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"Guilty! Guilty! My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it!"
—Dr. Morbius, Forbidden Planet
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When someone's inner darkness doesn't quite take over someone, but it does "escape" their body and rampage around. Fighting someone else's Enemy Without is tricky, as often it will either kill the person projecting it if it dies, or it will just resurrect itself until the actual darkness in the hero's heart is dealt with by the hero themselves.
Often symbolically represents repression, and the hero's refusal to acknowledge the darkness within or some other aspect of themselves. Victory is achieved half the time via "reintegrating" with it. Occasionally, however, it can be seen as representing some other inner demon, and thus, rather than being reintegrated, it must be abandoned, purged, or confronted and conquered. It's generally obvious which one in context, though the first one tends to be more popular.
Sometimes this battle will occur inside someone's own head in a dreamscape, making it both the Enemy Within and the Enemy Without at the same time. It may require saying "I'm Not Afraid of You!" to weaken it enough to beat.
This trope is very similar to The Heartless, Made of Evil, and Literal Split Personality. It is distinguished from The Heartless by having some personal connection to the person/people it was created from, from Made Of Evil because the Enemy may be flesh and bone, and from Starfish Character by leaving behind a clearly-defined original character.
See also: Evil Twin, Enemy Within, Shadow Archetype, Ghost in the Machine.
The "evil" is usually part of a character's Soul Anatomy.
Anime and Manga[]
- In Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita, Kaos's backstory is that Den was originally Kaos's evil impulses that occasionally surfaced to do evil things, and Kaos's father, Desty Nova, found a way to pull Den out and give him a body of his own, leaving Kaos free of Den's influence.
- In Magic Knight Rayearth, Nova was the suppression of Hikaru's hatred for herself, given physical form by the magic of Cephiro.
- Subversion: Madlax was a benign version of this; in this case, she was the sublimated desire of a young girl to kill her Brainwashed and Crazy father in self-defense. Uniquely, she grew up on her own without too many defects, as a relatively friendly mercenary in a war-torn land.
- In Animerica, Kiyone's Enemy Within becomes this in Season 3, having "escaped" his body when he felt remorse over Yumi's death (she gets better) but finds his way back when his good side was just broken out of his Driven to Suicide state and accepted Ron's words, angrily refusing to let him perform a Heel Face Turn. He attempts to give him another Hannibal Lecture, but is promptly told to shut up by his good side, telling him that he no longer has a purpose to be evil and wants to change for the better. This, followed by the power that the "true" Golem unlocks within him, triggers one of the best Crowning Moment of Awesome in the series.
- In Bleach:
- Ichigo has to battle his own mirror self inside a dreamscape.
- It's mentioned later on that forcing a Shingami's zanpaktou to manifest, then submit to you, is a required technique for accessing the second release.
- Dragon Ball:
- Piccolo begins his existence as Kami's cast-off evil side. The original "King Piccolo" is a Complete Monster, but his son / reincarnation, "Piccolo Jr", gets a lot of Character Development. Firstly, he's less interested in harming innocent people For the Evulz than he is in killing The Hero for revenge. Then he finds himself reluctantly fighting alongside the good guys when a greater evil shows up. Then he kidnaps his rival's son and puts him through Training From Hell, but gradually comes to care for him, to the point of Taking the Bullet. The Sorting Algorithm of Evil keeps churning out worse and worse villains, Piccolo Jr comes across as more and more heroic, and eventually he and Kami just agree to a Split Personality Merge.
- Piccolo further attacks this trope with one of his methods of training: he creates a second instance of himself (which, unlike Tenshinhan's technique, emerges out of the original). The two Piccolo bodies are not a full split, as the personality remains one and whole, controlling them both; their brutal sparring is nonetheless a cool parallel on the inner struggle he must be going through during his gradual Heel Face Turn.
- Played fairly straight with Majin Buu. His evil side comes out, fights him, then turns him into chocolate and eats him. And later reversed, when Buu's good side gets loose, and fights the evil side.
- This is part of the plot of the anime Seven of Seven. The main character, Nana, is an ordinary schoolgirl who finds herself with six alter egos representing different aspects of her personality (hot-headed Nanappe, cheerful Nanacchi, sensitive crybaby Nanarin, lazy and laid-back Nanakko, intellectual Nanasama, and eccentric Nanapon) after messing with one of her inventor uncle's experiments.
- An episode of Keroro Gunsou is a direct spoof of Seven of Seven: Giroro acquires a sextet of alter-egos representing parts of his personality after an encounter with one of Kululu's inventions. The gag is, only one is obviously part of him (his "inner soldier"), and the others much less so, like his inner coward, his romantic side, and his feminine and poetic sides, the last two female!
- This happens twice and in two variations in Ranma ½. The first time Ranma was split into his female (and evil) self and his male (and normal) self. The second time he found a way to physically fight his shadow, and inevitably, the shadow turned out to be slightly evil because it lacked a superego.
- Both the cases are present only in the anime version. In the manga this trope is not used (More precisely, in an episode there is a double of a female Ranma; but she is not a double but a ghost that, being sealed in a mirror, manifests herself looking as a female Ranma).
- The corrupted self-defense program that separated from the Book of Darkness once Hayate became its master in the second season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. It was even explicitly called the "darkness of the Book of Darkness" by Hayate.
- Subverted in the Touhou doujin Remily the Strange. When Remilia looks into a cursed mirror, it creates a doppelganger that's supposed to represent the victim's repressed evil. However, Remilia is already completely evil, so the doppleganger ends being extremely timid and "spaced out".
- Nanaya Shiki in Tsukihime: Melty Blood. Though, in a sense, he can be considered a form of alternate "what if" version of Tohno Shiki.
- Or what Shiki thinks is an alternate "what if" version of him. Also from the same game series: Red Arcueid (Arcueid falling to her bloodlust), and White Len (a jerk mirrored version of Len). Akiha Vermillion and Sion TATARI look like this, but actually aren't, Vermillion being Akiha's Super-Powered Evil Side (but not really that evil) and Sion TATARI as an alternate fate of Sion. However, this trope does sort of apply to Dust of Osiris, who is an alternate Sion from a potential future. And finally, the Night of Wallachia/TATARI can literally become/create this.
- In the animated adaptation of Samurai Deeper Kyo, this was Onime no Kyo's revised origin; he was essentially the fighting instinct within the soul of Mibu Kyoshiro, distilled into a separate and powerful body the Mibu created. Onime no Kyo then became an actual person, as opposed to merely the nickname of the Blood Knight Mibu Kyoshiro.
- Umineko no Naku Koro ni:
- In the third arc, Eva's younger-self "Imaginary Friend" becomes the new Endless Witch, and sets about murdering her entire family in the most cruel and unusual ways she can think of, apparently over Eva's protests.
- More broadly speaking, Bernkastel is this for Rika, from its predecessor, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. It turns out that the events of Saikoroshi-hen purged her from Rika's consciousness. She is, in essence, the embodiment of all of the dead Rikas who never made it past June of 1983. She doesn't actually rampage around in her source's world, however, instead making trouble in other worlds simply for her own amusement.
- The Fighting Game Ougon Musou Kyoku Cross introduces Black Battler, who is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the idea that Battler is the culprit.
- This situation, almost word for word was briefly dealt with in Naruto very recently wherein...at a waterfall of course...he had to get over his Dark Self, which for some, surprisingly was more of a reintegration instead of a total beatdown into submission , however - this was only a lead into tackling something far worse... battling the full rage of the Kyuubi.
- In Tekkon Kinkreet, this is one interpretation of the Minotaur. Specifically, the Minotaur symbolizes Black's inner darkness.
- Inverted in the anime version of Sailor Moon with Sailor Galaxia. Chibi-Chibi is the physical manifestation of Galaxia's Star Seed known by others as "The Light of Hope".
- Oto x Maho plays this one straight with Kanata, only to subvert a Mirror Match
- Subverted in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun. Kiyama created the Level Upper program that links espers together into a psychic network, making them capable of increasing their powers by drawing upon the collective's computational capability but at the cost of eventually falling into a coma. Kiyama, being the center on the network, can draw upon it to simulate their abilities herself... but when she goes overboard with her Determinator tendencies, all the anger, disappointment and self-hate of the students who used Level Upper to realize their dreams peaks and erupts from her body into the AIM Burst, a fetus-like amorphous creature that wrests control of the Level Upper network away from her then goes on a mindless rampage. Oh, and not only attacking the AIM Burst just makes it grow bigger, it's also Mind Raping everyone connected into the Level Upper network while active.
- From To Aru Majutsu no Index we have Misaka WORST, a second generation clone of Mikoto who is able to tap into the negative emotions that occur within the Sister clones via the Misaka Network. This can influence her behavior though, such as when Last Order has a fit of jealousy so does Misaka WORST.
- In King of Thorn we have Alice, who (as a result of abuse from her family) developed an alternate personality called Laloo to take the abuse for her. When Alice became infected with Medusa, it manifested from her back in the form of Laloo. How did Alice respond? By locking him in a room and burning the house down.
- Final episode of Black Rock Shooter has Mato taking the mantle of Black★Rock Shooter and fighting Insane Black★Rock Shooter in a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
Comic Books[]
- Professor X has attacked the X-Men via this method on a few occasions; once in the 90s cartoon, and several times in the comics, most notably as a fusion of his and Magneto's darkness, Onslaught.
- The good Professor also has a double, Cassandra Nova. After her confusing introduction, we were introduced to the idea that everyone has such a double, most of whom vanish at birth.
- Marvel Universe character The Sentry's arch-nemesis, The Void, is his own personal Enemy Without. It's implied that the incident which caused The Sentry to be erased from the minds of the Marvel Universe's populace for about 30 years was a failed attempt at re-integration.
- In the UK's Sonic the Comic comic series (not the same as the Archie one), Sonic lost control when he turned into Super Sonic, becoming interested only in causing as much destruction as he could. Eventually, Super was split from Sonic, becoming a recurring antagonist in his own right, and later a pacifistic protagonist who knew nothing of his past or name and fearing having to use his powers to help people because of his Super-Powered Evil Side.
- Shade, the Changing Man's Enemy Within, Hades, thanks to the power of madness, became an Enemy Without and an Ensemble Darkhorse in the same story arc. He also seemed to become less threatening and more helpful, so perhaps it's for the best that he vanished the scene before Spikeification set in.
- In an issue of the 2001 revamp of Doom Patrol, every member of the team is subjected to their own personal Hell. Deadpan Snarker Flash Forward, or Negative Man, is faced with eternity alone with nobody but another one of himself for company.
- In the Mirage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage comics, Casey's darker instincts, which had been personified in his mind into a darker, spikier version of himself, came to live when they took over the body of a shape-shifting comedian. Fighting ensued.
- Inverted in Calvin and Hobbes where bratty Calvin creates a clone of his good side. Interestingly played with; the good duplicate vanishes in a Puff of Logic when he has an evil thought, following prolonged exposure to the original Calvin.
- Adam Warlock originally had to deal with the Magus, his evil future self. Later on, as part of the Infinity Gauntlet storyline, he expelled both evil and good from himself to become a being of pure logic. The evil took the form of the Magus, and it was even implied that somehow this was the original Magus, using the evil expulsion as a way to resurrect himself. Once he was dealt with again, Warlock then had to deal with his good side, the Goddess, who had gone crazy and turned Knight Templar.
- Played straight with Nega-scott in Scott Pilgrim. This is odd when you consider how many tropes are played for laughs in it.
- The Spider-Man: India mini-series, in which the characters get their powers from magic rather than lab accidents, ends with the Goblin attempting to mystically provoke a Face Heel Turn in Spidey. The process draws on his memories of being bullied, encouraging him to use his powers to take revenge. The 'darkness' eating away at Spidey during his temptation appears as an analogue of the Venom symbiote...which survives even after Goblin is defeated.
- Happened to The Creeper once, where he kept spawning increasingly chaotic and literally animalistic copies of himself. It was all pretty squicky, actually.
- Lex Luthor once exposed Supergirl to black kryptonite. It's not clear whether he knew what exactly it would do to her, but he hoped it would be bad. Well, turns out the stuff does this, and Kara had an evil doppelganger for a while. "Dark Supergirl" later resurfaced as an Enemy Within.
- Black Lantern Firestorm becomes one in Brightest Day. During the inital Blackest Night, the Ronnie Raymond Firestorm's body rises, and a Faux Affably Evil Totally Radical personality is born, possessing all Ronnie's memories. After Ronnie is brought back from the dead by the White Lantern, Black Lantern Firestorm remains as an Enemy Within. Soon afterwards, it gets out of the Firestorm Matrix, becomes its own entity and renames itself Deathstorm.
- Jamie Madrox's duplicates have minds of their own, and usually embody a specific aspect of his personality. If that aspect happens to be, say, his anger or self-loathing, it might just try to kill him on the spot.
- Les Légendaires has Elysio, a mysterious young amnesiac trying to find out who he used to be. To his horror, he eventually finds out he used to be Darkhell, the protagonists' Arch Enemy and a cruel Evil Sorcerer who was The Dreaded in all his world. Hoping to prove everyone there is a mistake, he agrees to consumate a cure to his amnesia. When his memory starts coming back, he attempted to reject it, causing his Darkhell and Elysio personnas to split into separate beings.
Fan Works[]
- Inverted in the Pony POV Series. During the final battle with Nightmare Whisper, Fluttershy's Super-Powered Evil Side, Fluttercruel breaks out of her to help the heroes. Unlike most examples, this time it's a good entity previously contained in a now evil one that breaks free to help save the world instead of the other way around.
Film[]
- In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke encounters a phantom Darth Vader in a Force-flooded cave on Dagobah. When he strikes it down, it turns out to have his own face, representative of his own fear of turning to the Dark Side if he should do this for reals.
- In Forbidden Planet, the Monster From the Id.
Morbius: "Guilty! Guilty! My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it!" |
- Superman III features a pretty good fight sequence between a red Kryptonite-infected Superman and his moral base, Clark Kent. It's also a bit of a subversion in that its clearly shown to be a metaphor for Superman's internal struggle not to do whatever he pleases.
- Buddy Love is excised from The Nutty Professor in the second Eddie Murphy version.
- An entire species in The Dark Crystal is based on this trope.
- Subverted in The Movie of Scott Pilgrim Versus The World. At the end of the movie, Scott is faced with his shadowy doppelganger, "Nega-Scott"; but instead of fighting, they make plans for brunch. Apparently, they share a lot of the same interests. This is a major deviation from the original comic, where it was more of a Hopeless Boss Fight that could only be resolved by reintegration.
- In Gremlins, Gizmo is an adorable little critter who gives birth to other adorable critters when he gets wet... one of which always has a white stripe and really hates him.
Literature[]
- This is the premise for most of A Wizard of Earthsea.
- The Yamiko in Sailor Nothing (also The Heartless).
- Hunger in Matthew Swift is this for Robert Bakker. Unusual in that it targets Matthew rather than its originator.
- In Thursday Next, Thursday's adventures eventually inspire a book series, with the books' interpretations of Thursday appearing in the fictional Bookworld. The Thursday of the first four books is a leather-wearing pastiche of Badass Anti-Hero cliches, who eventually just decides to turn evil. Interestingly, after these four books the writers decided to go in the opposite direction so there's also a Thursday who's a touchy-feely Granola Girl. This gives the impression that she's become a Literal Split Personality, except that the real Thursday is still around and is demonstrably the only one from the Real World.
- A portion of Brave Story involves this trope. It becomes crucial in the climax.
- Spock gets an "evil version" in the Star Trek novel "Spock Must Die". It's caused by — yes, you guessed it, a transporter accident.
- The Dark Half, by Stephen King: The protagonist, an author, is persecuted by his pen name, which has come to life as an independent individual after being given a mock "funeral." Apparently the pen-name persona has created its physical form from a rudimentary conjoined twin that was removed from the protagonist's body in childhood. King was inspired to write this novel by his experience with his own pen name, Richard Bachman.
- In the Russian adaptation of "The Shadow" story, written by E. Schwartz, the protagonists's shadow becomes this. It is repeatedly shown that the hero and his shadow share abilities, but use them differently.
- Averted (somewhat), but this was at least part of the motivation for Dr. Jekyll. He hoped that he could divide a person's good and bad sides, and let each one go free to it's own devices, letting both of them do what they do best and each to be happy. It didn't work out that well, leading only to Hyde's malevolent persona and a physical transformation. Ironically, this, including the fact that Jekyll and Hyde were one person, was supposed to be all revealed as a twist in the end.
Live Action TV[]
- Red Dwarf
- In Terrorform", the crew have to rescue Rimmer from a planetoid that has modeled itself on Rimmer's subconscious, populated by personifications of his attributes. The Big Bad in this case is Rimmer's Self-Loathing, and the only way to defeat it in the end is to convince Rimmer that he is loved. It is solved by a group hug. And it's hilarious.
- "Demons and Angels," is an even better example of this trope. In it, the Red Dwarf and its crew are given "good" and "evil" copies by a triplicator; the "good" Dwarf is shiny, white, and well-maintained, while the "evil" version looks like an abandoned oil refinery. Similarly, the "good" versions of the crew are a bunch of pacifistic milksops, while the "evil" ones are sadistic monsters that dress in lots of leather. The plot revolves around causing the "good" and "evil" sides of the Dwarf to re-merge, as the original was destroyed in the process of creating the two duplicates; merging the "good" and "evil" sides of the crew is less of an issue (and in fact becomes impossible, as the "evil" crew members rapidly kill off all of their "good" counterparts).
- Doctor Who:
- In The Trial of a Time Lord Story Arc, the Valeyard, prosecuting at the Doctor's trial, is revealed to be all the darkness in the Doctor's soul, given life at some point between his twelfth and final incarnations.
- In "Journey's End", the half-human Doctor created from the Doctor's severed hand and the Doctor's companion Donna is willing and able to commit genocide on the Daleks. The real Doctor isn't pleased.
- Note that this version isn't actually evil, he's just more ruthless than the real Doctor is comfortable with. The difference in personality is due to the fact that the severed hand that created the half-human Doctor came from a time before he'd had a chance to partially heal from the Time War, and still had a lot of the less forgiving, Dalek-hating (but still good,) Ninth Doctor in his personality.
- The episode "Amy's Choice" takes place in a Black Bug Room version of the TARDIS created via an unintentional Psychic Link between Amy, Rory, and The Doctor. The "Dream Lord" who terrorizes them is basically a manifestation of The Doctor's self-loathing.
- In the Star Trek the Next Generation episode "Skin of Evil", the antagonist is the Enemy Without for an entire civilization.
- Despite its name, the original-series Star Trek the Original Series episode "The Enemy Within" makes Kirk into a Starfish Character, not an Enemy Without.
- A somewhat confusing example in Supernatural's "Dream a Little Dream of Me". In his "dreamworld", Dean's doppelganger taunts him on his low self-esteem and Daddy issues until Dean fights back in a rage and shoots it three times in the chest. Then it comes back as a demon [1]
Demon!Dean: "You can't escape me, Dean! You're gonna die and this, this is what you're gonna become!" |
- He also appears at the end of the episode, repeating the line and snapping his fingers with a big smile on his face.
- An episode of Angel serves as a perfect example of the dreamscape variety. Faith (through methods and because of reasons that are both too complicated to explain) ends up inside Angel's head and meets Angelus (Angel's Enemy Within) there as well as Angel. This culminates in a battle between Angel and Angelus achieved by carefully choreographed fight scenes with David Boreanaz and a split screen. It's quite impressive.
- In the 90s The Outer Limits episode "Monster" (4x18), a group of telekinetics recruited by the CIA to perform long distance assassinations are eventually stalked and killed by an amorphous cloud of hostile psychic energy that they apparently spawned.
- The trope is used in the third season Charmed episode "Just Harried", where Prue's constant suppression of her emotions leads to her id taking over her astral self and breaking away from her 'real' body.
- In Seven Days, Frank has an evil twin split off him when he travels to the past. After some time, the Evil Frank kills him, and travels to the past... only to be defeated by a good Frank who split off him.
Tabletop Games[]
- New World of Darkness
- In Mage: The Awakening, it is possible (although not wise) for a mage to bring some aspect of his personality (usually his personal Vice) into reality in a physical body. Doing so frees the mage of that personality aspect, but having a mage's Pride or Wrath walking around doing stuff isn't usually a good thing.
- Similarly, Vampire: The Requiem introduced the idea of "Hollow" Embraces — vampires who were Embraced post-mortem. They have the traditional vampiric trait of not having any reflection and not appearing on film, whereas other vampires just show up blurry. Thing is, that reflection is now a separate being. And it hates them.
- And in Fading Suns, this is what happens if a psychic behaves very badly.
- Before it was retconned as a part of the Ravenloft setting, the 1st edition AD&D module I10: The House on Gryphon Hill was a stand-alone adventure in which the vampire Strahd von Zarovich was the Enemy Without of a benign alchemist with the same name.
- In Exalted, the Ebon Dragon Charm called Black Mirror Shintai allows the user to literally become the victim's Enemy Without. Their victim's shadow disappears, and the user becomes an exact copy of them in all ways except one: their Motivation is a perfect inversion of their victim's, being devoted to undermining their goals and tearing down whatever they hold most dear.
Toys[]
- Vezon is this for Vezok in Bionicle. They're both evil, (mostly), it's just that one has very good tactical thinking abilities, and the other one has sanity. An unusual variation of this trope is that Vezon, the duplicate, is now acknowledged as a character in his own right, and has actually surpassed the original in terms of popularity.
Video Games[]
- In Ultima IX, it is revealed that The Guardian, the Big Bad of the later games, is in fact the "cast off" parts of the hero after he became the Avatar, the embodiment of Virtue. Note that this contradicts parts of the plot in Ultima 7 and 8 and in Ultima Underworld 2.
- In Final Fantasy IV, in order for Dark Knight Cecil to become a Paladin, he has to defeat his Dark Knight self not by fighting hand-to-hand, but by dragging out the fight, since Dark Knight Cecil uses exclusively an attack that damages the opponent at the expense of the caster's own life. The game even alerts the player of this, by saying that "A true paladin... sheaths his sword". In the American SNES version, however, since the aforementioned attack doesn't exist, the scene makes it seem that Paladin Cecil is letting his dark self "punish" him without striking back, thus defeating it. This only applies to the original Super NES release - the American versions of the Play Station and Game Boy Advance ports are identical to the Japanese and the attack exists in both.
- A similar thing happens in the sequel The After Years except Kain's dark side escapes, forcing Kain to track it down, but not before Kain's dark side wrecks havoc stealing crystals. Likewise, you have to fight Cecil's Dark Side again. Interestingly, in both cases you have to kick the Dark Side's ass first before integrating.
- In Final Fantasy VI, sleeping in a certain town with Cyan in your party triggers a sequence where the other three members of your party fight through a series of dream sequences inside his head, based on the character's previous adventures in the game, and ultimately fight a being that is devouring his soul from within.
- Happens quite a few times in Kingdom Hearts:
- The local incarnation of Sephiroth appears to be this for Cloud — as such, all of Sora's skills cannot defeat him and This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself. You can at least convince him to back off by battering him around. The same game to reveal this implies that Tifa is Cloud's "light without", making her an inversion.
- Vanitas is the Darkness Without of Ventus. He looks like a black-haired, golden-eyed Sora, since Ven's heart latched onto the then-newborn Sora's in order to survive being ripped in half.
- Most of The Heartless are generic and identical to others of their type. But if a person's heart is strong enough, it becomes a unique creature fueled by the darkness in that person's heart. They can easily become the enemy (or goal) of the Nobody created from what's left when the Heartless is formed.
- Space Harrier II with the final boss being Dark Harrier.
- "Dark Mega Man" at the end of Mega Man Battle Network 4. In Battle Network 5, he would spawn on the enemy side whenever one of the Dangerous Forbidden Technique Dark Chips backfired. And heaven help you if that ever happened during a boss fight...
- In Mega Man Star Force, Pat and his evil split-personality Rey both got separate bodies when fusing with Gemini. Unique in that Pat goes with what Rey says instead of trying to fight him. Because of that, Mega Man has to stop them both.
- Happens once in Sam and Max Freelance Police: In "Bright Side of the Moon", the Big Bad removes Max's hand, stomach, and tail. Each one turns into a different color Max embodying his tendency for violence, gluttony, and laziness, respectively. Without those traits, Max becomes completely docile and unable to interfere with the villain's plan.
- "Dark Link" at the end of Zelda II the Adventure of Link. Dark Link appears in later Zelda games as well, but this one fits the trope the best. A wizard is even seen making Dark Link pop out of Link once the boss room is entered, Link's final test for the Triforce was fighting his own evil. Dark Link (and his clones) plays a much larger role in The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures.
- The Transcendent One from Planescape: Torment, your mortality made flesh and removed from your body by magic... Who has nothing but the deepest of loathing for you and does not want to return.
- A Puzzle Boss in the original Prince of Persia revolved around this concept, being a dark or ghostly Prince split off by a magic mirror. As usual, the solution was to re-integrate.
- The post-final boss level in Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones also fits this trope. To defeat the Dark Prince, the embodiment of the Prince's evil qualities, after a lengthy scripted portion, you must run away from the fight, since violence only breeds more violence
- Eclair in La Pucelle has to fight her inner evil self; the resolution is that she must accept it, whereupon she gets the ability to transform into that self in later combats. However, the gameplay required to do this is an ordinary combat with a cut scene at the end showing the "acceptance".
- Eclair being an homage to Princess Crown's Gradriel, the latter's heroine also faces off against and gains the power to transform into her evil version.
- Inversion: Rularuu the Ravager, a Sufficiently Advanced Alien eater-of-dimensions from City of Heroes, has a Hero Without, Faathim the Kind, who helps you fight him.
- City of Heroes also has the Madam of Mystery, who gets stronger every time you fight her again. It turns out that she is the manifestation of darkness in the soul of the very person who is sending you to defeat her, only she doesn't know it.
- In a City of Villains mission, you go inside Johnny Sonata's head and kill his soul. Again inverted, his soul is nicer than he is.
- Maggie, and later Pandora, in Persona. Inverted with Mae, unless you're on the Bad Ending, in which case she tries to kill you with a Monster Teddy Bear and sends Mary to limbo.
- Persona 3's expansion, FES, has a dark version of the main character as a boss. Subverted in that it doesn't come from the main character (he's dead), but rather from the party's collective regret of his death.
- In Persona 4, personas arise from accepting and embracing one's Enemy Without. Denying it instead makes it go into One-Winged Angel mode.
- This is why entering the TV world is so dangerous, as anybody who does so will eventually run into their shadow (the part of themselves that they fear/ hate and hide from everyone). Only young chldren are exempt from this. the main character (along with 2 other characters) is also immune to this, due to having his poweres granted to him by the goddess that ochestrated the events of the game.
- The Idea of "Shadow Selves" dates back to Persona 2, though the people they appeared to already had Personas, they didn't go One Winged Angel, and they attacked even if you did accept them. However, the "Shadow Selves" in Persona 2 are not escaped from the characters themselves, but instead seem to be manufactured by the Big Bad Wannabe, possibly through exploitation of the rumors-to-reality system. They have their own Personas which were also mirrors of the originals, right down to the techniques.
- In the original Shadow Hearts, Yuri had to deal with the mysterious Fox Face, who appears if the in-game Karma Meter rose to high by defeating enemies. Halfway through the game, it is revealed that Fox Face is the manifestation of Yuri's fear of succumbing to the monsters that dwell within his soul as a Harmonixer. Once he learns that his soul belongs to himself alone, and the monsters can never take him over, Fox Face disappears. In addition, when Yuri harmonizes with a monster soul after this sequence, his animation changes from a frightening cry of anguish with accompanying head pain to a simple grunt with accompanying arm swing, showing that he has cast off his fear of his power.
- In Twisted Metal Head-On, it is revealed that Needles Kane, Sweet Tooth's driver, the psychotic clown, is a split personality of Marcus Kane. They drive different cars, and can fight and kill each other in the game. Eventually, Marcus gives in to Sweet Tooth's influence, and together, they drive a building and become Tower Tooth, the final boss of the game, as well as Dark Tooth, which is a super-powered ice cream truck with giant jaws that smash opponents. Which they also drive together. And ALL FOUR of these can fight in the same match. '.
- The final boss of Mega Man Zero 3 may or may not be Zero's Super-Powered Evil Side possessing a separate body. His origins are left somewhat vague.
- In this case Zero is more of a Hero Without. Said separate body is Zero's original body, which was being occupied by an evil personality. The mind of the real Zero (the good and Badass one) came into possession of a duplicate.
- Jade Cocoon 2: The first two-thirds are spent collecting items that will allow the demon possessing Kahu to be drawn out and defeated in this manner. Afterwards, Kahu must travel to the Forest of Darkness and slay four kalma who are possessing his friends and drawing out their inner evil or self-doubt.
- In Soul Calibur, Nightmare was originally Siegfried's alter ego, but subsequent games have given it its own body and personality (an extremely Chaotic Evil one).
- Silent Hill:
- Silent Hill 2: Pyramid Head is eventually revealed to be the incarnation of James Sunderland's guilt and weakness over his wife Mary's death, which kill themselves (there's two of them at this point) once James accepts the truth. True, he has been appearing in recent games despite James not being around, but those have been just irrelevant Fan Service. To further the trope, Pyramid Head is often depicted in fanart as looking identical to James under the helmet.
- Silent Hill 3 Memory of Alessa.
- Silent Hill Origins: The Butcher (who could also be the Enemy Within according to one of the game's Endings).
- World of Warcraft: Leotheras the Blind summons Inner Demons from raid members when he transitions to demon form. Each demon can only be hit by the person it was summoned from, and if that person doesn't manage to kill it before he turns back to his human form, they become mind controlled for the rest of the fight.
- Devil May Cry 3: The "understand your dark side" part is lampshaded (and subsequently averted), when a shadowy doppleganger of Dante appears to fight him.
Dante: I know why you're here. You're here to ask me some questions. Well too bad. I've already answered them myself. I don't need you. |
- Llednar in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is actually Mewt's form of concentrated power and hatred that is totally invincible to all forms of attack until Cid uses a card by Ezel to nullify Llendar's invincibility. Once defeated, Llednar turns into stone and crumbles.
- The final boss of The Suffering is lead character Torque's intense psychological issues given physical form by the evil presence at Carnate. This first manifests as Torque himself. In a blunt application of the "understand your dark side" aspect, he has to make use of his Enemy Within Super Mode to defeat it (using human form damages yourself). Then you have to fight said Super Mode in human form (self-damage applies, as before). Finally, it takes the form of an enormous, grotesque monster, which you have to beat with the help of Killjoy's machine.
- Metroid:
- Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime trilogy certainly qualifies.
- And then the SA-X shows up in Metroid Fusion. And it can reproduce by fission!!! In this case, Samus does reintegrate with it to fully restore her Power Suit and the Ice Beam.
- Darth Nihilus from Knights of the Old Republic II is hinted to be the Enemy Without of the main character. The cut content even includes a scene where it is flat-out stated that Nihilus and the Exile are two halves of the same being.
Webcomics[]
- An interesting variation is found in 8-Bit Theater, where during the main characters' trip into the Castle Of Ordeals, the only thing evil enough on the Castle's record to represent Black Mage's sins is... himself, who becomes more powerful as Black Mage reminds the doppelgänger of a few serious sins the Castle forgot to add. In typical fashion, Black Mage gets the manifestation to let its guard down, then stabs its face... from behind. Then absorbs its evil energy to avoid the catharsis of literally killing his own evil. Then commits one last atrocity offscreen, implied to be sex with the corpse.
- In The Wotch, Anne once tries to create helper duplicates, and is Genre Savvy enough to make sure none of them believe they're the original or decide they'd rather stay separate. Something goes wrong with it anyway, and each copy is a different aspect of her personality (often simply wearing a different color, though a few take on forms from previous arcs, such as her courage being a Batgirl-based hero, and her curiosity being a Catgirl.) The villains talked her anger, frustrated with having been kept from acting by the rest of Anne's personality, into refusing to return and trying to get rid of the others.
- After a crossover with Melonpool, It's Walky! introduced Anti-Joyce, a slutty duplicate of Joyce supposedly created from her repressed libido via the Dupe-O-Matic. She was killed by the original shortly afterward.
- Misfile: The Wraith in the Aiden and Bronwyn arc was apparently an amalgamation of the negative parts of their love, or something...
- The exact nature of Xero in Suicide for Hire isn't quite clear, though he's definitely spawned from Arcturus' dark side. Arcturus describes arm-wrestling with Xero as a "metaphorical battle", implying it's taking place only in his imagination, and nobody else can see Xero, but Arcturus holds conversations with him out loud (much to the confusion of the waitress who sees him talking to himself and can't hear the replies). The strongest evidence that Xero has some kind of tangible form is that items of clothing Xero was seen wearing, which Arcturus doesn't own, keep turning up in places he's recently been.
Web Original[]
- This was attempted in Survival of the Fittest version two, but didn't work out. The character Walter Smith was originally made in the pregame with the concept of him being the manifestation of Jack Bexley's dark side, as Jack was also a politician's child but, while he did not let himself be corrupted as Walter was, still had part of him that was like that. The plan was that they'd be bitter rivals, and Jack would eventually kill Walter in a fight late in the game as a symbol of finally getting rid of that side of his personality. Unfortunately, Jack's handler left the site and never put Jack into the game, leaving the storyline in the air and Walter as a pure evil villain without any of the symbolism.
- In The Spoony Experiment, Doctor Insano (pictured above) is an ambiguous example of this. It hasn't been made clear if he's a clone, Spoony's future self, or from an alternate dimension. Kickassia made it cannon that Insano is part of a split personality Spoony has, which makes no sense in context of every other appearance Insano made.
Western Animation[]
- In Ben 10, Ben's Ghostfreak form is revealed near the end of the second season to be bad news... After Ben loses control, Ghostfreak winds up separated from Ben's body and on his own, chasing Ben and possessing others for the remainder of the episode, trying to get back to Ben's body and take over. One of the examples where "re-integrating" the Enemy Without would be a very bad idea.
- Then again... (Near the end of the third season, a copy of the "true" (sunlight-vulnerable) Ghostfreak ends up on the Omnitrix. Whether this copy contains Ghostfreak's personality remains to be seen).
- Well, Ghostfreak himself said that his race, the Ectonurites, retain memory within the tiniest strand of DNA, so, yeah, it's probable that this is true, and that the writers just forgot.
- Then again... (Near the end of the third season, a copy of the "true" (sunlight-vulnerable) Ghostfreak ends up on the Omnitrix. Whether this copy contains Ghostfreak's personality remains to be seen).
- In Samurai Jack, Aku realizes that none of his forces are as strong as Jack is... so he creates an Evil Twin of Jack, made of Jack's anger and fury, to take him out. Naturally, Jack wins when he accepts it and doesn't fight back.
- In Darkwing Duck, the first episode ever written with a character called "Negaduck" was not truly starring the recurring Evil Twin Alternate Universe Negaduck that came to spearhead the Fearsome Five in later days. This Negaduck was the accidental byproduct of an invention Megavolt called "the tron-splitter", which was designed to separate an object into its component "positrons and negatrons", and then later re-merge them. A locked door, thus separated, would leave an empty doorway Megavolt could simply stroll through, and once re-merged without ever being unlocked, there would be no sign of tampering for the CSI squad to analyze. Things start going wrong when Darkwing catches him red-handed, and in the ensuing fight, Megavolt turns the tron-splitter on DW. DW's good side turns out, much like Captain Kirk, to lack the necessary sock-pow forthrightness that makes for a quack-fu action hero, while his evil side is unhesitatingly violent, and goes on a fearsome rampage. Later, it is discovered that the tron-splitter can "galvanize" a tron-pure subject, imparting functionally limitless super powers. As always, the solution is to re-merge the two before the Enemy Without destroys everything. Also includes an instance of Spot the Imposter, early on after the split.
- As implied, this is all a comedic rehash of an episode of the original Star Trek the Original Series in which a transporter accident splits Captain Kirk in two.
- In Justice League Unlimited's third season, Shadow Thief was revealed to be Hawkman's Enemy Without.
- In the South Park episode "Fourth Grade," Mr. Garrison has a face-off with his "Gay Side" in a direct parody of the cave in The Empire Strikes Back. He loses.
- In an alternate Bad Future of Danny Phantom, after losing his entire family and friends to a deadly explosion, the main character willingly agrees to separate his humanity. Thus resulting in his sympathetic arch enemy Vlad Masters--who had just recently adopted Danny--to honor his wishes by using the Ghost Gauntlets to separate his ghost half from his human self. This doesn't turn out so well; his ghost half instantly turns malevolent, uses the same procedure to tear off Vlad's ghost half, and joins with his half. The result? A Carnage-like mixture of Vlad Plasmius and Danny Phantom: Dark Danny. Not only does he kill his human half, but he blows up the entire mansion, and spends the next ten years turning the planet into a living nightmare. And this is a kid's cartoon.
- Teen Titans: This happens in multiple ways to all the Titans: Starfire, Cyborg and Beast Boy fight against the physical manifestations of their own evil, Raven confronts a case of Enemy Within in her dreamscape, and Robin fights a hallucination of his Shadow Archetype Slade that his own mind made up under the influence of a very, very bad trip.
- Happy Tree Friends: Flippy vs. Fliqpy in "Double Whammy". It ends up being a subversion, however...it actually is a case of Enemy Within and simply appeared to be Enemy Without to both Flippy and the viewer.
- ↑ this being Dean's actual predicted fate at that point - he's going to hell, and demons had been recently revealed to be humans who had been in hell long enough to lose their humanity.