History Main / KillingYourAlternateSelf

* The UrExample is probably Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's short story "[[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/w_wilson.html William Wilson]]", published in 1839. [[spoiler:Or it might be DrivenToSuicide. The ending is ambiguous.]]

* ''ComicBook/TheAvengers:'' Kang the Conqueror ''really'' doesn't like alternate versions of himself. Over the nineties he arranged or caused the deaths of every other alternate Kang he could find, until he was the last one left standing. He's also not wild about his future self, Immortus, or his other self, Rama-Tut. His younger version, Iron Lad, tried killing him, but that... [[TimeCrash really didn't work]].

* ''ComicBook/JourneyIntoMysteryGillen'' has one of the logical overlaps between this trope and KillAndReplace: [[spoiler: Ikol, the "echo" of the original, evil Loki, takes over the body of Loki's good-ish child incarnation, killing him and later impersonating him. But then it turns out the person thereby created isn't the original Loki, who's also dead - they have original Loki's memories but have absorbed child Loki's morality and part of his personality. (Yes, there was a ghost copy of him and a corporeal reincarnated version walking around at the same time. He's pretty much a god of MindScrew; don't ask.)]]
* In ''ComicBook/MightyMorphinPowerRangersShatteredGrid'', Lord Drakkon's goals seem to be a) conquer the world, b) kill as many versions of his heroic self as he can. [[spoiler: The whole event STARTS with him fatally stabbing the Tommy Oliver of the main comics, which takes place not long after he joins the team, and Drakkon later does the same thing to Zeo-era Tommy.]]

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(Double_Take_2009_film) In the 2009 film]] ''Double Take'', Alfred Hitchcock meets his older self during the filming of The Birds, and over an uneasy conversation they realise they will have to kill one another. Director Grimonprez said in an interview that [[spoiler: the coffee the elder Hitchcock sips turning to poison as an advert for coffee plays in the background mirrors the death of film due to TV and advertising, with the elder and younger Hitchcock taking the thematic places of film vs television]]. The idea of "if you meet your double, you should kill him" is played with throughout, and was even the film's tagline.

* The ''Series/StargateSG1'' season 3 episode "Point of View" has Teal'c confront his duplicate who is leading an invasion of Earth in another reality, offering him the choice to help liberate the world -- or die. Other Teal'c chooses poorly, is disposed of, replaced, and the invasion sabotaged.

* The ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' DLC Citadel has you fighting an identity thief and preventing them from stealing your life. It turns out that they are a [[spoiler: clone created by Cerberus to serve as spare parts for you in the second game]], and no matter which ending you choose [[spoiler: the clone dies, either at your hands or their own, to show their utter rejection of you.]]

* This is a plot point and game mechanic in ''VideoGame/StarRenegades''. The game begins with the mysterious Imperium taking a particular interest in killing the protagonist's brother. [[spoiler: The Imperium is the military of an alternate universe, and the laws of the reality prevent more than one version of a person existing within the same universe. The aforementioned brother is the current leader of the Imperium, and needed to kill his doppelganger to come through. In all runs after the first successful one, a random character is chosen to be leader, preventing the player from using that character in their team.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}'' has a dungeon called the Maze of Many. It's built to bring together every possible version of a team of adventurers, and then have them race through the maze until one team reaches the end and escapes. Since many groups are [[{{EvilDoppelganger}} evil]], insane or just bored and hungry, they will happily murder everyone else along the way, and it invariably ends in a mass free-for-all in the final room. Then the Maze resets, resurrects the dead and sends everyone back to start over ''every time'' someone wins. The body-count of alts is insane. [[spoiler: The main story party failed over 1.9 million times, and from their final run it's safe to assume a lot of those were at the hands their alt's. Also, at the claws, teeth, axes, magic tentacles -- you get the idea]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Archer}}'', Krieger discovers he has three Klon-Bruders. He later kills them [[spoiler: to prevent the launch of biological WMD's]], although it's [[AmbiguousCloneEnding unclear if the last Krieger standing was the original]] ([[ShrugOfGod creators are remaining mum]]).

* In''VideoGame/CallOfDutyZombies''

* In''VideoGame/CallOfDutyZombies'' *
** Black ops 3 zombies had Richtofen kill [[spoiler:Primis Richtofen.]] And the ultimis crew kills the[[spoiler:Primis crew]]

* In ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'', [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1587 SCP-1587 ("Dreamland")]] involves a professor who creates a device that allows lucid dreaming (experiencing a dream as if it were reality). One night he watches several films about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. When he dreams that night, he is killed by a Nazi version of himself from the dream dimension.

* ''WeternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'': Rusty tried to do this to a [[AlternateUniverseReedRichardsIsAwesome much successful alternate version of himself]] so could take his place but Alt!Rusty stopped Main!Rusty and dumped him back to his own dimension.

* ''WeternAnimation/TheVentureBros'': Rusty tried to do this to a [[AlternateUniverseReedRichardsIsAwesome much successful alternate version of himself]] so could take his place. Naturally, it didn't exactly work as intended.

** [[PlayerVersusPlayer The Sabbath battles]] seem to imply this as the way to determine the winners, applying ''[[KillEmAll both to the magical girls and to Omnis/Tobio]]''... all the way to ThereCanBeOnlyOne. Since this happens to be just an ExcusePlot for the game's PlayerVersusPlayer mode, and it is [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment brought up only briefly before vanishing from the story again]], it's not uncommon among fans to ignore this concept and theorize [[AllianceOfAlternates a less horrifically violent and dark solution to the multiverse's issues]]. Fortunately it's later subverted in the I=MGCM Arc 1.

* At the end of the ''Series/{{Arrowverse}}'' four-show crossover ''Series/CrisisOnEarthX'', Oliver kills his alternate-universe Nazi doppelganger.

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[[quoteright:350:[[Film/{{Triangle}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jess_vs_jess.jpg]]]]

* ''Manga/FutureDiary'' reveals that the [[TropeCodifier trope-codifying]] resident {{Yandere}}, Yuno Gasai, murdered her counterpart in the 2nd world to get a second chance to be with Yukiteru.
* ''Manga/FrankenFran'': Fran miscalculated her cloning project and then there were thousands of self-replicating copies of the same teenage girl. So she 'hired' the local police to help kill the majority. And then she revealed she also cloned the police, who had to kill each other.

* ''ComicBook/{{Eclipso}}'' often made plans to kill Bruce Gordon, not knowing or caring that they shared the same body.

* {{Defied}} in ''Fanfic/TheWrongReflection'', where the possibility of Captain Kanril Eleya's MirrorUniverse counterpart attempting to KillAndReplace her is brought up and immediately discarded. They put Dal[[note]]She's first officer on a Cardassian battleship.[[/note]] Kanril Eleya through a battery of medical tests when she comes aboard and determine that there's enough physiological and mental differences that they can easily tell them apart.

* In ''Fanfic/TheLandOfWhatMightHaveBeen'', the core plot is all about Elphaba helping to kill the self-proclaimed 'Radiant Empress', who is her insane alternate counterpart, and Chapter 53 ends with [[spoiler:Dorothy forced to kill the Hellion, a twisted creature of magic that was once her own other self]].
* Indirectly occurs in the ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' fic [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/26682751/chapters/65081434 "Happy Accidents."]] After Felicity kills Black Siren with a 'lucky' punch, Oliver's attempt to bring her back with a Lazarus Pit allows the soul of Earth-1 Laurel to be brought back to life in Black Siren's body, Siren's own soul having apparently become 'lost' due to her dying on a different Earth from her world of origin.

* ''Film/TheOne''. Gabriel Yulaw’s entire motivation was to hunt and kill alternate versions of himself from 125 different realities, to steal their power. This somewhat backfires when the only remaining alt finds that he’s got half of each victim’s strength and promptly fights back. The background fluff also claims that he's not the first to try this trick and was, in fact, inspired by another criminal attempting just that.

* ''How to Kill Your Clone''. A 2012 short film where the protagonist hires a third party - Clone Killer Corporation – to do the deed. Since he and his clone are identical in every way, it seems a smart move..
* ''Film/{{Predestination}}'': In the final scenes of the film, the Barkeep finally [[spoiler: finds the Fizzle Bomber, only to discover that it was himself, only older. After arguing he shoots the bomber multiple times]]. Given the way the film twists his life through time travel and paradox, this is almost the most normal aspect of the plot.

* Rocket Jump's short film ''Halloween Massacre'' had Creator/FreddieWong infiltrate a bar filled with his duplicates, innocently whiling the hours away. Being Freddie, he promptly slaughters them all, before being shot in turn and replaced by the [[KillAndReplace last surviving double.]] The duplicate’s happy grin as he is driven away is pure NightmareFuel.

* Subverted in ''Film/Ebenezer1998'', a Western retelling of ''Literature/AChristmasCarol''. In the bad future, present-day Scrooge is so desperate to stop the showdown he shoots at his own future self, but due to how the time travel works it has no effect.
* PlayedForLaughs in TheStinger to ''Film/Deadpool2'', [[spoiler:where Deadpool uses a time machine to kill the Weapon XI/Deadpool at the end of ''Film/XMenOriginsWolverine'' as well as killing his own actor Creator/RyanReynolds for accepting the script to ''Film/GreenLantern2011'']].

* Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse
** In ''Film/AvengersEndgame'', [[spoiler: Nebula kills her past self from 2014 to stop her from delivering the Infinity Gauntlet over to Thanos. Thankfully, this does not result in her being [[RetGone erased from history]] due to the way time travel works in the MCU]].
** This is [[spoiler:Wanda's]] main goal in ''Film/DoctorStrangeInTheMultiverseOfMadness''. She plans to kill one of her variants once she'll be able to travel to other parts of TheMultiverse, so she'll have said variant's children for herself. [[spoiler:Ultimately she doesn't go through with it after realizing that, to the Billy and Tommy variants, she's a monster who happens to resemble their actual mother and is trying to take her away from them.]] However, the trope is played straight with [[spoiler:Doctor Strange, who ends up killing Sinister Strange, an EvilCounterpart who himself has murdered several other Doctor Stranges in his quest to find a universe where he got together with Christine.]]
* Loopers in ''Film/{{Looper}}'' are hitmen who kill people the mob in the future sends back in time to avoid advanced tagging and tracking technologies. They're so named because when their services are no longer needed, the mob sends a now-older looper into the past to be killed by their younger self, referred to as "closing the [[StableTimeLoop loop]]". The plot is kicked off when Joe fails to kill his older self before Old Joe gets away.
* The plot of ''Film/GeminiMan'' involves a recently retired US government killer being hunted by a younger version of himself, cloned without his knowledge and raised as a son by his former mentor. Although this is because only the clone has the skill to take him on (a previous attempt having failed) it's also implied that his mentor has [[ThereCanBeOnlyOne his own dark reasons]] for wanting the original dead at the clone's hands.
* ''Film/BillAndTedsBogusJourney'': Bill and Ted have been apparently killed and replaced on the mortal sphere by "evil robot us's". They realise that, as a pair of slackers, they will never be skilled, strong, or co-ordinated enough to defeat the evil robot us's and reclaim their lives. In order to do so, they first need to find the most intelligent being in existence and enlist their help in building a pair of "good robot us's" to face them off with.

* The UrExample is probably Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's short story [[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/w_wilson.html "William Wilson"]], published in 1839. [[spoiler: Or it might be DrivenToSuicide. The ending is ambiguous.]]
* ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde'' is another early example of this trope. Faced with becoming the monstrous alter-ego Hyde permanently, Jekyll apparently [[spoiler: commits suicide. His body was found with a letter ending "I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end."]]
* ''Duelled''. The City of Kersh is supposed to be a safe haven, but there is a catch. Each person has a genetic duplicate living in the city, and to prove their worth they must hunt and kill their alternates before their twentieth birthday.

* The ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode where to restore Earth's timeline, President Kennedy has to die. And who better to kill JFK - and drive the conspiracy theorists nuts as they'll never be able to figure it out - but the JFK from the alternate, CrapsackWorld, timeline?
** A mishap with a technical doohickey of the week has Red Dwarf copied twice. Once, they're good counterparts, the other, evil counterparts. The main Dwarf crew avoid getting killed by their evil twins, the good ones get slaughtered mercilessly. Because good is dumb. As an act of self preservation, the crew manage to blow up the evil cast.
* In ''Series/TheFlash2014'', the first thing the Atom Smashes does upon arriving to Earth 1 is kill his non-meta-human counterpart. It's not stated why he does this. Also, when Dr. Light is brought from Earth 2 by Zoom to kill the Flash of Earth 1 (Barry), she decides that her only way of escaping the evil speedster is to KillAndReplace her Earth 1 non-meta counterpart Linda Park. Luckily, she's stopped before she can succeed. Additionally, [[spoiler:Zoom does this several times to his own "time remnant". The first time, the "remnant" is pretending to be Jay Garrick, the Flash of Earth-2, and his murder is designed to force Barry to seek revenge. The second time is just to show Barry that this trick requires being crazy enough to be capable of killing yourself (and being crazy enough to allow yourself to be killed)]]. Caitlin's Earth-2 counterpart Killer Frost tries to kill her after Caitlin frees her, [[spoiler:but than [[BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork Zoom saves Caitlin and kills Frost instead]].]]
* At the end of the ''Series/{{Arrowverse}}'' four-show crossover ''Series/CrisisOnEarthX'', Oliver kills his alternate-universe Nazi doppelganger.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "In Another Life", the version of Mason Stark who killed everyone in his office tried to kill the Eigenphase Industries CEO Mason.

* In ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'', most people kidnapped and made into Changelings by the [[TheFairFolk True Fae]] come back to find a [[CaptureAndReplicate Fetch imitation]] living their life in their place. The Seasonal Courts encourage Changelings to destroy those mockeries, although a fair few don't have the heart to kill an alternate version of themselves -- and a fair few Fetches are able to kill their Changelings when they try.

* In ''VideoGame/StarTrekStarfleetCommand'', one campaign mission involves a MirrorMatch between you (and your ship) and your MirrorUniverse EvilCounterpart in an exactly same ship. Naturally, destroying the other ship ends your other self.
* This is a plot point and game mechanic in ''VideoGame/StarRenegades''. The game begins with the mysterious Imperium taking a particular interest in killing the protagonist's brother. [[spoiler: The Imperium is the military of an alternate universe, and the laws of the reality prevent more than one version of a person existing within the same universe. The aforementioned brother is the current leader of the Imperium, and needed to kill his doppelganger to come through. In all runs after the first successful one, a random character is chosen to be leader, preventing the player from using that character in their team.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{IMGCM}}'' has several instances:
** [[PlayerVersusPlayer The Sabbath battles]] seem to imply this as the way to determine the winners, applying ''[[KillEmAll both to the magical girls and to Omnis/Tobio]]''... all the way to ThereCanBeOnlyOne. Since this happens to be just an ExcusePlot for the game's PlayerVersusPlayer mode, and it is [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment brought up only briefly before vanishing from the story again]], it's not uncommon among fans to ignore this concept and theorize [[AllianceOfAlternates a less horrifically violent and dark solution to the multiverse's issues]]. Fortunately it's later subverted in the I=MGCM Arc 1.
** [[spoiler:Iroha does this to a [[DemonOfHumanOrigin demonized version of herself]] and a clone it spawned at the end of Chapter 12]].
** Effectively the bulk of fighting done in [[ItsAllUpstairsFromHere the Demon's Tower]] is against [[ParasiteZombie zombified]] alternate selves of the heroines.
** Killing demons that have [[spoiler:hairstyles similar to certain heroines]] also count. As the main story reveals that [[spoiler:a number of demons the heroines fight are alternate selves from several [[AlternateUniverse parallel worlds]] who are slain and corrupted by [[TheVirus demons and other demonized selves]], and [[AndThenJohnWasAZombie these victims include the ones from the protagonist's party]]]].

* One of the MultipleEndings of Chapter 2-1 in ''VisualNovel/YourTurnToDie'' culminates in [[spoiler:a robot version of Reko Yabusame stabbing her to death.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Mulberry}}'': In "Outatime", a crossover with ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'', [[spoiler:Jennifer Parker meets a Jennifer from another timeline upon returning to 1985. She declares that only one Jennifer Parker can exist, and chops up the other one with an axe.]]

* In ''Webcomic/GeneralProtectionFault'', Trish tries to seduce Nick in order to gain access to his secrets, but luckily, he rebuffs her advances. Some time later, Nick and Ki run into another Trish, who's never met them before, and look into the fact that there are two Trishes together. The first Trish, an evil counterpart of Trish from the Nega-Verse, shoots her counterpart, saying that she's going to "commit suicide," then claims to have dissociative identity disorder. While Nick, a [[CharacterDevelopment former]] HorribleJudgeOfCharacter, doesn't buy that excuse, the group doesn't learn of the existence of the Nega-verse until some time later.
* [[spoiler: Dave Davenport]] of ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'' meets quite a number of alternate selves and never likes any of them much, but, being a generally mellow person, only moves for a kill when [[spoiler: he's having a MadScientist [[FreakOut breakdown]] and Dave prime, his clone with a five years out of date set of memories and Dave's old haircut, wonders stupidly through the teleport]]. This is probably cathartic.
-->'''[[spoiler: Mad!Dave]]''' (completely deadpan): I'm your future, and I hate you. I'm going to electrocute you now. (zap!)

* ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' published a guide entitled "[[http://www.cracked.com/blog/so-your-clone-trying-to-murder-you/ So Your Clone Is Trying To Murder You]]" - proposed solutions including summoning a third clone from one of the bad dimensions and murdering them instead. Averted when the original and the magical murder-clone agree to become housemates instead. Somehow it still managed to end with the line "MY LOVE. MY HEART. WE HAVE ARRANGED FOR ME TO GIVE YOU CRISPY LOVE."

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfZelda1989'': In "Doppelganger", Ganon uses a magic mirror to kidnap Zelda and replace her with a duplicate. At the end, after Zelda's proved herself to be the original, she grabs Link's sword and zaps her duplicate with it.
* An old Canadian short called "To Be" featured a young lady attending a demonstration of a Scientist's amazing teleportation chamber. After a bit of cajoling about how the machines work, the scientist admits that what the machine actually does is copy and transmit the biological data of the traveler to the destination pod, simultaneously creating a copy of the person why destroying the original. When the girl and the scientist get into a argument as to the ethical ramifications of this (including her concluding the original inventor was long dead after finding out he'd tested the machine himself numerous time so the current version isn't the actual creator), she manages to convince him to interrupt the teleportation process before the original is destroyed to prove the clone is in every way identical to its predecessor. The two cloned scientists are at first pleased to compare notes with one another, until the woman reminds them that one of them will now have to be destroyed since there can't be two of the same person. Unable to tell who was the clone and who was the original, the two settle on a game of chess to decide. The inevitable winner happily points out that obviously the original would be naturally smarter and more capable then a mere copy, claiming the title of the original. This bites him in the butt when the lady informs him that it is the original that is meant to be destroyed during teleportation, followed by her and the clone forcing him back into the pod as he begs and pleads. After witnessing his original destroyed, the scientist decides to abandon the machine, while the lady, guilt ridden over causing the death of someone to prove a point, opts use the machine herself so as to absolve herself of the guilt, as the new clone would be a whole separate person.

[[quoteright:340:[[WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfZelda1989 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zelda_kill.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:340:Killing your doppleganger? Well, ''[[CatchPhrase excuse me, princess!]]'']]

[[quoteright:340:[[WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfZelda https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zelda_kill.png]]]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfZelda'': In "Doppelganger", Ganon uses a magic mirror to kidnap Zelda and replace her with a duplicate. At the end, after Zelda's proved herself to be the original, she grabs Link's sword and zaps her duplicate with it.

** This is [[spoiler:Wanda's]] main goal in ''Film/DoctorStrangeInTheMultiverseOfMadness''. She plans to kill one of her variants once she'll be able to travel to other parts of TheMultiverse, so she'll have said variant's children for herself. [[spoiler:Ultimately she doesn't go through with it after realizing that, to the Billy and Tommy variants, she's a monster who happens to resemble their actual mother and is trying to take her away from them.]]

** This is [[spoiler:Wanda's]] main goal in ''Film/DoctorStrangeInTheMultiverseOfMadness. She plans to kill one of her variants once she'll be able to travel to other parts of TheMultiverse, so she'll have said variant's children for herself. [[spoiler:Ultimately she doesn't go through with it after realizing that, to the Billy and Tommy variants, she's a monster who happens to resemble their actual mother and is trying to take her away from them.]]

* In ''Film/AvengersEndgame'', [[spoiler: Nebula kills her past self from 2014 to stop her from delivering the Infinity Gauntlet over to Thanos. Thankfully, this does not result in her being [[RetGone erased from history]] due to the way time travel works in the MCU]].

* The ''Series/StargateSG1'' season 3 episode "Point of View" has Teal'c confront his duplicate who is leading an invasion of Earth in another reality, offering him the choice of helping liberate the world -- or die. Other Teal'c chooses poorly, is disposed of, replaced, and the invasion sabotaged.

* The [[Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse He-Man and The Masters of The Multiverse]] 6-part miniseries deals with this as [[MirrorUniverse Anti-Eternia]] [[EvilDoppelganger He-Man]] hunts down other heroic versions of himself to steal their powers. The series even starts with him successfully slaying what [[BaitAndSwitch appears to be the main universe He-Man]].

* Indirectly occurs in the ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' fic "[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/26682751/chapters/65081434 Happy Accidents]]"; after Felicity kills Black Siren with a 'lucky' punch, Oliver's attempt to bring her back with a Lazarus Pit allows the soul of Earth-1 Laurel to be brought back to life in Black Siren's body, Siren's own soul having apparently become 'lost' due to her dying on a different Earth from her world of origin.

* Kieron Gillen's run on ''ComicBook/JourneyIntoMystery'' has one of the logical overlaps between this trope and KillAndReplace: [[spoiler: Ikol, the "echo" of the original, evil Loki, takes over the body of Loki's good-ish child incarnation, killing him and later impersonating him. But then it turns out the person thereby created isn't the original Loki, who's also dead - they have original Loki's memories but have absorbed child Loki's morality and part of his personality. (Yes, there was a ghost copy of him and a corporeal reincarnated version walking around at the same time. He's pretty much a god of MindScrew; don't ask.)]]

* ''[[Manga/FutureDiary Mirai Nikki]]'' has [[spoiler: the [[TropeCodifier trope-codifying]] resident {{Yandere}}, Yuno Gasai, who murdered her counterpart in the 2nd world to get a second chance to be with Yukiteru]].

* Inverted in ''Franchise/{{Superman}} Family #187''. The Earth-2 Superman travels to Earth-1 in desperation after his [[Characters/SupermanJimmyOlsen Jimmy Olsen]] becomes deathly ill. Because he has no living relatives, Earth-2 Superman asks the Jimmy Olsen of Earth-1 to help with an experimental organ duplication process to save his alternate's life. Jimmy agrees, though matters get complicated when the inter-space travel releases a SealedEvilInACan.