Replacement Goldfish / Anime & Manga

• Nuku Nuku from All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku is not quite a Replacement Goldfish, in that the scientist takes the brain of the cat he struck in an accident and resurrects it in the body of a hyper-powered, incredibly cute cybernetic cat-brained girl.
• Astro Boy is the replacement for Tobio, the son Doctor Tenma lost in a car accident. It's especially tragic because Tenma had realised that he was so obsessed with developing a super-robot that he forgot to pay attention to his son, and the accident involved a robotic car that Tenma had given him as an apology. Tenma gives Astro incredible superpowers, partly to prevent anything bad from happening to the replacement. Interestingly, Tenma has an incredibly hard time dealing with it, especially when he realises that his robot son can't grow up (even though he was presumably designed that way). Pluto throws the additional wrinkle of Tenma rejecting Atom because he's too perfect and thus could never hope to be who Tobio really was. Different adaptations give Tenma varying degrees of tension with his creation, but it wasn't until the 2009 movie that Tenma could accept Astro as a different but equally valid son. There's a reason we use Astro Boy as the illustrative example on Unbuilt Trope.
• In Attack on Titan Zeke spent a lot of time playing catch with Tom Xavier, the man who eventually became his mentor and father figure. Xavier eventually admits that he once had a son who was killed as an infant; playing catch with Zeke was in some ways an attempt to recapture the happiness he never got to experience.
• Zeo in Beyblade. In the anime, he is a robot replacement to the original Zeo. In the manga, instead, he is Zeo's younger brother Leon who was brainwashed to behave exactly like his dead older brother.
• In The Big O anime, R. Dorothy Wayneright was an android created as a surrogate for the deceased daughter of her creator.
• Subverted in the Black Cat anime, where, for an episode, Train meets a girl who is physically identical to Saya. The thing is, he never really shows much romantic interest towards her, and ends up leaving and forgetting about her. Which certainly contributes to the idea of his character — that he loved Saya's carefree way of life, not that he romantically loved her. Therefore, since the girl had a completely different way of life and occupation, he certainly wouldn't be all that interested in her.
• An episode of Black Jack 21 has the good doctor (and his assistant/adopted daughter/wife, Pinoco) befriend a young guy living in a developing country. Originally one half of a pair of identical twins, his brother was adopted as a Replacement Goldfish for a wealthy man whose child (who looked identical to the brothers) perished in the same flood that rendered the twins orphans. The man hid the death of their child from his wife, and thus couldn't adopt both of them, forcing the twins to be separated, and the adopted twin to act like the long-dead boy in order to avoid breaking the heart of his adopted mother. (On top of this, she was injured during the flood and was left with a delicate health.) Cue his twin brother winding up mortally ill and in dire need of a kidney-transplant...and only one compatible donor in the city.
• Case Closed:
  • Taken to both very creepy and very heartbreaking extremes. 14 years ago, the daughter of a Tokyo daycare worker ran away from home. Her very mentally/emotionally frail mother tried to commit suicide several times, developed an eating disorder and had to be hospitalised; her despair was so deep that her husband and younger brother decided to kidnap a child from the husband's workplace and raise him/her as their own, so she'd be able to start from zero and regain the will to live again. Too bad the woman chose a little girl named Ran Mouri as the target, right at the moment when Shinichi Kudo was trying to befriend her: Shinichi went Properly Paranoid and told his parents Yusaku and Yukiko about the teacher's odd behavior... so Yusaku easily realised what would happen, alerted the police (including Ran's Papa Wolf Kogoro), had both wife and brother arrested, then talked the husband into turning himself too in exchange for being reunited with the daughter, whom he had previously located.
  • Inspector Shiratori tries to pursue Kobayashi-sensei after previously failing to court Miwako. When Kobayashi saw Miwako while visiting the station, and saw how much they look alike, she assumed that Shiratori just saw her as Miwa's Replacement Goldfish and tries to avoid him afterwards. However, it was revealed that the girl Shiratori first fell in love with was actually Kobayashi, and his initial pursuits of Miwako was a case of Wrong Girl First.
• In Chobits, Minoru's persocom Yuzuki was a replacement for his sister (whom you might recognize as Kaede from Angelic Layer). It should be noted, though, that he eventually understands what he is doing to Yuzuki and decides to stop updating his sister's personality into her. Also, the whole thing might be insane if it came from a scientist with no interest for ethics, but it's understandable since he's a lonely 12-year-old who needs some kind of emotional protector.
• The second season of Code Geass has Rolo, who was inserted into Lelouch's modified memories by Emperor Charles as part of a backup plan should Lelouch ever realize who he truly is.
• In Cosmo Warrior Zero, the new first mate, Marina Oki, looks EXACTLY like Captain Zero's late wife, though strangely unlike most examples - it's not really touched on when Zero starts falling for her.
  • Galaxy Express 999's Maetel has a startling resemblance to Kid Hero Tetsuro's Missing Mom. This is not a coincidence...
• In Cross Game, the characters meet Akane who happens to look exactly like Wakaba, Kou's dead love interest and the Tsukushima family's daughter. Subverted in that Kou and Akane don't end up together, and the main characters theorize (somewhat bizarrely) that Akane was sent by Wakaba to let them know that it's okay to move on. Yeah, whatever lets you sleep at night, bub.
• Honey Kisaragi in Cutey Honey, a robotic replica / partial clone of the daughter that Dr. Kisaragi lost. Before dying, however, Dr. Kisaragi reassured her that she was her own person and said that he loved her all the same.
• In Daytime Shooting Star, we see in the special centered on him Shishio meets a new girl who is essentially a grown-up, mangaka version of Suzume.
• The Millennium Earl from D.Gray-Man uses this trope in what could be the most sadistic and horrible way ever invented. He takes advantage of the grief of somebody and offers him a Replacement Goldfish of the loved one that he lost. This wouldn't be that bad if the replacement wasn't an Eldritch Abomination that will kill the person who invoked it and use his body as a disguise so it can wander outside looking for more victims without being spotted. Not to mention that the soul of the invoked one will be permanently attached to the monster until an exorcist frees it.
• In Digimon Adventure Masami and Yoshie Izumi had a baby son, but he died before he turned one year old. Almost at the same time, Masami's cousin and his wife died in a car crash, leaving their own baby son Koushirou behind. Therefore the Izumis took Koushirou in at first to recover from the death of their child, but in the end they loved him like he was their actual biological kid.
• This shows up occasionally in the Doll manga series with people trying to use the titular Ridiculously Human Robots as Replacement Goldfish. In one story, a little boy who is neglected by his mother is given a Doll that looks exactly like her for Christmas. When the boy tells his real mother that it's okay that she ignores him because he doesn't need her any more, she has a Heel Realization — which might have been the Doll's creator's goal all along. In another story, a woman who lost her son when a Doll accidentally drowned him in the bathtub and formed an anti-Doll terrorist group in response and begins to see the enforcer Doll (that looks like a young boy) that was sent to stop the group as a replacement son. The inventor of the Dolls nearly went through with this after his wife — who helped invent the Dolls — succumbed to a neurological disease that left her a listless shadow of her former self. In his grief, he designed a Doll that looked exactly like her and uploaded her memories into the Doll. When the Doll is activated and greets him with his wife's voice, he embraces it in joy — but stops when the Doll calls him "Master". Coming to his senses, the man devotes himself to taking care of his invalid wife.
• Midori Wakatsuki's foster parents in Eden no Hana adopted her to fill in the blank left by the tragic death of her biological daughter Reika. Her mentally-broken foster mom treats her with relative kindness, but calls her by the dead little girl's name and acts as if Midori was the real Reika. Her issues are made worse by the fact that her stepbrother sexually abuses her. It takes the intervention of Midori's actual brother Tokio to give her the chance to run away from this toxic situation so they can rebuild their lives together.
• Family Compo revolves around this. The adult protagonist is taken in by his aunt (who is near-identical to his deceased mother), her husband, and their daughter. The protagonist has romantic feelings toward his cousin but other than that they act like a typical family.
• Judah from Fire Punch resembles Agni's sister Luna causing him to believe she may have survived and been brainwashed. After she loses her memory, Agni convinces her that she is in fact Luna.
• Fist of the North Star played around this trope when Mamiya was first introduced, whose resemblance to Yuria (Kenshiro's supposedly dead fiancee) was the first thing he noticed about her. Subverted in that even though Mamiya is in love with Kenshiro at first, his feelings are not mutual. Also, Yuria is later revealed to be Not Quite Dead yet.
• Franken Fran has one truly brilliant subversion of this trope. One story follows a robotics expert asking for Fran's help in putting his dying wife's personality and memories into a robot program so he never has to lose her. In usual ironic fashion, he uses the program to make his new robot model, gets rich by selling them and starts to mess around with other women while ignoring his wife's robotic form because he doesn't believe it's her anymore. In comes karma like a steamroller, with a large army of robots with his wife's personality eventually become far too lonely and all go after him, unaware of their own strength and nearly kill him. When Fran enters the picture again, a robot remaining asks that he be saved so they can be together forever, and Fran figures there's only one way to do that properly. She turns him into a robotic program as well, that becoming his second model and him being so scared that he becomes a floor mat to the innocent wife robot.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • In all versions, most attempts at human transmutation are done to revive deceased loved ones, and the result is always dire disappointment. Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) takes it further: Many of these attempts create a homunculus who is physically identical to the original, but have their own soul and are recognisably not human. Izumi is the only one who actually bonds with the one she created, probably because all she had to compare him to was a stillborn child.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) Majihal creates simulacra of his lost love interest Karin from years ago. Turns out she had gone missing rather than died, but when she returned he had become so obsessed with perfecting his ideal android that he refused to accept an average-looking middle-aged woman as the genuine article. Alchemist Shou Tucker is also obsessed with using human transmutation to recreate his lost daughter, whom he "killed" by using as ingredients in a transmutation experiment, which then died.
  • There are two Replacement Goldfish relationships that complement and parallel each other. The orphaned Elric brothers take on their alchemy teacher Izumi as a mother figure, while Izumi herself had a stillborn child and now accepts the Elrics as surrogate children.
  • In one Brotherhood OVA, the Elric brothers encounter a rich couple that lost their daughter and apparently succeeded in transmuting her back, as they see the girl completely healthy, but it turns out that, unsurprisingly, the transmutation had failed, and the couple lied to the alchemist (who lost his eyes as payment) to make him believe he succeeded, and the girl was, in reality, an orphan they adopted because she was their late daughter's Identical Stranger.
  • In one of the Yonkoma, Van Hohenheim accidentally drops the flask containing the Homunculus, killing it. He literally replaces it with a goldfish.
• Full Metal Panic!:
  • This can be a rather disturbing (and possibly implied) view of the two (male) twins that Gauron took in. It's revealed that Gauron had actually wanted to lure and take Sousuke in the first time he saw him, giving him a "dark smile" (read: rapeface), and, later, even coming out and saying that his plans for Sousuke had been less than pure (hint: it involves raping him). Later, Gauron ends up taking in two male twins that he tells Sousuke "were quite similar to you". It gets worse: The twins are both Asian (like Sousuke), and they are described using similar terms to Sousuke's physical looks ("slender" build, around the same age, with a similar sort of haircut, and one of the twins even uses the same kind of gun Sousuke normally uses - an automatic pistol, which was also why Kaname knew how that gun worked better than if he had been using a different kind).
  • Toyed with a bit, and subverted during The Second Raid. Sousuke is separated from Kaname by Mithril, and goes into his huge Heroic BSoD. He ends up meeting a Chinese prostitute who looks exactly like Kaname, and decides to hire her to chat with him. The subversion comes in that, as soon as she starts making advances on him and attempts to kiss him, he completely freaks out and runs away.
• Invoked twice in Fushigi Yuugi:
  • Hotohori marries Houki, a young woman from his harem that looks just like a female version of the recently murdered Nuriko (who, according to the Suzaku Hi Den novel and OAV, was Houki's Big Brother Mentor). While Nuriko's affections for Hotohori were mostly unrequited, it does raise some eyebrows.
  • It's also explained in Suzaku Hi Den that Houki herself had once been in a relationship with a young man named Shuu, who looked just like Hotohori, save for their hair/eye color. And he's later revealed to be not just Hotohori's long-lost older half-brother, but the rightful heir to the Konan Imperial Throne. It ends in tears.
• Gakuen Babysitters: Defied by the chairwoman who adopts the Kashima brothers. She lost her son and daughter-in-law in the same plane crash that they lost their parents, but even though she has taken them under their wing, she makes it clear that she isn't there to replace their parents and they aren't there to replace her son. They do, however, create a new family dynamics between themselves on the principle that you are never alone, even when your loved ones leave.
• Game×Rush features the 'replacement child' type, with Miyuki's damaged mind believing that Yuuki was her son, Memori... and that anyone who tried to say differently was clearly trying to take Memori from her, and thus should be stabbed until they're dead.
• In Gantz, by the end, it's not so much a matter of who is, but rather — who isn't? Copies of dead people are surpassed in number only by dead-dead people, some of whom return. Sometimes, multiple times, and not necessarily quite the same as before. Also, people with certain double letter initials tend to get multiple concurrent copies through bizarre plot twists.
  • ...and then, there are all the examples of surrogate parenthood and adopting various characters as stand-ins for someone else. Throughout the series, there was exactly one character with a functional, complete family household - and even that ended badly. Although she did get a surrogate father figure who played this trope extremely straight very soon, seemingly deluding himself into thinking of her as his original daughter. And going to extreme levels of protective badassery to atone for his prior failure with his real kid.
• In one episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, a woman wants to kill her ex-boyfriend and become the Replacement Goldfish for him herself. Given that both are cyborgs with interchangeable bodies, it might even have worked in some twisted way.
  • Considering how the writers are Magnificent Bastards they never let us know whether or not she failed and if Pazu was or was not killed and replaced.
• Gunslinger Girl:
  • Jose Croce sees his cyborg Henrietta as one of these to his deceased little sister, Enrica, even letting Henrietta wear some of her clothing, though he teaches Henrietta the violin instead of the harp that his sister played. Eventually however Jose's doting on Henrietta makes her overly dependent on his praise, and he finds himself wearying of her constant need for his approval.
  • It's implied that Jose's brother Jean is cold and distant to his own cyborg, Rico, both to keep his emotional distance from a Cyborg girl who will die sooner or later and to not see her as a stand-in to Enrica.
• In H₂O: Footprints in the Sand, Hinata is a Replacement Goldfish for her own sister. Her older sister, the real Hinata, drowned, and the family forced Hotaru to replace her, telling everyone that Hotaru had died instead.
• This is the plot of the moive Hal, where Hal is killed in a plane explosion and a robot is given his appearance to help his girlfriend Kurumi come to terms with his death. The end of the movie reveals that it was actually the other way around. Kurumi was the one who had died and replaced with a robot, with Hal having deluded himself into thinking he was the robot as a coping mechanism.
• Hayate the Combat Butler: While there's no mutual romance thus far, a lot of the Ship Tease during the latter half of the Athena arc pointed out (explicitly and implicitly) just how many similarities Nagi shared with Hayate's first love, Athena. One bit of cover art even featured the both of them put side by side, and they're both referred to in-story as golden-haired girls who saved him from despair by taking him on as a Battle Butler. Said arc culminated in absolutely brutal Ship Tease that threw shippers in a frenzy.
  Hayate's thoughts: Will it happen again? Will another day come where I can tell someone I truly love them once more?
• In the original TV series of Hellsing, studio Gonzo reveals in an interview of Newtype that the reason why Alucard turns Seras Victoria into a vampire was because 'her eyes' reminded him to 'Integra's' when she was a young girl. This is never brought up in the series, though they do make an emphasis on her eyes when he's about to shoot her.
• High School D×D: Euclid Lucifuge is murderously obsessed with his sister Grayfia, who wants nothing to do with him since he is a villain. When he notices Rossweiss' slight resemblence to Grayfia, he kidnaps her and tries to turn her into his new sister, though Issei rescues her.
• In the original, 1969 Himitsu no Akko-chan series, Atsuko "Akko-chan" Kagami, the main protagonist, has to ask, for a school assignment, the origins of her name. She discovers that Atsuko was actually supposed to be her older sister who was stillborn. Being born a little girl, the "younger" Atsuko was given the name already used for her dead sibling, with no one ever mentioning that until she asked first.
• Suzu in Hotori - Tada Saiwai o Koinegau is a robot replacement for a couple who has recently lost their son to illness, and struggles with the question of whether he has an identity of his own. The "doctor" who's overseeing the process of implanting the dead boy's memories into Suzu also has a terminally ill daughter, but (perhaps wisely) decides against getting a Replacement Goldfish because he's got enough experience with the robot doubles to know that however good the replacement is, it will never really be her.
• In I'm Gonna Be an Angel!, Kai knows that Natsumi, who he is in love with, sees him just as a replacement for her dead brother Fuyuki, who Natsumi had obsessed over constantly since his death. He eventually decides that, for her own good, it would be the best if they parted ways.
• Sharem in Immortal Rain is so into her Replacement Goldfish son that she has no issues with his... eccentricities or his views on humanity.
• Due to looking almost exactly like him, Kiyama Hiroto from Inazuma Eleven is the adopted son of Kira Seijirou and a replacement for his deceased son, Hiroto, whose name he gets from. It is unknown what his real first name is, though if we go with the second sequel, an Alternate Continuity where the original Hiroto is alive, it's Tatsuya.
• Kagome of Inuyasha has major insecurites over the fact that she may be the title character's Replacement Goldfish for his lost love, Kikyou, aka Kagome's self in her past life. As the love plot thickens and Kikyo is brought back to life, it continues to play into Kagome's inferiority complex that Inuyasha will eventually return to her.
• Ultimately Defied in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean: as Foo Fighters' soul starts ascending to Heaven, Jolyne promises her she would take her Stand disc back from Pucci and bring her back in a new body. F.F. declines the offer and pleads her not to, since inserting her disc in a new colony of plankton would just end up creating a different Foo Fighters altogether and thus result in this trope; she's far happier knowing that, since she has a soul, it meant she was actually alive and died without losing her intellect.
• Cool, kind Class Representative Aya Kurokawa in Kanojo ni Naru Hi is a is a voluntary replacement goldfish for her older sister (also named Aya, albeit written with different Kanji) who was killed in an accident shortly before Aya herself underwent a spontaneous Gender Bender. She goes along with it because she loved her sister, is convinced that her sister truly was a much better person, and feels tremendous guilt for jealously wishing her sister ill before she died. Tragically, she's also a Stepford Smiler steeped in self loathing because she remains convinced she's just an imitation of the "real" Aya. She doesn't allow herself any credit for her own actions and firmly believes "The real me is ugly" despite Becoming the Mask.
• Played with in Kyousogiga. When the priest Myoe if forced to leave the realm he created, he makes his adopted son Yakushimaru into a replacement goldfish for himself. The second Myoe understandably has very mixed feelings about this.
• Played with multiple times in Land of the Lustrous.
  • Ghost remarks that Phos's new serious demeanour reminds them of Lapis, transferring their devotion to Phos because they find the resemblance comforting.
  • Phos becomes increasingly unstable after losing Antarc and Ghost, culminating in a self-destructive mental and physical breakdown where they see Cairngorm as Antarc and imprison them to keep them safe. After Phos regains consciousness, Cairngorm (still known as Ghost at this point) tells them to call them Antarc whenever they need to. However, Phos is noticeably disturbed by this, and shortly afterwards asks Kongo to give Cairngorm a name to distinguish them from the late Ghost. Phos only slips up once after this and quickly corrects themself, but Cairngorm continues to believe that Phos sees them as a replacement for Antarc, eventually asking Aechmea for what amounts to cosmetic surgery to look like Antarc so Phos will be happy.
  • After Phos's head is replaced with Lapis's, Cairngorm is very disturbed by the dissonance between their memories of their calm mentor and the chaotic Phos now wearing their face. Phos offers themself as a replacement for Lapis, but Cairngorm dismisses the idea, telling Phos that the head is now theirs to do as they please with.
• Variation: Fate Testarossa from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha was (unknown to her) supposed to be a replacement for Alicia Testarossa, the daughter of Precia Testarossa. Unfortunately, even with Alicia's memories, Fate was not a perfect copy (the Movie mentions that unlike Alicia, she's not left-handed and has different magic potential). In the end, she unwittingly became merely a tool to help Precia resurrect Alicia, while her inability to mimic the original led to much suffering on her part.
  • Her adopted son was in a similar position: he's a product of the same cloning tech that created Fate. It seems to have improved somewhat in the interim, as he's never mentioned to be different from the original Erio. He was taken away from his "parents" when the Bureau found out about his origins. One of the reasons Fate took him in was to try to prevent him from going through the same kind of pain she did as a child.
• Mermaid Saga:
  • Mermaid's Mask has an adult man called Nanao explain that his mother did this. She tried to commit double-suicide by eating mermaid's flesh when he was a young age, but she survived and stopped aging and he kept growing up. When he ended up having a son himself, his mother kidnapped her grandson and raised him as her own, even giving him the same name. She intends to replicate the first incident, believing that this Nanao will attain the same immortality as she did.
  • Mermaid's Scar has Mana and Yuta meet a woman named Misa ^note (she was unnamed in the manga, so the OVA came up with the name) and her young son Masato who turn out to be both immortal and together since World War II. Turns out, Masato isn't Misa's biological child: he became immortal first and offered her a chance to eat the mermaid's flesh and be with him. Misa accepted because her own child died and she saw Masato as a replacement, and now she deeply regrets it.
• Miracle Shojo Limit-chan, which was something of a "sister show" to the original Cutey Honey TV anime (but much more kid-friendly and much less popular), has a similar setup. The title character, Limit Nishiyama (birth name Satomi), was nearly fatally injured and the only way to save her life was to make her a cyborg.
• In Mission: Yozakura Family, Nanao bears a striking resemblance to Taiyo's deceased little brother Hikaru. So hearing Nanao's struggles to fit in and live a normal school life quickly moves Taiyo to tears and gets him to start doting on Nanao like he did with Hikaru.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00:
  • Played with in the second season when Neil Dylandy, the original Lockon Stratos, has a twin brother named Lyle, who eventually takes up his brother's place as Lockon in Celestial Being after Neil's death in the first season finale. He grew into being his own person by acting like as much of a Jerkass as he could when he first came to Celestial Being, purposely failing to deliver during battle, and refusing to feel vengeful when everyone expected him to. Only later does he actually put his heart into filling his dead brother's shoes, and it was when he was trying to save Katharon, the group for whom he was acting as a Double Agent. Later, he says that, as a child, he had himself sent to boarding school to get away from the comparisons and laments the fact that he will never live Neil down.
  • Lyle also deliberately tries to subvert this trope when Feldt Grace, his brother's Love Interest, meets him. When he first arrives on the Ptolemaios, he acts like a jerk to her and drives her off in tears. Lyle later apologizes, revealing that he did it because he recognized that she was in an emotionally fragile state, and didn't want her to form a misguided attraction to him based solely on the fact that he looks exactly like the man she loved. The two make peace, and they end up with completely different love interests.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Ayaka Yukihiro had a little brother who suffered a Tragic Stillbirth. Negi Springfield is the age her brother would have been if he was alive, causing her to try to act like a sister to him.
• Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion is partly cloned from the DNA from Gendo Ikari's wife, Yui, and is therefore Gendo's replacement goldfish for Yui. She has also died and been resurrected twice, which would make her a replacement goldfish for herself, and she is the surrogate host for the soul of Lilith because she has no soul of her own. Furthermore, Ritsuko considers herself to be a substitute of sorts for Rei. Meanwhile, Gendo considers Ritsuko a substitute for her mother Naoko, however, his feelings for both of them were equally cynical in nature. He didn't love either of them so much as he needed access to their skill sets and one was just as good as the other. The Dummy Plugs, which are intended to replace pilots, are based on Rei and Kaworu's personalities. And don't even get started on the whole thing with Kaji, Misato, and Misato's father.
  • Rei could also be considered Gendo's replacement for Shinji. In one of his angry inner rants, Shinji even says as much. The fact that Rei was the name Gendo had planned on giving Shinji, if he had been born as a girl, seems to support this.
• In One Piece, nearly the entirety of Gecko Moria's crew consists of zombies created from stitched-together corpses that are then reanimated by his shadow powers. They retain some personality from their shadow's original owner, but are more-or-less Zombie Mooks that obey his every command. In the past, he apparently had a loyal crew that were implicitly his True Companions, but they were all slaughtered by Emperor Kaido in the New World, leading him to create a crew of disposable husks that he would never get attached to.
• Played with in a chapter of Ouran High School Host Club, with a new character (Kanoya) being referred to by the Club Members (except Haruhi and Tamaki) as the "Ideal Haruhi" because in addition to bearing an uncanny resemblance to Haruhi, she lined up almost perfectly with Tamaki's daydreamed version of her. Subverted in that Tamaki apparently never viewed this "Ideal Haruhi" as a love interest, despite her crush on him. Poor Kanoya.
• In Penguindrum, Ringo Oginome actually aims to become one of this in regards to her deceased older sister, Momoka, even when her parents had not asked her for anything by these lines. By episode 14, she has decided to not go through it. For major irony, however, right as Ringo gives up on the whole deal... it turns out that Momoka's Unlucky Childhood Friend Yuri Tokikago does see Ringo as a RG for her, since she looks and acts almost exactly as Momoka would if she still lived. Unfortunately, Yuri is so mentally/emotionally broken at that point that she drugs Ringo and then gets ready to rape her. She ultimately doesn't go through it.
• In The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, Misaki's older sister, Fuuka, tells Jin in episode 11 that she sees herself as this to him.
• In Pet Shop of Horrors, an early chapter of the manga which became the first episode of the anime involves the Count selling a "rabbit" to a pair of distraught parents - a "rabbit" who looks exactly like their dead daughter, Alice. They take her in and treat her exactly the same as their own daughter, with disastrous results. It turns out that the "rabbit", when fed sweets, "gives birth to" (is eaten from within by) dozens of killer rabbits, each of which go forth, kill, eat, and "give birth" to more killer bunnies until the town is overrun.
  • Quite a few chapters deal with D giving a pet as a replacement for a lost child, spouse, or family member. Almost all of them appear human to the owners and (thankfully) they don't all end like Alice the Rabbit did. In one chapter, D is visited by a man whose famous fiancée just died and gives him a mermaid that looks just like her...a mermaid which enchants and seduces him before devouring him. Another chapter has Leon's younger brother Chris bond with a Maya bird which appears in the form of Chris and Leon's deceased mother, giving both a chance for emotional release before finally dying of old age. In fact, it was in that chapter that D comments on how the pets in his shop will deliberately take the form and role of whomever the owners want, including lost loved ones.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In the CD drama short story "The Birth of Mewtwo," the scientist who was working on Mewtwo was attempting to recreate his daughter at the same time. He was successful in creating a clone of her that would live for only up to four years in a tank.
  • There's also Jessibelle, James's psychotic would-be fiancée who looks almost identical to Jessie. James drifted toward a life of crime (and to Jessie) partially out of spite for his arranged engagement with Jessibelle as a child.
• This is implied to be the main reason for why Kyouko adopts Yuma as an apprentice in Puella Magi Oriko Magica. Yuma's about the same age as Kyouko's dead sister Momo, comes from a similarly destitute background, and if the Drama CDs are accurate, she even has a similar speech pattern.
• In QQ Sweeper Kyuutaro worries this is happening with Fumi, who reminds him of Fuyu, his childhood crush.
• Happens twice in RahXephon. The two main leads, Ayato Kaina and Haruka Shitow, inadvertently seek out a Replacement Goldfish for one another after they're separated across time by the arrival of the Mulians. Haruka starts dating Ayato's twin brother Itsuki, and Ayato becomes infatuated with a rather odd girl named Reika Mishima who's actually a spirit that's adopted the form of a girl similar to Haruka because Ayato missed her that much.. Eventually, they are reunited and everything is set right with the help of the titular Giant Mecha.
• An old man in the anime of Rozen Maiden convinced himself the boyish doll Souseiseki was his child, Kazuki.
• Part of the reason Yuuri from School-Live! is so attached to Yuki is because she reminds her of her little sister. It was subconscious though, because Yuuri forgot about her due to recent events.
• Shiina in Shadow Star gets to be this in a very strange way in the manga. She's a replacement for herself after she is killed by a fighter jet; it's basically the handiwork of her real Mon, the Earth itself, because she still has to fulfill her role in what will become of the world. Not to mention that if you believe the theory that Shiina drowned in the very first chapter, the Shiina we see throughout most of the manga is a replacement of that Shiina. And it's possible that there were other examples even before then.
• In Sing "Yesterday" for Me, Shinako was devastated by the experience of caring for her high school crush as he slowly died of a terminal illness. She fills the emotional void he left by caring for and nurturing his brother Rou and their father. She shows hints of possible attraction to Rou, but only because he reminds her of his brother, and is incapable of seeing Rou as his own individual man rather than a clone of his brother or a child to be cared for.
• In Slayers, Eris did this with her dead love Rezo, giving us Copy Rezo.
• In Sola, we find out that the protagonist, Yorito, is actually a replacement made out of paper by Aono to replace the REAL Yorito, who died sometime in the feudal era in a landslide. Using her paper manipulation abilities as a yaka, she basically planted dead!Yorito's personality and memories into origami!Yorito. The whole thing is a bit disturbing when you think about it. Near the end, Aono uses her powers to control Yorito when he tries to intervene in a fight. Yorito calls her out on this and points out that she would never have done that to the real Yorito.
• There's a trace of this in Sonic X where Shadow the Hedgehog, despite his current outright abhorrence of humans, chooses to save Chris Thorndyke from an exploding island after envisioning him as Maria Robotnik (it's all in the eyes, apparently). Somewhat subverted as it does not stop him from bashing the kid about a bit several episodes later.
• In Space Warrior Baldios, the long-deserted lunar colony of Little Japan turns out to be inhabited by elderly residents who'd refused to relocate decades before the series started. Their children and grandchildren died en route to Venus when their ship was struck by a meteor, leaving an infant Sole Survivor, Raita, who grows up to be a member of the Baldios crew and returns to the colony on a mission. He finds that the elders had surrounded themselves with android duplicates of their lost children, families that would never age or abandon them. When aliens attack Little Japan, the android versions of Raita's parents help him escape because his arrival had fulfilled their dream of seeing their robotic child grow up.
• An interesting variation in Tenchi Muyo!: In the OAV timeline, Sasami's connection to Tsunami began when Sasami, as a toddler, fell from a near-fatal height to the base of Tsunami's tree. Tsunami saved her by combining their lifeforce to heal the little girl; however, Sasami didn't understand and was afraid that she might just be Tsunami's copy of the real girl, and so carried the secret for years for fear of losing her family's love. When it's revealed, however, Tenchi and the other girls didn't exactly care, and Ayeka openly told her that she was still Sasami. Tsunami then confirmed that Sasami was indeed the real one.
• An episode of The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye features the superweapon Gravestone, whose creator made it in the image of his dead son and ended up trying not to use it for that reason.
• In Tōka Gettan, Yumiko considers Touka to be her dead daughter.
• In Vampire Knight, after noticing Yuuki's resemblance to her mother Juri, Yuuki's uncle Rido (who was in love with Juri) changed his plans from devouring Yuuki to keeping her as a substitute for Juri.
• Beluna, one of the maids in The Voynich Hotel is actually a simulacrum made by Elena, AKA Lachrymarum. Lachrymarum arrived too late to stop the beheading of the original, her middle sister Suspirorum, and for worse Suspirorum's head had already been taken away; she used what was left of the corpse to make Belena.
• Nataku in X/1999 is the botched, emotionless, genderless clone of the resident Mad Scientist's dead granddaughter Kazuki Honjou, a Delicate and Sickly girl who died before her destiny as one of the Dragons of the Earth was unfurled. As such, Dr. Honjou told Nataku what was going on and sent him to Kanoe so he would take Kazuki's place.
• An unusual case crops up in ×××HOLiC when it turns out the reason Watanuki was even born was because the universe generated him to fill the void Syaoran left behind when he was removed from his own timeline. It's unusual because this isn't about filling an emotional void, just a literal one.
• Yakou from Yurara No Tsuki fell in love with the title character's Superpowered Alter Ego, but couldn't get together with her because she's a Guardian spirit. In the sequel, Rasetsu no Hana he becomes romantically involved with Rasetsu, who looks almost exactly like Yurara (but with slightly different hairstyle). Mei was a bit concerned about this when he sees the two of them. However, a conversation he has with Mei reveals that it was Rasetsu's personality Yakou fell for, not her looks, making it more a case of Has a Type than anything else.
• In Yuu Watase's earlier manga Zoku Shinshunki Miman Okotowari, the trope is defied and probably deconstructed. Kazusa, who once had a huge Big Brother Attraction towards her brother Manato, once has the chance to date a boy named Takanari who looks JUST like Manato, plus glasses. However, this utterly and painfully fails, and Kazusa later concludes that she missed out on many prospect boyfriends because of her Big Brother Attraction.

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