Two Beings, One Body

Sakon and his brother are close.

Two or more characters are (for some reason) joined together into one body. They either have one aggregate personality, or the two fight for control of the common body. They may get control of separate parts of the body, especially if there are multiple heads. Extra points if they are opposites, enemies, or of different species or sex. If the other entity is an animal, this can be a form of Animorphism.

Can teach a lesson about walking a mile In Another Man's Shoes. It's kind of like an extreme version of Chained Heat, or a "Freaky Friday" Flip that got stuck halfway through.

The functional opposite is Literal Split Personality, which is splitting two aspects of a single being into two separate bodies; see also the notes on the Evil Twin entry.

Sub-Trope of Fusion Dance. Compare Sharing a Body and Mind Hive, where two or more minds are in a body, Conjoined Twins for when the two characters are related, and Two Men, One Dress, for when two people share a costume. Contrast Shapeshifter Mashup and Mix-and-Match Critters.

---

Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In an early Battle Angel Alita storyline, the villainous cyborg Puppeteer Parasite Makaku hijacks the gladiator Kinuba's power-body for its utility while getting a second head named Boarhead, a form of animal companion cyborg battle helper, until he eats it.
• Birdy the Mighty is about an alien police officer who accidentally killed an Ordinary High-School Student when chasing criminals to Earth. She saved his life by fusing with his body, and they can switch forms via a Transformation Sequence. This is kind of an exception to the typical transformation sequence, in that it does not cut away from the scene or involve music or fancy posing. It's more akin to a simple change of clothes, and is executed in a nonchalant fashion, most of the time. This isn't the only case, as Big Bad Christella Revi's backstory involved a failed version of this: Revi was originally born male and he was subjected to this in a failed attempt to save the life of a female Super-Soldier, hence why Revi is a woman now.
• Black Clover:
  • Through some twist of fate, William Vangeance ended up sharing his body with the reincarnated soul of Patry. In spite of their conflicting views on humanity, they were still able to understand and connect with each other because of this. After events allow Patry to incarnate in a body of his own, William becomes happy at finally being able to meet him face to face.
  • A much darker example occurs with Julius Novachrono and Lucius Zogratis, as they were both born in the same body as separate souls. Lucius exploits this to hide as Julius while the pieces of his master plan fall into place, only fully taking over once Adramelech brings him half of Lucifero's heart from the Spade Kingdom.
• In Blood Blockade Battlefront, Deldro Brody is Dog Hummer's blood. See, Aligura was (and is) in love with Deldro, but was also attracted to Dog... it didn't end well, as she extracted Brody's blood and put him in Hummer's body.
• Luciela and Raphaela from Claymore ended up fused together in a vegetative state after the latter tried to squeeze the life out of the former. Riful finds them and tries to find a way to awaken them so she can recruit them. She succeeds.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, this turn out to be the case for Daki and Gyutaro, both occupying Upper Rank Six position. Usually, the sister is the one in control, with the brother sleeping in the body. But when things get serious, he can come out out of her body, making them a Brother–Sister Team. Despite their wildly different personalities and fighting styles, they're considered as one being. To truly kill them, both of their necks must be cut at the same time, else the other will just regenerate.
• In Devilman, the demons are shape-changing entities able to possess human beings by biological mash-up (via teleportation). In some cases (as the main character), this possession happens to backfire: the human being "possesses" the demon and gains their powers but maintains his/her human identity.
• This is how Digimon often evolve, either to Perfect (Ultimate) with other Digimon (Digimon Adventure 02 and the second movie), or to Ultimate (Mega) with their human partners (Digimon Tamers), depending on which series.
  • As well, Chimeramon in Digimon Adventure 02 was created this way, by replicating parts of other Digimon.
  • Another case has Machinedramon and Chimeramon becoming a Japan-only video game's Big Bad, the eventually-godlike space/time-bending Millenniumon (And since the games reveal that that's who was in the flashback releasing the Dark Spores, leading to Ken becoming evil and eventually creating Chimeramon, Millenniumon is one big Stable Time Loop: he creates himself using Ken).
  • Speaking of Machinedramon, it sorta fills the trope, as it is made up of parts of other digimon. Granted they are the metal parts of several cyborg digimon, but that left arm is Metalgreymon's.
  • And the games reveal that Cyberdramon came from a combination of Ryo's third temporary partner and Millenniumon, his true partner. And while his being the cause isn't made explicit, it's generally accepted that Millenniumon's influence is the reason for Cyberdramon's sunny disposition.
  • Discussed in Adventure 02 after the first Jogress Evolution. The rest of the team's Digimon ask Chibimon (the only one who's done it so far) how it felt having two minds in one body, but Chibimon says it didn't feel like two minds occupying one body but like both their minds merged into one new personality.
• This is the end result of Excel and Hyatt's "Freaky Friday" Flip experience in the final episode of Excel♡Saga; Nabeshin is called in to undo it.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has a few examples, including Hohenheim the benevolent master alchemist Mind Hive, Father the malevolent master alchemist Mind Hive, and Greed/Ling. Yeah, the strikingly similar descriptions for the first two kinda hint at something - spoilers.
• In Ghost in the Shell: Arise, Tsumugi is a pair of twins whose brains were placed within a single cyborg body.
• In Hoshin Engi, the Maka Yonsho were originally a single monster who later split his power in four bodies, each with his own name, personality and Paopei. They can still turn back into a singular Blob Monster as a last resort transformation. Later in the series we see the Juttenkun member Hakutenkun, who resembles a dark-skinned, long-haired man and woman couple with conjointed limbs, seemingly having two bodies but a single mind.
• Naruto: Twin brothers Sakon and Ukon of the Sound Four have this as their main power, as the ability to fuse their bodies with each other and letting them spring their body parts from any part of the host body. Their most powerful ability, however, is to fuse their body with an opponent and break down their cells one by one. Of course, the big problem with this is that they'll feel the pain and receive the injuries of whoever they fuse to, so if the host dies before the cell breakdown finishes or if they don't detach before that, they die too. Sakon usually takes the main body while Ukon acts as support, whether manifesting his limbs out of Sakon to intercept or launch attacks or outright leaving to launch a sneak attack. This ends up leading to their deaths when Sakon is grievously injured and forces Ukon to take the main body so that he can rest up and heal. However, because Ukon is unused to being the main body, his movements are slightly slower and more prone to slip ups, which leads to him falling into Kankuro's trap which gets them both killed.
• Wapol from One Piece is capable to swallowing multiple people and spitting them out as one, which he did with his minions Chess and Kuromarimo to create "Chessmarimo". Subverted, when Sanji points out that the only thing fused was their clothes, and one is standing on the others back.
  • When a fan asked Oda what it would be like if Wapol fused all of the Straw Hats (which at this time went up to Robin), he replied it would create the creature in this drawing◊ which possessed Luffy's Straw Hat, Chopper's antlers, Nami's hair situated on its shoulders, Zoro's swords and haramaki, Sanji's eyebrow situated on top like a strand of hair, Robin's fringe, and Usopp's nose situated on its left shoulder and is named "Gargon".
  • Some SMILE Zoan users, introduced in the Wano arc, have their animal forms fused with them while having minds all their own that aren't particularly cooperative. For instance, Holdem has a lion's head and arms growing from his stomach that have a tendency to attack him, forgetting that doing so would hurt it as well; Dobon has an entire hippopotomus growing from his back, with himself permanently situated inside the hippo's mouth; and Fourtricks has a rooster surrounding his torso, leaving his own head and arms to sprout from the rooster's tail.
• Pokémon:
  • The Pokémon Adventures manga has Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres fused into a single chimeric creature near the end of the Red and Blue arc. Thankfully, the protagonists save them.
  • A Gastly in the anime once imaged a fusion of Blastoise and Venusaur, calling it Venustoise.
• A yeti, riding an ox, while carrying a crane in one hand and a snake in the other, were mashed up when they fell into a spring of Jusenkyo and drowned in Ranma ½, creating a unified curse. When a baby is washed and baptized in this spring, he is cursed to become a combination of these.
  • Later in life, this same character willingly augments his chimera-like body by applying a Drowned Octopus curse, which adds tentacles and the ability to shoot ink.
• The entire premise of Risky☆Safety is that an angel and a demon are forced to share one body — there's only room enough for one of them at a time; depending on the emotional state of the people around them, they may suddenly switch places. (Said switch is usually indicated by a sudden puff of smoke enveloping the one, and the other bursting out of it.)
• In Sgt. Frog, Keroro and Giroro end up fused together due to a synchronized swimming routine. (It made a sort of comedic sense at the time.)
• In Slayers, the character Zelgadis is a mix of human, golem, and demon features. His driving goal in life is finding a cure for his condition, even though it makes him super-strong, super-fast, and immune to most physical damage.
• Nero Chaos of Tsukihime shares his consciousness with 666 beasts. His body actually contained "chaos", and though he has melded with their minds, he can't actually control the mass very well. Beasts present includes the generic (dogs, wolves, a shark, elephant, crocodile...) and the mythical (a unicorn, some crab-spider thing...)
  • Also the Seventh Scripture's spirit. It's the blend of a (willingly) sacrificed village girl and a dead unicorn's soul. The unicorn had less willpower and was more dead or something, but magically far far stronger, so she spent a while with the unicorn mostly dominant plus sleeping. By this point, she's basically the village girl from before but with weird traits like a horse's tail, hooves and strange ears.
• Urusei Yatsura once had the teleporter trick with Ataru holding a notebook, which made a copy of his with the notes written all over, and got him stuck in the notebook. Whenever you hit the thing, a paper-thin copy splits off, and Ataru starts selling them.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! has an entire type of card called a "Fusion monster", which results from a fusion of two or three monster cards. Oddly enough, this sometimes results in two monsters fusing into something that looks nothing like either of its components, such as the fusion of Witch of the Black Forest and Lady of Faith (both female magic-users) into Musician King (a male rock-guitar player)! More recently, however, the fusions have started to make more sense. The Elemental Hero monsters are known for this, with most combinations of them having some fusion.

Comic Books

• The DCU: B'Wana Beast (and his Legacy Character, Freedom Beast) is a walking example of this trope, in that his magical African potion-induced super power was to fuse any two animals into one.
• Doom Patrol: In Grant Morrison's run, Rebis is a fusion of a man, a woman, and an immaterial being called the Negative Spirit.
• Elfquest: One scary example of this trope is Madcoil, a monstrous fusion of sabertooth cat and giant black python. Created when lightning struck the patch of ground where the two were fighting — ground which was permeated with leftover elven magic — this misbegotten Mash-Up beast acted out its insatiable battle-fury on the elven and human tribes. It fought with fangs, claws, constriction, and (for elves) the capacity to send maddening images of its own horrific "birth" directly into their receptive brains.
• Firestorm: Firestorm was born when a student and his teacher were "fused" together in a nuclear accident. The two are able to merge and separate at will, though only Ronald Raymond, the student, has control over the Firestorm form, while Martin Stein, the teacher, only has a ghostly presence during a "fuse". Once the two separate again Stein doesn't even remember what happened while they were joined. Of course, they have no powers whatsoever while separated.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: The post-Zero Hour version of Wildfire is the merged form of two minor characters, Blast-Off and Atom'X.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Ixis Naugus is the result of three Ixis Wizards (a Rhino, a Bat, and a Lobster) accidentally fusing into one being.
• The Transformers (Marvel): One of the most horrific moments was when Megatron and Ratchet were mashed together into a single misshapen body◊.
• Wild C.A.T.s: In the dystopian future shown in the Wild C.A.T.s/Spawn crossover, Wild C.A.T.s foes The Troika (a human, a Magma Man, and a Killer Robot) had been partially fused together.

Fan Works

• In the Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) fanfiction Abraxas (Hrodvitnon), after Vivienne is eaten alive by Ghidorah's centre head and temporarily dead, she's revived and transformed inside San's Not Quite Dead severed head to make them a two-headed human/Ghidorah Artificial Hybrid kaiju, with the second head becoming San's new head.
• The My Little Pony fanfiction Cutie Mark Crusadicorn features a spell gone wrong that puts all the Cutie Mark Crusaders into Twilight's body...and the inverse happens to Twilight. So while the CMC are trying to impersonate Twilight (arguing all the way, which comes out as a constant babble), Twilight is trying to get used to having six eyes, six ears and twelve legs in three different bodies - and don't get started on how she manages when the bodies get separated.
• In Dragon Ball Z Abridged, this is the relationship formed when Piccolo absorbs Nail. In the original anime, Nail's personality faded over time. Here? Not at all, as Nail keeps blathering on about nothing important and is more of a distraction than a bonus. It later involves Kami who, like Nail, faded away in the original anime. The power boost was important (at least for a while).
• This is how Nui's split personality is and they remain at odds with each other in Maim de Maim. Eventually, as of chapter 25, the two halves now have their own separate bodies, with the antagonistic one becoming Nui Prime.
• In the Jackie Chan Adventures/Teen Titans crossover A Shadow of the Titans, minor character Asuka-Tammy is two formerly-human women of that name transformed into a Spider Woman with a shared body below the torso due to them being eaten and digested by an Eldritch Abomination-serving Giant Spider before eating their way out.
• In the Magical Girl Crisis Crossover Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights, the 90s anime and manga/Crystal versions of Rei Hino / Sailor Mars do an accidental Fusion Dance when anime!Rei is fatally wounded and manga!Rei touches her hand. The resulting Fusion!Rei has elements of both personalities surface from time to time and has greatly enhanced powers over fire, including a new attack and a pair of Hot Wings... at the cost of her existence being unstable. She also has red pupils and fiery glowing streaks in her hair which smoke and occasionally give off embers.
• After Subterranean Animism came out, fusing pairs of characters into one became popular among Touhou Project fans—which led to this as the logical conclusion. For example, Reon (AKA Saikyou) stuffed thirteen other characters into Kanako, while Persona fan artist Mazeran fused sixteen of the series' Final Bosses and Yukari into one being.
• In Vaeru's Fan Fiction Transformers: Juxtaposition, the unfortunate main character is forced to share a body with the arguably even more unfortunate Sideswipe.
• In a Homestar Runner fan Sbemail entitled "virus 2," two fan characters, Coach C and her brother, Coach D, became joined at the waist. They currently remain like this.
• In Zany to the Max, an Animaniacs fan series by the same person:
  • Zak Warner and his sister Ko are joined at the waist, and are usually referred to together as "ZakKo". They are cousins of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot.
  • The fan series also has Wacka and Wakka (also known as C and K respectively), who parody Terri and Terry from Monsters University. They're not twins, however. Wakka is older. One episode reveals that they were part of a gene-splicing project that joined them together.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: Gregor Clegane is returned to life by the Chaos Gods. However, as the Wolf technically killed him twice in the name of a different god, he comes back in the form of conjoined twins joined back-to-back at the waist, one in blood-red armor and burning eyes dedicated to Khorne, the other to Nurgle in rusted armor, seeping wounds and maggot-pale skin.

Films — Live-Action

• Although not instant, in The Fly (1986), Jeff Goldblum builds a teleporter, and in one personal test accidentally includes a fly in. The resulting DNA fusion turns him into a fly-man monster over the course of the movie. Even worse, once his mutation has driven him insane, he plans to fuse himself with his love Veronica. And their unborn child.
• The 1990s version of King Ghidorah was created via this trope. He started out as three cute little critters before being hit by the atomic bomb (Yes, the same atomic bomb that created Godzilla) causing said cute trio of critters to fuse together and mutate into the three-headed dragon we all know and love.
  • The Monsterverse adaptation of the character which has a different origin similarly fits this trope, in that its three heads each display a distinct personality, with the director comparing the heads to triplet brothers.
• In Freaked, a couple of the protagonists, a man and a woman, get turned into a Multiple Head Case.
• Every single crew member on the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean is part man and part sea creature, ranging from fish to coral. Sometimes pieces of a ship (like the helm) are thrown in for good measure.
• This is basically the whole plot of The Human Centipede, albeit in probably the most disgusting way possible.
• The three-headed giant that scares Brave Sir Robin away in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
• The premise of famous B-Movie The Thing with Two Heads; a rich racist white man attaches his head to an unwilling black inmate.
• Seen as a charred corpse in The Thing (1982), in the prequel the titular alien monster merged with an unfortunate victim, creating a two-bodied monstrosity.
• In Malignant, the supernatural killer and the main character actually share a brain, as they used to be conjoined twins and the former still clings to life within the latter's mind.

Gamebooks

• In the Super Mario Bros.-based Nintendo Adventure Book Monster Mix-up, Bowser's son Iggy invents a machine that can fuse random monsters together, creating freakish hybrids.

Literature

• He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and Quirrel in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
• In the novel The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov the aliens in another dimension merge three into one as a part of their reproductive cycle. They get an aggregate personality and enhanced intelligence, and the merge becomes permanent at a certain point of their life cycle.
• In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's collaborative novel Good Omens, the angel Aziraphale's body is destroyed during a confrontation with an overzealous witch hunter who's mistaken him for a demon when the angel accidentally steps on a pentacle he'd used to communicate with Metatron. As a result, Aziraphale is forced to spend much of the rest of the book sharing a body with a medium.
• True History describes several of the creatures that live on the Moon in these terms. You know what that means...
• In Wayne Barlowe's Barlowe's Inferno, Hell is full of this sort of Body Horror. For example, there are vehicles made up of lots of people who've been mashed together so that they now consist of a big mash of flesh walking around on a collection of human legs.
• In Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, Madrigal escapes execution by temporarily co-inhabiting the body of her best friend, who had previously betrayed her by reporting her crimes (this is explained in that her friend is insecure and not very mentally stable, and at one point she is called "a soft mollusk thing, wet and shrinking," which makes for two souls to inhabit her body at once).
• In Orphans of the Sky, novel by Robert A. Heinlein, the protagonist meets Joe-Jim Gregory, the two-headed leader of a powerful mutie gang while looking around the hidden area of his world.
• Happens to Sir Glame and his horse Bill in Plotless, Pointless, Pathetic (a half-book, half-graphic novel, completely-wacky book by Joshua Wright).
• In the Nightside series, the Lamentation is eventually revealed to be this trope. John and Susie witness its creation from two treacherous ex-slaves when they venture into the past.
• In the Wild Cards series, the Oddity is three people who have been permanently merged by the Wild Cards virus into one monstrous, constantly shifting, painful whole. They're superhumanly strong and tough and act as a vigilante in Jokertown.
• In the Children of the Lamp series djinni can remove their spirits from their bodies and possess humans either by taking total control if the host is human or just riding in the backseat. Things get a bit awkward for a group of the heroes when Finlay has to serve as a host body for not only John but also Faustina. During this time Finlay refuses to take a shower because of Faustina's presence since he doesn't want her to see him naked. To make things even more enjoyable, both John and Finlay have a crush on Faustina. And a djinn passenger tends to pick up their host's thoughts.
• Subverted in Feet of Clay with Rogers the bulls, which only think that "they" are two different bulls. There's just one Roger, but because his forehead is so bulky that his eyes' fields of vision don't overlap, he decided a long time ago that there must be two of him, so thinks of "himselves" in the plural.
• The book What's Left Of Me features two souls born into a single body. Most 'hybrids' settle after a few years, with one soul fading away, but the protagonists and some others never do.
• In the original short story The Fly, the scientist's initial test of the teleporter causes his cat to disappear. Then the fly-fusion happens; when he tries to reverse it, he only succeeds in adding the cat to the mix.
• In Ward, the hero known as Capricorn is actually two brothers, Tristan and Byron, with different powers. Unusually for this trope, whichever brother is in "front" has full control, the other cannot take over unless they willingly swap.
• Inkmistress: A person taking a manifest entails fusing themselves with Bond Creatures. They can then shift forms at will between them.

Live-Action TV

• Numerous examples in Super Sentai and Power Rangers. In some seasons, the Monster of the Week is typically created by composing multiple organisms. There are also several examples of various henchmen being combined to form uber-henchmen.
  • Most examples of monster merging are voluntary, but in Power Rangers in Space, Darkonda is able to forcibly merge with Ecliptor against the latter's will.
  • Plex, the design studio that works on Super Sentai (and Kamen Rider) has a design matrix for making monsters which includes Animal, Plant, and Inorganic elements.
• In the Scrubs episode "My Princess", Dr. Cox tells his son a vaguely Princess Bride-esque story in which Turk and Carla appear as a two-headed witch known as The Turla.
• "Tuvix" (Tuvok plus Neelix) in the Star Trek: Voyager episode of the same name. This leads to a moral dilemma when the Doctor works out a means of separating them but Tuvix, who regards himself as an entirely different person with his own rights, objects to being 'murdered'. Unusually for Star Trek, there's no Take a Third Option — Captain Janeway ends up having Tuvix taken to Sickbay by force.
• One of the main villains in Gerry Anderson's Terrahawks third season was the result of an alien, robotic pregnancy. Due to a power failure during the delivery, instead of Cy-star giving birth to twins, what resulted was one being with two distinct personae; a female, sweet natured, lisping personality, and a male, psychotic German-accented personality. Since it had both genders, it was named It-Star.
• In an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place, Alex and Harper end up sharing the former's body after several attempts to undo a "Freaky Friday" Flip.
• The titular being in the Red Dwarf episode "Legion" creates both its body and its personality by copying those of all the intelligent beings around it.
• Kamen Rider Double is formed by partnered detectives Shotaro and Philip transforming together, with Philip's mind and essence merging into Shotaro's body, which transforms into Double. The situation is reversed with the Mid-Season Upgrade FangJoker, and Super Mode CycloneJoker Xtreme is a true Fusion Dance.
• In Come Back Mrs. Noah, a Teleporter Accident winds up creating a fused cat-parrot hybrid.

Podcasts

• Malevolent begins when private investigator Arthur Lester opens a cursed book and accidentally yields partial control of his body to the demon bound inside. When the dust settles, the demon — "John" — has control of Arthur's eyes, left hand, and toes, and the two share a mind; the show follows their quest to get unstuck from each other.

Puppet Shows

• In The Great Muppet Caper, Fozzie and Kermit play twin brother reporters, despite one being a bear and the other a frog. A photograph of the twins' father depicts a green-furred bear with Kermit's keyhole eyes and neck ruff.
• Nobody's quite sure if the Two-Headed Monster from Sesame Street is this or a Multiple Head Case. It's also led to semantic confusion at times (as seen in A Muppet Family Christmas).

Roleplay

• In The Gamer's Alliance, a dragon, an archdemon and a mage join together into a single entity which becomes the Godslayer.
• Nighthound's resurrection in the roleplay What Happened In Edmonton comes about when Taya tries to use a motivator made from his blood. Unfortunately for her, whoever made it didn’t account for his possession powers. He takes over Taya’s body, but she isn’t completely overwritten, leaving them to struggle for control.

Tabletop Games

• The Merging Virus in GURPS: Biotech makes a permanent composite being out of two or more creatures. It's shown as part of a future wedding ceremony.
• The Ravenloft supplement Children of the Night: The Created describes an unique flesh golem called Gestalt. It was created by a female surgeon who fused together the remains of her two suitors, who'd killed each other in a duel, into a single body and personality.
  • Not really alive, but the Strahd's Malefic Meld spell from the same setting allowed zombie-crafters to get creative, combining various creatures' corpses into Necrological Mash-Ups.
  • The darklord Frantisek Markov and other mad surgeons craft these things the hard way.
• Phyrexians from Magic: The Gathering recognise no species; all organisms can be "compleated", and since they frequently exchange body parts most phyrexians are composed of body parts of many organisms. This is incidentally why they can't produce planeswalkers; the spark can't form when there isn't a permanent body to sustain it.
  • Tibalt the Fiend-Blooded was originally a human who "studied" the effects of torture, attracting sadistic devils to his home. When the law came knocking at his door, he recited an incantation taught to him by the creatures, only for it to backfire and forcibly fuse him with them.
• Vilitch the Curseling from Warhammer. Grew up as The Un-Favourite and Butt-Monkey to his own twin, who was far better-looking and more skilled at combat than Vilitch. Until one day Tzeentch answered his prayers, by fusing their bodies as one. Now Vilitch throws spells at his enemies, while his brother's body takes out those who get too close.
  • Tzeentch, being a god of change, magic and conspiracy, tends to create this trope quite a lot. Another example of his influence here is Galrauch, the first Chaos Dragon, who was possessed by one of Tzeentch's daemonic Lords of Change and whose spirit constantly battles its possessor for control of its body. Galrauch now has two heads, which sometimes end up fighting one another when the dragon regains some control.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Greydle Dragon appears to be a physical amalgamation of body parts from other Greydle monsters, including the head of Greydle Alligator, the wings of Greydle Eagle and the arms and torso of Greydle Slime. It also has Greydle Cobra as a tail

Toys

• Monster High has three main cases:
  • The main case are Jackson and Holt, who can only exist while the other is "asleep". They didn't know about being the same person until their teenage years and have since worked out a schedule between them.
  • One of the core elements of Freaky Fusion. The ghouls go back in time 200 years to when Monster High was first built, but when they return to the present everyone except Frankie and Ghoulia have merged with someone else: Draculaura with Robecca, Lagoona with Jinafire, Clawdeen with Venus and Cleo with Toralei. They enlist the help of the new hybrid students to help them coordinate and cooperate.
  • Any and all multi-headed characters fall under this, such as Peri and Pearl and Three-headed Freddie. In Peri's and Pearl's case, they operate the body together, but either one of them can control the body on their own if the other gives no input.

Video Games

• Breath of Fire had several fusion forms your characters could merge into temporarily. Breath of Fire II allowed your characters to merge with "shaman" spirits for various results, some just a minor color change and stat boost, some much more drastic. In both cases, the changes were easily reversible and had little influence on the course of the story.
• In Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, before Dmitri dies, the souls of all the monsters he'd absorbed form into a giant mutant which you must fight.
• Revolver Ocelot loses his arm in Metal Gear Solid. In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, he's grafted on the arm of the dead Liquid Snake as a replacement. Liquid's spirit isn't one to give up so easily, and fights with Ocelot for control of his body.
  • By Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots the personalities have reportedly merged to become "Liquid Ocelot" but it turns out that Ocelot cut out Liquid's arm to prevent his spirit from manifesting itself again and then hypnotised himself into thinking he was still Liquid in order to fool the Patriots.
• The Fly (1958) was brilliantly spoofed in the climax of the game Day of the Tentacle: three characters use a time machine at the same time (Dr. Fred even mentions the movie by name as they did this), and end up fused into a three-headed, six-armed freak; at the end of the game, however, it is revealed that they weren't mashed up at all, but instead during the rough ride through time two characters had ended up inside the third one's shirt — given their appearance after they stepped out of the time machine, they had assumed they'd been fused together.
  Laverne: Great. Stuck here the rest of my life...listening to Bernard talking and watching Hoagie eat. Mom warned me there'd be days like this.
• Part of the Reapers' arsenal in the Mass Effect series; first shows up with Scions and Praetorians made of mashed-together human Husks in the second game, then we meet Cannibals (a Batarian Husk with a human Husk as a gun) and Brutes (a bulked up Krogan and Turian Husk mashed together) in the third game.
• The fangame Mushroom Kingdom Fusion has the Fusionist, a scientist working for the Big Bad. He makes a lot of these. The true final boss is also one of these.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2, you can meet the ghosts of six warriors who tried to fight against the King of Shadows... or, more precisely, you can meet the ghost that they've shared since the battle. "Went in 6, came out 1, went in 6, came out 1..."
• The final boss of TRON 2.0 is a monstrosity that three operatives of a rival company merged into after the digitalized themselves to enter the computer world and hunt down the main hero, but the process went haywire.
• Mother 3. The biological chimeras that the player encounters are bizarre amalgamations of ordinary animals created by the Big Bad because the normal creatures "suck". Examples include the Monkalrus◊, Ostrelephant◊, and Cattlesnake◊. You don't get points for guessing what they're combinations of.
• The final boss of Golden Sun is the two primary antagonists fused into a two-headed dragon. The sequel tops this with a threesome.
• Samus from Metroid could count. Being a human, she had to be infused with Chozo blood so she could survive on Chozo planets. Then at the start of Fusion, she receives a vaccine to save her from the X Parasites; said vaccine is made from Metroid DNA, which altered her genes and made her part Metroid as well. And if you want to get technical, she could be considered part X parasite after absorbing so many of the little monsters, and then when you think about all of the species whose DNA was absorbed by the X...
  • The X are able to do this as a natural ability: they can mix and match the DNA of any species they've absorbed to create hybrid creatures. The SA-X in Fusion tries this at the conclusion of its fight, and becomes this grotesque hopping abomination that, ironically, is far easier to kill than its original form.
• Legion from the PS game Shadow Man. Naturally, he quotes off I Am Legion.
• The Mooks in Ribbit are standard versions of this, like a snake with porcupine quills. The title character (apparently the first to be made) is a variant, with a rabbit's head and a frog's head joined by their necks, lacking a torso or limbs. (Note that Ribbit is not a Multiple Head Case, referring to itself as "I.")
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has a rather disturbing example of this trope in the sewer levels, where the large, spider like enemies are in fact a group of women mashed together. On an even more disturbing note, one of these women appeared to have been pregnant. Bloody Tzmisce...
• In Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, Monsieur Papierwaite turns out to be fused to Yog-Soggoth after a summoning ritual went horribly wrong.
• In Counterfeit Monkey, Alex and Andra voluntarily undergo body synthesization to create the body of an "Alexandra" whose features are enough of a blend of both of theirs that no one will recognize their shared body at a casual glance. They're forced to resort to this drastic procedure because 1) Andra is a wanted criminal, Alex is intent on escaping the island's oppressive governmental system, and it wouldn't do for either of them to be recognized in public, and 2) it's just easier for one body to escape than two.
• In the real ending of Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, Cortex's laser malfunctions and merges him with Tiny, Dingodile, and N. Gin. The resulting hybrid, understandably pissed, then chases Crash across the next level.
• Undertale has the Amalgamates: as a result of Alphys’s failed experiments involving injected Determination that caused monsters’ bodies to melt into dripping puddles and fuse together misshapenly, they’ve become bizarre-looking creatures made up of dozens of bodies attached to one another.
• Throughought Silent Hill, numerous enemies take this look up and play it for maximum Body Horror, with a single coat of skin wrapped tightly over two clearly separate, and often fighting, bodies.
• League of Legends:
  • Varus is actually Three Beings, One Body, comprising the Ionian hunters Valmar and Kai as well as the Darkin Varus himself.
  • Kayn starts each match this way, with Rhaast, the Darkin in his scythe, vying for control of Kayn's body. One ultimately expunges the other shortly into the match.
• Pyra and Mythra in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. While they each have their own distinct appearance, they share control of a single body and swap back and forth depending on who needs to use their powers and speak out loud, or if one of them wants to be left alone in their headspace for a while. The game's final act adds Pneuma, their original form who combines their personalities, and the ending gives them separate bodies of their own once and for all.
• Search Man from Mega Man 8 has two heads; according to lore, Wily thought two heads are better than one, with a shared personality. This however, resulted in the AI switching between two heads, confusing himself in the process.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, one member of the Twelve is actually two gods, twin brothers, joined as one. Nald, God of Commerce and Thal, God of the Dead, are worshiped together as Nald'thal the Traders. In the Endwalker expansion, players fight Nald'thal to see how they are joined together; Nadl'thal's legs are separate from the rest of his body, and his torso has A Head On Each End. Whichever brother is in control has his head upright. When they switch control, the torso rotates with the arms as the axl.

Webcomics

• Ysengrin from Gunnerkrigg Court is a wolf-man with trees for arms. He used to be a normal wolf; his current body was given to him by a trickster-god.
  • The Coyote simply gave him the power to control trees. He decided to morph them into a sort of biological powered armor.
  • Later on in the series, Ysengrin turns on and devours Coyote, causing the two of them to fuse into a new entity that calls itself Loup.
• Magellan starts with the character Brian Lonsdale fusing himself with his pet dog Elvis, producing the biologically mashed-up (and generally messed-up) Brelvis Lonsdog. And no, the process isn't reversible. In a later story, while attempting to find a cure, Brian's father replicates the process with other humans and himself!
• The "Meanwhile in the Dimension of Pain (or wherever)" guest strips for Sluggy Freelance conclude with the crowning absurdity of several of the demon characters mainly used only in those stories being accidentally fused into one grotesque blob of a creature.
• Ellen from El Goonish Shive has the memories of Elliot from before she was split from him and the memories of an alternate universe version of herself to the age of about 18. Therefore her current personality is influenced by all her sets of memories and mentally she is effectively a composite of the people she has the memories of even though she identifies herself as a distinct person from them.
• Homestuck:
  • Sprites can be prototyped twice. In the kid's session, each sprite was prototyped with something human and something non-human, with the exception of Rose's (which was prototyped with an Eldritch Princess doll and her dead cat's corpse). In the troll's session this is mostly avoided, with the exception of Aradia second-tier prototyping herself with her frog sprite. So far, the sprites that have suffered the worst from this trope have been Jade's sprite (a combination of Bec and Jade's dead dreamself, the latter of whom really didn't want to come back to life) and Jane's (prototyped by Gamzee throwing Tavros and Vriska's corpses into the kernelsprite). It seems, however, that Jake's sprite (prototyped by, presumably, Gamzee again using Eridan and Sollux's corpses) is relatively stable. This gets even more ridiculous near the finale, in which kernels start getting protyped with other sprites, leading to Jasprosesprite, a combination of Rose's previous Princess-doll/cat sprite, and a corpse of an alternate universe version of Rose, and Davepetasprite, the combination of Davesprite (alternate universe Dave + a bird) and Nepeta
  • A better example would be Caliborn and Calliope, for which this is an inherent feature of their species' biology. The two beings are diametrically opposed in both gender and moral alignment and fight for control of the body, and their maturation is complete only when one of the two has "predominated", effectively killing, consuming, and fusing with the remnants of the other.
• Sgt. Schlock has a low-level version happen to him twice in Schlock Mercenary. The first time, nanites were trying to assimilate him, but took long enough that he ended up having a conversation while his immune system got ready to wipe them out. The second time, he had absorbed a version of himself that had time-traveled from several months in the future, and had to deal with the extra memories and impressions.
• Gishki Ariel does this with a shiny Magikarp, which is supposed to represent Gishki Reliever, in comic #7.5 of Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game Gusto Fan Comic

Western Animation

• In Transformers: Beast Wars, the Vok fused Tigatron and Airazor into the vastly powerful Tigerhawk and used him as their envoy, and there was an entire subgroup created from malfunctioning stasis pods called "Fuzors", who had aspects of two different real-world animals (many of whom didn't appear on the show). Examples include Silverbolt (wolf/eagle), Quickstrike (scorpion/cobra), Torca (elephant/whale), and Injector (hornet/lionfish).
  • Speaking of Transformers, this is done in a much more horrifying way in the Marvel comics. Let's just say this cover◊ wasn't a typical comic cover mislead. And the caption at the top couldn't be more literal.
  • The Transformers introduced several two-headed monsters in the same year (1987). Though Monsterbot Doublecross is treated as one Autobot, his dragon mode's two heads act independently to the point where one head will not carry out tasks agreed to by the other. Two of the five Terrorcons are two-headed monsters, but operate in different ways. Hun-Grrr, the Terrorcon leader, is an off-white and magenta two-headed dragon whose heads speak in unison and act cooperatively — unless "food" is involved. Sinnertwin is a yellow and blue orthrus — a two-headed canine monster. Whether acting as a sentry or a shock trooper, his monster heads speak and attack independently of one another and sometimes argue.
• In the Futurama episode "Put Your Head On My Shoulder", Fry's body is critically damaged in an accident, and his head is temporarily grafted onto Amy's body while his own is being repaired. The situation is complicated by the fact that the two had been dating, but just before the accident Fry had been planning to break up with Amy.
• In Men in Black: The Series, rogue agent Alpha is one of these in his every appearance, using a Cosmic Integrator to fuse body parts from various aliens to himself. He believes it "improves" him, but really it just makes it clear how nuts he is. This eventually ends up in a Hoist by His Own Petard situation when he adds an alien with limitless regenerative healing to his mix and all the aliens regrow their own bodies and separate from him.
• In one episode of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, as punishment for disrupting class, The Gromble combined Krumm and Ickis into "Krickiss" and waited until they got sick of being "stuck" with each other.
• One episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command pairs off most of the organic characters one by one into blobs. You can even see most of Team Lightyear all mushed up together in two images on this site.
• Kim Possible's DNAmy does this to various critters as a central villain idiom, to duplicate her favorite plush toys, the hybridized "Cuddle Buddies".
• CatDog, whose protagonists are... well, you guessed it.
• In one episode of Aladdin: The Series, Aladdin and Mozenrath's spirits are both trapped in Aladdin's body after a botched Grand Theft Me.
• Family Guy: Cleveland and Quagmire get fused together after an accidental nuclear war brought on by the Millennium Bug in the episode "Da Boom". Peter initially calls them "Clevmire", but Quagmire insists on "Quagland".
• In Coldstone's second appearance in Gargoyles, he is retconned into being made from parts of three gargoyles that died in the attack on Castle Wyvern, which also causes him to get two extra personalities, one female and one evil. Word of God says it was the intention all along. It's an understandable mistake, given Coldstone's coloring — he's largely supposed to be seen exactly as Demona described him ("cold stone brought to life"), and thus should have been a shade of gray. However, the artists gave him the coloration of the personality that fanon now knows as Othello, making it seem like he's the only gargoyle from whom Coldstone is physically formed.
• In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), Skeletor punishes two mercenaries named Tuvar and Baddhra for ruining a plan with their bickering by fusing them into one body with two heads: this series' origin of the villain Two-Bad.
• The Secret Saturdays: In the episode "Ghost in the Machine", the main character Zak ends up fusing with both Komodo (a Komodo dragon) and Fisk (a 'gorilla-cat') after discovering a government project created to produce cryptid super-soldiers.
• South Park:
  • In "A Ladder to Heaven", Cartman accidentally drinks Kenny's ashes, and along with them his soul, with the result that Kenny ends up sharing Cartman's body, in a parody of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
  • In another episode, dentists think a giant half-squirrel half-chicken is the culprit of missing teeth and money.
  • ManBearPig, the half-man, half-bear and half-pig (sic) creature that Al Gore wants to warn the world about. He is completely cereal about the threat.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "SquidBob TentaclePants", this happens to SpongeBob and Squidward. And later Mrs. Puff, Sandy, Patrick, Mr. Krabs, and Pearl.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), two different members of the Rogues Gallery, Drako and the Ultimate Ninja, temporarily get merged together into a half-dragon, half-human body.
• The finale of the Terra Story Arc in Teen Titans (2003) involves the Titans facing a monster created by merging together three of the series' recurring villains, Cinderblock, Overload and Plasmus. They later benefit from a Snap Back.
• The main characters in Disney's cartoon series (and associated plush toy line) The Wuzzles are all beings exhibiting the biology of two different animals; including Bumblelion (Bumblebee/Lion), Hoppapotamus (Hippo/Rabbit) and Mooseal (Moose/Seal). (It's possible they were at least the partial inspiration for the Cuddle Buddies mentioned above.)
• Toxic Crusaders:
  • Surf-dude delivery boy "Fender" and mad scientist "Dr. Bender" accidentally fuse together forming the new hero... Headbanger.
  • Junkyard also qualifies: a homeless man who takes shelter with a junkyard dog whose kennel was covered in toxic waste. Add one bolt of lightning, and their molecules merged into a humanoid dog.
• Not a biological mash-up, but in one episode of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Dr. Robotnik's bungling robot lackeys Scratch and Grounder are badly damaged, and Robotnik puts them back together from the few parts left over as one two-headed robot, which he dubs "Scrounder".
• In Dragon Tales, Zak and Wheezie are a two-headed "Odd Couple" dragon, Zak being the uptight male half and Wheezie being the exuberant female half. In the episode "Not Separated at Birth," they split into separate bodies, but decide to rejoin by the end of the episode.
• In The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack episode "Gone Wishin", when K'nuckles tells Flapjack that mermaid tears can make wishes come true, Flapjack imagines himself and K'nuckles merged together:
  K'nuck-Jack: Finally we are one.
• In Wild Kratts, a poor octopus gets a hold of Martin and Chris's creature power suits, which give them the ability to become any animal. It malfunctions and just starts adding species instead of changing it, so when the brothers run into the octo-walrus Chris is convinced they've discovered a new species, but when they get to octo-walrus-shark-bowhead-whale-mackerel, they're just terrified.
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Canderemy", Candace and Jeremy are literally joined at the hip after being exposed to a stray shot from Dr. Doofenshmirtz's Combine-inator. Later, the doctor combines with his robot manservant Norm to become "Normenshmirtz", and at the end, the title characters get combined into a single (highly unnerving) entity.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Treehouse of Horror II" has Mr. Burns' head being grafted onto Homer's shoulder after his own body is crushed by the robot that he previously put Homer's brain into.
  • Later on, in the "Treehouse of Horror XV" segment "In the Belly of the Boss", a shrunken Homer regrows inside Burns' body with the former's face pushing up against the latter's skin.
  • Later still in the "Treehouse of Horror XXIV" segment "Dead and Shoulders", Bart's head is surgically attached to Lisa's body after Bart is decapitated during a day of flying his box kite in a fly zone near the Springfield airport. At the end of the segment, when Lisa gets decapitated at the sawmill, Bart's head is transferred to Selma's body while Lisa's is grafted onto Krusty's.
• One Monster High film and its accompanying toyline is about eight of the girls getting merged into four (Draculaura + Robecca, Lagoona + Jinafire, Clawdeen + Venus and Cleo + Toralei) as a side effect of traveling through time. In this form, they suffer from severe Power Incontinence (or in Cleo and Toralei's case, their animosity toward each other making inhabiting the same body difficult), so they have to get help from a group of Hybrid Monster students to control their abilities.
• One episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a case of three beings one body: the Chimera that attacks Apple Bloom has three heads each with a distinct personality that refer to each other as sisters.
• Steven Universe
  • Gems are no stranger to the idea of separate beings sharing a body, but the "Gem Mutants", as Steven nicknamed them, are unique in that they didn't agree to the sharing and don't seem to have any means of getting free. They're essentially the Gem equivalent of Frankenstein's monster, a creature reanimated from the dead using the remains of several dead individuals, except every piece brought along its owner's consciousness. It's left ambiguous how sentient they are and how much individualism they still have, but they're clearly not enjoying themselves. Taken to a horrifying extreme by the Cluster, which is the same concept except it's made from the remains of millions and millions of fallen Gems.
  • While this trope is normally averted with regular fusions, Malachite plays this trope straight. The component gems hated each other and only fused for their own selfish purposes. Their goals were quite conflicting, and Lapis ended up using force to keep Jasper from unfusing. The result is a constant war over who gets to control the fusion's body.
    Garnet: Yikes. They are really bad for each other.
• This happens to Ren and Stimpy in the Games Animation episode "Double Header". First, they're hit by the bus to Ursa Minor. As a result, they're combined into one body, but then they're hit by Ursa Minor itself, and due to there being less to work with, Ren is reduced to his head and legs which are sewn onto the back of Stimpy's body. Unfortunately, for Ren, his head just happens to be right above Stimpy's...posterior....
• Played with in the Rugrats (1991) episode, "Chuckie's a Lefty"; Angelica pulls the head off of her leprechaun doll and glues it onto the shoulder of her Cynthia doll in an attempt to pass it off as a two-headed doll, inspired by a two-headed cow that she saw at the Museum of the Strange and Unusual that she and her parents visited. When Timmy comes to see it, he isn't fooled, but Angelica claims that Cynthia was born with two heads.
• The Matzoriley Brothers from The Super 6 were Weft, Wight and Wong, a three-headed entity with a streak of rotten luck.
• Two-Face Expy Radical Left of The Venture Bros.. During a past incident with his Arch-Enemy, Right Wing, the two somehow wound up fused together. Each still maintaining their own mental autonomy despite the situation. So much so they can play a game of Cluedo together.

Real Life

• Conjoined Twins Abby and Brittany Hensel share the same body, but each have their own separate vital organs, and control one side of their conjoined body.
• A more subtle case would be instances of "split-brain syndrome" (formally known in neuroscience as "dual consciousness^note Not to be confused with the Double Consciousness trope.), when the hemispheres of somebody's brain stop communicating with each other to such an extent that each begins maintaining independent consciousness. More subtle because it's two nearly identical copies of the same character, who will usually agree to such an extent as to not be aware they're not each in full control... but that's not always the case, as they can possess separate memories (based on each not full access to the body's sensory inputs) and can take actions which the other was only considering.

---