Other Me Annoys Me



"Troi hologram: "Cast aside your masks and let me slip into your mind." Troi: "Muzzle it.""

- Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Hollow Pursuits"

A character encounters an "alternate" version of themselves that they greatly dislike. The alternate can be a work of fiction existing only on a written page or Show Within a Show, or a Doppelganger of some sort (Clone, Time Travel, Alternate Universe, etc). The alternate version may be a thinly veiled caricature that exaggerates negative qualities or emphasizes neutral or even positive traits in ways the original dislikes, or invents traits whole cloth that are highly out of character. The original is likely to become very angry at the author or the alternate for the real (or perceived) insult.

The "original" may find that For Want of a Nail their alternate version is really annoying, and (if not a fictional creation) the alternate may likewise find the original embarrassing. On the other hand, the alternate may be a much more successful or well developed individual who angers the original by outshining them. Expect at least one of them to say "I Resemble That Remark" and/or "Why didn't anyone tell me this makes me look fat?"

Compare Future Me Scares Me and I Hate Past Me.

Comic Books

 * In Hero Squared the "normal" Milo is quite annoyed with the Superhero version of himself from another universe (Captain Valor), and vice versa. Valor is less-than-impressed with Milo's selfishness and complete failure to make anything of his life, whilst Milo resents Valor's smug self-righteousness and over-simplified view of the world and how it works.
 * The Authority: while crossing over to a Gender Flipped Alternate Universe to talk to their counterparts, Jack Hawksmoor's equivalent is visibly pregnant. When asked about how he feels to see himself female and pregnant, he responds that he doesn't want to find out who the father is.
 * Marvel Comics: In the Identity Wars miniseries Deadpool, Spider-Man and The Hulk cross over into an alternate dimension. Spider-Man's alternate version is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, which annoys Spidey. Deadpool gets along famously with his alternate until he discovers that alt-Deadpool isn't Wade Wilson, it's . Alt-Wade Wilson is a Complete Monster Big Bad who Deadpool takes down. Bruce Banner discovers that he can't turn into the Hulk in this dimension and is overjoyed, until that gets reversed. Then alt-Hulk and Hulk duke it out.
 * One nice example involving Deadpool has him inventing an imaginary version of himself (aka, he willed himself into having a split personality) while trapped inside a room for over 800 years (long story). Why did he do this? To have someone to play hangman with of course. His plan fails when the imaginary Deadpool turns out to be a genius and starts totally kicking Deadpool's ass in the game.
 * In one Disney comic, Donald Duck's friends and family force him to spend 24 hours with a duplicate of himself, to show him how annoying he is.

Film

 * The movie Deconstructing Harry, where fictionalized characters closely resemble real people but with negative characterization. Anger ensues.
 * In the Phineas and Ferb movie, where Doofenschmertz encounters his alternate dimension double. Despite singing, "I found a new best friend and it's me!" they don't get along, culiminating in open conflict by the end of the movie.

Literature

 * Animorphs "The Seperation". Mean Rachel is totally annoyed by Nice Rachel.
 * A Chronicles of Echo episode narrated by Max had a mention that in a less pleasant stage of his life he was ready to choke the version of "Sir Max" living in the city rumours.
 * The first half of Robert A. Heinlein's By His Bootstraps consists of the interaction between the protagonist Bob Wilson and some of his past and future selves, due to a very convoluted Time Travel plot. The scene is retold several times, each from the point of view of a different version of Bob—who consistently thinks his past selves are idiots and his future selves are arrogant pricks. It comes to blows eventually. And this would be the man who.

Live Action TV

 * Vamp Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She thought the regular Willow was too wimpy, and regular Willow thought Vamp Willow was too skanky and evil.
 * Also the two Xanders in "The Replacement". The one who seems to the audience to be regular Xander is annoyed at the suave, confident Xander.
 * When Angelus returns on Angel we eventually discover how annoying the vampire with a soul is to his Complete Monster alter ego. The fact Angelous had to endure rescuing puppies and listening to Barry Manalow completely drives him up the wall, much to Faith's amusement.
 * Fringe - Walter and Olivia do not like their counterparts in the alternate universe. Walter doesn't like Walternate, because basically, Walternate was hellbent on destroying our universe (and also reminds Walter of how succesful Walter could have been, had he not been institutionalized). Walternate doesn't like Walter because Walter kidnapped his son and caused significant damage to the alternate universe. Olivia doesn't like Fauxlivia because Fauxlivia slept with Peter, and Fauxlivia is annoyed withe Olivia because Olivia's general demeanor is not as upbeat as Fauxlivia's.
 * McGee, of NCIS, wrote a novel somewhat based on people he knew. As each member of the team learned about how their counterpart was portrayed, they took offense at the idea. Tim made it very clear that the fictional versions weren't the same, but almost everyone said methinks thou doth protest too much.
 * Except Gibbs, who didn't mind.
 * Red Dwarf: Cat is pretty excited to meet his alternate dimension counterpart as he thinks it will be a female cat person, it turns out to be a dog person.
 * Earlier, there is an episode where Rimmer is copied, they annoy each other and eventually Lister just deletes one.
 * In one episode of Stargate Atlantis, an alternate universe version of Rodney McKay appears. This version is charming, extroverted and socially skilled. The regular Rodney ends up disliking him because everyone seems to like him better.
 * At the end of the episode Teyla, Sheppard, and Ronan reveal that they weren't terribly fond of the alt-universe Rodney, either.
 * Star Trek: Voyager has this happen to every character when they see the Doctor's holoplay "Photons Be Free", who he portrays as anti-holographic racists and even complete monsters. Eventually he relents and changes the characters to not be so obviously stand-ins for his real life friends.
 * In Star Trek: The Next Generation the main characters are offended by Lt. Barclay's versions of them in his fantasy holodeck adventure. Troi tells them to relax and just take them as amusing homages, until she happens upon her alternate self - a Damsel in Distress in love with Barclay. Riker immediately seizes the opportunity for an Ironic Echo.
 * On Friends, Rachel dates Russ, a guy who's remarkably like Ross. Ross finds him completely annoying, being totally unaware that he's basically criticizing himself.
 * This is referenced in Murder, She Wrote where fictionalized characters closely resemble real people but with negative characterization. Anger ensues.
 * In Supernatural in the episode Tall Tales Sam and Dean take turns telling Bobby what's happened so far and describe each other in an unflattering way.
 * "The Monster at the End of the Book," the episode which introduces Chuck the Prophet. Chuck thinks he's just making up stories, but he's really getting visions fo what Sam & Dean are going to do. Also they are disturbed to see people have been writing slash about their characters online.
 * In an episode of Stargate Universe, Doctor Rush gets sent back in time through "a freak of physics" and warns everyone that the very risky plan they were about to attempt was going to fail miserably. The non-time-travelling Rush (who's been very vocal about the risks inherent in the plan) is very smug about this, to the point of completely disregarding time-travelling Rush's ordeal. Time-travelling Rush is not impressed.

Newspaper Comics

 * Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes has had this problem, because he takes It's All About Me so far that it becomes "it's all about this me."
 * In one story arc, Calvin makes a clone of himself to do his chores for him, but the clone blows him off and goes to play instead. When Hobbes comments that "he's a clone of you all right", Calvin responds "What do you mean? This guy's a total jerk!"
 * When he makes a copy of only his good side, it works out at first because this one is willing to do all the work, but eventually they come to blows over whether they should be nice to Susie, whom the good side openly admits to having a crush on.
 * And when Calvin travels to the future to get his done homework from his future self, three different versions of him end up fighting over which of them should have done the homework. Totally averted with Hobbes in the same story, as his egotism is of a sort that gets along with itself. "You're right, as always, Hobbes."

Web Comics
"Schlock: The TV-me is putting me-me out of a job. [...] Maybe we can kill another TV network. Is there still money in that?"
 * In Schlock Mercenary amorphs ran into a problem with TV version of them:

"Portuguese Torg: "Are.... you... a... a... embezzle?" Torg: "Embezzle? Embezzle means to steal from a company or boss! I'm a freelance web designer, so I don't have a boss! Why?" Bun-bun: "The word is pronounced "Imbecile."" Portuguese Torg: "Ahh!""
 * In Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant normal Watson is displeased to learn of Stupid!Watson, the Flanderized version of himself that Sherlock Holmes is now partners with.
 * In Order of the Stick, mental representations argue amongst each other during her time with aphasia.
 * Sluggy Freelance features an access to a potentially infinite number of alternative dimensions, so there are opportunities for this.
 * Inverted in "Torg Goes to Hell": Zoë and Riff accidentally rescue the wrong Torg from another dimension—one who speaks only Portuguese. When their Torg returns, he tries to communicate with this alternative version of himself using a phrase book, but only comes up with sentences in the lines of (according to Babelfish) "For the Mondays, I am a shoe." Eventually, the "Portuguese" Torg swipes the phrasebook from his hands and tries himself:


 * In "That Which Redeems", Torg encounters another version of himself who turns out to be a complete jerk, to the point of not going to  In response to this, "our" Torg clubs him over the head with a serving-tray.
 * In "4U City Red",  meets an old grumpy alternative-dimension-version of himself that's basically the same as he, except older and grumpier. They really annoy each other, especially the young one the old one, though there is some grudging respect by the end at least.
 * Zigzagged in League of Super Redundant Heroes with Good Girl, or rather, her original, not-so-good personality, Bad Good Girl. Throughout most of the run of the strip, Bad Good Girl has despised her heroic alter-ego. However, when the two become a Literal Split Personality, they [get along surprisingly well. More or less.

Web Original

 * Red vs. Blue: while exploring Caboose's mind as a ghost, Church encounters Caboose's mental image of Church and is incredibly annoyed by him.
 * There was a battle between Courtney Love's 2 twitter feeds. The first one was the official feed managed by a ghost writter, the other was a private feed under a Nom De Plume. Courtney got enraged when the official feed started publishing polite things, and she published not-so-polite things about the official feed on her private feed.

Video Games

 * In Mortal Kombat 11, the Older and Wiser version of Johnny Cage is just as annoyed by his obnoxious counterpart from the past as anyone else is.

Western Animation

 * In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Gaang attend a play about themselves only to find that everyone except Toph hates their theatric counterparts.
 * In Batman Beyond, Terry takes Bruce to see Batman: The Musical for his birthday. Terry finds the jolly, musical Batman to be great fun. Bruce is... not impressed.
 * Code Lyoko, oh so many times. If you want comedic examples only, I still have them in spades. The most notable is in Triple Trouble, when Odd is split into three. They fight over who gets to go to lunch, and who has to go to PE class. They also ruin a joke by inadvertently repeating it. Another example is in X.A.N.A.'s Kiss. Odd complains to the clone he's fighting, telling it that if it's going to keep changing form, it should turn into a wimp next time. Its next form: Odd. In Revelation, another Polymorphic clone pulls a similar move on Ulrich, this time for strategy rather than mockery.
 * Futurama has the main characters travel to an alternate dimension where the characters meet their counterparts and find them annoying despite being almost identical. Except for Bender, who being an egomaniac gets along with his counterpart just fine. The others eventually warm up to their duplicates, too.
 * Then there was that time they went to the end of the universe and looked across to see their alternate, cowboy hat-wearing selves. Bender got tired of his alternate self flaunting the hat and decided to leave.
 * In Turtles Forever, this is the 2003!Turtles's (Especially Raphael and except for Michelangelo) reaction towards the 80s!Turtles, who are much sillier and less serious in comparison. This is taken Up to Eleven with the Mirage!Turtles, whose immediate reaction to seeing both versions is Kill-On-Sight.
 * Weird variation in South Park: a giant dragon summoned by overuse of the word "shit" has Cartman's voice - when it's defeated, Cartman says "What a lame voice..."
 * In Teen Titans, a character named nosyarG kciD (an Expy of Bat Mite, a Great Gazoo from the comic books who idolizes Batman), who is Robin from an alternate dimension, comes to try to help Robin heal his broken arm, but Robin doesn't quite enjoy this encounter. His double is massively incompetent, which doesn't help smooth things over.
 * From Rick and Morty; Rick is an anti-establishment type who hates governments, and he also hates himself. So it makes perfect sense that he'd despise the Council of Ricks, which is a government made up of alternate versions of himself. And the feeling is very mutual.