Magic Mirror

Outlook doubtful, ask again later.

"I will use my magic mirror for spying on my enemies rather than for vain attempts at preserving my position as fairest in the land."

— Guidelines for Evil Empresses

A common household device, sometimes employed as a symbol of vanity, but with much deeper roots: combining the reflective and symbolic properties of flat, still water and the portability and delicacy of glass, mirrors show a character their reflections, and often much, much more...

A common staple of fantasy literature and movies, the Magic Mirror is exactly what you think it is: A mirror with magical powers. Like a Crystal Ball, they can be used for seeing the future or communicating with or spying on someone at the other end, but a mirror is much more versatile; other possibilities include the mirror being used as a portal through time or space, or even into a Mirror Universe, and a Crystal Prison to trap foes. A mirror may even be used to reveal the true nature of one of the main characters or the villain. They are the standard tool for a Vain Sorceress who wants to know who is the Fairest of Them All.

Often, the Magic Mirror itself may be sentient; if it is, it's usually evil, or at the very least quite fickle.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Gauche Adlai from Black Clover uses Mirror Magic, in which he uses magical mirrors to reflect light into powerful beams to use against his foes, and to access Mirror Universes to bring alternate versions of himself to help him in combat. He has another one hidden under his bangs that can clone one person dozens of times in an instant.
• One of the Clow Cards in Cardcaptor Sakura is "The Mirror", but it's more of a Master of Disguise and shape shifter. In her human form, she's a white-haired girl in robes who holds a mirror in her hands.
• Mercuremon of Digimon Frontier has mirrors as shields that he can use to send enemy attacks back at them (or anywhere else.) The mirror seems to absorb rather than just bounce 'em off, and at one point, he sucks white projectiles into one mirror and spits identical-but-black projectiles out of the other.
• In the Tokyopop-published Manga The Dreaming, the use of a Mirror in a Bloody Mary-style ends up with one girl walking out into the bush, and being found dead and the twin characters started to have different dreams, with one of course ended up being possessed by the Headmistress' dead twin, permanently. The more superstitious of the twins berated the other - reciting the common mirror superstitions listed above.
• In the Byakko-related backstory in Fushigi Yuugi, it's mentioned that Suzuno "Byakko no Miko" Ohsugi brought a handmirror with her when she was spirited into the world of the book. It's a normal mirror at first, but it becomes magical after Suzuno has to go back to Japan and leaves it in the care of her Senshi and Star Crossed Lover Tatara, ultimately becoming one of the four Shinzaho.
• More than one of these is featured in Hell Teacher Nube. In a variation, there are two who aren't inherently magical, but Kyoko and Miki perform a sort-of spell to follow an urban legend that says mirrors let you see the future...
• Harisugawa in Mirror World. The title pretty much says it all. Harisugawa gets trapped in one and much of the plot is driven by him trying to figure out how to get out.
• Haunted Junction has the Mirror Girl or Kagamiko, a female ghost with the looks of an adorable little girl who resides inside of a floating mirror. In the manga, she also has the power of showing other characters what's reflected in other mirrors and also can use her own as a teleport device.
• Akko's mirror in Himitsu no Akko-chan, which makes her a Master of Disguise.
• Kanna's soul-sucking mirror in Inuyasha. It's also a crystal ball for the Big Bad.
• In Monster, the God of Peace has the reflection of a demon.
• The two mirrors in Mugen Densetsu Takamagahara Dream Saga. They're both based on Amaterasu's mirror.
• One youkai in Natsume's Book of Friends was looking for a mirror that could heal her friend. It had broken into fragments and one of them was in Natsume's eye.
• Toyed with in Onegai! Samia-don (adaptation of the novel Five Children and It). All the mirrors in the world are potential portals to a huge magical world, that cannot be accessed from the outside, if not via magic; during her A Day in the Limelight episode, a depressed Anne asks the Psammead if there's something specific behind mirrors, and he decides to take her there. The episode has a Bittersweet Ending since the last spot in the Mirror World contains Anne's earliest memories, including those of her deceased mother... and when she's about to unlock them, Psammead's magic wears off since it's sundown. She still thanks Psammead for giving her a beautiful day.
• One Piece: Charlotte Brulee, one of "Big Mom" Charlotte Linlin's daughters, ate the Devil Fruit called Mira-Mira no Mi that lets her create mirrors out of thin air. With her powers she can reflect people's attacks towards them, morph herself into a mirror image of a foe, morph anyone (animals included) into mirror images of people, and create a Mirror World where she can trap people within and move around and teleport to any place that has a mirror.
• In Peter Pan no Bouken, Queen Sinistra has one. Wendy gets thrown inside of it, finds a world behind the crystal... and has to face the Face Heel Turned Princess Luna.
• Ranma ½: One manga arc has a mirror haunted by a girl who wanted a boyfriend. It now creates a copy of a person who looks at it with the exact same appearance, personality and abilities, but not the Jusenkyo curse. With the addition of constantly flirting with men to get their attention. It also introduces a small compact mirror that traps people who look into it into a small pocket dimension.
• The Lilith Mirror in Rosario + Vampire has the power to return any monster disguised as a human to its original form if they gaze into it, as well as liberating their suppressed primal instincts. Strangely, when Moka is affected, she does not revert to her usual form; instead, she splits in two, each of them representing a different form. The mirror has a mischievous pixie-like spirit residing in it which, upon being set free by Kyoko (Tsukune's cousin), goes off to wreak utter chaos around Youkai Academy, thus weakening the barrier which separates the youkai world from the human world.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Sailor Neptune's Deep Aqua Mirror, one of the talismans that summons the Holy Grail. It can be used to see other locations and reveal illusions, not to mention it shoots water out of the glass.
  • Also Nehelenia's mirror in Super S, which corrupts her younger self into the Vain Sorceress she grew up to be. Later, in the first part of Stars, Nehelenia used mirrors and crystal shards to brainwash some people (including Mamoru) and traps the Senshi in others until Usagi, the Messianic Archetype, talks her out of it.
• Slayers:
  • One of the movies is about a Dungeons & Dragons type Mirror of Opposition, except that it doesn't work quite the way the villain thought it would... He thought it would spawn a Lina and Naga that would be willing to serve him and kill their duplicates. What it opposed turned out to be their personalities - it spawned a Lina and Naga set who were both extremely shy and nervous (and in Naga's case, ashamed of her outfit).
  • Another is seen in Slayers NEXT. Aqua the Dragon uses it to show Lina the horrible potential consequences of invoking the Lord Of Nightmares through her most powerful Black Magic spell.
• Soul Eater:
  • Shinigami's very large mirror acts as audio/video link to any of his staff or students provided they have a mirror (a pane of glass works, too). He can, however, use it to watch over people without such an aid (he's seen watching several missions from a vantage point where no mirror can be), though the mirror apparently cannot see everywhere (Asura and Noah have not been found via the mirror). Shinigami seems to use it for convenient transportation into the Death Room, but it's unclear where he's coming there from.
  • There's also the Death Scythe Tezca Tlipocta, whose weapon form is a mirror that allows him to reflect people's souls.
• Symphogear occasionally features the Senshoujing gear, which uses fragments of a mirror relic as its base. Its primary abilities are manipulating light and breaking "curses," which translates into a combat style based on Anti-Magic Beam Spam that can do everything from destroying other Symphogears to removing the Curse of Balal. Unfortunately, its ability to distort perception also means it can be rigged to Mind Control the wearer; as powerful as it is, Miku only gets to use it willingly in the final battle.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- has several uses of reflective surfaces for scrying or magical communication, but the most classical and recurring example is the giant mirror that the Big Bad uses like a Crystal Ball.
• Ichika's adventure in Uta∽Kata starts when Manatsu appears in an old mirror and promptly exits it with a cool light show.

Comic Books

• All-Star Comics: Queen Loreli has a hand mirror that turns anyone but she who gazes into it to stone.
• In the Dynamite comic The Blood Queen, the eponymous character gets her revenge on the wizard Valusia, after discovering that she can't absorb his powers through her blood magic due to the magic runes on his body, by imprisoning his soul inside a mirror so he can continue to counsel her.
• Angry Birds Comics: Game Play: Defied, the mirror in Mirror Mirror is thought to be this by the pigs, but it really isn't.
• In Cavewoman: A Wizard, A Sorceress and Meriem, Teegan uses a magic mirror to bring Meriem and Carrie through to her dimension.
• Fables:
  • The mirror from "Snow White" is a recurring character, and yes, "recurring character" is the right description; it appears to have human-level intelligence. It can show whoever asks it almost anything they ask for, but seems to prefer that the request be in the form "Mirror, mirror, [description of mirror]/[Question that rhymes with the first line]." We see it getting snippy with Jack at one point for not bothering to make his request rhyme (Jack tries to defend himself, saying it's free verse, but the mirror doesn't buy it).
  • The Mirror later reveals that it only makes people phrase their questions in rhyme form because it's inconvenient and annoying, so as to cut down on the number of inquiries.
  • More obliquely: Kay still has bits of the Snow Queen's Mirror stuck in his eyes even though he is freed of them in his original story.
• The Flash: Villain Mirror Master doesn't so much have "magic" mirrors, but he uses a technology-based "mirror gun" that allows him to channel power from a Mirror Dimension; it effectively gives him control over an entire Alternate Universe that he can bend to his will any way he pleases, no matter how vaguely it connects to mirrors. With this, he can do all sorts of different things up to and including instant teleportation via 'mirror portals', shapeshifting, power deflection, creating artificial doppelgangers of himself or others, releasing creatures made of broken glass, and even create entirely fabricated alternate universes. The original Mirror Master, Sam Scudder, was brainy but unimaginative so he never made full use of it, but his Superior Successor Evan McCulloch was an uneducated but highly imaginative person, and kept coming up with new and imaginative uses of the power. Wally West once had an Imagine Spot where he realised that if Evan ever truly realised the full scope of what he could do, he'd be a Physical God that nobody could touch.
• In New Mutants, Magik's scrying glass was one of her most powerful tools and was even stronger than Cerebro. Its shattering made painfully clear that she had lost control of Limbo, and during Inferno, rebuilding it signified that she was back in charge just in time for her Heroic Sacrifice.
• In The One Hundred Nights of Hero, there's an entire building made of glass that turns into these when night falls and the lights come on. The twelve princesses who live there use the mirror portals to sneak out to go dancing.
• Richie Rich's cousin Reggie Van Dough had a "magic mirror" invented by one of his top scientists that had one problem its owner didn't like: its reflection was just a little too honest in its answer to the reflection caster's questions. Even its inventor didn't like the reflection's brutal honesty.
• Despair from The Sandman (1989) has a domain full of windows. Each represents a mirror in our world, and she can look through them to watch the suffering of humanity. Sometimes she'll catch the eye of a person looking in a mirror and he'll experience dread and heartache.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Hippolyta sometimes has a scrying mirror, such as the one she used in the Golden Age to keep track of political and technological news from the outside world, or the one she has in Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman: Generations, however whether the mirror is magical, technological or a combination of both is up to the whims of the writers.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Circe uses a scrying mirror.
  • Hercules Unbound has a magic mirror that he can use to disguise himself as anyone, so long as there is not too great a height disparity between them. His repeated uses of it to try and sneak into Cassie's life and force her to accept her "destiny" as set forth by their father frustrated and annoyed her in Wonder Girl, until he took it too far and infurated her by disguising himself as Conner and trying to confront her while Cassie was visiting Conner's grave.

Comic Strips

• Garfield had this strip:
  Garfield: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the...
  Mirror: Wait... before you even get started... you're fat.
  Garfield: Where's my brick?

Fairy Tales

• Rather common in Western myths and legends, including:
  • "Beauty and the Beast" (likewise, in which the mirror shows the user whatever he or she asks to see).
  • "The Snow Queen" has a mirror created by a devil that shows only the ugly things in the world. It gets broken and two of the shards end up in a boy named Kai's eye and heart, turning him into a cold and unfeeling Empty Shell. From then on, it's up to his best friend Gerda to save him.
  • "Snow White" (later made into a Disney movie, where the Mirror - exact and unflattering - epitomized the all-consuming vanity of the queen).

Fan Works

• Adjacency: The dimensional mirror that is used to travel between The Multiverse of Alternate Universes.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series has one act as a gateway to a Mirror Universe, thanks to one of Dr. Brainstorm's inventions.
• Child of the Storm mentions the Mirror of Erised. In the sequel, it adds a mysterious spell that Harry refers to as 'the Mist of Infinite Mirrors' (alternatives were 'Disco-Ball of Doom' and 'Magical Mist of Me') when he encounters it in the First Task. Apparently it's meant to just trap you in a mirror cascade where you're not sure which reflection is you. Thanks to Harry's exposure to chaos magic and Psychic Powers, it accidentally drop-kicks him into the multiverse, showing him what 'Nathan' an alternate version of him explains as reflections of possible worlds picked out by his subconscious of varying relevance.
  • Additionally, there's the Mirror of the Norns, which appears in the sequel and functions like the Mirror of Galadriel, but the water is from a spring near Yggdrasil (is it a tree? Is it a cosmic network? Answer: Yes) with added blood magic - it shows the past, the present, and the future.
• In The Bug Princess, it's explained that Beetlejuice can enter Lydia's bedroom through one of these when she summons him, giving an explanation for its use in this way during the cartoon. He can manifest in other places on his own, provided that his reason for being there relates to her or her parents, but an odd haunting loophole restricts him to the mirror unless she specifically calls him into the room.
• In Empath: The Luckiest Smurf, magic mirrors can be used as a medieval fantasy version of the Internet. They are also used as part of Handy Smurf's portable revision of the telesmurf, working much like Smurfette's magic compact (see The Smurfs (1981) entry in Western Animation below).
  • In "Smurfed Behind: The Other Side Of The Mirror", the Janus Mirror is one that transports people to a Mirror Universe where characters are (almost always) the exact moral opposites.
• In Hearts of Ice, Yuki-Onna uses a magic mirror to watch the Human Plane.
• In the Eye of the Beholder:
  • Staring through mirrors in Quartz for long enough has a chance of getting a person transported to the quartz valley, where Shadows lurk.
  • Rather than tarot cards or masks, the QIB's Personas take the form of mirrors themed after them when not in use, which combust into blue flame to summon them forth. Sycophanta, on the other hand, has their Persona mirrors combust into red flame when in use.
• In Mirror, Mirror, Gaz buys a wall mirror from an antique shop that appears to be a normal mirror at first, but soon shows her reflection as a morbidly obese pig-like creature, due to her gluttony. When she confronts the shopkeeper of the store about it, the woman explains that The Mirror Shows Your True Self, and advises her to try changing who she is if she doesn't like what she sees in it. Instead, Gaz destroys the mirror with a baseball bat, causing it to unleash its magic and transforming her permanently into the pig creature.
• Mirror of Maybe's titular mirror allows anyone to see at least a few seconds into the future. If, however, you're integral to the future, it pulls you in and makes you live as many years into the future as it can predict what's likely to happen.
• A Moon and World Apart: Chapter 10 reveals that another Power (who's identified in chapter 20 as Milky Way, the Lady of Space) snuck a matched set into Celestia and Luna's respective quarters, allowing them to communicate through them. However, while they've made calls on them, neither has ever responded to the other's words when they get a call.
• The Palaververse: "Part 19 of the Palaververse: The World Beyond the Mirror" is about the creation and first use of a magical mirror for travelling between worlds by walking into it.
• Queens of Mewni: this was the form Venus the Fairest's wand would take, and allowed her to see a person's true intentions. It plays a pivotal moment in Venus's life: using it to see Eric Flowers's intentions proved that he went on the Snipe Hunt to find the Rainbow Flower out of genuine love for her, and not because she was his queen or because she's an Ethical Slut.
• In Seven Days in Sunny June, Sunset finds a second mirror that returns her to Equestria.
• Sunsplit Saga: From Sunshipped, the mirror that connects the human and pony worlds. Explicitly called a "magic mirror".

Film — Animated

• The Beast has one of these "as his only window to the outside world" in Beauty and the Beast.
• In The Frog Princess, Koshchei has a magical platter showing him whatever location he wants.
• The magic mirror in Shrek shows Lord Farquaad prospective princesses to marry, in the style of a 1970s dating game show. In Shrek 2, it's used as a television set. Its appearance is the same as in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or a parody thereof.
• In The Snow Queen (2012), Gerda and Kai's father made mirrors like this, and Gerda herself carries one. This is why the Snow Queen is afraid of mirrors; she can't bear to know what she has become.

Film — Live-Action

• As in the original book, Alice travels through a few of these in Alice Through the Looking Glass.
• Snow White still has her magic mirror in Avengers Grimm. At the beginning of the film, she uses it to scry on her friends and enemies. We soon learn that it also acts as a portal to Earth.
• Desmond has a mirror that can answer any question (in rhyme) in Casper Meets Wendy.
• The titular objects of the martial arts film, The Devil's Mirror. Known respectively as the Wind Mirror and Thunder Mirror, when combined they can overpower the enchanted traps of a mausoleum holding an invincible sword capable of destroying the martial world, which the film's main villainess intends to use for her own vile reasons.
• In the Olsen twins film Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, Aunt Agatha casts a spell that traps her sister on the other side of a mirror.
• The Hugga Bunch features a girl named Bridget Severson, who follows one of the Hugga Bunch characters through her closet mirror into HuggaLand, in search of a way to keep her grandmother young.
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus features a stage mirror as an entrance to the dream world.
• The title mirror mask from MirrorMask, in part.
• The Mirrors of the eponymous 2008 film, being the (rather halfassed) prison for some sort of demonic force, tend to manifest reflections which can make People Puppets of their real-world counterparts, controlling, harming, or killing them, or sucking them into the mirror world.
• The Artifact of Doom in Oculus. It's responsible for forty-five deaths at the beginning of the film.
• In Snow White: A Tale of Terror of course. It's never clarified whether the mirror is the affects of Claudia's psychotic break or a spirit.
• In Van Helsing, a giant mirror serves as a magical doorway to Castle Dracula.
• In the French supernatural thriller Vidocq, the villain makes his immortality-granting Magic Mirror into a mask for convenience.
• One of the "three lights" the titular hero has to find in Yamato Takeru is the Mirror of Amaterasu (a Public Domain Artifact, see Myths and Religion below). Unlike most other example its power is neither scrying nor teleportation, but to serve as a Wave-Motion Gun capable to destroying Tsukuyomi's humanoid form, and also his Orochi form after it helps turn Yamato Takeru into the godly Utsuno Ikusagami.

Folklore

• The many Real Life superstitions surrounding mirrors are, one might say, an extension of this trope. These include:
  • Breaking a mirror results in seven years' bad luck (probably, from when glass was very expensive, because you have to then pay off the debt).
    • This was actually based around the idea of a soul renewing itself every so often.
    • A lot of mirror folklore stems from the idea of the reflection as a manifestation of the soul: covering mirrors in a dying person's room prevents the departing soul from being trapped, soulless creatures (such as vampires) don't cast reflections, etc.
  • Using a mirror to summon some malevolent force:
    • "Bloody Mary" is a well known example.
    • And "Candyman".
    • And "Guy Made of Bees", a nod to Candyman.
    • And Biggie Smalls.
• Divination using mirrors is called Catoptromancy. Some legends held that a catoptromancer could also use mirrors to reflect magic back on the practitioner.

Literature

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: The Moon of Saba, widely believed to be a precious jewel, is actually an ornate silver washbasin imbued with the power of a lunar spirit, capable of granting that power to a human who looks into its waters during a special ritual. It's also that spirit's prison.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice enters another world magically through a mirror.
• Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne stories.
  • "The Enchantress of Sylaire". The title character has a mirror that reflects reality as it really is, ignoring all illusions and enchantments.
  • "The Colossus of Ylourgne". The magician Gaspard du Nord has a mirror that allows him to see distant scenes and places.
• In The Balanced Sword, the members of the evil conspiracy communicate using rune-engraved mirrors that can act as magical videophones and also as portals that they can step through to travel to the location of the other mirror.
• In Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast, the Beast has something like this. It's really more like a very highly polished table, with magic powder that causes it to show images of whatever he or Beauty ask to see.
• In the Black Trillium universe, there exists at least one "Magic Mirror" (In reality an ancient surveillance system built into a bunker under the ice.) The thing is running on the last shreds of reserve power and rambles on about low power levels and failing backup power cells. As a result the sorcerer using it has begun praising "Almighty Bahkup" every time he uses it.
• The Brotherhood of the Conch: In The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming, the titular mirror serves as a Portal to the Past to the Moghul Era, as well as a regular portal that can be used to get through walls. Kasim, an attempted usurper who was sent forward by a palace magician, searches the ruins for the mirror so he can travel back to one hundred years after he was sent forward, by which point the palace magician will be dead and his spells will have partially worn off, so he can assassinate the nawab and rule Bengal and eventually the world.
• In the Choose Your Own Adventure book Secret of the Ninja, the Player Character and their best friend Danai can potentially find one in their Time Travel adventures. If the Protagonist get near a certain well, they'll see a Cute Ghost Girl on the bottom and hear her voice begging them "take me out of the well". Refusing will lead to a Bad Ending where the Protagonist falls into the well and drowns, but agreeing will lead them to find an old mirror in its bottom; the Cute Ghost Girl, Yayoi, reappears and explains that her soul's bound to the mirror but now she can rest in peace, and tells the protagonist that the mirror will help her. Later, showing the mirror to the Big Bad when he's about to attack a Ninja that the leads need to talk to... will cause said Big Bad to run away in terror from whatever he saw on its surface, and lead to a Good Ending where the two leads can return home.
• There's a mirror in the afterlife in the Detective Inspector Chen series that tells the souls of the dead what they are likely to be in the next life when they reincarnate.
• Discworld:
  • The Big Bad in the novel Witches Abroad has a mirrors-facing-each-other setup which multiplies her images, also multiplying her power, but with nasty effects on her sanity and, it is implied, her soul. In general, Discworld Witches have a rule about not getting between two mirrors for this reason. Lilith also uses her affinity with mirrors for spying on the world: a reflection in any mirror, anywhere, can be intercepted and viewed by Lilith Weatherwax through one of her own mirrors. For this reason, the outgoing Fairy Godmother in Lancre^note At least four thousand miles across the Discworld from Genua has no mirrors in her home, and the more experienced Witches in Lancre know to either cover theirs or turn them face to the wall when they want real privacy.
  • The Omniscope used by the wizards in several books is described as looking like a mirror surrounded by junk. It's basically a flatscreen crystal ball. The Patrician initially thinks it's just a piece of glass, since it's set to "here" and "now" so he just sees what's on the other side of it. Ponder Stibbons resets the direction, which causes him to think it's a mirror until Ponder suggests that he wave at it.
  • And the Demon King in Eric has one that answers questions, although not very helpfully.
• Zhukov, the Big Bad of the Dishonored novel Dishonored: The Corroded Man, uses reflective surfaces as portals at the cost of his body decaying. His ultimate goal is to create one gigantic magic mirror, through which he can travel in time and change the past.
• In the parodic fairy tale The Dragon Hoard, the sorceress Maligna has one, with the standard feature set: it talks, answers questions like "Who is the fairest of them all?", and can show events occurring distant places.
• Dragon Steel: A special hand mirror in King Sambar's treasury is the only thing that can differentiate the real treasures from the countless replicas around them. Though it only does so if the user activates the spell by saying the words engraved on its back: "Do not deceive."
• The Dresden Files:
  • Harry makes a point of not having a mirror in his home, as there are apparently a bunch of nasty things out there which can attack through them. For some reason he keeps the rear view mirror in his car, though. And McAnally's Pub has 13 mirrors, with no complaints. Maybe there's some other reason he doesn't own one?
    • Perhaps because his home is a fixed point, under the protection of both a threshold and some very dangerous wards, so anything that wants to attack him needs something like a mirror to get through. In his car or at McAnally's, there's no threshold or wards, so they can attack him any old way. Plus, most supernatural monsters aren't all that up on modern technology, so probably haven't really grasped the concept of mirrors in cars, and Mac's is well known as neutral ground (and isn't somewhere you can rely on him to be).
  • Harry himself uses a mirror as a key part of a spell in Blood Rites.
• Parodied in book three of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Calling On Dragons, where magic mirrors are used as magical telephones. (You call someone by reciting the couplet "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, I would like to make a call".) A sign of the quality of the mirror is how polite it is to you; one mirror has quite the personality.
• In John Bellairs' The Face in the Frost (1969), the wizard Prospero has one. Chapter One: "That was the magic mirror, a competent but somewhat sarcastic mirror in a heavy gilt frame. When the magician was not trying to get something out of it, it was given to tuneless humming and crabby remarks."
• In Book III of The Faerie Queene, Britomart’s father had a scrying mirror from Merlin, which showed Britomart a vision of her one true love when she stumbled upon it.
• In the Goosebumps spin-off Horrorland, mirrors are banned because they are portals to Panic Park.
• Harry Potter:
  • The Mirror of Erised shows you Your Heart's Desire. This can border on Lotus-Eater Machine in some cases—Harry sees his deceased parents and extended family, and Dumbledore has to warn him not to spend all his nights staring at it.
  • There are also linked mirrors that wizards can use as the equivalent of walky-talkies (or, you know, Skyping). Sirius and James used them at school, and Sirius gives one of the set to Harry when Snape starts teaching him Occlumency. Not wanting Sirius to get in trouble for his sake, Harry stuffs it away. This comes back to bite him when he does urgently need to contact Sirius and forgets the mirror.
  • Even standard mirrors have a habit of talking back to their users (one tells Harry that attempting to straighten his hair is a losing battle).
• The sequel series to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus introduces the character Piper McLean who eventually acquires a dagger that once belonged to Helen of Troy called Katoptris, meaning "Looking Glass". True to its name the wide reflective blade can be used to scry remote occurrences. Piper sees a lot of circumstances that are personally horrifying to her because of it, wondering how Helen kept her sanity during her ownership, before sadly concluding that she probably didn't.
• In Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon, Conan the Barbarian is shown to Xaltotun with a magic mirror.
• In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Strange discovers how to travel magically between mirrors.
• In the Kull story "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" — the mirror of Tuzun Thune.
• Midway through Lirael, Lirael finds the Dark Mirror, a handheld portal into the past, used specially for Remembrancers. By walking into Death and reciting the incantation, the user can see into past events. The farther back one wants to look, the farther into Death she must walk.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • When the Fellowship visit Lórien, Galadriel has a mirror that shows things related to the viewer in some way, things that either have happened, are happening right at the moment or could possibly happen in the future; however it is impossible for even the wielder to predict what each individual will see. To the Ringbearer and Sam it shows the Shire right at that moment, as well as glimpses of the history of the Ring. The Mirror itself is in the form of water in a silver bowl. In particular, the light of the star Eärendil is also caught in the water of the spring, which Galadriel uses to fill the crystal phial she later gives to Frodo, so presumably it has mystical properties.
• Merkabah Rider: In "The Nightjar Women", the corridors of Lilith's brothel are lined with floor to ceiling mirrors. When the Rider is attempting to escape, he discovers that these mirrors are enchanted to act as portals: allowing to Lilith to bring in a large number of her bodyguard demons almost instantly.
• In The Mermaid's Mirror, the titular mirror can show people their loved ones who are separated from them. After Lena's biological mother became a mermaid again, returned to the ocean, and lost all memories of her life on land, Lena's dad spent hours staring into the mirror, watching her. Eventually he realized he was wasting his life, so he hid the mirror and everything else associated with her in a Loose Floorboard Hiding Spot. Years later, Lena finds the mirror, sees her mother, and realizes that she's half mermaid.
• In The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen Donaldson, all magic is based on mirrors and all mirrors are magical. Each mirror functions as a window to somewhere, in the same universe or not, and it is possible to transport things in and out of the mirror. Clever use of mirrors can achieve a wide variety of effects.
• In Stephanie Burgis's A Most Improper Magick, her mother's mirror. Kat finds it is a Clingy MacGuffin and she can use it as a portal.
• In The Nekropolis Archives, each of the Darklords owns two magic mirrors which are capable of opening portals between Nekropolis and Earth.
• In Michael Ende's The Night of Wishes, Beelzebub Preposteror was warned by a magic mirror about the cat seeking shelter actually being a spy.
• Of Fire and Stars: Farspeaking can be done using a mirror or other reflective surface like liquid to show a person across long distances.
• The Otherworld Series has Whispering Mirrors, which are used for secure two-way communications between members of the Otherworld Intelligence Agency.
• Mirrors can be used for scrying in both of Tamora Pierce's universes, but none of the main characters have a particular affinity for this means of divination.
• In The Princess Series, Snow White possesses one that was created by her mother to enhance her magic. In the final volume, she discovers that its magic comes from a demon that is trapped within it.
• Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes' version of Snow White has her find refuge with seven out-of-work jockeys who spend all their money on horse races. She ends up stealing the evil queen's mirror and using it to predict the race winners to live happily ever after, with the less-than-stellar moral that gambling is fine if you always win.
• The Scholomance: The protagonist has to make a magic mirror from scratch for an artificing assignment at Wizarding School. It's tricky work, requiring help from two friends, and they're all quite annoyed when it comes out cursed to dispense prophecies of doom instead of helpful advice.
• The Merlin Glass, from Secret Histories, is an enchanted hand mirror that can not only scry upon named people and locations, but also transport people (willingly or not), objects, vehicles or even whole armies to or from the scried-upon sites. Over the course of the series, its bearer Eddie Drood discovers more and more of its hidden functions, and dangers.
• the secret lives of Princesses: Magic mirrors are manufactured by the great-grandaughter of The Snow Queen, Princess Ices, along with other non-magical mirror, such as:
  • A mirror that allows you to watch TV and brush your hair at the same time.
  • A vanity mirror, like the one used by Snow White's stepmother. Comes with voice recognition and an access code.
  • A vice versa mirror, which allows you to travel to another world, like the one in Alice's looking glass.
• There are several forms of Magic Mirrors in Septimus Heap, mostly of the portal type. Several of them become critical to the plot in Physik.
• In Mercedes Lackey's The Serpent's Shadow, the villainess has a magic mirror called a dark mirror (understandable, since this is an adaptation of the Snow White tale). Said mirror is horror of the And I Must Scream variety — she uses it to imprison the ghost of a man she sacrifices and tortures him constantly to insanity then slavish devotion so he can be useful to her. And she planned to do this to the heroine...
• In Shaman of the Undead, every mirror is magical, as every mirror can be used to travel to alternative dimensions, including multiple hells, future and past. You can travel between the mirrors as well, but such ventures are unadvised, as members of various hells would love to eat, replace or keep humans.
• The character, Mirror, in the series The Sisters Grimm. Doesn't just show you what you want to see, but will take you there it is within his power, and is the guardian of a never ending warehouse of magical items and artifacts.
• Tom Holt's entertaining but nonsensical novel Snow White and the Seven Samurai subverts this (as he does practically everything else) by introducing the "Mirrors 3.1" operating system which Snow White's Evil Queen Nemesis uses to pretty much control the whole fairytale world. Sort of. Since it's a parody of a rather well-known OS, you can imagine it doesn't work quite as well as the box claims.
• Swan's Braid & Other Tales of Terizan: In "Sometimes, Just Because" the wizard has one that lets someone move into other worlds. However, it works both ways-something came out of the mirror and turned him into a doll before taking him into another world. Terizan's sent in to get him back.
• Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms:
  • Many of the godmothers have magic mirrors to help them.
  • In The Sleeping Beauty Fairy Godmother Lily falls in love with hers.
• The Mirror of Llunet is the object of Taran's quest in Taran Wanderer, by Lloyd Alexander. Taran wishes to know of his parentage and so seeks this mirror (actually a flat, still, shallow pool) which will show the truth.
• Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: In "And Who Is Joah?" Magdelene has one which lets her see Zayd from miles away as he comes for Joah.
• The temirs in Tough Magic are mirrors that function as videophones.
• In the Tsar Gorokh's Detective Agency series, the frequent Big Bad Koschei the Deathless goes through several magic mirrors that ordinary allow him to spy on anyone, anywhere, and to reveal a person's true nature, if he or she happens to be disguised by a spell. Koschei ends up accidentally breaking his first mirror himself. The replacement works fine, until Mitka gets his hands on it and somehow messes with the settings to show him girls swimming in a river. Koschei later reveals that he's been unable to fix the settings, so the mirror always shows girls in a river and nothing else. He executed five masters, who failed to fix it, before deciding to look for yet another replacement. He manages to order one from Venice, which is nice, except the mirror insists on speaking Italian, annoying him to no end.
• Villains by Necessity: The group runs into one which reveals Robin is a spy to them, as he's seen meeting with Archmage Mizzamir while they're looking in on the latter.
• Whateley Universe: One of the books that Fey has when she arrives at Whateley is:
  'The Magic Mirror: Medieval Legend And Modern Psychology' by Dr. Donald Ryecroft.

Live-Action TV

• The 10th Kingdom has lots of these. Besides the main set of mirrors that the Evil Queen has ("mirrors to travel, mirrors to spy, mirrors to remember, mirrors to forget, mirrors to rule the world!"), people can use them like videophones. The Huntsman even has a small pocket mirror that acts as a video cellphone! At one point, the heroes are shown to a mirror which answers questions, and finds that it's so old that not only is it half-deaf, but it won't understand a question unless it's spoken in rhyme.
• Gideon of Charmed has a magic mirror that connects his world to a Mirror Universe.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Warriors' Gate": The Doctor, Adric, and Romana end up in a Void Between the Worlds where the only way to the Doctor's original universe is through a magic mirror. The magic mirror may also take travellers elsewhere within the void.
  • "Vincent and the Doctor": The Doctor has a mirror that identifies species, and is the only way he can see the Monster of the Week.
  • "It Takes You Away": The mirror in Erik's bedroom acts as a portal to the antizone between the main universe and the Solitract. When the main characters visit the Solitract's universe, their appearances are mirror-reversed as well, with the Doctor's Fashionable Asymmetry making it most obvious with her. (Erik himself has the Slayer logo on his t-shirt reversed.) Breaking the mirror destroys the portal.
• The Bone Glass on Lockwood & Co. (2023) is a mirror created through horrific experiments. It supposedly shows you the world of the dead, but everyone who looks into it goes crazy or worse.
• Motherland: Fort Salem: In "Homo Cantus", the Season 3 premiere, Abigail enchants a gay station restroom's mirror to speak with her mom, as her image then shows up on another mirror inside her mom's office. This is a Spree work, and the Army witches don't know the spell-Scylla teaches it to her.
• Rod Serling's Night Gallery, episode "The Painted Mirror". A mirror acts as a temporal doorway, allowing anyone who passes through it to return to the time of the dinosaurs.
• Once Upon a Time gives both classic magic mirrors a twist:
  • The Evil Queen from Snow White has mirrors all over her castle, but none of them are actually magical. Her enslaved Spirit can appear in any mirror before the Queen because when he was the Genie of the Lamp, he used his own wish-granting power to "look upon her face forever".
  • In Season 4, part of this mirror is used by the Snow Queen to create a mirror which lets her cast the Spell of Shattered Sight, a Hate Plague based on the broken mirror in the original story.
• Stargate SG-1 has a Quantum Mirror connecting an unlimited number of parallel universes.
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • "The Mirror" features a mirror that supposedly shows a reflection of a man's assassins. A Central American dictator leaves it to the man who overthrew him, who becomes paranoid when he sees visions of his companions trying to do him in. Ultimately, he ends up killing himself.
  • "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" and "The Last Night of a Jockey" feature the main characters talking to their alter-egos through a mirror.
• Charles Dodgson's mirror in Warehouse 13 was used by previous Warehouse agents to trap Alice Liddell. Occasionally she gets an opportunity to escape, trapping someone else in the mirror and taking over their body in the process.
• Several times on The X-Files:
  • In "Syzygy", monster-of-the-week teen girls used a mirror to summon up Bloody Mary as described in the folklore section.
  • "Elegy" had one of the messages written on the mirror in blood.
  • Every crime scene in "Chimera" involved a broken mirror or shiny surface so that the MOTW could not actually see her true self when she was murdering.

Myths & Religion

• Found in Japanese Mythology, with Amaterasu's Yata no Kagami, supposedly part of the Japanese Imperial regalia. Quite possibly the Ur-Example, unless we can find an older one.
  • This was transmitted into the Shinto religion proper, where mirrors - rare objects in ancient Japan that were considered mysterious and beautiful - are often shintai, or objects of worship in Shinto shrines.
  • Subverted in Mirror of Matsuyama. A dying mother who lived in the mountains of Matsuyama gave her little daughter a mirror and told her it's a magical one that would let her see her mom's ghost when she was out of this world. It was just a normal mirror, though, with no powers; the mother had said so to give the child some emotional support for when she died. It kinda worked, as the very sheltered girl believed for several years that the image in said mirror was her mom's ghost, not her own reflection (sorta an echo of what her mom did when she got the mirror as a gift from her husband, too), but her father and stepmother were very confused as she didn't tell them anything and they mistakenly believed that either she was conceited and enamored with her own looks, or was a witch who wanted to use the mirror for evil spells.
• Voudoun: In the Voodoo religion, mirrors are seen as powerful religious objects that makes it possible to see into the spirit world and for the spirits to see into ours.
• Prester John supposedly had a mirror that he could use to view anyone and anything in his kingdom.

Music

• The symbolism and occult qualities of mirrors crops up in songs by the Blue Öyster Cult. The long arcane track "Astronomy" from the Secret Treaties album suggests that mirrors are the route to the four Winds Bar standing outside space and time, and that mirror-magic sustains the place. The later album Mirrors has a title track which hints at the same thing.

New Media

• One of Gaia Online's more interesting Random Item Generators was a handheld Mirror called The Dark Reflection, that transported the user into a Mirror Universe. (Complete with Mirror NPCs and Mirror Items). The Mirror was released as an equippable item as one of the grand prizes.

Pinball

• A magic mirror with a mocking Evil Mask within appears throughout Magic Girl.

Radio

• One episode of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme had a Fractured Fairy Tale version of Snow White, in which the Evil Queen's chancellor realises the mirror can be used for untraceable surveillance of other kingdoms, and also to manipulate the stock market. It hadn't occured to him before, because until the mirror responded to "Who's the fairest of them all?" by showing someone other than the queen, he had assumed she was deluded and it was just a mirror.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons has had a lot of magic mirrors through the years. Here are a few of them:
  • Mirror of Opposition: when a creature looks into it, a duplicate creature appears and attacks the original. In one version, the duplicate's personality is the opposite of the original.
  • Barlithian's Mystical Mirror: (1) when something is in front of it, the reflection shows the thing's true nature. (2) It can be used as a Crystal Ball. (3) It can repair any damage to itself and (4) inflict equivalent damage on the being that caused it. Also, once its location is publicly known, there's a chance each day that (5) it'll attract a few intelligent creatures to admire themselves in it. Fortunately for the owner (and any other "guests"), the visitor(s) won't attack while doing so.
  • Mirror of Curing: can heal damage.
  • Flaming Mirror of Tenh: allows travel to the Elemental Plane of Fire.
  • Mirror of Life Trapping: any creature looking at its reflection is trapped inside it.
  • Malto's Mirror of Retention: records (and can play back) events that occur in front of it.
  • Not-So-Funny Funhouse Mirror: as a Mirror of Opposition, but the duplicate has a distorted body.
  • Mirror of Recall: gives the user retroactive photographic and phonographic memory.
  • Mirror of Reversal: allows passage to a bizarre dimension where everything is reversed.
  • Skarda's Mirror: actually a portal to a mirror-walled pocket demiplane, described in its own adventure module.
  • Mirror of Mind Switch: Swaps the mind of whoever looks into it with the person holding it. Actually a hand-mirror.
  • Classic one is, of course, scrying mirror, which is also the second function of the Mirror of Mental Prowess.
    • There was even a Shout-Out — "Isolde's Answer" spell that allowed to see a scene in 5+ mile radius as an answer to one question using any scrying device. And yes, asking a mirror "Who's The Fairest of Them All?" (— them all in 1 mile per level, anyway —) was one of examples. The other two were far more useful "Where did I put that book?" and "Where are the fish biting today?"
• Man Myth And Magic module Death to Setenta. Inside the Maze of Death the PCs can find a hsll filled with mirrors. Once they start to move through it, ugly distorted reflections of themselves will emerge from the mirrors and attack them.
• World of Darkness:
  • Fetches from Changeling: The Lost, as part of their very nature, have powers over mirrors and associated elements. They can produce a shard of glass that serves as a knife from any mirror, or force a changeling to perceive everyone as wearing their own face, or trap a changeling in a mirror world, or touch a mirror and produce a clone.
  • Another New World of Darkness book, Proverbial Monsters, features a creature called a Miraree that gains access to this world when a mirror is broken, and can manifest through other nearby mirrors to drain people of their Life Energy.
  • Princess: The Hopeful: Unsurprisingly, the Court Of Mirrors has a number of Charms allowing their Princesses to see, talk, or travel through mirrors, use them to scry the future or distant places, and other suitable effects. They also fit the "symbol of vanity" aspect of this trope, given Mirrors' signature flaw.
  • In the Old World of Darkness, Werewolves generally needed a reflective, mirror-like surface to look at in order to cross between the physical world and the spiritual plane of Umbra.

Video Games

• Azure Striker Gunvolt: Zonda's Septimal power is named "Mirror", which lets them create a male and female form of themself, trap people in mirrors, create mirror images of themself and their allies, and illusionary powers (such as turning Gunvolt's perspective upside-down).
• The classical image of monsters and evil twins breaking out from inside a mirror is quite well-known. Case in point: Castlevania has a variety of animated skeletons and demons that emerge from mirrors.
• A few of these show up in the Dark Parables, which is to be expected since they're based on classic fairy tales.
• Mirrors are used as portals to the Dark World in Dark Seed.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: The Greater-Scope Villain's lieutenant communicates with his agents through distinctive black mirrors, each with an audiovisual link to its twin in his Mission Control center. When the player character reaches his lair, they can examine them to catch glimpses of agents in the next Act.
• Dragon Age:
  • Eluvians - relics of elven culture before The Empire enslaved them. Their powers include seeing over great distances and acting as a portal between the physical world and the Fade - or somewhere beyond even that. An Eluvian cursed by the Darkspawn Taint features in the Dalish origin story, and the Grey Warden Duncan shatters it to keep it from claiming more victims. In the Witch Hunt DLC, Morrigan activates one and uses it to disappear on a mysterious mission.
  • In Dragon Age II, Merrill's goal is to fix the one from the Dalish origin even if it means using Blood Magic. Circumstances ensure we never learn if it could have worked.
  • In the tie-in novel The Masked Empire, elven rebel Briala gains control of a small Portal Network of Eluvians. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Morrigan shows up with one and briefly takes the Inquisitor to "the Crossroads", where all Eluvians can be seen. Tellingly, if Merrill's goals were supported and she was on the Friendship path, her Eluvian has a counterpart seen there.
  • In "Trespasser", the final DLC for Inquisition, the Qunari attempt to use the Eluvians as part of a plot to take over Thedas. Solas eventually wrests control over the entire network, which isn't ideal considering his plans.
• In Emerald City Confidential, Queen Ozma has an all-seeing mirror in the throne room, similar to the source material. The protagonist tries to use it to find her missing brother, but it oddly shows her nothing.
• Epic Mickey: The opening scene from the 1936 Mickey Mouse short "Thru the Mirror", in which Mickey has fallen asleep reading Through the Looking-Glass and his dream self decides to go check out the mirror above his fireplace mantle, is used in the intro of Epic Mickey as an explanation for how Mickey ended up in Yen Sid's tower and accidentally created the Shadow Blot and caused the Thinner Disaster. The short itself is also featured as a 2D "travel zone" level in-game.
• EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance: Nemuri communicates with Malice, high-ranking Secretary of the Demon World and her overlord, via a magic mirror that shows Malice's face when communicating through it. All the better to see Malice's exasperated expression when giving Nemuri permission to forego stealth and be more aggressive in her mission, after already fighting her way openly through the Satellite Meza.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, Nyx's supports with the Avatar mention that there's a magical mirror she's looking for. Since she has been cursed with eternal youth, she wants to get said mirror to see what she'd actually look like if not for said curse. If she and the Male Avatar get an S support, he uses a normal mirror to propose to her.
  Nyx: "I'm looking for an artifact mirror. It's an ancient, sacred treasure, imbued with the power of the gods. It's rumored to reflect only the truth. And that's all I'll say about it."
  • In Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Nuibaba gives one to Berkut and he later uses it against Alm and his crew. The end result is that dozens, if not hundreds, of Terrors rise up from the ground and attempt to swallow everyone. Zofian and Regelian alike (Alm's party included) lose their collective poop. Even the user has issues with the end result.
• In the Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden game, Kagami no Miko, one of these is in the home of a girl from modern Japan named Mariko Kobayashi (her archaeologist dad found it in one of his research trips), and it swallows both Mariko and her best friend Takumi Mochizuki with its magic. It sends the two into the country of Hokkan, located within the Universe of the Four Gods, and in the path of the Genbu Kaiden heroine Takiko "Genbu no Miko" Okuda and her Genbu Senshi...
• One house on the Glider PRO CD, "In The Mirror", is themed around these—some helpful, some harmful, others just cool-looking. Mirrors were also a common form of teleportation, going as far back as Glider 4.0's "The House."
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Nimdok's chapter includes "Project: Perfect Image", a mirror created by Those Wacky Nazis that when viewed enables the person looking to see themselves with perfect objectivity. Of the people who looked at it, one killed himself and the other forcibly recalled his buried memories of all the atrocities he had committed during the Nazi regime. So don't peer into the Awful Truth-displaying mirror if you're a war criminal, is what we're getting from this.
• Mirrors in Illusions (1984) act as dimensional portals. On the other side, the game's Status Line has mirrored text.
• Pandora in Kid Icarus: Uprising uses an artifact called the Mirror of Truth to duplicate members of the Underworld's army and increase their numbers. A botched attempt to duplicate Pit manifests his dark side known as Dark Pit, who is disloyal to Pandora but still an enemy against Pit.
• The Magic Mirror from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs appears twice in the Kingdom Hearts series:
  • The mirror first appears in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. For gameplay reasons, it is given the previously unseen ability to suck people into a pocket dimension within itself where the mirror's spirit can physically harm the protagonists. It is also aware of events outside of Dwarf Woodlands, referring to the Keyblade Graveyard as "beyond light and dark" and "where war was waged upon the fells."
  • In Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage-, the mirror itself continues to exist in the Realm of Darkness with its spirit gone. Now seemingly possesed by darkness, it contains several parts of Dwarf Woodlands in pocket dimensions, connected by even more mirrors and reduced to twisted shells of what they once were. It also creates an Enemy Without Mirror Monster for Aqua to fight.
• In The King of Fighters, Chizuru Kagura is the holder of the Mirror of Yata, which grants her Master of Illusion and Barrier Maiden powers. The Mirror is stolen by Ash Crimson later, and it's returned to her when Ash gets himself Ret Goned.
  • She can give it the normal use if it's needed, though. In KOF: KYO she's seen watching over Iori and Kyo's Battle in the Rain through the Yata Mirror without needing to be there.
• Featured multiple times in King's Quest.
  • In King's Quest I, Merlin's Mirror, one of the treasures of Daventry, was a magical mirror, one of the three treasures Graham sought to collect.
  • In King's Quest II, the mirror shows the imprisoned Valanice to king Graham.
  • In King's Quest III, the mirror finally clears up after a long period of darkness has passed.
  • In King's Quest IV, the fairy Genesta first contacted Rosella through it, launching the events of the game.
  • In King's Quest VI, this mirror revealed to Alexander the peril of Cassima in the intro, again launching the events of the game; and yet another magic mirror is given to Alexander by the Beast from "Beauty and the Beast", and later used to win a duel with Death by making him cry. The mirror has a second use in the bare-bones ending, where it reveals the princess to be a fake at the royal wedding.
  • In King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, the mirror shows King Graham what transpires in the Realm of the Sun and later allows Connor his first glimpse of his enemy Lucreto.
  • In the Extended Universe novel King's Quest: The Floating Castle, the mirror is clouded by the arrival of an Evil Sorcerer, and the sorcerer's castle also has a set of mirrors which can be used to view between or even travel between each other.
• Kirby:
  • Some games make Mirror an ability that Kirby can use. With it he can throw up swarms of mirrors, reflect attacks, and create mirror copies of himself.
  • There's also the Dimension Mirror that is a portal to the Mirror World. In such a world exists mirror versions of Kirby and Meta Knight. In Kirby: Triple Deluxe, Queen Sectonia's turn into a vain, evil queen is attributed to looking at Dimension Mirror a lot. Also, the evil entity of Mirror World, Dark Mind, makes use of mirrors in his attacks.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has a Magic Mirror which functions as a Warp Zone between the Dark World and the Light World. In dungeons, it serves as an Escape Rope so Link can return to their entrance.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The Mirror of Twilight can create a gateway to the Twilight Realm, and its pieces serve as the second major set of Plot Coupons after it gets shattered.
• The main gimmick of the Mirage Mansion court in Mario Tennis: Aces are its floating mirrors that act as portals, which teleport the ball from one to the other to confuse the players. In the story mode, the mirrors are shown to be sentient and actively try to hinder Mario's quest for the Power Gems. The boss of the mansion is also a huge mirror named Madame Mirage.
• Ōkami uses magic mirrors both as Save Points and teleportation nodes. As well as blunt instruments used to violently beat demons to death. Considering one of the mythical Amaterasu's treasures is a mirror, this Ammy basically homages the myth.
• In the first Prince of Persia game, one of the levels contains a mirror that can't be broken with a sword and blocks one of the paths that the Prince must go through. The correct solution is to have the Prince take some steps behind, then run back towards the mirror and ultimately leap into it. Bad thing, doing so will release the Prince's Evil Twin of sorts, whom he must fight later.
• In Quest for Glory I there is a magic mirror that can be used to reflect spells back upon the caster. It's of course an important object in beating the game.
• The Sims 3 introduces this in the Supernatural expansion. Other than tell sims they're beautiful, it also can make them over or just chat with them. Also, like the other mirrors in the game, it can teach your sim the "charisma" skill.
• Solomon's Key had evil mirrors as Mook Makers.
• Soul Series: The Dvapara-Yuga is a holy mirror that purifies anyone or anything corrupted by evil energy. Kilik wears it to prevent the Evil Seed from controlling him.
• Terraria has magic mirrors that appear as items in underground chests, as well as an ice variant found in the underground snow biome. Using one of the mirrors will teleport the player back to their spawn point after a small delay.
• Tormented Souls: Full-length mirrors are gateways to a Dark World version of the mansion. The projection screen for video tapes lets you go back in time to where and when the tape was recorded.
• The gameplay of Ugly revolves around a magic mirror shard. By placing it somewhere, the player generates an intangible mirror image of themselves that, well, mirrors all their movements. Additionally, the player can swap themselves with the mirror image.
• In Ultima IX the destruction of Skara Brae could be seen by activating a red, smoky mirror in Lord British's chambers, after which the mirror shattered.
• Throughout the Yo Kai Watch series, a mirror-like Yokai known as Mirapo served as the player's Cool Gate, allowing them to go any place that they went to before.

Web Animation

• Audience!: Because of a being named Toshie who was sealed away using one, all mirrors in the world are magic mirrors. He can even control your reflection, tricking or manipulating people through power of suggestion. This also happens to be the only way he can communicate with the outside world.
• Mind My Gap has that "Damned 'Ol Mirror of Perspective" which Virgil uses as one of his primary tools of manipulation and observation.

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive: There was a magic mirror built into a door that was created by Tedd's Missing Mom in the Verres family basement. It was supposed to save any transformations it witnessed and copy them for later, but after copying too many spells it would overload and apply a Randomized Transformation on anyone in range. Tedd fixes it by sticking a bunch of faulty Magic Wands on it which release the excess magic buildup before the overload can happen.
• The Greenhouse: The previous tenants have all chosen to leave behind a weird red mirror in Mica's new apartment. They also all claimed the place was haunted. Turns out the two were related: about 10 years ago, a tenant decided not to finish a Summoning Ritual for a demon, instead binding the incomplete demon into a nearby mirror with a blood curse. Unfortunately for Mica, one of the first things she does is accidentally break the mirror, and then cut herself on the glass, letting the blood curse transfer to her and making her the demon's new anchor.
• The Shufflers: Märchen is gifted one by a client in the chapter "The Golden Mirror". It causes him to become enamoured with only looking at himself, to the point he doesn't sleep or eat even when Hiddenite forces him to.
• In Whither, you need a nameless child to make a hub of sorts - then every reflective surface is your magic mirror.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-412 ("Mutagenic Mirror"). Anyone who looks into this mirror suffers progressive body changes. If they live long enough a cavity forms in their chest and a small humanoid creature appears in the cavity.
  • SCP-739 ("A Mirrored Booth"). Anyone inside it when the door closes is "mirrored", with handedness swapped and all their L-amino acids replaced with D-amino acids (making them unable to process food). It's easily reversible by putting them in the mirror again, but repeated inversions start causing... strange alterations to their memories and personalities. It's implied that the mirror either replaces them with a version of themselves from another universe, or makes them slightly more "perfect" with each run through. Also, if you close the door with no-one inside, a Pattern Screamer comes out.
  • SCP-919 ("Needy Mirror"). After someone has been in front of SCP-919 for 15 seconds their image will come alive and beg them not to leave the area in front of SCP-919. If the person does leave, their image in SCP-919 will scream and disintegrate.
  • SCP-944 ("Mirror Maze"). A number of mirrors in the Fun House section of SCP-944 have strange effects on people who pass through them, such as being teleported to another mirror 700 miles away, being squashed down to a height of 3 foot 4 inches, and being trapped inside the mirror.
  • SCP-987 ("Gruesome Gallery"). SCP-987 (A-M) are a set of 13 mirrors whose reflections each depict a series of events involving the death of a different person.
  • SCP-2645 ("Through the Looking Glass"). SCP-2645 is a full-length mirror which connects to an identical Alternate Universe. When anything touches the surface of SCP-2645, instead of touching the mirror's surface it touches a duplicate of itself from the other universe.

Western Animation

• The American Dragon: Jake Long episode "Switcheroo" features a Magic Mirror with the ability to switch peoples' bodies. The episode's intended victims are Jake and Haley, forcing them to reexamine their sibling rivalry by living out a day in each others' shoes, and when Huntsboys #88 and #89 steal it, the two have to get it back by sunset or else they're stuck in each others' bodies forever.
• A few characters in Castlevania (2017) possess magical mirrors that can function as portals. These mirrors are normally stored as broken shards, to be reassembled during usage. Smaller mirrors essentially function as magical video phones, while larger ones can be used to teleport people.
• DuckTales (1987): Referenced in "Magica's Magic Mirror".
• In the Gargoyles episode, fittingly called "The Mirror," Demona steals "Titania's Mirror" from a museum, then uses it to temporarily capture Puck and make him grant her wishes. (A poor decision on her part.) She breaks it at the end of the episode, after seeing her reflection as a human.
  • Later we actually meet Titania and Oberon, rulers of The Fair Folk. In "The Gathering, Part 1," Oberon uses a mirror identical to the above in order to contact Princess Katherine, then transport himself to New York. Word of God says that this is "Oberon's Mirror," and that the set was given as a wedding present (by whom is unknown).
• On He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983), the Sorceress of Greyskull uses one of these.
• In The Legend of Zelda animated series episode "Doppelganger", Ganon secretly delivers a magic mirror to Zelda that, when moonlight strikes it, acts as a portal between the underworld and the castle. What's more, hence the episode's title, another feature it has is creating an evil clone of whoever is in front of it, in this case, Princess Zelda herself. The real Zelda's scream awakens Link when the clone attacks and kidnaps her. Although the real Zelda is taken back to the underworld, Link is able to stop the Moblins and the clone from stealing the Triforce of Wisdom by breaking the mirror, at which point the clone tricks Link into going on a mission to defeat Ganon. Link is fooled, at first, when the clone kisses him, but while venturing to Ganon's lair on horseback, he notices the clone is not casting a reflection while passing a nearby lake, making him realize the truth, but plays along to stage a rescue mission.
• Looney Tunes:
  • In Broom-Stick Bunny, Witch Hazel, who is "deathly afraid" of getting pretty as she grows older, is always asking the genie of her magic mirror who's the ugliest one of all. When Bugs Bunny, who's trick-or-treating in a hideous witch costume, knocks at her door, she mistakes him for a real witch and immediately consults the mirror again.
    Witch Hazel: Magic mirror on the wall,
    Who is the ugliest one of all?
    Genie: Thou wert the ugliest one, 'tis true.
    But that creep is uglier far than you!
  • The 1939 cartoon The Lone Stranger and Porky has the title hero consulting a magic mirror when he's alerted for trouble (in this case, a masked villain is holding up Porky Pig's stagecoach).
    Lone Stranger: Magic mirror on the wall... who needs my help the most of all?
• In My Knight and Me magic mirrors are used in place of all video and communication technology, with magic compact mirrors used like cell phones.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: The sorceress Porcina, in addition to a great deal of regular mirrors to admire herself in, owns a hand mirror that she can use to look at anything happening in the world. Additionally, in comics and backcard stories, Majesty had an enchanted mirror that could look out for danger, as well as create babies.
  • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls:
    • A mirror in the Crystal Palace serves as a portal between Equestria and a world of rainbow-colored humans.
    • A separate magic mirror appears in the third part of "Mirror Magic", which allows the antagonist to transport anything to a Pocket Dimension contained in the mirror by wishing for it.
• ReBoot's Hexadecimal had a mirror that was powered by her own viral energy. She used it for communication, spying on the Supercomputer, and when broken it released a web creature into Mainframe.
• Rocky and Bullwinkle: In one "Fractured Fairy Tales" spot, there's a guy who is so determined to be in a fairy tale that at one point buys a dozen mirrors and is frustrated when none of them answer him when he talks to them.
• Shimmer and Shine:
  • In "My Secret Genies", it's revealed that Shimmer and Shine used one to find out who they'll grant wishes to.
  • In "A Tree-mendous Rescue", Shimmer and Shine use one to talk to Princess Samira.
• The Smurfs (1981):
  • In "The Smurfette" and "Smurfette Unmade", Smurfette had a magic mirror compact that allowed her to communicate with Gargamel via Video Phone whenever she was in her "un-Smurf" mode, making it resemble a flip-top cell phone years before such a thing came to the market.
  • In "Smurfy Acres", Gargamel crafted two magic mirrors where one acted as a visual transmitter and the other a receiver, much like a television camera and screen.
  • In "Vanity Fare", Gargamel crafted a magic mirror that trapped whoever looked into it into an alternate dimension where he and Azrael would be waiting for their preferred victims, the Smurfs.
  • In "Beauty Is Only Smurf Deep", Periwinkle the pixie uses her magic mirror to ask "who's the fairest in the world", and it reveals Vanity Smurf. Later on in the episode, Periwinkle's father King Goldenrod uses it to track down his daughter, and it reveals that she is about to give Vanity a dangerous "mud bath".
• Sofia the First: The Royal Castle has one that grants wishes.
• Steven Universe: A magic mirror, similar to the one in Beauty and the Beast, can show any instance of Gem culture (Gems are aliens, some of which have settled on Earth). That is, until it's seemingly broken. Then it has the power to show anything that the main character, Steven, records. That is, until it breaks completely. Then it turns back into a Gem.
• On Wishfart, Fireball Cat's mouth acts like one. Yeah, it's a weird show.
• Xiaolin Showdown has the Reversing Mirror, which had the power to reverse the powers of any Shen Gong Wu it was used against. This was a rather loose definition, as its real powers could range from reversing effects (like heavy armor becoming light as a feather) to reversing the direction of offensive attacks (like a projectile or strike being turned the way it came) to whatever the plot required (rather than some magic glasses that showed the future showing the past, it showed a bizarro "opposite" future where the hero was evil).

Real Life

• A real-world equivalent is a modern-day cell phone or tablet, especially one equipped with a voice-activated assistant such as Apple's Siri or Amazon.com's Alexa.
  • There's also "smart mirrors" which are basically an OLED or LCD screen backed with a normal mirror so that the empty space of the screen can be used as such.
• A fun-house mirror isn't magic per se, but it may be viewed as such to people who are unfamiliar with its mechanics.
• Many actual occult practitioners have used means like this (such as gazing into glass or water) as a means of divination. Nostradamus is a famous example.

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