Misused: Opening A Can Of Clones

So, this trope has two different problems. First, Opening a Can of Clones is frequently misused for a character creating a bunch of clones of themselves or something similar, despite that not being close to the definition. Second, the actual trope is defined as objective despite describing an Audience Reaction — that being the audience no longer feeling there are actual stakes in a story due to the introduction of elements that can undo any consequences, such as clones, Time Travel, resurrection, or alternate universes.

Opening A Check Of Wicks results:

• 18/50 (36%) described subjective judgements/audience reactions towards a work.
• 23/50 (46%) took the "clones" part literally and described it as anything to do with a character having a lot of clones.
• 9/50 (18%) were ZCEs.

Possible Solutions: This should be YMMV and renamed to something like "No Real Consequences Equals No Stakes" (clunky title, will try to come up with something better).

1. Franchise.Metroid: Characters or creatures believed killed off in previous games commonly reappear as clones, robotic duplicates, X-Parasite doppelgangers, etc. (and in the case of Ridley, all of the above). This makes it almost impossible to truly believe that these characters are gone for good, and when some characters are revealed to survive (for example Kraid in Dread), there is a lot of speculation about whether it's the real character, a clone, or some other type of copy. There are even numerous theories that Samus herself is a clone, particularly following the events of Fusion.
2. WebAnimation.Overly Sarcastic Productions: Though not mentioned by name, this is a major point of their Detail Diatribe on The Multiverse. It doesn't matter if a writer handles a time-travel or universe-altering plot well the first time; by introducing an in-canon Reset Button, the audience now knows that anything they're invested in can be undone whenever a later writer feels like it, which can be a major blow to their enjoyment of the franchise.
3. Franchise Original Sin.Terminator: According to Word of God, the Terminator saga was always supposed to take place in a changeable timeline, and it was always supposed to climax with the heroes successfully stopping the birth of Skynet and rewriting history. Unfortunately, budget constraints forced James Cameron to save that spectacular climax for the sequel, with the original instead ending with a Stable Time Loop implying that John Connor's birth and the rise of Skynet were both inevitable. So when the heroes actually did seemingly stop Judgement Day, it made it look like the movies just had inconsistent rules regarding time travel. But it was easy to forgive that, partly because the heroes' victory at Cyberdyne made for a great Grand Finale, and partly because the idea of Kyle and Sarah being destined to conceive humanity's savior made for a great love story—even if those two plot points seemed to contradict each other. Many fans were unhappy when Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines claimed that Judgement Day really was inevitable all along, as not only was that idea not planned from the beginning, it also undid T2's ending. Terminator: Dark Fate also kept the idea of it being inevitable, but ignored all except the first two films. Skynet was never created, so the inevitable Robot War instead came in the form of a new artificial intelligence named Legion. Fans didn't like this twist, either, feeling that repeating the same Bad Future except with new characters didn't make the beloved ending to the second film seem any less pointless. Worse, the constant retconning as a result of the series' reliance on time-travel tropes has shattered almost any and all stakes the films used to have, as it becomes increasingly difficult to care about anything that happens in a story when there is no guarantee that any future plot points will be permanent.
4. PlayingWith.Cessation Of Existence: Enforced: "If we can't let characters stay dead, we'll be Opening a Can of Clones. Or, worse, we could succumb to The Chris Carter Effect, what with the Big Bad's reincarnations. We need some way for characters to be Killed Off for Real."
5. Quotes.Expendable Alternate Universe:
   The problem with these alternate universe/divergent timeline tropes that Nomura is obsessed with is that, unless you're a very clever writer [...], it's incredibly easy to make your characters feel like they're not special. It's incredibly easy to make them feel expendable. I think this fatal side effect of these tropes is the core reason why a lot of people hate this ending. For instance, Cloud Strife is no longer the Cloud Strife; he's just a Cloud Strife. I don't care about what happens to this dude because [the game] told me he's an alternate universe doppelganger. I don't care what happens to any of these people now.
   —Robot Co-Op discussing Final Fantasy VII Remake
6. Unexpected Reactions to This Index: You've introduced Doppelgangers, and now dramatic scenes have no impact because there's a built-in Reset Button.
7. YMMV.Original Sin: He's Just Hiding: Not everyone bought that Nick Fury is really dead, based on his use and abuse of Life Model Decoys in the past. These fans take "his" immunity to the secret bomb as evidence that it's not really him. Ultimately, this is proven correct.
8. YMMV.Star Wars Rebels: The Season 4 episode "A World Between Worlds" is possibly the most divisive episode in the show if not the franchise. People either love the episode for resolving Ahsoka's ambiguous fate, bringing Palpatine in to the show, and expanding the franchise's lore. Detractors however feel that Ahsoka should've died in her fight against Vader, feeling that bringing her back through such a convoluted method turns her into a Creator's Pet. Detractors also feel that bringing time travel into the mythos will lead to the Can of Clones trope and will inevitably result in the franchise's lore rules being broken.
9. ComicBook.Nick Fury: The LM Ds (Life Model Decoys) make his deaths less than believable.
10. Quotes.One More Day:
    Stan's synopsis for the Green Goblin had a movie crew, on location, finding an Egyptian-like sarcophagus. Inside was an ancient, mythological demon, the Green Goblin. He naturally came to life. On my own, I changed Stan's mythological demon into a human villain...I rejected Stan's idea...A mythological demon made the whole Peter Parker/Spider-Man world a place where nothing is metaphysically impossible.
    — Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man, (THE COMICS v12 #7 [2001] - "A Mini-History Part 1 -"The Green Goblin"), describing the origins of the Green Goblin and why magical concepts were antithetical to Spider-Man's story.
11. Crying Wolf: On a similar note, see Opening a Can of Clones for when this situation extends to an author and their audience, where viewers become unable to take the work at face-value because of certain story decisions made by the writer.
12. Quotes.Story Breaker Power:
    "[Force Healing] is a big plot hole because of the fact that it completely ruins death. There's no tension anymore. Death is a complete joke in this film. This person dies; comes back. This person dies; comes back. So, you do not give a shit when somebody dies! And not only that, but it completely ruins the series for the future. Like, you've got force ghosts that can do stuff [...], lightning strikes [...], and now we've got force healing [so] nobody can fucking die... I don't want to see episode X! I don't want to see XI; I don't want to see XII! ...They have to go away. They have to go back into the past."
    — The Angry Joe Show on force healing in The Rise of Skywalker.

1. Fanfic.Coreline: Alternate Self: Explicitly called "Alternates" or variations of it (like "Walternate", for example), these are the many versions of a Fictional character that have appeared all over the CoreLine universe.
2. VideoGame.Metal Gear Solid: Snake's brothers, Liquid and Solidus, are first introduced in this storyline. As a minor example, the Genome Soldiers share the same "soldier genes" that were harvested from Big Boss' remains. According to Liquid, this makes them all blood brothers.
3. Fanfic.Atonement Worm: Several Noelle Clones are prominent characters, including Pandora And Defiant.
4. Roleplay.Darwins Soldiers:
   • Averted. James Zanasiu has been seen in at least four different forms (regular, anti-matter, Furtopia regular, and AI) but they never interact, and so are easily distinguished.
   • On the other side of the coin, Rudyard Shelton has encountered all three of his doppelgängers (anti-matter, AI, and Keith Bailey but the problem of telling them apart never comes up since there are always superficial differences.
5. Recap.Rick And Morty S 3 E 9 The AB Cs Of Beth: Ambiguous Clone Ending: Beth's choice at the end of the episode isn't disclosed: did she decide to stay, or did she accept Rick's offer to make a perfect clone of her while she went travelling? The Beth we see again at the end of the episode seems much more cheerful and involved with her children than usual, which could point to a "perfect mom" clone-Beth or a Beth finally at peace with herself and her choices. On top of that, even if she did accept Rick's offer, Beth would also be able to Kill and Replace the clone to return to her old life later on. Rick could very well make another clone in the future, so from this point onward, Beth could switch places with her clones an indeterminate number of times.
6. Characters.PN 03: Schrödinger's Butterfly: Vanessa discovering a clone of herself in mission 9, discovering the Client is also a clone, and the Client saying memories can be faked calls into question just about everything in the game.
7. Characters.Adventure Time Princess Bubblegum: What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Considers her subjects expendable, as she can make more. She has prevented Finn from sacrificing himself and allowed a candy subject to do so because of this specifically.
8. Characters.Urbanus: (Nonkel Fillemon) He died in "De Buljanus-Dreiging" ("The Buljanus Threat"), but was cloned.
9. Differently Dressed Duplicates: After all, when you're Opening a Can of Clones, clothes may not be duplicated with the extra bodies, or an error in the cloning process could be introduced to help the audience tell the two apart.
10. Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: * This is the entire premise of Star Wars: Battlefront II, where you play as the 501st Legion, which "has a history of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat."
11. Webcomic.Darths And Droids: The comics and rants in Episode II note how the movies wasted the potential of having clones and shapeshifters. Later taken advantage of in Episode IV by making the original Han Solo a shapeshifter, allowing Jim's character to get away with impersonating him until Episode V, where, after capturing Jim's character, Boba Fett decides to cut him up and have a transplant of his flesh to restore his own shapeshifting ability.
12. WesternAnimation.Detentionaire: Most of the teachers at A. Nigma High are clones, as hinted by some of them resembling famous historical figures.
13. Characters.Monster Rancher Species: (Debuted in Monster Rancher 2) The Metalner that visits the ranch explains that a thousand years prior to the game, their race made clones of themselves and sealed them in Disc Stones, which they then left on our world.
14. ComicBook.Elvis Shrugged: Along with the 1970s one of Elvis, we later see that the Mad Scientist has created several mini Elvis clones called "Elvii".
15. PlayingWith.Disney Death: Double Subverted:
    • It turns out that it wasn't Walter who died, but a clone of him that was programmed to believe it was the original. Once he realizes what's going on, he creates a new, non-degenerated clone.
16. Quotes.Only The Creator Does It Right:
    When 'Thanos Rising' was announced, I wrote: “I will buy it. Partly because I’m curious, partly because I like Jason Aaron’s writing, partly because it seems like the sort of thing that would break my internet silence after less than three months. But, let’s not kid ourselves: this is clearly the broken memories of one of the defective clones of Thanos. Sorry. That doesn’t mean it can’t be good. It just means that if you’re not Jim Starlin, you’re writing about a clone.” I stand by that today.
    — Chad Nevett on Thanos Rising
17. Recap.SCP Foundation SC Ps 2000 To 2499: (SCP-2000) It repopulates the world with clones.
18. Characters.One Minute Melee Season One: (Dante vs. Ragna the Bloodeedge) The skill-set this Ragna has seems to indicate it's not the original Ragna. He's found by Dante surrounded by three defeated Hakumens, presumably clones as well. Judging from the green, red, and blue lights he absorbed from the defeated Hakumens, he got the copies by beating them.
19. Characters.Brave New World Pokemon: (Antagonists) Due to how easily he dies, Professor Tarwntulas set up a cloning system whenever he is killed.
20. Alike and Antithetical Adversaries: One extreme representation of this is to make the villains Not Even Human, rather being a horde of identical robots, insects or clones.
21. Denser and Wackier: Lois & Clark begins as a sort of office comedy interspliced with Clark's super heroics. Though the main duo stay more or less grounded in domestic reality, their surroundings become more akin to the Silver Age comics, with goofball villains (including Shelley Long, Drew Carey, Sylvia from The Nanny, and culminating in the guy from Night Court sporting a giant latex head and calling himself Dr. Klaus Mensa), time travel, magic, and clones galore.
22. Story Arc: The King of Fighters:
    • '99-2001 was "The NESTS Chronicles", focusing on an evil cartel's plans for world domination using the DNA of a captured Kyo to create human bioweapons. One of these "Kyo clones"^* "clones" in this case referring to regular humans injected with the DNA of another person; there are more traditional clones in the series, but most adhere to the former definition is K', a stoic Knight in Sour Armor who ends NESTS' ambitions by defeating their top-ranked executives.
23. ComicBook.Marvel A Fresh Start: Clones have always been a long-standing fixture in the Marvel universe but in these new storylines, cloning takes prominence as a plot point.

In Amazing Spider-Man it's been revealed that Kraven forced the High Evolutionary to clone him a large number of times in an attempt to raise a better heir. One of them took his Egomaniac Hunter ideals to the point of murdering all his "brothers" and ends up taking Kraven's place once he dies. Hickman's X-Men run has the mutants devise a way to resurrect their dead by cloning new bodies and uploading the latest backup of their minds into it. Tony Stark learns he really did die in Civil War II and that he's just a mental backup in a reconstructed body. This also applied to Rhodes, who he resurrected by the same means, and his parents, who Arno brought back in the same way when he found out. Natasha Romanoff is alive again after Secret Empire because the Red Room has similar clone backup protocols for all their agents. The telepath in charge of the process was bribed into using the heroic Black Widow's memories instead of one loyal to them.

1. Memes.One Piece: Clone Piece^{Explanation (spoilers)}Cloning was introduced in the series for some time now but used mainly for nameless goons like the Pacifista and Seraphim. Once Stussy became the first named character to be revealed as a clone, Pandora's Box was also opened as to who was also secretly a clone like Tashigi or Weevil, though most of the speculation was done jokingly. Some even joke that none of the characters seen so far are real and they're actually clones. Misuse for Epileptic Trees
2. YMMV.A Song Of Ice And Fire: The Faceless Men; just look at the WMG page. This despite the fact that the only use of Actually a Doombot the series has so far pulled off was actually Melisandre's doing. This also seems to be based on an earlier understanding of Faceless Man powers that was jossed in A Dance With Dragons: The Faceless Men keep around faces taken off of corpses and use blood magic to put them on their own faces. While this doesn't necessarily rule out impersonation via glamour, chances are that if a Faceless Man impersonates someone, the person they are impersonating is dead. Despite being "objective", item is used on YMMV page as though it is YMMV. Also misuse for Epileptic Trees.

1. AudienceAlienatingEnding.Video Games: Final Fantasy:
   • The Final Fantasy VII Remake was instantly slammed by the old guard once the ending of the first part came to light. Sephiroth (potentially the same Sephiroth from after the events of Advent Children) manipulates Cloud and his friends into killing the "arbiters of fate", leading to alterations in the timeline, the biggest of which is Zack's survival, with the implication that future events will not happen as they were supposed to as now Cloud and co. are aware of them. A lot of this is a case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! when many players were left convinced that future installments would veer more heavily from the plot of the original. It's also an interesting case of Broken Aesop crossed with Opening a Can of Clones, as the ending introduces several tropes (and has spawned numerous fan theories containing such tropes and more) which many players find not simply antithetical to certain themes from the original, but potentially render the entire series inconsequential from a story perspective (the fact that many characters now appear to have been Spared by the Adaptation has also led to accusations of 'saccharine poisoning').

1. VisualNovel.Umineko When They Cry: Given all the Reality Warper and Your Mind Makes It Real-type tropes that are involved, this was kind of inevitable. The red text is supposed to defuse the problem a bit, although a lot of it simply hinges on your trust of Beatrice in general.
2. Anime.The Big O: Commented out trope name and nothing else
3. Manga.Battle Angel Alita: The AR series.
4. YMMV.Bayonetta 3: Play the Game, Skip the Story: While it has some technical issues, on a gameplay front, Bayonetta 3 is regarded to be a great action game that improves upon many of the flaws in Bayonetta 1 and 2, while having a very satisfying and free flowing combat system, as well as some extra variety in the form of Viola. The story on the other hand, has seen a more contested response from fans and critics, with many finding aspects of it, such as the multiverse plot potentially Opening a Can of Clones, the Relationship Upgrade between Bayonetta and Luka, Bayonetta's death at the end, and Viola becoming the next Bayonetta, amongst other aspects, to be underdeveloped and/or unsatisfying.
5. SanitySlippage.Comic Books: The Transformers (Marvel):
   • Happens to Shockwave in the UK comics, when he learns he dies in the future. Determined to prevent this, he finds Megatron and sets him on Galvatron (well... it's complicated). Then the two start working together. Shockwave, who didn't expect this, just snaps, and kills anyone who approaches him.
6. ComicBook.The Clone Saga: The Spider-books in general are famous for this trope, but this is the story arc that kicked it into high gear. Peter later uncovers the original clone's scorched remains in the chimney; probably the intention was to throw doubt on Ben's identity and put forward the possibility of both Spider-Men being clones. By this point, though, there were already so many clones running around, the effect was lost and the whole subplot was discarded. Despite all the text, none of it makes clear which of the two uses of the trope it is referring to.
7. Film.Two Thousand And One A Space Travesty: Trope name and nothing else
8. Laconic.Infinity Abyss: Thanos gets his own Clone Saga.
9. ComicBook.Astro City: Commented out trope name and nothing else
10. Webcomic.Monster Of The Week: Who's the real Samantha?
11. Red String of Fate: The protagonist (one of them anyway) accidentally discovers this during the events of Kiln People. At the end of the novel, he's dropped his job as a Private Detective and is advertising an agency to link people with their soulmates.
12. Our Clones Are Identical: Why should anyone care about what happens to these clones?