Evil Twin

It's not easy bleeding green!

You can always tell the evil one by the dagger he's sticking in you.

Take a popular character and introduce us to the evil version of this character. Naturally, it's a favorite Soap Opera device. It's also very prevalent in genre shows, where the events may happen in an Alternate Universe: for example, the Wishverse in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or the Star Trek Mirror Universe. Typically the evil twin will be portrayed by the same actor as the regular character.

It's worth noting that in the overwhelming majority of cases the twin is evil; only rarely does an evil character suddenly find themselves contending with a good twin, and in those cases the good version is often simpleminded or purely comic. See Good Is Impotent.

Often, in science fiction, the Evil Twin is created from the original character by Applied Phlebotinum. Most of the time, this results in a "Good Twin" and "Evil Twin", neither of which are complete entities on their own. See Starfish Character for examples of this.

A goatee or other beard is a staple of Evil Twins everywhere. This comes from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror", in which the evil duplicate of Spock is distinguished only by the fact that he has a beard. It is common for parodies of Evil Twin to use a beard as a distinguishing characteristic, in some cases even when they shouldn't be able to grow facial hair - for example, Flexo in Futurama or Cartman in South Park. Some evil twins use Identical Twin ID Tags to differentiate from their good counterpart such as scars and evil costuming.

Sci-Fi versions usually wind up playing Spot the Imposter.

Compare Criminal Doppelganger, Evil Counterpart, and Enemy Without, and see also Doppelganger. For the situation where the original character pretends to be the Evil Twin, see Impersonating the Evil Twin. When multiple characters' Evil Twins team up, they become The Psycho Rangers.

If they are literal twins, they might be Cain and Abel and/or Separated at Birth, but an Evil Twin need not be a relative of the original, and a separated pair doesn't necessarily include an evil one.

If the two end up fighting, it is always a Mirror Match.

Occasionally Played for Laughs when both twins are evil.

A Sister Trope to Evil Counterpart (evil Alternate Universe persona), Evil Knockoff (intentionally created evil duplicate), and Criminal Doppelganger (evil Identical Stranger).

See Also: Mirror Morality Machine. Compare Evil Twin, but don't trust anything he says.

If you were looking for the videogame Evil Twin: Cyprien's Chronicles, it can be found here.

Examples of Evil Twin include:

Advertising

  • One Priceline advert includes the appearance of the company's spokesman's Evil Twin, complete with the Beard of Evil, the spokesman? William Shatner!


Anime and Manga

  • The evil twin was actually a major plot point for Blue Seed. Momiji's twin, Kaede, was called in first to deal with the evil plant monsters, due to her family's bloodline power, and ended up faking her death to join them.
  • Yuuna's evil twin in Maburaho was magic-derived.
  • Evil robotic Angels appeared in Galaxy Angel Moonlit Lovers, after an evil robot Tact appeared in the first game. Strangely, the fake Angels were the only villains to be kept in the Galaxy Angel anime, and they only appeared for one episode.
  • Gundam Seed featured Rau Le Creuset, an unstable clone of secondary character Mu La Flaga's father. While they initially don't seem similar, when Rau removes his mask, he reveals his identical face. Rau's feelings that his existence was an abomination and nihilism about humanity in general led him to attempt to wipe out all of humanity, Coordinator and Natural both. Considering that he got his last name from the french word of The Crucible...Yeah, he's a very screwed up guy.
  • The entire premise of Blood Plus is of vampire-like creatures originating from two twins who were born from the womb of the Mother, and they turn out to be Saya and Diva, the heroine and villainess. They look alike except for the fact that Saya has red eyes, and Diva has blue eyes, referencing the colors of the veins and arteries in human beings.
  • Monster has the titular Johan Liebert, Half Identical Twin of Anna Liebert (Nina Fortner).
  • Magic Knight Rayearth 2 has Nova, evil twin to titular protagonist Shidou Hikaru. Extremely bi-polar (which is putting it kindly as she switches constantly back and forth between cutesy, loving little child and homicidal psychopath personalities), and bat-shit insane. Created at the very instant that Hikaru and her fellow Knights were transported back to earth at the end of the first story, Nova is actually a small portion of Hikaru's soul given a separate existence and consciousness of its own. Hikaru couldn't cope with all the crushing negative emotions and thoughts brought on by the trauma induced by the first story's ending, and thus her body expelled them all along with a bit of her being, which was given a life of its own via Cefiro's "willpower=reality" system of existence.
  • Subverted in a stand-alone episode of The Slayers. A villain uses an enchanted mirror to create dark duplicates of his victims, including main characters Lina and Naga. The clones are supposed to be the "reverse" of the originals - which, to the bad guy's surprise, means the copies are meek, modest and peaceful, not evil.

real Zelgadis: (after listening to the mirror twins) Amelia... I think I just realised something very disturbing about you and me...

  • Throughout Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, there are sinister flashes of another Syaoran floating in a tank of water in the villain's base, who seems to be "influencing" the Syaoran who is traveling with the good guys. In the manga, the truth is revealed. The Syaoran in the tank is the "original" Syaoran, and the one traveling with them is really a heartless clone whose emotions were inspired by psychic connection. Upon the good Syaoran's release, our Evil Twin Syaoran succumbs to his programming.
  • Knives in Trigun, Cain in Trinity Blood, and Aion in Chrono Crusade. Apparently, being a guy who's the hero's evil twin means being a genocidal psycho and having a brother complex the size of the Empire State Building. Knives, Cain and Aion are anime's unholy trinity of Evil Twins. The three of them are practically expies of whomever came first. Roshel/Rociel in Angel Sanctuary is very much like them too, with the difference that Alexiel is female and his non-identical twin. Also a partial subversion in that Rociel is a supreme angel and Alexiel, a fallen one.
  • Subverted in Chobits. Freya, Chii's sister, at first glance appears to be Chii's dark side/evil twin/dark thoughts, The Enemy Within or just the highly-knowledgable Split Personality to Chii's innocence, but actually turns out to be looking out for Chii's safety, supplying her with information and intervening in preserving Chii when necessary.
  • Evil twins of the Sanzo-ikkou were created by a demon who rationalized that the best chance of beating them was pitting them against themselves. Turned into comedy when Hakkai, Gojyo, and Goku imagine beating up on a Sanzo-lookalike. Also used as An Aesop, as when they win against their clones - who are wearing their clothes from the first season - they explain to the confused demon that they are not the same people as they were when the clones were created and they grow and learn as blah blah blah.
  • Subverted in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: it's often impossible even for people who have watched the series more than once to tell whether Shion or Mion is the evil twin. This makes them both seem evil, or at least sinister.
  • Averted in One Piece. Luffy and his older brother Ace are on opposing pirate crews, and Ace has a sinister air about him, but the two actually have a good relationship.
    • Not that this really matters, considering that they're not twins or related by blood, for that matter.
    • Though not really a twin or relative, Blackbeard is rumored to be the antithesis to Luffy and like his name says, he does have a beard. Now at least
  • Fran of Franken Fran was built by Dr. Madaraki to serve as his apprentice. When one of her assistants is killed in a way that she can't prevent, she discovers the existence of her "sister" Veronica, built to serve as Madaraki's bodyguard. Unlike Fran, who will not condone a person's death if it can be prevented, Veronica will quite enthusiastically kill someone if it benefits her. Fran very quickly shoves a Restraining Bolt into Veronica's brain, and she settles into being a devil's advocate for her sister.
  • Shaman King: Yoh's evil twin and the series' Big Bad, Asakura Hao (changed to Asakura Zeke in the American Translation).
  • The third Keroro Gunsou movie featured a "Dark Keroro" generated by some lost alien technology.
  • In Bleach, Ichigo's Inner Hollow could probably be considered this. And if that's not enough, Szayel Aporro Granz makes evil clones of Renji and Ishida to fight, though they're mindless.
    • Earlier in the series, Ichigo acquires a special pill that lets him take on his Shinigami form while leaving a temporary artificial soul in his human body. The artificial soul turns out to have a will of its own, and is quite the Delinquent.
    • The Invasion arc introduced this concept very quickly, with many of the captains, vice-captains and a few of the highly seated officers that act at the vice-captain level being cloned by a Mad Scientist. They are stronger than the originals and much more aggressive... and often with quite a twisted outlook.

Clone!Yumichika: 'Did you think that, like you, I wouldn't be able to attack myself? You're mistaken. When I see you, I think you're beautiful just the way you do, but am I the only one who thinks you'd look even more beautiful covered in blood?'

  • Saint Seiya has Gemini Saga and Gemini/Sea Dragon Kanon, each of them is the evil twin to the other in different parts of the story. The Black Saints not only shares the same armor as the protagonists except theirs is black but for unexplained reasons also share the exact same physical appearance as their good counterparts. This is all the most jarring in the case of the Black Phoenix mooks that come in mass and all look exactly the same, that is to say like the main Phoenix. All the attacks of the evil counterparts also are reminiscent of the good ones albeit more evil. For example the attack of Black Pegasus, Ankoku Ryu Sei Ken, is similar to the Ryu Sei Ken of the main Pegasus except it slowly contaminates its victims eventually making them suffocate to death. Likewise, the Black Andromeda's attack has its chains turning into snakes feeding on the victim's blood.
  • While not an actual twin, Tullece, from the third Dragonball Z movie (Tree of Might), looks and (in the original Japanese, where he was voiced by Masako Nozawa) sounds just like Goku. His goals are slightly more sophisticated versions of what Goku likes to do: enjoy fine foods and engage in battles. It's possible he was meant to represent what Goku would have grown up to be like had it not been for Grandpa Gohan.
    • In the same vein, Majin Boo's two forms. The thin Boo, the one formed out of steam seems to act entirely evil, while the 'original' Fat Boo (aka Mr. Boo) often makes the 'good' choice, especially after the split. Though they don't look all that much alike until the reabsorption.
    • We can't discuss evil twins in Dragon Ball without bringing up the original's! Kami and Great Demon King Piccolo, anybody? Furthermore, you could compare Shen Long to his Black Star counterpart.
  • Hana from Papillion Hana To Cho is glamorous, popular, and the decided favorite over her Country Mouse twin sister Ageha until Ageha discovered tiny bit of confidence after reuniting with an old (male) friend. Hana then steals said friend by using Ageha's weak stomach to get her out of the way with a little Hidden Depths sweettalk. Things get worse after Ageha gets over the guy, improves her relationship with her Well Done Daughter Mom and hooks up with another guy: Hana disguises herself as Ageha while Ageha is sick and is so irritating that he breaks up with Ageha the next day he's a psych major and he couldn't tell Ageha was acting a bit off? C'mon, they're not Cylons!). Due to said guy being her school counselor and offlimits in the first place it's unlikely Ageha will ever know the real reason they broke up.
  • Zeon from Gash Bell, Evil Twin to the title character. Angry at not being able to have a Dangerous Forbidden Technique, which was given to his Idiot Hero of a brother. Has a Redemption Equals Death moment
  • In Ninin ga Shinobuden, Onsokumaru creates an evil duplicate when he attempts to use a Ninja Clone technique. Of course, Onsokumaru being Onsokumaru, the twin isn't really any worse than the original.
  • Zero's evil twin Ichiru in Vampire Knight.
  • Fairy Tail tries to play Gerard up as Siegrain's evil(er) twin. The former reveals by the end of the arc he's introduced in, however, that Siegrain was an illusion created to slip into the council and use their magic. They are actually one and the same. In truth he is actually inversion with Mystogan.
  • Subverted in an episode of the second season of Duel Masters... In a town populated entirely by sets of twins, it's suggested that one group is the evil twins... Until it's revealed that they're all evil.
  • Vampire Game plays around with this trope. In the kingdom of Razenia, twins are considered bad luck, and so when twins are born, one of them is chosen as "evil" and is abandoned. In this case, the "good" twin is the crown prince... and the "bad" twin turns out to be Vord, one of the nicest characters in the series.
  • Takaya from Tekkaman Blade quite literally has an evil twin. His twin brother Shinya succesfully completed the Tekkaman conversion process, becoming Tekkaman Evil and the main villain's dragon. At one point, he gets in close to Space Knight HQ in order to launch a surprise attack by dressing up as his brother and playing on his celebrity status amongst the human troops.
  • Ranma from Ranma ½ gets a mischievous copy of his female self from a Magic Mirror, who is incapable of gender-bending and happy to learn that Ranma is a guy. They almost manage to seal the copy in another magic mirror, but instead a second copy of Ranma is created, this one male. The two copies then hook up, which at least keeps them out of trouble.
  • Arguably, Suboshi from Fushigi Yuugi, Amiboshi's Hot-Blooded younger twin brother.

Comic Books

  • The entire Bizarro World in the Pre Crisis Superman mythos can be considered a form of Evil Twin by Applied Phlebotinum, though it slowly changed from "evil opposite" to "goofy opposite".
    • Eh? Bizarro STARTED as a "goofy opposite". Oddly, he arguably had an Evil Twin, in the form of Bizarro-Bizarro, who looked like Superman, spoke like Bizarro, and acted like a Jerkass.
    • In All-Star Superman, there's Zibarro, who's the most intelligent man on Bizarro World.
  • In addition to Bizarro, Superman has at least four other evil twins, each by way of a different trope. There is his Evil Counterpart General Zod. There's Hank Henshaw, who went from being a Take That parody of Reed Richards to an evil Superman by way of Grand Theft Me. There's his Mirror Universe double Ultraman (in fact, there are currently two Ultramen, from two similar but distinct Mirror Universes). And finally, there's his alternate universe counter part Superboy Prime, who began life as a sort of Sidekick by way of Ret Con, but was eventually transitioned into a villain.
  • Supergirl too. In the Silver Age there was her Enemy Without Satan Girl in Legion of Super-Heroes, created by Red Kryptonite. Supergirl (pre-DCnU reboot) went through a similar story which created "Dark Supergirl", although she ended up as more of an Enemy Within. And then there's Bizarrogirl, who causes chaos on Earth because she's just as confused as Kara but doesn't deal with it as well. Before that, Earth-Angel Supergirl had her own Bizarro-Supergirl, and also fought Matrix, her own former body! In fact, the shapeshifting Matrix-Supergirl, in one of her more confused periods, was also an evil twin of Superman... (A Mirror Universe Ultragirl has also been seen, but thus far Kara hasn't had to deal with her).
  • The Marvel Comics series Exiles inverts this. The reality-hopping team of the title need to defeat the evil Hyperion... so they fetch two good versions of him from other universes.
  • In the Transformers: Shattered Glass comic series, Cliffjumper is transported to a Bizarro Universe where the Autobots are evil and the Decepticons are good. In a bit of parody/lampshading, evil Rodimus even got himself a goatee, saying that he feels it makes him feel distinguished.
  • Newspaper comic inversion: In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin once made a perfect copy of himself to do his work for him, only to find out that his double was even more troublesome than the original, since he realized that he could commit any mischief and the original would get all the blame. A later storyline had Calvin making a duplicate of only his good side... who among other things starts trying to make friends with the girl next door Calvin's always trying to humiliate. Calvin confronts his good counterpart and provokes him into a fight. Angered, Calvin's Good Side decides that he's going to "tear [Calvin] limb from-", and promptly disappears with the exclamation "Oops, I had an evil thought!" Hobbes then declares: "Another casualty of Applied Metaphysics."
  • The DCU has Earth-3, a Mirror Universe of Evil Twins, including Alexander Luthor, the good twin of Lex Luthor. President John Wilkes Booth was assassinated by Union sympathizer Abraham Lincoln and Benedict Arnold is on the dollar bill, too. It also has the anti-matter universe, /another/ Mirror Universe of Evil Twins. The main visible difference between the two? The anti-matter universe is home to the Crime Syndicate of Amerika [sic], while Earth-3 is home to the Crime Society of America.
  • Subverted in the comic book Hellblazer, in which it is revealed that the series's star, John Constantine is the 'evil' twin, having strangled his brother in the womb with his own umbilical cord. He later crossed over to a parallel universe, where his brother had become an incredibly powerful and celebrated magus.
  • In the comic book Gold Digger, the two main characters (Gina and her adopted were-cheetah sister, Brittany) accidentally create a clone of themselves that shares traits from both of them, including their memories, in an attempt to remove a curse from themselves. After several battles with the clone, Gina realizes that the reason the clone is trying to kill them is because the curse is inhabiting the clone, motivating its irrational desire to kill them. Her father, an arch-mage, happens to show up in time to dispel the curse, and the clone is invited to join the family and given the name Brianna (a portmanteau of Brittany and Gina). Later on, the Djinn Madrid uses magics to disguise herself as Gina so well she can fool empaths. This backfires though, erasing her original form, and since then, Madrid has been slowly overwritten by Gina, to the point that a future version of herself traveled to the edge of existence and beyond to save her 'baby sister'
  • In Archie Sonic the Hedgehog, as well as having Shadow, and various Metal Sonics, there is the alternate world known as Moebius, home to kindly Dr. Kintobor (Robotnik's "evil twin") and the Suppresion Squad, the evil twins of the Freedom Fighters. Their leader was Anti-Sonic, the evil twin of Sonic himself, who proved to be very inept - despite helping Alicia (the evil Sally) depose of her father, he hadn't won a single fight since. Amongst his failures were accidentally giving the Sonic Underground Robotnik the Bio Borg instead of Robo-Robotnik and getting struck down by Antoine by accident. Compare this to Patch, Antione's evil twin, who successfully replaced Antoine, nearly ruined his relationship with Bunnie, poisoned King Acorn, killed Antoine's father and nearly took the throne before Sonic stepped in. Thankfully, Anti-Sonic got better after he Took a Level in Badass by becoming Scourge.
  • The Flash (Barry Allen version) had an Evil Twin in the form of Eobard Thawne, who had plastic surgery to resemble him, and then traveled back from the 25th century to become Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash. A later Retcon would reveal that Zoom was descended from Malcolm Thawne, aka Cobalt Blue, who really was Barry's estranged twin brother but had completely different powers.
    • In the 30th century Eobard's descendant created Inertia, a clone of Barry's (and his own) grandson Impulse, and sent him back in time to fight his counterpart.
    • For a while after he reformed, Dr. Alchemy (Albert Desmond) seemed to have a psychic twin named Alvin who took up his tools and identity, only becoming the evil twin after Albert became the good one. "Alvin" turned out to be the Philosopher's Stone's physical manifestation of his subconscious desire to continue a life of crime.
  • Pretty much every member of the X-Men has had at least one Evil Twin at some point, thanks to any or all of alternate realities, android duplicates, Skrulls and insane geneticists with a thing about cloning. Among the more notable examples...
    • Beast's evil twin from an alternate dimension, known as the Dark Beast, made his way into the mainstream universe and has been a recurring villain since the 1990s. Beast also had at least two other Evil Twins, but they didn't last.
    • Joseph was a much younger 'copy' of Magneto. Since at the time Magneto was villainous and Joseph was an X-Man, he counts as a Good Twin.
    • At one point half the team was replaced by the shape-shifting aliens known as Skrulls (this was back before everyone was doing it). While most of them remained in captivity while their doubles were running around making trouble, the story culminated in Professor X handing a simultaneous physical and mental beatdown to his double. While naked.
    • Professor X has an actual evil twin, Cassandra Nova. It's later explained that everyone has an evil twin, a psychic construct the Shi'ar call the mummudrai that they face off with before birth. Xavier killed Nova in the womb, but, because she was the Evil Twin of an extremely powerful psychic, she managed to survive as a mass of miscarried fetal tissue and reconstruct herself to the point where she could enact revenge.
    • Cable and Stryfe, although Cable seems to be the Good Twin. It's confusing.
  • During the Marvel Crisis Crossover with the entity called the Magus trying to snuff reality, he distracted all the superheroes by simultaneously creating Evil Twins of every superhero in the Marvel Universe.
    • Likewise the Avengers Forever series ends with a no punches pulled battle between every good Avenger that can exist, and every evil Avenger that can exist.
    • Infinity War, the above-mentioned Crisis Crossover, had a few interesting moments in the 'crossover' issues. One issue of Fantastic Four had the Human Torch being pursued by doppelgangers of several X-men, as well as his own 'twin'. Once Torch found out that not a single one of them was human, or even truly alive, he started flash-frying them like popcorn. He ended up missing his own twin, who merely looked at him and said he had no more intention of trying to absorb him, because as he put it before he left, "You're already worse than anything I could ever make you." Thing even later yelled at him that "You ain't no flaming version of the Punisher!" The irony of this is that Torch was one of the few that ended up not being defeated by the doppelgangers in the final issue, whereas the Thing was defeated not even a few minutes later by the dark version of Invisible Woman. Rage of the New Warriors ended up inadvertently absorbing his own twin, which had very little effect on him, surprisingly enough.
  • The Excalibur villains Lightning Squad were an alternate version of the team (minus Rachel, who has no counterpart in the multiverse) from a reality where the Nazis won World War Two. Hauptmann Englande was a cold and ruthless Nazi darling, Meggan had this Baroness thing going on, and Nightcrawler was a rapist; but the most chilling reflection was Jewish Shadowcat, who was a bald, emaciated slave to the regime.
  • Inverted in The DCU comic series Kobra, whose eponymous Villain Protagonist was the Evil Twin. His wicked schemes were always foiled by his Good Twin, from whom he'd been separated at birth. Shortly after the series was canceled, Kobra killed off his twin. Recently, however, Kobra himself was Killed Off for Real by a rogue superhero, and his minions have resurrected the good twin, brainwashed him to become evil, and made him the new Kobra.
  • In the final issue of the latest Arkham Asylum miniseries, Jeremiah Arkham meets the Jester. It transpires that the "Jester" is just a projection of what Jeremiah imagines himself to be, under influence of a psychotropic drug given to him by... the Joker.

Jester: Think of me as the Joker's evil twin.
Arkham: The Joker's evil twin?
Jester: Scary, ain't it?

  • Played straight in the Squadron Supreme limited series, when Hyperion is replaced by his Evil Twin as part of a larger Evil Plan.
  • Judge Dredd loves this trope. Dredd himself is a clone of Judge Fargo. Dredd may or may not be considered "evil", but he is definitely far more fascist than his clone father. His clone brother Rico and Rico's identical Mirror Universe double are straight examples. The Judda are a whole group of evil clones of him and other judges. His supposedly rehabilitated clone Kraken gets Brainwashed and Crazy. His Mirror Universe counterpart is a comically liberal counterpart to the fascist we know. And finally, his evil future self gets killed and dragged back to the present before getting up and going on a rampage. Dredd frequently Lampshades this by worrying if it's "something in the blood".
  • In King Ottokar's Sceptre, the conspiracy to steal the sceptre involves kidnapping Professor Alembick and replacing him with his twin brother.
  • The Smurfs deal with evil duplicates of themselves in The Smurf Threat that were created by Papa Smurf in order to get the Smurfs to stop fighting with each other.
  • In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe comic The Forgotten, a brain parasite attacking the Tenth Doctor takes on the appearance of an evil twin version of him, complete with beard and black pinstripe suit, and claims to be the Valeyard. The real Doctor immediately mocks the parasite's complete lack of originality.


Fan Works

Hoo boy. Let's say it's popular, and even more so if the base subject has a Mirror Universe or an Evil Twin as part of its own canon.

  • Case in point: Darkwing Duck fanfic writers take trips to the Negaverse every so often. A popular subject is 'NegaGosalyn' and her relationship with the Friendly Four (Hurt/Comfort Fic pops up here). One story even explains why Gosalyn wasn't evil there--the normal one would've turned rotten.
  • Conversed in a one-shot within the ATLA Another Brother universe, where Sokka believes an evil twin was the reason thatZuko was banished.
  • Turnabout Storm: Pinkie Pie suggests that Rainbow Dash has one of these, called Wob Niar, as a possible explanation of how the murder of Ace Swift went down. Phoenix insists on it being a stupid idea, but Pinkie being Pinkie, she sticks with it.


Film

  • In the superhero comedy Sky High, one of the teachers tries to set up a colleague on a blind date with his girlfriend's sister. "What if I said it's not just her twin? It's her evil twin." "This Friday, you say?"
  • The Movie of The Magic Roundabout introduces Zebedee's Evil Twin, the ice-wizard Zeebad who was imprisoned under the Roundabout itself. This would probably qualify it for Canon Discontinuity were it not for Tom Baker's wonderful Large Ham voice role. And then he became Jon Stewart in the American version.
  • Evil Robot Bill and Evil Robot Ted from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. If nothing else, it gave us the classic line (when E.R.Ted first sees Ted's girlfriend)..."I got a full-on robot chubby."
  • Carmen and Juni's robot doubles in Spy Kids.
  • The Avengers 1998. Mrs. Peel's clone, created by Sir August as his henchwoman. She is distinguished from the real Mrs. Peel by wearing a black leather jumpsuit.
  • In the film adaptation of The High Crusade the aliens create a genetically superior clone to fight Sir Roger.
  • Also Ash's evil twin in the third Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, though later on he's easier to distinguish and no longer identical after one of Ash's more gory actions.
  • The Bette Davis movie Dead Ringer: After the funeral of her brother-in-law (who had died of a heart attack), Edith Phillips learns that Margaret de Lorca, her rich identical twin sister, tricked the man Edith loved into marrying her (Margaret) instead. Edith kills Margaret and assumes her identity and life-style. Turns out things are not quite what they seem at the de Lorca household. Edith discovers that Margaret and her sleazy lover in fact murdered Mr. de Lorca and, realizing she will be charged with Margaret's crime, learns that You Can't Fight Fate.
  • La Davis previously played a fairly similar story in A Stolen Life: Mousy painter Kate Bosworth is attracted to brooding lighthouse keeper Bill Emerson, but then her sexy twin Patricia shows up and nabs Bill. After they're wed, Bill leaves the country on a new job and Pat and Kate go sailing, when a storm sinks the boat, Pat is drowned, and Kate is mistaken for her sister. Assuming Pat's identity, Kate eventually realizes that things at the Emerson manse are not quite what they seem. In fact, Pat had been cheating on Bill and they were planning a divorce, but after much soul-searching Bill realizes Kate is Kate and she is the one he really loved all along.
  • Olivia de Haviland in Dark Mirror: A woman suspected of murdering her doctor boyfriend has an identical twin sister. When both twins have an alibi for the night of the murder, a psychiatrist is called in to assist a detective in solving the case. Through a series of tests, he discovers which twin actually committed the crime and in the course of his investigation he falls in love with the normal twin.
  • The Noxious Offender a.k.a. Noxie, is Amortville's evil counterpart to Tromaville's Toxic Avenger a.k.a. Toxie.
  • Agent Smith of the Matrix Trilogy, starting with The Matrix Reloaded, essentially becomes Neo's evil twin as a consequence of Neo destroying him shortly after becoming The One.
  • Vanessa from The Little Mermaid, although technically the main villain in disguise, probably counts as Ariel's evil twin due to the distinct similarities between the two.
  • Subverted in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, in which Nega-Scott turns out to be just like Scott apart from the red eyes and grey skin, and instead of fighting they just talk and decide to have brunch later.
  • Blood Rage.
  • The TV movie Echo had Jack Wagner play an evil twin brother who kidnapped the main character and move into his life, killing his remaining relatives in the process, until at the end when the character's girlfriend confronts them both in the abandoned building, she doesn't know which one is the evil twin and ends up shooting one of them, with the audience also left wondering which one was killed.
  • Avatar and Black Wolf in Ralph Bakshi's Wizards, although they look nothing alike. Avatar is short, portly, friendly, and fairy-like (minus the wings). Black Wolf is tall, thin, evil, and mutated. The only thing they have in common is that they're both bearded.


Literature

  • In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan book series: After the very distinctive-looking Miles Vorkosigan claims (as a coverup for his secret identity) that he has a clone running around, it turns out he does have one. Who's been trained to take his life over. Turns out the twin, Mark, isn't necessarily born evil, just brainwashed (plus has Split Personality, with the personalities generally being pretty dark). Lampshaded in Mirror Dance: "Some people have evil twins. I am not so lucky. I have an idiot twin."
  • In William Sleator's The Duplicate, the clone isn't really evil, just resentful of being treated as a clone (he has all the memories of the original, so he believes he is the original). However, this leads him to make another clone, who really is evil (or at least not exactly sane).
  • In Haunted 1988 there are some horrendous acts going around and the family says it's Christina's evil twin sister who is doing it except there is no evil twin, it is just Christina.
  • In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next : First Among Sequels, Thursday is asked to train two fictional versions of herself as Jurisfiction agents. One of them, being from an adaptation that emphasized sex and violence, is a scheming, sarcastic bitch.
  • Oddly doubled variation: the twins from Sweet Valley High were menaced by another pair of twins who looked just like them, who wanted to take over their lives.
  • In Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas, and Electric, the villains attempt to replace a hero with a robotic copy of himself. His assistant is able to distinguish the two when the robot looks up and exclaims how worried he was that she'd be hurt, while the real version, despite the firefight going on outside, keeps playing a video game.
  • The Star Trek Deep Space Nine Relaunch novel Fearful Symmetry is all over this trope. You may want to draw diagrams for this. Back in the episode "Second Skin", Major Kira was surgically altered to look like a Cardassian and told she was Iliana Ghemor, an Obsidian Order agent who'd been given Fake Memories as a Deep-Cover Agent. This was planned by the Obsidian Order to gain evidence against Iliana's father was an anti-military-rule dissident. In this novel, the real Iliana shows up, and it turns out she did indeed have her memories and appearance altered to resemble Kira, before Gul Dukat called a halt to the operation in memory of Kira's mother. He then kept Iliana captive all this time, taking his ... confused (not to say disturbing)... feelings about Kira out on her. Iliana is now Ax Crazy with a side-order of Amnesiac Dissonance and wants revenge on anyone else who claims to be Kira Nerys. She starts off by killing Kira's other evil twin, Intendant Kira from the Mirror Universe, and taking her place. "Our" Kira, meanwhile, is being aided by Iliana's good twin; a Mirror Universe version whose father was the ruthless head of the Obsidian Order, but who defied him and joined the Terran Rebellion. Got all that? If this was the TV series, Nana Visitor would be playing four roles.
  • Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files has an entity that fits the evil-twin bill (based on Harry's wiseass and slightly lowbrow nature): more cultured, better groomed, more thoughtful, goatee. The catch is, the guy's neither evil, twin, nor real-he's a representation of Harry's subconscious, who takes the opportunity to lecture Harry whenever he's really on the ropes and unconscious.
  • Older Than Print: The "false Guenevere" in King Arthur, who is the true Guenevere's identical half-sister (somehow), and plots to take her sister's place as queen.
  • Happens literally in Ranger's Apprentice, although this is something of a subversion in that Halt's twin is more petty and pathetic than outright evil, and the dichotomy is one of competent/incompetent rather than good/bad.
  • Unusually, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a serious inversion, "William Wilson". The twins even have the same name. This is because the good twin is actually the narrator's conscience. Which gets confusing and symbolic when the evil twin murders him.
  • "One Lonely Night" by Mickey Spillane. An up-and-coming politician campaigning against corruption and Dirty Communists hires Mike Hammer to catch his insane twin brother who committed a murder in public in apparent attempt to destroy his reputation (fortunately the politician was giving a speech before hundreds of people at the time). Inverted in that Mike discovers the brother is a fraternal twin who doesn't look anything like the politician, who hired a look-alike actor to give the speech and commited the murder himself.
  • The novella The Wife of Martin Guerre subverts this: Bertrande's husband goes off to adventure and avoid farm life. 8 years later he returns and is noticeably kinder and softer in manner. When she questions him he responds that War Is Hell, that life is to be enjoyed. She feels troubled about this as she Loves him, but feels he is not her real husband and cannot stand to live a pleasant lie. Despite having a child with him, she eventually has him put on trial for impersonating Martin Guerre. The real Martin Guerre shows up at the end of the trial, confirms that the man is an imposter and calls her out for betraying both him as her husband, and the other guy whom she had admitted to loving. Doubles as Real Life as it is a fictionalization of a court case that did really occur in medieval France.
  • In The Mysterious Benedict Society series, the villain Ledroptha Curtain is the Evil Twin of the protagonist Nicholas Benedict. The two were Separated at Birth. When the Society first meets Mr. Curtain, they don't realize this, and don't figure it out until they receive a message from Benedict warning them to "Beware the Gemini."
  • In the Lightbringer trilogy, a major part of the backstory lies in the fact that instead of there only being one person with the power to become Prism in that generation, there had been two, brothers named Gavin and Dazen Guile. There was a civil war over which one would take the throne, in which the 'good' brother, Gavin, was victorious. Of course, what only a handful of people know is that although Gavin's army won the war, the man on the throne is actually Daven, who imprisoned his brother (who he closely resembled even before he made the effort to make himself his brother's double) and took his place. Also, even though the general population believes that Gavin was good and Daven evil, Daven has been a competent and fairly benevolent ruler, while some evidence suggests that Gavin might not have been as nice as the people believe.
  • In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "A Witch Shall Be Born", Salome to Queen Taramis.
  • Played straight in the short story "The poet and her double" in the book Women and Ghosts by Alison Lurie. Karo McKay, a young and gifted poet, finds out that she is followed by her Evil Twin, the anti-Karo.
  • Word of God has described Gellert Grindelwald of Harry Potter as Albus Dumbledore's (spiritual, not literal) evil twin.
  • In The Grimnoir Chronicles, Sullivan's brother Madi is the right-hand man to the Chairman. The two of them look enough alike that it gets Sullivan shot.
  • The trope is referenced in Alexander Pushkin's short story "The Queen Of Spades". Apparently a hallmark of "those dreadful modern novels".
  • Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol introduce two spirit-children who cling close to the Ghost of Christmas Present, named "Ignorance" and "Want". Ignorance symbolizes Scrooge's hatred towards others, while Want represents his greed for money. The Ghost tells him to beware them both (especially Ignorance) before vanishing while quoting his own words back to him:

"Are there no Prisons? Are there no Workhouses?"

Live Action TV

  • Gunsmoke: One episode had Festus jailed on charges of murder and robbery ... only someone who looked just like him was the actual criminal.
  • The Dukes of Hazzard: Two instances, both involving the series' two main villains (one each per episode):
    • In "Baa Baa White Sheep", viewers meet Boss Hogg's good twin, Abraham Lincoln Hogg (Sorrell Booke in a dual role), who dresses in a black outfit, complete with stovepipe hat, that matches Boss Hogg's white one. It helps to know that Boss's given initials stand for "Jefferson Davis".
    • In "Too Many Roscoes," the real Rosco is kidnapped by a band of bank robbers while the ringleader—an impersonator named Woody (James Best in a dual role) -- takes to the streets assuming Rosco's identity ... all to help his two criminal associates gain control of an armored truck delivering a $1 million shipment to Hazzard Bank. (Incidentally, the main characters fail to call Woody on his fake identity when "Rosco" bungles simple facts about his friends but remembers facts about the expected bank shipment in exact detail.)
  • Played with in the 2004 Battlestar Galactica. Boomer and Athena are a pair of Sharons/Eights who are set up as For Want of a Nail equivalents. Initially, Boomer seems to be more moral and Athena inclines towards the Dark Side, but both sway in both directions in the course of the series. By the end, Boomer has spent more time doing bad things (some of them very bad) whilst Athena is the nobler twin.
  • In one subplot of Soap, Burt is kidnapped by space aliens, one of who is transformed into an exact duplicate of him, who's not so much evil as horny for Burt's wife. Burt gets the aliens to return him to Earth, leading to this touching yet funny scene of Richard Mulligan acting with himself.
  • The episode "Mirror Image", on The Twilight Zone, has the protagonists haunted by apparent malevolent doubles. Somewhat averted, as the seeming evil doubles do little more than watch their counterparts, sometimes smiling darkly.
  • From Buffy the Vampire Slayer
    • Vampire Willow and Vampire Xander in "The Wish". Vampire Willow returned in "Doppelgangland" and actually met her good counterpart, making her a bigger example.
    • The trope was later subverted in The Replacement. A demon's spell, meant for Buffy, hits Xander instead, splitting him in two. He spends the rest of the episode tracking his twin while the twin interacts with his friends and makes various changes to his life. At the end its revealed That the blast doesn't split you into Good/Bad but only into Strong/Weak. The Xander that the audience thought was the "Good" Xander was actually the "Weak" one and the "Strong" one wasn't doing anything harmful to his life and was actually improving it. The demon's plot hinged on the fact that if one of the twins was killed, both would die. He'd planned to split Buffy into a Slayer powered version and a valley girl version, then kill the latter. In this case the special effects crew had an easy time getting both Xanders in the same shot. Xander's twin was played by Nicholas Brendon's identical twin brother, Kelly Donovan (who may or may not be evil).
  • The Channel Four comedy-drama Shameless had the Good Twin variety: homophobic villain Paddy Maguire turns out to have a homosexual and non-villainous twin brother.
  • Lois and Clark had Lois's evil twin, who was a clone. And Superman's misguided-and-sees-Lex-as-his-father twin, who was also a clone.
  • Averted in Castle. The murder victim (Zalman) had a twin brother (Edmund), who wore eyeglasses and turned up mysteriously while Castle and Beckett were searching the victim's secret magic workshop. Castle immediately lampshades this trope and speculates that Edmund was the victim and Zalman murdered him to assume his happy family life and prosperous, stable job as an accountant, while inheriting his own magic shop plus insurance money. Played straight; Lanie double checks the fingerprints and immediately rules Castle's theory out. While the twins were very different, both were good guys who lacked stage presence.
  • Data has an evil twin, Lore, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a "stupid twin", B4, in Star Trek: Nemesis.
    • William Riker has one, thanks to a transporter malfunction, that's at first just missing some social niceties after being stranded on a planet alone for the better part of a decade.
    • And then "Thomas" Riker shows up in Deep Space Nine, impersonates his brother, and steals the Defiant for a mission with the Maquis, making him at least seriously misguided. (He's right about the hidden Cardassian fleet.)
    • In Star Trek: Voyager, the Emergency Medical Hologram on the Evil Counterpart ship U.S.S. Equinox has had his "ethical subroutines" removed, making him an Evil Twin of the Doctor on Voyager.
    • Lots of evil twins in the Mirror Universe, of course, but Intendent Kira Nerys deserves special mention for being the only one who's actually met her counterpart. And got the hots for her.
    • Spock's "evil twin" was terrifyingly cold and ruthless; however, apart from the beard, he actually was identical to his regular universe counterpart, and was simply behaving logically for someone living in an evil empire. When he realizes what's happening, he helps Kirk return to his original universe so he can get his (evil) captain back. Kirk is even able to persuade him to rebel from the empire on moral grounds.
    • As well as having a double in the Mirror Universe, Kirk also had an android duplicate (What Are Little Girls Made Of?) and an evil double created by a transporter accident. (The Enemy Within)
    • The transporter double was an interesting case, as it actually split Kirk into a "Good" and "Evil" version of himself; the "Good" version was unable to command the Enterprise without the qualities of his "Evil" half.
    • In the original show, Spock detects the evil Kirk almost immediately and confines him, whereas the good Kirk is able to blend in without arousing suspicion. Spock later speculates that a civilized man can masquerade as a barbarian by simply reverting, but that a barbarian has no core of civilization to draw on.
    • In the expanded universe novels by William Shatner, Kirk (who was revived after his on-screen death in Star Trek Generations) finally gets to meet his Mirror Universe version, who likes to call himself Tiberius and who was, for a time, The Emperor (until Spock led a coup) before being instrumental in getting the Klingons and the Cardassians to ally. By the end of the trilogy, he has mellowed out, though, and becomes more like Kirk.
  • Similarly, Fantasy Island once revealed that Mr. Roarke and Tattoo had their own evil (non-identical) twins, who wore black suits with white ties, and had British Accents. Perhaps ironically, the 1998 reboot of Fantasy Island starred British actor Malcolm McDowell, complete with a black suit, as Mr. Roarke. In a seperate episode of the original series called "Look Alikes", a guest (Ken Berry) wishes to meet and exchange places with his (non related) twin (Ken Berry) who he has never met, and who of course turns out to be wanted by some bad guys.
  • The 1970s science fiction parody series Quark also hit this trope in an episode called "The Good, The Bad, and the Ficus". Spock-like Ficus, being a plant, had no morality to invert when the crew of the ship was duplicated.
  • Saturday Night Live:
    • "Frankenstein, Tonto, and Tarzan" sketch, Frankenstein is kidnapped and replaced by his evil brother. The big joke of that was Frankenstein was played by Phil Hartman and was inarticulate while his evil twin was played by Mel Gibson could speak proper English and Tonto and Tarzan still couldn't tell them apart.
    • This trope is parodied in another Saturday Night Live skit one which is titled Jay's Evil Twin, in it....Leno uses a fake moustache to determine if his date (Joan Cusack) will put out- his evil twin Wade.

Jay's Evil Twin: What's the matter, baby? Still got your clothes on? [releases an evil laugh as he shakes the beer can]
Kate: Oh, uh.. I don't want that beer.. I.. no, thank you, Jay.
Jay's Evil Twin: [releases an evil laugh] Wet t-shirt contest, baby? [pulls the tab on the beer can, gushing beer all over Kate's clothes]
Kate: Why! You're not Jay! You're Wade, his evil twin!
Jay's Evil Twin: [releases an evil laugh] Jay - that little weasel! That sniveling druid! What kind of a man would read "Our Bodies Ourselves"? I've got my own version of that book, baby - it's called "Your Body Myself!" [releases an evil laugh]
Kate: Ohhh, that's evil! You're an evil, evil man! [runs quickly out of the apartment]
Jay Leno: [releases an evil laugh, as he peels the fake moustache off his upper lip] You know.. I had a hunch that dame wasn't going to come across on the first date. You know, this evil twin thing works every time - I could have blown three hours and who knows how much dough on that girl. But, anyway.. [checks his watch] My God, it's still early.. I can still go to Hef's place, maybe meet somebody else there. See you later. [releases evil laugh as he exits the apartment]

  • Knight Rider, a show with only three regular human characters, featured four evil twins; KITT, whose prototype KARR appeared in "Trust Doesn't Rust" and "KITT vs KARR", Michael, whose surgically reconstructed face was revealed to be based on the long-lost Garth in "Goliath" and "Goliath Returns", Bonnie has an imposter wearing a Latex Perfection disguise in "KITTnapped", and Devon, who had a surgically reconstructed duplicate in "Knight of the Juggernaut". A script commissioned but never produced was to introduce yet another "evil twin", Devon's unscrupulous, though not actually evil, twin brother.
  • Lexx, presumably due to casting limitations, featured an endless supply of twins, some good, some evil. In a bit of Lampshade Hanging, the characters theorized that there were only a finite number of archetypes for human appearances.
  • In a Wizards of Waverly Place episode, Alex gets her replica out of a picture, using a special machine. Their lines suggests the fact Alex is actually the bad one of the two:

Alex: Goodness. I do look good in that dress. (she turns around) Baby Rockford, put that dress on, we got a fashion show to save.
Alex's replica: No! I like this dress...
Alex(turns to her replica): Alex, can I talk to you over there for a second?
Alex's replica: Sure! (she walks away)
Alex grabs a heavy object from a shelf, then follows her, with a dark scowl on her face.

  • Sliders featured numerous evil twins, including one case where there is a No Ending in which one of the regulars may have been permanently replaced by his twin.
  • Col. Carter from Stargate SG-1 had an evil replicator version of herself, Replicator Carter (Replicarter) who nearly takes over the entire galaxy.
    • In the Alternate Universe of "Point Of View", Apophis has a goatee, ala Spock, but everyone is morally the same, except maybe Teal'c (our Teal'c didn't give him chance to talk before offing him).
    • And then there's the Alternate Universe SG-1 that tries to steal the Daedalus in "Ripple Effect".
    • Subverted slightly by Col. Mitchell who points out to the alternate Mitchell that "You don't have a goatee, so you aren't from the evil twin universe"
  • Alton Brown's evil twin, B.A., is a recurring character on Good Eats, usually to provide contrast as Alton and B.A. make sweet and spicy varieties of the same dish. Despite that B.A. is "evil", and has been in and out of jail numerous times, Alton and B.A. seem to get along relatively well. Of course, this might be because B.A.'s also The Voiceless, and Alton provides the running commentary on anything B.A. makes.
  • Smallville had a couple of Evil Twin variants
    • Bizarro Clark, of course, whose distinguishing characteristic was that he'd wear the opposite jacket/shirt combo (red jacket/blue shirt if Clark's got a blue jacket/red shirt, etc.) and no one noticed. Also, in the episode "Onyx", Lex Luthor is split into a Good Lex and a Crazy/Evil Lex.
    • There's also Clark Luthor/Ultraman, an Alternate Universe version of Clark who was raised by Lionel Luthor. To say he's an utter psychopath would be an understatement. Proving how much Genre Savvy they've picked up over the years, Lois, Tess, and Oliver all immediately realise that this isn't their Clark and proceed to deal with him accordingly.
  • The season-long "Family Secret" arc on Sabrina the Teenage Witch ends with the revelation that every member of the Spellman family has an evil twin. Sabrina is then subjected to a series of tests to determine whether she or "Katrina" is the evil one. Hint: It's Katrina. The loser is sent off to the Other Realm Twin Cities. She returned in a later episode where she took Sabrina's place while the latter took Katrina's place in an Other Realm jail. There, Sabrina met Zelda's Evil Twin Jezebelda, an evil Mad Scientist Witch who, amongst other things, created the Black Plague. For some reason, Hilda's evil twin doesn't appear, but was mentioned. Hilda was the good twin that came closest to offing her evil twin during the tests.
  • So Weird: "Pen Pal": Random supernatural occurrences cause Annie to come face-to-face with a parallel universe counterpart who has fallen in with a bad crowd, and thereby turned "evil" (Well, goth and rebellious. This being a Disney show, the two are more or less synonymous).
  • Popular had Bobbi and Jessie Glass working at Kennedy High (as well as their brother Rock). Bobbi and Rock were notoriously mean and unpleasant, while Jessie the nurse seemed a bit nicer, comparatively speaking. And yet, in the first season finale, Jessie plotted to kill her twin and frame all of Bobbi's sophomore biology class for the murder. Who's the mean one now?
  • The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in the 90's had Jay playing different characters such as Iron Jay and Beyondo. The character of his that fits right in this trope is Evil Jay who appears at every full moon. Years before that, Jay Leno satirized the entire 'evil twin' trope when a guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Leno had a marked-up TV Guide and showed what seemed like a dozen 'evil twin' themed shows for that one week. There was one on Hawaii Five-O. The bit wrapped with Dynasty, which had Crystal replaced with her 'scheming lookalike', with Jay shouting, "Scheming lookalike? Scheming lookalike? It's an EVIL TWIN!". This trope is so endemic in television that perhaps we should be asking which shows never did it.
  • A two-part episode of The Incredible Hulk introduced viewers to another Hulk, created by a similar process to the one that transformed David Banner - but even more wild than the one we know, and actively malevolent and murderous.
  • Out of This World: Evie splits herself in order to attend a party while also writing a speech about the evils of school uniforms (Specifically, bright yellow dresses with blue baseball caps, and breeches for the boys). Unsurprisingly, the process results in a serious Evie and a reckless Evie. The serious Evie is portrayed as the "real" one, at least until Serious-Evie tries to give her speech and discovers that she's now in favor of the dress code. Troy attributes their eventual recombination to The Power of Love, which is kind of Squickworthy if you think too hard about it.
  • Stick Stickly, the stick puppet host of Nickelodeon's Nick in the Afternoon, had a diabolical lookalike, Evil Stick, who once tried to take over the summer programming block.
  • Subverted in Farscape's third season, where a second John Crichton is created... yet is absolutely the same as the first Crichton. However, it was essentially played straight in the episode My three Crichtons, which featured John being duplicated into a caveman and a future-brain-man-thing. Strangely enough, only one was actually evil.
  • Malcolm in the Middle had a hilarious inversion. Dewey is finding people who are just giving him money for no reason. At first he doesn't question it, but Reese finds out that there's another kid who looks just like Dewey. He then surmises that for every person there is an evil opposite. When Dewey is worried that he's met his evil twin, Reese points out the kid is virtually a saint and that Dewey is the Evil Twin. Reese then recruits Dewey to do a lot of bad things and get the other kid blamed, but by the end of the episode, Dewey tells the other kid's older brother on what's going on and gets Reese beaten up.
  • Friends gives us Phoebe's Evil Twin, Ursula. Or rather, Mad About You gave us Ursula, and Friends revealed she was Pheobe's Evil Twin. Parodied in another episode, when Joey was dating someone who honestly believed he was the character he played on TV. When she saw him on TV while Joey was in the room...

Ross: He's Hans Ramore, Drake's evil twin!

  • The final Space Cases episode to air, "Trouble With Doubles":

Commander Goddard: We have an Evil Twin situation.

  • 3rd Rock from the Sun had Dick temporarily replaced as high commander by another alien who takes on the same human form and identity. This replacement (called simply "New Dick") is not only an evil megalomaniac, he is also "extremely unpleasant." Even more than the original.
  • Alias gives us this trope via Project Helix. Two major characters (Francie and later Sydney) had evil versions, and several minor characters as well.
  • In the 2002 revival of The Basil Brush Show there's Basil's cousin Mortimer who is a criminal mastermind.
  • Heroes has begun this trope as an "evil" character Sylar gained shapeshifting abilities and has begun taking on the roles of a "good" character Nathan Petrelli . (Though their good and evil roles seem to change episode by episode).
  • In the Doctor Who classic series adventure Inferno, the Third Doctor is sent into an Alternate Universe where he encounters evil-fascist-twin versions of his friends in UNIT—the evil Brigadier has in fact lost his facial hair, but gained an eyepatch in response. Bizzaro Liz is a brunette instead of a redhead. Curiously enough, there's no evil version of the Doctor himself (although the Expanded Universe novels did suggest that the evil tyrant ruling this fascist alternative Britain was in fact an alternative version of the Third Doctor with a different body who went evil after his forced regeneration by the Time Lords).
  • In the New World Zorro series, Don Diego has an evil (though not identical) twin. Also, the evil Alcalde is at one point replaced by his identical twin, who raises the suspicion of the other characters by being somewhat less evil than the real Alcalde.
  • iCarly in the episode iTwins. Essentially, the main character Sam is the evil twin, and Melanie is the good twin.
  • In Lidsville the villain Hoodoo had a good twin, Bruce, the White Sheep of the family.
  • WKRP in Cincinnati did it with Venus Flytrap being suspected of crimes that were committed by a pimp-dressed Evil Twin complete with the obligatory goatee.
  • The renewed series of Mission: Impossible had its own unique take on this, thanks to Latex Perfection. An IMF agent who'd gone insane after a head injury was carrying out murders while disguised as Jim Phelps. Naturally he had all the training and skills that Phelps had, making him an Evil Twin in all but name. Well, that explains the first movie.
  • Supernatural has had three shapeshifter episodes:
    • "Skin", "Nightshifter", and "Monster Movie". The latter two don't really use this trope, but "Skin" prominently features a shapeshifter who becomes an Evil Twin of Dean.
    • Then there's the actual evil twin in "Simon Said." Sam and Dean are investigating a case where someone is using mind control to make people commit suicide. They find a guy named Andy who has mind control powers, but it turns out that the one who's actually making people off themselves is his long lost twin brother, who has the same powers. Andy's response when he finds out? "I have an evil twin."
  • The Evil Twin is a common trope for Brazilian soap operas to this day.
  • General Hospital once had an interesting take on this. There was once a character named Grant Putnam who was revealed to The Mole for the Soviet Union. The Power of Love redeems him and after helping to dispense with his comrades, continues his life. Eventually the Not Quite Dead real Grant Putnam recovers from amnesia. At first it seems he's evil due to the trauma of nearly dying and spending years in an asylum, but it's revealed that he was Evil All Along and had originally murdered his brother in order to have his brother's fiance, who's now married to the Russian.
    • One Life to Live had an aversion with Mortimer Bern, the good twin to crime lord Carlo Hesser. However, he didn't stay good once Carlo's lover Alex propped him up to take over Carlo's criminal empire (although he did get better)...
    • Another well-known American soap opera example is Andre Di Mera from Days of Our Lives. Andre was given plastic surgery to make him look like his cousin Tony at the contrivance of the man Tony grew up believing was his father, crime lord/practical supervillain Stefano Di Mera. At Stefano's behest and while Tony was kept secretly imprisoned, Andre while impersonating Tony became a serial killer just to frame an enemy of Stefano's, although Stefano ended up betraying him once Andre's killing spree included Stefano's own daughter (although that didn't stop Stefano many years later getting Andre to pretend to be Tony again!).
  • The short lived TV series Two was based on this concept. A man is Wrongly Accused of a murder committed by his Separated at Birth twin brother and goes on the run to Clear My Name.
  • Of course we can't forget Arrested Development featuring the Evil Twin as a major plot point where George consistently traded places with his luxuriously hirsute good twin Oscar. Dot com.
  • On Fringe, all of the characters have specific counterparts in the Alternate Universe. Whether or not they're evil is up to debate.
    • Interestingly, there is one prominent alternate universe character who did not have a counterpart in "our" universe for the longest time. Finally, a "good" version (who looks a little nerdy in glasses) shows up... for a single episode. He returns as a regular in the following season.
    • In a more straight version of this trope, there's a season 4 episode where the Fringe Divisions from both universes are working together to catch a serial killer in the alt-universe, with the help of his counterpart from the prime-universe, who thanks to a woman he met in his childhood, becomes able to contain his psychotic urges and avoid the crime path, such luck his alternate did not have.
  • An episode of the usually extremely down-to-earth Route 66, "I'm Here to Kill a King", features an assassin who looks exactly like lead character Tod and is played by Martin Milner.
  • In Chinese TV series 神医大道 (English title: "God Of Medicine") a maid-servant is magically transformed into the princess' evil twin. Then the princess is transformed into a duplicate of the maid, becomming her good twin. It's almost a Grand Theft Me, except that the changes happen separately.
  • In Dark Oracle the major antagonists, Blaze and Violet fall somewhere between this and Evil Counterpart. Evil Sage (Season 2, Episode 3, "Through A Glass Darkly") on the other hand, plays this absolutely straight, being the Dark World twin of Lance's girlfriend, Sage, and her complete opposite in terms of personality. Whereas real-world Sage is a geekily-cute girl, with low self-esteem and very odd taste in—well pretty much everything—her comic book counterpart is a vindictive bitch with creepy Mismatched Eyes, evil tattoos, and a plethora of Kick the Dog moments. She's hyper-aggressive to Sage's shyness, enjoys playing mind games with Lance, and looses a poisonous snake on a pair of girls who defaced her locker. It takes a near-death experience to bring the real Sage back.
  • Charmed had to deal with a few evil twins.
    • Paige had an evil past incarnation travel to the present who looks just like her.
    • And later on in the Sixth Season, there was a revelation of a mirror universe where everyone who is good is evil and everyone who is evil is good. The whitelighters are darklighters and the Police Station looks more like a strip club.
  • The Law and Order episode "Brother's Keeper."
  • The SVU episode "Double Strands", where the rapist and his wrongfully-accused twin brother were played by T.R. Knight.
  • Robert and Cameron Robinson from Neighbours, in a rare example of the evil twin being introduced first, albeit while pretending to be the good twin.
  • What, no reference to The Middleman episode "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome"? That's the entire point of the episode.
  • In Father Dowling Mysteries, the eponymous priest had and evil twin who was a criminal and would pop in and cause trouble.
  • Community Season 3, Episode 4, "Remedial Chaos Theory", features seven alternate timelines. The Abed in Timeline 1 recognises it as the darkest timeline (Pierce is dead, Annie's crazy, Jeff lost an arm, Shirley's a drunk, Troy lost his larynx and Britta dyed a strip of her hair blue) and suggests the group embrace their role as evil versions of the Main Timeline group.

Troy and Abed: Evil Troy and evil Aaa-bed!

  • Lord John Roxton gets one in one episode of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World after he is cursed for disturbing a graveyard's peace. The protector takes the ruthless and violent part - basically the hunter part - out of him andd gives him a life of his own. Evil!Roxton tries to kill the good one, using Marguerite as bait. It ends in a Mirror Match.
  • Starsky and Hutch each had one. These evil twins were pinning crimes on the original duo under orders of a corrupt attorney.
  • In the Fox TV movie Dark Reflection (aka, Natural Selection), C. Thomas Howell plays a dual role. In one, he is a successful computer programmer named Ben with a great house and an awesome sports car but is neglectful of his wife and son. In the other role, he is Adam, a clone of Ben who has been running around the country killing his other clones and taking over their lives. (There were seven clones all together). Well, Ben is last on the list. So, Adam gets a job at Ben's company, charms the wife and kid, and infiltrates Ben's life to learn all the little details he will need to accomplish his evil pan. Along the way, Adam kills a private detective who has figured it all out and Ben's mother who is the only one who know that Ben has a clone. He also has sex with Ben's wife, who can't tell the difference. In the climax, Ben and Adam fight on the roof and one kills the other. At the end, we find out that evil Adam survived and that he's a better father to Ben's son and wife, neither of whom know they're now living with a murderous clone who has killed.


New Media

  • Magic: The Gathering's official site did a theme week where most of the weekly articles were written by "evil twins" of their usual writers. Even the writer that's supposedly a supervillain; the twin is such a Well-Intentioned Extremist, he makes Light Yagami look like a Technical Pacifist.
  • World of Warcraft info site Thottbot.com allows you to switch between Classic and Evil Twin themes (white background vs. black background, among other color changes), and the loading screen when switching to Evil Twin mode says "Growing goatee..." (while the loading page to get back to Classic mode says "Shaving...").


Tabletop Games

  • In GURPS, Evil Twin is a disadvantage a character can take for additional points. The disadvantage makes the PC have to take the fall for things his evil twin does, as well as other characters thinking that the PC is crazy, or has a split personality. Interestingly, the Evil Twin has this disadvantage as well, and occasionally the Evil Twin will be blamed for something the PC did. And if you play an evil character with this disadvantage, you have to worry about getting the credit for your "Good" Twin doing things like saving orphanages.
  • In Dungeons & Dragons, Hextor, the god of Tyranny and War, is the Evil Twin of Heironeous, the god of Chivalry and Justice.
    • Dungeons & Dragons has a variation: There's an entire race called dopplegangers, who can shapeshift into any similarly sized humanoid-including other people.
    • D&D loves this trope. It also had the Mirror Of Opposition, which spawned an Evil Twin of anyone who looked at it (the twin then mmediately tried to kll and replace the original), the spell Simulacrum (a physically identical but less-powerful duplicate of the target, absolutely loyal to the caster), and at least two different takes on the "magically created copy of you trying to kill you" in monster form, the nastier of which had the horrifying combination of being more powerful than the original and totally invulnerable to anyone else's attacks.
  • In Changeling: The Lost, when The Fair Folk kidnap mortals they leave behind Fetches, magical duplicates of their victims, right down to their memories. All Fetches are incomplete, though, meaning they lack something of the original. When that something is empathy or a sense of right and wrong, then you've got an Evil Twin. Things get more complicated if they merely lack your alcoholism or bitterness, though. It works both ways. Fetches don't know they're not the original person, so when someone shows up who looks like a monsterous version of them (and nobody else can see the monsterous things, and thinks it looks exactly like them, but a different age), who hates their guts and has strange magical powers, they are perfectly justified to think they are the victim of this trope.
  • In Exalted, Infernals can obtain an Ebon Dragon charm, Black Mirror Shintai, that lets them shapeshift into an exact duplicate of the target, from obtaining their abilities right down to having the exact same fate, along with developing Intimacies and a Motivation antithetical to their target's.
  • Magic: The Gathering: Like so


Toys

  • A few variants used in Bionicle. First, we have an army of corrupted Alternate-universe versions of Takanuva, and then we have an inversion with "White Teridax", a "good" version of the main Big Bad.


Video Games

  • In the Sonic the Hedgehog video games, Sonic has had a number of evil robotic duplicates—the number of characters involved is unclear, but at least five different bodies have been used. In addition, the sometimes-evil character Shadow is very similar to Sonic in appearance and abilities.
    • Character-wise, there are at least two. Metal Sonic, who debuted in Sonic CD, is the most popular and consistent of Sonic's mecha-twins. Then there's Silver Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (both the Game Gear and the Genesis version) and Mecha Sonic from Sonic 3 and Knuckles, but neither of them showed any personality.
    • Doctor Eggman has an eviler twin in Eggman Nega, an alternate dimension version/descendant of Eggman. He has Eggman's desire for power and brilliant mind, but he has none of Eggman's quirkiness or hamminess, instead being thoroughly evil and cold (but with an eerily polite demeanor). Eggman Nega also created an eviler twin of Metal Sonic called Metal Sonic 3.0 (with a black and gold color scheme similar to G-mel).
    • The Archie comics Sonic has an evil duplicate from an alternate universe who's been in the comics for a long time. Originally referred to as Evil Sonic, he renamed himself "Scourge" after absorbing energy from the Master Emerald.
  • Devil May Cry has Vergil, who despises his humanity and does questionable things to assuage his power cravings, unlike Dante who dislikes his demonic heritage and fights demonic incursions.
  • Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, has Des X, who differentiates herself from her far more likable counterpart Desco with a pale color scheme, a cold personality, and a mature voice that is not fitting for her appearance.
  • This was the whole point of the series Two : The evil one is the first to discover he has a twin, and frames him for his own crimes.
  • Wario from the Super Mario Bros. games is Mario's evil twin, a malicious, greedy egotist to Mario's more peaceful, fair and modest nature. His origin is not known other than him being a childhood friend of Mario, but the most commonly accepted story is that he was jealous of Mario's fame and bullied him as a child. Wario has since moved away from being one of Mario's antagonists and instead wants to gather fame and fortune for himself.
    • Another evil twin of sorts appears in Super Mario Sunshine where an evil "Shadow Mario" is ruining Mario's good name by spreading graffiti and monsters with his magic paintbrush. He is shaped exactly like Mario, but his body is made of liquid and he has glowing red eyes. However, he turns out to simply be a child of Bowser's in disguise.
    • Speaking of Bowser, in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, an Artifact of Doom known as the Dark Star invaded his body and copied his DNA in order to take a form of an eviler looking Bowser. Bowser doesn't like the idea of an eviler twin ruling the Mushroom Kingdom.
    • Also, a being similar to Shadow Mario, Cosmic Mario, appears to race his red counterpart for a Power Star in Super Mario Galaxy, as long as a Cosmic Comet appears near the galaxy Mario is in. Luigi also has a cosmic clone that he can race. Another of Mario's clones appears in Super Mario Galaxy 2, similar to Cosmic Mario, except these clones just race around copying Mario's moves and vanishing when they hit the red plumber.
  • Body Harvest: The Man in the Black Suit. Revealed to be literally your evil twin at the end of the game. The invading aliens sampled a droplet of Adam's blood that was shed during the game's intro sequence, and used it to create a perfect copy of him.
  • The plot of Metal Gear Solid is all about this. The protagonist and his maniacal twin are the products of research into "soldier genes". The hero, Snake, was supposedly modified to have the strongest possible soldier phenotype, and the maniacal Liquid Snake was meant to be the weakest. It's subverted twice:
    • At the end of the first game, it's revealed that Liquid was actually the superior twin.
    • And Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty reveals a third 'twin', also not very nice.
    • Well, it's not a clear-cut Evil Twin, more like Liquid's just more evil than Solid Snake, since Solid Snake himself is technically an evil twin in his own respect, given the fact that he was a clone of Big Boss, and that it was heavily implied in Metal Gear Solid that he does actually enjoy war and all the killing, and the implications came from Psycho Mantis, Liquid Snake, and even one of his own allies, Meryl Silverburgh. However, even Liquid being more evil is completely debatable, given the fact that Psycho Mantis also mentioned that Solid Snake was true evil, and that he was even worse than Liquid Snake.
  • In World of Warcraft, players that use a transporter to Gadgetzan can be turned into their evil twin. Blizzard neglected to add goatees to the character models, unfortunately. As a Brick Joke, there's a female gnome imprisoned in Talramas in Borean Tundra, and when she attempts to escape she accidentally releases her Evil Twin. Said twin can later be fought in Hrothgar's Landing near Icecrown as part of a quest given by The Leaper after the Knights of the Ebon Blade take control of the Shadow Vault.
  • A common theme in Zone of the Enders: The main player's Humongous Mecha with a decidedly intelligent AI whose cockpit he ends up in is always part of a pair created for a specific purpose. Guess where the other one ends up?
  • In Silent Hill 3, Heather meets and fights her twin, which appears to be incarnate Memories of Alessa, as Heather and Alessa are basically the same person (nuances exist, however).
  • A bit of a reversal from the NiGHTS Into Dreams series. The titular character is the good twin of a pair of nightmares.
  • Done in No More Heroes when the well dressed Irish-brogue accented swordsman Henry says he's your twin brother...in the last three minutes of the game. Plus, considering how the Touchdown/Crystel/Whatever brothers behave it's hard to tell which one is evil. Also, it is probably the greatest parody of Dante and Vergil you'll ever see.
  • Samus Aran of the Metroid series has had two, both resulting from having her suit invaded by evil alien substances: the SA-X of Metroid Fusion, and Dark Samus of the Prime trilogy. Technically, Samus has 12. Due to the SA-X asexually reproducing, there were 11 of them in Metroid Fusion. She never meets the same one twice.
  • Even Kirby was a victim of this trope, when he and his three good twins traveled to the mirror world, they met Dark Kirby, which actually was a good guy! However, they also met Meta Knight's counterpart, Dark Meta Knight, which was truly evil.
  • In the F-Zero series, there's Blood Falcon, who was literally cloned from Captain Falcon, and wears the exact same clothes in a different color. In a nice touch, however, their racing machines are rather different.
    • The machine change is justified: The scientists that cloned Falcon realized Blood would have no chance against the Captain if they had identical machines: Captain Falcon is just way too skilled with his vehicle.
  • In Mega Man Battle Network 4, the final boss creates a dark version of Mega Man, simply titled "Dark Mega" in the game's sequel.
    • In the sequel, Battle Network 5, DarkMega is Mega Man himself, just tainted.
    • In the manga adaptation, Dark Mega Man is its own standalone character.
    • In addition, several boss characters in Battle Network 4 and 5 have "DS" versions, dark versions of themselves that stray from their attacking pattern to bombard you with any Battlechip you've used, even Program Advances.
  • Super Robot Wars Original Generation example: Beowulf, Kyosuke's Shadow Mirror counterpart. In OG 2, he is portrayed to be pretty much identical and as heroic as Kyosuke. But in Original Generations, it's revealed that he's a total sociopath obsessed with the world's destruction and rebirth, implied to be assimilated by the Einst, and just plain evil, perhaps as an after effect that Kyosuke in the Shadow Mirror Universe has no Excellen to balance it out ( Excellen was killed in the dimension and rebuilt into Lemon). Needless to say, this Evil Twin makes the Shadow Mirrors look like good guys. Thus far, he's only made a brief appearance during a cut-scene at the beginning of Original Generations, though fans have speculated that he may become a a prominent villain sometime in the future.
  • Mona Sax, the "knockout Femme Fatale" of Max Payne, introduces herself as the "evil twin" of Lisa Punchinello, the Don's wife. Lisa is killed by the Don near the end of the second act, and Mona shows up later during the final assault on the Aesir building, where she does a Heel Face Turn and apparently dies, only to show up again in the sequel, in which she plays a major role as Max's partner/love interest.
  • In all three episodes of Apogee's Monster Bash you end up having to fight Johnny Dash's evil twin. These fights are somewhat harder than most enemies partly because the evil twin can take more damage than most monsters and partly because the evil twin uses the exact same sprite graphics as the player's character, making things confusing at times.
  • Subverted in SaGa Frontier with Blue and Rouge. Blue is one of the seven main characters. Rouge is a secondary character. They are doomed to fight each other to the death. Now, since Blue is a main character, you'd think he's the good one, right? Wrong. Blue is very willing to manipulate others for his own means, whereas Rouge is a friendly, personable guy who will join others on their quest. Subverted further in that the two are different halves of the same person, split at birth - several types of magic in the Saga Frontier world are mutually exclusive, so if you learn one type, you can't learn the other; splitting him in two lets both halves learn different types (and Blue is told early on that if Rouge learns a type of magic, Blue can't). The "fight to the death" is actually how the two recombine.
  • Played straight and inverted in the third installment of Phoenix Wright. Partway through the final case, good twin Iris is replaced and impersonated by evil twin Dahlia, though you don't realize this until later. And at the end, you learn that six years prior, Iris pretended to be Dahlia for several months.
  • Every few The Legend of Zelda games, Link must face Dark Link/Shadow Link.
  • About halfway through Up You Arsenal, the third "Ratchet and Clank" game. Clank gets kidnapped by Big Bad Dr. Nefarious and replaced by a Dr. Nefarious built duplicate, Klunk. Ratchet even plays a few levels with Klunk on his back before finding the real Clank and defeating Klunk in a boss battle.
  • Banjo-Kazooie sequel Banjo-Tooie had the Jinjos' evil twins the Minjos, and one of the bosses in the game was Mumbo Jumbo's evil robotic twin Mingy Jongo.
  • Statesman, the resident Superman equivalent and Big Good of City of Heroes, has two evil twins: Tyrant, the Dimension Lord of the Mirror Universe, and Reichsman, the little-seen Nazi version from the dimension where the Nazis won. Naturally, pretty much every high-profile hero in the game has an evil counterpart in Tyrant's dimension, as the Praetorians. And as of Issue 17, every player character—hero and villain—can run a story arc featuring multiple iterations of his or her own Evil Twin. Heroes will also encounter a good doppleganger during their arc.
  • In Skies of Arcadia, actors-turned-robbers Vize, Anita, and Faina appear as Palette Swaps to heroes Vyse, Aika, and Fina, which has unfortunate results for the silhouettes on the Wanted poster (even though the heroes are already wanted as pirates, sort of). Turns out they even mirror several of the heroes' moves. When you beat them they make a legitimate business out of looking like you.
  • One of Final Fantasy XII's plot twists was that Basch, a leading soldier in the home nation's army, was framed by his evil twin brother in the murder of the king, resulting in Basch's imprisonment and nationwide condemnation.
  • In the Nancy Drew game Stay Tuned For Danger, actor (and suspect) Rick Arlen plays good and evil twins on the soap opera Light Of Our Love.
  • In Persona 4, every single person in existance - except, it seems, the Protoganist - has an evil twin called a "Shadow" born of their repressed feelings and thoughts. Get stuck in the TV world, and you'll end up meeting it.
  • Persona 2 also had evil Shadows based off people's inner selves, though their abilities and the circumstances behind their appearance are somewhat different.
  • Sega's other mascot,NiGHTS has an evil twin called Reala, who was created alongside the purple dream jester to with a similar appearance, and the same abilities. After the neutral protagonist began to fight against Wiseman, Reala was granted the ability to summon exploding orbs to gain an edge over his/her/its twin.
  • Mother 3 follows this literally. Lucas's twin brother, Claus, becomes evil after being reanimated and manipulated by Porky's minions.
  • Jet Set Radio: Future has NT-3000, a robotic doppleganger of Yoyo that infiltrates the G Gs when the Rokakku kidnap the real Yoyo ("NT" being short for "Noise Tanks", a rival gang).
  • In Tomb Raider & Tomb Raider Anniversary, Lara's Doppelganger has no skin. In Underworld, she gets better, blows up Lara's mansion, kicks her ass inside of her burning mansion, and kills Allister. Later, the Doppelganger gets her own Video Game on X Box Live.
  • The Big Bad of the Adventure Quest Bizarre Flecks Story Arc is Artix's Alternate Universe counterpart; while the Artix of our reality is an undead-slaying paladin, Artix von Facial Hair is a sadistic Necromancer who appears to have successfully taken over his world. Ryuusei's analog from said arc is an inversion, and an interesting and competent one at that.
  • Nanoha, Fate and Hayate got their very own Evil Twins in the form of The Darkness of the Book of Darkness copies Material-S(tarlight), Material-L(ightning) and Material-D(arkness), respectively, in the PSP game Battle of the Aces. They are identical to their good analogues, except that they are stronger, their skills can't be customized, they have different hair and clothes colors, and their personalities are complete opposites of the originals (Material-S is coldly logical, Material-L is The Berserker, and Material-D is just plain evil).
  • Evil Twin: Cyprien's Chronicles is an entire game revolving around this trope. The hero winds up in another world where he fights evil versions of his friends and himself.
  • The boss of the fourth level in Viewtiful Joe is "Another Joe", who looks just like Joe to the point the original makes a deal with him: loser has to wear a yellow outfit. His boss theme is even a Boss Remix of "Joe the Hero". It's actually Alastor.
  • Dr. Zed and his evil Mad Scientist brother Dr. Ned (who is a totally different, in no way made up person, and not just Dr. Zed in a cheap mustache disguise) qualify for this trope.
  • In Space Ace, Dexter has a clone named Hexter. He energizes into a bigger form when Dexter energizes into Ace.


World Wide Web


Webcomics

  • Life of Riley features an early villain in Evil Dan, opposite of the main character Dan. Slightly subverted in that Evil Dan is even more of a moron than Good Dan, and has no real skills as an evil opposite.
  • Kid Radd features an Evil Twin as one of a Goldfish Poop Gang duo - he serves as the titular character's Shadow Archetype later in the story.
  • The Sister arc of El Goonish Shive has main character Elliot get "cursed"[1] into a female form, then touch a magical diamond which separates him into his normal male self, and a female version, named Ellen, who has all of the same memories, experiences, etc. Believing that she's the embodiment of his "curse", and thus will disappear when it wears off in less than a month, she goes crazy and tries to become his evil twin in a desperate attempt to gain some sort of identity. She was wrong about disappearing, and wasn't so good at the evil twin thing. She now lives as Elliot's twin sister, joins the cast, and is accepted by Elliot's friends and family against the initial predictions of others. An extremely rare case of a "clone" getting a happy ending. All that stuff you saw in that spoiler? May not have been Dan Shive's plan to begin with...
  • Subverted in Pandect - Ice and a man who is like a father to him bear a striking physical resemblance, leading Ice to self-consciously dub Rocko his evil twin.
  • Ginger from Sugar Bits(pictured above) is a moody, sarcastic, rather abrasive princess, who lives in a realm undisturbed by humanity known as Harmonia. She also has a seemingly malicious twin sister, Licorice, who suddenly appeared in Hansel(one of Ginger's friends)'s dream. While Ginger seems to be more calm and introvert, Licorice is dynamic and fierce.
  • Good old-fashioned separated-at-birth actual twin Nale in Order of the Stick. He's the head of the Quirky Miniboss Squad (but not The Dragon, oddly enough), while his good twin Elan is a comically inept bard. Further, the members of his "Linear Guild" were deliberately chosen by Nale to be "evil opposites" of the rest of the good guys (though he does recruit a Token Good Teammate as a counterpart to Belkar). Not to mention that Elan is Chaotic Good while Nale is Lawful Evil. Further parodying the trope, Nale has a goatee - and his own actions have rendered Elan unable to grow facial hair.
  • In Gaming Guardians, Ultima was a doppelganger-demon who was permanently empowered by Scarlet Jester with a copy of Radical's powers, which also caused her default form to become a duplicate of Radical.
  • Depending on how you look at things, April in CRFH could be considered to be her 'sister' June's evil duplicate.
  • Subverted in Melonpool, in which the duplicate, Ralphie, is the good one. Also, the Melonpool/It's Walky! Crossover used the Dup-o-matic on an opposing army, who then immediately began fighting amongst each other. This crossover led to the creation of 'Anti-Joyce', who was the opposite of Joyce in that she was sexually active, rather than prudish. Interestingly, the storylines would have long-term consequences in both series: Ralphie joining the crew in Melonpool, while the murder of Anti-Joyce in It's Walky! would lead to serious psychological (and later, legal) problems for the original.
  • Subverted in Concerned, as protagonist Gordon Frohman's twin brother Norman Frohman is a highly-effective special ops agent working for the resistance. Since Gordon Frohman is Dr. Breen's biggest fan, wants to join the Combine, and is bitterly jealous towards Gordon Freeman, that makes him...
  • Cloney from Sluggy Freelance is eventually revealed as Aylee's Evil Clone. There's also Alt-Alt-Torg compared to regular Torg.
  • Galatea in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob may not be so much an evil duplicate of Molly, as just an extremely angsty, volatile one. She did try to Take Over the World once, but Bob appealed to her better nature and talked her out of it.
  • Casey and Andy has an entire parallel universe of Hackneyed Opposites, most notably Quantum Crook, the evil twin and nemesis for Quantum Cop. The same universe also features the Mime Plumber, arguably the good twin for the Mime Assassin.
  • Dinosaur Comics features an Alternate Universe where all the characters have goatees, featuring an evil (eviller?) version of T-Rex and Utahraptor.
  • In Gunnerkrigg Court, the Nobodies from Zimmy's Dark World come in two flavors: faceless creeps or near flawless duplicates of people she knows. Though they are not evil (they don't even know they're duplicates).
  • Basic Instructions helps us to distinguish the good and the evil twin in this strip
  • Instant Classic's arc, Brothers Donathan, introduces us to Xauthor, Author's evil twin, complete with a goatee.
  • Dead of Summer has an evil clone of Panther. This isn't revealed until the real one shows up to save the day.
  • Irregular Webcomic features the good alternate-universe version of colonel Haken.
  • Penny Arcade put a Twisp & Catsby twist on it.
  • The False Guenevere in Arthur, King of Time and Space. In the baseline arc, she's the same as in the mythology; Guenevere's identical half-sister plotting to take Arthur and the throne. In the contemporary arc she's Guenevere's full sister Fasha, and probably isn't exactly evil, although she may be a Stalker with a Crush. And in the space arc she's a clone, and again isn't evil, genuinely believing herself to be the real Guenevere. The one thing all three have in common is that they love Arthur and don't care much for Lancelot, thereby allowing space and baseline Arthur to have a Queen who loves him completely while convincing himself that he just wants Guenevere and Lancelot to be happy.
  • Alexis of A Magical Roommate considers her sister Alexandra (Better known as X) to be her evil twin. Of course, X isn't really evil, just anti-social and disturbingly fond of explosives.


Web Original

  • Arglwydd in ARCHON lampshades this, saying "...It always astounds me how the primary antagonist being the protagonist’s father, brother, evil twin or all of the above simultaneously comes as a shock."
  • The League of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions had interdimensional evil twins in the King's Interstellar Lethal Legionnaires, occasionally recurring group The Frank Conspiracy had a Dark Side & a Light Side, and the hero, Mr. Obvious, had a crazy twin brother, the hero, Mr. Absurd.
  • Parodied in the Whateley Universe. In one novel, Jade Sinclair tries to fix her Exemplar problem that's keeping her looking like an eleven-year-old boy. She uses massively superpowered Tennyo as a model. Jinn Sinclair gets the upgrade.. even though Jinn is only a PK copy of Jade, currently inhabiting some ground chalk. In a rare Genre Savvy moment for the Sinclair girls, Jinn pretends to be a clone of Tennyo, and (of course) insists that she is real and the real Tennyo is fake. No one is fooled. She is physically composed of ground chalk at the time.
  • The parody website Sev Trek subverted this in a cartoon where the crew of Voyager are duplicated by Yet Another Transploder Accident. However the duplicated crew are not evil, they're just more interesting.
  • But at least You can always tell them apart by their clothes, right? Right?..
  • I Wanna Be the Guy and You Have to Burn The Rope. The former, of course, is the evil one.


Western Animation

  • In Family Guy, Lois confronts two Peters on a rooftop. They both make claims to be the genuine article, and she finally shoots one. As she hugs the injury-free Peter his face pops off to reveal robotic insides. She asks "What was that?" to which he quickly replies "Nothing", and the scene cuts away.
    • See also Peter's evil brother Thaddeus, who is ridiculously over-the-top.
    • Tom Tucker, the news anchor, tried (rather unconvincingly) to invoke this when he was caught with a prostitute.
    • Stewie creates an evil clone of himself accidentally. No goatee, but a clothing-color inversion.
  • Kim Possible subverted this in the episode "The Ron Factor". The leader of the Global Justice Network, Doctor Director, is shown to have an evil twin named Gemini. An evil fraternal twin, of opposite gender and vastly different appearance, but with an almost identical eyepatch. This is based on Marvel's Nick Fury and his evil twin Scorpio, by the way.
    • When Private Dobbs, with whom Dr. Drakken swapped bodies to gain access to a weapon, contacted Kim Possible for help and explained he wasn't Drakken, Ron accused him of being Drakken's evil twin and Kim replied Drakken is the evil twin.
  • Transformers Armada had a black version of Optimus Prime appear when they briefly jumped dimensions for...some reason. Actually it was Sideways, but still an evil twin.
    • In a number of canons, "Scourge" and "Nemesis Prime" are an evil, black repaint of Optimus Prime.
    • A Botcon Transformers Animated comic features the Stunticons, destructive Decepticon clones from miscellaneous Autobots (and Lockdown, who's already pretty slaggin' evil.) Toxitron, the one based on Optimus, is a pastiche of Bizarro.
  • The Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Op POOL" features evil twins from a Mirror Universe, including a goateed Numbuh Four.
    • The Delightful Children From Down The Lane and their Father are evil twins of their counterparts from that universe. It's implied but not confirmed the same applies to the other villains from the mainstream universe.
  • In one of The Simpsons Halloween specials, Bart finds he has an evil twin, who's been locked in the attic and fed with fish heads his whole life. This is subverted at the end of the episode where we discover that Bart is, and has always been, the evil twin ("oh, don't look so shocked").
    • Mr. Burns also fits the trope, even if the only thing known about his twin (who never appeared in the series) is that he/she died from being shot. It's heavily implied Burns was behind his twin's death (and the deaths of all their other siblings) to inherit his parents' whole fortune as he told the tales of their demises to Bart Simpson, who was masquerading as Simon Woosterfield as part of a Prince and Pauper plot.
  • This was effectively parodied in the South Park episode "Spookyfish", in which Cartman's Evil Twin was soft spoken, considerate, and generous, so Stan and Kyle try to send the "real" Cartman back to the Alternate Universe instead.
  • In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Squeeze the Day", Bloo fools around with an eyebrow pencil, first drawing Big Ol' Eyebrows and a moustache on his face and pretending to be "Pierre", then adding an evil goatee and pretending to be "Pierre's evil twin brother".
  • Futurama also did a subversion of this trope, where it turned out Bender, as opposed to his "twin" Flexo (another robot of the same model, except with a goatee), had stolen a beauty pageant crown and was ultimately the "evil" one. However, Flexo ended up taking the blame for everything.
    • In "The Farnsworth Parabox," Professor Farnsworth creates a box containing a whole other universe, which is identical, except for everyone's color schemes and the outcomes of coin tosses. When the group from Universe A (ours) enter Universe 1 (theirs), each is convinced the other is their evil twins. Bender laments that he tries his hardest, and therefore it hurts that there's a Bender more evil than he.
    • Futurama's spoof soap opera "All My Circuits" also lampshades this with dialogue about the main hero Calculon's 4th evil identical septuplet.
    • Evil Lincoln
  • The animated DC Comics universe, particularly Superman the Animated Series and Justice League, has made extensive use of the evil twin concept.
    • In Superman, Superman encounters his "Bizarro" counterpart, a degenerate clone created by Lex Luthor. In another episode, Lois Lane finds herself in an alternate universe where her death resulted in Superman becoming an unhinged tyrant.
    • Justice League featured another good-guys-turned-bad alternate universe where, after Flash's death, the "Justice Lords" crossed the line by executing Luthor and taking over the world.
    • Batman faced a robotic evil twin of himself in Batman the Animated Series.
    • Robotic, yes. Twin, yes. Evil? Batman himself wondered at the end of the episode if it had managed to develop a soul, since it was in anguish at the thought that it might've accidentally killed him(the Bat). So evil - not so much, no.
    • Yeah, for half the episode you feel nothing but sorry for the poor guy, and pissed with Bats and Alfred for being all What Measure Is a Non-Human? on him. Then he gets possessed by the crazy supercomputer that made him (a Big Bad from a previous episode), and has glowy eyes and tries to take over the internet and use it to replace all humans with androids. Then Bats twigs what a nice guy he was before and tries to talk him down while fighting. Thinking he's killed Batman causes Batbot great pain, so in horror he goes and commits suicide by smashing the Batcomputer and preventing it from taking over the internet.
    • Don't forget Galatea, Lawful Evil pawn of the Cadmus project.
    • Brainithor created evil Justice Leaguers to battle the real team once. They were based on the Justice Lords. Since there wasn't a Justice Lord Flash (since the Flash's death was the nail in that universe), Flash gets a duplicate based on Professor Zoom (heretofore unseen in the DCAU, so more like a Shout-Out to him.)
    • Batman the Brave And The Bold "Deep Cover for Batman" features a version of the alternate-universe evil Batman counterpart Owlman who's appeared elsewhere—he doesn't match any recognized iteration, though; is not Thomas Wayne Jr. or the existentialist type. Brave and the Bold isn't really in Earth-1, so presumably its Mirror World isn't really Earth-3. Also features a good Joker who wears something like the Red Hood costume from one of his back stories and goes by that name. Somewhat cracked, but a good guy. Slight Mid-Atlantic accent.
    • Teen Titans had Trigon the Terrible basically do the same thing as Brainithor. They were beaten by the Titans switching opponents.
  • In Gargoyles, Xanatos had Goliath cloned as one of his attempts to get his very own gargoyle underling. The clone proved to be one of the most evil villains on the show, and it's telling that the normally unflappable Xanatos was visibly bothered by what a cunning and amoral Goliath was capable of, and it put him off the "personal gargoyle" idea for good. The clone - whose main motivation was an Oedipus Complex coupled with a desire for personal power - was unoriginally named "Thailog"; when asked why they didn't name him "Htailog" the writers joked that Keith David (voice actor for both) was a scary guy, and they didn't want to see his reaction at having to pronounce it.
    • Notably, the show averted the common "Evil Twin switches for Good Twin" trope; thanks to a flaw in the cloning process, Thailog's pigmentation is different enough from Goliath's that the two couldn't be mistaken for each other except in very poor lighting.
  • The short lifespan of Megas XLR still had enough time to introduce Coop to an evil Alternate Universe version of himself and one of Kiva, in the two-parter "Rearview Mirror, Mirror". The weird thing is that Evil Coop was supposed to be competent (as opposed to good Coop's idiocy) but for no reason decided to trade Megas in for a "better" bot (guess he forgot that Megas can shoot FREAKING BLACK HOLES OUT OF ITS CHEST).
  • In Darkwing Duck, there's the the recurring villain Negaduck (II), his evil Mirror Universe counterpart. (Negaduck (I), DWD's "evil side" who was merged back into him by the end of the episode, is more of an Enemy Without.)
    • Reportedly, both versions were meant to be explained/retconned to be the same character, though it's hard to imagine how that would have happened.
    • Interestingly, Darkwing's evil side - Negaduck (II), but also his non-galvanized Enemy Without, who acts almost identically - seems to bring out his good sides in a non-moral sense. The original is so conceited and bumbling he often can't get anything done until he really gets dangerous, but Negaduck is simply constantly angry and doesn't stop to pose or fool around. Because of this, the Evil Twin in this case has more attitude and is much more Badass much of the time. Of course, he does have the drawback of being compulsively evil for its own sake and Ax Crazy.
    • In a visit to the Negaverse (Negaduck (II)'s place of origin) DW meets the Good Twins of Megavolt, Quackerjack, The Liquidator, and Bushroot, a superhero team identified as the Friendly Four.
    • And, in same Negaverse, evil versions of Launchpad and Honker; Tank (pretty rotten in reality) is good. Oddly, Gosalyn in the Negaverse isn't evil.
  • Averted in Frisky Dingo. When the Xtacles find Xander Crews' mentally retarded twin brother and cure his condition with "brain chemical", he quickly becomes evil and swears revenge on Xander Crews until he is promptly shot in the head by one of the Xtacles. The Xtacle then explains that the entire "evil twin" thing made the plot far too complicated for its own good and the rest of the Xtacles agree.
  • Ranger Smith of Yogi Bear fame had a literal twin known as Slippery Smith. Being a fugitive for unspecified crimes (probably mostly theft) was bad enough, but forcibly swapping clothes with his brother and throwing him out to the cops was a Moral Event Horizon. Thankfully (if unsurprisingly), Slippery Smith did not appear in more than one episode.
  • In The Venture Brothers, Dr. Venture himself can be considered the evil twin to his brother Jonas Jr., whom he consumed in the womb. While Jonas Jr. is meant to be the true heir to Jonas Sr. and is the superior scientist, Rusty is a failed scientist who has shown himself to be amoral, having created a Joy Can out of an orphan's heart and a Frankenstein's Monster out of a Punch Clock Villain that his bodyguard killed as well as being generally a horrid father who seems to show mostly disdain for his own sons (though this might be related to the fact that they are shown to be Too Dumb to Live at times).
    • He even tries and fails to kill a successful, non bald doppelganger of himself from an alternate reality.
    • Though it does seem to rattle Dr. Venture when Henry Killinger (and his magic murder bag) assume he'd make a good supervillain/arch-nemesis for his brother. He turns it down when he realizes it, despite that his compound is so much more efficient that way.
  • Comically subverted in the cartoon Earthworm Jim. In an episode when Evil Jim, the titular character's Evil Twin, tired of being the only Evil Twin in the universe, used a Negative Synthesizer to create evil versions of Earthworm Jim's sidekicks. However, halfway through the episode the Synthesizer accidentally creates good twins of all of the series' recurring villains, including this most humourous exchange:

Good The Cat: I am Good the Cat. Would you be my friend?
Evil The Cat: I think not. Instead, I will destroy you with an acid furball.
Good The Cat: Then I will neutralize it with an antacid furball.


Evil The Cat: Curses!
Good The Cat: Kisses!

  • The Fairly OddParents has the Crimson Chin's (voiced by Jay Leno) evil Mirror Universe twin Nega Chin (also voiced by Jay Leno), who appeared in the episodes Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad Meet The Crimson Chin and The Big Superhero Wish. In the Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad episode he brought all his villain pals out of the comic, at the end he gets defeated by several versions of the Chin (all voiced by Jay Leno).
    • Don't forget the Anti-Fairies.
  • The Tick (animation) has Mucus Tick, an evil clone created by inter-dimensional horror Thrakkazog from a tissue, or rather Kleenex, sample taken from The Tick when he had a cold. Mucus Tick was, appropriately, green and amorphous. The sample was taken from a clone of Arthur, which among its most telling features is that it could only say, "I Arthur." The Tick considered that a rather compelling argument when it came time to determine which one was real.
    • Furthermore, Arthur seems to have an entire race of evil clones in an alien species called the Hey that coincidentally dresses exactly like him, has a language consisting entirely of the word "Hey," and literally worship nothing to the point of wanting to destroy everything.
    • Hey propaganda is patently hilarious to hear, because to the human ear it sounds less like inspiring prose and more like jaded, cynical hogwash. "Nothing is worth living for. Nothing is worth fighting for. Nothing is beautiful." You get the idea.
    • Arguably, Tick also has "Barry Tick," who is similar only in theme and wind up fighting each other over who gets to use their name.
  • In one episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Grim takes Billy and Mandy into a shadow world where their shadows manifests as their opposites. Mandy meets her good double, while Billy meets his stupid double. And no, that's not a typo. The stupid Billy spends much of the episode barking like a sea lion.
    • And it should be noted that Mandy turns her good double evil, so at the end Grim is unable to tell them apart.
  • Gadget's lookalike, Lahwhinie, from the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" is considered by many to be Gadget's evil twin. How or even if the two characters are related is a subject of debate amongst fans of the show.
    • Fan fiction has given Gadget another (literal) evil twin in the form of fan favorite OC Widget Hackwrench.
  • The Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode "Switcheroo" (the one in season 3, not 4) introduces Space Ghost's Evil Twin brother Chad... who, of course, has a goatee.
    • The original Space Ghost series had a straight example of this, with the evil "Space Spectre" crossing over for one episode from a parallel universe. No evil twins of Space Ghost's friends, however, since Space Spectre works alone, a fact pointed out by Space Ghost as the reason he was able to defeat Spectre.
  • In the Bounty Hamster episode "Twin Cheeks", Cassie comes across the roughest, toughest bounty hunter around - her alternative universe self! While certainly meaner, she actually turns out to be not quite as bright, and loses to the Real Cassie in a game of spaceship chicken.
  • Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has Evil Buzz Lightyear, a Buzz from an alternate reality who's, well, completely evil as opposed to our hero. And, of course, there's a beard...
    • Zurg also creates a whole team of evil counterparts to the heroes via cloning (and building them a robot counterpart to XR when they insist). Said clones were not aged to adulthood, however.
  • The Powerpuff Girls have the Rowdy Ruff Boys as their evil twins. Not that fanfiction writers care.
    • More accurately, later on in the comics (from a planned episode) come the Powerpunk Girls
  • The Real Ghostbusters had to fight ghostly evil twins, the result of their uniforms (contaminated from the battle with Gozer) coming to life.
    • In a later episode, they face the People-Busters, ghostly versions of themselves from an alternate universe. The "Evil" aspect is open to discussion, however.
  • Lucius and Wayne Cramp, from The Cramp Twins. Though it's more of a good twin, annoyingly bully and ridiculously filth loving twin. With purple skin.
  • Rikochet from Mucha Lucha had his leprechaun-esque evil twin, Rick O'Shay. The fact that the two names are homophonous leads to a Who's on First? situation when Rikochet tries to deny the crimes that he's being framed for.
  • Played with in Sealab 2021, where a pair of characters gets displaced in time, and Captain Murphy is convinced they are doppelgangers.

Captain Murphy: Tell it to Queen Doppelpopoulis!

  • The titular character in Widget the World Watcher had an evil twin from another dimension, Ratchet the World Trasher.
  • On Ren and Stimpy, Stimpy makes a formula which splits people into good and evil versions of themselves. Or in Ren's case, Indifferent Ren and Evil Ren. And his evil half takes more of the formula to become Evil Ren and Hideously Evil Ren (not that Indifferent Ren cares).
  • One episode of Jacob Two Two introduced Principal Greedyguts' good twin, who immediately became popular with the kids. And then subverted it, showing him to be even worse than the principal. And that's saying something.
  • The Mondays from The Secret Saturdays.
  • Not a real 'evil twin' per se, but an alternate Batman. Owlman (in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths) is exactly like Batman, except a sociopath. To be honest most of the JLA counterparts are like that, but especially Owlman.

Batman: [to Owlman] There is a difference between you and me. We both looked into the abyss, but when it looked back as us, you blinked.

  • An inversion in Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers: crime boss Jackie Subtract has a twin brother, Aiden. Aiden is a harmless inventor with a squeaky-clean criminal record who is mistaken for his brother far too often for his liking.
  • Played with in ReBoot. While the "second Bob" is truly evil he's really Megabyte in disguise, he acts like a good character and even convinces a few people that the first Bob is fake. He even convinced the real Bob that he was a fake. Like the Gargoyles example earlier, this show averted the "switching good twin with bad twin" bit, since "second Bob"'s only claim to being real was that he looked normal while "first Bob" was Web degraded.
  • Freakazoid!:! Guitierrez made an evil clone of Freakazoid which he then sent out to create havoc and commit crimes. He's quickly found out when he refuses to attend a Yakov Smirnoff film festival with Sgt. Cosgrove.
  • Samurai Jack vs. Mad Jack.
  • One episode of The Scooby Doo Show" featured Arlene Wilcox, whose evil twin tried to take advantage of their resemblance to have her executed as a witch. It'd have worked if not for those Meddling Kids.
  • One episode of Garfield and Friends featured Stinky Davis disguising himself as Binky the Clown, after which he starts a crime wave for which the real Binky is falsely accused and is almost imprisoned for it until Garfield saves the day.
    • Lampshaded by Garfield when he reads up on Davis disguising himself and exclaims, "Oh, no! It's an evil twin story! It's come to that!"
  • In the cartoon version of Space Ace, besides Hexter in the games, Dexter has a second evil clone named Baby Face Nerks, who looks like Dexter, but does not energize, and also wears a cowboy hat and wears a bandana around his neck. He appears in Wanter Dexter!.
  • Spider-Carnage of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Beta Test Baddie and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds par excellence. "I'm more you than you'll ever admit!"
  • Stunt Dawgs villain Richard P. Fungus and his insane twin brother R. Peter Fungus.
  • A Midnight Patrol episode featured the Night Mirror, that creates evil twins of good people who look at it. When the ones who look at it are evil, they're the evil twins to their good duplicates. The duplicates (be they good or evil) disappear when they look at the mirror.
  • Skeletor used a similar mirror to create an evil twin of one of He-Man's allies. When the ally tricked Skeletor into allowing a good duplicate into existence, it lead to He-Man asking both Skeletors to claim to be his friend. The original Skeletor was too evil to comply.
  • An interesting example in one episode of American Dad. The CIA develops cloning technology that makes an exact copy of the existing individual, same age and memories. After disputes with Francine over how to raise Steve, (with Francine winning the bike race, meaning Steve gets raised her way) Stan clones a second Steve to raise as his own, naming the clone "Stevearino". The clone is later shown to be evil, however, it is the result of Stan's overly-strict rules and not some inherent evil-ness that comes with being a clone.
  • The cartoon version of Dragon's Lair had a episode called Mirror Mirror, in which Singe disguises himself as Dirk to trick the villiage people. The episode ends with two morals. The second one? "Evil dragons should learn how to swim."
  • In the first season finale of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Captain America (comics) gets knocked out, then duplicated, by a Skrull invader. If the warning of Kang the Conqueror is to be believed, this Skrull will eventually betray the Avengers and/or the Earth, and this action will cause the destruction of the world.
  • Edgar and Ellen are identical twin siblings that cause mischief and mayhem to the peaceful town of Nod's Limbs through the use of pranks. They live in a tower mansion located at the outskirt forest near the town where they plan all their schemes to terrorize the citizens and the mayor's daughter Stephanie.

Other

  • In Where's Waldo Odlaw acts as Waldo's evil twin, being a criminal, and having a black and yellow colour scheme. Just as Waldo makes a journey to the "Land of Waldos" which is filled with Waldos, it is later reveled that Odlaw comes from "Odlaw's Swamp" which is filled with Odlaws.


Real Life

  • In France, during the time of the Directory, a man named Joseph Lesurques was guillotined for ostensibly being the leader of a vicious highway attack on the Lyon Mail carriage. Despite the fact that boatloads of character witnesses vouched for him, everyone knew him as nothing but a decent citizen, he had a valid (if not airtight) alibi, circumstances allowed for it to have easily been someone else, another criminal involved in the murders even confessed his own guilt and denied that of Lesurques, and anyone with half a brain could see that all of the evidence pointed towards Lesurques being innocent. The real murderer was later caught, and he did indeed look exactly like Lesurques. (His name was Dubosq, and he was obviously no Jean Valjean.) In keeping with the "slight tweak" aspect of this trope, the resemblance was only complete when Dubosq wore a blond wig (as he did the day of the robbery).
  • The Han twin murder conspiracy—Jeena Han tried to have her identical twin sister Sunny murdered.
  • Everyone loves dolphins. They are always happy and cheerful and help people at sea. And then there's the Bottlenose Dolphin. They don't look significantly different from other species of dolphins, but are well known to rape and kill all kinds of weaker dolphins. And then they play with the corpses. The best explanation for this behavior marine biologist have come up with is that they do it just for fun.
  • A scary bit of truth in television when it comes to forensics. Seeing as identical twins have the same DNA profile, one twin could commit a crime, frame the other, and unless there are fingerprints corroborating the innocent twin's story or a really good alibi...
    • Anyone born in the developed world who has a twin can probably prove it by referring to birth records or something. Anyone implicated in a serious crime who happens to have a twin and never tells the police about it is Too Dumb to Live, so there's no reason to worry too much about being framed by your own Evil Twin.
    • This has actually happened in the past. However, at least one case concluded that only the "evil" twin could have committed the crime since he had a motive and was in the area.
  1. ↑ i.e. being zapped by a Transformation Ray gun
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