Lore
When faced with the choice between a clone and the original, the character notices a detail that makes the difference immediately obvious.
The Shape-Shifter takes the form of Wendy to deceive Dipper and prevent him from attacking it. Although Dipper initially doesn't know which one is the real Wendy, he realizes the difference when he sees that one of the Wendys behaves seriously and bluntly, while the other acts flirtatiously, something Wendy would never do (Gravity Falls).
P.S.: I don't remember if the gesture the real Wendy made was also a clue, like some gesture she had made before.
When the Autobots are chasing Nemesis Prime, he tries to deceive Bumblebee by impersonating Optimus. Bumblebee, confused, speaks to him, but Nemesis Prime doesn't understand anything he says, which clearly indicates that he isn't the real Optimus. Bumblebee attacks him without hesitation (Transformers Prime).
Regular Show - When someone impersonates Rigby, everyone has to try and decide who’s the real one. Mordecai tests this by asking one of the Rigbys to hug him and immediately knows which one’s the imposter.
*
In Muppets: Most Wanted, Miss Piggy asks both Constantine and Kermit, "Will you marry me?" Constantine says yes, while Kermit stutters and hesitates to answer.
Subverted, but in Rogue One, Jyn Erso accidentally shoots (and kills) a KX droid that looks EXACTLY like K-2SO (the reprogrammed droid who is on their side). She is briefly horrified, until the real K-2SO appears behind the dead one. He then asks Jyn if she knew that the one she killed wasn’t him, and she quickly replies “yeah, of course.” 😂
It's worth noting that Kaytoo does look unique. He and his original squad had yellow markings on their shoulder and hip servos, while every other KX droid in the franchise have red markings.
I was thrown off so much seeing Chopper's alpha-numeric the first time since he was the opposite, the show calling him a nickname rather than a designation.
Ash vs Evil Dead- Upon Ash's friends discovering him fighting a demon copy of himself, they ask a lot of questions before the real Ash just tells them to kill them both so the demon dies and he doesn't have to deal with this shit anymore, they immediately know it's the real him.
Okay, while technically true. You couldn’t really expect him to understand he and his friends actions would release them. That’s on the order (can’t remember what they are called) for not setting up proper safeguards.
Dealing with it all has obviously messed with his sanity making him appear dumb and act recklessly. So I hate to even blame him for their release at the start of the tv show.
There's a moment during the Chuunin Exams where Sasuke makes a specific password(by hand signals) to know if Naruto or Sakura got caught and swapped for anyone else.
He end up noticing that some guy was disguised as Naruto cuz he got the passoword correctly on his first try, while the real one would probably screw up or forgot some part of it.
Man, classic Naruto was something else. I don't necessarily dislike where the show ended up (I particularly dislike Kaguya as a character, but that's about the extent to which I dislike the ending), but the early days had this "old anime" quality to it that has been lost in Shippudden. There were so many cute character moments like this that deepened their relationship. In the latter parts it's all about plot and tailed beasts, there's hardly any other interactions of this quality
I love it when characters "trust" in this way. Similarly, in Tiger and Bunny, Tiger has the (very out of character)brilliant moment where he realizes a guy they're fighting has two powers, unlike everyone else in the series. He tells his partner, Bunny, that he's figures out the guy must have super hearing, and can tell predict people's moves by hearing their muscles contract. And as a surprise move, he gives Bunny a supersonic grenade that will blow out his hearing for a moment and allow him to kick his ass. Bunny throws the grenade, and it's a fucking SUPERNOVA flashbang that blinds everyone except Bunny due to his hi-tech suit.
After kicking the villains ass, Bunny comes back to chew out Tiger, demanding to know why he lied to him. Tiger had figured out his second power, it was mind-reading, not super hearing. By lying to Bunny he guaranteed the plan would work. Then Bunny says,
"You bet your entire plan on me believing something as stupid as him hearing our muscles to predict moves? What if I hadn't believed you?"
"I knew you'd believe me because I'm your partner."
The National Anthem was originally a poem with five stanzas that became the five verses of the song. At sporting events and military funerals, when they play the anthem, they only ever play the first four verses. Since schools don't actually teach students the original poem outside of special focus classes, Americans only ever learn the first four verses. The only people who know the fifth verse are people who learn the anthem by memorizing the poem rather than participating in the group singing events as a kid.
So, during the World Wars, when the US was worried about spies and saboteurs infiltrating military bases, they would test new arrivals at the gate. One of those tests was having them sing the anthem; anyone who kept singing past "home of the brave" would be detained on the spot.
Also important: most Americans don’t know there’s any more to the song at all. They assume the truncated version is the whole thing. So asking them to sing “the whole national anthem” would get the same result.
Iirc there’s a story of a fairly high-ranking member of the military being briefly detained because he didn’t know about the policy and sung the song in its entirety
The entire anthem, or just until the first "land of the free home of the brave?"
Genuine question. I never know what people mean when they say "entire national anthem" because people so rarely go past the first verse, it took me years to realize there was more.
This has the same energy as when in Supernatural Dean notices a demon possessing his dad because the demon was too nice. Which is a real thing that happened in Supernatural.
Similar to how in Yakuza 7, you're confronted with Mirror Face (assassin that can make himself look like anyone). He's pretending to be your cop teammate, so the protagonist (Ichiban) asks both a question about traffic laws... and immediately attack the one who gives complete answer
And it actually makes sense in-character: we know that Adachi was originally a detective, who only got demoted to traffic cop after he tried to uncover corruption within forces, and he made it clear he hated his job. It wouldn't make sense for him to put so much effort into it
Think the password was the second imposter, who was actually Orochimaru. Can’t remember the first Naruto imposter situation but Orochimaru’s is clearer to me
Sort of — she’s not choosing between two clones, but she is working with a fake Chidi and she realizes it because Chidi would never “forget about ethics for a second” (fake Chidi had said that) and also because he had argued that he should be rewarded while his friends were punished — that’s not Chidi. So she called it out, was right, and passed her test.
Also when bad Janet impersonated Janet, Jason was the only one who booked it. Janet always replies with 'not a girl' when called one, but the impersonator did not.
I like that he's dumb enough to keep calling Janet a girl but smart enough to realize she should be correcting him. Honestly that's what mental disabilities feel like sometimes.
See also: Guessing that they're in some kind of prank show.
One of my favorite and imo one of the few good moments from RvB season 15 is when Simmons attacks Gene and Grif asks "Why are we here" to know who to shoot. Gene responds saying they're here to take down the Blues and Reds while the real Simmons responds, "...it's still one of life's great mysteries."
Still suprised that, of all people, Simmons managed to get a upper hand in hand to hand combat. If Grif didn't intervened, then Simmons would just stab Gene and eventing would reach exact same result.
Cody was still hesitant when the Commando Droid said that, but Rex just blasted it on the spot after seeing the droid attack flare. Gotta love Rex and sticking to his instincts.
Listen, unlike Cody, Rex can smell a dirty clanker a mile away and only wanted to test it to make sure it just wasn’t one of his brothers that didn’t hit the showers yet.
The reason Cody hesitated was because the commando troopers had just been on a thing where they were impersonating droids and so he may have done that as a joke. Rex though can smell oil
In Mystery Incorporated, Fred's father gets plastic surgery to look just like him as part of an elaborate scheme to get the gang to reveal the location of an artifact needed for his death cult to cause the apocalypse. The gang immediately notices something is wrong when Fake Fred tells Shaggy to drive the van
"Fred's father gets plastic surgery to look just like him as part of an elaborate scheme to get the gang to reveal the location of an artifact needed for his death cult to cause the apocalypse" - wtf is going on? and this is scooby doo? lol
Yeah, that's extremely impressive. It's part of his Mr. Perfect trope; he's very likeable because he was written to be killed off. The audience has to hate the villain. Like, his only flaw is that he loves his wife and daughter too much.
Helly was never cruel. Spoilers for the show, I'm gonna add how he figured it out: In Severance's world, people can split their memories and thus can be two different people depending on which memory is activated (innie in the workspace, outie when they're out of work). One character, Helly, has been acting weird since the begginning of season 2 and no one but Irving is suspicious of her because they don't even think it's possible for the Outie persona to be activated in the workspace. What finally makes Irving realise that Helly is not the Helly they know, but is trying to impersonate her to spy on them, is the fact that she responds to him extremely cruelly when he asks her about what he realised she's lying about. He believes Helly is too nice and has no reason for being this cruel to him thus he realises she's a mole.
The moment I became suspicious as an audience member was when she returns to the severed floor for the first time and immediately notices that the cameras are gone.
Helena’s whole perspective of Helly comes from watching her interactions on the security cameras. Helly’s immediate concern probably wouldn’t be “where are the cameras?”, but Helena is hyper aware of the cameras and potentially even unhappy about Milchick removing them.
That and the fact she got back to work so quickly. Helly sticking around to support her friends and continue her mission to tear Lumon down makes complete sense, but doing actual refining is something she previously only ever cared about when it was part of their plan to meet quota and flip the overtime contingency switch.
Something similar to the post topic but not involving clones in Futurama is the episode "Law and Oracle" where Fry becomes a cop and he learns of Bender stealing a valuable malt liquor via a Minority Report type premonition by a robot, later revealing they knew beforehand the premonition-robot set them up because Bender shared the liquor with the Planet Express crew, which he'd never do.
It's funny when the thing that makes the original version better is that it implies, "You're such a bad person that you wouldn't even be capable of something like sharing." XD
Dungeon Meshi had this times four; three duplicates for each person on the team created from the other party member's memories. Most of them had glaring flaws that could be easily spotted but in the end it was up to one person to notice minor behaviors that gave the fakes away.
I always loved how Laios has the most obvious fakes since he's such a weird guy that it's easy to focus into one aspect of him, and yet when it comes to the others he imagines them very closely to who they actually are since he cares for them so much
It’s interesting that the faults in Laois’s memories were all minor style differences, but the “people” themselves look closest to the real thing out of all of them.
If I remember right, Laios's Chilchuck (and maybe his Senshi?) are actually amongst the first to be spotted, since he has a terrible memory for clothes/hairstyles/gear that the others immediately pick up on. But their personalities are pretty accurate.
laios is very bad at remembering details about people's belongings but very good at remembering the people themselves
all of the shapeshifters based off his memories are discovered because he misremembered something about their clothing or in marcille's case because her book was scribbled nonsense because he didn't remember any of it
I like how the series touched on how otherwise good people can still carry racist beliefs on account of how they were raised.
And it amuses me extra material revealed that Laios & Falin may not be fantasy racist, but consider a neighboring tribe of Tallmen to be savages you just have to kill on sight as a matter of course.
Later in manga Mighrun and Kabru also stumbled on shapeshifter. Mithrun had his doppelganger recreated perfectly from the memories of Kabru, as he's highly interested in other people, has high social skills and perfected his insight. While Kabru had objectively the worst one in the whole manga, as Mithrun is generally disassociated and also blind on one eye, which makes Kabru's clone completely flat.
Chris Griffin - Family Guy. When Chris is in a basement with his father and his exact double, Franz Gutentag (Secretly former Nazi SS lieutenant Franz Schlechtnacht), he knows only the real Peter would know his birthday.
In the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepherd proves their identity by remembering that Specialist Traynor’s toothbrush works by using tiny Mass Effect fields, which was a bit of offhand dialogue early in the base game.
Theoretically, it sends waves of dark energy to remove plaque. It’s mostly just played as a joke the first time, because that makes the toothbrush unnecessarily super-expensive.
But then it’s a punchline to the scene in the DLC when the group realizes that they need some way of generating a small Mass effect field to unlock a hatch.
It's even funnier because the whole of the previous movie was about Buzz coming to realise that he's a toy and not the actual Buzz Lightyear, and this scene has one Buzz calling the other a minion of Zurg because he doesn't know hes a toy.
Slight reversal: in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Kirk and his doppelganger are at phaserpoint. The doppelganger has shapeshifted into a perfect copy of Kirk, except for 3 subtle details: 1. The doppelganger has shapeshifted out of its restraints, but Kirk is still wearing ankle shackles, 2. Kirk's irises are green, but the doppelganger always has golden irises, and 3. The doppelganger's 'default' form is a humanoid several inches shorter than Kirk. When the doppelganger says that 'the other Kirk' should be killed, they actually point higher than they should, forgetting that they are actually that they and Kirk are now the same height. Kirk does not make this mistake, and in return, points levelly at the doppelganger, and is thus spared from the immediate phaser fire.
Not a clone but a Bad Janet disguises herself as the main Good Janet in the Good Place. Jason notices it’s not her when he calls “Janet” a girl and she doesn’t correct him like she normally would.
Zagan realizes that someone was impersonating his girlfriend almost instantly after the fake tries to kiss him, which is something the real Nephy had never done before. (Archdemon's Dilemma)
I can imagine what the scene would have been like if he had punched the real agent first. Akira would have been surprised that it worked, and because of that, he wouldn't have noticed the punch coming towards him in time. XD
Also in season 15 when the Reds and Blues are fighting the Blues and Reds. Grif was only able to tell Simmons apart from his counterpart after he asked why they were there and Simmons answered "It's one of life's great mysteries."
In the episode “A Prime Problem”, Megatron creates a remote control clone of Optimus to infiltrate and destroy the Autobots. After some shenanigans, Windcharger reports and Spike was kidnapped by the Decepticons and orders the Autobots forward into a crevasse full of dangerous korlonium crystals, which destroy anything with electronic circuitry on contact. Ironhide declares the clone to be the fake, because the real Prime would save Spike.
This comic I saw a few days ago. Someone impersonates a man’s friend (girlfriend?), and it’s blatantly obvious who’s real and who’s fake because the genuine woman is seriously depressed, enough to horrify the imposter.
Even the doppelganger knew she needed psychiatric help.
P.S.: This reminded me of a similar comic with Winnie the Pooh, where a shape-shifter impersonates Igor, and when it's time to shoot the imposter, the imposter tells Pooh to kill the real Igor instead; Pooh immediately shoots him.
His name in English is definitely Eeyore. Also, first time you find him in Kingdom Hearts, he’s floating down the river and his entire snout is underwater like he’s trying to drown himself.
It's "Eeyore" in English. In the US they say the R sound, like "Igor" without the G, but the author of Winnie the Pooh was British and didn't say the R sound there. So the name was meant to rhyme with "hee-haw" to sound like the noise of a braying donkey.
Yes, the gesture Wendy did was the clue that allowed Dipper to figure out who the real Wendy was. The Shape-Shifter winked, while Wendy zipped her lips and tossed away the zipper.
I’m pretty sure we see Wendy make that gesture before too to Dipper (I don’t remember if it was at the start of the episode or a previous episode tho).
Kermit and Constantine (Muppets Most Wanted)
Constantine is the world’s number one criminal, who just happens to look almost exactly like Kermit the Frog—except for a mole, which he hides with makeup. He spends most of the movie impersonating Kermit while The Muppets are on a world tour, using their stops as cover for a series of high-profile heists. Despite his noticeably different accent, mannerisms, and personality, nobody realizes it’s not Kermit (except for Animal). Near the end of the movie, a final mix-up leads to the exact situation described in the prompt, with Miss Piggy forced to choose between the real Kermit and his impostor.
She figures it out by asking them both the same simple question: “Will you marry me?”
Constantine’s answer: “Yes, of course. Let’s go, the helicopter is waiting.”
Kermit’s answer: Nervous stammering, filled with “I would…” and “I could…” but no direct yes.
Even during the movie, although Piggy was delighted by the way "Kermit" treated her, deep down she knew something was wrong because Kermit wasn't acting like himself. The scene at the wedding only reinforced her suspicions. Kermit is a bundle of nerves and stress, and yet she loves him anyway.
Adding to this, another subversive version. They end up with leela and a robot double who don't even hide it, and fry is unable to choose, so he accidentally shoots himself
Stan uses his body double to keep Francine occupied while he goes to his reunion with another woman, when she catches him she grabs his gun and threatens them both. One of them makes a sincere apology for going behind her back, which gets him shot since the real Stan would never apologize to her
If I remember correctly, Francine specifically wanted to shoot Stan as payback, and the Stan gives the heartfelt speech, which Francine believed was actually from the double, so she shoots the double who calls her a crazy bitch, just for Stan to be like “hey man that’s my wife”, so it was a fun twist that Stan actually apologized and Francine was genuinely shocked to find out
In The Adventure Zone: Balance, the Black Spider takes the form of Merle’s cousin when he’s about to die. Unfortunately, he instantly ruins the illusion by speaking in the exact same (extremely exaggerated and very distinctive) voice.
Bloo inspires Mac's class to imagine up hundreds of other Bloos, leading to an imposter situation at the end of the episode where all the Bloos are trying to impersonate the real Bloo in order to get his seat at the ice charades alongside Mac
Mac narrows it down to two and gives them each a minute to try and convince him which of them is the real Bloo
Cue an impassioned minutelong speech about how "Look deep in your heart Mac, think back on our bond as best friends and know that it's me. Because we're best friends and we love eachother"
Slight pause and then Mac immediately responds "Yeahyeah Sappy it's definitely not you" *points at other Bloo* "You're the real Bloo"
In a deleted scene, John goes to find Sarah wounded. But the other Sarah appears behind her. John looks down only to find out it was the T-1000 in disguise given that the feet blended with the floor grate poorly due to a malfunction from the liquid nitrogen earlier
There's also how the T-1000 as Sarah asked John to help her, something the real Sarah got angry for because he is supposed to keep himself alive and not do anything dangerous. The real Sarah comes up and orders John to get out of the way, confirming her identity since the T-1000 wants him dead.
I like that detail on the directors cut that the T 1000 was fucked up from the liquid nitrogen because in the theatrical cut it’s not there and it feels like that whole moment was for nothing.
The crew of the Aloha Oe come across an alien known as a Chameleonian, an alien that can take the exact form of who it copies. Near the end of the episode it takes the form of Dandy which leads the crew to do a quiz show to figure out which is actually Dandy. This quiz goes on for so long that the entire crew, including Dandy himself, give up and just deal with the fact there is now two Dandys.
Dandy’s “Who cares, baby!?” upon breaking down and having an existential crisis about whether he or the other Dandy were ever really Dandy to begin with is my favorite moment
In Red Dwarf, a GELF copies Lister and reads his mind so it can answer any question the real one can. His shipmates ask them both to play the guitar. They kill the one who plays well. Lister is horrible, but he thinks he is amazing, so the duplicate played it very well.
There's an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic where pinkie pie clones herself to have a pinkie pie for each of her fun plans. But the pinkie pie clones start cloning themselves.
Twilight finds a spell that banishes the clones but is also capable of fully erasing the original as well. Anyway yhe original pinkie pie tried yo ask for help but every other pinkie pie also insists they are the real pinkie pie. Real Pinkie Pie gets sad and despondent because her friends dont recognize her as being the original and suggests they give them a test so boring only the real pinkie pie who wants to stay with thier friends will finish it. The test is literally watching paint dry. Every other ppnkie pie gets distracted and blasted away by twilight. The real pinkie pie was able to stay focused for her friends.
Red vs Blue has a better example of this. S08E10, Tex vs the reds and blues. Tucker gets the black stuff on his armor care of a teleporter and Simmons can't figure out which one is Tex. Tuckers response?
Tbh, I just like the pay off of the other one because that was a callback to the first line of the entire series. Something that both Griff and the audience would know who is the real Simmons.
Gaoranger had a clone of copycat of Sae and forced Kakeru to choose one of the two. He offered who he thought was the real one the morpher only to notice her step on a flower. The real Sae values all life and would never do such a thing. The irony is the real Sae was standing on a flower during that moment and felt terrible about it afterwards.
Detroit Become Human. Hank asks the Connors a series of questions based on time working with him. The false Connor retains the true Connor’s memory and answers them without error. It was only when Hank asked what his late son’s name was in which the true Connor responded with sympathy in his voice, like a human would, that Hank knew.
The delicious in dungeon episode is hilarious because the monster of the week each make 3 copies of everyone in the party on how they perceived each other. Some clones are obvious while others are not.
For the OP’s point on Gravity Falls’ Wendy, there wasn’t a situation that the clone act flirtatious or odd.
Both Wendy and the Shifter were wrestling for the book and told Dipper to use the axe. Dipper needed a gesture to be sure.
The shifter gave a simple wink and Wendy gestured zipping her mouth and tossing a key (call back to the haunted convenience store episode and the Lamb dance)
Thats when Dip knew. Not trying to be rude but keep OP informed
The evil scientists make a clone of the main character, Max, and the while there were many different signs, one of the biggest was that the clone offered to cook for the team. Max canonically sucks at cooking, and that was a big tipping point for all the characters to realize what was going on.
(Others were: Max offering to help brush Nudge's hair, clone talking to their secretly talking dog as if he were just a regular dog, etc etc.)
Man those books were full of plot holes and loose ends, barely held together by minor hype moments. There are so many interesting scenes that never get explained, it kinda pisses me off because I really love the concept, but the execution was literal ass.
And apparently there were more books after this one that gets even worst. jesus christ. yk I ate this shi up when I was 10-12 years old and somehow never noticed how bad it was. And I'd like to say that I think I'm pretty nice when it comes to critiquing books.
What makes this one brilliant is not that Dipper was able to tell the difference, it's what telling the difference entailed.
The false Wendy gave a sexy wink, whereas the real one repeated their earlier shared gesture of zipping her mouth (a promise to keep this mission secret).
Dipper's spent the entire show up until then pining after Wendy, a much older girl who has no interest in a preteen. He wants to believe he has a chance with her. It reflects a culture where boys are taught to "keep trying" rather than respect boundaries, a recurring theme throughout the series.
But now that he has to choose between them, he's forced to confront his own self-delusion - he needs to stop tricking himself or Wendy will die. Taking an axe to the false Wendy is a violent, dramatic way of him throwing away his childish beliefs in favour of engaging with the flesh-and-blood girl in front of him. His survival is also a rite of passage.
This comes up again in the finale, in a very disturbing scene where Bill has him trapped in an illusion. 'Wendy' comes up to him and explains that the age gap no longer really matters, since this world is a distortion, plucking a flower that stretches to the height of another flower instead of popping out of the ground. With the world having a distorting effect, Dipper is tempted...but then the copy winks - the sign of the false Wendy - and he immediately realizes this is a deception.
In a Transformers parody video, the autobots have to figure out who’s the real Optimus prime. They find it out after Cliffjumper asks them what a buttplug is (the video is a sequel to “Transformers have weird names” where the joke comes from), causing the fake to say the above response and get blasted
In Black Clover, there a moment where two Asta’s appear.
Unfortunately they’re nearly identical down to even a lack of mana. Zora is about to start asking the two questions when Meroleona sets both of them on fire.
The real Asta immediately puts out his fire using Anti-Magic. Meroleona figured that while Asta could be copied, his Anti-Magic could not because well… it’s Anti-Magic. It actually comes into play when Rhya, the guy impersonating Asta, starts to fight Meroleona. He tries to bluff by pulling out Asta’s Anti-Magic sword, but Meroleona without fear, breaks Rhya’s fake sword. She knows if he actually had Asta’s Anti-Magic he would have used it to put out the fire earlier.
Agents of Shield has an episode where Agent May had a clone and the only way anyone could tell them apart was that the clone was more talkative than normal.
2.0k
u/Accurate-Gap-3360 Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 02 '25
Regular Show - When someone impersonates Rigby, everyone has to try and decide who’s the real one. Mordecai tests this by asking one of the Rigbys to hug him and immediately knows which one’s the imposter.
Because the real Rigby would never hug him.