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  • In 30 Rock, an awkward mutual attraction develops between Jack and his kidnapped wife's mother due to how similar the two women are. Liz solves the problem by matchmaking her and the actor playing Jack in an upcoming movie. The actor is appropriately played by Alec Baldwin's brother William Baldwin.
  • Aaron Stone: (The series, not the character) is essentially meant to be this for the long-running Power Rangers franchise, especially considering what had been going on with RPM. And how'd it work? Aaron Stone ran for a total of 35 episodes. Power Rangers is still going strong after a Channel Hop. Nobody (but the network, likely) is shocked.
  • All My Children's Dimitri Marick first appeared onscreen rescuing heroine Natalie from a well where she'd been imprisoned by her psychotic sister Janet. As he tended to her, he repeatedly had flashbacks of a very similar appearing woman falling from a horse. Despite genuinely falling in love with Natalie it was very obvious that a huge part of his attraction to her was her resemblance to this mystery woman. Viewers soon learned that the woman was his wife and that she hadn't even been killed, just severely injured and left in a vegetative state.
  • In 'Allo 'Allo!, the actor playing Roger Leclerc died, so was replaced with his brother Ernest, who became an instant replacement love interest for Edith's mother (with the premise that she had loved both men when they were younger, but couldn't choose between them.)
  • Angel: In Season 5 Wesley's Love Interest 'Fred' Burkle is killed so her body can be used by Illyria. In exchange for Illyria agreeing not to kill anyone, Wesley acts as Illyria's guide to this strange new world she's been reborn into. Angel flat-out asks Wes if he's in love with Illyria; he denies it adding, "But I do need her." Wes does try to limit this trope — when Illyria offers to take Fred's form to understand human relationships Wes is outraged and refuses to speak to her for a while. Just before the Grand Finale, which no one expects to survive, Team Angel spend their time doing simple things they enjoy. Wes on the other hand just tends to Illyria's wounds, and she once again offers to comfort him by taking Fred's form, but Wesley refuses because he knows Fred is gone and to accept anything else would be a lie. "And since I don't actually intend to die tonight, I won't accept a lie." When Wes receives a fatal wound, Illyria asks "Do you want me to lie to you now?" Wes agrees, and Illyria morphs into Fred, telling Wesley she loves him and that they'll be together in the afterlife.
  • In Babylon 5, when Commander Sinclair (whose actor went over poorly with both audiences and the network) is replaced in the second season by Captain Sheridan, a similar but more dynamic and relatable Silver Fox, Delenn's budding UST appears to transfer from the former to the latter instantly and seamlessly, due to complex pre-planned story and character arcs having to be hastily altered to accommodate a new character in the role.
  • Battlestar Galactica (1978): Lighthearted example: In the original show, the robotic-drone daggit (AKA a dog) replica Muffet II was created as a replacement for Boxey's pet daggit Muffet who was killed by falling debris during the attack on Caprica.
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003):
    • This is the origin of the Cylon Centurions. Replace a goldfish (namely your dead daughter), set in motion the end of your civilization.
    • Oh, and Cavil was made in the image of Ellen's father.
    • All the human models seem to be Ellen and Tigh's replacement children and/or the Final Five's replacement PEOPLE.
  • Being Human: This trope is discussed by name - and involves an actual goldfish - in one second series episode.
  • The Big Bang Theory: Raj becomes closer friends with Stewart, the local comic book shop owner, after his Heterosexual Life Partner Howard Wolowitz gets married and goes to space. At one point Sheldon even refers to him as "fake Wolowitz" and insists that if Stewart is hanging around the group more now he has to act just like Wolowitz. It's worth noting, however, that Stewart is also a very lonely individual and was more than happy to be recognized as the replacement so long as he gets companionship out of it.
  • Black Mirror: In the episode Be Right Back, there is a whole online service devoted to replacing loved ones with an online relationship. And if the client wishes it; to have a full replica of the person.
  • The Borgias: Has Ursula Bonadeo, Cesare's love interest. He meets Ursula while visibly distraught during his sister Lucrezia's wedding, and essentially transfers his obsession with Lucrezia to Ursula. They share the same hair color/clothing styles, and both suffer from abusive husbands. Fans love pointing out how many of Cesare's conversations and even poses with Ursula mimic his interactions with Lucrezia.
  • At one point in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Rosa gives a puppy to Boyle, who is still mourning over the death of his dog, expecting that Boyle will accept the replacement and move on. This, however, enrages Boyle who rejects the puppy, leaving Rosa with it. She later ends up bonding with that puppy, giving her an understanding that losing a pet isn't something one can simply get over and move on by getting a new one.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Buffybot doesn't start out this way, but after Buffy dies at the end of Season 5, one of the series' more poignant scenes features Dawn, missing her big sister, lying down next to the Buffybot and cuddling with the robot as it charges. Furthermore, in the same episode, we see Giles trying to instruct it in Eastern philosophy during a sparring session, before Anya points out that would go over its head.
  • Caprica: By the series finale, Daniel and Amanda Graystone have fully accepted the Zoe avatar as a substitute for their dead daughter (it helps that she possesses almost every memory that the original Zoe did), even providing her with a physical body so she can interact with the real world.
  • Criminal Minds has several episodes featuring villains (called "unsubs") who do this. One particularly memorable one featured a mentally disabled woman who was replicating her beloved dolls using real women. The chemicals she injected them with to make them docile accidentally killed them. This was set off because her asshole doctor/dad gave her original toys to another girl. Other unsubs who did this were rapists, kidnappers, and even home invaders. Usually the crimes involve massive overkill because the unsub is really angry at the target. Generally the result of a childhood from hell, a teen romance gone horribly wrong, or a character who does not understand the word "no". Always involves either an unnecessary makeover (which functions as a clue to the Agents), or a form of makeover torment but where the object isn't to change the person's gender presentation (and there's no chance of the target enjoying it, unlike the usual variety).
  • Dark Angel: Max is eventually informed by her former commander and father figure, Donald Lydecker, who had been hunting her and the other escaped X5s for a long time, that her genetic code contains DNA preserved from his dead wife. She is not an exact duplicate, "more like inspired by".
  • Denji Sentai Megaranger:
    • Has Shibolena, the android created in the shape of Dr. Hinelar's daughter, Shizuka.
    • Earlier than that, Choudenshi Bioman had the Black Prince, who was created in the shape of Doctor Man's son, Shuichi. Subverted in that Shuichi is actually alive, and met the Biomen after the Black Prince's demise. In fact, his appearance revealed that Doctor Man was once a man.
    • And in one episode of Taiyou Sentai Sun Vulcan, Black Magma builds a robot replica of a scientist's dead daughter in exchange for his creating a lethal poison. The robot eventually accepts the scientist as its father and refuses to kill him when ordered to, leading the villains to destroy it.
  • Dirk Gently: Subverted Trope, where Professor Jericho has built a voice-responsive Robot Kid named after his daughter, who died in a car crash. However the real Elaine is not really dead but in a coma, Jericho is in denial that she's not going to recover, and far from transferring his affection to the robot, he's planning to sell her to China.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The trope is frequently invoked any time the Doctor gets a new companion. The Doctor either expressly says he needs someone else with him or denies that the new companion is replacing the old. This trope is usually averted or subverted when the Doctor develops a genuine relationship with the new companion.
      • On two occasions the new companion has directly pushed back at being compared to a previous occupant of the TARDIS. Martha Jones became frustrated at the Tenth Doctor's continual invoking of Rose Tyler (who had been lost in a parallel universe). Clara Oswald says outright she doesn't want to be competing with a ghost when the Doctor indicates that she reminds him of a friend (actually a future "echo" of Clara named Clara Oswin Oswald) who had died.
    • In the case of the First Doctor, he picks up Vicki, an orphaned young girl, immediately after losing his granddaughter Susan, and treats her like a surrogate. A couple of stories after Vicki leaves he picks up Dodo, who he takes an immediate liking to on account of her physical resemblance to Susan, despite her unusual stupidity.
    • K9 was created by Professor Marius to replace the dog he couldn't take to his new home, Titan.
    • Also used with K9 in a later episode; after bidding farewell to Leela and K9, the Doctor immediately takes out a box marked "K9 Mark II".
      • And again in the new series, with K9 Mark IV being given to Sarah Jane Smith immediately after the heroic sacrifice of K9 Mark III.
    • The whole ending of "Doomsday", where Jackie becomes alternate-Pete's replacement for alternate-Jackie, and alternate-Pete becomes Rose and Jackie's replacement for Pete, and Mickey becomes the replacement for Ricky (alternate-Mickey).
    • "The Doctor's Daughter": Jenny could be seen as a replacement goldfish to his family on Gallifrey, which he remarked had died previously. Though as far as the Doctor knows, he's lost Jenny as well, so not much of a replacement.
    • "Journey's End": Rose must return to the alternate universe she was trapped in for two years, so the Doctor gives her a replacement copy created when he transferred his regeneration energy into his severed hand and Donna touched it, creating a second Doctor. This one is a bit tricky and overlaps a bit with Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest, since it is explicitly stated in-series that 10.5 truly is the Doctor as much as any regeneration is, but the two will diverge from this point on.
    • Although her status as a love interest (not only that, but his wife) predates the arrival of Clara Oswald by several seasons, the return of River Song in "The Husbands of River Song" cast her in this role, given that only a few weeks earlier the series brought the Doctor's three-season-long relationship with Clara to a bittersweet conclusion.
    • "Spyfall": Discussed. When the Doctor reunites with her companions near the end after having been separated from them for most of the second part of the story, she's accompanied by two historical guest stars she recruited to help her during her time-hopping journey, and her companions fear they've been replaced. The Doctor wastes no time in resolving the confusion.
  • Dollhouse:
    • In "Man on the Street" (1x06), an Internet billionaire, Joel Mynor, uses Echo as a replacement for his dead wife Rebecca, but only once a year - the anniversary of her death in a car crash on her way to the new house Joel bought when he finally hit it big in business. Later, toward the end of "A Love Supreme" (2x08), Echo - who now can control the 40 personalities in her brain - briefly becomes "Rebecca" for the last time to give her blessing to Joel's remarriage.
    • In "Instinct" (2x02), another Rich Dude rents Echo as a longer-term replacement for his wife and mother of his infant child; again, the client's wife had died too young (in this case, of complications from the birth).
  • Elvis And Slick Monty: Parodied. In one episode, Slick had to get a literal replacement goldfish after Dr. Leon ate Elvis's old one while he is away, only for Leon to eat the replacement goldfish itself. With no time left to get another one, Slick stuck Dr. Leon's hand into the bowl. Elvis was fooled.
  • ER: When Luka flashbacks to when his wife and children were killed, viewers noted that his wife bore a resemblance to Carol Hathaway, explaining Luka's attraction to her.
  • Eureka: In the second episode, it is revealed that a scientist (after his wife leaves him) makes a clone of his wife and acts as if she had never left, even having a child with the clone.
  • Defied by Bade in Ezel. Although Ezel loves and respects her as an individual, she recognizes that he still has unresolved feelings for EyÅŸan, and that deep down, he wants nothing more than to continue where he left off fourteen years before. Refusing to be a second-option substitute in his dreams, she breaks up with him and urges him to follow his heart, as he will never find happiness unless his feelings are resolved.
  • The Flash (2014): Caitlin's fiance Ronnie apparently died in the same accelerator explosion that put Barry in a coma. After Barry wakes up, he slowly gets more and more Ship Tease with Caitlin, and it's implied a few times that he reminds her of Ronnie (as they're both handsome, good-hearted scientists). In the Hate Plague episode, when Caitlin gets a little overprotective, Barry snaps "I'm not Ronnie!" While he apologizes later, she admits he has a point, and the Ship Tease dials back considerably.
  • For All Mankind: Sean Baldwin dies in a tragic accident at the end of season 1 and his parents are broken with grief. The series then skips 9 years and season 2 starts with them having a grown daughter Kelly. Kelly was a Vietnamese orphan the Baldwins adopted. When Kelly asks them if she was a replacement for Sean and a "band-aid" for their grief, her parents admit that they adopted her as a way to fill the void in their lives but they always thought of Kelly as a "heart transplant" who saved their lives and made them happy again. It is implied that they suppressed their memories of Sean and the associated grief specifically because they did not want Kelly to ever feel like a replacement for him.
  • Niles' second wife Mel Karnofski in Frasier — a fussy, domineering, hysterically-inclined, nervous woman whose behavior (and the characters' reactions to it) made it clear that she was a saner, less abrasive version of Maris, Niles's Jerkass of a first wife, despite Maris being The Ghost. This is actually something that often occurs in real life with people who have recently gotten out of unhealthy relationships.
    • This wasn't even the first time it happened to him; when he first separated from Maris, he adopted a dog he called Girl that was basically Maris in whippet form.
  • In a season two episode of Friends, Rachel dates a man named Russ (played by the same actor as Ross) despite insisting that she is over Ross by now. She breaks up with him by the end of the episode, just as Ross's ex-girlfriend Julie walks in and locks eyes with Russ...
  • Fringe: Peter Bishop. The Peter from our universe died as a child and in his grief, Walter, his Mad Scientist father, dragged an alt-reality Peter into our world as a replacement.
  • In Full House, Michelle accidentally kills her pet fish after giving it a bubble bath. After the death is used as a learning opportunity, she receives a new fish and promises to take better care this time. In private, Jesse asks Danny and Joey if they really want to go through the whole process again when the new fish dies. Joey then whips open a cupboard to show they've purchased dozens of identical fish as a contingency.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Ned himself is one. After his older brother Brandon was executed, it fell to Ned to become Lord of Winterfell and marry Catelyn Tully.
    • Tywin tells Arya that she reminds him of Cersei when she was young, and something in his voice makes it sound like he regrets how things went. In the books, he and Cersei were originally quite close, but a series of events including Tywin failing to get her married to Rhaegar Targaryen and instead marrying her to Robert strained their relationship to the point it's at now.
    • With two sons dead and the third one hostage, Balon considers Yara his heir.
  • General Hospital:
    • The recently widowed Scott latches on to Katherine Bell, an old friend of his late wife Dominique, ignoring all signs that she's up to no good. Not until best friend Lucy produces undeniable evidence that she's a scam artist does he finally admit that he's been seeing her as this to his wife. Unusually for this trope, the two women looked nothing alike.
    • Similarly, Sonny fell for Hannah Scott because of her eerie resemblance to his late wife Lily (killed by a car bomb meant for him) and his late lover Brenda (killed in an entirely unrelated incident, but he blames himself anyway). While he admits to the strong similarities in their appearance, he's in denial about how much it affects him until the discovery that she's an undercover FBI agent and he realizes that she was no doubt assigned to him because of how much she looked like both women.
    • Happens to Katherine Bell again when Stefan Cassadine falls in love with her. Although he initially seemed genuinely interested in her, bit by bit, began to mold her into the image of his lost love Laura.
  • Good Omens (2019): The angels of Heaven assume that Job won't mind his children being killed as part of God's test of his faith because God plans to give him some new children afterwards. Aziraphale (the only angel who's actually spent time around humans) points out that humans don't work that way, and conspires with Crowley to spare Job's children. When Job and his wife are informed that their children are "dead" the couple are devastated and tell the angels they don't want new children. Aziraphale and Crowley then present the original children as the "new" ones, a lie that Job and Sitis happily go along with.
  • Hamish Macbeth: The episode "Wee Jock's Lament" has the title character's dog, Jock, run over and killed at the beginning of the episode. At the end of the episode, he ends up receiving another dog of the same breed as a reward for solving the crime of the week — and he names it Jock.
  • In the pilot of Harsh Realm, Hobbes meets the virtual double of his fiancée Sophie.
  • Heartbeat practically lived on this, with almost every village constable getting one. When PC Nick Rowan's wife Kate died, he was quickly introduced to Jo Weston, who became his second wife. When PC Mike Bradley's wife Jackie left the show, he was quickly linked to Tricia Summerbee (although the two characters did cross over for a bit). When PC Rob Walker's wife Helen was killed, he soon met Carol Cassidy, who stayed on the show long enough for Walker's successor PC Joe Mason to be her Replacement Love Interest.
  • In the Here Come the Brides episode "The Soldier," Jeremy shoots a bear that he thinks mauled Captain Clancey, but that turns out to be a tame bear used as a regimental mascot. He tries to make amends by buying a baby bear and giving it to Sgt. Todd, whose military career was ruined by the mascot's death.
  • Heroes: As of the volume 4 finale, Sylar has become one for Nathan Petrelli, complete with his memories being wiped and replaced with those of Nathan, his shapeshifting ability being used to turn him into a lookalike of Nathan (which, since he doesn't remember that he can shapeshift, leaves him effectively mode-locked), and the burning of a fake Sylar body to convince him that Sylar is most definitely dead for good. Of course, that still leaves the hunger that made Gabriel Gray into Sylar in the first place...
  • Hetty Feather: Polly is adopted from the Foundling Hospital by a rich couple because she resembles their recently deceased daughter.
  • In Highlander, one episode had Duncan meet a girl looking exactly like the long-deceased Tessa. It was actually a case of Surgical Impersonation as part of an elaborate plot to kill Duncan.
  • In How I Met Your Mother, it's revealed that Scooter, Lily's high school boyfriend who all series long has had a crush on Lily, ultimately goes on to marry Stripper Lily, her doppelgänger from "Double Date" and "46 minutes".
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
    • "In Throes of Increasing Wonder...": Disturbingly subverted with Lily, a prostitute whom Lestat de Lioncourt spent more time with when he realized that Louis de Pointe du Lac was avoiding him after he and Louis had sex for the first time. While Lestat places Lily in the same category as Louis in terms of their looks (they're both biracial "misfit beauties," as he calls them), he must have found her personality sorely lacking because in his words, she "proved herself a poor substitute." Louis later discovers that Lestat had murdered her.
    • "A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart": Lampshaded by Claudia when she concludes that Lestat and Louis had turned her into a vampire so that she can take Grace's place after witnessing from afar the other woman disowning her brother Louis. (Claudia's belief is erroneous because she was a band-aid baby to save Louis and Lestat's crumbling relationship, but since they never told her this, she does her best to understand their reasoning on her own.)
      Claudia: But today at the cemetery, I finally understood something so obvious, which I pondered for a decade why they made me: to be Louis' sister.
    • "The Thing Lay Still": Daniel Molloy infers that he's a replacement for Lily, the prostitute whom Louis had habitually paid to simply chat with him when the latter was human. Louis doesn't dispute it.
      Daniel: 144 years of life, and you're still Louis the pimp, paying a whore to sit in a room and talk with you. [...] Ten million dollars. That's my whore number.
  • In the Jonathan Creek episode "Angel Hair", Jonathan starts dating a woman whose curly-haired spaniel recently died. A montage shows her feeding him crisps, throwing a ball to him, and ruffling his hair. He never notices the implication, but Carla certainly does.
  • Kim's Convenience: Nayoung visits with a pet tarantula, which escapes and is eventually killed by the arachnophobic Appa. They send her off with another tarantula from Petsmart, none the wiser, and Umma lets slip that she did the same thing for Janet's hamster when she was a kid.
  • The King of Queens: Unbeknownst to Doug, it's the reason his childhood dog is still around.
  • Knight Rider: A really unpleasant twist for Michael Knight occurs in the second season episode "Goliath". Turns out he's the replacement for his benefactor's rotten-apple of a son Garthe.
  • Law & Order: Criminal Intent: In "Saving Face", a wealthy couple treat their daughter as this for their treasured son, whom they view as having possessed Marty Stu levels of perfection. Their daughter is perpetually The Un-Favourite her entire life and eventually resorts to crime in her desperation to gain her parents' approval. To make things worse, first off, this was entirely intentional; they literally conceived another child just to replace their son, which also means that the daughter was the un-favourite to a brother who she never even met, as he had been dead for her whole life. Second, and perhaps even more horrifying, is that the parents took this to the next level, expecting their daughter to live the life their son had mapped out for himself before he died at the age of thirteen, because the parents were convinced that the son's life would have followed that exact trajectory had he lived. The daughter was held not even to the actual course of the life her brother lived, but to his childhood fantasy of what he wanted to do when he grew up.
  • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In "Locum", a couple is revealed to have adopted an orphan girl simply because she looked almost identical to their biological daughter who was lost years before. To make the newly adopted kid look as much like their lost child as possible, the parents (mostly the mother) forced the 8-12 year old to wear the girl's clothes, dye her hair, and even get a nose job. The kicker? The biological daughter is found by the police alive and, at the end of the episode, is returned to her parents as the replacement daughter watches on.
  • In the Legends of Tomorrow episode "Compromised", Mick tries to make Ray one for Captain Cold. In the end, all Ray trying to act like Cold does is make Mick miss his friend more, and he tells Ray to quit it and be himself.
  • Little House on the Prairie: Nancy for Nellie Oleson.
  • Lost: Juliet is made into this twice, both times by Ben. The first time, he tries to use her as a replacement goldfish for Jack's ex-wife Sarah to further his Mind Screw on him. Then before that, for himself as a replacement goldfish for his MIA childhood sweetheart Annie.
  • Lost Love in Times: Qing Chen looks like Xian Wu, Yuan Ming's dead wife, so Yuan Ming wants her to replace Xian Wu.
  • Live Forever As You Are Now with Alan Resnick: The purpose of the digital clones is to replace the original person after their death; the testimonials section features multiple people who created clones of dead-loved ones, in order to replace them, and seem quite happy with the result despite the clones being, well...digital copies of a character with a few superficial personality traits added in, often not even the ones the original person had to begin with.
  • Malcolm in the Middle: Dewey did this in one episode with, indeed, a goldfish. Subverted Trope, since Dewey kept replacing the goldfish in order to fool his parents into believing he could reliably care for a pet so he could have a dog, and inverted by his parents who kept replacing the live goldfish with a dead one.
  • Modern Family: One episode ends with Mitch and Cam confessing secrets, which naturally includes a lot of Goldfish revelations. Cam confesses that the designer couch he'd bought was actually a knock-off, only for Mitch to confess he'd ruined the knock-off couch and replaced it with a real one. Their cat then walks by, with both of them confessing that that's not the original cat they had.
  • Monk: Featured a literal replacement goldfish. Natalie's daughter, Julie, had a goldfish given to her by her father who was subsequently killed in combat. Natalie repeatedly replaces the goldfish so that the daughter won't lose this emotional link to her father. Unfortunately, she does this well beyond the average lifespan of the domestic goldfish, which Julie's science teacher notices.
  • A literal example is found in Moon Knight (2022): Steven Grant has a pet goldfish named Gus that has one fin. However, after Steven "wakes up" from what was presumably a dream of being chased by an evil cult in the Alps, he notices that Gus somehow has an additional fin. He goes to the pet shop where he first bought Gus and the owner states that "he" demanded another similar one-finned fish, implying that 1) Steven's "dream" of being chased in the Alps was real, 2) Gus died because no one was there to feed him and 3) someone else was parading around in Steven's body to buy a new fish so Steven didn't realize what was going on.
  • NCIS:
    • Downplayed compared to other examples, but Gibbs's young daughter was killed long before the series started. Had she lived, she would have been about the same age as Abby, which hints at why Abby's always been Gibbs's favorite and why they have a much more personal relationship than Gibbs has with the rest of his team.
    • Tony has a goldfish named Kate, after a teammate who died early in the series, later joined by one named Ziva.
  • Newhart: "Hi. I'm Larry. This is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." You didn't even have to be adopted to be a Replacement Goldfish.
  • Nowhere Boys: Played with. Sam's parents had another child shortly after the time of his birth, called the same name. However, they don't know he exists to be replaced.
  • The Office (US): Following the one year Time Skip in the Grand Finale, we find out that Phyllis has been offering sweets to the new black employee who replaced the now-retired Stanley. During one of her confessionals, she then reveals that she's purposefully fattening the new kid up in hopes that he'll one day resemble Stanley, who she misses dearly.
  • One Foot in the Grave: Patrick adopts a dachshund after Pippa miscarries following a road accident. Pippa correctly points out that the dog is his "baby substitute".
  • One Life to Live: Within weeks after the stillbirth of her nearly term son, Cassie Carpenter found an abandoned baby in the manger scene of the town church (her husband was the local minister) and instantly declared that she was going to adopt him, even naming him "William", as she had intended to name her late son, clearly latching on to the new baby as a replacement for him. But when the birth mother came forward and changed her mind, the stress of the near-simultaneous loss of two babies triggered a nervous breakdown in which Cassie became convinced that the babies were one and the same.
  • The Orville: After the Xelayan security chief Alara Kitan leaves the crew to reconnect with her family, Mercer requests another Xelayan to replace her. Talla Keyali is for all intents a slightly older, more experienced version of Alara. Given how he clearly enjoyed seeing Alara put her Super-Strength to use, he may be a bit of an Amazon Chaser.
  • The Outer Limits (1995): Subverted in the episode "Mary 25", wherein the sleazy boss of a robotics company murdered his wife prior to the episode and replaced her with a robot made in her exact likeness. However, his motive for this is clearly to cover up his murder of her, since he all but ignores the robot and uses a Robot Maid instead to satisfy his "needs".
  • Perfect Strangers: After breaking up, Balki and Mary Ann date people who are virtual carbon copies of their exes.
  • Power Rangers:
    • When the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers came back from time travel, Adam was forced to say goodbye to his love interest Marissa. At the end of the episode, he bumps into a girl played by the same actress and is implied to be her descendant. Two odd things about this example: they were coming back from a California that was colonized by England; Marissa was a highly uncommon name in the 1700s. Though when the English are in charge of California, all bets are off.
    • A more mundane version (yet one much more infamous amongst long-time fans) happens later in Power Rangers Zeo: Tommy gets dumped by former Pink Ranger Kimberly, but soon becomes involved with Katherine, the new Pink Ranger and Kim's Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
  • Revolution: In episode 10, it is revealed that Miles is this for Bass Monroe, replacing his entire family. Deconstructed Trope, because Monroe developed an unhealthy borderline erotic fixation on Miles, and when Miles betrays him (expanded on in the first season finale) as well as disowns Monroe for ever being family, Monroe just loses whatever pretense of sanity he had. Monroe failed to realize that Miles is not some pet, but a human being with his own feelings.
  • In The Righteous Gemstones, the somewhat-estranged uncle, Baby Billy, treats his niece Judy like a stand-in for her mother, Aimee-Leigh. Baby Billy convinces Judy to perform in Aimee-Leigh's place and calls her "Judy-Leigh." However, it's an Invoked Trope: Baby Billy really just wants to revive the lucrative double act he once had with his sister, and it so happens he can prey on Judy's Middle Child Insecurities to do so.
  • After Maid Marian is killed off in the BBC's Robin Hood, a village girl called Kate is introduced as Robin's new love interest. As you might have guessed, the audience's reaction to replacing the legendary Marian with a random villager as Robin Hood's girlfriend went down like a cup of cold sick.
  • Scrubs: J.D. and Turk are very attached to their stuffed dog Rowdy, which Carla hates. As a favor to Turk to make up for hurting his feelings by insulting the dog, she offers to get him cleaned. On the way home, she loses the dog by not tying it to the top of her car securely enough. She then attempts to find a replacement. And then the ruse falls apart when the real Rowdy is found... and J.D. and Turk are thrilled because now they can both have one.
  • A variation in Sherlock. After pining over Sherlock for two seasons, Molly finally gets engaged to a man named Tom, whom she met through friends. The characters finally meet Tom at the end of the Season 3 pilot and find out that he dresses exactly like Sherlock. On the other hand, that's all they have in common. By the end of the season, the engagement is broken off.
  • Sisters: When she is contacted by the man who received her late husband's heart, Teddy begins projecting her memories onto him. It ends when he declares that he deserves better than being used as a substitute and she sadly realizes that she either isn't over her husband's death or that it's too painful to be close to a part of him.
  • Sliders: A mad scientist in one episode was, in fact, his robotic replica without even knowing it.
  • Smallville: Adrian Cross and Gabriel Grant were both clones of Lex's deceased brother Julian. Lex shot the first and hired an assassin to kill the other. In the same episode.
  • In Stalked By My Neighbor (a Lifetime Movie of the Week), a man becomes obsessed with the Glamorous Single Mother who has moved into his neighborhood, seeing them as God giving him back the wife and daughter he lost in a car accident a year ago and himself as this for her husband, who she also lost in a car accident a year prior. Yes, it was the same accident, and yes, the man was indirectly responsible—his wife and daughter were fleeing his controlling ways and he was chasing them.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Ezri slides right into Jadzia's corner of the Dax / Bashir / Worf Love Triangle, but ultimately winds up going the other way.
  • Star Trek: Discovery deals with this in season 4. Early in the season, Cleveland Booker's homeworld of Kwejian is destroyed by the Dark Matter Anomaly, sending him into a dark spiral. During this, he meets the scientist Ruon Tarka, who seeks to get into the DMA and obtain its power source so he can hop into an alternate universe a companion of his might be at. He convinces Book to join him as there would be a Kwejian there that wasn't destroyed and his family would be there. On the cusp of his victory, Discovery engineer Jett Reno tells them that even if he does end up in that universe with them, it's not his.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Dr. Noonien Soong transferred his wife's mind into an android after she was fatally injured when they were fleeing the Crystalline Entity that destroyed the planet they live on, despite the fact that she was going to divorce him. He went to such extreme measures to make her seem human, even the most advanced technological equipment and everyone she ever met, except Data, couldn't tell the difference. Soong's wife was still the same person, but had unknowingly become a Tomato in the Mirror who would never find out. Data himself didn't know Soong's wife was an android until her arm came off.
    • Something similar happens in the episode "Silicon Avatar" with scientist Dr. Kila Marr, whose son died on Omicron Theta - Data's home world - during the attack of the crystaline Entity. She goes from open hostility towards Data due to him looking exactly like Lore - who aided the Entity - towards seeing him as the last remnants of the child she lost, even going so far as to request he read her son's diaries... in his voice (Data, being the Tin Man he is, doesn't realise the psychological ramifications of this until it's way too late).
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: In the episode "Requiem for Methuselah", Rayna is a replacement for a woman from Flint's past.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • One episode had Janeway mistaken for an alien man's dead daughter. It ends up working out decently well for her; not only does he prevent her from being taken prisoner with Tuvok and B'Elanna, the man's devotion to Janeway and his desire to save his also dead wife from the prison where the Voyager crewmembers were being held ends up being what allows Janeway to rescue her people.
  • Supernatural: In a more realistic version, Dean replaced his dead mother by looking after both his father and his brother when he shouldn't have had to. And we all know how well that turned out.
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: It is hinted that Allison Young and Future!John have a relationship, and that Cameron may be her replacement in more ways than one....
  • That Mitchell and Webb Look:
    • Dreamy Pastures Insurance offers, as a life insurance policy, to replace your dead loved one with someone "prettier and kinder", usually in the Russian bride mold.
    • Also another sketch, in a parody of Rebecca, the trope itself is flipped on its head when the main character is changed to be Rebecca herself, and the context of the film becomes her dealing with the knowledge that Mr. de Winter is anticipating replacing her in the future.
  • In the pilot of Time Trax, no wonder he falls in love with her— she's his dead love interest's Identical Great-great-great-etc. ... grandmother.
  • Trailer Park Boys: In season 8, Ricky decided to get a pet goldfish. Unfortunately, since Ricky is not the sharpest of knives, he thinks it's okay to share drugs and liquor with "Orangie". This sets off a panicked search by his friends to replace Orangie before Ricky realizes he's dead (they even bribe a veterinarian receptionist to claim that he's drunk and passed out). Later, we find that Bubbles has amassed a large stock of replacement goldfish, and replacing the latest Orangie has apparently become a common routine for him.
  • Tyrant (2014): After the murder of her daughter Emma at the hands of the Caliphate, Molly demands of Barry that he impregnate her again to give her another child, despite their marriage basically being sexless at that point.
  • In Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Kimmy has a sister who was born after she disappeared. Really the only thing that needs to be said is that her name is Kymmi.
  • The Vicar of Dibley: In the British comedy series, Alice (the vicar's assistant) had a reincarnating budgie named Carrot. She never realized until the vicar told her that her mother kept buying her new budgies after each one died, even though the budgies looked completely different.
  • WandaVision: As Vision was killed in Avengers: Infinity War, we know this Vision must be some sort of replacement or revival. Wanda accidentally created him in an outburst of grief over losing the original Vision.
  • Westworld: Bernard is revealed to be a host built by Ford himself in the likeness of Arnold, his deceased partner in the Westworld project.
  • The White Queen: Elizabeth of York is this for King Richard III when his marriage to Queen Anne is on the rocks. The pursuit of power has corrupted and changed the Ruling Couple for the worse, so Elizabeth to some degree reminds Richard of who Anne used to be when they first fell in love. He even connects them in a moderately twisted manner. When Richard catches sight of his wife in a pastel green and beige gown that he deems would also be flattering for his niece, he commands the seamstresses to create an identical one. At the next party held at court, both Anne and Elizabeth are indeed clothed in the exact same dress.
    Richard: That silk is beautiful. It would suit our niece Elizabeth.
    Anne: [angry] You mean to compare us now in matching gowns?
  • Without a Trace:
    • In two separate episodes, it turned out that the person who had kidnapped the Victim of the Week had lost their own child and was desperately trying to find a substitute.
    • In another, when investigating the disappearance of a college student, the agents notice that the wife of her classmate bears a striking resemblance to her. Sure enough, he was the killer.
  • The X-Files: The golem in the episode "Kaddish", specifically created by the fiancee of an assassinated man to "play" him in a fake wedding.
  • Chase in Zoey 101 attempts to do this when Zoey leaves for England. But while the replacement looks like Zoey, she's not very pleasant in the personality department. And the fact that Chase is trying to replace Zoey with someone else kind of freaks out his friends.
    Logan: So you're saying it's just a coincidence that Gretchen looks exactly like Zoey?
    Chase: I don't even see a resemblance.
    Michael: Everybody thinks they look alike!
    Logan: And that's the only reason you're hanging out with her! She's your little Zoey replacement, and that's a little bit sick.

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