And what's the only thing worse than an evil doppelganger? An evil robot doppelganger. Or any robot doppelganger, really. The preserve of creators who want to undo character deaths, or to provide a big death in their own story without it having any lasting consequences, the android stand-in is used in DC and Marvel, the latter most often in the form of Life Model Decoys which have accounted for the numerous deaths and returns of Nick Fury. This trope is so pervasive and so, so terrible. Death in fiction can be used to really tug on the heartstrings, or provide some genuine moments for characters. Undoing that by revealing that the person who was just offed wasn't actually that person, just a hunk of nuts and bolts that resembled them, is super annoying and makes the original "death" totally pointless, just as it did when Thor was killed in Marvel's Civil War event...and it turned out to be a robot.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
