Evil Twin / Literature

• GONE series: Caine Soren is the estranged twin of the hero, Sam Temple. One of his biggest ambitions is to kill said hero.
• In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga: After the very distinctive-looking Miles Vorkosigan claims (as a coverup for his secret identity) that he has a clone running around, it turns out he does have one, who's been trained to take over his life. It turns out that the twin, Mark, isn't necessarily evil, just brainwashed (plus has Split Personality, with the personalities generally being pretty dark). Lampshaded in Mirror Dance: "Some people have evil twins. I am not so lucky. I have an idiot twin."
• In William Sleator's The Duplicate, the clone isn't really evil, just resentful of being treated as a clone (he has all the memories of the original, so he believes he is the original). However, this leads him to make another clone, who really is evil (or at least not exactly sane).
• In Haunted (1988) there are some horrendous acts going on, and the family says it's Christina's evil twin sister who is doing it. Except there is no evil twin — it is just Christina.
• In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next : First Among Sequels, Thursday is asked to train two fictional versions of herself as Jurisfiction agents. One of them, being from an adaptation that emphasized sex and violence, is a scheming, sarcastic bitch.
• Oddly doubled variation: the twins from Sweet Valley High were menaced by another pair of twins who looked just like them, who wanted to take over their lives.
• A wild play on this in the Fear Street novel Double Date. When the beautiful identical Wade twins move to town, Bobby, the biggest womanizer in school, vows to date each one with the other not knowing it. It seems to go well but Bobby is soon confused by the odd behavior either shy Bree or outgoing Samantha shows, including robbing a store. Bree explains they have a third sister, Jennilyn who was sent away because of her violent ways. But Samantha says there is no Jennilyn and it's Bree acting up. Bree insists there is a Jennilyn, who's identified by the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. After various wild acts, Bobby finds himself trapped in a cabin by the woman with the tattoo he realizes is Jennilyn who tries to pour "cannibal ants" on him. He escapes and races to the Wade home to warn them all...And Mr. Wade tells Bobby there is no Jennilyn, only the twins, who claim to barely even know Bobby. When he yells "the one with the tattoo did this" they show neither has a tattoo. After Mr. Wade leaves, Bobby realizes the room happens to be filled with every girl he's ever dated and dumped, all smirking at him. It turns out the twins knew all along about Bobby's game and were taking turns posing as both each other and "Jennilyn" (with a temporary tattoo) to teach Bobby a lesson.
• While not exactly evil or twins, in 'Harry Potter'', James Potter is described as 'looking exactly like Harry, save for his eyes', but is a real Jerkass when we first see him in 'Order of the Phoenix', when he bullies Snape (he grows out of it).
• In Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas & Electric, the villains attempt to replace a hero with a robotic copy of himself. His assistant is able to distinguish the two when the robot looks up and exclaims how worried he was that she'd be hurt, while the real version, despite the firefight going on outside, keeps playing a video game.
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch novel Fearful Symmetry is all over this trope. You may want to draw diagrams for this. Back in the episode "Second Skin", Major Kira was surgically altered to look like a Cardassian and told she was Iliana Ghemor, an Obsidian Order agent who'd been given Fake Memories as a Deep Cover Agent. This was planned by the Obsidian Order to gain evidence against Iliana's father was an anti-military-rule dissident. In this novel, the real Iliana shows up, and it turns out she did indeed have her memories and appearance altered to resemble Kira, before Gul Dukat called a halt to the operation in memory of Kira's mother. He then kept Iliana captive all this time, taking his ... confused (not to say disturbing)... feelings about Kira out on her. Iliana is now Ax-Crazy with a side-order of Amnesiac Dissonance and wants revenge on anyone else who claims to be Kira Nerys. She starts off by killing Kira's other evil twin, Intendant Kira from the Mirror Universe, and taking her place. "Our" Kira, meanwhile, is being aided by Iliana's good twin; she's a Mirror Universe version whose father was the ruthless head of the Obsidian Order, but who defied him and joined the Terran Rebellion. Got all that? If this had actually been part of the TV series, Nana Visitor would be playing four roles.
  • The relaunch novels also include the character of Gul Macet, another Cardassian played by Marc Alaimo in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He's Dukat's cousin and they are almost identical (the primary difference is that Macet is one of the only Cardassians ever seen with facial hair, which another person speculates was grown specifically to look less like Dukat), but Macet is a decent and honorable man, making him the Good Twin.
• Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files has an entity that fits the evil-twin bill (based on Harry's wiseass and slightly lowbrow nature): more cultured, better groomed, more thoughtful, goatee. The catch is, the guy's neither evil, twin, nor real-he's a representation of Harry's subconscious, who takes the opportunity to lecture Harry whenever he's really on the ropes and unconscious.
  • There is also Evil Bob, who also functions as a Superpowered Evil Side. Justified, due to the owner of his skull determining his personality. So for Harry (as a teenager), Bob is a wisecracking perverted genius sidekick, while for Kemmler or his disciples, the wizards who give the White Council nightmares, he is a terrifying spirit who can kill people with his mind.
• Older Than Print: The "false Guenevere" in Arthurian Legend, who is the true Guenevere's identical half-sister (somehow), and plots to take her sister's place as queen.
• Happens literally in Ranger's Apprentice, although this is something of a subversion in that Halt's twin is more petty and pathetic than outright evil, and the dichotomy is one of competent/incompetent rather than good/bad.
• Unusually, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a serious inversion, "William Wilson". The twins even have the same name. This is because the good twin is actually the narrator's conscience. This gets confusing and symbolic when the evil twin murders him.
• Mike Hammer: "One Lonely Night" by Mickey Spillane. An up-and-coming politician campaigning against corruption and Dirty Communists hires Mike Hammer to catch his insane twin brother, who committed a murder in public in apparent attempt to destroy his reputation (fortunately, the politician was giving a speech before hundreds of people at the time). Inverted in that Mike discovers the brother is a fraternal twin who doesn't look anything like the politician, and it was actually the politician who committed the murder — he hired a look-alike actor to give the speech and thus take suspicion off of himself.
• The novella The Wife of Martin Guerre subverts this: Bertrande's husband goes off to adventure and avoid farm life. 8 years later he returns and is noticeably kinder and softer in manner. When she questions him, he responds that War Is Hell, that life is to be enjoyed. She feels troubled about this as she loves him, but feels he is not her real husband and cannot stand to live a pleasant lie. Despite having a child with him, she eventually has him put on trial for impersonating Martin Guerre. The real Martin Guerre shows up at the end of the trial, confirms that the man is an impostor, and calls her out for betraying both him as her husband, and the other guy whom she had admitted to loving. Doubles as Real Life as it is a fictionalization of a court case that did really occur in medieval France.
• In The Mysterious Benedict Society series, the villain Ledroptha Curtain is the Evil Twin of the protagonist Nicholas Benedict. The two were Separated at Birth. When the Society first meets Mr. Curtain, they don't realize this, and don't figure it out until they receive a message from Benedict warning them to "Beware the Gemini."
• In The Lightbringer Trilogy, a major part of the backstory lies in the fact that instead of there only being one person with the power to become Prism in that generation, there had been two, brothers named Gavin and Dazen Guile. There was a civil war over which one would take the throne, in which the 'good' brother, Gavin, was victorious. Of course, what only a handful of people know is that although Gavin's army won the war, the man on the throne is actually Daven, who imprisoned his brother (whom he closely resembled even before he made the effort to make himself his brother's double) and took his place. Also, even though the general population believes that Gavin was good and Daven evil, Daven has been a competent and fairly benevolent ruler, while some evidence suggests that Gavin might not have been as nice as the people believe.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "A Witch Shall Be Born", Salome is this to Queen Taramis.
• Played straight in the short story "The poet and her double" in the book Women and Ghosts by Alison Lurie. Karo McKay, a young and gifted poet, finds out that she is followed by her Evil Twin, the anti-Karo.
• Word of God has described Gellert Grindelwald of Harry Potter as Albus Dumbledore's (spiritual, not literal) evil twin.
• In The Grimnoir Chronicles, Sullivan's brother Madi is the right-hand man to the Chairman. The two of them look enough alike that it gets Sullivan shot.
• The trope is referenced in Alexander Pushkin's short story "The Queen of Spades". Apparently a hallmark of "those dreadful modern novels".
• In the Forgotten Realms "Return of the Archwizards" series, the Shadovar often force their enemies to confront their Shadows, a manifestation of everything they are not. At one point they threaten to do this to Malik, a lying and cheating backstabbing bastard. He is not impressed at all:
  Malik: "Why should I fear such a thing? If a shadow is all the things I am not, this one is undoubtedly as charitable as I am selfish, as trustworthy as I am corrupt, as brave as I am craven. My shadow would only make me all the things that women desire and men admire."
• All over the place in Galaxy of Fear: Clones, along with the odd terrified non-evil one for flavor. Most are pretty much malevolent minions, but the very first one that Tash meets basically invokes this trope.
  "I'm you," the other Tash said, stalking forward. "I'm the dark side you don't want to let out. We're the same right down to the last gene. But there isn't room in this life for both of us. And since I'm stronger-you'll just have to go."
• An interesting subversion occurs in the Eighth Doctor Adventures with the Doctor's companion Samantha. The version the Doctor met and traveled with was actually paradoxically altered in the moment of their first meeting and accidentally turned into the "perfect" (blonde, peppy, vegetarian) companion. The original Sam is a (brunette) former addict, cynical and unimpressed with the Doctor. But she's not really evil, just a version of Sam who led a much harsher life and never met the Doctor.
  "So what's she like?" [asked Sam]
  "Who?" said the Doctor.
  "My evil twin."
  "Oh"..."She's very nice," he said cheerily. "She makes me think of me sometimes. Injustice breaks her heart. She talks a great deal. We both like omelets for breakfast."
  I get it, thought Sam. I'm the evil twin.
• Soul Seekers: Dace's twin Cade is this.
• In Emily the Strange: Stranger and Stranger, one of the Emily's is evil. The other can be considered good by comparison.
• Discussed in the humorous NATURE SF story "How to configure your quantum disambiguator". Of course, a goatee reference is present either. ^note  In NO case, push the red button!
• In the Zachary Nixon Johnson novel The Flaxen Femme Fatale, the antagonist Natasha is an evil clone of Zach's secretary Carol. Though she ultimately turns out to not actually be evil, merely unable to control her dangerous psi powers.
• Hero Adrian's twin sister Adrienne in The Shadowspawn novels. She even introduces herself as his evil twin to Adrian's girlfriend.
• In Where's Waldo?, Odlaw acts as Waldo's evil twin, being a criminal, and having a black and yellow colour scheme. Just as Waldo makes a journey to the "Land of Waldos" which is filled with Waldos, it is later revealed that Odlaw comes from "Odlaw's Swamp" which is filled with Odlaws.
• Penny builds her own robot Evil Twin in Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have a Nemesis in a convoluted plan to launch her career as a superhero by fighting her villainous persona. When it predictably tries to overthrow her, she develops a Good Twin. It tries to overthrow her for the good of humanity, but is foiled by Penny's power, which steals her body and identity. Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her continues the theme as Penny, trapped in a robot body by her power, tries to reclaim her organic body, and identity. "Meatbag" Penny isn't inherently evil, but is extremely destructive.
• In the George O. Smith story Identity, matter duplicators are used to copy people, e.g. like creating an Expendable Clone to practise surgery on. Unfortunately this means that identical twins tend to hate each other, as each is mistaken for a duplicate and blames the other. So the protagonist Cal finds himself up against his identical twin brother Benjamin, who fulfils this trope (at least from his perspective).
• The Cat Who... Series: In book #8 (The Cat Who Sniffed Glue), the existence of an evil twin turns out to be a plot point in resolving the murder. Everyone thinks that mild-mannered David is mourning the recent murders of his twin brother Harley and sister-in-law Jill, and that the tragedy is what caused the twins' mother to have a stroke. It's eventually revealed that Harley was having an affair with David's wife, and they cooked up a scheme in which Harley killed both David and Jill and took David's place. The mother's stroke happened when she figured it out. It's especially jarring because prior to all of this, no one had any suspicions about either twin.
• This is a key component in the young adult novel Twins by Caroline B. Cooney. Mary Lee is envious of her identical twin sister Madrigal, who is considered prettier and is much more popular. When Madrigal is killed in an accident, Mary Lee decides to use the tragedy to fake her own death, so she can live her sister's life instead of her own. Only when she 'becomes' Madrigal does Mary Lee find out that Madrigal was in fact a terrible person who did some truly evil things. The twins' parents actually sent Mary Lee away to boarding school because they began to suspect that Madrigal might try to kill her. They also knew all along which twin they had really buried, but went along with her ruse until she was ready to tell them the truth; as much as they hated to admit it, they were sort of relieved that their evil daughter was gone.
• In the Lois Duncan novel Stranger With My Face, protagonist Laurie discovers that she was adopted as a baby and has an identical twin sister, Lia, whom her parents did not adopt. Lia has mastered the art of astral projection, and is able to visit Laurie. As the twins form a relationship, Lia encourages Laurie to learn the same skill, so that the fact that they are on opposite sides of the country won't interfere with them being close. Lia, of course, is the evil twin. She tricks Laurie into learning astral projection so that she can take over Laurie's body and enjoy the happy family life that her sister has always known, after first getting to know her well enough that she can fool the people around her. However, Laurie's boyfriend and younger sister are able to see through the deception, and manage to help Laurie reclaim her body; Lia's body, meanwhile, has died and been cremated, so she is left without a host.
• The Berenstain Bears: The lead villain of the Big Chapter Book In Maniac Mansion turns out to be one of these. Squire Grizzly trusts his butler Greeves implicitly. The climax, however, reveals that Greeves has a twin brother named Arthur, who's been impersonating Greeves so he and his cohorts can make duplicates of the Squire's antique furniture, switch them out, and sell the originals for a lot of money.
• In the short story Problemat Czelawy (Czelawa's Problem) by Stefan Grabiński it's unclear which of the twins is the evil one - the twin who treats the other as Madwoman in the Attic, exploiting their unique circumstances for his research, or the twin who wants to murder him and rape his wife. And is finally murdered by the other brother.
• Miss Cackle from The Worst Witch has one in the form of Agatha who tries to take over the school near the end of the first book, only to be foiled by Mildred turning her and her coven into snails.
• Oddly Enough: In "The Japanese Mirror", Jonathan's reflection in the titular mirror turns into his evil twin as it absorbs his anger, and outright plans to cause misery to the people in his life once it takes over his body.
• In The Last Adventure of Constance Verity, Connie admits to having an evil twin with a distinct Yugoslavian accent and a propensity for sleeping with her boyfriends, so she tells Byron (who she's agreed to try a relationship with) in advance.
• The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks: Jason, having swiped some of Stanley's seeds, plants one for himself, but mistreats the resulting plant, causing it to become this to Stanley (which is lampshaded in book 5). Fortunately, Norman tames it so the family can sell it to a botanical garden... but in book 5, it's acting up again until Norman shows its new owners how to make it behave (which involves a lot of talking and singing to it), helping it get better again.

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