In the books and films about doppelgangers that had come to fill my evenings, I was struck by how reliably this phenomenon occurred: eventually, the double replaces the original, through sheer energy and tenacity, while the original fades away or worse. Dostoyevsky’s novel The Double ends with Golyadkin, the tormented protagonist, being taken away to an asylum, driven mad by his imposter’s duplicity.

XREF: This pattern of the double replacing the original echoes the broader 'evil twin' trope in literature, and could connect to narratives about identity replacement, impostors, or even AI/automation themes. QUESTION: Is this 'the double always wins' pattern universal across doppelganger fiction, or an artifact of the specific examples the author happened to consume?

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 132