[[BattlestarGalactica http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/CylonInTheMirror.jpg]]
[[caption-width:286:Cylon In the Mirror]]
-->''"Oh my god....I'm a tomato!"''
-->-Mayor Adam West, ''FamilyGuy''

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

It looks like the town's been taken over by ThePuppetMasters, and our hero's the only one left. He attempts to either escape and warn the outside world, or find where the invaders are coming from and shut it down.

But once he gets there, [[BrokenMasquerade he discovers the horrifying truth:]] [[TheReveal HE'S the fake!]] Cue screams of ''"WhatHaveIBecome?!"'' [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots A robot]], a [[CloningBlues clone]], a [[DeadManWalking ghost]], or some [[{{Doppelganger}} other duplicate]] that forgot he wasn't the real thing, or was [[{{Brainwashed}} programmed]] to [[ReplacementGoldfish believe that he was]], complete with FakeMemories of a MiningAccidentOnTroy.

In an ongoing series, it'll be a duplicate of one of the main characters. In a self-contained work, it'll just be someone who thinks they're human. Either way, it's an effective inversion of ThePuppetMasters. Assuming the duplicate works through the immediate suicidal tendencies (and/or murderous intent of others) they may find themselves having to ask a TrialBalloonQuestion to see if "their" friends and family would still accept them.

Variation of the TomatoSurprise -- hence the name. (Note the key difference is that here, the character doesn't know he's a tomato.) Compare IAmWho, which is (usually) a much more pleasant surprise. The opposite of this is AndThenJohnWasAZombie.
----
!!!This is a Twist Ending Trope. Expect your tomatoes to be [[IncrediblyLamePun spoiled]]!

'''Examples:'''

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime]]
* The TropeNamer (of sorts) is ''TheBigO'', to the point of main character Roger Smith actually crying out "I'm one of the tomatoes!" [[{{Narm}} Yeah, it sounded dumb]], but it was a shocking twist. But it gets weirder still near the end, when [[spoiler: he discovers this may not be the case, and he may have existed before Paradigm...]]
* Goku, of course, in the ''{{Dragonball}}'' series. He finds out from his long-lost brother Raditz at the beginning of DBZ that he is an alien (Saiyan) sent to kill all humans on Earth. He forgot his purpose and mellowed out after he fell off a cliff and hit his head as a child.
* ''RahXephon'' is riddled with examples (along with LukeIAmYourFather revelations). Not only is Ayato himself a [[HalfHumanHybrid half-human, half-Mulian]], but no fewer than two other characters discover the shocking truth about their own origins along the way; one of them was previously mind-wiped to make her forget them.
* 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.
* In ''FullMetalAlchemist'', Number 66, formerly Barry the Chopper, causes Alphonse to doubt that he ever was human. This, coupled with his lack of memories regarding certain events about his childhood - well, you do the math. [[spoiler: Turns out not to be the case; the reason for Al's memory gaps is simply that he was a little kid, and logically wouldn't remember a lot of things from when he was so young.]]
* In ''{{GUNNM}}'' Daisuke Ido is driven into a HeroicBSOD when he discovers that [[spoiler: he has no brain. It was removed and replaced with a microchip at the age of 19, as with all citizens of Tiphares, [[PoweredByAForsakenChild in order to make him less likely to violate the law]]]].
** [[MadScientist Desty Nova]] learnt the same thing about himself at some point before his introduction. It is not known if the truth drove him insane, or if his insanity helped him deal with the truth. Seeing as he was the only person who doesn't seem to care about their shared condition, it was likely the latter.
**Much later on,in the sequel manga ''Last Order'', Alita gets her own TITM - ''twice''. The first is when she [[spoiler:learns that her past self, before her amnesia, was directly responsible for a catastrophe that resulted in the death of millions and the transformation of the entire ''Solar System'' into a CrapsackWorld]]. The second is when [[spoiler:her brain, her last remaining piece of humanity,is revealed to have been removed at the start of the series and placed in a box she's been unknowingly carrying about for the past three volumes]]. She's told this ''just'' as it's exchanged for her friend's,resulting in a literal breakdown of her nanomachine body.
* ''{{Sola}}'' has a WhamEpisode where [[spoiler: Yorito realizes that he's a clone made of paper, as a [[ReplacementGoldfish replacement]] for the original who died centuries before, by his paper-manipulating sister]].
* ''ShakuganNoShana'' gets this out of the way with Yuji in the first episode -- as Shana bluntly explains to him, the ''real'' Sakai Yuji was erased from reality and eaten by a [[DemonicInvaders Rinne]]. All that he is is a temporary placeholder, meant to ease the strain on existence caused by the erasing of the orginal, and once his power of existence runs out, he'll cease to exist as well and reality will arrange itself so that Sakai Yuji will never have existed in the first place.
* ''HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi'' has a borderline example: [[spoiler:It turns out that Keiichi's foray ThroughTheEyesOfMadness in the first arc was ''him'' being crazy and not a case of TownWithADarkSecret -- but Keiichi only learns this in an alternate timeline when he gets a glean of his own actions from outside of his own mind at the time.]]
**[[spoiler:Though in his defense, it's not like the town doesn't have a dark secret...]]
*''TsubasaReservoirChronicle'' falls under this with [[spoiler: Syaron finds out he's a clone when the real one shows up.]]
**Played with again in ''XXXHolic'' when Yuuko reveals [[spoiler:Watanuki is a clone of Syaoran... of sorts]].
* Taikoubou from the ''HoushinEngi'' manga later finds out that he's actually [[spoiler: the other half of Ou Eki, and when they combine, they form one of the "First People", Fukki]].
* In the first season of ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'', [[spoiler:Fate Testarossa finds out that she is in fact a ReplacementGoldfish [[CloningBlues clone]] of Precia's dead daughter Alicia, prompting a HeroicBSOD]].
* ''RaveMaster'': [[spoiler: Elie is Resha Valentine]].
* ''{{Gundam 00}}'': [[spoiler: Anew Returner is an Innovator whose memories of her true identity were wiped out so she could become Ribbons's ManchurianAgent]]
* ''{{Kiddy Grade}}'': [[spoiler: One set of Eclair and Lumiere's has a slightly subverted version of this, as they realize something is NotQuiteRight first, before realizing they were clones and breaking free of Alv's MindControl.]]
* SorcererStabberOrphen: [[spoiler: Esperanza Reika thought her little sister Lycoris was dead and had been revived by her CreepyChild boss, Escalenna. It turns out Esperanza was the one who has truly died.]]
* ''GateKeepers'' [[spoiler: One of their teachers was an Invader, and he didn't know it]].
* Double-Subverted in ''{{Gravion}}'': [[spoiler:Leele discovers that she's apparently one of the Zeravire that's been attacking the Earth. In the episode afterwards, it's {{Hand Wave}}ed that her memories were mixed up from contact with one of the Zeravire. But as it turns out, she ''is'' a Zeravire. Sort of. She is in fact the niece of the alien scientist who created them, and shares the ''surname'' Zeravire.]]
* In ''{{Gantz}}'', this is what happens with Kishimoto. Apparently, she actually ''failed'' suicide, and the her that was sent to Gantz was actually a clone. When she gets sent back to the normal world, she sees that the other her is living normally at home, and she ends up having no place to go.
** The same thing ended up happening to [[spoiler: Kurono. He ends up getting a clone of himself because Reika [[{{Yandere}} decided to make a copy of him for herself]]]]. Yikes.
* TenchiInTokyo: [[spoiler: Sakuya isn't the OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent she thought she was. She is Yugi's sort-of clone, or more exactly, her "shadow". A mere extension of Yugi's own self.]]
* ErgoProxy [[spoiler: Vincent Law is the Ergo Proxy of the title, and it initially acts as a separate part of him without him knowing it. He previously erased his memories so that he could live a normal life as a human.]]
* Ayanami Rei in ''NeonGenesisEvangelion'', though she seemed to at least have a slight clue from the beginning that she was not quite normal.
** ThisTroper always assumed she knew the whole thing, but hey, AlternateCharacterInterpretation.
* DaCapo: [[spoiler:Miharu is ''not'' the real Miharu; it's a robotic clone modeled after her and built by her father, doctor Amakase. It was put as [[GoldfishReplacement a replacement]] when an accident -she fell from a tree while trying to rescue a stray cat; foreshadowed in episode 3 of the anime- [[PutOnABus landed the real Miharu in a deep comma]], opening a chance to test robot Miharu's behavior and adaptability in real life. Not only she is successful at impersonating her original (the only ones that find out are Jyunichi and Nemu); she's also very conscious of the fact she's a replacement, and strives to be more like the real Miharu so much that the sakura tree gives her dreams and sensations similar to the real Miharu. This, however, greatly reduces her lifespan, and ultimately causes [[TearJerker her death]]. STATUS: '''SUBVERSION'''.]]
* The [[FirstEpisodeSpoiler beginning]] of ''DarkerThanBlack'' is rather brutal about this, with an added ObfuscatingStupidity TomatoSurprise. It spends the first episode and a half setting up a sickeningly obvious MeetCute- then we abruptly find out that [[spoiler:the apparent female LoveInterest is in fact a Doll programmed with the memories of the real person, now dead, and the [[NiceGuy adorable]] Chinese exchange student who keeps "[[ContrivedCoincidence accidentally]]" rescuing her is that [[MookHorrorShow scary]], superpowered BadassLongcoat we saw at the beginning.]]
* In ''KingOfThorn'', one of the protagonists turns out to be a tomato in the mirror. [[spoiler:Kasumi is actually a ReplacementGoldfish Medusa construct created by Shizuku after the real Kasumi died]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:ComicBooks]]
* The plot of the much hated Comicbook/{{Spider-Man}} Clone Saga was going to originally resolve itself in this way, with the "clone" Ben Parker finding out that he was the original, while the "original" Peter Parker, whom comic book fans had been reading about since the original clone story in the '70s, would be revealed to actually have been the clone all along. [[AuthorsSavingThrow And then Marvel Comics chickened out...]] (After the infamously ''long'' Clone Saga want back and forth at least a half-dozen times about which Spidey was the clone.)
** This is basically the plot of the last SpirouAndFantasio comic by Tome and Jenry, Machine Qui Rêve.
* The [[JusticeLeagueOfAmerica 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 an entirely different human).
* TheReveal 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 KevinSmith comic ''GreenArrow: 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 [[MarvelUniverse Marvel]] heroes have a bit of an identity crisis meeting their human counterparts during the ''Secret Invasion'' CrisisCrossover.
* In an early issue of ''The Sensational She-Hulk'', our titular green goddess wakes up to see [[BodyHorror her headless body]] being used to provide a new mode of transportation for Chondu the Mystic's head. [[spoiler: It turned out to be a robot body, though. They couldn't find a saw that was able to cut She-Hulk's hair, let alone through her neck.]]
* Theres a short Marvel comic called "The Creature". A man finds an aliens diary runs around trying to find someone who'll believe him. The random guys on the street don't believe him. The policeman doesn't beieve him. The soldier guarding a military base tells him to take it to the observatory. The man rushes to a scientisct there, hands him the journal. The journal is written in an "unearthly scrawl" which only the person who wrote it could read.
* The [[ShowWithinAShow Comic Within A Comic]] ''Tales of the Black Freighter'' in ''{{Watchmen}}'' is another example.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* The TwistEnding of ''TheSixthSense'' is a relatively subtle example of the trope; the main character has no idea that anything is odd about him, as people's reactions to his words and actions seem entirely plausible, until he realizes that they only appeared to have been interacting with him in the way he expected them to.
* ''The Sixth Day,'' where the "cloned" Arnie turns out to be the original.
* Though the movie ''MulhollandDrive'' doesn't make it explicit, it's probably the most believable explanation for David Lynch's MindScrew. Note how Naomi Watts's blonde and Laura Elena Harring's brunette have different names in the last segment of the movie -- names given previously to other characters.
** The {{Word of God}} has verified this explanation, and has additionally stated that the movie itself screws this up when it has [[spoiler:Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring never sharing the screen except in a single shot]].
*** WordOfGod where? David Lynch is notoriously closemouthed about all his films and in fact eschews explanations of any kind.
* The TwistEnding of the Korean film ''A Tale of Two Sisters'' featured this trope in the form of an UnreliableNarrator, with the combination of RealAfterAll adding to the ending's [[TheUsualSuspectsEnding confusing nature]].
* The FauxHorrorFilm ''Session 9'' did this in the form of TheKillerInMe.
* Nicely done in ''The Others''. Grace Stewart finds herself in the midst of a haunting, only it turns out [[spoiler:''she and her family'' are the ghosts; the "spooks" they've been seeing are actually the living family who've come to see about buying the house.]] Particularly unsettling is the publicity clip where the creepy old woman talks to Grace in her daughter Anne's voice -- [[spoiler:when one realizes Anne is actually possessing the woman, a medium hired by the living family.]]
* In ''AngelHeart,'' Mickey Rourke's character, a private detective, turns out to be the very man he's been hired to track down.
* In ''Salvage'', Claire Parker seems to be living a [[GroundhogDayLoop Groundhog Day-esque]] nightmare where she keeps getting stalked and killed by serial killer Duke Desmond, only to wake up back at work as if nothing had happened. After a non-fatal attack, she learns from the police that Desmond can't be stalking her, since he's been dead for some time. She decides maybe it's his ghost that's tormenting her, and seeks advice on how to deal with that. The first place she visits just happens to be Desmond's former church, where the janitor reassures her that Desmond can't hurt her, as he's in hell. Not reassured, she goes to his old home, and then the library, where she finds a newspaper article showing that [[spoiler:[[DeadallAlong she and her boyfriend were his last victims]]. Eventually, Desmond appears in her house to kill her yet again, and now she's finally told the whole truth -- she isn't Claire. She's Duke Desmond, whose [[IronicHell punishment]] is to keep reliving his murder of Claire, from her perspective.]]
* ''FightClub'' is a masterful example, as Edward Norton's unnamed narrator befriends and starts Fight Club with Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden, anarchist and soap salesman. As Durden begins to raise an army of committed nihilistic followers, the narrator becomes less and less comfortable with the direction of the movement. After Tyler Durden disappears at the kickoff of a coordinated act of domestic terrorism, the narrator hunts desperately for him, only to be told that [[spoiler: he is himself Tyler Durden.]] The revelation changes the tone of previous conversations in the film, notably the inception of Fight Club -- what was a brawl between the narrator and Durden that attracted other participants becomes [[spoiler:the narrator/Durden beating himself up, rousing the curiosity of others.]] And Durden's intense sexual relationship with Marla Singer coupled with the narrator's open contempt for her; [[spoiler:what were the actions and reactions of two separate characters take on a different light when you know the characters are the same person, and Marla's confusion and hurt at the narrator's scorn makes more sense. In the end, the narrator shoots himself through the cheek, "killing" Durden by demonstrating he was willing to kill himself.]]
** Interestingly enough, The Author of the book provided some commentary for the movie version, and claimed he liked how the movie ended better than how he ended the book. [[ Seriously.]]
* Subverted, and ''possibly'' double-subverted in ''Film/TheThing''. [[spoiler: For a while, it really looks like Mac is The Thing. And then he's revealed not to be. But in the final scene, it's starting to look like he could be. If so, he hasn't been for long, though.]]
* ''TheCabinetOfDrCaligari''. Once you understand that [[spoiler: Francis is a nut, and Cesare and Caligari aren't even their real names]], everything makes a lot more sense. Including the art style.
** In the original ending everything was to be taken at face value. The producers suggested a change because they suspected the Weimar censors wouldn't allow a movie that implied an authority figure could be evil.
* ''Dead And Buried''. The sheriff of a small town discovers that several strangers passing through town and many of the townspeople, including his own wife, have been murdered and turned into zombies by the town's mortician. At the end he confronts the mortician and learns that he himself suffered the same fate sometime earlier.
** Not only that, but it's implied that he's investigated the killings ''dozens of times before'', his memories being wiped each time he learns the truth, because the mortician enjoys playing mental chess games with the sheriff.
* ''Jacob's Ladder''. In a deleted scene, Jacob finds out that [[spoiler: Jezzie was actually himself, when he unmasks the shroud she's enveloped in]].
* ''TheNeverendingStory''. When confronting his "true self" in a mirror, Atreyu sees [[spoiler: Bastian, the boy reading the book, as his reflection]].
* ''Impostor''. [[spoiler: Gary Sinese's character is, in fact, the robo-bomb he's been trying to prove he ''isn't'' for the entire movie. His wife is one, too.]]
* Literally in the BittersweetEnding of ''Mirrors''. Ben leaves the Mayflower building after having defeated the demon, but none of the emergency workers seem to notice him despite his injuries. [[spoiler: It turns out that he is trapped in the mirror world.]]
* The Jim Henson made-for-TV MindScrew film The Cube. [[spoiler:Strawberry jam]]
* In ''The Nines'', it turns out [[spoiler: the protagonist is a GodInHumanForm, one supporting character is a human trying to keep him LockedOutOfTheLoop, and the other is a fellow GodInHumanForm who wants him to [=re-=]AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence]].
* Depending on the version of ''Bladerunner'' you watch, either [[spoiler:Deckard]] or just [[spoiler:Rachel]] is a/are replicant(s), and going to snuff it fairly soon, or live happily ever after.
* The ending of ''{{Hellraiser}}: Inferno'' reveals that the being known as the Engineer that Detective Joseph Thorne was after is in fact the embodiment of his own dark urges; when Joseph confronts the Engineer the thing even peels away its blank face to reveal Joseph's underneath.
* The advertisements for ''{{Terminator}}: Salvation'' imply that therein a freedom fighter finds out that [[spoiler:'he' is an uploaded mind running on Terminator hardware]].
* In Takashi Shimizu's ''Reincarnation'', the story begins with a college professor filming himself as he brutally kills a hotel full of innocent people, including his own children, because of his obsession with reincarnation. Thirty-five years later, some creep decides to make a movie about it, and sets out to cast the killer and his victims. So what? [[spoiler: So plenty. He literally succeeds, managing to cast the reincarnation of everyone involved in the massacre. The main character realizes she ties into all this, but doesn't find out how until the end of the movie, when she sees her true self in her reflection.]]
* As seen in [[http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/fbv/bmbe/9350-transmorphers this video]], in the film Transmorphers the main character is eventually revealed to be [[spoiler: an android]]. The reviewer had this to say-
-->'''Film Brain''' What? What a twist!...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.]]
* ''ToyStory'': Buzz Lightyear. Consider the implications of realising that you're not a Space Ranger, not a human being, ''the universe you remember doesn't exist'': "[[ThisIsSPARTA YOU ARE A TOY!]]"
* The movie ''{{Identity}}'' does this, but in that movie [[spoiler: everyone is a tomato, at least in a IAmYouAndYouAreMe sort of way...]]
* In ''Unknown'', 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, 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 get blamed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* One of the [[OlderThanTelevision earliest examples]] is HPLovecraft's "The Outsider", a first person point-of-view story that follows a mysterious lonely individual who cannot remember coming in contact with people. When he escapes his tower, he scares off the first people he sees and spots his reflection, revealing him to be -- ta-dah! -- a ghoul.
** Lovecraft did this one again in the novella ''The Shadow over Innsmouth,'' which ends with the protagonist discovering that he is one of the HalfHumanHybrids that are the titular TownWithADarkSecret's dark secret.
** And again in his story "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family".
* "Imposter," a short ScienceFiction story by PhilipKDick. Dick used it frequently as both a device and a premise. Perhaps the best-known example is is the film ''BladeRunner,'' very loosely based on his novel ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'' Arguably, this is also the premise of ''{{A Scanner Darkly}},'' although in this case the twist is identical with the character arc. Bonus points for the fact that [[spoiler:the enemy plot revolves around the character finding out he's an android. The trigger phrase for the bomb inside him is "...then I must be the..."]]
* J. G. Ballard was also fond of this device, and employed it in his 1960 story "Zone of Terror."
* ''{{Goosebumps}},'' "A Shocker On Shock Street": A kid whose father is a horror movie director is menaced by horrible things; turns out he's the robot star, and the whole thing was part of the movie.
** ''{{Goosebumps}}'' was fond of this one. You also have the girl who suspects ghosts only to find out that she's the ghost, teenagers who discover that they're vampires, and people who think an invisible dude is a monster when in fact they're a bunch of bizarre aliens.
** Let's not forget the time when it was Halloween, and their best friends turned out to be pumpkin-headed monsters that had been causing the local mystery murders...
** Or the girl who's convinced the guy framing her for various incidents of mischief is a monster, only to have her parents invite said monster home to ''eat him'' because he's infringed on their hunting territory.
** Or the summer camp where kids are disappearing and being killed off, only to have it turn out to be a training simulation for the teenaged main character, whose first assignment requires him to travel to [[HumanAliens Earth]].
* In the novel ''{{John Dies at the End}},'' while dealing with a conspiracy involving agents of a parallel universe, the protagonist/narrator David discovers self-incriminating evidence and catches a glance of what appears to be a dead body in his tool shed. He can't remember a half-hour or so of his day, while his gun is missing a single bullet. He also finds out about a young woman, Amy, who went missing around the same time. He immediately suspects he murdered her during a bout of temporary insanity, but while following clues, he discovers that she's alive and well, but can't remember anything from when she went missing. He later learns that those conspiratorial agents are in fact perfect clones that have replaced other people in the city. Over the course of a few days, he uncovers some very unsettling information, protects Amy from the forces of darkness, falls in love with her, travels to the parallel universe with his best friend John, and cripples the organization behind the invasion. When he finally takes a good look inside his tool shed, [[spoiler:he discovers a corpse that looks exactly like himself. Assuming that this corpse was an intended replacement that he shot in self defense and blocked it out, he goes to reveal the identifying mark of the clones on the bottom of the body's foot. When the mark isn't where he expected to find it, Dave checks his own foot and learns that ''he'' is the clone, and personally killed the original Dave. At first, he's suicidal with guilt, but since he is completely indistinguishable from the real Dave in every way (aside from the mark on his foot that regular people can't see) and anything that would have controlled him is now dead, John and Amy manage to convince him to go on living his life as if nothing had happened. Except for his friend John occasionally calling him "Monster Dave" as a joke.]]
** It seems to me as if the movie "The Broken" [[spoiler:owes much of what is interesting about it to this book. Too bad they couldn't come up with an alternate universe for the mirror people to have come from which had some (at least ''implied'') depth. Instead, the complete lack of motives or personality makes them anything but scary and simply absurd. It's a shame; derivative isn't always a disadvantage, but this one suffered [[MissedMomentOfAwesome critical ending failure.]] ]]
* Done twice in the ''Crucible'' trilogy by Sara Douglass. First, the protagonist goes out to return the demons to Hell -- only to find out that both his wife and best friend (and soon-to-be-king) are demons. Then, when the antagonist role shifts to the angels, he discovers he is an angel too, and thus doomed to send all mankind into eternal slavery. Poor Tom.
* Subverted in Kurt Vonnegut's ''Breakfast of Champions'' wherein a man of declining mental health becomes convinced that failed Sci-Fi writer Kilgore Trout's short story really is a letter from God revealing his TomatoInTheMirror status.
* ''Sabella'' by TanithLee ends with the reveal that [[spoiler:she and the main male character are both native Martian copies of human children who died in a certain underground cave.]]
* ''Kill the Dead'', also by TanithLee, ends with the reveal that [[spoiler:ghost-killer Parl Dro is, himself, a ghost.]]
* Done excellently in the DragonLance short story "The Best." It is done in first person, with the narrator being a noble who's hired the four best dragonslayers in the land to kill a dragon who's been terrorizing the countryside. At the end of the story, they reach the dragon's lair, and it's revealed that [[spoiler: the narrator actually ''is'' the dragon in a magical disguise, and he's gathered them all together to take them all out at once, so he can sleep in peace.]] And it works.
* ThursdayNext uses this trope in ''First Among Sequels'', when [[spoiler: Thursday1-4 is impersonating Thursday the second time, the first person narrator actually switches to Thursday1-4, so even the audience is fooled...until she starts thinking about her villainous plot again.]]
* ''IAmLegend''. The book, obviously. In fact, this is the entire reason for the name of the book.
** Although more than being a tomato all along, it's more the dictionary changing while he wasn't looking.
* Lord Dunsany's short story "The Return", in which the narrator--who promises a real ghost story--only discovers at the end that he is the ghost. (Also broadcast as a radio play.)
* The short story ''The Copy'' by PaulJennings features a copy machine (which creates a mirror-image replica of objects put into it) which a boy uses to copy himself so he can beat down a bully, but becomes jealous of his copy and kills him. Afterwards, his mother remarks that it's odd - his mole used to be on the other cheek, and he's writing with his left hand instead of his right...
* One of the DoctorWho ExpandedUniverse novels featured an Eighth Doctor companion, Fitz Kreiner, realise he's an android duplicate of himself. [[StuffBlowingUp Whereupon he explodes]].
* This is the plot of the [[StarTrekDeepSpaceNine DS9 relaunch novel]] ''Fearful Symmetry'', told first from Captain Kira's perspective, then from that of her double, Iliana Ghemor, a Cardassian sleeper agent altered to look like Kira and remember being her. In the novel, Ghemor is the tomato; in the DS9 episode it was a sequel to, the tomato was [[spoiler: not]] Kira.
* AlastairReynolds does this a lot in the ''Revelation Space'' novels. Chasm City offers a particularly convoluted example: Our lovable hero Tanner is actually [[spoiler:the war criminal Cahuella, after stealing Tanner's identity and buying into his own cover. Cahuella experiences flashbacks of the life and times of the near-mythological psychopath Sky Haussmann, and believes them to be the result of the indoctrinal virus he is infected with. Actually, he is Sky Haussman.]]
* In Nick Harkaway's ''The Gone Away World'', a CrapsackWorld in which a super weapon poked big holes in the time-space continuum and which is held together by AppliedPhlebotinum 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 innvolving said phlebotinum.]]
* In the GeneWolfe's ''The Other Dead Man'' the protagonist fights off CameBackWrong crewmates. Then he is shown a mirror...
* In the {{Harry Potter}} series, when Harry realized that [[spoiler: he is a horcrux. For Voldemort to die, Harry himself must die because he is what is holding Voldemort to life. This is why the prophecy stated that "neither can live while the other survives." Also, Harry realizes this is the reason for the similarities between himself and Voldemort...because he IS Voldemort, at least partially.]]
* The classic children's book ''The Monster At The End Of This Book''. No, Grover, YouAreTheDemons.
** Not to mention the sequal starring Grover ''and'' Elmo, where he falls for it ''again''.
* The ''StarWars: Galaxy of Fear'' book ''Clones'' features, you guessed it, [[CaptainObvious clones.]] Possibly subverted. Tash, after avoiding a hoard 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. (This was also this troper's first exposure [[NightmareFuel to that idea]].) Apparently our Tash is legit, but [[OrIsIt 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.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]
* ''AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'': "The Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor''. The adopted Karin is invited to TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday on the thirteenth floor of the apartment building. The employees are soon revealed to actually be aliens with three fingers and [[TheBlank no faces]](NightmareFuel), and seem to be trying to abduct her. After she and Billy escape, and the ship leaves, Olga reveals to Karin through the TV that the aliens left her there ten years ago and were trying to rescue her. Billy then looks at her and sees that she has [[{{Shapeshifting}} shapeshifted]] back into a faceless alien as well.
* Bizarrely enough, the MindScrew ending of ''ThePrisoner'' implies that this is the entire premise of the series.
** In the episode ''The Schizoid Man'', Number Six seems to have been mistaken for an agent trained to impersonate him. [[spoiler: Evidence mounts that in fact he is the impostor, and has forgotten his own identity. But in the end, the trope is subverted as he realizes that's what they want him to think.]]
* ''{{Stargate SG-1}}'' did it at least twice:
** "Tin Man" (season 1): The SG-1 team seems to have been transferred into robot bodies by a lonely alien maintenance man. In the end, they find out that they weren't transferred, they were ''copied'', with the originals still alive.
** "Fragile Balance" (season 7): Jack O'Neill wakes up after an alien abduction to find himself in a body 30 years younger... and slowly dying. After convincing his colleagues of his identity and tracking down his abductor, he finds (of course) that he is actually a genetically damaged clone of the original O'Neill (still with the alien).
* ''StargateAtlantis'' likes it even more:
** In "Michael" (season 2), Lieutenant Michael Kenmore awakens in Atlantis' infirmary, unable to remember who he is. After being informed of who he is and that he barely survived terrible injuries from a raid deep in enemy territory, he is let out and undergoes psychiatric therapy (including periodic drug injections) for the strange nightmares he keeps having. He eventually discovers secret observation videos of himself in the infirmary, and is horrified to discover that he is actually a Wraith that was transformed into a human using an experimental genetic drug and then brainwashed.
** In "This Mortal Coil" (season 4), Sheppard, [=McKay=], Ronon, Teyla, and, later, Dr. Weir find that they are replicator-made copies of themselves, and that the version of Atlantis they are in is also a copy.
*** They come to take it remarkably well, especially [=McKay=]. Mostly because of [=McKay=]'s insight in the situation.
** In "The Kindred" (season 4), Carson Beckett is found by the Team. The only problem: he's supposed to be dead. But he insists and is sure, that he is the real Beckett. Turns out he is a clone.
*** "Took your bloody time!.. What?"
* ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "Whispers": We follow Miles O'Brien in flashback form as he seems to combat a station-wide conspiracy;[[spoiler: turns out he's actually a clone, sent by one of the alien factions undergoing negotiations on the station, programmed to assassinate the leaders of the other faction. O'Brien seems particularly vulnerable to these types of plots; he seems to be ''Deep Space Nine'''s ButtMonkey.]]
* ''TheTwilightZone'', "After Hours": A woman's shopping trip to a department store goes awry, as the people she talks to seem to transform into mannequins. In the end, we find out that she's one of the mannequins, who take turns going out into the world as a human for a month at a time. Also used in the '80s remake.
** Also the episode "Four O'Clock": A self-righteous man goes around telling anyone who will listen that at precisely four o'clock he will, by sheer force of will, cause every evil person on the planet Earth to shrink to two feet tall. Four o'clock rolls around and the man finds ''himself'' shrunk to a height of two feet tall, much to his chagrin.
* The new ''BattlestarGalactica'' has done this with five characters. Boomer spends the first season wrestling with the slow realization that she's the Tomato In The Mirror. Moreover, as of the Season Three finale, [[spoiler: Tory Foster, Galen Tyrol, Sam Anders, and Saul Tigh are "triggered", and realise they're Cylons.]]
** Boomer literally has a bad experience with her locker mirror, on which someone (herself?) has written the word CYLON in big yellow letters.
** [[spoiler:Ellen]] is lucky, because she gets to almost instantly remember her past and be at peace with herself when she resurrects.
*** Only in the CrapsackWorld that is ''Galactica'' can you call [[spoiler:being fatally poisoned by your husband]] "lucky".
* In one episode of ''QuantumLeap'', Sam finds himself in the body of someone in a mansion where everyone thinks there's a vampire on the loose. After clearing up the situation, he finally gets around to looking in a mirror... and doesn't reflect. Literal Tomato "in the Mirror."
** This was hinted in the end of the previous episode, where we see the character Sam switched with actually had vampire fangs (played by Robert [=MacKenzie=], who bears a close resemblance to ChristopherLee).
* The climax of the recent ''DoctorWho'' episode "Utopia" revolves round the revelation that the kindly human Professor Yana is, unbeknownst to him, the Tomato in the Mirror, a 'sleeper' personality and biological disguise created by the Doctor's archenemy the Master, previously thought dead. His original personality and biology is contained, thanks to some AppliedPhlebotinum, in a pocket watch, and released when Yana is tempted into opening the watch.
** Before this we have the Doctor himself turned into a human Professor in 1913, through use of this pocket-watch-device. Of course the viewer knows who he really is, but the Doctor doesn't and once he finds out he's pretty shocked and doesn't want to go back.
** Not to mention [[spoiler:the little girl]] in "Silence in the Library."
** In The Next Doctor [[spoiler: The Doctor finds another person who claims to be the Doctor. This other Doctor is investigating the place of a guy who died. It turns out, the new "Doctor" is the guy that supposedly died just had info about the Doctor overwritten over his mind.]]
** Probably a weak example, but Turn Left's time-beatle on Donna's back may count, considering that, while the audience knew about it, Donna didn't, and anyone who stared at her back, knowing something was there, was instantly met with Donna telling them off for acting so strange, only for her to find out there ''was'' something (horrifying, too) there.
* ''StarTrekVoyager'' did this with "Course: Oblivion", where the entire crew realized that they're imperfect duplicates. (About halfway through the episode, which is rare for this trope. Usually it's a twist ending, not a twist middle.) Several episodes earlier, a semi-sentient planet-spanning not-quite-lifeform on a hostile planet they visited to refill on {{Phlebotinum}} had replicated Voyager in its entirety, right down to the last bulkhead and RedShirt. The "real" Voyager crew never knew about their clones; they started disintegrating, found out that it was due to their distance from their origin, and failed to get back before disintegrating completely, [[ShootTheShaggyDog dissipating just before they could contact Voyager]].
** And if you want even more detail, the {{phlebotinum}} in question is just deuterium, something you can find in heavy water. Yes, it's living, shapeshifting deuterium.
* In ''PowerRangersOperationOverdrive,'' a villain gives the HumongousMecha a virus, and it's spread to the base... and then to the Red Ranger, Mack, (aka [[FanNickname iMack]]) who turns out to be an android.
** Another example, this time in ''PowerRangersTurbo'': Justin notes that the other Rangers are acting odd, and finds out that they are really robots. At the end of the episode, it's revealed that Justin himself was a robot, who was programmed so that he didn't know he was a robot, and that the real Ranger team built them to help Zordon on Eltar. Lot of good that did...
* The ''{{Torchwood}}'' episode "Sleeper" has a seemingly human woman with a seemingly happy life (complete with job and husband) find out that she's actually an alien who will be "triggered" to wage a campaign of terror on Earth.
* In an episode of ''{{Sliders}}'', the world is populated by almost entirely by androids, and one human [[MadScientist scientist]] who attempts to create an android with the transplanted memories of Quinn. It turns out that [[spoiler: the scientist actually died, and his memories have been transplanted into an android version of himself, without him actually knowing that.]]
* Same thing happened in the Original StarTrek episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" with Nurse Chapel's lost boyfriend.
** And with Rayna in "Requiem For Methusalah"
* The core premise of ''{{Invasion}}''. Set in a small Florida coastal town, several characters return from unremembered experiences in the water feeling not quite themselves. At first they appear to have been altered by mysterious glowing creatures, who may or may not be aliens, in the water. But it's soon revealed that they are in fact altered copies, and their originals were killed in the duplication process. Since they have the same memories, emotions, and personality as their originals, it raises the issue of whether and why they should be considered a different person at all. Each of them, and their 'unaltered' friends and family, answers the question a little differently.
* ''{{Angel}}'': in "Spin the Bottle", everyone's memory is wiped back to age 17. Wesley, who at that age was head of his class at vampire-hunting school, reckons it's a test: they've been locked in this abandoned building with a vampire, whom they must identify and kill. Angel (who at that age was a living human), in a private moment, looks at a mirror ...
* ''{{Supernatural}}'': In "Road Kill", the MonsterOfTheWeek doesn't know she actually is dead (and thus, a spirit hunting a stretch of highway) until the end of the episode.
**'Haunting', not hunting. Sam and Dean only mention one other person, besides the spirit in question, who died as a ''direct'' result of her actions. [[spoiler: And that's only because they both died in a car crash she caused - the other guy was a pedestrian who was ''very'' much aware that they were both dead, and that she was responsible for it. The victim they mention the old man-spirit torturing every year, on the anniversary of the crash? ''Is always her''.]] The boys only get involved because of reports of a terrified woman being chased across the road every year, causing [[spoiler: 15 other crashes, most of them also fatal.]]
* ''{{Red Dwarf}}'': This trope is played with in the episode ''Out of Time'', when Lister is apparently revealed to be a Ridiculously Human Robot. He is floored by the revelation, but gets no sympathy from Kryten, who points out that his emotions are only artificial. However, the moment the crew escapes the unreality pocket through which they were traveling at the time, he becomes human again. (In fact, as the other reality was false, he had never been anything but human.)
* In the episode "Omega" of ''{{Dollhouse}}'' we find out [[spoiler: that Dr. Saunders is actually a former Doll, Whiskey.]]
* The ''FearItself'' episode "New Year's Day". A young woman wakes up during a ZombieApocalypse and tries to get to her friend's apartment. At episode's end, [[spoiler: it's revealed she committed suicide the previous night and is now one of the zombies.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Machinima]]
* ''RedVsBlue Reconstruction'': Episode 16 revealed that [[spoiler:Church is the Alpha [=AI=].]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* "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 [[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory about something else entirely over some people's heads]].
* At the very end of the {{Genesis}} concept album ''The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway'', the protagonist Rael discovers that he and [[spoiler: his brother John whom he's spent the entire album chasing]] are actually the same person.
--> Hang on, [[spoiler: John]]! We're out of this at last
--> Something's changed, it's not your face
--> It's ''[[TomatoInTheMirror mine]]''!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Radio]]
* The Firesign Theatre, in their audio production ''I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus'', uses this device ingeniously. One must listen carefully (or have seen a spoiler) to realize that the character "Clem" who finishes the story is not the one who started it, but rather a holographic clone created by the original Clem and then dismissed into cyberspace.
* In the Big Finish DoctorWho audio titled ''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]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:TabletopGames]]
* This is a huge element of the [[ArtificialHuman fetches]] in ''[[TheWorldOfDarkness Changeling: the Lost]]''. They believe themselves to be ordinary humans, but they have the ability to see things others can't -- that is, the people on the street who look like monsters. At some point, the fetch usually finds out that it's not a real person; it's a copy made by one of TheFairFolk to serve as a replacement for the human they took to Faerie to serve as their plaything. Those "monsters" they're seeing? They're the people who managed to escape from Faerie in the first place. And a lot of them aren't big fans of something fake living their life...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:VideoGames]]
* {{Killer 7}}: [[spoiler:Thought the Killer 7 were ''Harman's'' split personalities? Nope. They're Garcian's.]]
* The last level of ''Braid'' has Tim running a deadly gauntlet, with the Princess following above, disabling traps and opening doors. He reaches the end and [[spoiler:rewinds time, revealing the truth: she was ''setting'' traps and ''closing'' doors, trying to keep him away.]]
* In {{Klonoa}} 1, [[spoiler:Klonoa himself turns out to be from an alternate reality at the end.]]
* In the true route in {{Ever 17}}, the amnesiac Kid looks himself in a mirror and realizes that [[spoiler:he is not the same Kid seen in Takeshi's perspective.]] In fact, [[spoiler:he isn't even the Kid he sees in the mirror. He is the reader.]]
* In the original Japanese version of ''Street Fighter 2010'' (not the American localization that claims the protagonist is Ken Masters), Kevin Straker is [[spoiler: one of the very "Parasites" he was sent to destroy. It was all part of Dr. Jose's master plan to use him to conquer the universe...which promptly fails when Kevin kills him.]]
* Subverted in ''MegaManZero 3.'' Zero doesn't care that he's the clone. Zero doesn't care about how the AxCrazy OmnicidalManiac FinalBoss is the original Zero driven insane. All he sees is an enemy who needs to be taken down.
**Clone Zero is the '''real''' Zero, his "heart and soul" transferred to the clone body. Omega, original body or not, is one entirely different person.
-->'''Mega Man X''': The heart is what counts. Not the body...
** This is echoed in MegaManZX Advent. Grey has spent enough time fighting for his life against Maverick Mechaniloids, Pseudoroids, five other Mega Men, and both Prometheus and Pandora that when he finally learned that [[spoiler:he is actually Master Albert's backup body and Model A a recording of his data and powers]], he stopped giving a damn about who he originally was. That one of the Mega Men in question was Aile certainly helped him stop caring about his predetermined identity.
* In ''FinalFantasyX'', Tidus discovers that [[spoiler:he and his civilization don't really exist. They did exist at one point, but they were obliterated in a war with Bevelle. Now they're just all part of a dream being generated by the survivors of that civilization, which are now a gestalt of magical naked people trapped in a mountainside. No. Really.]]
* In ''KingdomHearts II'', Roxas starts seeing mysterious people that no one else seems to notice. He eventually discovers that the Twilight Town he's been living in [[LotusEaterMachine is a fabrication]], and that he himself is a "Nobody" of the main character, Sora.
* In ''FinalFantasyVII'', Cloud, the protagonist, suffers from freaky headaches and weird disjointed flashbacks. It then transpires that he is a [[CloningBlues clone]] of the villain, Sephiroth, and has been acting under Sephiroth's MindControl for the game so far. Even more confusingly, when he recovers from his HeroicBSOD, he realizes he was never a clone to begin with (what he really is is quite complicated, but it involves the way the SuperSoldiers are created, and how TheVirus contains the [[GeneticMemory genetic memories]] of those infected). When he regains his [[FakeMemories true memories]], he finally [[CharacterDevelopment develops]] into a fully fledged person.
* In ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic,'' the protagonist [[spoiler:is revealed to be the "late" Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Revan.]]
* A little over halfway through ''{{Bioshock}}'', the protagonist learns [[spoiler:he's a genetically altered assassin, created from [[LukeIAmYourFather Andrew Ryan's DNA]], and smuggled out of Rapture as a pawn in mobster Fontaine's [[XanatosGambit complicated scheme]] to kill Ryan and take over the city.]]
* The short interactive fiction [[http://zmpp.sourceforge.net/games/index.html 9:05]] revolves around this concept.
* ''CityOfVillains'' has a story arc where the player character uncovers clues that they are in fact robotic duplicates made by [[TheChessmaster Nemesis]]. Subverted by the final mission, which explicitly states that the player character is the original, but the ''contact'' who sent them on the missions is the robotic duplicate (with the real one alive but captive).
* ''LegacyOfKain'' character Raziel's story is basically a long string of this. Over the course of the three games he appears in, [[spoiler: he starts off as a re-resurrected vampire, only to find out that the vampires are a world-destroying evil that he must personally weed out.]] Then, it is revealed to him that [[spoiler:he used to be a high-ranking Sarafan vampire hunter before he was a vampire.]] In part II, [[TimeTravel time travel]] hijinks lead to the discovery that [[spoiler:the original vampires weren't so bad at all.]] Then he finds the last survivor of the original, ancient vampire race, the only one who can give him the answers he seeks, [[spoiler:brutally and mercilessly slaughtered... by Raziel's own, past Sarafan self. [[StableTimeLoop Whom Raziel later KILLS along with his fellow Sarafan, indirectly preparing his own vampiric resurrection as well as his brethren's]].]] As if this wasn't enough, just moments later, he comes to the startling realization that [[spoiler:the symbiotic, semi-sentient, insane wraith blade that he's been carrying for two games is [[StableTimeLoop the future version of his own soul]].]] Finally, he learns that [[spoiler:he is the [[TheChosenOne foretold messiah of the vampire race]]. No, wait -- he's the messiah of the Hylden, whom he thought he's supposed to kill. No, wait, ''he's both at once''. Turns out that [[PropheticFallacy the prophecies weren't all that clear on this]].]]
** Even before that, there was Kain's dilemma: Originally lead to believe that by killing the mythic Circle of Nine he could be released from his vampyric unlife, he eventually learns that [[spoiler:he is, in fact, one of its members, the reincarnated guardian of the Pillar of Balance, and his liberation from vampirism may only come in death.]]
* Subverted in ''DeusEx'', in which protagonist JC Denton is informed that [[spoiler: both he and his "brother" are actually artificial life forms. Rather than reacting with shock, angst, or an unconvincing identity crisis, JC calmly takes the revelation into stride, and even remarks that he had considered the possibility in the past. His ''artificially constructed memories of the past'', that is.]]
** One of the few discrepancies in ''Deus Ex'' is JC's history. In one version [[spoiler: he was cloned and artificially aged, being about six months to a year old during the game.]] In the other, [[spoiler: he was genetically engineered but was raised in Switzerland.]] Both of these versions are supported by information from characters who knew The Truth in the form of email archives, statements, and physical evidence within The Conspiracy. [[spoiler: In the final area, JC first guns down the man who killed his father, then sees his cloning tank, and the one that is growing his younger sibling, Alex D.]]
* In Team Dark's ending in ''SonicHeroes'', Rouge discovers [[spoiler: hundreds upon ''hundreds'' of copies of Shadow in tubes identical to the one he was in at the start of the game. It matters little, though -- once he's over the shock, he decides that original or not, he's still ''the'' Shadow the Hedgehog]]. This is followed up on in one of the multiple endings of ''ShadowTheHedgehog'', with Eggman admitting that [[spoiler: Shadow is one of the copies. He gets over it instantly, kills Eggman and takes over the world.]]
** In the canon ending of ''ShadowTheHedgehog'', [[spoiler: Eggman tells Shadow he is the original, and he found him after he fell to earth and put him into a capsule to let him heal.]]
* ''TheWorldEndsWithYou'' pulls this twice: first you find out [[spoiler:everyone playing the Reapers' Game is dead and trying for a new chance at life]], and then it turns out that [[spoiler:Shiki traded her appearance to play the game, and always appeared as her friend Eri.]]
** '' Don't forget Joshua. He [[spoiler:killed you. [[StabTheScorpion No he didn't, Sho did]]. No wait, [[SubvertedTrope yes, he killed you]] so that you could be his proxy for the game. And he's God.]]
* In ''MaxPayne 2: The Fall of Max Payne'', [[spoiler:the [[ShowWithinAShow show within a game]] ''Address Unknown'' ends like this: The protagonist, John Mirra, who spent the entire show looking for the murderers of his family, realizes that he himself was the killer after he sees the killer's face staring back at him in a bathroom mirror. This, incidentally, may mean the whole purpose of the show was to set up a truly terrible pun: the main character is named John Mirra, and he solves the mystery in the bathroom (as in, the john) by looking into the mirror....]]
* In ''{{Xenogears}}'' when Fei finds out that [[spoiler:his father is really the new body of Grafh, and also Wiseman is his father as well]]
** Not only that, but he also discovers that [[spoiler: he is the {{omnicidalmaniac}} ID, while his current amnesiac personality was artificially made after he committed a genocide.]] Then he discovers [[spoiler: or should we say [[GeneticMemory remember]] that he became crazy because his mother was [[TheManBehindTheMan Miang]] and made a lot of gruesome and painful experiments on him]] Then, we learn that [[spoiler: Grafh and Fei are actually the same person, in two different bodies, and that 500 years ago, he was the lover of the game's world equivalant of the pope who made a {{HeroicSacrifice}} for him, causing Lacan (Fei's name at the time) to become the immortal Grahf while his original personality kept reincarnating]]. If this was not enough, Fei later learns that [[spoiler: he is the ancestor of every inhabitant of the world, which he was not supposed to be, that free will exists thanks to him, and that he '''created''' his soul mate 10.000 years ago as a child because he felt a need of protection while he was linked to [[KingOfAllCosmos The Wave Existence]], which gave him the power to [[RealityWarper wish his feelings into reality]], and that all of it makes him basically the {{TheAntichrist}}, except that here, the Antichrist is the [[DarkMessiah ''good'' guy]] ]]. Fei is not a case of tomato in the mirror, he is [[spoiler: The tomato, the mirror, the frame of the mirror, the room in which the tomato and the mirror are, and the architect of all of this actually wants to be killed by him]]
* In ''[[WildArms1 Wild ARMs 1]]'', the character Rudy has his arm severed and when his friends try to heal him they discover that he is not human, but an [[ArtificalHuman artificial life form]] created as a weapon, and his body is biologically similar to the demons they are fighting.
** Something similar happens to Jet of ''{{Wild ARMs 3}}'' when he finds out he is not actually Dr. Enduro's son, but actually an ArificialHuman created to interface with the Yggdrasil System.
* In ''{{Castlevania}}: Aria of Sorrow'' Dracula is KilledOffForReal before the start of the game. Its main villain claims to be Dracula's reincarnation. He's not, [[spoiler: the mysterious power possessed by the main character, Soma Cruz is Dracula's power, and Soma is Dracula reincarnated. Cue EnemyWithin.]]
* ''MetalGearSolid'': YouShouldKnowThisAlready, but Solid Snake goes into Shadow Moses Island to rescue two hostages, and stop terrorist leader Liquid Snake from launching a nuclear strike. The hostages he's meant to rescue keep having heart attacks, and Meryl claims he looks just like Liquid. Snake then discovers that [[spoiler: both he and Liquid are clones of Big Boss, and that he's been used as a vector for the FOXDIE assassination virus.]]
** If anything, Raiden in ''Sons of Liberty'' is an even bigger tomato than Snake. A former ChildSoldier who ends up suppressing his traumatic memories, he goes through all kinds of virtual reality training reenactments of Snake's best missions, and his mission in the Big Shell was modelled right off of the Shadow Moses mission. His relationship to the game's BigBad, Solidus Snake, closely resembles the one between Solid Snake and Big Boss, and the entire mission was meant to be an experiment to transform Raiden into the spitting image of Solid Snake himself as well as a social experiment in giving The Patriots control over all digital information. To say that Raiden was a XanatosSucker by this point would be a grand understatement.
* As if Konami can't stop recycling the plot enough, a similar theme appears in ''Neo {{Contra}}'' when [[spoiler:protagonist Bill Rizer meet with the "real" Bill Rizer, A.K.A. Master Contra. The BigBad reveals that both of you were part of a program called "Project C" in an effort to stop global warfare, and thus was cloned from the concious of a legendary soldier.]]
* S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl: [[spoiler: You were Strelok all along]]
* ''Ys Book I and II'': Feena first appears in Book I as a ordinary-looking girl locked up in the Shrine dungeon, and seems to have lost her memory. In Book II, right before the final boss, she is revealed to be one of the twin goddesses of Ys. During the ending cutscene, she tells Adol to "remember the girl in me".
* ''{{Snatcher}}'' pulls this off rather beautifully. So, Gillian Seed is a [[BladeRunner Deckard]] {{Expy}} working for an organization hunting down [[strike:replicants]] Snatchers, robots that look like humans. Also, you and your wife have amnesia and can't remember anything about your past. Well, it's quite obvious that [[spoiler: You and your wife are amnesiac Snatchers]] Except... [[spoiler: Actually, neither of you are. You invented the Snatchers 50 years ago and were cryogenically stored.]] HideoKojima is so good a writer even the GenreSavvy are left in surprise. There are about 5 other {{Tomato Surprise}}s that are subverted to hell and back in the very same game too.
* In ''{{Folklore}}'', your two protagonists are an amnesiac MysteriousWaif named Ellen and an IntrepidReporter named Keats. Ellen naturally gets freaked out at first by the supernatural discoveries she makes, while Keats strangely takes it all in stride, presumably because he just wants to know the truth. Their being drawn to the same location and chain of events appears to be related only by the person who called them. [[spoiler: In reality, Keats is a Halflife, ghost-like beings that the player has interacted with the entire game. He looks human because Ellen and Livane created him from a drawing Ellen (then known as Cecilia) drew of her terminally ill friend Herve by guessing how he would have looked as an adult. He's a reporter only because Herve wanted to be one, and the magazine he writes for (which Herve was a fan of) went out of business in the late 80s and the "office" the player saw Keats in at the beginning of the game is in fact another realm in the Netherworld. And of course, he's part of the story because the whole chain of events 17 years ago is what created him.]]
* ''TalesOfSymphonia: Dawn of the New World'' features Emil, a cowardly teen who is given the ability to channel incredible power from the dormant spirit Ratatosk in order to protect Marta, who seeks to awaken the spirit himself from the core she carries and restore his power. Over the course of the game, Emil's recollection of certain major events is spotty, and many people in his hometown of Palmacosta, from which he left six months prior, know his name but don't recognize his face, much to his annoyance. Eventually it comes to light that [[spoiler: Emil has not been channeling Ratatosk's power; he himself is Ratatosk, and the moments when he gains power to fight are him using his true abilities. Contrary to everyone's belief, Ratatosk had been awake for months, but was incredibly weak. In order to hide his true identity as he recovered, he created a fake persona using the appearance of a boy he'd killed named Aster. The fake was designed to quickly fill in the gaps of its memory; during the mass murder in Palmacosta six months prior, a women named Lana, blinded by her injuries, mistook Ratatosk for her son, Emil, and so the false persona came to believe it was Emil. No one in Palmacosta recognizes him because while there was once an Emil Castagnier there, this one looks completely different. The real Emil is implied to be dead, murdered at the same time as his parents. Furthermore, the core Marta has is a fake, designed to make her a target for those who seek to kill Ratatosk before he regains his full power.]]
* In ''{{Persona 2}}: Eternal Punishment'', [[spoiler: The Sumaru City in which Maya and company live in is one big mirror, the denizens of the city (except Tatsuya) are pretty much tomatoes. In the "real world" (what Joker calls "the Other Side"), Maya was killed with the Lance of Longinus in Innocent Sin. Stricken with grief over her death, Tatsuya and his friends demanded Philemon to do something about it. Philemon agrees to bring her back, but in the alternate world where EP takes place, but with a price--everyone must forget Maya and the friendship they shared. Everyone gives up their memory, but during the process Tatsuya out and out refused to forget Maya and through sheer force of will he ends up in EP's Sumaru with all his memories intact, causing a paradox. The Maya in this world runs across him and feels a strange deja vu vibe from him, as well as pain in her side, where she had been stabbed in Innocent Sin.]]
*In ''Persona4,'' [[spoiler:Teddy realizes he was a Shadow all along.]]
*The extent to which this trope applies in DigitalDevilSaga is certainly arguable, but it probably applies when Serph [[spoiler:realizes that he was created as a virtual AI doll version of someone who was experimenting on one of his comrades when she was ''two years old''. Oh, and his spirit's still around and affecting him.]]
* Ihe Cybran Campaign of ''SupremeCommander''. Dr. Brackman, creator of the Symbionts, calls all Symbionts "his children" and refers to the player as "my boy". The debriefing at the end of the campaign reveals that [[spoiler: He's being literal about the son thing - you are his clone.]]
* ''TalesOfTheAbyss'' gives us Luke fon Fabre, a [[JerkAss spoiled rich kid]] who's been shut-in at his mansion for seven years until the start of the story due to a kidnapping incident which [[TraumaInducedAmnesia shocked him into losing his memory]]. He soon goes on to find out that he's supposed to be the [[TheChosenOne the world's savior]], and continues to give everyone grief about how special he is. [[spoiler: Cue the traditional Tales series megatwist, where he discovers that he's suddenly become a mass murderer, his beloved sword instructor set him up, all his friends are tired of his crap and to top it all off, he's the clone of the REAL Luke fon Fabre, who's been spending the last seven years trying to stop Van by [[ReverseMole working on the inside]].]]
* ''[=~Star Ocean: Till the End of Time~=]'': [[spoiler: The entire universe that Fayt and everyone else inhabits is an MMORPG created for the amusement of 4D beings, called the ''Eternal Sphere''. And the creator of the game has decreed that all "bad" data must be deleted as he felt that the Eternal Sphere's inhabitants have grown to be too sentient, with technology that almost matches that of the "real" 4D dimension]].
* Tomato-In-The-Mirror reveals have pretty much become a staple of SilentHill games since SilentHill2, in which James realizes that he [[spoiler: mercy-killed his wife]].
*''FatalFrame 2'' has an example of this. The player is led to believe that Mayu [[spoiler: is being driven by the town's local AxCrazy ghost to kill twin sister, playable character Mio in order to complete an gruesome ritual that (among other things) requires an elder twin to kill his/her younger sibling. The game goes out of its way to show Mayu as a possessed, malevolent force.]] In the penultimate chapter of the game,[[spoiler: it is revealed that the town has an odd legend about twin birth order -- instead of older/younger they have inferior/superior, respectively, and the superior twin always allows the inferior to be born first. Now Mio, and the player by proxy, is the probable murderer.]]
** Probable my foot, [[spoiler: As FatalFrame 3 proved, the ending that Mio kills Mayu in is the CANON ending]].
* In SuperRobotWars: EndlessFrontier it's revealed that [[spoiler:Haken Browning]] is W00 a genetically engineered human made by a project which tried to create the perfect soldier. It causes some worries, but it's fairly short-term. He's in a group consisting of a smart-mouthed android with a split personality, a second android with cat-ears and like-wise split personality, a 2000+ year old {{pettanko}} oni princess, another princess who's as top-heavy as her sword and a chinese fox-spirit who cracks more sexually slanted jokes than you can shake a sword-cane at. And the other guy was in a group even crazier than this one.
* ''BatenKaitos Origins'' plays this in a really [[WhamEpisode interesting and powerful manner]]: [[spoiler: ''you're'' the tomato. Yes, you, the player...well, in a sense.]] That strange world that Sagi keeps getting sent to, where a bunch of people keep calling him Marno? [[spoiler:That's you. You're actually playing the role of Marno's spirit, not a nameless Guardian Spirit...oh, and by the way, Marno is one-fifth of the EldritchAbomination Malpercio. Yup, you're part of the dark god that helped ravage the world a millennium ago and is the final boss of the first, chronologically-second, ''BatenKaitos''. Don't you feel special?]]
* In ''{{Prototype}}'', Alex Mercer had extremely mixed feelings when [[spoiler: he discovered that he was the Blacklight Virus, while Alex Mercer was the person who released it on New York and was consumed. Especially since the real Mercer was worse than the virus itself.]]
* ''SecondSight''. [[spoiler:It turns out that the main character isn't a lab escapee having flashbacks to a time just before it all went wrong, he's in that time and having precognitive visions on the verge of a BadFuture. One of the very few surprise twists where the character turns out to be himself.]]
* In ''{{Disgaea 2}}'', it is eventually revealed that [[spoiler: Adell is actually a demon himself, even though he'll keep saying he's human.]]
**Actually, [[spoiler:Adell himself isn't told this in the main story, but it's pretty obvious to the player.]]
* ''{{Phantom Dust}}'' has the amnesic main character searching for clues of his and everyone else's lost memories in the post-apocalyptic, ghoul-filled world. It is revealed to him by his friend, Edgar, that [[spoiler: the protagonist, along with everyone else in the world save Edgar, are fabrications created by Edgar from the dust to help him overcome his loneliness when he returned from space to find Earth a complete, lifeless wasteland.]] When the protagonist beats the final boss it is further revealed that [[spoiler: the Edgar you've known throughout the game is himself a fabrication, having been created by the original Edgar to watch over things after his death.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:WesternAnimation]]
* ''BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', "His Silicon Soul": A robot duplicate of Batman goes through this trope before his programming activates; the plan of the AI that created it is only foiled because the duplicate was a [[ThouShaltNotKill pacifist]] TinMan.
** Its successor, ''TheBatman'', has Batman and Robin trying to distribute the cure for a madman's ZombieApocalypse drug. Turns out they were the ones under the effects of a drug that gives you wild hallucinations about everyone else being a zombie, and that same hallucinogen was what they were about to spread through the entire city.
*Still in the {{DCAU}}: ''SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'': Bizarro is full of FakeMemories that have him convinced he's Superman. He even convincingly looked and acted like the real Superman, at least initially...
*''Ben10AlienForce'' has a duo (ex-trio) of alien hunters that think they were mutated by [[ScaryDogmaticAliens DNAliens]], and hate all aliens. At the end of the episode, they are told that the reason they look like aliens is because They. Are. Part alien. NO. Really?
**Also [[spoiler: Tyler in the episode "Inside Man", turning out to be a [[ScaryDogmaticAliens DNAliens]] who still is fighting it and trying to be human.]]
*** In all fairness to them, they were likely just annoyed at their powers not having an off switch.
* At the cliffhanger end of the Season Two finale of ''TransformersAnimated'', [[spoiler: Sari looks down at her injured elbow to see circuitry poking out, and her adoptive dad, robotics genius Isaac Sumdac, responds "We need to talk."]] In the next season, it's revealed that [[spoiler: Sari was a Cybertronian Protoform Isaac somehow came across, and sampled his DNA to create her form.]]
** Except Isaac isn't her [[spoiler: adoptive dad]]. He's the genuine article, even when you consider the revelation of Sari's "birth". After all, [[spoiler: his DNA was required in order to bring her "online" and was what made her part-Human, effectively making her his biological daughter at the same time as being a robotic alien]].
* Parodied in ''FamilyGuy'' when Mayor West, upon being struck in the face with a brick, touches the wound, then stares at the blood on his hand, dramatically realizing, "Oh my God! I'm a tomato!"
** HilariousInHindsight: despite being a typical [[YouFailLogicForever unlikely leap in logic]] from [[CloudCuckooLander Mayor West]], it has everything to do with the trope, and pretty much nothing to do with the TropeNamer.
* Used in an episode of ''Series/{{Legion of Superheroes}}''. Superman relizes that he is actually the shape-shifting Ron-Karr, tricked into believing that he is Superman in order to be put to use as a spy.
* Used twice in ''{{Futurama}}'';
** One of the "Scary Door" gags has a mad scientist who has combined the evilest of Earth's animals' DNA and poured it into a machine, to create a pure evil creature. a door on the machine opens, and a nude man, complete with CensorSmoke, walks out and says; "[[{{Anvilicious}} It turns out it's man]]."
** In the episode "The Honking", Bender is run over by a "were-car" while staying at a mansion he inherited from his uncle. When people back in New New York are getting run over, Bender believes the were-car followed him, until it turns out Bender became a were-car himself.
** Subverted in ''IntoTheWildGreenYonder''. Fry looks around to find the person whose thoughts he can't read (the dark one). After not finding anyone, he concludes that he is himself the dark one. [[spoiler: However, the dark one is actually a small alien leech that Leela keeps nearby.]]
* On TheSecretSaturdays, the Saturday family and their nemesis, V.V. Argost, go through the entire first two seasons, to retrieve clues that would help locate Kur, only to find the surprising truth. [[spoiler: The Antarctic Cryptid that they fought wasn't Kur, but that cryptid-controlling Zak is (and has always been) Kur...]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:WebComics]]
* A mundane version of this occurs in {{DMFA}}, when [[http://www.missmab.com/Comics/Vol_651.php Dan realizes why he doesn't trust Abel]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:WebOriginal]]
* A Creepypasta story titled "Mice" featured a narrator who had trained "mice" into becoming intelligent and making their own communitees. He regularly kills some of the weaker ones to discourage any rebellion against him. In the end, it's revealed that [[spoiler: the narrator is actually a robot and the mice are really people]].
[[/folder]]

----
<<|TwistEnding|>>
<<|OlderThanTelevision|>>
<<|ExampleAsAThesis|>>