Replacement Goldfish / Western Animation

• Played for slightly-creepy laughs in The Amazing World of Gumball‎, when Darwin is mistaken for a genius and taken away for study. His parents take in Rocky, dress him up as Darwin, call him 'Rockwin' and tell him to call them Mom and Dad. Darwin is a goldfish, making this a literal example as well. Back when he was still a pet, Darwin himself was also a literal example for the first two Darwins. "The Origins" reveals that there were a lot more than two Darwins before him. The Wattersons' negligence, stupidity, and bad luck killed many a goldfish.
• The American Dad! episode "You Debt Your Life" features Roger moving out of the Smith's house, so Stan finds a replacement Roger in the form of Andy Dick. They also had a very literal example in "Finances with Wolves", when Klaus gets his brain put into a black man and he flushes his goldfish body, but by the end, he winds up back in a completely new but identical goldfish body.
• In The Animals of Farthing Wood, refusing to accept the fact that his friend Mole died, Badger mistakes his son Mossy for him because he looked just like him, he eventually dies without learning the truth that Mole had long since died and that he'd been talking to his son the whole time.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Iroh begins treating his nephew Zuko like a son after his own son, Lu Ten, dies in battle. Unlike most examples, though, Iroh loves Zuko for who he is and doesn't project Lu Ten onto him. Since Zuko is also DESPERATELY in need of a (good) father figure, it all works out. Usually. In the end, it definitely does.
• Batman: The Animated Series: H.A.R.D.A.C. began his plan to replace the world with robot duplicates after its creator, Karl Rossum, tried to create a new version of his daughter, who had been killed in a car accident.
• Beast Wars: In an odd spin on the trope, Megatron had a habit of making replacement Dinobot clones. An organic one was made after he defected to the good guys and the transmetal Dinobot II after his Heroic Sacrifice. Megatron seemed pleased with these clones (Dinobot II was basically his second in command), except when they followed their template's footsteps a little too closely.
• Esther in Ben 10: Omniverse. It's rather obvious she was intended from the start to replace Ben's girlfriend Julie, who the writers made break up with him in the same series.
• Mortimer of Craig of the Creek. He is Kelsey's 37th pet parrot.
• Danielle in Danny Phantom was created as an imperfect clone of the main character (not only physically younger and female, but with an unstable body). She was a stepping stone on the way to creating a perfected clone and, when she found out, turned into a Tyke-Bomb.
• In one episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Mac and Bloo look through the house's annual family photos and find one where everyone but Madame Foster and Frankie is strangely absent. Bloo's first theory: a Galactic Conqueror came and abducted everyone. When Mac asks him how everyone came back the next year, Bloo reasons that they never came back and Madame Foster built robot replacements for all of them.
• Futurama:
  • In "The Luck of the Fryrish", Philip Fry is upset that his brother Yancy took the name Philip and accomplished all of Philip Fry's goals. However, it turns out that the Philip Fry of history was actually Philip Fry II, Yancy's son. Yancy named his son out of admiration for his brother.
  • In the sixth season episode "Rebirth", Fry builds a robot as a replacement Leela after the real Leela ends up in a coma. Then doubled — it turns out that Fry was a robot created by the real Leela after the real Fry died. The two robots are promptly paired off.
  • In the episode "Godfellas", the crew tries to cheer Fry up by giving him a replacement Robot Buddy for Bender who went missing. It doesn't work.
  • In "The Silence of the Clamps," Bender goes into the Witness Protection Program, prompting Fry to befriend mafia robot Francis "Clamps" Clampazzo, another foul-mouthed, aggressive robot, who has been hired by Planet Express as his replacement.
  • In "The Late Philip J. Fry," Fry, Bender and Farnsworth disappear due to a time-machine accident and are thought to have been killed in an explosion at a robot bachelor party. In the timeline that ensues, Leela eventually marries Farnsworth's clone Cubert due to his resemblance to Fry. It doesn't go well.
• Subverted in Generator Rex. It turns out ZAG-RS was created by Rex's brother César, who modeled her after their mother. ZAG-RS's birth also predates the Event, which was when Mr. and Mrs. Salazar died, but ZAG-RS ends up on Rex's rogues gallery before he learns her backstory.
• In Gravity Falls, Grunkle Stan treats the wax dummy of himself like his long-lost brother, which, at that time, seems like a joke about his ego.
• Parodied in Johnny Bravo. He wakes up in the hospital to find a nurse that looks identical to the girl in his dream... then he wakes up again.
• Kaeloo: In Episode 100, Kaeloo, after undergoing Sanity Slippage and not having seen her friends for about a year, selects three flowers, gives them similar names to her friends, and treats the flowers the same way she would normally treat her friends.
• My Goldfish is Evil: A literal example in the episode "Sewer Adventure". Bubbles faked his death to reunite with a previous goldfish Beanie's mom had a kid.
• In The Owl House, Hunter turns out to be a Grimwalker based on Belos's older brother, Caleb. Caleb was murdered by Belos for falling in love with a witch, and Belos has subsequently created a very long line of Grimwalkers to replace Caleb with a more obedient version, all of whom he eventually killed and replaced for "betraying" him. When Luz asks what a Grimwalker even is, Belos simply responds that Hunter is "a better version of an old friend."
• In Phantom 2040, we eventually learn that Doctor Jack designed Pavlova as a replacement for his deceased wife of the same name. He is not pleased when the robot inevitably develops into her own person.
• Rudy Mookich from Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain is a Nelson Muntz Expy who replaced Montana Max as Elmyra Duff's love interest. That whole show seemed determined to prove that Tiny Toon Adventures never existed.
• Recess: In "Speedy, We Hardly Knew Ye," we see the death and funeral of Speedy the Hamster, who'd been a classroom fixture for some time. As the students, staff, and former students start sharing fond memories it soon arises that everyone has rather different memories of Speedy; it had/didn't have spots, loved/hated apples, it was a boy/girl, etc. Turns out that "Speedy" been constantly replaced over the last forty years, "which is rather long-lived for a hamster," as noted by Gretchen.
• In Rick and Morty, Straw Nihilist Rick isn't above doing this to entire realities, relocating to better parallel worlds as a last resort for when their own becomes a lost cause in his eyes. His alternate universe equivalents regularly do so with their Mortys as well to the point that they don't even see them as people anymore, and it's revealed in Season 5 that the previous flashback with his wife and daughter Beth being murdered by another Rick wasn't a lie like he claimed, meaning every single timeline with the full Smith family existing together was this trope.
• The Robot Chicken sketch "The Truth Behind Alvin" reveals that whenever one of the Chipmunks dies, Dave replaces them with a new chipmunk, and has done this so many times, he has a rodent burial ground in his backyard. In an interview, he points out that the Chipmunks have been touring since 1958, and the average lifespan of a chipmunk is three years.
• Rocko's Modern Life: After Filbert's pet myna bird Turdy is killed by Heifer accidentally sitting on him, a guy with a pet monkey shows up to drop off a box of winged monkeys that are apparently Turdy's children with the monkey.
• The Simpsons:
  • Referenced in the very first episode of the series in Marge's Christmas letter.
    Marge: Our little cat Snowball was unexpectedly run over and went to Kitty Heaven. But we bought a new little cat, Snowball II, so I guess life goes on.
  • Referenced again in "Round Springfield": After the death of her mentor Bleeding Gums Murphy, Homer tries to console Lisa by reminding her how they got Snowball II, and that she can replace Murphy with "a new jazzman."
  • In the Treehouse of Horror segment "B.I.: Bartifical Intelligence," Bart, the original goldfish, wakes from his coma, builds himself a robotic shell, and comes back for revenge.
  • It turns out that the country singer Lurleen Lumpkin, who did have a crush on Homer in her debut episode in season three, has since then had a string of husbands who all look like Homer, except for being of different ethnicities.
  • In "I'm Going to Praiseland", Christian rock singer Rachel Jordan comes back into Ned's life for the first time since shortly after his wife Maude's death. Rachel ends any chance at their relationship after waking up to Ned cutting her hair like Maude's.
  • In the B-plot of "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot", Snowball II dies. Lisa goes though a series of replacement cats, who end up killing themselves in a barrage of accidents (and one apparent suicide). Near the end of the episode, the Crazy Cat Lady gives Lisa a cat that looks nearly identical to Snowball II, and because Lisa doesn't want to go through the hassle of buying a new pet bowl, she decides to call her new cat Snowball II and pretend the whole incident never happened. When Principal Skinner overhears, he calls Lisa out for pressing the Reset Button out of laziness, to which Lisa rebuts by calling him "Principal Tamzarian".
• South Park:
  • When Kenny was Killed Off for Real, the boys tried to make Butters dress in Kenny's coat and even called him Kenny until he stopped cooperating. Another episode implied there were different Kennys and their parents named each new kid "Kenny" to replace the last one. Then in the "Coon and Friends" trilogy it's subverted when it turns out that every child they have after Kenny dies IS Kenny being literally being reborn as a Hand Wave to him being killed and being back next episode. It's also gotten to the point where Kenny will shoot himself in the head when tired since he'll wake up the next day in his bed.
  • After Kyle is taken away by Apple to become part of the first HUMANCENTiPAD, Gerald and the boys go to the Geniuses for help. The Genuises offer them a replacement friend.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: It's all but stated that Norman Osborn sees Harry as a disappointment, and doesn't even care when his son does things to try and impress him. In sharp contrast, he serves as a mentor figure for Peter Parker, admiring the kid's intelligence and drive. He clearly sees Peter as the son he never had... or rather, the son he wanted.
  • While he's slightly better in Ultimate Spider-Man, Norman outright states at one point that he always wished Peter had been his son instead of Harry, and (when he's the Green Goblin) kidnaps Peter Parker and tries to make him "part of the family" by turning him into Carnage.
• A downplayed but rather tragic example in Star Wars Rebels: it's all but outright confirmed that the former Darth Maul latches on to Ezra Bridger to be his replacement for his murdered brother, whom Maul misses terribly with a hefty dose of My Greatest Failure.
• Steven Universe
  • A variation; "Last One Out of Beach City", Pearl falls head over heels for a human woman who looks almost identical to the deceased Rose Quartz, save for a very different taste in fashion. She manages to get the woman's number at the end of the episode after talking to her. With that said, Pearl doesn't treat her like she's Rose, and a Freeze-Frame Bonus reveals Pearl got a lot of other phone numbers, which means she isn't seeking a replacement. Considering Pearl herself was the one who originally suggested a Rose Quartz as Pink Diamond's alternate persona, it may very well be that she simply Has a Type.
  • Subverted when Steven uses the Room to talk to his mom. While he has fun with Cloud Rose, he realizes that she isn't his mother, just another figment of his desires. Cloud Rose does reassure him when he starts questioning what Rose did and tells him he knows Rose didn't create him to run away from her problems.
  • It is Played for Drama and played straight when Steven reveals to the Diamonds that he has Pink Diamond's gem, that she changed into Rose Quartz, and thus he is Pink Diamond's son. Yellow and Blue Diamond doesn't understand what "moms" are and treat Steven as their long-lost sister, much to his chagrin. White Diamond does know what a mom is, but she doesn't care at first; to her, Steven is just a human vessel for Pink Diamond to inhabit. She's blindsided when Pink doesn't reform after White removes the diamond gem from Steven, and is told by Pink Steven that his mother is "Gooooooooone!"
  • In the movie, the Big Bad, Spinel, used to be Pink Diamond's playmate and was abandoned by her, so she's seeking revenge on Steven and the Crystal Gems. At the end of the movie, Spinel does a Heel–Face Turn and is taken by the Diamonds, to whom Spinel reminds them of Pink.
• Teen Titans (2003): Beast Boy's love interest, Terra, is turned to stone. Then, in the Grand Finale several seasons later, he suddenly sees a girl who looks just like her and is convinced she's the real Terra (whose petrified body has vanished), even though she at least claims to not know him or remember anything about being a superhero. They do not wind up getting together in the end, and whether the girl really was Terra or just a lookalike is left ambiguous. Word of God says she is, and an issue of the show's official spin-off comic eventually confirms it. It's a throwback to the comics; however, in that continuity, the second Terra was a clone and the first really was dead.
• Unintentionally (and rather subtly) done in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012). When Hamato Yoshi loses his wife and baby daughter to an attack by Oroku Saki, he moves to New York and buys four baby turtles for company. One encounter with the Kraang and some Mutagen later, and Yoshi suddenly has four new sons to take care of.
• Ultimate Spider-Man: A fairly creepy version happens in an episode aptly titled "Carnage". The Goblin, after Harry rejected the Venom symbiote in the season one finale, is looking for someone to serve as the symbiote's new host. However, because of what the Goblin serum has done to his brain, he believes he's looking for a new son to replace Harry. Because he always liked how Peter Parker is more intelligent and driven than Harry, he abducts him. Made especially creepy when, after Peter wakes up Strapped to an Operating Table, the Goblin starts referring to him as son and injects him with the Carnage symbiote.
• In The Venture Bros., the accident-prone titular brothers have killed themselves numerous times, only to be replaced by identical clones (with their memories implanted) every time, a major plot point at the beginning of the second season although it's Zig-Zagged as Dr. Orpheus implies that Rusty made a Soul Jar through the memory implanting process and only their bodies are clones. Hero with an F in Good Dr. Venture seems to think this is no big deal and is later revealed to be a clone himself, which barely fazes him.

---