Replacement Goldfish: Difference between revisions

|''[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/03/02 Penny Arcade]''}}

 

 

In realistic settings, this could be an orphan taken in by a parent who has recently lost a child (to death, relocation, etc). In a sci-fi setting, the typical trope is the lonely scientist who [[Creating Life|creates]] a [[Ridiculously Human Robot|robot]], [[Artificial Human|android]], [[Brain Uploading|artificial intelligence]], [[Cloning Blues|clone]], or [[Robot Me|robot]]-[[Cloning Blues|clone]] in the image of the deceased (probably first seen in this form in the classic ''[[Metropolis]]''). Often it's a [[Robot Girl]] or [[Robotic Spouse]], or [[Robot Kid]] in the case of a dead child.

 

{{examples}}

* Nuku Nuku from ''[[All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku]]'' is not quite a Replacement Goldfish, in that the scientist takes the brain of the cat he struck in an accident and resurrects it in the body of a hyper-powered, incredibly cute [[Robot Girl|cybernetic]] [[Catgirl|cat-brained girl]].

* ''[[Astro Boy (manga)|Astro Boy]]'', a replacement for the son Doctor Tenma lost, who died in a car accident playing with a robotic car that Doctor Tenma gave him to make up for the fact that he was so obsessed with developing a super-robot that he forgot to pay attention to his son. In one version, he was about to apologize for neglecting his son when he got the news.

* Midori Wakatsuki's foster parents in [[Eden no Hana]] adopted her to fill in the blank left by the death of her bio daughter Reika. Her mentally-broken foster mom treats her with relative kindness, but calls her by the dead little girl's name and acts as if Midori was the real Reika. Her issues are made worse by the fact that [[Brother-Sister Incest|her stepbrother]] [[Rape as Drama|sexually abuses her]]

 

* ''[[Y: The Last Man]]'' averts this in the [[Distant Finale]]. Yorick refuses to even consider the offer implied by theories concerning 'bringing back' any number of dead women and a sample of {{spoiler|355's hair}}.

** Played rather straight in the same series' penultimate chapter {{spoiler|when Dr. Matsumori is revealed to have used his estranged daughter's tissue samples in the hopes of being a proper father to her this time around. Alison Mann (''neé'' Atsuko Matsumori) is annoyed over it, but she did not like the guy anyway, even before finding out he had sabotaged her own [[Truly Single Parent|cloning project]] out of sheer ego}}.

* Havok from the [[X-Men]] was adopted as a child...by parents seeking to replace their dead son. How they got past psychological screening is anyone guess, but then again, ''Mr. Sinister'' was the one running the place.

 

* The Professor does this twice in ''[[The Nightmare Before Christmas]]''. The first is Sally, who proves very undesirable, rebellious and disobedient. Exasperated, the Professor gives her freedom and {{spoiler|makes a female robot who uses half of his own brain.}}

{{quote|"Think of the conversations ''we'll'' have, my dear."}}

** It's also worth pointing out that it was Sally's suggestion in the first place.

* In [[Disney Animated Canon|Disney's]] ''[[Tarzan (Disney film)|Tarzan]]'', the titular character was adopted by Kala who recently lost her baby to Sabor.

* In ''[[Vertigo]]'', Scottie molds the brunette Judy into the image of the elegant blond Madeleine after the latter woman breaks his heart by committing suicide. Cruelly ironic once learned that {{spoiler|Judy really ''is'' the "Madeleine" he'd known -- she impersonated the real Madeleine as part of Elster's plan to cover up his murder of his wife.}}

* In ''[[A.I.: Artificial Intelligence|A.I.]]'', the android child David is adopted as a replacement for Henry and Monica's comatose son. The problems really begin when the "real" son wakes up.

* One of the big reveals at the end of ''[[Don't Look Back (film)|Don't Look Back]]'' involves this. {{spoiler|The real Jeanne died in a car accident when she was a child, and her mother raised Rosa Maria to take her place}}.

 

* ''[[Lois McMaster Bujold|Ethan of Athos]]'': Terrance brings his wife's corpse to the best scientists money can buy and asks them to revive her. They can't, but offer to create a clone identical to Janine in looks, personality, and mannerisms - perhaps even with a few improvements. Terrance declines, but he does have the scientists splice her DNA into donor ovaries so that he can have thousands or millions of Janine's babies.

** Averted with prejudice in the same series's ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|Mirror Dance]]'', by both Miles' and his mother Cordelia's emphatic refusal to treat Miles's clone Mark as anything but Miles' brother. One of the reasons for this is that in the setting, most civilized societies with cloning technology treat a clone as legally either the child of the person who originally commissioned its creation, or the sibling of the clone's genetic progenitor.

* At least twice in the ''[[Sweet Valley High]]'' series, Steven ditches his girlfriend Cara to pursue girls who resemble his dead girlfriend Tricia. To make matters worse, he refuses to see either girl as her own person and instead tries to mold them into Tricia's image—the food they eat, places they go, interests that they have. Not until one of the girls finally blasts him for this and declares that she deserves better than being used as a substitute does he finally realize how unhealthy his behavior is.

* {{spoiler|Daphne}} in ''[[The Golden Oecumene]]'' made a replacement for ''herself'' as a last gift to her lover before retreating into a [[Lotus Eater Machine]], making its personality an exaggerated parody of everything she thinks her lover wanted in her. [[Cloning Blues]] are touched upon, but the duplicate eventually develops its own sense of selfhood—and in any event, {{spoiler|the lover is also an [[Artificial Human]], having been created from a computer simulation.}}

* Nurse Agnes Meredith in ''[[Septimus Heap]]'' starts hoarding dolls after losing her son Merrin in the first book - after all, with dolls you at least know what you are with.

 

* ''[[Monk]]'' featured a literal replacement goldfish. Natalie's daughter, Julie, had a goldfish given to her by her father who was subsequently killed in combat. Natalie repeatedly replaces the goldfish so that the daughter won't lose this emotional link to her father. Unfortunately, she does this well beyond the average lifespan of the domestic goldfish, which Julie notices.

* ''[[Denji Sentai Megaranger]]'' has Shibolena, the android created in the shape of Dr. Hinelar's daughter, Shizuka.

* [[The Borgias]] has [[The Scrappy|Ursula Bonadeo]], [[Villain Protagonist|Cesare's]] love interest. He meets Ursula while visibly distraught during his sister Lucrezia's wedding, and essentially transfers his [[Incest Subtext|obsession with Lucrezia]] to Ursula. They share the same hair color/clothing styles, and both suffer from abusive husbands. [[Incest Yay Shipping|Fans]] love pointing out how many of Cesare's conversations and even poses with Ursula mimic his interactions with Lucrezia.

 

* The song "Silver Bride" by the folk metal band Amorphis is about a widower who creates a woman of gold and silver to serve as this. It was inspired by a passage from ''[[The Kalevala]]'', the Finnish national epic that has inspired much of Amorphis' work.

* In [[The Protomen]]'s [[Rock Opera]], [[Mega Man (video game)|Mega Man]] is a goldfish for the fallen Proto Man. In a way, Proto Man could be seen as a variation - the son Dr Light never had, since Wily murdered his girlfriend.

* The title character of the [[Voltaire (musician)|Voltaire]] song "The Mechanical Girl" was created by a tinker who had lost his daughter and made her to be a new one.

 

* Seth from [[The Bible]], who was born after the death of Abel.

** [[The Bible]] loves this trope. King David's first child by his affair with Bathsheba died a week after birth. What did David and Bathsheba name kid #2? Solomon, or "Replacement." King Solomon could literally be the [[Trope Namer]].

* In ''[[The Kalevala]]'', mythical master smith Ilmarinen is widowed and, in his loneliness, searches for a new wife. No maiden accepts him, fearing to meet the fate of his dead wife. Having forged the sky and the miracle machine Sampo, he decides to make himself a perfect wife from silver and gold. It turns out badly, as the new wife says nothing, feels nothing, and is as cold as a stone. In the end, disappointed Ilmarinen pushed her back into the forge, destroying her.

 

* In ''[[Exalted]]'', the Celestial Exalted get reborn after they die. The Exalted part goes on into a new person, retaining some small bits of its memories and personality traits, while the human part dies. Most new Exalts are treated by their peers that remember their previous lives as being the same person, even though they are not and have personalities of their own. (Swan was Desus, Contentious Sword etc)

* In the storyline for the ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' set ''Planeshift'', Yawgmoth (the Big Bad) grants Crovax (the Dragon) a Replacement Goldfish for his lost love, Selenia. Later Crovax lures Gerrard (the main protagonist) to the dark side with false promises of a Replacement Goldfish of his own, though Gerrard sees through the ruse in time. It is unclear whether Crovax realizes that his Selenia Mark II is not the genuine article.

* In 4th Edition ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', there is an Epic Destiny called "Hordemaster". As one of its features, you gain a number of followers that, upon your death, take up your mantle until such a time you can be resurrected. Conveniently, your replacement is mechanically identical to you, but your party might not be so warm to him/her.

 

* Heavily implied in ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'':

** The nurse speaks about how she lost her daughter, who was Juliet's age (she nursed them both), and she treats Juliet as her daughter instead. (Besides that, her husband is also dead. This probably explains why she's still living with the Capulets after all these years—she lost her family, and she adopted a new one.)

* Inadvertently done in ''[[Miss Saigon]]'': The role of Ellen, the woman Chris marries after returning from Vietnam, was usually played by a blonde or redhead. However towards the end of the show's Broadway run, an Asian actress was cast in the part. Suddenly, instead of moving on with his life as he insisted that he had, it now seemed fairly obvious that Chris only married Ellen because she reminded him of his lost love Kim.

 

* In the anime and videogame of ''[[Xenosaga]]'', the character of MOMO was an [[Artificial Human]] reconstruction of her creator's daughter, Sakura.

** He went a little further than that with Momo being the 100th Replacement Goldfish he created in a full scale production line of androids with her face. His wife, on the other hand, was none too pleased with seeing a hundred copies of her dead daughter running about the galaxy and mentioned as much.

* ''[[Dragon Age 2]]''. Partway through the second act, {{spoiler|Hawke will meet a "Quentin", who has been killing women throughout Kirkwall to recreate his diseased wife out of their body parts, using [[Blood Magic]].}}

 

* As we find out, {{spoiler|Marena}} from ''[[Keychain of Creation]]'' is actually {{spoiler|Misho's lover in his past life and he remembers her as such, not as the current-day Marena.}} This causes a lot of frustration.

* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'', {{spoiler|Grace's DNA was artificially crafted, but the project was hijacked into a replacement for a scientist's daughter, who died in a car crash. Grace considers the original Grace her mother and calls the scientist her grandfather.}}

* Done [[Dude, Not Funny|horrifyingly]] in ''[[Dubious Company]]'', when Raque [[Rape Is Okay When Its Female On Male|realizes]] Elly looks like a [[Identical Stranger|younger version]] of her beloved king.

 

* {{spoiler|Epsilon}} in ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' acts as a Replacement Goldfish best friend for Caboose, replacing {{spoiler|Church}}. Of course, he has the original's personality and memories, so it's not too big of a deal for him.

** And then he is replaced by {{spoiler|Washington}}

** It's hinted at the end of ''Reconstruction'' that {{spoiler|Agent Tex}} was one of these for someone that the Director loved.

 

* Danielle in ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' was created as an imperfect clone of the main character (not only physically younger and female, but with an unstable body). She was a stepping stone on the way to creating a perfected clone and, when she found out, turned into a [[Tyke Bomb]].

* Odd spin: In ''[[Transformers]]: [[Beast Wars]]'', Megatron had a habit of making replacement Dinobots. An organic one was made after he defected to the good guys and the transmetal Dinobot II after {{spoiler|his [[Heroic Sacrifice]].}} Megatron seemed pleased with these clones (Dinobot II was basically his second in command), except when they followed their template's footsteps a little ''too'' closely.

** {{spoiler|[[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|At the end, it definitely does.]]}}

* In ''[[The Venture Bros]]'', {{spoiler|the accident-prone [[Cloudcuckoolander|titular brothers]] have killed themselves numerous times, only to be replaced by [[Cloning Blues|identical clones]] (with their memories implanted) every time}}, a major plot point at the beginning of the second season. Sociopath Dr. Venture seems to think this is no big deal.

* One episode of ''[[American Dad]]'' <ref>You Debt Your Life</ref> which features Roger moving out of the Smith's house, has a plot about Stan finding a replacement Roger in the form of Andy Dick.

 

 

* This has been a major problem with divorced families with teenaged kids still living at home. The mother unconsciously starts treating her son as a replacement husband or the father unconsciously treats his daughter as a replacement wife, sexually and emotionally. The poor kid ends up expected to provide adult advice and adult emotional support to a parent!

* A documentary about the children of Holocaust survivors (''Jews'', BBC Four, June 2008) featured a woman who had survived Auschwitz but whose young daughter had been gassed there. Later, she settled in Britain, remarried and had another daughter, who was named after the first one.