Identical Stranger



They say that everybody has a double somewhere. After all, the Earth has a human population of 7 billion, it would be actually stranger if no two people were at least vaguely similar. On the other hand, it's not as common in Real Life as it seems to be in media.

On television this is often utilized for comedy, by making them very different people.

As far as tropes go, this is one of the more ludicrously implausible ones. Take the probability of an Identical Grandson, ramp it Up to Eleven, and we're sort of in the right ballpark. This trope has stuck around mainly because it's a fun Plot Device. Meeting your own grandfather requires you to be in a Time Travel scenario, whereas a stranger can be, well, anyone more or less. Still, expect groans from the audience if this trope forces both identical strangers onto the screen at the same time a little too often. It gets past our Willing Suspension of Disbelief largely because it seems less improbable in the abstract than when we're directly confronted with it.

When combined with Swapped Roles it results in Emergency Impersonation. Add both Swapped Roles and Fish Out of Water and you have Prince and Pauper. If one gets put out of action, the other might be called upon to pull an El Cid Ploy.

Compare: Criminal Doppelganger (when an Identical Stranger is also an evil duplicate of a character) and Similar Squad. For regular series with identical twins, see Twin Switch.

Don't confuse this trope with Celebrity Resemblance.

Anime & Manga

 * Love Hina: Kaolla's brother happens to look exactly like a tanned, not-clumsy version of Keitaro.
 * Meanwhile, the manga and the Spring Special introduced Nyamo, who looked and acted like a darker (and somewhat more athletic) version of Shinobu (complete with crush of Keitaro). Given that they did not share a language they did not fool anyone, but the effect was still creepy.
 * In Tokyo Mew Mew, Mashio from the PS2 game and Aoyamada from a Filler episode are Identical Strangers to Aoyama Masaya, with similar personalities as well. He's never around when this happens, as both instances of Ichigo meeting them are in remote areas where practically nobody but them lives.
 * Spoofed in a filler episode of Naruto (one of the infamous two-years worth of fillers) where Ino is asked to substitute for a princess that "looks just like her," which she does...if you don't count the fact that said princess probably weighs two to three times more than Ino. That was because she used to look at lot (though not exactly) like Ino, but when she was nervous about meeting the guy she was arranged to marry she started eating a lot and got fat.
 * Queen Diana Soleil and Kihel Heim from Turn a Gundam are pretty much identical, so they pull a Twin Switch.
 * After having a discussion about identity, Major Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell notices a person that look exactly like her. It's something about finding identity when being a cyborg, but someone might just as well edit this example while explaining what the hell that scene was about...
 * Kusanagi's prosthetic body has a stock appearance - other people can buy one that looks the same (the Major's has a whole heap of high performance, military grade equipment beneath the skin).
 * In CLAMP's short manga series Wish, the strong resemblance between demon prince Kokuyo and stoic human Shuichiro Kudo is repeatedly commented on by other characters. It being CLAMP, this is never given any vague hint of an explanation.
 * In the Twincest manga Everyday Every Night, protagonist Nohara Minato has no idea he has a twin until one suddenly shows up and starts following him around and professing his love to him all the time. Minato doesn't believe that the stranger is his twin (even though they're identical) until he shows him a cut in the same place that Minato has one. Nevermind that twins do not work that way.
 * Cromartie High School: Hokuto's Butler looks like he could be the grandfather of Kamiyama. When they meet for the first time, there is a moment of stunned silence until they declare they don't know each other at all.
 * One episode of Harukanaru Toki no Naka de - Hachiyou Shou has the main cast meeting a girl who looks exactly like Akane (minus the hair length) and even has the same name. Ironically, when they are trying to help said girl and her boyfriend, and come up with some plan that involves impersonating them, the idea of Akane performing the role of her "twin" gets rejected immediately on the grounds of being too dangerous.
 * Cross Game ups the drama stakes by introducing Akane, a girl who looks identical to Kou's love interest  Wakaba Tsukushima.
 * Izumi Isoyama from Ga-Rei looks almost exactly like the long-dead Big Bad Yomi Isayama.
 * Detective Conan: Several.
 * Shinichi Kudou and Kaitou Kid
 * In the Lupin III vs. Detective Conan crossover, Ran and Princess Mira look enough alike that Mira makes Ran her unwilling royal double for a while.
 * The Detective Boys' schoolteacher Kobayashi-sensei has an uncanny resemblance to Officer Satou with glasses. In later manga issues,
 * The three Osaka kids in the OVA, "Conan and Heiji and the Vanished Boy" strongly resemble the Detective Boys. Even their names sound very alike: Mayumi, Mikihiko, and Kenta.
 * Gundam: The Origin, an alternate retelling-slash-prequel to Mobile Suit Gundam, introduces a real Char Aznable, who looks exactly like Casval Deikun (the Char fans know and love) except for eye color (Casval has blue, Char has brown). When Casval learns that the Zabis are out to get him, he pulls a rather cold-blooded Twin Switch, getting poor Char killed and assuming his identity. This actually briefly lead to an Epileptic Tree that Full Frontal from Gundam Unicorn was Real!Char who had somehow survived.
 * One Piece features Kuina, Zoro's childhood friend from flashbacks, and Tashigi, a young woman in the Navy, who both look very similar. Given that Word of God has confirmed these two share the same year of birth and the fact that Oda is pretty much the undisputed master of Chekhov's Gun...
 * Pay close attention to chapter 0...
 * This would presumably be because
 * In Eyeshield 21, during the "Death March" arc Sena accidentally gets roped into a round of NFL tryouts where he meets Jimmy Simard, who looks very much like his teammate Ishimaru back home. The joke is that "Jimmy Simard" sounds like "jimi ishimaru" when said with a Japanese accent. "Jimi Ishimaru" means "plain Ishimaru," one of the running gags of the series.
 * In the anime, on the plane ride that kicked off the America arc the characters mix up Cerberus and an identical looking stuffed animal.
 * Full Metal Panic has two examples. One is anime-only, and the other is found only in the original novels: In the anime, Kaname gets one in TSR, in the form of a Chinese prostitute who fancied Sousuke (who paid her just to talk because he was having huge psychological problems at the time). In the novels, there's a side story where Sousuke is revealed to be almost identical to a young teen heartthrob idol named Kousuke; when he got getting tired and wanting a vacation, switches places with Sousuke. Hilarity Ensues.
 * In Nagasarete Airantou, protagonist Ikuto just happens to resemble Takatora, Anyone who had known Takatora has even noted the similarities between the two.
 * Baccano's Huey Laforet not only has identical kids and grandchildren, but also an Identical Stranger by way of Kasuka Heiwajima, who is noted to look quite like his identical great-great-grandson Charon Walken in the eighth volume of Durarara. How a Japanese model and actor ends up with such an uncanny resemblance to an immortal French terrorist and his offspring is anyone's guess, but fans have theories.
 * Spritle and Prince Jam from one episode of Speed Racer.
 * Ichigo Kurosaki and Kaien Shiba in Bleach, though were never close to meeting each other or alive at the same time. Aside from Kaien having black hair and Ichigo having orange hair, they look so much alike that Ukitake, Kaien's captain, briefly wonders if Ichigo could somehow be Kaien, despite having personally witnessed Kaien's death. This lead to some people theorizing Ichigo was Kaien's reincarnation, but this was Jossed when we saw.
 * There are still plenty of Epileptic Trees about the possibility of some larger connection between the two characters than just coincidental resemblance, though.
 * Makoto and Princess Fatora in El Hazard- even worse, it's a gender-swapped identical stranger.
 * Asuna Kagurazaka and Nekane Springfield from Mahou Sensei Negima, though on the more realistic side of things as one merely strongly reminds you of the other.
 * In Cowboy Bebop, Faye Valentine first met Spike Spiegel when she mistook him for a similar-looking but identically dressed contact.
 * Gundam 00 has a Justified version thanks to cloning; Flashbacks will occasionally feature people who are the genetic source material for modern clones. Gundam 00 a Wakening of The Trailblazer introduced Meena Carmine, whose ancestor's DNA was used to make Nena Trinity, and a flashback shows that Aeolia Schenberg was friends with E.A. Ray, whose DNA would be used to make as well as the lookalike who menaces Setsuna during the events of the movie.
 * In Hekikai no AiON, Sheila and Tatsuya's mother, who happens being called Umi. The reasons of this have not being revelated yet.
 * Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force has an antagonist Mariya Ranevskaya who looks suspiciously like a tattooed punk version of Vivio. Doesn't qualify for Criminal Doppelganger because no one seems to have cottoned on In-Universe.

Comicbooks
"Morgan: Whatever you've been doing to piss these people off...cut it out!!"
 * Archie Meets The Punisher (no, really, this is real and somehow, against all odds, actually good) featured the Punisher following a con-man identical to Archie to Riverdale.
 * In a subversion, they didn't look completely alike; only similar enough to cause some confusion. Heck, even Moose could tell they were not the same once he got a closer look.
 * Wonder Woman -- Originally, she met her injured love interest's nurse, who conveniently looked exactly like her, was also named Diana, and needed Wonder Woman's help to join her boyfriend in another country as well. Wonder Woman bought the Diana Prince identity from this nurse.
 * The Golden Age Flash story "Anything Can Happen!" shows four Flashes on the cover. The story delivers, though they're never all in one place. Jay Garrick is the first; a banker who happens to look just like him is the second; a substitute who wears a mask to impersonate this banker at boring functions is the third; and a mannequin wearing that same mask to fool the bad guys is the fourth.
 * The white-haired Warlord, Travis Morgan, ends up in Seattle, home of blonde Green Arrow. Morgan is mistaken for the persona-non-grata Arrow and is consequently attacked by half of Seattle's criminal population, leading to a confrontation with his double to find out why everyone in town hates him.


 * And in Morgan's own series, Morgan had a double who was used by his foes to attempt to take over the kingdom.
 * And Shakira turned out to be a dead ringer for a kidnapped princess, leading to an Emergency Impersonation scenario.
 * In a Why Not? crossover from Dynamite Comics featuring Ash Williams and Xena Bruce Campbell's likeness played a triple role, Ash, a mini Ash called Ash-It, and Autolycus. The two "full size" Bruces being mistaken for each other is a plot point. (And very Xena-appropriate; see below.)
 * Ash also met an identical stranger in the Evil Dead/Marvel Zombies crossover...but it was actually Ashley G. Williams, a supermarket employee who happened to be the Marvel Universe version of Ash.
 * In the Western Shojo manga Miriam, a lawman uses his uncanny resemblance to wanted killer Silver King (they both have long, blond hair, blue eyes, and a diagonal scar on their face) to infiltrate a criminal organization from the inside.
 * In Marvel Comics, Flatman, aka Dr. Val Ventura, looks exactly like and has roughly the same exact powers as Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four. The only difference is that Flatman is, well, flat, his entire body being less than an inch thick. This is pretty much never ever commented on, no matter how obvious it is.
 * Later became a Running Gag in Great Lakes Avengers.
 * This is how the Wasp entered into Hank Pym's life - she looked identical to his dead wife.
 * In X-Men, after Jean Grey kills herself to prevent herself from becoming Dark Phoenix again, Cyclops eventually meets Madelyne Pryor, who's a dead ringer for the departed Jean. They fall in love, get married, and have a son, and Scott retires from the X-Men. And then the trope is subverted, when it turns out Maddie is actually a clone of Jean created by Mister Sinister to get Scott and Jean to reproduce and create a genetically perfect being, and Maddie Goes Mad From the Revelation (and demonic influence) and becomes the villainous Goblin Queen. And then she dies. And then it turns out that, not only was Jean not dead (just in a cocoon at the bottom of the Hudson river), she was never actually Phoenix in the first place (maybe; that last part gets retconned constantly).
 * An extremely common trope in Silver Age Superman comics. Not only do Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and other supporting characters encounter their own randomly-occurring identical duplicates on Earth, they even have duplicates on Krypton (a single Kryptonian city, at that - the Bottle City of Kandor!) Astute readers pointed out how often this plot device was used, and in response, a DC editor actually stated that, in Real Life, every single person on Earth has at least one exact duplicate walking around somewhere (it's a Science Fact!)
 * One of the very few occasions on which this was even vaguely justified: Vam-Zee, who adopted the identity of Kandorian superhero Nightwing from Superman, looks exactly like the Man of Steel. The explanation? They're cousins.

Fan Works

 * Socrates, of Calvin and Hobbes: The Series, is identical to Hobbes save for red stripes on his tail.
 * Andy discovers a pharaoh that looks just like him in "Pharaoh Andrew".
 * One of Turnabout Storm's Original Characters, Sonata, is uncannily identical to Mia Fey, to the point of making Phoenix confuse her with Mia. To make things even more wierd and eerie, she's also an unicorn from Canterlot.

Film -- Live-Action

 * The Olsen Twins movie It Takes Two was basically a ripoff of The Parent Trap, only replacing Identical Twins with Identical Strangers.
 * Hugh Jackman's drunken doppelganger plays a key role in The Prestige.
 * This plays a huge part in Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha, which is about a warlord's double.
 * Francis is the Navy is centred around this with Francis's owner Lt. Peter Stirling (Donald O'Connor) being a dead ringer for Bosun's Mate Slicker Donovan.
 * The Great Dictator: Unnamed Barber and Adenoid Hynkel.
 * Before that, Charlie Chaplin played two roles as The Tramp and a look-alike millionaire in The Idle Class.
 * In The Great Race, Professor Fate looks exactly like the prince of a Ruritania-like small country. This leads to a subplot, parodying The Prisoner of Zenda.
 * One episode of The Little Rascals, "Alfalfa's Double", features the titular boy meeting up with his identical upper-class double; naturally they decide to switch places for the day. Hilarity Ensues.
 * In Dave, Kevin Kline plays both the President of the United States and Regular Guy Dave, who resembles and winds up impersonating the POTUS.
 * And in The Film of the Series of Wild Wild West, he plays President Grant and Artemus Gordon, who occasionally disguises himself as a perfect double of Grant.
 * The Leslie Nielsen movie Wrongfully Accused has a scene where the main character defaces his wanted poster so no one will make the connection that it's him. Another character played by Nielsen inexplicably appears with the same features he drew on the picture, and is promptly arrested. This same gag was used in The Simpsons Movie.
 * In History of the World Part One, during the segment on the French Revolution, Mel Brooks plays King Louis XVI, and the "piss boy" who works at the palace. When a double for the king is needed, the piss boy is given the part.
 * In Adventures in Babysitting, there is the Playboy Playmate who is a dead ringer for babysitter Chris.
 * This trope is one of the plot points in Johnny Stecchino.
 * The comedy Start the Revolution Without Me has an interesting example: two different sets of twins (one from a peasant family, one from an aristocrat one) happen to look exactly identical to the other pair.
 * It's justified in the movie. The peasant and noble mothers each give birth to a set of identical twins at the same doctor, and the babies are mixed up so each family gets one from each pair of twins.
 * The 1935 comedy The Whole Town's Talking has Edward G. Robinson as a vicious gangster and a meek accounting clerk who looks just like him.
 * The hero and love interest of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang enjoy playing Spot The Celebrity Doppelganger. In one bar they see Punk Rock Steven Seagal, Native American Joe Pesci, and Brazilian Billy Bob Thornton ("Oh, that's a bit of a stretch..."). The casting people must have had a ball finding them...
 * In Angel on My Shoulder, a gangster looks exactly like Judge Frederick Parker and, aided by the Devil, attempts to ruin the Judge's reputation.
 * In The Majestic, the entire plot is based around an amnesiac Jim Carrey being mistaken for his Identical Stranger twin, who was a soldier in WWII. Who sounds like Matt Damon.
 * The Disney Channel movie Model Behaviour has Alex Burrows as your average American teen who looks almost identical to supermodel Janine Adams except she wears glasses. They are both played by Maggie Lawson.
 * In Monte Carlo, small town girl Grace Bennett is a dead ringer for the infamous British socialite Cordelia Winthrop Scott. Despite her friends claiming they can tell the difference, she manages to fool Cordelia's aunt for awhile.

Literature
"''"But there are the scum of the low country in the army these days, who would do anything for money, and it is these that the king must guard against. I could not help but note that mein Herr spoke too perfect German for a foreigner. Were I in mein Herr's place, I should speak mostly the English, and, too, I should shave off the 'full, reddish-brown beard.'"
 * The Roman author Plautus' Menaechmi, circa 200 BC, has two identically-named people of identical appearance from different cities, thus making it Older Than Feudalism. Shakespeare's adaptation of this The Comedy of Errors did it out the wazoo, with two sets of identically named identical twins from different cities in the same master/servant relationship. In either case, since no one knows of the other's existence when they first arrive in the same city, Hilarity Ensues.
 * It doesn't end there: Rogers and Hart wrote a musical, Boys From Syracuse, based on A Comedy of Errors. Now you can have all the Identical Stranger goodness you want, plus singing!
 * A Tale of Two Cities has this as the central plot point.
 * Lord Vetinari gets one in the Discworld novel The Truth.
 * Another Discworld example is in Wyrd Sisters, where the hidden heir to the throne looks almost exactly like the Fool. Seemingly subverted . Then re-subverted in a different way
 * The Flashman novel Royal Flash relies on this trope, as the title character's uncanny resemblance to a Danish prince is the reason he gets dragged into his adventures in said story in the first place.
 * The actor in Robert A. Heinlein's Double Star isn't perfectly identical to the politician he is assigned to impersonate, but he is close enough to fake it.
 * Spoofed in the Daniel Pinkwater novel Slaves of Spiegel. The three (supposed) greatest chefs in the universe are Identical Strangers of each other...except for the minor aspect that they're from three entirely different species that don't resemble each other at all. Their names are also Significant Anagrams.
 * The Prince and the Pauper, a story written by Mark Twain. A beggar boy and a prince have a chance encounter and decide to switch places for a short while.
 * Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey features one where the eponymous Brat bears an uncanny resemblence to the missing Patrick Ashby. As it turns out, he's actually
 * Already mentioned above, The Prisoner of Zenda is a classic example of the trope.
 * In the sixth Geronimo Stilton book, an actor is hired by Geronimo's Arch Rival, Sally Ratmousen, to impersonate him as a ploy to get her hands on his newspaper. The actor looks (and acts) so much like him that even his closest family is fooled. Later, he pulls the same trick on Sally by making up his male cousin to look just like her and get the newspaper back.
 * José Saramago's The Double: a man finds an exact double of him on TV and starts stalking him. Tragedy ensues.
 * Les Misérables has Champmathieu, who gets arrested in Jean Valjean's place because he just happens to look exactly like him.
 * Played several times in the Sweet Valley High series--surfer Bill Chase becomes infatuated with the twins due to their resemblance to his deceased girlfriend, Elizabeth eyes a guy who resembles her departed boyfriend Todd, but dumps him when she realizes he's a jerk, and older brother Steve dumps his girlfriend Cara at least twice to pursue girls who resemble his dead girlfriend Tricia. Adding insult to injury, despite acknowledging the physical similarity, he refuses to see either girl as her own separate person and instead continues to insist, "She's just like Tricia!", despite all evidence to the contrary. It's not until one girl tells him she deserves better than being used as a substitute and dumps him that he realizes how unhealthy his behavior is.
 * Seen in the original Nancy Drew series and the later Nancy Drew Files, with a nearly identical plotline--a young woman impersonates Nancy while she goes about committing various crimes, getting the real Nancy into serious trouble.
 * The Koriani entchantresses in Janny Wurts' War of Light and Shadow series find a random baby with green eyes, who looks as though he might grow up to look sort of like Arithon...and cast a spell on him as he grows up so that he looks exactly like Arithon. As Arithon is considered rather like the Antichrist...things do not work out well for that kid.
 * In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Mad King, Barney Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, U.S.A, is taken for the title king. In their defense, the king had been imprisoned for ten years, while a boy, and so they were going by the description. Still...

Whereupon the storekeeper turned hastily back into his shop, leaving Barney Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, U.S.A., to wonder if all the inhabitants of Lutha were afflicted with a mental disorder similar to that of the unfortunate ruler. ''"


 * In Gaunt's Ghosts novel Only in Death, an allied regiment's Major Berenson bears a startling resemblance to  Caffran.
 * In Wise Blood, when a huckster turns Hazel Motes' Church Without Christ into a moneymaking scheme, Hazel cuts off ties with it. Said huckster then goes and finds a guy who looks a lot like Hazel--and even drives a similar car--to continue serving as the church's prophet.
 * In the last two Time Scout books, Skeeter Jackson and Noah Armstrong look very similar. It's the coloring and the bone structure, and a complete coincidence.
 * Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover universe has a principle that everything except the psychic matrix stones has one exact duplicate somewhere in the universe; a couple of the novels have people locating their doubles for plot purposes. In another book, a Terran who simply happens to look extremely similar to a Darkovan nobleman is kidnapped by mistake.

Live-Action TV
"Frasier (to Niles): Whatever you do, don't engage him in a fistfight. It would all just look too weird!"
 * An Only Fools and Horses special featured an American Mafia boss who looked exactly like Del.
 * At least four Doctor Who stories, most notably The Androids of Tara, where Mary Tamm ended up playing four roles: Romana, Princess Strella and android versions of each.
 * In The Enemy of the World, the Second Doctor was a dead ringer for Villain with Good Publicity Ramón Salamander.
 * In The Massacre, the First Doctor was a dead ringer for the Abbot of Ambroise.
 * In the Fifth Doctor story Black Orchid, Nyssa was a dead ringer for Ann Talbot.
 * And these are all cases of a Human Alien being a dead ringer for a human.
 * In Mexican telenovela La Ursupadora, villainess Paola is thrilled to meet Identical Stranger Paolina at a beach resort, and quickly forces her to switch places. They are later revealed to have been twins separated at birth.
 * Xena: Warrior Princess had Meg (a harlot), Diana (a princess) and Leah (a priestess) who all happened to look like Xena. In addition to all of them having being confused for Xena at some point, there were also stories in which they were being confused for each other before Xena arrived on the scene!
 * Lucy Lawless also had two Hercules: The Legendary Journeys roles that were not Xena or the doppelgangers from her own show. Both - an Amazon and Lyla - predated Xena. After Xena's own show got started, Salmoneus compared the similarity between Lyla and Xena for Hercules.
 * In Beakman's World, all of the Famous Dead Guys (and girls!) looked like Beakman, or Lester, or Josie/Liza/Phoebe. Except Beakmom. She looked like Edith Bunker.
 * Featured in, believe it or not, Green Acres, when a criminal who looks exactly like Oliver Douglas comes to town.
 * Used in an episode of Up Pompeii! where the plot revolved around a visit from Caesar who looked identical to Frankie Howerd's roman slave Lurcio. As with everything in this show, the fact that Frankie Howerd was playing two separate characters was heavily lampshaded, with constant references by Howerd to the audience about his versatility in playing two characters and many occasions where Howerd would come in the wrong costume and have to change rapidly.
 * Gilligan's Island. "Gilligan vs. Gilligan" sees the arrival of a Russian spy who looks identical to Gilligan, thanks to plastic surgery.
 * As did the identical-to-Ginger but Hollywood Homely woman who ended up on the island, got a makeover,
 * And we also see the impostor who was living as Thurston Howell III before falling off of a yacht and washing up on the Isle.
 * Scrubs: after Laverne dies, Nurse Shirley takes her job. She looks exactly the same as Laverne, but only JD notices this. (The names are a nod to Laverne and Shirley.)
 * Friends, "The One With Russ": After breaking up with Ross, Rachel goes out with the aforementioned Russ, who looks, acts, and talks just like Ross. Amazingly, the only other character not to notice the similarity is Ross.
 * Similarly to the Friends example, on an episode of Frasier, Daphne goes out with essentially a clone of Niles. Like Rachel, Daphne doesn't notice; unlike Ross, Niles does and is very pissed.
 * Actually, Niles doesn't notice for some time and goes around noting what a pretentious fop the clone is - it takes Martin and Frasier to point out the obvious to him before he gets it. Even then, it takes a time. THEN he's pissed.


 * Likewise, Frasier himself once goes out with a woman who very strongly resembles his late mother, in both the way she looks and the way she acts. He is the only one who doesn't notice: when he finally does, he breaks it off because it's all just too damn awkward.
 * The Brady Bunch. In "Two Petes in a Pod," Peter meets his exact double in school. Wacky hijinx ensue.
 * In Primeval the character of Claudia Brown has a bridge dropped on her by the Timey-Wimey Ball and the identical looking, but very different, character of Jenny Lewis replaces her. A rare case where it isn't undone by the Reset Button by the end of the episode and Claudia is for all intents and purposes Killed Off for Real.
 * Star Trek: Voyager: In an early episode called Deadlock, Harry Kim is killed and an alternate version is drafted in from another universe where it was the rest of the crew that died. This means that for the bulk of the series the person we see as Harry Kim is an Identical Stranger for the one who started it. Surprisingly for Voyager, the Reset Button is not mashed and this state of affairs is left unaltered, unsurprisingly though this is never mentioned again. There Are No Therapists it seems.
 * In the episode proper, the ship was duplicated by a Negative Space Wedgie, and both Voyagers were equally 'ours.' Where the extra mass came from is anybody's guess. The other-dimension thing is a Retcon that exists only in a non-canon novel Echoes, which does address the fact that Harry has long felt as if he's taking another man's place. Apparently, a lot of versions of the starship Voyager had been through the experience, meaning only every second dimension has a version of the ship.
 * The double was created by some odd energy wave, 'twinning' the Voyager, and presumably the extra mass came from the initial energy wave. Also, continuity is nodded to throughout the series in that Naomi Wildman was an infant who died during childbirth on one ship, and was brought along with the other Harry Kim. In a later episode involving some odd Negative Space Wedgie, Harry and Naomi are unaffected due to them not being entirely 'in-sync' with the dimension around them.
 * There is an episode of The Monkees in which Micky gets in a bit of trouble due to looking absolutely identical to a dangerous gangster wanted by the police.
 * The Nanny loves this. In one episode, Maxwell dates a woman who looks and acts just like Fran. And neither Fran nor Maxwell ever realize the similarity. Then on another occasion, C.C. dates a man who looks and acts just like Niles, which makes Niles
 * This trope is the pilot episode of Sister Sister. Tia and Tamera meet each other in the mall. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Of course, they end up being twin sisters Separated at Birth and Tia and her mom go to live with Tamara and her dad for the entire series.
 * In The Colbert Report, Stephen's Doppelganger takes over during one of his Better Know A District Segments.
 * He seems to have quite a few of these.
 * Don't forget Esteban Colberto.
 * Jack from Thirty Rock has a doppleganger who seems to differ only in being Mexican and apparently extremely gay. He plays the Generalissimo, the villain of a soap opera.
 * As does the Hulu alien...
 * The Flighty Zeus.
 * How I Met Your Mother featured references to multiple Doppelgangers, something the gang is always on the lookout for, in a recent episode. So far, they've seen  Lily has promised Marshall that as soon as they see  It Makes Sense in Context.
 * In a gag for Conan-era The Tonight Show, the back-seat rows (the ones you never see from the cameras) are decided to not get any love - so they have huge bodybuilders march out and flex for the back row. One looked exactly like one of the cast members. Down to the glasses.
 * One episode of Get Smart involved the discovery that KAOS had launched a campaign to find the doppleganger of everyone in CONTROL. Get Smart was the king of doppelganger shows - there were at least three doubles of Max, and 99 and the Chief had at least one apiece.
 * NCIS. In "Doppelganger" Team Gibbs is dumbfounded to find a Metro PD squad whose members are identical in personality to their own. A Perp Sweating leader who Dope Slaps and drinks Starbucks coffee, a probie geek who fetches said coffee, a Handsome Lech Italian-American whose attempts to flirt with Kate are crushed with sarcasm and a Deadpan Snarker female cop who does the same thing to DiNozzo.
 * The X-Files. Done as one of the many He Is Not My Boyfriend gags in "The Rain King." Scully and Mulder arrive at a TV station and are at first assumed to be the married couple about to appear on the program. When the real couple arrive they look like country hick versions of the two FBI agents.
 * Not to mention season seven's "Fight Club", which had this trope as its central plot. The Cold Open of that episode has a pair of FBI agents investigating the mysterious events, and it takes a couple minutes of dialogue before the camera shows their faces and reveals that they are two strangers who just happen to look and sound a lot like Mulder and Scully.
 * In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk is Someone Else," Adrian Monk and a contract killer look almost identical.
 * Janet from Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Michelle from Grown Ups in the Two Pints... Comic Relief special.
 * Miner and mountain climber Jiro Satsuma to Dan Moroboshi.
 * There's an episode of The Phil Silvers Show where Bilko turns out to have a double. They never meet until the final scene but they keep getting mistaken for each other and much Hilarity Ensues.
 * Another episode involved Bilko promising a Bing Crosby concert to the troops. Unfortunately Bing was late to arrive so Bilko tried to placate the troops by passing off as Bing a soldier who happened to be a lookalike. The double couldn't sing, however, with his only talent being able to recite Longfellow's poem The Wreck of the Hesperus. Bing saved the day by arriving at the end of the episode--and proceeded to entertain the troops by reciting The Wreck of the Hesperus.
 * The Incredible Hulk: It had one episode in which David Banner ran into someone who looked almost like him with the exception that his doppelganger was and looked a little bit older. The doppelganger, unfortunately, was a crook. Both parts were played by Bill Bixby.
 * On Perfect Strangers, following his break-up with Mary Ann, Balki happily declared to Larry and Jennifer that he was over her because he had met the woman of his dreams...and then promptly introduced them to a woman who looked exactly like Mary Ann. The trope is then played twice when the foursome go out to dinner and encounter Mary Ann, who of course, is dating someone who looks just like Balki. Interestingly, they both immediately notice the similarities in each others partners, although of course, they don't see the similarities in their own--although Balki realizes it after slipping up and calling the new woman "Mary Ann".
 * A strange case cropped up on All My Children. Tad got Easy Amnesia and ended up in California, where he met Nola Orsini, who instantly recognized him as her long-lost son Ted. Ted had disappeared as a child, but Nola saw Tad and knew this was what Ted would grow up to look like. After a few years, Tad returned to Pine Valley and got his memory back. The following year, it turned out Nola was right. The real Ted showed up, and he looked exactly like Tad.
 * In-universe example - Eric Szmanda from CSI & Jonathan Togo from CSI: Miami - . I believe that Szmanda is even in the backdoor pilot for the miami spin-off as well. It would be.....interesting to say the least were they to ever meet.
 * On Community, Abed is coerced into approaching a girl he's attracted to because one of her old textbooks has a sketch of him in it - which turns out to be a sketch of her boyfriend, a caucasian Abed-lookalike.
 * When Diana Rigg left The Avengers, it was stated that Emma Peel's husband had finally turned up alive. He looked exactly like Steed, leaving viewers to wonder how she dealt with that emotionally all the time they worked together.
 * The Prisoner episode "The Schizoid Man" screws with Number Six's sense of identity by secretly conditioning him to alter his reactions, then introducing an Identical Stranger who's been trained to react the way Six is supposed to.
 * Denzi Blue, Battle Kenya and Space Sheriff Gavan (all played by Kenji Ohba) are treated as this when they are brought together in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Space Sheriff Gavan the Movie. Except here, it turns out that the three have been friends for a long time.
 * Denzi Blue, Battle Kenya and Space Sheriff Gavan (all played by Kenji Ohba) are treated as this when they are brought together in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger vs. Space Sheriff Gavan the Movie. Except here, it turns out that the three have been friends for a long time.

Radio

 * In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio The Church And The Crown, Peri is a dead ringer for Queen Anne of France, and is accidentally kidnapped in place of the Queen, driving much of the plot.

Theater

 * Martin and Arnaud from Martin Guerre must be identical strangers. Granted, seven years have passed between Martin leaving Artigat and Arnaud returning, but they must look A LOT alike for there to be acutal doubt as to who is who.
 * Played with in Miss Saigon towards the end of its Broadway run, when an Asian actress (instead of the usual white one) was cast as Ellen, the wife of the title character's lover Chris. Suddenly, instead of moving on with his life, as he insisted that he had, it now appeared that Chris only married Ellen because she reminded him of Kim.
 * In A Flea In Her Ear, faithful husband Victor and drunken porter Poche are absolutely identical.
 * In Avenue Q, Nicky searches for a boyfriend for his friend Rod (who secretly has a crush on him), and finds Ricky, who is almost identical to Nicky, right down to having the exact same voice, except that he's gay. Rod is overjoyed.

Video Games

 * Spoofed in Wario Ware: Smooth Moves. Not only is Jimmy P. an Identical Stranger for Jimmy T., they have nearly the same storyline in their stages. Jimmy P. has a tan, though, causing an anonymous flyer on the town message board to say that Jimmy T. "Must have gotten some sun" and "Looks like a different person!"
 * You take this role in Infinite Undiscovery as Capell, who is mistaken for the hero of the land, Sigmund. It forms a major part of the plot.
 * In the opening dialogue of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Marin is at first mistaken for Princess Zelda.
 * In Star Ocean the Second Story, Claude and Prince Chris look exactly alike. Interestingly, this isn't used for a Prince and Pauper bit; at most, Claude can meet Chris during a Private Action and go hit the local bar with him.
 * Final Fantasy VI has Celes being nearly identical in appearance to Maria, the famous opera singer, and ends up having to substitute for her as part a Zany Scheme to get the party onboard Setzer's airship. Some theorize that, as Celes is a Designer Baby, she may well either be a clone or close genetic relative of Maria (she certainly seems to share Maria's talent for opera, after all, being able to perform well enough to fool the obsessed fan Setzer despite never having sung before in her life). This has not been officially endorsed by the source material. We never actually see Maria in the game, so we have to take the other characters' word for it about their resemblance.
 * Final Fantasy X makes Tidus an Identical Stranger to two unrelated characters. In FFX, he's a coincidental doppleganger of Wakka's dead brother and Lulu's lover Chappu, opening the door for Wakka's Big Brother Instinct and Lulu snark. In Final Fantasy X-2 we learn that . Wait, so why did he look like Chappu?
 * He didn't look exactly like Chappu, just had a slight resemblance.
 * Happens in Tales of the Abyss with Luke and Asch. Later subverted when.
 * This leads to most of the plot in Leisure Suit Larry II when Larry mistakenly obtaining a microfiche when someone identical to him was suppose to and spending most of the game avoiding the KGB.
 * Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep introduces Ventus, who is physically identical to Roxas. Somewhat justified in that
 * Both have justifications:  Unfortunately, this still doesn't explain why
 * It could be that very fact that
 * Another Star Ocean example: Ameena in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time looks exactly like Sophia. Despite being from another planet entirely. Although, finding a twin is probably easier when your candidate pool is twice as large. Justified,

Webcomics
""Wait a minute! You just taped a picture of Riff's head to this painting."
 * In Sluggy Freelance, the medieval warlord Lord Torgamous looks exactly like modern day Torg (except for the beard).
 * Subverted another time (perhaps also hinting at Identical Grandson).

"Makes the story more dramatic, don't it?""


 * El Goonish Shive: Diane is physically identical to Susan. The two are distinguishable only by hair color and fashion sense. Despite this it appears that they have never met. Considering the amount of lampshade hanging around this one, as well as the fact that we know of at least one way for this to be perfectly possible (not counting identical twins separated at birth), this is probably going to become important later.
 * Nedroid: Over the course of the ongoing Harrison Stories arc Harrison comes across two creatures underground who look exactly like his friends Beartato and Reginald only to find out that they're Buttfranklin Buttwhistle and...His friend Reginald who's a little insulted Harrison didn't recognize him
 * During an earlier arc Beartato jumps into outer space and encounters an alien who looks exactly like his friend Reginald with a pair of antenna. It's then subverted when Space Reginald wipes some dirt off his face and crawls out of the crater he's standing in, revealing himself to be quite different from regular Reginald
 * Brawl in the Family has Kingsonnn Dededoo, who looks exactly like King Dedede with a mustache. And he's here to clean your clock.
 * Nintendo Acres has Link from LoZ and Lionk, Link's part-time door-opening stunt double and full-time employee of all the town's restaurants
 * Akuma TH has the "Superhero" Mathman, who looks like the title character in a cape and a not particularly concealing mask. Everybody who sees Mathman assumes that he's actually Akuma, and neither of them is particularly convincing when denying it. However, the third annual World Spriter's Tournament showed that they were, in fact, separate people.
 * Off White: A wolf pelt that looks like Iki except with orange eyes instead of blue.

Western Animation

 * In one episode of The Fairly Odd Parents, Timmy Turner's parents are arrested because they resemble a pair of criminals, the Souvenir Bandits (whose surname happens to be Turnbaum).
 * In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer is temporarily banned from Moe's due to rampant douchebaggery (for Moe, at least). Soon after, a man who looks exactly like Homer with a mustache, in a top hat and suit goes to Moe's. He introduces himself as "Guy Incognito" and is promptly beaten up and thrown out. The real Homer, passing by, is shocked to find his exact double unconscious but is suddenly distracted by a dog with a puffy tail.
 * In The Movie, Bart doodles on a wanted poster with his family on it to prevent the owner of the store it was in from noticing it and calling the police and getting them arrested. A family resembling the modified picture ends up getting arrested after the store owner notices the poster.
 * Another episode has Bart do a Prince and Pauper plot with a rich kid who looks just like him. At the same time Bart and his rich doppelganger meet, they also meet a guy who looks like a 30-year-old version of them; that guy has a wife who looks like a 30-year-old, female version of Milhouse.
 * In the Donald Duck cartoon Donald's Double Trouble, Donald meets another duck who looks just like him, only he speaks clearly (with a British accent, no less) and has impeccable manners. Donald convinces his double to take Daisy out on a date to win her back, as she had dumped him for his bad manners. Donald soon regrets it, as he finds his doppleganger enjoying the date a little too much.
 * In the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" Gadget switches places with Luwhinie (spelling uncertain), who is her exact duplicate (aside from being voiced by Gidget actress Deborah Walley).
 * The Flintstones had an episode featuring a rich exact double of Fred who gets fed up with his stressful life and runs away. His employers then encounter Fred who ask him to take the double's place, until Fred himself also gets fed up and leaves. All the while, the double has been going around encountering Fred's friends and family and acting like a jerk to them, only for Fred to arrive home and everyone start treating him like dirt and him not understanding why. Kind of sad, really.
 * The plot is recycled in another episode (with an emperor, this time). Fortunately, the confusion gets cleared up at the end.
 * Also used in the finale movie The Man Called Flintstone: Fred is called in to take over the role of the secret agent Rock Slag, who just happens to look exactly like him.
 * The Recycled in Space version of the Flintstones, The Jetsons had the exact same plot, with a random secret agent looking exactly like George Jetson.
 * A similar plot to that first example is used in an episode where an alien sends androids down to Earth that not only happen to look exactly like Fred, but also "Yabba dabba" just happens to be all they can say. This episode has a happier ending where "Fred's" strange behavior is blamed on the diet he was on and he's taken off it, much to his delight.
 * In one episode of Family Guy, Peter and three Identical Strangers (except for facial hair and glasses) all get free samples of sausage at the grocery store, one after the other, then all show up at the same time for seconds.
 * In Code Lyoko Season 1 episode "The Girl of the Dreams," a New Transfer Student, Taelia, is believed to be a materialized Aelita. But besides similar looks and Significant Anagram names, they have nothing in common (unless you choose to believe some Wild Mass Guessing).
 * SpongeBob SquarePants, "No Weenies Allowed": a sponge identical to Spongebob only with dark hair and the real deal (wearing a Rainbow Clown Wig) both appear at the Salty Spittoon at the same time.
 * Kim Possible, "Chasing Rufus": There is a couple exactly identical to Kim and Ron only with a pair of glasses and shaggy mustache respectively.
 * Class of 3000, "Westley Side Story": The kids from Eastley school like exactly like our protagonists from Westley.
 * A trio of characters who look a lot like Catdog's nemesis appears as policemen in one episode of Cat Dog.
 * Flexo in Futurama.
 * Flexo and Bender are both bending units, AKA the same model of robots. They were made to look identical on purpose by Mom's factories. While they are strangers yes, they're technically related.
 * Flexo has a goatee to tell each other apart.
 * In the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, April O'Neil is revealed to look identical to Mallory, princess from the fictional country of Malicuria. Hilarity ensues when Shredder decides to capture Mallory in order to ransom her for the MacGuffin of the week.
 * One episode of The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo has the actor Mr. Magoo asked by the police to impersonate an identical gangster in order to catch the whole gang.
 * King Arthur and the Knights of Justice Had Arthur King, Lance and to a lesser extent, the other ten replacements for King Arthur, Sir Lancelot and the rest of the true knights of the round table.
 * Colonel Chicken in Chowder (who looks exactly like Chowder but dressed like Colonel Sanders) was mistaken by Mung as a ploy to get him to bake schmeanut blutter flookies. Then Chowder comes in with his actual ploy while Colonel Chicken is confused at their resemblance.
 * Another episode features Porridge, who looks exactly like Chowder except that he wears glasses and his fur is in a different shade of purple.
 * American Dad: Stan has a CIA double named Bill who he has do all the stuff Stan doesn't want to do. In one creepy development, Bill ends up dating Stan's daughter Hayley!
 * In one episode of Storm Hawks, Piper meets her double: Princess Peregrine of Klockstoppia, or Perry, as she prefers to be called. A Prince and Pauper-type plot ensues, albeit not with total consent on Piper's part...
 * In The Weekenders, Tony Tortallero looks almost identical to main character Tino Tonitini and says "Sure!" in almost the same voice. However, in neither of Tony's appearances does he ever say anything except "Sure!"
 * An episode of Pepper Ann featured a girl and her family moving into town and they happened to look just like her and her family members with a few differences and having slightly difference names.
 * On Rugrats Angelica is mistaken for the daughter of an Italian restaurant owner. As a Spoiled Brat, she takes advantage of the situation.
 * One episode of Josie and the Pussy Cats involces a princess who looks just like Valerie.
 * In Yogi's Great Escape, in the "western ghost town" scene, Quick Draw McGraw mistakes Yogi and Boo-Boo for an identical pair of outlaws who were wanted for cattle rustling.
 * Similarly to the Josie example, this happens to Kimber in an episode of Jem when she meets (you guessed it) a princess who looks just like her.
 * An episode of Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats involves Henry, a lost cat with orange fur, thin black stripes, a round head, and a round black nose...
 * The Top Cat episode "The Missing Heir".
 * Jimmy Two-Shoes gives us TCFM, who looks exactly like Beezy only green, and uses this to get the people of Miseryville to do what he wants.
 * Eric Cartman looks a lot like Marlon Brando...and a bit like Dakota Fanning.
 * The animated Punky Brewster episode "Double Your Punky" had Glomer creating a clone of Punky from a photograph to keep him company at home while the real Punky was at a school picnic. The clone, however, was obnoxious, and in his confusion, Glomer zaps the sweet Punky back into the photograph and throws it away. Having retrieved it and getting her back, Glomer is unable to tell who the real Punky is. It's up to Brandon (Punky's dog), who recognizes her scent.