History Main / MergingMachine

* ''Film/TheFly'' (both the 1958 and 1986 versions) is arguably based around an accidental version, merging a man with a fly (and later the man-fly with the teleporter itself). Many parodies and homages tend to fall into this trope by having multiple "mixings" take place.

* Wapol of ''Franchise/OnePiece'' had this as one of his sub-powers. While the Munch-Munch Devil Fruit gave him the power to fuse himself with anything he ate, he could also fuse eaten objects with each other, creating an entirely new object. This trope is then [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] as he ends up profiting by promoting the fused objects as toys and selling them.

* ''Literature/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': Shizue Izawa possesses the [[SoulPower Unique Skill]] [Degenerate], which allows her to combine and disassemble items or even abilities in her possession at will. However, Shizue was never able to draw out this Skill's full potential before her passing. After [[TheAssimilator absorbing her per her dying request]], [[TheHero Rimuru]] gains the Skill for himself and is able to start making full usage of it with [[BenevolentAI [Great Sage's] help]] to, among other things, break down weapons and items into natural resources in order to harvest those same resources to make new items, combine minor Spirits into new Spirits that he then [[FusionDance fuses with other people]], and create new Skills on the fly from existing ones in his possession. [[spoiler:[Great Sage] eventually merges with [Degenerate] in order to complete her evolution to the Ultimate Skill [Raphael, Lord of Wisdom], keeping the latter Skill's effects and boosting them even further.]]

* In ''[[VideoGame/ForgottenRealms Tymora's Luck]]'' tinker gnomes and two gods made a "fusion chamber".

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* The ''Film/AceVentura'' animated series had an episode based around [[WholePlotReference a scientist whose teleporter combined him with a fly.]] Later in the episode [[spoiler:Ace is combined with Spike]].
* For one episode of ''WesternAnimation/FairlyOddparents'' Timmy celebrates a half-day from school by wishing up a machine that combines any distinct objects put inside. He has a lot of fun making himself half-kid and half-skateboard, but it goes wrong when Crocker combines himself with cheese and gains cheese-based powers. Timmy has to combine himself with a lot of objects to stop Crocker.

* Similar to the''Star Trek'' example, in the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVDemonsAndAngels]]" an experiment with a teleportation device causes the ship and crew to be split into "High" and "Low" versions. Eventually the crew manage to recombine them.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' had Dr. Doofenshmirtz build one of these so he could combine his two childhood loves: [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext his pet giant cockroach and garlic ice cream]]. They go together about as well as it sounds.

May be involved in ItemCrafting. This may be the source of MixAndMatchCritters, MixAndMatchMan and (sometimes) NinjaPirateZombieRobot.

* Wapol of ''Franchise/OnePiece'' had this as one of his sub-powers. While the Munch-Munch Devil Fruit gave him the power to fuse himself with anything he ate, he could also fuse eaten objects with each other, creating an entirely new object. This trope is then [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] as he ends up profitting by promoting the fused objects as toys and selling them.

* In a failed CBS pilot a scientist developing a teleporter decides to use it to surprise his girlfriend in another lab by teleporting in with a rose and invite her out for a date, but being unfamiliar with the lab he teleports into the same location of an advanced space probe complete with AI and survival instincts she's developing causing them to merge. As a result when he's threatened the probe that's otherwise invisibly merged with him emerges in increasing degrees until when at risk of death it completely takes over looking like a vaguely humanoid killing machine.

* ''Toys/{{BIONICLE}}'': The Spear of Fusion, which can also be used in reverse. The results can be a bit unpredictable and can only be undone with the spear. When it was accidently used to split a skakdi in two, the result was one being with the same appearance and abilities as the original but with reduced intelligence and self control and another being that looked completely different and was smarter than the other half but powerless and rather crazy. It has also been used to split a flying creature into two animals that each had only one wing so couldn't fly, fuse together two toa into a creature with reduced intelligence and very different powers than its components, and fuse two skakdi together to form a being that immediately turned on its teammates because it now had twice as much hatred for its team.

* The ''Videogame/{{Scribblenauts}}'' series has the [[https://scribblenauts.fandom.com/wiki/Create-A-Tron Create-A-Tron]], an unsummonable object that only appears in "Create" levels in Super Scribblenauts and Scribblenauts Remix. Goal of these levels is to put the correct items, animals, people etc. in the create-a-tron to create the required new object.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In one Treehouse of Horror episode, after Homer buys a matter transporter from Professor Frink (and uses it around the house to save him walking from one room to another... though it takes more effort to move the transporter booths), Bart uses it to fuse with a fly, hoping it will give him superpowers. But instead of Brundlefly, he gets the 1958 Fly (Bart with a fly head, the fly with Bart's).

* One Treehouse of Horror episode from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', where after Homer buys a matter transporter from Professor Frink (and uses it around the house to save him walking from one room to another... though it takes more effort to move the transporter booths), Bart uses it to fuse with a fly, hoping it will give him superpowers. But instead of Brundlefly, he gets the 1958 Fly (Bart with a fly head, the fly with Bart's).

Basically it's a device that fuses multiple objects together, kind of like FusionDance. Works by either shooting a beam or placing the objects into a machine. May also work in reverse. Sometimes, the effect is [[MergingMistake unintentional and probably not the main purpose of the device]]; {{Teleporter Accident}}s are particularly prone to turning the devices into Merging Machines, especially in cases such as TeleFrag.

* ''Literature/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': Shizue Izawa possesses the [[SoulPower Unique Skill]] [Degenerate], which allows her to combine and disassemble items or even abilities in her possession at will. However, Shizue was never able to draw out this Skill's full potential before her passing. After [[TheAssimilator absorbing her per her dying request]], [[TheHero Rimuru]] gains the Skill for himself and is able to start making full usage of it with [[BenevolentAI [Great Sage's] help]] to, among other things, break down weapons and items into natural resources in order to harvest those same resources to make new items, combine minor Spirits into new Spirits that he then [[FusionDance fuses with other people]], and create new Skills on the fly from existing ones in his possession. [[spoiler:[Great Sage] eventually merges with [Degenerate] in order to complete her evolution to the Ultimate Skill [Raphael, Lord of Wisdom], keeping the latter Skill's effects and boosting them even further.]]

* ''LightNovel/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': Shizue Izawa possesses the [[SoulPower Unique Skill]] [Degenerate], which allows her to combine and disassemble items or even abilities in her possession at will. However, Shizue was never able to draw out this Skill's full potential before her passing. After [[TheAssimilator absorbing her per her dying request]], [[TheHero Rimuru]] gains the Skill for himself and is able to start making full usage of it with [[BenevolentAI [Great Sage's] help]] to, among other things, break down weapons and items into natural resources in order to harvest those same resources to make new items, combine minor Spirits into new Spirits that he then [[FusionDance fuses with other people]], and create new Skills on the fly from existing ones in his possession. [[spoiler:[Great Sage] eventually merges with [Degenerate] in order to complete her evolution to the Ultimate Skill [Raphael, Lord of Wisdom], keeping the latter Skill's effects and boosting them even further.]]

* A case where the "merging machine" is a person: In the thirteenth issue of Grant Morrison's ''Comicbook/AnimalMan'' series, the B'wana Beast was infected with Anthrax and it drove him a bit crazy, to the point he was using his powers to merge random animals and turning the resulting chimera into killing machines.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Tuvix". A transporter accident fuses Tuvok and Neelix together, forming the title character. They eventually work out how to reverse the process, leading to an existential plea from him equating it to murder.
* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': In the ''[[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S04E24ManosTheHandsOfFate "Manos" The Hands of Fate]]'' episode, Joel's invention exchange is the Cartuner, a device that takes two newspaper comic strips and combines them into something funnier than the source material.

* Inverted and then played straight in one episode of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', where a transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into two people, one with all his more aggressive traits and the other with his more passive traits. Eventually the crew figures out what caused the malfunction and successfully uses the transporter to reunify him.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''[==]'s punch-card alchemy process lets you convert objects into punch-card codes and back, and by merging the codes, you can create merged objects.

* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' has [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-914 SCP-914]], [[InSeriesNickname "The Clockworks"]]. Putting two items in the input booth and running the machine on "fine" (the setting for turning things up a notch) or "very fine" (typically produces something that goes even higher to the input) tends to yield outputs that combine aspects from both inputs; in one of the side-stories, 914 was fed a [[RedShirt D-class]] and a 64-core supercomputer multiple times, with outputs including sixty-four small robot spiders [[{{Squick}} with human faces]] and a human with a supercomputing brain (which was the desired output). In addition, one of its other settings, "coarse," often functions as an {{Inversion}}, separating objects into their component parts.

* In ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureJojolion'', the Wall Eyes are a geological phenomenon that have this effect on objects buried in the ground near them. One character demonstrates this by burying a lemon and an orange, then digging them up and cutting them to reveal that they've swapped segments. [[spoiler:Later it's revealed that this has nothing to do with the Wall Eyes, and the ground has had this property for generations. It's also responsible for the creation of protagonist Josuke Higashikata, who's the merger of two men, Yoshikage Kira and Josefumi Kujo.]]

* The ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' has [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-914 SCP-914]], [[InSeriesNickname "The Clockworks"]]. Putting two items in the input booth and running the machine on "fine" (the setting for turning things UpToEleven) or "very fine" (typically produces something that goes even higher to the input) tends to yield outputs that combine aspects from both inputs; in one of the side-stories, 914 was fed a [[RedShirt D-class]] and a 64-core supercomputer multiple times, with outputs including sixty-four small robot spiders [[{{Squick}} with human faces]] and a human with a supercomputing brain (which was the desired output). In addition, one of its other settings, "coarse," often functions as an {{Inversion}}, separating objects into their component parts.

* ''LightNovel/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': Shizue Izawa possesses the [[SoulPower Unique Skill]] [Degenerate], which allows her to combine and disassemble items or even abilities in her possession at will. However, Shizue was never able to draw out this Skill's full potential before her passing. After [[TheAssimilator absorbing her per her dying request]], [[TheHero Rimuru]] gains the Skill for himself and is able to start making full usage of it with [[BenevolentAI [Great Sage's] help]] to, among other things, break down weapons and items into natural resources in order to harvest those same resources to make new items, combine minor Spirits into new Spirits that he then [[FusionDance fuses with other people]], and create new Skills on the fly from existing ones in his possession. [[spoiler:[Great Sage] eventually merges with [Degenerate] in order to complete her evolution to the Ultimate Skill [Raphael], keeping the latter Skill's effects and boosting them even further.]]

* For one episode of ''WesternAnimation/FairlyOddparebts'' Timmy celebrates a half-day from school by wishing up a machine that combines any distinct objects put inside. He has a lot of fun making himself half-kid and half-skateboard, but it goes wrong when Crocker combines himself with cheese and gains cheese-based powers. Timmy has to combine himself with a lot of objects to stop Crocker.

* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretSaturdays'' the Saturdays get tricked by a faked message from a ghost into helping some evil scientists complete a machine that can merge living things together, who then test the machine on Zack, Fisk, and Komodo.

* ''Toys/{{BIONICLE}}'': the Spear of Fusion, which can also be used in reverse. The results can be a bit unpredictable and can only be undone with the spear.

* ''Toys/{{BIONICLE}}'': the Spear of Fusion, which can also be used in reverse.

* ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'': In the ''[[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S04E24ManosTheHandsOfFate "Manos" The Hands of Fate]]'' episode, Joel's invention exchange is the Cartuner, a device that takes two newspaper comic strips and combines them into something funnier than the source material. ''"Comicstrip/{{Ziggy}} had Comicstrip/{{Garfield}} neutered?!"''

* Jakyou Manors/The Velvet Room/Demon Fusion Program-enhanced tech in most of the ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' games, including the ''[[Franchise/ShinMegamiTenseiPersona Persona]]'' series, function this way for combining demons, personae, swords, spell/tarot cards, and any number of other compatible things.