History Main / CaptureAndReplicate

* ''ComicBook/SecretInvasion2008'': The Skrulls' usual M.O. gets bumped up with them doing this to several Earth super-heroes and villains, using magic to give themselves the memories and personalities of the people they're replacing to help sell the disguise. This occasionally backfires, when the memories and personalities are stronger than that of the Skrull they're replacing (as happens with their Captain Mar-Vell impersonator), or they copy someone with a mental illness, such as Hank Pym. His replacement inherits Hank's bipolar disorder, and comes to believe the invasion is doomed. His bosses ignore him, kill him, and replace him with a new Skrull. It's revealed that this ''keeps happening'': Pym is just that unstable.

* ''ComicBook/TheWarlordDC'': During the "War of the Gods" arc, Y'Smalla imprisons Tara in a dungeon beneath Machiste's palace in Kiro, and uses the Apokoliptan technology provided to her by Desaad to assume Tara's form and start a romance with Machiste, thereby driving a wedge between him and Morgan.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': Doctor Psycho ties up Veronica Cale and dumps her in a closet, then uses his psychic abilities to pretend to be Cale in order to hide from the authorities and prey on Cale and others.

* ''ComicBook/SecretInvasion2008'': The Skrulls' usual M.O. gets bumped up with them doing this to several Earth super-heroes and villains, using magic to give themselves the memories and personalities of the people they're replacing to help sell the disguise. This occasionally backfires, when the memories and personalities are stronger than that of the Skrull they're replacing (as happens with their Captain Mar-Vell impersonator), or they copy someone with a mental illness, such as Hank Pym. His replacement inherits Hank's bipolar disorder, and comes to believe the invasion is doomed. His bosses ignore him, kill him, and replace him with a new Skrull.

* ''ComicBook/XMen'': For a while in the 1990s, Wolverine was replaced by a Skrull.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Megamind}}'' does a variant. While trying to blow up the Metro Man Museum, the titular supervillain runs into museum curator Bernard. Thinking quickly, Megamind scans Bernard with his disguise watch and dehydrates with his De-Gun before impersonating him. [[spoiler:The real Bernard doesn't show up again until TheStinger, where he gets rehydrated in Megamind's washing machine.]]

* ''VideoGame/MetalSlug 3'': Halfway through the 5th stage, one of the player characters will get kidnapped by the Mars People. Later, as you storm the Martian Mothership, you'll find clones of said character as your enemy; much later, you'll find said character in an aquarium-esque confinement where you have to rescue him/her while clones of said character attack you en masse.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E01ApocalypseRising Apocalypse Rising]]", Martok, the right-hand-man of Klingon Chancellor Gowron, is discovered to be a Changling and killed. Later, in "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E14InPurgatorysShadow In Purgatory's Shadow]]", Worf discovers a Changeling prison camp where the real Martok is being held captive along with other prisoners. While there, he also discovers that the Dominion has had [[spoiler:Doctor Bashir]] in the camp as well, [[WhamEpisode and that he's been there for at least a month or two]]... [[OhCrap which means his impersonator has had that long to wreak all kinds of havoc unsuspected]].

* ''ComicBook/TheWarlordDC'': During the "War of the Gods" arc, Y'Smalla imprison Tara in a dungeon beneath Machiste's palace in Kiro, and uses the Apokoliptan technology provided to her by Desaad to assume Tara's form and start a romance with Machiste, thereby driving a wedge between him and Morgan.

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS7E1SpearheadFromSpace Spearhead from Space]]", Nestene Consciousness's real plan is to create plastic replicas of world leaders and take over the Earth. After duplicating General Scobie, the Autons place the real Scobie's paralyzed body on display in Madame Tussauds alonside the plastic models of world leaders. the Doctor becomes suspicious when he notices te Scobie 'dummy' is wearing a wristwatch, wound and still at the right time.

* Appears in the German SF novel ''Der Verbannte von Asyth'', whose plot revolves largely around aliens replacing important individuals on Earth with masked infiltrators of their own kind. The originals are kept alive at the aliens' hidden base and thus remain conveniently available for questioning.

** ''Anime/DigimonTamers:'' The D-Reaper abducts Jeri while no-one's looking, using her crushing depression and self-loathing as a power source, replacing her with a copy. A very, ''very'' creepy copy. None of the other kids think anything amiss because of what Jeri had just been through, and assume she's just in severe shock.

* ''ComicBook/{{Empyre}}:'' Tanlath the Pursuer turns out to have been DeadAllAlong. The real Tanlath died years ago, as a prisoner of the Skrulls. [[spoiler:The one Earth's heroes have dealt with is actually the Skrull Empress R'klll.]]
* ''ComicBook/FantasticFour:'' A favoured tactic of the Skrulls, what with their shapeshifting and all. It's often thwarted by the Skrulls being too petty to make prolonged use of it.

* ''ComicBook/{{Royals}}:'' Before the series begins, Maximus impersonates Black Bolt and has him locked up in the inescapable super-prison the Inhumans were planning to dump him in, using an image inducer to hide himself. Medusa soon figures it out because Maximus is no help during a fight, but by the time he's revealed it's too late to do anything but put up with him.
* ''ComicBook/SecretInvasion:'' The Skrull's usual M.O. gets bumped up with them doing this to several Earth super-heroes and villains, using magic to give themselves the memories and personalities of the people they're replacing to help sell the disguise. This occasionally backfires, when the memories and personalities are stronger than that of the Skrull they're replacing (as happens with their Captain Mar-Vell impersonator), or they copy someone with a mental illness, such as Hank Pym. His replacement inherits Hank's bipolar disorder, and comes to believe the invasion is doomed. His bosses ignore him, kill him, and replace him with a new Skrull.

* ''ComicBook/XMen:'' For a while in the 90s, Wolverine was replaced by a Skrull.

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E4TheSontaranStratagem The Sontaran Stratagem]]"/"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E5ThePoisonSky The Poison Sky]]", Martha Jones is put into some kind of slime vat and a clone is grown from a nearby pod, so they can use her to sabotage UNIT's attempts to fight back. Eventually, the Doctor reveals he knew all along, and was counting on the clone's sabotage to sabotage the Sontarans.

* ''Series/SecretInvasion2023'': In ''Film/CaptainMarvel2019'', Skrulls were shown to "sim" the memories of those they captured. In this series, the rogue Skrull faction keep people captive so they can keep using their mind and memories to pretend to be them.

* ''Series/SecretInvasion:'' In ''Film/CaptainMarvel2019'', Skrulls were shown to "sim" the memories of those they captured. In this series, the rogue Skrull faction keep people captive so they can keep using their mind and memories to pretend to be them.

* In the ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' movie ''Anime/PokemonTheFirstMovie'', Mewtwo captures the Pokemon of the trainers he lures to his island so that he can clone them all.

* Jafar does this in the ''Aladdin'' sequel, ''WesternAnimation/AladdinTheReturnOfJafar'', as part of his plan to frame Aladdin for the murder of the Sultan. He captures Jasmine and disguises himself as her to appear at the execution.

* In the ''Literature/HarryPotter series'', Polyjuice Potion can allow one to mimic any person, but it requires [[SympatheticMagic a piece of the person]], usually a hair. The piece must be recent and taken while the subject is alive, so in order to impersonate them for more than a few hours, it's necessary to keep them captive somewhere. In ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire Goblet of Fire]]'', [[spoiler: Barty Crouch Jr.]] does this with [[spoiler: Mad-Eye Moody]] in order to impersonate him throughout an entire school year.
* In ''Literature/{{Newsflesh}}'', the reason why President Ryman hasn't been responding to the After the End Times team's calls for help is that [[spoiler:his wife and children are being held captive and have been replaced by docile clones for public appearances. All they do is smile and wave.]]

* In the ''Literature/FightingFantasy'' gamebook "Starship Traveller", the captain can get captured by aliens and cloned as an attempt to capture the ship for themselves. Fortunately, on a successful dice roll you can imprint certain traits on the clone that will make your crew realize what's going on.

* One story arc in ''Series/FTLNewsfeed'' involved the president of the North American Union being kidnapped and replaced with a clone.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': This is the modus operandi of Ethereal Doppelgangers, a more powerful version of the classic ''D&D'' {{Doppelganger}}. Their Assume Identity power allows them to not only takes the appearance, but also copy the mind, memories and personality of a person. Since it's a lengthy process, and easier on a willing subject, they usually try to broke a deal with kidnapped people, treating them correctly and releasing them unharmed once they obtained what they want. Although they are LawfulEvil monsters, they can be trusted to keep their part of the bargain.
* ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' plays on this idea. The changelings of the title are actually the humans who were abducted (at any age, not just as babies) and taken away to Faerie; fetches, artificial beings crafted from random detritus and animated by TheFairFolk, take their place, and actually believe themselves to be the person they replaced. Getting your old life back may very well involve doing this, in reverse, to an innocent being who's totally unaware that it isn't really you.

* In ''VideoGame/SaintsRowTheThird'', TheSyndicate captures Oleg Krilov--a giant of a man--and keeps him sedated in their labs to mass-produce [[TheBrute clones of him]] and throw them at the Saints. One mid-game mission sees the Saints infiltrating said labs and freeing Oleg to stop the clone production.

* ''Manga/AyakashiTriangle'': Haya impersonates her brother by pretending he was [[GenderBender turned into a girl]], tying him in the meantime just to [[MuggedForDisguise steal his ninja suit]] and keep him from exposing her. Soga ends up breaking out and taking his suit back, but only after Haya was done with her charade anyway.

* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePrincessAndTheFrog'', part of the plot involves Naveen's servant Lawrence passing as him. This is done thanks to a talisman that lets Lawrence look just like Naveen, but needs a drop of Naveen's blood once a day or so to continue working. However, Naveen escapes early in the movie and the bad guys spend some time trying to find him.

* ''WesternAnimation/AladdinTheSeries'' episode "Black Sand" had Mozenrath send his [[NightOfTheLivingMooks mamluks]] to infiltrate the palace and take their place and appearance by using the titular black sand.