"A Kingdom Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand"

This is a Bible quote most famous in America for how Abraham Lincoln used it (changing Kingdom to House), but I find it amusing how his use of it is perhaps undermined by acknowledging that Jesus was specifically talking about the Kingdom of Beelzebub when He said this (arguing it is absurd to accuse Demons of helping someone cast out Demons).  Doesn't necessarily debunk it's applicability, but it's funny to think about.

What I want to talk about today however is the weird irony of how often writers of fiction want to believe the Kingdom of Beelzebub is exactly the Kingdom that would be incapable of following this advice.

A lot of kids shows in particular want to preach the value of teamwork by suggesting that the bad guys always lose precisely because they can't actually work together.

It's a lot more jarring however when these same tropes pop up in more "adult", "serious" or "realistic" settings.  Where the big bad thinks making the cashing in of their bounty on the hero a competition will increase the odds of success when what it really does is cause the assassins to spend half their time saving the hero from each other.  In Arkham Origins when it turns out it was The Joker doing it to cause Chaos it works, but when the real Black Mask does it in the recent Birds of Prey movie.... I like the film overall but that part does annoy me a bit.

Or when in Rise of Skywalker General Hux betrays the First Order to the Resistance because his personal hatred of Kylo Ren suddenly now trumps his devout loyalty to Authoritarianism so strongly established in The Force Awakens.

However the example that is most pertinent on my mind right now is Sailor Moon.  You see one of the things Manga fans really harp on the 90s Anime for is the way this trope is strongly at play in that version but really never was in The Manga.  However 90s Anime fans feel the Satou and Ikuhara versions of these villains have more "depth" since we spent more time with them.  But when all that depth merely functions to make them less effective as antagonists it's ultimately a hollow depth, to some viewers at least.

Thing is it could be all this infighting was partly because of the 90s show drawing things out longer, they need to explain why it's taking so long for this many super powerful black mages to accomplish anything.  But it's also partly because 90s Toei didn't want the Senshi killing the bad guys as directly as they did in the Manga, so Zoisite kills Nephrite, Mimette kills Eudial, Tellu kills Mimette and so on.

I've been slowly but surely watching my way through Cutey Honey Flash, the 97 Cutey Honey reboot designed to serve as a successor to the 90s Sailor Moon Anime, and this trope is again at play here in a way that as far as I can tell currently it isn't in other versions of Panther Claw, but I'm no expert on that franchise.

Perhaps it is inappropriate to bring The Bible into this particular trope discussion, since this quote was about Demons not Sinful Human Beings who have presumably more complicated motivations. Number one, villains in Magical Girl shows and Power Rangers sometimes are treated as more Demon then Human.

But more importantly this Trope often happens for the trope's own sake without putting any thought into why these characters are acting this way.  If they don's care about this cause enough to put it ahead of their personal animosity for certain co-workers why are they fighting for it at all?  If this villainous organization itself isn't driven by an ideological goal what is driving it?  Those questions could have good understandable answers, but usually the show is hoping we won't ask in the first place.

A lot of those Sailor Moon Manga fans frustrated by the 90s Anime love the mid 00s Live Action show commonly known as PGSM.  On that show the Shitennou wind up not being all on the same page but why actually does make sense in the context of that re-imagining of the story.  Parts of what was done with them in the 90s Anime work great, I love Nephrite/Naru and Kunzite/Zoisite.  But the complete picture is never painted at all, the 90s Anime is the one version to never even explain the part about them being originally Prince Endymion's loyal retainers.

The Black Moon Clan has it the worst, for them the 90s Anime almost completely removes their motivation.  They were supposed to be the most ideologically driven of any of the Sailor Moon villains so them spending the Anime constantly betraying each other over petty BS is completely nonsensical.

But the Infinity Arc is the most Lovecraftian Sailor Moon story-line, the Deahtbusters are meant to be like one of those cults Nyarlahotep founded, so their infighting in Sailor Moon S doesn't make sense either.

You can have villains fighting each other because they weren't part of the same "Kingdom" to begin with.  You can have rivalries within an organization so long as those rivals can put that aside when it's time too actually fight the heroes.  You can have someone in a villainous organization who actually has their own agenda.  Or you could attempt to debunk these rules I'm making altogether by making it make sense.

But a lot of the time villains are undermining each other for no reason other then people expect villains to behave that way.

Update: The closest thing to a TVTropes page for this says it's not a pervasive trope at all but rather that it's a rarity when this happens.  I guess when a Trope is annoying you at the moment it seems more pervasive then it actually is.

Update November 2024: I just watched episode 14 of Corrector Yui and it's entire moral is again about the bad guys not being able to cooperate.