Asteroids Monster

Say hello to Starfish Jr.

"We don't die... we multiply."

—Robin Harris

A common type of enemy, an Asteroids Monster is a creature of significant size that, when killed, splits into several miniature versions of itself. Sometimes, killing these may result in further miniature versions, which may in turn split into even smaller versions. There can be any number of stages, although three seems to be the most common number. The Asteroids Monster is often also a Blob Monster.

The miniature versions may grow to normal size if they are not killed quickly. Also, the smaller asteroids tend to be faster than the bigger versions, thus making them even more dangerous. The Asteroids Monster is typically not a boss, but are usually Demonic Spiders or at least Goddamn Bats. It occasionally shows up as the Mini Boss.

The Asteroids Monster is named after the arcade game Asteroids, which featured asteroids that would explode into two small asteroids when hit, which could further be split into even smaller asteroids. The smaller the asteroid, the more points it was worth.

Related to Hydra Problem.

Examples of Asteroids Monster include:

Anime and Manga

  • The angel Israfel from Neon Genesis Evangelion splits in two when it's first attacked. Its only weakness is a Training Montage synchronised dance battle.
  • One high level summon in Naruto is a giant multi-headed Hell Hound that if struck splits apart into multiple hounds, which could split into more and even recombine into a hound with more heads than the original. The only way to deal with it was to kill the summoner, sending it back to wherever the hell it came from.
    • Tsunade's summon Katsuyu, a giant slug, can similarly split, although it can't grow in size/number and doesn't need to be attacked to split.
  • Impel Down in One Piece has the aptly named Puzzle Scorpions. They look like a giant centipede normally, but divide into about a half-dozen poisonous scorpions if struck.
  • Tomie takes this to the logical extreme. The titular character is an Eldritch Abomination who has an incredible healing factor. Stab her? She heals. Chop her to pieces? Each piece generates a new Tomie. Slash her up without actual dismemberment? nasty things happen.
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 1st, the Jewel Seed monsters were reimagined to be this. One splits into three and attempts to run away after it was blasted, and another had a severed body part turn into smaller monsters that attacked its assailant.
  • Witches in Puella Magi Madoka Magica can be this. Originally, there's one "parent" witch with a Grief Seed, and it generates familiars that serve and protect it. The familiars (which don't have Grief Seeds) can split off, form their own barrier, and begin tormenting humans. Once they cause enough destruction (heavily implied to culminate with killing someone), they turn into a copy of their parent with another Grief Seed.
  • One manga "ZOUSHOKU SHOUJO PLANA-CHAN!", had the heroine Rinne Ikaruga forced take care of her Mad Scientist sister's genetically engineered mutant half planarian (a non-parasitic flatworm) 4-year old named Plana. Due to the regenerative abilities coming from her planarian half, Plana is able to instantly split into more of herself much to Rinne chagrin, as simply tripping causes Plana to instantly multiply into more Planas (including smaller ones) https://web.archive.org/web/20100825132330/http://www.tenmanga.com/chapter/ZoushokuShoujoPlanachanCh001/202501-14.html. Fortunately for her (and the entire town should it get overcrowded with numerous little mutant girls), limitations to Plana's splitting ability make it so that separating into 30 parts causing all Planas except the original to instantly disappear.


Comic Books

  • The Zylons from DC Comics' Star Raiders graphic novel. A Zylon that's been blasted into a dozen pieces will soon regenerate into a dozen Zylons; the only way to completely destroy one is to send it into the vacuum of space.


Film

  • In a variant, when Ash in Evil Dead 2 is grabbed by his own reflection, he breaks free and the mirror it'd leaned out from gets broken. As soon as he turns his back on the broken pieces, a bunch of miniature Ashes emerge from the fragments and gang up on him.


Literature

  • According to one Jewish interpretation of The Bible, the plague of frogs started with just a single frog, which split into two every time it was hit. The Egyptians nevertheless were so annoyed they couldn't stop hitting it, ending with the whole Egypt being inundated.
  • In Star Tiger by Christopher Anvil, the only creatures on a planet appear to be placid herbivores. But if you kill one and don't destroy the body completely, what's left regenerates into one or more smaller, vicious carnivores, ranging in size from a tiger down to a shrew.
  • The Dresden Files has the 'Mantis Girl' Denarian, who turns into a bunch of little mantises when blown to bits. They all come back together to re-form the larger self. It also has Lea's guardian worm, which turns into two guardian worms when blasted.
    • Trolls bleed miniature versions of themselves and can eventually reform from the smaller parts.
  • Sheri S. Tepper's squicky novel, Shadow's End had genetically engineered little boy designed to be the virus a bunch of monsters called Kachi. One of the monsters chews up the boy and spit out the pieces which end up becoming 120 smaller versions of the boy, some as small as half a finger with the biggest being leg size.
  • Non-aggressive example: In Mid-Flinx, one of the bizarre things Flinx sees in the jungle is a worm-like many-legged shape which, when it falls off one branch, "shatters" into several short animals on the one below. These scurry around for a bit, then link up head-to-rear as a single crawler again, thus maintaining the illusion they're one larger and less-vulnerable animal.


Live Action TV


Newspaper Comics

  • Lio discovered that this is what happens if you attempt to eliminate a Bedsheet Ghost with scissors.


Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • Ochre Jelly. If you don't have blunt weapons, you'll end up with forty jellies with 1 hp each.
    • "Pudding" monsters break into two fully-functional halves when hit with a bladed weapon or lightning.
    • Neogi Old Masters teem with young Neogi slowly eating them from inside. When it's dead, little nasties will evacuate, then try to eat everything meaty in sight.
    • Adventure I3 Pharaoh. The PCs can encounter Chabang Men. If hit with a cutting blow, they split apart, collapse into mud, then spring up as two new Chabang Men. They can be neutralized by pinning them to the wall with spears or other stabbing weapons.
    • Adventure IM1 The Best of Intentions. The Firemaster smashes a fire elemental with his fist, splitting it up into 24 smaller elementals that scurry off.
    • First edition trolls were like this, although it took some time. In other words, if you kill a troll by hacking it to pieces, be sure to burn the pieces. In later editions, only the biggest piece would regrow.
    • The 3.5-edition Monster Manual 3 has a variation with the omnimental, an elemental composed of all four classical elements which, when killed, splits into one creature for each element.
  • Once upon a time, Horrors of Tzeentch in Warhammer Fantasy Battle did this - "Pink Horrors" split into weaker "Blue Horrors" when wounded. The rules no longer reflect this aspect of the fluff, "for the sanity of the players."
  • Magic: The Gathering gives us the Mitotic Slime.
  • At least one weapon (determined randomly) per playing of the board game The Awful Green Things From Outer Space.


Video Games

  • Asteroids, of course, the inspiration for the trope name.
  • Many Tower Defence games feature a "split" enemy, that, when defeated, splits into two smaller but weaker enemies.
  • Manovas in Azure Dreams, although instead of dividing when killed, they do it whenever you hit them.
  • The Robot Russian Nesting Doll boss from Alien Hominid.
  • Titans in Guild Wars did this whenever encountered, often having a physical titan turn into a magical titan when killed which would then split into two physical titans, making for a very long fight.
    • Note that only the ordinary titans did this, stronger titans and bosses did not, which paradoxically meant that you were often relieved to see a more powerful enemy when low on health.
  • Gradius 3's second stage was filled with large bubbles that split into four smaller bubbles when destroyed. More akin to stage hazards than enemies, but a decent example nonetheless.
    • The Lethal Lava Land stage had lava bombs that split into smaller fragments, which were indestructible in the arcade version/
  • Heart of Darkness featured a rather nasty cyborg who when killed was reduced to two lumps on the ground... which respawned into cyborgs if you didn't kill them quick enough. When you first encounter him this is a nightmare as you have to use a slow charged attack in order to destroy them. It got easier once you had your gun back.
  • The Jub-Jub ghosts in the Neopets Magax game. And since all the enemies in a given stage have a tendency to grow, it's not uncommon to wind up with three normally-sized enemies to deal with.
  • There's Zols, the Bari from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, the Eeno from The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask, some versions of the Floormaster, the noise-sensitive Digdogger, and in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess some strange edible blobs called Chu (which can go both ways, smaller junks can congeal to form a larger enemy).
    • The Floormaster is the worst, as the larger Floormaster does a given amount of damage from hitting you, but the smaller mini-Floormasters can grab you and take out the same amount of damage every few seconds. Get grabbed by all three (one grabbing you holds you in place so the others can latch on) and you're simply screwed. And of course, given enough time, they will grow into full-sized Floormasters.
    • Chuchus in The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword are an especially annoying variant; they split into smaller Chuchus when sliced, which can re-combine into the original Chuchu, at full health — and if you slice horizontally, they split vertically, instantly falling back together. Only the smallest sub-Chuchus can be killed with your sword, and the biggest ones contain eight small ones, some of which might appear momentarily after 2 hits with your sword. Chuchus of any size can grab you and prevent you from attacking. Did we mention some of them can electrocute you through your sword when you hit them?
    • Jahalla, boss of the Earth Temple in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, splits into multiple poes when injured. Link must then kill as many of these poes as possible before they reform and repeat the cycle until the boss dies.
  • Super Mario Bros. examples:
    • Fryguy from Super Mario Bros. 2. Hit him with mushroom blocks three times, and he splits into four smaller Fryguys, which only take one mushroom block hit each to kill. Of course, with each mini-Fryguy you kill, the others get faster, making the last one far more dangerous than even the original big one.
    • The Marching Milde boss from Super Mario World 2 Yoshis Island.
    • The Phantamanta monster in Super Mario Sunshine probably takes the cake for number of "little asteroids". It splits 6 times to make 64 tiny manta ray ghosties.
    • Trunkle in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. Also, Mrs. Thwomp from Partners in Time, though she could re-form after a while.
    • The Goomba in New Super Mario Bros. Wii has a large variant that splits into two regular Goombas when stomped, plus an even larger variant that splits into two large ones.
  • A type of Metalhead enemy in the Jak and Daxter series.
  • The green Cerberus-like creatures in God of War. They spit out nasty little puppies called Cerberus Seeds which, if left alive long enough, would grow into full-sized Cerberi, which will eventually spit out more Seeds... One area of the first game is deliberately set up so you have to kill a number of them before they multiply too much.
  • Boss Boom Box in Banjo-Kazooie.
  • The Promethean in Age of Mythology is a clay dwarf that splits into two smaller ones when killed (the two minis die normally). In one of the scenarios, the Titan Prometheus is capable of generating the large ones intentionally by scraping clay from his arms.
    • If one would make a scenario where a trigger would convert all little Prometheans into large ones, you could actually end up with an infinite number of them... Until your computer lagged too much.
  • Inverted in Final Fantasy IV with the Calcobrena, a group of trick bosses consisting of six small dolls with a small amount of HP... except that if you kill them in the wrong order, the remainder turn into a giant doll that's a lot tougher to kill.
    • Also appearing in the game is the Mom Bomb, which grows into a massive monster, then explodes, damaging you and leaving a bunch of smaller bombs in its place.
    • Also appears in Final Fantasy III, with splitting monsters in two dungeons. Fortunately, you can stop them from splitting. Unfortunately, only by rapidly burning through your limited spell charges or by using the others far less than useful Magic Knight class to kill them with katana.
    • Final Fantasy VII has some nesting doll-like enemies near Costa Del Sol that spit out a smaller version of itself when killed. They are pathetically easy to kill.
    • Flans are this way in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Crystal Bearers.
  • Inverted in later Dragon Quest games. In a random encounter of eight ordinary-looking Slimes, if they all survive a turn they pile together to form a King Slime.
  • In City of Heroes, several Devouring Earth baddies leave smaller versions behind at death, though they usually don't split any further. Some high-ranking Clockwork pull this as well.
    • The Giant Monster versions of the Devouring Earth rock and crystal enemies actually split into upwards of four or five normal-sized enemies, which can then further split into the smallest versions.
  • Several of the GUILT in Trauma Center: Under The Knife/Second Opinion. One is Paraskevi, a worm thing that instantly kills the patient if you let it live too long, and the only way to kill it is to stun it with the laser then cut it in half, then cut those pieces in half, and so on, until you can remove the little pieces. The other is Savato, which can create little baby versions of itself that can grow into semi-savatos if you aren't careful.
  • The King of Shadows, the final boss of Neverwinter Nights 2. First, you defeat him normally, then he splits into smaller copies, and after you defeat them, he reassembles and becomes a Puzzle Boss.
  • The Amoeboids (green sewer blobs) from the Ratchet and Clank series.
  • In Castlevania III, the Phantom Bat boss splits into smaller bats when hit. Only after reducing them to the smallest size could they be defeated. Super Castlevania IV had a few random encounters that worked this way, as well as the Zapf Bat boss, which did the same thing.
    • Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance has a slime boss that breaks down into smaller slimes every time it is hit (with each slime then acting as an individual enemy). These divisions are much weaker than the boss, and they also result in the boss becoming smaller and smaller. In other words, the fight becomes easier as it goes.
  • World of Warcraft has a few cases of rock giants that will fracture into smaller rock giants, but there will always be the main "piece" and then smaller "shards". The main rock giant can be defeated before or after you defeat its shards. Thankfully, though the main rock giant is an extra powerful elite monster, his shardlings are normal powered or slightly underpowered for their level.
    • Additionally, hydras from Warcraft III split into smaller hydras to simulate head regeneration. Slime beasts do the same, with one particularly big one in the Orc expansion campaign splitting about 10 times, each split splitting into two smaller ones.
    • One of the bosses in the Halls of Origination instance from Cataclysm is guarded by fire elementals that each split into two smaller elementals when killed, who each split into two even smaller, who each split into two more. Kill them one split at a time or you'll quickly get surrounded by Goddamn Bats. You used to be able to prevent the splitting by using a stun ability at the right time, but this has been addressed in a patch.
  • The Doom series features the Pain Elemental. Kill it, and it splits into three Lost Souls. (Don't kill it, and it spits Lost Souls one by one. Hard to be sure which is worse.)
  • BloodRayne features an ancient vampire Hedrox, who splits in two copies when hit.
  • Spheres Of Chaos is a game that lies firmly within Asteroids' family tree. As such, it has several varieties of Asteroids Monster.
  • The appropriately-named asteroids in Geometry Wars Galaxies levels whose names start with Mas- or Por- will split in half, then the halves will release 5-10 monsters of the same shape when destroyed. Also, the spinners are a mild example. The big ones split into two smaller ones, the two smaller ones die normally.
    • Similarly, in Desktop Tower Defense, the "spawn" critters divide into two smaller ones, and the two smaller ones are then killed normally.
  • NES The Addams Family video game Fester's Quest includes green slimeballs that multiply when shot... The problem is that they don't split up into a set amount like most enemies of this type and will continue to multiply over and over again no matter what. Without large weapon upgrades or explosives, the slimes will continually regenerate until you are able to quickly destroy every single last one. On the upside, they leave lots of powerups upon their deaths. On the downside, the game includes power downs, and the leave those too, leaving you to figure out how to get the good stuff while not losing the powerups you already got.
  • Variation of this in Parasite Eve. In the game's Bonus Dungeon, there's a giant cockroach boss that can lay a larva. If the larva isn't killed fast enough, it will reach adulthood and gain the same stats and abilities of its parent, including the ability to lay another larva. This means that the fight can loop indefinitely unless you break the cycle.
    • Not so dangerous is a monster in the regular game that spawns brains that then detach and bounce around. Kill enough to bump the battle's target counter to 99 and you can earn a Super Tool.
  • Star Fox often has literal asteroids that behave this way. While not explicitly enemies, some games in the series treat them as such, allowing the player to get extra kills by destroying them.
    • Command, while not having splitting asteroids, has minor enemies that act this way.
  • A type of Met in Mega Man 5. Upside, they can give multiple powerups. Downside, they bounce, making them hard to hit.
  • The lava golems in Serious Sam. And not only once, but the smaller fragments divide into smaller fragments when they die, and those smaller fragments divide into even smaller fragments.
  • The Fission Metroids in Metroid Prime, though they only divide once.
    • Metroid Prime 3 brings us the Phazites, floating balls of semi-sentient Phazon that show up once you beat the boss of a planet. Very annoying since it takes going into Hypermode to kill them, which both uses a tank of energy and puts Samus at risk of a Nonstandard Game Over.
  • Some forms of Artificial Chaos in Sonic Adventure 2 (and all of them in Shadow the Hedgehog) are of the re-forming variety; to destroy them you have to break them apart and destroy the smaller ones, then attack the core, but if you don't destroy the small ones quickly enough, they reattach to the core.
  • The black pudding monsters in Nethack divide when they're hit with a non-lethal blow (with a weapon which is made out of iron), rather than when they die. Each of the child puddings are the same size as the original, but only have as much health as the parent did after taking damage from the blow, so hitting them with high damage blows will reduce the number of times they divide. On the other hand, if you hit them with a underpowered weapon which does a minimum of damage and occasionally give them a rest so they can heal you can "pudding farm" an endless amount of them, giving you countless pudding corpses to sacrifice to your god and, since monsters sometimes Randomly Drop items, and endless supply of items.
    • Similar hijinks can be done in Elona with bubbles, and with high fire resist, believers of fire (summon other fire creatures when in melee), although the Goddamned Bats interpretation of the trope arises with Aliens (impregnate rather than split, the child taking the stats of the parent NPC), Mass Monsters (Semi-strong rocklike monsters whose chief way of killing is stat draining), and finally the almighty Machine Cube, which is like the borg version of a D&D Gelatinous Ochre cube. ph34r
  • The antwerp in Quest for Glory 1 splits into several smaller antwerps if you use your sword on it when it jumps on you. Borderline case, since only the original is hostile.
  • The larger rocks in the Intellivision game Astrosmash would split into two smaller rocks when shot.
  • The mutated scorpion boss in Parasite Eve. After you've dealt enough damage to the boss, it splits into 4 parts, boxes you in the center of the battlefield in by encircling you, and attacking one at a time.
  • Will Rock has the Minotaurs. When killed, they are blown to bloody bits, which quickly regenerate into two smaller, weaker, but also more aggressive Blood Minotaurs. Thankfully, you later acquire some weapons which can destroy them in a single shot, preventing the splitting.
  • The Pang/Buster Bros. series of games have five different sizes of balloons as enemies. Hitting a balloon of any size except the smallest will cause it to split into two (or sometimes four) of the next smallest size.
  • Ape Escape has a certain jumping enemy. If the smallest size enemy touches you, it hurts you and dies.
  • Flash game Medieval Rampage has large ice golems which split into two or three fast but weaker ones. Actually one of the weaker enemies though since the large version is so slow you can blast him at your leisure, and the small ones die with one or two shots. Good to farm.
  • Cut off the tentacles of a Reynaldo in Onimusha, and the severed appendage will grow into a new Reynaldo if left alone long enough.
  • In the Descent games, the Sidearms and Spiders do this, and the offspring tend to be Goddamned Bats or Demonic Spiders. The Sidearm Modulas can also reform into full-size Sidearms, similar to the aformentioned Floormasters. Other enemies will also sometimes do this, eg producing Internal Tactical Droids or Red Hornets.
  • Slimes in Rogue.
  • In the first Kingdom Hearts, Atlantica had an enemy called Sheltering Zone which would split into five or six Sea Neons, the undersea equivalent of a Shadow.
  • Two examples in the online Flash Game Amorphous, where every single enemy in the game is a Blob Monster.
    • The Clutter will split into 1-3 baby versions of itself if defeated, each of which can grow into an adult sized one. Thankfully, they cannot kill the player character.
    • The Amalgam is a far more dangerous one—hitting it when it is too large will cause it to break apart into smaller pieces. Each smaller Amalgam can absorb more slimes wandering about, causing them to grow big again. Oh, and if you touch a large enough Amalgam, you are absorbed (read: you die) on the spot.
    • Inverted by Gloopies, which can undergo "reverse mitosis" and fuse into much harder enemies. Biters can do this, too, into the aptly-named Horror.
  • Some monsters in the Avernum series (particularly slimes) split every time it's their turn, but only if you damaged them in the time between their current turn and the last turn. Rather than being smaller and weaker, each duplicate has the same power as the original—but they also have the same post-damage HP (so if you hit one for 10 damage, the duplicate will also have 10 damage on its count.) It's best to only attack one per turn, but hit that one with everything you've got.
    • The Exile games had the same mechanic. In Exile III, for instance, it was used twice - once on a fairly weak low-level slime, and once on the doomguard, which had 150 hit points and a mid-level boss by itself.
      • Exile and Avernum both take their cues from the Ultima series, especially Ultima V; slimes and gargoyles in Ultima V divide when struck, assuming that they're not killed on the first blow. Slimes only appear in groups of sixteen, and each will divide once; there are subtle visual differences between divided and undivided slimes.
  • Asteroids Deluxe had the asteroids, duh, but also Killer Satellites where the pieces also home in on your ship.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has an enemy of this type, first seen in Area 3.
  • For a rare non-enemy example, there's Locoroco species in Loco Roco. As long as they don't get eaten or getting hit by spikes or hurt in other way, the smaller subordinates will do just fine.
  • In Centipede, centipedes split whenever one of their middle segments gets shot.
  • The Polish enemies in Cave Story's Sand Zone.
  • Fun Orb's "Sumoblitz" has pink Bunkatbots that split in two when they break.
  • The FarFall boss in An Untitled Story.
  • Monster Bash has the sludge monsters.
  • Slimes in Minecraft come in four sizes, which can withstand and deal proportional amounts of damage. Killing a slime will cause a it to split into four of the next size down. The smallest size slime will still chase you around but can't hurt you (unless it pushes you off a ledge or into lava).
    • In the official release (1.0), creatures in the Nether called Magma Cubes do this as well. And much like the smallest slimes, the small magma cubes are ADORABLE!
  • Starfish enemies in Bug!!, as well as a brown beetle enemy (for some inexplicable reason).
  • Each episode of Major Stryker has a boss that does this for its second phase.
  • Terraria has mother slimes which split into baby slimes on death.
    • The King Slime produces Blue Slimes whenever you hit it, implying that you're cutting little bits and pieces of it off.
    • There's also the Eater of Worlds, which is basically the Centipede converted into a platformer boss.
  • X-COM: Apocalypse alien Multiworm releases four Hyperworms when killed.
  • Spiral Knights actually inverts this. There is a type of slime that alone is very weak and easily defeated. However groups can quickly merge together into a single enormous, very powerful slime monster.
  • One of Stewie's levels in Family Guy Video Game! takes place in Peter's brain, where there are memories of Lois who can kill him with their attempts to hug him. If they're attacked they multiply into clones dressed in one of her outfits from the show and also attack by throwing objects corresponding to that outfit.
  • One of the enemies in Zanac was an egg that would come a third of the way into the screen, and, unless it was shot down first, split in half, releasing its payload. The two half-shells were much harder to destroy than the egg. This enemy actually first appeared in E.I., Compile's very first Shoot'Em Up.
  • The Twin Burgers from Heroic Armies Marching.
  • Gravity Crash has the indigenous squid-like lifeforms that split into 5 smaller squids when hit.
  • A lot of enemies in The Binding of Isaac split into smaller parts when hit. For normal enemies, some flies, brains . For bosses, Envy, Blastocyst and Fistula break up into smaller parts upon destruction. Some also spawn several different enemies upon death like the Duke of Flies.
  • Flans in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers.
  • In a Shout-Out to Fantasia, Dark Castle has a walking broom enemy that splits into smaller brooms.
  • The Stingray from Mini Robot Wars splits into three weak copies when destroyed. Much more of a nuisance if anything, as neither the large or small stingrays could attack.
  • In Zeliard, hitting red slimes with basic weapons or spells would make them multiply, and not even damage them.
  • The Entrails Parasite boss in Tales of Graces splits into eight smaller versions of itself after it takes a bit of damage. On higher difficulties, they can be extremely troublesome to deal with, as they cast spells rapidly, and can KO the entire party in seconds if they're not interrupted with area attacks.


Web Comics


Web Original

  • Happy Tree Friends: Also qualifies as a Me's a Crowd in one episode "Peas in a Pod". Lumpy unknowingly plants an alien seed coming from a fallen comet, which becomes a large stalk that spews out a green pod clone of the light blue moose. Being Lumpy, he uses the clone to manage his chores. The somehow more dimwitted clone ends up accidently chopping off its own leg during wood cutting, which regenerates and becomes another Lumpy clone. Realizing he will have more clones to manage his chores, Lumpy chops up the pod Lumpies until he has an entire army of Lumpy clones willng to do his bidding. Of course the clones cause havoc by killing the other characters whom they mistake for things Lumpy wanted cleaned (such as wiping Sniffles face so hard his brain was exposed or crushing Cuddles with a mop). The entire episode is a parody of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.


Western Animation

  • In an episode of ReBoot, the heroes (who have become characters in a dungeon-crawler) are attacked by two animated suits of armor. Dot casts a spell that ends up splitting them into four suits that are half the size. Dot casts the spell several times over, then Bob and Enzo start stomping.
  • In the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence in Fantasia, Mickey Mouse enchants a broom to fetch water in his place. When he realizes that it won't stop and he doesn't know how to enchant it to stop, he chops it up. A minute later, the splinters turn into hundreds of brooms that won't stop.
    • This is direct from Goethe's poem Die Zauberlehrling, although that particular apprentice only cuts the broom in half and only has to deal with two.
    • Taken Up to Eleven in an episode of The Simpsons that spoofs the Sorcerer's Apprentice - Scratchtasia. Scratchy keeps cutting Itchy into pieces only to have each piece become a smaller copy. In exasperation, Scratchy rapidly cuts them until nothing is left but powder. He then sighs, inhaling the powder, which becomes powder-sized versions of Itchy that kill him from the inside out.
  • Samurai Jack Aku has demonstrated the ability to split into multiple copies of himself when struck.
    • Jack also took on one of these monsters in the beginning of another episode, capped off with a "WHO ELSE WANTS SOME!?!".
  • A non enemy variant is Meatwad in Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
    • Still only have two eyes and one tooth between all of them though. They also seemed to get dumber (if you can even tell) and their voices got higher the smaller they were. Plus, Shake KNEW they just kept getting more annoying, but couldn't help himself from cutting them up into smaller pieces for fun.
  • The space-based Rock Lords in Transformers Animated have this ability. Unfortunately, it only works once, and it didn't do the one who swallowed Bumblebee much good when it went up against Sari.
  • The silver mine monster in Godzilla: The Series.
  • A quasi-enemy version occurs in Futurama episode "Fry and the Slurm Factory", when Leela kicks Glurmo (the slug-like Wormulonian Slurm Factory guide), splitting him in half. Each half reforms into a half-sized version of Glurmo (complete with smaller-sized clothing, for some reason), with a strangely distorted voice. They show up again later in the series, still half-sized and odd-voiced.
  • A series of shorts on Nickelodeon had a pair of Ineffectual Villain alien invaders who landed on a planet inhabited by a little alien that split into two more when they first tried to zap it with their laser guns. They took advantage of the alien's ability by zapping it numerous times, making more little aliens happily willing to serve their every need. Things go out of hand (as they always do for them) when too many zaps causes too many little aliens running around, which makes the pair zap them even more, which of course makes even more of them. Eventually they're forced to leave the planet as it overflows with little aliens.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: Patrick Star, being a fat pink starfish, demonstrated this in at least one episode.
  • Wooldoor Sockbat did this in one episode of Drawn Together.


Real Life

  • Many simple-bodied organisms can reproduce asexually by splitting into smaller fragments. The planaria in particular is renowned for its regenerative capabilities: an individual can be cut into as many as eight equal pieces, each of which can survive and develop into a separate planaria.
  • Cut an arm off a starfish, it grows another starfish. Cut off your own arm...?


    This article is issued from Allthetropes. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.