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Clone by Conversion

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More Smiths will suffice.

Agent Thompson: You!
Smith: Yes, me. [starts transforming him into another Smith] Me, me, me.
Thompson-Smith: Me, too.

One of the problems with cloning is how slow and inefficient it is; you have all the difficulties of creating life, letting the clone mature, dealing with it diverging from the original, Clone Degeneration and so on. One simple way around this is to start off with some raw materials... namely, another person. This can range from using Functional Magic or Applied Phlebotinum to transform someone physically and mentally or using more mundane means like Magic Plastic Surgery and Brainwashing. Either way, the unfortunate victim becomes the original's Doppelgänger.

Since this basically involves killing the person who the clone is "made" from, this trope tends to be the province of villains. Indeed, since cloning has become possible in Real Life (and no longer automatically brings to mind a Mad Scientist), this is a good way for a writer to keep the act of cloning someone as ethically questionable. A villain who makes a habit of it might also be The Virus (especially if the clones are able to transform people as well).

Expect all the usual Clone Angst, since the copy has to deal with a Loss of Identity on two levels; both as a copy of someone else and from losing their original identity (if they can even remember it). A Sub-Trope of Our Clones Are Different.

Compare and Contrast; Humanshifting (when someone has the ability to transform into another person), We Will Not Use Stage Makeup In The Future (when this is used where a simple disguise would have sufficed), Body Surf (when there is always only one of the "surfer", barring accidents), Grand Theft Me (when someone takes over another person's body), The Virus (which transforms the victim into a member of the Virus' type, rather than into a specific individual, although this distinction may be blurred if the Virus has a Hive Mind), Face Stealer (who forcefully transforms themselves into the original rather than the other way around), Self-Constructed Being (when any material can be used as well as focusing on the being in question), and Kill and Replace (when the killer transforms into or impersonates the victim).


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Boruto: Those marked by Kama will turn eventually turn into the ĹŚtsutsuki who marked them, erasing their genetic profile and personality in the process.
  • In Digimon Ghost Game, Monster of the Week Gyuukimon is said to be able to do this to other Digimon but when it attempts this on Hiro's human classmates, it turns them into malformed hybrids.
  • In an episode of Dorohedoro, Chota is forcefully transformed into Nikaido in order to fool En and Chidaruma. However, he does not become a mental clone of Nikaido and therefore has to act like he is her.
  • In Hunter Ă— Hunter, this is one of the powers within the ability Convert Hands: Transfer Student. If the user touches someone with the palm of his or her right hand, that person becomes a physical duplicate of the user. Chrollo uses this ability as part of a trap for Hisoka, who was pursuing him, by turning a bystander into a copy of Chrollo so Hisoka would target the bystander instead of him.note 
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, the Enhanced Person #4 Elan Ceres is in fact a poor fellow who got hired to serve as a Body Double for the original, undergoing a memory wipe and surgical procedure to look just like them. Once #4 outlives his usefullness, he is immediately killed and replaced with #5. This notably also raises some questions about main character Suletta Mercury, who's perfectly identical to Ericht Samaya who was Brain Uploaded several years before Suletta was supposedly born.
  • Naruto:
    • Impure World Resurrection brings people back from the dead by turning still-living people into clones of them.
    • Another technique transforms a person in a walking puppet of the controller and transforms the puppet body to match the master. These copies are only as strong as the amount of energy the controller transfers to them. When they are killed, the bodies revert to their true forms.
    • The Infinite Tsukuyomi very slowly turns humans trapped in it into White Zetsu clones by draining them of their personalities and defining features.
  • In One Piece, one of BrĂ»lĂ©e's lesser-used powers is this. Though she mainly uses her Mirror-Mirror Fruit powers to appear in other people's mirrors and emerge through them, she also has the power to take any animal (human or otherwise), including herself, and physically alter them into a mirror image of someone or something else, Devil Fruit powers included. The effects are easily undone, however, which is why she uses it only to confuse her enemies and to stall for time.
  • Tomie: If someone gets an organ transplant or blood transfusion from Tomie, that person will eventually turn into another Tomie.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • A character willingly subjects themselves to this in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. Z-One, in an attempt to bring hope to the Bad Future he came from, converted himself both physically and mentally into an exact duplicate of Yusei Fudo, even to the point of being able to use the powers of both the Crimson Dragon and even Clear Mind, though it ultimately amounts to nothing, as eventually, only four survivors — Paradox, Aporia, Antinomy and Z-One himself — remained, and eventually only he remained. In his final duel with Yusei, he uses the fact that he now thinks exactly like Yusei to deadly effect, leading to Yusei having to rely on tactics he'd never use just to stay alive.
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, the card Galaxy-Eyes Cipher Dragon can take control of enemy monsters and change their names, appearance, and stats to mirror it.

    Audio Plays 
  • In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio play Mission of the Viyrans, Peri becomes the vector for a pathogen that painfully converts the entire populace of a planet, the Doctor included, into clones of her.

    Comic Books 
  • The DCU:
    • The Convert, one of the Justice League 3000's main enemies, does this en masse as his primary ability. It's also how the future versions of the Justice League were created.
    • Justice League of America: The first villains who the Justice League ever face off against in Silver Age continuity (though it wasn't the first story about them published) are seven alien warlords who choose Earth as their battleground for a winner-take-all free-for-all. They each vary wildly in appearance and abilities, except for one: they each can turn any humans (or super-humans) they focus on into loyal, miniature Mook versions of themselves. Thankfully, this also has No Ontological Inertia (it was the Silver Age, after all).
    • Justice Society of America: A story arc has the nanomachines that give Cyclone her powers suffer a malfunction that makes them transmissible and convert other women into copies of her. She eventually works out the problem and reverts the victims, but not before someone she went to for help exploited the situation to try and copy her powers.
    • In Mystery of Space #103, this is the Evil Plan of four aliens who form an alliance to take over the galaxy. They use ray guns that convert objects and people into loyal copies of themselves, possessing their powers. Their plans are fortunately thwarted by a man who catches wind of their evil schemes and gets caught in a crossfire between the four of them. This leaves each quart of his body transformed, granting him Flying Brick, Shock and Awe and Selective Magnetism powers, so he becomes Ultra the Multi-Alien.
    • Wonder Woman (1942): Queen Atomia's "Proton Chamber" turns those of her victims that are forced into it and put through the chamber's process all into identical clones which are near mindlessly loyal to her and extra susceptible to her mental commands.
  • Marvel Universe:
    • Spider-Man:
      • In The Clone Saga, Norman Osborn creates a copy of Aunt May via a "genetically-altered actress" while keeping the real Aunt May captive as part of his Ass Pull-errific master plan.
      • Previous to this, the original Clone Saga was retconned by way of the Jackal using a retrovirus to create his clones, not the virtual instant clones as originally portrayed. Once the second Clone Saga kicked off, that retcon was unceremoniously dismissed in an "I Lied" reversal.
    • X-Factor (2006): The Karma Project's army of superhumans is made of numerous people who were injected with Darwin's DNA and transformed into exact copies of him. Fortunately, they all begin breaking down.
  • The Transformers (Marvel): In the UK comics, when Straxus fails into transferring his mind into Megatron's body, he turns a hapless Decepticon technician (that is retconed into Archforce by ask Vector Prime) into a "Megatron clone" to attempt the transfer again.

    Fan Works 
  • Assimilation is a The Matrix fanwebcomic focusing on what the bluepills were doing during the Smith virus (see the example for The Matrix below), as the title suggests.
  • The Friday Night Funkin' fanfiction Felixs Guide To Apocalypse Survival is about this, with Carol, one of the game's mods, becoming the vector of a pathogen that slowly assimilates everybody on Earth into clones of herself. By the end of the story, Felix himself gets fully assimilated, but earlier in the story he was partially assimilated. Apparently, this story was inspired by the example from The Matrix.
  • Luminosity: In Radiance, Elspeth accidentally does this. She can use her powers to implant thousands of memories into a given person. With a bit of makeup, it's not too hard to mislead them as to which set of memories are their own.
  • Rise of the Minisukas: Mayumi is convinced that the Minisukas are attempting to transform her into one of them. The first time she sees regular-sized Asuka, Mayumi becomes convinced that she was a normal girl whom they have turned into one member of their brethren.

    Film — Animated 
  • In Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the Joker implants his DNA and consciousness into a special chip installed into Tim Drake during his torture of him, causing him to turn into a copy of him many years later. Batman saves Tim and destroys Joker once and for all by shorting out the chip.
  • In Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, Lady Tremaine, with the Fairy Godmother's wand, turns Anastasia into a duplicate of Cinderella so she can wed Prince Charming while the real Cinderella is sent to her doom.

    Film — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • Angelmaker: The true villain, Shem Shem Tsien, used surgery and brainwashing to turn the serial killer Vaughn Parry into a perfect replica of himself, allowing him to "survive" and continue his plans well past his death by old age. This pseudo-resurrection didn't help his preexisting god complex any. A number of "prototypes" with incomplete brainwashing are employed as part of his goon squad.
  • In Beta, clones are created by extracting the soul of the original person (the "First") out of his/her body, then implanting a computer chip with information into said body.
  • In the Light Novel The Brave Man's Plan for Conquest, the protagonist Rain Shudo loses a battle with a demon lord. However, he keeps her alive and clones her as in many ways as possible to create world peace. Rain agrees, and eventually, she learns Self-Duplication magic, and creates spells and potions to transform others into her copies.
  • The Forerunner Saga reveals that the Didact from the Halo 3 terminals was the result of the Ur-Didact (the one from Halo 4) imprinting his consciousness upon a younger Forerunner. Unusually for this trope, the original personality still maintains some influence (most notably in his much more friendly attitude towards humanity compared with the original), and the act itself is portrayed as a necessary one, with the Didact imprint even promising his host that he'll return control when his mission is over, though, by the time that happens, their personalities seem to have become irrecoverably merged. He's still much better off than his progenitor.
  • In the Imperial Radch trilogy, Anaander Mianaai pulled this on Lieutenant Tisarwat before we even got a chance to meet the poor kid, kidnapping and secretly installing ancillary implants in her brain to assimilate her as a "stealth" segment of the Anaander personality for espionage purposes. It does not end well.
  • MARZENA lays down the concept that certain people with neurochemically similar brains can form empathic states and become a singular mind when mentally linked up using the Bremen Chip. Connecting two similar brains together can cause the less-dominant brain to become more dominant-like (although the full effects can take months to manifest). This is what happens to Lauren when she connects to Marian's brain, fully maturing an Independent Psychological State, allowing her brain to mimic Marian's brain activity and thus break into Marian's brain-locked computer.
  • In More & More & More Tales to Give You Goosebumps, this starts happening to Beth's family when they watch the Christmas tape in "A Holly Jolly Holiday" — as they continue watching, they gain the star of the tape, Susie Snowflake’s personality and her looks.
  • In Slimer, Charlie is a genetically engineered shapeshifting shark who absorbs the minds and bodies of his victims. Near the end, as his original body is dying, he "impregnates" the body of a Brinkstone helicopter pilot instead of absorbing him. The original body dies, while the cells implanted into the pilot convert the man's body into an exact duplicate of Charlie, with his memories and personality. Overlaps with Body Surf a little.
  • In Stardoc: Plague of Memory, Cherijo's long-dead first love, Kao Torin, is sighted on the Hsktskt homeworld. He turns out to be a genetically altered Hsktskt, created from DNA extracted from Kao's corpse which was buried in space by Jorenian custom.
  • In The Stormlight Archive, when a Fused spirit kills a singer and takes their body, the singer's form shifts to something unique to the Fused.
  • In Vampire City, being turned into a vampire can have this effect on the victim, which can be a little weird if they were originally a different sex than the vampire that bit them.
  • Whateley Universe: Blood transfusions from someone with a high-level Healing Factor carry the risk of this, with or without the Death of Personality aspects.
    • Knockoff was fortunate; while he became a physical copy of his mother after she was forced to give him a life-saving transfusion, his/her own mutation manifested as a result, which meant that not only did she retain her own memories and personality, she also developed powers that differed from her mother's.
    • A more tragic example was Adavia Taylor, who became contaminated with a male superhero's blood during a supervillain battle. For the next several months, she slowly became an almost-exact copy of the hero, in both body and mind, eventually forgetting his previous life entirely.

    Live-Action TV 
  • An episode of Series/Crackanory shows a postman unsatisfied with life meet a new girl named Zoe, whom he begins to transform into as he reads her mail.
  • Doctor Who:
  • The Even Stevens special "A Very Scary Story" has Rn convert everyone in the school into exact copies of herself, not even sparing her family
  • In an episode of The Good Place, many characters are transformed into the maid Janet.
  • Kamen Rider Ghost has Adel, Prince of the Ganma, who intends to become the world. Allying with the Ganmaizers, fifteen monsters who assume his form, Adel gains the ability to transform the populace of both human and Ganma worlds into copies of himself, including his henchmen and his sister.
  • In season 2 of Legion (2017), there is the ongoing mystery of how Lenny seems to have been resurrected, as she was killed in Season 1 and Farouk took her form when tormenting David. It turns out that Farouk had absorbed her mind when she died, and kept her imprisoned within himself. After regaining his own physical body, he kidnapped David's sister, Amy, and murdered her by using a machine that physically transformed her body into an identical copy of Lenny's. Then he placed Lenny's mind inside said body. This means that Lenny, while effectively resurrected, is really just possessing the Empty Shell that was once Amy.
  • The first episode of the second season of Lois & Clark has Lex Luthor's ex-wife requesting a surgical procedure on a woman to turn her into an exact lookalike of Lois Lane as part of a revenge plot.
  • In 2003, the MTV Movie Awards did a parody of The Matrix Reloaded in which, among other things, Seann William Scott as Agent Smith did this to Wanda Sykes. He later tries to do this to Justin Timberlake, but Justin is The One and proceeds to beat the crap out of all of the Agent Scotts, which causes the original to snap out of it and go back to normal.
    Wanda: Hey, you're that guy that got peed on in American P[Agent Scott shoves his fist into Wanda's gut and starts transforming her into an Agent] Mmm, ooh, you're hittin' the spot! How big is your fist? Good lord! Hey, wait a minute, man, this shit is dry-clean only!
    Agent Scott: You'll like being a dude. [the transformation finishes]
    Agent Scott's clone: I do.
  • Tokumei Sentai Go Busters has an unusual example of a villain doing this to himself. Late in the show, Enter, attempting to gain The Power of Hate for himself, deliberately begins copying more and more of Hiromu's abilities, fighting style, and eventually even his Buster form. It even reaches the point of his face morphing into Hiromu's at times.
  • In What We Do in the Shadows (2019), Nandor uses a series of wishes from a djinn to bring his favorite wife, Marwa, Back from the Dead. While the djinn returns Marwa with no baggage or angst, Nandor turns out to have liked her as a person much less than he remembers. Throughout the season, Nandor wishes for Marwa's appearance and tastes to morph to match his own, ultimately wishing that she were a copy of Guillermo's boyfriend, Freddy, in body and mind.

    Music 
  • A willing version of the process is very common in Visual Kei. Whether out of their admiration for other artists or out of wanting in on their success, this happens with some artists who take Follow the Leader to an extreme and become, in effect, clones of other artists' personas and sometimes even scarily close to their actual selves. Some common artists that pick up a lot of this are hide of X Japan — to the point that hides clones and cosplayers are almost their own subculture within visual kei — Kyo of Dir en grey — who was himself one of Kuroyume's Kiyoharu — and Atsushi Sakurai of BUCK-TICK.
    • Kisaki and Kaoru are among the many artists who are famous for hiding clone attempts, though both have somewhat moved on from that phase.
    • Leoneil of Vaniru is probably the most famous Atsushi Sakurai clone yet — to the point that it is widely rumored the two are father and son.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The third edition introduces the psionic power "Mind Seed" which, after a week-long incubation, turns the target into a mental duplicate of the psion (though eight levels lower than the psion when s/he infected the target). This power, in turn, is one of the tools the Dreaming Dark uses in Eberron.
    • In the Venom's Taste trilogy, a yuan-ti psion used this power a lot. Anyone could be one of her minions (since they keep their original body). She converted chieftains, and once threatened a character's baby with it. Paranoia Fuel indeed.
  • Magic: The Gathering:
    • Essence of the Wild operates this way, turning any other creature you cast or otherwise put into play into a copy of itself. Since they will then also have the copying ability...
    • Interestingly, while all clone spells encourage copying the strongest creature on the battlefield, Metamorphic Alteration also rewards turning an opponent's best creature into a copy of the weakest creature.
    • Permeating Mass can turn every creature it touches into a copy of itself.
  • One artifact weapon in Pathfinder is a cursed, intelligent longsword that causes any user who is drawn into a contest of wills against it and fails the Will save to slowly transform into such a clone of the long-dead barbarian warlord who originally wielded it
  • Shadowrun: Carl Brackhaven murdered his son Kenneth for turning into an ork at the age of twelve, then stole a kid off the street and had him surgically and mentally altered to keep up the appearance of having a pure human son. Players learn the truth of this in Ghost Story, one of the adventures in the Super Tuesday! Third Edition supplement.

    Toys 
  • The Hydraxon seen in the BIONICLE series isn't the original, rather a matoran named Dekar who was unwillingly transformed into Hydraxon by the Mask of Life as a protector, with the transformed Dekar having all of the originals skills, memories and loyalties of the deceased jailer, with Dekar being completely overwritten to the point that Hydraxon doesn't even realize he used to be someone else, and the only difference being that the original is dead and the new one used to be someone else. While it takes a while for the new Hydraxon to learn the truth, he ultimately doesn't care as who he is now is what is important to him. To him, he is the real, one and only Hydraxon, and fully replaces the original to the point that the other members of the Order of Mata Nui don't even realize that the Hydraxon they knew is dead.
    Hydraxon: [to Pridak] You don't get it. It doesn't matter who I was before. All that counts is who I am now — Hydraxon. Your enemy, your jailer, your nightmare for 90 millennia, and for every day that's left to you.

    Video Games 
  • Batman: Arkham Knight: Four individuals (Johnny Charisma, Christina Bell, Albert King, and Henry Adams) are slowly transforming into clones of the Joker due to being transfused with his Titan-infected blood, which Joker shipped out to hospitals prior to his death in Arkham City. This leads to them developing Joker's traits, such as green hair, white skin, and his Ax-Crazy personality traits.
  • This happens to Alcatraz in Crysis 2, who was given Prophet's nanosuit as the two were dying. Through the game, the suit heals him, at the expense of turning him into Prophet. The effect has fully completed by the time of Crysis 3, with no mention of who the current Prophet used to be.
  • In Cytus II, Phoenix Wyle has access to Magic Plastic Surgery technology that lets him turn a person into a doppelganger of someone else, so long as they have the same gender and blood type. It's later revealed that PAFF/Aroma White as we know her is the result of this technology being applied: after she was mortally injured in a car accident, another girl named Kaori was kidnapped and turned into a copy of Aroma, as well as being subjected to brainwashing to overwrite her memories, though this was incomplete and left her with small fragments of Kaori's memories which eventually allow her to learn the truth about herself.
  • A virus transforms many demons in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten into clones of Axel, first just acting like him, but later sounding and looking like him. The protagonists do manage to turn everyone back. Or not, depending on which ending you get.
  • In Endless Space 2, the Horatio faction unlocks the unique "Genetic Resequencing" technology in the late game. Each use converts one population unit of another species into a Horatio, even if they're robots or constructs of rock.
  • The cloning pod in Evil Genius works by copying the Evil Genius's appearance onto one of the many disposable mooks in your employ. The purpose of this is to get the mook killed in order to make the World Powers believe your Evil Genius is dead and lower your heat level. The ID Eliminator arguably as well, though it turns its victims into boilerplate template mooks instead of into a copy of the Evil Genius.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud Strife turns out to be this kind of clone of Sephiroth (along with countless others who were implanted with Jenova's cells, with the amount they were injected with determining whether they just get a little power boost like everybody in SOLDIER, or end up crippled, insane, and vulnerable to having their body completely taken over by Sephiroth). Cloud is also one, to a lesser degree, of his dead friend Zack, whose personality and memories he partly absorbed, repressing his own due to guilt and shame after the resident Mad Scientist messed up his head. This kind of mimicry is part of the whole Jenova-cell package apparently, but it combined with Cloud's psychological trauma and major pre-existing self-esteem issues, to create a real mess of his identity.
    • Happens occasionally in Final Fantasy XIV:
      • This is how the Weapons' Oversoul works — it overwrites the pilot's personality with that of the person whose combat data was chosen as the template, and reshapes their body into a more monstrous and bizarre version of that person. Over the course of the questline, the player has to contend with clones of Nael van Darnus, Gaius van Baelsar (whose original, still-alive self is decidedly not amused) and Regula van Hydrus.
      • In the caster questline of Endwalker, it's eventually revealed that the bishop attempted to summon Thordan as a primal, but has only succeeded in transforming a person into a clone of one of the Heaven's Ward knights — with memories of all of them, to boot.
  • In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], it is revealed that the Big Bad Xehanort's plan is to create an Alliance of Alternates by gathering thirteen incarnations of himself from across space and time, with most of them being preestablished antagonists subjected to this trope by having them host a fragment of Xehanort's heart.
  • The King of Fighters utilizes this in the story of K'. He's still considered a clone of the main hero Kyo despite only being injected with Kyo's genes and retaining his own appearance.
  • In Loop Hero, the Priestess Sigma is the personification of faith in God. When her physical body dies, a suitably faithful host undergoes a slow physical conversion as their soul is gradually supplanted by Sigma.
  • In Mass Effect: Andromeda, the Kett have spent so long tinkering with their genes that they can now only reproduce via this method, abducting other species and "exalting" them into more Kett.
  • The Matrix: Path of Neo: Agent Smith can be seen copying himself over a female civilian in cutscenes during the Burly Brawl segment.
  • In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Venom Snake is this to Big Boss, achieved through plastic surgery and hypnosis.
  • Quantum Protocol: The Black Virus card can transform the card that destroys it into a copy of itself while still having an automatic effect that regularly damages the operator. Worse yet, it voids the original card so that it cannot be accessed from the trash. However, the conversion effect won't work if the card that destroys the virus is sent to the trash via execution or card effects.
  • In Resident Evil 6, Ancient Conspiracy leader Simmons created a clone of his employee, Ada Wong (whom he was a little obsessed with) by testing out the C-Virus on his lover, and employee, Carla Radames. When she got her memories back, she was not amused.
  • The Tarr from Slime Rancher will attempt to devour any slimes in its vicinity. Upon devouring a victim, it expands, and spawns a clone of itself. Water will sterilize them, and can potentially destroy them altogether.
  • The Space Retrovirus from Space Station 13 turns all the later infected into duplicates of the original.
  • Claygirls from String Tyrant make more Claygirls like this. Their clay spreads over the victim's body and unless washed off turns the victim into a Claygirl.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, it turns out that the entire Journey of Regeneration is actually just a front for the villain to resurrect his sister via this method. The Chosen Ones are really just people specifically bred to have bodies as similar to his sister as possible.

    Webcomics 
  • In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, King Radical's plan turns out to be to do this on a massive scale. More specifically, he would replace people by summoning inhabitants of the Radical Lands, where he came from, in their place.
  • AsteroidQuest: The baddies in Polo Quest are able to convert people into clones of the badass warrior Rokoa, provided they're of the same species as her. As the payload contains her personality and memories, it involves a Battle in the Center of the Mind. The results vary depending on how that confrontation went.
  • El Goonish Shive: In the "Family Tree" arc, all of the guests at a college party start turning into obedient clones of Nanase. This was done by "Not-Tengu" as part of a Revenge by Proxy scheme against Nanase's aunt.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons: Anyone who eats one of Gog-Agog's worms becomes Gog-Agog. It's presently uncertain whether those who have become Gog-Agog but do not look like her are Gog-Agog mentally but just look like their old self (meaning the host is effectively dead), or if Gog-Agog's personality remains latent within them until she feels like emerging (consuming the host's body in the process and reforming it into another Gog-Agog). Either way, Gog-Agog is a population of her own, and with titles like "Queen of Worms" and "The Great Devourer", she definitively falls on the 'villain' part of the spectrum.
  • Chris Daily's Guest Strip of Questionable Content involves multiple characters transforming into copies of the same woman before making out with each other.
  • Schlock Mercenary introduces the "REDHack" technology in the "Random Access Memorabilia" arc; State Sec's plan to capture a Big Dumb Object is to use a combination of Super-Soldier and advanced medical technology to stream mind backups of one of its agents into the skins of the civilian research staff, allowing them to physically convert each victim into a Super-Soldier duplicate of the agent when the activation signal is sent. A later storyline reveals that the same agency has regularly been creating sleeper agents using the same technology, who would be overwritten on-demand by the mind of the same agent. In theory, the sleeper is supposed to have a backup gestalt so they can be restored after the mission and only lose a few days of memories. In practice, the gestalts are often too out of date to be useful, and the agent usually dies during the mission anyway.

    Web Original 
  • A Creepypasta titled "Nurse Joy" explains that this is how there are so many Nurse Joys in PokĂ©mon.
  • Oxventure: In the episode "Sect Appeal", this turns out to be the cultists' plan; rather than grow Egbert clones from scratch, they're going to inject townsfolk with a serum to transform them into them.
  • RPC Authority: RPC-239 can replace someone's consciousness with his own by coming into direct physical contact with them. The worst part is that there's no way to revert this, not even with amnestics.
  • SCP Foundation:
    • SCP-936 is capable of this. The object was discovered in the possession of a man who had tried to commit suicide to transfer his consciousness into the object. Instead, an SCP researcher carrying the object died while transporting it, successfully transferring his consciousness into the amulet and possessing whoever touches it. If the host touches the object for 30 days (usually via wearing it like an amulet), the consciousness transfer is permanent, even after the object is removed. The Foundation is restricting the researcher to possessing only one person at a time cycling hosts just in case, but thankfully he retains his loyalty to the cause and is searching for a release.
    • Implied with SCP-2009, which causes infectees to assume the appearance, personality, and memories of a "Thomas Hoang," who may or may not be the origin of the contagion.

    Western Animation 
  • Archie's Weird Mysteries: One episode shows Veronica accidentally causing the populace of Riverdale to start gradually turning into duplicates of herself after making a misguided wish on a wish-granting artifact that everyone was more like her. By the time Veronica is able to reverse this, the whole town is filled with snobby teenage girls and even Archie and Betty are starting to not act like themselves.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Gaang are given a creepy guide called Joo Dee when they visit the Earth Kingdom. When her veneer breaks, she's taken away and replaced by an eerily similar guide who answers to the same name and insists she's the same person. It's revealed that the city in question has an entire room full of "Joo Dee"s being brainwashed into similar guides. It's never made clear if they're based off someone, but it certainly fits the spirit of the trope.
  • Ben 10: Alien Force: Albedo is a Galvan who turned into a copy of Ben thanks to making his own Omnitrix copy and the original setting Ben's DNA as the default form. He also retains his original personality while playing The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body completely straight, hating Ben because his body gives him irrational impulses, hormones, and chili fry cravings (that last one being his own quirk that he chooses to blame on Ben).
  • Family Guy: In the "Family Guy Viewer Mail #2" story Fat Man and Robin, Peter gains the ability to transform anyone he touches into a clone of Robin Williams.
  • Jumanji: The Animated Series: The protagonists manage to drop Van Pelt into a bottomless pit. However, afterwards Peter slowly begins to look and act more like him. Eventually Van Pelt Peter explains that there must always be a Van Pelt in the game — even if Alan kills Van Pelt Peter, he'll just become Van Pelt instead. They eventually save Peter, at which point the old Van Pelt manages to climb out of the pit and goes back to hunting Alan.
  • in Kuu Kuu Harajuku, HJ5 receives a record deal from a record company named Monotone Records, which is owned by a robot named Monotone. The girls receive a makeover that makes them look nearly like exact duplicates of one another, with the only noticeable differences being in their skin tone, makeup, and eye color.
  • Miraculous Ladybug: This is Monster of the Week Reflekta's primary ability. Fortunately for the victims, they keep their personalities and simply transform physically into her. Fortunately for her, they do not get her superhuman powers but are robbed of any they might have. It also has a logical weakness; since her powers are based around turning people into her, it does nothing further to whomever it's already affecting, especially if they act as human shields or get their hands on other equipment.
  • Monster Farm: "A Pair of Jacks" had Count Cluckula drink a potion that turned him into a duplicate of Jack Haylee.
  • Phineas and Ferb: Dr. Doofenshmirtz's -Inator in "Night of the Living Pharmacists" has the power to turn anyone repulsive...by turning people into zombie-like clones of Doof himself, which turn other people into Doof-clones upon contact. Chaos ensues.
  • Regular Show: In "Benson Be Gone", Benson is replaced by Susan, who proceeds to work the park workers harder than he ever did, which slowly starts to turn them into copies of her, though they keep their original faces and personalities.
  • Mr. Frundles from Rick and Morty is a living Grey Goo scenario: anything it bites grows a living, sentient Mr. Frundles face. When it bites Season 2 Jerry's ankle in "Solaricks", his ankle becomes Mr. Frundles and it gets control of just his leg, but when it bites him on the face, his face changes and it takes over his entire body. The entire world is Mr. Frundles about 30 seconds later.
  • The Simpsons: In the "Treehouse of Horror XXXIV" segment Lout Break, Homer eats a "radioactive garbage donut" that creates a burp-borne virus that turns everyone (except Bart, Lisa and Maggie) into fat, balding, lazy idiots like himself.
    Homer-Ned: I've been neighbor-ino'd into Hom-diddly-omer! And why am I in church when football is on?
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Strange Energies", after accidentally developing godlike powers, Ransom transforms the Apergosian citizens' heads into copies of his own, but retaining their natural orange skin.
  • Ugly Americans: One episode features a plague that's turning New Yorkers into clones of Larry King. Apparently, the plague is a rare side effect caused by the original Larry King taking too many medications that interacted in an unexpected way.


 
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Mr Frundles

The adorable-looking alien Mr. Frundles can turn anything it bites, whether it be living or inanimate, into a copy of itself with the same abilities. Once unleashed, it takes less than a minute for it to completely affect the entire planet, turning it into a barren wasteland and forcing the family to move dimensions.

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