Look-Alike Lovers

Are we sure they're not siblings?^note They're actually cousins.

Alice sure looks like her mother quite well. You could say that she looks like a younger version of her mother. Later on, we see her father, who also looks like her. Wait, wouldn't that make the mother and father look suspiciously similar too? And that it does, when we see the whole family together!

The same thing can be said about couples. The two characters apparently are not related, yet somehow you could tell they would click because they look similar to each other.

There are many reasons why this happen. For parents, it could be explained that the son or daughter is conceived by the show first before creating the parents of the character. It could also mean a reflection on real life, as people are attracted to someone that looks like them.

Usually the blood relationship of the couple is stated or implied to be unrelated early on to avoid questionable stuff.^note Though if they look like twins because they are twins, it's Half-Identical Twins and Twincest. If they look like each other because they are each other it's Screw Yourself and either Opposite-Sex Clone or Homosexual Reproduction.

Often done when designing a romantic partner in a really short piece of media in order to save time. If not, don't expect the couple to be main characters.

See also Birds of a Feather, which goes beyond the characters' looks. Related to Model Couple, especially when used for advertising. If it's about minority races then it's Like Goes with Like. May involve Coordinated Clothes.

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Examples:

Animation

• Simple Samosa has Amma and Appa, who are white-colored humanoid iddiyappams who both have black hair and wear red and blue clothing. The two spakeepers get married in "Spa Wars", their debut episode.

Anime & Manga

• Downplayed in Berserk, but earlier on in the manga Guts and Casca often looked very much alike,◊ having short military hair and thick eyebrows, with only their skin tone and size being different. Averted later on, as Casca grows longer hair, and thanks to Art Evolution, their faces are more distinct.
• Bleach:
  • Possibly the reason Rukia Kuchiki and her brother Byakuya somewhat resemble each other, despite not being blood-related—she's his deceased wife Hisana's younger sister, and the two look almost identical apart from Hisana having slightly wispier hair.
  • At the end of the manga the ginger haired, brown-eyed Ichigo and Orihime are married and have a kid.
• Ruri and Kasuka from Durarara!!. Both have pale skin, dark hair and a similar stoic demeanor. Their relationship initially starts off as being for show, but grows into a genuine affection later since the two have far more in common than either initially realize.
• A gag yonkoma from Eyeshield 21 sees Munakata of the Amino Cyborgs shows a fellow teammate the familial resemblance between father, child and mother. His teammate is rather unnerved, and Munakata encourages him not to think about it too much.
• Itsuwaribito reveals that Kuroha, in her real appearance, and her Childhood Friend Saiha actually look very similar, both having Raven Hair, Ivory Skin, dark Tsurime Eyes, and sharp facial features. Considering that they were both Sex Slaves to Kuroha's father, it would seem that this kind of appearance is what Kuroha's father likes.
• A trait of several characters' parents in Naruto including Hinata and Hanabi's as well as Sasuke and Itachi's. Given the propensity for ninja clans to intermarry it's possible they are actually related to their spouses.
• One Piece has Igaram and his wife Terracotta, to the point some of the Straw Hats accused the latter of just being Igaram in drag. Zoro lampshades this.
  Zoro: A couple can only look so much alike!
• One chapter in Otomen features Yamato asking out one of Juta's sister, whom Asuka thinks looks very much like him. Later subverted, since she doesn't reciprocate and started going out with Kurokawa instead.
• In Ranma ½, both Hikaru Gosunkugi's parents look a lot like their son, having the exact same sunken eyes with dark spots underneath, being rather gaunt and black-haired too.
• Reborn! (2004):
  • Mukuro and Chrome can count since they’re not blood related, but look so similar that no one would’ve known better. Their names are even anagrams when written in Japanese script (Mukuro and Kuromu).
  • There is also Tsuna and his kind-of-love-interest Kyoko.
• In Toriko, Dogged Nice Girl Rin attempts to invoke this trope towards Toriko, whom she loves (and eventually marries), modelling her appearance after him to the point of giving herself scars to match Toriko's own — much to his dismay. Fortunately, she stops after she puts it on the wrong side.
• Your Name has Taki and Mitsuha, though given the entire premise of the movie is a "Freaky Friday" Flip, it's likely intentional.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Jaeger, the guy who looks like a gay clown, has a wife and a son◊ who look exactly like him, just with different hair colors.

Comic Books

• The Beano: Teacher and his wife, Mrs Teacher. As the artist Leo Baxendale says in the documentary Comics Britannia: "Now she looks exactly like teacher... and that raises the question, was teacher married to his sister?"
• Marvel Universe:
  • Sharon Carter and Steve Rogers, as both have blond(e) hair and blue eyes.
    • Used to also be the case with Steve and Sharon's aunt Peggy, before her appearance was changed to align with her cinematic counterpart.
  • Karolina Dean and Julie Power were sometimes accused of this by fans while they were together, a situation not helped by some artists forgetting they're not both blondes. Lampshaded in Runaways (Rainbow Rowell) — when Gert sees them together, she asks if it's an Evil Twin situation.
  • Invoked as part of the power set of X-Men character Benjamin Deeds (a.k.a. Morph) — his powers are an odd mix of shapeshifting and empathy which mean that the longer he spends in anyone's presence, the more he will grow to physically resemble them, and the more they will like him. In other words, if anyone does fall in love with him he will be their lookalike — whatever they look like.

Comic Strips

• Life in Hell: Binky and his girlfriend Sheba. As Matt Groening said Sheba is "basically Binky in drag", which he consciously based on Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

Fan Works

• In Never Been Bothered, the protagonist initially mistakes Anna and Elsa for sisters instead of a married couple. The two just look a lot alike — similar facial shapes, similar noses, similar freckles, etc. This is because they are sisters.

Films — Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree: In a flashback, Gloriosa and Timber's great-grandparents have the same hair color (respectively) as their great-grandchildren, but they also share the exact same skin tone, which isn't common even among siblings within this Amazing Technicolor Population.
• Puss in Boots: The brutish Outlaw Couple Jack and Jill. Jill looks very much like Jack — just with less body hair and no Perma-Stubble.
• The epilogue to Up shows that Dug got together with a female dog that looks identical to him. They had many puppies together.

Films — Live-Action

• In the Divergent movie adaptation, Four and Tris looks somewhat similar to each other. In the Divergent novel, Tris was a short waif-looking Plain Jane girl with light blond hair and striking steel blue eyes while Four was tall, dark and handsome with beautiful blue eyes of his own and the only similarity in their looks physically; complete opposites in looks. However, the character Tris Prior not only received an Adaptational Attractiveness when Shailene Woodley was cast to play her opposite to Theo James who portrays Tobias "Four" Eaton but they look somewhat similar with the physical coloring and height.
• Carrie Rickey, in a bonus episode of the '80s All Over podcast, humorously noted that in The Fly, "Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum look like twins." Another critic, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, points out that "the silhouettes of their respective poufy brunette coiffures are revealed — particularly on profile [as in the opening scene] — to be far too similar to be coincidence." Emma Westwood, in her book-length essay on the film, adds to Heller-Nicholas's observations that in said scene the two are even dressed in outfits that put them on equal terms with each other (she has shoulder pads, he looks like a "geek or college professor"). The two are also of comparable height. Notably, the two performers were actual lovers at the time of shooting (it was the second of three films they made together, and they were even married from 1987-90); Goldblum was cast first and suggested Davis for the role of his love interest, and her height actually helped win her the part.
• Neo and Trinity in The Matrix trilogy look very much alike, both with pale, androgynous faces and short black hair. This leads to some confusion for the audience during their sex scene in the second movie where it's hard to tell exactly whose ass you're looking at.
• In the critical and financial bomb Moment By Moment, Lily Tomlin and John Travolta play lovers with a large age gap. What's distracting however is their resemblance to eachother. Both have brown eyes, sharp jaws, pale skin and long, dark '70s hair. The poster features them lying on a bed facing one another, but it's hard to distinguish which is which.
• Seems to be a trend for some Keanu Reeves films, as in Point Break Johnny looks◊ a helluva lot like his girlfriend Tyler both having messy black hair and androgynous faces.
• In Requiem for a Dream, Marion and Harry look like they could be siblings. They are both dark haired, androgynous, with similar features. Even their profiles look alike.
• One of the love interests in Le Samouraï was cast because the actress looked like she could be Alain Delon's sister and the director wanted the audience to feel that awkwardness between them. What makes this particularly weird is that said actress was Alain Delon's wife.

Literature

• Harry Potter: Kind of justified, as both of the couples below are pureblood, and thereby a little inbred:
  • Lucius Malfoy has a pale, pointed face, with pale blond hair and cold grey eyes. His wife Narcissa is described as tall, slim, "nice looking", and very pale, with blue eyes, and long blonde hair. (Her hair coloring thus differs from most of the House of Black, who generally have dark hair.)
  • Arthur Weasley and his wife Molly both have bright red hair and probably freckles as it is a family trait.
• Completely inverted in one Agatha Christie novel The Moving Finger: When every villager starts receiving hate mail, the main character (who lives with his sister) is accused of being unmarried lovers masquerading as brother and sister. They don't look anything like each other (as each takes after one very different parent), hence the accusation.
• Neuromancer has the Magnetic Dog Sisters, an apparently a heterosexual couple of heavies who had extensive plastic surgery to look alike.
• Sarah and Silas Heap in Septimus Heap are married and they both share green eyes and curly blonde hair, traits also seen in their children.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Inverted with Cersei and Jaime Lannister, who are Half-Identical Twins and look very alike—but most people don't realize they are also lovers. They have kids, and yes, they do look like both of them. Their father, Tywin, married his cousin Joanna, and they were presumably an example as well, which also helps explain why the twins look so much alike.
  • Most Targaryens share the same silvery blond hair and purple eyes, and the reason for this is because most Targaryen couples are made up of siblings or cousins married off to each other. When close family is unavailable, they are instead married off to the Velaryons, who, being fellow Valyrian descendants, also have silvery blond hair and purple eyes.
• This occasionally pops up in Warrior Cats. For example, Crowfeather and Nightcloud were both black cats.
• The Van der Veghels in Ngaio Marsh's When in Rome look suspiciously similar. Alleyn suspects, but cannot prove, they are in fact half-siblings. What's more, he suspects blackmail on this point prompted the husband to commit murder.
• In the Dollanganger Series, siblings Chris and Cathy spend the majority of their adult lives presenting themselves as husband and wife. They're both blue-eyed blonds, and do have a noticeable resemblance, according to other characters. They raise Cathy's two sons by other relationships and an adopted daughter (Chris is never stated to have fathered a child of his own). Their parents, Chris Sr. and Corrine, were also noted to resemble each other. Chris and Cathy eventually find out that their parents were uncle and niece and if the ghost-written Garden of Shadows is to be considered canonical on this point, also half-siblings themselves.

Live-Action TV

• An example of a Deconstruction that isn't grim or dark occurs on 30 Rock, where Jenna Maroney begins a long-term relationship with a Drag Queen who works as a Jenna Maroney impersonator because she's so vain that she wants to make out with "herself".
• In one episode of Broad City, Ilana hooks up with a girl only to suddenly realise that A) they look almost exactly alike and B) that's apparently what drew her to the girl in the first place. The other girl, Adele, thought that was the whole point of the hookup.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Willow and Oz.
  • Also Buffy and Spike — both are petite blondes with sharp facial structure, full lips, light eyes and a tendency to wear garish nail polish, combat boots and long trench coats.
• One episode of CSI involved an intentional evocation of this trope (or something) when it's revealed that to lure a man who is a little person out a fake woman was created using a photo of the man himself that was slightly altered so he wouldn't notice. It's explained that this was successful because people are attracted to people with similar features to themselves.
• On The Drew Carey Show, Oswald is contacted by the son of an old girlfriend who believes Oswald to be his father; however, the guy looks just like Lewis, who admits to having a fling with the mom. Oswald objects that the guy doesn't look like Lewis, he looks like his mom, leading to this exchange:
  Drew: Creepy — Oswald had sex with someone who looks like Lewis.
  Kate: Creepier — Lewis had sex with someone who looks like himself.
• In The Sarah Silverman Program, Sarah's next door neighbours are the "gigantic, orange, and gay" Brian and Steve, who look extremely similar to one another (including sharing the same slobby fashion sense).
• Parodied in the Saturday Night Live "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketch when the real-life Alex Trebek shows up to visit Will Ferrell-as-Alex Trebek. Naturally, Sean Connery can't resist.
  Sean Connery: Well, well, well. Two Trebeks. I feel like I'm in a Raisin Bran commercial: "Two scoops of fruit!"
  Real Alex Trebek: Back off, Connery. I don't have to take it from you.
  Connery: I guess it's true what they say: Old married couples do start to look alike.
• In Selfie Henry and his girlfriend Julia don't exactly look alike-she's tiny and white, he's 5'10 and Korean, but they dress alike (even before they start dating) and even have somewhat similar hair. They also have similar personality traits, for the most part.
• An episode of 2 Broke Girls has a couple of "bears" who even have the same facial hair.
• The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt episode "Kimmy Googles the Internet!" features a married couple, both members of which are played by Rachel Dratch.

Manhwa

• A natural trait of a certain race in I Wish, who begin to assimilate themselves to their target of affection, often ending with them looking very similar to their beloved.

Music

• Vocaloid:
  • Whenever Len and Rin aren't portrayed as siblings, romance songs featuring the two have them as a young couple that just happen to look similar to each other. On example of this is HoneyWorks' Love & Hate series.
  • In Manbou-P's "Time-Warped After Chopping My Stag Beetle", the time-displaced Gumi meets her future granddaughter, who by herself already looks a lot like her... but she's seen alongside her parents who are both outright identical to Gumi aside from their clothing — her father is just Gumi with a suit, top hat, and mustache. It's not stated which of them is Gumi's child.

Video Games

• Fate/Grand Order: Rama and Sita look like gender-flipped versions of each other, and Rama's own androgynous looks don't help. This is the result of their artist being confused about Sita's character concept; they initially believed Rama would transform into a girl, resulting in Sita's design looking very similar to his.
• Pac-Man and his wife Ms. Pac-Man, with the latter resembling the former, but with a pink bow, lipstick and a beauty mark.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog series subverts this trope with Sonic and Amy. The two actually do have similar appearances, design-wise (it's more apparent in their classic designs, where Amy's quills are arranged in the exact same way as Sonic's) but their modern designs share similarities too, minus the obvious ones like Amy wearing actual clothes rather than just shoes and gloves, and her being pink to contrast Sonic's blue), but the two aren't actually in a relationship (Despite Amy's wishes, and Sonic hasn't stated any interest), although there has been Ship Tease regarding the two hedgehogs.
• Former lovers in this case, but both Undertale and its follow-up Deltarune feature Toriel and Asgore, who look very similar outside of their horn length and Asgore's reverse Furry Female Mane. It's unclear how notable this resemblance is, as they're the games' only point of reference for what Boss Monsters look like along with their son Asriel. Lampashed in the true pacifist route, when Papyrus first met Toriel and think that she is a clone of Asgore who shaved his beard.

Webcomics

• In The Mansion of E, Amos and Nellie are an elderly couple who look a great deal alike.
• In Questionable Content, when Dora dyes her hair black, she looks a lot like Marten. In a non-canon guest strip Tai turns all the men in Northampton into women and Dora and Fem!Marten immediately start making out.
• The Winston Rowntree comic 4 types of husbands and wives has this as one category "the you with longer hair".

Web Original

• One of the "Dating Problems Every Lesbian Will Recognize" in the BuzzFeed video of the same name.
• Jinx and Minx, the main characters of JM Kit, are a boyfriend and girlfriend, and they're both stuffed bunny toys with a missing eye. Though it's downplayed a bit as Jinx is brown and Minx is white, and their missing eyes are on different sides.
• Twisted around a little by The Nostalgia Critic and The Nostalgia Chick who have a similar aesthetic (pink pouty lips, large green eyes, Hollywood Pudgy, pale, dark hair, often wear glasses). She won a contest created by him to be his Distaff Counterpart, and they might not be a standard couple, but they own a complicated sexual history.
• RWBY:
  • Both of Blake's parents are black-haired, golden-eyed, light-skinned, and cat faunus.
  • Weiss' parents are both pale blue-eyed humans with white hair. However, Jacques had black hair in his youth.
• Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye: Exaggerated with Riley and Olivia, who are played by the same actress and revealed to be more than just friends in the companion podcast epilogue. Of course, they don't see the resemblance themselves.

Western Animation

In General:

• Think of any cartoon that takes place in a World of Funny Animals has an Amazing Technicolor Population. Chances are very high, that, despite all odds, the Funny Animals will be the same species, and people with technicolor skin are very likely to have a lover with the same skin color as them.

Specific Series:

• This trope happens in a relative sense in The Amazing World of Gumball: Elmore is full of all kinds of Funny Animals, plants, and Animate Inanimate Objects that are subject to all kinds of Medium Blending, and Interspecies Romance isn't treated as unusual; the main character's parents are a cat and rabbit. But most of the other married couples we see are of the same medium, artstyle, and species (e.g. Penny's parents are both peanuts with Thick-Line Animation like her, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson are both CGI Muppets, Banana Joe's parents are both CGI bananas, and Sussie's parents are both live-action chins). Lampshaded in "The Recipe", as Gumball sees Anton's parents (off-screen) and mistakes them for clones of Anton kissing each other.
• Amphibia: Anne’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Boonchuy, share quite a few resemblances, with Mrs. Boonchuy essentially looking like an older version of her daughter, and Mr. Boonchuy looking like a male version of his wife.
• Ralph the security guard and his wife in Animaniacs. Their son, who looks nothing like them, desperately hopes that he is adopted.
• Arthur: A majority of the kids' parents are this, the only notable exceptions are Brain and Sue Ellen's parents and Mr. Ratburn and his husband.
• Bob's Burgers: Both Bob and Linda share the same hair color and skin tone, which made their own son believe they were brother and sister for years.
• In the Bump in the Night Christmas special "'Twas the Night Before Bumpy", Destructo's Christmas present is a girlfriend named Destructette, who essentially resembles a female version of Destructo.
• In the Clone High episode "Cloney Island: Twist!", Scudworth and Mr. Butlertron run into Scudworth's long-lost lover Sandra Sandria and her robotic assistant Mrs. C. Not only do Sandria and Mrs. C essentially resemble female versions of Scudworth and Butlertron, but they also end up having sex with each other's counterparts.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: All the parents of Sector V's members look exactly alike in spite of the fact that we can't see their faces.
• The Fairly OddParents! has Sheldon Dinkleberg, whose wife looks like a female clone of him.
• Family Guy: Mort's wife Muriel, who looks just like Mort if he was in drag.
• Hey Arnold!: On the episode "Parents Day", the two adults that play with Brainy both look almost exactly like him. This could be explained by them being cousins or being Brainy's mother/father with Brainy's uncle/aunt (after all, Arnold is not with his own parents, but with his grandparents).
• King of the Hill: Hank and Peggy Hill are a realistic version, both being bespectacled brunettes with short hair. Their son Bobby somehow resembles neither of them.
• Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse look nearly identical in most of their incarnations, with the same head, body, eye and ear shape. The only difference between them is their clothes and Minnie's long eyelashes.
• In Ready Jet Go!, Jet's parents, Carrot and Celery, look exactly alike. They both have red hair and blue space-suits.
• Regular Show: Muscle Man and his girlfriend Starla have an improbable resemblance to each other, as both are short and fat with green skin.
• Robot Chicken:
  • The Nerd's parents share red hair, identical glasses, and similar facial features. Likely unintended, but it does explain why the Nerd looks so much like his dad despite his biological father being the Krampus.
  • One sketch has Mickey Mouse reject a date with Minnie specifically because she looks like him in drag and he's not that much of a narcissist. Donald probably is, but upon meeting Daisy is struck with the realization that he makes an ugly woman.
• In Rocko's Modern Life, Mr. and Mrs. Bighead looks like clones of each other. Though there is one difference in their designs besides their clothes and hair— Bev has fatter arms.
• Shaun the Sheep: Lola, Shaun's one-episode love interest from "Two's Company", is basically a female version of Shaun, the key difference being a long blonde mane and eyelashes. This being Claymation, her body was in fact probably quite literally a spare copy of Shaun's.
• The Simpsons:
  • Pictured above: Milhouse's parents look so similar to each other, their own son is half-sure they're brother and sister. A later episode however has Milhouse state that they are cousins.
  • Same case with Chief Clancy Wiggum, his wife Sarah, and their son Ralph (albeit not to the extent of the Van Houtens). Amusingly, Ralph and Chief Wiggum weren't even initially planned to be related.
• Invoked in "Love At First Bite" from Victor and Valentino. Valentino falls for a girl, Matty, who just moved to town. Matty looks like a female version of him and is even vegan like him. As it turns out, she's a shape-shifting matlazihua who wants to eat Val.
• One episode of The Weekenders has Tino's friends suggest girls for him to date. One of them is a female copy of himself with a different hairstyle. It doesn't work out.

Real Life

• It's actually proven that people are attracted to someone who looks vaguely similar to them, be it physically or mentally, through a process called Assortative Mating. The theory is that this is an evolutionary instinct designed to help find people whose genes will work well when combined with their own. This also possibly helps explain some real life instances of Genetic Sexual Attraction where siblings separated in early childhood wound up dating when they unknowingly met again as adults, since they experienced this trope without the Westermarck Effect from being reared together to cancel it out.
• Taylor Swift and her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn could pass as siblings. He actually looks a lot like her brother, Austin.

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