Self-Duplication

If her name is Penny, does that make them Dimes?

Java: What the hell are you gonna do to me without your army?
Danton Black: [replicates himself] I am an army.

— The Flash (2014), "Fastest Man Alive"

The ability to make several copies of oneself, normally maintaining control over all copies. Usually comes implicitly with the ability to recombine said copies.

This power can be very potent. One can be effectively immortal if at least one of you survives, one gets the ability to distract, surround or hinder your opponent and if all the duplicates work from a single mind it all occurs with perfect coordination. This power is an opportunity for writers to show off the creative combat techniques and imaginative Mundane Utilities.

There may or may not be some idea of a central self, one copy who is the "proper" version for whatever reason: you have to kill that one to kill them all at once, one gives all of the commands, etc. The other copies, conversely, rarely count as persons in and of themselves; see also Clone Angst. If they are counted as actual people, expect Which Me?. Examples where there is no central self, or at least a central self tied to one particular body, tends to overlap with the Hive Mind, where all the copies essentially sharing a single mind and consciousness.

Possible side-effects include Literal Split Personality. May be used in a Doppelgänger Attack or to make a Disposable Decoy Doppelgänger, a Breather Episode might go for Me's a Crowd. Not to be confused with I Am Legion. Power Perversion Potential means this naturally leads to Screw Yourself. This will usually be part of a Monkey King Lite's arsenal, owing to Sun Wukong himself being a famous user of this power.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A commercial for the Turkish laptop model Casper Nirvana features Turkish pro basketballer Ersan Ilyasova facing off against a competing team by himself. Then he splits into four guys, which makes the main guy on the opposing team smirk with a look that says, "Nice trick, but we can still take him." Then the Ilyasovas all grow to ten feet tall, with the opposing team just gaping up at them. Then they play basketball.

Anime & Manga

• Aizawa-san Multiplies: Title character Shino Aizawa gains the ability to duplicate herself after falling into a ditch. Each of her duplicates are based off of the specific emotions she felt at the time of their manifestation. The biggest trait they all share are romantic feelings for Souta Mizutani, leading to comical situations as he deals with Shino and her duplicates.
• The hero of the manga Akumetsu is a terrorist clone army, and manages to make this ridiculously cool. His trademark mask blows his head off when he dies, concealing this slightly (slightly) from the authorities, and also transmits all the memories and consciousness of the dying member to his base in space, where they make a new copy. Kind of makes a cheat of the 'I'm willing to die to wipe out evil' thing.
• In Aldnoah.Zero, the Ortygia Kataphrakt have this ability, being able to constantly generate copies of itself so long as they are within a 30 meter radius.
• In Black Clover, Gauche can summon an alternate version of himself in combat thanks to his magic mirror.
• In the Bleach anime, Jai can use his weapon to make multiple copies of himself.
• Dr. Luciana Estevez from Blood Blockade Battlefront gained the ability to split herself into clones after making a deal with a Beyondian. However, the more clones she splits into, the younger they get.
• In Cells at Work!, Naive undergoes cell division after becoming activated.
• Code:Breaker: Heike can split himself into 100 clones as a result of his light powers combining with his superior intelligence.
• In Cross Ange, Embryo can create multiple copies of himself using Hysterica.
• In DARLING in the FRANXX, the True Enemy creates several copies of itself during the final battle.
• In Date A Live, this is Kurumi's most frequently used power, which she uses to form a massive information network by spying on her targets.
• In The Death Mage Who Doesn't Want a Fourth Time, Vandalieu can use his [Out-Of-Body Experience] to create multiple Spiritual copies of himself.
• Don't Meddle with My Daughter!: Clara can use her Super-Speed to create physical copies of herself. The only time she's ever used it is during the "Amazing Eighth Wonder Vol.1", where she used her clones to gangbang her own mother^note Clara was possessed by an alien parasite at the time. Once the parasite was destroyed, she returned to normal and lost all memory of the event.
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Robot Kingdom has the titular character Doraemon fighting for his life in an arena. So what does he do? Fill the arena with clones so the opponent can't tell which one is the real one.
• Dragon Ball:
  • This is a technique used originally by Tenshinhan albeit in filler, Piccolo, and once by Krillin, oddly enough, who loves using it as well. Tenshinhan originally used it as a combat technique, but this became less useful as the character got stronger due to each clone having a fraction of the original's strength. Piccolo normally uses it for training purposes, allowing him to spar with himself.
  • Subverted with the ninja Murasaki. He claims he can create four identical clones, each as strong as himself; in fact, he's one of a set of quintuplets.
  • Both the magician Babidi and his father Bibidi have the ability to split themselves into multiple copies, but doing so divides their power among all the copies.
  • During Fat Buu's fight with Kid Buu, Fat Buu's severed pieces reform as four copies of himself, all of which proceed to beat up Kid Buu.
  • Goku Black is able to summon endless copies of himself made of pinkish mist sfter using his ki scythe to make a tear in reality. They disperse with one hit, but reform almost instantly.
• In The Familiar of Zero, Viscount Jean-Jacques can create copies of himself with wind.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Father creates all the homunculi from undesirable pieces of his own soul, although you wouldn't guess it because, with the exception of Pride, there isn't much family resemblance. He can also reabsorb them, but that's a very unpleasant process.
• Future Card Buddyfight:
  • Demon Lord Asmodai can copy himself at will, and Tetsuya will often call multiple different versions of him.
  • This is how Death Tallica's effect is represented in the anime, by creating smaller versions of itself that intercept incoming attacks.
• GaoGaiGar FINAL, The 11 Planetary Masters of Sol are revived with dozens of copies of themselves in the last battle after Palus Abel orders Pisa Sol to use the Pas-Q machine to its fullest. Which is exactly what GGG wanted them to do, by having them overuse the Pas-Q to have it weaken enough to a state where it and the Sol Masters can be destroyed.
• In Gatchaman Crowds, Utsutsu can produce clones at will. In gatchaman form, the clones lack her scarf.
• In Gundam Build Divers, ZeroMaru can execute Bunshin no Jutsu, creating multiple copies of itself.
• In High School D×D, Bennia has the power to clone herself. The clones she makes are easily distinguishable but because she's fast, enemies can't hit her clones anyway.
• In Hunter × Hunter, Shaiapouf's Nen ability Beelzebub allows him to split his body into tiny sized pieces that allow him to scatter into multiple areas and scout ahead.
• In Inu × Boku SS, Soushi tends to use his duplication abilities to help with chores or as part of battle strategy.
• In Inuyasha, filler villains the Four Ninja Demons are capable of creating clones of themselves.
• Jewelpet:
  • In Jewelpet Twinkle☆, clones of Aqua pop up when he gets angry, and disappear when he calms down.
  • In episode 16b of Jewelpet: Magical Change, this happens to Sapphie unwittingly - the cloning machine that causes it was sealed by her, but somehow someone still triggered it and the resulting clone kept on creating duplicates to have friends to talk to (Sapphie was all alone on an island and felt lonely, a trait carried over to the clone). At any rate, there's a massive number of Sapphies that the others have to distinguish in order to find the real one.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, the arc's Big Bad President Funny Valentine stand allows them to pull copies of themselves to fight and to remain effectively immortal (as all clones share the same memories) or of others to blow them up.
• In Kemurikusa, the Rinas are actually clones of Rinamu (who seems to be the "original" one) and it seems she has the ability of creating more. We actually never see her creating more Rinas though.
• In Kill la Kill, Houka of the Elite Four gains the ability to make illusionary clones of himself once he upgrades to Probe Regalia MKII.
  • Nui also demonstrates this ability to make clones of herself during one of her fights with Ryuko.
• Shiro, a male-like Lunarian from Land of the Lustrous, is able to do this.
• Lupin III: Dragon of Doom implies that Genzai uses a ninja clone technique or body doubles, as he repeatedly "dies" only to reappear again unharmed.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Ectoplasm, a U.A. teacher, can create clones by expelling said ectoplasm from his mouth which will then form into multiple clones. The clones can also combine into one giant sized Ectoplasm clone.
  • Twice can make copies of himself and other people as well, except he has no control over them and refuses to use his power on himself ever since his copies rebelled against him in the past, and has to wear a mask in order to prevent himself from splitting involuntarily. Part of his fear is that, in the chaos of his copies turning on each other, he himself lost track of whether he’s the original or just another duplicate . He gets over it in the Meta Liberation Army Arc, when Skeptic tries to kill Toga, and creates a truly massive swarm of clones to near-physically crush the Army.
• My Monster Secret: This is a favorite technique of Akane's, most often used for dragging people around.
• In Magical Girl Site, Hachi is capable of multiplying herself seemingly indefinitely, creating an army of copies.
• In Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers, Ultron makes many copies of his body to fight the Avengers and take over the world.
• Naruto has various ninjutsu that can create clones.
  • The Shadow Clone Jutsu (Kage Bunshin no Jutsu) is the first to be introduced and the most iconic one among them, not the least due to the protagonist tending to utterly spam it (the first ever use resulted in around 2000 clones!) as part of his pre-Time Skip combat strategy. After the time skip, he can make absurd numbers if he needs to. At one point, he makes one shadow clone for every leaf on a tree so that all of them can train on using a new technique at once. And since everything a clone experiences and learns is transferred back to the original when they are dispelled, this greatly reduces his training period from years to mere days.
  • Other clone jutsu tend to combine it with Elemental Powers, creating a duplicate out of whatever substance a certain ninja has control over: Gaara can use his sand jutsu to create a clone out of sand, while water-users like Kisame can summon a water clone. Presumably, this also includes a bit of genjutsu to make the clone look more lifelike.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Negi attempts to make a single copy of himself using a traditional Japanese magic that animates a paper doll, with which he is unfamiliar. Eventually he succeeds, but all his previous (bungled) attempts also animate, and Hilarity Ensues as the small crowd of defective Negi-copies run around amongst his students, just as they decide to make him the object of a kissing competition.
  • Later, in the manga storyline, Negi experiences the first day of the Mahora festival multiple times via a Time Travel device, and fails to entirely keep the secret of what he's doing from his students.
  • Kotarou and Kaede can use (the by-now mandatory) Ninja self-duplication techniques; Kaede notably starts off a beautiful Mundane Utility sequence by splitting herself into 14 copies in order to forage for edible wild plants really fast.
  • Haruna has used her Art Initiates Life artifact to create copies of herself to get her Doujin work done faster.
  • Negi has also learned how to make clones out of lightning. Actually, he could always do that—now they're actually convincing.
• Ninja Nonsense has Onsokumaru attempt to use a cloning jutsu. He succeeds, but ends up locked in an "epic" battle with the clone. Who poofs out of existence anyway when the spell duration runs out.
• In Nurse Witch Komugi, Komugi magically cosplays as Ken the Eagle from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman in a desperate bid to defeat her Transforming Mecha-controlling Ninja Maid enemy (who was cosplaying as Tekkaman)... and is soon joined by the rest of the Science Ninja Team, who are also cosplayed Komugis. Another Komugi later appears as The Professor. Her sidekick had no idea she could even do that, but Komugi plays it off like nothing at all.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica 's Kyouko Sakura's Rosso Fantasma is an attack able of this, but we never see it in action since it's a remainder of her wish and its results, and her subconscious locks it away. She gains access to it once she's a witch.
• In the Osomatsu-san episode "We Caught A Cold", Jyushimatsu somehow multiplies himself and then shrinks those copies down so they can enter the other brothers' bodies and cure their colds.
• Ranma ½:
  • Konatsu the Kunoichi has a technique that allows him to create at least three clones of himself which are coordinated with his true body. Given how this would be his most useful ability by far and the fact that it was never used in combat, it may be an illusion similar to Cologne's "Splitting Cat Hairs", or given how it seemed real, more likely simply not developed enough yet to be useful under pressure.
  • One of the Jusenkyo curses is the Spring of Drowned Twins. It presumably creates a clone of the affected whenever they're splashed with cold water that disappears with hot water, but how exactly it works isn't known. The plot concern keeping it from being used on Happosai by Pantyhose Taro, who's mistaken it for a different spring. Happosai is eventually splashed with it, but by so little it only duplicates a bump on his head.
• In Rave Master, "Closed Cocoon" Dorton has a secret technique, Cocoon Army, which can spawn many copies of himself, all with the same powers as him.
• In Reborn! (2004), Adelheid can use her ice powers to make copies of herself to fight for her.
• Rebuild World: Technological variant.
  • Tiol, as a result of his Emergency Transformation at the hands of Mad Scientist Yatsubiyashi turning him into a Tragic Monster human hybrid, serves as a Mook Maker using the resources he eats as an Extreme Omnivore which get recycled by Nanomachines into new bio-mechanical machines that spring from his body. These eventually get refined enough to be Remote Body copies of Tiol, and an entire swarm of them dog-pile Akira from the rooftops of the ruins. Tsubaki using Brain Uploading technology resurrects Tiol in one of these platforms.
  • The Super-Soldier Haruka is able to split herself into multiple copies as the result of using a Nanomachine based Super Serum that also grants Voluntary Shapeshifting and regenerating From a Single Cell.
• In Regalia: The Three Sacred Stars, Johann is revealed to have multiple clones of himself.
• The Rising of the Shield Hero:
  • After Naofumi and Raphtalia ascend to godhood, they leave mortal copies of themselves behind to live normal lives alongside their friends.
  • Medea can break off fragments of her essence and reincarnate them in newborn women so as to wreak chaos and destruction.
• Mizore from Rosario + Vampire can create "ice clones" of herself and her friends, which seem to be able to operate independently, though they don't last long. They're quite fragile as well, so she doesn't use them as backup combatants.
• Shimeji Simulation has Big Sis, who is revealed that she is able to create clones of herself, as it is shown when the original Sis, Majime and Shijima were capturing the other rogue Sis clone, as well as her plan to take the Key in an attempt to unlock the humans the ability to change themselves in a whim, which is mostly triggered by Ayaka's performance.
• Tamagotchi has the Art of Shadow Cloning, a ninja skill Gozarutchi mentions in episode 22b. It's apparently difficult to pull off, but Gozarutchi is able to save Kikitchi from floating too high in the air on a slowly-breaking kite by using the ability.
• Treated with much more seriousness in Komugi's parent series, The SoulTaker, with Kyosuke's sister Ruina having created various "Flickers" of her soul to throw off her pursuers. They all look different and a good chunk of them don't even know they're Flickers to begin with.
• In Tantei Opera Milky Holmes, Blue Hunter can do this thanks to his Master of Illusion abilities.
• Ryoko and Ryo-Ohki of the Tenchi Muyo! OVA can do this, but they've never done it in combat - Ryoko used hers for role-playing while Ryo-Ohki wanted carrots.
• In That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Souei can cast off clones of himself that are constantly connected to him, which is definitely useful in his craft.
• In the Tiger & Bunny movie "Tiger & Bunny: The Rising", Kasha Graham can create illusions and use them to make copies of herself.
• In Tokyo ESP, this is the Professor's favoured fighting tactic, which he performs with his illusion-casting powers.
• In the last special chapter (after the finale) of To Love Ru Darkness, Rito is the victim of another one of Lala's inventions (a cat robot that can make a clone of anything), getting a clone of himself every time he sneezes. Chasing the cat-robot, an entire army of Rito is created and naturally even his skills are multiplicated. Almost the entire female cast is stripped and groped.
• In Toriko, Blob Monster Tokage can divide into smaller versions of itself.
  • Coco can make clones of himself out of poison.
• In World Trigger, Wen So can use her trigger to multiply images of herself and fool her opponents.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Trueman can split himself into several copies.
• In Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs, both Sagiri and Hibari can make clones of themselves, although only Hibari can make her clones with different outfits.
• In YuYu Hakusho, Suzaku can create seven copies of himself with his Prism of Seven technique.

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy: The title character can create 2 extra copies of himself that function independently so he can use 3 elemental powers at once. Later in the series, he can now have 7 copies active at maximum, and 2 at minimum when he uses Elemental Fusion.
• Agent Ali: The young INVISO agent named Moon has holographic technology embedded in her suit that allows her to cause clones of herself to appear, which proves useful in confusing enemies.
• Careful S. of Happy Heroes has the ability to duplicate himself. According to one episode of Season 3, several of his duplicates have distinct personalities that, according to Doctor H., are all a part of the actual Careful S.'s personality (evidently, he's good at hiding it).

Comic Books

• Myriad from Amalgam Universe is an amalgam of Multiple Man and Triplicate Girl.
• The DCU:
  • The "Silent Majority", a member of a throwaway team of American-themed super-powered government agents called the Force of July. His code-name came from a combination of his personality (laconic) and his powers.
  • Phalanx, a Roman-themed supervillain, has this power.
  • The Engineer from The Authority can do this, using nanotech to extrude copies of herself. Her main limitation is that she spreads her consciousness throughout her duplicates, and the more she creates the harder it is for her to manage them all. It's never explicitly stated if she could have created autonomous duplicates.
  • Figment, a Batgirl (2011) villain, can duplicate himself using a power suit.
  • The minor Catwoman villain Repro is modelled after Billy Numerous of Teen Titans (2003).
  • Centipede, a Canadian super-agent who tracks Nelson in Dial H.
  • The Firestorm villain Multiplex gets this power as well as Super-Strength.
  • The Flash:
    • Mirror Master is notorious for this (if he appears in any media, you can expect him to do this). He can successfully achieve this effect with the clones being made of glass. He can also create duplicates of other people and heroes that are loyal to him, with the clones of heroes having the same powers.
    • Manuel Lago has From a Single Cell abilities, so if a body part is chopped off, it will regrow into a full-bodied clone of him. The clones formed a group called Mob Rule, wishing to gain their own free will.
  • Yang Kei-Ying/Seven Deadly Brothers from Great Ten can split himself into seven clones. Each of the seven is the master of a particular form of wushu (or kung fu) such as the Crane style and the Tiger style.
  • The Green Lantern villain Evil Star can create miniature duplicates of himself called Starlings from his Starband.
  • Hardware (1993) villain Reprise can duplicate himself, as well as his weaponry.
  • Double Trouble from Infinity, Inc. can duplicate himself into two. The second clone eventually decided to kill the other and as a result the former disappeared as the two cannot exist alone.
  • Ten of Hearts from the Justice League Unlimited tie-in comic can create ten clones of himself.
  • Luornu Durgo (a.k.a. Duo Damsel, Triplicate Girl, Triad, or Duplicate Girl, depending on the continuity/series) of Legion of Super-Heroes can do this as a natural ability of her people. the Carggites. Some continuities give her a specific twist on this trope, such as the duplicates all have distinct personalities or the fact that she's the last of her species, so the entire population of Caragg are just a million duplicates of her.
  • The minor Shazam! villain Amoeba has this ability.
  • There's a Steel villain called the Worm who can duplicate himself.
  • The Superboy villainess Swarm has an insect theme and can duplicate herself.
  • Tetrad Force, the father of Superboy and the Ravers member D.C. Force, can split himself into four mentally linked copies and can be quite useful for getting things done at the Force family's home/farm/compound in Canada.
  • Superman:
    • The villain Riot can duplicate himself as well as can stick to walls.
    • Bizarro can do this, but only under the light of a blue sun. He used this ability to create his own versions of Superman's friends and enemies, including Lois Lane and Bizarrogirl. This is how Bizarro World was populated.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Alpha Flight:
    • Flashback can summon alternate future versions of himself to fight for him, with the clones gaining an inverted color version of his costume. One of the alternate future versions that died turned out to be his inevitable future self, this caused him to become paranoid and eventually stopped wearing his costume to prevent this. He then had two children Malcolm and Jennifer Monroe who has the exact same powers.
    • Janus can split into two beings.
  • The Avengers:
    • Loki has this power since the first Avengers story, though he uses it more frequently in the movies.
    • Zamira from one annual issue can create clones of herself. However, these clones have a similar appearance and same personalities to people and or heroes she has met.
    • Shang-Chi gains this power in The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman).
  • Carnage develops the ability to create and control offshoots of his symbiote in Carnage Vol. 1, resulting in a number of duplicate Carnage symbiotes oozing around.
  • The Inhumans:
    • Sporr is an Inhuman with this power.
    • The Inhuman Tusk can create miniature clones of himself that sprout out of his hunchback.
  • Clone Strike Force from Spider-Man 2099 has this ability.
  • Catherine Mora, the somewhat Invisible Woman Expy from Supreme Power, can split herself into two. She can also make the other one disappears making this effectively the Twinmaker form of teleportation.
  • Machine Man from Ultimate FF, being made of Gah Lak Tus nanomachines, is able to duplicate himself.
  • X-Men:
    • Jamie Madrox a.k.a. Multiple Man. If he leaves his duplicates separated for too long, they start to become more independent and develop their own personalities, sadly making a Me's a Crowd plot difficult for too long but an Evil Twin incredibly easy.
    • A mutant called Clay who has similar duplicating abilities as Jamie Madrox was hired to assassinate the latter in the series Madrox.
    • The French mutant Legion (not to be confused with the mutant with the exact same name), who's a member of the French Empire from Exiles, has the same self-duplication mutant ability.
    • Another mutant named Sea Dog has the same cloning ability as Madrox and Legion. He is a member of the Crimson Pirates.
    • The X-Factor villain Timeshadow can create several out-of-sync time duplicates of himself with each having their own independent thought.
    • Esteban Beach can create electromagnetic duplicates of himself and whatever he is touching.
• Shakara: Phaze is an alien assassin who can summon an infinite amount of Alternate Universe counterparts of herself.
• The astral drops from W.I.T.C.H. are perfect duplicates of the Guardians, only without powers. The problem is that there are not multiple astral drops that get summoned and dismissed, only one that is put in limbo when non-active, so they start developing their own personalities and feelings... And only Hay Lin treats her drop as an actual person (something they get called on).

Fan Works

• A Certain Droll Hivemind: Misaka Mikoto claims that she can create weaker copies of herself out of electricity so long as there's a generator nearby. Her clone Misaka-11111, who is far weaker than her, did not know she had that power, and is very impressed. She completely fails to realize that Mikoto is making up this power on the spot to cover for 11111's presence.
• Little Hands, Big Attitude: One of Kaia's many abilities is to create duplicates of herself. She can only consciously control one at the time, but she can transfer her consciousness between her clones with no issues. Such abilities are quite easy when you're made of water.

Film — Animated

• In Aladdin and its sequels & spin-off series the Genie has this ability as well as shapeshifting and uses it to fill huge entourage parades for Aladdin, become armies of bodyguards, to do huge golden-age of Hollywood dance numbers on his own and more.
• In Incredibles 2 and its associated short Auntie Edna, Jack-Jack can be seen splitting himself into multiple clones.
• In Justice League: Doom, Flash villain Mirror Master can do this, with the clones being made of glass.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf Film Series:
  • In Mission Incredible: Adventures on the Dragon's Trail, Xiao Shen Long the dragon has the ability to duplicate himself.
  • In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Meet the Pegasus, Brother Pony has the ability to duplicate himself using a computer mouse, obviously calling it "copy and paste".

Film — Live-Action

• The Concerto in F sequence of An American in Paris features Adam (played by Oscar Levant) as every member of the orchestra and audience.
• A cut scene from the script of Bruce Almighty features Bruce creating an army of himself to beat up some thugs.
• In Cult of Chucky, it turns out that Chucky has learned how to copy his soul onto multiple bodies at once. In addition to the original, currently held prisoner by Andy, he possesses three other Good Guy dolls over the course of the film, and ultimately Nica as well. And it turns out that he taught Tiffany the same trick.
• The Matrix: Agent Smith has this ability in Reloaded and onwards. Due to his ex-Agent ability to hijack bluepills being accidently altered by Neo, he gains the ability to copy himself, overriding bluepills, redpills, and even Matrix programs over and over again like a computer virus. Needless to say, when he meets Neo once again, there are a lot more Smiths than Neos.
• Penny from Sky High (2005) uses her power to make herself into her own one-woman cheerleading team and Girl Posse.
• In Smart House, the holographic PAT demonstrates the ability to appear in multiple places at the same time.
• Supergirl (1984): Selena creates magical shadows of herself during the battle against Supergirl at the amusement park.
• Jamie Madrox/Multiple Man from X-Men: The Last Stand robs seven banks at the exact same time and serves as decoy for the authorities.

Literature

• A Master of Djinn: The Al-Jahiz imposter can double himself, with ghuls who look just like him springing up to attack people who face him.
• The Perfect Run:
  • Bloodstream, Len's father, had the Green power to control his own blood and the Blue power to turn himself into pure information. Combined, he became his own blood, and he could infect others to turn them into copies of himself. Only about ten copies at a time, though, and he could only infect humans. Both turn out to be psychological limits. It was predicted that if Len died, he'd go insane and infect the entire world, killing every living thing within months. Then Dynamis used him to make their knockoff elixirs, turning all their customers into potential new Bloodstreams.
  • Psyshock technically does this, though it's more of a Body Surf. After observing Bloodstream's ability, he realized he could use his psychic and cybernetic powers to turn people into latent clones of himself. He can only have one active body at a time, but if one dies he'll just reshape the nearest thrall into a new copy of himself.
  • The Alchemist turns out to have the ability to create an unlimited number of copies of herself from simulated timelines, with any skills or abilities she might need. She was a worldwide conspiracy of a single person. As it turns out, spending decades with no one but yourself for company leaves you rather narrow-minded, which is why she never saw anything wrong with any of the terrible things she did.

Live-Action TV

• The 4400: In "The Great Leap Forward", Jed Gerrity develops the ability to self-duplicate after being exposed to promicin.
• Alisha from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is an Inhuman who can create seemingly limitless copies of herself. Taking out the "real" Alisha will also take out the rest.
• Arrowverse:
  • The Flash (2014):
    • Danton Black aka Multiplex is the villain of the week in the second episode. In this case, there is a single "controller", who must be taken down. During the climactic fight, Barry uses his Super-Speed to locate the one Danton with beads of sweat on him from the exertion of controlling so many copies and slams him into a pillar, knocking out all the copies.
    • Speedsters with the Speed Force can travel in time to have another version of themselves assist them. It is called a time remnant, but it is a Dangerous Forbidden Technique, since the time remnant has his own autonomy the same memories and the identity of the original but cannot have his life. This was the case with the big bad of Season 3.
  • Supergirl (2015):
    • "Hostile Takeover": One of the alien henchmen can clone himself by literally splitting himself in half in which a clone will quickly grow.
    • "Ahimsa": An alien called a Kopy can duplicate himself.
• Charmed (1998):
  • In a Season 1 episode, Prue casts a spell on herself to create two extra copies of her after Phoebe has a vision of her being stabbed. The two clones are also a Literal Split Personality, as one represents her neurotic, control-freak side, and the other her highly repressed sexual side. The real Prue is unaffected by the split and acts like normal.
  • Prue develops the power of Astral Projection in Season 2, but it's treated more like Self-Duplication (her astral-body is still on our plane, corporeal and can be seen by others). It's implied late in Season 3 that Prue's Astral Projection would have eventually evolved into true self-duplication if she hadn't died.
• Eli from Heroes, who could only be defeated if you took out the "true" him.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "The Joining", Captain Miles Davidow, a crew member of the Aphrodite facility on Venus, injected himself with the DNA of a Venusian creature in order to keep himself alive; he knew that he would otherwise die as the facility's oxygen supply was rapidly running out. The creatures reproduce by a very advanced form of mitosis, producing complete copies of themselves in the process. When he returns to Earth, Davidow begins to undergo mitosis in the same fashion. It first manifests itself in a form of a Healing Factor. When he cuts off one of his fingers, it regrows within hours. He eventually produces a full size, if unfinished, copy of himself. In order to prevent the risk of him infecting the general population, he is returned to Venus where he and five perfect copies man the Aphrodite facility in permanent exile.
• Smallville:
  • Brainiac, being as he was a Terminator 2 like living liquid metal produced by a spaceship, could do this on top of so many other things. Mostly used so he could be in several places at once to throw people off his scent while plotting.
  • A season two Monster of the Week, Ian Randall, was much more limited: one extra person would climb out of his back and he used one to study in two places at one so he could achieve the best grades since when they recombined so would their memories.

Literature

• In The Candy Shop War, one of the effects of the Sands Of Time is to split the wearer into three selves. It should be noted, however, that anything that affects one of the selves affects all of them. If one is injured, they are all injured. If one is under the affects of a magic candy, they all are. At the end of the hour, the selves recombine at the closest safe location to the average of their positions.
• The Dresden Files: In Cold Days, Sharkface/He Who Walks Before has this power, and uses it during the battle for Demonreach.
• The Machineries of Empire has the radiant force multiplier, a bomb that, for a time, creates kaleidoscope-like copies of anything in its area of effect. The heretics use it to get a drop on Cheris' forces in the first battle.
• Mitosis: The titular Epic has the power of at-will duplication, with no "prime" self (any of him can create more clones). The only thing that stops this from being a complete Story-Breaker Power is that his power includes a Conservation of Ninjutsu effect: the more of him are currently in existence the weaker and more fragile each individual copy becomes.
• A possible Ur-Example is the 1943 French short story Les Sabines, by acclaimed writer Marcel Aymé. It deals with an ordinary French woman called Sabine who happens to have this gift (don't ask why), of the "a single mind controls all the bodies" variety. At first she only uses it to do all the housework at once, but, when she meets a charming stranger, she decides to permanently split herself; one of her bodies will remain by her husband's side while the other elopes with the fellow. And as she keeps meeting more potential lovers, she ends up spread thin with thousands of copies all over the world (and people are starting to notice that wherever they go the keep running into unexplained lookalike). Deciding to punish herself, she sends one more avatar to live a tough, rotten life in the slums. Eventually, a thug murders that double, causing all the Sabines to die together.
• Post-Self: The uploaded can fork themselves fairly easily, and by the 24th century have adopted three general philosophies. "Taskers" rarely fork but when they do they make short-term forks that merge back with the original once the task is done. "Trackers" fork more frequently and sometimes maintain them for extended periods. While "dispersionistas" fork often and seemingly for fun.
• In Super Powereds, Julia can create multiple copies of herself with a Hive Mind. It's originally stated that all of her clones are equal, but then this is revealed to be false. There is an original. In fact, she frequently sends a clone to a party, while being the designated driver herself. This allows her to experience everything a clone does without her own body being affected by the negative consequences. She also claims to be a good Christian girl and a Technical Virgin, which doesn't stop her from using her doubles to have wild sex (including Twin Threesome Fantasies, of course) with guys. This way, she can maintain that her own body has never been penetrated, while also having plenty of experience and enjoyment.
• We Are Legion (We Are Bob): The point of a Von Neumann probe is that it can make more of itself to spread across the galaxy. Bob hesitates before making his first batch, but soon has no choice but to go through with it. Each new clone has a slightly different part of the original Bob's personality emphasized, and chooses a new name for himself.
• In the Wearing the Cape books, there are a variety of Redux-type superhumans. Examples include Platoon, who duplicates himself permanently on a regular basis (there are implied to be dozens of him), and the supervillain Flash Mob, who can make 20 or so temporary duplicates.
• The Worm universe offers several examples:
  • The supervillain Oni Lee is a teleporter that leaves short-lived duplicates behind every time he jaunts. He uses this to great effect when combined with duplicated weaponry such as handguns or grenades.
  • The superhero Prism can split into three copies and remerge into any of the three to gain enhanced strength, speed, and durability.
  • Spree, a member of the villain team known as The Teeth, can spam vast hordes of duplicates ... that get dumber and dumber every second they're "alive".
  • Cape-turned-mercenary Satyrical has the ability to produce flesh clones that can shapeshift to look like whoever he wants them to.

Myth and Religion

• The Buddha created multiple images of himself in various postures while performing the Miracle at Śrāvastī.
• Korean folk hero Hong Gildong could do this by transforming straw dolls into doppelgangers of himself.
• Pan, from Greek mythology, had the ability to split into multiple "Panes", each with its own name. Three of them, Agreos, Nominos and Aegipan, are described as having their own unique appearances, personalities and abilities.
• Sun Wukong is sometimes attributed with this ability as one of the kung fu disciplines he learns ("Hair into Many", etc.).
• Draupnir from Norse Mythology is a golden ring that was made as a gift for Odin; it's capable of automatically creating up to eight copies of itself every ninth night.

Pinball

• The backstory for Mad Daedalus briefly mentions Icarus, a clone of Daedalus that he created to serve as his assistant.

Tabletop Games

• Champions and Mutants & Masterminds have this as the Duplication power.
• In DCHeroes this was the Split power.
• In Eclipse Phase, the ubiquity of Brain Uploading technology means that anyone can copy their mind-state and download it into a secondary body. This process is known as 'forking'. People can generate several types of forks - alpha forks are full, one-to-one copies of the primary ego. Beta forks are 'pruned' copies of the ego, usually with reduced skillsets and substantial memory loss, and are often created to perform a specific task. Delta forks are the most rudimentary type of fork, more like generic A.I.s with a personality template than full beings. When a fork's task is complete, it is usually merged back into the primary ego. However, depending on how long it's been since the fork was generated and how much the two minds have diverged, reintegration may be more difficult or even impossible. Up to a day of separation is acceptable, but at a week or more, substantial mental damage becomes a risk. The legality and morality of forking is disputed within the setting, and varies depending on which polity the characters are in — under some governments, forks are considered property, not sentient beings in their own right, or vice versa. Forking is a taboo subject in many places.
• In Mage: The Awakening, the highly advanced "Manifold Presence" spell creates multiple temporary copies of the spellcaster. They can also be made autonomous and can potentially operate anywhere in the world, while sharing their sensory input with the caster.
• The Selesnya Conclave from Magic: The Gathering has cards that have an ability called Populate which makes copies of Creature Tokens on the playing field.

Theme Parks

• Figment has this ability in Journey into Imagination at Epcot, with there being an entire scene of his own clones each doing a different activity while singing the ride's theme song "One Little Spark".

Video Games

• Blaseball: Players can appear at bat even if they are already on base. This most commonly happens when the roster is too small for every player to appear uniquely.
  • During the Coffee Cup, Liquid Friend was the only batter for BC Noir. Every time a player came up to bat, it was just another copy of Liquid Friend.
  • The Secret Base modification for stadiums, introduced in Season 15. When a player actually enters it, things get weird. Lenny Spruce of the Boston Flowers entered the Base, came up to bat, then two of him came out of the Base, and then he batted one of his other selves in.
  • Due to mishaps involving Flooding, Kelvin Drumsolo ended up on first base, second base, third base, and then batted themselves in with a triple to score three runs.
• Control: The power of the Waist Mannequin. As said in its description of its effect:
  The item duplicates. The trigger [...] is unknown. No correlation can be found in either the number of duplications that manifest during an episode or the duration for which they last before disappearing.
• Destiny: Taken Psions can perform this, sometimes to the level of Me's a Crowd.
• Fire Emblem Fates: The Mechanist class has the Replicate skill that allows the user to create a copy of themself. A copy shares everything that the original has, including skills, current stats, current class, and inventory.
• A variation of late-game enemies in Ghostrunner is capable of this, and the player has to cut through each one until the original is killed in order for the rest of the clones to disintegrate.
• Grow: The onkies can sometime do this, which allows them to do some teamworks.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons: The miniboss Agunima can create three copies of himself, which move about the room and attack Link independently. The two copies are invulnerable, but can be told from the real wizard because they don't cast shadows.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Monk Maz Koshia, the final boss of The Champions' Ballad DLC, will being to split himself into nine copies in the second phase of his battle. Each of these copies can damage Link, although only one of them is the true Monk — the others go down in one hit. If all the copies are destroyed, Maz Koshia can summon more later.
• Mega Man 3: Gemini Man can have up to four clones alongside the original.
• In Phantasy Star Online 2, Dark Falz Double creates an army of copies of itself to guard the Profound Darkness. It's later revealed that despite appearing as twins, the true Double is the boy, while the girl is an Opposite-Sex Clone he made of himself.
• Mutant Night has power-ups which change your character into a dozen copies of himself, all attacking a single target simultaneously. The copies are invulnerable, to boot, at least until the effect wears off the the player is down to one mutant again.
• Impfinity, one of the Zombie Heroes from Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes is capable of creating several clones of himself via a device on his chest. His Signature Superpower "Triple Threat" spawns two Impfinity Clones in random lanes.
• This Puzzlescript game. Too bad the monsters can do the same. You can even Tele-Frag yourself again if you stand in the way of yourself (but make sure that it aren't your last two personas).
• Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages has a caster ability called the Forked Path Catalyst, which creates two other copies of the caster. Rogues can create decoys, with physical presence that ranges from standard holograms to Hard Light.
• In Samurai Warriors, the ninja characters Hanzo Hattori and Nene can create duplicates of themselves to attack alongside them.
• Spare Change used intermission scenes similar to Pac-Man at the end of each level. The third one is titled "Double Agent", where the two baddies make a tactic of stealing and running in different directions. In response, the arcade owner splits in two to chase after the thieves.
• Some of the zombie ponies can do this in Story of the Blanks.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario RPG: Subverted. Yaridovich is able to disguise into several identical Toads (save the one pretending to be the elder). However, his real form looks nothing like the Toad duplicates. Played straight with one of his special moves, which produces an equally strong copy of himself with less HP.
  • Mario Party 8: The Weeglee Candy turns the character who eats it into three smaller duplicates of themselves. After they hit the Dice Block, they can steal one Candy from every character they pass by.
• In Poptropica, this is Copy Cat's power on Super Power Island. The clones disappear when you touch them, though.
• Touhou Project:
  • Flandre Scarlet can do this up to three times for her "Taboo - Four of a Kind" spell card attack. She does this as an improvement of the stock vampire "turn into a swarm of bats, then back into a person" ability.
  • Her sister Remilia enhanced the power in the opposite way - never more than one humanoid body, but has no limit to the number of bats she can exist as and can change back from any single bat.
  • In a general sense, this is one of the innate abilities of being a Shinto god. When a god is enshrined or summoned, you don't actually call the god itself, but rather creating an exact replica of that god's spirit. This is how in Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe, Sanae can summon her goddess Suwako to fight against Suwako. In the same game, it's also the justification for a Suwako Mirror Match.
• Janus Cascade in Wild ARMs 3 revealed his ability to make duplicate bodies of himself, in an attempt to escape death by the protagonist party. Unfortunately for him, he perished for good shortly thereafter.

Webcomics

• Grrl Power: Harem has this power, on top of being a Hive Mind with teleportation powers. Any potential problems with the duplication are averted; each different body has a "different personality", but it's just a façade on Harem's part. In her words, "There's no 'this one' or 'that one', there's just ME." Having said that, she does personalize each different body with hairstyles, tattoos, piercings, and wardrobes for each copy. It also helps that she has incredible intelligence.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: Gog-Agog is an insane God-Emperor made of worms. Trillions of worms, spread across the myriad universes of The Multiverse, which she uses to make bodies for herself and to convert other beings into more Gog-Agog. Because killing her would require destroying every single worm, Gog-Agog is near-unkillable, and has survived the repeated destruction of the multiverse and the ensuing Reset Button an unknown number of times.
• Paranatural: A "racist whale-frog" spirit that breaks into Max's house has this power. It can bring any reflection to life, and feeds by eating copies of itself.
  Max: Okay that's a little out of my comfort zone. Gonna call for some backup.
  Alt Text: A pragmatic ghost hunter would be happy with this turn of events, as the number of foes has decreased.
• Cassidy/Flash Cut's main power in Sleepless Domain: she uses her giant scissors to split herself into two people, each clone wielding half the pair of scissors as a sword. There are downsides to this, though, mainly, they're subject to Gemini Destruction Law, so when a monster slashes both halves at once, Cassidy only has time to stab Goops in the eye before she disappears entirely.
• In Sombulus, Tenge Kaedermos has the ability to split into several autonomous copies of himself at will, as well as recombine himself magically. There seems to be no core copy or hivemind, though it is indicated that a copy will share the same level of energy as the original. The Morphids are another group have this ability as well, and can flood an area with hundreds of copies in a zombie-like horde. (Though in their case, it does not appear to be voluntary.)

Web Original

• Manson Haight, a small-time paragang member from ASH, has the power to make one duplicate every day.
• Zahra Ghorbani from Heroes Save the World can make copies of herself, but they only remain for as long as they're in physical contact with her.
• Sebastian from The Platoon of Power Squadron can multiply herself. She mostly uses her power to get off work and to have someone to play video games with. Unfortunately, after a certain number of copies they get a little unstable and less like herself. One of them even left to move in with her boyfriend due to constantly being treated like she's just a clone.
• Flynt Coal from RWBY can create four copies of himself, typically to amplify his trumpet weapon.
• Troika of the Whateley Universe can split into three identical people, while OMAG can split into at least six people but the duplicates don't seem to have the autonomy that Troika's dupes do.

Western Animation

• The one-off villain Everywhere Man from The Batman, who uses a duplicator device to create clones of himself that can be dispelled with the push of a button. The catch is that every successive clone is more independent and less morally compromised than the last; the "prime" E-Man is actually a clone that locked up the original to use his invention for crime.
• Ben 10:
  • Nosedeenians are electric-based aliens that can self-duplicate with enough power.
  • Ditto from the original series could do this, but if one of the copies was harmed, it would affect every one of them.
  • Echo Echo from Ben 10: Alien Force can also do this and every copy is independent of itself, meaning Ben can keep one of them as backup in case anything bad happens to the others.
  • In Ben 10: Omniverse, we get to see Ditto's natural predator who can also self duplicate.
  • The new alien Slapback from the reboot can duplicate himself with each clone becoming heavier and stronger.
• The Buzz Lightyear of Star Command Villain, Torque has this as his special ability, as bestowed upon him by Buzz's greater Arch-Enemy, Emperor Zurg.
• Father has this power in Codename: Kids Next Door, but only for one episode. Each copy can use his fire powers to equal strength of the original, but disperse into shadow with one hit. The main purpose of them was so Numbuh 1 and Numbuh 362 couldn't pin him down to make him tag one of them.
  Father: You know, I never was fond of Tag. I always preferred... (creates dozens of copies in an instant) HIDE AND SEEK!!!
• In Danny Phantom, this is a rare power among ghosts. Vlad Plasmius can use it without difficulty. Danny himself spends most of the series trying to perfect it, and his evil future self (who incidentally absorbed Vlad's ghost half) has mastered it.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Superman villain Luminus manages to achieve this effect with the clones being made from Hard Light in Justice League.
  • Chronos managed to give the Dee Dee twins this power in the Justice League episode "The Once and Future Thing: Time, Warped", which causes them to duplicate if they are struck.
  • Replay in Static Shock, a Former Child Star who uses his copies to steal. They are shown to be separate individuals, but he has the ability to wipe them out from existence at will, thus keeping them in line.
• Multi-Man of The Impossibles in Frankenstein Jr.'s backup cartoon can, as his name suggests, make multiple copies of himself. The idea ended up getting recycled for another series, The Super Globetrotters.
• This is the power of Loony Fan Sebastian in the Generator Rex episode "Rock My World".
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • The Sapotis, the akumatized form of Alya's twin sisters Ella and Etta, are a pair (at first) of imp-like monsters that split into two every time they eat something (and they'll eat anything). They're individually weak but quickly manage to get Ladybug and Cat Noir on the defensive because the heroes simply can't take them out quicker than they multiply.
  • The Mouse Miraculous has the special power of "Multitude", which lets the user split into multiple copies. However, they all shrink in size proportionally to the number of duplicates.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Too Many Pinkie Pies", Pinkie finds a magic pool that allows her to do this. She ends up cloning herself to be able to spend more time with her friends. Then things get worse.
• Private Snafu: In "Gas", the sentient cloud of Deadly Gas splits itself into three in order to surround Snafu.
• He doesn't normally have this power, but in one episode, SpongeBob SquarePants uses this to demonstrate that a lucid dreamer can do anything they want in a dream. "I can make a million of me!"
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Hekapoo can create an army of clones of herself, but they'll disappear if the flames above their heads are blown out.
• Billy Numerous in Teen Titans (2003). A particularly skilled one too, since he's able to create literally dozens of clones near-instantaneously with no power loss. Yes, he's only about as strong as the average man, but when you suddenly have 30 of them, all sucker-punching you from every angle, he's a fairly formidable villain. However, he does have a "cap" of how many he can make (implied to be in the hundreds or so, admittedly), and trying to go further than that cap causes all his duplicates to come back together.
• The Tick: The Living Doll from "Grandpa Wore Tights" is an elderly superhero who's "full of tinier men". He can split his body apart to reveal smaller versions of himself, and uses this power to distract Handy and the Human Ton.
• Lady Redundant Woman from WordGirl got this power after, no joke, fusing with a photocopier.
• The Ring of Nine Dragons in Xiaolin Showdown allowed the user to duplicate him/herself, but cut his/her power into equal portions and leads to Literal Split Personality.
• Dr. Simon Ecks from Young Justice (2010), in a case of Adaptational Superpower Change, can create clones of himself. If the main Simon is knocked out, all of the clones will disappear.

Real Life

• Certain species of plants, fungi, and bacteria have the power to form clonal colonies where a single ancestor can reproduce vegetatively, not sexually, to form a large population of clones. Sometimes these clones are interconnected through roots and runners to form a single massive organism that is practically immortal.
  • Most notable of these is Pando, a 100 acre large connected Quaking Aspen colony with 43,000 individuals estimated to be over 80,000-years-old.
    • The cloning ability was actually used to overcome the effects of climate change where the post ice age west was inhospitable for Aspen seedlings. Without young aspens or conifers, which were both sensitive to the arid environment, to compete with, the clonal colonies came to predominate. Some estimate that in some places Aspen have not reproduced sexually for 10,000 years.
• And when it comes to individual cells, there is of course mitosis in general, the form of cell division in which each daughter cell has a complete copy of the genetic code in the end. ^note As opposed to meiosis for the purpose of sexual reproduction, in which the daughter cells only get one half of all the genes. Though which of the genes get expressed after that, determining the individual cells' form and function, is another matter...

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