Drakken's cloning machine

Lore & Background

The cloning machine sits in a circular chamber deep within Drakken's lair, surrounded by coolant pipes, bio-containment glass, and a bank of monitoring screens that Drakken insists on narrating aloud for dramatic effect. The device works by scanning a subject's cellular structure and rapidly assembling a biological duplicate from stored genetic material and synthetic tissue. The process is slow, noisy, and produces a considerable amount of steam and ozone smell, which Ron always finds somehow fascinating while Kim is already looking for the power coupling to yank.

What makes the machine a perfect Drakken invention is its inherent fragility. The clones are not perfect; they glitch, they forget to finish sentences, they sometimes phase slightly out of sync with the original. Drakken, for all his genius, treats the machine as a status symbol more than a practical tool. He wants to be everywhere at once, to deliver his monologue in three time zones simultaneously. The machine grants him that fantasy, and then Kim and Ron walk in, Ron accidentally bumps a coolant valve, and the whole operation dissolves into a puddle of synthetic protein.

The episode in which the machine appears is a classic example of the show's structure: a seemingly impenetrable villain plan undone not by a superior gadget but by a teenager's casual, well-timed intervention. The cloning machine never appears again in the series, reinforcing that Drakken's grandest inventions are always one clumsy Ron away from becoming a very expensive puddle.

In Their Own Story

The lair hummed at a frequency that made Drakken's left ear twitch. He stood before the glass chamber, arms spread wide, watching the twin figures of himself materialize in the gel bath, each blinking with the same cold, satisfied gaze. "At last," he purred to no one in particular, "I shall be in three places, delivering three monologues, and none of them will be interrupted by a—"

A soft *thunk* echoed from the ventilation shaft above. Then another. Then the unmistakable sound of a foot in a sneaker pressing down on a very important pressure plate.

Drakken turned. Ron Stoppable dangled from a grate, grinning, holding a half-eaten burrito. "Hey, Drakken. You want me to turn that thing off, or are you gonna keep doing the whole 'evil echo' thing?"

The clones in the tank looked up in unison. "I was going to say—"

"—the same thing," Ron finished, chewing. "Cool. You're all very cool."

Kim's voice crackled over the comm. "Ron, the coolant line is leaking into the main bus. You have approximately four seconds before the whole chamber goes to soup."

Drakken looked at the tank. He looked at Ron. He looked at the tank again, where his clones were now slowly dissolving into a faintly pink slurry.

"...I was going to say that was a *very* effective counter-strategy, Stoppable."

Ron saluted. "You're welcome, Drakken."

The lair flooded with steam. Somewhere, a very confused clone of Drakken's left shoe washed up against a pipe.

Reader's Guide

GADGET: Drakken's Cloning Machine

User: Dr. Drakken (sole operator; no henchman is ever trusted with the controls)

Mechanics: The device scans a subject's DNA and cellular blueprint, then assembles a biological duplicate from synthetic tissue in a sealed gel-filled chamber. The process is slow, produces heavy steam and ozone, and requires the lair's main generator at full output. The resulting clones are functional but imperfect—they desynchronize, forget mid-sentence, and are vulnerable to physical disruption of the containment field.

Debut: The machine appears in a single-episode Drakken scheme, consistent with the show's pattern of one-off lair gadgets. It is not a recurring tool; Drakken never references it again.

Iconic use: Drakken attempts to create multiple simultaneous versions of himself to execute a multi-pronged plan. The scheme is derailed when Ron Stoppable, navigating the lair by accident, disrupts the power or coolant systems, causing the clones to dissolve. Kim delivers the final quip from the comm unit while Ron holds up a burrito.

Type classification: Biological replication / lair infrastructure. Sits alongside other one-off Drakken devices (mind-control emitters, love-potion synthesizers, environmental manipulators) as a showpiece gadget rather than a repeatable weapon.

Fan note: The machine is beloved as a perfect encapsulation of Drakken's character—genius-level engineering in service of a deeply petty, ego-driven fantasy, undone by a teenager who is technically in the wrong place for entirely unrelated reasons.

Did You Know?

• The cloning machine is a one-off gadget; Drakken never uses or references it again in the series, consistent with how most of his lair inventions are single-episode set pieces.
• The device's failure mode—clones dissolving into a protein slurry when the containment field is disrupted—echoes the show's recurring gag that Drakken's most elaborate plans are undone by the simplest physical interrupti
• Drakken always narrates his own gadgets aloud during activation, a running joke that Kim and Ron exploit by simply waiting for him to finish his monologue before striking.
• The machine's reliance on the lair's main generator means that any power disruption, however minor, is enough to collapse the entire operation—a vulnerability Ron discovers by accident more often than by design.