Doppelganger Link

How do you make The Many Deaths of You feel worse? Make 'em all simultaneous!

"My genetic code provides my clones with a T-Cog I no longer possess and all I get is their agony?!"

— Starscream lamenting the unfairness of life in "Armada", Transformers: Prime.

This is when two or more doppelgangers (clones, alternate selves, different timeline variations of the same person) have some kind of link. The link is usually psychic in nature. Other cases may involve Synchronization, in which something happening to one doppelganger affects the others.

This includes:

• Being able to sense or track each other's presence across some distance.
• Being aware of what the other is doing or what is happening to them.
• Being in tune with the other's emotions or physical well-being.
• Telepathic communication.
• A Hive Mind of multiple clones or doppelgangers.
• Psychic access to the other's memories and knowledge.
• Having whatever damage one suffers inflicted on the other.

This trope is quite common as a way of introducing complications to the already weird situation of having someone who looks exactly like you running around. If the character is dealing with an Evil Doppelgänger or Evil Knockoff, this only adds to the danger they present. The doppelganger could be able to read the character's mind, allowing them to predict their actions or learn valuable information. If the doppelganger's well-being is tied to a character, then killing them presents a risk and would necessitate finding a way to stop them without killing them. This can also serve as a metaphor for how our actions can affect others we don't know about.

Compare Twin Telepathy and Genetic Memory.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ayakashi Triangle: Suzu can create a duplicate of herself called an omokage, whose senses are linked to hers.
• Black★Rock Shooter: Humans and their Otherselves are linked. When Kagari carves a heart-shaped scar on Yomi Takanashi's chest, the same scar appears on Dead Master. When an Otherself is killed, their human counterpart screams in agony, faints, and then wakes up with no memory of whatever caused them grief and pain. If a human dies, their Otherself ceases to exist (this is never seen, but Saya implies this when she attempts to murder Mato Kuroi to destroy Black Rock Shooter, but ultimately cannot bring herself to do the deed). As long as the human lives, the Otherself will eventually resurrect.
• A Certain Magical Index: The Sisters are clones of Misaka Mikoto who can link together into a Hive Mind using a weaker version of Mikoto's electromagnetic abilities.
• Dragon Ball: Kami and Demon King Piccolo were once one individual before being split in two. If one dies, so will the other. This connection extends to Demon King Piccolo's son/reincarnation, Piccolo Jr., whose death during Dragon Ball Z's Saiyan Arc results in Kami also dying. When Piccolo is revived, so is Kami.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run: Funny Valentine's Stand allows him to swap bodies with any of his alternate universe counterparts.
• MÄR: Snow is Koyuki's counterpart in the fantasy world of Mar Haven (or in the case of the anime her magically-created clone). They see each other's lives in their dreams.
• Naruto: Duplicates created using the Shadow Clone technique are linked to the original. For example, if the original gets hurt (or in Naruto's case, dons the Demon Fox cloak, which burns him), the clones will feel the same pain and possibly disperse. On an inverse note, if a clone is gathering nature energy and overloads, they will turn into stone, a fate that will befall the original as well. Naruto also learns anything the clone learned if it is destroyed, which he exploits to speedrun learning new techniques.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie: Metal Sonic was created using stolen samples of the real Sonic's DNA. This apparently formed a mental link between the two that allows them to predict each other's moves in battle.

Comic Books

• The Authority: The Engineer has a mental link to the duplicates of herself she creates using her Nanomachines. She can create up to 82 duplicates, but going further will cause her personality to dissociate. The Engineer can also limit the mental connection between herself and her clones through concentration as seen by when she stopped herself and her other clones from experiencing an orgasm one clone had during sex with Jack.
• Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: PSmIth features an entire society of clones who make up a Hive Mind and are effectively a single person with dozens of identical bodies. The main characters don't know this at first and are initially confused when they keep apparently running into the same person over and over in unexpected circumstances.
• The DCU:
  • The Flash: Back when he was Impulse, Bart Allen acquired the ability to create energy duplicates of himself. One of them died during Our Worlds at War, causing Bart to go into psychic shock.
  • Infinity, Inc.: Double Trouble can make duplicates of himself. He doesn't feel any pain if they are hurt but they feel any pain inflicted on him.
  • Legion of 3 Worlds: Sun Boy feels a jolt of pain when Superboy Prime murders his "Threeboot" counterpart.
  • Superman:
    • Two for the Death of One: Superman is magically split into two duplicates who can send telepathic messages to each other.
    • Superboy and the Ravers: Tetrad Force can split himself into four mentally linked duplicates.
  • Supergirl:
    • Supergirl (2011): Supergirl and her Earth-2 counterpart Power Girl meet for the first time when the latter is being taken in by the US military. The two touch and share a brief psychic link that causes them to experience each other's memories.
    • Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade: When Supergirl's jerkass duplicate is turned into a crystal statue, Kara can briefly "hear" her thoughts...much to her disgust.
• Marvel Universe:
  • New Avengers (2015): Issue #17 reveals that after Secret Wars (2015), the Maker was split into multiple copies of himself, with each one placed in the newly created multiverse. Each of these versions shares the same consciousness, allowing them to operate independently.
  • Spider-Man 2099: In the original version, Miguel can sense whenever any of his Alternate Selves dies. That feeling manifests as physical pain, and he also catches brief glimpses of their deaths.
  • War of the Realms: Old Thor and Modern Thor's existence is predicated on the survival of Young Thor — their past self from the 9th century. Malekith quickly figures out that if he kills the hammer-less Viking, the other two more powerful versions will cease to exist, and orders his soldiers to focus on him.
  • X-Men:
    • New X-Men: The Stepford Cuckoos are cloned children of Emma Frost grown from her ova cells while she was in a coma from a Sentinel attack. They have a telepathic hive mind which is strongest when they are in close proximity to each other.
    • X-Factor (2006): Jamie is killed by the demonic villain Bloodbath in issue #227. The next few issues show him returned to life and pulled into alternate universes where his counterparts are either dead or dying. This causes Jamie to ponder if his powers work by pulling other Jamie Madroxes from alternate universes.
    • X-Force: Reignfire is a clone of Sunspot and has a one-way telepathic connection with him. He used it to take control of Sunspot and make him attack his friends.
    • X-Men: Sword of the Braddocks: An alternate reality Slaymaster kills every alternate self of Psylocke. She senses each death and promises to end the villain's slaughter.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): When the portal to the Mirror Universe is open, the inhabitants of both worlds become linked to their respective counterparts. The evil version of Celestia takes advantage of this by attacking the evil Luna to harm the good Luna.
• The Smurfs: In "The Hundredth Smurf", Vanity Smurf had a mirror duplicate with whom he had synchronized movements.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Sonic Universe #59 introduces Eclipse, a Black Arms Super-Soldier created in Shadow's image. Shadow wipes out all of the Black Arms except Eclipse, who maintains a Psychic Link to Shadow through the Black Arms Hive Mind, allowing him to invade Shadow's mind and manipulate him to a degree.

Fan Works

• A Certain Droll Hivemind: The Sisters from of A Certain Magical Index (see the Anime section above for their entry) are the focus of this fic. The difficulties of keeping a private diary when one is part of a constantly active telepathic hivemind is lampshaded and used as underline just how different the Sisters' thought processes are.
  Misaka-11111: Apparently I need a space where I can keep my own private thoughts, and where I can be honest with myself without society judging me. The Network finds this idea amusing. We keep our own private thoughts in our sisters' heads. I did not explain that to her. She is intellectually aware of the nature of the Network, but she does not comprehend it. Explaining it would be hard work, and also against orders, so she is permitted to believe that we are more akin to individuals able with a thought to talk on the phone with another member of the Network.
• A Chance Meeting of Two Moons: Luna and her male Alternate Self Artemis develop a Psychic Link which allows them to telepathically communicate even when they are in different universes.
• Child of the Storm: It is implied that the Sinister clones are a Hive Mind. While it appears that he simply jumps from one cloned body to another, but it has been hinted that multiple clones are active at once as observed by Maddie pointing out he shows up in unexpected places and that she would notice if he were just jumping from one body to another.
• Hellsister Trilogy: Supergirl has a mental link with her Evil Doppelgänger Satan Girl.
• Incompatible Lives: A major twist in the first half of the story is that Blake's dreams are actually the memories of Damian Wayne, who he was cloned from. Damian in turn has been experiencing Blake's memories when he dreams.
• I'm Nobody: Sora is the original person, Roxas is his Nobody^Explanation his physical body moving independently with its own will, and Xion is a Replica based on Sora's memories. They can all see each other's memories via their dreams. This can be very useful when Roxas or Xion need information they wouldn't have otherwise, but it can also lead to very awkward situations, like Sora dreaming about the time Roxas and Tali made out.

Films — Live-Action

• The Dark Crystal: The opening narration states that there are only ten Skeksis and ten Mystics left, and the reason their numbers are precisely equal is revealed as the story unfolds. Any injury or death inflicted on a Skeksis is also suffered by their Mystic counterpart, and the reverse appears true as well. The ending reveals that each Skeksis/Mystic pair was born from the splitting of a single urSkek when the Crystal darkened.
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness establishes that dreams are visions into the lives of your counterparts from parallel universes.^note This means that actual dreams do not exist in the MCU. It also introduces Dreamwalking, a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that allows a magic user to possess and control a doppelganger of their choosing.
• Everything Everywhere All at Once: The denizens of the Alphaverse have developed technology that allows them to access the skills, memories, and even bodies of their parallel universe counterparts. However, this link is one-way only: the counterparts who are accessed black out while their other self is in control and have no memory of what their Alpha doppelganger did in the intervening time.
• The One: If Yulaw and his counterparts are any indication, people can sense and possibly track their alternate selves if they are in the same universe. Both Lawless and Gabe seem to sense Yulaw's approach mere seconds before he attacks them and Yulaw is also able to track Gabe to a hospital and locate the room where he is undergoing an MRI, with no indication that he had to follow Gabe or ask where Gabe was. Later, Gabe is able to track Yulaw to an industrial plant and does indeed confirm that he is doing this by sensing Yulaw's presence in that location.
• Spider-Man: No Way Home: The Raimiverse Peter Parker states that he could feel that his MCU counterpart needed help shortly after being pulled over to his universe.
• Us: The Tethered and their human doppelgangers are "connected" in a vaguely defined way. The Tethered are made to mimic the lives of their surface counterparts, as stated by Red who was made to marry Gabe's Tethered Abraham and give birth to children identical to Adelaide's children. The Tethered are also able to use their link to track their humans as seen throughout the movie.

Literature

• Discworld: When the Split at Birth twin sons of Time, Lobsang Ludd and Jeremy Clockson, first encounter each other, one of them is unconscious — but nonetheless, Susan notices that their lips move at the same time, trying to form the same words.
• Hyperion Cantos: The second book reveals that a restored backup of the John Keats reconstruction is connected to the Body Backup Drive of the original version and can see through the eyes of the woman carrying it. The connection is two-sided.
• Imperial Radch: The Emperor has a Hive Mind across thousands or millions of cloned bodies allowing her to personally oversee her empire.
• In the book version of The Prestige, Alfred has always felt a psychic connection with what he believes to be his long-lost twin. It turns out that Alfred himself is a duplicate of a little boy named Nicholas Julius Borden.
• Spectrum: A Teleporter Accident results in seven copies of Irina now existing across the universe. All of them have a rudimentary awareness of each other's existence (and feel it when one of them dies) but otherwise share no information among themselves.
• The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell: The main villain has dozens of copies of himself, all of which share one mind since they were created by traveling to some universe that appears to duplicate everything on a quantum level. When one of Jim's sons goes through a portal to another universe, he suddenly seems to be in two places at once, having been connected in the same manner to his twin brother on the other side. This is Hand Waved as the twins having been one cell at one point in their development. Finally, when both twins fall in love with the same woman, who also falls in love with both young men, she uses the villain's method to duplicate herself, thus allowing herself to be with both of them at the same time (still one mind but now shared by two bodies).
• Time Enough for Love: Lazarus Long inadvertently has a pair of Opposite-Sex Clones created in order to tempt him to stay alive after the boredom of literally 2300 years of life. Lapis Lazuli Long and her sister Lorelei Lee Long claim to possess this. It's never verified (and the other characters display an uncharacteristic lack of interest in exploring the phenomenon), but they do tend to finish each other's sentences and generally behave like Single-Minded Twins.
• Trinton Chronicles: Aurora can make clones of herself whose pain and death she feels. This has a significant effect on her mental state.
• Void Trilogy: Multiples are humans who spread their minds through numerous cloned bodies, with thoughts and emotions distributed through gaia motes and cybernetics.

Live-Action TV

• Charmed (1998): Most Time Travel episodes had characters synchronized to their past selves so that anything that happened to the past character happened to the time traveler as well. Chris and Wyatt were the most notable examples of this.
• Doctor Who:
  • "City of Death": The villain of this episode is an alien who was split into seven copies of himself and scattered across Earth's history when his spaceship's hyperdrive exploded. The different fragments can communicate telepathically, allowing them to collaborate on his scheme to escape Earth.
  • "The Waters of Mars": The Flood is technically millions upon millions of self-replicating viral microbes distributed through water. They are able to plan and act collectively as a single gestalt. Andy and Tarrak show themselves to be perfectly synchronized when the Flood in them hears Maggie's screams.
  • "The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People": Gangers (short for "doppelgängers") are body duplicates of individual humans made of an organic substance called The Flesh, which are in common use by the 22nd Century. The human and their ganger duplicate are linked through a telepathic remote control harness, allowing the human to maneuver their ganger through hostile environments without putting the human at risk. However, certain freak incidents, such as an electrical storm or solar storm, can sever the link and give the gangers sentience. It is later revealed that the Amy Pond in the first half of Season 6 had been a ganger all along, with the real Amy unaware that she had even been kidnapped because she was mentally experiencing everything her ganger did.
  • "The Vanquishers": When the Doctor is split across three locations, her consciousness tends to switch locations telepathically. The two still within the universe are able to communicate more easily than the one who is stuck in the void between parallel universes. Downplayed, since Time Lords have natural telepathic abilities.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: If a person dies or is injured, their Mirror Universe counterpart suffers the same fate and vice versa. However, if a person is in the void between worlds, only pain will transfer, as shown when The Sovereign is killed, Hercules feels the pain of being stabbed, but survives.
• Power Rangers/Super Sentai:
  • Ninja Sentai Kakuranger: Daimaou creates a Monster of the Week named Daradara, whom he cloned from his own being. When the Rangers discover that Daradara is synchronized to Daimaou, they damage Daimaou which disrupts Daradara's attempt to drain Ninjaman's powers.
  • Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: A Monster of the Week named Demonite had a clone which he sent to attack Ryan, while Demonite himself dealt with the other five Rangers. Any damage inflicted on Demonite would be reflected on his clone and vice versa. Carter saves Ryan by destroying Demonite and thus killing the clone in the process.
  • Power Rangers Wild Force/Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger: Onikage/DoroDoro can make clones of people using their own shadows. He uses this ability to create the Shadow Rangers/Shade DoroDoro to fight the Wild Force Rangers/Gaorangers. The Shadow Rangers are able to predict whatever moves the Rangers are about to make before they execute it and any damage inflicted upon them is reflected back on the Rangers. However, this connection appears to only be one-way as the Rangers can't predict the Shadow Rangers' attacks and the Shadow Rangers can damage them without being hurt themselves. When Onikage tries to use his shadow clone ability on Jindrax/Yabaiba, the latter reflects the attack back on him using a Magic Mirror. Onikage finds himself fighting his own shadow clone and is killed when the Rangers destroy the shadow clone.
• Superman & Lois: In season 2, Clark becomes telepathically linked to a creature in the Shuster Mines. It's revealed that this creature is actually Clark's counterpart from the Bizarro Universe who is trying to stop the Big Bad Duumvirate from accomplishing their goal.
• The Vampire Diaries: This normally isn't the case for Elena and her Evil Doppelgänger Katherine. However, one episode has Katherine order a witch to create a link between herself and Elena to prevent the Salvatores from killing her. They end up non-fatally stabbing Katherine a number of times before being informed of what is happening to Elena.
• The X-Files: The Creepy Twins who serve as the antagonists in "Eve" are human clones created as part of a eugenics experiment to create superhuman soldiers and scientists for the US. The clones appeared to have some kind of unexplained link, as they committed identical crimes at the same time and seemed to be aware of each other's existence despite being 3000 miles apart and having no means of communicating with each other. They even told the exact same story when separately interrogated by Mulder and Scully.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost: Changelings have part of their souls invested in their Fetch, the fae construct left to impersonate them when they're first kidnapped by The Fair Folk. The Fetch can always sense its Changeling's proximity and can learn other uses of the bond, like copying their powers, one-way Synchronization, and negating their defenses in combat.
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • In Third Edition, the Dvati are a humanoid race consisting completely of identical twins, with one soul shared by two bodies. In addition to their Twin Telepathy, the twins can know the health and mental state of each other by concentrating a bit. This mental link also means that some powers targeting them will affect both, notably mind-affecting and personal spells, as well as Level Drain.
  • In Fifth Edition, ancient dragons can gain an ability called "Dragonsight", allowing them to link and communicate with alternate versions of themselves, called echoes, from other worlds on the Material Plane. These dragons can also fuse with their echoes to become greatwyrms.

Video Games

• Kid Icarus: Uprising: Dark Pit discovers that he and Pit are linked in some way when the latter being turned into a ring results in the former becoming an empty husk. As a result, Dark Pit opts to help Pit save Palutena in the Chaos Vortex chapter where he reveals this information. Also Played for Laughs in the same chapter when Pit and Dark Pit perform a battle cry together which Viridi openly mocks as them being mentally in sync.
• Kingdom Hearts: Naminé is Kairi's Nobody. However, Kairi's heart has no darkness, which means her heart didn't turn into a Heartless. So Naminé was formed from Kairi's heart, but Sora's body (It makes sense in... scratch that.) This connection allows Naminé to tamper with Sora's memories.
• Mortal Kombat X: Mileena's ending has becoming mentally linked with several copies of her.
• Prince of Persia: Shadow Man is a dark copy of the Prince created by a Magic Mirror. The pair are synchronised, so that if the Prince manages to hit Shadow Man, or vice versa, both take damage and if he does kill Shadow Man, he dies as well. The solution is to Sheathe Your Sword, and walk into him to perform a Doppelmerger.
• Tales of the Abyss: Asch and his clone Luke have a mental connection that allows them to speak to each other. However, only Asch can initiate it between himself and Luke.
• Xenosaga:
  • The URTV units are child clones of Dr. Dmitri Yuriev and can telepathically communicate with each other. This bond is particularly strong between Albedo and Jr. who were initially conjoined twins, to the point that Jr. can sense when Albedo is reduced to particles.
  • The blond-haired blue-eyed standard U.R.T.V. Units 001 – 665 are a Hive Mind. They regard units 666 – 669 as "monsters", due to the latter possessing emotions and individual consciousnesses.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night: Since Archer is a (possible) future version of Shirou, the latter can unconsciously absorb the former's powers and skills due to being in the same timeline.
• Sunrider: It is revealed that Veniczar Arcadius is a collective of cloned women known as the Prototypes, who share a single mind and identity.

Webcomics

• El Goonish Shive: In the Second Life arc, Ellen Dunkel is mentally linked with an alternate universe version of herself, experiencing her Second Life's memories through dreams. She later discovers this was done to her by Nioi in order to sync up her physical and spiritual ages.
• Girl Genius: Count Drusus Beausoleil is a professor who created clank duplicates of himself to better carry out his duties. After reviewing the Van Rijn notes he got as a reward for betraying Paris to The Other's forces, they became so sophisticated that the sensations experienced by one were shared with the others and the original Beausoleil. The page image above depicts him suffering the pain of death many times over as a result of dozens of his duplicates getting destroyed all at once. He tries to smugly pass off his execution as a minor setback, as the last one in the city is also a clank double. Then the new master of Paris informs him that the real Beausoleil will meet his own doom soon enough, what with him failing his real masters and all. The professor has no comeback to communicate through his proxy, which summarily gets destroyed as well.
• Grrl Power: Harem's superpower is the ability to split herself into up to five bodies, all of whom are a linked Hive Mind, so she shares the sensory imputes and knowledge between them. When Maxima gives one of her bodies a wedgie as revenge for a prank, it sets off a chain reaction of Amusing Injuries among her bodies as they all react simultaneously and wind up tripping, bumping into things, or otherwise accidentally hurting themselves.
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • The second Fleetmind is composed of hundreds of copies of Petey.
  • The Partnership Collective is a Hive Mind composed of mass-cloned snakelike Amoral Attorneys linked by Hypernet implants.

Western Animation

• Ben 10: In "Divided We Stand", Ben unlocks a new alien form named Ditto who has the power of Self-Duplication. Any pain inflicted on one Ditto copy is felt by the others. In the very same episode, Dr. Animo captures Ben while the latter is in Ditto form and copies the alien's duplication powers to give them to his latest creation. Unfortunately for Animo, the process also gave his creature Ditto's weaknesses, so when one died, all the other monster clones disappeared.
• Justice League: In "Fearful Symmetry", Supergirl is troubled by recurring nightmares in which she appears to be killing people who are connected to Cadmus. It turns out that these murders are actually the actions of Galatea, a clone of Supergirl created by Cadmus, and the nightmares Supergirl is having are a result of a psychic link between the two that allowed her to see what Galatea was doing. The Question theorizes that the link works both ways: while Supergirl was having visions of Galatea's murders, Galatea was feeling Supergirl's horror and guilt over these murders which was affecting her work. He's proven correct when he dares Galatea to kill him on the spot and she's unable to bring herself to do it.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Horde Prime ensures that every clone he makes of himself is connected to his hive mind, giving him full control of them. As Hordak and Wrong Hordak demonstrate, the connection can be severed showing the clones have their own distinct personalities.
• Storm Hawks: The Cloning Crystal can make duplicates of a person when exposed to sunlight. The clones and the original all feel pain when one of them is hurt, as Snipe discovers when he hurts one Finn clone and all of them react in pain.
• Transformers: Prime: In "Armada", Starscream creates five clones and orders them to kill Megatron. One of the clones runs into Bulkhead and is beaten to death. This is how Starscream learns that he feels whatever pain is inflicted upon his clones.
  Starscream (preparing to kill the last clone): I feel your pain. Really, I do...

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