Her name's Kay Challis, but most of the time she refers to herself as... Crazy Jane. She was abused by her dad when she was a child. Very badly abused. Her experiences resulted in what psychiatrists call disassociation. Basically, that means she developed multiple personalities to cope with the trauma. Her therapists tells me that so far they've identified 64 personalities, each with its own name and function. And following the effects of the "Gene bomb" each with its own distinct metahuman ability.
— Will Magnus, Doom Patrol #19
Split Personalities differ in many ways, from having different genders to different moral compasses. In settings with superpowers, one way that personalities can differ is their powers. Said personalities might share a set of powers but have one or more powers unique to them, have a unique power or set of powers per personality, or all have variants of a single power or set of powers.
How this can work depends on the setting; in settings where powers are dependent on personality, a person with multiple personalities would naturally develop different powers for each personality. If powers are tied to a person's mind or soul, then a person with split personalities will be explained as having multiple minds/souls with each one having a different power as a result. If each personality once had their own body, then each power will be based on whatever powers they originally had as their own person. Sometimes a person will be explained as having multiple powers with each personality being only having access to particular powers.
If a Split-Personality Merge occurs, expect the fused personality to have access to every single power.
Characters with Superpowered Evil Sides usually aren't this, as the evil personality normally just has their own powers in addition to whatever powers the good personality has. Contrast Superpowered Alter Ego, where only one personality has powers. Examples from video games might overlap with Multi-Slot Character or Stance System.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Darwin's Game has Sui and Souta, which may also combine with Brother–Sister Team (Sui expresses that "Souta" is her brother). Regardless, Sui's sigil in the game, Pollux Light, allows her to manipulate water while Souta's sigil, Castor Light, lets him turn water into ice. Since they can apparently switch back and forth freely, they powers complement each other perfectly, with Sui moving water right where Souta can freeze it.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: King Crimson and its secondary ability, Epitaph are both usable by Diavolo, while his Split Personality Doppio only has free reign over the latter and limited use of the former (which excludes its signature time-erasing ability). King Crimson seems to represent Diavolo, who speaks through his Stand until his identity is revealed.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: During The Big Five's duel against Yugi and Jonouchi, the former possess and share Honda's body, switching control at different points, which has the effect of changing which Deck Master ability is currently active.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: Phantom is a Sharing a Body variation; each personality has their own deck and Extra Deck, which changes when they swap with one another. Since the cards in Phantom's Graveyard, field, and hand don't change, this means he can perform combos that otherwise wouldn't be possible by using cards from multiple personalities.
- YuYu Hakusho: Shinobu Sensui, lead villain of the Chapter Black Saga, has seven distinct personalities as a result of a key event in his past. While only three are seen in combat, two of them have unique powers: the violent Kazuya personality is able to generate a gun barrel in place of his hand, letting him harden and focus Spirit Energy into a bullet, while the original Shinobu personality is the only one with access to Sacred Energy (or Sei Kō Ki), due to it requiring a certain mental state to awaken; he uses it to clad himself in armor and for projectile attacks, including an energy tornado.
Comic Books
- In Bladeshot, every time Sadie kills one of the demons, she absorbs their essence into her, creating a risk that one of those demons will possess her body. On the other hand, whenever a demon takes over, she gets access to a different set of powers; the first demon she absorbs, for instance, grants her the ability to become intangible at will.
- Doom Patrol: Crazy Jane has sixty-four different personalities, each with their own power.
- X-Men: Legion is the son of Professor Charles Xavier and Gabrielle Haller, and unfortunately suffers from a form of schizophrenia that is heavily associated with his powers. Initially, the boy has only three major personalities: Jack Wayne (the telekinetic), Cindy (the pyrokinetic), and Jamail (the telepath). When Legion is erased from the timeline at the conclusion of Age of Apocalypse, his three personalities wander about in the deserts of Israel, until Nightcrawler, Meggan, Shadowcat, and Colossus help them to move on. Then, when Legion reappears in New Mutants (2009) and in subsequent issues, it is revealed that he has numerous personalities inside his mind, each with their own mutant powers.
Fan Works
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Demonic Possession doesn't immediately give the possessor all the powers of their host. If they don't know the right way to cast a magic spell, the possessor would have to learn it having their host demonstrate, then memorize the shown procedure, or forcibly extract the memories. A.k.a a possessed body's individual souls' powers stay individual unless shared, and Ami is one of the few users of the power to possess people that would let the host take control sometimes, and that's because she's Bad Powers, Good People.
- The Royal Protector (The Eternal Winter): Star Butterfly ends up sent to St. Olga's and develops a split personality due to the Mind Rape there, splitting her between her Ax-Crazy hedonistic side and her Princess Classic side, with each only able to cast spells that relate to the personality.
Literature
- Aetheral Space: Split-Personality Team Bruno and Serena del Sed each developed separate Aether techniques. Bruno can create solid shields from air pressure, while Serena can form materials she touches into swords. Having different powers is the reason the two of them exist — the technique of the original del Sed personality, Yakob, let him create new personalities to fulfil different roles, such as offence and defence.
- The Stormlight Archive: Invoked by Shallan with help from her Lightweaving powers. Due to her trauma-induced phobia of wielding a Shardblade, she creates a new persona, Radiant, to allow her to practice swordsmanship, and it quickly becomes a full-fledged split personality.
Live-Action TV
- In Avataro Sentai Donbrothers, Jiro Momotani has two personalities which each have separate heroic identities. The energetic good side becomes Don Doragoku, while the bloodthirsty "Dangerous Jiro" becomes Don Torabolt.
- An episode of Forever Knight has Nick investigate a murder with a woman as a possible suspect. She later turns out to have multiple personalities. She also turns out to be a vampire, something only one of her personalities is aware of. Natalie later points out that her other personalities didn't display various vampire traits. For example, she was able to survive being in direct sunlight.
Tabletop Games
- Deviant: The Renegades: The Alternate Persona Scar has two Deviations that, when taken together results in a Deviant whose Variations can only be used by a particular personality; Inferior Persona makes it so that the alternate personality can only use Variations entangled to the Alternate Persona Scar, while Superior Persona prevents the primary personality from using Variations entangled with Alternate Persona.
Video Games
- Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: Tink combines this trope with Stance System; his lecherous red form has the ability to become stronger when near female characters, while his more timid blue form receives a bonus to his movement stat.
- The Guilty Gear series has Zappa, playable in the Guilty Gear XX series. He's a common man possessed by a vengeful spirit called S-Ko, as well as four other spirits (Dog, Sword, Ghost, and Raoh) who take turns possessing Zappa in-game. Each spirit has its own moveset, with a few of them being shared between all spirits.
- Honkai Impact 3rd has a variation that uses knowledge rather than superpowers; Vill-V is known for "partitioning" her own mind; she has about 8 of them, with each having their own focus of expertise, such as being a Stage Magician, an engineer, a chef, a spiritualist, etc.
- The basic premise of Killer7 is that you play as the Smith Syndicate, which is really the seven personalities of an old man named Harman Smith. Each of his personalities has different weapons, attributes, and Personality Powers which are required to progress through levels and fight bosses. When switching personalities, the character model changes completely (ranging from a blind kid to a muscled Masked Luchador to a barefoot woman in a dress) and other characters also seem to perceive Smith as the personality in cutscenes. Five of them are freely switchable in gameplay, but two are more unique: Harman himself is only available in predetermined sections and Garcian, the cleaner, is only usable when another personality has been killed and he is used to recover the dead persona and have it revived. Fitting, since it's Garcian who is the actual body although even Garcian isn't his original personality... it's all a bit of a Mind Screw.
- Lost Ruins: The unlockable Another Side, Another Story mode has a Many Spirits Inside of One protagonist, instead of just personalities, transforming between each spirit gives access to the powers of their original body, but can't use all of them at once, meaning that the ability to roll and fit into small gaps, for instance, is locked to one of the three forms, although all three bodies have movement abilities, but only rolling can fit into small gaps.
- Neverwinter Nights 2: In the Mask of the Betrayer expansion, the Player Character is given the option of recruiting a follower called One of Many, a Mind Hive created from the undead souls of people who were burned alive in a furnace. Three different personalities can take control of the Mind Hive, which changes its class and function within the party — The Child acts as a stealthy rogue, The Brute turns it into a bloodthirsty barbarian, and The Madwoman grants it the spellcasting abilities of a warlock.
- Persona 4: Arena Ultimax: Sho Minazuki has two identities of which only one, the "Minazuki" personality, can use a Persona, Tsukuyomi. The "Sho" personality, on the other hand, is a Badass Normal.
- Soul Series: Downplayed. Tira's mind is split between "Jolly" Tira and "Gloomy" Tira. While the two don't have radically different capabilities, their attacks do have different animations and properties, with Gloomy being more aggressive and Jolly being more tricky. They'll both become dominant at different points in the battle, usually after a lot of damage is given or taken.
Western Animation
- Transformers: Animated: Blitzwing is a Triple-Changer, a Transformer with two alternate modes, who possesses three personalities as a result of the experiments that made him a Triple-Changer. His personalities are Icy, who possesses ice powers on and transforms into a jet, Hothead, who possesses fire powers and transforms into a tank, and Random, who possesses both of Icy and Hothead's powers and transformations. In something a deconstruction of this trope, one of Blitzwing's weaknesses is that since his transformations are involuntary, if one were to trick him into switching from one personality to the other, he would have no choice but to transform into the respective vehicle mode, even if the other personality's mode would be more useful.
