History Main / ManySpiritsInsideOfOne

The {{Trope Namer|s}} is a song by {{Music/HammerFall}}, based on the famous biblical tale of Legion, man possessed by multiple demons, which is obviously the TropeCodifier. Contrast IAmLegion, another trope named after this tale (and a story in Literature/TheBible), which occurs when members of a group start referring to themselves as a group, rather than individual people, implying that they lost their individuality or at least see themselves as a community or partners.

* In the ''Literature/WorldOfTheFiveGods'' book ''The Hallowed Hunt'', this turns out to be the situation of the BigBad [[spoiler:Wencel]]. Hundreds of years ago when their country was in the process of being conquered, the last Hallowed King underwent a sacred ritual to ensure that if he were to die, his consciousness would pass to the next male heir in his line to continue the fight. [[GoneHorriblyRight And the next, and the next, and the next...]] The consciousness that originally inhabited these bodies is swallowed up and added to the amalgamation. By the time the story reaches the present day, he's given up all ambitions beyond ending the cycle and dying once and for all. When we get a look at him through spirit vision, he's a monstrous abomination of hundreds of twitching faces vying for control.

** [[spoiler:Hoenheim]] has a massive number of human souls in them, but plays with the trope even further when he reveals that over his long life he's reached an accord with each and every individual soul housed within him. This means those souls are not constantly freaking out and move with him in a singular purpose of will, making him, in some ways, more powerful than Father or the Homunculi, who only use those souls as fuel.

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1297958411068560100
%% Please do not change or remove without starting a new thread.

* ''Anime/BattleBDaman'' has Bull, a boy with three personalities: a calm one, a confident one, and an aggressive one.
* Although for the most part, she actually only has one personality (the other one almost never comes up), in one ''Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei'' chapter, this is done with Kaere. She's the {{fauxreigner}} ForeignFanservice character and she splits into an entire United Nations' worth of personalities. [[spoiler:Inverted with Kafuka who happens to be one spirit within many bodies due to all the girls in class having one of her organs. Add another personality to Kaere's long list of personalities.]]

* Jindai Komaki and Iwato Tatsumi from ''{{Manga/Saki}}''. They are both {{Miko}}, and they each have 9 goddesses that they tend together. Only one goddess can surface in a character in any given time, but their opponents can expect to essentially fight Komaki ''twice''.

* In ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'':
** Father and the Homunculi all contain many human souls within their bodies, which act as [[PoweredByAForsakenChild fuel]] for their powers. In most of these examples, it's an inversion of the trope--the host is the evil one, possessing a lot of tortured souls within them.
** [[spoiler:Hoenheim]] has a massive number of human souls in them, but plays with the trope even further when he reveals that over his long life he's reached an accord with each and every individual soul housed within him. This means those souls are not constantly freaking out and move with him in a singular purpose of will, making him, in some ways, more powerful than Father or the Homunculi, who only use those souls as fuel.
* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', at least once in their lifetimes, every user of One For All experiences the Vestiges, a phenomenon where the residues of the wills of past users briefly manifest as silhouettes. It is a symptom of One For All's power increasing with every successive generation. The ninth and current One For All user, Izuku Midoroya manifests it on an unprecedented level. He can [[spoiler:meet the spirits of previous users of One For All for [[DeadPersonConversation advice]] and even access [[AllYourPowersCombined their original Quirks]]. In contrast, Midoriya's predecessor All Might, the greatest superhero of Japan, was ignorant of this rare ability.]]

* In ''ComicBook/XMen'', Charles Xavier's son, Legion, once had multiple personalities with different superpowers. [[SplitPersonalityMerge Then he went better]], but as a whole was so powerful that he caused the ComicBook/AgeOfApocalypse. He later came back, now having hundreds of personalities, each with its own unique power. Some of them are minds of dead people he drained, making him a combination of this trope and MindHive.
* ''Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk'': At the beginning, it was only Bruce Banner and the ruthless Gray Hulk, who turned green and then started getting constantly dumber until we get the most well-known version of the character, the Savage Hulk. Later a new Gray Hulk, a mischievous and selfish version of the first gray Hulk, joined them. Then [[SplitPersonalityMerge the Hulks and Banner merged]] into Professor Hulk, who was later {{retcon}}ned to be a completely different personality altogether. Recently, the four of them have been joined by Green Scar--an [[BarbarianHero intelligent, brutal warrior persona]]. There was a story revealing that Banner has a lot more Hulks in his mind, including such creatures as the lizard-like Guilt Hulk or the monstrous Devil Hulk, but the question of whether it's still in the continuity remains debatable.
* Jill Presto from ''Comicbook/{{Lucifer}}'' has host to the 12 Basanos.

* She-Dragon from ''Comicbook/SavageDragon'' combined this trope with HearingVoices. The personalities never took over but there were very distinct personalities and voices in her mind that would speak out loud. As it turns out, [[spoiler: they belonged to beings on a counter-Earth.]]

* ComicBook/SimonDark is made up of the minds, and patchwork body bits of twenty-four dead teenagers, though he gives up two to their afterlives in order to save the life of a fatally wounded friend.
* ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'': Crazy Jane has 64 personalities, some pleasant, some unpleasant, all with distinct abilities of their own. They live in a subconscious realm called The Underground, where they are housed in separate stations when not in control. "Crazy Jane" is merely the dominant personality that Kay Challis takes when interacting with others.

* In ''Film/TheExorcismOfEmilyRose'' Emily at one point starts speaking in demon voices as the demons say there are many of them in her and each one has possessed a different evil person throughout the history. Movie is VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory of Anneliese Michel, who was suffering from severe mental problems and had many seizures. She also believed she was possessed, specifically by Lucifer and several evil people throughout history, including Cain and UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.
* In ''Film/GhostRider2007'', when Blackheart gets his hands on the Contract of San Venganza and absorbs all the souls that were bound by it, he becomes this complete with the VoiceOfTheLegion. [[spoiler:It also makes him ''ludicrously'' vulnerable to the Ghost Rider's Penance Stare, which he was immune to when he lacked a soul because now he has a thousand souls to burn with it. [[ClippedWingAngel Oops]].]]

%%* The Dire Magnus from the ''Books of Beginning'' trilogy is an example of this.

** Subverted in Myria [=LeJean=]. The Auditors possessing her named this body expecting continued collectivism, but the form bestowed individuality upon whatever Auditor force(s) operated it, and at the end she changes her name to Unity.

* ''Literature/MatthewSwift'' shares his mind with the numerous entities known as The Electric Blue Angels to the point that the first-person narration is constantly switching between "I" and "We."

* It's indicated this may be the case with Randall Flagg in ''Literature/TheStand''. After Tom is put into his trance, he talks of the New Testament references -- Flagg's name being Legion and Jesus driving him into a herd of pigs once.

* In a ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode, Doctor Jackson has been possessed by personalities of multiple members of a spaceship's crew. Surprisingly, it's one of the rare examples when possession in the show isn't evil.

* This occurs several times in [[Literature/TheBible the New Testament]]:
** Jesus encounters a violent demon-possessed man who identifies himself as "Legion, for we are many." If taken at face value as a reference to [[AncientRome a Roman legion]], that would indicate about ''five thousand'' demons inside one individual. Jesus exorcizes the demons and sends them into a herd of pigs, which they destroy.
** There's another New Testament reference — St. Matthew [-XII-], xliii.–xlv.:
-->And when an unclean spirit is gone out of a man he walketh through dry places seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith: I will return into my house from whence I came out. And coming he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then he goeth, and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is made worse than the first.

* In Shintoism, a shrine can be build to venerate multiple deceased individuals at once, if there was something that connected them when they were alive. The ''kami'' (loosely, 'deity') of this shrine is a singular entity that represents all the deceased. One of the (many) reasons that the Yasukuni Shrine is berserk-inducing for Koreans is because it honors the war dead of Imperial Japan, which included enlisted soldiers from then-conquered people, including Koreans-- the clergy of Yasukuni refuses to take down the Koreans registered in the shrine, citing that they are part of the ''kami'' of Yasukuni.
* Some Gulf Coast Native American peoples including the Karankawa believe their holy people harbor many spirits inside one body.

[[folder:Tabletop Game]]
* ''TabletopGame/MutantsAndMasterminds'' character Moodswing, from the Super Unicorn META-4 universe chronicled in Crooks and in the 1E Player's Handbook, is a Chinese psychic who currently carries the minds of 6 other psychics in his head, his powers varying depending on who is in control.

* ''VideoGame/Portal2'' reveals this to be the case with [=GLaDOS=], the other voices in question being the personality cores you destroyed in the first game.

* Platinum the [[MeaningfulName Trinity]] of ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'' is a MagicalGirl with a rather unpleasant female personality (Luna), a nicer male personality (Sena), and one of the six heroes (Trinity) sharing the same body.
* The [[VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2 Mask of the Betrayer]] expansion pack for ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'' gave us One-of-Many - an amalgamation of several hundred spirits. He is governed by the worst of these--and as a result, he is a twisted monster that keeps tempting you to do evil and add additional spirits to "the many".
* Legion from ''Franchise/MassEffect'' is a single body inhabited by numerous operating systems. Despite seeming very similar, they were split evenly[[note]]Well, it wasn't a 50-50, since there were those that wished to abstain, but those in favor and those against were still equal in number.[[/note]] when [[spoiler: deciding whether to kill or convert the Geth heretics, hence why they delegated the heretics' fate to you.]]
* Ermac from ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' is this, especially later in the series.
* In ''VideoGame/LiveALive'', [[BigBad O. Dio]] from the Western Chapter. [[spoiler:He's actually a horse possessed by the vengeful spirits of a regiment that got wiped out, taking out their hatred for humanity on an old west town. The horse returns to being a horse after O. Dio is defeated.]]
* Sora from ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' habitually invites other people in, although he usually isn't consciously aware of doing so. By the end of ''Kingdom Hearts II'', he's renting out space to [[spoiler: Ventus, Xion, and Roxas]], and [[spoiler: Kairi]] was also in there for most of the first game. Most of his tenants are fairly nice people, but all but two of 'em ''were'' trying to kill or suppress him at one point or another, intentionally or not.
** The villain of the series, Xehanort, is this as well, notable in that, for most of the series, [[spoiler: he's the hijacker, with the proper owner body being Terra]]. It counts as this trope because [[spoiler: Terra]] took in [[spoiler: Master Eraqus]] as a passenger shortly before Xehanort did his thing.
* In the UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 title ''VideoGame/GuiltyGear XX'', there's Zappa; a polite and friendly Aussie who's perfectly normal on the surface (save an eccentric taste in wardrobe) except for the fact that he's the unknowing host to a grab bag of crazy ghosts including a spectral sword, a few dozen wisps, a hellhound, and an armor-clad lightning spirit. The most powerful and malevolent of his "guests" is S-Ko, who [[ClingyJealousGirl readily takes control of him whenever he attempts to interact with other people]]. Unlike S-Ko, the weaker spirits are loyal to Zappa, often comforting him whenever he is depressed or sad.
* Exdeath from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' is [[spoiler:a living tree with many evil spirits sealed inside him. The release of these spirits combined with the power of the Void are what cause him to transform into Neo Exdeath at the games' end.]]
* [[spoiler:Turel]] from ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain'' is possessed by several hundred hylden ghosts when you find him in ''defiance'', [[spoiler:they later move on to Raziel to [[ThePlan inspire him to go through with killing Kain]].]]
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' series, the Prime Evil (as opposed to the Prime Evils, which are merely the three most powerful of the Great Evils) is the embodiment of all seven Great Evils in one being. The original Prime Evil was Tathamet, from whose body the Burning Hells and the original Great Evils sprang, but in ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'', [[spoiler:Diablo is reborn as the Prime Evil, and the reason he is able to be dominant over his brothers in this form is that Adria used Leah, her own daughter by him by means of his last host, as his vessel]].

* In ''VideoGame/BioShock'' this is a side effect of using plasmids. The ADAM samples the genetic memory so using too much or too often leads to one "seeing ghosts" (a.k.a. memories of the past users). In ''VideoGame/BioShock2'', [[spoiler:the BigBad, Sophia Lamb, decides to intentionally invoke this on her daughter. She plans on filling Eleanor with all the ADAM in Rapture so Eleanor will cease to exist and instead be the perfect Utopian who only works for the common good and with every skill and talent ever in Rapture at her command.]]
* Uta Bloody Valentine AKA [[spoiler: The Rabbit Killer]] of ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld'' is revealed to have started out as one of these: having [[FetusTerrible assimilated her twin sisters in the womb]], she was born with two additional personalities rattling around inside her head. With three identities struggling for control of her body, Uta spent most of her childhood in and out of mental hospitals - up until [[HumanoidAbomination Lilith]] found her and gave her sisters bodies of their own.
* Magyar from ''VideoGame/{{Brawlhalla}}''. Originally 100 elite knights BackFromTheDead, but whenever one of them was killed, his soul would join one of his still standing comrades to keep the army just as strong. Over years of wars, they ended up as a single knight formed by 100 souls.

* In ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', by the end of the series, you can count at least four different personae that are within [[spoiler:Yasu]]'s body. Basically, [[AmbiguousGender s/he]] is more or less confirmed to be [[spoiler:Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice]]. However, if you count all of his/her {{imaginary friend}}s who don't actually take control of his/her body, the number of people in there easily jumps into the double-digits. It's a stinking party in his/her head. This is a slight variation on this trope, though, since these are all simply [[spoiler:Yasu]]'s personae and not actual people.

* In ''Webcomic/TowerOfGod'' Hoaqin's final 'clone' turned out to be the conglomeration of Albelda and the billions of souls that White had consumed prior to his "death".

* In ''Webcomic/ABeginnersGuideToTheEndOfTheUniverse'', [[spoiler:the Everyman turns out to be the personification of all of humanity.]]
* ''WebComic/TwoGuysAndGuy'': Played With. [[http://www.twogag.com/archives/1284 Guy has many demonic spirits inside. But none of them have that much control over her.]]
* ''Webcomic/DaughterOfTheLilies'': This happens when drath possess a herd of animals. [[spoiler:They mash the herd together into a very loosely humanoid form with hundreds of Drath voices speaking in sync from its mouths.]]

* This happens to Brutaka from ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' in the web-serials, when he falls into a vat of Antidermis. This is the substance from which the BigBad's species, the Makuta is born, and it contains the spirits of the unborn Makuta. Thankfully, they are all ''good'' by nature, and to Brutaka's species, Antidermis even works as a FantasticDrug. Thus the spirits do not corrupt Brutaka, he receives PowersViaPossession, but [[IAmLegion his mind is totally overwritten]], and his body becomes deformed.

* Blitzwing from ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'' has three personalities--a cool, calm tactician with [[AnIcePerson ice blasts]], or more awesomely, ice ''missiles;'' a rowdy, battle-loving hothead with [[PlayingWithFire fire blasts]]; and a cackling, non-sequitur spouting TalkativeLoon who can use ''either'' of their powers. He's also got two vehicle modes: Icy uses jet, Hothead uses tank, Random uses either.
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', Two-Face developed a third persona: Judge, a ruthless vigilante who was punishing criminals. Both the Harvey Dent and Two-Face personae were unaware of Judge's existence. It also seems that Judge didn't know he shared a body with them, since he was ruining Two-Face's plans and tried to kill him.
* In ''Franchise/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', the Avatar is normally just one reincarnated person with the ability to use all four elements. If that person accesses the [[SuperMode Avatar State]], usually through an UnstoppableRage, they contact the spirits of every single Avatar before, channeling thousands of spirits through one mortal body. It's a little bit scary. The catch is, if an Avatar dies in that state, [[KilledOffForReal the Avatar cycle will end]].
** After season 2 in ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', [[spoiler:Korra's link to her past lives is severed after Raava is temporarily slain. Even after they are reunited, it's just her and Raava now.]] The Avatar State is arguably even scarier now, since [[spoiler:bereft of the influence and experience of its past human incarnations]] it's been reduced to its most primal savage state.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'': In "Demonicism", Tom thinks that getting one of his "inner demons" removed will help with his anger issues, while Star thinks it's a bad idea as one of Pony Head's exes had previously had this done and became an EmptyShell [[StepfordSmiler who is always cheerful about everything]]. He goes through with it anyway, only to find that it didn't make a difference because it removed one of ''thousands''. This ends up becoming useful in a later episode where the characters face a threat that can [[YourSoulIsMine steal souls]] and leave people in a lifeless state, but he avoids this fate because he has so many of them.

* A milder version (which may have been {{Flanderiz|ation}}ed to this trope) is when people have inner conflicts and don't know what they should do. Like Theatre/{{Faust}} by Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe said: "Two souls alas! dwell in my breast."

* ''VisualNovel/Case03TrueCannibalBoy'': The original Cannibal Boy is the fusion of several abandoned children from Mt. Candyhouse, and they can separate individual spirits to act as minions.

* In Comicbook/XMen Charles Xavier's son, Legion, once had multiple personalities with different superpowers. [[SplitPersonalityMerge Then he went better]], but as a whole was so powerful that he caused the ComicBook/AgeOfApocalypse. He later came back, now having hundreds of personalities, each with its own unique power. Some of them are minds of dead people he drained, making him a combination of this trope and MindHive.

* In the French series ZornEtDirna, DeathTakesAHoliday (well, gets trapped in a MagicMirror), so killing someone results in their soul being transferred to your body. The closest thing to actual death is achieved by having criminals kill people in vast slaughterhouses, accumulating souls until they in turn are killed by another person (Zorn and Dirna's mother is the dominant personality inside a huge ''male'' barbarian).

* In the Creator/LoisMcmasterBujold book ''The Hallowed Hunt, one of the ''Literature/Chalion'' books, this turns out to be the situation of the BigBad [[spoiler: Wencel. ]] Hundreds of years ago when their country was in the process of being conquered, the last Hallowed King underwent a sacred ritual to ensure that if he were to die, his consciousness would pass to the next male heir in his line to continue the fight. [[GoneHorriblyRight And the next, and the next, and the next...]] The consciousness that originally inhabited these bodies is swallowed up and added to the amalgamation. By the time the story reaches the present day, he's given up all ambitions beyond ending the cycle and dying once and for all. When we get a look at him through spirit vision, he's a monstrous abomination of hundreds of twitching faces vying for control.

--> '''Mallory''': I've got a head full of so many dead people I suspect whoever I started off as should probably be counted as one of them.
* The novel ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd'', by Website/{{Cracked}}'s David Wong, gives us Shitload, who is the host body of a hive mind.

* It's indicated this may be the case with Randall Flagg in Literature/TheStand. After Tom is put into his trance, he talks of the New Testament references--Flagg's name being Legion and Jesus driving him into a herd of pigs once.

* In a ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode, Doctor Jackson has been possessed by personalities of multiple members of a spaceship's crew. Surprisingly, it was one of the rare examples when possession in this show wasn't evil.
* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Masks": Data is possessed by an alien probe, and takes on the personalities of various figures from the mythology of an extinct civilization. Mainly an excuse to let Brent Spiner act his nuts off.
* Similarly in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "Infinite Regress," Seven of Nine manifests the personalities of the people she had assimilated as a Borg drone.
* In the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' {{Verse}}, the Kurlan believed that a person was made up of a group of individuals, each with his own voice. A [[http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Kurlan_naiskos Naiskos]] was a sculpture representing a person, which could be opened to reveal several little people inside it.
* [[spoiler: Alpha and Echo]] on ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'', who don't forget their previous implants.
* In ''Series/KamenRiderDenO,'' the main Rider is possessed by an Imagin. ...then another, and another. When suited, each possessor makes a different Den-O with a different [[WeaponSpecialization weapon of choice]]. Though they're not all in him at once, any can take over at will. HilarityEnsues (literal, non-ironic hilarity, that is) often.

* After [[spoiler: Castiel swallows the Leviathans]] in season 6 of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', he starts hovering somewhere between this trope and MindHive.
* [[TheHero The Doctor]] in ''Series/DoctorWho'' is something between this and MindHive, being an amalgamation of [[AntiHero themself]], [[{{Precursor}} the Other]], and [[EldritchAbomination Zagreus]].

* Russell, the drummer from Music/{{Gorillaz}} is this, overlapping with SoulJar. The other spirits contained within Russell are his friends, who were killed in a drive-by shooting.