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Evil Versus Evil

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
(Redirected fromEvil vs. Evil)
A big clue is when both sides haveNames to Run Away From Really Fast.
"And so theEvil Overlord defeated the otherEvil Overlord,and the land rejoiced."
—Gnarl,Overlord

Sometimes, you just need a break from heroes. It can get a bit repetitive to have every protagonist be awhite-as-snowgoody-goodyhero. A refreshing dose of moral ambiguity can do just the trick. When you're tired of watching heroes be heroic, watching aVillain Protagonist be villainous can be a nice change of pace.

But there's a problem with this. See, heroes are so popular because peoplelike heroism. People are, to some small extent,basically good; they like watching other people be happy, succeed against all odds, and so on.Most of the time. The reason villains lose all the time is because they do things that get them intoscrappy territory;that's the reason they're villains. Watchinga villain defeat the heroes andplunge the world into darkness and suffering might be refreshing at first, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

The solution? Pit theVillain Protagonist against theVillain Antagonist.Someone so rotten that no matter how low you go on theKarma Meter, you'llstill want to kick his ass. That way, the character(s) canbe evil whiledoing good. It's the best of both worlds. You don't have to do really rotten things likekicking puppies, you can kick fire-breathing demon puppies instead. It's kind of hard toTake Over the World when anotherEvil Overlord is already ruling it;or wantsto destroy it. For aGentleman Thief who wants the best loot, what better target than other thieves?The Starscream has to havesomeone to overthrow, right? And even the most viciousKnight Templar is right once in a while. And if both bad guys arebad enough, having them killing each other is a victory for everyone!

Note that if a work'sprimary conflict is about Evil Versus Evil, then there is a serious risk ofDarkness-Induced Audience Apathy. If the viewers/players/readers cannot support any faction, they may simply not care.

See alsoEven Evil Has Standards andBlack and Gray Morality. ContrastEnemy Civil War,Eviler Than Thou, andThe Good, the Bad, and The Evil, which are about antagonists battling other antagonists. This trope is the opposite of aVillain Team-Up. Has aSub-Trope inEvil Versus Oblivion, where one side is world-destroying bad.

No real life examples, please; We know that this is sometimesTruth in Television, butcalling real people "evil" is avery bad idea.

Examples of Evil Versus Evil include:


Anime & Manga

  • Lone Wolf and Cub has Retsudo Yagyu and Abe-no-Kaii Tanoshi. Kaii attempts to destroy both Yagyu and the main character, Ogami Itto, while Retsudo spies on Kaii with plans to kill him after Itto. Eventually,Retsudo gets fed up with Kaii and frames him for a seppuku-worthy crime. Kaii dies.
  • In one of the manga fromUFO Robo Grendizer -part of theMazinger Z trilogy-,Big Bad King Vegakilled Emperor of Darkness,Big Bad of the former series:Great Mazinger. Pretty fun, King Vega not only did it because he was a potential competitor -since he also wanted toTake Over the World-, but also becauseEmperor of Darkness was wanting toally with the heroes to overthrow him.
  • As an odd example where the worse bad guy is actually the one you might cheer for, Kotomine vs. Zouken Matou inFate Stay Night. Sure, he's anOmnicidal Maniac but he's not the one whoinflicted Sakura's backstory on her nor is hemade of worms. Zouken wants immortality. Kotomine wants to destroy the world. Kotomine comes off better.They both die though. After all, Kotominedoes want to summon the closest thing toThe Devil theNasuverse seems to have. Kotomine gets a lot of sympathy points beforehand, though. And he saves Sakura and Ilya plus stops True Assassin.
  • Excel Saga. One side isWorld Domination group ACROSS, trying to take over Fukuoka City as a first step towards taking over the worl. The other side is the very corrupt Department of City Security, trying to stop ACROSS. Both recklessly disregard the lives of the people living in Fukuoka in their attempts to take the other one down.
  • Hunter X Hunter's main villainHisoka is a pretty good example of this as he often pits himself against other villains eitherfor his own twisted amusement or so that he can bethe only one to kill series protagonist Gon and his friends.
  • InHaruhi Suzumiya, Ryoko is extremely forward about her plans. She wants to kill Kyon in order to provoke a massive data explosion from Haruhi. Admittedly, this could cause the end of the world, depending on how much Haruhi loves Kyon. Yuki stops her and deletes her. Fast forward to nine novels later. Yuki is sick. (She's become ambassador to the Sky Canopy Dominion, because they aren't allowed to kill her after Kyon's threat. Next best thing is to send her to Cthulhu, and hope that'll break her completely.). Just when Suyoh comes out, and attacks Kyon, Ryoko arrives, in aBig Damn Heroes arrival, and protects Kyon. She still wants to kill him, but for now, only she can kill him.

Kimidori:Your potential usefulness was marginally greater than the threat you present.

  • Bleach:Mayuri (who is technically a good guy) achieves hisBig Damn Heroes moment when hesaves Ishida and Renji from Szayel Aporro Granz, who was gleefully torturing them by snapping every bone and tendon in their bodies one by one.
    • Kenpachi (who is also technically a good guy) versus Nnoitra Gilga.
  • Kekkaishi is oddly getting to be like this. Aside from the guardians of Karasumori, there are two main factions.Sousui is attempting to bring down the Urukai, and Shinyuuchi-hunting.Yumeji is attempting to stop the former, but is also Shinyuuchi-hunting and trying to destroy Karasumori. (For those unfamiliar with the series, Shinyuuchi-hunting is the act of killing a god and taking over its domain. Considered to be the ultimate perversion of the laws of nature.)
  • Baccano!: The most literal example is probably the fight in the Flying Pussyfoot between the Lemures and Ladd's gang. The Lemures are aCult devoted to the immortalMad Scientist Huey Laforet and they plan on slaughtering the passengers as a sacrifice to their leader/show of force to free their leader from prison. Ladd's gang are a bunch of psychos who are there to hold the train for ransom...after killing half of the passengers. Ladd's gang only kill the Lemures and by extension rescue the passengers, becausethey want to kill the passengers themselves, purelyFor the Evulz.
    • And don't forget about the Rail Tracer, who basically makes this a three-way bad guy fight.
  • Battle Royale has Kazuo Kiriyama against Mitsuko Souma.
  • Gundam also used it a few times.Zeta Gundam featured the first three-way of the series with the Titans fighting with Haman Karn's Neo Zeon, followed by the infighting of the Glemmy faction versus the Haman faction inGundam Double Zeta.
    • Gundam Wing starts out OZ vs the Earth Sphere Alliance, then the Treize Faction (of OZ) vs (Romafeller Foundation) OZ, then the White Fang vs OZ.
    • Gundam SEED and itssequel have the Earth Alliance/Blue Cosmos/Logos versus ZAFT.
    • After delving deep enough into the plot ofGundam AGE, one can argue that the war between Earth Federation and the Unknown Enemy is this.
  • InOne Piece,the Seven Warlords of the Sea, theWorld Government'sToken Evil Teammate serve as this, going after other Pirate crews, who are all viewed as evil by the WG and Marines, and who are almost all not good like the Straw Hat crew. In a way, this sort-of sums up the Pirates versus theWorldGovernment. Especially when you have people likeFleetAdmiral Akainu andVice Admiral Onigumo in such high positions in their armed wing, or a guy likeRob Lucci as the leader of your top assassin squad.
    • And whether Dragon's Revolutionaries are actually good remains to be seen. Bartholomew Kuma used to be a member before becoming a Warlord, after all, and he's said to have been a vicious mass murderer (although his actionsprior tolosing his free will to his cyborg conversion make him look like one of the more decent of the Warlords, so it's not clear-cut in any case).
  • The trope is invoked inBasilisk by the Shogun, to head off another Evil Versus EvilXanatos Speed Chess occurring between the nannies of his heirs, and remove them from influence over the succession.
  • InBerserk, the Neo-Band of Hawks led byGriffith and the Apostles versusEmperor Ganishka of Kushan. Both sides use different types ofEldritch Abominations in their final battle.
  • Happens to some extent at the end of the first season of theBlack Butler anime. A psychoFallen Angel tries to burn London to the ground as the first stage of an attempt to "purify" humanity. Humanity's only hope ends up being a demon who, for various reasons, wants said angel dead.
    • The second season initially appeared to be leading towards this type of conflict, but very quicklyabandoned this approach by having Claude, previously morally ambiguous a la Sebastian, off Alois, briskly setting him up as the main antagonist and effectively eliminating themoral ambiguity aspect.
    • The whole principle of Ciel's role as the Queen's watchdog is like this. Ciel achieves the Queen's desires and keeps stability through many times evil means. It is not too surprising that a police officer calls the Earl a demon.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist pits Greed against the other homunculi and Dante/Father. He betrayed his creator and "siblings", and remains against them right up to his death.

Al: That makes you a friend of Envy, Lust and the others, doesn't it?
Greed: I wouldn't say 'friend'; more like 'sworn enemies' if you wanna get down to the grit.

  • Liar Game is more of a down to earth type of story but it goes on and on for chapters on Round 4 whereYokoya and Harimoto are competing with each other, and in times making alliances even, to a point that our main heroes, Akiyama and Nao, kinda disappear. Even Yokoya and Harimoto kinda disregard Akiyama as a threat for a while. Big Mistake.
  • Ryo Mashiba vs. Ryuuhei Sawamura inHajime no Ippo. See a greater description onEviler Than Thou.
  • Black Lagoon has an awful lot of this going on. With very few exceptions it's extremely hard to see what, if anything, distinguishes the protagonists and antagonists on a moral level. Possibly nothing, except for the strength of the person'sFreudian Excuse. InBlack Lagoon you're either a mafia leader or a complete psychopath. Or both.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh has a duel between Yami Marik, a psychopath who likes toMind Rape and attempt to murder people, and Yami Bakura, a thief and murderer who wants the Millenium Items for his own mysterious reasons. The chapter/volume this duel appears is actuallycalled "Evil VS Evil", making it an intended example of this trope. We're meant to be rooting for Bakura, as he's got Marik's good half on his side...too bad he loses. It has the honour of being both this and an example ofHam-to-Ham Combat—it becomes the kind of duel that needs to be seen to be believed.
    • Yami Yugi versus all the villains in season 0.
  • In the variousSlayers series, the Monster Race shows up to be exemplars of this trope on a regular basis, usually through Xellos. The main plot Arc of Slayers Try is an archetypical example of this trope.
  • InNaruto you haveSasuke VsDanzo. Someone who's obsessed enough with vengeance that he's willing to destroy Konoha to avenge his clan fights against someone who was responsible for the massacre of his clan and many other questionable deeds, including almost letting Konoha get destroyed so he can overthrow Tsunade and rule as he sees fit.
  • The Namek saga ofDragon Ball Z has Vegeta almost in the role ofVillain Protagonist. Keep in mind that he is theBig Bad of the previous arc (barely a month before), and that his methods for obtaining Dragon Balls (devastate the village it is kept) are exactly the same that Frieza and his men employ. But, with Goku inspace/healing and Piccolo dead, he is the best chance of holding off or defeating Frieza for most of the saga.
  • Elfen Lied is an example of this in some respects. Lucy is aVillain Protagonist, but the organization that's trying to capture her is led by aComplete Monster and has field agents who arevery questionably heroic. Most of the good characters can't really do much in this conflict; Nana is the only "good" diclonius, and she's a bit of aJobber.
  • Code Geass: Lelouch vi Brittania lampshades this trope to his campaign as the leader of theBlack Knights against theHolyEmpire of Britannia.
  • An episode ofBakugan Mechtanium Surge was actually called Evil VS Evil.
  • Urotsukidouji - Return of the Overfiend has a lot of factions: Nazi-like humans, terroristic Makemono, Amano, who's working for a god that previously causedThe End of the World as We Know It, Faust, who wants to kill said god to obtain his power, Kyo-O, who's said to be the devil (and is probably the lightest shade of grey in the whole bunch)... pick your poison.
  • Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force: TheHuckebein Family finds itself fighting others who are infected with the same virus but areEviler Than Thou.

Comic Books

  • The quintessential comic book example:Wanted, the story of the son of one of the world's most skilled supervillains in a world where a much, much more grotesque, inhuman villain is waging war with—yes—other supervillains, for control of the world, which has fallen under the control of—hey, you guessed it! -- supervillainy.
  • The DCU has theSuicide Squad, a US government black ops unit made up primarily withjailed supervillains who agree to undertake dangerous missions against other supervillains with promised clemency if they survive.
  • TheLarry Hama-writtenG.I. Joe comics by Marvel had the Cobra Civil War storyline, where Serpentor andthe Crimson Guardsman masquerading as Cobra Commander fought over control of Cobra. Destro and his Iron Grenadiers represented a third villain faction in the conflict. The Joes didn't have much to do but bear witness to eventsthough Serpentor's faction had bought their support from corrupt elements within the Pentagon.
    • The recent revival comic also had a storyline or three about Cobra factions gunning for each other, including one named... Cobra Civil War.
  • Even though it was called Super-Villain Team Up, Marvel's comic series featuredNamor andDoctor Doom (Namor being anAnti-Hero of sort during those days. And yes, nowadays again as well.) fighting mostly each other and other supervillains. Only the occasional hero would show up and get involved.
  • The DC crossover eventReign in Hell pitted the half-demon children of Shazam, Blaze and Satanus, against Neron (who wasretconned into beingthe ruler of Hell instead of being just another demon lord) in a bid to control all of Hell. A few of the magic-using DC heroes got involved in the conflict because the fallout of the infernal struggle was screwing up magic in general. It ultimately ended withSatanus defeating Neron by transformingall the demons of Hell into humans (which had the side effect of stripping Neron of most of his power that was absorbed from other demons over the millenia), Neron's head on a pike, and Blaze betraying Satanus in a moment of weakness making her the new Queen of Hell.
  • Geoff Johns'Rogue War, which pitted two teams ofThe Flash's rogues (one led by Captain Cold, the other by the original Trickster) going up against each other, (over the body of Captain Boomerang, among other things) soon joined by a third group (brought together by the Top). This leads up to aCMOA where Captain Cold, almost the epitome ofEven Evil Has Standards, freezes then kills the Top, the whole time berating him why this shouldn't have happened.

Captain Cold: Forgot one of the rules, Top. Rogues shouldn't fight each other. 'Cause when they do... *shatters the frozen Top* bad things happen.

  • In theMarvel UKTransformers Generation 1 story "Target: 2006", Galvatron travels back in time and kicks everybody's arses, trapping Megatron and Soundwave under a pile of rocks. With the Autobots badly beaten, Ironhide decides to free Megatron in a desperate bid to defeat Galvatron. Oh, and while that's going on,Starscream is acting against themboth.
    • Happens a lot in the comics, actually. Shockwave frequently faced off against Megatron; Starscream manipulates Scorponok and Ratbat into sending their respective armies into combat in the Underbase Saga; Jhaixus kicks Megatron's arse inTransformers Generation 2 to solidify his position as the realBig Bad of the storyline; etc.
  • Deadpool is recurrently made of this trope. HeckMarvel Comics in general frequently invokes this trope.
  • In UDON'sStreet Fighter comic series,Bison meets his end at the hands of Akuma after a sound thrashing and"The Reason You Suck" Speech.
  • TheSecret Six. Balancing them fighting bad guys with occasional suggestions of just how brutal they really are is a large part of the series.
  • One issue of theSpider-Man comics featuredElectro getting the security blueprints of the banks he planned to rob from a crooked sales representative. Unfortunately, the representative was selling Electro out tothe Shocker, who would get to the banks before Electro did and empty the vault. When Electro realizes that he's being double-crossed, he goes back to the crooked sales rep with the intention of frying him, only for the Shocker to interrupt andsave the sales rep. Electro and the Shocker then fight for all the loot they both intended to steal.Electro wins.
  • Countdown to Final Crisis is made of this trope, withDarkseid,Monarch,Superboy-Prime, andBobThe Monitor all gunning for each other for various convoluted reasons, mostly having to do with theirsuperhero enemies and said heroes'bizarre, fragmented, mixed-upparallel plotlines running throughout the series.
  • The presidential election inTransmetropolitan. The incumbent,the Beast, is aRichard NixonExpy who firmly believes that he has done his job if, at the end of the day, a majority of his constituents are still alive, and whose major accomplishments in office consist of abusing his powers to punish demographics that support his opponents and getting the Supreme Court to rule that campaign contributions are personal gifts. Over in the Opposition, meanwhile, the race for the nomination has come down to two men: Bob Heller, aSocial Darwinist whowould beA Nazi by Any Other Name if the characters didn't keep openly referring to him as a Nazi, and Gary Callahan, asociopath who confides to the protagonist that he wants to be PresidentFor the Evulz. In the end,Callahan cuts a backroom deal with Heller to win the nomination, goes on to defeat the Beast, and becomes a poster boy forPresident Evil.
  • Boom Studio'sfrench import7 Psychopaths chronicled a group of army-sanctioned crazies who are trained and parachuted into Germany to killAdolf Hitler. The group included a sociopathic mimic, a bloodthirsty maniac who shrugged off pain, a man who believed Hitler to be an actual demon, and a mother with impeccable sniper skills.
  • Happensall the time in theSonic the Hedgehog comics, due tothe sheer number of villainous factions in the series.
  • Batman: The War of Jokes and Riddles was an eight-part story taking place duringBatman's second year (told viaFlashback, Batman relating it toCatwoman, where a gang war had erupted between the Joker and the Riddler.

Fan Works

Films -- Animation

Films -- Live-Action

Aereon: If we are to survive, a new balance must be found. In normal times, evil would be fought by good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil.

"Do we drop another mouse into the snake pit, or do we send our own snake and let him crawl in?"

  • Outrage is about several groups ofYakuza killing each other.
  • Bully is about a group of vapid, selfish, amoral wastes of space who conspire to commit murder. The victim is aComplete Monster, but the film argues that he's only the same key played louder.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean revolves around this (though theygrayup some sides). At least one of the factions consists of amoral pirates. The others include an amoral/somewhat sadisticPsychopomp and theComplete Monster leader of the East India Trading Company. (plus the British Navy, which doesn't do much.)

Literature

  • The theme of "evil against evil" is prevalent in the bookThe Exorcist, starting with Merrin's archaeological trip to Iranq where he finds a demon statue that the natives stated was an evil artifact to combat evil. This foreshadows Karras' "evil act" ofaccepting Pazuzu into himself, to save Regan.
    • Shown Their Work : the demon's Pazuzu, Mesopotamian King of Wind Spirits,monsterand main antagonist of the story. AsSummon Bigger Fish noted, he was summoned (mainly by pregnant mothers) to combat his arch-enemy and wife, Lamashtu, who was known for killing or kidnapping young children.
  • InAnimorphs, Visser One and Three are usually at each other's throats. Visser Three wants Visser One's spot, something Visser One is only too well aware of. In one book, the Animorphs, Visser One, and Visser Three all had their own plans to kill off the other two. Though of the two, Visser One is considerably more sympathetic than theComplete Monster that is Visser Three.
  • Hells Children by Andrew Boland. Though most of the characters occasionallyPet the Dog, it’s mostly Evil Versus Evil.
  • S.M. Stirling'sMarching Through Georgia pittedThose Wacky Nazis againstThe Draka. Most readers end up rooting for the Nazis, because the Drakaare evenworse.
  • Harry Turtledove has an interesting example in hisWorldwar series: we have a lot of scenes of powers often thought of as "evil" such as the Nazis, the Imperial Japanese, and the Soviets fighting the invading Race. The twist is that the Race are much more "civilised" even than the Western Allies (they're possibly an allegory for the Western world in the Nineties) yet they see us as inferior and want to conquer andenslave assimilate us and erase our culture. It can often be an uncomfortable crux for the reader to decide who is the more evil.
    • It Got Worse in the sequels (Colonization). When the Colonization fleet arrives and starts unloading civilians, someone uses a nuke against them, killing millions.It was the United States that did it, and to prevent another war from breaking out the President allows the Race to nuke Indianapolis.
  • Everyone inH.I.V.E. is evil to some degree. Even the leader of G.L.O.V.E.'s rival group,H.O.P.E., hires assassins to kill the world's greatest assassin and a teenaged boy, who just happens toliterally have a "binary brain". It doesn't help that the series is based around a school for villains.
  • The Lord of the Rings is often presented as a simplistic Good vs Evil, but in fact the conflict between Saruman and Sauron forms an important part of the plot ofThe Two Towers, although nothing much in the way of real Evil-Versus-Evil warfare ever comes of it. Likewise Ungoliant and Morgoth inThe Silmarillion.
  • The videogame / comic / novelShadows of the Empire had the Emperor keep Darth Vader and Prince Xizor, head of the criminal enterprise Black Sun, at his right and left hands. Naturally they hated each other; for Xizor it waspersonal. But they had to remain outwardly civil with each other until the end. It's implied that the Emperor set things up like this because he found it entertaining.
    • And because it distracts his minions from plotting againsthim; a man who rose to ultimate power by treachery naturally takes many precautions to avoid falling victim to more of the same.
    • Unfortunately, this policy led to a complete fragmenting of the Empire upon his death with warlords running rampant.
    • Also in theStar Wars Expanded Universe it is heavily implied that one of the reasons the Empire was created was to defend the galaxy against extragalactic threats like the Yuuzhan Vong. This is unambiguously one of Grand Admiral Thrawn's key motivations.
      • This was just an excuse, made by Imperials trying to justify it's actions many years later.
  • Hannibal by Thomas Harris. On one hand you've got Dr. Hannibal Lecter himself, serial killer and cannibal, versusMason Verger who abused his own sister as a child, moved on to molest more children and planned onfeeding Dr. Lecter to some pigs he's had trained to eat human flesh.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire generally featuresGrey and Gray Morality, but occasionally twoComplete Monsters are thrown into the ring together: Ser Gregor Clegane vs Vargo Hoat, for example.
  • In the1632 series, theThirty Years' War is basically described as this. This does have basis intruth. While mostly thought of as a Protestant versus Catholic conflict in real life—and, indeed, religious tensions did play a significant part—it was largely just a massive, selfish power play between the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire and most of Europe which resulted in the loss of countless of lives. Heck, even the "Catholic" and "Protestant" sides were not rigidly divided along those religious lines. Their armies were often composed of mercenary troops with mixed religions. Both sides' armies also had the tendency to rape, pillage, and burn villages, regardless of the religious make up of said villages. Theauthor repeatedly hammers this point home in the series, as well as the fact that 17th century Europe in general was not a pleasant place.
    • TheTruth in Television was not just limited to the nobility's power grabs. Groups of Catholics and Protestants (who were themselves divided mostly among equally hostile Calvinists and Lutherans) frequently tore each other apart when the opportunity presented itself. Rape, looting, and mass murder were employed with equal frequency by any one of the factions against the others.
  • HarryFlashman is a loathsome, profiteering, traitorous cowardly braggart who'llKick the Dog for fun, betray his country at the drop of a hat, and lie shamelessly about it all to look like a hero afterwards. But he's generally up against some of the nastiest pieces of work the 19th century has to offer, so you'll (almost) forgive him for it as long as they lose in the end.
  • Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons. While there are good guys and they are the point of view about a third to half the time, the plot is ultimately driven by the two big bad chessmasters. Most of the cast happen to be their pieces (literally, in some cases), and a good chunk of the cast are sociopathic mind vampires.
  • Michael Marano'sDawn Song, in which there is a battle for dominion over humanity between the demon lord Belial and hissuccubus minion who represent theaesthetic side of evil and the demon Leviathan who represents mindless, chaotic ugly evil.
  • The ending of theDragonlance Chronicles trilogy has Raistlin, by this point an evil black-robe, helping Tanis killAriakas for his own purposes. In the sequelLegends trilogy, it is revealed that Raistlin's ultimate agenda is to kill and replace Takhisis, the head evil goddess of the setting. In theLost Chronicles trilogy, particularlyDragons of the Highlord Skies, it is revealed that there was in general a tremendous amount of infighting and back-stabbing among the Dragonarmies.
    • TheDragonlance series does this a lot. The Knights of Takhisis were instrumental in the defeat of the Chaos armies. Lord Soth and several of the Dragon Overlords were killed by more powerful villains after tearing through the greatest heroes on the continent for years. Nuitari, god of the black moon, makes a habit of subtly disrupting any plots by his fellow evil deities that might disrupt the balance of the world. One of the central concepts of the setting is that Evil is typically more powerful, and almost always has the advantage of being the aggressor in a given conflict, but will inevitably turn upon itself and give Good a chance to restore the balance.
  • This is how theMuggles ofThe Wheel of Time think about The Dragon fighting The Dark One in the back story, since The Dark One is an Expy of the devil, but The Dragon went on to destroy most of the world - people say "The Dragon Brings Both Despair and Hope" for a reason. This makes people understandably nervous about the coming of The Dragon Reborn, but it eventually turns out that The Dragon was basically a good guy who got a heavy dose ofMind Rape (which only partly carries over to his re-incarnation).
    • A better example fromThe Wheel of Time would probably be the dead city of Shadar Logoth and Mashadar, the amorphous cloud of evil that lives there. Mashadar hates theDark One and all its minions. However, it's unquestionably a thing of evil that will eat the good guys as quickly as the bad.
    • Several books also detail the conflicts between theDark One's various minions. The Forsaken are all plotting against each other and at least a few times have succeeded in stabbing each other in the back. The first book also details a trip through the Blight where the characters are running from worms. They are assured that if they can make it to the mountains, the worms will stop: "The worms are afraid of what lives in the mountains."
  • Thomas Ligotti'sodd little novelMy Work Is Not Yet Done has for its "hero" one Frank Dominio, anUnfetteredReality Warper who sits on the edge ofType V only by dint of the fact that nearly every victim of hisRoaring Rampage of Revenge is, to greater or lesser extent, aComplete Monster...If we are to trust him at all. And why should we expect any less,considering the author's usual domain?
  • Grunts! chronicles the struggle between theINCREDIBLYJerkass Light, and the at bestFaux Affably Evil Orcs.
  • In theChronicles of Amber, Corwin actually describes himself as "a part of that evil which exists to oppose other evil."
  • A good portion of theWar of the Spider Queen.
  • InWarrior Cats we haveTigerstar Vs. Scourge duringThe Darkest Hour. And, depending on your view of them,Stick Vs. Dodge in SkyClan's Destiny may count.
  • Much of Glen Cook'sAnnals of the Black Company is devoted to the internal conflicts between powerful evil sorcerers. Much of the original trilogy involves the Lady's struggle to keep herEviler Than Thou husband, the Dominator, from freeing himself, so she can keep ruling her own empire as she pleases.
  • Happens in-universe inHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, although it's more a case ofJerkass vs. Annoying. When Snape and Lockhart are dueling, Harry and Ron think the best outcome would be if they finished each other off.
  • The final battle of theBooks of Swords trilogy is fought between Yambu, the Silver Queen,Big Bad of the first two novels, andVilkata, the Dark King, the evenBigger Bad of the third book. Interestingly, Yambu only does herHeel Face Turnafter she wins the battle but loses her throne. Of course, the third book does give Yambu asympathetic backstory, including something of aFreudian Excuse. But it's not an accident that she wins the battle using Soulcutter, also known as the Tyrant's Blade, a name she acknowledges.
  • Private Detective andVigilante Man Mike Hammer, as quoted inOne Lonely Night just before he blew away a bunch ofDirty Communists who were torturing Velda.

I was the evil that opposed other evil, leaving the good and the meek in the middle to live and inherit the Earth!

Live-Action TV

  • 24 does this A LOT; probably because most evil plots involve groups of bad guys working together (a bit ofTruth in Television). But of course, since they're bad guys, they'll turn on each other in a heartbeat.
    • Homeland fans that are also yoai fans that liked the Carrie/Nick Brodie romance would be quick to see that as pretty hot. "They'll turn on each other in a heartbeat" and so forth.To the mattresses!
  • Stargate SG-1 andStargate Atlantis has this thing going on. We have the Goa'uld fighting each other over territory and other things, we have the Replicators (not evil per se, but a threat to all life) fighting everyone, including the Goa'uld. In Atlantis we have the Asurans, who battled the Wraith, erasing human life to deplete the Wraith's "food sources".In the end the Asurans proved to by far the greater threat, leading to analliance between the humans and a Wraith faction to eliminate them.
    • The Wraith are no more friendly amongst themselves than the Goa'uld, that alliance containsnine factions, not the three you'd assume at first glance.
  • Heroes gives us the conflict between insane serial killer Sylar and ruthlessKnight Templar organisation the Company.
  • When they're not fighting the Federation, theKlingons and the Romulans spend most of their time fighting each other. (Or other Klingons. Actually, Klingons don't get along with anyone, really.)
  • Season 8 ofDoctor Who had thisOnce Per Episode withThe Master and whatever monster he hadallied himself with. Some larger-scale examples include: the Sontaran-Rutan war, the Dalek-Movellan war, the Dalek civil war, and the Dalek-Cyberman battle (such as it was).
    • And now, it appearsthat the war between the Time-Lords and Daleks became this.
  • Lost has the conflict betweenBen Linus and Charles Widmore in seasons 4 and 5, as they vie for control of the island. In season 6, it seems to be setting the stage for another one in addition:Charles Widmore versus the show's realBig Bad, The Man In Black.
    • By the end of the series,Ben gets redeemed. And Charles seemed to be on that track, but then Ben killed him... His full redemption doesn't come until after that.
  • TheSmallville episode "Injustice". A group ofsupervillains are sent to take downDoomsday.
  • Power Rangers Zeo saw Rita and Zedd attempting to undermine the Machine Empire. In the end, it wasRita and Zedd that destroyed The Empire, rather than the heroes.
    • This trope is a major part of thePower Rangers Operation Overdrive series. TheCorona Aurora, an object of god-like power, is so sought after that there are a total of four distinct villain factions fighting the Rangers and one another for it; they occasionally get along, but most of the time, they're fighting one another as often as they fight the Rangers. Even after being shown they're a much greater threat working together, they go right back to trying to kill each other afterwards.
    • Power Rangers Dino Thunder had Mesogog, the currentBig Bad,team up withthe previous season'sBig Bad Lothor. Once their plans fail, they instantly turn on one another and duke it out. Of course being the presentBig Bad, Mesogog ultimately wins.

Mesogog: Looks like this planet has one too many evil villains, and I have no intention of leaving.

  • Dexter is made of this, what with the title character being a serial killer that targets criminals, mostly other serial killers.
  • The demon Crowley inSupernatural is an amusing example of this. He manipulates and double-crosses just about everybody in sight, from the protagonists to his own demonic peers, in order to save his own neck, his comfortable job as a soul merchant and (incidental to those goals) the world. Though a useful ally and unusually honest for a demon, he never makes any attempt to pretend he isn't evil. This makes it all the more impressive that he convinces the good guys to keep working with him even after they've been tricked, thrown under the bus, beaten half-senseless and otherwise abused as a result of listening to him.
    • Crowley becomes the instigator of this again in Season 6; it's eventually revealed thatThe Mother of All came to Earth and started building armies of monsters in response to Crowley's plans to steal all the souls from Purgatory - the Mother's domain. And when the Mother's killed, the last few episodes of the season are still spent dealing with this trope, as the Winchesters find themselves stuck in the middle of the power struggle between the remainingcontenders for the position ofBig Bad: Crowley, Raphael, and Castiel, who hasJumped Off the Slippery Slope to prevent Raphael from turning the planet into a graveyard by restarting the Apocalypse. In the end Castiel decides to cut Crowley out of the deal, in response to which Crowley teams up with Raphael, but CastielOut Gambits them both. He kills Raphael, ascents togodhood, and makes Crowley his servant not much later. In season 7 he's killed due to the strain of containing inside himself, in addition to millions of souls, the Leviathans - absolutely ancient creatures from Purgatory who wish only to consume. Which leads to...
    • Crowley instigating thisagain in season 7. He attempts aVillain Team-Up with the Leviathan's nominal leader, but is brusquely rejected. Then he orders his demonic forces to ignore the Winchesters so they can hunt Leviathans around the clock.
  • TheMasters of Horror episode "Pick Me Up" has Wheeler, a serial killer truck driver, V.S. Walker, a serial killer hitchhiker. The eventual winner?The serial killing ambulance driver duo who pick them up at episode end.
  • Invoked at least once a season onDeadliest Warrior:The Mafia vs. theYakuzathe Mafia won; theIrish Republican Army vs. theTalibanthe IRA won; theViet Cong vs. theWaffen SSthe SS won; theMedellin Cartel vs.Somali piratesSomalis won;Saddam Hussein vs.Pol PotHussein won; andHernan Cortez vs.Ivan the TerribleCortez won.
  • InCovert Affairs Annie Walker trys to provoke this when, instead of assassinating the terrorist she is hunting, she tells him that his father(the head of the organization) had ordered his girlfriend killed.

Print Media

  • Mad'sSpy vs. Spy, in all its various incarnations. Except for their arbitrarily assigned color scheme, the two sides are identical, committing the same horrible (if hilarious) atrocities on each other... which was creator Antonio Prohias's whole point.

Professional Wrestling

  • Though less common than Face vs. Face, and FAR less common than Face vs. Heel, sometimes happens in pro wrestling, pa rticularly whenVince Russo is at the helm. Making one a success can be difficult though, since one of the cardinal rules of any match is that the audience should be rooting forsomeone. One major example would beThe Corporation Vs. TheMinistry of Darkness feud, where both sides were portrayed as bad guys.
    • Though in the end those two groups would merge together to form the Corporate Ministry, and it was revealedVince McMahon was the mastermind behind both stables all along. It still works as not every member was in on the plan, though those members left prior to the merger andturned face. Though even in the Corporate Ministry there was fighting within the group, especially betweenThe Undertaker andTriple H.
  • OnRaw 1/24/11The Nexus was confronted by The Corre and later the leaders,Wade Barrett andCM Punk faced each other with the loser and his group out of theRoyal Rumble.
    • Which led to aCrowning Moment of Funny when John Cena was appointed special guest referee, and disqualified both Barrett and Punk for 'excessive use of profanity on a PG show', eliminating both factions from the Rumble. He was overruled.
  • AnyTriple H vs.Kurt Angle match from 2000-2002 was this essentially. Triple H was the sledgehammer-wieldingVillain Sue against the pompousSmug Snake Kurt Angle who wanted to take the guy's wife. Though they were both heels, they were tenuous allies at best and vicious enemies at worst. They would feud on and off from year to year, with neither really turning face at all (the closest being theirNo Way Out match where Triple H was running off ofDeterminator face heat).
    • During this period Triple H even paused during his catchphrase to allow the audience to finish it—a way of hinting to thesmart marks that he was going to turn face.He didn't.
  • Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Hart Foundation could be viewed as this, had it not been for the overwhelming crowd reaction in Austin's favor.
  • Undertaker vs Big Bossman in a Hell In A Cell match was this. This one wasn't so successful, mostly because they had no real chemistry or feud, so the crowd had nobody to root for.

Tabletop Games

  • Pretty much the fundamental premise ofWarhammer 40,000, whereevery side is supposed to be evil, and if the players ever startthinking otherwise, the writers make that sideeven more evil to make sure it doesn't happen anymore.
    • The Biggest 2 examples being the Eldar and the Tau. The Eldar are psychic space elves thatcan see the future. They fight againstChaos, which is whatEldritch Abominations fear when they're up late at night. The fanbase tended towards them being the good guys, so the latest editions of the game has played up the "Manipulative Bastard" part to 11 and making it clear that they're all about the long game. In one example, they caused an Ork warlord to attack the Human world of Armageddon, killingbillions in order to save a few thousand Eldar lives; in another, they happily attacked both Orkish and Imperium worlds in order to deny the Tyranids biomass. Further, an Eldar captured by the Imperial Guard makes it perfectly clear that once they are back on top they will systematically kill every single human, or Mon-Keigh, in existence.
      • The Tau are anime-influenced space-communists that fight for The Greater Good, and are the closest thing the setting has to a neutral or even good faction. That is, if you ignore the fact that their entire race is being mind controlled by their leaders. Not wanting such an obvious good race in the series, Games-Workshop pointed out that the Tau's plans for humanity include forced sterility, slave camps, and genocide. The kicker?They're still the only thing close to a good race the game has.
      • From one of the Imperium's scholars. This is the same Imperium where aliens are regarded on the same level we regard poisonous snakes.
        • Which still doesn't mean they're wrong given the setting—many of the reports claiming the Tau are the good guys are from Tau propaganda. That's howGames Workshop explains conflicting sources, which is either lazy or brilliant. Or both.
    • The Imperium gets this too. For every hardworking adept who agonizes over every difficult decision, honorable space marine, or working class guardsmen with balls of steel they show you; they are contractually obligated to show tenKnight Templar inquisitors screaming "EXTERMINATUS!"
        • Which really just becomes stupid before long, as rarely do you see a competent Inquisitor.
        • Which could be consideredFridge Brilliance. An Inquisitor actually good at his job most likely works covertly, swiftly and quietly removing any threats to the Imperium, or even preventing them from becoming a threat at all, without anyone noticing. The only way to know if a competent one ever did anything at all, is when he fails and thingsgo from badto worse.
        • And the Inquisition itself has a lot ofRight Hand Versus Left Hand struggles between the factions too, though it rarely breaks into open war, and more individual backstabbing/assassination/purging. Puritans are more eager to purge everything with fire, while Radicals areless constrained in methods and often more competent - or at least experienced.
  • Likewise, the fundamental premise inWarhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Its nice guys - High Elves, Wood Elves, Bretonnians, Empire, Dwarfs - are not.
  • This is sort of built into thealignment system inDungeons & Dragons, though it's more a result of any Evil alignment taking onOrder Versus Chaos: chaotic evil and lawful evil characters theoretically hate each other as much as, say, good and evil ones, and while this isn't applied so much to mortals, the war between demons and devils, which is known as the Blood War, is mentioned more often than the war between celestials and fiends.
    • The Third EditionDungeon Master's Guide says "...evil rarely gets along with evil, for the desires of one selfish and destructive being, by definition, conflict with the desires of other selfish and destructive beings.
    • The two Fiendish Codexes explain that there is an infinite number of demons, and there's more of them spawning at all times. Angels, Archons, Devils & company are in a finite number. The Devils exist in fact so they can use their superior tactics and team work (due to their Lawfulness) along with similar weapons as those used by the demons, to keep the demons in check. The books make it explicit that if the Devils weren't around, the demons would swarm and destroy all of creation. The books also hint that if the demons vanished, the Devils could probably conquer the Multiverse, being a race composed entirely ofMagnificent Bastards andChessmasters.
      • And in the 2nd Edition of the game, the various forces of good took time to fan the flames, hoping to break their enemies against each other.Planescape has many references to various celestials who help the Blood War along and support either the side they dislike less or both at once - whether because it's the easiest way to get rid of as many fiends as possible, or out of fear the fiends will reach a truce, or reasoning that when the fiends are busy killing each other, they have less free time to roam around and mess with innocent people. In the boxed setHellbound: the Blood War, there's even an adventure where player characters discover high-ranking angelic beings funneling weapons and armor to their favored side in the war so more and more of the fiends would be killed.
      • Some demon sub-races are also enemies of other demon sub-races (retrievers eat all other demons, for example). Some members of the higher ranking devil sub-races get promoted to the next higher-ranking sub-race by getting their direct superior killed or demoted, while some pit fiends (the highest-ranking sub-race) do the same to replace the devil dukes and duchesses who themselves areThe Starscream to the archdevils. There's also much enmity betweenthe archdevils (Dispater and Mephistipholes vs. Baalzebul, Prince Levistus vs. Princess Glasya, all the other archdevils trying to take Asmodeous' throne) and the demon lords (Juiblex vs. Zugtmoy, Baphomet vs. Yenoghu, the three-way battle between Graz'zt, Orcus and Demogorgan).
    • Graz'zt also has an enimity with Malcanthet the Queen of Succubi, for avery different reason. Having a reputation as a notorious rake, Malcanthet is the only female who hasever rejected him. Of course, that's not the wayshe tells it. Being just as much the lustful seducer as he is, she claims the exact opposite. Oh, and being Demogorgon's lover doesn't help - it would certainly be a blow to Graz'zt's pride to know that not only does she prefer his enemy to him, but that she prefers a hideous two-headed reptilian abomination to him.
      • In theComplete Scoundrel supplement, a prestage class called the Malconvoker is introduced which follows the teachings of a book called Vital Pact to impersonate evil for the sole purpose of summoning fiends to fight other evils and other with perpetuate all of the fighting between evil above, since the Celestial beings are too few to win their war against evil otherwise.
    • 4th Edition has several instances, the most notable being thegod of war Bane and his eternal war versusgod of destruction Gruumsh. While Bane revels in conquest and power, one of his prime commandments is toALWAYS obey the rules of war. He also likes his followers to be rigidly disciplined and wants to preserve the world so that it will be worth conquering. Gruumsh on the other hand revels in utter destruction and encourages savagery in his followers. Both want to be the uncontested god of war, and thus they've been fighting for eons over their differences.
    • Another example is between the god of fear, Bane (no,not that one) and the god of murder, Cyric, in theForgotten Realms setting. This isn't a case ofOrder Versus Chaos or trying to decide which isEviler Than Thou. These two just hate each other on a very personal level. The problem is that Cyric is currentlysealed in a can, so they can't fight directly. Instead, they're marshalling their respectiveworshippers to go on an (un)holy war against one another. Since in the Forgotten Realms,the gods need worshippers to survive, this is the only way they have to kill one another.
    • More generally, this applies to many of theExclusively Evil races
      • An orc tribe's worst enemy tends to not be a human kingdom, a clan of dwarves or even aHidden Elf Village, but a rival orc tribe, and the same applies to hobgoblins andtheir tribes. Only a sufficiently powerfulBig Bad can terrify rival tribes into working together, and the result tends to be aKeystone Army. If theBig Bad dies, rival orc and hobgoblin tribes who were previously intimidated into cooperating will turn on each other with a vengeance.
      • The Chromatic Dragons (black, blue, green, red, and white), are all evil (blue and green are Lawful Evil, black red and white are Chaotic Evil), and all obsessed with gathering hoards, gaining territory, building power, and destroying anything good (especially the good Metallic Dragons). However, they have no love for each other either, and they will fight to kill or chase each other away (even if two dragons, a black and a green for instance, manage to form a truce, eventually and inevitably one or the other will break the truce and resume hostilities). The worst are red dragons, the archetypal evil dragons, who will slaughteranyone and anything in their pursuit of their desires.
      • Frost giants (OftenChaotic Evil according to the Third EditionMonster Manual) often kill white dragons for food and armour or capture them to use as guards. There are both many evil and many non-evil githzerai, but both attack the githyanki and mind flayers on sight. Meanwhile, githyanki and mind flayers are both evil and attack each other on sight as well.
      • Salamanders hate efreet. Most beholders want to wipe out all other beholders.
    • In the epic moduleDie, Vecna, Die! the lich god Vecna tricked the Oeridian tyrant Iuz the Old into freeing him from imprisonment inRavenloft; while Vecna's overall plan failed, he and Iuz have been enemies ever since.
  • Any twoRavenloft darklords whose domains share a border are quite likely to be bitter enemies, and most domains have one or morelesser villains waiting in the wings to seize power if the dominant evil should slip up. The most famous of rivals, Strahd and Azalin, have been feuding and sabotaging each other's schemes for centuries, although the nature of the Land of Mists prevents opposing darklords from simply overrunning their rivals' territory. Falkovian Darklord Vlad Drakov (in 2nd Edition) is hated by all Darklords whose realms border his (especially Azalin) due to his frequent attempts to conquer them, but his attempts are so lame they consider him beneath contempt.
  • The post-warDragonlance setting is like this. WithTakhisis banished to the Abyss, her five Dragonarmies turn on each other. Now, the five factions are just as apt to fight each other as they are to attack the good guys.
  • This is the very principle behind theTabletop RPGNecessary Evil. An alien invasion has wiped out all the superheroes, so the only ones left to defend the world is the supervillains. After all, you can hardly conquer the world if it's already been destroyed by aliens, right?
  • TheCharacter Alignment system for Palladium games (such asRifts) establishes that Aberrant characters (thinkLawful Evil) refuse to have anything to do with the other Evil alignments and finds them disgusting. It's quite possible to have an all-Aberrant party run a lot like an all-Principled party with only a few slight differences.
  • Vampire: The Requiem is basically built on this, as is theVampire: The Masquerade. While player characters are perfectly capable of beingFriendly Neighbourhood Vampires, (at least until theirinner beast makes them tear a few innocent onlookers apart), Vampire society can basically be summarised as an evil monarchy ofNietzsche Wannabes andChessmasters fighting against the psycho satanists and creepy ninjas.
  • Savage Worlds: Necessary Evil envisions a world where supervillains are the only powerful humans left after a massive alien invasion. They form a resistance to fight back the occupiers, but aren't necessarily reformed. If they drive back the aliens, they'll be in a position to take over the planet.
  • An option forIn Nomine casts the setting as Dark Low Contrast, where angels and demons are both wicked, violent fanatics and nobody at all is looking out for humanity's interests. The PCs in such a campaign will normally try to be better than the rest, though.

Video Games

  • Shadow the Hedgehog has a path pitting theAffably EvilDoctor Eggman againstComplete MonsterBlack Doom.
  • Syndicate. Set in a future where human life is cheap (and entire populated areas are subject to "lunchtime nuclear testing"), corrupt syndicates vie for control of the world, with no qualms whatsoever about the idea of killing civilians in the process. Or just brainwashing their enemies into doing their bidding if violence is too much of a hassle.
  • Gargoyle's Quest, a spinoff ofGhosts N Goblins, puts you in the role of Firebrand the Red Arremer, a recurring miniboss from those games and a member of the invading demon army. He takes a break from laying waste to the human world in order to heroically defend Hell from the invading demon hordes of another Hell.
    • The sequel,Demon's Crest, sees Firebrand escape from gladiatorial combat to hunt down Phalanx, a demon who has stolen several powerful crests from him and is using their power to rule the world. The catch? Firebrand wants the crests sohe can rule the world.
  • The most obvious modern example would beOverlord. You play as the reincarnation of anEvil Overlord seeking revenge on the heroes who defeated you. Conveniently, all seven of them have become so corrupted in the meantime that they rival you in evilness, are now virtual embodiments of theSeven Deadly Sins and enable you to still become aVillain with Good Publicity while killing them if you play your cards right. In fact,the seventh hero is possessed by the actualEvil Overlord, and is the one that corrupted the others. Surprise! You're not the real overlord, you're aTomato in the Mirror.
    • And in the sequel you play as the previous Overlord's son fighting against an oppressive Empire that seeks to eradicate all magical beings (that would include the new Overlord and his minions too). Also, theBig Bad isthe power mad Emperorseeking godhood willing to summon a man-eatingEldritch Abomination to accomplish his goal. Compared tothat, the Overlord looks almostheroic! Key word: almost.
  • Before he got into mini-games, Wario ofSuper Mario Bros. came up with the idea of stealing money from other bad guys. This has worked out rather well for him.
    • Of course, it hasn't stopped other bad guys from stealing money fromhim.
  • Mass Effect 2 has a few instances where this occurs. In Omega, theBlue Suns mercenary band fought off against the invadingBlood Pack in the slum districts.
  • Star Warsswims in this trope—most conspicuously in the video games, Dark Siders fight each other if anythingmore intensely than they fight anyone else.
    • InKnights of the Old Republic, taking the Dark Side path means fighting Darth Malak for control of his/your war machine, with the conquest of the Republic covered in the epilogue.
    • Ditto forJedi Knight,Jedi Academy, and any other game that gives you a Dark Side path...
    • Also ditto for the films and the Expanded Universe, which has been a verycolorful place sincePalpatine was overthrown in favor of theNew Republic. The New Republic has completely collapsed in favor of some kind of uneasy coalition of monarchical Imperial factions, independent core planets, and alien invaders by this point, and most of the Skywalker family is back on the Dark Side—and thiswithout being a deliberateCrapsack World.)
  • City of Villains is a good example of why this trope exists. The few truly evil contacts (Westin Phipps in particular) produce a good deal of controversy about whether they're "too evil." Thus, more than half the game's missions could very easily be rewritten for heroes. Many contacts have forced unethical traits and selfish motives written in for why you're stopping a villainous organization from realizing their plans. Hell, you spend more time fighting your "patron" organization of Arachnos than you spend fighting Wyvern or Legacy Chain (Longbow are like cockroaches, though...).
  • Newly unveiled footage fromTwisted Metal shows factions gameplay. So very, very much this. Dollface andSweet Tooth Needles Kane have each recruited followers, and they're squaring off.
  • Probably the only way Kratos inGod of War could seemeven remotely sympathetic is making the Greek pantheon out to begigantic bastards, especially Zeus. To be perfectly fair, one glance at mythology will tell you this isn't far off...
    • Most of the Greek Pantheon has few, if any, redeeming qualities aside from the fact that they replaced something that could be consideredworse from the Ancient Greek point of view.
    • The gods of Olympus actuallyInvoked Trope this trope inGod of War by sending Kratos, aSociopathic Hero who's just a hair away from becoming aComplete Monster, to battle other monsters that nobody else can defeat. Kratos utterly slaughters each one, then moves on to the next. He even becomes powerful enough to kill Ares, the eponymous God of War, and takes his place.
    • The creators of the game have stated that the reason they didn't go with a more traditional Greek hero is because they felt that such a character wouldn't last five seconds in the world they were trying to create. There are actually several minor characters in both games who embody various versions of those iconic heroes, and they are usually killed horribly within seconds of their appearance. Perseus lasts the longest, but even he is not immune. Still, if the creators had read the original mythsa little more closely, they would have realized that the only thing separating Kratos from those so-called "heroes" is that Kratos doesn't even try to justify his actions by calling them noble. He just kills things. Alot of things.
    • Kratos is actually a traditional Greek heroin every sense of the word.In Greek folklore and mythology, a 'hero' was originally a demigod. Cue thebig reveal ofGod Of War 2.
  • Some parts ofDungeon Keeper pit you against rival keepers, but these events are mostly incidental; the main focus of the plot is still about fighting heroes.
    • Far more focus on this in the unofficial expansion packAncient Keeper, in which the focus is on proving that you're tough enough, vicious enough, and (above all else)clever enough to take your place among the ancients of your kind. You still fight heroic forces constantly, but crushing other candidates for the title (often on their home turf) and surviving the current ancients' tests is the goal.
    • Dungeon Keeper 2 gives you an ongoing rival keeper named Nemesis, who commands all of the other rival keepers you face. Again, the primary goal is killing the heroes, though this time it's to take the Portal Gems they guard, some of which have already been looted by the other keepers.
  • During the early part of The Arbiter's campaign inHalo 2, since you're playing as Covenant you get to fight humans to show how they aren't actuallyworthless in combat, right? Wrong. Instead, you start off fighting Covenant heretics in the ruins of what youblew to smithereens in the first game.
    • It's worse than that. A mid-to-late-gameTomato Surprise makesthe Arbiter a sort ofVillain Protagonist in hindsight.[1]
    • In the later parts of the firstHalo game, one can simply sit back and watch the three-way battles between Flood, Covenant, and Sentinels until one faction kills the others and start actively huntingyou.
      • Sentinels are hardly "evil", though. They're just following their programming: defend the Ring from anyone they perceive as a threat. Now Guilty Spark, on the other hand, is adecidedly more complicated matter.
    • Lampshaded in one of the last levels ofHalo 2. You can either fight your way up the catwalk to the Tomb of the Arbiter, or rush in headlong. The enemies on said catwalk will follow you inside... and start fighting the other enemies already there.

Cortana: You might want to try sitting this one out.

    • InHalo 3, at one point the Prophet of Truth is about to activate the Halo Array and unleash destruction upon the galaxy.Nobody wants that, not eventhe parasitic Flood, so for one brief moment you must fight alongside Flood combatants and decimate Truth's bodyguards. Like in the example above, you can even hang back and let the unstoppable hulks do the heavy lifting for you.
  • Excluding the Protoss campaign, you play as a commander in an evil force throughoutStarCraft Brood War. This is even lampshaded by the Queen Bitch of the Universe herself.

Duran: Do you think they suspect anything, my queen?
Kerrigan: Of course, Duran. They're simply siding with the evil they know over the evil they don't. They just don't realize exactly what it will cost them.

  • Several scenes in theHalf-Life series feature the human enemies and alien enemies fighting each other. InHalf-Life 2 and its Episodes, Combine troops, Antlions, and Headcrabs/Zombies all willingly attack each other. After an epic battle between a mob of Zombies, a swarm of Antlions, and Freeman and his Vortigaunt ally, the Vortigaunt comments on how the Antlions and Zombies continue to fight even after the two had escaped.
  • The gameGoldenEye: Rogue Agent is a prime example. The only real difference from being Bond is that you can use human shields.
  • InSaints Row 2, the player character is atotal sociopath, but so are the leaders of the rival gangs.
  • Wizardry sums it up this way: a good man helps an old lady across the street. A neutral man crosses the street and helps an old lady across while he's doing so. An "evil" male PC helps a young lady across the street. Your enemies help an old lady halfway across the street.
  • Team Fortress 2: Two teams of ruthless, bloodthirsty mercenaries gleefully blasting the shit out of each other, with only the flimsiest justification.
  • Fable will always pit the Hero against the villain Jack of Blades. However, the "Hero" can be evil himself if he so chooses, so his motivation is left up to the player to pick: is he fighting Jack to avenge his loved ones and save the world, or to keep Jack from conquering the world so that he can conquer it himself?
  • Turn-based strategy gameDisciples 2: Dark Prophecy features this near the end of theLegion of the Damned's saga.It turns out that Uther isn't really the reincarnation of the Legion's god, but just some evil brat siphoning his power and slowly killing him. Since you're one of the god's loyal servants, you have to fight him in the end. This has the odd effect of givingdemons from hell the surprisingly sympathetic motivation oftrying to save their god.
    • One of the BEST campaign twists in known history. Added bonus? The fight againstDemon Uther is quite possibly the toughest boss in the game.
    • Really, any fight between the Legions of the Damned and the Undead Hordes.
  • InPrototype, we have thesociopathic, nigh unstoppable monster whoeats people. He's the player character, and the closest thing to a hero we have (hevery slowly develops something akin to a conscience). Then we have theBlackWatch, a secret military organization who created the viral threat in the first place (to target racial minorities), tested it on civilians, and are planning on nuking Manhattan to stop its spread. Then we haveElizabeth Greene and her viral mutants, who essentially intends to unleash aZombie Apocalypse because she can. The man-eating dude wins. Yay?
  • Warcraft likes this trope. We have the demons of the Burning Legion heavily at odds with the Undead Scourge even though the magic they use and their ultimate aim is almost identical (not to mention the Scourge used to be part of the Legion). Being the original "owners" of Azeroth, the LovecraftianOld Gods are at odds with both the Legion and the Scourge although they are implied to have a degree of influence on both of these factions. Illidan's motley crew of (evil) Blood Elves, Demons and Naga are engaged in heavy fighting against the Legion due to Illidan's failure in taking out the Undead Scourge for the Legion.
    • In addition,The Frozen Throne featured the Plaguelands Civil War, a four-way war within the Scourge between the loyalists of Arthas, the loyalists of the Legion, the Forsaken (a group of free-willed undead) and the remaining Alliance forces (who are generally good guys but are led by a racistJerkass Lord Garithos).
      • This one got even worse inWorld of Warcraft; while the Burning Legion's pawns are exterminated, new conflict is added with the fanatical Scarlet Crusade, Varimathras' loyalists, and the ambiguous Knights of the Ebon Blade. While the Forsaken and the Knights are protagonists of an ambiguously gray morality with both sympathetic and sinister members, the only unambiguously "good" force in the Plaguelands was the relatively small Argent Dawn.
    • The Dark Iron dwarves initially fought in the service of Ragnaros against the Blackrock Orcs, who served the Black Dragonflight. In Cataclysm, however, Ragnaros has joined forces with Deathwing.
    • The main opposition to the gronn-ruled ogres of Outland, which prove a threat to the Alliance and Horde's Outland allies, happens to be theExclusively Evil Black Dragonflight, which is seeking to avenge the deaths of many of its members at the hands of Gruul the Dragonkiller.
    • In "Wrath of the Lich King", the Scourge conquered the Nerubians and has almost conquered the Drakkari ice trolls, both of which are quite evil (the ice trolls especially so, even compared to the evil and barbaric majority of the non-playable trolls). In Drak'Tharon Keep, both the living trolls and their allies, and the undead trolls and other Scourge members attack the party as they make their way up the keep.
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story pits Bowser up against Fawful, who's taken over the Mushroom Kingdom and booted him out of his own castle.Again. This time, however, the Super Mario brothers, for the most part, play a supporting role in the game, powering up his body when necessary (includingmaking him a giant in order toMegaton Punch castles). Later on afterFawful and the Dark Star goOne-Winged Angel it's up to Bowser to save the Mushroom Kingdom.
  • If you take the evil path in the vast majority ofRPGs, you're still going to have to fight the same evilBig Bad. In aBioWare game, your quest will be close to the same regardless of your alignment, including a struggle against the minions of theBig Bad;maybe, at the end, you'll be given an option to join them instead of fighting them; otherwise, you'll just prove to beEviler Than Thou.
  • InThe Godfather, your character Aldo Trapani runs a protection racket for the Corleones, doesn't hesitate to cause property damage or (threaten to) brutalise shopkeepers in his extortion attempts and can kill people in a wide variety of ways. Pretty much every copper in NYC is aDirty Cop who at best never turns down a bribe and at worst is a rapist. The other Families don't have the moral high ground, though, as their members are always itching for a fight, rule their turfs with iron fists and don't shy from shooting up civilians blocking their line of fire to you.
  • Tommi Vercetti ofGrand Theft Auto Vice City got the most characterization as a villain. Although he appears to be criminal out of necessity in the beginning, he's not justpunching a clock; he's been a lifelong career killer, never wanted to be anything else, and has noFreudian Excuse behind it. Hehas no standards beneath him and doesn't appear to be any better than any of his enemies, yet still manages to be the mostAffably Evil character in the series.
  • Any enemy inDoom that either has a gun or throws a different type of fireball can cause monster infighting. The "former humans" are most prone to this, as they're the only enemies in the game whose weapons can hurt others of their own kind. The Arch-Viles can be humorous with this, as they can resurrect an enemy who they just killed and then get into another fight with them, and repeat the process.
    • The Cacodemons and Barons of Hell are also good examples of this. Dead Cacodemon corpses can be found in "Baron halls" and wall images of crucified Barons of Hell can be found in some areas where Cacodemons are the predominant enemies.
      • This feud between the Barons of Hell and Cacodemons is also noted in the expanded universe Doom books.
      • Cacodemons crucified Barons, despite lacking hands or anything resembling tool-manipulators. That's some serious hate.
  • Super Robot Wars has this as a thing that can be done in the game provided there are 2 sets of enemy forces on a battlefield, Primary Enemies (Red) and Neutral/Secondary (Yellow) despite them usually targeting you, they will go for each other if they are in range at times, firing shots and destroying each other, which in larger levels can make life a tad easier. Different villains from various anime are often pitted against each other, with additional original villains throw in.
  • InShin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne this occurs betweenChiaki, Isamu, and Hikawa and depending on which endingthe Demi-Fiend as well.
    • The ongoing battle throughout theShin Megami Tensei series betweenLucifer and YHWH counts as well.
  • Uram andHokan ofSpellforce.
  • Modern Warfare 2.General Shepard's Infamous Shadow Company vs. Makarov's Ultranationalists. And you in the middle. How fun! Although it only lasts a mission but it's far easier just to make the fight as even as possible then sit back and watch the carnage (typically shadow is ahead).
  • BioShock (series). The idealist objectivist turned bitter despot Andrew Ryan versus the sleazy power-hungry smuggler and rebel Frank Fontaine, both with hordes of insane, vicious mutated Splicers at their command.And you're a mind-controlled test tube baby used by Fontaine (under the guise of Atlas, a noble rebel and family man) to kill Ryan, then he turns on you. He dies. Only you and Tenenbaum, a Jewish Nazi collaborateur andThe Atoner, survive the events of the story.
  • In the thirdRampage the only reason you don't destroy humanity is that aliens trying to take over the world provide a distraction.
  • Hexen II's sparse story becomes this if you play as the assassin or necromancer. The assassin wants to killEidolon to prove she's the best assassin of all time, and the necromancer wants to kill Eidolon so people fear him again.
  • Traffic Department 2192 hasevil versusevil versusevil, withevil and evil thrown in for laughs.The final faction initially looks benevolent, since it's composed ofActual Pacifists--nope, they're allManipulative Bastards, and they're evil too! The protagonist, arguably the most evil of the lot, is also the most beneficial, wiping everyone else out so the few decent people can take charge.
  • Street Fighter IV has Vega/M. Bison pitted against Seth, both of whom are power-hungrycomplete monsters who want toTake Over the World for themselves.
  • The war between Mishima Zaibatsu and G Corporation inTekken.
  • If an enemy in anyMarathon game accidentally shoots another enemy, they will fight it out while you stand and watch. In the second game the native f'likta fight the phfor as long as you're lying low. InInfinity the A.I. Tycho controls the pfhor hunters, fighters and you, using his forces to fight against the phfor enforcers, compilers, and Durandal's humans [[spoiler:planned by you to keep a CosmicHorror under wraps.
  • InMyth: The Fallen Lords the dark leaders, the fallen lords, hate each other more then they hate you. In one level you sit back for most of the level and let the two forces fight each other, then pick off the pitiful remnants.
  • Ever destroyed another ship inEVE Online? Congratulations, you just killed anywhere between a few dozens to a few dozens of thousands of people. Reduce that by a power of 10 or so for any player-controlled ships. As such,everyone in this game is a mass-murdering lunatic.
  • Legacy of Kain: Protagonist Kain is aMagnificent BastardVillain ProtagonistEvil Overlord. He's the hero of the games mainly because his enemies areKnight TemplarOmnicidal Maniacs who are even worse than he is.
  • TheMega Man Legends SpinoffThe Misadventures Of Tron Bonne have you controlling one member of the main series'Goldfish Poop Gang and herAdorable Evil Minions trying to pay her brother's ransom. Sure, the main antagonist is an evil bastard trying to rule the world and your motive is quite noble...but you still accomplish it by robbing livestock from a farm, stealing containers from the docks, and blowing up a bank while fighting the police.
  • InFahrenheit you have two factions fighting over onelittle girl who could give them the power to rule the world. First you have theOrange Clan, anancientorganization who already control the world, but wish to expand their power. The second is thePurple Clan a group ofartificial intelligences who wish to use the girl's power to create anew ice age, killing humanity, and becoming the new dominate race. In between these two you have the hero, Lucas Kane, theUnwitting Pawn of both groups, who has power overThe Force, andlater gets killed, and brought back asThe Undead.
  • Command & Conquer games has quite a bit of this. As Nod, expect to fight Nod separatists at least once. They also fight CABAL and the Scrin at different points. As Soviets, expect to find at least one mission fighting Soviets. Then there's Yuri's Revenge, with Soviets versus Yuri, and Red Alert 3 with Soviets versus the Empire of the Rising Sun. Then in Uprising the Soviets vs Future Tech.
  • A good many of the members in the Organization ofKingdom Hearts Chain of Memories are working against each other in order to further their own individual evil agendas. Then inKingdom Hearts II, Maleficent and the Heartless take on the Organization and the Nobodies. When the Organization takes control of the Heartless, Maleficent then has to pull anEnemy Mine with the main heroes.
  • InBaldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, one part of the Watcher's Keep involves a maze with three stones needed to escape, and two factions of warring demons, on opposite sides of the Blood War, hold one stone each. You can kill one of the factions and claim one stone off them while taking the other as a reward, or you cankill both of them. If you are a good-aligned character, you will have no choice but to kill them all—the leaders of both sides will sense your innate goodness and try to kill you.
    • Actually, it's having any member of your party beLawful Good that causes both of them to attack you. Any other good-aligned character can still interact with them. If you don't team up with one or the other of the fiends, you'll miss out on a powerful magical item that they'll reward you with, but having a Lawful Good party member is required in order to get a different powerful magical item found in the same level of the dungeon. You can get both if you do not have any Lawful Good characters when you run into one or the other of the fiends and choose to assist them and get rewarded with the Rogue's Hood (a helmet that buffs thieves), then come back into the maze after that with a Lawful Good character to get the enchanted Paladin-only Bastard Sword.
  • Shogo: Mobile Armor Division features conflict between the CMC,the Fallen, andShogo Industries over control of Cronus. The UCA is mostly good, but has the potential to become an antagonist in one path of the game when Admiral Akkaraju plans on using the Kato Cannon to destroy Avernus to eliminate the Fallen,playing into Ryo's plans.
  • Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire has a borderline case, with the two terrorist teams, Team Aqua and Team Magma. It's borderline because the teams are something ofwell-intentioned extremists, wanting to expand the sea and land for the sake of Pokémon (or so they say), respectively, and are in direct opposition to each other. However, inRuby, Team Aqua are actually allies (and vice-versa regarding Magma andSapphire), but it's played straight in the third game,Emerald, where both teams were portrayed as antagonists to the player while still warring against each other.
  • WhileDragon Age II is mostlyGrey and Grey Morality, the final conflict between the Templars and the Circle of Magi in Kirkwall devolves into Evil Versus Evil. The leaders ofboth factions give into their (figurative) inner demons and nearly drag the rest of their members down with them. No matter which side you initially pick, you end up killing both of the leaders to achieve a cease-fire.
  • Probably more 'grotesque monstrosity versus grotesque monstrosity,' butKilling Floor occasionally has instances of zeds fighting each other. This is sometimes relatively even (aSiren versus aBloat), and sometimes comically one sided (aClot standing in the way of aFleshpound). Notable for the fact that, if left alone, they will gladly spend quite some time attacking each other and will often ignore players, even those who are two steps away and pointing a rocket launcher at them.
  • The scrolling shmupTerra Diver makes players mercenaries working for a greedy megacorp of resources around Earth against its rival corporations with the story of eco-terrorist threat as a cover-up of the disastrous war of greed.
  • Can easily happen inDwarf Fortress - All the nasty creatures and evil factions are only alike in their hatred of the Dwarves, so if two of them happen to arrive at your fort at the same time, expect them to tear each other to pieces.
  • No More Heroes is pretty much this. Travis isn't really such a great guy, and is tearing through mobs of mooks and taking assassination side jobs on possible not so evil people all for the sake of getting laid. Once. Although a few of the other assassins are much worse than he is. Like Destroyman. And Bad Girl.Dear god Bad Girl.
  • Killer7 takes this trope, mixes it up, and paints a pretty psychedelic picture with it. Some of the villains are just so awful, but a few of them are probably better than the main characters who are only doing any of this for the sake of a paycheck.Or maybe not. Not to mention that some of the members of Killer7 are assholes or cowards. Or that barely anything makes any sense in the plot of that game.
  • Though one could hardly think of the title character as evil, the page describes the plot ofSly Cooper almost perfectly: aGentleman Thief who steals from other criminals.
  • Breath of Fire IV features aSupporting Leader, thenoble ifheavy-handed literalGod-Emperor Fou-Lu being betrayed and abused byThe Empire that he helped to found, eventually resulting in amassiveFace Heel Turn that sees him become aWoobie, Destroyer of Worlds. Said empire has anextremelySelfish Evil leader and aComplete Monster at the head of its science departmentturning people intoBody Horrorspurely becausescience thought it'd be lulzy. As you near the end of the game, the only question remaining is, "Which one will be theBiggest Bad?"
  • Uncharted 2's second half of the game sees Lazaravic's soldiers fight theGuardians Of Shambala
  • In Famous 2 features anti-mutant fascist rednecks take on mutants.
  • InFallout 3, the cruel Talon Company (see ruthless mercs) go toe to toe with super-mutants.
  • The main plot ofFallout: New Vegas revolves around this trope: The Mojave is caught in a stalemate between Caesar's Legion, a brutal dictatorship which indiscriminately crucifies people and wipes out whole towns, and the New California Republic (NCR), which committed a massacre of civilians at Bitter Springs, and whose soldiers will shoot to kill over minor crimes. Both have issues keeping the Fiends, a group ofAx Crazy Chem abusers, in line.
  • The backstory ifFallout was basically this. TheAlternate History starting after World War 2 had the Soviet Union collapse much quicker than in our timeline and the Middle Eastern powers go to war with each other. This caused a huge economic crisis. Europe collapsed and became a war torn hell hole, and the US and China tried to solve their oil problems by invading their neighbors (in the US's case, Canada, in China's case, the former Soviet nations). Eventually, these last two functional governments went to war, which started in Alaska and spread to the Chinese mainland, causing China and the US to nuke one another and bring aboutThe End of the World as We Know It. At the time of the war, China was an imperialistic, aggressive, tyrannical nation with an army ofSociopathic Soldiers. The United States was the exact same, except ruled by a puppet government controlled by a Nazi-esqueAncient Conspiracy called The Enclave in addition to all of that.
  • Lampshaded in the GTA IV Episodes when you play as Luis and seeNiko and Johnny (who are against you in this but played in the previous games) fight against some Mafia goons in the museum.
  • Somewhatdeconstructed inPlanescape: Torment, where the Blood War between the devils and the demons inevitably gets mentioned. You might think it's okay for the very, verynearly literallyalways lawful/chaotic evil beings to slaughter each other, but the suffering the war causes around the multiverse is so great that theKnight Templar angel Trias thinks allowing it to continue is an act of supreme passive evil on part of his fellow Celestials.
  • A late-game quest becomes this inMight and Magic VII if one goes for the evil path. You work with/for guys who want to take over the planet through force of superior weapons technology, and who find nothing wrong with mad laughter (and your personal chronicler finds the discovery of left-over torture instruments from a previous occupant of your castle to be a happy surprise). You still get sent to kill the Kreegans' King Xenofex, though, because the Kreegans arePlanet Looters and a big threat in general.
  • Both sides of the civil war inFar Cry 2 talk a good talk about how they're making their country a better place, but both are willing to commit war crimes for tactical advantages or petty vengeance. Some of the mercenaries profess idealistic motives, but all of them except the protagonist choose money over decency. The Underground is well-intentioned, but completely ineffectual, repeatedly requiring the protagonist's help to wipe out hostile mercenaries. The closest thing to a heroic figure is the arms dealer supplying both sides, and that's only because he wants them to wipe each other out.
  • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes has three enemy factions that all want the Phazon on planet Aether to themselves: The Ing, the Space Pirates, and Dark Samus. The Pirates are pretty much thebutt monkeys, most of the ones that aren't killed by Samus are either possessed by Ing or killed defending their Phazon from Dark Samus. At first it's unclear if the Ing and Dark Samus are allies or enemies, but a scene just before the second fight against Dark Samus shows her killing a group of Dark Pirate Troopers (Ing-possessed Pirate Troopers) and taking their Phazon.
  • InOdin Sphere, most of the villains are fighting against each other and the heroes are either third parties or unwitting pawns. Odinwants to bring the end of the world and lead the survivors into a new age, the trio of wizards want the same thing and alsoget revenge on Odin for betraying them before he became a king, King Valentine is simply so broken that he wants to end everything while also wantingrevenge on Odin for seducing his daughter, the Fairy Queen (the least evil of the factions) wants a world ending weapon that she uses to keep her people alive, Odin's general makes it no secret he's trying for a coup, Melvinplans to become the new leader of the faries and used Oswald as a test subject for a weapon he wanted to mass produce, the Queen of Death is only interested in running her place as she sees fitand making Oswald her slave, per contract,the last king of Titania wants out of the afterlife to cause some chaos, the Fire King desperately wants Gwendolyn as his wife and is willing to kill anyone in his way andIngway wants tokill Odin more than anyone for making his life a living hell. Oh, andGriselda, Gwendolyn's sister, manipulated her and Oswald into helping kickstart the end of the world in ghost form. If you couldn't guess, most of these people end up clawing at one another's necks before the game is over.
  • The Witcher, while doesn't always steer close to the novels, maintains theGrimdark part. To quoteJo Pereira‏ - "Witcher is full of hard decisions. Help the cannibal witches or side with the murderous tree?"
  • InMortal Kombat 11, the Joker (who appears as aGuest Fighter) isreally angry at Shang Tsung for stealing his act - a reference toMortal Kombat 9 where one of Shang Tsung's Fatalities is a reskinned version of the Joker's fromMortal Kombat vs. DC Universe."Never rub another man's rhubarb!" snarls the Clown Prince of Crime.
  • Helldivers: Super Earth is an autocracy wearing a democraticPaper-Thin Disguise. Given that the cutscene for losing the campaign showsthe destruction of Super Earth with all the civilian casualties that likely entails, though, the enemy aliens are at best down with a severe case ofHe Who Fights Monsters, at worst exactly the kind of fiends the propaganda paints them as - hardly lily-white freedom fighter types.

Web Comics

  • Sluggy Freelance: Bun-Bun, being aSociopathic Hero, tends to get this whenever an arc focuses on him. Particularly the "Oceans Unmoving" arc where he's pitted against a naval empire out to enslave everyone in their dimension. It's not that Bun-Bun's got any ethical objections to slavery (he takes a few himself), he just doesn't want to be the one enslaved. He still comes out as the sorta good guy, because, unlike the Navy, he'sevil in a cool way. He's a frickin'Space Pirates, after all.
    • Of course, Oceans Unmoving plays it even straighter with Bun-Bun against his treacherous former first mate Blacksoul,aka the Bun-Bun we'd been following throughout the comic as it turns out that Captain Bun-Bun was from before the comic started.
  • The "Midnight Crew" Intermission inHomestuck pits the eponymous Midnight Crew against The Felt. The Midnight Crew is a small yet dangerous gang that effectively rules their cityand turn out to be Alternia's versions of theBig Bad and his cohorts though they aren'tnearly as evil. The Felt is a rival gang whose members possess time related powersand take orders from anEldritch Abomination called "Lord English".
  • Ansem Retort. Hell, there's only a couple people that are actuallygood: everyone else is a murderer, psychopath,Jerkass or all of the above, no matter which side you look at.
  • Vexxarr instigates a war which is essentially this.

Vexxarr: Which side do you pity the most? The side that attempts toenslave anyone it meets or the side that attempts toeat anyone it meets?

Web Original

Western Animation

  • The entire purpose for Zhao's existence onAvatar: The Last Airbender was to make Prince Zuko a villain you can cheer for. This was expanded for season two, with Zuko moving further intoAnti-Hero territory and the new main villain,Princess Azula, overshadowing him in every possible category.
    • Similarly,Ba Sing Se vs. the Fire Nation in season two. Touted as the Earth Kingdom's last great bastion against the Fire Nation's invasion, it is in fact a city witha puppet king and evil shadow government that practices brainwashing. The shadow government's leader,Long Feng, comes into face-to-face conflict with Azula near the end of the season.
      • Yeah, the Earth Kingdom on the whole is pretty messed up in its own ways. You may recall the soldiers terrorizing that town that Zuko eventually liberates. Not to mention General Fong trying to force Aang into destroying the Fire Nation by endangering his friends. And, then, of course, there's the Dai Li...
  • For theSequel Series,The Legend of Korra, as of Episode 8, we haveAmon vs.Tarrlok.
  • As aVillain Protagonist,Invader Zim inevitably finds himself in this situation, once against a group ofPlanet Looters attempting to steal Earth, and once against another Irken seeking to causeThe End of the World as We Know It before he could (which also required anEnemy Mine situation).
  • This is basically the entirety of theMegatron/Starscream relationship. Even more explicit inTransformers Animated, where Starscream makes his break from Megatron in the first episode.
    • There's alsoTransformers Prime: in addition to the Decepticons, the Autobots also find themselves fighting the human groupMECH. And on top of that, near the end of the first season,Starscream splits from the 'Cons, like hisAnimated counterpart.
      • Which is then followed several episodes later by the arrival ofUnicron, who's such an epitome of evil that Megatronallies with the Autobots to stop him.
  • Gargoyles. Oh dear God do they ever. How many times hasXanatos been betrayed or outright attacked by someone more evil than he is? And then there'sMacbeth, who frequently fights againstDemona.
  • The Spectacular Spider-Man, anotherGreg Weisman show, as well. The series begins withTombstone having firm control of New York's criminal underworld, but then he has to defend it fromthe Green Goblin. Then Gobby disappears, but in the next season the "Gangland" arc pits him againstDr. Octopus'sSinister Six on the one hand and returned former crimelordSilvermane on the other,along withhisDragonHammerhead becomingThe Starscream. And then what happens?The Green Goblin comes back anddefeats them all in one fell swoop.
  • Dungeons and Dragons
    • Tiamat and Venger hate each other so much that they tend to fight, completely forgetting about the children. In the infamous "Dragon's Graveyard" episode, the children seek Tiamat's help in trying to kill Venger.
    • Another example from the same series was where the kids were outclassed by an evil wizard. Presto tells Venger what the wizard is up to... queue Venger marching in to deliver a beatdown and the kids running like hell.
  • The Powerpuff Girls formed anEnemy Mine withMojo Jojo to combat an alien force. He was determined to provehe was the most evil.
  • Lucius Heinous VII (Villain Protagonist) against the Weavils (Exclusively Evil) inJimmy Two-Shoes certainly qualifies. Also Lucius vsthe Rodeo Clowns in "Heinous vs Clown".
  • InBatman the Animated Series, the villains of Gotham City hold a very, very delicate balance between them all. The memorableBad Guy Bar episode "Almost Got 'Im" features such villains as the Joker, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, the Penguin, and Killer Croc playing poker, all looking like they might kill each other at any moment- and at the end it's revealed that Harley Quinn has Catwoman tied up ready to be fed into a food processor.
    • Two-Face and Poison Ivy have an interesting rivalry, as they used to date before Harvey Dent became Two-Face. One episode shows that as district attorney, Dent had wanted to develop a park into housing, and Ivy pretended to take a romantic interest in him so she could kill him by poisoning him.
    • This leads to aCrowning Moment Of Funny, when Harvey says half of him wants to strangle her and the other half wants to hit her with a truck. Ivy then explains to the others "We used to date." Joker and Penguin immediately nod and say "Aha!" in understanding.
  • Heather vs. Alejandro in the finale ofTotal Drama Island World Tour. Even lampshaded by Harold in the final song.
  • A three-way version: Professor Pericles vs. Mr. E(his former owner) vs.Mayor Jones inScooby Doo Mystery Incorporated.
  • Conversed in an episode ofHey Arnold!. Sid suggested that he and his friends just watch two bullies, Wolfgang and Ludwig, duke it out over Gerald Field and when they're both dead they can reclaim it. This makes the example moreJerkass vs.Jerkass though, and when they try out the plan, the bullies just force the younger kids to play football to decide a winner rather than get their hands dirty. In the end, the bullies find they like each other, leaving the gang worse off than before.
  • A major point of the plot of the 2019Harley Quinn series.Villain Protagonist Harley seems dead set on taking the Joker's place as Gotham's number one super-villain by proving herselfEviler Than Him. She's not exactly doing the best job at it...
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle: during the Kirwood Derby arc,Boris Badenov fought Fearless Leader for the Derby. When the narrator asked who would win the fight, they bothturned to the camera and shouted, "Who cares? We're both bad guys!"
  • Two episodes ofFilmations Ghostbusters featured a villain named Big Evil, who tried to usurp Prime Evil's status as theBig Bad of that series. Both episodes invoked theEnemy Mine trope by having Prime Evil asking for help from the heroes.
  • The second to last episode ofJustice League Unlimited "Alive!" had this. The Secret Society Grodd had created had been taken over by Luthor. However with Luthor taking much more of the cut than Grodd did and Luthor himself seemingly descending into insanity as well as not giving Tala much attention, she decided to bring back Grodd from Luthor's imprisonment along with a good number of the rest of the society who also had an ax to grind with Luthor. Of courseLuthor won in the end. And thenDarkseid came along.....
  • TheTeen Titans has Sladeteaming up with Robin to fightTrigon the Terible (a.k.a. Satan). He had ulterior motives of course. He is still Slade, but yeah, it was that bad.
  • Stewie VS Penelope inFamily Guy. Stewie used to be very evil in the first few seasons, but has mellowed out a lot and is more of a jerk than an evil bastard. He meets Penelope, a baby girl his age who has done her acts of killing people and having a mass amount of weapons of her own. Stewie likes Penelope at first and wants to be with her, but even he starts to have his doubts, getting tired of killing people everyday and he fights her to the death when she goes to kill Brian because Stewie wouldn't do it.


No Real Life Examples, Please meansNo Real Life Examples, Please Funny that.

  1. ↑Turns out, the heretics wereright, and the Arbiter spends nearly all of Halo 3 righting all that's gone wrong.
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