Tomato in the Mirror: Difference between revisions

[[File:CylonInTheMirror.jpg|link=Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|frame|Boomer meets the enemy face-to-face.]]

 

 

Our protagonist is going through a perfectly normal day. Only... something's wrong. The people around him are acting just a bit ''[[Glamour Failure|off]]''. They keep mentioning [[Arc Words|a string of words]], or are trying to herd him to a certain place.

Variation of the [[Tomato Surprise]], hence the name. (Note the key difference is that here, the character doesn't know they're a tomato.) Compare [[I Am Who?]], which is (usually) a much more pleasant surprise. The opposite of this is [[And Then John Was a Zombie]]. See also [[Expendable Clone]] and [[Dead All Along]]. For extra oomph, expect the tomato to [[House of Broken Mirrors|break the mirror]] in frustration. If the surprise is the character discovering that they were the villain all along, that's [[The Killer in Me]].

 

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[Tenchi in Tokyo]]'': {{spoiler|Sakuya isn't the [[Ordinary High School Student]] she thought she was. She is Yugi's sort-of clone, or more exactly, her "shadow". A mere extension of Yugi's own self.}}

* ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' falls under this with {{spoiler|Syaron finds out he's a clone when the real one shows up.}}

* This is the entire premise of ''[[Zegapain]]''. Kyo believes that he is playing a video game in which he pilots a giant robot fighting against aliens trying to wipe out the computers that hold the brain patterns of the remnants of humanity, only to discover the "game" is the real world, and he is merely data in one of those computers.

* ''Kitsune To Atori'' - One of three stories that have absolutely no relation to each other whatsoever. The plot of the first chapter was pretty confusing but involves a tale of two sisters. The younger sister, Atori, hates lies and sees the foxes (who have magical abilities and can transform into other forms) as deceitful and evil, which is also partly fueled by the fact that her older sister suffered a fox attack and now bears a scar on her eye, which she covers at all times. Thinking that her sister is being too lenient on the foxes, she becomes confused when she reassures her that "It's fine if your not honest, as long as you stay by my side." Later Atori finds her older sister removing their sword that cuts through spells and attacks her, assuming her to be a fox disguised as her sister. Through a series of revelations it's revealed that she and her sister had been lying all along. Atori is actually a fox and her "sister" used a spell to make her forget her painful past and live peacefully.

* The [[Justice League of America|JLA's]] initial way of dealing with the White Martian threat was to hypnotize them into thinking that they are mere humans. This leads to an issue where Batman declares that several members of the JLA need to track down a great threat to the world: Bruce Wayne. Turns out that one of the brainwashed martians was working for Wayne as an assistant. After being involved in a plane wreck it loses its memories ''again'' and decides (from papers it had) that it ''is'' Wayne and takes his form (making it a double example of this trope: a martian who is forced to think it is human who then winds up thinking it is a different human).

* [[The Reveal]] of {{spoiler|Elijah Snow}} as the mysterious Fourth Man in ''[[Planetary]]''.

* In ''[[Rising Stars]],'' Poet asks Clarence Mack what he knows about the murders of the other Specials. Clarence discusses his own theories and uses his ability to enter the minds of others to show Poet his findings, when he realizes that {{spoiler|he saw exactly who the killer was, and was murdered only moments later for it. And that, while he was unaware of it until just now, he's only having this conversation because another Special who is a medium summoned his ghost.}}

* The [[Kevin Smith]] comic ''[[Green Arrow]]: Quiver'' features the titular hero, Oliver Queen, returned from the grave. This seems at first to be a typical comic book resurrection, but why does Oliver seem convinced that he never died at all, that ''everyone else'' is acting very odd, and that cellphones and modern computers are the sort of things only supervillains possess? Turns out that this is Ollie's body brought back to life, minus his soul. The Spectre wanted to resurrect him, but his soul was happy in heaven. So they compromised; Oliver's body was given new life, but with ten years of his history removed to avoid all the [[Wangst]] he would have otherwise gone through (as his life was in shambles when he died). In the end his body and soul are reunited, returning Ollie back to life ''for real'' this time.

* A number of Skrulls believing themselves to be [[Marvel Universe|Marvel]] heroes have a bit of an identity crisis meeting their human counterparts during the ''Secret Invasion'' [[Crisis Crossover]].

* There's a short Marvel comic called "The Creature". A man finds an alien's diary and runs around trying to find someone who'll believe him. The random guys on the street don't believe him. The policeman doesn't believe him. The soldier guarding a military base tells him to take it to the observatory. The man rushes to a scientist there, hands him the journal. The journal is written in an "unearthly scrawl" which only the person who wrote it could read.

* The [[Show Within a Show|Comic Within A Comic]] ''Tales of the Black Freighter'' in ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]''.

* In the first issue of [[Alan Moore]]'s run on ''[[Swamp Thing]]'', the titular character learns that {{spoiler|he isn't Alex Holland. He's just a sentient plant that absorbed Alex Holland's memories, and his years of searching for a way to regain his humanity were pointless because was never human in the first place}}. This sends him into a ''major'' [[Heroic BSOD]]. {{spoiler|[[Prototype|Turns out Alex isn't Alex after all]]}}

* In the [[Wolverine]] comic ''[[Old Man Logan]]'', this applies to {{spoiler|Wolverine himself. Over the course of the comic he states that he will never use his claws again because he did something horrible. Turns out the X-Men Headquarters were attacked by the combined force of every villain ever. So Wolverine went out on a bloody rampage to kill each and every one of the attackers only to find out that Mysterio made Illusions for him to see the entire X-Men crew as villains. Guess what... He murdered them all.}}

* [[Machine Teen]] is initially unaware that he's a robot. When he's injured at school he refuses to accept that he's not bleeding, and when he's forced to aknowledge it, he immediately shuts down while the knowledge is deleted.

{{quote|'''[[Bad Movie Beatdown|Film Brain]]''' What? What a twist!...[[Sincerity Mode|I don't mean that sarcastically. That is a genuine statement from me. This is a shocking development]]. Mostly because he's the only one who can act. Remotely.}}

* The film ''[[Shattered]]'' follows a man who survives a car accident with amnesia. Along the way he discovers that {{spoiler|his wife was having an affair. She explains that she didn't say anything because she didn't want him to remember killing her lover. When he finds her lover's corpse, it looks just like he does after the doctors repaired his face to look like the photos of the man they believed he was.}}

* The movie ''[[Identity (film)|Identity]]'' does this, but in that movie {{spoiler|everyone is a tomato, at least in a [[I Am You and You Are Me]] sort of way...}}

* In ''Unknown'' (2006), several men wake up in a warehouse with toxic-vapor-induced amnesia. They discover that some of them are kidnappers, and at least one of them is a kidnappee, but they don't know who's which. The protagonist hopes he's not one of the villains, and the gradual return of his memories eventually reveals he's an undercover cop. This comes as a great relief ... until, at the end, {{spoiler|he catches sight of the kidnapped man's wife, regains his memory of the affair he's been having with her, and realizes that he'd gone to the warehouse to ''kill'' her husband so they could get married and the kidnappers would be blamed.}}

* In Nick Harkaway's ''[[The Gone-Away World]]'', a [[Crapsack World]] in which a super weapon poked big holes in the time-space continuum and which is held together by [[Applied Phlebotinum]] the narrator tells the story of himself and his best friend Gonzo and how the world came to be. {{spoiler|About halfway through when the story shifts to present tense we find out that the narrator is Gonzo's imaginary friend who has been made flesh by an accident involving said phlebotinum.}}

* In the [[Gene Wolfe]]'s ''The Other Dead Man'' the protagonist fights off [[Came Back Wrong]] crewmates. Then he is shown a mirror...

* The ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Galaxy of Fear]]'' book ''Clones'' features, you guessed it, [[Captain Obvious|clones.]] Possibly subverted. Tash, after avoiding a horde of clones of herself and her brother, finds a defective Tash-clone that thinks she is the real girl and the others are after her. Since they seem to have her memories, Tash freaks and wonders for a while if ''she'' isn't a defective clone herself. Apparently our Tash is legit, but you never know.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5M0PcVC2dw "Something Was Wrong"] from the second book of the ''Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark'' series.

== Live-Action TV ==

* ''[[Are You Afraid of the Dark?]]'':

** Another episode had a girl thinking the new neighbour was a ghost, only to learn she was the one who was dead.

* Bizarrely enough, the [[Mind Screw]] ending of ''[[The Prisoner]]'' implies that this is the entire premise of the series.

* In the [[Super Sentai]] parody short [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD6gTrvuG0M "Rolling Bomber Special"], Shingo Katori of [[SMAP]] fame plays the [[Unlucky Everydude]] who keeps getting attacked by the (fortunately very ineffective) Super Sentai "Freshmen", who think he's the destroyer of worlds they've been hunting all this while. It's not till he's 'activated' and [[Body Horror|robotic limbs start ripping out of his body]] that he realises ''they were right''.

* Played for laughs in [[Chapelles Show]], which had a sketch featuring a rabid member of the KKK who's blind so he doesn't realize that he's black.

 

== Music ==

* Daniel Johnston's "Devil Town" seems to be about this trope--'''I didn't know they were vampires / It turns out I was a vampire myself...''' That is, unless it's actually [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|about something else entirely over some people's heads]].

* At the very end of the [[Genesis (band)|Genesis]] [[Concept Album]] / [[Rock Opera]] ''[[The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway]]'', the protagonist Rael discovers that {{spoiler|he and his brother John whom he's spent the entire album chasing}} are actually the same person.

* ''Who Will Love Me Now?'' by [[PJ Harvey]] is a narrative song where the character sings of monster in the forest who has done terrible things, the monster lamenting 'who will love me now?' At the end of the song the character reveals ''they'' are the monster.

* This is played with in The Emptiness, by Alesana. Specifically, {{spoiler|The artist and the thespian are one in the same.}}

* The video for [[Garbage]]'s "Bleed Like Me". {{spoiler|Shirley Manson plays a nurse in a mental hospital; she eventually realizes that she's actually one of the patients.}}

* Sally Fingerett's song "She Won't Be Walking" is a song about domestic abuse. The chorus is positive and hopeful:

 

 

== Radio ==

* In the Big Finish [[Doctor Who]] audio ''The Natural History of Fear'', the main characters appear to have had their memories erased to blend in and hide inside a fascist Big Brother city, but {{spoiler|we later learn the Doctor and his companions simply passed through, and donated their memories to be diluted into the populace, who needed them to evolve from their stagnant unchanging fascist city, and the "main" characters we are following are a much different species simply having residue memories of the main characters.}}