Tomato In The Mirror / Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Fern, who was created from the fusion of the Grass Sword and the Finn Sword, is born convinced that he's the real Finn Mertens and the other guy is just an imitator. He has a major tantrum when he finally realizes he's the imitator, and he has a long and very complicated journey trying to find his identity and live up to his hero legacy.
• The Batman:
  • In "Gotham's Ultimate Criminal Mastermind", while D.A.V.E. is aware that he's a robot, he believes that he's a human supervillain who's been imprisoned inside of a robotic body — in reality, he's a computer program designed by Hugo Strange with the memories and abilities of Batman's rogues gallery. When Batman asks him about his origin, he rattles off the origins of several other villains and then has a meltdown when he realizes the truth.
    D.A.V.E.: But...I am Gotham's ultimate criminal mastermind! I consider all possibilities! How could I not have considered... this?
  • In "Strange New World", Batman and Robin try to distribute the cure for a madman's Zombie Apocalypse drug. Turns out they were the ones under the effects of a drug that gives you wild hallucinations about everyone else being a zombie, and that same hallucinogen was what they were about to spread through the entire city.
• Ben 10: Alien Force has a duo (ex-trio) of alien hunters that think they were mutated by DNAliens, and hate all aliens. At the end of the episode, they are told that the reason they look like aliens is because They. Are. Part alien. NO. Really?
  • Also Tyler in the episode "Inside Man", turning out to be a DNAlien who still is fighting it and trying to be human.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • "His Silicon Soul": A robot duplicate of Batman goes through this trope before his programming activates. The plan of the AI that created it is only foiled because the duplicate was programmed too well: it was programmed with all of the real Batman's personality traits, including his steadfast refusal to kill.
    • "Growing Pains": Clayface forms a separate sentient being, in the form of a young girl, to scout for him. She forgets who she is and is found by Robin who befriends her. She tells Robin of a man who is chasing her, and when they encounter him, he seems to be her father; he tells the girl (Annie) that "It's time to come home." In the heartbreaking final scene, Annie realizes what she is, and throws herself into Clayface to save Robin, being absorbed in the process. Robin then throws batarangs into the tank of solvent above them, causing streams to pour out onto Clayface as he demands he bring Annie back. Since Annie gaining separate sentience was a fluke to begin with, Clayface can't. Batman catches Robin's arm just as he's about to hurl the batarang that will kill Clayface.
    • "Judgment Day": Two-Face is targeted by a violent vigilante who calls himself the Judge and is determined to get him first. He and Batman are in agreement on this, as the Judge has already nearly killed both the Penguin and Killer Croc, and eventually nearly succeeds in killing Two-Face by turning his own hideout into a Death Trap — going to so far as to seal off an escape route that Two-Face thought only he knew about — that Batman has to get them both out of. As it turns out, the Judge is actually a third Split Personality of Harvey Dent himself, created in response to his Two-Face persona in order to fight crime. As Batman says in the end. "That's why he knew about the escape route. He knew everything about Two-Face... except that he was Two-Face."
  • Superman: The Animated Series: Bizarro is full of Fake Memories that have him convinced he's Superman. He even convincingly looked and acted like the real Superman, at least, initially...
  • Justice League:
    • A variation of this trope occurs in "Paradise Lost" when Superman and Wonder Woman had illusions in which they saw each other as monsters. Fighting ensues. After a while of brutal fighting from both sides, Superman discovers, to his astonishment, Wonder Woman's reflection in water instead of the monster's. Superman tries to expose the ruse to Wonder Woman, but his attempts are futile. Following a small, but brutally one-sided fight, Wonder Woman finally gets an answer to "Where is Superman?!" The monster points to a mirror revealing that she's been fighting her friend the entire time.
    • In the two-part episode "Legends", a few members of the League get transported to an alternate universe. They find themselves in a bizarre world that is seemingly a pastiche of the retro Golden Age and Silver Age comic books, with its own (cornball) version of the Justice League, the Justice Guild of America, who regularly battle against equally cornball villains. However, after some investigation by Green Lantern and Hawkgirl, it's revealed that the entire city was a Lotus-Eater Machine created by a Reality Warper, and the real Justice Guild died long ago trying (and failing) to prevent a nuclear war; in other words, the current Guild learns that they aren't even real. When Ray attacks and defeats the League members, the Justice Guild ultimately decides to fight Ray despite knowing that defeating him would result in a Dream Apocalypse that would take them with it. "We died once to save this Earth. And we can do it again."
• DuckTales (2017):
  • Parodied in the episode "The Terror of the Terra-Fermians!", where Launchpad, after watching a B-Horror of Mole Monster, thinks that Dewey is one of them in disguise. Dewey, getting frustrated of the suspicion, asks how can Launchpad that by his logic, know is he not a mole monster himself. Launchpad actually ends up considering this, stopping his paranoia.
  • Played straight in "The Last Adventure!", when Webby learns that she's actually an Opposite-Sex Clone of Scrooge that was created by F.O.W.L.
• In the Fanboy and Chum Chum episode "Monster in the Mist", Boog has been staring at a Mini Chomp game for multiple hours that it renders his vision blurry. When he sees Fanboy with Chum Chum sitting on his head, he hallucinates the two as a scary monster and freaks out; the boys, thinking there's a monster around, vow to help Boog catch it; and even Lenny is led in to mistake the two for the monster when cheese spray gets all over his glasses. Of course, the boys don't realize they were the monster the whole time until Boog wears glasses and the cheese is wiped off of Lenny's, and he angrily chases them out for nothing. But then an actual monster similar to the one he hallucinated appears. Go figure.
• Several examples in Futurama;
  • One of the "Scary Door" gags: "Why should I believe you? You're Hitler!"
  • In the episode "The Honking", Bender is run over by a "were-car" while staying at a mansion he inherited from his uncle. When people back in New New York are getting run over, Bender believes the were-car followed him, until it turns out Bender became a were-car himself.
  • Subverted in "Into The Wild Green Yonder". Fry looks around to find the person whose thoughts he can't read (the dark one). After not finding anyone, he concludes that he is himself the dark one, as his thoughts can't be read by other telepaths. However, the dark one is actually a small alien leech that Leela keeps nearby.
  • Played straight in Bender's Big Score though. Fry loses Leela to a man named Lars. He later travels to the past and splits in two, with the original Fry returning to the future and the time loop created copy staying and living 12 years in Fry's original time. When Bender travels back in time to kill this Fry, his attack burns Fry's hair off and damages his vocal cords, changing his voice. Time-loop Fry looks in the mirror and realizes that he is Lars and then travels to the future to court Leela.
  • In "Rebirth", an interesting variation occurs in the first episode of the revived series. The Planet Express ship crashes after the events of the last movie, killing everyone, except the Professor and an amnesiac Fry, who is able to revive everyone with a stem cell machine. Leela remains in coma, so Fry builds a robot version of her in despair. The robot Leela learns of her true nature, but aside from some Angst, isn't concerned...until of course the real Leela wakes up, and they battle each other, so Fry is forced to shoot either one, and ends up shooting himself. Turns out Fry himself, was a robot, the real him was killed in the crash, while Leela, whom he shielded, survived. Since there was little left of Fry, Leela created a robot Fry. A malfunction, however, killed Leela forcing the Professor to use the rebirth machine on her along with the other dead crew members, and destroyed Robot Fry's memory. The issue is resolved when Fry is resurrected, and Robot Fry and Leela decide to hook up with each other.
  • In "The Ghost in the Machines", Bender's software ghost is perplexed and frustrated when his coworkers appear to be ignoring him, but stunned when the Robot Devil explains to him that he's dead: "I thought I just had laryngitis and antigravity."
• Hilda and the Mountain King: During the first act, the titular main character is told twice that she is a troll, but both times she refuses to believe it... until she sees her own reflection and starts crying.
• Infinity Train has this occur to one of its protagonists. The fifth episode of Book 3 reveals that Hazel, a young girl with a seemingly malfunctioning number and no memories of her parents, learns that she's actually a denizen native to the train. A few episodes later, she discovers that she's an imperfect clone of Alrick (Amelia's deceased lover).
• Invincible (2021): In the second season, despite having blown himself to bits in season one in a futile attempt to slow Omni-Man down and buy some time, Donald is seemingly alive and well. After a brief encounter with Debbie leaves her looking like she'd seen a ghost, and having no luck getting any answers from Cecil, Donald begins looking for answers himself. In episode 4 of season two he manages to hack into Cecil's classified documents and is horrified to discover video footage of his own death at the hands of Omni-Man. Panicked, he then stabs himself in the arm with a knife while in the restroom to see if he still bleeds normally, which he does and at first Donald is relieved... only to then panic again when he realizes the knife he used is now bent.
• Justice League Action: The Halloween Episode "Trick or Threat" has its main characters initially appear to be four trick-or-treating children dressed as Batman, Zatanna, Dr. Fate and John Constantine. When they end up confronting Klarion, they see their reflections in the House of Mystery and discover that they're actually the real Batman, Zatanna, Dr. Fate and John Constantine magically transformed into costumed children.
• Used in an episode of Legion of Super Heroes (2006). Superman realizes that he is actually the shape-shifting Ron-Karr, tricked into believing that he is Superman in order to be put to use as a spy. And the only reason Ron-Karr was planted there was because Chameleon Boy (another shapeshifter) was planted in the villain's team with the same method, needing a similar Tomato in the Mirror moment to get him back.
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Kipo learns in the sixth episode that she's actually half-Mute, with the ability to shapeshift parts of her body into that of a jaguar to allow for night vision, super-strength, and enhanced sense of smell and hearing. She later learns from her father that he and her mother were geneticists who spliced her DNA with an animal mutagen in hopes that her existence could serve as an example of how humans could safely return to the surface without being in constant fear of the Death World it had become. He also reveals that she'll eventually be capable of shapeshifting into a Mega-Mute jaguar in addition to her base abilities. When Kipo learns of this, she reacts with glee of turning into a Mega-Jaguar.
• In Ninjago, Zane has gone his whole life not knowing if he actually has any parents. Guided by a mysterious falcon, he eventually stumbles upon a hidden laboratory. He first discovers the falcon is actually a robot, then sees mysterious blueprints. Moments later, he realizes these aren't just any blueprints...they're his.
• The Owl House featured this two episodes in a row:
  • In "Hollow Mind", Luz and Hunter end up in Belos' Mental World, where they learn through both his memories and his inner self that not only did he lie about the dangers of "Wild magic" and what the Titan the Boiling Isles are made from wants, but his Golden Guards were all artificially made beings called Grimwalkers whom Belos killed when they turned against him, with Hunter being the latest one. They were also implied to be cloned from someone Belos once knew (possibly his brother), and the same episode also reveals that Belos is actually a human. Several episodes later, Hunter says that he doesn't know if this means he's a witch or a human.
  • The very next episode, "Edge of the World", has Luz, King, and Hooty following a letter left by someone who appears to be a member of King's species. They call themselves "Titan Trappers", but Luz and Hooty realise that the way they describe Titans applies to King. Not only that, but they're not really demons, just witches who dress up like Titans in order to catch them. Luz ends up telling King that he's a Titan when she has to stop the trappers from sacrificing him. It's also strongly implied that his father became the Boiling Isles.
• Rick and Morty: In the episode "Mortiplicity", Rick reveals he built "decoy families", which are completely identical to the real Smiths, to protect them from vengeful aliens. But because the decoys don't know they're decoys, they start believing they are the real Smith family and begin building their own decoys and so on and so forth. Summer points out this possibility to Rick (over multiple iterations), but he's so sure of his own creations that he brushes it off. She's proven right when the decoy families start killing each other off in preemptive strikes under the impression they're the real family. At the end it turns out none of the families the episode followed were the real family.
• In one Robot Chicken sketch, two boys enter a junkyard, boasting that the junkyard dog won't catch them. The Junkyard Dog jumps out and one of the boys tells him he died in 1998. Junkyard Dog groans in disappointment, sprouts a halo and ascends to heaven.
• On The Secret Saturdays, the Saturday family and their nemesis, V.V. Argost, spend the first season trying to retrieve clues that would help locate Kur, a dangerous ancient Sumerian being that ruled over all cryptids, only to find that Zak, who has always had the ability to communicate with these creatures and considered their best counter to Kur, is in fact Kur's reincarnation.
• South Park: Tuong Lu Kim, the owner of the Shitty, uh City Wok Chinese restaurant is not actually Chinese. He's Dr. Janus, a white man with multiple personality disorder.
• Played for Laughs by SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • The page image is from the episode "Hall Monitor", in which SpongeBob and Patrick try to enforce the law, but end up breaking through open windows and causing car crashes. The public end up starting a manhunt for the "maniac" that caused all this trouble, and the rest of the episode derives a lot of its humour from the fact that SpongeBob and Patrick can't figure it out despite how increasingly obvious it is.
  • In the episode "Rule of Dumb", when Squidward makes all of Bikini Bottom realize that "King" Patrick has no real power of authority, Patrick goes on an angry tirade against SpongeBob, insisting he's not a corrupt ruler. When he realizes SpongeBob fearfully sneaked out, Patrick decides to get himself the drink he ordered SpongeBob to get him, when he sees his monstrous reflection in the mirror. Only then does he realize why he ended up alone, and happily abdicates the throne.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • Parodied in "Blood Moon Ball", where a skeletal horse is shocked to discover that he's been dead all along.
  • Played more seriously in "Monster Bash" where Miss Heinous discovers that she's actually a half-monster named Meteora, and the daughter of Queen Eclipsa and her monster lover.
  • A possible example in "Escape From The Pie Folk", where the Pie King claims that Festivia, the girl who Meteora was replaced with to become Queen, was originally from Pie Island, making Moon and Star related to the Pie Folk. However, since the Pie Folk are known for being liars, it's unknown if this is really the case or not.
• Steven Universe:
  • Steven always knew that he was half-Gem. What he didn't know until "A Single Pale Rose" was that the gem he inherited from his mother wasn't a Quartz gem, but a Diamond.
  • "Change Your Mind": After being proven wrong about Steven being Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond's Meat Puppet and getting called out by Steven for acting like a child, White Diamond, who believes herself to be flawless, gets embarrassed and blushes bright pink, along with all of the other Gems she's controlling. She realizes that if all of her puppets are blushing, then she must be the one blushing, meaning that she's not perfect and flawless as she had believed.
• At the cliffhanger end of the Season Two finale of Transformers: Animated, Sari looks down at her injured elbow to see circuitry poking out, and her adoptive dad, robotics genius Isaac Sumdac, responds "We need to talk." In the next season, it's revealed that Sari was a Cybertronian Protoform that Isaac somehow came across, and sampled his DNA to create her human form.
  • Except Isaac isn't her adoptive dad. He's the genuine article, even when you consider the revelation of Sari's "birth". After all, his DNA was required in order to bring her "online" and was what made her part-human, effectively making her his biological daughter at the same time as being a robotic alien.
• In Ultimate Spider-Man (2012), when Scarlet Spider learns he is not a teenager from the streets suffering from Doc Ock's brainwashing as he'd come to believe. Rather he is a Synthezoid imbued with Spider-Man's DNA. He does not take the revelation well, prompting a Heroic BSoD.
• In the first season of Young Justice (2010), Red Arrow is the most adamant about finding The Mole in the Team, placing suspicion on Artemis (who isn't really Green Arrow's niece and whose parents and sister are criminals), Superboy (who's a Cadmus creation), and Miss Martian (who's lying about her true appearance, and though she is Martian Manhunter's niece, he doesn't know her that well). It turns out that he was unknowingly the mole, subconsciously programmed to create dissent, and while under Mind Control he puts the entire Justice League under mind control as well. In the next episode, it goes From Bad to Worse. He isn't even the real Roy Harper, but a clone created to be the villains' pawn.

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