Trope where one person pretends to be multiple people working different jobs
In S3E3 of Avatar, entitled The Painted Lady, a character named at different times Dock, Xu, or Bushi worked as a ferryman, fishmonger, and river cleaner respectively. The "characters" are distinguished from each other only by the hat they wear, and at one point, the character even changes his hat in front of the protagonists.
I'm almost sure this joke is referencing an existing trope or some other media, but I can't remember where. In what other media, if any, does this trope appear?
Best Answer
Trope name is Acting for Two, but it's not really limited to two:
The character you know and love walks off set on one side, and a couple of seconds later walks in on the other side, only he's wearing different clothes! And talking funny! And everyone's calling him Cousin Rick, not Fred
Or a similar sub-trope Identical Stranger:
They say that everybody has got a double somewhere. After all, the Earth has a human population of 7 billion; it would actually be stranger if no two people were at least vaguely similar in appearance. On the other hand, it's not as common in Real Life as it seems to be in media.
On television this is often utilized for comedy, by making them very different people personality-wise.
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The Smart Girl Trope, Explained
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