Alternate Species Counterpart

An Alternate Species Counterpart is a character that is created by taking an existing character, then changing their species. This could be done as a one-off for comedic purposes, the creation of an Evil Counterpart to serve as a Foil for the hero, a visitor from an Alternate Universe, the result of a bad dream after a big dinner, or a new Spin-Off to extend an existing property.

If the counterpart is a manufactured robotic version of the original character, then this is a case of Robot Me.

Compare with Adaptation Species Change, Dub Species Change, and Anthropomorphic Animal Adaptation. However, while those tropes deal with derivative works that are separate from the original, an Alternate Species Counterpart will oftentimes share the same canon as the source character, and the two may end up interacting at some point.

A form of Expy and Alternate Self. See also Distaff Counterpart, Evil Counterpart, and Similar Squad.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball: Humans are similar to Saiyans and Tuffles (Anime-only). The differences for Saiyans and Humans are the former tails and transforming into giant apes with tails.
• Fairy Tail: Ichiya's Edolas counterpart is an Exceed (a magical cat-like creature) named Nichiya. Porlyusica is the Edolas human counterpart to Grandeeney. Dragons are Earthland counterparts to Exceeds.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: In the original anime, Rei and Kaworu are belong to a species of mysterious powerful beings known as Angels. In Lighter and Softer Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days, there is no indication Rei is anything but human, while Kaworu has even more bizarro abilities with no explanations. The world in which the events take place also remains a mystery. It could be a full-fledged Alternate Universe, events that occur after one of the many Cosmic Retcons, characters' fantasies about better life, or a non-canonical continuity we shouldn't try to explain.

Comic Books

• DC Comics:
  • The Batman/Elmer Fudd Special has human versions of Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Sylvester the Cat.
• Marvel Comics:
  • Fantastic Four (2022) issue #12 has the team meet dinosaur versions of the Avengers and their children. Meanwhile, the dino-FF has ended up on Earth-616 in their place.
  • Marvel Apes is a spin-off comic which is the Marvel Universe, but with everyone as an ape or some other type of non-human primate. Spider-Man, for example, is a Spider-Monkey.
  • The Mighty Thor:
    • Beta Ray Bill is an alien Korbinite who proves himself worthy of wielding Mjölnir after a battle with Thor.
    • Throg, the Frog of Thunder, was originally introduced after Thor was transformed into a frog and unable to revert to his Asgardian form. He was eventually created as a separate character (a human transformed into a frog) who shares a portion of the Thunder God's powers.
  • The Shatterstar series has Pug-Smasher, who is an alternate-reality version of Captain America villain Flag-Smasher... except that he's a pug.
  • Spider-Ham is Spider-Man as a a cartoon pig. He is originally from Earth-8311, which is home to cartoon versions of Marvel's super-beings, such as Captain Americat, Hulk Bunny, and Ducktor Doom.
• In The Muppet Show Comic Book: Four Seasons issue #2 "Summer", the characters at the Whatnot Theater troupe are counterparts to the Muppets, with the host being Dermot the Dog. Other Whatnots including Miss Tiggy (a tiger), Bonzo the Great (a monkey), Dr. Tongue (as opposed to Dr. Teeth), and Vegetable (a giant carrot who plays the spoons).
• Sonic the Comic: In issue #17, Sonic and Tails were forced to dream that they were human by Eggman's Mind Game machine.

Fan Works

• In Crisis of Infinite Twilights, many of the alternate Twilight Sparkles are of this trope. Examples include a Twilight who's a shark and one who's a Japanese Magical Girl.
• "Echoes of a Past Memory" is a Flash Forward Fic of The Brittas Empire where Gordon Brittas, now an immortal Cyborg, comes across a group of aliens during his new job as Manager for a leisure centre in Verluon 6 which reminds him very much of his human staff members back in Whitbury. Asceid for instance is meant to be the alien version of Carole, being rather shy and having to keep her children behind reception as their father had disappeared from their life.
• Elementals of Harmony: Due to a universal ban on humans, humanoids that arrive in to the plane of Ungula turn into an equinoid counterpart of themselves, as seen in My Little Praetor, where elves become deer, due to the pun-based nature of the plane combined with the ban:
  Jin-Gitaxias: Deer. Elk. Elf. Hm. Wordplay.
• The Palaververse: Terra Incognita has the ponies of Starswirl and Meadowbrook meet their human counterparts.

Films — Animated

• The Great Mouse Detective: Basil of Baker Street and Dr. David Dawson are the mouse counterparts of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, who also exist in the same universe (there is one scene where Holmes and Watson make a brief appearance as silhouettes).
• In Minions, Scarlet tells the Minions her own version of The Three Little Pigs, essentially acting as a warning as to what will happen to them if they fail to steal the crown. The Minions are the pigs, and Scarlet is the Big Bad Wolf.
• The My Little Pony: Equestria Girls franchise is a human High School AU spin-off that takes place in a parallel dimension to the main Friendship Is Magic series.
  • The first film has FIM Twilight Sparkle meet human versions of her Equestrian friends at Canterlot High. The Stinger of the sequel introduces EG Twilight Sparkle, who spends the third film investigating the strange happenings at the school and naturally freaked out by all these people she's never met knowing her name. It is also briefly discussed much later on in Magical Movie Night, when a character from Equestria asks to visit the human world.
    Sunset Shimmer: Well, I haven't ever seen you in that world. So chances are you aren't gonna run into yourself.
    Starlight Glimmer: ...is something you don't hear everyday.
  • Notably averted by Ex-Big Bad/Hero Protagonist Sunset Shimmer, who originated from Equestria but permanently resides in the human world. The character doesn't seem to have a human counterpart; if she does, they have yet to be mentioned, and even the very idea of a native human equivalent is never discussed in canon, making this is a major source of Fanfic Fuel.
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: A few of Peter/Miles' AU counterparts are different species such as Spider-Cat, an orange calico cat with the powers of Spider-Man. This is even goes to extinct animals such as Pter Ptarker, a Tyrannosaurus rex that also possesses Spiderman's powers.
• In Top Cat: The Movie, T.C. ends up befriending a group of dogs, who serve as this to his original gang of cats — Vinny is the dog counterpart to Benny the Ball, Einstein to Brain, Dandy-Dandy to Fancy-Fancy, Spectrum to Spook, and Chattanooga to Choo-Choo.

Films — Live-Action

• Some of the alternate versions of Evelyn in Everything Everywhere All at Once are nonhuman variants, such as Evelyn the doodle, Evelyn the piñata, Evelyn the pigeon, and Evelyn the rock.

Literature

• In the children's book Martha Doesn't Say Sorry, Martha reads a parody of Harry Potter called Harry Otter.
• The children's book The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig parodies the story The Three Little Pigs by reversing the species.
• In the kids' story Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs, the bears in the Goldilocks story are replaced by dinosaurs.
• In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles novel "Buried Treasure", the Turtles encounter a team of four humanoid mutant squirrels named Antonio, Ludwig, Johann, and Wolfgang. They were trained by their mentor to serve as secret agents.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who: "Rise of the Cybermen" depicts an alternative universe, one which is technologically more advanced in some aspects and which has Rose's father still alive. Unlike the main timeline, however, Rose is a completely normal pet dog rather than a human.
• The Go Show sometimes parodies fairy tales this way:
  • In their parody of The Little Red Hen, the hen is replaced by a little red pig.
  • In the parody of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" from Aesop's Fables, the wolf is replaced by a Threatening Shark and the sheep are replaced by seahorses.
• In Loki (2021), one of Loki's Variants is an alligator. Not an anthropomorphic alligator, not a talking alligator, just an ordinary alligator wearing Loki's distinctive horned hat. Several of the other Lokis (including the show's protagonist) are completely baffled by its existence.
• Red Dwarf:
  • "Parallel Universe" features the crew going to a Gender-Bent Alternate Universe. Whilst their counterparts are for the most part female versions of themselves, the Cat's counterpart is a male evolved dog rather than an evolved cat.
  • "Dimension Jump" features a universe where Rimmer becomes a heroic space adventurer, with the others seen in alternative roles. Unlike in our universe, the Cat's counterpart (The Padre) is human instead of a Cat Folk, Kryten's counterpart (Bongo) is also human rather than a Robot Maid, and Holly's counterpart (Mellie) is an android (although the fact that she's an android is only revealed on the website) rather than a Benevolent A.I..
  • "Skipper" features one alternative universe where the Cat's counterpart was a giant RatMan, Lister having been put into stasis for bringing a rat on board instead of a cat.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Vic Fontaine is a hologram in the main universe, but in the Mirror Universe he is a human. It should be noted that the very idea of the Mirror Universe was revised in the series: instead of simply turning good characters into bad ones and vice versa, the universe gradually became its own unique thing — and Vic Fontaine became another indicator of this.
  • In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Author, Author", the Doctor creates a holonovel with characters based on the crew of the Voyager. The counterparts of the non-human crew members, the half-Klingon B'Elanna Torres and the Vulcan Tuvok, are human; on the other hand, the counterpart of Chakotay is Bajoran, and the counterpart of Harry Kim is Trill.

Puppet Shows

• The "Outer Space" segment of The Jim Henson Hour featured an alien television broadcast of The Teppums, alien versions of The Muppets. Characters include Timrek the Gorf, Oznog (an analog to Gonzo), and unnamed Teppum versions of Vicki, Digit, Leon, Bootsie, and Brad.

Video Games

• Luigi's Mansion: The 3DS version of the game introduces Gooigi, a sentient lifeform made of Goo that resembles Luigi. He also appears in the third game.
• A good number of Pokémon species have alternate counterparts. These include Pikachu and its numerous clones (Plusle and Minun, Dedenne, Morpeko, and others), Luvdisc and Alomomola, official convergent evolutions Diglett and Wiglett, and regional forms like Corsola and its Galarian form.
  • On the similar vein, Generation 9 introduces Paradox Pokémon, the past and future counterparts of previous Pokémon.
• Shovel Knight: The hidden NPC character Fish Head wears armour identical to Shovel Knight's minus the helmet, showing him to be an anthropomorphic fish underneath. He's implied to have been inspired by Shovel Knight to take up a similar mantle to do good.
• Splatoon: The Octolings are octopi counterparts to the squid-based Inklings. Just like Inklings, Octolings are capable of shifting between a humanoid form and their namesake form. While initially enemies in the story mode of the first game, subsequent games give the player an option to play as them.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has Lanz as one of its main characters. He is essentially Reyn from Xenoblade Chronicles 1 as a Machina, as they not only share physical resemblances, but both wield a weapon that is both a sword and a shield, are best friends with the protagonist, and act as the Dumb Muscle of the party.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner: In the Strong Bad Email "animal," a fan asks what Strong Bad would "like as if" he were his own made-up animal. Unfortunately, all of Strong Bad's ideas are either nonsensical or "nasty blob things" like da Huuuuuudge. He settles on a cutely dopey critter named Sterrance. Da Huuuuuudge makes a reappearance in "alternate universe," where it joins in the other Strong Bads in their number-one jam and has a high-pitched singing voice.

Web Comics

• El Goonish Shive: NP: Revenge of the Jokes 1 has the normally human Amanda be a catgirl for the second panel.
• Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal (2022) plays this for laughs with Doomfish, a goldfish wearing a Doctor Doom mask and with an ego to match.
  • Also subverted with Doctor Octopus Octopus, who's just an octopus wearing an eight-armed lab coat and a bad wig.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: The Ice King writes stories about a cat named Cake, who's basically a gender-flipped, cat version of Jake the dog.
• Played with in the Amphibia episode "Wax Museum". The family visits a roadside curio museum which is an Expy of the Mystery Shack from Gravity Falls. Curator Ponds is a frog-man Corrupted Character Copy of Grunkle Stan, while Frog Soos implies that they're alternate counterparts of the Gravity Falls characters.
• Arthur: In "Draw!", Francine's friends are mad at her, so they draw unflattering comics of her. However, most depict her as other species (Fern's comic has her as a cow, for instance, and someone else's has her as a frog). They do this partly to deny that the comics are about her, but mostly just as part of the insult.
• Charlie and Lola: Sometimes, the siblings watch movies or read comics about a parody of Batman called Batcat.
• The season 2 opening for The Critic shows Jay and his son Marty visiting a zoo and seeing a pair of giant pandas that just happen to look exactly like the two of them. Both give a confused but polite wave in greeting, to which the Jay-ish panda responds with a wink.
  • In the episode "Frankie and Ellie Get Lost", Jay's parents end up stranded on a desert island when their plane crashes. After some time on the island, they manage to build up what is essentially a Bamboo Technology version of their wealthy lifestyle back home. This includes an ape butler who is a dead ringer for their human butler Shackleford.
• The Croods: In one story, Guy tells a story about a protagonist who he based off Eep, but in the story she's a tiger instead of a cavegirl (he was inspired by her tiger skin dress.)
• The Cuphead Show!: In "A Very Devil Christmas", Devil and Henchman meet Santa's elf that looks, acts and speaks just like Stickler, The Bore of the Underworld.
• Dora the Explorer: One episode reveals that in other countries, there are animals that, much like Swiper, have Sticky Fingers and can be stopped by saying their name, followed by "no swiping". However, these animals are not foxes like Swiper.
• DuckTales (2017): At the end of the episode "Terror of the Terra-firmians!", the five Rock Monster creatures that Webby, Lena, and the triplets encountered in the abandoned metro tunnel are revealed to be their exact counterparts — three boys coloured red, blue and green, and two girls coloured purple and black. The brief dialogue between the red and the purple one mirrors an earlier conversation between Huey and Webby.
• Futurama:
  • "Love's Labors Lost in Space" has the crew rescuing animals on a soon-to-be-destroyed planet called Vergon 6. One of the animals is a Mimic which looks like Leela, except it has the body of a horse.
  • "Bender's Game" sends the Planet Express crew into an alternate Fantasy world where several characters become common fantasy creatures. Leela and Hermes become centaurs named "Leegola" and "Hermaphrodite" (pronounced like Aphrodite), Amy becomes a water nymph (or rather a water nympho) named Gynecaladriel, Zoidberg becomes some sort of giant centipede creature, and Mom and her sons are demons.
  • "Naturama" is a Three Shorts anthology where every character is reimagined as animals.
    • The first segment has everyone become salmon (with Zoidberg becoming a crawfish and Lrrr and Ndnd becoming bears who try to eat the salmon).
    • The second segment has the professor as a tortoise named "Lonesome Hubert," with Fry, Leela, Amy, and Hermes as his finch companions and Bender as an iguana. Hubert's mate is a tortoise version of Mom.
    • The third segment has the cast imagined as elephant seals, with Zoidberg becoming a vampire squid that seal Kif retrieves for his mate, Amy. Scruffy also appears as a walrus, and several other characters cameo underwater as different species, such as a jellyfish that resembles Nixon.
• In Legend Quest: Masters Of Myth, Marcella's Similar Squad has a unicorn to Alebrije in Leo's team.
• The Loud House:
  • In "White Hare", Lincoln is knocked out and dreams a World of Funny Animals where his family and his then-unseen crush are anthropomorphic rabbits (and the former is considerably larger with fifteen extra sisters), while his friend Clyde is a beaver; to top it off, all the characters have entirely different names from their real versions. This doubles as a Development Gag, as the show was originally pitched as being revolved around these dream characters.
  • Several of the characters the Louds make up for their story in "A Dark and Story Night", most of which are based on themselves in one way or another, are of various fictional species rather than humans. These include Lori's Mermaid, Lynn's Tricksy (an alien-like being), Lucy's Dominic Dunkster (a ghost), Lana's Ribbon (an anthropomorphic frog), and Lisa's Robot.
  • Lincoln's imagined story in the short "10 Headed Beast" (itself an adaptation of a story from the comic book) has all of his sisters reimagined as the individual heads of the titular draconic being.
• Martha Speaks: In "Martha Spins a Tale", when Martha gets to the Beanstalk Parody part of her story, the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs is now a duck.
• Milo Murphy's Law: The episode "The Note" has a moment where the main characters encounter a Similar Squad, which includes a pet pig who strongly resembles Diogee.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: On Cluster Prime, Vega's group of friends are robot doppelgangers to Jenny's friends. Where Jenny has Brad, Tuck, and Sheldon, Vega has Drab, Tuff, and Shell.
• The Spin-Off series My Little Pony: Equestria Girls is built around this trope, as it features a world like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, but with humans instead of ponies and set in a High School AU. A magic portal allows characters to travel from one world to the other, transforming them into the appropriate species in the process, and a few characters have met their alternate doppelgängers this way.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "Blorpsgiving", Pat-Tron's family are meant to mirror Patrick's but as robots, down to having similar names and designs.
• PAW Patrol has the Kitastrophe Crew, a group of kittens led by Mayor Humdinger from Foggy Bottom. The cats are almost identical to our canine heroes and even have the same gear, right down to Cat!Zuma having a bone-shaped scuba mouthpiece.
• Planet Sheen introduces Doppy, an alien who looks, sounds, and acts exactly like Sheen's human friend Carl from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.
• In the Pound Puppies (2010) episode "Catcalls", the main characters run into the "Kennel Kittens", a Similar Squad of cats. The cats not only look like their dog counterparts and have similar names, but also share the same voice actors.
• The Simpsons:
  • The early short "Zoo Story" has the Simpsons meeting ape versions of themselves at the zoo.
  • The Couch Gag for "Team Homer" gives us a glimpse at a mouse version of the family, complete with them having their respective haircuts.
  • In "Smoke on the Daughter", Homer and Bart encounter a family of raccoons that eerily resemble the Simpson family.
  • In "Last Exit to Springfield", Mr. Burns has a pet vulture which bears a strong resemblance to himself.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout," SpongeBob and Patrick head to the surface world and go to the Trusty Slab, where they encounter live-action human versions of the show's main cast. Better yet, these human versions are portrayed by the same voice actors as their underwater counterparts — i.e., Tom Kenny portrays human SpongeBob, Bill Fagerbakke portrays human Patrick, Rodger Bumpass portrays human Squidward, Clancy Brown portrays human Mr. Krabs, Carolyn Lawrence portrays human Sandy Cheeks, Mr. Lawrence portrays human Plankton, etc.
• We Bare Bears: The episode "Panda's Friend" centers around Panda making friends with a guy named Tom, who's basically a human version of himself. At the end of the episode, he ends up meeting two human equivalents to Grizzly and Ice Bear, named Griff and Isaac. They would appear in further episodes.

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