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"Amazing! An exact duplicate of your brother. Only with pigtails."
Dr. Fidgel, 3-2-1 Penguins!

A set of twins who look and act for all the world like they're identical, except for the miiiinor detail that one's male and the other's female.

It's common — especially in drawn or animated media, where the creator has complete control over the appearance of the characters — to use brother–sister twins as being each other's Distaff Counterpart and Spear Counterpart. They often display identical twin tropes, such as Twin Telepathy or Synchronizationespecially if they are Creepy Twins. It's a way to make sure that twins, even if they're not identical, are immediately identifiable as such if it's relevant to their characters, and there are no other visual cues to show that siblings are fraternal twins instead of just regular brothers and sisters. If the two siblings drift apart at any point during the story, a Twin Desynch is likely, and often occurs at puberty when the secondary sexual characteristics start becoming more apparent. In fact, if they don't desynch to some degree during puberty, they're likely to come across as a little too close.

Also note that due to the androgynous features of this trope, such twins will traditionally be depicted as Ambiguous Gender, playing Dude Looks Like a Lady, Bishōnen and Wholesome Crossdresser for the brother, and Genki Girl, Tomboy-type Tsundere for the sister. For this reason, this trope is also very common in stories with Otokonoko Genre or Sweet on Polly Oliver, where it serves as a standard explanation for the protagonist's femininity or the reason for his forced dressing up. On a less fetishistic note, one twin being trans can be used as a plausible explanation with genetically identical twins, which is why this trope can lend itself to a Trans Audience Interpretation.

In Real Life, this would fall under Strong Family Resemblance, as any set of fraternal twins, opposite sex or otherwise, are no more or less likely to resemble each other than normal brothers and sisters, other than being the same age. Of course, being the same age will help two siblings who look alike resemble each other even more.

Compare to the rare real-life phenomenon of semi-identical twins, where the twins have identical genes from their mother and different genes from their father, and thus can be the same sex or opposite sexes. This could lead to an Uncanny Family Resemblance if the sperm are similar enough.

This trope is perhaps the most glaring example of Always Identical Twins.

Compare Opposite-Sex Clone.

Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Tatara and Sarasa in Basara: when Sarasa decides to impersonate her twin brother, she just cuts her hair and almost everybody believes she is Tatara — even Tatara's fiancée. However, it may be because people deeply want to believe it.
  • In Bizenghast, Edaniel and his sister Elala look very similar, as to a small degree Edrear and Eniri, despite their different skin tones (they were made from bits and pieces of leftover souls so they don't entirely resemble each other).
  • Possibly Hansel and Gretel from Black Lagoon. They appear to be brother and sister, and are nicknamed "Vampire Twins", but it's never revealed whether they are different sexes or not. Confusing things further, they have switched roles on-screen at least once, by having "Gretel" remove "her" long-haired wig (revealing a haircut identical to "Hansel"'s, down to the color and style) and hand it to "him" to put on. As their highly stylized school uniforms are effectively unisex, the switch is flawless. It gets weirder in the end when (Hansel?) Gretel talks with both Hansel and Gretel's personality by (him?)herself. It's highly possible that they are same-gender full-identical twins who are just acting out separate gender roles. Though it's strongly implied that they are either transgender or were mutilated and forced into it, judging by the look on Rock's face when Gretel shows him. Squick either way.
    • This is lampshaded in a manga omake where it's stated the Animated Actors who "played" the twins are actually the same gender (female).
    • In the omake where everyone's genders are switched, they look exactly the same.
  • Lampshaded in Boku ni Natta Watashi: "Is it even possible for fraternal twins to be completely identical?"
  • It's implied in Bokura no Hentai that Ryousuke and Yui are this. They're never outright described as twins, but they were apparently the same age. The only difference between them was clothes and hair length. Marika even mistakes a photograph of a young and tomboyish Yui for Ryousuke. This trope makes it all the easier for Ryousuke to dress up as Yui after she dies.
  • Yukino and Kanade from Candy☆Boy. They're fraternal twin sisters but look similar besides their hair.
  • In Castle Town Dandelion, there's Misaki and Haruka, which look similar enough despite obviously fraternal twins such that Haruka often wears Purely Aesthetic Glasses as Identical Twin ID Tag. Averted by Shuu and Kanade; viewers often forget they actually are twins.
  • Inverted: In Case Closed there's a pair of twins who look rather different, but have almost identical genes, to the point where the female twin's suicide is blamed on her brother/fiancé (she'd only just found out that they were related, and he didn't find out until after she was dead) because of skin that is stuck under a false nail, and he has to be bailed out by Conan-as-Kogoro. It's explained as the girl having been born with Turner Syndrome, where she was born with only one X chromosome. Presumably, this explains why they look so different. But then it also implies the two could have been identical twins if not for something going wrong with the meiosis.
  • Aya and Aki Mikage from Ceres, Celestial Legend, who are not only Half Identical Twins, they are also Reincarnations of ancestors of theirs, a husband and wife, adding a touch of Twincest.
  • Suou and Shion from the second season of Darker than Black. Explained by the fact that Suou is actually a copy that Shion made of himself, but because the copies he makes with his power always have one major difference from the original, Suou turned out female. Except it's not justified because even though the current Suou is a copy of Shion the original is still shown to be a half identical twin in the flashbacks she appears in. The fact that the current Suou looks like her younger self despite being a copy of her brother is evident of this. Mind Screw in any case.
  • Terriermon and Lopmon in the Digimon franchise. In Digimon Tamers, they aren't related (Lopmon's a Heel Face Turned Deva who's introduced right before things heat up), but they still manage to get an accidental Twin Switch in the second movie. The part about them being of opposite gender technically only applies in the English dub, as Lopmon is male in the Japanese version, though the entire biological part is technically moot to begin with as Digimon are canonically of No Biological Sex.
  • Kyu and Myu from Doraemon: Nobita's New Dinosaur, a pair of dinosaur twins hatched of the same egg. They lookexactly identical to each other save for their feather colours, and that Myu have slightly longer feathers behind her ears.
  • Android #17 and #18 from Dragon Ball Z, who would look identical if not for their different clothes and hair color.
  • In Final Fantasy: Lost Stranger, Palom and Porom make an appearance as the Mahlwon court mages of the Mysidian royal family. They look identical aside from their hairstyle, and they both share an incredible gift for magic.
  • Kurt and Chloe Klik from Genesis of Aquarion. They can only be told apart because Chloe has long hair and wears a skirt, unlike her twin brother.
  • Stan and Sandy from Hamtaro are twin brother and sister. What sets them apart between the two is Sandy's ribbon tail, a pure white body and green eyes and Stan's normal tail, a yellow-beige body and grey-blue eyes.
  • Subverted in Hetalia: Axis Powers. Switzerland and Liechtenstein look almost exactly alike save for their height and eyes, but they're actually adopted siblings who met each other right after World War I, when they were the nation-tan equivalent of older teenagers. It's safe to assume they are at least distantly related since they both represent Germanic nations, but it's not specified what they are to each other in this sense.
  • Jewelpet Twinkle☆: Alma and Yuuma are so alike that Alma easily passes for a boy with the right clothing, and Akari keeps referring to her as "the boy who looks like Yuuma" before they properly meet.
  • Mariya (a Creepy Crossdresser) and Shizu (a Sweet Polly Oliver) in Maria†Holic resemble each other exactly except for gender. Which is probably part of why they can crossdress so easily.
  • Johan and Anna/Nina from Monster, who were dressed identically when children and were almost indistinguishable. It remains when they grow up, to the point that Johan disguises himself as a woman to hide, and when Nina arrives in the same town she's confused for her brother's female identity. However, Johan noticeably has light blonde hair while Nina has dirty blonde hair, so they are not 100% cut out.
  • Tsukasa and Subaru of Nameless Asterism are a strange, somewhat borderline case. They do look similar, and the first time we see Subaru he happens to be crossdressing in Tsukasa's school uniform. Her friends do point out that he looks just like her... eventually. Personality-wise, they're completely different, and Tsukasa deliberately downplays the fact that they're twins, claiming he's her "younger brother" (by a few minutes, presumably).
  • Toki and Sagi of Naruto were very similar in appearance, to the extent that Toki was able to impersonate Sagi after his assassination.
  • Kanba and Masako in Penguindrum. It eventually gets lampshaded when Sanetoshi points out how physically similar they are as a part of a "Break Them by Talking" lecture that he delivers to Kanba as he's getting ready to use a Survival Strategy to revive Masako, who has recently gone through an Heroic Sacrifice for Kanba.
  • Yuki and Jun Kanzato from Persona -trinity soul- would fit this trope to the letter if Yuki's soul wasn't in Jun's body after her death. Jun also manages to keep a transplanted piece of his sister's brain in his head without any need for anti-rejection medications.
  • Hiori and Lily from Phantom Thief Pokémon 7 look a lot alike, but they're opposite gender twins.
  • Kurando and Mafuyu from Popcorn Avatar are this, to the point when the latter comes to visit Kurando's classmates mistake her for him crossdressing.
  • Daisy and Violetta, children in Princess Knight and its sequel, Twin Knight. Not only do they have the same beauty spot on their left hands, but Violetta has to, like her nearly-homonym Viola from Twelfth Night, impersonate her brother. And it works.
  • Kozue and Miki in Revolutionary Girl Utena, though their hair colors are different shades of blue. The Movie uses a cameo that simplifies the twinness by making their hair the same shade of blue.
  • In the Italian dub of Sailor Moon Stars the gender bending Sailor Starlights were turned into this, making them separate characters to the Three Lights due to the complaints from Moral Guardians.
  • In Samurai High School, Tsukiko and Kou don't look similar at all, but nobody in school ever notices when they swap places, they probably count.
  • In Shugo Chara!, Nadeshiko's identical twin brother Nagihiko shows up when Amu visits her house. Immediately subverted in the exact same chapter, where it's revealed after she leaves that they're the exact same person.
  • Pot of Thunder and Pot of Fire from Soul Eater are an androgynous pair of very young children that look nearly alike. In the manga, a powerup temporarily changed them into adults, showing that Thunder is female, Fire is male, and they only look alike because they're so young.
  • Atelier Lana's Star Trekker is about the adventures of Captain Aya Nakajima, with her First Officer and identical twin Brother Commander Homare Nakajima. From the explanation given in the manga:
    These two each received half of their parents' genes and are identical twins thanks to biochemical composition.
  • Sumeragi Subaru and his sister Hokuto from the anime and manga Tokyo Babylon and X/1999. By the time Subaru is an adult he looks noticeably different from Hokuto with a longer face while she looks the same, since at this point she's appearing as a spirit and hasn't visibly aged, having died at 16 in the climax of Tokyo Babylon.
  • Vassalord has two sets of these: Rayflo and Rayfell are actual Half-Identical Twins, while Charley and Cheryl are unrelated (as far as we know) but look uncannily similar.
  • A chapter of Venus Versus Virus deals with a girl who asks Lucia and Sumire to help her brother deal with a Virus. Tsukuyo and her brother Youji look alike except for their hair lengths and attire. Tsukuyo has turned into a Virus and no one can see her anymore besides her brother, the girls, and Nahashi. Her brother instantly knew something was wrong with her and locked himself in his room. She is killed by Lucia at the end.
  • Sora and Haruka from Yosuga no Sora. That they both have unisex names doesn't help.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, the twins Lua and Luka look so similar that at one point Lua successfully disguises himself as his sister by wearing her clothes and changing his hairstyle. He otherwise makes very little effort to pass himself off as Luka. Justified a bit in that both children are home schooled and reclusive so no-one knew much about them. Then subverted when the opponent who beats Lua trying to get him to use "her" signer dragon points out to the Big Bad that "That's wasn't a little girl, that was a little boy."

    Comic Books 
  • 2000 AD: In Nikolai Dante, Alexandr and Alexandra Romanov are a somewhat squicky example, as they are twins, lovers, and specially enhanced killing machines that can create and throw nano-mines. Oh, and they can fuse themselves into one deadly grotesque, six-limbed form.
  • Alpha Flight: Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie Baubier — a.k.a. Northstar and Aurora — started off this way too. Both had the same silvery-black hair, identical powers (super-speed, flight, and creating blinding light when they touch), and wore similar outfits with the only difference being half of a star on their opposing hips, symbolizing their synergy. However, when Aurora falls out with Northstar after he slut-shamed her (in addition to being tired of his abrasive and self-serving personality in general), she changes her costume to be different from his, and even has her boyfriend Sasquatch, a geneticist, alter her powers. The end result is that she isn't quite as fast but can generate light on her own.
  • Archie Comics: Jason and Cheryl Blossom are twin siblings with the same deep red hair. It only makes their incestuous feelings more disconcerting in Afterlife with Archie.
  • The Beano: Sidney and Toots the twins in the Bash Street Kids comic strip.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: An interesting case was a story arc in the "Season Zero" comic (which took place between "The Origin" and "Welcome to the Hellmouth", published in 2003) where she goes to Las Vegas. The villains are a pair of conjoined twins: a male vampire and a female mortal. They didn't particularly look alike, but the fact remains that conjoined twins are identical by definition and always the same sex, so a pair that are opposite sexes is a case of Artistic License – Biology.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes: In "The Death of Lightning Lad", Lightning Lass easily poses as her dead brother for one mission, but was revealed because she didn't have an Adam's Apple. Much later, it was shown that her planet is almost all twins, but the twins were generally depicted as identical.
  • Marvel 100th Anniversary Special: Trin and Kirby Richards-Banner, the twin grandchildren of Reed and Sue.
  • Power Pack: They're not twins, but Alex and Julie Power look like they are. Especially when they reunite in Future Foundation, and the cartoony art style gives them very similar faces.
  • Rat Queens: Violet and Barrie are both red-haired light-skinned dwarves with beards, but the social conventions afforded to their genders lead them to very different outlooks on life.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): The series gave Nack the Weasel a Canon Foreigner twin sister named Nic, who looks exactly like a female version of him, facially identical save for a ponytail and eyelashes. Strangely, on her entrance in one issue, the woman Nack is flirting with mistakes her for his wife.
  • Spider-Man: In Sins Past, Sarah and Gabriel Stacy are mostly identical, except for their hair length and gender.
  • Star Wars (Marvel 1977): Vila and Denin aren't exactly the same. You can see from the second link that Denin is taller and a little broader across the shoulders. Still, after Denin died Vila was able to impersonate him.
  • Swordquest: Torr and Tarra look completely identical except for their genders.
    "A son and a daughter, as alike as two flowers from the same cutting!"
  • Winter Guard: The rare aversion to this trope are Vanguard/Red Guardian and Darkstar of the Soviet Super Soldiers, Winter Guard, and X-Corp. He's a redhead Husky Russkie and she's an icy blonde, nor do their powers resemble at all. He fires concussion blasts that he must focus through his hammer and sickle while she's a darkforce manipulator.
  • X-Men:
  • Zipi y Zape: The twins look exactly the same... except for their hair color.

    Comic Strips 
  • The Phantom: The Phantom's twin children Kit and Heloise.

    Fan Works 
  • The Beauvoi twins, Reynard and Hermione, from Be Careful are described as this, with Reynard being referred to by Lord Voldemort in one side-story as looking like a male version of Hermione, which is particularly notable given that their canon counterparts, Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy are not related and bear no resemblance to one another at all.
  • Hazeltail and Mousewhisker in the Better Bones AU, due to Hazeltail being transgender. Though they are actually two out of a set of triplets, the third who doesn't look like them at all.
  • In the Doctor Who fanfic Gemini, the last two surviving Time Lord test subjects of the military research facility are a genetically identical man "TL-13-Alpha" and woman "TL-13-Beta"
  • In the Sanders Sides fanfic "Kill the Lights" Roman and Remus are revealed to be this: they're identical twins, but Remus is a cis woman while Roman is a trans man.
  • In a few Knights of the Old Republic fanfics, there would be both the male and female versions of the Player Character, which was both a nod to the Skywalker twins and a way to further obscure the Tomato Surprise by use of Collective Identity. This spread into Mass Effect where there'd be a John and Jane Shepherd co-leading the Normandy crew. This was probably the reason why Mass Effect: Andromeda just shrugged and made a set of twins for the protagonists (though you only play as one of them).
  • The Official Fanfiction University of Redwall has an excuse for this; in one of the original printings of the book Redwall, the character Killconey swapped between male and female pronouns thanks to a typographical error. (According to later printings he's meant to be male, in case you're wondering.) In the OFUR, this has resulted in there now being two of him, one male and one female. The female one is generally referred to as Konnie to avoid confusion. She's technically more of an Opposite-Sex Clone, but they think of each other as twins.
  • Pack Street has Anneke and Wolter, who are at least depicted this way in the art, and common fan art has fun with the two of them being confused for each other. In the actual text, however, people seldom have trouble telling them apart, even the generally clueless Remmy.
  • In Prison Island Break, Shadow the Hedgehog can tell that E-123 Omega's Living Battery is his sister - or at least, an experiment based on his genes - even though she's also a feline instead of a hedgehog, because she has distinctive red streaks on her body and around her eyes, and chest fur.
  • Justified in RWBY: Scars with Weiss and Whitley. It's not clarified if they're fraternal or identical but they look a lot alike nevertheless. Not only do Schnee's have a Strong Family Resemblance on default, but Whitley is a trans boy.
  • In South Park fandom it's pretty common to depict Kevin Stoley and Esther has twins, simply because their designs fit this trope so well. Officially we know little about either of their families.
  • The roleplay group The Strex Family has Diego and Divina, who in addition to being half-identical are supremely creepy.
  • In VOCALOID Forever, the Manderstein twins, Ash and Caiden, are this. Both have blonde hair and blue-gray eyes, with Ash has longer hair than her twin brother. The Kagamines, whose canonical relationship is left ambiguous, are also a pair of twins.
  • In Velma Dinkley's Beginning, we have Jessie, who's the twin sister of Red Herring. She and the other popular girls beat up Velma, because a nerd like her talked to their friend Daphne and crush Fred. She even threatens to have her brother beat up Shaggy if she doesn't stay away from them.
    Jessie: Look Dorkley, I don't know how you talk to Freddie without him ignoring you but that stops now. If you ever go near Freddie again, you're dead.
  • The Victors Project has Gloss and Cashmere as this. When they were adolescents, once Cashmere had to cut her hair after some gum got stuck in her hair, and until it grew back none of their friends or relatives could tell her or Gloss apart.
  • With exception to gender, Adam and Adora in Yin-Yang are practically mirror images of each other. When Catra read the newspapers detailing the royal family reuniting, she notes that Adam was "almost [Adora's] exact double." Bow also makes note of this resemblance after meeting Adam.
  • The Animaniacs fan series Zany To The Max has Zak Warner and his sister, Ko. Then they're conjoined.

    Films — Animation 
  • Tuffnut and Ruffnut Thorston from the film adaptation of How to Train Your Dragon. It becomes a bit less pronounced in the sequels, as they get older, but the resemblance is still very strong.
  • John and Dawn in Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation (as seen in the page image) are indistinguishable apart from Dawn's pigtails.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Gamebooks 
  • The protagonists of Les Messagers du Temps: The Prince and the Princess of Time are twins and are described as looking exactly alike. Despite this, the Princess often gets compliments about her beauty.

    Literature 
  • The legendary immortals known only as the Twins in Trudi Canavan's Age Of The Five trilogy appear to be this to begin with — they were originally not only identical, but conjoined. They separated themselves with magic to avoid detection, and some time afterwards, one of the twins changed from female to male using similar magic. It was really confusing how one could be female and the other male given their history, and the reference to 'the change' is really easy to miss...
  • Averted in Lev AC Rosen’s All Men of Genius: Based on William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Violet does disguise herself as her twin brother Ashton, but only to people that don't know them. People have no problem telling Violet/"Ashton" and Ashton/"Ashton’s cousin Ashton" apart.
  • Arly Hanks: In Maggody and the Moonbeams, Dahlia insists that her twins are "identical", because they look a lot alike to her and she's convinced it'll get them successful Hollywood careers. The contrary fact they're different sexes is ignored, as she doesn't actually know what "identical" means in this context.
  • Hideyoshi and Yuuko Kinoshita in Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts. Hideyoshi is so feminine that without even crossdressing, he's mistaken for his own sister.
  • Both sets of The Bobbsey Twins are explicitly stated to bear a close physical resemblance to each other. Nan and Bert are both tall, dark-haired, and slender, while Flossie and Freddie are small, blonde, and chubby.
  • Chronicles of the Kencyrath has heroine Jame and her Half-Identical Twin brother Torisen. Jame and Tori look really similar: Jame is quite androgynous, and Tori is a tad androgynous too — but they're ten years apart in age, thanks to some Year Outside, Hour Inside magic. And still, Jame is frequently mistaken for her brother. Once she's better known, he is mistaken for her too — but only once, because that's when he stops finding it amusing and decides to defy the trope by growing a beard.
  • Implied in the Dollanganger Series'' with Cathy's younger twin siblings Cory and Carrie. They're described as looking extremely alike, to the point where if Carrie's hair was cut short it would be almost impossible to tell them apart. Their parents are half-uncle and half-niece, and in fact are also half-siblings, which accounts for the Strong Family Resemblance.
  • The Empirium Trilogy: The male Ilmaire and the female Ingrid are a pair of twins, born to the King of Borsvall. They both sport the Borsvallic blond eyes and hair and are similarly pale skinned. In terms of personality, though, they're quite different.
  • In The Famous Five book Five on Finniston Farm, there are the "two Harries" twins, who look alike and often speak in unison, but one is a boy, and one is a girl. The boy was originally called Henry, and the girl Harriet, and they became known as the "two Harries".
  • Poppy Z. Brite's novel The Lazarus Heart features identical twins, one of whom is a transgender woman.
  • The Lockhart And Teague series has the Constant twins who look very similar, although Sebastian is slightly prettier.
  • In Orlando Furioso, Ricardetto takes advantage of being always mistaken for Brademante to woo a princess who fell in love with his twin sister. He claims to have been turned into a man by a grateful water nymph.
  • In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm Queen of the Dead, Chris and Anne Domingo mention offhand that they are genetically identical other than the difference of an X chromosome. Unlike the usual trope, they look different from each other (except for their shared devilish appearance) with Anne being notably taller than Chris.
  • Redwall: The Marlfoxes, a family of seven siblings (who may or may not be actual septuplets, given that they're foxes and could be one big litter) described as all looking almost identical.
  • The Secret History: Charles and Camilla initially appear to conform to this trope. As the plot unravels, their personality differences become more apparent they lose their united front (Twin Desynch).
    Side by side, they were very much alike, in similarity less of lineament than of manner and bearing, a correspondence of gesture which bounced and echoed between them so that a blink seemed to reverberate, moments later, in a twitch of the other's eyelid.
  • In The Shadowspawn trilogy, at first glance heroine Ellen mistakes her lover Adrian's twin sister Adrienne for him. Justified in that they're offspring of a highly inbred vampire-werewolf-sorcerer species.
  • In Sheri S. Tepper's Sideshow, two of the main characters are conjoined twins of different genders. This is justified in that they were both born intersex, with ambiguous genitalia. The doctors asked their parents for their opinion on what to do, and while the father was certain that the first one was male (the Virgin Mary had told him so), the mother thought it would be nice to have a little girl. Naturally, the two run into some problems at puberty, since they share a circulatory system, but they each identify as the gender they were assigned and raised as.
  • As children, Thom and Alanna, of Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series, were so much alike in face and body shape as to be mistaken for each other if dressed alike, which they exploit when their father sends them away from home for their schooling as teens, thus kicking off the plot. Swapping places allows Alanna to train as a knight and Thom to become a mage. The only distinguishing feature of the twins at that time was the length of their hair. It stops applying once they're grown, as Alanna comments that Thom has grown taller than she when they meet as older teenagers.
  • In Kathryn Lasky's Starbuck Twins Mystery series of books for children, fraternal twins Liberty and July Starbuck are described as indistinguishable from one another save for the fact that Liberty's hair is long, and her brother July's is short. They also display Twin Telepathy.
  • The Star Wars Legends continuity has Leia and Han's first two children, Jaina and Jacen Solo. Timothy Zahn, who wrote the novels in which they first appear, deliberately modeled them after the Luke/Leia duo. In this case, though, it makes a little bit more sense, since they are raised together.
  • In A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Quagmire triplets are "absolutely identical," so how the Baudelaires tell whether they're talking to male Duncan or female Isadora is a mystery — although Isadora is illustrated with subtly longer hair. But at least the two brothers Duncan and Quigley never share a scene.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Ser Jaime and Queen Cersei Lannister. As kids they would Twin Switch. The fact that their parents were cousins might have helped. They're also Twincestuous (with the implication that the narcissistic Cersei sees it as the closest she can get to Screw Yourself). When Jaime starts to grow a beard while spending time as a prisoner in the third book, he thinks to himself that Cersei will hate that it makes them look less alike, and it becomes a very important symbol of their growing distance. It's also noted to Cersei's displeasure that Loras and Margaery Tyrell look even more alike, despite not being twins.
  • Split Heirs: Artemisia's triplets look completely identical-two are boys, one a girl raised as a boy.
  • Survivor Dogs: Spring and Twitch look a lot alike. The only differences are their sexes and Twitch's lame paw.
  • Heinlein's Time Enough for Love:
    • A couple of female genetic scientists create a pair of Half-Identical Twins for Lazarus Long: two redheaded women named Lazuli and Lorelei, or Laz-Lor. Lazarus calls them his "identicals" even though they're not exactly, being girls. And then they engage in a threesome that is either Twincest, Brother–Sister Incest, or father-daughter incest, depending on how you interpret the relationship. Please keep in mind that Lazarus himself is a pretty blatant Author Avatar.
    • Lazarus also bought a pair of slaves to free who had been produced by careful genetic engineering. Said engineering ensured that, while they were brother and sister, they had no genetic relationship (having been created from perfectly complementary gametes, each bearing different halves of each parent's genes). They were sold as a novelty, with complete documentation included in the package. Since they know they're full siblings, they had to be taught why it wouldn't be a good idea for their children to produce children with each other.
  • Lawrence Sander's The Tomorrow File references a pair of opposite-sex "identical (and incestuous) twins" named Francis and Frances.
  • In Wolves of the Calla, the fifth book of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, almost all births in the village where the story is set are Half-Identical Twins; this is an explicitly unnatural and evil effect, however, with villains periodically kidnapping and Mind Raping one from nearly every set.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In The Beverly Hillbillies, cast regular Max Baer Jr. would occasionally show up as Jethro Bodine's twin sister Jethrine (voiced by Linda Henning). Dietrich Bader did the same as Jethro and Jethrine in the 1993 movie.
  • The Big Bang Theory averts this by giving Sheldon a fraternal twin sister, Missy, who could pass for a sister but is not simply him with a wig. Sheldon explains the scientific errors behind this trope in his typical Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness. Howard replies, "Hallelujah!" as Missy is rather attractive and Sheldon is rather gaunt.
  • Also averted on The Edison Twins: Annie is a redhead, while her twin Tom is blonde. (There was even an episode in which they explained the concept of fraternal vs. identical twins.) Meanwhile, their younger brother Paul is a brunette!

  • Butch Lesbian "Walter" from German series Hinter Gittern Der Frauenknast ("Behind Bars - the Women's Prison") has a twin brother who's apparently indistinguishable from her without his beard. They use this in one episode to change roles, allowing her to escape and him to get closer to several female prisoners.
  • Justified in a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode, where what appear to be Half-Identical Twins turn out to have been born as identical twin males. One twin's genitals were badly injured by a botched circumcision, and a crackpot doctor convinced the parents he'd grow up happier if given a sex change to female (s/he wasn't).
    • Tragically Truth in Television; there was apparently a real rash of this kind of thing back in the 70s, when cutting edge thinkers had decided that gender was just a matter of socialization. Turns out it's a little more complicated than that. See Wikipedia: David Reimer. It happened more than once because the first doctor, John Money, who performed it wrote medical articles stating that the procedure went well without aftereffects, because he didn't like the results he got — they conflicted with his theory.
  • Little Lunch: Nobody knows which of Max and Elsa is which, even though they know one is male and one is female. The fact they both use the boys' toilets makes it more confusing, as does their tendency to speak simultaneously.
  • The short lived FOX series Mental had the part about a botched circumcision resulting in a sex change. It was all fine, until the "girl" ended up lighting him/herself on fire for no apparent reason and kept seeing him/herself in the mirror without a face. The protagonist (a rebellious psychiatrist) realized what was going on. The "girl's" true identity as a male was trying to push its way to the surface. "She" didn't even have proper female genitalia, just a prosthetic designed to look like one. The crackpot who convinced her father to do this planned to give "her" a vagina when "she" was 18. (Because every girl waits until she's 18 before having sex or masturbating, and wouldn't notice the difference because No Periods, Period is normal.) Naturally, when "her" boyfriend finds out the truth, he runs away in disgust. At the end, "she" gets a boyish haircut and decides to try to explore the male lifestyle, even though, without certain body parts, the experience would be far from complete.
  • The Saperstein twins, Jean-Ralphio and Mona Lisa, of Parks and Recreation. Both are similarly spoiled, self-centered, and obnoxious (although Mona Lisa is worse). They're even played by actors who resemble each other, Ben Schwartz and Jenny Slate.
  • Power Rangers RPM has the peppy twin geniuses Gem and Gemma. They have several superficial differences if you look close enough, but you have to look very closely - not because the differences are minor, because they aren't, but because the twins in question are just that single-minded.
  • In Raven's Home, Nia mentions that her hairstyle is the only thing that separates her from her twin brother. Of course their actors don't look similar, though Nia could also have been joking.
  • Subverted in Sykes, in which Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques played twins (called Eric and Hattie) who insisted that they were identical twins, despite the fact that they looked completely different to each other — Sykes was very thin, while Jacques was a somewhat large lady — in addition to being the opposite sex.

    Music 
  • Vocaloid's Rin and Len Kagamine are sometimes portrayed this way (they're colloquially referred to in the fanbase as "the twins"). Officially, they look similar (same eye color, same hair color), have the same surname, and are opposite genders, but whether they're twins, mirror images, or something else entirely has been intentionally left to anyone's interpretation by Word of God (although it should be noted that Len is canonically taller than Rin by a few centimeters, meaning that if they were twins they wouldn't actually be an example of this trope as far as their official portrayal goes). This ends up functional in that individual creators producing work with them are left free to make them twins, lovers, both, different versions of the same person, complete strangers, or whatever is necessary for the individual work. In fact, most works that do portray them as twins don't necessitate in-story that their faces look exactly alike (with one of the famous exceptions being their incarnations as Riliane and Allen in the Evillious Chronicles saga).

    Podcasts 
  • In The Adventure Zone, Lup is revealed to be Taako's twin sister. Justified in that Lup is trans, and her and her brother's general ambivalence to gendered fashions make their wardrobes very similar.
  • Oliver and Olivia Kennedy from the Cool Kids Table game Creepy Town.

    Theatre 
  • Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer are implied to be twins. They look very similar, to the point where their owners can't tell them apart, but their markings are actually different.
  • Siegmund and Sieglinde from Die Walküre.
  • Older Than Steam: See Sebastian and Viola from William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Viola, assuming her brother is dead, disguises herself as a man — so when the actually-not-dead Sebastian returns, he promptly gets mistaken for his "sister". This could be seen as reflecting Shakespeare’s life as the father of opposite sex twins, Hamnet and Judith; Hamnet died in childhood.

    Video Games 
  • Isabelle and Digby from the Animal Crossing series look similar besides fur color and clothing. In Happy Home Designer, Digby insists on being called a twin brother, not a little brother.
  • Assassin's Creed: Odyssey plays this with its optional protagonists, Alexios and Kassandra, both of whom look pretty much identical save for the former having a squarer jaw and being unshaven. Ironically, they're not even twins; one was a young child when the other was born (the older sibling is whichever one the player chooses to play), but they have such strong family resemblance and are close enough in age anyway one could easily pass for the other's Distaff or Spear Counterpart (which is kind of the point of the choice).
  • Astral Chain features the Howard twins. Like certain other examples, you play as one while the one you didn't choose becomes a supporting character. In this case, the chosen twin's name will be player-determined, while the supporting twin will always be named Akira.
  • Nox and Matin Catorce are identical brother and sister twins from Blind Justice ~Torn souls, Hurt Faiths~ by Zektbach in the beatmania series. Both twins also have special swords that are identical, although one represents Hope and the other Despair.
  • Subverted in BioShock Infinite. Robert and Rosalind Lutece seem to be this at first, though this is the least abnormal trait they display. They actually turn out to be different versions of the same person from parallel universes.
  • In the Bleach video game The Third Phantom, we have the main protagonists Matsuri and Fujimaru Kudo, both have similar hair and eye colors and both are noted to have similarly enormous talent and spiritual pressure.
  • Reynold and Wren from Costume Quest. The player chooses which one they want to play, the only real difference between the two being gender, and saves the one that they didn't choose.
  • Prince Alaric and Princess Alana, in Cute Knight Kingdom. They're so identical that for a long time, they're able to get away with pretending to be a single individual called Al. The observant player, however, will note that their eyes are different colors.
  • Dance Central: Jaryn and Kerith are pretty much similar in every aspect, both physical and behavioral except gender, to the point most of the other characters think they're creepy. There's a reason these two are always introduced together both in-game and in media; they're basically the same person, split into two only because the game needs two dancers per crew.
  • Dragalia Lost Downplays this trope with Euden and Zethia, similar to Dipper and Mabel. Although they have the same face, same blond hair, and are even about the same height, they have distinct features, such as their eye color, with Euden having green eyes and Zethia having blue eyes. Although there is a slight subversion: Euden and Zethia are not twins, but rather, Euden is a clone of the original twin, Nedrick. When is comes to Nedrick and Zethia, this is completely averted, as Nedrick looks quite different from Zethia (even without his curse). This means that Euden looks just like a male version of his aunt.
  • Dragon Quest V: Parry and Madchen, the hero's blonde children. Parry is mainly a physical attacker whereas Madchen is the magic powerhouse. Also, for whatever reason, Parry is the only who can wield the Zenithian Sword, even though both children are descendant of Dragon Quest IV's legendary hero Solo/Sofia.
  • Averted in Eagle Eye Mysteries with the title protagonists, Jake and Jennifer Eagle. Besides the obvious gender differences, he's a redhead and she's brown-haired.
  • James and Francine Garrett, twin co-owners of the Atomic Wrangler in Fallout: New Vegas. Fran is... not attractive because of it.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Palom and Porom from Final Fantasy IV qualify as this. The original sprites lacked sufficient detail to make it clear whether they were meant to be identical or simply share a number of similar traits and style of dress; but the CG renders in the DS edition depict them as having identical facial features.
      • However, instead of being clones of one another, the two are characterized with distinct themes of reversal and mirror imagery. Not only the sexes, but elements of personality (Palom is boastful and rude, Porom reserved and polite), their style of dress (both are pictured wearing red and green outfits with identical patterns, but one's is red where the other's is green, and vice versa), their use of magic (Palom uses the destructive Black Magic, Porom uses the healing/supportive White Magic), and hairstyle (the sprites show a right/left reversal between the two, otherwise being identical; the portraits show Porom's hair looking well-groomed and Palom's hair looking rather messy).
      • By the time that Final Fantasy IV: The After Years rolls around, they've developed their own styles and no longer dress in complimentary outfits. They've also dyed their hair different colors (Porom's hair is now a vivid pink, whereas Palom has white-tipped bangs), which makes them look even less alike. However, they still have identical facial features and the CG renders depict them as being the exact same height even as adults, so they never manage to escape this trope completely.
    • Alphinaud and Alisaie from Final Fantasy XIV are this in terms of looks, but their personalities are so different that Alphinaud serves as a major character throughout the main plot, whilst Alisaie leaves soon after her introduction and is only important in the plot for the Binding Coil of Bahamut raid. Humorously, Alphinaud (the male twin) is frequently mistaken for Alisaie (the female twin), but not the other way around... at least until the first expansion, where she's shown a few times spying on the Warriors of Darkness and eventually returns to the main plot (with slightly different dialogue depending on whether you did the Coil or not) and becomes instrumental to their defeat. By the time the second expansion rolls around she's just as much part of the main cast as her brother. Several outfit changes make the resemblance less pronounced over time, and it is revealed that their mother liked to dress them to match. Patch 5.5 reveals that this is a Berserk Button for Alisaie when she rips Estinien a new one when he mistakes her for her brother showering praise to her. It's the hair ruffle that really pisses her off.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Ayra's children Larcei and Scáthach, from Genealogy of the Holy War.
    • Also Yumina and Yubello, from Mystery of the Emblem.
    • And in The Sacred Stones, the twins Ephraim and Eirika. They also are the main characters.
    • The male and female Morgans and the male and female Kanas being twins is a rather popular fanon among Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fates fans.
      • In a similar vein, the male and female Avatars of Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses are sometimes made into twins in some works where they both exist at the same time, like Super Smash Bros. To prevent confusion, one of them, usually Female Robin, Female Corrin and Female Byleth, is given their Japanese name (Reflet, Kamui, and Beresu/Bereto respectively).
    • Fire Emblem Engage has Clanne and Framme. They're twins who bear strong resemblances to each other, even having the similar braids. The main differences between them are That Clanne wears green while Framme wears pink. They also fight differently, as Clanne is a mage while Framme is a healer.
  • Aether and Lumine of Genshin Impact are a pair of twin Dimensional Travelers. The twin that the player does not choose as their avatar gets captured by one of the gods of the world they just arrived in, with the other twin having their dimensional powers stripped from them, and going on a journey to rescue their twin.
  • Tsukino and Yosuke in Judgment, to the point that Yagami tries to have Yosuke go undercover as his twin in order to catch a groper. Yosuke refuses, but the groper still mistakes him for Tsukino in the end.
  • In The Last Blade 2, a woman impersonates her dead twin brother, Kojiroh, a member of the Shinsengumi, in order to bring his killer to justice. She ends up living the rest of her life under the charade, taking on her brother's identity as a tribute to him.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: The protagonist is established in the character creation screen as one of a set of opposite-sex fraternal twins, and the character model for your twin uses the same settings you have, only gender-inverted.
  • Vent and Aile in Mega Man ZX seem to be like this... That, or they're just two versions of the same person. It depends on where you look.
  • In Odin Sphere, we have playable protagonist Velvet and her twin brother Ingway. While not exactly alike, both have similar features, share hair and eye colors, and have a tendency to wear rather Stripperiffic clothing.
  • Tate and Liza, twin Gym Leaders in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. They look so similar that it's a common mistake to think Tate is also a girl, thus making them fully identical.
  • Alfred and Alexia in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica. In fact, the resemblance is so good that Alfred is able to convincingly pretend to be Alexia for several years after she was frozen in order to make people think she was still alive. Kind of explained in that they are really clones.
  • It's not normally obvious due to their normally different outfitsnote  and hairstyles, but Rahal and his sister Rania Suikoden V are near-identical. When Rahal is required to disguise himself as a woman, the player is likely to not realize what happened at first, and instead wonder "How did Rania get here, and what happened to her glasses?"
  • Likewise, games in the Super Robot Wars series often give you a choice for the Original Generation Player Character, and when those series get adapted to the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation sub-series, the different choices often undergo some form of Divergent Character Evolution and become their own characters. But in the case of Raul and Fiona Gureden of Super Robot Wars Reversal and Akimi Akatsuki of Super Robot Wars GC they were presented as a Male/Female choice of the same person. The OG games made them twins, and in Akimi's case, the sister was renamed "Akemi". Averted however with Ingram Plisken and Viletta Vadim of Super Hero Sakusen: they were male and female versions of the same character, but when introduced into Super Robot Wars Alpha and Original Generation, they became Opposite Sex Clones.
  • A rare Justified example through non-supernatural means occurs in Tell Me Why: Alyson and Tyler were both assigned female at birth and are actually genetically identical, but Tyler is a trans man while Alyson is a cisgender woman.
  • The protagonists in Young Souls are seemingly identical Fiery Redhead twins, a boy and a girl.

    Visual Novels 
  • Averted and discussed in Ever17. You are confused as to why Sara and the Kid don't have the same abilities or look similar despite being twins, at which point it's explained with some amusement that biology doesn't work like that.
  • In the Murder Mystery Jisei, one of the main characters has an identical twin sister who you don't see until the end of the game. It turns out that she and her brother were private investigators, and she deliberately sent her brother in as a mole to check out the murder scene. She was the telepathic voice helping the protagonist to solve the crime all along.
  • Played totally straight in Ladykiller in a Bind where the plot revolves around the fact that The Beast can easily impersonate her brother by simply wearing a suit.
  • Played completely straight with the Brother–Sister Team of Kaname and Saori Shishido from Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow. It's even a huge plot point since Kaname is killed off almost at the start of the game and Saori pulls a Sweet Polly Oliver to join a group of vigilante that he was supposed to become a part of, needing just an Important Haircut and putting on male clothes to pass as Kaname.
  • Played With the demons Zepar and Furfur from Umineko: When They Cry, who are twins despite having differently coloured hair and different overall colour schemes — and then there's the fact that we don't know who's the boy and who's the girl. However, they do have the same eye colour and wear the exact same outfit.

    Web Animation 
  • DSBT InsaniT: Killer and Killdra, who are both sarcastic goths who wear orange.
  • Red vs. Blue subverts this with North and South's faces — while both have very light blond/white hair, they look quite a bit different — but it's played fairly straight with their armor, which is subtly different colors of purple and green. When only one is on screen, it's hard to tell which it is unless they're standing next to someone (South is shorter than North) or you've gotten really good at picking out the different colors of purple (South is lighter and North is darker).

    Webcomics 
  • Alienby Comics: Riri discusses being one of these after having grown up looking identical to their twin brother in "Breaking the Set".
    Riri: Growing up my brother and I were always seen as a collective pair, rather than as individuals. Many people couldn’t tell us apart, and some didn’t see the need to, since they saw us as a matching set. One barrier I faced in coming out was the disappointment others would have with me ‘breaking the set’ by no longer looking like my brother—as if somehow my being trans tainted the twin part of my identity… But I will not make decisions about my appearance for the whimsy of others.
  • AntiBunny: Pluto and Persephone, in spite of being opposite genders, look nearly identical. Persephone tends to repeat anything Pluto says.
  • Ember and their sister Ariel in Blindsprings, with the variation that Ember is non-binary in gender identity, but was assigned male at birth. The only real visual difference is Ariel having longer hair.
  • Catena: The littermates Bear and Bryony don't act alike, but except for their hair and Bear's chin they're pretty nearly identical. Their other sister Patches, on describing Bryony, even comments to Bear that "She looks like you, only, you know, pretty."
  • Sam and April of Dragon City look identical aside from gender and April's glasses; but according to the Fourth-Wall Mail Slot they actually are identical. This is because gender in dragons is influenced by incubation temperature (as in crocodiles) rather than genes. Every other set of twins in the comic are obviously fraternal, even having differently colored scales.
  • Drowtales: Kau and Shala, seen briefly as children where the only visual differences between them are different shades of blue for their eyes, Shala (the girl) having more prominent eyelashes and Kau (the boy) having spikier hair tied on the other side. This is averted after the timeskip where there are a number of obvious differences between them, the main one being that following usual drow sexual dimorphism Shala is noticeably taller than her brother, and after chapter 46 Kau gains tainted red eyes, but Shala only lives a few minutes after this happens anyway.
  • Homestuck: John and Jade. Even before The Reveal, they are very similar in appearance and behavior (much more so than Rose and Dave). This could be partly because their biological parents looked pretty similar as well.
  • Hooky features the twins Daniella and Dorian Whytte. As twelve-year-olds, they look alike except for their hairstyles and different - although matching - clothes, to the point that a major plot point in the first part of the webcomic is the question of which of them is featured in an important prophecy.
  • Pince Rayburn and Princess Hoya from Im Stanning The Prince look almost completely identical except for Hoya's longer hair, make-up and dimples.
  • Aaron and Sharon in Pixie Trix Comix are certainly very similar, though Aaron is a gawky teen guy (but by no means ugly — and he gets a little more appealing after he starts working out), while Sharon is Ms. Fanservice. The trope is actually implicitly invoked before Sharon meets the rest of the cast when Felix and Tracy learn that Aaron has a twin sister and admit to each other that they're curious what Aaron would look like with boobs. (They really should know better; they themselves are siblings, though not twins, and have no particular resemblance.) Later, Tracy tells Aaron that he shouldn't be so quick to deny that Sharon is hot, as he looks like her (he suffers from a blind spot on the subject due to raging Sibling Rivalry), and he (not entirely illogically) takes this as a sign that Tracy thinks he is hot.
  • In Questionable Content, people think that Claire and Clinton are this, but she's a couple years older than him. It also doesn't work because Claire's actually trans, so she was presumably raised as a male.
  • Roomies!, It's Walky!, Joyce and Walky!: Walky and Sal in It's Walky!, but less so in Joyce and Walky, and not at all in Dumbing of Age. This is due to Art Evolution, with the fact that they do have differences (in particular, Sal claims Parental Favoritism for Walky because he "came out more white" while she has naturally kinky hair) being a point of contention between them. However, it might be there on some level, as Walky has mentioned that he's been mistaken for Sal before.
  • Surviving Romance has the twins Minwoo and Seonwoo Ha, who despite their gender difference are noted by several characters to look identical.
  • Tiger, Tiger is about the noblewoman Ludovica takes the identity of her twin brother Remy in order to seek adventure and pursue her dream of studying sea sponges. Sure enough, the siblings look similar enough for her to pull off the charade, though they are actually drawn in subtly different ways, such as in the shape of their jaw. The most obvious difference is how Remy's beauty mark is by his eye while Ludo's is at the edge of her lip.
  • In Welcome to Room #305, there was a rumor around his campus that Yoongsung was a crossdresser. They really were seeing his twin sister, Yoona. Yoona's hair color is lighter but otherwise they look very similar.

    Web Videos 
  • Critical Role: Vex and Vax. Their official art depicts them with very similar features. The twins are also separated in Episode 20, and when another character asks Vax what his sister Vex looks like he points at his own face.

    Western Animation 
  • In 3-2-1 Penguins!, the only differences between Jason and Michelle are their outfits and Michelle's pigtails. As shown on this page's quote, Fidgel lampshades how alike they look.
  • Ben 10 episode "Camp Fear" features brother–sister twins named Andy and Mandy.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door: The Interesting Twins from Beneath the Mountain are the same height, have identical hair and eye colors, wear identical uniforms and bowl cuts and finish each other's sentences — and are a boy and a girl.
  • Edgar & Ellen: The titular twins look exactly the same, except that Ellen has long hair in pigtails and no bangs. They even dress exactly alike.
  • Downplayed in Gravity Falls: Dipper and Mabel, the main characters, are twins with identical bodies and faces with the exception of small skin details (rosy cheeks for Mabel, eyebags and a red nose for Dipper); Mabel also has braces. The resemblance isn't generally brought up, as their clothes and personalities are closer to Polar Opposite Twins. In the defictionalized Gravity Falls: Journal 3, Dipper writes that Mabel looks like him but with "girl hair."
    • Stanford and Stanley Pines are a strange same-sex example. They are actual identical twins (apart from Ford's sixth fingers), but because they have very different personalities and lifestyles, they grew up to look very similar but still noticeably distinct. Even as teenagers they had different body shapes, jawlines and haircuts.
  • Jacob Two-Two: Noah and Emma are nearly identical, save for their different noses and hair colors, and Emma having pigtails. One episode showed that they have identical laundry piles.
  • In Justice League Unlimited, the Ultimen are based on the Superfriends team members who were created for the show instead of the comics. Their versions of the Wonder Twins, Downpour and Shifter, are so similar it's very difficult to tell them apart. Shifter doesn't have much in the way of the Most Common Superpower, so even examination of the chest area only works if they're standing side by side to compare. They even share a voice actor. Justified in that they are not actually twins, but somewhere between clones and genetically engineered super beings.
  • King of the Hill: Before the Retcon, Peggy and her brother Hoyt were stated to look very much alike, but after the retcon they look nothing like each other.
  • In Koala Man Alison and Liam are fraternal twins and look very similar with the same hair color, face shape and general build. The most significant difference is Alison is a bit taller since girls tend to hit puberty first.
  • The Legend of Korra: Korra's cousins Desna and Eska are a pair of androgynous Creepy Twins who seem identical at first glance. Played for Laughs when Bolin is smitten with both of them, calling them "lovely ladies," before Korra tells him Desna is a guy. Bolin then has to ask which one Desna is. But once we start seeing them up close, it's clear that Eska, the girl, wears makeup and styles her hair in pigtails.
  • The Legend of Vox Machina: Vex'ahlia and Vax'ildan. While they (thankfully) wear distinctive outfits and have their own separate fighting styles, their features are so similar that Scanlan admits in his introductory song that he can never remember who's who.
    Vex: (deadpan) He's Vax.
    Vax: (equally deadpan) She's Vex.
  • Muppet Babies (1984): Scooter and Skeeter. Of course, appearance is where their similarity ends, as Scooter is a nerd and Skeeter is a total daredevil.
  • My Little Pony: Rainbow Roadtrip: The Barrel twins are identical in most respects — they have the same color scheme, and by and large have entirely interchangeable personalities — but are a boy and a girl, requiring them to be fraternal twins who just so happen to look identical to one and another.
  • The Owl House has Amity Blight's elder siblings Edric and Emira. Apart from a few minor differences in appearance and personality, they put great effort into looking identical. Subverted in that they study the Illusion magical track at school and use their powers to amplify their resemblance; without them they look much less identical. They also start diverging from their primary track later in the show, reflecting their increasing tendency to drop the act and become their own individual. They look even less identical in the Distant Finale, where Edric's jawline is wider.
  • Rosie's Rules: The recurring characters Quinn and Jun Liu are identical twins, except Quinn is a boy and Jun is a girl.
  • Rugrats: Phil and Lil. One episode has the twins managing to distract a robber just by removing Lil's bow to make her look exactly like Phil. Although it could be argued that most babies look alike anyway, in the spinoff, where the kids are 10-13, Phil and Lil can still pass for each other with a simple change of clothes and a wig.
  • The Simpsons: The twins from Audrey McConnell's 4th grade class at Springfield Elementary. The twins consist of one boy and one girl.
  • Strawberry Shortcake: Lem and Ada from the 1980's series. Supposedly only their dog, Sugar Woofer, could tell them apart, despite Ada wearing a bow and Lem wearing a hat at all times.
  • Woody Woodpecker: Woody's niece and nephew, Splinter and Knothead, respectively.

    Real Life 
  • The official medical terms for these kinds of births are sesquizygotic twins or semi-identical. They are incredibly rare. Of the theoretical 100 billion humans ever born, less than a thousand pairs — 0.00000002% of all humanity — are thought to be born like this. In modern recorded times, depending on how strict one categorizes amniotic genotyping, less than five proposed and only two medically confirmed. For this to occur, an unfertilised egg partially divides by cleaving into two new, albeit still-attached cells. These cells are then fertilised by two separate sperm cells, with the fertilised cells undergoing further division into a blastomere that then splits in half, thus creating twins. What is particularly unusual about this is that as the resultant twins carry chromosomes from both sperm cells in their own cells, they are chimeric, having a mixture of genetic information as a result of the unconventional nature of their formation.
  • While extremely rare (only three to five known cases), there are cases in which otherwise identical twins can be of the opposite sex. More info here from The Other Wiki.
    • One real-life occurrence that can produce boy-girl twins who are genetically identical (but who do not bear a strong visual resemblance), is when a zygote that is 46,XY (a normal healthy boy), undergoes incomplete mitosis in the womb. One of the resulting zygotes is 46,XY (still a healthy boy), and the other has a missing Y chromosome, and so is 45,X (a girl with Turner Syndrome). Genetically identical apart from the sex chromosomes, although Turner syndrome produces some fairly noticeable differences (physical and otherwise).
    • Another case of different-sex identical twins involved twins both of whom had some 47,XXY and 46,XX and showed signs of Klinefelter's Syndrome. That being said, in this example it's possible that a rigorous and expensive combination of surgery, drugs, and therapy could make the "unhealthy" male of a brother–sister twin pairing turn out "normal" if Klinefelter's Syndrome was detected early enough. However two major issues are: #1 such a scenario has not been medically documented, #2 medicalizing intersex people to make them look more normal, rather than for health reasons, is morally iffy.
  • When two sperm fertilize one egg, which is rare, the resulting embryo almost never survives. However, there is a very rare (as in "only two cases in recorded history" rare) case of "semi-identical twins": a chimerical zygote forms (all cells have the same maternal DNA contribution, but one of two possible paternal contributions) which then splits (like when identical twins form.) Each child is genetically a chimera, but with different fractions of the two paternal DNA contributions. In both known cases, the two sperm were an X and Y. In the 2007 case, this resulted in an assigned-male and an intersex child, in the 2014 case an assigned-male and assigned-female child, although the girl at least is known to be infertile.
  • Can happen when one identical twin is transgender and transitions later in life.
    • As of 2011 there are now news stories about a pair of teenage identical twins where one is trans. Nicole Maines (the twin who transitioned) is now a well known trans actress who plays Dreamer, the first trans superhero on TV, on Supergirl.
    • Another example of this is transgender actress Laverne Cox of Orange Is the New Black, who has an identical twin brother, which was extremely convenient for flashback scenes showing Cox's character Sophia before her transition.
    • Yet another notable example of this can be found in the case of Bunny and David Michael Bennett (Rabbit and The Spine) of Steam Powered Giraffe, in which Bunny is a trans woman, and both still have similar singing voices.
    • Alastair Casey and his sister are identical twins; he transitioned later in life.
    • Enforced in the tragic case of David Reimer, who was reassigned as a girl after a botched circumcision attempt, and eventually transitioned back into a man before killing himself at the age of 38.
  • There's also the less rare instance where fraternal twins of opposite sexes simply have such a Strong Family Resemblance that they can pass for each other... at least until puberty, anyway. Even then, there are boys who are a bit Bishōnen, and girls who are a bit Bifauxnen...
  • This can also happen if opposite-sex twins are babies with short/no hair. All babies look somewhat alike when they're that young.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Half Identical Twin, Almost Identical Twins, Almost Identical Twin, Opposite Sex Identical Twins

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Kenny and Misty Meaner

We're introduced to Mr. Meaner's sister Misty, who looks (and sounds) exactly like her brother.

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