History Main / MamasBabyPapasMaybe

* Inverted on the ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' ''[[Manga/NarutoGaiden Gaiden]]'' sequel mini-series with Sasuke's daughter, Sarada. She greatly resembles her father plus glasses, but when she asks her mother [[spoiler: Sakura]] (who doesn't wear glasses) if her father wore glasses too (he doesn't), she acts very evasively of the question. Sarada then questions her mother of even being married to her father; logically, [[spoiler:Sakura]] doesn't take it very well and has a rage-fit, allowing Sarada to discover a picture of Karin (who does wear glasses) with her father. [[spoiler: And then it turns out that Sakura '''is''' Sarada's biological mother; the supposed "evidence" saying that Karin was the girl's mom was actually badly-handled by Karin's friend Suigetsu since Karin was Sakura's midwife and some DNA of ''both'' women got mixed up. The evidence was actually Sarada's dried umbilical cord, which Sakura gave to Karin as a gift for delivering Sarada. Suigetsu mistakenly THOUGHT the umbilical cord came from Karin. The cord's DNA matched with Sarada's because it came from Sakura.]]

* This is the idea behind the Islamic custom of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iddah Iddah]], which forbids women who have been divorced or widowed to marry within a certain amount of time (for divorced women, the time period is three lunar months, while for the widowed, it's four lunar months plus ten days). This is to prevent anyone from doubting the paternity of any child the woman has after the end of her previous marriage, since four months is usually the earliest time a woman's pregnancy can be inferred in the pre-modern world (i.e., before the advent of ultrasound). If the woman ''is'' pregnant during Iddah, then the period is extended until she gives birth.

** The show also does an interesting spin on this. When it is discovered Sun is pregnant, she cannot be sure who the father is, her husband Jin, or another man she was having an affair with back in Korea. Who the father of the baby matters, because women who were impregnated on the island die in childbirth, while those impregnated off the island survive. This creates a dilemma for her, as if the baby is her husband's (who impregnated her on the island) he will never find out about the affair, but she will most likely die, Wheras if the baby is the other man's, Jin would know of her infidelity but Sun would survive the childbirth. [[spoiler: The baby turns out to be Jin's, but luckily Sun makes it off the island before the delivery.]]

* ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'': In "Oswald's Son", Oswald meets Robert Gates, a young man who is the daughter of Oswald's high school girlfriend. Both Oswald and Robert believe that Robert is Oswald's son, but Kate and Drew observe that he looks very much like Lewis, who is revealed to have also slept with Robert's mother while they were in high school. Lewis and Oswald spend the rest of the episode trying to be a father to Robert until Drew decides to settle the matter with a paternity test. However, Oswald and Lewis realize that it doesn't matter which of them is Robert's father as they love him equally and refuse to hear the results of the test.

This can be a source of tension and drama even when the mother is honest because neither the child nor the father can prove it. The GreenEyedMonster is very prone to doubt. It can also complicate the HeirClubForMen, as the man usually wants his heir to be his biological descendant. If the mother refuses to tell, only men who have actually slept with her can even guess, and speculation tends to run wild. If she lies, the man has no way to prove his innocence unless he has an alibi that would preclude his having slept with her -- merely knowing he had not is not proof -- and he may even be forced into a ShotgunWedding. If the man believes himself to be sterile, and the LawOfInverseFertility works, expect the resulting arguments to be ugly.

* It was rumored for years that the youngest child of Franz Josef I of Austria-Hungary and his wife UsefulNotes/{{Elisabeth}} ("Sisi"), Marie Valerie, wasn't actually Franz's daughter but the child of Sisi's close friend and admirer Gyula Andrássy, the Hungarian Prime Minister. Since Valerie grew up to be very physically similar to Franz, the rumors went away with time; Valerie herself, however, was traumatized by them and ended up disliking anything Hungarian.

* It was rumored for years that the youngest child of Franz Josef I of Austria-Hungary and his wife Elisabeth/Sisi, Marie Valerie, wasn't actually Franz's daughter but the child of Sisi's close friend and admirer Gyula Andrássy, the Hungarian Prime Minister. Since Valerie grew up to be very physically similar to Franz, the rumors went away with time; Valerie herself, however, was traumatized by them and ended up disliking anything Hungarian.

* Downplayed in ''Fanfic/InTheBleakMidwinter''; the wealthy Riddles, and especially their maid Fiona, are naturally a bit suspicious of a girl who comes to their home and presents a baby who she claims is Tom's. Since Hermione isn't trying to extort anything from them, however, just giving them the entirely voluntary option of raising their son and grandson, they soon warm to her. It also helps that little Tommy shares his father's unusual eye colour.

* In ''Literature/ADayOfFallenNight'', the prequel to ''Literature/ThePrioryOfTheOrangeTree'', Glorian Berethnet takes advantage of her line's StrongFamilyResemblance to avoid sleeping with the seventy-year-old man that she has to marry for political reasons. As soon as she comes of age, she gets pregnant by a friend of hers, knowing that nobody will be able to tell. Her husband is fully on board with this plan (having no desire to sleep with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter) and pleased she's already taken care of it--he just asks that she not make it obvious.

* This is the backstory of one of the characters in Creator/MercedesLackey's ''[[Literature/LastHeraldMageTrilogy]]''; when the kid was born eight months after the wedding and took after his mother's side, particularly resembling his maternal uncle, his father assumed [[BrotherSisterIncest the very worst]], and took it out on both mother [[AffairBlameTheBastard and child]]. Particularly awful because there ''was'' a way to check; the father just didn't want his suspicions confirmed. [[spoiler: The boy was simply born prematurely, and wasn't the uncle's, but the mother probably ''had'' been abused by her brother and being reviled and abandoned by her husband [[TroubledAbuser was disastrous to her state of mind]].]]

* This is the backstory of one of the characters in Creator/MercedesLackey's ''[[Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar Magic's Promise]]''; when the kid was born early and looked like neither his mother nor his father but exactly like his maternal uncle, his father assumed [[BrotherSisterIncest the very worst]], and took it out on both mother and child. Particularly awful because there ''was'' a way to check; the father just didn't want his suspicions confirmed. [[spoiler: The boy was simply born prematurely, and wasn't the uncle's.]]

[[folder: Radio]]

* "[[http://music.debracowan.com/track/johnny-be-fair Johnny Be Fair]]" is a joke that got turned into an Irish ballad. Buffy Saint-Maire and Debra Cowan both sang versions of it. The song tells of a girl who wants to marry, but all of the young men who propose to her turn out to be her father's bastard sons. In the end, she goes to her mother in despair, and her mother sets her straight:

-->My mother said "If your father knew,
-->It's me he'd surely kill,
-->For your father's not your father,
-->So marry whom you will."

* In some continuities of ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'', Selina Kyle/Catwoman is implied to be an unacknowledged, illegitimate daughter of [[TheDon Carmine Falcone]].

* In ''[[ComicBook/RobinSeries Robin]]'', after asking Oracle for advice about Stephanie's pregnancy, Robin quickly denies his paternity is even possible -- "Not guilty. Not even a suspect." Downplayed in that Oracle accepts his word for it.

* In ''Literature/ThePrioryOfTheOrangeTree'', the women of the Berethnet line all look so alike that the portrait hall of queens through the ages looks like a collection of sisters--it's impossible to tell who their fathers might be from their looks. Although Sabran's father was officially her mother Rosarian's husband, it becomes a stronger and stronger possibility that she was actually sired by the privateer Gian Harlowe instead (and late in the story, Gian does imply that he has paternal feelings towards her even though they never met).

* On ''Series/TheWalkingDead'', when Lori gets pregnant, Shane thinks he's the father instead of Rick. Lori shuts him down, and he dies before Judith is born, so it hasn't really come up since; even the few people left who knew Shane don't question that Judith's Rick's daughter. In season 7, Rick says that he thinks that Judith is Shane's daughter but it does not change how he feels about her.

* Happens practically OnceAnEpisode on ''Series/{{Maury}}''. "You are/are not the father!" is a preferred CatchPhrase of the titular host, who invites couples on his show to do [=DNA=] tests to see if the man in question is the father of a child or not. It gets to the point where women have had to come back several times to try and find out, including one woman who tested ''[[ReallyGetsAround 17 men]]'' without success.[[note]] Essentially, she would need to have slept with all 17 within, roughly, a one week period for ''any'' of them to have a realistic chance of matching. And that's just the guys that were proven non-matches. ....Yeah.[[/note]]

* In ''Manga/FruitsBasket'', while a young Tohru is at her father's funeral, some relatives speculate that Katsuya Honda wasn't really her father, and that her mother Kyouko just had an affair. [[KickTheDog To her face]]. Their only "evidence" for this was that Tohru didn't particularly resemble Katsuya and that Kyouko had, years and years ago, been in a biker gang. Hearing this spurs Tohru to begin to [[{{Keigo}} speak very formally]] (something Katsuya was well-known for doing), to try to convince others that he really was her dad.