Gender Flip / Live-Action TV

Regardless of the gender, the game is afoot for Sherlock.

Examples of Gender Flip in Live-Action TV.

---

• 12 Monkeys, an adaptation of the 1995 movie, has Jeffrey Goines turn into Jennifer Goines.
• In The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, Sherlock's descendant and Expy is his great-grandniece. And her archenemy is Molly Hardy.
• In Arrow, the African-American Posthumous Character Paula Holt becomes a white guy called Paul. Still married to Mr Terrific, though.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • The chief of Kyoshi Island is a man named Oyaji in the cartoon, and a woman named Yukari in the live-action series. Also, Yukari is Suki's mother, while there's no indication that Oyaji is related to Suki.
  • The namesakes of Omashu were a man and a woman in the original, while in the adaptation, they were both women.
• In the second series of The Avengers (1960s), Honor Blackman (as Dr. Cathy Gale) replaced Ian Hendry (Dr. David Keel) as John Steed's partner. In her earliest appearances (scripts written much earlier for Hendry), her dialogue was left completely unchanged. This is sometimes credited with making Cathy Gale a particularly memorable female character for the early '60s.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003):
  • Starbuck and Boomer are Gender Flipped (and Race Lifted) from the original. As often happens with actors who find themselves replaced, Dirk Benedict was less than happy about it, referring to his heir as "Stardoe" (har har). Kevin Smith joked about this when he hosted a Battlestar Galactica panel at Comic Con.
    Smith: [to Ron Moore and David Eick] I'm glad you guys changed Starbuck into a woman. Otherwise it would have made all those kissing scenes with Lee really awkward.
  • Lloyd Bridges' Commander Cain was also revived as Michelle Forbes' (now Admiral) Helena Cain. But they're both equally crazy.
• Jonathan Cartwright/Mouse in Batwoman (2019) is a Gender Flip of Batman villain Jane Doe, who likewise impersonates people with flayed-skin masks, and was named as Jane Cartwright in Gotham.
• The production of Swan Lake put on in The Big Leap uses genderblind casting. This coupled with several cast changes causes several roles to have this. Simon is Odile the Black Swan, Brittney is briefly Prince Siegfried, Aja is Von Rothbart by the final production, and the show makes a big deal out of casting two women as the Siegfried's parents (with a sound cue that bellows "two mommies" whenever it's brought up).
• The Bionic Woman is a gender flipped reimagining of The Six Million Dollar Man, at least one episode of which was plot and dialogue identical. At the end, the titular hero has to provide an impromptu explanation of how his or her finger came to be cut. The explanation given in both cases was "I cut myself shaving".
• In Black Lightning (2018), Erica Moran is a gender-flipped version of Freight Train from The Outsiders, real name Eric Moran.
• Servalan in Blake's 7 was originally a man and was originally supposed to appear once. Once Jacqueline Pearce entered the picture, that all changed.
• The Boys (2019): Madelyn ^note James Stillwell and Grace ^note Greg Mallory. Season 2 has Stormfront played by a woman while "Vic the Veep" Neumann is reimagined into Victoria Neumann.
• Brave New World: Mustapha Mond, the male World Controller in the book, is now female.
• In the Japanese mini-series Chi no Wadachi, the investigator character is played by Tao Okamoto. The character was a man in the original novel.
• In the Death Note live-action drama, Near, who is a boy in the manga, was played by a teenage girl and deliberately had their gender left ambiguous.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Web Planet", the character Vrestin, leader of the Menoptera war party, was written as male (like all the other Menoptera). However, when casting the character, the cast and crew were impressed with the choreographer hired to create the 'insect movement' and cast her as Vrestin without changing anything in the script besides pronouns, resulting in one of the most powerful Action Girl supporting characters in 60s Who. Vrestin is male in the Target novelisation of the story (Doctor Who and the Zarbi), which is based on the original script.
  • In "Galaxy 4", the Drahvins were originally all male, until producer Verity Lambert suggested making them all-female.
  • Gia Kelly in "The Seeds of Death" was originally a man.
  • Morgan in "Colony in Space" was originally a woman, with Susan James cast in the role. However, she was replaced by Tony Caunter when the BBC's Head of Drama Serials made an unusual intervention and decided the role was inappropriate for a woman to perform. James was nevertheless paid in full.
  • The human president in "Frontier in Space" was originally a man.
  • Bettan in "Genesis of the Daleks" was originally a man. Aside from Sarah Jane Smith, she's the only female character in the story.
  • Marn in "The Sun Makers" was originally a man.
  • Dr. Solow and Preston in "Warriors of the Deep" were originally men, until director Pennant Roberts made them female. Roberts usually gender-flipped at least one role in every story he directed.
  • Averted in "The Twin Dilemma", as John Nathan-Turner was encouraged to cast two more experienced female actresses in the roles of the Creepy Twins, but chose male actors because he believed it was crucial the characters be boys for the script to work. He may have had a point about this (the twins can be read as a Plot Parallel for the Doctor's fragmented personality following his regeneration).
  • The stage play adaptation of "The Robots of Death" turns Uvanov, Borg, Cass and Dask into women. One would think that this was being done to obscure which character is secretly the pro-robotist terrorist Taren Capel, but the main characters refer to Taren as 'she' from the beginning. Another side effect of this is that it means the only surviving male character of the story is Poul (who exists as a gibbering vegetable).
  • Pope Benedict IX is portrayed as a woman in "Extremis". Considering the scandalous nature of his reign, this was probably much safer than portraying him accurately. It also doubles as a Shout-Out to the legend of Pope Joan. However, it's later revealed that nearly the entirety of the episode was part of a simulation.
• Doom Patrol (2019)
  • Cyborg's childhood friend Ron Evers is now his love interest Roni Evers.
  • The Brotherhood of Dada is now the Sisterhood of Dada, although in fact, only two members are examples: the Fog (whose real name is changed from Byron Shelley to Shelley Byron) and the Quiz (whose real name was never revealed in the comics). Sleepwalk was already a woman and Frenzy remains male, as is new member Malcolm.
• In Dracula, Van Helsing is a man. In Dracula (2020), there are two Van Helsings, both female.
• In another Sherlock Holmes adaptation, Elementary, John Watson has been changed to Joan Watson and is played by Lucy Liu. As Liu is Chinese American, this is a Race Lift as well. Also, Moriarty is now a woman and is combined with Irene.
• One of the episodes of the new Fantasy Island featured a terminally ill woman who wanted to experience life as a soldier in a combat zone. Instead of being placed with a company of male soldiers like she expected, she was placed in a gender-reversed version of The Squad, which was filled with the requisite roughneck personality types, only with women playing the roles.
• The Flash (2014):
  • A crossover event between that show and Arrow introduced a Gender Flip of The Atom's enemy, the Bug-Eyed Bandit, with "Bertram Larvan" becoming "Brie Larvan" (portrayed by Emily Kinney).
  • Season 3 introduces the Top as a young woman, with the character's name changed from "Roscoe Dillon" to "Rosalind 'Rosa' Dillon" (portrayed by Ashley Rickards).
  • Season 4's "Luck Be A Lady", introduces Becky "Hazard" Sharp, who is female in both the series and the comics ... except the details of how her Winds of Destiny, Change! powers work are altered slightly to essentially make her a gender flip of Amos Fortune, specifically the way he's presented in Justice League Europe.
  • Season 4 also introduces the show's version of Black Bison, who is a woman named Mina Chayton instead of a man named John Ravenhair.
  • Also in Season 4 is a version of Fiddler, who instead of an elderly man named Isaac Bowen is a younger woman named Izzy Bowen.
  • And obscure Hawkman character Null, who's a woman named Janet Petty instead of a man named, well, Null, as far as we know.
  • Joss Jackam, the Weather Witch, is very loosely based on Weather Wizard's son in the comics, Josh Jackam.
  • Season 5 introduces Spin, who is changed from a man known only as Mr. Auerbach to a woman named Spencer Young.
  • Evan McCulloch, a.k.a Mirror Master II, is adapted as Eva McCulloch.
  • The Red Death is an alternate universe version of Bruce Wayne in the comics, but in the series, Red Death is instead an alternate incarnation of Ryan Wilder, the second Batwoman.
• In the TV movie that inspired Forever Knight, the medical examiner and Secret-Keeper who'd met Nick when he woke up in the morgue had been male.
• Fuller House flips the genders of its antecedent series. In the original, Danny Tanner (a man) raised three girls with help from his two pals (also men), in the new show, DJ Tanner (a woman) raises three boys with help from her two pals (women).
• Game of Thrones:
  • For an unknown reason, the Dornish practise of open succession (i.e a firstborn girl inherits before her younger brother) was erased. This leads to some notable Dornish ladies who rule in their own right being changed into men. In particular, Oberyn refers to his father as being Prince of Dorne before him, when in actual fact his mother was the reigning Princess. And in the books, the head of the delegation Tyrion meets outside King's Landing is a woman. An HBO press release named Prince Trystane rather than Princess Arianne as the heir to Prince Doran Martell.
  • Bronn's betrothed Lollys is said to be a daughter of Lord Stokeworth rather than the elderly Lady Tanda Stokeworth of the novels.
  • House Cerwyn was actually headed by a woman at the point in the novels where they are introduced in the show, Jonelle Cerwyn, after the Boltons killed her father and brother. The TV version omitted Jonelle and kept her brother alive — actually part of a pattern of gender-swapping minor background vassals from female to male.
• The Goldbergs depicts producer Adam Goldberg's life in The '80s, but with one major difference: in real life, he has two brothers, Barry and Eric. On the show, he has a brother Barry and a sister Erica.
  • This particular example gets an In-Universe inversion in "8-Bit Goldbergs". In Adam's computer game based on his family, Erica is replaced by a man named Eric and her boyfriend Geoff Schwartz becomes Eric's girlfriend Geoffina.
• Good Omens (2019): Pollution is nonbinary, referred to in the narration as "they", and played by a woman. Beelzebub is a woman as well, as are the Archangels Michael and Uriel, and most notably God Herself (but she's just a voice).
• Gotham changes Firefly from a white male named Garfield Lynns to a young Latina woman named Bridget Pike (played by Michelle Veintimilla).
• A zig-zagged example takes place in Hallmark Hall of Fame's 2005 miniseries Hercules. In this adaptation, the Nemean Lion is a male animal, but it can turn into a beautiful woman in order to seduce their enemies into letting their guard down. Then again, the miniseries fuses this character with the Theban Sphynx, so the monster is probably female after all, only that its true form looks like a male lion.
• Red Dragon's male reporter Freddie Lounds becomes the female reporter Fredricka Lounds in the TV adaptation Hannibal. In the same show, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Alan Bloom becomes Alana Bloom and is given some angsty UST with Will Graham.
• The Hardy Boys (2020): Biff Hooper, a teenage boy in the novels, is made into a teenage girl in the Hulu series.
• Hawaii Five-0 makes Kono a woman (renamed Kona, but still nicknamed "Kono"). She's played by Grace Park, who was previously best known as the gender-flipped Boomer in Battlestar Galactica (2003).
• It Happened One Christmas (1977) is a TV-Movie Gender Flip of It's a Wonderful Life starring Marlo Thomas. Played completely straight.
• High Fidelity: Rob, originally a man in the book, film and musical is made a woman for the series.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Antoinette Brown (a woman) is based on Antoine (a man) from The Vampire Chronicles, a musician (although she's more precisely a singer) who becomes Lestat de Lioncourt's lover and is later turned into a vampire.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia spoofs the trope in "The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies' Reboot", where Dee leads a delegation of the show's female characters in rehashing the concept of a previous Episode on a Plane. Artemis keeps complaining that the idea is lazy and suggesting that they do something new instead.
• The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story gender-bends Bagheera - and Bagheera alone - so that s/he's a female for the duration of a movie. This is probably so that Mowgli can have a mother-figure without adding in Mother Wolf, the she-wolf from the book, but it can be a little odd for a kid only familiar with the Disney version.
  • It's not the first time that Bagheera was a female. The Soviet series Adventures of Mowgli did the same. Due to how Bagheera has a feminine pronunciation in Russian.
• Mrs. Lee from Kim's Convenience was a man named Mr. Lee in the original play.
• In Krypton, the terrorist Jax-Ur is an attractive woman in her 40s instead of an old man.
• Legend of the Seeker: In the books, everyone refers to the Creator as "he". Here, it's the opposite, and her (apparent) human avatar is a woman.
• Let the Right One In: Eli in the novel is a castrated boy. Eleanor is a girl.
• Lockwood & Co. (2023): Pamela Joplin was Albert Joplin in the book series, while Fairfax's assistant Ellie was a big hulking male thug named Grebe.
• In Lost in Space (2018), Dr. Zachary Smith is now a woman played by Parker Posey. In a subversion, it actually turns out that "Dr. Smith" is a con woman who stole the identity of this continuity's Zachary Smith.
• Lovecraft Country has a few examples, such as George and Hippolyta's son Horace becoming their daughter Dee, and Caleb Braithwaite becoming Christina Braithwaite.
• Lucifer (2016):
  • The angel Remiel is a white man in the comics, but is depicted as an Asian woman in the show.
  • Gabriel is also changed from a white male to an Ambiguously Brown woman.
• In MacGyver (1985), the title character took his orders from Pete Thornton. In the reboot, this role is filled by Patricia Thornton until she's discovered to be a mole for the enemy, arrested, and replaced by Matty Webber.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the Flag-Smasher is a woman named Karli Morgenthau rather than a man named Karl Morgenthau.
  • In Hawkeye (2021), Detective Rivera is a man, rather than a woman.
  • Jeryn Hogarth, a male lawyer in the comics, is played by Carrie-Anne Moss in Jessica Jones (2015), with the character becoming "Jeri Hogarth" instead. Still attracted to women, though.
  • Zigzagged with Moon Knight (2022). While Layla El-Faouly is loosely based on Marc Spector's wife, Marlene, she also becomes a female version of The Scarlet Scarab. Her last name "Faouly" is a reference to the Abdul & Mehemet Faoul, who used the alias in the comics.
• The Japanese series Miss Sherlock is an update of Sherlock Holmes set in modern day Tokyo. Sherlock becomes Sara "Sherlock" Futaba, while Watson becomes Wato Tachibana.
• Missing (2012) (female secret agent searches for her kidnapped son) seems to be a gender-flipped TV version of Taken (male ex-secret agent searches for his kidnapped daughter).
• In-universe example: In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk and the Actor", there's a movie adaptation being made of the Steve Wagner case (in "Mr. Monk and the Astronaut"). In this movie, Monk is played by method actor David Ruskin (Stanley Tucci), Natalie is played by a blonde actress, and Captain Stottlemeyer is a cameo appearance by Peter Weller. As for Randy Disher, he was wholly expecting Brad Pitt to be portraying him in the movie. Instead, Randy is replaced with a gorgeous brunette actress who becomes a love interest for Captain Stottlemeyer. The real Stottlemeyer and Disher don't know this when they show up on the set to watch a rehearsal, leading to a very awkward moment when the actors lean in for a kiss.
  Captain Leland Stottlemeyer: That never happened.
  Lt. Randall Disher: Not even once.
• Monkey, an adaptation of Journey to the West, changed the gender of certain characters: Tripitaka is now a woman, Buddha is a goddess and Guanyin a god.
• The BBC's 2012 Setting Update of Nicholas Nickleby has Nick working at a Bleak Abyss Retirement Home called Dotheolds Hall, in place of the Boarding School of Horrors Dotheboys Hall. Smike, the "simple" boy Nicholas befriends and rescues from the place, becomes a senile old lady named Mrs. Smike.
• In The Nightmare Room episode "My Name Is Evil", the protagonist is male when she was female in the original story. The protagonist's peers were similarly gender flipped.
• Once Upon a Time changes Jack the Giant Killer to Jacqueline the Giant Killer.
• In One Piece (2023), Sham, one of Kuro's minions, in a woman, while her manga counterpart is a man.
• The Outer Limits (1963): In "I, Robot", Dr. Charles Link's closest living relative is his niece Nina. In the 1939 short story "The Trial of Adam Link, Robot" by Eando Binder on which it is based, his closest relative is his nephew Tom.
• Part of Me: In both El cuerpo del deseo and En cuerpo ajeno, it was an older man who inhabited the body of a younger man; here, it's an older woman inhabiting the body of a younger woman.
• Power Rangers: The fullest effects of this trope are best seen in the seasons that are actual adaptations of the source shows including character portrayals, though for some instances, this trope applies only in combat when the Ranger adaptation would only use fight footage rather than adapting episode plots.
  • When Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger was "remade" into Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the male Tiger Ranger became the female Yellow Ranger in order to have two female Rangers instead of just one. This practice started a trend for Yellow Rangers when four later Super Sentai shows were adapted into Power Rangers seasons: the male Yellow Rangers from Gingaman, Gogo-V, Timeranger and Gaoranger were turned into females in their corresponding adaptations (Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, and Wild Force). This practice would cause inconsistencies between the imported Japanese footage and the locally-filmed new footage, in which the Yellow Ranger would switch from having a masculine figure in one scene to having a feminine one in the next.
  • Tsuruhime, the Ninja Sentai Kakuranger White Ranger, underwent heavy Decomposite Character treatment. Of the three characters to take on her roles, two (Alien Ranger Delphine and MMPR Katherine) were still women, while her role as team leader and one of her Zords went to the male Tommy Oliver.
  • Katie from Power Rangers Time Force was made similar to Domon from Timeranger, although many of the latter's traits were given to Lucas and Trip. From what was left, Domon's nostalgia for sumo wrestling competitions got adapted as Katie missing her family, a much more emotional and feminine intake on the feeling; similarly, the subplot with Domon's relationship with a female photographer who discovered his identity was changed to a one-off deal between Katie and a male photographer who unmasked her that didn't go anywhere, due to males pursuing relationships being less common (and to make room for focus on the Rangers who wore any shade of red).
  • Taylor from Power Rangers Wild Force, on the other hand, was almost identical to Gaku from Gaoranger in terms of background and plot, the only major differences being personality (Taylor was a bold Defrosting Ice Queen, Gaku was friendly from the very beginning and somewhat quirky) and rank (Taylor was a lieutenant, whereas Gaku was a soldier). As a female Lancer was proven successful the previous season, Taylor got a better end of the stick than her yellow predecessor, who was The Big Guy and therefore more expendable.
• Queen of Swords was pretty much a straight Gender Flip of Zorro, to the point that Sony sued over its resemblance to the character and its 1998 The Mask of Zorro film.^note The judge ruled against Sony, holding that both the original Zorro story and its first (1920) film adaptation were now in the public domain, and any similarities to the 1998 film were incidental.
• The crew of the Red Dwarf meet the Gender Flipped versions of themselves in a parallel universe. Although, not all of them were flipped. The Cat, the ultimate narcissist, is looking forward to meeting the feminine version of himself for... obvious reasons. However, his opposite number is a male Dog with zero dress sense.
  • Eventually, when Norman Lovett, who played Holly, left, they just hired Hattie Hayridge, who played his Gender Flip Hilly and said that Holly got a sex change to look like Hilly.
  • Captain Hollister is a man in the TV series, and a woman in the tie-in novels.
  • In the second pilot for the US version, the Cat was played by Terry Farrell (who would go on to be Jadzia in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) as a "feline warrior woman". (The original pilot had Hinton Battle playing the role much as Danny John-Jules did.) In the end, the American remake never aired anyway.
• Revenge (2011), a modern-day reimagining of The Count of Monte Cristo, gender-flips the protagonist Edmond Dantes to be Emily Thorne. Rather than having been framed herself like Edmond, Emily is the daughter of a man who was framed and falsely imprisoned.
• In the anthology series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, one episode adapts Robert Barr's "The Absent-Minded Coterie". The clever Mr. Macpherson becomes the equally clever Miss Mackail.
• Djaq in Robin Hood is a Gender Flip of the Saracen outlaw seen in Robin of Sherwood (Nassir) and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Azeem). ... And Robin Hood: Men in Tights (Achoo).
• Lucky in The School Nurse Files was a boy in the original novel, but the director changed him into a girl for the series.
• The American remake of the Australian show Secrets & Lies transforms lead investigator Ian Cornielle into Andrea Cornell.
• Due to being unable to find suitable actresses, the Indian remake of Shake it Up rewrote the leads as boys.
• Sherlock:
  • Watson's brother, "H. Watson", mentioned in "The Sign of Four", becomes John's sister, Harry (short for Harriet).
  • "The Hounds of Baskerville": Dr. James Mortimer becomes Dr. Louise Mortimer.
  • Laura Lyons becomes a young, male Corporal Lyons.
  • Stapleton is a trickier case; there's a Mr. Stapleton and Miss Stapleton in the book, but only one (female) Dr. Stapleton in the programme. The plot's been changed sufficiently that you can't tell which one she's meant to be by her actions.
  • The King of Bohemia becomes an unnamed female British royal in "A Scandal in Belgravia".
  • In John's Character Blog, Dr Barnicot from "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" becomes Sally Barnicot.
  • In the actual episode "The Six Thatchers", which probably makes the above blog post Canon Discontinuity, there is a brief reference to one of the busts belonging to a Miss Orrie Harker, counterpart to the original's Horace Harker.
  • In the same episode, DI Stella Hopkins is based on Inspector Stanley Hopkins, introduced in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange".
• In the American version of Skins, most characters are transplanted from the British series except for the openly gay Maxxie. Maxxie becomes the lesbian Tea.
• In Star Trek: The Original Series, Gene Roddenberry sort of gender flipped the First Officer role, which was originally written as an emotionally distant, supremely rational Number Two (named "Number One"). NBC objected, however (not due to the casting of a female so much as the casting of the particular female, Majel Barrett, who happened to be Roddenberry's mistress at the time.) While different in several ways (most obviously, being an alien), Mr. Spock essentially assumed both her role as First Officer and her rationality and lack of emotion.
• Supergirl (2015):
  • Dr. Emil Hamilton is changed to Dr. Amelia Hamilton.
  • N'or Cott was a male Martian in the comics, but is briefly mentioned in "Rebirth" with female pronouns.
• In Superman & Lois, General Hardcastle from the 90s cartoon is a woman.
• The CBS All Access adaptation of The Stand (2020) changed the Rat Man into the Rat Woman.
• When a Revival of The Time Tunnel was attempted in 2002, male scientist Dr. Tony Newman was changed to female scientist Dr. Toni Newman.
• The Umbrella Academy (2019): In the comics, Vanya is a cis woman. In the show, Viktor comes out as a trans man in Season 3 due to Elliot Page's own gender transition.
• In the books of The Vampire Diaries, Elena had a 4-year-old sister. In the TV show, she has a teenage brother. The boarding house Stefan stayed in was also owned by an elderly woman instead of Stefan's and Damon's "uncle".
• This isn't unique to Power Rangers either. Priest Poe from Space Sheriff Shaider was a transvestite, but his VR Troopers equivalent was a woman named Despera.
• The Walking Dead (2010) does this to a few notable characters from the comics:
  • The male Dr. Stevens from the comics subverts this. His name is given to a woman, but it turns out that he's a Decomposite Character, and Dr. Stevens' Character Development from the comics is given to Milton Mamet, who is also male.
  • Twins Ben and Billy become sisters Lizzie (older) and Mika (younger), respectively. Ben does appear beforehand, though.
  • In Season 5, Alexandria Safe-Zone's first couple Douglas and Regina Monroe, respectively, are introduced as Deanna and Reg Monroe.
• Warehouse 13 plays with this trope; H.G. Wells is split into two people; the real H.G. Wells is Helena G. Wells, the genius inventor, adventurer, and warehouse agent. The man recognized as H. G. Wells is her older brother Charles, who chronicled her adventures using her abbreviated name as a pen name.
• The Warrior Nun Netflix series changes Julian Salvius to Jillian Salvius.
• Will & Grace. Will wanted to stage an all-male rendition of Ben-Hur titled "Ben-Him". Grace mentioned her mother appeared as "Millie Loman" in "Death of a Sales Lady". Grace's mother also mentions not even wanting to audition for 'The Ice-Person Cometh'.
• The title character in NBC's live broadcast of The Wiz is played by Queen Latifah:
  Dorothy: The Wiz is...
  Cowardly Lion: ...a fraud!
  Tinman: ...and a woman!
  Dorothy: And what's wrong with being a woman?
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • In "The Hitch-Hiker", the protagonist is a woman named Nan Adams. In The Orson Welles Show radio play by Lucille Fletcher on which it was based, the protagonist is a man named Ronald Adams. Fletcher was not pleased by this change. Furthermore, in the radio version, Ronald picks up a woman and briefly gives her a lift, but she leaves after he tries to run over the hitch-hiker. In the television version, Nan gives a lift to a male sailor, who leaves for the same reason.
  • In "To Serve Man", a translator named Betty discovers the true meaning of the Kanamit book To Serve Man. In the short story by Damon Knight, it is a man named Gregori.
  • In "Four O'Clock", Oliver Crangle's parrot is a male named Pete. In the short story by Price Day, the parrot is a female named Pet.
  • In "Mute", the telepathic child is a girl named Ilse Nielsen while the Wheelers have lost their daughter Sally. In the short story by Richard Matheson, the telepathic child is a boy named Paal Nielsen while the Wheelers have lost their son David.
  • In "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville", Satan appears to William J. Feathersmith in the form of Miss Devlin. In the short story "Blind Alley" by Malcolm Jameson, Satan (most commonly called His Nibs) assumes a male form with the conventional appearance of "the vermilion anthropoid modified by barbed tail, cloven hoofs, horns and a wonderful sardonic leer."
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In "Dead Woman's Shoes", Maddie Duncan is possessed by the spirit of a murdered woman named Susan Montgomery when she puts on her expensive high heels. In the original episode "Dead Man's Shoes", the murdered gangster Dane's personality takes control of a homeless man named Nate Bledsoe when he puts on his two-tone black and white shoes.
  • In "To See the Invisible Man", Mitchell Chaplin meets an invisible woman who refuses to talk to him during his own sentence of invisibility. He later acknowledges her presence once he has completed his sentence. In the short story by Robert Silverberg, the other invisible person was a man.
  • In "Shadow Play", Adam Grant's defense attorney Erin Jacobs goes to the district attorney Mark Ritchie over her concerns that Adam may be telling the truth about all of them being characters in his recurring nightmare about being executed. In the original episode, the matter was first raised by the newspaper editor Paul Carson.
  • In "The Cold Equations", the Ship's Record clerk is a woman. In the short story by Tom Godwin, the clerk is a man.

---