The doppelgängers are the main antagonists of "Mirror Image", the 21st episode in the first season of The Twilight Zone, which aired in 1960.
They are malevolent extradimensional counterparts of humans from a parallel dimension, and thus appear human themselves, at least externally, and their members are exact copies of actual humans. They appear to have extensive knowledge of their counterparts' lives, although how they have such knowledge is unknown. When brought to Earth, doppelgängers would use their knowledge of their counterparts' lives to take their place, making no attempt to communicate with their counterparts and acting generally maliciously, wordlessly taunting their counterparts.
Like their human counterparts, the doppelgängers were portrayed by Vera Miles and Martin Milner.
History[]
At some point in time, through unknown means, doppelgängers were pulled from their dimension and dropped on Earth. On Earth, they would infiltrate the lives of their counterparts, and find some way to eliminate them in order to take over their lives.
In the 1960s, a doppelgänger of a woman named Millicent Barnes arrived on Earth and went to find the actual Millicent, who was at a New York bus depot en route to Cortland. The depot only had Millicent, a cleaning lady, and an elderly ticket agent within it. While Millicent's back was turned, her doppelgänger asked the ticket agent twice when the bus would arrive, and took Millicent's bag, placing it behind the desk. The agent did not notice that there were two of the same person in the room while responding to the doppelgänger, and when the real Millicent eventually went up to the agent to ask about the bus, the doppelgänger ran out of sight. The doppelgänger then entered the restroom, being noticed by the cleaning lady, and then ran out of sight again when Millicent went to the bathroom. In the bathroom mirror, through the bathroom's open door, Millicent finally saw the doppelgänger herself, sitting on a bench and smiling evilly at her. The doppelgänger then hid once more before Millicent could exit the bathroom or get anyone else to notice her.
Back in the waiting area, another man entered the depot, named Paul Grinstead, and met with Millicent. He managed to calm her and accompanied her to the bus when it finally arrived, but the doppelgänger managed to get on the bus before them and was seen by Millicent, who screamed and ran back inside, fainting, allowing the doppelgänger to take over her life. Paul and Millicent remained in the depot, and Paul then had policemen take away Millicent, believing that she was insane. Then, a male doppelgänger appeared on Earth, taking Paul's suitcase while Paul was drinking from a water fountain, but Paul managed to turn fast enough to see the doppelgänger running off. Paul chased the doppelgänger down the street, but when the doppelgänger passed under a street light, Paul was able to see that the doppelgänger was of him, smiling at him as he vanished into the darkness, leaving Paul confused and shocked on the street.
