Fusion Dance

And that, my friends, is how the platypus came to be!^note Image by Pandaluna

"What Amethyst is attempting to say is Opal is an amalgam of our combined magical and physical attributes fused into a single entity."

— Pearl, Steven Universe, "Giant Woman"

Two separate characters merge to make one, usually more powerful, unified being. This is done either via Applied Phlebotinum, Functional Magic and/or Merging Machine. This can have a number of unpredictable results:

• The Composite — A and B merge; the end result C has aspects of both the characters that were part of the merge, including All Your Powers Combined and a fused personality. May also be a Combining Mecha or a Mix-and-Match Critter.
• Power Booster — Person B disappears, but the merging give A new powers or attributes. B may still be able to "speak" in A's mind. A still looks exactly the same as before, only has superficial changes (clothing, for example), or looks like a more powered-up version of A (and only of A).
• Switcher — A and B merge; they both keep their traits, but only one of them can be present at a time and they can now switch places as needed. If B is the powerful one but A lives the everyday life, then B will act as a Superpowered Alter Ego. May result in A or B occasionally controlling the other's body.
• Two Beings, One Body — A and B merge physically, but both personalities retain some control over the body. If full control is not possible on either side, they will need to cooperate to do so much as move. Even if that problem does not exist, the personalities might end up fighting for control if they do not agree on something they want. See also Evil Hand.
• Mixed Form Shapeshifter — A and B merge, and instead of choosing between two forms, they can combine them as they need, and can make a form with the advantages of both forms.

In most cases, this is to make a being more powerful than either would be alone (especially when it involves The Hero and The Rival since that invokes Yin-Yang Bomb), but there are some exceptions.

Compare Combining Mecha. See also All Your Powers Combined, Motif Merger, and Equippable Ally (for a less intrusive method of combining two characters). This trope may sound like a literal version of Mating Dance, but it's not. When the fusion goes horribly wrong, see Merging Mistake. If the components cannot easily be discerned in the result, see Fusion Dissonance. If the components have a romantic relationship, also see Romantic Fusion. If the fusion is done between siblings, it's a Sibling Fusion. If the fusion stays most of the time fused or is otherwise irreversible, it's a Permafusion.

Contrast Literal Split Personality and Self-Duplication, when an individual gets split into two or more beings, Split-Personality Merge, and Physical Attribute Swap, where two characters exchange physical traits instead of mixing them. Contrast also Grand Theft Me, which looks like the Power Booster or Switcher variant but with less cooperation and more hostility.

Not to be confused with Composite Character. Or with Together We Are X, which is just a way for The Team to introduce its members. Also unrelated to Amalgamated Individual, where the actions of multiple people are ascribed to a single person.

For music to go with this trope, click this link.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Fan Works
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Advertising

• During the commercial Choques for Axe/Lynx, we can see a big number of fusions occuring while a man drives though the city. The females merge with the objective of creating a better woman for the man. Watch it here.

• In the commercial for Patos snack, Nutty, a man gains the power to combine things and people after eating the snack. This is proven when he fused two beautiful girls, eating the result. Shortly after, he fused two dresses for her new girlfriend. His powers end up backfiring at him when he accidentally unfused his girlfriend back into two girls, who look rather pleased with him.

Asian Animation

• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 40, the lucky and unlucky dolls' cans pass their expiration date and the dolls merge with each other, forming a giant doll that the goats have to avoid.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Feral Shadow, Breathstealer and Urborg Panther can fuse to form the Spirit of the Night. Well, that's the flavor of it anyway.
  • Visions has a cycle of four mechanical chimeras — Brass-Talon Chimera, Iron-Heart Chimera, Lead-Belly Chimera, and Tin-Wing Chimera — each possessing a unique ability. Each chimera can be sacrificed to give its ability and a stat boost to one of the other three, representing the chimeras fusing into a single combined monster. The background of each card's art shows a sketch of the combined entity they can become.
  • The background fluff also has a Power Booster example: The plane of Rabiah was split into 1001 individual versions, each with a counterpart for each resident of the original, except for one man, Taysir, who was reflected only five times (one for each colour of mana). The black Taysir was manipulated into fusing with each other Taysir, which resulted in him becoming the most powerful planeswalker in the multiverse until Urza ascended.
  • Karona, an embodiment of Dominaria's mana, was born from the fusion of the angel Akroma, the planeswalker Phage, and the human Zagorka during the Apocalypse set.
  • Planes ocassionaly merge or split. This can be quite jarring to the inhabitants, as in Alara or Kamigawa, and it was actually the entire point of the creation of Rath. (Yawgmoth couldn't attack Dominaria directly, so he created Rath to send his troops to, and waited until Rath merged with Dominaria).
  • Mechanics-wise, Rath has a race called Spikes, 0/0 creatures (in other words, too weak to live) who come into play with +1/+1 counters (making them strong enough to live), but you can remove them to put them on other creatures, or for other effects. You can also equip one living weapon on another living weapon.
  • The expansion Eldritch Moon introduced a mechanic called "meld", which involves flipping two cards over and combining them into a new creature. Most of them are Body Horror examples, the result of Emrakul's power forcefully merging several living beings into monstrosities.
  • Grusilda, Monster Masher can combine any two creature cards from graveyards into one creature.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Fusion Monsters are the result of 2 or more monsters fused together by a card effect, with Polymerization being the most common one. Elemental Heroes, Cyber Dragons, Gem-Knights, Shaddolls, and Fluffals are some of the archetypes centered around Fusion Summoning. There's also Contact Fusion (employed by Neo-Spacians and Gladiator Beasts), which doesn't require a card effect but needs the materials to be on the field. Flavour-wise, most Fusions are Mergers that show aspects of both materials in one body. Certain Ritual, Synchro, Xyz, and Link Monsters are also designed as mergers of other monsters, but not nearly as often as Fusions (conversely, there are several modern Fusion monsters that aren't actually designed as mergers of other monsters, but are simply the bosses of their archetype, such as the Invoked Beasts).

Films — Animation

• Wreck-It Ralph: This is what happens when King Candy is eaten by a Cy-Bug in the climax — a Cy-Bug formatted to look and act like King Candy.

Films — Live-Action

• The serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel features the Billy Batson/Captain Marvel Switcher.
• The Station aliens in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey can body-slam into each other to form a larger, muscular alien.
• At the end of The Dark Crystal, the surviving urRu and Skeksis are rejoined into their original Urskek forms.
• In Dude, Where's My Car?, the Alien Jumpsuit Chicks merge together into one Super Hot Giant Alien.
• The main antagonist of The Hollow is the fusion of a coven of witches all merged into one and resurrected as a nigh unstoppable abomination of wood and fire.
• Pokémon Detective Pikachu: A method of Fusion Dance plays a key role in the plot. Mewtwo has the psychic ability to forcibly fuse humans and their Pokémon partners into a single, more powerful being. Detective Pikachu is the result of him doing so to Harry Goodman and his Pikachu in order to save the former from severe injuries, whereas Howard Clifford's Evil Plan is to force Mewtwo to do this to everyone in the world. In an interesting twist, it's explicitly noted that the fusion dance is only possible if one member's higher thinking is suppressed; Harry and Pikachu could only be fused while Harry was unconscious, while the villain has to use "R" serum to render Pokémon temporarily feral and mindless for his plan work.
• In RoboGeisha, cyborg assassin sisters Yoshie and Kikuyakko merge together, using their combined powers and weapons to defeat Hikaru and foil his plans.

Literature

• At the end of Apprentice Adept: Unicorn Point, after merging the worlds of Photon and Phaze together, The entire sentient population of Phaze became Switchers, merging with their opposite number from Photon. The only exceptions were Photon residents who hadn't been on the planet long enough to have gained an "other self," or those whose alternate selves happen to have died.
• In Burying the Shadow, the eloim naturally have sex through fusion dance. Occasionally the fusion will be permanent, resulting in a creature called a Harkasite. The practice is largely taboo by the beginning of the book in favor of more human sexual behaviors.
• Codex Seraphinianus has a page or two (which usually also doubles as cover art) of a human man and woman fusing together to form an alligator, and provides a very detailed and somewhat unsettling series of images of their bodies merging into a single creature.
• Cradle Series: Anything and anyone of any power that dies leaves behind a Remnant, a shadow of their power manifested in physical form. Becoming a Herald requires intentionally manifesting your Remnant without dying, then merging with it to reforge your body into a more perfect form. It is a pure contest of will, and generally no one will even explain the process to anyone below Archlord, the highest advancement level. Failure, at best, means horrific death without even leaving behind a Remnant. In Wintersteel, Lindon discovers that ascending to Monarch requires combining this process with being a Sage, who use Icons that are normally a case of Mutually Exclusive Magic. Yerin also accidentally ascends to Herald a level advancement early by willingly fusing with her blood shadow. In the next book, the Monarchs explain to Yerin that she damaged herself in ways that might never heal by doing this too early and in a non-standard way, so they heal her as her reward for winning the Uncrowned King tournament.
• In Deltora Quest, mild Steven never has to fear danger, for his brother Nevets dwells within him, and at the first sign of danger can rise to the surface and destroy every living creature within the reach of his fists. While Steven doesn't fear his brother, he has on several occasions suppressed his emergence, since Nevets doesn't distinguish between friend and foe and would kill even the young heroes if they got near him.
• The title character in the Dog Man books was created when a police officer and his police dog were injured in an accident, and the doctors saved them by putting the dog's head on the man's body.
• In the Eighth Doctor Adventures book Alien Bodies, it's mentioned the Krotons will ultimately become a single gestalt race, the Ixtricite, with another crystalline race called the Rhotons and some other race whose name the Doctor can't recall.
• Forest Kingdom: In Book 4 (Beyond the Blue Moon), it's discovered that the Lady of the Lake, who is all that remains of one of the last Transient Beings, fused with the spirit of Queen Eleanor, Rupert's mother, when she died.
• In The Gods Themselves, the aliens come in three different genders (Rational, Parental and Emotional) who use this to have sex and create their mature, final solid form, the Hard Ones.
• In the Hainish novel City of Illusions, two minds who have lived sequentially in the same body (after one was erased and the other grew in its place, then the first one was restored) end up in joint control. Since their enemies have told a different story to each of them, they are able to see through the lies by working together.
• In Heretical Edge, some people willingly let themselves be possessed by a Seosten, resulting in the Power Booster variant; Seosten can use their perfect memory, communicate with their host, control some of the host's powers, and apply temporary multiplicative boosts to all of the person's natural and supernatural abilities. The trouble is finding a Seosten willing to do this..., as very few of them will cooperate with races they see as inferior.
  • Apollo was revealed by WoG to offer this to various thrill-seekers so that together they could pull dangerous stunts without him being recognized.
  • Enguerrand, though not a Seosten himself, has their powers. In addition to possessing his opponents, he occasionally possesses Gabriel Prosser to supercharge Prossor's already impressive powers.
  • Jophiel and Elisabet form a romantic version of this.
  • After learning she was possessed by Tabbris, Flick proposes this.
  • Chayyiel, already one of the most powerful Seosten, wants a powerful host she can do this with. She had her sights set on King Arthur before Puriel took him out of play.
• INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!? has fusion as a subset of Orange magic. This fuses two or more people together to create someone with the combined abilities of both. If some of the participants were injured to begin with, the fusion will have less severe injuries as their health is essentially averaged. This does have risks, such as the fusion being weaker or even unable to use magic at all, and it can even end up as a horrific chimeric abomination. The main example of fusion in the series is a major spoiler: when any two or more of the girls in the main cast fuse, the result is always the Goddess of Dawn.
• In the Jacob's Ladder Trilogy, one source of conflict is that the divided Angels must perform one to reunite into a single AI capable of controlling the entire ship. However, only one mind will be in control of the worldsoul produced by the fusion, and each Angel wants to be the dominant one. Ultimately, Rien's interference in the process results in the birth of the Angel Nova, which has a unique identity of its own rather than the mind of any of its components.
• The Last Dragon Chronicles: This happens when the Fain "commingle." By the end of Book Four, David also contains Ingavar, Thoran, Dr. Bergstrom, and G'lant. That's a lotta people in one body.
• The Locked Tomb: This turns out to be the Dark Secret behind lyctorhood. A necromancer devours the soul of their cavalier, granting fighting skills and an infinite source of energy. Normally this is the "power booster" version, with the cavalier and little remaining of them beyond instinct, but an improved version allows them to switch control.
• The Composite happens during a battle with Lucifer in the book Magnus by Matthew Dickens.
• In The Moment of the Magician, Jon-Tom fights a spellsinging duel against four demonic creatures, whose bodies gradually fuse into a literal one-man-band. This results in a "fusion dance" of a different sort, when Jon-Tom spellsings it/them into submission with his rendition of the Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance", and they explode in a miniature mushroom cloud!
• Michael Moorcock is obviously very fond of this trope.
  • The Elric Saga: Elric temporarily merges with two of his Eternal Champion alter egos from different worlds in order to save the multiverse. They become a three-headed, six-armed superbeing. An another opportunity, he merges with three of them.
  • That merger was in The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, an Elric of Melnibone novel by Michael Moorcock. Erekose, Elric, Corum and Hawkmoon join together to form the "Four Who Are One" to fight Agak and Gagak.
  • In The Final Programme, the protagonist merges with his (female) rival to create a hermaphroditic superhuman.
  • In The Dreamthief's Daughter, the protagonist, an alternate-universe Elric, merges with him in order to overcome many challenges.
  • And in ''The City in the Autumn Stars"", something similar is attempted, but the experiment fails because they just don't have the technology yet.
• In Paths Not Taken, two minor villains - a married couple who'd bargained to ensure they'd never be parted — incur some karmic retribution for their misdeeds, and are fused into a single monstrous creature. It's strongly implied, albeit not stated outright, that the resulting creature will become the Lamentation.
• Oddly Enough: At the end of "The Japanese Mirror", by accepting his anger as a part of himself and calling it back to him, Jonathan absorbs his evil double.
• In Paradise Lost, of all places, this is how angels are said to make love, melting together and just loving each other. Note well that no explicitly female angels are ever shown in the poem... So yes, an old Puritan man did this trope centuries before any other example you're likely to name.
• In the Paradox Trilogy, phantoms come in sizes ranging from smaller than a finger to larger than a planet. It turns out that larger phantoms are formed by many smaller phantoms fusing together.
• Primal Warrior Draco Azul: In the short story "Reminiscence", the Mayan death-god Hunhau reveals that he and Uacmitun Ahau were once a single entity before splitting into two beings so that he could have a right hand upon becomeign the Top God. Pushed to the brink of defeat by Draco Azul, Hunhau and Uacmitun Ahau merge back into their original form, Cizin.
• At the end of Thief of Time Lobsang Ludd and Jeremy Clockson, temporal duplicate sons of the Anthropomorphic Personification of Time, merge with each other to become a Composite. (Jeremy has an innate and very precise sense of timekeeping; Lobsang has an instinctive understanding of the work of the History Monks, and together he has the full powers of his mother and enables her to retire.) The Composite decides to keep being called Lobsang, though, because Jeremy was pretty screwed up and never really liked being Jeremy.
• Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle: Gatouhan's Drag-Ride has the special ability of fusing living organisms with other living organisms or inorganic matter with other inorganic matter (but not living organisms with inorganic matter). He can fuse multiple Abyss to create hybrids with the powers of their constituents, such as Gargoyles that have the invisibility of Phantoms. He can also fuse anything used to attack his Drag-Ride and either shoot it back as projectiles or convert it into additional armor. When at a disadvantage, he fuses with his two allies (with their consent), healing his injuries with their flesh and upgrading his Drag-Ride into a three-headed one with the combined capabilities of all three.
• Universal Monsters: After realizing the monsters have escaped from their movies, Joe and Captain Bob initially theorize that Dracula has fused with a real person and taken him over. It's subverted in his case, but the climax of book 2 confirms that some of the others did merge with real people when they were first released from the films, starting with Bela the gypsy and his mother Maleva. It happens again in book 6, where Larry Talbot's Wolf Man is re-released and merges with a different host from before.
• In Simon Hawke's The Wizard of Santa Fe, Billy Slade starts out as a teenager who shares his body with the spirits of two millennia-old archmages. When Billy suffers a lethal wound, both possessing spirits simultaneously sacrifice their own energies to save his life, and the three of them undergo a Fusion Dance, transforming Billy's body into an adult that shares their physical traits and magical aptitudes, while blending aspects of their personalities with his.
• The twins, Kaguya and Yuzuru, from "Date A Live" are originally one person named Yamai Kazamachi. Both temporary fused back into Yamai Kazamachi to fight against Beast in volume 22. Their fusion ends shortly after the fight is over.

Podcasts

• Eidolon Playtest: After killing President Henry Dracula, Harvey absorbs his essence, legally becoming the president and gaining his powers in the process.

Roleplay

• In Yu-Gi-Oh! East Academy Denero and Meteor are forced in to doing this during the duel against his parents, proving the latter's conviction but also hoping to gain the power to win Marcus seeming to be unable to keep a monster on the field for them had not helped matters.

Tabletop Games

• In Deadlands, a Harrowed is formed by fusing a deceased man and a demon. It's a Switcher, because only one of the two is in control at any time, but they share the powers pool. In case of the good Harrowed, it's also Enemy Within.
• Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition:
  • Edition 3.5 has a high-level power called fusion, for Psions who specialize in Psychometabolism. The power lets the user meld with a willing creature and take on all their abilities, combining hit points, the best of saves, skills, attacks, and ability scores. If both use psionics they even combine their power point pools.
  • The Book of Exalted Deeds introduces Channeling, which allows Celestials (Outsiders from the good-aligned planes) to merge physically with a mortal (as an equivalent to the fiends' Demonic Possession). It works only on willing mortals and gives them serious boost to mental stats, and share all skills and supernatural powers of the Celestial. Powerful Celestials have this as a power, and lesser ones can profit of Channeling too if the mortal cast the appropriate spells.
  • From Magic of Eberron, the spell leap into animal allows a Ranger or Druid to merge with a willing animal (usually their animal companion), leaving only the beast visible. Good for infiltration, but hardly for combat since the caster cannot use any spell or power while merged.
• Exalted:
  • There's a Solar Circle Sorcery spell called "Unity of the Closed Fist" found in the White Treatise. It creates the composite variant but adds all the elements of the different types of Exaltations involved. It can combine up to five individual Exalts, thus the name — five fingers making a single closed fist.
  • Alchemicals have a version known as Synthesis of Divine Affiliation, which can affect six instead. However, the only way that you'll be using it to fuse one of each caste of Alchemical is when everything has gone to hell, because the sixth caste are supposed to go completely unseen until at least four varieties of brown gooey substance have hit the fan.
• Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined: The Amalgam can incorporate other characters into their system as they progress. Those who take the "Equal and Opposite" move also have a rival who is the fusion of the rivals of all the Amalgam's hearts.
• Shadowrun has the Inhabitation Creature Power. This power is mostly seen in Insect Spirits. Under the Fifth Edition rules, to summon an Insect Spirit, it must inhabit a living or dead vessel. When an Insect Spirit inhabits a body, it may take on one of three forms: True form, Hybrid form or Flesh form. All three resemble Power Booster in that the spirit gains a physical body although hybrid and flesh forms also gain some or all of the vessel's knowledge and/or skills as well as gaining other extra powers. The Hybrid form also resembles The Composite. In all cases, the Spirit has full control over the host.
• The Ritual of Union in Unknown Armies is a power-booster version, with a few twists.^note Neither participant knows in advance which personality becomes dominant, the "winner" can choose which body's form to use, and the whole process is extremely mentally stressful.
• In early editions of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 one of the rewards that the Chaos Gods could grant their followers to be merged with a daemonic beast, such as a Juggernaut of Khorne, a Flamer of Tzeentch or a Steed of Slaanesh. The resultant composite being had the abilities of both its original mortal form and the daemonic beast, while its physical form was also a combination of the two.
• The World of Darkness:
  • The Incarnate Inheritance from Beast: The Primordial is an example of the Composite variation. The Beast must unite her human Life and her monstrous Legend into a single Myth, rewriting the narrative of the Primordial Dream so that it now revolves around her. If she succeeds, she is able to fully merge her human self and her Horror into a single entity with the strength of a Horror and the freedom of a human.
  • In Geist: The Sin-Eaters, Sin-Eaters are the power booster type, having a Geist that fused its soul with theirs, giving them ghost-like powers and abilities, as well as near immortality. The Caul Manifestation takes this one step further, as the Geist (which is usually just a presence in the back of the Sin-Eater's head) merges with the Sin-Eater, enhancing his form and granting him new powers.
  • Old World of Darkness:
    • The Blood Brother bloodline of vampires naturally came in packs that could fuse together into a grotesque mashup.
    • The vozhd war ghouls, produced by Tzimisce vampires by taking around a dozen or two ghouls (usually human) who were then fleshcrafted into one gargantuan near-mindless fleshy engine of destruction and mayhem. Their heyday was during the dark ages - not only is modern usage of them too attention-grabbing in most situations, modern advances in weaponry mean that they're much easier to defeat than they were before, usually making them a waste of resources.
• In Zweihänder, the Fell Knights and Havoc Conjurers are already elite foes that'll easily crump the average player character. But things can get worse, a Fell Knight and a Havoc Conjurer can undergo a Black Magic ritual that'll fuse them together into a new being known as a Dread Count. The Dread Count is a mutant Magic Knight that's more powerful than either of its former selves in their respective fields.

Toys

• BIONICLE:
  • Any three Toa of different elements can merge and form a Toa Kaita. The only exception is a Toa of Light and an evil Toa of Shadow (technically not a Toa anymore, as Toa means "hero"), since the two elements cancel each other out. The Kaita fusion merges the three minds into one, creating a new being wielding their powers along with a boost in strength. Other creatures have also shown the ability to form a Kaita, most notably the mechanical Bohrok, Bohrok Va, Bohrok-Kal and Rahkshi. So far, only the Rahkshi have gained new powers from merging. If a Kaita's mind loses concentration, it will split into the individual beings again. In addition to Kaita there are also a Matoran Nui and Turaga Nui, which combines six beings instead of three. However, these tend to last shorter, as the concentration required to maintain it is immense. Legend has it that a Toa Nui could be formed, rivaling even the power of the Great Spirit Mata Nui. However, Word of God says that it is not possible.
  • The Kaita so far shown are Akamai (Tahu, Onua and Pohatu), Wairuha (Lewa, Gali and Kopaka; plus its upgraded Toa Nuva version), Bohrok Kaita Za (Tahnok, Nuhvok and Pahrak (coincidentally the same elements as the Toa)), Bohrok Kaita Ja (Lehvak, Gahlok and Kohrak; plus it's Kal-version), Rahkshi Kaita Za (Tuhrak, Lehrak, Kuhrak) and Rahkshi Kaita Vo (Vohrak, Guurahk and Panrahk). Yes, BIONICLE characters of the same elements and species tend to have similar sounding names; why are you asking?
  • Also Takutanuva in BIONICLE: Mask of Light, the merged light/dark being formed when Takanuva switches masks with Makuta while submerged in Energized Protodermis. It appears to be a Composite type, although the personality seems more akin to Takanuva than Makuta. This was more or less Fridge Logic-ed when it was revealed that this was because Makuta's plan meant he decided to remain more-or-less dormant.
  • All these are represented by using the instructions put together from the individual BIONICLE instruction manuals to build a new, bigger model from all their parts combined. The spiritual predecessors of the BIONICLE, the Slizer and RoboRiders, also had this feature.
• LEGO's Mixels line has this as its main gimmick. If two Mixels merge they'll either become a Mix, which is a Power Booster/Mixed Form Shapeshifter with one Mixel dominant and the other giving them their powers, or they'll become a Murp, which is a misshapen Composite that has its own personality and the Mixels' powers with no control over them. If three Mixels of the same tribe merge they'll become a Max, which is a large bestial Composite.

Visual Novels

• In SC2VN, Stunt controls one side's units while Reva handles the economy, just like in Starcraft II's archon mode above. Stunt lampshades it.
• The idol cover girl, Chuua Churam, in Chu x Chu Idol is a fusion of the vampire girl, Chuchu, and a normal human girl, Chiyu, when they kissed each other. In their fused state, Chuchu is in full control of their body while Chiyu remains conscious of what's happening. The protagonist, Kensuke, is able to hear Chiyu within Chuua Churam after becoming their slave while others couldn't. In the sequel game, another new pair of heroines can fuse together to become another idol girl named "Chuuno Churam".

Web Animation

• Mike Salcedo's Alphabet Lore series's characters can become by spelling their names and turning themselves into the object they want to turn into. For instance, when G used morse code, he summoned C, A and B to spell CAB.
• DEATH BATTLE!: Naturally this trope would show up in the season 9 finale, Gogeta VS Vegito, with both the pair of saiyans, Goku and Vegeta, doing their respective fusions to determine which fusion dance is better, Metamoran dance or the Potara Earrings. It is judged that the Potara Fusion is better due to Goku not needing to lower his power to match Vegeta's with the earrings and that the Potara fusion last longer than the Fusion dance. At the end of the episode, Boomstick wishes with the dragon ball to fuse with Wiz, though we do not get to see what it looks like.
• Dreamscape: The Possessor Ghost gives up its "life" to fuse with Melinda to become Ghost Melinda in Episode 7.
• DSBT InsaniT: At one point, Darkness Duck uses Darkness Snake's headless body as a replacement for his string. He becomes much stronger in the process.
• Done by Dewey and Louie in Ducktalez 3, but this ends up being their undoing as they argue over their fused name.
• Eskimo Bob: In the special "Return of the girl", Bob and Alfonzo (or rather their clones) can do the Composite example by doing the animation the originals do in the beginning of each episode. The Penguin and Sams can do the power booster example with the help of the alien business men. And The Fish in a space ship can do this with the Fishticons.
• In the Sonic the Hedgehog fanimation Nazo Unleashed, Sonic and Shadow fuse into Shadic after assuming their Hyper forms.
• SMG4: The [1] of the series, Niles, merges with his fellow Meme Guardian SMG0 to form the universe-hopping Eldritch Abomination known as Zero. When Melony is forced to Mercy Kill Axol in the finale of "WOTFI 2021", this only succeeds in splitting SMG0 and Niles from each other.
• Red vs. Blue explores multiple examples. Project Freelancer was a military experiment that implanted AI partners in the minds of their top soldiers, intending to get the Power Booster result. However, some Agents instead became Composites as the personalities and desires of the human and AI became intermingled. And in at least one case, a powerful and dangerous AI is able to hide within a host as a Switcher, eventually taking over the body to wreck some havoc. Some AIs even adopt a new title based on a fusion between their partner's name and their original Greek letter designation, such as O'Malley, a fusion of the Omega AI and its host Allison.
• The Movie of TVTome Adventures ends with Alpha and Zetto merging their characters to make the far stronger "AlphaZet." Bizarrely, the merged form doesn't merge their characteristics at all, simply having the left side of the body look like one character and the right side looking like the other. Both of them have equal control over the resultant body, and have to work in perfect sync. This is never mentioned again until the season three finale where, in a subversion of the usual trend of the movie having no effect on the series as a whole, they use the merged form again.

Webcomics

• Akuma's Comics has the Power Booster version where Akuma permanently bonds with his Sprite Eater-created Evil Knockoff Shin Akuma. Late in the comic it's revealed that not only is Shin Akuma still alive, having taken the identity of Oni, but ends up fighting Akuma for control of his/their body.
• In Ansem Retort, Axel and Zexion were somehow able to fuse into Andrew Jackson.
  Zexion: You're a killer and I'm a politician. Fusing us would just turn us into Andrew Jackson!
• During the Inert Vessel arc of Awful Hospital, when the Dolphin (still partially embedded in the mangled corpse of Doctor Balmer)◊ attempts to follow the Exvironator into the pool of embalming fluid, the exvironator-contaminated Flush turns it and Balmer into Balphin◊. Before that, Fern's allies merge in a direct reference to Steven Universe.
• In the Bravoman comic, the heroes discover that by destabilizing Anti-Bravoman's anti-particles (by beating him up) the resulting vortex fuses them into Bravomaster: a powerful and completely serious giant. When repeating the fusion at the end of the series Waya-Hime joins in, which gives the resulting fusion ninja abilities but doesn't effect the personality.
• The Feyn in City of Somnus can merge with their animus (animal companions made of pure magic) into Amalgams, somewhat monstrous, but nigh unstopabble. In chapter 6, Paollo discovers he has an ability to put his soul in another, creating something similar, except with more drawbacks and less control.
• Changelings in Charby the Vampirate gain new bodies by merging with and replacing the originals.
• Several companies from Consolers, like Square Enix and Koei Tecmo, are "merges" — two companies merged together into one character. When companies merge with each other, it turns them into one character with combined traits and looks from both of them.
• In Drowtales, this is one way to make the "Taint" safe. By becoming one, truly one, with the demon it will no longer be able to harm you. Given that this requires merging with it on the spiritual and mental level as well, it's still pretty risky.
• In Extra Fabulous Comics #212, a piece of cheese and a burger try the trope. It turns worse than you would expect.
• An El Goonish Shive filler strip shows the result of a Ellen/Nanase fusion in the style of Dragon Ball Z via fusion dance.
• Near the end of Fite!, Guz is absorbed into Lucco. It's mostly a Power Booster type, but there's a little Composite, as Lucco has Guz's eyes after the fusion.
• Gunnerkrigg Court:
  • In "Memories of the Worthless", Ysengrim, having been given Coyote's strength, uses it to kill and eat Coyote, taking everything else from him. The composite calls himself Loup, and claims Ysengrim and Coyote are both dead, although he later admits Ysengrim is still inside him somewhere. The episode which introduces the character properly is called "Neither", referring to how he's neither of the original characters. (Annie says "I liked Coyote, and I loved Ysengrim, but I don't like you, Loup.")
  • Loup later pulls in a different Annie from an alternate timeline, leaving two separate Annies - one who lived in the Court for several months and another who stayed with Loup in the forest. They eventually learn to deal with each other, but after an encounter with Zimmy and Gamma they reform into a single Annie, with all the memories of both.
• This is the premise behind the "Divine Union" in Holystone. Mortals already share their bodies with gods as a matter of day-to-day life, but the Union combines them into one more powerful creature.
• In Homestuck, during Act 6, Gamzee forcibly prototypes a Kernelsprite with the bodies of Tavros and Vriska, creating the unholy abomination known as Tavrisprite. He later does the same with Erisolsprite and Fefetasprite.
  • Other sprites have elements of this, due to being prototyped twice.
  • Lord English turns out to essentially be a fusion of Equius, Dirk's autoresponder, half of Gamzee, and of course, Caliborn. By extension, this also applies to Doc Scratch. Lil Cal is the Soul Jar that allowed all of this to happen.
• In Jack the twin demonic personifications of Gluttony often share the same body with one in control of it and the other's face sticking out of the crotch, switching seemingly at random.
• In the animated webcomic Kid Radd, the Damsel in Distress love-interest Sheena (who subverts her assigned role at every turn) winds up merging with what was, essentially, a dying, future version of herself. In her normal form, she's an NPC — Invulnerable Civilian, but incapable of attacking... her future self is a Hero, however, and thus capable of powerful attacks, while sacrificing the inherent invulnerability of the NPC. Thus, this is a Switcher type.
  • Kid Radd also contains a structure designed with Lost Technology that causes Composite fusions of characters. This is crucial to the villain's Evil Plan: to have either Crystal or Radd's group gather an army of the most powerful sprites and have them fuse together, then assimilate their fused form as a Power Booster. It would have worked, if only Crystal fused herself with an NPC.
  • There is also Gnarl and Kobayashi, two minor villains who end up accidentally fusing themselves by the same method as the Big Bad. They are eventually separated, but they learn to fuse themselves again whenever necessary, becoming the Composite.
    • Also resulting in one of the better lines from the comic: I'm... we. I mean, us are me.
• Kill Six Billion Demons,
  • Demons can reduce themselves to their mask, which can be worn by someone else to merge into a powerful "devilskin warrior". They rarely do this, because unless the person has been hollowed out into an Empty Shell it's very dangerous should their personalities conflict. Allison and Cio do this to become Allicio.
  • In Book 5, Allicio merges theirself with the angel White Chain and becomes an entity called The Fool: Aspected Chaos, which appears to be more unified and powerful.
• In Magience, several slimes merge into a giant Slime Golem.
• Parodied in Paranatural with the "friendship fusion", which is really just three kids standing on each other's shoulders.
• Parodied in Problem Sleuth, in which Ace Dick uses Belly Of The Whale to absorb his alternate form clones, Zombie Ace Dick and Fiesta Ace Dick, gaining their powers. This results in Ace Dick becoming himself, since he doesn't have the imagination to come up with a suitable combined form.
• In Redeem, every character can fuse himself with another via magic using the Composite Modus Operandi.
• In Shotgun Shuffle, while shopping for toys on Black Friday, Ellie's second-oldest sister Tarragon and her youngest sister Pumpkin randomly fuse together.
  Ellie: They seemed to have gotten into a huge mess and... "combined their powers."
  Ginger: They formed Captain Planet?
  Ellie: I think it's called Tarrakin.
  Pumpagon: We are Pumpagon!
• Several rather horrific examples appear in Stand Still, Stay Silent:
  • Giants are either trolls that have managed to grow to gargantuan size, or are simply made up of many trolls that have all fused together, creating a disgusting abomination. Some giants that have been shown have had multiple human bodies comprising some of their parts, and can become so huge and mutated they can't even move.
  • A kade is even worse than a giant, since it works on a spiritual level and isn't limited to non-immune people. By looking into its eyes, even in the dream world, the kade can infect and corrupt a person's soul, taking control of them. Afterwards, the person will usually merge with the kade, and a single kade can house hundreds of souls.
    • After Hilgja was infected by a kade, she spread the illness to her village and corrupted Ensi. Despite Ensi's attempt to save Hilgja's soul, it was implied that both women have joined with the kade.
  • Sleipnope started out as a regular murderghost (a person who was given a 'cure' for the illness, which killed them, leading them to go insane as their spirit was left to wander for all eternity) however, they killed and fused with a horse beast and several other trolls and spirits, giving them the appearance of the mythical horse, Sleipnir, leading fans to name them after it.
• Wonderlab: This is the ability of My Sweet Home. It normally takes the size of a tiny dollhouse, but any employee that becomes overly attached to My Sweet Home fuses with it, becoming giant in the process. This is a reference to Alice in Wonderland, where Alice grows to giant size while trapped inside the White Rabbit's house.

Web Original

• Word of god states that this will happen with Trayen and previous osmovessels Avatar-style in Series 3 of Phaeton.
• Whateley Universe:
  • The twins Phobos and Deimos sometimes fuse into a more powerful being called Fury that has the heads and limbs and tails of both of them, along with a fear aura so powerful that it rips up reality around itself. Later on, Phobos dies, Fury is created by fusion with others.
  • Gog and Magog can fuse into a larger being called Gogmaggog.

Websites

• In The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, Briar ends up harnessing the power of a time-paradox to merge with her Bad Future Evil Counterpart, Acantha. Her benevolent personality remains dominant, but she gains some of Acantha's powers in the process and her personality is slightly altered.
• In DeviantArt, this is quite common. Most of the fusions are between females however. If the fusion is between a male and a female, expect the result to be female or female-ish, but it's a rare occasion to find it ending with a male result, especially if the result is rather muscular.
• The Forum 3000 question-and-answer site once had the "Bitter Crack Baby" and "Jet Li" personas merge to create "Bitter Jet Li" (with a userpic twice the size of the other personas).
• Gaia Online had a subplot where Gino had, unbeknownst to everybody (possibly including himself), fused with his "dead" father, making him into the badass superhero The Masque at the expense of making him unpredictable and violent, particularly towards Ian (who felt likewise about him/them). The reveal came when the local Mad Scientist injected him/them with a catalyst that caused them to split, ending that plotline and setting up the next with an Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
• Lioden: To defeat Apophis at the end of the Rise of the Serpent event, you must merge with the god you sided with during the event. The merged being is primarily your lion but grown to Godzilla-size due to being infused with godlike power, with the traits of the god altering its appearance. While control over it is technically split, it’s the god who takes charge during most of the battle.
• Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG:
  1462. Dwarves do not have the racial ability to merge into a larger, more powerful dwarf.

Web Videos

• Aldrivers, Devourer of Cos: Napoleon Bonermight forms this way, visualized in the vein of Dragon Ball while verbally referencing Steven Universe.
• As part of a Running Gag on Game Grumps, the Grumps chronically confuse ProJared with Jirard The Completionist, and at one point make a joke of a possible composite fusion of the two, dubbing the result "ProJirard The Finishist." By the time that the Grumpcade episode for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time came out, they got both Jared and Jirard to appear simultaneously on the show, and made a joke introduction of the two fusing into ProJirard the Finishist, Dragon Ball Z style. They also make references to the character by having Jirard and Jared say the same things at the same time.
• Lanipator and Kirran of Team Four Star can do the fusion dance to become Lirran. See Xenoverse 18, Drunklstiltskin 3 and some fanart.

Real Life

• Male anglerfish are Power Boosters to the extent that some aren't even physically capable of eating. Essentially being the fish equivalent of drone bees, their sole purpose in life is to sniff out a female (multiple times their size) and bite into them, releasing an enzyme that slowly reduces the male to a pimple with gonads for a ready supply of semen whenever the female's ready to lay eggs.
• Primary Symbiosis is the biological version of this, where two organisms (a microbe with another microbe or another larger multicellular host) become so necessary for each others' survival that they essentially merge with each other. Bacteria can become incorporated within the actual cells of their host, to the point of almost being considered organelles. This is, in fact, the origin of mitochondria (thought to be descendants of an ancient alpha-proteobacteria) and chloroplasts (descended from a cyanobacteria), as well as eukaryotic cells themselves!
• Chimerism and mosaicism are phenomena revolving around a fusion dance between two embryos very early on in their development into a new animal. A chimera has cells from both twins, with each individual cell containing the DNA of one twin; the proportions vary from case to case, ranging from a few scattered cells here and there to patchwork-like patterns to different organs originating from different individuals, resulting in effectively two bodies being merged into one complete organism.
• A number of modern countries previously existed as smaller entities before fusing into one larger state:
  • Germany and Italy were each a collection of smaller kingdoms and principalities before they were each united under a single monarch in the 19th century. Germany did this again after the Cold War, when the capitalist West Germany merged with the formerly communist East Germany to become Germany as we know it today.
  • Many of the provinces and states that make up Canada and the United States were once all separate British colonies. However, they eventually chose to fuse themselves into larger countries by establishing federal governments. Canada is an unusual variant in that many of its founding fathers originally wanted to merge all of the British North American colonies into one single big colony and erase all the provincial borders, although they settled on a federal system due to the protests of some of the representatives from the Maritimes, and even moreso the protests of Lower Canada/Quebec.
  • The United Kingdom was once the separate countries of England, Scotland, Wales and part of Ireland. England eventually conquered Wales and Ireland, even as it merged the English and Scottish Crowns together. Most of Ireland eventually became an independent republic, although the provinces of Northern Ireland remain part of the U.K.
  • What are now the provinces of the Netherlands were different counties governed by Spain in the 16th century. When the Dutch Rebellion began they decided to work together, and that's how the United Republic was born, with roughly the same borders as the Netherlands has today.
  • Ditto for (some at least) cities, that as they have growth have absorbed close towns that have ended as districts on them. Despite this they tend to keep their former aspect (layout of the streets, low houses, a large church in the center^note At least in Spain. One example in its capital, Madrid: Vallecas, the building of the former town council...)
  • Japan has tons of former towns and villages that have been incorporated into cities over the years, particularly outside the metropolises of Tokyo and Osaka, where rural settlements underwent a spate of being consolidated into districts of their nearest larger cities (which on their own typically have populations closer in range to that of a medium-sized town in the UK or USA). To see this in action, go to Wikipedia and take a look at cities in Japan's more rural prefectures, particularly those of the Chubu and Tohoku regions, and you'll find plenty of districts that once used to be separated from the cities they're now a part of.
  • Spain came about by the union of the Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, as a result of the 1469 marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, both members of the same House of Trastámara. However, Aragon and Castile remained legally distinct until the early 18th century, when Castile forcibly integrated Aragon following the War of the Spanish Succession.
  • Romania was born out of two separate Romance-speaking kingdoms in Eastern Europe: Wallachia and Moldavia. Unlike many of its neighbors, there was no historical precedent for a united Romania before 1859, the year Wallachia and Moldavia united.
  • Tanzania is a union of two separate territories in East Africa: Tanganyika (a British, formerly German, colony) and Zanzibar (an offshoot of the Sultanate of Oman).
  • Somalia is composed of two European Somali colonies (Italian Somaliland and British Somaliland) that chose to unite upon independence. Another colony, French Somaliland, became the separate country of Djibouti upon independence.
  • Much like Germany, Yemen is made up of two separate countries that united after the Hole in Flag. North Yemen was formerly an Ottoman colony which became an independent state after World War I. South Yemen was a former British colony that gained independence as a communist state during the Cold War.
  • North and South Vietnam united in 1976, at the conclusion of the Vietnam War. Actually a case of failed Balkanization, as the country was united before 1955, being separated as a result of Cold War politics and Western meddling, much like the Korean peninsula (except, of course, that Korea never reunified).
• Grafting of plants is a common agricultural practice, particularly for fruit trees and for ornamental plants such as roses or potted cacti.
  • A botanical sculptor at Syracuse University is in the process of constructing an orchard of grafted-together fruit trees, each of which will bear 40 different varieties of stone fruit (apples, peaches, plums, cherries, nectarines, almonds). In springtime, every branch of each tree will bloom in a different color.
• The Universe loves this trope. From the smallest scales to the largest ones:
  • Nuclear fusion as mentioned above. 'Nuff said. Much earlier, just after the Big Bang, free quarks and antiquarks combined to form protons and neutrons as well as antiprotons and antineutrons respectively.
  • Planet formation^note Terrestrial planets. Gas giants, except for their cores, form on a different way. is considered to take place in the form of grains of dust and ice combining to small groups (planetesimals) that merge to make protoplanets, and so on until planets are finally formed. The process continues up to this day in our Solar System, whenever an asteroid or comet collides with Earth or another planet.
  • In places with high stellar density as (the centers of) star clusters or centers of galaxies, as well as in binary systems where the stars are very close one to each other, stars can collide and fuse to form larger ones known as blue stragglers.
  • Black hole mergers, that we've just recently started to detect via gravitational waves. They deserve special mention since spacetime itself rotates with them during the dance before merging and when two supermassive ones embrace the event is so violent that the product of the merger may be expelled from its galaxy, not to mention the mess left in the surroundings.
  • In the current paradigm of galaxy formation and evolution, galaxies grow bottom-up, as small galaxies combine to form larger galaxies, which merge to form larger systems that combine again and so on — bonus points when two galaxies orbit each other before merging, altering their shapes in a true fusion dance — and the same goes for groups and clusters of galaxies and even the voids that separate them. This is heavily supported by many observations as well as predicted by computer simulations. Our own galaxy is disrupting and absorbing a much smaller one and is predicted to merge with the Andromeda Galaxy, which is larger than ours, within 3 billion years; deep surveys have shown many similar events, and messy systems interpreted by astronomers as the product of two galaxies combining to form a larger one as NGC 7252 aren't uncommon at all.

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