Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"When aren't I thinking what you're thinking?"
Sometimes a writer wants to include twins or triplets as characters but doesn't want to give them different personalities. They're just "the twins", for the most part, and even though they might have different first names, they're essentially the same character. The twins aren't really the Creepy Twins or users of Twin Telepathy; they're written just one character in two separate bodies and have only one personality between the two of them. There's no real difference between the two, and they're generally presented as one consciousness split between two bodies and are never apart.
The opposite of Different As Night And Day. If they're on a superhero or villain team of some sort, they'll often be counted as a "single" member (like the Witches 5 from Sailor Moon - which was actually six girls, but two of them were twins).
Real twins usually cringe when they see this trope anywhere, seeing as how most of them dislike having their individuality marginalized.
On occasion, this trope can occur with characters who are not twins, or even related — most likely Those Two Guys.
Examples:
Anime/Manga
- As mentioned above, Ptilol and Cyprine from Sailor Moon, who were really one person in two bodies.
- Up until they can't agree on how to kill someone, anyway.
- Despite so little screentime, Phobos/Deimos, Lethe/Mnyomesene, and Chi/Phi might be like this. Chi and Phi seem to be one-minded in wanting to kill the senshi, anyway.
- Pyun and Potaro from Dai Mahou Touge.
- Jougan and Barinbou, the twin Big Guys from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. They are never seen apart from each other, and while they don't finish each other's sentences, they often do split a complete statement between them, with one taking one full sentence and the other taking the next.
- Imari and Sayoka from Inukami
- Subverted in Ouran High School Host Club with identical twins Hikaru and Kaoru: they start out following this trope to a tee, speaking together and finishing one another's sentences, but by the middle of the series they've developed entirely distinct personalities... and Kaoru even recognizes that this trope is unhealthy and takes steps to try and avoid it.
- Even before that, it was early on established that Kaoru was passive and Hikaru was aggressive, both on and off stage. Later on it is revealed that they put on an imitation of this trope to drive people away. When Haruhi manages to see through this act, they start loosening up, to the point where their true personalities start showing.
- Emi and Yumi in Irresponsible Captain Tylor.
- Ai and Ren from Kanokon
- The Autobot Clones and Decepticon Clones in Transformers Headmasters.
- Hansel and Gretel from Black Lagoon. Sure they are presented as different personalities with different genders, until they switch the gender between them.
- Yu Fang and Yu Lan from Full Metal Panic. Though they do split up every now and then for certain missions. However, they appear to have pretty much the same personality.
- Ranma One Half has two sets of Single Minded Twins; one unique to the anime, one to the manga. The anime has Ling-Ling & Lung-Lung, who aren't identical twins (with different hair colours, eye colours, weapons and hair styles), but nevertheless act as functionally one person. The manga has Pink & Link, who act like this when they come to Nerima, but are portrayed as being Different As Night And Day in their backstory.
- The first movie, Big Trouble in Nekonron, China, has the Lucky Gods Daikokusei and Daihakusei, two Go-playing siblings who are functionally identical. The only difference between them is that one plays white and the other plays black.
- Jasdero & Devit from D.Gray-Man. Literally.
- The second season of The Slayers has a pair of these; identical twin martial artists who want to be famous pop idols and who get into a fight over what Lina thinks is a book of spells, but turns out to be a collection of lost folk remedies. For added measure, Mimi and Nene are physically identical to Ranma One Half's Shampoo.
- The Tachibana twins, Masao and Kazuo, in Captain Tsubasa. They're also Genre Savvy to the point of using their single-mindness as a game strategy.
- The Twin card from Cardcaptor Sakura. They move in perfect symmetrical unison and can only be sealed after being beaten simultaneously, as they're pretty much just two halves of a single entity.
- In the increasingly-weird later novels based on the {{Doom} games, the main characters encounter a member of a species of aliens that look vaguely like upright-walking gorillas and are born as Single Minded Twins. They choose the name, for ease of use of the humans, "Sears & Roebuck".
Comedy
- Bob And Ray had a pair of recurring characters named Clyde and Claude McBeeBee, non-identical twin bandleaders who went everywhere together and always spoke in unison.
- One comedienne (whose name escapes This Troper at the moment) specifically cites and mocks this trope. "I have a twin brother. People are always asking me things like, 'You're twins; can you hear each other's thoughts an' stuff?' 'Yeah. Oh, hang on...he thinks you're an idiot.' "
Comic Books
- Triplicate Girl (AKA Duo Damsel, AKA Triad), of the Legion Of Super Heroes, could (at different times in the various storylines) split into either two or three.
- Simlarly, Marvel's Multiple Man.
- Ladyhawk, a supporting character(s) in Spider-Girl, is/are a set of twins sharing the same superhero name and identity (so they can operate at full-time for a single hero while still maintaining private lives). They are implied to have distinct personalities, but since their screen-time is so limited, the only observable difference is that one of them is more experienced.
- The Stepford Cuckoos (Celeste, Esme, Mindee, Phoebe, and Sophie) in the X-men family of books, are identical quintuplets and form a "Five-in-One" telepathic mind. Later events show the "hive" mind splintering, leading to the deaths of Esme and Sophie.
- Greg Land uses this as an excuse to draw even less that usual. Cue copy/paste. He also makes their breasts huge. Like rivaling Emma Frost Huge. They're about 16ish. (But then what else is new?)
- Though never explicitly stated (it's implied to be the result of a string of freak coincidences), Batman villains the Trigger twins. They first met when they both attempted to rob the same bank, only to discover their exact resemblance to one another. Ever since, neither of them has ever seemed to come up with an idea the other hadn't been thinking of as well.
- The Thompson Twins in Tintin, who are not technically twins but are virtually indistinguishable - the only difference is their moustaches. Furthermore, in the original French, they were known as Dupont & Dupond, which are even pronounced identically - this was kept up at least to some extent in most translations, including English, where they are known as Thompson and Thomson.
- In standard English Thompson and Thomson are pronounced identically as well, by anyone who isn't consciously trying to demonstrate how they pronounce them differently.
Fan Fiction
- An author going by "persian85033" has produced an X Men Evolution fanfic
 involving, may God help us, the Single Minded Dectuplets Maria Xoaquina, Maria Xitlalli, Maria Xaviera, Maria Xacinta, Maria Ximena, Maria Xiomara, Maria Xochilt, Maria Xosefina, Maria Xulia, and Maria Xamila, who literally refuse to be separated even for the length of a single school period: the entire school has to be rearranged so that they can be in the same room for every class.
Film
- The Corsican Brothers, as portrayed by Cheech and Chong.
- In The Prestige, "Borden" is actually a pair of twins who have spent their whole life letting everyone else think they are a single person; whenever they appear together in public, one is heavily disguised, and they switch roles as necessary. The only flaw in the plan is that they fall in love with different women.
- The Twins from Matrix Reloaded, probably justified seeing as how they are computer programs.
Twin #1: We are getting aggravated.
Twin #2: Yes, we are.
- Don't forget Fanty and Mingo from Serenity.
Fanty: Domestic troubles?
Mingo: Domestic troubles?
- Numbers 3 & 4 from the movie Nine, both of which are very skittish, are very curious about the world, and never talk.
- Skids and Mudflap from the Transformers film series, both portrayed as rednecks trying to be gangstas. Skids, however, is somewhat more aggressive and intelligent then his brother (and also has a slight case of hero-worship for Optimus Prime), even though Mudflap is probably the better fighter and driver.
Literature
- Fred and George Weasley from Harry Potter, at least superficially.
- Rowling specifically envisioned slightly different personalities to the twins. Fred is braver and more outgoing and is the "leader," while George is more clever but meeker. The difference is very subtle due to their limited screen time, and their enjoyment of using this trope on their mother. To her credit, many found it surprising that Fred was the one who died, stating that George's personality made him the more obvious victim.
- Of course, this trope is in effect in full force in the aftermath, given that George marries Fred's love interest.
- Sam and Eric from The Lord of the Flies. Throughout the book, their names evolve from "Sam and Eric" to "Sam 'n' Eric" and, finally, "Samneric", cementing them as one person. The only time they talk independently is after their camp is raided showing how effed up everything is getting. Even their description supports this idea - their skin looks stretched tight across their bones, as if they don't have enough skin between them.
- In the Spider Robinson book Lady Sings the Booze, Arethusa is literally a pair of single minded twins, two women who from birth were telepathic with each other to a constant degree, combined with some weird superstition in their parents, caused them to grow up as a single person in two bodies.
- The Twins from Eragon. No one even bothers to know their names, but since they're cartoonishly evil (bald, arrogant, and hissing) it apparently doesn't much matter how they're treated.
- What their names were doesn't really matter, especially after their unfortunate encounter with an axe.
- Actually, the Twins don't have names. Ajihad says to Eragon "I would tell you their names, but they don't have one".
- In another rare use of the 'One person, Two bodies' ploy, Miss Level, a village witch first met in Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld), was born with two bodies, and people assumed her to be a set of twins, "then they thought [she] was evil." She lives a very prosaic existence for someone with two bodies. She meets an unusual end: when only one of her bodies is killed, she survives, though is weakened from the blow, and eventually finds that she still remembers how to use two bodies, and thus, being a witch, gains basically telekinetic abilities.
- Ursula K. Le Guin's short story Nine Lives featured 10 clones who were essentially one being. When nine of them died in an accident, the survivor considered himself "nine-tenths dead" and nearly lost his will to live.
- Ian McDonald's Desolation Road (set in the far future) had an incident with two clone-assassins, AlphaJohn and BetaJohn. They were two clones who were one being, with perfect telepathic connection, having the advantages of sharing all their senses. The victim realizes that he can shoot one of them, and they'll both die. So he does that.
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Shakespeare's Hamlet are an example of characters who are not related, but function as a single character to the point that, according to some interpreters, other characters sometimes don't know which is which.
- In The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix, there are the twins of the Clayr, Sanar and Ryelle. It is noted that their souls are bound around eachother too tightly for even magic to treat them as separate beings.
- Used on two separate occasions by David Eddings: in The Belgariad and in Regina's Song
- Used in some form in A Breath Of Snow And Ashes in the Outlander series, with Jo and Kezzie. Namely, in that they end up mutually devoted-- and married to-- the same woman, and there's a bit of a kerfluffle over whether it's "really" bigamy or not, if twins can be taken as the same soul shared between two bodies. Yeah. It's a bit weird.
Live Action TV
- Subverted on Odyssey Five, Kelsey and Bodanis, two of Neal's computer Geek friends are twins who are very similiar, but when the Very Special Episode about evil AI mindcontrol drugs came around, Kelsey was hit and Bodanis asked Neal for help.
- In Quark, there are the Bettys (played by a pair of Doublemint gum twins) who can't decide which one is the clone (answer: the pretty one).
- Corey and Trevor in Trailer Park Boys are a non-related example.
- Mahou Sentai Magiranger's Nightmare Sisters aren't even identical, but almost all of Mea's lines amount to the last one or two words of whatever Nai just said. (Of course, they're both halves of a vampire queen who split herself because she got lonely.)
- Power Rangers RPM has Gem and Gemma, who don't appear to be capable of independent thought (or speech; the page quote is probably the only time they don't finish each other's sentences). For all intents and purposes, they are one person in two bodies. No explanation is made of this. In fact, its not even commented upon.
- At least, not initially. Six episodes after their first appearance, they finally begin to be split up (though usually not by their own choice) and are given individual plot threads and slow-going characterization. However, it's doubtful they'll ever lose the singleminded-ness, except on the rare occasions they disagree on something (when they do disagree, its generally about romance, with Gem being overprotective of Gemma).
- Double Trouble, a duo of recurrent villains in Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego. Their description reads: "Two guys, one mind, no shame".
- Averted in Star Trek Voyager. When the oft-mentioned but never-seen Delaney twins from Steller Cartography finally make an appearance, one of them is attracted to Harry Kim, much to his annoyance as Harry prefers her sister. When a nonplussed Tom Paris points out that it shouldn't make any difference, Harry proceeds to list a number of character differences between the two, ending with "that cute dimple on her right cheek."
Philosophy
- In his book I Am a Strange Loop, philosopher-scientist Douglas Hofstadter describes an Alternate Universe called "Twinwirld", in which (almost) everyone is a pair of Single Minded Twins, called a "pairson". (Single births are called "halflings" and considered unbelievably pitiful.) This is an analogy for the two hemispheres of the brain.
Tabletop Games
- Alpharius and Omegon from Warhammer 40 K are described as "two bodies with a single soul".
- Dungeons And Dragons featured a race called the Dvati who were based on this trope. Each "individual" Dvati was a pair of empathically linked identical twins.
Video Games
- Timmy and Tommy Nook from Animal Crossing, who both say the same lines, with little gray words at the end representing the other one saying it at the same time.
- Ami and Mami from The Idolm@ster.
- Psyme in Sigma Star Saga has younger triplet sisters who share a single mind and possess incredible psychic powers. For the level they appeared in they also served the purpose of Creepy Triplets as well as a Fetch Quest. Possibly justified, since they're from an alien race.
- Zorn and Thorn, from Final Fantasy IX. They habitually repeat what the other says, and merge into one freaky boss for their final boss fight.
- In the backstory for Xenogears (as revealed in the games Perfect Works book) Miang's incarnation during the Zeboim era is as a set of identical twins, making this another example of the "one person two bodies" variant
- An odd variation is taken in Rune Factory 2. Sera and Serina are twins who you are told are very different because one is "bookish", while the other is "sporty". In actual fact, however, they are separated in only one quest, where one begs you to reunite her with the other, at that, and not only like doing the same things, but count as one person in your menu, and giving items to one counts as giving it to the other. As a second-generation romantic option, dating one means dating the other, and they even complete (or simply repeat and enunciate upon) each other's sentences. Thanks to a probably-unintentional bug, they're even available as romantic interests to a female PC.
- Ashley and Sidney Webber of Backyard Sports are like this. Achmed and Amir Khan have similar personalities, but have opposite abilities.
- Koume and Kotome from Ocarina of Time. Despite representing two opposing forces of nature, they literally combine to create the most disturbing porn star ever.
Web Comics
- In Schlock Mercenary, T'Chukk is from a race of bicameral lifeforms; he's a single being in two bodies, synced by radio. A bit of hyperspace communications augmentation, and he's able to be his own wingman in the crew's fighter craft wing.
- Gemini Gold/Silver in Triquetra Cats
Web Original
- Hamburger Pattie of the League Of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions could split into two and become a Double Pattie.
- Void Dogs has Nick Bradley, clone lifer (a subculture that emulates this trope through a mix of cloning and memory merging).
- The popular You Tube video "Shoes" references this when the mother of a pair of twins asks "Don't they have the same thoughts?" Nothing could be further from the truth.
Western Animation
- Sherri and Terri in The Simpsons.
- Jim and Tim from Kim Possible.
- Also Wego; they even shared the same name. They have self-duplication as a superpower.
- The Bully Brothers from The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop.
- Tomax and Xamot from GI Joe.
- Walt Disney's Huey, Dewey and Louie, who were scripted, and treated, as one character in their earlier appearances.
- It's already implied above, but This Troper feels she should mention that their later appearances had them with differing personalities.
- Charles and Mambo from Duckman.
- Más Y Menos from Teen Titans; they actually have to be touching to use their super-powers.
- Hip and Hop from the Western Super Mario Bros cartoons, based loosely on the Iggy and Lemmy (who had no such relation) from the games Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario World. Mario fandom is fond of the cartoon personalities of all the Koopalings, however, and so uses this trope but the games' names.
- Notably averted in Invasion America, which had Sonya and Simon, a pair of psychically linked twins with super-powers which were stronger when they touched each other... and still gave them different personalities and independent character arcs.
- Bill and Ben in Thomas The Tank Engine (and to a far lesser extent, Donald and Douglas, although they are more independent of each other).
- Skarloey and Rheneas. Both started out as young and hot-tempered but at 140 years old they have mellowed out quite a bit.
- Al and Moo Sleech from the Nicktoon Doug.
- In the Batman Beyond movie, Dee-Dee/The Deeds/Delia & Deidre Dennis are twin sisters who may as well be two halves of one person. Besides looking and talking exactly the same (both twins are rapidly and amusingly voiced by Melissa Joan Hart), they move and fight in incredibly effective teamwork. Just goes to show how devastating it would be if villains didn't attack the hero one at a time...
- In Justice League Unlimited they return for an episode set in a time travel corrupted future where they're given the power to duplicate, making even more copies with the same single mind.
- Walter and Perry of Home Movies aren't related, but they are never apart (and almost always holding hands). Their less-than-totally-innocent relationship makes them essentially one character.
- Ian and Jeremy from Barbie And The Diamond Castle.
- Jetfire and Jetstorm from Transformers Animated. It's made all the more literal after they are badly injured and implanted with Starscream's programming during an experiment in allowing Autobots to fly. Besides being able to turn into jets, they gain the ability to combine into a single form known as Safeguard.
- Tad and Chad on The Fairly Oddparents are a variation. They aren't related, but other than different skin colors they could be twins.
|
|
