The Psycho Rangers / Western Animation

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• 6teen has a darker Six Student Clique that are friends of Tricia's that tried to take over their favorite lunch spot.
• Inverted with the Danger Society from the Action League NOW! episode of the same name. The Danger Society is a team of four humans, who despite being average, are far more competent and heroic than the League. The League deciding to trash their headquarters and intimidate the members only makes this inversion clearer (and the League look even worse than usual).
• In Season 1 of Alpha Teens on Machines, Payne and his two henchmen go through Terrible Interviewees Montage to find somebody they can hire to fight titular team. After few failures they finds out five maniacs who happens to have similar skills and opposite personalities to the members of A.T.O.M.
  • Season 2 has Mu-Team, A.T.O.M.'s evil clones mixed with animals whose natural abilities could improve their skills:
    • Tilian is Axel's clone who fights as well as the latter, but his DNA is mixed with that of a gecko, a cobra, a crocodile, and a chameleon, giving him the power to Wall Crawl, spit paralyzing venom, camouflage, and detach and regrow limbs to give him an edge in combat.
    • Firekat is Lioness's clone specializing in capoeira whose DNA is mixed with tiger, lion, cougar, and cheetah DNA which gives her heightened agility and speed, sharp claws, and heightened senses.
    • Wrecka is King's clone and the strongman of the team who carries the DNA of elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, granting him superhuman strength and a sharp horn on his forehead for offensive attacks
    • Rayzah is Shark's clone mixed with an electric eel, jellyfish, piranha, and barracuda to make him even better swimmer
    • Stingfly is Hawk's with hornet, wasp, dragonfly, and beetle DNA so he can use his piloting talent to control himself while flying.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has the main heroes fight evil versions of themselves twice. The first time happens when they have to save Wakanda from getting invaded by shape-shifting Skrulls. The second happens when Ultron decides to replace all the humans in the world with emotionless robots, and replaces some of the Avengers first. The Masters of Evil from the same show combine this with the Legion of Doom trope.
• Ben 10 has the Negative 10, who were formed specifically to defeat Ben and his allies. Their name reflects this, though there aren't counterparts for all 10 of Ben's alien forms. Driscoll/Forever King (former Plumber who was kicked out for stealing confiscated alien technology) is a counterpart to Max (a current Plumber), Dr Animo (mad scientist who mutates animals into monsters) to Ben's form Wildmutt (animalistic alien), Charmcaster (magician) to Gwen (magician), Clancy (insect mutant who can control insects) to Ben's form Stinkfly (insect-like alien), Rojo (uses Powered Armor and in her previous appearance was merged with a robotic drone) to Ben's form Upgrade (alien that merges with technology to control and upgrade it) and to Cooper (can control machines), Sublimino (short hypnotist) to Ben's form Grey Matter (tiny alien with genius intelligence), Thumbskull (big and strong brute) to Ben's form Four Arms (the same with four arms), Acid Breath (can breathe or spit acid) to Ben's form Upchuck (can eat things and spit them out as explosive projectiles), and Frightwig (Prehensile Hair) to Ben's forms Wildvine and/or Snare-oh (both have Combat Tentacles). The only one who doesn't really have a counterpart is Forever Ninja, though a case could be made that it's a counterpart to Ben's form XLR8: both fight using their speed, and both have what appear to be visors covering their faces but which are technically part of them.
• The villains in Captain Planet and the Planeteers made an attempt toward this after they got the rings to create Captain Pollution.
• One episode of Class of 3000 features the Westley kids going up against their counterparts from Eastley, all of whom wear red and black Reich-style uniforms. Coincidentally their teacher looks nothing like Sonny.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • The Delightful Children from Down the Lane look eerily similar to Sector V. The movie reveals that they were once the lost team from Sector Z.
  • Another episode, Operation: P.O.O.L., introduces their Mirror Universe counterparts. For the heroic Kids Next Door, we have the villainous Destructively Nefarious Kids. And an inversion for the fiendish Delightful Children From Down The Lane, we have their heroic counterparts, the Little Traitor Dudes For Children's Defense.
• Clones of the protagonists from Gargoyles. Subverted in that only Goliath's clone Thailog was actually evil. But they did have the same fighting their doubles problem. In the comic book continuation, Lexington's clone Brentwood chose to stick with Thailog. He's portrayed, like the rest, as more gullible and naive than actually evil.
• Invoked in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021). There are two Sentient Cosmic Forces; the Power of Grayskull and the Power of Havoc. If one person wields the power of one force, the other force eventually creates a "Nemesis" to oppose them. When Adam and the others obtain the Power of Grayskull and became the Masters of the Universe, Prince Keldor embraced Havoc and became Skeletor. From there, Skeletor eventually gave Havoc to Kronis, Evelyn, and R'Qazz to turn them into the Dark Masters.
• The Shadow Avengers were MacBeth's attempt to create her own version of the I.N.K. Invisible Network of Kids.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: "The J-Tots" has the Chang Gang, a team of criminals brought together by Bartholomew Chang as a villainous counter to the J-Team.
  • Tommy Chung is Jackie's counterpart. Both are Chinese martial artists and the field leaders of their respective teams.
  • Bob "The Bopper" Halfcock is a wrestler making him the Evil Counterpart to El Toro.
  • Helga Sorenson is the team's muscle making her Tohru's counterpart.
  • Philip Crane is the Chang Gang's burglary expert and is Viper's rival on the team.
• Played straight and subverted on Justice League. In the original, there were three versions of the Injustice Gang. However, only the third was made up of any form of counterparts to the seven members of the League (and even then, the relations were stretched at best), and the fights for each tended to trade off who fought who every time. In Unlimited, the various Injustice League members merged into the Legion of Doom, which had grown in response to the Justice League's growth. It should be noted that the villain The Shade has the distinction of being on all four Injustice Leagues. (He points this out at the third Injustice League formation, to which the villain recruiting him replies "Third time's the charm".)
  • The Alternate Universe counterparts introduced in "A Better World" are near perfect examples. Superman and Batman did mention that having counterparts willing to break any "rules" they kept would make them much more difficult to fight. It was somewhat subverted when Batman's counterpart proved to still have the same sense of morality. In Unlimited, Brainiac/Luthor recreated the alternate universe counterparts, and a few needed to trade partners to defeat them. (Flash defeated his counterpart in a most excellent way. His counterpart taunted him by saying no one else trusts him with his childish behavior and the Flash responded with "Says you! I got a seat at the big conference table...I'm going to paint my logo on it!" And he proceeded to destroy the counterpart.) The Flash and his evil counterpart were particularly interesting, since in the Alternate Earth Luthor based his team on, the Flash had died (which is what prompted that League's Start of Darkness in the first place). So instead of a Justice Lord version of Flash, Luthor created a copy of Professor Zoom. Which makes one wonder where he got the idea...
  • In the Grand Finale, when the Legion of Doom and the Justice League were about to come to blows, there was an excellent shot of everybody facing off with their Evil Counterpart: Green Lantern vs. Sinestro, Superman vs. Bizarro, Atomic Skull vs. Captain Atom, Giganta vs. S.T.R.I.P.E, Volcana vs. Fire...and Batman standing alone, since nobody is cool enough to beat Batman. Or because of the Bat embargo, none of his rogue's gallery could appear.
• The Cutie Mark Crusaders in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic had some in their 2 bullies (plus one that joined said bullies for only one episode), though it wasn't that overt. Sweetie Belle and Diamond Tiara had practically the same color scheme, only swapped (Sweetie Belle is white with pink and purple hair, while Diamond Tiara is pink with white and purple hair). Apple Bloom and Babs Seed are both part of the Apple family, and neither had their cutie marks (though they both got theirs later). Scootaloo and Silver Spoon don't have that many similarities, except that neither have had their families shown, and Silver Spoon's loyalty to Diamond Tiara is the element of Scootaloo's mentor.
  • "The Mean 6" features evil duplicates of the Mane Six (a fandom term for the main cast that has been used officially often enough now.) However, they're... not very good at it. They succeed at sowing discord but in the end can't get anything done. (Interestingly, they look and act much like the Mane Six did under Discord's influence back when he was a villain — and they can't work together or use the Elements for the very same reasons the discorded real ponies couldn't.)
• The Kitten Catastrophe Crew in PAW Patrol are a group of cats who look like the canine heroes, but cause trouble around Adventure Bay.
• In a different Paul & Joe cartoon, Pound Puppies (2010), another not-quite-evil team, the Kennel Kittens, occasionally appeared to antagonize (and even sometimes cooperate with) the main Pound Puppies team. The greatest difference between the two (beside species) were that the Kennel Kittens were a bit more willing to engage in underhanded means against the Pound Puppies than the Pound Puppies were against them.
• The Rowdyruff Boys in The Powerpuff Girls and the Powerpunk Girls in the Comic-Book Adaptation.
• The Real Ghostbusters:
  • In the episode "Citizen Ghost", Peter Venkman recounts how Slimer first came to stay with the Ghostbusters after the Gozer incident. They received new uniforms to replace their original uniforms, which were heavily contaminated with ectoplasm. The ectoplasm later animated the old uniforms, creating four ghostly doppelgangers of the Ghostbusters, out to take down the originals, until Slimer ended up saving them.
  • The Peoplebusters in "Flip Side" are a similar set of ghost versions of the Ghostbusters (minus Winston) from an alternate universe version of New York. Even their power sets are flipped, as humans fly and pass through walls in this reality, while the Peoplebusters have their own version of the proton packs (which shoot slime to entangle the Ghostbusters).
• ReBoot featured a game where the heroes had to fight game sprite copies of themselves in the final level.
• Two counts in Recess, though neither was exactly evil: once when Lawson decided to put together his own crew to rival TJ's, and once when the main characters went to a school that was full of kids who paralleled the students at Third Street School and had to play kickball against their own doppelgangers.
• Parodied in Sealab 2021 with the Bizarros, doppelgangers of the Sealab Crew from an alternate universe who aren't so much evil as they are really, really stupid.
• The Mondays from The Secret Saturdays are a deconstruction. While the Saturdays are a cohesive and close-knit Badass Family, the Mondays, being their polar opposites, are a barely functional gang of brutes who betray each other at every given opportunity and make their hatred of the others well known when there is no such opportunity.
• Smiling Friends parodied this with the Frowning Friends, Grim and Gnarly; a duo who vaguely resembled Pim and Charlie. Where the Smiling Friends help people out of depression, the Frowning Friends would convince people that nothing in life matters as part of a plan to eradicate happiness the world over.
• The Legion of Low Tide from Sushi Pack. Also, in one episode Oleander created her own team of living food fighters to counteract the Sushi Pack. Unfortunately, she made them too much like the Pack, and the two teams were able to see past their differences. That, and she tipped her hand too early (she was planning on eating both teams), so they all teamed up to defeat her instead of each other.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • The H.I.V.E. F.I.V.E. (even though there were six of them in their second appearance...) though the connections aren't quite as direct. The most obvious would probably be Jinx for Raven. The rest are pretty much up for debate. Jinx later moved out of this role when she met Kid Flash and he convinced her to become a heroine, while also gaining her affection in the process.
  • Taken a step further in Teen Titans Go!, where the H.I.V.E. are brought down to five members, each having a specific Titan they fight against. Robin and Gizmo, Cyborg and Billy Numerous, Beast Boy and Mammoth, Raven and Jinx, and Starfire and Seemore.
  • Trigon created evil versions of Starfire, Beast Boy, and Cyborg. The clones proved to be too much for their original counterparts to defeat, until the Titans switched opponents, which allowed them to come out on top.
• One of the Big Bads of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fast Forward created mutated clones of the turtles, one for each, and they were even called the "Psycho Turtles". In a reversal of the above Titans mention, the Turtles used knowledge about themselves to defeat their evil counterparts without switching opponents, although typically they do switch opponents. Also, like the original "Psycho Rangers", these clones lasted past the end of the season.
• In the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, the Punk Frogs are a notable subversion. While Shredder did (indirectly) mutate them from ordinary frogs, going as far as to teach them how to fight as well as even naming them based off his heroes such as Napoléon Bonaparte and Genghis Khan, he had to trick the Frogs into believing that the Turtles were the bad guys in order for the Frogs to fight them. When they find out the truth, the Frogs instantly turn against him.
• Almost every subgroup has a counterpart team on the opposite side in Transformers. The Triggerbots and Triggercons, the Protectobots and the Combaticons, the Aerialbots and the Stunticons, etc.
  • The G1 origins of the Aerialbots and Stunticons are an inversion, with the former created by the heroes to counteract the latter.
    "Megatron wants to battle us on the roads. We'll fight him in the skies!"
    • What's ironic about this is that the Stunticons themselves are a type of Psycho Rangers for the Autobots as a whole. They were created by Megatron because he wanted a unit of car-based warriors to counteract the Autobots, the vast majority of whom had car-based alternate forms.
  • Due to a shortage of Autobot combiners, however, the Constructicons and Predacons never had exact opposites. The Dinobots and/or Omega Supreme were the arch-enemies of the former, and Sky Lynx was the enemy of the latter. (Despite being small compared to Predaking, Sky Lynx has defeated them more often than not. Because he's that good. And knows it.)
  • While the most deliberate setup was in combiners, the fourth season featured the development of the various Nebulan-partner-based *master technologies — the Autobots first developed Headmasters, which the Decepticons copied and expanded with the Targetmasters. The Autobots then flipped it around and copied the Decepticons to develop Autobot Targetmasters as their Good Counterparts.
  • A weird and somewhat comical version is the case of Autobot master spy Punch, who acts as his own Psycho Ranger by transforming into the evil Decepticon agent Counterpunch. Ironically, the Decepticons aren't wise to the deception and seem convinced that he was purpose built to be their counter to Punch. In terms of personality, Counterpunch is actually a separate personality whose behavior is every bit as unpleasant as the average Decepticon's, with the major exception that he shares Punch's goals of helping the Autobots — that may actually make him an odd version of Good is Not Nice.
• Turbo F.A.S.T. had F.A.J.I.T.A., a team of snails owned by a Guy Fieri stand-in that tried to take advantage of F.A.S.T.'s weaknesses to outrace them. F.A.S.T. used an opponent switch, except for Turbo, who beat his counterpart Fusion on his own by using his hubris against him.
• As in the original comic, the animated adaptation of W.I.T.C.H. has two:
  • The first group is the Knights of Revenge, renamed Knights of Destruction to distinguish them from the Knights of Vengeance (a cartoon original villainous group that preceded the formation of the Knights of Destruction which consisted of all of Phobos' old lackeys under Nerrisa). There are many indecisive confrontations before Nerissa strips them of their powers to fuel their replacements, that constitute the second group (NOT the Runics, as the cartoon never got that far).
  • The second group is the previous generation of Guardians, better known as CHYKN after Hay Lin put their initials together as she had done with her own group ("Better witches than chicken"), that Nerissa recruited to fight the protagonists. Of course, for her to pull that off, she ended up having to capture and brainwash two of her former allies (Kadma and Halinor), create an Altermare of the one who resisted her brainwashing and brainwash that (Yan Lin, which led to her granddaughter Hay Lin's Heroic BSoD) and resurrect and brainwash the fourth whom she killed many years ago, (Cassidy). While technically stronger than WITCH because they had two Amplifier Artifacts to their one, CHYKN was ineffective due the mind control reducing their intelligence, making them reliant on Nerissa and screwed if she was distracted. Nerissa changed tactics after they suffered a Curb-Stomp Battle and later used them to attack WITCH when they were split up and not transformed, and had to put them inside the Seal of Nerissa for the rest of the season when they managed to throw off the brainwashing.

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