Credit: NBC/Getty Images (2), ABC/Getty Images, ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection, NBC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
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Prepare to See Double in Three, Two…
Image Credit: ABC, Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images, John Paschal/JPI (3) One day soon, the havoc that Rafe’s lookalike Arnold is wreaking on Days of Our Lives will come to an end. But before it does, we’re taking a look back at some more naughty-and-nice twins and doppelgangers from that soap and all the rest. Take a peek below…
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Adam and Stuart Chandler, All My Children
Image Credit: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection (2) The quintessence of good and evil twins, Adam Chandler was ruthless, remorseless and never slipped into one of his schmancy suits without first sticking a trick up its sleeve; his brother was kind, gentle and always paired his trademark cardigans with a smile that was so open, it might as well have been a welcome mat.
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Lauren Fenmore and Sarah Smythe, The Young and the Restless
Image Credit: Chris D/JPI, Sean Smith/JPI Though once upon a time maniacal Sheila Carter had stolen Lauren’s husband and baby, the villainess’ twisted sister didn’t think that that was enough. So Sarah underwent enough plastic surgery to turn her into the spitting image of Lauren and stole her very life out from under her!
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Stefan and Jake DiMera, Days of Our Lives
Image Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI (2) It pays to have a spare. After Vivian Alamain’s son with Stefano DiMera met his maker, she was as shocked as viewers in 2020 when manservant Ivan Marais revealed that she had, in fact, had twins all those years ago. Though auto mechanic-turned-businessman Jake didn’t live any longer than sneaky Stefan, Vivian’s period of mourning was especially brief as, this being Days of Our Lives, the OG brother was simply resurrected.
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Marge Cotroke and Katherine Chancellor, The Young and the Restless
Image Credit: CBS Though Marge wasn’t just rough around the edges, she was rough all over, her resemblance to moneybags Katherine still got her recruited to replace the Duchess and start, um, liquidating her assets. Against all odds, the yin/yang pair wound up becoming good friends.
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Emily Quartermaine and Rebecca Shaw, General Hospital
Image Credit: John Paschal/JPI (2) When the Quartermaines’ sweet-tempered adopted daughter became a victim of the Text-Message Killer in 2007, all of Port Charles wept bitter tears… which suddenly dried upon the arrival in town of her heretofore-unknown twin sister. Unfortunately, Rebecca was counting on looks being deceiving in order to continue her shady life as a con artist. When the schemer took her leave, nobody bothered to shrug, much less weep.
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Rafe Hernandez and Arnold Feniger, Days of Our Lives
Image Credit: Chris Haston/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images When evil genius Stefano DiMera needed a stand-in for the upstanding detective in order to execute a revenge plot, he simply took a petty criminal — emphasis on the “petty” — and remade him in Rafe’s image. Ever since, Arnold has been a DiMera family go-to for generating double trouble.
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Frannie and Sabrina Hughes, As the World Turns
Image Credit: CBS/Getty Images (2) Back in 1986, Bob and Kim Hughes’ daughter came home to Oakdale from a trip abroad with much more than souvenir-shop trinkets. She discovered that she had a twin in Sabrina. But while Frannie was as straight an arrow as ever they came, Sabrina was more than willing to bend the truth — to the point that she allowed her newfound sibling’s fiancée to make love to her without disclosing that he had the wrong sister.
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Drew Cain and Jason Morgan, General Hospital
Image Credit: ABC (2) Though these brothers have never been played by the same actor or looked anything alike, they are nonetheless identical twins. They just didn’t find out until 2017, when hitman Jason came back from the dead to reclaim his life from Drew, who’d mistakenly believed that he was the husband that Sam McCall had mourned. By 2024, Jason and Drew had both made a round trip to the afterlife, with the latter even taking on yet another new face.
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Reva Shayne and Dolly, Guiding Light
Image Credit: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection Grief-stricken after the latest “death” of his true love, Josh Lewis ignored the fact that she was one of a kind and had her cloned. Cut to: the return of the OG Reva and poor Dolly ingesting enough rapid-aging serum to send this storyline to an early grave.
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Alan and Martin Laurent, The Young and the Restless
Image Credit: Howard Wise/JPI (2) “What, what, what could have caused Ashley Abbott’s personality to split?!?” wondered her friends and family in 2024. She had a history of mental instability, sure. But this was some next-level [bleep]. Thank goodness she had in her corner Alan, whose psychological training (eventually) prompted him to consider that maybe Ashley had had a run-in with his sociopathic twin, Martin. Had he neglected to mention that he had one of those? Mon Dieu!
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Lily Snyder and Rose D’Angelo, As the World Turns
Image Credit: Deborah Feingold/CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection Rare are the characters who were allowed to grow up with more misapprehensions than Lily. As far as she knew, she was the biological daughter of Lucinda Walsh (nope) and she was an only child (also nope). Only after learning that she’d been given up for adoption by Iva Snyder did Lily discover in the early 2000s that she had a twin, Rose, a showgirl who liked just one thing more than a rhinestone headdress: a good scheme.
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Rush and Jonny Carrera, The Bold and the Beautiful
Image Credit: CBS screenshot (2) And you thought your sibling was embarrassing! Jonny Carrera tried to woo Lauren Fenmore (at the time on loan from The Young and the Restless) despite the fact that she’d already run afoul of his twin brother, Rush, a total psycho who was as rape-y as he was unoriginal. Just look at the photos — he copped not only Jonny’s hairdo but his facial hair, too! Weak, bro.
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Rick and Blade Bladeson, The Young and the Restless
Image Credit: Cliff Lipson/CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection Jabot photographer Rick “Blade” Bladeson thought that he’d left his past behind him after letting evil twin Rick drown. (We know, right? And Blade was the good twin!) Unfortunately, it turned out that Rick was harder to sink than a cork, and once he followed his brother to Genoa City, he pulled more switcheroos on sister-in-law Ashley Abbott (then Brenda Epperson) than you’d get from every Parent Trap movie combined.
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Marco Dane and Mario Corelli, One Life to Live
Image Credit: Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty Images (2) Karen Wolek’s pimp got a new lease on life following the demise of his doctor brother. Marco strapped on a stethoscope and began making the rounds, only prescribing himself a new leaf to turn over when he got busted for identity theft.
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Amber Moore and April Knight, The Bold and the Beautiful
Image Credit: Jesse Grant/JPI (2) We’d have sworn that scheme queen Amber Moore was one of a kind. Heck, she would’ve, too! So her jaw dropped along with ours in 2003 when she made the acquaintance of lookalike April Knight, the twin sister that mom Tawny had never mentioned she had. And whereas there was no low to which Amber wouldn’t stoop, aspiring singer April charted a course that kept her on the high road.
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Shane and Drew Donovan, Days of our Lives
Image Credit: Paul Skipper/JPI (2) “Anything you can do, I can do badder” was sort of the motto of Shane Donovan’s twin brother, Drew. They both trained at the ISA, but whereas Shane chose to walk the straight and narrow, his ne’er-do-well sibling veered so far from the righteous path that he was recruited as an assassin by no less than Stefano DiMera! Drew was even given a scary, Shakespearean henchman handle: Iago.
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Robert Barr and Quinn Armitage, Santa Barbara
Image Credit: NBC screenshot Eager to live the high life that his twin brother had always enjoyed, Quinn perfected an American accent, had lover Flame Beaufort cage his lookalike and endeavored to walk a mile in Robert’s shoes. Quinn was good at it, too — so good that he even fell for the same woman that Robert had, Kelly Capwell.
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Emily Peterson and Patty Williams, The Young and the Restless
Image Credit: Sean Smith/JPI (2) When Victor Newman decided to weaponize archenemy Jack Abbott’s unhinged ex Patty, step No. 1 was to get her a new face. The cat fancier’s pick? The same one worn by her shrink Emily, who — what are the odds? — fell just as hard for Jack as Patty had.
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Anna and Alex Devane, General Hospital
Image Credit: Chris D/JPI When Alex Devane was on All My Children, she didn’t seem like much of a conniver at all. But once she joined sister Anna on General Hospital, her true colors shone as brightly as a warning sign, and we came to realize that if one of them had it in her to be a double agent, the other had it in her to be a triple, even a quadruple, agent!
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André and Tony DiMera, Days of our Lives
Image Credit: Paul Skipper/JPI Some evil twins aren’t born, they’re made. Case in point: André DiMera, who had his face rearranged to resemble that of his nephew/brother (it’s complicated!) in order to go on a murder spree for puppetmaster Stefano. And while Tony’s candidacy for sainthood seems unlikely — there’s more tarnish on his halo than there is halo! — André is by far the greater of two evils.
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Sheila Carter and Phyllis Summers, The Young and the Restless
Image Credit: Aaron Montgomery/JPI, Howard Wise/JPI All these years later, we’re still not sure that we understood the storyline in which loco Sheila got herself plastic surgery’d into Phyllis to continue to torment poor Lauren. In the end, Sheila was shot dead… so who the heck is that waiting tables on The Bold and the Beautiful these days?
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Marlena and Samantha Evans, Days of our Lives
Image Credit: Columbia Tristar/Courtesy of the Everett Collection “What does Marlena have that I don’t?” wondered sibling rival Samantha Evans (played by Deidre Hall’s real-life twin sister, Andrea). To find out, the green-eyed monster swapped places with the shrink — and went so far as to have her institutionalized. But karma bit Samantha hard a few years later when she was mistaken for Marlena by none other than — ack! — the Salem Strangler.
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Marley and Victoria Hudson, Another World
Image Credit: Arthur L. Cohen/NBC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection, NBC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection You can’t tell from these pictures of Ellen Wheeler and Anne Heche, both of whom won Emmys playing the yin/yang twins, but the Hudson sisters were identical, at least for most of their time in Bay City. Oh, and fun fact: Between Another World stints, Wheeler earned another statuette for her work as Cindy Parker, the ill-fated twin sister of All My Children’s Karen.
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Jack Abbott and Marco Annicelli, The Young and the Restless
Image Credit: John Paschal/JPI (2) The saying isn’t “If ya can’t beat ’em, clone ’em,” but that was kinda what Victor did when he replaced his lifelong nemesis with a Peruvian drug lord who just happened to be his dead ringer. Do we even need to tell you that this plot went as badly as the one Victor hatched to sick Patty on Jack?
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Ryan Chamberlain and Kevin Collins, General Hospital
Image Credit: ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection, Howard Wise/JPI Their face is just about the only thing that these polar-opposite siblings had in common. Ryan Chamberlain was a serial killer whose reign of terror in Port Charles spanned decades; Kevin Collins is a shrink whose greatest sin was keeping it from his friends and family that his brother wasn’t nearly as dead as they slept easier believing.