Split-Personality Team

One for all, and all for one!

Split Personalities aren't always hostile to the original or radically different in Character Alignment. Sometimes the personalities are different in complementary rather than strictly antagonistic ways. Sometimes they even have common goals.

In a Split Personality Team, a character's multiple personalities have a "division of labor" in which each personality takes charge during a particular emotion, challenge, or aspect of life. The personalities that take over during these special circumstances generally have skills or psychological traits that suit them for the job. A common variation is a more resilient or even badass personality that surfaces during moments of extreme stress if the core personality is psychologically fragile.

The Split-Personality Team is less horror-oriented than other Split Personality Tropes, because the alternates are generally on the core personality's side, or at least looking out for their shared welfare. It's more commonly used in psychologically oriented stories exploring the complexity of a character's fractured mind. Some Real Life accounts of Dissociative Identity Disorder report a similar phenomenon, which may have inspired the trope. DID patients in therapy may, rather than setting a goal of merging into one personality, choose to work toward a psychologically healthy Split Personality Team.

May involve Talking to Themself. Compare Mind Hive and some instances of Multiple Head Case. Multiform Balance is the shapeshifter version.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Change 123 plays with this. Shrinking Violet Motoko possesses four other personalities, each of them a martial arts prodigy, and all of who split off because of the traumatic Training from Hell her three adoptive fathers put her through. The first three, known collectively as "HiFuMi", are able to converse among themselves and, when Motoko is in danger, can assume control and trade off as needed to combat the threat. Motoko, however, can not consciously communicate with them, and is often left dealing with the aftermath of their actions without remembering what happened. (She eventually learns to use a diary to communicate with her other personalities.) The last personality, Zero, is a rage-fueled Implacable Man and, thus, not typically cooperative with any of Motoko's other personalities.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind has this in the form of the main villain, Diavolo, and his split personality, Doppio. Being extremely paranoid of people finding out his identity, Diavolo doesn't go out in public, preferring to "switch" to Doppio, who definitely seems more normal so long as you don't stick your nose too deep into his business.
• An adaptational case comes up in the manga based on The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. After pulling out the Four Sword, Link is split into four copies of himself, Green, Red, Blue and Purple. In the manga version, the four parts have different personalities: Green is energetic, Red is timid, Blue is hot-headed, and purple, called Vio, short for Violet, is calm and thoughtful.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam 00, although they started out in a more standard Jekyll & Hyde configuration, Allelujah and Hallelujah eventually develop into a duo that help each-other out depending on the required situation as well as occasionally fusing. Allelujah acting as thought and moral while Hallelujah acts as instinct and drive. The visual cue to which personality is in charge at the moment is which eye is showing, with the left grey eye representing Allelujah, while the right gold eye is Hallelujah. Whichever personality is dormant will have their eye covered by their hair. But whenever they go all-out and fully merge, they sweep their bangs aside to show both eyes and become "the Super Soldier."
• In Naruto, Zetsu is the only Akatsuki member who doesn't go around in Evil Duo - his teammate is himself, i.e Black and White Zetsu. The white is goofy and gleeful while the black is serious. He can also split into two halves.
• In So I'm a Spider, So What?, split personality is literally a power ("Parallel Minds") that characters can unlock by levelling up the multitasking skill ("Parallel Thought"). When the protagonist Kumoko unlocks this skill, she makes extensive use of it by dividing their work. "Information Mind" (Kumoko's original mind) handles processing information while "Body Mind" handles moving their body around. As she levels up Parallel Minds to gain more personalities, they become "Magic Mind #1" and "Magic Mind #2" whose job is to cast spells during battle so the other two minds don't have to focus any of their own attention on it. It's implied that the skill wasn't actually meant to be turned on permanently, but Kumoko was kind of insane to begin with.
• Alpha Q in Transformers: Energon has a few, very distinct, separate personalities. Each personality has their own face. Overlaps with Multiple Headcase and Mind Hive.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Before Yami's true nature and origin were revealed, everyone thought he was a Split Personality of Yugi (Yugi called him "other me"). As Yami was the better duellist and had the mind powers to punish cheating opponents, they switched out for battles. During their match against Pegasus, they relied on their bond and trust to duel him by switching between one another so Pegasus' mind reading won't work. However, it's later revealed that Yami is in fact the spirit of a Pharaoh from thousands of years ago who was sealed within the Millenium Puzzle and is connected to a much grander scheme, with a running theme being what the Pharaoh's name is. Yami/Atem and Yugi's final duel serves to demonstrate that Yugi no longer needs Yami to fight for him, letting Yami move on to the afterlife.
  • Revisited in Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V where Yuya starts off alone but gains Yuto as an additional personality inside his body part way through the series.
• Shinobu Sensui from YuYu Hakusho has seven personalities, created after a psychologically traumatic event to help carry his burdens. They could even converse with each other and convince each other to take a particular course of action. i.e, the suave Manipulative Bastard seen at the beginning is "Minoru", created to contact and deal with Sensui's followers, and when Yusuke manages to land a hit on "Minoru" Sensui switches to a personality named "Kazuya", who is an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight that handles the actual killing of the human beings Sensui hates so much.

Comic Books

• Lance Temple starts off Blaze of Glory wanting to avenge himself upon his other personality, the Outlaw Kid, who he believes killed his father. In reality, it was the shock of discovering his son was the Outlaw Kid that killed his father. As the 4th issue begins, Lance starts coming to terms with the truth, and willingly pulls his mask over his face to become the Outlaw Kid.
• The DCU:
  • The Creeper and Jack Ryder are usually at odds, but they are this in the 1997 The Creeper miniseries, with Jack providing his investigative skills and the Creeper handling combat. At first, they are uneasy allies but eventually full-fledged partners when they are freed of their self-loathing in the DC One Million event.
  • Rose and Thorn, also of DC, in some versions. The original is your basic Jekyll & Hyde villain, but later on, there have been both rebooted versions of the original and entirely different characters later, where they're both good, but the civilian Rose is, well, a civilian but Thorn goes and takes care of business by night, with both having to leave each other messages. Some versions of the good Thorn can be pretty brutal and antihero-ish, though.
• Dirty Pair (the 1990s Adam Warren Animesque comic book series): Shasti was an Artificial Human created to exploit this trope, with four separate personalities she would switch between as her missions demanded. An attempt to temporarily load the personality of a psychopathic criminal her team was hunting drove her homicidally insane, but did not reduce her ability to use her alternate selves to become a criminal mastermind.
• The Incredible Hulk:
  • In the early 2000s, Bruce Banner develops Lou Gehrig's Disease, which is killing him. He strikes a bargain with the various Hulks in his head (primarily the green Savage, gray Joe Fixit, and Professor personalities): they can come out whenever they think is appropriate, and in turn they keep Banner alive.
  • During World War Hulk, Doctor Strange attempts to reach Banner inside the Hulk’s mind to try to stop him. However, when he gets inside he discovers that, not only are they working together, they anticipated this and laid a trap for him.
  • Revisited in Immortal Hulk. Bruce is active during the day and handles scientific knowledge or anything to do with rules or structure. The Immortal/Devil Hulk comes out at night and is more at home with gut feelings and doling out karmic punishments. Bruce can trade places with Joe Fixit if he needs Joe's cunning or is just emotionally overwhelmed; something similar applies to the Immortal and Savage Hulks. The Professor and the Green Scar are conspicuous by their absence until Xemnu starts messing with Bruce's head, at which point the Green Scar joins forces with the Savage Hulk to fight back.
• In Infinity Wars (2018), Arachknight's mind splintered to create three additional personalities in his head. The original Peter is referred to as "Science Pete", the Child Prodigy and Omnidisciplinary Scientist who's unfortunately clumsy and cowardly in a fight. "Mr. Parker" is The Social Expert who runs Parker Industries and engages in his interpersonal relationships. "The Spider" is his day-to-day Arachknight persona, a quippy jokester who establishes his Friendly Neighborhood cred and gets around on patrol with his flair for acrobatics. "The Knight" is The Big Guy and The Brute as well as a Scarily Competent Tracker, making him the go-to guy for finishing fights. These four personalities working in tandem has made him both a successful superhero and a technology magnate, but they often bicker about how to handle a situation.
• Moon Knight has DID, but his three alters help each other to fight crime. Marc Spector is the original identity, who maintains the whole thing, Jake Lockley is a cab driver who hears the word on the street, and Steven Grant is a rich socialite who has connections with the powerful and funds Moon Knight's crusade. The Moon Knight identity itself may or may not be a seperate alter, and Mr Knight, a detective who wears Moon Knight's mask with a suit, is probably a seperate one again.
• Shazam!: In the original 1940s/50s Fawcett Comics run of Captain Marvel, Cap and Billy Batson (along with Junior/Freddy and to a lesser extent Mary), their normal and empowered selves were this. After the DC Comics revival, they became more single-personality Henshin Heroes.

Fan Works

• The Mega Man X fanfic An Axl Story has Axl share his body with Lumine, whose hostile takeover plot failed and ended up performing a Heel–Face Turn, and Iris, explained by having her body be used as the basis for Axl's. Internally, they can communicate with Axl and interact with his functions, while externally, they can take advantage of his A-Trans System to morph into their own forms and freely roam the world.
• Breaking Twilight by OrphiusOlyandra gives us Pinkie and Pinkamena, the latter of whom embodies all of the bad parts of the former's life, which she had cut from her memory as if from pages in a book, and replacing them with happier Fake Memories^* (We see her do this with some guards she killed to get out of captivity, where she is shown convincing herself she threw them a party instead.) so she can live with herself. Pinkamena torments her over this, until they eventually team up to win the war and Pinkamena starts showing more benign traits. And then a third one is accidentally created by Twilight's botched attempt at a Split Personality Merge, ultimately named "Pinks" as she's neither Pinkie nor Pinkamena, but somepony in between.
• Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls:
  • Pinkie's Fullbring allows her to bring Pinkamena, who is the embodiment of her repressed negativity and emotions, into the physical world, and Pinkie eventually becomes a hammer for Pinkamena to wield. In the Camp Everfree arc, completing their Fullbring merges them physically together again, though they later reveal that they can separate again if needed, but allowing them to remain as distinct mental entities.
  • Twilight eventually manages to come to a mutual understanding with Midnight to the point where they begin working together in combat, Twilight handling Quincy reishi manipulation and Midnight focusing on magic.
• Herding Chats: Adrien has two alters to help him, the male alter Felix to act as Gabriel's "perfect" son for photoshoots and meetings, while the female Chat is the outgoing persona when using the Cat Miraculous. They aren't as harmonious as a team, with the two alters keeping Adrien from realizing that his personas are actual personalities rather than masks, Felix secretly stealing money from their father to set up an escape fund, and Chat wanting to keep her meetings with Marinette a secret from the other alters. There's also a darker and malicious alter locked away in their Inner World, attempting to manipulate Chat into letting it take control of their body.
• In The Heroes of Legend, Constance von Nuvelle’s two personalities work together for research when she develops spells. While her boisterous nighttime personality is the main driving force for developing her magical theory, her more subdued daytime personality reviews her notes to determine what among them is useful and what is nonsense.
• Heroes of the New World goes with the popular fan theory that Marshall D. Teach has multiple personalities working in tandem to achieve his goals. Teach is the more public, affable personality, while the malicious Blackbeard only shows up in private. He believes that Izuku Midoriya is undergoing the same thing, but the Vestiges act more as a Mind Hive rather than separate aspects of Izuku's psyche like Teach/Blackbeard are.
• The Immortal Game weaponizes this, with Celestia and eventually Twilight being able to split the mind into two: one to analyze the situation, the other to act on it. And then we find out the Big Bad can do it too, and can split into a previously unprecedented three personae.
• In the Lighter and Softer (in the sense that nobody is a serial killer) Hannibal fanfic series Multiplicity, Hannibal Lecter's Dark and Troubled Past gave him one of these, consisting of Hannibal, Dr. Lecter, the Cannibal, Little Sister, and the Sin-Eater.
• The Multicolored series of The Avengers fanfiction expands Bruce Banner and the Hulk's relationship into a full Split Personality Team, introducing a bunch of additional alternates and explaining their personality and roles.
• Pinkie Personalities features Pinkie Pie, Pinkamena, and Surprise having hidden their status for quite some time. Pinkamena is more serious and somber but definitely not the usual Ax-Crazy fan portrayal; Surprise is more like Pinkie - same goofiness, but less of a filter and knowledge of when to turn it off.
• A Kingdom Hearts fanfic titled Somebody Told Me (now dormant, possibly dead) presents Roxas and Naminé as alters of Sora but they get along, can communicate, even via a Mental World, and even try so that all three can live their own lives as best as possible. Part of the story at the time was dealing with Naminé's boyfriend Marluxia being brought into the loop and how his acceptance and subsequent behavior changes complicates Sora and (especially) Roxas' lives.
• Three's A Crowd (Naruto) kicks off with Naruto being murdered, only to find his consciousness somehow inhabiting Sakura's body alongside Inner Sakura. While Sakura remains the dominant personality, the trio freely interact within her mind, and Naruto can make use of her chakra to independently manipulate objects such as puppets.
• The Love Live! fic When One Becomes Many reinvents the different idol groups as separate dissociative systems. In the original story, the systems were developed to protect their hosts from abusive fathers.

Film — Animation

• FernGully: The Last Rainforest has The Hero Zack needs Batty Koda to fly him to the control section of the leveler, but Batty's instinctive fear of anything man-made obstructs this effort. Zack slaps Batty, which literally rewires the bat's brain, until Batty thinks that he's in a John Wayne movie, whereupon he bravely flies Zack to the Humongous Mecha.

Film — Live-Action

• This is how Kevin's multiple personalities manifest in Split. Barry appears to be the most outgoing, Dennis originally came about to appease Kevin's mother in her demands that he keep things clean, while Patricia is composed and organized and can direct some of the more volatile personalities, curbing their excesses. Kevin's therapist even comments on how well he does at his job and that he's one of her most consistent patients. At least, that's how it used to be. Unfortunately, Patricia is evil and convinces Dennis and Hedwig to team up with her against the nicer personalities to summon the Beast, submerging Barry and the rest in their quest to bring him about. And poor Kevin hasn't seen the light in two years.

Literature

• Aristoi features a ruling class of people that pretty much have this as a superpower.
• In Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex, Artemis develops a second personality called Orion. After the Big Bad brands Artemis with a rune of enthrallment, Artemis endures an electric shock in order to awaken Orion, who turns out to be unaffected by the rune and possesses martial arts prowess which Artemis does not, making him very useful in the conflict that follows.
• In Blindsight, multiple personalities are no longer considered to be a mental disorder and some people have them surgically induced for multi-tasking. The team's linguist, known as "The Gang", has four primary personas and dozens of partial personality nodes.
• Joe's World: Wolfgang Laebmauntsforscynneweeld, wielding the twin powers of madness and amnesia, is himself both "the main patient, the head psychiatrist, the chief tester as well as testee of experimental drugs, and the captain of the security guard" at the Begfat asylum that he himself founded, so he could have a home of his own.
• Multiples by Robert Silverberg. 20 Minutes into the Future multiple personality is accepted and respected as a variant normal lifestyle, similar to being gay. Many groups form cooperating teams, keeping logs if they can't communicate directly. The main character, a singlet, first poses as a multiple, then tries experimental treatment to see if she can become multiple for real.
• By Rhythm of War, this is what Shallan's quasi-DID has evolved to, with three distinct personalities that communicate with each other and hand off control as needed: "Shallan" handles art, scholarship, and social interaction, "Veil" handles stealth and spycraft, and "Radiant" handles combat and stressful situations.
• This Alien Shore: The main character Jamisia is on the run, and struggles to understand the Others, extra people who live in her head. In the space colonies, mental "disorders" have been accepted as variant normal (people paint their faces with kaja designs, associated with totemic animal spirits, to indicate what variances they have). The most prominent among the Others in the story are Derik, aggressive and impulsive; Raven, trained as a pilot and a technician; and Katlyn, the seductress. At the very end, the group escapes to a safe area of space and is identified as belonging to a kaja called rusa, a deer which in Japanese mythology sheltered within its body the spirits of lost souls.
• Altogether Andrews is one of the Crazy Homeless People introduced in The Truth, whose eight or so personalities manifest themselves whenever they need to express their opinion, in this case whether selling newspapers constitutes work.
• In the Voidskipper novel In Pursuit of Bark's Finest, Madeline Zargosty is partnered with Maximus Hadrian (often simply called Max), a cyberwarfare expert who's been downloaded into the same morph as her. While they briefly separate for various purposes, they generally stay together. Notably, Max is recognized as an agent in his own right by the Bureau of Starforce Intelligence.
• Vorkosigan Saga: This is explored in depth in Mirror Dance. Mark Vorkosigan develops a Split Personality Team he dubs the "Black Gang" (because they do the dirty jobs) in order to survive and eventually escape Cold-Blooded Torture. Three of the personalities are Too Kinky to Torture (in different ways) and one of them is a manifestation of Mark's assassin training. Mark's only regret is that he can't take his alternate personalities to a posh dinner like Miles can with Admiral Naismith.
• When Rabbit Howls: The Troops have some elements of this, although they don't always surface for practical reasons. Mean Joe protects the most vulnerable personalities, Grace the Zombie keeps going under immense strain, Black Katherine deals with rage, and so forth. They also don't sequester emotions to certain people. Each has his or her own full range of emotions, but handle them in different ways; through art, writing, work, etc.

Live-Action TV

• Doom Patrol (2019): This is how Crazy Jane's personas are supposed to work. Unfortunately for her, there's a reason she's a member of the Doom Patrol instead of the Justice League: having a headspace full of close to 50 different personas, all of which have some sort of personality disorder, some of which are so extreme that they can't even comprehend how to take care of Jane's body when they're in control, does not lend itself to cooperation. A great deal of time in Jane-centric episodes is spent on the personas disagreeing with each other while Jane attempts to keep them in line and cooperating.
• In The Flash (2014), the prime universe Killer Frost (the first we met was from an alternate universe) is at first a Superpowered Evil Side of Caitlin, but at the end of the season where she was introduced, she makes a Heel–Face Turn while not fully becoming Caitlin again. When we find them next season, each is clearly her own person, and Frost gets an arc of finding herself as an individual. Caitlin and Frost work together, with Caitlin being the scientist and Frost being the superhero, and care for each other a great deal.
• In Jekyll, Jackman and Hyde agree to devote their respective talents towards the common goal of saving Jackman's family. True to the trope, they retain their individual personalities and and powers or lack of them. Their alliance is simply a case of switching voluntarily depending on which would be most useful at any time.
• A Sense8, from the show of the same name, consists of eight people with a mental link, turning them into a collective Hive Mind. Each original personality still exists, and can take over for someone in a situation where one person's skills is better suited to another person's problem.

Tabletop Games

• Practiced by Eldar in Warhammer 40,000: keeping themselves free of Chaos influence requires utmost focus on whatever they do — in particular, all the craftworld warriors have a civilian and warrior persona, switched through an elaborate pre-battle ritual.

Video Games

• Danganronpa: This is the point which Toko Fukawa and Genocider Syo/Genocide Jack in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls have reached after numerous years of the former being justifiably terrified of the latter. Toko has learned to control when Jack fronts (by shooting herself in the head with a taser) and Jack has quit being a man-hunting serial killer to use her power to instead slaughter armies of killer robots. In return, they’re pardoned for the tens of bodies they dropped before The End of the World as We Know It and are given an internship in the second-to-last government on Earth, which quickly becomes the last by the end of the prologue. Toko’s in charge unless they need to fight things, then Jack is called out to destroy everything in their path.
• In Grandia II, Elena, a White Magician Girl by default, gains a Superpowered Evil Side, who is a Person of Mass Destruction, as a result of Demonic Possession. When she becomes Millennia, usually right before a major boss battle, she helps the party, at first because their short-term goals coincide, and later because she's in love with the main character. Just before the final boss, she gains a separate body and they are able to fight together.
• The Killer7 use this as a gameplay mechanic, with all the Smiths playing differently, using different weapons, and having different skills despite being split personalities of one man (the twist being that the one man is not the one that we think). They even appear to change form when they switch personalities and have their own health meters.
• Hel in Smite has a Light Side with a nice personality and a Dark Side with a nasty personality. While they tend to argue with each other, they split the job while fighting.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice: Uendo Toneido's characters, Kisegawa and Patches, are revealed through testimony to be full-blown split personalities, who work with him to enhance his rakugo performances. Much of the case revolves around the question of whether the three are hiding a murderous fourth personality named Owen. It turns out a fourth personality called Owen does exist, but he's just a timid little boy and not the murderer. None of the other three share Owen's memories, so their reaction to seeing their master's dead body was to hide any evidence that he might have done it, as they literally didn't know otherwise; in fact, he was a witness to the murder.
• In Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow, Kagura has a Split Personality, Homura, born from his horrifying Dark and Troubled Past. The Hot-Blooded Homura was born to protect the gentle Kagura's frail mind after his trauma, and tends to take over when Kagura's either in battle or too stressed.
• The Voerman Sisters in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Though initially hostile towards each other, the Player Character can convince the them to reconcile with one another.

Web Comics

• Jekyll and Hyde from MK's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde though they can both be quite stubborn and obstinate in their ways.

Western Animation

• Danny Phantom: In "Identity Crisis", Danny uses an invention to split himself into two. Despite spending most of the episode clashing with each other, Fun Danny and Super Danny eventually learn to work together in sync before they merge back together.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: K.O. initially lets T.K.O. have control to fight Jr., but they come to another agreement: K.O. can use T.K.O.'s power (at least once), while T.K.O. can roam free in their mindscape (implying he'll have a lesser effect on K.O.'s normal personality) and gets a punching bag.
• Invoked in South Park. A psychiatrist diagnoses multiple personality disorder at Butters when he plays trucker, cowboy or detective. It then turns out that the psychiatrist himself has MPD and one of his personalities, a boy named Billy, tries to convince Butters to become "Inspector Butters" in order to solve a crime. Butters plays along, because the psychiatrist is armed and one of his personalities is ready to shoot him if he steps out of the line.
• Mike of Total Drama has this going for him. His personalities include a resilient Situation expy, an athlete, a Grumpy Old Man, an Adventurer Archaeologist ... and Mal. All of these personalities except for the latter (maybe) have easy if slightly situational triggers (athletic challenge, not wearing a shirt, wearing a certain type of hat, etc.) that can be exploited to this effect.
• In Transformers: Animated Blitzwing has three personalities. Anger brings up a drill sergeant who transforms into a tank and uses fire as a weapon. When calm, a more rational personality, in the form of a tactical specialist, takes over. This one transforms into a jet and uses ice as a weapon. These two personalities conflict with each other, and the third personality acts as a bridge between the two. This last one shows up randomly, without provocation, and is insane; however, he is the most powerful out of the three because he can use both ice and fire. He does not appear very often, and when he does, only sticks around for a few seconds.

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