This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
A variant of this could be called "Split at Birth": our protagonist meets a character who appears at first to be his long lost twin - until it is revealed that they are, in fact, the same person split in infancy by applied phlebotinum. Often the "twins" are characterized as inverses (either Different as Night and Day, or Evil Twin) since the original's personality traits were divided unevenly between them (e.g. one "twin" got all the confidence, leaving the other timid and introverted, etc.) This trope shows up in Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys and Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time.
- Something simialr showed up in a Star Trek The Next generation episode, thouuh that wasn't spilt at BIRTH. A malfunction with a transporter created to versions of the same person - one, a leiutenant, was stuck on the planet for years, while the other, his older self, lived on believing hismelf the only one. neither kenw of the other's existence until a chance return to the planet at which point - whoops.
Daibhid C: Pulled this:
- An extremely unfortunate case of Truth in Television, a brother and sister pair of twins met, fell and love, and were married
before they found out the truth and the marriage was annulled.
Shortly after this was splashed all over the British media, Lord Acton was asked for details as to when and where it had happened, because no-one could find any records of it, and said it was just an example.
fleb: *cough* Cutting this. Yahoo News deletes their articles after a month, so linking to them is a Big Mistake.
- ** Well, here's Truth in Television for ya'.
