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反 supplies the sound exactly: fǎn → fǎn, identical pinyin and tone.
反 also pulls strong semantic weight — it depicts a hand turning something over (
厂 cliff +
又 hand), giving the meaning 'reverse, flip back.'
返 is the motion-version of that flip: to turn back, return on one's path. Pure phonetic-plus-meaning overlap, an unusually transparent pairing.