Cloning Splits Attributes

"United you stand, but divided... you're a whole mess of weaklings."

— Lilo Pelekai, Lilo & Stitch: The Series, "Dupe"

Well, it's happened. By magic, science, or good old superpowers, a character has found themselves in a Me's a Crowd situation. But this should be fun right? For heroic characters, two (or more) heroes should have an easier time saving the world, while villains can wreak twice (or more) the havoc they did before.

But what's this? The former genius now needs his fingers to keep track of simple math. The once faster than light speedster can barely outrace a generic car. And the once-unstoppable powerhouse can barely lift a truck, let alone a mountain.

It turns out that rather than creating perfect clones, whatever has caused this turn of events actually divided an important aspect of the character, making the crowd individually, and even as a unit, weaker than the original whole. Typically the character has to rely on friends to get them back together, or hope for a second event to bring unity, but typically before that happens, Hilarity Ensues.

For this trope to occur, at least one definitive characteristic of the character or object being split has to show a noticeable decrease amongst the clones (and the original if they're also present).

This also has a use in explaining Conservation of Ninjutsu for characters that can split but don't simply overwhelm their opponents with numbers.

Sister trope to Literal Split Personality, in which it is the personality characteristics that are split, though they often overlap when it is a combination of personality traits that gives a character their strength.

A common property of an Asteroids Monster, with the smaller forms almost always having less health and attack power.

Can be a major weakness if attempting a Doppelgänger Attack, and is always a huge weakness if Synchronization is in play. If synchronization is not in play, you may get Kill One, Others Get Stronger.

Fusion Dance would be an inversion, wherein a single character is created from many and usually has more of a trait or power than any of their components, and for greater effect also takes on some of the components' eccentricities too.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ayakashi Triangle: When an ayakashi clone of Matsuri is made, one of them keeps the sex-transformation spell that was placed on Matsuri (which also includes silver hair and a Mark of the Supernatural), while the other has his original male form. It's not obvious whether the clone is the male (who would have been made without copying the spell) or the female (who would have been created from the removed spell).
• Blood Blockade Battlefront: Dr. Luciana Estevez is able to split herself into a large number of clones, but the more clones there are, the physically younger each one becomes. This makes the hospital where she works look like it's staffed by a bunch of preteen girls.
• Dragon Ball: This is the main drawback of the Tri-Form Technique, first used by Tien Shinhan. On the surface, it allows a fighter to quickly outnumber his foe by making up to four copies of themselves. The copies even retain the original's skills and intellect. The problem is that the overall power of the original is now split between however many clones have been created, meaning the new fighters are all individually weaker. This can put you at a significant disadvantage against a sufficiently powerful opponent, as Goku pointed out when Tien tried to use it against him. Interestingly, Piccolo finds a better use for the technique to provide him with an evenly matched training partner.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Mahito is able to split himself into clones using Idle Transfiguration. Unlike his original self, the clones are unable to perform Idle Transfiguration on others.
• Naruto: This is how the Shadow Clone Jutsu works. Unlike the normal basic Clone jutsu, shadow clones are not illusions or afterimages, but have corporeal form and are thus able to fight, take damage, act independently, and even perform more jutsu. What gives them form is that the user imbues each clone with half of their own chakra and the strength and durability of each clone is directly proportional to the amount of chakra in each, making higher numbers of clones far weaker and easier to destroy. The Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu is a forbidden technique because it is dangerous for most people to attempt due to the fractioning of chakra. Naruto, however, is able to master this technique because he can tap into the Kyuubi's chakra, giving him a near-infinite supply to divide amongst his clones, effectively loopholing his way out of the main downside to the technique. He's also seen using the clones to accelerate his training since the memories and experiences of each clone return back to him along with the chakra when they are destroyed.
• 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.)

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy: The titular character can create 3 clones of himself, later 5 then 7, each with a unique elemental power. According to Retak'ka in BoBoiBoy Movie 2, this is an inferior way of using his elemental powers. While splitting allows him to use them simultaneously and increases the number of active fighters, it ends up being weaker due to dividing power among multiple copies of BoBoiBoy. The most power-efficient way to use them is to split into 2 then fuse into one singular form which removes the numbers advantage but retains the ability to wield multiple elements at once along with gaining a new upgraded power.

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.

Comic Books

• In the Achille Talon album La Loi du Bidouble, Doctor Samson Fo-Pli's invention, powered by Green Rocks from a strange meteorite, can duplicate items and even people. Said clones are initially both identical to the original, but after a while, they reduce in size because of conservation of mass.
• Justice League of America: During the "Crisis on Earth-A!" storyline, the criminal Johnny Thunder of Earth-One takes possession of his heroic counterpart's Thunderbolt, using it to erase the JLA from existence. When the Justice Society step in (disguised as the JLA), Thunder orders the Thunderbolt to divide himself into six and fight them. The Thunderbolt complies, but privately notes that each of his copies will only be one-sixth as powerful. As a result, the JSA manage to get the better of him, and he and Thunder are forced to retreat.

Literature

• Dragonlance: Draconian Measures of the Kang's Regiment subseries introduces the Heart of Dracart which is capable of turning one Draconian into about thirty. The problem is that this is achieved by splitting the Draconian's soul, which causes the individual clones to have a marked loss of such things as willpower, aggressiveness, intellect, magical power, and skill. They also lose their after death attack, as there's not enough magic present to activate the spell. Kang himself observes the resultant clones also look like low res versions of the original, a fact that prevents him from realizing one of his own Draconians was subjected to the process as well. Additionally, the cloned Draconians have a marked decrease in vitality, only able to survive for about a thousand days before simply turning to dust. Sadly, this was being used by a mad (and narcissistic) Draconian general in an attempt to stave off his One-Gender Race 's eventual extinction, a plan he wanted to move forward with despite Kang finding the other gender.
• Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere: By stabbing himself with his gravity sword, Walter can use the gravity to spread his molecules out, splitting himself into two bodies. Because his body is just spread out over a wider area, each clone body is less dense than when he has a single body, and he still only has a single consciousness controlling both clones, so it's noted by Tenzou to be a difficult technique that's easy to disrupt. While Walter was able to duel Futayo, one of the strongest students from Musashi, to a standstill using a single body, using his clone technique he was easily overwhelmed by Milton, a small talking crow.
• In the third book in the Portal to Nova Roma series the main character gains the ability to create doppelgangers of himself. They all share attributes and psychic abilities (which rely on the mind and spirit, which are spread across all of his bodies). The catch is, he has to give each one enough classes and abilities to protect them, and every other body loses the ability to attain those classes. Thankfully, as an AI in a human body he has an incredible ability to multitask, so he gives each body a different role: Prime (leadership, battle), Crafter, Monk, and Mage.

Video Games

• Kingdom Hearts: Atlantica had an enemy called Sheltering Zone which would split into five or six Sea Neons, the undersea equivalent of a Shadow.
• Kirby: Planet Robobot: The Dedede Clone starts off fighting just like the original, but after being reduced to half HP, it splits into three smaller clones that deal less damage and lack the ability to inhale.
• Metal Gear Solid: Solid Snake and Liquid Snake are both clones of the legendary soldier Big Boss, but only Solid got Big Boss's superior "soldier genes" while Liquid was left with the inferior recessive genes. Or so Liquid was led to believe. It's actually the other way around. This is, of course, not how genetics work.
• XCOM2: The Codex enemy will create a clone if hit by an attack that fails to kill it. The original Codex's remaining hit points are split between it and its clone.

Tabletop Games

• Mayfair Games' DC Heroes RPG. The Split power allows a character to create duplicates of themselves. Each duplicate created reduces the Attributes (ability scores), Skills and Powers of the original and the duplicates by 1 AP each. Since beginning heroes have low APs, those who create too many duplicates can make themselves weaker than normal characters.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In various editions, some ooze monsters have the ability to split into two smaller oozes in response to certain types of damage. Each time they split, the two new monsters have exactly half the hit points of the original. They also suddenly become extra-vulnerable to spells and other abilities that target an area, like Fireball or Burning Hands. This causes some adventurers to take advantage of the fissioning property to effectively double or quadruple the effectiveness of such a spells.
  • Spells or powers allowing a character to duplicate himself are rare and mostly very short-lived:
    • The body outside body Wu Jen spell creates several duplicates of the caster, with about all of his/her attributes, but only one-quarter hit points and no spellcasting abilities (plus their equipment is mundane and not magical). Coupled with its short duration, it is mostly useful to Kung Fu Wizards.
    • The fission psychic power can split an Egoist (a psion specializing in psychometabolism) into two bodies. The duplicate has two negative levels, though (plus only mundane equipment, as above), and the character's power points reserve is divided between the two.

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive: After the change in magic, Nanase remarks that using her clone spell now splits her brainpower.
• This happens with ARC-Swat Member Harem in Grrl Power. Her main superpower is to manifest up to five (total) bodies but the more bodies she is manifesting means that each body is physically less capable. With all five bodies active each is as strong as a normal 19-year-old girl, albeit one who is very fit and well-conditioned. With a single body, her strength and agility are low-grade superhuman. There are also some secondary abilities related to how she projects her clones that allow a form of teleportation and the amount of mass they can carry goes up if there are fewer clones manifested. All that being said she finds being confined to a single body "limiting" and tries to avoid such situations but will temporarily reduce the number of bodies present if she needs to teleport a large mass with one clone (though that trick does require at least two bodies active to work).

Western Animation

• Aladdin: The Series: "Seven Faces of Genie" sees Genie attacked by an explosive device while on a diplomatic mission that separates him into seven separate Genies who all act weirder than average. It is later revealed that while the bomb may have initiated the separation, the actual cause was because Genie was being metaphysically torn apart trying to fulfill all the roles of a diplomat without success. Hence why the individual Genies were limited in their ability to use their magic as they could only apply it in a way that reflected the role they represented. Ultimately once Genie understands he was never expected to be perfect in any one role, he's able to pull himself together and regain access to his full power.
• Batman: The Animated Series: Riddler lures Batman into a virtual reality. Batman replicates himself again and again until there are 64 of him. Riddler duplicates himself each time to match, which was Batman's plan because by splitting his focus 64 times he renders himself incapable of maintaining the virtual world, and the simulation starts to collapse.
• Ben 10: Ultimate Alien: In the second episode Ben finds himself triple booked, so uses Echo-Echo, an alien with duplication abilities, before returning to human form. when he does this it is revealed that each clone has a different aspect of his personality: one with all Ben's aggression, one with all his sensitivity, and one who is laid back, best resembling normal Ben. Naturally he sends the sensitive Ben on a mission with Kevin and the aggressive one to his Girlfriend's Tennis Match, while laid back Ben goes to see a movie.
• Danny Phantom: In one episode Danny uses the Fenton Dream Catcher (designed to separate ghosts from non-ghosts) to split himself in two, one fully human, one fully ghost. The Human one is a laid-back slacker, while the Ghost one is a full-on stereotypical superhero. Later after going through the catcher again they remain separated, with the same personalities but they now possess, half of Danny's usual powerset.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: This is the power of Experiment 344, a.k.a. Dupe, from the episode of the same name. Everything he duplicates loses half of something when he does so, as discovered when Lilo remarks a duplicated ice cream is only half as tasty as the original. Stitch gets hit with the same effect and at first the duo are ecstatic as four Stitches are able to have four times as much fun. Unfortunately, with his powers reduced to a quarter strength, he's unable to fight against Gantu's new squad of fighting experiments and winds up captured. Lilo manages to trick Gantu into using Dupe to make a hundred copies each of his experiments, reducing THEIR powers and giving Stitch the advantage again. Ultimately Dupe finds a home making low-cal treats for health-conscious vacationers.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Normally the Tiger Talisman provides spiritual harmony, a power that allows the other talisman powers to be used in concert with each other. But if someone breaks it, it splits them into two versions of themselves, the Yin and the Yang. It should be noted this is not the same as good and evil, though the more aggressive and reckless Yang side does seem prone to Jerkass behavior. Note that the episode wrongly refers to the Yang side as dark and Yin as light (when it's actually the opposite), though it gets the Yin side being passive correctly.
• 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.
• Sonic Boom: The episode "Multi-Tails" sees Tails, upset over a failure in battle, decide to clone himself and form a brain trust to create superior inventions. Unfortunately, a flaw in the machine used causes the ten duplicates to each receive only a tenth of Tails's original intellect, leading to such bright ideas as seeing what a wall tastes like, attempting to fly while spinning his legs, and enjoying a Mehburger. Tails's friends naturally try to help, while keeping his clones from hurting themselves, but accidentally end up with one hundred doppelgangers. Fortunately Eggman decides to intervene so he doesn't start waking up to a lair full of nitwit foxes destroying everything and eating all his pudding.
• Ugly Americans: In "Kill, Mark... Kill", Mark Lily snaps his friend Leonard Powers's wand causing the wizard to explode. Before Mark can gather up Leonard's remains into an urn as instructed, the little blobs of flesh suddenly morph into dozens of miniature Leonards, each only possessed of a fraction of the original's sense of maturity and cynicism. As it turns out, the only way for OG Leonard to come back is for each of the minis to die, causing the others to inherent their portion of Leonard's soul until there is only one left.
• Xiaolin Showdown: The Ring Of The Nine Dragons Shen-Gon-Wu can do this if you're not careful. Designed to create up to nine copies of its wearer, Master Fung warned that only a fully trained monk has the inner strength to use the ring properly. Omi, ever full of hubris, believes this includes him and uses the ring. Sadly this splits up his maturity, intellect, skill, and fighting prowess while doing nothing to his ego, resulting in several near useless monks, whenever he uses the ring. Jack Spicer later challenges one of the copies to a showdown and wins the ring because the copies were separate for most of it. Fortunately Jack isn't any better equipped to use the artifact than Omi, much to Wuya's annoyance.

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