Board 8 > Best of the Trope Season 2: Day 210 - Identical Stranger

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Best of the Trope!

Here are the rules. Each day, I will post a trope from TV Tropes, and each poster can name up to three examples of that trope. Whichever nomination gets the most mentions wins! Posters may also name as many Honourable Mentions as they like, but they are purely optional and will not count towards the running score. You may look at the TV Tropes page for that day's trope for examples, but you do not have to pick all your examples from the page. You can nominate whatever examples you like, as long as they qualify for the trope. Each trope will last around 24 hours before the next one goes up.

In the event of a tie between 4 or more nominations, a tiebreaker poll will be run the next day to determine a winner.

Posters may also nominate any tropes they wish to see come up during the series. This is optional, and you don't have to do it every day, or at all. Tropes will be randomly selected from the list each day, except for some occasions where I will pick a thematically appropriate trope that may or may not be on the list.

Here's the list of previous tropes, so if you wish to nominate some tropes, check on here that it wasn't previously done. http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Best_of_the_Trope

Trope list:
Fat and Skinny
Kindhearted SImpleton
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You
The Woobie
Trauma Conga Line
Humiliation Conga
Evil Costume Switch
Torch the Franchise and Run
Trash the Set
Grand Finale

The winners of yesterday's trope, Lean and Mean, were Voldemort (Harry Potter), Waluigi (Super Mario Bros.) and Slenderman (Marble Hornets), who got 2 votes each.

Previous winners: Day 176 onwards
Launcher of a Thousand Ships - Nightwing (DC Comics)
Evil Cripple - Mr. Glass (Unbreakable)
Breather Level - 100 Acre Wood (Kingdom Hearts)
Beef Gate - Automatic 4-Star Wanted Level (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas)
One True Love - Buttercup and Westley (The Princess Bride) / Shrek and Fiona (Shrek)
Cliffhanger - The Snap (Avengers: Infinity War)
Anti-Climax Boss - Yu Yevon (Final Fantasy X)
Lights Off, Somebody Dies - Devil / Anthology of Interest (Futurama) / And Then There Was Shawn (Boy Meets World)
Broken Base - Genwunners (Pokemon)
Difficult But Awesome - Ana (Overwatch)
Disc One Nuke - Hawlucha (Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon)
Lampshade Hanging - How did Yzma and Kronk get there first? (The Emperor's New Groove)
Tier Induced Scrappy - Meta Knight (Super Smash Bros Brawl)
Squishy Wizard - Alakazam (Pokemon)
Clipped Wing Angel - Genie Jafar (Aladdin)
Cruel and Unusual Death - Executions (Danganronpa)
That One Level - Escape from the Water Slums (Jak II) / Water Temple (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)
Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence - Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)
The Reason You Suck Speech - Quagmire to Brian (Family Guy)
Magic Knight - Geralt (The Witcher) / Bayonetta
Dem Bones - Jack Skellington (The Nightmare Before Christmas)
Acrofatic - Po (Kung Fu Panda)
Game Breaker - Detective Mode (Batman Arkham Series)
Fluffy the Terrible - Fluffy (Harry Potter)
Deathbringer the Adorable - The Grand Master of All Things Bad (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon)
Storming the Castle - Leeroy Jenkins
BFS - Buster Sword (Final Fantasy VII)
Fat Bastard - Eric Cartman (South Park)
Mentor Occupational Hazard - Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)
Oddball Doppelganger - Mimikyu (Pokemon)
Mood Whiplash - The destroyed village ends "A Girl Worth Fighting For" early (Mulan)
Names to Run Away From Really Fast - Shelly DeKiller (Ace Attorney)
Hostile Show Takeover - Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club)

Today's trope is Identical Stranger. Here is the link: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdenticalStranger

They say that everybody has got a double somewhere. After all, the Earth has a human population of 7 billion; it would actually be stranger if no two people were at least vaguely similar in appearance. On the other hand, it's not as common in Real Life as it seems to be in media.

On television this is often utilized for comedy, by making them very different people personality-wise.

As far as tropes go, this is one of the more ludicrously implausible ones. Take the probability of an Identical Grandson, ramp it Up to Eleven, and we're sort of in the right ballpark. This trope has stuck around mainly because it's a fun Plot Device. Meeting your own grandfather requires you to be in a Time Travel scenario, whereas a stranger can be, well, anyone more or less. Still, expect groans from the audience if this trope forces both identical strangers onto the screen at the same time a little too often. It gets past our Willing Suspension of Disbelief largely because it seems less improbable in the abstract than when we're directly confronted with it.

TL,DR: Two unrelated characters look exactly alike.

Nominations:
The Prince and the Pauper
Flexo (Futurama)
Kingsonn Dededoo (Brawl in the Family)

Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel (real life)
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Kingsonnnnn Dede...doo
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Kingsonn Dededoo (Brawl in the Family)

He's here to clean your clock.
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Carrie Fisher/Film Vault Receptionist (Scream 3)
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The Barber and Adenoid Hynkel (The Great Dictator)
Robert Angier and Gerald Root (The Prestige)
Lesbian Robin, Mustache Marshall, Stripper Lily, and Mexican Wrestler Ted, and Doctor Barney (How I Met Your Mother)
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Kingsonn Dededoo
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The Barber and Adenoid Hynkel (The Great Dictator)
Maria and Mary (Silent Hill 2)
Trish and Eva (Devil May Cry)
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Rock Slag (The Man Called Flintstone)
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Doppelgangers (HIMYM)
Prince and the Pauper

Bender and Flexo
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Homer Simpson and Guy Incognito (The Simpsons)
Homer Simpson and Krusty the Clown (The Simpsons)
Bart and Lisa/Lester and Eliza (The Simpsons)
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Homer Simpson and Guy Incognito (The Simpsons)
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Homer and Mr Sparkle

Homer Simpson and Guy Incognito
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Gotta echo

Homer Simpson and Guy Incognito

Celes and Maria (Final Fantasy VI)
Homer Simpson and Guy Icognito
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Rankings so far:
Homer Simpson and Guy Incognito (The Simpsons) - 5 votes
Kingsonn Dededoo (Brawl in the Family) - 4 votes
The Barber and Adenoid Hynkel (The Great Dictator) - 2 votes
Lesbian Robin, Mustache Marshall, Stripper Lily, and Mexican Wrestler Ted, and Doctor Barney (How I Met Your Mother) - 2 votes
The Prince and the Pauper - 2 votes
Flexo (Futurama) - 2 votes
Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel (real life)
Carrie Fisher/Film Vault Receptionist (Scream 3)
Robert Angier and Gerald Root (The Prestige)
Maria and Mary (Silent Hill 2)
Trish and Eva (Devil May Cry)
Rock Slag (The Man Called Flintstone)
Homer Simpson and Krusty the Clown (The Simpsons)
Bart and Lisa/Lester and Eliza (The Simpsons)
Homer and Mr Sparkle (The Simpsons)
Celes and Maria (Final Fantasy VI)

Kingsonn Dededoo
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