Unknown Rival / Literature

• Alexis Carew: In the backstory, Rashaed Coalson for Dunholm Carew, which leads to a one-sided family feud. When it was Dunholm's turn to pick first on land claims during the colonization of Dalthus, several times he happened to pick out claims that Rashaed wanted. Dunholm insists to the Coalsons to this day it was pure coincidence, but Rashaed became convinced Dunholm was deliberately screwing him and taught the hatred to his sons and grandsons. Later Rashaed sabotaged the colony's antigrav hauler when it was headed to the Carew estate to bring Dunholm's wife to Port Arthur for treatment, leading to her Death by Childbirth. Later his son Daviel made a high-speed pass over Alexis's parents' buggy, spooking the horses to a crash that killed both of them.
• The Black Tulip: Cornelius van Baerle is completely unaware that he's become Isaac Boxtel's archenemy, and only vaguely remembers him as a next-door neighbor when he finally sees him at the end of the novel..
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales Of The Slayer: And White Splits the Night: As the current Slayer, Asha Sayre spends years training herself to fight the local rural vampires, and develops It's Personal feelings toward fighting them once she realizes that they compose the local Ku Klux Klan cell and that You Killed My Father. The vampires have never even heard of the Slayer line and have killed so many people that there is almost no chance that they remember one specific murder of a black man who they viewed as subhuman twelve years earlier.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories, the titular barbarian and Thoth-amon never actually meet and Conan is never the direct object of Thoth-amon's attacks. In The Phoenix on the Sword Thoth sends a demon to kill the man who enslaved him after he lost his powers who is leading an assassination attempt on then king Conan, actually inadvertently saving him although he also tells the demon to kill everyone with his erstwhile master, thus putting Conan in danger again. In The God in the Bowl Conan just happens to be robbing the museum where a deadly gift from Thoth-amon to a rival is being kept. In The Treasure of Tranicos Thoth-amon is after one of several parties after the title treasure, Conan, once again just happens to inadvertently get in the way. In The Hour of the Dragon Thoth-amon is just mentioned by a group of Stygian priests seeking a way to combat him after his return to power.
• In The Dinosaur Lords, Falk considers Jaume to be his rival and contantly attempts to one-up him, undermine him and, above all, prove that he's worse than Falk. Jaume, on the other hand, has no idea of this and considers Falk to be little more than his co-worker, though one who ascended through ranks admirably fast.
• In The Fountainhead, Toohey considers himself Howard Roark's arch-rival. When he confronts Roark and asks him, "Why don't you tell me plainly what you think about me?", Roark replies, "I don't think about you."
• In the Gotrek & Felix series, the Skaven wizard Thanquol spends decades plotting how to defeat the titular duo after they hunted him for so long and destroyed all his plans. When he finally catches them he finds out that they have no idea who he is, or that the various Skaven attacks they had blundered into over the years were even connected.
• Halo Expanded Universe: The Interservice Rivalry between the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (a.k.a. ODSTs or Helljumpers)—the UNSC Marine Corps equivalent of paratroopers—and the SPARTANs—Super Soldiers like Player Character MCPO. John-117 that make up UNSC Navy special warfare units. The ODSTs have a grudge against the SPARTANs both for being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad in the press, and because John accidentally killed a couple of them in a sparring match and wasn't punished (mostly because the Helljumpers started it), while the SPARTANs... are Consummate Professionals that don't care overmuch what the Helljumpers think of them off the battlefield.
• In the Heralds of Valdemar series, Tremane — a potential heir to the Eastern Empire's throne — defects to become king of Hardorn, the land he was supposed to conquer for the Empire. His replacement, Melles, imagines that Tremane is his great arch-rival and thinks about him frequently while consolidating his own power: Tremane for his part is too busy managing his people and new kingdom to spare a thought for Melles.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy takes this to an extreme. Mild-mannered and mostly confused Arthur Dent is captured and accosted by Agrajag, who claims that he keeps being reincarnated only to be killed by Arthur Dent every single time, including the times he was a bowl of petunias, a bystander at a cricket match, and one in a time and place Arthur has yet to visit. This, as one may imagine, has left Agrajag rather unhinged, so that when Arthur insists that he's not doing it on purpose and the universe is just "playing silly buggers" with them, Agrajag point-blank refuses to believe it.
• The Sword of Saint Ferdinand: Neither García nor his brother Diego have the slightest clue what Pedro de Guzmán hates them to death and is constantly plotting ways to destroy them.
• In the Marla Mason series, the chaos witch Nicolette is obsessed with becoming Marla's nemesis, while Marla considers her nothing more than a minor nuisance. In the novel Lady of Misrule, several characters outright tell Marla that her refusal to take Nicolette seriously has motivated her to become a far greater threat than she might otherwise have been, as she is trying to become so dangerous that Marla won't be able to ignore her anymore.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: From volume 2 on, Tullio Rossi fancies himself a rival to main viewpoint character Oliver Horn, both as a swordsman and for the affections of Nanao Hibiya. Oliver never considers Rossi much more than a minor annoyance and defeats him with relative ease all but one time they cross swords,^note Oliver started teaching him after their first bout, and Rossi manages to beat him once in volume 6 when he was off his game for unrelated reasons and for her part, Nanao only has eyes for Oliver.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has a couple of possible examples.
  • Cersei very definitely sees Margaery Tyrell as a rival, but it is not clear whether Margaery is actually trying to undermine Cersei or not. It is certainly true that Margaery's family is trying to increase their power at Cersei's expense, but it is unknown if Margaery is knowingly assisting in their schemes, or is genuinely trying to be friendly with Cersei and is upsetting her largely by accident. The latter seems unlikely, since she is shrewd enough to immediately see through Cersei's plan to get her damned in trial by combat, and calls her a "vile, scheming, evil bitch". Cersei's main reason for antagonizing Margaery is because of a prophecy that says she will be brought down by a younger and more beautiful queen. The reader is well aware that this could just as easily be Daenerys, whom Cersei has never even considered.
  • Viserys Targaryen sees himself as the Big Good to Robert Baratheon's Big Bad, but Robert (correctly) sees Viserys' sister Daenerys as more dangerous (though for the wrong reasons). Despite this, Robert still considers him a threat, but would likely reconsider this if he knew just how staggeringly incompetent and useless Viserys really is, making this a strange example of Viserys being a Partly-known Rival who deserves to be treated as an Unknown Rival, and probably would be treated as an Unknown Rival if Robert actually knew anything about him. Viserys is also convinced he's been staying just ahead of Robert's assassins for his whole life, but Robert had never actually tried to have him killed since he got to Essos.
• In Austin Grossman's novel Soon I Will Be Invincible, the relationship between the hero Core Fire and the villain Dr. Impossible is like this.
• Wendy Mass' short story "The Stars at the Finish Line" averts this — the protagonist's academic rivalry with a girl he has a crush on has nabbed him excellent grades. When he mentions this to her close to the end of the story, she acts confused...then laughs and reveals that of course the rivalry was mutual; she was just messing with his head.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • The Lord of the Rings: Saruman has always envied Gandalf for being the more popular of the two (which was in no small part thanks to him being humbler and wiser). Gandalf on the other hand always respected Saruman and apparently had no idea how much his fellow Maia resented him, being sincere and personable right up to the moment Saruman revealed his true colours and attacked him. Also, Saruman view himself as an equal of Sauron and desires his powers. While he allies himself to the Dark Lord, Saruman actually plans to claim the One Ring as his own and use its powers to backstab Sauron in order to claim his throne, while only using the alliance as a way to buy himself time to prepare his Isengardian troops for the inevitable war against Mordor. Sauron, meanwhile, dismisses Saruman as an upstart Big Bad Wannabe whose treacherous plans the Dark Lord is very much aware of and whose hubris Sauron plans to crush as soon as the war with Gondor has been won.
  • The Fall of Númenor: Erendis loudly declares that Uinen is her foe when she is called Uinéniel ("Daughter of Uinen"), since Uinen is the Maia associated with the seas and she is jealous of her crush Aldarion's love of sailing. For her part, it is highly doubtful that Uinen even knows that Erendis -who never even left her island- exists; and the thought of being involved in a love triangle with two humans would never occur to the Lady of the Seas, who was already married to another Maia before the world was created.
• In Warrior Cats, (spoilers for Rise Of Scourge and The Darkest Hour) Scourge desperately wants to kill Tigerstar, who has no idea who he is.

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