Click to viewBeing evil is supposed to make you smarter, but it doesn't always work out that way. In science fiction, evil twins are often more idiotic than their good counterparts. Just check out our list!
Gordon Tracy from Dick Tracy. In the radio serial, Dick Tracy's brother Gordon has an equally square jaw (I think), but isn't quite as smart as the Dickster. A supervillain who goes by the names The Spider and The Lame One (Really - worst supervillain name ever!) captures Gordon Tracy and does brain surgery on him to make him EEVIL. (The "Lame One" also uses a sound weapon to destroy San Francisco's bay bridge, and steals a superspeed airplane, according to Wikipedia.) Anyway, the brain surgery may turn Gordon Tracy ebil, but it doesn't make him a match for Dick. Probably because now he's evil and brain-damaged. Oh well.
Superman has a million evil duplicates, to the point where you wonder what's his deal. Luckily, they're all lacking in the super-intelligence aspect of his Kryptonian rockstarness, especially Ultraman, the evil alternate universe version whose name sounds like he's the spokesman for a dish-washing liquid. And who keeps coming to our universe despite some bizarre rule that says he can only win in his own universe. And then there's Superboy Prime, who's just kind of a nutbar. Really, the smartest quasi-evil Superman duplicate is Bizarro, who can at least master the incredibly complex grammar involved in saying everything in reverse — except for the things that make it possible to understand what he's saying.
Star Trek is full of slightly addled evil dupes as well, including bearded Spock, who's first a pawn in an evil alternate universe, and then lets Kirk talk him into betraying all the evil fascist principles he stands for. The real Spock would never have let Kirk talk him out of supporting the Empire with one of those five-minute Kirk rants. And then there's Transporter Kirk, who wears too much eyeliner, macks on his Yeoman and wears the wrong uniform shirt. The worst, though, is probably Data's evil twin Lore — can anybody explain to me his evil scheme involving a Borg alliance and giving Data fingernail-enabled emotions? Anyone? (I think fingernail emotions probably feel sort of chalky.)
Knight Rider: Not only did KITT have a rival with a somewhat slower processing speed, KARR, but Michael Knight also had an evil brother, Garth. As far as KARR goes, he's sort of the less-streetwise prototype of KITT, who often drives into situations his tires aren't fortified for. Garth, meanwhile, is Michael's twin, also played by David Hasselhoff. Only Garth drives a truck... named Goliath. I love how even the KR fan site admits that Hasselhoff may have given in to overacting slightly when playing Garth. Here's Garth meeting his sad end. ("So cold and so ruthless! You remind me of my mother!" "You're hungry for my touch... just because I look like HIM!")
The One features an evil version of Jet Li from an alternate universe, who's killing all of the other versions of himself so he can become god, or something. If I had the power to jump into alternate universes, I'd probably be too busy tracking down Firefly season three DVDs and then selling them on eBay.
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, in most versions at least, shows people being replaced with alien "pod people" duplicates, whose prozac-addled demeanor gives them away.
UFO: In this series by Gerry Anderson (Space: 1999), Commander Straker and Col. Foster run into duplicates of themselves hiding out in a secret undersea base. Unfortunately, the alien duplicates can't quite copy human speech, so they just play taperecordings of the real Straker and Foster when they need to fool people.
Blork's Evil Twin. In this sequel to the classic children's book Space Brat, the space-brat Blork has mended his ways... until he creates an evil duplicate of himself named Krolb that does the opposite of whatever he does. And for some reason Krolb wants to shrink their home planet of Splat using a shrink ray. Why? Don't ask for logic from a person named Krolb. Just... don't.
Futurama features a duplicate of Bender named Flexo, complete with the required goatee... but it turns out Bender's actually the evil one. And you know that Bender is pretty brain-damaged from all his wild robo-carousing.
Godzilla has at least two evil duplicates, Space Godzilla and Mechagodzilla. But neither of them can dance as well as Godzilla can.
Darkwing Duck has an evil duplicate from an alternate universe, Negaduck — he's just as skilled and smart as Darkwing, but with a chainsaw instead of friends. Actually, not such a bad trade-off.
Dark Samus sprouts out of the DNA of the real Samus, in the Metroid Prime video game. Called "the Dark Hunter," she's almost a match for the real Samus, except that she's overconfident. Plus she keeps destabilizing and losing her physical form. (I have days like that too.)
Inspector Gadget has an evil twin named Robo-Gadget, whose hands are replaced with machine guns in the movie version. Built by Dr. Claw, he's probably only about as smart as his creator. Plus he only has a handful of gadgets built in, as opposed to the dozens with the Inspector wields.
The Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror VII includes an evil twin of Bart named Hugo, who lives in the attic wants to reattach himself to Bart. As in so many of these evil twin stories, though, it turns out Hugo is actually the good twin, and they switch places. (And since Bart's really the evil twin, it's pretty safe to say the evil twin is the dumber one. Just think of all the self-inflicted brain damage.)
The Flash has Professor Zoom, aka the Reverse Flash, who isn't exactly a duplicate of Barry Allen, he's just an evil counterpart in a color-reversed costume.
The X-Men have tons of counterparts, including the Beast's evil twin Dark Beast, plus a ton of Skrull dupes. Professor X has an evil twin named Cassandra, who actually comes pretty close to wiping out the mutants but underestimates poor old Cyclops. (Everybody always undestimates Cyclops, probably because they've seen X-Men 3.) As for Dark Beast, he's just not as brilliant as Hank. There's no way.
Bill And Ted meet Evil Robot Bill And Ted in Bill And Ted's Bogus Journey. They've been sent back in time from the future to take Bill and Ted's places in the Wild Stallynz. Actually, they probably are smarter than the original Bill and Ted, come to think of it. Scratch them from the list.
Miles Vorkosigan has a clone named Mark, who starts out being designed to kill and replace Miles by terrorists, but ends up not really being evil. In Mirror Dance, he even becomes a sympathetic (if flawed) character who wants to free other clones from non-consensual brain transplants.
Wonder Woman meets an evil alternate version of herself, from another universe, who's seen how lame Wondy's relationship with Steve Trevor is, and decides to come take Steve for herself. (Why??) For some reason, this leads to a contest of wills in the evil alternate universe, where Wondy gets de-aged to her pre-pubescent self.
Lois And Clark featured an evil clone of Lois, who tries to take her place, and does a good enough job that Clark marries her. She only gets caught out because Clark notices she's behaving strangely. There's also a clone of Clark named "Vatman." And a frog-clone that takes the place of the president. And Smallville featured Bizarro Clark, who's weakened by direct sunlight.
Stargate: SG-1 featured a replicator version of Colonel Carter. She turns out to be pretty unreliable, though, betraying her fellow Replicators when they attack the humans. Later she becomes the leader of the Replicators, but the real Carter gets to an anti-Replicator superweapon before she does, making all the Replicators disassemble.
Third Rock From The Sun tried to replace our beloved supreme commander, Dick, with Evil Dick, who may have been as good-looking as Original Dick, but isn't quite as good in bed, or as inspiring a leader.He decides to call all three of his underlings "Tommy," and has some very original ideas about courtship.
Doctor Who features many evil twins, including the cactus-faced Meglos, who duplicates Tom Baker's Doctor but utterly fails to carry off the burgundy-great-coat look with the proper panache. And the eye-patch wearing, mustache-clad Brigade Leader, an alternate-universe version of the Brigadier who just isn't quite as resourceful when faced with a monster rampage.
The Bionic Woman, Jaime Sommers, has a duplicate named Lisa Galloway, who actually just has plastic surgery to make her look like Jaime. But she's not even bionic, she just does a lot of drugs that make her able to jump high. Or maybe the drugs just make her feel like she's jumping really high. That seems very plausible.
Additional research by Katharine Duckett.