Ditto Aliens: Difference between revisions

The tendency for all [[Alien|aliensalien]]s, within a given species, [[You All Look Familiar|to look almost identical]]. This is contrary to human expectations, where the diversity of appearance within even single families of humans is remarkable. With extraterrestrials there is no evidence of this racial or ethnic diversity. Everyone from the same species will look almost exactly alike.

* In Doris Egan's ''Two-Bit Heroes'', the heroine, Theo, is on a planet where the overwhelming majority of people have dark hair and eyes. She's bewildered when the locals insist that she closely resembles another offworlder -- atoffworlder—at one point, someone tells her, "You could be twins" -- despite—despite Theo having auburn hair and the other woman being blonde. Everyone having the same hair color has led to them recognizing one another by cues that have nothing to do with coloration, to the point where they don't even think about color as an identifying feature.

** An odd exception: the Sontarans, explicitly described as being a race of clones, ''didn't'' all look alike, firstly because a variety of different actors played them and secondly because the costume and make-up was mildly revised for nearly each story in which they appeared. (The first and second Sontaran stories, ''The Time Warrior'' and ''The Sontaran Experiment'' averted this by having the same actor player play the three Sontarans seen in that story. Even though they did have a continuity mix-up in the latter story.) Despite there still being slight differences between the two Sontarans whose un-masked faces we see on scene in "The Sontaran Stratagem" the [[Ditto Aliens]] phenomena is lampshaded in the typical way "we say the same of humans."

* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Star Trek Deep Space Nine]]''

* A ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episode had [[Creator's Pet|Wesley]] mistake a visiting alien officer for a friend of his from the Academy. Said alien explained that members of his race who come from the same "geostructure" look identical. When asked how the aliens told each other apart he replied "We just do."

* ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Star Trek Enterprise]]'' managed a slight aversion with the Andorians, who, while mostly being various shades of blue, also feature a race of white-skinned Andorians called the Aenar. In the [[Distant Finale]], we see that blue Andorian Shran married one of these Aenar, and their child is an interestingly unique Teal color.

* ''[[Buck Rogers in Thethe 25th Century]]'': Played straight in an episode of where one race has no diversity of appearance beyond male/female.

* ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]'': Played with with the Eye Tyrant (Beholder) race. To other races, they all look alike... but to the Beholders, that slight difference in the exact shade of red their skin is or just how long their teeth are that the other races overlook is a sign that the other Beholder is an abomination against nature that must be killed on sight. A Beholder would probably shocked and disgusted that humans or elves can't tell its purity from the debased nature of the other breeds... if it actually viewed anything that's not a Beholder as anything more than annoying vermin

* ''[[Transformers]]'': Exception -- DueException—Due partly to the [[Merchandise-Driven]] origins of the franchise, most Transformers look suitably different, have different weapons and abilities, and even those who share an alternate mode may transform differently. A small handful don't even have a humanoid robot mode. It's not uncommon for Transformers to be upgraded into new bodies by any number of means, either, so the trope has arguably been completely reversed here: Not only do they not look identical, sometimes they won't even look like they did last time someone saw them!<br /><br />Exception to the exception: The plastic injection mold being one of the most expensive parts of the toymaking process, Hasbro and Takara tend to create multiple characters as [[Palette Swap|recolors of the same physical design]], so in the fictions some characters are model-mates with others. In G1, Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp are all the same design, as are Thrust, Ramjet and Dirge. Rumble and Frenzy are the same model, as well. Then there are some specific "races" of mass-produced Cybertronian [[Mecha-Mooks]], like Sharkticons, Sweeps, the Vehicons from ''Beast Machines'', and some other examples.

* In the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' [[Expanded Universe]], Kahlee Sanders notices that every single quarian looks exactly alike, and then when she thinks of it, nearly all members of alien races look identical. Then she notes that humans are beginning to follow the same trend, since in this universe, due to many interracial relationships, many humans are becoming more and more similar as all the races begin to mix together. She theorized that a couple hundred more years, humans will become [[Ditto Aliens]].

* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'': This fantasy series uses the Ditto Aliens trope a lot. When Gorons and non-lethal Zoras were introduced in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'', each had exactly one model to go around - the only ones who looked any different were the Zora king and princess, and the Gorons' tribe leader. The gorons at least had deviation in size, but it was still the exact same model, just enlarged or shrunken as needed. This is in stark contrast to the Hylians, who ''all'' looked unique.<br /><br />This was improved a bit in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'' -- the Zora had two different models for standard citizens. A number of relatively important gorons got unique models as well, but the ordinary ones still all looked alike.

* Given a [[Lampshade Hanging]] in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', when a local sapient uses "they all look the same to me" line when referring to the mercenary group, offending the titular character Schlock, who is not even remotely bipedal. Hung with an even larger lampshade in a later strip of the same comic, where the alien members of the mercenary crew are complaining that a group of new recruits are all Terrans, and 'all look the same to them'. Given that at this point in the series history, 'Terrans' includes not just humans, variousbut sapientseveral varieties[[Uplifted ofAnimal]] apespecies based on apes (pretty much anything Chimpanzee-sized and larger, up to and including Gorillas), along with sapientand '''elephants'''...

* Uryuoms from ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' seem to be [[Ditto Aliens]] as well. They don'tare even[[One-Gender Race|sexless]] (having reproduction [[Bizarre Alien Reproduction|mostly outsourced to a symbiont]]) and seem to have differentno individual features exceeding the range of their minor shapeshifting. How the Uryuoms tell each other apart is unknown, probably via low-grade telepathy (which they use instead of genderspheromones). However, they may have specific "habitual" shapes and are big on fashion and cosmetics, so apart from the basic face, they can still be differentiated. And developed "[[Transformation Ray|cosmetic morph devices]]" allowing more drastic changes of body, up to genuine human anatomy and physiology.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130325030537/http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111040421 This exercise] demonstrates why this may well be [[Truth in Television]] -- while—while we're very well wired (for good reason) to distinguish between other members of our own species, without particularly noticable distinguishing features we're far less able to differentiate between individuals even of other commonly encountered species native to our own world. As such, it's no stretch to imagine we'd have difficulty with creatures from another world entirely.

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