Twinmaker: Difference between revisions

== Anime & Manga ==

* {{spoiler|Ayanami Rei}} in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' actually appears as three different clones over the course of the show. This isn't known until [[The Reveal]].

* {{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.]]

* [[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 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.

** 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 From the Revelation|dust theory]].)</ref> Meanwhile, Peer is [[Machine Worship|happy to]] [[Jumped At the Call|sign up]] to become two people, seeing it as a new way of breaking away from the "quintessentially human" experience.}}

** 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}}.

* In James Patrick Kelly's novelette "Think Like a Dinosaur", reptilian aliens give us teleportation, but insist on "balancing the equation" (destroying the original afterward) or they'll cut us off from the network. Normally the original is unconscious, but one is revived after the teleport is mistakenly believed to have failed, invoking this trope in full.

* 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.

* [[Clifford Simak|The Goblin Reservation]] is built around this trope.

 

 

== Live-Action Television ==

** 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.

* ''[[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.

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]''.

** 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.

* 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 ==

** 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."}}