| abstract | - The concept of clones or copies being made to replace original people, usually either as a means of Teleportation (by creating a copy somewhere else and destroying the original) or as a way of obtaining Immortality (creating clones to replace a dying or dead original, for example). The Twin Maker is often a convenient way of bringing a dead character back from the dead without needing to invoke any trope that revives the old character. In manner and appearance, they are almost always perfect doppelgangers, indistinguishable from the original. This trope is often used in a science-fiction setting, where it can be readily justified by any amount of technobabble on cloning, teleportation devices, copying machines, and the like. Fantasy and other works involving magic are also natural habitats for this trope. When an original is not dead yet, there may be some interaction between them and their clone, but usually it's a case of Never the Selves Shall Meet. Where this trope gets interesting is how the moral status of the new copy and the moral implications of disposing of the original are handled. First, the treatment of the twin: Some characters won't see the problem with treating them both as if they were the same person, whereas others will point out that it only works from an external viewpoint: the person will seem exactly the same to everyone else, but the actual stream of consciousness has been severed, and the new copy is, in this sense, a completely different person. Sometimes it will be argued that the copy doesn't count as the original person, though given how interchangeable they would be if the paperwork for their birth certificates were ever mixed up, this argument is harder to hold up for long. Second, the ethics of disposing of the original: If this matter is addressed at all in fiction, the Uniqueness Value and Cloning Blues tropes may well be invoked or played with as part of the story. A teleportation machine that worked in the manner of the short story To Be (see quotation above) would probably be regarded as a killing machine, but if there is any doubt about whether the stream-of-consciousness continues or not, the issue may well be sidestepped. If nothing in the device suggests anything sinister, it's generally treated as harmless. It's probably a straightforward Teleportation. If the Twinmaker is kept a secret, it will probably be part of The Reveal. Particularly devious characters may exploit the Twinmaker for their own ends, perhaps to create decoys to lure out assassins, or to dispose of an Unwitting Pawn by "tweaking" it mid-way through its creation. Often involves Cloning Blues. Clone Jesus and You Cloned Hitler are related, but not subtropes. Examples:
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