Triptych is 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 as Triptych, except with much more horrifying results in the latter series.

Released on Netflix in February 2023, the Mexican murder mystery series Triptych was 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 ᴅᴇᴀᴅ 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 as Three Identical Strangers, but there are similarities.

Triptych Is “Inspired By Actual Events”

This Is Not Completely Accurate

When the Mexican thriller Triptych starts, 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. Fargo opened 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 ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” This was completely untrue.

The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre opened 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, the Triptych “actual events” are also misrepresented. Instead of being based on a true story, the series seems to have taken the idea from Three Identical Strangers and turned it into a mystery thriller.

How Is Triptych Similar To Three Identical Strangers

Both Stories Are About Triplets Who Didn’t Know The Others Existed

Both Triptych and Three Identical Strangers are based on triplets who never knew the others existed until later in life. In Triptych, 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.

That is very similar to Three Identical Strangers, which also had very sinister implications as 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 October 25, 2065, 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 in Triptych, though.

What Is Different Between Triptych & Three Identical Strangers

Triptych Is A Murder Mystery

Of course, the biggest difference between Triptych and Three Identical Strangers is that Triptych is a murder mystery with sinister forces keeping the triplets apart. On the other hand, Three Identical Strangers is 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 in Three Identical Strangers, it happened later, after the brothers united and one of them died by suicide. The death in Triptych was a police murder with a dark secret below the surface.

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 in Three Identical Strangers had no happy ending (one died, and the other two grew apart), the women in Triptych also had no happy ending, but things got much darker for them in this story.

While both were about the “nature vs. nuture” experiments, Triptych got 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 also Triptych‘s major twist ending that makes even Three Identical Strangers look innocent in comparison.