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Significant Double Casting

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Jonathan Hyde as Alan's greatest childhood and adulthood fears.

Frequently in fiction, and especially in theatre, the same actor will play multiple roles. Sometimes this will just be for the sake of convenience, and not meaningful to the plot; after all, if an actor is going to show up at the theatre every night to perform, you might as well take as much advantage of their skills as possible. However, sometimes there are reasons for the same actor playing two parts that are symbolic or have some subliminal impact on the story. Hence, Significant Double Casting.

The main distinction between this and the Acting for Two tropes is that almost all of the Acting for Two tropes operate on the assumption that the two (or more) characters look identical. Here, the point is merely that the two (or more) roles are intended to be played by the same person for some effect. So, in a way, this trope is a subtrope of Acting for Two, and a supertrope of some of the tropes listed on that page.

Compare Identical Grandson, Identical Stranger. Often used to hint towards a Two Aliases, One Character situation when both are played by the same actor. Contrast Cast as a Mask, where two different actors are cast to conceal the fact that they're playing the same character.


Examples:

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    Anime 
  • In Afro Samurai and its spin-off game, Afro and Ninja Ninja are both voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, and it is eventually revealed that the latter is a figment of the former's imagination.
  • Yhwach in the Bleach anime shares the same voice actor with Zangetsu because the supposed Zangetsu is in fact an impostor whose image is a reflection of how Yhwach appeared 1000 years prior to the main story. This is also true of the English dub.
  • Digimon Adventure 02:
    • Both Oikawa and BelialVamdemon are voiced by the same actor in the Japanese and both Spanish dubs. Vamdemon has possessed Oikawa and uses his life force, along with the Dark Spores, to engineer his revival at the very end of the series.
    • Oikawa also shares a voice actor with Mummymon in both the Japanese and the Spanish dubs. Mummymon is an artificial half-Digimon, half-human, created using Oikawa's own digitized DNA.
  • In Dragon Ball, Demon King Piccolo and Kami (AKA God) are voiced by Takeshi Aono due to them originally being a single entity. In the English dub, both characters as well as Piccolo Jr. are voiced by Chris Sabat. (A number of parent and child pairs in the series are also voiced by the same actor, most notable with Masako Nozawa as Goku and his kids Gohan and Goten, and his father Bardock.)
  • Fairy Tail, while no stranger to Acting for Two, occasionally dips into this:
    • Several actors end up playing relatives to their recurring roles, moreso in Japanese: Aya Hirano plays Lucy and her mother, Layla; Yui Horie plays Carla and her mother, Chagot; Miyuki Sawashiro plays Ultear and her mother, Ur; and Katsuyuki Konishi plays Laxus and his great-grandfather, Yuri. The English dub mostly avoids this by casting different actors, with the exception of Lucy and Layla, both played by Cherami Leigh; in this instance, the dub takes it a step further than the Japanese version by having Leigh play their ancestor Anna, voiced in Japanese by Aya Endo, who incidentally played Lucy's friend Eclair in the first Fairy Tail movie, Phoenix Priestess.
    • A handful of seemingly unrelated characters with shared actors have turned out to be counterparts between Earth-land and Edolas: Jellal and Mystogan, Porlyusica and Grandeeneynote , and Makarov and Faust.
  • Freezing: Both Satellizer El Bridget and Kazuha Aoi (in flashbacks) are voiced by Mamiko Noto in reference to the early scene where Kazuya Aoi mistakes Satella for his sister. This is not true of the English dub.
  • The Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) anime had both the Elrics' mother and Sloth being voiced by the same actress; Sloth ends up being the Homunculus created when the brothers tried to use human transmutation to bring their mother back to life.
  • Mupu and Fupu in Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star are given the same voices as the currently-absent Dark Magical Girl twins Michiru and Kaoru, setting a connection between the two pairs, due to Michiru and Kaoru's Heel–Face Turn near the end of the season.
  • In Gaiking: Legend of Daiku Maryu, Captain Garis and Daiya's father are both voiced by Tōru Ōkawa, highlighting the captain's role as a father figure to Daiya.
  • Gundam:
  • Karakuri Circus:
    • Bai Jin, Dean Maistre, Sadayoshi Saiga, and Commander Faceless are all voiced by Toshio Furukawa, which foreshadows that they're the same person.
    • Francine, the automata made in her image, Shirogane/Éléonore, and Angelina are all voiced by Megumi Hayashibara. Éléonore and Angelina are eventually revealed to be Francine's identical great-grandniece and grandniece respectively.
  • In the first season of Kemono Friends, the only two human characters, Kaban and Mirai, are both played by Aya Uchida. The final episode reveals that Kaban is actually a human Friend, born from one of Mirai's hairs coming into contact with Sandstar.
  • In Lyrical Nanoha, Subaru and Nove are both voiced by Chiwa Saitō. It turns out later on that they are genetically sisters since Nove was a modified clone of Quint just like Subaru and Ginga. Averted with the third character she voices in the series, Quattro.
  • Mekakucity Actors provides a three-way version of this, as Mamoru Miyano voices not only Konoha, but Haruka and the Wide-Open Eyes Snake (in snake form). It is revealed in Episode 6 that Haruka is Konoha before he died and came back without memories and his appearance altered to resemble Haruka's online avatar. The fact that he also voices the Snake foreshadows who the Snake's final host body in the final episode will be.
  • Both Sophia Ascart and Atsuko Sasaki from My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!'s Animated Adaptation are voiced by Inori Minase since the former is actually the latter's reincarnation. This also applies to the English dub, where they're both voiced by Kira Buckland.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Megumi Hayashibara provides the voices of both Rei Ayanami and Yui Ikari, alluding to Rei's true identity as Yui's clone. She also voices Eva Unit-01, which neatly turns out to tie into how the Eva is powered by Yui's soul. While the original English dub of the anime series gave them different voice actors, the dub of End of Evangelion, as well as the Amazon Prime redub of the Rebuild films, would give them both the same VA: Amanda Winn-Lee.
  • In Noir, Mireille and her late mother Odette are both voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi,note  which serves to underline the fact that they look almost exactly alike, which actually is a plot point.
  • The Witch Queen in Ojamajo Doremi never has her voice actress revealed in the credits until she reveals her identity near the end of the series. It's Yuka Imai, who plays Yuki-sensei.
  • One Piece:
    • In both the Japanese and English versions of the anime, Nico Robin's mother, Olvia, is voiced by the same actress as (adult) Robin herself. Fitting, since Robin is a Generation Xerox of Olvia, with the same profession and intelligence, and looks just like her except for their hair colors (Olvia's is white, Robin's is black).
    • The Fake Straw Hats are a band of pirates posing as the real ones. In Japan they are all voiced by the same actors as the genuine ones, but with their roles switched. note 
    • In the anime adaptation of the Wano arc, Tenguyama Hitetsu in the present day and Kozuki Sukiyaki in the flashback section are both voiced by Ryūzaburō Ōtomo. Chapter 1053 reveals that Hitetsu is actually Sukiyaki, who had faked his death after escaping from Orochi's imprisonment.
  • In the third Pokémon film, Spell of the Unown, both Entei and Molly's father Spencer are voiced by the same actor in English and Japanese. The former is effectively an artificial replacement for the latter, complete with the same voice and a comparable fatherly personality.
  • In Slayers Evolution-R, the man who hires Lina to protect him from the assassin Zuuma has the same actor, hinting what his "long business trips" really are.
  • Ryoko's voice actress, Miyuki Sawashiro, also does the Big Bad, Finé, in Symphogear.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • Kubo and the Two Strings: If you notice the same actor voices Kubo's mother and Monkey, it's much less surprising that they're the same person. To make this a bit less obvious, the marketing downplayed the former's presence and never made it explicit that the actor was even double cast. Their performance for each character is deliberately very different, so it's easy for an uninformed viewer to not notice.
  • The LEGO Movie:
    • Will Ferrell voices President Business, the Big Bad of the movie who wants to freeze everything with the Kragle... and also plays The Man Upstairs in the live-action segment, as we discover that his son modeled President Business on his father, who desires to preserve his LEGO creations with Krazy Glue.
    • In the sequel, Chris Pratt pulls double duty playing both Emmett and Rex Dangervest, to symbolically emphasize their status as Foils. Except that's not quite true. The actual reason he plays both is because Rex is Emmett; he's Emmett's Evil Counterpart from a Bad Future.
  • The Man Called Flintstone: Paul Frees voices a number of characters, including two characters who are later revealed to be the same character: the Green Goose, and Triple X.
  • Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio:
    • Gregory Mann plays Pinocchio and Carlo, which signifies Geppetto's need to replace his son twenty years prior from collateral damage from World War I. It's also because Pinocchio is using the borrowed soul of Carlo to bring him to life.
    • Tilda Swinton plays both The Wood Sprite and the Sprite's sister Death, to add to the movie's message about life and death.
  • In the Dreamworks film The Prince of Egypt, Val Kilmer plays both Moses and God. This was probably done to signify that God is speaking through Moses rather than to Moses, especially since God's voice also has a whispery female voice layered into it to emphasize that God is a pure spirit beyond the concept of gender. It may also be a Shout-Out to The Ten Commandments (1956) where Charlton Heston provided one of the many male voices layered together to represent God.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Beauty and the Beast (1946), Jean Marais plays both the Beast and Belle's Prince Charming Wannabe suitor Avenant which helps emphasize them switching roles at the end of the film with Avenant becoming beastly and the Beast becoming human again. It also hints at the ending not quite being as happy as it appears on the surface — the director Cocteau was quoted as saying that the Beast's transformation back into a prince was intended to be disappointing to Belle because it was "condemning her to a humdrum marriage and a future that I summed up in that last sentence of all fairy tales: 'And they had many children.'", and the Beast's human form looking exactly like that of Avenant, her handsome but selfish suitor, helps imply that he might not be great to Belle either now that he no longer has to act humble and kind to her to break his curse.
  • The Tim Burton film Big Fish features Helena Bonham Carter as both a woman who once knew the main character and a witch who terrorised him as a child. This is even lampshaded.
    Will: But logically, you can't be the witch, because she was old when he was young.
    Jenny: It makes sense if you think like your father. See, to him, there's only two women: your mother, and everyone else.
  • Bram Stoker's Dracula: Besides the obvious of Winona Ryder playing both Mina and Dracula's human wife Elisabeta (the former is the reincarnation of the latter), Anthony Hopkins plays both Van Helsing as well as the priest in the prologue who informs Dracula of Elisabeta's death.
  • Invoked in Captain Marvel, where the Supreme Intelligence appears to everyone who comes forth in the form of the person that they admire the most. In Carol's case, she sees her late mentor, Dr. Wendy Lawson, and a Deleted Scene would have revealed that Yon-Rogg sees himself.
  • Cloud Atlas is a nested Anthology Film with six different stories across time, space, and genre, all linked together by themes of universality and the simultaneously disparate yet interlinked nature of fiction. Playing off of this, every actor plays at least double duty, rotating between protagonist, antagonist, or even nobody in particular ​— just for one example, Tom Hanks plays:
  • In Jumanji, Jonathan Hyde plays both Sam Parrish (Alan's father) and Van Pelt (the Great White Hunter who likes Hunting the Most Dangerous Game). This highlights Alan's fear of both characters.
  • In The King's Man, Tom Hollander plays George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II. This is intentional, as all three monarchs were related. In fact, George and Nicholas were so similar in appearance they would frequently dress up as one another just to mess with people.
  • Land of Oz:
    • Most of the named characters in The Wizard of Oz appear in Kansas at the beginning or end, and have similar roles in both worlds: the Wicked Witch/Mrs. Gulch as the antagonist, Professor Marvel/The Wizard as the charlatan who gets Dorothy into trouble, and three farmhands/traveling companions as moral support for Dorothy.
    • This is also used in Return to Oz and Oz the Great and Powerful. Considering that it wasn't a part of the books, this just shows how lasting an impact the 1939 film had.
  • The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp features Deborah Kerr playing the protagonist's first love... and then she appears as two more women he meets in his life that remind him of her.
  • Orson Welles's 1948 version of Macbeth had each of the actors playing the witches appear as another character. Brainerd Duffield played the First Murderer, Peggy Webber played Lady Macduff and Lurene Tuttle played the Gentlewoman. This version also expands the witches' roles into The Chessmaster, having them manipulating the events of the story.
  • Mary Poppins Returns: The animated sequence features a villainous wolf, badger and weasel meant to represent Mr. Wilkins, Mr. Gooding and Mr. Frye, respectively. Besides being voiced by the actors who play them, the wolf shares Wilkins' trait of swinging his pocket watch.
  • In MirrorMask, Helena's mother and father (Gina McKee and Rob Brydon) are also the Queens (both the good one and the evil one) and Prime Minister of her dream world.
  • Moebius: The same actress, Lee Na-ra, plays both the wife of the cheating husband and the mistress that the husband is cheating with. This fits in with the film's themes of incest and sexual obsession, as the son becomes sexually attracted to the mistress before eventually having sex with his mother.
  • A Monster Calls has Liam Neeson voice the eponymous monster, and appear in a photo as Connor's deceased grandfather.
  • In the film Nadja, the title character is Dracula's daughter, being pursued in the present day by a descendant of Professor Van Helsing. Dracula himself, being dead, appears only in flashbacks, once as Stock Footage of Bela Lugosi, but otherwise as a dim faceless figure who is played by the same actor as Van Helsing.
  • Peter Pan: The film continues the tradition of the original play (see the Theatre entry below) of having Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, both of whom set out to spoil the children's fun, played by the same actor. This film also plays up Wendy being almost attracted to Hook.
  • In the Spider-Man Trilogy, Bruce Campbell has a minor role in each of the films as a wrestling announcer, a snooty usher, and a French waiter respectively. According to Sam Raimi, had he directed the fourth film, he would cast Campbell as Mysterio, implying that all of the earlier cameos were Quentin Beck in disguise.
  • In Time Bandits, Sean Connery plays both Kevin's surrogate father figure Agamemnon as well as the fireman who rescues him in the end. Kevin reacts to the similarity. This helps raise a number of questions for the film's Gainax Ending.
  • In the X film series, Mia Goth plays both core characters: Pearl, the farm girl from the 1910s, and Maxine, the porn actress from the 1970s, as each is a mirror of the other and framed as the future and past of the other, respectively. In X, the first released film, Goth plays both characters who meet each other in the tail end of the 1970s and reflect on each other, with the story discussing aging out of sex appeal and opportunity with their juxtaposition. Pearl is a prequel where Goth plays only Pearl and shows her descent into murder, and the final film MaXXXine is set to continue the mirror, being a piece just about Maxine and taking place after X.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The miniseries version of Angels in America uses only eight actors for all the significant and many of the minor roles, meaning that (for example) actor Jeffrey Wright ends up playing Camp Gay nurse Belize, Harper's imaginary friend Mr. Lies, and the Continental Principality of Africa. In the play, the workload is bigger: Eight actors play approximately thirty roles, many of them important in some way.
  • The BBC version of The Chronicles of Narnia has Barbara Kellerman doubling up to play Jadis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the hag who wishes to resurrect Jadis in Prince Caspian and the Lady of the Green Kirtle in The Silver Chair. The latter has fueled the Fanon that Jadis and the Green Lady are actually the same person.
  • On Dispatches From Elsewhere, the leaders of the two battling groups — Octavio Coleman, Esq., and Commander 14 — are both played by Richard E. Grant. It turns out to be an in-universe example of Making Use of the Twin, as the actors hired to play them are twin brothers. And in fact took turns playing each character.
  • Doctor Who makes a plot point out of the casting of Peter Capaldi, though it does take a season and a half to ultimately pay off. Capaldi had played Lobus Caecilius in "The Fires of Pompeii", a full five years before his casting as the Twelfth Doctor. The Doctor had subconsciously chosen the face of Lobus during his regeneration to keep the spirit of Donna Noble's words alive in this brand new regeneration cycle. His former best friend's desperate pleas for the Doctor to "just save someone" results in him rescuing the Caecilius family, an event which comes full circle as he remembers Pompeii in "The Girl Who Died".
    • In addition, Capaldi also played a government official named John Frobisher in the Torchwood spin-off series. While it's not known for certain, Word of Saint Paul is that Frobisher is an identical descendant of Caecilius. There's a certain dichotomy there, as Caecilius and his family survive the eruption of Vesuvius thanks to the Doctor, while Frobisher ends up killing himself and his entire family.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • Tobin Bell voices Dr. Alchemy as well as Savitar. This is because Savitar is using the Philosopher's Stone to take control of Julian Albert's mind and force him to take the role of Doctor Alchemy.
    • John Wesley Shipp plays three characters who are in some way parental figures or predecessors of Barry Allen: his father Henry Allen, Jay Garrick of Earth-3, and Barry Allen of Earth-90. There is some suggestion that these characters are Alternate Selves, but they're more distinct than most alternate selves in the series, even the evil ones, not even sharing a namenote .
    • Similarly, Michelle Harrison, in addition to playing Nora Allen, Henry's wife and Barry's mother, also plays Jay's wife Joan and "Speedforce Nora", an entity that takes Nora's form because it sees Barry as family.
  • If by "significant" you mean "because it's funny", there's a handful of scenes in Home Movie: The Princess Bride where actors act opposite themself.
    • Jennifer Garner plays Buttercup during her introduction to the town as princess, and is also the Booer.
    • Nick Kroll plays Inigo, Vizzini, and Fezzik, all opposite himself, for part of the scene where they're sailing away after kidnapping Buttercup.
    • Catherine Reitman portrays both Inigo and Fezzik in the scene just prior to the climax where they're scoping out Humperdinck's castle with a still-unconscious Westley. Westley's played by a Fake Shemp in all of Reitman's shots.
    • Penélope Cruz plays both Buttercup and Prince Humperdinck for the scene where Buttercup's reluctantly getting ready for the wedding and insists to Humperdinck that Westley will save her. Her husband Javier Bardem couldn't play Humperdinck because he was already slated to play Inigo later on.
  • Irma Vep: Alicia Vikander in the series plays both Mira, who is playing Irma Vep in the modern Show Within a Show, but also Musidora, the French actress who'd first played the character in Les Vampires seen through many flashbacks to its 1915 production. This is shown as Mira slowly becomes Irma over time.
  • Kamen Rider Revice has Wataru Hyuga as both Daiji Igarashi and Daiji's Inner Demon, Kagero. Besides being Daiji's Demon, Kagero is shown to be the Yin to Kagero's Yang, [[spoiler:as when Kagero disappears after his "death" to give Daiji access to the Holy Wing Vistamp, Daiji's sense of justice becomes more and more distorted.
  • "Murder, She Wrote" features Angela Lansbury as the protagonist J.B. Fletcher. Two episodes, 'Sing a Song of Murder' and 'It Runs in the Family,' also have her playing her hammy British cousin, Emma MacGill. The latter episode is solely Emma, but both star in the former.
  • In The Orville, Michaela McManus portrays a Krill schoolteacher named Teleya and Captain Mercer's new love interest Lieutenant Janel Tyler. On the one hand, casting the same actor multiple times isn't unusual in Star Trek, which The Orville is an homage of. On the other, Janel turns out to be Teleya after Magic Plastic Surgery, infiltrating the Orville in order to get Ed kidnapped for his command codes.
  • Power Rangers:
    • Done by sheer coincidence in Power Rangers Mystic Force: when adapting Mahou Sentai Magiranger, the producers realized that Machiko Soga had played Rita Repulsa in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the very first series, as well as the Mystic Mother in Mystic Force. The Mystic Mother is eventually admitted by Udonna to have been "known as Rita in the dark days." The fact that Rita had been hit by the purification wave unleashed by Zordon's Heroic Sacrifice in the Power Rangers in Space finale provided a convenient method for them to be the same person.
    • In Power Rangers Beast Morphers, the Big Bad Evox is apparently voiced by Randall Ewing, who curiously has no prior voice credits. Then comes the endgame of season 2, and Evox reveals himself to be the reincarnation of Power Rangers RPM's Big Bad, Venjix — who is voiced by Andrew Laing. Take the fact that "Randall Ewing" is a near-anagram of "Andrew Laing" and put two and two together.
  • Red Dwarf
    • In the episode "Dimension Jump", Ace is Rimmer's Alternate Self, as Spanners is for Lister, but Mellie (Hattie Hadridge), the Chaplain (Danny John-Jules), and Bongo (Robert Llewellyn) can't be alternates to Holly, the Cat, and Kryten because they're humans; they just form the same circle as Rimmer's sort-of-friends do.
    • In the episode "The Last Day", Jim Reaper, the Divadroid International representative who announces that Kryten is obsolete, is also played by Robert Llewellyn, hence the laugh when he points out that the Series 4000 mechanoid is "quite amazingly ugly".
  • Scrubs: Later, in the series, Laverne dies and her replacement Shirley is played by the same actress. Laverne was killed off because they thought the show would be ending that year, but when it continued, Bill Lawrence fulfilled a promise to cast the actress in another role. Note that only J.D. notices a similarity, but it's played for laughs as even then he can't quite place it.
  • On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Max Grodenchik plays Rom, the younger and less-respected brother of Quark the bartender. In one specific episode ("Body Parts"), Quark has a dream where he's in the Divine Treasury (Ferengi Heaven) and meets Gint, the first Grand Nagus — who is also played by Max Grodenchik, a similarity that Quark immediately notes. On the one hand, it helps represent that fact that Rom, despite being the resident Cloud Cuckoolander, also has a sense of practicality that Quark often doesn't, with Gint trying to give Quark some practical advice. On the other hand, it also foreshadows the fact that Rom will become the next Grand Nagus.

    Music 
  • In the video for Paul McCartney's "Pipes of Peace", which focuses on an English soldier and a German soldier during the 1914 Christmas truce, McCartney plays both soldiers.
  • In the video for Poets of the Fall's Obsession Song "Carnival of Rust", vocalist Marko Saaresto plays both the decaying, monochrome Sad Clown automaton Zoltar, who sings the song, and the flamboyantly dapper, ever-grinning human barker Mr. Greed, underscoring that Zoltar's attitude towards love is dysfunctional.
  • In the video for Sublime''s "Date Rape", the two people who deliver Laser-Guided Karma upon the date rapist (the judge who sentences him to prison and his cellmate who subjects him to Prison Rape) are both played by former porn star Ron Jeremy.

    Radio 
  • Big Finish Doctor Who: Done interestingly in their first audio drama, the multi-Doctor story The Sirens of Time. The first three parts have the Seventh, Fifth and Sixth Doctors respectively on a prison planet, a U-boat and a starcruiser. The companion-substitute characters are all voiced by Sarah Mowatt (and have similar names), but while this proves to be a significant plot point, there's more theme casting elements that are "invisible" within the story. The captains in the Fifth and Sixth Doctor episodes are both voiced by Mark Gatiss, with their lieutenants voiced by John Wadmore (Sixth does lampshade this by telling Pilot Azimendah "people like you" are always pointing guns at him). The prison commandant in the Seventh Doctor episode is also voiced by Wadmore (one might assume he has a superior somewhere who would have been voiced by Gatiss had he appeared). And in the final part Gatiss and Wadmore both play Knights of Veleysha with Mowatt as their Knight Commander.
  • In the original The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978), Bill Wallis plays both Prosser (the man in charge of demolishing Arthur's house to make way for a new road) and Jeltz (the alien in charge of demolishing Arthur's planet to make way for a new hyperspace route).

    Theatre 
  • Angels in America:
    • When Prior goes into Heaven at the end of the play, each of the other seven actors in the show plays a member of the Council of Angels. When Prior wakes up afterwards in his hospital bed, he goes The Wizard of Oz on Belize, Emily, and Hannah ("And You Were There!").
    • Even in the HBO Mini Series—where some of the more outlandish uses of Significant Double Casting are ditched—Jeffrey Wright (Belize), Emma Thompson (Emily), Meryl Streep (Hannah), and Ben Shenkman (Louis) all still double as featured angels, and all four of them still appear in the scene after Prior wakes up.
  • Arcadia explicitly instructs the character of Augustus and his mute, mysterious descendant Gus (180 years later) to be played by the same person. It's left oddly ambiguous as to whether the two are actually the same character.
  • In Assassins, the Baladeer and Lee Harvey Oswald are often played by the same actor. The Baladeer, who represents a naive view of the American Dream, becomes Oswald at the end of "Another National Anthem". In that number, the Baladeer, the Proprietor, and the Assassins have a verbal duel over their visions of America, and the Baladeer loses. Double casting allows this transformation into Oswald, who is the epitome of the Assassins and their view of the failures of the American idea.
  • Some stagings of As You Like It have Duke Senior and Duke Frederick played by the same actor, since they're brothers and don't appear on stage at the same time.
  • The Narrator in Blood Brothers plays several bit parts as well, all of which he plays for a reason. For example, he plays a bus attendant who breaks from reality briefly to impart ominous words to Mrs. Johnstone, before stepping back into character.
  • In the annual production of A Christmas Carol at Seattle's ACT Theatre, the actress playing Scrooge's jilted fiancee Belle in the Past era traditionally also play's Fred's wife in the Present, Adult Past Scrooge's actor plays the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and the Ghost of Christmas Past's actress is (usually) double-cast as the Charwoman in the Bad Future.
  • Equus: The Young Horseman responsible for Alan's first riding experience also plays his favorite horse Nugget. This represents Alan's confusion at his attraction to horses and repulsion towards sex.
  • Hamilton:
    • The play has several double cast roles between the two acts; Jefferson and Lafayette, Mulligan and Madison, Peggy and Maria, and Laurens and Phillip. This introduces parallel/double meanings to the ending of "Alexander Hamilton": Lafayette/Mulligan and Jefferson/Madison both fought with him (in both senses of the phrase — alongside and against), Laurens and Phillip both died for him (Laurens defending emancipation, a passion both men shared, and Philip defending his father's honor), and Peggy and Maria Reynolds both loved him (Peggy as a sister-in-law, and Maria as a way to help her husband blackmail Hamilton, although it's unclear if Maria had actual feelings for Hamilton or not).
    • In addition, one of the ensemble players is referred to as "The Bullet". Along with being the one who represents a literal bullet in the multiple duels, this actress reappears throughout the show in roles that foreshadow death. For example, she plays the last soldier to interact with John Laurens before his death and the woman who tells Phillip Hamilton where to find George Eacker, his future killer.
  • The stage direction notes for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child make a point of stating that young Hermione in the past is to be played by the same actress who plays Rose, the daughter of Ron and Hermione.
  • The Inheritance:
    • E. M. Forster, the fourth-wall-breaking narrative steerer of the first act, and Walter, one of the play's older gay "mentors", are played by the same actor.
    • Both of Toby's ill-advised partners (Adam and Leo) are played by the same actor, who gets a scene where he switches between roles.
  • In Into the Woods, the roles that are usually double-cast are thematically similar:
    • The Big Bad Wolf and Cinderella's Prince are unable to control their appetites, whether in regards to eating or in regards to sex.
    • The Narrator and The Mysterious Man insist on commenting on the action without becoming involved.
    • On the other hand, Cinderella's Mother and Granny would like to be more proactive, but are each unable to, for separate reasons. The Giant is also often voiced by this actress, but that's less for thematic reasons and more because she's one of the few cast members not onstage during those scenes.
  • In Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical, as duality is the theme of the play, all the rich people on the hospital's board of directors (Jekylls) are played by the same actors as poor and sometimes criminal people living in the underbelly of the city (Hydes).
  • While The Lightning Thief has multiple dual-cast roles, the most significant is Luke. The actor playing him will also traditionally play Ares and Percy's ambiguously-abusive stepfather, Gabe, making him the voice behind all of the major antagonists minus Kronos, who doesn't physically appear.
  • In Little Me all seven of the men in Belle's life are played by the same actor.
  • In Little Shop of Horrors, all the characters who encourage Seymour to use Audrey II for fame and fortune, directly or otherwisenote , are usually played by a single actor.
  • This trope is often (if not always) used in productions of Macbeth, with the actor playing King Duncan also being cast as the Porter. Due to the way the stage of the Globe Theatre is laid out, Macbeth would enter onstage after murdering Duncan. After he and Lady Macbeth exit, the same door Macbeth had just walked out of is the door the Porter would have to enter through. Because he's usually played by the same actor who played Duncan it's intended to give the audience a shock, making them think Duncan perhaps survived Macbeth's attempted murder or has returned as a vengeful ghost, giving them the same sensation of confusion, doubt and fear Macbeth is currently feeling. Then he starts speaking in prose (commonly used to denote low-life characters) and the audience realises this is the same actor playing a completely new character as far away from the likes of nobility as is possible.
  • The Man From Mukinupin, which plays around a lot with themes of duality, has no fewer than three pairs of siblings whom the script specifies should be played by one person each: the twin brothers Jack and Harry, one or other of whom is the title character; their love interests, the half-sisters Polly and Lily; and the sisters' father Eek and his brother Zeke. Another actor plays three roles, all of whom affect Jack and Polly's romantic trajectory in various ways.
  • William Shakespeare used this trope in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Theseus and Hippolyta, the betrothed royals of Athens, are frequently played by the same actors who play Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the faeries. Different productions have used this trope to contrast the daylight world of Athens and the nighttime faerie world.
  • Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 has Prince Andrey and his cruel, decrepit father played by the same actor to emphasize that the two are much alike. Most characters in the show believe that Andrey's fiancee Natasha is ruining her life by running away with another man, but the casting implies that she's actually dodging a bullet.
  • Our Countrys Good is set in Australia's early convict settlement, with some scenes depicting life among the convicts and others showing the leaders of the colony arguing about the best way to run the settlement. With the exception of the central role of Lieutenant Clark, every actor who plays one of the freemen also plays one of the convicts, and vice versa.
  • Peter Pan: Both Mr. Darling, the stern authority figure that tries to spoil the children's fun, and Captain Hook, the main antagonist also out to ruin the children's fun (by killing them), are usually played by the same actor. This tradition is usually continued in other Peter Pan media. (Although apparently to begin with J.M. Barrie wanted Captain Hook to be played by the same actress as Mrs. Darling!)
  • In Reefer Madness, one character who plays the Moral Guardian narrator also shows up in a number of other roles in the musical, including as Satan tempting the protagonists into using drugs. The implication, confirmed at the end, is basically that he is also an evil tempter in the Moral Guardian role.
  • The Rocky Horror Show opens with a faux cinema worker called The Usherette who's usually played by the same actress as Magenta in the main story.
  • The play Speaking In Tongues has three acts, each featuring four characters. and is written so that four actors can play nine characters: Leon/Nick, Pete/Neil/John, Sonja/Valerie and Jane/Sarah. Averted in the film adaptation Lantana.
  • Sunday in the Park with George typically has the characters from Act One played by the same actors as the characters from Act 2, which is set nearly a hundred years later. Most notably, the actor who plays Georges Seurat in Act 1 plays his secret great-grandson George in Act 2, while the actress who plays love interest Dot in Act 1 plays Marie, Dot's daughter and George's grandmother, in Act 2, highlighting their family connection and the Georges' parallel struggles with art.
  • In The Tales of Hoffmann, some productions have Hoffmann's three lost loves, Olympia, Antonia, and Giulietta, played by the same soprano, and sometimes have her also play the current object of his affections, Stella. It's also common to have the same baritone play the villains of each story, Coppélius, Dr. Miracle, Dapertutto, and Councillor Lindorf, so that Hoffman is continually falling for aspects of the same woman and that he is continually being thwarted by the same man. The 1951 Powell and Pressburger film had different actors for the love interests, but had Robert Helpmann play all four main villains.
  • In Witness for the Prosecution, two roles are always double-cast for reasons that would be a huge spoiler.

    Video Games 
  • 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim: Almost everyone. The story revolves around a time loop, where several characters survive previous loops and come back in next ones. On top of that, these characters are all based on people who built the digital reality the game is set in. This means that all of the main cast members voice at least two different people. Atsumi Tanezaki and Allegra Clark voice four.
  • In the Amnesia: The Dark Descent expansion Justine, both Justine and the nameless player character share an actor, which foreshadows that they're the same person.
  • BlazBlue:
    • In BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, the voice cast listing during the staff roll has the VAs for Hakumen and Nu-13 replaced with question marks. It isn't until the True End that it's revealed that Jin and Hakumen share the same VAs by being the same person, and that Noel and Nu (and later Lambda) share VAs by being clones of the same person, Ragna and Jin's younger sister Saya.
    • On the subject of Saya, they also share their voice with the Murakumo Units mentioned above, but only in flashbacks; the present-day version has a different voice in Japanese and English (barring the original Japanese version of Continuum Shift), which is likely justified by the fact that Chronophantasma reveals Saya has been made into the vessel for Izanami, the goddess of death herself. Presumably, the change in voices is because Izanami is speaking through Saya.
    • An easy-to-miss one: You may notice that some sites mention that Ada Clover/Nirvana talks and that she has the same voice actresses as Litchi Faye-Ling, even though Nirvana pretty much serves as The Voiceless most of the time. However, in one route in Carl's story in Calamity Trigger, he flashes back about a word Ada said, and she was voiced for that one line. How significant? As the series progresses, Carl slowly starts to form a good bond with Litchi and mostly sees her soul to be similar to Ada's.
  • Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow: You'll only get to fight the franchise's overarching villain Dracula in the Arrange Mode, and he's voiced by Soma's (the protagonist of the main mode) voice actor Hikaru Midorikawa. Why? Because Soma is Dracula, and at this point Dracula has completely taken over Soma.
  • In the English dub of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Grant George voices both King Krichevskoy, Laharl's father and predecessor as Overlord, and Recurring Boss Vyers (aka Mid-Boss). The implication (confirmed in an art book) is that Vyers is Krichevskoy brought Back from the Dead by Lamington.
  • Dragon Quest XI: Both the Luminary and Calasmos are voiced by Rasmus Hardiker in the English version, suggesting an innate duality between their respective roles as the harbingers of light and darkness.
  • In all versions of Fatal Frame II, Mio and Yae share voice actresses. The same goes for Mayu and Sae. This is because the ghostly residents of Minakami Village mistake Mio and Mayu for Yae and Sae.
  • Fire Emblem Fates manages to pull this twice:
  • Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location has PJ Heywood voicing the father-son duo of William and Michael Afton, who are repeatedly noted to have a Strong Family Resemblance and who each serve as a Foil to the other.
  • Whereas in the Japanese version of Guilty Gear I-No has been voiced by Kikuko Inoue since her XX debut, in English, she was initially voiced by Tara Platt in Xrd -SIGN-, who was then replaced by Amber Lee Connors for -STRIVE-. Both Inoue and Connors also voice Megumi, Axl's girlfriend and a minor NPC. It's only revealed near the end of -STRIVE- that I-No is an Alternate Timeline version of Megumi who exists in the present game's timeline.
  • Infinity series:
    • In Never7, Haruka's VA is replaced with question marks. This is to disguise the fact that she is the clone of another character, and is played by the same actress.
    • In Ever17, Takeshi and the Kid have the same voice actor, though they are not voiced on their routes and can only be heard on the opposite route. This is to conceal the fact that the "Takeshi" and "Kid" that we see are actually the same person, and not the real characters played as on their routes. Oddly enough, this is also subverted, as the real Takeshi and the second Kid also have the same voice actor, but there is no real reason for all three characters having the same voice actor in-universe; it's just a coincidence. To top it off, Blick Winkel is also voiced by the same actor in the drama CD.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Sora is voiced by Miyu Irino in the Japanese version and Haley Joel Osment in English, while his Nobody Roxas is respectively voiced by Kōki Uchiyama and Jesse Mc Cartney. When Birth by Sleep came out, new hero Ven looked like Roxas and shared his voice actor, while masked antagonist Vanitas had Sora's voice actor. The game revealed that Vanitas looks like Sora under his mask, as he's Ven's Enemy Without and his extraction damaged Ven's heart, forcing him to bond with Sora's to survive and the bond caused Vanitas to shapeshift into a dark version of Sora. As for Ven-Roxas, at the end of the game Ven's half-destroyed heart merges with Sora's, and years later according to Word of God, when Roxas was birthed from Sora he got the remnants of Ven's heart, which is why he looks like Ven.
    • Kairi and Xion, who resembles a black-haired Kairi, also share the same actresses: Risa Uchida in Japanese and Hayden Panettiere and Alyson Stoner in the English versions. It's significant but not in the way it sounds: though it seems Xion is related to Kairi, she is really a Replica of Sora, made from his memories, who takes Kairi's appearance due to her being Sora's strongest memory.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Sheik and Zelda's Voice Grunting are both done by the same actress, Jun Mizusawa, for obvious reasons. This makes Sheik's few voiced grunts (like when she blinds Link with a Deku Nut) a form of foreshadowing as they're actually quite feminine if you manage to listen to the seconds-long clips.
    • The Hero's Shade from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama, who also voiced the adult version of Link in Ocarina. It's strongly implied in-game (and flat-out stated by Word of God) that the Hero's Shade is indeed the spirit of none other than the Hero of Time, come to pass on his knowledge of swordsmanship to his descendant.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Link and Ravio are both voiced by Mitsuki Saiga. The end of the game reveals that Ravio is the Lorulean counterpart to Link, effectively making them the same person. Strangely, this convention does not apply to Zelda (Ayumi Fujimura) and Hilda (Kei Hayami), who likewise are the Hyrule-Lorule equivalents of one another.
    • In the English dub of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the Champions share their voice actors with their corresponding present-day allies to Link, with the unavoidable exception of opposite-sex siblings Mipha and Sidon. The counterpart characters are also given different vocal styles to match their contrasting personalities and ages despite sharing voice actors: for example, Sean Chiplock gives Revali the theatrical and energetic voice of a teen or young adult, while his modern successor Teba an older, gruffer, and terser voice.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has the ancient Sages voiced by the same actors as the Champions from Breath of the Wild, emphasizing how they were Precursor Heroes.
  • Metal Gear:
    • In Metal Gear Solid, both Liquid Snake and Master Miller are voiced by Cam Clarke in English and Banjo Ginga in Japanese, though with notably different voices. That's because throughout the entire game, the real Miller is dead. Liquid has been impersonating him the entire time to manipulate his brother into unknowingly activating Metal Gear REX for him. In later games, Miller's actual voice actor, Robin Atkin Downes, would use a voice very similar to Clarke's to further sell the deception.
    • Pulled again in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. When Raiden first meets Lt. J.G. Iroquois Pliskin, the subtitles actually make sure to explicitly credit Pliskin as being voiced by David Hayter in English and Akio Ōtsuka in Japanese, the same actors as protagonist Solid Snake. What makes things confusing is that the Big Shell station Raiden and Pliskin have infiltrated is said to be held hostage by someone calling themselves Solid Snake, and the real Snake should be dead either way. As it turns out, the "Solid Snake" that's been holding the Big Shell hostage is his brother Solidus, looking and sounding absolutely nothing like the real Snake, who unsurprisingly has been in disguise as Pliskin the whole time. This is muddied by the voice casts between languages: Solidus is also voiced by Akio Ohtsuka in Japanese, but unlike Pliskin has a completely different voice actor in English.
    • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain continues this with Venom Snake/Big Boss and Ishmael from the prologue sharing an actor, an early hint that the latter is the real Big Boss, a fact concealed by his Bandaged Face.
  • Persona:
    • Throughout the series, Personas are the manifestations of one's innermost thoughts and feelings. As such, all Personas share their voice actors with the ones who wield them. This is most notable in Persona 5, where players get to witness the Personas speaking with their other selves before manifesting and Arsène appears before Joker to give him encouragement prior to a turning point in the story. note 
    • In Persona 2, Jun Kurosu and the Joker share voice actors because the Joker is Jun's villainous alter-ego, borne from the false memories implanted in his mind by the Big Bad of his childhood playmate, Maya Amano, burning to death during an arson.
    • In Persona 3, the protagonist, Ryoji, and Pharos are all voiced by Akira Ishida in the Japanese dub, with Yuri Lowenthal or Aleks Le in the English dubs for the original games and Persona 3 Reload respectively. This is because Ryoji is Death, who had been sealed inside the protagonist's subconscious for the past ten years and had picked up some of his humanity, and because Pharos is Ryoji before he is entirely reformed as Death.
    • In Persona 4, the protagonist and Adachi are both voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch in the English dub. While the two characters seem totally unrelated at first, it soon comes to light that they are polar opposites of one another in Izanami's game — Adachi's Persona is even a corrupted version of Izanagi. The funny side of this is that when the two confront each other (and in spin-offs like the anime adaptation and Arena Ultimax), it's just Bosch talking to himself.
  • In Portal 2, GLaDOS and Caroline are both voiced by Ellen McLain. This started out being just for convenience, since they had a "Cave's assistant" character who was originally male and named Greg, but decided they didn't want to hire another voice actor for so few lines. But then it gave the developers the idea of having Caroline be the woman who became GLaDOS via Brain Uploading.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, Jim Ward voices both recurring character Captain Qwark as well as Abercrombie Fizzwidget, the Megacorp CEO. This explains how Qwark is able to successfully impersonate Fizzwidget for most of the game.
  • Shantae: Shantae and her arch-villain Risky Boots share the same voice actress in appearances beginning with Shantae and the Pirate's Curse to further emphasize their parallels as polar opposites yet similarities, to the point where Shantae, at the very end of the game, now wields Risky's entire skillset from her boss fights.
  • Silence: The Whispered World 2 has the two girls that die in the prologue be the guards of the gate from Chapter 3.
  • In Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, the same voice actors voice Jack's companions and the Four Fiends (Ash/Lich, Jed/Kraken, Neon/Marilith and Sophia/Tiamat) that the former would later turn into. Similarly, Jack's VA also voices Darkness Manifest, the game's Final Boss and an entity that bears the likeness of Chaos — the being Jack himself will later become.
  • In the Sunrider series, the Prototypes look identical to the Sunrider's chief engineer Chigara and share their Japanese voice actress with her. Chigara herself is a Prototype, and an unwitting spy embedded in the Sunrider's crew to advance the Alpha Prototype's goals.
  • Tales series:
    • Tales of Symphonia uses the same voice actress for Tabatha, as well as Martel Yggdrassil. While it's not overly withheld from the player that the former is an android, it takes a bit longer to reveal she is a failed attempt at creating a vessel for the latter. So while the two are not identical, they clearly share more than just a color scheme. This culminates in Martel reincarnating as a Summon Spirit by manifesting through Tabatha in the ending.
    • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World does this with Emil Castagnier/Ratatosk and Aster Laker. While this can be credited to Ratatosk taking on Aster's physical form (and Emil's identity) after killing him, we are shown via flashback that they shared a voice even beforehand.
    • In Tales of the Abyss, a couple of the voice actors play more than one character for plot-important reasons — in each case, at least one of the characters they play is a replica. Therefore, in both the Japanese and English versions of the game, Luke and Asch have the same voice actor, and Ion, Sync, and Florian all share the same voice actress.
    • Tales of Xillia 2 also does this for characters and their counterparts from alternate realities. This is done to greatest effect with one of the heroes and the Disc-One Final Boss, with main character Ludger taking on his evil counterpart in Victor. In fact, the main reason Ludger is a Silent Protagonist is to hide this twist.
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Shulk and Zanza, by means of Sharing a Body.
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Consuls N and M look and sound identical to Noah and Mio, respectively. N and M are an Alternate Self of the duo who lost in their quest and wound up as Z's servants.
  • In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Masato Arakawa and Ryo Aoki have the same voice actor because they are the same person, with Masato having changed his name at some point while Ichiban was in prison.
  • In Yandere Simulator, Ayano "Yandere-chan" Aishi shares a voice actress with her mother, and (male) Senpai has the same VA as Yandere-chan's father. Turns out Ryoba was also a Yandere, and Mr. Aishi was her senpai.

    Web Animation 

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time:
    • It's eventually revealed in "Bonnibel Bubblegum" that Punchy, Manfried and Crunchy were all artificial gum people created by Bubblegum to be her family. Crunchy and Manfried's former and current forms share the same voice actors (Tom Kenny and Maria Bamford) but Punchy does not.
    • In "Marcy & Hunson", Marceline sings a love song called "Slow Dance With You", with a female ghost voiced by Hynden Walch doing the backup vocals. The only other character Walch voices is Princess Bubblegum, a character who has a lot of deliberate Ship Tease with Marceline.
  • Ben 10: Omniverse sees both Ben Tennyson's son in the future, Kenny, and Spanner voiced by Scott Menville (replacing Tara Strong in the former role). This is because Kenny is Spanner. On the other hand, Menville also voices Jimmy Jones, the Red Herring for Spanner's identity.
  • Beware the Batman sees Deathstroke and Dane Lisslow voiced by Robin Atkin Downes. Dane turns out to be anagram of Slade Wilson, hence Dane is Deathstroke.
  • In Bojack Horseman, Will Arnett voices Bojack and, in flashbacks, his emotionally distant late father Butterscotch. In a dream sequence near the end of the series, he also voices Bojack's hero and parasocial father figure, the racehorse Secretariat (who Bojack had also portrayed in a biopic). There is some Lampshade Hanging about the "confusing" dream-logic involved in this projection.
  • The Boondocks: Brothers Huey and Riley are both voiced by Regina King. She gives each character a different voice (growing more distinct after Season 1), making the brothers sound like unique individuals yet still sounding related.
  • In Codename: Kids Next Door, three members of Sector V share voice actors with their family members. Numbuh 3/Kuki and her mother Genki are voiced by Lauren Tom, Numbuh 4/Wally and his baby brother Joey are voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, and Numbuh 5/Abby, her older sister Cree, and their mother are voiced by Cree Summer.
  • In the Futurama movie Bender's Big Score, both Philip Fry and Lars Fillmore are voiced by Billy West. They're actually the same person. Lars is an aged time-travel duplicate of Fry who was disfigured by injuries he sustained during the events of the movie. However, Lars' voice is heavily distorted, and Billy West voices many other characters in the show, including every one of Fry's male relatives (past, present, and future). So even if the viewer does realize it's the same voice actor, many don't see the significance of it until The Reveal.
  • In Gargoyles, Kate Mulgrew plays a bit role as Fox's mother. Later, she plays Titania, Queen of The Fair Folk. Coincidence? No. Turns out, they are the same person after all.
  • On Marvel's Spider-Man, the episode "Venom" has Ben Diskin voice both Venom and Flash Thompson. That's because the latter ends up being taken over by the former. Fortunately, it's only for this episode.
  • On Miles from Tomorrowland, Elan Garfias voices Silas and Commander Nemmex. They're one and the same.
  • Miraculous Ladybug: Hawk Moth and Gabriel Agreste share a voice actor in the original French cast and several other dubs. It wasn't until the beginning of the second season that viewers had confirmation that Gabriel was Hawk Moth, although plenty of fans suspected already.
  • In Motorcity, the KaneCo computer system is voiced by Kate Micucci, who also voices Julie. Chris Prynoski confirmed that Kane intentionally programmed his daughter's voice (albeit much deeper-sounding) into the system.
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes has Steven Ogg voice the villainous Professor Venomous and the heroic Laserblast. The latter became the former. He also voices the even-more-villainous Shadowy Figure, who turns out to be Venomous's Split Personality Turbo form.
  • In The Owl House, Zeno Robinson voices Hunter, as well as the previous Golden Guards seen in "Hollow Mind". Later in that episode, it's revealed that Hunter is the latest in a long line of clones, all of which served as the Golden Guard and were murdered when they "betrayed" Belos.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Sweet N Sour" has a trio of baby animals known as the Fluffy Bunch using their cuteness to rob Townsville blind, and if the Powerpuff Girls try to arrest them, they get scolded by the town painted as animal haters. The Fluffy Bunch are voiced by Catherine Cavadini, Tara Strong, and Elizabeth Daily; the actresses for the Powerpuff Girls.
  • In Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, two of the characters that Eric Bauza voices in the series are Splinter and an action hero named Lou Jitsu. They're one and the same as Lou Jitsu is actually the stage name of Hamato Yoshi.
  • Used a few times in the Scooby-Doo franchise regarding "Scooby-Doo" Hoaxes. For example, this is used in Pirates Ahoy! (Ron Perlman voices Captain Skunkbeard and Biff Wellington, and the rest of the pirate crew are the supporting cast), Camp Scare (Dee Bradley Baker voices the three monsters and one of the forest rangers), and so on. In LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash, besides her usual role as Daphne, Grey DeLisle Griffin also voices the ghost pirate Bingo Belle and Laura Holdout. For the most part, this franchise has the perpetrator Cast as a Mask.
  • In the 2018 reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Keston John provides the voices of Hordak and Horde Prime, Hordak's genetic progenitor, along with all his other clones.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Whenever there are multiple instances of a Gem, they share a voice actor; all Pearls are voiced by Deedee Magno Hall, all Amethysts are voiced by Micheala Dietz, etc. The same applies to very similar kinds of gems, like Sapphire and Padparadscha (both Erica Luttrell) or Jasper and a large variety of Quartz-type gems (all voiced by Kimberly Brooks). This reaches truly impressive levels in "Hit the Diamond", where Charlyne Yi voices SIX different Rubies (seven if you count the Ruby fusion) and still makes them sound vocally unique. Despite being entirely different types of gem, Jades and Nephrites also have the same voice actor, mostly to save on casting, but also to reference the historical confusion between their namesakes.
    • Steven and his father's voice actors also voice Onion and his father. Partially this was so they didn't have to cast a new actor for characters that only speak gibberish, but it does emphasize how Onion and Steven play off each other.
    • When Steven goes into Rose's Room, it creates a tiny floating whale voiced by Susan Egan. Egan would later turn out to be the voice of Rose herself. Later, she also voices Pink Diamond, as she's Rose's real identity. This would have been a pretty obvious giveaway, so the show kept Pink Diamond's voice unheard until The Reveal. This eventually leads to an odd sort of inversion in Steven Universe: Future, as we finally hear from some real Rose Quartzes, and it's significant that they are not voiced by Egan (though the voice Kimberly Brooks uses is very similar).
    • All of Steven's plant creatures are voiced by Zach Callison, Steven's VA.
    • "Jungle Moon" has Stevonnie and Priyanka Maheswaran play Pink and Yellow Diamond, respectively, in a dream that Stevonnie has. It serves triple duty — it draws parallels between the human characters (from Connie's memories) and the gems whose roles they're acting out, it means they don't have to go through the trouble of scheduling Patti LuPone for a flashback, and it protects the identity of Pink Diamond's real voice actress (as this was Pink's first appearance).
    • White Pearl is the one exception to the "same-type gems sharing voice actors" rule, but instead shares voice actors with her master White Diamond. This is because she is, in fact, Pink Pearl who is under White Diamond's mind control. As Pink Pearl, both in a flashback and after she is freed, she is voiced by Deedee Magno Hall like other Pearls.
    • Much like Steven's plant creatures, the Pebbles created by Pink Diamond share her voice actor—except for a few, which instead sound like Steven.
  • On Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, Keith David, who voices Malcolm Kane, also voices Number One, the leader of the Tech Men. They're one and the same.
  • In Sym-Bionic Titan, the identity of the man behind G3 is all but explicitly stated — and one of the major giveaways is his voice actor. Both he and Lance's father were voiced by Richard McGonagle.
  • In Totally Spies!, Jennifer Hale voices both Sam and her Alpha Bitch counterpart, Mandy. Of course, Jennifer found herself voicing nearly half the female characters on this series, but the two members of Mandy's Beta Bitch posse are voiced by Sam and Clover's VAs respectively.
  • On The Venture Brothers, creators Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick voice many duos (21 and 24, Billy Quizboy and Pete White, Dr. Girlfriend and The Monarch, Watch and Ward). These duos tend to have similar interactions, i.e., how Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick interact in real life.
  • The Wander over Yonder episode "The Toddler" has Wander and Sylvia looking after a baby that was separated from his parents. Sylvia's angered insistence to everyone passing by that she and Wander aren't the baby's parents is made funnier by the fact that the baby's actual parents have the same voice actors as Wander and Sylvia.
  • Young Justice (2010):

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