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Two Beings, One Body
aka: Biological Mashup
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Two or more characters are ( for some reason) joined together into one entity. They either have one aggregate personality, or the two fight for control of the common body. They may get control of separate parts of the body, especially if there are multiple heads. Extra points if they are opposites, enemies, or of different species or sex. If the other entity is an animal, this can be a form of Animorphism.
Can teach a lesson about walking a mile In Another Man's Shoes. It's kind of like an extreme version of Chained Heat, or a Freaky Friday Flip that got stuck halfway through.
The functional opposite is Literal Split Personality, which is splitting two aspects of a single being into two separate bodies; see also the notes on the Evil Twin entry.
See also Fusion Dance (this is a Sub Trope) and Sharing a Body, where two minds are in a body. Contrast Shapeshifter Mashup.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- This is how Digimon often evolve, either to Perfect (Ultimate) with other Digimon (Digimon Adventure 02 and the second movie), or to Ultimate (Mega) with their human partners (Digimon Tamers), depending on which series.
- As well, Chimeramon in Digimon Adventure 02 was created this way, by replicating parts of other Digimon.
- Stir in Machinedramon and Chimeramon becomes a Japan-only video game's Big Bad, the eventually-godlike space/time-bending Millenniumon. (And since the games reveal that that's who was in the flashback releasing the Dark Spores, leading to Ken becoming evil and eventually creating Chimeramon, Millenniumon is one big Stable Time Loop: he creates himself using Ken.)
- Speaking of Machinedramon, it sorta fills the trope, as it is made up of parts of other digimon. Granted they are the metal parts of several cyborg digimon, but that left arm is Metalgreymon's.
- And the games reveal that Cyberdramon came from a combination of Ryo's third temporary partner and Millenniumon, his true partner. And while his being the cause isn't made explicit, it's generally accepted that Millenniumon's influence is the reason for Cyberdramon's sunny disposition.
- Birdy the Mighty is about an alien police officer who accidentally killed an Ordinary High School Student when chasing criminals to Earth. She saved his life by fusing with his body, and they can switch forms via a Transformation Sequence.
- This is kind of an exception to the typical transformation sequence, in that it does not cut away from the scene or involve music or fancy posing. It's more akin to a simple change of clothes, and is executed in a nonchalant fashion, most of the time.
- Franken Fran, due to the Art Major Biology nature of its science, strays into this territory occasionally.
- Luciela and Raphaela from Claymore ended up fused together in a vegetative state after the latter tried to squeeze the life out of the former. Riful finds them and tries to find a way to awaken them so she can recruit them. She succeeds.
- In the manga Devil Man by Go Nagai, the demons are shape-changing entities, able to possess the human beings by biological mash-up (via teleport). In some cases (as the main character) this possession happens to backfire: the human being "possesses" the demon and gains his powers, but he maintains his/her human identity.
- This is the end result of Excel and Hyatt's Freaky Friday experience in the final episode of Excel Saga; Nabeshin is called in to undo it.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- A Mad Scientist combined people with animals (Chimeras, as they are called) mostly to find out if he could, and partly to keep his certification as a government-funded alchemist for finding a way to make a "talking Chimera". The results weren't pretty, but included mixing his daughter and his dog together, as well as his wife and...something else. The latter we only mostly see a silhouette of, but it's only words known are "I want to die."
- Later on, other human/animal chimeras are introduced as characters, having been made by the government already before the above.
- Greed/Ling
- Envy's true form, which is a giant green lizard/dog...THING with a little bit of human thrown into the face. Then there's moaning growths coming off him that come from human souls.
- A yeti, riding an ox, while carrying a crane in one hand and a snake in the other, were mashed up when they fell into a spring of Jusenkyo and drowned in Ranma 1/2, creating a unified curse. When a baby is washed and baptized in this spring, he is cursed to become a combination of these.
- Later in life, this same character willingly augments his chimera-like body by applying a Drowned Octopus curse, which adds tentacles and the ability to shoot ink.
- In the comedic fantasy anime series Slayers, the character Zelgadis is a mix of human, golem, and demon features. His driving goal in life is finding a cure for his condition, even though it makes him super-strong, super-fast, and immune to most physical damage.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! has an entire type of card called a "Fusion monster", which results from a fusion of two or three monster cards. Oddly enough, this sometimes results in two monsters fusing into something that looks nothing like either of its components, such as the fusion of Witch of the Black Forest and Lady of Faith (both female magic-users) into Musician King (a male rock-guitar player)! More recently, however, the fusions have started to make more sense. The Elemental Hero monsters are known for this, with most combinations of them having some fusion.
- The entire premise of Risky Safety is that an angel and a demon are forced to share one body — there's only room enough for one of them at a time; depending on the emotional state of the people around them, they may suddenly switch places. (Said switch is usually indicated by a sudden puff of smoke enveloping the one, and the other bursting out of it.)
- In Keroro Gunsou, Keroro and Giroro fused together due to a synchronized swimming routine. (It made a sort of comedic sense at the time.)
- Nero Chaos of Tsukihime shares his consciousness with 666 beasts. His body actually contained "chaos", and though he has melded with their minds, he can't actually control the mass very well. Beasts present includes the generic (dogs, wolves, a shark, elephant, crocodile...) and the mythical (a unicorn, some crab-spider thing...)
- Also the Seventh Scripture's spirit. It's the blend of a (willingly) sacrificed village girl and a dead unicorn's soul. The unicorn had less willpower and was more dead or something, but magically far far stronger, so she spent a while with the unicorn mostly dominant plus sleeping. By this point, she's basically the village girl from before but with weird traits like a horse's tail, hooves and strange ears.
- Urusei Yatsura once had the teleporter trick with Ataru holding a notebook, which made a copy of his with the notes written all over, and got him stuck in the notebook. Whenever you hit the thing, a paper-thin copy splits off, and Ataru starts selling them.
- Wapol from One Piece is capable to swallowing multiple people and spitting them out as one, which he did with his minions Chess and Kuramarimo to create "Chessmarimo". Subverted, when Sanji points out that the only thing fused was their clothes, and one is standing on the others back.
- When a fan asked Oda what it would be like if Wapol fused all of the Straw Hats (which at this time went up to Robin), he replied it would create the creature in this drawing
 ◊ which possessed Luffy's Straw Hat, Chopper's antlers, Nami's hair situated on its shoulders, Zoro's swords and haramaki, Sanji's eyebrow situated on top like a strand of hair, Robin's fringe, and Usopp's nose situated on its left shoulder and is named "Gargon".
- The Pokémon Special manga has Zapmolcuno, a chimaera resembling a mashup between Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, respectively.
- Also, an episode of the Pokémon involving Gastly had Gastly turn into a chimaera resembling a weird mashup between a Venusaur and a Blastoise as an attempt to fight off Ash's Bulbasaur and Squirtle.
- Sakon (And his twin brother Ukon) the villainous member of the Sound Four from Naruto has this as his main power with the ability to fuse their body with each other letting them spring their body parts from any part of the host body. Their most powerful ability however is to fuse their body with an opponent and break down their cells one by one.
Comic Books
- DCU comic book character B'Wana Beast (and his Legacy Character, Freedom Beast) is a walking example of this trope, in that his magical African potion-induced super power was to fuse any two animals into one.
- Firestorm, a DC Comics superhero, was born when a student and his teacher were "fused" together in a nuclear accident. The two are able to merge and separate at will, though only Ronald Raymond, the student, has control over the Firestorm form, while Martin Stein, the teacher, only has a ghostly presence during a "fuse". Once the two separate again Stein doesn't even remember what happened while they were joined. Of course, they have no powers whatsoever while separated.
- One scary example of this trope is Madcoil, a monstrous fusion of sabertooth cat and giant black python. Created when lightning struck the patch of ground where the two were fighting — ground, which was permeated with leftover elven magic — this misbegotten Mash-Up beast acted out its insatiable battle-fury on the elven and human tribes of Elfquest. It fought with fangs, claws, constriction, and (for elves) the capacity to send maddening images of its own horrific "birth" directly into their receptive brains.
- In the dystopian future shown in the Wild C.A.T.s/Spawn crossover, Wild C.A.T.s foes The Troika (a human, a Magma Man, and a Killer Robot) had been partially fused together.
- One of the most horrific moments of the Marvel Transformers comics was when Megatron and Ratchet were mashed together into a single misshapen body◊.
- In Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, Rebis is a fusion of a man, a woman, and an immaterial being called the Negative Spirit.
Fan Works
- In Vaeru's Fan Fiction Transformers: Juxtaposition, the unfortunate main character is forced to share a body with the arguably even more unfortunate Sideswipe.
- After Subterranean Animism came out, fusing pairs of characters into one became popular among Touhou fans—which led to this as the logical conclusion. For example, Reon (AKA Saikyou) stuffed thirteen other characters into Kanako, while Persona fan artist Mazeran fused sixteen of the series' Final Bosses and Yukari into one being.
- In a Homestar Runner fan Sbemail entitled "virus 2," two fan characters, Coach C and her brother, Coach D, became joined at the waist. They currently remain like this.
- In Zany To The Max, an Animaniacs fan series by the same person, there are two characters that are joined at the waist: Zak Warner and his sister Ko, who are usually referred to together as "ZakKo". They are cousins of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot.
Film
- The film All of Me.
- Although not instant, in The Fly, Jeff Goldblum builds a teleporter, and in one personal test accidentally includes a fly in. The resulting DNA fusion turns him into a fly-man monster over the course of the movie.
- In the original short story, the scientist's initial test of the teleporter causes his cat to disappear. Then the fly-fusion happens; when he tries to reverse it, he only succeeds in adding the cat to the mix.
- The 1990s version of King Ghidorah was created via this trope. He started out as three cute little critters before being hit by the atomic bomb (Yes, the same atomic bomb that created Godzilla) causing said cute trio of critters to fuse together and mutate into the three-headed dragon we all know and love.
- In Freaked, a couple of the protagonists, a man and a woman, get turned into a Multiple Head Case.
- Every single member crew member on the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean is part man and part sea creature, ranging from fish to coral. Sometimes pieces of a ship (like the helm) are thrown in for good measure.
- This is basically the whole plot of The Human Centipede, albeit in probably the most disgusting way possible.
- In The Great Muppet Caper, Fozzie and Kermit play twin brother reporters, despite one being a bear and the other a frog. A photograph of the twins' father depicts a green-furred bear with Kermit's keyhole eyes and neck ruff.
Gamebooks
Literature
- In the novel The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov the aliens in another dimension merge three into one as a part of their reproductive cycle.
- In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's collaborative novel Good Omens, the angel Aziraphale's body is destroyed during a confrontation with an overzealous witch hunter who's mistaken him for a demon when the angel accidentally steps on a pentacle he'd used to communicate with Metatron. As a result, Aziraphale is forced to spend much of the rest of the book sharing a body with a medium.
- True History describes several of the creatures that live on the Moon in these terms. You know what that means...
- In Wayne Barlowe's Barlowe's Inferno, Hell is full of this sort of Body Horror. For example, there are vehicles made up of lots of people who've been mashed together so that they now consist of a big mash of flesh walking around on a collection of human legs.
- In "Daughterof Smokeand Bone," by Laini Taylor, Madrigal escapes execution by temporarily co-inhabiting the body of her best friend, who had previously betrayed her by reporting her crimes (this is explained in that her friend is insecure and not very mentally stable, and at one point she is called "a soft mollusk thing, wet and shrinking," which makes for two souls to inhabit her body at once).
- Happens to Sir Glame and his horse Bill in Plotless, Pointless, Pathetic (a half-book, half-graphic novel, completely-wacky book by Joshua Wright).
- In the Nightside series, the Lamentation is eventually revealed to be this trope. John and Susie witness its creation from two treacherous ex-slaves when they venture into the past.
- In the Wild Cards series, the Oddity is three people who have been permanently merged by the Wild Cards virus into one monstrous, constantly shifting, painful whole. They're superhumanly strong and tough and act as a vigilante in Jokertown.
- In the Children Of The Lamp series djinni can remove their spirits from their bodies and posses humans either by taking total control if the host is human or just riding in the backseat. Things get a bit awkward for a group of the heroes when Finlay has to serve as a host body for not only John but also Faustina. During this time Finlay refuse to take a shower because of Faustina's presence since he doesn't want her to see him naked.
- Subverted in Feet of Clay with Rogers the bulls, which only think that "they" are two different bulls. There's just one Roger, but because his forehead is so bulky that his eyes' fields of vision don't overlap, he decided a long time ago that there must be two of him, so thinks of "himselves" in the plural.
- The book What's Left Of Me features two souls born into a single body. Most 'hybrids' settle after a few years,with one soul fading away,but the protagonists and some others never did.
Live Action TV
- Adam from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Big Bad of Season 4.
- Also Forrest Gates, Adam's Dragon.
- Numerous examples in Super Sentai and Power Rangers. In some seasons, the Monster of the Week is typically created by composing multiple organisms. There are also several examples of various henchmen being combined to form uber-henchmen.
- Most examples of monster merging are voluntary, but in Power Rangers in Space, Darkonda is able to forcibly merge with Ecliptor against the latter's will.
- Plex, the design studio that works on Super Sentai (and Kamen Rider) has a design matrix for making monsters which includes Animal, Plant, and Inorganic elements.
- In the Scrubs episode "My Princess", Dr. Cox tells his son a vaguely Princess Bride-esque story in which Turk and Carla appear as a two-headed witch known as The Turla.
- Stargate Atlantis had done this enough times that they do a bit of Lampshade Hanging on the fact that almost all of the major characters have had to share bodies at some point.
- "Tuvix" (Tuvok plus Neelix) on Star Trek: Voyager.
- One of the main villains in Gerry Anderson's Terrahawks third season was the result of an alien, robotic pregancy. Due to a power failure during the delivery, instead of Cy-star giving birth to twins, what resulted was one being with two distinct personae; a female, sweet natured, lisping personality, and a male, psychotic German-accented personality. Since it had both genders, it was named It-Star.
- In an episode of Wizards Of Waverly Place, Alex and Harper end up sharing the former's body after several attempts to undo a Freaky Friday Flip.
Tabletop Games
- The Merging Virus in GURPS: Biotech makes a permanent composite being out of two or more creatures. It's shown as part of a future wedding ceremony.
- The Ravenloft supplement Children of the Night: The Created describes an unique flesh golem called Gestalt. It was created by a female surgeon who fused together the remains of her two suitors, who'd killed each other in a duel, into a single body and personality.
- Not really alive, but the Strahd's Malefic Meld spell from the same setting allowed zombie-crafters to get creative, combining various creatures' corpses into Necrological Mash-Ups.
- The darklord Frantisek Markov and other mad surgeons craft these things the hard way.
- Phyrexians from Magic: The Gathering recognise no species; all organisms can be "compleated", and since they frequently exchange body parts most phyrexians are composed of body parts of many organisms. This is incidently why they can't produce planeswalkers; the spark can't form when there isn't a permanent body to sustain it.
- Vilitch the Curseling from Warhammer. Grew up as The Unfavourite and Butt Monkey to his own twin, who was far better-looking and more skilled at combat than Vilitch. Until one day Tzeentch answered his prayers, by fusing their bodies as one. Now Vilitch throws spells at his enemies, while his brother's body takes out those who get too close.
Video Games
Web Comics
- Ysengrin from Gunnerkrigg Court is a wolf-man with trees for arms. He used to be a normal wolf; his current body was given to him by a trickster-god.
- The Coyote simply gave him the power to control trees. He decided to morph them into a sort of biological powered armor.
- Magellan starts with the character Brian Lonsdale fusing himself with his pet dog Elvis, producing the biologically mashed-up (and generally messed-up) Brelvis Lonsdog. And no, the process isn't reversible. In a later story, while attempting to find a cure, Brian's father replicates the process with other humans and himself!
- The "Meanwhile in the Dimension of Pain (or wherever)" guest strips for Sluggy Freelance conclude with the crowning absurdity of several of the demon characters mainly used only in those stories being accidentally fused into one grotesque blob of a creature.
- Ellen from El Goonish Shive has the memories of Elliot from before she was split from him and the memories of an alternate universe version of herself to the age of about 18. Therefore her current personality is influenced by all her sets of memories and mentally she is effectively a composite of the people she has the memories of even though she identifies herself as a distinct person from them.
- Sprites in Homestuck can be prototyped twice. In the kid's session, each sprite was prototyped with something human and something non-human, with the exception of Rose's (which was prototyped with an Eldritch Princess doll and her dead cat's corpse). In the troll's session this is mostly avoided, with the exception of Aradia second-tier prototyping herself with her frog sprite. So far, the sprites that have suffered the worst from this trope have been Jade's sprite (a combination of Bec and Jade's dead dreamself, the latter of whom really didn't want to come back to life) and Jane's (prototyped by Gamzee throwing Tavros and Vriska's corpses into the kernelsprite). It seems, however, that Jake's sprite (prototyped by, presumably, Gamzee again using Eridan and Sollux's corpses) is relatively stable.
- Gishki Ariel does this with a shiny Magikarp, which is supposed to represent Gishki Reliever, in comic #7.5 of Yu Gi Oh Card Game Gusto Fan Comic
Web Original
Western Animation
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