedgehog and he was now much more ambitious than ever before, even becoming king in his unvierse.
      • He then forces this on his Anti-Freedom Fighters, turning them into the Suppression Squad. Not only are they just as bad, they followed Scourge's example in changing their names from their counterparts (such as Anti-Sally calling herself Alicia) to further stand out from them. Princess Sally's counterpart, Alicia, is nothing more than a figurehead. Miles, Tails' counterpart, is cold, calculating, and the real brains behind the team. Rotor's counterpart, Boomer, took his genius and used it on himself, turning himself into a cybernetic terror (which also makes him Bunnie's evil counterpart) Patch, Antoine's evil counterpart, is completely vain and in it for power. Subverted with Anti-Bunnie; she ended up becoming good (kinda) when she ended up contracting NIDS and her teammates left her to die. She was saved by Dr. Kintobar via a special mech suit (resembling Omega oddly enough) and she became his bodyguard as a result while now calling herself Buns.
    • Sonic the Comic featured King Sonic, hailing from a Mirror Universe in which Sonic was the one who got caught in the explosion of the Retro-Orbital Chaos Compressor instead of Dr. Kintobor. As such, in the absence of Dr. Robotnik, this Sonic became the tyrant that sought to take over his universe's Mobius. He has all of Sonic's abilities with none of his redeeming qualities and even has his own Superpowered Good Side in King Super Sonic.
  • Subversion: In Phil Foglio's short story "Work Ethic" found in Grim Jack #40, heroes from a world in which there is only pure good and pure evil (and the heroes always win), get transported to Grimjack's world, which has a more realistically varied moral spectrum. Thus, since they see that everything is not purely good, they begin to destroy the entire town of Cynosure until Cynosure's protector sends them back to their own dimension. (Incidentally, these heroes, the Heterodyne Boys, later became the inspiration for Girl Genius.)
  • Similarly, in JLA/Avengers, the League, seeing the many imperfections of the Marvel Universe, conclude that it's the Evil Universe. The Avengers, seeing statues and museums to the heroes everywhere in the DC Universe, conclude the exact same thing (they think the DC heroes have set themselves as gods).
  • In the X-Men alternate earth where Charles is Juggernaut, he ruled Earth as a dictator showing just how evil he would've been if not for his bullying big brother taking the Gem for himself. Several other "Evil Professor X" universes appear in Exiles, sometimes with him balanced by a heroic Magneto.
  • Judge Dredd:
    • 2000 AD continuity: Deadworld is a mirror image of the 'real' world which is ruled by four Dark Judges, supernatural beings who consider all forms of life to be punishable by death (their philosophy being that only the living commit crimes). There are hints that Deadworld was more-corrupt than Dredd's world. Life was viewed more cheaply than in Mega-City One, and the Judges wore all-black uniforms. Judge Death, still an ordinary human, joined up so he could kill people with impunity. He had already killed several classmates in secret, but on his first day on the job, he executed all 27 offenders. Eventually his philosophy started to catch on with the other Judges. There was a growing resistance movement to the Judges at this point, but the Chief Judge was too slow to act, and Judge Death overthrew him in a coup, renaming his courtroom the "Hall of Injustice." Also around this time, a team of undead priestesses called the Sisters of Death set up shop on Deadworld, which coincided with other problems such as crop failures. The Dark Judges attracted the attention of the Sisters and were transformed into undead creatures. After the Dark Judges outlived their usefulness, Death butchered all of them—sparing only his three closest friends, who were just as insane as he. (Judge Fuego a.k.a. Judge Fire was infamous for having burned down a school over noise violations.)
    • The Alternate Continuity of the short-lived Judge Dredd: Lawman of the Future comic (a more kid-friendly title featuring the uniforms from the Stallone movie) takes this a step further: In his first encounter with Judge Death, Dredd learns that the undead monster is a future version of himself, which wasn't the case in the main-continuity Deathworld.
  • Transformers: Shattered Glass, where the heroic Decepticons are fighting to protect Earth and Cybertron from the power-mongering of the evil Autobots. "Till All are Gone..." And yes, Evil Rodimus has a goatee.
    • Quintessons are tree-hugging, peace-loving, groovy lingo-speaking, space-hippies. The major Quintesson character is an exile who disagrees with the usual Quintesson policy of non-interaction with races until they're deemed sufficiently advanced — as opposed to the normal Quintesson policy of enslaving or arbitrarily executing "inferior" beings.
    • Starscream is Megatron's most loyal soldier who praises his commander. (It's all rather creepy, to be honest.) He also bears the color of his normal universe friend-turned-foe, Jetfire.
    • Earth is a Crapsack World that views both factions of Transformers as enemies. But more illustrative of the reversed nature of the universe are the Witwicky brothers, who are now petty criminal allies of the evil Autobots, and the machine-hating Marvel Comics villain Circuit Breaker (or Josie Beller), whose Shattered Glass counterpart is Josephine "Sephie" Beller, an ordinary human Decepticon ally who loves machines and admires the Transformers. The Mad Scientist Dr. Arkeville's counterpart is Professor Henri Arkeville, a Science Hero. The cruel dictator Abdul Fakkadi's counterpart is a benevolent ruler who is a father to his people. Cobra is a resistance unit fighting for freedom against America's tyrannical enforcers: G.I. Joe.
    • Nobody in this universe has heard of beings like Primus, Unicron, or The Fallen. When a displaced G1 Cliffjumper explains the concept to Megatron and the other Decepticons, they find the idea quaint. It should be noted that these beings are multiversal singularities (there is only one version of them in the multiverse), so if they ever showed up in the Shattered Glass-verse, they would be the same as in the normal universe. There is an evil Alpha Trion, however.
      • Though that changed following the Shroud, which caused the multiversal singularities to split into a counterpart for each universe. Thus there's now a good Unicron and an evil Primus.
    • Earth also has a My Little Pony, where they have unfriendly sounding names, like Rainbow Dark and Poison Apple (likely evil counterparts of Rainbow Dash and Applejack, respectively).
  • Disney Mouse and Duck Comics
    • Disney Ducks Comic Universe also dabbled in this; in this comic, Paperinik ends up going into an alternate universe where Uncle Scrooge is poor, Gladstone Gander is unlucky, policemen are criminals, criminals are good, and Paperinik himself is evil.
    • Mickey Mouse Comic Universe:
      • In one series of comics, it's especially disconcerting in that the Phantom Blot, a Manipulative Bastard and trademark villain, is a superhero.
      • In the Italy series X-Mickey we find Mickey traveling through portals to another dimension and meeting new characters that are special for this series. Most notable is the Goofy-lookalike werewolf named Pipwolf, but we also have Manny that looks like an albino Minnie, and several other characters that are recurring throughout the series.
  • Mandrake the Magician has had several adventures involving a mirror universe. Usually the evil mirror universe tries to invade the ordinary universe, coming through just about any mirror (though they prefer to begin with Narda's), since they have a spray that makes mirrors soft and permeable.
  • The Powerpuff Girls comic "Deja View" involved the Powerpuff Girls' adventures through a universe in which they must help the heroic Jomo Momo (Mirror Mojo Jojo) defeat Oppressor Plutonium (Mirror Utonium). Meanwhile, the girls' counterparts, the Powerpunk Girls, wreak havoc on Townsville. This was originally going to be a season five episode for the TV show, but its CGI put it over budget and near a tight deadline. They gave the storyline to DC Comics to make as issue #50.
  • The 7th arc of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic book series deals with the mane six (plus Spike) traveling to another dimension where the villain of the season 3 premiere, King Sombra, is actually The Good King while the counterparts of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are the villains. Other changes include the mane six's counterparts being pictured on wanted posters while various antagonists throughout the series are depicted as heroes. Some characters' traits are reversed; ie the Apple family are snobby aristocrats instead of humble farmers.
  • The Planetary/JLA one-shot is set in an alternate timeline where the main characters from Planetary are evil and playing the role that their enemies the 4 do in the main timeline, with JLA characters introduced as the heroes trying to take them down.
  • The Tom Strong stories "Too Many Teslas" and "The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong" both depict a very large number of alternate universes to the main Tom Strong universe, including a Mirror Universe in which Tiberius Strong and his daughter Twyla Strong are both villains, and Nazi Germany was a tragically-short-lived utopia that saved the lives of millions of people.
  • The Mices on Infinite Earths storyline in Marvel Comics' Mighty Mouse comic, being a parody of Crisis on Infinite Earths, introduced Earth-Not, ruled with an iron fist by Mangy Mouse, Mighty Mouse's Evil Twin with reversed costume colours (red suit, yellow cape).
  • The Vision has Anti-Vision, his crooked doppelgänger from a parallel universe.
  • In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (Boom! Studios), there's Lord Drakkon, an alternate reality version of Tommy Oliver/Green Ranger who, upon being freed from the Sword of Darkness and offered a hand in friendship, ran back to Rita. He became drunk on power and ultimately destroyed the Power Rangers and killed Rita and took her place.
  • Archie Comics: One issue had Archie and Chuck stumble into a backward version of Riverdale where everyone's personality (including theirs) was inverted. The most extreme case was Jughead, who goes from a practically asexual glutton to a skirt-chasing pervert who hates food so much that he blows up a bridge to stop food shipments from entering town.

    Fan Works 
  • The RPG.net forum discussion Shattered Disc, a mirror universe Discworld. "The world burns ... on the back of a turtle."
  • My Stupid Reality, a Death Note fic in which the Light vs L conflict is reversed - in this universe, Light is a genuinely Nice Guy who has spent all his life pretending to be imperfect and it's L that jumps off the slippery slope.
  • Also the Death Note AU The Faceless (Disguise of Carnivorism)- in canon Light kills L but is seen as admirable by the men he's deceived. In this universe, Light rescues L and is met with derision by his soldiers as they realize the Awful Truth about what they were fighting for.
  • Among Warhammer 40,000 fans, there is practically an entire genre built around "What if the Horus Heresy had the loyalists and traitors switch places?"
    • Perhaps the original in this genre is The Dornian Heresy which switches the places of the loyalists and traitors, and in almost every major event the alternate choice was made. The Emperor sided with Magnus during the Council of Nikea, and Magnus privately requested that the Emperor perform the soul-binding ritual on him and the Thousand Sons to protect them from the influence of Chaos, meaning that the Thousand Sons gained the power to banish and in some cases even outright destroy daemons. Angron had Horus and the Emperor side with him during the slave uprising on his world, resulting in him removing the combat implants in his warriors. After the Heresy, the Legions were never broken up to make sure they could stay strong and root out traitors within their ranks. Ultramar was tricked into fighting the Alpha Legion and Word Bearers, resulting in them becoming a third power, meaning that they were no longer held by the rules of the Imperium and began to tinker with their technology. Lorgar chose to declare a holy war upon Chaos rather than siding with them. And, most shocking of all, Abbadon became a tactical genius!
    • Perhaps a more well-known story is that of The Roboutian Heresy. As the name implies it is Roboute Guilliman who leads the rebellion against the Emperor.
  • You Got HaruhiRolled! features an Evil Counterpart of the SOS Brigade, who hail from a literally photonegative universe. The Anti-SOS Brigade (the canonical Evil Counterpart) offers to help them kill the SOS Brigade, but are betrayed by the photonegative SOS Brigade (and Evil Tsuruya).
  • The Sacred and the Profane is a Darker and Edgier retelling of Good Omens where Crowley (now known as Caphriel) is the angel and Aziraphale (now Zirah) is the demon.
  • A Bleach fanfiction features Sonoma and Kan'na. Sonoma is the original universe, introduced in the works of Tite Kubo. Kan'na is a universe created by a user and is the parallel twin universe to Sonoma. Kan'na is war-torn, and the World of the Living is in a post-apocalyptic state, having been overrun by Hollows. Morals and standards do not exist in Kan'na, same for rules.
  • Reimagined Enterprise uses the Trope Namer once per season, using similar concepts to the acclaimed "In A Mirror, Darkly" episode from the canon show.
  • A group of The Transformers fans wrote several pieces about a possible Transformers mirror universe, with the first such piece appearing in 2001, predating the Shattered Glass universe by around seven years (as Shattered Glass #1 appeared in 2008). This fan-made Mirror-verse setting was unusual in that its good and evil flip was played completely straight (with the evil Autobots proving to be even more monstrous than the Decepticons of the normal universe), where Shattered Glass has hints of clever parody in its content.
  • Darkwing Duck already had a mirror universe in the form of the Negaverse. Negaverse Chronicles explores that world extensively.
  • During the 'Good and Evil' chapter of Various Vytal Ventures we see a glimpse of such a world, where RWBY is a team of Psycho Rangers, Ozpin is an Evil Overlord, and almost everyone has their personality completely swapped. Naturally, it makes several Shout Outs to the original Star Trek Mirror-verse.
  • In The Bridge (MLP), several good and bad Kaiju get transported to Equestria. In the spin-off The Bridge: Sound of Thunder, Raiga finds herself in Equestria and thinks she will soon be reunited with Godzilla and her other friends, except it turns out she arrived in the mirror Equestria from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW). To make matters worse, the Kaiju transported to this world are from a mirror universe as well. Godzilla is a sadistic murderer instead of a hero, Battra Lea is an Omnicidal Maniac instead of a guardian, etc. On the flip side, Xenilla and Destroyah are heroes instead of villains. Raiga's own counterpart is shy and meek instead of fight-happy.
  • The This Time Round Meta Fic setting for Doctor Who has Some Other Time Round, where the author avatars are nastier, the stories are darker, and the canon characters are from "Inferno".
    • Curiously enough, there's no evil version of the Doctor himself (although the Expanded Universe novels did suggest that the evil tyrant ruling this fascist alternative Britain was in fact an alternative version of the Third Doctor with a different body who went evil after his forced regeneration by the Time Lords).
  • Given that the Undertale fandom is a breeding ground for Alternate Universes, it's not surprising that one of these exists - Underfell, where the monsters were forced to bury their kinder natures and "kill or be killed" is the law of the land. Typically, Flowey becomes the player's partner and guide, while Papyrus becomes a vicious sadist (or at least tries to be), Alphys becomes a Mad Scientist, Undyne and Mettaton both become significantly more vicious, Toriel becomes My Beloved Smother or an Evil Matriarch, and Asgore is a dictator and unrepentant child-murderer. And everything generally looks Darker and Edgier. Some interpretations put a little more emphasis on the looks part, turning it more into a human intimidation tactic than anything truly genuine.
  • The Terinu fanfic "The Grace of God" has the mainline characters drop into a parallel universe where their personalities were twisted in the worst possible direction. Leeza is the obedient military officer her father always wanted, Terinu is Mavra Chan's loyal enforcer, Melika is a Space Pirate, and Rufus warped from an honorable Ace Pilot to a drunk, drug-addicted wreck.
  • The Danganronpa fanfic Through The Cracked Mirror reverses the roles of Hope and Despair.
  • From the Gravity Falls fandom comes the Reverse Falls AU, in which Dipper and Mabel (often but not always given the surname "Gleeful") are a pair of ruthless, sometimes outright Ax-Crazy Creepy Twins. More often than not Mabel will be a Stalker with a Crush to the now-heroic Gideon, while Dipper begins a much more... belligerent relationship with Pacifica. That is, if the setting isn't just an excuse to write an inverted BillDip fic.
  • Steven Universe's take on this is the Momswap AU, where the homeworld gems Jasper, Lapis Lazuli, and Peridot take the place of Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl as Steven's surrogate moms and the rebels fighting for Earth, while the canon Crystal Gems are the threatening Homeworld gems. Sometimes Yellow Diamond is Steven's mother instead of Rose Quartz, and sometimes everyone is swapped- even Steven. It all depends on what interpretation you're talking about.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has a Mirror Universe fic called The Roboutian Heresy where instead of Horus leading a rebellion against The Emperor, it is Roboute Guilliman, and the Loyalist/Traitor legion split is reversed.
  • Earth's Alien History has one inspired by the Star Trek example. In this universe TeTO, defeated in the Mekon War and gripped with revanchism and xenophobia, recreates itself as the Terran Empire in order to ensure its place as a Great Power of the galaxy.
  • Cells at Work! has the "Black Blood Cell" universe, where the cells play up the "sexy and sadistic" angle of Mirror Universes. Downplayed in terms of role, as their purpose still usually remains to protect the body rather than destroy it.
  • The Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story "Smurfed Behind: The Other Side Of The Mirror" introduces a Mirror Universe where the Smurfs in it are all red-skinned, mostly wear black, and are all evil all the time, with most of the male Smurfs being Depraved Bisexuals and Smurfette being a promiscuous adulteress who is married to Papa Smurf, and where their main adversary Gargamel is always good. The Psyches, who are morally ambiguous in the normal universe, are shown to be opposites in the least in being emotionally liberated instead of emotionally suppressed, and team up with the normal universe's Polaris Psyche to act as allies against the Mirror Universe Smurfs. True to the title of the story, the way to that universe and back is through a Magic Mirror called the Janus Mirror, which appears in both universes as a gateway.
  • RWBY: Dark is an alternate universe where the canon villains like Cinder, Mercury, Emerald, Roman, Neopolitan, and Salem are all reimagined as a heroic resistance against the vile Lord Ozpin and his army of Huntsmen and Huntresses, while heroes like Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang are reimagined as serial killers, corrupt executives, genocidal terrorists, and feral savages.
  • In the Miraculous Ladybug fanfic Funhouse Mirror, a brush with an akuma leads to Alya meeting her own mirror universe counterpart, whose personality consists of all the Ron the Death Eater cliches Alya tends to get hit with in fanworks.
  • The New Adventures of Invader Zim: In Season 2 Episode 7, an accident with some cosmic energy during a fight sends all three teams into an alternate universe where everyone's morality and personalities are flipped. Among other things, Zim and Tak are heroic agents of the Irken Federation trying to peacefully uplift humanity, Tenn is a lazy hedonist, Nyx is a bland corporate drone, and Dib and the twins are supervillains out to Take Over the World.
  • Forever Evil gives Owlman to Batman — his doppelganger from a morality-inverted universe who's very much a Social Darwinist crime boss. Interestingly, Owlman is much more openly affectionate and doting towards his sidekick than Batman. He's still a horrendous Parental Substitute due to his deep Yandere tendencies.
  • In Hottie 3: The Best Fan Fic in the World, Judas Blythe, who is from an Alternate Universe, is the evil counterpart of Blythe Baxter from Littlest Pet Shop (2012).
  • Shattered Heaven plays this pretty straight for Fate/stay night, with Archer traveling to a universe where Shirou is a sadistic megalomaniac, Gilgamesh is basically nice but a pathetic wreck, and Sakura is an asexual tsundere. Its sequel, Shatteraxia, is the equivalent to Fate/hollow ataraxia, with the twist that the two universes wind up combining in, well, fragments, just like ataraxia shows bits of the original stay night routes mixed together.
  • There's an arc in the Yu-Gi-Oh! fic Chaos Effect, set in-between Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, where Edwin, Tristan, Tea, and Tea's sister Yuri are sucked into a morality-flipped universe, where everything has a punk dystopian aesthetic and Solomon Moto rules Domino City with an iron fist. Edwin, being Genre Savvy, takes the time to educate the others on this trope and its variations when helping them adjust to what's happened to them.
  • Discussed in Ambition of the Red Princess. While the DC Comics of Naofumi's world has Superman and Batman as heroes, Motoyasu's world has Ultraman and Owlman, the evil counterparts from the Crime Syndicate, as fictional heroes. Both heroes even wonder if their own real worlds are mirror universes of each other.
  • Dark Mirror is a Ben 10 fanfic that re-tells the original series but switches around the positions of the heroes and villains, making the Plumbers a corrupt Knight Templar organization (with Max having been fed enough propaganda that he refuses to consider that they might be in the wrong at first) and Vilgax the Big Good among other things. However, Ben and Gwen are still as heroic as they were in canon, and as a result characters who were members of their Rogues Gallery in canon end up becoming their allies here.
  • Halloween Unspectacular: The fifth edition story "The Other Side of the Mirror" shows a world where an alternate version of Aang leads the oppressive Empire of the Sky alongside a council of counterparts to other Nicktoons characters, all of whom see no problem with sentencing a freedom fighter version of Azula to forced labor with her civil rights stripped away.
  • Downplayed in The Wrong Reflection, a Star Trek Online fanfic dealing with the Trope Namer. The makeup of the prime universe Captain Kanril Eleya's crew means there physically can't be a straight-played evil version of the USS Bajor: In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Bajor is part of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance in the mirror universe—the Occupation of Bajor was perpetrated by humanity and they were freed by the Alliance conquest—but most of the members of Eleya's senior staff are Terran species. So instead other things get changed: Mirror Kanril is the XO on a Cardassian battleship and a darker version of the Anti-Hero compared to the Pragmatic Hero Eleya.
  • In chapter 5 of DIO messes up the timeline, DIO's efforts to make a timeline where he gets together with his adopted sister Johanna Joestar creates a world where Johanna's mother Mary survives her canon death by using the Stone Mask to become a cruel vampire. The result is a world where the Joestar family are now the embodiment of Aristocrats Are Evil, with Mary ruling the Joestar estate with sadistic glee and feeding on injured patients, Goerge is a corrupt businessman and essentially a Sycophantic Servant to his wife, and Johanna an arrogant and cruel heiress that treats Dio (who in the new timeline is an Adopt-a-Servant) as her plaything, before becoming a vampire herself.
  • There is a subgenre of Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfiction in which the Water Tribes are the ones who launch the war rather than the Fire Nation, typically with Zuko and Azula swapping roles with Katara and Sokka. Downplayed in that Aang himself is usually still The Hero, although he is sometimes subbed out for another Avatar.

    Film — Animated 
  • Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, strongly inspired by the Crime Syndicate stories above.
    • Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths depiction of Batman's counterpart Owlman is far more representative of an "evil version" than the Justice Lords Batman. Owlman sums up the entire topic of alternate versions nicely to Superwoman (evil version of Mary Marvel, counterpart to Wonder Woman):
      Owlman: Every decision we make is meaningless because somewhere, on a parallel Earth, we have already made the opposite choice. We're nothing. Less than nothing.
      Superwoman: How can you say that? We're rich. We're conquerors.
      Owlman: [pointing at alternate Earths] And here we're poor. We're slaves. And here, our parents never met, so we were never born. Here, the world ended in nuclear war. Here, no fish was brave enough to crawl up on land and humans never evolved. And so on, ad infinitum.
    • And summed it up even more succinctly to Batman later on:
      Batman: You're Insane!.
      Owlman: Does it really matter? There are alternate versions of me that you would find quite charming.
  • In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Earth-42 functioned as one to Miles' home universe of Earth-1610B. Because of the Big Bad, the spider that was supposed to give Earth-42 Miles his powers ended up going to our Miles, leaving that reality without a Spider-Man. As a result, he became an Evil Doppelgänger to Miles after his father died, becoming his reality's Prowler.

    Film — Live Action 
  • In Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969) by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson, the astronauts are sent to inspect the planet that is orbiting directly on the other side of the sun from us. But a malfunction when they arrive brings them home Except that everything is mirrored. Writing. Body parts. It turns out the other planet sent the mirrored astronauts off to our Earth at exactly the same time.

    Literature 
  • In Andre Norton's Star Gate (1958), the human colonists of Gorth, seeking an Alternate Universe version of their beloved adopted planet that has no native intelligent life, accidentally stumble into a version in which their own counterparts have used their advanced technology to enslave the inhabitants.
  • The Dark Reflections Trilogy features a literal mirror universe.
  • Characters from Mirror Universe settings occasionally turn up in the Nightside novels, such as Dark Artur (an alternate King Arthur whose mentor Merlin had sided with the Devil), or Joan Taylor and Steven Shooter (Gender Flip villainous versions of the series leads).
  • Spider Robinson's story "Mirror/rorriM Off the Wall" has an invasion by Trebor, the evil mirror twin of Robert, a patron of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. One of the tipoff's is that Callahan's bar doesn't have a mirror normally, just quotes written behind the bar, and suddenly, there is a mirror.
  • The Mirage is a novel about a Mirror Universe The War on Terror, where a liberated, cosmopolitan United Arab States is attacked by a fundamentalist Christian America and ends up invading them in retaliation. Of course, the fact that it's such a funhouse mirror version of our world is key to the plot...
  • The Last Dragon Chronicles: Every main character in Fire World has a counterpart on Earth. It's also Lampshaded in-universe.
    • David is ...well, David.
    • Eliza is Elizabeth.
    • Harlan is Arthur.
    • Penny is Lucy.
    • Rosa is Zanna.
    • Gwyneth is Gwillana.
    • Mr. Henry is Mr. Bacon.
    • Mathew is Tam.
    • Angel is Alexa.
    • Boon is Bonnington.
    • Stromberg is Bergstrom.
  • The "Cosmic Chess Match" arc in Perry Rhodan is famous for the protagonists ending up in one of these after an experiment gone wrong. In this case, it's not entirely clear whether it was a fully "legitimate" instance of the trope or an artificial creation of one of the dueling super-intelligences; the trigger condition for returning home (Perry Rhodan himself killing his own evil double) and the fact that it worked basically instantly once met seem to rather hint at the latter, but ANTI-IT could have just as easily made use of an already-existing alternate universe.
  • Defection: is a setting where travel between dimensions is relatively common, albeit only truly available to those on the larger end of the power pool, thus resulting in a lot of alternate versions of the same person.
  • Trey and Troy, the "bad" Dimensional Guardians from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes often pick fights with the protagonists.
  • In the eighth Captain Underpants book, George and Harold accidentally travel to a parallel universe where all the people they know are the opposite of how they are in the main universe: Insufferable Genius Melvin is a drooling idiot, George and Harold themselves are evil, and all the teachers are nice and helpful. When they try to escape, their Evil Doppelgangers and evil Captain Underpants tag along and wreak havoc in their world.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In the Doctor Who story "Inferno", the Doctor is transported to a world where Britain is a military dictatorship and the UNIT characters are either evil (like Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart and his Eyepatch of Power and Platoon Underleader Benton) or resignedly following orders (like Section Leader Liz Shaw and Doctor Petra Williams)note . The location and plot are the same (an attempt to drill into the Earth's mantle), but penetration is reached, and the world is destroyed. The Doctor is able to escape in time and stop his Earth's version of the project.
  • Subverted in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Ripple Effect". 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. Which is pretty much how they solve the problem of sending everyone back.
    • In the Alternate Universe of "Point of View", Apophis has a goatee, a la Spock, but everyone is morally the same, except maybe Teal'c (our Teal'c didn't give him a chance to talk before offing him).
  • Charmed (1998) had a Polar Opposite World in the two-part finale of Season 6, where good and evil were reversed. Mortal people and places were all grungier, the Charmed Ones were evil witches, demons were good (such as Barbas being the Demon of Hope instead of the Demon of Fear), and the Underworld was green and pleasant. Leo was a Darklighter instead of a Whitelighter, and Paige and Chris were Darklighter-witch crossbreeds instead of Whitelighter-witch crossbreeds. Presumably the Darklighters (Evil Counterparts to Whitelighters who try to eliminate them with specially poisoned crossbows) of the primary universe were Whitelighters in the Mirror Universe. The characters had to forge an alliance with their "evil" selves to get both worlds back into balance after some of them swapped places.
    • An imbalance that occurred when these universes crossed caused a total Flanderization of their respective moralities for the second part of the two-parter; in our 'good' universe, even the most minor of infringements of law or courtesy was now enough to have you (cheerfully) shot, whereas so much as the slightest gesture of kindness in the Mirror Universe would now incur the same consequence. Also, it was always day in the good world, and always night in the evil one. Neither set of Charmed Ones found this situation tolerable, and they managed to undo it by the end of the finale.
  • Parodied in a "lost episode" of My Name Is Earl, which retells the story of the Pilot, except instead of watching Carson Daly, Earl flips over to Family Guy and is inspired by Stewie Griffin to take revenge on everyone he feels has wronged him. He is eventually killed after failing to take revenge on his old bullying victim Kenny for making him "feel stupid".
  • In an episode of Power Rangers Ninja Storm, Tori is sent into a parallel universe where the other Rangers are the bad guys and the villains are good guys (the shallow, fashioned obsessed villainesses are even hippies in this universe).
  • One of the many, many sphere malfunctions in 7 Days (1998), 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. Also, everything in this "inverted universe" is mirrored. Get it?
  • The Middleman: In "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome", the alternate-universe Middleman goes from all-American Boy Scout type to less-than-altruistic Anti-Hero, Pip goes from selfish brat to Catholic priest working to help the helpless, Lacey is a stripper, with Noser as her muscle, the entire world is a dystopia ruled by Fatboy Industries, and Wendy is the Big Bad. Oh, and all the male characters have beards.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 explicitly parodies the Star Trek mirror universe in their "Last of the Wild Horses" episode. Tom and Gypsy are swapped with their evil counterparts. In the evil universe, Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank are trapped on the SOL, while bearded Mike and the bots subject them to horrible movies. Notice how they even sit on opposite sides of the theater.
  • Hercules: The Legendary Journeys had a universe where Herc was an evil ruler called the Sovereign, Iolaus was his jester, Xena was a conniving minx, and Gabrielle was a vicious executioner. Opposing the Sovereign's rule were such figures as Joxer (the Spock "one good man" type character, but "opposite" to "our" Joxer by being competent) and Ares, god of love. Aphrodite was also the prim and proper queen of the gods; Hera is said to be the goddess of music, while Cupid is mentioned being the god of war. Later episodes referred to Callisto as a virgin priestess, and Cheiron as a Sadist Teacher.
    • The Sovereign also had a Beard of Evil. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't realize that the main universe's Ares is also evil and has no qualms about killing.
    • In the first episode to feature this universe, a rule was established where everyone was connected to their counterpart. If one person on either world died for whatever reason, their counterpart would immediately die along with them. A loophole was later established in that a character being in the Netherworld (an in-between realm) negated that connection; that's how Hercules survives Ares killing the Sovereign.
    • Notably, in Season 5, the court jester Iolaus crossed over to the main universe permanently and became more developed. This was during a period where the regular Iolaus was dead long-term, so production made use of Michael Hurst by bringing back the jester counterpart.
  • Kamen Rider Dragon Knight uses this concept literally - the parallel world of Ventara is connected to Earth through reflective surfaces like mirrors and windows. The Earth Kamen Riders are mirror twins of the original Ventaran Riders, who are all heroes, which causes some interesting moments. For example, the good guys are a bit weirded out by Ventaran!Strike, since his Earthly counterpart is a Smug Snake Jerkass. He ends up in a relationship with a reporter at the end of the series.
  • Kevin, Gene, Feldman and Fargas in The Bizarro Jerry episode of Seinfeld.
  • Not played straight, but homaged in Fringe, where practically the first person encountered in the alternate universe is played by Leonard Nimoy. In the show's "over there" universe Walternate is a villain in the Well-Intentioned Extremist mode, although the original Walter has some ethically suspect things in his past too. Their version of Olivia is essentially good but does bad things because she believes in Walternate. Other characters aren't better or worse, just different. And a few characters change alignment after the Cosmic Retcon.
    • Interestingly, there is one prominent alternate universe character who did not have a counterpart in "our" universe for the longest time. Finally, a "good" version (who looks a little nerdy in glasses) shows up... for a single episode. He returns as a regular in the following season.
    • In a more straight version of this trope, there's a season 4 episode where the Fringe Divisions from both universes are working together to catch a serial killer in the alt-universe, with the help of his counterpart from the prime-universe, who thanks to a woman he met in his childhood, becomes able to contain his psychotic urges and avoid the crime path, such luck his alternate did not have.
  • In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Wish", Cordelia gets her wish that Buffy never came to Sunnydale, turning the town (and likely the world) into hell. Xander and Willow are vampires and rule the streets at night, Angel is regularly sexually tortured by Willow, Buffy eventually turns up bitchier than Sarah Connor at her worst to stop a vampire plot to industralize the killing of humans, only to die trying like most of the show's characters.
  • In season two of the Game Show Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego, this was common type of skit. In the Mirror Universe, AMCE was a force of evil and VILE was a force of good. Kevin lampshaded this when one of the skits came up.
  • Pixelface: In one episode, Riley exits the game from the wrong port and finds himself in a different console where Alexia is an Extreme Doormat, Aethelwynee is a Jerk Jock, Rex is an Insufferable Genius, Claireparker is The Pigpen and Kiki is... a large, hairy man.
  • Lost in Space did an episode entitled "The Anti-Matter Man" where John Robinson gets kidnapped by his mirror self, who wants to take his place in the "normal" world. In the mirror world, everything is different, where because the robot is good, his mirror counterpart is permanently imprisoned. Oddly enough (since it was slightly earlier) Drun (the mirror Don West) has a beard. Will, Dr. Smith and the Robot rescue him, and the episode concludes with John throwing Mirror John over the side of the "bridge" between the normal world and the mirror world.
  • The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Zack and Cody travel to an alternate universe in the episode "Suite Life of Success" where everything is ideal for them: Mr. Moseby is a fun-loving rule-breaking cool guy; the hotel is called "The Fitzpatrick" because Maddie is the heiress instead of London; London has Maddie's former job as candy counter girl and is the smart one while Maddie is The Ditz; Carey is a famous singer and lets the boys do everything they want; Esteban is a maid; George Clooney is on the nickel; and Arwin is Carey's manager has hair wears leather and Carey has a massive crush on him instead of vice versa.
  • Parodied in Community. When the tossing of a die to choose who picks up some pizza creates seven alternate universes, one horrible one is created where Pierce dies, Jeff loses an arm, Shirley becomes an alcoholic, Annie suffers a mental breakdown, Troy's larynx is destroyed, and Britta dyes a blue streak in her hair. Genre Savvy Abed deduces that they're in the "evil" universe, makes them all fake beards, and makes it their job to break into the true universe and wreak havoc.
  • Polish sitcom Swiat wedlug Kiepskich has an episode where the son of the titular dysfunctional family passes by the mirror in the hall and discovers that his reflection is wearing glasses, formal suit, and a rather nerdy haircut. After brief argument with the reflection, he finally responds with a headbutt which results in them both swapping places with each other and he ends up in an alternate universe where his family is rich, their alcoholic neighbours are tennis-playing scholars with academic degrees, and he's a world-famous fiddle player. Who is about to have his biggest performance in just a few hours. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Wizards of Waverly Place has this in the episode "All About You-niverse".
  • Flander's Company does this with the Villain Protagonists discovering an alternate universe where their company trains and forms superheroes instead of supervillains.
  • Here's an example you might not expect: in a "The Word" segment on The Colbert Report from February 10, 2007, Stephen opens with reporting on a new theory about parallel universes. In the middle of the segment, there is suddenly a cheesy science fiction zoom-out, and suddenly Stephen is a left-wing hippie whose "Word" was "Troops Out Now!" After a while of seeing Hippie!Stephen's reporting, the same zoom-out is shown, and you cut to "real-life" Stephen arguing in character that the US military should invade any parallel universes we find.
  • The alternate Enchanted Forest created by the book Heroes and Villains in the Season 4 finale of Once Upon a Time has shades of this. Snow White is the Evil Queen, with Charming as the Huntsman and the Dwarfs as her royal guard. Meanwhile, Regina is in Snow's role as the bow-wielding freedom fighter, and Rumpelstiltskin is a noble and brave White Magic user known as the Ogreslayer and the Light One. Other characters seem to have less of a personality shift, although their position in the story has changed. This is all the result of Rumple's desires coupled with the whims of the current Author, Isaac, who has a thing against Snow and Charming and thinks villains are more interesting to write.
  • Happens in the Henry Danger episode "Opposite Universe" when Henry and Charlotte end up in a Mirror universe while their evil counterparts are trapped in the other, "good" universe after a tubing into the Man Cave during an electrical storm. Obligatory evil beards for Captain Man, Schwoz (kind of), and Mr Hart. Piper is a non-violent, unselfish girl.
  • While not played perfectly straight in The Flash (2014), we get a lot of morality inversions in Earth-2. Most of the CCPD are still good guys though their circumstances are different, but when it comes to the superpowered players:
    • Our Hunter Zolomon is a normal guy as far as we can tell. Theirs is the Big Bad Zoom.
    • Our Caitlin is a friendly scientist. Theirs is the gleefully sadistic and murderous Killer Frost.
    • Our Cisco is also a friendly scientist. Theirs is The Dragon.
    • Our Ronnie Raymond: half of the heroic Firestorm, until his apparent death. Theirs: all of the evil Deathstorm after having wrested full control away from Martin Stein, who remains trapped inside him, unable to even communicate by now. (Which may make Stein a rare person, like Barry, Iris, and Joe, to be good in both worlds.)
    • Our Floyd Lawton is the assassin Deadshot, with perfect aim to the point of it being a superpower. Theirs is a police officer, who is called Deadshot by those who make fun of his terrible aim.
    • Our Laurel Lance, or should we say Dinah Laurel Lance, is the second Black Canary. Theirs is the evil Black Siren, although she has since made a Heel–Face Turn.
    • Our Harrison Wells was shady where the viewer could see but the cast couldn't, eventually revealed as Eobard "Reverse-Flash" Thawne. You worry when theirs turns out to be a bit shady too, but it turns out that he's trying to protect his daughter, held by Zoom, at any cost, and eventually levels with the team. Of course, this isn't a perfect example since Reverse-Flash had taken the identity of the true Wells of our world, who seems to have been a decent guy.
    • Our Linda Park is an innocent reporter. Theirs is the enemy known as Dr. Light. She's more sympathetic than most of Zoom's crew, though.
    • Our Henry Hewitt: The villain Tokamak, who blasts away at the heroes with nuclear blasts even after the thing he was supposedly mad about no longer mattered. Theirs: Innocent member of Star Labs.
    • While the Green Arrow is still good, we get a different sort of flip: his origin story happened much the same except it was Oliver who died and Robert who survived to become the hero.
    • Not all of the CCPD is the same. Our David Singh is the police captain. Theirs is a criminal who was being brought in, though it was a brief enough sequence that we don't know how villainous or redeemable he is.
    • Our Adrian Chase is the villain Prometheus. Theirs is the Green Arrow after Robert Queen.
    • Our Tommy Merlyn is a decent guy and a doctor. Theirs… is also decent but is also the Dark Archer who seeks to do what his father tried to do on Earth 1.
    • There's also Earth-X, where many heroes and other good characters are honest-to-God Nazis. This includes Oliver (Black Arrow and the Fuhrer), Kara (Overgirl and Oliver's wife), Barry (Blitzkrieg), Tommy Merlyn (Prometheus), Quentin (a Sturmbannfuhrer who had his own bisexual daughter Sara executed), Laurel (Siren-X, who is even worse than Black Siren).
  • NTSF:SD:SUV::: Trent accidentally comes into contact with a Magical Particle Accelerator and travels to an alternate dimension where the NTSF is a terrorist organization rather than a crime-fighting unit.
  • The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Mirror Image", Millicent Barnes speculates that the appearance of her Doppelgänger at the bus terminal is due to the normal universe converging with an alternate universe and that her doppelgänger must eliminate her in order to remain in the normal universe. Paul Grinstead later learns that she is right.
  • Dark Matter (2015): An alternate universe is introduced in the second season episode "Stuff to Steal, People to Kill". It's not a straight example of a Mirror Universe because not everyone's moralities are reversed, but the moralities of the Raza crew (our protagonists) are. In the primary universe, they were mindwiped at the beginning of the series and became subject to Amnesiacs are Innocent, and in the alternate universe this never happened, so they are still a bunch of mass-murdering Psychos for Hire. The AU crew escape into the main universe at the end of the episode, and join forces with Ferrous Corp and Emperor Ishida as a Big Bad Ensemble in Season 3. The Chronic Backstabbing Disorder that crewmembers Two and Three encounter while Impersonating the Evil Twin on the alternate Raza is an intentional Shout-Out to the attempted coup Kirk, McCoy and Uhura face in the Star Trek Mirror Universe. In keeping with the Trek Mirror universe episodes, the alternate Raza is also more dimly lit.
  • As a show about parallel universes as the central premise, logically there will be many episodes of Sliders with variants of the main characters who are evil or at least very morally questionable. Most notably however can be considered the introduction of Logan who is Quinn Mallory's double, as the difference between being born a man or woman is just a chromosome. She was intended as a recurring villain but was vetoed by the studio. Another is the infamous "Evil Arturo" seen in the episode "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome" which fans debate to this date whether he remained in that world or slid with the rest. Arturo is evil in several episodes tho. Rembrandt and Wade also have their share of evil or at least murkier versions.
  • The Umbrella Academy (2019): The Stinger for Season 2 has the Red Sparrow Academy siblings as the Alternate Timeline bad counterparts for the Umbrella Academy siblings. The alternative universe Ben in particular is mean and rude unlike the All-Loving Hero and Friendly Ghost Ben of the original timeline who performed a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Red Dwarf introduced an interesting variation in the episode "Backwards". The crew travels to an alternate universe where time runs backwards, which results in Rimmer and Kryten deciding that they wanted to stay since objectively this world is better since death doesn't exist due to people coming back to life before aging backwards and criminals un-commit crimes. They further point out that in this universe Hitler will, in a few decades, be responsible for bringing thousands of people back to life and liberating countries from an oppressive government that he then dismantles, while Lister responds that the story of Santa Claus is about a fat man who steals all the kid's favourite toys.
  • Smallville had a couple of Evil Twin variants.
    • There's also Clark Luthor/Ultraman, an Alternate Universe version of Clark who was raised by Lionel Luthor. To say he's an utter psychopath would be an understatement. Lois, Tess, and Oliver all immediately realize that this isn't their Clark and proceed to deal with him accordingly.

    Music 
  • K-pop group Girls' Generation also known as SNSD played this one straight in their story version music video for Oh! and Run Devil Run. An accidental spill causes their computer to open a door allowing Delinquent versions of the girls to step into the clubhouse where they proceed to trash the place. One of the girls unplugging the computer causes the evil versions to fade away like static.

    Mythology and Religion 
  • Some would say the myth of Thor in Outgard (Thor:OutgardLoki, Loki:Logi, Thjalfi:Hugi).

    Newspaper Comics 
  • In 2015 Dick Tracy launched into an arc where Sam "Trigger" Catchem and Pat Patton are goons working for "Boss" Tracy, 88 Keyes is a short-lived but honest nightclub owner, and Pruneface is the chief of police. This alt-universe is eventually revealed as a movie set.

    Podcasts 
  • Hello, from the Magic Tavern quite naturally has a mirror universe in which Arnie, Chunt, and Usidore are all evil, and work with the Dark Lord to conquer Foon, and Tannikin the Terrible is a heavily-tattooed psychopathic mass murderer (but still adorable). Blemish, naturally, is heroic (but still a jerk to evil people). Curiously, the Dark Lord appears to be a constant, and there are some other differences, such as the wizards all being associated with different colours. The version of Arnie in this universe comes from a mirror Earth in which he actually did abandon his wife and child, and fell through a portal behind a Chick-Fil-A in Evil Chicago (yes, that's the city's actual name).

    Tabletop Games 
  • In the HERO game Champions, a supplement describing various one-off Alternate Universe concepts included a mirror universe, complete with The Psycho Rangers versions of the Champion superhero team.
  • As a direct homage to DC's Crime Syndicate, the Freedom City setting for Mutants & Masterminds has a Mirror Universe (Anti-Earth) in which the city is called Empire City and the Freedom League is replaced by the Tyranny Syndicate.
  • The fan-made Brighthammer 40,000 campaign setting for the Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying games is largely a Mirror Universe, with some Bizarro Universe mixed in — given the state of the normal universe, it's a pretty nice place to live. There are exceptions, however. The Tau are exactly the same — their new status as villains is simply because the rest of the universe now looks better, rather than worse, by comparison. The Tyranids are also the same — they're mirrored in that they're now the threat another extragalactic faction is fleeing from, rather than being implied to be fleeing from an even worse extragalactic faction. While the Eldar are reversed in alignment as well, the makers took it to a logical conclusion: The Bright (Dark) Eldar were born in dire straits, and are fighting a losing war against their cruel brethren. The Slaan are a borderline exception, as well: They're much the same, but they're now villains as the setting replaces the mysterious-but-benevolent Old Ones of 40k and Warhammer Fantasy with the twisted and horrifying Great Old Ones; being devoted servants to the Old Ones is now an unequivocally bad thing. The Deceiver (the worst of the extremely nasty C'Tan in Canon) is still completely evil, it's just that how he goes about it is reversed — he's known as the Soothsayer, and rather than causing trouble with deception, he instead specializes in sharing dangerous and unpleasant truths and dispelling even harmless or necessary lies. The other C'Tan play this straight, though — the Daybringer is flat-out benevolent, the Void Dragon is well-meaning but utterly alien and unaware of just how dangerous his knowledge can be in the wrong hands, and the Outsider is in a self-imposed exile due to emotional and mental scars from battling the Great Old Ones... but the Tyranids are heading toward his "prison" and no-one knows how that will turn out.

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE has two. The "Melding Universe" is a world where the Great Beings managed to fix Spherus Magna before it blew up, Toa look like Matoran (and vice versa), and the regular universe's Big Bads (the Makuta) embraced light rather than darkness. The "Dark Mirror Universe" is a world where the Toa became Knights Templar and conquered the world as a result of Toa Tuyet successfully obtaining the Nui Stone and becoming an unstoppable tyrant with her enhanced power. The Makuta, the Dark Hunters, and a rag-tag group of renegade Toa form the resistance. It isn't a perfect example though, as most characters still have the same personality as the main universe. Takua also never became the Toa of Light in this universe because he was unneeded due to the Makuta not being the threat they were in the main universe.

    Video Games 
  • 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."
      • Also as a foil to the heroic Freedom Phalanx.
    • The expansion Going Rogue (not to be confused with Sarah Palin's book) looks to be giving them a Retcon into more 'Justice Lords' than 'Crime Syndicate', where incidentally there is also a Syndicate in Praetorian Earth. There's also good versions of several villain groups; the soul-stealing Carnival of Shadows are the heroic Carnival of Light, and the Resistance seem to be based on the Freakshow.
    • Other confirmed "opposites" include:
      • Counterpart to Clockwork King is Metronome, who is a disembodied psychic entity.
      • Counterpart to Ghost Widow, is Belladona, who is still alive and a member of the Resistance.
      • Counterpart to Nemesis, the Magnificent Bastard, is an apparent nobody
      • Counterpart to Odysseus, leader of the Warriors, is a trainer in the Underground.
      • Counterpart to Calvin Scott, husband to Aurora Borealis, is the leader of the Resistance.
      • Counterpart to Venessa DeVore, leader of the Carnival of Shadows, is the leader of the Carnival of Light and is responsible for the Resistance's very existence. She saw the Emperor's new order coming and banded together several military leaders to stand against him. Her psychic abilities also keep Mother Mayhem and the Seers from finding the Resistance.
    • And the fans love to embrace this, creating Praetorian counterparts of their own characters, and of currently unseen canon characters.
    • The same game featured the "Amerika Korps", who were from an Alternate History where, you guessed it, Hitler conquered and occupied the US. Clumsily Ret Conned into the Council Empire later on, though Issue 15 brings back the most memorable character of the Amerika Korps.
      • The "Amerika Korps" could be seen as a slight subversion to the idea that they were identical mirror counterparts. While the game's background clearly stated that the Statesman and the Reichsman could spend all day slamming each other into the concrete, the Reichsman did not like competitors approaching his power level and deliberately made sure his "teammates'" training were less than adequate. That came back to bite him in the ass.
  • Champions Online has Multifaria, which features in the "Resistance" Adventure Pack. Here, Millennium City has become New Harmon, the seat of an evil dictatorship run by "Citizen Harmon", this world's version of the heroic Defender, who is better known as Shadow Destroyer. The evil Champions are known as the Conquerors, and many of the Champions (Kinetik, Witchcraft, etc.) have evil counterparts to be fought in this world, while you aid good versions of several of your villainous enemies in the normal world along with the original Doctor Destroyer, who Shadow Destroyer defeated and imprisoned when he came to Multifaria before stealing his Destroids for his own use.
  • Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. However, it's similar to most of its predecessors, aside from the sidekick Kirbies that wander around.
    • Played With in that Mirror World Kirby isn't evil, he just thinks that Kirby is his evil counterpart. However, Meta Knight's Mirror World counterpart plays this trope perfectly straight, lacking Meta Knight's sense of honor. The Big Bad of the game, Dark Mind, aka, the Mirror World's equivalent to 0, is as cruel, if not, crueler than than their real counterpart.
    • If Kirby: Triple Deluxe is anything to go by, King Dedede's Mirror World counterpart also plays this straight, being more maliciously evil than the merely greedy Dedede.
  • The "Shadow Mirror" world that features prominently in Super Robot Wars Advance and Super Robot Wars: Original Generation. May or may not be the world that SRW 64 took place in.
    • Shadow Mirror isn't a one-for-one Mirror Universe, though — while some characters are flipped (most prominently Kyosuke Nambu/Beowulf), others were mostly the same or didn't even last that long (Ryusei Date was apparently the same up until Beowulf killed him, and Rai Fujiwara was killed test-piloting the original Huckebein). In Advance, it's stated that Shadow Mirror's Amuro Ray died young, paralleling the Mobile Suit Gundam novel rather than the anime.
    • There's also Lemon Browning, who is the Alternate Universe version of heroine Excellen Browning. The split came in a shuttle crash; the original Excellen survived without a scratch, while the other died and was rebuilt by her parents into a cyborg.
    • Then there is Asakim Dowin from Super Robot Wars Z, who is clearly an Evil Twin, or at least an Evil Counterpart, to Masaki Andoh from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, being his antithesis in every possible way and having a mecha that is basically a darker version of Masaki's Cybuster. Many fans speculate that just like how Masaki's Backstory involves the mystical world of La Gias, Asakim's might just involve La Gias' Mirror Universe too.
  • The AdventureQuest Worlds 2nd Birthday Event has your hero visiting the Mirror Realm, where pretty much everything is switched around. Battleon is called Battleoff, Aria owns a butcher shop instead of a pet shop, Yulgar's Inn is called "Ye Olde Outt," Zorbak is actually good, Cysero is actually sane, Warlic is a Mad Scientist rather than a mage, and the greatest hero of this reality turns out to be Drakath. His "Lords of Order" (basically good mirror counterparts of the Chaos Lords you've fought so far) have been captured by this realm's Big Bad, King Alteon, who commands an undead army led by Artix, who is an undead Doom Paladin in the Mirror Realm, and you have to free them. The adventures include a trip to Lightovia (basically a mirror Darkovia) where Safiria is the Queen of the Werewolves instead of the Vampires (and where the werewolves love silver rather than it being the bane of their existence), a trip to a farm where a farmer is infecting his chickens with Chaos (don't ask) and finally heading to Alteon's secret lair, an evil mirror version of Swordhaven Castle, to do battle with undead Artix.
  • Many team vs. team combat games and multiplayer RTS/turn-based strategy games implicitly use this for the sake of fairness; both teams will have access to identical characters who fight in levels that are the same on each team's side. Color-coding or something else that doesn't affect gameplay distinguishes the two "worlds."
  • Super Paper Mario has the twin cities of Flipside and Flopside, which are actually connected to each other through a mirror. Flipside is the game's Hub Level with a white tower leading to seven colorful worlds, while Flopside is its dark counterpart which looks like a mirrored version of Flipside with dilapidated buildings and an Ominous Black Tower leading to The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. The Ancients constructed the two cities to be opposites of each other because light can't exist without darkness. The inhabitants of Flopside are not evil, but do have opposite personalities from their counterparts and also have different skin colors and triangular noses instead of square noses. Most residents of the two cities are unaware that the other city exists, although one pair of counterparts decide to switch places with each other after they contact each other in their dreams.
  • Soma Spirits: There is a Joy and a Sorrow version of everyone, and everywhere. One version of someone getting too emotional can affect the other.
  • Call of Duty: Zombies has an inversion with the Primis crew (that acts as the current protagonists) acting as the good counterpart (from an alternate universe) to Ultimis, the original recurring team of Black Ops 1. Whereas the Ultimis team is made up of battle-crazed soldiers that embody negative stereotypes of their respective countries (insane drunken Nikolai, gun-obsessed Tank, etc.), Primis comes from an alternate universe where the 4 met under different circumstances at a younger age, and embody positive stereotypes of their respective countries (determined comradery for Nikolai, patriotic hero for Tank, etc.). Most notable is Richtofen—instead of being the Obviously Evil Herr Doktor, Primis Richtofen is an Anti-Hero who does what he does "To secure a better tomorrow"
  • Crash Bandicoot has the obviously titled Evil/Nega Crash, his alternate universe equivalent from the Tenth Dimension. Fake Crash (a goofy lookalike created from "an experiment gone horribly wrong") interchanges between being an antagonist or occasional friend of Crash, similar to Wario.
  • The Mirror of Mystery bonus level in Skylanders: Trap Team takes place in one of these. The player's Skylanders and Glumshanks go to a world where Kaos is a good guy and Eon is a villain named Evilon. Mabu, Flynn, and Persephone are also evil while Trolls are friendly.
  • Fire Emblem Engage: This is one of the main ideas behind the "Fell Xenologue" DLC, as it essentially takes place in one where Sombron wins. The Four Hounds, who are some of the main game's main villains, are the good guys and have opposite personalities to their mainline counterparts. There's also the royals, who also have opposite personalities to their mainline counterparts, like how Alcryst is egotistical, or how Ivy is a corrupt tyrant. It's mentioned that their retainers, who, although long dead at this point, had the opposite personalities as the main counterparts as well. For example, Chloé is said to have had a Plain Palate, Merrin is said to have hated animals, Brunet is said to have been a Lethal Chef, etc. However, It turns out that the royals are actually Corrupted, so whether or not these are accurate depictions and descriptions of Alternate Elyos' inhabitants while they were still alive is up for debate.

    Webcomics 
  • 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.
  • Irregular Webcomic!'s "Cliffhangers" theme had a visit by an alternate Kolonel Haken from a mirror universe where the Nazis were good and Monty was evil. Eventually he was killed in single combat by the main-universe Haken, so the only dead Nazi was a good Nazi.
    • Following the history reboot, there have been two forays to the evil mirror universe. Thus far, the only visible differences are the beards, the arrangement of the panels, and Dr Jones Sr.'s dislike of sausages and avoidance of puns.
  • In Wily's Defense takes place in a universe where Dr. Wily would like a less exciting lifestyle, Cut Man's the hero, Dr. Light is an egotistical megalomaniac, and X is Ax-Crazy.
  • McAwesome is apparently a mirror shop of Shortpacked!
  • Agents of the Realm has another universe on the other side of the Divide, which has its own set of the Agents and its own five amulets. Judging by LBB, it's more advanced than ours.
  • Sluggy Freelance features an infinity of alternative dimensions. One of them is hinted to be a world of evil counterparts, having spawned a malicious version of Kiki, and possibly a selfish jerk version of Torg. (It's not known whether those characters were actually from the same dimension, but they might have been.)
  • Bob and George: In the first AU Bob lands in an intelligence flipped world.
    • While Megaman and Bass swapped intelligence with Protoman (They're geniuses and Protoman's the dumbass), Bob and George swapped temperaments: George became a blind psychopathic murderer, Bob became a flaming homosexual. The regular Bob was...a bit freaked out.
  • The Dimension of Hackneyed Stereotyped Opposites in Casey and Andy. Since Casey and Andy are Chaotic Neutral at best, conventional moral flips don't apply to them (instead Andi is a girl who dates God instead of Satan), but Quantum Cop's counterpart is Quantum Crook.
  • El Goonish Shive, obviously. There's the Main Universe's Tedd (the one the story follows), Beta Tedd, Lord Tedd (also known as Alpha Tedd and the evil one pictured in the mirror in the trope image note , the Tedd from Ellen's "Second life" dreams and those are just the canon ones. There's also a paired universe with the main one, which is inhabited by griffons. However, since the two are inextricably connected (described as "two faces of the same coin") one character argues that they shouldn't be considered separate universes.
  • In Universal Compass there are 10 Alternate/parallel worlds that each reflect a certain emotion.
  • In The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, Wonderella and Wonderita end up in one of these...except Wonderella's morality is so fluid in the first place (due mainly to her It's All About Me mindset) that her mirror counterpart is virtually the same person as her.
    • Later, Wonderita's mirror counterpart arrives in the main universe to try to destroy it. Since Rita is The Pollyanna, mirror!Rita is pure evil. The Wonderitas end up making out while the Wonderellas watch, drinking beers.
  • In Homestuck, Beforus serves as one for Alternia. At first it appears that the Beforus trolls are the Good Counterpart to the trolls we know and love, but we soon see that they're easily capable of doing terrible things. The only difference is that they do it with an I Did What I Had to Do mentality as opposed to For the Evulz.
  • In Shattered Glass Prime, its Shattered Glass but with elements of Transformers: Prime. Optimus Prime is a brutal warmonger who seeks to rule Cybertron under his rule and Megatron is a Nice Guy and leader of the Decepticons who seeks to put an end to Prime's reign.
  • Scott from Basic Instructions briefly visits on in this strip. There's a very brief Heel Realization moment when it becomes clear that, compared to this universe, his is the "evil" one.
  • Deconstructed in one strip in Two Guys and Guy: The mirror universe shown isn't characterised much, but since it's such an accurate mirroring of the other dimension, a mirror-gate leading from one to the other can't be used to travel between them because your counterpart gets in the way.
  • Kickback finds himself in one in Insecticomics. Except that the Insecticons aren't really evil so much as they're irresponsible and fun-loving. The mirror universe Insecticons are accountants. And Lazerbeak is a male ninja instead of a female pirate. Who won't let Kickback wear a dress because he's not a girl.
  • Universe 13 Kakarot in Dragon Ball Multiverse. At some point in his universe, Goku regained his destructive instincts, wiped out humanity, and proceeded to Go Mad from the Isolation. The end result is terrifying.

    Web Originals 
  • In the League of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions, the LICC Universe is mirrored by the KILL universe.
  • Protectors of the Plot Continuum has a Mirror Universe that is an obvious Shout Out to Star Trek, including Beards of Evil.
  • The RPG Net message boards once featured a wonderful idea for a Discworld mirror universe. The Disc is torn by war between the scarily charismatic Last King, ruler of Ankh-Morpork and the Plains, and the all-powerful Crone, who controls the Ramtops. Between them are the Crone's former apprentice Magrat, Havelock the assassin, and Samuel King-killer. And their leader, the last survivor of the Silver Horde, Rincewind Spellholder.
    • Later additions included the Wizard-Killer, a bestial creature that haunts the library of the abandoned UU; Susan the Vain, who plays both sides, seeking to replace her grandfather as Champion of the Auditors; the History Monks, who presumably have decided this is all meant to happen for reasons of their own; the Chalkland Hag, who seeks to challenge the Crone and has turned a society of harmless brownies into an unstoppable army; Lady Sybil, who breeds war-dragons for the Last King and seduces others to her own ends; and Reginald Shoe, who has fled Ankh and turned Pseudopolis into an undead police state. Amongst others.
  • Gaia Online recently featured a literal Mirror Universe in the form of the Dark Reflection random item generator. Unlucky Everygirl Kanoko get sucked into a bizzaro Gaia, and Gaians have to venture through the mirror to rescue her. Bizzaro Gaia features strange versions of the most famous Gaian NPCs. Some of these are fairly basic changes. (Agatha and Rina swapping ages, Moria and Sasha swapping clothing styles, Ian and Rufus swapping species), while others are a bit more bizarre. (Scheming con man Nicolae is now a priest, Liam has become a woman, his yaoi-bait roommate Gino has become his boyfriend, and Edmund has become a huge nerd.). Various inversions of items are present as well. (Gaia-Tan has become Gaia-Sama, Grunny has become Prunny, etc...)
  • The Allen And Craig Show, in Episode 12, features two gangsta counterparts to Allen and Craig that share many similar characteristics but have a more "urban" edge.
  • Mr Welch parodied the concept with a superhero player character that was, as usual, rejected by his gamemaster.
    325. Even if he was a paragon of humanity in his alternate dimension, Good Hitler is not an appropriate superhero concept.
  • In Welcome to Night Vale, Desert Bluffs is implied to be a Mirror Universe. A sandstorm rolls into Night Vale, bringing with it doubles of all the citizens, who fight each other to the death. It opens a portal in Cecil's radio booth, transporting him away to places unknown, and depositing another man in his place. In the episode's P.O.V. Sequel, we find out where Cecil went, and learn that Night Vale isn't actually all that bad, by comparison.
  • Atop the Fourth Wall has Iron Liz get transported to one in the Star Trek #2 (Gold Key) review. There exists an Evil Twin of Linkara (complete with a mustache and beard) who thinks All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder is genius and that Rob Liefeld's artwork is "beautiful." His version of the opening also suggests he finds Tom Strong, Watchmen, Booster Gold, and Starman to be terrible books. Dr. Insano is far more sane and heroic, declaring himself the champion of science. Pollo is essentially the same, just in the Tom Servo body. Same with Mirror Liz, whose only major difference is that she loves the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons (which is how the main universe versions of Pollo and Linkara knew something was wrong.) More disturbingly, the Mirror version of Margaret, the girl whose soul was sacrificed by a cult to create the magic gun, wasn't forced into it against her will. She was a willing volunteer.
    • Other characters, recurring and otherwise, are also from mirror universes: Iron Liz's evil counterpart Judas Liz; Mechakara, who is actually an evil Pollo wearing the skin of his universe's Linkara; and Dr. Linksano, who is apparently Linkara, but not really, and might be Insano's brother, or a version of him from another universe, or... it's complicated.
  • Hello, from the Magic Tavern has a mirror universe where our heroes are evil and act on behalf of the Dark Lord. Evil Arnie has a goatee and is always trying to tell his companions about (Evil) Earth, much to their annoyance.
  • Dreamscape: Melinda, Ethan, and Betty are from one of these, among others.
  • Cooking Youtuber Adam Ragusea occasionally calls on this trope almost by name when he mentions the mirror world featuring Adam with a goatee. This world is brought up whenever Adam points out that the way a food is traditionally made is just that, an arbitrary way of making it that crystalized as the way of making it and that it isn't always the best way to make a given dish at home, which is highlighted by having the method he proposes be the default of this world and Mirror Adam covering our traditional method on his show. Mirror Adam usually says something like "It doesn't have that [abitrary feature] tradition really demands," or "It's an okay substitute," and always ends his stint on the show with "Long live The Empire."

    Western Animation 
  • One episode of Rugrats (1991) has Chuckie and Tommy thinking that they landed in "Mirror Land" when they flipped over a mirror. Thanks to a series of contrived coincidences, Hilarity Ensues.
  • 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. Hilariously, the show depicted the twins on screen at the same time with a deliberately obvious Split Screen effect. Later on, we see that Kenny is rich, Stan and Kyle are Cartman-level Jerkasses, and Chef is a skinny white insurance salesman.
  • Darkwing Duck has the Negaversenote  from which one version of Darkwing Duck's Evil Twin Negaduck originates, where he evidently rules with an iron fist. Nega-Honker has the (regular) Tank's personality and morality while Nega-Tank has Honker's, the rest of the Nega-Muddlefoots and Nega-Launchpad are thuggish psychotic killers, and the Negaverse versions of the other four members of Negaduck's "Fearsome Five" are known as the "Friendly Four" until Darkwing Duck retrains them. Interestingly, despite being Negaduck's ward, Nega-Gosalyn has the same general morality as her prime universe counterpart (much like bearded Spock), but a reversed personality: whereas regular Gosalyn is a rough-and-tumble sports-loving Tom Boy and Bratty Half-Pint, Nega-Gosalyn is a sweet and obedient well-behaved pink-dress-wearing young lady.
  • There's a mirror universe in CaptainN, accessed by going through an actual mirror. Oddly it's not just characters' alignments that are inverted. For example, one lady is shown "doing laundry" by covering her clean clothes with dirt.
  • In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Batman travels to one of these when the Red Hood, an alternate version of the Joker, needs his assistance. He seems to enjoy repeatedly punching out the alternate version of Green Arrow a little too much...
  • The SWAT Kats episode "The Dark Side of the SWAT Kats" featured the titular team being warped to a dimension where their equivalents are evil (as is that of their ally, Deputy Mayor Callie Briggs). The universe wasn't entirely swapped, however - some major characters retained their 'correct' moral alignments. (There were other more subtle changes as well, such as the Enforcers using fixed-wing aircraft rather than helicopters.)
  • 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 after 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.
  • The World's Greatest Superfriends had such an episode, "Universe of Evil". Each of the Superfriends received an Evil Makeover (Aquaman with an eyepatch! Robin with a pencil mustache! Wonder Woman letting herself go!) See them here.
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command had as a minor villain the imaginatively dubbed and yes, goateed, Evil Buzz Lightyear who came from a parallel universe that he had conquered. He's exactly as evil as Buzz is good. There are parallel versions of the other main characters, except none of them are evil, just jaded from being under Evil Buzz's thumb. Oh, and the inverted counterpart for Emperor Zurg? He works at a local diner.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door had one in which even the acronyms were reversed - the counterparts to the Delightful Children From Down The Lane were the Little Traitorous Dudes From Children's Defence, who opposed the iron grip of the Destructively Nefarious Kids, who were led by Numbuh -4, who had attained a goatee to make himself look even eviller. Fortunately, since the regular Numbuh 4 is brave to the point of recklessness and a strong physical fighter, Numbuh -4 was a coward and weakling. Also, Numbuh -86 was a sweet girly girl.
    • Other differences include a dumb and weak-willed Numbuh -1, Numbuh -2 was also dumb but good at making jokes, Numbuh -3 is a bitch, and Numbuh -5 is a geek. Strangely, the LTDFCD still talk in unison like their main counterparts, though in surfie accents and they still work for "Daddy", who, unlike Father, is an extreme worrywart who cares a lot for his kids.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero's two-part episode "Worlds Without End" had several of the Joes traveling to a Crapsack World that bordered on this; while most of the alternate versions of G.I. Joe and Cobra were still morally similar to their counterparts in the regular universe, Cobra's having conquered the world made it the legitimate government of that world and G.I. Joe an enemy of the state. Also, in a bit of a twist, the alternate Baronness was romantically involved with Steeler's counterpart before he was killed in action, and this was one of the stronger influences which persuaded Steeler to stay with her in her world at the end when most of his teammates returned to their own world. (A couple of the others also stayed with him to help revive G.I. Joe's resistance movement in that world.)
  • The Real Ghostbusters episode Flip Side had Egon, Ray, and Peter end up in a flip dimension where ghosts are the natural populace and are menaced by humans. While there, they encounter ghostly versions of themselves called the Peoplebusters.
  • Hey Arnold! had an episode where Arnold goes into the country to visit his weird cousin Arnie. All of the people he meets are counterparts of his friends, but they all appear in pairs, with each one displaying the attributes of the other's counterpart: Harold and Rhonda appear as Harry and Rhoda, with Harry being slim and fashion-conscious and Rhoda being a fat slob. Stinky and Phoebe are seen as Stumpy and Fifi, with Stumpy being intelligent and Fifi being simple-minded and Gerald and Sid appear as Gerard and Kid, with Gerard being the whiny one and Kid being cool. In the end, it turns out that it was All Just a Dream.
  • Sonic Underground had the hedgehogs enter one where they were the tyrants and Robotnik was a Freedom Fighter. It ended with them redeeming their evil counterparts. Strangely, there was no mirror version of Queen Aleena.
  • Ben 10: Omniverse: Ben 23 has a take on it, where the Ben there is a Jerkass who believes that all aliens (except his transformations) are evil. His Rogues Gallery includes a Tetrax with a diamond Beard of Evil. In the end, it turns out the Big Bad was really Azmuth, trying to get back the Omnitrix from Ben (who he, with good reason, believed was abusing it), and Ben himself wasn't evil, just misguided. Since Tetrax was a good guy as well, the only real alliance difference was Seven-Seven (who worked for Azmuth and thus was also good).
  • Space Stars had an episode with an alternate universe where Space Ghost's counterpart was Space Spectre, a ruthless Space Pirate.
  • The Danger Mouse (2014) episode "Sinister Mouse'', DM meets his counterpart from a mirror universe called the Twistiverse, who is a master criminal in a red bodysuit. He is opposed by Danger Toad (Twistiverse Baron Greenback) and secretly works for the evil genius Baron Penfold. Later episodes feature Twistiverse versions of other characters; "Twisted Sister" features a version of Professor Squawkencluck who is not only evil but, when Squawkie accidentally turns herself into a little girl, has turned herself into an old woman.
  • Rupert featured a rather literal example of this trope in "Rupert in Mirrorland", where Rupert Bear's friend the Professor uses an invention of his to reveal that inside all the mirrors was a world where everyone's reflections are sentient beings. The Professor's reflection is shown to be evil, but it's only because of a side effect of the Professor's experiment and the reflections of everyone else are as nice as their Nutwood counterparts.
  • Kaeloo:
    • The show had an episode where the main four get teleported to an alternate universe where Kaeloo is usually a huge monster and transforms into a cute little girl when angry, Stumpy is a genius, and Quack Quack and Mr. Cat have each other's personalities and traits. The episode turns out to be a dream Stumpy had, the events of which he is narrating to Kaeloo.
    • Another episode had them go to a universe where they study academic subjects all day instead of playing games and hanging out, the normally fun-loving, friendly, hyperactive Kaeloo is a Stern Teacher, Stumpy, who is usually stupid, is smart, and Mr. Cat, one of the smartest in the cast, is a moron who eats books.
  • Discussed and subverted in the Futurama episode "The Farnsworth Parabox" when the main cast meet the versions of themselves from an alternate universe, and the doubles pair off to keep an eye on each other since each side is convinced that the other represents the "evil" universe (according to Alternate Farnsworth, "when you create a parallel universe it's almost always populated by evil twins.") In fact, personalitywise the alternate cast are indistinguishable from the cast as we know them, the key difference being a handful of relatively mundane changes in circumstance caused by coin flips having the opposite outcome.
    Alternate Farnsworth: Leela. The good Leela. I want you to snoop around the other universe and find out how evil they are. (handing Alternate Leela a ray gun) Here.
    Leela: I tell you they're not evil! ...But don't be confused! They are jerks.
  • An episode of Peter Pan & the Pirates has Peter going into the Center Of The Earth were everything is inverted and they have all copies of themselves; the Lost Boys are slaves, Hook is a pharaoh-like figure assisted by Egyptian-looking versions of the Pirates, and so on.
  • The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, in the serial Amazamoose and Squirrel Wonder (2019), required Moose and Squirrel to venture into Opposite World, where Boris and Natasha were heroes fighting against the sinister schemes of Evil Rocky and Evil Bullwinkle.
  • Oh No! It's An Alien Invasion: In one episode, Louis is sent to an alternate dimension where S.W.E.E.T. are evil (they stole the Brainlings' technology and used it to abduct all the world's adults), and the Brainings are good (they're hiding in Swell-Mart and are fighting back against S.W.E.E.T. to restore order to the world).
  • The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius had an episode where Jimmy's evil clone uses a modified duplication device to make an evil copy of the entire earth except for Jimmy so that he will have an entire world where everyone is as evil as he is. Jimmy has to travel to the evil earth and reverse the duplication process because the duplicator also has the side effect of causing the original to fade away.
  • Superman: The Animated Series did this in "Brave New Metropolis"; Lois finds herself in a Metropolis ruled by Lex Luthor, with Superman as his superpowered enforcer, having gone Knight Templar after failing to save his dimension's Lois from a car bomb.
  • The Smurfs (2021): In "The Pluffs", Brainy and Smurfblossom find themselves in a parallel universe where the Smurfs (or rather, the titular Pluffs) are gray, mean, and have nothing better to do than bully each other or kindly folk like Bigheart (Bigmouth), or the kindly wizard Caramel (Gargamel). Even the wildlife are reversed, as the butterflies bite people and vicious rabbits chase cats up trees.
  • An episode of Atomic Puppet saw Joey and AP fight evil versions of themselves from one such universe. The mirror Atomic Puppet also switches roles, with Joey as the puppet and AP as the wielder. Later, they meet the mirror version of Mookie, who is the greatest superhero in his world and has a mustache for some reason.
  • An episode of The Secret Saturdays has a magic mirror bring The Mondays, their evil counterparts from a Mirror Universe, into their world. Each of them has their personalities reversed and some physical differences to tell them apart. In addition, they are supposed to be made of Anti-Matter, which causes reality to go crazy every time one of the characters approached his or her counterpart (Actually, if they were made of antimatter they would have exploded like nuclear bombs the moment they entered the positive universe... which is exactly what happens when Argost tries to absorb both Zak Saturday and Zak Monday's powers in the series finale).
  • The Miraculous Ladybug special "Miraculous World: Paris - Tales of Shadybug and Claw Noir" centers around Ladybug and Cat Noir meeting a benign version of Hawk Moth/Monarch from a world where their counterparts are villanous enforcers of that world's resident Big Bad. Outside those three, the mirror universe aspects are downplayed; it's shown that the alternate versions of Alya, Nino, and (according to a throwaway line) Chloé are all on the same moral wavelengths as their main universe counterparts.
  • Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake: In "The Winter King", the gang ends up in an alternate universe where their version of the Ice King managed to overcome the Crown's curse and is a benevolent and beloved ruler. He is also frequently kidnapped by the psychotic Candy Queen, the evil version of Princess Bubblegum, who comes from a corrupt version of the Candy Kingdom. However, this is subverted at the end of the episode, where it turns out that this universe was once very similar to the original Ooo, except the Winter King was a sociopath who figured out how to transfer the Crown's curse on to Bubblegum so he could enjoy the power and immortality without the insanity. Fionna accidentally saps the magic out of the crown, killing the Winter King and freeing Bubblegum.


 
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A Whole Different Enterprise

A transporter accident sends Kirk, Bones, Scotty, and Uhura into an evil mirror universe.

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5 (8 votes)

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