Look-alike

• In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "William Wilson" (1839), a man is followed by his double.
• In
  St. Petersburg, Russia, Yakov Pyotrovich Golyadkin, psychotically
  encounters a double of himself who looks identical to him but has all the charm, unctuousness, and social skills that he himself lacks.
• identical twin
  .
• In Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859), two characters, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, bear an uncanny resemblance to one another.
• In The Woman in White (1859), by Wilkie Collins, the protagonist meets two women, Anne Catherick and Laura Fairlie, who strongly resemble one another. (See also Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White in "Illegitimacy in fiction: Victorian".)
• In
  Henry VIII of England
  , and his pauper look-alike, Tom Canty, trade places.
• In
  impersonates
  a king he closely resembles, after the king is abducted on the eve of his coronation.
• Ramses the Great.^[13]
• Georg Kaiser's 1917 play The Coral depicts a powerful industrialist whose male secretary is his exact double. The secretary's duties include impersonating his employer at public functions. Other employees can tell the two men apart only by the fact that the secretary always wears a coral watch-fob.
• The Living and the Dead, 1954 novel by collaborators Boileau-Narcejac, on which Alfred Hitchcock based his 1958 film Vertigo.
• In Robert Heinlein's novel Double Star (1956), actor Lawrence Smith is approached to impersonate prominent politician John Joseph Bonforte, who has been kidnapped, despite his antipathy toward Bonforte's policies. In studying the man to perfect his imposture, Smith eventually comes to admire Bonforte. He continues this performance through an election and, when Bonforte dies, the subsequent tenure in office as "Supreme Minister." This story parallels that of the film Dave, but in this case when the actual politician dies, and Bonforte's staff begins to suggest shifts in policy contrary to Bonforte's beliefs, Smith refuses to submit to their desires, removes them from their positions, and continues in the role for the rest of his life, in honor of Bonforte's legacy.
• In
  The Scapegoat
  (1957), an Englishman meets his double, a French aristocrat, while visiting France, and is forced into changing places with him, finding himself caught up in all the intrigues and passions of his double's complex family.
• In Richard Powell's novel Don Quixote, U.S.A. (1966), Arthur Peabody Goodpasture, an inept Peace Corps volunteer and the spitting image of El Gavilan, a revolutionary leader in the fictional Republic of San Marco in South America, is forced to assume the identity of El Gavilan after the original is kidnapped and taken to the Soviet Union when El Gavilan's plot to have Goodpasture abducted by the Russians goes wrong.
• In
  Nazi German paratroopers attempt to abduct British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from an English village he is visiting. It subsequently transpires that the actual Churchill had been elsewhere while a political decoy
  visited the village.
• "The Leader and the Damned" (1983) by
  Colin Forbes is a secret history thriller whose plot is based on the assumption that Adolf Hitler was assassinated in 1943, a bomb completely destroying his body. The Nazi hierarchy kept this as a top secret and got a double to impersonate Hitler
  , and it was this double who led Nazi Germany until its final demise in 1945.
• In
  double
  is used after the U.S. president is kidnapped by Korean and Soviet agents.
• In David Lodge's 1984 novel Small World, the protagonist keeps running into two women, Angelica and Lily, who are identical twin sisters with confusingly different personalities.
• double
  in a disappearing-and-reappearing act.
• In Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline (2002) the heroine meets up with improved look-alikes of her parents and all her neighbors when she enters the Other Mother's world.
• José Saramago's 2002 novel The Double traces the intertwining lives of a history teacher and his bit-actor identical double, one of whom ends up dead while the other ends up living with the other's widow.
• In Christopher Golden's novel Dead Ringers (2015) the main characters find themselves invaded by people exactly like them, but "better" or with malicious intent.
• In Britain's Private Eye magazine, a long-running satirical feature of the letters section intentionally reversed the captions on look-alike photographs.^{[14][circular reference]}
• In A.M. Kherbash's novel Lesath (2019) the protagonist is mistaken for an escaped inmate and is incarcerated in a remote facility.

Film

• The Woman in White (1912), adapted from the Wilkie Collins novel The Woman in White, was followed by 1917, 1929, and 1948 film versions.
• In the 1918 lost film
  Kaiser Wilhelm
  and his double Robert Graubel.
• Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities (see "Literature", above) has been produced as three film versions between 1911 and 1958, as well as television and stage adaptations.
• Anthony Hope's novel The Prisoner of Zenda (see "Literature", above) has been the basis for many film and stage adaptations, the first film version being in 1913; the best-known film version is John Cromwell's 1937 film.
• Mark Twain's novel The Prince and the Pauper (see "Literature", above) has been the basis for many film and stage adaptations, the earliest film version being in 1920.
• Alexandre Dumas, père's, The Man in the Iron Mask
  (see "Literature", above) has been adapted into eight film versions between 1929 and 1998.
• The Student of Prague (1926): Balduin is followed by his double after making a deal with the devil.
• The 1932 musical film The Phantom President depicts a man who is eminently qualified to be President of the United States but who is unlikely to be elected because he is dull and lacks charisma. Fortunately, he has an exact double: a patent-medicine salesman and vaudeville hoofer who is a charismatic campaigner but has no actual political qualifications. The film cynically suggests that most American voters would prefer the latter to the former. Both roles are played by legendary song-and-dance man George M. Cohan.
• The 1940 comedy film
  Jewish barber who is Hynkel's spitting image. The barber eventually replaces Hynkel, who has been arrested after having been mistaken for the barber. On nationwide radio the barber, impersonating the dictator, declares in a great rousing speech an end to antisemitism
  and a return to democracy.
• In The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943), directed by James P. Hogan and starring Ludwig Donath, a man plans to murder Adolf Hitler and steal his identity.
• Angel on My Shoulder (1946): The Devil persuades a deceased gangster, played by Paul Muni, to let his soul possess the body of an honest judge who looks exactly like the gangster and who is causing the Devil distress with his honesty.
• The Magic Face (1951): Adolf Hitler is killed by his valet and double, Rudi Janus, who takes his place.
• D'entre les morts (From Among the Dead) by Boileau-Narcejac
  .
• The Square Peg (1959): Norman Wisdom plays road repairer Norman Pitkin, who is called up for the army and sent to Nazi-occupied France, and also Pitkin's exact double, General Schreiber.
• The Scapegoat (1959): Alec Guinness plays both a French aristocrat and the English schoolteacher who is maneuvered into taking his place so the Frenchman can have an alibi for a murder.
• In the
  atom bombs
  .
• historical novel Pharaoh (see "Literature", above).^[15]
• In The Double Man (1967) an American CIA agent (Yul Brynner) is lured to Austria, so that an East German lookalike can take his place.
• In the
  Brigadier General George Carnaby (Robert Beatty
  ), who is a chief planner for the Western Front, is captured by the Germans. He is taken for interrogation to a mountaintop fortress and needs to be rescued by a team of Allied commandos before the Germans realize that he is in fact an impostor, a lookalike U.S. corporal named Cartwright Jones.
• In Gentlemen of Fortune (1971), a Soviet crime comedy movie, Yevgeny Leonov plays both the protagonist, a good-hearted kindergarten principal Yevgeny Troshkin, and his exact double, a vile crime boss nicknamed "Docent". Since Docent stole a precious artifact and refused to give it out, the police hire Troshkin to impersonate him, so he could get any useful information from Docent's henchmen. Eventually, this results in Troshkin slowly re-educating the gang.
• Napoleon Bonaparte
  . A double of the Emperor is killed, and Allen's character is executed.
• In The Eagle Has Landed (1976), based on Jack Higgins's novel, German paratroopers attempt in 1943 to abduct Prime Minister Winston Churchill from an English village. It is revealed that it is actually a political decoy who visits the village and is assassinated.
• In Foul Play (1978), starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase, the twin of an American archbishop kills the archbishop, impersonates him, and plots to assassinate a fictitious Pope Pius XIII.
• daimyō Shingen, who is subsequently killed by an enemy sniper. The false identity of the kagemusha is revealed when he is unable to ride Lord Shingen's favorite horse; but in the final battle at Nagashino
  the kagemusha accepts his role and fights as the last man holding the banner of the Takeda clan.
• The film Double Trouble (1984) features comedian duo Bud Spencer and Terence Hill playing two billionaires who, fearing for their lives after several assassination attempts, hire two look-alikes.
• In a feature-length episode of the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses entitled "Miami Twice", Derek is mistaken for a Mafia don who is his spitting image, and he is used by the Mafia in an attempt to fake the don's assassination (though several tries fail). The likeness is so uncanny that even Derek's brother Rodney is tricked. Both Derek and the don are played by David Jason.
• Moon over Parador (1988): Paul Mazursky's film in which a man who is filming in a fictional country in Latin America
  called Parador, is forced to play the role of the country's late president, whom he closely resembles.
• gynecologists
  .
• Wait for Me in Heaven, a 1988 Spanish comedy, features Pepe Soriano as Francisco Franco and his decoy.
• In Roberto Benigni's Johnny Stecchino (1991), the main character is passed off for a snitch hiding from the mob.
• In Gary Ross' 1993 film Dave, an impersonator is hired by the U.S. President's chief of staff as a temporary decoy.
• In
  Russian Mafia
  was his look-alike twin brother that he never knew he had. Tracing the dead brother's footsteps, the protagonist inadvertently "inherits" the brother's predicaments and girlfriend.
• The 1999 film
  a handmaiden being used as a decoy, and Padmé (Natalie Portman) is the real queen, and has been posing as one of her own handmaidens. Knightley was cast in the role due to her close resemblance to Portman; even the two actresses' mothers had trouble distinguishing them in full make-up.^[16]
• In the 1999 film Bowfinger the plot centers on a down-and-out filmmaker in Hollywood attempting to make a film on a small budget with a star who does not know that he is in the film, while also utilizing a lookalike of the star to shoot several scenes.
• In the Hindi movie, Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai, Roshan plays two different men
• The 2002 film Bubba Ho-Tep starred Bruce Campbell in the role of an elderly Elvis Presley who had traded places with an Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff (also played by Campbell) and now lives in a nursing home.
• identical twin
  .
• In
  doubles
  in their astonishing disappearing-reappearing acts.
• archive footage
  of the tournament with the fictional action depicted.
• Vantage Point (2008): a decoy helps protect the president from a possible assassination threat—and is shot. The film claims that "doubles have been used since Reagan."
• The Devil's Double (2011) dramatised Latif Yahia's claim to have been Uday Hussein's double.
• The Dictator (2012): A political satire black comedy film starring Sacha Baron Cohen both as a tyrannical yet childish despot and as a dimwitted political decoy.
• Masquerade (2012): South Korean historical film starring Lee Byung-hun in dual roles as the bizarre King Gwanghae and the humble acrobat Ha-sun, who stands in for the King when he faces the threat of being poisoned.
• The Scapegoat (2012) is a remake of the 1959 Alec Guinness film, starring Matthew Rhys.
• Enemy (2013): a college professor discovers look-alike actor
• The Lookalike (2014) follows two criminals as they attempt to find a lookalike love interest for a drug lord after the unexpected death of the girl he's actually interested in.