Child of Two Worlds

Half Kree, half Skrull, all hero!

"You will always be a child of two worlds. I am grateful for this, and for you."

— Sarek (to Spock), Star Trek (2009)

There are two separate, perhaps opposing, communities. There is an individual who somehow claims membership in both communities. This could be because:

• They were born in one community but raised in the other one.
• They have one parent from each community.
• They belong racially to one community but culturally to the other.
• They are married to someone from the other community.
• Their nation of residence is not their nation of ancestry.

This gives the character a dual identity. It may be that he sees himself as a member of both communities, or he may identify more strongly with one community but potentially claim/be claimed by the other.

There are various effects this can have on the character:

• They experience uncertainty about their identity.
• They are expelled from or unable to fit in both communities.
• They try to bridge the gap between the two communities.
• They must seek to learn about one of their communities.
• They may reject one side of themselves entirely, and struggle to deny its influence.

Those split between Single-Species Nations often struggle, often being either ostracized or outcast from both nations due to their similarities with "the enemy". Cases of total rejection are a common origin of a Hunter of His Own Kind, especially when one half is Always Chaotic Evil or there are deeper issues with one parent, but isn't exclusive to this situation. For instance, a Proud Scholar Race Guy character raised by adoptive Proud Warrior Race parents may seek to prove themselves by becoming the most ruthless and violent warrior of the tribe.

A Hermaphrodite in a society in which two distinct sexes are the norm might experience this, but the converse, an anomalous single-sexed being in a society in which hermaphroditism is the norm, would be a different matter.

Note that this trope is not just about identifying with multiple communities. Hobbit, Jedi, and Starfleet Officer are all identities, but a hobbit Jedi Starfleet Officer doesn't fit this trope unless his mixed identity gives him some kind of advantage, disadvantage, inner conflict, conundrum, or purpose in life.

Note also that this trope is about people who have dual identities due to accidents of birth or circumstance. Someone who chooses to join a community in order to enhance their diplomatic credentials would not qualify.

Often Nature vs. Nurture debates (whether in-universe or not) will come into play. May also overlap with Child of Forbidden Love.

Compare Mighty Whitey and Going Native, Half-Breed Discrimination, and Hybrid All Along. See also Wainscot Society. "Rediscovering Roots" Trip is when the child travels to one "world" to connect with their heritage.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ai Yori Aoshi: Tina Foster was born in America, but has lived most of her life in Japan, to the point that she actually has trouble remembering how to speak English. She tried attending high school in America, only to find out that she didn't fit in. But returning to Japan for college, she realized that her Caucasian features meant that she stood out and wasn't at home in Japan, either.
• Ao no Fuuin: Soko is the Queen of the Oni but identifies herself more as human and wants to be just that. But the Oni depend on her as their leader, so she often isn't sure which side of Humans VS Oni she should be on, as both sides are not right and she is important to both of them.
• Blue Exorcist: Okumura Rin is the half-breed bastard Son of Satan who was raised by an exorcist and chooses to be one himself while struggling with both sides of his heritage and accepting both sides. The fact that a lot of people want him dead just for existing does not help.
• In The Bush Baby Jackie is white British, but she's lived in Kenya ever since she was three, she wishes to stay there even after she's ordered to leave.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Goku has this as a key element of his backstory. Dragon Ball Z establishes that he was born to a savage warrior race called the Saiyans before being sent from his home planet Vegeta to conquer Earth, and that as a baby he possessed the violent temperament common to most Saiyans before a head injury turned him into the All-Loving Hero we all know and love. While he places his allegiances firmly with Earth and fights to defend it against a Saiyan invasion that includes his long-lost brother Raditz, he nonetheless makes peace with his heritage during the Namek arc and unlocks the Super Saiyan transformation that defines the rest of the series.
  • Goku's two sons introduced in Z, Gohan and Goten, are more literal examples of this trope, as is Vegeta's son Trunks. None of them experienced Saiyan culture (which was dead long before any of them were born), but they were all influenced by it in different ways (Gohan rejected his Saiyan impulses and became a Badass Bookworm, but was still menaced by Saiyan villains like Raditz and Turles who sought to teach him to embrace the Blood Knight life, while Goten and Trunks were more eager to embrace the traditional Saiyan love of combat and even achieved the Super Saiyan state while still children).
• Future Robot Daltanious:
  • Prince Harlin, upon arriving to Earth, was adopted by a kindly human and forgot that he was a Heliosian. He lived life as an ordinary Japanese boy, and was more in-tune with his Japanese side because his adoptive dad was a traditional Japanese kite painter. He didn't find out about his alien heritage until he was lost at sea and rescued by a group of fellow Heliosians, who told them that he was their Prince and the son of Emperor Palmillion. After being rescued by Kento & Co., Harlin devotes all his time into becoming a just ruler for his people, even choosing to stay in the Galactic Federal Republic and rebuild the Empire rather than stay in Earth with his son in Japan.^note The anime does imply that since Kento pilots the titular Humongous Mecha, they can visit each other whenever they want.
  • And then there's Kento Tate, who is part-human and part-Heliosian. His father is actually Prince Harlin, or, as he was known on Earth, "Hayato Tate". He rejects his Heliosian heritage and proudly calls himself a human, and reprimands Earl for acting like him being part-alien means he's better than everyone. He has no interest in Heliosian culture or politics, despite Earl's constant attempts to pigeonhole him into them, and openly calls it stupid and ridiculous. Part of the reason he takes his human heritage so seriously is because after his father's disappearance, he was raised by his grandfather Kazuto Tate, who was a traditional painter from Edo and always gave him sagely advice.
• House of the Sun: Daiki considers himself fortunate of being a person with two places to call home: one, at his late parents' house, and one with his aunt's family at Kobe.
• Being a half-demon, the titular Inuyasha spent most of his early life being persecuted by demons (including his half-brother Sesshoumaru) for being weak and humans for being dangerous. While he's much more sympathetic to humans overall, trying to find acceptance (and unlock his full potential) makes up a large part of his story.
• Lady!!: Lynn Russel is biracial. She has a Japanese mother, Misuzu Midorikawa, and an English father, Sir George Russell. She was raised in Japan until she was five years old and was in for a culture shock when she came to Britain. By the end of the series, she's fully assimilated into British culture and disconnected from her Japanese roots. The sequel manga has her retain her Japanese heritage by bringing her (1/4th-Japanese) kids to the part of Japan where she grew up.
• Marine Corps Yumi: The main character is unknowingly a dual citizen of Nippon and Amerigo due to the latter's citizenship by birth policy. She had to give up her Nipponian citizenship in order to join the Marines, though.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: This is the source for much of hero Kira Yamato's angst. Being a resident of the Heliopolis colony that was attacked by ZAFT tied him to the Earth Alliance, which he initially fought for. But being a Coordinator tied him to the antagonist faction ZAFT, as did his friendship with ZAFT soldier Athrun Zala. The late-series revelation that Kira wasn't just any Coordinator, but was in fact the flawless Ultimate Coordinator, the one and only result of Ulen Hibiki's experiment to perfect the Coordinator process particularly tormented him, as it meant that he represented the worst of what each side saw in the other and represented an unachievable ideal that one side feared and the other strived for.
• Mokku of the Oak Tree: The world of nature recognises Mokku as one of their own due to his mother being a tree, but he keeps seeking acceptance from humans.
• Nobara no Julie: Julie is torn between returning to her hometown in Tyrol, where she was born and raised (rural Austria) or staying in Vienna (urban Austria). Lampshaded in one episode where a friend of her father comes to visit, and then cuts his trip short, bemoaning "Julie is no longer Julie of Tyrol...''. In the end of the anime, she chooses to live in Vienna forever, with the narration stating that she's become a proper Viennese child.
• One Piece: Chopper was once a normal reindeer until he gained sentience and human intelligence after eating the Human-Human Fruit. Because he was no longer just a reindeer and he could never be a normal human, he was largely ostracized by both to the point that he came to see himself as a monster. When he meets Straw Hat crew, however, they think nothing of it and invite him to join them as the crew's doctor (with Luffy in particular being amazed by his transformations). After the Time Skip, Chopper comes to embrace his duality and is happy to be a monster that the rest of the crew can rely on.
• Sailor Moon: Usagi Tsukino, due to reincarnation, was raised both in the ethereal aristocracy of the Moon Kingdom and (many years later) the mundane freedom of Earth. The series ends with her choosing to remain a mortal individual instead of being subsumed into the blissful original light from which stems the moon and her magic...but this doesn't mean she's just human, either.
• Wicked City: Taki (human) and Makie (Black Worlder) were intentionally paired up in hopes of conceiving a child that would fulfill the terms of a peace treaty. That the conception of said child turned Makie into a Pregnant Badass was a bonus.
• Wolf Children: Played with. Yuki and Ame are both wolf and human; at the beginnings of their life, Yuki was the more wolfish and Ame rejected it, but by the end of the story, Yuki and Ame identified themselves solely as human and wolf, respectively, and are upset by their sibling seeing things otherwise.
• Voltes V: Kenichi, Daijiro and Hiyoshi are half-Boazanian, as their mother was an ordinary Japanese lady while their father was the disgraced Boazanian Prince La Gohl. For most of their lives, they believed they were fully human and didn't understand why they were selected to specifically ward off the Alien Invasion, until a dying General Dange told them the truth. This invigorated them to save their father more than ever.

Comic Books

• Aquaman is the son of the Atlantian Queen Atlanna and the human Joseph Curry. While he is the ruler of Atlantis he was also raised on the surface world.
• The Eagles of Rome: Ermanamer was born in the Cherusci land across the Rhine, but spent his teenage years in Rome as Arminius. Similarly, Marcus is the son of a Roman war commander and a German princess.
• The Mighty Thor: Asgardians have a thing to end wars with these. For example:
  • Angela and later Laussa daughters of Odin (Aesir) and Frigga (Vanir) were born to symbolize the unity of the Aesir (people of Asgard) and Vanir (people of Vanaheim) after the Vanir wars. Angela also got abducted and raised by an Angels of Heven making her a child of three worlds resulting in a lot of issues as when her true heritage comes out and the Angels unceremoniously exile her. While the Asgardians take her in gladly the ideals and thinking she brings from the Angel society clash with theirs so badly she cannot integrate herself.
  • Adopting Loki as a symbol of their victory over the Frost Giants. Let's quote him how he feels about this:
    Loki: I may have been born in Jotunheim, but I was raised in Asgard. And yet I am neither Jotun nor God. Not truly. So what exactly does that make me? For many years I pondered that question before finally realizing the answer: I am... Loki.
  • Thor himself is literally this trope as his birth mother is none other than Mother Earth herself, Gaea.
• Ms. Marvel (2014): Kamala Khan, the second Ms. Marvel, was conceived in Karachi and born in New Jersey. Her Pakistani heritage and customs make her an outsider in America, but in an issue where she goes to Pakistan, she stands out by being too American. And then there's her latent Inhuman heritage...
• Persepolis: Marjane was born and raised in pre-Islamic Revolution Iran, but then grew up in Austria during her teens. She feels conflicted over not properly fitting in with either Western or Iranian culture (too "provocative" for Islamists, too "savage" for Europeans).
• Superman:
  • Superman was born on Krypton and raised on Earth, and for a while believed he was the last Kryptonian. His struggle to reconcile both sides of his heritage would take a significant part of his history. In Man of Steel, Jor-El expresses his hopes that Superman will, in time, become the bridge between two worlds.
  • Unlike Superman, Supergirl spent most of her formative years in Krypton, and often she feels like she kind of belongs to both worlds but fits in neither. In Supergirl Vol. 5 issue #30 she mutters "[She] barely understands [Earth] and barely can remember [Krypton]". Though, in the New Krypton arc she realizes she's become more human-like without realizing, and has nightmares where crowds of Terrans and Kryptonians demand her to pick a side.
    Lana Lang: So what's it like over there?
    Supergirl: On New Krypton? It's... different. Our people are happy there. The planet itself is beautiful, too, but... It's weird, but being around other Kryptonians like my mother, I'm really starting to feel... well...
    Lana: Alien?
    Supergirl: Some of them are so different from humans, Lana. They think differently, they speak differently, they... react differently. I've been on Earth so long, it's been hard for me to fall back into being "just another Kryptonian".
  • By the end of Who is Superwoman?, Supergirl decides that, even though she still feels conflicted between Krypton and Earth, she has to learn to shoulder the problems of both worlds because both of them are her home.
    Supergirl: This is my home. One of two that is. If I'm going to live on both, I'm going to have to learn to shoulder the problems of two worlds. Shouldn't be too much of a problem, right? After all, I'm Supergirl.
  • Kon-El has some serious personal conflicts due to his biological nature as being created from Superman and Lex Luthor's DNA and the contrast between his strange early upbringing by other Cadmus manufactured beings and his later "teen" years living with the Kents in Smallville.
  • In Superman Smashes the Klan, Clark was born on Krypton, but adopted and raised on Earth, making him culturally human despite his alien origins. But given this is the 1940s, he's terrified of being persecuted for not being human, leading him to reject his origins and try to pass for human. His suppression of his Kryptonian heritage prevents him from unlocking the full breadth of his powers, which comes back to bite him when he fails to use his X-ray vision to locate the bombs the Klan planted in the Unity House, resulting in its destruction.
• Wonder Woman:
  • In her original and less convoluted backstory, Donna Troy was a girl from man's world who was rescued from a fire that killed her parents and raised on Themyscira as Diana's adopted sister.
  • In New 52 and Rebirth, Diana herself and her twin brother Jason are children of Zeus, the leader of the Olympian gods and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons.
• Most of the characters from the X-Men books are firmly tied to either the human or mutant communities, with a strong culture of Fantastic Racism on both sides and years of hostilities dividing the two. But a handful of characters straddle the line between the two groups, including:
  • Wolverine villain Lady Deathstrike might be the most eyebrow-raising case, as she has fought for the most extremist of factions on both sides of the divide. Originally a Dragon Lady stereotype with no ties to either group, she fell in with the anti-mutant crowd in the 2000s and became a prominent enforcer of Reverend Stryker. Then she was recruited by the Red Queen to her Sisterhood of Mutants (despite not being a mutant). Most recently she's aligned herself with another pro-mutant faction, and barring a Status Quo Is God reset button push she may have shed her ties to the human racist community for good.
  • Supporting character Garrison Kane (aka the second Weapon X) from the Cable and X-Force books. Much like Lady Deathstrike, he's a Cyborg who has fought for both sides of the human/mutant conflict, first mutants as an ally of Cable and the X-Men, and then humans as an enforcer of a particularly brutal incarnation of the Weapon X program. He saw the error of his ways but tragically succumbed to Redemption Equals Death attempting to make things right.
  • Josh Foley (aka Elixir) of the New X-Men was introduced as a Jerk Jock and mild Fantastic Racist who joined up with Donald Pierce's Reavers, only to unexpectedly discover he was in fact a mutant himself and join the X-Men after a Humiliation Conga of being disowned by his family and attacked by his friends. He's since become a firm part of the mutant community and even joined Magneto's latest (as of 2019) incarnation of the Brotherhood of Mutants.
  • Adrian Luca, one of the three original Player Characters of X-Men: Destiny, is very similar to Elixir above in his backstory, having been raised as a Child Soldier of the anti-mutant Purifiers before discovering his mutancy and subsequently being alienated from his former allies. The X-Men and Brotherhood both court him for membership, and depending on the player's choices he can go the Elixir route and swing from one group of extremists to the other.
  • The infamous Nurse Annie from the equally infamous writer Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men was an ordinary human with a Freudian Excuse (she dated an abusive mutant, causing her to develop anti-mutant prejudices) who fell in love with the X-Man Havok after a long period of taking care of him while he was stuck in a Convenient Coma. After he woke up, she followed him to the X-Men, where her lingering prejudices made her clash with several X-Men.
  • Vying with Lady Deathstrike above for the most extreme case of this is Graydon Creed, the human son of Sabretooth and Mystique. Being born to two of the most evil mutants in history filled Graydon with hatred for mutants, and as an adult, he became a politician who campaigned to Fantastic Racists all across the country. Despite overtures by his two heroic half-siblings Nightcrawler and Rogue, Graydon refused to turn away from his anti-mutant crusade, leading his mother to eventually assassinate him as revenge for the murder of her lover Destiny (which Graydon wasn't even involved in).
• In Young Avengers, Hulkling is a half-Kree half-Skrull child of an affair between Captain Marvel and a Skrull princess. Both the Kree and Skrulls want him to lead their faction. For extra fun, the Kree and Skrull despise each other and have been trying to wipe each other out for thousands of years.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm:
  • Harry, who is half-Asgardian, half-human (or to be more accurate, half-Asgardian, half-magical human/mutant), and is occasionally presented as being caught between the two worlds — while there's been no indication that he'll be forced to choose any time soon, his priorities and values derive heavily from Earth. Complicating things further, a lot of his Earth-based life is in New York with the Avengers, and he starts picking up aspects of their mentality, changing (sometimes not for the better) in ways which jar with the Wizarding world.
  • Then there's the classic case of Clark Kent, who was born on Krypton, and eventually becomes aware of it, and feels caught between his normal life as an average High School Student in Smallville, and his superpowered ancestry as the Last Son of Krypton.
• The Child of Love: Asuka is half-American, one-quarter German, and one-quarter Japanese. She chose a Western name for her child and she gave Shinji chocolates on Valentine's Day because it's the tradition in Japan.
• In Dæmorphing: The Presence of Justice, Loren realises that they need feshlath, children of two herds, to talk the Andalites out of blowing up Earth. She and Tobias can act as go-betweens for the humans; the Hamees for the Hork-Bajir; and Arbron for the Taxxons.
• As a Dunmer who lives in Morrowind but was born outside of it, Jane falls into this category in the crossover fanfic Daria in Morrowind.
• In Androgyninja's A Drop of Poison, Sakura comes from a civilian background, which causes some strife due to how some shinobi look down upon 'civilian-born ninja'. Sakura's efforts to prove herself yield mixed results; while she's earned some recognition by A Dose of Venom, this also leads to her straddling both worlds, finding that she's not quite accepted by either.
• Empath of Empath: The Luckiest Smurf is born a Smurf but raised as a Psyche from infancy, and thus struggles with who he wishes to identify himself as when he finds out the truth of his actual parentage.
• In Hellsister Trilogy, Kara had been born and raised in a Kryptonian city, but she moved to Earth when she was fifteen. Now she's almost thirty, but she hasn't yet managed to adapt to her new home.
• Kallen Stadtfeld, Countess of Britannia: Much of Kallen's character development in R0 revolves around her growing to identify more with her Britannian heritage. In contrast, her brother identifies far more with his Japanese heritage.
• Subverted in Kara of Rokyn. After spending about fifteen years living as a Kryptonian immigrant in Earth, and failing to fit in among Earth people, Kara pays a visit to Rokyn, a world settled by other Kryptonian survivors, and decides to move there permanently because she feels she belongs among them.
• In Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Kraith stories about Spock finding his place in traditional Vulcan culture, his name means "communicates a blended tradition". It also implies "a founder of dynasties" because the ancestor for whom he is named was that.
• Life and Honor: Mance being half-wilding is cause for mistrust amongst the Black Brothers, even if the Watch practically raised him.
• A running theme for the "Junior Trinity" in the Teen Titans Our Own League novels is they are each the children of three worlds. Robin is an Al Ghul, a Wayne and (by adoption) a Kyle; Superboy is an El, a Kent, and a Luthor; and Wonder Girl is a three-way hybrid of human, Amazon, and Titan. Aqualad is a more traditional case, as a half-Atlantean raised as a human.
• In crossover Portalborn, it's mentioned the Dragonborn, who's a human woman -and werewolf- with the soul of the dragon, lives among two worlds.
• Scarred Survivors has Urd — half Goddess, half demon; born in Niflheim, moved to Asgard in her youth.
• Edward and Alphonse are half Ishvalan and half Amestrian actually Xerxian in Son of the Desert but fully identify with their Ishvalan heritage and are proud of it despite fearing that they will be killed for it and going against cultural taboos by practicing alchemy.
• Son of the Sannin: Haku was born in and spent his early years in the Land of Water but grew up in the Land of Fire. He was specifically appointed as Kiri's ambassador in Konoha for this reason, since he would have a vested interest in maintaining peace between the two nations.
• In Summer and Winter, Ace becomes this after his resurrection. He is a Whitebeard, but also the Spirit of Summer, the latter duty of which will force him to go to Earth one day. The thought of having to leave his old life behind tears him up inside and makes him feel guilty for having to choose one world over the other.
• In Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation, it's been five centuries since two Kryptonian heroes arrived on Earth, but their descendants can't forget about their alien heritage due to their powers. Co-protagonist Katherine describes living on Earth as "trying to run through a room carpeted with eggs, and trying not to break anything". On Rokyn, another world inhabited by people of Kryptonian descent, they have no powers so they don't need to hold back, but it isn't their home either because they haven't been raised there.
• Talespinner: A large part of the story revolves around exactly how Sarah embodies this.

Films — Animated

• Balto: Balto is a wolf-dog hybrid and feels caught between the two at times. The humans don’t trust him and the town dogs pick on him. He sees a wolf pack that seems to be calling to him to join, but he doesn’t feel like part of them either. The same thing pops up with his daughter Aleu in the sequel as she looks more like him than Jenna.
• Bao: For all intents and purposes, the bao is a Chinese child, raised by Chinese parents, growing up in the West (specifically, Canada).
• The Boxtrolls: Eggs is one of these, according to his biological father at any rate: he was born a human, but raised by the boxtrolls after an attempt on his birth father's life.
• Played with in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea. While Melody is half-mermaid and half-human ('Never been seen, never before!'/'A child is born of sea and shore!') and ultimately brings the human and mermaid communities together at the end of the film, the reason Ariel cut ties with Atlantica was because she thought keeping Melody ignorant of her mermaid heritage was the only way to save her from Morgana.
• In Turning Red, Mei is a Chinese child, raised by Chinese parents, growing up in the West (specifically, Canada).^note The similarity to Bao is not a coincidence; both films are by the same director.

Films — Live-Action

• Blood In Blood Out: Miklo is a man of mixed Mexican and Anglo ethnicity, living in a Latino community but having white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Due to this, when he joins the Mexican gang inside the prison, he convinces the gang leader to make him an infiltrator because he can blend in with the rival Aryan Brotherhood gang and go to places that are off-limits to Latino and black inmates.
• Chariots of Fire: Both of the central figures are examples, both in the film and in real life.
  • Harold Abrahams was Jewish and the son of a Lithuanian immigrant to the UK, which alienated him in many ways from the predominantly Christian English culture. Nonetheless, he loved England deeply and sought to become an ideal Englishman. The film addresses his struggle to be seen as such.
  • Eric Liddell, though ethnically fully Scottish, was born in China as the son of Christian missionaries and spent his early childhood there; in real life, he often described himself as "Oriental". The film depicts how his devout faith alienated him from the British mainstream.
• Discussed in a realistic example of The Farewell, where it functions as the main conflict. Billi's whole family are Chinese, but she and her parents moved to New York City when she was very young. The rest of her family still live in China, and there's much discussion of Billi's American values, the value of America in China, and which is "better".
• The Godfather: Tom Hagen was born into a German-Irish family but raised by Sicilians. As an adult, he often acts as a buffer between the Corleones and their WASP colleagues.
• Godzilla: In the Heisei films of The '90s, Godzilla Jr. is introduced in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II being brought up by the humans who found his egg before eventually going to live with the adult Godzilla. Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla and Godzilla vs. Destoroyah portray him as being much friendlier toward humans (particularly Miki Sagusa) than other Kaiju, with Vs. Destoroyah in particular showing him going out of his way not to make landfall and hurt the people onshore like his father would.
• Hidalgo: Frank Hopkins is half Native American and half white, and has a foot in both cultures.
• Maleficent: As a princess, Aurora is the rightful heir to the human kingdom's throne. However, she is raised in the woods and grows to love the fairy kingdom, and the revelation that she is a princess leaves her conflicted over which home she belongs in. In the end, she chooses both realms, and Maleficent crowns her Queen of both humans and The Fair Folk.
• This is pretty much the main theme of Mowgli. As a human child raised by jungle wolves, Mowgli has to find out who he really is and where he belongs. This being Truer to the Text, this used to be the same case for Bagheera as well, who grew up among men while truly belonging to the jungle.
• The Namesake: Nikhil/Gogol has a complex about this that goes right down to his name. He is a Bengali born and raised in the U.S., although with strong Bengali family and cultural ties. Confusing things still further, his name Gogol is a gift from his father, a huge fan of Russian author Nikolai Gogol. His entire story reflects aspects of the experiences of young ABCD people.
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Shang-Chi is the son of Ying Li a former inhabitant of Ta Lo, an alternate dimension where its residents are trained in ancient martial arts and guard the universe from the Dweller-in-Darkness, and Xu Wenwu/The Mandarin, a millennia-old warlord and head of the terrorist organization the Ten Rings. When his father tries to invade Ta Lo because the village is apparently keeping her imprisoned behind the dark gate, Shang-Chi goes to Ta Lo to help stop him. After learning about his maternal heritage and accepting that he's the son of both of his parents, he gains the strength needed to fight his father and defeat the Dweller-in-Darkness using the Ta Lo fighting style and the Ten Rings.
• The page quote hails from Star Trek (2009), with Vulcan Sarek describing his half-human son Spock. Spock's mixed parentage was touched on in Star Trek: The Original Series, but is made a much more central element of the character in the reboot films.
• Tamahine: Tamahine has a British father and a Polynesian mother, and spent her childhood in the latter's culture. Then in her early adulthood, she is brought to England and struggles to understand its customs, particularly British Stuffiness as compared to the more open Polynesian way of being.
• Thor: Odin hopes Loki will become a bridge between Asgard and Jotunheim. Instead, Loki utterly repudiates his Jotun heritage, going so far as to attempt genocide against his birth people. The fact that Odin kept it a complete secret and let Loki believe Frost Giants were monsters didn't help matters. It takes Loki several years until he can accept his heritage, portraying his adoption in a positive light in a stage play or calling himself the Prince of Asgard and the rightful King of Jotunheim in the same sentence.
• Underworld (2003): Eve is the child of three worlds as she's born as a Vampire-Lycan-Inmortal hybrid.
• Where Hands Touch: Leyna is a biracial girl who was born to a white German mother and a black French African father in Germany. As a result, though she was born and raised German, Lenya can never fit in due to the pervasive racism against biracial people at the time, which only gets worse when the Nazis take power. Lenya does all that she can to conform, even adopting Nazism. It does no good though because of her ancestry forever being a barrier.

Literature

• Tobias from Animorphs struggles at times with his dual identity as a human boy trapped in the body of a red-tailed hawk. The most prominent book dealing with it is “The Encounter”. Tobias struggles with his human mindset and need to kill to survive as a wild hawk while also feeling annoyed at taking food from his friends. He starts feeling detached from his human self but it does get better. Later, he sometimes struggles with the fact that he can become human once he regains his morphing power, but only for two hours at a time. He thinks he’ll have to make a choice between staying hawk and becoming a nonmorphing human, but the “cousin” saying she’ll adopt him is actually Visser Three and it’s a trick. Also, there’s the aspect of dating Rachel and wondering if it’s right since he can’t stay human permanently.
• In Arrivals from the Dark, Paul Richard Corcoran is the son of a human woman forcibly impregnanted with the seed of a Bino Faata named Dyte. Thus Corcoran is a Half-Human Hybrid. However, he was raised on Earth by his mother and holds nothing but contempt for the Faata. The psychic abilities he inherited from the Faata allow him to sense what people are feeling and communicate over incredible distances. Some of his descendants are capable of the same feats. Later on, Corcoran's great-grandson Sergey Valdez accidentally triggers the psychic conception in a Lo'ona Aeo female named Zantou. Zantou eventually gives birth to a male named Heeyar. While biologically and genetically he's Lo'ona Aeo, he inherits some of his father's character traits and is less averse to meeting aliens than other Lo'ona Aeo. He longs to meet Valdez's human children, whom he considers his siblings.
• Bhowani Junction: Played for Drama in regard to Victoria's inner conflict about her mixed-race status and all it entails. She feels racially superior to Indians but socially inferior to Brits. She grows resentful of Britain's culture after her experience serving in the British Army but can't quite connect with the Indian people from her childhood town when she returns. The climax of her character development is choosing another Anglo-Indian as her romantic partner.
• John the Savage from Brave New World is the son of the Director and a Beta named Linda who was stranded in the Savage Reservation. At the Reservation, John is ostracized by his Native American peers due to being white, and when he comes to the World State, he is only ostracized even further. Why? Well, other than having grown up reading Shakespeare's works, he was also naturally born, and possesses a sense of humanity and morality much like the reader's, in contrast to the World State, a society with a morality based on "happiness" and "unhappiness", going out of its way to pacify and satisfy its people if it means making them incapable of living anything but a crude shell of a life.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: As a human Made Fae, Feyre has a foot in both worlds; she'll never be welcomed back into human lands, but she still cares about humankind.
• Captain Carrot from Discworld is this between humans and dwarfs, being a human raised by a dwarf king. He occasionally acts as mediator between extremist factions of either. He once described himself as "the Brothers united," the Brothers in question being the legendary first man and first dwarf.
• In Dune, Jessica and her son Paul Atreides are both Harkonnens as well, since Jessica is really Baron Vladimir Harkonnen's daughter. Combining the Atreides and Harkonnen bloodlines was a necessary part of the Reverend Mothers' plan to sire the Kwisatz Haderach.
• In the Earth's Children series Ayla literally dreams that her son Durc (half Clan, half Cro-Magnon) brings the two disparate communities together, but it never happens as far as we know. The series concluded in 2010 with the subplot about Durc completely unresolved. In the meantime she herself, a Cro-Mag raised in the Clan, is the catalyst for the two tribes learning to have not quite so terrible feelings towards one another.
• Maia of The Goblin Emperor is half elf, half goblin, born from a loveless political marriage. While the goblins of this world are not an Always Chaotic Evil race, and rather similar to elves except for their skin colour (black as opposed to the elves' white), there is some racist prejudice, and the cultures are different in some aspects. His parents' marriage failed as an attempt at diplomacy, however, Maia himself is very interested in building bridges.
• The title character of the Jani Kilian series was born human, but went through an idomeni religious school as part of a cultural exchange and later was rebuilt using idomeni genetic material. One of Kilian's jobs is serving as an intermediary between human and idomeni communities, and she's involved in troubleshooting problems affecting both sides.
• Mowgli in The Jungle Book is a human boy raised by wolves at a very young age. He winds up being cast out of the wolf pack and a human village, leading him to live by himself in the jungle. The song he sings after his victory over Shere Khan describes his liminal nature and the conflicting emotions it brings him.
• Töne Förk in Noob. He was initially groomed to take the Coalition leadership. One of his political rivals set up to make him a Puppet King at best, outright kill him at worst. Seeing a Face–Heel Turn into the Empire as the Lesser of Two Evils, he eventually decided he was the one with the best chance of uniting the two factions due to having seen the war from both sides.
• Isaac Asimov and Janet Asimov's The Norby Chronicles: Norby is a robot built by a Terran spacer from his scraps and the wrecked computer of a Jamyn spacecraft. The process has left him quite mixed up, and he initially is uncertain exactly where he belongs but chooses to stay with Jeff because of their friendship.
• Oliver Twisted: Oliver has no memory of his parents, and later discovers their identities while searching for his destiny. His father was a reformed warlock whilst his mother was the White Mage daughter of Brownlow, and much of Oliver's qualms with being a warlock was that warlocks are evil, until he learns his father was a reformed one.
• "The Paper Menagerie": The paper animals folded by Jack's mother are an unsubtle metaphor for his feelings towards their Chinese heritage. He adores them as a child, rejects them when he aligns himself with his white American father and neighbors, and returns to them in grief after his mother dies.
• Shatter the Sky: Maren is the child of a Zefedi father and a Verran mother. The Zefedi conquered the Verrans while ruling their land still. While her parents love each other and have a good marriage, it's something that puts her in the middle between the two peoples. Maren too stands out from her Verran neighbors, as she inherited Zefedi looks from her father. Nonetheless, she considers herself fully a Verran due to being raised among them. She's glad while being in the midst of Zefedi however that her height and skin color (unusual among Verrans) don't stand out, as they had before all her life, which lets her blend with them.
• The Silerian Trilogy:
  • Ronall is the son of a Valdan man and Silerian woman. Valdans have also ruled Sileria for centuries, with violent antagonism between most members of both peoples. He gets prejudice from both sides as a result.
  • Elelar and Mirabir both conceive children who are intended to be this. Their children will both have fire and water magic, healing an ancient rift between both types of magic users.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • King Benedict Justman was born from parents of House Blackwood and Bracken, two houses that share one of the most intense rivalries in all of Westeros. Both houses initially despised him, but he eventually won them over and they became his first supporters.
  • Brynden "Bloodraven" Rivers, the bastard son of Aegon IV Targaryen and Melissa Blackwood, is a child of Valyrian and First Men ancestry, where said relationships are allegedly a rarity in Westeros, and he's so far the only one who shows how powerful a child of Valyrian and First Men heritage may turn out, being an immensely powerful greenseer and skinchanger.^note The Blackwoods would legitimately marry into the Targaryens two generations after Bloodraven when Betha Blackwood married Aegon V, but their children were just normal humans, and among their descendants, only Daenerys has shown herself to be tied to magic when she breeds her three dragons. Bloodraven himself had two full siblings who were seldom mentioned and did not seem to possess magical abilities. One could wonder how it'd be if Targaryens ever bred with Starks, and it's a very good question.
  • Theon Greyjoy was born to Balon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands, who leads a raiding people, but after his father's rebellion is put down, he is given to Eddard Stark to be raised as a ward (read, hostage), where "Ned" Stark and his house are a very honorable people. Much of Theon's arc over the books (and television show) is coming to terms with his upbringing versus his birth family.
  • Daenerys Targaryen was born in Westeros, but was forced to flee as a newborn to the East since her family had recently been dethroned and Robert Baratheon, to secure his position on the Throne, had ordered to kill all the remaining Targaryens. Dany grows up a witness to the many cultures inhabiting Essos while also learning second-hand about Westeros by Viserys. In turn, she turns into a polyglot once grown and adapts well to Dothraki culture once married to Khal Drogo (oiling her hair in the style of the horselords and wearing painted vests, in contrast to his brother's stained silks).
• Talos, the protagonist of Spartan, was actually a child from a noble Spartan family, but the city-state neglected him due to his malformed foot (and according to this law, every child who cannot serve as a warrior must be left to die from exposure). Luckily, he was rescued and he was raised as a Helot.
• Split Heirs: Arbol, child of the Gorgarian king who conquered Hydragea and the Old Hydrangean king's daughter, grows up with a foot in both worlds. She brings them together at the end, as the new queen which both have accepted.
• One of the Star Trek Novel 'Verse books (Vulcan! by Kathleen Sky) mentioned that "Spock" meant "The Uniter" in the Vulcan language. His father was, after all, the ambassador to Earth and expected his son to follow in his footsteps.
• Tarzan of the Apes: Tarzan has a story similar to Mowgli. He was born into the world of man, but raised in the wild. The Disney adaptation even has a theme song called "Two Worlds".
• Temeraire: Tharkay is the child of a 19^th-Century English officer and a Nepalese woman, leaving him experienced with but a stranger to both cultures, who becomes a cynical and independent Native Guide in Central Asia. In a candid moment, he admits how British racism has alienated him, and the British protagonist apologizes for his own prejudice and honestly asks for Tharkay's friendship.
• Tolkien's Legendarium: The Half-elven. By default they are mortal, but very much belong to the elven world as well.
  • Those in the lineage of Lúthien get to choose whether they will be mortal or immortal: but this only changes their fate, not their powers while alive. They are actually children of three worlds, since Lúthien was half-Maia.
  • Elrond and Elros in particular have a bad case of this since they are not only half-human and half-elf but also belong to both of the two major types of elves (who do not like each other). Plus, they were raised by the Sons of Fëanor: a third faction of elves that the other two despise for different reasons. In the end though, it makes Elros the perfect candidate to unite all the human tribes into a single nation: and Elrond the perfect person to coordinate the fight against Sauron. But it's never easy being the guy everyone is related to in Middle Earth.
• Under the Pendulum Sun: Changelings spend their early lives truly believing that they're the humans they replaced, then get exposed and recalled to Arcadia by The Fair Folk. Neither human nor truly Fae, they're out of place in both worlds, which causes Ariel a fair bit of Supernatural Angst.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Fireheart and his nephew Cloudtail struggle with this in the first series; Fireheart was born a kittypet but joined the Clan when he was young, and he brought Cloudtail to the Clan shortly after Cloudtail's birth. Both have to deal with prejudice from Clanborn cats, Fireheart feels torn between loyalty to his kittypet sister and his loyalty to the Clan, and Cloudtail struggles with the allure of kittypet life while learning to become a Clan warrior.
  • In the prequel series Dawn of the Clans, Thunder is the son of Clear Sky, the leader of the group of cats living in the forest, but when Clear Sky refuses to raise him, Thunder's uncle Gray Wing takes him in and raises him in the moor group. As Thunder grows, he feels loyalty to the group he was raised in and views Gray Wing as a father, but also wants to earn Clear Sky's approval and feels more at home in the forest itself than on the moor, so he tries living in each group. Ultimately his relationship with Clear Sky remains rocky and he forms his own group in another part of the forest.
• Like in the musical, Elphaba from Wicked is the daughter of an Ozian woman and a man from Earth. Of course, she never discovers it, but it's foreshadowed throughout, and are the hints to the origin of her green skin and her ability to read the Grimmerie. Elphaba also as a child travelled through Squadling country alongside her family, which lead to her being more savvy and open-minded to other cultures later on.

Live-Action TV

• Cleverman: Koen was born to an Aboriginal father and a white mother. She died before he was born (Koen was delivered by emergency C-section) and Koen got bullied for being her son by Aboriginal boys who called her a whore. His half-brother Warru is among those who's held her against him, and so unsurprisingly when grown up he's estranged from the Aboriginal community, with only white friends. He slowly embraces his Aboriginal side upon learning he's the titular Cleverman, a heroic savior in Aboriginal culture, abiding by their customs more.
• Dexter: New Blood: Audrey tells Harrison that due to having a birth mother who was White and her dad partly Seneca, she never felt fully part of either community.
• On Earth: Final Conflict, two of Liam Kincaid's parents are human and one is a Kimera, an alien race connected to the Taelons. Being part alien makes Liam more sympathetic to the Taelons and helps him to win Da'an's trust. He brings Da'an and the human resistance together and tries to encourage cooperation between the two species.
• On Falling Skies, one of the Espheni overlords plants his genes into a pregnant Anne Glass, causing her to produce a half-human, half-Espheni daughter that the Espheni hope will bring peace between the two species. It doesn't quite work — the humans see Lexi Glass-Mason as a Creepy Child and turn against her after she starts displaying her alien heritage.
• Game of Thrones:
  • This is the Freudian Excuse behind Theon Greyjoy's Start of Darkness: he's the last living heir of House Greyjoy, but was taken hostage as a child by House Stark and raised for most of his formative years as a "kraken among wolves". Despite forming a deep friendship with House Stark's firstborn heir Robb, Theon succumbs to the desire to please his Archnemesis Dad and prove he's a real member of the Ironborn. After a lot of Character Development (and lots of Cold-Blooded Torture), Theon is finally able to admit that Ned Stark was more of a father to him than Balon Greyjoy ever was.
  • Jon Snow is the son of two dynasties, Stark and Targaryen, who never shared a marriage. The Starks are descendants of the First Men and former rulers of a Grim Up North kingdom. The Targaryens are descendants of a civilization of dragon riders, who came from Essos to conquer all the Seven Kingdoms. Thus, Jon is the son(g) of ice and fire, which almost fills the title of the book saga letter by letter.
  • This is a factor in the Face–Heel Turn of Daenerys Targaryen in the final season. The last surviving heir (or so she believed herself to be; Jon actually has a greater claim to the title than she does) of House Targaryen, she was smuggled out of the continent of Westeros as a baby and spent most of her life traveling around the various Free Cities of Essos. The tales of her older brother Viserys (who was killed in the first season) filled her with a longing for her homeland and a deep desire to take what she believed was hers by right, the Iron Throne that Westeros's kings mount. After six seasons of rising to power in Essos, Daenerys finally returned to Westeros in the seventh season as an adult with the army and experience she needs to rule the continent. Unfortunately for her, she was now effectively a foreigner as far as the Westerosi people were concerned, and by leading an army of an infamous Essos people called the Dothraki, Daenerys's rival for power Cersei was able to smear her to the populace as a foreign menace. Tragically, even fighting for the Westerosi against the White Walkers didn't mitigate the distrust the smallfolk had for her, and after realizing this (and enduring a devastating string of personal losses) she went Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and embraced her inner Dothraki, ravaging the Westerosi capital of King's Landing and personally burning thousands of smallfolk alive.
• Ginny and Georgia: Ginny, being biracial, has felt caught in between at times. She says to Hunter (who's also biracial with East Asian/white heritage), that she's had no friends in the past as for white kids she'd been not white enough and black kids too white. She cries on seeing one comment which calls her "the whitest black girl" and self-harms by burning herself with a candle over it. Later she also speaks with Hunter about how annoying being asked "what are you?" is, and being stereotyped given their backgrounds (he notes that he's half Taiwanese, though "Asian" is all even his friends know). In a slam poem given for her class later she also mentions her annoyance at being put into a box with regards to her identity too, refusing that pigeonholing. She and Hunter talk heatedly about what their own experiences given this have been, which devolves into insults (this was highly criticized due to relying on stereotypes, plus the "Oppression Olympics" of them one-upping about who's experienced worse).
• The Law & Order episode "Pride" had a gay conservative who was trying (and somewhat succeeding) to make both the gay community and the ultra-conservative community happy.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Although Elrond chose to follow his Elven half and become immortal, unlike his late twin brother, he is still very much the Half-Elven. This is sometimes leveled against him as a Stealth Insult, but by standing slightly outside of full elvishness, he's also capable of (and willing to) see their faults—and to fully empathize the mistrust others have of them. (His protest to Durin is also a reminder that he hasn't forgotten how Fëanor's sons, all the progeny of the greatest elf who ever lived, completely wrecked his family.)
• The L Word:
  • Bette is biracial, having a black father and a white mother. She always identifies this way to honor them both, although white people often don't realize she's biracial, thinking her olive skin tone and dark slightly curly hair just means Bette's of Italian descent or something. Bette resists the demand to identify solely as black by a black woman she meets too, remarking how that's based on the racist One-Drop Rule, but points out she never tries to pass as white either, as noted above. Further, she requests that her wife Tina conceive their daughter with a black donor, which is agreed to, thus continuing her mixed heritage.
  • Dani Nùñez in Generation Q, who's of half Latino and half Iranian heritage. Although she has a Latin American name, she's fluent in Farsi along with Spanish and knowledgeable about Iranian culture, bonding due to this with Gigi, an Iranian-American.
• Midnight Sun (2016): Anders is half Sami, half Swede. He has mostly lived as a Swede, though he's very sympathetic to the Sami. This puts him at odds with both sometimes, as the Sami are suspicious of Swedes, who often mistreat them. Conversely, some Swedes dislike Sami and thus him too.
• Mohawk Girls: Anna, who has a white mother and Mohawk father, struggles with this at length. She won't be accepted by many Mohawk unless she's disclaimed more "white" attributes but still isn't eligible for citizenship in the band due to having too much white ancestry. However, conforming means she steadily becomes meaner as it's the rudest Mohawks demanding this, and in the series finale refuses to anymore, saying she's both-Mohawk, but also white.
• Picnic at Hanging Rock: Marion is mixed race, with a white father and Aboriginal mother. Due to her rich father paying for it, she's educated at a high society finishing school and mixes with upper class white girls. It's clear though she will never gain full entry among them due to her heritage, since even when offered a teaching position she'd have to always hide when the students' parents came due to their racism.
• In the Mini Series Queen (the story of Alex Haley's paternal grandmother), the title character is the result of her slave mother's consensual affair with the plantation owner. Adding to her dichotomy, she's taken to be a lady's maid to the child her father has with his white wife (her half-sister) and therefore grows up with the same advantages as her, meaning that she genuinely identifies more with the white side of her family. She gets a harsh awakening when she's tossed out after the Civil War.
• ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.?: Cuban-American Joe and Carmen's parents and grandparents pressure them to cling to traditions and values from a country they can't remember (Joe) or never experienced (Carmen). At the same time, outside the home, they both experience pressure to assimilate to America and set aside their traditions.
• She's Gotta Have It:
  • Greer is a biracial man here, unlike in the film, as the son of an African-American man and a White Frenchwoman. He'd also grown up at least partly in France. As a result, he dislikes American culture regarding race, since in France there is less expectation that a person has to fit into one box. He also doesn't like being categorized as just "Black" as that feels like denying his mother to him.
  • Mars is half Puerto Rican and half Black, along with his sister. While it isn't focused on too much, both speak Spanish and embrace being Black plus Puerto Ricans.
• Star Trek:
  • Worf, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, is a Klingon who was raised among humans and is an officer of Starfleet, but who is strongly connected to his Klingon roots in spite of growing up far away from any of his kin. He is loyal to Starfleet and Captain Picard, but also adheres strictly to Klingon teachings of honor. Much of Worf's character arc centers on the fact that he embraces Klingon ideals but is willfully blind to the fact that the Klingon Empire largely fails to live up to them.
    • Not as emphasized, but Ship's Counselor Deanna Troi is also this, as the daughter of a Betazoid mother and a human father. She inherited her mother's empathic abilities, but also several Terran customs from her father, including a love of Wild West stories and (in one comics arc) the skills of a killer pool hustler.
  • Star Trek: Voyager has B'Elanna Torres. She's alienated from her Klingon heritage because her human father left her and she suffered discrimination at a time when relations were poor with the Klingon Empire. She's also a tsundere who (rightly or wrongly) blames her personality issues on being half-Klingon. There's also Seven of Nine, a human assimilated by the Borg but forcibly severed from the Collective by the crew of Voyager. Her Borg pride and Blue-and-Orange Morality clash with Captain Janeway's Starfleet values in the first couple of years, but while she eventually becomes used to being human again, her character in Star Trek: Picard indicates she has trouble assimilating into human society as well.
  • Ziyal wants to be a mediator in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She's the daughter of a Bajoran woman and Gul Dukat, the Cardassian prefect at the end of Bajor's occupation, and there's still a lot of bad blood between the two species. Since her artwork has visible influences from Bajoran and Cardassian artists, she thinks it can highlight the similarities between them. She's killed before any of this can come to fruition.
  • It's not as blatant as it is in the reboot films (see the page quote), but there are still allusions made to Spock of Star Trek: The Original Series being this, given his half-human, half-Vulcan lineage.
  • Star Trek: Discovery follows the reboot films' cue by exploring Spock's status in Vulcan society and contrasting him with Michael Burnham, a human orphan fostered by Spock's parents and raised in Vulcan society, making her another example of the trope.
  • According to Word of God, if Star Trek: Enterprise had gotten renewed for another season, they would have revealed that T’Pol’s father was a Romulan deep cover agent on Vulcan, making her this.
  • Star Trek: Picard has quite a few variations on this:
    • Seven of Nine is an xB (ex-Borg), a freed Borg drone, who famously served with Starfleet for several years under the command of Captain Janeway. She's implied to have since become rather disenchanted of both the Borg and the Federation for their various failings and serves with the Fenris Rangers, a militia force that attempts to keep the peace in the former Romulan territories.
    • Hugh is another xB, who is rather more idealistic than Seven, representing the Federation on a joint project with the Romulan Free State to help rehabilitate former drones and study technology aboard a derelict Borg cube in Romulan territory. He has been forced to compromise his ideals to work with the Romulans, in return for seeing the concrete benefits the project provides for the otherwise neglected or victimized xBs. The sad truth is that the Romulans, even with whatever plots they are running, prove more trustworthy than the overall galactic society traumatized by the Borg Collective's incursions.
    • Doctor Soji Asha is a brilliant young woman from Earth working with Hugh on the Borg Reclamation Project. Except that she is actually an advanced Soong-type android programmed with false memories, sent out along with her sister to investigate a plot that threatens their kind. As the story develops, she grows increasingly unsure if she can trust anyone from any side.
    • Picard himself, being both a famous retired Starfleet admiral and well-respected historian, as well as an xB haunted by his brief time in the Collective and the things he was forced to do against his will. While Seven and Hugh are mostly known for being former drones of the Collective, many in the Federation seem to overlook Picard's relatively brief time, despite how heavily it weighs on him personally. Except, of course, when he runs into a survivor of The Battle of Wolf 359, such as Captain Shaw, who remembers him for being the only Borg dangerous enough to have his own name: Locutus.
• Strange Empire: Kat and Caleb are Métis (First Nations/White ancestry). Both navigate between these two different, frequently antagonistic worlds with varying degrees of difficulty and bond over the fact.

Music

• Irish folk song "The Orange and the Green" is all about this, with the singer being the son of a Protestant ("Orange", as in the Loyal Orange Institution, a Protestant fraternal order) man and Catholic ("Green") woman, and how he had to balance both religions as he grew up, attending both services each Sunday and being called a different name by each parent, along with being homeschooled because neither of them could agree on which type of school he should go to. For his part, the singer remains strictly neutral, not choosing one over the other.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • It's not uncommon for plane-touched races, such as the half-celestial aasimar, half-fiend tieflings, and half-elemental genasi, to end up as this. They're too closely tied to their supernatural ancestry to pass as regular mortals, and their precise ancestry will often see them treated with uncomfortable reverence or vicious prejudice. They're however fully children of the material world, and their extraplanar ancestors rarely see them as more than another strain of mortals.
  • Half-dragons often find themselves uncomfortably placed between their parent species' society. Dragons rarely respect half-dragons and never consider them peers, while humanoids view them with fear and suspicion and often cast them out as monsters. As such, most half-dragons find themselves forced to the fringes of the world, unable to fit into either humanoid or draconic society and too few to form their own.
• Exalted: This is frequently the lot of the God-Blooded, the children of mortals and supernatural beings, who are frequently torn between the worlds of their human and spirit parents. At best, mortals will view them with superstitious reverence and spirits with condescending benevolence. At worst, mortals will treat them as abominations and spirits as embarrassing or repulsive mistakes. Even with the best treatment, they're often too magical in nature to be comfortably part of mortal society but too human, and too tied to human needs and nature to live among spirits. Many are left with no place where they can fit in as a result and resort to suppressing one half or the other of their heritage to live with either parent's people, slavishly following their supernatural sires to find some purpose in their lives, or becoming wanderers and drifters. The Ghost-Blooded are hit particularly hard by this. They're too alive to fit among the dead, but the shadow of death follows them among the living; mortals view them as abominations, the dead as useful tools but not as peers or parts of their society. Even metaphysically, they have no actual world to dwell in — they're neither truly dead nor alive and do not belong in either the Underworld or Creation. The dead and the living were not meant to mingle, and the natural order has no place for things that should never actually have existed.

Theatre

• Some Like It Hot: San Diego millionaire Osgood Fielding III is ne Pedro Francisco Alvarez, and sings about having to sift between his Mexican and American sides in the past.
• Westeros: An American Musical: Theon, who grew up among the Starks and became good friends with Robb Stark. However, Theon is technically a hostage among the Starks and his birth family isn't exactly on the best terms with them. Theon tries to use his position to make his father an ally to Robb, but he ends up having to choose between the two instead.
• Elphaba Thropp of Wicked is word-for-word called this near the end of the show when it's discovered that while she was born in Oz to an Ozian mother, her biological father is the Wizard, who is from earth. Elphaba ends the show with no idea of her heritage at all, but this does affect her biological makeup (such as giving her green skin) and is the source of her great magical powers.

Video Games

• Battleborn's Mellka is a literal one as her human father was born on Penarch while her Aelfrin mother was from Eshteni, both worlds of which were tragically darkened. Mellka's background and upbringing also make her a child of two worlds in character. She chooses to both embrace aspects that are more nature attuned such as Eldrid beliefs of things like the fabled Old Sentinel, and her bio-gauntlet; and aspects that are less nature attuned such as her clothes, gun, and hairstyle.
• In Dark Chronicle, player character Maximilian is revealed to be this at the end of Chapter 4: while his father, Gerald, is from the present day, his mother, Elena, is from 100 years in the future. She had been sent to the past to protect Gerald from being assassinated for being the bearer of the Red Atlamillia, but fell in love with him, and the Atlamillia was passed down to Max when he was a child. Galen Agaris implies in Chapter 6 that this may be why he was destined to wield the Atlamillia and defeat Emperor Griffon.
• In Deltarune, Kris is a human who was adopted by Asgore and Toriel Dreemurr as a very young child and was raised in a town otherwise populated entirely by monsters. Because of this, they identify more closely with monsterkind (to the point where looking at pictures of human families makes them uncomfortable), yet constantly feel some level of unwanted distance as a result of the marked differences between humans and monsters.
• Terra in Final Fantasy VI is the daughter of an Esper father and a human mother.
• Zidane in Final Fantasy IX was born an Angel of Death to cause death and destruction on Gaia but was abandoned on Gaia by Kuja so he grew to love the place and defy his creator, while still saving his kindred.
• In Final Fantasy X, the Al Bhed are a shunned group since they freely use technology (which the rest of the Yevon-worshipping world rejects) and have spiral-shaped irises. Yuna, who is half Al Bhed, eventually brings them both together by exposing Yevon as a Scam Religion, ending its reign.
• In Fire Emblem Fates, the main character Corrin was born into the royal family of Hoshido but was raised in the court of Nohr as a member of its royal family as well, leading to the decision of which side they fight for in two of the three campaigns. Corrin is in fact the heir of a third kingdom ruled by his/her (now evil and insane) dragon god king father. Azura is in a similar position as someone born into the royal family of Nohr but raised by the Hoshidan royal family after being abducted in retaliation for Corrin's kidnapping.
• Genshin Impact: Ganyu is a human-Adeptus hybrid, and her Story Quest explores her identity crisis and whether she belongs with the other Adepti or with the humans in Liyue. Her character story mentions that Ganyu the qilin finds it difficult to understand mortal squabbles, but her human blood reminds her always to hold out hope that she might someday be able to fit in. One of her voice lines has her express a kinship with the Traveler for being "different" from normal humans, just like her situation.
• The Legend of Zelda: There have been subtle hints ever since Ocarina of Time established her nursemaid and Parental Substitute Impa as a member of the Sheikah tribe that Princess Zelda also associates with and honors the Sheikah despite being a Hylian. She spends much of that game disguised as a Sheikah, she wears a robe with the Sheikah eye emblem on it in Twilight Princess, and she is enthusiastic about researching ancient Sheikah technology in the backstory of Breath of the Wild despite the Sheikah having been banished from Hyrule prior to that point for their association with said technology.
• In Mortal Kombat, Kitana is a princess of the realm of Edenia but was raised as the daughter of Outworld's warlord emperor Shao Kahn. In her tower ending in Mortal Kombat 11, Kitana uses the power of Kronika's Hourglass to restore her home realm of Edenia, only to find it and its culture completely foreign to her, and realizes that while she may be an Edenian by nature, she's an Outworlder by upbringing. Kitana decides to return to ruling Outworld but using Edenian ideals to do so.
• Rune Factory 3: Micah is half-human/half-monster. Because of this, he is able to be accepted by the (mostly) humans of Sharance Village and the monsters of the Unvir settlement and help reunite them. Which was Aquaticus' plan all along.
• League of Legends has Sona, who was born in Ionia (the most magic-tinged region in Runeterra), but following the Noxian invasion in her adolescence, she fled to Demacia (a staunchly anti-magical kingdom, but she was Happily Adopted by a noble family). She's in conflict with both places she calls home — she found post-war Ionia so radically changed that she could no longer return, and Demacia has become especially tinged with anti-magic paranoia following the rise of Sylas's violent mage rebellion and the death of King Jarvan III.
• In World of Warcraft, the heir-apparent of Ironforge has the blood of the rulers of the Bronzebeard Clan and their mortal foes the Dark Iron Clan.
  • The brief time that the elves of Quel'thalas spent in The Alliance has led to at least one half-elf: Arator. His parents are also now leaders of two different societies as well, neither of which existed when he was a child. Plus he was raised in Dalaran by his aunt and uncle, also a human and an elf. Life is complicated when you're the child of your world's ultimate Power Couple.
  • Jaina Proudmoore also. She is originally from Kul Tiras but has spent so much time in Lordaeron and with people from Lordaeron that she has absorbed a lot of their culture. She is also considered family by the Wrynn dynasty of Stormwind, despite not technically being a relative at all. And now she has a dragon boyfriend.
• Discussed in Xenoblade Chronicles 1. When plans for an alliance between the races of the Bionis (Homs, Nopon, and High Entia) surface, Melia proposes herself as a potential ambassador, since she has the privileged position of being both regent of the High Entia and of half-Homs heritage. She doesn't take the position though, and instead continues to be part of the Party of Representatives.
• The Witcher 3: Geralt considers himself steeped in both human and monster worlds. As a mutant, his duty is to hunt down 'monsters' on both sides, while preventing conflicts that would devastate both.

Visual Novel

• Kariya from Cafe Enchante thought he was human but recently discovered he has fairy ancestry. He has been ill most of his life as his body isn't meant to be in the human world. He struggles with leaving his human life behind to live in the fairy world Medio or stay in the human world with his Happily Adopted family but continue to grow sicker and not live for a long time.
• Amanda from Daughter for Dessert grew up in her father’s world of salt-of-the-earth small businesspeople. However, her aunt eventually shows up to draw her into her mother’s native world of wealthy socialites.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue has Junior, who is the product of Tucker (human) and "Crunchbite" (alien). Later on, in Recreation, Tucker mentions that he and Junior have been working as negotiators of a sort.
  Tucker: We're like the ambassadors here or something. Humans and aliens seem more comfortable with us, since we're kind of, you know, in between.

Webcomics

• Unsounded: Diamanta was born to an Aldish couple that managed to escape to Sharteshane, who were then captured and traded back to Alderode to curry favor. She was then raised in Sharteshanian orphanages but always held animosity toward both governments. Due to her appearance, she was constantly mistaken for Crescian which she gave up correcting people on as her heritage, upbringing, and eventual career left her functionally stateless.

Western Animation

• Buddy, the protagonist of Dinosaur Train, is a Tyrannosaurus raised by Pteranodons. He gets along with another Tyrannosaurus family just fine, but he feels conflicted about the possibility of leaving his adoptive family behind when he grows up.
• Hit-Monkey: In episode eight, Monkey is told by the spirit of his old tribe’s leader, that it has become is fate to walk between the worlds of animals and humans, belonging to neither but protecting both as a killer of killers.
• Isadora Moon and her baby sister Honeyblossom are half fairy and half vampire.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Spike is a dragon who was raised by ponies. Although he still has some draconic instincts, notably Greed, he's culturally an upper-class pony, treats Twilight Sparkle as kin, and has a serious and long-lasting romantic attraction to Rarity.
  • "Surf and/or Turf": In the wake of the 2017 movie, the Storm King's defeat has removed the threat that forced the hippogriffs of Mount Aris to use a magical pearl to transform into seaponies and hide beneath the ocean. Many have taken this opportunity to go back to their old lives, but others opted to remain underwater as seaponies. The exception to this is Terramar, a young boy who is unable to decide between the two adjoining worlds, as his mother chose to be a seapony and his father and sister to be hippogriffs, and now feels torn between the two worlds.
• Ninjago: Season 8 reveals that the First Spinjitzu Master is one of these, being half-Dragon and half-Oni. This also means that Wu, Garmadon, (the First Spinjitzu Master's sons) and Lloyd (Garmadon's son) are also part Oni and Dragon.
• The Owl House: While Luz Noceda may have been born and grown up on Earth, she feels far more at home on the Boiling Isles due to people being far more accepting of her quirks. That said, she never once even considers abandoning Earth or her mother, and it's made clear that having to give up either world would come at the cost of her mental well-being. As a result, the series ends with her having access to a working portal door and being able to freely travel between the two worlds. She even amends Azura's "Warrior of Peace" boast that she had quoted several times in the series to include that she is both "child of the human realm [and] student of the demon realm" during the final battle.
• Steven Universe: The eponymous hero is a Half-Human Hybrid born from a Gem mother and a human father. He lives on Earth and interacts with the local human community and his father and is raised by his late mother's friends and comrades, the Crystal Gems. This has given him the unique advantage of being able to empathize with and befriend people from both races.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: Prince Lotor is introduced to whispers of his half-Galra, half-Altean nature. His hand-picked female generals are also half-Galra. We find out during Season 6 that Lotor considers himself Altean and actually hates the Galra, though how much of the latter reveal was spurred on by Quintessence exposure is unknown.

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