Evil Versus Evil: Difference between revisions

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**** 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 how [[Games 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 ten [[Knight Templar]] inquisitors screaming "EXTERMINATUS!"
**** [[Flanderization|Which really just becomes stupid before long]], as rarely do you see a competent Inquisitor despite the fact that the radicals are supposed to be incredibly rare.
**** Which could be considered [[Fridge 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 things [[It Got Worse|go from bad]] [[Serial Escalation|to worse]].
**** And the Inquisition itself has a lot of [[Right 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 are [[The End Justifies the Means|less constrained in methods]] and often more competent - or at least experienced.
* Likewise, the fundamental premise in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]''. Its nice guys - High Elves, Wood Elves, Bretonnians, Empire, Dwarfs - are not.
* This is sort of built into the [[Character Alignment|alignment system]] in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'', though it's more a result of any Evil alignment taking on [[Order 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 Edition ''Dungeon 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 of [[Magnificent Bastard]]s and [[The Chessmaster|Chessmasters]].
*** 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. In the ''[[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 set "''Hellbound: 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 are [[The Starscream]] to the archdevils. There's also much enmity between [[Demon Lords and Archdevils|the 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).
*** In the ''Complete 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 the [[Evil Overlord|god of war Bane]] and his eternal war versus [[Complete Monster|god of destruction Gruumsh]]. While Bane revels in conquest and power, one of his prime commandments is to [[Even Evil Has Standards|ALWAYS 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, [[Name's the Same|not that one]]) and the god of murder, Cyric, in the ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' setting. This isn't a case of [[Order Versus Chaos]] or trying to decide which is [[Eviler Than Thou]]. These two just hate each other on a very personal level. The problem is that Cyric is currently [[Sealed Evil in a Can|sealed in a can]], so they can't fight directly. Instead, they're marshalling their respective [[Religion of Evil|worshippers]] to go on an (un)holy war against one another. Since in the Forgotten Realms, [[Gods Need Prayer Badly|the gods need worshippers to survive]], this is the only way they have to kill one another.
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* ''[[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 the [[Butt Monkey|butt 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.
* In [[Odin Sphere]], most of the villains are fighting against each other and the heroes are either third parties or unwitting pawns. Odin {{spoiler|wants to bring the end of the world and lead the survivors into a new age}}, the trio of wizards want the same thing and also {{spoiler|get 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 wanting {{spoiler|revenge 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, Melvin {{spoiler|plans 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 fit {{spoiler|and making Oswald her slave, per contract}}, {{spoiler|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 and {{spoiler|Ingway}} wants to {{spoiler|kill Odin more than anyone for making his life a living hell}}. Oh, and {{spoiler|Griselda, 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 the [[Grimdark]] part. To quote [[Nerf Now|Jo Pereira‏]] - "Witcher is full of hard decisions. Help the cannibal witches or side with the murderous tree?"
 
 
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** And much later, averted when {{spoiler|[[Killer Game Master|Vriska]], [[Four Eyes, Zero Soul|Eridan]], and [[Monster Clown|Gamzee]] almost have a three-way showdown... Only for [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|all three]] to be taken by surprise by [[Cute Monster Girl|Kanaya.]]}}
* ''[[Ansem Retort]]''. Hell, there's only a couple people that are actually ''good'': 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.
{{quote|'''Vexxarr''': Which side do you pity the most? The side that attempts to [[Evil Overlord|enslave anyone it meets]] or the side that attempts to [[I'm a Humanitarian|eat anyone it meets]]? }}
* Mac and Shmeerm live up this gloriously in one of the longer more epic''[[Voodoo Walrus]]'' storyarcs titled [http://voodoowalrus.com/?p=777 Meatnecks and Boomsticks]
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** For that matter, the story seems to be setting up the Linear Guild as competition for the Gates with both the good guys and [[Big Bad|Xykon]]'s gang.
** [[Played for Laughs]] [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0453.html here], when two [[Mook]]s from different villains fight over who gets to kill [[Supporting Leader|Hinjo]].
* ''[[Magick Chicks]]'' focuses on [[Terrible Trio|three]] [[Cute Witch|witches]] named [[Alpha Bitch|Melissa]], [[The Starscream|Cerise]], and [[PopularGenius Is DumbDitz|Jacqui.]] The main villain of the series is a horrible, [[Manipulative Bastard|manipulative]] girl named Faith. Both sides are so nasty, it's a little hard to tell who to root for.
** Jacqui is nice, if too airheaded most of the time, and occasionally tries to help people outside her little circle. So is Tiffany, though she is thoroughly skulljumbled even without all the mind control.
* This is how [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized|the Insurrection]] views the war between [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|the Covenant]] and [[United Nations Is a Super Power|the UNSC]] in ''[[Halo: A Fistful of Arrows]]''.
 
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* In ''[[Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog|Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog]]'', it could be argued that both Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer are evil, only the latter has enough [[Villain with Good Publicity|good PR]] that he has everyone convinced he's [[The Cape (trope)]].
* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]'', we have [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|Marik]] and Florence versus [[Complete Monster|Melvin]] and Team [[4Kids! Entertainment]].
 
 
== Western Animation ==