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Twinmaker: Difference between revisions
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{{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 Twin Maker is often a convenient way of bringing a dead character back from the dead without needing to invoke any trope that revives the old character. In manner and appearance, they are almost always perfect doppelgangers, indistinguishable from the original. This trope is often used in a science-fiction setting, where it can be readily justified by any amount of technobabble on cloning, teleportation devices, copying machines, and the like. Fantasy and other works involving magic are also natural habitats for this trope. When an original is not dead yet, there may be some interaction between them and their clone, but usually it's a case of [[Never the Selves Shall Meet]].
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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.
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{{examples}}
== Anime & Manga ==
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** Furthermore, a [[Freeze-Frame Bonus]] reveals that the lower half of Lilith is actually {{spoiler|''[http://www.evacommentary.org/full-op/full-op_C237_comp.jpg Unit-01]''.}}
* {{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,]] [[Abusive Parents|and her creator wasn't thrilled.]]
== 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]]s are permitted to know this.
* ''[[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 [[C. J. Cherryh]] novel ''Cyteen'', explored the difficulties of using cloning to make an exact duplicate. In order to produce a clone genius on par with the original the scientists raising the clone had to duplicate the original's upbringing as closely as possible.
** The title character of ''Joshua, Son of None'' is a clone of JFK, whose upbringing and experiences are "managed" in a similar manner by his creators. The plan starts to go off the rails when he discovers this.
* 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|"I'm [[Humans by Any Other Name|embodied]], not deranged! If a copy of my mind experiences a few minutes' consciousness, then is lost, that's not the death of anyone. It's just amnesia."}}
** 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 "[http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Extra&pagetitle=The+Extra§ion=fiction The Extra]", {{spoiler|the protagonist inadvertently condemns himself by transferring what he thinks are the key portions of his brain to a younger cloned body, not realizing that his consciousness will continue in the old body as well as in the clone}}.
* Sam Vimes objects to using magic anyway, but in [[Discworld/Thud|Thud!]], even when he gives in and goes to the wizards for help, he absolutely refuses to use teleportation because he's paranoid about the idea that the person at the other end isn't the same person as the one who was teleported.
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* 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 Twinmaker is never mentioned again, even though it would have been very helpful in many other circumstances.
== Tabletop RPG ==
* ''[[Paranoia]]'': Every player character has six identical clones, and when one dies, the next one is sent in to replace it.
* 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 ''[[Sonic Adventure 2]]'' at the end of ''[[Sonic Heroes]]''. The other two members of Team Dark discovers a lab full clones in tubes, and [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|destroy them all without telling him]]. Rouge reveals she knew he was a copy the entire time. This being the first game after Sega went third-party, the writing hadn't ''completely'' started to suck yet.
** 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 ==
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== [[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. As of Season 3, when the clones were used as an army during an attack on the Venture compound, this is no longer true.
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[[Category:Doppelganger]]
[[Category:Teleportation Tropes]]
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