The Mirror Shows Your True Self in Live-Action TV series.
- The 10th Kingdom used an inversion. The Queen used a hypnotic mirror which showed her merely standing behind Virginia, when in fact she was strangling her. It wasn't until Virginia glanced to the side and saw the truth in another mirror that she was able to break free.
- 30 Rock:
- The show had an HD camera in one episode which shows the real you. Liz Lemon shows up as an old hag, Pete shows up as an old man, Kenneth the page shows up as a Muppet, and Jack Donaghy looks 20 years younger.
- Kenneth once mentioned that he sees only a white haze when he looks into a mirror.
- 7 Yüz: The episode "Hayatın Musikisi" plays with the concept in a rather innovative way. Oşa warns Pınar that seeing her own reflection will break the "spell" that empowers confidence and decreases inhibitions, and she goes to drastic lengths to maintain the façade. However, under the musical trigger Oşa teaches her to use, Pınar ceases to be her authentic self; she does not truly grow or improve, but is instead offered a figurative mask that projects the image she believes others want to see. This disparity is emphasized by the very song used to trigger her confidence mode, "Bambaşka Biri" (literally, "Somebody Different"), as well as its failure in the presence of Eray, who believed in Pınar and saw her strengths at the beginning of the story. Of course, Oşa's magical solution also turns out to be a farce. Only through recognizing the truth can Pınar authentically empower herself and truly gain confidence.
- Are You Afraid of the Dark?:
- The episode "The Tale of the Mystical Mirror", the antagonist is an old witch/beauty shop owner who uses illusions to maintain the appearance of youth, but mirrors reveal her true age. When the protagonist investigates the witch's house after her friends who work at the shop go missing, she realizes something is wrong when she can't find any mirrors in the house. Clearly taken from the folklore surrounding Transylvanian (Romanian) Countess Erzebet (Elizabeth) Bathory.
- In "The Tale of the Captured Souls", Peter avoids mirrors or getting his picture taken by a camera. Danny (the heroine) soon finds out through the mirror monitors in his secret laboratory that he is really 100 years old and that he has killed off visitors by Rapid Aging using the laboratory's Vampiric Draining mechanism. Partly inspired by Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, or possibly by the concept that pictures steal bits of the soul.
- Babylon 5: As John Sheridan prepares to leave for Z'ha'dum, there's an odd scene where he recalls in flashback (or is it a flashback?) the words of Kosh, who warned him against going. As the words are heard again, Kosh appears in the mirror over Sheridan's shoulder. Of course, had already been established that Sheriden had been Touched by Vorlons.
- Best Friends Whenever: When Cyd and Shelby travel to a specific time, their appearances (in their and the viewers' point of view) don't change. But when they look in the mirror (and in the way everyone else sees them), they are in the bodies of their past/future selves. A Running Gag is that they always take a selfie in every timeline they are in that shows what they look like then. Cue to them jumping to the 70s in which their appearance doesn't change even their selfies, due to the fact that they jumped to a timeline where they don't even exist.
- Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction: "Mirror of Truth" has this. A vain woman goes to a make-up specialist, only to find the job done not to her expectations, insulting the owner and leaving without paying. The owner swiftly curses her to look as ugly as she is inside. Soon, her fiancé calls off the marriage, she tries to fix her face with creams and finally asks a professional surgeon for plastic surgery. The viewer never once sees her face ever since the moment her engagement is called off with her fiancé being unwilling to look her in the face, leading to wild expectations about how she looks. She still is very beautiful, but when she looks in the mirror, she sees a disgustingly disfigured face staring back at her. The host suggests the curse allowed her to, in his own words, look into her soul and see the ugliness that existed there.
- Charmed (1998) plays this straight or inverts it on several occasions:
- When a human is possessed by an alchemic life essence, the guest sees, and can speak to, the host's trapped soul on mirrors and other reflective surfaces; others see a normal reflection. This happens to a businessman and, later, Piper.
- When a Cupid projects Paige into her husband Henry's mind, Henry sees Paige in the mirror.
- Inverted when the sisters fake their death, they cast a glamour spell that makes them look as different people to anyone "but not those we call family". They (and the audience) see each other as their true selves, while all mirrors show the glamour.
- Columbo. Played for laughs in "Murder, a Self-Portrait". The Villain of the Week is an artist who spends the episode painting a portrait of Columbo, but warns him that it will reveal his dark, tormented policeman's soul. It turns out to be... just like the Columbo we know.
- Dead Like Me: The camera sees the main characters (who are all grim reapers who died in an accident or a murder) as they were in life; mirrors show how they look to the other characters. This change in appearance is to keep anyone who knew them in life from catching on.
- Doctor Who:
- In "The Power of the Daleks", Patrick Troughton's Doctor looks into a mirror and sees William Hartnell; a reassurance to an audience who've never seen a regeneration before that he is the same man.
- At the end of "Amy's Choice", the Doctor sees the Dream Lord, really the Doctor's dark side reflected in the glass of the TARDIS console for a moment.
- "Vincent and the Doctor": The Doctor has a mirror that can identify various species, a gift from his godmother that has been sitting in the TARDIS junk-drawer for over a millennium. He quickly tests it on himself to see if it still works, leading it to bring up the First and Second Doctor before he puts it down satisfied with this field-test.
- In Dracula (2020), even when he restores his appearance of youth by feeding on people, Dracula (at least to his own eyes) always appears as a withered old man in mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Inverted with Lucy; while her reflection has her appear to be just as stunningly beautiful as she was in life, in the flesh she's... pretty much what you'd expect her to look like after being cremated.
- Subverted in the tv movie The Forget-Me-Not Murders. The detective played by Richard Crenna brings the murder suspect played by Tyne Daly a large rectangular-wrapped parcel which he says is her 'true self'. She just scoffs that he's obviously got a mirror in there. "I'm supposed to see myself and...go into shock? You are truly pathetic." So she removes the wrapping and is shocked to see a rather uncomplimentary painting of her by a former friend.
- Good Omens: When the psychic Madame Tracy is possessed by the angel Aziraphale, she looks into a mirror and sees him looking back. He gives her a little wave.
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: In "Protean Challenge", the shape-shifter Proteus is revealed in mirrors.
- Kamen Rider Dragon Knight: Played With. General Xaviax approaches potential Riders disguised as a human, but when he glances at his reflection, his true form is revealed.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: When "Halbrand" conjures an illusion of the raft where he met Galadriel, his reflection is that of Sauron's Tin Tyrant form.
- Lucifer plays with it, where a Glamour Failure is often shown via a reflective surface but doesn't happen every time there's a mirror.
- MADtv: The "That's My White Mama" sketches features a Sassy Black Woman who is currently occupying the body of a fat white dude (Artie Lange). When she acts like a Boomerang Bigot by opposing her daughter dating a white boy, the boy in question tells the white mama to look in the mirror. It turns out she only sees a black woman.
- La Mujer en el Espejo (The Woman in the Mirror), a Latin-American telenovela, has an interesting variation: a magic mirror that "contains" the image of a beautiful woman. It can be used by women to take on her looks, but regular mirrors will still reflect their true appearance.
- MythQuest: Whenever Alex or Cleo go into a myth they see themselves and each other as they are, but the rest of the world and anything reflective shows them as the characters within the myth that they replace.
- Once Upon a Time: When a young ogre is captured in the forest, Belle wants to be certain he's evil before taking drastic measures. While she goes to fetch a magic mirror that reveals the monster within, Gaston attacks the ogre while faking self-defense. The magic mirror reveals Gaston's true evil nature when his reflection, not the ogre's, show a red glow in his eyes.
- The Outer Limits (1995): In "First Anniversary", aliens stranded on Earth are able to fool the senses of the men they marry into thinking that they are beautiful human women, changing outward appearances each time. After a year, the glamour power wears off as the humans become acclimated, able to see through any form. As one of the victims started to sense something was wrong, he was able to see his wife's true form for a second in the mirror of their bathroom.
- Quantum Leap: Inverted. On-screen, Sam appears as himself. But mirrors and reflective surfaces show the true appearance of whomever he's leaped into. This startles him in the series finale when he sees himself in the mirror with gray hair. This is also used to great effect in the episode "Blood Moon", where he's kept from seeing a mirror the entire episode as he investigates claims of a vampire on the loose. When he finally glances into a polished plate, he sees nothing.
- Salem: Mary's reflection is that of an old hag, one she claims represents the state of her soul.
- The Sandman (2022): In "Calliope", the three Fates visit Calliope in a room with a mirror. In several shots, one of the Three is seen reflected in the mirror, and each time the reflection is a different one of the Three than the one standing in front of it, signifying that all three are aspects of a single whole.
- Stargate Universe:
- Most common in the latest branch of the franchise, it's also been used elsewhere. Ancient tech allows two people to switch minds. The controller is the one whom we see. The controlled person is visible to the other characters, and in mirrors, TV feeds, photographs, etc.
- That tech originated in Stargate SG-1, with Daniel and Vala looking into a mirror and discovering that they've been transported into other people's bodies.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Interface" starts with Geordi walking around. He then looks at a reflective surface, and we are shown a cylinder hovering in the reflection instead of the engineer. It turns out Geordi was using a telepresence system to move as if he was the drone. In this case, the mirror reveal is for the audience.
- Star Trek: Voyager: In "Infinite Regress", Seven of Nine starts exhibiting a peculiar form of split personalities in which she unwillingly channels others who were assimilated by the Borg; each time she does, a nearby reflective surface shows who she's becoming (a little girl, a Klingon warrior, etc.).
- The true face of several monsters in Supernatural that can pass for humans (like wraiths, changelings, and sirens) are revealed by mirrors. In "Sam Interrupted", Dean is watching a mirror dome for a wraith he knows is in the building. However, the wraith has already infected him with a hallucinogen, so Dean ends up attacking the wrong man.
- The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Dead Man's Shoes", while possessing Maddie Duncan's body, Susan Montgomery sees her own reflection in the mirror instead of Maddie's.
- Twin Peaks has two scenes where BOB showed up in the reflection of the person he was possessing. Said mirrors tend to be damaged. In The Return, it turns out BOB was not controlling Cooper's body, just passively inhabiting the body of Cooper's Evil Twin, but a look in the mirror briefly shows a fragment of his real face, confirming BOB is still there after all those years.
- Ultra Series
- Alien Nowar from Ultraman Cosmos have a human disguise which is dispelled when reflected upon a mirror. Also, shooting his reflection can actually hurt him.
- An episode of Ultraman X have Isamu bunking in with the Nebula House, a trio of residents who turns out to be aliens in disguise. One of the residents, an Alien Valky, was brushing his teeth one morning, forgetting there's a human living with them - cue a terrified Isamu hiding in a nearby closet seeing the alien's true form reflected on the bathroom mirror. Luckily the Nebula House aliens are non-hostile...
- Warehouse 13: In "Fractures", Artie notices Alice Liddell's reflection in a serving tray carried by a hotel waitress. He and the other Warehouse agents realize they can use reflective surfaces to track Alice as she body jumps from one hotel guest to another.
- The X-Files:
- "Dreamland" is a "Freaky Friday" Flip in which Mulder switches places with Man in Black Morris Fletcher. As in the Quantum Leap example, the audience continues to see Mulder as Mulder, but his reflection reveals that everyone else sees him as Fletcher, and vice versa.
- "The Unnatural" is about an alien who falls in love with baseball, taking on the form of a black player in 1947 Roswell. At one stage while he's asleep another character sees his true Grey alien face reflected in the window of the bus they're traveling on. The image disappears when he wakes up.
- In "Chimera", every mirror at the crime scenes was shattered so the killer would not see her true self. She suppressed this side of her personality and honestly was not aware that she was responsible for the murders.
