Sitcom Arch-Nemesis

aka: Sitcom Arch Enemy

What is this feeling? Fervid as a flame, does it have a name? Yes!
Loathing, unadulterated loathing, for your face, your voice, your clothing!

Yamcha: Look, I don't have your mutually-sustained hate boner for [Vegeta], OK?
Tien: I don't have a hate boner for him.
Yamcha: Dude, it's a pretty hateful boner.

— Dragon Ball Z Abridged

The Sitcom Arch-Nemesis is an alternative to the traditional Arch-Enemy, generally Played for Laughs. Basically, they could be considered the protagonist's "favorite enemy". They usually are not dangerous or evil, but even if they are the contrast between their cruelty and petty bickering has comedy value of its own. They are defined primarily by how they just rub a character from the show entirely the wrong way, and the two will never miss an opportunity to have at each other with Volleying Insults or small-minded pranks. It's possible they are very annoying or a straight-up Nice Guy, but act as a foil to a main character that inspires rage upon hearing their name. Often, the two are kindred spirits and don't realize it; these rivals are much more likely to have an Enemy Mine plot than dramatic rivals. Since generally there isn't much at stake in that rivalry, it will usually revolve around insignificant, everyday matters, filled with comedic moments. Alternatively, the rival may turn out to be a Romantic False Lead for the primary love interest, and the Love Triangle the core source of their rivalry.

The Sitcom Arch Nemesis is usually just a recurring character, because if they were part of the main cast then The Protagonist would do nothing but fight with them. Indeed, often they are oblivious to this rivalry or never seen in person, further defining them entirely by how the main character views them.

Note that these aren't necessarily unique to sitcoms, and other stories – including more comedic action stories – can have a character who fills this role, sometimes even if there is a character who fulfils the role of an actual Arch-Enemy. In the more lighthearted action shows, particularly in certain cartoons and kid shows, sometimes the actual Arch-Enemy will act like a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis when the story or comedy demands it, alternating between attempting to Take Over the World one day, trying to wreck the hero's birthday party the next and maybe even Go-Karting with Bowser.

Compare with The Rival and Vitriolic Best Buds. Often used with Comically Lopsided Rivalry.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Watanuki from ×××HOLiC hates Doumeki for no adequately explained reason, simply stating that he's thought of Doumeki as annoying from the moment he laid eyes on him. Unfortunately for Watanuki, Doumeki is also a living spirit repellent, while the whole plot of the manga was set in motion because of the fact Watanuki's very blood attracts spirits, so he's often forced into Teeth-Clenched Teamwork with Doumeki. Further complicating matters, several people in universe seem to ship him with Doumeki, including his boss and the girl he likes, and it's implied that Doumeki is not adverse to the idea.
• In Boarding School Juliet, the countries of Towa and the West have this relationship. There's a bit of genuine racism fueling it, but mostly it's that they need an outlet for their Proud Warrior Race instincts. This is why the brawls at Dahlia Academy adhere to rigidly defined moral standards.
• Syaoran Li and Touya from Cardcaptor Sakura, pictured above. Their first encounter was at a time when Syaoran didn't like Sakura and tried to assault her over the Clow Cards she had, prompting Touya to protect her. Not exactly the best first impression on Syaoran's part. Even when Syaoran begins to cool down, he and Touya show hostility towards one another every time they're in each other's presence, so you can only guess what happens when Syaoran starts developing feelings for Sakura.
• Kuroko, from A Certain Scientific Railgun, has a very one-sided hatred of Kongo, despite Kongo being nothing but friendly and helpful, if somewhat egotistical. She even expressed annoyance, rather that gratitude, when Kongo uses her aero hand to knock an armored truck into a helicopter pursuing her and her "sissy" Mikoto, It's not really clear why, though.
• Cowboy Andy from the Cowboy Bebop episode "Cowboy Funk", who is a rival bounty hunter in it for the glory. Spike hates him, and spends more time fighting off Andy than he does actually trying to catch the episode's bounty. Faye and Jet realize that this is because the two men are too similar: Both are impulsive, petty, tend to jump to conclusions and have a penchant for causing wanton collateral damage.
• Piyoko from Di Gi Charat and the Digi Devil from Panyo Panyo Di Gi Charat really try to be legitimate Big Bads, but being inept villains in humor series whose schemes rarely rise above the level of Poke the Poodle dooms them to be this instead.
• While he starts out as an Archenemy in Dragon Ball Z, and later views him as a The Rival, by Dragonball Super Goku has become something of a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis to Vegeta, with him being obsessed (sometimes to a comical degree) with proving he's better than Goku (not only at fighting, but at anything they happen to be doing). Implying that Goku is better than Vegeta at anything is his Berserk Button.
• In the various versions of the anime/manga El-Hazard, Jinnai always has this near-psychotic hatred of Makoto, school ace and a Nice Guy to boot, who easily makes friends with anyone, including Jinnai's own sister Nanami. It also doesn't help that Makoto is too nice to notice that he's been beating him in almost every aspect without even trying.
• Gintama:
  • Gintoki and Hijikata will nearly always end up arguing or even picking a fight with each other whenever they meet. Hijikata's strict personality clashes with Gintoki's lazy one, one is a fan of Shōnen Magazine while the other prefers Shonen Jump, and they like to criticize the other's Trademark Favorite Food. They're occasionally shown to have a form of respect for each other, are in may ways more similar than it seems at first glance, and in one episode they proved to be absurdly good at fighting side by side, but neither of them would ever admit any of this.
  • Hijikata has another one in Okita, 1st Captain of the Shinsengumi, who is very obviously trying to take over Hijikata's vice-commander position, regularly attacks him with a Bazooka, has tried to poison his food on one or two occasions, and generally does anything to unnerve him.
• Haganai:
  • A rare mutual form can be found in Yozora Mikazuki, a brunette Jerkass extraordinaire, and Sena Kashiwazaki, a ridiculously hot Rich Bitch. Yozora loves heaping verbal, emotional or sometimes physical (by way of a flyswatter) abuse upon Sena until the latter storms off crying; Sena in return loves showing off how rich, beautiful and hot (not to mention huge-breasted) she is compared to Yozora. But at the end of the day, both are still similar, being friendless girls who tend to agree on anything they, ironically, are Comically Missing the Point on.
  • To a lesser extent, Kobato Hasegawa, a 13-year-old Elegant Gothic Lolita, and Maria Takayama, a 10-year-old nun, who engage in outright childish fights over the attention of the former's older brother, Kodaka.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • France and England, so much that there's a "French-English Quarrel Preserve" and England gets involved in The War of the Austrian Succession just to fight France. It's said that antagonizing each other is the only thing that keeps the two old timers going, and of course, it's Truth in Television.
  • Greece and Turkey, Turkey is the only thing that makes the usually laid-back Greece get riled up at all.
  • Russia and America are this after the Cold War. Though they're no longer enemies, they're still very passive-aggressive towards each other. Despite this, in one of the strips, they have been seen as on friendly terms, post-Cold War.
  • Romania and Hungary. As soon as they're in the vicinity of one another, the atmosphere gets tense, and Death Glares come out. Hungary also names her dogs after him, and locks him out of the Hetalia Hetaween 2013 party.
  • Ladonia treats Sealand as this due to his ambition at taking over leadership of the micronations, but Sealand doesn't reciprocate at all; he likes Ladonia and calls him "interesting."
  • Cuba sees America as this, much to the dismay of America's brother Canada, whom Cuba at times mistakes for America.
• Hozuki's Coolheadedness: Hozuki and Hakutaku hate each other's guts. Their completely opposed personalities cause them to get along badly, and they can both be rather petty if it allows them to take a jab at the other (which is particularly notable in Hozuki's case as he is otherwise very serious and straight-laced). Pointing out their physical resemblance is a Berserk Button for both of them.
• In Kekkaishi, Shigemori and Tokiko spend their mornings attacking each other with gardens hoses; it's part of their feud about the 'legitimate heir' of the Kekkaishi founder. Both are rather upset that their grandchildren don't share their grudge.
• Subverted in A Little Snow Fairy Sugar: Greta considers Saga to be her rival in all things, but Saga, who is uninterested in rivalry, pretends to be completely oblivious to Greta's challenges and boasts.
• Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! has Chunibyo Sanae Dekomori and ex-Chuunibyou Shinka Nibutani. Not only does Dekomori keep bringing up Shinka's embarrassing past as 'Mori Summer', she refuses to believe Shinka was actually her idol.
• In My Bride is a Mermaid: Lunar tends to treat Sun this way, though Sun doesn't really reciprocate and simply views Lunar as a friend, a sentiment Lunar constantly lets slip that she shares. Mikawa and Nagasumi's relationship basically oscillates between this trope and The Rival before eventually settling into Vitriolic Best Buds territory.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Neito Monoma acts this way towards the entirety of Class 1-A. Though he was initially introduced as a much more credible threat, putting up a decent fight against Bakugo's team during the cavalry battle, essentially every single appearance since has consisted of him laughing exaggeratedly at the alleged 'incompetence' of class 1-A before being knocked out by his own class' representative.
  • Kirishima and Tetsutetsu started out this way - with Tetsutetsu's entire existence as a character being a joke about how his ability and personality were essentially the same as Kirishima's, which prevented either of them from standing out at all next to the other - but eventually became friends after Kirishima won their arm-wrestling contest.
• One Piece:
  • Of the main crew, this is largely what the rivalry between Zoro and Sanji actually amounts to. These two never miss an opportunity to belittle, one-up, or humiliate the other.
  • Buggy sees his relationship with Shanks as this. Shanks, in turn, sees them as Heterosexual Life-Partners. It's best to identify them as Vitriolic Best Buds. In a twist on this trope, this causes Buggy himself to be overestimated by the World Government and his own men, because Shanks is one of the most powerful and feared pirates in the world yet Buggy- who has known Shanks since they were both kids- has absolutely no fear or respect for him at all while Shanks, in turn, always treats Buggy as an old buddy; as such, everyone thinks that Buggy is roughly equal in power to Shanks when in reality Buggy is far, far weaker than him.
• In Oreimo, Kirino and Kuroneko are these to each other. While they both love anime they like different genres of it, and will often engage in Ham-to-Ham Combat to ridicule each other's favorite shows. Despite this, they genuinely do like each other, and spend a lot of time together after they first meet in episode 2, turning into more of Vitriolic Best Buds.
• Patlabor: The TV Series: In "Target, Chief Goto", Captain Goto becomes the target of mailed death threats and an escalating series of pranks (from cat dung left in his slippers up to somebody distracting Noa during an op and causing her Labor to get knocked into a house), which turn out to all be caused by a disgruntled ex-Labor mechanic whom he had gotten fired for incompetence. Goto ends up embarrassing the guy so badly he has a Villainous Breakdown and admits it was all his own damn fault.
• In The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, there's Rita and Maid-chan, who get into little arguments with each other over Ryuunosuke.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Jessie, James and Meowth have their rival Team Rocket fraction Butch and Cassidy. Though the latter were largely an Always Someone Better to the trio initially, by their later appearances they're near equally bumbling and prone to childish bickering with the three over who is superior.
  • Ash has his former rival Gary Oak. Although he was an arrogant Jerkass, he was generally respected as a good trainer by everyone else, and their rift was mostly personal, since they were otherwise pretty similar. Gary would often go out of his way to antagonize Ash, most famously with "Gary was here. Ash is a loser," and Ash's own grudge was often Played for Laughs to the other characters. It was eventually revealed that they used to be childhood friends until they got into a fight over a Poke Ball, and they eventually mended their friendship at the Johto conference.
• Bossun and Tsubaki in Sket Dance will almost always bicker whenever they meet, but also often help each other when in trouble. Might be part of their Sibling Rivalry.
• Sorcerer Stabber Orphen: Volkan is a troll who always runs afoul of Orphen in various adventures. He's not an actual villain in the series but nonetheless has an antagonistic relationship with the main character and always rubs Orphen the wrong way, with Orphen sometimes taking it out on Volkan in comically violent ways. The two never get along, always butt heads in petty squabbles, and Orphen always considers Volkan a pain in the ass to deal with because Volkan owes him money and never contributes a single thing to help resolve problems or make Orphen's life easier.
• In Teasing Master Takagi-san, the protagonist Nishikata is constantly teased by his cute classmate (the Takagi-san from the title) and more often than not winds up blushing like mad or is otherwise outsmarted. He tries to get his own back, but whatever plan he comes up with either has a glaring flaw he fails to notice until it's too late, or Takagi-san turns it against him. Takagi-san genuinely likes him, but she just enjoys watching his over-the-top reactions. (Yes, you will probably die of diabetes if you read this manga.)
• The Evil Organization Florsheim from Tentai Senshi Sunred are the sitcom arch nemesises of Sunred, who finds them all incredibly annoying for constantly picking fights with him. Florsheim, on their side, are Contractually Genre Blind and know that as an Evil Organization they must fight the superhero in order to Take Over the World... But they're really bad at the whole 'being villains' part.
• In Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun Kalego, the title character's stern teacher, and Opera, the servant at Iruma's house, have this dynamic. Kalego and Opera went to school together, with the latter turning the former into a glorified errand boy. In the present Opera is one of the very few people that Kalego fears, and they know it. Opera will never spare a chance to pick on or troll Kalego, but they are both invested in Iruma's education and the safety of the school. They will put aside their differences to fight together against a larger threat if needed. But as soon as the threat is gone, Opera will be back to needling Kalego.
• World Trigger: When working in an army full of teenagers with colorful personalities, there is a big chance one will have a few certain types of colleagues they can’t handle.
  • Jin is Hyuse's nemesis because he was the agent who defeated and detained him during Aftokrator’s invasion. Hyuse puts up a petty attitude whenever Jin is ever mentioned, to the point where he's upset when he realizes Jin is not an option to blacklist in their relations survey and refuses to ask Jin for any Border related guidance.
  • Prior to the Expedition Exam, Border gives out a relations survey for agents to fill, which includes naming the agents who they “do not want to bring (work with) on the Expedition Force.” Then Border proceeds to use the results to make the agents team up with their dreaded arch-nemesis for the duration of the Expedition Exam.
    • Team 03 has Kageura (B003) snapping at Inukai (B001) for his insincere, teasing personality, and the irritation is amplified by Kageura’s Spider-Sense Side-Effect. It reaches the point where Kageura and Inukai squabble even when the latter is being sincere.
    • Team 07 has Osamu and Katori (B011) mutually not liking each other. Katori belittles Osamu for his Designated Red Shirt status, while Osamu is uncomfortable with Katori for her arrogance, her unpredictable performance, and endless dramatic complaints.
    • Team 08 has Ema (B003) not liking his Captain Ninomiya for personal reasons, mainly over the disappearance of Sniper, Mirai Hatohara. Ema spends most of the exam making passive aggressive comments towards Ninomiya's captaining style while Ninomiya responds with curt indifference.
• Yotsuba&! has a couple of these relationships:
  • The title character has Yanda, whom she instantly hates with a hatey five-year-old hate, but other characters merely find annoying. It doesn't help that Yanda takes a childish glee in figuratively (and literally) yanking her pigtails.
  • Jumbo almost has this sort of relationship with Miura, of all people. At one point, he flies to Hawaii just to spite her.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: In the 4Kids version, Seto Kaiba's hatred for Katsuya Jonouchi/Joey Wheeler is even more extreme and is often Played for Laughs at Jonouchi's expense.
  Kaiba: "...and anyone who's late for registration will be disqualified. Mokuba, make sure Wheeler's late."^note Keep in mind, Jonouchi is right next to him when he says this. And as pointed out by Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series, this dub line change doesn't make any sense, due to the fact that there is no registration at all, and Jonouchi was an invited participant.
• Zatch Bell!'s enemies numbered among them a demon who could brainwash other humans, a giant mindless destruction machine... and a weird-mouthed human girl who delighted in tormenting him. Somehow, that last one was a challenge he never overcame.

Comic Books

• Asterix: Fulliautomatix the blacksmith and Unhygienix the fishmonger are forever at each other's throats and often the cause of the village brawls due to the former making unflattering remarks about the dubious freshness of the latter's fish.
• Atomic Robo:
  • Stephen Hawking. It apparently originated in them having two opposing theories on black holes, with Stephen Hawking winning out. When Robo was sent on a two-year mission to Mars, Hawking told NASA that Robo had a standby mode he could spend most of his time in, which he doesn't. This resulted in Robo having to spend that entire time awake and aware. He managed to use his time by arranging rocks on Mars' surface to spell out "Stephen Hawking is a bastard", visible from space.
  • More recently, Sir Richard Branson has taken over the role, fitting in as an obnoxious neighbour who is constantly Bothering by the Book about Robo's projects at Tesladyne. The hostility is not helped by Robo constantly having to borrow Branson's stuff to deal with action science crises.
• Buck Danny: O'Connor, the admiral's pet dog, is this to Sonny Tuckson. Destructive as hell and always causing accidents for Sonny at the worst possible time, and also hazardous to his career as he knows that if anything should happen to O'Connor while he's around, the admiral would hold him personally responsible. (Which is a very realistic possibility, as the dog is also none too bright and very prone to getting itself into trouble).
• In Franco-Belgian Comics series Clifton, the titular character keeps running into officer Strawberry who delightfully hands him tickets for various traffic violation. There were times where Clifton got back at Strawberry however, like the time where the latter unknowingly handed him tickets while Clifton was driving a diplomat registered vehicle.
• Deadpool and Squirrel Girl had this kind of relationship when the former hung around the Great Lakes Avengers.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Donald Duck and his neighbor Jones (essentially a larger Dog Face version of Donald with no relatives other than a rarely-seen mother) are often at each other's throats for petty reasons. Of course, since this is a comic, their rival schemes tend to result in a lot of Amusing Injuries. Donald also has such dynamic with his Born Lucky cousin Gladstone.
• The Fantastic Four has the Yancy Street gang, a band of jerks who love to play pranks on the Thing and make his life miserable. In classic stories, they also had Walter Collins, the owner of the Baxter Building, who was their landlord and constantly at odds with the team.
• Gaston Lagaffe has an arch-nemesis, which is Longtarin. He always pranks him, and they both always argues with each other, even Jules, and everybody else hates him.
• In Hack/Slash, extradimensional talking mutant dog Pooch claims he is constantly tormented by an innocent-looking pug named Goblin. We never see this in action, but from the way Pooch talks about him it's clear that their relationship is one of intense animosity.
• This was very much Sonic and Knuckles' relationship in the early days of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics); anytime the two were in the vicinity with each other, they would instantly come into blows over virtually nothing. This persisted for years until they eventually mellowed out and became Vitriolic Best Buds (mirroring their relationship in the video games).
• Spider-Man:
  • J. Jonah Jameson, a local newspaper mogul who is utterly convinced that the web slinger is a menace and uses the press to constantly attack him and accuse him of everything from Engineered Heroics, reckless endangerment, to outright theft and even murder, or otherwise putting the worst possible spin on almost everything Spider-Man does. For his part, Spider-Man retaliates by constantly insulting J.J. to his face and occasionally playing pranks on him or leaving him webbed up in compromising situations, while taking solace in the fact that he's secretly photojournalist Peter Parker and an unaware Jameson is actually paying Spider-Man for his own pictures.
  • Spider-Man and Human Torch had this dynamic in earlier stories, before becoming Vitriolic Best Buds.
• In James Robinson's Starman, Jack Knight has a rival that is the owner of a store specialized in old collector's memorabilia just like Jack's own store. Jack's father, a former superhero, makes the amusing comment that it must be nice having an archenemy that doesn't try to kill you.
• The Super Buddies had a pair of neighbours building a bar next to their headquarters. One of them was Richard "Dick" Hertz; Sue hated him when she found out that he was once the supervillain Blackguard (who?), who worked for the "1000" in Metropolis (oh, that Blackguard, sure). Oh, and Dick had an associate in the bar, who was once the greatest American hero, or so he says — Guy Gardner. (Humorously, Blackguard was a recurring enemy of Booster's in his early solo career, but neither seems to remember the other.)
• Tintin: Captain Haddock has Jolyon Wagg (Séraphin Lampion in the original text), an inhumanly persistent insurance salesman. They originally met completely by accident, with Wagg seeking refuge inside Haddock's home when his car (due to one of Professor Calculus' experiments) broke down just outside. He's been the bane of Haddock's existence ever since, appearing at the most inopportune moments and occasionally seriously hampering Haddock and the other heroes' work.
• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye features Rodimus and Thunderclash; both are captains of starships searching for the Knights Of Cybertron, but Thunderclash is basically ten times better at it (as well as everything else ever). Thus Rodimus is virulently jealous of Thunderclash and tries to undermine him whenever the crew encounters him. Doubles as Unknown Rival, as Thunderclash is clearly oblivious to Rodimus's hatred.
• Walter Melon: The main character's strained relationship with his much despised neighbor Bitterbug (Lefuneste in the original text) is the basis of many, many gags.

Fan Works

• Black Sky: After being kinda humiliated by Barty's superior knowledge in languages, Squalo considers his very existence as a taunt towards him. There's also the fact he's Varia Quality but will never join the organization, which deprives Squalo from the opportunity to raise his minions' general level of competence. Oh, and Barty just likes to rile him up.
• The Bugger Anthology: The first video sees the Cybermen engage the Daleks in petty squabbles, leading to the titular "Bitch Fights" where two of the Doctor's most feared and lethal enemies lob insults at each other like snarky kids on a playground.
• A Certain Droll Hivemind: Misaka-11111 spends a significant amount of time extremely annoyed at Misaka-10901. 11111 is stuck in Academy City during the rainy season, while 10901 is in Hawaii and spends most of her time on a beach drinking pina coladas. Later, 10901 takes over writing the diary while 11111 is in combat, and keeps inserting her own commentary about how annoying 11111 is.
• Commissar Ivan to Commissar Steve in A Day in the Life of a Commissar. Basically, whatever Steve has, Commissar Ivan gets a cooler version of it, seemingly just to piss off Steve.
• In Gravity Falls: Once More, Dipper's new friend Derrick is this to Mabel. Starting with a bad first impression (they bumped into each other, causing Derrick's soda to spill over Mabel's sweater), they have never gotten along, with Mabel seeing him as a bad influence on Dipper and Derrick finding her annoying, leading to them constantly bickering over everything. After four years, Dipper has learned to deal with it by keeping them apart as much as possible, and manages to keep them civil during the summer return to Gravity Falls only by promising them 100 dollars each if they don't start any serious fights.
• Invasion of Falls: Gaz and Mabel do not get along at all, constantly butting heads and arguing, but occasionally agreeing on other things like disliking other characters' stupidity. Mabel refers to the situation as them being "frenemies", and states that this means that only she gets to insult Gaz.
• Mauling Snarks: In this Worm fanfic, Jack Slash and Accord can't stand each other for reasons unexplained, but due to a good dose of Adaptational Heroism their antagonism takes form of ridiculous shenanigans rather than anything murderous. For example, in one of their outings, Slaughterhouse Nine send on army of genetically engineered ducks into Accord's territory to mess things up and annoy him. In return, Accord tames those ducks and makes them into a cleanup crew.
• Something Lost Something Found: Lostbelt Morgan and Artoria (Alter) are this. Morgan hates Artoria as soon as she sees her with almost no justification other than "She's an Artoria" and regularly loses her cool around her despite normally being The Stoic. Her grudge is almost entirely one-sided, as Artoria Alter refuses to even indulge Morgan's various hang-ups with her (like her blade sharing Morgan's name), simply telling her that she's being childish and leaving her to stew in her anger.
• This Bites!: After Enies Lobby, Sengoku considers Jeremiah Cross as this. Cross regularly exposes the World Government's and the Marines' dirty secrets and encouranges people around the world to think for themselves rather than blindly believe what the WG tells them. During Enies Lobby, Cross finds and narrates to the entire planet CP9's operational black book, causing a massive rise in revolutions, rebellions and general crime sprees. Sengoku has a heart attack in response.
• In the Total Drama fanfic Total Drama Legacy, Ezekiel is this to Anne Maria. Those who have seen Revenge of the Island will know that Ezekiel was an Abhorrent Admirer to Anne Maria, but even though it's been years since ROTI and Ezekiel is now Happily Married to Izzy, Anne Maria still hates him. Anne hates him so much, in fact, that she writes him a very Strongly Worded Letter filled with profanities, solely out of spite.
• True Potential: Jiraiya and Roshi have this dynamic, their hatred from each other being born not out of being ninjas of feuding villages (though there is bad blood from a Noodle Incident during the last war), but out of being dueling writers. Jiraiya's books sell better, but Roshi argues (not without reason) that this is only due to the porn. Not helping matters is the fact that Jiraiya's godson Naruto genuinely likes Roshi's books and dislikes Jiraiya's.
• In Ultimate Sleepwalker: The New Dreams, Kenny Anderson has an unexplained hatred of John Kricfalusi. He's never said exactly why he hates John K, and his friends decide they're probably better off not knowing.
• World is Small Behind the Bars: Boingo, after becoming a famous comic book artist, has this with famed mangaka Rohan Kishibe, started when Rohan figured out that Boingo's comics were based on predictions from Tohth he used against the Joestar group, while Boingo would get payback by finding and pointing out that Rohan used his Stand Heaven's Door to gather material for his writing. When talking about an upcoming convention with Hol Horse, Boingo expresses glee at annoying Rohan as much as possible when they meet up.
  • Peculiar Parasitic Phenomenon from the same author expands on the concept, having Rohan and Boingo's rivalry as one of the B-plots. The two are shown rivaling on-screen, arranging a Fan Convention in Morioh simply because they wanted to host a vote between their fans to prove that one of them is better than the other. They both lost to a third party artist and tied for the second place. Their harmless rivalry is also contrasted with Rohan's actual deadly rivalry with Yoma Hashimoto who tries to kill Rohan on several occasions after the mangaka cheated in their treadmill competition and serves as a Knight of Cerebus of the story.
• Aang and Iroh have a petty rivalry in zuko is a chihuahua (small, angry, down to fight), which is driven by Iroh's envy at the Avatar training his nephew.

Films — Animation

• In Aladdin, Razoul the guard has a deep and undying hatred for the titular hero that lasts all of the movies and throughout the animated series. He is much more dangerous than a typical sitcom arch-nemesis as he does genuinely try and kill Aladdin at several points, but he usually has a reason / excuse to do so and (almost) always acts within the bounds of the law and wouldn't dare harm other heroic characters like Jasmine or the Sultan. He has been chasing Aladdin since the latter was a street rat and resents the fact that a petty criminal (who often humiliated him) has been welcomed into the royal family, but mostly he's just doing his job and being a Jerkass about it, whereas most actual villains in the franchise are violent murderers and evil sorcerers. It also helps that he's Dumb Muscle and not really a match for Aladdin at all and even less so the Genie.
• In Shark Tale, Oscar has Don Lino's Camp Gay dragon, Sykes. Saving the fact that Sykes treats Ernie and Bernie like The Ace.
• In Turning Red, Tyler is this to Mei. The two frequently bicker and insult each other, and both have conspired against each other on separate occasions with Tyler humiliating Mei at the Daisy Mart and at school and Mei forbidding Tyler from getting pics with her panda form. Following the reveal of Tyler's love for 4*Town, however, the two are shown to be on far better terms.

Films — Live-Action

• Avengers: Endgame: Thor's biggest nemesis is "NoobMaster69," a random player who keeps trolling Thor's friends on Fortnite. An ad for X-Box and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier hinted that he was Aaron the salesman at Apple from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
  Thor: NoobMaster, hey. It's Thor again. You know, the God of Thunder? Listen buddy, if you don't log off this game immediately, I am going to fly over to your house, come down into that basement you're hiding in, rip off your arms and shove them up your butt! Oh that's right, yes, go cry to your father, you little weasel!
• Bruce Almighty: Evan Baxter to Bruce, who is merely a bit of a jerkass to Bruce and "steals" (according to Bruce) a promotion from him as the new main news anchor of the station they work at, despite clearly having earned it. This is enough reason for Bruce to torment him after he gains godlike powers by publically humiliating Evan on live air (and in a Deleted Scene, cause him a massive nasal hemorrhage and set his hair on fire).
• Wendover is to Captain Spratt in Doctor in Trouble, always popping up to annoy him, embarrass him, or somehow cause irritation to him.
• In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Steve perceives that he has a professional rivalry with Hennessy, but it's pretty obvious that in reality the former is simply bitter that the latter is a more successful oceanographer, the former husband of Steve's ex-wife and kind of a jerk.
• In Predator, Blain's macho posturing is often mocked by Poncho.
  Blain: "(Chewing tobacco) will make you a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus, just like me!"
  Poncho: (holds out his grenade launcher) "Strap this on your sore ass, Blain!"

---

Poncho: "You're hit. You're bleeding, man."

Blain: "I ain't got time to bleed."

Poncho: "Oh, okay." (blasts the bad guys with the grenade launcher) You got time to duck?" (debris falls on them and Blain has to hide)

• Dr Jonas Miller from Twister is a Jerkass Smug Snake who sold out to a big company for fame and fortune and stole the designs for Bill's tracking system with the defence that Bill hadn't got it passed the theory stage. It is also clear in the film that he is mostly just tracking Bill's team and swooping in to steal the credit without knowing how to predict twisters himself. Despite this, he doesn't do anything blatantly illegal and ultimately proves more of a danger to his own team than anyone else.

Literature

• Constance Verity Saves the World:
  • Millie is Tia's other friend and she and Connie have a rivalry over the title of "best-friend." While Millie is nowhere near the level of threat Connie is used to in her life of adventuring, she's still invested enough to imagine the many ways she could take her out physically without actually doing it, instead sticking to the kind of Passive-Aggressive Kombat "normal people" do in such situations.
    ...there was a weird conflict between Connie and Millie. A friendship tug-of-war, a struggle for best-friend status.
  • Two of Connie and Byron's new neighbors in their new apartment building includes the vampire Duke Warlock and Vampire Hunter Baron Solaris, both of whom deliberately avoid each other during the housewarming party.
• In the Discworld book Snuff, Lord Vetinari appears to have reached this level of 'enmity' with the crossword editor of The Times, whose mastery of obscure linguistics and terrible wordplay is advanced enough to give even him pause.
  • As of Raising Steam she has landed several victories, but the stress of the contest finally gets to her and she resigns.
  • The Venturi and Selachii noble families have an intense rivalry. However, at parties, they are required to be polite to each other, and thus restrain themselves to non-controversial subjects. Such as "You appear to be standing". The actual cause was forgotten generations ago, but it must have been important or else this would be considered silly.
• Ellen and Otis: Ellen Tebbits and Otis Spofford, to each other. Otis got started antagonizing Ellen because his mother is Ellen's ballet teacher (and he likes to see Ellen get mad), and he's usually (but not always) the instigator.
• In the Horrible Harry series, Harry and Sidney are always fighting, usually because Sidney does something to annoy Harry and Harry retaliates by playing a gross prank on him. Still, they have their share of friendly moments.
• Jaine Austen Mysteries: Jaine's father has one in Lydia Pinkus, President of the Tampa Vistas Homeowner's association.
• In Astrid Lindgren's Karlsson on the Roof, the strict and haughty Miss Bock quickly becomes this to Karlsson. He actually rather likes the woman, it's just that what he likes the most about her is how much fun she is to rile up and insult.
• In the first chapter of Lunar Park, Bret (in a semi-fictionalized account of the author's real life) takes several personal shots at Keanu Reeves.
• Star Wars Legends: Borsk Fel'lya is this to basically every major hero from Return of the Jedi until halfway through the New Jedi Order series (all in all, about twenty years). As infuriating as he can be to deal with, he's not actually an Imperial spy, or a dark side adept, or a wannabe dictator, or an agent of any of the above (well, not intentionally). He's simply a powermongering politician who, while he doesn't put his career ahead of everything else, certainly puts it ahead of more than he should. He's a political rival of Admiral Ackbar whose attempts to discredit his rival sow chaos in the New Republic fleet command at the worst possible time, he interferes in the lives of his fellow Bothans to an intrusively personal degree when he thinks they don't best reflect his image of their people, he fans the flames of every anti-human conspiracy theory on the books, and by the time he's Chief of State, he's happy to indulge the growing anti-Jedi sentiment... leading him to at first ignore the extragalactic invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong as a Jedi hoax, and later on, leave the Jedi homeworld on Yavin 4 totally exposed to a coming attack that he knows about but neither warns them about nor dispatches anyone to protect them from. What's most infuriating to several of the heroes, however, is that when he's finally cornered and facing death at the hands of the invaders, he's still got enough panache to go out with a bang, detonating a personal nuclear device that kills twenty-five thousand enemy warriors along with himself. This accomplishes little or nothing from a military standpoint, but instantly immortalizes him as a hero and martyr for the history textbooks, and erases every bad memory of his long career of backstabbing and obstruction.
• Ornon and Eugendides in The Queen's Thief series. Ornon can't stand Eugenides, which may have to do with how Ornon lost all his sheep (and much of his wealth with them). Ornon doesn't do anything substantial besides take every opportunity he can to annoy Eugenides. (It's also possible that they're both exaggerating the extent of the antipathy for an audience—but Eugenides still bleats like a lamb or barks like a sheepdog whenever Ornon enters the room.)

Live-Action TV

• In the latter seasons of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Dick had Vincent Strudwick. Tommy dated Strudwick's daughter Alissa, making them Star-Crossed Lovers.
• 30 Rock:
  • Jack Donaghy and Devon Banks, who vie for control of NBC. Later, Devon's role is taken by teenager Kaylie Hooper.
  • Jenna Maroney is no stranger to this trope. Her official arch-nemesis appears to be Jenny McCarthy, but she's also apparently had a feud with Raven-Symoné.
    She knows what she did.
• Arrested Development:
  • Stan Sitwell to the Bluth Family in general, and George Sr. in specific. A more one-sided variation in that he is a genuinely nice man who is largely oblivious to the extent of the Bluths' disdain for him, and that George dislikes him because he is in the same business and just as successful (without the need to resort to illegal practices), and his philanthropy makes the Bluths look bad. George and Lucille even went so far as to adopt a daughter they didn't want (Lindsey) who Sitwell was trying to adopt, purely to spite him.
  • Lucille personally has Lucille 2, her very nice neighbor who wants nothing more than for the Bluths to succeed. Once, Lucille 2 hired some construction workers to renovate her apartment while she was away, and Lucille wound up getting them to move the wall dividing their homes two feet in, and install a larger bathtub for her.
• Beachcombers: There is Relic who annoys nearly everyone in Gibsons, BC, especially Nick who has him a business rival. However, as much as they can't stand him, Nick has been known to come to him to bunk as a last resort and when Relic is in truly serious trouble, everyone is willing to lend a hand.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • Sheldon Cooper actually has two of these, the first being Barry Kripke, who he once got in an Escalating War with (it didn't end well), and the second being Wil Wheaton. The latter has had a showdown with Sheldon twice and Wheaton triumphed both times. However, he used underhanded tactics both times. You might count the Indiana Jones showing as a third occasion, meaning Sheldon has one victory.
  • Shelly is just great at getting arch nemeses. There is also Leslie Winkle: who "made Sheldon Cooper cry like a little girl?".
  • Sheldon has a long list of arch nemeses so old he keeps it on a floppy disc. Wil Wheaton was recently taken off the list, only to be replaced by Brent Spiner.
    Wil: (to Brent) Don't worry, it doesn't take up a lot of your time.
  • Sheldon's childhood idol Arthur "Professor Proton" Jeffries has Bill Nye the Science Guy (who actually admires him) for ripping off his show.
    Bill Nye: Wow, Arthur Jeffries. It's an honor to meet you. My show never would have happened without yours.
    Professor Proton: That's what I told my lawyers.
• Boston Legal: There are several recurring characters who develop this relationship with one or more of the heroes. The most memorable of them is undoubtedly Melvin Palmer, a Texan attorney who specializes in representing the rich and guilty, usually with Alan Shore as the opposing attorney. What drives Alan insane is that while he actually wins all of his cases against Palmer, the man is never remotely bothered by this (he gets paid either way), maintains a cheerful and friendly demeanor even while defending his clients' most heinous actions, and can reliably be counted on to show up again a few episodes down the line with an equally heinous client. ... And then he finds himself defending Alan when he's accused of adultery, successfully gets him cleared of all charges, and leaves him in his debt, much to his chagrin.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
  • The warm and mutual loathing between Captain Holt and his rival Deputy Chief Wuntch.
  • Jake very much sees Doug Judy (a.k.a. The Pontiac Bandit) as this, with their face-offs being a once-per-season event that reliably gets a whole episode devoted to it. He even refers to Doug as his "nemesis" on numerous occasions. However, as Doug himself often points out, they often come across more as Vitriolic Best Buds with their shared sense of humour and taste for wacky hijinks, and would very likely be best friends if they weren't on opposite sides of the law. Jake angrily refuses to accept this... but is almost always willing to go along with Doug's crazy ideas under the guise of catching a bigger criminal, which always results in Doug getting away. Not to mention actually taking Shipper on Deck Doug's advice about his love life with Amy.
  • As a whole, the NYPD (or perhaps just the Nine-Nine) has a bitter rivalry with.... just about every other civil service agency in the city, from the MTA to the NYFD to the sanitation department.
  • However, the pilot subverts this between Det. Jake Peralta and Captain Holt. Initially, it looks like the childish detective chafing against orders from the stern, no-nonsense captain is being set up as the show's primary antagonistic relationship... But Jake comes to respect Holt by the end of the first episode, and their relationship quickly shifts to one of Holt being a Parental Substitute and Cloudcuckoolander's Minder for Jake.
• On Caroline in the City, it's Caroline's strip vs. the strip Cathy.
• Miss Manger from Charley's Grants is to Lord Charley, often being the only one standing in the way of him getting his grants.
• Cheers:
  • Sam's nemesis is the rival bar Gary's Old Town Tavern.
  • Also John Hill, owner of Melville's, the restaurant upstairs.
  • Carla also considered Diane to be her worst enemy, with Cliff perhaps a close second.
  • Woody has his father-in-law Mr. Gaines as well as French Jerk Henri, who openly admits to trying to steal his girlfriend.
• In Chuck, Season 1 has Harry Tang, arch-nemesis to Chuck and Morgan at the Buy More. Season 2 has Emmett Milbarge fill the void Harry left.
• During the first season of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert had one in the form of Russ Lieber, a liberal talking head played by David Cross, before the character was written out.
• Community:
  • Jeff's rivalry with Rich, the handsome doctor who is always better than him.
  • There is also the rivalry between Prof. Duncan and Senor Chang which they eventually settle through Mutually Assured Destruction.
  • There's also Jeff and Leonard's antagonism.
  • The gang also hates Shirley's unseen friend Gary and absolutely loath Todd Jacobson, Greendale's resident Nice Guy.
• In Corner Gas the entire town of Dog River has this with the neighboring town of Wullerton (spits).
• In Coupling, Patrick has Ivan, who is like the uber-Patrick, complete with snazzy car, corner office and blonde trophy wife.
• Professor Hobbes from The Culture Vultures is to Dr. Cunningham, clashing with him over his blasé approach to his work.
• In Dad's Army, Captain Mainwaring (the pompous, upper-middle-class bank manager whose power and authority as Home Guard platoon leader has gone straight to his head) has Chief ARP Warden Hodges (the pompous, lower-class greengrocer whose power and authority as Chief ARP Warden has gone straight to his head).
  Hodges (when Mainwaring has got stuck up a church belltower with no ladder): I hope you stay up there to let me enjoy this war in peace. Because I do enjoy this war. I've never enjoyed anything as much in all my life... And you! You always spoil it!.
• Desperate Housewives: Mrs. McClusky started out as this for Lynette, but ended up as a subversion as the two eventually came to understand each other as the series went on and formed something of a friendship.
• In Detectorists, it's two organisations that are Sitcom Arch Nemeses: the Danebury Metal Detecting Club (who are the main characters) and the Antiquisearchers.
• On The Dick Van Dyke Show Buddy Sorell makes every attempt to insult producer/ bald brother-in-law of the star Mel Coolley. It's also Lampshaded that their enmity is totally idiotic. Buddy's explanation for why he keeps making fun of Mel is "I do it 'cause I like to rib him! And...I sort of...hate him."
• The Drew Carey Show: Drew's nemesis is Mimi in spite of the fact that she's a main character of the show. The pair frequently trade barbs, but will occasionally begrudgingly support each other.
• On Eureka, Fargo has two: Larry in the early seasons, who wants his job, and Dr. Parrish in the later seasons, who's in a Love Triangle with him.
• In Everybody Hates Chris Chris has the white racist boy Joey Caruso as an arch nemesis.
• Everybody Loves Raymond:
  • Ray actually calls Peggy, the leader of his daughter's scout troop and mother of her best friend, his "arch enemy".
  • Marie thinks that Harriette Lichman is her archenemy for Frank's affection. Frank casually toys with her on that.
  • Raymond occasionally banters with his neighbor Parker despite Ally and Parker Jr. getting along nicely.
  • Robert and Raymond's sibling rivalry borders on this a time or two.
  • Peter, Robert's brother in law started out as this. Ironically his sibling rivalry between himself and Amy has been known to mirror Raymond and Robert's. Not to mention he is currently dating Raymond's arch enemy Peggy.
  • Debra and her sister Jennifer are revealed to mirror Ray and Robert. In this case Jennifer was the favoured sibling, possibly explaining Debra's affinity with Robert.
• Extraordinary Attorney Woo: Benevolent Boss Myung-seok has one in the form of Seung-jun, who runs another team at Hanbada and delights in any opportunity to lord over Myung-seok.
• In Father Ted, the titular character has Father Dick Byrne. The two constantly get into ridiculous one-upmanship contests, not realizing how similar they are; one episode ended with a split screen of their two households, with identical action going on on both sides.
• The Flash (2014): Season Four reveals that Barry Allen has one in the form of Ralph Dibny. While the reason for mutual grudge isn't humorous (prior to the series, Dibny tampered with evidence for a case to get a suspect he believed guilty convicted; Barry busted him and got him fired), the actual rivalry is Played for Laughs due to how unabashed both men are in their hatred of one another, from Ralph's jealousy over how successful Barry's gotten in the interim between their last meeting and his debut episode to his lamentation over how he has to hate the Flash after he learns it's Barry under the mask.
• Although not an individual person, Australia, in general, seems to serve in this role for Murray and the band in Flight of the Conchords
• In Frasier, the titular character has Cam Winston. The two are virtually identical to each other, in that they're both pompous, snooty, articulate egomaniacs. When they finally call a truce because they think their parents were dating, their "treaty" includes them agreeing to share grooming and personal care advice on features that the other one had noticed.
• Freaks and Geeks subverts the trope by originally having Kim Kelly be Lindsay's nemesis but they become best friends. It's played straight with Sam and Alan White.
• On Full House, once Michelle takes over the Little Miss Snarker title from Stephanie, Stephanie redirects her snide remarks towards Kimmy, who only occasionally fires insults back due to her relative lack of wit. In fact, of all of the main cast who ever makes fun of Kimmy, Stephanie does it the most often — sometimes multiple times in a single episode. By the time of Fuller House though, Stephanie and Kimmie become more like Vitriolic Best Buds.
• Game of Thrones: Meera to Osha, who quickly grows jealous of Meera.
• Town selectman Taylor Doose from Gilmore Girls generally exists only to annoy the main characters, and generally the whole town of Stars Hollow with his obsessive need to control every aspect of the town. Luke in particular sees him as an arch nemesis.
• On Good Eats, Alton has several of these: W (a cranky sales-associate at a kitchen supply store), his "sister" Marsha (an Expy of Martha Stewart), Cocoa Carl (a notorious and unscrupulous purveyor of heavily-processed convenience and snack foods), and The Mad French Chef (sometimes shown to be one of his instructors from culinary school, who doesn't like his sometimes unorthodox ways of cooking).
• The Good Place: Tahani, Eleanor's next-door-neighbor, to Eleanor herself. The former, as a condescending British socialite-philanthropist who airs her supposed goodness to the world, really gets on Eleanor's nerves, even as Chidi insists (and Eleanor grudgingly accepts) that Tahani truly is a good person. Turns out to have been invoked, of all things, as when Michael chose the central four humans to torture each other for eternity, he predicted that Eleanor and Tahani would grate on each other. Eventually becomes a subversion; Character Development ultimately leads to them becoming close friends.
• In Grounded for Life, Finnegan has O'Keefe as a nemesis. Their children were dating. Also, Finnegan's bar had "McGinty's".
• Half & Half: Big Deedee Thorn regularly competes with her husband's ex-wife Phyllis. She also has an evil sister.
• In Home Improvement, Tim's hated rival Bob Vila made several guest appearances, often dismissing Tim's show as a ripoff of his own.
  • Tim shows a surprising bit of maturity after a race when he reveals to his wife that he could have won but let Bob win as to do so would have been at extreme risk of destroying the car. Bob bought his car and would just get a new one, Tim built his over the course of a year and wasn't going to throw all that work away just to prove a point.
  • Tim also hated the nearby but never seen Doctor Johnson, an 80 year old proctologist who won the Christmas lighting competition every year. Considering the lengths Tim goes to beat him, the doctor's display must have been quite a sight indeed.
  • Alternatively, Tim's exceptionally overdone and usually dangerous displays may actually have been illegal in the contest (leading to disqualification) and the good doctor was the best of the legal entrants. Given that one year, his display was bright enough to enable a plane landing, illegal is likely. (Then again, they won that year.)
• On the short-lived sitcom Hope And Gloria, talk show host Dennis Dupree (Alan Thicke) has a massive grudge against, um, actor Alan Thicke. This comes to a climax at a Growing Pains reunion on Dupree's show which ends in a Thicke on Thicke fistfight.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • Ted has a big beef against the rival architecture collective "Sven".
  • Also in season one, he has a one-sided rivalry with Robin's two main love interests - Sandy Rivers and Derek.
  • Also Robin has Patrice, her co-worker at World Wide News... who actually likes her dearly.
• iCarly has two pairs: Sam with Freddie, and Carly with Nevel. Also Spencer with Chuck.
• In I Dream, Natalie was this, mostly to Amy. Though when they're forced to work together they do end up getting along in the end. If only until the next episode.
• I Dream of Jeannie:
  • Nosy NASA psychiatrist Dr. Bellows is constantly played off Tony Nelson this way. With the good doctor always suspecting that Tony is hiding something. (Which would be Jeannie.)
  • There's also Jeannie's vindictive sister, who is also named Jeannie and also played by Barbara Eden. (In a brunette wig.)
• I Love Lucy often referred to Ricky's rivalry with fellow mambo singer Xavier Cougat.
• In It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the gang has a feud with the McPoyles, an exceedingly creepy family with a passion for milk, sleepwear and incest. Charlie and Smitty also qualify.
• On Its Your Move, the rivalry between Matthew and his neighbor/mother's boyfriend Norman was the premise of the series.
• Jimmy Kimmel Live!:
  • Jimmy Kimmel has Matt Damon as his nemesis. Kimmel had a Running Gag where he always ended every episode with the words "Apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time".^note The show had trouble booking big-name guests in its early years and Kimmel began "apologizing" in self-mockery since no talk show would dream of bumping an A-Lister like Damon Damon eventually responded in kind, starting a years-long mock feud with Kimmel, including an intro to an interview with Damon that took so long that they actually did run out of time, spoof music videos where Kimmel's then-girlfriend Sarah Silverman revealed that she was, in fact, fucking Matt Damon behind his back (to which he responded by revealing that he was fucking Damon's friend Ben Affleck behind her back), and marking the 10th anniversary show with a Hostile Show Takeover on Damon's part, rebranding it Jimmy Kimmel Sucks!.
  • Kimmel also has a light-hearted rivalry going with John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, who are his next door neighbors and delight in tormenting him with elaborate pranks.
• On Just Shoot Me!, Jack is constantly competing with Donald Trump over who is King of New York. Also regular is head photographer Elliot with Annie Leibowitz. Occasionally, the entire cast and Cosmo magazine.
• Kirby Buckets has Kirby and his sister Dawn. Dawn herself also has one with her school's Alpha Bitch Mandy. Also, we have Eli and Jean-Luc, a boy who only communicates in mime.
• Lab Rats has Leo with school bully Trent, and Bree with on-and-off-again best friend Caitlin. And of course, there's Perry who serves as this for all four kids.
• Letterkenny has the hicks Wayne and Daryl vs. the hockey players Jonesy and Riley.
• Lizzie McGuire has Lizzie and school bully Kate Sanders.
• Life with Derek has the titular Derek serve as this for protagonist Casey.
• Living Single has Kyle and Maxine with an enormous dose of Belligerent Sexual Tension. Before him Maxine had Regine who dated Kyle.
• Married... with Children: Marcy increasingly becomes Al's nemesis due to them being such polar opposites. After Marcy marries Jefferson, however, comedic parallels are drawn between them now that they're both married to lazy slugs.
• Martin: Martin and Pam are this, with Martin using her breath and her using his height as a common source of ammunition.
• Mighty Med has main characters Kaz and Oliver with Alan Diaz.
• Modern Family:
  • The series plays with this trope in the episode where Cam is hosting a charity function for a music appreciation group. He keep referring to his rival (who hosted the event the year before) as his new nemesis. Mitchell tries to point out that it's just silly in real-life, but Cam takes great delight in the drama the relationship allows for.
  • Played straight with Jay and Manny's father, Javier. Everything Javier does annoys Jay to no end, because Jay sees him as an irresponsible deadbeat—and yet everything always works out for him.
  • Phil and Gil Thorpe, a rival real estate agent. Gil is a crueler version, as he often makes crude comments towards Phil's family members (especially Claire) just to be a dick.
  • Jay and his business rival in the closet industry, Earl Chambers.
  • Cam and Mitchell insist that gays and lesbians are this to each other, using improvised Venn diagrams to show how they have nothing in common. Even after they bond with a lesbian couple over concern for their children, they can occasionally be heard angrily muttering "lesbians" whenever they do something particularly annoying.
  • It's Played for Laughs between the kids - Luke begins to see Lily as this from about Season 3, when she grows into a snarky toddler, though the real reason is probably that with her talking and interacting more she's stealing his limelight as the precocious youngest child in the family. Lily takes it a step further herself by starting to see Joe as this from the very day he's born, which is something she and Luke actually bond over.
  • Lampshaded in an episode in the final season, where Phil reflects on the oddity of a family of generally decent people having so many bitter rivalries.
• Mr. Bean
  • Bean's sadistic grudge against that blue Reliant Regal car.
  • His diary features a similar relationship with the Man in Room #3 down the hall, told entirely through the notes that he leaves outside the door and Bean sticks in the book. They decide to bury the hatchet (literally!) on New Years Eve.
• In Monk, Adrian Monk has Harold Krenshaw, who shares a therapist and many phobias and neuroses with him. The rivalry is mutual, usually over who is better friends with the therapist or who has made more progress.
• Joy and Catalina on My Name Is Earl. It starts due to Joy calling Catalina a whore upon their first meeting, but later grew into jealousy over being the two primary Ms. Fanservice characters on the show. Plus, Joy is very politically incorrect and Catalina is an illegal South American immigrant. They eventually make peace with each other near the end of the series after Joy saves Catalina's life.
• In a rare case, Dan Quayle, quasi-unintentionally, started a feud with Murphy Brown, who served as a liberal Archie Bunker and pretty much had a Ripped from the Headlines feud going on with most everyone in Washington.
• My Wife and Kids has Wanda being this to Michael. They always argue when talking to each other.
• On The Nanny:
  • Mr. Sheffield loathes Andrew Lloyd Webber after the former turned down the opportunity of producing Cats, Tommy, and Hair.
  • C.C. and Niles also count. They are fighting almost every time they meet. Later their Snark-to-Snark Combat evolves into Belligerent Sexual Tension.
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide:
  • Ned has school bully Billy Loomer.
  • Moze originally had Suzie Crabgrass as a rival in the first season, but they became friends later on, and Alpha Bitch Missy Meany became her most reoccurring nemesis.
  • Cookie, like Ned, has had Loomer as a rival for most of the series, but in the third season also has Academic Alpha Bitch and Stalker with a Crush Evelyn Kwong.
  • Gordy the janitor has Vice Principal Crubbs, who's always threatening to fire him, and of course, the weasel.
• In NewsRadio, Jimmy James has Johnny Johnson. Jimmy also often tries to one-up Bill Gates.
  Bill: Hasn't this been done before? I mean, every year some billionaire goes up in a balloon.
  Mr. James: Why do you think I'm doing this? The peer pressure among billionaires is tremendous. Bill Gates practically called me a Nancy-boy.
• In Night Court, Judge Stone had a low-key rivalry with Judge Wapner from The People's Court, as well as a one-upmanship contest with another prank-obsessed judge.
• In one episode of NUMB3RS, we meet Marshall Pennfield, Charlie's old rival from Princeton who arrives at CalSci to give a guest-lecture in which he finds a flaw in the Eppes Convergence, the mathematical theorem that made Charlie famous. Charlie will readily admit that Pennfield is brilliant; he just doesn't like him because he's an asshole who constantly targeted Charlie in school for being a Child Prodigy. In the end, Pennfield helps Charlie figure out the case of the week, and when Charlie does find a way around Pennfield's problem, he calls it the Pennfield Variation something Marshall actually finds funny. When Pennfield returns a couple seasons later in the episode "Frenemy", he and Charlie work together which largely consists of them bickering...even then, it's clear there is a undercurrent of respect for each other and their rivalry comes from their time from Princeton. Marshall is actually surprised when Charlie compares them to a crimelord and the leader of a vigilante group at war with each other and think they hate each other as much. By the end of the episode Marshall is invited to dinner at he Eppes house as a sign of them burying the hatchet.
• The UK version of The Office had Tim vs. Gareth. The US version has Michael against Toby and Dwight against Jim; in the former case, Toby looked upon Michael's "rivalry" with a measure of disbelief, and in the latter case, Jim uses it as an excuse to constantly pull pranks on Dwight. A somewhat more straightforward rivalry in the US version was Dwight vs. Andy, first when Andy attempted to usurp Dwight's position as Michael's favorite and later when both got involved in a love triangle with Angela. They have since become fairly good friends. In later seasons, the Andy vs. Nellie rivalry replaced the Andy vs. Dwight one.
• Gussie and Charlie from On the House were forever at odds due to their positions as shop steward and foreman; Charlie wants to get work done on the building site, whereas Gussie would rather be on strike 24/7.
• One Foot in the Grave: Victor Meldrew and Patrick Trench. They have a... not exactly one-sided, but somewhat asymmetrical feud, based on Patrick misinterpreting Victor's constant bad luck as malicious attacks on him.
• Played with Roy Slater on Only Fools and Horses. He's presented in the context of this trope, but is genuinely villainous. He's a Dirty Cop, a borderline-abusive husband, and a sociopath.
• In Our Miss Brooks, Miss Brooks has Miss Enright, a fellow English teacher and rival for Mr. Boynton's affections.
• In Parks and Recreation, there is an extremely bitter rivalry between the parks department and the library department, as well as the entire city of Pawnee with Eagleton (though it's mostly one-sided).
  • The library rivalry quickly developed a more serious bent when it transpired that the main librarian was Tammy 2, Ron's ex-wife and his own sitcom arch-nemesis. Tammy 2 is an Ax-Crazy nymphomaniac who is obsessed with getting Ron back , and doesn't mind manipulating and abusing other characters in order to get her way.
  • Leslie also has a rivalry with local high school student Greg Pikitis. Leslie takes it much more seriously than he does and Greg admits to intentionally pushing Leslie's buttons because it's fun to rile her up. He only appears in two episodes (and a cameo in the final season), but Leslie makes clear she's been warring with him for years offscreen every Halloween.
  • Leslie's other nemesis is City Councilman Jeremy Jamm. Leslie even makes a chart of how many times they've gone up against each other and who's won each time. Their enmity lasts for two seasons but gets resolved after Leslie hooks him up with Tammy 2...and then she and Ron have to rescue him from the abusive relationship.
• Power Rangers Dino Charge has Shelby and Kendall be mutual Sitcom Arch-Nemeses to each other. They're both "good guys" – Shelby's the Pink Ranger and Kendall is Mission Control and the Purple Ranger – but they rub each other the wrong way; since Shelby has a bit of an ego and annoys people (especially Kendall, who is her boss) trying to get what she wants, while Kendall is no-nonsense and has little patience for such things. As a result, Kendall makes unnecessarily bitchy remarks about Shelby and Shelby complains that she's not being treated as well as she deserves. They are able to work together when there's an actual crisis to deal with, though.
• In Reba, Brock has not one, but two nemeses — Eugene (a rival dentist) and Lori Ann (Reba's friend). Both of them are eventually Put on a Bus.
• Roseanne would likely consider her son-in-law Mark her arch nemesis with Leon a close second.
• RuPaul's Drag Race:
  • Alyssa Edwards and CoCo Montrese (stemming from real-life bad blood between the two former pageant rivals)
  • "Rolaskatox" (Roxxxy Andrews, Alaska and Detox) and Jinkx Monsoon, with Roxxxy in particular disliking Jinkx.
  • Bob the Drag Queen and Thorgy Thor;^note Although this was mostly one-sided as Thorgy continually compared herself to Bob to the extent that it began affecting her performance. This was so strong that it carried over and affected Thorgy during her appearance on All-Stars 3. Bob and Derrick Berry.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch has one in Libby Chessler, who grew to hate Sabrina after being turned into a pineapple for a few hours.
• Sanford and Son has Fred Sanford and his sister-in-law Aunt Esther.
• Saturday Night Live's "Celebrity Jeopardy!" skits had Darrell Hammond's Sean Connery as this to Will Ferrell's Alex Trebek, with Connery routinely flinging mockery at Trebek, giving knowingly wrong answers just to be crude and making That's What She Said jokes about Trebek's mother, while Trebek responds with calm snark and visible exasperation. Connery goes to great lengths to get on the show to torment Trebek more, even cutting an album of "filthy limericks" just to be eligible for the "Rock and Roll" episode. Often, however, Connery seems to extend an olive branch to Trebek and claim his behavior is "all in good fun" — only for Connery to immediately make Trebek the butt of another crude joke.
• Schitt's Creek: Ronnie becomes this to Patrick, who is not used to people not liking him.
• In Scrubs:
  • J.D. has the Janitor and, briefly, hotshot intern Keith. Though frequently it was the Janitor getting ticked off at something minor that J.D. did and getting petty revenge, or playing a prank on J.D. for no particular reason.
  • J.D. and Sean also don't much like each other, what with stealing each other's girlfriends.
  • Dr. Cox and Hugh Jackman.
  • For a while, Turk and Marco (Carla's brother).
• Seinfeld:
  • Jerry has Newman. Whenever Newman shows up, Jerry will greet him, "Hello... Newman" with dripping contempt. The two will usually trade barbs whenever they're around each other. Whenever Jerry realizes that Newman is behind some misfortune of his, he will sneer "Newman!" with his lip curled. There seems to be no catalyst to their feud. They just hate each other. Newman gripes that Jerry makes a living entertaining "a half-soused nightclub rabble that lap up your inane 'observations'!" while he toils away in obscurity at the post office. Jerry Seinfeld (the real one) says that for him, the rivalry was that Newman was the only one on the show who was always trying to make Jerry suffer instead of it being the other way around.
  • "The Puerto Rican Day" reveals that Jerry has a traffic nemesis, "Maroon Golf," who refers to Jerry as "Black Saab" when they hurl taunts at each other.
  • George has Lloyd Braun, a guy he grew up with and whom his parents seem to prefer more than him.
  • Elaine has Sue Ellen, "The Bra-less Wonder," who provokes Elaine's A-Cup Angst.
  • Kramer has FDR... Franklin Delano Romanowski.
  • Jack Klompus is this to Jerry's father Morty.
• Played with in Sherlock. Sherlock's arch-enemy is revealed to be his smug but concerned brother Mycroft, who just wants to end their silly feud.
• That '70s Show:
  • Red Foreman's arch-nemesis is Bob and Midge Pinciotti. It's a downplayed example for most of the series as much as Bob annoys Red and Midge annoys Kitty, the two are probably the couple's closest friends.
  • Also, Mitch and his father are enemies of Eric and Red. This was a subversion of the "actually very nice" example, because, as they started losing battles, they revealed their problematic relationship. In later appearances, Mitch was reduced to a joke.
  • Fez has Fenton.
  • Eric's trampy sister Laurie served as the Arch Nemesis to no less than three characters in Jackie, Hyde and Eric himself.
• The Thundermans has super-powered twins Phoebe and Max butting heads with each other all the time.
• Trailer Park Boys has Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles (and, sporadically, most of the other people in the park) on one side of this situation and Mr Lahey and Randy on the other. An unusual example in that not only is the feeling very much openly acknowledged as mutual, but both sides are presented with (more or less) equal amounts of sympathy.
• Jake "the Klingon" Klinger, rival plumber to Ben and sci-fi fanatic, in 2point4 Children (although he retained his Star Trek based nickname, the show he had allegiance to changed in every appearance).
• Veronica Mars: In season 4, Patton Oswalt plays supporting character Penn Epner, a pizza delivery guy who participates in an amateur sleuth / conspiracy online group. One member of the group, Don, is constantly sniping back and forth with him and they subject each other to pranks such as Penn putting pig ear filters on Don's live feed.
• The West Wing: Leo can handle his critics and rivals in the Democratic Party, his opponents in the Republican Party, and the leaders of various hostile nations just fine. He's invariably dismayed, however, by the appearance of Lord John Marbury. A colorful British diplomat with a rare talent for getting under Leo's skin, he routinely pretends to mistake him for the butler, misnames him "Gerald", and cranks up his personal habits to eleven (from womanizing to smoking) that he knows are an irritation. Unfortunately, he's also one of the finest minds in his government, which means Leo has to put up with him whether he likes it or not. He'll be damned if he doesn't vent to the President about it, though.
  Leo: I don't even think the accent's real!
• Deconstructed in Wilfred with his rivalry with a little boy who keeps doing the "fake ball throw" trick on Wilfred. It escalates to Wilfred (or Ryan in a drunken rage; it's rather ambiguous) getting him accused of burglary. The kid is eventually cleared and the robberies are pinned on a homeless man.
• Will & Grace: Karen has a competition with Candice Bergen and likes to torment Marlo Thomas.
• In Wizards of Waverly Place, Alex Russo has Gigi.

Newspaper Comics

• In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin has several:
  • The first is Susie Derkins. It has been suggested that the two might get to like each other if Calvin ever outgrew the belief that Girls Have Cooties. (Of course, he never got past age six in the comics.) One storyline had Calvin create a duplicate of himself with the morality switch set to "good", who (tried to) get along very sweetly with Susie, much to the original Calvin's horror.
  • Another nemesis is Rosalyn the baby-sitter, who is the only person Calvin actually seems to fear.
  • With Moe, things balanced out in a cosmic sort of way. Calvin ran intellectual circles around Moe, but Moe had the raw physical power to make that not really matter that much in the immediate short term.
• Bucky from Get Fuzzy has Fungo, the ferret that lives next door. It's probably safer to say Bucky is Fungo's Sitcom Arch Nemesis, rather than the other way around. Bucky seems to dislike Fungo (and ferrets in general) on the basis that they're too clever by half, and attempts to wage a campaign of harassment against Fungo; Fungo, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to care much about Bucky at all, outside of subverting Bucky's gambits by being too clever by half.
• Peanuts
  • Snoopy and the vicious "Cat Next Door". The cat is never seen, but routinely rends Snoopy's house with a single swipe of its claws as a response to his cutting witticisms.
  • Charlie Brown and Lucy could be considered this.
  • Schroeder, well-known for his love of the piano and Beethoven, has this dynamic not with a specific character, but rather with anyone who plays the accordion.

Music

• Many of Eminem's beefs were more like this than serious antagonism.
  • In particular, his beefs with *NSYNC, Britney Spears and the rest of the TRL set were never taken seriously by either party (Britney and NSYNC both claimed that he was lovely to them outside of kayfabe), but he became notorious for doing everything he could to insult them (including murdering effigies on them on stage).
  • His feud with Canibus was also relatively gentle, with both rappers taking cracks at each other for years, but with Canibus readily acknowledging Eminem's great skill and influence on his style, and Eminem responding with playground-level insults to wind him up and encourage him to fight harder, rather than to seriously damage his career.
  • Eminem was not always great at keeping his sitcom beefs non-serious - his beef with his former friends Limp Bizkit started with pranks but led to D12 beating Fred Durst up, and his beef with Moby (intended as this, by Word of God) resulted in a group of people in his Misaimed Fandom assaulting him on the street. His beef with Mariah Carey was probably also intended as satirical, but escalated so disgracefully that various unaffiliated rappers stepped in to tell him to cool it. And as for his beef with Machine Gun Kelly, while Eminem's diss track is goofy in tone and pretty restrained, the track ended up doing serious damage to MGK's reputation and public persona and led to him being better known now as a ridiculous irritant than as a musician.
  • Eminem's running gag of making sick and deliberately poorly researched jokes about Christopher Reeve led to Reeve threatening to beat him up on numerous songs.
• Lee Ann Womack's song, I'll Think of a Reason Later describes this toward a woman that the singer hasn't even met, but is apparently engaged to a man she likes. She concludes, "She may be an angel who spends all winter/Bringing the homeless blankets and dinner," but "I really hate her/I'll think of a reason later."
• The Lonely Island have this as a running joke in their "Just 2 Guyz" series of music videos (which also includes "We Like Sportz", "We'll Kill U", and "We Need Love"). The two protagonists, Guy Number One and Guy Number Two, despise their neighbour Steve (played by Andy Samberg), calling him a cunt in each video (except "We Need Love", where they instead accuse his girlfriend of being a slut)—despite him never being seen to do anything malicious to them.

Professional Wrestling

• The first season of GLOW featured plenty of examples of the "dramatic", but it also featured Americana and Spanish Red, who had much in common, in spite of open hostility, and did indeed have Enemy Mine situations.
• Chris Jericho and Stephanie McMahon had this dynamic for a very long time, to the point that a fan theory is that Jericho was envious that she'd sleep with anyone EXCEPT him.
• On a promotional level, WWC publicly wished death on IWA Puerto Rico, as did Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling and W*ING on IWA Japan. In private, the companies all helped one another.
• ECW and the WWE. On screen, they were antagonistic to one another. Off screen, they actually worked together against main rival WCW. This was also true of ECW and SMW, but it lacked a national TV deal so no one remembers it.
• CM Punk and Delirious had many legitimately bitter feuds in IWA Mid-South. Their feud with each other was not one of them. The wrestling was serious enough for one hour time limit draws, but their personal attitude towards each other was mainly down to who had the best pranks.

Radio

• Cabin Pressure has Douglas and Herc Shipwright. Both smooth voiced expert pilots, they are friends before and in the first episode they meet in the series, but Douglas seems to resent Herc moving in on his territory after this. After this they frequently verbally spar, though Herc doesn't seem overly bothered.
• Possibly the grandfather of them all, Jack Benny and Fred Allen.
• Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music:
  • In the first season, Mitch's arch-nemesis was Richard Stilgoe, especially as Robin Ince mentioned Stilgoe whenever Mitch referred to himself as The BBC's most popular satirical songwriter. They eventually battled it out in the final episode of the season, and became friends.
    Mitch: Looks like I'll need a new arch-nemesis for the next series.
    Richard: Is Bill Bailey ready for this?
  • Mitch Benn's next arch-nemesis was Stephen Fry, King of Twitter, which was a Running Gag in the 2009 series of The Now Show.
• Alex Jones and Glenn Beck [1] [2]
• The Kevin and Bean Show on Los Angeles station KROQ had crosstown rival Rick Dees on KIIS. Kevin and Bean often mocked Dees on their show and accused him of pre-taping his show. They occasionally played pranks on him and tried to catch him at home when his show was on the air, pretending to be a live broadcast. This made headlines when Dees filed a lawsuit accusing them of stalking him.
• Phil Harris, of the radio sitcom The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, had two of these on his show: his brother in law Willy and the grocery boy Julius, who is in love with his wife, Alice.

Tabletop Games

• The two goth groups in Visigoths vs. Mall Goths take their rivalry rather seriously, since what's at stake in their mutual conflict is the most important thing to a 90s teen in LA: the right to hang out at The Mall. While the two sides have an adversarial relationship, all physical conflict merely results in Amusing Injuries and hurt feelings.
• Trazyn the Infinite and Orikan the Diviner, in Warhammer 40,000. Their relationship is either this or Arch-Nemesis, as their antics range from comically petty pranks and insults, to nightmarishly cruel attempts to murder the other (often with thousands or millions of deaths in collateral damage), or subject them to a Fate Worse than Death. This is on full display in The Infinite and the Divine.

Video Games

• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Evan and Hotsan don't like each other and, unless there are urgent matters, constantly bicker and try to portray their respective hunter clans superior.
• In Disco Elysium, the player character has this kind of relationship with Garte, the owner of the hotel. Garte's reasons for hating the protagonist are reasonable (the protagonist, instead of removing the festering dead body outside the hotel whose murder he is supposed to be investigating, got apocalyptically drunk, ran around scaring hotel guests by putting his gun to his head and threatening to kill himself, sexually harassed the bartender so much she quit, trashed his room, then tried to run out on the damages bill) but even considering the circumstances he is extremely rude. Meanwhile, the protagonist loathes him for trying to make him pay for the things he broke, and the player has plenty of options to damn Garte to the heavens, including telling the Moralintern that he's an international criminal in hiding in the hope of getting him executed.
• In Ensemble Stars!, Tori and Tsukasa treat each other like this: though they're both privileged heirs, Tsukasa comes from a long-standing noble family (which has recently fallen on hard times money-wise), while Tori is the son of a very wealthy toy company CEO (who has no other special lineage). As a result they're constantly bickering over who is the 'real' elite kid and take every opportunity to trade petty insults. However, through Character Development they manage to turn into Vitriolic Best Buds, with Tsukasa eventually realising that he's only hard on Tori because the rest of his family mocks him and he always feels pressured to live up to their expectations of him.
• Fake Happy End: When Mishka realizes that Karin intentionally didn't mention that the tower is infested with monsters, she pushes a tamed monster towards Karin and the protagonist while they're trapped in goo. Likewise, Karin pushes Mishka into a teleportation tile to scare her. Afterwards, the two try to get one-up on each other for the rest of the game.
• Raul Tejada the Ghoul and "Best Friend" Tabitha the Schizophrenic Nightkin Super Mutant in Fallout: New Vegas. In the Black Mountain Radio channel, Tabitha is often threatening Raul with execution. However, Raul merely needs to remind her that he has not outlived his usefulness and is the only one who could possibly repair her beloved robot Rhonda (as well as being a useful repairman in general), to her frustration. If the Courier does not complete their quest, the two are still at it for a long time.
• Mass Effect:
  • In Mass Effect 2, this is the initial relationship between Joker and EDI, leading them to partake in an Escalating War of pranks. Shepard and other characters joke that they really should just admit their Belligerent Sexual Tension already. In the sequel, they do.
  • The Citadel DLC of Mass Effect 3 reveals that Samantha Traynor has one in Polgara T'Suzsa, her rival in the asari version of chess, who is a very unsportsmanlike winner. They each do an Eyed Screen when they see each other.
  • Also in Citadel, Joker has started falling into this with fellow Ace Pilot Steve Cortez. Particularly when they were bickering about how to fly the taxi they were in when they were using it to keep the Normandy from jumping to FTL.
  • In Mass Effect: Andromeda, this is the relationship between the chief engineer Gil Brodie and the pilot Kallo Jath, due to differing styles and Kallo's belief that Gil doesn't respect the work that went into the Tempest's construction. It ends up being Played for Drama once the reasons for their antagonism become clear. On Kallo's end, his Photographic Memory is so strong that he perceives all the work that went into the ship and his friendships with the rest of the construction team is still happening and he's not willing to let those things go. On Gil's end, he points out that the Tempest wasn't built with the Scourge and the kett in mind, and he's honestly afraid that the lives of the crew are going to end up in danger because Kallo's sentimentality kept them from adapting.
• Persona 5: Futaba treats Yusuke like her psuedo-nemesis after he rearranged the body parts of her Featherman models to appear more aesthetically pleasing to him, much to her own horror. She constantly ribs on him, and when he makes a mouse pun later in the game (due to them all being temporarily turned into mice in a palace), she is very unamused.
• Bob Arnold in Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh acts like this to protagonist Curtis Craig (rival employee, seemingly^note Bob's actor has suggested that Bob's jerkassery towards Curtis is partly because he's attracted to Curtis and tries to cover it up really dislikes each other, does pranks, is fighting over a promotion...). Only problem is, Phantasmagoria is a horror story... so Bob gets killed. Horribly, and in a way that puts suspicion on Curtis.
• Lian and Melli from Pokémon Legends: Arceus are constantly bickering with each other. It starts when they argue over whether Kleavor or Electrode is better (while the world is in danger), and they continue taking potshots at each other during the Daybreak DLC. Mai even notes that they're having way too much fun with this in the latter case.
• Since the beginning of the Street Fighter series, Ryu and Ken have always been Best Friends and had a Friendly Rivalry. However, the rivalry dynamic between Luke and Jamie as seen in Street Fighter 6 is anything but and fits this trope instead. Each of their Story Mode campaigns end with them facing off against one another over the same scenario. In each campaign, they became angry after accidently bumping into each other with each thinking the other bumped into him on purpose and neither wanting to apologize. Before, during, and even after their match, they can't help but sling insults at each other without skipping a beat. Naturally, this also goes for their victory quotes against one another:
  Luke: Heh! And that's a win for me. Got anything to say, pretty boy?
  Jamie: Next time ya see me, be sure to put some respect on my name. Got it, meathead?
• In Dark Prison, this is the relationship between Elma, Selena Recital's Robot Buddy, and Chika, Shu Shirakawa's familiar. In fact, half of the hilarity in Dark Prison is the both of them butting heads at each other.
• Promotional material for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate portrays this kind of relationship between King K. Rool and Villager, mostly involving the latter stealing the former's crown or food with his 'Pocket' move.
• Tales of Vesperia has Repede thinking of Estelle this way, despite the fact Estelle truly wishes for him to like her. This repeatedly causes her no end of grief with his constant dismissal of him. Then she gets rather jealous of Judith being okay in his eyes even though they just met.
• A rather odd variant in Touhou Project with the usually arch-enemies Kaguya and Mokou. While Mokou absolutely hates Kaguya for humiliating her father a long time ago, Kaguya doesn't think seriously of this supposed slight but still kills Mokou just as much as she kills her just because she's bored and finds her frequent fights with Mokou to be entertaining.
• Trails Series:
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Agate inadvertently becomes one to Erika Russel, after his Big Brother Instinct towards her very beloved daughter Tita is misinterpreted. Unfortunately for him, Erika is a Mad Scientist frequently in need of "test subjects"...
  • Jusis, member one of the most prestigious noble houses, and Machias, a commoner who firmly believes in Aristocrats Are Evil, have this kind of relationship in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel.
• Tyranny has a darker, but still humorous take on this.
  • Eb and Lantry, though mostly on Eb's part. She hates Lantry because she's a Tidecaster, and he's one of the Sages, a rival school of magic, though one with a well-earned reputation for dishonesty and stealing secrets. She would happily kill him, but for the fact that she would be killed in turn, at best. As it stands, they like to rib each other when they have the chance, though it's certainly not good natured.
  • To a lesser extent, Eb and Barik. They have good reasons for disliking each other, but there's a pretty transparent element of UST between them. It's not big enough of a plot point for anything to come of it other than a few humorous lines of dialogue.

Visual Novels

• Klavier Gavin serves this role in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, which is particularly strange as despite being a Prosecuting Attorney (an antagonistic role from the protagonist's point of view), he's very much a good guy with a friendly disposition towards Apollo, which makes him fall squarely into this trope. This is especially so for non-protagonist detective Ema Skye, who's actually working on the same side as him yet has little but complete disdain for the man. While part of, and the root cause of it is the more serious reason of believing him to be at fault for the disbarment of Phoenix Wright, the way she voices it and the majority of her complaints focus on his "foppish" demeanor contrasting her ideal of a prosecutor and the way some chains he wears happen to reflect sun into her eyes.
• In Code:Realize, Herlock Sholmes deals a significant blow to Lupin's pride when he interrupts the train job in Chapter 4. Thereafter, Sholmes is the one subject guaranteed to make Lupin lose his cool, even when they're not actually working against one another. Sholmes doesn't help matters by gleefully poking at Lupin whenever the opportunity presents itself; at one point on Lupin's route, Cardia observes that Sholmes seems to bring out the worst in Lupin.

Web Animation

• Inverted in Red vs. Blue, as despite the two sides literally being at war, they act in more of a friendly rivalry, and the only one to actually take the war seriously is Sarge.
• RWBY: Maria, a retired huntress, and Cordovin, the commander of an Atlas military base. Maria has to go through Cordovin's base every few years. Apparently early on Maria brought some outside cashews on the flight, Cordovin put her on the extended screening list for life, and they've been enemies ever since. Because of this feud, the heroes can't get a plane legally, so they have to steal one. When Cordovin finds out and calls them over the radio, Maria starts loudly eating cashews, which she apparently brought just to mess with her.
  Maria: You hear that, Cordo? That's the sound of me not caring! [manic laughter]

Webcomics

• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Dr. McNinja has plenty of serious (if bizarre) enemies, but he considers his true Arch-Enemy to be a "birdosaurus" who occasionally shows up to do something really annoying at the worst possible moment. While the "something really annoying" is usually potentially fatal, like "set off the huge trap you just avoided," the Doctor's attitude is still pretty comical, and the birdosaurus is objectively just a nuisance compared to the real villains.
• The rivalry between Brad and Shaz in Bloody Urban is something of a Running Gag.
• Buster Wilde Weerwolf: Trey the bouncer is this to Buster because Trey is always having to kick out Buster from the club but Buster somehow makes it back in, only for Trey to throw him out once every now and then.
• Casey and Andy:
  • Andy had an Escalating War across time with none other than Grover Cleveland.
  • Although Grover Cleveland made regular one-panel appearances for years, before the final arc where he was a major character. And it turned out there were really good reasons for all of it.
• Commander Kitty has an oddly one-sided example between CK and Ace. CK can't even hide his disdain for Ace when they talk, but Ace honestly acts more like CK's a good friend.
• Dinosaur Comics:
  • Ryan North is occasionally this to Randall Monroe of xkcd, explaining xkcd's scorning of North's field of expertise ("Because FUCK computational linguistics"). Like the previous examples, they're really friends.
  • Meanwhile, North and Andrew Hussie played this to each other for a while, to the point of... well, this. Again, actually friends.
• Dragon City:
  • Rachel from and her neighbor Emily don't like each other, though they got a little better when their daughters became friends and a little better after Rachel became Emily's deputy mayor.
  • Rachel's daughter, Erin has a girl named Cynthia that she's always feuding with at school.
• In an example that exists only in the character's head, Sensei Greg of El Goonish Shive is convinced that Carrot Top is his arch-rival.
• Hitler Rants Parodies depicts Fegelein this way.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has Jean and Voluptua. Jean has always considered Volly to be a rival for Bob's affections and resented her for it. After years of ambiguity, her suspicions have now proven to be true.
• Commander Badass in Manly Guys Doing Manly Things has Canadian Guy.
  Commander: [to his wife] What do you mean, "Don't fight Canadian Guy to death on the front lawn?" Why else would I invite Canadian Guy over!?
• Ménage à 3 has the relationship between Yuki and Sonya. Initially, their enmity is at least somewhat justified, in that they are rivals for the affections of the hopelessly passive Gary and the elusive Zii. However, by the time that they've joined Zii's band together, both have bedded Gary, and they've had a rather deranged affair, it's clear that their continued bickering is mostly fueled by the fact that Sonya is addicted to drama while Yuki sees life through an anime-tinted lens.
• As above, Narbonic's Helen Narbon has plenty of real enemies, but often seems to see her greatest foe as "MIT Student Dave Barker" ... a real person and reader of the strip.
• The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Patrianna is Wonderella's social rival, with the two of them being especially catty towards each other, both as superheroes and as their secret identities.
• Problem Sleuth and his next-door neighbour Ace Dick detest each other for unknown reasons, although at the start of the story he does accidentally blockade PS in his office with a bust of Ben Stiller. They continue writing insulting notes to each other and pissing on them until PS accidentally orders AD a load of whores, and AD decides it's time to bury the hatchet and start working together with PS to get out of the building.
• PvP has Max Powers. Cole and Brent hate Powers with a passion, with Francis often joining in on the hate on. It gets to the point his name is the comics' The Khan whenever something goes wrong for Cole. Later on Cole admits that he doesn't even really have a good reason for hating Max, he's just petty and begrudges Max the fact that he's an overall good guy and more successful than Cole^note the only hint of anything less than exemplary character on Max's part, in fact, was an inability to see Skull the troll, and this is hinted to be more self-absorption than any legitimate sin on Max's part. This admission prompts Max to go on walkabout, as the Australians call it, and he eventually comes back with the grating edges sanded off his personality, and the staff of the magazine grow to think of him as a good friend^note and he can see Skull now, too.
• Questionable Content: Jeph Jaques and Sam Logan act like each others' sitcom arch nemesis in guest comics and on their own comics' homepages, but are friends in real life.
• Skin Horse has another variant on the "has real enemies but cares more about the sitcom one" twist: Dr Englebright really is one of the villains, but that's not why Sweetheart hates her, which is more to do with policy meetings and relative positions on org charts.
• In Sluggy Freelance Gwynn seems to feel she and Torg have this relationship at times. Torg actually thinks of her as a really good friend, if maybe a little too hot-headed.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: Lalli doesn't like cats very much, which causes him to not be very fond of Team Pet Kitty.

Web Original

• The Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic play this to each other. The guys who play them actually get along in real life, but even the characters' attempts to do a review together ends in them beating each other up... again.
• Atop the Fourth Wall: Moarte and Linkara often get into petty squabbles with each other, most of them stemming from Linkara getting frustrated with Moarte taking over entire rooms of his house to host his show every year. Moarte tends to take all of Linkara's jabs in good humour. Although, as the "Be All My Sins Remembered" arc showed, Moarte only spared Linkara's life in exchange for lending him space to host his show. Moarte makes it very clear that while he'll let a lot of Linkara's insults slide, he can revoke their deal anytime he so chooses.
• Bon Appétit: Brad has this relationship with Alex Delaney, to the point where Brad has actually used the phrase "my nemesis" to describe the man. Anything that goes wrong in Brad's life will be met with cries of "DELANEY!", whether or not Delaney had anything to do with it or was even in the room.
• James "Caddicarus" Caddick and Ian "Brutalmoose" MacLeod have a ridiculously intense feud where they can't spend two minutes together without bickering or pranking each other. It feels similar to the Nerd/Critic war, except neither of their online personas are of the irritable Caustic Critic type (especially Ian, who usually reviews edutainment and Narm Charm-filled classics over jazzy music and is one of the chillest people in the Youtube reviewer sphere), making their cartoonishly over-the-top rivalry even funnier by sheer contrast with their regular stuff.
• Neither of them are main characters, but Nerris and Harrison have this kind of relationship in Camp Camp due to both thinking their kind of magic is superior to the other's. That said, the episode "Quest to Sleepy Peak Peak" reveals that they can put their differences aside if the situation is dire enough, or at least would be dire if they weren't playing pretend.
• Dad is hateful of Neighbor, stating in a few videos how he wants to be better than him in some way just to rub it in his face, and then being openly sarcastic and rude to Neighbor when they run into him at Restaurant. Neighbor himself comes off as a decent person...if not for his implied relationship with Cheryl.
• Dashie Games' Mario Kart 8 series quickly established Donkey Kong (more commonly referred to as Donkey BITCH-ASS) as this thanks to many comically timed disruptions from the ape across the series. This started because of Mario Kart 8 using an invisible rival system to determine the toughest CPU opponents exclusively in the game's Grand Prix mode, with Donkey Kong being one for Dashie's preferred character of Yoshi... But despite this, Donkey would often somehow find his way into the race even when the character choice, mode, or even game rendered him outside the bounds of this mechanic, finding ways to draw Dashie's attention and vitriol to him every time regardless of how much antagonism he actually performs. It got to the point where he's become Dashie's full-fledged nemesis in general and something of a Big Bad to the channel as a whole, being featured in the channel banner to this day, consistently chosen as an opponent in other games such as Mario Party when the choice is given, and resulting in any video where Dashie plays as Donkey Kong such as within one of his own games being treated as a reluctant Enemy Mine. The most ironic part about this is that Dashie has on many occasions voiced his love for the Donkey Kong Country games and has proven himself to be considerably skilled at the original too, which has made their relationship into something of a We Used to Be Friends.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  • Tien manages to becomes this for both Vegeta and Cell. He constantly tweaks their noses with insults while shrugging off their responses, loving every minute of it. The two could kill him at any time but doing so would means Tien wins since they took the easy way out and they're not willing to give him that. Well, up until Cell starts having his Villainous Breakdown and decides to blow up Earth. Then there's how Cell Came Back Strong after his botched self-destruction and made his survival clear by shooting a hole through Trunks' chest, quickly apologizing and admitting he was aiming for Tien but missed because almost everyone present was "too weak" for him to pick out in the dust cloud.
  • The sequel series, HFIL has Freeza and Cell developing a mutually antagonistic relationship rather quickly. And Cell makes macaroni art of himself choking the life out of Tien as a depiction of his greatest regret, since he never got the chance to do it while he was alive.
• Escape the Night has Matt and Lele, who dislike each other for extremely petty and vague reasons. This is the only rivalry in the show that wasn't just for camera, these two actually hated each other in real life. The fights, arguments and insults we see in the show were actually real.
• Gary: Landlord of the Flies: Exaggerated with James, one of Gary's tenants. The blog never mentions him doing anything wrong to Gary, yet the latter despises him on a deeply disproportionate level – going so far as to steal his TV, break into his car, and viciously insult him over the phone.
• Life of Boris: Boris has three.
  • The man only known as "asshole neighbor Vadim", who insists on doing home improvement projects when Boris wants to sleep, at one point paid off a debt to Boris with novelty napkins, and beats Boris at "War Thunder".
  • Kolya the Western Capitalist Spy occasionally appears, seducing young slavs with his decadent capitalist ways. Of course, Kolya is easily spotted because he squats on his toes.
  • One who was more prominent in the early days of the channel is Igor The Incompetent Programmer, whose shitty code makes Boris eat his ushanka in frustration. However, since Boris could let his keyboard go and become a full-time Youtuber, Igor has slid into obscurity.
• Michael Ian Black on Mike & Tom Eat Snacks hates Ian McShane to the point that he could be considered Mike's nemesis, because according to Mike he was up for the role of Swearengen on Deadwood, but got sick and Ian took the role from him.
• In Noob, Omega Zell is The Team Wannabe to Justice guild, but also a self-centered He-Man Woman Hater. Saphir, the person who gets to call the shots on whether or not he gets in, is basically an Iron Lady with a little of The Perfectionist mixed in. Their personal interactions shown in the webseries and mentioned to happen in the novels are conflictual, but their respective guilds remain allies to each other.
• The Nostalgia Critic: As of his review of A Simple Wish, the Nostalgia Critic has a rivalry in Mara Wilson (also fueled by his past bashing of her roles in Matilda and Thomas & Friends).
• In Qwerpline Gus seems to enjoy irritating Graham and Alex, for example by giving Lorna Schlitzwhistle the studio's new number whenever they change it.
• As a joking rivalry between RT Game and Call Me Kevin, which exists alongside a recurring joke among fans of them being the same person. They're both tall, lean, Irish Letsplayers who play similar games and indulge somewhat similar black comedy with a cheerful presentation. The peak of the joke was when Kevin made amusic video singing (Take me Home) Country Roads, 'stealing' a recurring gag from RT's channel.
• From the SCP Foundation, SCP-914 and Researcher Darby. For context, objects inserted into SCP-914 on different settings will be processed in certain ways (an energy drink and a fruit salad, for example, produced a fruit salad-flavored energy drink). Researcher Darby's tests almost always end in disaster/near death, to the point that SCP-914 purposefully trolls him. In one hilarious example, a rubber ball inserted on the Very Fine setting bounced around the facility at crotch level looking for Darby.
• SMPLive:
  • AntVenom and Schlatt have a rivalry over their different opinions on the music disc Stal.
  • Carson is Travis's during the first month of SMPLive, with the two getting increasingly absurd hits on each other back and forth and getting into petty squabbles constantly.
• In Soon I Will Rule The World, the main character has an unusual one in that said archnemesis is one of his own minions, the Shapeshifter, who keeps playing annoying pranks on him. He would get rid of him if not for the fact that the Shapeshifter has a nigh ungodly resilience to death and whenever AA tries to kick him out, it always turns into a case of The Cat Came Back.
• Iconic Twitter shitposter dril has a complicated relationship with his former friend DigimonOtis, with whom he once attempted to open a barbership (which fell through due to dril's phobia of hair). They fell out in 2012 after an unknown incident, and Dril attempted to make amends by making an artwork for him, which caused DigimonOtis to block him. Dril later claimed DigimonOtis "made my life a living hell for 20 years" and called him a nerd. After this, he regularly criticised the DigimonOtis brand and claimed to want to destroy his empire via 'a coordinated campaign of viral folk songs'. DigimonOtis responded by sending death threats. On April 2015, Dril announced a truce during which DigimonOtis would unblock his account to end the feud, but was kept waiting, had to go to Otis's house, then abandoned the truce by claiming the new Digimon game looked like shit before freezing the peace treaty in piss and throwing it on the freeway. While Dril has praised DigimonOtis's efforts to "keep Sharia Law out of the donkey kong 64 wiki", the two remain nemeses. As of writing, their last known contact was in November 2019, when Dril left a severed human thumb in Otis's bed to call out his disloyalty.
  Fuck Otis. I will never follow a bastard such as this.
• Two Best Friends Play: The Ustabiaz, as shown when their leader stole Matt's drink and caused him to scream their name at the top of his lungs. However, if you were to ask any Bestfriendnatic about it, they would tell you that the Ustabiaz are the Zaibatsu's deadliest foes, perhaps even more so than David Cage.
• This is more or less the best way to describe the relationship between Encyclopedia Dramatica and Uncyclopedia, and The Other Wiki too for that matter. (We're the wacky special guest if anything.) Although the former two tend not to bother feuding anymore since given that they're both parody wikis (albeit with entirely different themes) and all involved just look silly.
• UrinatingTree:
  • In his video about the Washington Capitals that the Caps of late have gotten one with THE FUCKING PENGUINS!, as have his Pittsburgh Steelers and THE FUCKING PATRIOTS!
  • More directly, there is a guy who gets blamed for everything wrong in the sports world now by him and his fandom. Fuck you, Spanos!
• In Vester And Friends , Mario has two. Link who thinks he's better than Mario and often gets beat up by the red plumber, and Luigi who calls the red plumber a "Fat Italian Plumber" while Mario calls Luigi a "Skinny Winny"
• Vinesauce Tomodachi Life
  • Walrus is by far the biggest one. He's a Nice Guy, is beloved by just about everyone, and tends to solve more problems than he causes. Why does Vinny hate him? Because he "stole" (read: got asked out by) Two-Faced, who, as far as Vinny is concerned, is only allowed to be with Vinesauce. Thus, Vinny does everything he can to bother Walrus, including feeding him hated foods and putting him in a jail cell apartment. It borders on Unknown Rival at times, as Walrus has stated at one point that he's devoted to Vinny. Vinny doesn't have this attitude forever; after a decision he makes leads to Two-Faced cheating on Walrus for DK in Episode 37, he ends up feeling sorry for him, and from then on starts treating him just as well as he does anyone else.
  • Bonzi Buddy and Dolan are also this to Vinny. This isn't because of anything they did in-game, but rather because of their origins; Bonzi is a Discredited Meme that grew popular because of Vinesauce, and Dolan is a not-entirely-discredited meme that was added on a whim. Vinny loathes both of them, and constantly threatens to evict them, even though he never does so. Unlike Walrus, they do not redeem themselves in time, and they both get the axe in Episode 38.
  • Broccoli is a minor one; he doesn't do much good or bad, but his Smug Snake-like face makes Vinny very angry, and he has a strong desire to punch him. This desire only grew when Broccoli acted very immature over getting a job in Episode 52.
• In We Are Our Avatars, The Grinning General has it in for Eridan Ampora because as GG puts it, "HIPSTERRR!" Here is an example of an exchange between the both of them in Trollian.
  cyberneticSharklover began trolling caligulasAquarium
  CS: HIPSTERRR! ^note  This is supposed to be in the color of the rainbow
  CA: oh jegus its the rainbowwblood again
  CA: listen wwe wwill have enough convversations in the future so please dont mind wwhen i do this
  CS: Do what???
  CA: this
  caligulasAquarium blocked cyberneticSharklover
• Welcome to Night Vale:
  • Cecil, the Character Narrator, absolutely loathes Steve Carlsberg, for reasons that have yet to be made clear. Some fans assume they're exes. However, it appears that Cecil has an entirely valid reason to hate Steve as he's the neglectful (at least according to Cecil) stepfather of Cecil's niece. Later episodes give even more depth and nuance to their relationship, suggesting that Cecil only dislikes Steve because he is too open about the town's many dark secrets, and is afraid that it'll affect said niece. It should also be noted, that as far as we can tell, Steve seems to be quite nice, a protective step-father, and his scones are probably decent.
  • The nearby town of Desert Bluffs appears to fill this role for Night Vale as a whole. Albeit quite a serious one.
  • There's also the Apache Tracker. Every time he comes up, Cecil goes out of his way to remind the listener what a racist asshole he is.

Western Animation

• Archer:
  • Mallory is constantly talking about trying to one-up that bitch Trudy Beekman, her best frenemy who never actually shows up on screen.
  • ISIS as a whole had this sort of relationship with the more competent ODIN, as well as the KGB. They could never quite be real arch-nemeses, as Mallory was in a romantic relationship with the heads of both organizations. However, things seem to have gotten Darker and Edgier between the rival organizations, as Len Trexler (the head of ODIN), was last seen brainwashed and possibly lobotomized by ISIS agents, Major Jakov (of the KGB) has been murdered, and his murderer (ODIN agent Barry) is now running the KGB and is a completely psychopathic cyborg.
• AP of Atomic Puppet has this relationship with the Felt family's pet cat Bubbles. AP claims he's a supervillain conspiring to destroy Atomic Puppet from the inside, but Bubbles remains just the ditzy, overweight feline the family loves.
• Babar and Rataxes' animosity in Babar is basically a version of this trope with diplomatic relationships, as the show is mostly comedic and lighthearted, the rivalry between both sovereigns is Played for Laughs most of the time. Only in the movies is Rataxes is truly evil.
• Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! had Daphne... and all sea creatures, somehow. With dolphins, at least, it was related to her somehow owing them money; when she paid the debt, the dolphins stopped harassing her. Other sea life, however, has proven not so forgiving.
• Beavis And Butthead: Principal McVicker fills this role to the titular characters, being an overworked, antagonistic principal who hates Beavis and Butt-head (with the feeling being mutual) and always trying to get them expelled or kicked out because he's tired of dealing with them stressing him out. And as certain episodes like "Wet Behind The Rears" show, he'll also try to humiliate them in petty ways if he thinks he can get away with it.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • The title restaurant is across the street from Jimmy Pesto's Pizzeria, and the two managers have a mutual obsessive hatred as a result.
  • Tina has a mutual antipathy with Tammy, one of the popular kids in her class, albeit not as popular as she thinks.
  • Phillip Frond, the Control Freak Wagstaff guidance counselor, can be played off against any of the Belcher kids, but he and Louise are special enemies.
  • Louise also has Logan Bush.
  • Linda has Colleen Caviello as well as Cynthia Bush, Logan's mother.
• BoJack Horseman:
  • An early episode has BoJack feel this way about Neil McBeil after BoJack said that his dibs on muffins means nothing to him.
  • Princess Carolyn and Vanessa Gecko. Which is eventually revealed years later to be one-sided on Carolyn's part.
• Camp Lazlo: Samson and Raj dislike each other and get into petty squabbles.
• Chowder: Mung Daal and Endive are both restaurant-owning cooks with a large rivalry, mostly with Endive trying to one up Mung and succeeding most of the time. Most of the time because there are times Mung has her caught by the short hairs such as "Endive's Dirty Secret" where not just Mung Daal's Catering Company blackmails her into letting them use her pools but also the rest of Marzipan City as well!
• Cupcake & Dino: General Services has two.
  • For Cupcake and Dino, there's Peetree.
  • For uncle Chance, there's Sneaky Stan.
• Darkwing Duck hated Gizmoduck, mainly due to his skillset (Flying Brick vs Badass Normal) and popularity (The Ace vs Butt-Monkey) being the complete opposite of Darkwing's.
• In Dinosaur Train, Mr. Pteranodon doesn't get along with Larry Lambeosaurus due to the latter's stupidity.
• In Ed, Edd n Eddy, Eddy has petty squabbles with Kevin and Sarah, who seem to hate him the most out of all 3 of the Eds.
• In The Fairly OddParents!, Mr. Turner had his one-sided rivalry with his next-door neighbor, Sheldon Dinkleberg. Or, as Mr. Turner usually called him, "Dinklebeeerg...". Mind you, in one episode the two of them fought each other with milk-powered Giant Mecha and Dinkleberg didn't seem to have a problem with the idea. It's implied this resentment is both because Dinkleberg used to date Mrs. Turner, and because Dinkleberg doesn't have any kids and can afford a lot more nice things. This is eventually played with in the 7th season episode "Operation Dinkleberg", where Dinkleberg reveals himself to be completely evil after all and the leader of M.E.A.N. (Ministry of Evil and Abusive Neighbors), only to later reveal to Timmy that it was all an act (that cost him $30,000!) because he knew how much it meant to Mr. Turner to have an arch-nemesis.
• Family Guy
  • Peter vs Ernie the Giant Chicken, a store hand who gave him an invalid coupon, spawning multiple long drawn epic battles.
  • Brian used to have one in Stewie, though Character Development has slowly evolved them into Vitriolic Best Buds.
  • Afterwards Brian started another rivalry with Quagmire. This was initially more of a one sided hatred on Quagmire's part at its earliest points, who loathed all of Brian's preachy, unctuous qualities, though after too many gratuitous (and sometimes violent) outbursts, Brian started venting a similar anger and contempt towards Quagmire's juxtaposing self righteous hedonism and began provoking or heckling him on purpose.
  • Chris/Monkey. Subverted in that it was revealed that the monkey was not evil and never wanted to hurt Chris.
  • Meg has a rivalry with Connie, but it's mostly one-sided, as Meg has tried many times to befriend Connie.
• Futurama:
  • The ongoing and largely unexplained hatred of Zoidberg on Hermes' part. It was shown on subtle occasions that Zoidberg was something of an annoying leech to him, as well as his incompetent qualities that Hermes barely tolerates the rest of the team for. Add to that his sheer lack of backbone and he's the ideal stress ball for a traditional bullying employer. In one episode, Zoidberg claims Hermes is his best friend, as he is the only one who cares enough to insult him even when he doesn't have any reason to, as opposed to the others, who only insult him only when he does something wrong.
  • Professor Farnsworth's rival "Wernstrom!" and smug "young" former understudy who swore revenge for ranking one of his pop-quizes an A minus (for bad handwriting). However, when Farnsworth suggests an Enemy Mine, Wernstrom is overjoyed at the prospect.
• The Ghost and Molly McGee has Andrea Davenport, the popular rich girl at Molly's school, who is the only one who reliably get under Molly's skin or put dents into her Incorruptible Pure Pureness, usually by accident or bad circumstance.
• Gravity Falls:
  • Dipper is openly hostile towards Jerkass Emo Teen Robbie after he starts dating Dipper's crush, Wendy Corduroy. This comes to a head in "Fight Fighters", where Robbie gets fed up of Dipper's reciprocation to his provocative and bullying behaviour and threatens to beat him up, only to come to the realization that he doesn't hate Dipper enough to physically hurt him after Dipper spared him from McSkirmish's rampage.
  • Stan and Gideon's bickering play with this—Gideon is genuinely evil, having tried to commit murder just by the end of his first episode and spent most of the season trying to steal ownership of the Mystery Shack, but in episodes where he's not the main antagonist he spends most of his screentime inflicting minor, pointless torments upon Stan. Stan, not knowing of Gideon's worst side until the first season finale, treats the kid as simply an annoyance.
  • Mabel outright calls Rich Bitch Pacifica her nemesis, and the two get into increasingly escalated conflicts with each other. It reaches a point when Mabel has no problems resorting to cheating in a golf game using sentient golf balls just to one up her. Of course, when said golf balls attempted to murder Pacifica does Mabel realize that their rivalry might a be a bit unhealthy and the two eventually settle on a truce.
• Grojband has the title band's Distaff Counterpart rivals The Newmans (guess who they're named after?), who always compete with the band for various gigs and at the different Battle of the Bands they play at.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Uncle and Tohru's mother. They insult each other, play mean-spirited pranks, and compete with each other in everything from Mahjong, to Tic-Tac-Toe, to shuffleboard, to arm wrestling. They even come close to blows several times, only to be stopped by Jackie or Tohru. However, they always put aside their differences and work together whenever bad guys threaten them and their family, and Uncle even bought her a Christmas present.
• Kappa Mikey provides us an odd example, where the lead is the Sitcom Arch-Nemesis to another main character. Mikey is utterly oblivious to Lily's seething hatred and jealousy towards him. This is what happens when you put the Cloudcuckoolander and the Alpha Bitch on the same set.
• Kim Possible
  • Kim and Bonnie Rockwaller. Considering the latter is an Alpha Bitch, it isn't particularly surprising; she's a constant recurring thorn in the "basic average girl" side of Kim's life.
  • Mr. Barkin. Mostly toward Ron, but occasionally toward Kim as well such as the episode where he catches her not making it to class on time and gives her detention.
  • Several of Kim's actual enemies — including her Arch-Enemy Dr. Drakken and his henchwoman Shego, ended up evolving/devolving into this sort of relationship, Depending on the Writer. Drakken has tried to outright kill Kim Possible on several occasions, but he has also spent a great deal of time trying to publicly embarrass or bicker with her; Shego, meanwhile, is just as likely to take potshots at Kim's fashion sense as fight her to the death, and once stole a green leather jacket simply because Kim had her eye on it.
  • Drakken arguably has the supervillain equivalent of this in Professor Dementor, his Always Someone Better arch-rival who keeps one-upping him with better funding, equipment, henchmen and general level of success. They rarely actually fight, though Drakken has been known to steal from Dementor because his inventions are grudgingly better.
• King of the Hill: Hank Hill had... Thatherton! A rival propane salesman who ran his own propane business that constantly competed against Strickland Propane for customers and used less than morally scrupulous methods.
• League of Super Evil: Justice Gene is this to Voltar, as he's the only superhero (read as in: a random guy who put on a costume and decided to oppose Voltar) who cares enough to try and stop Voltar's "evil" schemes. Voltar, on the other hand, is utterly delighted to have his own superhero enemy because it makes him feel like a real supervillain.
• In Milo Murphy's Law, the safety-obsessed crossing guard Elliot Decker seems to consider Milo his arch enemy.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • After she undergoes her Heel–Face Turn, Trixie ends up acting as one of these to Twilight, spending most of their mutual screentime bothering her without ever crossing into genuine villainy. Much of the comedy comes from the fact that Twilight is so far out of Trixie's league that it should be a Comically Lopsided Rivalry, but manages to get on Twilight's nerves in just the right way to make their rivalry mutual.
  • Discord, another former antagonist (who was a much bigger threat) ends up in this role for Twilight as well after their reformation, with it being a tossup whether any given annoyance is purely meant to irritate her or double as a teaching moment.
  • Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are this to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, taunting them about their blank flanks and also referring to them as such. Then came Season 5's "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" when Silver Spoon finally called out Diamond Tiara for her behavior which led to them befriending the Crusaders when they got their cutie marks.
• Pet Alien:
  • Tommy Cadle has his next-door neighbor, Melba Manners. Melba frequently bosses Tommy around and insults him, but constantly suffers comedic misfortune as a result of Tommy's aliens' antics.
  • Swanky and Flip despise each other. Swanky is a Jerkass to all of the other aliens (and Tommy), but Flip is the only one to return Swanky's hatred and and frequently attacks him in comedic ways.
• Phineas and Ferb: Although Doofenshmirtz is an actual villain and he has a real archnemesis/best friend in Perry the Platypus, he also has a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis in Rodney, a fellow villain who's constantly trying to outdo him, and his brother Roger, who was the favorite when they were children and still gets the lion's share of their parents' attention.
• Puppy Dog Pals has snooty poodle Cupcake and her bodyguard Rufus.
• Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: Brent, the school's metal shop teacher's apprentice, is this towards Howard. He only calls him by his last name and he got upset when he thought Howard was replacing him as apprentice.
• Regular Show:
  • Rigby feels this way about his brother Don purely because Don has had more success than him and is taller (despite actually being younger than Rigby). This is one sided - Don loves Rigby and wants to spend time with him, and shows absolutely no signs of sibling rivalry with him. Rigby eventually comes to realize this and tones down his aggression.
  • Both Rigby and Mordecai had an actual one in Muscle Man early in the show's run, but overtime this too subsided and Muscle Man became more of a Vitriolic Best Bud.
• Rick and Morty:
  • Rick Sanchez and Jerry Smith. Rick cannot stand Jerry for impregnating his daughter on prom night, causing her to give up on her options, and also for being cowardly, mediocre, and using other people's pity. Jerry meanwhile can't stand how Rick has hijacked his family's attention while putting them in danger. When Jerry gives Beth an ultimatum to get Rick to leave or else he will, Beth instead chooses Rick, causing her to divorce Jerry. The two of them still manage to be this (albeit to a lesser extent) during the season that Jerry and Beth are split up, and once they get back together, it comes back full force.
  • By later seasons, Rick has also become this with the President of the United States. Rick and President Curtis are Worthy Opponents who frequently try to one-up and out-gambit each other, with Rick seeing him as a hypocrite and a thorn in his side while the President considers Rick and Morty one of the biggest threats to the country and the world. Nevertheless, despite having rather violent, quite destructive fights, Rick and the POTUS are Friendly Enemies who both sincerely enjoy their adversarial relationship, to the point that multiple other characters tell them that they should "just f*ck and get it over with already."
• Ed Bighead to the titled protagonist of Rocko's Modern Life. Rocko is largely oblivious towards Mr. Bighead's hatred for him and is actually quite friendly towards him sometimes (especially since Mrs. Bighead has no animosity towards Rocko), not unlike Spongebob and Squidward.
• Gem Stone is Sabrina: The Animated Series answer to Libby, except worse as she goes out of her way to humiliate Sabrina in several episodes. Luckily, Gem's plans often backfire.
• The Simpsons has many examples :
  • Homer abhors Ned Flanders, out of both jealousy for his good lifestyle and popularity as well as his insufferably pious and goody goody demeanour. Ned was almost always jovial and kind in return, though by later episodes starts showing some mutual contempt after everything Homer does to him.
  • There is a noted mutual dislike between Homer and Patty and Selma, being Obnoxious In-Laws and all.
  • It's also a Running Gag that Homer dislikes Bart's best friend Milhouse with no firm reason given.
  • Marge has Helen Lovejoy, a gossipy woman who will frequently criticize Marge and her family.
  • Maggie had a lampshaded case with Gerald, the baby with one eyebrow. There's amusingly little context to it outside the lampshade hanging.
  • The relationships among some of the supporting characters touch this, e. g. Principal Skinner vs. Groundskeeper Willie (who frequently makes disparaging remarks about him behind his back) and Mayor Joe Quimby vs. Police Chief Clancy Wiggum (corrupt incompetent politician vs. corrupt incompetent official).
• South Park:
  • The show has their iconic rivalry with Kyle and Cartman (though Cartman is also hated by ALL of the other kids too). Cartman is an insane, sadistic anti-Semitic Comedic Sociopath, Kyle is an over-persistent moral-loving voice of logic (and a Jew). Their feud ranges anywhere between exchanging childish insults, attempting to humiliate the other (typically Cartman's style) or actually trying to kill each other on numerous occasions. Cartman is seen as very obsessive with their rivalry, and can go great lengths to ensure his rival's misery. Kyle himself has also been shown to get quite competitive on multiple occasions as well, just to get back at his frenemy.
  • Cartman develops an intense rivalry with Kenny when they both adopt superhero alter-egos, The Coon and Mysterion respectively. The Coon is jealous of Mysterion for being more respected and taken more seriously as a crimefighter (though most of the "crimes" both of them report on are petty, like littering) and because The Coon came first and Kenny is clearly inspired by / copying Cartman. Mysterion meanwhile thinks that The Coon is a complete psycho who has no idea what being a hero actually means and thinks it is more about getting attention and making the world a better place for himself, and if anything The Coon could be regarded as Mysterion's actual Arch-Enemy since Coon / Cartman is Obliviously Evil and doesn't see an issue with truly despicable actions like Engineered Heroics, terrorism or even taking control of Cthulu and using him to kill or destroy anything he doesn't like.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • As often as their fights get serious, Plankton and Mr. Krabs sometimes fall into this (particularly when Plankton is written as a Harmless Villain, and is little more than a mere nuisance to Mr. Krabs). In "Spy Buddies", the two even had a bet that Mr. Krabs could steal his own formula if he were in Plankton's place.
  • Squidward and Gary. Squidward hates Gary for frequently intruding on his property, while Gary once viciously mauled "Smelly" (really Squidward covered in concrete) and SpongeBob states that Squidward's the only person that he's ever seen mauled so brutally by him.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • As a whole, the Beta Shift quartet has the Delta Shift quartet. The two sides hate each other with a passion and try to one-up each other.
  • On a personal level, there's Rutherford and Livik. Rutherford hates Livik because Livik is Always Someone Better. Livik hates Rutherford because he took his promotion on a whim by Tendi.
• On Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Marco has this relationship with Jeremy Birnbaum, his rich, Jerkass karate rival, who delights in Marco's misery even when he doesn't cause it directly.
• Transformers: Animated:
  • The show portrays Optimus and Sentinal Prime in this light, though later episodes reveal why they act this way towards each other.
  • Wasp is an arrogant Jerkass towards Bumblebee (and Bulkhead) to the point where it earns him the honor of being the primary suspect as a Decepticon spy, courtesy of Bumblebee. Their names and color scheme help drive home the very familiar dynamic that's portrayed between the two.
• Given the way supervillainy is treated in The Venture Bros., The Monarch and Doctor Venture fall under this trope. The Monarch's aggression was initially hardly noticed by Venture himself, seems almost completely arbitrary (aside from the fact that Venture made fun of The Monarch's poetry in college, and stole his truck when they were kids which the Monarch didn't even remember), and Doctor Girlfriend has even acknowledged within the show that the two share enough similarities to be good friends were it not for the supposed hatred that exists between them. However, the Monarch has genuine, murderous hatred toward Rusty for reasons yet to be revealed.
• In a parody of traditional sitcoms, the Wander over Yonder episode "The Bad Neighbors" essentially had Emperor Awesome be Lord Hater's variant of this trope while retreating on a planet known as "Suburbion 5" complete with a laugh track every line.

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