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Synchronization

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Do you know how long it takes to hang a dragon? Rick sure does.

Xamot: (grunts in pain)
Alpine: Hey, I never laid a glove on you!
Xamot: I feel... what my brother feels...
Alpine: Terrific! Pass this on! (punch)

Two people are linked together, or a person is linked to an object, such that whatever happens to one also happens to the other. Killing or harming one of them will lead to the death or equivalent harm of both. You wouldn't think this would be desirable, but it works the other way too; see Empathic Weapon.

If enemies are linked together, and are therefore forced to protect or aid each other to ensure their own safety, this becomes a form of Chained Heat.

Twins in media tend to experience this a lot as Twins Are Special, made famous by Alexandre Dumas's novella, The Corsican Brothers. It's also common with the Enemy Without.

Frequently goes hand-in-hand with a Psychic Link, because Your Mind Makes It Real, and sometimes with Mindlink Mates or Twin Telepathy. Compare My Significance Sense Is Tingling. Can be exploited for very interesting effect. See also Shared Life-Meter, a related video game trope. Reality-Changing Miniature and Voodoo Doll are variants of this, where objects or people are linked this way with a representation of them.

If the link can ensure the death of a participant but doesn't otherwise transmit pain or other feelings, then it isn't a Synchronization but a case of Can't Live Without You. Compare Psychic Glimpse of Death, where one party experiences the death of another while connected to their mind but is able to survive, and Shared Life Energy, in which life energy is shared to save a life. Compare Remote, Yet Vulnerable and Sympathetic Magic..


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Yuka and Mika, twin girls in Hot Tails, share not only each other's pain, but also pleasure. Since Hot Tails is a Hentai manga, you can guess how this is applied. To be a tad more specific, Yuka goes out on a date, and Mika, bored and a bit irritated, entertains herself. This makes Yuka's trip to the park with her boyfriend a bit more interesting.
  • Ah! My Goddess: Angels and their host goddesses are linked to each other, and so are doublets, with the Doublet System being the hostage exchange between the gods and the demons in which a young demon and god(dess) link their souls, but then are made to forget whom they're doubletted with (though Welsper and Belldandy would later rediscover their link); killing one kills the other as well.
  • Ayakashi Triangle:
    • Suzu can create a duplicate of herself called an omokage, which she shares senses with, including pain. It was initially speculated the injuries would also transfer over, but it was later shown the omokage breaking a hand and being torn to pieces only made Suzu feel the pain.
    • Sosuke's Engulfing Shadow is a giant spectral mouth that he can eat Life Energy through, but damaging it will also damage his actual mouth or more.
    • The sex-changing curse that Shirogane put on Matsuri links them together in special circumstances, even after Shirogane became too weak to remove it. When Shirogane had a bad cold, Matsuri's could feel the mark it left burning to the point he collapsed. One failed attempt to remove the spell instead caused Shirogane to start Fading Away. Shirogane has claimed killing him would make the spell irreversible.
  • In Black God, a Tera guardian and a human can form a pact to sync up their "Tera", granting the guardian great strength, though this can be physically tiring to the human partner.
  • In Black★Rock Shooter, humans and their Otherselves are linked. When Kagari carves a heart-shaped scar on Yomi Takanashi's chest, the same scar appears on Dead Master. When an Otherself is killed, their human counterpart screams in agony, faints, and then wakes up with no memory of whatever caused them grief and pain. If a human dies, their Otherself ceases to exist (this is never seen, but Saya implies this when she attempts to murder Mato Kuroi to destroy Black★Rock Shooter, but ultimately cannot bring herself to do the deed). As long as the human lives, the Otherself will eventually resurrect.
  • In Bleach, Captain Komamura's bankai is a giant warrior that mirrors his movements, and any damage inflicted on the bankai will in turn be inflicted on Komamura's body. Since no one else's bankai has this problem, it makes his power in particular a double-edged sword. His typical strategy is to finish his opponent with one blow. The link does, however, come with the advantage of the bankai being able to heal if severely damaged, something no other bankai is capable of.
  • In Corpse Princess, the death of a contracted monk usually leads to the death of his Shikabane Hime. If she goes on living, she is considered just another Shikabane and must be executed.
  • DARLING in the FRANXX: male and female pilots must be in sync to activate and run the FranXX mecha. Falling out of sync disables the mech. The pistil (female) also synchronizes with the mech itself, feeling pain for any damage it takes.
  • Digimon:
    • In Digimon Adventure 02, Jogress Evolution (DNA Digivolution in the dub) was achieved (three times) when two of the human characters synched emotionally with each other, merging two Adult/Champion Digimon into a single Perfect/Ultimate. At least one of the three examples came along with a synchronized heartbeat from the two characters in question.
    • Taken even further in Digimon Tamers. First shown with Takato, whose strong bond with his partner Guilmon causes him to start feeling Guilmon's pain at certain times (starting with the battle with the tiger Deva Mihiramon), as well as allowing him to mentally and emotionally connect with Guilmon, at times even allowing him to lend Guilmon strength. After the main trio Bio-Merge with their Digimon, they discover that all three of them now feel their partner's pain when they fight the D-Reaper in the real world.
  • In Dragon Ball, when Kami separated his evil side and forced it out of him, it eventually became King Piccolo. Unfortunately, he went on a rampage and killed thousands of people For the Evulz, but Kami couldn't let him die, because if he died, Kami would also die. After Goku mortally wounded King Piccolo, he spat an egg out with his essence that carried on the Synchronization. It eventually hatched into Piccolo Jr, who was linked to Kami just like his father was. Eventually, they fused together again after Piccolo underwent Character Development and a Heel–Face Turn.
  • The mechs of Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure are controlled via a pilot's "Life Sympathy", with higher levels being more powerful at the cost of feeling pain when the mech is damaged. Main character Kazuki is the only known male pilot and also has negative Life Sympathy levels that allow him to pull off impossible feats.
  • In Eureka Seven, Coralians are linked to the Scab Coral. If the Scab is being attacked, all Coralians will feel the pain at the same time, hinting that Eureka will die if the Scab Coral is dead. It becomes an important reason for the protagonists to stop Dewey's plan to annihilate the Scab Coral. This synchronization caused Renton to lose his beloved Eureka in the manga ending, while in the movie ending, Eureka managed to "work around" this fate by becoming fully human(The explanation of how it happened is up to debate, but you can't deny that The Power of Love plays a huge part in this happening).
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Organic Link Magic involves linking two or more things together such that damage to one will result in similar damage done to the other. Laxus' Thunder Palace involves using Lightning Lacrima that, if destroyed, establish a link with the destroyer that causes them to take damage equal to what took out the lacrima alongside getting blasted with the lightning magic already stored inside the lacrima. Brain's Superpowered Evil Side Zero is kept as a Sealed Evil in a Can via Organic Link magic connecting the six members of the Oracion Seis, with each seal fading as one of the Seis is defeated in battle.
    • Meldy links Gray and Juvia together via Magulity Sense so she only needs to kill one to kill the other, intending to do so on Juvia by viewing her as the weaker of the two. Despite being burdened by experiencing each other's injuries, Juvia is too tough for Meldy to defeat, so she resorts to linking herself to them, then attempting suicide. Meldy is stopped because the link allows the targets to feel each other's emotions, and Juvia's feelings for Gray overwhelm her.
    • If one damages an Etherious' Book of Zeref, they harm the Etherious as well. Zeref uses this to prove that Natsu is E.N.D. during his battle with his brother. Also, if Zeref were to die, Natsu would die too, as the Books of Zeref channel their creator's magic to sustain the Etherious. At the same time, any repairs to the Book will also heal them, as proven when Lucy rewrote the letters that went missing in Natsu's book after Zeref fatally impaled him, which healed the hole in his chest shortly afterwards.
  • Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: When "Chloe" (Kuro Illya) first joins the cast and expresses a desire to kill Illya, Rin and Luvia get around this by carving a magic rune onto Chloe that causes a one-way version of this between her and Illya: whatever pain Illya feels, Chloe will feel too, and if Illya dies, so too will Chloe. This is enough to prevent Chloe from attacking Illya until she undergoes a full Heel–Face Turn, though Chloe keeps the rune for a long time afterward out of sentimentality. They later do the same thing to Bazett to stop her from attacking them. While it convinces her to form a truce, Bazett is so tough that feeling Illya's injuries barely fazes her and she states she could still beat Illya half to death and maintain consciousness afterwards. Unlike Chloe, she found a certain magic-using nun and had the rune removed, though she still kept up the truce.
  • For the Kid I Saw in My Dreams: Since birth, Senri and Kazuto have felt their other twins physical pain whenever one of them obtains an injury.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, when Ed gets severely injured, his younger brother Alphonse blanks out. This is because Ed and Al are linked, and that Al's body is actually feeding off Ed's—which is part of the reason why he's so short.
  • Fushigi Yuugi:
    • The original series features twin brothers Amiboshi and Suboshi, who felt everything that happened to the other, a la The Corsican Brothers. Also, for a while, Yui was synchronized to Miaka due to them wearing their school uniforms, so that (for instance) when the latter was drowning, the former couldn't breathe. When Miaka changed clothes later, the psychic link was cut off and it didn't let her know that Yui, who was still clad in her uniform, had been taken into the Universe of the Four Gods.
    • Used with a rather dark twist in the prequel Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden. Einosuke Okida killed his daughter Takiko and himself by stabbing himself while he was holding "The Universe of the Four Gods" in his other hand and while Takiko was still inside the world of the book. That way, Einosuke's fatal injuries were transferred to Takiko's body as a Mercy Kill - she was summoning Genbu and dying very, VERY painfully as a result.
  • A similar system is used on the Endlaves in Guilty Crown: pilots are synchronised to their machines via remote interface, though they feel everything the machine does, and Ayase seems to show physical manifestations of damage to her Endlave on her actual body. How a machine is meant to feel pain (and indeed why you'd build in a system which incapacitates your pilots with extreme pain if their machines are destroyed when hot-swapping pilots between machines can be done instantly) is beyond explanation.
  • Gundam:
    • In Mobile Fighter G Gundam, Gundam Fighters control their Mobile Fighters via the Mobile Trace System, a skin-tight uniform with various receptors on the outfit to control them through movement. Blows to the Gundam translate to blows towards the pilot and severe damage to the Gundam can really harm a pilot as shown when Sai Saici was forced to rip off one of Dragon Gundam's arms to trick the Mermaid Gundam. It's also said that only the best pilots can handle the suit as those unsuited for it can be injured or killed.
    • In Gundam Build Fighters Try, Sekai develops a strange ability known as "Assimilation" that allows him to link up (in an undefined way) with his Try Burning Gundam Gunpla, making it stronger, though damage done to the Gunpla translates to injuries onto him.
  • GUN×SWORD:
    • Van, who was surgically reconstructed so that his life is synched to Dann of Thursday, his Armor. He grows ill if he spends too long without riding it, and if it's seriously damaged he suffers as well. If it's destroyed, he dies. Oddly enough, although no surgery is in his backstory, Ray Lundgren has a similar occurrence — when Carossa hurls a giant shuriken into Volcade's eye, Ray's vision goes permanently blurry.
    • Ray's problem was likely caused by the electric shocks he received when Volkein took damage, or from hitting the back of his head when knocked backwards (which can cause blindness and eye damage).
  • In Higurashi: When They Cry, Rika is implied to share this sort of connection with Hanyuu, though it is played for laughs rather than drama, with Rika threatening to eat spicy food whenever Hanyuu fails her. One would assume that either the connection is one-way, or Rika has a much higher pain threshold than Hanyuu due to all those horrific deaths.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Stands are effectively astral projections, and damaging them results in corresponding damage to its user. Additionally, in Part 3 a Stand user named Steely Dan had the power to inflict a "Corsican Brothers"-type bond on another person (for example, getting tapped in the leg with a stick led to his victim almost breaking his and having his back scratched caused the sensation of being flayed alive). He used this on Jotaro's grandfather Joseph and threatened to kill him if Jotaro didn't play along; he then proceeds to abuse Joseph and humiliate Jotaro until the Stand is removed, upon which Jotaro (having written down all the things Dan had done to him) beats the crap out of him with his own Stand. For three whole pages.
    • It is only because of this synchronization that Jotaro is able to defeat Big Bad DIO; during their last battle, Jotaro strikes The World's leg in the same place where he had injured DIO's leg, and as a result, the neon vampire's body practically shatters.
    • Heavily downplayed in the case of Part 4's Red Hot Chilli Pepper. Damage to the Stand doesn't really transfer to the user Akira; likewise, when the Stand uses electricity to heal itself, Akira's wounds are unaffected. If the Stand is completely destroyed or runs out of power, however, Akira will die. After his user's fight with Josuke's group, the Stand is left in a broken state, with missing legs and a damaged head and left arm, but its injuries don't transfer to Akira, as he's still whole.
    • At the end of Part 4, Kira is dragged to a Fate Worse than Death by the hand-spirits of Ghost Girl's Alley. In desperation, he tries to have his Stand Killer Queen blow up the hands. Instead, the hands tear Killer Queen apart and Kira suffers the same fate. Of course, being a spirit now, this can't actually kill Kira as much as he might wish otherwise, especially since now he can't resist them anymore.
    • In Part 6, Stone Ocean, Xander McQueen has the Stand "Highway to Hell" which synchronizes him to his victim whenever he attempts to kill himself. This is coupled with zero control over his own suicidal tendencies.
    • This doesn't apply or at least applies to a lesser extent to Automatic Stands (Stands that take act on their own with minimal action from the User), Bound Stands (Stands that need to be bound to regular objects to show themselves, such as Strength from Part 3), or Colony Stands (Stands that consist of many smaller units, such as Sex Pistols or Harvest; as long as one unit is alive and active, then its user will remain alive no matter how bad their injuries are).
      • Special mention goes to Notorious B.I.G, an Automatic Stand that can keep going after its user is dead. In fact, the user has to die to activate the Stand.
    • The Live-Action Adaptation of Part 4 takes this in a more humorous direction: After capturing the water-based Stand Aqua Necklace in an empty bottle, Josuke taunts it while shaking up the bottle. The scene immediately cuts to show Aqua Necklace's user Angelo flopping around on the muddy ground like a fish out of water, furiously screaming "STOP THAT!"
  • Kanon: Mai and the demons she fights, due to their actually being manifestations of her own suppressed healing powers.
  • The protagonists of Kiznaiver, are a group of teenagers bonded together via the "Kizna System" that causes them to feel the pain of the others in an attempt to force them to form a relationship with one another. Initially it is primarily physical pain, but as the series progresses they also feel emotional pain and eventually hear the thoughts of one another.
  • The whole plot of Loveless revolved around the empathic connection between "Fighters" and "Sacrifices", in which the first are capable of commanding spells while the second suffer the effects of attacks in combat. The connection between both parties is vital to ensure victory and survival.
  • Magic Knight Rayearth:
    • The Knights are synchronized with the Rune Gods they've established a contract with. If the Rune God they're riding is injured, it will wound the Knight herself — to the point that breaking the Rune God's weapon will destroy the Knight's own Escudo sword. This synchronization is particularly evident in the Alternate Continuity OAV, where Alcyone's hand was torn apart (and remained a bloody mess afterwards) when Hikaru punched through her Rune God's claws.
    • In the trial for escudo, while Hikaru and Umi face copies of their loved ones (Hikaru's puppy, Umi's parents), Fuu fights a fake version of herself, and each gets the other's wounds.
  • In the manga adaptation of Mega Man X4, this is the case with Repliforce commander Colonel and his sister Iris, who are Reploid twins. Colonel and his sister Iris were originally created as one Reploid by Repliforce scientists, who wanted to create an ultimate Reploid warrior with a strong fighting spirit and a pacificist heart akin to X. The differences were considered irreconcilable, and they were split into two Reploids. Any damage one sibling receives has similar effects on the other. When Repliforce launches their secession movement for a Reploid-only state and independence from the human government, Zero and Colonel have a fearsome fight, damaging each other and only stopping after Iris interrupts the fight. Iris later faints in Zero's hands because the minor damage that Colonel suffered was still felt by her.
    • After Iris is damaged by a computer terminal explosion caused by the deceased Cyber Peacock, Colonel breaks military regulations and goes to the base where she is being treated in a stasis pod to try and save her. He finds Zero and insists on fighting him despite the fact that Zero has already gotten a vaccine for Iris, and tells Zero that it is their desinty to fight. Zero holds nothing back, and slices of Colonel's right arm with his saber. Moments later, Iris's right arm corrodes in the pod. Zero realizes that Iris once said she and Colonel are "two people, one person" and that he is hurting her by damaging Colonel. Despite all this, Colonel refuses to surrender, and charges at Zero one last time. Zero, with an agonizd expression on his face, reluctantly kills him by slicing him in half, knowing full well that doing so would cause Iris to die as well. Iris later jolts out of her sleep and breaks out of her pod, and says she feels pain as if there were a hole in her chest. After instinctively going to her brother's corpse, she inadvertently fuses with him and is transformed into a Ride Armor. After she causes some destruction and kills Reploids in the base, Zero smashes the armor and pulls her out of it. Iris tells Zero that even though her brother is dead, she was happy to have spent time with Zero. She then dies moments later because of Colonel's death directly affecting her.
  • Mekakucity Actors: It is all but stated in the final episode that this is the case for Konoha and Haruka (technically owner of the former's body), in that if one has his wish granted, the other will disappear/cease to be/die along with him. One could argue that they are the same person, just split into two parts, but Haruka referring to Konoha as 'the other me' suggests he thinks of him as a separate being.
  • Subverted in a rather cruel fashion in My-HiME:
    • The HiME Childs are powered by the feelings their user has for another (their "Most Important Person" - who can be her Love Interest, a parent, a sibling, a role model, etc.). When the Child dies, so too does the person (though not vice versa). When this comes into play in the anime (as it happens to pretty much every HiME by the end), the HiME, whilst surviving, enters a Heroic BSoD (the first one, Akane, even goes catatonic). There's also a sticky battle between two HiMEs (Mai and Shiho) who share their 'Most Important Person' — it's the same guy (Yuuichi) for both of them. As a result, whoever wins kills their Important Person... and in the end, Yuuichi ends up dying. And he actually does tell Mai (the girl he romantically loved) to shoot Shiho's Child down, so she wouldn't BSOD because of him.
    • One later battle is between two HiMEs (Shizuru and Natsuki) who each consider the other their most important person, and ends with both of them dying when their Childs are destroyed. It overlaps with Murder-Suicide - Natsuki deliberately had her Child shoot itself and Shizuru's dead so they would go down together, and she even cradles Shizuru in her arms as they die..
  • My-Otome:
    • An Otome's Master feels everything his or her Otome does. This was done because in addition to being a prettified bodyguard, an Otome is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. A Master whose life is on the line as well is theoretically less likely to engage in war. Likewise, a Master/Slave Unit in the same series.
    • The Slaves that members of Schwarz use follow this principle. If one is damaged, the user is injured, and if one is destroyed, the user dies. The reverse is also true, as a sniper kills a Slave user, and causes the Slave to disappear.
  • Naruto:
    • Hidan can turn himself into a living voodoo doll. Any damage he suffers would then happen to his victim. Since he is immortal, he can easily kill someone with this ability. It is, in fact, his favorite way to kill people. His tactics almost all revolve around setting up this technique and then "killing" himself. A fact that Shikamaru uses against him.
    • Yamanaka Ino could do something similar with her clan's Valentine jutsu, which allows a shinobi to invade the mind of another, at the expense of leaving the practitioner's body comatose and suffering damage equal to the possessed body. Her teammate Nara Shikamaru's family has a similar jutsu; one stretches one's shadow out to lock on an opponent, making the practitioner and the victim move identically. The latter has shown itself to be less impractical, and has been used in combat a few times over the series. It helps that Shikamaru is a Teen Genius and very respectable strategist. They later show advanced versions of this technique, which don't have this disadvantage, but are harder to perform.
    • Shadow Clones suffer this as a limitation. For example, if the original gets hurt (or in Naruto's case, dons the Demon Fox cloak, which burns him), the clones will feel the same pain and possibly disperse. On an inverse note, if a clone is gathering nature energy and overloads, thus turning into stone, the creator will suffer the same fate because the creator will absorb the same overload of nature energy.
    • In a Naruto filler arc, Naruto faces what seems to be Kabuto in one of Orochimaru's hideouts. Kabuto uses a Dangerous Forbidden Technique of which connects the hearts of the user and the victim through chakra strings. He then proceeds to remove his own still-beating heart from his chest and squeeze it, causing Naruto to take damage as well.
    • In a later filler arc, this happens between Sora and Naruto. Because they're both Kyuubi Jinchuuriki. The entity sealed in Naruto is the real deal, but Sora's father collected excess chakra that the Kyuubi had bled off during the Konoha battle and sealed it in Sora, turning him into a pseudo-Jinchuuriki. When Sora activates his chakra cloak, Naruto's also activates in sympathy, and by repressing it himself, he helps Sora return to normal.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: The mecha pilots use neural links to control their Eva units. A meter shows the "synchronization ratio" which depends on several factors including plug depth (increases synch but puts the pilot under more strain as well as risking mental contamination by the Eva) and the pilot's psychological state (being depressed lowers the synch ratio). Low synchronization means you can't pilot the mech at all (it won't even move under 20%), and higher synchronization ratios give the pilot better and better control, but in exchange they feel more of the damage the evas get. It's made clear that higher synchronization ratios are dangerous in various ways, but it's not completely explained. Examples:
    • On one occasion Asuka was saved by cutting the link a split second before Unit 02 was beheaded by Zeruel's arms.
    • When his synchronization ratio exceeded 400%, Shinji dissolved into his mech and had to be reconstituted. It is said that the same happened to his mother but she didn't come back, as she became Unit 01's mind and soul.
    • Similarly, after descending to a dangerous plug depth in order to save Rei in Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22, Shinji became trapped in the entry plug for fourteen years, finally being recovered from Unit 01 in the beginning of Evangelion 3.33.
    • In End of Evangelion, Asuka's ratio reaches 300% and the injuries to Unit 02 are reflected on her body. Seeing that she ran out of power just as she was speared in the head and that her opponents were, for all intents and purposes, cannibalistic harpies, it isn't necessary to elaborate the result.
    • It's said that the Eva units' synch rate depends on the pilot's need to "run to mommy". Which is why the units tend to go BERSERK and start acting on their own in moments of extreme turmoil. This is also why, in the original series, Asuka's synch rating actually goes down as she comes to terms with her past with her mother, to the point where she can't even pilot anymore.
  • One Piece:
    • Basil Hawkins, a minor character, makes use of voodoo dolls that somehow transfer any damage done to him to whatever unlucky sap he managed to make a voodoo doll of.
    • Gecko Moria has the ability to remove a person's shadow and infuse corpses with it to give the corpse life and the original person's strength (it can also be infused into a living person, but only temporarily). However, he can't just kill the original person once they've outlived their usefulness because if the person dies, the shadow "dies" too. So once he's removed a person's shadow, Moria just lets them go (of course, without a shadow, they will die if exposed to sunlight).
    • Paramecia-types can occasionally have this problem, depending on the power and if it has any transformations. Nico Robin will feel the pain of any attacks against one of her detached, sprouted limbs, and any structural damage suffered by Capone Bege's walking fortress form will be reflected as an injury when he transforms back.
    • Doctor Vegapunk somehow manages this between all six of the individuals he split himself into. While this means they all have telepathy with each other, this also extends to biology: None of the others need to eat, sleep or take care of other biological functions much because they have a single individual doing it all for all of them.
  • In The Anime of the Game for Persona 4, Personas act more like Stands than in the games. The protagonists do all their fighting through their Personas, and feel any harm that afflicts said Personas.
  • In Pokémon the Series: XY, Ash's Greninja has access to a unique Super Mode known as Ash-Greninja when Ash and Greninja synchronize their strong feelings a a trainer and Pokémon. This forme allows Ash to see battles from Greninja's point of view and causes Ash and Greninja to share each other's pain. Ash even goes so far as to frequently copy what Greninja is doing in the middle of a fight.
  • RahXephon:
    • This is also implied (but not confirmed outright) to be the case — in one fight, the RahXephon is impaled through the shoulder, and Ayato is seen clutching his own shoulder afterwards.
    • It's more clearly the case for the people trapped into piloting the enemy Dolems. Ayato himself doesn't quite get this through his head until it's too late, though: he has already indirectly beaten Hiroko to death by defeating the Dolem she's linked to.
  • In Ronin Warriors (Yoroiden Samurai Troopers), the first Dynasty Warrior that Ryo fights causes this effect between himself and Mia (Nasuti) and Yulie (Jun), so if he gets injured, they suffer all of the pain. Ryo eventually defeats him by using his armor's power. (Though how this didn't kill them is not explained.)
  • Played for laughs in Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, in which Sonic and Hyper Metal Sonic achieve synchronization while fighting each other. Cue a scene where Sonic suddenly grabs his head in pain while grinning mischievously. Hyper Metal Sonic just got a peek up Sara's skirt and got kicked in the head for it.
  • The Emilys in Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry shared a psychic connection first seen when Sara encounters the doll and names it, and the girl takes the name as her own. The Emily race initially mounted against the Union because they felt their compatriots' pain at being dissected.
  • At one point in The Vision of Escaflowne, Van became synchronized to Escaflowne. While this allowed him to win the battle in that episode, it also resulted in him taking serious injuries in the same places the Escaflowne was damaged, and the only way to treat them was to get Escaflowne fixed (with poor Van screaming and BSODing in pain as the gashes were welded closed), since fixing Escaflowne is like fixing any machine, only more complex. And considering that Escaflowne turned black when it happened, synchronization could also count as a Superpowered Evil Side.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • In many battles, the duelists seem to be physically weakened by the carnage going on in the card game. In many cases there is some sort of supernatural explanation for this, but it sometimes happens even when no supernatural forces are at play. There is some sort of weak implication that the realism of the holographic systems used causes a stress response in dedicated players — in one early duel, Yugi's grandfather Sugoroku actually has a heart attack when he loses. Kaiba certainly seems to believe that using his own advanced holographic systems gives him an edge, as his opponents are overwhelmed by the realism of the simulation.
    • Yami and Yugi could arguably be this as well, what with the whole two-souls-sharing-one-body business; they're usually in tune with each other's emotions, thoughts and, shown at least once, feel each other's pain. Not to mention that it has been implied that if one of them is killed, the other will die as well.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yuya or one of his counterparts entering an Awakened state will cause any of the others nearby to become Awakened as well, which also leads to them speaking in unison.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters, it's implied that anyone who loses their only/final Capsule Monster dies. Early episodes show how characters are also harmed when their sole monster suffers damage. When a group of Trents attack and strangle Celtic Guardian, Yami is also choked.

    Comic Books 
  • An underground comic called Clio's Problem had this on a grand scale. The narrator is visiting her old friend Clio who she hasn't seen in years, and has definitely seen better days. Especially since she seems to be suffering from a delusion that every time something bad happens to her, something worse happens to the world. She gets in a fender-bender, there's a twenty-car pile-up. She burns herself on a stove, an apartment building burns down with everyone inside. Even mental problems have consequences, from her anorexia causing a famine to her depression causing a wave of suicides. She has pages and pages of evidence and even demonstrates the curse by stabbing herself with a needle...causing a news report to come on about a famous actor who just got randomly stabbed to death. Her friend still thinks it's all coincidence, and that's when Clio drops the bombshell...she has AIDS. She has maybe six months left and is terrified of what will happen to the world when she dies. Her friend still doesn't believe it's real, and then an angry Clio suddenly slips on the floor and knocks herself out...and as soon as she falls unconscious, the city is hit with a blackout. The last panel is Clio's friend with a look of dawning horror on her face.
  • The 1970's DC Comics character Kobra had this problem; he and his twin brother suffered the injuries the other one got, so his brother was an enemy he could not kill. Kobra eventually got around this with some Applied Phlebotinum to break the psychic link.
  • Back when he was Impulse, Bart Allen acquired the power to create energy duplicates of himself. When one of them died during Our Worlds at War he went into psychic shock. While he recovered, he was extremely reluctant to use the power after that.
  • The Incredible Hulk: A What If? issue had Bruce fail to push Rick into the ditch to save him from the gamma bomb. Instead the blast was effectively filtered through Bruce's body before irradiating Rick, which telepathically bonded the latter to the former in both his egos. When General Ross tries to exploit their connection to entrap the Hulk, he neglects to treat Rick's radiation poisoning until it's too late and Rick dies. This drives the Hulk murderously insane, and he ends up killing the Fantastic Four and Iron Man in his rampage before Thor can finally put him down.
    • One of Hulk’s lesser known enemies was a pair of convicts named Hammer and Anvil, who fought him using a magic chain that kept them together. This chain also connected their lifeforce, and this lead to their final defeat. During a fight with Hulk in the desert, the Scourge of the Underworld, a supervillain who specialized in killing off other supervillains, shot Hammer, and as a result, Anvil died holding his partner in his arms.
  • Khaal and his brothers in Khaal: The Chronicles of a Galactic Emperor have their lifeforce tied together as result of being half human hybrids born from a female Psycog. If one of them dies, the other two will follow them. Khaal discovers this when he nearly murders his brothers in a fit of madness, but their dying father stops him with this revelation. At the end, as part of his victory, Khaal traps his brothers in a blob-like prison ala I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, ensuring that they never die and cause his own death.
  • In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW), when the portal to the Mirror Universe is open, the inhabitants to both worlds are linked, leading to a scene where the evil Celestia sadistically attacks the evil Luna just to injure the good Luna.
  • Old Lace, the psychic velociraptor, in Runaways, with her owner Gertrude and later Chase.
  • In The Smurfs comic book story "The Hundredth Smurf" (and its Animated Adaptation), Vanity had synchronized movements with his mirror duplicate until the duplicate got knocked out by running into a wall (or, in the case of the cartoon show, until the duplicate fell down the stairs and out the door of Vanity's house).
  • Transformers

    Fan Works 
  • In chapter 11 of The Wind Waker, Link fights two Bokoblins and a Moblin at the top of Dragon Roost Island to free Medli from a prison cell, like the game it's based on. Unlike the game, the three monsters are linked by magic. When Link slays the Moblin, the Bokoblins drop dead as well.
    Medli: I see. The Bokoblins and the Moblin were magically linked. You kill the Moblin and all three die.
  • Pain is an Arrow Soulmate AU Fic where soulmates feel each other's pain, physical and emotional. Deconstructed, in that that turns out to be exactly as horrifying as it sounds. Sara has a Jerkass Realization upon learning Oliver didn't feel her pain (and thus she slept with her sister's boyfriend for nothing); and Oliver has one when he realizes the near constant sense of heartache and betrayal might be coming from Laurel, making him realize just how badly he hurt her. Laurel meanwhile is forced to drop out of law school, and can't even hold a regular job, as she keeps feeling his pain of combat, torture, etc.
  • In The Bridge, Praetorian Guard 094/Monster X/Kaizer Ghidorah had a psychic connection to his spouse Controller 011. They could communicate with each other and share injuries, something Grand King Ghidorah noticed and exploited by collapsing the building the comparatively less durable 011 was on. Played with tragically when it's revealed the reason Kaizer Ghidorah/Monster X sport a scar on their pectoral was because 011 stabbed herself in the heart so Kaizer Ghidorah would be incapacitated and stop his rampage, knowing her husband would survive thanks to his Healing Factor. The psychic whiplash of their bond being severed split 094's persona.
  • A Chance Meeting of Two Moons: Alternate universe counterparts can develop this; in Artemis and Luna's case, it ultimately leads to a full-blown Psychic Link, letting them speak telepathically to one another even from different worlds.
  • In the Facing the Future Series, Danny and Sam develop a link that allows them to sense how the other is feeling and where each other are, right down to the last step they are making.
  • The Heart Trilogy:
    • In the climax of Heart of Fire, Kathryn feels Smaug's pain through their Psychic Link when he's hit by the Black Arrow.
    • When Smaug kills Freyja in Heart of Ashes, Andraya feels like something irreplaceable has been torn from her chest and realizes what has happened to her daughter.
  • In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fics, this is often the case with Celestia and Luna and their respective celestial bodies, either permanently or just when manipulating them. This often comes with a dose of Required Secondary Powers, as implied in No Nose Knows, when Luna is raising the sun for a sick Celestia:
    "She is?" Celestia asked, and she groaned when Bean nodded. "Ugh. She better not complain about it then."
    "About what? The hives?"
    "No so much that. She—"
    "HOT! HOT! HOT!"
    "That—" Celestia said with a longsuffering sigh "—is what I meant."
    Bean looked on in amused horror as Luna, from within a magical shield, pranced into the room and blew out the small flame that had been burning on one of her wingtips. There was smoke rising from her back and from a few patches of singed fur on her sides, and it appeared that a few of her feathers had been turned to charcoal.
    "You are hereby prohibited from ever getting sick again." Luna announced, as she checked her other wing for any open flames. "And are you completely sure there is no way to turn down the temperature on that thing?"
  • The Ultimate Evil: It appears that two people who are Others to each other can feel each other's pain in extremely painful situations.
    • When Valerie is injured in the face by the Dragon Talisman, Shendu briefly feels her pain in his own face.
    • When Valerie falls and cuts her palm in the tunnels under Hollowland, Shendu becomes stiff until she bandages her wound. Sensing her blood calling out for Shendu's spirit makes Xiao Fung realize they're Others to one another.
    • When Shendu is knocked unconscious by a prolonged touch on the Pan'Ku Box, Valerie briefly feels his pain in the back of her head.
    • The scar on Valerie's left hand tends to flare in pain when something significant happens in the sequel, such as when Shendu (who is now bound to her) is resurrected.
    • When Hsi Wu senses his Other's transformation into her Superpowered Evil Side, it feels like losing something you didn't even know existed.
  • In the final chapters of the Vocaloid fic Rotting Camellias, Miku finds a way to use this trope against Meiko, who has been keeping her locked in a cage.
  • Fledglings, or: Everything's Better With Penguins: Agents Mallory and Anis briefly find themselves changing locations alongside Tawaki and his partner due to the narration of the story they're in referring to the later pair as "agents", which the former also are. Mal and Anis are thankfully able to use their CAD's "narrative decoupling" option to desynch themselves.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Asylum (1972 Horror), Byron's Living Toy is a tiny Remote Body which he controls through sheer force of will. When Dr. Martin crushes it underfoot, the injury is transferred to Byron's own body, and he is crushed to death from afar.
  • In Avengers: Age of Ultron, twins Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are linked this way (at least, Scarlet Witch, as The Empath, feels what Quicksilver feels. It's never mentioned whether the link goes both ways). When Quicksilver dies, it doesn't do the same to Scarlet Witch, though judging from the way she screams when it happens, it is pretty bad for her, too.
  • In The Carpenter, the ghostly carpenter is pained whenever his house is damaged. He's vanquished when the place is set on fire, which causes him to burst into flames.
  • Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers plays the classic tale for laughs.
  • The Double: After Simon punches his Identical Stranger James, he discovers that they have some sort of connection that causes them to share injuries. Simon then uses this link to kill James by jumping off a roof while James is handcuffed to a bed so he will receive life saving medical attention while James won't be found in time.
  • In Dragonheart, when a dragon shares half his heart with a human, they share each other's pain, and the human's life is also linked to the dragon's: as long as the dragon lives, so does the human; if the dragon dies, the human does too.
  • E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: E.T. and Elliot share a psychic bond. As Michael puts it, "Elliot feels [E.T.]'s feelings."
  • In the first two Heisei era Gamera movies, a bead salvaged from ancient Mu psychically bonds a girl named Asagi to the title monster, resulting in her sharing proportional injuries when Gamera is wounded. This bond is broken at the end of the second movie, though in the third the enemy monster Irys gets its own psychic partner.
  • Prince Nuada and his sister Princess Nuala suffer from this in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. This ends in Nuala performing a Heroic Sacrifice by killing herself in order to stop her brother's plans. It also makes the Hostage for MacGuffin ultimatum the villain makes with his sister as the hostage rather stupid. And Abe even stupider for doing it anyway.
  • In In Your Eyes, Dylan and Rebecca can read each other's senses, and if one takes a large hit (such as crashing into a tree while sledding or getting hit on the back with a pool cue) the other is knocked out as well.
  • The Jackie Chan film Twin Dragons has him playing twins Separated at Birth. They can influence each other's movements... somehow. The specifics aren't ironed out, but examples include Engineer Fighter Jackie finding his fingers tapping oddly while Musician Jackie is playing the piano in concert, and Musician Jackie being able to fight off Mooks while Engineer Jackie is in a cage because Engineer Jackie starts making the correct punch and kick motions.
  • In Magic in the Water, the lake monster Orky briefly possesses a number of people, leaving all of them with a link to him. They all develop a rash and eventually fall ill due to toxic pollution making Orky sick.
  • Part this, part Mental Fusion is required on the behalf of the pilots in Pacific Rim so that they can control the powerful Jaegers with a neural link. More than one pilot is necessary to take the mental strain of moving a giant robot with your mind, so Jaeger pilots must be "Drift-compatible" in order to ensure that they can work together effectively. To facilitate this, most (though not all) pilot pairs are family members or romantic couples.
  • In Pumpkinhead, those who summon the eponymous vengeance demon feel the pain that the demon causes to its victims, and Pumpkinhead feels the pain caused to its summoner; the only way to kill Pumpkinhead, therefore, is to kill the summoner.
  • In Star Wars continuity, the Tusken Raiders of Tattoine ride giant, shaggy beasts called banthas, which share a near-supernatural bond with their owners via a combination of training and affinity. A bantha is always the same gender as its rider, and when two Raiders marry, their bantha's also become mates. If a bantha's rider dies, the bantha usually dies shortly after, often becoming feral and violent before dying.
  • Played for Laughs in Stephen Chow's Royal Tramp. When Stephen finds out they're synchronized, he insists on "testing" them, taking one behind a curtain and leaving the viewer to figure out what he's doing by the reactions of the other one.
  • The Suicide Squad: Starro's Puppeteer Parasites are an extension of him, so when his giant Kaiju form gives a Mighty Roar, everyone taken over by him mimics it, and when Polka-Dot Man slices a limb off, they stand on one leg and clutch the other while screaming in agony.
  • The events of Upstream Color are driven by the lifecycle of a parasitic organism which creates a psychic link between those it's inhabited.
  • In You Might Be the Killer, once the woodcutter's mask imprints on a person, any damage done to the mask is suffered by that person as well.
  • In Your Highness, Psychopathic Manchild native king Marteetee has a cauldron of magic mustard that manifests a five-headed hydra in his gladiator arena when he sticks his hand into it. Unfortunately, if one of the hydra heads is lopped off, he loses his corresponding finger. When he dies and plunges face-first into the cauldron, a giant agonized face emerges from the arena floor.

    Literature 
  • In White Trash Warlock, Adam saves the life of a stranger, Vic, by giving the dying man a "thread" of his own life force. the connection between them saves Vic's life, but also means that the two can feel each other's pain, sense when the other is near, and occasionally read each other's minds.
  • The Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley. The main protagonist Steve Brickman has an unconscious telepathic link with his kin-sister Roz so when he's wounded in battle she experiences the same injuries, though they vanish without trace in a few hours.
  • It's one of the major plot points of the Dragonriders of Pern books: Newly-hatched dragons bond with the candidate they feel the strongest empathic connection to ("Impression"). From then on, the pair can communicate telepathically and influence each other's emotions. If a dragon's rider dies, that dragon will immediately suicide by jumping between permanently. If a dragon dies, the shock will often kill his rider outright (or in one particular case, leave them catatonic).
  • Many examples from Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar books, the foremost being the telepathic and empathic bond between Heralds and their Companions. Similar bonds exist between twins (those with mind-magic, anyway) and lifebonded couples.
  • Another twin version in Eldest: When Roran bludgeons one Twin to death, the other convulses and dies.
    • Dragons and their riders have a very strong bond and with practise can use each other's senses, though intense physical sensations are not transferred. Death of either partner causes extreme depression and/or insanity in the other except in very rare cases and the closer and older they are, the worse the separation is.
    • There's even an example between races. Thanks to the powerful spell that allowed riders to exist as true mediators, if something happens to one race it effects the other as well. For example elves in this setting used to be short-lived and intensely violent, but millennia of synchronisation with dragons has made them as long-lived and somewhere along as thoughtful as the other race, dragons on the other hand gained the power of speech and formed a civilisation of sorts. Humans, added much later to the spell, have only had subtle changes.
  • One sub-story in American Gods features a pair of African twins, sold into slavery aged twelve and separated when they're sold on. They never see each other again in the flesh... but when the boy is bitten by a poisonous spider and loses an arm as a result, his sister's arm withers for no reason her owner's doctors can explain. The brother also appears to the sister one last time after his death.
  • Grimoire's Soul: Due to Ceyda and Reiner's magical bond, any damage suffered by one will be suffered by the other.
  • Also used between the twins in Kate Forsyth's Witchever they do to something they also feel. Slap someone and you both feel the pain. Kill someone and you have a heart attack and die. Sit on a hoard of food while other starve around you and feel the pain of their hunger. The title of the story is the reverse of The Golden Rule, attributed to Jesus of Nazareth in the Biblical book of Matthew: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
  • The protagonist of Charles Stross' The Jennifer Morgue is "destiny entangled" with his partner... this grants them useful tricks like telepathy and sensorium sharing (definitely a fetish when one half of the partnership is a succubus...) but with the downside that they eventually lose all individuality and become a single mind in two bodies.
  • A major point in Faith of the Fallen is the so called maternity spell, which causes that effect... Useful for taking hostages.
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Percy and Grover's empathy link, a telepathic communication between them. Empathy links also grant the users the ability to sense where the other is and somewhat read their emotions. The downside is, if one person dies, the other will most likely also die or sink into a vegetative state. Grover offers to end the link after Percy's saved him so as to avoid this, but Percy chooses to stay linked.
  • Dragonlance: The New Adventures: In Bronze Dragon Codex, a young bronze dragon who hates humans and a human girl who hates dragons are magically linked so they feel anything the other feels. This is a problem, since the dragon gets nauseous like a human when she tries to fly, and humans are much more frail than dragons.
  • Septimus Heap: A sought-for art for Dragon Riders that Septimus and Spit Fyre use in Darke to win the duel with Merrin Meredith.
  • The Elf and panther ClawBound pairs in James Barclay's Raven and Elves novels are linked in both this fashion and with Mental Fusion. Although they don't necessarily die at exactly the same time, they don't outlive eachother for very long and are always buried together (or left to the rainforest, if they're on their home continent of Calaius).
  • Rand and his Evil Counterpart Moridin get synced together about halfway through The Wheel of Time. The link transmits emotions, physical pain, and occasionally pops them into each other's dreams. At the end of the series, this leads to a "Freaky Friday" Flip- Rand is dying, but wants to live, while the suicidal Moridin is still healthy. Their link swaps their minds, allowing Moridin to die in Rand's body, while Rand lives on in Moridin's.
  • Devil's Cape has Jason and Julian, twin brothers who can share sensations and even pains. Jason mentions once tasting oranges when Julian was eating one, and after Jason is shot in the eye when out as Argonaut, Julian calls him wanting to know why he woke up weeping blood.
  • Pact briefly features a pair of Creepy Twins, a male and female pair of Others who mimic one another's movements and fight as one. They do not immediately share injuries-rather, when one is injured, the other is compelled to inflict that same injury upon themselves. They're beaten by taking advantage of this, as when one is injuring itself then the two of them are out of sync and cannot properly defend, which leads to a cycle of injury and self-injury which ends with one having a knife in the eye-an injury that the other immediately mimics.
  • The Fire Sermon has the twin pairs of Alphas and Omegas, if one of the pair is severely injured/sick or dead, the other will be as well.
  • Villains by Necessity: This is the downside of having familiars in the book's universe-anything which the familiar suffers the mage shares. Thus when Nightshade, Valerie's familiar, kills a good mage's bird familiar, the mage dies too. Sam and Arcie exploit the fact earlier too by threatening Nightshade so Valerie will release control of the group.
  • In The Witchlands, in some extreme cases, the connection between Threadsiblings can develop from Psychic Link into this. In that case, one will always feel when the other uses their magic, and if one dies, so does the other.
  • Time for the Stars. Tim links to his brother Pat for moral support while he's having a surgical operation. It backfires because when Pat is anaesthetized his mind is still conscious, while Tim feels both his brother's fear and the pain of the surgeons cutting into him.
  • The Fire's Stone: Aaron and Darvish are linked together by their souls and any injury to one affects the other. They also can't get very far from each other, and this spell is undone later.
  • In Mouse (2017), Priest helps Mouse use his powers to give Anna a physical body that's magically linked to his. Now they can feel each other's pain and emotions and catch snippets of each other's thoughts, and Anna complains about the taste when Mouse drinks tea.
  • In Gnomes, when gnomes are born, a tree is planted for them and the gnome and the tree grow together. Around their 100th birthday, the gnome with mark the tree to show their ownership and let others know to not cut it down, but once the gnome dies, so does the tree.
  • The Oddmire stars a pair of "twins" who are actually a human child and a goblin changeling. If one gets an injury, the other is sure to get an identical one within a few minutes. As Kull explains, normally a changeling would turn back into a goblin with a week, but since he was never separated from his human counterpart, the magic that copied him is still in effect.
  • In the Juniper Sawfeather novel Whisper of the Woods, June becomes synchronized to an ancient treant that's in danger of being logged. When someone kicks its roots, she feels like she's been kicked in the shins, and when Nathan hits it with an axe and later a chainsaw, she feels like she's been stabbed in the stomach.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In Babylon 5, when Lochley and Zack go to arrest Lyta in "The Wheel of Fire", she demonstrates her Touched by Vorlons powers by drumming her fingers on a table, followed by everyone else in the zocalo doing the exact same thing.
  • One episode of Bewitched had Endora casting a spell to synchronize Samantha and Serena.
  • Blake's 7:
    • In "Voice from the Past", the crew try to cure Blake from his brainwashing by linking their minds to his. When Blake goes berserk Avon tries to knock him unconscious, only for Jenna (who's mindlinked to him at the time) to feel the blows as well.
    • "Death-Watch" has the in-universe audience synchronised to one of two dueling champions so they can experience his emotions during the Deadly Game. This is not just for vicarious thrills but because the Combat by Champion is their substitute for warfare, so it's regarded as entirely proper that the general population experience these feelings as well.
  • Charmed (1998):
    • In one episode, Phoebe synchronizes with a Magical Native American man who was trapped in a time loop in an alternate dimension and sentenced to die, something that would kill Phoebe as well.
    • Most of the Time Travel episodes had characters (most notably Chris and Wyatt) synchronized to their past-selves so that anything that happened to the past character happened to the time traveler as well.
  • Doctor Who: In "Full Circle", after Romana gets bitten by a Marsh Spider, she starts feeling the pain and agony the Marshchild experiences as it gets vivisected, resulting in her mirroring its dying rampage before storming out to lead a Marshman invasion of the starliner. This ends up foreshadowing The Reveal that the Marsh Spiders, Marshmen, and Alzarians are all different phases of the same species' life cycle.
  • One of the comedy skits from The Electric Company (1971) had the Corsican brothers inflicting pain on themselves so that the other would feel until the both of them collapsed.
  • Farscape:
    • An episode features a pair of bracelets that cause one of the wearers to feel what the other is feeling, even injuries. This is used by the crew as insurance when dealing with Scorpius, who agrees to wear one of the bracelets. It doesn't work particularly well, as Scorpius threatens to blow up Earth, and is easily tough enough to just throw John around anyway. In fact at one point Scorpius stabs himself in the wrist to get John to drop a gun.
    • A greedy doctor purposely synchronizes pairs of Moya's crew so that he can charge them a huge fee for the cure. Which of course only he knows how to make. This is played for both drama and comedy — D'Argo finds himself experiencing The Immodest Orgasm when the women he's synced to masturbates. Later another character is captured by terrorists, who try to identify the others by cutting off her fingers and looking to see who screams.
  • In Fringe, a boy becomes synchronized with a fungus. If it dies, he dies, and he senses what it senses (light, heat).
  • In Haven, the villain William is linked to Audrey, which makes it rather difficult to fight him. On the plus side, he has a Healing Factor, and when he heals, Audrey does as well. At one point, Nathan resorts to knocking her out to defeat him. There is also an amusing scene where Nathan hits him with a Groin Attack, and it doesn't hurt her. It seems to only apply when they are in the same world; they defeat him by throwing him through a portal to another world without any concern for what happens to him.
  • In Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, if a person dies or is injured, their Mirror Universe counterpart will suffer the same fate and vice-versa. However, if a person is in the void between worlds, only pain will transfer, as shown when The Sovereign is killed, Hercules feels the pain of being stabbed, but survives.
  • Legend of the Seeker: The maternity spell Nicci uses to hold Kahlan hostage makes them share every sensation, being called this as a link like a mother has with her baby in utero. She forces Kahlan to do whatever she wants this way, by hurting herself so the pain is shared. For instance, she tortures Kahlan by being beaten (at her wish) by a man.
  • In the dramatization of Longitude, one of the cranks seen by the Longitude Committee suggests using a "powder of sympathy" to link dogs in this way. The idea is that a dog on land would be injured at noon each day, causing its counterpart aboard a distant ship to bark in pain. In this way the sailors could keep track of Greenwich Mean Time. Not surprisingly the Committee didn't think much of the idea — Untruth in Television, you might say. (Of course, they didn't think much of John Harrison's practical methods either.)
  • Lost Love in Times: Qing Chen links her life with Yuan Ling's to stop him killing her. When she cuts her finger, his finger starts bleeding too. When he's poisoned, the poison affects her too.
  • Mech-X4: Ryan Walker is bonded to the eponymous robot, so whatever damage is done to the robot also hurts him.
  • Motherland: Fort Salem:
    • Played with, as Raelle has a magical link to Scylla that allows Scylla to transmit messages to her via their palms. They don't share sensations otherwise.
    • Alder and her biddies are somehow linked by magic. Thus, when Alder suffers an attempt on her life, the injuries are shared between them, sparing all their lives.
    • Petra Bellweather innocently taps her pen on her desk, but actually syncs an enemy officer's heartbeat to the tapping. The faster she taps, the higher his heart rate. She continues until his heart gives out and he drops dead.
  • Once Upon a Time: People split by Dr. Jekyll's newest serum have this, but it works somewhat oddly. Hyde dies when Jekyll is fatally impaled, yet when Regina splits the Evil Queen off and crushes her heart, the Evil Queen revives shortly afterward. The only way to permanently kill her is to do so after their link is severed by the Shears of the Fates. (Not that she does get killed, since Regina develops a new plan that works out for the better.)
  • The Order: Binding spells involve people sharing blood by cutting their palms and clasping them while they say an incantation. After this any harm that comes to one is shared with the other. This is used to keep trust and hold hostages.
  • Power Rangers:
    • Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The monster Blue Globbor had an energy link to Ninjor, making the Rangers fearful to attack him.
      • In the original Sentai version, Blue Globbor's counterpart was Daradara, who had similar abilities and consequences - rather than his feeling pain from their attacks, Ninjaman felt the pain instead. However, Daradara was also synchronized with Daimaou (due to having been cloned from him), and felt pain when Daimaou did. Having discovered this, NinjaRed used this weakness to disable Daradara long enough for his siphoning ability to be disabled, thus allowing the team to destroy him.
    • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: Demonite, one of three extra-powerful monsters created by Diabolico towards the end of his run as the lead villain, created an exact copy of himself. Unfortunately for him, any damage inflicted on one of them was felt by the other.
    • Power Rangers Jungle Fury: Being the literal embodiments of the Rangers' combined Animal Spirits, the Megazords are piloted this way, meaning the Rangers usually have to synchronize with each other, too.
  • In the Red Dwarf episode "Justice", the Justice Field reflects any criminal acts back upon the actor. If you try to light the sheets on fire, you end up lighting yourself on fire (and the sheets stay unburnt). "It's the ultimate deterrent", as Rimmer says. This situation leads to a marvelous fight in which hitting your opponent hurts you instead. The bad guy, a Simulant (think the Terminator with really bad BO) is too dumb to realize what's going on, so he tries shooting Lister and throwing a knife at him. Twice. Lister even draws a target on his groin and presents it for kicking. Then he hands the Simulant a few giant vases, to be smashed over Lister's head. The Simulant then tries to strangle Lister, thus strangling himself. With the bad guy defeated, the Cat turns up, armed with a spade...
  • The Rise of Phoenixes: Ning Yi and his father are linked, so his father feels ill when Ning Yi does. This is how the emperor knows when Ning Yi is just pretending to be unwell.
  • Sense8 has eight protagonists bound by a Psychic Link who share each others' minds and bodies, a bond that gets stronger as the series goes on. When they're still awakening to their abilities, a man tries to kill Riley by suffocating her and Will starts asphyxiating in a crowded bar. A season later, Sun's enemies try to hang her in her cell, and all eight are strangled alongside her. According to another sensate, losing a member of your cluster is survivable, but she describes it as "the worst pain [she's] ever felt".
  • Star Trek: Discovery: Michael Burnham was killed in a terrorist bombing when she was a child, and she only came back to life because Sarek used a mind-meld to transfer a piece of his katra to her. As a result, they share a telepathic link; when Sarek is later injured by a suicide bomber, Burnham collapses in pain.
  • In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Attached", Capt. Picard and Dr. Crusher are (slowly) synchronized by alien technology implanted into their brains as a prisoner control device (they experience debilitating pain and nausea if separated too far) — slowly because the implants gradually get more effective as they "learn" their hosts' brains. Mostly, though, the whole episode is an excuse to get them to talk to each other about their feelings.
  • Ultraman Ace: This effect happens to humans who sold their souls to the demon-lord, Yapool, for Choju possession, where their souls will be connected to the monster they summoned. A notable example with the first of it's type: the monster Garan is born from a Mad Artist, Kuri, selling his soul to bring artworks depicting his monster into the human world, and Kuri is able to control Garan by synching the monster's movements by sketching it on a drawing panel, but in the penultimate battle when Ultraman Ace managed to sever one of Garan's limbs, Kuri the artist feels his monster's pain as well and is forced to drop his paintbrush and collapse holding his arm.
  • The Vampire Diaries: Katherine has a witch create synchronization between herself and Elena to prevent the Salvatores from killing her. They end up stabbing Katherine non-fatally a couple times before being informed about what's happening to Elena.
  • Multiple artifacts in Warehouse 13 have this kind of effect. Most notably, Johannes Maelzel's metronome, which can bring someone back to life, but causes the person who brought them back to feel any pain they feel.
  • The Wheel of Time (2021): Aes Sedai and Warders share a bond which results in one's condition affecting the other. For example, when an Aes Sedai falls unconscious it weakens her Warder. When Lan drinks alcohol, Moiraine becomes noticeably emotional. At Stepin's funeral as Lan grieves his dead friend Moiraine starts to cry as well.
  • The X-Files: In "Oubliette", a woman who'd escaped a child-abductor as a girl experiences spontaneous injuries, because she's Synchronized with the kidnapper's latest victim. She winds up drowning on dry land when the abductor attempts to kill his captive by submerging her in a river. The young girl survives, with no sign of the injuries which had been transferred to the woman.

    Music 
  • The Figurehead by The Merry Wives of Windsor is about a foolish captain who dearly loves both his ship and his much wiser bride, and so elects to have his ship's figurehead fashioned in her likeness. On the ship's next voyage out she gets a deep cut on her arm just as the ship gets damaged by a coral reef, and on the voyage after that she breaks her leg just as the ship's mizzenmast is destroyed in a storm. Realizing what's going on and worried that it might actually kill her if she doesn't put a stop to it, she uses her link to the ship to destroy it before it kills her, dooming her husband and his crew in the process.
    The lady tore her dress and sails ripped in her mind's eye
    She threw off both her shoes and saw the anchors both let fly
    From seaside cliff she plunged herself, lungs filled with a mighty breath
    And as she sank beneath the waves the sailors found their death

    Puppet Shows 
  • The Dark Crystal and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Due to them being the separated halves of their original urSkek selves, the urRu (Mystics) and Skeksis are connected, so that when a member of one race dies so does one of the other (so their numbers are always the same), and when a Skeksis is injured one of the urRu suddenly sustains an identical injury. The nature of this connection is a subtle clue to the film's ending.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In BattleTech, pilots wear neurohelmets which link their consciousness to their Mechs and lets the BattleMech use the pilot's sense of balance to keep upright. It also functions as a security system, to prevent other pilots from stealing a Mech. The link is explicitly and wisely not two-way in most occasions, but "neurofeedback" can result from ammunition explosions. It is described as extremely painful, and frequently renders the pilot unconscious from sensory overload. If it happens too much in a short time, it can even kill the pilot, similar to how a strong shock across the heart can stop it.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Some powers can induce synchronization between two living beings, like the psionic science fate link or the death link spell. Both creatures will lose Hit Points if one is wounded, but death isn't necessarily automatic for both if one is reduced to zero. Can be useful as a bargaining chip (to dissuade an enemy from getting violent), or to wound a creature otherwise immune to many forms of attack. Can also work in reverse, rejuvenating both creatures by using healing magic on just one. Or, by constructing a triangle of fate links, to mean that any damage to one participant results in infinite damage to all of them. There is at least one build that deliberately inflicts this on themselves. Combined with the "Masochism" feat and delay death spell, the character gets a single round with an infinite bonus to all rolls.
    • In the Ravenloft setting, Dr. Mordenheim and Adam are linked in such a way that they have to be killed at the same time, else they regenerate from any injury.
    • Still with D&D, a minor synchronization also exists between a magic-user and his familiar (or a creature like a homunculus), although the exact effects vary from one Edition to the other. Though it doesn't concern mere wounds, a wizard will suffer badly if his familiar or homunculus is killed, and a homunculus never survives his creator's demise.
    • Likewise, the Shaman takes damage when her spirit companion is destroyed, and the companion vanishes if she falls unconscious.
    • As noted, the empathic link between a wizard and familiar (or another character with an animal companion/paladin mount) is usually too weak to count as full synchronisation. However, there is a Corrupt spell, master's lament from Heroes of Horror, which can strengthen this link to the point that any damage or magical effect suffered by the familiar or the master will be transferred to the other.
    • Dungeon magazine #73, Side Treks adventure "The Necromancer's Pet". The title creature is a pseudo-familiar in the shape of a bulldog. It wears a magical collar that can cast the Lifeline spell on other creatures. While the spell is in effect, half of all Hit Points of damage done to the pseudo-familiar is inflicted on the target of the spell instead.
    • The Tome of Mighty Magic, a AD&D-compatible supplement. When the spell Empathic Revenge is cast on someone, anyone who attacks them takes half of the Hit Point damage they inflict on the spell's recipient.
  • The Twin Souls merit in Mage: The Ascension lets you combine spheres and boost Quintessence when in contact, and keep track of each other relatively easily when not. On the down side, if one dies, the other must make a tough Willpower roll to survive the psychic shock.
  • Runequest supplement Trollpak, "Book of Uz" part 2. The Aranea cult has a special type of Divine Intervention. The supplicant can link themselves to another person so that if the supplicant dies, the other will as well. This is an excellent way to persuade another person not to kill you.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Titan Princepes suffer physical pain when their titans suffer battle damage. Not merely the Princeps, but the key members of his crew also suffer such pain, in varying degrees, particularly the Moderati.
    • In a similar manner to the above, Tau Battlesuit pilots suffer from this, including "battlesuit psychosis", in which they are so linked to the suit, so used to it that they cannot function without the suit's sensors as filters for their own senses, and if the suit is damaged, (say by the loss of an arm), the pilot will find themselves unable to use that arm until the suit is repaired. The Tau also have a 'bonding ceremony' which, while largely symbolic, has been known to have the occasional extreme side effect, to the extent that the death of a member of the bonded team can drive the survivors insane (by Tau standards).
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: In order to make sure that the two supremely arrogant beings would cooperate, and to teach them both a lesson in humility, Khorne bound the Chaos champion Vorgaroth and his dragon mount Skalok such that, if one of them should die, the other will instantly perish in a shower of blood.

    Video Games 
  • Beyond Divinity: This is punishment for letting the human escape, and the death of one will result in the death of the other. As such, Death Knight attempts to break out of the prison, in order to find someone powerful enough to remove the curse.
  • BioShock 2 reveals that the first series of Big Daddy would fall into a coma and die if their Little Sister were killed. Or if they just wandered off too far.
    • Sofia Lamb actually exploits this, by smothering (but not killing) Eleanor in front of Delta, fatally injuring the bond between them. The broken bond ends up being one of the contributing factors in Delta's death.
  • BlazBlue: The Life Link concept. What makes it unique is that so long as one lives, the other will continue to survive and the only way to kill them is to take out both individuals at the same time. Ragna/Nu-13 and Terumi/Mu-12 are known examples of this.
  • Bloodline Champions has the Psychopomp's Soul Link ability, damaging and causing an effect on enemies hit to also cause their allies hit by the effect to take an additional 20% of the damage they personally take while the effect is on. The Guardian had an ability called Thrust, which would cause an ally you hit to have part of the damage they take while affected be done to the Guardian, with the damage the Guardian taking from that being also reduced.
  • In Dishonored 2, Emily has the Domino ability, which allows her to link multiple people together so that dispatching one will take out the others. She can even summon a Doppelganger to be used as a target.
  • Rynn and Arokh make a "Bond" in Drakan: Order of the Flame that effectively synchs their hit points with each other (in-game it is described as "merging their existences into one"). It doesn't seem like a fair trade at first, since Rynn is a mere mortal and Arokh is a nigh-unstoppable dragon but apparently, only killing Arokh kills Rynns as well, not vice versa. This is also supported by the fact that the human who originally made a Bond with Arokh (a certain Heron) has been dead for centuries when Rynn meets Arokh.
  • In the Drakengard series, Pacts can be made between humans and other creatures by sacrificing something. In Caim's case, he loses his ability to speak. If either he or his dragon partner, Red, die, so will the other. This happens to anyone who has a Pact.
  • In Final Fantasy IV, Cecil and Kain murder Rydia's mother by killing her conjured dragon. In the DS remake, Pochika/Whyt is a substitute for the party Summoner, and is thus bound by the same rules. If it dies, she does as well.
  • In Granblue Fantasy, the player character is character is mortally wounded early on, forcing Lyria to use her powers to save them. This links the pair's lives together, which is what kicks off their travels together. In gameplay, Lyria normally isn't a party member, but she's responsible for your Summon Magic, so if the player character is knocked out, you're locked out of your summons as well. An anniversary event gave her a playable version, and if either you or Lyria are knocked out while she's in the party, then the other is knocked out as well.
  • Hiveswap: A side effect of the Soleil Twins being literally one mind in two body, as explained by the Friendsim. This comes to be a major kick to the ass when Baizli dies via falling onto a spike and getting decapitated, resulting in Barzum screaming in agony as she both felt her twin's demise and their connection suddenly being severed.
  • In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Dark Pit is connected to Pit, since he's really the physical manifestation of Pit's "dark side" (not that Dark Pit is actually dark - more neutral than anything). Their level of synchronization is actually very vague — battle damage to one Pit does absolutely nothing to the other, but when Pit gets trapped in a ring for three years, Dark Pit is unconscious the whole time. Thus the latter realizes that he's connected to Pit, much as he dislikes it.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
    • The Jedi Exile is synchronized with one of the characters in their party, causing any status buffs either one receives to affect the other. There is talk of severe consequences to the Exile should the character die, but the game wisely doesn't inflict damage on both characters in combat if one is hit. It is, in fact, a plot point that you do not take damage from the other if it is in the heat of battle.
      • The game makes clear that it is this trope and not just Can't Live Without You by first having a cutscene where harm to the synchronized character causes intense pain to the Jedi Exile, and then after you've hashed out how the link works having the mentor teach you how to block pain from going one way or the other.
    • The bond there was based off a similar (but weaker) bond between Bastila and the player in the first game. That one was not strong enough to serve as a physical conduit, but only served as a plot point to justify a series of Heel–Face Revolving Door rotations.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel has the Divine Knights. The pilots and the knights become synchronized when in battle, taking any damage shared between each other. Rean's initial connection with Valimar caused to be unconscious for a month, and in Cold Steel II, Crow is fatally killed after his mech Ordine is impaled through the heart. Further in Cold Steel III after Rean is consumed by his Superpowered Evil Side after Millium's death causes Valimar to transform along with him, delivering a Curb-Stomp Battle to the Ancient Beast, but in the process unleashing the Great Twilight.
  • In the Mega Man Battle Network series, Lan and his Net Navi MegaMan.EXE often synchronize with each other.
    • A particularly extreme example occurs at the end of Battle Network 3, when Lan digitizes himself into the net world and literally fuses with MegaMan.EXE in order to increase the latter's power as much as possible to destroy the Big Bad Alpha.
    • From Battle Network 4 onwards, it becomes a true gameplay effect: Damaging enemies just before they attack causes this, which gives you double damage on your next attack. It's even more extreme in the manga, where the consciousness of the Operator and Navi actually merge. In addition, any damage done to the Navi in the virtual world is transferred to the operator, be it a small cut, a dismembered limb, or full-out deletion/death. The concept in general is taken a bit further than usual, with Full Synchro being explained as eliminating the delay between a command being issued and its execution, which is absolutely necessary to the most powerful of the autonomously operating Net Navis, who don't have such a delay in the first place.
  • In Metroid Fusion, it's stated that when Samus puts on her semi-organic Power Suit, it bonds to her nervous system, which is why no one can remove her suit but her; this leads to problems when she needs emergency medical attention, like when the X Parasite infect her through the suit. It's also why when she is infused with Metroid DNA to save her life, her suit grows a layer of Metroid flesh; it couldn't be removed entirely and she had to be treated with it on. Fan speculation states her relationship with it may be more symbiotic: it's the reason why she feels pain when her suit is hit, why she regains health if she picks up energy, and why she can go hours or days on end non-stop without rest or eating (she siphons energy from her suit).
  • Comes up in both Ni no Kuni and Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom. In each world, there is someone who shares the same soul as the other. Something that happens to one will happen to the other. Usually the same soul cannot exist in the same world twice, so usually travel is impossible. This is a major plot point in both games.
  • Onmyoji:
    • Shōzu's "Life Link" skill connects all members on her team together, causing the whole team to take the damage dealt to one member. Since the damage is split evenly among the team, it ends up greatly reduced compared to that one would normally take. Its weakness? The damage from Mōba and Shoyō's special skills, which will not be shared and will still be fully taken by whomever it is dealt to.
    • Ushi-no-koku-mairi can set up a straw effigy connected to one member of the opposite team, causing them to take the damage dealt to it. It sounds useless at first until a multi-target attack is unleashed on them; the foe linked to the effigy would end up taking twice as much damage.
  • Physical Exorcism Series: Thanks to her telepathy, Jade can make others feel her pain to distract them in battle. This is effective on both regular humans and evil spirits like Black. The Cannibal Boy of Mt. Candyhouse tries to get around this by killing her with one attack so that she won't have any opportunity to reflect her injuries, but she counters this by sharing the pain of her period.
  • The final boss in Planescape: Torment is The Transcendent One, the Mortality of the Nameless One. Both it and the protagonist are immortal due to being separated magically and one way to end the game is to use a weapon that can permanently kill the Nameless One, the Blade of the Immortal, on yourself; this will destroy both of them.
  • Pokémon has the ability "Synchronize", which works in that if the Pokémon with that ability gets poisoned, paralyzed, or burned, then their opponent gets poisoned/paralyzed/burned, too.
    • Destiny Bond's Move Description: After using this move, if the user faints, the Pokémon that landed the knockout hit also faints. Its chance of failing rises if it is used in succession.
    • Grudge's Move Description: If the user faints, the user's grudge fully depletes the PP of the opponent's move that knocked it out.
    • Destiny Knot's Item Description: A long, thin, bright-red string to be held by a Pokémon. If the holder becomes infatuated, the opposing Pokémon will be, too.
  • The Interactive Fiction game Savoir-Faire has a magic system based around linking objects so that what happens to one happens to the other as well. People can also be linked, and it's said that members of feuding aristocratic families are often linked to one another as a sort of hostage thing, so that one family can't harm members of the other without also hurting their own relatives.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei I, the Hero is linked to the Heroine. After the End, he remains linked to her reincarnation, and whenever there is a full moon he takes damage from the fact that a demon is currently devouring her from the inside out.
  • It used to be in Super Mario World that Yoshi eating a powerup would affect Mario. This is no longer the case in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but in that game, using a held powerup affects all players, unlike powerups found in levels.
  • Titan Quest: The Immortal Throne Downloadable Content's Dream Mastery's Trance of Empathy:
    Force enemies to share the damage they inflict upon you by forming a telepathic link to their minds that conveys only pain and siphons life in retribution.
  • Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos: Tauren spirit guides could use spirit link to bind several people together. However it was used defensively, because instead of the damage being duplicated it was split between them, causing an enemy's attacks to be dispersed though a larger group of people and thus easier to keep people alive through.
  • The World Ends with You:
    • The characters have to synchronize themselves with another player, if they want to win the game. This, however, comes with all of the above explained consequences. This works the same way during battles, as enemies and Players alike share life force on the top and bottom screens. If Neku defeats an enemy on the bottom screen, it is also erased on his partner's side.
    • In addition, eating food raises the Sync Ratio of your partner (somehow?). The lower the Sync Ratio, the less effective they are in battle, with a 0% sync resulting in insultingly bad performance. Yeah, the more they like the food, the better; they gives audio cues as to how each food item appeals to them. But this is a temporary effect, fading within a few battles; for increased sync that lasts longer, Neku and partner should really wear the same brands.
  • In World of Warcraft it is used both offensively and defensively:
    • A Holy Paladin's spell "Beacon of Light" causes any heals they cast to also heal the one carrying the beacon. Protection paladins have an ability that takes part of damage dealt to raid members and transfers it to him.
    • San'layn encountered in the Icecrown Citadel have the ability to link two members of the raid, with any damage dealt to one also being dealt to another.
    • The Wracked Slaves in Zangarmarsh frequently attack in pairs, with a visible "tether" between the two of them. Any damage inflicted on one is divided evenly between both, resulting in the pair lasting twice as long (but also resulting in both dying at the same time).
    • Restoration Shamans have the Spirit Link totem spell which functions similarly to the above-mention spell from Warcraft III, tethering anyone in the totem's range and equalizing their health values, trading off one or two nearly dead party members for several lightly wounded ones - who can easily be healed to full by multi-target healing spells, which effectively rebounds off the continued syncing and doubles/triples/quadruples/quintuples the healing.
    • Many Dual and Wolf Pack Boss encounters through the game's history share their health, with the mechanics often incentivizing attacking one target over the others to avoid their dangerous mechanics or counterattacks, but not forcing you to kill each one individually.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
    • Rex and Pyra are synchronized due to Pyra sharing her core crystal and her life force in order to save Rex. Any injury one suffers, the other does too. This confuses a lot of people they run into: Pyra can't heal herself as quickly as a Blade usually can, while Rex is left rather more beat up after fights than a Driver usually is.
    • The endgame reveals that the Big Bad of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Zanza, and the Architect of Xenoblade 2 are two halves of the same person, so naturally when one of them dies, the other will die as well.

    Visual Novels 
  • Fate/hollow ataraxia: Avenger's Noble Phantasm, Verg Avesta, causes a one way version of this. Any pain or injuries Avenger takes reflect on his opponent. The ability is rather impractical however. It only affects one opponent at a time, and he has to concentrate to use it, so if an attack knocks him unconscious or kills him, he out of luck. And since he's physically frail, he's likely to be incapacitated by injuries long before his opponents.
  • Fate/stay night:
    • The Shadow and Sakura. The Shadow is actually her subconscious mixed with and powered by the Tainted Grail (most likely, it is a shadow familiar of hers), so even in the event it is somehow destroyed, a new one would eventually come into existence, while her death would kill it permanently. So although she is usually not actually leaving her room, the Shadow is going out and eating people, providing her with prana. Although, she does go out herself sometimes as well.
    • Also Shirou and Archer. Because Archer is the (possible) future version of Shirou, being in the same timeline as his past self causes Shirou to unconsciously leech Archer's power's and skill's. This allows Shirou to gain several level's in badassery (Although it largely depends on the route.)
  • In Tsukihime, the maids Hisui and Kohaku are known as Synchronizers. It is known they can give other people energy and maintain their sanity or remove it little by little... Also Shiki and SHIKI in Hisui's route connect during dreams and feel the pain/take the damage of the other. Unfortunately, SHIKI has something of a Healing Factor...

    Web Comics 
  • Killroy & Tina are linked thus. They also share super powers as long as they're within five kilometers of each other.
  • Bowsette Saga: According to Chompy, Chain Chomps feel any damage their chain takes, a precaution that prevents them from biting through them. Chompy is willing to take the pain when she bites through her chain so she can help Bowsette, getting a power boost in the process.
  • Two of the main characters of Darken, Gort and Mink, share such a bond. Mink is rather annoyed by it, due to Gort's tendency to charge into trouble with his sword raised, often commenting "He's going to get us BOTH killed!" Gort was the one who agreed to the creation of this link, in order to save Mink's life, and nobody's entirely sure why (since he's basically a supervillain), though allegations of a romantic relationship between the two HAVE been made.
  • Happens both ways in The Dragon Doctors. When Kili's soul is plunged into darkness and imminent death by an evil spirit, her empathically-bonded lover Greg nearly dies along with her, but is able to use his connection to save her and himself.
  • Girl Genius: Gil and Tarvek wind up synchronized by a "Si Vales Valeo" latin for  procedure intended to save Tarvek's life. And then Agatha comes down with the same disease Tarvek has, which means she gets hooked into the procedure as well.
  • Kin in Goblins claims that Yuan-Ti don't experience love in the same way that humans do, and the closest they get is what they call "True-Seeing"; when two Yuan-Ti grow particularly close, they become able to experience the other's emotions and pain as though they were their own.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: One is implied between Lalli and Tuuri when Tuuri drowning briefly causes Lalli's chest to hurt bad enough for him to lose his balance off his seat.

    Web Original 
  • Appears to be what is happening to the six main characters of Six Chances who become connected with one another through a Psychic Link. If one of them is gravely injured, they all feel it. And if one of them dies... Well, they haven't dared to try it out.
  • In Dead West, this seems to be the side-effect of the Oaths, at least when they are properly offered and accepted. After the Porcelain Doctor accepts Gervas' Oath for protection, he heals Gervas easier even without actually using his Healing Hands, his Power Incontinence seems to concentrate on Gervas, and they are able to pull Back-to-Back Badasses notably easily, Battle Couple -style, without actually exchanging words or practicing.
  • Goodbye Strangers: The Tomodari always spawns in linked pairs some distance apart from each other. Any injury inflicted one also appears on the other. Each Tomodari also mimics whatever sounds are heard by its twin, though they have trouble imitating speech.
  • SCP Foundation, SCP-607 ("Dorian"). When SCP-607 bonds with someone, anything that happens to it (physical or emotional) will also happen to that person. It also happens to be suicidal, which means anyone it bonds with will not last much longer.
  • Trinton Chronicles Aurora is linked to her duplicates the same way by feeling their pain and their death, kind of screws her up mentally.
  • Whateley Universe example: Tennyo and Generator are now psychically linked so when one get really badly hurt, the other feels it. Not really helpful so far.

    Web Videos 
  • AFK: Alts can feel the pain when another is killed. However, this doesn't kill them as well, and goes away quickly afterward.
  • This is the very premise of Double Life SMP. Each player's health-bar is linked to another (officially refered to as a "soulmate"), if one takes damage so will the other, and if one dies, the other does as well. Since the game doesn't directly tell people who their soulmate is, most of the first day was spent with everyone running around punching each other to find their partner. (And in SolidarityGaming and TangoTek's case, they didn't find out until the latter lost his first life.)

    Western Animation 
  • Ben 10:
    • In the fourth season, Ben gains an alien form called Ditto that can split into multiple copies of itself, with the catch being that they all think autonomously, albeit with the same personality, but are synchronized so that pain inflicted on one Ditto is felt by the others.
    • Echo Echo, on the other hand, is essentially Ditto with a sonic scream but doesn't have Synchronization, instead the clones are very fragile.
    • They're sort of the opposite on this score. Dr. Animo once copied Ditto's power into his hybrid monsters, creating an army from one. But destroying one made them all disappear. As such, it's not just pain: if Ben split into a hundred Dittos and one died, it would be "adios, Ben." However, with Echo Echo, if he split into a hundred of them and 99 died, just one remaining means Ben is okay. Just such an occasion happened, with Ben keeping one of himself in the trunk of the car.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers: There's quite a lot of synchronization here.
    • As the Spirit of Earth, Gaia is synchronized with both the planet in general and with Hope Island in particular. If the planet or the island are severely damaged, she either feels physical pain or gets weakened, even to the point of grave illness. It works the other way around, too – if Gaia were to be killed (either directly or via getting deprived of immortality), Earth would die with her.
    • The same double synchronization exists between Gaia and the Planeteers. She is the source of their rings' power (see "Summit to Save Earth, Part 1"), but if they betray her, she loses her powers and becomes mortal (see "The Conqueror").
    • Captain Planet, being the Anthropomorphic Personification of the combined powers of the Planeteer rings, is dependent on Gaia as well; whenever she's seriously hurt, his powers start to fail.
    • On a lesser scale, the Planeteers are all connected through Ma-Ti, whose ring lets him both send and receive telepathic messages.
  • Centaurworld: This turns out to be the case with the General and the Nowhere King, because they're two halves of one being, an elktaur which magically split himself into human and deer halves (with the deer half later mutating into the Nowhere King's skeletal form). Horse realizes this means the General will never bring their war with the Nowhere King to an end because killing the Nowhere King will kill him too.
  • Referenced on Family Guy when Stewie and Brian pretend to be them.
    Stewie: I'm Tomax and this is Xamot. We're twins who can feel each other's pain.
    Brian: [after Stewie steps on his foot] Ow!
    Stewie: No Brian, I'm supposed to say 'ow!' You ruin everything!
    Brian: [after punching Stewie] Ow.
  • In one episode of Futurama, Bender feels what Leela feels due to an emotion chip installed.
  • Demona and Macbeth from Gargoyles were synchronized by a magic spell that caused them to feel each other's pain whenever they are in close proximity, implied to be intended to keep Demona loyal as Macbeth's protector. Since they came to hate each other's guts, there has been a series of violent confrontations where they're essentially beating themselves up by fighting the other. This is the source of their immortality compact, handed out by the mystical tricksters that granted the wish; they cannot die unless one kills the other, at which point both will. It's seemingly Macbeth's life goal to do just that.
  • Tomax and Xamot from G.I. Joe are an example of synchronized twins. It seems to end at pain (and possibly pleasure), though — Xamot has a facial scar that Tomax lacks.
  • In Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, "Bad Po" has this happen between Po and his Evil Twin, used for genuinely hilarious effect.
  • The subject of the Men in Black: The Series episode "The Psychic Link Syndrome".
  • Rick and Morty: In "Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty", Rick befriends a dragon named Balthromaw, and the two end up "soul-bonding" (which is disturbingly played out like intercourse), resulting in Rick feeling whatever he feels, including getting whipped, hung, and getting an arrow to the eye.
    Balthromaw: It pains me that you feel my pain.
    Rick: Yeah, how 'bout you suck your dick? Which is also somehow my dick.
  • In Transformers: Prime, Starscream makes an army of clones, only to find out that he feels whatever pain they experience. He discovers this when Bulkhead beats one to death. Luckily he only feels the pain and doesn't receive any actual damage, else he wouldn't have survived Megatron killing three more in short order, and he himself murdering the last treacherous clone by first blowing a hole through its chest, and then blasting it in the head as the episode fades to black, capped off with him screaming about how much it hurts.
    Starscream: My genetic code provides my clones with a T-Cog that I no longer possess, and all I get is their agony?!
  • Wakfu: Amalia (like any Sadida) is somewhat synchronized with her animated puppet, which she uses to fight (though this doesn't transmit wounds; in fact she can use it as a shield). This turns out quite problematic in episode 7, where Amalia gets poisoned and thus delirious, and the puppet becomes a nasty, evil little pest.
  • Zak Storm: Clovis, being a bound to the Chaos ever since he misplaced his body, is affected by the state the Chaos is in. For example, if the Chaos breaks down, Clovis would get sick-.

    Real Life 
  • Quantum entanglement: Albert Einstein famously derided the concept as "spooky action at a distance". But it turned out that this phenomenon really exists. This is only a partial case. If you set the state of one of the particles, the entanglement will break. It's just that checking the state (which gives a random result) will get the same result for both particles. If you use this right, you can get effects that are statistically impossible under classical physics.

 
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Alternative Title(s): Synchronisation

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Attempted Prison Murder

When Sun's enemies try to hang her, the rest of her cluster immediately start getting throttled as well.

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