Triptychis a Netflix series about a woman who discovers her doppelgänger. Unlike many similar stories that involve a supernatural ordeal, this one was pulled from the headlines and is loosely based on a true story that documentary fans might already be familiar with. That story comes from the 2018 documentary,Three Identical Strangers. Both are about identical triplets who were separated as babies and grew up without knowing anything about each other. However, they discovered each other later in life. That is the same story asTriptych, except with much more horrifying results in the latter series.
Released on Netflix in February 2023, the Mexican murder mystery seriesTriptychwas created by screenwriter Leticia López Margalli (Dark Desire). In the streaming series, a forensics agent named Becca Fuentes (Maite Perroni) shows up on the scene of a police shooting, only to find that the dead woman, Aleida, is her exact duplicate. She soon learns this is her twin, and another woman’s DNA also connects to them, making them triplets. This sets her on a mission to uncover the truth of her past. The plot is not exactly the same asThree Identical Strangers, but there are similarities.
Triptych Is “Inspired By Actual Events”
This Is Not Completely Accurate
When the Mexican thrillerTriptychstarts,there is text on the screen that says, “This story is inspired by actual events.“However, as we know, that is never always true, no matter what a filmmaker might say.Fargoopened with text that read, “This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” This was completely untrue.
15 Documentaries with Real-Life Plot Twists
From The Jinx to The Thin Blue Line, the most jaw-dropping moments in film come from these fifteen documentaries with real-life plot twists.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacreopened with a narrator who said, “The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths.” That was also not true, although in that case, Leatherface was inspired by serial killer Ed Gein. With that said, these murders were all fictional. Much like that,theTriptych"actual events” are also misrepresented.Instead of being based on a true story, the series seems to have taken the idea fromThree Identical Strangersand turned it into a mystery thriller.
BothTriptychandThree Identical Strangersare based on tripletswho never knew the others existed until later in life. InTriptych, the story starts when a forensic agent named Becca Fuentes (Maite Perroni) goes to the scene of a crime and sees that the victim — a woman who took a doctor hostage — is her doppelgänger. She investigates and realizes the woman (Aleida) is her twin. While pulling DNA, she learns that there is a third triplet, a stripper named Tamara. They then seek out the sinister reasons they were separated at birth.
July 20, 2025
Alba Gil & Leonardo D’Antoni
That is very similar toThree Identical Strangers, which also had very sinister implicationsas to why the boys were separated at birth with no one knowing they were related. In the real-life story, psychiatrists Peter B. Neubauer and Viola W. Bernard worked with the Jewish Board of Guardians to separate triplets at birth, sending one to a blue-collar home, another to a middle-class family, and the third to an affluent family. The Board then made visitations throughout their lives to see how the children changed based on their living conditions.
Known as the “nature versus nurture” experiment, this experiment received harsh criticism, and Neubauer refused to publish the results. They will remain sealed at the Yale University Library until June 21, 2025, although about 10,000 pages were released but were heavily redacted. While the two stories remain different, they both tell the same tale of triplets separated at birth and kept apart for nefarious reasons. The “nature vs nurture” experiment was the exact same inTriptych,though.
What Is Different Between Triptych & Three Identical Strangers
Triptych Is A Murder Mystery
Of course, the biggest difference betweenTriptychandThree Identical Strangersis thatTriptychis a murder mystery with sinister forces keeping the triplets apart. On the other hand,Three Identical Strangersis about unethical experimentation, but it was not illegal and was only attacked for its lack of ethics.Both the documentary and the Netflix series had one of the triplets die, but inThree Identical Strangers, it happened later, after the brothers united and one of them died by suicide. The death inTriptychwas a police murder with a dark secret below the surface.
10 Best Documentaries About Scandals Like Operation Varsity Blues
Operation Varsity Blues is the latest big documentary about a real life scandal, and fans will also love these documentaries.
The only real similarity between the documentary and the Mexican crime series was that they both involved triplets who never knew the other existed. While the boys inThree Identical Strangershad no happy ending (one died, and the other two grew apart), the women inTriptychalso had no happy ending, but things got much darker for them in this story.
While both were about the “nature vs. nuture” experiments,Triptychgot dark when the person responsible began killing people to see how that affected the triplets, went on to pose as one of the triplet’s therapist, and even hired people to interact with them, including sending in people to date the women to see how they reacted. There was alsoTriptych’s major twist ending that makes evenThree Identical Strangerslook innocent in comparison.
