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"[Chrom] and Ike are too similar. No point in having two characters that are pretty much carbon copies. Am I right?"

A common trope seen in Fighting Games, where two or more characters are given equal or similar abilities and moves. They may look similar, and in older games will likely be a Head Swap and/or Palette Swap of one another, but this is not required; indeed, in Tekken, one human character has similar moves to a bear. Generally, if the characters aren't exactly alike, one will be comparatively quick and light, with the other slow and heavy, and a third may be balanced between the two. Divergent Character Evolution may serve to further differentiate such characters in sequels.

This is often justified in the game's backstory (if it has any) by the characters being family members or having trained in the same school.

If you ever hear anyone call these characters "Echo Fighters", chances are they play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which marks these types of characters with that term.

Compare Cosmetically Different Sides. Contrast Ditto Fighter, where a character copies every character he fights against. Supertrope of Shotoclone, which refers to this phenomenon affecting a particular character archetype. A Multi-Slot Character might have their multiple incarnations be this trope.


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Fighting Game examples:

    Arc System Works 
  • Battle Fantasia:
    • Urs and Marco Van De Land, who also happen to be brothers. It's a weird case with 9-year-old Marco and 17-year-old Urs. And they manage to do this and come off as amazingly different at the same time, partly because of Urs' Impossibly Cool Weapon.
    • Another example from the same game is Olivia and Odile, who look similar, have similar weapons, and it turns out that Dokurod cloned Olivia to create Odile.
  • Unusually for a fighting game, BlazBlue didn't really have this until the second revision of the third game.
    • After seemingly being cut from the roster due to her destruction in the previous game, Lambda-11 makes a return alongside her sister units, Mu-12 and Nu-13 respectively. This is averted for the former, as the two may look similar, but play completely differently. However, it's largely played straight with the latter. Nu and Lambda share the same normal attacks, Distortion Drives, and even an Astral Heat, although they have quite different properties.
      • Nu's playstyle is focused on keeping her opponent at a distance. Her Drive swords are quick and freely cancellable, her Gravity Seed recharges more quickly and can be cancelled out of, her Sickle Storm and Legacy Edge push opponents full-screen, and she keeps her teleport dash and Supra Rage specials.
      • Lambda, on the other hand, is focused more on locking down the opponent and closing space. Her Drive swords are slower, but cause more stun, her Gravity Seed can actually hit the opponent and cause them to float helplessly in midair, her Sickle Storm and Legacy Edge keep the opponent trapped in a certain space, her Calamity Sword homes in on the opponent, and she has three different command dashes plus a completely original projectile move to retain pressure.
    • And as a point of interest, it was played dead straight in a forgivable way in the previous title. Nu-13 was just a more visually interesting and plot-progressing way of being "Unlimited Lambda-11". Like all Unlimited characters, Nu-13 had almost exactly the same moveset as the base form, just with a few tweaks to make her dementedly powerful.

    Bandai Namco 
  • In the Tekken series:
    • In the first game, aside from one or two unique moves, all unlockable characters were clones of the eight default characters (e.g. Anna as Nina's clone, Heihachi as Kazuya's clone, etc.). With the exception of Wang, they even have the same voice clips as one of the eight. 2 differentiated them somewhat, although their similarities still outweigh the differences. Tag gave them some unique new moves, namely side throws and sidestep-based moves. It wasn't until 5 that the Divergent Character Evolution was fully complete and they are no longer considered clones.
    • A good example of this is King and Armor King. In the very first game, the latter's moveset was basically the same as King's but with the addition of Mishima's Wind God Fist (f,N,d,d/f+2) and Thunder God Fist (f,N,d,d/f+1) attacks, which (in the first two games) made him objectively superior to King, as King was effectively the same character but without those attacks. By the time of the first Tag game, however, Divergent Character Evolution started to kick in; Armor King's f,N,d,d/f+1 was no longer a copy of the Mishima TGF, his "WGF" was also changed from the Mishimas', though technically the same functionality wise, and he was given a new f,N,d,d/f+4 knee attack, a new SS+2 uppercut and a d/b+4 low-hitting dropkick, while King had many moves unique to him such as the Rolling Sobat (f+4), Moonsault Body Press (1+4), Deadly Boomerang kick (SS+3+4), and so on. Both of these movesets, minus Armor King's version of the WGF, would merge and form the basis of King's moveset for 4; since Armor King was absent from that game, King took over his moves from Tag. In Tekken 5, however, King's moveset was extensively overhauled with many new moves, so when Armor King returned for its upgrade, Dark Resurrection, they could no longer be considered clones, nor Armor King to be an "improved copy" of King, even though they still shared a few identical moves or had many roughly equivalent moves (for example, they both possess Giant Swing and Tombstone Piledriver, with the same command/input, but these grapples have unique animations for each of them). By Tekken 7 the differences were enough that their playstyle is now radically different: King has slightly better holds and mid attacks, making him more of a defensive yet mix-up-oriented character, while Armor King has the edge on pokes and whiff-punishing, making him more of a rushdown character with emphasis on poking, spacing and baiting enemy attacks that he can punish. Both Kings, however, remain with a key weakness in lacking good lo- hitting attacks (as their lows are slow and/or require a counter-hit in order to deal substantial damage), in order to enforce players to try for grabs more often.
    • Characters who share the same slot are clones of each other. Examples include Devil/Angel and Roger/Alex in 2 and Tag, Kuma/Panda from their debut until Tag 2, and Lee/Violet in 4 and 7. Eddy/Christie, although sharing the same slot in 4 and vanilla 5, is sort of an aversion since their throws are unique, but otherwise they play this straight as their other moves are identical. When Angel and Alex returned in Tag 2, they were made different from their original characters (note that Devil is now just a transformation of Kazuya).
    • The legacy characters: the Laws, the Changs, the Jacks, the Kings, the Kumas, the Armor Kings, the Rogers, and the Ravens are similarly clones of each other. For this reason, most of them do not appear in the same game. (A notable exception is when Jack-2, Gun Jack, and P. Jack all appeared in Tag together, as did Michelle and Julia, while in Tag 2 there is just Jack-6 and P. Jack while Julia took on an alternate identity. However, the latter game, unlike the first, did have both Laws.)
    • Kuma/Panda were finally given their own slots starting in Tag 2. Initially, it seemed that this was so the player could choose both bears in their team (since a slot cannot be chosen twice). However, the change seeped into the mainline installments as they also have their own slots in 7 and the only thing separating them is their unique Rage Arts.
    • Kazuya, Heihachi, Jin and Angel/Devil played very similarly up to Tag, justified since they practice the same brand of Mishima Karate. In particular, Jin can be considered a + version of Kazuya, since he has all of Kazuya's moveset plus some inherited from Jun. With Kazuya's return to the franchise in 4, this was averted by giving Jin a whole new fighting style, while only maintaining a handful of his old moves that were already unique to him, and further specializing Heihachi's Mishima Karate. 5 then introduced Devil Jin, who inherited old Jin's moveset mixed with versions of the laser attacks from Angel/Devil, but this time, there were enough differences not to make him simply an upgraded Kazuya.
    • There is, however, an interesting case of "circular influence" between Angel and Devil Jin: after Angel's hiatus from the series after Tag, Devil Jin picked up on Angel/Devil's laser beam attacks (including the flying variations) as well as the SS+2 "Devil Twister" uppercut launcher. When Angel returned for Tag 2, she was given the majority of Devil Jin's moves, to the point that in this particular game she can be considered mostly a clone of Devil Jin (though, in the same vein as with other clones in the franchise, she was also given some unique moves to make her not completely identical to him).
    • Baek and Hwoarang are a subversion. It might be tempting to dismiss them as clones, since they are teacher-student, practice taekwondo, and have a shared story. However, their fighting style is actually very dissimilar (Baek utilizes traditional taekwondo, while Hwoarang incorporates a more street fighting variation due to his rebellious personality). In fact, just in Tag alone, they are more separate than post-Divergent Character Evolution Heihachi and Kazuya.
    • Jinpachi Mishima is also a subversion. He practices Mishima Karate, yes, but his is so divergent it's basically In Name Only (he does not even have EWGF, a certain indicator of a Mishima and possessed by Kazuya, Heihachi, and Devil Jin).
    • As the name suggests, True Ogre is an upgraded version of Ogre in 3 and Tag, since he has all of his moves in addition to new ones involving fire breathing and flying. However, he does lose a single one (Ancient Power). Tag 2 would make True Ogre a little more distinct from his base form, now dubbed Ancient Ogre.
    • Asuka was added in 5 with the specific reason to replace Jun, and thus inherited most of her moves. When Jun returned in Tag 2, she was the one given a mostly brand new moveset instead of Asuka's. However, Jun's new moveset was now largely shared with Unknown, the returning boss from the first Tag, who this time was confirmed to be Jun's One-Winged Angel form.
    • Tag 2 has a slew of clones of original characters. As with Kuma/Panda, the reason is so the players can choose them together. Examples include Lee/Violet, Xiaoyu/Miharu, Lili/Sebastian, among others. The situation is just like the first game in that the characters are identical save for one or two unique moves, although this time they have unique voice clips. There are aversions, though: Kunimitsu plays different from Yoshimitsu since she has (an expanded version of) her old fighting style, which is already separate from Yoshi to begin with.
  • Soul Series:
    • Starting with Soulcalibur III and IV, the series took this route with Siegfried and Nightmare. Only fair since they literally started out as the same character.
      • This was also the case in the original Soulcalibur. While Nightmare inherited Siegfried's style from the original installment, Soul Edge, due to Soul Edge using Siegfried as its host, Siegfried himself was also an unlockable character. Obviously, Siegfried employed the same techniques as Nightmare (who is technically the "clone" in this case despite Siegfried's appearance being non-canon), though his moveset had minor differences.
      • Despite Divergent Character Evolution coming into play between these two starting in III (Siegfried ended up keeping about 70% of Nightmare's moves from SCII), Soulcalibur VI oddly moved them closer to this territory even though they retain their distinct playstyles from previous iterations. Notably, Nightmare regained some of the stances he had originally that were then given to Siegfried whereas Siegfried has a passive ability that, when he's at low health, allows him to use Nightmare's now-trademark Soul Wave.
    • The Alexandra sisters (Sophitia and Cassandra) developed along these lines as well since the latter showed up in SCII (though the latter was originally intended as a Suspiciously Similar Substitute until popular demand brought back the former for the console version of SCII and subsequent sequels). When both were "retired" for Soulcalibur V, Sophitia's children Patroklos and Pyrrha became their successors, with Pyrrha (and her malfested form, Pyrrha Omega) drawing the most from Sophitia, while Patroklos had a more unique style and a final form inheriting Setsuka's moveset.
      • Before her sister joined the fray, Sophitia had another clone in the form of SCI's Lizardman, who also brandished a sword and shield. As it turns out, Lizardman was originally Aeon Calcos, another one of the 24 holy warriors tasked with destroying Soul Edge by Hephaestus and bestowed with divine weapons. After sitting out Soulcalibur II (see below), III brought Lizardman back, this time brandishing an axe instead of a sword but still sharing several moves with the Alexandra sisters. It wasn't until V that Lizardman, now going by his original name of Aeon, decisively pulled away from his clone status: he was given a complete moveset overhaul (explained by Ares granting Aeon the ability to steal the skills of anyone he feasted upon), sporting dual axes, being able to sprout wings and breathe fire, and even borrowing moves from Kratos's stint in Broken Destiny. (In fact, it's implied Aeon ate Kratos.)
    • Hwang and Mitsurugi started out like this before Soulcalibur changed Hwang's move list to be more unique (albeit somewhat similar to Xianghua's on account of their acrobatics). Hwang was then phased out in favor of Yun-seong in SCII, who took the acrobatic elements of Hwang's style and expanded upon them, though Hwang returned as a bonus character in III and was briefly bumped back up to playable status for that game's Arcade Edition. With Hwang's return as DLC in SCVI, Divergent Character Evolution kicked in enough to better distinguish Hwang from both Mitsurugi and Yun-seong.
    • Rock and Astaroth. Becomes a plot point when Astaroth discovers his origins (he, the "Black Giant", was modeled after the "White Giant", Rock) and then attempts to kill Rock.
    • Raphael and Amy, though this is justified by Raphael teaching Amy his fencing techniques. Amy also seems to have a slight emphasis on thrusting attacks compared to Raphael, though not to a particularly notable degree.
    • Kilik and Seong Mi-na also shared a lot of moves in Soulcalibur in spite of their different weapons, but differentiated more and more with each subsequent sequel. Seong Mi-na's moves are straightforward and have changed the least, while Kilik gained a focus on range and punishing opponents' mistakes. This is partially justified in that Mi-na trained under both Kong Xiuqiang (a former monk of the Ling-Sheng Su Temple and the father of Xianglian and Xianghua who would've inherited Kilik's Kali-Yuga had he not stolen the Krita-Yuga to give to his lover Xiangfei) and Edge Master (Kilik's master). Kilik even notes the similarity in their styles when he encounters her in Mi-na's SCIV story. VI decided to further diversify them by having them inherit different moves from Xiba, their shared successor in V (Xiba being Kilik's son with Xianghua who was later trained by his grandfather Kong).
    • The console versions of Soulcalibur II had a set of one-time clones in the form of Assassin (Hwang), Berserker (Rock), and Lizardman (Lizardman). Assassin was long thought to actually be Hwang due to his moveset and similar appearance, which received a nod in VI where Hwang goes undercover to save Mi-na while wearing clothes almost identical to Assassin's.
  • In Ehrgeiz, the Final Fantasy VII characters are generally clones of other characters and have very similar movesets. Yuffie matches up with Sasuke, Vincent with Godhand, and (to some extent) Sephiroth with Cloud. Secret Character Zack and Cloud share a similar moveset as well.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven has Part 3 Jotaro and Part 4 Jotaro. They have almost identical movesets, with Part 4 having better range and Part 3 a better Time Stop.
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces, Stern/Material-S, Levi/Material-L, and Lord Dearche/Material-D were these to Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate respectively, having the exact same move sets but with different stats to emphasize their status as Doppelgangers. Divergent Character Evolution eventually happened when they returned in the Gears of Destiny sequel, after they spent their time recovering from being dead devising their own fighting techniques and spells to show that they aren't just mere copies.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. Full Boost does this with most of its DLC, introducing versions of existing Mobile Suits with alternate pilots. While their movesets are mostly the same, some units do have alterations and most have entirely different EX Bursts, but most importantly they almost always cost fewer resources to use. For example, the version of the Infinite Justice Gundam piloted by Lacus Clyne has a different Assist Character and EX Burst, its damage output is lower and its melee options are more limited, but it only costs 1000 points while the standard version piloted by Athrun Zala costs 2500; since the standard resource meter in ExVs is 6000 points, Lacus' I-Justice can afford to respawn twice as much as Athrun's can.
  • When Gundam: The Battle Master 2 was brought over to the west as Gundam Battle Assault, U.S. and European players got access to the exclusive Wing Gundam Mobile Suit to use in Duels and Story Mode. But don't get too excited' Wing plays exactly the same as the Zeta Gundam, which is still available to play as in those same modes. Likewise, the Zaku II and Zaku IIS has the exact same movelist, the only difference being that the IIS is red and moves three times faster.
  • Dragon Ball FighterZ zig-zags this trope by including two different incarnations of Goku and Vegeta on the game's roster, one as Super Saiyans and another as Super Saiyan Blues. While both versions share some attacks (mostly normal attacks, maybe one special), on the whole their movesets are fairly different because the Super Saiyan versions draw inspiration from the original DBZ while the Blue versions draw from Dragon Ball Super; even in the cases where the characters share special attacks, they usually have different properties. note  Of course, their sharing moves could be seen as justified since it's the same characters; Goku's fighting style and signature moves don't change just because he's operating at a different level of power. DLC would later add a third version of Goku and Vegeta, this time as their base forms from the Saiyan Saga of Z. As before, their movesets are remarkably different from the other playable Gokus and Vegetas due to the part of the series they represent, such as Goku having access to the Kaio-ken and Vegeta using his Galick Gun as a regular special move. The later arrival of Ultra Instinct Goku in S3 is perhaps the most notable aversion to date, with Goku instead adopting a very technical style of play largely revolving around counters and other defensive options (including the ability to automatically evade regular ki blasts by phasing through them during his forward walking animation). Even his normal ki blasts have been swapped out for the pressurized wind Goku's punches are seen generating while in that state while his posture is upright and relaxed compared to the other Goku variants adopting a formal fighting stance.
  • Dragon Ball Xenoverse averts this for the most part, with nearly every character having their own basic attacks, except for some forms that are given their own slots, but this also includes SSGSS Goku, SSGSS Vegeta and Golden Frieza, who were paid DLC, although they had several new super and ultimate moves.
  • Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 strangely made one of the DLC fighters from the previous game, GT Trunks, a clone of Future Trunks despite him having a unique moveset beforehand. The pre-order bonus, Base Goku Black, is also a moveset clone of regular Goku, since the game was released early into the Future Trunks Arc in Super and there wasn't much to go off, with what he did have at first being similar enough to Goku. Black did, however, get his own super and ultimate move, and a later DLC included his Super Saiyan Rosé form with a fully unique moveset.

    Capcom 
  • Street Fighter:
    • The trope codifiers are Ryu and Ken, having appeared in every game in the series to date. At first, they started off as clones of one another, having the exact same movesets and being merely head swaps of one another (because the original Street Fighter had no scope for mirror matches, so they needed two identical characters for competitive play). During the Street Fighter II games, their stats, moves, and strategies began to differentiate, albeit little by little each new iteration (by Super Turbo the duo had different basic attacks and special moves, whereas in The World Warrior, literally the only difference is Ken's kick throw spins an extra time), but by the time the Street Fighter Alpha series started they had distinct backstories and extremely similar, but not identical, abilities. Naturally, the series also includes Akuma, Sakura, and Dan.
    • Street Fighter Alpha:
      • Charlie was originally brought in as a stand-in for Guile during the Street Fighter Alpha series, but plays this trope straight when Guile was put back in the roster for the console versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3 (and Marvel vs. Capcom 2); they both have identical special moves but different Super Combos. Chronologically speaking, the Alpha series is set before Street Fighter II and Charlie was the one who taught Guile all of his special moves according to his backstory. Street Fighter V more substantially differentiates them (Charlie being a rushdown character with V-Gauge-reliant teleports and the ability to steal his opponent's meter, Guile having even more of a focus on his usual zoning and turtling capabilities), to the point that the only move they do share is the Sonic Boom.
      • Averted with Cammy and the Dolls. Juli and Juni, Bison's bodyguards in Street Fighter Alpha 3, retain some similarities, but still play quite differently. Even more so with Decapre from Ultra Street Fighter IV, despite what certain detractors will have you believe.
    • Street Fighter III:
      • New Generation introduced Sean, a Brazilian student of Ken who was originally intended to be the sole Shoto of the III series until Capcom decided to bring back Ryu and Ken. Outside of a few atypical-for-a-Shoto traits, notably his inability to throw a fireball on command outside of his Hadou Burst Super Art, Sean mixes some Brazilian jiujitsu and basketball into his attacks and also possess the ability to manually roll like Ken and Akuma could in Alpha. Additionally, his Dragon Smash changed from a Shoryuken-based Meteor Move (NG and 2I) to a two-fist uppercut with somewhat pitiful horizontal range (3S), presumably to highlight his inexperience as a martial artist. (To wit, Sean went from a top-tier character in 2I to one of the worst in 3S and is—perhaps not coincidentally—treated as a joke in-series from then on.)
      • Yun and Yang originally had the same moveset and even shared the same character select slot in New Generation, but Yang eventually learned his own techniques from 2nd Impact and onward. By 3rd Strike, they only shared two specials (a double palm strike and a command grab that switches sides with the opponent) and one Super Art (which functions akin to Custom Combos/V-ism from the Alpha games), with everything else in their kits being unique moves.
      • Urien and Gill are also similar, but Urien is a charge-type character and not as brokenly overpowered. This is even a plot point, as Urien is Gill's younger brother and would-be backstabber who finds his attempts to usurp control of The Illuminati failing at every turn because Gill not only vastly outclasses him in power, but also is cunning enough to predict—and derail—Urien's schemes.
    • Street Fighter EX:
      • In addition to Akuma (who was Put on a Bus after the original game/EX Plus α) and Sakura (who likewise went missing until EX3), Ryu and Ken also have Allen and Kairi, though with some noticeable differences. For example, Allen lacks any kind of Hurricane Kick in favor of a surging punch (Justice Fist) that can deflect projectiles and Kairi plays more closely to Akuma with the use of aerial fireballs and a Diving Kick—albeit as Super Combos instead of more freely accessible special attacks. In fact, with Kairi taking a turn to The Dark Side in Akuma's absence starting from EX2, Kairi assimilated even more traits from Akuma, such as gaining equivalent techniques to the Ashura Senku and Shun Goku Satsu. In another interesting move, while Kairi's fireballs are no longer thrown out like the other Shotos after the original EX, Fighting EX Layer would see his Moryo Kasen changed into the traditional Tatsumaki Senpukyaku instead of the multi-input Tatsumaki used by Kairi and Ryu throughout the entire EX series.
      • Zangief got a rather mild example in Darun, a pro wrestler from India who wishes to test his mettle against the Red Cyclone. In a sense, he's something of a substitute for Haggar, who'd could count as well but has never been in the same game as Zangief so far (although Haggar did get his own unique Special Moves in Ring of Destruction to set him apart from Zangief).
      • Skullomania would receive one in the form of Shadowgeist in the second game. Whereas Skullo's attacks are speedy and somewhat unpredictable, Shadowgeist is a more straightforward power character. This also extends to their Super Combos, most notably Skullo Energy/Death Energy: the former merely blows away foes whereas the latter sucks in opposing players in the manner of a black hole.
  • In Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, while the Secret Character known as Shadow Lady shares some of Chun-Li's moveset, she also has some unique moves of her own such as an electric barrier to shield herself and stun opponents, a laser beam from her palms, firing missiles from her back, and morphing her hands into drills for a ramming attack. In this game, she is a Chun-Li who was unwillingly brainwashed and cyborgized by Shadaloo.
  • In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, for some reason there are two versions of Wolverine: Wolverine with adamantium claws (who is a Secret Character) and Wolverine with bone claws. Gameplay-wise, the differences between the two are minimal; bone claw Wolverine is more of a Glass Cannon than adamantium claw Wolverine, who's already a Fragile Speedster, has different Assist moves, and has less special moves and Hyper Combos. Bone claw Wolverine is roughly based on the Wolverine in CotA and XvSF, while the Wolverine with adamantium claws is based on his MvC1 incarnation. All other known differences can be counted on one hand.
  • Tatsunoko vs. Capcom:
    • Ryu and Ken, except this time Ken is Ken the Eagle from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.
    • With the addition of Joe the Condor in Ultimate All-Stars, along with Jun, the three Gatchamen play this trope straight among themselves.
    • Tekkaman and Tekkaman Blade count to a degree in Ultimate All-Stars. The Tekkamen have many shared/similar techniques, but their executions are noticeably distinct. Tekkaman is a Mighty Glacier (and might have the highest damage output in the game outside of the Giant characters), while Blade (the Ken) trades in some power for a good deal of speed, possibly making him just shy of being a Lightning Bruiser.
  • God Hand, a game stylized after old-school Fighting Games and Beat 'em Ups, features a protagonist, Gene, with "the right arm of God." So naturally, there's another character who has the left arm that you encounter in the game. His moveset and powers are exact copies of ones Gene himself can use, with minor changes made to make the fight fair. And then there's the 51st arena challenge, unlocked by beating ever single other one. Your opponent for this fight is another Gene, but as he appears at the end of the game with both Godhands.
  • Biff Slamkovich and Gunloc in the Saturday Night Slam Masters series. They have nearly identical movesets, but uniquely enough for this trope the inputs for these moves are different between them (with the exception of their Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs move, which has the same "mash a Punch button" input for both). They also each have unique projectile moves and stock grapples.
  • Darkstalkers:
    • There's Morrigan the succubus and Demitri the vampire. They both have the standard "fireball" and "dragon punch"-style moves. Demitri's moves are slower, and his uppercut flies straight up unless performed during his dash, whereupon it then diagonally drills into foes.
    • Lilith, introduced in the third game, has weaker specials than Morrigan, but a more diverse moveset. Justified in that she's a third of Morrigan's soul that was sealed away and then given physical form by Jedah.
    • Another set is Bishamon and Oboro Bishamon in Vampire Savior, with the latter representing Bishamon when he's not under the control of his cursed sword and set of armor.
  • Plasma Sword: Nightmare of Bilstein, the sequel to Star Gladiator, more than doubled the roster of the original game by adding 14 new characters. Most of them mirrored one of the characters in the original cast, having almost identical movesets and weapons with the only real difference being their supers.
  • Jotaro and Dio in Capcom's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fighter have similar movesets, with the main differences being in their Super Combos (Jotaro's are souped-up versions of his specials, whereas Dio has more variety in his). Interestingly for this trope, despite being the main characters (or rather, the main character and main villain), their learning curves are among the more difficult in the game.
  • Shirou and Archer have largely identical move lists in Fate/unlimited codes. This is something that also comes up in the original visual novel, as Shirou copied a lot of Archer's techniques because he was impressed by them after seeing him fight. However, it eventually turns out that Archer is in fact a Future Badass version of Shirou, sending this trope round full circle.

    Konami 
  • Castlevania: Judgment has an interesting case with Simon and Trevor. Both Belmonts use the Vampire Killer whip and have several similar moves (including at least one identical special), but Simon specializes in quick, wide sweeps, while Trevor mixes it up with several jabs and slower, more powerful attacks.
  • In the SNES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters, Leonardo and Michelangelo.
  • Bloody Roar 2 handles this in an interesting manner: while two characters (Shina and Uriko) are traditional examples, being similar to but distinct from their predecessors (Gado and Long), two other moveset clones are straight-up replacements for characters from the first game (Jenny for Fox/Hans and Stun for Mitsuko), having all of their moves and more, and a third, the literal clone Shenlong, actually has Long's original moveset, while Long himself got a slightly different one; this was reversed in the third game, with Long getting his original moves back and Shenlong getting a noticeably different moveset. Fang from Extreme is a similar odd case, being a clone of Yugo's first game moveset, rather than of his noticeably different moveset from the second game onward.

    Nintendo 
  • Super Smash Bros.:
    • In the original, Mario and Luigi were given the same moveset, though Luigi's specials have different properties. His fireballs travel in a straight line, his cyclone hits once for high damage, and his Coin Jump Punch also only hits once but turns into a devastating Fire Jump Punch at point blank range. Melee started differentiating the two by giving them entirely different side specials, and some of Luigi's standard attacks got modified to boot. By Brawl, Mario gains FLUDD from Super Mario Sunshine as his Down Special Move note , and both brothers have different Final Smashes. Ultimate pushed things even farther by giving Luigi the Poltergust to use for tether grabs. Melee added Dr. Mario as another clone, who had more powerful attacks; when he returned in the fourth game he retained his Melee moveset while Mario's had changed, and the differences in their speed and strength were more pronounced than before.
    • Jigglypuff was added due to its similarities with Kirby, thus sharing a handful of standard attacks with him, though the next game would give both of them new moves to differentiate them to the point where many don't consider them moveset clones anymore.
    • Link has Young Link and Toon Link as his clones. In general, the alternate versions are less damaging but more agile than regular Link, though they also execute their attacks slightly differently. Brawl also gave Link the Gale Boomerang from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which deals no damage on the return trip and instead has a "windbox" that pushes opponents around. Ultimate included all three at once, while giving standard Link a more dramatic overhaul to reflect his appearance and abilities in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: he can pick up the arrows from his neutral special to fire two at once, the Gale Boomerang has been reverted to a normal boomerang, he no longer has the Hookshot or Clawshot, his bombs must now be manually detonated with a second use of his down special, and his Final Smash became a variant of Zelda's old one. Young Link retains Link's old moveset but on a smaller body, while Toon Link is floatier and has a few different attacks in comparison.
    • Falco is a clone of his teammate Fox; though unlike other clone relationships, Fox is the one that's a Fragile Speedster. Falco also jumps higher and has different attack executions; for instance, his laser makes enemies flinch, and starting with Brawl, in addition to several of his standard moves being de-cloned, he kicks his Attack Reflector out in front of him while Fox holds on to it. Brawl introduced an unusual partial example in Wolf; although his special moves and Final Smash are clearly inspired by those of his rivals, they have drastically different properties, and most of his standard attacks are completely different.
    • Unlike most of the series' clones, Ganondorf is completely unrelated to the character he's cloned from, Captain Falcon. While (initially) sharing the exact same animations as Falcon, Ganondorf is a hell of a lot slower and harder-hitting. Later games started giving their various moves distinct properties, and Ultimate finally gave Ganondorf a sword to use for his smash attacks. As for Falcon himself, in Smash 64, he shares some of his standard attacks with Samus, but is otherwise vastly different.
    • Pichu is another weaker-but-faster clone, this time of its evolution Pikachu. It also has a gimmick that it takes damage from its own electric attacks due to inexperience.
    • Marth, a spacing-oriented character with a devastating "sweetspot" for his attacks at the very tip of his blade, has two clones, Roy and Lucina. In Melee, Roy recycles Marth's animations but his sword is heavier and on fire, giving his attacks slightly different properties — in particular his neutral-B attack can be charged to devastating effect, his Counter operates differently, and he does the most damage with the base of his blade instead of the tip. When he returned in the fourth game's DLC, several moves were tweaked or replaced to make him less like Marth. Meanwhile, Lucina (as a descendant and impersonator of Marth) is almost identical to him, only lacking the sweetspot on the tip of her sword, allowing her to deal equal damage with every part of the blade. In Ultimate, Roy gets his own direct clone in Chrom, who, like Lucina, uses a balanced blade with an average damage output of Roy's sweetspots and sourspots. Since this leads to Chrom's damage output being higher on average than Lucina's, he is also somewhat handicapped by a less effective recovery.
    • Lucas acts as this to Ness, though it's downplayed as the properties of his specials are different, and most of his standard attacks are completely different.
    • The fourth game adds Pit's literal clone Dark Pit, who has different properties on his Bow and Arm weapon attacks, as well as a different Final Smash, but is otherwise completely identical. A particularly odd example in that Dark Pit originated as an alternate color scheme for Pit in the previous Smash Bros. game, before being turned into an actual character who was then adapted back to Smash.
    • Ultimate officially labels full clones as "Echo Fighters", who are listed by having the same number as the original character, but an added "ᵋ" symbol. Both Lucina and Dark Pit are classified as Echoes, and a number of new ones were added: Princess Daisy (a clone of Princess Peach), Richter Belmont (Simon Belmont), Dark Samus (Samus), Chrom (Roy), and of course Ken (Ryu). Partial clones (which is to say, all other characters listed above) still exist, but are differentiated enough that they are not classified as Echo Fighters. How much of a clone an Echo Fighter is varies: Daisy, Dark Samus and Richter are more or less the exact same fighters as the ones they are echoing albeit with very minute changes that barely impact gameplay, Chrom and Lucina have a decent amount of mechanical changes from Roy and Marth respectively to not be complete derivatives, Dark Pit has significant differences that are only present in three moves (one being his Final Smash, which are usually disabled in competitive matches), and Ken has an entire moveset whose properties allow him to stand out from comparisons to Ryu as the most definitively unique Echo in the entire cast.
    • Isabelle from Animal Crossing is not considered an Echo Fighter, but she has a number of moves, both normal and special, that are notably similar to Villager's. However, where she differs from Villager, she tends to differ greatly.
    • Challenger Pack 9 features Pyra and Mythra as a pair of transforming characters whose only moves with differing animations are their specials, though their shared attacks are differentiated by Pyra having stronger damage and knockback while Mythra having faster frame data and movement speed.
    • Of course, the hidden "Palutena's Guidance" skits featuring the Kid Icarus cast can't help poking fun at the practice of cloning characters. In Robin's skit in for 3DS and Wii U, Viridi mocks Chrom for only showing up in Robin's Final Smash attack and not participating himself because he's too similar to fellow Fire Emblem character Ike. This became Hilarious in Hindsight when Chrom was added in Ultimate and copied Roy instead. During Wolf's, Palutena and Viridi both compare Fox and Wolf's relationship to Pit and Dark Pit's, with Viridi bringing up that they have "the same 'glorified Palette Swap' thing." And in Daisy's, Pit refuses to believe that she's not just Peach in a different dress.
  • Springtron in ARMS is nearly identical to Spring Man, having the same speed, size, and even shares unlockable arms with him. The only major difference is that he doesn't have Spring Man's auto-charged arms at low health, but charging both arms releases an EMP burst that disables any extended arms.
  • The final eight enemy characters in Joy Mech Fight are upgraded versions of the eight main characters, like with the other enemy characters you can unlock them after a normal mode playthrough.

    Sega 
  • Persona 4: Arena subverts this twice:
  • Power Instinct:
    • Twin sisters Otane and Oume. In the first game, Otane is a playable character, while her sister Oume (who serves as the game's boss) is just a palette swap of Otane. In the second game, the roles are switched for storyline reasons, but the new final boss Otane has a CPU-exclusive move. In Legends, the first game where both of them are playale, they are given new additional moves — among them, Otane gets her CPU move from the previous game as her new super move. Finally, Matrimelee made their shared special moves different: Otane retains the classical moveset with new commands, while Oume retains the old charge-based commands but changes them noticeably.
    • The sisters' young transformation mode from the first game is a sprite edit of Annie, to the point that they share a special move. It's semi-averted in the second game, where their young mode's clothing changes from a basic sleeveless shirt to a Sailor Fuku (probably to demonstrate Oume's upbringing) — instead of editing Annie's new sprites, the developers edited the young mode's sprites from the first game and drew a couple of new ones.

    SNK 
  • Fatal Fury:
    • Predating even Art of Fighting's Ryo and Robert are the three-man team of Terry, Andy and Joe in the original game. They each had a fireball, a dashing attack, and a flying attack with the potential to hit multiple times, with only their fourth special and the ranges on their normal attacks being functionally different (and even that fourth move was incredibly similar for Terry and Andy). Fatal Fury 2 added more and more varied normal attacks, tweaked the properties of their specials to help differentiate them, and gave them each a completely unique Desperation Move. Nowadays, their gameplay styles are nothing alike.
    • Kim's sons, Kim Jae Hoon and Kim Dong Hwan, however, play very similarly to each other and to their father in Garou: Mark of the Wolves.
  • As mentioned above, Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia in the Art of Fighting series (and The King of Fighters by extension), which also has Yuri and Takuma/Mr. Karate, respectively. Not unlike the Shotos of Street Fighter, they're all practitioners of the same martial art (Kyokugen), though each has been trained in a different discipline, resulting in differences like Robert relying primarily on kicks (to the point that in NeoGeo Battle Coliseum and KOF XI, a What If? version of him based on Garou: Mark of the Wolves generates projectiles with his legs). Additionally, Yuri is largely self-taught and therefore relies on improvised techniques, many of which are parodies of attacks used by her SF counterparts. Takuma falls in and out of this trope the most, despite (or perhaps because of) his mastery of Kyokugen; he usually lacks the others' Shoryuken analogue but has access to unique moves like his Shoran Kyaku command grab, whereas his (Serious) Mr. Karate persona seen in SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos and KOF XIII plays more like fellow Kyokugen karateka Khushnood Butt/Marco Rodriguez (such as having normal and super variants of Kohou) but with additional, Akuma-esque quirks.
  • The King of Fighters:
    • SNK's Alternate Company Equivalent to Street Fighter brings us Kyo Kusanagi and Iori Yagami. Their movesets were originally somewhat similar (justified in that their ancestors created their respective fighting styles together), with several shared moves. Currently, however, they only have one move in common. Kyo's flames are red, and Iori's are purple due to the Riot of the Blood (a curse inherited from Orochi due to the Yasakani clan's deal with the entity for greater power). Iori is much more sadistic, although not an outright villain (even though he likes to break into evil laughter from time to time).
    • Non-protagonist examples from the same series are Ralf and Clark, and Mature and Vice. Ralf and Clark, the Palette Swap heroes of Ikari Warriors, started out as head swaps with differing intros, winposes, throws, knockdown moves, effects on one of their shared attacks, and desperation moves. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine these two were ever that similar, especially with their different signature moves, Ralf's Vulcan Punch and Clark's Super Argentine Backbreaker. Mature and Vice, on the other hand, shared outfits, normal moves, throws, and one special move (a command throw) in their '96 debut. Like the Ikari Warriors, their '98 return had them undergo Divergent Character Evolution such that all that remained the same were their weak punches and throws.
    • Shingo may not have flames, but his fighting style is similar enough to Kyo and Iori, though his personal twists to the moves make him more than just a carbon copy of Kyo. In-story, Shingo observed and took notes on Kyo's fighting style but (as a non-Kusanagi) was not formally trained in their ancestral martial arts, explaining the various botched and incomplete attacks. While Shingo would later would be taken under the wing of Kyo's father between the events of 2001 and 2003, Saisyu's instruction seemingly didn't do much to improve his form—though he'll occasionally hallucinate that he's actually shooting fire in 2003.
    • An interesting example with Ash Crimson. His design and playstyle are meant to evoke Remy from Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (a sort of counter-Take That!, as Remy was designed to resemble Iori), Ash therefore plays like your basic charge-type character, with only a few tweaks to the tried-and-true template associated with Guile. However, the fact that he's using these types of moves with pyrokinesis gives his moveset a distinct resemblance to that of Kain R. Heinlein from Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Most notably, Ash's Thermidor is exactly the same as Kain's Himmlischer Steele, both supers manifesting as a large sphere of flame that slowly creeps across the screen. The fact that Ash made his debut in KOF 2003, the same game where MotW-era characters and other elements (like Terry's "Wild Wolf" look) were brought into the fold, makes these similarities all the more eyebrow-raising.
    • The Maximum Impact series of KOF games includes an absurd amount of this trope. Excluding characters with alternate forms (such as Nightmare Geese and Classic Kyo), you have Chae Lim using Kim's older moves, Nagase based off Hanzo Hattori (a secret character from the Samurai Shodown series—see below), and Lilly Kane, based off her brother Billy's moves but with ice attributes, to name a few.
    • The King of Fighters XIII brings back an older, almost forgotten example: friendly rivals Joe Higashi and Hwa Jai (from the first Fatal Fury). They share many a move, but there is a difference functionality-wise.
    • KOF XIV would introduce Kim's master Gang-il, who not only uses harder-hitting versions of some of Kim's attacks and can perform his Rangetsuzan in midair but also employs several moves formerly exclusive to Kim's sons in Garou.
    • A particularly odd case comes within the duo of K9999 and Nameless — the former appeared in both 2001 and 2002, yet skipped 2002's Updated Re-release in favor of the latter, who has visually different yet functionally identical equivalents to his predecessor. The prevalent theory was that K9999 got Screwed by the Lawyers, more specifically those of AKIRA creator Katsuhiro Otomo, and had to be replaced. Then K9999 came back, as Krohnen, for real in XV, whereas Nameless remained in relative limbo before being brought Back for the Dead in the mobile spinoff KOF All-Star.
  • Hanzo and Fuuma from World Heroes, a Fighting Game with characters loosely based on historical figures. Japanese legend depicts Fuuma Kotaro and Hattori Hanzo as lifelong enemies, until the former ultimately killed the latter (though history actually records Hanzo dying of natural causes).
  • Samurai Shodown heavily plays with it through the whole series:
    • Headswapped characters are common through the earlier games, but they usually fall to Divergent Character Evolution: Hanzo-Galford in the first game, Nakoruru-Rimururu in III and Kazuki-Sogetsu in IV note .
    • The Shura/Rasetsu mechanic introduced in III inverts this, as it gives every character (except the bosses) two different movesets. note 
    • The 3D 64 duology further reinforces Divergent Character Evolution: most headswaps now are completely different characters, and some Shura/Rasetsu modes are so different that they count as new characters both in gameplay and story. This trope is played straight with Kuroko and the two Deku, though.
    • Every hidden character in Warriors Rage (PlayStation) is a clone of the 11 initial ones, although they all have new storylines, voices and basic moves. There are three categories: boss characters that are mostly unique note , standard clones that share the exact same special moves note , and Player Mooks that lack all special attacks note .
    • V (Zero) and VI (Tenkaichi Kenkakuden) marked the end of the Shura/Rasetsu mechanic. While most characters lose moves or get them all, some Rasetsu modes are turned into new characters based on side characters: Suija, Enjanote , Reranote , Rasetsumarunote , and Kim Ung Chenote . Old Rasetsu Nakoruru and Galford are hidden characters in Samurai Shodown VI, which served as a Dream Match Game for the series.
    • V's midbosses are head swaps of Genjuro and Ukyo with original gameplay, but in VI they're given movesets to be more similar to their III/IV Rasetsu equivalents — especially Yumeji, whose moveset is completely changed.
    • VI's final boss, Makai Gaoh, acts as Gaoh's Super Mode. The home port has EX modes for SSV's four new characters that gives them movesets closer to their first appearance.
    • In Edge of Destiny/Sen, clone characters are similar to the ones in earlier Soulcalibur titles in that they share a large part of their moveset but mingle it. Takechiyo, Suzuhime, Angelica and Draco note  are the only true new characters, every other new character is a clone of them or of returning characters — the first three head swaps of the franchise still are clones of each other.

    Takara Tomy 
  • Eiji Shinjo and Kayin Amoh from Battle Arena Toshinden. Eiji's lost brother Sho qualifies — he has all of both Kayin and Eiji's moves, but he hits harder, and he shoots two fireballs when using Rekku Zan.
  • In the Naruto: Clash of Ninja series:
    • Iruka and Mizuki are this (in Mizuki's first appearance, the two shared character slots). Also, Kisame and Zabuza, both Swordsmen of the Mist, have similar movesets (more obvious in the Japanese games where they're both playable; Zabuza does not appear in the internationally-released Clash of Ninja Revolution games, while Kisame does).
    • Hinata and Neji have similar movelists, but many of Hinata's moves are original to the games (for example, instead of using Eight Trigrams 64 Palms, she repeatedly attacks an opponent with Gentle Fist palm strikes, then finishes with a burst of chakra), due to limited information on her fighting style. In the Ultimate Ninja series, Hanabi (Hinata's younger sister) follows a similar principle.
    • The game-exclusive characters in Revolution 2 count. Komachi is similar to Haku and Kagura is like Kimimaro.

    Other 
  • The Fighting Game Ur Examples are the identical fighters from Karate Champ. Completely identical fighting styles, and they even wore a white and red gi.
  • Mortal Kombat:
    • (Human) Smoke's moveset is Scorpion's, save for not doing Scorp's "Get over here!"/"Come here!" yell when he connects with the spear. They are also rivals, as Smoke belongs to the Lin Kuei, the same organization that gave rise to Sub-Zero. Mortal Kombat 9 averts this with Smoke's separate and (mostly) distinct moveset.
    • Kano and Jarek, although this is another case of a Suspiciously Similar Substitute meant to replace the former; they weren't playable in the same game until Armageddon, where Jarek averts it with his new moveset consisting on his lasso attacks in order to be at least different from Kano.
    • Superman and Captain Marvel in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe play this. A stranger version is Lex Luthor and Sektor, who don't appear in the same game, but Luthor plays similarly to Sektor, even blatantly using similar special moves.
    • The series' first four hidden characters were all moveset clones, in addition to being Palette Swaps. In the first game, Reptile had both Sub-Zero and Scorpion's moves while being faster note ; the entire point of him was to use a Fatality on him to skyrocket players' scores. In the second game, Jade debuted as a clone of Kitana — not only did they swap her palette for a new character, they had Jade keep all of Kitana's arsenal while making her able to walk faster and be immune to projectile attacks (as well as attacks like Sub-Zero's ice puddle). Alongside Jade came Smoke and Noob Saibot, both of whom were Scorpion clones who walked faster but lacked her projectile immunity. Reptile, Jade, and Noob all became very original characters pretty quickly, but it took years for Smoke to leave Scorpion's shadow in this respect. Even in his cyborg form he borrowed all his special moves from other characters. It wasn't until the fourth main game that the series began moving away from this means of hiding characters.
    • It's pretty amazing how often Scorpion was used as the template for "new" characters. Chameleon incorporated his moveset as he channeled all the male ninja characters, but the most blatant of all was Monster from Deception. Monster's genesis is that he was just another costume for Scorpion the developers decided against using, but decided to work it into the game anyway, putting absolutely no further effort into it in the process. As a result, Monster plays exactly as Scorpion does, and has no backstory — even the game admits he came out of nowhere via dialogue. He shows up once in Konquest Mode, you beat him, he leaves — never to return. He can even be "unlocked" via cheat devices that simply use his model and name on Scorpion's moveset data, but if you've played as Scorpion in this game, you've played as Monster.
    • The Nintendo 64 version of Trilogy couldn't squeeze Chameleon in for some reason, so instead it got Khameleon, his female equivalent who channels the moves of Kitana, Mileena, and Jade instead. Unlike him, however, she can't just whip any of those moves out any time she wants; you have to wait until the color of her name in her lifebar is the same as the outfit of the character you want to use a move from. Want to do Jade's Dodging Shadows? You have to make sure you key it in whenever Khameleon's name is green.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us has the John Stewart version of Green Lantern, who was merely a new skin and voice for the default Hal Jordan GL, same moves and all. This is expanded on in Injustice 2 with the concept of "Premium Skins", which basically allow you to turn an existing fighter into another DC Comics character, usually one with a similar theme or power set in the comics. These included Power Girl for Supergirl, Vixen for Cheetah and Reverse-Flash for The Flash (as well as Black Lightning for Raiden).
  • Arcana Heart features Heart and Saki, two friends with slightly different outfits who share a few normal attacks and both feature a dash attack, an anti-air attack, and a mid-air stomp attack. However, Heart's attacks are punch-based and use quarter-circle type inputs, while Saki's are kick-based and use charge motions.
  • In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Hinokami Chronicles, the game being limited by what the anime has covered at the time of its release forced CC2 to try everything they could to expand the roster, leading to them making almost every single Water Breathing user in the series be a playable character, all with the same moves with very few differences between their normal attacks, with the only striking difference being what Form is used as their ultimate attack.
  • Billy and Jimmy Lee naturally filled this role in the Neo Geo Double Dragon Fighting Game, as well as in Double Dragon V for the SNES and Genesis.
  • Melty Blood has a handful of Palette Swap characters, but the degree of them being an actual Moveset Clone varies greatly. Some are close to their counterparts like Akiha Vermillion and Nanaya Shiki, but others like Mech-Hisui and Sion Tatari share several normals but have very different specials.
  • Advanced Variable Geo has Yuka Takeuchi and Chiho Masuda as its primary set; the second game introduced Tamao Mitsurugi, the main character of that game.
  • Battle K-Road, an arcade-only fighting game released by Psikyo in 1994, features an entire character roster consisting of head/palette swaps. There are two karatekas, two boxers, two Thai kickboxers, two Jujitsu girls, two sumo wrestlers, two commandos and even two Terminator-like cyborgs. The only character without a head-swap is naturally the final boss himself.
  • In Divekick, this is illustrated by the titular characters, Dive and Kick. Their angle of descent is identical, but each is a little better at their namesake than the other. Their special moves are completely different, though.
  • Parodied with Fukua from Skullgirls. She is an April Fools' Day character who is a literal clone based on main character Filia, with nearly identical normal attacks for the most part, and her reveal trailer is a direct Take That! to Decapre's trailer for Ultra Street Fighter IV. She manages to be distinct from her predecessor with completely different special moves based on older variations of Filia in the alpha build of the game.
  • In Eternal Fighter Zero, Doppel Nanase is this to Rumi Nanase. Doppel is basically a copy of Rumi when she's fighting bare-handed, as they have the same normal moves, and they even both share a few combos, but aside of that, they can be easily distinguished: Rumi has a Stance System where she can fight whether with her wooden sword or bare-handed (at the cost of some special moves and her Super Armor), and her moveset is distributed accordingly; Doppel fights exclusively bare-handed, and has a good variety of grapple moves and other special techniques. Such differences make this a downplayed example.
  • Both Acceleration of Suguri and its sequel, Acceleration of Suguri 2, have this with Suguri and Sora, since both share similar moves, but with different propertiesnote . Suguri for instance is a Jack of All Stats armed with tools for every situation, while Sora focuses more on aggressively hounding and rushing her opponent down. In addition, Suguri has a unique Sword Wave attack that she can use at mid-range, whereas Sora doesn't.

Outside of Fighting Games:

    Bandai Namco 
  • Kratos Aurion and Zelos Wilder from Tales of Symphonia use the same weapon types, and have similar stats and identical special moves. With the exception of one single dungeon, however, only one will ever be in the party at a time.
    • Worth noting that the differences between them are more pronounced in the PlayStation 2 remake, especially in special moves. Even in the GC version, Kratos has Judgement, an angel technique, that Zelos can't get (in that version, anyway).
  • Luke and Asch from Tales of the Abyss, whose move sets and physical appearances are identical apart from Asch having a few offensive spells that Luke doesn't. This is explained as being due to their having learned to fight from the same teacher. Plus Luke is a clone of Asch, which helps. It's also lampshaded in one sidequest where Luke effectively gives this as a reason for them to be Mutually Exclusive Party Members.
  • Folka Albark and Fernando Albark in Super Robot Wars Compact 3. Even their mechs were originally palette swaps... before they get upgraded.
  • Out of the four playable characters in Panzer Bandit, Kou and Kasumi have a similar set of skills and attacks, though Kasumi is slighty faster and combo-oriented. There's also Jin, who fights identical to Kou.

    Capcom 
  • Mega Man (Classic):
    • Mega Man and Proto Man (justifiably given they're DLN-001 and DLN-000), with Bass as the Glacier Clone. Ironically, while Bass is statistically the stronger robot, it is his overconfidence that prevents him from defeating Mega Man.
    • Currently, post-MM8 Divergent Character Evolution has Mega Man as the Jack of All Stats/Mighty Glacier (only has a regular jump and the slide as movement options, but is tailored to fighting bosses thanks to his Mega Buster's Charge Shot), Proto Man as the Glass Cannon (same basic skillset as Mega Man, is stronger, faster, jumps higher, and can block shots with his shield, but has terrible defense due to his defective nuclear reactor), and Bass as the speedster (better overall mobility due to his double jump and dash, can't charge his Buster, but has rapid-fire action and can aim it in any of the eight directions).
    • Depending on the game (for example, the Marvel vs. Capcom series), Roll functions as Speedster Clone. Other times, Capcom has her go the Zero route by making her a physically oriented fighter.
  • The Devil May Cry series:
  • In the first Sengoku Basara game, Matsu used Kenshin's weapons moveset. Kasuga as well for Sasuke. In later games however Matsu and Kasuga got their own unique moves, the former using a naginata while the latter used Razor Wire attached to kunai. Similarly, quite a few polearm-using characters used Toshiie or Shingen's movesets before getting their own.
  • In Strider 2, Strider Hiryu and Strider Hien. Both use the same techniques, but Hiryu is mostly close-and-personal, while Hien uses throwing weapons.
  • Monster Hunter has many examples, especially during the first generation kickstarted with the very first game in the series. This doesn't count the cases of subspecies and variants, as they fall under Palette Swap instead and thus are expected to share movesets with their parent species anyway.
    • In general, you can often expect to see monsters of a specific monster class share some basic attacks (Flying Wyverns have a spinning tail swipe, Ursid Fanged Beasts have a multi-hit series of punches, Brute Wyverns have a forward charge, etc.)
    • Monster Hunter (2004):
      • The theropod branch of Bird Wyverns, most noticeable with Velocidrome, Gendrome and Iodrome in the first generation games; and again with Great Jaggi, Great Wroggi and Great Baggi in the third generation games. They all rely on group attacks with the help of their smaller minions, though most of them also have some special attack to stand out (for example, Iodrome and Great Wroggi use poison, while Gendrome uses paralizying bites). Giadrome is added to the Drome trio in the second generation (standing out for its ice-based spits), while Great Maccao does the same in the fourth generation, and Great Izuchi joins Great Wroggi and Great Baggi in the fifth.
      • Rathian and Rathalos. It's justified because they're the same species of monsters that differ gender-wise. Rathian is a female wyvern that inflicts poison with the tail and spends more time on land, while Rathalos is a male wyvern that inflicts poison with the legs' claws and spends more time on air. However, both share many other attacks, such as charging at the hunter, spitting fireballs and turning around constantly.
      • Basarios and Gravios. They're part of a species as well, with both being winged monsters with rock-based skin, only in this case distinguished by age (the former is a young form and the latter is an adult form). While both monsters can expel flames from their skin and charge at the hunter, Basarios shoots fireballs from its mouth while Gravios shoots a laser-like fire beam.
      • Monoblos and Diablos are horned, territorial monsters that inhabit deserts and attack with melee-based attacks (including a charge from underground). However, Monoblos is more calculating in its moves, often turning around as it runs before attacking; Diablos is more reckless and tends to attack the hunter directly.
      • Yian Kut-Ku and Yian Garuga, starting from the latter's debut in Freedom. Both are Bird Wyverns that attack with their beaks and shoot fireballs, though Kut-Ku has trouble putting a fight due to its inexperience while Garuga is more vicious and can also inflict poison with its tail (similar to Rathian).
    • Monster Hunter 2 (dos):
      • Daimyo Hermitaur and Shogun Ceanataur are large Carapaceons that serve as King Mooks to their respective minions (Hermitaur and Ceanataur) and attack almost identically with their pincers (both walk sideways and attempt to slash nearby preys or hunters, and can also use both pincers at once to perform a wider slash Bear Hug-style) and burrow underground to attack the hunter from below with their carapaces' horns (Daimyo's carapace is a Monoblos skull, while Shogun's is a Diablos skull). However, whereas Daimyo's special attack is spewing water at the hunter, Shogun's is climbing onto the ceiling and either shooting water from there or landing onto the hunter.
      • Teostra and Lunastra also exhibit this, and it's once again because they're technically the same species (leonine Elder Dragons that attack with powerful fire blasts), but having opposite sexes. They're given different traits each in Monster Hunter: World.
    • Monster Hunter Freedom Unite: Akantor and Ukanlos, with the latter joining the former since this game. Both are exceptionally powerful Flying Wyverns whose power and size are reminiscent of Elder Dragons, and their proportions and designs are similar as well. They tend to perform large-scale attacks with their mouths and are capable of moving from one spot to another by dashing underground. However, Akantor inhabits volcanoes and its attacks are imbued with fire and dragon elements, while Ukanlos inhabits cold regions and its attacks are imbued with ice.
    • Barioth and Nargacuga are this in Monster Hunter Portable 3rd and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (despite them debuting in Tri and Freedom Unite respectively), as both monsters make use of their bodies to perform strong melee attacks, though Barioth also has them associated with ice (on top of having a unique tornado skill). The similarities are mitigated in the later games featuring both of them.
    • Monster Hunter 4: Gore Magala and Shagaru Magala. Gore is a winged, dark-skinned monster of indeterminate category that inflicts the Frenzy Virus with its melee attacks as well as with the frenzied purple projectiles it spits. Shagaru, which is classified as an Elder Dragon, can do these things as well with the difference that the melee attacks have a wider range and the projectiles can split into smaller parts (and ricochet as they do) to have a greater chance at hitting the hunter. As with Lunastra and Teostra, it's because they're technically the same species, though instead of a gender difference, they're different stages of the monster's life cycle (Gore Magala are juveniles, Shagaru Magala are adults).

    Koei Tecmo 
  • Ryu and Ken Hayabusa (son and father, respectively) from the Ninja Gaiden arcade game (or not; no one's really sure. In the arcade game, they're supposed to be nameless).
  • The Dynasty Warriors franchise has several examples across its different entries:
    • In the original Dynasty Warriors game, the bonus characters (Sun Shangxiang, Nobunaga and Toukichi) were clones of one of the player characters or bosses. Sun Shangxiang would gain her own moveset in the second game, while the others were kept out of the series for anachronistic reasons... At least until the Warriors Orochi series crossed the two eras once again.
    • In Dynasty Warriors 2, every new character's moveset is a clone of one of the returning characters from the first game, although in further sequels some of them borrow their movesets from different characters. Starting from the third game, many new characters have a completely original moveset (although some are cloned, like Daqiao being a clone of Xiaoqiao in 3-5), while other clones started to get minor Divergent Character Evolution.
    • Dynasty Warriors 6 completely revamped the weapon system, with a dose of new over-the-top weaponry that replaces many of the older characters' equipment. This also means that roughly half of the cast either becomes a blatant clone, and/or loses the Divergent Character Evolution that they had in earlier entries.
    • Dynasty Warriors 7 once again changed the weapon system, mixing the engine from the sixth game with the slightly more plausible Stock Wushu Weapons from the first five games (although most weapons from 6 would return sooner or later, like Zhou Yu's staff), but half of the cast once again became a moveset clone. By the time of Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, though, every single character had gone through Divergent Character Evolution with their own original weapons, most of them suspiciously similar yet different enough to the cloned ones they had.
    • Dynasty Warriors 9 once again revamped the game engine. In consequence, the number of weapons gets dialed back to 36, so every character except Lu Bu shares a weapon moveset with at least one other character. The only things differentiating the characters are their Special Attacks and Musou Attacks.
  • In Warriors: Legends of Troy, there is Achilles and Patroklos on the Greek side as well as Hector and Aeneas for the Trojans.

    Konami 
  • Bill Rizer and Lance Bean in the initial three Contra games (including the console ports of the first two). Later installments would have other clones.
  • Goemon and Ebisumaru (indeed, in The Legend of the Mystical Ninja they were renamed "Kid Ying" and "Dr. Yang" respectively).
  • Valeria and Anita in Suikoden II. Similar fighting styles and stats, and both own a Falcon Rune. They're also rivals.

    Nintendo 
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Luigi has often been a clone to Mario's throughout the games, though whatever rivalry is there is questionable. In both versions of Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Japanese one known as The Lost Levels outside Japan), as well as the Game Boy Advance version of Super Mario World and all of his 3D appearances (Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World), Luigi is slightly faster and jumps higher than Mario, but has poorer traction (these differences are also carried over to Super Smash Bros.).
    • In some of the games, there are Koopalings who share attacks or patterns with each other. This is most noticeable with Larry and Iggy, who have had the same attacks in nearly all of their appearances, even in Super Mario Maker 2 where the other Koopalings are given unique movesets based on previous mainline games (the only difference, aside from Larry's energy projectiles being blue and Iggy's being green, is that Larry tends to move back and forth with tall jumps, while Iggy moves sideways rapidly).
    • The original Super Mario Kart for SNES has no less than FOUR pairs. Mario and Luigi once again play to each other (as well as being Jack of All Stats), but Donkey Kong Jr. and Bowser (best top speed), Yoshi and The Princess (best acceleration), and Koopa and Toad (best handling) also form their own pairs. The following Mario Kart games have continued this tradition, with Double Dash!! taking it to larger extents.
    • Daisy is also a clone of Peach in her first few appearances in spin-off games. She quickly diverged into being different, but in games like Mario Party and Mario Kart: Double Dash!! the two play exactly the same. In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, she is the most obvious clone character in the entire series, with no gameplay quirks of her own, even in a game that promotes a diverse cast.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask both have ReDeads and Gibdos, the latter of which is essentially the former wrapped up as a mummy (though it debuted as early in the series as the NES original). To a lesser extent, Lizalfos and Dinolfos share the same patterns and attacks. And for the brief time he is playable in Majora's Mask, Kafei has identical animations to Link, from walking to flinching. This was done to easily incorporate his playability into the engine.
  • Every Fire Emblem game has one of these, known as the Red and Green Knights or Cain and Abel. They're both Cavaliers (or axe fighters) who's only difference is stats.
    • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light: Cain and Abel.
    • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: Alec and Naoise.
    • Fire Emblem: Thracia 776: Orsin and Halvan (though they're not Cavaliers, but Axe Fighters).
    • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade: Lance and Alen, Wade and Lot (again, Axe Fighters).
    • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: Kent and Sain, to a degree Dorcas and Bartre (Axe Fighters version)
    • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: Forde and Kyle.
    • Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: Oscar and Kieran.
    • Fire Emblem: Awakening:
      • Stahl and Sully (the latter being the first ever female member of the duo) fill the Cavalier role again, with the former being stronger, and the latter being faster.
      • This is the first game in the series to apply this trope to the mages. Miriel and Ricken are the pair for regular Mages (Miriel being a straight-up Squishy Wizard with Ricken, oddly enough being more of a Jack of All Stats)
      • Tharja and Henry are the Dark Mage duo (Tharja being a Glass Cannon with poor accuracy, Henry leaning more towards Mighty Glacier/Jack of All Stats).
      • Sumia and Cordelia are the Pegasus Knight duo. Sumia's modifiers lean towards Fragile Speedster (with less Strength and Defense in return for more Speed), but Cordelia has more balanced modifiers all-round.
      • This trope even extends to class sets as well rather than just stat modifiers and growth rates in starting classes. While some characters share the same class set with one differing class (e.g. Chrom's Lord v.s. Ricken's Mage, Gregor's Barbarian v.s. Priam's Fighter, etc.), a few others have the exact same class set with a possible differing starting class (Mighty Glacier Nowi v.s. Jack of All Stats Tiki, Mighty Glacier Henry v.s. Fragile Speedster Gangrel, and Squishy Wizard Lissa v.s. Glass Cannon Emmeryn)
    • Fire Emblem Fates:
      • This is the first game that applies this trope to the Mercenaries, Selena and Laslow. The former possesses higher Speed, Magic (not that it will help her much being in a physical class), Defense, and Resistance; the latter has better HP, Strength, Skill, and Luck. This is also reflected in the two's "canon" advanced classes (i.e. the advanced classes that don't give the characters a generic palette). Hero takes advantage of Laslow's statistics better having higher Strength, Skill, and Luck than the Bow Knight, while Selena fits perfectly in the Bow Knight class with it's better Speed and higher Resistance (and assuming that she hits her caps in all stats she can still use Levin Swords and Shining Bows close to as efficiently as physical weapons since the 28 Strength and 25 Magic cap differences aren't that far from each other).
      • Hoshido and Nohr each have their own mage duo: Hayato and Orochi from Hoshido, and Nyx and Odin from Nohr. Hayato's modifiers lean towards a magic-oriented Jack of All Stats, with high Speed and above average Magic and Luck, but subpar Skill, Defense, and Resistance. Orochi has subpar Luck and poor Speed and Defense, but she is in a three-way tie for the best magic with Elise and Nyx and possesses high Skill and Resistance. Nyx's modifiers are similar to Tharja's Glass Cannon modifiers with poor accuracy, while Odin's are similar to Henry's Jack of All Stats, albeit a bit slower (his growths curiously lean more towards a physical fighter with only his Magic modifier not matching his growths).
      • The Nohrian Knights, Benny and Effie. Benny's modifiers and growth rates are the typical Mighty Glacier, with the lowest Speed modifier and growth rate out of all the playable characters, but the highest Defense modifier out of them as well. Despite being in a Mighty Glacier class, Effie has the modifiers of a Glass Cannon, with higher Strength, but less Defense and Resistance, though the growth rates are still decent.
      • The Hoshidan Samurai, Hana and Hinata. Hana's modifiers and growth rates are the Fragile Speedster associated with the class (high Speed, but less defenses), but Hintata's modifiers are the opposite, leaning towards Mighty Glacier.
      • Kaze and his brother Saizo play the Cain and Abel role despite not being Cavaliers (but Ninjas instead), and they're involved in a three-way moveset clone system with Kagero. Kaze is the fastest unit bar none with high Skill and above average Resistance but has subpar Defense and poor Strength and Luck; Saizo has above average Strength and Defense (also possessing a respectable Magic growth very slightly blow his Strength) with one of the best Skill statistics, but his Speed and Resistance are both poor; Kagero has the best Strength statistics bar none (ironic for being in one of the weakest physical classes), a high Speed growth (with a contrasting negative Speed modifier), a subpar Skill stat and growth, and the better Resistance statistics.
      • Arthur and Charlotte, the fighters of Nohr. Arthur has above average Strength and Defense with one of the best Skill growths (tied with several others for the best Skill stat), but his Resistance is lacking and he has the absolute godforsaken Luck out of anyone in the entire game which by the way is also a rare case of something on the Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration (only a captured generic Hero has the same growth rate in Luck as him). Charlotte on the other hand is tied for the best Strength modifier with the above mentioned Kagero, Effie, and Keaton, possesses a monstrous HP growth (surpassed only be a few capturable characters), and has high speed. However, her high statistics are offset by pitiful Defense and godawful Resistance.
  • Many consider Fox McCloud and Falco Lombardi from the Star Fox games to be this (as noted in the Super Smash Bros.-related entries).
  • Pokémon has a few examples. Most are of the appearance kind. For particularly notable examples:
    • Plusle and Minun, who are basically Pichu with plus signs and minus signs respectively for their ears and tails. They also share the same type and have slightly different stats. They even act as the main partner Pokémon in one of the Ranger games!
    • Nidoking and Nidoqueen are the gender-exclusive final forms of Nidoran, sharing a Poison/Ground typing, abilities and monster-like appearance. They differ mainly in stats, where Nidoking has higher attacking stats while Nidoqueen has higher defenses. Additionally Nidoqueen and its pre-evolution Nidorina cannot produce an Egg - due to Pokemon's breeding mechanics, this means the only way to get a Nidoran egg of either gender is to breed Nidoking with Ditto.
    • Latios and Latias, among a few other opposite gender twins, have similar stats distributions (but not the same - Latias has 20 more Special Defense and 10 more Defense, while Latios has 20 more special Attack and 10 more Attack), and quite similar appearance.
    • Pokémon Black and White Versions introduced the legendary trio: Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus. They all look similar, have similar stats (Tornadus and Thundurus LITERALLY have the same overall stats while Landorus has 10 extra Defense and HP with its Attack and Special Attack stats swapped), and they all are at least part Flying-type. This changed in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, with the Kami trio gaining Therian formes that alter not only their appearances (Tornadus becomes bird-like, Thundurus becomes reptile-like, and Landorus becomes feline-like), as well as their stats.
    • The elemental monkeys also play this straight in three: Pansage, Pansear and Panpour as well as Simisage, Simisear and Simipour, their respective evolutions. Among the group of three, they have the exact same stats and their only difference are their elemental type and their move pools associated with them.
    • Charizard and Typhlosion have exactly the same overall stats and both are fire type starters (of regions right next to each other and sharing a Pokémon League, no less). The only difference between the two is that Charizard is part Flying type and they can learn different moves.
    • Pokémon X and Y introduced its box legendaries of Xerneas and Yveltal, which happen to have the same exact stats as one another. However, that's their only similarity, as their typings, movesets, and abilities are quite different from one another.
    • Pokémon Sword and Shield gives us the box Legendaries Zacian and Zamazenta, two wolves whose stats are exactly the same as one another, whose moves upon levelling up are almost exactly the same, and whose signature moves of Behemoth Blade and Behemoth Bash are completely identical in terms of function. The differences happen to be their primary typings and when in their Crowned forms, their stats change to be quite different from one another, with Zacian gaining much higher Attack and a bit higher Speed and Zamazenta gaining much higher Defense and Special Defense and a bit lower Speed.
  • Nintendo Wars: In Advance Wars Dual Strike, Jugger and Koal are moveset clones of Flak and Adder, having the same stats and CO Abilities, though with slight differences note . This is lampshaded if you pair Koal and Adder together and win a fight: all their win quotes remark on how alike they are and how good of a team they make, how good of friends they've become, and they even end up finishing each other's sentences.

    Sega 
  • Rin Rin, Fei Rin, and Ai Rin from Anarchy Reigns all share the same moveset, except for their Killer Weapons. The same goes for Garuda and Secret Character Gargoyle.
  • "Polly and Gon" from Baku Baku Animal have the exact same moveset.
  • In Bayonetta, Jeanne has the same moves and weapons that Bayonetta does while also having some distinct differences in gameplay. For example, she can dodge infinitely (while Bayonetta has a delay after the fifth dodge) but the timing for Witch Time is a lot tighter.
  • Gunstars Red and Blue are this in the Gunstar Heroes series. In the first game, their difference are merely some frames and the fact one has to stand still to shoot and the other only stops moving to shoot when hanging to something. In the sequel, however, both could move and shoot, lock aim or lock movement, but what made them different is that one had a machine gun and the other a laser gun. Well, that and some visual differences as well.
  • Puyo Puyo frequently has clones up the wazoo, although not always within the same games as each other.
    • On a technical level, everyone is a clone in the Tsu (normal) style, as well as other styles where there are no character differences. Even just looking at the ones with character differences, there still manages to be examples.
    • Yo~n style only has one pair of clones: Arle and Doppelganger Arle, who are both a Palette Swap of the other. Besides voice lines, the only difference between the two are that Arle's special attack is easier to get but lasts for a shorter amount of time than her clone.
    • In styles with dropsets, or different falling character blocks, usually this is averted in a direct sense. However, there are characters who share dropsets and character powers across different games, making them clones of each other in that regard. Examples include Dapper Bones, Skeleton T and Ally, all of whom share a dropset but none of whom are playable in the same game, as well as Lidelle, Draco Centauros in 7 (although she would undergo Divergent Character Evolution in the very next game), Ess and Penglai. There are three games, however, with clones in the same game as each other: Puyo Puyo Tetris, its sequel, and Champions. In the former, it was just Ringo and Tee for Party mode. In the sequel? Ringo and Tee return, but also, there's Lidelle and Ess, Ocean Prince, Serilly and Zed, Yu & Rei, Harpy and Jay & Elle, Ms. Accord and Ex, and Schezo and Ragnus. All of the latter characters were Suspiciously Similar Substitutes in the last game except for Ragnus, who first appeared in a Fever-era game with...
    • Champions, which not only had them in the same game at the same time, but also Suketoudara and Hed, who were even more identical: while Schezo and Ragnus have different attack powers and AI patterns, Suketoudara and Hed are completely alike.
    • Puyo Puyo Tetris 2's skill battle is also packing some clones, in particular the four way square of Maguro, Klug, Draco and Raffina, who have different auto skills but identical active skills.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Tails started out as a clone of Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Since then, Sega did try to slowly differentiate him, particularly by letting the player actually take advantage of his flying ability.
    • Sonic Adventure 2 gives three sets: Shadow to Sonic, Eggman to Tails, and Rouge to Knuckles.
    • In Sonic Heroes, Team Sonic and Team Dark operate identically in Speed and Flight Formations. Knuckles and Omega, the respective Power characters for those teams, are mostly similar outside of their attack combos, whereas Team Rose and Team Chaotix have more noticeable quirks that differentiate themselves from the other teams.
    • Sonic Dream Team takes after Adventure 2, where it gives three sets of identical controls and abilities between its six playable characters — Amy and Sonic can use both use the Light Speed Dash, Cream and Tails can both fly, with special rings being able to restore their flight meter, and both Knuckles and Rouge and glide around and climb up walls the others can't. Moreover, each character has the ability to do a Homing Attack and Boost.
  • Total War combines this trope with Palette Swap. While most factions share the same units, especially if they are part of the same cultural group, there are some instances that go this trope in that the factions in question have nearly the exact same unit rosters barring a unique unit or two.
    • Shogun: Total War and Total War: Shogun 2: Every faction in the game has the exact same roster, with the second game taking steps to rectify this by giving each faction a few unique units and Elite Mook versions of existing units. It gets to the point that the second game's multiplayer allows players to mix and match unique units from different factions.
    • Rome: Total War: The base game has the four Roman factions (the three playable houses and the Senate), who have the exact same unit roster with the only distinction being what type of gladiator they can recruit. Barbarian Invasion has the (Visi)Goths and Ostrogoths, Sarmatians and Roxolani, and Burgundii and Lombardii who all share the same respective rosters, and the two Roman factions have separate rebel versions as well. Alexander has the Barbarian factions on the campaign who are all clones of one another and share the same roster to the point that in custom battle they are all rolled into the same faction. Meaning tribes that are culturally distinct such as the Thracians and Scythians all have the same roster.
    • Medieval II: Total War: The base game has Spain and Portugal, who have near-identical rosters with a few distinct units. The Americas campaign has the Aztecs, Tlaxcalans, and Tarascans, who have almost identical rosters to one another, and the non-playable versions of England and France have paralleling rosters with shared units like Pikemen, Crossbowmen, and Palette Swap versions of Conquistadors. The Britannia campaign has Norway, who has a near-identical roster to Denmark but with extra units, and the non-playable Baron's Alliance, a rebel version of England. The Crusades campaign has the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Principality of Antioch, who while being far more distinct from one another when compared to the other examples listed here nonetheless parallel one another given their similarly structured rosters and shared emphasis on fanatical knights and supporting troops. The Teutonic campaign has Novgorod, a Palette Swap of Russia, and Denmark is able to acquire Norway's unique units should they form the Kalmar Union.
    • Empire: Total War: The Native American factions all share the exact same roster, with only a few unique units to distinguish themselves from each other.
    • Total War: Rome II: Athens and Syracuse have the exact same unit roster, and in custom battle are only distinguished from one another by their selections of Mercenary Units (Athens has Rhodians, Cretans, and Thracians while Syracuse has Balearics and Italians).
    • Total War: Attila: The Nordic and Slavic factions all have the exact same rosters with the only distinctions among them being a unique line of units.
    • Thrones of Britannia: A Total War Saga: The game's playable factions (excluding the Normans and Norse who are only playable in custom battle) are divided into five cultural groups with two playable factions each. With the exception of the Gaels (whose two playable factions have different rosters given how one is Irish and the other is Scottish), the other factions share unit rosters with only a few unique units depending on the faction (e.g., for the Welsh factions, Gwynedd has a unique line of spearmen while Strathclyde has a unique line of cavalry, but otherwise have the exact same roster).

    Sony 
  • Characters in Crash Team Racing are paired up by skill: Crash and Cortex (balanced), Coco and N.Gin (best acceleration), Tiny and Dingodile (best top speed) and Pura and Polar (best handling). Crash Bash is also like this, but the pairs are: Crash and Coco, Cortex and N.Brio, Tiny and Koala Kong and Dingodile and Rilla Roo.
  • Ape Escape has Spike (the hero of the first game) and Jimmy (the hero of 2), who are actually cousins.
  • Legend of Dragoon does this twice. Both times because of the new character replacing the old. Albert replaces Lavitz and has the exact same moves, though his timing is much faster, while Miranda replaces Shana seamlessly.

    Square Enix 
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Krile inherits Galuf's jobs and equipment in the second act of Final Fantasy V.
    • Cloud and Zack from Final Fantasy VII, since Cloud has mannerisms, memories, and parts of his personality "borrowed" from Zack, for traumatic reasons. This is a key point in numerous key points in the game, including his migraines, voices in his head, why Aerith is initially attracted to him, why Sephiroth can control him, etc. etc. etc..
    • Squall and Seifer, both being practitioners of Exotic Weapon Supremacy (and also being raised together) use similar moves, although with wildly different applications. In fact, these over-similarities are what kept Seifer out of Dissidia Final Fantasy.
    • Shuyin, the Big Bad in Final Fantasy X-2 looks very similar to the previous game's hero, Tidus, and even fights exactly like him in the final battle. The reason for this is Tidus, who was made up by the Fayth, was made to look like Shuyin, who was an actual person.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • In 358/2 Days, Roxas and Xion play identical to each other, with the exception of Roxas's dual-wield ability. This is justified in-story, given Xion's nature as a Replica created from Sora's memories.
    • In Kingdom Hearts III, the Hunny Spout, Grand Chef, Classic Tone, and Starlight Keyblades' Formchanges are respectively cloned from the Shooting Star, Hero's Origin, Favorite Deputy, and Kingdom Key's. Crystal Snow's Blizzard Claws Formchange is also cloned from Happy Gear's Agile Claws.

    Other 
  • Azur Lane loves this trope to add shipgirl (and therefore characterization) diversity to the playable roster without extremely affecting actual game balance. Numerous ships within the same class are moveset clones of each other (examples: Ajax and Achilles within the Leander class, many Fletcher class destroyers of the same rarity, and Nevada and Oklahoma of the Nevada class) even though they have entirely different personalities and backstories related to their real world counterparts. It's justified since they're supposed to be the same mass-produced ships except for a different name slapped on, but still noticeable since just as many ships are entirely unique in gameplay mechanics.
  • The Musketeer in Darkest Dungeon is a backer-made class who is functionally identical to the Arbelast, but has her own visuals and dialog. The sole mechanical difference between them is one equivalent Trinket. In the Butcher's Circus PvP mode, however, their movesets were altered to fill different niches.
  • Galaxy Angel II combines this with Expy. Apricot, Milfeulle's younger sister, is Jack of All Stats, just like Milfie was in the Galaxy Angel original trilogy, but for most of the first game, Milfie is retired from the military and is now a Barrier Maiden and Damsel in Distress. In the end of that game, when she's freed, she and the Moon Angels join up with the Rune Angels and you can control both at the same time.
  • Game Master Plus: The guest character, Eloire, has the same skills and equipment options as Elsa's Fighter class, only all of her skills are at level four. This works in favor of non-Fighter routes, since the player can just give all the Fighter gear they accumulated to Eloire.
  • The Ikari Warriors Ralf and Clark (renamed "Paul" and "Vince") started out as this.
  • Knight Bewitched 2: At the end of the game, Hermes turns into a demon, but uses the last of his sanity to transfer his powers to Lissandra so that she can use cleric skills to help the party. As a result, she joins the the exact same stats, skills, and equipment as Hermes.
  • Like Contra above, both Marco and Tarma of Metal Slug started out as this, as did Eri and Fio when they made their debut in Metal Slug 2. Same with Trevor and Nadia in 4. It wouldn't be until 6 when they would be given different abilities to stand out more from each othernote .
  • Soul Nomad has Ido/Dio and Yodo/Odie. Storywise, Yodo and Ido. Dio also cries "Dark Plasma" when doing Thunderbuster, a copy of Ido's Dark Plasma.
  • The original two sides from Mount & Blade, Swadia and Vaegir, are such, sharing a troop tree progression. Swadian ranged units use crossbows while the Vaegir's use bows, Swadian infantry uses sword and board and heavy armor while Vaegirs use two-handed weapons and lighter armor (for quicker speed) and their cavalry shares the defense/power trade off. The stand alone expansion introduces the Sarranids also share a troop tree, who are more focused on speed.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines. Chaos Marines are often derisively thought of as mere "spiky marines", due to the fact that they still use largely human weapons, tactics, units, statlines, and even STCs. The trade-off is that "Loyalist" Marines get superior technology (Psychic Hoods, Thunder Hammers, Land Speeders, Drop Pods...), while Chaos Marines get daemonic pacts (Cult Marinesnote , Icons of Chaos, sorcerous powers, Daemon allies, mutant specialists...)
  • In the G.I. Joe game, Duke, Scarlett, Snake Eyes and Roadblock all look very differently, but play exactly the same.
  • In Star Trek Online, the Starfleet Avenger-class and Klingon Mogh-class battlecruisers have the same bridge officer layout, virtually identical stats, and very similar unique consoles that act as Recursive Ammo weapons. Their primary difference is that the Mogh has a built-in cloaking device, whereas the Avenger has to use the cloak console add-on. Justified as the Avenger having been based off of stolen plans for Klingon battlecruisers, and the Mogh being based in turn on the Avenger.
  • Azrael in Batman: Arkham Knight uses the same moves as Batman, but has less gadgets and seems to be slightly faster. This is justified in-game as Azrael is said to have learned them while watching Batman throughout the years. In challenge mode, he has a different set of challenges, which are often more difficult than Batman's.
  • In Ys SEVEN, Sigroon and Aisha are interchangeable bow-and-arrow clones, even keeping the other's skill EXP when the other joins. When Cruxie takes over for Mustafa, she simply inherits his inventory and skills as well.
  • Heroes of the Storm: This was done bizarrely for Zeratul, who was given a clone of Maiev's abilities from Warcraft III, excluding the Ultimate. Cleave is Fan of Knives (an Area of Effect around the caster), Singularity Spike is Shadow Strike (a thrown projectile that slows and deals damage), and Blink is Blink (a short teleport). He even passively enters stealth, although unlike Maiev he can remain stealthed while moving. Allegedly, Zeratul was actually supposed to be Maiev, but the team wanted more StarCraft representation. In a strange aversion, when Maiev herself was eventually added to the game, she was given her own unique kit. She still lampshades the cloning, though.
    Maiev (after killing Zeratul): I know all your tricks, Zeratul!
  • In Maniac Mansion, Syd and Razor both have the same special abilities: being able to get the green tentacle a record deal, as well as being able to microwave Weird Ed's hamster.
  • In Halo 2, the only differentiation between Elite gameplay and standard Spartan gameplay is the swap from flashlight to active camo (not respectively). In multiplayer, there is no difference, but the hitboxes are actually different, with the Elite model having a slightly larger hitbox (making it entirely a handicap). Halo 3 does away with both of these aspects both in co-op campaign (the only time you can play as an Elite in campaign in Halo 3, with all three additional playable co-op characters being Elites) and in multiplayer. Ironically, this creates hitbox dissonance between the Elite model and the hitbox, making Elites now slightly better in multiplayer because of some holes in their model where the hitbox isn’t located but their physical form is because it’s not mapped to their model. Halo: Reach scraps both issues by completely removing playable Elites from campaign and making them only exist in specific multiplayer modes either designed around asymmetrical combat or with only Elites, but with their own stats and hitboxes. All games after that just scrapped playable Elites entirely.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie has Ishmelga-Rean, the evil counterpart of Rean Schwarzer. All of his crafts are the same as Rean's except more menacing. He also does have some of Giliath Osborne's crafts as well, just like father and son. Even his S-Craft is the same as Rean's, only far more evil.

In other media:

    Anime and Manga 
  • Naruto: Gaara's father, the Fourth Kazekage, is shown to have the exact same combat style as his youngest son, the only difference being that he uses gold dust instead of sand. Justified, as Gaara at one point stated that his father personally tutored him in ninjutsu.
  • Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle:
    • Yoruka has the same three special techniques as Lux, having invented them independently, and even has access to the same Super Mode Over Limit (but through a different mechanism). Downplayed as they're not that similar otherwise; Lux's Drag-Ride makes him a flying Time Master while Yoruka's makes her a stealthy assassin who can control others.
    • Lux turns out to be this to his Evil Mentor, Fugil, who secretly guided the former into recreating his Drag-ride techniques. While Fugil has the ability to use a copy of any Drag-ride, he prefers Bahamut (the one he gifted to Lux) above all the others because it fits his personal combat style, making him fight very similarly to Lux.

    Pinball 

    Professional Wrestling 
  • Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior — both tall, tanned, musclebound, insanely-popular-and-powerful brawler/power wrestlers hailing from the southwestern United States (ok, Warrior's from Parts Unknown, but the man behind the gimmick's from Arizona) with a bodyslam-heavy arsenal and the ability to hulk up in '80s/early-'90s WWF. Of course, the fans just had to see them battle each other at WrestleMania VI. And considering the two involved, the resulting match was more awesome than it had any right to be.
  • The Undertaker and Kane. They use the same moves, are Kayfabe brothers of similar size and general appearance and, at various times, have been the two top guys in the WWF/E — most especially when Kane first debuted.
  • Matt and Jeff Hardy are another pair in WWE. Jeff has more daredevil high-flying moves, while Matt is the more solid wrestler, but on the whole, their styles are extremely similar, and they have an on-again, off-again case of Sibling Rivalry writ-large. Jeff even uses Matt's Finishing Move, the Twist of Fate, as one of his own signature moves.
  • Booker T and The Rock. Somewhat justified due to them being the Alternate Company Equivalent of each other (as in, Booker was told to wrestle more like Rock)
  • Jeff G. Bailey personally set up Jason Cross to be one against AJ Styles in NWA Wildside. In Ring of Honor, AJ's former protege, Jimmy Rave, joined with Prince Nana against him and started using AJ's moves.
  • Brock Lesnar and Goldberg — both were big, fast and strong Showy Invincible Heroes of their respective brands during the Brand Extension era. The two finally met at WrestleMania XX, but unfortunately, unlike Hogan and Warrior above, the match was an Epic Fail.
  • Rey Mysterio Jr. had one in Místico, right down to the 619-slingshot (though Mistico followed it up with a submission hold). Much later, Sin Cara even had his own in Sin Cara Negro.
  • Suicide being one to Christopher Daniels led commentator Don West to accuse Daniels of trying to take two pay checks from TNA by wearing a mask. Thing is, Daniels was Suicide but had since passed on the mantel to someone else by the time everyone was accusing him of being Suicide.
  • Following an explosive confrontation on Talking Smack, The Miz began to use moves from Daniel Bryan's repertoire to show his disdain for Bryan.

    Tabletop Games 
  • One Night Ultimate Werewolf has an expansion called One Night Ultimate Super Villains. Many of the roles from Super Villains perform the same actions as roles from earlier games in the series:
    • Mirror Man's player looks at another player's card and performs that role's action, similar to the Doppelganger from Werewolf.
    • Temptress has her player take another player's card and replace it with a spare villain card, similar to the Alpha Wolf from Daybreak.
    • Dr. Peeker is a villain who may look at another player's card, like the Mystic Wolf from Daybreak.
    • Evil-O-Meter sticks out her fist and a player whose role is a super villain must tap her fist if sitting next to her. The Cow from Alien does the same.
    • The Mad Scientist wants to get caught and only wins if that happens, like the Tanner from Werewolf. Additionally, the Intern wants to help the Mad Scientist get caught unless no one is playing the Mad Scientist, then the Intern assumes the role of the Mad Scientist, just like the Apprentice Tanner.
  • Pathfinder: The Samurai is an alternate version of the Cavalier, in a nod to the similarities between historical samurai and Western knights. The Samurai keeps the knightly order and banner mechanics but trades out the emphasis on Jousting Lances for a Heroic Resolve mechanic.

Alternative Title(s): Ryu And Ken

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