Alternate Self

Proving once again that teleporters can do truly anything!

TG: and hey you might even be able to help your past dream self wake up sooner without all that fuss you went through
TT: I think the true purpose of this game is to see how many qualifiers we can get to precede the word "self" and still understand what we're talking about.

— Dave Strider and Rose Lalonde, Homestuck

The Alternate Self is the same person as the character, but living a separate life. The most common cause is that the two alternate selves live in separate timelines that diverged reasonably recently and were the same or very similar during the person's formative years.

However, in some Speculative Fiction, a Alternate Self can also be created by a Teleporter Accident, a Time Travel mixup, where the clone somehow keeps the personality, skills and memories of the original.

The character and the alternate self (or the two alternate selves, if the plot treats them equally as characters) might have been more or less changed by different circumstances, but they are still the same person at the core. They may or may not be the same age, but they do NOT have a linear relationship of one being the younger self that will become the other — the older self.

Given the rise in popularity of The Multiverse in popular fiction, especially in how it's often used to connect two previously unrelated pieces of fiction or separate adaptions in a Intra-Franchise Crossover, what exactly counts as an example of this trope can get confusing. This trope is when a specific piece of work features an alternate version of a character either through them meeting, the alternate self appearing in some form such as being The Cameo, or in an Alternate Reality Episode. While a specific work might connect to other adaptions that include the same characters, unless both versions of the character appear or are at least acknowledged to some extent in the same work the trope should not be used.

An Alternate Self is the opposite of a Mirror Self, and yet they often overlap in a fluid pondering of identity.

• Alternate Self = Same person, but different life.
• Mirror Self = The opposite person, but in some ways still the same.

In the case of separate timelines, the two alternate selves may or may not be able to share information through Flash Sideways.

When several alternate selves team up against something or someone, it's an Alliance of Alternates. The appearance of an alternate may result in Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment or Alternate Personality Punishment. If the alternate self goes by a different name, see Alternative-Self Name-Change.

Also see Distaff Counterpart and Alternate Species Counterpart.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball Z: Everyone from Future Trunks' timeline is this to the people in the present, since using Trunks' Time Machine splits the main timeline into branches rather than allow one to change future events.
  • Dragon Ball Super: After meeting Zamasu in the present, Goku and co find Future Zamasu in another timeline. This Zamasu has gone completely Ax-Crazy and has joined Goku Black in his quest to kill all humans. And then it turns out that Goku Black himself was an Alternate Self of Zamasu before switching bodies with Goku in another timeline.
• In EDENS ZERO, this is what happens whenever a planet's time gets eaten by a Chronophage, which essentially erases the planet and replaces it with an earlier version of itself, including anyone who was on the planet at the time. Since this isn't really time travel, anyone from the "past" can live an entirely different life from before without setting off any time paradoxes, because the rewind is still a part of history. This allows the "past" and "present" versions of Weisz, one of the main characters, to co-exist because "Present Weisz" managed to escape the planet without being erased.
• In Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA, there are three separate characters who are parallel versions of one person, Shirou Emiya. First is Illya's older brother, who lives a normal life. Second is Miyu's older brother, whose life follows a parallel version of Fate/stay night. Third is Heroic Spirit EMIYA, who comes from a future where Shirou Emiya contracted with the world and became a Heroic Spirit. The second learns the third's identity when the latter responds to his summoning and lends him his power through the Archer Card.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stone Ocean: Enrico Pucci's Made In Heaven kills most of the cast and then accelerates time for everything except living beings to the end of the universe and then to a similar point in time to the next universe. Emporio, the only main cast member to have survived, encounters Gonkish versions of Jolyne and Jotaro confirmed to be different from the originals due to having died in the previous universe. After Emporio kills Pucci during another time acceleration he's transported to another new universe and this time he encounters versions of Ermes, Anasui, Jolyne and Weather Report who all look much closer to the originals and whose lives have gone much better due to the absence of Pucci, to the point of Irene and Anakiss (Jolyne and Anasui's counterparts) being in a healthy relationship. Supplementary material hints the souls of the originals were preserved in these counterparts.
  • Steel Ball Run: Funny Valentine's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap allows him the ability to travel between universes, letting him pull in alternate versions of people to instantly kill anyone by exposing the originals to their alternate self, and call upon copies of himself to gang up on his opponents.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The XY series introduced a Mirror Universe where the characters are the complete opposite in personality from their canon selves. Ash is a wimpy crybaby instead of a brave and confident trainer, Serena is a bully who picks on Ash instead of a kindhearted girl with a crush on Ash, Bonnie is extremely polite instead of an energetic kid, Clemont is an athletic magic user rather than an inventor who couldn't run for more than five seconds, and Team Rocket are heroes who help Ash from the shadows instead of being pathetic criminals.
  • An alternate continuity was introduced with the 20th movie called Pokémon: I Choose You!, where Ash's story was changed by receiving a rainbow feather from Ho-Oh the day he started off on his journey. The resulting change created a timeline where he started out more competent and humble than his canon self did, and failed to encounter many of his original Pokémon or traveling companions though the credits imply he eventually will.
  • The Journeys series cracks open the multiverse when an alternate, more competent version of Team Rocket trick Dialga and Palkia into fighting one another, using their energies to de age every Pokémon on the planet into eggs so they can steal them and raise them all as their own. The resulting incident leads to the discovery of a world where Dawn became a trainer instead of a Coordinator, even going so far as to be the Sinnoh League runner up, Ash is still a wimpy crybaby, Goh is a brilliant engineer, and Chloe is a more confident person with incredible hacking skills.
• Re:CREATORS: This trope is used to explain what happens when a fictional character comes to life in the real world. According to Meteora, the characters in the real world are merely alternate versions of the original characters, who still exist within their original stories. Even if the characters die in the real world, the original versions will still exist, but they will have no memories or recollection about what happened in the real world; which means that, emotionally and psychologically, they are not the same characters we have come to know across the series.
• The main premise of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- involves the main characters hop through various dimensions to accomplish different goals. Occasionally, they'd meet alternate versions of characters they've met before. For example, in Hanshin Republic, Syaoran meets alternate versions of Yukito and Toya in an Okonomiyaki restaurant and Syaoran inadvertently gives the latter an Embarrassing Nickname after calling him "Your Majesty" (as Toya is the king in Syaoran's original homeworld). Also, given that the series have a Shared Universe with CLAMP's other work, Sakura and Syaoran are also alternate selves of the main characters of Cardcaptor Sakura.
• A huge plot point in Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V where the protagonist Yuya and deuteragonist Yuzu each have three people that look exactly like them in three separate dimensions. Later seasons introduced Alternate Selves of characters from previous series.

Comic Books

• Astro City: Jack-In-the-Box II meets three alternate versions of his unborn son; two of them became ruthless vigilantes after his death, the third one became a non-vigilante college professor. This realization that he could leave his son without a father prompts him to go into retirement, training one of the Trouble Boys to take his place as the new Jack-In-the-Box.
• City of Dreams: The protagonist is quite different in her dreams compared to her waking world self.
• DC Comics: Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D is essentially a team of Superman counterparts from the 52 Universes. Not all of them are alternate versions of Clark himself (there's a Captain Atom and a Captain Marvel), but most of them are.
• Marvel's What If? rarely showed alternate selves meeting, but its Spiritual Successor, Exiles, often had such meetings.
• Supergirl and Power Girl are the exact same person from different universes.
  • Post-Flashpoint Power Girl is very reluctant to meet her mainstream universe self at first partly because she is worried the universe would explode if they actually touched. When they finally meet in Supergirl Volume 6 #19 the universe is fine, the two Karas psychically bond and kick butt together, and the only snag is Supergirl's fortress AI mistaking Power Girl, then Supergirl herself for a clone and trying to destroy her.
  • Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade: In the fifth issue Supergirl finds Supragirl, her counterpart from an aborted timeline.
• The Multiversity, being a multiverse crisis event, features a number of alternate versions of DCU characters, including Earth-4's versions of the Charlton Comics heroes, Earth-5's versions of the Marvel Family, Earth-10's Kal-L, Earth-23's Kalel, etc. Taken to the next level in Thunderworld #1, which sees Sivanas from across the multiverse team up.
• Convergence features multiple versions of characters from DC's pre-New 52 timelines/universes meeting each other and the people they know.
• The Spider-Verse event is a team-up of Spider-Man counterparts from across the Marvel multiverse, which continued in Web Warriors and Spider-Geddon.
• Spider-Gwen (A.K.A. Spider-Woman and Ghost-Spider), herself an alternate spider-powered variation of Gwen Stacy from Earth-65, has had several encounters.
  • She learns about her 616 self during Spider-Verse, because she was confused by Peter's clear discomfort around her.
  • During her first solo series, she encounters that very Gwen. However, due to how time-travel works in the Marvel Universe, this causes a timeline split, with the new Gwen-617 becoming a detective and bonding with a symbiote of her own.
  • During her crossover with Miles Morales, she finds herself on the utopian Earth-8. Turns out that Gwen-8 is married to Miles-8. Oh, and they have kids.
  • She helps kidnap and replace a clone of Gwen-616 during The Clone Conspiracy.
  • Ghost-Spider is kicked off with a quest to help a Gwen who’d turned herself into a heroic Green Goblin but had lost control when she witnessed the death of her father and her Spider-Man, Harry Osborn, sacrificing himself for her.
• The Secret Wars (2015) miniseries Thors has many different versions of Thor collectively serving as Battleworld's police and a serial murderer killing off versions of Jane Foster and Donald Blake. The whole event is set up so that almost every major character has alternate selves running around except for Doctor Doom and the majority of the Fantastic Four. As in only one Doom, Sue Storm (Mrs. Doom), Johnny Storm (is the "sun"), Ben Grimm (is the "Shield" containing the more lethal territories), Franklin and Valeria... and no Reed Richards at all. Until the survivors arrive including two of him (Mr. Fantastic from the main universe, and the Maker from the Ultimate Marvel one).
• Averted in Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Unite, which features both the main Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) universe and the Sonic Boom universe, but only Boom characters who do not have counterparts in the main Sonic universe play active roles in the crossover itself. The Boom versions of Orbot and Cubot do make a tiny contribution towards the beginning by building a Genesis Portal for X, Zero, Axl, Sticks, Fastidious, and Comedy, but that's the extent the actual alternate characters are involved, and they do not meet each other at any point.
• Superboy (1994): The "Hyper-Tension!" arc is kicked off by a version of Kon-El from a different reality showing up with a cryptic warning and dying as the Justice League tries to save him. Kon-El then learns an evil alt-reality version of himself who was completed to Westfield's plans has been traveling through Hypertime taking over different earths and imprisoning the local versions of Superboy including Kal-El (Earth-One), Karkan (Earth-183), Kal-El (Earth-395), Supergrrl (Earth-1098), and Kid Kon-El (Earth-1890) who then all team up with our Superboy to defeat Westfield's evil clone.
• The Final Days of Superman features three versions of Superman - the New 52 Superman, the pre-New 52 Superman, and an insane Energy Being copy of the New 52 Superman who's convinced he's the real one. It also features the New 52 and pre-New 52 versions of Lois Lane. Following the death of the New 52 Superman, DC Rebirth features a story arc where the pre-New 52 Superman is confronted with the mystery of how Clark Kent can be around - a completely human Clark Kent with no super-powers, who recalls a life as an ordinary human being and denies having ever been Superman. Superman Reborn reveals that the pre-New 52 Superman was actually split into two, one of whom was the New 52 one, and they remerge at the end. Additionally, the "human Clark Kent" was really Mr. Mxyzptlk.
• Part of the plot of Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! deals with this as characters meet alternate versions of each other, most notably including a Barbara Gordon from a universe where she was still Batgirl rather than Oracle, she and her Batman were lovers, the Joker opting to kill Commissioner Gordon instead of crippling her, going on to kill Sal Maroni before he could disfigure Harvey Dent, and much like in The Dark Knight, deciding to disfigure Dent himself.
• Waverider from Armageddon 2001 and the leader of the Linear Men from the Superman stories "Time And Time Again Again" and "Time Ryders" are both Matthew Ryders from two different timelines — Waverider came from one in which the Monarch destroyed all superheroes and came to power as Earth's sole ruler, while Linear Man Matthew Ryder came from one in which Monarch's plan to destroy all superheroes was averted (the one that ultimately became part of the mainstream DC Universe canon). Initially Waverider had a bad relationship with the other Matthew Ryder and even at one point killed him, which ended up trapping him, Superman, and the Linear Men in a Nullsphere until Waverider used Hunter's eye beam energy to prevent the other Matthew Ryder from being killed in the first place, thus restoring things to normal. In Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!, Waverider was fused with Monarch to become Extant, forcing Linear Man Matthew Ryder to become the new Waverider in his alternate self's place.
• Gravity Falls: Lost Legends: "Don't Dimension It" has Mabel getting trapped in a pocket dimension with dozens, even hundreds, of alternate versions of herself. Unfortunately, almost all of them are as self-absorbed and scatter-brained as she is, and the one who isn't turns out to be the villainous Anti-Mabel.
• Wonder Woman was the first DC comic to officially run an Alternate Universe story, in which Diana helps her counterpart from another universe fight the race of giants that are tyrannizing her world.
  • In Wonder Woman (2006) the villain Genocide is revealed to have been developed using the corpse of a Diana from another world.
  • In Wonder Woman: Odyssey the Big Bad Nemesis is the twisted form of an Alternate Universe Diana, who has been slowly losing her mind due to her burden as Nemesis and plans to force Diana to become the new Nemesis by killing her.
• Several iterations of Deadpool exist in within the main continuity and in alternate universe books:
  • The Deadpool Corps of Deadpool Corps are other versions of Deadpool, known by different names to readers and nicknamed by the main version to: distaff counterpart Lady Deadpool ("Boobs"), Marvel Zombies severed head Headpool ("Shorty No Pockets" aka "Shorty"), lil tyke Kidpool ("Tito"), and animal superhero Dogpool ("Cujo"). They originally team up to battle a multiverse-devouring cosmic threat.
  • Deadpool Kills Deadpool features Deadpool killing Deadpool. That is, one version of Deadpool targets and slaughters multiple previous versions of himself and new ones created for the book, including the Deadpool Corps and Deadpool Pulp. There's a large-scale battle involving many, many more Deadpools.
  • The Ultimate Marvel version of Deadpool is even more violent than in the main universe, and is a grotesque, evil, mutant-killing bigot.
• The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers face this in the Boom! Studios series, in the form of Lord Drakkon for Green Ranger Tommy, Drakkon's Ranger Slayer for Kimberley, and depowered counterparts for Zach and Trini as lead members of The Coinless. Jason and Billy's counterparts are dead, having been killed by Drakkon himself.
• Invader Zim (Oni):
  • In Issue 12, Zim and Dib are accidentally sent into a Bad Future where Zim has successfully conquered Earth. This version of Zim, known as Emperor Zim, is somewhat more mature and competent and looks down on his younger self, who comes to despise him in turn.
  • During the Battle Void Arc, Zim and Dib end up trapped in a Pocket Dimension inhabited entirely by alternate versions of Zim from across The Multiverse. And which is being secretly run by an evil alternate version of Dib.

Fan Works

• Abraxas:
  • There's essentially more than one version of San, as the San who serves as one of the story's two main protagonists, having come from the severed Ghidorah-head via Brain Uploading, only has memories of Ghidorah's actions up to the head's decapitation, and doesn't remember what his regrown counterpart did before it died with Ghidorah at the battle of Boston — kind of like an outdated backup file copy. Another version of San who has the same pre-Upload memories and is still evil, has regenerated alongside Ni and Ichi via Ghidorah's surviving DNA traces. The evil San at one point scorns the San who's fused to Vivienne as being nothing more than a "shadow" or "shed skin", and has no apparent compunctions against using Break Them by Talking and Mind Rape on San and Vivienne. Vivienne is able to tell the two San's apart when the evil one speaks to her via Psychic Link, as her San's mental voice is slightly changing with his Character Development, whereas the evil San's voice sounds the same as when San first fused to her.
  • MaNi/Elder Brother is a "shed skin" like Vivienne's San, created by Ghidorah's right head splitting off during the three-headed monster's regeneration and forming an autonomous body with the Many. He's also even more Ax-Crazy than is normal for Ni, which Word of God states is due to a combination of lacking Ghidorah's middle head as a Restraining Bolt and being exposed to MaNi's Skullcrawler-made body's violent impulses. During Chapter 17, two versions of Ni/Elder Brother are existing at the same time after Ghidorah has once more regenerated its right head following MaNi's creation.
• Becoming a True Invader: A version of Keef from another universe shows up midway through the story to help fight the Employer, who is also from that universe. Unlike his canon counterpart, who is a normal human, he's an officer of an interstellar law enforcement agency.
• Child of the Storm: Harry spends most of chapter 41 of the sequel Ghosts of the Past talking to an older version of himself thanks to an enchantment malfunctioning under his powers' influence, and the cracks in reality left over from Chthon's rising at the climax of the first book. The counterpart refers to himself as "Nathan" for simplicity's sake, and comes from a timeline where Wanda adopted him after the events of his First Year. He then shows Harry a number of other alternate timelines, varying from the hilarious to the horrifying (and all apparently picked out by Harry's subconscious), in aid of teaching him a lesson or two - though he refuses to spoon-feed him. He later reappears, teaching Jean and Maddie about the ins and outs of the Phoenix.
• Crisis of Infinite Twilights is built entirely around this. Scootaloo accidentally causes a magical explosion that shatters Twilight and also opens portals across the globe allowing alternate Twilights to appear. From one that was the Princess of Equestria with Celestia as her student, one who is pure evil, one who is a shark, a Japanese Magic Girl, and one who is the leader of the 3rd Row Saints, each chapter introduces at least one new Twilight, leading to an epic battle of hundreds of Twilights fighting it out.
• A Crown of Stars: A fact of life in Avalon is that you will inevitably run into yourself at some point (almost literally in Shinji's case), or even children you never had. Asuka and Shinji, the pair the story follows, were profoundly weirded out when they bumped into their analogues from “The Way out Is Through” universe. More so when they got a call from their daughter, who was also twice their age (it's apparently good custom to introduce yourself to your analogues and welcome them to the family, though Senior Fleet Commander Sohryu-Ikari also couldn't resist the urge to mess with their heads a little; she got it from her mom).
• Daydreams And Nightmares actually points out in-universe that Storm is an alternate self of Shanzira.
• This idea is explored in detail in the Discworld fic Doppelgangers, by A.A. Pessimal, which builds on a scene in The Colour of Magic where Rincewind is flipped onto Earth and for a moment sees life on Earth through the eyes of his alternate self there^note Although in the book, this is presented more as the universe hastily altering history so it looks like he was there all along.. Establishing a link between Discworld and Roundworld (Earth), the story builds and establishes clear links between the two worlds. Rincewind turns out to be not the only Discworlder to have a Doppelganger on Earth...
  • The fic Slipping Between Worlds takes this a step further, tidying up loose ends from Reaper Man and The Science of Discworld to suggest a mechanism by which people from Earth can end up on Discworld. And not only people (Alice Band) but whole countries turn out to have Discworld alternate selves...
• Equestria: Across the Multiverse is all about multiversal exploration, so naturally the protagonists run into a lot of these, though not always with the same names (such as the My Little Pony Tales universe versions of Shining Armor and Mayor Mare being Sincere Heart and President Pony respectively), and there being multiple versions of the same person present at the Jaunting Base at any one time is rather common. In fact, one of its residents is an alternate version of Minuette whose Equestria all transcended into virtual beings who lives in their computer systems as Mission Control.
• Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls: While the main premise of Equestria Girls is alternate versions of My Little Pony characters as humans the crossover with Bleach adds more layers too it with the counterparts of characters like Discord, Sombra, Torch, Lightning Dust, Twilight, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash's parents, Blueblood, and Bount Trixie ending up in different places and moralities than their Equestrian versions thanks to the different powers they have, the cultures they grew up in, and the events they experienced; the end result tends to make then Foils to their other self in some way.
• Except It Abide in the Vine is built on this, with the majority of the cast consisting of Alternate Universe versions of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes: Marvel Cinematic Universe based and Marvel 616 based, Race Lifted, Gender Flipped, a Darker and Edgier Steve and Bucky from a HYDRA-ruled dystopia, and even a Steve Rogers who isn't from New York.
• Fallout Girls features this frequently, as the Rainbooms start running into the Fallout versions of themselves, their families and their friends.
• Fate/Black Dawn: In an omake chapter, various copies of the characters are summoned to Chaldea, leading to the canon versions meeting the fic versions. Canon Arturia and Canon Mordred are not amused at alternate Morgan and Mordred, while Canon Shirou gets into a Cooking Duel with alternate Shirou.
  Saber Mordred: So, let me get this straight. Instead of having me commit the rebellion against my Father, you and my Mother fell in love, you basically adopted me, and you staged a war against Father so you could try to convince her to abandon Camelot in favor of living an extremely long life—because you love her.
  Ruler Shirou: That's the basics, yes.
  Saber Mordred: And you taught Your Me how to use a bow, and basically gorged her on sweets, good food, and paternal affection.
  Ruler Shirou: You could say that, yes.
  Saber Mordred: THIS IS BULLSHIT.
• Little Hands, Big Attitude features several instances of this, especially since Mephiles - now Obsidian - comes from the games continuity while the story takes place in the movies universe.
  • The movie Sonic is somewhat younger and far more innocent than the version of Sonic that Obsidian remembers, and he's also less mature and more enthousiastic as a person. This helps Obsidian distinguish the two and not project the hatred of the game version of Sonic on his new brother.
  • Kaia is this world's version of Chaos. Unlike Chaos, who is basically a savage beast filled with rage, Kaia is perfectly elonquent and seems mostly sad and resigned to her situation of futily looking for her emeralds. That said, Kaia remarks that there was a time she was that angry, but it has mostly fizzled out with time.
  • Silver and Blaze. While Silver is a time traveller from an apocalyptic future and Blaze a princess from a different dimension, here the two of them grew up together in an apocalyptic present (though Blaze is still royalty). Basically in the new universe the two settings of their original world's get combined. Obsidian panics at the possibility of meeting them because even though he knows they come from a different reality, they are the two people most likely to recognise Mephiles. Fortunately, Mephiles is not a thing where they're from.
  • This world's version of Shadow has a completely different personality than his game counterpart, falling under Amnesiacs are Innocent, Honor Before Reason and hating violence. There's also a hanging question on whether or not he really is an artificial lifeform like his original version or not. Interestingly, this version of Shadow keeps getting visions of things that happened to his game counterpart.
  • Obsidian in his sleep sees visions of alternate versions of his brothers, like a version of Sonic with wings, Tails being a submarine pilot, or Knuckles being the elderly guardian of a village.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Paradox: The Flay Allster in this Alternate Timeline is one to the original Flay, as a result of her death being undone by the eponymous Paradox Gundam. This Flay, who still reels from the horrors of the war, spends most of the story trying to atone for her sins and her relationship with the Paradox's pilot, Akiza^note no, not that Akiza, despite the character is based on her.
• In the Project Dark Jade fic Her Shadowed Realm (a Crossover between Jackie Chan Adventures and Yu-Gi-Oh!), Yu, "The Jade Empress", came from (and by that, I mean sealed in the Shadow Realm after a Face–Heel Turn) the original JCA universe (or one that's pretty similar), and eventually makes contact with Pegasus, which allows her to make sure the Yu-Gi-Oh world's version of Jade gets a specially crafted deck, which includes a card of Yu. Yu's plans for her counterpart are currently unknown.
• In An Infinite Number of Pinkies, Pinkie Pie meets a whole slew of alternate versions of herself being gathered together by the alicorn Pinkie Prime for the ultimate party. Ultimate as in final, as Pinkie Prime has grown so bored with her immortality that she's decided to destroy the multiverse and herself with it.
• In Pursuit of a Single Ideal:
  • Miyu's older adoptive brother is the alternate self of this fic's protagonist, Shirou. This heavily affects Miyu's behavior towards him, as she Desperately Craves Affection and tries to get it from him while using the excuse that Shirou "reminds her of her brother".
  • Another Shirou counterpart pops up with Emiya Alter in the form of a Class Card, leading in a Mirror Match between the two. Shirou is convinced that he is going to end up the same way as him, but Muramasa gives him a Screw Destiny speech to snap him out.
  • The Assassin class card servant that Shirou and Grey fight is an alternate version of Shirou's father Kiritsugu. Shirou and Kiritsugu figure it out when Shirou recounts the match to him, including a description of what weapon he used.
• In keeping with one half of the crossover being the DC Universe, the Multiverse comes into play Hunters of Justice, when teams RWBY and JNPR use some of the Justice League's tech to see other versions of themselves. Also, while the story takes place in a universe where Brainiac kept Cinder from enacting the Fall of Beacon, thus Yang still has her arm and Pyrrha is still alive, Batman used the same tech to see into worlds where their canon fates did happen and designed armor accordingly to prevent it from befalling them.
• The Kingdom Hearts fanfic Lost Boys has Maleficent screwing with Sora by showing him his Canon self. She even offers to restore it, but he refuses in the thought that he can't be that happy anymore, not when he's been depressed and traumatized for so long. He falls into a HBSOD as he wonders what on earth he did to deserve his crappy life.
• Mass Effect: Life is a Game and its sequel have a Reality Warper offer Male!Paragon!Shepard a one-way trip from Mass Effect 3's endgame to the beginning of the series. Upon arriving in his past, Shepard realizes that a Female!Renegade!Shepard has accidentally fallen into his world as well, so he introduces her as his wife.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Harrison Wells, Harry Wells, and H.R. Wells exist in the same world, all working at S.T.A.R. Labs to promote the greater good. They're also drinking buddies and play Secret Hitler with each other. Izuku himself is the Earth-2014.00 counterpart to Clark Kent.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Season 2 Episode 7 sees Dib, his friends, and Zim and Tak's teams being accidentally transported to a Mirror Universe and meeting their counterparts there.
• On a Cross and Arrow is about the main characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic finding themselves in a Gender Flipped alternate universe and running into their counterparts (Dusk Shine, Berry Bubble, Applejack, Rainbow Blitz, Elusive, and Butterscotch).
• In Origin Story, Alex Harris is an alternate self of Power Girl. At first, Alex thinks that she is Xander Harris with Kara's memories, but later comes to realize that she's actually a melding of both Xander and Kara, with her own experiences and opinions.
• The Pony POV Series reveals the main timeline is simply one in a very large multiverse, the Gender Flip universe from On a Cross and Arrow is one of them. This leads to a pretty awesome moment when Applejack teams up with Orangejack, her alternate self from a world were she didn't see the Sonic Rainboom, to fight Nightmare Mirror, another alternate version of her who'd not only gone Nightmare, but become a Multiversal Conqueror. To defeat her, Applejack summons four other alternate versions of herself that represent the other Elements.
• The Crisis Crossover in RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse has the Trixie and Twilight of the Lunaverse show up in the Mane Six's world. The rest of the Luna Six and Luna herself have followed them. Contemplation of the road less traveled ensues.
• Too Many Ashes: Professor Oak gene-spliced a perfect trainer — Ash Ketchum — to collect Pokedex data for him and a perfect partner Pikachu to act as a starter, made several dozen copies of each of them, and turned them loose into the world with no knowledge of the existence of any other clones. By the time the clones figure out what's going on, several of their number have embarked on drastically different lives and career paths that aren't just "average Pokemon trainer".
• In With Strings Attached, Ringo briefly stares at his “Beagle” counterpart in the Plaza hotel room in New Zork. The two Ringos don't get to talk because Beagle Brian Epstein is screaming at the “fake” Ringo and threatening him with arrest. Beagle John, who is the only one who knows what's going on, manages to talk Brian into letting “fake” Ringo go free, since an arrest = unwanted publicity = every illusionist and face-changer trying to get into the hotel that way. It Makes Sense in Context.
• The Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic The World Without the War has an omake in which the cast meet their canon-counterparts. Usually causing freak-outs on both sides. Until Toph meets Toph.
• This used to be a very common thing in Ranma ½ fanfics at one point.
  • Two different Ranmas meet and talk in Girl Talk, part of The Return fan-verse.
  • Richard Lawson's Definitions Of hell has two Ranmas swap places before meeting up to compare notes.
  • Deb Goldsmith's Equal Halves has a female version of Ranma from a fanfic end up with canon Ranma due to a wish by Kuno.
• Fractured Sunlight: The focus of the fic is on "Sci-Twi" (Princess Twilight's human alternate) and specifically her relationship with the human version of Sunset Shimmer she knew as a kid.
• The Forever Captain series: In returning to the midcentury, Steve Rogers eventually encounters the version of himself that was frozen in ice and woke up in the 21st Century. Their meeting is alluded to in The Favor, but the only time it’s been seen on-page is in Respects to Pay.
• There Was Once an Avenger From Krypton:
  • Discussed when Eda admits that she thought that Stan (whom she met on Earth) and Ford (whom she met in another dimension) were doppelgängers of each other rather than twins.
  • Discussed by Strange when he mentions that he saw visions of Doctor Doom killing alternate versions of him before revealing that Doom himself is not native to their universe. As it later turns out, Doom is native to their universe, it's just that he and the original version of Reed Richards have been rebooting and altering the timeline numerous times.
  • Relating to the above point, all the non-Marvel characters in the Kryptonverse are technically this to their canonical versions due to the alterations Doom and Reed have been getting the Celestials to make. Word of God says that, if Ben went to the universe of the canon Ben 10 series, for example, the native versions of him and his family would still be there.
• In Through the Looking Glass (My Next Life as a Villainess), Gerald and Keith from My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! switch places with the Geord and Keith from the in-universe game Fortune Lover after all four make a wish involving their current lives by a runestone Gerald and Geord were studying. Gerald wanted his fiance Katarina to love him romantically, while Geord wanted his Katarina to not love him so he can end their engagement; meanwhile Isekai!Keith wanted Katarina to see him less as a brother and more of a romantic option, while Game!Keith wanted a loving and caring family. Later, the Katarinas from both worlds switch place after making wishes themselves in reaction to the other Gerald/Geord. Game!Keith is the only one who's actually 100% satisfied by his wish.
• Infinity Train: Boiling Point: An alternate version of Chloe of the Vermillion from Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail exists, the main differences in their personalities and attire. Word of God even states that the Chloe Cerise in this story is from a different universe.
• The Invader Zim fic When Gamers Collide features two versions of Gaz meeting each other after interdimensional accidents in their respective universes transport them both to a Pocket Dimension. Specifically, the cruel misanthrope from the original series (dubbed Black-Gaz) and the kinder Jerk with a Heart of Gold from the comics and TV movie (Blue-Gaz). At first they get along, but a callous comment about Dib quickly causes them to come to blows, with Black seeing Blue as a cheap imitation and mockery of everything she stands for, while Blue sees Black as a sociopath and all her worst qualities intensified.
• The RWBY fanfic "Fractal Chaos" revolves around a failed experiment causing members of Team RWBY and JN_R (plus Neo) to periodically switch places with alternate counterparts from parallel timelines. They rarely swap with their own doubles however, allowing them to directly interact with their alternates. These include a timeline where Ruby and Yang lost their father instead of their mother, one where Blake fell back into terrorism and became even more radicalized, and one where all of Team RWBY has Maiden powers and have already managed to beat the Big Bad. Yang calls out the ones from that reality for being on "easy mode".
• Witches Rangers and the 141: Discussed.
  • The Army Rangers of Hunter 2-1 discover the striking similarities between Shirley and the real-life inspiration Chuck Yeager, eventually coming to the conclusion Shirley is a guy in their universe. The revelation shocks her to unconsciousness.
  • When visiting a museum in Germany, Trudy discovers a WWII exhibit of her real-life inspiration, Gerhard Barkhorn. All the similarities between the two are pointed out by her until Ghost reveals to Trudy that Gerhard's wife was actually named Christl, which is disturbingly close her own sister's name, Christiane (whom she harbours feelings for in ways that may go beyond the familial). Trudy nearly mentally overloads from that information.

Films — Animated

• Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension sees the cast of Phineas and Ferb travelling to an Alternate Universe, so naturally they meet their doppelgangers. In the second dimension, Doctor Doofenshmirtz has successfully conquered the Tri-State Area, Perry the Platypus is his brainwashed cyborg henchman, and Candace is the leader of the Resistance. The two Doofs perform an entire song about it!
• Like its source inspiration, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has multiple versions of Peter Parker from across the multiverse:
  • The one from Miles Morales's universe is an Ideal Hero who has his life together both as beloved NYC icon Spider-Man and regular civilian Peter Parker. Shame about the "being dead" thing. Also, this one is blonde and blue-eyed, while pretty much every other version of Peter has been brunette and brown-eyed.
  • Peter B. Parker is, to put it lightly, in the middle of a midlife crisis, becoming somewhat out of shape and rather cynical in the process.
  • Peter Benjamin Parker (aka Spider-Man Noir) is a comically serious private eye from a universe where it's still the 1930s and everything is in black and white.
  • Peni Parker is a young Japanese-American Genki Girl from the far future who pilots a spider-themed mecha named SP//dr.
  • Peter Porker (aka Spider-Ham), despite his porcine appearance, is not a pig who was bitten by a radioactive spider, but a spider who was bitten by a radioactive pig.
  • While Gwen Stacy (aka Spider-Woman) is not an alternate version of Peter Parker, her dead best friend was, having become the Lizard instead of Spider-Man.
  • The Stinger features the return of 60s cartoon Peter Parker.
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse continues the tradition and cranks it up to eleven. The Spider-Society, lead by Miguel O'Hara is host to thousands of variations of Spider Men across all eras and media. The plot hinges upon the fact that the Miles Morales of Earth-1610B was supposedly never meant to be Spider-Man since the mutated spider from Earth-42 teleported to Miles' dimension and bit 1610B's variant instead and is therefore an aberration — a threat to the multiverse in Miguel's eyes. In the finale, Miles accidentally teleports into Earth-42 and encounters his alternate self — the Miles who didn't get bitten by said mutated spider and instead became the Prowler in a Crapsack World.

Films — Live-Action

• The Back to the Future trilogy features multiple alternate versions of Marty's family and recurring antagonist Biff Tannen. Biff, in particular, is first a corrupt middle-management bully, then a timid goofball, and finally a murderous Corrupt Corporate Executive with enough money and power to completely screw up Hill Valley and its surroundings.
• This is the main plot point of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Every choice you make creates an alternate universe where you chose differently — and through the power of verse jumping, you can send your mind into your alternate self, and borrow their skills and memories for use in your universe. Evelyn in the "main" universe is a woman in a failing marriage running a failing laundromat, but in other lives, she's a martial artist and movie star, a blind singer, the scientist who discovered verse jumping, a martial artist who exclusively trained with her pinkies, a teppanyaki chef, a variant human with sausages for fingers, a piñata, a pencil doodle, an inanimate rock...
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Quite a few of these are created in Avengers: Endgame, and some survive to appear in later films:
    • When Nebula and Rhodey travel to back in time to the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), 2014 Thanos gets wind of their plans and teleports to their present where he's already been killed. He is accompanied by Gamora, Nebula, the Black Order and his entire army. Most of them are snapped out of existence by Tony Stark, with a few, including 2014 Nebula, killed beforehand in the climactic battle. 2014 Gamora, however, survives and reemerges in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
    • When Tony Stark, Cap and Scott Lang travel back in time to the aftermath of the Battle of New York in The Avengers (2012), they encounter 2012 Loki. He manages to snatch the Tesseract and escape, creating a divergent timeline. His subsequent adventures are chronicled in Loki (2021).
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home reveals that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy and Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man Series are parallel universes to the MCU, retroactively making many characters in those franchises alternate selves to their MCU counterparts and each other. Peter Parker ends up meeting his own counterparts from both of said universes.
• The One goes on the premise that there are 125 versions of a person each existing in their own universe. Every time any of them die, the life-force or energy that harmoniously flows through them from the deceased is equally distributed among the survivors making them faster, smarter and stronger. The Big Bad Yulaw has been going around killing each of his alternates to become the One, with the final battle being between him and Gabe Law with the power of the other 123 deceased alternates split between them.
• Sliding Doors is built on this trope. Just a few minutes into the movie, the main character misses the tube. But wait, she did get on the tube. Two timelines, and two lives that are quickly becoming more and more different.
• Star Trek (2009): The Kelvin Timeline plays host to a younger iteration of the Original Series crew, where the destruction of the Kelvin by the mad Romulan known as Nero causes Starfleet to take up a more aggressive stance. The Enterprise is delayed from launching by 13 years to be completely redesigned into a more tech-heavy powerhouse, Kirk starts off as a brilliant recluse who's living in his father's shadow (since his dad was the one who sacrificed himself on the Kelvin), and the rest of the Enterprise crew is already serving on the ship well before they were meant to. Spock-Prime, the original Spock from the Prime timeline, ended up in this reality for the rest of his life, even parting words of wisdom to his younger self.
• Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers features an alternate universe with various counterparts to characters such as Jun Manjome, Shin Hayata/Ultraman, Akiko Fuji, Dan Moroboshi/Ultraseven, Anne Yuri, Hideki Go/Ultraman Jack, Aki Sakata, Seiji Hokuto/Ultraman Ace, Hokuto Minami, Daigo Madoka/Ultraman Tiga, Rena Yanase (though known here as Rena Hayata due to being Shin Hayata's daughter), Hikari Madoka, Shin Asuka, Ryo Yumimura, Gamu Takayama/Ultraman Gaia, Atsuko Sasaki, Hiroya Fujimiya and Reiko Yoshii. Notably in this universe the Showa Ultras lived as humans after their exploits and married their love interests, Hayata and Fuji are Rena's parents and Hiroya doesn't transforms into Agul and finally all Ultras come from M78.

Literature

• Examples of this are seen in a number of books in the Animorphs series: The Stranger features an alternate counterpart of Rachel, while later, The Familiar and the last Megamorphs book feature alternates of the whole team. Interestingly, the third Megamorphs book deliberately excludes Rachel in its presentation of a dystopian future while including everyone else.
• In the first Chrono Hustle story, Jack has a choice between going to the past or the future. He goes to the past. Then in the third story he sends a letter to himself, telling himself to go to the future, which ends up creating a second Jack, who does make that choice.
• A few examples from Discworld:
  • In Thief of Time, the characters Jeremy Clockson and Lobsang Ludd turn out to be the same person, but duplicated due to the unusual circumstances of their birth, being the son(s) of the Anthropomorphic Personification of Time.
  • In Jingo, Vimes makes an important choice as he goes to pick up his "Dis-organiser", which normally tracks what appointments he is due to have in the day — he picks it up as his two selves diverge, and each of them get the wrong one, meaning Vimes gets to find out what would have happened if he had made the other choice.
• In Labyrinths of Echo, Murakoks are people with a life-long (but variable in strength) Psychic Link to lots of Alternate Selves in other worlds. The downside is having to keep one's place in the net — a travel to another world leads to insanity. The only one appearing was Koba,^note not the only hint that among his alternates was one Joseph Dzhugashvili the Dean of Beggars in the capitol. He has more than enough of skills magical and social, but turned down an offer to join Secret Investigations, arguing he must be a beggar for the balance between the alternates. He's a very rich "beggar", though.
• Lafayette O'Leary: In The World Shuffler, when O'Leary is transported from Artesia to the parallel world of Melange, he encounters several folks who are alternate versions. The princess Adoreanne, who rules Artesia, is now a barmaid of loose morals named Swinehilde, and her consort, the Count Alain, is now a jealous barkeep named Hulk. O'Leary's wife is now a noblewoman, Lady Andragorre, and worst of all, there appear to be several Lafayette O'Learys, from several different worlds, all working at cross-purposes.
• The Last Horizon: Using his father's Doppelgänger Attack spell heightened to epic levels, Varic tries to steal the magical abilities from alternate lives. This is specifically described as possibilities and probabilities, not true other selves from alternate universes. Unfortunately, they didn't anticipate that the ritual would work too well; Varic wakes up not just with the power of his alternate selves, but the full memories of six lives. Oh, and the other five were from at least a few years in the future, so he also remembers the various apocalypses that are going to be visiting the galaxy soon.
• In Lost Time, it is discovered that the Nathan of Blake's reality is one to Nathan-Prime, who claims to come from Earth-Prime, the reality from which all realities branch off of. Keeping Nathan alive is a side mission Nathan-Prime tasks Blake with, as them being alive gifts him with their excess creative energy with which he can utilize to do his job as the Guardian of the Multiverse. If Blake's Nathan dies unnaturally (i.e.: not as part of the natural flow of space and time), Nathan-Prime would grow weaker if he traveled to their reality and lose some of his power.
• In the Mistborn series, burning gold lets you see alternate selves had your past been different while burning electrum lets you see various possible futures depending on the choices you make. This usually leads to a strong feeling of Other Me Annoys Me, at least with more self-loathing characters, and is described as very disturbing. However, in The Alloy of Law, it's revealed that you can form a sort of Mental Fusion with your alternate self, though it's not the focus of the plot.
• Mother of Learning: The protagonist discovers that the world he is living in is an exact copy of the real world, including the people. Suffice to say, he eventually has a confrontation with his original self. His simulacrums also fit this trope.
• The Rifter: Ravishan and Kahlil. Kahlil, after a lonely youth training in Rathal'pesha, spent years in Nayeshi waiting to bring the Rifter (John) to Basawar; then his key to the gates fell into John's hands and John crossed through. He landed at an earlier point in time and met Ravishan the trainee-Kahlil; together, the two of them changed history radically. Now the future where Ravishan becomes Kahlil will never happen, but his future self is still over in Nayeshi, not knowing that events he remembers have been wiped out of existence. Kahlil crosses to Bashawar and arrives thirty years after John's arrival. He doesn't meet himself because by this time, Ravishan is dead. However, he does pick up Ravishan's memories; he describes having two timelines in his mind as being like the reflection in a windowpane where you can see both the reflection and the view outside, and focus on one or the other. Eventually, the two selves merge even further.
• Well presented in the third book in the Rogue Agent series, Wizard Squared, in which the reader is presented with an alternate take on the climax of the first book, and the domino effect shows how terribly poorly that universe went when the characters crossover. Interestingly, the point of divergence was a possibility that the character in the original timeline discounted as too dangerous. Cue Evil Overlord.
• In the Algis Budrys novel Rogue Moon, teleportation is done in the Star Trek way of decomposition and reconstitution. (Star Trek: The Original Series came out later.) Rogue Moon is more interested in the implications though: two copies of the same person genuinely are the same person, so much so that they can communicate with each other using telepathy until they diverge enough. This is useful in investigating an alien machine that kills its occupants. The decomposition is lethal, no ifs, ands, or buts. The scan can then be reconstituted any number of times, but this is a separate process. Rogue Moon is messed up.
• In The Talisman, people in our world tend to have a twinner in the Territories. Fundamentally the two people will be at least similar.
• In TimeRiders, Foster looks to be one for Liam until City of Shadows, when the team finds out that they are all support units and Liam and Foster are separate Liam units.
• The premise of the short story "The Wheels of If" by L. Sprague de Camp is that as part of a ploy to discredit a political rival, someone in an Alternate Universe comes up with a way to cycle the consciousnesses/souls of seven people in seven universes who happen to be similar enough to count as Alternate Selves. The rival is one of these, ending up with the mind of a man from our timeline. Unfortunately for the villain, the man from our timeline is himself a capable political operator and knows tricks that haven't yet been thought of in the alternate universe.

Live-Action TV

• The seven different timelines formed in the Community episode "Remedial Chaos Theory" allow for seven alternate versions of each of the seven main characters.
• Doctor Who:
  • There's a few of these in the Alternate Universe first seen in "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel", including versions of Mickey (known there as Ricky), Rose's parents and Mickey's grandmother. Rose's father and Mickey's gran were already dead in the "main" universe. Mickey ends up deciding to stay to replace his dead counterpart. When it was revisited in "Doomsday", Jackie Tyler also winds up staying to replace her dead counterpart. And an alternate Harriet Jones (a short lived Prime Minister in the main universe) is mentioned to be President of Great Britain. It later turns out in the Big Finish audios for Torchwood that the alternate self of Torchwood One's leader Yvonne Hartman sneaked over to the main universe during these events.
  • In "Journey's End", the Doctor's severed hand, having absorbed regeneration energy and come into contact with Donna Noble, branches off into a human-Time Lord metacrisis, with the Doctor's memories, but a biology and lifespan closer to that of a human. Conversely, as the metacrisis went both ways, Donna Noble also gained the experiences of the Doctor, which slowly killed her.
  • "The Name of the Doctor": In an attempt to save the Doctor's life, Clara Oswald scattered untold numbers of these all throughout his timeline, all sharing her appearance and high intelligence, as well as her love for adventure, soufflés, and children. Before the Doctor manages to track down the original Clara on present-day Earth, we meet one in Victorian London, and another one in a crashed spaceship. More pop up in the expanded universe — Amy runs into an American version in the anthology Summer Falls, and the Twelfth Doctor and Clara meet a near-future version in a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.
• In Farscape, John is "twinned" by an alien device. They are forced by circumstances to split up, and for an extended period of time the series alternates between following one and following the other. Both versions believe that they are the original, and that the other is the copy, but it is abundantly clear that they are both the original.
• Many Alternate Universe examples in The Flash (2014), due to the introduction of Earth-2 in season 2.
  • Barry isn't a metahuman; Iris is a cop; Joe is a singer and goes by Joseph; Caitlin and Cisco are metahuman villains respectively named Killer Frost and Reverb; Linda Park is a metahuman criminal named Dr. Light; Ronnie is alive, evil and goes by Deathstorm; Laurel Lance is alive, evil, and a metahuman going by the name Black Siren; Henry Allen on Earth-3 is a speedster and the real Jay Garrick.
  • Taken to its logical extreme with Dr. Harrison Wells. Tom Cavanagh has played six versions of Wells, plus two impersonators of the Earth-1 Wells, as of season 3. The Earth-2 "Harry" is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, while the Earth-19 "H.R." is a Seemingly Profound Fool. There's also Harrison Sherloque Wells, a French Great Detective, whose genius is focused on reading people and solving crimes rather than science.
    • The Council of Wells and the Council of Harrisons further increase the number of Harrys in the multiverse.
  • John Wesley Shipp portrays Barry's father Henry Allen, and the voice of Henry from Earth-2 is also heard on the phone at one point, meaning the same actor voices him. In addition, he also portrays Jay Garrick, the Flash of Earth-3 (Henry at one point mentions that his mother's maiden name was Garrick). In the Elseworlds crossover, he also portrays the Flash of Earth-90, the Earth of the 1990 series (first seen during Barry's original trip to Earth-2).
  • The Crisis on Earth-X crossover introduces alternate versions of Oliver, Kara, Tommy, Quentin, Winn, Snart, Red Tornado, James, and Metallo. Interestingly, Tommy-X is the Prometheus of Earth-X. There's even a Nazi version of the Waverider.
  • Then, the crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) does this to nearly every major DC property, featuring (or featuring via another character from the same series) alternate versions of Batman (from Earth-89, Earth-66, Earth-9, and Earth-99), Superman (from Earth-96 and Earth-167), and The Flash (featuring the return of the Earth-90 Flash and even a cameo from the DC Extended Universe Flash). It also retroactively declares the Oliver Queen from the future timeline of 2046 from Legends of Tomorrow as hailing from Earth-16, features a deceased counterpart for Batwoman on Earth-99, and separates the Titans and Doom Patrol (2019) shows into different Earths after characters from the latter series appeared on the former.
• Frasier did an episode in its eight season spoofing Sliding Doors - we see two different universes depending on whether Frasier wears a sweater or a suit for an upcoming date. Although, not everything changes.
  UNIVERSE 1.
  [Frasier enters his apartment with his arm in a sling. Martin is in his chair, watching the television.]
  Martin: [without looking up] Hey Fras! How did that speed date thing go?
  Frasier: Actually, I didn't go, Dad. I went to the hospital instead.
  Martin: [not paying attention] That's nice.
  UNIVERSE 2.
  [Frasier enters his apartment, uninjured, but after a bad date. Martin is in his chair, watching the television.]
  Martin: [without looking up] Hey Fras! How did that speed date thing go?
  Frasier: It could not have been worse.
  Martin: [not paying attention] That's nice.
• All the Alternate Universe counterparts of the cast of Fringe — except for Alt Astrid, who has Asperger's/high functioning autism with no explanation for it.
• Kamen Rider Zi-O eventually introduces White Woz, an alternate version of the Black Woz who serves as Sougo's hype man. Coming from a timeline where Geiz Revive defeated Ohma Zi-O, White Woz is the dedicated follower of Geiz.
  • Kamen Rider Zi-O: Final Stage gives us Red Woz, yet another alternate Woz who is Tsukuyomi's hype man.
• Legion takes place in an Alternate Universe which is separate from the X-Men Film Series, so the Charles Xavier portrayed by Harry Lloyd has a different life from the Patrick Stewart-James McAvoy version. He's a full-blooded Englishman instead of being half-British, half-American, he was a young adult instead of a child during World War II and fought as a British army officer, plus he got married and had a son instead of remaining a bachelor and childless. The most glaring deviation is that he never establishes the X-Men.
• Most of the characters in the sixth season of Lost are presented this way: Living very different lives in the two timelines while still being the same persons. Subverted in the season finale, but presented this way throughout the season nonetheless.
• Ace Rimmer (and his entire timeline) in Red Dwarf.
  • In the episode "Demons and Angels", a replicator malfunction creates two copies of Red Dwarf, crew included. One copy contains all the best elements and the crew are all kind, enlightened pacifists, while the other ship contains their worst elements, peopled by twisted and sadistic versions of the crew.
• The So Weird episode "Pen Pal" has Annie encounter a version of herself from an Alternate Timeline where she spilled grape juice on herself, kicking off a chain of events that led to her becoming a remorseless bad girl. In the regular timeline, Annie chose orange juice instead, didn't spill it, and her life went on as normal.
• The Stargate-verse really likes this trope, though they tend to invert it and have the alternate-universe counterparts show up in the main universe.
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • The episode "Point of View" has an alternate Sam who comes to the main universe running away from a Go'a'uld invasion. When they go back into her universe to help fight the invasion off, Teal'c ambushes, kills, and replaces his own alternate self.
    • The episode "Ripple Effect" has multiple copies of most of the main characters, and one memorable scene of an entire room full of Sam Carters trying to solve the problem that's causing them all to converge in the same place, with a table full of blue jello. The episode's villains turn out to be the first set of duplicates to show up.
  • Stargate Atlantis:
    • The episode "McKay and Mrs. Miller" has an alternate-universe McKay ("Rod") who shows up to ask them to stop destroying his universe with the experiment of the week.
    • The episode "The Daedalus Variations", the team discovers the corpses of their alternate-universe counterparts and McKay has to bootstrap on his own dead self's research. Later in the episode, Sheppard fights off a mysterious alien ship with the aid of yet another alternate version of himself. Much ego stroking occurs between the two Sheppards.
• William Thomas Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation was split in a Transporter Malfunction. The two alternate selves were the same person at the time of the split, but one of them lived on Enterprise while the other was shipwrecked on a deserted planet for several years. This other Riker later calls himself Thomas Riker (using their middle name) and builds a separate life for himself. There is also the fact that the Riker who stayed behind never got the chance to be promoted to the rank of Commander (he's still a Lieutenant), leading to at least one ironic situation where Riker is essentially giving himself orders.
  • Thomas appeared again on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine posing as Will Riker. The only person who notices something amiss before the reveal is Chief O'Brien when Riker doesn't greet him as a friend during a chance encounter.
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds:
  • In "A Quality of Mercy", Captain Pike encounters one of the cadets he will fail to save the day his grisly fate in The Original Series occurs, and tries to warn him. An older version of Pike in a Wrath of Khan era uniform appears and shows Pike that if he avoids the training accident that crippled him in the first place to remain as Captain of the Enterprise, the events of "Balance Of Terror" will play out much more disastrously. The Romulans will see Pike's more merciful approach as a sign of weakness and unleash a devastating war that cripples Spock — the only person who will bring peace with Romulus — into the same vegetative state Pike was supposed to suffer. The present Pike decides to let history play out, but it does give him an idea of who's the ideal man to replace him: one James T. Kirk.
  • In "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", La'an Noonien Singh encounters a Starfleet Department of Temporal Investigations Officer, which results in her being spared from a timeline alteration. In this new reality, Earth never joined a Federation and instead established an isolationist space force, which resulted in the Romulans putting the rest of the galaxy in a war they seem to be winning. The Enterprise still exists, but she's under the command of Kirk instead of Pike. Traveling back into the 21st century with this Kirk, La'an soon learns what caused this change: The Romulans assassinated her ancestor, the infamous Khan Noonien Singh, which prevented the Second American Civil War, the Eugenics Wars, and World War III from occurring. Without this kick to the teeth to get humanity to get their act together, their planet became an environmental wasteland, and are on the verge of total conquest. On top of that, it reveals that the reason the franchise has been constantly Retconning the entire Eugenics Wars is because time travelers keep screwing with history to try and wipe out the Federation, resulting in the Wars being moved from the 1990s into the 21st century to compensate.
• In the Supernatural episode "What Is And What Should Never Be" (S02, Ep20), we see an alternative version of Sam based on what he would be like if his mother lived.
  • When a Nephilim is born, a rift opens up to an 'Apocalypse Universe' where Michael has taken over. Several previously-killed characters have alternates in this Universe that subsequently become regulars when a group of Apocalypse World inhabitants is brought over to the main 'verse.
  • And in "Destiny's Child" (S15, Ep13), the boys encounter incredibly rich versions of themselves that are heirs to a worldwide hunting business and have a tech malfunction while dimension-hopping. Hunting isn't just the 'family business' for them, it's the family Big Business. All involved are a bit weirded out by the encounter.
• Ultra Series:
  • Heisei Ultraseven features an alternate version of Ultraseven that was the only Ultra to ever visit Earth and who never even left in the end due to collapsing from his injuries.
  • Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga: The series in generals features many alternate versions/equivalents of characters from Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Tiga: The Final Odyssey, all while hinting at a greater connection.

Pinball

• In TX-Sector, you must intentionally trigger a Teleporter Accident to create an alternate self for multiball.

Roleplay

• In Glowfic most of the characters are alternate versions of character "templates". They have usually almost identical appearances and personalities, and most templated characters will have similar names, to varying degrees, for example the "Bell" template always have the syllable "bel" somewhere in their birth names, unless the phonetics of the local language doesn't support it, in which case they will have the closest equivalent that works with the language. Even some characters that were originally unique have subsequently had alternate versions found when new worlds are discovered.
• In Wanya Kingdom VS Awoofy Unity, almost every character has at least one alternate counterpart, especially due to the number of Alternate Universes that exist and the fact that Forgorian Legacies is set in one of them. Additionally, the Yoshi, Chyss, and Sherran that appear in the reboot are alternate universe counterparts of the originals.

Tabletop Games

• The GURPS Infinite Worlds sourcebook has an over-the-top version of this, in which a large number of Alternate Selves of Lord Byron — including a sea captain, a republican revolutionary, a vampire, and a female vampire hunter — all meet each other.
• The Tangents sourcebook for Alternity refers to these as "Persistants", or Persistant Individuals. While most parallel individuals don't vary too much, the backgrounds of some of these individuals can vary greatly, depending on the universe they live in, and within an infinite number of universes, there isn't necessarily any logic behind an individual being the head of a Fortune 500 company in one reality and be the night janitor of the same company the next reality over.
• Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined has the "Echoes of Another Life" from The Anachronism playbook, which allows the character to come back as a version of themselves from an alternate timeline.
• d20 Weekly had a regular feature about spellbooks called "Analects Arcane". The ones for a standard Dungeons & Dragons-style setting were introduced by excerpts from the journal of a wizard named Arngrim Aignirson, whose role as Mage of the North apparently includes recording all known spells. The ones that fitted more into a d20 Modern world were introduced by reports from Arnold Aigson, who studies and catalogues new spells for the Twilight Foundation as Director of the Northern Research Institute, while secretly syphoning the more interesting ones to the Knights of the Rosy Cross, where he's Marshal of the Northern Demesne.

Theatre

• The Musical If/Then is a Split Timelines Plot that follows a woman named Elizabeth as she starts a new life in New York City. A choice presented to her on her first day in town winds up leading her life in very different directions, and to help differentiate the two in one timeline she goes by "Liz" and in the other "Beth". By the end of the play both Liz and Beth and the people closest to them have lived quite different lives as a result.

Toys

• The Transformers franchise has dealt from this from time to time, most notably, Transformers: Shattered Glass, Transformers: Timelines and tie-in comics for Transformers: Cybertron. When Hasbro decided to incorporate Transformers Aligned Universe into the larger Transformers multiverse, the original Thirteen Transformers fell into this, as the Aligned Thirteen featured a few members who'd be incompatible with the larger Multiverse version as a whole, including Alpha Trion and especially Optimus Prime. Ask Vector Prime confirmed this as the Mutliversal Vector Prime (who, across all non-Aligned universes, is the same 'bot from Cybertron) identified his Aligned incarnation as a distinct and separate entity.
  
  Then came "Another Light", which put an end to multiversal singularities altogether, meaning that retroactivly, the Fallen seen in the Dreamwave comics and the movies aren't the same guy themselves, but separate entities as well.
• BIONICLE has several alternate universes, most of which have at least a few alternate selves of heroes and villains, sometimes where one became the other (such as good Teridax from the Melding universe). Of particular note is the "Dark Mirror" universe, in which main universe Takanuva meets alternate Takua, and "The Kingdom," where he teams up with Turaga Takanuva. The former situation has a minor case of Other Me Annoys Me, but all in all Takanuva gets along with himself pretty well. There was also a villain who used a Mask of Dimensional Gates to kidnap alternate universes' Takanuvas and turn them evil.

Video Games

• Afterimage: The Flavor Text of most outfits imply the existence of Renee's "other selves" in an alternate world. Some of these outfits are references to other video game characters, however.
  A brand new cloak that shares the exact same style as the one worn by a certain girl with amnesia. It almost feels like it belongs to her other self in an alternate world. Perhaps you could try it on?
• ANNO: Mutationem: Ann learns the mysterious being that's connected to her, Amok, is an alternate version of herself due to sharing a dimensional link. Unfortunately for Ann, Amok is also an Ax-Crazy Omnicidal Maniac with a penchant for killing anyone who pisses her off and is dead-set on annihilating Ann's world, which causes Ann a considerable amount of trouble for her.
• Shows up in BioShock Infinite, thanks to the multiverse exploration aspect of Elizabeth's "tears". It turns out that not only is Rosalind Lutece's "brother" Robert actually an alternate version of herself according to her audio logs, but Booker DeWitt is actually an alternate version of the game's Big Bad, Zachary Hale Comstock.
• BlazBlue:
  • Hakumen is Jin Kisaragi's alternate self. Specifically, he's from a timeline when Noel Vermillion didn't exist, and Tsubaki was his secretary. Tsubaki is killed by Nu, trying to stop Jin from going after Ragna as he normally does in the present timeline. When Nu tries to fuse with Ragna like she always does, Jin runs after the two and flung back in time as a result. His body is damaged beyond repair, and so he is installed in the Susanooh unit which explains his current appearance.
  • BlazBlue Bloodedge Experience's takes place in one of the franchise's many alternate timelines, connected to all the other ones by the Boundary. The protagonist is Naoto Kurogane, who is eventually revealed to be the Alternate Self of the main series protagonist Ragna the Bloodedge. When Naoto enters the main series timeline in BlazBlue: Central Fiction, Rachel remarks that his presence makes Ragna's own existence thinner. Bloodedge Experience also has Raquel Alucard, the counterpart to Rachel Alucard, and like Ragna Naoto has a sister named Saya.
• Chrono Cross makes extensive use of this trope. The game's set-up is that when the main hero was a child, he was attacked by a demonic panther. In one world, he lived, in the other world, he died. This is what allows him to travel between worlds. Some characters are also changed between worlds — the main hero's childhood friend is far more somber in the other world, and his mother is nowhere to be found.
• Dragon Ball Xenoverse takes Dragon Ball Z a bit further with Time Patrol Trunks. Originally simply Future Trunks, the addition of Dragon Ball Super's Goku Black arc caused another split, which the sequel ran with by having TP Future Trunks go back in time and save Gohan by defeating Androids 17 and 18 himself before they killed him.
• Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: According to the save ducks in the Secret Area, the Faceless bosses are versions of the Zodiac Archdemons from another timeline. The only exception is Aquarius, who is the prime archdemon and thus has no counterpart in any timeline. Instead, the player can fight the unsynced version of Aquarius.
• Elsword gives us the (as of this writing, unreleased outside of Korea) third job path for Add, the Diabolic Esper, which invokes this in its backstory. Specifically, Add perfected the ability to go back in time to prevent his family from being killed, but he miscalculated and wound up in another timeline in which he found that his family had never been killed and his young self was living happily with his family.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • The game introduces an alternate version of the Fate series' iconic Saber (Altria Pendragon) as a Lancer. This version traded Excalibur for the holy spear Rhongonmyniad; this has some positive benefits (she's more mature, both physically and mentally, because Excalibur suppressed her growth) and some negative ones (like the spear turning her into a Knight Templar). There's even a slight variation on this within the game, as the playable version gave up Rhongonmyniad after 10 years and mellowed out while the NPC version held onto it and went full villain and goddess.
  • A truly shocking example comes in the form of Fou. In another life, they would be more well known as Primate Murder.
  • The Cosmos in the Lostbelt story arc introduced the concept of "Lostbelt Variants", where due to some Alternate History events or the Servant summoning system getting corrupted for the Arc Villains, every Servant summoned within a Lostbelt ends up wildly different from the version in Proper Human History, even moreso than the Shadow Archetype comprising the Alter category or the situation with Lancer Altria, as some Lostbelt Variants are pretty much In Name Only due to the changes. This is shown best by the Faerie Knights from the Britain Lostbelt, as Gawain, Tristan, and Lancelot are not only the opposite gender, there's only about one or two similarities with the Proper Human History Gawain, Tristan, and Lancelot.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening features this due to time travel. All of the second-generation characters get alternate selves in the "Future Past" DLC episodes, Morgan gets a second alternate self in said DLC episodes, and the playable version of Yen'fay is explicitly an alternate self to the NPC version of the character. Not to mention that the game's Greater-Scope Villain is an alternate-future version of the Avatar, the player character, who is possessed by an Eldritch Abomination.
  • This is also prevalent Fire Emblem Heroes. Due to it being a gacha game and how its Summoning system works, the player can potentially summon Fire Emblem characters from various points in time, and even to Alternate Timelines. To further explain, each different version of a unit (e.g., original Lucina versus Spring Lucina) is treated as an alternate self with their own consciousness and memories. The game also splits out alternate gender versions of characters, such as Corrin or Shez; in the case of Kris, it was explicitly stated in Forging Bonds that male Kris is the 'canon' version who all the other characters recognise, while female Kris comes from an alternate timeline. This can get confusing when both genders of a character get the same seasonal, leading to increasingly unwieldy descriptors like 'Fallen Female Morgan' (or 'F!F!Morgan'). It can also get confusing when characters have similarly-named alternate versions, like Summer Micaiah and Hoshidan Summer Micaiah (which until the former's release was often just called 'Summer Micaiah' herself), or Adult Tiki ('A!Tiki') and Ascended (young) Tiki.
• Ghost Trick: Ray is revealed at the end of the story to be an alternate version of Missile, who originally came from a Bad Future where his only option was to travel back to the past and wait out until everything began to set a plan in motion to save everyone.
• This is one of the major premises of I=MGCM, as the end of Chapter 12 shows that Omnis and his heroines encounter their alternate selves from several alternate universes. It's also revealed that some demons the heroines fight were once their alternate selves from other alternate universes before they were slain and corrupted by demons and their demonized selves, including the ones from player protagonist Tobio's party.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us is an alternate universe where the Joker blows up Metropolis, and Superman kills him, which is the Start of Darkness that leads to a Face–Heel Turn for Supes. The characters of the main universe end up going to the Injustice universe, and have to deal with the corrupt, totalitarian state that it's become, including many Alternate Selves that have also made a Face–Heel Turn. Main-Superman especially calls out Injustice-Superman once the two finally come face to face.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Most moderately significant characters, and even a few significant ones like Tatl, are implied to be alternate versions of characters from Ocarina of Time.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: Lorule has counterparts to the inhabitants of Hyrule, most notably Hilda and Yuga, who are the counterparts to Zelda and Ganondorf, respectively. Link is aided by his own counterpart in the form of the shopkeeper Ravio, who keeps his face hidden by a rabbit mask until the ending of the game.
• Limbus Company is built on this. The game's "Identity" system allows the twelve Sinners to channel alternate dimension versions of themselves in combat. Sometimes the Identity has them occupy a position somewhere else in the world's setting, but some other Identites have the character replace another's role entirely.
• Many of the characters in the Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream exist in two places: one in Napple Town and another one, described as a warped mirror image out in the "seasons" — the game's platforming levels. The characters aren't identical, but they are linked to each other.
• In Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, the female protagonist of Persona 3 Portable is from an alternate world where she is the main lead instead of the male protagonist. When she meets the main timeline SEES, she recognizes all of them, but none of them recognize her. Later on, when both counterparts meet, they also note that they feel like they know each other.
  Female Protagonist: I'm him, and he's me...?
• Puyo Puyo!! Quest: There are alternate versions of characters that are treated as a different person than their "prime" counterpart. "Steam City Arle", for example, is not the same Arle we all know, being a singer in a steampunk city.
• Rakuen: Several of the characters found around the hospital share more than just the exact same name and personality as the villagers of Morizora's Forest.
  • Employees such as Panky and Jacky and visitors like Danielle, Cora, and Kazuko also have the same general occupation as their fantasy counterparts.
  • Patients and their loved ones share the exact same issues, relationships, and backstories as their counterparts, but the details of the latter are slightly altered to match the fantastical nature of Morizora's Forest. Each time the Boy successfully helps one of the villagers, the result carries over to their real-world counterparts in some way.
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart deals with a temporal problem that results in alternate universe versions of characters making appearances, with the most prominent being Rivet, an alternate Distaff Counterpart of Ratchet as well as Kit, who's the same for Clank. Aside from them there are various other alternate versions of characters who are typically just as if not more capable than their mainline counterparts with the most prominent being Emperor Nefarious, who is bigger, nastier and overall a more successful supervillain than Dr. Nefarious.
• In Shin Megami Tensei IV, when traveling to the Alternate Timeline of Blasted Tokyo, you meet a man named Akira. After leaving Blasted Tokyo, you are taken to another timeline named Infernal Tokyo, home to another Akira. Their timeline diverged with the events of the nuclear war twenty-five years previous; in Blasted Tokyo, the nukes were allowed to strike, while in Infernal Tokyo, the crisis was averted, with the coda of the advent of demon technology. It's also heavily implied that there's a third Akira in the original universe, who eventually became King Aquila of Mikado. All three Akiras share the fate of being crowned King of Tokyo or its nearest equivalent. In the same vein, the main protagonist's previous incarnation was part of the history of these alternate timelines and was in fact pivotal to the development of all three.
• In Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, three of the four Spideys are alternate Peter Parkers.
• In any spin-off game of the Super Mario Bros. series, there tends to be some in its playable roster.
  • Metal Mario, who is originally a power-up form has been playable in the Mario Kart series, and a few sports games.
  • Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour has Shadow Mario. Unlike Metal, Shadow Mario is actually a form of Bowser Jr and both of them are playable in the same game. We can assume that the person taking Shadow Mario's form might be II Piantissimo.
  • Mario Kart 8 also introduces Pink Gold Peach, who is a metallic version of Princess Peach similar to Metal Mario. Appearing as DLC in this game are Tanooki Mario & Cat Peach, who are another power-up form of two already-existing characters.
  • Bowser also has a counterpart in Dry Bowser, who originally was Bowser after his skin melted in lava. Only the Mario Kart & Sports games seem to only make them separate characters while mainline games still acknowledge them as the same character.
  • Mario & Luigi:
    • In Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, when traveling through Luigi's dreams, Mario is accompanied by "Dreamy Luigi", who is significantly braver than the waking world's version, and possesses many abilities the real Luigi doesn't.
    • Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam reveals that Paper Mario and his version of Bowser are this to regular Mario and Bowser.
• In the Super Smash Bros. series, Mario and Dr. Mario are treated as two different people, despite being the same person.
• Tales of Xillia 2:
  • Shows up a lot, due to a large portion of the plot involving heading to fractured dimensions - versions of the prime dimension, but with minor altercations. Several of the characters encountered (and fought) are some of those who have died during the previous game. Some, like Gilland, are not much different. But there are some like Agria or King Nachtigal, who are very different.
  • There are also alternate selves of the party members, but due to how their journey goes, are usually never met. But there is the special case of Alternate Milla. In her dimension, she succeeded in destroying Exodus at a young age and has lost her status as Lord of Spirits since, and her personality is vastly different from regular Milla. The party also encounters Ludger's alternate self in a fractured dimension, but it turns out that this Ludger has gone insane over his knowledge of being from a fractured dimension, has killed majority of the Xillia cast and is intent on killing Ludger, to take his place.
• In The Witch and the Hundred Knight, there are at least three alternate versions of Metallia shown throughout the game. One is shown as a high school delinquent, the other is a sick patient in a hospital, and Torude who is revealed at the end of chapter 12 as Metallia questions her about changing her own name.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has Noah and Mio as the leaders of the Ouroboros, and Consul N and Consul M, their previous incarntions who joined Moebius following their deaths, as major antagonists. Although it turns it was N who originally chose to join after being told by Z about how fighting Moebius is seemingly futile, while M didn't have a choice, as Z only revived her a Moebius because N wanted to be with M forever.
• YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG centers around multiple realities with different rules and features to them, all connected to the Soul Space. Each person has an Alternate Self across all other realities with the same "soul" as them.

Visual Novels

• The plot of Princess Debut has Sabrina's alternate self, Princess Sabrina, burst out of her closet and tell her the two must change places as the princess is dreadful at dancing and a huge ball will take place within a month. The cast of the available princes are all alternate selves of her classmates and childhood friend, though their names differ somewhat.
• Nasuverse
  • Archer of Fate/stay night is this to Shirou Emiya, the main character. He is only able to exist in the same era due to being summoned from outside of the timeline.
  • Due to the mechanics of the Holy Grail War in which the Servants are actually copies of the true spirit summoned from the Throne of Heroes, it is theoretically possible to summon more than one version of a Heroic Spirit into the war, assuming the Heroic Spirit can fit into more than one class. That said, there's no guarantee they'll will be exactly alike, as being summoned into a different Class can result in all manner of personality shifts as a result of being from a different point in their life (for Gilgamesh, being summoned as a Archer has his personality as closer to the arrogant man he was before he befriended Enkidu, and his Caster self would be the Older and Wiser version from after Enkidu's death) to being a completely different person as a result of being from an alternate timeline (Archer from /stay night, Shirou, and their Alter self from Fate/Grand Order).
  • Fate/EXTRA features an Archer who is an Alternate Self to the Archer from the core series. The point of divergence was that while the original Archer made a contract with Alaya, causing him to become a Counter Guardian and come to hate the ideals that his younger self believed in, the Moon Cell Archer became a genuine Heroic Spirit, being much nicer and still capable of believing in his ideals.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Lion Ushiromiya is this to Sayo Yasuda, also known as Beatrice, Shannon and Kanon. Lion exists in a world where Sayo wasn't rejected by Natsuhi, thrown off a cliff, and raised to be a servant, only to be driven to create different personas as a way to cope with bullying, heartbreak and gender/body issues. The chances of this world existing is about one in 2,578,917.
• In Zero Escape, this is pretty much the basis for how Phi, Junpei and Sigma are able to know information they can't know. The games work on the multiple world theory, in which every single difference in action, human or otherwise, creates another branching universe. All three of them are able to "know" information, and obtain the same memories that their alternative counterparts in different histories obtained at the same time-frame within their respective universes [e.g, at 3PM on the same day]. It's revealed in Virtue's Last Reward that the reason for this is that they subconsciously perform "universe jumps" where their mind alone is transferred into the mind of another version of themselves. Although technically the Sigmas, Phis and Junpeis can be considered "the same" person in a sense [since they all streamed from the same "point", they're all the same person, just in different "choice paths"], most normal non-esper people have no way to "mind jump" through alternative timelines into their "other selves".

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive got several full arcs of these in continuity and about as much outside of it.
  • Tedd exists and has self-esteem issues in every Alternate Universe—even the one where aliens fought in the American Revolutionary War and every third or so guy around is a Half-Human Hybrid. In another version, he calls himself Omega Tedd and may or may not be planning to invade the other universes to kill his inferior selves. Eventually.
  • Ellen is an Opposite-Sex Clone of Elliot, and has a crisis of identity from the moment of her creation due to having all of the original's memories, personality traits, and extreme reluctance with being trapped in female form, which is only compounded by (later disproven) fears that the cloning process would give her a lifespan of less than a month. She is later granted, through magical dreams, the memories and experiences of one of her own alternate selves so that she can build a separate life for herself as Elliot's "sister."
  • It's later revealed that Magus is an alternate self of Ellen that has been trapped in the main universe. Specifically, he comes from a universe where magic is commonplace and gender roles are extremely rigid, so using Gender Bender magic to pursue an "opposite sex career" is culturally expected. However, it's also heavily implied that he actually is transgender and might have a biased view on things. In particular, he wants to turn the main Ellen into a man despite her protests because he's convinced that's what she wants.
• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja:
  • The Mayor, who traveled from the future to save the world from ninja zombies. Then, he discovered that alternate versions of himself had also traveled into the past to save their timelines from various things like Rogue Super Vacuums. Usually, they finish their mission and live a peaceful life away from the city.
  • There's also the time Dr. McNinja made a bunch of clones of himself with the intention of having each one study a different field of science and later merging them all together to become one person with the shared knowledge of all of them. The one tasked with studying agriculture failed to merge due to the intervention of a time traveler, and ended up living a peaceful life as a farmer. His name is Old McNinja.
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • The wormgates could link one input to multiple outputs, creating "gate-clones". The most extreme case was a scientist named Gav, who went through a clone-gate with nearly a billion outputs, and is now an entire marketing demographic.
    Gav-285074072: There are still over 900 million Gav-clones out there. My activities of the last year can only be understood statistically.
  • Also, at one point Kevyn Andreyasn managed to go back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. The timeclone accomplished this, and then retired.
  • Kevyn did the gate-cloning trick once before, but only made one copy of himself. The original was killed soon thereafter. Kevyn puts down the successful suicide mission on his resume.
  • The gate-cloning trick, in fact, was how the owning corporation ran the wormgates; there would be the output that got you where you were going, and another one at a top secret location, where your alternate selves would be detained, interrogated, and then executed so that they didn't have to feed you or worry about their secret getting out.
• Charby the Vampirate: The wraith is Zeno from an alternate timeline where he did not die as a child and grew up to be a much taller, imposing and proud Chosen One.
• The comic The Dreamer features 21st century and 18th century version of several characters, most notably the main character Beatrice Whaley (and so far it is hinted that there are others as well).
• In Problem Sleuth the character Pickle Inspector has many of these such as Future Pickle Inspector, Past Pickle Inspector, Godhead Pickle Inspector, Past Future Pickle Inspector and Future Future Pickle Inspector. This is then taken to the extreme when One of the alternate Pickle Inspectors Creates smaller and smaller alternate versions of himself until they make all matter on the atomic scale.
• In Homestuck there's many alternate versions of characters who come from Doomed Timelines, including Davesprite, who's Dave from an alternate future who came to the past and prototyped himself. Also, in the post-scratch session there are alternate versions of the kids, as well as their ectobiological parents. And everyone who plays SBURB gets a dream self as well, so they can play around on Prospit and Derse even while they sleep.
  • In addition, every Sburb session creates alternate versions of the game constructs, which results in two and later, three alternate versions of Jack Noir running around. Through a complicated metaphor involving Crash Bandicoot, Karkat explains to John that the constructs have the same personalities, but different circumstances make them lead different lives. For example, the Jack Noir of Karkat's timeline helped banish the Black Queen from Derse, while the Jack Noir of John's timeline took the Black Queen's ring by force and used its power to become a mass-murderer.
  CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES. OUR JACK TRUMPED THE QUEEN, BUT GOT NO FURTHER. YOUR JACK GOT THE BEST OF BOTH OF THEM, AND IS NOW SOMETHING HIGHER THAN A QUEEN OR A KING...
  • Dirk Strider has this in spades, with Lil Hal, an AI clone of his 13 year-old brain, Brain-Ghost-Dirk, an imaginary version of him manifested via Jake's Hope powers, and Ultimate Dirk, an amalgamation of all his alternate selves.
  TT: I think the true purpose of this game is to see how many qualifiers we can get to precede the word "self" and still understand what we're talking about.
  • Trollian allows past and future versions of everyone to communicate with each other through memos. Karkat in particular hates every other version of himself and tends to ban them from his memos as soon as they pop up. Of course, when he's being honest he admits he pretty much hates Current Karkat too. Most of the other trolls actively like their past and future selves or at least pretend to because winding Karkat up is fun.
  KARKAT: THE ONLY GUY MORE ANNOYING AND STUPID THAN FUTURE ME IS PAST ME.
• In Relativity, Irina returns to Earth from a successful six month light speed space travel mission, only to find an alternate version of her who already returned after her mission failed one month in, and is in the process of divorcing her wife due to the strain the failed mission put on their marriage. Her wife, meanwhile, hopes being with Irina will give her back the marriage she would have had if the other mission never failed.
• Guilded Age: Shanna of "Sepia World" is explicitly an alternate universe version of Shanna Cochran from Fans!.

Web Original

• In Keit-Ai and all its derivatives, a boy and the alternate universe version of his crush cooperate in helping them win the hearts of their other selves. However, drama ensues as they fall in love with other instead and question the NATURE of LOVE.
• Jenny Everywhere has an infinite number of them living in all possible realities. (Thus making her able to fit into any possible story.)
• Board James: Word of God suggests that the plot twist of the Video Games episode means that BJ is this to the Angry Video Game Nerd (and vice versa), as opposed to the popular fan theory that Board James is a Stealth Prequel.
• Underverse: In season 1 alone there are eight different versions of Sans running around, and that's excluding the ones who just happen to look like him.
  Sans (thinking): (Seriously, all those alternate versions of myself will leave me with side effects for life.)

Western Animation

• Amphibia: In "Wax Museum", Frog Soos postulates that there are perhaps alternate universe versions of themselves.
• Darkwing Duck:
  • The show introduces the concept of a Mirror Universe called "The Negaverse," where the moralities of everyone are reversed. Darkwing's arch-enemy, the villainous Negaduck, is strongly implied to be that universe's version of Drake Mallard, though it's never actually confirmed.
  • Similarly, the comics continuation introduces an entire multiverse of Darkwings who happen to be various different pop culture figures, such as Simba and Lady Gaga.
• Final Space: Nightfall is actually an older version of Quinn from an Alternate Timeline who's spent the last twenty years traveling from timeline to timeline trying to save Gary and the universe. She's consequently much more stoic and hardened than the main Quinn.
• Futurama:
  • In the episode "The Farnsworth Parabox", the characters travel to a whole slew of alternate universes in which they meet their appropriate counterparts. The universe they interact with the most, though, is defined by opposite coin flips, and differing hair colors.
  • In the movie Bender's Big Score, the paradox-free time travel creates temporal duplicates; however, its nature as a paradox-correcting time code means the duplicates are always doomed. Fry's duplicate (created due to time-travelling on the day he got frozen) manages to last long enough to become a savvier and more mature version of Fry, and as it turns out, is Leela's new boyfriend Lars Filmore.
• Naturally, Justice League has a two-part episode about this, "A Better World". In a parallel universe, Lex Luthor killed the Flash and, as a result, is murdered by Superman (it's also implied that Lex, who had become President of the United States in that timeline, was about to start a nuclear World War III). This ultimately leads to the remaining five members of the League rebranding themselves as the Justice Lords, who turn the planet into a police state with themselves in control and drop their generalized rules of Thou Shalt Not Kill — yes, even Batman. Since they have virtually eliminated all crime, Lord Batman starts fiddling with interdimensional travel and finds the main-universe Justice League. Then the Justice Lords decide to do it all again in the Justice League's universe.
• In "Spider-Wars", the two-part Grand Finale of Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spidey visited a parallel universe where a version of The Clone Saga had happened, and Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider was fighting against Peter Parker/Spider-Carnage. He was assisted by various other alternate Spideys, including an arrogant armored Spidey from a world where Uncle Ben had never died, a Spidey who had Doc Ock style tentacles, a Spidey who was still suffering from the mutation sickness from Season 2's "Neogenic Nightmare", and an actor from a world in which Spider-Man is a fictional character, played by him in movies.
• As part of the Spider-Verse event, the Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) series had its own feature-length take on a team up across the multiverse, as Spider-Man pursued the Green Goblin from one universe to the next. The participants were new versions of Spider-Girl, Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Ham, Spyder-Knight, and even young Miles Morales.
• Rick and Morty has numerous alternate versions of Rick, Morty, and sometimes the rest of the family show up, occasionally forming an Alliance of Alternates. The largest of these, the Citadel, is inhabited solely by hundreds of Ricks and Mortys.

Real Life

• If the Universe is infinite,^note or so mind-boggingly big that for all intents it is, a hypothetical traveler who went on and on sooner or later would find a copy of themself, as well as one of the observable Universe left behind. Physicist Max Tegmark has calculated that, in a Universe of that type, the nearest copy of yourself would be at 10^10^28 meters and the closest copy of our observable Universe at 10^10^118 meters.^note Those numbers are respectively a 1 followed by 10^28 and 10^118 zeros. What's more, if the Universe was actually infinite, there'd be an infinite number of them.

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