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This is what would have happened if Satoshi hadn’t been spirited away.
I can vouch that [those games] are a result of fantasies by people who don't actually have a younger sister. — Sasahara (setting the record straight), Genshiken
Nothing adds that certain je ne sais quoi to a storyline like a romantic or sexual attraction between siblings. Most of the time it may be merely implied, but sometimes it's laid out right in the open for the viewer to see. Its presence in a story usually adds a great deal of emotional intensity.
Frequently actual incest is avoided through the device of siblings who aren't really — they're fostered, or step-sibs, or adopted. Thus, while in arbitrary terms of relationship they may be brother or sister, in "true" terms of blood they are not, and may pursue their chosen target with relative impunity. Often it's just an extreme version of the Unlucky Childhood Friend setup; male and female characters who normally couldn't cohabitate or possibly even interact normally with each other are 'forced' to but meet with an arbitrary contrivance preventing them from developing past it. The only difference being the audience is more likely to accept the latter contrivance as believable.
Many sociologists believe that the instinctual aversion to incest is caused by familiarity and growing up in proximity rather than some sort of recognition of heritage (the Westermarck effect ). Many close tribal and small village communities marry outside of the tribe or village because of this. This would also explain why brother-sister incest was possible among Egyptian royals (where the girls were raised separately from the boys and didn't even meet until after puberty), while some European royal families such as the Valois faced extinction because the king and queen couldn't bear to touch each other - not because they were that closely related, but because they'd been brought up together since early childhood and thought of each other as siblings.
Although the Japanese have just as much of an incest taboo as any other culture, there does not seem to be any automatic assumption of tragedy surrounding incestuous relationships in anime, as there would be in most Western productions. It may be shown as sad, improper, and/or perhaps even reprehensible, but participants are no more likely to come out to a bad end than any other characters in the story. A supposed Japanese legend which states that star-crossed lovers are reborn as siblings probably has something to do with it as well.
It is also very common in Japanese works, at least, to see a girl address a boy she's interested in as onii-sama, the ultra-respectful form of... 'big brother'. For example, in Mai-HiME, Munakata Shiho addresses Tate Yuuichi in exactly this way, and harbors an obsessive desire for him that leads to some fairly serious jealousy of her rival (Tokiha Mai). This is also a common trope of bishoujo games. Of course, this is more a Japanese language trope; onii-sama or onee-sama ("big sister") is a fairly standard thing to call someone older than you that you respect.
Compare Incest Is Relative, Only Child Syndrome. See also Creepy Twins, Twincest, Not Blood Siblings, Kissing Cousins, Big Brother Complex.
Contrast with Parental Incest, where the parent/child power dynamics can make it even Squicker.
Needless to say, doesn't help the Like Brother And Sister argument at all.
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Sister Princess and its "sequel" series, Sister Princess Repure, both have incestuous subtexts, but the subtext surfaces clearly in Repure: in the very first episode, Karen recounts how she decided that she would be her brother's bride, despite society's disapproval of such a thing. In the original series it is less visible, although still present — one sister (Chikage) was Wataru's lover in a previous life , Sakuya openly flirts with him (Rin Rin and Mamoru are more subtle hiding their flirting under the disguise of admiration for their Brother), and all twelve spend one episode making mock wedding dresses so they can play at being his "bride".
- Onegai Twins has what may or may not be an incestuous Love Triangle, between a boy and two girls who both claim to be his twin sister. To add to the blurring of the line, the girl who turns out to actually be his twin is different between the anime and the novelization. Interestingly, though, the setup of the plot clearly steers away from this: whoever turns out to be the twin must step out.
- That said, both girls kiss Maiku before it's over, so be ready for some Squick. The possibility of being his sister keeps them from getting really aggressive, but that's all it does; their ambitions are not deterred.
- Meanwhile, perhaps to provide contrast, there's a minor character (Matagu) who's blatantly attracted to his little sister Haruko.
- Magikano plays with the trope: The main character's oldest sister has a downright obsessive love for him (one that is definitely not simply sisterly) even to the point where she claims she will marry him and becomes ultra possessive whenever any other girl shows any interest. However he doesn't seem to have any interest in her. The arrival of the protagonist's Magical Girlfriend makes her intensely jealous and always vying for his attention.
- Despite the show's fanservicey roots, it's never portrayed as actually romantic or sexual though. The manga on the other hand...
- In Marmalade Boy, Yuu and Miki become step-siblings when their parents marry (with both sets of parents splitting up and marrying each other), and then find themselves growing attracted to each other. Later in the series, they find evidence that they are actually blood siblings after all; before they learn that this was all a big misunderstanding (said evidence wasn't referring to Yuu, but to his mom's still-born child), they decide that they would marry regardless.
- Interestingly, the Mangaka (according to her notes on the series) originally planned for them to discover that they were blood siblings and split up for good
, eventually hitching up with their unrequited love interests in a Distant Finale. Her producer convinced her that it wouldn't go down well with the fans...
- Angel Sanctuary features a romantic relationship between the main character, Setsuna, and his (real, not adopted, foster or step-) sister Sara. Rochiel wanted this with Alexiel, but she wasn't having any of it.
- In Maze Megaburst Space, not only is the central couple a pair of blood siblings, and not only is the central plot their successful and unrepentant plot to be together, but it goes even beyond that...
- In Revolutionary Girl Utena, not only does Touga's sister Nanami harbor an intense crush on her older brother, but she also has a near-insane jealousy of anyone or anything that might attract more of his attention and love than she does. There is also the strange love-hate relationship between Kozue Kaoru and her twin brother Miki, best displayed in the bizarre bathtub-and-straight-razor scene from the Utena movie. Most important to the plot, though, is the semi-consensual relationship between Anthy and her manipulative and domineering brother Akio.
- Love Hina's most recent segment, the miniseries Love Hina Again, features Keitaro's little step-sister Kanako, who wants to claim him for herself. Throughout her attempted seduction of him she always refers to him as "big brother"...even when half-naked and cuddling up to him.
- In the manga, it's discussed at length that they are Not Blood Siblings - but Keitaro treats Kanako as if they are. As such, he's remarkably freaked out by Kanako's attempts at seduction.
- DC Da Capo features another almost-incest relationship between a boy and his foster sister.
- In Soul Taker, Runa wanted to marry her twin brother Kyousuke, who declined the honor.
- In an unusually negative scene, there is a pseudo-incestuous rape sequence in Ayashi No Ceres.
- It also contains a subversion and plot device of this trope, seeing as Shisou Mikage, who is still madly in love with his wife Ceres, is reincarnated as Aki Mikage. Aki's twin sister Aya is the reincarnation of Ceres, and she is eventually led to killing him to save both herself and Ceres.
- Koi Kaze plays this trope straight with two blood siblings who haven't seen each other since childhood. It's arguably one of the most realistic and emotionally powerful portrayals of an incestuous relationship.
- The sum of the plot in Boku wa Imouto ni Koi o Suru ("I'm In Love With My Little Sister." Talk about Exactly What It Says On The Tin.)
- Alti in Simoun is obsessed with her sister Kaimu, and tries to prod her into choosing to be female so that Alti can become male and "protect" her.
- They also have sex once during the course of the show (long story) and in the Distant Finale they are living together even though they both chose to remain female.
- Delphine from Last Exile has a similar fascination with her brother Dio.
- Ali and En in the anime-only "Makaiju" ("Doom Tree") arc of Sailor Moon. This is explainable to an extent, however: not only are they the only surviving members of their species, but they are "children" of a tree, which used what remained of its powers to "grow" them after the rest of the species was destroyed in warfare; thus making them "siblings" in roughly the same sense as Adam and Eve.
- Lampshaded once by Makoto, when "Natsumi" bitches "Seijuurou" out for letting Mako offer him a part of her lunch. She's squicked and says something by the lines of "Wow... these siblings! So weird!"
- Dokkoida?! deliberately plays with this trope since Suzuo's Mission Controller, Tampopo, disguises herself as his sister, Kosuzu, to blend into Earth society. The eighth episode in particular parodies this trope to the point of full-fledged Deconstruction: seeing a soap opera using this trope makes all of the Pretty Freeloaders in the apartment the characters live in worry about Kosuzu/Tampopo's relationship with Suzuo — including Kosuzu. Suzuo doesn't notice a thing, and manages to restore the status quo with a Dunno Whats Going On But speech at the end.
- Hansel and Gretel from Black Lagoon, even though it's not clear which of them is which, or if they're even different genders.
- Genshiken pokes fun at this, with Sasahara, who actually has a sister, delivering the above line.
- Tiriel and Sorath in Shakugan No Shana have an incestuous relationship, though in this case it's portrayed in a wholly negative (and downright disgusting) light. What they are muddles the water, but only somewhat. Shana seems to take more offense at the French kissing than anything else.
- In Tsukihime, Shiki's sister has a very possessive crush on him. Parodied in numerous doujinshis and official omakes, including one where Ciel points out the hopelessness of the crush. Shiki's feelings are purely platonic. And a large part sheer terror—Akiha is tsuntsundere at best and yandere at worst. Of course, they are Not Blood Siblings, and Akiha does have her own path in the Visual Novel.
- On that note, Azaka from Kara no Kyoukai also loves her brother deeply, to point where it gets in the way of her becoming friends with the series heroine Ryogi Shiki. Her love may not be the same in nature as Akiha's but since she and her brother were used as a strong basis for Akiha and Shiki, it is likely that the "love for my brother" was carried over as well.
- Though they never did anything incestuous, SHIKI hints many times that he has romantic interest in his sister Akiha. Too bad all she thinks about is her other "brother," making this trouper really feel bad for SHIKI.
- While we're on the note of Type-Moon, in Fate/Stay Night, Ilya, who is Kiritsugu's blood daughter, has quite a bit of affection which could be considered romantic for Kiritsugu's adopted son, Shirou.
- Ren and Mihato in They Are My Noble Masters have a mutual brocon-siscon relationship, and are quite supportive of each other. It's almost sweet if one is willing to look past the sibling thing. Then again, this is a show that's filled to the brim with fetishes. They do have a route together in the original h-game.
- In the same series, Shinra is very open about her sexual attraction towards Miyu, her younger sister. Worse, she sexually assaults her on numerous occasions, which is played entirely for laughs. That Miyu seems to be very ambiguous about this and that the youngest sister is actually jealous for being left out just adds to the squick-factor. Fetishes, indeed.
- The Spiral manga has a variation: Ayumu was in love with his sister-in-law even before his brother married her, and lived with her after he disappeared. Also, since all of the Blade Children have the same father, Kousuke and Ryoko's relationship, despite growing up as childhood friends rather than siblings, is incestuous. Kousuke specifically asks Ryoko not to call him 'big brother,' saying that he wants to be able to dream of being with her.
- Massively implied in ".hack//Legend of the Twilight" ( epecially in the anime, where it's played mostly straight, moreso than the manga, where it's largely played for laughs ) between protagonists Shugo and Rena that the series has become derisively known among critics as ".hack//Twincest".
- In Code Geass Lelouch admits that his half-sister Euphemia was the closest thing he had to a first love and his relationship with full-sister Nunnally is considered suspicious both by people in the actual show and by fans of the series. However, it should be noted that Lelouch is a Celibate Hero who has shown little interest in sex, despite spending plenty of time around Kallen and C.C.
- This trooper has seen many pairings between Lelouch and his siblings floating around the fandom, the most prominent aside from Lelouch/Euphemia and Lelouch/Nunnally being Schneizel/Lelouch.
- Aono in sola is obessed with her (younger, for a change) brother Yorito to the point of creating a copy of him that took enough power to leave her bed-ridden for years.
- It is heavily implied in Naru Taru that the bully Aki Honda and her older brother Yasuhito have a ... rather intense relationship.
- It's downright spelled in the manga. So much that Aki is once shown straddling Yasuhito while practically naked. Then, Oni shows up, kills Yasuhito by smashing his head on ther wall, and rapes and kills Aki as revenge for what they did to his master, Hiroko.
- Renhou and his sister Miiru in Fushigi Yuugi. In fact, their incestuous relationship got them killed by their people, and they go to the Big Bad Tenkou in hopes he'll help them stay together.
- The first episode of Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer, the Villains Of The Week were an incestuous set of twins (who were empowered by the Big Bad Evil Guy to save the dying sister) who merged into a gestalt monster "powered by love".
- Infinite Ryvius spoiler:We eventually discover that Ikumi had fallen in (that kind of) love with his Dead Older Sister.
- Kanan is Hakkai's older sister in the Saiyuki manga, although this was edited out of the anime version, and, as they had been Separated At Birth or very close to it, they weren't originally aware of it. A tie-in novel also suggested that they might be twins as well, which was approved by Word Of God.
- Miyuki Takamachi in Triangle Heart 3 Sweet Songs Forever is actually Kyoya's cousin, but adopted as his sister. In the game she's an option, though in canon he chooses to be with his childhood friend, Shinobu. Yes, this shows up in early episodes Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha; watch as Kyoya states he's going to visit Shinobu. For one second she shows jealousy, and then it's never mentioned again.
- She seemed more annoyed at his using accompanying Nanoha to visit Suzuka as an excuse to see Shinobu, given that he doesn't seem completely open about his relationship (In A's episode 9, she teases him about being able to work with Shinobu for Christmas with a cute smile on her face). Interestingly enough, Miyuki calls him "Kyou-chan" (like she did in Triangle Heart) instead of "Onii-chan", like Nanoha does, which may indicate that they're Not Blood Siblings.
- In Clannad, Tomoya's wild imagination causes him to imagine the Sunohara siblings as this when he misinterprets one of Mei's lines
.
- In True Tears what starts as a case of Big Brother Complex evolves into borderline incest when we learn that Jun has romantic feelings toward Noe, his younger sister. This trope is also averted at one point Shinchiro and Hiromi are under the impression that they are siblings but it turns out that they are not related.
- Hoshina Utau from Shugo Chara loves the resident bishonen catboy of the series, Tsukiyomi Ikuto. The thing is, her real family name is Tsukiyomi and she is Ikuto's sister, which does explain why Ikuto is so cold towards her advances — in fact, he's downright disgusted when she kisses him.
- The secret of the Kuhouin family in Kure-nai is that each girl born into the family is imprisoned in the "Inner Sanctuary" for their entire lives, for the sole purpose of bearing the children of their brothers to continue the lineage. Their very existence is kept hidden from the public, and the male members of the family marry women from outside the family just to keep up the masquerade.
- In Ghost Hound, the main character, Tarou, has a slight obsession with his sister which leads to him accusing the girl he likes of being his sister reincarnated as an explanation for why he thinks about her all the time.
- In D Gray-man, Komui's attitude toward his sister Lenalee straddles the line between a Big Brother Complex and this trope; even the other characters find it a little creepy and frequently remark on his obsession.
- Candy Boy's main theme is the yuri subtext between (fraternal) twin sisters. The lyrics in the recap video appended to the first episode proclaim that "this may be the best pairing in the history of the world". Ahem.
- Vampire Knight: Yuuki and Kaname are blood siblings in a romantic relationship. In fact, it has been stated that marriage between siblings in not uncommon between pureblood vampires: For examples, Yuuki and Kaname's parents were married siblings as well.
- Berserk subverts this somewhat, since Serpico and Farnese were in love at one point and are half-siblings, but Serpico's love becomes more brotherly after he learns that Farnese is his half sister.
- Minato and Juunichi's relationship in Akane-iro Ni Somaru Saka is seen as this by everyone despite the siblings' insistence that it's not. It turns out everyone else was spot on, because when the show ends, Minato is the one who ends up winning.
- In Mahou Shounen Majorian, Mari falls in love with the magical girl form of her brother, Masaru—which makes it kind of hard to classify.
- Axis Powers Hetalia has both the traditional brother/sister version and a Ho Yay one. On a hand, the Yandere Natalia/Belarus would love to marry her older brother Ivan/Russia (also a Yandere), which freaks him out no end. On the other, the Annoying Younger Sibling Yonsoo/South Korea isn't much more successful in getting his older brother Yao/China (and sometimes his other older brother, Kiku/Japan), to acknowledge his more-than-brotherly affection. Both cases are played for laughs.
- And let's not get into the UST and Ship Tease between former adoptive brothers Alfred/America and Arthur/England.
- At one point in the Oh My Goddess manga, a botched love potion fed to Keiichi causes any female to meet his eyes to become passionately infatuated with him — starting with his sister Megumi. She says, "Our love can transcend these foolish bonds of blood!" His horrified reaction: "Oh no it can't!" Fortunately, neutralizing the potion wipes her memory of the incident.
- In Minami Ke, Chiaki and Kana's adoration of Haruka many times looks extreme, the fact that they talk about her possessively and will scrutinize any potential love interest says something.
- in Kare Kano, Kazuma and Tsubasa simutanously get crushes on their other as their parents get married. Cue Squick from parents, Wangst from Kazuma which make him run away from home, which makes poor Tsubasa down the mental road before it gets better
- Somethinged in Fresh Pretty Cure. Miki's brother Kazuki lives with her father (her parents are separated, presumably divorced) and uses his name. She hasn't told her best friends they they're related, and in the first episode she refers to their upcoming outing as a date. The second episode focuses on one of their dates; it also features The Reveal that they're related, but you'd be forgiven for missing this detail. Eventually it's revealed that, when her friends assumed Kazuki was Miki's boyfriend, Miki went out of her way not to correct them because she thought it was cute.
- Vampire Game: It's a big, feuding Royally Screwed Up family, and brother-sister incest is the least of their problems — that couple looks downright normal in comparison, Love Makes You Crazy moments aside.
- Happy World: The explanation Takeshi uses to explain Elle's connection to him is that she's his step-sister. Cut to Takeshi exclaiming loudly to her in a classroom "We should make a baby." And they actually go halfway through the act before realising that they're not emotionally ready for it.
- As it turns out, their relationship to eachother is technically step-siblings... probably. Takeshi's mother is Elle's mother, but Elle doesn't have a father, so it's a bit complicated.
- Their child, Prayer, is eventually born... but not through normal means. Takeshi and Elle fuse their bodies, and Prayer is born when they split apart again.
- In Shoujo Sect, one of the early hentai scenes is between sisters. Momoko gets upset that she (unwittingly) and Shinobu (less so) helped set this up. The amusing thing is that if she hadn't said so, we wouldn't have known they were sisters, what with all the Onee Sama-ing that goes on at all-girl schools. Their sharing a last name is also kind of a clue, though admittedly that detail might be easy to miss.
- Ninin Ga Shinobuden has Sasuke imagining that he's the object of an Unwanted Harem. He disturbingly imagines that Shinobu is his sister.
- Onii-chan Control has the brother who fled from his younger sister because he's developed inappropriate feelings for her. Unfortunately, his younger sister is not only fully aware of these feelings, but returns them in a big way. And she's a first-rate manipulator beneath her cutesy facade, managing to track him down, get admission to the same college he goes to, and worm her way into becoming his roommate. The entire series is about him trying to avoid this trope while she tries to invoke it.
- Two examples of this, running in both directions, are present in Hatsukoi Limited. Ayumi's brother, Yuuji, is a definite siscon, and Koyoi Bessho is defined by her brother complex. Of course, they are but one small part of the Love Dodecahedron that permeates the series.
- In the spinoff of Genshiken, Kujibiki Unbalance has the main character's sister pursuing him endlessly, even going so far as to try perfume that is actually a love potion to seduce him. Instead she just succeeds in getting MC's best friend to kiss MC much to his sister's despair and anger.
- An example also occurs in Yuu Watase's pre-Fushigi Yuugi manga, Shishunki Miman Okotowari. Asuka Higuchi falls for her half-brother Manato Sudou early on in the story, and he eventually comes to reciprocate. And then they learn that they aren't blood-related after all—in a very mind-twisting way.
- In Shinkon Gattai Godannar, English pilot Knight Valentine will flirt with any female in sight, much to the consternation of Ellis, his sister and partner, who thinks he doesn't notice her. But if the way he looks at her swimsuit-clad form and the fact that he sees Ellis' face when an amnesiac Mila is hitting him with Charm Person are any indication, he does notice her in that way.
- This issue is addressed in a second season episode of Jigoku Shoujo. The incestual love in this case is one-sided, and the offending sibling is, of course, sent to hell. The episode ends on a lighter note; the aforementioned sibling is not tortured on the ferry (unlike sinners who have done worse), and there is the knowledge that the brother and sister will eventually be reunited as per the terms of the curse.
- The Manga and Anime of Kiss X Sis is Onegai Twins on steroids The basic plot is this. Keita is a 14 year old junior high school student studying for his high school entrance exams. He has two older stepsisters in high school Riko and Ako. One day his sisters decide to bring him lunch while they have free time from school and end up confessing their love to him in front of his class. To make matters worse, his mother and stepfather are completely OK with this — in fact his mother is taking bets among the neighborhood housewives on which girl he gets first!
- This troper only saw the first episode of Queens Blade, but Leina seemed quite obsessed with her sister Reina, showing flat out disappointment that she couldn't spend the night in her room.
- The original OAV series of Tenchi Muyo! is filled with incestual attractions — the whole mess basically got started when Ayeka fell in love with and was engaged to marry her elder half-brother Katsuhito/Yosho. See Incest Is Relative for full details.
- Seimei is a Love Makes You Crazy version in Loveless towards Ritsuka. To Seimei, him and Ritsuka are the only two people in the world. The fact that the two are full-blooded brothers is probably the least squicky thing about him, though.
- Silvia in Genesis of Aquarion has a pretty obvious attraction to her older brother Sirius, becoming incredibly jealous of even the slightest hint of romantic interest in other women. It seems her insistent belief that he is the reincarnated lover of the woman she is the reincarnation of has a lot to do with this. In reality, reincarnation is largely to blame, but not in the way it first seems: they are actually both reincarnated from the same person, each holding a fragment of Celiane's soul. The longing of the two halves to be united again causes Silvia's apparent crush on her brother; he doesn't feel the same way because he got stuck with the negative aspects of Celiane's soul and memories, and so sealed them away at a young age.
- In Lady Georgie!, the Plucky Girl Georgie is romantically pursued by her two adoptive brothers, Abel and Arthur. Since the three were raised together and Georgie herself didn't know she was adopted for many years... well, yeah.
- This is a catalyst for one of the storylines in Mononoke.
- In Urusei Yatsura, the Mizunokoji siblings have a one-sided version of this going on... more or less. According to their screwed up traditions, Asuka was raised in total isolation from the opposite sex, and with the terrible job her maids did in regards explaining the other sex (something worsened by her fact her first encounter with a guy was Ataru Moroboshi), she's terrified of men... except for "Big Brothers", whom her maids made out as a special, dependable, trustworthy exception to men in general. Between her phobia and her naive ignorance, she not only has a crush on her brother Tobimaro, but is constantly trying to perform deeds with him that are only appropriate between lovers. Tobimaro, meanwhile, is perfectly aware of their relationship and that the things she tries are not appropriate. The fact that their crazy mother blames Asuka's actions on him, despite the fact she was the one who arranged for Asuka to be raised the way she was, only makes things more galling for him. The fact she has Super Strength and is thus prone to crushing his bones whenever she gets frightened or romantic does not help.
- Sakurako from Sakura Gari is a scary Yandere who is incredibly possessive of her brother, the main character Souma.
Comics
- Pietro/Quicksilver, of the Marvel Universe, is extremely protective of his sister, Wanda/the Scarlet Witch, and their unusual relationship is a little more suggestive in the revamped Ultimate Marvel.
- Forget "little more suggestive". In the first issue of Ultimates 3, it's stated outright:
Wasp: You don't get it, Mister Rogers, do you? They love each other. Captain America: Of course they do. They're brother and sister. Wasp: No. It's more than that. They're in love. Captain America: But... they are brother and sister. Hawkeye: Yep. And if you think we've got problems with that Tony Stark sex video, just wait until somebody in the media figures them out.
- Given the horribly abusive and manipulative childhood their father put them through, it's not actually too psychologically unrealistic that they'd turn to each other for "comfort and joy". Amazing as it seems, the mainstream Marvel Universe versions (orphaned twice, victims of prejudice, the emotional mindfuck of Multiple Choice Past, finding out your real dad is your old Bad Boss, losing your first and second families, and finally being driven insane) had the better lives...
- Of note are the characters Wiccan (a magic-user) and Speed (a speedster) from the Young Avengers. They're supposed to be the result of Wanda making herself pregnant with demon magic when she was with the Vision, but the fact that the boys are unsure of who their father is and that Speed somehow takes after his uncle could be seen to have implications of this.
- Preacher has two families that indulge in incest, both of whom end up with deformed children: Jesse's childhood friend, Billy-Bob, only has one eye, while the inbred children of Jesus Christ are mentally retarded. The latter was intentional, as they were trying to keep the bloodline of Christ "pure". Since it's been two thousand years, that's a lot of inbred Jesus generations. Herr Starr comments on this by saying "Son of God or son of man...you can't *** your sister and expect much good to come of it."
- Top Ten has Smax and Rexa, which attempts to justify it by saying they're probably the only two half-ogres in existence, thanks to their unlikely conception. Smax is squicked by the idea, Rexa isn't. He gets over it. It's implied that because their home universe is governed by the laws of fairy tales and myth, the taboo doesn't really exist, and Smax is just being a Woobie.
- In a later issue of Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil that Men Do, it was revealed that Francis Klum who later becomes Mysterio had been repeatedly raped over the course of his life by his older brother.
- Averted in Y The Last Man where Yorick describes his relationship with his sister Hero as being "Like Luke and Leia...but without the French kissing."
- Ragdoll of the Secret Six occasionally mentions his relationship with his sister- among other activities, French kissing and prom night.
- Sister/sister incest occurs in the XXXenophile story "The Monster Under the Bed".
- X-men villains the Strucker Twins were always...er...oddly close. Close enough that when Andrea died, brother Andreas kind of went insane, wrapped the hilt of his sword in her flesh (their powers required physical contact between each other), and spent about a year running around like a maniac, demanding of everyone in sight that they revive her.
- In Grendel, Orion Assante had a lifelong consensual BSI relationship with his two sisters, who were twins. It's implied that in this series' alternate future, fear of HIV infection had so curtailed sexual relations with strangers that getting it on with one's relatives — whom, at least, one could trust not to be infected — had become grudgingly tolerated by society, provided no pregnancies resulted.
- Sometimes used as a substitute for Parental Incest in fairy tales, such as Penta of the Chopped-Off Hands.
Fan Works
- Super Smash Bros. - The Evangelion Wars: Dialga and Palkia are supposed to be brother and sister (originally brothers, but Palkia got bent). It really doesn't come off that way.
- There seems to be no sign of incest in the original book, but that didn't stop the The Chronicles of Narnia fans. The most popular pairings are Peter/Susan and Edmund/Lucy, with Peter/Edmund and Edmund/Susan all very popular as well. "Blame the chemistry between the actors." As you can imagine, given the Christian origins of the stories, this is a large division for the fanbase.
- This troper is not really surprised about the incest fans. After the movie, her own little brother asked her if Peter would marry Susan and Edmund would marry Lucy, despite of the fact that he knew they were related. She had to explain him how real things work. Plus, when the four siblings remained in Narnia, in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, the movie didn't mention other humans that lived there. It actually made you think about it...
- Thanks to the onscreen chemistry between the actors portraying them, Tru and Harrison Davies of Tru Calling developed a small but dedicated shipper following. One of the better NSFW stories.
Films
Literature
- The Bible — specifically, Samuel II — has a case of this. David's son, Amnon, lusts after his virgin sister, Tamar, so badly that he pretends to be ill so that Tamar would come to his room to feed him. He then raped her despite her protests (and it being a gigantic no-no in Jewish law).
- Adam and Eve, or is that Parental Incest? She was born from him.
- Plus Abraham and Sarah, and all of Noah's children. In fact, Biblical chronology demands that incest had to happen at no less than two points or else none of us would be here.
- An interesting interpretation was brought up recently (no source unfortunately, I forgot) that some Christian scientists are using this excuse to explain why humans are not perect replicas of God anymore. Once we entered the mortal world, we only had incest to sustain the race, and thus the perfect image got retarded out of existence by persistent in-breeding.
- Which goes to show just how poorly these particular "scientists" understand genetics; incest only causes defects because it increases the probability of inheriting a homozygous set of preexisting recessive genes for said defects.
- Another thing to consider is that, after Cain killed Abel, he was exiled away from his parents, and was said to have founded a city with some other lady. Where did she come from?
- She is the daughter from the girl Adam had BEFORE God made Eve. It's complicated, which is probably why almost nobody remembers that there actually was a woman before Eve.
- Except that Lilith and the other one (See? Some of us remember!) only feature in Jewish works, so if you take the Christian version of the Old Testiment as literal than Cain's wife has to be his sister. And even if she is Adam's kid by Lilith or the other one, it's stil incest. Theiy're half siblings.
- The Dollanganger series by V.C. Andrews. The first two books, famously starting with Flowers in the Attic, focus on two siblings Cathy and Chris who with their younger twin brother and sister are locked in an attic by their grandmother and escape after the male twin dies of poisoned donuts. Turns out the reason their Grandmother Olivia locked them up is because their Mother and Father (who died in a car accident making it necessary for them to move to their Grandparent's mansion) were half-uncle and niece and were disowned because they were caught having sex and then ran away. The big issue is that Cathy and her brother Chris have an incestuous relationship as teenagers that Cathy tries to avoid but, among other things, apparently Rape Is Love, and they end up living as husband and wife in an open secret type of relationship. The big surprise comes in the fifth book and prequel when you find out Cathy's parents were not half-uncle and niece...they were actually half-brother and sister AS WELL as half-uncle and niece due to Cathy's grandfather Malcolm raping his Step-Mother Alicia. They never knew as Alicia and husband died and Malcolm, John Amos, and Olivia NEVER told anyone. All of this leads to (Grandmother) Olivia becoming the cold cruel person she is in the later books in order to hide this from the world
- Many of the author's works are known for this trope, including the Casteel series (Heaven and her uncle Troy), the Cutler series (Dawn and Philip), Landry series (Ruby marries her secret half-brother so he can pose as the father of her illegitimate child, and later has a one night stand with him) and Broken Flower.
- In Jean M. Auel's Earths Children series, Jondalar's half-sister is madly in love with him. 'Course, since these characters don't understand where babies come from and Jondalar and Joplaya's common parent is their father, they are believed to be something closer to cousins than siblings. Still squicky though.
- The Prophet's House Quintology has this in spades with the incestuous House Rassianus, most notably in the Backstory between Sepirahkt and Areina, but later Alisayne and Lysander get in on the action.
- The Anna Pigeon mystery A Superior Death by Nevada Barr includes a consenual brother-sister couple (who have had themselves sterilised so there will be no children). Anna pities them more than condemning them.
- In Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon Morgaine and Arthur have sex and concieve a child as part of a religious ritual without either of them being aware of the others identity. When they find out Arthur is appalled, but Morgaine maintains that since they were possessed by the God and Goddess at the time it wasn't really them.
- Kind of further confused by the fact that Morgaine is capable of just leaving it behind her (more or less) while Arthur is still in love with her.
- The titular characters of Kelly Braffet's Josie and Jack have an increasingly sexualized relationship, but it's deliberately unclear if they ever consummated it.
- The love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights has overtones of this, but don't worry — he's adopted.
- Because of the way Mr. Earnshaw randomly brings Heathcliff home one day, some people do theorize that he's his son by another woman, which would make Heathcliff and Catherine half-siblings.
- Orson Scott Card seems fond of twisting this trope. In Speaker for the Dead, sequel to Enders Game, Miro and Ouanda are outed as half-siblings by Ender's Speaking, due to Miro's mother's adulterous relationship with Ouanda's father. Later they both remark that it's lucky that, due to strong Catholicism, they never had sex.
- Although one of them points out later that if further tragedy hadn't struck right after that revelation, they might have made some attempt to continue the relationship - but what happened next would have drastically changed things for them anyway, and therefore made it easy for one of them to break it off.
- In murder mystery The Demoniacs by John Dickson Carr, the early-eighteenth-century detective has come to suspect that his girlfriend is his half-sister. She isn't. If she is, he wants to find and destroy the evidence. When he admits that to her, after finding out she isn't related, she's pleased rather than squicked; she plainly feels it's romantic.
- Downtiming The Night Side by Jack Chalker presents this as the inevitable consequence of growing up marooned on a small island with only your parents and siblings for company. It's only natural for the kids to want to do what mom and dad do (a lot, since it is a Chalker book) with the only other people available.
- In Agatha Christie's Sleeping Murder, the killer was the victim's brother, who had tried to prevent her from forming any romantic attachments, and killed her after her marriage to another man.
- In Cassandra Clare's City of Bones a fortuneteller tells Jace that he will "Love the wrong person". He falls in love with Clary, who turns out to be his sister.
- Subverted. They end up not related. Jace is the son of his supposed Father's second second-in-command. And Clary ends up with Jace. Though only after meeting and kissing a boy she finds out is her REAL brother. Oops.
- The heroine of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders finally discovers her long-lost mother. Unfortunately, Moll's mother is also...her mother-in-law. Oops.
- In the David Eddings Elenium trilogy, King Aldreas has an incestuous relationship with his sister, Princess Arissa; there is a lingering question, for part of the story, whether he was the father of her son Lycheas.
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides begins with a portrayal of the incestuous relationship between the protagonist's grandparents.
- In The Sound and the Fury, it is implied that Quentin is in love with his sister, and even offers to have sex with her so that he can claim that her out-of-wedlock child is his, shifting the blame to him and preventing her from dishonoring the family (exactly how this would have helped is dubious). She says okay, but he chickens out. He then tries to tell his father that he has "committed incest" with his sister, who doesn't believe him. To top it off, Quentin later commits suicide, and his sister ends up naming her daughter after him.
- It's also a major plot point in Absalom, Absalom, in which Quentin is told the story of Henry Sutpen, who protected his sister from the advances of her half-brother (although he, in the end, manages to convince himself he's okay with the incest, just not the fact that her half-brother has a fraction of black ancestry). This is but part of the huge amount of emotional baggage Quentin gets dumped on him.
- John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire.
- Twice in Katharine Kerr's Deverry series; the first time in Daggerspell, as part of the ancient tragedy that drives the first four books, involving a despairing heroine dumped by her one true love, the second time as one of the many acts demonstrating the corrupt nature of the villainess.
- In Dean Koontz' The Bad Place, the villain, generally known as "Candy", and his brother, co-protagonist Frank, are two of the offspring of hermaphroditic Roselle (fully reproductively functional as either sex), who was herself the product of brother-on-sister rape.
- The villain's sisters, Violet and Verbina have an implied attraction for each other and a rather blatant one for Candy. Considering that this eventually gets them killed, the latter is definitely not played for eroticism.
- Katherine Kurtz's Camber of Culdi. The last king of the Festillic dynasty, Imre I, has an incestuous relationship with his sister Ariella, which produces the line of Festillic pretenders who for generations proceed to plague the Haldane dynasty.
- In Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Brother Sister Incest, though not present in the main narrative, is an important part of Estraven's backstory and love life (which is... complicated.)
- In Sharon Maas's Of Marriageable Age, Saroj finds out Nat is her half-brother, only after she's carrying his child. Of course it turns out she's adopted, in the end..
- In Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years Of Solitude, the first two propagators of the Buendia family are cousins, and a major theme throughout is the prevention of the family tree from getting too tangled, for fear of "bearing iguanas". There is much Squick. In fact, at the very end, one character becomes the lover of his aunt, thinking she's his long-lost sister.
- House Targaryen in A Song of Ice and Fire made a proud tradition of breeding brother to sister for generations. Though most Targaryens have a penchant to be silver-haired and violet-eyed, their insistence on keeping the bloodline "pure" for three hundred years or so means also that they now tend to produce either an honorable ruler or a complete psychopath, making the Targaryens a sort of on-again-off-again example of Royally Screwed Up.
- Likewise, Cersei and Jaime Lannister, as revealed in the first book. Cersei's children, including King Joffrey, are not the offspring of her husband Robert Baratheon, but of her Half Identical Twin Jaime. If this were ever proven, the kids would be publicly slaughtered as abominations. Mom's not cool with that.
- And then there's the scene with Theon Greyjoy and his sister Asha, where she gave him a deep and rather passionate kiss, and felt him up. In this case, it was a Secret Test Of Character: Asha recognized her brother, even if the reverse wasn't true. Plus, Theon was pretty embarrassed when he found out.
- Cormac McCarthy's novel Outer Dark opens with a woman giving birth to her brother's baby, and things — as they often do in McCarthy's worlds — quickly go downhill after that.
- Ian McEwan's debut novel, The Cement Garden, involves a brother's lust for his older sister.
- In Gladys Mitchell's The Saltmarsh Murders (1932), the murderer blackmails the Lowrys into helping in covering up some important evidence on the strength of the knowledge that they are brother and sister rather than husband and wife.
- Vladimir Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle chronicles an incestuous family with a focus on a specific brother-sister pair, who end up semi-happily married by the end of the book.
- That does not begin to do justice to how tightly wound that family is. Van and Ada start off thinking they're cousins—on both their respective fathers' sides and their respective mothers' sides, as their fathers are brothers and their mothers are sisters, only it turned out that both of them were the product of an affair between the man Van knew as father and the woman Ada knew as mother. In addition, the pair of brothers and the pair of sisters that they married were second cousins. Oh, right, and Ada's sister (or half-sister, as it ended up being) also had a thing for Van and is Driven To Suicide when it is unrequited.
- Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast: Titus/Fuchsia is implied, but not explicit.
- In Pyramids, Ptraci's father was Teppicymon XXVII, so she is Teppic's half-sister. This is revealed to the reader midway through the book, but the main characters remain unaware of it until near the end. They show UST for each other during their escape from Djelibeybi. After they meet up again back in Djelibeybi and find out that they are related, Ptraci asks "That doesn't make any difference, does it?", to which Teppic replies "I think it does, really."
- The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy features extremely heavily implied Twincest between Rahel and Estha after their 23 year separation.
- In the Drizzt Do'Urden novels, Vierna was quite taken with her little brother, but he refused her. That incest is implied to be seen as kinky at best even among dark elves — who, among other things, have sex with demons and engage in public orgies at graduation ceremonies — it kind of drives home that even Vierna, probably the most well-adjusted of the Do'Urden women, is more than a little twisted.
- Vierna seemed to think she was doing him a favor; assuming Drizzt was too embarrassed to engage in the aforementioned public orgy, she was offering to help him fulfill his "graduation ceremony" in a private setting with someone he knew, rather than in public with a stranger.
- The Thirteenth Tale has Charlie's obsession of sorts with his younger sister Isabelle. Then again, with a family like theirs, it's hard to turn out in any way normal children.
- The Faerie Queene features intercourse between twins in the womb. The giants Argante and Ollyphant, themselves the product of incest, mingle "in fleshly lust" before birth and emerge clasped in the act.
- Mignon of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is the product of actual Brother Sister Incest. Her parents did not discover that they were siblings until after they had a daughter and the discovery lead to Mignon's mother's suicide and her father's madness.
- The end of the Lensman series strongly implies that the Kinnison kids will do this to produce a new race of superbeings. "Doc" Smith implied on several occasions that this idea kept him from doing a sequel, as back then such ideas were strictly taboo— if he wrote that into a story, he'd never find a legitimate science fiction publisher who'd accept it.
- Steve and Roz Brickman from Patrick Tilley's excellent Amtrak Wars series had a covert sexual relationship while they were younger. However, given the extremely weird nature of the Trackers, it's arguable as to whether or not Roz and Steve are related biologically (they are emotionally at the very least).
- J.R.R. Tolkien's story of Túrin Turambar (told both in The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin) has a doomed relationship between Túrin and his Separated At Birth sister Nienor.
- Túrin is based on the character of Kullervo from The Kalevala, who has a similar unknowingly incestuous relationship with his sister.
- The not very famous book Malika from french author Valérie Valère is all about the incestous love between a teenager boy and his little sister Malika. The siblings live by their own in Paris, and have an Absent Father. At one point they confess their feeling to each other and start a relationship.(And have a sexual encounter, and a really, really tragic end)
- Randall Garrett's first Lord Darcy mystery, "The Eyes Have It", had this as its motive for homicide, as a noblewoman had killed her obsessed brother to stop him from raping her.
- Philippa Gregory's Wideacre, complete with BDSM. Squick squick SQUICK. ...Or alternatively...
- The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillippa Gregory has at least one non-platonic kiss between Anne Boleyn and her brother George (who in real life as in the book was accused of adultery with her and was also beheaded). Their "closeness" probably stems from the fact that George is the only person Anne can really trust in her precarious position. The narrator, Mary, and her husband speculate that Anne may have convinced George to sleep with her once she was queen so that she could have a son, and that one or more of her miscarried pregnancies may have been incestuous.
- George actually kisses both Anne and Mary. Several times. Non-platonically.
- In Lord Byron's Manfred, the title character strongly implies that his "nameless" crime was incest with his beloved Astarte. His Cain focuses on the hero's love for his sister/wife and his incredulity that though Jehovah has tolerated incest among mankind's second generation, his own children are forbidden to marry each other. Originally the protagonists in "The Bride of Abydis" were a brother and sister in love but were changed to first cousins in the final version.
- What, Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher hasn't been mentioned yet? The obsession of Roderrick for his sister Madeleine hints clearly at incest.
- The Egyptian, as it involves Ancient Egyptian royalty obviously includes this as a matter of course. Mostly in the character of Baketamon who considers her brother as the only man fit to marry her.
- Francescia Lia Block's novel Wasteland explores how a relationship like this could even develop. Older brother Lex and sister Marina appear to be soulmates(their attraction apparently began as small children) and they are written as extremly sympathetic. When the relationship is finally consummated the guilt drives Lex to suicide. And then it turns out he's adopted.}
- In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath, there are two sets of brother-sister couples: Gerridon and Jamethiel, who were responsible for a great betrayal in the distant past, and their children fraternal twins Jame and Torisen. The mutual attraction between the latter two has so far only been strongly implied, but Hodgell seems to be heading for depicting a romance if for no other reason than that, as she stated in an interview, she simply does not find any other male character in the books as interesting as Torisen.
Live Action TV
- The Children of Dune miniseries. Specifically between Leto II and Ghanima.
- In the book, they actually end up getting married, but Ghanima is very firm on the subject: "I will not bear your children, brother." to which Leto replies; "I love you, my sister, but that is not the way my thought tends." Leto, actually, at least claims to be unable to reproduce after forming a bond with sandtrouts. Thus he marries his sister (it helps that he has a committee of ancestor advisors presided over by an Egyptian pharaoh in his head), but her children (important to Leto's Golden Path) are fathered by a Corinno who also authors the entries of Encyclopedia Exposita. All this said, Stilgar is not amused.
- Paul and Alia have incestuous overtones in Dune Messiah. At one point, Alia engages a sparring robot nude, before Paul stops her from killing herself (one wonders how long he was standing there). Its certainly not helped by the Bene Gesserit's clear intention to find a way of bargaining for a way to get Paul and his sister to produce an heir.
- The British Soap Opera Brookside had a storyline about a brother and sister who engaged in consensual incest and later split up without any direct or karmic punishment. They later got back together and were written out of the show by establishing that they'd moved to where no-one knew them and were living as a married couple.
- On Lost, Boone and Shannon are stepsiblings who have slept together. Boone was also in love with Shannon.
- One episode of House MD had a young married couple whose similar illnesses were thought to be from exposure to the same environmental factor but turned out to be genetic; they were half-siblings through the husband's (white) father's affair with the wife's (black) mother, and had become attracted to each other as teenagers. The father's determined attempts to keep them apart were misinterpreted as disapproval of interracial romance, and the young couple ran away together before finding out they were related. It is intimated their relationship did not survive the revelation.
- A major plot thread in Carnivale involves the obsessive, sadomasochism-tinged relationship between preacher-slash-Antichrist Justin Crowe and his sister Iris.
- Somehow played with on Hannah Montana. Miley, in her alter ego as pop star Hannah Montana, is caught going in her own back door by a photographer. To keep her Secret Identity under wraps, she claims to be "visiting a friend"... just as her brother comes out of the house, leading the paparazzi to assume that they're dating. It gets worse when the brother realizes that being Hannah's assumed boyfriend has its perks, so he kept the pretense going even after Miley (who is naturally mortified by the whole thing) repeatedly asked him to stop. The whole thing culminated in an over the top parody of Tom Cruise couch jumping incident.
- Something like this occurred again after Miley's brother had amnesia, and thought Miley was his girlfriend. She's rightfully disgusted.
- A series of Saturday Night Live skits during the Eddie Murphy era intimated that this was the case with Donny and Marie Osmond. The impressions weren't really that good, and they were really kind of more disturbing than funny.
- And one of them was Elaine Benes. And the other one's career brought even less success.
- In the second season of Prison Break, this is the other secret President Reynolds can't allow to become public. The first secret, of course, being faking her brother's death.
- In Scrubs, Keith gets mad at Elliott for telling Carla that he made out with his sister in the fifth grade. Elliott says he has nothing to be ashamed about because his sister is gorgeous.
- In the HBO series Rome, Octavia, at the behest of her manipulative lesbian lover Servilla, seduces her younger brother Octavian (the future emperor Augustus). There is no evidence for any such affair happening in real life. Made even squickier when it turns out he knew all along that she was only seducing him in order to get something in return, and he was curious as to what it would be. He could have just asked, but...
- Semi-averted in Veronica Mars: Duncan slept with Veronica shortly after (but not, let it be said, because of) finding out she might be his half-sister, which caused him to break off their long-standing relationship without explanation (she wasn't). Veronica didn't find out about her possible parentage - or the fact that they'd slept together (she'd been accidentally dosed with rohypnol; as had he, which fueled the loss of inhibition) - until much later. They got back together once the whole incest thing was cleared up. (It should be noted that Veronica's taste in men could be charitably described as "quirky".)
- Happens not once but twice in Nip/Tuck.
- Hinted in Heroes. Maya and Alejandro Herrera are twin siblings who have always been, erm, very close to each other. It doesn't help that Maya has VERY deathly poison powers and for a long time the only one capable to neutralizing them is Alejandro. Not to mention Maya's terrible powers came up the first time during Alejandro's wedding when Maya found out Alejandro's soon-to-be wife was cheating on him... though to be fair, the other man was threatening her in case she spoke.
- It REALLY doesn't help that Maya was acting unusually *** and jealous towards Alejandro's bride-to-be even before catching her in flagrante delicto and killing her.
- Tony and Effy Stonem from the British teen soap Skins would be, um, a little bit fixated on each other even if one ignored the episode in which Tony hallucinates a beautiful girl asking him outright if he wants to *** his sister. (Oh, and the first-season episode in which () a sociopathic thug Tony'd competed with over another girl kidnapped Effy, shot her full of heroin, and attempted to force Tony to have sex with her — y'know, as one does — leading to much angst and a really quite stunning shot of shirtless Tony carrying his unconscious little sister out into the night.)
- Averted in Dirty Sexy Money. Nick's father works as a lawyer for the Darling family, has an affair with his client's wife and even fathers a child which is passed off as a Darling. Nick has an affair with one of the Darling daughters in his teens. The show might have ended up fitting this trope - if the showrunner hadn't written INCEST on a board in the writer's room and firmly crossed it out.
- Throughout Six Feet Under, bipolar Billy Chenowith is shown to have an unhealthy obsession with his genius sister Brenda, which she shares to a certain degree (they have tattoos of each other's childhood nicknames on their backs, for example). Whenever Billy goes off his medication, things start to get a bit crazy, such as when he tries to carve the tattoo off her back after taking his own off in an effort to "cleanse" himself or when he and Brenda get into an argument and she reveals that their mother showed her "what you wrote about me" several years previously. The audience is never told what it was that she read, but the subtext is pretty obvious. As the show progressed, said subtext rapidly became text, to paraphrase Buffy, when Billy tries to kiss Brenda while she comforts him and in season five, after Brenda's husband Nate dies, she begins imagining seeing him telling her that every man she's ever been with has only been a substitute for Billy, and has a dream in which she and Billy begin to have sex.
- Arrested Development: Twins Michael and Lindsay end up being Not Blood Siblings, which prompts Lindsay to jump Michael.
- Firefly. In an amusing scene deleted from "Our Mrs. Reynolds", Simon is thrown for a loop by his sister's latest bit of loopiness.
River: (to Shepherd Book) We want you to marry us. Simon: What? We... no! (pause) What? River: Two by two... Everyone has a match, a mate, a dopple. I love you. Simon: No, River... mei-mei... of course, I love you too, but we can't be married. (to Book) She's really crazy! (River kicks Simon in the shin) Ow! Ah, no, I — I don't mean crazy... that's just — you know that's not something brothers and sisters do. I mean, on some planets but only pretty bad ones.
- For added squickiness, River then takes a pillow and puts in under her dress saying "Now we have to be married" for the sake of their child.
- When Charlie from Two And a Half Men finds out the girl he's currently bedding might be his half-sister, he immediately stops, saying, "Turns out I draw the line at incest." Since the episode takes place during the holidays, supporting characters call it "a Christmas miracle."
- Married with Children: Bud and Kelly slightly. Bud always rags on her skankiness, Kelly has many comments about his sex life (she seems to be jealous of his blow-up doll). She enjoys when he acknowledges her hottness or achievements.
- In one episode, she seductively leaves lipstick marked kisses on him. Together they create the Bundy Bounce and she has him drooling. Most of the time they end up teaming up together. They share mutual feelings reguarding their parents. A date (Corey Feldman) disses Kelly cause she won't put out, so Bud purposely gives him the measles. Kelly CRUELLY gets revenge for Bud on a girl who humilated him.
- There is subtleties in other episodes, if you look. To the point everyone continuously asks the actor if he banged Christina Applegate.
- Cold Case: A rising young senator's aide/girlfriend is killed when she learns that her boyfriend's childhood wasn't just "rough", it was "make your sister look and act like your wife-rough". To the senator's credit, it was an accident and the coverup was his sister's idea.
- Law And Order SVU: Like the House example, the children of two uneaqually wealthy families mistake their parents' hatred of their relationship as rivalry when in fact they're half-siblings. The SVU is called in when the girl is accidentally killed by her father after she learned the truth. When the boy learns of it later, he immediately throws up and he's told to keep it together for the sake of the girl's younger brother, now his half-brother, as both the mothers involved were going to jail for separate incidents in the case. Poor ***.
- CSI Miami: Trailers indicate that an upcoming episode is going to play like the Law and Order episode above mixed with Marmalade Boy: a man has two families and his son and daughter fall in love. The Squick comes in after they learn they're half-siblings and stay in the relationship anyway. I smell a double suicide!
- In Angel, Gunn once was accused of letting his sister be turned into a vampire due to incestuous feelings for her (It Makes Sense In Context). Seeing the scene where she tries to turn him, and most of that episode, one understands where people got the idea there was something more there.
- In one episode of Friends it's heavily hinted that a man that Rachel is dating has a "special relationship" with his sister. They even take baths together. In another, episode it is revealed that Ross accidentally kissed his sister, Monica, (thinking she was Rachel) while he was in college.
- One episode of ER had a brother and sister go too far when comforting each other after their mother's death and they end up having sex once. She ended up pregnant.
- Both averted ("I'm not banging my sister!") and played straight (the McPoyles) on Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
- Wiseguy. International arms/drug dealers Mel and Susan Profitt. This causes problems when Susan becomes attracted to the protagonist Vinnie Terranova
.
- Unintentional BSI vibe surfaced on Seventh Heaven frequently, often in the guise of wacky hi-jinx.
- In the pilot episode Mary asks her brother Matt to help her practice kissing. Their father walks in on them before anything happens. Reportedly, the script actually called for them to kiss, but Jessica Biel and Barry Watson refused to do it.
- The seven siblings all had active, obsessive interests in the sex lives of their brothers and sisters.
- In the episode in which Lucy gives birth, brother Matt takes her shopping and the store employees assume they are married. Rather than say "He's my brother," Lucy replies that they are not married, leaving the store employees to assume they have a sexual relationship. While in labor in a stuck elevator, Lucy insists on Matt (in training to be an OBGYN) be the one to deliver her baby even though there are trained, non-related paramedics in the elevator.
- An episode of Private Practice had a married couple who found out they were half brother and sister (same sperm donor as a father), and then wanted to stay together and have the sister's tubes tied. The writers then pulled a Debateand Switch when it turned out the brother knew before the couple got married.
- The founding and series naming story arc of 1980s Australian prime-time soap, Sons and Daughters, had two non-identical twins, separated at birth and moved to different cities, fall in love. It's only revealed that they are siblings after the engagement. Squicked a generation of Australian soapie viewers as it had been implied their relationship was not platonic by any means.
- On Passions, sisters Whitney and Simone were both in love with Chad, who viewers were led to suspect was their half-brother, as the girls' mother, Eve, had a child with Julian Crane, but the child was kidnapped. Eventually, Chad and Whitney started a relationship (and Simone became a lesbian) and Whitney got pregnant. Immediately thereafter, she and Chad learned that they were, in fact, brother and sister because Chad was Eve and Julian's missing child. After about two years of angst, they found out that Chad was actually the child of Julian's father and Eve's adopted sister, meaning that Chad and Whitney were not blood siblings after all. As if to show that the trope had been averted only because the writers thought they could push the envelope further, they then brought on Eve and Julian's actual child, a psychopathic hermaphrodite named Vincent (who had been living in Harmony as the established character Valerie for several years), who proceeded to have an affair with his uncle Chad (both as Valerie and as Vincent, at separate times), rape his half-sister Fancy, and seduce and become pregnant by his own father.
- Although it's not canon Jalex (Justin and Alex who are brother and sister) is the most popular ship for Wizards of Waverly Place. It may also be a case of Getting Crap Past The Radar.
- Heavily Lampshaded in a recent episode where Alex and Harper (who has a serious crush on Justin) switch bodies and "Alex" spends the episode being blatantly jealous of Justin's girlfriend and making remarks about how dreamy his eyes are.
- Or in another episode where Harper and Justin become friends and Alex spends the episode trying to break them up. Apparently she's jealous of Justin spending time with her best friend but it really comes off as Alex being jealous of Harper spending time with him (and the fact that Alex is fully aware of the crush does not help matters).
- What takes the cake is the episode where Alex accidentally wishes that everyone forgot who Justin was, so everyone thinks of him as a complete stranger. Cue Alex and Justin's own mother saying that they would make a cute couple. That is definitely Getting Crap Past The Radar.
- What The Buck
hilariously points out the subtext in his review of The Movie.
- In the recent movie the producers seem to constantly insert incestous Double Entendres in otherwise heartwarming brotherly scenes. Or perhaps, they have actually forgotten that Justin and Alex are supposed to be brother and sister... Or they returned to their first idea. (Justin and Alex were originally supposed to be best friends, not brother and sister. The script was changed later).
- "Quinceanera". Never minding the fact that Justin switched his body with a 30 years old dance instructor, or that Alex switched bodies with her mother, Justin's lines couldn't get any weirder, when he started dancing with his younger sister:
Justin:If you were fifteen years older, I would ask you to dinner. Mi amor.
Alex: Okay, that's really weird.
Justin:It's time for the big finale. Leap into my arms. (he gets on his knees and spreads his arms)
Alex(smiling): Really?
Justin: I've got you, baby.
- In the BBC series of Robin Hood...it's complicated. Technically no actual incest actually occurs, but with the introduction of two long lost siblings, things get rather awkward. Robin starts a relationship with Isabella, and although the two of them aren't related by blood, it's later revealed they share a half-brother, and that Robin's father planned to marry Isabella's mother, meaning they were almost step-siblings. Furthermore, when the time comes for this long lost brother to introduce himself to his half-sister, the writers instantly make the relationship explicit in the hopes of sinking any incestual vibes. It doesn't work. Also, at one stage (during a heat wave) Isabella bathes Prince John's head with a cold pack, cooing the words "hot, hot, hot," whilst smirking at Guy, her full brother, over John's head. In a later episode, Isabella drugs and gags Guy before tying him to her bed, and even later, Guy strokes her hair in a surprisingly intimate gesture.
- In "The Killings at Badger's Drift", an episode of the British television series Midsomer Murders, an old woman discovers a brother and sister in an incestuous relationship and is murdered to keep her quiet. Later on, a busybody and her son, who likes to know everyone's secrets and is not adverse to a spot of blackmail, end up dying as well.
- "The Brady Bunch" - Let's talk about context. Three boys living with three girls,and no blood relation between the sexes. At least four of them are in puberty when they meet. Truly, when you're a Brady, you always have a date.
- One of the main plots on Kinderen Geen Bezwaar ("No Objections from the Kids"). It's of the step-sibling variety, which isn't too clear if you didn't see the first few episodes...
Music
- The Kate Bush song "The Kick Inside", title track from her debut album.
- Not uncommon as a theme in folk songs either; "Sheath & Knife" probably being one most easily listened to at the moment. Example modern lyrics
.
Mythology
- In many versions of the Arthurian mythos, Morgause is Arthur's half-sister. Their son and nephew, Mordred, eventually destroys Arthur's kingdom.
- In Norse Mythology, marriage and breeding between brother and sister were common amongst the Vanir before their alliance with the Æsir. Freyja and Freyr being a prominent example.
- In fact, almost by necessity most creation myths involve this, particularly among gods and titans like Zeus and Hera, and their grandparents Earth and Sky — who were mother and son too, technically.
- The whole pantheon is filled with incest of just about every conceivable combination. Brother-Sister Incest is probably the least strange of it.
- In the book of Genesis, Eve was made from Adam's rib, so unless God worked some additional magic, they were brother/sister in a cloning sense. The book doesn't tell us where Cain and Seth's wives come from, but Adam and Eve are the only established source, so it's probably supposed to be a common sense conclusion. Since humanity is still young and vital, it's a case of Incest Is Relative until more careful selection is possible or even necessary. But fifteen hundred (and change) years later, the punitive Great Flood leaves only four married couples alive — three of the men are brothers, and the fourth couple are their parents. The following children would have no one to marry but their cousins or siblings. As Genesis also claims that people lived an average of 400 years back in those days, the much shorter lifespans following the Flood can be taken as a result of that tragically narrowed gene pool. This is all consistent with the Bible's theme of Gotterdammerung as a consequence of man's pride leading to repeated falls.
- Later, Abram and Sarai, who would still later be called Abraham and Sarah. Abram asked Sarai to use this fact so he wouldn't be killed over her. She agreed, and they went down to Egypt. The Pharaoh at the time had this lovely 65-year-old taken to his house, and the Pharaoh and his house were subsequently stricken with great plagues. Upon learning that Abram had not told him the important fact that she was his wife, he told Avram off and sent them away. Fast forward twenty-five years, and they went down to Gerar, still planning the same omission. Abimelech took her, and learned from a vision that she was Abraham's wife, and that Abimelech would die if he didn't give her back. He did, but asked Abraham what could have possessed him to omit such an important detail. He explained his reasoning, but also that she was, in fact, his sister from another mother, but from the same father. He let them live there and gave them stuff, and Abraham prayed and the wombs of Abimelech's house were reopened from being stopped up. (Bet that experience made him wary when second cousins Isaac and Rebekah came into town with the same story...)
- Averted in the Rigveda. Twins Yami and Yama are the first created mortals, and Yami attempts to seduce Yama so they may continue the human race. Yama refuses on the grounds that she's his sister so that's just wrong.
- In ancient Hawaiian myth, the divine couple who gave birth to the Hawaiian islands were either siblings or half-siblings. They also had a daughter who grew up to be so beautiful that her father begun a relationship with her and fathered two more kids. This became the basis for a practice known as pi'o, intentional incestuous mating amongst the ruling class. Extensive genealogies were kept in order to produce the most inbred (and thus, godly) chiefs possible. The commoners were forbidden to do this out of fears that they would start producing children with chieflike levels of mana.
- In Greek mythology, Byblis falls in love with her brother Caunus, and defends their relationship by pointing out how many immortals have had incestous relationships. Their story was later retold by Ovid.
- Said incestuous relations between immortals include, but are not limited to: Cronus, the leader of the Titans, marrying his sister Rhea; and their son and daughter, Zeus and Hera, who married each other after Zeus offed and succeeded Cronus.
- Alchemy has many incest symbols, especially the hierosgamos or coniunctio ("sacred marriage" or "union"), a chemical wedding of male and female, brother and sister. The rebis is often shown as an incestuous brother and sister, portrayed as a union of Sol and Luna, sun and moon.
- Egyptian mythology: Isis and Osiris, Nephthys and Set. In some versions of the mythos, Isis gives birth to reincarnations of herself and her husband who mate even before birth - may sound icky at first, but this is in all probability a fertility myth inspired by the constant rebirth of plants and harvest.
Pro Wrestling
- Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment has been trying to do an incest storyline going all the way back to 1999, when Ken Shamrock was supposed to be in love with his Kayfabe sister (Shamrock refused). Then Vince tried to have an incest storyline between himself and Stephanie (she refused); he countered by replacing himself with his son Shane (she refused again). He finally got his incest storyline between Paul Burchill and his Kayfabe sister Katie Lea. Note that his inability to get an incest story actually going didn't prevent him from alluding to such things.
- In an unlikely turn of events, they accepted, but the audience refused. You just can't win.
Tabletop Games
- In Deadlands, the Whateley family tree seems to drop nothing but bad apples. Part of the reason for this is the "selective breeding" instituted by the clan's otherworldly patron. Most of the residents of Gomorra, California can't figure out exactly what the relationship is between Nicodemus and Delores Whateley. Some think they're siblings. Some think they're married. Both are right. Squick. (Bonus prize: reading the Whateley Family Bible, complete with a family tree in the front, has driven some folks insane.)
Theater
- Pre-television example: Wagner's opera Die Walküre ("The Valkyrie", premiered in 1870), second of four operas in his Ring Cycle, involving siblings Siegmund and Sieglinde. Siegfried, the hero of the third and fourth operas in the cycle, is their child. This case is perhaps different from both the anime versions as well as most western versions. Though their love does end in tragedy, the tragedy is due to the fact that Sieglinde is already married to someone else, and not particularly associated with the fact that the Siegmund-Sieglinde relationship is incestuous.
- Of course, as the immortal Anna Russell pointed out, Wotan's enthusiastic and widespread adultery means that nearly every relationship in the Ring cycle is to some degree incestuous: Siegfried only ever meets one woman who's not his aunt. But that's the beauty of Grand Opera: you can do anything, so long as you sing it!
- This was a major theme in "revenge tragedies" of the 1600s, which basically aimed to contain as much violence and as many illicit relationships as they could. In The Duchess Of Malfi for example, Duke Ferdinand has obsessive subconscious feelings for his sister, the titular character, which he never fully realises and eventually drive him insane. Cheerful stuff.
- The Courier's Tragedy, a fictional "ill, ill Jacobean revenge play" featured in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, has a fair amount of this among the villains.
- Of course we can't forget Tis Pity She's a Whore (another 1600s drama)! Annabella and Giovanni, not having seen one another since they were young, fight their attraction and seem to have a good deal of wangst over it for a while...but only for a while.
- John Ford, the author of Tis Pity seems to have been mildly fascinated with the concept: in The Broken Heart, Ithocles forcibly marries his sister Penthea to the insanely jealous Bassanes, who soon suspects her of cheating on him with everyone, including, eventually, Ithocles himself. They're not doing it, (any more than Ophelia and Laertes, jeez...) but Ithocles IS very controlling of Penthea's sexuality...
- Some interpretations of Hamlet will portray Ophelia and Laertes as either: A) lusting after one another, or B) already sleeping with one another. This is mostly common in psychoanalytic interpretations of the play, which also portray Hamlet as having an Oedipus Complex.
- Death of a Salesman. Biff and Happy seem... closer than most brothers.
- In the recent Stephen Sondheim musical Road Show, the subtext between Addison and Wilson Mizner just barely manages to remain "sub". Sharing a sleeping bag in the middle of an Alaska blizzard? Well, it's cold out there (though that doesn't explain the snuggling). Singing about "Brotherly Love" while in said sleeping bag? That's perfectly innocent and only the most dirty-minded spectator would read anything sexual into it. But when Wilson says in the middle of a fight with Addison "How about a farewell kiss from your brother?" and tries to kiss him on the mouth... and when he seems distinctly jealous of Addison's boyfriend... and when the climax of the show turns on Addison telling Wilson to get out of his life because he's ruined everything, to which Wilson nonchalantly responds "You don't want me to go. You love me." and Addison bursts out: "All right! I love you! Does that make us even?"... well, you know what they say: it's only subtext if it's subtle.
- Lawrence and Joanna Brown in Lanford Wilson's one act play Home Free. The fact that they're incestuous siblings is actually one of the less worrisome things about their relationship.
- In Bat Boy: the Musical, this trope plays a major role when it is revealed that Edgar and Shelley, who have just confessed their love for each other and had sex, are fraternal twins.
- In Sam Shepard's Fool For Love, the main characters are on-again/off-again lovers who are ultimately revealed to be half-siblings.
- In the Australian play The Club, Geoff reveals to a member of his team's committee that he slept with his double-amputee sister and then his mother, resulting in his father shooting himself immediately afterwards. The squick is slightly reduced by the reveal that this story was a blatant lie.
Video Games
- A regular recurring theme in the Fire Emblem series. Several of the girls in the player's party, well, admire their older brothers a bit too much, with or without some bits of censorship. Examples:
- Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: Princess Lachesis and King Eltoshan of Nodion (she even straightforwardly says she won't marry a guy who's less cool than her brother), Diadora and Lord Alvis. Note that in the latter's case.... Having the two hook up and breed is actually a part of the Big Bad Manfloy's plan to create a vessel for his Demon Lord. And through Mind Control in Diadora's part, it happens.
- Yet another example for Genealogy of the Holy War are the High Priest Claude and the Dancer Sylvia, whom many fans believe are really brother and sister. They both possess the Blagi bloodline, and Claude once mentions that Sylvia reminds him of his sister, who disappeared many years ago (and Sylvia says she's an orphan). And yes, they can potentially marry each other and have children (who are playable characters in the second half of the game).
- Genealogy of the Holy War definitely takes the cake for the King of this trope. If not paired with anyone else, Arthur and Tinny (children of Tiltyu) gets a special dialogue about her past and hinting that Arthur *may* have this kinda feeling to Tinny. Alternatively, cousins Aless (son of Eltoshan) and Nanna (daughter of Lachesis) can be predestined and have a special love dialogue. And if Ayra had kids from Lex, and you paired Lakche with either Johan or Johalvier, well... any familial relationship between them (that kinda makes Lakche and both of them distant cousins, actually) is instantly thrown out of window. And there's also the fact that Julia, daughter of Alvis and Diadora, has a crush on Celice, son of Sigurd and... Diadora, too. Must run in the family, dammit.
- Celice and Julia don't really count since they don't get anywhere and their feelings are left rather ambiguous (this is before they even find out they are siblings).
- Very much so, since she and Celice develop less crush-y feelings for one another over the course of the game. Heck, even there's a moment where Celice explicitly states that he feels no romantic attraction towards her. Plus, the game data is specifically designed to reduce their Relationship Values over time.
- The most straightforward and strongest examples are Diadora and Alvis, they even have two kids together, and Lachesis and Elstoshan. In terms of the meaning of the word incest, then just Diadora and Alvis, even if they are not aware that they are.
- Eltosian and Lachesis never go anywhere, though. In fact, it seems more like Lachesis has something kind of like a childish crush on her Happily Married older brother.
- And, because true Brother Sister Incest and Kissing Cousins is not enough tropes for a game this screwed up, we have Areone and Altenna, the biological son and, er, "adopted" daughter of King Trabant of Thracia. And by "adopted", we mean Trabant killed her parents when she was 3 years old and took her as part of the spoils of war, ostensibly so he had a member of the Noga bloodline to wield the legendary weapon her father had on him but suggested to have something to do with an unrequited love for her mother.
- Special mention needs to go to the ability to pair up Lana and Lester with their cousins Faval and Patty. Their mothers are sisters, so from a social standpoint they're cousins. However, their mothers are identical twins, which means that from a genetic standpoint, they're half-siblings. It takes some skill to make two couples simultaniously fall under Brother Sister Incest and Kissing Cousins. Oh yeah, both couples are also predestined.
- Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade: Clarine and Klein of Reglay
- Fire Emblem: Lady Priscilla of House Carleon and Raven aka Lord Raymond of House Cornwell. They even had a sort-of Childhood Marriage Promise going on... and she intended to ask him to fulfill it.
- Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: Ephraim and Eirika (which is actually Twincest as well). In a nice reference, though, Ephraim's unique weapon is the spear Siegmund, while Eirika's is the sword Sieglinde; see Die Walküre under Theatre for an explanation.
- Hmmm... where is it ever suggested that they have any feeling of this nature for each other?
- Let's see, the support conversations between the two of them, the support conversations between Eirika and Innes, the conversations between Eirika and Lyon...every potential suitor seems to realize that they have to compete with Ephraim. (And that really, they can't compete with Ephraim.)
- Though it was Bowdlerized to remove as many references to incest as possible, the idea was too central to the plot of Drakengard to throw it out completely. It's only alluded to once or twice.
- The new character in Tekken 6, Miguel Caballero Rojo, adheres this trope in an one-sided way. When his sister announced she's going to get married, he became so furious he almost planned to kill her fiancée. Unfortunately, during the wedding, there's a sudden attack, and that killed his sister. Roaring Rampage Of Revenge occurs soon after for Miguel.
- In No More Heroes it is implied that Travis and his half-sister Jeane might have been in that sort of relationship. Travis was completely unaware of the situation he was in, and is appropriately shocked and horrified upon finding out.
- In Max Payne, one of the Mooks is watching a soap opera where a woman reveals to her lover that she is... his long lost sister!
- Taka and his sister Kana from the Visual Novel Kana Little Sister become attracted to each other more and more as time progresses. She is also terminally ill, so the makers have enough material for a lot of melodrama. And boy, do they deliver - no punches pulled here!
- Resident Evil Code: Veronica? The relationship between siblings Alfred and Alexia Ashford is by far the creepiest part of the entire game. Many more layers are added to the Cake of Creepiness when you add the fact that the twins were born when their "father" was trying to clone his super-genius ancestor Veronica, who his family all but worshipped, and... the embryo divided, which has implications that one or both of the siblings is transgendered or intersex.
- In Jagged Alliance 2 you can run into a family of heavily inbred rednecks. One of them will tell you that the inbreeding is what keeps them strong. For some reason they have run out of women though and want you to give them one of your party in exchange for guns.
- Janus and Lela in Divine Divinity. And they have sex when they are like only (pre-)teens (Don't worry, it's told to you, not seeing it).
- The player character and Imoen of Baldur's Gate grew up treating each other like brother and sister, but are hinted to have/have had romantic overtones in their relationship (yes, even if the player is female), which is overturned in the sequel, when not only does the player have a chance to fall in love with someone else, but Imoen is in fact revealed to be the player's half-sister (though given the nature of their father, it's debatable if they're related at all...).
- Played straight, however, by the Imoen Romance mod. To the mod's credit, it does not take an easy way out of the Squick involved, and presents it as something the player and Imoen simply have to deal with.
- Though as an ero-game it's par for the course, Princess Waltz takes this to an almost absurd degree. Arata and Chris are not only half-siblings (same father), they are cousins (their mothers are sisters), and second cousins (their father and respective mothers are also cousins).
- That sounds a lot like the plot of Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor...
- However, the game very pointedly refrains from mentioning that they are, in fact, related quite closely. Instead, the typical not blood related version of this goes to Shizuka and Arata
- The 3rd generation of Dragon Valors in the eponymous PSX game Dragon Valor are a brother-and-sister pair of twincest lovers.
- Possibly played with with Mega Man and Roll. In the original series, they're brother and sister (in the sense of being robots with the same creator). But in Mega Man Legends, they're Like Brother And Sister, with Mega Man being an Accidental Pervert to Roll. In Mega Man Battle Network, they are actually dating. And in Marvel Vs Capcom, Roll is described as Mega Man's sister at one point, then as his girlfriend later! OK, so it was due to a translation error, but it's still makes it the only game where incest truly is suggested.
- In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Emma Emmerich, step-sister of Hal Emmerich... well let me quote wikipedia: "It's revealed through conversations between her and Raiden and later between her and her brother before she dies that she has strong romantic feelings towards Hal and wished for him to see her as a woman and not his sister."
- Which, of course, never happened, because Otacon was
sensible sleeping with his stepmother/E.E.'s mother.
- The Visual Novel Lamune has a romantic path for Suzuka, the one-year-younger sister of male lead Kenji. (This troper does not know if the visual novel ever makes a Not Blood Siblings reveal.) The anime adaptation portrays their relationship as a non-romantic sibling relationship, since it follows Nanami's route, though the trope gets poked fun at once when Hikari teases Suzuka about being jealous of Nanami.
- In Viva Pinata, (despite how it looks) this can happen veeery easily. Heck, getting the Fourheads practically requires it!
- Play with and averted in Super Robot Wars W. When Aria and Regulate join Valstork family, Kazuma think that [[Aria is rather cute. Only to has Regulate, told him how she's happy that Kazuma think of Aria AS SISTER and she WILL be glad if he keep that feeling, in extremely cold voice. Unable to act against one whose like his mother, the ship never get sail.
- In The Sims 2 half of the neighborhood of Strangetown is made up of the Curious Family. But since EAxis didn't bother to set all the relationships correctly, many players have unwittingly married the Curious brothers to their older half-sisters, Lola and Chloe (Curious) Singles. It's also possible for the sisters to have romantic interactions (without cheats) with their surviving father (PT #9 Smith), and now that this troper thinks about it, probably everyone they're related to that's old enough. Thanks, EAxis.
- Very strongly suggested to have happened in Wild Arms 2 between Lord Irving and his sister, as part of a Xanatos Roulette to defeat the Big Bad (long story).
- Played with and ultimately averted in Cute Knight, where the PC can either marry Prince Kirelan or take her royal position as his sister, Princess Alexandra. But it turns out she's not really Alexandra, she's just faking. But then it turns out that she IS a princess by blood after all, she's Alexandra's older sister. But THEN you realise that it's okay, because Kirelan's adopted!
- Before the console release of Blaz Blue, many fans shipped Jin/Noel, Ragna/Noel, and Ragna/Jin. In true story mode, it is revealed that they are all siblings (although with Noel's background, it might be a little more complicated).
- However, it is arguably cannon that Jin has the hots for Ragna anyway.
- Can happen between the protagonist Ryo and his stepsister Ayame in the visual novel Crescendo
- The hentai game Artificial Girl 3 has the option of giving a girl the player creates the "Blood Related" trait, which depending on other factors makes the girl have some big or little sister lines during normal and special interactions.
Web Comics
Web Original
- The topic of sister/sister incest is the premise of the cynical if romantically portrayed Web Serial Novel Sisters
. (Later chapters Not Safe For Work.)
- That same website also has Becka the Beast, which features a weird variant: Gia and Becka fall in love, but circumstances involving Becka's abusive father force Gia's father to adopt Becka.
- This has cropped up in Survival of the Fittest a couple of times (although in one case this was Twincest). Matthias Kovalenko of V2 was scarily obssessed with his sister Jodeen. (fortunately, she never made it onto the island). Nothing explicit ever occurs, but from Matthias' thoughts, most get the impression it isn't just brotherly concern.
- Fortunately averted in Broken Saints: Shandala and Gabriel look like they might be bonding romantically prior to Tui Jr's death, but it is cut mercifully short. This is especially creepy when you realize Gabriel knows Shandala is his sister.
- In the Forest Tales (Chakona Space) setting, there are a number of examples of this (as well as some Parental Incest) between members of various genetically-engineered species such as chakats and foxtaurs. Hermaphrodite chakat sisters Forestwalker and Goldfur enjoy recreational sex, and foxtaur brother and sister Garrek and Malena are also mated. (This is handwaved with the explanation that they have been genetically engineered to eliminate the sorts of diseases and conditions that inbreeding can produce in humans, and as created species do not share the exact same moral squick factors as their creators.)
Western Animation
- Despite its Western origins, the writers of Avatar The Last Airbender seem to be playing with this trope. One of the panels during their Shipping Slideshow at Comic Con 2006 romantically paired Princess Azula with Prince Zuko's alter ego, the Blue Spirit. Azula plays the proverbial Temptress, seductively luring her brother back to the dark side in the second season finale. Then of course came a certain bedroom scene in the season 3 premiere...
- Astute viewers may pick up something weird about Martin and Diana's (his step-sister) relationship in Martin Mystery. Turns out, in the original Italian graphic novel, they were lovers. In the original comic they are not related, and even marry. Case of Adaptation Decay.
- Like Saturday Night Live above, Family Guy also did an incest joke about Donnie and Marie.
- And about the characters Lorelei and Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls.
- In a recent episode, Meg asks Chris if he wants to "practice kissing again."
- In G1 Transformers, Orion Pax and Ariel were originally boyfriend and girlfriend. After their bodies were destroyed, Alpha Trion recreated them both as Optimus Prime and Elita One and the two continued the relationship in their new lives. Their anatomy turned out to be so similar that Optimus is able to save Elita's life with an energy transfer, and Optimus seemed a bit disturbed when Alpha Trion told them about their origins. When she steps close to him at the end, he even walks away quickly. No one outright mentions the word "incest", but it's heavily implied that something weird's going on.
- This troper kind of got this vibe from Dexter and Dee Dee in Dexter's Laboratory. Especially in that one episode where Dexter ages himself to 16 years to attract his babysitter, but ends up attracting Dee Dee instead.
- Dexter and Dee Dee act rather romantic sometimes. Their behavior is a mix of sibling rivalry and childish romance.
- This troper remembers some episodes in which Mandark tries to save Dee Dee, in order to conquer her heart. His opponent is actually... Dexter, who is always preffered by Dee Dee. In fact, Dee Dee is quite disgusted by Mandark, while she's constantly hugging and kissing Dexter.
- In South Park, there is an episode in which Stan has problems with his older sister, Shelly, who constantly beats him. When he asks his friends' help, Kenny suggests something through his orange parka. Although his words are muffled, the suggestion is obvious, because Stan replies, scandalized: "Sick dude, she's my sister!"
- In American Dad, Roger tricks Steve into believing he's adopted. This triggers a bit of a Heroic BSOD in Steve and one of the first things he does is go to his sister Hayley, says there's always been "sexual tension" between then makes out with her. Hayley is understandably surprised and repulsed.
- There was also one episode where Hayley poses nude for Roger for his painting. Steve takes it, not knowing it's Hayley, and masturbates to it. Hayley doesn't like this (understandable) and tries to get it back. Roger takes advantage of this and hold an auction for the both of them to see who gets the painting. In the end Francine wins the auction and hangs it in the living room.
- Cletus and Brandine from The Simpsons are related to each other in all sorts of ways. One of them being as brother and sister.
- And then there's the Bart/Lisa shippers. Yes, they exist.
- Aversion: With the communal raising of children the titular species employs in Gargoyles, this was an early fan idea about Demona's and Goliath's relationship, until Word Of God severerly beat that out the fandom by stating that the pheromones a gargoyle releases when he is courting smell horrible to any close family relation. This is only natural, really, since nature prefers genetic diversity over in-breeding.
- Interesting, gargoyles still consider the other gargoyles they were raised with to be their sibling. Coupling inside this social family appears to be perfectly normal simply because if they had already evolved a physical mechanism to prevent inbreeding (the pheremones), then there'd be no pressing advantage to evolving a psychological mechanism (Westermarck Effect — the origin of the incest taboo).
- There us some subtle subtext in this touching number
from An American Tail.
- 'Subtle subtext'? Hell, Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram's music video for their cover of the song plays it as a straightforward romantic ballad...and they didn't have to change a word. It's still a lovely song, but...yeesh.
- In an odd case of Brother/Brother incest, Daggett and Norbert of Angry Beavers are often shipped. However, since this fact is rarely touched upon in the series (the only example I can think of is the first episode) this may be accidental.
- Phineas and Candace, from Phineas And Ferb, act a little too "into" each other.
- Anyone get this vibe from Danny and Jazz, from Danny Phantom?
Real Life
- On the imageboard 4chan incest is referred to as Wincest, and is greatly encouraged by it's residents. This is mostly due to the startlingly large number of hentai doujins posted on the site involving incest. Not all incest is considered Wincest. Just the really sexy pairings.
- Standard operating procedure for some social classes in history. The Egyptian royalty (up to the Greek Ptolemies, who adopted Egyptian customs) is perhaps the best known example.
- Including everyone's favorite, Cleopatra, who married her brother when she was 12 and he was 8. She also married her other brother when she was 23 and he was 17, after brother #1 was killed in a civil war (he was on one side, she was on the other)
- The entire Ptolemaic Dynasty is spectacularly inbred. With the incredible amounts of same-generation and cross-generation inbreeding going on, there aren't even terms for some of the relationships between people. Take, for example, Cleopatra VII (the one we all know): her father, Ptolemy XII, is the son of Cleopatra IV and Ptolemy IX (brother and sister), while her mother, Cleopatra V, is the daughter of Bernice III and Ptolemy X. Ptolemy X is the brother of Cleopatra IV and Ptolemy IX, while Bernice III is the daughter of Ptolemy IX and Cleopatra Selene I (brother and sister). Even counting generations gets difficult.
- Although it should be noted that this was an explicit exception from the incest taboo. (which was in full force for ordinary people) the fact that ancient egyptians regularly used "sister of my heart" as a way of saying "beloved" just further confuses matters though.
- The Romans had the same taboo inherited by later Western civilization, but ancient historians claimed that insane emperor Caligula had sex with his three sisters, especially his favorite Drusilla. Although in all likelihood it was a lurid slander that epitomized his already sensationalistic reign of madness, this was incorporated into his portrayal in I Claudius.
- This Troper woulde like to remind everyone of Nero. Well it was not his fault as his mother groomed him that way! He is a more sympathetic case that that of Caligula, poor poor victim Nero! No wonder he was crazy!
- There was also a persistent rumor in Cicero's day that Clodia Pulchra III was having an affair with (among many, many other men, including being Catullus's "Lesbia") her brother, P. Clodius Pulcher, despite being married...to her first cousin, Q. Caecilus Metellus Celer (until she poisoned him).
- Ancient Hawaiian myths are full of this, which happens when a very, very strict Taboo (or Kapu, if you're Hawaiian) system forbids marrying below your status, and the only other avalable prince/princess/demigod is your sibling.
- Genetic sexual attraction
, where siblings (or other blood relatives) meet for the first time as adults and feel an attraction to each other. The Westermarck effect blocks attraction for people raised together in their early years, but in cases where they were not raised together...
- Though most of the scientific community and many, many siblings who were raised separately from another and didn't get the hots for one another (this troper and her brother included) dismiss this theory as bullshit.
- Well, clearly some people experience attraction, the question is whether it's inevitable... which people having it often try to claim it is, but most everyone else disagrees. Meeting a total stranger and being told that they're your family and you're supposed to feel an instant connection and love for them probably is confusing though.
- One of the men Henry VIII claimed Anne Boleyn was sleeping with was her own brother. This was probably an invention to make it more likely for him to get rid of her though. Still, the movie The Other Boleyn Girl had Anne asking her brother, but him unable to go through with it.
- False Occurance: Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson of the rock group Heart relate a story where their managers placed a fake expose in a trade rag where Ann and Nancy profess their lesbian love for one another. The sisters themselves had no idea about this until a fan mentioned it offhandedly. The sisters' response was the song "Barracuda".
- Lord Byron is generally believed to have had an affair with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh (who he didn't meet until they were adults), even commenting that she's the only woman he ever loved. Whether or not he fathered any of her children is debatable.
- One of them in particular, Elizabeth Medora Leigh (Leigh's third daughter and potentially Byron's first), was especially suspicious due to Byron's comments that he feared the child would be born deformed (an "ape", in accordance with 19th century beliefs about incest) and that it would be his fault if she was, in addition to his ex-wife explicitly telling both Medora and Ada Lovelace (Byron's second daughter) that Byron was Medora's father.
- A famous and rather bloody murder was committed in France in 1933 by two sisters, Christine and Lea Papin, who were working as maids for the same family. When the husband of their victim came home, he found them naked in bed together; it is very likely that their relationship was incestuous. Their lives inspired the Jean Genet play (and the 1974 movie) The Maids and the 2001 film Sister My Sister, among many others.
- A few years ago, in Seventeen magazine, there was an article about a brother and sister who were dating eachother. Their parents met because they were dating, started dating, and got married, so don't worry, it's all legal.
- Wait what? Wouldn't that make them step-siblings?
- The BBC did a My Shocking Story documentary on this, and even interviewed a mother/son couple (obscured, of course). One of the subjects was a man who met his half-sister from the Bahamas and couldn't stop thinking about her, much to the annoyance of his wife.
- Porn stars Amber Lynn and Buck Adams kept the fact that they were brother and sister hidden from everyone. The secret only came out when the two of them were hired to perform in the same movie and were scheduled to do a scene together. They naturally refused.
- This did not, however, dissuade Amber Lynn from having a scene with her supposed "sister", Ginger Lynn. (The actresses are not in fact related.)
- Then there are the statements (or perhaps misstatements is a better term) by Angelina Jolie about her brother.
- My Big Redneck Wedding has an episode where a brother and sister were geting married, but she was adopted by his parents at 16, so it was alright.
- This
strangely moving Times Online story.
- According to Dear Abby, a happily married couple found out one of their Dad's had an affair with the other's Mom. Turned out their were half-siblings and that squicked out the husband so much he had a fatal heart attack. Not sure if it's a sad story or one of the best black humor stories I have ever heard.
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