Introductions to Foils and Counterparts in Writing

 Introduction to Foils:

Foils are one of my favorite tropes in fiction. Broadly speaking, a foil is a new character that is designed to contrast with a preestablished character in a story (usually our protagonist or their mentor). It’s not enough for these two to just be different, they must be polar opposites in some way: personality, disposition, morals, goals, powers, backgrounds, you name it. Generally speaking, the reason why you’d write a foil is to generate friction that can change or push the main characters in some way, making them more compelling to an audience. 

Foils are a favorite trope of mine because they’re as old as storytelling itself. You can find foils in ancient mythology, classical literature, modern literature, comic books, television, radio, video games and everything in-between. 

They’re extremely flexible, because characters can be foils for any number of reasons. Plus, individual characters themselves even need to be foils. Weapons can be foils, or groups of characters, or the settings they inhabit. A personal favorite of mine is that it’s possible for subplots within a story to be a foil to the main plot! For instance, in the first season of Arcane, the show makes a point of contrasting Vi and Caitlyn more intimate, emotional relationship with Jayce and Mel’s loveless and ultimately meaningless sexual relationship. 

Because of this, foils are actually rather difficult to mess up, and you can do almost anything with them. How many differences characters have and why they are foils can be used for drama, action, comedy, and anything in-between. And if the foil character isn’t executed to their fullest potential, that’s alright, because now they can just exist as their own character. 

Writers generally design foils in one of two ways:

• First, they are opposite to the main character in every conceivable way. All of the things I just mentioned—personality, opinions, abilities, morality, dreams, upbringing—it’s all entirely reversed. These foils are much more multifaceted, but also much easier to write. Because the two characters are so different and have no middle ground, it doesn’t take much imagination to examine why friction exists between them. 

• Second, writers can choose to highlight a single difference between two characters, and they are complete opposites in regards to that one thing, but are completely the same in everything else. In essence, the foil acts as a counterpart to our main character, showing what they would become if they made a single choice differently. 

Roles:

Once it’s been determined why two characters are foils, and whether they contrast in everything or just one thing; the foil can take on a few basic roles.

First, and most obviously, they can serve as an antagonist. In this case, the differences between them and our hero are usually rooted in goals, morals and worldviews. One of the first and most well-known foils in literature is Grendel, the savage monster who opposes our noble Beowulf in the epic poem of the same name. While Grendel is a literal monster, Beowulf still has a certain monstrous, barbaric style to his fighting. Their fight sets the tone for the rest of the poem and sets several events in motion, and much literature and analysis has been devoted to exploring Grendel as much as the original poem explored Beowulf. 

Obviously the notion of a foil fulfilling the role of an antagonist is very common. Other examples include the chaotic and unpredictable Joker serving as a foil to the rigid and lawful Batman; the billionaire Lex Luthor serving as a foil to the immigrant farmboy Superman; the racist, scummy Bob Ewell serving as a foil to the noble and righteous Atticus Finch; and so, so much more. 

• It’s important to note, however, that antagonists are not strictly the same as villains. A protagonist and an antagonist oppose one another for their goals, while a hero and a villain oppose one another because the villain is evil and the hero is good. Villains, antagonists and foils all overlap, but they are not strictly the same thing. If our main character is a criminal, a common antagonist is a law enforcement officer just trying to do the right thing by arresting them, such as Carl Hanratty in Catch Me If You Can or Sam Gerard in The Fugitive; those characters are certainly antagonists and foils, but not villains. 

• However, if we are dealing with a work that has multiple antagonists who are also villains, but only one of them is a designated foil to our hero, that generally becomes the “main” antagonist of the story. The natural friction between protagonists and antagonists is multiplied by the natural friction that exists between foils. 

• For safe measure, some writers will even throw in a third, more personal reason why these two are fighting, and the foil becomes an outright nemesis. A nemesis is different from an antagonist or a villain; they’re not opposed due to clashing goals or clashing morals, they’re just the person our hero hates most in the world. 

Let me use an example here. In One Piece, our protagonist and hero is Monkey D. Luffy, a freedom-loving, rebellious pirate trying to find the titular treasure. To illustrate the difference between antagonist, villain, foil and nemesis, I’ll use a few characters:

• A recurring antagonist is Smoker, a Navy Marine assigned to hunt him down. However, Smoker isn’t a villain, because he’s just a man doing his job. 

• In the Wano Arc, we learned more about the villain Rocks D. Xebec. Even though he’s a villain, he’s not an antagonist, because Luffy never fought him. 

• Big Mom is both an antagonist and a villain. Not only is she a morally heinous person, her goals directly bring her into conflict with Luffy. 

• Finally, someone like Blackbeard is both an antagonist and a villain AND a nemesis AND a foil. Blackbeard is a morally disgusting man, Luffy’s opposite in many ways, a major opponent in his quest for the One Piece, and one of two men responsible for the death of his brother Ace; but the similarities between the two often bring them in conflict just as much as their differences do. 

Second, they can serve as a rival, friendly or otherwise. In this situation, it’s actually very unlikely that these two characters are foils because of their goals. After all, rivals are defined by competition, but for them to interact in a competitive manner they must be competing for the same thing. The friction that comes with being foils is just further incentive for them to beat one-another. 

Foils as rivals is very popular in Shonen manga. While some manga occasionally flirted with making them antagonists or outright villains (Vegeta famously began life as an arc villain and Sasuke was the final boss of Naruto), most writers have decided it’s more compelling for their characters to be vastly different individuals competing for the same thing. I’ve spoken at length about this in my essays on rivalries in Yugioh and My Hero Academia, but these dynamics often have a contrast between natural talent and money (Yugi and Kaiba), hard work and money (Yuma and Kite), or hard work and natural talent (Deku and Bakugo, Asta and Yuno). 

Third, foils can serve as a lancer. For those that are unaware, ensemble casts in fiction often fulfill what we call a “Five-Man Band,” a pattern seen in every genre and every medium you can think of. Broadly speaking, a Five-Man Band consists of the following:

• A Leader, generally the protagonist or mentor, who leads the team.

• A Heart, the emotional center of the team, who handles social situations and emotional problems.

• The Smart One, who solves complex technical problems, and is a vast reservoir of plot-relevant knowledge. 

• The Big One, who is usually the best fighter and/or the one capable of applying brute force consistently. 

• And the Lancer. The Lancer is effectively the second-in-command of the group, and while their main role in-universe is to help lead the team, their main role narratively is to contradict and push the leader. 

A foil is useful for the role of the Lancer. If one character’s designated job is already to push our main character’s buttons, we might as well just give them opposing character traits. The secretive, paranoid Batman is often depicted as a lancer to the more optimistic, idealistic Superman in DC Comics, and the two are perfect foils. Similarly, the humble Steve Rogers and cocky Tony Stark often serve as lancers to each other in Marvel Comics, and ever since Civil War Marvel has leaned into the concept of Tony as Steve’s foil. 

One of my personal favorites is when you have a designated Leader who everybody gets along with, and two characters who are both Lancers, and those Lancers disagree with each other rather than the Leader. Kirk, Spock and Bones had this dynamic in Star Trek, with our leader Kirk finding himself between Spock’s logical planning and Bones’ emotional decision-making. This is an especially powerful trope when the co-Lancers can put aside their bickering to focus on their Leader, such as Zoro and Sanji working to help Luffy in One Piece, or Gimli and Legolas working to help Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. 

However, within the Five-Man Band, if our main character is the Smart One, their foil is almost always going to be the Big One, and vice versa. Brains contrast with brawns, after all, so giving two characters with opposite functions opposite appearances or personalities makes complete sense. In Voltron Legendary Defender, our showoff pilot Lance is the Lancer (nice) to Keith’s more serious Leader for a portion of the show; but at the same time, resident Smart Guy Pidge is a foil to Hunk, the Big Guy of the team. 

If the foil is going to be an ally of the show in some way, or even a major rival, it’s important that writers develop chemistry between the main character and their foil. (Platonic or romantic.) For comedy purposes, one of my favorite approaches is to make the characters who are opposites in many ways such as background and abilities, but somehow always act the same and arrive at the same conclusions. Gon and Killua from Hunter x Hunter are best friends who share the same childlike curiosity despite their wildly different circumstances, and Megumi and Yuji from JuJutsu Kaisen both exhibit the same self-sacrificing behavior despite vastly different outlooks on life. In both cases, I was 100% onboard with their friendship, even though their differences were more apparent than their similarities. 

Fourth, and bear with me on this one, foils are often love interests. I know I’ve spent a lot of time so far talking about rivals, nemeses and villains, but think about it. In almost every popular romance story, “opposites attract” is a main theme. Sure, these two characters might not be foils because of their morals or goals, but they can be foils in upbringing or personality. 

How often have we seen “naive schoolgirl meets bad boy” or “no-nonsense woman meets goofy manchild” or “serious loner falls in love with extraverted sunshine incarnate”? Those might not be foils in the same way Blackbeard and Luffy are foils, but they count all the same. 

I generally despise romance stories and romance subplots that rely on this trope, especially because they often glorify unhealthy dynamics that could never work in real life. But my favorite example of foils as love interests is Arcane. I gotta hand it to them, they tackled the “posh rich character meets brash poor character” and made the relationship work by using it as commentary for class differences without skipping over what made Vi and Caitlyn so lovable in League of Legends in the first place. 

Fifth, and more broadly speaking, foils are often there to enrich the themes of the story. This is especially true of counterpart foils, characters who only have one thing separating them. Oftentimes, the author will use that difference as a discussion point.

For instance, in Attack on Titan, Eren and Zeke are foils to one-another, especially in the fourth season (or final two arcs for you manga readers). These two are half-brothers and Titan Shifters, and at this point in the manga we can’t reasonably call Zeke a villain (or Eren a hero) because they’re both so morally gray, and characters in-universe acknowledge how similar they are. However, Zeke believes the Eldians need to die, whereas Eren believes everyone except the Eldians need to die. Isayama uses this relationship to discuss nature vs nurture, with Zeke believing that his brother is a product of brainwashing and Eren insisting that he’s always been this extreme. 

The sixth and final function often goes hand-in-hand with the other functions. In extremely rare cases, a talented author can set up two characters as foils and bitter enemies, then explain the circumstances that led to their current relationship. Essentially, the foils are there to tell history. 

One of my favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird, is especially noteworthy upon closer inspection because of the twisted, mirrored relationship between Atticus Finch, the moral center of the story, and Bob Ewell, the main villain. 

Bob is a racist drunk filled with hate towards pretty much everyone in town; Atticus is a fighter for equal rights, who holds no apparent grudges towards anyone around him, despite the massive amount of hate he receives rather than gives. Atticus also teaches his children, Jem and Scout, the virtues of honesty, kindness and respect. Bob, by sharp contrast, cares little for his children and uses his daughter to frame Tom Robison for rape only out of spite towards Tom. 

That’s all well and good, but where Lee’s writing really shines is how she contrasts the entire Finch family to the larger Ewell family. Both are old Maycomb families who’ve had a massive impact on the town. The Ewells live in the slums of town without a dollar to their name because of Bob’s constant drinking, and while not as drastic, Atticus does establish fairly early on in the novel that the Finches are quite poor due to Atticus getting few jobs because of his reputation as an equal rights-supporting lawyer. The Ewells are looked down on by pretty much everyone, and have been for generations. But Maycomb looks down on the Finches for a different reason: Atticus is the only person in the town actively fighting for the betterment of their society. 

Evil Counterparts:

“We’re not so different, you and I.”

Arguably one of the most popular cinema quotes of all time, this phrase and its many variations have appeared in nearly everything you can think of, from Transformers to X-Men to Raiders of the Lost Ark. This line points us in the direction of a subtrope of foils: the evil counterpart.  

Lying at that perfect intersection of a counterpart foil, antagonist, villain and nemesis, the evil counterpart is generally the most dangerous villain our hero has to fight, the most personally and thematically-engaging, and the most similar. Their very existence poses a question: “What if our hero had one bad day?”

Obviously, this trope has a lot of specific criteria:

• The characters must have enough similarities to be compared to each other, yet enough differences (or one big difference) to be moral opposites of each other. 

• They must oppose one-another in some way. 

• The narrative must acknowledge their similarities, either indirectly (such as through circumstance) or directly (such as other characters commenting on their similarities). 

• One is generally depicted as being more evil or lawless than the other, with the two counterparts in turn being classified by which one is good and which one is evil, so to speak. 

Furthermore, this trope is at its best when the hero and their evil counterpart had similar upbringing, when the evil counterpart is around the same age as or a bit older than the hero, and they had similar worldviews until recently. 

Generally, the factor that separates our hero from their evil counterpart is a singular event that changed their worldview. 

Star Wars is one of the best examples of this trope, for two reasons. First, Darth Vader is an extremely iconic but mysterious character, who seems equal parts monstrous and otherworldly in the Original Trilogy, so the twist that he and Luke are so similar hits that much harder. Two, George Lucas went to the trouble of making the evil counterpart the hero of their own story just so we could see this “one bad day.” 

Luke and Anakin are jack-of-all-trade characters who specialize in a number of things, such as fighting, piloting and inventing. Both were raised on desert worlds, both were mentored by Ben Kenobi, and both were great Jedi who fought evil. 

Anakin’s “one bad day,” of course, is the entirety of Revenge of the Sith, where he makes the decision to sacrifice his morals in exchange for power to protect Padme, both from the Jedi he’s grown paranoid of and the nightmares that plague him. What I like about Anakin’s fall from grace is that he has a lot of the same surface-level characteristics as Luke, but their core personalities underneath that are vastly different. Whereas Luke was trusting and sought adventure, Anakin was distrusting and sought power. Luke was humble and kind, Anakin was angry and boastful. Palpatine exploited Anakin’s more negative qualities in the Prequels, but he couldn’t see past his and Luke’s surface-level similarities, which is why he failed to turn Luke in Return of the Jedi. 

Archer from Fate/stay night is the idea of an evil counterpart taken to its most logical conclusion. He literally is a future version of our main character, Shirou Emiya, displaced from his original timeline and summoned to Shirou’s Holy Grail War. I’ve spoken about this before in my essay “Fate/stay night: A Retrospective,” but Archer canonically comes from a universe very similar to the first route, but we don’t learn his identity until the second route, Unlimited Blade Works. The original visual novel forces us to get comfortable with Shirou and Archer’s characters individually before revealing their connection, retroactively changing how we view the first route and laying down new context for the third route. 

Miscellaneous: 

I wanted to end this essay by talking about two other takes on foils that I really, really enjoy, 

First, we have one of the hardest takes on the trope: making three characters foils instead of just two. One of the easiest ways to go about this is to designate one character in the “center” of the rivalry, who we’ll call character A. After that, introduce character B, who is character A’s opposite in every way. Finally, introduce character C, who is character A’s foil in only one way. 

I don’t care for JK Rowling as a person, but Harry Potter does this quite well. Early books seem to indicate a fairly simple rivalry between Draco and Harry, with the two constantly squabbling and competing. However, as we learn more about his home life, it turns out Draco isn’t evil, just trying desperately to impress a deeply amoral family. Once we learn this, Draco seems to serve as the opposite and foil to Ron Weasely of all people. 

The important thing to note here is that Ron and Draco had friction from the get-go. Ron lives in poverty with five siblings, a doting mother and a father obsessed with Muggles. Draco is the only son of a wealthy, sterile, sophisticated family who believes themselves better than Muggles. 

However, Draco never had that immediate friction with Harry, and in fact, Draco saw a bit of a kinship in Harry. When they first meet, he actually wants to become friends with Harry, and only bullies him out of spite when Harry rejects him. Essentially, Draco is the opposite to Ron Weasley, but the counterpart to Harry Potter. 

Yugioh GX, Yugioh Zexal and My Hero Academia also all do this very well by crafting two rivals for our protagonist who embody different traits of the genre. Chazz is a rich snob while Zane is a talented loner. Shark is a power-hungry bully with a heart of gold and Kite is a vicious duelist obsessed with his family. Bakugo is a loudmouthed brat while Shoto is a quiet prodigy. In all of these cases, the rivals challenge different parts of the hero and eventually become so fleshed out they can reasonably challenge one-another as well. 

The best example of a three-way foil dynamic, off the top of my head, is Netflix’s Castlevania. The relationship between Alucard, Trevor and Sypha is the beating heart of the show. Each of them has some sort of trait that separates them from the other two and makes them a foil: Alucard is cold, focused and he bottles up his emotions, in contrast to the vocal and emotionally available Sypha and Trevor. Sypha is from a nomadic tribe, and this has made her a bit naive and inexperienced. And Trevor is a loudmouthed, vulgar brute in contrast to his more reserved, polite friends. 

Part of why they’re such a good trio of foils is that they fulfill almost every role of a foil I mentioned above: lancers, rivals, love interests, you name it. Hell, these three even develop one of the central themes of the show. The very things that separate all of them are family. Sypha’s sheltered outlook is due to her nomadic upbringing, Alucard’s cold and rigid behavior is a result of being raised by a literal vampire, and Trevor’s reckless and vulgar nature is a consequence of being from a family of persecuted monster hunters. 

Anyways, I’m getting a bit off track. But you should watch Castlevania if you haven’t already. 

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Second, we have foils between entire species, which JRR Tolkien uses to develop the world of Middle-Earth. The elves for example are portrayed as mystical and borderline angelic; their counterparts, the orcs, share the same skill in war, but are filthy and animalistic. The dwarves are more rough-around-the-edges, and are often looked down on (literally and metaphorically), but there’s a certain beauty to their subterranean culture. Thus, they are opposed by the goblins, who’ve overrun Moria. 

The humans are later presented as having a much smaller but infinitely more skilled counterpart in the Nazgul; Tolkien uses these three counterparts to great effect in showing the dark nature of his characters and the corruptibility of the three races as a whole.  

However, there’s another layer to this: by also stating in his narrative that all of these species have been around for millennia, Tolkien establishes a long, bloody history. He’s essentially fulfilling the sixth function of foils I mentioned earlier, but on a much larger and grander scale than Harper Lee, which compels our heroes to push forward and end the cycle of violence. 

Conclusion:

To summarize, this is one of the most diverse tropes out there, as well as one of the oldest. From its earliest influences in mythology to its new applications in fantasy and worldbuilding, I hope that all new authors find some way to use this trope. There’s so much richness that can be found here, if we just think to look.