Alleged Lookalikes

aka: Non Identical Twins

I'm pretty sure they are both bears.

Kermit: Gee, Mr. Tarkanian, we thought identical twins working on a newspaper would make an interesting story.
Mr. Tarkanian: Well it doesn't. Especially since you two guys don't look anything alike!
Kermit: Well, that's because Fozzie's not wearing his hat. Fozzie, put your hat back on.
Fozzie: Yes, sir! [puts his hat on]
Kermit: See?
Mr. Tarkanian: Oh, yeah...I can see it now.

— The Great Muppet Caper

Characters who supposedly resemble each other, either because they're identical twins, relatives, or just Identical Strangers, don't actually look alike. Or, at the very least, don't resemble each other more than they resemble other characters.

This can be a side-effect of Only Six Faces, or Generic Cuteness. It can also be a result of character design (having two characters who genuinely look identical can be confusing for the audience, unless them being identical is the point). Due to the Rule of Perception, most creators try to add something to make it always evident which is which. In a live-action series, oftentimes the creators don't want to put in the work to either cast twins or deal with the complexity of Acting for Two.

This only covers cases where two characters are compared in a way that to the audience is clearly not appropriate; just saying You Remind Me of X doesn't count. See also Easy Impersonation, when it's someone deliberately disguised as another.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In a commercial for the Seattle Mariners baseball team, Jose Lopez and Yuniesky Betancourt as the "doubleplay twins" dress identical, and get a song about how "you're seeing double," but look absolutely nothing alike.

Anime and Manga

• In Blue Seed, Momiji and Kaede are supposed to be identical twins, which is a major part of the plot. However, Momiji has long red hair and Kaede has short blue hair and a beauty mark on her face. Because of this, both characters look more like sisters whom were born years apart instead of identical twins.
• Cardcaptor Sakura:
  • Sonomi comments on how much Sakura looks like her deceased mother Nadeshiko, to the point of being surprised at the resemblance before she even knew who Sakura was. Despite this, there's no noticeable resemblance between them aside from Sakura inheriting Nadeshiko's green eyes (her brother Touya actually looks much more like Nadeshiko than Sakura does).
  • Yue, and Yukito, an entity the former created to hide inside are noted by another character to be "just alike," when in actuality they have almost nothing in common whatsoever, despite technically being the same person in a odd way. They are functionally in effect completely separate characters with contrasting personalities and distinctly different appearances.
• In Case Closed, Shinichi and Kaito Kuroba (a.k.a. Kaitou KID) are said to be so similar that Kaito can disguise as Shinichi without one of his signature masks. Problem is, because of the author's style, just about anyone can pass as anyone with the right wig (and many of them actually have).
• In Digimon Frontier, people marvel at the near-identical Koji and Koichi, who only share points of similarity that everyone else shares due to the art style. It leads up to their being revealed as each other's long-lost twin. Fraternal twins do exist, but again, we get "they look exactly alike!" Once per Episode. The only noticeable thing that it can truly be chalked up to is that they're the only two of the main cast who have black hair (and even then their hairstyles are different) are and Tsurime Eyes.
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: While Illya and her magically-generated clone Kuro do naturally look very similar, in-universe this trait is greatly exaggerated. They're suggested to be nearly indistinguishable, to the point that Illya's friends and even her brother mistook Kuro for Illya the first time they saw her. However, to the viewers it's always obvious which is which, since Kuro has brown skin, pink hair, and bright orange-red eyes, while Illya has white skin, white hair, and dark red eyes.
• Gals!: When Ran goes to Taiwan for a study tour, she gets mistaken for actress Vivian Lin, who apparently looks a lot like her. However, due to the series' Only Six Faces art style, they look no more identical than any other pair.
• In Inuyasha, everyone initially compares Kagome to Kikyo, of whom she is the reincarnation. They may technically have the "same" face, but the series suffers from Only Six Faces, so they don't look any more alike than any other two random characters you could pick out. The anime makes this even worse than the manga, as there Kikyo and Kagome purposefully differ in many ways: their hairs' style, texture, and color; habitual facial expressions including nose and eye shape, skin tone, and figure — to the point where they're two of the most distinct characters of the same sex and similar age group.
• Played for Laughs/Drama in Kotaro Lives Alone. The first time Karino and Kotaro are out together, people assume that they're a father and son, with several even commenting on their supposed resemblance. Enough people do it that Karino starts to freak out, wondering if an ex-girlfriend got pregnant without telling him. Kotaro himself seems uncomfortable by any comparisons between Karino and his real father.
• An interesting case happens in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure because of the artist's style changes. Part 3 protagonist Jotaro Kujo is supposed to look identical to his grandfather Joseph Joestar in his 30s, to a point Joseph's mistress Tomoko Higashikata mistakes him for him in Part 4. Jotaro's appearances in every Part that he appears in are all during periods of Art Evolution, meaning that Jotaro never looks like Joseph in the slightest to the readers (unless you count Araki's recent redesigns, which suffer from an extreme case of Only Six Faces).
• Nova in Magic Knight Rayearth is said to look exactly like Hikaru (being a manifestation of Hikaru's dark side), to the point of being mistaken for her by other people. As actually drawn, however, the two look totally different — Nova has long, loose bubblegum-pink hair (compared to Hikaru's tightly-braided dark red hair) and huge pointed ears which give her the appearance of some kind of elf or alien. They have the same colour eyes, but otherwise only look as similar to each other as they do all the other female characters.
• In an early episode of My Hero Academia, one of the 1-A students comments that Deku's Quirk resembles All Might's. While this is literally true, as Deku's Quirk is the same as All Might's, One For All, passed onto Deku, the only resemblance between the two is basic Super-Strength, one of the most basic powers in the world.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion, we have Rei, the blue-haired, red-eyed, inhumanly pale clone of Shinji's late, brown-haired, dark-eyed mother, Yui. They do at least have similar faces, but the resemblance is apparently so great that Shinji's father destroyed all photos of Yui in order to prevent him from noticing.
• In The Quintessential Quintuplets, the Nakano sisters are frequently mistaken for one another due to supposedly looking and sounding almost identical. This would be fine enough if it weren't for the Generic Cuteness seen with other female characters, in addition to the variant styles, cuts, and colors each sister's hair has. While they're all supposed to have the same hair color In-Universe, their different hair colors are meant to make it easier for viewers to tell them apart. The anime ups this by giving them all distinct voices, only maintaining anonymity of the bride in the first episode's intro by muting her dialogue.
• In Samurai High School, the main protagonists Kou and Tsukiko are presented as Half-Identical Twins who can pull a Twin Switch without anybody noticing, despite their vastly differing heights, eye shapes and colours.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, no-one ever seems to see a difference between short, moe, Tareme-eyed, soft-voiced Yugi and his not-quite-so-short, bishonen, Tsurime-eyed, deep-voiced alter ego. Some fans have tried to explain the (apparently not so) obvious changes as audio-visual cues to the audience that do not actually exist in-universe. Since every once in a blue moon somebody will mention one of the changes in passing, this explanation has not been widely accepted. Maybe the others just can't stop staring at his hair. The manga averts this. People all notice the switch between Yugi and his alter ego or at least they notice that he has changed. It gets even more ridiculous in Season 5, when the gang travel to Ancient Egypt. The anime adds a scene where the gang meet Atem's childhood friend Mana. She promptly mistakes Yugi for Atem, but now there is not only a height difference but a difference in clothing and also skin colour.
• Similarly, in Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yuya, Yuto, Yugo and Yuri, being dimensional counterparts of each other, are all said to look extremely similar, and are frequently mistaken for each other - despite having wildly different hair, voices, heights, eye-colors, clothes and mannerisms. Their Distaff Counterparts (Yuzu, Ruri, Rin and Serena) get a similar treatment. For comparison purposes, here is a picture of all the lookalikes.

Comic Books

• In-Universe in the Harley Quinn comics. The third issue has a man who says he can never hold down a job because he looks just like... the Joker. (Harley had guessed Al Gore with a bad haircut.) He doesn't and is clearly delusional, eventually leading to his own death out of sheer idiocy.
• Vertigo Comics' Moonshadow #9 has the Tittletat Twins, who are visually different (in height, weight, hair color and style, etc.) but claim to be identical in all those aspects. They were born of different parents in different years, but when they met they decided they were clearly twins. The protagonist decides to not discuss the subject with them.
• Wonder Woman: While Diana and her sister Donna generally look similar the art usually does quite a good job of keeping them unique, with Diana a tad taller and with curly hair and a stronger jawline and Donna having nearly straight hair and a more petite nose and mouth. This made a (short-lived) retcon to Donna's backstory in Wonder Woman (1987) claiming she was the literal mirror image of Diana brought to life seem rather nonsensical, as even when the two were standing right next to each other in civilian clothes they are, even during this story, very noticeably different in appearance. Of course, this isn't an un-justified claim, as Donna is somewhat famously an accidental Decomposite Character of Diana (the writers of Teen Titans assumed that the Wonder Girl character appearing in backups and occasionally teaming up with Wonder Woman was a sidekick, when she was actually a past self).

Films — Animation

• In The Breadwinner, protagonist Parvana pretends to be a boy while wearing her deceased brother Sulayman's clothes. It's mentioned several times that she now looks just like him. The thing is, assuming his depiction in the Story Within a Story is accurate... she doesn't, really. Then again, it's usually their mom making the comparison, and she's shown to be in a pretty frail state emotionally, both about Sulayman's death and the family's current situation.

Films — Live-Action

• Played with Analyze That.
  Eddie De Vol: You know my guys - Enormous Bobby and Al Pacino?
  Paul Vitti: Al Pacino... that's your name?
  Al Pacino: No, they call me that because I look like Al Pacino.
  Paul Vitti: Oh?
  Al Pacino: The actor.
  Paul Vitti: Anybody ever call you Carol Burnett?
  Al Pacino: Why?
  Paul Vitti: Because you look as much like Carol Burnett as you do Al Pacino.
• A big plot point in The Black Dahlia is that Madeleine Linscott and the murdered Elizabeth Shortt looked alike. Kay is even able to spot the resemblance from several feet away on the lawn. Actresses Hilary Swank and Mia Kirshner look nothing alike.
• In Gattaca, the fact that Vincent is able to disguise himself as Jerome using his DNA samples is believable, but, looks wise, they aren't that similar. Jude Law and Ethan Hawke just don't look alike, at least not enough to confuse one for the other. However, this is completely intentional, since the theme of the movie is how dehumanizing it is for people to be reduced to just a genetic signature. In universe, this is portrayed as people (especially cops) being so confident in their genetic analysis material that "Who-looks at the face, nowadays?" The only people to notice are the Love Interest, who's surprised when she meets the real Jerome, and a random doctor who realizes the urine samples "Jerome" is providing are actually coming from a hidden pouch but keeps it to himself.
  • The film is actually a mild subversion, as the profile picture for "Jerome Morrow" is actually a photoshopped blend of Ethan Hawke and Jude Law.
• Funny but somewhat viewer-dependent example in Goal of the Dead: The soccer team has three Korean players, coincidentally even all named "Park", and can't distinguish them.
  Trainer: [After one Park becomes a zombie meal] Hey! Didn't we have three of them?
• Providing the current trope image is Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear in The Great Muppet Caper. In the movie, Kermit and Fozzie are supposed to be identical twins, despite being... well, a frog and a bear. As soon as they put on their hats, everyone falls for it.
• In the Harry Potter films, Harry is still said to have inherited his mother Lily's bright green eyes; they even changed Snape's Last Words to "You have your mother's eyes..." The problem, of course, is that Daniel Radcliffe's eyes are bright blue, while Lily had brown ones. So not only did neither match the book, they didn't even match each other.
• Judge Dredd got a lot of mockery for featuring Sylvester Stallone and Armand Assante as "identical twins" Joseph and Rico Dredd, who are both the clone sons of Chief Justice Fargo (Max von Sydow). All three men have vastly different facial structures and body types. The whole thing runs on Hollywood Genetics, with Rico's DNA being so identical to Joseph's that he can frame him for a murder by planting the gun that Rico used, so they aren't non-identical twins or something like that.
• Happens in Kamen Rider: The First, where the woman only spots one of the two Hopper operatives in night time, making it harder to distinguish their Palette Swap. On top of that, she's seen Hopper no. 1 without the helmet once, but because of aforesaid problems with color perception, she doesn't know that it him who saves her later since he keeps the helmet on this time, AND she comes across Hopper no. 2 in the daytime and thinks that's the one who saved her. That would make sense in the show, where for the longest time, only small details kept them from being 100% identical. But this being the big-budget remake, the producers knowingly pimped out the suits with heavy detailing just to make sure you weren't counting arm-stripes to tell them apart.
• In the very goofy 1991 movie Mystery Date (1991), everyone confuses Ethan Hawke with Brian McNamara (playing his older brother), despite the fact that the two bear next to no resemblance to each other. Seriously. They even claim to give Ethan Hawke the same haircut, but he still has that bowlcut style haircut he had in every movie he made in the early 90s. It's ridiculous.
• In the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, Will Turner is repeatedly said to be the splitting image of his father Bootstrap Bill. When Bill actually appears in the second film, he's played by Stellan Skarsgård, who looks nothing like Orlando Bloom.
• In Repo! The Genetic Opera, Mag comments that Shilo has her "mother's eyes, her hair" — the eyes are debatable, but the hair looks nothing alike, Marni's hair being slightly lighter and curly. Especially noticeable since Shilo's "hair" is a wig supplied by her father.
• Taken to extremes in She's the Man with twin siblings Viola (Amanda Bynes) and Sebastian (James Kirk). Bynes and Kirk do have enough facial resemblance to be twins, but it's still very obvious that Bynes is a woman and Kirk is a man; they are far from the Half-Identical Twins the film presents them to be. It starts off reasonably enough — Viola is first mistaken for Sebastian from behind, Viola's ruse of impersonating Sebastian is conducted mostly around people who have never met Sebastian, and Sebastian's dormmates immediately notice that Viola-as-Sebastian is rather small and feminine — but the climax hinges on this trope; when Sebastian returns to the plot, everyone who knows Viola-as-Sebastian somehow instantly recognizes him, the trio of minor characters who concocted the Sebastian disguise think Sebastian is Viola, and the twins are eventually forced, though nonchalantly, to flash their genitals and breasts to a crowded soccer stadium to confirm their identities to everyone.
• In the 1993 thriller Suture, half-brothers Vincent Towers and Clay Arlington are supposed to be near-identical, enough for them to switch identities. This despite Arlington being played by the solidly-built black actor Dennis Haysbert while Towers is played by the angular white actor Michael Harris.
• Twins details an experiment with genetically engineered brothers, one of which was given the more desirable genes, and the other the leftovers. By the end they are dressing alike and duplicating each other’s movements exactly. Everybody who sees them comments on how you just can’t tell them apart. They are played by Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger who couldn’t possibly look more different. This is of course entirely intentional. The film even used the tagline: "Only their mother can tell them apart".

Literature

• In Doris Egan's "Two-Bit Heroes", narrator Theodora is constantly mixed up with Cantry, the ladylove of the biggest criminal in the area she's visiting. Theodora finds this especially ridiculous because she's a redhead and Cantry is a blonde, but since the two of them are from other planets and the planet they're both living on, Ivory, is populated with dark-skinned brunettes, it's maybe natural that Ivorans wouldn't somehow notice/pick up on that. Eventually the two of them get caught up in a scheme to have two "Cantrys" showing up at the same time.
• Inverted in Warrior Cats. Many characters look virtually identical to other cats, but this is only referenced when they have a very Strong Family Resemblance. Apparently, cats look less similar to each other than they do to humans.

Live-Action TV

• Ashes of Love:
  • Jin Mi is supposed to resemble her mother so much that she could be mistaken for her. Well, theoretically someone could mistake Jin Mi for Zi Fen... from a distance and in poor lighting. But no one who knew Zi Fen and got a good look at Jin Mi would ever make that mistake.
  • Similarly, Su Li supposedly resembles Zi Fen, but the two of them don't look anything alike.
• Charmed (1998) - one episode has an old friend of the family go on about how much Prue resembles her mother, and she denies it, insisting that Piper is the one who takes after her the most. She's correct on the first count, but both Shannen Doherty and Holly Marie Combs barely resemble their mother Finola Hughes. It's arguably Phoebe's actress Alyssa Milano who looks like her the most, and she even played the role in a brief home movie scene before it was cast with another actress.
• Metastises horribly with an Obvious Stunt Double in the Doctor Who story "The Chase", in which the Doctor's Evil Knockoff is played by William Hartnell's stunt double even in scenes when only one character had to be shown. The evil Doctor is said to be indistinguishable from the other in every way, which is reaching. The two actors do look very similar, but still readily distinguishable.
• Drake & Josh:
  • In the episode "Paging Dr. Drake", Drake puts on a doctor's outfit to get the attention of the female nurses, in which he gets mistaken for Dr. Nussbaum. But when Nussbaum shows up, it becomes clear he and Drake look absolutely nothing alike.
  • In the episode "Theater Thug", after Josh portrays the titular crook in a re-enactment on an America's Most Wanted-esque program, he gets mistaken for the thug by the police and several bystanders, despite clearly not looking anything like him. Even when the actual thug was present, he gets falsely arrested again anyway.
• In-universe in the KYTV episode "The Making of 'David Chizzelnut'". It's obvious that the leading man's body double is completely unsuitable, since he is so much taller; obvious to everyone except the actor himself, that is.
• An episode of NewsRadio had this as part of the plot. Matthew's 'twin brother', played by pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart, came to visit. He looked nothing like him, but they both kept playing 'look alike' games. Eventually Matthew's brother says that it was a stupid idea of his parents in order to misdirect Matthew from thinking he was adopted. The rest of the cast is shocked, as this is incredibly stupid, even for Matthew. It turns out that the deception was the other way around. Matthew was the biological son, and he was simply playing stupid in order for his brother to not think he was adopted.
• Once Upon a Time - upon seeing a portrait of Helga, the Snow Queen's middle sister, Hook does a double take and says "bloody hell, she looks just like you" to Emma. Besides the blonde hair, not really. The next episodes even seem to ignore this and just focus on how Emma is a Replacement Goldfish because of her magic more than any physical resemblance.
• Played as a joke in the sitcom The Other One, half-sisters Cathy and Cat meet for the first time after their father dies. Cat's mother proclaims that they look just like each other — they react with bewilderment, since they clearly don't.
• In one episode of Poirot, multiple characters state that a group of adult male siblings are all dead-ringers for their father. Not only do they not look like their father; they don't particularly look like one another either.
• Parodied in a Saturday Night Live sketch called "Brother 2 Brother". It sees supposedly identical twins played by the very built Chris Hemsworth and much more average Taran Killam trying to pull a Twin Switch in order to pass an exam. No-one is fooled and pretty much the entirety of the sketch consists of the teacher and students pointing out the physical differences between the two.
• In Sykes Eric and Hattie insisted they were identical, despite not only being the opposite sex but also being completely different body types (Eric being taller, thin, and rakish and Hattie being shorter, heavier set and baby faced).
• In Switched at Birth, several characters have said that Bay looks like her biological mother Regina, a clue that she was switched at birth. While Bay doesn't look much like the parents she was raised with, she doesn't look much like Regina at all. On top of that, it's been said many times that her parents assumed she got her "colouring" from a distant Italian relative (Bay's biological mother is Latina), when Bay really just has pale white skin but with brown hair, something that isn't that weird considering her "dad" has medium brown hair anyways.
• The Goes Wrong Show: In the Series 2 episode "The Most Lamentable...", Chris and Max are playing identical twins. While the resemblance is better than if Robert, Dennis, or Jonathan had been in one of the roles, the fact remains that they are still easily distinguishable- for example, Max is blonde and Chris has dark brown hair.
• In an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, Gabrielle and Aphrodite have to infiltrate a twins bar run by the Gemini twins, despite not remotely looking alike (Aphrodite is a good deal taller than Gabrielle, for starters).

Podcasts

• Played with in Welcome to Night Vale. Cecil and Kevin are mentioned to be completely identical, aside from the latter's Black Eyes of Evil. This carries over to the live version, where it can be clearly seen that Cecil Baldwin and Kevin Free look practically nothing alike. Word of God says that only the descriptions in the podcast are canon, which are so far irrelevant to anything besides clothing.

Pro Wrestling

• There's a Professional Wrestling duo named The Dudley Boyz/Team 3-D where one of the "twins" is white and the other's black. The official explanation is that they are "Brothers from Another Mother". They even managed to once pull the switch-places-when-the-ref-isn't-looking trick.

Puppet Shows

• The Great Muppet Caper has a running gag in which Fozzie and Kermit are supposed to be twins and they can only be told apart when Fozzie has his hat on. Gets even funnier when they get each other confused while simultaneously acknowledging their obvious physical differences:
  Fozzie: You're lucky. You have fur.
  Kermit: No, Fozzie, you're the one with the fur. Turn on your light and see for yourself.

Theatre

• In Blood Brothers, Mickey and Eddie are supposed to be identical twins. This has not stopped some productions from casting actors who have very different appearances.
• The Comedy of Errors: Two pairs of long-lost identical twins end up in the same town. In some productions, the twins are played by different actors, and even, if the production wants to play this trope for laughs, different races and/or genders.
• Les Misérables: Champmathieu is supposed to look exactly like Jean Valjean, but in practice the actors are seldom identical.
• Swan Lake: Rothbart's daughter Odile goes to the ball in disguise as Princess Odette, who wears white. The audience knows it's her because she's dressed in black.
• In Twelfth Night, Viola and Sebastian are supposed to be Half-Identical Twins, impossible to tell apart when Viola is dressed as a man. Needless to say, it is very difficult to find a suitable male and female actor who are even the same height, let alone actors who look enough alike to be mistaken for each other. Even when the play is performed with an all male cast, as it was originally performed, actual male twins are rarely cast. One television production from 1969 simply used Double Vision movie magic to have the lead actress play both roles.
• In The Woman in White, Laura Fairlie and Anne Catherick are supposed to look similar, but are often played by actresses who look different from one another.

Video Games

• In Breath of Fire IV, Ryuu and Fou-Lu are said to look very similar, at least by the residents of the village of Sonne. Their facial features, however, look almost nothing alike, even if you ignore their completely different hair styles and colors, their completely different eye colors, and Fou-Lu's horns.
• In the Devil May Cry series Dante and Vergil are twin brothers distinguished by outfit colors, voices and hairstyles, though their Battle in the Rain in the third game have their wet hairs styled the same way, further showing how identical they look. In spite of that, the two somehow got completely different facial models in the fifth game, therefore looking no longer like each other. Even the Alternate Continuity spin-off had their versions of Dante and Vergil sharing the same facial model.
• Earth Defense Force 5 introduces a new type of alien to the series, the Colonists. In-game dialogue hypes up how they look "almost identical to humans" but when you finally see them... they're actually giant, bipedal frogs. Characters continue to insist they look "almost exactly like humans", and at no point does anyone compare them to frogs.
• Samuel in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem is a copycat of another character, the famed swordsman Navarre, and even people who knew Navarre well could get them mixed up at first glance. In the original game, they really were almost identical; the only difference between their portraits aside from a different pose is that Samuel has a headband. But in the 2010 remake, Navarre went through a redesign—his tunic went from purple to red, he lost his shoulder armor, his skin became noticeably paler, and his hair changed from brown to black. For some reason, though, Samuel's design wasn't updated to reflect those changes, meaning the only resemblance he and Navarre have is that they're both long-haired myrmidons (like... the vast majority of myrmidons).
• The player character in GreedFall is fully customizable, and can look like anything. The only feature that's forced upon all characters, for plot reasons, is a facial mark. Apparently, having this mark is enough to make you look exactly like a native of the island most of the game takes place on, even if you look nothing like the natives. The mark can even be mostly concealed by facial hair, but one native will still mistake you for a comrade 'from behind,' even if you're wearing foreign clothes.
• Twin brothers Sven and Grancy in Gyee. In their introduction story, the player character first meets Grancy for a brief moment, then meets Sven a while later, mistaking him for his brother. Sven decides to pretend to be Grancy for the heck of it, and the player character doesn't notice until they come across the real Grancy again. The thing is, the two are Polar Opposite Twins and players can distinguish them easily. The two have different hair colors (Sven has black hair with a red streak, Grancy has white hair with a blue streak), different hairstyles (Sven has messy hair with a bandana, Grancy has his hair spike upwards showing his forehead), different clothes (Sven wears messy red uniform, Grancy wears his blue uniform properly), and completely different demeanors (Sven is Hot-Blooded, Grancy is The Stoic).
• Kingdom Hearts: Members of Organization XIII either claim Sora looks like Roxas or just call Sora "Roxas". This is... confusing, since to some degree they seem to actually believe he is Roxas, but they're also messing with his head, and it's hard to tell which is happening. Sora and Roxas do have the same face, but they also have completely different hair, mannerisms, and voices, so it's kind of hard to actually confuse the two. Every other human/Nobody pair is basically identical (for example, the only difference between Axel and an adult Lea is the facial markings on the former and Axel/Lea is basically treated as one singular person anyway, to the point that the names are interchangeable), making it seem even weirder. With later revelations about the nature of Roxas and nobodies, the Organization had reason to believe that Roxas could become the dominant persona. However, as Roxas had personal reasons to hate the Organization, getting him to take charge would have been bad for them.
• Knight Eternal: Hector, the priest of Westvale, states that Astraea looks like Helena. However, she has short black hair, unlike Lilith and Helen in Timeline 2, who both have long blonde hair while also being considered the spitting images of Helena. Unfortunately, most of the cast of the previous games don't want to tell her about her past, since they believe that she's actually Lilith.
• Metal Gear:
  • In Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake and Liquid Snake are stated to be identical clones, and Solid even cuts his hair during the briefing so he won't be confused for the terrorists' commander. However, their ingame models look nothing alike. Downplayed in The Twin Snakes remake, where Solid and Liquid have exactly the same facial features, although they are still very easy to tell apart due to dramatic differences in their hairstyles, mannerisms, and voices.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Solidus Snake is the leader of the terrorists behind the Big Shell Incident and claims to be Solid Snake, a lie which everyone excluding the skeptical Raiden believes because Snake and Solidus are supposedly identical. However, while they do have otherwise identical in-game models, Solidus has been afflicted with Rapid Aging earlier than Solid Snake, meaning that his character model is aged up to look about forty to fifty years older than him, making it strange that anyone could actually confuse the two. There’s also the Fridge Logic that, considering Solidus was the former President of the United States, no one ever confused Solid Snake for being the president in previous games despite him supposedly looking identical to him. Their differences are even more pronounced in the English-speaking version of the game where Solid Snake and Solidus have different voice actors who sound nothing alike, while the Japanese version keeps them more similar by giving them the same voice actor.
  • The trope is finally Subverted in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater where, while Snake and his identical father Big Boss do have some very subtle differences to their character models, the differences are subtle enough that it actually is easy to confuse the two (and in fact many gaming publications do confuse the two). They also share the same voice actor in all language dubs of the game, making them even more identical. In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the trope is subverted again because Venom Snake is truly identical to Big Boss as well, enough for it to be a surprising plot point to most players that they are actually different people.
• Mortal Kombat: Originally, Kitana and her clone Mileena were an aversion of this but due to Art Evolution their looks became more distinct. This made instances where Mileena was mistaken as Kitana in-universe seem very ridiculous. Mortal Kombat 9 takes it to its logical conclusion in story mode where Jade beats Mileena in a fight, only for Smoke to arrive afterwards and accuse her of beating Kitana, despite the fact Mileena wears purple while Kitana wears blue. Raiden even points out that the girl lying on the ground is not Kitana, but Smoke has none of it and proceeds to attack Jade.
• In Onmyōji (2016), the protagonist Seimei has an Evil Counterpart who goes around causing troubles and all the latter's victims mistake the former for the perpetrator. While the two of them do have use the exact same character model (the Evil Counterpart can even be unlocked as an alternate skin for Seimei) their colour schemes are radically different, including highly distinctive face paint on the evil twin that player Seimei lacks. Like, we know they are separated from a single person, but come on.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: Played for laughs. Shantae, Risky Boots, Sky, and Rottytops are all mistaken for the missing princess of the Tan Line Temple and held against their will. Mind you, these are four very attractive women, though with their different (and often fantastic) skin and hair colors, they're not even particularly easy to mistake for each other. The actual princess? Short and dumpy, not even slightly similar in appearance to any of the four. Risky threatens the High Priest with violence after realizing who she's being confused with. The townspeople only seem to notice after the princess returns (she was just shopping), and the High Priest remains confused even then.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: A minor Running Gag in the series is how various characters end up mistaking another character for Sonic, and vice versa.
  • In Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic and Shadow are both consistently mistaken for the other. It's somewhat of a Downplayed Trope, because while Shadow does easily pass as an Evil Counterpart of Sonic, there are more than enough physical differences between the two to them apart (different color schemes, different quill shapes, Shadow has a raised bit of fur on his chest). This is a holdover from Shadow's initial design, which more heavily resembled Sonic than his final one did.
  • The 2006 game tries to pull a similar stunt with Amy initially confusing Silver for Sonic. Unlike Shadow, Silver bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to Sonic whatsoever and barely even looks like he's part of the same species.
  • In Sonic Generations, the game is about Sonic meeting with himself from the Genesis/Mega Drive era. Originally Sonic was shorter, had shorter legs, black eyes and was pudgy, but in the Sonic Adventure, he was redesigned being taller and having longer legs, green eyes and was more slim. Despite this all of Sonic's friends don't seem to notice much difference between the two, even both Sonics don't notice when they look at each other through a glass and think they're looking at a mirror.
• In Star Fox 64, Katina features enemy ships that dialogue suggests are supposed to be very difficult to distinguish from the numerous friendly ships in the level. They are not even approximately the same shape, and, aside from both ships having green patches, they are very different colours. Nonetheless, Peppy will sometimes report shooting down a friendly ship before immediately realizing his error. It is difficult to avoid shooting the friendly ships, but only because there are so many and they're as flimsy as the enemies.
• In Super Mario Sunshine, people constantly mistake Mario for Shadow Mario, and insist that Mario is the one responsible for polluting Isle Delfino; even when they are seen together, characters (including Princess Peach, who's spent more time around Mario than anyone else besides his brother Luigi) insist that they look identical. This despite the fact that Mario has his normal color scheme, while Shadow Mario is uniformly blue from head to toe and appears to be made of water.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Regal is initially interested in speaking with the party instead of capturing them because of Presea's alleged resemblance to Alicia, her younger sister, but when you actually get to see the latter, the only thing she has in common with Presea is pink hair and it isn't even the same shade.

Visual Novels

• Phoenix Wright and Furio Tigre in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations. Played for laughs since the only thing Furio shares with Phoenix is a hair style. They differ in build, temperament, facial features, and skin tone, yet Tigre successfully managed to impersonate Phoenix in court using a fake badge made of cardboard, although it should be noted that the game goes full-out with this and uses Phoenix's sprite in this scene. Phoenix spends the entire case wondering how anyone could think Tigre looks like him.
• Tokimeki Memorial 4: It's certainly true that Rui Nanakawa looks like Tadashi, but she's still a girl. Even when in his clothes, Rui is a head shorter, has a higher pitched voice, lighter skin, and certainly isn't lacking in the bust department. No one seems to notice these differences except the Protagonist.
• In the Fate Series, it's noted that Artoria Pendragon and Jeanne d'Arc are extremely similar-looking, to the point that Gilles de Rais thought they had to be the same person (though he is a bit of an unreliable source on the issue), and Jeanne is often lumped in with "Saberface" characters that share Artoria's design, such as Mordred, Nero, and alternate versions of Artoria. Thing is, other than that they're both blonde women drawn by a guy notable for Only Six Faces, the two don't actually bear that much resemblance to each other—they have different builds, different hair in color and style, different heights, different eye colors, and even their faces are noticeably different in structure. Possibly a case of Leaning on the Fourth Wall, as players of the original Fate/stay night often assumed Saber to be Jeanne d'Arc before The Reveal.

Web Animation

• Parodied in Sonic Shorts with one short featuring Sonic being increasingly frustrated for being mistaken for Metal Sonic, Shadow and Silver, culminating in him ripping his own ears off.

Western Animation

• Played for Laughs in Back at the Barnyard. The other dog who was impersonating Duke looked nothing like him.
• In the Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "So in Louvre Are We Two", Muriel states that her mother used to tell her she looks like Mona Lisa, which she agrees with, but they don't look alike at all.
• Exaggerated in Family Guy in the episode "German Guy" when Chris gets in a Spot the Imposter situation with Peter and an elderly Nazi. Peter remarks that they don't look anything alike, but it doesn't help.
• On Grojband, Kin and Kon Kujira claim to be identical twin brothers, but they look absolutely nothing like each other.
• In one episode of Kaeloo, Kaeloo says that fraternal twins Pretty and Eugly resemble each other. Pretty is not amused.
• This is a Running Gag with Ember in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. "Triple Threat" had her having a hard time telling Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer apart, since they're "both purple ponies with purple hair", and they "both have cutie marks with sparkly things". Doubles as Leaning on the Fourth Wall as fans have often pointed out the similarity between the two names. Another episode, "Sweet and Smoky", had her mixing up Fluttershy with Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie, even though they are all different colors and the latter two don't have wings.
  Starlight Glimmer: Mine's more of a glimmer.
  Ember: How is that different?
• Played for Laughs in South Park, due to the adults being complete idiots. A goat gets mistaken for Stevie Nicks by both the military officers and Fleetwood Mac themselves.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series: The public and the police somehow mistake Morbius for Spider-Man even though Spider-Man wears a full body-concealing red and blue costume and Morbius wears black leather, has pale skin, and can fly. This leads to Spider-Man being blamed for Morbius' crimes.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants, Plankton creates a shoddy robot of Mr. Krabs that both looks and sounds nothing like the real thing. SpongeBob, however, is unable to tell them apart. This could be justified due to SpongeBob's exceptional naivete, since the only other person to see the robot (besides Mr. Krabs himself) is Squidward, who isn't fooled for a moment; Plankton disposes of him by giving him the day off.

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