"Guilty! Guilty! My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it!"
— Dr. Morbius, Forbidden Planet
When someone's inner darkness doesn't quite take over someone, but it does "escape" their body and rampage. 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. The other half of of the time it can be seen as representing some inner demon, and thus, it must be abandoned, purged, or confronted and conquered.
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 Literal Split Personality by leaving behind a clearly-defined original character.
See also: Evil Twin, Enemy Within, Ghost in the Machine, Self-Constructed Being, Shadow Archetype, Indulgent Fantasy Segue, Mental Monster, Tulpa, Powering Villain Realization, and Residual Evil Entity. Very dangerous in combination with Superpowered Evil Side. The "evil" is usually part of a character's Soul Anatomy.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Animerica: Kiyone's Enemy Within becomes this in Season 3, having "escaped" his body when he felt remorse over Yumi's death 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 Breaking Speech, 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 Moment of Awesome in the series.
- 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.
- Black★Rock Shooter: The final episode has Mato taking the mantle of Black★Rock Shooter and fighting Insane Black★Rock Shooter in a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
- Bleach:
- Ichigo has to battle his mirror self inside his inner world first as part of training from Zangetsu and later because the mirror has taken over Zangetsu and is trying to take over Ichigo too. In this case, it is resolved via reintegration by conquering.
- The mirror self is Ichigo's "inner Hollow" who takes over Ichigo's body (gradually turning more and more hollow like) during their showdown and the Visored have to fight him to keep him from transforming completely and killing everyone in Karakura Town.
- It's mentioned later on that forcing a Shingami's Zanpakutou to manifest, then submit to you, is a required technique for accessing the second release, Bankai.
- All of this leads up to The Reveal that the "inner Hollow" is the true Zangetsu, and that it was never really his enemy. It just wanted Ichigo to stay alive at any cost.
- A Certain Magical Index: 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.
- A Certain Scientific Railgun: Subverted. 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.
- Digimon Universe: App Monsters: The Big Bad Leviathan originated as Big Good Minerva's thoughts of rebellion against humanity, which Minerva is supposed to help. Minerva cast Leviathan out so she wouldn't be tempted, only for Leviathan to become his own separate entity.
- Dragon Ball:
- Piccolo begins his existence as Kami's cast-off evil side. The original "King Piccolo" in Dragon Ball is evil, 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. As 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 agree to a Split-Personality Merge for a powerup.
- Played straight with Majin Buu. His evil side comes out, fights him, then turns him into chocolate and eats him. Later reversed, when Buu's good side gets loose, and fights the evil side (who is now even worse than before). By the end of Dragon Ball Z Buu has two good sides; himself and the human Uub (a purified reincarnation of the evil one).
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: In "Solid State Society" Section 9 is worried that The Puppeteer they're chasing is actually Motoko, who's retired from Section 9. When Motoko tracks down the Puppeteer and asks What the Hell Are You? because the Big Bad appears to share her amoral determination and cyber skills, she's shocked to find it's a cyber-personality of herself evolved from her subconscious interacting with the Net.
- Higurashi: When They Cry: A side-effect of Rika's traumatizing Mental Time Travel through various alternate realities where she and her friends constantly get murdered was the creation of Bernkastel, a psychotic alter-ego who was purged from Rika's consciousness and exists separately in an unknown reality. She spends her time tormenting the people who unwittingly funded the projects that caused Rika's suffering, to Batter's dismay.
- Higurashi Sotsu revealed that Hanyuu is a rare inverted example to Eua, who may or may not be connected to Featherine.
- King of Thorn: 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.
- The Lost Village: This happens to everyone who travels to the village. They have to fight their inner darkness manifest in order to get out.
- 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.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's: The corrupted self-defense program that separated from the Book of Darkness once Hayate became its master. It was even explicitly called the "darkness of the Book of Darkness" by Hayate.
- Magic Knight Rayearth: Nova is the suppression of Hikaru's hatred for herself, given physical form by the magic of Cephiro.
- Naruto: During his training, Naruto has to confront a dark copy of himself that is the product of his lonely childhood and the lone obstacle in his efforts to tame the Nine-Tailed Fox.
- One Piece: Variation. Gecko Moria's Shadow-Shadow fruit allows him to steal the shadows of living humans and place them into corpses. This creates zombies with the personality and fighting style of the shadow and the physical strength of the corpse. This results in zombie versions of Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, and Brook. However, the actual bodies are very different from the originals, especially with Sanji (a penguin with a dog's face) and Luffy (Oars, a demonic-looking giant). Also, the zombies are really only evil because they are under Moria's control. Only Brook and Luffy actually encounter their own zombies.
- Ranma ½: This happens twice and in two variations in the anime version. 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. In the manga this trope is not used; there is a visual double of a female Ranma, but she is not a true double, but a ghost that, being sealed in a mirror, manifests herself looking as a female Ranma.
- Sailor Moon: Inverted in The '90s anime version with Sailor Galaxia. Chibi-Chibi is the physical manifestation of Galaxia's Star Seed known by others as "The Light of Hope".
- Samurai Deeper Kyo: In the animated adaptation, 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.
- 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.
- Sgt. Frog: An episode 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.
- In Shamanic Princess, Tiara is confronted by her own magical powers made manifest in the form of seductive figure who tries to steal her newly summoned familiar. The shadow tries to repulse Tiara by drawing attention to their unity of being, but Tiara realizes there is a flip-side to that - she can accept herself and claim her full power in the process. Doing so gives her access to her Super Mode for the first time.
- Slayers: Hilariously subverted in an OVA where Lina and Naga face a Magic Mirror which was built to create these for use against powerful demons. The problem is that it works too well, since the opposite of a truly violent being is a completely harmless one. Given that our heroes are Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent, their respective doubles don't come out as planned.
- Tekkonkinkreet: This is one interpretation of the Minotaur. Specifically, the Minotaur symbolizes Black's inner darkness.
Comic Books
- DC Comics:
- Batman:
- At one point, Catwoman became simultaneously two Enemy Withouts for herself. Since Gotham City had been put into a Lotus-Eater Machine, "Catbird", now a hero, Batman's wife and living a happy life, begins to be stalked by a woman who looks a lot like herself, who subsequently attacks her trying to tear apart the illusion. Both claim that the other is evil: Catwoman is destroying Catbird's idyllic life, but she claims Catbird is stealing her true nature and the reality of her life.
- This happened to the Creeper once, where he kept spawning increasingly chaotic and animalistic copies of himself. It was all pretty squicky, actually.
- 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.
- Green Lantern:
- Black Lantern Firestorm becomes one in Brightest Day. During the initial 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.
- In Circle of Fire, Kyle accidentally creates a sentient, superpowered construct named Oblivion that is the embodiment of all the emotions that he represses: sorrow, self-doubt, resentment at being patronized by his more experienced teammates in the Justice League, and a penchant for A God Am I. Once Oblivion gains enough awareness, the very first thing he does is act on Kyle's resentment by handily defeating the Justice League, forcing Kyle to solve the problem on his own.
- Shade, the Changing Man's Enemy Within, Hades, thanks to the power of madness, became an Enemy Without and an Ensemble Dark Horse 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.
- Supergirl:
- In Demon Spawn Pre-Crisis Supergirl fought Nightflame, a sword-wielding witch who was a manifestation of her dark side — specifically her death wish — who left Supergirl's mind and entered the physical world to fight her and capture her.
- In the Post-Crisis Supergirl storyline Girl Power, Lex Luthor 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.
- The Condemned Legionnaires: Predating Girl Power for several decades, Supergirl's inner darkness is drawn out and given shape by exposure to a Red Kryptonite meteor. Kara's evil duplicate names herself Satan Girl, puts a black suit on and attempts to kill the female Legionnaires to prolong her existence.
- Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade: A bizarre accident creates Belinda, Linda's evil duplicate who feels compelled to make Linda suffer.
- In the Superman story Kryptonite Nevermore, the titular hero faces up to the Sandman Superman, a being from another dimension charged with Superman's mental and physical vibrations that takes on Superman's form.
Sandman: I am a being woven from your mind — your heart — your soul! Can you not see—? I am you! And I fear that we may not both... survive!
- Batman:
- 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 consummate a cure to his amnesia. When his memory starts coming back, he attempted to reject it, causing his Darkhell and Elysio personas to split into separate beings.
- Marvel Comics:
- A foray of one Dr. Henry Pym (also known at the time as Goliath) into Artificial Intelligence ended up this. You see, he used his own brain patters as a template and Hank is in all honesty not a well man. The upshot is one of that The Avengers' most fearsome foes, the indestructible enemy of all organic life known as Ultron, combines the brilliance of one of their founding members with most of the psychological issues Pym at least tries to keep a handle on and over-cranked versions of all his worst impulses.
- 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.
- The Spider-Man: India (2004) 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.
- 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.
- X-Men:
- Professor X has attacked the Comic Book via this method on a few occasions, most notably as a fusion of his and Magneto's darkness, Onslaught.
- New X-Men introduces another double of the good Professor, Cassandra Nova. After her confusing introduction, we were introduced to the idea that everyone has such a double, most of whom vanish at birth.
- As shown in X-Factor (2006), 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.
- Scott Pilgrim has this with Nega-Scott. A mysterious shadowy version of Scott, he is usually seen with a smirk and only seen by Scott (though during the finale, Kim Pine may have seen him.). Nega-Scott represents the repressed memories and mistakes in Scott's life, mainly in his romantic endeavors. It's also why Scott's attempts at defeating Nega-Scott never went anywhere.
- In Sonic the Comic, 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 Superpowered Evil Side.
- In 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 life when they took over the body of a shape-shifting comedian. Fighting ensued.
Comic Strips
- 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.
Fan Works
- Enemies Within: Evil Sayori is an amalgamation of all the dead Sayoris from different iterations of the visual novel who survived the game's deletion by floating endlessly in the void.
- Inner Demons: Throughout the story, Twilight has been controlled by her inner Darkness, which transformed her into the Queen of Darkness, the story's Big Bad. However, when the Elements of Harmony on used on her during the Final Battle, the Darkness is forced out of her body, only to take on a life of its own.
- Inverted in the Pony POV Series. During the final battle with Nightmare Whisper, Fluttershy's Superpowered 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.
- In the Pony POV Series Chaos Verse (a recursive spin off of the above), the Big Bad is revealed to be one of these, specifically Nightmare Moon's essence, separated from Luna by the Elements of Harmony and given a life of its own as the Eldritch Abomination Nightmare Phobia.
- Subverted to hell and back in this
Kingdom Hearts fic. Xehanort kidnap The Hero to infect Sora's heart with anger and vengeance, Sora turned himself into full heartless, allowing Roxas to take over his body without either of them losing too much strength, and thus bring their anger down on the Big Bad and try to avenge his victim. (as opposed of the half-state half-power they experience like in CoM and Days). Only because The Power of Love and Friendship helped.
- In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, Guru shares this relationship with Lord Slug, similar to that of Kami and Piccolo. That is, Guru is the evil half.
- Shadows Awakening: Near the end of the story, The Queen succeeds in corrupting Jade, causing the Tiger Talisman containing her to react by forcibly separating them, giving the Queen her own body, with all of the powers Jade had as a Shadowkhan.
- In the Danny Phantom fanfic series, Facing the Future Series, the separated ghost half that Tucker wished for makes a return.
- Subverted in the Touhou Project 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 up being extremely timid and "spaced out".
- The case with Anankos in The Invisible Princess; he ripped out his soul, which went on to be the Anankos Mikoto met, fell in love with, and had a family with, and the body that remained is the antagonist driving the story.
- In Hellsister Trilogy, Satan Girl is Supergirl's dark side, given physical form by Mordru after she had been created by exposure to Red Kryptonite and reabsorbed into Supergirl during a previous adventure (in Adventure Comics #313). It frightens Kara to think that blood-thirsty, murderous, lustful psychopath came from her.
"All I knew at the time was that I had a fainting spell," said Supergirl. "While I was out, the real Red K effect came through. The thing... it..." She fumbled for words, then burst out: "I was cloned! It cloned me, and the clone was, well, my evil side. My dark side. And it was just as real as... as real as me."
- In Pokémon fanfiction Trial of Juno, the Fallen represent the darkness (specifically their sin, or ability to sin) of a person's heart. Injuring a Fallen will cause the original to be hurt as well.
- In My Little Pony/Green Lantern crossover Entities Of Emotion, Nightmare Moon was still skulking about Luna's subconscious until a series of events lead to her getting split from Luna and merging with the Butcher.
- My Little Planeswalker: Sunset the Exiled is the embodied personification of Sunset's repressed rage and egotism.
- With this Ring... (Green Lantern): In the past, Carol Ferris had developed a split personality called the Predator, spawned from her darkest traits, which had been given physical shape by her gem and later merged back with Carol. As fighting Katma Tui, Carol manages to throw it out and destroy it.
Part of her seemed to be spinning away, like ectoplasm emerging from a medium's flesh. Her original mass wasn't visibly affected, but another self was being brought forth. It was vaguely coalescing, dummying up into a homuncular shape.
And it was the most horrible thing Hal Jordan had ever seen, but he knew it had to run its course.
It took all his strength to hold Carol back, for her physical self was being drawn to the power-burst. More than that, it took the might of two power rings and her star sapphire gem to keep them apart. The Zamaron guards below watched in terrible fascination at what was happening to their queen, and wondered if they should shoot the Lanterns down, or if the aliens were trying to save her.
And then the only connection between the meta-being and Star Sapphire was a thin silvery thread, which broke like a severed umbilical. It retracted quickly into the main mass of itself, which hardened, coalesced, and defined itself into a humanoid being. One which cupped its hands beneath the purple and green ball of fire. One which was all too familiar to Hal Jordan.
"The Predator," he said, softly. - A Diplomatic Visit: In the fourth story, The Diplomat's Life, as in canon, Twilight and co. manage to free Stygian from within the Pony of Shadows. Unlike canon, Rabia has gained enough power to remain a serious and independent threat afterward (though he also has to absorb the Umbrum Forces as a result), and it takes further effort to finish them off for good.
- Naru-Hina Chronicles:
- Due to the messing of Seireiko's ritual, all of the hatred and anger inside Sasuke got stuck inside a clone of him.
- Seireiko weaponizes this trope with his Dark Soul Shadow Clone. It creates a clone of an individual that only has their negative traits, and this causes the clone to feel the uncontrollable need to kill the original. Said clones also have Black Eyes of Crazy.
Films — Animated
- Used symbolically in Megamind: The Button of Doom where Megamind is forced to face a giant robot programmed with his former evil personality. He only manages to defeat it when he quits trying to emulate Metro Man and uses his "evil" intellect to take it down, not only making peace with himself but also symbolically "destroying" his former self once and for all.
Films — Live-Action
- In Brazil the main character has Power Fantasy dreams in which he fights monsters that are based on the things he sees in his real-life bureaucratic dystopia, culminating in him facing off against a 10 feet tall Samurai with an armor that aesthetically resembles the circuits and parts of Sam's cumbersome telephone. Upon defeating and unmasking him, however, Sam discovers that the Samurai has his own face. It strongly implies that Sam fears of being part of the very system he resents.
- The Dark Crystal: Played with; each of the urRu/Mystics and Skeksis are literally two equal halves of a whole being. Word of God says that in the past, the urSkeks tried to use the light of the Crystal to purify themselves by burning out the evil in them. Instead of purification, they achieved division because their darker halves were as much a part of their fundamental nature as their lighter halves.
- 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 real.
- 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!
- The robed figure Faust in Ghoulies IV turns out to be the incarnation of evil that the main character from the first Ghoulies film cast aside when left the occult, who now needs to replace him in order to continue existing.
- In Gremlins, Gizmo is an adorable little Mogwai who gives birth to others of his kind when he gets wet... one of which has a white stripe of fur and really hates him. The aptly-named Stripe later mutates into a Gremlin when he eats after midnight and becomes the first movie's Big Bad.
- Hellraiser:
- Pinhead Unbound in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth. After Captain Spencer rediscovered his humanity in the last film, his evil proved so strong that he was split up into his good human spirit and the Cenobite Pinhead, now pure evil.
- In the Twist Ending of Hellraiser: Inferno, it turns out that the Engineer is a representation of the darker side of Joseph's personality, a remorseless hedonist.
- However, many questions raised in Inferno are left unanswered, and it is heavily implied that everything that happens in the movie (except for the beginning and the epilogue) might (not) have been just a dream, which would mean that most of the murders have never happened and the Engineer is just a metaphor created by Pinhead as part of the dream. However, this interpretation (and most others), fail to explain who and how committed the murders which ocurred before Joseph activated the Lament configuration. Indeed, most of the revelations and pot twists in the movie's conclusion are a case of a Voodoo Shark.
- Nutty Professor II: The Klumps: Buddy Love is excised from Sherman Klump's body when the latter decides he finally wants to be rid of him, whereas in the previous film he was simply an evil Split Personality. However, this turns out to have negative side effects since neither can survive without the other and Sherman starts to rapidly lose his intellect.
- Subverted in Scott Pilgrim vs. 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.
- 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.
Literature
- Earthsea: This is the premise for most of A Wizard of Earthsea. As a new apprentice, Ged fools around with his first master's books when his master is absent, and sees what is later termed "a shadow of a shadow". After attending wizard school and some other events happen, the shadow manifests, Ged's darker side that constantly pursues him and tries to take him over. Ged finally leads it to an uninhabited stretch of land to fight it; defeating it includes accepting that dark emotions and the desire for power are part of him, to be controlled, but never expelled. Weirdly, the land they were fighting on disappears after Ged gets back on the boat.
- The Yamiko in Sailor Nothing (also The Heartless).
- Hunger from 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 Spock Must Die!. It's caused by — yes, you guessed it, a Teleporter Accident.
- The protagonist of The Dark Half, 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.
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: 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 its 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.
- Animorphs:
- In The Separation, Rachel has a Literal Split Personality episode where she's split into two halves, dubbed "Nice Rachel" and "Mean Rachel." Mean Rachel is widely regarded as the "enemy" of the "Enemy Without." Subverted when, eventually, Rachel (along with everyone else) realizes that both halves are needed. Played straight because, for the rest of the series, Rachel recognizes that darker part of herself, and does not like it.
- In book 12, Rachel acquires a crocodile morph. She turns out to be "allergic" to it, and eventually expels the DNA from her system which turns into a fully grown crocodile. Which is a problem.
- An odd example is in Ex-Heroes. The hero known as Cairax is really a demon, and when he returns in the third book, the human who had merged with him splits apart, and acts to destroy him.
- "William Wilson" has an interesting twist on this idea. The narrator is a complete Jerkass, and the story describes his torment as his schemes are frequently thwarted by another person identical to him, even down to having the same name. It turns out that this second character is the personification of his conscience, whom he murders at the end of the story.
- Oddly Enough: In "The Japanese Mirror", the protagonist finds a strange mirror which absorbs his anger. At first, he sees nothing wrong with this as it seems to fix his anger issues. But as he becomes thinner and thinner, he finds out that a darker copy of him is lurking in the mirror, feeding off his anger and waiting to take over his body.
- In the Galactic Milieu Trilogy (Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask, Magnificat), a principal adversary is an immaterial being called Fury that turns out to be a subconscious manifestation of a major character.
Live-Action TV
- In 7 Days (1998), 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 using Now Do It Again, Backwards to invert this trope.
- The Angel episode "Orpheus" 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.
- The trope is used in the third season Charmed (1998) episode "Just Harried", in which Prue's constant suppression of her emotions leads to her id taking over her astral self and breaking away from her 'real' body.
- 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. Another theory is that being human, he had the ruthless pragmatism of humans instead of the Doctor's idealism. It can still come across as a bit bizarre that the Tenth Doctor treats him like a monster for destroying the Daleks even though they had nearly destroyed the Universe, and in fact, the whole multiverse, and the other option looked like just leaving them round to cause even more death and misery.
- "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.
- Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Later in the series, it's revealed that Parado is Emu's Bugster, who thanks to an operation that took place six years ago, was taken out of his host body and managed to exist without having to kill his host, unlike his fellow Bugsters. After the event of episode 40, Parado does a Heel–Face Turn and joins Emu's side permanently to defeat Masamune.
- In Misfits, due to the Storm, Rudy gained the ability to split into an Extroverted and Introverted version of himself. Subverted in that aside from constantly arguing, neither one of them is actually evil. Played straight by the third version, who was such a complete psychopath, the other two conspired to put him in prison.
- In the finale of Season 5 of Once Upon a Time, Dr Jekyll creates a potion that separates him from Mr Hyde; it is later used by Regina to separate the Evil Queen. Regina thinks she killed the Queen immediately after the seperation but was wrong, presumably setting up the Big Bad of Season 6.
- The Outer Limits (1995): In the episode "Monster", 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.
- In Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, Messogog is an alternate persona of Anton Mercer he accidentally created in an experiment. Throughout the majority of the series, the two of them swap back and forth for control of their body. After their secret is inadvertently exposed to the rangers, Messogog decides he's had enough and uses a special potion to separate himself from Anton, allowing him to be active full time. Unfortunately for Messogog, with Anton safely separated from him, the rangers were now free to fight with everything they had without worrying about harming Anton.
- 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).
- The Secret World of Alex Mack has Alex accidentally come into contact with a compound called "GC Divide" which splits her puddle form into two people with distinct personalities, one being the regular Alex, and the other being her repressed bad-girl side that tries to eliminate her good half on two separate occasions, as well as just being unpleasant to everyone around her.
- In Smallville, Black Kryptonite can separate the personalities of a single being into two separate beings.
- In "Crusade", Clark uses the Black Kryptonite to separate himself from his Brainwashed persona Kal-El and destroy him.
- In "Onyx", an experiment with Black Kryptonite goes wrong and results in Alexander, Lex's evil side, being separated from him.
- In "Doomsday", this happens with Davis Bloom when Chloe uses Black Kryptonite to separate Davis from Doomsday.
- Despite its name, the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Enemy Within" makes Kirk into a Literal Split Personality, not an Enemy Without or even an Enemy Within as per the title.
- 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.note
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.
- The titular hero of Ultraman Ginga has one in the form of the show's Big Bad Dark Lugiel. The two were originally a singular being from the future whose contradicting preference over life forms had caused the split. Lugiel believes that to end suffering, all lifeforms must be paused to obtain peace but Ginga believes that overcoming sadness is what makes them stronger. At the final episode of Ultraman Ginga S, even Ginga admits that each time he grows strong, same thing will be applied to Lugiel, indicating that they will always be connected even if the latter had already died.
- The Wizards of Waverly Place reunion special "The Wizards Return: Alex vs. Alex" has Alex casting a spell on herself to get rid of her bad qualities, which manifest into an evil reflection in a mirror that escapes and becomes one of the villains of the special. When her Implacable Woman tendencies prove her to be impossible to get rid of through magic alone, Alex draws her back into her body by voluntarily renouncing her powers.
Tabletop Games
- In Exalted, the Ebon Dragon Charm called Black Mirror Shintai allows the user to 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.
- And in Fading Suns, this is what happens if a psychic behaves very badly.
- 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.
- Leviathan: The Tempest: While an Ahab is technically a seperate person from the Leviathan he hunts, he draws his power from the Leviathan's own self-loathing. This enables him to automatically bypass certain of his Leviathan's defenses, but it also means that the instant the Leviathan dies the Ahab loses all his powers.
- 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.
- There is a D&D item called the mirror of opposition. It's basically a magical trap: if you look in the mirror, it will create an Enemy Without of your own level and carrying similar equipment, but with an alignment opposing yours. Since characters of directly opposed alignment have very different morals and worldviews, they will likely initiate combat right away.
Toys
- Vezon is this for Vezok in BIONICLE, who was created out of the latter when he was hit by the Spear of Fusion (it turns out it could do the reverse of its namesake as well). 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.
- The original story plans (that were ignored by Cathy Hapka when she wrote Tale of the Toa, though later Retconned into canon by the BIONICLE Encyclopedia) for the defeat of the Shadow Toa was essentially this trope in reverse. The only way the Toa Mata could defeat the Shadow Toa was by accepting the Shadow Toa as manifestations of their own inner darkness, and thereby absorbing the Shadow Toa into their bodies.
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. This contradicts parts of the plot in Ultima VII and 8 and in Ultima Underworld 2. It also makes a complete mash of a better game, Ultima IV, which is about becoming the moral exemplar, and unleashing a monstrosity who then ruins entire worlds defeats the point.
- Final Fantasy:
- 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 (as the American version is based on the "Easy Type" version), 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 PlayStation and Game Boy Advance ports are identical to the original version Japanese and the attack exists in both.
- A similar thing happens in the sequel Final Fantasy IV: 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.
- Llednar in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is actually Mewt's form of concentrated power and hatred that is 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.
- In Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning's attempt to seal away her own weaknesses is revealed to have manifested as Lumina.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- An important character in the level 50 Dark Knight quest has this trope and you have to beat it down before it does any more damage. The character in question is Fray who is you. Your own inner darkness yearns to be free of control and servitude, after becoming sick and tired of always playing the hero and getting nothing in return for their heroics and reached a boiling point after Before the Fall. Fray initially manifests by possessing the corpse of another recently-killed Dark Knight, but because you keep denying your desires in the name of helping people who even your character implicitly believes don't do much to deserve it, it manifests itself as a copy of yourself and attacks you to assert dominance. Once it's defeated, it stops trying to overtake you and will only emerge if you ever need them, such as for the level 70 quest when another enemy without - this one representing your sorrow over how many lives you've taken - tries to pull the same gambit.
- The Pandaemonium raid series features this trope for one of its main villains. In the past, Lahabrea was "infected" with another character's desire to achieve godhood at any cost. He tore out part of his own soul to stop this desire from consuming him, but the discarded soul fragment eventually gained a body for itself and started calling itself by Lahabrea's old name, Hephaistos. The fragment would then try to fulfill that desire by merging people with monsters to create demigods called hemitheos.
- Get in the Car, Loser!: The boss of Act III is Deadname, a representation of Sam's doubts about her transitioning. This boss has a physical presence, as shown by how it can hurt the party and be perceived by people other than Sam. In the second DLC, the Sam from the alternate universe looks just like Sam's doppelganger, and Alt!Sam had to fight his own doppelganger, who looked just like Prime!Sam.
- Omen in Killer Instinct (2013). With a malevolent servant of Gargos known as Omen inside of him, Jago risks transforming into the evil Shadow Jago. Eventually he manages to purge his spirit and expel the demon, but at this point Omen had become so strong he could manifest his very own body. Thus Omen was born. Curiously enough, in Season 3 and the Shadow Lords mode he actually pulls a Heel–Face Turn out of a combination of Humanity Is Infectious and Become a Real Boy.
- 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.
- Birth by Sleep: 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.
- 0.2: Phantom Aqua is Aqua's fears and insecurities given physical form by the Realm of Darkness.
- Space Harrier II with the final boss being Dark Harrier.
- "Dark Mega Man" at the end of Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon. 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.
- Part of the big reveal in Mega Man Zero 3 is that you've been playing as one for the past three games. Sometime after Mega Man X: Command Mission takes place, Zero was suckered by the evil Dr. Weil into being put into stasis, thinking it would remove the last traces of the Maverick Virus from him when in reality it was just the opposite: Weil used a cheap copy of Zero's body to siphon off the good personality created by Dr. Cain after he was captured by Sigma so that the real Zero could become the psychotic killer that Dr. Wily always wanted.
- Happens once in Sam & 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 Living Shadow 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.
- Naufragar: Crimson: Hyo and Kyo originally shared a body and Hyo spends much of the game suppressing Kyo's personality while controlling his body, but after killing Athena and stealing her life energy, Hyo leaves Kyo's body and gains his own.
- 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.
- Persona, given its thematic basis in Jungian psychology, loves this trope:
- Aki (Maggie) and later Pandora in the original Persona are embodiments of the negative aspects of Maki (Mary). Inverted with Mai (Mae), who's an embodiment of Maki's innocence. Unless you're on the Bad Ending, in which case Mai tries to kill you with a Monster Teddy Bear and sends Maki to Limbo.
- 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 Big Bad Nyarlathotep, 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.
- For that matter, Nyarlathotep itself is essentially the collective Enemy Without of the entire human race, and most of the franchise's other Big Bads are literal embodiments of humanity's most negative aspects.
- Persona 3 FES's extended epilogue, "The Answer", 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 (specifically, the part of themselves that they fear/hate and hide from everyone), which are even referred to as Shadows. Denying it instead makes it go into One-Winged Angel mode. This is why entering the TV world is so dangerous, as anybody without a Persona who does so will eventually run into their shadow. Only young children are exempt from this. The main character and the two main culprits are also immune to this, due to having their powers granted to them by the goddess that orchestrated the events of the game.
- Naturally, Star Wars games occasionally indulge in this as a Call-Forward or Call-Back to The Empire Strikes Back.
- In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords at the end of the tomb of the Sith Lord Ludo Kressh on Korriban you fight a vision of a Dark Side copy of yourself wielding a saberstaff and acting as The Dragon to Darth Revan, as a vision of What Could Have Been had you stayed by his side following the Mandalorian Wars.
- In Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Sith Warrior fights a Force-vision Mirror Boss of themselves in their class story on Tatooine. Depending on your current Force alignment, the shadow will taunt you for being either too Light or too Dark. You can bypass the fight by agreeing with it, but you get points for the alignment opposite to yours as a result.
- In the Jedi Temple DLC of The Force Unleashed, Starkiller fights a vision of his Dark Side counterpart from the alternate ending.
- In Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II: Mysteries of the Sith, Luke's wife Mara Jade Skywalker is required to fight a manifestation of her own inner darkness before entering a Sith temple.
- In the original Shadow Hearts, Yuri has to deal with the mysterious Fox Face, who appears if the accumulated "Malice" of slain monsters reaches its peak. 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. .
- 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 SoulCalibur, 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. The fact that Pyramid Head shows up in later games regardless of James's absence is a shining example of The Artifact.
- 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:
- Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has the "understand your dark side" part, which 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.
- Devil May Cry 5 both plays this straight and inverts this with Urizen and V, the demon and human halves of Vergil split from each other through the usage of Yamato. Urizen represents Vergil's drive for power overriding his morality and indeed his original reasons for wanting to be strong and will kill and use anyone to gain more. V represents the compassion, empathy, and sense of humor Vergil buried deep down to prevent them from getting in his way and fights to protect innocents and stop Urizen from causing chaos.
- Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has the "understand your dark side" part, which is lampshaded (and subsequently averted), when a shadowy doppleganger of Dante appears to fight him.
- 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.
- In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Pandora attempts to create one for Pit with the Mirror of Truth, but "Dark Pit" ends up defying this by being stubbornly independent.
- Shantae: Shantae is a half-genie, half-human hybrid with a mild yet ongoing identity crisis. Then the pirate captain Risky Boots comes along and uses a magic lamp to rip out Shantae's genie magic, resulting in a half-human VERSUS half-genie Mirror Boss for the poor heroine.
- In Metal Gear Ac!d, it is revealed that Snake spent several years of his life living as "Hans Davis", a Mad Scientist alter ego who forced children to battle to the death to create a strong child to use as a weapon. Things get worse when he encounters Hans in person, who has an extended conversation with him, identifies himself as Snake's Doppelgänger and claims that 'when someone's Shadow grows too big it can leave the body and walk around on its own. And that is how we're both here'. This is all bunk. The so-called doppelgänger is actually an actor hired to impersonate him as part of a protracted campaign to gaslight Snake into madness.
- The final boss of Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is Shadow Barkley. In the movie Space Jam, which the game is based very loosely around, Barkley's abilities and knowledge were stored in that Basketball along with that of other players. Shadow Barkley emerged as a result of negative energies and Barkley's negative thoughts stored inside the ultimate B-Ball.
- An Optional Boss in Sands of Destruction is Dark Kyrie, a Shadow Archetype of the hero. He's the manifestation of Kyrie's doubts and fears, a side effect of when he grew a soul and became human, then decided to give that up to try and save the world from his serious power incontinence. Apparently the part of himself that he rejected in order to be able to make a Heroic Sacrifice also rejected the idea that suicide would save people and so got himself his own body (and an Infinity +1 Sword).
- Inverted in Hyrule Warriors, where Lana is Cia's goodness that has been expelled and given form.
- This is actually written into the setting background for Diablo; in the setting's Creation Myth, there was originally a single Supreme Being, Anu, which tried to attain true perfection by casting out the parts of its being that represented the concepts of evil. This resulted in Anu becoming a being a pure good, as it had intended, but also caused the evil parts of itself to attain independent life as Tathamet, a seven-headed demonic dragon. The two promptly tore each other apart; the High Heavens coalesced around Anu's spine, whilst Tathamet's corpse become the Burning Hells and its seven heads became the setting's Demon Lords And Arch Devils. Sanctuary, the mortal world, was created when a band of rebellious angels and demons used the Worldstone (the crystalized eye of Anu) to create a hiding place for themselves, whilst humanity came into being as a result of crossbreeding between the renegades.
- The miasmon of Taming Dreams are emotions and internal turmoil given form by miasma, the dregs of the material the gods fashioned the world out of. Pleasant emotions tend to manifest as cute forest critters, while intense emotional turmoil creates giant monsters that tend to be more or less abstract visual representations of said turmoil.
- In Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, the Engineer is a part of the hero's own soul, representing his mad wish to prevent his visions of war and bloodshed in the 20th century.
- According to Word of God, every enemy in The Binding of Isaac is this in one way or another, and some are more obvious than others in that regard, but there are a few specific examples. We have It Lives!, the Palette Swap of Mom's Heart and Isaac's embryo, in the Womb levels. Isaac himself appears as a boss in the Cathedral, and ??? (Blue Baby) in the Chest soon after. In the Blue Womb we have Hush who is Isaac's dying body, and Delirium in the Void which is his mind finally breaking down.
- Inverted in Megadimension Neptunia VII where Uzume Tennouboshi, the friendly-if-brash new CPU Neptune and the others befriend, is what's left of the goodness and conscience of the original Uzume Tennouboshi, which separated from her after she became consumed by hatred and evil and took on the name Kurome Ankokuboshi.
- Celeste has "Badeline", a part of Madeline that gains an existence of their own once she starts climbing the mountain. However, she isn't exactly Madeline's "evil side" — she's more like a representation of her depression and anxieties whose antagonism is a twisted attempt to protect Madeline from harm. Madeline eventually realizes this and the two are able come to an understanding after some additional struggling, working together to conquer the final level. The "Farewell" epilogue goes on to show that she's mellowed out into a proper (albeit still sardonic) voice-of-reason when they end up splitting again.
- Mr. Oshiro also has these in the form of the dust bunnies that manifest in the Celestial Resort Hotel. They're representation of his anxieties. Unlike Madeline, he doesn't even seem to notice them.
- For most of his existence, Evil Ryu was a (mostly) non-canon character in the Street Fighter universe, representing Ryu's "What if?" Enemy Within that could overwhelm him if he desires victory to the point of no longer showing honor or mercy. However, come the fourth season of Street Fighter V's Downloadable Content expansions, Evil Ryu has been given both physical and canon form as "Kage". Kage is described as the manifestation of the Satsui no Hadou, the evil ki that warps Ryu into a bloodthirsty demon (and something Akuma embraces with all his fighting spirit). Because of events in the game's main story that saw Ryu purge himself of the Satsui no Hadou, that discarded side of his being has gained enough strength to become corporeal.
- Meanwhile, Rose, from Street Fighter Alpha is an inversion. She is the good half of M. Bison's soul, personified. This isn't readily apparent (to say the least, they don't look or act alike), although one tell is that they both rely on psychic powers.
- The Servant summoning system in Fate/Grand Order allows the player to summon evil alternate versions of a Heroic Spirit and make them fight alongside or against their original counterparts. Some, like Artoria Alter and EMIYA Alter, represent the original's ideals taken to a logical extreme. Others, like Jeanne d'Arc Alter and Cu Chulainn Alter, are conceptual existences that are more akin to Evil Knockoffs. And then there's the more complicated cases, like Gilles de Rais (one is him as a loyal soldier, the other is him as the serial killer he became), Jekyll & Hyde (there's one instance of the two being separate — and the player is controlling Hyde), Lancer Altria (both are good, but the Alter version is less vulnerable to corruption) and Atalante (both are evil, the Alter version is just less restrained about it).
- At the beginning of the third act of Alone in the Dark 3, Carnby, back from the dead, meets his evil doppleganger. However, because Carnby dislikes violence, the doppleganger itself won't attack unless Carnby attacks (and, hit or miss, trying to attack hurts Carnby). The correct solution is to put down your gun and merge with the doppleganger.
- Inverted in Dragon Quest XI, where it is the good half of the ancient Sorcerer Morcant that emerges from him after he betrayed and murdered Erdwin. The good half would later become a Spirit Advisor for our heroes, calling himself the Seer.
- In AFK Arena, two of the non-playable bosses in the "Twisted Realm" mode have this origin, both starting as Enemies Within the normally-peaceful Wilders. Arden became vulnerable to demonic influence when pondering how much he wanted to not die before his work understanding the mysteries of the forest was finished, but managed to gain enough control of himself to expel his darkness after talking to his apprentice, Nemora, and remembering that she would carry on his legacy after he was gone. Nemora herself wasn’t immune, though; this once-Friend to All Living Things was driven mad by the constant death and blight around her, making her fight to destroy rather than protect. She regained control after seeing Ulmus blossoming after successfully resisting the dark power attacking him, reminding her of her purpose. Now, though, both a dark Arden known as "The Unhinged" and a dark Nemora known as "Demonic Entity" are wreaking havoc on their own...
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land has an inverted example with Elfilin, who is the small amount of compassion originally contained within Fecto Elfilis. He split off from them after 30 years of experimentation in Lab Discovera, causing Elfilis to regress to a larval state: Fecto Forgo.
- AMC Squad has Le Sang, who was originally Sang's evil side after he became a warlock. Sang, however, grew to dislike this evil within him after he engaged in this evil for so long, that he cast it out of his body via a ritual to purge himself of it. This evil side now has a corporeal form and no inhibitions whatsoever, and went and caused chaos wherever he went. And now, he has resurfaced in Egypt, where he tempts the titular Squad to come face him, knowing that they will try to fight him. And Sang is longing to absorb his power after being weakened from the ritual, hoping that he can regain his full self without the evil temptations that come from it...
- In Brutal Orchestra, it's later revealed that Bosch, the oil-demon that acts as Mission Control and guide around Purgatory, is actually Nowak's intrusive thoughts and suicidial impulses, explaining why he acts so aggressive and cruel. When Nowak calls him out on this, Bosch explains that he is suffering as well due to Nowak's actions, describing it akin to a Fate Worse than Death because of the sheer amount of pain he's in. As a twist on this trope, this trope is gradually downplayed when the character involved has a Jerkass Realization, as Bosch calms down and he and Nowak put their differences aside and begin to work together.
Visual Novels
- 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 Superpowered 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 become/create this.
- Umineko: When They Cry:
- 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. She's actually an Anthropomorphic Personification of theories that place Eva as the culprit.
- More broadly speaking, Bernkastel is this for Rika, from its predecessor, Higurashi: When They Cry. 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 Umineko: Golden Fantasia introduces Black Battler, who is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the idea that Battler is the culprit.
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 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 makes 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 Cat Girl.) 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 a projection of the negative parts of her love. Maybe.
- 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.
- Subverted to hilarious effect in Rusty and Co. when Madeline the Paladin gets zapped by an artifact that draws out her evil side, Anti-Madeline — who turns out to be about two inches tall.
- White Dark Life has shadows, the dark half of a neutral soul. The most notable is Dark Matt, the Shadow of one of the main protagonists, while antagonistic he is in secret, very self loathing and envious of the protagonists.
- In El Goonish Shive, Abraham's Dewitchery Diamond "removes" curses by creating a whole new person. The old person now no longer has the curse, while the new person is the physical embodiment of it. Having created it in a Gone Horribly Wrong attempt to cure his friend of lycanthropy, assumed that the diamond would only be used on (and therefore create physical embodiments of) actually dangerous curses, which fall under this trope. Accordingly, he vows to destroy all "abominations" so created. However, when Elliot uses it to "cure" a Gender Bender, the result is Ellen, an innocent Opposite-Sex Clone, who (despite a brief attempt) is just plain not evil.
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 canon that Insano is part of a split personality Spoony has, which makes no sense in context of every other appearance Insano made.
- Here is one possible explanation.
- To Boldly Flee explains it as the effect of a reality-distorting Plot Hole.
- Here is one possible explanation.
- Atop the Fourth Wall has a peculiar variation. Linkara goes on a quest of sorts, and leaves behind a Star Trek-esque hologram with his personality. At the end of his journey, Linkara discovers that he had been slowly becoming evil; that is to say, he'd become aggressive, arrogant, uncaring, and using force to achieve self centred goals. On the way back home, he resolves to better himself and be a good person. The hologram, however, has no such character development, and while fairly affable in most conversation, he threatens the lives of Linkara's friends, and devises a plan to blackmail Marvel into writing better comics. Naturally, when Linkara gets home, he deals with the thuggish version of himself face to face.
- 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.
- Inverted in the case of Markiplier. During his playthrough of Markipliers Adventure 2, he revealed that the Nurse in his Surgeon Simulator 2013 videos was, in fact, a product of the Doctors diseased mind. However, in the game, she's an actual character.
- In Jeff Compass, Garnold states that he is this to Mr. Shovelware, but this may be a result of Mr. Shovelware's Sanity Slippage.
Western Animation
- In Jackie Chan Adventures, this happens a few times with the Tiger Talisman (namely to Jackie), which can split a person's yin and yang sides into separate beings that act independently until they are fused together again. Notable, however, in that Jackie's dark side, while rude and prone to violence, is NOT evil, just incomplete without his light half, and is more interested in what he thinks is "cool".
- 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.
- 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.
- Unfortunately, Mad Jack returns when Jack succumbs to his rage after Aku destroys every single time portal in existence, resulting in him killing innocent creatures possessed by Aku and him losing the sword. Later on, Jack has to confront him one last time and let go of his hate after realizing it, as well as Mad Jack, was the reason he went down a path that almost destroyed him.
- 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. This is all a comedic rehash of an episode of the original Star Trek 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, released by an encounter with a probably damaged Asbsorbacron, originally invented on Thanagar to keep ships' logs.
- 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 Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Yoda himself goes through this at the behest of Qui-Gon Jinn which allows him to properly guide Luke through it when the time comes.
- In an alternate Bad Future of Danny Phantom, after Danny's family and friends are killed in an explosion, he 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 half. This doesn't turn out so well; Ghost Danny instantly turns malevolent, grabs the Ghost Gauntlets, and rips out Vlad's ghost half. Then he merges with it, resulting in a Carnage-like mixture of Vlad Plasmius and Danny Phantom known as Dark Danny. Dark Danny then kills Human Danny and blows up Vlad's entire mansion, then spends the next ten years turning the planet into a living nightmare. He also goes back in time and attempts to cause the explosion that killed Danny's friends and family in the first place, thus ensuring his own creation. And this is a kid's cartoon. This, of course, fails, and he ends up erased from existence.
- Teen Titans (2003): 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.
- The Legend of Korra has Dark Avatar Korra, a manifestation of Korra in the Avatar State during her battle with Zaheer.
- SheZow has SheZap, the unintended product of Guy throwing a discarded fingernail into a nuclear waste vat. Described as his dark side, he's the same as Guy except his outfit is black and green, his voice is higher to exemplify his instability, his version of Guy's Laser Blade is a curling iron that doubles as a Hot Blade, his skin has a Sickly Green Glow, and his motivation appears to be For the Evulz.
- Played with in Gargoyles—Coldstone is a gargoyle zombie robot who actually has three souls Sharing a Body; one of them is evil. In their last cartoon appearance, Puck and Alexander arrange for them to have three separate bodies, and the two good ones leave on a quest to finally take down the evil one.
- The Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "Angry Nasty People" has zombie director Benton Tarantella use a special camera of his to create a projection and embodiment of all of Eustace's cruelty called Mr. Nasty, a literal negative copy. Given the source that he came from, he doesn't look much different and is just as abusive to Courage as normal Eustace is, but the difference can gradually be seen by how meaner than him he acts towards Muriel as well. Unlike full examples, Eustace is too preoccupied with the money that Mr. Nasty brings him to care about his evil side's insults towards his wife and him as well.
