"Hence, although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse."
When it comes to the Split Personality — figurative or literal — many depictions operate through the common trope of Jekyll & Hyde, in which the secondary persona is some flavour of villain and the original self is a hero, or at the very least virtuous.
However, this isn't always the case — not even in the work that gave us the trope to begin with: in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Hyde soon became Jekyll's means of secretly indulging himself without feeling guilt or endangering his social standing, as Jekyll enjoyed the criminal adventures that he and his alternate persona got up to... up until Hyde gained a life of his own and spiraled out of Jekyll's control. In the wake of the story's adaptation into theatre and eventually into film, Dr. Jekyll was progressively reinterpreted until he was portrayed as purely good and genuinely upstanding, often to the point of altering his motives for conducting the experiment in the first place.
As adaptations have continued to evolve, acceptance of moral ambiguity has become more common in audiences. As such, in modern depictions of secondary personalities, the original "Jekyll" persona can often be portrayed in shades of grey, rather than being an entirely saintly figure left helplessly witnessing the havoc wrought by "Hyde". In turn, as the narratives exploring these inner conflicts have grown more sophisticated, the complexities of the split personalities involved have also deepened.
In fact, in the modern-day diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder, there are a range of co-morbid/congruent behavioral traits that can complicate the matter even further. And as our understanding of such disorders has evolved, so too have portrayals of the original personality, becoming more flawed, more morally compromised, and in some cases, more unsympathetic.
In the extreme, the original personality might be painted as a villain in his own right — often cold-hearted, orderly, and amoral, while the "Hyde" is a monstrous agent of chaos and devastation. After all, if Hyde is seen as the most authentic embodiment of Jekyll's darker nature, can Jekyll truly be considered wholly virtuous when harboring such a potential monster within?
Please note that this trope doesn't concern itself with the adaptation-induced misconception that the relationship between "Jekyll" and "Hyde" is as clear apart as black and white — not even in cases where the roles of the pair are switched — nor is it about adaptations of the story in general. Rather, this trope explores such instances where the typical morality associated with split personalities begins to blur...
See also Preferable Impersonator.
Compare Betty and Veronica Switch, for when two people with a Betty and Veronica dynamic end up in the opposite position to where they were set up to be.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Paprika: In the anime film adaptation, Dr. Atsuko Chiba has adopted the persona of "Paprika" in order to secretly treat her patients in their dreams... but given the nature of the dreamworld, Paprika has taken on a life of her own. Far from being dangerous, she's charming, whimsical, and genuinely compassionate, and she's the personality who actually has the power to influence dreams. By contrast, Chiba is a strictly professional Ice Queen who never seems to dream for herself, never has fun, and reacts to the emotional foibles of her co-workers with irritation and even rage. For good measure, it's heavily implied that she represses her true emotions, hence why Paprika exists separately from her in the first place. In the finale, this comes to a head when the only way to achieve victory is for Chiba to acknowledge her true feelings and merge with her other self to become a gigantic infant that devours the Big Bad in order to literally mature into a complete person.
Comic Books
- Batman: Some interpretations of Two-Face depict Harvey Dent, the ostensible good side, as being much more morally ambiguous than his sterling reputation suggests — though he's generally nowhere near as bad as his Split Personality. The most famous example is The Long Halloween, where Harvey is an obsessive and cold misanthrope to start with, to the point where even Gordon and Batman — his closest friends and allies — suspect him of murder long before his transformation.
- Flashpoint (DC Comics): One of the heroes featured in the event is a super-strong, monstrous woman named Miss Hyde, who is the transformed alter ego of a woman named Bobbie Stevenson in reference to the author of the original novel. Miss Hyde is the more heroic personality, as Bobbie Stevenson held Lois Lane hostage and tried to sell out to the resistance.
- The Mask: Loss of Inhibitions or not, quite a few Mask users are seen to be total jerks even without the Mask, most prominently Stanley Ipkiss. Unlike his movie counterpart (who had the benefit of both Adaptational Heroism and Adaptational Nice Guy) Stanley was petty, jerkish, and cowardly; becoming Big Head just made his sick dreams come true, and while he's nowhere near as Ax-Crazy as Big Head, he's enough of a Psychopathic Manchild to gloat over what he did even once he removed the Mask.
- The Mighty Thor: Doctor Calvin Zabo was a lifelong fan of the story of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, specifically the idea of being able to become someone else to engage in crime and take revenge on those he felt slighted him without having to worry about being caught. Using his scientific genius, he succeeded in creating a formula that turned him into the hulking brutish supervillain he dubbed Mister Hyde. Whether they are separate personalities or simply the same person in a different form shifts Depending on the Writer, but one thing that's remained consistent that they're both equally vicious, sadistic sociopaths — to the point that even in stories where Zabo is prevented from changing into Mister Hyde, he's proven to be more than capable of enacting depravity and mass murder on his own.
- Spider-Man:
- Norman Osborn is often portrayed as just as despicable as his Ax-Crazy Green Goblin persona, especially following his comeback in the late 1990s, being a Corrupt Corporate Executive who puts profits over people every time. During the Dark Reign event, he became director of SHIELD, renaming it to HAMMER and creating his own Dark Avengers, all while blaming Tony Stark for the Skrull invasion, and made numerous attempts to kill his own son Harry. Even when stripped of his powers and psychosis at the end of Superior Spider-Man (2013), Norman became an international arms dealer heading a crew of goblin-themed mercenaries. Even when he was cured during The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) and genuinely makes an effort to atone, he still teamed up with Wilson Fisk AKA The Kingpin in an effort to try and take down one of Spidey's rogues.
- Mr. Negative is a heartless gangster who is the evil split personality of kindly philanthropist Martin Li. However, it's later revealed that the man who calls himself Martin Li was in reality a gangster and human trafficker/slaver who stole an identity from his "cargo". It's heavily implied (and at times stated outright) that the evil Negative personality is partly a result of the original man's repressed guilt and failure to come clean about his crimes.
- The "Lizard's Tale" arc of The Spectacular Spider-Man revealed that Dr. Curt Connors could always control the Lizard, he simply chose not to because he secretly enjoyed being evil through an alter-ego (which he could have stopped at any time) that got all of the blame; this has been ignored by all subsequent stories outside of a possible nebulous reference during "Brand New Day."
- The Sentry: The Sentry is a Nigh-Invulnerable Physical God who seems like an Ideal Hero at face value but is actually very dangerous due to his mental instability coupled with his power level. The Sentry's greatest enemy and his evil split personality is an Eldritch Abomination called The Void, which is equal in power and will kill a person whenever the Sentry saves someone. The original person, Bob Reynolds, was a mentally unstable junkie who accidentally drank Super Serum when looking for a fix, and the resulting problems may be a result of Reynolds repressing the real circumstances of how he got his powers. Essentially, the serum made him the ultimate Reality Warper and he created both a (warped) version of the hero he wanted to be and a monstrous reflection of how he actually thought of himself.
- X-Men: In Immortal X-Men, a flashback reveals that whatever Apocalypse did to the original Nathaniel Essex gave Essex an alter that strongly resembled the future Mr. Sinister. The original Nathaniel Essex wasn't a good or nice man, being a narcissistic epitome of Victorian colonialism and cultural posturing. The alter simply acted on his repressed urges, leading him to go out at nights to commit random murders. It's also the original Essex who devises the scheme to create clones who would feed data to an A.I. copy of his own mind to turn it into an all-powerful machine god. The killings committed by the "Sinister" alter pale in comparison to the death and destruction wrought by the original Nathaniel Essex.
Fan Works
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Aquamarine is reconceptualized as a young girl with DID, with Bluebird Azurite being an alter she developed from her mother's abuse (her mother being based on Eyeball). However, both Aquamarine and Bluebird are bullies and pranksters, and Aquamarine is fully okay with killing people under Bill's guidance — Bluebird simply comes out as a protector when she's treated just as badly or worse by others.
Film — Animated
- Van Helsing: The London Assignment: The original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde feature as the main villains of the story, with both being monstrous in their own way. While Hyde is still the murderous brute he was in the live-action film, Jekyll is a self-deluding stalker who's been more than willing to profit from Hyde's murders in order to advance his own scheme.
Film — Live-Action
- Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Much like his book counterpart, Dr. Jekyll willingly turns into Hyde to indulge in his darker impulses, killing anyone who mocks his theories or comes between him and his ward, Vicky. When he finally confesses his love to Vicky and she spurns him, he decides to inject her boyfriend, Bruce, with the Hyde formula to frame him for the murders and have her all to himself, doing so right in front of her to indicate he's not giving her a choice in the matter.
- The Cell: Once Catherine starts delving into Carl Rudolph Stargher's unconscious mind, she finds that he's dominated by his schizophrenic Id, manifested as "a king of a twisted kingdom." As such, she tries to seek out the other aspects of his personality for information on Stargher's surviving captive, but though his inner child is nice enough, he can't help much... and when Catherine finally discovers Stargher's more rational adult self, it turns out that this persona is just as involved with the serial killing as the dominating Id. Not only does he refuse to help, but he quickly sicks Stargher King on her. The nearest thing to a sane thought he has is in the finale, when he suggests that Catherine should Mercy Kill him, believing that he was doing the same thing for his victims.
- Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde: While Jekyll is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, he is the one who starts the killing spree, independent of Hyde.
- The Mask: In the climax of the film, Dorian Tyrell gets the Mask and makes for Coco Bongo to massacre his enemies. Of course, Dorian was already a ruthless gangster who was out to overthrow his boss, so his Mask persona is just him with all remaining vestiges of restraint sanded off.
Literature
- The Pilo Family Circus: Main character Jamie is a bitter, superficial, cowardly, and generally self-absorbed dickhead who slips an unknown substance into a housemate's milk as petty revenge for hogging the shower. After being press-ganged into the Circus and forced to wear the Clown Division's facepaint, he develops the alternate personality of "JJ," a Psychopathic Manchild with all Jamie's worst traits turned up to eleven. In response to JJ's increasingly violent antics, Jamie regularly uses the Powder to sedate himself so he won't have to deal with the consequences of his other self's actions, even though he knows that his time in the Circus can only end with JJ taking over for good. It's not until after Winston the Clown recruits him for the Freedom Movement that Jamie gets off his ass and tries to be a better person in the face of JJ's atrocities.
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, despite popular perception of its central trope, plays with this. Dr. Jekyll is a respectable gentleman and good friends with the narrator Mr. Utterson while Mr. Hyde would trample a girl and feel no remorse, but as Jekyll admits in his final confession, while Hyde is indeed pure evil, Jekyll isn't pure good. While Jekyll's original idea for the potion was to separate his good and evil halves so the good one wouldn't be tempted by evil and the bad one wouldn't be bothered by a conscience, that's not how it ended up happening; the evil half lost the conscience, but the good half didn't lose the temptation, something Jekyll speculates to be because he was Secretly Selfish in consuming the potion so he could indulge in evil. Jekyll is perfectly happy to allow Hyde to run riot and satisfy his evil impulses until Hyde crosses the Moral Event Horizon in a way Jekyll couldn't ignore (murdering Danvers Carew for no reason), at which point he does stop taking the potion, but by that point it's too late and 'Hyde' has become the default persona, so he needs the potion to become Jekyll. In the end, Hyde's relationship to Jekyll is less a split personality than a drug addiction.
Live-Action TV
- Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: Played With for Jiro. Jiro's Split Personality is actually the social one everyone knows by default. The real Jiro is the one everyone else thinks is an alter. The Dangerous side is just a Heroic Wannabe that runs on The Power of Hate whose primary goal is to supplant Taro as team leader in its pursuit of heroism and is willing to attack its allies to do so. The default self meanwhile is an Innocently Insensitive Glory Seeker that occasionally nudges in the direction of a Lack of Empathy; almost always succumbing to narcissism whenever he's put in a position close to "hero". Dangerous is ironically The Empath despite its anger issues and somewhat mellows out over time. The other side meanwhile is rather superficial and barely knows any better, which only wigs the others out. Dangerous is a nuisance deliberately, the other Jiro is a nuisance inadvertently.
- The Boys: Homelander's increasingly unhinged nature is shown by things like arguing with a reflection that embodies his most impulsive, dark, and megalomaniacal thoughts. However, regular Homelander is already a narcissistic murderer and rapist with no regard for human life.
- Moon Knight (2022): Downplayed and ZigZagged. While abrasive mercenary/superhero Marc is initially framed as the alter to gentle Audience Surrogate Steven, who indulges in violent, dangerous situations while Steven sleeps, it turns out Marc is the original personality while Steven is the alter. However, Marc is also gradually shown to be more of an Anti-Hero with a Dark and Troubled Past, so by the time Steven discovers Marc is the original personality, he doesn't find Marc odious at all, and in fact helps him face his trauma. And then there's that secret third personality...
- Misfits: Season 3 introduces Rudy, who has the Storm-imbued ability to manifest another persona as a Literal Split Personality. Though Rudy treats his other self like a disruptive menace, it's clear that Rudy 2 is actually the nicer, sensitive, introverted version of himself that the main personality would rather keep submerged. By contrast, Rudy himself is brash, crude, lecherous, hedonistic, selfish, and in permanent denial of just how miserable he really is. Consequently, though neither of the pair is truly villainous, it's more common for Rudy 2 to end up getting saddled with the consequences of what the main persona did rather than vice versa. And then it turns out that there's a third alternate personality to the dynamic, a heartless psychopath that both Rudy and Rudy 2 are trying to keep repressed, playing the Jekyll and Hyde dynamic straight.
- Once Upon a Time: When the show's version of the classic Jekyll and Hyde are introduced at the end of season 5, it seems they're the standard "Jekyll = good; Hyde = bad" pair. However, season 6 reveals that Jekyll is the real villain — "all mind, but no heart", as Hyde says at one point — and driven to rage and murder, the latter of which he frames Hyde for. Hyde, in contrast, is villainous in that he's willing to allow innocents to die for his vengeance, but also displays actual emotions — mainly, he's still mourning the woman he fell in love with and who loved him back until Jekyll killed her because she'd rejected him in favor of his Hyde personality.
- This is bad news for Regina, who thought she was excising the last traces of her evil by using Jekyll's technology to split her "evil side" into another body. While that version of Regina is a being of pure evil that the heroes must defeat, the original Regina is still a conflicted Anti-Hero rather than the paragon of niceness she had hoped to become.
- Power Rangers Dino Charge: The second season starts off with the dual personalities of human-looking Heckyl and monstrous Snide as the primary antagonists. Both of them are evil, the only difference is in their methods and fighting styles: Snide is a straightforward violent brute with a sword who's not all that big on planning, while Heckyl is a manipulative Psycho Electro who will act friendly and charming while he secretly plots your demise. Later subverted, when it's revealed that Heckyl used to be a good person who was corrupted by the Dark Energem, which also created Snide as his Superpowered Evil Side. When they get split, Heckyl eventually switches back to the side of good while Snide remains evil to the very end.
- The Resident: Dr. Cain treats a nice friendly patient with a brain tumor, but the case is complicated by the fact that the tumor has seemingly caused an alternate personality to form. The patient's other personality is the leader of a white supremacist group and refuses to let Dr. Cain treat him because Cain's black, while the nice personality begs Dr. Cain to rid him of his alter. Dr. Cain removes the tumor, figuring that since the white supremacist is just a symptom of the disease, he has no right to refuse treatment. Dr. Cain is then horrified to learn that the nice one was caused by the tumor, and all that remains is the original white supremacist personality, who, thanks to Dr. Cain, is rid of his alter and in perfect health.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons, Out of the Abyss: Derendil explains that he's an elf prince cursed into the monstrous form of a Quaggoth, but the Quaggoth's vicious instincts are slipping out more and more. In fact, the Derendil persona is a demon-inflicted delusion, and if he's ever cured of his madness, he reverts to a violent brute forever.
Video Games
- Dark Seed II: The finale reveals that Jack is the Serial Killer terrorizing the town, but despite Mike's insistence that he must also be the Shapeshifter, Jack claims to be a Split Personality of Mike himself. If this is true, Mike doesn't exactly qualify as the "good" personality, being whiny, self-pitying, impulsive, and astonishingly childish, not to mention prone to extremely questionable decisions over the course of the game — including punching out an FBI agent and killing Paul Cooper.
- Fallout: New Vegas: In Dead Money, one of your companions is a Nightkin with 2 split personalities who act like an Id and a Superego without an Ego to unite them. Dog, the Hyde, is an animalistic brute who talks in Hulk Speak, eats just about anything or anyone he can stuff into his gaping maw, and instinctively latches onto authority figures whom he can serve — hence why he kidnaps people for Father Elijah. God, the apparent Jekyll, is much more intelligent and at least somewhat honorable, but that doesn't stop him from being a cold, cruel, and thoroughly self-interested Control Freak.
- Psychonauts: Boyd Cooper is ultimately revealed to possess an Enemy Within just waiting to take him over. Known as the Milkman, he's a ruthless destroyer created by Coach Oleander in order to burn down the Asylum and destroy all evidence of Dr. Loboto's activities. Worse still, Raz accidentally awakens the Milkman during his attempts to get into the Asylum. But as nasty as this other personality is, Boyd isn't exactly a nice guy himself: a delusional paranoiac and conspiracy theorist, he will endlessly ramble on about the covert groups he believes to be responsible for ruining his life, oblivious to Raz's growing exasperation. Plus, he was fired from his last job as a department store guard for randomly interrogating shoppers out of sheer paranoia — and retaliated against his dismissal by burning down the store.
- Saints Row IV: Shortly after being rescued from her Mind Prison, Shaundi manifests a Literal Split Personality in the virtual world. Known as "Fun Shaundi," this new self is everything that Shaundi despises about her past and is treated like Mr. Hyde because of it, even though Fun Shaundi is really just a friendly but irresponsible hedonist, just as Shaundi herself used to be in Saints Row 2. By contrast, Present Shaundi is cold, short-tempered, acerbic, and more than a little bloodthirsty, reflecting the character's desperate need to make up for her perceived flaws.
- The Secret World: The supernatural assassin known as the White Rabbit is eventually revealed to have been born with multiple personalities as a result of absorbing her twin sisters in the womb. None of the three could be described as good, given that all of them demonstrated violence and a tendency to escape from the asylum on hunts for magical creatures. Ultimately, Lilith found the unfortunate young woman and gave her other personalities bodies of their own... and eventually, they became an entire team of White Rabbit assassins posing as one. No matter which White Rabbit you're dealing with in the present, the Mask of Kan'ami diagnoses her as a heartless sociopath.
- The Suffering: Ties That Bind: The ultimate twist of the game is that the crime lord Blackmore is actually an alter of Torque. However, while Blackmore is a ruthless, scheming psychopath who wants to seize control of Torque full-time, Torque isn't exactly a saint either: not only does he have such Unstoppable Rage that he's committed manslaughter in the past, but he willingly participated in organized crime while in Blackmore's employ, before Carmen talked him into quitting. Depending on player choice, Torque can also prove himself to be a remorseless sadistic killer who abused and slaughtered his family — to the point that in the bad ending, Blackmore can take over his mind simply because Torque has become too much like him to resist.
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Towards the end of the player's time in Santa Monica, it's revealed that Therese and Jeanette Voermann are actually the same person, courtesy of Malkavian insanity. Though the alter Jeanette initially seems the less trustworthy and can do some pretty villainous things if the player sides against her — condemning the Ocean House Ghosts to haunt the hotel for eternity, for example — the original personality Therese is much more openly unpleasant: not only is she cold, sanctimonious, bigoted, and utterly ruthless in her pursuit of power, but she has no qualms about using the local blood bank as her personal larder and allowing her ghoul to restock it through some creatively brutal methods.
Western Animation
- American Dad!: In "The One That Got Away", one of Roger's personas developed into a Split Personality in its own right and hired a hitman to kill Roger. However, it turns out that this new identity, Sidney Huffman, is actually a genuinely nice character who only resorted to attempted murder after being pushed to the limits of tolerance by Roger Smith's douchebaggery. By contrast, Roger has always been Comedic Sociopathy incarnate, to the point that he created the Sidney Huffman persona because he didn't know how to process guilt.
- Beware the Batman: Harvey Dent here is a selfish, blustering, amoral Corrupt Politician from the get-go, orchestrating a manhunt against Batman to gain more votes and allies with Anarky and Deathstroke to kill Batman. When he's disfigured, he develops a Split Personality that is far more calculating and rational, but even more ruthless and willing to break the law.
- DuckTales (1987): A unique variation in the episode "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. McDuck" where it is mentioned that this version of Jekyll was a sour, friendless loner who developed a formula to make himself likable, in effect turning the Hyde persona into the nice half. Unfortunately, the formula worked too well, resulting in Jekyll (and later Scrooge) becoming a laughing, crazy Overly Generous Fool that was a public nuisance rather than a murderer.
- The Mask:
- The Mask sometimes ends up in the hands of villains like Pretorious or Fish Guy. In "Shadow of a Skillit", it was revealed that Skillit enforces this as he hates Nice Guys who own the Mask and goes out of his way to kill them, preferring them bad. In this episode and "All Hallows Eve", the audience can learn that the Mask was in possession of such infamous personalities like Atilla, Blackbeard, Genghis Khan, Billie the Kid, and Merlin (who turned himself into the monster Nilrem).
- In "Split Personality", we meet Chet Bozak, Stanley's high school bully, who tormented him relentlessly and ended up getting expelled after nailing a bunch of wood to Stanley's head and passing him off as a doorstop for shop class. When Chet returns as an adult, he gets his hands on one half of the Mask, allowing him to transform half his body into his own Mask persona — who is even worse than him, and actually tries to kill Stanley with a circular saw. Even Chet thinks this is going too far and ends up in a physical struggle with his own alter ego.
- In "Counterfeit Mask", Peggy Brandt ends up wearing the Mask instead of Stanley, gaining her own vain and selfish Mask persona who will happily threaten beauticians with a hammer for not doing a thorough job. However, Peggy isn't normally a straightforward "nice" character, having been taken from film continuity — in which she sold Stanley out to Dorian Tyrell, and though she's repented of this and even demonstrated true friendship to Stanley since then, Peggy's still trying to exploit the Mask for the scoop that will make her career. She's also hard-nosed, impatient, and more than a little domineering, especially compared to Stanley... and as serious as Peggy is, she isn't above being immature when she can get away with it, as she demonstrates when the Mask's youth serum allows her to be a teenager again in "Little Big Mask".
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: In "Nowhere to Hyde", the meek scientist Dr. Jekyll tells the gang he was experimenting with a formula that may be transforming him into the Ghost of Mr. Hyde, a jewel thief, while he is unaware. In truth, Mr. Hyde was just a disguise for Jekyll, who was perfectly aware of his actions. Jekyll even tries to frame the whole thing on his maid.
