Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:s men 3263.jpg|link=Doctor Who|frame| Close enough.]]

 

So the protagonist is forced to part with a love interest for supernatural reasons.

 

Not to be confused with [[Replacement Goldfish]]. [[Replacement Love Interest]] is for non-supernatural occurrences or where it is explicitly ''not'' the same person. See also [[Doppelganger]], obviously.

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Gantz]]'', this is subverted with Kurono and Kishimoto. When Kishimoto died during a mission, Kurono thought to try and pursue her clone that was still living a normal life. However, she ends up thinking Kurono is a [[Stalker with a Crush|nutty stalker]] and runs away from him.

** However, this trope is followed in relation to Kato and Kishimoto. It's implied that Kato has finally decided to get together with Kishimoto's clone, and she seems to have taken a liking to him.

* In ''[[Fushigi Yuugi]]'', Hotohori marries Houki, a woman from his harem that looks just like a female version of Nuriko. Also, Houki herself had once been in a relationship with a man that looked ''just'' like Hotohori {{spoiler|later revealed to be his long-lost older brother}}

 

* In the [[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]] comics, after Jean Grey "died" in [[The Dark Phoenix Saga]], her boyfriend, Scott Summers, met and married Maddie Pryor, a girl who looked just like her. Of course, it's not a straight example because 1) Maddie turned out to be a clone of Jean created by an enemy, and 2) Jean wasn't really dead and later came back to marry Scott.

** It would've been a closer example, had the original plan —that Maddie was the reincarnated Jean— not been scrapped.

* In ''The Incal'', John Difool meets, falls in love and loses a beautiful "Aristro" (she goes off with another guy.) Later he meets Animah, who exactly resembles her. (Strangely, given the metaphysical manipulation that occur in reference to John, this seems to have happened by accident.

* In ''[[Countdown to Final Crisis]]'' The Atom Ray Palmer ended up in a parallel universe where his counterpart had just died. He tried to make a new life for himself there and got together with the counterpart of his insane ex-wife Jean Loring. Amazingly enough, things were actually going pretty well—but since this is Countdown, which was described on this wiki as DC's love letter to [[Kill'Em All]], it didn't last.

 

* At {{spoiler|the end}} of ''[[Code Geass: Mao of the Deliverance]]'', C.C. {{spoiler|takes Mao to [[Spirit World|C's World]] while he is unconscious and leaves him there with the mental version of herself}} so he can be happy. Mao's reaction, however, is a [[Subverted Trope|subversion]] as he, while grateful for the gesture, is ultimately NOT satisfied and [[Sequel Hook|determined to get back]].

* In the infamous fanfic ''[[My Immortal]]'', when Draco is kidnapped by Voldemort, [[Mary Sue|Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way]] mentions how Vampire looks exactly like Draco... before screwing him... in front of the class.

** Which is even ''more'' ridiculous when you remember that "Vampire" is supposed to be Harry and he ''doesn't'' look like Draco.

 

* In ''[[Susie Q]]'', Zach falls for Susie, a ghost who needs to settle her family's unresolved affairs before moving on to the afterlife. With the help of Zach, she succeeds and moves on to the afterlife and is reunited with grandfather and boyfriend. The next day at school, Zach runs into a new student named Maggie (played by the same actress). It's strongly implied that she's Susie's reincarnation, sans Susie's memories. The situation prompts Zack to [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|give a baffled glance to the camera]]

* ''[[Xanadu]]'' has the protagonist parting with a muse played by Olivia Newton John, only to meet an identical waitress at the end.

* In one of the post-credits scenes of ''[[Austin Powers|Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me]]'', {{spoiler|Austin finds Felicity with another man - his 10 minute-younger duplicate from the moon}}.

{{quote|'''{{spoiler|Austin from 10 minutes ago}}''': Technically it's not cheating, baby.}}

* In the 1984 film of ''[[A Christmas Carol]]'', the man Belle ended up marrying after leaving Scrooge looks just like his past self, possibly played by the same actor.

* In ''Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai'' Sonia's boyfriend Rohit dies in an accident near the middle of the film, and when she moves to New Zealand to start anew she meets Raj, who is a bespectacled look-alike for Rohit (up to have similar career choices despite their different upbringings). Their similitude is so great that she initially rejects Raj advances because he reminds her of Rohit too much, {{Spoiler|and when Raj chases her to India he is nearly killed for some thugs who acted like he has Rohit, cluing Sonia and Raj that Rohit's death wasn't actually accidental but merely looked like it was}}.

 

* Disturbingly handled in the ''[[Scorpion Shards]]'' trilogy by Neal Shusterman. The titular "Shards," pieces of a Starfish Character, can only truly love each other. Dillon, the leader of the group, attempts to start a relationship with an outsider, but is haunted by memories of a female Shard who died in the first book. The solution is best summed up by the tropes involved: [[Death Is Cheap]] for the female Shard, [[Death of the Hypotenuse]] combined with [[Deader Than Dead]] and [[Heroic Sacrifice]] for the outsider, and [[Freaky Friday]] plus [[That Man Is Dead|That (Wo)man Is Dead]] just to up the weirdness.

* The ''[[Redwall]]'' novel ''Martin the Warrior'' has an odd case of this. In the end, it's revealed that the traveler narrating the story is a dead ringer for Rose, Martin's love interest {{spoiler|who was killed by the [[Big Bad]] in the final battle}}. The catch? The two will never meet, as Martin lived and died many generations before the traveler told the story.

* In Stephenie Meyer's ''[[The Host (novel)|The Host]]'', one human has his girlfriend taken over by a Soul. The free humans then remove the Soul, but the girlfriend is brain-dead due to the possession by this point—so they just stick the Soul back in the body. The original mind's boyfriend then stays with the Soul-in-the-body, despite said Soul being the ''reason'' that his girlfriend died at all.

 

* In episode 4 season 3 of ''[[Charmed]],'' "All Halliwell's Eve" The sisters meet a nice guy in the past, who helps them out a lot. When they travel back to the present (several hundred years later) Prue meets an exact look alike (also played by the same actor) in P3.

* Subverted in ''[[The Outer Limits]]'', [[wikipedia:Second Soul|Second Soul]]. One man's wife dies and donates her body to an alien race (they can occupy and revive recently dead bodies, and need to do so to live). He meets the recipient, and finds out that they do sometimes inherit random memories from their hosts, but she does not fall in love with him, becomes bothered by his following her around and eventually gets a restraining order against him. It's even hinted that the process is set up to prevent the aliens from being close to family members of their hosts, presumably to prevent this from becoming a regular occurrence.

* In ''[[Fringe]]'', "our" Lincoln Lee and "their" Olivia Dunham become this for each other.

 

* As a method of apologizing to his roommate Rod, Nicky in ''[[Avenue Q]]'' {{spoiler|finds a boyfriend for Rod. Ricky, who other than being muscle-bound, is an exact copy of Nicky.}}

 

* Brutally deconstructed in ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'', where James can choose to be with Maria, who is an idealized doppelganger of his dead wife Mary. In the ending Maria starts to cough, implying that James is doomed to relive the pain of her dying from a terminal illness just like his wife did. The game implies that this is what James just deserves for clinging to an image of his wife instead of moving on.

** Or, in another interpretation, refusing to accept responsibility for what he did, and failing to understand why what he did was wrong and selfish.

* ''[[Super Paper Mario]]'' lets you purchase a robotic doppelganger to replace the [[Fairy Companion]] {{spoiler|who turns out to be the ''villain's'' love interest.}}

* At the end of ''[[The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police|Sam and Max Freelance Police]]: The Devil's Playhouse'', {{spoiler|Max}} is [[Killed Off for Real]]. The cutscene shows the devastated {{spoiler|Sam}} leaving all his friends and walking aimlessly through the town. Suddenly, he sees the [[Time Travel]] elevator from Season Two and finds there {{spoiler|Max}} from an [[Alternate Timeline]], in which {{spoiler|Sam}} is the one who died. After an awkward moment, they decide to resume their mischief and pretend none of this happened.

* In ''[[Winter Shard]]'', if Frederone's love interest Rosetta dies, Zewoe creates a clone of her to please him. This enrages Federone, either because he promised Rosetta that he wouldn't try to resurrect her or because {{spoiler|he did resurrect her only for her to be [[Driven to Suicide]] because of her religious beliefs}}, and he actually orders Marliene to wear a mask at all times when around him because he doesn't want to be reminded of how much she resembles Rosetta. He can either come around to accept Marliene as a legitimate love interest in her own right, or he can reject her.

 

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', ''both'' Zoe and her Dimension of Lame counterpart are this for Torg. First Torg has a [[Cannot Spit It Out]] crush on Zoe, then he gets trapped in the [[Another Dimension|Dimension of Lame]] and hooks up with that universe's Zoe, then {{spoiler|Alt-Zoe is killed by Lord Horribus}} and Torg returns to his home universe, and starts crushing on Zoe all over again.

** And it turns out Torg is this for Alt-Zoe as well, since her dimension's Torg vanished long ago after the two were romantically involved.

* In ''[[Tsunami Channel]]'', one of the most shocking revelations from ''Experimental Comic Kotone'' was that Onii-chan happened to be this for {{Spoiler|Haruna. Turns out that he was a blonde version of her deceased fiancé, and the reason she arrived and lodged herself as his [[Arranged Marriage|Arranged Bride]] was exactly for her to meet her dead ex Doppelgänger and have a second chance}}.

 

* Parodied in ''[[Johnny Bravo]]''. He wakes up in the hospital to find a nurse that looks identical to the girl in his dream... [[Dream Within a Dream|then he wakes up again]].

* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'' '''''may''''' have done a variant/[[Deconstructed Trope|deconstruction]] of this: Beast Boy's love interest, Terra, is turned to stone. Then, in the series finale (several seasons later), he suddenly sees a girl who looks just like her and is convinced she's the real Terra (whose petrified body has vanished), even though she at least claims to not know him or remember anything about being a superhero. They do ''not'' wind up getting together in the end, and whether the girl really ''was'' Terra or just a lookalike is left ambiguous.

[[Category:Acting for Two]]

[[Category:Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest]]