Expendable Clone: Difference between revisions

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== Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Vandread]]'', this is revealed to be the underlying reason for the creation and maintenance of the sex-segregated planets of Meger and Talark where children are [[Designer Babies]] artificially engineered through mixed-cloning of the original colonists -- majority of whom still remain secretly secured in cryo-stasis -- as the colony leaders were unwilling to sacrifice any natural-born children to the organ-harvest fleets of Earth.
* In ''[[To Aru Majutsu no Index]]'', Mikoto is cloned and the clones are mass-produced in their thousands to be killed in an experiment to increase Accelerator's power. The mild discomfort she gets by discovering she is cloned [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|pales to her reaction]] when she learns they're being killed off ''en masse'' for an experiment, and she breaks down upon her clones claiming that they are simply '180 000 yen (around 2000 dollars) lab animals'.
* Inverted in ''[[Franken Fran]]'': Fran generally considers both the original and the clones equally expendable as long as there is at least one copy of the person left (though she will try to keep all involved alive).
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* ''[[Lyrical Nanoha]]'' usually follows the [[Clones Are People, Too]] route, but ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS|Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S]]'' has an inversion of this in [[Mad Scientist|Doctor]] [[Big Bad|Jail Scaglietti]]. He considers even himself to be expendable as long as one of the Jail clones {{spoiler|that he had implanted in the wombs of the [[Amazon Brigade|Numbers]]}} gets away.
* Played straight in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'': Rei has several dozen clones ready to swap her out if she dies or decides to not play along with her superiors' [[Assimilation Plot]]. All three of her superiors who know about it ([[The Chessmaster|Gendo]], [[Number Two|Fuyutsuki]], [[Evilutionary Biologist|Ritsuko]]) treat her like a tool and she lets them because she knows her replaceability too and [[Extreme Doormat|considers resistance useless]]. Really, only Shinji treats her nicely with genuine intentions - which later comes back to [[Apocalypse Maiden|bite everyone else in the ass]] [[The End of the World as We Know It|in a MAJOR way]].
* [[Puella Magi Kazumi Magica]] has Nico during her combat with Kazumi against the Soujus.
 
 
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* Another [[Kill and Replace]] inversion is ''The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve'' by [[Robert Silverberg]]. Let's just say the title doesn't indicate [[Too Dumb to Live|which far side of the curve]] the main character's on.
* The entire plot of Destination: Oblivion, a pre-[[Dune]] novel by Frank Herbert. All of the main characters are expendable clones, basically a living simulation to iron out all the kinks in the mission before sending out "Real" people. They're not meant to survive. This isn't a spoiler: the audience finds this out at the very beginning of the book. The characters take a lot longer.
** That goes throughout the [[Wor Ship]] series; clones will be sent on the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs, and if there's ever a shortage in supplies or necessities, clones will be the first to suffer.
* In Hannu Rajaniemi's ''[[The Quantum Thief]]'' the Sobornost Founders have uploaded their minds to millions of artificial bodies. These collectives are called copyclans, and their members synchronize their memories and brainpower whenever they are together, allowing them to be everywhere in their massive empire at once. It doesn't matter if a few die, since there's always backups. Although their interests don't always coincide, and some of the Founders are said to be in war against themselves. Also, the main protagonist, Jean le Flambeur has millions of copies of himself trapped forever in the Dilemma Prison, but he's just happy that he was the one that got away.
* The [[Vorkosigan Saga]] is all over the place on this trope. Betans think that [[Clones Are People, Too]], but one of the big industries on Jackson's Whole is to clone a rich person and surgically transfer the brain of the original into the clone, which restores the client to his/her late teens/early twenties at the cost of the life of the clone (Assuming the surgery is successful). One of Mark's main goals in life is to shut that industry down.
 
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** Though the Revivial series episode Replica averted the trope; when a bioengeener's wife emerges from a coma that was incorrectly thought to be terminal she states that the clone (who has her memories) created prior to her awakening needs to be "disposed of". She quickly notes that she does not mean termination: she is instead suggesting erasing the clone's memories and leaving her in a far away city where she can hopefully start a new life (in the end, the clone ends up with a clone of the bioengineer himself and [[Everybody Lives]]).
* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' has Will Riker being split by a transporter accident a couple years ago. They send him on his way as "Thomas" Riker once he is recovered.
** ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]:'' Data dies. However, since B-4 and he shared memories, it's strongly implied Data will 'resurrect' through B4. [[Expanded Universe]] material, such as the prequel comic to the 11th movie, outright states it to be the case.
** ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Star Trek Deep Space Nine]]'' has a man who murdered his clone to frame Odo for his murder. He is arrested in the end, Odo saying that killing one's own clone is still murder - a rarity of a clone being valued as a life form of its own in Trek.
** ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]]'' plays with this one in "Tuvix," wherein the named hybrid makes an overwrought speech about how splitting him back into Tuvok and Neelix will be murder. Much of episode was about the moral dilemma of killing one to save the other two, and even the Doctor refused to perform the procedure, due to the Hippocratic Oath. Janeway had to do it herself, and left in a guilty mood. A lot of fans [[Moral Event Horizon|never forgave her]].
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== [[Tabletop RPG]] ==
* The Clone spell in early editions of ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'', which created a magical duplicate of a living creature. If both the clone and the original existed at the same time, "the original person and the clone will each desire to do away with the other, for such an alter-ego is unbearable to both." This had exceptionally amusing results in the [[Forgotten Realms]] when unknown forces released all ''twenty'' or so of the archmage Manshoon's backup clones from stasis, resulting in the "Manshoon Wars."
* Later ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' editions deal away with the issues by making the clone effectively a dead body until the original dies. They also include the simulacrum spell that creates a duplicate (that can't learn or grow and is under perfect command to its creator) that could be used as [[Fighting a Shadow|an expendable distraction]], impersonator and [[Screw Yourself|other uses]]. Due to being a spellcaster under your full control, if the creator has the "circle magic" class features it can burn all of its spell slots to boost the circle leader's casting to an [[Game Breaker|insane level]].
* Played with on the April Fools special [[Penny Arcade]] Witchalok class, which has the following spell description:
{{quote|Create two duplicates of yourself, and place them in adjacent squares. Each duplicate is a real person with his or her own hopes and dreams. These duplicates die at the start of your next turn.}}
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* The clones of P.B. Winterbottom in ''[[The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom]]'' which are only there to get him his pie. They disappear once they're done.
* The entire point behind the Replica in ''[[F.E.A.R.]]'' is that they're cloned soldiers {{spoiler|of Paxton Fettel}} who can be quickly grown, trained, and deployed at a substantially reduced cost when compared with normal [[Private Military Contractors]], and their training, conditioning, and psionic control turns them into fearless, highly disciplined and unswervingly loyal troops. This gets turned on its head when the psychic commander who controls the Replica goes bonkers and turns them against the corporation that created them.
* ''[[EveEVE Online]]'' subverts (Averts?) this, as clones are a way to cheat death, but each one is equally valuable, and forgetting to keep them updated results in losing knowledge you've learned, requiring you to spend time re-learning it. Compounded by the fact that EVE trains skills ''in real time.''
* Played with in ''[[Advance Wars]]: Days of Ruin''. [[Big Bad]] Caulder/Stolos has created multiple [[Truly Single Parent|clone offspring]] of himself, and seems to view them all as ultimately expendable. {{spoiler|Isabella/Catleia is one of them, or to be specific she is the "backup" of one of his children who got killed in one of Caulder/Stolos' experiments. We later learn that Caulder/Stolos himself is, in fact, one of many identical clones the original Caulder/Stolos made of himself: The clones decided [[There Can Be Only One]] and killed each other, and the last surviving clone then killed the original.}}
* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'' pulls this off pretty well, with the option to have one from the start of the game. (It ends up being necessary to switch the real Crono with the clone later on in order to avoid disaster)
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Inverted in [[Girl Genius]]. After Lucrezia gains the ability to upload her mind into multiple bodies, she doesn't mind dying as long as some copies remain elsewhere.
** Also, she really doesn't want to kill/commit suicide in Agatha's body, as it will cause her to lose ''very'' valuable knowledge that she had gained, and that knowledge will not transfer to her other copies, nor back to the device that she uses to create the copies in the first place.
* Subverted in ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'': An [[Opposite Sex Clone]] of Elliot is made, who has all of his memories up until that point. It's initially believed Ellen's [[Your Days Are Numbered|doomed to vanish after a certain amount of time]], which causes her to panic and briefly try to be an [[Evil Twin]]. It's quickly discovered her existence is secure, and thanks to a few pulled strings, she is now living as Elliot's "twin sister". She has since become a character rather [[Divergent Character Evolution|different from Elliot]], and is completely accepted by everyone privy to the secret.
* Gate-clones in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' are treated as sentient individuals, and the lives of most sentient individuals are often treated pretty cavalierly if they aren't protagonists. They're definitely legally unique; the problem comes from the fact that gate-clones have all the memories of the original up to the cloning. For example, if a man kills someone, then gets gate-cloned, both clones are guilty of murder.
** The trope is played [[Just for Pun|dead]] straight by the F'Sherl-Ganni, who created the gate-clones; they made a practice of duplicating people, interrogating the duplicates, and then disposing of them. [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-04-05 This practice] killed about fifteen billion people ''every three hours and thirty-nine minutes'', for ''hundreds of thousands of years''. They murdered the equivalent of the entire galaxy's population several times over. [[Would Be Rude to Say Genocide|Good thing they were just clones.]]
** The Gavs are something of a special case. Given their sheer number (950 ''million'' to start with) a certain amount of attrition could be expected to random chance.
* Averted in ''[[Walkyverse|It's Walky!]]'' where Joyce has to face criminal charges after killing her duplicate.
* Subverted near the climax of the "There But For The Grace" story arc in ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]].'' Jerry fires his gun at Molly and Galatea, and it looks as if one of them (presumably Galatea, the clone) has been killed. But it turns out in the next strip that they're both fine; he was aiming at another target.
* "Debated" in ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]'' [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1879#comic here]
* In a ''Parking Lot Is Full'' strip a rich man uses cloning technology to make endless copies of himself... ''Into hamburger''. Self-cannibalism: The ultimate in decadence.
* Grey Gerling, of Barfquestion fame, illustrated a story he wrote when he was ten. The protagonist, to escape from a monster he created, cloned himself and got the monster to attack the clone instead of himself. In the title of the page Grey mentions that he didn't see how morally wrong it was fourteen years ago.
 
 
== [[Web Original]] ==
* Pan can create copies of himself and others in ''[[ThaliasThalia's Musings]]''. The copies are explicitly stated to be like shadows or projections in nature, incapable of feeling. {{spoiler|He creates a copy of Echo to help her fake her death in front of [[God Save Us From the Queen|Hera]]}}.
* In [[Doppelganger (web video)|Doppelganger]] Vincent accuses Victor as using him as this.
 
 
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Used in ''[[Danny Phantom]]''. No one, least of all Danny, seems particularly bothered when Danny destroys the less-human looking clones. Only the human-looking Danielle gains his sympathy. This is subverted, however, by the fact that Danny also doesn't seem to be bothered when he destroys the so-called "perfect clone" of himself, which would be, in theory, at least as "human" as his [[Opposite Sex Clone]] Dani. Vlad himself only considered the "perfect clone" human, even rejecting the only person who probably loved him. [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain]].
** Danny probably had no problem eliminating Vlad's prime clone because if it had been completed, it probably would've been his [[Evil Twin]] and after the trouble he had with [[Future Me Scares Me|Dark Danny]], the last thing he probably wants is to deal with an evil version of himself.
* In the ''[[Futurama]]'' movie ''Bender's Big Score'', not only can you kill yourself in another time without messing up your life history, but there's actually a plot point that time duplicates are always doomed and will die in some random accident shortly after they are created. {{spoiler|Note that "random" and "shortly" can extend up to "suicide" and "one thousand years later."}}
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* This is one of the philosophical/moral quandaries behind the ethics of cloning, particularly the idea of "growing" full-body people for harvesting organs that are identical matches.
** This is an old-fashioned fear even today, since we already know that cloned organs can be grown in pigs or sheep instead of human bodies, and we aren't far from growing at least some organs in vitro, as well.
* Averted with identical twins. While they are genetically identical, neither is considered remotely expendable. It's [[Backup Twin|only in fiction]] that twins are treated as expendable.