Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers
23,028
edits
Mirror Match: Difference between revisions
→Pro Wrestling: Fixing|links to disambiguation pages
m (→[[Fighting Game]]: clean up) |
Derivative (talk | contribs) (→Pro Wrestling: Fixing|links to disambiguation pages) |
||
| (12 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 4:
{{quote|'''Leela:''' ''(Facing her alternate universe counterpart)'' We're exactly the same, I know all her moves. [[Genre Blindness|Therefore, I have the upper hand.]] Hiiyyyya-ow!
''(They both do the exact same kick and knock each other unconscious)''
'''Professor Farnsworth:''' Now, now; perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything.
|''[[Futurama]]''}}
''"Nice to meet you, another myself."''
A term that originates from [[Fighting Game
[[Collectible Card Game]]s use the term as well, but with a different meaning - in a CCG, a "mirror match" is when two players with the same deck theme play against each other. While the decks likely differ in spots, the central strategy is the same.
Line 19 ⟶ 20:
Compare [[Fearful Symmetry]], [[Evil Knockoff]], and [[Mirror Boss]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime & Manga ==
* In the ''[[Yes! Pretty Cure 5]]'' movie, the Precures go into a mirror world and fight evil Cures. The [[Fan Nickname]]-happy fandom had a field day with Cure Nightmare, Cure Deadly Nightshade, Cure [[Tokyo Mew Mew|Br]][[Macekre|id]][[Expy|ge]][[4Kids! Entertainment|t]]...
Line 47 ⟶ 48:
* Played with in the ''[[Slayers]]'' OAVs: The <s>heroes</s> protagonists end up looking into a mirror that produces duplicates of them with radically opposed personalities. {{spoiler|However, the protagonists are naturally egotistical and prone to violence, which leaves their mirrors as demure pacifists - terrifying the protagonists.}} One could say the mirror-duplicates win a psychological battle rather than a physical one.
==
* In ''[[Captain Atom]]'' #56 and #57, Cap fights a battle with his own dark side, what he calls "the chaos I have inherited."
* In the 50's & 60's, [[Wonder Woman]] ended up with an improbably large number of storylines that involved her fighting [[doppelganger]]s of one sort or another.
Line 53 ⟶ 54:
* The original, very brief appearance of [[Spider-Man]]'s clone was basically a one-issue, pretty cool Mirror Match fight that ended with the clone killed in an explosion. Twenty years later, the clone got [[Death Is Cheap|brought back]] for a convoluted storyline that dominated the title for a couple of ''years.''
* One of the earliest [[Stan Lee]]-scripted stories featuring [[The Mighty Thor]] pitted our hero against an exact duplicate created by a [[Mad Scientist]]. [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check]] much?
* ''[[Captain America (comics)|Captain America]]'' #350. Steve Rogers (as the Captain) vs. John Walker (as Captain America) at the behest of the [[Red Skull]] (who was [[Back from the Dead]] in a [[Cloning Blues|cloned body of Rogers]]). The Skull even took on the winner - Rogers - thus providing a truer Mirror Match (since Walker was actually taller, stronger, and more [[Unstoppable Rage|prone to rage]] than Rogers)... except that the Skull-Rogers "fight" was really an excuse for the Skull to use his [[Good Smoking, Evil Smoking|Dust of Death]] on Rogers. Walker intervened, however, and the Skull got [[Hoist by His Own Petard|a taste of his own bad medicine]].
== Films -- Live Action ==
* The "evil robot usses" from ''[[Bill and Ted (film)|Bill and Ted
* In ''[[Superman III]]'', [[Superman]] is exposed to some flawed synthetic kryptonite and turns "evil" (read: superpowered [[Jerkass]]). His inner conflict is played out onscreen when Clark Kent manifests in front of him and they fight until Clark wins, then tears open his shirt revealing the untarnished S-shield and flying off to undo the damage he did when he was "evil", ending the only enjoyable scene in an almost universally reviled movie.
* Subverted in ''[[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World]]'', when Scott meets Nega-Scott. There was only the vaguest of foreshadowing and no real explanation, although several interpretations are possible. It looks like they're going to fight...but then they get to talking, and it turns out they have a lot in common. They decide to meet for brunch the next week.
Line 108 ⟶ 109:
== Pro Wrestling ==
* The [[
** They did this again at ''Vengeance '' in 2006, except this time it was [[
* WWE have tried it once again. This time, it's Sin Cara vs. Sin Cara, and surprisingly, it doesn't suck.
Line 128 ⟶ 129:
== Video Games ==
=== [[Action Adventure]] ===
* ''[[Shinobi]]'' for the PS2 has Moritsune.
* In ''[[Castlevania Judgment]]'', both the combatants have special comments and a (shared) unique win quote for a mirror match.
Line 139 ⟶ 138:
* In ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep]]'', {{spoiler|Master Xehanort possesses Terra's body to create the young Xehanort, but Terra's hatred reforms his armor as the Lingering Sentiment to continue fighting. All of Xehanort's attacks are attacks usable by Terra, and they even share the same battle stance}}.
** Thematically done with Sora vs Roxas and Ven vs {{spoiler|Vanitas}}, Roxas being Sora's [[Empty Shell|Nobody]] and {{spoiler|Vanitas}} being {{spoiler|the dark half of Ven's split heart}}. Done more traditionally with the minibosses Anti-Sora and Shadow Roxas.
Line 166 ⟶ 164:
** And, of course, Shang Tsung could turn the fight into a Mirror Match by transforming.
** However, the earliest incarnation of this trope predates Mortal Kombat by at least seven years. ''Ultima IV'' had the player's party fight evil opposites near the end of the game; there may be earlier examples.
** The games with pre-fight dialogue (IX, X, and XI) usually give some humorous exchange in this type of match that invokes the [[Other Me Annoys Me]] Trope, though rarely trying to explain it.
* ''[[Street Fighter II]]: Champion Edition'' was produced largely to allow this sort of match - the original ''Street Fighter II'' didn't allow for mirror matches (except for the SNES version shown above, which featured a code that could be inputted when the game started).
** The ''[[Street Fighter II]]'' manga by Masaomi Kanzaki had a story arc where the four main Street Fighters (Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Guile) had to team up with the Four Shadaloo Devas (Bison, Sagat, Vega, and Balrog) in order to defeat their evil clones.
Line 214 ⟶ 213:
* ''Breakers'' (and its sequel ''Breakers Revenge''), a Neo-Geo fighting game by third-party developer Visco, had a unique approach for [[Justified Trope|justifying]] the presence of mirror matches in the single-player mode. The computer-controlled clone of the player's character will have a different name tag and a unique palette used exclusively by the computer, implying that the clone character is actually a different fighter who uses the same fighting style.
* In the NES version of ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters]]'', this feature is available for every fighter except Hothead (a humanoid dragon based on the Warrior Dragon from the comics). The game claims that "The Dragon Spirit [inhabiting Hothead] would never allow such a thing," but in reality, the game's ''memory'' won't allow such a thing. If you use a [[Game Mod]] to do it anyway, it will cause massive [[Game Breaking Bug|flickering in the sprites.]]
** The [[Sega Genesis]] version has a plot related explanation of how this is possible, the bad guys' [[Evil Plan]] involving evil clones of the heroes. Not coincidentally, this is also the explanation as to why the good guys would fight each other.
* In addition to the usual version of this trope, several characters<ref>Big the Budo, Brocken Jr., Kinnikuman, Perfect Choujin Neptuneman, and Ramenman</ref> in ''[[Kinnikuman: Muscle Fight]]'' can face off against counterparts from further along in the canon timeline.<ref>{{spoiler|Neptune King}} for Big the Budo, Kinniku Suguru for Kinnikuman, Justice Choujin Neptuneman {{spoiler|and The Samurai}} for Perfect Choujin Neptuneman, and Anime Ramenman {{spoiler|and Mongolman}} for Brutal Ramenman</ref> Kinnikuman Big Body even has a special intro if he's facing against himself. As it turns out, one of the Kinnikuman Big Bodies is the God of Brute Strength and the other is Strongman.
Line 224:
* ''[[Dynasty Warriors]] 3''. The battle of Fan Castle is a fight between allied forces (Wu and Wei) and Shu forces (led by Guan Yu). If you set up a custom battle on this map, choose the Wu forces, and select your character to be Guan Yu, he will comment in the opening cutscene, "[[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|I am my own opponent? This will be difficult.]]"
=== [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s ===
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' claims to have this in the final quest, with the Mirror Class monster. You can't hit it either, and it blocks anything you do to it. How do you win while it whomps you? {{spoiler|Hint, [[Revive Kills Zombie]].}}
* In ''[[Guild Wars]]'', one of the main quest chains has you fighting a mirror copy of yourself, only all of its stats are maxed, and even if you don't equip any skills, it's got a big sword to hit you with. Or a bow if you run away. Oh, and it's max-level, while you can reach it several levels below your own max. {{spoiler|Solution? Equip skills that require a health sacrifice, or hexes that the enemy triggers by either spellcasting or attacking. Either way, the AI is stupid enough to kill itself for you.}}
Line 232:
** The second is herald Vol'azj in the Old Kingdom, once during the fight (twice on heroic) he casts insanity on the party, causing shades of the party to spawn where they were standing and attack you, these do use abilities, but besides iconic class abilities, they generalize the images to what their class is good at (druids and priests will only heal, death knights will death grip, ect. ect.).
** The third is in Icecrown Citadel, the Val'kyr will summons shadow reflections of various raid members who use powerful abilities and need to be killed, [[Hilarious in Hindsight|a few of these would later become skills useable by players.]]
* One of the task forces in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' ended with the hero team facing shadow copies of themselves in City Hall. Somewhat averted in that you were not ''forced'' to fight your counterpart among them (and in fact, most people didn't).
** One of the clone arcs, possibly the ''[[City of Villains]]'' version, ended with you having to fight ''eight'' copies of yourself. At some point in both the heroic and villainous clone storylines you had to face off with a possibly superior copy of yourself at least once.
=== [[Multiplayer Online Battle Arena]] ===
Line 299 ⟶ 301:
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'' there's a test during the Gauntlet in The Urn of Sacred Ashes Quest that has each party member, including the player character, face an invisible version of themselves, complete with names hovering above them and matching voices (for shouting as you kill them)
* A rather interesting take is down in an early [[PlayStation 2]] game and adaptation of Orphen called Scion of Sorcery where Orphen, Majic and Zeus are forced to fight against one. While its default form is that of a grayed out and dusty-looking version of Orphen with yellow boots, it can freely change into either of the party members. While it barely ever attacks, attacking it while it impersonates any one of you will result a significant amount of mirror damage dealt to your party but the person being imitated will receive the brunt of it and when it assumes its default form, it'll put up a barrier before launching a projectile. Reflecting the projectile with the right spell (Armor of Purity) will cause it to transform into a lizard man where it can safely be whacked on.
* ''[[Monster Girl Quest Paradox]]'' allows you to recruit every enemy, so this trope turns up whenever you have a generic enemy confront their random encounter version. Party members also carry over to [[New Game Plus]], so this can happen even for unique named characters. Many of the latter have special dialogue when fighting against themselves.
=== [[Shoot'Em Up]] ===
Line 332 ⟶ 335:
* ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' episode "Divided We Fall" Luthor-Brainiac recreated the Justice Lords (and a very Reverse-Flash-looking evil Flash) for the original founders of the Justice League to fight. [[Opponent Switch|They stopped them by going up against different copies, instead of their counterparts.]]
** [[The Flash]] beat his evil counterpart on his lonesome. Dude knows how to deal with his issues. (That's because he is the only sane one of them. He just got super powers and decided to help people.)
** IIRC,{{verify}} Batman beat his duplicate as well.
** Also played with in the episode "[[Fearful Symmetry]]": As Supergirl battles her [[Evil Counterpart]] Galetaea, the [[Clothing Damage]] of their costumes starts to make them mirror the other's...
* An episode of ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' has a trio of criminals who decided to disguise as the girls to rob banks. It works, [[Easy Impersonation|even though they are tall, ill-mannered men with weird dresses and huge theme-park-disguise powerpuff girls]] [[Paper-Thin Disguise|heads that you could see their beards through]]. Even more so, when the girls finally appear to fight them, both teams are attacking one another at random, until [[Only Sane Man|Blossom]] screams "Enough! Everybody, fight only your double!", and everybody accepts, even [[Idiot Ball|the non-powered villains]].
Line 349 ⟶ 352:
[[Category:Fighting Game]]
[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Mirror Match]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
| |||