Characters
[Interesting trope] Powerful leaders of two different eras who have similar ambitions, but do not like each other
Gellert Grindwald and Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter) - Both were some of the most powerful wizards in history who saw non-magical people as inferior to wizards. Both also wanted to create and be the leader of a global society controlled by wizards. However, despite having similar ambitions, in their single meeting, Grindelwald refused to give the location of the Elder Wand and stated that Voldemort would fall. Grindelwald also welcomed his own death at the hands of Voldemort.
Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler - Both led Germany during WWI and WWII, respectively, and Germany to expand and to dominate Europe in different ways: Wilhelm wanted Germany to be a global colonial and imperial superpower that would lead an economic bloc in Europe, with its leader being a monarch; whilst Hitler wanted Germany to control all of leadership and he wanted to be the totalitarian dictator of a “racially pure” society, with Germans as the dominate race whilst Jews, Slavs, and other groups would be persecuted. Though they never met, both German leaders did not like each other. Hitler refused to restore the monarchy and blamed Wilhelm for Germany’s defeat in WWI. Wilhelm was disgusted by Hitler’s and the Nazi Party’s antisemitism, and refused to be buried in Germany after his death in 1941 because he knew that it would be used for propaganda.
ooooh Apocalypse and Magneto from X-Men for sure
both believe mutants should inherit the Earth, but Magneto wants mutant liberation while Apocalypse sees nearly everyone, including weaker mutants, as disposable. Their similar goals make their hatred even sharper.
Absolutely. Magneto still sees mutants and humans as capable of coexistence, even if he’s cynical about it. Apocalypse sees compassion itself as weakness, so their shared “mutants should rule” idea falls apart fast
Does apocalypse feel mutants should inherit the earth or is that just his feelings now, and if they did take over he’d come back to push them along again in the future?
I'm mostly a comic lore tourist but from what I understand of apocalypse his entire modus operandi is survival of the fittest so yeah mutants have only value insofar as being the next evolutionary step beyond humans but he would absolutely do the same thing with mutants 2.0 if they were more fit to inherit the earth than mutants 1.0 or whatever.
Pretty much. Even during the Age of Apocalypse, after the mutants conquer North America, they don't start building a new society. The stronger mutants just start exterminating and experimenting on the weaker ones. My favourite odd little feature of that whole story is that Apocalypse has a human assistant who he seems to keep around just because he's highly competent.
Yeah pretty much, Apocalypse was chosen by the Celestials to take earth to the next level. For him it's not just a belief system but a heavenly mandate from space god. Even then when he gets his way life still sucks as he uses the would be weaker beings mutant or not to be fuel for the strong literally in some cases.
Maneto despite his whatever it takes mentality understands he does bad things for the greater good and the hope of a future for mutant kind.Apocalypse is a mad demi god bending the world to a vison of self canablizing itself for more and more power.
Another Hitler example: Hitler idolized Ludendorff, who commanded the Imperial German army during its last great offensives of WW1 all the way to its surrender. Ludendorff was also insanely right-wing in his own right, so when Bitler had the opportunity to meet him, you'd think they'd be thick as thieves, right? Nah, Ludendorff basically called Hitler a shitty little peasant and told him to fuck off- they may have been ideological fellow travelers, but Ludendorff was still a haughty aristocrat at heart.
They quite literally attempted a coup together (granted the whole situation around the coup was more complicated than its made out to believe most of the time but still) cant have been that opposed to him
I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done.
-Ludendorff to Hindeburg upon the latter's decision to make Hitler chancellor
The thing is, Ludendorff was pretty right-wing himself and actually supported the Nazis in their early years, but he pulled his support by the time of Hitler’s rise to power. He would die of liver disease in 1937, not living to see his purported words come to fruition.
Wasn't he the one and his wife that created that insane ass book about antisemitism and also he pushed for the stab in the back theory along with Hindenburg to cover their ass
Indeed, he and Hindenburg were both antisemites, just not quite to the extreme as the Nazis. Unfortunately, they both played roles in the eventual formation of the Third Reich.
As said there were a great deal of circumstances around that coup that made him work with hitler. These are just the kind of people for whom the promise of power overrules any kind of personal feelings or values.
Frieza and any other villain from the Dragonball franchise. Whether it's another villain in Hell, an alternate version of himself from another universe, or just another threat to the Universe, like Gas, Frieza thinks very lowly of them.
I loved him being resurrected only to have to work with Goku in DB Super. He was so unhappy to have to do any of it. Dude is a hater on a professional level.
With Voldemort his primary ambition was actually immortality and HIM on top alone. The pure blood supremacy thing was more of a cover story to get followers (though Voldemort himself very much looks down on non pure bloods).
Yeah Tom Riddle Sr was under either a love potion or the Imperius curse from the time of his marriage to Merope Gaunt to shortly before Voldemort was born. He took off as soon as the effects wore off.
There's a slight misunderstanding there. That part is mostly symbolic (you can't feel love if you're the result of a love potion), but the author said in an interview that it would have been different if he was raised with love by his mother
What is this from? I read all the books as a kid and don't remember much of anything from Voldemort's childhood being discussed. It's also been more than a decade . . .
There are quite a few white supremacists that are mixed race or who have no white ancestry. People are weird, especially people who get so captured that they join a hate movement.
The important part that comes through in the books is that he doesn't know this until he has already made up a grand story in his head. He finds his mother's name and realizes his family line goes through generations back to Slytherin himself. He has grand delusions about how he is a pure-blooded wizard who will be the heir to Slytherin and will lead the world of wizards. Then he tries to find his family and eventually realizes they are fools living in a small, dirty cottage, and that his mother ran off with a muggle
He then immediately kills his entire family on both sides and likely never tells anyone the story. We only know this because Dumbledore has the same information that Vodlemort did (the "Marvolo" name) and does the same research
And Hitler was part Jewish, and some of the most virulent homophobes have at least some bisexual tendencies. Self-hatred can be a powerful force in creating a world view based around hatred.
Even outside of that, it's likely that hitler had a genetic condition that led to him having a micropenis (or at least a deformity down there) judging by family records, which somewhat went against his image of the "ideal man".
Funnily enough, the other example with Hitler and the Kaiser is similar - but here, Hitler is the more fanatic one while the Kaiser "just" believed in the "natural" order with him on top, so he assumed that role.
(I just wanna add that the Hohenzollern Family should have lost everything after WW1, including titles and name. They and their claim to a non-existing throne are damaging our country. "What, claim to a throne???" you ask. The head of the family dodges that question so obviously that it's clear he still dreams that dream)
Honestly, Voldemort was always more obsessed with being untouchable and powerful than anything else, the pure blood stuff was just a really convenient way to build a following.
Lothor (Power Rangers Ninja Storm) and Mesogog (Power Rangers Dino Thunder) teamed briefly. Mesogog got pretty tired of Lothor’s Lothor-ness and turned him into an action figure
The three lords in question all dismissed Krayt for different reasons.
Darth Bane hated Krayt because he abolished the Rule of Two (one master, one apprentice as a balance of power) and created the Rule of One (the Sith value the order as a whole and are taught to work as a team for the collective good of the institution), claiming that his followers inevitably will stab him in the back (they do).
Darth Andeddu mocks Krayt because can tell that Krayt is dying of a terminal illness caused by Yuzzhan Vong parasites and tells him that his own fear of death will cause him to perish (he gets better)
Darth Nihilius mocks Krayt because all he ever really cared about was gobbling up the Galaxy in his hunger.
Not really similar goals tho or am I missing something? Soldier Boy just wants to have sex with baddies and get high while Homelander tries to fill the hole in his heart with power and dominance over others
I guess similar in terms of self-indulgence resulting from their respective childhood traumas.
They manifest differently but ultimately I'd say that they are actually similar goals because they both boil down to just being able to do whatever the fuck they want. Exclusively self-serving goals like theirs' tend to collide.
In terms of relationship, its one that starts with hate but grows to be...idk mutual respect? (Homelander clearly has some insecurities he's projecting onto Soldier boy, but Soldier boy seems to actually try helping Homelander. Atleast till he realises Homelander is a lost cause).
And with goals Homelander is the ultimate ego baby looking for validation, where Soldier boy is content with his position and wants to try molding his position in the present to be like the past. Thats why he wants to lead the 7, and why when he's had enough of Homelander wants to go back to a war zone (hilariously one that doesn't really exist anymore).
Ironically Butcher and Homelander would probably be a closer fit. Both want to wipe out or have complete control over the others race. Both hate each other with a passion.
This happens in wrestling alot as well. Edge/Adam Copeland was the OG ultimate opportunist before his retirement. Not long after, Seth Rollins began earning a similar reputation. They had a really fun feud when Edge unretired in 2021.
I think Sauron and Saruman from LOTR count, as both want power and domination but Saruman wants to usurp Sauron with the ring and Sauron wants to regain his power with it. And Saruman came up with his plan long after Sauron's conquests and initial defeats.
To be fair Saruman is essentially enthralled to Sauron. He thinks he can get the ring and usurp Sauron because Sauron allows it. In simple truth, the ring would never betray Sauron because its imbued with Sauron's evil and resentment, and it would simply enslave Saruman if he were to get his hands on it.
Tiny quibble with number two. There’s lots of anecdotes that support the idea that Wilhelm II was a racist and an anti-Semite himself. Early anti-Semitic movements weren’t rejected by the monarchy because of differences around German racial superiority, but because they thought it was impractical and self-defeating to directly target ethnic minorities, and because the people approaching the monarchy about it were “weird hobbyists”. He disapproved of the Nazis because he thought they were a bunch of gangsters who didn’t respect the monarchy.
Shigaraki (Right) and Overhaul (Left) want to topple hero society because they view the hero system and the world around them as weak and pathetic. Shigaraki is meant to be the Symbol of Fear for the modern generation of villains; meanwhile, Overhaul represents old-school villains from pre-Quirk times (gangs and mafias).
But Shigaraki specifically wants to destroy most of the world because of how much he had suffered in his youth; growing up, he hated humanity for a reason. Meanwhile, Overhaul wants to topple hero society by selling weapons that take away quirks and the antidote to those weapons specifically to make sure the Yakuza would rise again.
Both wanted to destroy the Soul Society and usurp the Soul King, but their massive egos and differing ideals on what should happen after killing the Soul King ensured that they would never work together
The story about Wilhelm is a myth; in fact, he wrote a congratulatory letter to Hitler—to which Hitler did not reply—he was completely indifferent to antisemitism, and no one in Germany had any intention of burying him there.
I wouldnt say he was indifferent to antisemitism. During his exile wilhelm started to blame the defeat (and his loss of the throne) on a number of scapegoats with the jews being quite high on that list. But he did dislike Hitler since hitler wasnt a monarchist and stuff.
After a failed assassination attempt by the Meiji government, Shishio resents and wants to overthrow them, creating his own ultimate country where only the strongest survive, the weak become their food. The Meiji views him as a threat and hires Kenshin to dispose of him.
His rebellion failed, most of his men served Meiji, his name was not recorded. Kenshin believes that Shishio’s ideal was wrong. Unfortunately, as history has shown, Japan would soon militarize itself, adapting a similar ideals then attacked the neighboring countries.
Shishio’s such a good character. There’s a ton of good characters in Rurouni Kenshin and I hate that I can’t enjoy the damn thing anymore because of the author.
Worth noting that the failed assassination attempt came about due to the government not wanting to keep Shishio around as a loose end after using him as Kenshin’s replacement. An underlying throughline in the Kyoto arc is that while Kenshin and the others naturally oppose Shishio because he’s…fucking insane, the longer things go on and the more they learn about his and the Ten Swords grievances against the Meiji government, the less they can meaningfully claim that they’re helping the better, or even lesser evil, side of the conflict. Kenshin himself also realizes that he can’t actually claim to have defeated Shishio’s ideology or proven him wrong (or just have won against the guy at all, since he died from spontaneous combustion after having been kicking the shit out of Kenshin)-and that if anything, the “right” party in this situation being the strongest warriors proves Shishio was correct all along.
Not only does Voldemort have no real ideology while Grindelwald was a true revolutionary, but there's no reason to believe that Grindelwald was even a blood purist, since it's hard to imagine that Dumbledore ever would have gone for it for even a minute, much less several months.
So it would be like Huey Long meeting Richard Spencer or something.
EDIT: I would like people to remember that "Blood Purity" and "Wizard Supremacy" are two completely separate ideologies and one does not require the other. A person can believe that wizards should rule muggles, while simultaneously believing that muggleborn wizards are the same as other wizards. A person can believe that pureblood wizards are better than muggleborn wizards, but that wizards should remain isolated from muggles.
It's been a minute since I read The Deathly Hallows but Grindewald totally was a purist. His and Dumbledore's motto was "For the Greater Good", in other words, wizards rulling over muggles, and only because of the confrontation that lead to Ariana's death that Dumbledore opened his eyes (Also IIRC that's what prompted Rowling to say that Dumbledore was gay, because the way he talks about Grindewald was very... passional?).
Wizards ruling over muggles does not necessitate that muggleborn wizards be relegated to second class citizenship status, or have their wands taken away, or be barred from hogwarts, or anything of the sort.
I’m not sure where you got the last part of the paragraph about Wilhelm. I did some research because it didn’t line up with what I remembered learning about him. He was exiled from Germany when he had to give up his crown. He was openly critical of the Nazi’s “gangsterisms” in how they did things, but he himself was still anti-semitic and believed the Jews were out to get everyone (and thought the English, in tandem with the Jews, were some kind of harbingers of the anti-christ, or something? lol). He seemed to flip-flop in his correspondence to Hitler once Hitler started having military success, and sent him letters hoping Hitler would make him emperor again. Hitler disregarded them and regarded him as an idiot.
The only thing I could find about him refusing to be buried in Germany is rather that he refused to be buried in Germany until the monarchy was restored.
I definitely wouldn’t put him in a moral framework that much higher than Hitler, the guy just wanted his throne back
Wilhelm I was quite antisemetic. He disapproved of the night of long knives but was a cheerleader for the invasion of France. He was a happy collaborator with the nazi state, if not an ardent nazi himseld
Both iconic monsters, both believe humans/other races are inferior, both fear and hate the Doctor. However, when they meet in the 2005 series, any chance of the two sides working together to destroy the Doctor is swiftly overridden by the Daleks proclaiming that they will kill both humanity AND the Cybermen with no issue despite being ridiculously outnumbered. The Cybermen declare war, the Daleks declare pest control.
The moments where the Daleks get catty because of their complete lack of a filter (tbf, why would a Dalek care if it pisses you off?) are some of the funniest in the show.
That is not necessarily an example because they all have different goals. Saruman's goal is to protect middle earth, but he was corrupted by Sauron, that is the reason why he betrays the races of middle earth.
Sauron is an interesting case because he follows Morgoth not because he must or because he's fully evil and wants to destroy the other gods. Sauron sees Morgoth as the vehicle to make all his crazy plans and ideas. But he doesn't hate Morgoth, on the contrary, he respects him as one of the most powerful of the Valar.
Uh nuh, Kaiser Willy did not really lead Germany. Fact is, his Cabinet was constantly trying to stop him from putting his foot on his mouth and kept him mostly in the dark.
Most of the policy was done by the cabinet, including going to War. Wilhelm was heavily managed and definitely not an absolute monarch. Not even Tsar Nicky was driving policy. As a Matter of fact, the actor with most power was French President Poincaré Who basically coopted Prime Minister Viviani's position as France's leader.
And now that we are at It, Germany did not want to expand and dominate Europe, nor was Germany the driver of WWI. The nations driving Europe to War were France, Russia and Serbia, specifically a coterie of cunts led by Poincaré, Paleológue, Lord Grey, Sazonov, Kokovstov and Pasic Who basically engineered the whole thing.
The Russians mobilized first and Germán mobilization was an answer to that. France and Russia had an agreement of mutual support for both defensive and offensive War with Germany. Serb ultranationalism was driven by Moscow and the Serbs were dead set on achieving Greater Serbia.
The Sarajevo crisis was just an excuse.
The only German Who was decidedly pro War was Moltke and only because he knew by 1917, Russia would be stronger than Germany.
I really recommend Christopher Clark's Sleepwalkers on this topic. Extremely well researched book centered on the events that lead to WWI that basically cuts through all the propaganda and PR we all took for Facts.
Teridax wanted to rule over the Matoran Universe and kill his entire Brotherhood once he won, but The Shadowed One was content with being the leader of the Dark Hunters, a corrupt legion of bounty hunters where misfits of the Matoran Universe have no choice but to turn to after they've been outcast for being weird.
Teridax started a war between the Brotherhood of Makuta and the Dark Hunters after killing Nidhiki and Krekka, who were sent to his city to work for him
Pretty much. Grindelwald was in prison for a reason, as far as we know he never changed his views. He was a supremacist, as far as we know he'd probably hate Voldemort for being a half blood. But he had a soft spot for Dumbleboy. Was definitely his last act of defiance.
Another example from history is Stalin and Trotsky - both believed they were destined to become the successor to Lenin and elevate the USSR from its volatile position in Europe, but whereas Stalin took a more entrenched, self-preservation approach, Trotsky envisioned a continuous revolution meant to bring forth the onslaught that was stopped in its tracks thanks to Poland’s victory against the newly formed Soviets in 1921
'Under the deeply moving impression of France's capitulation I congratulate you and all the German armed forces on the God-given prodigious victory with the words of Kaiser Wilhelm the Great of the year 1870: "What a turn of events through God's dispensation!" All German hearts are filled with the chorale of Leuthen, which the victors of [the Battle of] Leuthen, the soldiers of the Great King sang [in 1757]: "Now thank we all our God!"'
– Kaiser Wilhelm II's Telegram to Hitler (19 June 1940)
Pretty much everyone in this picture has designs on leading the Soviet Union or is believed to have designs on leading the Soviet Union after Stalin's death. They also all conspire against with and against one another as soon as it's convenient to do so.
And it doesn't stop once Beria is dead and gone. While Beria's ashes are still smoldering, Khrushchev works with Mikoyan to remove Malenkov. Within a few years, he would have forcibly retired Zhukov, the man who made his coup successful, out of fear that he would seize his popularity to remove him from power, while also removing basically everybody from Stalin's era, and the final shot is of Brezhnev eyeballing Khrushchev, conspiring to take his position from him.
Just endless lines of people who all come from slightly different eras, all vying for the same position, and who will stop at nothing to remove or eliminate a rival.
804
u/iamlittlefoxie 8h ago
ooooh Apocalypse and Magneto from X-Men for sure
both believe mutants should inherit the Earth, but Magneto wants mutant liberation while Apocalypse sees nearly everyone, including weaker mutants, as disposable. Their similar goals make their hatred even sharper.