Evil Knockoff

The original substitute Sonic the Hedgehog. Accept no substitute! ...Wait, what? [1]
"Kojack is pretty much just evil Jack, and evil makes everything better!"
—MadWorld

The Evil Knockoff is what happens when the Big Bad decides that he could finally beat that frustratingly tenacious hero if only he had... his own, personal, mindlessly loyal copy of the hero! This is based on the theory that there's something about the hero personally that makes them unbeatable. (Big Bads do tend to obsess about this stuff.)

For a character to be an Evil Knockoff, it must be a copy created at least partly for the purpose of defeating The Hero in combat, on the principle of fighting fire with fire.

In the least justified cases, the Big Bad produces an obviously mechanical copy with superficial visual resemblance to The Hero but little functional similarity; for example, a robot "copy" of a human ninja could rely on hidden machine guns and rocket launchers. This prompts the question of just what talismanic property of the hero's appearance is actually getting copied into "Mecha-Hero." The reason why is some absurd and never clearly articulated theory that "nothing can be as strong as the hero but the hero- or something that kinda looks like him!"

In more justified cases, the Big Bad knows strength when he sees it, and so makes sure the copy shares some basic capabilities or power source with the hero, or is an actual clone. If The Hero is already mechanical or otherwise manufactured (i.e. an engineered Super Soldier), the copy will usually be based on that hero's original blueprints or other stolen underlying technology, be reasonably close in appearance and capabilities, and fight in a nearly identical fashion, resulting in a battle of wits and spirit instead of the more usual Aesop that copies are never as good as the original.

Some villains don't stop with just one Evil Knockoff, and Send in the Clones to produce a small army of Evil Knockoffs. Thanks to Conservation of Ninjutsu, these clones are usually not quite as good as the original, but make up for that via sheer numbers.

Often a form of Laser Guided Tykebomb. Sister Trope to Evil Twin (evil identical twin), Evil Counterpart (evil Alternate Universe persona), and Criminal Doppelganger (evil Identical Stranger). Related to Mirror Boss and Sixth Ranger Traitor. Often, whole teams being cloned results in The Psycho Rangers. If the knockoff turns out to be the manifestation of the hero's inherent evil side, it's an Enemy Without. Contrast Psycho Prototype, where the hero is the "Good Knockoff".

Examples of Evil Knockoff include:

Anime

  • The Corpse Corps from Blood Plus are clones of the Schiff. Well, clones of Moses, at least. Interesting in that the schiff themselves are vampire "knockoffs" who've become a Phlebotinum Rebel Secret Project Refugee Family.
  • The Cloneblades from the Witchblade anime are an odd case, being clones of an artifact instead of a character.
    • Casual variant, as both Cloneblades and Excons/iWeapons are fruits of research which began when Dohji Industries and NSWF were allies and ended before they came to blows (i.e. catastrophe), so neither is created specifically for battle with each other or original. Also, Cloneblades are more imitation than copy, never showing any signs of being [semi]sentient/self-willed (unlike Witchblade). NSWF checked whether would-be wielder is physically and mentally ready for Cloneblades, but measured compatibility for Witchblade.
  • Guyver has Guyver II, who should have beaten the hero.. and would have had his control metal not been shattered from the outset. In fact, it's so unrealistic that Sho beat him so early that the most recent anime changed it around, making Guyver II the "boss" for the Cronos Japan opening arc. (This was, by the way, done with Yoshiki Takaya's appoval.)
    • There's also the female Guyver II from the Guyver: Out of Control OVA. She's the final opponent Sho faced and she pretty well beats the shit out of Sho from nearly start to finish. Only the Control Metal picking then and there to go haywire from extended use saved him from being either killed or enslaved by Kronos.
  • Getter Robo Armageddon (The Last Day Of The World) had Dr. Saotome unleash a horde of mass-produced copies of Getter Robo G, from the second season of the original series.
    • Not only that, Saotome and two other villains actually pilot a much more powerful Getter G near the end of the series and duel the heroes in a roughly evenly-matched battle.
  • The Eva Series in End of Evangelion are mass produced copies of the Evas. Unusually for this trope, but typical for Evangelion style Deconstruction, these copies are superior to the protagonists' units. They have infinite sources of power, flight and copies of the Artifact of Doom. Their opponent is Unit 02 armed with battery power, a combat knife, and a really angry German. The original loses.
    • However, all these copies are still inferior to Eva-01 the Super Prototype equipped with an even better "infinite" energy source, the Original Lance of Longinus, superior Flight Capability, and a person born to Pilot Eva. Of course, he doesn't even fight at all after having yet ANOTHER Mental Breakdown upon seeing Asuka and Eva-02's remains, so him and the Audience spends the rest of the Movie being Mindraped.
  • In Demonbane, Doctor West created a knockoff copy of the titular robot, with all its magic... except Lemuria Impact.
  • Towards the end of the first series of Vandread, the Harvesters produced copies of the Vandreads; after the first set of copies were destroyed, the mass-produced later versions didn't seem much of a threat in the Second Stage. The Evil Knockoff of the Cool Ship Nirvana in the Second Stage, however, unexpectedly turned out to be a Transforming Mecha that was in fact stronger than the original. (The copy of it shown at the final battle though was much weaker, though)
  • In Gunnm, Tiphares/Zalem eventually creates the AR series, exact copies of Alita/Galley's cybernetic body complete with robotic chips for brains and her Panzer Kunst fighting style. Most of them get killed off, but three of them go on to get their own character development, in an attempt to become individual.
  • Barasuishou in Rozen Maiden was specifically created to defeat the real Rozen Maidens by Enju, the jealous apprentice of the maker of the original dolls. He eventually succeeds. Well, sort of.
  • One episode of the original Bubblegum Crisis OVA had Boomers dressed up like the Knight Sabers. Very powerful Boomers whose true forms take up at least 50% more volume than their disguises.
  • The Dark Bring "Decalogue" from Rave Master is an Evil Knockoff of Haru's Ten Commandment's sword, with ten forms that match the forms of Haru's sword except for the last one.
  • Amiba from Fist of the North Star, the second Hokuto Shinken pretender in the story, never actually trained in the style, but instead uses a variation he developed through pressure point experiments, which he dubs the "Amiba-style Hokuto Shinken". Needless to say, Kenshiro was not impressed.
  • In Naruto: Shippuden, Team Guy has to defeat copies of themselves in order to break a seal on a cave entrance. They are exact copies of the strengths and techniques of each team member. In true Team Guy style, the copies are defeated because the originals become stronger than they were when they started the fight.
  • In the 2001 Cyborg 009, Albert Heinrich/Cyborg 004 faces off against a robotic doppleganger. Having been manufactured after the cyborgs escaped, it's significantly stronger than him, resulting in a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown until he finally does something the robot doesn't expect: save a bird's nest rather than try and avoid its attacks.
  • Afro-Droid from Afro Samurai.
  • Astro Boy has an inordinately high number of them. The first was an unstable copy created by a one-off enemy known as the Bronze Republic to prevent him from retrieving a spaceship component they stole. Then there's the 1980s version of Atlas (and the 2003 version to a lesser extent, but oddly enough not the original). Honorable mention goes to Astroboy Mk. II, who never actually met the real one & isn't evil so much as a Jerkass.
  • In Hellsing all of Milennium's vampires are cheap knockoffs of Alucard. The only members of Milennium who aren't knockoffs, the Captain and Schrodinger, also end up being the only members of Milennium who have ever defeated Alucard.
  • Iron Kaiser to Mazinkaiser SKL, being said to be directly based on Mazinkaiser's design and having almost identical set of attacks.
  • One of the monsters of the week in GaoGaiGar absorbs a bunch of spare parts and becomes an evil version of the title mecha. The battle ends with dueling Hell and Heavens.
    • In FINAL, a Brainwashed and Crazy clone of Mamoru uses a copy of GaoGaiGar to fight Guy in the improved GaoFighGar. Ends similarly to the above, but it's a massive Tear Jerker instead.
  • Dragon Ball GT has Hell Fighter 17, the machine mutant clone used to brainwash and fuse with the original Android 17. Trouble is, the scientists that made this happen should've known they couldn't trust each other or the resulting Super Android 17 not to pull a double cross.
  • Turn a Gundam has a strange reversal: according to external sources, it was actually the Turn A that was reverse-engineered from the Turn X, in an attempt to copy its technology. The people who created the Turn A were terrified of the Turn X ever being used against them and wanted something that could put up a decent fight against it... making the Turn A a "Good Knockoff" of the Turn X. The two machines are shown to be dead even in combat capabilities, to the point that the series ends with them locked in an eternal stalemate, neither able to overpower the other.
  • In Great Mazinger, the Mikene are able to replicate and mass produce Great Mazinger itself and turned them loose on their foe. They usually show up in various Super Robot Wars installments when the original Great storyline is used.
  • Claymore it is revealed that Youma and Claymrores are the Organizations attempts at recreating weapons equal tot he power of the Descendants of Dragons called the Asarakam.


Comic Books

  • The infamous Clone Saga in Spider-Man.
  • The Flash comics has Inertia, who was created to be the evil Thawne family member when Bart Allen (Impulse I/Kid Flash II) refused his heritage as a Thawne.
  • In most Superman stories, Bizarro is a creation of Lex Luthor, intended to defeat Supes. For his part, Superman has pretty much never considered Bizarro evil so much as incredibly misguided. This is across all incarnations, from the confused Superman clone to the backwards denizen of Bizarro World.
  • In the Legion of Super-Heroes storyline The Great Darkness Saga, the servants of Darkseid are duplicates of Lydea Mallor (ancestor of Legion member Shadow Lass), Superman, a Guardian of the Universe, and Darkseid's sons Orion and Kalibak.
    • In the Postboot version of the same storyline, the same Big Bad has cloned minions of his son Orion, fellow New God Big Barda, and, um, Firestorm, for some reason.
  • The various comic versions of Sonic the Hedgehog usually feature Metal Sonic at some point- recently in the Archie comics, a robot duplicate of Scourge, Sonic's Mirror Universe counterpart was also created.
    • Sonic the Comic renamed the character "Metallix" to be more distinctive, and explained his different appearance in Sonic CD versus Sonic and Knuckles as being due to there being a whole army of them, the Brotherhood of Metallix. Naturally, what with A.I. Is a Crapshoot, they ended up going rogue, usurping Robotnik and even attempting to erase him from history.
  • Evil robot Ultron from the Marvel Universe frequently tried making evil knockoffs (of sorts) to limited success. Both the Vision and Jocasta's thought patterns were based off those of the Avengers Wonder Man and The Wasp respectively, but both also quickly turned against him and would go on the become Avengers themselves, making them more-or-less good knockoffs of already good characters. Similarly, Alkhema was created with the thought patterns of Mockingbird and was arguably a successful Evil Knockoff as she was genuinely evil but ended up betraying him anyway. Even later on, Ultron planned to replace all organic life with evil knockoffs after he killed them all (he failed, of course).
    • It is also revealed that Ultron himself is a Evil Knockoff of his creater, Hank Pym, who used his own thought patterns in Ultron's programming process.
    • And again, in Spider-Man #520, Hydra reveals four Avengers knockoffs, using special gear to simulate their powers: The Hammer, with his electricity-manipulating hammer, as a counterpart of Thor; Karl, a man in powered armor styled after Iron Man (who refuses to call himself by his assigned codename, Tactical Force); The Militant, basically a terrorist version of Captain America (comics); and Bowman, a counterpart to the (then-deceased) Hawkeye.
  • Match, the evil clone of Superboy in The DCU.
    • Superboy as well. Didn't work out.
  • The Black Lanterns in Blackest Night are evil (and in the cases of dead villains, eviler) knockoffs of the dead people chosen by the Black Lantern rings. The rings reanimate the corpses and simulate any powers and weapons they had in life and a twisted version of their original personalities specifically meant to provoke a strong emotional response from people, enabling the Black Lanterns to rip out their emotion filled hearts.
  • Not so much evil as unfriendly and impolite, but Obmoz in Zombo was created as a more powerful version of Zombo that would do as The Government commanded.
  • The many evil doppelgangers of Earth's greatest heroes in the Infinity War, created by the villainous Magus.
  • The Titanium Man was a KGB agent who had a suit of armour modeled specifically on Iron Man's specs (although inferior Soviet resources meant that the resulting armour ended up being more than eight feet tall). The Iron Monger was a later villain to do the same thing.


Film

  • De Nomolos' evil plot in Bill and Teds Bogus Journey involved a pair of robot Bill and Teds assassinating and then replacing the originals. This also counts as an Inversion after Bill asks "How do you defeat a pair of evil robot usses?" You build a pair of good robot "usses"! (Hilariously, these do not look human at all.)
    • Station!
  • Mechagodzilla in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, which was created by the Simians.
  • An early example is the 1920's film Metropolis. In the film, slaves which toil to keep a city running find hope in the form of a woman called Maria, who leads them in rebellion. To counter this, the leaders of the city above create a robotic copy of Maria to take her place.
  • Slightly different in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The Big Bad only gathers the League so he can get samples of their powers, create multiple Evil Knockoffs, and sell them to the highest bidder - "an army of Hydes, invisble spies, vampire assassins" - together with Nemo's supertechnology.
  • Nuclear Man is the Evil Knockoff of Superman in Superman IV.
  • All of the major villains Iron Man has fought have been knockoffs of Tony Stark's own designs. The Iron Monger was directly based off the Mk I, the "Hammeroids" were designed to compete, and Whiplash designed his tech to beat Stark at his own game.
  • Before the heroes confront Nicola in Bunraku, they each have to face off against an evil counterpart.


Gamebooks

  • The Doomstones of the Lone Wolf series were created by Agarash the Damned to mock the Lorestones of Nyxator. And in the series proper, Lone Wolf faces an Evil Knockoff of himself called Wolf's Bane. Following the trope, the Doomstones are much easier to destroy than the Lorestones. Wolf's Bane, not so much.


Literature

  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe, specifically The Thrawn Trilogy, has Luuke Skywalker, an evil clone of Luke made from the hand he lost at Cloud City and wielding the same lightsaber. He was indeed mindless, and designed that way, as an extension of his master's will. Also, one of the main villains of this arc also proved to be a clone of a character we'd meet much later in a novel set during the prequel series, although he was very, very like the original. Zahn originally wanted to make this character a clone of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Executive Meddling torpedoed it.
  • The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings has a variant example - Morgoth makes evil knockoffs of entire races, the Orcs from the Elves and the Trolls from the Ents. This is, however, part of the limitations of his power - "The Dark Lord cannot make, he can only mock".


Live Action TV

  • Power Rangers Dino Thunder had an evil knockoff of the White Ranger after the original evil one did a Heel Face Turn.
    • And almost every Power Rangers team has an episode in which the Big Bad creates bad Rangers. The Jungle Fury season did a variation on it, with the "Five Fingers of Poison," poisonous animal-based Monsters Of The Week, as an Evil Counterpart team rather than an Evil Twin team. They later did have an Evil Knockoff the Spirit Rangers, senior members of the Rangers' order, with original suits and attacks based on the masters' own animal spirits.
    • The original series did this most memorably in "Return of the Green Ranger" when White Ranger Tommy was cloned and the clone became the Green Ranger.
  • Princess Ardala created several copies of the eponymous hero in Buck Rogers. One of them was to be sent to Earth to act as a spy; the others... were to be kept by Ardala for her own private purposes.
  • In an episode of The A-Team a villainous landowner hires some thugs to pretend to be the A-Team to terrorize his enemies, with a fake Hannibal, fake B.A., and a fake Face. It ends as well for him as you might imagine.
  • KAOS created Gropo the robot to destroy Hymie (who was created by KAOS in the first place, but changed sides).
  • In Primeval, Helen Cutter creates a clone of Nick Cutter in order to infiltrate the ARC. The real Nick almost gets his evil clone twin to turn, telling him he has free will. He fails. The clone however, whispers "Save yourself!" just as he sets off the bomb intended to destroy the ARC
  • In Beetleborgs the Shadowborg was an evil Beetleborg specifically created to destroy the heroes. The good guys had to create a good knockoff of Shadowborg, the White Blaster Beetleborg, to even the odds. Because of the rules governing the magic that created White Blaster, when Shadowborg was eventually defeated White Blaster's power vanished as well.
    • Subverted in Juukou B-Fighter, the Metal Heroes series which was where the original footage of Beetleborgs came from, by the original version of Shadowborg, Shadow/Black Beet. Originally created to defeat the B Fighters by his master, he eventually starts to question his own existence and his loyalty starts to waver. Then, it is revealed that he is an actual clone of Takuya/Blue Beet and is eventually become obsessed with beating Takuya in order to prove his own existence and in order to gain immortality as he is dying due to being a short-lived clone who was only created to serve his purpose in defeating the B Fighters. He eventually ditch his master to fight for himself.
  • One episode of the classic Hawaii Five-O featured a criminal who put together a team of lookalikes of the Five-0 squad in order to con a businessman out of a large chunk of cash.
    • The episode was also notable for showing what a Mission: Impossible type operation would look like from the other side.


Newspaper Comics

  • Modesty Blaise: The Russians use plastic surgery and extensive training to create a duplicate of Modesty in "The Double Agent".


Religion and Mythology

  • A common interpretation of the Antichrist is that he is a false god, to stand in for the real deal.


Tabletop Games

  • Near the end of the Paranoia adventure "Send in the Clones", the PCs discover that their adversary Teela O'Malley has been cloned multiple times. They end up facing an entire army of Teelas.
  • In Monsterpocalypse, the monsters from the faction Ubercorp International are robot duplicates of monsters from other factions.
  • In Magic: The Gathering, cards like Clone, Vesuvan Doppleganger, and The Mimeoplasm let you create this, though (because of rules regarding "legendary", or unique, cards), doing it to one of those causes both to die. Also, the Scars of Mirrodin block went out of its way to make Phyrexian versions of old cards.
    • Sakashima the Imposter is a (somewhat clunky) workaround to the Legend Rule, though he has the ability to impersonate multiple creatures (sequentially), and so is arguably not an example.


Video Games

  • Although Sailor Moon has evil counterparts to the Inner senshi for basically every season/arc, the only group that fits as Evil Knockoffs is the Opposito Senshi from the Another Story SNES game. Each Opposito has a corresponding power to her counterpart (dark water for Nabu to combat Mercury, for example) and they even have a unified uniform design. Their mission is specifically to take the power of the Ginzuishou and defeat their counterparts. In fact, if you show up without Mars at one point in the game when confronted by her Knockoff, Marduk calls Mars a coward.
  • Dr. Ivo Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog has created several robotic duplicates of Sonic, Metal Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog CD (pictured above is a scene from his arrival in the animated movie) being the most famous. He's never used more than one at the same time, though - apparently Robotnik is Genre Savvy enough to know about Conservation of Ninjitsu.
    • On the other hand, Sonic Heroes implied that Metal Sonic had created an entire army of Shadow androids after usurping Eggman. When he took back his position, Eggman uses those Shadow androids in Shadow the Hedgehog for a couple of stages. He also convinced Shadow that he was an android as well, and Shadow, due to his amnesia, even accepted it in two of the endings. However, about seven to eight minutes into the final battle, Eggman admits to the Shadow you control that he had saved him from his death in Sonic Adventure 2 and is the same ultimate lifeform that his grandfather, Professor Gerald Robotnik, created 50 years ago.
  • Jon Irenicus makes copies of the party members with his magic the first time you fight him. They're not much of a threat as they lack the skills and equipment of the Party and can only attack normally.
  • The Sloth Clones from Neopets. Unique in that they're clones of the villain that created them.
  • The final stage of Metal Slug 3 features a disturbing piece of Martian Organic Technology which is continuously pumping out clones of one of your captured comrades. Fortunately, each clone is just as much a One-Hit-Point Wonder as you are (well, actually they have 4 hit points, but they drop so much Heavy Machine Gun ammo that it doesn't help them stay alive any longer). Once you free your comrade from the machine, it starts producing zombies of him/her instead (and these are much tougher, and even have that nasty Blood Vomit attack).
    • In Metal Slug 5 the Ptolemaic Army uses Metal Slug tanks of their own. In fact, the first boss of the game is a giant Metal Slug.
  • Depending on how you play Mega Man X 2, you either fight Zero, or Zero dispatches a cheap knockoff clone of himself built by the X-Hunters.
  • F-Zero has Blood Falcon, a clone of Captain Falcon by Black Shadow.
  • Guilty Gear XX has Robo-Ky, a green-skinned robot copy of Ky Kiske.
  • Mortal Kombat has Mileena, a clone of Kitana created by Shang Tsung with Tarkatan DNA as a plus, making her one heck of a Butter Face.
  • Mega Man Zero inverts this by making the Zero you play as the knockoff, but the memory's real...the original Zero body is the mindless, Ax Crazy one.
  • This comes up a few times in Metroid.
    • In Metroid Prime, the Space Pirates make several weapon designs to emulate Samus's Chozo Powersuit. They also attempted to copy the morph ball, only to have it break every bone in the test subject's body. Needless to say, they moved on.
    • Later in the Prime games, Dark Samus appears, after the eponymous creature stole Samus's Phazon Suit. It has Phazon-based versions of several of Samus's attacks from the first Prime game.
    • The SA-X in Fusion is a bunch of X taking the form of Samus's suit; when they infected her, she had to lose most of her suit to be cured, so the SA-X has the upper hand for most of the game.
  • In-freaking-verted by Tales of the Abyss in almost every way conceivable: The Big Bad decides he'd rather have The Chosen One for himself, so he kidnaps and makes an inferior clone of said chosen one and sends the clone back as a stand in while grooming said chosen one into becoming his disciple. The Chosen One turns out to be a bit smarter than the Big Bad had intended and rebels against him... While the clone ends up surpassing both the original and the Big Bad himself, to the original's annoyance and the Big Bad's utter surprise.
  • The Riku Replica in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, though when you fight him in gameplay, he fits the other definition of "cheap".
    • And in 358/2 Days it seems that Xion, an imperfect Replica of Sora, was a failed Evil Knockoff
      • Ooooh, that's a really complex one. Roxas is important to the Organization, because he can use the Keyblade, meaning that unlike the entire rest of the Goddamn Organization, he can actually contribute to it's ultimate goal. But Roxas is kind of a wild card and the higher-ups don't like that, so Xion was created to siphon off Sora's memories from Roxas, and his ability to use the Keyblade, so that they could have someone they could control. So she's actually meant to be an Evil Knockoff of both of them, and no, that's not redundant.
  • In Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots, Calamitous' evil legion of Living Toys are backed up by robotic clones of SpongeBob SquarePants, Danny Phantom, his archnemesis Jimmy Neutron, Timmy Turner, and Tak who, beyond looking like those heroes, have zilch to do with them in abilities. The proposed explanation for this is that these robots are built from Master Models, figurines holding data from characters around the multiverse that Calamitous kidnapped and then dumped back home and mindwiped to keep his secret plans, uhh, secret (Except that the first two were never seen captured at all during the storyline, though their previous clash two games ago might fill in for that.). And considering what Master Models you collect in game, we have to question what makes him consider that Arnold is as worthy as Aang.
  • The Big Bad in Dengeki Gakuen RPG: Cross of Venus sends out copies of various characters (none of which are of the playable characters) to act out his evil plans of Canon Defilement on the featured Light Novels (really). All of those fakers are bosses (in fact, it'd be easier to list which bosses are not clones) and while looking exactly like the genuine characters (except for the Minori and Kanzaki clones, who both have villainous eyes), they are also weaker than them (except for the Minori clone again, considering what kind of story Toradora is in the first place) as one of them admits after defeat.
  • In Endless Frontier, the Einst create copies of Haken and Excellen, and later even produce versions of the Personal Troopers.
    • Also, in OG 2, they made the Einst Eisen, based on Kyosuke's Alt Eisen.
  • Knights of the Old Republic 2 features the HK-50s, which are the evil(er) knockoffs of HK-47. And HK-47 was pretty damn evil to start with.
    • It has to be said that for all their bragging, they lack the original's subtlety (and that's saying something) - the first one keeps dropping his facade so much you have to wonder how he managed to fool anyone long enough to do anything. Not to mention their combat skills are nowhere near the original's - after a bout of grandstanding, three of them are wiped out by T3-M4, a pintsized astromech droid. (Then again, T3 is that badass. Maybe they should've copied him instead.)
      • HK-47 himself is angry at these knockoffs. It's too bad the HK-50 factory never made it into the final game.
    • Fridge Brilliance: It's rather like what George Lucas has done to Star Wars in the last 15 years. This could actually be a subtle criticism...
  • Surprisingly not mentioned yet, Wario could be considered a knockoff of Mario. However, after Super Mario Land, he became a bumbling idiot with absolutely no resemblance except the outfit. Shadow Mario is a more recent version, although he is really Bowser Jr. in disguise. Waluigi can be considered a knockoff of Luigi as well.
    • Also, in Paper Mario, the Duplighost enemies could transform into your allies, and at one point in the game a mirror breaks, and it turns out that Mario and his allies' reflections were actually disguised enemies behind glass.
  • In Ratchet and Clank Size Matters, the Big Bad creates an army of clones of the main character. At first they're identical replicas, but later on you meet ones with heightened attributes. These include speed, strength, and carrying a huge flamethrower. Because they're really tiny, the ones that aren't destroyed are sold as toys, or are kept to keep Qwark company.
  • The golem Astaroth's Character Development in Soul Calibur from the third game onwards revolves around him discovering that he is just an Evil Knockoff of Rock the "White Giant". Astaroth dedicates himself to killing Rock so that he can be a truly unique being instead of just a cheap copy.
    • Soul Calibur was created to be a good knockoff of Soul Edge. However, since it was created using a piece of Soul Edge itself, it turned out to be just as bad in a different way in Soul Calibur IV.
    • Not only that, Astoroth gets his own twin, who is a bright eyed idealist clockwork golem. She is tasked with bringing Astoroth back.
  • The Issue 17 update of City of Heroes, titled "Dark Mirror", revolves around this trope, with various dopplegangers for players to fight, of varying origins.
  • Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex has Cortex create a bigger, more violent version of Crash named, imaginatively, Crunch. Then Crunch joins Crash's side at the end of the game.
  • In Rayman, there's Bad/Dark Is Evil Rayman, created by Mr. Dark.
  • Kojack in MadWorld is basically a copy of the player character Jack. It's not known how evil he is, he's just another participant in the Blood Sport that is Deathwatch. Jack certainly isn't Incorruptible Pure Pureness either, it's pretty much just the announcers who say Kojack is an Evil Knockoff of Jack.
  • Dragon Quest gives us the FooHero, FooFighter, FooPriest, and FooMage, knockoffs of the Hero, Warrior, Priest, and Mage classes.
  • At the end of Final Fantasy X, there's a script battle against evil versions of all your aeons, and in the international version, there's a more real battle against them.
  • The supervillain Deja Vu in Freedom Force can make evil duplicates out of anyone he wants, so he chooses to make a bunch out of Minuteman (a Captain America (comics) Expy). The knockoffs have the same powers but have Glowing Eyes of Doom.
  • Dark Link has appeared sporadically throughout The Legend of Zelda. His most memorable appearance was probably in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. He usually has similar sword play abilities compared to the main character, but a lack of magic and various items.
  • In Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, Dark Mind captures Meta Knight and creates a copy of him called Dark Meta Knight who is sent to attack Kirby. Dark Meta Knight is disguised as the real one for most of the game until the true Meta Knight reveals that he is an imposter.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising gives us Dark Pit, created when Pit shattered a soul-reflecting mirror (it breaking is why Dark Pit isn't a perfect copy). However, despite Pandora's wishes, he's definitely more of an Anti-Hero than a villain.
  • A notable ability of Chaos Sorcerer in Dawn of War II in Last Stand is to create demonic copies of his enemies - and sacrifice them to restore health if he needs to. Alternatively, he can trade these abilities for increased health and attack power as well as ability to heal himself by sacrificing energy.
  • In Super Robot Wars Z 2, Anti-Spiral pilots a Palette Swap of the Gurren Lagann with Anti-Spiral Nia instead of the Grand Zamboa because Tengen Toppa wasn't in the game.


Web Comics

  • Parodied in Adventurers! Khrima creates robot duplicates of all the heroes, and plans to kidnap the heroes and replace them with their doubles to fool each other, only to be informed of the holes in this plan: the duplicates only vaguely resemble the people they're replacing; he built a double of Evil Killer Death Spybot 5000, who is already a robot and already on their side; if all the adventurers are replaced by robots then when the trap is sprung the robots will be turning on each other, and of course, if they're kidnapped, there's no need to trick them anyway.
  • The concept is parodied in this Zebra Girl comic.
  • MS Paint Masterpieces had Copy Mega Man, made by Dr. Wily to stop Mega Man and pre-loaded with all of the Robot Masters weapons. A logical move on Wily's part since Mega Man is, y'know, a robot he helped build. And honestly, it would have actually killed Mega Man if it weren't for outside intervention.
  • In Sonichu, Robotnik and Giovanni make two Evil Knockoffs of Sonichu - Black Sonichu (later renamed "Blake") and Metal Sonichu. Metal Sonichu is defeated in his first appearance and Blake is an annoyance to Sonichu and the Chaotic Combo until his hidden away Heel Face Turn after getting a girlfriend.
  • In Sluggy Freelance, Santa Clause creates Mecha-Easter Bunny to defeat Bun-bun. The only way he could be more evil than Bun-bun is to destroy Tokyo, which he does before he even appears on-panel.
  • In It Sucks to Be Weegie, Luigi ends up running into the one guy that might possibly suck more than he does; Waluigi. Hilarity Ensues.


Web Original

  • Atop the Fourth Wall has the mysterious Mechakara, who resembles Linkara with a robotic hand. His origins and motives are unknown and mostly he's just lurked in the background chuckling in a sinister fashion and occasionally making subtle attempts on Linkara's life and re-killing the original Spoony. Linkara apparently doesn't even know he exists.
  • As related to the above, The Spoony Experiment has implemented this recently. At the end of Spoony's Final Fantasy VIII review, he is attacked by Squall, who was hired by Dr. Insano, ALL of whom are played by Noah Antwiler. At the end of this encounter, both Squall and Spoony are killed, and Linkara takes to reanimating Spoony through cloning. This Clone is now the main character of the Spoony Experiment. The Evil Knockoff comes in when a short while later, a Black Lantern ring falls into Linkara's hotel room while he's at the Chicago Comic Convention, and reanimates the soul of the Original Spoony One. This Black Lantern version fights Linkara briefly, is defeated, and joins Linkara in a single review. He is then promptly murdered by Mechakara and brought back as a Black Lantern again. Then, in the Final Fantasy X review, before the review truly begins, the Original Spoony bursts in on Clone Spoony, explaining that he came back to life as Spoony the White, and came to kill the clone to get his show back. Upon finding out that Clone Spoony was going to review Final Fantasy X, however, Spoony the White shot himself with the gun intended to kill the Clone. He then promptly returns as a Black Lantern Spoony, again. Given the convolution of this plot, it's hard to say if he's really the original, an Evil Knockoff, or if this is reversed from the get go.


Western Animation

  • Kim Possible once had Drakken create a small army of feral Kim "clones." This plan failed, spectacularly, but at least he learned an important lesson: "No clones."
  • Utonium's college roommate did this in a sad, disturbing episode of The Powerpuff Girls. The knockoffs failed because he cut back on the sugar in order to increase profits.
    • Not to mention the Rowdyruff Boys, who were created to be copies of the Powerpuff girls with a twist: being boys (made from "snips and snails and puppy-dog tails"), and naturally, being more violent.
  • The Futurama episode "I Dated a Robot" had an army of evil Lucy Liubots.
  • The J-Team from Jackie Chan Adventures had an identical team of evil knockoffs, until they did a Heel Face Turn at the end of the episode.
  • In one "Teen Force" short on Space Stars, Uglor created an evil duplicate of Elektra.
  • Evil Emperor Zurg decides to make a team of evil, cloned rangers in an episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. Trouble is, he takes them from their cloning vats a bit early and ends up with a team of evil kid versions of team Lightyear. At the end of the episode, Zurg tries again, but waits too long and gets a team of senior citizens.
  • The episode of Big Guy and Rusty The Boy Robot in which the Legion Ex Machina reproduces Big Guy from his original blueprints—which is a plot point, since Big Guy's final design differed from those blueprints in a few very important ways. They do make a few additions.
    • There's also an episode where Donovan manufactured a line of Rusty-clone toys. In a subversion, they were perfectly docile. Then the Legion Ex Machina got a hold on one of the clones, and used it to control all of the clones. So, Big Guy and Rusty had to deal with an entire army of Evil Knockoffs.
  • In Gargoyles, Xanatos decides first to build a small army of cheap robotic copies of Goliath, then a suit of Powered Armor for himself that resembles Goliath's appearance, then has ordinary humans gene-spliced into knockoffs, and then just out-and-out clones him. None of these schemes work, and the clone plan backfires so spectacularly he never tries again.
    • Though it's worth noting that having the red exo suit does allow Xanatos to almost hold his own against Goliath and other non-humans. Additionally, Thailog and Xanatos together probably could best the Manhattan Clan. Pity Thailog hates both his dads.
    • Part of the problem is that Xanatos' knockoffs have a nasty habit of turning good. Of the four gene-spliced humans, only one remains evil throughout the entire series. Of the six clones, only two choose to be evil.
  • Metalhead, Slash, and Tokka (never seen without Rahzar) in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Metalhead is an obviously robotic and non-ninja imitation; the other two are at least other mutant turtles.
  • The idea is lampooned in an episode of Action League NOW, in which The Flesh is impersonated by RoboFlesh, who is indistinguishable from The Flesh aside from metal bolts covering his entire body. No one notices the bolts, and the evil mayor almost wins.
  • Dr. Claw once created an army of Inspector Gadget clones. Another episode had a M.A.D. Agent create a crude robotic duplicate of Gadget to frame him for crimes. The spinoff series Gadget Boy and Heather also had one episode where Spydra created a copy of Gadget Boy named Bad Gadget Boy. Even Gadget and the Gadgetinis was not immune to this trope, having an evil clone of Gadget in one episode and a disguised M.A.D. Agent in another.
  • Aku does this to the titular Jack in one episode of Samurai Jack. In this case, the clone is a physical manifestation of Jack's rage.

Aku: Is there no fighting style that can defeat his ?! ... Yeeees... No fighting style can defeat his!

    • He is then defeated. Awesomely. Seriously, you have to see this.
      • It isn't in a fight.
  • Scourge and Nemesis Breaker for Optimus Prime and Leobreaker, respectively, in two separate Transformers series.
    • Due to Ri D Scourge sharing a name with G1 Scourge, the former is now called Nemesis Prime.
  • The Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy created a mechanical duplicate of Dave called Mecha-Dave in an episode of Dave the Barbarian.
  • Brother Blood made a whole bunch of evil Cyborgs by memorizing the original's blueprints on Teen Titans. The problem turned out to be that you can only copy so much- and the human bits were not part of that.
    • Heck, Blood went so far as to copy Cyborg's blueprints on himself, turning himself into an Evil Knockoff. With Cyborg's powers added on to his own original ones, CyBlood was nearly invincible- pity he didn't count on the power of Deus Ex Machina...
  • In the old The Legend of Zelda episode "The Doppelganger", Ganon creates an Evil Knockoff of Zelda (complete with "evil"-color outfit). It has a couple of tells: it can't make the Triforce float, it casts no reflection, and it's kisses were "colder than [Link] expected". Also, being a magic monster, it was destroyed by the energy blast from Link's sword (which had been previously shown to just sting actual people).
  • Vlad tried several times to clone Danny Phantom, including creating a younger Distaff Counterpart.
    • The thing is, he succeeded in creating the perfect clone. All he needed was that one mid-morph to finalize it.
  • In one episode of Aladdin, a chaos elemental can't figure out how to defeat Aladdin, so he makes a Bad Aladdin to fight him, complete with Bad Genie. Luckily, Good Aladdin figures out that Bad Aladdin wouldn't have freed his genie, so stealing the lamp works.
  • In the DCAU, Cadmus created a clone of Supergirl named Galatea. She wasn't very nice.
    • Like in the comic books, the DCAU version of Bizarro was created as a genetic clone of Superman gone awry.
    • In the finale of the Cadmus story arc, the Brainiac/Luthor hybrid generates robotic Evil Knockoffs of the Justice League. Or alternatively you could argue they're technically regular knockoffs of Alternate Universe Evil Twins, the Justice Lords.
  • Megatron did this a bunch with Dinobot in Beast Wars. Once he created an all-organic clone of Dinobot's raptor form, once he made a pack of unstable cyber-raptors, and finally he just out-and-out made Dinobot 2.
    • The latter does make a Heel Face Turn at the end, when the original Dinobot's memories come back after Rampage's death.
  • In one of Doug's Quailman stories, Dr. Rubbersuit captures Quailman and splits him into his good and evil halves, planning to use the latter as a henchman. The evil Quailman escapes and proceeds to wreak havoc.
  • The He-Man and the Masters of the Universe character "Faker" is an evil palette-swap of He-Man himself, with blue skin, red hair and orange armor. Depending on which version of canon you accept, he's either a malformed clone (the comic book), or a magical creation of Skeletor (the animated series).
  • A She Ra Princess of Power episode featured a creature that, on the Horde's orders, copied She-Ra's strength and abilities but, fortunately, also copied her personality.
  • Lawrence Limburger and Karbunkle once created evil copies of the Biker Mice From Mars.
  • In Phineas and Ferb, Doofenshmirtz once created clones of Perry the Platypus to fight fire with fire. He stated that, by fire, he meant Perry the Platypus; and the other fire also meant Perry the Platypus.


Real Life

  • Frederick the Great went out of his way to recruit light forces once he realized how effective Maria Theresa's Croats and Hussars were at raiding.
  • During lengthy conflicts, its very common for one side to copy or incorporate the other's weapons technology, tactics and strategy. Sometimes it went as far as recruiting the people who are responsible for whatever you were copying. The results can be anything from a noticeable improvement, to a bad knockoff.
  • An example of something not at all for the purpose of fighting would be, at least from the perspective of The United States, the Buran spacecraft, the Soviet Union's knockoff of NASA's Space Shuttle.
  1. ↑ Accept no substitute substitutes!
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