See the full list of examples at Mirroring Factions.
- In Deus Ex, Paul Denton mentions to the player the irony of how in order to defeat the one-worlders, the resistance forces, who support sovereignty and independence for the different peoples throughout the world, have to become a global organization.
- In the Dragon Age series, the Templars and the mages might be at war each other, both groups have difficulty with shades of grey and both fit into the Knight Templar trope.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- The Aedra and the Daedra are typically viewed as opposites, particularly by mortals. Good and Evil. Order and Chaos. Light and Dark. Gods of Good and Gods of Evil. Angels and Demons. However, prior to the creation of Mundus, the mortal plane, there was no distinction made between these et'Ada ("original spirits"). The Aedra are simply the et'Ada who participated in creation (which is why their name means "our ancestors" in Old Aldmeris, while the Daedra ("not our ancestors") did not. This is why scholars and, in a few cases, the deities themselves, are quick to point out that these are beings truly Above Good and Evil who operate on their own Blue-and-Orange Morality. Anyone trying to classify them as such is simply trying to apply mortal moralities to immortal beings, which is a foolhardy endeavor.
- The Morag Tong is a legal Dunmeri assassin's guild of Professional Killers. They hold Mephala, a Daedric Prince whose sphere is "obscured to mortals", but who is associated with manipulation, lies, sex, and secrets, as their patron deity. The Dark Brotherhood is an illegal assassin's guild (leaning closer to a Psycho for Hire organization) which split off from the Morag Tong long ago. They practice a relative Religion of Evil, serving the "Dread Father" Sithis and his wife, the Night Mother, a mysterious entity who leads the Brotherhood and speaks through the Listener of the organization. According to some sources, the Night Mother may very well be an aspect of Mephala, meaning that both groups, despite their differences, are still dedicated to the same deity.
- Vivec, the Tribunal deity, clearly was never a big fan of the Dwemer. As one of Nerevar's councilors, Vivec believed that peace could not be had between the Chimer and Dwemer. He later urged Nerevar to make war on the Dwemer when evidence was brought forth that showed they were in possession of the Heart of Lorkhan and were attempting to tap into its power. However, Vivec would later draw his own divine powers from the Heart and the A God Am I-type response he gives if you question his past actions is very similar to the one he attributes to the Dwemer Architect Kagrenac when Nerevar originally questioned him about the Heart in The Battle of Red Mountain:Vivec: "Can you, mortal, presume to judge the actions and motives of a god?"Kagrenac (per Vivec): "But Kagrenac took great offense, and asked whom Nerevar thought he was, that he might presume to judge the affairs of the Dwemer."
- A race that prides themselves for completely shaping modern Tamriel into what it is today, who bull-headedly looks down on other races and professions that are commonly not used in their culture even though history has shown that they were once skilled practitioners of it, follow a religion that is basically a combination of Men and Mer beliefs while a sizable minority still follows their old religion. All of these can easily describe both the Nords and the Altmer as of the 4th Era.
- In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the bard songs "Age of Aggression" and "Age of Oppression", sung by bards in pro-Imperial or pro-Stormcloak holds, respectively. The song tunes are identical and both songs have parts where the lyrics are the same. Try saving before the peace treaty and take different dialogue options to favor the Empire or Stormcloaks, and make note of how often the two sound just like the other between dialogue trees. If you finish the Civil War before the final battle, you'll meet Rikke if you sided with the Stormcloaks, or Ulfric and Galmar if you sided with the Empire, in Sovngarde. It seems as far as the gods, or at least Shor, is concerned, they're all honorable heroes worthy of the afterlife. Tullius is only excluded because he's not a Nord, and so couldn't enter Sovngarde.
- Fallout:
- The Brotherhood of Steel has, since the first game, portrayed itself as a wise and noble order dedicated to protecting the rest of humanity from technology, which they are incapable of using wisely. They point to the Raiders and other scumbags of the wasteland as rationale for their confiscating what advanced technology they can, and destroying what they can't. Which makes them little more than the Raiders or any of the "I know best" themed tyrants in the game series.
- Fallout 4:
- The Synths and the very Institute they ran away from. Weird boogeymen with advanced technology whom all the other factions distrust because of how secretive they are. The Acadia faction of the Far Harbor DLC acts as an elaborated version of this, as a group of Synths that have ended up forming a (mostly) undergroundnote scientific institution mistrusted and mysterious to others in the region, with both a history and (depending on the player's actions) continued use of Synth infiltrators and replacements of authority figures to protect its interests, claiming it to be for the common good.
- Genshin Impact: The Fatui and the Abyss Order are two villainous factions that the Traveler faces in their journey across Teyvat. They differ from each other in both origins and goals to the point that they oppose each other in-game and are in direct competition for control of the continent. The Fatui is a Corrupt Bureaucrat syndicate from Snezhnaya lead by the Cryo Archon; the Tsaritsa, whose goal is to steal every Archon's Gnosis and end their reign over Teyvat in pursuit of her delusional dream of peace, while the Abyss Order is an Anti-Human Alliance composed of monsters from the Abyss and currently lead by the Traveler's long lost sibling, whose goal is to overthrow the Archons and Celestia entirely as revenge for destroying their original home of Khaenri'ah. Despite this, both factions do overlap in many aspects, such as their desire to challenge the divine order ruling Teyvat as well as having sympathetic motives behind them.
- Explored during the Elder Wars of Lusternia. The Elder Gods face off against the Soulless Ones, and a splinter faction of Elders decides to employ the Soulless' own tactics against them: namely, eating their fallen foes to imbibe their strength. They become addicted to the rush of power and begin devouring other Elders, too. By the time of the game itself, one of these cannibalistic Elder Gods — Morgfyre — is indistinguishable from a Soulless One himself.
- My Child Lebensborn: A journal entry written by the Player Character points out that both the Germans who valued the child and the Norwegians who are ostracizing the child think of the genes the same way. The only difference is that one group considers those carried by the child to be inherently good and another considers them to be inherently bad (the Norwegians believe that propensity for creating another Nazi Germany is In the Blood).
- The New Order Last Days Of Europe: The All-Russian Black League are a Russian warlord faction rebuilding a broken nation after a humiliating defeat in a global conflict, garnering support from the public and legitimacy from other nations by aping authoritarian-socialist rhetoric and making empty promises to step down and allow a civilian government to take over once the country is fixed. Behind closed doors, the Black League is a genocidal and rabidly ultranationalist death cult led by War Hawks, General Rippers and Omnicidal Maniacs. Their leader is a right-wing dictator who was once a simple soldier, driven mad by thoughts of revenge against the world for what happened to his beloved country. Add the scary black uniforms and military iconography as well, and you have Russian Nazis via He Who Fights Monsters. This coincidentally also makes the Black League a mirror to Ordenstaat Burgundy, a breakaway Nazi state that also wants to deliberately engineer the destruction of the world in the name of nuclear genocide against a certain people, while they retreat into bunkers and reemerge after the fallout has cleared - their goals are the same, though arguably the Black League's is narrower in scope, as they just want Germans to die in the apocalypse while Burgundy wants all non-Aryans to perish so they can reclaim the Earth.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic has the Republic and the Empire. The space missions for each side are identical, both factions make heavy use of hired guns (smugglers and bounty hunters, respectively), and both are plagued with bureaucratic power struggles making it impossible to get anything done without the player character's help.
- In the backstory of Stellaris, earth once sent a colonization attempt to the far reaches of space, which sadly failed. As time goes, earth unified under the United Nations of Earth, Egalitarian Xenophiles who take to the stars to meet other alien species and establish good relationships with them. To their surprise, one colony ship from the disastrous attempt long ago survived, flourished, and developed into The Commonwealth of Man, Xenophobic Militarists who are happy to enslave the filthy xenos. Despite the opposite ideologies, The Commonwealth still see the UNE as their brethren, and when a nasty alien species cracked one of UNE's colonies, The Commonwealth promised vengeance on the xenos and returned the favor with their own planet cracker.
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Galeem and Dharkon's factions are almost entirely alike, both being lead by an Eldritch Abomination that seeks to cover the universe in their chosen element (light or darkness respectively), and use the Trophies of fallen Fighters to produce Puppet Fighters for their captured spirits. Additionally, the respective bosses under their control are also explicit counterparts: the two Hands (Master Hand and Crazy Hand), the One-Winged Angel form of a Shigeru Miyamoto-created villain (Giga Bowser and Ganon), a villain created by Masahiro Sakurai (Galleom and Marx), and a third-party boss (Rathalos and Dracula).
- Undertale: The opening intro leads you to believe that monsters and humans are totally different and the monsters are painted as the evil ones. Should you spare monsters and talk to various NPCs, you can see that they aren't really that much different from humans in terms of what they celebrate, what their favorite hobbies are, and so on, but very few character actually mention the similarities. Should you get the Golden Ending, the trope is further expanded upon where humans and monsters are able to coexist with each other peacefully and very easily since they're very much alike.
- Wild ARMs 3 has your playable party and the Shroedinger family, a rival gang of Drifters. Virginia and Maya are the hot headed leaders passionately searching for something in the wasteland (justice for Virginia, the ultimate gem for Maya), Clive and Todd are the older father figures who keep everyone's heads on straight, Gallows and Alfred are seemingly naive and immature characters who are much smarter than they initially appear, while Jet and Shady are the more anti-social members of the group who are also the token non human. Shady is a talking cat while Jet is an Artificial Human.
- Wolfenstein: The New Order: Optional rebel character J has a less than rosy view of American society before Those Wacky Nazis took over with their Diesel Punk, pointing out that the Nazis' actions are just the logical extreme of views on racial superiority and purity that were held by virtually every country in the 1930s, and that in particular America used to treat colored individuals like himself almost as bad as the Nazis treated Jews. To the point that, as a black man, the Nazi regime is pretty much a case of Meet the New Boss. Player character B.J. Blascowicz, an American-born Polish Jew (who ironically looks like he stepped off of a Nazi propaganda poster about the Ubermensch), doesn't take the comparison very well.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3: While Keves is a technology-oriented country and Agnes is a magic-oriented country, there's practically no differences beyond their fashion senses. They both use Magitek Blades, they both ride Humongous Mecha that siphon the life force from dead enemies, they both have fervent worship of the Queens, and they both hate each other for the entirety of their ten-year lifespans. Also, they have the same exact Consuls playing both sides.
