Grudges and Archenemies

If you have never seen the cartoon Gargoyles, I would highly recommend you watch it (even if you're an adult).  Not only is it made by some pretty amazing people, but it has incredibly well done continuity and character building.  One of the aspects I loved the most is that each one of the main gargoyles had a grudge against a different one of their villains that persisted throughout the show and heavily influenced their interactions with those characters.  Goliath and Xanatos, Brooklyn and Demona, Lexington and The Pack, Broadway and criminals with guns, and Hudson and the Archmage.  Any time one of these villains showed up, the appropriate gargoyle would start acting very different.  Goliath was always quick to mistrust David Xanatos.  Lexington was always eager to go out and fight if The Pack was involved.  Broadway would go in a rage to destroy the firearms because of a bad experience he had with one in the past.  These recurring attitudes really helped to give a strong depth to the gargoyle's characters because you would slowly see them overcome the grudge to win the day.  Goliath kept being forced to team up with Xanatos.  Lexington kept getting caught when he stupidly rushed out to fight The Pack, so he eventually learned to fight smarter (which made sense since he was the smartest of the gargoyles).

Star Trek: The Next Generation had a similar thing going on, but not so tangible.  Almost every time a character had an episode revolve around them, they would have to struggle with the same issue.  Geordi would time and again have episodes about bad relationships.  Riker kept dealing with problems caused by his career (either focusing too much on it in his past or refusing to advance to Captain).  Crusher dealt with being alone.  Picard kept dealing with opening up and not being such a stoic Captain.


I want to say I'm just illustrating some examples of a foil, but with Star Trek, they were situations and not characters and with Gargoyles, they weren't the opposite of the character, they were just an archenemy developed from the gargoyle's first experience with them.  I guess this is much harder to do if your story just has a single protagonist since he'll just seem really bitter if he has a strong grudge against all of his villains.