Me's a Crowd



"You see, the best thing about being me...is that there's so many of me!"

- Agent Smith, The Matrix

Through Magic or super-technology, the main character decides to get a large number of chores done via copying himself. Expect the original to choose all of the fun things to do when assigning chores around. Hilarity Ensues when the copies rebel or degrade, which results in either (1) at least one Evil Twin, or (2) copies continually being made to the point of risking exposing the Masquerade, or at least ruining the main character's reputation.

These copies rarely count as persons in and of themselves. See Cloning Blues. If they are counted as people, expect Which Me?.

Compare with Doppelganger Spin, Sorcerer's Apprentice Plot. Not to be confused with I Am Legion. May be used in a Doppelganger Attack. See also Literal Split Personality.

Anime and Manga

 * Funny Valentine of Steel Ball Run can visit alternate dimensions and bring back copies of himself. Since the copies all have his exact same personality and memories, and because there are infinite worlds, Valentine is almost invincible.
 * In Mahou Sensei Negima, Negi attempts to make a single copy of himself using a traditional Japanese magic that animates a paper doll, with which he is unfamiliar. Eventually he succeeds, but all his previous (bungled) attempts also animate, and Hilarity Ensues as the small crowd of defective Negi-copies run around amongst his students, just as they decide to make him the object of a kissing competition. Later, in the manga storyline, Negi experiences the first day of the Mahora festival multiple times via a Time Travel device, and fails to entirely keep the secret of what he's doing from his students.
 * Kotarou and Kaede can use (the by-now mandatory) Ninja self-duplication techniques; Kaede notably starts off a beautiful Mundane Utility sequence by splitting herself into 14 copies in order to forage for edible wild plants really fast.
 * Haruna has used her Art Initiates Life artifact to create copies of herself to get her Doujin work done faster.
 * Negi has also learned how to make clones out of lightning. Actually, he could always do that--now they're actually convincing.
 * In episode 23 of Keroro Gunsou, Keroro tries to use the (malfunctioning) Kero-Ball to fix one of his Gundam model kits, but accidentally activates the "Copy" function instead, which results in hundreds of Keroro clones infesting the Hinata house and the base. He plans to use these clones to help him take over the planet, but they're all as lazy and goofy as he is and would rather slack off. What's worse, he later learns that unless he gets rid of the clones somehow, the Kero-Ball will overload and all the Keroros (including the original) will vanish.
 * However, the Keroro example above is directly lifted from the main plot of another series, Shichinin no Nana / Seven of Seven (one of the recurring characters in SoS is from Keroro, so it goes both ways). The seven Nanas, however, are all considered separate people, unlike many examples on this page. All I can say for the girl's love interest is, you poor lucky bastard, getting 7 girls who all want you (and likely aren't afraid of sharing)...
 * In Naruto, this is known as Kage Bunshin No Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu), and the title character uses this as his primary battle technique. Other characters use similar techniques, but can't quite manage it on the same scale as Naruto himself, who can create upwards of a thousand copies of himself. Sadly, it rarely helps. In the Naruto world, Conservation of Ninjitsu applies to your own clones.
 * As a side note, his clones can also function the same as Jamie Madrox from the aforementioned Marvel Universe in that any experience his clone has will be absorbed by Naruto upon dispersion, so he can learn new abilities faster, but he also absorbs any mental strain experienced. Thankfully, he doesn't have the Evil Twin problem in this case, but he does sometimes accidentally get into fights with himself before remembering he can just end the technique.
 * It sometimes helps a lot, but going up to Conservation of Ninjitsu levels means it's probably a distraction or temporary Redshirt Army of himself. Clones to help him execute his big mojo attacks are very useful regularly.
 * This is more a "conservation of chakra" issue. Each of the Naruto clones can still execute all of his techniques and retains all of his expertise (which, because Naruto is canonically an Idiot Hero, is not necessarily a lot, especially in the beginning) ... it's just that they're not as super-powered as he alone would be. Consider that Naruto is stated to have access to something near 100x the amount of chakra as his teacher Kakashi - who's fairly powerful himself - and boggle at the thought of it.
 * It's revealed in the Chunin Arc, that creating a '____ clone' requires expending a significant amount of chakra. It is implied that there are different levels of chakra required to create a clone. Up to six illusions that merely copy the caster can be used even when said ninja is on the verge of collapse. Creation of a complete clone involves dividing chakra evenly between the clones. Clones created using elements or physical objects (water, paper, etc.) cost less than creating them out of scratch. The latest arc revealed that chakra is evenly transferred between clones, so a more recent strategy involves having a few clones store up chakra while the rest fight: when Naruto runs out of chakra, a clone dies, and Naruto gets his health fully restored. The limits of this haven't been completely tested, but it seems he can enter 'Sage Mode' indefinitely (barring the physical strain of the ability) and can spam his highest level techs while in that form.
 * In Nurse Witch Komugi, Komugi magically cosplays as Ken the Eagle from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman in a desperate bid to defeat her Transforming Mecha-controlling Ninja Maid enemy (who was cosplaying as Tekkaman)... and is soon joined by the rest of the Science Ninja Team, who are also cosplayed Komugis. Another Komugi later appears as The Professor. Her sidekick had no idea she could even do that, but Komugi plays it off like nothing at all.
 * Treated with much more seriousness in Komugi's parent series, Soul Taker, with Kyosuke's sister Ruina having created various "Flickers" of her soul to throw off her pursuers. They all look different and a good chunk of them don't even know they're Flickers to begin with.
 * The hero of the manga Akumetsu is a terrorist clone army, and manages to make this ridiculously cool. His trademark mask blows his head off when he dies, concealing this slightly (slightly) from the authorities, and also transmits all the memories and consciousness of the dying member to his base in space, where they make a new copy. Kind of makes a cheat of the 'I'm willing to die to wipe out evil' thing.
 * This is a technique sometimes used in Dragon Ball Z, originally by Tenshinhan, albeit in Filler Piccolo (And once Krillin, oddly enough) loves using it as well.
 * Ninin ga Shinobuden has Onsokumaru attempt to use a cloning jutsu. He succeeds, but ends up locked in an "epic" battle with the clone.
 * Konatsu the Kunoichi from Ranma One Half has a technique that allows him to do this.
 * Cologne's "Splitting Cat Hairs" technique in the anime also counts, seeing as it causes a circle of 18 clones of Cologne. True, 17 of those Colognes are merely illusions (presumably Battle Aura projections), but the technique makes use of the sheer number of them to allow the real Cologne to beat on her opponent without them being able to hit the real her in return. Ranma only manages to overcome it by throwing a bit of KFC to the center of the real circle, so the hungry Cologne snaps it up and drops the move.
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist, creates all the  from undesirable pieces of his own soul, although you wouldn't guess it because, with the exception of, there isn't much family resemblance. He can also reabsorb them, but that's a very unpleasant process.
 * The Manga Adaptation of The Legend of Zelda Four Swords is all about this: Link is split up into 4 different Links (optimistic and childlike Red; aggressive and over-confident Blue; controlled and intelligent Vio(let); and the (perfectly regular) brave and virtuous green Link) plus one Shadow Link, who came from the Shadow Mirror and serves as an Evil Twin. The five Links superficially differ only by the color of their clothes (and hair, in Shadow Link's case). In the manga pages themselves, they also have their eyes drawn differently (Green: Normal and Clear; Red: Big and Wet; Blue: Smaller irises and Edgier; Vio: hyper focused and empty irises; Shadow: either empty or colorless irises), on the colored illustrations, however, their eyes are all the same as well.
 * In one episode of Adventures of Mini Goddess, Urd is babysitting some rats, and runs into a situation where she is asked to do three things at once. She however wants to play craps. She then makes two clones of herself, however all the clones wind up wanting to play craps as well. As you would expect, no actual work got done.
 * Mizore from Rosario to Vampire can create "ice clones" of herself and her friends, which seem to be able to operate independently, though they don't last long. They're quite fragile as well, so she doesn't use them as backup combatants.
 * Code Breaker:  can split himself into 100 clones as a result of his   powers combining with his superior intelligence.

Comic Books

 * This trope more or less sums up Marvel Universe character Jamie Madrox's power (triggered via physical impact), especially once he learned that his duplicates were independent and developed their own personalities the longer they remained separate from him. Only he doesn't stop with "at least one evil twin". Any personality trait can be literally embodied in one of his "dupes"; as well, he sent out dupes to master certain occupations and skills, which after the dupes are reabsorbed, he learns as well. (The latter is distinctly implied to be the cause of the former--though the "independent duplicate" problem had some prior precedents, it became a permanent issue after he had reabsorbed many of the dupes sent out to learn new abilities.)
 * Warning: Combining the 'master certain occupations' and the 'evil twin' problem is VERY BAD!
 * In the Earth X continuity, Madrox is an information broker, said to have a dupe in every major city on the planet. However, under dire circumstances and threat of starvation, Madrox is forced to eat one of his dupes, and falls victim to the curse of the Wendigo--which is passed to every duplicate around the world. The heroes of Earth are forced to Kill It with Fire to eradicate the threat of self-duplicating, flesh-eating monsters.
 * The Batman Beyond comic introduces a Legacy Character of Catwoman, who is actually Multiplex's daughter and inherited his powers. This gets tied into her cat theme by calling her duplicates her nine lives.
 * Another DCU example, Bizarro can do this, but only under the light of a blue sun. He used this ability to create his own versions of Superman's friends and enemies, including Lois Lane. This is how Bizarro World was populated.
 * Another Marvel Universe character, Flashback, has a similar power--but he pulls his 'clones' from his own future.
 * One of Flashback's future selves gets killed during a battle with Alpha Flight. This causes the original to go into Villainous BSOD because he now knows HOW he's going to die but not WHEN, which causes him to become afraid of being pulled into the past (which apparently he cannot control) because that could be the time he dies.
 * The Superman villain Riot's powers work the same way as Madrox, with the added ability to clone himself at will.
 * This was shown in Marvel's Lighter and Softer Marvel Age imprint when, via some contrived means involving the aforementioned Jamie Madrox, the Incredible Hulk ended up with his power (including the physical impact trigger), filling the city with hundreds of different-personality Hulks wreaking havoc, due to the majority of the Hulks (predictably) reacting to duplicates of themselves by hitting them. There was even a hopeless romantic Hulk.
 * Again from the Marvel Universe: when he attempted to get his powers back via the Terrigen Mists, Quicksilver acquired this instead.
 * Bart Allen (formerly known as Impulse and Kid Flash) could produce avatars of himself which could travel through the timestream.
 * Dr Bedlam (later Baron Bedlam) from DC Comics' New Gods is a disembodied intelligence who can possess a number of robot bodies.
 * One The Avengers story had all the different models of Ultron sharing a consciousness. A more recent Superman story did the same thing with Brainiac, whose mind not only inhabits every version of himself through the years (except the rebellious Brainiac 2/Vril Dox), but also an entire army of robotic drones.
 * Doctor Manhattan exhibits this ability in Watchmen, being intimate with his girlfriend Laurie with a copy of himself while a third is continuing to work in the lab.
 * Invincible has the Mauler Twins, who are apparently a super-strong villain/mercenary type and his clone, neither of whom knows which is which because the original's memories were duplicated along with his body. This results in them working together relatively peacefully aside from the constant dispute, because while the idea was for the clone to serve the original, their shared memories essentially make them equals.
 * Dupli-Kate from the same series is a heroic version.
 * Triplicate Girl can, of course, split herself into three. Sometimes they're color-coded orange, white, and purple, (all of them are real regardless, but the cool thing is that the combined TG has a tricolor costume which splits into three mono color ones) and sometimes one of them dies while they're separated, making her into Duo Damsel. In the Threeboot continuity, the original Triplicate Girl was the sole intelligent survivor of some sort of apocalypse on her homeworld and could split and reemerge any number of selves, but when she/they was/were contacted by the United Planets, she/they split off the Legion's Triplicate Girl, who can only split out to three and won't be reabsorbed by any of her home selves because she's become too different and it worries them.
 * The original/Retroboot Triplicate Girl lost one body fighting Computo, becoming Duo Damsel. Then, she sent one of herself back in time to help Karate Kid with a mission in the 21st century, and this "Una" was also killed. With only one body left, however, she discovered she'd become able to make unlimited copies of herself, and took the new name Duplicate Damsel.
 * Minor Top Ten character Multi-Woman can make several versions of herself, each with a different superpower.
 * Ninja High School had Jeremy accidentally photocopy himself into 100 variations, each one with different aspects of his personality.
 * In Silver Age Superman comics, Superman employs a number of Robot Mes to cover for him to conceal his Secret Identity. Their intelligence varies from one story to the next, but it is tacitly accepted that they are not truly self-aware (and are, therefore, expendable). When occasional Phlebotinum causes one to become genuinely self-aware, it's a big problem and Hilarity Ensues. In The Bronze Age of Comic Books, the editors decided the robots were too much of a Deus Ex Machina, so they start malfunctioning (officially due to increased pollution levels in Earth's atmosphere) and Superman stops using them.
 * Animal Man possesses the power to take on the abilities of any animals in his immediate vicinity. During the Grant Morrison run, in an arc where he was trapped in a cell with no animals nearby, he took on the attributes of a single-celled organism within his digestive system. Notably the ability to replicate himself through mitosis. Within ten seconds, he was able to outnumber his opponent.
 * Wisp from Dreamkeepers has this as her power, splitting up parts of her personality as needed.
 * In the The Authority, the Engineer can create clones of herself. It got to the point where she makes herself into a literal army. There are instances in which she has sex with Jack Hawksmoor while giving a speech at United Nations, or destroying entire fleets of mooks while resuscitating a kid.
 * Her case is a little different, though, as she creates robots, not clones - all her other selves are still controlled by her.
 * Fantastic Four: Happened to Ben Grimm once, when his exoskeleton began shedding larvae that turned into clone-Grimms. The problem? They were almost all Evil Twins. Reed was forced to trap Grimm and his duplicates in an alternate dimension while he looked for a solution. Ben, meanwhile, fought off his evil versions with the help of the few good clones he could find.
 * Yeah well, sometimes it's just one Thing after another...
 * As fractured as Shade the Changing Man is on the inside, it was probably badly advised for him to split up physically. After generating an Evil Clone who escaped and attempted to supplant the original, Shade stopped deliberately duplicating himself.
 * In Dark Empire, Luke Skywalker is able to make one doppleganger to rescue his friends and help them escape the Big Bad while he stays behind to fight said Big Bad. The doppleganger dissolves into light soon after entering hyperspace. He never has this power again, and Leia refers to it as a Sith technique.
 * New Batman villain White Rabbit is revealed in Batman The Dark Knight #7 to be

Fan Works

 * In Past Sins, Nightmare!Nyx uses this twice, once to infiltrate the Royal Guard and once to.

Film
"Agent Thompson: You!!
 * Multiplicity is a live-action movie example.
 * The Matrix: Smith begins cloning himself over other denizens of the Matrix after Neo does... whatever he did to him at the end of the first movie.

Smith: Yes, me. (hand-stab) Me, me, me.

Smith: ... Me too."


 * In The Prestige,
 * Non sci-fi example: Blofeld's army of doubles in Diamonds Are Forever.
 * In Asterix And Obelix the Druid multiplicates the eponymous duo to repel the Roman invaders.
 * Penny the cheerleader in Sky High is the entire cheerleader squad.
 * Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich?
 * Malkovich. Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich.
 * In Resident Evil Extinction Alice, teams up with a large number of clones of herself, with the intention of going after Umbrella.

Literature

 * In the Deathstalker series by Simon R. Green, Hazel D'Ark eventually learns to summon variants of herself from alternate universes.
 * A teenage boy finds a duplicating device in William Sleator's The Duplicate, and uses it so he can go on a date and his grandmother's birthday party at the same time. Hilarity Ensues when his duplicate claims to be the original, and ends up going on the date while he gets the birthday party. Then the duplicate makes another duplicate, and things start getting complicated.
 * Even more so as it turns out that
 * This is the key SF element in Brin's Kiln People. The original copies himself to a number of specialized golem bodies to perform various chores. Sometimes the copy isn't clean and it "goes Frankie" and takes a vacation instead of buying groceries.
 * Within the world of Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (Literature), all Toons can summon a "dupe" which will disappear in 24 hours. They're typically used for stunts and to allow for Amusing Injuries..
 * Meow's A Crowd in Whispering Nickel Idols, in which the semi-divine litter of kittens known as the Luck of A-Lat appear to consist of five or six most of the time, but can fan out by the hundreds when there's a whole crowd of people to interact with.

Live Action TV

 * Variation on this in Doctor Who. Thanks to The Nth Doctor, there's currently eleven different incarnations of the Doctor running around the space/time... it's extremely rare for them to meet (Timey-Wimey Ball, actors dying and all that), but when they do the result tends to be similar to this trope. Here's an artist's rendition, shall we say, of how the first ten Doctors would act if forced to cooperate.
 * A straight example in "The End Of Time":
 * Also in "The Deadly Assassin", while in the Matrix, the assassin takes on various generic historical personas (a samurai, a clown, a WW 1 biplane pilot etc) to attack/frighten the Doctor (and the audience). At one point several of him seem to man several positions on a train (or trains) simultaneously to run over the Doctor's leg.
 * In another Fourth Doctor story, "The Leisure Hive", the villain Pangol used a form of Applied Phlebotinum to recreate himself thousands of times over as a conquering army. Thanks to the Doctor's interference he ended up with an army of Doctors, which disintegrated within minutes of their generation.
 * An arc in the later seasons of Stargate SG-1 had Baal make dozens of clones of himself, and in a few episodes set on Earth at least five of them hung out together. One episode even has a Gotta Catch Them All where the heroes travel the galaxy, trying to scoop up all the Baal clones. A freeze frame near the end of the episode shows fifteen clones in one room. It turns out
 * Battlestar Galactica: it's a natural state for them (or as natural as Artificial Humans ever get), but each of the Significant Seven models has an army's worth of clones.
 * Power Rangers SPD Yellow Ranger Elizabeth "Z" Delgado has this ability.
 * An episode of Eureka features Dr. Stark accidentally cloning himself. The clones try to take over the world. Long story.
 * Used in a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers PSA to show that differences between people is a good thing.
 * In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode covering The Human Duplicators, Tom Servo ends up cloning himself dozens and dozens of times during a host segment, creating a small herd of Servos to menace Crow with. Strangely enough, this is one gag that doesn't Snap Back, and the surplus Servos end up as recurring supporting characters, usually whenever Servo wants to perform with the United Servo Academy Mens' Chorus or the Sir Thomas Neville Servo Consort of the Middle Ages Just-After-the-Plague Singers. In the final episode, Servo cleans up this dangling plot thread by blowing up all the doppelgangers.
 * The Monster of the Week of an episode of Power Rangers Dino Thunder had the power to create copies of anything in front of him. At one point, he made three copies of Cassidy on the spot, and the four of them proceeded to drive Devin crazy by stacking him with chores.
 * Round the Twist has a character make only one clone to win a running competition. However, a rabbit starts cloning an army of itself with the machine. All the objects used in the machine, cloned or original, begin to dissolve eventually, due to a fault in the machine. At least one rabbit survives, though, because in the final scene we learn what happened when Bronson put her with a male rabbit.
 * Jed Garrity gains this power at the end of The 4400.
 * Eli, Samuel Sullivan's right-hand man (men?) in Heroes.
 * Kamen Rider OOO has this power as the Set Bonus for his Gatakiriba Combo. It doesn't get used very often because (In-Universe) it's physically taxing and because (in Real Life) it's reportedly a very expensive effect.
 * The Movie contains a special usage, where OOO splits into eight copies and then each one transforms into one of his primary Combos to fight the Big Bad.
 * In Game of Thrones the warlock Pyatt Pree appears to create a double of himself, although many of those watching think the warlocks are charlatans and this is just a trick.

Newspaper Comics

 * Bill Watterson's strip Calvin and Hobbes had a storyline like this, where Calvin uses a "duplicator" to make copies of himself, who turn out to be disobedient jerkasses like the original. Eventually he gets fed up with the copies, and turns them into earthworms (but Calvin being Calvin, the clones aren't inclined to complain: they're all "Cool! Let's go find someone to gross out!"). This story appears in the collection Scientific Progress Goes Boink.
 * Later, Calvin tried again for similar reasons, this time making a clone of only his "good side". However, when the Good Twin tries to become friends with the neighborhood girl (with no success whatsoever), Calvin tracks him down and argues with him, and when the duplicate is about to fight him, he spontaneously explodes. Turns out fighting doesn't count as "good".

Radio

 * And in the second radio season of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, we have Lintilla.
 * Not to mention Allitnil, Allitnil and Allitnil.

Tabletop Games

 * The Champions superhero Tabletop RPG had "Duplication" as a possible super power.
 * Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition has the Fission psionic power and the Body Outside Body spell, both of which let you clone yourself. An incantatrix can use the latter to produce a hundred or more clones that last all day, and apart from a bit of feedback damage if they die, they are completely expendable.
 * The descriptions state that the "clone" has all your thoughts and memories in addition to being completely obedient to you. One supposes that said thoughts and memories include the idea that being created by magic invalidates the "clone's" rights as a sentient being and makes it okay for them to have their will subverted and used as slave labor. (Better double-check your alignment, party mage), since it's so rarely heard of for a product of said spells/powers to go "Wait a fucking minute, I want to live!"
 * Since the clone's you, as long as you don't tell it anything that you yourself wouldn't do given the knowledge that if you die you will still exist, there are no moral quandaries at all.
 * It's an end of a long way. From Basic D&D (Master Rules) on, it was "Only One Me Allowed Right Now", then in 3E most little side-effects (like long delays or aging) making spells inconvenient for munchkinish style of dungeon-scouring were removed, but the clone spell created dead meat when the original was alive, and then... this.
 * Also the simulacrum spell.
 * GURPS has a Duplication advantage and Clone spell.
 * The Clarissa Explains It All Game can be played by up to six people, and all of them will be Clarissa Darling. Whoever gets a Driver's License and car first, wins!
 * Mutants and Masterminds has a Duplication power and includes at least two crooks with the power set. Remlok, a time-traveling thief, summons himself from various futures. The Other Woman has a more conventional duplication power.
 * In the Adventure! pulp RPG from White Wolf, this is the secret power of Yellow Peril villain The Ubiquotous Dragon. Being a universe where the power scale is rather low, this is not only very powerful ability, but he also uses it in a much more low key way than most examples on this page. Essentially, every one of his local Dragons is himself, which means they are perfectly loyal and coordinated, and even if you find the body, he will still be there.
 * In Eclipse Phase, Brain Uploading has become so ubiquitous that there are now more disembodied minds than there are organic bodies to accommodate them. All one needs to do create a horde of themselves is to create duplicates of their minds (in a process called "forking") and then download them into new bodies (either organic or robotic). However, if the forked personalities stay separated from the original for more than a few hours, they start to become separate and distinct people, as their experiences alter their personalities.

Troper Works

 * Archipelago Exodus' Terrian Brogue has this power. Now that the ability has amplified to duplicating items he's holding on his person as well, he's taken a giant leap forward in terms of versatility and usefulness... and financial value.

Toys

 * Makuta Bitil's Mask of Power in Bionicle allows him to summon past versions of himself to create this effect.

Video Games

 * Kirby Mass Attack revolves around the wizard Necrodius splitting Kirby into 10 weaker, smaller copies of itself. Kirby uses this splitting to his advantage to solve the countless puzzles of the game.
 * And if this troper remembers correctly, something similar happens in Kirby and the Amazing Mirror.
 * The Legend of Zelda Four Swords saga. This was most likely done by Nintendo to keep fanboys from arguing about who gets to play as Link.
 * In The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures, Shadow Link continues to spawn endless copies of himself until.
 * A powerup in the NES Ninja Gaiden allows Ryu to create up to two red doubles that follow his movements. They can also hang in the air and attack if you move right.
 * The Freedom Force villain Déjà Vu, who spoke in rhyme and could clone himself indefinitely until the original was knocked out (said original being easily detectable since he's the only one with a full life bar). The sequel, Freedom Force Vs The Third Reich featured the WWII era Japanese villain Red Sun who had a slight variation of this power: he couldn't clone himself indefinitely but the clones became stronger and regained health whenever one fell in battle, hence they had to be dealt with one at a time. This variation in powers was most likely a reaction to the fact that some players would grind Déjà Vu's clones for infinite prestige points.
 * Mega Man 3 had Gemini Man as a Robot Master, While Mega Man X 4 gives us Split Mushroom.
 * The latest issue of City of Heroes features a variation of this, as Villains have the option to find out if they can beat an 8 man team of themselves.
 * The Piece of Eden had this as one of the abilities it granted in both of the Assassin's Creed games.
 * Although they are apparently just illusions (that will stab you )
 * Zeus does this in God of War 3.
 * In Heroes of Newerth, there's a special power up that clones you twice. You can also clone yourself by using an item, the Geometer's Bane, and some heroes can do it on their own.
 * In Super Mario World, some Chargin' Chucks can split into three identical copies, which all then proceed to attack.
 * In the tactical RPG Kartia the Word of Fate for the PS 1, the elf twins have this power, though it's only visibly used by the male one near the end of the game in Toxa's scenario.
 * Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City has a Ninja class; one of their moves lets them create a shadow clone to fill the usually-vacant sixth slot in the usual five-man party. However, they can use this to fill any empty slot... potentially resulting in a small army of fake!ninjas covering for the real one.
 * Mardek Chapter 2, in which your first mission includes killing a guy who is "actually five blokes in one" or something like that. Magic theives.
 * One Desire Demon in Dragon Age can create illusory duplicates of itself.
 * Agent 47 of Hitman is a clone of himself, being 47th one. He ends up fighting a lot himselves and in some cases his clones are trying to assassinate him. Er, it's complicated. Anyhow, he's apparently the superior clone.

Web Animation
"RIOT! RIOT! RIOT!"
 * A Legend Of Zelda parody, Four Swords Misadventures has Dark Link doing this - a lot. The first time, he even used the quote from Agent Smith before showing it off. In the latest episode, he uses this power to go on a one-man riot.

Web Comics

 * Example from The Wotch: Anne Onymous accidentally schedules 4 different things for the same time, and uses a spell to multiply so she doesn't have to cancel anything. Unfortunately, it turns out that the duplicates are actually aspects of her personality, and when the spell overcharges, all the aspects of her personality run loose. Cue showdown against her personified Anger, who later becomes a recurring antagonist...
 * Dr. Positron in PS238. There are several Dr Positron androids, with slightly different personalities.
 * In Narbonic, Professor Madblood needs an army to conquer the Earth, so he builds 15,000 robot duplicates of himself.
 * In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Dr. McNinja had to learn all sorts of things and he didn't have enough time so... it's cloning time!
 * This strip of The Noob.
 * One gag in Blip shows that the cyborg Mary used her robot clones to deal with having scheduled four dates at the same time.
 * In Homestuck, Aradia Megido's time powers in the Medium allow her to create an army of alternate future selves, which are used to help defeat the Black King in their session. Dave Strider has the same powers in the kids' session and (ab)uses them to the point where there are at least 43 iterations of him running around at one point, both Stable Time Loop travellers and Bad Future copies. Also, Eggs from the intermission has the ability to teleport into the past, which he uses to create an army of... hims; he also creates an army of Biscuitses too by taking Biscuits with him when he teleports. In the, Dirk manages this with A Is (although to nowhere near the extent of Dave and Aradia - yet) and is also somehow able to
 * Schlock Mercenary turns this up to the max. Gav stepped through a duplicator device with 950 million outputs, and the clones now form a major sapient ethnicity and marketing demographic. Cloning Blues eventually gets to Gav, and they start funding and implementing a program to physically and mentally distinguish themselves.
 * In Problem Sleuth, Pickle Inspector uses his imagination to create time-traveling clones of himself. [[Serial Escalation it's revealed that.
 * In Fite, Skerry sometimes appears as one figure, and sometimes as three.
 * In Real Life Comics, Tony decided to make a cloning machine to get an easy workforce.

Web Original

 * Los Hermanos of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe has this power in spades. He combines this with Hive Mind, as not only can he create thousands of copies of himself, he shares his consciousness between them. (He is somehow capable of dealing with all the conflicting sensory input, and is capable of handling multiple tasks at once, multiple conversations at once, and so on). At any given moment, he's likely got a dozen duplicates active around the world working in as many different occupations. Anything one duplicate learns, all the duplicates know how to do. And at least two of his constantly active duplicates are married. But only one is an active superhero.
 * Aryan Nation is a controversial white supremacist superhero (yes, you read that right) who shares Los Hermanos's powers. His powers are so similar to Los Hermanos that the Global Guardian once hypothesized that maybe Aryan Nation was one of his dupes who managed to gain a separate consciousness. (He found out later this wasn't true.)
 * Posse is a superhero from Dallas, Texas, who can separate into twenty individuals.
 * The Seven Brothers is a super-strong Chinese hero who can split into seven bodies. He is also a Hive Mind.
 * Mob Rule, a South African super villain from the same setting, has a similar power. His copies, however, are independent individuals.
 * Colony, a British super villain, can create a dozen duplicates. Like Mob Rule, his copies are independent.
 * Saba Devatao, an Indonesia super villain, creates eight duplicates and like Los Hermanos is a Hive Mind. She's an expert martial artist who can flawlessly coordinate her bodies in attack routines that baffle most of her opponents.
 * Jade (a.k.a. Generator) of the Whateley Universe has the ability to create disembodied copies of herself, complete with personality, that can possess and telekinetically manipulate physical objects. Needless to say, she's finding a lot of uses for them. Like pretending to be the ghost of her -- actually nonexistent -- older sister so she can attend two classes at once, say...but at least as initially depicted (before individual functions seem to take over a bit), they're still all very much her to the point where she's temporarily devastated when one vanishes without a trace due to another mutant using her own power to trap the loose 'spirit'.
 * It appears to be implied, in the various stories from Jade's perspective, that the copies are all still her - but they're referred to by different names both so that other people (and, sometimes, Jade herself) can keep track of who is doing what and so that the Pronoun Trouble doesn't get too excessive. Plus, a large part of Jade's secret hinges on her posing as her own sister.
 * Aurora in Trinton Chronicles has the ability to create duplicates of herself out of energy and each one has her personality making them essentially her at heart. The duplicates are only linked to her in the fact that she feels their deaths or pain but nothing else. They are created from energy and must verbally impart any knowledge they learn to her. They also all seem to be 'aware' of their meager existence, going so far as to protect the real Aurora from various attacks at the expense of their own forms. Once dismissed they just dissolve into energy. Theory is that each clone is a part of Aurora given form but that has yet to be proven.
 * In one of the comics at the Heroes website, immortal villain Adam Monroe encountered a duplicator with this power during the Revolutionary War. The duplicator was unable to overcome Adam's Healing Factor, and no matter how many doubles Adam killed, more could keep coming as long as one of them survived.
 * The Spoony Experiment introduced several clones of Spoony in the aftermath of his Final Fantasy VIII review, . Two of the clones permanently took up the identities of Dr. Insano and Spencer D. Bum.
 * Of course, this doesn't count the original Insano that was running around, as well as all the various characters played by Spoony, like Gordon Ramsay, Ultimate Warrior, Terl...
 * The Angry Video Game Nerd once made three clones of himself to demonstrate how a video game he was reviewing had a four-player option, since no one would have wanted to play the game.

Western Animation

 * In Men in Black, the MIB have the technology to produce "quickclones" that function as perfect copies of the original. The downside? After a few hours they start spitting Word Salad and melt into goo.
 * Jade from Jackie Chan Adventures once used magic to make a copy of herself to get out of her chores so she could go with Jackie to fight the bad guys. Not only did Jade2 sneak along (because that's what Jade would do), but Jade's duplication spell was imperfect and her clone started making additional clones. Before you know it, there's a thousand Jades running around.
 * In Alienators Evolution Continues, one of the uncontrollable mutations Wayne sported was uncontrollably and continuously cloning himself. While initially amusing, it is soon discovered that with each splitting the copies have less and less of Wayne's original DNA, threatening to cause yet another alien outbreak.
 * American Dragon Jake Long did the same, except corrupt magic was used for the last clone, and it became an Evil Twin.
 * In Xiaolin Showdown, The Ring of Nine Dragons can be used to split the wearer into up to nine copies of himself. The catch is that the duplication process spreads his skills and intelligence thin across all the copies. Continued practice with the ring did allow the user (notably, Jack Spicer) to overcome this weakness, though.
 * One of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror specials had Homer do this using a magic hammock (which the clones themselves end up using, causing them to degrade in quality until one of them comes out as Peter Griffin, until they all run off a cliff when baited by a giant donut). The Twist Ending was that it wasn't the original Homer that survived at the end.
 * In one of the Pinky and The Brain comics, Brain fires Pinky and uses a duplicator device to make a copy of himself. The copy refuses to assist, however, and steals the duplicator, creating a copy of himself, and so on ad nauseum until Brain manages to "cancel out" all the copies. Pinky of course returns, over the course of the adventure ... and the last panel depicts lots of copies of Pinky, which presumably gets dealt with off-camera.
 * An episode of the actual show was similar. Brain tried to make clones of himself to teach a catchy dance to the world, and Pinky wound up being accidentally cloned and distracting the Brain clones with his own dance.
 * The Brak Show had an episode based around this, where Brak and Zorak spend all weekend playing video games, and then when the family decides to go out to Brak's favorite restaurant, Brak and Zorak are told they can't come because they didn't finish their homework. After the parents are gone, Zorak talks about needing a time machine, and Brak reveals that Thundercles left him the key to his Time Shed. They go back to the beginning of the weekend to warn their past selves to do their homework, but get caught up in video games until they're called down for dinner, causing Brak to panic as he realizes he's out of time. This repeats many times until his room is completely filled with copies of Brak and Zorak, at which point they decide the only viable solution is to go back in time and prevent the invention of homework. They also inadvertently prevent Brak's favorite restaurant from ever being made, but the one that appears in its place is pretty good too, so it all works out in the end.
 * Ben 10 gained a duplicating alien form named Ditto. Anything that happens to one Ditto is felt by all of them. Given what happens to the Stinkfly clones, if one Ditto is destroyed, the rest will presumeably follow.
 * In the Retool into Ben 10 Alien Force, the form called "Echo Echo" takes this role (minus the part about feeling each other's pain), but combines it with a weird look, a creepy voice and sonic powers.
 * Batman the Animated Series uses this in the Riddler episode "What Is Reality", where he controls a virtual reality universe that follows his every whim. In the end, Batman faces off against the Riddler, who demonstrates his mastery of the domain by duplicating himself. Batman realizes he can do so as well, and the two get into a ridiculous arms race of clones. Eventually the Riddler's consciousness is spread too thin for him to maintain the simulation, and it collapses, with Riddler's mind still inside.
 * In an episode of The Batman, an old friend of Bruce Wayne's makes a quantum duplicator, immediately resulting in an evil twin of himself who locks up the original and becomes the super-villain Everywhere Man, who steals things and replaces them with quantum clones so no one can tell they're even gone. It takes a literal army of him to take on Batman and Robin (who were armed with the less-stable prototype duplicator), and the Dynamic Duo last long enough to take advantage of the device's one flaw: the clones eventually start to exhibit free will. The clones turn on Everywhere Man when Batman reveals he has neither the ability nor the intention of allowing them to exist after the battle, forcing Everywhere Man to dispel them all. When Everywhere Man says he can just create another army, Bats tells him he can't win because the end result would be the same. This may have just been a bluff to distract Everywhere Man, so the guy he was cloned from could sneak up, grab the duplicator, and dispel him.
 * In an early episode of The Fairly Odd Parents, Timmy wishes for "a ton" of copies to do chores. His Literal Genie godparents divide 2000 pounds by his body weight to get 42.5 clones (the .5 is rendered as a half-sized Timmy). The result follows the second case of the trope, so that Timmy has to get all the clones rounded up into a room and wish them away before someone sees more than one Timmy at once.
 * In an episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Jimmy cloned himself, but mixed it up somehow. Each clone was a different aspect of himself (his Romantic side, his Cool side, etc.). This, of course, included an Evil Twin. Hilarity Ensues. However, even by the end of the episode, the evil twin remained, and eventually got a full-length episode where he served as the main antagonist before presumably dying (and not just in the "absorbed back into Jimmy" sense either).
 * Danny Phantom has the main character using one of his dad's "Fenton" devices to split himself in two: one to fight ghosts around the clock, the other to goof off. Of course, his personality splits too, one is The Ace and one is a slacker.
 * Also, form duplication is a special trick possessed by particularly powerful ghosts, Vlad being able to split himself into four normal forms, or hundreds of shadow forms. At first, Danny could only do it through the use of a power-enhancing Humongous Mecha, but he managed to pull it off on his own during season three... why he didn't make more use of it is never explained.
 * In WITCH, both the animated series and original comic version, the guardians can use the Heart of Kandrakar to create soulless slave clones of themselves known as Astral Drops. Normally the use of Astral Drops is rather innocent, but have occasionally led to big problems, most notably in the animated series episode "H is for Hunted" (Nerissa turns an Astral Drop into a person with real feelings and emotions) and the third volume of the comic book (Astral Drops rebel and wreck girls' romantic lives).
 * It gets pretty messed up in the comic, when the Astral Drops suddenly gain independent souls, causing the original girls to be haunted by the spirits of their copies whenever they absorb them. The oracle eventually decides on turning the Astral drops into independent people with their own bodies, appearances and identities, which, however, leaves the girl's without cover-ups for their missions.
 * In Transformers Animated . Upon getting to know his clones better, he realizes one thing: "This is gonna be a long orbital cycle."
 * The toyline adds one more:.
 * Subverted in one episode of Care Bears, where Shreeky gets her partner/lackey Mr. Beastly thrown out of No Heart's Castle for something that was her fault. Shreeky ends up having all of Mr. Beastly's menial chores foisted upon her, and comes up with the genius idea to magically clone herself. She introduces her legion of Shreekys to No Heart, each with its own responsibility...but when she explains that the last one's job is to take the blame for making messes, the Shreekys start bickering to the point that No Heart declares that "one Beastly is better than five Shreekys any day! Get them out of here, and get Beastly back!" (Though since this means she's gotten out of doing chores, she still got what she wanted anyway...plus a little catharsis out of vaporising her misbegotten legion of clones, who immediately start bickering again over whose genius plan it all was.)
 * In an Adventures in Care-a-Lot episode, Grumpy uses a machine to create a clone of himself to help him build his latest invention, but the clone wants nothing to do with Grumpy's original blueprints and creates a clone of his own. The two clones kick Grumpy out of his own workshop, but when Grumpy gets back in (with some help from the others), he finds the clones are sick of each other, and they willing go back into the machine.
 * Multi Man in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Impossibles had "create multiple copies of myself" as a super power. The Multi Man concept was later recycled as one of the heroic identities of The Super Globetrotters.
 * Time Squad, "Day Of the Larrys": Sarcastic Robot Buddy Larry 3000 decides to build a duplicate of himself to help around the station. The duplicate decides to build another duplicate, and so on.
 * Lady Redundant Woman, from Word Girl gained the ability to do this from - get this - a photocopier accident. She literally merged with the copier. The clones turn into paper when hit.
 * Rolly Polly Ollie
 * One Johnny Test episode had the title character notice his super-intelligent twin sisters pull the duplication act in order to spend their afternoon ogling their hunky neighbor instead of cleaning out the garage. So he uses their duplication machine to get out of mowing the lawn... and, of course, leaves it on so that it makes a total of 100 clones tearing up the lawn. And Dad, who quite specifically told them not to duplicate themselves like LAST time, is only 10 minutes away from home...
 * Happens to a number of characters in a Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law episode, as done by the Deadly Duplicator.
 * In one Tiny Toon Adventures episode, Plucky doesn't do his homework, so he builds a time machine and goes back in time to the start of the weekend, where he meets himself. Plucky B takes the time machine and goes forward to Monday morning, where he shows it to Buster and Babs, and while playing with it, they accidentally end up in prehistoric times, where they meet their ancestors.
 * Happens in Lilo and Stitch: The Series, where one of the experiments has the power to duplicate anything multiple times. Originally the protagonists think that this is a wonderful way to get everything they want done at once, but eventually they realize that every duplicate reduces the collective power of everyone who has been cloned (original included) to 1/(number of copies). Winds up being Chekhov's Gun later in the episode.
 * In Kim Possible, the Wego twins' power is to create more of themselves.
 * The Jimmy Two-Shoes episode "Too Many Jimmy", thanks to one of Heloise's inventions.
 * The Spliced episode "Clones Don't Care 'Bout Nothin' Either"
 * Multiple Santa and his electrically-generated Santa Clones from The Tick.
 * In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987, Donatello is tired of fixing things, so he create a clone of himself. The clone refuses to work and a cloning glitch makes him stronger and smarter than Donatello. He sides with Pinky McFingers, creating millions of cloned rats planning to loot the city.
 * In one episode of Phineas and Ferb, the titular brothers and their friends think up Personality Powers for themselves, with Phineas imagining himself with this.
 * Another episode (Appropriately called 'Split Personalities') has a molecular splitter the boys invented inadvertently divide Candace in two- one obsessed with busting, the other obsessed with Jeremy Johnson. After some confusion, the brothers manage to corral both Candaces and merge them, but not before briefly splitting the two into more Candaces!
 * Teen Titans has several examples of this trope.
 * Beast Boy can accomplish this by turning into an asexually reproducing lifeform and just splitting. In the comic book continuity, he is shown to have the potential to gain this power as an extension of his shapeshifting powers but isn't confident enough to employ it just yet (although some Flash Forwards have shown future versions of Beast Boy being able to more or less become a one-man green stampede).
 * This is the power of villain Billy Numerous, hence the name. All the Billies appear to have the same personality, and since Billy is a bit of a hick, he fights with himself a lot.
 * This was also the plan of the aquatic villain Trident, who considered himself to be the ultimate life form. Beast Boy solves the problem by asserting that only one of them can really be the best, causing them all to fight amongst themselves.
 * Seen in the Futurama episode "Benderama". Professor Farnsworth invents a machine that makes two smaller copies of any object. Bender uses it on himself to make two smaller clones to do his work for him. Then each of the clones makes two clones. And those clones make two more clones, and so on until the Earth is threatened by a Grey Goo of microscopic Benders.
 * In Marvel's licensed Ren & Stimpy comic, the Commander Höek and Cadet Stimpy story "I Scream Clones" features Stimpy acquiring permission from Space Command to clone himself in order to keep up with his shipboard duties. Predictably, the proliferation of Stimpys threatened to drive Ren mad....until he realized that he could simply clone himself and create an army of Rens to smack the stupid out of the Stimpys.