Not multiplication, division.
Slipstream: Each of us clones represents one aspect of your personality. (Points to the other clones, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Sunstorm, and Ramjet respectively) He's a coward, he's an egomaniac, he's a suck-up, he's a liar.
Ramjet: I am not!
Starscream: So... which part of me did you come from?
Slipstream (the only female): Don't ask.
Ramjet: I am not!
Starscream: So... which part of me did you come from?
Slipstream (the only female): Don't ask.
A character gets split into two or more copies of themself, each of which reflects some facet of their personality. This can be similar to Evil Twin, but the split need not be along the good/evil axis. Sometimes seen as part of a Journey to the Center of the Mind. When this is not the case, it's usually an effect of the Applied Phlebotinum of the week.
Often the parts have to work together, as none of them is individually capable of what the original character was. Sometimes, as they spend more time together, they start to become more like each other. Ultimately, they may come back together through a Fusion Dance that is also a Split-Personality Merge.
Compare Enemy Without, but the components are not necessarily enemies, and unlike in Enemy Without none has any particular claim on being the "original" version. Compare I Hate Past Me, Future Me Scares Me, and Alternate Self, where instances of the same character might have different personalities. Also compare Self-Duplication, which is similar in appearance, if nothing else. Contrast Fusion Dance, where two or more beings become one being. May overlap with Emotion Personification when the copy is the physical emotion removed from the original.
Not to be confused with Half the Man He Used to Be.
Examples subpages:
Other examples:
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Asian Animation
- In BoBoiBoy, the eponymous character has the ability to create duplicates of himself with different Elemental Powers and distinct personalities coinciding with each of their powers:
- Lightning/Thunderstorm: The most serious and aggressive in battle, tends to be a loner.
- Wind/Cyclone: Cheerful, playful, and quite carefree.
- Earth/Quake: A calm and wise leader of all the forms, noted as the closest to the original BoBoiBoy's personality.
- Fire/Blaze: A loony Mood-Swinger, he can switch from fun-loving and playful to violently aggressive when provoked.
- Water/Ice: Calm, carefree, and easy-going, almost to the point of being very lazy.
- Leaf/Thorn: A naive, cheerful Cloudcuckoolander. Unlike Fire/Blaze and Wind/Cyclone, he is also close to being a Manchild.
- Light/Solar: The Ace of all forms, he is shown to be prideful, intellectual and strong.
- In Happy Friends, Careful S. has the ability to duplicate himself as his main superpower. In one episode of Season 3, it's shown that four of the clones he can produce this way have very distinct personalities, and according to Doctor H. they're all a part of the main Careful S.'s personality. Evidently, Careful S. is very good at hiding it.
Audio Plays
- Big Finish Doctor Who has this happening to the Eighth Doctor in the episode "Caerdroia", where he gets split up into the three main sides of his personality, resulting in a passionate and easily distracted Cloudcuckoolander version, a compassionate, rational version, and a gloomy, pragmatic, Deadpan Snarker version. In response, his companion, Charley, nicknames the goofy one "Tigger" and the grumpy one "Eeyore". At the climax of the story, the villain, Kro'ka, captures the goofy Doctor and the rational Doctor with the intent of Mind Probing them, but before he can do so, he is confronted by the grumpy Doctor, who threatens to use a Mind Probe of his own on Kro'ka in order to find out who The Man Behind the Man he is working for actually is. When Kro'ka tries to talk him down, pointing out that a part of the Doctor or not, he is still the Doctor, and the Doctor is too merciful to forcibly invade the mind of another living being, the grumpy Doctor in turn points out that, unfortunately for Kro'ka, while the compassionate sides of his personality would indeed normally hold him back from such questionable acts, he is the Doctor's more "nasty" and pragmatic sides made flesh and doesn't have the other sides to mediate him, so therefore he has no such scruples and then invades Kro'ka's mind, despite his pleas, without a second thought. When the grumpy Doctor is reunited with the goofy and rational ones, just before they are recombined back to a whole person again, they both figure out what he did and are none too happy about it.
Comic Books
- All-Out Avengers: The second issue begins In Medias Res, with Doctor Doom allying with the Avengers... against Doctor Doom. The good and evil sides of his personality have been separated into their own bodies. They're recombined by the end of the issue.
- Darkwing Duck: Happens to Negaduck at the end of "Crisis On Infinite Darkwings". To the n-th degree, it turns out.
- Dial H for Hero:
- The 1980s version that appeared in Adventure Comics and subsequently served as backup material in New Adventures of Superboy ended with the revelation that the Wizard and the Master were actually Robby Reed, protagonist of the original 1960s series that appeared in the pages of House of Mystery, split into good and evil halves. The squabble between the two led to the original H-Dial disappearing, which led to the Wizard creating a new pair of dials and trusting Chris King and Vicki Grant to use them while the Master created villains to try and take the dials fom Chris and Vicki.
- The 2019 series features a Y-Dial that causes transformations at the cost of the bearer being split into two beings in the process. In a similar manner to the 1980s series, it is revealed that the Operator and Mr. Thunderbolt are actually the original dial-bearer Robby Reed split into two beings from using the dial. The current bearer Miguel Montez also ends up using the Y-Dial to become a Superman Substitute named Supermiguel and a Shazam-inspired hero named Thunder Montez, the latter ending up siding with Mr. Thunderbolt's scheme.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
- One Donald Duck comic had featured him getting split into the seven sins by an Ancient Artifact, even being Colour-Coded for Your Convenience. It all seems easy enough as only Wrath/Anger, Envy, and Greed are causing trouble (with Sloth don't even trying to run and Gluttony as well as Lust being ridiculously easy to lure into a trap). That is, until they fuse back together, but in the wrong way.
- One recurring villain of Donald's superhero identity Paperinik is the "Mad Ducktor", the evil side of Gadgeteer Genius Gyro Gearloose. In his second story the Mad Ducktor is permanently seperated phsyically from Gyro and is a seperate person in all of his following appearances.
- The villainess Array, from Fred Perry's Gold Digger (Antarctic Press) comic, had the ability to create custom-built alternate personalities while splitting them into their own bodies (which could be crafted to look like anyone or anything she wanted). However, when she reabsorbed her duplicates into herself, the personalities remained permanently distinct from the original, giving her a massive MPD. Fortunately for her, they generally get along, and allow her to be a one-woman conspiracy in the process.
- Green Lantern (1960): In the comics of the mid-1980s, a vigilante/villain character named Predator showed up mysteriously to protect Carol Ferris while Green Lantern Hal Jordan had to spend some time in outer space due to the command of the Guardians. After Hal Jordan decided to quit the Green Lantern Corps, giving John Stewart permission to take his place as the protector of Sector 2814, Predator kidnapped Carol Ferris and performed a Fusion Dance with her that changed them into Star Sapphire right before Hal's eyes. Hal later learned that during his time in space, after Carol had transformed into Star Sapphire due to not being able to cope with the loss of Hal being anywhere that she could reach him, she had split into two beings — Predator, which represented "the male side of her", and Carol herself, who was the normal "female side" that loved Hal. Years later, this was given a Retcon in that Predator was actually the entity of the violet light of the emotional spectrum, namely love.
- The Incredible Hulk:
- This has happened to the Hulk on occasion, usually separating Bruce Banner and the Savage Hulk, commonly reducing the Hulk to a rampaging 'beast' without Banner's intellect to keep him in check. Paul Jenkins' run saw a number of journeys into Banner's mind with various Hulks showing up representing different aspects of Banner's psyche.
- During John Byrne's run, Bruce and the Hulk are split, which initially seems like a good deal for Bruce. He's finally free of the Hulk, and can marry Betty Ross. However, Al Milgrom's run soon shows that the Hulk took all of Bruce's drive with him. Without that, Bruce has no motivation for anything besides killing the Hulk. And without Bruce, the Hulk is just a mindless berserker. Then it turns out the two are dying from being separated, forcing them to remerge.
- The aftermath of Onslaught saw Banner literally split from the Hulk — but unlike the above, the resulting Hulk wasn't a mindless beast, but a merger of the Savage Hulk and Joe Fixit, a Hulk that continued for a while even after Bruce returned from Franklin Richards's pocket universe and remerged with the Hulk.
- Jason Aaron's run on The Incredible Hulk (2011) kicks off with the Green Scar Hulk (a smarter version of the Savage) getting himself split from Banner; this was achieved by having Doctor Doom perform brain surgery to literally extract the uniquely "Banner" elements of the Hulk's brain and then clone a new body for the Banner personality that lacked the genetic potential to become a Hulk (this had the effect of reducing Green Scar's intellect to a level Doom compared to a ninth-grader). Unaware of the exact circumstances of the split, Banner doesn't take it at all well, to the point that Banner irradiates an entire island trying to turn himself back into a Hulk, culminating in his body being disintegrated and his personality returning to the Hulk's body.
- The Immortal Hulk: During "The Hulk in Hell", the titular Hulk and Bruce Banner are split apart in the Below-Place, leaving the Hulk emaciated and weakened until Bruce is freed. The Below-Place works on its own rules, so the next time, Joe Fixit and Savage Hulk are separate entities, which Joe figures is because whoever's in charge of the place makes the rules.
- The Incredible Hulk (2023) ends with the "Fractured Son" Hulk being attacked by Eldest, an ancient demonic entity, which leads to Banner being expelled from Hulk's body as the Eldest manifests as The Infernal Hulk. Banner initially tries to go into hiding and live a peaceful life at last, but the threat of the new Hulk forces him to make contact with the other heroes and find a way to restore the more familiar Hulk.
- Justice League of America:
- JLA (1997): One storyline did this to the League's entire roster — splitting Superman and Clark Kent, Batman and Bruce Wayne, etc. Hilarity spectacularly failed to ensue as things went on: Clark was scared of heights while Superman was losing his humanity, Bruce Wayne had no outlet for his rage at the criminal element while Batman lost his motivation (as observed, Batman is driven by the memory of the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne but that memory "belongs" to Bruce), the Flash lost his connection to his human past while Wally West became lethargic and missed his dates with his wife, and Kyle Rayner was faced with a psychological breakdown without the ring to vent his creativity while Green Lantern lacked any imagination and just shot things. Martian Manhunter and John Jones were actually not too badly off, with the Manhunter simply becoming more distant from humanity while Jones enjoyed the freedom from his old grief at being the last of his race, but Plastic Man got split into Plas, who literally could not be serious, and Eel O'Brian, the ruthless and manipulative ex-career criminal, was left wondering if he only became good because of his time as Plastic Man. Only Wonder Woman and Aquaman were immune as they essentially didn't have "secret identities", and then only until they got hit with a second blast: Aquaman got split into fish and human, and Diana was split into clay statue and disembodied spirit... which was exactly what she wanted to happen.
- Worth noting, this wasn't intended to be a bad thing; some aliens did it because they wanted to help the heroes by giving them the chance to have a break without having to worry about crime. Or so they claimed. Then we found out their motives weren't quite so altruistic.
- Appears to be happening to the Enchantress in the first issue of Justice League Dark. Her original self lies withered in an isolated cabin, surrounded by baleful spells. Meanwhile a wide-eyed June Moone wanders the streets surveying the weirdness.
- Legion of Super-Heroes (1989): In the 1994 reboot, Triplicate Girl was portrayed this way, with her three split selves portrayed as The Three Faces of Eve. Since most of the other inhabitants of her homeworld were (or forced to behave as) Single Minded Duplicates, she left after a traumatizing stay at Bedlam House barely failed to "cure" her of her mental disorder.
- The Mighty Thor: Don Blake has been fissioned off from himself a couple of times. Don always winds up with Thor's sense of humility (after all, that was the reason Odin created the Don Blake persona to begin with), and without that part of his personality, Thor becomes a conceited jerk. However, this changed when Thor 'died' during the war against the Serpent, with Blake existing as a separate entity despite Thor's loss; when Thor returned there was no significant shift in his personality, but Blake went so far as to make a deal with the Enchantress to try and become a god himself out of bitterness at his complete lack of an identity without Thor. Thor (2025) takes this further when Thor is seemingly killed in battle and manifests on Earth as mortal Sigurd Jarlson facing the threat of Donald Blake's new leadership of the Serpent cult, although it is later revealed that "Blake" is actually merged with the essence of the World Serpent while "Jarlson" is the manifestation of the better part of Donald Blake's soul, with Thor's presence still unaccounted for.
- Spider-Man:
- Sandman had this happen to him once, in Peter Parker: Spider-Man, by some plot. He got split into his core, his childhood self, his feminine side, and unfortunately, his evil side in order to handwave why he stayed a crook.
- A The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) storyline saw Peter and Spider-Man split into separate entities, with Peter basically possessing all of the responsibility while Spider-Man only had his sense of humour, to the point that Spider-Man actually asked Peter who 'Uncle Ben' was and thought it was a good idea to reprogram the Tri-Sentinel as a means of transport, until Peter was able to reverse the process after confirming that the two would die if not brought back together.
- Supergirl:
- In Adventure Comics #313 The Condemned Legionnaires, Supergirl had an evil half created by a piece of red Kryptonite. She came out wearing a black cowl and full bodysuit.
- Supergirl (2005) story arc Girl Power: Supergirl's evil clone -properly named Dark Supergirl- was spawned by black Kryptonite and wore a black version of Kara's normal outfit.
- Superman:
- Superman (1939) #162: The Amazing Story of Superman Red and Superman Blue'', is an alternate universe story in which Superman splits himself into two identical Supermen, and the two wound up unbottling Kandor, rebuilding Krypton (eliminating kryptonite in the process), curing all evil on Earth with an "anti-evil ray" (as a side benefit, Reformed!Luthor came up with a cure for all disease), and marrying both Lois Lane and Lana Lang (one each, obviously).
- Superman Reborn reveals Flashpoint caused Superman to be separated into his New Earth and Prime Earth selves. It's also a reference to the Red and Blue era, given the lights used to represent the two. At the end of the story, they merge into a single, complete version of Superman.
- He's also been split into Superman and Clark Kent numerous times. The moral is usually that it's the "ordinary guy" part of his personality that gives Supes his heart and sense of perspective—and without those qualities he's is at best arrogant or detached and at worst a terrifying, ruthless alien.
- Tharg's Future Shocks: A writer who imagines himself as various different personas as he writes different series, goes to a doctor as he is experiencing Writer's Block. The doctor takes him to a machine that will allow the various personalities to be given their own bodies. However, after this, the writer still can't think of any new stories as his other personas all type away at their own, so he creates a new one.
- In Wizards of Mickey, the Darker and Edgier Fantasy Alternate Universe of Disney comics, Yen Sid was originally the evil Supreme Warlock and also the teacher of Master Nereus and the Phantom Blot. However, during a magical battle against the Dragons, he was split in seven hooded ghosts, embodying his seven main personality traits, as per this trope. The six evil ones became known as the Guild of Diaphans. The good one, meanwhile, was banished to Another Dimension where he lives a scholarly life in a small house in the middle of a snow-covered plain. At the end of the series, the heroes succeed in bringing the Good!Yen Sid back, and he fuses back together with the Diaphans. Thanks to the knowledge he has gained, he is now able to get the upper hand over his less virtuous sides and this leads the complete Yen Sid to pull a Heel–Face Turn.
- World of Warcraft has this with Varian Wrynn, who was split into two parts: King Varian, a royal puppet under the control of Lady Katrana Prestor (Onyxia), and Lo'Gosh (a nickname given to him by orcs), amnesiac arena champion.
- Jamie Madrox from the X-Men comics has a mutant power that creates duplicates of himself upon physical impact. Each tends to manifest some aspect of his personality. Originally, it (usually) didn't work that way, with dupes being exactly identical to the original unless outside forces screwed with his powers (which happened at least twice). But now, dupes always have their own personalities to varying degrees. And can come back out when he doesn't want them to, sometimes.
Comic Strips
- In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin successfully clones only the good aspects of his personality with his trademark cardboard box technology. This leads to a lot of people cracking "you'd be a lot smaller if that were true," remarks. This is eventually subverted: since even Calvin's best qualities are still inherently his own, the "good" clone threatens to clobber his creator, vanishing in a Puff of Logic for having done something evil.
Fan Works
- Abandon All Hope, Embrace All Chaos: The Emperor's Shards are pieces of his persona that have been split off from him and scattered around The Multiverse: Estalius, the Shard who works with the Justice League after possessing a clone of Dr. Alexander Megalos, represents the Emperor's Intellect; The Emperor's Valor manifests through Daniel Holden, a Religious Bruiser on a version of Earth devastated by Chaos; The Emperor's Compassion ends up possessing Fyodor Karamazov.
- In The Chronicles of Narnia fic Across the Worlds
, after the Pevensies are displaced across various alternate worlds by the Great Darkness, Susan, Peter and Edmund eventually find a world which is essentially ruled by three identical versions of Lucy, each representing a corrupted version of one of her siblings; Empress Lucille the Gentle is fixated on her own beauty, General Lucia the Magnificent refuses to listen to the input of others due to her belief in her own power, and High Inquisitor Lucinda the Just is a ruthless strategist.
- Everqueen: The Emperor can split himself into his "Aspects" representing his divine Domains: The Eagle, representing his ruler aspect, the Knight, representing his warrior/hero aspect, the Shepherd, representing his God of the Dead aspect, and the Witch, representing his psychic powers and scholarship. They've also shown they can change if the Emperor himself does; the Knight used to be a Knight in Shining Armor, but centuries of Dirty Business and I Did What I Had to Do have stained and rusted his armor, while the Witch was once the Scholar before the Emperor came to view psychana as inherently corruptive and dangerous.
- The Danny Phantom fic Benediction sees Danny facing his 'future self' once again by using the Fenton Ghost Catcher to split the other ghost back into his separate identities of Danny's ghost-half and Vlad's severed ghost-half. While they eventually have to recombine back into one entity or 'die', while split the two personas are less violently destructive than the whole, allowing Jazz to give the Danny aspect of the split some psychological therapy. After she deduces that the older Danny was 'coping' with his grief and pain at the loss of his family by 'hiding' under Vlad's rage after the split, Jazz is able to help him acknowledge that he didn't always fail and encourage him to focus on the positives, with the result that the recombined ghost is less interested in pointless destruction. The sequel, "Indemnification", sees Dark Danny return to his future, where he occasionally interacts with the ghost of his deceased human side, the two acknowledging that the two aren't quite complete even if they recognise that they are now two distinct people.
- In Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, when the protagonists journey into Socrates' mind, they find various aspects of his personality — his happiness, sneakiness, nobility, and ultimately his negativity (who made the whole dimension in the first place to rule over the other aspects).
- Chaos Theory Z:
- As in canon, Kami and Piccolo are two halves of the Nameless Namek, who shed his evil traits to become Guardian of Earth. But in this story, it comes to light that what the Nameless Namek cast aside that became Piccolo were only the traits he perceived as detrimental to his goal…including the desire to become Guardian of Earth in the first place, which manifested in King Piccolo’s desire to rule the world. Lord Slug even reveals that they weren’t properly separated; if they were, their lives wouldn’t be tied to each other. With all of these revelations, Kami and Piccolo have a proper heart-to-heart to make peace with each other, ending with Kami fusing them back together.
- Lord Slug performed the Separation Ritual as well, incarnating his compassion, empathy, honor, and doubt into a separate form, and then leaving it at the mercy of a group of vile raiders.
- Danganronpa Class Swap: Genocider Syo has split off from Toko to become her own being, complete with her own body.
- Doctor Who in the Multiverse of Madness has a spiritual version: when the Thirteenth Doctor (Doctor Who) finds herself, Dan and Yaz in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wong decides to question the Doctor by expelling her astral form from her body, only for this to result in the Doctor's past incarnations manifesting as well.
- Fission is a Quantum Leap fanfic which is, per the Author's own admission, a reworking of the novel Double or Nothing (see Literature), where Sam leaps into a pair of twins. Here, the pair of twins Sam leaps into (this time in 1970) have been drafted to Vietnam, and are set to ship out soon; one of the twins is saddled with preparing for deployment while also dealing with an alcoholic, pregnant wife, while the other opted to instead dodge the draft and hide out in a hippie commune. As the leap progresses, Draft!Sam finds himself consumed with a growing sense of anger and frustration over the leap in general, while Hippie!Sam is primarily focused on all the potential good they can do with their current predicament.note And even after everything gets resolved, and both Sams fuse back together upon leaping out, Sam finds himself leaping forward several years in order to save the hippie commune from an unresolved threat.
- From Fake Dreams: The Edefelt sisters' summoning of Medea results in this. Luvia has the nicer Princess incarnation, Marjatta the more cruel Witch incarnation. This is reflected in their Noble Phantasms and skills.
- In the The Ghost and Molly McGee fanfic "Split Persona-Libby", Molly's best friend (and recently girlfriend) Libby gets split into five clones of herself, each representing an aspect of her personality: there's a Smart Libby who's logical but unemotional; a Sarcastic Libby who's snarky and bad-tempered, a Shy Libby who's nervous and bashful, a Lovestruck Libby who's touchy-feely and optimistic, and a Creative Libby who's melodramatic, imaginative, and prone to acting like a Film Noir detective.
- In Hellsister Trilogy, Legion's nemesis Mordru uses his magic to resurrect Satan Girl, Supergirl's evil clone fashioned from her inner darkness.
- A variation occurs in Hogyoku ex Machina when Ichigo figures out how to manifest Zangetsu and his hollow self in the real world. The latter and Zaraki end up getting along swimmingly.
- In the Infinity Crisis spin-off Of Kryptonians and Queens, black kryptonite is used to split Lena Luthor and Morgana Pendragon- Lena being a second identity magically created by Morgana- into separate entities; Lena was originally "just" a false identity created by Morgana that worked too well, and after the split Lena retains some of Morgana's magical ability as a bonus.
- Legacy of the Cursed Lands: Zetto/Kirbopher used to be one person who could switch between those forms at will. The virus split them in two both physicaly and mentally: Zetto is logical, but complitely emotionless and has No Social Skills, while Kirbopher can interact with people, but can't control his emotions or think things through.
- Manynette: An overworked Marinette gets akumatized into Manynette, creating multiple copies of herself with each representing a different role/responsibility:
- Buginette is the "Ladybug" part of Marinette, being able to be Ladybug full-time without needing Tikki to transform.
- Bakinette is the part of Marinette that helps her parents around the bakery.
- Presinette embodies Marinette's responsibilities as Class President.
- Chorinette exists to do all of her other household chores.
- Fashionette embodies Marinette's passion for fashion, doing all of her commissions and productions.
- Carinette is the part of her that acts as the Living Emotional Crutch for the people around her, giving out encouraging words and small gifts to everyone she interacts with.
- Napinette, implied to be the original Marinette, seems to mostly represent the part of Marinette who's burnt out, her whole role simply being to sleep while the other Manynettes take care of her other responsibilities.
- In Mega Man Reawakened, Gemini Man's Gemini Duality mode splits his personalities into two bodies.
- A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies: All the ponies of Dream Valley were created as representations of some part of their creator's personality. This is also why there are so few stallions—their creator, Queen Majesty, did what she could with what little masculine aspects her mind had within her.
- Mischief (MHA): Whenever Izuku loses control of his emotions, his Decoys, each one representing an aspect of his personality, manifest. So far the revealed personas are: Two, Confidence; Three, Logic; Four, the Prankster; Five, Guilt; Six, Hunger, or more accurately, Ambition; Eight, Anxiety; Nine, Deprerssion; Eleven, Self-Sacrifice; Twelve, the Analyst; and Thirteen, Love, more specifically his love for Ochako.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction:
- Discord does this to Twilight in Becoming Ponies. Unusually, her mind itself isn't split, exactly; only her magical power and ability is removed and installed in a new body.
- Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship has Twilight Sparkle being split into Belle Amie and Shining Spark, the former representing her heart and emotions and the latter embodying her magic and logic. At least, that's what it appears at first — the truth is slightly more complicated.
- The MLP Loops: Nyx from Past Sins (see below) ends up being activated as a looper, to Twilight's immense relief—she had thought she would never have a chance to see her daughter again in her infinite life. Nyx's connection to Luna ends up causing much weirdness; often she won't Awaken until after Nightmare Moon is defeated, but sometimes she'll Wake up early and just leave Luna behind, short-circuiting the whole evil plot. There have also been loops where she and Luna both Awaken at the same time, Sharing a Body. In any situation where a vote comes up, Luna inevitably tries to bring Nyx in as a ringer on her side.
- The Palaververse: Second Sun: The titular second Celestia is a result of this situation, splitting into Red Oni, Blue Oni.
- Past Sins: Cultists enact a ritual to revive Nightmare Moon, Luna's Superpowered Evil Side. She was supposed to end up with all of Luna's power and memories, but due to mistakes she ended up as a filly (though still an alicorn) with no memories who goes by the name Nyx. Twilight ends up raising her as a daughter, and despite many problems along the way, she becomes a much better pony than the cult expected.
- The central conflict of A Piece of Pie occurs when Twilight Sparkle's experiment results in four aspects of Pinkie Pie's personality taking form and running amok.
- Sophia's avatar: In this My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! fic, the Magic Tool Department invents a golem that a magic user can transfer their soul into and control. But when Sophia Ascart uses the Avatar, her present self is trapped in the golem while her past self Atsuko "Acchan" gets control over her body.
- Sunsplit Saga: Sunscarred has an experiment put together by Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer, which resulted in Sunset Shimmer, as a highly magical person splitting in seven constructs that represent seven parts of her personality.
- Naru-Hina Chronicles Mini-sodes: One arc focuses on Naruto's Shadow Clones becoming real with different personalities. They include a female version, a smart one, an aggressive one, a flirty one, and one who keeps eating ramen.
- One step backwards and Three forwards: As a result of the reality-altering Wishes made by Hawkmoth and his supporters, Adrien is split into two individuals in the new world: Felix Agreste, who remembers his past life, and his younger brother Adrien, who exists to fulfill Lila's Wish of having him as her Meal Ticket.
- The Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic The One With The Angelic Face sees Angela (the female version of Angel in this series) split into the female human and male vampire identity after Drusilla borrows Toth's weapon. However, as the two halves literally need each other to exist in this dimension, eventually Angela will revert to her 'natural' state of a two-centuries-plus corpse while Angelus will become a pure vampire demon and be unable to exist on this plane, forcing the gang to merge the two identities back together before Angela dies.
- Basically applies in "Pokemon: Dark Multiverse" when the Dark Knights attack the Pokemon world; an attack by Arceus splits the Red Death back into his separate personas of Bruce Wayne and Barry Allen, prompting Barry to join the heroes opposing the other Knights and the Bruce that had been part of the Red Death finally accepting that he was wrong when confronted by his prime reality counterpart.
- In Prism, Kenshin is split into a thirty year old version of himself, a teenage self, and a child self. Some different aspects of his personality end up split among them as well, such as the teenage version having a short temper and little self-control, most of which went to the adult version.
- "The Sister in the Door" is based on the premise that Seeley Booth (Bones) is the human identity of Angel (Angel) after he achieved Shanshu. However, Booth's tumour is revealed to have been the work of the First Evil, with the operation to remove the tumour from Booth's brain allowing the First's agents to arrange for the part of Booth that is still Angelus to manifest as a separate entity.
- The Star Trek: Lower Decks fic A Tale of Two Tendis opens with a transporter accident splitting Tendi into two people; much like previously happened with Captain Kirk ("The Enemy Within"), one Tendi demonstrates her more aggressive qualities where the other personality is more timid and relatively passive. This leads to the aggressive Tendi adopting her title of "Mistress of the Winter Constellations" essentially full-time while the more timid Tendi still defines herself as a Starfleet officer but lacks confidence in herself. The two call Rutherford for help finding a way to make the split permanent, but after the Mistress attempts to change Rutherford's personality by hacking his implant to make him more receptive to her advances, the "new" Rutherford decides to just merge the two back together, explicitly noting that in their divided state the Mistress has none of Tendi's interest in science while the lieutenant lacks any confidence in her own scientific efforts and he prefers the united Tendi rather than either of the two existing versions.
- Flandre from Touhou Project is a mentally unstable little sister locked in a basement. She can split herself into four using her spellcard Four Of A Kind, and fan works often depict the clones as expressions of different aspects of her psyche. For an example, Aozora Market created a doujin where she asked permission to go shopping in the village, and used Four of a Kind to spread the unstable parts of her personality around. One of them manages to buy the thing she wants, but not before the rest of them create chaos in the mansion.
- Many YouTube Poops have Luigi with split personalities, most often Gay Luigi and Mama Luigi. Heck, even the split personalities have split personalities. They've had a few encounters. In "Final Hours", all of his forms were together witnessing the end of the world. However, the end didn't happen.
- Zecoroota: Wherein Zecora is split into her two different stripe colors, each representing a separate facet of her. Neither are particularly concerned.
Film — Animation
- Aladdin (1992, Disney): Word of God says that Iago is actually a part of Jafar's personality that he deliberately split off from himself and transferred into a parrot with magic in order to get rid of the personality traits he felt were holding him back.
- A Certain Magical Index: Miracle of Endymion: It is eventually revealed that Arisa Meigo was a being split off from Shutaura Sequenzia as part of her Bargain with Heaven. Arisa apparently represents Shutaura's love for music and cheerfulness, as Shutaura lost those traits after the split. Neither of them were aware of the other until the villain brings them together and explains this, leading to Arisa having a Tomato in the Mirror moment. They eventually merge back together, causing Shutaura to regain her cheer and love for music. In the epilogue, Shutaura occasionally sings in Arisa's voice, making Touma and Index realize Arisa still exists.
- In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo are "remnants" of Sephiroth, who, having died but still existing in The Lifestream, was unable to create a complete avatar of himself. Instead he created these puppets, who were separate persons (and nowhere near as cool) but each embodied some part of his personality. Apparently, Kadaj represents his anger and rage, Loz his speed, strength and attachment to Jenova, and Yazoo his charisma and aloof demeanor.
- Bad Cop/Good Cop from The LEGO Movie. He's one of those minifigures whose head has two faces with different expressions and rotates to change them, the "inactive" face being obscured by the helmet. Both are voiced by Liam Neeson, but Good Cop sounds nothing like him.
Emmet: Look, um, I watch a lot of cop shows on TV. Isn't there supposed to also be... Isn't there supposed to be a good cop?
Bad Cop: Oh, yes. But we're not done yet.
(Bad Cop's head swivels around to become Good Cop.)
Good Cop: Hi, buddy! I'm your friendly neighborhood police officer. Would you like a glass of water?
Emmet: Yeah, actually, that sounds—
Bad Cop: (head switches back to Bad Cop) Too bad! (punches glass across the room)
Film — Live-Action
- The Cell: Inside his mind, Carl is divided into three separate personas: Carl as a young boy before he committed his crimes; Carl as an adult, aware of who and what he is in the present but unable to stop; and the Demon King, a monstrous figure who dominates the other two personalities.
- Cult of Chucky reveals that thanks to a spell from voodoofordummies.com, Chucky has found the means to split his soul into other dolls, the titular cult. One of these clones ends up body-surfing into the body of Nica Pierce. It seems he's taught his accomplice Tiffany Valentine on how to do this, as the ending reveals she's successfully split her soul into at least one Tiffany doll.
- The Skeksis and the UrRu (Mystics) of The Dark Crystal and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance are respectively the evil and good halves of the UrSkeks, separated by accident when the titular crystal was cracked during one of their experiments on it. The only way they return to their UrSkek state is to make the crystal whole again, so not even skekGra and urGoh, a Skeksis and a Mystic who want to merge back together, are able to do so.
- A bizarre variation of this happens to Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Naturally, considering the character, this is taken to extremes with an entire crew of dozens of Jack Sparrows, each one supposedly reflecting one aspect of his character (although this appears to have been a hallucination rather than any of them actually manifesting as physically independent entities).
- The movie version of Sadako Yamamura, from The Ring. Originally a child with unbelievably powerful Psychic Powers, her father somehow split her into an innocent side and an evil, supernatural one. The former was sent off to live a (semi) normal life, grew up, and went to college. The latter was imprisoned and subjected to drug treatments that stunted her growth —but did little to assuage either her malevolence or her powers, which she used to contact ( and revive) her adult half halfway across the country. Their reunion... resulted in tragedy for everyone involved.
- In Silent Hill (2006), the psychic little girl Alessa Gillespie split apart after enduring terrible trauma, as with the games, although rather than two beings, she split into three: the innocent Sharon Da Silva, adopted daughter of the film's protagonists; the menacing Creepy Child "Dark Alessa"; and her original body, stored in Silent Hill's hospital. According to the filmmakers, the split echoes the Holy Trinity (Sharon is Jesus, Dark Alessa is the Holy Ghost, and the original Alessa is God), which fits the theme of Alessa being the "God" of Silent Hill. This trope is still present in the sequel Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, where Sharon and her adoptive father have renamed themselves (she's now Heather Mason).
- In Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, the Toymaker was advised by three holographic characters with his face: a Sociopathic Soldier, a Corrupt Corporate Executive and a New-Age Retro Hippie.
The Toymaker: I don't mind talking to 'myself', but when you guys start to cut me out of the conversation, that's when it gets a little strange.
- In Superman III, Supes gets exposed to some "artificial" Kryptonite that turns him evil, then splits him into an evil Superman and a good Clark Kent.
- In Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, Arcee is composed of three motorcycles. Each body has the same personality, though. In the comics, all speak at once, similar to Transformers: Generation 1 character Reflector.
Literature
- In Anansi Boys, Anansi's son gets split into Fat Charlie (the uncool, apparently nonmagical one) and Spider (the god). The analogy with starfish is made explicit, using the former trope name.
- The Animorphs book The Separation has Rachel, shapeshifted into a starfish, get cut in half with a spade. The two starfish halves regenerate into Nice and Mean Rachel, both quite explicitly called that in the text. However, it isn't just good and evil: in a situation inspired by the Star Trek version, the kind Rachel can plan complex scenarios but is incapable of focusing in the moment, and the violent one is the opposite, incapable of thinking beyond the moment. They have to work together because neither alone can function well enough to do what she wants.
- The Appeal: It's revealed that a non-supernatural variant happens with Issy and her email friend, Lauren. "Lauren" is in fact Issy's invention to deal with her self-hatred.
- In Coiling Dragon, when a Saint passes the threshold in their understanding of the Laws or Edicts and becomes a god, a divine spark is created. If the Saint takes the spark into their body, that body is their divine body. They can, however, form a new divine body around the spark and retain their original body. The primary benefit of this choice is that a divine body is typically limited to using only one type of magic, but the god's other magics remain usable with the original body.
- In The Cosmere, each of the sixteen Shards that act as gods for various worlds is a fragment of an original uber-god called Adonalsium. When Adonalsium shattered, each Shard of its personality and power was taken up by a human Shardholder, becoming deities such as Honor, Cultivation and Odium, Ruin and Preservation, Devotion and Dominion and Endowment.
- Daughter of the Sun: Orsina deals with a wraith in a town named Aola that turns out to be this. Due to the influence of Xera, Goddess of Melancholy, a man who'd just lost his son and couldn't properly grieve manifested this way. After he and his husband finally deal with their grief, it fades away.
- In The Drawing of the Three, Roland splits apart Odetta and Detta into two separate people whereas before, they had been two personalities in the same body. The two are then theoretically recombined to make Susanna, but Detta keeps showing up on her own anyway.
- The Duplicate features this, or so the duplicates think. They're wrong, even if they manage to convince the original for a while.
- Franny K. Stein: The tenth book 'Mood Science'' has Franny upset her dog Igor by accidentally ruining a jigsaw puzzle he was working on and making things worse when her attempt at restitution was simply to make him a two-piece puzzle. Deciding that she'd be better off without emotions, she uses her Mixer-Upper to remove her feelings and put them in separate bodies, resulting in personifications of Franny's anger, sadness, silliness and fear. Without emotions, Franny becomes apathetic to the point that she doesn't care to do anything when events lead to a virus spreading throughout the town and turning everyone into toads. It takes persuasion from the personification of Franny's sense of duty (who had the door to the Mixer-Upper shut on her before the situation escalated to requiring her intervention) and her grandmother to get Franny to focus on restoring her emotions and finding a way to cure everyone.
- By The Heroes of Olympus, it's revealed that most if not all of the Greek gods from the previous series have Roman counterparts that differ from the original depending on what Roman ideals are placed on them. It's hinted that these counterparts are separate from each other and can combine. The renewed conflict between Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter causes them to exhibit constant split personality disorder, one of the reasons why they don't assist the battle against the Giants directly (the other is because Olympus is sealed off by Zeus/Jupiter, so no one can).
- "The Humours" by Robert Sheckley involves a man who got a schizophrenia cure in his childhood by getting the other personalities siphoned into artificial bodies. He spends the story searching for them around the Solar System.
- In I Got Caught Up in a Hero Summons, but the Other World Was at Peace!, Shallow Vernal, aka Shiro, split herself into two, with the other half being the main heroine Kuromueina. Despite both having different personalities, both end up loving the MC Kaito.
- It's eventually revealed in Volume 29 of INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!? that the Goddess of Dawn split herself into nine individual females who end up becoming the protagonist Kotarou's love interests. All nine girls possess parts of the Goddess's powers, abilities and worries. The Goddess did it out of loneliness, hoping that Kotarou could accept her for who she is as everyone else who came before Kotarou failed to meet her expectations. Kotarou accepted all of her and the Goddess followed Kotarou's request to become human and erase everyone else's memories, including her own, to lead a normal human life.
- In The Nekropolis Archives, the beings called the Watchers were originally a single entity with no concept of "self" or "other". When it first encountered other life and gained an understanding of the concept that multiple perspectives could exist, its mind divided into multiple entities embodying conflicting aspects of its personality. Gregor and Shamika are parts of it which are respectively repulsed and fascinated by the concept of "otherness".
- Old Kingdom: At the climax of Goldenhand, Chlorr's Soul Jar is revealed to have what's left of her original human self, Clariel, bound in stasis in the River of Death. When awakened, Clariel is horrified at the Undead Abomination Chlorr has become, and helps Lirael lay them both to rest for good.
- In Pact, Rose and Blake Thorburn initially appear to be each other's Distaff Counterpart, the same person born a different gender, with one being the original and the other created by magic. However, it is revealed later that they are in fact two pieces of the same person, a progenitor of unknown gender and name, who were split into pieces by magic, with each getting parts of the original's personality-Blake got the strong moral compass, Rose got the deep-rooted cynicism, and they both got enough mutual antagonism that it's a real danger that they'll destroy each other before their numerous enemies manage to do so.
- Past Doctor Adventures: In Managra, three clones of Lord Byron are featured, each one reflecting a different part of the description "mad, bad and dangerous to know".
- One novel in the Quantum Leap book line, Double or Nothing, concerns Sam managing to leap into both halves of a pair of twinsnote in 1986, while back at the Project both twins are inhabiting Sam's body. It quickly becomes apparent that it wasn't a clean leap as both Sams take on starkly different personalities: Trucker!Sam becomes completely selfish and underhanded, to the point where he's perfectly fine abandoning the leap and permanently replacing the guy he leapt into, while Professor!Sam becomes morally driven to a fault, with no sense of self-preservation, or even the ability to lie. And to make things worse, Trucker!Sam winds up accepting a job to dump nuclear waste, which will wind up causing a nuclear holocaust if he isn't stopped.
- In The Secrets of Droon, this happens to Sparr, though at first they think he's just been de-aged. It turns out he was split into a young version (who was learning to be good) and a very old version (who was entirely evil). The evil old version forcibly re-combines them and brings him back to his "middle aged" form.
- Robin Hobb seems to have discovered a new use for this in The Soldier Son — it can solve Love Triangles.
- Space Brat: In the climax of book 5, the Blob Monster that's been trying to keep Blork from leaving it alone is finally able to divide via mitosis, with each half having a different feeling — one still wants to keep Blork, the other understands he has to go. Unlike most cases, this is a positive thing, as both halves have learned from their experience.
- In Sublimation, emigrating results in a copy of the immigrant (known as an instance) being left behind in their home country. It also only applies if the immigrant truly wants to leave home permanently.
- Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: In "We Two May Meet" Magdelene discovers she's been split into two people. One is her carefree, promiscuous, relaxed self. The other (Magdelene two) is her nagging, prudish and reserved aspects which don't usually show at all. Naturally, they get along poorly, but team up to learn what happened.
- In Wear Your Soul Round Your Neck, a subset of humanity attains perfection by casting off their flaws. Unusually, the perspective character is one of these discarded flaws, called "malforms" - and she will fight to the death to avoid being merged with her former host.
- Whateley Universe: Chad/Chaddy/Merry/Mai/Paige/Petra. Currently in three parts: Paige, Petra, and Chaddy. Paige is at Whateley, Petra is in Italy, and Chaddy is running around in Sara's head.
- Happens near the end of Xenocide. Jane, Ender, and company make the first journey outside of spacetime and back in, in which the travelers keep or alter themselves and their possessions by imagining them so. The purpose of the trip succeeds: Ela creates a safe replacement for the descolada with her mind. The trip also brings surprises. Ender's fractured psyche forms two extra persons: Peter and Valentine as he remembers them from his adolescence. They all share Ender's soul.
Music
- The music video for Kylie Minogue's "Did It Again" involves Cute Kylie, Sexy Kylie, Indie Kylie and Dance Kylie sometimes helping each other out, but mostly fighting one another, as a metaphor for the different directions she was being pulled in as an artist.
- The music video for "Breaking Up With" by RedHook features vocalisy Emmy Mack getting into a wrestling match with a Heel version of herself, whom she beats with a huracanrana.
Myths & Religion
- Hindu Mythology: Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu
- The Triple Goddess of Neo-Paganism: Maid, Mother and Crone.
- Subverted by Christianity, as a common misconception is that the Holy Trinity is God divided into the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In reality, what we consider to be God is the result of the three working in tandem to guide mankind. In essence they are one God, despite being three equal persons with no divisions in power.
- Pandeism and many versions of Pantheism has all beings being Literal Split Personalities of God.
Podcasts
- The Fallen Gods: Missandere and Delilah are two halves of the same soul split in half by their mother in an attempt to protect them. It didn't work as well as she'd like.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- In 4th Edition, the dragon god Io was cut in two by the King of Terror, Erek-Hus. The two halves then rose up as a pair of new deities, Bahamut and Tiamat, who then killed Erek-Hus. All Io's evil qualities, his hubris, arrogance, and envy, were embodied in Tiamat, while his good qualities, his desire to protect and his sense of equality, were embodied in Bahamut. Both gods inherited Io's preference for working alone, and became bitter enemies after the battle. In previous editions, Bahamut and Tiamat were instead the children of Io.
- The halflings' patron deity Yondalla is known as a squeaky-clean, Lawful Good goddess of family and protection, but one of the race's biggest secrets is that she has a dark twin of sorts. Yondalla waited to create her race until she'd seen the other deities make their own, and was so impressed that she borrowed some of what made them each special to put into her halflings — a bit of the elves' grace and speed, a pinch of the dwarves' devotion to community, some of the humans' ambition, and so forth. The other gods were annoyed, but were willing to let Yondalla's offense slide if she got rid of her larcenous streak. When she did so, these darker impulses coalesced into the Chaotic Neutral goddess Dallah Thaun, a deity of secrets and trickery. Rather than an Enemy Without, Dallah Thaun complements Yondalla as a separate aspect of the same whole — they can hear each others' prayers and have the same dedication to the halflings' well-being, they just differ in their methods. When a halfling needs healing or a plentiful harvest he prays to Yondalla, but when it's time to relieve others of their wealth or seek vengeance against those that would harm the little folk, halflings pray to Dallah Thaun.
- The Other playbook from Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined is based off of Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts, so can easily be some manner of replica of another player or NPC.
- Warhammer has Naestra and Arahan, the Sisters of Twilight. These two Wood Elf maidens represent the light and dark sides of the Wood Elf people, and were originally a single elf called Naestrahan, split apart by fey forest magic for some unfathomable purpose. At least, that was their original origin story — the 2014 Wood Elf army book made things a lot less certain, suggesting that they may instead just be regular elves of peculiarly opposite natures, the magically bound together children of Queen Ariel, or even the light and dark aspects of Ariel's personality given physical form during one of her absences from the world.
- Warhammer 40,000: Alpharius and Omegon, possibly; the pair are Single-Minded Twins often described as "two souls in one body," and the only ones among the twenty Primarchs to be twins (in fact, Omegon's very existence technically brings the count to twenty-one) and even their father the Emperor doesn't seem to be aware of Omegon's existence. The pair themselves eventually speculate that they were, originally, one person split into two bodies while traveling through the Warp as an infant. It is, thus far, the most plausible explanation given for their anomalous existence.
Theatre
- In the opera Eurydice, Orpheus has a countertenor double that adds emphasis to several of his songs that represents his heroic quest, contrasting with the regular-guy baritone Orpheus.
- Done as a metaphor in The Lady In The Van, Alan Bennett is portrayed as two separate characters (played by different actors on stage, since they interact, but both played by Alex Jennings in the film): Alan, the writer who has a detached view of events, and A.B., the person they're actually happening to. (And the film is also narrated by the real Alan Bennett.)
- Three Tall Women: The three tall women in question, named only A, B, and C, are actually the same woman at three different ages: 92, 52, and 26, respectively. C is not happy at all at the prospect of turning into either A or B, who are mostly bitter and angry.
- In Bo Burnham's Stand-up comedy show "what.", Burnham is split into two characters, the left brain and the right brain, for the purpose of solving his mental distress. The two halves of his brain offer various views on how to flirt, fight with each other on what they did wrong and why Bo is unhappy, and then eventually decide to do comedy in order to allow both halves of the brain to work together. With this decision made, the two halves of the brain are then re-attached.
Toys
- In BIONICLE, Vezok got hit with a fusion ray set in reverse, causing his strategic cunning side to be split off. Notably, this was not an equal split, the double (named Vezon, the Matoran word for "double") had only Vezok's head for tactics; not his powers, not much of his appearance, not even his sanity. And unfortunately for Vezok, the split was permanent (even after getting a hold of the fusion device again, his teammates wrecked it out of annoyance and because him being smart again would make him harder to backstab).
- In the Transformers: Timelines fiction, Nexus Prime is a large Cybertronian who split his mind and body to form a combiner made of five individuals to help hide the pieces of a vital artifact from enemy hands. The individuals in question are unaware of this for the longest time, making some of their interpersonal dynamics (especially Skyfall and Landquake's Odd Friendship) Hilarious (or at least weirder) in Hindsight. There's also no clear way to classify which person represents which side of Nexus' personality, as they're all fairly three-dimensional personalities. This also makes recombining a Heroic Sacrifice: Becoming Nexus again means the end of all of them as individuals.
Visual Novels
- Fuuko from CLANNAD might count. After the car accident there is the Fuuko in the hospital and the one in the school that everybody seems to be forgetting.
- And by extension, Ayu Tsukimiya, as Fuuko is an expy of her.
- In DRAMAtical Murder, Ren was originally part of Aoba's personality (his "restraint" facet, or his superego) but was forced to split from him and occupy his Allmate's dog-like body when the third facet of Aoba's personality (his "evil" side, or more accurately his id) threatened to overtake him completely. His consciousness then gets passed down to Sei's human body in the true ending so that he and Aoba can actually get romantically involved.
- Galaxy Angel II: The final videogame of the trilogy, Eigou Kaiki no Toki, has this happening to Kahlua and Tequila on their route when they accidentally get in contact with Cookie (a nanomachine organism the heroes discovered in planet Femto). The nanomachines end up creating a separate physical body for Tequila, and she tells Kazuya that now she has to take care of both of them. Things start getting complicated when Kahlua starts becoming a little possessive of Kazuya, and the two end up merging back together.
- In Galzoo Island, if you choose to make love to Nekomatamata and impregnate her, she will end up getting split into five children version of herself, unlike all the other girls in the harem. Kusushi explains that eventually, the five children will combine back into one once Nekomatamata grows back to adulthood in a few days time.
- In The House in Fata Morgana, Morgana was told she was a saint since birth and tried to live up to the title until her Trauma Conga Line, by the end of which she had shoved all her saintly, self-sacrificing qualities into half her mind and begun speaking to this half to cope with her torment. Centuries later, while Morgana continued to haunt the titular house where she died, her saintly half (which she didn't remember existed) went on to become a full soul and reincarnated several times without her, even marrying the reincarnation of the man who'd been in love with Morgana in their first life.
- Pigu Geliciam in the visual novel Rance IX has the ability to split her body into smaller copies of herself, maximum up to eight copies.
- M and Baron in Shikkoku no Sharnoth, as part of Moriarty's experiment. Also, only one of them is ever treated like the character that was originally split.
- SHUFFLE! has Sia's more aggressive split personality, Kikyou, take over when Sia was being too indecisive in what to do about Rin. Kikyou is actually Sia's dead little sister who made a pact with Sia when they were still unborn, enabling her soul to share Sia's body.
- They can literally split in one of game's endings.
- Also, Lycoris can take over Nerine at times, as shown in anime and Essence+ bonus scene.
- In Silver Crisis, the titular Silver is this to Lucario. He was created by Ganondorf from the darkest parts of Lucario’s Aura, which harbors his anger and bitterness towards his former Master and Humanity as a whole, fueling Silver’s goal of destroying all of existence.
- This also happens to Link midway through the story, courtesy of Ganondorf once again. He creates his own variation of Dark Link, though his existence is very short lived.
- Towards the end of the story, Lucario has a Heroic BSoD, which has him encounter all of his different emotions/facets of his personality as actual people in his own mind, who are trying to help him resolve the inner conflict deep within himself.
- Silver, using Ganondorf’s absorbed power, creates Dark Versions of everyone to attack them during the final battle.
- Chinatsu and Ojou in Suika. The former is the love and memories of the latter.
- Tsukihime: Len had part of personality split into White Len and then bolstered with magic (or something) giving her an evil twin of sorts. The most notable thing besides being, you know, evil, is that White Len speaks a great deal while Len has only spoken two or three times in total.
- When They Cry:
- Word of God for the series is that Bernkastel from Umineko: When They Cry is a collection of Higurashi: When They Cry's Rika's memories of all the Fragments where she died.
- Not really a case of a split personality but more of imaginary friends and personas is Sayo Yasuda from the same franchise, who dresses up as servants Shannon, Kanon and the witch Beatrice, who sometimes 'talk' to one another to represent Sayo's internal struggles with her controversial decisions.
Web Animation
- This is essentially the main premise of 13 Cards, a college student named Fëdor ends up summoning eight clones from the magic playing cards he got from the fortune teller, all of which have distinct personalities.
- Brawl Universe has Sheik being split from Zelda thanks to Ganondorf's Magic and she becomes this. Since she was initially part of Zelda, she vies for Link's affections like Zelda does, but otherwise she seems to be her own person.
- Test Tube ends up splitting Yin-Yang into his two split personalities in episode 3 of Inanimate Insanity II. Yang ends up causing more harm to the group when he's split like this than when he is with Yin, and since Status Quo Is God, Yin and Yang end up coming back together as one by the end of the episode.
- Was the plot of the Summer 2025 Special Episodes in Paranormal High School, where Riko ended up splitting into 6 different aspects of herself and being sent around the world, causing her brother to ask the rest of the main characters to assist him in finding them.
- In Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction, we learn that Project Freelancer, a military program implanting Artificial Intelligences into elite soldiers, was only given a single AI to work with by the UNSC which was based off of a cloned brain of the programs' Director. So they subjected this Alpha AI to stress and psychological torture until it started breaking apart, producing fragmented consciousnesses based on one aspect of the Alpha — Delta represented its logic, Gamma its deceit, Omega its rage, and so on. The problem was that Sigma the fragment embodying both creativity and ambition got the idea of becoming a "true" AI and achieving Metastability by attacking the other Freelancers and absorbing its siblings, giving rise to the Meta. The Alpha itself is revealed to be Leonard Church of Blue Team; having been stripped of too much of its original personality and capabilities that it was simply sent away for it's own safety, while his "Girlfriend" Texas is actually another fragment of Alpha known as "Beta": a manifestation of the feelings that the Director had felt for his late wife Allison.
- Near the end of The Strangerhood, it's revealed that an accident occurred when Tovar was transported to the Strangerhood, which split him into two different people, one that was pure evil and one that was pure moron.
Webcomics
- In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, when the good Doctor finds himself at death's doorway, his soul splits into two figures: his rational, scientific side, dressed in a doctor's scrubs; and his Hot-Blooded, justice-obsessed side, dressed in full Ninja garb. Both sides have to cooperate to... persuade The Grim Reaper to allow McNinja to live.
- In the "Army Of One" arc, there is a sort of inversion, where the doctor has a bunch of clones of him made, they all go to college for eight years, taking different degrees, and then merge back into the original McNinja, which justifies his vast scientific knowledge and also helps explain some things in past stories (how he has a Universal Driver's License, why he occasionally argues with his Inner Monologue, etc).
- In At Arm's Length, Ally spent most of the "Splitting Hares" arc divided into two versions of herself, one loyally staying by her husband Peter's side while they other half commits to her friends Sheila and Reece. Both claimed to be the "true" Ally and fought it out, each accusing the other of being inferior and making irresponsible choices. It took the threat of being erased from existence due to the instability of the split to get them to put aside their differences and come together again.
- Blood is Mine: Jane's red is a mental representation of her powers and alien heritage. At first it looks like skin with massive teeth stretched over a wall, then as a blood-splattered version of Jane with inhumanly long limbs. After Jane accepts it, her red turns into a copy of her, only with red hair. When Jane overcharges her astral projection through Incident F, she encounters other fragments of her personality, such as her inner child or the embodiment of her fears.
- In this Dresden Codak strip, Kimiko suddenly, somehow has a red-coloured, extroverted copy of herself split off from her. Extrovert Kimiko then proceeds to run off with the guy that Introvert Kimiko was spying on.
- In He Is a Good Boy, when Crange is insulting himself in a mirror at a bar, the planets align and he splits into his depressed half and his moral half. Moral!Crange goes on a massive euphoria trip while Depressed!Crange is able to drink without inhibition and gets very pissed when Moral!Crange knocks the crown that he won in a drinking contest off his head. They eventually make up and agree to go their separate ways, but as soon as they do, the planets come out of alignment again and they merge back together.
- Sollux Captor from Homestuck is a semi-example: he's got two "dream selves" (most main characters have only one dream self: a duplicate who lives in a tower in Another Dimension and which they temporarily become when they go to sleep.) Each dream self apparently accounts for one of the two sides of his bipolar personality, so when one of his dream selves dies, he goes from manic-depressive to just permanently depressive.
- Theoretically all character's dreamselves should qualify, but Jade is the only other character who actually shows a major difference in personality between her dream and waking selves. Her dream self is goofier and more impulsive than her waking self. And is a blubbering pansy when brought back from the dead as Jadesprite.
- Dave and Davesprite also reflect this to a lesser extent. The latter went through a Bad Future in which he lost two of his friends and had to face down an inevitable death. As a result he's not as stoic as Dave.
- Heroes of Heart rule over an Aspect governing the self and identity. Their myth arc often involve "a journey of splintered self." Dirk has this in spades between himself and his auto-responder. Ironically, he doesn't have it with his dream self, since he runs both bodies at once with the same mind.
- Calliope and Caliborn also count. While they're more like two beings who share the same body, they have separate dream selves.
- The titular character of Jix has multiple personalities; in one arc she was cloned and her "Remula" personality was seemingly transferred to the clone. Unfortunately it turned out that the device only copied her.
- Lookism: This is the best trope to describe what happened to Park Hyung Suk, a chubby and unattractive teenager. After being bullied most of his life, he shuts himself into his new apartment. After having fallen asleep from crying so much he wakes up because of a Potty Emergency. When he's done and is going to wash his hands, he sees himself as a Bishōnen in the mirror, but when he goes back to the bedroom his usual body is there sleeping. Turns out he got another body and changes between them each time he sleeps.
- Medic Pics: Several chapters split the author into his thoughts as an artist and his thoughts as a student, and their conflicting goals.
- Spoofed with a duplication ray (the "Dupe-O-Matic") in Melonpool in which Ralph is first split to form his good twin Ralphie, then Ralph was split again to form his even eviler twin Fauntleroy so in essence Ralph was being distilled. Interestingly, Melonpool instead gets split into his usual moron self and a twin who is a genius.
- The Dupe-O-Matic is also used in a cross-over with It's Walky! to duplicate Joyce, who already had a Split Personality, creating an Evil Twin who continued to have effects far down the plot.
- The Non-Adventures of Wonderella featured "Orgy Biv's Chromasplitter", which divided Wonderella into her two most dominate personalities: Passive and Aggressive.
- While rendered incomprehensible for a good stretch of the series, Haley from The Order of the Stick often got into arguments within herself, with mental versions of herself that represented fragments of her psyche. Her self-loathing was usually the one she spoke with, but she sometimes met with other parts of her, such as her optimism, her vanity, her mistrust, her latent bisexuality, and the new side of her that's sick of the emo stuff and wants to get back to comedy.
- One Philler Space arc has Philler split into three beings: his id, ego, and superego.
- Sequential Art has Hilary split into multiple aspects of her personality- a flat-chested sadistic and spiteful Hilary, a busty exhibitionist Hilary, and a half-formed, guilt-ridden Hilary constantly apologising for her many misdeeds. After she is re-merged, it turns out they missed a fourth Hilary, a tiny and cute version that represents her joy and wonder.
- The Wotch: In the 2003 "SchizophrANNEia" arc, Anne tries to fulfill multiple commitments by using a spell to make identical copies of herself. Turns out that each copy represents a different emotion, and furthermore each new copy diminishes the original incrementally. Needless to say much hilarity ensues before Anne is finally able to pull herself together.
Web Original
- The Bandwidth Theatre episode "Microsoft: The Verdict" sees an antitrust judge order Microsoft split into its good and evil sides. The use of the classic transporter sound effect makes this a Shout-Out to "The Enemy Within", which for many is the archetypal example.
- In Books Vs Movies, the Matt Hatter who reviews the movie versions of books is said to represent the more rational, objective side of Matt Guion and it's eventually established (via Double Vision) that he and the "regular" Matt are separate people. Later events create further literal split personalities from Regular Matt, including the Scottish Reviewer who's knowledgeable about theater, Evil Twin who's a Card-Carrying Villain, and a seeming Captain Obvious who turns out to be more of an Empathic Shapeshifter.
- Destroy the Godmodder has lots of this, almost always combined with Author Avatar, since players use it to spawn mini plot points and summon themselves as entities. And then the GM got one too...
- Jordan from Jordan Underneath is seen interacting with various other versions of himself throughout his videos, usually representing parts of his personality.
- Sad Jordan is a perpetually sad Jordan that represents Jordan's sadness and depression. He is characterized by the black tear streaks coming from his eyes, his friendship with the scary Mr. Whiskers, his habit of saying depressing things and his compulsion to remind Jordan constantly of those depressing things.
- Skele-Jordan is Jordan. And a skeleton. He might also be insane and a representation of his inner Nightmare Fetishist.
- Evil Jordan is Jordan's evil side who tries taking over as the dominant personality in the Silent Hill 3 review. Half of his face (and hand) is painted black with one red eye.
- Anxiety Jordan represents Jordan's anxiety. He has swirly eyes, a cracked face and wears a white hoody, and usually mutters all of the little things that bother him.
- Luke Mochrie and the Inners: Kinley Mochrie uses Phillip, his Inner Pessimist, and Ringo, his Inner Optimist, to point out the good and the bad qualities of a film being reviewed. Sometimes, she'll even have other Inners pop in every once in a while to show their perspective along with Phillip and Ringo.
- In Sanders Sides, Thomas Sanders has long conversations and debates with personifications of the different aspects of his personality, who try to help him find solutions to his personal or existential issues in his daily life.
- Logan, Thomas' logical side, is a symbol of Thomas' logical thinking, his acquired knowledge, and has the shape of a high school teacher, with a black shirt, an indigo necktie and glasses. He always sports a serious attitude, has trouble understanding slang words or double meaning expressions, and despises dad jokes. He becomes frustrated when he thinks the other Sides are ignoring him or aren't being serious enough.
- Patton, Thomas' morality, also known as Dad, represents Thomas' sense of right or wrong, his emotions and feelings, and also his inner child, something that makes him behave like a goofy little child, something ironic as he has the appearance of the average American family man, with a blue polo shirt, a gray cardigan wrapped around his shoulders, and glasses. Appropriately, he's always telling dad jokes that exasperate Logan. He has a habit of using jokes to hide his negative emotions, and of pushing Thomas too hard to be selfless at the expense of his mental health.
- Prince Roman, Thomas' creativity, also known as Princey, represents Thomas' creative thoughts, his hopes and dreams, his fantasy in general, and also his love for singing. Appropriately, he has the shape of a Disney prince, with a white royal outfit and a red strip crossing his chest. He has a huge ego, always wants to be the center of attention and clashes often with Virgil, always creating new inventive insulting nicknames for him. Because of his desire to be the center of attention, Roman also has a fragile ego and becomes upset easily when he feels he is not being listened to.
- Virgil, Thomas' anxiety, represents Thomas' fears, his anxiousness, his self-deprecating thoughts, and his fight-or-flight instincts. He has the appearance of an emo teenager, always wearing a dark hoodie and heavy eyeshadow under his eyes. He speaks with a soft, monotone voice, making cynical remarks to Thomas and the other Sides, especially Roman. Virgil may seem like a negative part of Thomas' personality, but without him, Thomas can't function. After Accepting Anxiety Part 2, Virgil starts to be less obtrusive and contributes more helpfully to the Sides' discussions. He still kicks in full force when Thomas needs him to, though.