Tomato In The Mirror / Anime & Manga

• In After School Nightmare, the main character is invited to take a secret class at their boarding school necessary to graduate in which students face their biggest fears and personal issues, fight each other, and seek the keys to unlock a giant set of doors. One assumes this is merely the school's complicated therapy for a group of very, very troubled kids, but in the end it's revealed that they're all unborn children, and "graduating" is actually being born. While the main character appears to be struggling with their gender identity, they're actually making the choice of which of two opposite-sex twins will live. It's unclear what this implies for the other students; Kureha was supposedly raped as a child, and Sou was involved in an incestuous relationship with his sister, but all that happened before birth. The questions this raises can result in some Fridge Horror.
• In the Anime/Manga/Novel Another, the only way for the dead classmate to be found is for them to be killed, as even they don't know their true identity. They do, however, have an ace up their sleeve, as Mei Misaki can use her doll's eye to see "the color of death." It is in this way that they find the dead classmate was in fact not one at all, but the protagonist's aunt and classroom teaching assistant.
• Battle Angel Alita:
  • Daisuke Ido is driven into a Heroic BSoD when he discovers that he has no brain. It was removed and replaced with a microchip at the age of 19, as with all citizens of Tiphares, in order to make him less likely to violate the law.
  • Desty Nova learnt the same thing about himself at some point before his introduction. It is not known if the truth drove him insane, or if his insanity helped him deal with the truth. Seeing as he was the only person who doesn't seem to care about their shared condition, it was likely the latter.
  • Much later on, in the sequel manga Last Order, Alita gets her own TITM — twice. The first is when she learns that her past self, before her amnesia, was directly responsible for a catastrophe that resulted in the death of millions and the transformation of the entire Solar System into a Crapsack World. The second is when her brain, her last remaining piece of humanity, is revealed to have been removed at the start of the series and placed in a box she's been unknowingly carrying about for the past three volumes. She's told this just as it's exchanged for her friend's, resulting in a literal breakdown of her nanomachine body.
• The Big O:
  • Gordon Rosewater has taken to growing tomatoes in his retirement, but he also views this as an analogy for what he did to build Paradigm City: Creating cloned humans to populate the place. People who learn they were one of his "tomatoes" are usually shocked.
  • Roger Smith actually cries out "I'm one of the tomatoes!" Yeah, it sounded dumb, but it was a shocking twist. But it gets weirder still near the end, when he discovers this may not be the case, and he may have existed before Paradigm...
  • Alex Rosewater as well when he realizes that he was just another one of Gordon Rosewater's "tomatoes".
• One Black Jack chapter involved a young boy in a hospital who notices that the doctor, nurses and even his mother have changed personalities, and decides that aliens must have taken over their bodies...and he's next! Blackjack eventually explains that the boy has a terminal illness, and the hospital personnel and mother were just walking on eggshells trying not to let him know. Fortunately, Blackjack is there to cure the illness.
• Bleach:
  • Senna of the first movie is horrified when she learns herself to be nothing more than the merged memories of the Blanks. The trope is zigzagged as she refuses to accept that she never actually existed and her dying request is that Ichigo take her to her grave, which is proof of her existence. Even though the grave does not exist, Ichigo chooses to tell her it does so she can die happy having never accepted the truth about herself.
  • Also the entire premise of anime episode 315: Masayoshi is a wandering shinigami who has been hunting down the Hollow who killed his wife. It turns out that he'd been possessed by that Hollow, and he killed her while under its influence, but he regained control with no memories of what he'd done.
• A stand-alone ero-manga titled Borderline uses this: a man falls in love with a mannequin, which then comes to life and makes love with him. It later turns out that they were both mannequins to begin with.
• The first episode/chapter of Bungo Stray Dogs ends with Atsushi discovering that the tiger that's been "chasing" him is actually himself, transformed under the moonlight.
• Cardcaptor Sakura hosts the second type: at the end of the first arc, the series takes an abrupt twist when the cast (and audience) learns that Yukito wasn't human. Needless to say, the character in question goes through several of the same angst and questioning of their own existence as is described above when they later find out themselves.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Hyouka Kazakiri thought she was a normal girl until flying debris breaks her head open (the injury heals up) to reveal that she is really an artificial angel, an aggregation of Academy City's AIM (psychic energy) fields. She doesn't take it well, until Touma assures her that he and Index don't care that she's not human; she's still their friend.
  • Arisa Meigo thought she was a normal girl. Toward the end of movie A Certain Magical Index: Miracle of Endymion, everybody learns that she is really a part of Shutaura Sequenzia that separated from her. Even Shutaura didn't know about this at first.
• Combattler V: The Dragon Garuda discovers, to his dismay, that he is actually the latest of a series of identical androids.
• In Cross Ange, the protagonist and her squadmates have a My God, What Have I Done? moment when it's revealed that the DRAGONs that they have fought and killed just so they can make money and survive turn out to be humans. Which hits Vivian the hardest when it turns out she's one of them. Ange understandably breaks down at the revelation.
• In D.Gray-Man, it's eventually revealed that Allen is actually the host for the Fourteenth Noah, which is how he can control the Ark. Unfortunately for him, he woke it up, and now the Fourteenth is trying to take over his body.
  • This is even worse than that: The fourteenth Noah is actually half of the original Millennium Earl. You know, that guy who is the maker of akumas and the ultimate goal of everyone in the series is to kill him? Well, Allen is half of him. The Earl is as surprised to learn this as anyone.
• The beginning of Darker than Black is rather brutal about this, with an added Obfuscating Stupidity Tomato Surprise. It spends the first episode and a half setting up a sickeningly obvious Meet Cute — then we abruptly find out that the apparent female Love Interest is in fact a Doll programmed with the memories of the real person, now dead, and the kindhearted dorky Chinese exchange student who keeps "accidentally" rescuing her is that scary, superpowered mask-wearing Badass Longcoat we saw at the beginning.
  • The second season has one regarding secondary protagonist Suou Pavlichenko. Her mother says she's a clone of the original Suou, who died eight years before. Turns out, as her father explains, she's an Opposite-Sex Clone of her brother Shion that he created with his contractor powers. Shion used himself as a reference since the original Suou was his twin and gave her Fake Memories to fill in the gaps. Least to say, Suou was not pleased when she found out.
• Deadman Wonderland: Shiro is the Red Man. Complicated by the fact that it's revealed that it's a split personality that was created from the trauma she endured, only for it to be revealed later that the second personality was fake all along.
• A version occurs in Death Note when Light loses his memory of being Kira, spends several episodes working with the investigation to uncover Kira while vowing to bring him to justice, and finally recovers his lost Death Note, at which point he realizes that he is indeed a mass-murderer with a god complex, and his memory loss was part of his own Batman Gambit. Subverted in that he's totally fine with it.
• Goku in the Dragon Ball series:
  • In Dragon Ball Z, he finds out from his long-lost brother Raditz at the beginning that he is an alien (Saiyan) sent to kill all humans on Earth. He forgot his purpose and mellowed out after he fell off a cliff and hit his head as a child. It takes the death of Krillin at the hands of Frieza to finally come to terms with his origins, resulting in his "I am the Super Saiyan Son Goku" speech.
  • There's also a sort of in-universe example of this. Goku's friends have all known since soon after they met him that he once transformed into a giant ape monster and killed his own adopted father, but they keep it a secret from him. Goku eventually has his Tomato in the Mirror moment much later, during his battle with Vegeta's Oozaru (or Giant Ape) form, but it's already been spoiled for the audience.
• Ergo Proxy:
  • Vincent Law is the Ergo Proxy of the title, and it initially acts as a separate part of him without him knowing it. He previously erased his memories so that he could live a normal life as a human.
  • Re-L is a clone of the Monad Proxy. She discovers this when she returns to Romdeau and finds a replacement clone has been created.
• Fairy Tail:
  • The villagers of Galuna Island ask the heroes to cure them because they had been transformed into demons. It turns out their memories had been tampered with and they had always been demons. Most of them take this pretty well and are able to accept it.
  • Natsu learns that his father Igneel tried and failed to destroy a powerful demon named E.N.D., only able to seal its power. At the end of the Tartaros Arc, we learn that E.N.D. actually stands for Etherious Natsu Dragneel, which Natsu doesn't learn until the final arc of the series. And during said final arc, we and he learn straight from Zeref that not only is Natsu E.N.D., he's actually Zeref's dead little brother whose resurrection into an amnesic demon was Zeref's overriding goal for most of his life and pursuit of which is what got him cursed with Complete Immortality by the God of life and death in the first place.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Number 66, formerly Barry the Chopper, causes Alphonse to doubt that he ever was human. This, coupled with his lack of memories regarding certain events about his childhood — well, you do the math. Turns out not to be the case; the reason for Al's memory gaps is simply that he was a little kid, and logically wouldn't remember a lot of things from when he was so young. Also, the sigil that binds the soul to the armor-body was a little faded. Ed made a point about fixing it up later on. It's also mentioned that all bodies and souls not belonging to each other will eventually begin to reject each other. Though what "reject" means exactly is never explained, it could be reasonably assumed that memory gaps would be a possible effect. And a bonus in the original language: his name "Al" is pronounced "Aru" in Japanese, which is identical to the verb 'aru', which means "to exist" as an inanimate object — 'iru' is for living things that exist...
• Gantz:
  • This is what happens with Kishimoto. Apparently, she actually failed suicide, and the her that was sent to Gantz was actually a clone. When she gets sent back to the normal world, she sees that the other her is living normally at home, and she has no place to go.
  • The same thing ended up happening to Kurono. He gets a clone of himself because Reika decided to make a copy of him for herself. Yikes. He then reminds his clone how Ms. Fanservice she is and gives him a fist bump.
• Gate Keepers One of their teachers is an Invader, and he didn't know it. Dealing with him really doesn't sit too well with Megumi, who was a reluctant member of the team to begin with, and it may be among the reasons for her Face–Heel Turn later on.
• Double Subversion in Gravion: Leele discovers that she's apparently one of the Zeravire that's been attacking the Earth. In the episode afterwards, it's handwaved that her memories were mixed up from contact with one of the Zeravire. But as it turns out, she is a Zeravire. Sort of. She is in fact the niece of the alien scientist who created them, and shares the surname Zeravire.
• In Hal, Hal is a robot who has been programmed with the personality of the real Hal, to help his former lover deal with the devastating loss the real Hal's death was to her. A blow to the head Hal receives later snaps the truth of the matter to him, that he is in fact a man who was driven insane and believed himself to be a robot after the death of his lover and the girl he has been helping get over her loss? A robot programmed with the personality of the dead girl to help him deal with his loss.
• Taikobo from Hoshin Engi later finds out that he's actually the other half of Ou Eki, and when they combine, they form one of the "First People", Fukki.
• In one of the latter chapters of I Am a Hero A bunch of people is stuck in an Italian bell tower. While discussing what to do with the lost child that just arrived, one of the characters suddenly reveal they are actually all zombies. Then, the narration flickers between their perception and the girl's, showing that he is actually right.
• Isao from Inside Mari believes himself to be a man stuck in the body of teenage girl named Mari. Over the course of the manga it's revealed that Mari has a Split Personality and that there never was a bodyswap.
• Kiddy Grade:
  • One set of Éclair and Lumières has a slightly subverted version of this, as they realize something is not quite right first, before realizing they were clones and breaking free of Alv's Mind Control.
  • This also happens in the Reverse manga when Éclair and Lumière that the readers are reading about turned out to be fakes that Alv and Dvergr made as a test (tying in to the aforementioned event in the anime).
• Kill la Kill:
  • Senketsu learns that he's an alien, which he doesn't really mind. However, what triggers the Heroic BSoD is when he learns that his species, Life Fibers, see humans as food, and he realizes that he has been feeding on Ryuko all along, since he needs to drink her blood to activate his powers.
  • Later, Ryuko learns that she's a human/Life Fiber hybrid. And her mother's a Life Fiber monster who experimented on her as a baby and threw her into the trash when she was done with her. She goes mad from the revelation for a while.
• In King of Thorn, one of the protagonists turns out to be a tomato in the mirror. Kasumi is actually a Replacement Goldfish Medusa construct created by Shizuku after the real Kasumi died.
• Kitsune To Atori: One of three stories that have absolutely no relation to each other whatsoever. The plot of the first chapter was pretty confusing but involves a tale of two sisters. The younger sister, Atori, hates lies and sees the foxes (who have magical abilities and can transform into other forms) as deceitful and evil, which is also partly fueled by the fact that her older sister suffered a fox attack and now bears a scar on her eye, which she covers at all times. Thinking that her sister is being too lenient on the foxes, she becomes confused when she reassures her that "It's fine if you're not honest, as long as you stay by my side." Later Atori finds her older sister removing their sword that cuts through spells and attacks her, assuming her to be a fox disguised as her sister. Through a series of revelations it's revealed that she and her sister had been lying all along. Atori is actually a fox and her "sister" used a spell to make her forget her painful past and live peacefully.
• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (2005), Ghanti hates Hylian Knights due the bandits she was raised by telling her that her parents were killed by them. It turns out that it's the other way around: her parents were Hylian Knights who were killed by bandits, who then abducted her.
• One episode of Little Witch Academia (2017) involves Akko accidentally resurrecting a skeleton, who immediately tries to embark on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against a man he can't remember for reasons he can't remember. He eventually remembers both the man (Headmistress Holbrook's father) and the reason (he abandoned her after sending her to Luna Nova), but it takes him a little longer to remember that he was that man.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Fate Testarossa finds out that she is in fact a Replacement Goldfish clone of Precia's dead daughter Alicia, prompting a Heroic BSoD.
• Mazinger Z:
  • Secondary character Erika was an amnesiac girl who barely remembered her name. She felt an odd, devastating inner emptiness, but in spite of it she thought she was a normal girl. And then Baron Ashura appeared and revealed that in reality she was a human-looking robot built to murder Kouji Kabuto. She freaked out considerably — and understandably — and she refused to believe it.
  • Lorelei thought she was an average, little girl with a slightly eccentric and weird father. And then she found out that she was in reality a Robot Girl, and the key component to start a Humongous Mecha.
• In the first episode of Mnemosyne, Kouki Maeno discovers that he's actually a clone of the original Kouki Maeno. Unusually, he actually takes it pretty well: after one Attempted Suicide, he settles down and grows into a well-adjusted man.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Anew Returner is an Innovator whose memories of her true identity were wiped out so she could become Ribbons's Manchurian Agent.
• Monster has a Story Within a Story called "The God of Peace" that uses this trope.
• Mochi, Suezo, Golem, Tiger and Hare in Monster Rancher turn out to be the Phoenix whose soul was split into five pieces.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: You know those alien monsters humanity has been fighting throughout the series? Humanity is one of them. To be more specific, both humans and Angels are descended from the so-called "Seeds of Life" planted on Earth eons ago, with humans descending from a being known as Lilith, and the Angels descending from Adam. Adam actually landed first, but entered dormancy when Lilith showed up, as they could not coexist with each other peacefully. The peace was broken when Adam was reawakened from its slumber, which triggered the Second Impact that led to the appearance of Adam's children—the Angels. Humans are designated the "18th Angel" because not only they are ultimately of the same breed as the Angels, they end up playing a major part in causing The End of the World as We Know It.
• PandoraHearts:
  • It is revealed that the main character, Oz, is actually the Black Rabbit. And Jack Vessalius' former Chain. And it turns out his body is actually Jack's. These reveals turned the series on its head.
  • There's also Elliot turning out to be the core illegal contractor of Humpty Dumpty and while not the Headhunter, ended up being the one to kill half of his family under HD's control.
  • Gilbert is a Baskerville.
• One episode of Paranoia Agent follows three people who meet in an online chat room and decide to make a suicide pact together. Throughout the episode, they attempt time and time again to kill themselves, and fail every time. In the end of the episode, one of them realizes that their first suicide attempt was, in fact, successful—for the rest of the episode they've been ghosts, and none of their attempts have worked because you CAN'T kill yourself if you're already dead. It also explains why Lil' Slugger/Shounen Bat freaked out at their presence—he only targets the living. Looking closely, one may notice that the characters no longer cast shadows after a certain point in the episode, hinting at this revelation.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, Homura learns that the city they're in is a witch barrier, and initially suspects that "Bebe", the little girl who in other timelines would become the witch Charlotte, is the witch responsible for the barrier. Once she determines that Bebe is not the witch, Homura eventually puzzles out that in order for Madoka to even be present, the witch in question had to have had prior knowledge of her existence, but in a universe where the memory of her had been forgotten due to the nature of Madoka's wish at the end of the TV series, there's really only one Magical Girl who could have known about her without already being taken away by the Law of the Cycle...Homura herself. She tests the theory by intentionally separating herself from her Soul Gem by leaving it on a table and getting on a bus, realizing it's correct when she doesn't suddenly lose connection after a hundred meters and her body doesn't fall over dead. The realization is devastating to Homura's mental state, symbolized by the appearance of dozens of handprints suddenly appearing inside her "Soul Gem" (indicating she's trapped inside and can't get out) before she shoots it to pieces in frustration, an act that would normally kill a Magical Girl since it's their phylactery. The surroundings of what is now revealed to be Homura's witch barrier also suddenly become chaotic, with crashing buses from the sky and zeppelins on fire as Homura's world comes down and falls apart on her in more ways than one.
• Ramen Fighter Miki: Parodied after Kankuro reveals to shopkeeper Akihiko that he is not a Star Ranger, merely a guy who Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality:
  [The background goes Deliberately Monochrome while he looks dramatically at his hands]
  Akihiko: I’m not a real Star Ranger?
  [He adopts a Pose of Supplication]
  Akihiko: Is that so, is this how it is? No, its true. Somewhere in the depths of my heart, I already knew...However, however, I can’t just give up now! Even if I am not Red Star...
• RahXephon is riddled with examples (along with Luke, I Am Your Father revelations). Not only is Ayato himself a half-human, half-Mulian, but no fewer than two other characters discover the shocking truth about their own origins along the way; one of them was previously mind-wiped to make her forget them.
• Rave Master: Elie is Resha Valentine.
• School-Live! includes two examples of this due to delusional characters:
  • The first is that Megu-nee has been Dead All Along. This is revealed in the first five chapters of the manga, but isn't revealed in the anime until halfway through (which resulted in many changes). All the characters know she is dead except for Yuki. They let Yuki keep believing Megu-nee is alive. Yuki saw Megu-nee die along with everyone else but began repressing it, and the entire zombie apocalypse, due to the trauma. Eventually Yuki comes to accept Megu-nee's death.
  • The second one involves Cool Big Sis Yuuri and her little sister Ruu. After undergoing a Sanity Slippage due to the stress of trying to survive in a zombie apocalypse, she finds her little sister Ruu in an abandoned building and saves her. Ruu becomes the Tagalong Kid and Rii is very protective of her. This however comes with the cost of her becoming The Load of the gang. It's eventually revealed that Ruu does not exist, at least not anymore. "Ruu" is actually a teddy bear Rii found. She is hallucinating that it is her sister while the real Ruu is implied to be Dead All Along. Rii doesn't break out of her delusion. She instead leaves "Ruu" behind with an ally.
• In Serial Experiments Lain when the eponymous character realizes in what is one perhaps the most dramatic and mind-bending reveal in a series full of dramatic and mind bending conspiracies that she is in fact a program engineered to be the god of the new world created when the Internet/Wired overtakes reality.
• Shakugan no Shana gets this out of the way with Yuji in the first episode — as Shana bluntly explains to him, the real Sakai Yuji was erased from reality and eaten by a Rinne. All that he is is a temporary placeholder, meant to ease the strain on existence caused by the erasing of the original, and once his power of existence runs out, he'll cease to exist as well and reality will arrange itself so that Sakai Yuji will never have existed in the first place.
• Sola has a Wham Episode where Yorito realizes that he's a clone made of paper, as a Replacement Goldfish for the original who died centuries before, by his paper-manipulating sister.
• Sorcerer Stabber Orphen: Esperanza Reika thought her little sister Lycoris was dead and had been revived by her Creepy Child boss, Escalenna. It turns out Esperanza was the one who has truly died.
• Star Driver: Marino, Mizuno's older sister, is a clone created by Mizuno's first phase ability so Mizuno wouldn't be lonely.
• Summer Time Rendering: Beings called Shadows take the shape and memories of people, then Kill and Replace them. The Shadow who gets Ushio Kofune is implied by the other Shadows to be defective, because she has no memories of being a Shadow and genuinely believes she is Ushio, plus she is not connected telepathically to the Shadows' Mother. The Shadows call her a traitor, but she rejects them, declares she is human, and is determined to protect Ushio's sister, Mio, and love interest, Shinpei.
• In the "Underworld" arc of Sword Art Online, Kirito wonders whether he's actually Kirito or just an AI.
• Tenchi in Tokyo: Sakuya isn't the Ordinary High-School Student she thought she was. She is Yugi's sort-of clone, or more exactly, her "shadow". A mere extension of Yugi's own self.
• Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 does this. After Mirai and Yuki finally make it home, we find out that Yuki died a few episodes earlier. He is actually now a ghost/hallucination.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- falls under this when a clone of Syaoran breaks out of the Big Bad's lair and gets Yuuko to teleport him to the world where the heroes currently are. Then the bomb gets dropped: turns out He's the original Syaoran, while the guy the we (the audience) have been following is the clone. ...And that's when things start to turn Ugly.
• UFO Robo Grendizer
  • Maria Grace believed she was an average girl...until her grandfather revealed that she was an alien.
  • And her brother Duke Fleed played this trope in the Gosaku Ota manga continuity. Dr. Umon had wiped out his memories so they did not torture him and he was able living like a normal human being. However, when a stream of reports of UFO sightings started arriving to the Space Research Laboratory he started to feel odder and uneasier, although he did not understand why. It was when the Vegans started to strike nearby cities he finally remembered he was an alien.
• Played with in ×××HOLiC when Yuuko reveals that Watanuki is a clone of Syaoran...of sorts. Specifically, his birth was generated to replace the real Syaoran's place in the Universe when Syaoran was removed from his timeline.
• The anime adaptation of the second game of Ys does this with Lilia, who was infused with a demonic essence to save her life as a child by Keith Fact, who reveals this to her when Adol is trying to fight Darm, the being keeping the demons in existence. It's also the reason she wasn't turned into stone by Dares.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, Shark slowly realizes that he is a Barian, even smashing his mirror when he experiences his past-life memories and recognizes the pendant around his neck.
• This is the entire premise of Zegapain. Kyo believes that he is playing a video game in which he pilots a giant robot fighting against aliens trying to wipe out the computers that hold the brain patterns of the remnants of humanity, only to discover the "game" is the real world, and he is merely data in one of those computers.
• Zekkyou Gakkyuu:
  • Bloody Valentine: Misaki is happily looking forward to spending Valentine's Day with her new boyfriend, Naoyuki. But she finds threatening letters in her schoolbag and a creepy girl keeps stalking and glaring at her. And even Naoyuki seems to be hiding their dating status. When Misaki confronts the stalking girl about leaving her and Naoyuki alone, Naoyuki drops the bombshell: Misaki isn't his girlfriend. She is the stalker, who wrote those threatening letters she found, and threw a ball through a window, injuring Naoyuki's actual girlfriend. Misaki was deluding herself.
  • The Boyfriend Story: Mei feels ostracized by classmates because she doesn't have a boyfriend to brag about, but her friend suggests a cellphone app that allows her to create a perfect boyfriend. A virtual human, practically indistinguishable from regular humans. He overloads and goes insane, so Mei decides to delete him and rushes to her friend's side, whom she has been ignoring in favor of the boyfriend. Cut to the friend talking about how 'Mei' has become a hassle of a friend...and promptly deletes the Best Friend 'Mei' character.
  • The Family of Five: A girl always has her parents and two siblings around her, even in school, but nobody makes any mention of it. When her crush asks her out, she wants to accept, but her family tells her that she can't because of previous errands to run. The girl snaps and attacks her family with a knife — cut to a classroom, where a girl accidentally cut her smallest finger off. The girl and her family in question were a group of fingers and a thumb.
• Sakura Minamoto spends the first few minutes of Zombie Land Saga running from the undead. She escapes the mansion she woke up in and runs into a cop, stepping forward to ask him for help...and then he pulls out a gun in sheer terror, prompting her to look into a nearby street mirror and see that she herself is a zombie.

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