Split Personality - Television Tropes & Idioms

Zetsu: One of the extreme examples.

"Hello, me, meet the real me!"

Megadeth, "Sweating Bullets"

"Isn't it true that at these times [Fred Flintstone] often descends into a delusional state, sometimes actually adopting another person's persona?"

Harvey Birdman, Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law

"I used to be schizophrenic, but we're fine now."

In real life, Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, or MPD) is an extremely rare condition, and there is some controversy as to whether or not it even exists. The condition as it is understood to modern psychology, if it does exists, is of an individual who has no control (at least initially) over when personalities switch - although there is often a 'trigger' - who does not remember what happens to the alternate identity/identities. The condition is thought to result when a child copes with abuse by convincing themself that it's happening to someone else; as such, the trigger is generally some condition the child is trying to dissociate themselves from, by means of creating a sub-personality who gets put "in charge".

Like many things, MPD/DID is represented (and misrepresented) frequently in television and other media. Characters with a split personality are surprisingly common, but most of them don't quite match the textbook definition of dissociative identity disorder. In older media it will often be called "schizophrenia" even by psychologist characters, despite the fact that this is a completely unrelated psychological disorder. (Schizophrenia literally means "split brain," but split in a much different way; it's more like being on a really bad drug trip.)

See also Double Consciousness, Identity Amnesia, Jekyll And Hyde, Superpowered Evil Side, Split Personality Merge and Split Personality Takeover. If the split personality is the antagonist, it's the Enemy Within. Shapeshifting is sometimes involved.

If the two personalities are aware of each other, expect a Gollum Made Me Do It situation to develop. If the Split Personality gets its own body, that's Enemy Without.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Pictured above: Zetsu from Naruto has two well-differenced halves. His right side is black and speaks in a deep voice, while his left side is white and talks in a lighter voice. Both halves can talk with each other, and sometimes argue! The English dub even gives each half a completely different voice-actor!
- Zetsu can even split his personalities (and body) into two different halves. Another example is Jugo, whose case overlaps with Superpowered Evil Side since, like noted on the page, his powers cause the split personality but activate independently, and as such, the change between the two has nothing to do with whether or not he uses his powers.
- To a lesser extent, Ka rin.
On Dragonball, the character Launch (or Lunch, depending on the translation) would go from a sweet, naive, blue-haired (or black-haired in the manga) girl to a hot-tempered, gunslinging, criminally-inclined blonde (dubbed "Kushami", Japanese for "sneeze", by fans) and back again whenever she sneezed.
Lady Une of Gundam Wing developed split personalities out of her love for her boss Treize, one a cold-hearted, calculating Colonel Badass, the other a kind, soft-spoken peace advocate. She has a few moments of near breakdown before being shot roughly halfway through the series and remaining comatose until the final arc. The coma apparently gives her time to resolve her issues, and when she wakes up she has Iron Une's military and strategic skills and Saint Une's compassion and desire for peace.
The "Other Momoka" from Keroro Gunsou, as well as Private Tamama.
Parodied in an episode of Excel Saga, in which a cute detective channels her late father whenever she puts on his hat. At the end of the series, its played straight with Il Palazzo shows another kind of split personality, becoming possessed by his own desire to conquer. This was a definite case of a Super Powered Evil Side, along with elements of demonic possession. In the manga, of course, which had more time for these things, the split personality was more of a subversion, the only real differences being in fashion sense and prefered targets- neither was evil or good, and both were slightly insane.
- It's still a bit unclear how Lord Il Palazzo's personalities work in the manga. Sometimes it seems that it's only a case of varying amnesia, varyingly remembering and forgetting things from his past, which shape his motives, but one consistent difference has been that sometimes he is fond of Excel and tries to get her to remember something (maybe), while other times he wants her gone.
Yami Yugi in Yu-Gi-Oh! is initially presented as one of these, before it is revealed that he is actually the spirit of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. The same goes for Yami Bakura, but not Yami Marik, who is a more traditional split personality caused by childhood trauma. Ironically, Yugi's GX successor is a true example.
Mahoraba's Kozue Aoba has four alternate personalities, switching to one at random whenever she's shocked or surprised. Her eye colors change for each personality, and each personality prefers to wear her hair differently. She switches back to normal by going unconscious. While each personality is pretty distinct from the rest, they all have several distinct traits they share, particularly a liking for her crush and a major thing for umeboshi.
Shinobu Sensui in Yu Yu Hakusho was a pure innocent before encountering the Black Book Club, rich men who tortured demons for fun. He couldn't bring himself to kill humans (as opposed to demons), and so developed another personality to do the dirty work. Over the years, he developed six alternate personalities, switching between them depending on the situation. Each one has a different level of power; the original one, Shinobu, is the most powerful of them all... and is still an innocent, as he let the others do the dirty work.
In the manga Othello, the shy main character Yaya switches to her alter ego, bold and assertive Nana, when she sees her reflection.
In Card Captor Sakura, Yukito Tsukisgiro turns out to be the 'disguise' of Yue, Kero's counterpart. Yue changes into Yukito on purpose, but Yukito has no idea Yue exists and cannot remember anything that happens to Yue. He doesn't know that his comically large appetite is due to the fact that he's actually eating for two (the other being a powerful magic-user.)
- He later comes to realize what goes on... when Touya gives his powers to Yue so neither he nor Yukito would disappear.
A particularly odd case takes place in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, where Kaere Kimura has a split personality that contains an aggressive foreigner persona and an over-the-top Yamato Nadeshiko persona.
Another strange example is Sukisho in which both Sora and Sunao developed split personalities, Yoru and Ran respectively, due to experiences they were subjected to as children. The catch: the split personalities Yoru and Ran have a romantic relationship...unlike Sora and Sunao. Ever now and then the split personalities will take over and some, or, depending on the degree of the situation, extreme awkwardness follows
Gundam00: Allelujah Haptism has a rather pyschotic other half that he calls Hallelujah.
- Soma Pieres has this as well. Her name is Marie Parfacy
  - Actually, it's the other way round. Marie Parfacy was the original girl, and Soma is her split personality
Air Gear: The perky, happy Akito has another personality, the violent and curse-spewing Agito, who was created after his older brother locked him in a cage and forced him into fighting against other AT users. Who's in charge can usually be indicated by his Eyepatch Of Power. The manga, however, went even further and introduced a third personality named Lind, who seems to be more mature and worldly than the two of them. Consider this troper confused all to hell.
MPD Psycho really drives this trope to utter extremes. Hell, some of the multiple personalities even appear in other physical bodies, and this even when their original physical body has died. Which might make this manga a slight twist.
Nyu/Lucy in Elfen Lied. One's has the mental capacities of a small child, the other's an insanely powerful killer out to take out a significant portion of humanity.
Tyki Mikk of D.Gray-Man has commented how having a light side and a dark side makes life more fun. He can be a perfectly ordinary, personable man, but is also a trememdous sadist and has killed at least five Exorcists, including one of the Generals. Most of the other Noah have similar Split Personalities, albeit somewhat less extreme.
Yumie Takagi, berserker soldier of the Iscariot Organization in Hellsing. The (not canon for the series) Cross Fire stories in the first three manga volumes involve her being brought out for various assassinations, to the dismay of her other personality, a thoroughly sweet nun named Yumiko.
Jamie Hemeros in Zoids New Century Zero develops a cocky ace pilot alter-ego named Wild Eagle who takes control during battles every now and then. Although popular opinion seems to suggest that this happens when Jamie breaks the sound barrier in his Zoid, Wild Eagle actually seems to appear only when Jamie gets overly stressed out in battle.
In the second season of Princess Tutu, Mytho starts to complain of "another me" being inside of him, an evil personality that quickly begins to take over more and more. Later, it's revealed that it's actually the result of one of his heart shards being tainted with Raven's blood.
Inuyasha has Suikotsu of the Band of Seven, who has three personalities: a kind and caring doctor who has no awareness of the other two, an ultra-violent killing machine who knows of the other two and despises his gentler personality, and an "in-between" personality who is aware of the others and serves the Band of Seven while remaining calmer and more rational than his bloodlusting counterpart.
Motoko in Change 123 has three split personalities named Hibiki, Fujiko, and Mikiri - collectively known as HiFuMi (1, 2, 3) - that materialize whenever she's in danger. These split personalities come from her Training From Hell under three different adoptive fathers. Changes in hair color, eye color, muscle and cup size come with it, along with martial arts styles — each personality, other than Motoko, are martial arts masters in a single specific field.
- A 5th personality emerges at one point called Zero. Zero represents all of Motoko and HiFuMi's negative emotions, and is very unstable — Oh, and she has all the other personalities martial arts expertise, at the same time, and is super strong, to boot. Recent translated chapters of the manga insinuate that Motoko might indeed just be another alternate personality, with Zero being the real person.
Suzuho in Macademi Wasshoi is usually quiet and meek, communicating only through sketchbook messages. When she removes her ribbon, her other side comes out, which is pretty much the exact opposite in personality. Violent, talkative, and, for some reason, blue-haired.
Paranoia Agent has a woman whose split personality (who is far more promiscuous and thrill-seeking) actually leaves messages for her on her answering machine. And threats. Frightening stuff.
- This is actually a moment where MPD is depicted accurately. There have been recorded cases of personalities threatening other personalities. (Even going as far as causing bodily damage)
Another example from a work by Satoshi Kon is the title character of Paprika, who is the dream avatar of Dr. Atsuko Chiba. Paprika is everything that Chiba isn't and secretly wants to be.
The Big Bad in Part 5 of Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure has two personalities. There's Doppio, a borderline autistic, childlike man, and Diavolo, a cunning, violent and paranoid mafia boss. His hair color, eyes, and size change drastically and his Stand power changes form as well. Doppio communicates with Diavolo by holding random objects to his face like a phone (after hearing schizophrenic ringing).
Usopp from One Piece may be developing this. When it was first introduced, "Sogeking" was an assumed name and Paper Thin Disguise Usopp used (the reasons are complicated). Usopp acted rather differently while in his Sogeking disguise, even managing to score his first real Big Damn Heroes moment before reverting back to his old, cowardly self after circumstances changed and he was able to remove the mask. During a later fight (as Usopp), he is actually depicted mentally arguing with Sogeking. It may still be metaphorical, though-the author often does this sort of thing, and has never given a straight answer confirming or denying this theory.
- If memory serves, when he turns into Sogeking in One Piece: Unlimited Cruise, he says something like "Save me, Sogeking!" which might indicate they are different personalities.
Averted in Kara No Kyoukai: Tohko correctly identifies that what Shiki used to have before her coma can't be dissociative identity disorder, given it's complexity.
Shiki: "There's nothing funny about having a dual personality."
Tohko: "No, no. You know, you two don't have anything as pleasing to look at as dissociative identity disorder. Existing simultaneously, each having their own unique will, and on top of that your actions are coordinated. That sort of complex personality shouldn't be called a "dissociated identity," but rather a "united independent personality."
Inner Moka from Rosario To Vampire is an example of this.
Nobara Ibaragi in Gakuen Alice has some sort of split personality - one personality adores and wants to protect the main character, and the other does whatever her evil 'teacher' tells her to do.
Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist is revealed to suffer a sui generis, mindblowingly over the top case of this. Long story short: he is a human Philosopher's Stone, these are made out of many people's souls, do the math. He has devoted most of his life to isolate, communicate with and befriend each of these 536329 different people "living" within him.
In Monster, Johan is indeed a real person, but Inspector Lunge (or Runge) is convinced that he is an alternate personality of Dr. Tenma.
- Wolfgang Grimmer, meanwhile, occasionally blacks out when physically threatened. When he recovers, everyone who threatened him is dead. He refers to the personality that takes over as "the Mighty Steiner", after a show he watched as a child (where the title character is the superhero persona of an unknowing boy).
This is currently a MAJOR SPOILER, but in Karneval, Yogi has one. His usually gold hair turns silver as an indication.
In King Of Thorn, the English translation says Alice has schizophrenia, but it later becomes clear that it's actually DID - being abused by her family caused her to develop an alternate personality called Laloo, who would take the abuse for her. After she became infected with Medusa, Laloo manifested as an Enemy Without.

Comic Books

Two-Face, of Batman fame, alternates between the just Harvey Dent and the maniacal Two-Face.
Dr. Banner in The Incredible Hulk was a different person when transformed into the Hulk. The comics took it to extremes, with different versions of the Hulk with different personalities: in addition to the traditional "Savage Hulk", there also developed a sneaky, amoral version called Joe Fixit (who was grey, like in the Hulk's first appearance). Eventually, the personalities were integrated into the "Merged Hulk", but this was retconned to be just another personality, the Professor (who had Banner's brainpower, Fixit's cunning, and most of Savage Hulk's strength).
- Two other personalities in Bruce's lineup are the Devil Hulk, a reptilian creature that lacks any sense of guilt, and the Green Scar, who combines Fixit's cunning with the Savage's strength, and over time develops to become possibly the strongest Hulk incarnation of all.
Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol featured, among other characters, Kay Challis, also known as Crazy Jane, who had no less than sixty-four separate personalities, each with its own name and function, and after a "gene-bomb" was detonated during an alien invasion of Earth, each with its own superhuman ability.
Triplicate Girl/Triad from the Legion Of Super Heroes tends to show signs of this trope when she splits apart. The version of her in the Post-Zero Hour reboot was explicitly written as having three distinct personalities when split — which was considered a mental illness on her homeworld, although her grandmother insisted it was natural, and suppressing the different aspects was what was unhealthy.
- Then again, arguing with yourself is considered pretty nutty on this planet, too.
- The current version takes this a little far; her entire civilisation consists of triplicates of the same person. The one/three who are members of the Legion, however, have had so many different experiences from the others that the rest won't let them rejoin.
The DC Comics character Etrigan the Demon was bonded to man named Jason Blood as punishment for being tempted by Morgaine Le Fay into betraying Camelot. Jason switches places and lets Etrigan take over when there's superheroing to be done. (He's a prime example of Cursed With Awesome.)
The DCU also has had two different Rose and Thorn characters over the years, one whose Thorn persona was a villain, and a later one whose Thorn is a hero.
This troper remembers a Star Wars comic, where after a Jedi kills a love in a fit of jealousy she develops a dissociative disorder. One personality is a crazed killer, murdering women that remind her of the one her love was cheating on her with, while the normal personality obsessively "chases" this killer.
Jeanne-Marie Beaubier, aka Aurora of the Marvel Universe's Alpha Flight had at least two separate personalities when first introduced: the demure and timid "Jeanne-Marie" and the forthright and fun-loving "Aurora". Flashbacks in an early issue of Alpha Flight revealed that the "Aurora" personality split off from "Jeanne-Marie" after she was severely beaten by the nuns who were raising her. Originally, only "Aurora" had superpowers (not surprisingly, since the nuns had beaten Jeanne-Marie for telling them she could fly — she could, but they assumed she was lying), and if too much stress caused her to revert to the "Jeanne-Marie" personality in a crisis, it could cause serious problems. In her more recent appearances, she's shown signs of having a third, unnamed, personality, whose main characteristic is being psychopathically violent.
Similar to Crazy Jane, Professor X's son Legion originally possessed three personalities with a distinct psychic power (one was telekinetic, one was telepathic, one was pyrokinetic). This was later expanded to an unnamed number of personalities ALL with a unique power. Unfortunately, when these personalities were successfully merged, the new, improved Legion decided the best thing to do was to travel back in time to kill Magneto (he missed, killing his own father and unintentionally spawning the Age Of Apocalypse timeline).
Mary Walker, a supervillainess most commonly associated with Daredevil, has three distinct personalities. The "Mary" personality is a timid, quiet, pacifist; her "Typhoid Mary" persona is adventurous, lustful and violent; her "Bloody Mary" personality is sadistic, brutal, and hates all men.
Insane robot and Avengers villain Ultron. Every model has a new, different personality, culminating in one version which contained every previous personality constantly vying for supremacy, basically making him eight unstable megalomaniacs in one.
Ultron gets it honest, apparently, as his/her creator and 'father' figure, Dr. Henry Pym, underwent a period of insanity where he not only believed himself to be an entirely different person, but claimed to have actually killed Pym. While this was eventually resolved, he's still not the most stable of people, to the point that when he was Skrull-replaced, they went through multiple agents specifically because each one that imitated him eventually developed his mental problems and had to be eliminated to keep the cover from being blown.
Shasti from Adam Warren's version of the Dirty Pair is an Artificial Human deliberately engineered with four personalities for different tasks.
Copycat from DV8, whose four personalities are each represented by different fonts and Word Balloons.
There's one story by German comic writer Walter Moers with a "schizophrenic" guy who says that he "counts for two" because of his two personalities, of which he is aware, and who switch pretty fast. One of them is pretty boring and essentially just says things like "me too". Yes, it's neither correct nor PC.
Grant Morrison's run on Batman revealed that Batman, who prepares for everything, deliberately cultivated a back-up personality should the Bruce Wayne/Batman persona be incapacitated.
Jack Ryder sometimes sees The Creeper as a completely different personality.

Film

Another well-known example is Gollum and Smeagol ("Stinker" and "Slinker") from Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings. In the live-action movies, the two personalities frequently carry on conversations, to the point that they're practically two minds consciously coexisting simultaneously in the same head. This split-personality theme is less pronounced in the earlier animated movies or the original books, but still present. See entry under Gollum Made Me Do It.
- This troper once read a dissertation by some psych students which came to the conclusion that whatever Gollum's got, it's not DID. Among the reasons cited are that people who have it generally aren't aware that they have another personality, and they certainly can't have conversations with one another (armed with this knowledge, Niki from Heroes, below, kind of gets my hackles up when a psychiatrist tells her she has a classic case of Multiple Personality Disorder. No she fucking doesn't you quack.).
In the movie Primal Fear, the shy and gentle Aaron, on trial for killing the archbishop, is revealed to have a split personality named Roy who is much more outspoken and aggressive and did in fact kill the clergyman. At the end, we also find out that Aaron doesn't actually have a split personality; the more disturbing truth is that Roy created Aaron and has been hiding behind the fake personality for years.
Fight Club made this its most ingenious twist.
The premise of the Farrelly Brothers' movie Me, Myself and Irene.
- Yet another example where it is incorrectly labeled as schizophrenia.
Sybil, based on a 'true story' of Shirley Ardell Mason.
The first plot twist of the movie Identity.

Literature

In the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel The Strange Case Of Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde, Dr. Henry Jekyll develops a formula what separates his good and evil sides inside of him. By drinking that potion he can transform himself into the villainous Edward Hyde, making this trope Older Than Radio.
The protagonist of Simon Hawke's "Tribe of One" trilogy (set in the Dark Sun setting of Dungeons And Dragons) is a man with more personalities than he can count, who walks Athas in search of a way to bring his fractured mind together.
In the Lord Of The Rings and related materials, it is suggested that Gollum's personality developed from Smeagol talking to the Ring ("my precious") which he eventually identified as part of himself.
Subverted to hell and gone in the novel Blindsight: one of the characters is a linguist with three surgically-induced alter personalities (known collectively as the Gang of Four). Some time is taken up in discussion of twentieth-century attitudes towards MPD, which are largely dismissed as barbaric and irrational.
Altogether Andrews, from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, has eight personalities, none of which answer to Andrews. There's also Agnes Nitt and her alter ego Perdita X Dream, who started out as a name she thought was cool in Lords And Ladies, then became the embodiment of her id in Maskerade, then became a full-on Split Personality in Carpe Jugulum.
- This is apparently not that uncommon on the Discworld. Perdita is explained as having come about specifically because Agnes took a part of herself-her desire to not be a nice girl with a good personality-and gave it a name. Her senior witches muse to themselves that giving something a name gives it life, too. Rincewind's conscience and Sam Vimes's inner rage are also sometimes depicted as semi-sentient, especially in Night Watch, where Vimes refers to it as "The Beast". In Thud!, we find Vimes also has an "inner watchman", who ends up kicking a powerful vengeance spirit out of Vimes' mind.
- Mightly Oates also suffers from this, dividing into a skeptic part and a devout part. At one point he considered having himself exorcized. And, like Agnes/Perdita, he is resistant to vampiric mind control, because they can control only one mind per brain.
Lord Mark Vorkosigan, from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, developed four extra personalities to resist torture: Gorge, Grunt, Howl and Killer. While he learns to control them, they explicitly do not go away. Fortunately they are all fixated of protecting/aiding Mark to the best of their abilities from the getgo and even like his girlfriend.
- Mark's brother/progenitor Miles hovers upon the verge of this trope when is undercover identity of Admiral Naismith threatens to become a fully separate persona. Mark also laments that at least Mile's alter ego is the sort of person you can dress up and take out to a party if the need arises compared to his far more primal alters.
The Christian novel Thr3e (as well as The Movie Of The Book) contains an example of this trope: The killer who's been chasing the protagonist is actually a split personality of the protagonist. But wait! Isn't the title "three"? That's right! It turns out his childhood friend who's been helping him solve the mystery is also one of his split personalities.
Sybil
Sidney Sheldon's novel Tell Me Your Dreams is about a woman who fears she is being stalked, and her two co-workers who become concerned about her. It is eventually revealed that all three are the same person; the main character developed two separate personalities because she could not handle the trauma of childhood sexual abuse.
In Stephen King's The Dark Tower series introduces two characters in the second book: Odetta Holmes, a fairly well-to-do black woman who lost her legs and is generally surviving the 1960's as best she can; and Detta Walker, who is dangerous, brutal, and very bitter. The two personalities are almost completely unaware of each other, at least until the plot comes knocking. At the book's climax, the two personalities integrate into Susannah Dean, who possesses the good sense of the former, and the tenacity and will of the latter.
The fanbase is still split (pun completely unintentional) over whether "Lews Therin" is actually Rand's former incarnation, or just another symptom of his madness.
- This one is both Jossed AND confirmed by "Knife of Dreams". Lews Therin actually is the former incarnation, which does not help Rand's situation, for it shows how far his madness has progressed. In Semirhage's words (the gist) "The descent into terminal insanity can be...abrupt." According to her, through a fellow Forsaken with past experience studying mental illness, the theory was that not all split personalities are past lives, but those that were had it worse, as there could literally be no cure or treatment.
Holmes/Moriarty/Jack the Ripper in The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (yeah, it was a weird book).
Jade, from the Whateley Universe. Not only does her alter ego, Jinn, fit her BIT - whereas Jade is actually named Jared and has been stuck as an eleven year old boy since she was eleven (they're actually fourteen now) - but Jinn is a telekinetic manifestation of Jade's spirit. Or so the current theory goes. The events of one of the earlier stories results in Jade discovering that she can also split off additional manifestations, which are dubbed Jann, Jeanie, Jamie the Spy Speck, etc. Her current limit is four if she wants to stay conscious, or five if she's fine with passing out.
In Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' Persistence of Memory, Erin suffers from DID with the complication that her alter comes from psychic residue from a vampire attack on her pregnant mother. While the alter that manifests is just the psychic remnant, the basis for Erin's alter, Shevaun, is a very real and very dangerous vampire.
In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Red Fury, the Blood Magic gives the Bloodfiends the Genetic Memory of all those whose blood they drank, giving them effective multiple unintegrated personalities — and a fierce desire to drink more blood, worsening the problem. Rafen, fighting one, can clearly recognize the source of its sblood, and dying, it might have said, "Brother."
"Runt" from Wraith Squadron manages to skirt the reality issue by being, well, an alien - he has a number of highly specialized minds, such as the Pilot and the Student; this is noted to be natural and healthy for his species, and learning to switch quickly between personalities is helpful for him. Lara Notsil/Gara Petothel/Kirney Slane, though she might appear to fit the trope and once dreamed of her different personas arguing, is really a spy who started Becoming The Mask and soon had a genuine desire to defect, as well as some unstable identity issues. No split personality.
This is only the start of the trouble in Michael Slade's Ghoul.
Matt Ruff's novel Set this house in order is about Andrew Gage, the "public face" of a multiple personality. And that's just the beginning.
The Dragonlords are born with two souls/identities: one human and one dragon. This overlaps into Sharing A Body in that the two personalities are fully aware of each other and even converse at times. The main character, Linden, has trouble controlling the anger issues of his dragon side, Rathan. His mate's infant-like dragon side refuses to acknowledge her.

Live Action TV

Dollhouse has two: Alpha and Echo. However, Echo only gets it the last two episodes, and they're both a literal case of many personalities.
Niki Sanders on Heroes has "Jessica", the personality of her dead sister, as an amoral alter ego with super-strength. This may be justified by being a superpower rather than a pre-existing condition, but this has yet to be made explicit.
- They've since clarified that it's neither: some people just can't handle having superpowers and the stress causes a dissociative break.
  - Making this one a quite literal Superpowered Evil Side.
- When "Jessica" kills their father in early S1, it's made clear that he was abusive to the point of killing Nikki's sister Jessica, after whom the alter is names. Only the "Jessica" alter remembers, which resembles real theories of DID fairly well. In S2, a third, party girl personality, who apparently began as a mere alias, emerges.
While this is a staple trope of daytime soap operas, the soap One Life To Live took this to an extreme. Not only did established character Victoria Lord Buchanan develop a number of personalities (the most notorious of which was streetwalker Niki Smith, a full contrast to Viki's upper-crust manner), her daughter Jessica later developed her own split (tough girl Tess). Apparently, in the OLTL universe, split personality is a genetic disorder. In addition, Viki's brother, Todd Manning, at one point was also thought to suffer from DID, with 5 separate personalities: the original Todd, Tommy, a little boy who was the abused Todd as a small child, Rodd, an Italian-accented charmer and Peter, a representation of Todd's abusive step-father, and a strict female personality that served as the Gatekeeper. At the end of the storyline, Todd admitted he'd been faking all of the personalities, but as he left town (the actor was leaving the show) a last scene showed Todd and all of his personalities on the plane giving it something of a Or Is It? ending.
The United States Of Tara, with four alternate personalities; a sex-and-drugs addict 15-year-old called T, a disturbing Stepford Smiler housewife named Alice, and a male, rowdy, alcohol and brawls loving motorist called Buck, along with The Mysterious Gimme, who was unknown even to Tara.
In the third season of Homicide Life On The Street, a serial killer turns out to have multiple personalities, including a seven-year-old girl. One detective tricks this personality into burning herself, so another personality sues the precinct. However, it is implied that this may all be a ruse on the killer's part.
Shawn and Gus run into a character with three personalities on Psych. Two are male, one is a female, and one is the killer, who is (understandably) a little ticked off that the female personality is scheming to get a sex change.
- When Gus points out how rare the condition is, it is hand-waved by Shawn pointing out it only has to happen once to be true.
On the British soap opera Holly Oaks, troubled emo kid Newt has an alternate personality called "Eli", who trashes the Deans' house and encourages him to run away from his foster home. In recent episodes he now plans to find and kill the real Eli (a friend from his days in the social care system) in the hope of banishing the "Eli" personality.
On Ally Mc Beal, one client was the original personality, who wanted treatment to get rid of the alter-ego, who hired another firm to protect it's existence. The court found in favour of the original personality, which the treatment then unexpectedly eliminated. This is a case of Did Not Do The Research, as the treatment for DID is to integrate the personalities together.
Nip Tuck one of the episodes is Montana/Sassy/Justice one wants her ankles fixed and another one wants her breasts gone because she is 5, this is the same person mind you.
Law and Order:SVU has had a multiple personality woman (Cynthia Nixon) killing her abusive dad She gets not guilty by reason of insanity, she was faking it
This is the premise of the short-lived series My Own Worst Enemy
In The Sarah Connor Chronicles episode "Allison from Palmdale," Cameron suffers a glitch due to combat damage she took earlier in the series. As a result, she takes on a completely different identity and personality, that of a girl named Allison Young, a future resistance fighter whom her body was modeled after and then subsequently killed. By the end of the episode, she recovers, though not without supplying the stuff of many an unpleasant dream in the process.
In one episode of Stargate SG-1, Carter likens being host to a Tok'ra symbiote to having schizophrenia. They meant DID. Apparently, they later did their research, and as though to pay penance for their error, made an episode where Daniel Jackson actually got schizophrenia from an Applied Plebotinum that was intended to kill Goa'uld.
- Since DID patients generally aren't aware of their other personalities, but some schizophrenia manifests as hearing voices in your head, maybe they did mean schizophrenia. The Tok'ra host and symbiote are conscious at the same time regardless of who is controlling the body, and communicate with each other mentally.
Criminal Minds used this twice: once in second season, when Reid was kidnapped by a man with three personalities, one of whom tortured him, one of whom drugged him, and the last of whom played Russian roulette, and once in fourth season, when the rapes and murders of young men in Florida over spring break turn out to be the work of a woman named Amanda in the body of a guy named Adam. In the first case, all of the personalities were aware of each other, although it's not clear that they knew they inhabited the same body. In the second, only the secondary personality is aware of the condition, which leads to a Split Personality Takeover.
The Doctor Who audio Omega has a sort-of case of this: Omega, half of whose personality is under the delusion that he's the Doctor and that Omega isn't inhabiting the same body as he is. However, it's clearly not DID and has rather more sci-fi causes.
An episode of CSI had a woman faking multiple personalities to get an insanity plea

Tabletop Games

Eldar from Warhammer 40000 cultivate separate personae for wartime and peacetime so that they do not lose themselves to their bloodlust. The dang things are scary when they get pissed...

Video Games

This also happened in the Space Ace video game (which later became a short-lived cartoon). After being struck by the bad guy's "Infanto-Ray", Ace would sometimes involuntarily transform into Dexter, a skinny, nerdy, teenage alter-ego.
One of the villains in Xenogears turns out to be one of the main characters that the player has been playing as. The villain's name, "Id", should be a vital clue to those with knowledge of psychology.
- The character in question had at least four personalities. Five, if you count the little boy whom Id calls "the coward". Even more if you consider reincarnations and Grahf.
Xeno Saga Episode II also has a mini-boss who alternates between two personalities, one of which is cold and cruel, the other of which is hot-blooded and nasty. Oddly enough she doesn't feature in any story sequences and is just a throwaway boss.
In Killer 7, the player-controlled character actually has seven distinct personalities, with their own looks, special abilities, everything. There's even a personality that's albino, one that's paraplegic, and one that's a woman.
- In the first versions of killer7 the physical body that everybody else sees is Garcian's. There was either a cutscene or just a part of a level that showed this when Dan walked into a bathroom and saw ~~himself~~ Garcian. This is also alluded to in the released game when confronting Curtis Blackburn when he says "you turned into a badass"
Ford Cruller in Psychonauts suffers from this due to a battle that shattered his psyche in the past and is only able to remain stable within his underground sanctuary, which houses one of the largest psitanium deposits. His personalities are all named Cruller and serve as several different roles in the camp, ranging from Ranger Cruller, Admiral Cruller, Chef Cruller, and so on.
- Also Fred Bonaparte and his split personality Napoleon Bonaparte—Fred knows he's crazy, he just can't seem to get rid of Napoleon until Raz helps him out.
Manah, the Creepy Child Big Bad of Drakengard seems at first to be suffering from this. It later turns out to be part-Split Personality, part-Demonic Possession.
Slightly subverted in Super Robot Wars Original Generations. After Lamia Loveless had been repaired, her voice box got worse that she sounds like something else that is out of her character, she could sound enthusiastic or just plain cutesy, making it feel like she has different 'modes' of personality. Of course, she quickly reverts back to her calm, cool self afterwards, with much confusion on the events.
- And played straight in Mugen no Frontier: SRW OG Saga, whereas Lamia Expy Aschen Brodel REALLY have personality split disorder. Just wait until she reveal some skin, and all the stoic android facade got replaced with a Genki Girl personality.
And still in Super Robot Wars, Split Personality is the gimmick of the heroine of SRW Destiny, Cliana Rimskaya. One is a rougher, stoic girl that is capable of piloting and kicking ass, one is a borderline sweet Yamato Nadeshiko.
Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness from The Elder Scrolls series is A split personality of Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order.
- This was deliberate, though. When all the other Daedric Princes realised how powerful Jyggalag was becoming, they used their vaguely established powers to curse him to become the very thing he hated the most.
- The Shivering Isles also contains a village called 'split' where each citezen has been turned into two people based on their Manic and a Demented sides.
In Um Jammer Lammy Captain Fussenpepper has a Split Personality making him either, The Ditz who can't tell right from left, or a Drill Sergeant Nasty and War Hero.
Crying Wolf of Metal Gear Solid 4 suffers from a split personality. The "wolf" personality has a compulsion to murder children and the "crying" personality mourns those killed by the "wolf", but seems unaware that she is the "wolf".
- Screaming Mantis also. The mantis persona was created by her psyche to justify the cannibalism required for her survival.
In Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni, Frederica Berkanstel, the author of all those poems at the beginnings of each of the arcs, is eventually revealed to be, at the least, sharing a body with Rika. It's sort of skated over in the anime, though, and even in the game, it's less than clear what the relationship between the two is.
Socks, the lunatic boxer from Facebreaker has two personality (a nice, English-accented intellectual and an angry psychopath) which manifests in the sock puppets that he uses for boxing gloves.
Similarly, a pirate appears in Escape From Monkey Island who has developed two additional personalities in order to cope with having his ego shattered by the Ultimate Insult. They are manifested through the puppets he wears in a Punch and Judy type of show, which themselves take on the forms of the series' hero and villain in appearance, though not so much in personality.
Tira, from Soul Calibur IV, has had her brain broken by prolonged exposure to Soul Edge, and she flips back and forth between her original "joyous" personality (where she'll kill you with a smile on her face) and her "malicious" one (where she'll just kill you).
- I think Tira's case is more manic-depressive/bipolar/whatever you like to call it. She seems to swing from joyful and energetic to angry and depressed and back. It's just mood swings rather than personality changes.
Therese and Jeanette from Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. It formed after Therese killed her father, who had been sexually abusing her.
- Or after she was Embraced. It's hard to tell with Malkavians.
In Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within, the entire storyline is based around a girl who has a malevolent split personality.
Tohno/Nanaya Shiki from Tsukihime, with a twist: despite barely appearing, the Nanaya identity (his Super Powered Evil Side) is actually his original self, the Shiki who would have been had the events of Tsukihime's backstory not occured. His "main" Tohno identity was added after "the incident" via brainwashing, but it remains as his main identity even after he finds out the truth.
Emil Castagnier from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Normally, he's very timid, sweet, and cowardly. But when he goes into his humorously named, "Ratatosk Mode", he turns much more vicious and merciless. Though, he is actually Ratatosk, and "Emil" is actually a fabricated personality, but still...
- In Tales Of Vesperia, whether or not he has this is still up for debate, but Raven and Schwann sure don't act like the same person.
  - Yeah but isn't that the point? Considering Raven doesn't want to be associated with his past it wouldn't be unusual for him to act totally different to cut off all ties to his 'old self'. Though I guess you could also argue he uses Schwann as a scapegoat for all the things he does wrong. Though if they were two separate people wouldn't they appear at the same time in the same place?
Brad Kilstein from Psychic Force. For someone who is voiced by Ryusei Nakao, he is surprisingly soft-hearted and abhors fighting and violence. However, at one point, his personality may revert into the typical Ryusei Nakao character: a brutal, sadistic Ax Crazy Psycho For Hire.
Eternal Darkness' Xel'lotath speaks in two voices - one is well-spoken, rational-sounding, and almost as imperious-sounding as the paper to her scissors Ulyaoth. The other sounds extremely paranoid and somewhat delusional, always using a quiet but harsh whisper. And with the remarks each voice makes, it sounds like she could hold a full-blown conversation with herself. Suitably, she is the goddess of insanity.
Sakubo, a character of .hack/GU, has a serious case of this. Originally stating he and his sister shared a character, we later find out they LITERALLY share the character. Saku, the girl side, is the more violent side and Bo, the actual person, is a shy boy who developed Saku to help him stand up for himself. It's essentially like sticking Blackrose and Elk into one body. Add in the fact that Saku is obsessed with 'White Haired Pretty Boy' Endrance and things get a little weird if you think on it too long...
Dinah, one of the spirits from Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2 has a Good Angel Bad Angel split personality. The "bad angel" personality is the default one, though sometimes her "good angel" side will shine through every now and then to apologize profusely for Bad!Dinah's rudeness.
Tink from Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories has two sides - the "blue" personality, which is calm, polite and timid, and the "red" personality, which is lecherous, short-tempered, rude and selfish. It takes a magic spell to suppress his "red" side in the cutscenes, though he can switch between them freely in actual gameplay. When in the "red" side, he gets a boost to his stats by being near female characters.

Western Animation

Played more seriously in Batman The Animated Series with the "evil" personality of Two-Face almost completely consuming the mind of Harvey Dent to the point where the "good" personality rarely surfaced again, much to Batman’s dismay.
- This troper likes to think of it as the two differing personalities fusing together. After all, for all his malice, Two Face still has a lot of Harvey Dent in him, not just when he gets "good heads."
  - This seems most likely, since "Two-Face" was not nearly as brutal as the "Big Bad Harvey" persona had been. This also seems to be why this interpretation needs a coin in the first place (both personas make perfect arguments for each course of action).
- This got taken to a weird extreme when the killer vigilante "The Judge" appeared and started trying to kill Batman's rogue's gallery, including Two-Face, with death traps. The Judge turned out to be an alternate personality of Two-Face himself.
- In the same series, Baby Doll alternated between being Baby, the happy child she once played and whom she had slipped into in obsession, and Mary Dahl, the sane adult woman. Her account of how it split was a Tear Jerker.
  "Father": We're actors, remember? You cancelled our show because you whined you weren't getting enough attention!
  Baby Doll: But I knows now I made a boo-boo! (as Dahl) It was hard for me out there. I studied and trained and auditioned, but no one wanted me. Over the years I remembered how happy I was with all you around me, and the folks at home watching me each week... Me. (as Baby) Baby Doll. Hee hee! Now I'm Baby for good, and everyone will love me again!
- And then there was the Ventriloquist and Scarface, the latter of which was a separate personality of the former, embodied in a ventriloquist dummy with a machine gun. Of course, it's occasionally hinted that Scarface has a will of his own, but that's just silly.
  - The Batman takes this even further: Scarface's ventriloquist is "Reformed" by being given a new puppet meant to be a "Good" alternate personality. And it works, too: the new puppet even gives Batman the hint that Scarface was on the loose again. Say what you will about the series, but I thought it was funny to see the two puppets "Fight" each other after The Reveal..
  - The first animated series Scarface episode went so far as to describe the Ventriloquist and his dummy as two separate people who were born trapped in the same body, with Batman making an analogy to Siamese twins. Split Personalities Do Not Work That Way, to put it mildly, but the series did go on to provide a more realistic portrayal of Dissociative Identity Disorder with Two-Face, whose personalities are different facets of Harvey's mind.
Blitzwing of Transformers Animated, with a face to go with each personality. Blitzwing's weaponry and vehicle modes seem to be tied into his personality (in the only interpersonality conflict he's had so far, his angry and calm faces argued over which vehicle form to scan). The calm face uses some sort of ice missile and a jet form, while the angry face uses a flamethrower and tank form and the crazy face seems to be able to use both - but is not as skilled with either. Prowl actually caught on to this during a battle, and used Bumblebee to annoy Blitzwing so much that he switched from calm/jet to angry/tank—and promptly fell out of the sky.
- Word Of God gives the personalities the names of Icy, Hothead, and Random respectively.
- Note: Blitzwing's personalities technically aren't different people; they're just immediate shifts between certain states. As seen in the falling tank incident, he'll often swap depending on his mood/the situation—you'll never see Icy get angry or Hothead act happy.
Dr. Rockso, the Rock n' Roll Clown (he does cocaine) in Metalocalypse. Dr. Rockso is the dominant personality, but amicable troublemaker Leonard Rockstein briefly succeeded in suppressing him just long enough to make his return all the more surprising.
Played For Laughs as a twist in American Dad when Roger, the alien with the Paper Thin Disguise, hunts down someone who used his credit card only to discover it's himself, as a persona of his that gained a will of its own.
Parodied in Futurama's Show Within A Show All My Circuits in "Beast With A Billion Backs," as Calculon discovers he has a fourth split personality.
Dr. Splitz/Splitzy in Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys. Apart from his Meaningful Name, he's also notable in being The Smart Guy. Sort of. Dr. Splitz is incredibly intelligent and ingenuous, while Splitzy is an impulsive moron. However, they both seem to share incredible knowledge of electronics and machinery, and Splitzy's irrationality sometimes comes in handy when Dr. Splitz is hesitant.
- They also actually go back and forth between acting like one person with two personalities and interacting with one another.
Dr. Splitz: Uh, don't you have anything to add, Splitzy?
Splitzy: I ain't talkin' to you!
Ace Lightning has Random Virus, a cyborg with one good and one evil personality. He's constantly fighting between them though how much these two sides of him are indivdiuals is unclear.

Webcomics

In the relatively unknown webcomic Jix, the titular character is the second personality of an invader from an alien race who was surveying Earth. She stayed on Earth until she was sane again.
In Everyday Heroes, Wrecking Paul is the murderous alter ego of his supposed "employer".
Kano, the protagonist of Kagerou has several personalities. The personality that answers to "Kano" is initially not aware of the others.

Web Original

In Red vs. Blue, the Director of Project Freelancer induced a split personality into the Alpha AI so he could easily harvest multiple AIs from the one.

Real Life

Anne Heche (known to be bisexual) claims (or at least once claimed) to have multiple personalities. On reading about that, this troper wondered if she wasn't really bisexual, but rather had one straight personality and one gay one.
Herschel Walker was a former football player with tons of personalities, for instance, The Hero and The Professional White Man. I am not making this up.
Kenneth Bianchi, one half of The Hillside Stranglers, attempted to set up an insanity defence. He claimed to have another personality named Steve Walker and, according to Bianchi, Walker was the killer - Bianchi himself was innocent. He managed to fool a couple of psychiatrists before the whole charade collapsed.
There have been several autobiographies written by people with DID; for instance, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality by Joan Frances Casey and When Rabbit Howls by the Troops for Truddi Chase. Truddi Chase has also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Music

Renard, oh lord, Renard. Some of his artists pseudonyms, in rough alphabetical order, are: Adraen, Azrael, Bloomin' Nutters, D-Mode-D, Detergent, Emoticon, Furries in a Blender, Hecate, Jackal Queenston, Jaql, Kitcaliber, Kitsune

, Klippa, Lollipop, Mayhem, MGD-Crew, MGD Assault Force, Mr. R, Neko, Plusfuchs, Renard, Perdique Darron, Sigma, and Sonitus Vir, as well as some others.

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