How do you free the hero who has been captured and securely locked up in the Evil Overlord's dungeon? Replace him with another character with sufficiently similar features to fool the guards.
The easiest way to accomplish this is by having a moment alone with the prisoner and then swapping clothes or bodies. Or the guard is being Mugged for Disguise.
In a variation of this trope, the Doppelgänger is the one being imprisoned in the first place.
Compare Criminal Doppelgänger, Bride and Switch, Twin Switch. Contrast Trojan Prisoner.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: The titular heroine is smuggled out of custody by having a girl of similar build take her place in the prison cell. It helps that the girl was wearing a face-concealing veil.
Comic Books
- Indestructible Hulk: In issue #3, when A.I.M. is abducting Professor Burke, they've conveniently put him in an isolation helmet, so his head is completely concealed. During a skirmish, S.H.I.E.L.D. swaps Banner, wearing identical clothes and a dummy helmet, for Burke, getting him (and therefore Hulk) inside the A.I.M. base.
- The Killing Joke begins with Batman visiting the Joker in Arkham Asylum to try and reason with him. When he grabs the Joker's hand, white body paint rubs off onto his glove, causing him to realise that the Joker has escaped and left an imposter behind to take his place.
- Spider-Man: In long-running story arc The Clone Saga Peter is arrested for crimes committed by Kaine, the first successfully created Parker clone, during the time of Kraven's Last Hunt in Utah. By this time, Ben Reilly, Peter's other clone, has returned to New York. At the end of the arc "The Mark of Kaine", Ben offers to take Peter's place in prison, while Peter goes back home to tend to his wife Mary-Jane, whose pregnancy is just in the early months.
- What If? (Marvel Comics): One story has Captain America being held for execution by the Kree. Hawkeye sneaks into prison to release him and take his place, betting that their physical similarities would be enough to fool the Kree, who have great difficulty distinguishing one human from another.
Films — Live-Action
- Ernest Goes to Jail: With help from his Amoral Attorney, Ernest's Criminal Doppelgänger Felix Nash arranges for Ernest to tour the prison for a Jury Duty assignment, where he knocks him out and trades places with him.
- The Great White Hope: Jack Jefferson gets convicted for violating the Mann Act (transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes — though in his case it's strictly because he had sex with a white woman). After his conviction, he gets the opportunity to go home to see his mother. He arranges for the Detroit Blue Jays (Negro Baseball team) to visit as well. Jack trades places with the leader of the Blue Jays so he can leave the country while the cops are watching the house. They don't particularly look like each other, but the Blue Jays leader is wearing a copy of Jack's loud shirt.
Jack: Rudy'll spend the afternoon by the window here while I go rollin' 'cross the border with the Jays.Pastor: They'll find you out, Jack.Jack: Hey, who find me and who lookin'? Y'all heard that old sayin' how all niggers look alike.
- Iron Man 2: Justin Hammer pays to have another prisoner who has Ivan Vanko's uniform number and resembles him in some way placed in his cell. Vanko kills the prisoner and uses an explosive hidden in mashed potatoes to make it seem like he's dead while Hammer's men get him out of prison.
- The Man in the Iron Mask: The titular prisoner is the identical twin of the king, whom The Three Musketeers rescue from the prison. The end of the movie has the prisoner and the king essentially switch places.
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout: The Apostles, followers of former Syndicate leader Solomon Lane led by John Lark, call for a meeting in which Ethan Hunt and the IMF are expected to give up Lane in exchange for the lost plutonium needed to build and set off nuclear bombs. The IMF decide to give them Benji instead of the real Lane, so they have Benji dress up in a latex mask and fake his voice, while Agent August Walker of the CIA keeps an eye on the real Solomon Lane to make sure he doesn't escape. Walker immediately moves to free Lane, revealing himself to the audience as John Lark. Unfortunately for him, the IMF knew exactly who he was the whole time and the "real" Solomon Lane is Benji in disguise, while the "fake" Solomon Lane they escorted out in front of Lark's own eyes couldn't give him or Lark away by revealing the double-cross.
- Muppets Most Wanted: Constantine the Frog is the film's main villain and Kermit the Frog's Criminal Doppelgänger. Constantine breaks out of prison and convinces most of the Muppets that he's Kermit, while the real Kermit is arrested and sent to prison in Constantine's place.
- Woman At War: At the end of the film, Halla is arrested for environmental terrorism and sentenced to prison, but switches places with her twin sister Ása, who has decided she agrees with the cause and wants to help.
Literature
- The Count of Monte Cristo: A switcheroo among prisoners in this case. For his escape, Edmond switches places with the corpse of his deceased room neighbour and mentor Abbé Faria, expecting to dig himself out of a shallow grave overnight. To his surprise, his body bag, with a weight tied around his feet, gets dumped from the prison walls into the sea instead.
- A Dance with Dragons: Jeyne Poole is forced to pretend to be Arya and marry Ramsay who keeps her as his Sex Slave. Abel's washerwomen, with Theon's help, make a plan to get her out: they pretend to be serving girls to get access to her room and have her switch clothes with Squirrel, who is the most similar to her in height and build, while Squirrel climbs out the window to safety.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Barty's father chose to make a public example of his son, and sentenced him to a term of life imprisonment in Azkaban at the age of eighteen to nineteen. When Barty's mother was dying, she wished to see her son freed. She and Barty Crouch Sr. went to visit their son in his cell, and by using Polyjuice Potion, they were able to reverse their appearances. Barty Jr. was smuggled out of Azkaban disguised as his mother while his mother stayed behind in a cell disguised as her son. She died soon after and was buried under her son's name.
- Ivanhoe: Wamba the jester, disguised as a monk and tossing off the occasional bit of Latin, is allowed to enter the besieged Castle Torquilstone to give the Saxon prisoners there the last rites. Left alone with them, he promptly switches clothes with his master Cedric, allowing the latter to use the same disguise to walk out of his cell and eventually the castle.
- The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues opens with DiGriz being condemned to death by drowning for trying to rob the mint. The League decide they have a better use for his talents, and so send in one of their agents to act as his lawyer, with an assistant who's actually an android. The android changes places with DiGriz, allowing him to escape while the android is 'drowned'.
- A Tale of Two Cities: This is invoked to get Charles Darnay out of prison. Sydney Carton forces Charles' accusers to admit they can't identify him since he looks identical to Sydney.
- World of the Five Gods:
- In "The Prisoner of Limnos," Nikys and Penric enter the convent of Limnos to rescue Nikys' mother, with Penric disguised as a woman. Nikys' mother then leaves Limnos disguised as the woman Penric had been posing as.
- In The Curse of Chalion, Iselle and Betriz are not held in confinement but do have a troop of guards keeping a close watch on them. They escape by being allowed to go out walking (since they obviously can't escape on foot), exchanging clothing with a pair of unnamed women, and riding off while the now-disguised women go back to the castle under the watch of the guards.
Live-Action TV
- 'Allo 'Allo!: After Series 5, Monsieur Roger LeClerc's actor Jack Haig was diagnosed with cancer and was too ill to return to the series. Rather than recast the role , it was decided to introduce Derek Royle as Roger's brother, Ernest. Series 6's first episode, "Desperate Doings in the Graveyard", has René briefly explain that Roger switched places with his brother in the nick as the food in the prison was better than the food at Café René.
- Diagnosis: Murder: Mentioned and defied in the episode "Santa Claude", with the last act focusing on Mark and the team trying to get a dying man who was falsely accused of murder away from the sheriff's deputy planning to extradite him for escaping prison. As the man is preparing to act as Santa for the kids at Community General (which the deputy begrudgingly lets him do at Mark's request) and is about to start, the deputy tells him "If I start seeing two Santas, I'm gonna shoot first and sort the details later". Mark has something else in mind anyway.
- Mission: Impossible: One episode's plan centers around a subversion. Tasked with getting a political prisoner out of The Alcatraz, the team goes through a lot of trouble to briefly talk to the prisoner, then open the door to his cell, close it again, and leave. When the guards return, they discover that the prisoner's cell has been accessed (part of the security is a logger that tells how many times the door has opened, which doesn't match the guard's log), and find the prisoner is acting out of character (at the IMF team's request) and conclude that there has been a switcheroo when there hasn't. Since they think the prisoner has already escaped, they then see nothing wrong with turning the "double" over to a security officer from the capital (Cinnamon) to be "taken elsewhere for interrogation".
- Space Cases: In "Prisoner of Luff", a prisoner named Sofiana Mrtz manages to smuggle Catalina into her high-security cell to serve her sentence for her. As the guards only look at the cell numbers and whether or not the cell is occupied, they don't even notice that Catalina isn't even the same species as the prisoner who's supposed to be there. This is incredibly unfortunate for Catalina, as Sofiana was scheduled to have her mind erased before she managed to break out. Luckily, her crewmates manage to rescue her.
- Tracker (2001): Cole gets arrested in a Frame-Up for murder engineered by Zin’s goons using the human actor Cole took his physical appearance from. Cole knows he can only get to the bottom of it and prove his innocence if he’s free and can access his improvised technology so he and Mel engineer a switch by luring the actor into a meeting while Cole is being moved in a truck and using Cole’s Super-Speed ability to switch him with the actor.
Music
- Vocaloid: * NILFRUITS' "Shama" does this in the finale of its music video. The seductive prisoner Kalmia ends up making an ally of the guard Clay Pool; and after she successfully enchants Clay, they decide to switch clothes so Kalmia can escape prison. Clay then distracts the other guards by running around the prison, while Kalmia looks on and laughs at her gullible compatriot.
Video Games
- Dragon Age: Inquisition: This is Leliana's solution to breaking Warden Blackwall out of prison. She swaps him out with a double to fake his death.
- Poptropica: In "Escape from Pelican Rock Island", you are framed by the Booted Bandit, an Identical Stranger to you except for the fact that he wears boots — he captures you and leaves you at the scene of the crime while he escapes. It's up to you to escape the prison and prove your innocence.
Web Animation
- An episode of GEOWeasel has Jimbob being arrested and put in jail due to the police mistaking him for Weas, who is on a wanted poster. When Nar and Weas arrive at the prison to claim his innocence, the police look at the poster again and realize that Jimbob looks nothing like the guy on it. They let Jim go free and threateningly approach Weas... before arresting Nar (who looks even less like the poster) and throwing him in the brig. Despite Nar's threats, Weas is perfectly happy to leave him in there.
Western Animation
- Centurions: In "Return of Cassandra", Cassandra Cross' Evil Twin Lilith imprisons her sister and impersonates her as part of one of Doctor Terror's schemes. It's not a perfect impersonation — viewers who saw "That Old Black Magic" will immediately notice that "Cassandra" is acting a bit different and that her magic is red instead of blue.
- Cow and Chicken: This is Played for Laughs in "Field Trip to Folsom Prison". During a field trip to the local prison, Chicken takes the nametag and outfit of one of the convicts while said convict joins the class, wearing a rubber glove on his head for disguise. Neither the prison nor Cow is any the wiser to it until Chicken tells the prison warden and Cow realizes that the convict is too nice to be her brother. This is all in spite of the fact that the convict is a large adult human and Chicken is... a chicken.
- DuckTales (1987): In Duck In The Iron Mask, Dewey uses a variation to distract the guard while Huey and Louie escape. Taking advantage of being identical triplets, Dewey sits in front of a three-way mirror so that, to the guard, it still looks like all three boys are in their cell.
- Garfield and Friends: In "Jailbird Jon", Jon goes to a prison to do a lecture about cartooning. While there, a convict exchanges places with him and escapes in his car. Garfield manages to trick the convict into thinking that Jon's car has broken down and then knocks him out with the car's hood so the police can arrest him. In the end, Jon is set free, but this time, the convict manages to exchange places with Garfield.
- Little Lulu: During one episode of The Little Lulu Show, a criminal called Marty the Midget breaks free from his prison cell and gets Tubby arrested in his place. It does not help that they look so similar.
- Mr. Bean: The Animated Series: In "Wanted", an escaped convict, who resembles Mr. Bean, takes refuge in his flat. The police wrongly assume Bean is the convict and arrest him, whereupon he is sent to prison. The real convict delights in freedom until he meets Mrs. Wicket. Being mistaken as a criminal who got out of prison, Mr. Bean ends up being the scapegoat for the let-loose criminal. The lookalikes end up doing time on their jobs separately as a different person. Mistaken for an escaped convict, Bean is carted off to jail where he finds that, with a little imagination, prison can be quite nice actually. The real convict finds life less cozy under the thumb of Mr. Bean's landlady.
- The Patrick Star Show: In "Patrick's Prison Pals", prisoner Sockeye Sammy takes Patrick's clothes and passes off as him while Patrick is left in his prison uniform. This allows Sockeye to leave the prison while Patrick is stuck, and nobody (except Squidina) notices they're different people.
- Phineas and Ferb: The gang goes on a "mind share vacation" where they swap brains with some friendly aliens. Unfortunately those aliens were actually criminals who tricked them in order to swap out of an intergalactic prison, with the kids trapped in the bodies of the aliens inside.
- TaleSpin: In "Bringing Down Babyface", Baloo is tasked with taking Babyface half-Nelson to a high-security prison. Before Baloo arrives, Babyface manages to knock out Officer Malarkey and paint their uniforms to make it look like he's the officer and Malarkey is the prisoner. Babyface manages to evade Malarkey, who thinks Baloo is helping him escape. Baloo then has to clear his name by finding Babyface's hideout and leading the police to it so they can arrest him.
- Tiny Toon Adventures: In "America's Least Wanted" (part of "Here's Hamton"), Plucky finds out that Hamton has a Criminal Doppelgänger, Knuckles Cutlet. When he hears that there's a $25,000 reward for Knuckles' capture, Plucky dresses Hamton as a prisoner and tries to turn him in. Near the end of the short, Plucky finds out from the police that they had arrested the real Knuckles almost an hour ago. However, Plucky isn't one to give up so easily, and in the struggle, Hamton accidentally gets thrown in jail while Plucky leads Knuckles to his house, where Knuckles tries to kill him with an axe.
- T.U.F.F. Puppy: In "A Tale of Two Kitties", Kitty's twin sister Katty escapes from Petropolis prison and vows revenge on Kitty for having her arrested. After Kitty has a falling-out with Dudley, she finds Katty in the bathroom of T.U.F.F. HQ. Katty switches clothes with Kitty and spray-paints their hair so the real Kitty will get imprisoned while she attempts to steal the 24-Karat Goldfish Bowl. With help from Snaptrap, the real Kitty escapes from prison and foils Katty's plan.
Real Life
- Apparently
, in China, wealthy criminals hire body doubles to do their prison time for them.
- The most famous episode of General Antoine Lavalette's life is his escape from the Conciergerie in 1815, which was accomplished by having his wife Emilie trade clothes with him. Their tomb even features a bas-relief depicting the scene.◊
- German king (and later Holy Roman Emperor) Maximilian I was almost rescued in this manner by his advisor Kunz Von Der Rosen, who disguised himself as a priest to infiltrate the castle where Maximilian was being held and suggested that they switch places. Subverted, as Maximilian declined the offer, but this event inspired the example from Ivanhoe .
