Trickster Twins

"How did I get roped into hanging out with these two?"

"We'd play pranks all the time! That's what you do as twins!"

— Daniel Bronstadt, This Sounds Serious

Woe to the fictional parents of the Trickster Twins. They are a set of siblings (not necessarily twins, but often are) that are always up to no good in pursuit of sadistic delight. They are a magnet for trouble (either attracting it or causing it) and have to find a way through a series of convoluted plans to escape the situation.

The traits most common to a set of Trickster Twins is that they're pranksters or entertainers. Their antics are usually for comic relief, but other times, their tricks can be far more sinister. Trickster Twins also tend to have the good-natured compulsion to pick on or tease the rest of the cast. If they target a single character out of the entire cast, that victim is usually the Butt-Monkey.

They are fond of the Twin Switch.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Adventures of the Little Koala: When he's seeking the extra money needed to buy a toy train he has his eye on, Roobear gets talked into babysitting the younger siblings of his friends Nick and Pamie, a mischievous penguin quartet. He was warned they were a handful.
• Kazuo and Masao Tachibana in Captain Tsubasa have some traits of this, specially since both of them are deadpan snarkers. They have even come to weaponize their trickery, as many of their shared in-game tricks rely on acrobatics and their intelligence.
• Fuuka and Fumika Narutaki in Negima! Magister Negi Magi. Notably, Fumika is more reserved and often states that Fuuka's pranks aren't such a good idea, but she always gets dragged along and always gets into it anyways.
• Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin in Ouran High School Host Club. They even appear as Cheshire Cats during a homage to Alice in Wonderland.
• In Petit iDOLM@STER, Ami and Mami Futami's puchi counterparts take this further than the video game versions. Each puchi has a single strange power or exaggerated trait, and for Koami and Komami, it's that they do little else but play over-the-top pranks on everyone else, even when there was no logical opportunity for them to have set it up.

Asian Animation

• Flower Angel: The petunia fairy twins in Season 1 episodes 21 and 22 love to play pranks and make Kukuru a target for their jokes, doing things to him such as magically making his soup disappear and turning into wasps to scare him.

Comic Books

• Pride High has Smash and Crash. They finish each others' sentences, can trade places with one another in an instant (which they slyly use while wrestling), and remain the most devious of the prime group of antagonists.
• Wonder Woman: In the Golden Age the Holliday Girls triplets Lillie, Tillie, and Millie Heyday are all quite fond of participating in the wacky pranks their pseudo sorority pulls, as well as making people confused about which one of the three identical sisters they're talking to.
• Zipi y Zape, even if as Characterization Marches On they became somewhat less mischievous.

Fan Works

• Harry Is a Dragon, and That's OK not only has the Weasley twins, but also Tyler and Anne Smith who are actually Kitsune who often get into prank wars with each other. Thanks to this, Peter is caught out during Harry's second year, leading to the release of Sirius Black earlier than in canon.
• In Sight Ukitake's zanpakuto, Sougyo no Kotowari are a very mischievous pair of twins who Speak in Unison, play pranks on Ichigo and play Kidou Tag which consists of them firing kidou at Ichigo while he runs away.
• Transformers: Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are often portrayed as a pair of mischief makers who never miss a chance to play a prank, regardless of how often they're yelled at or otherwise punished.

Films — Animation

• Brave has identical triplets Harris, Hubert, and Hamish. Among their antics, they steal cakes, cut off part of a sleeping guard's mustache, and tie their father's peg leg to a table so he flips it when he gets up.
• How to Train Your Dragon has Ruffnut and Tuffnut, who constantly compete with each other to cause the most mischief. This is before they actually dedicate their lives to Loki.

Literature

• Timmy and Tommy Tibble from Arthur, two bratty kids who go to preschool with D.W.
• The Baby-Sitters Club: Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold in their first appearance, but it turns out they're just acting out because they're sick of being treated like one person. They're much better when they show up later.
• Hugal and Monan from the Dungeons & Dragons Eberron novel The City of Towers thrive on twisting mind screws.
• The Kokonoe twins, Ayaka and Ayaka, in Girls Kingdom are both mischievous twins who love to prank, molest, and otherwise troll those around them, including their own boss, Kagura. The protagonist, Misaki, would prefer to avoid them as much as possible, but since her mistress is part of same salon as the Ayakas' mistress, she gets to deal with them daily, though they do let off a bit when Kirara enters Kagura's employ as well, since they have another new toy to play with.
• Harry Potter: Fred and George Weasley cause humorous trouble for their family and for Hogwarts. When they grow up, their deviousness becomes the seed for their own company - Weasley Wizard Wheezes, a joke shop. (And in a meta-example, their film actors James and Oliver Phelps had their own penchant for trickery, sometimes switching places just like their characters.)
• Bertie's cousins Eustace and Claude in Jeeves and Wooster. Among their other exploits, they both fall in love with the same girl and go to ridiculous lengths to win her... to the despair of both the girl and Bertie.
• The relationship between the two eponymous rascal boys in Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz is not specified, but they have a common uncle, which indicates they are either cousins or twin brothers.
• Downplayed in Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Travis and Connor Stoll aren't actually twins, but they look so much alike that Percy can't initially remember which one is older. (It's Travis, for the record.) They love playing pranks, but they're also responsible enough to be co-heads of Hermes' cabin after Luke is revealed to be working for Kronos. In later books, Travis is at college while Connor remains at camp.
• Bill and Ben in The Railway Series. Edward and BoCo are the only ones who can keep them in order. Donald and Douglas had a bit of a tricksy streak when they first arrived on Sodor, pulling a few Twin Switch gambits to each get the other out of trouble, but once their place on the island was secure for both of them, they toned this down.
• In Robert A. Heinlein's The Rolling Stones (1952), Castor and Pollux, "the Unheavenly Twins", who at least are not guilty of experimenting with unlicensed atomics inside city limits - this time.
• "Trouble Twins" Florida and Dallas from Ruby Holler, although it's justified in that they're mistreated by the owners of the orphanage where they live and strike back in the only way they can; Dallas is actually a Nice Guy and Florida is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of I Love Lucy, Lucy tries to earn some quick baby-sitting money and agreed to watch a ten-year-old boy. What she doesn't know is he has a twin brother, who the mother quietly drops off in the living room while she and the first boy are in the kitchen. Wackiness ensues as it appears the one boy disappears and reappears between the two rooms until the ending.

Podcasts

• Taako and Lup from The Adventure Zone, presumably coming from their rough childhood spent in caravans.

Pro Wrestling

• The Blossom Twins in the UK Wrestling scene and Ohio Valley. Unlike most Tag Team Twins, they're more mischievous than actively malevolent.

Theatre

• Mungojerry and Rumpleteazer are a notorious couple of cats, knock-about clowns, quick-change comedians, tight-rope walkers, and acrobats! However, it is argued among Cats fans whether they are twins, brother and sister, or something else entirely, but due to their almost identical markings and that they often hang out together it is mostly assumed that they are twins.

Video Games

• Dee and Dum from Alice in the Country of Hearts. Their tricks range from the innocent to the... not so much.
• The iDOLM@STER has Ami and Mami Futami. They enjoy playing pranks or teasing other people and, before Mami grew out her hair, they looked identical. Their main stick in the first game was to switch roles repeatedly and the producer had to figure out when it was Ami and when it was Mami. They toned down a little bit in iDOLM@STER 2 on the pranking part.
• Subverted with Vivi and Linda in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. Vivi is a prankster, but Linda is a Nice Girl who doesn't want anything to do with it and will apologize to anyone her sister pranks. Vivi will often pull a Twin Switch on her own to troll people, which annoys Linda to no end.
• Twins Sam and Joe in Love & Pies used to pull pranks on others when they were kids. This carried on to Sam's adulthood, when he pretended to be Joe to trick the latter's Love Interest, Amelia, into kissing him.
• Elijah and Mijo from Lunarosse engage in a bit of this when you first meet them, as they make you play a guessing game in order to pass to Sherwood Village.
• Pokémon Black and White: Tornadus and Thundurus, both of which have the Prankster ability.
• Jay and Elle from Puyo Puyo Tetris love to pull pranks on others, with Ai being their usual target.
• Duke and Luke Crabtree from Sir Basil Pike Public School, who reenact the old Knights and Knaves puzzle on the player character.

Visual Novels

• Higurashi: When They Cry: Twin sisters Mion and Shion have a penchant for pulling a Twin Switch to confuse the hell out of Keiichi and the audience. At first, it's funny, but that changes when Shion goes crazy, kidnaps Mion, starts killing people, and makes everyone think Mion was the murderer.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Bonny and Betty de Famme are Stage Magicians who use Twin Switch in their tricks.

Web Animation

• The Gemini twins from AstroLOLogy are frequently seen pulling pranks on the other star signs.
• Lifty and Shifty from Happy Tree Friends are of the more sinister variety, being thieves.

Webcomics

• The Arrow twins in Ava's Demon show this in their short time in the comic thus far.
• The Tassin Twins from Battle Kreaturez are mischievous eccentric Kreature Tamers who speak in half-truths and enjoy teasing their crush, Ben Weiss, the series' protagonist.
• Erma's cousins, Mitsu and Momo. They're very good at pretending to be sweet and innocent in company, but mock Erma behind the adults' backs as well as bully the neighbourhood kids.
• Edward and Henry in The Paul Reveres are notorious scoundrels, which is partly how they got drafted into the British Army in the first place.
• The Cake twins in Slice of Life have shades of this, particularly Pumpkin.
• The protagonists of Transmission, Russell and Reggie.
• Unsounded: The "horror childrens" at Litriya are a pair of young twins who are constantly pulling pranks and singing mocking songs as they happily run about their lives.

Web Videos

• Vex'ahlia and Vax'ildan from Critical Role, each in their own ways. Vax is both the party rogue and a fan of pranking his fellow party members. Vex is a notorious haggler and flirt, and also fights with a number of neat trick arrows.

Western Animation

• Tommy and Timmy Tibble of Arthur, as seen in the page image from when Arthur babysat them. They make D.W. look like an angel by comparison.
• Bother and Blister from The Crumpets, who pull pranks on other members of the Crumpet family, especially their younger brother Ohoh.
• Edgar & Ellen: The titular twins who spend their time pranking the other residents of their town.
• Zim and Zam, Yzma's nephews from The Emperor's New School (voiced by Dylan and Cole Sprouse, who play Zack and Cody).
• Kim Possible has Jim and Tim, nicknamed the Tweebs. They're the titular character's twin younger brothers who enjoy making trouble with their scientific experiments and inventions.

• Edric and Emira Blight, from The Owl House, pull many pranks in their first appearance, making them a relatively rare fraternal twins example of this trope.

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