...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Ambiguous Clone Ending
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At some point in the story, the hero was cloned. At the climax of the story, the hero fights their clone and one lives while the other dies. However, whether the survivor is the clone or the original is left uncertain. This usually leaves a lot of uncertainty and angst because the survivor fears seeing a Tomato in the Mirror, and may grapple with the guilt of essentially having murdered themself. Sub-Trope of Ambiguous Ending. Compare Schrödinger's Butterfly, where whether the heroes escaped the Lotus-Eater Machine is left in doubt. Shell Game is a prerequisite. May involve a Theseus' Ship Paradox. As an ending trope, be prepared for SPOILERS. |
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Lobo: For a while there, even one drop of Lobo's blood would grow into a clone. Whenever this happens, the Lobos would team up to kill all of their enemies and then turn on each other. The lone surviving Lobo would be declared the "real" Lobo. Since it didn't matter to Lobo—or any of his clones—who survived as long as one of them did, and everyone else in the DC Universe tries to avoid Lobo anyway, readers didn't really care either. Except for Slo'bo. See, at one point Lobo was de-aged to about fifteen and hanging out with Young Justice, and he died... and when all the blood-clones grew up and started killing each other (while everyone else, thinking he was dead, was very far away), one of them ran and hid. After the others were done, he came out and ran back to Earth while the new Lobo was off doing whatever, but he was too ashamed to be called Lobo anymore, so he took a new name. |
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One Halloween short on The Simpsons involving a magical hammock that made multiple Homer Simpson clones ends with all the Homer clones being lured off a cliff to their doom using giant donuts pulled by helicopters. However, it turns out that the real Homer was amongst the clones who fell to their doom (according to the surviving clone he was the first one over the cliff). Marge is understandably distraught at first but is mollified when the clone offers her a backrub. The fact that the song "Love the one You're With" by Stephen Stills is playing in the background also helps. | |
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Except for Slo'bo. See, at one point Lobo was de-aged to about fifteen and hanging out with Young Justice, and he died... and when all the blood-clones grew up and started killing each other (while everyone else, thinking he was dead, was very far away), one of them ran and hid. After the others were done, he came out and ran back to Earth while the new Lobo was off doing whatever, but he was too ashamed to be called Lobo anymore, so he took a new name. | |
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Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious: Both Yuri (Girly Girl of the Lovely Angels) and her Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb clone are seriously wounded while escaping a supernova. In the epilogue, one Yuri is bedridden as her partner Kei tells her about the funeral for the other Yuri she just came back from. Subverted in the last panel, where it's revealed that the clone's the one who survived. | |
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One episode of Time Squad had Larry make a double of himself, with each double making another until there were hordes of them. Otto and Tuddrussel decided to shove all but one who claims to be the original into space. Despite the final Larry booted out being especially insistent he's the original and the one left behind giving an evil laugh, status quo is restored when he's shunted back to a subservient role. | |
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Rick and Morty: In "The ABCs of Beth", Rick offers to make a perfect clone of Beth that will possess her memories and take over her role in the family while the real Beth can go on vacation. It's not revealed how she answered. In the following episode, "The Rickchurian Mortydate", however, Beth remembers this conversation and becomes convinced that she is a clone created to replace the original Beth after she agreed to Rick's offer. She never gets hard proof either waynote For what it's worth, Rick vehemently insists she is not a clone, but offers no evidence other than his word, which, given his history of lying to and manipulating his family, cannot entirely be trusted and both Beth and Morty point out he'd probably say the same thing if she was a clone, but ultimately decides that clone or not, she is happy with her current life and even reconciles with Jerry. "Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri" reveals that Rick did create a clone of Beth after she told him she wanted him to make the decision for her. However, Rick decided to randomize the two so that not even he would know if the 'original' Beth was the one living with him or the one off having space adventures. Since Rick set things up so that even he would never be able to find out if he changed his mind, we may never get a real answer. Played for Laughs at the end of "Mortynight Run". Rick and Morty go back to the Jerryboree to pick up Jerry after their adventure, however, an alternate Rick asks if their Jerry is actually his Jerry, but Morty lost their identification token so they can't say for sure. Rick doesn't really care and swaps Jerrys with the other Rick. "Solaricks" reveals that yes, the first Jerry was the right one and the one they swapped with is a different Jerry. They still don't care after finding out, however, and the "right" Jerry ends up dying at the end of the episode anyway. In "Mortiplicity", Rick created decoys of himself and his family, who then created decoys of themselves until there were dozens of identical and near-identical Smith families. Those who realized they were decoys either killed themselves out of despair or started killing other decoys until There Can Be Only One. By the time they nearly all wiped each other out in a massive war, they don't even care which Rick, Morty, Beth, Jerry, or Summer survived so long as they are the only ones. |
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In an episode of Psi Factor, a main character thinks his resurrected wife is actually possessed by an "Ancient", so he banishes her and resurrects her again. The ending heavily implies that it's still the same Ancient. | |
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Another Earth ends with The Reveal of Rhoda coming home and seeing another Rhoda. Which Rhoda is which, who visited who, what their differences are is never revealed as the movie ends. | |
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Discussed in Ayakashi Triangle: Long after Matsuri was turned into a girl, he gets an ayakashi split off that takes his opposite sex form—but they don't which is the human or ayakashiExplanation Either the sex-changing curse was removed from Matsuri by making it into its own being or a male clone was created without affecting the original.. The duplicate's mind was an exact copy, so Matsuri's mother points out they can't just brush off either of them. | |
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The Twilight Zone (1959): Subverted in the episode "In His Image". Near the end of the episode, Ridiculously Human Robot Alan and his creator Walter (who he was created as an exact duplicate of) get into a fight. A few minutes later, Alan's fiancée comes in and one of them escorts her out of the room, reassuring her that everything is okay. Then we see Alan's body lying on the floor. | |
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DuckTales (2017): Played for Laughs in the episode "Moonvasion!". Prior to this episode, Gyro had succeeded in his goal of making a clone army of himself. Over the course of the episode, at least two of the Gyros are killed and the remaining ones aren't entirely sure if the original Gyro was among the deceased. | |
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In Warframe's backstory, Albrecht Entrati, pioneer of Void technology, encountered a Doppelgänger of himself during his first voyage. When nobody else reported encountering this being, he began to question his own identity, ultimately deciding to reject Orokin Immortality and commit suicide by old age. Considering we see the real identity of the doppelganger, The Man in the Wall, emerge from a massive Void portal at the end of "The New War", it's fairly safe to say that it was indeed Albrecht who returned back to reality during that fateful day. | |
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Red Dwarf: In the episode "Out of Time", Starbug is confronted by an upgraded (but identical looking) Starbug, crewed by evil future versions of the Starbug crew. It ends with the "good" vessel losing most of its crew, and a laser blowing up one of the combatants. Which ship won isn't revealed until the next series. (It was the evil crew that won, but the Temporal Paradox that resulted from it caused the Reset Button to be hit) It was also initially left unclear which Rimmer is the Rimmer we see from Back to Earth onwards (the one from Series I-VII who became Ace Rimmer or the one from Series VIII who may or may not have died during the series cliffhanger) as Series X presented evidence for both scenarios.note Series X!Rimmer talks about remembering being killed by the radiation leak, which only happened to the first Rimmer, but also mentions dealing with the chameleonic microbes, which happened with the second Rimmer. It was eventually revealed through Word of God in 2020 that the Rimmer seen since then is indeed the one who went off to become Ace. |
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One possible interpretation of Mictlantecuhtli's power in Geist: The Sin-Eaters. The Kerberos of Mictlan has the unique ability of returning the soul of anyone who has ever died, even if they have been destroyed utterly. The returned soul would over time 'behave like an idealised version of the character', that there won't be any potential out of character moments, and the sourcebook leaves whether the soul is the real deal or just a duplicate up to interpretation. | |
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The ending of season 2 of Flux Buddies. After fighting Duncan's evil clone Lalnable Hector for over a season, Lalnable reveals that he is the original and our Duncan is one of the clones. Of course, he's not exactly a reliable source... | |
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In the 2019 Big Finish Doctor Who story Narcissus, the surviving Osgood claims she's not a Zygon. But she might be lying. She implies the same in the webcast The Zygon Isolation, and probably isn't lying (because she's talking to the third Osgood). | |
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Comes up in Galaxy of Fear: Clones. Tash, fleeing a horde of malicious clones of herself, sheds her clothes and slips into one of the jumpsuits her clones are wearing, stacked neatly up near the cloning vats. She then ends up falling and hitting her head, so the past hour or so is a blurry mess, and runs into another Tash wearing something other than a jumpsuit, who rather than being evil is defeated and terrified and insists that she is Tash; the other clones arrive and kill the terrified one. Tash doubts herself for a bit, but ultimately resolves that she is not a clone - for one, she still has her mother's necklace, which none of the others have - because these clones don't act the same ways she's been acting all along. She's been intrigued and repulsed for some time by the Dark Side of the Force, while her evil clones are outright fascinated; she's pretty much become used to danger and the threat of death, but they rejoice in killing. She's afraid, but not cowering and terrified like the one nonviolent clone. | |
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The Prestige: By the end, Angier is definitely dead, but it's not clear when he dies. The matter duplicator works by materializing one Angier some distance away while the other remains stationary in the machine, with Angier not knowing if which one is the original since they're perfect copies. The first test ends with the one who teleports dying, every performance of Angier's trick ends with the one who stays behind drowning to maintain the illusion, and the last Angier is shot dead by Borden. When did the original Angier die, and how much of the movie follows his clones? | |
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Played with in the third season of Farscape: after John gets "twinned", both characters are essentially seen as equally real and valid. One of them makes a Heroic Sacrifice; at first, Aeryn refuses to speak to the other when they're reunited. D'Argo and Chiana are also "twinned", but their doubles are killed during the same episode. They are both seen to be grappling with questions of "What if that was the real me and I'm just a copy?" |
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In the Gilligan's Island episode "Will The Real Mr. Howell Please Stand Up", a man who looks exactly like Mr. Howell (and has, in fact, been impersonating him back on the mainland) washes ashore on the island, causing confusion for the crew until he finally flees the island...or did he? The episode ends with Mrs. Howell suddenly becoming uncertain that the Mr. Howell still on the island is her Mr. Howell (he vehemently insists that he is the real one). | |
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Archer: Near the end of season 5, Krieger meets three clones of himself. Though initially friendly to him, it's eventually revealed that the clones are planning to launch a missile filled with nerve gas. Our Krieger attempts to stop them, and in the ensuing fight three of the four Kriegers are killed. The survivor disarms the missile and returns to the United States with the rest of the heroes, but it's intentionally left vague whether he's our Krieger or one of the clones taking his identity, with the episode containing hints towards both: He's the real Krieger: He did disarm the missile, which the clones would have no reason to do, and he also knew about Cherlene's brain implant (and the fact it was just a sticker), which the clones wouldn't (unless the real one told them about it offscreen). He's a clone: After the fight, Krieger has a concussion. Our Krieger was never shown to get hit on the head, but one of the clones did. He also calls his co-workers by the wrong names, which he attributes to the head wound, but could have been a result of him not knowing them. A third possible option presented later in the series is that he's real and has prosopagnosia: He's present for the birth of Lana's daughter, Abbiejean, which occurs after the four Kriegers' struggle, but doesn't recognise her the following season, despite seeing her extensively since her birth. He did suffer a long fall. |
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Not precisely a clone (the clone acts way different), but towards the end of Mass Effect 3, Shepard has to grapple with the ontological confusion of their being brought back from a really-most-sincerely-dead state by Cerberus. To whit, are they the actual Shepard, with a bunch of cybernetics that helped restore brain function... or are they a bunch of cybernetics programmed to believe it's Shepard? Shepard's companions and/or love interest are emphatic in their defense that they're the real deal, but none of them can offer any concrete proof, except for a romanced Liara (because of the "merging of consciousness" that comes with Asari mating) — and even she can't be 100% certain the difference would be noticeable. | |
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Downplayed in part five of The Garden of Sinners. Soon after Touko is killed by Cornelius Alba, another Touko comes through the door and returns the favor. Before he is killed, Alba tries desperately to comprehend whether the one he killed was the original or the clone, but Touko dismisses this as irrelevant — mainly because, as a doll-maker of unparalleled talent, she has achieved the ultimate mastery and can create infinite copies of herself that are indistinguishable from her original, thus making this entire notion meaningless. It is therefore entirely possible that both Toukos we see in the story are clones/dolls/copies, while her original body is long dead — it wouldn't change anything about her character, and isn't addressed again at any point. | |
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Superman: Back in the early 90s, DC Comics revisited the famous Sand Superman storyline, in which a being of pure sand was created after Superman eradicated Kryptonite from the Earth. The two fight and a massive explosion takes place within the Fortress of Solitude. The story ends with Superman talking to Luthor with the hinting that the surviving Superman is actually the sand creature. At one point, the prevalent rumor was that this story was supposed to have been DC's escape route if the marriage between Clark and Lois didn't pan out had the incident that led to The Death of Superman not occurred, but it's been proven to be not true. | |
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Hime from Princess Resurrection was cloned along with almost everyone else in one chapter reminiscent to the pod aliens. While everyone else had multiple clones, Hime only had one and the two of them act and think so alike that the two of them bar themselves in the dining room while everyone else fights off the army of clones. In the end, they both agree on who is the clone and who is the original with the clone making a heroic sacrifice. It isn't really clear if the "clone" really was the clone and we only have the agreement between the two on who is who. | |
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In My Hero Academia, we learn in Chapter 115 that this is part of Cloudcuckoolander Twice's backstory, and the reason why he acts so strange. He decided to abuse his cloning Quirk in order to have his clones (which are identical to him but fade away if they suffer injuries equivalent to a broken bone) commit crimes, but then his clones turned on and killed each other, resulting in Twice becoming traumatized(to the point he has a breakdown if his face isn't covered) and not knowing whether he's the original or a clone. And then in Chapter 229, during the fight with the Meta Liberation Army he suffers enough damage to realize he is the real Twice, and it's enough to let him get enough self-confidence back in the short-term to cut loose with his cloning abilities again. In the Paranormal Liberation War arc, Twice's final clone only lasts for a minute or so after the real Twice is killed, before falling apart, which finally proves that the scenario Twice feared was impossible. | |
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Mystery Science Theater 3000 plays this for laughs. Tom Servo accumulates numerous clones over the course of the series, and in Diabolik, he prepares for his return to Earth by killing all those clones. But Mike Nelson and Crow can't tell the difference between the clones and the original, and the Servos themselves decide who's the "real" Servo mainly through attrition. So there's no clue whether the last Servo standing is the original or not. In Reptilicus, Crow casually creates another gaggle of Tom Servo clones, then melts them all down to scrap when he's done. The original Servo gets melted down as well, somehow, and a clone left in his place. The clone immediately comes clean about the mix-up, but no one cares—and for the rest of the season, everyone treats him like he's the original Servo. |
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Lupin III: The first movie, The Mystery of Mamo seems to be heading for this until the climax, in which Mamo reveals that the Lupin that died at the beginning was the clone. When Inspector Zenigata shows up afterwards to arrest Lupin, he tries to invoke this trope with Zenigata, but the inspector doesn't care. Referenced in the later Lupin movie Green vs. Red, where it isn't clear if the Lupin at the end is the real one, Yasuo dressed as Lupin, or another impersonator entirely. No-one seems to care. |
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In the second-season Sliders episode "Post Traumatic Slide Syndrome", the characters find themselves on a world that's just like their own Earth, but with only a few differences. One of those differences is that that world's Professor Arturo missed the opportunity to go sliding through other dimensions with Quinn Mallory and the others, and has regretted it ever since. This world's Arturo gets in a fight with the regular Arturo just as it's time to slide. Before the portal closes, one of the Arturos leaps through and joins the other Sliders (and eventually makes a Heroic Sacrifice in the third season) while the other is left behind and says "Oh, God." It's never made clear whether the Arturo who joins them at the end is the same one they started with. The writers later confirmed that the regular Arturo was the one left behind. |
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In the Don't Hug Me I'm Scared episode "Death", Duck returns from the dead to discover that he's been replaced by a shapeshifting blob, who has taken on his likeness. After a tense moment of silence, the Ducks decide that they can live with each other. A variation of the theme song plays, with the second Duck awkwardly shoehorned in. One Duck kills the other before the song can even finish, deciding that "four doesn't work". The question is did the real Duck kill the clone, or vice versa? Duck has shown homicidal tendencies before, but who's to say the clone hasn't completely copied his personality? On top of that, the dead Duck can briefly be seen with maggots around his corpse, which the 'real' Duck was previously shown to have from his time buried in the ground. | |
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In Read or Die when the "good" Nancy fights the "evil" Nancy it's nearly impossible to keep track of which is which during the fight. This creates an extra layer of drama when the surviving Nancy shows up and pretends to shoot the heroine so she can get close enough to the Big Bad to kill him. To make the ending more complicated, the one who wins the fight elects to join the villain in death afterwards, leaving Yomiko a note that she didn't kill the other one after all. If you pay really close attention, they have different dominant hands, something Yomiko picks up on in one scene since she figures out which Nancy to stand next to when they're facing off. | |
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Subverted in Legend of the Five Rings. During the original Clan War story arc, Bayushi Kachiko uses an Artifact of Doom to create an evil duplicate of Doji Hoturi as part of her revenge against him for killing her son. Unknown to Hoturi, he was actually their son. Hoturi finally faces the False Hoturi in a duel alone and away from any witnesses. But since the loser melted into goo and maggots upon death, it's quite clear that the real Hoturi won. | |
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The first movie, The Mystery of Mamo seems to be heading for this until the climax, in which Mamo reveals that the Lupin that died at the beginning was the clone. When Inspector Zenigata shows up afterwards to arrest Lupin, he tries to invoke this trope with Zenigata, but the inspector doesn't care. | |
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Spider-Man: Doing this ultimately led to The Clone Saga. And, by extension, to the somewhat shorter Brand New May saga in the Spider-Girl comics. However, the first "Clone Saga" (during Gerry Conway's run on The Amazing Spider-Man (1963)) offered a strong reason why the Peter seen at the end was the original: all the clones of Peter were fixated on Gwen Stacy, while the real Peter had undergone Character Development since her death and had begun a relationship with Mary Jane Watson. Knowing this, Peter does not look at the results, as his ability to grow past that point proves that he's the original. Too bad editorial forgot that by the time The '90s rolled around. | |
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The Incredible Hulk: In Hulk (1999), an odd case occurs in the Split Decisions story arc, where the Hulk is cloned. The final confrontation follows all the conventions of the Ambiguous Clone Ending: Banner and the Clone face each other alone, the fight itself isn't shown, and the scene skips to Banner returning to his friends telling them the clone is dead. It seems like we're meant to be unsure that the real Hulk won... except that the clone was heavily modified, and in Hulk form looks unmistakably different from the real Hulk. Since we see the Hulk looking perfectly normal in the very next storyline, he's clearly the original... so why does the narrative go through all the plot points associated with this trope? | |
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In Android at Arms by Andre Norton, the protagonist is the subject of a plot to replace him with an artificial duplicate — or is he the duplicate, with implanted memories making him think he's the original? | |
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The Misadventures of R2 and Miku has an episode devoted to Miku cloning herself. After all but one of the Mikus are killed, the remaining one expresses serious doubt about whether she's a clone or not. | |
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In Welcome to Night Vale, Intern Dana is the only intern to have ever graduated from Red Shirt status at Night Vale Community Radio. Only problem is, it might not have been the original Dana who survived the death match with her doppelganger in "The Sandstorm". Due to this, from then on she's referred to as "Intern Dana, or her double". | |
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The Double Cherry powerup in Super Mario 3D World can cause this. The clones disappear on getting hit, and once they're all gone the last one remaining is treated as the "original" Mario/Luigi/Peach/Toad. Also, the moment any clone touches the end of level flagpole, all the others disappear. Was that the real Mario, or...? | |
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Doctor Who: Petronella Osgood and her Zygon duplicate invoke and enforce this trope to keep the peace between humans and Zygons, never revealing which of them is the human and which is the Zygon. Even after one of them dies in the Series 8 finale, the survivor refuses to confirm which one she is, and eventually another Zygon takes the dead Osgood's place. So now the Osgoods are either a human and a Zygon again, or two Zygons both honoring the dead human original. Which one of them is the surviving Osgood (who could be either human or Zygon), and which one is the Zygon who replaced the dead Osgood? Only they know — and they're not telling. In the 2019 Big Finish Doctor Who story Narcissus, the surviving Osgood claims she's not a Zygon. But she might be lying. She implies the same in the webcast The Zygon Isolation, and probably isn't lying (because she's talking to the third Osgood). |
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One of the BBC radio adaptations of Blake's 7 had a Teleporter Accident near the end that created two copies of Avon, one of whom ended up pulling a Heroic Sacrifice at the climax. The last two lines of dialogue are this exchange: | |
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Eddsworld: After Edd, Tord, and Tom are finished killing all of the clones in "Spares", they realize they forgot to kill a Matt clone, who walks up beside the real Matt. However, rather than trying to Spot the Imposter, they instead decide to throw Tom in the trash and have one of the Matts dress up as Tom, not answering the question of which Matt is the real one. | |
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Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig: Pazu's Day in the Limelight leads to him confronting his Psycho Ex-Girlfriend, who was planning to Kill and Replace him with a robot copy of his body and downloaded memories. It's implied that the real Pazu wins. If one looks closely, Pazu gets cut and bleeds while the impostor gets stabbed through the last part of her that is human, her brain. The psycho-ex's robot body has a huge cut with no internal blood or organs when the fight ends. Interestingly, neither the Major nor Batou know who won: when the Major asks Batou, Batou responds Pazu "probably" won. | |
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In Kagetsu Tohya, if you decide to search for the killer, sometimes you do battle with him. The killer is you, somehow. During some of the battles, it gets so confusing the fighters themselves begin mixing which is which, and the winner himself doesn't know who he is anymore. Try Again! | |
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Invincible (2021): The Mauler Twins make sure this is always the case for them whenever one dies, and purposefully set up the process of cloning and copying the memories to be so perfect and seamless that, by the time it's over, both have the exact same memories. They bicker like siblings on who's the real one and who's the last clone, but admit during a more emotional moment that it's better that way; it never ends well if they know who the clone is, in their words.note The comic and later Season 2 of the show reveal what happens when they know which one is the clone. The 'original' (easily recognized due to his burn scars) would boss the 'clone' so much, that the clone eventually snaps and poisons the original. | |
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Family Guy: | |
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Amphibia has one with Anne, who dies after using the Calamity Gems to destroy the Core. The Cosmic Guardian tells her they made a backup of her that should be the same, but it's not made clear if she's entirely a separate being or if it's just her body that was replaced. Regardless, Anne says she'll probably have an existential crisis over it later. | |
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Annihilation (2018) ends with Lena returning from the Shimmer. It doesn't seem apparent during her debriefing to her superiors, but when she reunites with Kane (who she has learned actually died in the Shimmer and was apparently replaced by a clone... maybe), she asks him if he's really Kane, which he answers by asking her if she's really Lena. Subtle hints (particularly Lena's eyes changing) at least suggest that Lena isn't the same person as she was before entering the Shimmer. | |
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The ending of Tales of the Abyss is ambiguous on whether the person who appears at the end is Luke, Asch, or an amalgamation of the two. The only piece of evidence is an optional sidequest reveals that creatures who undergo fomicry suffer a "big crunch" effect after a certain amount of time, in which the fonons of the original disperse and are absorbed into the clone. However, the sidequest does not reveal how much of the original persists after this process, leaving the answer vague. | |
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Alex Rider: Point Blanc, although it's not technically his clone. Alex has thwarted the villain's plot to replace the children of influential people with surgically-altered teenage clones of himself, only to find a clone that looks like Alex waiting at his school (Alex had posed as a businessman's son to get close to the villain). The ensuing fight causes a fire, and only one Alex walks out...until the sequel came along, of course. Several books later, it turns out that both survived. The clone has been in prison for the intervening books and is now even more obsessed with revenge. Alex ends up personally killing him. |
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