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Ned: Peter?
Peter, Peter, and Peter: Yeah? ...Oh, sorry, did you mean...?

By some mechanism, be it Time Travel, Alternate Universe, Literal Split Personality, or cloning, there are now two or more Alternate Self editions of a character. Each copy seems unable to get over the fact that every other copy is him/her/them/itself and this shows up with pronoun confusion.

Generally Played for Laughs, since even In-Universe it would make sense to simply use first and third person specifically to avoid this sort of thing. Incidentally, some languages feature a proximate-obviative system, where you have multiple third person pronouns to highlight the topic of a conversation: A sentence like "Alex hit Bob; he was upset", for example, would see two different words both meaning "he" depending on whether the speaker meant Alex or Bob (which itself depended on whether the speaker was focusing on Alex or Bob). For obvious reasons though, no known language has this for its first person pronouns.

Related to Time-Travel Tense Trouble. Compare My Future Self and Me. Also see One-Steve Limit, which can result in similar problems when averted. May lead to a Alternative-Self Name-Change.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Ayakashi Triangle
    • Suzu turns out to be the Split Personality of the ayakashi medium spirit that was born with all her Past-Life Memories, who is known as either "Childhood Heart" or "Kanade". Suzu usually speaks of Kanade as another person or "the younger me". Kanade speaks of Suzu in much more confusing terms that blur the line between treating Suzu as herself or a different person. Most strangely, she'll sometimes use descriptive terms (like "Childhood Heart") that are spelled in kanji, but given the furigana that indicate she's actually saying "watashi (I)".
    • After Matsuri is split into boy and girl halves, they're usually simply called "Girl Matsuri" and "Boy Matsuri" by other characters. Each Matsuri tends to call the other "the boy/girl/other me"—or "fake" when they're more antagonistic.
  • Nearing the end of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, the multiple Syaorans and Sakuras have conversations with each other. This is extremely hard to discern when reading these pages, since they all look alike.
  • Yugi, Bakura, and Marik in Yu-Gi-Oh!. Though not Millennium item-related, Kaiba and Set(o) might also count.
    • Jounouchi comments on it in one scene where Yugi excuses himself so he can go sulk on the roof... but not him, the other him.

    Comic Books 
  • Marvel Universe:
    • Jamie "Multiple Man" Madrox falls into this on occasion. For instance, in one issue of X-Factor, he splits up into opposing groups of Multiple Men. Upon encountering each other, one of the Multiple Men says "There I am! Get me!". Also, when he found out one of his dupes had lived a full life without him (even to the point of having a son), he was stunned that "I named you after my father..."
    • Loki from The Mighty Thor, when there are more of him around (whether it's due to time travel, alternate universes, or something else). Sometimes it's accidental, but he actually used this trope (and Third-Person Person) to obfuscate which version of himself he is talking about (if any, and not for example some abstract connected to himself). Lo and behold from Journey into Mystery (Gillen):
      Past Loki's ghost: ...as I also made you understand, Loki would only sacrifice Loki to save himself...
      Kid Loki: In Odin's name, is the wordplay trickery as annoying when I do it?

      Kid Loki: This must be the worst thing I've ever done.
      Ikol:note  Ahem.
      Kid Loki: I meant me.
  • Averted in one Calvin and Hobbes arc where Calvin and Hobbes use their time machine at 6:30 and travel two hours ahead so they can grab the completed homework assignment, then both Calvins go back an hour to find out why 7:30 Calvin didn't do it. Each Calvin refers to the others by the time they're from, and fortunately are all visually distinct (6:30 has goggles, 8:30 has goggles and is in his pyjamas).
  • Billy and Mandy get sucked into Grim's cosmic cuckoo clock ("Better Luck Next Time," Cartoon Network Block Party #45) and are flung hither and yon through time. Billy meets himself as a rather intelligent baby who becomes stupid after Billy influences him. Later, landing in the future, Mandy starts berating Billy with her words duplicated by herself as a senior citizen berating a senior Billy.

    Fan Works 
  • Dragon Ball Z fanfiction Honor Trip has this in the form of Cell, who is now a protagonist, and Future Cell, who is most decidedly not.
  • The cast of Dimensional Links are the Links from almost all the Legend of Zelda games, but as a group they avert this by being very different from each other.
    • Green, Blue, Red, and Vio specifically avert this by considering themselves to be distinct individuals despite being originally one boy.
    • The Four avert this by being a Hive Mind; they think of themselves as one boy with four bodies, and referring to one of them refers to all of them.
    • The Link(s) from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask play it straight. Within minutes of meeting each other, they establish that the one from the end of Ocarina of Time will be called Ocarina, and the one who experienced Majora's Mask will be called Mask. Unlike the Four Sword users, they acknowledge that they are the same person; Mask once acts on a bet that Ocarina made using that logic. Word of Dante/Word of God is that Ocarina is afraid that he isn't good enough to eventually become Mask.
  • Between the Lines (MrQuestionMark): The following conversation that ends with his Catchphrase, is held between Touma and his Alternate Self shortly after they meet in Chapter 21:
    Touma: [...] And who are you, me? You can't be me! I'm me!
    A!Touma: On the contrary, how can you be me... when I am me? You are you and I am me.
    Touma: But you're me! You can't be you when you're me!
    A!Touma: How can I be me when I'm you?
    Touma: That doesn't make any sense!
    A!Touma: In the sense it makes no sense, it makes sense.
    Touma: ...Such misfortune.
  • This fanmade Pokémon TikTok depicts a Maushold, a Pokemon consisting of four white mice, as being one consciousness spread amongst four bodies. The Maushold's rant about the general confusion of their own existence includes differing pronouns based on how many of themself they're referring to at the moment, as the bodies aren't identical.
    Maushold: One of I is allergic to peanuts but weI can't tell which it is, because any time any of I eat peanuts, me all get a rash!
  • The Palaververse: Second Sun: Due to a Literal Split Personality situation, personal pronouns are tricky:
    And she — I — a pox on the pronouns of this situation
  • Oversaturated World: Discussed with Derpy and her analogues in other dimensions in "Sonnenunterganglied, by FoME", while she's fixing a mess she sort of caused:
    "Well, I couldn't just wreck everything and leave myself to fix it, could I?"
    Sunset smirked. "You inhabit a very interesting realm of grammar. Have I ever told you that?"
    "A few times."
  • In Songs of the Spheres, to prevent confusion, and to show off the fact that they've broken free of who they used to be, most of the ponies (and several other characters) come up with their own semi-unique identities, replacing their 'standard' names: Flutterfree Asquall, Evening Sparkle, Renee Jackson, et cetera.
  • In The Shimmerverse/The Sunsetverse crossover Shimmering Sunsets, after Twilight straps Twilight to a rocket:
    "What was I thinking, strapping me into that rocket? When I get back I am going to kick my flank for this, do you hear me myself?!" Some more coughing sounded. "Wait, Shiny, is that you?"
    “Twilie?” Shining blinked in surprise. Well, only for a few seconds. It was just like his sister to come visit in such a manner. “What the hay are you doing here?”
    "I was going a little crazy, so I decided to strap me to a rocket so that I could go see you. Apparently I thought this was a good idea, I just don't get me sometimes."

    Films — Animated 
  • In The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace starts referring to Hutch in the first person after he takes on his personality. For instance, when Lady Tottington rings the doorbell, we get this:
    Wallace: (transforming) I can't answer the door like this!
    Hutch: (walking towards door) Charming. I'm Wallace.
    Wallace: (yelps) I already am!

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Averted in Primer, where characters living in the past refer to their doubles with third person pronouns, and sometimes even their own names.
  • Some confusion with Spider-Man: No Way Home as all three Peter Parkers will respond when one is addressed. They eventually settle on numbering themselves to clear things up.

    Literature 
  • Alfred Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit", in which a man and his android duplicate can't tell which of them he is, nor which of them is a murderer.
  • In C. J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe, this is common in Union culture due to cloning.
    • In the case where a clone needs to be distinguished to an earlier version of himself/herself who is no longer alive, the common usage in Cyteen and Regenesis is to refer to the original as "my/your predecessor" if they have the same name. Another usage is to refer to the elder of the pair as "senior", as in "Warrick" versus "Warrick senior".
    • Azi — the mass-produced clones who are the most common result of the technology — grow up knowing that there may be many copies of their particular geneset/psychset combination; that is, many clones with an identical environment, leading to very, very similar people. In Regenesis, the current version of Florian has to discuss his predecessor. He reflects inwardly that time before he himself existed was not emotionally attractive to him; he has no trouble with the fact that they're really not the same individual, however similar they are.
    • Parental replicates — clones of people who had a "normal" upbringing as opposed to the structured education of an azi — are much harder to replicate psychologically, and do sometimes have trouble coping with who's who. In the case of a parental replicate, where the original and the replicate have the same name, the latter may be referred to with the suffix PR attached to his or her name.
  • —All You Zombies— features a time-traveling hermaphrodite who not only meets themselves multiple times but ultimately becomes their own mother and father.
  • This situation occurs in various Science Fiction and fantasy works by Andre Norton.
    • The protagonists of Android at Arms wake on a strange world and learn that they have been kidnapped and stored as Human Popsicles, while being replaced by android duplicates. The question eventually arises, which one is the Robot Me (a Ridiculously Human Robot by necessity) and which is the original, and how to prove it? When the main character, Andas, confronts a much older version of himself on his homeworld, both are deeply shaken — each believes he's real, but how could a Robot Me be such a Ridiculously Human Robot as to do the various things each has done? (The protagonist refers to his older counterpart as "the false Andas"). Another variation happens later, when he and one of his companions wind up in an Alternate Universe, and he confronts a dying version of himself.
    • In Star Gate (1958), all the human colonists on Gorth evacuate the planet at the beginning of the book because The World Is Not Ready — that is, the native intelligent species of Gorth (who call them the Star Lords) isn't ready for the humans' much more advanced technology. Some opt to search for an Alternate Universe in which Gorth never developed intelligent life. They accidentally wind up in a Mirror Universe in which their counterparts enslaved the natives rather than helping them. The Half-Human Hybrid protagonist refers to the Mirror Universe counterparts of the Star Lords as the Dark Ones, the Dark Lords, or (in the case of individuals, such as Lord Dillan) "the false Lord X" or "the Dark Lord X" to distinguish them from the "true" Lord X. (The Lord of the Rings was less than 5 years old at this point, please note.) The eldest of the Star Lords has the hardest time adjusting to it when he finally sees the Dark Lords, because although he knew intellectually what they were, it hit him very hard to see (apparently) several people among them who in his universe were long dead and had meant a great deal to him. He had to be restrained from going to them until he got himself under control.
    • The Big Bad of Victory on Janus (1966), THAT WHICH ABIDES, creates android duplicates of the Iftin and of some human colonists — not as Evil Knockoffs, but to frame the Iftin for apparently attacking the colonists. The Iftin refer to the android duplicates as the "false Iftin", and can tell them apart from the true ones by smell. The worst problem the protagonist has is when duplicates turn up, not of himself, but of an old Love Interest and an old friend, both probably, but not certainly, long dead.
  • Averted by the Fel clones in The Hand of Thrawn. They have major, major Clone Angst, but each of them has named himself something different, dresses differently, and has different hair. They keep a common family name, Devist, and let people think of them as just a really close and fairly insular family, because they're desperately afraid of being discovered and killed for being clones. A brief stretch where one, Carib, is the viewpoint character and has a momentary existential meltdown ends as he strengthens his resolve by reminding himself what he's worked for.
  • In The Time Traveler's Wife, reluctant time-traveler Henry keeps running into versions of himself in the past, present, and future. Can be shocking, funny, sexy, or tragic, depending entirely on the circumstances.
  • In Brothers in Arms, Miles Vorkosigan discovers he has a clone, who has been trained to impersonate him and is also (at this time, anyway) known as "Miles". At one point, the two clones are chasing around a large building, leading Miles to ask a bystander "Have you seen me already? Which way did I go?"
  • Happens in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya when Kyon meets an adult version of Mikuru.
    • Intrigues are all about it: Mikuru goes one week back in time and poses as her own long-lost twin sister.
    • And in the climax of Astonishment when two versions of Kyon from two parallel realities meet in a closed space.
  • The Star Diaries: In The 7th Voyage of Ijon Tichy a.k.a. 147 Vortexes, the titular space traveler cannot fix his ship alone and drives it into a gravity vortex to create a time loop that would bring another copy of him. Then into another to copy a spacesuit too. Unfortunately, the copies cannot agree on anything, keep beating each other, stealing chocolate and lumping the blame on "the Sunday one". And the poorly controlled ship keeps running into more vortexes bringing more Ijons from different times, including an old man who the others try to pump for information (after all, if he exists, he got out alive somehow), but turns out to be senile and forgetful, and 2 small children who end up saving the day.
  • Common in the works of authors like Linda Nagata, Charles Stross, and Greg Egan where there's no technical reason that software intelligences can't duplicate as many copies of themselves as needed. Stories set when the technology is new or in settings where biological and software intelligences interact lead to confusion.
    • In Nagata's Vast, Clementine is dismayed by the way Nikko and Urban casually create and destroy instances of themselves.
    • In Stross's Accelerando, there are numerous personality clashes between people who treat persinality as fungible and those who cling to a single persona.
    • In Egan's Permutation City, Peer spawns a clone of himself to enter the construct, and is faced with the decision of who will remain in the real world.
  • The protagonist of "...And it Comes Out Here" by Lester del Rey has a few moments of pronoun confusion when talking to his younger self.
    I'm you thirty years from now, or you're me. I remember just how you feel; I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago.
  • In Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her, there are two Pennies walking around, one in the original organic body who identifies themself as Penny's power, and a robot which is carrying Penny's soul. Except, as it turns out, they're both parts of the same whole, as well as the "Heart of Gold" part of her, which is her most noble aspects, currently trapped in an iron heart.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Tyrol in Battlestar Galactica (2003) having trouble remembering to refer to Cylons in the first person, rather than humans.
  • When Willow is accosted by Vampire Willow in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Doppelgangland":
    Willow: What do I want with you?
  • Happens more often than not in Doctor Who, with all the time travel, alternate dimensions and clones the show's got going on. It's also meant that fans have had to come up with ways of keeping things straight.
    • The Doctor's multiple bodies are referred to by numbered regenerations — for example, Tom Baker's Doctor is "Four" and Matt Smith's Doctor is "Eleven"note  When they're the same regeneration, other identifying markers are used — for example, the two versions of the Doctor running around in Season Five are called "Normal Doctor" and "Jacket Doctor", or the clone of the Tenth Doctor at the end of Season 4 is called "Meta-Crisis Doctor" or "Tentoo". The Master is recognized by the actor playing him (with the exception of Michelle Gomez's Master, who is generally referred to as "Missy" both in-universe and out), and Romana is kept straight by numbering her as Romana I and Romana II. River Song's bodies are kept straight as "Melody Pond", "Mels" and "River Song".
    • One memorable instance of confusion is in the anniversary special "The Three Doctors", when the Second Doctor met the Third Doctor and Jo Grant:
      Second Doctor: You see, he is one of me.
      Jo: Oh I see, you're both Time Lords.
      Second Doctor: Well quite! Well, not quite. Not... not just Time Lords. We're the same Time Lord.
      Third Doctor: Please, you're only confusing my assistant. Jo, it's all quite simple. I am he and he is me.
      Jo: [confused] "And we are all together, koo koo kachoo"?
    • In "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", the human alter-ego which the Tenth Doctor temporarily assumes to hide from the Family of Blood is distinguished from Ten by his adopted name, Mr. John Smith.
    • The two-parter "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People" brings us identical clones of various characters. These are referred to as Ganger-[insert character here].
    • In the 50th Anniversary Special "The Day of the Doctor", Eleven refers to Ten as "Sandshoes" and the War Doctor as "Granddad" (despite Eleven being hundreds of years older than him, chronologically), which both take offense to.
  • Occurred briefly in the first season of Heroes between Hiro and Future Hiro, as highlighted on the quotes page. In the fourth season, Hiro goes back in time to the period of the first, talks to his younger self, then calls him(self) a moron after sending him(self) off on a mission intended to avert paradox.
  • MADtv (1995): In an Arnold Schwarzenegger spoof where he features in a movie called Stolen Identity 3, Arnold and his clones get into endless arguments that basically go "Are you me or am I you?" "I'm not me! I'm you!" "Who am I if I'm not me?!"
  • In an episode of Quantum Leap, Sam leaps into a young Al, and they have to distinguish between observer Al and young Al. After a short while, Sam just suggests calling the young Al "Bingo", his nick-name at the time.
  • In the Red Dwarf episode "Stasis Leak", multiple copies of the crew begin to accumulate in the same time period, leading to general confusion.
    Past Rimmer: Three Listers! Splendid! Perhaps Lister here would like to go over to the fridge and open a bottle of wine for Lister and Lister! Rimmer here doesn't drink, because he's dead, but I wouldn't mind a glass!
  • Occurs multiple times in Stargate SG-1, at one time with the entire SG-1 team.
    Landry: Excuse me, Colonel Carter.
    A whole room full of Carters turn to look at him
    Landry: ...My Colonel Carter.
  • Played for both laughs and drama in Farscape. In season 3, John is "twinned" by an alien device, and both Johns are perfect copies of the other, to the point that they can finish each other's sentences and will have identical reactions to various situations. They only slowly start differing when they get separated and start experiencing different events. There is some humor derived from this situation, but it evolves into drama when the question comes up of which John will be able to romance Aeryn, and culminates in a Heroic Sacrifice for one of them, treated with all the gravitas due to the death of the main character of the series, despite the fact that there's still a John Crighton running around.

    Music 
  • The video for "Mercy" by GOOD Music involves three identical Kanye Wests during his verse.

    Video Games 
  • In Hearthstone's Monster Hunt solo adventure, one of the available heroes is Toki the Time-Tinkerer, a gnome mage that specializes in rolling back time to trick out the game's random effects. And as the final boss of her run, she has to face Infinite Toki, a Bad Future version of herself, out to prevent some sort of a screw-up on her part. Both of them start referring to each other with "I" and "me", such as in declarations "I have to stop myself before I am too late!"
  • Kingdom Hearts is filled with this, to the point that this is practically the essence of most of the things that happened in all the side titles and the second main games of the series. Sora, Roxas, their Data versions as well as their memory editions are implied to be the same person though they all try to get their own unique identities and this causes a major emotional mayhem for them. Roxas eventually realizes this and gives up. It is also shown that the Sora we know has his heart connected with Ventus making him practically another version of him. Later it is shown that Roxas has the same heart as Ventus as well as his looks. Roxas' personality has an uncanny resemblance to the combine personalty of Ventus and Vanitas, who was yet another part of Ventus having the same appearance as a black-haired Sora. Xion is practically a female version of Sora with the looks of Kairi as Sora remembered her.
    • Riku has his own troubles with his replica, whom he eventually kills in battle, shattering the replica's dream of defeating and then becoming the original Riku.
  • In Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, the eponymous professor and his sidekick Luke Triton travel 10 years into the future after receiving a letter from Luke's future self. They have difficulty knowing which one is being referred to when their name is used at first, but Layton comes up with an easy way to distinguish.
  • In both Raidou Kuzunoha games, an alternate version of the titular character appears. It's somewhat mitigated by the fact said alternate does not have the exact same name, but it still causes a great deal of confusion.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy, if you're playing as Mario, you find Luigi in various levels who refers to Mario as "bro". If you're playing as Luigi... you find Luigi in the same places, who refers to (player) Luigi as "me" in the same places in the dialogue.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • Schlock Mercenary:
    • The wormgate system creates a perfect duplicate of anyone sent through it, which is kept for interrogation by the Gatekeepers, who then kill the clone. The first characters who suffer from this problem are Doythaban and his gateclone Haban II, but this later becomes a galaxy-wide problem when billions of these clones are released. However, no-one suffers from it more than Gav, who clones himself 950 million times to escape, leading to an truly epic case of this trope.
      Gav: There are still over nine hundred million Gav clones out there. My activities of the last year can only be understood statistically.
    • At one point the Terran government tries to charge Kevyn with treason for mass-releasing the teraport designs. He points out that it was his now-deceased clone who released that information, not him, and thus he can't be charged with anything.
    • It also leads to some rather bizarre court cases, since there are some legal issues where the gate clones are not always considered separate individuals. In one case, a person had two death penalties against him for Manual Operation under the Influence (essentially getting a DUI on a starship, which both needs a manual operator to be installed and has rather dire results on a crash). When his gate clone turns up, the judge rules that, since the clone was created after the commission of the crime, it is perfectly legal for them to apply the second death penalty to the gate clone.
      Judge: Oh, and you used up all your appeals the first time around. Sorry.
    • In the "A Hand of Aceys" storyline, a gate clone attempts to murder the original version of himself, but instead gets killed by the original acting in self defense. Since the clone and the original are legally the same person in that particular jurisdiction, the final police verdict ends up being attempted suicide.
    • The Gavs eventually found a way to differentiate themselves from one another, to the point where they are barely recognizable as Gav-clones. Especially the females.
    • Kevyn has to go through this again, during his attempt to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
    • One guy sees a solution to his having two wives (wifes?). Unfortunately, they tell him that if said solution happens to rhyme with "gleesome", he'll be dead twice over.
  • Pretty thoroughly averted in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!. Golly and Jolly are both biological clones of Molly with totally different upbringings, and the castmembers are apparently all bright enough to realize that even if the three look alike, they are different people.
  • In Bob and George, due to convoluted Time Travel and Alternate Universes, one story arc involves Mega Man and Bass, Past Mega Man, Alternate Mega Man and Bass, Future Alternate Mega Man and Bass, and Far Future Alternate Mega Man and Bass (though the last one was a trick). They end up wearing helpful labels to show who is who, since they all look identical in a Sprite Comic.
  • Dave and Davesprite in Homestuck. John has some trouble figuring out how to refer to them.
    Dave: and hey you might even be able to help your past dream self wake up sooner without all that fuss you went through
    Rose: I think the true purpose of this game is to see how many qualifiers we can get to precede the word "self" and still understand what we're talking about.
    • Karkat uses "past me" and "future me" when talking to himself.
    • Every player has a dream self on the moon of Derse or Prospit respectively. Then time shenanigans get involved, both via literal time travel and time traveling messages. Then some of the dead selves end up coming back to life as separate characters from the "main" characters. It only gets more confusing when alternate universe counterparts to the heroes show up.
    • Then there's Pickle Inspector in Problem Sleuth. Things start getting out of hand with Past Future Pickle Inspector/PFPI, and in the end an infinite number of his past and future selves become the whole universe.
    • Hell, Dave in general. Being a Knight of Time, there's a bunch of alternate versions of him from stable time loops and splintered timelines in existence at any given time. At one point, Jade looks for him with her Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles (basically scrying goggles) and finds fourteen different versions of him.
      Jade: dave! any dave out there please answer me!
      Dave: this is a dave out here whats up
  • Suppression: Cerene runs into this problem constantly, because there are three of her. And yes, it confuses all three of them (or at least the two we've seen so far).
  • Happens in General Protection Fault with alter egos from the main and "nega-verse"
    Trudy: (after her counterpart gets knocked out) I'VE BEEN HIT! Well, sort of.
  • The Doctor Who fan-comic The 10 Doctors as a comic that include 10 versions of the same man.
    Fifth Doctor: That's the nicest thing I've ever said to myself.
  • In this Chasing the Sunset strip, when Feiht is fighting "Evil Feiht" she becomes confused as to which one she is. In the next strip Ayne helps her to pull herself together.
  • Happens a few times to Juni/Zero and its various neural clones in Unity, with a key example being this strip; a few hundred rounds later, Zero is still figuring it out.

    Web Original 
  • Jade Sinclair (Generator) and her creations in the Whateley Universe. Jade's creations aren't really inventions. They're objects populated by a psychic clone of herself, including the character Shroud, who is claiming to be her sister Jinn. Even Jade can't keep her pronouns straight when talking about her selves, to the point that it is a Running Gag.
    • After Belphegor accidentally created Belphoebe (a teenaged female Drow clone with a mental imprint of Belphegor's memories), the two of them immediate start bickering over who was the 'real' Belphegor, with him also begging her to have sex with him; Belphoebe immediately declared that she now understood why every girl he'd asked out had turned him down.[1]
      "I thought you, at least, would be sympathetic."
      "Sympathetic, yes. Cheap, no."
  • College Phoenix, Hobo Phoenix, and Lawyer Phoenix in Phoenix Wright Ace Idiot. "I traveled back in time to murder my younger self, blamed it on myself, and hired myself to defend myself. Then I prosecuted myself to insure myself the murder of myself would never be linked to myself."
  • Alan Grant in Curveball can make several copies of himself in distant locations. Unfortunately, this didn't come with the ability to keep track of which clone is doing what — he had to learn how to do that through experience. So, he always refers to his clones in the first-person singular, because to him, they are him.
  • In the various glowfics, alternate universe variations of people are a major plot element, to deal with people with almost identical appearances, personalities, and names the characters have come up with a system of giving each individual a unique nickname to use when dealing with their alts and alts of the people they know.

    Western Animation 
  • Happens in the Ben 10 episode "Ben 10,000" when Ben meets his older self.
  • Carl²: Happens in the theme song when Carl first sees his clone. "When face to face, I met myself at the door."
  • Happens at the end of the Time Travel episode of Cow and Chicken, with Chicken complaining of his time-travel duplicate "I ate all the cereal, now there's none left for me!"
  • Danger Mouse:
    • DM has to suss out which of two Penfolds is real in "Penfold Transformed". Neither are — one is a robot duplicate planted by Dr. Crumhorn which converts into a menacing cyborg; the other is Stiletto in a Penfold outfit. The real Penfold was kidnapped by Dr. Crumhorn but managed to escape.
    • DM goes through this during "The Good, The Bad and the Motionless" when he meets his evil self at Stonehenge.
      Evil DM: Time, my bland code friend, is standing stiil... except for you and me. Or should I tell me and you. Or maybe even... me and me!
      DM: I'm not going to be pushed around by two percent of me!
  • The Gravity Falls episode "Double Dipper" features a few instances of this joke among Dipper's photocopied duplicates. "Hey, buddy! It's me, you."
  • In the Steven Universe episode "Steven and the Stevens", the titular character uses time-travel so that multiple copies of himself can all be in a band together, and base an entire song on this premise. Then they start fighting...
    "Listen, Steven and I have been talking, and Steven agrees..."
  • The infinite Ricks of Rick and Morty are pretty relaxed about living in a society composed entirely of themselves and an equal infinity of Morties. It does, however, lead to some peculiar grammar.
    Rick: Fuck me, pal!
    Also Rick: Fuck you? No, no, no: fuck me.
  • Happens to Candace in Phineas and Ferb after the boys' latest invention splits her desire to be with Jeremy and her desire to bust the boys into two distinct people.
  • In Episode 232 of Kaeloo, Stumpy travels through different dimensions with a portal gun and meets several versions of himself, all of whom refer to each other as "me". At one point, one of them asks to borrow the portal gun and Stumpy says no because "only I can use it", but the other him reminds him that "I am you" so technically he's allowed to use it.
  • In Kim Possible, when future Shego explains the plan to her past self:
    Future Shego: You need the Time Monkey.
    Present Shego: Can't I just use yours?
    Future Shego: No this is mine! Okay, well, actually it's yours too...

    Other 
  • The Firesign Theatre's audio play "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger" features a flashback told by Catherwood the butler — twenty years earlier he surprises his bride Nancy with a time machine, intending to honeymoon in ancient Greece. He tries it on himself first, and when he returns minutes later, he's a shaky-voiced, 1,000-year-old codger, to her horror. Present-day Nick bursts in unexpectedly and uses the time machine to travel forward 20 years back to the present, taking the couple and shady character Rocky Rococo with him. Back in the present they're shocked at finding there's two of all of them — they fight with their other selves, except the two Catherwoods who enjoy having someone their own age to talk with.
  • A fairly well-known T-shirt design reads: "I have gone to find myself. If I get back before I return, keep me here."


 
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Interdimensional Stumpys

Stumpy meets versions of himself from different dimensions, all of whom refer to each other as "me".

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