Right down to the skin of his teeth.
A Visual Gag (most of the time) where a character poses similarly to a picture of themself. Depending on the flavor, the picture may be close to them on the wall or it may be pulled down to reveal the pose struck. Bonus points if the character sees the photo and then strikes the pose like it.
In some variants, it may not be intentional, or it may be another art form, such as a painting or bust.
May overlap with Unflattering ID Photo, and in extreme cases with Droste Image.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Arrow Emblem: Hawk of the Grand Prix has Goichiro Katori's introduction, a closeup of him staring silently with apparent disapproval... then the camera pans down to his jacket, where he has a name tag pinned to his lapel, with a photo of him in exactly the same pose and facial expression. (You can watch this scene, without any context, here
.)
Films — Animation
- A variation in Despicable Me: When Mr. Perkins is chewing out his son, he at one point stands next to a bust of his exact likeness.
- Scooby-Doo! and the Monster of Mexico: Invoked when the gang is going through customs. The guard looks unconvinced at Shaggy's ID picture, which depicts him and Scooby together. Shaggy and Scooby hurry to strike that same pose, and the guard lets them pass through.
- WALL•E: The captain's quarters have portraits of the Axiom's past captains hanging on one wall. Captain McCrea hides from Auto's roving eye by standing in front of his own portrait, counting on Auto's lack of depth perception to conceal him. This almost works, as Auto has to backtrack for a second look, which is when the captain pounces.
Films — Live-Action
- Airplane!: While deliberating on how to save the airplane, ground support Steve McCroskey stands in front of a framed photograph of himself making the same pose... which contains another photograph within it of the same pose.
- Biff in his office in Back to the Future Part II, standing in front of a painting portraying him in a similar pose.◊
- Parodied in Bean, where Mr. Bean intentionally makes the same face as his Unflattering ID Photo after he's shown making a more normal face.
- Used in Hot Fuzz when Simon Skinner makes his signature Slasher Smile... right next to a framed Employee of the Month photo with him making the exact same face.
- In The Man with the Golden Gun, villain Scaramanga has a life-size dummy of James Bond in his murder course. In the final battle Bond replaces the dummy and assumes the same position, this lets him surprise Scaramanga with a killing shot.
- Not Another Teen Movie: A double subversion occurs when Jake Wyler poses next to a picture of himself... where he is looking at a picture of himself doing the exact same pose.
- Scooby-Doo: When Scooby goes into the owner of the island's office, he sees a picture of himself smiling. Scooby does the same pose as he recognizes the photo.
- Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over: When Juni enters the Mega Race area, he so happens to stand exactly as the silhouette of The Guy in the poster behind him. This causes nearby Beta-testers to declare Juni as The Guy, though later The Guy is revealed to have a completely different armor from the poster.
Live-Action TV
- CSI: NY: A variation occurs in "Death House" when Mac and Stella are trying to figure out the clues left in an abandoned penthouse by a long-dead Trap Master. They re-arrange all the furniture in one room to exactly match a portrait of the original owner, but Mac realizes something is missing. He then sits in an armchair, striking the exact pose as the man in the picture, and a secret doorway immediately opens.
- Family Feud: For several seasons each show began with both competing families standing still posed as if in a family portrait until the announcer said their name.
- Hannah Montana: In "You Didn't Say It's Your Birthday", when Lily and Oliver discover a potato chip that looks like Darth Vader and charge people to see it, Rico draws their attention to a burned-in legal disclaimer on the chip saying that any Vader-like chips are property of Rico Enterprises (a division Mua-Ha-Ha, Inc.). The disclaimer also includes an image of Rico smiling and giving a double thumbs-up, then cutting to the real Rico making the same pose.
- The IT Crowd: The first episode opens with the head of Reynholm Industries sitting behind his desk, his hands steepled in front of him, giving the audience a shrewd, withering stare. Then the camera pulls back, revealing that's just a framed photo mounted on the wall. It pans over to reveal the exact same man behind his desk, holding the exact same pose.
- Red Dwarf: In the Back to Earth special, the Dwarfers end up on Earth in 2009, and discover that they are supposedly television characters. Lister stands in front of a promo poster for this very special, making the same pose as the several images of him on the poster.
Video Games
- Hi-Fi RUSH: Chai is introduced through a headshot showing him doing devil-horns attached to his application form for a cybernetic arm. When it's pulled down, he is striking the exact same pose in front of them.
- Later in the game, after being launched into the robot cafeteria, Chai and 808 make the exact same pose as a picture of them on a nearby TV screen, alerting the whole building to his presence.
- One Night At Flumptys 3: When Grunkfuss the Clown is sitting in the art gallery and not getting up to leave, his facial expression will perfectly mimic the picture of him on the sign warning you not to flash him.
Web Animation
- PUNCH PUNCH FOREVER!: around 3:14 in, the main character GoGo is seen making a goofy face in the tournament picture shown, and immediately after recreating that face as if it were a natural expression.
Webcomics
- A variation: one xkcd strip has a panel showing the distribution of black and white ink within the strip itself, which consists of a smaller copy of the strip spread across an x/y axis.
Web Video
- Phelous, on his show Bootleg Zones, occasionally does a gag called "Making the Face", where he tries to get his expression as close as possible to a deformed toy. When he bought a 3D-printed statue of himself as a Ghostbuster he did the routine again, getting a 100% percent match because of course his face and the toy's face are the same.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Mystery," Bobert the robot goes over the video recorded of someone stuffing Principal Brown into Gumball's locker. As Bobert enhances the video, it reveals the person to be Ms. Simian, with a confused expression, and she strikes that exact pose as soon as she’s revealed.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: When Ty Lee asks about the identity of two attractive young women in a picture, Creepy Twins Lo and Li reveal it was them, and recreate the pose. Because the twins are now elderly, it doesn't have quite the same effect.
- Dan Vs.: In episode 18, when the police are arresting Dan's imposter, he makes the same exact face as Dan makes in the cops' photo.
- El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera: Rodolfo becomes so enamored upon seeing Maria again that he makes origami of himself with a love-struck expression that happens to be of him with a love-struck expression holding origami of himself.
- In The Simpsons episode "Two Bad Neighbors", George Bush Sr.'s Secret Service is ogling the photo I.D. of Ned Flanders before they give him clearance to see the former president, which features the exact big, wide smile and pose that Ned (and his family) also displays at the gate.
- Smiling Friends: At 5:16 a hanging picture shows a person in a single running frame, and that character is shown running across the screen in the background.
- Spider-Man (1967): A common meme from this cartoon shows Spider-Man sitting behind a desk with a photoshopped picture of him directly behind him on the wall.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- Parodied, doubling as I Resemble That Remark!. In "New Student Starfish", Mrs. Puff takes offense to an unflattering drawing of herself, immediately turning into exactly how she looks like in the drawing.
- Combined with a Droste Image in "No Free Rides". After rushing SpongeBob into a driver's license with an extremely easy extra credit assignment, Mrs. Puff goes home to find that his parents have thrown her a surprise party to celebrate him finally passing his class. When the camera cuts back to Mrs. Puff, the resulting shot — including her current pose — is depicted in a framed photo on her wall.
- "The Getaway": When Sticky Fins, an escaped convict, mistakes SpongeBob as his getaway driver, he checks into his student driving license, showing SpogneBob having a goofy smile, and makes that exact face when he puts the card down.
SpongeBob: I just don’t take a bad picture, do I?
- In Tuca & Bertie, when moving into Bertie's apartment, Speckle puts up a framed photo of his face while making the exact same open-beaked smile that he has in the photo.
- Villainous: Doubles as I Resemble That Remark! and happens twice in a row. To show how the Medusa Device works, Dr. Flug creates a statue of Black Hat with an annoyed expression. Cut to Black Hat wearing the exact same expression before he angrily protests "What?! I don't look like that!", at which point there's a newspaper clipping behind him◊, showing him in the exact same position and with the words "He doesn't".
Real Life
- Homer's All-Purpose Bucket is a Home Depot bucket that shows a picture of a man holding and pointing at a bucket with the exact same picture on it.
