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That's Not My Neighbor - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri Mar 01 2024

That's Not My Neighbor (Video Game)

The Doppelganger Detection Department (D.D.D.) needs you!

That's not my Neighbor is a 2D job simulator and horror game created by Nacho Sama. It was released on February 24th, 2024 and is exclusively playable on Microsoft Windows. It's available for a small price on its itch.io page. The game was inspired by Papers, Please, but with a horror twist.

In the year 1955, monsters with the ability to mimic humans called doppelgangers have become an everyday nuisance. As the new doorman of your apartment building, it is your job to discern sneaky doppelgangers who wish to infiltrate from regular tenants just looking to go home. But be careful! Should you fail, both you and the tenants are going to be on the menu.

The complete game was released on September 28th, 2024.

A remaster released on Steam on March 11th, 2025.

That's not my Neighbor contains examples of the following tropes:

  • The '50s: As the D.D.D. worker in the intro is kind enough to inform you, the game takes place in February of 1955.
  • Achievement Mockery: There are achievements for dying to a doppelganger and killing a neighbor.
  • Alliterative Name: The Doppelganger Detection Department.
  • Anti-Frustration Features
    • In Nightmare Mode, Doppelgangers will kill you immediately if you let them in, rather than waiting to the end of the day to kill you. This not only prevents any paranoia from letting them in, but also avoids any possible Kaizo Trap should the player defeat the clown at the end of the day.
    • Zig-Zagged with Chester's Quiz. Answers aren't case sensitive, and Nightmare Mode's fifth question accepts the answer (SCP-038) with or without the hyphen. However, Arcade Mode's second question is looking for the exact answer "Psychrolutes marcidus" — specifically the smooth-head blobfish — as opposed to any of the thirty-odd other known species in the family Psychrolutidae with the common names of "blobfish" or "sculpin", eleven of which fill the genus Psychrolutes.
  • Big Good: The D.D.D., for a given measure of "good". They don't care much that their doormen keep dropping like flies and have no issue putting you, a rookie who mostly took the job because they needed the money, in life-threatening danger with no training whatsoever. That being said, they will always come when you call and take care of the doppelganger quickly and cleanly while you yourself are allowed to wait for the clean-up out in your safe fortified booth.
    • Significantly, the result screen lists neighbors falsely flagged as doppels are killed, while successfully identified doppels are merely "captured." This could mean nothing, or it might hint at something sinister going on behind the scenes at the D.D.D. The cipher in Nightmare Mode provides a possible explanation.
  • Big Ol' Unibrow: Roman Stilnsky is noted to have a unibrow. Thus, if he shows up with two eyebrows, that should be a sign that you are dealing with a doppelganger.
  • Blatant Lies: Some doppelgangers really don't do a good job of impersonating. When caught in an inconsistency, a doppelganger will also resort to making obvious excuses to convince you to let it in anyway.
  • Bluff the Impostor: Doppels don't seem to know who is or isn't on the daily list. You can use this to your advantage by lying and accusing people who are on the list of not being on it. Some doppels will then out themselves by saying they had an emergency, while humans (and some other doppels) will tell you to check the list again.
  • Bowdlerise: In newer versions of the game, certain doppelgangers no longer utter "Fuck!" when caught.
  • Bureaucracy Simulator: You play as the doorman for an entire apartment building, tasked with checking IDs, whether the subject who wishes to enter is listed, and whether they are who they say they are — with the slight twist that you're dealing with something far worse than possible burglars or con-artists.
  • But Thou Must!: In Nightmare Mode, the Monster Clown from Unlikely will want to play a high-stakes card game with you at the end of a run. Choosing to play will start the game; refusing to play and calling the D.D.D. on him will cause him to kill the D.D.D. worker sent on him, then force you to play the game anyway.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Most if not all of the residents in Nightmare Mode have various appealing job titles such as "Torturer", "Human Hunter", or "Soul Eater", and they'll be more than happy to put them on their documents.
  • Censor Box: In the Steam version, if the "Trypophobia" box is checked, the Doppelganger's holes will be blocked off by a large black box.
  • Cheating with the Milkman: Played with. Francis Mosses, the milkman, is confirmed to be the father of Anastacha Mikaelys. However, given that Nacha's marital status is unknown, it is debatable whether Anastacha really was the result of Nacha having an extramarital affair with Francis or if Nacha and Francis were at least already a romantic couple, married or not, when Anastacha was conceived.
  • Company Cross-References: A man in a clown mask randomly shows up only to hand you a piece of paper. It has a headshot of a Monster Clown and reads as a warning to not play any games with him, with a link to another itch.io game for more info. This is the clown from Unlikely, another game by Nacho Sama. He actually shows up at the end of the shift in Nightmare Mode, where you are forced to play a card game with him; if you lose, he kills you.
  • Copycat Mockery: "Cleaning protocol completed, bla bla bla..." said by the clown in Nightmare Mode after he kills the D.D.D. worker (who usually shows up after a doppelganger is reported to say "Cleaning protocol completed. You can continue your job.")
  • Critical Staffing Shortage: By the time you report for duty, it's heavily implied you might be the only doorman left. That's how much the doppelganger situation has gone out of control. Your predecessor, Henry, is fondly remembered not because he did a particularly good job, but because he managed to hold out this long without getting killed by the doppelgangers.
  • Decapitation Presentation: Choosing not to play the clown's card game in Nightmare Mode and calling the D.D.D. on him will result in the clown holding up the bloodied D.D.D. worker's head on a stick, citing his usual phrase of "Cleaning protocol completed." and proceeding with his game.
  • Defiant to the End: Doppels will never attempt to run away or cut a bargain, even when they know the jig is up. Doppels who drop the act will even encourage you to call the D.D.D. even when, as far as they know, they won't survive the encounter.
  • Doppelgänger: The main threat of the game. They can shapeshift into people in order to infiltrate buildings and hunt down the residents that live within, and their level and quality of impersonation varies from doppelganger to doppelganger, ranging from small differences like missing or misplaced moles to blatantly obvious Facial Horror. Though the doppelgangers in Nightmare Mode always miss a detail or two, they do a significantly better job impersonating the neighbors, given that these discrepancies are very subtle.
  • Double Meaning: Nightmare Mode, which is both nightmarishly difficult and nightmare-inducing.
  • Epic Fail:
    • Some doppelgangers will try to infiltrate the building while the person they're disguised as is already home. It takes the doorman only one quick call to the apartment in question to catch on and immediately call the D.D.D. on them.
    • A doppelganger can be so obviously inhuman in appearance you have to wonder who it thinks it's fooling. You even have the option to point out the shoddiness of its disguise, after which it will mumble out a comically unconvincing excuse about having slept badly or something similar.
    • Peach the Doppelganger's "attempt" at forging documents has every entry filled by the word "Peach" in some form, while his ID card and entry permit have actual peach fruits in place of a portrait. Similarly, 42's documents will be filled out by some variation of the number 42 in one way or another. Peach and 42 will show up in Nightmare Mode, but they can be let in without issue, because they are VIP's'.
    • Getting F-Rank requires you to let in every doppelganger while calling the D.D.D. on all the actual neighbors. It's not as easy as one might think, since you cannot get this rank if any real neighbor successfully enters or if you caught even one doppelganger. There's a reason why getting F-rank is considered an achievement in itself.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: The Doppelgangers and Nightmare Mode residents noticeably have quite the low-pitched Voice Grunting, suiting their true monstrous natures.
  • Facial Horror: The less skilled doppelgangers often have grotesque features like a tumor-shaped head or a bunch of holes in place of a mouth. They'll still try and convince you that they're totally the person on the photo though, they just slept on their side funny.
  • Failed a Spot Check:
    • Some doppelgangers get their human disguises almost right, with only one or two small details being incorrect. If you don't pay enough attention, you might very well open the door for an impersonator and only realize once it's far too late.
    • You need to shut the door after every passing subject. Otherwise, the apartment building's entrance will remain open for anyone to just casually walk in.
  • Featureless Protagonist: Due to the first-person perspective, we don't get a look at the player character's appearance.
  • Game Face: Some doppelgangers, when questioned over tiny discrepancies in their appearance or paperwork (or simply that the resident they're impersonating isn't on the list that day), will completely lose their cool and revert to a snarling, monstrous expression with bloodshot eyes and sharp teeth. The first time you see this will earn you the "Redhanded" achievement.
  • Gonk: Even some of the humans aren't guaranteed to be lookers. For instance, Roman Stilnsky, the accountant, looks like a cranky Muppet.
  • Graceful Loser: Determined as he is to play his high-stakes card game with you, the Clown will admit defeat if you beat him and let you end the day victorious, although he will mention that he'll encounter you again and you may not be so lucky next time.
  • Hazmat Suit: The D.D.D. employee wears a yellow one.
  • He Knows Too Much: In Campaign Mode, sending the D.D.D. on the real W. Afton will get you kidnapped at the end of the shift for knowing the truth about his involvement regarding the doppelgangers and promptly send the D.D.D to "take care" of you.

    W. Afton: Look at what had to happen. You just had to do your job. But no, you had to stick your nose where it didn't belong. Did you think you could change something? You're nobody. You're just a simple doorman of your building. Correction, you were the doorman of your building. You know what to do, boys.

  • Horror Comedy: The premise is definitely creepy, and there are a few serious scenes like the Doppelgangers that are caught red-handed or the Monster Clown in Nightmare Mode, but the game, for the most part, doesn't take itself too seriously. The characters are generally goofy, both the humans and doppelgangers are generally incompetent, and there are a few joke-y moments in addition to the tense ones. Even the otherwise horrific scene with the clown killing the D.D.D. agent and pretending to be them can come across as darkly humorous.
  • Hugh Mann: Some of the more blatantly obvious doppelgangers come off as this. There's also this little note you can potentially come across on a doppelganger's Entry Permit:

    I'm not here to eat anyone.
    I only eat human food like everyone else.
    Let me in, to make my normal human meals.

  • Human Disguise: The Doppelgangers shapeshift into human forms, but most of them are very bad at it, often having visibly inhuman or monstrous features. Some of them are competent enough to look and act completely human, but still made at least one mistake with mimicking whomever they're impersonating.
  • Identical Twin ID Tag: Two residents in the building are identical twin models, with their only distinction being they have beauty marks on opposite cheeks. Complicating matters, doppelgangers may pretend to be one of them with the other's beauty mark placement. Fortunately, they can also be identified by their different earrings and clothing colors. Subverted in Nightmare mode, which has them look quite different.
  • Imposter Forgot One Detail: Some doppelgangers can look perfectly like the person they're trying to impersonate, but their documents may be fake (i.e., no D.D.D. signature, expired ID, typo in their name or ID number), they're not on the list and don't have a good reason for it or giving an impossible reason (such as a doppelgänger of the retired Mclooy saying there was an accident at work) or the person they're impersonating is already at home, giving them away. The doppelgangers in Nightmare Mode will inevitably make errors in their disguises, but they are evidently much more competent as the discrepancies are very subtle.
  • Jumpscare:
    • If you let even one doppelganger slip past, the game will end with a pair of green, clawed, bloodied hands coming up from behind you.
    • In Nightmare Mode, capturing an innocent neighbor will cause a ghostly face to appear on the wall. Capture one more and it will suddenly jump out and kill you, ending the game.
  • LOL, 69: The phone number of the apartment where the twin models live is 6996.
  • Mistaken for an Imposter: If you screw up and have your human neighbors accidentally disposed of instead of the doppelgangers.
  • Monster Clown: In Nightmare Mode, the creepy clown from Unlikely will appear at the end of the run and ask to play a card game with you. He's also stronger than any Doppelganger — selecting No will cause him to become upset until the player sics the D.D.D. on him... and he kills the D.D.D. agent before forcing you to play. Losing his game will have him crush the window protecting you and kill you.
  • Monster Mash: In the aptly named Nightmare Mode, the established residents are replaced with monstrous counterparts of them, which ranges from classic monster such as Yog Sothoth, replacing Francis Mosses and Nyogtha Z'mog, replacing Gloria Schmicht to expies of mythological deities such as Chaugnar Faugn replacing Arnold Schmicht and Yan Luo Wang Diyu, replacing Mia Stone.
  • Morton's Fork: At the end of Nightmare Mode, the clown from Unlikely will ask to play a card game with you. Selecting "No" does not give a different outcome. The clown will simply frown until you call the D.D.D. on him, only for the metal shutters to reveal the clown holding the D.D.D. worker's decapitated head on a stick, and going along with the game anyway.
  • Most Definitely Not a Villain: Some doppelgangers can give their entry request reason as "I'm not a doppelganger. I'm a normal human with normal behavior. Just let me in, to do my normal human activities".
  • Must Be Invited: The doppelgangers can only wreak havoc on the apartment complex if you let them in, be it by letting them in under the mistaken assumption that they're really whoever they're disguised as, or by leaving the door open after approving the person before them.
  • Never Bareheaded: Mclooy Rudboys is noted to ALWAYS wear his big white ten-gallon cowboy hat; him ever turning up without it is a sign you’re not dealing with the real Mclooy. Other normally hat-wearing residents may show up without theirs as well, but there's a chance that they might've just left it at home that day and a quick call to their wife (provided she's in) will clear that up.
  • Non-Standard Character Design: Most of the cast have cartoonish designs straight out of MAD, and Roman Stilnsky looks like a Muppet, but Francis Mosses more resembles something from a Disney or Don Bluth movie.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: While the main thing is their rather laughable attempts at human disguises, we're otherwise almost completely left in the dark about doppelgangers. All we know about their true forms is that they're green with claws, and their origins are entirely a mystery, for they could be demons, aliens, fae, or something else entirely. While the intro to Nightmare Mode briefly flashes a picture of something looking like a Grey, it's not confirmed to be a doppelganger. Solving the cipher code on said mode, however, implies that they're government experiments.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: In sharp contrast to the Humanoid Abomination looks of most Nightmare tenants, Francis's Nightmare counterpart, Yog Sothoth, is an attractive-looking (by the game's usually gonky art style) Goth vampire.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: All it takes to get you killed at the end of the day (or immediately in the case of Nightmare Mode) is letting in a single doppelganger, meaning that you have absolutely no room for error with them if you want to survive. It's possible to survive if you get your innocent neighbors mistakenly disposed of, though, as long as you don't let in any doppelgangers, unless it's Nightmare Mode, where you can only afford to screw up once.
  • Point-and-Click: Gameplay consists of inspecting paperwork, looking for inconsistencies via the documents provided to you, and comparing the people coming to your booth with their photos and profiles in your files. As well as calling the D.D.D. if they don't.
  • Point of No Return: In the Steam version, once you press the button to call the D.D.D., there is no possible way to back out of it and can only proceed forward with calling them.
  • Pokémon Speak:
    • All Peach the doppelganger can say is "Peach"; even his documents say nothing but the word "Peach".
    • The two "Ghost Face" doppelgangers can only say "hoon".
    • 42 can only say and write "42" (providing forty-two "42"s as the entry request).
  • Precision F-Strike: Certain Doppelgangers that get questioned for incorrect documents, wrong appearance, or for not being on the day's list can lose their usual calm facade and let out a "Fuck!", giving away their true nature. This gets dropped in newer versions of the game.
  • Rouge Angles of Satin: There are a few typos in some of the dialogue, of which include wrong but similarly spelled words.
  • Shout-Out:
    • One of the residents' names is Dr. W. Afton. In further extension to this, his Nightmare counterpart is clearly modeled after Springtrap. The cipher at the end of Nightmare Mode even reveals that he's the lead researcher in the doppelganger project, not unlike the real Afton's infamous experiments with remnant.
    • Some doppelgangers impersonating Dr. W. Afton have Star Wars references in their credentials, such as "R2D2" and "CP3O" in place of "Dr. W.". A third Dr. W doppelganger can have the first name of XLR8.
    • Another resident, Steven Rudboys, bears a strong resemblance to Travis Bickle.
    • Chester's first question of "What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything else?" and the VIP 42's whole schtick is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
    • Chester's fourth question of "At least how many times do you have to fold a 0.01mm thick sheet of paper to cover the distance between the Shire and Mordor?" is all about the beginning and end locations of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the 1,779 miles between them.🛈
    • Nightmare Chester's fourth question of "Temple where once a god caused the largest pandemic ever seen in all the great dark beyond," pertains to World of Warcraft, specifically the Zul'Gurub update that caused the Corrupted Blood incident.
    • Nightmare Chester's fifth question of "Clave name of the multicellular organism with the ability to clone anything it touches its rhizome" pertains to the SCP Foundation, specifically SCP-038 "The Everything Tree".🛈
  • Strong Family Resemblance: Anastacha Mikaelys has the same eyes, vacant expression and apathetic attitude as resident milkman Francis Mosses, and Word of God confirms that Francis is her biological father◊ (Anastacha's mother Nacha's marital status is not stated, however, so despite the clear implications, there is no indication its the result of an affair).
  • Take Over the World: At the end of Campaign Mode, if you had let everyone inside willy-nilly, a Doppelganger will congratulate you:

    Doppelganger: I should thank you. Thanks to you, we were able to take full control of this building. Next will be the city, then the state, the country... Now join with your fellow humans.

  • Touché: Doppelgangers with an otherwise seamless disguise but forget a detail in their documents may outright drop the facade and admit you caught them as they await the D.D.D.
  • To Serve Man: The doppelgängers are heavily implied to eat people, as you will be taken away and slaughtered by a doppelgänger if even one of them gets inside, and one line that a doppelgänger can give is "I'm not here to eat anyone.".
  • Verbal Tic:
    • Francis Mosses always starts his sentences with "mmm".
    • Anastacha Mikaelys shares the quirk mentioned above, which hints at her and Francis' relation. She also has a habit of ending her phrases with "whatever".
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: It's possible to call the D.D.D. on the actual neighbors, which will result in them being killed. Doing so will get your score lowered in Arcade Mode, however, but won't actually kill you, so you technically can call the D.D.D. on literally everyone that crosses your path and live to tell the tale. Some players purposely sic them on W. Afton after learning what he's responsible for… Siccing the D.D.D. on everyone in Campaign Mode will result in you getting arrested for the indirect murder of your neighbors at the end while sending the D.D.D. on the real Afton will leave him unscratched as you being kidnapped and murdered for knowing too much.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: In Nightmare Mode, choosing to sic the D.D.D. on actual neighbors (and thus killing them) will cause a ghostly face to appear on the wall. Do it one more time and the ghostly face will lunge out at you and kill you instantly.
  • We Have Reserves: You can encounter as many as 9 doppels in one session, perhaps more than the number of legitimate residents you permit entrance each day. Assuming each doppel is a distinct individual and that this influx isn't unusual, the number of doppels that must be running around is truly horrifying.
  • Wham Line: In Nightmare mode, a strange man in cult attire would give you a cipher letter. Solve the cipher and you may get an idea of the Doppels' origins...

    Trojan Horse Project
    Funded by the Military Department of the Government
    General Director: Oswald D. Keppler
    Lead Researcher: Dr. Afton
    Year of Creation: 1945
    [...]
    Leak Detected - Emergency Protocol Activated
    Contingency Plan: Foundation of the Doppelganger Detection Department
    Current Status of the Project: Active
    Promising Project Results

  • Word-Salad Humor: One of the unique doppelgängers that you can encounter is named "Peach", and all of his dialogue is just him repeating the word "peach"... and even all the images he provides in his documents are images of peaches.