Needs Help: And You Were There

It seems to me that there are several issues with the tropes And You Were There and But You Were There, and You, and You.

The first, obviously, is that they have very similar names; I can never remember which is which without going to check. It would be a good idea for at least one, and possibly both, to be given a new name that more directly describes what it's about.

The second issue is that there isn't currently a clear division in what they're about: between them, they cover two ideas, but it's not the case that one of them is clearly about one idea, and the other is clearly about the other. As I see, it the two ideas are:

1. There is a Dream Sequence or a Separate Scene Storytelling sequence where the characters in the dream/story are duplicates of people the dreamer/storyteller knows. This may be lampshaded during the sequence ("You seem familiar somehow") or at the end ("And you were there, and you, and you..."). There may be some symbolic importance to the duplication, or it may just be that the regular cast wouldn't get any screen time in the episode otherwise.

2. Two characters who are not Doppelgangers or family members are played by the same actor to indicate a symbolic or metaphorical connection. May or may not involve one of the characters being in a dream/story.

The Wizard of Oz, the trope namer, combines both ideas: Dorothy has a dream in which the key players are duplicates of people she knows in real life, and have a symbolic connection in that her friends are still her friends, and her worst enemy is still her worst enemy. Which is probably why the tropes are mixed up — But You Were There, and You, and You is mostly Idea 1, but the trope description for And You Were There is a mixture of both.

So I propose that And You Were There's trope description be adjusted to be specifically about Idea 2, and the examples redistributed accordingly. And at least one of them should be renamed.

Opening this one. Honestly, I think in this case what needs to be done is for them to both be sandboxed for where the examples go, Cut, and run through the YKTTW with new names, definitions, and examples that are written to actually highlight one of the tropes rather than this mishmash of concepts and tropes.

I don't even see a clear separation between the OP's two proposed redefinitions. (Part of the problem is that I find it hard to tell what Separate Scene Storytelling is from its opaque name and confusing supertrope definition.)

What shimaspawn says is pretty much what I wanted to suggest, actually, but I wasn't sure if it was too extreme right off the bat.

I'll sandbox a demonstration of my proposed division when I get the time, some time in the next couple of days; hopefully it'll be clearer then.

Oh, huh. It looks like we already have a page that's specifically about Idea 2: Significant Double Casting.

I think the name is fine they should just be merged. Since we have Significant Double Casting already, i think idea 2 is covered.

Previous discussion [1] (with links to more discussions)

There is also Visions of Another Self.

I think merging the pages would be a good idea. The distinction seems very very small to me, and the names are near-identical. It feel it takes more effort to parse which one best fits a particular example than is really worth making.

This.

If we're merging these tropes, couldn't we have a better trope description?

There's also the usage that seems to be included in the And You Were There page, where an installment of a series takes place in a separate world with entirely different characters "played by" the regular cast, with some linking personality elements connecting the regular versions of the characters to their new roles, but without the dream aspect or any other in-story connection. Sort of like The Muppet Christmas Carol and other such things.

That would be more like Universal-Adaptor Cast or the various subtropes of Something Completely Different.

... or Alternate Reality Episode