Split Personality / Live-Action TV

• One client in Ally McBeal is the original personality, who wants treatment to get rid of the alter-ego, who hires another firm to protect its existence. The court finds in favour of the original personality, which the treatment then unexpectedly eliminates. At the time this was aired, many professionals who still believed this condition was even real did seek to obliterate or eradicate all but one of the selves. Nowadays, however, usually the goal of therapy is "integration" in the sense of a state of mind in which everybody can still think, feel and express themselves.
• One cop show where the multiple wasn't faking was Barney Miller. In the episode "Power Failure", Sgt. Wojohowicz arrests shy Charlie Keller for punching a bookie; Charlie insists Lenny did it, and Lenny, a loudmouth roughneck, later shows up and cheerfully admits it. When their doctor bails them out, a third, unknown person appears; he's an erudite, high-class sort who's been trying to come to the front and speak to the doctor for a long time.
• Batman (1966): Professor William Omaha McElroy, an Egyptologist at Yale University, would become the villain King Tut every time he was hit on the head and return to normal when he was hit on the head again. He became the only series villain never to be sent to jail, via the insanity defense. Prof. Mc Elroy also knew about his Tut self (despite not recalling what he did under it) and also tried to prevent King Tut's emergence via wearing a special hat supposed to soften blows to the head. Obviously, it didn't work.
• Baywatch: A woman develops a split personality when her twin sister dies. Her two personalities both become obsessed with Mitch Buchannon. One personality takes over and tries to drown him. The real topper is the woman is played by Carrie-Anne Moss years before The Matrix.
• Jim and Jerry Reynolds are not faking on Becker either in "Papa Does Preach". They're quite real and there's a clever twist in that the rude, assertive Jerry is the one who's trying to cooperate with Becker on the need to take cholesterol medication. Being multiple was portrayed as persons in a family with very different temperaments trying to get along and take care of the body.
• Buffyverse: Angel has two separate personalities; himself, the heroic vampire with a soul, and Angelus, a soulless sociopath who's listed as the most vicious and evil vampire in recorded history. While Buffy the Vampire Slayer initially just depicted Angelus as Angel with his Restraining Bolt removed, Angel establishes that the two are totally separate personas, and Angelus exists in an And I Must Scream state while Angel is ensouled. They even have a Battle in the Center of the Mind in "Orpheus."
• In the Columbo episode Fade in to Murder, actor Ward Fowler (played by William Shatner) begins to demonstrate increasing signs of having a split personality with Detective Lucerne, the character he plays on the fictional TV show. While Fowler seeks to evade Columbo's investigation, Detective Lucerne actively aids the lieutenant in tracking down his other self.
• Criminal Minds:
  • In the second season, Reid gets kidnapped by a man with three personalities, one of whom torturs him, one of whom drugs him, and the last of whom plays Russian roulette. All of the personalities are aware of each other, although it's not clear that they know they inhabit the same body.
  • In the fourth season, 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. Only the secondary personality is aware of the condition, which leads to a Split-Personality Takeover.
  • In "All That Remains", Bruce Morrison is a friendly enough person, but has a sadistic personality named Johnny who tends to come out during drunken rages. Interestingly, he isn't the killer. He isn't even involved.
• The Crowded Room: Danny has Disassociative Identity Disorder (DID), then (1979) labeled Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), with at least seven other personalities (alters).
• An episode of CSI has a woman faking multiple personalities to get an insanity plea.
• One episode of CSI: Miami has a woman with three personalities, one of whom is male. They aren't all aware of each other and the one that isn't is very confused.
• In Cutie Honey: THE LIVE, Panther Claw member Yuji Nakajo has three split personalities: the original, a calm and reserved young man; Hikomaro, a gleefully sadistic child; and Giza, a viscous Blood Knight. Later in the series, they are overtaken by a fourth personality: Hikaru, a non-combative yet Manipulative Bitch. However, instead of a Jekyll & Hyde situation, they're all villains with a capital V, no matter how much Honey wishes otherwise (he helped her once; she was convinced he was good deep down no matter how much he told her straight-up that no, he wasn't, he'd just helped her get away from his rivals so he could profit. The series, while it's got some laughs, is actually not a very optimistic one - in the end, he's no better than everyone, himself included, says, no matter which personality is in the driver's seat today.)
• In the 2015 version of Death Note, Mello is the violent, aggressive split personality of Near, who initially manifests through Near's puppet, but after L's death, Mello seems to take over Near directly. Subverted when Near reveals that this takeover was a ploy to get Light to reveal himself as Kira.
• The main hook of Do No Harm: The title character is an ethical doctor who switches to a malevolent second personality at 8:25 pm each night and then reverts back at 8:25 am the following morning. After keeping this personality sedated with drugs for years, one day he finds that his body has become immune to them... unleashing the other personality, now bent on destroying his life. Subverted in the series finale when it was revealed that the benevolent personality was the alternate personality while the malevolent one was the original.
• 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 a more sci-fi cause. Likewise in "The Face of Evil", where a sentient computer was repaired by the Doctor who accidentally impressed his own personality on to it.
• 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.
• In The Flash (2014), Caitlin starts to go a bit dark-side whenever she uses her newfound icy powers, eventually becoming a full-blown case of this trope. However, Killer Frost has a proper Heel–Face Turn all on her own and she and Caitlin are getting better at sharing headspace over time.
• In The Following, after recurring villain Luke Gray is killed, his twin brother/killing partner Mark recreates him as an alternate personality which he slips into to deal with stressful situations, as Luke had done for him in life.
• An episode of Forever Knight features a woman with two personalities, one of whom is a normal mortal and the other a vampire.
• In Grimm, there was a kid who was a wesen called a Genio innocuo who had his genome spliced with Löwen DNA and his Löwen side developed a separate personality of its own, killing people that he competed with as a way of protecting him.
• Rare realistic example from Hannibal, in which Will Graham begins to have dissociative episodes due to being overdosed on Nightmare Fuel. It basically consists entirely of stretches of "lost time," in which he can't remember what he's been doing.
• Niki Sanders on Heroes has "Jessica", the personality of her dead sister, as an amoral alter ego with super-strength. 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 ego is named. Only the "Jessica" alter remembers, which resembles real theories of DID fairly well. In S2, a third, party-girl personality called Gina, who apparently began as a mere alias, emerges.
• Highlander had an immortal with a split personality. The good side, Michael Moore (no, not THAT one), was a good friend of Duncan's. But the evil side, Quentin Barnes, slowly overpowered Moore and Duncan had to keep his promise to stop Barnes. In an earlier time, the evil side actually killed the good side's girlfriend.
• Hill Street Blues featured a murder at a homeless shelter for which the only witness was someone with this condition, or something like it.^note Some of the things he says could imply he has schizophrenia, because whoever happens to be in control at the time can apparently hear the other personalities; not unusual for multiples, but believed to be so at that time. Eventually it transpires that one of the man's personalities was the killer, and when he figures that out he throws himself out of a fourth-storey window, determined to prevent "TJ" (the killer) from harming anyone else. It's as much of a Tear Jerker as it sounds.
  • Another episode had the cops so convinced that the main suspect was multiple with a "killer personality" that they ignored obvious clues that he was speaking the truth when he told them about his twin brother who was capable of such things. They found out too late that there really was a twin.
• On the British soap opera Hollyoaks, 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 later episodes, he 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.
• 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.
• Jam and Jerusalem has Rosie, the awkward but friendly Cloud Cuckoo Lander, and her angry, intimidating alter-ego Margaret.
  • This becomes much more poignant in the second series when it is revealed that Rosie was molested as a child; multiple personalities are common among trauma survivors ^note in fact, child sexual abuse was once explained even by many doctors as just about the only way multiplicity happened, so this may be a possible explanation for Margaret.
• Korean drama Kill me heal me features the main character with 7 different personalities due to his experience as a child.
• The Season Nine finale of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, "Three In One", has a character who legitimately has three personalities as opposed to faking. The following spoiler will tell you whether any of them did anything illegal. Yes. He ended up that way because of severe childhood abuse, which his female abuser told him was "discipline". When he grew up, hearing any adult woman talk about the importance of disciplining a child made him remember his own "discipline", which made him angry and afraid and brought the "protector" personality to the surface. The protector would then attack and kill the woman, whom he believed was advocating and participating in the abuse of children.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit has had a multiple personality woman (Cynthia Nixon) killing her abusive dad. She gets a "not guilty" verdict by reason of insanity, but she was faking it. The detectives realize it too late, and settle for arresting her sister, who was also involved.
• An episode of Lie to Me has Cal take a client with this disorder. Cal has to figure out which of her several personalities witnessed a murder. Although the character is initially referred to as having a split personality, Foster corrects the speaker and instead says that she has DID, which is the term used for the rest of the episode. Foster also notes that DID is very rare, assuming it exists at all.
  Foster: It's Dissociative Identity Disorder, and it's more plausible than a psychic vision, but just barely.
• By the end of season 4 of Melrose Place, Kimberly had several personalities.
• In Mr. Robot, it is revealed that the titular Mr. Robot, a hacker who recruited Elliot into the hacker collective fsociety, is actually another personality of Elliot that manifests itself as a hallucination of Elliot's deceased father. Elliot is not aware of this until near the end of the season.
• Murdoch Mysteries features a suspect in a murder that suffers from this in the episode "Me, Myself, and Murdoch".
• My Own Worst Enemy has this as the premise of the show. Edward Albright, a spy, is the original personality, and Henry Spivey, a quiet middle-management office employee with a wife and two kids, is the implanted cover. The chip that separates the two lives breaks down, and Henry becomes aware of his alter-ego.
• NCIS: New Orleans: The killer in Episode six is revealed to be one of these, born to shield his original from their abusive father. He framed the father for a crime he didn't commit in order to get him locked up; when the father was released, the Hyde personality started killing again to frame their father a second time and get him sent back to jail permanently.
• Played for laughs in an episode of Night Court, where a defendant's DID wasn't revealed to the main characters until near the end. One personality was prudish, the other was slutty. The episode's running gag was for her more "open" side luring Dan into some private (and always off-camera) location for some hanky-panky, only for her prudish side to re-emerge just as things were apparently getting good.
• In the Night Visions episode "Switch", the protagonist, Sydney, has multiple personalities.
• Nip/Tuck: One episode has Montana/Sassy/Justice. One wants her ankles fixed and another one wants her breasts gone because she is 5.
• NYPD Blue: In season 3 episode 20, "Spotlight on Rico", the suspect claims he has a twin brother, who may be the real murderer. Furillo and Goldblume find no evidence that such a man exists, so write the suspect off as a whacko multiple personality nutcase who in all probability is the killer because everybody knows multiples are all violent and dangerous, right? Spoiler: They are so convinced of their "killer multiple" theory that they ignore subtle but obvious clues that there really is a second man.
• 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 complete contrast to Viki's upper-crust manner), her daughter Jessica later developed her own split personality (tough girl Tess), as a result of a retcon where a young Jessica follows Niki to a bar and gets raped by a guy and this was caught on tape. 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.
• In Power Rangers Dino Charge, we meet Heckyl and Snide. As opposed to one being good and one being evil, they become a Big Bad Duumvirate - Heckyl being a careful and intricate planner using every page in the Gambit Index and Snide not having the patience for subtlety and preferring more direct plans. They argue a lot, but surprisingly manage to work together well enough to not ruin each other's plans by interfering.
• A patient in Private Practice was alleged to have this condition; she was diagnosed at the age of seven and partially raised by her older sister, and she hasn't had a resurgence in ten years. Unfortunately, they came back with the stress of her sister moving away. She was actually faking so that they won't move.
• 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.
• Sanctuary (2007) has Adam Worth, a genius with a split personality. It's a bit confusing, since both are, apparently, named Adam. The split started after his daughter got sick and died. He blames the Five for this.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: "The Enemy Within" pushes the Jekyll & Hyde trope to extremes when Captain Kirk is divided into his good and evil halves. And again like The Dark Crystal, Kirk's good half is weak and indecisive while the evil Kirk has his way with pretty much everyone (including, very nearly, Yeoman Rand). He gets better.
• Star Trek: Voyager: In "Infinite Regress", Seven starts going back and forth in exhibiting different personalities, sometimes in rapid succession, e.g., shifting from an angry Klingon, to a scared little girl, to a logical Vulcan, etc. They find out that this is due to a Borg viniculum, which houses the personalities of various people assimilated by the Borg.
• 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 Phlebotinum that was intended to kill Goa'uld.
• In the Terminator: 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 who was 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.
• United States of Tara: Tara has four alternate personalities: a 15-year-old sex-and-drugs addict 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 and serves as a kind of "pure id/protector" alter, who comes out whenever Tara gets too close to discovering something which might traumatize her. Seasons Two and Three introduce three more personalities: Shoshana Schoenbaum, an alter based on a therapist Tara creates after reading said therapist's book; Chicken, who is essentially Tara when she was five years old; and Bryce Crane, an alter based on Tara's half-brother who is believed to have sexually molested Tara when she was a child and is the reason why she has DID in the first place. Bryce then proceeds to apparently kill all of the other alters, although the last episode reveals that Buck, T, and Alice are still alive.
• Jacqueline Hyde of Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego has two personalities, The Ingenue and Omnicidal Maniac, which she repeatedly switches back and forth between. Her "evil" side speaks in Voice of the Legion.
• This is the premise for the Russian comedy series Zaitsev+1. The protagonist, Sasha Zaitsev (sometimes Latinized as Zaicev) is a typical college nerd who is in love with Nastya, the prettiest girl in his class, although she doesn't know it and stays with her cheating Jerk Jock boyfriend. Whenever Zaitsev gets hit in the head, is blinded by a bright light, or is deafened by a loud noise, he turns into Fyodor, his wild, rude, and cynical alter ego who likes big women. While Fyodor is actually played by a different actor, only the audience perceives him as a different person. Everyone else just notices that Zaitsev is suddenly acting very differently. Fyodor likes to sleep around, especially with another girl named Nastya, which becomes a problem for Zaitsev, who can't really explain his problem to others without sounding insane.
• Part of the reason why so many cop shows have the supposed multiple turn out to be faking has to do with the Hillside Strangler case (see Real Life examples).

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