History Main / BrainUploading

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project Blue Brain Project.]] They've claimed to have simulated a rat's neocortical column and [[CommitmentAnxiety expect]] to be able to simulate the entire human brain by sometime in 2020, depending on which expert you ask. In practice, those who actually study brain development generally believe that it's pointless to predict such a thing, since our understanding of the brain's structure is not complete enough to create an AI.

** ''Literature/SchildsLadder'' and ''Literature/{{Incandescence}}' are in a far-future civilization where people can copy or transfer their minds between organic and cybernetic chassis at their convenience; space travel is usually done by commissioning a new body on the destination planet and then beaming the mind over. Oddly, ''Schild's Ladder'' mentions some FantasticRacism against people who exist entirely in virtual reality, but the notion that they would try to [[GreyGoo assimilate the entire universe into a computational medium]] is mocked as a goofy conspiracy theory.

** ''Literature/SchildsLadder'' and ''Incandescence'' are in a far-future civilization where people can copy or transfer their minds between organic and cybernetic chassis at their convenience; space travel is usually done by commissioning a new body on the destination planet and then beaming the mind over. Oddly, ''Schild's Ladder'' mentions some FantasticRacism against people who exist entirely in virtual reality, but the notion that they would try to [[GreyGoo assimilate the entire universe into a computational medium]] is mocked as a goofy conspiracy theory.

** [[WildMassGuessing One theory as to]] what happened to Dr. Light between the original ''VideoGame/MegaManClassic'' series and the ''VideoGame/MegaManX'' series. Additionally, it's believed that Wily not only is some sort of VirtualGhost by 21XX due to the [[TheVirus Maverick Virus]] (particularly with his involvement in the events of ''VideoGame/MegaManX5'' being implied by Sigma's description of [[BigBadDuumvirate his unknown benefactor]] and later confirmed by WordOfGod), but also somehow turned himself into a Reploid; both Serges, one of the X-Hunters from ''VideoGame/MegaManX2'', and Isoc, one of Gate's underlings in ''VideoGame/MegaManX6'', are suggested to be incarnations of Wily.

** The "In Limbo" anomaly has your science vessel discovering a vault on a lifeless alien world, containing still-functional computers that the planet's original owners used to upload scans of their brains in a last-ditch attempt to survive some apocalypse. You can shrug and leave it be, study the equipment, or try to download these digitized consciousnesses into whatever robot technology you have available. Uploading the data into Robots or Droids gives an underwhelming result, but if you've got full [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Synths]] researched, not only is the download a complete success, [[VideoGameCaringPotential but the grateful robo-aliens join your empire, potentially by colonizing a world none of your existing species can survive on]]. Alternatively, the [[TheXenophile Enigmatic Observers]] may ask for the dead aliens' brain patterns so they can clone new bodies for them on their [[PeopleZoo Sanctuary planet]], which gives you a significant opinion bonus with the most benign Fallen Empire type without the happiness penalty for giving them some of your own people.

* In ''Literature/DragonBones'', Oreg had a variant of this done to him. His father gave him a bowl of soup that made him fall asleep, and when Oreg woke up, he ''was'' [[PoweredByAForsakenChild castle Hurog]]. He feels it if the castle is damaged, can see everything in it, and can make doors lead to places where they shouldn't be able to lead, such as directly from a cave deep under the castle to the protagonist's bedroom. He does have a body, which is not his actual body, but a magical copy that his father gave him because "it amused him" -- this fact enabled all owners of castle Hurog to inflict pain on Oreg if they wished to punish him. It is implied that many of them wished to do so. Made worse by the fact that Oreg can't commit suicide; only his current owner can kill him.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'': The greatest minds of Amphibia and past monarchs learned to cheat death by uploading their Consciousness to a [[MindHive Mind Hive]] that would end up being known as [[BigBad The Core]].

has The Core serving as The Man Behind the Man for King Andrias. It is a Mind Hive consisting of Amphibia's greatest minds and past monarchs. In its original form it has the appearance of a multi-eyed spherical robot with robotic tentacles and glowing orange eyes with lighter shaded pupils, it is way bigger than even King Andrias himself.

** Tarvek uploads his sister's mind into a [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot Ridiculously Human Clank]] almost by accident: he builds it to serve as her prosthesis after she's injured, and it doesn't notice when she dies. Later, the same clank ends up housing the mind of [[BigBad the Other]].

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This computer [[{{Transhuman}} has a number of advantages]] over a [[CallAHumanAMeatBag meat human]]. The simulation can be run many thousands of times faster than objective speed, if you've got enough computing power. It can be backed up with trivial ease. You can run multiple copies at the same time, and have them do different things, make exotic [[MindHive personality composites]], and tinker around with the inner workings of the brain in ways that are either difficult or impossible to do with a meat brain. Additionally, there's the fact that it's impossible to kill as long as its data is backed up somewhere and there exists a computer on which to run it — you can just restart the simulation wherever you left off and the mind won't even recognize it.

Critics of the concept are quick to point out that it presupposes an understanding of neurology (not just human neurology, but even the neurology of a common insect) far, ''far'' beyond what currently exists; and that without that knowledge, even the most powerful computer cannot do this. Nevermind that it also assumes general purpose digital computers[[note]]the kind that is easily reprogrammable and is used ''everywhere'' nowadays[[/note]] or some other similar computer architecture will overcome current physical limitations and stay relevant in ultra-high workload applications instead of being displaced by more specialized analog neuromorphic architectures - which are more powerful but less flexible, defeating much of the purpose of mind uploading versus, say, life extension and other forms of bio-augmentation. Proponents of the idea assure us that this knowledge is coming and that the required technology will continue to advance. Proponents who hope to live to see and actually benefit from it assure us that it's coming really really soon.

* Can you augment intelligence? Or does the brain's pattern need to be copied ''exactly'' to still function like a mind, leaving no room for radical enhancements?
* Can the upload be copied? If the answer is "no", the work might be a softer sci-fi, although it's also possible to make it a little harder by running the [=AIs=] on a quantum computer and saying something about the "[[ShownTheirWork No-Cloning Theorem]]". Or simply declare the recording to be [[CloneDegeneration analog.]]

There's also a pile of legal, moral, and theological questions and concerns that might be addressed in the story, [[Analysis/BrainUploading discussed at length on the Analysis page.]] Suffice it to say that JustAMachine and CyberneticsEatYourSoul may come into play, possibly resulting in your digital self [[TranshumanTreachery becoming much less concerned]] with what happens to [[CallAHumanAMeatbag meatbags]].

* ComicBook/CaptainAmerica villain the Machinesmith was originally human, but after one battle he was mortally injured in a fall. His servant robots found his body and "program-recorded" his mind, [[EmergencyTransformation uploading it into a robotic body]]. He's gotten used to it over the years, though initially he didn't take it well at all.

** In ''ComicBook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesMirage'', this accidentally occurs to Professor Honeycutt; while testing out his Menta-wave helmet (which granted its user psychic and telekinetic abilities) a bolt of lightning caused his consciousness to be transferred to the body of his robot SAL. In the [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 cartoon based on the book]], this later on allows him to copy his consciousness between computers, allowing him to [[DisneyDeath survive his own heroic sacrifice]].

** Discussed and subverted in chapter 28 -- [[spoiler:Shepard's]] Soul Catcher has everything that should be needed to reconstruct her, and yet doesn't actually have her.
---> He took out the hexagonal chip from his coat, the Soul Catcher that contained [[spoiler:Shepard]]'s memories, her mind, her skills... but ironically, not her soul.
** In chapter 35 we learn that part of the process of making [[spoiler:Snatchers]] involves making a copy of a person's memories.

** [[spoiler: Malinche]] uploads her mind into the [[EvilKnockoff Dark Condor]] aircraft to survive a terminal brain injury, using the Crown of Sundar that provides mental powers.
** Taken further by chapter 40, where [[spoiler: Esteban's mother, Muran'Kel, volunteers to become the Custodian of the Cities of Gold. She died as her brain was integrated into the cities' computer network, but her mind lives on as a [[ProjectedMan holographic construct]]. This allows her to jump from one city to another to maintain them from within, and even manipulates the orichalcum sand in Kumlar to build herself a solid body.]]
* ''Fanfic/TranscendentHumanity'': This is central to the setting, as most humans are uploaded, can jump across the network from server to server, and occupy temporary physical bodies ranging from biological humans and mechanical soldiers to vehicles and starships.
* ''Fanfic/TheStudentPrince'': Merlin does a variant when [[spoiler:Excalibur malfunctions]], by [[spoiler:transferring Kilgharrah to the plane to make it fly without the use of both its engines]].
* ''Fanfic/{{Vigil}}'': Commonplace, as the story draws a lot of technology from ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'', where this is widespread practice. Humans were the first to develop cortical stacks, which save a constantly-updated brain-state, although this was due to reverse-engineering [[Videogame/XCOMEnemyUnknown Ethereal]] technology. The turians developed their own rough approximation in the form of Exos, although it wasn't until they met humanity that they could directly upload a brain into an Exo body.
* ''Fanfic/ProtocolCyFox'': Lt. Miles "Tails" Prower of the Keplerian Republic Space Navy is killed by Metal Sonic Mark V but preserved within a cortical stack backup chip and slotted into a MAARS Mark IX security robot by Janus Rotarl and Maria Robotnik.
* ''Fanfic/FalloutEquestria'': Crusader Maneframes are AI supercomputers, and they are specifically designed so that a pony can upload their mind to it if the Crusader [[AIIsACrapshoot goes rogue]]. However, the upload is just data, with no soul, so it's considered a last resort. Elder Cottage Cheese of the Steel Rangers tries to use the Black Book to upload his soul in addition to his mind, allowing him to truly live forever. [[spoiler:He fails, but it turns out Princess Celestia herself had already done something like that centuries ago. She uploaded herself and her soul to the Single Pegasus Project Crusader Maneframe, intending to use it to control the weather. Unfortunately, she was unaware that Rainbow Dash had disconnected the Crusader from the controls, as she didn't want "a machine that thinks it's a pony" in charge. Celestia was left trapped, able to watch the entire Wasteland but unable to do anything to help]].
* ''Fanfic/EvaSessionsSomeplaceVastAndDry'': This accidentally occurs to [[spoiler:Kyoko when her soul completely migrates into Unit-02 one minute after her death. She is able to access the MAGI supercomputer's resources and continue to converse with her living colleagues through computer terminals, although only Gendo, Yui and Naoko are privy to this secret.]]
* ''Webcomic/ScoobAndShag'': [[spoiler:Penny duplicated her own mind into the robot she built, giving him a personality.]] Initially, he considered himself a part of her; later on, he developed his own personality and individuality as "[[WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget the Inspector]]".
* ''Fanfic/EncryptWithinTheDarkToSaveTheClockworkOfAHeart'': [[spoiler:Queen]] uploads her mind into the network to escape being hunted, but [[spoiler:Roboppi]] outright says she's in too much pain from the transfer that she busts them out of prison to make it stop. Ryoken speculates [[spoiler:she will slowly lose her humanity without the connection to her body. And it's discovered that she deleted parts of herself in order to make the pain stop, but it made her less human.]]

* Deconstructed in the film ''Film/{{Advantageous}}.'' Gwen, the protagonist, loses her job as a corporate spokesperson due to age and racial discrimination, just as the company that's firing her is perfecting Brain Uploading technology. In order to support her daughter, she asks to be put into a younger body and return to her job as the company's spokesperson. [[spoiler: The technology is still in its infancy. When the newer, younger Gwen feels disconnected and distant from her daughter, she finds out that she wasn't "uploaded" so much as "photocopied". Fragments of Gwen's memories and experiences were put into a new host body and blended with the host's personality; in short the original Gwen is dead, and the new spokesperson is an entirely new being.]]

* In ''Film/AvatarTheWayOfWater'' [[spoiler:it turns out RDA figured out how to save "backups" of people's brains and have downloaded the backups of the marines who died in the first film into an army of recombinant human-Na'vi clones.]]

* In ''Film/{{Chappie}}'', [[spoiler: Chappie uploads Deon's consciousness into a Scout whilst the latter is dying from a gunshot wound, and then later uploads Yolandi's consciousness into another custom-built Scout after she'd died. Chappie also gets around the problem of his low battery by uploading himself into a discarded Scout body nearby.]]

** [[spoiler:Arnim Zola, the scientist from]] ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger'', succumbed to disease in the 1970s, forcing him to upload his mind to a computer system. It only helped him as he is able to [[spoiler:aid the modern HYDRA, which he revived as a shadow organization within the US government, execute their plan without the restrictions of age slowing him down]] in [[Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier the sequel]]. Since this happened back when computers were still reel to reel, his brain requires a truly massive amount of storage space, in both the literal sense and the technological sense.
** An odd case in ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron''. [[spoiler:Rather than a human attempting to upload their mind from a body into a computer, it's Ultron, a computer program, attempting to upload his mind from the network into a specially-designed body. Later, Tony and Bruce upload J.A.R.V.I.S. into the same body, despite opposition from Steve, Wanda and Pietro, in the process creating Vision]].
* ''Film/OverdrawnAtTheMemoryBank'' called it a "dopple" (as in doppelganger). Once your brain was uploaded to a [[WhenThingsSpinScienceHappens spinning cube]] you could take a vacation and experience life as an animal. Aaron Fingle's dopple was botched when the technicians lost his body and were forced to upload his consciousness to a mainframe as an interim solution. The film indicated he had a limited amount of time before his consciousness degraded to the point of non-functionality. It wasn't really made clear if this was a function of the transfer, the inability of his body to continue function without the mind or some other factor, but then again it was a made for TV movie aired on PBS. It was also lampooned on ''[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]]''.
-->'''Mike:''' Hooray for socks!

* The cheesy sci-fi film ''Film/{{ROTOR}}'' suggests that part of the protagonist's mind was uploaded to the killer robot.

* ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture''. After V'Ger scans and destroys Ilia, it sends a robot replica of her to the Enterprise with her memories and personality stored in it. Eventually the crew manages to re-awaken her mind in the machine.
* Similarly, in ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'', Data tries to help B4 become "more than his programming," and uploads his experiences and memories into B4's much simpler brain. [[spoiler:Later, when Captain Picard tells B4 of Data's death, B4 is understandably confused but later starts absentmindedly singing a song that Data did. When he gets stuck on a stanza, Picard prompts him with the next line, wondering if possibly Data is actually somewhere in B4.]]

* In ''Film/{{Transcendence}}'' Will is uploaded into a computer in an attempt to save his life after being shot. [[spoiler:Evelyn gets uploaded in the climax just before the virus destroys Will, allowing her to see the truth of Will's actions.]]

* In ''The Footprints of God'' by Greg Iles, a super-MRI is used to scan the brain and upload the resulting model into a computer. The uploaded person is fully connected to the Internet, and able to learn things in seconds. The person being uploaded is a billionaire with a [[AGodAmI god complex]]. Guess what happens.

* The ''Literature/JennyCasey'' series by Creator/ElizabethBear contain a sentient A.I. with the memory and behavioral patterns of physicist UsefulNotes/RichardFeynman. Despite thinking of himself as "Dick" or "Richard", he's very clear on being a different person than the original Feynman. He also takes considerable advantage of the increased processor power he finds, duplicating himself many times [[spoiler:and eventually becoming a sort of guardian to the entire Earth]].

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' adventure "Imago" had a human personality uploaded to and stored in a computer. This is probably a ShoutOut to ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'', because the game borrowed a lot of other things from that novel. It also had the Program [=JackBeNimble=], which "saved" copies of the brains of people killed in the Crash 2.0
* The "ghosts" in the ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' setting ''TabletopGame/TranshumanSpace'' are produced by disassembling and scanning a human brain at the molecular level. Contrast with "shadows", which are non-destructively uploaded but are imperfect simulations, and "eidolons", which aren't even made with a brain scan-- they are just fakes made from stock footage and biographical databases.
* "Nybor's Psychic Imprint" spell in ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' (at least, 3rd ed).

** The "Soulkiller" program, which would copy the victim's personality onto a sufficiently powerful mainframe and then kill the victim's physical body. Alt Cunningham, the program's creator, became its first victim when she had finished writing Soulkiller for evil MegaCorp Arasaka and they decided they didn't need to have her running around anymore. Overlaps with AndIMustScream.
** Also, certain kinds of full 'Borgs, especially combat models, can be used with brain canisters that store a person's memories/soul which can be swapped between the combat cyborg body and a "normal" one.
* ''TabletopGame/CarWars''. Autoduelists store their memories on a machine and have clone bodies made. If they die in the arena, their memories are "played back" into their clone and they live again (well, sort of).

** Also, almost every body comes equipped with a Cortical Stack, and as in the ''Literature/TakeshiKovacs'' series (which gets an InspirationNod), they are nearly indestructible barring a deliberate attempt to destroy them.

* In ''Nova Praxis'' brain uploading requires a process called "Apotheosis", which involves nanobots replacing brain tissues with nanogel over the course of a week. Afterwards the subject can remain in their original body until it dies or upload into a flash-cloned or robotic sleeve, or even live as a Sim on a server.
* Creator/GamesWorkshop games:
** ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': As [[SpaceElves Aeldari]] souls retain their consciousness after death, the Craftworlders attempt to save themselves from being devoured by [[ArchEnemy She Who Thirsts]] by uploading their souls into an ArtificialAfterlife known as an infinity circuit, allowing the individual's soul to become a part of their [[PlanetSpaceship craftworld]] itself and continue to advise the living. Additionally, in times of great need, soul can be downloaded from the infinity circuit, placed into spirit stones, and uploaded into Asuryani war machines and Wraith-constructs to act as a form of spiritual AI.
** The backstory for the Necrons essentially involved this, transferring their consciousnesses into bodies of living metal to escape their short lifespans as well as win the war against the [[{{Precursors}} Old Ones]]. The price for this, however, was the loss of their soul. In their original incarnation, this meant they were transformed into near-mindless killing machines. After the rewrite, the Necrontyr nobility retained (most of) their minds, and their soullessness manifests in subtler ways, such as CreativeSterility. ''Literature/TheTwiceDeadKing'' adds that the Necrontyr subconscious didn't take the transfer well; on a deep, unconscious level, every Necron is screaming in terror about being trapped in a dead body, convinced they're suffocating without a mouth or lungs to breathe with, convinced their heart has stopped because they can't feel one beating.
** ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'': In the background for the GaidenGame ''Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire'', [[TheMagocracy the Katophrane]] rulers of the city discovered that the mysterious substance known as shadeglass could be used to capture the souls of the dead. Seeing the potential in this phenomenon, the Katophrane constructed a network of shadeglass mirrors throughout the city to store their living essences so that they could continue to guide their city eternally rather than pass on to the afterlife. It was for this denial of his due that [[DeityOfHumanOrigin Nagash]], the God of the Dead, cursed the city, turning it into the nightmarish realm of madness and illusion that it is today.

* ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'':
** [[spoiler:Dave, when he awakens as a MadScientist, does it to TakeOverTheWorld.]]
** In the mini comic ''Edie in Orbit'' (which has only seen the light of day as a Sunday special feature), Edie's robot buddy is a human mind scanned into a floating robot head.

** Tarvek uploads his sister's mind into a [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot Ridiculously Human Clank]] almost by accident: he builds it to serve as her prosthesis after she's injured, and it doesn't notice when she dies. Later, the same clank ends up housing the mind of [[BigBad The Other]].
** This [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20100407 was]] lady Lucrezia's ''speciality''. At some point, there are at least ''three'' known copies of her mind uploaded into various bodies: [[spoiler: Agatha, who has to wear a special pendant to keep the Other's personality repressed, the Anevka-clank, whose original personality was removed completely first, and Zola, who may or may not have actually taken control of the Other personality in her.]]
* A Major MacGuffin of the Hob arc in ''Webcomic/DresdenCodak''.
* In ''Webcomic/{{Unity}}'', the main character's neural patterns had been uploaded into a powerful computer. [[spoiler:This simulation eventually (and accidentally) takes over the ship -- for the better.]]
* In ''Webcomic/BobAndGeorge'', the Maverick virus is a digital copy of Dr. Wily's soul, corrupting and reprograming Reploids just as Wily did to robots.

** ''Book 19'' starts to explore what would happen if a backed up mind doesn't '''want''' to be reincarnated ([[spoiler:Gunther Thurl]], killed in Book 18), and the use of 'mind-clones' as digital ambassadors, when resources are too tight to send fully equipped regular ships....
* In ''Webcomic/OHumanStar'', Al's brain is copied to create a robotic Al [[spoiler:and Sulla]].
* In ''Webcomic/QuentynQuinnSpaceRanger'', brain uploading is highly illegal due to the first test subjects [[http://www.rhjunior.com/quentyn-quinn-space-ranger-0091/ going insane]] from a combination of [[AndIMustScream sensory deprivation]] and the knowledge that they were just copies of their organic counterparts.

* In ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'', {{Artificial Intelligence}}s work much the same way as they do in the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' universe which the series is based on -- they are created from a real person's brain, and you can make an A.I. of a still-living person by cloning their brain and whatnot. In ''[[WebAnimation/RedVsBlueTheRecollection Reconstruction]]'', it's revealed that the Alpha A.I. that Project Freelancer tortured to create {{Literal Split Personalit|y}}ies to harvest was based on a brain scan of the project's director, [[spoiler:Leonard Church]], specifically to [[LoopholeAbuse get around laws forbidding the mistreatment of artificial intelligence]], since he argued that any tortures he inflicted on the Alpha were more or less done to himself. The Beta fragment, [[spoiler:better known as Tex]], is an unusual variant in that it was created not through psychological torture but as a side effect of the Alpha's creation, born from the Director's strong memories of his [[TheLostLenore Lost Lenore]].
* In the ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'', the supervillain named the Palm is doing the ''reverse''. He's downloading copies of his A.I. self into the brains of (probably) already-dead human bodies, with BodyHorror results. (Of course, as far as we know he started out as a human being -- Dr. Abel Palm -- who left his body behind to convincingly fake his death, so depending on just how successful he was he may ''also'' be a straight example of the trope.)
* In ''Literature/FineStructure'', [[spoiler:[[BigGood Mitch Calrus]] inhabits a mortal body, but he needs to be around in 20,000 years to fight the FinalBattle. Thus he makes countless copies of himself and spreads them all over the solar system, to be [[BodySurf installed in available bodies as necessary]]]].
* Ubiquitous in ''WebOriginal/OrionsArm'', in which minds living in entirely virtual universes make up a significant chunk of the population. Entities that keep upgrading their minds will usually have to upload into a more advanced housing several times.
* ''Website/SCPFoundation'',
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2000 SCP-2000 ("Deus Ex Machina")]]. Both played straight and inverted. SCP-2000 creates human clones and loads preexisting neural patterns into them. Copies of neural patterns of important personnel are updated as well.
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2048 SCP-2048 ("The Virtual World")]]. SCP-2048 says that by scanning a person's brain activity and using an AutoDoc to extract and destructively analyze their brain it can put their mind into a virtual reality LotusEaterMachine.
** [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2669 SCP-2669 ("Khevtuul 1")]] is a Foundation space probe that contains the consciousness of an exobiologist named Dr. Asma Tareen. Through a combination of sheer isolation and the soul-crushing realisation that there is no other life in the galaxy, she has gone completely insane and [[EarthShatteringKaboom is returning to Earth at 5 times lightspeed]]. [[spoiler:To try and stop her, the Foundation tried to upload the mind of a physicist, only for her to subsume his consciousness. Then they sent a psychologist to try and talk her down. Then they sent a computer expert to hack her systems. Both of these failed. Now they're sending the consciousnesses of coma patients and babies in a desperate attempt to confuse her to try and keep her away.]]

* In ''Literature/{{Simulacrum}}'' only the protagonists do it. The rest of society sees it as suicide.
* ''Literature/{{Starwalker}}'': Cerebral implants allow this to happen. It's how engineers examine the ship's computers. However, [[spoiler:In the case of Starwalker it results in the brain of Danika, the ship's pilot, merging with the AI of the ship to produce a SpaceshipGirl.]]
* ''WebAnimation/GenLOCK'': This is how the show's HumongousMecha function: rather than cockpits piloted in person, pilots have their minds uploaded directly into their mechs allowing them to move and fight as if they were their own bodies. It does have its drawbacks, however. [[PhlebotinumHandlingRequirements Only one-in-a-million people can actually use gen:LOCK]] (you ''don't'' wanna know [[CruelAndUnusualDeath what happens]] if you try without being compatible), and only for a very short period of time. Staying in gen:LOCK for too long runs the risk of not being able to return to their bodies ''at all''.
** It turns out that there are some serious side effects to staying uploaded for too long, however. [[spoiler: The Union "Nemesis" mech is the original mind of Chase, captured by the Union, tortured and broken, and then [[CloningBlues copied hundreds of times over]] before being locked within the distinctly inhuman Nemesis chassis for far longer than it should be]]. Later on, in order to defeat Nemesis, [[spoiler: Chase chooses to stay within his own Holon well past the limit on uptime, forever locking him into his Holon. [[CursedWithAwesome As he's now permanently within a 40-foot tall high-tech flying battle mech, rather than his crippled organic body, he doesn't consider it a bad trade]].]]
** There's also an age limit on gen:LOCK pilots. Even if a pilot is compatible, the technology's dependency on high neuroplasticity - which decreases as one ages - means that a pilot can age out of the program. [[spoiler:Leon is compatible but considered too old. When he uploads into a Holon out of desperation at the end of the first season, his brain is severely damaged when he tries to return to his body, leaving him comatose]].
** Another example is [[spoiler:Caliban]], who contains an early prototype of the gen:LOCK technology and carries [[spoiler: a small part of Doctor Weller's own personality and knowledge in his chassis.]]

** The Soviets use technology provided by Renzaoren (a RidiculouslyHumanRobot uncovered in a crashed spaceship) to upload the recently deceased Stalin's mind into a computer. Unfortunately, the process drives Stalin insane, and he launches a nuke at the "traitors" in the Kremlin. Understandably, the Soviets pull the plug on him after this.

* ''WebAnimation/MetaRunner'': This is what happened to the mind of [[spoiler: Lucinia following the Project Blue incident; while her physical body barely survived intact and was able to be restored by Lucks, her mind had ended up fragmented. While Lucks was able to obtain parts of it and put them in [=TASCorp=]’s servers, the other parts needed to fully revive Lucinia ended up being uploaded and merged into Dr. Sheridan’s Turbo Artificial Rapid Intelligence (T.A.R.I.) AI, causing it to gain awareness before somehow ending up in an mysterious artificial body.]]
* This concept is discussed by Derek in ''WebVideo/TruthpointDarkwebRising'', where he advocates it as a method of avoiding becoming a "[[FutureSlang deathcuck]]".

* In ''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 TMNT: Back to the Sewer]]'' it is revealed that the Utrom Shredder periodically uploaded a copy of his mind as a back-up; if he ever died, that copy was then re-downloaded into a clone body. Before that, Professor Honeycutt (aka "The Fugitoid") combined this with LightningCanDoAnything.

* In the original ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' series, the Autobots once transfer Spike's mind into a cobbled-together Transformer body that Sparkplug had made, so his mind can survive while his injured body undergoes surgery. Unfortunately, it turns out a human mind can't function very ''well'' in a Transformer brain, and he spends the episode gradually going AxCrazy until they're able to put him back.
* In ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', it's revealed that Finn's mother uploaded her brain in order to continue to protect the last remaining human civilization with a robot army as she was dying of a plague. She later attempts to force this upon the remaining humans [[SafetyWorst in order to "protect" them]], but Finn manages to talk her out of it.
* The title characters of ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' had their minds uploaded by Doctor Venture because they're death-prone and he keeps a stock of clones ready to replace them. Even better, Doctor Orpheus, after being unable to find their souls in the afterlife, found them ''inside the recording device''. On one hand, this does mean the clones have the souls of the originals.... on the other hand, ''Rusty inadvertently made a SoulJar''.
* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', Robert Vance does this because of an uncurable brain disorder. However, after being shut down for 35 years, he explores Gotham, discovers Terry's suit, and decides to find a new body.
* This is the premise of ''{{WesternAnimation/Robotix}}''. Aliens who put themselves in [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]] to survive a solar flare storm are revived by their MasterComputer, not by waking them but by transferring their "essences" into [[HumongousMecha giant construction robots]] called Robotix. This was [[EmergencyTransformation not their original plan,]] and they're [[BodyHorror very upset about it.]] In Creator/MarvelComics' one-shot comics adaption, the problem is further examined in the fact that the Robotix no longer have human-sized hands with which to manipulate or repair the master computer.
* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'':
** It turns out that Tak's ship has a copy of her mind on its computer. In one episode, Dib overrides it by copying his own mind into its place, which creates its own problems when the copy thinks that ''it'' is the real Dib and Dib is a robot duplicate.
** Another episode has GIR's programming accidentally transferred from his own robot body into the computer brain of Zim's base, giving him control over the whole complex.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In a segment from "Thanksgiving of Horror", the Simpsons buy a "Kitchen A.I." with Marge's memories downloaded into it. Marge finds it neat at first, but she soon starts to find it creepy and uncomfortable.
-->'''Marge:''' She knows everything I know! ''More'' than I know!
-->'''Homer:''' Honey, it's Williams Sonoma. They wouldn't steer us wrong. That's where we got our panini press.
-->'''Marge:''' The panini press doesn't remember me wetting my bunk at summer camp!
* Done unintentionally in ''WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse2021''. While repairing an RK Security robot, Duncan used a data cog he found in a chest in Castle Grayskull. The data cog is later revealed to be a legacy recording of [[TheArchmage Orko the Great]], containing all of his memories and knowledge of magic. This uploaded information made the robot believe it was Orko the Great for some time until the reality of its robotic nature and inability to use magic finally set in.

* Adam Warren's version of the ''ComicBook/DirtyPair'' has this as a common technology, which plays a role in several of the plots -- such as when a rogue agent uses an emergency backup of Yuri's mind and DNA to grow his own EvilTwin to send at the originals.

* ''Literature/{{Accelerando}}'' by Creator/CharlesStross has uploads; they're legally the same person as their predecessor--to prevent people from running up huge debts, copying themselves, and then committing suicide--and work by neural simulation.

* The Creator/AlastairReynolds [[Literature/RevelationSpaceSeries Revelation Space]] universe has both neural ("alpha-level") and behavioral ("beta-level") uploads.
** Alpha-level uploads are considered sentient in their own right, and when they're first developed constructing them kills the human in question. Even after nondestructive scans become possible, destructive alpha-level scans achieve a higher resolution and a more accurate simulation of the mind they are based upon. Most people prefer nondestructive uploads with periodic updates, for obvious reasons. It's also implied that it takes a certain strength of will and personality to become an upload... many of the first group of uploadees who undergo destructive scanning do not thrive in their new virtualities and many crash or became corrupted. Later systems presumably had this bug ironed out, though it is never explicitly mentioned.
** Beta-level simulations are generally not considered sentient, although a ''particularly good'' beta-level simulation that was trained over a very long period of time may well appear sentient if you don't know any better, to the point where it may as well be considered an AI.
* In William Gibson's ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'' series:
** ''Neuromancer'' itself has a ROM chip with a human being's personality stored on it. When plugged in, it acts like an AI.
** Later, more complete uploads can be made with the advent of more complex storage and simulation systems. 3Jane's Aleph in ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' ended up running several human minds after their bodies died, and it was suggested it may have been used to record many more.
* ''Literature/PostSelf'': In the 22nd century brain uploading into a virtual reality known as "The System" is developed. By the 24th century the System is hosted on a space station in Lagrange orbit and Earth's ecosystem has degraded to the point where governments are paying people to upload. A major theme is the impact of "forking," creating copies of uploaded people, on personal identity.
* One of the central themes of the Rudy Rucker novel ''Literature/{{Software}}''. It comes with a host of drawbacks (the scanning process involves powerful lasers vaporizing the brain, one layer of cells at a time, and even once scanned, the only computers that can run a program as intense as a full intelligence are bulky and require constant cooling to below-freezing temperatures), but it does give a whole host of benefits as well, as the mind can be projected into robotic drones that are fit, never age or get sick, can toggle drunkenness on-demand, and are ultimately expendable.
* Played for extreme horror in the short story "Daddy's World" by Creator/WalterJonWilliams.
* In ''Literature/DragonBones'' Oreg had a variant of this done to him. His father gave him a bowl of soup that made him fall asleep, and when Oreg woke up, he ''was'' [[PoweredByAForsakenChild castle Hurog.]] He feels it if the castle is damaged, can see everything in it, and can make doors lead to places where they shouldn't be able to lead, such as directly from a cave deep under the castle to the protagonist's bedroom. He does have a body, which is not his actual body, but a magical copy that his father gave him because "it amused him" - this fact enabled all owners of castle Hurog to inflict pain on Oreg if they wished to punish him. And it is implied that many of them wished to do so. Made worse by the fact that Oreg can't commit suicide, only his current owner can kill him.
* One of the main characters in ''Literature/TheAndroidsDream'' by Creator/JohnScalzi is the uploaded personality of Brian, the protagonist's high-school friend, who brain-scanned himself as a prank just before graduating, and then died in combat shortly thereafter. [[spoiler:Brian eventually discovers that many of the events in the book have been orchestrated by another uploaded personality, who's been around for about a century. Unlike Brian, her brain was scanned while she was old and the technology was still in its infancy. In fact, the strain ended up killing her, but the VirtualGhost lived on.]]
* The ''Literature/JennyCasey'' series by Creator/ElizabethBear contain a sentient AI with the memory and behavioral patterns of physicist UsefulNotes/RichardFeynman. Despite thinking of himself as "Dick" or "Richard", he's very clear on being a different person than the original Feynman. He also takes considerable advantage of the increased processor power he finds, duplicating himself many times [[spoiler:and eventually becoming a sort of guardian to the entire Earth]].
* In Creator/TadWilliams's ''Literature/{{Otherland}}'' series, the villains plan to upload their minds to the Otherland network (and commit suicide to avoid duplication problems). It fails; however, [[spoiler:Orlando]] finds himself uploaded to the network after [[spoiler:his apparent death]], and it eventually transpires that the version of [[spoiler:Paul Jonas]] who's been appearing throughout the series is an upload; after [[spoiler:his]] HeroicSacrifice, the main characters meet his physical counterpart. [[spoiler:Mr. Sellars does this in the end, too.]]
* ''The Resurrected Man'' by Creator/SeanWilliams revolves around a form of DestructiveTeleportation in which a person is scanned in mind-boggling detail and then recreated at a different physical location. One subplot involves the creation of brain uploading as a spin-off technology: same scans, but instead of recreating the person in a physical location, they're recreated as a computer simulation.
* The central premise of the Literature/TakeshiKovacs series by Creator/RichardKMorgan is that computer technology has advanced to the point where everyone has their brain backed up on cortical stacks and most any middle class consumer can afford a new body after a while (mortgages and re-sleeving insurance policies are common making the price an apparent contrast with that of a house), creating effective immortality open to the mass market. Bodies are referred to as "sleeves" and society as a whole doesn't value life as much since you only suffer 'Real Death' if your cortical stack is destroyed -- and cortical stacks are heavily armored. They can be destroyed, but it takes a good deal of effort to do so. Anything short of massive firepower, enormously high temperatures or [[spoiler:nanomachine-induced disintegration]] won't so much as scratch them. Cortical stacks commonly survive incidents of incredible violence that leave the bodies [[LudicrousGibs scattered over several square metres]].
* ''The Footprints of God'' by Greg Iles has memory uploading using a super MRI to scan the brain, and uploading the resulting model into a computer. The uploaded person is fully connected to the Internet, and able to learn things in seconds. The person being uploaded is a billionaire with a [[AGodAmI god complex]]. [[HumanityOnTrial Guess]] [[ANuclearError what]] [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath happens]].
* In John [=DeChancie's=] ''Skyway'' series, the protagonist's father has his mind preserved by SufficientlyAdvancedAliens and acts as the AI for his truck. Later he's given a pseudo-organic body by other even Sufficiently More Advanced Aliens.
* ''Fool's War'' by Sarah Zettel ''appears'' to have brain uploading technology. [[spoiler:In actuality, it just has [=AIs=] who've figured out how to ''download'' themselves into human bodies -- the uploading process doesn't work on anyone who started their life as human.]]
* In the strange society depicted in Creator/IainMBanks's book ''Literature/FeersumEndjinn'', when a person dies their mind is automatically uploaded by organic systems in their brain (not implants; they grow there naturally implying they are germ-line genetic engineering). They then get downloaded into physical bodies again the first seven deaths, then spend their next eight rebirths solely in a virtual reality. Then they die for good. Nondestructive uploads can also be made, and their experiences reintegrated at a later date. This allows for the possibility of people uploading copies of themselves to have a passionate affair in a suitably private virtuality, and then redownload the experiences into their minds and fully appreciate them later without interfering with work or family life.
* In ''Destination: Void'' by Creator/FrankHerbert, the entire purpose of the apparently impossible, deliberately crippled interstellar colonization mission is determined by the crew to be to force them to create (because they are doomed to die if they don't), beyond the reach of the disaster that would likely ensue, an artificial intelligence beyond the capacity of a human brain. This is done by first building a physical analog of a human brain, but with several times the complexity, then once it has displayed the necessary capabilities, uploading the mind of one of the creators into it, and parts of the personalities of the others. [[spoiler: This results in the creation of a god, like in all Frank Herbert books.]]

* Several works by Creator/RobertJSawyer explore this trope:
** ''The Terminal Experiment'' has a scientist scan and copy his mind three times, to run an experiment: One is left without knowledge of mortality to simulate immortality, another is stripped of all physical sense, to explore a disembodied afterlife, and one is left unaltered as a control. This soon [[GoneHorriblyWrong goes horribly wrong]] as they escape onto the internet and one starts killing people.
** The short story ''Identity Theft'' also deals with some of the ramifications of this. [[spoiler:One of them being, if a ''second'' copy of a person is made and you destroy one of them, is it murder?]]
** ''Mindscan'' was built upon ''Identity Theft'' where it has this being commercialized. Rich people get what's essentially a super MRI that creates a perfect duplicate of the brain at the time and it gets uploaded into an android body. The originals then retire to a lunar colony that's extra-legal and the androids will claim to be the humans and designed to look like them at their peak of life. The book then revolves over WhatMeasureIsANonhuman as one android version has to fight over her personhood.
** ''Red Planet Blues'' portrays a Martian colony where this technology is commonplace and normal. The few people who object on the grounds that a copied mind is soulless are seen as weird.
* This is common in ''Literature/DownAndOutInTheMagicKingdom'' by Creator/CoryDoctorow. Anyone with enough Whuffie can backup themselves at will, a restore is made using a clone body. Since the process is so easy and basically free, it's common for people to swap their body for a clone-and-restore for things like the common cold.
* In ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'':
** There is an alien species that likes uploading the minds of prisoners and putting them through some kind of programming to make them AIs for small fightercraft and various systems in their ships. We're never shown or told what this does to the minds, but Luke thinks they're all suicidal.
** A later book had the dying Jedi boyfriend of a character willingly going through this with that same technology, though without the reprogramming, and being put into a [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot Ridiculously Human Droid]]. The result was basically a human-looking droid who answered to the same name and had the right memories and personality, but couldn't touch the Force and didn't feel any angst when captured and given a restraining bolt. General consensus was that doing this had been a mistake. There was also a Jedi character who'd uploaded herself into a spaceship somehow; the end of the book had droidboy getting destroyed and his girlfriend committing suicide while leaving her body intact so that spaceship girl could inhabit it. Droidboy and his girlfriend are mentioned by no other authors.
** ''Literature/TalesFromTheMosEisleyCantina'': [[MadScientist Dr. Evazan]] experiments with technology to cheat death by this means. He uses it to switch his partner Ponda Baba's mind with a senator's. However, it works backward, the senator's mind ending up instead in Ponda's body.

* Creator/{{Ken MacLeod}}'s ''Literature/FallRevolution'' books have it as well, with brain backups, or minds that get copied from brain to computer and back to brain.
* Creator/VernorVinge:
** The short story "The Cookie Monster" has a decidedly unethical variant; [[spoiler:a scientist uploads his students and employees into a simulated computer environment without their knowledge and uses them to do tasks that require a human mind at computer speeds, and [[GroundhogDayLoop "resets" them after a set period]] (a day for tech help, months for researchers, etc.) to keep them from catching on. It's not revealed whether "reintegration" with their real-world counterparts is possible, though as two of the protagonists [[CloningBlues are copies of the same person]] and another is a copy of someone who was murdered after upload, it's definitely not possible for all of them.]]
** Discussed in the novella "Literature/TrueNames" as a possible solution to Erythrina's health problems--the possibility is remote, but not necessarily completely out-of-reach.
* Creator/PeterFHamilton:
** In the Greg Mandel trilogy, Philip Evans, the aging CEO of Event Horizon, has grand visions for the future but is dying with only his teenage granddaughter to carry on the torch. So he uploads his brain into a neural network bioware core. It also works as an UpgradeArtifact, enabling him to run a MegaCorp with the singular direction of a family corporation.
** Edenists in the ''Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy'' universe upload themselves to the neural strata (brain) of living habitats at the moment of their deaths. Notably, the individual's consciousness only exists as a discrete entity for a few decades before it is absorbed into the habitat's gestalt personality. [[spoiler:Also, souls objectively exist. They are distinct from a person's consciousness and are ''not'' uploaded.]]
** In his Literature/CommonwealthSaga, humanity developed an artificial intelligence, the SI, in the 22nd century. It set out on its own and took over an (uninhabited) planet, but still maintains cordial, if slightly inscrutable, relations with humanity in the 2380s, when the story takes place. Occasionally, the SI will extend an offer to an individual to be uploaded when they die. Which, thanks to rejuvenation and re-life technology, is entirely voluntary.
** By the time of the ''Literature/VoidTrilogy'', over 1,000 years after the ''Literature/CommonwealthSaga'', humanity has developed the Advanced Neural Activity system- ANA- as a repository for human consciousnesses on Earth. ANA is the official government of Earth, definitely the most powerful faction in the human Greater Commonwealth, and possibly one of the most powerful physical or semi-physical factions in the galaxy. Important uploaded folks maintain organic bodies in storage for when they need to interact with physical humans or aliens. Less important people can have a body cloned for them upon request if they want to stretch their legs. Few do. ANA is explicitly recognized as a stepping stone for humanity on the path to going [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence post-physical]]
* This happens to Lia Kahn in ''Literature/{{Skinned}}'' by Robin Wasserman.
* This appears in ''[[Literature/CouncilWars There Will Be Dragons]]'' by Creator/JohnRingo. Rachel, one of the protagonists, has a friend who gets transferred into nanites [[spoiler: and dies as a result of the power loss when the Net goes down, although it's stated that she might be revived if the power returns and she'd had a good memory storage system installed]]. The nanites are regarded as being people, but one of the problems mentioned with the procedure is that it 'locks' the person at the mental and physical age they were when it was done, meaning that the friend is stuck as a teenager for the rest of her life.
* Creator/GregEgan loves this trope and the philosophical questions it poses:
** In "Learning to Be Me", children are fitted with a "jewel" -- a small solid-state computer that monitors all brain activity and emulates it, guiding (or forcing) a slaved AI to be a mental clone of the growing child. As middle age approaches, it is traditional to have the failing grey goo scooped out of your skull and let the jewel take over. If you ''are'' the failing grey goo, you have a horrible dilemma to face -- but are you ''absolutely sure'' you aren't the jewel?
** ''Permutation City'' centers around the topic of brain uploading. In it simulations, including environments such as cities, are created for people who create virtual clones of themselves. For research purposes the protagonist himself uploads his brain multiple times, yet the virtual clones kept killing themselves so he chooses to make an experiment.
** Its SpiritualSuccessor ''Literature/{{Diaspora}}'' is in a world where most of the population are uploaded minds who live in robotic shells, virtual-reality environments, or both. This gives them great control over their own minds: xenobiologists can make alien copies of their consciousnesses to act as emissaries and translators, artists can loan out their sense of aesthetics, space travelers can slow their perceptions and suspend their capacity for boredom, and so on. By the second part of the book, most characters are the "descendants" of uploaded individuals and have never been organic.
** ''Literature/SchildsLadder'' and ''Incandescence'' are in a far-future civilization where people can copy or transfer their minds between organic and cybernetic chassis at their convenience; space travel is usually done by commissioning a new body on the destination planet and then beaming the mind over. Oddly, ''Schild's Ladder'' mentions some FantasticRacism against people who exist entirely in virtual reality, but the notion that they would try to assimilate the entire universe into a computational medium is mocked as a goofy conspiracy theory.
* ''Literature/TheAdorationOfJennaFox'' by Mary Pearson. [[spoiler: Jenna Fox wakes up after being in a coma and finds out she is only a clone of herself.]]
* A destructive variation happens to the main character of ''Loop'', by Koji Suzuki, where he volunteers to messily get himself uploaded to a virtual reality to [[ItMakesSenseInContext save the world from super-cancer]]
* The Creator/StrugatskyBrothers' ''Literature/NoonTwentySecondCentury'' includes a short story, in which the brain uploading technology is first attempted on a dying genius's brain. This procedure involves shutting down an area for miles lest any EM emissions interfere with the process. For the same reason, perpetual rain clouds are induced in the area to block solar radiation. The containers for the mind are large buildings full of gel. This makes one character to wonder if everyone will take up as much space after an upload. The other character thinks that anyone else's mind will probably fit into a suitcase. Unfortunately, the subject dies with only 98% of the process complete, making this a partial success.
* This becomes the plot point in the ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' ExpandedUniverse ''Dark Templar Trilogy'', where a Protoss female named Zamara copies her consciousness into the brain of Jake Ramsey, a human archaeologist. While she is able to communicate with him and grant him some of her PsychicPowers, the process will ultimately kill Jake. They travel to a Dark Templar world where priests record memories of still-living Protoss onto [[GreenRocks Khaydarin crystals]]. This is different from what is done by the Khala-worshiping Protoss, who have specialized individuals known as Preservers, who store entire consciousnesses (not just memories) in their heads, "uploaded" through the HiveMind at the moment of death. Zamara is the last Preserver. The goal is to put Zamara's consciousness onto one such crystal. Unfortunately, Zamara realizes that the Dark Templar only copy ''memories'', not entire individuals. However, the unusually large crystal they use not only manages to contain the entire consciousness of a Preserver but also that of a [[EldritchAbomination Dark Archon]] who threatens to destroy everything.
* In the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' series, there is one book in which a species of intelligent birds on the Hork-Bajir homeworld have the technology to create computer-backups of a person's mind, which can be inserted into someone else's brain after the original's death, to temporarily share their body. [[spoiler: The Andalite female Aldrea]] was stored in this way. In the Ellimist Chronicles [[spoiler: the Ellimist is captured by a creature the size of a moon, who can absorb memories of any being it entangled. He eventually breaks free by downloading all the memories into himself. The trope appears again later when he starts making copies of himself, until he has become an entire starfleet. The copies never branch off to become separate people, however, as [[HiveMind their minds are always in contact with each other]] via ship-to-ship communication.]]
* In Creator/RobertAHeinlein's Future History series, specifically ''Literature/TimeEnoughForLove'' and its sequels, this capability is identified as part of the [[FountainOfYouth medical rejuvenation technology]] used in cases of extreme physical deterioration, wherein a human being's brain is scanned and uploaded to a computer while a new one is cloned; said clone then has the saved brain downloaded back into it. The same technology is used in reverse when the computer Minerva decides to [[BecomeARealBoy become human]] -- she creates a [[MixAndMatchMan composite]] [[WetwareBody clone body]] and downloads herself into it once it's mature.
* While not computerized, characters in the ''Literature/SkulduggeryPleasant'' Universe can sleep for three nights with a gemstone called an echo stone beside them, and thereby imprinting it with their personality and memories. It then generates a hologram which can also talk, but is still immaterial. The stone needs to be recharged by putting it in its cradle, which takes about a year.
* Max Barry's ''Literature/MachineMan'' has the main character, Dr. Charles Neumann,[[spoiler: eventually end up as this.]]
* Discussed in ''The Biology of Franchise/StarTrek''. Athena Andreadis's general conclusion is "it's theoretically possible assuming a ludicrous amount of highly reliable data storage, but if it could be done, it's very likely you would go insane".
* Featured twice in ''Red Planet & Other Stories'' by Kevin Griffis. Once as a destructive upload forced on an unwilling victim, and in a later story as an emergency measure to save the mind of someone badly injured with little hope of survival.
* Uploading is a recurring theme in Creator/RobertReed's works:
** The short story ''Finished'' features a destructive form of brain uploading, called "finishing". The patient is immersed in a tub of microscopic machines, which infiltrate the body and begin to scan and record everything while destroying the tissue to power themselves. The scanned brain is then downloaded into a robotic body designed to mimic human appearance. However, because the scan is only of a few seconds of brain activity and because of the non-rewritable nature of the robotic brain, emotions recorded when someone is "finished" remain lingering for the rest of the time they remain alive in their artificial body. So if someone is finished on a good day, they'll always be in a fairly good mood. If they are finished while terminally ill or suffering, [[FateWorseThanDeath they'll be suffering for hundreds of years.]]
** ''The Winemaster'' had tens of thousands of people upload their minds into tiny, [[YearOutsideHourInside fantastically fast]] robotic bodies. BrainUploading became an illegal activity in the United States after a number died due to heavy atoms from cosmic rays destroying their minds, and uploaded minds are considered to not be living entities - as almost none of the current transhuman individuals were originally even ''human'', instead being [[UterineReplicator artificially built]] to resemble humans. The story follows a group of transhuman individuals fleeing the destruction of their shielded enclave in a Buick, which functions as a GenerationShip because of how fast the transhumans live.
* ''Staying Behind'', a short story by Ken Liu. This has caused the collapse of civilisation because most people chose to live forever in digital form, and those who refuse are left in a ScavengerWorld with little to offer their children.
* In ''Literature/RatsBatsAndVats'', this turns out to be something that can be done with Rats and Bats, which are {{Uplifted Animal}}s created by installing neural cyberware (called "soft-cyber" in series) into genetically engineered animals; because their memories and personalities are ultimately rooted in the soft-cybers, extracting the implants and then re-installing them in a new brain allows them to be resurrected. [[spoiler: In the sequel novel, Ariel, a rattess, gets killed by the now openly-hostile Korozhet and has her soft-cyber installed into a mindwiped human woman; their intention was to question her, but things got out of hand. While she's not entirely comfortable in the new body, she gets over it quite quickly; she can finally take her InterspeciesRomance with her human cohort, Fitzurgh, to a physical level as a result.]]
* In SA Swann's ''[[Literature/ApotheosisSwann Apotheosis]]'' series, Residents of Salmagundi all have their minds uploaded into the Hall of Minds at or immediately before their deaths, for later downloading by their descendants.
* In ''Literature/TheNexusSeries'': Several attempts were made to upload someone to a computer brain. One was reduced to reciting poetry endlessly, while another was an American billionaire who decided he was [[AGodAmI a god]] afterwards and had to be destroyed before he crashed the entire grid. [[spoiler: We soon learn that Su-Yong Shu is the first successful upload of a person to a quantum computer system, which was done as a last ditch effort to save her life after an assassination attempt. Part of the reason why she hasn't gone like the rest is because she also has a [[WetwareBody clone body]] running [[BrainComputerInterface Nexus 5]] that can interact with her stored consciousness. [[SanitySlippage After this body is killed however...]]]]
* In ''Literature/TheQuantumThief''-trilogy most of the humanity live as Gogols, mind uploads that can be copied and modified for different tasks as their superiors see fit, in planet-sized ''gubernya'' diamond brains of the Sobornost upload collective. Meanwhile, Earth has been taken over by out of control nanotech, which absorbs and contains human minds, but doesn't give them embodiments, resulting in centuries of sensory deprivation, and most often insanity. Finally, a rival upload collective, the Zoku, imprint their minds on quantum states of matter that can't be copied, embracing the unpredictability principle of the quantum mechanics that the Sobornost abhor.
* In ''The Tunnel Under The World'' by Frederick Pohl, Guy Burckhardt and the rest of the inhabitants of Tylerton were [[spoiler: killed in a chemical explosion. Their minds were transferred into the body of miniature robots so that Dorchin could use them as advertising test subjects]].
* In ''The Last Holey Man'' [[note]] yes, that's spelled right [[/note]] by V.C. Angell, the great dark secret of Reconstructed civilization is that [[spoiler: since the mind recordings are analog, people [[CloneDegeneration lose memories every time they are backed up,]] and usually don't even realize it has happened. The destructive uploading process is also notoriously unreliable, and many humans don't survive even in electronic form.]]
* ''The Century Long Journey'' by Vladimir Tendryakov has Earth communicating with another race 36 light years away. There is no FTL in any form, so they take a person with eidetic memory, upload his brain, and broadcast it to the other guys. The other planet grows a body for him, learns about Earth, teaches him everything about itself, and sends his mind back.
* Several ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' novels deal with this. During the [[TheWarOfEarthlyAggression First Galactic War]], the [[TheEmpire Earth Alliance]] [[RealRobot serv-machines]] used human pilots working in direct neural contact with [=AIs=]. Over time, an AI would learn from the pilot and even adopt some of the pilot's personality traits. One novel involves a lead designer putting an extremely-complex AI module into a new series of serv-machines with a lot more {{Data Crystal}}. All the members of that battalion end up dying in battle. However, their machines are recovered, repaired, and reused. Over time, the [=AIs=] end up resurrecting the personalities of the dead pilots. Later (in-universe chronology) novels deal with the implications of the ImportedAlienPhlebotinum called "logr". A logr is a small DataCrystal that's also an incredibly powerful computer. They were specifically designed millions of years ago to preserve the minds of dead [[StarfishAliens Logrians]] after death in a fully-functional virtual world. Once humans get their hands on the tech, the implications are staggering. No one needs to die permanently anymore. They can survive in their own private world. Additionally, reliable cloning tech means that ResurrectiveImmortality could become a reality. This, though, is clamped down on, as it presents so many legal issues (e.g. inheritance, property, debts), it's easier to just make it illegal to clone a new body. Ultimately, a solution is found by sending volunteers to faraway worlds to settle them and start brand-new lives. There's also a very real fear of ImmortalityImmorality, as evidenced by the [[HumanAlien Harammins]], whose Immortal Quota has ruled a stagnant empire for 3 million years by using this tech.
** The main character of the "John Mitchell St. Ivo" story arc has his mind uploaded into that of an identical-looking android after being fatally wounded by a security bot. In one novel, he has to constantly prove his right as a sentient being, as most just assume he's a run-of-the-mill self-learning bot (who don't qualify as sentient beings in this 'verse, for the most part). Later on, his android body is damaged, so his "crystal sphere" is plugged into that of a HumongousMecha instead (thanks to PlugNPlayTechnology). By the end of the arc, he grows an appropriately-aged clone for himself and downloads his mind into it.
* In Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/LineOfDelirium'', ResurrectiveImmortality called [=aTan=] (anti-Thanatos) is achieved by first performing an excruciatingly-painful molecular scan (for the MatterReplicator) and implanting the person with a "neural net", which appears to be a series of brain implants with a SubspaceAnsible. According to the official story, at the moment of death, the net beams the total sum of the person's knowledge (including the memory of dying) into the [=aTan=] Corporation's databanks. If the person's resurrection has been paid (always in advance), the nearest [=aTan=] facility replicates a new body based on the saved template and downloads the person's mind into it. The real truth is that it's impossible for a neural net to send out so much information in a single burst, especially since it's entirely possible for it to be damaged or destroyed during the person's death. Instead, the net is constantly transmitting new memories, and the end of the transmission is treated as death. Attempts to block the transmission trigger a resurrection, except the new body might have all the person's memories but none of the consciousness. Should the original find a way to kill himself, the new body suddenly becomes a full-fledged person. That's right, OurSoulsAreDifferent. It's also possible, but highly illegal, to record and look through a person's memories like an audio-visual film.
* In the ''Literature/JacobsLadderTrilogy'', all Exalts upload their minds to their symbiotic nanite colonies. In the event of their death, their mind can be transferred to the Library and stored for access by necromancers, or downloaded into a BodyBackupDrive. To prevent their enemies from coming back in this way, some people make a habit of consuming the colonies of those they kill.
* In ''Literature/StarTrekColdEquations'', which follows on from the ''Next Gen'' examples below, it's revealed that [[spoiler: Noonien Soong]] transferred his mind to an android body in a destructive process. He believes - but is not certain - that he is the "real" person, having experienced continuity of consciousness during the procedure. He briefly worries that he may be an android who has murdered his creator, but quickly realises the contradiction; if he's not the person who initiated the procedure then he's an android who watched his creator commit suicide.
* In ''Literature/{{Genome}}'', Alex eventually discovers that [[spoiler:"Edgar", the so-called artificial virtual personality, is actually the uploaded mind of Edward Garlitski, a brilliant geneticist, whose ideas were so controversial that TheEmperor ordered his mind to be uploaded into a [[PowerCrystal gel crystal]] and his body destroyed (it doesn't help that, in the prequel, Edward's OppositeSexClone tried to start a rebellion in the Empire). This probably means that the original Garlitski is dead and gone, and "Edgar" is just a copy]].
* ''Literature/WeAreLegionWeAreBob'': A living brain is destructively scanned, where it can be uploaded to a replicant core and activated. While the original is dead, the copy can be copied infinitely, and most nations on Earth use these copies to run important but boring tasks that are beyond lower-level [=AIs=]. Bob himself is used for a Von Neumann probe. The same is true for Major Ernesto Medeiros, who is put into the Brazilian Empire's probe. At one point, one of the Bobs encounters the Australian probe, who first tells him to "piss off, mate!" and later turns out to have gone insane from the isolation and sense deprivation (Bob is the only probe with the know-how to build a VR for himself to feel human). [[spoiler:The European probe was destroyed by one of the Medeiros probes.]]
* In the ''Literature/AgentG'' novels by Creator/CTPhipps, this turns out to be the origin of [[spoiler: the Letters. They think they've just had their memories wiped but are actually clones of a bunch of deceased agents who are being employed as expendable soldiers for the [[FluffyTheTerrible International Refugee Society's]] clients.]]
* The existing of this technology is a major plot point in ''Literature/LucifersStar'' as it's discovery allows the creation of clones with the existing technology of bioroids. The protagonist, Cassius Mass, has to deal with the fact one has been made of him and it's being used to serve as a figurehead for a YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters organization he opposes. The trick being it's a more idealistic and bloodthirsty past version of his present self. Cassius also encounters a similar clone of his sister [[spoiler: and late wife.]]
* In Creator/JohnScalzi's ''Literature/OldMansWar'', when 75-year-olds join the Colonial Defense Force, they're told that they will have healthy lives. What they're not told is that they will be injected with tens of thousands of nanobots, which will perform continuous brain scans in order to get their patterns, while the cadets are put through a number of tests to trigger certain emotions and mental processes. After a few days, their minds are transferred to a quickly-grown youthful body partly based on their own DNA (but heavily modified for SpaceMarine duty). The process takes a few minutes, but during it, the person feels as if he's watching the procedure from two viewpoints at once (i.e. through the eyes of both bodies). After synchronization is achieved, the doctor cuts the link and shuts down the old body's brain. It's not stated what would happen if the old brain isn't shut down (i.e. would there now be two versions of the same person walking around?). The legal issues are averted, since the cadets are already legally dead back on Earth and can never go back. After their tour of duty is complete, they may retire to civilian life, at which point the procedure is repeated, and they're loaded into a proper young clone of themselves.
* In the DistantFinale of ''[[Literature/{{Spin}} Vortex]]'', the various human colonies manage to use Hypothetical technology to upload their minds into the Hypothetical network prior to the end of the universe. Isaac Dvali does the same. At the moment of the universe's collapse, they manage to transfer themselves into TheMultiverse and exist as raw data. Isaac eventually grows weary of this existence and voluntarily ends it by downloading his memories into the mind of a brain-damaged young man in another universe (which appears to be a time-shifted version of the primary 'verse), hoping to change the fate of the man he admired.
* In ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsIHaveANemesis'', Penny invents brain transfer technology, which she uses to give The Apparition a body, and then uses to create a heroic duplicate of herself to fight in an effort to establish a separate villainous identity so that she can move to being a superhero. ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsYouBelieveHer'' follows up with the climax of the prior book, with Penny desperately seeking a way to get her brain back in the right body.
* In ''Literature/{{Borgel}}'', [[spoiler:Evil Toad's Great Popsicle]] is a computer simulation of its deceased creator's brain contained within [[spoiler: a paper mache popsicle]].
* ''Literature/{{Digitesque}}'': One of the many wonders of the ancients. The gods casually call up a man who died over a thousand years ago to talk to Ada. [[spoiler:Turns out that the "ghosts" are uploads from Elysium, the artificial afterlife, invading the real world to steal bodies. Some sort of alien code interfered centuries ago to allow them to do that, and then when the coders tried to fix it they corrupted the afterlife and turned it into a Hell. While it's unclear what the original motivation of the ghosts was, ''now'' they've all been driven insane and just want to live again]].
-->'''AI:''' [[spoiler:That was one of many motivations for the Kronos Project. Universal access to an afterlife. The death of death, in the words of one of the project founders]].
* ''Literature/FallOrDodgeInHell'' is all about how brain uploading is developed as a route to life after death. After Dodge goes into a permanent coma, his will stipulates that his vast fortune be used to develop the technology, making him the first person to live in a digital afterlife. But things get complicated when new arrivals start to disagree on what direction that their digital afterlife should take.
* ''Literature/Reaper2016'': At eighteen, people leave their physical bodies behind and are uploaded into Game, a massive multi-world artificial environment where they can custom-make their bodies and have adventures, like fighting monsters, living as fantasy beings, etc.
* In ''Literature/ReadyPlayerTwo'', [[spoiler:the BigBad is Anorak, which is revealed to be a digital copy of the late James Halliday instead of merely his OASIS avatar. But he's also a FlawedPrototype, since Halliday erased a sizable chunks of his memory in an attempt to keep the AI stable, but it ended up having the opposite effect. Halliday later perfected the process, testing it out on Kira Underwood, his best friend's wife, whom he always hoped to woo. He copied her mind without her knowledge not long before her death, but the copy turned out to be exact, and she rejected him. At the end of the quest, Kira's digital copy Lucosia gives Wade the Rod of Resurrection, which allows him to bring back anyone who has ever put on an ONI headset, which copied their mind every time and updated it with new memories after every usage. Wade uses it to resurrect Og, who has died the previous day while battling Anorak (which was also the first and only time he put on an ONI headset), reuniting the lovers. Samantha resurrects her late grandmother. Wade realizes that no one ever needs to die permanently anymore.]]
* ''Literature/MirrorProject'': After Bill Vargas's wife Lynn is rendered vegetative by a car crash, Bill has her severely damaged brain digitized so doctors can better examine it. All of them tell him there's no hope that she'll ever regain consciousness. So Bill lets the simulator fill in the damaged spaces with its own code, resulting in an entity that's part Lynn, part machine.
* ''Literature/OctoberDaye'': [[NatureSpirit Dryads]] normally live inside trees. After her grove was cut down, April the dryad escaped and January O'Leary managed to put her consciousness into an information "tree" in a computer server. [[spoiler:Later on in ''A Local Habitation'', it turns out the secret project ALH was working on was a way to do this to all fae, and the murderer was using it to kill people by uploading their minds.]]

* In ''Manga/BattleAngelAlita'' [[spoiler:this is used as important final plot twist in the last episodes, when the mad doctor Desty Nova reveals that his organic brain was abducted and replaced with a biochip with his personal memories implanted. He found it years ago and became literally mad]]. In ''Last Order'' this practice appears to be diffused in some contexts (i.e. Zekka had practised it on himself [[spoiler:but also the main character "herself" becomes an unknowning example of this case; new revelations are follwed by "''WhatMeasureIsAMan''" stuff]]). However, the sequel is stuffed with many other examples of futuristical or bizarre WeirdScience. We have also the [[spoiler:CloningBlues of Desty Nova]].
* Done in ''Manga/BlueDrop: Tenshi no Bokura'', to the main character's best friend. To avoid spoilers, lets just say that it ends badly [[WorldHalfEmpty for]] ''[[WorldHalfEmpty anyone]]'' [[WorldHalfEmpty involved]]. Reader included.
* In one ''Manga/CaseClosed'' NonSerialMovie ''Anime/DetectiveConanFilm06ThePhantomOfBakerStreet'', the ChildProdigy coded an artificial intelligence that is practically himself,[[spoiler: and then killed himself. This artificial intelligence then haunted an DeepImmersionGaming event and...]] Nobody in the movie [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman even tried to distinguish between said artificial intelligence and its creator, and neither did fans.]]

** The Dummy System is like this and treated as a DangerousForbiddenTechnique, essentially a simulated pilot that's used when Shinji refuses to kill Touji. How bad is it? Well [[TheStoic Rei]] has to take a look in ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'' since she is the model for is and even she is disturbed by it.
* In ''Anime/ProfessorLaytonAndTheEternalDiva'', [[spoiler: Melina's memories were uploaded into a device her father constructed and disguised as a musical instrument, so he could find a body that matches hers and create a ReplacementGoldfish [[WhatTheHellHero by erasing the consciousness of an innocent girl]]. Once he actually did it, Melina [[WhatHaveIBecome did not agree.]]]]
* ''LightNovel/RebuildWorld'': It's common for hunters to have a 'black box' of sorts installed in their body as part of an insurance plan to make them into a FullConversionCyborg if their original body dies, which causes Search and Rescue operations to treat dead bodies the same as wounded. It's also possible to back up someone's personality via the old world internet. Both of these serve as a means for villains to come BackFromTheDead.

* In the British comic ''ComicBook/RogueTrooper'' (a ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' stablemate to ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd''), three of the protagonist's squadmates were uploaded to chips on their death and integrated into his equipment. (These personality-saving "biochips" are actually an integral feature of ''all'' Genetic Infantrymen; they're meant to be recovered in case of death and installed in newly-cloned bodies.) Of course, the chip has to be recovered and placed into a slot in the G.I.'s equipment within sixty seconds.
* ''Comicbook/JudgeDredd'' has them as well, though they're huge when they're introduced. One strip in ''ComicBook/TheSimpingDetective'' has disposable variants as a plot point.
* In ''Comicbook/TheAvengers'':
** ComicBook/TheVision's personality is based on an upload of Wonder Man's personality -- though in practice, the two of them have [[InformedAttribute never really acted very much alike.]] Not that this prevents him from [[CloningBlues angsting about it, of course.]]
** ComicBook/{{Ultron}}, psycho KillerRobot and Avengers enemy, attempts to upload the entire mind of his 'mother', the Wasp, into a female bot that he's created (aptly named Jocasta) for companionship, having brainwashed his "father"/her husband into helping him do it. While the Avengers rescue her before the process could finish (and kill her), Jocasta ends up with enough of Janet's personality to later turn on him and join the Avengers.
** Ultron himself is RetConned as having originated with a botched download by mentally-unstable Henry Pym's all-too-flawed engrams.
* In the Marvel/Epic comic ''{{ComicBook/Dreadstar}}'', one of the themes is that the main heroes fight against a tyrannical government, only to [[spoiler:find out [[MeetTheNewBoss the new government isn't much better]]]]. Willow, one of the main characters, [[spoiler:uploads herself to take over the new government's main computer]].
* In the original ''Comicbook/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|Mirage}}'' series, this accidentally occurs to Professor Honeycutt; while testing out his Menta-wave helmet (which granted its user psychic and telekinetic abilities) a bolt of lightning caused his consciousness to be transferred to the body of his robot SAL. In the [[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 cartoon based on the book]], this later on allows him to copy his consciousness between computers, allowing him to [[DisneyDeath survive his own heroic sacrifice]].
* In ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}'', people can destructively vacate their bodies, using their chemical energy to bootstrap a cloud of {{nanomachines}} that then houses their consciousness. This being ''Transmet'', they've formed their own weird subculture. Similar technology is used to revive cryonically frozen heads by downloading their brains into cloned bodies.

** The stand-alone comic book ''ComicBook/IronManHypervelocity'' is entirely about Tony Stark 2.0, a digital version of himself that occupies his suit. As the comic progresses, he slowly gets corrupted by a rogue virus girl program. [[spoiler:The virus turns out to be an amalgam of the various test subjects for the brain uploading research that went into Tony Stark 2.0's creation. Note that Tony Stark didn't perform any of the unethical and torturous research, he merely stole it from the [[SuperVillain Super Villains]], Corrupt Corporations and Government Conspiracies that did]].
* The UltimateUniverse ContinuityReboot of ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'' had this trope when [[spoiler: Lyonard [[PunnyName D'Aq]] uploaded his brain as a side result of him exploring a virtual world]]. Then this trope became a ChekhovsGun when [[spoiler: after Lyonard got KilledOffForReal (or, more precisely, got [[OneWingedAngel devolved into the monstrous Lyozard]] ''and then'' got killed off) [[BackFromTheDead and Uno downloaded the data version of his brain into a (superpowered, of course) bionic body]].]]
* This happened to Cliff Steele (Robotman) in Creator/GrantMorrison's ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'' after the Candlemaker crushed his brain. Fortunately, he was hooked up to the Chief's computer at the time, and his intelligence was downloaded on a disk. Once he figured out what happened, he was able to return to his body, though he was pretty freaked out by the entire process.
* The Battlestar Galactica comic ''The Final Five'' has this as the origin of the Thirteenth Tribe. Originally, they were members of the other 12 tribes but after uploading their consciousnesses into new cybernetic bodies were treated as a new group. This includes the idea that the Thirteenth Tribe have committed some kind of 'sin', apparently borne out by the intervention of supernatural/sufficiently advanced beings.
* ''ComicBook/SavageDragon'' featured a number of characters with PowerArmor who had previously downloaded their brainwaves into the suit, allowing them to continue fighting long after death.
* [[DeusEstMachina Quetzacoatl]] in ''ComicBook/TomStrong'' has destructive brain scanning technology. A laser is used to (destructively) read a person's brain.
* In the comic reboot of ''The Jetsons'', Rosie the maid is actually the Jetson family's grandmother, who uploaded her mind and memories into a robotic body when her body started failing.
* In the future society of ''ComicBook/{{Spiritus}}'', convicted criminals have their consciousness uploaded to android bodies programmed to perform manual labor.
* In ''ComicBook/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesIDW'', after Bebop and Rocksteady nearly kill Donatello, his mind is uploaded into Metalhead while the Fugitoid and Harold heal his broken body.
* ''ComicBook/DoctorAphra'': Rur was part of an immortality-seeking Jedi sect who tried to upload himself into a droid. Unfotunately, all he did was copy his mind into the machine, which then believed itself the real Rur and killed the imposter. It's later found and reactivated, even getting into a fight with Darth Vader being being unceremoniously removed and put into storage.

** In the ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'' Annual #1 story "The Surrogate", a young tooljerk named Cryssia is hooked up to a wave amplifier which connects her mind to an invulnerable robot body on the surface of Praxis IX, a planet with a predominantly methane atmosphere and a surface temperature close to 1,000 degrees, so that its platinum reserves can be mined. However, almost as soon as she is connected, Cryssia's entire consciousness is transferred to the robot body. Having been told by the scientist who subjected her to this treatment that the mass of the robot body can be reformed at will, Cryssia transforms it into a giant, golden version of Supergirl with the ability to fly. In her childhood, her parents had told her stories of Supergirl's legendary exploits on Old Earth and she had always imagined herself as the hero. Cryssia uses her new body to destroy the space station orbiting Praxis IX and kill the scientist who did this to her. Although her original body is destroyed, the process that transferred her consciousness to the robot body was irreversible.
* ''ComicBook/TheUltimates'': [[ComicBook/UltimateFantasticFour The Maker]] casually killed Tony Stark after experimenting with his grain. He was able to upload his consciousness in his Iron Man suit due to his brain having prolonged exposure to the Infinity Gem in it. So the Infinity Gem gave him mental powers so he can upload his brain into anything with a CPU. With all the gems he later created a new body for himself and uploaded himself in it.
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman''
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': Julian Lazarus refuses to accept his son's death and ''thinks'' he's found a way to preserve his son's mind in his lab, uploaded into an artificial intelligence. He's not done so and rather created an AI designed to behave in the manner he remembers his son but he refuses to listen when told this, even though prior to his son's death he was well aware of what his project was capable of.

* ''ComicBook/XMen'': In the [[ComicBook/XMen2019 Krakoa Era]] of the X-Men, it was revealed that this was the true purpose of Cerebro, with Forge designing the system and Xavier secretly using it to upload the minds of every mutant on the planet into a giant database (which itself has several copies located across the world), which can now be installed into a duplicate body upon said mutant's death; with the help of a select group of mutants known as the Five.

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* ''Film/The6thDay '' features a way of making copies of a person mind that can be uploaded into clone bodies. Unfortunately as uploading is often done after death you get memories of dying.

* ''Franchise/MegaMan'':
** [[WildMassGuessing One theory as to]] what happened to Dr. Light between the original ''VideoGame/MegaManClassic'' series and the ''VideoGame/MegaManX'' series. Additionally, it's believed that Wily not only is some sort of VirtualGhost by 21XX due to the [[TheVirus Maverick Virus]] (particularly with his involvement in the events of ''VideoGame/MegaManX5'' being implied by Sigma's description of [[BigBadDuumvirate his unknown benefactor]] and later confirmed by WordOfGod), but also somehow turned himself into a Reploid; both Serges, one of the X-Hunters from ''VideoGame/MegaManX2'', and Isoc, one of Gate's underlings in ''VideoGame/MegaManX6'', are suggested to be incarnations of Wily.
** In ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends'', [[BigBad Juno]] was about to backup himself through this way after being defeated by Mega, as long as the ColonyDrop would [[XanatosGambit remain continued]]. Fortunately, it was halted by Data the monkey, who has A Class authority over the system (while Juno was C class), not only it halted the colony drop, it deleted Juno's backup data.
** [=MegaMan=].EXE in ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' supposedly originated as an uploaded version of a baby with a rare heart condition who had no other way to survive. He also uses DNA ([[MST3KMantra somehow]]) to perform {{Synchronization}} with his twin brother.
* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
** Human-made "Smart" [=AIs=] (that is, ones that can learn new information) are created by this method. The resulting [=AIs=] are ''not'' exact copies of their donors (since the uploaded mind will automatically rewrite its neural map into a superior system), but will often retain some memories and sensations from their original humans (for example, [[VideoGame/HaloWars Serina]] remembers kissing a boy and maintains a theoretical interest in chocolate). However, this process [[PoweredByAForsakenChild kills the brain being uploaded]], so only one (known) AI has even been based on a still-living person's mind, Cortana. She was created by flash-cloning Dr. Halsey, removing the clone's brain, and scanning it; it took twenty tries. Indeed, this was part of the reason why self-cloning is technically illegal. Also, because of how "rampancy" works (in which the AI eventually "thinks itself to death" from their matrixes starting to degrade from absorbing and computing too much data), "Smart" [=AIs=] can't be successfully copied, as copying them also copies the degradation of their matrixes at that moment in time, not to mention creating any potential errors in their copy's coding as a result of the process.
** Mind transferring was ubiquitous in [[{{Precursors}} Forerunner]] society; even the armor they wore everyday was capable of uploading the wearer's consciousness, with their funerary rites involving loading the deceased's last recorded memories and mental patterns into time-locked containers. Naturally, they had a much more advanced form of this trope, being able to upload effective copies of their consciousnesses into computing systems ''without'' destroying the original mind. While the method they used to make their actual [=AIs=] is unknown, [[spoiler:343 Guilty Spark himself was created in a process similar to that of human [=AIs=], as a way to save the dying human Chakas (though other human personalities were also loaded into him)]].
** ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'' has a malicious variant of this; the [[spoiler:Ur-Didact]] uses the Composer (an abandoned Forerunner device originally designed to combat the Flood) to painfully destroy humans so their minds can be digitized to make his personal army of [[EliteMooks Promethean Knights]].
* ''VideoGame/TalesFromTheBorderlands'' reveals that, before his death, [[spoiler: [[MadScientist Professor Nakayama]] had an AI version of [[BigBad Handsome Jack]] created. Rhys accidentally uploads said AI into his brain, and later uploads it into Helios itself; though whether Rhys does so willingly or through Jack forcing him to depends on the player's choice.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Independence War 2}} Edge of Chaos'' takes Jefferson Clay from the first game and puts him in a "Brain Box", so that the main character over a century later can have a mentor and guide to the game. [[AllThereInTheManual According to the manual]], the digital Clay is not too happy about this state of affairs.
* The AI that comes with the ship TheFederation loaned Samus in ''VideoGame/MetroidFusion'' is one of these. [[spoiler: Because of his similar personality to an old commanding officer of hers, Samus dubs him Adam. She later realizes that it actually ''is'' said officer, uploaded to AI, when he says something to her that [[SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay only he would say]].]] Apparently brain uploading is commonly used by the Federation to preserve the minds of politicians, military leaders and other important people. It would seem that the uploading is only done when the person is dead or dying, but considering that Adam died under unrelated circumstances, [[spoiler:namely in the huge, fiery explosion of a lab full of invincible Metroids jettisoned into space]], this is almost certainly to avoid the complications of having armies of duplicates running around rather than for any reason inherent to the process.
* ''VideoGame/HostileWatersAntaeusRising'' had this, with "soulcatcher chips"; it was apparently inspired by ''Rogue Trooper''. They were said to the copies of the minds of dead soldiers in AI form. Though they could be duplicated you were not allowed to, because it had been found that if two copies of the same personality became aware of each other each would consider the other an impostor and they would fight to their destruction.
* ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'' implies this to be part of the process behind the Clinical Immortality secret project. And that's just the beginning: the AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence Victory is done by first uploading all the knowledge created by Mankind into Planet's [[GeniusLoci global mind]], then by uploading all your people's minds in the same global mind. It's also specifically stated that the project will result in ''everyone''[='=]s mind being uploaded into Planet (whether they want it or not). However, only the faction that completes the project first will have its members retain most of their individuality.
* ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'':
** [=GLaDOS=] claims to have a backup of Chell on file, which she later claims to delete. Of course, [[spoiler:she is a [[UnreliableNarrator lying liar who tends to lie]].]]
** ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'':
*** Cave Johnson wanted to upload himself into Aperture Science's central computer system to stave off his death. [[spoiler: In case he died before that, he wanted his secretary Caroline to run the facility. When Cave himself died, Caroline was uploaded into [=GLaDOS=]. DummiedOut lines indicate that this was done [[UnwillingRoboticization against Caroline's wishes]], which may have contributed to [=GLaDOS=]' [[AIIsACrapshoot ...issues]].]]
*** In the [=PeTI=] DLC, it turns out that in an AlternateUniverse Cave [[spoiler:succeeded in uploading himself. He quickly goes insane from boredom, and decides he needs to kill everyone so he can ascend to Olympus like Hercules]]. When Cave Prime hears this, he decides to [[spoiler:''cancel the [=GLaDOS=] project'', confirming that "Earth 1" is not the same universe the main story takes place in.]]

* ''VideoGame/AceCombat3Electrosphere'' had this with "sublimation", the act of uploading your mind inside a computer. Among other things, Ouroboros is a secret faction hell-bent on sublimating all the people in the world, and Fiona is unable to forgive her sister Cinthia after she tells Fiona she wants to sublimate her mind. (Don't panic if you don't know that: all that stuff is exclusive from the Japanese original; the American release had [[{{Macekre}} this engaging storyline replaced]] with a generic AIIsACrapshoot plot).
* The Doctor, a PlayfulHacker of ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' is revealed to be one of these, and created an easily produced process to upload personalities. Oddly enough for the genre, it didn't destroy her original mind or body; [[MegaCorp Crey]] took care of that some time after she had already gone on the net. She's treated as a [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman human]], although she does recognize that she's not one any longer. ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' also features this trope's inversion : Paragon Protectors are revealed to run on home-built personalities downloaded into clone bodies, using the same underlying technology and copied on a massive scale. [[CloningBlues They're fairly expendable]], in a world where normal clones or uploaded personalities are treated fairly well, but [[MegaCorp Crey]] does tend to harvest the original copies for those personalities from the rotting corpses of dead heroes and rip out whatever higher brain functionality is left before slapping the Paragon Protector together.
* Occurs at the end of ''VideoGame/SpaceQuestIVRogerWilcoAndTheTimeRippers'', when BigBad former-"human" A.I. Vohaul not only uploads Roger's son's mind to a disk (1.44mb! Who knew the mind was so... compressible?), but then uploads his own mind to Roger's son. Roger then has to defeat Vohaul by putting his son's mind back in place and transferring Vohaul's mind to the computer just seconds before a system format.
* In ''VideoGame/Jak3Wastelander'', [[spoiler:Vin (who had died in the previous game)]] is discovered to have uploaded his mind into a computer. This is treated as if he were the same person [[spoiler:and had never died at all]].
* ''VideoGame/TronTwoPointOh'', the video game sequel to the cult sci-fi Disney flick ''Film/{{Tron}}'', featured [=Ma3a=], an artificially intelligent construct and vector for the digitization correction algorithms who was modeled after the original movie's Lora Baines, player character Jet Bradley's mother. It is hinted however that [=Ma3a=] actually has part of Lora's consciousness integrated into her program (said part having been digitized during the digitization laser accident that claimed Lora's life).
* Orthopox from ''VideoGame/DestroyAllHumans'' does this when [[spoiler:he gets destroyed with the mothership during a nuclear attack staged by the KGB.]]

* ''VideoGame/StarshipTitanic'': all the robots on board have copied alien minds courtesy of 'personality transfers'. It's like blood donation in America, which means you get lots of people who really shouldn't be donating.

* In ''VideoGame/TotalAnnihilation'', this is what sparks the game's galaxy-wide [[ApocalypseHow class 4 apocalypse]]. When the Core announces it will start doing this to it's citizens, the Arm rebels. The Arm apparently thinks cloning soldiers in bulk to be used as cannon fodder is fine, though.
* In ''{{VideoGame/Starsiege}}'', this is how the Immortal Brotherhood came to be; individuals who were part of the Lazarus Project team, or who were exceptionally loyal to Emperor-to-be Solomon Petresun, were transferred into biomechanoid brains which could then be transplanted from body to body. Since the brains have their own power supply and were extremely durable, the immortal could be killed without actually dying... however, the nature of the brain/body interface could cause severe personality shifts from one 'lifetime' to the next. [[BigBad Prometheus]], the [[AIIsACrapshoot Cybrid]] who invented the technique, later used it to create infiltration units as weapons against its creators.
* ''VideoGame/PerfectDark [[{{Prequel}} Zero]]'' has an appearance by a character who appeared in the original game as an AI. He dies in the very mission you meet him in; the last mention he gets is [=dataDyne=]'s CEO calling over the intercom "I want his brain on ice!".
* In the ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series:
** The fluff contains some interesting trivia on "brain" uploading: essentially, a true intelligence, be it natural or artificial, can only "run" on a quantum computing core, and while it is possibly to copy the ''data'' that constitutes it to as many cores as you wish, each copy would be a different "individual" rather than a carbon copy, thanks to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that plays a major part in quantum computing. The geth get around that by acting as a single emergent HiveMind ("geth consensus") that controls multiple hardware platforms.
** ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'': David Archer, whose mind was uploaded so he could control an army of [[MechaMooks Geth]]. Unfortunately, his mind is unable to take the strain of being in charge of a highly advanced computer network, and he goes insane.
** In the ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' ending "Control", [[spoiler:Shepard performs this in order to take over the Reapers]].

* ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'':
** Throughout most of the series the audience - and the characters - are led to believe that [[spoiler:Subject 16, Desmond's predecessor, went crazy and committed suicide. The first is definitely true, and the second may be as well, but before he did so, he was able to upload or at least copy his mind into the Animus program, where he is implied to be watching over Desmond.]] In ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRevelations Revelations]]'', [[spoiler:this is confirmed. He shows up for the first time, fully-formed, ''marginally'' more stable than previously displayed, and confirms himself to be a copy in his database entry. Interestingly, despite stating in no uncertain terms that he is a copy of the original Clay Kaczmarek and that the original is dead, he still introduces himself as Clay Kaczmarek and seems to consider himself a real person in his own right]].
** This may also be how [[spoiler:Juno has survived all these millennia, plotting to return to the world and take it over. Unfortunately, Desmond has no choice but to release her in order to activate the shield protecting Earth from the solar flare]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Glowgrass}}'' contains an example where it is used to discover part of an ancient culture.
* Prometheus in ''VideoGame/{{Conduit 2}}'', due to events in the last game.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Kamui}}'':

* In ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolidPeaceWalker'', a somewhat less biological, more behaviourally-based attempt is used to create Peace Walker's AI, a somewhat [[CameBackWrong distorted]] version of [[spoiler: [[LadyOfWar The Boss's]]]] consciousness.

* In ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars 2'', you can preserve admirals' expertise by converting them into expert systems. They will never retire; however, since the end result of the destructive process is not truly sapient, they won't gain any more stats improvements or possible new skills. The supplementary material also reveals that this is the case with the [[PlanetLooters Locusts.]] They were once an organic race until they invented BrainUploading, upon which some of those who became engrams decided they were superior to the baselines and bombed the latter back to the stone age before setting out into the void to make more of themselves while wiping out the inferiors.
* Your entire crew in ''VideoGame/IronSeed'' has had this done to them.
* ''VideoGame/ArmoredCore'':
** Becoming "HUMAN-Plus" means this... they also fuse your consciousness with your AC. [[spoiler: This is what happened to the Zodiacs in Armored Core 5. And Chief. And Hustler One (AKA [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast NineBall]])]]
** It also happens to [[spoiler: Reaper Squad and later Maggy, when she chooses to become a reaper]] in Armored Core Verdict Day
* In ''VisualNovel/MuvLuvAlternative'', this happens to [[spoiler: Kagami Sumika and she becomes the "00-Unit". Although the process killed her, she was [[AndIMustScream already just a]] BrainInAJar, so that actually isn't much. The end result is that she becomes a Quantum Computer with a practically human body that isn't quite human.]]
* ''VideoGame/UniverseAtWar'' has Commander Orlok of the [[PlanetLooters Hierarchy military]]. The [[TheManBehindTheMan Overseers]] couldn't risk losing such a competent commander to death. So they had his consciousness transferred from his organic alien body to a HumongousMecha, effectively granting him immortality and thus giving him the title of "The Eternal".
* ''[[VideoGame/GoldBox Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed]]'': Implied to be the origin of friendly AI [=SCOTT.DOS.=] The co-leader of [[FunWithAcronyms P.U.R.G.E.]] does this while your party is storming their headquarters, creating [=SOOTH.DOP=]. He ends up getting [[HoistByTheirOwnPetard Hoist by His Own Petard]] when you discover a virus the P.U.R.G.E. scientists were developing specifically to destroy digital personalities on the same computer he's locked down.
* Done to the party in the finale of ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994'', as traveling back in time using the Phase Distorter would destroy organic bodies, so they're given robotic bodies to use for the journey.
* This happens to countless people in ''VideoGame/{{Transistor}}''. Their uploads, or "Traces," are what you use for active and passive abilities. However, Red isn't able to communicate with any Traces directly other than the Man, [[spoiler: because of all the people trapped in the Transistor, he's the one she knew the best and cared about the most]].
* In the graphic interactive fiction ''[[VideoGame/{{Gateway}} Gateway II: Homeworld]]'', after the PlayerCharacter travels to the PocketDimension where the [[{{Precursors}} Heechee]] are hiding, he finds that their society is in large part influenced by the uploaded minds of their deceased ancestors. The official belief is that they're the same people as when they were alive, although a small faction secretly believes that they're just copies, explaining that they experimented with uploading the minds of the living, and the process doesn't take anything away from the living person, while both versions appear to be fully-functional individuals. Eventually, thanks to the player, the Heechee agree that it's time to stop living in the past and drastically reduce the influence their ancestors have.
* In ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'', Neural Uploading is a late game technology and part of the Supremacy affinity. The process works by scanning a person's brain to map it, then running a simulation of the brain in a quantum computer. The [[Quotes/CivilizationBeyondEarth quotes]] associated with advancing through Supremacy show that AIs are treated as equal to humans, and the Supremacy affinity as a whole sees AI, robots, and cybernetics as the way for humanity to move forward.
* In ''VideoGame/{{SOMA}}'', [=WAU=] sought to keep its humans alive by ''[[AIIsACrapshoot any]]'' means necessary. Any human that couldn't be turned into cyborgs forcibly underwent this, including Catherine and [[spoiler: Simon]]. Of course, [[spoiler: the process doesn't actually transfer the mind from one vessel to another, but creates a copy that believes itself to be the original, which causes truly horrifying ethical and existential issues]].
* In ''VideoGame/StarcraftIILegacyOfTheVoid'' the Purifiers were an experiment in Protoss brain uploading and robotics. However, the Conclave treated them like machines and weapons and they rebelled, only to be shut down for centuries. Later they are reactivated to aid in the war against Amon. And it turns out that [[spoiler: Fenix had his memories copied while he was being turned into a [[BrainInAJar Dragoon]] and his robotic version convinces the Purifiers to join the cause. But he later decides he is only a clone and renames himself Talandar.]]
* ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace'':
** The titular [[{{Precursors}} Endless]] found a way to transfer their minds into machines but the process was only available to the wealthiest. This caused a great schism in the Endless society, between the Concrete Endless who remained organic, and the Virtual who embraced uploading. This sparked a massive war which led to the extinction of the Endless.
** In the [[VideoGame/EndlessSpace2 sequel]], the Vodyani discovered the Virtual uploading technology around the same time their homeworld suffered completed ecological collapse. To survive, they underwent the uploading en masse becoming beings of living energy. However the process was flawed, and they now both survive and reproduce through VampiricDraining of entire populated star systems. [[spoiler:Some surviving Virtual Endless share bodies with Vodyani]].
* ''Videogame/StarRuler2'''s expansion pack introduces The First, a playable faction composed entirely of post-physical aliens that watched the extinction of their origin species and the rise and fall of hundreds of other empires. The First have only ventured out from their computational hubworld after the arrival of the Heralds, fleeing ''something'' in their home galaxy. Despite The First's ancient nature and the computational power they possess, they are the only empire to have absolutely no form of FasterThanLightTravel.
* ''VideoGame/Code7'' has [[spoiler: Alex. Their friend Sam even finds Alex's brain connected to the computer]].
* ''{{VideoGame/Headlander}}'':
** Humanity has uploaded their minds into robot bodies called imposters, in a bid to live forever.
** [[spoiler: It is implied that [[BigBad Methuselah]] was created by several uploaded minds being combined, one of which belonged to the character that the player character is a clone of.]]
* In ''VideoGame/Doom2016'', Samuel Hayden underwent research into cybernetics after learning that he had brain cancer, uploading his consciousness into a robotic body so that he could continue his research.
* ''Videogame/{{Destiny}}'':
** The Exos are the result of human minds being uploaded into mechanical bodies, resulting in highly intelligent RidiculouslyHumanRobot [[MechanicalLifeforms lifeforms]]. It is unclear what precise purpose the Exos served prior to [[TheEndOfTheWorldasWeKnowIt the Collapse]], with differing sources suggesting they were built as war machines, as [[{{Transhuman}} a means of achieving immortality]], or as a mechanism to let a mere human mind safely explore [[DeusEstMachina the Vex network]].
** ''Videogame/Destiny2'' revealed in the ''Warmind'' expansion that the Exos' experience "Disassociative Exomind Rejection," or DER, a syndrome where the human mind rejects its mechanical body and suffers a degenerative breakdown where the human mind will eventually "die." The solutions to this were to periodically routinely "reboot" the Exo, wiping their memories while retaining the personality, although this causes long-term issues with memory retention if done too many times, and to program "humanisms" into Exos like letting them [[EatingMachine eat, drink,]] sleep, or [[{{Robosexual}} copulate]] to mimic their old human bodies.
** In the ''Destiny 2'' expansion ''Beyond Light'', the creation point of the Exos is unearthed on Europa - the [[ElaborateUndergroundBase Deep Stone Crypt]]. Recovered test logs and journals from the nigh-MadScientist Clovis Bray show that the first human minds uploaded into Exos would rapidly degenerate via a process termed the "loop/billboard/crash" cycle, losing higher thought and defaulting to mindless repetition; they could still pass a Turing test, but were philosophical zombies, and eventually would shut down altogether. Short term, it could be countered by wiping and re-uploading the stored personality engram, but that's obviously not ideal. The issue was that Exominds were too static to emulate human brains, which are constantly adapting and evolving; the solution was discovered through extremely ethically dubious experiments, harvested alien microbes, and a healthy exposure of [[RealityWarper paracausal]] Darkness energy, creating an improved Exo brain unstable enough to host a consciousness indefinitely.
** However, Exominds lasting longer led to the discovery of DER, above: lacking somatosensory feedback from bodily organs such as the lungs, heart, and stomach, the mind would develop [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion Cotard delusion]] and become convinced those organs had failed and go insane with terror about being trapped in a corpse. Returning that feedback with simulated "humanisms" was the only way to prevent the delusion, much to the annoyance of Clovis, who wanted his Exos to feel no such organic "weaknesses", and the reboots let Exos orient better to their new bodies, as they lost all memory of having an old one.
** Notably, there is no "continuity of consciousness" involved in becoming an Exo. A human becoming an Exo undergoes a brain scan, and the scan is uploaded into the Exo body. The brain scan is invariably fatal to the original human due to the toxicity of the radioligand and the intensity of the magnetic fields involved (but the resulting capture is accurate down to the quantum level, which wouldn’t be possible with a less potent scan). The Exo is technically a new, distinct person, although Clovis Bray's philosophy of mind is that everyone is constantly becoming a new, distinct person at any given moment of their lives, so this isn't really a huge deal.

** The "In Limbo" anomaly has your science vessel discovering a vault on a lifeless alien world, containing still-functional computers that the planet's original owners used to upload scans of their brains in a last-ditch attempt to survive some apocalypse. You can shrug and leave it be, study the equipment, or try to download these digitized consciousnesses into whatever robot technology you have available. Uploading the data into Robots or Droids gives an underwhelming result, but if you've got full [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots Synths]] researched, not only is the download a complete success, [[VideoGameCaringPotential but the grateful robo-aliens join your empire, potentially by colonizing a world none of your existing species can survive on.]] Alternatively, the [[TheXenophile Enigmatic Observers]] may ask for the dead aliens' brain patterns so they can clone new bodies for them on their [[PeopleZoo Sanctuary planet]], which gives you a significant opinion bonus with the most benign Fallen Empire type without the happiness penalty for giving them some of your own people.

* In ''VideoGame/{{SUPERHOT}}'', it's revealed that [[spoiler:the game itself is an AssimilationPlot uploading its players inside the game via brain uploading. This includes you in the finale, with no end in sight.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'': [[spoiler:Cephalons]], originally thought to be [=AIs=] built using [[LostTechnology technology that no longer exists]] from the days of the [[{{Precursors}} Orokin]], turn out to be this. The Orokin being AbusivePrecursors, it's originally implied that they were all uploaded against their will (and modified after to be loyal), but at least one woman uploaded herself willingly. Her mind was deteriorating, and she wanted to preserve herself.
* In ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series, the Dunmeri (Dark Elven) Tribunal [[DeityOfHumanOrigin deity Sotha Sil]] used his advanced understanding of Nirn's "[[MagicMusic Tonal Architecture]]" to create SteamPunk and {{Magitek}} technological wonders while the rest of the world is stuck in [[MedievalStasis Medieval]] HighFantasy [[MedievalStasis Stasis]]. After the [[PlayerCharacter Nerevarine]] strips he and the other Tribunes of their divinity during ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]''[='s=] main quest, Sotha Sil is thought to have been killed by fellow Tribune [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Almalexia]] during the ''Tribunal'' expansion. However, ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsOnline''[='s=] ''Clockwork City'' expansion (a prequel taking place several centuries before ''Morrowind''), reveals that Sotha Sil had made himself into a {{Cyborg}}, replacing his arms and part of his head with mechanical components. It is also revealed that the Clockwork City itself is a massive computer and that Sotha Sil was capable of uploading his memories and consciousness into an "artificial astronomical matrix". Essentially, by the time of the events of ''Tribunal'', it is quite likely that he uploaded his conciousness and was no longer inhabiting his body when Almalexia "killed" it.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', it's briefly mentioned that during the 21st century the founder of the firearms company Glock Inc., Gaston Glock, uploaded his consciousness into an AI that continued to design guns for the company long after his death such as the [[PlasmaCannon Glock 86 plasma pistol]].
* ''VideoGame/{{X}}-Universe'': The X-Encyclopedia speaks of "presence clouds," artificial nebulae made of a form of degenerate matter called computronium that forms a sort of DysonSphere around a star. The [[{{Precursors}} Ancients]] virtualized their consciousnesses into one and create replacement ones around other stars as dictated by stellar life cycles.

* This is how the virtual world EDEN works in ''VideoGame/DigimonStoryCyberSleuth''. Some extremely dark possibilities are explored, such as "EDEN Syndrome", a condition where being killed in EDEN renders the user brain-dead with no known cure. [[spoiler: There's also a company apparently exploiting EDEN users for OrganTheft.]]
* The Architect from ''VideoGame/{{Ghostrunner}}'' is a digital copy of Adam, co-founder of Dharma Tower and savior of humanity. He insists that he's the real deal, for all intents and purposes, but others in the game question whether he has the soul or conscience of the original.
* ''VideoGame/OneMustFall2097'' has the owner of WAR, [[BigBad Major Has Kreissack]] and the prototype Nova [[HumongousMecha HAR]]. As the Major is 103 years old, he has just about reached the practical limit on his body's lifespan... so he decides to transfer his mind into the Nova itself and ''become'' the 250-ton missile-launching war machine and presumably name himself immortal corporate tyrant of WAR. He goes about this in a far more analog fashion than most, by having his brain extracted from his head and put into the Nova. This ends poorly because the prototype Nova's reactor is touchy, such that DefeatEqualsExplosion. Kreissack's brain dies for good when the Nova's head is blown off its chest in the resulting blast. After seeing all that, almost everyone agrees that the brain implanting is a ''terrible'' idea, but that the Nova has potential, and they eventually design a stripped-down Nova with the normal BrainComputerInterface for mass production.
* ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'' has [[MegaCorp Arasaka]]'s Relic system, part of their Save Your Soul program, which creates an "engram" of a person. The Relic, based off an improved version of the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Soulkiller]] algorithm, comes in two varieties. The first, a version meant to be commercially available, is a just a copy of one's memories and personality, essentially a hyper-sophisticated chatbot with no true consciousness or self-awareness. The second version is much more advanced and effectively emulates the person and their awareness with a reasonable degree of emotional and volitional accuracy, with the ability to perceive and learn. Even in the latter case, though, the designer of the original [=SoulKiller=] (and one of its victims) notes "something" is lost, although it's ambiguous if that something is the actual soul or simply some kind of data loss. In both cases, the upload's personality and memories can be altered just like any data, and Arasaka scientists have been secretly experimenting on clients' uploads to understand the program's limitations and possibilities. The fact that engram is ultimately not the original also means, no matter the ending, [[spoiler:V dies, whether by living out their remaining days in their body or because Alt Cunningham created an engram, seperated Johnny's data, and downloaded the cleaned V engram back into V's body/took V with her across the Black Wall. Although there is continuity of experience, the "original" V is dead no matter what.]]
* Each crewmember of ''VideoGame/ThePersistence'' has a copy of their mind somehow uploading into the ship's computer, which is programmed to immediately create a clone for them to possess as soon as they die. The problem is that when the ship was damaged, all but two of the crew's back-ups were destroyed, so the ship has been printing out copies of the dead crew members non-stop with no personality back-up to speak of, leaving them mindless monsters.

* About 15% into ''VisualNovel/AnalogueAHateStory'', it's revealed that [[spoiler:your AI companion, *Hyun-ae]], is actually the uploaded mind of [[spoiler:a girl of the same name]] who perished on the ''Mugunghwa'' along with everyone else six centuries ago.
* ''VisualNovel/BaldrSky'': [[spoiler:The Project Ark is eventually revealed to be a huge exodus to the virtual world, triggered by Ark if humanity is doomed.]] And later in Makoto's route, it's revealed [[spoiler:Neunzehn also uploaded himself into the Baldr system, which eventually caused the events of the series.]]
* Played with in ''VisualNovel/TheEdenOfGrisaia''. Yuuji soon learns that the Thanatos computer system :is linked to the uploaded brain of [[spoiler:his sister, Kazuki,]] who was found on the verge of death. Thanatos did not have the memories of the person it was based on at first until a clever researcher helped it unleash the memory blocks, after which it could act as the person it had been in life. [[spoiler:However, in truth, it wasn't just that the brain was uploaded but rather that the brain was connected into the computer system through the spinal cord while Kazuki herself was placed into an isolation pod, making it a subversion. The system doesn't work properly without her connected, meaning that her brain was never truly uploaded at all.]]

* Occurs at the end of ''VideoGame/SpaceQuest 4'', when BigBad former-"human" AI Vohaul not only uploads Roger's son's mind to a disk (1.44mb! Who knew the mind was so... compressable?), but then uploads his own mind to Roger's son. Roger then has to defeat Vohaul by putting his son's mind back in place, and transferring Vohaul's mind to the computer just seconds before a system format.

* ''[[VideoGame/GoldBox Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed]]'': Implied to be the origin of friendly AI [=SCOTT.DOS.=] The co-leader of [[FunWithAcronyms P.U.R.G.E.]] does this while your party is storming their headquarters, creating [=SOOTH.DOP=]. He ends up getting [[HoistByTheirOwnPetard Hoisted By His Own Petard]] when you discover a virus the P.U.R.G.E. scientists were developing specifically to destroy digital personalities on the same computer he's locked down.
* Done to the party in the finale of ''VideoGame/Earthbound1994'', as traveling back in time using the Phase Distorter would destroy organic bodies, so they're given robotic bodies to use for the journey.

* In Creator/RobertAHeinlein's Future History series, specifically ''Literature/TimeEnoughForLove'' and its sequels, this capability is identified as part of the [[FountainOfYouth medical rejuvenation technology]] used in cases of extreme physical deterioration, wherein a human being's brain is scanned and uploaded to a computer while a new one is cloned; said clone then has the saved brain downloaded back into it. The same technology is used in reverse when the computer Minerva decides to [[PinocchioSyndrome become human]] -- she creates a [[MixAndMatchMan composite]] [[WetwareBody clone body]] and downloads herself into it once it's mature.

* Subverted in the ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' episode "Brain Scratch." A new religious cult is encouraging people to upload themselves to the net, [[spoiler: but it turns out the upload machines are completely fake and the uploadees are unknowingly just killing themselves.]]

** The Time Lord Matrix is a supercomputer containing the recorded ''memories'' of all the past presidents of Gallifrey, but apparently not their complete personalities.

** The backstory for the Necrons essentially involved this, transferring their consciousnesses into bodies of living metal to escape their short lifespans as well as win the war against the [[{{Precursors}} Old Ones]]. The price for this, however, was the loss of their soul.

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'',

* ''VideoGame/OneMustFall2097'' has a much more analogue version of this in the owner of WAR, [[BigBad Major Has Kreissack]] and the prototype Nova [[HumongousMecha HAR]]. As the Major is 103 years old, he hs just about reached the practical limit on his human body's lifespan... so he decides to transfer his mind into the Nova itself and ''become'' a 250-ton war machine and presumably immortal corporate tyrant. He goes about this in a far more analog fashion than most, by having his brain extracted from his head and put into the Nova. This ends poorly because the prototype Nova's reactor is touchy, such that DefeatEqualsExplosion, and Kreissack's brain dies for good when the Nova's head is blown off its chest in the resulting blast.