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Sitcom Arch-Nemesis

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Sitcom Arch-Nemesis (trope)

Yamcha: Look, I don't have your mutually-sustained hate-boner for [Vegeta], OK?
Tien: I don't have a "hate-boner" for him.
Yamcha: Dude, it's a pretty hateful boner.

The Sitcom Arch-Nemesis is an alternative to the traditional Arch-Enemy, generally Played for Laughs. They usually are not dangerous or evil, but instead are defined primarily by how they just rub a more prominent character from the show entirely the wrong way, and the two will never miss an opportunity to have at each other with Volleying Insults or small-minded pranks. It's possible they are The Friend Nobody Likes, but it's just as possible they are a straight-up Nice Guy who acts as a foil to the character who despises them. Either way, they inspire rage upon even hearing their name, essentially being their "favorite enemy" in a sense. Often, the two are kindred spirits and don't realize it; these rivals are much more likely to have an Enemy Mine plot than dramatic rivals. Since generally there isn't much at stake in that rivalry, it will usually revolve around insignificant, everyday matters, filled with comedic moments. Also given the humor inherent in the relationship, any interaction between such rivals works better with bickering and petty insults rather than any legitimately hurtful remarks and the emotions behind it are funnier if they remain not all-too-serious wrath and do not sour into outright hate. Alternatively, the rival may turn out to be a Romantic False Lead for the primary love interest, and the Love Triangle is the core source of their rivalry.

The Sitcom Arch-Nemesis is usually just a recurring character, because if they were part of the main cast then the constant fighting would take over the show. Indeed, often they are oblivious to this rivalry or never seen in person, further defining them entirely by how the other character views them.

Note that these aren't necessarily unique to sitcoms, and other stories – including more comedic action stories – can have a character who fills this role, sometimes even if there is a character who fulfils the role of an actual Arch-Enemy. In the more lighthearted action shows, particularly in certain cartoons and kid shows, sometimes the actual Arch-Enemy will act like a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis when the story or comedy demands it, alternating between attempting to Take Over the World one day, trying to wreck the hero's birthday party the next, and maybe even Go-Karting with Bowser in-between.

Compare with The Rival and Vitriolic Best Buds. Often used with Comically Lopsided Rivalry.


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Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Watanuki from ×××HOLiC hates Doumeki for no adequately explained reason, simply stating that he's thought of Doumeki as annoying from the moment he laid eyes on him. Unfortunately for Watanuki, Doumeki is also a living spirit repellent, while the whole plot of the manga was set in motion because of the fact Watanuki's very blood attracts spirits, so he's often forced into Teeth-Clenched Teamwork with Doumeki. Further complicating matters, several people in universe seem to ship him with Doumeki, including his boss and the girl he likes, and it's implied that Doumeki is not adverse to the idea.
  • Asteroid in Love has an one-sided case. Yuu generally sees Mira with quite a bit of disdain, pulling no punches in her view that the latter's big-hearted nature is the undoing of the Earth Science Club, to the point that in Chapter 50, she's the only person who thinks the more seriously-minded Ao is more suitable for the club's presidency than Mira is, all despite Ao is a Shy Blue-Haired Girl. On the other hand, Mira is nice enough to not care.
  • Bosco Adventure (1986): Hoodman and Damia hate each other because they're constantly competing to impress Scorpion and become his Top Dragon. Hoodman was there first, but Scorpion tends to favour Damia because she shows more promise. Cue the two constantly sabotaging each other whenever they get the chance.
  • In Boarding School Juliet, the countries of Towa and the West have this relationship. There's a bit of genuine racism fueling it, but mostly it's that they need an outlet for their Proud Warrior Race instincts. This is why the brawls at Dahlia Academy adhere to rigidly defined moral standards.
  • Syaoran Li and Touya from Cardcaptor Sakura, pictured above. Their first encounter was at a time when Syaoran didn't like Sakura and tried to assault her over the Clow Cards she had, prompting Touya to protect her. Not exactly the best first impression on Syaoran's part. Even when Syaoran begins to cool down, he and Touya show hostility towards one another every time they're in each other's presence, so you can only guess what happens when Syaoran starts developing feelings for Sakura.
  • Kuroko, from A Certain Scientific Railgun, has a very one-sided hatred of Kongo, despite Kongo being nothing but friendly and helpful, if somewhat egotistical. She even expressed annoyance, rather that gratitude, when Kongo uses her aero hand to knock an armored truck into a helicopter pursuing her and her "sissy" Mikoto, It's not really clear why, though.
  • Cowboy Andy from the Cowboy Bebop episode "Cowboy Funk", who is a rival bounty hunter in it for the glory. Spike hates him, and spends more time fighting off Andy than he does actually trying to catch the episode's bounty. Faye and Jet realize that this is because the two men are too similar: Both are impulsive, petty, tend to jump to conclusions and have a penchant for causing wanton collateral damage.
  • Piyoko from Di Gi Charat and the Digi Devil from Panyo Panyo Di Gi Charat really try to be legitimate Big Bads, but being inept villains in humor series whose schemes rarely rise above the level of Poke the Poodle dooms them to be this instead.
  • While he starts out as an Arch-Enemy in Dragon Ball Z, and later views him as a The Rival, by Dragon Ball Super Goku has become something of a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis to Vegeta, with him being obsessed (sometimes to a comical degree) with proving he's better than Goku (not only at fighting, but at anything they happen to be doing). Implying that Goku is better than Vegeta at anything is his Berserk Button.
  • In the various versions of the anime/manga El-Hazard, Jinnai always has this near-psychotic hatred of Makoto, school ace and a Nice Guy to boot, who easily makes friends with anyone, including Jinnai's own sister Nanami. It also doesn't help that Makoto is too nice to notice that he's been beating him in almost every aspect without even trying.
  • Gintama:
    • Gintoki and Hijikata will nearly always end up arguing or even picking a fight with each other whenever they meet. Hijikata's strict personality clashes with Gintoki's lazy one, one is a fan of Shōnen Magazine while the other prefers Shonen Jump, and they like to criticize the other's Trademark Favorite Food. They're occasionally shown to have a form of respect for each other, are in may ways more similar than it seems at first glance, and in one episode they proved to be absurdly good at fighting side by side, but neither of them would ever admit any of this.
    • Hijikata has another one in Okita, 1st Captain of the Shinsengumi, who is very obviously trying to take over Hijikata's vice-commander position, regularly attacks him with a Bazooka, has tried to poison his food on one or two occasions, and generally does anything to unnerve him.
  • Haganai:
    • A rare mutual form can be found in Yozora Mikazuki, a brunette Jerkass extraordinaire, and Sena Kashiwazaki, a ridiculously hot Rich Bitch. Yozora loves heaping verbal, emotional or sometimes physical (by way of a flyswatter) abuse upon Sena until the latter storms off crying; Sena in return loves showing off how rich, beautiful and hot (not to mention huge-breasted) she is compared to Yozora. But at the end of the day, both are still similar, being friendless girls who tend to agree on anything they, ironically, are Comically Missing the Point on.
    • To a lesser extent, Kobato Hasegawa, a 13-year-old Elegant Gothic Lolita, and Maria Takayama, a 10-year-old nun, who engage in outright childish fights over the attention of the former's older brother, Kodaka.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers:
    • France and England, so much that there's a "French-English Quarrel Preserve" and England gets involved in The War of the Austrian Succession just to fight France. It's said that antagonizing each other is the only thing that keeps the two old timers going, and of course, it's Truth in Television.
    • Greece and Turkey, Turkey is the only thing that makes the usually laid-back Greece get riled up at all.
    • Russia and America are this after the Cold War. Though they're no longer enemies, they're still very passive-aggressive towards each other. Despite this, in one of the strips, they have been seen as on friendly terms, post-Cold War.
    • Romania and Hungary. As soon as they're in the vicinity of one another, the atmosphere gets tense, and Death Glares come out. Hungary also names her dogs after him, and locks him out of the Hetalia Hetaween 2013 party.
    • Ladonia treats Sealand as this due to his ambition at taking over leadership of the micronations, but Sealand doesn't reciprocate at all; he likes Ladonia and calls him "interesting."
    • Cuba sees America as this, much to the dismay of America's brother Canada, whom Cuba at times mistakes for America.
  • Hozuki's Coolheadedness: Hozuki and Hakutaku hate each other's guts. Their completely opposed personalities cause them to get along badly, and they can both be rather petty if it allows them to take a jab at the other (which is particularly notable in Hozuki's case as he is otherwise very serious and straight-laced). Pointing out their physical resemblance is a Berserk Button for both of them.
  • In Kekkaishi, Shigemori and Tokiko spend their mornings attacking each other with gardens hoses; it's part of their feud about the 'legitimate heir' of the Kekkaishi founder. Both are rather upset that their grandchildren don't share their grudge.
  • Subverted in A Little Snow Fairy Sugar: Greta considers Saga to be her rival in all things, but Saga, who is uninterested in rivalry, pretends to be completely oblivious to Greta's challenges and boasts.
  • Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! has Chunibyo Sanae Dekomori and ex-Chuunibyou Shinka Nibutani. Not only does Dekomori keep bringing up Shinka's embarrassing past as 'Mori Summer', she refuses to believe Shinka was actually her idol.
  • In My Bride is a Mermaid: Lunar tends to treat Sun this way, though Sun doesn't really reciprocate and simply views Lunar as a friend, a sentiment Lunar constantly lets slip that she shares. Mikawa and Nagasumi's relationship basically oscillates between this trope and The Rival before eventually settling into Vitriolic Best Buds territory.
  • My Hero Academia:
    • Neito Monoma acts this way towards the entirety of Class 1-A. Though he was initially introduced as a much more credible threat, putting up a decent fight against Bakugo's team during the cavalry battle, essentially every single appearance since has consisted of him laughing exaggeratedly at the alleged 'incompetence' of class 1-A before being knocked out by his own class' representative.
    • Kirishima and Tetsutetsu started out this way - with Tetsutetsu's entire existence as a character being a joke about how his ability and personality were essentially the same as Kirishima's, which prevented either of them from standing out at all next to the other - but eventually became friends after Kirishima won their arm-wrestling contest.
  • One Piece:
    • Of the main crew, this is largely what the rivalry between Zoro and Sanji actually amounts to. These two never miss an opportunity to belittle, one-up, or humiliate the other.
    • Buggy sees his relationship with Shanks as this. Shanks, in turn, sees them as Heterosexual Life-Partners. It's best to identify them as Vitriolic Best Buds. In a twist on this trope, this causes Buggy himself to be overestimated by the World Government and his own men, because Shanks is one of the most powerful and feared pirates in the world yet Buggy- who has known Shanks since they were both kids- has absolutely no fear or respect for him at all while Shanks, in turn, always treats Buggy as an old buddy; as such, everyone thinks that Buggy is roughly equal in power to Shanks when in reality Buggy is far, far weaker than him.
  • In Oreimo, Kirino and Kuroneko are these to each other. While they both love anime they like different genres of it, and will often engage in Ham-to-Ham Combat to ridicule each other's favorite shows. Despite this, they genuinely do like each other, and spend a lot of time together after they first meet in episode 2, turning into more of Vitriolic Best Buds.
  • Patlabor: The TV Series: In "Target, Chief Goto", Captain Goto becomes the target of mailed death threats and an escalating series of pranks (from cat dung left in his slippers up to somebody distracting Noa during an op and causing her Labor to get knocked into a house), which turn out to all be caused by a disgruntled ex-Labor mechanic whom he had gotten fired for incompetence. Goto ends up embarrassing the guy so badly he has a Villainous Breakdown and admits it was all his own damn fault.
  • In The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, there's Rita and Maid-chan, who get into little arguments with each other over Ryuunosuke.
  • Pokémon the Series:
    • Jessie, James and Meowth have their rival Team Rocket fraction Butch and Cassidy. Though the latter were largely an Always Someone Better to the trio initially, by their later appearances they're near equally bumbling and prone to childish bickering with the three over who is superior.
    • Ash has his former rival Gary Oak. Although he was an arrogant Jerkass, he was generally respected as a good trainer by everyone else, and their rift was mostly personal, since they were otherwise pretty similar. Gary would often go out of his way to antagonize Ash, most famously with "Gary was here. Ash is a loser," and Ash's own grudge was often Played for Laughs to the other characters. It was eventually revealed that they used to be childhood friends until they got into a fight over a Poke Ball, and they eventually mended their friendship at the Johto conference.
  • Bossun and Tsubaki in Sket Dance will almost always bicker whenever they meet, but also often help each other when in trouble. Might be part of their Sibling Rivalry.
  • Sorcerer Stabber Orphen: Volkan is a troll who always runs afoul of Orphen in various adventures. He's not an actual villain in the series but nonetheless has an antagonistic relationship with the main character and always rubs Orphen the wrong way, with Orphen sometimes taking it out on Volkan in comically violent ways. The two never get along, always butt heads in petty squabbles, and Orphen always considers Volkan a pain in the ass to deal with because Volkan owes him money and never contributes a single thing to help resolve problems or make Orphen's life easier.
  • In Teasing Master Takagi-san, the protagonist Nishikata is constantly teased by his cute classmate (the Takagi-san from the title) and more often than not winds up blushing like mad or is otherwise outsmarted. He tries to get his own back, but whatever plan he comes up with either has a glaring flaw he fails to notice until it's too late, or Takagi-san turns it against him. Takagi-san genuinely likes him, but she just enjoys watching his over-the-top reactions. (Yes, you will probably die of diabetes if you read this manga.)
  • The Evil Organization Florsheim from Tentai Senshi Sunred are the sitcom arch nemesises of Sunred, who finds them all incredibly annoying for constantly picking fights with him. Florsheim, on their side, are Contractually Genre Blind and know that as an Evil Organization they must fight the superhero in order to Take Over the World... But they're really bad at the whole 'being villains' part.
  • Tsukipro The Animation introduces ZIX, rival unit to Growth, who are one of the Idol Genre series' protagonist units. Ryota from Growth and Mitsuru from Zix have this kind of relationship, and other characters even get shocked by the lightning that shoots between them (as in the above Cardcaptor Sakura image). In their past, the two members of Zix were chosen by SunPro over Ryota, Koki, and Kensuke, who then left SunPro and formed their own unit, Growth, under the titular producer, and became far more popular than Zix.
  • In Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun Kalego, the title character's stern teacher, and Opera, the servant at Iruma's house, have this dynamic. Kalego and Opera went to school together, with the latter turning the former into a glorified errand boy. In the present Opera is one of the very few people that Kalego fears, and they know it. Opera will never spare a chance to pick on or troll Kalego, but they are both invested in Iruma's education and the safety of the school. They will put aside their differences to fight together against a larger threat if needed. But as soon as the threat is gone, Opera will be back to needling Kalego.
  • World Trigger: When working in an army full of teenagers with colorful personalities, there is a big chance one will have a few certain types of colleagues they can’t handle.
    • Jin is Hyuse's nemesis because he was the agent who defeated and detained him during Aftokrator’s invasion. Hyuse puts up a petty attitude whenever Jin is ever mentioned, to the point where he's upset when he realizes Jin is not an option to blacklist in their relations survey and refuses to ask Jin for any Border related guidance.
    • Prior to the Expedition Exam, Border gives out a relations survey for agents to fill, which includes naming the agents who they "do not want to bring (work with) on the Expedition Force." Then Border proceeds to use the results to make the agents team up with their dreaded arch-nemesis for the duration of the Expedition Exam.
      • Team 03 has Kageura (B003) snapping at Inukai (B001) for his insincere, teasing personality, and the irritation is amplified by Kageura’s Spider-Sense Side-Effect. It reaches the point where Kageura and Inukai squabble even when the latter is being sincere.
      • Team 07 has Osamu and Katori (B011) mutually not liking each other. Katori belittles Osamu for his Designated Red Shirt status, while Osamu is uncomfortable with Katori for her arrogance, her unpredictable performance, and endless dramatic complaints.
      • Team 08 has Ema (B003) not liking his Captain Ninomiya for personal reasons, mainly over the disappearance of Sniper, Mirai Hatohara. Ema spends most of the exam making passive aggressive comments towards Ninomiya's captaining style while Ninomiya responds with curt indifference.
  • Yotsuba&! has a couple of these relationships:
    • The title character has Yanda, whom she instantly hates with a hatey five-year-old hate, but other characters merely find annoying. It doesn't help that Yanda takes a childish glee in figuratively (and literally) yanking her pigtails.
    • Jumbo almost has this sort of relationship with Miura, of all people. At one point, he flies to Hawaii just to spite her.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: In the 4Kids version, Seto Kaiba's hatred for Katsuya Jonouchi/Joey Wheeler is even more extreme and is often Played for Laughs at Joey's expense.
    Kaiba: "...and anyone who's late for registration will be disqualified. Mokuba, make sure Wheeler's late."note 
  • YuYu Hakusho: Hiei and Kubawara has this relationship. Hiei never missed the opportunity to mock and troll Kubawara.
  • Zatch Bell!'s enemies numbered among them a demon who could brainwash other humans, a giant mindless destruction machine... and a weird-mouthed human girl who delighted in tormenting him. Somehow, that last one was a challenge he never overcame.

    Comic Books 
  • Asterix: Fulliautomatix the blacksmith and Unhygienix the fishmonger are forever at each other's throats and often the cause of the village brawls due to the former making unflattering remarks about the dubious freshness of the latter's fish.
  • Atomic Robo:
    • Stephen Hawking. It apparently originated in them having two opposing theories on black holes, with Stephen Hawking winning out. When Robo was sent on a two-year mission to Mars, Hawking told NASA that Robo had a standby mode he could spend most of his time in, which he doesn't. This resulted in Robo having to spend that entire time awake and aware. He managed to use his time by arranging rocks on Mars' surface to spell out "Stephen Hawking is a bastard", visible from space.
    • More recently, Sir Richard Branson has taken over the role, fitting in as an obnoxious neighbour who is constantly Bothering by the Book about Robo's projects at Tesladyne. The hostility is not helped by Robo constantly having to borrow Branson's stuff to deal with action science crises.
  • Buck Danny: O'Connor, the admiral's pet dog, is this to Sonny Tuckson. Destructive as hell and always causing accidents for Sonny at the worst possible time, and also hazardous to his career as he knows that if anything should happen to O'Connor while he's around, the admiral would hold him personally responsible. (Which is a very realistic possibility, as the dog is also none too bright and very prone to getting itself into trouble).
  • In Franco-Belgian Comics series Clifton, the titular character keeps running into officer Strawberry who delightfully hands him tickets for various traffic violation. There were times where Clifton got back at Strawberry however, like the time where the latter unknowingly handed him tickets while Clifton was driving a diplomat registered vehicle.
  • Deadpool and Squirrel Girl had this kind of relationship when the former hung around the Great Lakes Avengers.
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Donald Duck and his neighbor Jones (essentially a larger Dog Face version of Donald with no relatives other than a rarely-seen mother) are often at each other's throats for petty reasons. Of course, since this is a comic, their rival schemes tend to result in a lot of Amusing Injuries. Donald also has such dynamic with his Born Lucky cousin Gladstone.
  • The Fantastic Four has the Yancy Street gang, a band of jerks who love to play pranks on the Thing and make his life miserable. In classic stories, they also had Walter Collins, the owner of the Baxter Building, who was their landlord and constantly at odds with the team.
  • Gaston Lagaffe has an arch-nemesis, which is Longtarin. He always pranks him, and they both always argues with each other, even Jules, and everybody else hates him.
  • In Hack/Slash, extradimensional talking mutant dog Pooch claims he is constantly tormented by an innocent-looking pug named Goblin. We never see this in action, but from the way Pooch talks about him it's clear that their relationship is one of intense animosity.
  • Monica's Gang: Monic and Jimmy Five's relationship often came down to this. And of course, Monica always wins their squabbles.
  • This was very much Sonic and Knuckles' relationship in the early days of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics); anytime the two were in the vicinity with each other, they would instantly come into blows over virtually nothing. This persisted for years until they eventually mellowed out and became Vitriolic Best Buds (mirroring their relationship in the video games).
  • Spider-Man:
    • J. Jonah Jameson, a local newspaper mogul who is utterly convinced that the web slinger is a menace and uses the press to constantly attack him and accuse him of everything from Engineered Heroics, reckless endangerment, to outright theft and even murder, or otherwise putting the worst possible spin on almost everything Spider-Man does. For his part, Spider-Man retaliates by constantly insulting J.J. to his face and occasionally playing pranks on him or leaving him webbed up in compromising situations, while taking solace in the fact that he's secretly photojournalist Peter Parker and an unaware Jameson is actually paying Spider-Man for his own pictures. This is toned down on Spidey's part as he matures into an adult, however. In fact, the two have buried the hatchet entirely by modern times, with Jameson knowing Peter's secret identity and actively helping him whenever possible.
    • Spider-Man and Human Torch had this dynamic in earlier stories, before becoming Vitriolic Best Buds.
    • When the Spider-Verse Crossover brings together spider-heroes from Marvel's alternate universes, Silk of 616 and Ghost-Spider of 65 come to dislike one another, as almost every characteristic of Silk highlights a contrary one of Ghost-Spider. Ghost-Spider then uses universe hopping technology to attend college classes on 616's Earth, which is often an excuse to keep having Silk and Ghost-Spider squabble.
  • In James Robinson's Starman, Jack Knight has a rival that is the owner of a store specialized in old collector's memorabilia just like Jack's own store. Jack's father, a former superhero, makes the amusing comment that it must be nice having an archenemy that doesn't try to kill you.
  • The Super Buddies had a pair of neighbours building a bar next to their headquarters. One of them was Richard "Dick" Hertz; Sue hated him when she found out that he was once the supervillain Blackguard (who?), who worked for the "1000" in Metropolis (oh, that Blackguard, sure). Oh, and Dick had an associate in the bar, who was once the greatest American hero, or so he says — Guy Gardner. (Humorously, Blackguard was a recurring enemy of Booster's in his early solo career, but neither seems to remember the other.)
  • In the 1970s, The Superman comics had Steve Lombard, a former football player turned sportscaster at WGBS, who was this for his coworker Clark Kent. He was brash, arrogant, and constantly trying to humiliate the "meek" and "clumsy" clark by showing off his own physical prowess, and of course being thwarted every time by Clark's surreptitious use of his powers to turn the tables. Subverted in that Lombard still considered Clark one of his best friends, even if Clark couldn't stand the guy. While he hasn't been as prominent since the 1970s, the character still turns up from time to time in a similar capacity.
  • Tintin: Captain Haddock has Jolyon Wagg (Séraphin Lampion in the original text), an inhumanly persistent insurance salesman. They originally met completely by accident, with Wagg seeking refuge inside Haddock's home when his car (due to one of Professor Calculus' experiments) broke down just outside. He's been the bane of Haddock's existence ever since, appearing at the most inopportune moments and occasionally seriously hampering Haddock and the other heroes' work.
  • Transformers: More than Meets the Eye features Rodimus and Thunderclash; both are captains of starships searching for the Knights Of Cybertron, but Thunderclash is basically ten times better at it (as well as everything else ever). Thus Rodimus is virulently jealous of Thunderclash and tries to undermine him whenever the crew encounters him. Doubles as Unknown Rival, as Thunderclash is clearly oblivious to Rodimus's hatred.
  • Walter Melon: The main character's strained relationship with his much despised neighbor Bitterbug (Lefuneste in the original text) is the basis of many, many gags.

    Fan Works 
  • Black Sky: After being kinda humiliated by Barty's superior knowledge in languages, Squalo considers his very existence as a taunt towards him. There's also the fact he's Varia Quality but will never join the organization, which deprives Squalo from the opportunity to raise his minions' general level of competence. Oh, and Barty just likes to rile him up.
  • The Bugger Anthology: The first video sees the Cybermen engage the Daleks in petty squabbles, leading to the titular "Bitch Fights" where two of the Doctor's most feared and lethal enemies lob insults at each other like snarky kids on a playground.
  • A Certain Droll Hivemind: Misaka-11111 spends a significant amount of time extremely annoyed at Misaka-10901. 11111 is stuck in Academy City during the rainy season, while 10901 is in Hawaii and spends most of her time on a beach drinking pina coladas. Later, 10901 takes over writing the diary while 11111 is in combat, and keeps inserting her own commentary about how annoying 11111 is.
  • The Chaotic Masters: Dojo and Mushu have had a rivalry since the days of the Chaotic Masters' rampages, as a result of being on opposite sides of the conflict, with Dojo taking it to comical extremes seemingly born out of jealousy at Mushu's superior skills.
  • Commissar Ivan to Commissar Steve in A Day in the Life of a Commissar. Basically, whatever Steve has, Commissar Ivan gets a cooler version of it, seemingly just to piss off Steve.
  • Courier Six and Glynda Goodwitch form this dynamic almost immediately after meeting in Dust in the Wind. The two regularly butt heads when interacting due to a rather compounded misunderstanding, that spends multiple chapters only growing worse. Recent chapters have had the two beginning to move past the issue, but animosity is still quite clear between them through Glynda's acerbic attitude and the Courier's snark.
  • Fairy Friends: Jermaine's father hated Mr. Dinkleberg with a burning passion before the Dinklebergs moved away. No reason is ever given for the hatred, with Jermaine noting that Mr. Dinkleberg was only ever cordial and friendly with everybody, including Jermaine's father.
  • In Gravity Falls: Once More, Dipper's new friend Derrick is this to Mabel. Starting with a bad first impression (they bumped into each other, causing Derrick's soda to spill over Mabel's sweater), they have never gotten along, with Mabel seeing him as a bad influence on Dipper and Derrick finding her annoying, leading to them constantly bickering over everything. After four years, Dipper has learned to deal with it by keeping them apart as much as possible, and manages to keep them civil during the summer return to Gravity Falls only by promising them 100 dollars each if they don't start any serious fights.
  • Invasion of Falls: Gaz and Mabel do not get along at all, constantly butting heads and arguing, but occasionally agreeing on other things like disliking other characters' stupidity. Mabel refers to the situation as them being "frenemies", and states that this means that only she gets to insult Gaz.
  • Koi No Yokan (Nitrobot): Wheeljack and Airachnid. He keeps an eye on her, and she slings death threats at him. Apparently, their first meeting involved her webbing him up and threatening to devour him. But the moment Wheeljack started talking, Airachnid lost her appetite.
  • Mauling Snarks: In this Worm fanfic, Jack Slash and Accord can't stand each other for reasons unexplained, but due to a good dose of Adaptational Heroism their antagonism takes form of ridiculous shenanigans rather than anything murderous. For example, in one of their outings, Slaughterhouse Nine send on army of genetically engineered ducks into Accord's territory to mess things up and annoy him. In return, Accord tames those ducks and makes them into a cleanup crew.
  • Metal Gear: Green: Aizawa and Ocelot are this. Aizawa is largely a Sadistic Teacher and a Jerkass to the point where the Ocelot Unit is comprised of students he expelled. In contrast, Ocelot is an HPSC representative (actually working for the MSF) who gives insurmountable advice to the students Aizawa is supposed to train, despite the fact the man is a teacher.
  • Patchwork (FFVII): An Obnoxious Entitled Housewife becomes this for Aerith, constantly taunting her whenever they cross paths, usually about her youth and being a teen mother. When Seph goes off to help Genesis and Angeal, which winds up taking a full year, she makes comments about how he's run off and Aerith should just find another boy toy. Aerith does start sniping back eventually.
  • Something Lost Something Found: Lostbelt Morgan and Artoria (Alter) are this. Morgan hates Artoria as soon as she sees her with almost no justification other than "She's an Artoria" and regularly loses her cool around her despite normally being The Stoic. Her grudge is almost entirely one-sided, as Artoria Alter refuses to even indulge Morgan's various hang-ups with her (like her blade sharing Morgan's name), simply telling her that she's being childish and leaving her to stew in her anger.
  • This Bites!: After Enies Lobby, Sengoku considers Jeremiah Cross as this. Cross regularly exposes the World Government's and the Marines' dirty secrets and encouranges people around the world to think for themselves rather than blindly believe what the WG tells them. During Enies Lobby, Cross finds and narrates to the entire planet CP9's operational black book, causing a massive rise in revolutions, rebellions and general crime sprees. Sengoku has a heart attack in response.
  • In the Total Drama fanfic Total Drama Legacy, Ezekiel is this to Anne Maria. Those who have seen Revenge of the Island will know that Ezekiel was an Abhorrent Admirer to Anne Maria, but even though it's been years since ROTI and Ezekiel is now Happily Married to Izzy, Anne Maria still hates him. Anne hates him so much, in fact, that she writes him a very Strongly Worded Letter filled with profanities, solely out of spite.
  • True Potential: Jiraiya and Rōshi have this dynamic, their hatred from each other being born not out of being ninjas of feuding villages (though there is bad blood from a Noodle Incident during the last war), but out of being dueling writers. Jiraiya's books sell better, but Rōshi argues (not without reason) that this is only due to the porn. Not helping matters is the fact that Jiraiya's godson Naruto genuinely likes Rōshi's books and dislikes Jiraiya's.
  • In The TV Tropes Character Crossover War, one develops between two members of A.R.M.E.D. — James the Conductor and Gordon the Big Blue Engine — both of whom hail from prominent series involving railroading. James sees Gordon as a loud and pompous express engine from a very poorly run railway, so he stuffs him at the back of the Polar Express as cargo when he's forced to let him come along, while Gordon thinks James is just being petty because he's a far better engine than the seemingly non-sentient (and American) 1225, which winds up leaving him vunerable to Hawk Moth's manipulations.
  • In Ultimate Sleepwalker: The New Dreams, Kenny Anderson has an unexplained hatred of John Kricfalusi. He's never said exactly why he hates John K, and his friends decide they're probably better off not knowing.
  • World is Small Behind the Bars: Boingo, after becoming a famous comic book artist, has this with famed mangaka Rohan Kishibe, started when Rohan figured out that Boingo's comics were based on predictions from Tohth he used against the Joestar group, while Boingo would get payback by finding and pointing out that Rohan used his Stand Heaven's Door to gather material for his writing. When talking about an upcoming convention with Hol Horse, Boingo expresses glee at annoying Rohan as much as possible when they meet up.
    • Peculiar Parasitic Phenomenon from the same author expands on the concept, having Rohan and Boingo's rivalry as one of the B-plots. The two are shown rivaling on-screen, arranging a Fan Convention in Morioh simply because they wanted to host a vote between their fans to prove that one of them is better than the other. They both lost to a third party artist and tied for the second place. Their harmless rivalry is also contrasted with Rohan's actual deadly rivalry with Yoma Hashimoto who tries to kill Rohan on several occasions after the mangaka cheated in their treadmill competition and serves as a Knight of Cerebus of the story.
  • Aang and Iroh have a petty rivalry in zuko is a chihuahua (small, angry, down to fight), which is driven by Iroh's envy at the Avatar training his nephew.
  • Strange Potter Dr. Strange and Dumbledore have been rapidly become this, with both coming into altercation with each other.
    • Dumbledore sees Strange as a disrespectful, reckless young upstart that doesn’t respect his wisdom, and the fragility of the government of the Wizarding World and its customs. He’s appalled at the fact that Strange’s magic completely defies what is expected of HP magic. Lastly, he is increasingly frustrated in that Strange has gained Harry’s complete trust, and by extension completely nuked all of his plans regarding the prophecy and Voldemort.
    • Strange, on the other hand, sees Dumbledore as an increasingly out of touch old man, too stuck in his ways, (maintaining the status quo in the wizarding world rather than progressing it), and the belief that he’s always right and has the correct answers. He’s disgusted by the fact that Dumbledore refuses to share vital information, take into account alternatives or the feelings of the people he manipulates. And unlike the headmaster, Strange fully believes in keeping Harry in the loop, and protecting the boy from being literally used and abused.

    Films — Animation 
  • Aladdin (1992, Disney): Razoul the guard has a deep and undying hatred for the titular hero that lasts all of the movies and throughout the animated series. The com aspect of the relationship can seriously vary however since he is much more dangerous than a typical sitcom arch-nemesis and he does genuinely try and kill Aladdin at several points, but he usually has a reason / excuse to do so and (almost) always acts within the bounds of the law and wouldn't dare harm other heroic characters like Jasmine or the Sultan. He has been chasing Aladdin since the latter was a street rat and resents the fact that a petty criminal (who often humiliated him) has been welcomed into the royal family, but mostly he's just doing his job and being a Jerkass about it, whereas most actual villains in the franchise are violent murderers and evil sorcerers. It also helps that he's Dumb Muscle and not really a match for Aladdin at all and even less so the Genie.
  • In Shark Tale, Oscar has Don Lino's Camp Gay dragon, Sykes. Saving the fact that Sykes treats Ernie and Bernie like The Ace.
  • In Turning Red, Tyler is this to Mei. The two frequently bicker and insult each other, and both have conspired against each other on separate occasions with Tyler humiliating Mei at the Daisy Mart and at school and Mei forbidding Tyler from getting pics with her panda form. Following the reveal of Tyler's love for 4*Town, however, the two are shown to be on far better terms.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Avengers: Endgame: Thor's biggest nemesis is "NoobMaster69," a random player who keeps trolling Thor's friends on Fortnite. An ad for X-Box and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier hinted that he was Aaron the salesman at Apple from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
    Thor: NoobMaster, hey. It's Thor again. You know, the God of Thunder? Listen buddy, if you don't log off this game immediately, I am going to fly over to your house, come down into that basement you're hiding in, rip off your arms and shove them up your butt! Oh that's right, yes, go cry to your father, you little weasel!
  • Bruce Almighty: Evan Baxter to Bruce, who is merely a bit of a jerkass to Bruce and "steals" (according to Bruce) a promotion from him as the new main news anchor of the station they work at, despite clearly having earned it. This is enough reason for Bruce to torment him after he gains godlike powers by publically humiliating Evan on live air (and in a Deleted Scene, cause him a massive nasal hemorrhage and set his hair on fire).
  • Wendover is to Captain Spratt in Doctor in Trouble, always popping up to annoy him, embarrass him, or somehow cause irritation to him.
  • Deconstructed in Christmas Evil. Harry's immaturity is in full display thanks to his animosity with Moss Garcia who is in his naughty list. He has no sympathy for Moss even after witnessing the Parental Abuse Moss gets from his mother.
  • Ganbare!! Robocon: Robocon to Shintaro and Hatsue, who hate him for his stupidity and the fact that their children prefer him to them. All of their attempts to get rid of him fail.
  • Harry Potter: Professor Snape becomes this to the trio sometimes, particularly to Ron and Hermione compared to his serious hatred of Harry which often does make their shared scenes heavier. While he has a personal reason to dislike Harry, he has nothing against those two except that they are close to Harry and that they are Gryffindors, therefore making them a target of his bullying. Witness the moment in the fifth film where he slaps Ron's head after he snickers when Umbridge questions his failed bid to become Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, which is Played for Laughs.
  • In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Steve perceives that he has a professional rivalry with Hennessy, but it's pretty obvious that in reality the former is simply bitter that the latter is a more successful oceanographer, the former husband of Steve's ex-wife and kind of a jerk.
  • In Predator, Blain's macho posturing is often mocked by Poncho.
    Blain: "(Chewing tobacco) will make you a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus, just like me!"
    Poncho: (holds out his grenade launcher) "Strap this on your sore ass, Blain!"

Poncho: "You're hit. You're bleeding, man."
Blain: "I ain't got time to bleed."
Poncho: "Oh, okay." (blasts the bad guys with the grenade launcher) You got time to duck?" (debris falls on them and Blain has to hide)
  • Dr Jonas Miller from Twister is a Jerkass Smug Snake who sold out to a big company for fame and fortune and stole the designs for Bill's tracking system with the defence that Bill hadn't got it passed the theory stage. It is also clear in the film that he is mostly just tracking Bill's team and swooping in to steal the credit without knowing how to predict twisters himself. Despite this, he doesn't do anything blatantly illegal and ultimately proves more of a danger to his own team than anyone else.

    Literature 
  • Constance Verity Saves the World:
    • Millie is Tia's other friend and she and Connie have a rivalry over the title of "best-friend." While Millie is nowhere near the level of threat Connie is used to in her life of adventuring, she's still invested enough to imagine the many ways she could take her out physically without actually doing it, instead sticking to the kind of Passive-Aggressive Kombat "normal people" do in such situations.
      ...there was a weird conflict between Connie and Millie. A friendship tug-of-war, a struggle for best-friend status.
    • Two of Connie and Byron's new neighbors in their new apartment building includes the vampire Duke Warlock and Vampire Hunter Baron Solaris, both of whom deliberately avoid each other during the housewarming party.
  • In the Discworld book Snuff, Lord Vetinari appears to have reached this level of 'enmity' with the crossword editor of The Times, whose mastery of obscure linguistics and terrible wordplay is advanced enough to give even him pause.
    • As of Raising Steam she has landed several victories, but the stress of the contest finally gets to her and she resigns.
    • The Venturi and Selachii noble families have an intense rivalry. However, at parties, they are required to be polite to each other, and thus restrain themselves to non-controversial subjects. Such as "You appear to be standing". The actual cause was forgotten generations ago, but it must have been important or else this would be considered silly.
  • Ellen and Otis: Ellen Tebbits and Otis Spofford, to each other. Otis got started antagonizing Ellen because his mother is Ellen's ballet teacher (and he likes to see Ellen get mad), and he's usually (but not always) the instigator.
  • In the Horrible Harry series, Harry and Sidney are always fighting, usually because Sidney does something to annoy Harry and Harry retaliates by playing a gross prank on him. Still, they have their share of friendly moments.
  • Jaine Austen Mysteries: Jaine's father has one in Lydia Pinkus, President of the Tampa Vistas Homeowner's association.
  • In Astrid Lindgren's Karlsson on the Roof, the strict and haughty Miss Bock quickly becomes this to Karlsson. He actually rather likes the woman, it's just that what he likes the most about her is how much fun she is to rile up and insult.
  • In Lord of the Rings, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins serves as this to both Bilbo and Frodo. She wants their home of Bag End and has never forgiven Bilbo for coming back after everyone thought he was dead, nor Frodo for inheriting it when he leaves again, and fruitlessly contests his ownership, harangues both of them about it, and steals small objects when she's let inside. Bilbo's possession of the One Ring was revealed to some other Hobbits (most importantly Merry) because he kept using its invisibility to avoid talking to her.
  • In the first chapter of Lunar Park, Bret (in a semi-fictionalized account of the author's real life) takes several personal shots at Keanu Reeves.
  • Star Wars Legends: Borsk Fel'lya is this to basically every major hero from Return of the Jedi until halfway through the New Jedi Order series (all in all, about twenty years). As infuriating as he can be to deal with, he's not actually an Imperial spy, or a dark side adept, or a wannabe dictator, or an agent of any of the above (well, not intentionally). He's simply a powermongering politician who, while he doesn't put his career ahead of everything else, certainly puts it ahead of more than he should. He's a political rival of Admiral Ackbar whose attempts to discredit his rival sow chaos in the New Republic fleet command at the worst possible time, he interferes in the lives of his fellow Bothans to an intrusively personal degree when he thinks they don't best reflect his image of their people, he fans the flames of every anti-human conspiracy theory on the books, and by the time he's Chief of State, he's happy to indulge the growing anti-Jedi sentiment... leading him to at first ignore the extragalactic invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong as a Jedi hoax, and later on, leave the Jedi homeworld on Yavin 4 totally exposed to a coming attack that he knows about but neither warns them about nor dispatches anyone to protect them from. What's most infuriating to several of the heroes, however, is that when he's finally cornered and facing death at the hands of the invaders, he's still got enough panache to go out with a bang, detonating a personal nuclear device that kills twenty-five thousand enemy warriors along with himself. This accomplishes little or nothing from a military standpoint, but instantly immortalizes him as a hero and martyr for the history textbooks, and erases every bad memory of his long career of backstabbing and obstruction.
  • Ornon and Eugendides in The Queen's Thief series. Ornon can't stand Eugenides, which may have to do with how Ornon lost all his sheep (and much of his wealth with them). Ornon doesn't do anything substantial besides take every opportunity he can to annoy Eugenides. (It's also possible that they're both exaggerating the extent of the antipathy for an audience—but Eugenides still bleats like a lamb or barks like a sheepdog whenever Ornon enters the room.)

    Newspaper Comics 
  • In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin has several:
    • The first is Susie Derkins. It has been suggested that the two might get to like each other if Calvin ever outgrew the belief that Girls Have Cooties. (Of course, he never got past age six in the comics.) One storyline had Calvin create a duplicate of himself with the morality switch set to "good", who (tried to) get along very sweetly with Susie, much to the original Calvin's horror.
    • Another nemesis is Rosalyn the baby-sitter, who is the only person Calvin actually seems to fear.
    • With Moe, things balanced out in a cosmic sort of way. Calvin ran intellectual circles around Moe, but Moe had the raw physical power to make that not really matter that much in the immediate short term.
  • Bucky from Get Fuzzy has Fungo, the ferret that lives next door. It's probably safer to say Bucky is Fungo's Sitcom Arch Nemesis, rather than the other way around. Bucky seems to dislike Fungo (and ferrets in general) on the basis that they're too clever by half, and attempts to wage a campaign of harassment against Fungo; Fungo, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to care much about Bucky at all, outside of subverting Bucky's gambits by being too clever by half.
  • Peanuts
    • Snoopy and the vicious "Cat Next Door". The cat is never seen, but routinely rends Snoopy's house with a single swipe of its claws as a response to his cutting witticisms.
    • Charlie Brown and Lucy could be considered this.
    • Schroeder, well-known for his love of the piano and Beethoven, has this dynamic not with a specific character, but rather with anyone who plays the accordion.

    Music 
  • Many of Eminem's beefs were more like this than serious antagonism.
    • In particular, his beefs with *NSYNC, Britney Spears and the rest of the TRL set were never taken seriously by either party (Britney and NSYNC both claimed that he was lovely to them outside of kayfabe), but he became notorious for doing everything he could to insult them (including murdering effigies on them on stage).
    • His feud with Canibus was also relatively gentle, with both rappers taking cracks at each other for years, but with Canibus readily acknowledging Eminem's great skill and influence on his style, and Eminem responding with playground-level insults to wind him up and encourage him to fight harder, rather than to seriously damage his career.
    • Eminem was not always great at keeping his sitcom beefs non-serious - his beef with his former friends Limp Bizkit started with pranks but led to D12 beating Fred Durst up, and his beef with Moby (intended as this, by Word of God) resulted in a group of people in his Misaimed Fandom assaulting him on the street. His beef with Mariah Carey was probably also intended as satirical, but escalated so disgracefully that various unaffiliated rappers stepped in to tell him to cool it. And as for his beef with Machine Gun Kelly, while Eminem's diss track is goofy in tone and pretty restrained, the track ended up doing serious damage to MGK's reputation and public persona and led to him being better known now as a ridiculous irritant than as a musician.
    • Eminem's running gag of making sick and deliberately poorly researched jokes about Christopher Reeve led to Reeve threatening to beat him up on numerous songs.
  • Lee Ann Womack's song, I'll Think of a Reason Later describes this toward a woman that the singer hasn't even met, but is apparently engaged to a man she likes. She concludes, "She may be an angel who spends all winter/Bringing the homeless blankets and dinner," but "I really hate her/I'll think of a reason later."
  • The Lonely Island have this as a running joke in their "Just 2 Guyz" series of music videos (which also includes "We Like Sportz", "We'll Kill U", and "We Need Love"). The two protagonists, Guy Number One and Guy Number Two, despise their neighbour Steve (played by Andy Samberg), calling him a cunt in each video (except "We Need Love", where they instead accuse his girlfriend of being a slut)—despite him never being seen to do anything malicious to them.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • The first season of GLOW featured plenty of examples of the "dramatic", but it also featured Americana and Spanish Red, who had much in common, in spite of open hostility, and did indeed have Enemy Mine situations.
  • Chris Jericho and Stephanie McMahon had this dynamic for a very long time, to the point that a fan theory is that Jericho was envious that she'd sleep with anyone EXCEPT him.
  • On a promotional level, WWC publicly wished death on IWA Puerto Rico, as did Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling and W*ING on IWA Japan. In private, the companies all helped one another.
  • ECW and the WWE. On screen, they were antagonistic to one another. Off screen, they actually worked together against main rival WCW. This was also true of ECW and SMW, but it lacked a national TV deal so no one remembers it.
  • CM Punk and Delirious had many legitimately bitter feuds in IWA Mid-South. Their feud with each other was not one of them. The wrestling was serious enough for one hour time limit draws, but their personal attitude towards each other was mainly down to who had the best pranks.

    Radio 
  • Cabin Pressure has Douglas and Herc Shipwright. Both smooth voiced expert pilots, they are friends before and in the first episode they meet in the series, but Douglas seems to resent Herc moving in on his territory after this. After this they frequently verbally spar, though Herc doesn't seem overly bothered.
  • Possibly the grandfather of them all, Jack Benny and Fred Allen.
  • Mitch Benn's Crimes Against Music:
    • In the first season, Mitch's arch-nemesis was Richard Stilgoe, especially as Robin Ince mentioned Stilgoe whenever Mitch referred to himself as The BBC's most popular satirical songwriter. They eventually battled it out in the final episode of the season, and became friends.
      Mitch: Looks like I'll need a new arch-nemesis for the next series.
      Richard: Is Bill Bailey ready for this?
    • Mitch Benn's next arch-nemesis was Stephen Fry, King of Twitter, which was a Running Gag in the 2009 series of The Now Show.
  • Alex Jones and Glenn Beck [1] [2]
  • The Kevin and Bean Show on Los Angeles station KROQ had crosstown rival Rick Dees on KIIS. Kevin and Bean often mocked Dees on their show and accused him of pre-taping his show. They occasionally played pranks on him and tried to catch him at home when his show was on the air, pretending to be a live broadcast. This made headlines when Dees filed a lawsuit accusing them of stalking him.
  • Phil Harris, of the radio sitcom The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, had two of these on his show: his brother in law Willy and the grocery boy Julius, who is in love with his wife, Alice.

    Tabletop Games 
  • The two goth groups in Visigoths vs. Mall Goths take their rivalry rather seriously, since what's at stake in their mutual conflict is the most important thing to a 90s teen in LA: the right to hang out at The Mall. While the two sides have an adversarial relationship, all physical conflict merely results in Amusing Injuries and hurt feelings.
  • Trazyn the Infinite and Orikan the Diviner, in Warhammer 40,000. Their relationship is either this or Arch-Nemesis, as their antics range from comically petty pranks and insults, to nightmarishly cruel attempts to murder the other (often with thousands or millions of deaths in collateral damage), or subject them to a Fate Worse than Death. This is on full display in The Infinite and the Divine.

    Video Games 
  • Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Evan and Hotsan don't like each other and, unless there are urgent matters, constantly bicker and try to portray their respective hunter clans superior.
  • In Disco Elysium, the player character has this kind of relationship with Garte, the owner of the hotel. Garte's reasons for hating the protagonist are reasonable (the protagonist, instead of removing the festering dead body outside the hotel whose murder he is supposed to be investigating, got apocalyptically drunk, ran around scaring hotel guests by putting his gun to his head and threatening to kill himself, sexually harassed the bartender so much she quit, trashed his room, then tried to run out on the damages bill) but even considering the circumstances he is extremely rude. Meanwhile, the protagonist loathes him for trying to make him pay for the things he broke, and the player has plenty of options to damn Garte to the heavens, including telling the Moralintern that he's an international criminal in hiding in the hope of getting him executed.
  • In Ensemble Stars!, Tori and Tsukasa treat each other like this: though they're both privileged heirs, Tsukasa comes from a long-standing noble family (which has recently fallen on hard times money-wise), while Tori is the son of a very wealthy toy company CEO (who has no other special lineage). As a result they're constantly bickering over who is the 'real' elite kid and take every opportunity to trade petty insults. However, through Character Development they manage to turn into Vitriolic Best Buds, with Tsukasa eventually realising that he's only hard on Tori because the rest of his family mocks him and he always feels pressured to live up to their expectations of him.
  • Fake Happy End: When Mishka realizes that Karin intentionally didn't mention that the tower is infested with monsters, she pushes a tamed monster towards Karin and the protagonist while they're trapped in goo. Likewise, Karin pushes Mishka into a teleportation tile to scare her. Afterwards, the two try to get one-up on each other for the rest of the game.
  • Raul Tejada the Ghoul and "Best Friend" Tabitha the Schizophrenic Nightkin Super Mutant in Fallout: New Vegas. In the Black Mountain Radio channel, Tabitha is often threatening Raul with execution. However, Raul merely needs to remind her that he has not outlived his usefulness and is the only one who could possibly repair her beloved robot Rhonda (as well as being a useful repairman in general), to her frustration. If the Courier does not complete their quest, the two are still at it for a long time.
  • Mass Effect:
    • In Mass Effect 2, this is the initial relationship between Joker and EDI, leading them to partake in an Escalating War of pranks. Shepard and other characters joke that they really should just admit their Belligerent Sexual Tension already. In the sequel, they do.
    • The Citadel DLC of Mass Effect 3 reveals that Samantha Traynor has one in Polgara T'Suzsa, her rival in the asari version of chess, who is a very unsportsmanlike winner. They each do an Eyed Screen when they see each other.
    • Also in Citadel, Joker has started falling into this with fellow Ace Pilot Steve Cortez. Particularly when they were bickering about how to fly the taxi they were in when they were using it to keep the Normandy from jumping to FTL.
    • In Mass Effect: Andromeda, this is the relationship between the chief engineer Gil Brodie and the pilot Kallo Jath, due to differing styles and Kallo's belief that Gil doesn't respect the work that went into the Tempest's construction. It ends up being Played for Drama once the reasons for their antagonism become clear. On Kallo's end, his Photographic Memory is so strong that he perceives all the work that went into the ship and his friendships with the rest of the construction team as still happening and he's not willing to let those things go. On Gil's end, he points out that the Tempest wasn't built with the Scourge and the kett in mind, and he's honestly afraid that the lives of the crew are going to end up in danger because Kallo's sentimentality keeps them from adapting.
  • Persona 5: Futaba treats Yusuke like her psuedo-nemesis after he rearranged the body parts of her Featherman models to appear more aesthetically pleasing to him, much to her own horror. She constantly ribs on him, and when he makes a mouse pun later in the game (due to them all being temporarily turned into mice in a palace), she is very unamused.
  • Bob Arnold in Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh acts like this to protagonist Curtis Craig (rival employee, seeminglynote  really dislikes each other, does pranks, is fighting over a promotion...). Only problem is, Phantasmagoria is a horror story... so Bob gets killed. Horribly, and in a way that puts suspicion on Curtis.
  • Lian and Melli from Pokémon Legends: Arceus are constantly bickering with each other. It starts when they argue over whether Kleavor or Electrode is better (while the world is in danger), and they continue taking potshots at each other during the Daybreak DLC. Mai even notes that they're having way too much fun with this in the latter case.
  • Since the beginning of the Street Fighter series, Ryu and Ken have always been Best Friends and had a Friendly Rivalry. However, the rivalry dynamic between Luke and Jamie as seen in Street Fighter 6 is anything but and fits this trope instead. Each of their Story Mode campaigns end with them facing off against one another over the same scenario. In each campaign, they became angry after accidently bumping into each other with each thinking the other bumped into him on purpose and neither wanting to apologize. Before, during, and even after their match, they can't help but sling insults at each other without skipping a beat. Naturally, this also goes for their victory quotes against one another:
    Luke: Heh! And that's a win for me. Got anything to say, pretty boy?
    Jamie: Next time ya see me, be sure to put some respect on my name. Got it, meathead?
  • In Dark Prison, this is the relationship between Elma, Selena Recital's Robot Buddy, and Chika, Shu Shirakawa's familiar. In fact, half of the hilarity in Dark Prison is the both of them butting heads at each other.
  • Promotional material for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate portrays this kind of relationship between King K. Rool and Villager, mostly involving the latter stealing the former's crown or food with his 'Pocket' move.
  • Tales of Vesperia has Repede thinking of Estelle this way, despite the fact Estelle truly wishes for him to like her. This repeatedly causes her no end of grief with his constant dismissal of him. Then she gets rather jealous of Judith being okay in his eyes even though they just met.
  • A rather odd variant in Touhou Project with the usually arch-enemies Kaguya and Mokou. While Mokou absolutely hates Kaguya for humiliating her father a long time ago, Kaguya doesn't think seriously of this supposed slight but still kills Mokou just as much as she kills her just because she's bored and finds her frequent fights with Mokou to be entertaining.
  • Trails Series:
  • Tyranny has a darker, but still humorous take on this.
    • Eb and Lantry, though mostly on Eb's part. She hates Lantry because she's a Tidecaster, and he's one of the Sages, a rival school of magic, though one with a well-earned reputation for dishonesty and stealing secrets. She would happily kill him, but for the fact that she would be killed in turn, at best. As it stands, they like to rib each other when they have the chance, though it's certainly not good natured.
    • To a lesser extent, Eb and Barik. They have good reasons for disliking each other, but there's a pretty transparent element of UST between them. It's not big enough of a plot point for anything to come of it other than a few humorous lines of dialogue.

    Visual Novels 
  • Klavier Gavin serves this role in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, which is particularly strange as despite being a Prosecuting Attorney (an antagonistic role from the protagonist's point of view), he's very much a good guy with a friendly disposition towards Apollo, which makes him fall squarely into this trope. This is especially so for non-protagonist detective Ema Skye, who's actually working on the same side as him yet has little but complete disdain for the man. While part of, and the root cause of it is the more serious reason of believing him to be at fault for the disbarment of Phoenix Wright, the way she voices it and the majority of her complaints focus on his "foppish" demeanor contrasting her ideal of a prosecutor and the way some chains he wears happen to reflect sun into her eyes.
  • In Code:Realize, Herlock Sholmes deals a significant blow to Lupin's pride when he interrupts the train job in Chapter 4. Thereafter, Sholmes is the one subject guaranteed to make Lupin lose his cool, even when they're not actually working against one another. Sholmes doesn't help matters by gleefully poking at Lupin whenever the opportunity presents itself; at one point on Lupin's route, Cardia observes that Sholmes seems to bring out the worst in Lupin.
  • of the Devil: The protagonist, Morgan, is one to Detective Reyes, who regards her as arrogant and anti-authority - which she is, but Reyes is the only character in the game with enough of a stick up her ass to have a problem with it. Reyes starts seething at the first reminder of Morgan's existence, and the two of them engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat every time they meet - or at least, Reyes tries to. Being a combination of very tense and very naive means her attempts rarely go well for her.
  • Paper Perjury: Justina has a particular hatred for Fry Noil, the graffiti artist who regularly vandalizes her dad’s store, and is not happy when she has to meet with Fry in the course of her police work.

    Web Animation 
  • Helluva Boss: Moxxie Knolastname and Loona Buckzo drive each other up the wall every chance they get. It's heavily implied Loona started it due to her issues showing affection to those she cares about deep down, but every barb she delivers to Moxxie (mostly about him supposedly being fat despite not looking any thinner or thicker than other imps), Moxxie fires right back. However, they've got each other's backs when the chips are down, and when Moxxie is undergoing a mental health spiral in "GHOSTF*CKERS" over I.M.P.'s finances, Loona is the one making sure he doesn't go too far, and even immediately provides him with coping material to cheer him up when he has a solution to his problems yanked away by a mathematical error.
  • Inverted in Red vs. Blue, as despite the two sides literally being at war, they act in more of a friendly rivalry, and the only one to actually take the war seriously is Sarge.
  • RWBY: Maria, a retired huntress, and Cordovin, the commander of an Atlas military base. Maria has to go through Cordovin's base every few years. Apparently early on Maria brought some outside cashews on the flight, Cordovin put her on the extended screening list for life, and they've been enemies ever since. Because of this feud, the heroes can't get a plane legally, so they have to steal one. When Cordovin finds out and calls them over the radio, Maria starts loudly eating cashews, which she apparently brought just to mess with her.
    Maria: You hear that, Cordo? That's the sound of me not caring! [manic laughter]
  • Fazbear and Friends (ZAMination): Bendy towards Foxy, because he mistook him for Boris, in many shorts, he annoys him by calling him Boris much to his displeasure. Lastly, in later shorts, Bendy's feud with Foxy disappears completely and they are now seen as simple secondary characters.

    Webcomics 
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Dr. McNinja has plenty of serious (if bizarre) enemies, but he considers his true Arch-Enemy to be a "birdosaurus" who occasionally shows up to do something really annoying at the worst possible moment. While the "something really annoying" is usually potentially fatal, like "set off the huge trap you just avoided," the Doctor's attitude is still pretty comical, and the birdosaurus is objectively just a nuisance compared to the real villains.
  • The rivalry between Brad and Shaz in Bloody Urban is something of a Running Gag.
  • Buster Wilde Weerwolf: Trey the bouncer is this to Buster because Trey is always having to kick out Buster from the club but Buster somehow makes it back in, only for Trey to throw him out once every now and then.
  • Casey and Andy:
    • Andy had an Escalating War across time with none other than Grover Cleveland.
    • Although Grover Cleveland made regular one-panel appearances for years, before the final arc where he was a major character. And it turned out there were really good reasons for all of it.
  • Commander Kitty has an oddly one-sided example between CK and Ace. CK can't even hide his disdain for Ace when they talk, but Ace honestly acts more like CK's a good friend.
  • Dinosaur Comics:
    • Ryan North is occasionally this to Randall Monroe of xkcd, explaining xkcd's scorning of North's field of expertise ("Because FUCK computational linguistics"). Like the previous examples, they're really friends.
    • Meanwhile, North and Andrew Hussie played this to each other for a while, to the point of... well, this. Again, actually friends.
  • Dragon City:
    • Rachel from and her neighbor Emily don't like each other, though they got a little better when their daughters became friends and a little better after Rachel became Emily's deputy mayor.
    • Rachel's daughter, Erin has a girl named Cynthia that she's always feuding with at school.
  • In an example that exists only in the character's head, Sensei Greg of El Goonish Shive is convinced that Carrot Top is his arch-rival.
  • Hitler Rants Parodies depicts Fegelein this way.
  • The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has Jean and Voluptua. Jean has always considered Volly to be a rival for Bob's affections and resented her for it. After years of ambiguity, her suspicions have now proven to be true.
  • Commander Badass in Manly Guys Doing Manly Things has Canadian Guy.
    Commander: [to his wife] What do you mean, "Don't fight Canadian Guy to death on the front lawn?" Why else would I invite Canadian Guy over!?
  • Ménage à 3 has the relationship between Yuki and Sonya. Initially, their enmity is at least somewhat justified, in that they are rivals for the affections of the hopelessly passive Gary and the elusive Zii. However, by the time that they've joined Zii's band together, both have bedded Gary, and they've had a rather deranged affair, it's clear that their continued bickering is mostly fueled by the fact that Sonya is addicted to drama while Yuki sees life through an anime-tinted lens.
  • As above, Narbonic's Helen Narbon has plenty of real enemies, but often seems to see her greatest foe as "MIT Student Dave Barker" ... a real person and reader of the strip.
  • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Patrianna is Wonderella's social rival, with the two of them being especially catty towards each other, both as superheroes and as their secret identities.
  • Normalsville: A running gag is Harrod and Artie playing cartoonish pranks on each other, although a later comic has Harrod show a very genuine disdain for Artie. Sometimes they also seem to have feelings for each other
  • Problem Sleuth and his next-door neighbour Ace Dick detest each other for unknown reasons, although at the start of the story he does accidentally blockade PS in his office with a bust of Ben Stiller. They continue writing insulting notes to each other and pissing on them until PS accidentally orders AD a load of whores, and AD decides it's time to bury the hatchet and start working together with PS to get out of the building.
  • PvP has Max Powers. Cole and Brent hate Powers with a passion, with Francis often joining in on the hate on. It gets to the point his name is the comics' The Khan whenever something goes wrong for Cole. Later on Cole admits that he doesn't even really have a good reason for hating Max, he's just petty and begrudges Max the fact that he's an overall good guy and more successful than Colenote . This admission prompts Max to go on walkabout, as the Australians call it, and he eventually comes back with the grating edges sanded off his personality, and the staff of the magazine grow to think of him as a good friendnote .
  • Questionable Content: Jeph Jaques and Sam Logan act like each others' sitcom arch nemesis in guest comics and on their own comics' homepages, but are friends in real life.
  • Skin Horse has another variant on the "has real enemies but cares more about the sitcom one" twist: Dr Englebright really is one of the villains, but that's not why Sweetheart hates her, which is more to do with policy meetings and relative positions on org charts.
  • In Sluggy Freelance Gwynn seems to feel she and Torg have this relationship at times. Torg actually thinks of her as a really good friend, if maybe a little too hot-headed.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: Lalli doesn't like cats very much, which causes him to not be very fond of Team Pet Kitty.

    Web Original 
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic play this to each other. The guys who play them actually get along in real life, but even the characters' attempts to do a review together ends in them beating each other up... again.
  • Atop the Fourth Wall: Moarte and Linkara often get into petty squabbles with each other, most of them stemming from Linkara getting frustrated with Moarte taking over entire rooms of his house to host his show every year. Moarte tends to take all of Linkara's jabs in good humour. Although, as the "Be All My Sins Remembered" arc showed, Moarte only spared Linkara's life in exchange for lending him space to host his show. Moarte makes it very clear that while he'll let a lot of Linkara's insults slide, he can revoke their deal anytime he so chooses.
  • Bon Appétit: Brad has this relationship with Alex Delaney, to the point where Brad has actually used the phrase "my nemesis" to describe the man. Anything that goes wrong in Brad's life will be met with cries of "DELANEY!", whether or not Delaney had anything to do with it or was even in the room.
  • James "Caddicarus" Caddick and Ian "Brutalmoose" MacLeod have a ridiculously intense feud where they can't spend two minutes together without bickering or pranking each other. It feels similar to the Nerd/Critic war, except neither of their online personas are of the irritable Caustic Critic type (especially Ian, who usually reviews edutainment and Narm Charm-filled classics over jazzy music and is one of the chillest people in the Youtube reviewer sphere), making their cartoonishly over-the-top rivalry even funnier by sheer contrast with their regular stuff.
  • Neither of them are main characters, but Nerris and Harrison have this kind of relationship in Camp Camp due to both thinking their kind of magic is superior to the other's. That said, the episode "Quest to Sleepy Peak Peak" reveals that they can put their differences aside if the situation is dire enough, or at least would be dire if they weren't playing pretend.
  • Dad is hateful of Neighbor, stating in a few videos how he wants to be better than him in some way just to rub it in his face, and then being openly sarcastic and rude to Neighbor when they run into him at Restaurant. Neighbor himself comes off as a decent person...if not for his implied relationship with Cheryl.
  • DashieGames' Mario Kart 8 series quickly established Donkey Kong (more commonly referred to as Donkey BITCH-ASS) as this thanks to many comically timed disruptions from the ape across the series. This started because of Mario Kart 8 using an invisible rival system to determine the toughest CPU opponents exclusively in the game's Grand Prix mode, with Donkey Kong being one for Dashie's preferred character of Yoshi... But despite this, Donkey would often somehow find his way into the race even when the character choice, mode, or even game rendered him outside the bounds of this mechanic, finding ways to draw Dashie's attention and vitriol to him every time regardless of how much antagonism he actually performs. It got to the point where he's become Dashie's full-fledged nemesis in general and something of a Big Bad to the channel as a whole, being featured in the channel banner to this day, consistently chosen as an opponent in other games such as Mario Party when the choice is given, and resulting in any video where Dashie plays as Donkey Kong such as within one of his own games being treated as a reluctant Enemy Mine. The most ironic part about this is that Dashie has on many occasions voiced his love for the Donkey Kong Country games and has proven himself to be considerably skilled at the original too, which has made their relationship into something of a We Used to Be Friends.
  • Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
    • Tien manages to becomes this for both Vegeta and Cell. He constantly tweaks their noses with insults while shrugging off their responses, loving every minute of it. The two could kill him at any time but doing so would means Tien wins since they took the easy way out and they're not willing to give him that. Well, up until Cell starts having his Villainous Breakdown and decides to blow up Earth. Then there's how Cell Came Back Strong after his botched self-destruction and made his survival clear by shooting a hole through Trunks' chest, quickly apologizing and admitting he was aiming for Tien but missed because almost everyone present was "too weak" for him to pick out in the dust cloud.
    • The sequel series, HFIL has Freeza and Cell developing a mutually antagonistic relationship rather quickly. And Cell makes macaroni art of himself choking the life out of Tien as a depiction of his greatest regret, since he never got the chance to do it while he was alive.
  • Escape the Night has Matt and Lele, who dislike each other for extremely petty and vague reasons. This is the only rivalry in the show that wasn't just for camera, these two actually hated each other in real life. The fights, arguments and insults we see in the show were actually real.
  • Gary: Landlord of the Flies: Exaggerated with James, one of Gary's tenants. The blog never mentions him doing anything wrong to Gary, yet the latter despises him on a deeply disproportionate level – going so far as to steal his TV, break into his car, and viciously insult him over the phone.
  • Life of Boris: Boris has three.
    • The man only known as "asshole neighbor Vadim", who insists on doing home improvement projects when Boris wants to sleep, at one point paid off a debt to Boris with novelty napkins, and beats Boris at "War Thunder".
    • Kolya the Western Capitalist Spy occasionally appears, seducing young slavs with his decadent capitalist ways. Of course, Kolya is easily spotted because he squats on his toes.
    • One who was more prominent in the early days of the channel is Igor The Incompetent Programmer, whose shitty code makes Boris eat his ushanka in frustration. However, since Boris could let his keyboard go and become a full-time Youtuber, Igor has slid into obscurity.
  • MandJTV has let his hatred for several Pokémon be made very apparent over the years:
    • Miltank. He finds the prominent nipples/udders on its design to be gross, and, of course, Whitney's Miltank is notoriously difficult.
    • Kabuto, as shiny-hunting it in Pokémon Let's Go led to him spraining his wrist.
    • Drowzee, due to a wayward comment of his in a collaboration with PM7 led to John and his audience joking about him having a crush on it.
  • Michael Ian Black on Mike & Tom Eat Snacks hates Ian McShane to the point that he could be considered Mike's nemesis, because according to Mike he was up for the role of Swearengen on Deadwood, but got sick and Ian took the role from him.
  • In Noob, Omega Zell is The Team Wannabe to Justice guild, but also a self-centered He-Man Woman Hater. Saphir, the person who gets to call the shots on whether or not he gets in, is basically an Iron Lady with a little of The Perfectionist mixed in. Their personal interactions shown in the webseries and mentioned to happen in the novels are conflictual, but their respective guilds remain allies to each other.
  • The Nostalgia Critic: As of his review of A Simple Wish, the Nostalgia Critic has a rivalry in Mara Wilson (also fueled by his past bashing of her roles in Matilda and Thomas & Friends).
  • In Qwerpline Gus seems to enjoy irritating Graham and Alex, for example by giving Lorna Schlitzwhistle the studio's new number whenever they change it.
  • Dantavius has an arch-enemy in Franklin from Franklin The Turtle. Yes, the children's book character. Dan made an entire video detailing the crimes of the two-legged testudine, which range from "joining the KKK", "becoming an occultist Nazi", "joinind ISIS", "selling his own child to buy heroin" and "making Your Mom wet". He also stole Dan's ex-wife Linda from him.
  • As a joking rivalry between RT Game and Call Me Kevin, which exists alongside a recurring joke among fans of them being the same person. They're both tall, lean, Irish Letsplayers who play similar games and indulge somewhat similar black comedy with a cheerful presentation. The peak of the joke was when Kevin made a music video singing (Take me Home) Country Roads, 'stealing' a recurring gag from RT's channel.
  • From the SCP Foundation, SCP-914 and Researcher Darby. For context, objects inserted into SCP-914 on different settings will be processed in certain ways (an energy drink and a fruit salad, for example, produced a fruit salad-flavored energy drink). Researcher Darby's tests almost always end in disaster/near death, to the point that SCP-914 purposefully trolls him. In one hilarious example, a rubber ball inserted on the Very Fine setting bounced around the facility at crotch level looking for Darby.
  • SMPLive:
    • AntVenom and Schlatt have a rivalry over their different opinions on the music disc Stal.
    • Carson is Travis's during the first month of SMPLive, with the two getting increasingly absurd hits on each other back and forth and getting into petty squabbles constantly.
  • In Soon I Will Rule The World, the main character has an unusual one in that said archnemesis is one of his own minions, the Shapeshifter, who keeps playing annoying pranks on him. He would get rid of him if not for the fact that the Shapeshifter has a nigh ungodly resilience to death and whenever AA tries to kick him out, it always turns into a case of The Cat Came Back.
  • Iconic Twitter shitposter dril has a complicated relationship with his former friend DigimonOtis, with whom he once attempted to open a barbership (which fell through due to dril's phobia of hair). They fell out in 2012 after an unknown incident, and Dril attempted to make amends by making an artwork for him, which caused DigimonOtis to block him. Dril later claimed DigimonOtis "made my life a living hell for 20 years" and called him a nerd. After this, he regularly criticised the DigimonOtis brand and claimed to want to destroy his empire via 'a coordinated campaign of viral folk songs'. DigimonOtis responded by sending death threats. On April 2015, Dril announced a truce during which DigimonOtis would unblock his account to end the feud, but was kept waiting, had to go to Otis's house, then abandoned the truce by claiming the new Digimon game looked like shit before freezing the peace treaty in piss and throwing it on the freeway. While Dril has praised DigimonOtis's efforts to "keep Sharia Law out of the donkey kong 64 wiki", the two remain nemeses. As of writing, their last known contact was in November 2019, when Dril left a severed human thumb in Otis's bed to call out his disloyalty.
    Fuck Otis. I will never follow a bastard such as this.
  • Two Best Friends Play: The Ustabiaz, as shown when their leader stole Matt's drink and caused him to scream their name at the top of his lungs. However, if you were to ask any Bestfriendnatic about it, they would tell you that the Ustabiaz are the Zaibatsu's deadliest foes, perhaps even more so than David Cage.
  • This is more or less the best way to describe the relationship between Encyclopedia Dramatica and Uncyclopedia, and The Other Wiki too for that matter. (We're the wacky special guest if anything.) Although the former two tend not to bother feuding anymore since given that they're both parody wikis (albeit with entirely different themes) and all involved just look silly.
  • UrinatingTree:
    • In his video about the Washington Capitals that the Caps of late have gotten one with THE FUCKING PENGUINS!, as have his Pittsburgh Steelers and THE FUCKING PATRIOTS!
    • More directly, there is a guy who gets blamed for everything wrong in the sports world now by him and his fandom. Fuck you, Spanos!
  • In Vester and Friends , Mario has two. Link who thinks he's better than Mario and often gets beat up by the red plumber, and Luigi who calls the red plumber a "Fat Italian Plumber" while Mario calls Luigi a "Skinny Winny"
  • Vinesauce Tomodachi Life
    • Walrus is by far the biggest one. He's a Nice Guy, is beloved by just about everyone, and tends to solve more problems than he causes. Why does Vinny hate him? Because he "stole" (read: got asked out by) Two-Faced, who, as far as Vinny is concerned, is only allowed to be with Vinesauce. Thus, Vinny does everything he can to bother Walrus, including feeding him hated foods and putting him in a jail cell apartment. It borders on Unknown Rival at times, as Walrus has stated at one point that he's devoted to Vinny. Vinny doesn't have this attitude forever; after a decision he makes leads to Two-Faced cheating on Walrus for DK in Episode 37, he ends up feeling sorry for him, and from then on starts treating him just as well as he does anyone else.
    • Bonzi Buddy and Dolan are also this to Vinny. This isn't because of anything they did in-game, but rather because of their origins; Bonzi is a Discredited Meme that grew popular because of Vinesauce, and Dolan is a not-entirely-discredited meme that was added on a whim. Vinny loathes both of them, and constantly threatens to evict them, even though he never does so. Unlike Walrus, they do not redeem themselves in time, and they both get the axe in Episode 38.
    • Broccoli is a minor one; he doesn't do much good or bad, but his Smug Snake-like face makes Vinny very angry, and he has a strong desire to punch him. This desire only grew when Broccoli acted very immature over getting a job in Episode 52.
  • In We Are Our Avatars, The Grinning General has it in for Eridan Ampora because as GG puts it, "HIPSTERRR!" Here is an example of an exchange between the both of them in Trollian.
    cyberneticSharklover began trolling caligulasAquarium
    CS: HIPSTERRR! note 
    CA: oh jegus its the rainbowwblood again
    CA: listen wwe wwill have enough convversations in the future so please dont mind wwhen i do this
    CS: Do what???
    CA: this
    caligulasAquarium blocked cyberneticSharklover
  • Welcome to Night Vale:
    • Cecil, the Character Narrator, absolutely loathes Steve Carlsberg, for reasons that have yet to be made clear. Some fans assume they're exes. However, it appears that Cecil has an entirely valid reason to hate Steve as he's the neglectful (at least according to Cecil) stepfather of Cecil's niece. Later episodes give even more depth and nuance to their relationship, suggesting that Cecil only dislikes Steve because he is too open about the town's many dark secrets, and is afraid that it'll affect said niece. It should also be noted, that as far as we can tell, Steve seems to be quite nice, a protective step-father, and his scones are probably decent.
    • The nearby town of Desert Bluffs appears to fill this role for Night Vale as a whole. Albeit quite a serious one.
    • There's also the Apache Tracker. Every time he comes up, Cecil goes out of his way to remind the listener what a racist asshole he is.


Alternative Title(s): Sitcom Arch Enemy

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Chuck Chambers

He's a violent, disrespectful brat who doesn't take getting punished very well.

How well does it match the trope?

4.67 (6 votes)

Example of:

Main / BrattyHalfPint

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