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Not So Different Remark / The DCU

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    Comic Books 

Comic Books

  • Batman:
    • In the first issue of one Azrael series, Az is on the hunt for a serial killer. During the course of his investigation, he realizes the killer is targeting people who allowed a horrible crime to happen. When they finally confront each other, the Avenging Angel gives himself the not so different speech, and allows the killer to depart.
    • That he is not so different from his greatest enemies, especially The Joker, is repeatedly shown to be one of Batman's greatest fears. It's not an unfounded idea either; he may not be cruel or a murderer, but he's still not the sanest guy. In fact, most of the members of his Rogues Gallery are a dark reflection of a certain aspect of his personality.
      • The Killing Joke has the Joker try to prove his similarities to Batman in his own psychotically twisted way. In the end, after Batman proves that the Joker's biggest point, that everyone was just like him, false, he and Joker share a joke implying neither of them is really sane, and end the book laughing maniacally together. One of the Joker's primary goals is to prove that everyone else is not so different from him. He tried it in The Killing Joke, and he tried it again near the end of Batman: No Man's Land when he shot Gordon's wife Sarah.
    • Batman/Scarecrow: Year One discusses this a few times. Batman and Scarecrow both, in private moments, consider the other's similarities to himself:
      Batman: It's not about the killing. Guy dresses up in something horrific, goes out into the night and terrifies his enemies. He's acting out...from deep, visceral trauma...probably childhood...sound like anyone you know?
      Scarecrow: Curious bird, our Mr. Batman. In some elliptical ways not unlike myself. Darkly introspective...brooding...clearly traumatized in early childhood. Like to meet our bat friend one day.
      • Robin later disagrees that this is the case:
        Robin: I believe you loved your parents, lost them, and felt a deep, visceral guilt about it. Our guy probably killed his parents, lost his mind, and feels no guilt whatsoever. You're not like him, Bruce.
    • Mr. Zsasz gave Batman one of these speeches during the Knightfall crossover. His main point was that they both hunted people.
    • Batman himself is also regularly used as the unsavoury person from whom the hero is not so different, when other heroes accuse their Bat-raised team members.
    • Batgirl: while Barbara Gordon is more emotionally stable than Bruce and is actually willing to let people get close to her without being compelled to push them away, she can be every bit the manipulative Control Freak that he is. In an early Birds Of Prey storyline, Huntress called out Barbara on her secret attempts to "fix" Huntress (Huntress took issue with being considered "broken") and left the team. As she left, she accused Barbara of turning out to be a manipulative jackass just like Batman.
    • Huntress thinks this about her (even more) Evil Counterpart, Tabby Brennan, in Birds Of Prey.
      Huntress: Can't help it...that young woman grew up the daughter of a KILLER. Just like I did. Just like me.
    • Played for laughs at least once; when waiting for the police in Batman's custody, a captured serial killer makes a mocking speech of this nature about how Batman is driven by the same bloodthirsty impulses that he is, and that it's only a matter of time before Batman snaps and gives into them. Batman points out that if this is true, then the most likely first target is going to be whatever crazed serial killer he happens to be standing next to, particularly if said serial killer is insulting him. Crazed serial killer decides that Shutting Up Now is probably a good idea.
    • Red Hood and the Outlaws: How Red Hood handles his Talon during the Night of the Owls. He relates to being killed and reanimated as a killer, and not being in control of his own life. The Talon asks Red Hood for help, as he cannot self terminate.
  • In Blackest Night, Saint Walker tries to connect with Atrocitus by pointing out that he has lost his family as well, so he can understand his pain. However, Atrocitus retorts that Saint Walker lost his family in an accident, while Atrocitus' family was murdered.
  • Shazam! (2012): Billy is given a vision of how Black Adam became the champion of magic, and sees a young Egyptian boy offered the power to save his family. He realises that Adam is a kid in over his head, just like him, and tries to reason with him on that level. It turns out that if he'd seen the vision all the way through, he'd have learned that Adam was the boy's uncle, who killed him because that sort of power didn't belong in the hands of a child.
  • The Mist (Nash) from the 1990s Starman series gave this speech to Jack Knight, citing the fact that they were both carrying out the roles because of their fathers. Jack goes out of his way to prove her wrong by being nice to her father, the original Mist.
  • Superman:
    • Supergirl and Lobo in the New 52. Although the former is a hero devoted to protect people and her cousin Superman's protegee and the latter is a violent jerkass and Anti-Hero at best, both of them are two angry, lonely aliens and the last of their respective kinds. In the Red Daughter of Krypton, Lobo tells this to Supergirl:
      Lobo: I know, because I was like you once. Bitter. Alone. Mad as Hell. But I didn't let it consume me. I put it to work.
    • In Bizarrogirl, Supergirl realizes that she and her Bizarro counterpart are not really opposites as much as reflections as soon as she meets her.
      Supergirl: But then you happened. Everything I was thinking... Every emotion in my body... Every doubt I had inside... I saw all of them in your cracked face. You were like me.
    • Several examples in Supergirl (Rebirth):
      • When Kara fights Lar-On, she explains that they are not so different in order to appease him.
        Supergirl: I know your anger. Your confusion. I remember it from when I was stranded here. Disoriented. A different language. Different world.
      • While she sees Supergirl's rocket leaving Earth, her foster mother thinks is how her biological parents felt when they blasted their only daughter off into space to save her.
        Eliza: Look at her go. It feels strange, Chase, blasting Kara off into space. This must be how her real parents felt.
        Cameron: I think they'd relate.
    • In Krypton No More, Superman has been tricked into believing he is a mutant human (long story). After defeating two mutant super-villains, Superman thinks that they are not so different:
      Superman: The ironic part is — They and I have so much in common! We were all victims of mutation, yet they turned their powers against the normal world...
    • The Black Ring provides a rare example where it's the hero who utters this line. When Lex Luthor realizes that Superman is Clark Kent, Superman tries to show him that they are more similar than Luthor wants to believe◊. Luthor being Luthor, he refuses to admit it.
      Superman: You see, Lex? We're more similar than you think.
    • While it's not a comparison Brainiac himself would ever make, one of Superman's greatest fears is becoming like Brainiac, since the Coluan is everything that people like Luthor think Superman is like. A mental battle between Superman and his hallucination of Brainiac in Superman Vol. 2 #219 sums it up.
      Brainiac: You're Kal-El, son of Jor-El and Lara. [punches Superman, drawing blood] You're an alien. Pretending to owe allegiance to a world that will never be your own.
      Superman: N-no... not... pretending...
      [Superman tries to fight back, but Brainiac blocks and punches him again, flooring him]
      Brainiac: You're hiding from the truth, as if calling yourself Clark Kent changes what you are. You and I are alike in many ways. You hate me because I've found the one thing that you will never know.
      Superman: [coughing up blood] Wh... what?
      Brainiac: I am at peace with what I am. I don't pretend to some false humanity, hoping weaker beings will "accept" me.
      Superman: They do accept me... Lois... loves me...
      Brainiac: I looked into her mind, Kal-El. I saw the truth. She is afraid of you. They all are.
    • Last Daughter of Krypton: Reign insists that she and Supergirl have more in common than what Supergirl is willing admit, what with being aliens with little recollection of how they lost their homeworld and became strangers in a strange land. Nonetheless, Supergirl refuses to believe she can have something in common with a world-conquering, blood-thirsty monster.
      Reign: But you remain blind to what we have in common.
      Supergirl: We have NOTHING in common!
      Reign: No? We both seek answers to our origins. Like you, I awoke with my memory fractured. [...] But for both you and I, the full truth of what happened to us remains hidden in the wake of Krypton's destruction. And yet we both sense that this world might play some part.
    • "Superman and Spider-Man": When confronted by Superman, Doctor Doom states they are much alike: men of great power, who could change the world. However, he chooses to impose his will upon the world, whereas Superman refuses to, letting people suffer famines, wars...Superman replies he would become a dictator by doing that, which would effectively turn him into another Doom.
  • In The Sandman: Overture, Night notes that Dream and Desire are too similar which resulted in their disagreements, while Dream insists that they're nothing alike by insisting that Desire is selfish, manipulative and single-minded, three qualities that DO apply to Dream. Moreover, Desire actively works with Dream to save all of reality, proving that Desire also takes his/her responsibilities seriously.

     Films 

Films

  • In The LEGO Batman Movie, the Joker tries to pull this to get Batman to send him to the Phantom Zone. It works.
  • Batman uses a not-so-different Speech to try to reason with Catwoman near the end of Batman Returns in hopes of demonstrating that he understands her struggle with an alter ego that deliberately rejects hope for a happy life. Awareness that he is not so different from the Penguin as Batman and from Max Shreck as Bruce Wayne is also hinted at being his reason for taking his battles against them so personally.
  • DC Extended Universe
    • In the opening scene of Man of Steel, Jor-El must cast the deciding vote on whether or not to send General Zod and his cohorts to the Phantom Zone for their crimes. Zod tries to convince Jor-El to join him by pointing out that Jor-El, like Zod, has also come into conflict with the rest of Krypton's council many times in the past. Jor-El responds by silently casting his vote in favor of banishment.
    • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Clark confronts Bruce, having just learned he's Batman, and, under the guise of an interview, condemns Batman's violent vigilantism and that "he believes he's above the law". Bruce snarks back the similarity of how he sees Superman.
      Bruce Wayne: The Daily Planet criticizing those who think they're above the law is a little hypocritical, wouldn't you say? Considering every time your hero saves a cat out of a tree, you write a puff piece editorial about an alien who, if he wanted to, could burn the whole place down. There wouldn't be a damn thing we can do to stop it.
      • The second not so different moment is at the end of their fight, where Clark, about to be killed by Batman, begs Batman to save Martha Kent, who's being held hostage by Lex Luthor. While Clark calling out to save "Martha", makes Bruce stop, since it's the same name as his mother, the not so different moment comes when Lois Lane reveals that Clark's talking about his own mother. This strikes a chord with Bruce, still badly affected by the death of Martha Wayne, allowing him to empathise with Clark, snapping the Dark Knight out of his Unstoppable Rage and realise just how far he's fallen.
    • In Suicide Squad (2016) Deadshot insists that Rick Flagg has more in common with him than he thinks. Comparing the latter's work as a Black Ops agent to his own as a hit man. While Flagg rejects the notion initially, he is eventually forced to admit that the things he's doing for Waller are no better than any of Deadshot's assassination contracts.
    • Wonder Woman (2017): Diana believes that humans in general are good and it's Ares who's corrupting them. When she meets him and he reveals just how little provocation they have needed to commit atrocities, she's faced with how, for all her idealism, she's not so different from him: if she goes on thinking humans could not do such things if they are "good", she'll have to agree with him that they are "evil". And they both originally set out to destroy the evil that led to the war.
  • Superman: The Movie: In the opening scene, Jor-El must cast the deciding vote on whether or not to send General Zod and his cohorts to the Phantom Zone for their crimes. Zod tries to convince Jor-El to join him by pointing out that Jor-El, like Zod, has also come into conflict with the rest of Krypton's council many times in the past. Jor-El responds by silently casting his vote in favor of banishment.

    Live-Action TV 

Live-Action TV

  • Arrowverse
    • Arrow
      • In "Muse of Fire", Helena says this to Oliver Queen, despite his insistence that what he does is about justice, not vengeance. (She has a list like his, and breaks a man's neck because "no-one can know my secret", just like Oliver does in the pilot.) He tries to mentor her as a vigilante but only succeeds in making her a more dangerous killer. In later seasons he admits he failed because at the time they really weren't so different, as Oliver hadn't adopted his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule.
      • In "Dodger" the Villain of the Week argues to the Arrow that he's stealing from the rich just like him. It's not an argument Oliver buys. First, he's not Just Like Robin Hood as everyone assumes, and second he doesn't put exploding collars on people to force them to steal for him.
      • In "Streets of Fire", Thea discovers her supervillain father is Not Quite Dead and threatens to shoot him. When she carries out the threat (Malcolm is wearing a Bulletproof Vest) he says it only proves his point that they are the same. (As with Helena, Thea accepts training from Malcolm but turns out to be Not So Similar.)
        Thea: I'll shoot you. I will!
        Malcolm: I can see it in your eyes. My eyes. They're just like mine. Both of them filled with pain and anger, because those we loved were ripped from us.
    • Batwoman (2019)
      • After realising her sister Kate Kane is Batwoman, Alice says that her dressing up in that costume makes her just as crazy as she is.
      • Alice says that like her years of captivity, Sophie has also been kept "imprisoned" in a sense with being closeted about her attraction to women.
    • The Flash (2014): Part of Zoom's anarchist "fun" during the final Season 2 story arc was trying to pull this with Barry. It almost worked.
    • Legends of Tomorrow: The first season had one between Ray and Mick after Ray took a beating for Mick, and Mick thought he was an idiot. Ray says that he took a beating for Mick because of things that are more important than surviving, despite the fact that he could have been killed, and tells Mick that there must be something he views as worth dying for. Mick replies that he'd die for the perfect score, and Ray replies that the only difference between them is how they define a score.
  • Lucifer (2016): In Season 6, we get Lucifer and Chloe's daughter Rory from the future (long story). When Lucifer describe her to Amenadiel as "Resting mean face. Loves blaming others. Combative, rebellious, claims I abandoned her.", Amenadiel inmediately notes the similarities with a "maybe she is your daughter". Linda, for her part, lampshaded how much alike Lucifer and his daughter are, which the duo's reply is... to let out near-identical scoffs and crossing legs.
  • In Peacemaker, Eek Stack Ik Ik/"Goff", the queen of the Butterflies, claims that they and Peacemaker are similar, stating that the Butterflies are fighting by any means necessary to make the world a place where they can live, such as by mind-controlling humans to forcibly fix problems such as the climate crisis, just like Peacemaker's stated motive of cherishing peace so much that he's willing to kill for it—and suggests that Chris should join them because their causes align. Peacemaker, however, rejects this, having moved past his initial dogmatic worldview.
  • Smallville:

     Video Games 

Video Games

  • Injustice:
    • Injustice: Gods Among Us: At the end of the story, Mainstream Superman admits to Batman that if he was put through the same Face–Heel Turn like his Regime counterpart, he might react the same way. He hopes the day never comes to pass, though Insurgency Batman tells him that if it does pass, he'll come to hunt him down. In his ladder ending, unsettled by his fight with his Evil Counterpart, Mainstream Superman decides to ingest a Kryptonite piece that can be remotely detonated by a trigger which rotates between each of the Justice League members, in case he ever goes down his counterpart's path. Appropriately enough, Batman has been denied a shift with the trigger.
    • Injustice 2:
      • In the game's opening, Batman points out how Superman's Well-Intentioned Extremist approachon crime after Metropolis has not only driven him and most of the Justice League down a path of tyranny and fear, it also transformed them into the very monsters they once fought against.
      • In the tie-in comics, Batman is compared to Superman by a US senator who accuses Batman of constantly acting on his own without any input of people around him, which lead to catastrophic consequences and hammers home that the only real difference between him and Superman is that Superman was more effective than Batman. On a much darker side, he elects to use Kryponite-infused fear toxin against Zod when he goes into Papa Wolf mode, the exact same weapon that Joker used on Superman to cause so many problems for the world in the first place. In the game itself, Damian points out whether Batman would have taken the same route as Superman did if the Joker nuked Gotham and killed Damian instead of going after Metropolis, to which Batman is unable to answer.
      • Harley points out to Wonder Woman how she has become very similar to her, namely the fact that they tried to impress the wrong guy (Joker and Superman). Wonder Woman, while secretly acknowledging her role in manipulating Superman down a path of tyranny, responds by stabbing Harley in the stomach, though Harley survives thanks to Supergirl's timely intervention.
      • After realizing what a monster her cousin has become, Supergirl is all-too-happy to tell this to Superman. He retorts by stating that Krypton would have been saved if his father Jor-El had been more like Zod. On top of that, Zod's motivation for his coup in Post-Crisis canon was trying to save his planet from destruction by supplanting its Obstructive Bureaucrat leaders, which is is not unlike what Superman's now doing, and his rather condescending view of humanity as needing him to protect them is not terribly removed from how Zod sees them.
      • Several villains such as Atrocitus and Gorilla Grodd invoke this trope on Superman. Most notably in his arcade ending, Grodd steals Brainiac's tech to become a Galactic Conqueror and impose his order, something which Superman does in the "Absolute Power" ending.
      • Invoked by Scarecrow in one of his intros with Batman, as both use fear as a weapon against their enemies.
      • As usual is with him in most DC Comics media, the Joker invokes this trope in his Straw Nihilist mindset, but many of the characters consider it nonsense, and some even call him out on his insanity.

    Western Animation 

Western Animation

  • DC Animated Universe
    • Batman: The Animated Series
      • One episode involves a Japanese ninja stealing the secret of a "deadly touch" technique and facing off Batman for a climactic fight. Batman, himself trained as a ninja, is forced to hear the villain claim this trope. In response, he tells the guy that today, he's fighting as a samurai not a ninja. (Later, when Bruce talked to his sensei about it, the old man put his doubts to rest, denying that Batman was anything like a ninja at all, pointing out that he had tried to rescue his foe and refused to use the "deadly touch" technique himself, despite knowing how to. In other words, Batman had the one thing a ninja lacks: honor.)
      • In "A Bullet for Bullock", after admitting he bends the law to get results, the titular detective remarks that he and Batman aren't so different. Naturally, as the two despise each other, this pisses Batman off. He's right, too. while Bullock is a crude dislikable oaf, he's not corrupt in the slightest, a surprisingly competent cop, and even an almost as capable Combat Pragmatist as Batman himself. Ironically, what he and Batman have most in common is the law puts up with both of them (and they each put up with each other) because they both definitely get results.
      • Poison Ivy tries to pull this on Batman, claiming they both punish "evildoers." Batman doesn't always agree with her definition of "evildoer"...
    • In the series premiere of Batman Beyond, Terry McGinnis convinces Bruce not to stop him by appealing to their common loss:
      Bruce: I'll shut down the suit again — and this time, it'll be for good.
      Terry: I read up on you, Mr. Wayne. I know how you lost your folks. The guy who murdered my dad is on that transport. This is my one chance to nail him.
      [pause]
      Bruce: The hover pads are in the northeast sector.
      Terry: Wish me luck.
      Bruce: Good luck.
    • In a third season episode, Bruce and Terry return Fingers (a gorilla given human-level intelligence) to Africa, where he declares his intention to protect his home from poachers. When Terry expresses concern that Fingers knows who they are, Bruce says that he isn't worried:
      Bruce: He's a kindred spirit if I've ever seen one.
    • Justice League Unlimited
  • Subverted on Batman: The Brave and the Bold — when orphaned, friendless Billy Batson meets his Evil Counterpart, Black Adam, he thinks of him as the closest thing he has to some sort of family and is convinced there must be some good left in him. It...doesn't really work out, though Billy gets a different happy ending anyway.
    Billy: He was a Champion. Like me.
    Shazam: A Champion, yes. But not like you, young Billy. Not like you at all.
  • Teen Titans (2003) likes this a lot.
    • Slade is obsessively fond of doing this to Robin, because he wants to make Robin his apprentice. It always makes Robin go into a frenzy of rage, which is always fun for Slade, who just clearly enjoys messing with his head. This was the premise of the "Apprentice" Apprentice (Part 1)" and "Apprentice (Part 2)". Robin ponders near the end, "Focused, serious, determined...as much as I hate to admit it, he and I are kind of alike. But there's one big difference between me and Slade — He doesn't have any friends." Slade even manages to do this when he's dead in "Haunted" by making Robin act crazy and violent through drugs. He later taunts him by referring to them as "friends" when they team up in "The End". Slade is not all that different from Robin's mentor Batman, with the key difference there being that, while they are both cold and meticulous, Slade is cruel and self serving while Batman is selfless and compassionate behind his ruthless exterior.
      • An even worse example occurs in "Masks". When Robin tries to justify to Starfire why he didn't tell trust them enough to tell them he was Red X, she sadly tells him that he does indeed have a big thing in common with Slade: Neither of them trust anyone.
    • Trigon also does this to Raven, calling her "daddy's little girl," with the double whammy of Because Destiny Says So.
    • Brother Blood tries to do this to Cyborg, but it's not as effective as with Robin, because Cyborg is a lot more grounded and Blood isn't as good at making things personal. In fact, it's Brother Blood who takes this the most seriously, to the point that he makes himself into a cyborg to prove his point. The hero's response? "You look like a psychopath!"
    • In "Forces of Nature", Beast Boy realizes Thunder and Lightning are the same as him due to them playing pranks, thinking they're harmless, and never realizing they could cause real harm with it and getting their friendships ruined. Similar to how Beast Boy's friendship with Starfire almost got jeopardized by this, Thunder has a similar situation when he tried to stop Lightning from doing more destruction.
  • The Batman:
    • Villains try this on Batman with increasing frequency as the series goes on. To his credit (and the misfortune of said villains), Batman proves quite capable of rationally explaining the key differences while he beats the snot out of them.
    • Then again, while it's rare for a hero to come to this conclusion about himself without any prompting at all from the villain, Batman did so in the episode "The Big Dummy". Alfred was trying to convince Bruce to expand his social life online, and he had actually met a woman named Becky who he promised to meet. As Batman, in the main storyline, he confronted Scarface, and when learning that Arnold Wesker and Scarface were clearly a case of a Split Personality, where Scarface was the dominant personality, he started to wonder if he and Bruce Wayne were similar. If Batman was his dominant personality, he wondered if he could have any true relationship, because he'd be hiding half his life from them. (At the conclusion, he decided against it, telling Alfred to meet with Becky and apologize. Becky asked if Bruce was married, and Alfred told her he was - to his work.)

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