Gender Flip / Western Animation

Examples of Gender Flip in Western Animation.

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• In The Amazing World of Gumball, when Nicole, her children and Larry are trying to chase Richard to prevent him from delivering the next pizza in time, so that Larry can fire him and prevent the fabric of the universe from being completely torn apart, the more they get close to him, the more they are affected by his universe-tearing power. In a brief instance, they become subjected to a gender flip, among other reality distortions such as a body swap or a realistic rendering of their cartoony selves.
• The Adventure Time "Fionna and Cake" episodes (one per season since the fourth season) do this to pretty much every character in the show (except for the canonically agender BMO), including the theme song singer.
• In The Animals of Farthing Wood animated series, Owl, Weasel, Kestrel and Adder, who were males in the books, were changed to females. Confusingly, Kestrel has male plumage.
  • Due to the fact that Adder, Weasel and Owl were females in the TV series, their love interests (who were females in the books) got their genders-swapped too, with them becoming males.
• Animaniacs:
  • The creators couldn't get the rights to use Screwy Squirrel from Tex Avery MGM Cartoons, and thus, the equally violent Slappy Squirrel was born.
  • The Warners were also originally three brothers, but the third was sort of uninteresting, so she became a girl to add something new.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Fans often joke that the roles of the Evil Overlord's son and daughter on the Evil Overlord List are gender flipped with Zuko and Azula. The Nick website also suggests Ozai and Zuko are a rare Gender Flip of the Fairest of Them All trope.
  • The series also has two developmental gender flips: Toph and Azula both started as male characters (the latter being called "Prince Azul", and initially having a much smaller part that didn't come up until the end). The former gets a reference in The Ember Island Players, among many, many other in-jokes. The original male design for Toph went on to be reused for Avatar Roku's Earthbending teacher.
• Barbie gets some meatier roles via Gender Flip in:
  • The Princess and the Pauper, a girls' video based on Barbie dolls.
  • Barbie and the Three Musketeers (Barbie as an Action Girl!)
  • Barbie in A Christmas Carol (Ebenezer Scrooge is now an Victorian-era opera diva named Eden Starling)
• The Batman
  • Gotham mayor Marion Grange changed to a male, despite the comic version of the character being a woman. This was mostly so that the creators could cast Adam West in the part.
  • Vulture of the Terrible Trio was made into a woman due to the comic book version of the group consisting of nothing but men.
• In the original pilot of Bob's Burgers Tina was a boy named Daniel. This is particularly humourous considering the voices and personalities of both characters are identical.
• In-universe example: The Danger Mouse episode "A Loo to a Kill" is set during the filming of a Danger Mouse movie, in which DM plays himself, and Penfold is played by Scarlett Johamster (and Promoted to Love Interest).
• In DC Super Hero Girls, Harley Quinn's pet hyenas are girls named Lucy and Ethel instead of boys named Bud and Lou.
• A particularly demented example occurs in Drawn Together on the episode "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special" where the characters, in an attempt to help Xandir prepare for revealing his homosexuality to his parents, role play as Xandir's parents (among other random roles). Eventually even this fake family has to see a therapist (Woldoor), who suggests that said role playing family role play yet again. This ends with Captain Hero being a meek, feminine housewife, Toot being a homophobic blue-collar father, and Xandir becoming a prostitute for Japanese businessmen.
• In Fantastic Four: The Animated Series, Lavinia Forbes, the Baxter Building landlady who doesn't much like having a superhero team in her building but can't evict them, is a flip of Walter Collins, the Baxter Building landlord from early Fantastic Four comics, who doesn't much like having a superhero team in his building but can't evict them.
• In the 90s cartoon version of Flash Gordon, Flash's ally Prince Thun of the Lion People became Princess Thundar.
• Gargoyles was originally going to have Broadway as a female, but Executive Meddling didn't like the idea of an overweight female protagonist. It's worth noting that the clan was also originally going to be led by a female named Dakota, but she was considered uninteresting, so they reimagined her as Demona and created Goliath instead.
• In Gerry Anderson's New Captain Scarlet, Seymour Griffiths (Code Name: Lt. Green) is replaced by Serena Lewis (also codenamed Lt. Green).
• G.I. Joe: Resolute reimagined Dial Tone as a woman. On the subject as to why, Warren Ellis, who wrote it, said that Hasbro insisted a random tech he gave a lot of dialogue to be a named Joe and literally said that he picked Dial Tone "because it amused me."
• Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child occasionally did this to the characters, along with changing the stories to be more multiracial than the typically European originals. For example The Prince and the Pauper became "The Princess and the Pauper".
• Ram Man from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) is reimagined into Ram Ma'am in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021). Mosquitor is likewise remade into Mos'quita-ra.
• Green Ghost and Shrinking Ray are both women in Invincible (2021), when they were male in the source comics. The latter had her name changed to the more feminine Shrinking Rae to match.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures depicts the Mad Thinker, a middle-aged or elderly male in the comics, as a teenage girl.
• In the original Inspector Gadget, MAD Cat was male. In the 2015 reboot, MAD Cat is female.
• Used heavily in Jellystone!, switching numerous characters who were originally male to female. Among them are Jabberjaw, Augie Doggie, Squiddly Diddly, Brain, Choo-Choo, & Spook (now Spooky) of Top Cat, Loopy De Loop, and Yappee of Yippee, Yappee, and Yahooey.
• Johnny Test: One episode had Johnny get into a Show Within a Show involving "An annoying younger sibling who pesters his twin brother mad scientists for experiments". None of the characters can place the similarities. The episode ends with Johnny and his Expy hanging out while both sets of twins have a double date.
• In the early planning stages of the Justice League animated series, a female version of Cyborg was supposed to have been part of the main cast. Test footage of her even exists. The character design later appeared in the comics as Cyborg's Evil Counterpart and niece of his Love Interest.
• In Justice League Unlimited, the second Queen from the Royal Flush Gang is a male Crossdresser rather than a woman. Not quite a straight example, though, since the Gang itself tends to have a revolving roster... For that matter, in both versions of the RFG seen in the series, we have Ace (the only carryover member) as a young preteen girl; in all comics before this and most adaptations (including distant-sequel Batman Beyond), Ace is a male character (and is often depicted as a cyborg or android with Super-Strength).
• Little Miss Scatterbrain and Little Miss Stubborn have become Mr. Scatterbrain and Mr. Stubborn in The Mr. Men Show.
• My Adventures with Superman:
  • In the comics, the Newsboy Legion was an entirely male group. Here, members Walter "Flippa Dippa" Johnson, Anthony "Gabby" Rodriguez, and Patrick "Scrapper" MacGuire are reimagined as the now female Flip Johnson, Gaby, and Patti, respectively, resulting in the team's name being changed to the Newskid Legion as well.
  • Male comics character Ron Troupe has been changed to the female Ronnie Troupe for this show.
  • Heat Wave is male in the comics, but appears as a woman in this show. While there is a female version of Heat Wave in the comics, the version seen in the show is meant to be an adaptation of the Mick Rory incarnation of the character.
  • An in-universe case of this trope occurs with the appearance of the League of Lois Lanes, which includes a male alternate of Lois named Lewis Lane and a female alternate of Jimmy named Jalana Olsen.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic did this to the Gen 3 pony Star Swirl, who was mentioned but not seen until his appearance in Season 7, and called Star Swirl the Bearded.
• Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed: The Rock Special replaces the mole rats' patriarch Grand-pah from the original book with a matriarch named Grand-mah.
• In The New Batman Adventures, Calendar Man's counterpart is a former model called Calendar Girl (name aside, though, she's a very different character).
• Playdate with Winnie the Pooh: While Rabbit was mostly male in all other incarnations of the franchise, he was changed to female in this short-form musical TV series.
• When they are introduced in the second season of Winx Club, the Pixies were all female. But in the Spin-Off series Pop Pixie (that is an Alternate Universe), some of them who had significant roles in the original series (Digit, Livy, Zing, and Jolly) have had gender alterations and are male now.
  • It is also confirmed by the creator that Helia was supposed to be a girl, hence why he has a female name. It's likely he was supposed to be the new 6th Winx fairy (as well as Flora's best friend), but his gender was changed so he could become a love interest.
• The animated adaptation of the Redwall book Martin the Warrior changed the gender of the hedgehog character Pallum from male to female. This was because it was thought there were not enough female characters in the main cast.
• Zig-zagged in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Grand Finale appears to reveal that The Foot Recruit, who's female, is a gender flipped version of Casey Jones, but the real deal debuts in the Big Damn Movie, enlisting the Turtles' help in preventing his Bad Future from coming to pass who reveals that the former is his mother.
• In Robin Hood: Mischief in Sherwood, the role of Will Scarlet is filled by a girl named Scarlett in order to avert The Smurfette Principle.
• The CGI Rupert cartoon flipped Pong Ping and Ferdy Fox into females, renaming them "Ping Pong" and "Frieda" respectively.
• Sad Cat, an early (and forgotten) Ralph Bakshi character, was a gender-flipped version of "Cinderella" (with evil step-brothers instead of evil step-sisters, and the fairy godmother being a male "Gadmouse"), a rare female-to-male example of this trope.
• Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century has Inspector Lestrade as a female (she's a descendant of the male Lestrade from the original Sherlock Holmes stories, and also a major fan of the master detective in general).
• When The Simpsons puts their cast members in another story to parody the original, occasionally Lisa will be given a role that was originally male. For instance, Lisa was given equivalent roles for Sherlock Holmes, Johnny "Connie" Appleseed, and Amadeus (as Sally Eri).
• Implied with Kaa from the animated short Welcome to the Club, she has a female voice, presumably with the intent of homaging Scarlett Johansson's performance in the 2016 film.
• Azrael, the cat from The Smurfs (1981) was female in the comic books, but is male in the TV show, later comics, and live-action movie.
• Despite not appearing in She-Ra: Princess of Power aside from being mentioned in the series bible and relegated to a toyline-exclusive character, Double Trouble (who is female) is gender flipped to non-binary for She-Ra and the Princesses of Power along with using "they/them" pronouns.
  • Additionally, the peacock-themed seer Peekablue is male in the reboot, thus averting his original-series counterpart's Animal Gender-Bender. He is appropriately a Bishōnen...at least, if Double Trouble's impersonation of him is accurate; the real Peekablue never actually appears.
  • The Star Sisters also became the Star Siblings, with Jewelstar being male. Interestingly enough, the Star Sisters and Princess Peekablue were namedropped in the "Princess Prom" episode (though they didn't appear on-screen), and Double Trouble was visible in some background shots of the same episode.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series: The episode "Make a Wish" is based on "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man!" in The Amazing Spider-Man #248. The kid who collects Spider-Man is Maria Taina Elizando rather than Tim Harrison (although she mentions a brother named Timmy).
• Spidey and His Amazing Friends changes Dr. Octopus into a girl.
• Transformers: Animated:
  • Changed the character of Red Alert from The Unicron Trilogy from a male to a female for their own version of Red Alert. In fact, they originally wanted Ratchet to be female and have Red Alert's name, but the final version of the show changed Ratchet back into a male, and made Red Alert a separate character.
    • Interestingly, Ratchet was intended to be female in the original Marvel comics. But Executive Meddling made him male to the Transformers toyline's "no gender" rule and being for boys.
  • Also, the comic story "The Stunticon Job" depicts the Animated version of Drag Strip as a femme.
• Transformers: Cyberverse:
  • Cosmos is reinterpreted as female rather than male.
  • This continuity's version of Swoop, introduced in the TV movie The Immobilizers, is female when all prior incarnations of the Dinobot were male.
  • A few of the Seekers had their genders changed as well. Nova Storm and Skywarp were male in G1 and female in Cyberverse. Acid Storm was supposed to follow suit but was animated with both the male and female Seeker body types so the writers decided to make them non-binary.
  • The Quintesson Judge has five faces and normally all faces are presented as male while here two are women whilst the other three are men.
  • Clobber's exisence is due to this. She's clearly designed as a female version of the Animated character Lugnut, and in fact was intended to be, but Hasbro executives forced the show's crew to rename and make her a separate character.
• Transformers: EarthSpark:
  • Just like in Cyberverse, Skywarp and Nova Storm appear as female robots.
  • The Decepticon Cassettes Frenzy and Ravage also female in this continuity.
• In The Mondo TV version of The Trash Pack, as a way to give a gender balance to the main Trashies, Scum Gum, Scabby Cat, and Sour Snail were made female, as opposed to the male pronouns they were given in the toyline. When Scum Gum and Sour Snail returned in the webseries, they were reverted back to male.
• The "Spider-Verse" arc in Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) introduces Petra Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Girl, a teen girl version of Peter Parker from an alternate universe. Petra's Earth also contains female versions of Nick Fury (Nicole Fury), Harry Osborn (Harriet Osborn), J. Jonah Jameson (J. Joanne Jameson) and Norman Osborn (Norma Osborn).
• In Voltron: Legendary Defender, it's revealed that the series' version of Pidge is really a girl named Katie Holt. She's pulling a Sweet Polly Oliver to join the Galactic Garrison and locate her missing brother, since she was banned from their facility for breaking in one too many times.
• The cartoon version of Watership Down has the book character Blackberry made from a buck to a doe. Many fans were displeased about this, since half the plot of the original is about the fact that they need does to establish a successful warren.
• Wolverine and the X-Men (2009):
  • Arclight, a woman in the comics, was remade into a man. Word of God is that they didn't feel comfortable having Cyclops violently confront a woman while on a warpath as he did to the show's Arclight when he asked about Sinister's location, believing he has Jean.
  • Master Mold is female. Of course, Master Mold has always been a robot that gave birth to other robots, but he was previously referred to as male anyway.
• Spyke from X-Men: Evolution seems like a black, male version of Marrow, but Word of God is that they was a complete coincidence. The show's creator claimed he had never heard of Marrow prior to working on the show, which is not too implausible given the character's relative obscurity.
• In Young Justice (2010):
  • Red Inferno and Red Torpedo have their genders flipped from the original comics. This is because the show establishes that the two were originally the Golden Age heroes Red Torpedo and Firebrand, and thus their genders needed to match their 40's counterparts (Greg even commented on this, including his confusion at the original change).
  • Asami "Sam" Koizumi is a female version of Samurai from Superfriends.
  • The Newsboy Legion is reimagined as the Newsgirl Legion, with Tommy Thompkins changed to Tommi Thompkins, Tony "Big Words" Rodriguez to Antonia "Big Words" Rodriguez and John "Gabby" Gabrielli to Gabi Gabrielli.
  • Rictus is also changed from a man to a woman.
  • The Child from Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld appears in the fourth season, but with their human form now that of a little girl rather than a boy.
• In the original Pet Alien toyline, Shank and Dank were both male. In the show, Shank is instead female while Dank stays male.