Mothra vs. Godzilla: Both Nakamura the egg-loving reporter and Torahata the greedy businessman have the first name Jiro.
Destroy All Monsters: Gorosaurus was accidentally misnamed Baragon when he attacked Paris even though they look nothing alike. Justified for a reason, as the Baragon suit was going through modifications, was used for many monsters in Ultraman, and was still being repaired in the middle of filming.
See the Franchises folder for MonsterVerse examples.
Jurassic World: There are two Nick's (Letting and Kilgore) in the same scene at one point.
The Saw movies contain a couple of examples: In the first film, Dr. Gordon's wife's name is Alison, which is also Detective Kerry's forename. In the second, a main character is Daniel Matthews, which is also Detective Rigg's forename. However, we don't learn Rigg's or Kerry's first name until the fifth movie, soit's a subversion. Other examples include Mark, a victim in the first film, and later an antagonist from the third movie onward (Hoffman), and the surname "Young", shared by recurring character Amanda and one-off character Timothy.
In Brooklyn Tide, not only are there two characters named "Jonathan", but Jonathan Corbin and Jonathan Clay function as the protagonist and antagonist respectively, were former partners, and both have the initials JC.
A very important aversion in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice; Lex Luthor captures Superman's mother, Martha Kent, and threatens to kill her unless Batman's head is brought to him within an hour. Superman rushes off to Batman, not completely certain if he will end up asking for Batman's help, or simply kill him, but Batman doesn't spend a moment listening to him, and immediately tries to kill him. The battle eventually ends with Batman having his boot on Superman's throat, seconds away from killing him. Superman desperately chokes out "Save Martha"—and this makes Batman stop, because his mother was also named Martha, and her name was his father's last word as he died.
In Heathers, three of the lead cast are called Heather. As the name implies.
Die Hard has a duo of FBI Agent Johnsons. No relation. One even answers a phone, "This is Agent Johnson. No, the other one." Die Hard 4.0 has a callback with another Agent Johnson, and McClane reacts with alarm at the name.
The Big Lebowski: The basis of the entire plot is that a slacker named Jeffrey Lebowski is mistaken for a millionaire of the same name. Nicknamed "The Dude" and "The Big Lebowski" respectively, to avoid confusion.
Pirates of the Caribbean had William Turner (Bootstrap Bill) and his son William Turner (Will). (And HIS son, William Turner the 3rd)Justified since it a common real life naming convention for fathers and sons. It's also used for a throwaway joke. Dead Men Tell No Talesretcons the name of Will and Elizabeth's son from William Turner III to Henry Turner, presumably to avoid problems with this trope now that he's a major character.
The Two Jakes, says right in the title that there are two primary characters named Jake.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade features a father and son pair of Dr. Henry Joneses, which is highlighted when a character greets, "Doctor Jones" and both reply. The younger Jones, however, prefers going by "Indiana" rather than his first name or "Junior." In the fourth film, there's a third Henry Jones.
The main character of Groundhog Day is named Phil and of course there's the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. Phil, with the typical Bill MurrayTypecasting, loathes the rodent even more because of this fact.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding has a funny scene in which the father introduces the extended family. Just about everyone's name is a variation of Anita or Nick.
Gus: Welcome to my home. Over here is my brother, Ted, and his wife, Melissa, and their children, Anita, Diane and Nick. Over here, my brother Tommy, his wife Anzie, and their children, Anita, Diane and Nick. And here, my brother George, his wife Freda, and their children, Anita, Diane and Nick. Taki, Sophie, Kari, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, uh, Nikki, and I am Gus.
In Goodfellas, Karen's narration at her wedding reception mentions the abundance of Peters, Pauls and Maries among the guests.
Pirates of Silicon Valley, about the early days of Microsoft and Apple, had three characters who were really named Steve—Jobs, Wozniak, and Ballmer. Risk of confusion was removed by using Ballmer's last name and Wozniak's nickname of 'Woz'.
Played with in the baseball movie Major League: Back to the Minors. Finding that he has two Juans on his team, the manager denotes them Juan 1 and Juan 2. A pitcher with a psychology degree comments about it possibly giving them issues. The manager asks if he'd like to be Juan 3.
Played with in The Hangover: Black Doug and White Doug. The fact that the main characters are looking for the latter, but other characters assume they're refering to the former, whom they lead them to instead, takes up a big part of the plot.
RoboCop (1987) have two Bobs, the OCP executive Bob Morton and a mook named Bobby. Both of them died rather messily halfway into the film.
The series has two "Duke"s: a good Duke who was Apollo Creed's trainer until Apollo died in Rocky IV and then became Rocky's trainer, and an evil Duke from Rocky Vwho is Tommy Gunn's manager in and just wants to make money out of him. Both Dukes are black.
The police station in Hot Fuzz has two Andys working there, whose last names are Wainwright and Cartwright. Both names have the same origin: they both mean "wagon maker"
The Terminator kills two other women named Sarah Connor before targeting the future mother of John Connor. He had no idea what Sarah Connor looks like or exactly which one he's after, but does know what town Sarah will be living in, so he just goes through the phone book and ices each one on the list. The police quickly figure out his pattern because of this.
It's easy to miss, but the police detectives with the surnames Traxler and Vukovich have the same first name: Ed.
In Kingdom of Heaven, the producers purposefully changed the name of the historical Raymond of Tripolis to Tiberias because they were afraid the audience would mistake him for Reynald de Chatillon.
The Infernal Affairs trilogy has two women called Mary both of whom are successive love objects for Ming.
The Ju-on franchise has two characters called Kyoko. The first one, who has psychic powers and thus can sense that something is very, very wrong with the house, appears in the first two movies, and the second one is (arguably) the protagonist of the fourth movie.
Casino Royale (1967) has Sir James Bond pulled out of retirement, his name and number already given to the one we all know—spearheading a campaign against SMERSH, he gives all his agents (men and women alike) the name James Bond, to keep the enemy confused.
Enforced in The Golden Compass where Word of God changed Iofur's (pronounced like Yo-Fur) name to the much more evil sounding Ragnar because it sounded too close to Iorek (said as Yor-ek).
The James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me has a brief aversion; besides Mr. Bond himself, a random sailor in the background during the Liparus shootout is also called James.
British Lieutenant: (issuing orders to a few of his crew): "Andrew, James, Russell, Purvis, follow me!"
Averted subtly in Unforgiven where the protagonist is called William and the antagonist is called Bill (which is, of course, the short form of William).
Subverted in Letters to Juliet when two Patricias get confused as she thinks there is only one.
To clarify the above point, Sophie gets mistaken when Charlie introduces her to Patricia, recognizing the name of his ex-girlfriend. It turns out that this Patricia at the wedding was his cousin.
Also averted with Lorenzo Bartolini, as there were dozens of men with that name.
In Son of Frankenstein, the title character, Wolf Frankenstein, has a wife named Elsa; the sequel The Ghost of Frankenstein is about Wolf's brother Ludwig, who has a daughter also named Elsa.
The Hammer Horror films suffer from having a lot of characters share names. The Frankenstein movies have a seemingly endless line of guys named Hans, while the Dracula movies seem to have an infestation of Pauls.
Out on a Limb (1992), starring Matthew Broderick, has a pair of brothers both named Jim. "We were named after different people though. I'm named after our Dad, and he was named after our Grandpa."
Inverted VERY deliberately in the 2006 film Inside Man starring Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. To confuse the police, victims and any potential witnesses, the members of a bank heist crew call each other differing variants of "Steve": Stevie, Steve-Oh, etc. The amazing thing is how smoothly they work despite this.
Lester: That's our neighbour, Jim, and his partner... Jim.
Sister Bridget cruelly enforces this in The Magdalene Sisters. When Rose introduces herself she says they already have a Rose and has everyone call her by her middle name, Patricia. Crispina's real name is Harriett, so we could assume there was another Harriett in the laundry as well.
Averted in Slumdog Millionaire where Jamal searches the name Latika in the phone listings and gets over 3000 results. Even when he searches Salim K Malik he gets six results.
Averted in Black Swan. The director's name is Thomas. One minor character—one of Lily's friends at the nightclub—is named Tom.
Averted in, of all things, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Jeff's co-pilot is named Danny, and Tor Johnson's character is Inspector Daniel Clay. This is probably just another case of Ed Wood's general problems with internal continuity.
Averted in Gerry with the characters Gerry and Gerry. One of the few examples where this doesn't get confusing because they're the only two characters.
Averted in Mystery Men, with the leaders of the Disco Boys being Tony P and Tony C.
Averted in The Public Enemy (1931): There are two guys named Patrick, but most of the time they're called Paddy Ryan and Pat Burke, so there's no reason to get confused.
Big Business stars Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin as two mixed-sets of twins. The two characters played by Tomlin are both called Rose, those played by Midler Sadie.
In Smiley Face, the protagonist's roommate is named Steve, as is her pot dealer. They are referred to as "Steve the roommate" and "Steve the dealer" respectively in the credits.
Totally shattered in the Finnish 1985 movie Calamari Union, which—depending on the source—features between 14 and 16 characters named Frank.
Subverted in the Star Wars movies, which feature the pilot Wedge Antilles, Captain Antilles of the Tantive IV, Bail Antilles (senator from Alderaan), Bail Organa (senator from Alderaan), Mace Windu (Jedi), and Mace (shipwreck survivor on Endor). However, confusion over the Maces is unlikely, since Endor-Mace wasn't in the feature films, but a non-canon TV movie. Word of God (that being George Lucas) is that, as exotic that it sounds to us, "Antilles" is supposed to be a last name as common as "Smith" in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
There are also five canon characters named Ben: Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi, Ben Solo, Ben Neluenf, Ben Quadinaros and Ben Teene.
In Episode II, we see the death of Jedi High Councillor Coleman Trebor at the hands of Jango Fett. By Episode III, his seat has been taken by Coleman Kcaj. The characters are named after Industrial Lights & Magic employee Robert Coleman and his son Jack respectively.
Viva Maria!'s main characters are both named Maria.
Considering its size, the Friday the 13th franchise has done a remarkably good job of playing this trope straight over the years. There is actually only one instance of two characters sharing the same name in the same movie (victims "Jim" and "Jim Carlson" both appear in Part VIII), but considering that the franchise spans 12 movies with well over a hundred named victims, it's pretty much inevitable that a few names would be recycled across installments. The most commonly used root name to date has been "Rob", which has been given to five different characters (Rob in The Final Chapter, Robin in Part V, a different Robin in Part VII, Admiral Robertson in Part VIII, and Robert Campbell in Jason Goes to Hell). And yes, all five of them die.
Averted and a major plot point in Jennifer 8 in which a cop called John is investigating several murders of blind women; when a fellow detective who's carrying a wire confronts the killer, he shouts "Not you, John! Not you!" before getting iced. The murderer is a cop called John, but the hero's John Berlin, while the killer is John Taylor.
Disregarded out of necessity in the Icelandic film Útlaginn, which is based on Gísla saga Súrssonar. A common complaint among foreign viewers is that the characters more or less look alike and bear similar names. "Just when you've distinguished one character from another, he gets killed."
The Distinguished Gentleman: The protagonist swindles his way into Congress by invoking this trope, capitalizing on the fact that his name is very similar to a recently deceased Congressman. Nobody realizes that "Jeff Johnson" isn't the politician they are accustomed to until he shows up to give his acceptance speech. He decides to do it again at the end of the movie by running for President—his full name is Thomas Jefferson Johnson!
Angel Salvador in First Clas shares her name with one of the original X-Men from the comics, a completely different character who appeared as a supporting character in X-Men: The Last Stand.
Subverted in The Book of Life. The film has characters named Maria and Mary.
Played straight out of necessity in the movie The Wrong Guys, which stars Louie Anderson, Richard Lewis, Richard Belzer, Franklyn Ajaye and Tim Thomerson as life-long friends and ex-Boy Scouts. The rule of The Danza is in effect for most of their characters, but Richard Belzer's character is called Belz (otherwise we'd have two Richards).
Zardoz has Arthur Frayn, almost always called by his last name, and Friend, whose first name is never given. A first-time viewing can be confusing, as the names are pronounced almost identically, and the two characters are close associates who are often mentioned when neither is present on screen.
Blood Work: James Cordell and James Lockridge (the latter is known as James Noone in the book).
Played for laughs in the French movie RRRrrrr, where everyone - including women - is named Pierre (which is the French form of Peter). This is a play on the expression "L'Age de Pierre", which in French means either "The Stone Age" or "The Peter Age". They can still distinguish each other by name, as seen when the chief call its tribe's members one by one by name and they know which Pierre it is (they even notice when one of them is missing).
Averted on If Looks Could Kill: the protagonist is a Detroit high school student named Michael Corben, and there is an American super spy named Michael Corben. This confusion (made stronger because of the murder of Corben the spy before he can get on the same flight to Europe that Corben the teen was taking) creates the whole Mistaken for Badass situation that composes the plot (and when someone points out at one point that Corben is too young, the others assume that he's a Teen Superspy or an example of Older Than They Look).
Averted in Saving Private Ryan: the squad finds Private James Ryan and deliver the news that his brothers are dead. The private is distraught and asks how they died, and Captain Miller tells him they were killed in action. Private Ryan says he doesn't understand this as they're still in grade-school, at which point Miller begins to realize there's been a mix-up: this is James Frederick Ryan from Minnesota. Later when they find the right Private Ryan, Miller makes sure he's talking to James Francis Ryan from Iowa.
Used as a Red Herring in Final Destination 3. In one of the Spooky Photographs that Wendy took before the roller coaster premonition, she is wearing a McKinley (the name of the town and high school) shirt. Realizing this, she believes that Ian (after his girlfriend's death and his resulting Sanity Slippage) will somehow be the cause of her death due to McKinley being his last name, but he is killed before he gets the chance.
Averted in The Passenger (1975) where David Locke, the protagonist, shares his name with David Robertson, the man whose identity he assumed.
Averted in the 1923 silent film The Covered Wagon. There are two character named William: Will Banion and Bill Jackson.
Averted in The Return of Sherlock Holmes. The film contains two unrelated characters named Hudson: Holmes' housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, and antiques dealer Morse Hudson.
Billy Beane: Get Steve on the phone. Peter Brand: Schottnote Then-owner of the Oakland Athletics or Phillipsnote Then-general manager of the New York Mets?
Vamps: Played straight, not to mention Played for Laughs when Stacy wants to keep dating Joey after learning his full name, saying that Van Helsing isn't that uncommon of a name. Goody is quick to tell her that, yeah, it is.
The Fast and the Furious (2001) and its first sequel have two different characters named Monica: the girl who says she's Edwin's girl even if he loses (she lies) and Agent Fuentes, who's undercover in Carter Verone's operation.
Krull: It is revealed the Widow of the Web's real name is Lyssa, the same as the princess.
Multiplicity features the protagonist Doug, and his three clones. Everyone calls the clones "Two", "Three" and "Four" to avoid confusion, and the clones happily call the original Doug, "Doug"... excpt for the mentally challenged Four, who calls him "Steve".
Juncture features a Marty Cox and a Martin Shaver.
Averted, possibly unintentionally in He Walked By Night. Sgt. Jones is a major character, and when giving instructions to patrolmen, Capt.Breen addresses one of them as Jones. Also, on two separate occasions, Capt. Breen phones the captains in charge of the burglary and robbery divisions. On each occasion, he addresses the person on the other end as 'Steve'.
The first may be the most bizarre aversion ever. During "The Awards" at the end of the film, one of the other best screenplay nominees also has the oh-so-common name of Jerilee. For no apparent reason. The second Jerilee could have been named anything else and impacted the story not a iota. No one in-universe, not even the main character, remarks upon the coincidence, and it only serves to give the audience a moment of doubting their own sanity: have they been mistaken about the heroine's surname all this time? Did she get remarried yet again without our knowing? Is it a continuity error? Nope! (Contrast the similar scene in The Oscar, where the name duplication among the nominees is very plot-relevant.)
There are two characters named George, though they have nothing to do with each other and have no scenes together. Would it have been that hard to rename one of the Georges?
Naomi And Ely's No Kiss List: Two different sets of characters both have the same name. First, two guys named Bruce (labeled Bruce 1 and Bruce 2). Then two Robins, one male, one female.
The Hunt:this is why the protagonist was captured in the first place—her name is Crystal May Creasey, while the Big Bad has a petty grudge against a Crystal Mae Creasey who lives in the same town. Protagonist Crystal gets her mail sometimes.
Adam (2019): Averted; there's Casey and Boy Casey. They date each other.
Captain America: The First Avenger: The Howling Commandos have three and a half characters named James - Barnes, Montgomery, and Morita, and Jacques Dernier.
However there is only one Steve. At least until several films later when Doctor Strange shows up.
Nope: Technically averted; protagonist Otis Haywood Jr. has the same name as his father, Otis Haywood Sr., but Otis Jr. is almost exclusively referred to as "O.J." throughout the film (and Otis Sr. is both mostly a Posthumous Character and only referred to by his children as "Pops").
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain has a pair of identical twins known as Thomas Twp note Pronounced "tup"; in Welsh, W is a vowel and Thomas Twp Too, played by Tudor and Hugh Vaughan. It's a Running Gag that nobody can tell them apart; even their listing in the end credits carries the note "or the other way round".
A notable aversion in David Lynch's Wild at Heart. In the opening scene, the protagonist, Sailor, is attacked by an assassin, by the name of Bobby Ray Lemon. Much later in the film, while him and his girlfriend, Lula, are passing through Texas, they meet Bobby Peru, who turns out to also be an assassin who is out for Sailor's blood.
In Are You Being Served?, one of Mr. Humphries' transgender friends is called Harry, which was revealed to be Mr. Harman's first name in Series 5 of the TV series, in the episode "The Old Order Changes", prior to his name being changed to Beverly in the Series 9 episode "Monkey Business".
"Tony" is the first name of both Dr. Burke and the author of The Garden of Pleasure, while it was also the first name of Dr. Benskin from Doctor in the House (1954) and Doctor at Large.
Dr. Hare also has the same first name as a lead character from In the House, sharing "Richard" with Grimsdyke.
Dr. Grimsdyke and Miles from Doctor in Clover share a surname with Grimsdyke from In the House.
Llewellyn Wendover shares his surname with the irritable patient Tarquin Wendover from In Clover.
Mrs. Dailey's daughter's name is "Dawn", which was also the name of one of the strippers from In Love.
In Please Turn Over, when Janet learns that Naked Revolt was written by a "Josephine Halliday", her first thought is that it is simply someone with the same name as her daughter, seeing as Jo normally hardly ever likes to write.
