Asteroids Monster

Hot Princess Peach's heated battle with a fiery foe gets four times hotter.

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

— Robin Harris

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

Sometimes, the miniature versions will grow to normal size if they are not killed quickly with the potential to overwhelm the player if it's allowed to continue for too long. Also, the smaller asteroids tend to be faster than the bigger versions and harder to hit, thus making them even more dangerous. The Asteroids Monster is typically not a boss, but are usually Demonic Spiders or at least Goddamned Bats. It occasionally shows up as the Mini-Boss. If it is an intelligent life-form it isn't always clear if the new individual is a perfect clone of the original one and if the original one is one of the new ones. In supernatural cases it can be justified as the creature capable of dividing its entity. Needless to say, something so different from the human body invokes strong feelings of alien-ess.

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

Related to Hydra Problem. Contrast Weaponized Offspring. For monsters that are asteroids, see Genius Loci.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In this commercial, a waffle iron turns a curious, walking Eggo waffle into four walking Eggo Minis.
• A mid-2000s bumper for the Sci-Fi Channel has a sumo wrestler running towards the Sci-Fi logo. Once he runs into it, he turns into several tiny luchadores.

Anime & Manga

• In Bleach, James turns into dozens of tiny versions of himself when Renji dices him.
• Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might: Rezun and Rakasei split from their combined form after being hit with a dual-energy attack from Tien and Chaiotzu.
• In the manga adaptation of Dragon Ball Super, Infinite Zamasu is changed from an Eldritch Abomination to having the ability to infinitely reform into Fused Zamasu (despite the Fusion Dance timing out).
• The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach!: The Cheep-Cheep Mario encounters underwater pops into smaller Cheep-Cheeps after enlarging itself.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 1st, one Jewel Seed monster splits into three and attempts to run away after it's blasted, and another has a severed body part turn into smaller monsters that attack its assailant.
• Naruto:
  • One high level summon is a giant multi-headed Hell Hound that if struck splits apart into multiple hounds, which could split into more and even recombine into a hound with more heads than the original. The only way to deal with it is to kill the summoner, sending it back to wherever the hell it came from.
  • Tsunade's summon Katsuyu, a giant slug, can similarly split, although it can't grow in size/number and doesn't need to be attacked to split.
• The angel Israfel from Neon Genesis Evangelion splits in two when it's first attacked, and one can heal the other's injuries. It's only defeated by a simultaneous strike to its cores after it splits; said attack is a synchronised dance battle.
• One Piece:
  • Impel Down has the aptly named Puzzle Scorpions. They look like a giant centipede normally, but divide into about a half-dozen poisonous scorpions if struck.
  • Punk Hazard is home to Smiley, a blob with similar splitting powers. No one, not even the Straw Hats, are able to defeat it. It only goes down when it eats some candy its creator Caesar Clown prepared for it, which causes it to self-destruct into a WMD.
• In Puchim@s, Haruka-san multiplies if she's doused with water.
• The eponymous Tomie is an Eldritch Abomination who has an incredible healing factor. Stab her? She heals. Chop her to pieces? Each piece generates a new Tomie. Slash her up without actual dismemberment? Nasty things happen.
• Elg from Toriko has Healing Factor which combined with his "Nou-darake gene" (which allows an organism to grow a new brain) allows each his dismembered body parts to regenerate into a clone of himself, complete with his memories and personality.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: When Belowski's Mokey-Mokey King is defeated, it turns into three regular Mokey-Mokeys. (Sort of. Technically, Belowski special summons them from his Graveyard using the monster's card effect, but the Solid Vision system "animates" it as an Asteroid Monster.)
• ZOUSHOKU SHOUJO PLANA-CHAN!, has the heroine Rinne Ikaruga forced take care of her Mad Scientist sister's genetically engineered mutant half planarian (a non-parasitic flatworm) 4-year old named Plana. Due to the regenerative abilities coming from her planarian half, Plana is able to instantly split into more of herself much to Rinne chagrin, as simply tripping causes Plana to instantly multiply into more Planas (including smaller ones). Fortunately for her (and the entire town should it get overcrowded with numerous little mutant girls), limitations to Plana's splitting ability make it so that separating into 30 parts causes all Planas except the original to instantly disappear.

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy: The Multi Monster boasts the ability of cloning himself each time he is defeated, and the same goes for each of his clones. However, it isn't until there is an army of Multi Monster clones that anyone realises that they were shrinking the entire time. They each become a size that BoBoiBoy can pick up and trap one of them in a jar.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • A number of cards — such as Maalfeld Twins and Worldspine Wurm — allow you to put a number of weaker token versions of themselves in play when they're killed, with the original's health and power divided evenly between them. Mitotic Slime goes one step further, as its own halves can come back as halved version themselves.
  • Spiny Starfish can regenerate lost health and, whenever it does so, creates a weak starfish creature to represent a new starfish growing from a severed limb.

Comic Books

• The Ix Negaspike from the Power Girl comics is a self-replicating, indestructible alien monster. When Kara freezes and smashes it to bits, it regenerates into more monsters.
• Lobo was once able to regenerate an entirely new copy of himself from a single drop of his blood.
• The Zylons from DC Comics' Star Raiders graphic novel. A Zylon that's been blasted into a dozen pieces will soon regenerate into a dozen Zylons; the only way to completely destroy one is to send it into the vacuum of space.

Films — Animated

• In the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence in Fantasia, Mickey Mouse enchants a broom to fetch water in his place. When he realizes that it won't stop and he doesn't know how to enchant it to stop, Mickey chops the broom into pieces with an axe. A minute later, the splinters turn into hundreds of brooms that won't stop, and poor Mickey finds himself in over his head. This is direct from Goethe's poem Die Zauberlehrling, although that particular apprentice only cuts the broom in half and only has to deal with two.

Films — Live-Action

• When Ash in Army of Darkness is grabbed by his own reflection, he breaks free and the mirror it'd leaned out from gets broken. As soon as he turns his back on the broken pieces, a bunch of miniature Ashes emerge from the fragments and gang up on him.
• In The Gate, when the undead Workman zombie falls to the floor, it breaks up into a bunch of smaller demons.
• Every time The Green Slime is cut or injured, it can heal its wounds and the cells in its blood will form new members of its species.
• Hellboy: When one Sammael monster is killed, its life force will leave its body and split in two—causing two of the eggs it had previously laid to hatch and grow to adulthood in seconds.
• In Shin Godzilla, the eponymous monster is an unholy monstrocity that is less invulnerable than the traditional Godzillas. The problem is that the chunks of flesh blown off of it, by the only direct hit scored on it by a desperate hit by a bunker-buster-bomb, start to generate eyes, mouths and faces within hours!
• In The Thing (1982), every cell of the Thing is an independent organism. At various times during the film, it gets parts chopped off it, which grow new appendages and scuttle off.

Gamebooks

• The second Sorcery! has an enemy called a living corpse, who upon being hit, will break apart into six different enemies: the head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg. You must defeat all six parts before you can continue, although each individual part only has 1 STAMINA point so it's not really that difficult.

Literature

• Ascendance of a Bookworm: The Hundertteilung and Talfrosch feybeasts are both known to have larger individuals that explode into a bunch of smaller ones in response to attacks that inflict physical damage.
• The Night Cloaks in The Botticelli Horror are flat, carpet-like creatures that fly around and swoop in on their victims, and when injured, broken-off pieces of them simply arise as a baby Night Cloak. The Army shoots several of them to pieces, thinking they've won, only for the pieces to revive as more Night Cloaks, doubling their numbers.
• The Dresden Files:
  • The 'Mantis Girl' Denarian turns into a bunch of little mantises when blown to bits. They all come back together to re-form the larger self.
  • Lea's guardian worm turns into two guardian worms when blasted.
  • Trolls bleed miniature versions of themselves and can eventually reform from the smaller parts.
• In The Ickabog, it's rumoured that the eponymous creature will split into two Ickabogs when killed.
• In Mid-Flinx, one of the bizarre things Flinx sees in the jungle is a worm-like many-legged shape which, when it falls off one branch, "shatters" into several short animals on the one below. These scurry around for a bit, then link up head-to-rear as a single crawler again, thus maintaining the illusion they're one larger and less-vulnerable animal.
• Sheri S. Tepper's novel, Shadows End has genetically engineered little boy designed to be the virus of a bunch of monsters called Kachi. One of the monsters chews up the boy and spits out the pieces which end up becoming 120 smaller versions of the boy, some as small as half a finger with the biggest being leg size.
• In Star Tiger by Christopher Anvil, the only creatures on a planet appear to be placid herbivores. But if you kill one and don't destroy the body completely, what's left regenerates into one or more smaller, vicious carnivores, ranging in size from a tiger down to a shrew.

Live-Action TV

• Ghosted: “Lockdown” has the team facing a Cryptid which possesses a healing factor so advanced its spilled blood will grow into a new much smaller monster (which closer resembles an eel, compared to the full grown creature being a biped amphibious reptile).
• In Kamen Rider OOO, one Monster of the Week is an Electric Jellyfish that splits into two when hit or cut (though shooting 'em turns out to work just fine).
• A Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers episode features Mooks who melt when struck, only to re-form into two. Being genre blind, our heroes dig themselves in deeper and deeper until the two who were searching for the Forgotten Superweapon finally get back.

Mythology and Religion

• According to one Jewish interpretation of the Book of Exodus, the plague of frogs started with just a single frog, which split into two every time it was hit. The Egyptians nevertheless were so annoyed they couldn't stop hitting it, ending with the whole of Egypt being inundated.
• One legend from Hindu Mythology features an Asura called Raktabija whose spilled blood transforms into a copy of him when it touches the earth. He is defeated by the goddess Kali, who eats all of his clones and then holds him above her head and drinks all of his blood to stop it touching the ground.

Pinball

• As with the video game, Defender has Pods that explode into Swarmers when hit. Taking out all of the Swarmers opens the Stargate in the right outlane.

Podcasts

• Gemmies, Gemini's henchmen from Sequinox, will split in two when cut in half or just take enough damage. Sid gets around this by slamming two back together and then finishing her beatdown of it.

Tabletop Games

• The Awful Green Things From Outer Space: Weapons have a range of different effects on the Awful Green Things — some damage them, some do nothing, and some make them split into fragments that grow into more Awful Green Things. This is predetermined by random placement of face-down chits, and gradually revealed as the defending (ship's crew) player tries different things to see which ones work and which ones make the infestation worse.
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • Many of the game's oozes have this trait. When hit by edged weapon, ochre jellies simply split into two smaller jellies that each carry half of the original's health points. If you don't have blunt weapons, you'll end up with forty jellies with 1hp each. "Pudding" monsters similarly break into two fully-functional halves when hit with a bladed weapon, while mustard jellies can split and reform themselves at will as they hunt their prey.
  • Neogi "old masters" teem with young neogi slowly eating them from inside. When it's dead, the little nasties will evacuate the corpse and then try to eat everything meaty in sight.
  • First edition trolls have Healing Factor strong enough that limbs and pieces of flesh severed from them will slowly grow into new trolls. In other words, if you kill a troll by hacking it to pieces, be sure to burn the pieces. In later editions, only the biggest piece regrows in this manner.
  • The 3.5-edition Monster Manual 3 has the omnimental, an elemental composed of all four classical elements which, when killed, splits into one creature for each element.
  • The burrow root —a serpentine, blood-drinking plant monster— can split into two new creatures when an attack reduces the original to half its hit points. This is in fact how the things reproduce, so they'll stick out a losing battle long enough to divide this way before retreating into the ground.
  • Protean scourges are scythe-wielding, devilish-looking humanoids that can split into two identical creatures in response to damage, each with as many hit points as the original. The main downside about this is that the creature can't use its shapeshifting abilities when divided, and each duplicate uses the same pool of charges for its spell-like abilities.
  • Adventure I3 Pharaoh: The PCs can encounter Chabang Men. If hit with a cutting blow, they split apart, collapse into mud, then spring up as two new Chabang Men. They can be neutralized by pinning them to the wall with spears or other stabbing weapons.
  • Adventure IM1 The Best of Intentions: The Firemaster smashes a fire elemental with his fist, splitting it up into 24 smaller elementals that scurry off.
  • Dragon Magazine #302 introduced the Puzzle Golem, a variant of the Stone Golem that can split into two smaller golems called Pieces that are one size category smaller. Each of those can split into two smaller Pieces and so on until they hit the tiny size class. The smaller ones can also recombine into the larger ones.
• Godforsaken: If a troll suffers a particularly egregious wound, it divides into two smaller trolls. Spawned trolls that have access to food grow into full trolls within a few weeks.
• Pathfinder: One type of skeleton, on being destroyed, reforms into two smaller skeletons with half of the original's hit die. The resulting skeletons will likewise reform into two half-size versions of themselves when destroyed, a process that repeats until the skeletons reach Diminutive size or they're down to one hit dice each.
• Warhammer:
  • Pink Horrors of Tzeentch split into weaker Blue Horrors when wounded. Each Blue Horror then splits into a pair of Brimstone Horrors when wounded itself.
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: The Multiplication mutation, one of the mutation options in the 2E Tome of Corruption, gives its bearer the ability to split into a crowd of up to ten smaller duplicates, which then act and move independently for a number of turns before merging back together.

Video Games

• Afterimage:
  • Defeating a Gear Shark causes it to burst into multiple small Sharklings.
  • Scorchwhere features a type of creatures that split or spawn into their weaker counterparts (on top of exploding) upon death. One dead Pyro Slenderer spawns two Pyro Shadows; and one dead Pyro Shadow spawns two Pyro Shades.
• Age of Mythology: The Promethean is a clay dwarf that splits into two smaller ones when killed (the two minis die normally). In one of the scenarios, the Titan Prometheus is capable of generating the large ones intentionally by scraping clay from his arms.
• Two examples in the online Flash Game Amorphous++, where every single enemy in the game is a Blob Monster.
  • The Clutter will split into 1-3 baby versions of itself if defeated, each of which can grow into an adult sized one. Thankfully, they cannot kill the player character.
  • The Amalgam is a far more dangerous one — hitting it when it is too large will cause it to break apart into smaller pieces. Each smaller Amalgam can absorb more slimes wandering about, causing them to grow big again. Oh, and if you touch a large enough Amalgam, you are absorbed (read: you die) on the spot.
  • Inverted by Gloopies, which can undergo "reverse mitosis" and fuse into much harder enemies. Biters can do this, too, into the aptly-named Horror.
• Animal Crossing: The Gamecube version has a Dummied Out paper airplane. Dropping this item outside places a little paper airplane on the ground, but exiting and entering a building causes them to multiply. They will eventually spread like wildfire, locking up the whole acre, and if it continues, your whole town! And don't bother trying to pick them up, they'll appear to be gone, but they are still there and will come back, complete with multiplying, when you enter and exit again.
• ANNO: Mutationem: Destroying the grub hives will forcibly spawn a variety of grub eggs that'll hatch immediately to attack.
• Some monsters in the Avernum series (particularly slimes) split every time it's their turn, but only if you damage them in the time between their current turn and the last turn. Rather than being smaller and weaker, each duplicate has the same power as the original—but they also have the same post-damage HP (so if you hit one for 10 damage, the duplicate will also have 10 damage on its count.) It's best to only attack one per turn, but hit that one with everything you've got.
• Asteroids features asteroids that split into smaller rocks when shot, which in turn can be split into even smaller rocks that can be destroyed for good.
• The larger rocks in the Intellivision game Astrosmash split into two smaller rocks when shot.
• Azure Dreams: Manovas divide whenever you hit them.
• Baldur's Gate 2 has Fission Slimes and Fission Trolls, both of which turn into two monsters when dropped to zero HP unless you Kill It with Fire. The trolls only do this once, but the slimes keep doing it every time and can end up overwhelming an improperly prepared party.
• Ballpoint Universe Infinite has asteroids that fragment into smaller asteroids when destroyed.
• Banjo-Kazooie: Boss Boom Box splits into gradually smaller Boom Boxes as it takes damage.
• A lot of enemies in The Binding of Isaac split into smaller parts when hit. For normal enemies, some flies and brains. For bosses, Envy, Blastocyst and Fistula break up into smaller parts upon destruction. Some also spawn several different enemies upon death like the Duke of Flies.
• Biomechanical Toy has those gigantic, floating smiley faces which split in two, four and eight after being shot.
• For some reason, the Nui-Kopen in BIONICLE: The Game split into two smaller Nui-Kopen (Kofo-Kopen, possibly?) upon taking damage, though this can probably be attributed to the game's rather loose interpretation of BIONICLE canon.
• Bloodrayne features an ancient vampire Hedrox, who splits in two copies when hit.
• Bloons Tower Defense: Every single bloon does this except for the lowest tier. Short list from strong to weak in BTD6: B.A.D gives 2 Z.O.M.Gs and 3 D.D.Ts, Z.O.M.G. gives 4 B.F.B.s which give 4 M.O.A.B.s, which give 4 ceramics, which give 2 rainbows, which give 2 zebra, which give a black and a white, which each give 2 pink, and from then on only one comes out each time, going pink, yellow, green, blue, and finally red. Additionally, there's also lead bloons that give 2 black, purples that give 2 pinks, and D.D.Ts that give 6 camo regrow ceramics. Also, if a bloon gets through your defenses, you lose lives equal to the total amount of bloons you let slip, meaning that if a blue one gets through, you lose two lives, but if a ceramic gets through, you lose 104 lives. If a M.O.A.B. or anything above goes through, and you don't have a lot of extra lives, the game ends instantly. Downplayed after round 80 due to the introduction of super ceramics, which replace normal ceramics to reduce lag: they are a lot tougher than normal ceramics, but only split into a single rainbow, itself splitting into a single zebra, and so on. This means that a BAD past round 80 only has, at most, 146 children bloons.
• Bound by Blades: Skullako, the Blob Monster boss, can turn into two, and four, smaller copies of itself when it receives damage. It gets a new health bar everytime it divides, too, but luckily it stops at four.
• Bugsnax has some of the eponymous creatures split up into smaller Bugsnax, some of which can only be found this way. These include the Big Bopsicle, its Palette Swap the Paletoss Grande, the Preying Picantis, and the Scoopy Banoopy.
• Castlevania:
  • In Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, the Phantom Bat boss splits into smaller bats when hit. Only after reducing them to the smallest size could they be defeated. Super Castlevania IV has a few random encounters that worked this way, as well as the Zapf Bat boss, which did the same thing.
  • Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance has a slime boss that breaks down into smaller slimes every time it is hit (with each slime then acting as an individual enemy). These divisions are much weaker than the boss, and they also result in the boss becoming smaller and smaller. In other words, the fight becomes easier as it goes.
• In Cave Story, the Polish enemies found in Sand Zone will split into smaller Polishes when killed. The smaller Polishes themselves thankfully do not split.
• In Centipede, centipedes split whenever one of their middle segments gets shot.
• City of Heroes: Several Devouring Earth baddies leave smaller versions behind at death, though they usually don't split any further. Some high-ranking Clockwork pull this as well. The Giant Monster versions of the Devouring Earth rock and crystal enemies actually split into upwards of four or five normal-sized enemies, which can then further split into the smallest versions.
• Two examples in Clash of Clans:
  • The Golem, a high-level ground-based meat shield, splits into two smaller creatures, known in-game as Golemites, when killed.
  • The Lava Hound, a higher-level flying meat shield that somewhat resembles a winged dog-golem hybrid, spawns 8 to 12 tiny Lava Pups when killed.
• Comet Busters!, an Asteroids clone, features asteroids breaking down into smaller bits at each hit. A large one becomes two medium ones, a medium one becomes two small ones, and thankfully the small ones are the last.
• In Crimson Glaive Sigma, you can encounter Segmented Serpent enemies that will split into smaller ones when you destroy any segment of theirs that isn't their head or tail.
• Crimsonland has Spideroids. Killing one splits it into two smaller spiders, who split into two more even smaller spiders when killed, and so on. The cycle continues for several more steps, to the point where trying to kill just two big ones can quickly lead to being overwhelmed by an entire screen of miniature spiders.
• Cuphead: The larger ghosts in the mausoleums will break into smaller ghosts the first time they are parried.
• In a Shout-Out to The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Dark Castle has a walking broom enemy that splits into smaller brooms.
• In later waves of Demon Attack, the big demons when hit will split into two smaller demons that will eventually fly down and try to ram you.
• Demon's World has vampire mooks, who upon being killed turns into a number of bats and continues attacking.
• In Desktop Tower Defense, the "spawn" critters divide into two smaller ones, and the two smaller ones are then killed normally.
• Don Doko Don has Miniman, an enemy which splits into smaller halves twice.
• Doom:
  • Doom II introduces the Pain Elemental. Kill it, and it splits into three Lost Souls. Don't kill it, and it spits a potentially infinite stream of Lost Souls one by one. The manual makes note of this by stating that "killing him is almost as bad as letting him live".
  • In the Doom II RPG for cellphones, the Spider Mastermind will break into three Arachnotrons. This is actually the hardest part of the fight since the Arachnotrons are quite fast, and you're probably running low on health and all those Nano Drinks you used at the start of the fight have worn off.
  • DRL features the Agony Elemental boss, which is to the Pain Elemental as the Pain Elemental is to the Lost Soul.
• Dota 2: Mud Golems split into two smaller Shard Golems upon death (starting from 30 minutes into the game, they split into 3). The hero Doom can gain the abilities of neutral creeps by Devouring them, and if he Devours a Mud Golem, he also gains the ability to split on death, spawning two Doom Shards that share his character model but function the same as Shard Golems.
• Dragon Quest: Inverted in later games. In a random encounter of eight ordinary-looking Slimes, if they all survive a turn they pile together to form a King Slime.
• The Myconids from Dragon's Crown are mutated, mobile mushrooms whose larger versions will split into smaller Myconids when killed. These smaller Myconids will then grow into larger Myconids when left alive too long, though Myconids that were born from another Myconid thankfully won't multiply into other smaller Myconids even if they reach that point.
• Dragon Unit has tree-men enemies who upon being killed, turns into three smaller tree-men.
• Dungeons & Dragons Online: Similar to the tabletop version, most oozes will split into smaller ones if damaged by a non-blunt weapon; in addition, many will ruin your metal or wooden weapon with acid. Fortunately, it's not hard to locate a "Muckbane": a crystal club.
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • Any body part that gets lopped off can be reanimated as a separate enemy. (Memorably illustrated here.) Over and over again, to the point where severed fingers and the skinned hides of butchered animals achieved Invincible Minor Mook status; a crude Hit Points system had to be patched in as a temporary fix while Toady One worked on extending the damage rules to include "pulping".
  • If the full moon shines its light upon the reanimated limbs of a were-creature, each transforms into an entire werebeast, which usually means everything in the area is going to die messily.
• The Nuka-World DLC for Fallout 4 gave certain legendary radroaches the annoying on-death ability to spawn half a dozen smaller radroaches from their exploded carcass.
• One of Stewie's levels in Family Guy Video Game! takes place in Peter's brain, where there are memories of Lois who can kill him with their attempts to hug him. If they're attacked, they multiply into clones dressed in one of her outfits from the show and also attack by throwing objects corresponding to that outfit. The first batch of clones in turn multiply into two more when defeated.
• NES The Addams Family video game Fester's Quest includes green slimeballs that multiply when shot... The problem is that they don't split up into a set amount like most enemies of this type and will continue to multiply over and over again no matter what. Without large weapon upgrades or explosives, the slimes will continually regenerate until you are able to quickly destroy every single last one. On the upside, they leave lots of powerups upon their deaths. On the downside, the game includes power downs, and they leave those too, leaving you to figure out how to get the good stuff while not losing the powerups you already got.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy III has splitting monsters in two dungeons. Fortunately, you can stop them from splitting. Unfortunately, only by rapidly burning through your limited spell charges or by using the other far less than useful Magic Knight class to kill them with a katana.
  • Final Fantasy IV:
    • Inverted with the Calcobrena, a group of trick bosses consisting of six small dolls with a small amount of HP... except that if you kill them in the wrong order, the remainder turn into a giant doll that's a lot tougher to kill.
    • The Mom Bomb grows into a massive monster and then explodes, damaging you and leaving a bunch of smaller bombs in its place. Interlude has the Dad Bomb whose boss fight follows the same pattern, except that three of the bombs it splits into are Balloons instead of regular Bombs.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, the Flans (and similar palette swap monsters) sometimes split into more. This is also the gimmick of the Optional Boss in the GBA remake, Malboro Menace.
  • Final Fantasy VII has some nesting doll-like enemies near Costa Del Sol that spit out a smaller version of itself when killed. They are pathetically easy to kill.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • In Copperbell Mines, the trick mini-boss Ichorous Ire cannot be killed through normal means. Instead you need to get a Blasting Cap to blow up the blob to split it into two. This is done three times and finally when you have 8 tiny blobs of Ire, you can kill them normally.
    • Lou Carcolh in the FATE "There's Something About Lou" starts as one rather large monster with suitably high HP, and when you kill him he splits into three smaller versions with less HP, which in turn split into another three even smaller and weaker versions before they finally stay down for good.
• The appropriately-named asteroids in Geometry Wars Galaxies levels whose names start with Mas- or Por- will split in half, then the halves will release 5-10 monsters of the same shape when destroyed. Also, the spinners are a mild example. The big ones split into two smaller ones, the two smaller ones die normally.
• Gradius:
  • Gradius III's second stage is filled with large bubbles that split into four smaller bubbles when destroyed. More akin to stage hazards than enemies, but a decent example nonetheless. The Lethal Lava Land stage has lava bombs that split into smaller fragments, which are indestructible in the arcade version.
  • The Bacterian emperors explode into pieces and spread across the universe every time they are killed, as Gofer boasts in Gradius IV after he is defeated.
• Gravity Crash has the indigenous squid-like lifeforms that split into 5 smaller squids when hit.
• In the video game adaptation of Gremlins 2: The New Batch, giant spider enemies will split into three smaller spiders upon death.
• Grim Dawn has the Beast faction's Nemesis boss, Kubacabra the Endless Menace. When killed, it spawns two monsters named Kubacabra the Enduring. Each of those in turn spawns two Kubacabra the Tenacious, which thankfully do not split further. Each version of Kuba also has Life Drain and Damage Over Time attacks that can make the fight something of a slog.
• Guild Wars: Physical titans turn into magical titans when killed which will then split into two physical titans, making for a very long fight. Note that only the ordinary titans do this, stronger titans and bosses don't, which paradoxically means that you're often relieved to see a more powerful enemy when low on health.
• Hazelnut Hex has a giant eyeball Blob Monster-thing as a Mini-Boss, who divides itself into smaller eyeball blobs when you damage it. You keep shooting until the boss couldn't divide itself anymore.
• Heart of Darkness features a rather nasty cyborg who when killed is reduced to two lumps on the ground... which respawn into cyborgs if you don't kill them quick enough. When you first encounter him this is a nightmare as you have to use a slow charged attack in order to destroy them. It gets easier once you get your gun back.
• In Helter Skelter, hitting a monster out of order will cause it to split into two smaller monsters. Fortunately, the smaller monsters can't divide further.
• In Hollow Knight, the Flukemon enemy is split between its head and tail on death. Both proceed to attack you separately.
• In Into the Breach, one possible hive leader is a giant Blob Monster that upon death splits into smaller blobs.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: Sugarbugs are small, marshmallow-like aliens that reproduce when cut into several pieces.
• In Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, the Horned Witch splits into smaller versions of herself when you attack her, and you have to kill all of the miniature clones to win.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts: Atlantica has an enemy called Sheltering Zone which will split into five or six Sea Neons, the undersea equivalent of a Shadow. The player can avoid this by dealing the coup de grâce with a magic attack instead of a physical one.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep adds the Blobmob, a jellyfish-looking Unversed found only in the Deep Space world that when killed will split into two... and each of those two will split into two more when killed. Repeat once more for a total of eight kills from one enemy unless you've frozen any of the larger ones first.
• Kingdom Rush: Origins: Munchshrooms explode into two Boomshrooms on death, while Fungus Breeders explode into two Munchshrooms on death.
• Kirby: Planet Robobot: The Dedede Clone starts off fighting just like the original, but after being reduced to half HP splits into three smaller clones that deal less damage and lack the ability to inhale.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Bari, a type of recurring enemy, resemble large, floating jellyfish that split into two smaller Biri when killed. Two giant Bari encountered in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds split into fifteen Biri each.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Zols and Vires split into two monsters, but only if struck with a weapon under a certain power level. In order to kill them in one go, Zols require the White Sword, Arrow or Magic Rod; Vires require Magic Sword or Bomb (Silver Arrows also work, although you're only likely to use this strategy in ROM hacks of the game since the Silver Arrows can't be collected before level 9 and there aren't any Vires in level 9 of either quest).
    • The boss Digdogger will split into three smaller, weaker versions of itself if Link plays the Recorder.
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has the Giant Bubble and the Boss Bot in the final palace. The Giant Bubble turns into two Bubbles; Boss Bot turns into several small Bots that look exactly like regular Bots, except they are a lot harder to kill.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: In this game, the Floormaster does a given amount of damage by hitting you, but once it's split, the smaller mini-Floormasters can grab you and dish out the same amount of damage every few seconds. Given enough time, they will grow into full-sized Floormasters.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages: The boss Smog can split into either two or three smaller clouds, which must be gathered together into one in order to be able to damage the boss.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons: To defeat Digdogger, Link must smash it with an iron ball until it splits into multiple minis of itself and then crush all those miniatures in turn.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Jalhalla, boss of the Earth Temple, splits into multiple Poes when injured. Link must then kill as many of these Poes as possible before they reform and repeat the cycle until the boss dies.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Chus are small blobs of slime that split into smaller blobs when killed (this can go both ways, as smaller junks can congeal to form a larger enemy); since each small Chu comes in a different color, it's important to avoid the merge if the player seeks to scoop the remaining fluids they leave after being killed. Chuchus in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword are an especially annoying variant; as in Twilight Princess, they split into smaller Chuchus when sliced, which can re-combine into the original Chuchu, at full health. Additionally, if you slice horizontally, the half on top will instantly fall back into the other one. Only the smallest sub-Chuchus can be killed with your sword, and the biggest ones contain eight small ones, some of which might appear momentarily after 2 hits with your sword. Chuchus of any size can grab you and prevent you from attacking. Some of them can electrocute you through your sword when you hit them.
  • Hyrule Warriors: In the DLC Twilight map, the "Stop the divisive plan!" levels feature fights against shadowy versions of the playable characters that will subdivide when they take enough damage. Fortunately, they can't recombine, nor can they divide additional times should the enemy healers give them more health (that said, Shoot the Medic First).
• The Maid of Fairewell Heights: When the Golden Yellow Mushroom is cut up, it turns into four smaller versions.
• Flash game Medieval Rampage has large ice golems which split into two or three fast but weaker ones. Actually one of the weaker enemies though since the large version is so slow you can blast him at your leisure, and the small ones die with one or two shots. Good to farm.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man (Classic):
    • The eyeball-like Petit Devils in Galaxy Man's stage from Mega Man 9 have this property. The green ones split into three, the orange into four.
  • Mega Man Network Transmission: The Puffy mini-boss in Water Works Comp 3 is a giant-sized version of the Mini-Puffy that breaks up into four smaller Puffies, which break up into four even tinier Puffies.
  • Mega Man Star Force: The head of the Final Boss blocks its core, but when it gets destroyed, it splits into two other heads.
• Metroid:
  • Metroid Prime: The Fission Metroids are a unique breed of Metroid found in the Impact Crater, and on the third floor of the Phazon Mines in the PAL and Wii versions. They behave like normal Metroids, but upon depleting their health they split into two more Fission Metroids, both of which are only vulnerable to one of Samus's beams (denoted by what color their membrane is). However, a Power Bomb will instantly blow up any Fission Metroids in the vicinity without letting them split.
  • Metroid Fusion inverts this, where the X-Parasites dropped by killed enemies, if left alone long enough, will either reform into the exact same monster they had been, or seek out another one to make it grow bigger.
• Slimes in Minecraft come in three sizes, which can withstand and deal proportional amounts of damage. Killing a slime will make it split into two to four of the next size down. The smallest size slime will still chase you around but can't hurt you (unless it pushes you off a ledge or into lava). Magma Cubes in the Nether do this as well. Much like the smallest slimes, the small magma cubes are adorable!
• The Stingray from Mini Robot Wars splits into three weak copies when destroyed. Much more of a nuisance if anything, as neither the large or small stingrays can attack.
• The Pumpkin Boss in Monster Force consists of two giant pumpkins who split into smaller pumpkins after taking enough damage.
• The Legion of Wax in Monster Train is a heavy unit based which, at base form, is a towering unit made of four large fighters grouped together. When its health is reduced to 0, rather than dying and discarding, it instead splits into two slightly smaller pairs of two units. Then, when each of these units is killed, it again splits into two small individual units before finally dying out. Each time a split occurs, the lesser units lose some of the base stats of the greater, but both lesser units keep all bonuses and enhancements of the parent unit, effectively doubling their damage output each split. And then you get to bring the original back with Reform mechanic, with more stats and automatic death counter to trigger the multiplication again, and again.
• Nankoku Shounen Papuwa kun (an obscure Japan-esxclusive platformer) has it's first boss being a giant, floating sentient apple monster with a sign on it that says "80". When you hit it, it splits into two medium-sized enemies bearing a sign that says "40", and then four small enemies with a "20" before finally becoming eight tiny enemies with a "10" on them. The last form can be destroyed instantly with a Smart Bomb however.
• Neopets: The Jub-Jub ghosts. Since all the enemies in a given stage have a tendency to grow, it's not uncommon to wind up with three normally-sized enemies to deal with.
• The black pudding monsters in Nethack divide when they're hit with a non-lethal blow (with a weapon which is made out of iron), rather than when they die. Each of the child puddings are the same size as the original, but only have as much health as the parent did after taking damage from the blow, so hitting them with high damage blows will reduce the number of times they divide. On the other hand, if you hit them with a underpowered weapon which does a minimum of damage and occasionally give them a rest so they can heal you can "pudding farm" an endless amount of them, giving you countless pudding corpses to sacrifice to your god and, since monsters sometimes Randomly Drop items, and endless supply of items.
• Neverwinter Nights 2: The King of Shadows, the final boss. First, you defeat him normally, then he splits into smaller copies, and after you defeat them, he reassembles and becomes a Puzzle Boss.
• The skeleton mooks in Ninja: Shadow of Darkness, upon receiving enough hits, will break into two from the waist... only for both halves to attack you as separate entities. You'll need to defeat both halves to proceed, the upper half with a Goomba Stomp while the lower half can be defeated by kicking and punching normally. (Ever seen a pair of skeletal legs without a body flailing about trying to kick you? You will in this game, and it's hilarious).
• In the Leifthrasir remake of Odin Sphere, the King Ooze mid-boss spawns normal slimes and eventually splits up as you damage it.
• In Ōkami, Ninetails periodically raises the sword on her back, which acts as a lightning rod to Amaterasu's lightning power. Attacking her this way splits her into nine maidens, which must be destroyed individually before she reforms. Destroying eight of them begins the second phase of the fight, where she reverts to a weaker form.
• Cut off the tentacles of a Reynaldo in Onimusha: Warlords, and the severed appendage will grow into a new Reynaldo if left alone long enough.
• The large thorn blobs in Ori and the Blind Forest split into several smaller blobs, which split into still smaller pieces.
• In Otto Matic, you will encounter pushy blob monsters that can be destroyed only by freezing them and then punching them into pieces which can then be picked up as power-ups... or left to thaw and grow into identical blobs.
• In the 2005 version of Pac-Man Arrangement, each boss is a giant ghost that is split apart into dozens of small blue ghosts whenever Pac-Man eats a Power Pellet. Pac-Man must eat each of the smaller ghosts in order to finish off the boss, but once the Power Pellet's effects wear off, the ghosts will merge back together, with their combined form getting smaller the fewer are left remaining.
• The Pang series of games have five different sizes of balloons as enemies. Hitting a balloon of any size except the smallest will cause it to split into two (or sometimes four) of the next smallest size.
• Iris and Aerie from Paranautical Activity both split into smaller versions of themselves after they lose a certain amount of health.
• Parasite Eve:
  • In the game's Bonus Dungeon, there's a giant cockroach boss that can lay a larva. If the larva isn't killed fast enough, it will reach adulthood and gain the same stats and abilities of its parent, including the ability to lay another larva. This means that the fight can loop indefinitely unless you break the cycle.
  • After you've dealt enough damage to the mutated scorpion boss, it splits into 4 parts, boxes you in the center of the battlefield in by encircling you, and attacks one at a time.
  • Not so dangerous is a monster in the regular game that spawns brains that then detach and bounce around. Kill enough to bump the battle's target counter to 99 and you can earn a Super Tool.
• PAYDAY 2: When an enemy with "Hydras" mutator dies, two weaker enemies spawn in their place. Those enemies can also split into weaker enemies, and so on, until the split limit is reached or there are no weaker enemies to split into.
• Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire:
  • Greater Black Oozes split into two Lesser Black Oozes when killed.
  • The Optional Boss Hauani O Whe is a gargantuan Black Ooze with extremely high stats. When you finally manage to kill it, it splits into two Gigantic Black Oozes, each of which is still boss-level tough. Below 50% health they will try to merge back into Hauani O Whe. If you don't physically stop them from touching at this point, most easily done by paralyzing status effects, Hauani will re-form at full health. Each Gigantic Black Ooze splits into two Massize Black Oozes on death, which each split into two Greater Black Oozes, which then as before split into two Lesser Black Oozes. Any of the lower-level Oozes can also merge back up to the next-most-powerful form when below half health.
• PO'ed has alien Blob Monster enemies that splits into multiple copies of themselves as soon as you score a hit, with one single monster easily dividing up to four times before it's finally dead. You can use a flamethrower however, the wide range of flames can incinerate the blobs faster than they can duplicate.
• The Mythical Pokémon Melmetal is said to split into a bunch of Meltan near the end of its lifespan; when the strongest member is ready to evolve, it absorbs all the other Meltan in its group and turns into a Melmetal again.
• In Potion Permit, Green Blobs split into a few smaller versions when defeated.
• In Power Pete, in Candy Cane Lane, the Gummi Bear enemies split into smaller versions of themselves when they are first hit.
• In Quartz, a Shoot 'Em Up for the Atari ST, shooting a Hadron will split it into several smaller Quarks, which themselves must be shot to release Neutrino pickups.
• The antwerp in Quest for Glory I splits into several smaller antwerps if you use your sword on it when it jumps on you. However, only the original is hostile.
• Ratchet & Clank: The Amoeboids (green sewer blobs). They appear in the original game, Up Your Arsenal, and Rift Apart. They come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. A large one splits into two medium ones, and a medium one splits into 2 small ones. Fortunately, in the original and Up Your Arsenal, it only takes one hit to make them split. The 2016 game gives the large and medium Amoeboids more health, making them take longer to split, but otherwise they behave the same way.
• A plane in Robot Dinosaurs That Shoot Beams When They Roar splits into two when shot.
• In Rock Raiders for the PC, blasting apart a rock or ice monster with a laser beam (or a lava monster with a freezer beam) causes it to spawn three knee-high versions of itself ... which then make a run for the nearest wall and dig their way to safety.
• Slimes in Rogue Legacy split into smaller slimes upon losing their hitpoints, only the smallest ones actually dying. Herodotus, the boss of the Land of Darkness, behaves like this on a much larger scale.
• Savage Halloween have the Bedsheet Ghost enemies who explodes into half a dozen smaller bedsheet ghosts upon defeat.
• In the Game Boy Advance version of Scooby-Doo: Mystery Mayhem, using the Tome of Doom on the Fire Ghost causes him to split into smaller ghosts. Once he's split into the smallest ghosts that exist in the game, it is possible for these fragments of him to be sucked into the Tome of Doom.
• The lava golems in Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. Not only once, but the smaller fragments divide into smaller fragments when they die, and those smaller fragments divide into even smaller fragments.
• Some forms of Artificial Chaos in Sonic Adventure 2 (and all of them in Shadow the Hedgehog) are of the re-forming variety; to destroy them you have to break them apart and destroy the smaller ones, then attack the core, but if you don't destroy the small ones quickly enough, they reattach to the core.
• Spiral Knights actually inverts this. There is a type of slime that alone is very weak and easily defeated. However, groups can quickly merge together into a single enormous, very powerful slime monster.
• Splatoon 3: In a clear Shout-Out to the Phantamanta fight from Super Mario Sunshine, Big Man splits into smaller manta rays every time he's attacked until the player attacks the "real" Big Man. The smaller copies can unleash some devastating attacks if left unchecked, and they become more aggressive as the fight goes on.
• One Baneling upgrade in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm lets them turn into two smaller, slightly less potent banelings on death (the other, vastly more broken upgrade lets them jump cliffs and over friendly units). Abathur notes that continuing the trend is inefficient, as it only leds to vaguely-self-aware slime.
• A bonus boss in the Directive 7 flaspoint of Star Wars: The Old Republic is the Replicator which... replicates.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Bros. 2: Hit Fryguy with mushroom blocks three times, and he splits into four smaller Fryguys, which only take one mushroom block hit each to kill. Of course, with each mini-Fryguy you kill, the others get faster, making the last one far more dangerous than even the original big one. On top of that, some versions of the cartridge have a glitch that can leave the fight unwinnable if you get hit by one of the pieces while taking out another.
  • Paper Mario 64: During the fight with Huff N. Puff, the sixth boss of the game, he has little clouds called Tuff Puffs popping out of him for every bit of damage he takes. Killing them quickly is a good idea since not only can they attack, if you don't kill them, Huff N. Puff will swallow them and heal off the damage; 1 HP for every small one and 2 HP for every large one.
  • Super Mario Sunshine: Phantamanta splits six times to make 128 tiny manta ray ghosties — each split divides them up into two smaller ones except for the last, which splits them into four.
  • New Super Mario Bros. Wii: Goombas have a large variant that splits into two regular Goombas when stomped, plus an even larger variant that splits into two large ones.
  • Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island: The Marching Milde miniboss in World 4. This pink-colored creature will divide each time Yoshi performs a Ground Pound onto it or the resulting smaller replicas. The smallest ones can be eaten by Yoshi, meaning that the boss battle can be won with this move (this cannot be done with any of the other bosses).
  • Luigi's Mansion: Boolossus, composed of fifteen small Boos. Luigi needs to swing it into the horn of a unicorn statue to burst it, then freeze and suck up the smaller Boos. The more Boos he catches, the smaller and faster Boolossus gets.
  • Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars: The Ameboid splits into five if hit by a physical attack.
  • Mario & Luigi:
    • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: Trunkle has the ability to split itself into four mini-Trunkles in battle. However, three of them are just clones that crumble when they take damage; the real one has a berry hidden in his mouth. He can also recombine with the clones.
    • Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time: Mrs. Thwomp behaves a lot like Trunkle: she appears to gain three clones after reducing in size from too much damage (she can also grow back). They're actually robots that three Goombas are using to back her up; two of them have different teeth and the third has a chip in its head, so it's easy to see which is which.
• FunOrb's "Sumoblitz" has pink Bunkatbots that split in two when they break.
• The small versions of the bacteria monsters in the SNES SWAT Kats game burst apart into three tiny blobs that continue attacking the player and die in one hit.
• The Entrails Parasite boss in Tales of Graces splits into eight smaller versions of itself after it takes a bit of damage. On higher difficulties, they can be extremely troublesome to deal with, as they cast spells rapidly, and can KO the entire party in seconds if they're not interrupted with area attacks.
• Terraria:
  • Mother slimes split into baby slimes on death.
  • The King Slime produces Blue Slimes whenever you hit it, implying that you're cutting little bits and pieces of it off.
  • The Star Cells split into smaller Star Cells when they die, which then grow into more full-sized Star Cells.
• Thunder Hoop has those gigantic floating lizard-head mutants, who upon being shot to bits will explode into a dozen smaller floating heads.
• Titan Quest:
  • Spriggans, small Waddling Head plants with vines as limbs, split into two smaller copies called Sprigglings upon death.
  • Richard 'Crash' Svennson, one of the bosses in Primrose's Passage, is a Blob Monster that splits into two repeatedly after its health reaches zero.
• The first boss (and enemy) in Titan Souls is a giant slime which divides in two every time it is hit. The only way to kill it is to destroy its brain which can only be hit when it has has divided into its smallest size.
• Trauma Center: Under The Knife/Second Opinion: Several of the GUILT. One is Paraskevi, a worm thing that instantly kills the patient if you let it live too long, and the only way to kill it is to stun it with the laser then cut it in half, then cut those pieces in half, and so on, until you can remove the little pieces. The other is Savato, which can create little baby versions of itself that can grow into semi-savatos if you aren't careful.
• The Ultima series:
  • In Ultima V, slimes and gargoyles divide when struck, assuming that they're not killed on the first blow. Slimes only appear in groups of sixteen, and each will divide once; there are subtle visual differences between divided and undivided slimes.
  • Ultima Online used to have asteroids slimes, which in addition to splitting also regenerated health and could share space without limit. That ended when a player discovered that by trapping a slime in a house and throwing weak splash-damage potions in through the window, he could generate enough slimes to devour the entire server when he released them.
• The boss of FarFall in An Untitled Story is a large, blue, expressive boulder that splits recursively into smaller blue, expressive boulders when stomped with a Ground Pound. Only the smallest blue pebbles furiously hopping around the area can be killed permanently.
• Venture Kid: When Andy beats the Blob Monster Mooks in the Volcano level, they split into three smaller blob monsters.
• Vermintide II: Tzeentch's Favor causes enemies to split into two weaker enemies upon death until they reach skavenslaves or cultists.
• The Void Rains Upon Her Heart:
  • At the start of her second phase, Split Veyeral's main body splits into four veyerals, which can split again up to two times each. Unlike most of these enemies, she has enough HP that you can't take out every single little veyeral before the fight ends. The mechanics of the fight reward you for splitting off all of her 16 parts.
  • Molten Veyeral spawns two split veyerals at the end of her phase. The number of times they can split depends on the level, and this time you can take out them all.
• Warcraft:
  • Warcraft III: Hydras split into smaller hydras to simulate head regeneration. Slime beasts do the same, with one particularly big one in the Orc expansion campaign splitting about 10 times, each split splitting into two smaller ones.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • There are a few cases of rock giants that will fracture into smaller rock giants, but there will always be the main "piece" and then smaller "shards". The main rock giant can be defeated before or after you defeat its shards. Thankfully, though the main rock giant is an extra powerful elite monster, his shardlings are normal powered or slightly underpowered for their level.
    • There's a variation with a water elemental in the Violet Hold instance. "She" will explode into numerous smaller elementals periodically throughout the fight. "She" can't be damaged except by destroying the smaller entities before they can rejoin the main body.
    • One of the bosses in the Halls of Origination instance from Cataclysm is guarded by fire elementals that each split into two smaller elementals when killed, who each split into two even smaller, who each split into two more. Kill them one split at a time or you'll quickly get surrounded by Goddamned Bats. You used to be able to prevent the splitting by using a stun ability at the right time, but this has been addressed in a patch.
    • The Brawler's Guild has several monsters that operate along these principles, including slimes and a giant walking bomb that splits into smaller versions of itself when killed.
    • Immerseus in Siege of Orgrimmar plays with this trope. After his health is depleted, his body splits into a large number of water blobs that move to reform in his pool. During this stage the players must kill the contaminated blobs and heal the pure blobs; the more thorough they are, the less health Immerseus has when he reforms. This repeats until he is finally purified.
    • Tectus in Highmaul starts as single boss, but on death splits into two Shards, both of which can split into four Motes. The Shards and Motes retain the same abilities as the original boss at full damage, which can rapidly turn the entire arena into a deathtrap if not properly handled.
    • Unstable Amalgamations in the Arcway are slime creatures that turn into four Unstable Oozes when killed, each of which turn into four Unstable Oozelings. All of these mobs are constantly casting an area of attack spell. Ordinarily this isn't an issue, but some Mythic Plus mechanics can make them an issue.
• In Warframe, the second guardian of Inaros' tomb in the quest "Sands of Inaros" is a large golem that splits into two smaller golems when killed, up to 5 times, thus potentially pitting you with 32 angry sandstone monsters lobbing rocks at you.
• Wildcat Gun Machine have the purple slug-like monsters, a recurring enemy who explodes into six smaller versions of itself when killed and continues trying to chew you to bits. Their smaller counterparts dies in one hit using any weapon.
• Will Rock has the Minotaurs. When killed, they are blown to bloody bits, which quickly regenerate into two smaller, weaker, but also more aggressive Blood Minotaurs. Thankfully, you later acquire some weapons which can destroy them in a single shot, preventing the splitting.
• X-COM: Apocalypse alien Multiworm releases four Hyperworms when killed.
• XCOM 2 features the Codex, an extra-dimensional creature of Pure Energy that will clone itself whenever it takes damage, halving its remaining hp between the body that was struck and a new Codex that appears in a random location nearby, ready to teleport to flank a target, or drop a psionic bomb to shut down your squad's weapons and force them to scatter before the attack detonates. Players are therefore encouraged to kill Codices in a single attack when possible... or use a flashbang to stun them and shut down their clone ability.
• One of the enemies in Zanac is an egg that comes a third of the way into the screen, and, unless it's shot down first, splits in half, releasing its payload. The two half-shells are much harder to destroy than the egg. This enemy actually first appeared in E.I., Compile's very first Shoot 'Em Up.
• In Zeliard, hitting red slimes with basic weapons or spells makes them multiply, and not even damage them.

Web Animation

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

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: Much to the horror of Baron Wulfenbach's troops, each of the modified traveling circus clanks that Agatha made is composed of dozens of smaller clanks that break off when they're destroyed. Smaller clanks that are able to self-destruct with a big boom.
• Sleepless Domain:
  • In Chapter 8, Undine and Heartful Punch fight an amorphous Blob Monster that has breached the Inner Barrier. After they manage to take it down, its remains promptly pull themselves together to form several smaller monsters that surround the girls.
  • In Chapter 13, Rue seemingly takes out a large worm-like monster with one of her explosive potions. However, not only did the monster itself survive, but Rue's attack caused its back half to split off into a separate, smaller monster, with a ring of teeth just as sharp as the original.
• Spacetrawler: Ditherkers will "spawn multiples of themselves" on the brink of death. The only way to kill them without creating more is to outrun them until they starve.

Western Animation

• In Season 3 of Ben 10 Ben gets a new alien (Gwen gives him the name Slap Back) who splits in two every time his back is hit (so one becomes two, two become four, and so on). The kicker is that every time it happens the copies are two times heavier and stronger than before.
• In Futurama episode "Fry and the Slurm Factory", Leela kicks Glurmo (the slug-like Wormulonian Slurm Factory guide), splitting him in half. Each half reforms into a half-sized version of Glurmo (complete with smaller-sized clothing, for some reason), with a strangely distorted voice. They show up again later in the series, still half-sized and odd-voiced.
• Generator Rex: In the episode "Mixed Signals," Rex slices the starfish E.V.O in half not knowing about its ability to divide, thus causing it to continually divide into smaller and smaller units, making it even harder to catch. Rex and co finally manage to subdue it after the creature is injected with a serum causing it to reassemble into its complete form.
• The New Adventures of Superman: In "Lava Men", Superman discovers that punching the Lava Man causes it to split into a bunch of blobs that grow into identical Lava Men.
• A series of shorts on Nickelodeon has a pair of Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain alien invaders who land on a planet inhabited by a little alien that split into two more when they first try to zap it with their laser guns. They take advantage of the alien's ability by zapping it numerous times, making more little aliens happily willing to serve their every need. Things go out of hand (as they always do for them) when too many zaps causes too many little aliens running around, which makes the pair zap them even more, which of course makes even more of them. Eventually, they're forced to leave the planet as it overflows with little aliens.
• In the Van Beuren Studios Rainbow Parade short "Parrotville Fire Department", one of the parrots tries to take down one of living little flames with an ax, but this just splits them into even smaller little fires.
• In an episode of ReBoot, the heroes (who have become characters in a dungeon-crawler) are attacked by two animated suits of armor. Dot casts a spell that ends up splitting them into four suits that are half the size. Dot casts the spell several times over, then Bob and Enzo start stomping.
• Samurai Jack: Aku has demonstrated the ability to split into multiple copies of himself when struck. Jack also took on one of these monsters in the beginning of another episode, capped off with a "WHO ELSE WANTS SOME!?!"
• Exaggerated in an episode of The Simpsons that spoofs The Sorcerer's Apprentice — Scratchtasia. Scratchy keeps cutting Itchy into pieces only to have each piece become a smaller copy. In exasperation, Scratchy rapidly cuts them until nothing is left but powder. He then sighs, inhaling the powder, which becomes powder-sized versions of Itchy that kill him from the inside out.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Patrick Star, being a fat pink starfish, demonstrated this in "Karate Star".
    SpongeBob: Patrick! Your arm!
    Patrick: Ha! Don't worry, Spongebob, I'm a sea star. My limbs grow back. See?
    SpongeBob: Hooray for regeneration!
    [later]
    Patrick #2: HIYAAA!
    SpongeBob: Patrick! I thought you gave up chopping!
    Patrick #1: Oh I did. Unfortunately, we sea stars have limbs that grow new bodies.
  • SpongeBob also demonstrated this ability at times (though it's usually Played for Laughs) such as in "The Sponge Who Could Fly" or "I had an Accident"
• Taz-Mania: When Taz blows up the eponymous thing in "The Thing That Ate the Outback", he finds himself facing an army of miniature things; each one as ravenous as the original.
• A recurring gag in several of Tex Avery's cartoons is after a character gets smashed by a heavy object they'll turn into multiple miniature versions of themself which will then fuse together to become full-sized again, one such example comes from "Big Heel-Watha" when Screwy Squirrel hits the title character with a mallet.
• Wakfu: Mocked during the season 1 Title Sequence, with Yugo jumping onto some sort of gelatinous cube monster who splits into many smaller, cutesy-looking cubes.

Real Life

• Many Real Life asteroids, especially the smallest ones, are believed to be fragments of larger ones destroyed in collisions with others long ago. In a few cases the orbits of some are so similar that are considered to form an asteroid family, created by the disruption of a larger body. Blasting apart a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth with a nuclear bomb might not be the best idea because instead of one big impactor, you'd end up with a bunch of smaller ones — still traveling in the same approximate direction, and possibly radioactive.
• Many simple-bodied organisms can reproduce asexually by splitting into smaller fragments. The planaria in particular is renowned for its regenerative capabilities: an individual can be cut into as many as eight equal pieces, each of which can survive and develop into a separate planaria.
• Cut an arm off a starfish and not only will the starfish grow another arm, but the arm can grow another starfish (so long as it's connected to a portion of the central disc). Early clam farmers, much to their horror, discovered this when they thought they had killed the starfish (by tearing it in half and tossing both pieces back into the water) eating their clams. Incidentally, starfish belong to the class Asteroidea.
• Mowing or stomping or pummeling weeds may kill the original plant or fungus, but the act of destruction will spread the seeds or spores around a wide area causing the problem to get worse. Many invasive weeds can resprout from cuttings and root fragments as well.
• If you smash a spider that's carrying an egg sack, there's a chance you'll end up with a lot of little spiders.
• Killing leaders of organized crime or terrorist networks doesn't simply cause their followers to give up and go home; instead, these followers fight to fill the power vacuum, becoming fragmented and generally more violent in the process. So instead of dealing with one well-disciplined organization, law enforcement suddenly has to deal with countless autonomous organizations. This effect has been observed in both the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels after major Drug Lords were killed or arrested and with Al-Qaeda after their leadership was killed and dispersed.
• Megakaryocytes, the cells responsible for producing platelettes, die and fragment into them when they hit the end of their lifespan.

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