Mental Fusion

aka: Mind Meld

Don't bother translating. It's Squirrel Squeak.

Helios: We are Daedalus. We are Icarus. The barriers between us have fallen and we have become... our own shadows. We can be more if we join... with you.
JC Denton: And if I do? What becomes of me?
Helios: You will be who you will be. We are our choices. And we can choose to lead Humanity away from this... darkness.
JC Denton: This is what I was made for, isn't it? This is why I exist? (beat) All right, let's do this.

— Helios ending, Deus Ex

Two or more characters willingly create a Psychic Link in order to do amazing things.

This trope can be pulled off many different ways. A common one has mystics and magicians use Super Empowering to give one among them their combined power. Telepaths may subsume themselves into a group entity for greater psychic power and reach. Technopaths can "plug in" directly to a greater AI or a group of other technopaths.

This comes in a few flavors: Usually, a single person is "elevated" and made first among equals. The other magicians, telepaths or what not give the first the full benefit of their individual powers and telepathic advice, etc. while they meditate and stay immobile. While in this weakened state, enemies can attack these powerful Mental Fusions by going after the supporters. An equally common variant has the "mob", where the group has no one mouthpiece, but moves with perfect synchronicity and jointly use their powers and combat skills in perfect teamwork to devastating effect. The downside to these is that they usually severely drain everyone once the spell is over.

Compare Assimilation Plot, where the goal of The Plan is to create this on a universal scale. Compare Hive Mind, which is when a usually involuntary and permanent version of this happens and all sense of self or individuality is lost. If one dies while in the link is in effect it's a Psychic Glimpse of Death. May coincide with Fusion Dance. See also Mind Link Mates and Twin Telepathy. Side effects may include creation of a Living Memory inside participants' minds, speaking in unison, Glowing Eyes, Battle Aura, Power Floats, and drowsiness.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In Dragon Ball, fusions created by the Fusion Dance and Potara Earrings combine the personalities and memories of the fusees, as if both are on the mental driver's seat in harmony. When the two defuse they retain their fused memories, including those of different fusions (for example, in the Super Broly movie, Gogeta remembered when "he" was Vegetto). The Namekian fusion method meanwhile also combines the two fusee's personalities to a certain degree (with one fusee dominant, as Piccolo was in both his fusions), with the main gains being knowledge and an increase in power. Buu's absorption also gives him personality traits of the people he absorbs, such as Gotenks's cockiness or Piccolo's smarts and cunning.
• In both the manga and the first movie of Ghost in the Shell, this is the point of the plot! Project 2501 was trying to lure the Major to it so it could offer her to fuse their minds. Her interpersonal behavior remains the same (which wasn't much to begin with), but her abilities as a hacker and to dive directly into computers increased greatly.
  "I want a guarantee that I can still be myself."
  "There isn't one. Why would you wish to? All things change in a dynamic environment. Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."

• The Enterrans in Shinzo turn to cards when killed and can be absorbed for power, or can do it voluntarily to give another Enterran Super Empowering, returning to normal afterward. Sago and Kutal would later on do this to give Mushra enough power to enter his (near) final form.
• Happens in Soul Eater with the Soul Resonance, a link between a meister and his or her weapon; and the Chain Resonance, a link between all the individuals (both meisters and weapons) of a team. This resonances not only increase the power of the group overall but also increase each individual's power and, in the case of Soul Reasonance, it's a prerrequisite for certain attacks.
• In Rosario + Vampire, Lady Oyakata transforms into a giant plant monster and then absorbs Moka, Kurumu, Mizore and Ruby. The girls are fused with Oyakta both physically, as they become part of her body, and mentally, since their minds get linked to hers.

Comic Books

• In The DCU, Checkmate Rooks are injected with Starro DNA in order to create this. It has to be used carefully, or there's a fair risk Starro itself will start listening...
• During the X-Man (Counter-X) run, Nate Grey ended up doing this with his Earth-998, a mildly insane mutant shaman. He went from Hot-Blooded loner trying to live a more or less normal life to a Crazy Sane Barefoot Loon who embraced the fact that he was an outsider and never shifted beyond Tranquil Fury (and was all the more frightening for it).
• Near the end of his ongoing solo, after a lot of Character Development, the mutant multiple personality Legion learns to trust himself enough that he starts merging with his personalities rather than forcibly draining their powers. Eventually he effectively cures his DID by merging with them all.
• Star Trek: Early Voyages: In "One of a Kind", it is revealed that the Lirin possess a shared consciousness called the Unity. When three Lirin are killed unexpectedly in a fire in a residential tower, it is an almost unprecedented event in their history and a deep loss for the Unity. Nano is recalled to Liria in order to rejoin the Unity but he is unable to do so as it repels him. He is almost crushed by a boulder but Captain Pike pushes him out of the way at the last second. Soon afterwards, José Tyler and Sita Mohindas are almost killed by another fire after attempting to strike up a conversation with a gardener. Although the Lirin claim that it was no more than a freak accident, it is clear that this is not the case. Nano requests his crewmates' assistance in solving this mystery. After Nano is connected to a psionic amplifier from the Enterprise, Spock determines that the Lirin have a shared unconsciousness of which they are unaware. Their deep-rooted fear of the unknown has given rise to a pyrotechnic manifestation that attempts to destroy all outsiders or traces thereof. As a result, this fear is slowly killing them. It can only be defeated and eventually eradicated by the Lirin confronting themselves and learning to live among the rest of the galactic community.
• In the Transformers comic books, Headmasters are Transformers who have mentally fused with a human (or Nebulan) partner. The combined minds work in tandem, usually giving Headmasters faster reflexes and/or better tactical assessment skills. They are usually depicted as a single entity, though sometimes the two personalities will discuss and argue with each other as the story requires.
  • Gestalts use this as well, although the product more likely than not will be less than the sum of its parts. As in, the only things their minds can process are things all the parts agree on. Most of them end up as Dumb Muscle that'd be hard pressed to produce a coherent sentence.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: The Saturnians create large group mental links while using their invisibility cloaks in order to communicate without being overheard. These links seem to have one dominant member who directs the others, and overall individuality is not fully sacrificed.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) fanfiction, San and Vivienne Graham in their first two hybridized forms share their body by way of Multiple Head Case, but once they transform into their single-headed final form, they apparently experience The Composite. Their voices now speak in unison and refer to themselves with singular first-person pronouns instead of plural, although either personality can still exhibit prominence over the other and they can have separate mental reactions to the same thing. According to the author, Viv and San now consider themselves to be more a single being which has two personalities inside of it than separate beings sharing a body.
• In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, the Stradroid Sunstar has this ability. He performs one on Bass, seeing into his mind and briefly powering him up. It also let Bass see into his mind.
• In Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space, TuMok performs a Martian Mind Mash with Buster Kincaid by headbutting him in the face.
• Manifests in two forms in Lords Among The Ashes:
  • Jaune's Semblance, War, forms an aura gestalt among all those fighting alongside him, allowing them to surpass their limits and act in perfect synchronicity with respect to one another.
  • Jaune and Cinder's soul bond allows them to bolster each other's Auras as well as combine their Semblances to bring forth the black flames of Ruin.
• Rocketship Voyager. Captain Janeway and Tech Lieutenant TuV'k use the Martian melding-of-minds to communicate with Nee'Lix as they lack a common language. By sharing memories they also create a shared sense of empathy, avoiding the instinctive Uncanny Valley reaction that occurs when making First Contact with an alien race. For example when the first humans landed on Mars, it created a psychic Hate Plague that caused every Martian in the area to massacre them—which also demonstrates the danger of this trope, the creation of a psychic gestalt causing the individual to lose their sense of self in favor of the Overmind.
• Like Star Trek Vulcans, Psyches in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf series can also meld with other people's minds to see what's in their memories, as Polaris Psyche did with Vanity in "The High Cost Of Smurfing" to see who it was that gave him pixie dust as a drug. Empath himself can link with the multiple minds of his fellow Smurfs to create a mindlink that gives him additional power. During this mindlink, the Smurfs can know what their fellow Smurfs are thinking at the moment.
• This happened by accident in Tower of Babel, a NieR fanfic when Gestalt and Replicant Nier attempted possession. Later, a way to deliberately replicate this process for others has been found.
• Code Prime:
  • It is explained that when Cybertronian Combiners combine, both their bodies and their minds merge into a single entity. However, this is ultimately a double edged sword, for while Combiners are extremely powerful, the combined mind ultimately reduces it to a Dumb Muscle.
  • Unlike Combiners, when the Black Wyverns gain the ability to form the Hercules thanks to the Enigma of Combination, their minds do not merge into a single entity, but instead become synchronized thanks to Lelia’s Geass, which allows them to better coordinate against Devastator.

Films — Animated

• Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths: The Martian Manhunter turns down a kiss from Rose Wilson, but only because a Mind Meld is more effective for both to express their feelings and history. When they're finished they're in a Headbutt of Love.

Films — Live-Action

• Of a fashion in Pacific Rim. The dual pilot system used by most of the Jaegers has both pilots neurally linked in order to heighten synchrony (also, as said by Guillermo himself, because the neural strain of directly controlling a body twenty five stories tall would be too much for a single human). One pilot controls the left side, the other the right. The Chinese Jaeger Crimson Typhoon bucks the trend by using three pilots to control its three arms. Only two pilots in the world have ever managed to run one solo and not be horribly brain-damaged.
• Used by Old Spock in Star Trek (2009) to deliver Exposition to Jim Kirk. Young Spock mind-melds an unconscious Romulan for directions.

Literature

• The premise of Sharon Green's The Blending series. In the Psionics as Magic world of The Blending, everyone has at least a little bit of magic and every 25 years the Fivefold Throne can be won through a contest. A team of adepts, persons with middling to high levels of magical power, try to see if they can psychically join together to combine and amplify their individual specific power into one whole known as a Blending, with the strongest Blending contestant being the winner. While in a Blending, thoughts and memories are shared by each member while retaining their individuality. A member can also take the lead in a Blending while the others boost their power.
• In Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series, this happens more than once. In "The Mick of Time", the regulars at Callahan's join together telepathically to defeat a deadly alien threat. They do so again in "Callahan's Legacy" to stop the last servant of that threat, making him do a Heel–Face Turn. Ironically, they broach the idea of doing this again in "Callahan's Key", but decide not to.
• In Clan Ground Thistle-chaser has the ability to "hear the song" - that is, to join in the hive mind that unites True-of-Voice's clan. Unlike them, she also has the ability to tune the song out. In a later book, her brother is shown to have the same ability.
• In the Darkover novels, telepaths often form "circles" to combine their psychic powers and perform major feats.
• In the Earth's Children series, Neanderthal shamans (known as Mog-ur) are able to control and direct the minds of the men during religious ceremonies. A particular preparation of datura is used.
• Vernor Vinge's novel A Fire Upon the Deep includes an alien race called Tines. Each one is only as smart as a dog, but when they assemble in packs, they link up into a single larger mind. A pack of four is about as smart as a human. The link is made not with telepathy or magic, but with high-freqency sound, and several plot points hinge on the implications of that.
• By the time of Foundation's Edge, the Second Foundation have begun experimenting with mental fusions. The main use they have found for it thus far is setting up a link in advance to allow a single Second Foundationer to draw mental strength from other Second Foundationers not on the scene, thus allowing them to punch above their own mental weight. A much, much greater example is Gaia, a permanent union of everything native to the world of Gaia, including the rocks and atmosphere. The Gaians' ultimate goal is to establish Galaxia, the union of the entire galaxy. The end of the novel sees a leading Second Foundationer return pondering the potential of mental fusions and with ideas of working more on them.
• Stingships, small Space Fighters of the Humanx Commonwealth, are always piloted by a human/thranx two-person team, electronically linked to one another and to their ship's computers. When combat ensues, battle-drugs are administered to evoke the human's killing instincts and the thranx's dispassionate calculation, which are evaluated and merged via the ship's systems to pick out the tactically-optimal instant for a devastating strike.
• InCryptid: The process of solving the dimension-hopping equation normally burns through the mind of the Johrlac doing it. To avoid this happening to Sarah, Artie tells her to use his mind, Antimony's, James's, and Mark's, plus all the cuckoos surrounding them, as "data banks" to offload some of the equation. This results in all the cuckoos except Sarah, Mark, and the children being reduced to Empty Shells, but in the process she accidentally deleted her friends' and family's memories of her to make room for the equation. Later, when performing the equation to return home to Earth, Sarah uses as many "husked" cuckoos as they can round up, plus a little of everyone's mind, to avoid melting her mind again. Mark and Artie give up their minds so she has more space and processing power, but she's able to recreate Artie's memories from everyone else's memories of him (and the mice's Perfect Memory), and Mark appears to be undergoing the same metamorphosis that Sarah did after book 2.
• In E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, the Arisian Mentor was actually 4 Arisian minds joined together. Several Lensmen create temporary "wide-open [insert number here]-way" mental fusions during the series. (The number before "-way" being the number of minds involved.)
• The Machineries of Empire: "Compositing" technology lets humans join a temporary or semi-permanent hivemind remotely. Some people enjoy the sense of communion and purpose it brings, while others consider it a Fate Worse than Death. In the Hexarchate, command of the Kel faction has long since been assumed by a nested composite under the control of its top-ranked General.
• In The Obernewtyn Chronicles farseekers are able to form a mindmerge to increase their range. The traditional method uses a group of farseekers pooling their energy to boost the signal of one member, and is limited by the number of minds the sender is able to link with simultaneously (Rushton's one Talent is the ability to combine many minds in this way, although he can't farseek himself). Then Aras comes up with a new method whereby trios of farseekers link to each other then to two other groups, forming a conduit for an unlinked mind to 'slide' along without using up their own energy. In this way, Elspeth is able to farseek all the way from just outside Obernewtyn to Sutrium, half way across the Land.
• In Andre Norton's Ordeal in Otherwhere, Shann Lantee and Charis Nordhalm, with their Bond Creatures form this to achieve various things.
• In the Patternist series, the Pattern is a mental fusion of telepaths controlled by a single individual, the Patternmaster. Before it was created, telepaths could not endure being around each other as their thoughts would inevitably start to merge.
• Planet of the Damned, by Harry Harrison. The protagonist having Refused The Call, the man trying to recruit him to save an alien world about to be destroyed by hydrogen bombs forms an empathic link so he will feel what's at stake.
• In Edmond Hamilton's Return to the Stars, alien invaders resort to this in order to get details about a superweapon after a normal Mind Probe fails to get them from the main character. Since all he knows is how to use it, they don't learn anything useful... but the hero learns the location of their fleet.
• The Revelation Space trilogy by Alastair Reynolds features Conjoiners, individual humans with machine-interface implants that allow them to communicate essentially telepathically across their shared wireless network. Some degree of direct mind reading is also possible, limited by social courtesy and the degree of mental firewalling in place. There is also still a hierarchy of individuality in place, with higher ranking individuals having a little autonomy, but to be a Conjoiner means always answering to the collective, and to take action otherwise is treason.
• In The Thrawn Trilogy, the cloned Jedi Master Joruus C'baoth is able to do this with vast swaths of the crewers of the Imperial Fleet, picking things out of each mind in the process. He can essentially control them with this, making for around thirty percent increase in efficiency and also making a ridiculous degree of synchronicity possible. Crewers released from his control are generally exhausted and somewhat horrified; unsurprising, since C'baoth is insane. At one point in a power-grab he does this to the entire Imperial fleet except for Thrawn and Pellaeon, who are in a ysalamiri field. C'baoth, sent after that stunt to Wayland to be put under guard, does a one-person version where he basically destroys the mind of an officer, making him into a sort of puppet that dies not long after they are mentally separated.
  • We don't find out if he's right, but Thrawn has a theory that the Emperor was doing this at Endor, and the sudden loss of his influence instantly threw the Imperial forces into chaos. He recruits C'baoth in the first place to utilize the ability, but limits using it to a few critical battles.
  • This multi-person version would be named Battle Meditation, though later materials would show that C'Baoth's technique is far more invasive and exhausting than normal, as he was calling on the dark side. Regular Jedi battle meditation lets allies feel each others' hopes and wills, drastically increasing morale, while also sowing fear and doubt in enemies. It used to be a semi-common technique in the Old Republic, with a few Jedi, such as Bastila Shan, so skilled at it that they could turn the tides of battle.
  • In the New Jedi Order it was shown that an all-Jedi group could make a Jedi Meld to act with reflexes and synchronicity that they couldn't match normally. However, one particularly dangerous mission forces a group of Jedi to mind-meld for a prolonged time, and even years afterward, the survivors are still unconsciously attuned to each other.
  • Outbound Flight's complement of Jedi are assigned to the weapons systems and trained to do the Meld. They are very good gunners, but unfortunately it's not enough to get them out of that situation.
  • Zahn also uses this in the Hand of Thrawn books, where Luke and Mara's growing emotional affinity allows them to effectively mind-meld when faced with a deadly trap. The meld is almost immediately followed by Luke proposing to Mara.
• It's also used by starship pilots in the Vorkosigan Saga.
• In The Wheel of Time series, channellers (magic users) often do this to multiply their power.
  • The most common form is a temporary bond known as "linking", which due to the setting's Unequal Rites, can only be initiated by women, though men can join the circle. The purpose of this is to give one person control of every participant's magic power, allowing them to use it collectively and more efficiently.
  • A weaker but permanent bond exists in the Warder bond, which only gives each member a vague sense of the other person's location and physical and emotional condition. This bond is developed by the Aes Sedai, with their counterparts, the Asha'man, developing a similar bond. A certain couple discover late in the series that using both bonds between the same pair strengthens them enough that the two can communicate telepathically.
• Dairine does something sort of like this in the third Young Wizards book and it's a side effect of group spellcasting in general.

Live-Action TV

• The 4400: In "Try the Pie", a resident of Evanston has the ability to create a shared consciousness between anyone who ingests a chemical that they produce. The members of this shared consciousness can read each other's thoughts and experience each other's memories.

• Seamus Harper in Andromeda
• Babylon 5:
  • The renegade telepaths led by Byron and eventually by Lyta Alexander use this extensively to fight off PSI Cops and other authorities. It's also used during sex.
  • It's used earlier by Talia and a group of rogue telepaths (none higher than P12) to overwhelm Bester (a strong P12) and give him Fake Memories of killing them.
• The Final Five Cylons attempted to do this in Battlestar Galactica, however it also let them all see each others' memories which revealed to Tyrol that Tory killed Cally. Cue the killing.
• Mind links have been used several times in Doctor Who, including in "The Girl In The Fireplace" (between the Doctor and Madame de Pompadour), in "Planet Of The Ood" (between the Doctor and Donna, so she can hear the Ood singing), and in 'Bad Wolf' (between the Controller and her masters, the Daleks) Physical contact was used in the first two examples, which were also temporary.
• Shown in squicky detail in the action-comedy Danger 5. When Tucker forms a Psychic Link with a female shaman, a tentacle shoots into his forehead, his eyes roll up and white fluid spurts from his mouth.
• The Dollhouse episode "Stop-Loss" has Rossum using its active technology to create a commando squad in which all the members share each others' thoughts.
• Farscape's Delvians can "Share Unity", where two people join minds and soul. It's described as better than all the best sex and drugs you've ever taken... and it can drive you insane if you kill someone while sharing unity. Zhan did so to her former lover for betraying their people to the Peace Keepers. Despite the madness being considered incurable and being incarcerated, she got better after years of soul-searching and meditation. She uses this ability a handful of times throughout the series to share knowledge or intimacy, or to simply help sooth a a close friend's mind and emotions in times of great stress.
• Star Trek: The Original Series. The Vulcan Mind Meld provides a useful plot device to communicate with aliens who are too alien for the universal translator or to undo the mind-whammy some less friendly telepath put on one of the team.The procedure is explicitly stated to be risky, and while Spock never shows any signs of lasting damage, on more than one occasion a sufficiently alien mind has given him a Poke in the Third Eye. Examples include "Is There in Truth No Beauty," where Spock mind-melds with a Medusan to save the Enterprise, "The Devil in the Dark" to find out why a rock monster is attacking humans, and "The Changeling" with the robotic probe NOMAD (how that works is not explained, but Spock has trouble breaking the connection, possibly because he is dealing with an artificial mind this time, and one which actively attacks "organic units" like himself).
• Doesn't come up as often in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but one prominent example of how risky the procedure can be comes up when Captain Picard volunteers to meld with legendary Vulcan diplomat and negotiator Sarek (Spock's father), who is suffering from a form of Vulcan dementia called Bendii Syndrome that affects emotional regulation. Sarek gains enough stability to complete a particularly delicate treaty negotiation, while Captain Picard spends most of a day confined to his quarters suffering rapid, violent mood-swings.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Changelings can also perform a mind meld with each other through "linking", the act of merging their body with another Changeling to exchange memories and sensations. A link between two Changelings is considered to be very intimate, such that the female Changeling from the Dominion uses it to seduce Odo early in the sixth season, as well as be used in a metaphor for homosexuality in the episode "Chimera". Most Changelings live on their homeworld in the "Great Link", an ocean of linked Changelings existing as a singular entity. In the episode "Things Past", a Negative Space Wedgie causes Odo, at the time divested of his shapeshifting powers, to form something akin to a link with Sisko, Dax, and Garek that causes them to live through some of Odo's past memories.
• In Star Trek: Enterprise, the dangerous aspects of the Mind Meld are addressed when a group of Vulcans who reject the usual philosophy of suppressing emotion prove to be rather less skilled at it. Apparently the reason Spock in TOS and the movies never had any lasting harm for either himself or the people he melded with is that he's just that good. T'Pol suffers from a form of brain damage called Pa'nar Syndrome after this flawed Mind Meld, but is later cured by T'Pau (who by the time of TOS would be the de facto leader of Vulcan) performing a correct Mind Meld.
• Deconstructed in Star Trek: Voyager where the Emergency Medical Hologram is opposed to this technique on principle.
  • In "Meld", Tuvok mind-melds with a murderer to establish his motives and starts to take on his violent urges.
  • In "Survival Instinct", Seven of Nine and several other drones are severed from the Borg Collective, so she assimilates them into a mini-Collective when it looks like they're regaining their old memories. This mini-collective however is unable to properly reassimilate into the Hive Mind.
  • In "Unity", a group of ex-Borg could temporarily become a mini-collective to pool their mental power for various purposes, including healing. Unfortunately they are unable to resist solving all their problems this way and establish a new Collective.
  • In the third season of Star Trek: Picard it turns out the Daystrom Station is holding a techo-organic version of the Soong Android as this creation has has multiple different versions over the years, they are loaded with the personalities of all of them so Data, Lore, B_4 and Lal the daughter Data programmed. The two strongest personalities Data and Lore vie for control it looks like Lore wins but Data actually surrounds his memories to Lore and turns Lore into Data the end result is mostly Data, a good man, but with a bit of Lore's dark and sarcastic sense of humour.
• The penultimate episode of Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured a four-way link between Buffy herself, Willow, Xander, and Giles, with Buffy as the focal point.
• Angels in Supernatural have a mental link, which Dean refers to as Angel radio.

Multiple Media

• BIONICLE:
  • Fusions combined the minds of their components, but required immense concentration on their part to keep the combination up. Some involuntary merges, such as Takutanuva (the temporary fusion of the good Takanuva and evil Makuta Teridax) were different: when recalling the event, Takanuva considered his and Teridax's minds to have merely occupied a shared mental space rather than actually merging into one — their minds chose to work together.
  • Brutaka, after tumbling into a vat filled with Antidermis, the substance that Makuta are born from, soaked up so many Makuta spirits that their minds became permanently merged.
  • Inverted by the Makuta's assimilations: these only merged the bodies but not the minds, so in order to retain the control over their fused bodies, Makuta had to repress and destroy the minds of those they consumed — as Teridax put it, they made quite literally disagreeable meals.
• Transformers: With Combiners, as shown by various stories over the years, the combined minds have to get along in order to the form to function. In the case of the early ones, it's not much of a success. The Constructicons are six geniuses (well, five geniuses and Bonecrusher) merged together into "DEVASTATOR SMASH!", while the Stunticons are all wildly insane, led by a bullying thug who they all hate, meaning Menasor is a psychotic smash-machine. Meanwhile, the Aerialbots are united in the goal of protecting people, but between Silverbolt's neuroses, Slingshot, and Fireflight's attention span, Superion isn't packing a lot of brains. With some of the later Decepticon combiners, the problem becomes the fusion being too good. The Seacons get on so well (provided Nautilator's not involved) that if they didn't come with a time limit, they'd never split up willingly.

Tabletop RPG

• In the 1st Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, psionic characters could join their minds together to boost their total power.
  • In AD&D, psionicists do this via 'convergence' power. The group's power points are pooled together, and if one participant knows a power, everyone can use it. Mental attacks on the group affects all of them... but only after overcoming all their defences (so they also can take advantage of the telepathic Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors).
  • They can do this in 3.5 too through the 'metaconcert' power.
  • In the pre-4.0. lore, the Illithid race of the future linked their Elder Brains together and then detonated them to create a psionic storm that opened/will be opening a temporal rift, sending the surviving Illithid to the past. The common Illithid doesn't have this ability, though.
• In Exalted, the Terrestrial Exalted have the Charm "With One Mind", which allows a group of Dragon-Blooded to coordinate tactics and automatically block attacks aimed at their allies.
• In Nomine has the Ethereal and Celestial Songs of Unity, the first just allows skill sharing among a group, the second creates a full-fledged mental fusion of the "mob" type, each body can act separately and the mass mind can use all their skills and abilities (although it can only take one *supernatural* action at a time) and can see, hear and so on from the point of view of all bodies simultaneously. The problem with the Song is that if the participants don't get along, the massed entity created from them may dither and delay due to the conflict. Also, the participants memories of the actions taken by the mass mind will be sketchy.
• Shadowrun. Ritual spell casting allows magicians to mentally join together to cast powerful magic over long distances.
• In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperial Guard can field a unit that consists of a "choir" of psykers. Individually, they would be too weak to be useful in combat, but by combining their psychic powers, they can still serve. In the fluff, astropaths (who use telepathy to send messages between star systems) can also work in choirs to boost their range, efficiency, and clarity.

Video Games

• In Ar Tonelico 2, the various modes of the Infel Phira amounts to this. Replakia combines dozens of spellcasters to boost the damage of attack spells to an impressive levels, while Metafalica is a more through mental fusion that is used to get enough power to create a Floating Continent . A few other modes are used for mind control instead.
• The Transcendence victory in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri involves humanity voluntarily forming a planetwide collective consciousness. And the planetary consciousness then plans a second transcendence: some people volunteer to be reinstated in individual bodies and head off to colonize other worlds, with the hope that between them the planets will devise a way to escape entropy's cruel grip and thus allow life to flourish indefinitely. This is replicated in the Spiritual Successor, Civilization: Beyond Earth.
• In City of Heroes we have the two psychic members of the Freedom Phalanx, Sister Psyche and Aurora Borealis, the former was dying from injuries and the later was an Unskilled, but Strong young psychic who agreed to let Psyche possess her to cheat death. In this case, Psyche going into a coma allowed doctors to stabilize and attempt invasive medical techniques to save her body. Meanwhile, Psyche continued to patrol the city in Aurora's body, she shifted the situation from Grand Theft Me to Sharing a Body. As a single being Psyche/Aurora was/were able to do phenomenal things. Psyche willingly returned to her body a few decades later, once medical technology advanced enough to repair her tissue damage. She was willing to give up the fusion, so as not to impose on Aurora. The two are still able to coordinate remarkably well, with or without telepathy, just from previously existing on the same mental wavelength. Completing each others' sentences is not uncommon when the two are in the same room.
  • On the City of Villains side we have the Arachnos Seer Network, obviously used for more sinister purposes. The Seer Net is the collective minds of all Arachnos psychics, some of which are mutant, but most of which just receive a remarkably specific mental training program for anyone with even a hint of a sixth-sense. To ensure loyalty the network not only acts as a communication and training program, but also a Psychic Block Defense, achieved by beaming their loyalty to Arachnos over and over again into their subconscious. When Fortunata's and Seers access the network to communicate with the others of their station, they are effectively syncing-up as a country wide Mental Fusion with every other Arachnos psychic to problem-solve complex issues in seconds. This only becomes more terrifyingly efficient when added to the fact, that the guy giving them orders, though not a psychic himself, has more thought-processing power than the entire rest of the network put together! Needless to say, despite just being a communication network, this is one of Arachnos's most potent tools.
• On a similar note, this is what apparently happens in the Helios ending in Deus Ex: Invisible War. All humans are united by/in a global network where they can share their minds with each other. How much of their identity do they retain is uncertain, but according to the JC Denton humanoid terminal of the A.I., "Helios will communicate, not assimilate. Life will go on as usual."
• In Cyberpunk 2077, Virtual Ghost Alt Cunningham's goal is to absorb all the other digital consciousnesses stored by Arasaka and get her revenge on the company from beyond the grave. In the good endings, either V or Johnny surrender the body to the other and go with her.
• The Advent in Sins of a Solar Empire. Following the game's emphasis on Grey-and-Gray Morality, it has both good and bad applications.
• In Psychonauts, an accidental version of this is the final level of the game. The "Meat Circus" is caused by Raz and Coach Oleander's minds fusing together in the brain tank, combining Raz's childhood memories of the circus with Oleander's memories of his father's butcher shop. The result is as terrifying as you'd expect.
• In Starcraft, this is the basis of the Protoss religion, called the Khala. Protoss are universally psychic, and evolved a super-powerful collective consciousness that manifests as magic-like abilities. Communion with this "Khala" is actually touching all the minds, thoughts, and emotions of the Protoss race at large. However, there is a small group of heretic protoss who fear that this will, one day, completely subsume their personalities, and take steps to sever themselves from it permanently (they evolved their own culture). "Sever" is rather literal in this case, since they accomplished this by cutting off their hair-like nerve cords. And it turns out this communal mental link was nothing more than Amon's leash. When he is revived he psychically dominates most of the Protoss barring those whose nerve cords were severed.
• In Mass Effect, the geth function similar to this, on two levels: each of the flashlight-headed robot guys is a hardware "platform" for 100 or so programs which work together to control it. A single program only has a limited intelligence, but several operating in parallel can collectively have the intelligence of a sentient. Also happens in groups of geth via a wireless network, they combine their programs' computing power to think and strategize by load-balancing their processes across all the platforms, allowing for less redundancy of thought and more time to think a plan through. This has been described as less of a collective consciousnesses and more of a "collective unconsciousness". When not occupying "mobile platforms" for combat, maintenance, or construction, the geth exist in large servers which host large numbers of individual programs. This is called the "Geth Concensus" and is the closest analogue they have to a government. Their long term goal is to construct a server vast enough to hold all geth programs simultaneously, this being their own version of The Singularity.
  • The asari are also capable of performing a mental link with others. Referred to as "melding", this allows asari to read the thoughts of others. Liara uses melding in the first game to help Shepard interpret visions they received from a prothean beacon. Melding is also how the asari reproduce, allowing them to use the minds of their partner (who can be of any race or sex, since asari can reproduce semi-asexually) to influence the genome of their offspring.
  • Also, in Mass Effect 3, one of the colonists from Feros says that they use the remnants of their fusion with the Thorian to fight the Reapers, as they can still feel each others' thoughts and feelings.
  • It turns out that the Reapers are similar to the Geth except the individual "programs" are what's left of the minds of the people used as the raw material to create Reapers. The so-called "Heretic Geth" are Geth who wanted to take a shortcut to the Geths' long term goal by serving the Reapers in exchange for a Reaper body that can host all of the Geth programs at once.
• Played straight in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn at the finale when Matthew, after being beaten down three times by the excessive light on the Apollo Lens firing platform, gives the last of his power to Sveta so she can make her Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Made even better by the fact that Matthew's ethereal silhouette follows her around for the brief period you get to control her. Effect gets subverted somewhat, however, once the blow is taken by Volechek instead of her.
• The Skritt in Guild Wars 2 work on a similar principle. They can apparently communicate vast amounts of information with each other extremely quickly through their rodenty chirps and squeaks, to the point that they are effectively exponentially more intelligent the more of them are around. Lone Skritt have trouble managing abstract thought. A group of five or so working together in an entire city of them managed to figure out how to reassemble a golem from spare parts — though not how to avoid setting off its tampering failsafes and have it immediately attack upon activation.

Web Comics

• Blood Is Mine: Jane can "sync" with people who have her blood inside them. This allows her to share their skills and knowledge, but staying synced up for too long can lead to their memories bleeding over and their identities starting to blur. Thale can use similar abilities to completely rewrite the minds of his victims into copies of his own.
• There's a scene in ElfQuest where the Wolfriders' telepathy allows them to think and act as one in order to defeat the monster Madcoil. Curiously that's the only time that particular ability is discussed, although it's probably used in other battle scenes.
  • Well, although it's not en masse like that, the ability comes up during the troll war, when each experienced warrior bonds with an inexperienced warrior so that the amateur would instinctively know how to use the unfamiliar weapon (longsword).
• In Erfworld, a Thinkamancer can form a mental merge with another caster, so the Thinkamancer can boost the other caster's abilities well beyond what they can normally do at that level. In rare (and extremely risky) cases, a Thinkamancer can merge with two other casters, allowing them to wield new magic that no individual caster could dream of using. Breaking such a link without assistance can cause catastrophic damage to the minds of all the casters involved, possibly killing them, although the Thinkamancer can redistribute the harmful effect, protecting the others by accepting the brunt of it, or vice versa.
  • It's eventually revealed that powerful Thinkamancers can link to one another in greater numbers than three in order to become an even more sophisticated mental collaboration. Often they just use this for internal communication on an extremely elaborate and deep level, allowing for highly organised collective decision making, but when they combine their magic they become capable of feats that break a few assumed rules of Erfworld.
• A Miracle of Science has a single massive mental fusion forming the gestalt mind of Mars. Unusually, it's one of the good guys.
• In Sequential Art squirrels form the Think Tank, a biological processor with super...squirrel inventive and strategical abilities.

Web Original

• In Metamor City telepaths can form these to combine their power, or whenever they have sex. Unfortunately if a teep has sex with a "mundie" they can't break off the fusion and even if the psychic link is severed they each retain a combination of their two personalities.

Western Animation

• Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers had a wicked tactic where all of the Series 5 team could pool their strength through Niko's psychic abilities, either to create a very strong shield or an equally strong power blast. It usually did the trick, though it would often drain the charge and/or knock Niko unconscious afterward.
  • A nastier version is the Slaverlords: they are all psychically linked to the Queen, possibly linked to one another, and in most cases, it takes 3-4 beings to make one.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender caps season 1 by having Aang and La, the spirit of water and the oceans, fuse (or Aang allowing himself to be possessed) into a Kaiju sized water elemental that obliterates the attacking Fire Nation fleet. And it was good.
• In the second season finale of Justice League Unlimited, Lex Luthor fuses with Brainiac. The latter is initially hesitant since its experiences with Darkseid gave it trust issues, but Luthor assured it that if they were truly one then trust wouldn't be an issue. Both parties are pretty pleased with the result: Luthor gets Brainiac's vast power and knowledge, and Brainiac gets Luthor's ambition.
• How the literal Fusion Dance of Steven Universe works. At one point, Pearl describes how fusions are completely unique individuals; she uses the metaphor of water being much more than just hydrogen and oxygen stuck together.

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