I've finally figured out how cloning really works, and do my best to explain it. This is a very complicated matter to discuss, so I try to use as many visuals as I can to aid in the discussion. Hopefully, cloning won't be such a mysterious glitch anymore!
For the sake of simplicity, I left out certain obscure details from the model I described. There are 3 of them in particular, which are as follows:
(1) I said that "when multiple objects all unload at once, they each move to the front of the vacant slots one-by-one, from left to right." This is true for objects of the same group (e.g. coins in a group of coins) and true for two groups of the same object (e.g. 2 groups of goombas), but oddly doesn't seem to be true for two groups of different objects (e.g. a group of coins and a group of goombas). If you unload both of these groups simultaneously, it seems that one of the groups will always unload before the other, regardless of which one is on the left or right (so the goombas will always unload before the coins do). I do not know why this is. This detail would only concern you if you happen to unload 2 different groups of objects at the same time while cloning, which is highly improbable.
(2) I said "there are 240 slots." This is in fact true, but in each course, you can only use a specific number of these slots, a number which is usually slightly below 240. For instance, in Tick, Tock Clock, you can use at most 239 slots, whereas in Rainbow Ride, you can use at most 227 slots. I do not know why this is. This detail would only concern you if you plan on cloning objects up until the point at which the game would freeze.
(3) I said "if you try to load an object when there are no more vacant slots, the game will freeze." This isn't necessarily true. There are actually two tiers of objects: objects considered important and objects considered unimportant. The unimportant objects are essentially the special effects, such as the smoke from a lava burn, the yellow stars from a ground pound, or the poof from collecting a power star. If you load an object (important or unimportant) when there are no more vacant slots and at least one of the occupied slots contains an unimportant object, then the slot of the first unimportant objects will be overridden with the loading object (i.e. the loading object steals the unimportant object's slot). Note that if you try to load several unimportant objects at once and there's not enough vacant slots, then they will override each other (as long as there's at least one vacant slot). Therefore, the game will only freeze when you try to load an object when there are no more vacant slots AND every occupied slot contains an important object. This is done to keep the game from freezing for as long as possible, at the cost of the unimportant objects. This detail would only concern you if you plan on cloning objects up until the point at which the game would freeze.
*****ADDITIONAL NOTES*****
When you spawn a bubble bomb:
VS1 ⇒ bubble bomb
VS2 ⇒ bubble bomb's shadow (oddly enough)
When you collect the 8th red coin and 100th yellow coin so that the stars appear simultaneously:
VS1 ⇒ 100 coin star
VS4 ⇒ red coin star
When you go near fwoosh:
VS1-VS5 ⇒ cloud puff
VS6 ⇒ fwoosh's face
When you go near a lakitu for the first time that level:
VS1 ⇒ cloud puff that maintains the other cloud puffs
VS2-VS6 ⇒ cloud puff
When lakitu spawns a spiney:
VS1 ⇒ spiney
When you go near a group of n big goombas:
VS1-VSn ⇒ big goomba
When you collect a red coin:
VS1 ⇒ the floating number
When you kill a goomba:
VS1-VS20 ⇒ poof
VS21 ⇒ poof spawner
VS22 ⇒ yellow coin
How I clone the star in the last scene:
grab fake bob-omb: bob-omb ⇒ VS9
load chain chomp: VS9 ⇒ VS4
load 5 coins: VS4 ⇒ coin#4
collect coin#5: (no effect)
collect coin#4: coin#4 ⇒ VS2
collect coin#3: VS2 ⇒ VS3
collect coin#2: VS3 ⇒ VS1
collect coin#1: VS1 ⇒ 100 coin star
