Did People Within The Matrix Always Resemble their Real World Bodies?

As best I can remember, when people in the real world (or the supposed real world) went into the Matrix, they always looked the same in the Matrix as they did in reality.

Was that always the case, or were people able to adopt false appearances, perhaps to deceive agents or other humans? Or were there cases where the Matrix gave them different appearances for its own reasons?

Answer

The claims in the Matrix Wiki's article on Residual Self Image is a bit difficult to follow:

Zion operatives who re-enter the Matrix appear as avatars with appearances that can be totally different from their true appearance within the real world.

"Appearance" here probably means clothing and hairstyle, not physiology. The former aspects of appearance can and do change. Clothing, it seems, can be loaded at will. Hairstyle seems to reflect the person's self-perception (like Neo's in the sequels).

A person jacking in could probably manage a false mustache but not much more. It seems their physiology is picked for them by the Matrix itself. The only exception I can think of is Bane. After the infection, he looked like Smith within the Matrix, but obviously, looked like himself in the real world.

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