I have run into this issue before, and I ran into it again today. I was wondering if there was a better way to work. I am animating some pieces candy that I am object merging in to a geo node, copying them to points with random animation. Works great, 24fps. I bring in the hero candy which I wrapped with a vellum sim, animate it on its own, works great, 24fps. However, when I use a merge node so I can see them both, the merge complains about not having the same attributes, I get that, but it causes my frame rate to chug at like 6fps and is not use able to animate with. I checked the performance monitor and it pointed to the merge as well. If I take the hero guy out and put him in his own geo node, with show all nodes in my viewport on, so I can see the BG candies and the hero candy at the same time, it works great, 24fps. However now I am split up into two geo nodes. I realize that I can make shortcuts to each geo node, but is there a better way to do it in a single geo node? Is there a "stupid" merge node that doesn't care about attributes or anything and will just show two things together? Apologies about the length, Thank you.

The template flag can show more than one thing without 'merging' them. Change display options for template geometry to render normally instead of ghosted if desired.