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{{trope}}
{{quote|''The machine, in fact, merely analyzed the contents of the first booth, then sent a description of it to the second booth, where a copy was created. The contents of the first booth were then '''destroyed'''''.|''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}pdxucpPq6Lc To Be]''}}
The concept of clones or copies being made to replace original people, usually either as a means of [[Teleportation]] (by creating a copy somewhere else and destroying the original) or as a way of obtaining [[Immortality]] ([[Body Backup Drive|creating clones to replace a dying or dead original]], for example).
The
Where this trope gets interesting is how the moral status of the new copy and the moral implications of disposing of the original are handled. First, the treatment of the twin: Some characters won't see the problem with treating them both as if they were the same person, whereas others will point out that it only works from an ''external'' viewpoint: the person will seem exactly the same to everyone else, but the actual stream of consciousness has been severed, and the new copy is, in this sense, a completely different person. Sometimes it will be argued that the copy doesn't count as the original person, though given how interchangeable they would be if the paperwork for their birth certificates were ever mixed up, this argument is harder to hold up for long.
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If the [[Twinmaker]] is kept a secret, it will probably be part of [[The Reveal]]. Particularly devious characters may exploit the [[Twinmaker]] for their own ends, perhaps to create decoys to lure out assassins, or to dispose of an [[Unwitting Pawn]] by "tweaking" it mid-way through its creation.
Often involves [[Cloning Blues]]. [[Clone Jesus]] and [[You Cloned Hitler]] are related, but not subtropes.
{{examples|Examples: }}▼
== Anime
* The {{spoiler|Ayanami Rei}} we see in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' is actually
** Furthermore, a [[Freeze
* {{spoiler|Fate Testarossa}} of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' was developed as a [[Replacement Goldfish]] shortly after the originals' death. [[Why Couldn't You Be Different?|It didn't go exactly as planned,]] and [[Abusive Parents|
== Film ==
* In the live-action [[In Name Only]] ''[[Aeon Flux]]'' movie, {{spoiler|everyone who has ever lived in the past 400 years is a clone of a small pocket of humans left after a worldwide plague}}. Only a select few [[Ancient Keeper
* ''[[Alien]]: Resurrection'' is about scientists trying to do this to {{spoiler|Ripley}}, who dies in the third film.
* In ''[[The Prestige]]'', {{spoiler|a man owns a machine that creates a duplicate of whatever's put inside it, and either teleports the original away or creates the copy some distance away. It's revealed he had done this several times to himself for a magic trick, each time drowning whichever one remained in place.}}
** {{spoiler|This troper thought it was clear that it was the copy that appeared some distance away, creating the appearance of teleportation - so the magician had actually repeatedly drowned versions of himself and been replaced with a clone}}
** The first time this happens, {{spoiler|the one who stayed in place shot the one who appeared at a distance, meaning the original Angier is dead either way}}. (Then again, the concept of [http://lesswrong.com/lw/r9/quantum_mechanics_and_personal_identity/ "the original"] isn't well-defined, given what we know about quantum physics.)
== Literature ==
* The trope namer is ''[[Resurrected Man]]'', where "Murdering Twinmaker" is both a nickname for the teleporter and the nickname for a serial killer who uses the data in the sending teleporter to create his own copies, which he murders for pleasure.
* [[Orson Scott Card]]'s short story "Fat Farm": People can be cloned and have their memories copied into the clone. The clone then replaces the original person.
* Miles Vorkosigian has one of these in the ''[[Vorkosigan Saga]]''. He was created to replace Miles, but when Miles and his family found out they broke the clone out and adopted it into the family. He's treated by everyone as Miles' brother.
* The [[
* In some of [[Greg Egan]]'s stories, characters deal with things by imagining a line of continuity from the death of the first copy to the creation of the second, despite the lack of causal connection; this shows up in ''[[Permutation City]]'' and in ''Schild's Ladder'', and possibly elsewhere.
{{quote|
** In ''Permutation City'', {{spoiler|after launching [[It Makes Sense in Context|Elysium]], the Paul left behind on Earth kills himself, apparently having only ever cared about his Elysian copy.<ref>[[Fridge Logic|You'd think]] that he'd expect to survive in the same way he survived his last [[It Makes Sense in Context|22 deaths]], but the messy gradual death of a brain [[Fan Wank|might work differently]] from the instantaneous deletion of a [[Brain Uploading|Copy]]; he might get pared down to a tiny thread of consciousness as he dies, and in the process [[Esoteric Happy Ending|forget all about]] [[Go Mad
** In the short story "[https://web.archive.org/web/20200328172602/http://eidolon.net/?story=The
* Sam Vimes objects to using magic anyway, but in ''[[
* In James Patrick Kelly's novelette
* In the ''[[Star Trek]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] novel ''Federation'', when Zefram Cochrane is first transported aboard the ''Enterprise'', he immediately thinks he is a duplicate of the original, assuming transporters to work like replicators. Instead, a crew member calms him down, explaning that the process works on the quantum level, meaning he is still the original Cochrane.
* Averted in [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[Line of Delirium]]'', where the aTan machine re-creates people after their deaths by replicating their bodies from the previous molecular scan and downloading the stored memories into the new brains. Originally, it is claimed by the aTan Corporation that each re-created person is indeed new, although they are considered to be the heir to the dead person's life. However, it is revealed later that re-creating the same person twice only results in one having a consciousness, while the other is a mindless zombie, only able to passively answer questions and perform routine tasks. This is due to something the aTan people call the "[[Our Souls Are Different|x-factor]]" that is present in humans and several other races. When a person dies and his or her body is re-created by aTan, this "x-factor" locates the new body and inhabits it, giving this new body the same consciousness as the dead person. For some reason, the aTan Corporation decides to keep this a secret from the general public, only informing the [[The Church|Church of the One Will]] of their findings. Needless to say, the Patriarch immediately gives full blessing to aTan. After all, it's not every day that someone proves the existence of the soul.
* [[China Mieville]]'s novel ''[[Kraken (
* ''[[Clifford Simak|The Goblin Reservation]]'' is built around this trope.
* In ''[[
* ''[[
▲== Live-Action Television ==
▲* ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'' had a subplot of Crichton's twinning. Although in this case, neither one was a copy or original exactly. Crichton really was just duplicated/"twinned" into two identical Crichtons (they play rock-paper-scissors and draw some 100+ in a row).
** They even use this in the next episode to have one twin impersonate the other to "prove" Crichton was never at the scene of an explosion (since he is of course, completely unhurt).
*** The rock-paper-scissors thing is referenced later to show how they have diverged from each other, one (having died) sends the other a holographic recording which he closes by offering to play again, throwing rock as the other Crichton throws paper.
* ''[[Star Trek:
* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'': Weyoun has died and been replaced with a clone several times over the course of the series. One episode dealt with two Weyoun clones existing at the same time (one had gone AWOL, so his next clone was activated early). Near the end of the series, he's deeply frightened when the Dominion's cloning facility is destroyed, allowing him to be [[Killed Off for Real]].
* ''[[The Outer Limits]]'' made "Think Like a Dinosaur" (see Literature) section into an episode.
* In an episode of ''[[Earth: Final Conflict]]'', Liam is implanted with a tracking device by Sandoval at Zo'or's request, as they have grown suspicious of him. In order to allow them to continue their investigation and keep Sandoval and Zo'or in the dark, Street puts Liam into a mini-coma and uses a modified ID portal to create a quantum duplicate of him without the tracking device, although she claims that the universe will eventually erase him out of existence. The duplicate Liam is identical to the original in every way and doesn't seem to mind being the copy. At the end of the episode, he makes a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to save Renee. Just before the [[Earthshattering Kaboom]], he sends a message to Sandoval, which confuses the latter to no end, as he knows thanks to the tracking chip that Liam is nowhere near that location. He later questions the real Liam, who has no memories of these events, before dismissing the matter.
** Like many devices introduced in the series, this
== Tabletop
* ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'': Every player character
* In ''[[Dungeons
** As of 3E the Clone spell simply creates an inert duplicate that the original's soul transfers to at death.
* ''[[Eclipse Phase]]'' uses [[Brain Uploading]] for both pseudo-immortality and most interplanetary "travel". Though unless they were really rich someone rarely gets downloaded into a clone, rather a "used morph" that happened to be lying around at the body bank. Making more than one active copy of a person is fairly easy and highly illegal, but slightly edited copies are sometimes used for a form of real-time interplanetary communication.
== Video Games ==
* ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]''.
* Shadow from ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' was revealed to be possibly a clone of the one from ''[[
** Of course, this was all retconned in ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]'' with the explanation that Eggman had sent a robot to recover his body after he [[No One Could Survive That|visibly burned to death falling to earth from an orbiting space station]]. Yeah.
* The "Immortality Through Cloning" version is used as a plot point and gameplay mechanic in ''[[Destroy All Humans!]]''. The reason the Furons are harvesting human brains is because it contains a strain of DNA vital to their cloning process, and every time you die in-game, your [[You Are Number Six|name increases by one digit]]. There's even a level about recovering your own remains.
* In the ''[[Star Trek Armada]]'' games, ''Nebula''-class ships have a special ability called the "Gemini Effect", which temporarily creates a duplicate of the target ship. With some quick thinking, this ability can be used to get free resources by duplicating a vessel and then scrapping the duplicate for parts. The game designers, apparently, did not think of this possibility.
== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[
* While actual teleportation is possible in ''[[
** Similarly, later on {{spoiler|Schlock is killed off, and a new Schlock is created to replace him. The new Schlock thinks it's kind of cool, "but not cool enough to do twice."}}
** In later chapters, brain backup/restore procedures become a thing, and after merging UNS development and [[Precursor]] nanotech, actually available, so there's 1-5 scale of "how dead you are", where clinical death is only the first notch. When {{spoiler|Captain Tagon}} dies in a [[No Kill Like Overkill|full LAZ-5 event]], they mourn and memorialize the first version, and then build a new clone with all of the memories except the final 42 minutes.
== Web Original ==
* In the ''[[Mortasheen]]'' universe, [[Knight Templar|Wreathe]] uses portal technology, which preserves the teleported person intact but is incredibly inefficient. Meanwhile [[Crazy Awesome|Mortasheen]] utilizes teleportation that makes a twin of the user somewhere else and destroys the original. Mortasheen being [[Crapsack World|what it is]], no one there is bothered by this and the twin is considered and treated as the original. Wreathe, however, is revolted.
* An one-shot [http://goldenage.comicgenesis.com/d/20100919.html short story] on ''[[Golden Age of Adventurers]]''.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Canadian animator John Weldon's terrifying short, ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc&feature=related To Be]'': In it, a scientist is demonstrating his new "Murdering Twinmaker"-style teleporter. The heroine claims that the machine is immoral, and to assure her that there's no need to worry, he agrees to delay the "murdering" part of the machine by a few minutes. The original and the clone come out and meet each other, they play a game of chess, and then each fights tooth and nail to push the other into the machine. She just grabs one of them and helps the other scientist push him in as he kicks and screams and begs for his life. They end up shutting him in with his arm slammed in the door and nuking him, causing his arm to visibly disintegrate. [[Stunned Silence|Then it gets quiet.]] The surviving scientist realizes the immorality of such a device and walks away, but the heroine feels guilty and decides that she has to atone for what she does, and enters the machine.
* In one ''[[Aeon Flux]]'' episode, the titular character's archenemy and lover creates a clone of her. The clone and the original meet and conspire against him. In the end, one of them gets gunned down in front of Trevor. {{spoiler|It wasn't the clone.}}
* {{spoiler|The Venture Twins}} have this kind of immortality in ''[[The Venture Bros]].'', but they're unaware of it
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Futuristic Tech Index]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
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[[Category:Teleportation Tropes]]
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