Literal Split Personality

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    Not multiplication, division.

    Slipstream: Each of us clones represents one aspect of your personality. He's a coward, he's an egomaniac, he's a suck-up, he's a liar.
    Starscream: So... which part of me did you come from?
    Slipstream: Don't ask.

    —Transformers Animated

    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.

    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. Also compare Self-Duplication, which is similar in appearance, if nothing else.

    Not to be confused with Half the Man He Used To Be.

    Examples of Literal Split Personality include:

    Anime & Manga

    • Nana Suzuki from Seven of Seven, who was split into seven by a Freak Lab Accident involving a secret experiment of her scientist grandfather.
    • 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.
    • In Ah! My Goddess, Urd gets split into her Goddess and Demon halves, with the former acting much more like Belldandy and the latter more like her mother (not to mention Demon-Urd taking the Stripperiffic outfits of regular-Urd to extremes). They eventually realize that neither Urd is the true Urd and recombine.
    • Keroro Gunsou has a few examples.
      • In Episode 15, resident Yandere Momoka split into her shy, retiring side and her aggressive, angry side (who normally co-exist and switch depending on the situation) thanks to a Keronian G-force simulator and an ill-timed lightning strike.
      • In the Keroro episode "Giroro: The Man with Seven Faces (De Arimasu)", Giroro is accidentally split into his 7 selves: evil American soldier Giroppe, shy child Girorin, housewife Girocchi, poetic girl Giroko, suave romantic Giropon, normal Giroro, and cool-looking Girosama, the one with the nice laugh.
    • In Rosario + Vampire Capu2, the Lilith Mirror splits Moka into her Outer and Inner forms. Both of them are unstable apart, and since the Lilith Mirror's magic needed to be reversed, they rejoin shortly after they split, much to Kokoa's disappointment.
    • Kami from Dragon Ball removed his evil from himself, forming Piccolo Daimao, who was literally made of evil, according to many. However, Piccolo's son (or reincarnation, who is also Piccolo but definitely an alien) fused back with Kami to gain immense power. Though he had become good already.
      • Similarly, the Demon God Buu (originally a rotund, bubblegum-colored enemy) turned good, but traumatic events led him to expel all the evil in his body as a gas cloud... which was another form of Buu, but rail-thin and dark, and just as powerful. Then Evil Buu devoured the Good Buu and became... Super Buu! It's that kind of story arc.
    • Gunnm (Battle Angel) has Den, the cybernetic warlord and resistance leader who is actually a rage-driven split personality of radio star Kaos, given independent existence with a remote-controlled robotic body created by Mad Scientist Desty Nova.
    • Naruto's Zetsu is a plant-man hybrid where half of his body is black, and the other half is white. Both represent a different personality: the black half is serious while the white half is more easygoing. They can split apart, with the white half being able to make copies of itself.
    • Return to Labyrinth - Mizumi, the Queen of Cups, has the power to create ablations, carving off one of a person's aspects into a new being. Moppet is an ablation of Sarah's dreams. Moulin and Drumlin are ablations of Mizumi herself, respectively her regret and hope.
    • In the Legend of Zelda: Four Swords manga, each Link (aside from Green Link, who retains the original Link's complete personality) embodies a different part of his personality. For example, the blue Link is rather hot-headed, the red link is cheery, and the purple Link is crafty and thinks a lot.
    • SHUFFLE! had 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.
    • A Filler story of the Ranma ½ anime had Happosai use a special incense to duplicate Ranma's female form in a separate, independent entity to do his bidding. Problem is, it was pure evil, had phenomenal Psychic Powers, and kept trying to seduce the original Ranma to drain his Life Energy.
    • Father, the Big Bad of Fullmetal Alchemist, can do this at will. He expels aspects of his own personality that he doesn't like, and these discarded traits form separate individuals who typically become his minions. To a certain extent, he regards them as his children, but that's mostly because he has family issues.
    • In Bleach, Starrk and Lilynette are both the primera Espada, who split into two in order not to feel lonely, as all his/her "friends" were too weak to survive long.
    • D'Arcmon and HippoGryphomon in the Digimon Frontier movie Island of Lost Digimon. It turns out that they were actually two halves of the villainous Murmuxmon, who was posing as leaders of the rival factions in order to resurrect Ornismon.
      • Although it should be noted that the American dub implies it to be Voluntary Shapeshifting instead of this, which kind of makes more sense.
    • In Soul Eater, Shinigami created Death the Kid by splitting him off from himself. The first is a Cloudcuckoolander unable to use his massive power and fairly lenient on the whole 'order' business. The second insists, somewhat arbitrarily, on order in every aspect of the world which displeases him, yet lacks his father's power to enforce it.
    • One possible explanation for The Medicine Seller in Mononoke.
    • Amamiya Sakurako of Psyren gains one, Abyss, who she learns to fight alongside.
    • The World God Only Knows: When Kusunoki Kasuga gets possessed by a spirit, her personality splits between her normal self and her cute side, which starts manifesting whenever she sees something cute and fights reacting to it.
    • A popular theory behind the connection to the two When They Cry series is that Bernkastel is a collection of Rika's memories of all the failed Fragments, and then separated herself from Rika.
    • In Pokemon, Sabrina's shunning of her emotions in favour of focusing solely on training her psychic powers eventually caused her emotional side to split off into a Creepy Doll-like body. When a Haunter Ash had befriended got her to laugh she underwent a Split Personality Merge and learned to embrace her emotions.


    Comic Books

    • Triplicate Girl from The Legion of Super Heroes has this. In some incarnations, it works on a Shy/Outgoing scale.
    • 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.
    • One JLA storyline did this to the League's entire roster- splitting Superman and Clark Kent, Batman and Bruce Wayne, etc. Hilarity spectacularly failed to ensue- 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, etc. As for the others... It Got Worse. Only Wonder Woman and Aquaman were immune, 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.
    • Superman once was an energy being; he then became two energy beings: Superman Red and Blue. We don't like to talk about it.
      • He's also been split into Superman and Clark 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 and at worst terrifying.
    • The villainess Array, from Fred Perry's Gold Digger 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.
    • Supergirl once had an evil half released by black kryptonite. She came out wearing a black version of her normal outfit.
    • This has happened to the Hulk on occasion, usually separating Bruce Banner and the Savage Hulk. Paul Jenkins' run saw a number of journeys into Banner's mind with various Hulks showing up representing different aspects of Banner's psyche.
      • Jason Aaron's run kicks off with the Green Scar Hulk (a smarter version of the Savage) getting himself split from Banner. Banner doesn't take it at all well.
    • 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.
    • Happens to Negaduck at the end of "Crisis On Infinite Darkwings". To the n-th degree, it turns out.
    • The Mighty Thor has had Don Blake 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.
    • World of Warcraft has this with Varian Wrynn, who was split into two parts: King Varian, a royal puppet under Lady Katrana's (Onyxia) control and Lo'Gosh,[1] amnesiac arena champion.


    Fan Fiction

    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Jaune Arc accomplishes this with the skill Thaumiel toward the end of The Games We Play, a RWBY/The Gamer Crossover Fic by Ryuugi.


    Films

    • In the movie 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.
    • The Skeksis and the UrRu (Mystics) of The Dark Crystal are the evil and good halves of the UrSkeks.
    • 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.
    • 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 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.
    • 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.
    • In Spy Kids 3: 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."


    Literature

    • One of the Animorphs books had Rachel, shapeshifted into a starfish, get cut in half with a spade. The two starfish halves regenerated into Nice and Mean Rachel, both quite explicitly called that in the text. However, it wasn't just good and evil: in a situation inspired by the Trek version, the kind Rachel could plan complex scenarios but was incapable of focusing in the moment, and the violent one was the opposite, incapable of thinking beyond the moment. They had to work together because neither alone could function well enough to do what she wanted.
    • In Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, 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.
    • In the third book of The Dark Tower series, 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.
    • William Sleator's young adult novel The Duplicate features this, or so the duplicates think. They're wrong, even if they manage to convince the original for a while.
    • Robin Hobb seems to have discovered a new use for this in the Soldier's Son trilogy--it can solve Triang Relations.
    • A story 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 galaxy.
    • 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.


    Live-Action TV

    • Kirk, in the Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within". However, the "evil" side proved to be the side with the strength to make tough decisions, proving that both halves are needed for the whole to work.
      • And the seemingly meek, passive "good" side turns out to have more courage than the other, whose angry defiance hides terror of losing independent existence.

    "Can half a man live?"

    • In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Faces," B'Elanna Torres is split into her Klingon and human halves by the Vidiians: the Klingon is a barely contained rage factory, the human is a simpering wimp.
    • A spell intended to separate Buffy's personality from her Slayer abilities in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer hits Xander instead, separating him into an "aggressive" Xander (charming, well-groomed, and confident; but hot-headed and impetuous) and a "passive" Xander (awkward, paranoid, and insecure; but with Xander's trademark sense of humor). Note that despite the negative Xander's suspicions, neither half is actually evil. Both Xanders also refer to "The Enemy Within" during the episode.
    • Smallville:
      • The opening episode of Season Four introduces black kryptonite. Martha uses it on Clark in order to try and deprogram him (long story) and it causes him to split into his good and evil sides, "Clark" and "Kal-El" (all of this most likely a Mythology Gag to Superman III). Unfortunately, the "fight" is very, very brief, with Kal starting to choke Clark only for Martha to toss the kryptonite to Clark, who smashes it into Kal's chest and fuses them back together. Lex got the black kryptonite treatment (here, it's created from heating regular kryptonite) in a later episode, with the good version being sweet (but not the crybaby many "good twins" are when this trope is used) and the evil version being... Lex Luthor.
      • In the Season Eight finale, Clark uses black kryptonite to separate Davis Bloome's human half from his Doomsday side, so that he could fight him without having to worry about what he was doing to the innocent human half. Unfortunately, we then find out human Davis isn't so nice after all - apparently, the things he had to do to keep Doomsday under control (namely becoming a Serial Killer) drove him crazy, and he has to be killed anyway but sadly not before also killing Henry "Jimmy" Olsen.
    • Farscape:
      • The show plays with this by duplicating the lead character, John Crichton, into two identical (equal and original) characters, both imbued with all the personality traits, good and bad, of the original. This happens at the same time as a split in the crew, with both halves of the crew believing that they have the real Crichton with them. This situation persists for half a season, and the repercussions run through the rest of the series. This functions as an arc-wide Reset Button for certain plot points that were almost too-neatly wrapped up. Heroic Sacrifice, anyone?
      • Also played straight in the episode "My Three Crichtons," wherein John is split into a Power Trio: the original (ego), an animalistic version that acts purely on emotion (id), and a hyperevolved version that acts purely on the basis of logic and self-preservation (superego).
    • In General Hospital's Supernatural Soap Opera spinoff Port Charles, Livvie is split in two by her vampire lover Caleb. The bad half continues to live as Livvie. The good half has amnesia and is named Tess.
    • In the Doctor Who Big Finish audio "Caerdroia", this happens to the Doctor, who gets split into "the responsible one", "the loopy one", and "the nasty one".
      • So he gets split into Five, Ten, and Six?
      • A variation, from the new series: the Doctor's severed hand grows into a duplicate of him due to Donna Noble's unintended interference. He becomes half-human and apparently somewhat more callous in his strategies than the original, reminiscent of the Ninth Doctor's more desperate methods.
    • In an episode of Goodnight Sweetheart, the protagonist Gary gets hit by lightning at the exact instant he walks through a time-portal. He wakes up on one side of the portal, and later discovers that an unscrupulous, sex-obsessed version of himself appeared on the other side. Hilarity Ensues. Doubly applies as it is later revealed that Gary isn't actually the good side... a third version of him, a very camp, charitable man, shows up at the end of the episode, explaining that he'd been busy helping out in an air-raid shelter.
    • Trey of Triforia, the first "Gold Ranger" from Power Rangers Zeo, had the alien ability to split into 3 parts, representing Wisdom, Courage, and Power... uh, I mean Heart. When he was injured, he was stuck as three beings, locking him out of using his Ranger powers and forcing their temporary transfer to someone else. They had to wait until the stars were right to recombine him and give him his powers back.
    • The Red Dwarf episode "Demons And Angels" featured a triplication device, which created a Good Ship with crew (who exist in the starship equivalent of Crystal Spires and Togas, and can even make Pot Noodles edible), an Evil Ship with crew (where Rimmer's H has fallen sideways and... yeah) and a Neutral Ship with crew (i.e. the original gang). The Neutral Ship duly exploded, and it required a polarity reversal to recreate it from the others.
      • There's also the Confidence and Paranoia episode in one of the early series.
    • Charmed:
      • In a season 1 episode entitled "Which Prue Is It Anyway?", Prue casts a spell that accidentally creates 2 clones of her. One of the clones represents her fun, wild side, while the other clone exhibits her take-charge, business-like side.
      • The same thing happens to Piper in one of the books.
    • Kahlan in the Legend of the Seeker episode "Torn". The reason for the split is a magical talisman that is used to transport the casting wizard and the Confessor to Idendrill. However, the talisman is partly guided by the Confessor's desires. In Kahlan's case, her Confessor side wanted to go to Idendrill to help the people there, but her emotional side did not want to leave Richard's side. The talisman resolved this conflict by splitting one person into two.
      • Zedd claims that the two versions (super-rational Confessor and super-emotional human) were never meant to exist, as both had sex and didn't get pregnant. Because every time you have unprotected sex you have to get pregnant.
    • Happens with Emma in Mutant X. She's split into her aggressive side and her passive side. They can't live without each other.
    • Darrin of Bewitched gets split into his fun loving side and his workaholic side by his mother-in-law.
    • Dollhouse has several interesting takes on this; the person is never "split" in any way, but they're in a room with a copy of their mind in someone else's body talking to them. The first one has a rebellious younger girl's brainscan tweaked to have the copy become "well-adjusted" and mentor the real girl into possibly getting over her traumas. In the second, hilarious instance, Topher puts an exact copy of his brain into Victor. They get along great until they're actually in the same room as each other.
    • In My Favorite Martian, one of Uncle Martin's machines gets struck by lightning, splitting him into triplets, one who agrees with everything, one who disagrees with everything, and one who can never make up his mind. The Animated Adaptation used the same plot with Martin's nephew Andromeda.
    • In the season 6 finale of Supernatural, Sam is stuck in a Mental World where his identity has split into three personalities: Sam, Soulless Sam, and the Sam who's been tortured in the Cage.
    • Occured in an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. When everyone was pressuring Sabrina to go to a different college she ended up splitting herself into four different versions of herself without anyone knowing. Apparently she didn't even know about it herself until all four Sabrinas meet up towards the end of the episode.

    Machinima

    • In Red vs. Blue Reconstruction, it is revealed that Project Freelancer was given the use of only one A.I. Eager to get more, the Director (on whom the Alpha was based) tried to copy it. When that failed, he instead tortured it to deliberately create a split personality. Different emotions and traits split off from Alpha, each one forming a new A.I. For example, Delta was Alpha's logic, Gamma was its deceit, Omega the rage and Epsilon the memories. Some fans think that Alpha kept his ability to be an ass.
      • Which isn't surprising considering Church is the Alpha A.I.
    • 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.


    Mythology


    Newspaper Comics

    • 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.

    My ethicator machine must've had a built-in moral compromise spectral release phantasmatron! I'm a genius!


    Tabletop Games

    • In 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, the Dragon God Io was cut in two by the King of Terror, Erek-Hus. The two halves then each rose up as a new god: 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.


    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).


    Videogames

    • In Mega Man Star Force, Pat has a split personality, Rey. Gemini becomes his EM wave partner. When he EM Wave Changes and becomes Gemini Spark, Gemini splits into two, and the two personalities split. Gemini Spark White merges with Pat. The dominant one (the one you hit to damage), Gemini Spark Black, merges with Rey.
      • Thank Capcom for small blessings; in Star Force 2, both of them are damageable separately.
    • In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer Safiya, Nefris, and Lienna are all aspects of The Founder, AKA The Red Woman, deliberately split off into separate bodies.
    • The Longest Journey features a character who was split into his logical and emotional halves. His logical side is a cold, amoral human; his emotional side is a Chaos Vortex that nearly kills the player character. When his two sides are reunited, he turns out to be a decent guy.
      • Happens with the entire world in the backstory, with one Earth split up into the magical Arcadia and scientific Stark with the intention of reuniting them at a later date. This also creates several other pocket worlds.
    • Twice in Sam and Max:
      • In Sam And Max Save The World, Hugh Bliss 'separates Max's bliss' by symbolically cutting off body parts connected to his sins - his violent hand, gluttonous stomach, and slothful tail. These body parts are then animated into a Violent Max mindlessly blasting at everything with his gun, a Gluttonous Max mindlessly consuming everything that comes near and a Slothful Max too depressed even to move, while the rest of Max's body wonders around in a blunted, blissed-out, Nightmare Fuel-ish daze with huge chunks carved out of his body.
      • In Sam And Max: The Devil's Playhouse, after Max becomes an Eldritch Abomination, he creates Spores - flaming floating heads which carry an aspect of his personality each. These include Trademark Favorite Food-obsessed Max, Drill Sergeant Nasty Max, Brooklyn Rage Nostalgia Level Max, Ship Tease Ho Yay-with-Sam Max...
    • In the first Breath of Fire game, the party enters the mind of Mogu, who is in a coma, to find his personality fractured. They have to find his missing Courage in order to bring them together and wake Mogu up.
    • And in the fourth Breath of Fire game, there's one of the most blatant examples. Both Ryu (series protagonist) and Fou-lu (technical antagonist and Woobie) are actually two halves of the same god, the Yorae Dragon/Arukai no Ryuu, that was summoned 600 years ago on the western continent in a desperate attempt to stop a massive civil war. Unfortunately, the summoning was botched; only half the god made it across straightaway (becoming the first emperor of the Fou Empire), the other half ending up landing 600 years in the future and literally halfway across the world. (The Fou Empire and its precessor do not have a good track record at successful summonings.)
      • It should be noted the original split isn't good/evil here, but rather along Yin/Yang aspects (Fou-lu being the yin/water/cold aligned half, Ryu being the yang/fire/heat aligned half). Fou-lu is actually neutral at first; he ends up going to Omnicidal Maniac thanks to having his girlfriend used as a Tactical Thermonuclear Curse Peasant in a deliberate attempt to kill him by the very empire he founded (which does not want to give up its regency to him).
    • In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, this happens with Kain. The part of him that is jealous of Cecil getting Rosa got his own body and stole the crystals in order to kill Cecil. The other half of him took on a disguise and went on as the Hooded Man to help out Ceodore.
    • In Kingdom Hearts:
      • Sora is split several times: Roxas is his Nobody born during the brief time Sora lost his heart, while Xion is made out of memories extracted from his mind.
      • Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep goes the Enemy Without route with Ventus and Vanitas. They're eventually rejoined, with Ven winning their fight for control over his heart, but he's so weakened he has to merge his heart with Sora's to survive, retroactively bumping the "people existing through Sora" count even higher.
      • Xehanort has a very similar situation: Master Xehanort gave up his body to possess Terra, and this created the current Xehanort with MX and Terra's hearts battling for dominance. Then Xehanort split himself into "Ansem" and Xemnas, Ansem was born from Master Xehanort's heart while Xemnas was born from Xehanort's mind and Terra's body, and as a result Ansem clearly takes after Master Xehanort while Xemnas has some fragments of Terra in him. With the way the Kingdom Hearts universe handles things, there could likely be even more incarnations of Xehanort out there with their own personalities and appearances, considering how many hearts and bodies he's gone through.
    • 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.
    • In the penultimate scene of Planescape: Torment, the Nameless protagonist meets some of his earlier incarnations in person - the good incarnation, the practical incarnation, and the paranoid incarnation.
    • In |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, two of the big villains of the game—Iblis, a mindlessly destructive fire-demon; and Mephiles, a cunning, manipulative creature of darkness—are actually split aspects of Solaris, a god of light and time who "eats dimensions for breakfast". Naturally, they recombine for the True Final Boss of the game.
    • Chinatsu and Ojou in Suika. The former is the love and memories of the latter.
    • Legends in Pokémon Black and White say that there was a great dragon that two brothers used to protect Unova. But when the brothers began arguing with each other, the dragon split its yin into Zekrom and its yang into Reshiram, who would fight endlessly. It's also theorized that a third Pokémon, Kyurem, is what's left of the original dragon. Which is probably why it looks so "incomplete".
    • In Mugen Souls, the protagonist, Chou-Chou, is capable of splitting up her personality and how the personality looks like into eight different types which are Egocentric (default personality), Natural, Vigour, Sadist, Beauty, Tsundere, Masochist, and Cool. Unusual for this trope, this is also a game mechanic in which to convince enemies to become your slaves, you must be at an appropriate personality to get them to join you so that they can power up your Energy Ball and your ship, the Gcastle.


    Visual Novels

    • 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.


    Webcomics

    • Spoofed with a duplication ray (the "Dupe-O-Matic") in the webcomic 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.
    • 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).
    • The Non-Adventures of Wonderella featured "Orgy Biv's Chromasplitter", which divided Wonderella into her two most dominate personalities: Passive and Aggressive.
    • 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.
    • In At Arms 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • Chasing the Sunset had Feiht split from herself, after her conflicting desires gave her a nightmare and she began talking to herself about how she may start talking to herself. Of course, she's still a pixie, so once she gets in a Cat Fight with herself, eventually both fail to keep track which of her is the Evil Twin.


    Web Originals

    • 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.
    • Chad/Chaddy/Merry/Mai/Paige/Petra of the Whateley Universe. 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.
    • In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, Prezma ("Prism" in Russian) is a superheroine with diagnosed Multiple Personality Disorder. Normally, she has no actual super powers until she splits into seven individual bodies (one for each of her known personalities, and each matching a color in the visible spectrum). After she splits, each of her bodies has a different set of super powers based on the color they represent.
    • In Film Conscience, Luke 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, he'll even have other Inners pop in every once in a while to show their perspective along with Phillip and Ringo.


    Western Animation

    • Raven in Teen Titans. Not only did she occasionally split into lots of different personalities, their cloaks were even color-coded for the viewer's convenience.
    • Omi from Xiaolin Showdown did this when he used the Ring of the Nine Dragons in Season One. He is the current page image.
    • Genie in the Aladdin animated series had an episode dedicated to this, where he was split into seven parts of his personality.
      • As did Aladdin himself: in another episode his logical head was split from his emotional body.
    • Near the end of the first season of Jackie Chan Adventures, the Tiger Talisman splits Jackie into yin (good) and yang (bad) sides. Good Jackie is too pacifistic to fight the Mooks, and Bad Jackie sees nothing wrong with joining them for money, until Good Jackie points out that that means he won't get to fight anymore.
    • In the Darkwing Duck episode "Negaduck", the eponymous crimefighter is split into good and evil sides, which are later enhanced into super-good and super-evil sides. (Bizarrely, this is not the origin of the villain called Negaduck.)
      • Later something similar would happen to Gosalyn in "The Frequency Fiends," leaving the original unaffected but creating three superpowered duplicates with single personality traits.
    • Starscream's clones in Transformers Animated all embody an aspect of their creator, although he doesn't have to give up anything to create them. They represent his arrogance (Thundercracker), sycophancy (that is, kiss-ass-iness, Sunstorm), deception (compulsive lying, Ramjet), and cowardice (Skywarp), along with a female clone, Slipstream, who tells Starscream not to ask what she represents. (Fan theories include: his strategic abilities; his snarky side; his self-loathing; his feminine/latent homosexual tendencies. The writers refuse to comment.)
      • Expanded Universe clones include Dirge (greed), Thrust (envy), and "Clone Black" (his lack of originality?).
    • An even better example from Transformers is the G1 Combiners, like the Constructicons' Devastator, the Combaticons' Bruticus, and the Predacons' Predaking—inverted because the separated parts are the originals, but then they combine into one giant robot that has the combined mind of the five/six/seven components. With the bad guys, this tends to mean they destroy everything; the good guys protect everything. Usually. The Technobots' Computron has a problem with thinking things out too much and sometimes gets beaten by the primal-instinct Decepticons. The questionably-canonical explanation is that the combined form only has the traits all five have in common, hence urge to smash other side being about all there is to them. Predaking is the sole exception to the hulk-smashiness of combiners because the Predacons work together just that well.
      • There's another case of splitting among the Transformers: In Beast Machines, Megatron's organic and machine sides are split between the new Maximal, Noble, and his base. Noble has a Jekyll and Hyde thing going, but it turns out that's all Megs stringing the Maximals along and he has full control of both forms.
    • In Danny Phantom, Danny tries to use a ghost dreamcatcher to split his ghost half from his human half. It works about as well as you'd expect. Fun Danny (the human half) was, well, fun-loving, but kind of apathetic, while Super Danny (the ghost half) was obsessed with crime fighting, but reigning the boyscoutness attitude. They tried to fix it by going through the dreamcatcher again, but this just divides their powers amongst each other. It's revealed they went through the 'split' side twice, and at the end of the episode they finally go through the 'merge' side, which sets everything right.
      • A case of a similar bit of Applied Phlebotinum having wildly different results: in The Ultimate Enemy, after seeing all his friends and family blown up in front of his eyes, Danny goes to Vlad, the regular series' Big Bad, and asks him to "make the pain go away." Vlad agrees, and they decide to rip out Danny's humanity. This splits Danny into a ghost half and a human half, like the example above; this time, though, the ghost half is completely insane and very violent. We don't really get to find out what the human half was like, because before we get a chance to get to know that Danny, the ghost Danny splits Vlad into ghost-Vlad and human-Vlad, and fuses with the ghost-Vlad; this amalgamation of ghostly badness then turns on human-Danny, and brutally murders him so gruesomely that human-Vlad, a decade later, is unwilling to talk about it. ...Sounds nice, huh?
    • One episode of World of Quest had the title character split into pacifistic Good Quest who irritated the Questers with his talking about group hugs and sociopathic Evil Quest who turned Lord Spite into his butler. Upon recombining, Quest declared that he hated the good him.
    • In an episode of Captain Planet, Dr. Blight develops a device that creates evil clones of whatever is put in it. The villains capture and clone all of the Planeteer rings to create pollution-causing counterparts (Super Radiation, Deforestation, Smog, Toxics, and Hate). Just like Captain Planet is formed from the power of the Planeteer's five rings, Dr. Blight's rings combine to form Captain Pollution.
    • Spoofed in an episode of Ren and Stimpy. Ren gets split in two, but instead of getting split into a good and evil side, he gets split into an evil side, and an indifferent side. Later, Evil Ren tries to clone himself, but only gets split again into Evil Ren, and Hideously Evil Ren.
    • Happens in Bounty Hamster. An Applied Phlebotinum machine able to separate things into their component parts, gets used on Marion creating an assortment of copies based on various aspects of his personality.
    • In season 3 of Justice League Unlimited, it's revealed that the Shadow Thief is the dark side of Hawkman's mind given physical form.
    • In the episode called "The Good, The Bad, and the Johnny" of Johnny Test, Susan and Mary split Johnny into his good side and his bad side. Good Johnny acted really annoying and sweet. Bad Johnny kept on doing bad stuff and got much stronger.
    • Jimmy from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron splits himself into several copies of himself in order to try and get his chores done faster. They all adopted one personality (and took it to the extreme, mind you). The "evil" one appears in later episodes, too.
    • In Phineas and Ferb, Candace gets split into her two strongest emotions: Her desire to bust her brothers, and her crush on Jeremy.
    • In one episode of the Beetlejuice cartoon, BJ gets so mad about being stiffed on a reward for breaking up a Wild Teen Party on Halloween night, he literally becomes "beside himself", splitting into a good side (an easy-going Lovable Coward with a fondness for bad puns) and an evil side (a crude, slovenly prankster).
    • In the Batman the Brave And The Bold episode "A Bat Divided!", a nuclear accident splits Batman into the three sides of his personality: an intellectual scientific detective, an angry bruiser... and a laid-back, nacho-munching slacker. Apparently, it's Slacker Batman's heart that allows the other two conflicting sides of his personality to work together.
    1. ↑ An nickname given to him by orcs
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