Basic Trope: A character's reflection talks back.
- Straight: Brad engages in an argument with his reflection.
- Exaggerated: Brad, Julie, and their dog engage in an argument with their reflections in the same mirror at the same time.
- Downplayed: Brad's reflection doesn't move, and the effect is achived entirely through voiceover.
- Justified:
- Brad is hallucinating.
- The mirror is revealed to be a two-way mirror with an identical twin, clone, robot or hologram on the other side.
- The "mirror" is a video screen with extremely high resolution, which normally mimics the image that would otherwise be "reflected" in it but has been deliberately set up to turn the person looking into it into a sophisticated CGI character that talks back.
- In-universe, mirrors are magical windows to the Mirror World. It just so happens that Mirror Brad decides he's had enough with regular Brad.
- The magic mirror doesn't have a face of its own and thus uses the face of whoever it's communicating with.
- Inverted: Brad, frustrated at his day, yells at his reflection in his mirror. His reflection runs off crying, with Brad in shock that his reflection, for the first time, moved independently of him.
- Subverted: Through the magic of editing, Brad argues with his reflection... and then we see the scene from a neutral perspective, and it looks like Brad is talking to himself.
- Double Subverted: ...But it turns out this is Julie's perspective—the dog is barking furiously at Brad's reflection, knowing something is very wrong.
- Parodied:
- Brad engages in an argument with his reflection in the water of his toilet bowl.
- Brad's reflection destroys itself with a hammer after smelling Brad's breath.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes, the reflection is another entity on the other side. Sometimes, it isn't. No one can figure out any pattern to it, and the reflection isn't answering any questions.
- Averted: Brad's fighting his conscience, but he engages in a pure Mirror Monologue
- Enforced: The setting is magical and Brad is the only character in the story. The writers need someone for Brad to talk to who is exactly like him but whom he can only interact with verbally, so they choose a copy of himself.
- Lampshaded: "How should I know, I'm only your reflection?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited:
- Brad gives the mirror to a disliked local politician as a white elephant gift so he can have someone to debate his policies with every day.
- A local politician (who may or may not be disliked) seeks this sort of mirror in order to gain advice, debate policies, and settle conflicts without needing anyone else to do it with him.
- Defied: Brad's reflection starts to argue, but Brad says "Not right now; later tonight, sure, but I don't have time right now."
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Well, they seem to have kept the internal argument over the money in the book in the movie by means of having Brad argue with his reflection."
Back to The Man in the Mirror Talks Back
