Evil Counterpart/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Evil Counterparts in Film include:

  • In Toy Story 3, it turns out Lotso-Huggin' Bear was once very much like Woody. He was the favorite toy of a little kid who enjoyed her toys very much, Daisy being very much like Andy, and he had a small but loyal posse of other toys who would always lend a hand. On top of that, he has all the intelligence, resourcefulness, and planning skills of Woody. Where he and Woody diverged is their response to being separated from their respective owners, and arguably, what happened with their owners when separated. In the original Toy Story, when Woody and Buzz go missing and Andy finds out, Andy frantically searches for them until they return, and they never give up hope. When Lotso goes missing and Daisy finds out, they buy another Lotso and call it a day. This causes Lotso to snap and completely lose his faith in people. He then goes to Sunnyside Daycare, gathers allies, and becomes a dictator. If Woody had turned evil and bitter, he would've taken the same strategy: Gather allies, then gather power in anticipation of any upcoming threats.
  • Chick Hicks, the main villain of Cars (also by Pixar) is actually the evil counterpart to Lightning McQueen. Both are actually portrayed as mean and arrogant racecars who cared about nothing but themselves and made fun of other cars. What makes them different is that at the end of the film, McQueen ends up losing the final race but is now respected by the other cars since he actually now learned to accept defeat by helping another racecar, Strip "The King" Weathers, cross the finish line after he was crashed by Chick, while Chick ended up winning the same race but is ultimately betrayed by everyone else since they found out about what he did to The King, and that doing such is actually against the racing code.
  • In Kung Fu Panda, Tai Lung to Po. Both were raised to carry on the work of their much tinier fathers and have destinies tied to the Dragon Scroll .
    • Also, Tigress and Tai Lung. Both don't know their real parents (one was raised in an Orphanage of Love, the other was a Door Step Baby). Both only wanted their father/teacher's love. Like Tai Lung, Tigress believed she would be chosen as the Dragon Warrior by Oogway, and resented Po for 'stealing her thunder.' They also both suffer from Pride and a bad temper. Only the fact Tigress remained honorable and chose to become an even better and more worthy warrior (and, most likely, her defeat at the Thread of Hope) kept her from following the same path.
  • The Disney Animated Canon have lots of examples:
    • Sleeping Beauty has the evil fairy Maleficent to the 3 good fairies
    • The Princess and the Frog has Facilier (evil, male, tall, slim, young, attractive, slick) and Mama Odie (benevolent, female, short, pudgy, very old, hard of hearing and a goofball). Originally Facilier was supposed to be Odie's son.
    • Leroy and Stitch.
    • Disney villains in general are the evil counterparts to Disney Princesses. Guess which one has more characters!
  • Mozenrath to Aladdin. Both of them are very clever and quick-witted, yet they are occasionally prone to letting their youthful impatience and boredom get in their way of completely reaching their full potential, and they're both hinted to have rather unpleasant pasts. Oh, and neither of them is ever seen without their faithful animal companions.
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: Judge Doom to Eddie Valiant; both are law enforcement who hold a certain hatred towards toons. However, deep down, Eddie holds a certain fondness for toons, suppressing it mainly becuase of his brother's death and is still a good person underneath. Doom's hatred is perhaps more intense, which is ironic as he turns out to be a toon himself.
  • In Kill Bill, Elle Driver, aka California Mountain Snake, is the counterpart to Black Mamba.
  • Trevelyan (former Agent 006) in GoldenEye. He even gives the For Want of a Nail reasoning and a Not So Different speech.
  • Rene Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark is a classic example. Both he and Indy are successful Adventurer Archaeologists with the main difference being that Belloq is willing to work with anyone, (including the Nazis) on a job, and that he's perfectly content to let someone else find the treasure, then steal it from them at gunpoint. Belloq also delivers an excellent example of a Not So Different speech at one point.
  • Iron Monger (Obadiah Stane) to Iron Man (Tony Stark) in the 2008 film.
  • The Man with the Golden Gun: Scaramanga and Bond. Scaramanga gives a Not So Different speech:

Bond: You live well, Scaramanga.
Scaramanga: At a million dollars a contract I can afford to, Mr Bond. You work for peanuts, a hearty well done from her Majesty the Queen and a pittance of a pension. Apart from that we are the same. To us, Mr Bond, we are the best.
Bond: There's a useful four letter word, and you're full of it.

  • Push has two. Nick's counterpart is Victor, and Cassie's counterpart is the Triad Watcher. Victor is a better Mover than Nick, and the Triad Watcher is a better Watcher than Cassie.
    • It seems to be implied that Nick and Cassie are every bit (if not more) powerful, but are novices at actually exercising their powers compared to their more experienced counterparts.
      • That, and the fact they are son and daughter of the best mover and watcher anyone has ever seen (Cassie's mum set up events for ten years in the future) so they may have genetically inherited a bit of it. The agent pusher is also a counterpart of the experiment survivor, although she could arguably already be better.
  • In Star Wars, Darth Vader is naturally the evil counterpart to Luke Skywalker (a living incarnation of the evil that Luke is perfectly capable of), and Emperor Palpatine is an evil Force mentor version of Yoda.
  • Star Trek: Nemesis had Shinzon, the evil clone of Jean-Luc Picard whose main purpose in the story is to show what Picard himself could have become had he grown up under more oppressive circumstances. Picard himself uses this in an attempt to demonstrate that Shinzon had the choice to become a better person, while Shinzon wanted to prove that Being Tortured Makes You Evil.
  • In the Heisei series, Godzilla gained an Evil Counterpart in Space Godzilla, a being created from a fusion of Biollante (who was a fusion of Godzilla's DNA and rose DNA) and a crystalline entity. While Godzilla was in neutral "force of nature" mode, Space Godzilla was definitely malicious and evil, coming to Earth to torment Godzilla and conquer the planet.
  • The writers' and director's audio commentary for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl at one point refers to Captain Barbossa as "the dark side of Jack Sparrow".
  • In Black Swan, Lily might be this to Nina. Nina frequently hallucinates a phantom doppelganger that seems to mean her harm.
    • This mirrors Swan Lake, the ballet the film is centered around; Odile the Black Swan, is this to the White Swan, Odette.
  • According to Jordy, the Bread-Squeezer is this to Jason in Mystery Team.
  • Glory has the Negro irregulars to the 54th Massachusetts.
  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon plays with this. Sam and Bumblebee are given dark counterparts in the form of Soundwave and Dylan. Bumblebee came to Sam for help, Sam's family having a history with Cybertronians. Likewise Dylan's dad received Soundwave as a "client", as the Decepticon had him crunch numbers to make further trips by NASA to the moon improbable, ensuring no one would ever find the Ark. This becomes a case of Fridge Brilliance in the final battle, where both human and Autobot kill their respective counterparts.

Dylan Gould: (to Sam) Do you really think you were the first one recruited to join the "noble" alien cause?

  • In the Hellraiser franchise, the Lament Configuration is a cursed puzzle-box that is used to open the gates of Hell and allow the Cenobites to come to Earth. A Good Counterpart of this device called the Elysium Configuration is built in Hellraiser Bloodline, but rather than a small cube, this Configuration is the space station itself and its satellites, which when manipulated into a specific pattern, focus solar power into a beam of holy light that actually incinerates Pinhead! Canonically, at least.
  • In the fourth Toxic Avenger movie, the villain is Toxie's evil counterpart, the Noxious Offender.
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