Disowned Sibling

Luigi: Mario, stop! We're brothers!
Mario: I have no brother.

— Flash-Gitz Animation, "Racist Mario"

It's a fact of life that siblings don't always get along (Sibling Rivalry, Cain and Abel, Aloof Big Brother, The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry, Sibling Murder... basically the "Brothers and Sisters" portion of Dysfunctional Family Index). While some siblings can stick together through thick and thin, sometimes a relationship is so horrible that one or both siblings decide that it's best to cut ties.

There are a wide variety of reasons why a character might disown their sibling, and how sympathetic the disowner is depends on said reason. Sympathetic characters will disown their sibling(s) because of genuine awful behavior such as adultery, bullying, or turning their backs on their family. Unsympathetic characters might disown their siblings for selfish reasons such as being embarrassed by their siblings, money, or because they have no use for their siblings.

Whether or not the siblings reconcile can vary. In situations where both siblings are sympathetic, they will usually forgive each other eventually. A sympathetic sibling might be willing to forgive their less likable sibling if the latter is truly repentant or if what they did isn't unforgivable. Unsympathetic siblings might have no problem going back to the one they disowned for personal benefit.

Sibling counterpart to I Have No Son! and Disowned Parent. Compare Adopting the Abused, to which a once-abused person finds a healthy familial relationship. If someone in this relationship meets the sibling that once abused them, it should be expected for them to say who their family really is.

As this can often be an Ending Trope, Expect Unmarked Spoilers.

People do disown their siblings in real life, but considering how personal disowning can be, No Real Life Examples, Please!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Daimos: When Richter realizes that Erika has fallen for a human, he's so enraged he smacks her. Margarete covers Erika with her body, and begs Richter to show her mercy, but he punches and kicks her too. He comes close to killing Erika while repeatedly muttering "I have no sister...", but seeing the reflection of his frenzied expression in his sword makes him reconsider. After Erika attempts an escape to Earth to be with her lover, Richter is once again enraged and considers her dead to him.
• Oshi no Ko: Ruby disowns Aqua in Chapter 106 for revealing that they're Ai's children, since she's convinced Aqua doesn't care about Ai anymore if he's willing to spill her darkest secret. It takes Aqua revealing himself as a reincarnated Goro during one of her despair sessions for her to forgive him.
• Osomatsu-san: Played for Laughs:
  • In one episode, after Osomatsu thoroughly embarrasses Choromatsu in front of Nyaa Hashimoto, Choro hits him over the head and proclaims that Osomatsu is a stranger to him from that point on.
  • In another episode, when Todomatsu refers to Choromatsu as an "idol otaku", to which Osomatsu remarks that he's accidentally stepped on a landmine. Choromatsu proceeds to absolutely destroy Todomatsu by declaring that he shouldn't have been born because quintuplets are far better than sextuplets.
• Saki: Teru constantly denies that she has a sister, Saki, due to an implied tragedy in the past, and the last time Saki saw Teru, Teru refused to speak with her at all. When Saki learned from Mihoko that Teru told this to a reporter, she became depressed and wondered whether there was any hope of reconciling with her. In Chapter 129, Awai asks Teru if Saki is her sister. Teru starts to say no but then says that Saki is her sister.
• Space Runaway Ideon: Harulu is disappointed with the actions of her sister, Karala, who sided with the humans after refusing to hand over Ideon to them. She considers her a lost cause and chooses to forsake her. Upon learning that Karala got pregnant with a human, Harulu is disgusted by this and kills her and her unborn son not only out of jealousy because Karala gets to be with the man she loved but also to salvage her family's reputation and keep the bloodlines pure.

Comic Books

• Batgirl (2000): Cassandra Cain's half-sister Marque disowned her after Cassandra promised her a chance to take revenge on their father, then incapacitated her so she could handle him herself.
• New Warriors: Silhouette disowns her brother Midnight's Fire after he becomes a gang leader and comes to blows with Sil's sometimes boyfriend and Fire's ex-friend Night Thrasher.
• Remarkable Ruby: Mia has not been kind to her younger sister Ruby since Ruby arrived at middle school or acknowledged her at all, because she fears that Ruby's awkwardness, Embarrassing Nickname, and bad reputation will affect her popularity. The Reveal is that they're sisters at all—it's not shown until near the end, when they finally make up.

Fan Works

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Subtly but clearly done with San (Ghidorah's former left head) towards his two elder brothers (Ghidorah's middle and right heads respectively). His elder brothers, Ichi and Ni, physically and verbally abused San with chronic frequency for eons when he was a part of Ghidorah before being severed, and they stopped giving him any affection billions of years ago. During San's Character Development since being separated from Ghidorah, he loses his reservations about going against and killing his evil brothers (who he mutually thinks physically aren't his brothers anymore since they no longer share a body), he doesn't mourn the possibility of Ichi and Ni dying permanently, and to drive the point home, San gradually transitions out of verbally and mentally referring to Ichi and Ni as "Eldest Brother" and "Elder Brother" in favor of referring to them as "the middle head" and "the right head".
• Kedabory's Elmore Chronicles: "The Voicemails" opens with the day that Boris Small cut ties with his younger brother Steven. He has barely spoken to them since thus he doesn't know that his sibling has since come out as non-binary, and Sybil (Steve's new name) never attended Boris's wedding, nor met his daughter Sophie.
• The Loud House fanfics:
  • In the fanfic Lincoln Betrays Lucy (covered in episode 24 of Peeking Through the Fourth Wall), Lucy says Lincoln is no longer her brother when he's falsely accused of revealing her secret that she secretly wears Princess Pony pajamas. By the end of the fic, the roles are reversed; Lucy attempts to apologize to Lincoln, which he turns down, and the narration refers to Lucy as his "former" sister.
  • In Lincoln is Done, Lincoln is extremely mad at his sisters for teasing him over seeing his butt, being overly nurturing when he injures his ankle, wrongly blaming him for clogging the toilet, and because he had a nightmare about them sending him to Hell. Throughout the fic, he refers to them as his "ex-sisters" or his "former sisters".
  • In Linka and Chocolate, Linka (the Rule 63 version of Lincoln) eats ALL of the chocolate pies in her sleep that her brother Lane were saving for a party. She fears he'll say he has no sister, but he assures her that he won't.
• Loved and Lost: The manipulated Twilight Sparkle disowns her brother Shining Armor when she mistakenly believes Princess Cadance just became injured because of him as well as her former friends and Celestia. She also does that in retaliation of the way he renounced her at the wedding rehearsal, wording her words the same way he did. She does later regret this once she realizes how she's being manipulated and reconciles with Shining Armor who in turn owns up to his own actions toward her.
  Twilight: And you can forget about me calling you my BBBFF^note Big Brother Best Friend Forever anymore! In fact, I don't even have a brother.
• Pony POV Series: Cheerilee's strained relationship with her sisters Berry Punch and Cherry Blossom is bad enough that she denies having more than one sister.
• Ma Fille: Sisters Heather and Laura Sanders cut each other off in their early twenties due to their conflicting values and life goals. They never reconciled, as Heather died a few years later after giving birth to her daughter Katrina (the titular "fille").
• Pokeronpa Legendary Killings: In chapter 3, Zacian disowns his brother Zamacenta when Giratina reveals to everyone that the heroic dog is actually the traitor, openly threatening his life and succesfully killing him.
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing:
  • Gretel stopped responding to Hansel's calls over him selling New Age products and forging a scholarship letter for her because it was dishonest. She felt guilty and took him back after she found out Hansel was sex trafficked, which she originally thought was a lie until she saw a video of his rape.
  • Geumsaegi's family sent his sister to an Orphanage of Fear and pretended she never existed because she went deaf. After both he and she escaped North Korea and ended up in California, she was willing to be friends with him but declared that he wasn't her brother anymore because she had a new life.

Film — Animated

• Trolls Band Together: Branch feels bitter about his brothers abandoning him and when John Dory comes back to ask for his help, considers him his former brother. Poppy misunderstands what that means stating, "That's not how DNA works."

Film — Live-Action

• The Fast and the Furious: Aside from Mia, Dom actually has one other sibling, Jakob, whom Dom forced to leave home after he accused him of sabotaging their father's car that caused his death. The Family only learn about his existence when he returns to exact revenge against Dom in F9, something that is attributed to this trope.
• The Godfather: Michael Corleone effectively disowns his brother Fredo when he hears his reasons for selling out the family, only sparing his life for the sake of their still-living mother. After she passes, however, he has Fredo executed during a fishing trip.
• The first Lethal Panther revolves around a hitwoman, Miyamoto, trying to keep her secret life as an assassin a secret to her only living relative, her little brother Tom who's supposedly an art student studying in Paris. Turns out Tom is another hitman himself, on an assignment after Miyamoto's friend Sylvia. When Tom eventually kills Sylvia in front of Miyamoto, Miyamoto outright disowns her brother — it takes Tom pulling a Heroic Sacrifice to save his sister for her to accept him again.
• Silverado: Rae Jackson is very bitter about her brother Mal leaving his family to make money out in the frontier, which resulted in their father Ezra losing his ranch to McKendrick, their mother dying, and Rae becoming the mistress of the gambler Slick. When Slick sees Rae having a tense reunion with Mal and asks about her "friend", she replies, "He's not my friend, he used to be my brother."

Literature

• Harry Potter:
  • Walburga Black disowned her son Sirius for running away from home. When Alphard (confirmed by Word of God, in the Black Family Tree, to be Walburga's brother) left his nephew Sirius money in his will, Walburga disowned him as well.
  • It's implied earlier that many magical families disowned members who married muggles (non-magical people) or even children born to muggle couples (called "Mudbloods" by these families). This is made explicit in the last book by sisters Bellatrix and Narcissa, about the marriage their third sister, Andromeda:
    Bellatrix: [Andromeda's daughter] is no niece of ours. We — Narcissa and I — have never set eyes on our sister since she married the Mudblood. This brat has nothing to do with us, nor any beast she married.
• Played for laughs in Imperial Radch, where Breq and an ancient, long-lost warship have been referring to each other as "Cousin" throughout their alliance against Anaander Miannai. When Breq starts singing the equivalent of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall", we get this exchange:
  Zeiat: Are there any more verses?
  Breq: Nine hundred and ninety-eight of them, Translator.
  Sphene: We are no longer family.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Thomas and his other siblings don't consider Keith their brother, even calling him "whoreson".
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Downplayed by Chela, who was forced by her powerful father not to acknowledge that Stacy Cornwallis is her illegitimate half-sister: they're officially cousins. According to a tradition common in the mage aristocracy, Stacy was raised in her mother's family to be a de facto Hidden Backup Princess should something happen to Chela, and shunned by her stepfather as a consequence without even being told the reason until she was ten years old. However, Chela still loves her even though they aren't allowed to acknowledge their real relationship, and deeply regrets the rift between them.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Daenerys' narration describes Viserys as "the man who was once her brother" from the point that he threatens to cut out her baby if Drogo doesn't live up the deal to field him an army to his execution by molten gold.
• Warrior Cats: According to Word of God, Dustpelt is embarrassed by Ravenpaw's personality and refuses to admit they're brothers.
• Wuthering Heights: After Isabella Linton elopes with Heathcliff, her brother Edgar's response is: "Trouble me no more about her. Hereafter she is only my sister in name: not because I disown her, but because she has disowned me." Thus Isabella has no one to turn to when her new husband turns abusive. The siblings eventually reconcile through letters after Isabella leaves Heathcliff, however, and twelve years later, Edgar is with her when she dies.

Live-Action TV

• Dickensian: By the finale, Amelia Havisham has just discovered that not only has her fiance Compeyson been scheming to trick her out of her money and then abandon her at the altar, but her brother Arthur has helped him along the way, and only decided to turn him against at the last minute due to Curious Qualms of Conscience. Feeling betrayed by both her family and the man she had fallen in love with, Amelia bitterly rejects Arthur's attempts at reconciling with her, openly stating that she no longer has a brother and ordering him to Get Out!, before dissolving into an intense screaming Heroic BSoD that will end with her becoming the bitter misanthropic old spinster that we all know from Great Expectations.
• Drake & Josh: The episode "Josh Is Done" has Josh deciding to cut Drake out of his life after he makes Josh flunk a test. Drake assumes that Josh needs him and thus will inevitably come back, but unfortunately for Drake, the opposite happens. Josh's life gets better without Drake dragging him down, while Drake's life gets worse because he can't rely on Josh.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Louis de Pointe du Lac is close to his family, and particularly with his sister Grace. After Louis is turned into a vampire in "In Throes of Increasing Wonder..." (which his family doesn't know about), his family relationships begin to become strained, though he tries to maintain them. He's now living with his new vampire lover Lestat de Lioncourt, who his family doesn't like because he's creepy and arrogant. Louis seldom visits his old home, and when he does, it's only at night because most vampires die when exposed to sunlight. There are a couple close calls with Louis's new vampire powers. In "...After the Phantoms of Your Former Self", he almost loses control and eats his baby nephew, and Grace returns to the living room to find her brother has fled and her son is alone on the floor crying. In "Is My Very Nature That of a Devil", Louis gets angry and accidently breaks the front doors of the family mansion with his supernatural strength. Over the decades, as Grace ages and Louis doesn't, she starts to register that as weird, too. She doesn't know he's a vampire per se, but she knows something happened, that he changed somehow. For her own sanity and for her family's safety, she has to write him off. The last time Louis sees Grace in "A Vile Hunger for Your Hammering Heart", she shows him the headstone she had made for him to give herself closure for the brother she lost.
  Grace: Don't need that either, Louis... or whoever you are that took my Louis.
  Louis: It's me, Grace.
  Grace: I sat across the dinner table from him my whole life. The pews in St. Augustine's on Sunday. Hid my fourth-grade report card on purpose, 'cause his was so bad and he didn't want our parents to find out. (Beat) You're not my Louis; you can't be. (lays a bouquet of flowers at a grave marked with Louis's name) I praying myself old beggin' what to do about you. God never talked back, so... this is how it has to be. For me, for my family. You understand?
  Louis: (starts to cry)
  Grace: (squeezes his hand, kisses his cheek, then walks away)
• Mad Men: Young Dick Whitman escaped his horrible family life by enlisting in the Korean War, and was then able to return home early by assuming the identity of his commanding officer Donald Draper, with everyone believing Whitman dead except for his brother Adam, who caught a glimpse of Dick on the train as he was delivering his own coffin. A decade later, Adam tracks down the now-successful ad man "Don Draper," but Don, fearing his lies will be exposed, wants nothing to do with him, and pays him $5,000 to get out of his life. Adam, shocked at his brother's coldness, and having no one else to turn to, hangs himself.
• The Muppets Mayhem: Episode 4 mentions that Janice has an identical twin sister whom she is estranged from for unknown reasons, and she urges Nora to avoid letting it happen with her sister.
• Power Rangers Ninja Storm: When Cam discovers that Lothor is his paternal uncle, he asks his father, Kanoi, why he was never told this information. Kanoi explains that it's because he no longer considers Lothor his brother.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Bar Association", Rom has a feud with his brother Quark, who is also his boss (Quark wouldn't give Rom paid sick leave for the ear infection he had, which made him work instead of having it treated, allowing it to get serious, which resulted in Rom going on strike and encouraging his coworkers to join in). At one point, Rom calls Quark his "ex-brother".
  • Star Trek: Discovery: Michael Burnham is the adoptive sister to the famous Mr. Spock, but it's revealed in Season 2 that he wants nothing to do with her. At first, "If Memory Serves" indicates that Burnham hurled several insults at him as a child as part of a misguided attempt to let her run away without putting Sarek's family at risk from Vulcan extremists, which she feels is what stunted his willingness to embrace his human side. However, it turns out he despises her not because of that argument, but because he thinks her trying to carry the burden of her family's death, the well-being of Sarek's family, and bearing responsibility for starting the Klingon-Federation War was selfish; said argument was just the first of many reasons why he rebuffed her attempts at reconciliation. He only forgives her when she learns the true reason behind her parents deaths, and admits that Spock had a point.
• The Tudors: When King Henry VIII learns that his sister Margaret has betrayed him by marrying without his permission, he disowns her.
  King Henry: How dare you look at me? I am your Lord and Master; not your brother! You are both banished from court. You will relinquish your London houses. You will remove yourself from my sight. […] And Margaret! I have yet to decide whatever to make your bed-mate a head shorter.

Video Games

• In Child of Light, Aurora decides that Norah is Beyond Redemption after she lures Aurora into a trap, gleefully reveals that she had been deceiving her since they first met, and imprisons her friends in the Forgotten Tower with the intent of leaving them to die, and grimly disowns her.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, Ugetsu, the rogue, violent revolutionary who seeks to plunge Hingashi back into the Age of Blood, is revealed to be Makoto's brother. However, his sibling rejects him and his cause, as his extremist actions led their entire family to be executed as per Hingan law.
• In Honkai: Star Rail, Natasha had a brother named Vache who was a doctor like her. But she's horrified when she learns how he used her clinic to turn the poor and sick of the Underworld into Unwitting Test Subjects for his experiments into making mankind immune to the cold. Natasha then disowned him and had him banished to the frozen wastes outside of Belobog. Oleg remarks that Vache likely would have been executed on the spot if Natasha weren't so clearly conflicted about this because of her familial love for Vache.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Bi-Han and Kuai Liang were once close, with Kuai Liang looking up to his older brother. But as Sub-Zero and Noob Saibot, the two have grown to despise each other; Sub-Zero for his brother's vile deeds, and Noob for his younger brother's perceived betrayal. Each has said to the other at one point or another "We share blood. We are not brothers."
  • The story was reversed in Mortal Kombat 1, being very close previously, Bi-Han (Sub-Zero) is the traitor who killed his own father and turned his clan into an order of assassins and thieves while Kuai Liang (Scorpion) founds a new clan to honor his father's wishes.
• No Straight Roads: This happens near the end of the second fight with DK West. Zuke, after being fed up with his brother's attitude towards him, outright declares that West is not his brother. This shocks both West, who is genuinely hurt by this, and Mayday, who calls Zuke out on it.

Web Animation

• ATTACK on MIKA: In "Parents go on a week-long vacation with only their favorite daughter..." Saki declares to Yuki that they're no longer sisters after their parents got arrested. It becomes more cathartic since Yuki is the one to first declare Saki as not her sister but a maid.
• Etra chan saw it!:
  • Yuri and Katsura cut ties with their sister Akane for sleeping with and stealing Yuri's fiance.
  • Yuzuriha declares Hiiragi is no longer her brother after he ditches Yuri the wedding to be with Akane causing everyone to hate Yuzuriha and her parents just for being related to him.
  • Kuroki disowned and punched his brother Hiiragi for stealing his wife.
  • Tachibana decides to cut ties with his annoying younger sister Akane because she constantly came over his house and tried to take his wife's car without permission.
• Manga-Waido: Satoshi cuts ties with his brother Seiya after he got into trouble for making fun of Satoshi's educational background despite he was helping Seiya to study in college.
• Trouble Busters:
  • Hillary disowns her sister Alice for sleeping with her husband.
  • Melanie disowns her brother Ken for his ingratitude towards their grandparents, who raised Melanie and Ken when their parents died, trying to steal Melanie's inheritance, which their grandparents left Melanie for actually taking care of them, as well as the fact that he stole $50,000 from them.

Webcomics

• Rain (2010): The title character has a strained relationship with her older siblings, fraternal twins Aiken and Kellen, not helped by both of them being insensitive at best, violently transphobic at worst in response to their younger sister's (formerly brother's) transgenderism. However, Rain disowns Kellen as her sister after the latter forcefully gives her a transphobic Traumatic Haircut in her sleep, and Kellen in turn calls Rain an embarrassment to be around. They are rebuilding bridges with each other by the comic's end, though.

Web Videos

• Apple Texts: Stories where the antagonist is the protagonist's toxic sibling will inevitably have the protagonist cut ties with their sibling. Some stories have toxic siblings cutting ties out of pride or because they feel being associated with the protagonist will make them look bad. While the protagonists are willing to cut their siblings out of their lives for good, the antagonists have no problem going back to their sibling when it's convenient.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Feud Episode "Oh Brother" has Luigi disowning Mario after Mario states he wishes that he never had a brother during an argument. Fortunately, they manage to reconcile during the ending.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Invoked in "The Words" when Gumball is trying to get his adopted brother Darwin to realize how all his Brutal Honesty is hurting people. After simple insults don't work, Gumball resorts to this trope ("You, are not my brother. You are just a PET... WHO GREW LEGS!"), which sends Darwin through a wall (literally) and reduces him to tears until Gumball, having made his point, hurriedly takes it back.
• American Dad!: In "There Will Be Bad Blood", Stan and his half-brother Rusty are at first on moderate terms, despite Stan passive-aggressively rubbing his family's apparent wealth in Rusty's face as a snide Thanksgiving tradition. However, once Stan sees Rusty's opulent home for the first time and realizes Rusty's family is a lot wealthier than Stan always assumed they were, the Smiths try to steal Rusty's home for themselves in a frankly pathetic manner, which involves kidnapping him, his wife, and kids in their sleep and putting them in the Smith house while the Smiths take Rusty's house. Rusty responds to this transgression by taking his house back with the security detail, and just before he sends the Smiths on their way, Rusty tells Stan that he'll kill him if he ever sees him again. Rusty shows no signs of backing down from this threat in the episode's ending, when he approaches a disheveled and dehydrated Stan with a shotgun for wandering into his land while Stan was lost in the desert.
• Daria: For years, Quinn refused to publicly acknowledge that Daria was her sister, referring to her as her "cousin", "au pair", and "foreign exchange student". She is willing to help Daria in "Ill", saying that skin-care crises transcend interpersonal conflicts. This finally changes in "Lucky Strike", when Quinn openly acknowledges that Daria is her sister. And "Aunt Nauseam" sees Quinn actively trying to mend their sibling bond after seeing the nightmarish relationship her own mother has with her sisters. Quinn even asks Daria if they'll end up like their mother and aunts.
  Quinn: Daria? You don't think we'll end up having the same fight over and over again, for the rest of our lives, the way mom and Aunt Rita do, do you?
  Daria: (dryly) No. We'll use weapons.
  Quinn: (visibly distraught) Don't say that!
  Daria: I'll make you a deal. The only weapon I'll use against you will be my winning personality, and the only weapon you'll use against me will be your merciless silent treatment.
  Quinn: Silent treatment? I never— ha. Deal.
• DuckTales (2017): In the episode "Day of the Only Child!", invoked by Dewey where he, Huey, and Louie spend a day away from each other to act as if they aren't brothers and do their own things apart. Dewey invented the day to have some alone time while Louie uses this opportunity to hang out with Doofus Drake. Huey is the only one against the Holiday to where he feels the need to get substitute brothers in the form of Burger and Bouncer.
• Gravity Falls: A key element of Stan Pines' backstory. After accidentally ruining his brother Ford's science project and wrecking his dream college enrollment, he is disowned by his family and kicked out of the house. At the end of the same episode, Stan and Ford pull this on each other, thirty years after the initial breakdown of their relationship: Ford is angry that Stan risked a possible The End of the World as We Know It scenario by saving him from the portal; Stan is angry that Ford isn't interested in thanking him for the thirty years he sacrificed to save him, and even angrier when he discovers that Ford wants him out of the Mystery Shack. For good measure, he says that Dipper and Mabel are the only family he has left. By the finale, they do patch things up, especially when Stan nearly sacrifices his memory to defeat Bill, finally making Ford realize how foolish he's been.
• Kaeloo:
  • Played for Laughs with the Alpha Bitch Pretty, who keeps threatening to disown her twin sister Eugly if she doesn't do what she says. For example, in Episode 131, Pretty is in a bad mood and refuses to allow Eugly to be happy because she herself isn't. Kaeloo asks them to smile for a picture, and Pretty says that if Eugly smiles, she will no longer accept her as her sister.
  • Played for Laughs again in Episode 209. Stumpy is forced to spend a day babysitting his annoying little sister, Nombril, who likes to spend her time following Stumpy around and trying to get his attention. When Kaeloo asks about it, Stumpy insists that he "has no sister" and spends most of the episode pretending he doesn't know who Nombril is.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • This happens between Tonraq and Unalaq. During their final confrontation, after the reveal of several betrayals Unalaq took to usurp his throne, Tonraq declares Unalaq is no brother of his. Unalaq is unconcerned.
  • In "The Spirit of Competition", Bolin walks in on Korra kissing Mako, devastating him. Mako finds him at a restaurant, stuffing his face with noodles. In a fit of Inelegant Blubbering, Bolin says Mako's no longer his brother, but a "brother betrayer". Mako is having none of this and drags him out of there.
• The Loud House: In "Making the Case", when Lincoln's sisters are mad at him for making an embarrassing video of most of them, one of them, Lucy, tells him to his face that she has no brother, adding that she's said it before but never meant it up until now.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Discussed at the end of "A Canterlot Wedding – Part 1". Twilight harshly accuses Cadance of trying to brainwash Shining Armor, causing Cadance to run off sobbing. Shining is utterly furious with Twilight and yells at her for making his fiance cry. He then kicks her out of the wedding reception. Twilight takes this to mean that he's disowned her and breaks down in Tears of Remorse as a Dark Reprise of her "BBBFF"^note Big Brother Best Friend Forever song plays. As it turns out, however, this wasn't Cadance at all, but Queen Chrysalis in disguise, and Twilight and Shining Armor work things out by the end.
• The Owl House has a non-verbal example. Emperor Belos once looked up to his older brother, Caleb, and almost worshipped him as his idol. In fact, the reason why he turned into the deranged maniac that he is today was because of a desperate attempt to get approval from his brother. Near the end of the series, Belos gets a brief glimpse of Caleb's ghost, and the look on his face says more than words ever could: he is not happy. In Belos' pitiful attempt to try to still get Caleb's approval, he does nothing but stand there with a cold, dry look on his face. Even in death, Caleb knows that all of Belos' Fantastic Racism and murders of innocent lives is not worth it when he only did it simply because he Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality. A brother like Belos is no brother at all, and Caleb's ghost slowly fades away as Belos fruitlessly tries to talk him out of it.

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