80s Blockbuster Series Has The Best Evil Twin Storyline

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 5 seconds ago

Evil twin storylines have been around forever. Soap Operas use them at least once a year, and sometimes, the evil twin becomes more popular than the good twin. Star Trek: The Original Series introduced the Mirror Universe, where evil Spock had a goatee, creating a simple visual language for when someone is evil. Star Trek isn’t where you can find the best evil twin storyline though, that would be the 1982 hit series, Knight Riderstarring David Hasselhoff. It’s the best because not only does Michael Knight have an evil twin, Garthe, they even made an evil counterpart for K.I.T.T.: K.A.R.R., complete with an evil goatee.

Knight Rider Has The Best Evil Twins

Both K.I.T.T. and K.A.R.R are modified Pontiac Firebird Transams loaded with all sorts of weapons and gadgets, except one AI is designed to save people, and the other was damaged and corrupted to only pursue self-preservation. K.A.R.R. was the original prototype that resurfaces in the Season 1 episode, “Trust Doesn’t Rust,” after some thieves recover it from deep storage. Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) and K.I.T.T. stop his rampage by taking advantage of the self-preservation instinct with a game of chicken. It’s an 80s action series, and it’s incredible.

In that first appearance, K.A.R.R. resembles K.I.T.T., except he’s voiced by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, who returned in the 2008 series), instead of Mr. Feeny (William Daniels). When K.A.R.R. resurfaced in Season 3, he was modified to include a two-tone paint job: black on top, and silver on the bottom. The result? K.A.R.R. has the evil goatee.

K.A.R.R. should have been in more than the two episodes. The concept of an evil car is incredible and could have been milked for at least one episode a season. Knight Rider video games have done the evil car justice, and in every iteration of the show, K.A.R.R. eventually shows up at least once. K.I.T.T. wasn’t the only one on the show to have an evil twin, which annoyed David Hasselhoff.

David Hasselhoff Put On The Evil Facial Hair

Hasselhoff’s Michael Knight isn’t actually Michael Knight: he’s Michael Long with a surgically constructed face that we learn was modeled after Garthe Knight, the son of Knight Industries founder Wilton Knight. You know he’s evil because he’s played by David Hasselhoff with a thin mustache and a soul patch. Well, that, and he straight-up murders a man who was going to squeal about his plan to use his modified big rig, Goliath, to steal missiles from the U.S. government.

Garthe appears in Season 2, first in “Goliath” and again in the aptly named “Goliath Returns,” and he likely could have appeared more times except Hasselhoff has been vocal over his dislike of playing Garthe Knight. In a moment of delightful honesty, he’s explained in interviews that playing both roles meant he was always on set for those episodes and couldn’t take breaks in his trailer during production. That’s the best reason yet to drop a character from a show.

Knight Rider isn’t a particularly deep series, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s from a time before the concept of a mythology arc was needed in every show. Weekly adventures were good enough for audiences of the 80s to make it one of the most popular shows, and there’s always a chance that it could come back. Knight Rider (2008) may have crashed and burned, but the concept of someone trying to do good and battle crime with a superintelligent car is never going to be out of style. Unlike Garthe Knight’s soul patch.