The doppelganger
Although there are instances of this particular trope in literature, it is mostly recognized as an overused TV trope with enough variations to make one’s head spin.
Wilkie Collins didn’t shy away from using it in The Woman in White and more recently, the writer behind the acclaimed K-drama series The Penthouse: War in Life took advantage of it in spectacular fashion just as shamelessly as U.S. based show-runners had done countless times before them.
The doppelganger trope, not to be confused with the twins trope (sometimes evil twin trope) only works under certain conditions. This isn’t to say that writers don’t keep on trying to disregard the obvious problems with said trope in the absence of one or more of the favorable conditions needed to make it work. Suspension of disbelief can only carry one so far…
How?
Plastic surgery
The main character or one of the protagonists (usually) gets replaced by (or impersonated behind their back by) an antagonist who has gone under the knife in order to achieve a level of resemblance allowing them to fool people into thinking they’re the protagonist.
The issues
People who get plastic surgery to repair something (that’s the typical pretext used to get a surgeon to agree to the transformation) typically get changes made to their face and sometimes to the elements affecting the overall figure. Cleavage or derrière surgery can be part of the deal, right after the nose job or facial implants.
You never read or hear about surgery being done to alter other significantly recognizable features such as the fingers, feet. Vocal signature is hardly ever addressed as well.
Nitpicking much? Not really, no. As soon as your doppelganger tries to worm their way into the lives and beds of people who have had long-standing relationships with the original character these will become major plot holes. These will break the much needed suspension of disbelief on which your entire story is standing right now.
Close relatives, love interests who have known you for years and other close friends would notice your hands being different for example. So your character doesn’t even need to get in bed with anyone to blow their cover. The same goes with their voice and speech patterns.
These issues are often dismissed by writers of fiction who focus on audiovisual media in terms of final format for their story as it’s easy to make viewers forget them when using the very same actor or actress to bring both characters to life.
Unless your doppelganger is only trying to fool vague acquaintances, lives in a country where it would be considered normal to wear gloves all year round and is a talented voice actor, there is no point in trying to use that trope.
The Penthouse almost got away with doing it and failed during the last segments of that story, if we accept that there is no family connection between Na Ae-Gyo and Shim Su-Ryong. One of these two characters spends the best part of 17 years walking around as the other in order to secure investments and political alliances using the name and family credentials of the other. It works because none of these people know either of them well enough to tell the difference and because an individual close to the wealthy woman is helping the imposter by providing identical clothing and schedule details.
The whole thing ceases to be believable the minute one of them supposedly manages to fool the primary accomplice into thinking she’s the other. A mistake no man would make when it comes to two women he has been intimate with for almost twenty years.
Even if they had been twins, which would come with a few problems of its own, the minute they start having adult interactions would be when the mask falls.
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