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Split Personality Tropes

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Tropes about people who have or think they have multiple alternate identities, personalities, or selves.

This is a sub-index of Madness Tropes.


  • Alternate Identity Amnesia: One side does not remember anything the other side does when they're in control.
  • Enemy Within: The evil personality aims to take over the body.
  • Enemy Without: The evil personality escapes from the body.
  • Evil Brunette Twin: The evil personality has darker hair.
  • Evil Feels Good: The evil personality enjoys doing evil.
  • Evil Twin: The evil personality is the moral opposite of the good one.
  • Flip Personality: The change between personalities.
  • Funny Schizophrenia: The split personalities are Played for Laughs.
  • Ghost Memory: One personality has the memories of the other.
  • Gollum Made Me Do It: The evil personality bullies the good personality into compliance.
  • The Hat Makes the Man: A piece of headgear that alters the wearer's personality.
  • Hearing Voices: The personality in control can still hear the other one talking to them.
  • The Heartless: The evil personality is born from negative emotions.
  • Helpless Good Side: The good personality can't do anything to keep the evil personality in check.
  • Heroic Safe Mode: One personality decides to take matters into their own hands.
  • Hyde Plays Jekyll: One personality pretends to be the other.
  • Identity Amnesia: A character suffers amnesia and develops a new personality.
  • Jekyll & Hyde: A good person who changes into a villainous alter ego.
  • The Killer in Me: In a twist, one of the main characters turns out to be the killer. The character in question may or may not be aware of this.
  • Literal Split Personality: A person gets separated into two or more individuals who each represent a different aspect of the person's personality.
  • Living Memory: A memory of a character somehow becomes alive and able to interact with other characters.
  • Many Spirits Inside of One: Many antagonistic/villainous spirits controlling one person.
  • Mind Hive: One body, many minds.
  • Multi-Gendered Split Personalities: Alters have different genders from each other.
  • Not Himself: A character isn't acting like their normal personality.
  • Sexier Alter Ego: A character transforms into the attractive version of themself.
  • Shadow Archetype: A character that embodies something another character does not like about themselves.
  • Split at Birth: A singular being separates into multiple entities at birth.
  • Split Personality: A character whose mind is split into multiple different personalities. Alternately, fictional portrayals of systems or multiples, or people with dissociative disorders.
  • Split-Personality Makeover: Physical changes show which personality is in charge.
  • Split-Personality Merge: Two or more alters combine into one; in fiction, this is usually meant to symbolize accepting all aspects of oneself.
  • Split-Personality Switch Trigger: A specific situation that consistently causes a split personality to emerge.
  • Split-Personality Takeover: A character succumbs to their dark side permanently and irrevocably.
  • Split-Personality Team: A character's multiple personalities have different skills and responsibilities, and they take control as appropriate.
  • Superpowered Alter Ego: A person's other self has superpowers.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: The evil personality of a good person has superpowers.
  • Talking to Themself: A person has a conversation with themself; in this case, a person's split personalities converse with each other.
  • Twin Test: Trope variation in which a character is tasked with distinguishing when one personality is in control by any of the personalities to see how well that character knows them.
  • Two-Person Love Triangle: When a person is involved in a Love Triangle with multiple personalities of the same individual. Note that this also applies to individuals with an alter ego (e.g. superheroes and their civilian identities, real-life people and their online personae, etc.) and is not exclusive to a person "multiple personalities", so to speak.

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