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Cloning Blues: Difference between revisions
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That's for the lucky clones who are created properly. In many shows, cloning is an imprecise science, so there is a high probability that any clone will turn out to be an [[Evil Twin]] -- almost as high as the probability of creating an [[AI Is a Crapshoot|evil computer]] (Because everyone knows that [[Science Is Bad]]). Other unlucky clones will just have [[Glamour Failure|birth defects]], [[Resurrection Sickness]] or be [[Clone Degeneration|increasingly inexact duplicates]].
And that's for the clones who are just unlucky. The really unlucky clones have [[Evilutionary Biologist|malevolent creators]] who can make [[Designer Babies|custom clones]] [[Uterine Replicator|grown in a vat]], sometimes [[Send in the Clones|in bulk]] -- which are exact meta-xerox copies of the original except that they have [[Battle Butler|fanatical]] [[Cyanide Pill|loyalty]] to the creators. Or the [[Lamarck Was Right|innate skills]] of a ninja assassin. [[Stock Super Powers|Or superpowers.]] Or [[Lego Genetics|just add]] some alien DNA to create [[Half-Human Hybrid]]s, or even [[Opposite Sex Clone|a different set of reproductive organs]]. Or all five at once -- and those clones will still look, act, and think exactly like the original in every other way. You can expect all that tinkering to make something [[Gone Horribly Wrong|Go Horribly Wrong]], too. A clone like this is always considered [[Tyke Bomb|highly expendable]] by their creator, except in rare cases where said [[Evilutionary Biologist]] has [[Truly Single Parent|developed]] [[Replacement Goldfish|an attachment]] to it.
Because of all this (or possibly as a cause of all this), clones get very little respect. Heroes who hesitate at killing intelligent life might still kill their evil clone. In the question of [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]], most clones rank somewhere between the [[Big Creepy-Crawlies]] and the [[Mecha-Mooks]]. Interestingly, on the question of [[Uniqueness Value]] the only clone that matters is the last one...[[Twinmaker|provided the original is dead]].
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This assumes the clone ever had a mind of its own, of course. Sometimes a clone is an [[Empty Shell]] without the original's [[Our Souls Are Different|Soul]], and exists only so that the creator can overwrite their mind and personality onto it in case of accident. In this case, it's more like coming [[Back From the Dead]] -- although if the clone has a mind of its own at the start, this is yet ''another'' reason its life sucks. And let's not debate how [[Our Souls Are Different]], in which case clones (especially of the deceased) will be [[The Soulless|soulless abominations]] [[Came Back Wrong|before God]] and [[Scale of Scientific Sins|nature.]]
Some clones aren't biological clones at all -- they're robot doubles, or copies created by the good old transporter. These have more reason to be exact xerox copies -- but they get even less respect.
Unrelated to [[Something Blues]]. See also [[Scale of Scientific Sins]] and [[Creating Life]]. Closely related to [[Expendable Clone]]. Contrast with [[Clones Are People, Too]], where they ''do'' get to live their own lives.
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* ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' had direct cloning be highly illegal, in contrast to simple genetic modification, though it didn't stop a powerful politician from cloning himself several times, believing the clones would be superior successors to his biological son. At least three have been seen, and of those one became a manipulative nihilist that attempted to wipe out the human race, and another became a pawn of the secret [[Big Bad]] of the sequel. All of them apparently suffer from birth defects that prematurely accelerate their aging and cause intense pain if not treated with medication.
* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' and its sequels have Fate Testarossa. Near the end of the first season, she's a [[Tomato in the Mirror]] when Precia reveals that she's a clone; Fate, though treated as an equal by her new employers, who know she's a clone, and her classmates, who don't, once briefly wonders if she even counts as a person once during ''A's''. In later seasons she's surrounded by people who care for her individually, though, and this is quickly refuted. In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS|StrikerS]]'', she adopts children similar to her to be raised in a loving environment so that they will not have to ask the same question.
** In fact, Nanoha takes this trope to the extremes, as number of clones begin to outnumber the natural born characters. At least ten of the characters in the series are clones. In [[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS|StrikerS]], most of the villain party are made out of cyborg clones, even Jail himself is revealed to be a clone of a true Al Hazardian.
* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'': Rei Ayanami is a tragic cocktail. She's a [[Half-Human Hybrid]] with [[Easy Amnesia]]. Her isolated upbringing with Gendō Ikari left her with [[No Social Skills]]. Her Male Counterpart, Kaworu Nagisa is a mysterious cocktail of [[Dissonant Serenity]], [[Ambiguous Innocence]], and [[Half-Human Hybrid]]. Then again, everybody in that mess of a show a tragic cocktail of at least three different tropes, clone or no clone. And she hates it to boot. After being cloned (again) she is just pissed off and tired, wanting to die. But she isn't allowed to.
** The second ''[[Rebuild of Evangelion]]'' film even has a scene of Rei floating in an LCL tank, wearing a collar engraved with "REI-02".
* ''[[Pokémon: The First Movie|Pokémon the First Movie]]'' features an angry, bitter clone who became a [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]]. He returns in a TV special, though he's mellowed down.
* ''[[RahXephon]]'' has {{spoiler|Isshiki Makoto, who, in both flashbacks and his final breakdown, is shown to take the fact that he's an inferior clone...rather hard, to say the least. Indeed, he almost directly causes humanity to lose the Human-Mu war out of a need to prove that he was more than an imperfect copy of his "father"}}
* In a truly staggering example of the clone inferiority complex, after the villain of first season of ''[[Slayers]]'', Rezo the Red Priest, makes a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] and dies on the apocalyptic magics of the protagonists to allow the destruction of the demon he was host to, the clone created by his spurned former lover becomes obsessed with convincing the same protagonists to use the exact same potentially world-ending spell on him so that, in the unlikely event of his survival, he can claim to have achieved something the original had not. The dubiousness of trying to one-up a self-sacrificing gesture by surviving your own is apparently lost on the mind of a megalomaniac.
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* This comes up towards the end of ''[[King of Thorn]]'', since by that point {{spoiler|both Marco and Kasumi have died and been resurrected as Medusa constructs}}; essentially, they are just copies of their original selves. Marco, [[Determinator|not being one prone to angst]], simply recommends they live on as normal.
{{quote|'''Marco''': Your worth hasn't changed. And it never will.}}
* In the second season of ''[[Darker
* The premise of ''[[Afterschool Charisma]]'' is a lot like ''[[Clone High]]'' if that was done seriously; that is, a school in the near future is populated by teenage clones of historical figures as a research/social experiment. And yes, [[You Cloned Hitler|they cloned Hitler]] (Who, surprisingly enough, is actually one of the most kind-hearted clones; go figure). There is enormous pressure on the clones to live up to their originals. Marie Curie, who wants to study music, [[Released to Elsewhere|transfers out]], while Mozart, who [[Fantastic Racism|embraces his fate and looks down on non-clones]] can't handle the pressure and {{spoiler|[[Driven to Suicide|attempts suicide]]}}.
* In ''[[Appleseed]] Ex Machina'' Briareos and Tereus, [[Artificial Human|a bioroid]] made from his genetic material are identical right down to birthmarks (though since Bri is a cyborg now, it's not immediately obvious to anyone who didn't know him before the fact), and share quirks and tendencies to a ridiculous degree. Genetics Do Not Work That Way! Naturally Tereus feels angsty about his lack of uniqueness, even though millions of other bioroids demonstrate no such issues, and are treated as fully equal to humans - to the point that the government mostly consists of bioroids!
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** Dredd himself also has clones.
** The thinking behind this seems to be that if a clone doesn't work out as planned, they'll just put out another. Logical, really..
* The ''[[Star Fox (series)|Star Fox]]'' comics did a little bit of this, both cases involving [[Big Bad|Andross]].
** In the first 1992 ''[[Nintendo Power]]'' comic by Benimaru Itoh, Andross is killed when the Dodora he is controlling steps on his ship. His two assistants, one of whom is named Herbert, take a hair sample and revive his DNA, creating two copies of him. Trouble arises when one turns out to be a softy when it comes to Fox's mom (Vixy). The other wants to remain extra-ruthless.
** There was a short ''Star Fox 64'' manga, but with only one Andross.
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* In ''[[Moon]]'', Sam, the [[The Aloner|only]] human crew member on a [[Mega Corp]] moon base, discovers {{spoiler|that he is only one of a very large number of cloned Sams with [[Fake Memories]], each being employed for a three-year "contract period" (which is really a [[Clone Degeneration|life expectancy]]) before he's directed into a suspended animation chamber to be "picked up" (read: disposed of.) He finds the [[Tomato in the Mirror]] when he gets into an accident [[No One Could Survive That|No One Could Survive]] and is rescued by his successor.}}
* In ''[[Species]] 2'', Eve, a clone made from the half-alien hybrid Sil, is kept in [[Lady Land|a female-only environment]] and studied for weaknesses so that if another incident occurs like it did in the first movie, the attacker can be destroyed efficiently. [[Hilarity Ensues|Things go badly for all concerned]].
* This is the central plot point of ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]'', in which Picard discovers that the Romulans developed a clone of him for use in a [[Zany Scheme]] that was later abandoned. Even though this clone made it through the first twenty years of his life having had no contact with the original Picard, he still develops a massive inferiority complex and constantly justifies his actions as being "exactly" what Picard would have done if he had been raised in the same situation, rather than accept that he is his own person.
* Played with rather disturbingly in ''[[The Prestige]]'': {{spoiler|a magician has a machine built that creates an exact duplicate, memories and all, in order to perform an amazing "teleportation" trick. The duplicate, essentially being the same person, would go on to complete the show while the ''original'' falls through a secret trap door and ''drowns'', his corpse secretly disposed of every night. The magician essentially clones himself and then commits suicide for the sake of his magic/revenge.}} And actually, {{spoiler|since all of his memories are copied along with the body, the clone magician never feels like he commits suicide. The clone still beleives he've performed the same trick dozens of times and that the one who actually drown is the real clone.}} Little does he know!
* In ''[[The 6th Day]],'' we follow the main character Adam Gibson as he stumbles on an evil plot involving clones. Halfway through fighting the organization who he believes has put a clone of him in his place, he [[Tomato in the Mirror|finds out that he is the clone]]; the one living in his house with his wife is the real Adam. He is pretty disappointed, but he quickly recovers and enlists the original Adam to help him destroy the conspiracy.
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* In the ''[[Deathstalker]]'' novels by Simon R. Green, we have {{spoiler|Evangeline Shreck (cloned before the series starts to replace the Evangeline who was killed by her father when she wouldn't let him rape her), and the clone of High Lord Dram}}. And the clones (and sometimes [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|esper clones]]) that the empire enslaves for labor.
* Clones in the ''[[Dune]]'' novels, called gholas, are realistic to an extent in that they are created as embryos, and must fully gestate and grow up at a normal rate. The similarity ends there, though -- a ghola can be "shocked" into recovering all the memories its original had up until the moment of death, even if the original was still alive at the time his cells were harvested. (This applies for ALL humans, not just clones. In ''[[Dune]]'', you [[Genetic Memory|possess all the memories in your entire lineage]]).
** Gholas originally weren't strictly clones. Up until the third book in the series, gholas are the actual bodies of the deceased. They're just placed into axlotl tanks as quickly as possible, which essentially regrows the dead tissue and brain cells enough that the body is brought back to life. The body has no memories of its former life. But then, the Bene Tleilax engineered a [[Xanatos Gambit]] that resulted in the ghola having their psyche exposed to something their former life would vehemently oppose, which shocks their mind into reawakening. The later novels have gholas grown from simple cells, rather than the original body, so they are true clones -- but they are still known as gholas because the term evolved over time to encompass a far more complicated definition. They still have the stigma of necromancy, though.
* The clones in [[William Sleator]]'s ''[[The Duplicate]]'' have it rough. First off they get less and less sane the farther from the original they are, and the sanest ones develop black marks on their hands and die abruptly. Since they're not convinced that they are copies (they're physically and mentally identical to the original until the marks appear), this all feels monstrously unfair.
** The protagonist cloned himself. Unfortunately, the clone believed ''he'' was the original and in turn cloned himself, and that clone ALSO thought he was the original. Unfortunately for them, clones tend to develop mental illnesses quickly. The second clone became clinically depressed; the first one was the original's [[Evil Twin]].
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* The Ira Levin novel ''[[The Boys from Brazil]]'' has Hitler clones that are just like identical twins -- including the part about acting differently when they're raised in different environments.
** The Nazis who made the clones considered the nurture bit -- all the clones are placed in families where the husband is much older than the wife, as was the case with Hitler's parents. To round things off, {{spoiler|the adoptive fathers are killed when the clones have reached the age Hitler's father died.}}
* [[John Scalzi]]'s ''[[Old
* A series of sci-fi novels written by Steven L. Kent explores this trope. All enlisted men in the future armed forces (not officers or NCOs) are clones, and the main character is a special kind of clone. All the regular clones have no idea they're clones and are biologically programmed to die if they ever find out.
* The ''Regeneration'' book series by L. J. Singleton features five cloned teenagers who aged naturally. One of them {{spoiler|was cloned from a serial killer and struggles with his violent urges}}, and all of them have some form of {{spoiler|minor superpower}}.
* In the [[C. J. Cherryh]] novel ''[[Cyteen]]'', much of the plot involves attempting to re-create a dead scientist by raising a clone much like the original - and there are many difficulties. But the bulk clone population is depicted as less than human, both in fact and in how society sees them. Critically, they are inherently vulnerable to being programmed. Blues indeed: imagine having your emotional makeup determined by a committee comprising Microsoft and the Pentagon.
* ''Anna to the Infinite Power'', a YA novel (and later movie), provides a thoughtful take on how the attempt to clone a single genius multiple times might be hampered by the distinctive personalities of her clones.
* A duology of novels, ''Farthest Star'' and ''Wall Around A Star'' by [[Frederik Pohl]] & Jack Williamson, feature a form of [[Teleporters and Transporters|teleportation]] that sends a copy of you elsewhere but leaves the original intact. The copy can be modified ''en route,'' since all you're transmitting is information. Interestingly, this is how most physicists figure real-life teleportation might work.
* ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'': ''The Finders Stone Trilogy'' by Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb subverts that trope twice. When main heroine, Alias, {{spoiler|who is herself an artificial, magically created being,}} found out that she has many clones, she is originally angry at being "copied"; the actual clones are much calmer, have their own lives, and don't mope about their origin in the slightest. Even more -- the clones would like to be friends with Alias, are unaware of her, or don't care even if they do know. Two clones are seen in the series, a couple more are mentioned, and all of them are confident women with different personalities. Eventually, Alias accepts her "sister" as an equal and seems to be at ease with the whole deal.
** In Alias's defense regarding her views of her "sisters" she'd just learned that she was not, as she thought, a naturally born person (hence feeling like a "thing to be copied"), and had been given the impression that her sisters hadn't existed past the destruction of the last of the five entities involved in her own creation so when one of them popped up in front of her Alias had a bad moment - since said last entity had specifically labeled the others as being more puppets to his whim than free spirits like Alias. As for her sisters being calmer, non-mopy, etc: most of them don't seem to have the first clue about where they really come from. Of the three that have actual screen time in the books, only one knew the full story. The other two both thought themselves simply amnesiac, much like Alias herself when first introduced.
* Gilbert Gosseyn (pronounced 'go sane' - get it?) of A.E. van Vogt's books ''The World of Null-A'' and ''The Players of Null-A''. When he's killed, he 'wakes up' in a new cloned body with all his old memories right up to his death. And he has a superpower too.
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** In a robotic version, the protagonist of ''Saturn's Children'' is a sexbot who describes how she, and other [[A Is]] similar to herself are created. AI's with human level intelligence take as long as a human would to develop, so no [[Instant AI, Just Add Water|instant AI]], with one loophole: an AI can be duplicated easily. The standard procedure for artificial beings like her was to raise one prototype as desired than clone the AI into identical bodies.
* The Beta clones get varying degrees of this in ''[[7th Son]]'' once they discover what they are. In particular is Fr. Thomas, who fears that because he is artificial he has no eternal soul. Which is kind of a big deal for a priest.
* In Mary E. Pearson's ''[[The Adoration of Jenna Fox]]'', {{spoiler|the title character}} is a physical double of {{spoiler|the original Jenna Fox}} who is almost entirely constructed of a substance called BioGel. Her exterior parts--like skin and hair--have been cloned from the original girl's cells. Even her brain is 90% artificial; {{spoiler|it contains 10% of the brain of the original Jenna--the only portion of the original that could be saved}}.
* In [[John Varley]]'s universe they have a law that only one person can own a genotype: all copies must be destroyed. So if you discover that you're an illegal clone, your only hope is to kill your progenitor and replace him/her. Cue several plots.
** Must be hell for identical twins.
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** Interestingly, the Cylons are never seen to make clones of existing human characters, rather they were based around certain archetypes of personality and appearance. All people revealed to be Cylons were that way from the beginning. They were either self-aware but passing for human or had fake memories. By the end, it is strongly implied that the Cylons would not even have known how to go about cloning an individual human; most of them didn't know how their own system of downloading functioned.
*** The Number Eight models were unique among Cylons in that they disagreed with each other. All other Cylons were, apparently, similar enough in personality that they could be counted on to have any member of the model vote for the entire model line in a representative system, even though some of them had different individual experiences that might have affected their personalities. Then again, Boomer is also the only model of which any copies worked as unconscious sleeper agents, so that might explain the difference.
** As seen in ''[[Caprica]]'', the first Cylons of the Twelve Colonies result from the controversial copying of human consciousness into robot bodies.
** At one point, even the apparently-revived Starbuck ponders whether or not she might be a clone with fake memories {{spoiler|she's not}}.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]'': "The Invisible Enemy" featured ''miniaturized'' clones of the Doctor and Leela, though K-9 explains that they aren't "really" clones, but a sort of phlebotinum-photocopy. Surprisingly, they gave no sign of having any trouble with their status as duplicates specifically created for a [[Fantastic Voyage]], nor with the fact that their predicted lifespan was something on the order of twenty minutes.
** Averted with {{spoiler|Jenny}} in {{spoiler|"The Doctor's Daughter"}}, a fraternal "clone" (the process doesn't produce an identical duplicate). She does get told she's "not real" by The Doctor and ''quickly'' calls him on it.
** Played straight with Slime!Martha in "The Sontaran Strategem."
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* In one story line arc of ''[[Soap]]'', Burt is kidnapped by aliens and a transformed alien duplicate sent down to his home in his place. The long-lived alien had gone 2,000 years without sex and was very much enjoying pizza, frozen snickers and Burt's wife Mary...not necessarily in that order...until Burt got the chance to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8laJD6yZS8w convince him to let Burt have his life back again.]
* The documentary series ''Animal Pharm'' skewers this trope by showing that not only are clones not just copies, they may not even look the same as the original.
* In [[Juukou B-Fighter]], Shadow/Black Beet suffers from this. Originally created to defeat the B Fighters by his master, he eventually starts to question his own existence and his loyalty starts to waver. Then, it is revealed that he is an actual clone of Takuya/Blue Beet and eventually become obsessed with killing Takuya in order to prove his own existence and in order to gain immortality as he is dying due to being a short-lived clone who was only created to serve his purpose in defeating the B Fighters. He eventually ditch his master to fight for himself.
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** ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'' also features [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Copy-X]], who was built as an [[El Cid Ploy]]. However, it isn't really him - the real X sacrificed himself to [[Sealed Evil in a Can|seal up a dangerous enemy]] much earlier - so the clone, with an incomplete version of X's programming, ends up virtually turning evil.
* ''[[Ever 17]]''. The character in question is referred to as a clone and views the 'original' as a parent. The two are immensely similar in personality and thought processes, but due to slight differences in how they were raised, their beliefs and behaviors are slightly different. The older of the two has grown since the time when they were nearly indistinguishable and become quite different. There is no social stigma (cloning is legal here), nor any angsting over being a copy. The clone ''does'' wonder what they mean to the original, though.
* ''[[Destroy All Humans!]]'' is centred around cloning, but clones are also used when Crypto dies during gameplay. Each clone has a number, with Crypto, starting at 137 because 136 was shot down near [[Area 51|Area 42]]. While each clone is made after the other dies, there is no personal difference between them besides their numbers and in the beginning of the game, after learning of 136's disappearance, 137 wants to go rescue himself and confuses the pronouns a lot. When he does find his remains, he laments his loss referring to 136 as himself and takes revenge on the humans for killing him.
* Astaroth from the ''[[Soul Series]]'' undergoes this during 3 and before 4, when he learns that his template was Rock he goes on a berserk rampage, destroying his creation place and eventually finding Rock and almost killing him.
* In the MMO ''[[Tabula Rasa]]'', all of a player's characters on one server are clones of each other to explain why they all have the last name and share a supposedly rare special ability. Despite that, clones don't share memories by default. Players must earn special credits to use the ubertech necessary to share experience and training from one character to a new clone; even then, there can be differences in how that knowledge is applied. Clones can also look different or even be a [[Opposite Sex Clone|different gender]].
** Prior to their introduction, it was stated that AFS scientists were working on the creation of [[Half-Human Hybrid|Half Human Hybrids]] using this technology. In [[Perpetual Beta|Deployment 9]] they were released, playing all the related tropes straight.
* It is suspected that the protagonist in the game ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' is a clone. The antagonist taunts her saying that her brain is "permanently backed up" on a computer, and there are hints indicating that death is not a particular aspect of a failure. In addition, the game contains scribblings and other artifacts left by previous participants of the survival courses, and the game does not exclude the possibility that some of the participants were just previous instances of the PC.
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== Web Comics ==
* Subverted in ''[[El Goonish Shive]]''. Elliot's [[Opposite Sex Clone]] Ellen starts out believing she has no place in the world, only to find the rest of the cast [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2005-12-21 are willing to accept she's more than "a girl copy of Elliot" even before she's fully come to accept it herself.]
* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', the character of Gav Bleuel (based on the real-life comic artist of ''[[Nukees]]'') put himself into suspended animation in the 21st century, and is later awoken (after being found in a disused storage locker) in the 31st, where he is accidentally duplicated nearly a billion times and becomes the largest single ethnic group in the galaxy. [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2011-12-25 After a few years,] the society of Gavs has developed technology to alter themselves physically and mentally from one another to regain their individuality.
** He's just the most extreme example. The entire webcomic is full of clones -- mostly gate-clones like Gav (created by exact sub-atomic-level duplication), but also a time-clone: time-traveller meets his old self, and because the timeline is changed, they both continue to exist. Also, biological cloning is possible, but outlawed.
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* In ''[[The Gamers Alliance]]'', [[The Brute|Shamshir]], [[Squishy Wizard|Venom]] and [[Beta Test Baddie|Rune]] are clones of [[The Chessmaster|Jemuel]] who are active during the Great War. Although being effective antagonists who get the job done, they're still seen by their creator [[Evil Sorcerer|Dante]] as nothing more than failed experiments to resurrect the ''real'' Jemuel. Although the first two clones are content being relegated to assassins, Rune is much more bitter and ambitious and eventually ends up dedicating his life to surpassing Jemuel in power and cunning.
* Los Hermanos of the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'' is able to create a near-infinite number of duplicates of himself, but they are all ''him'' when it comes to memory and knowledge (they share a mass-mind...talk to any of his duplicates, and you're talking to all of his duplicates). Imagine his shock and surprise when he encountered the [[Super Villain]] known as El Unico, and it turned out to be one of his duplicates, who had somehow separated from the mass mind but otherwise retained all of his powers.
** Later, when Los Hermanos encountered Aryan Nation (a controversial white supremacist ''superhero''...yes, you read that right...who shares Los Hermanos's powers), the similarity of Nation's powers nearly convinced the Global Guardian that Aryan Nation was yet another one of his dupes who managed to gain a separate consciousness. (He found out later this wasn't true.)
** Mob Rule, a South African super villain from the same setting, has a similar power. His copies, however, are independent individuals, and they occasionally get into ''very'' violent arguments.
** Colony, a British super villain, can create a dozen duplicates. Like Mob Rule, his copies are independent and sometimes aren't all that cooperative with each other.
* The idea of a stereotypical, perfect-copy clone is used in a fantastically original manner in the web-novel ''[[John Dies at the End]]''. {{spoiler|In this case the blues aren't about being a clone so much as they are that he ''killed the original main character'' and took his place without knowing. His best friend and girlfriend forgive him, but now his biggest worry is [[Villain Override]].}}
* Cloning can be done fairly easily for people in the civilized regions of ''[[Orion's Arm]]'', memory transfer optional. This isn't commonly done, since property laws get all iffy when cloning comes into the picture: most of the time, the copies can own property but have no property to begin with. Other times, if the clone is given the original's memories, property can be split down the middle if a disagreement arises. It varies A LOT depending on region. Nonetheless, one person cloned himself hundreds of times and is in the process of making a documentary on the myriad ways his copies have gone. On the net or in virches (virtual environments), copying is done very frequently. These are not usually included in population counts for this reason.
** The notes on population suggests that if you count virtual clones, 90% of the population would consist of ''five people''.
* Belphoebe of the ''[[Whateley Universe]]'' was a forced-aging clone of Jobe's perfect drow girl, with no memories. Then a fat, neurotic nerdboy tried to copy a girl's mind into Belphoebe so he'd have someone who'd like him and accidentally copied ''his own'' mind in. It takes Belpheobe a while to get her act together at that point.
* After [[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony's]] death at the end of his ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'' review, Linkara brought him back as a clone, who is indistinguishable from the original Spoony and doesn't seem too conflicted about not being the original one. And considering [[Came Back Wrong|what came of the original...]]
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* On ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy]]'', future Mandy is a [[It Makes Sense in Context|giant worm Empress]] who keeps having Billy cloned, as these copies' tendency to idiotically get themselves killed provides her with amusement. ("We lose more Billys that way...") ''Not'' a case of clones being inherently stupid, as the original Billy was just as dumb.
* [[Superboy]] in ''[[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]]'', being [[Superman]]'s clone. Superman himself [[That Thing Is Not My Child|is]] [["Well Done, Son" Guy|not]] [[Parental Neglect|pleased]].
** Interestingly, Superman currently uses this as a rationalization why he shouldn't mentor Superboy--he thinks that if he does, Superboy will feel the need to live up to him. However, it's pretty clear that Superman really just finds his clone's existence disturbing.
** By the end of the first season, {{spoiler|Roy Harper/Red Arrow. The one we've been following throughout the show was revealed to be a clone from Cadmus, while the real Roy was put in stasis for three years. He does not take the news about his true nature, along with being an unwilling traitor, very well.}}
* On ''[[American Dad]]'' Stan uses CIA technology to create a clone of his son Steve to prove to his wife his way of raising him is better.
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