History Main / HeritageDisconnect

* A Spanish language Goya commercial has a young Latina girl telling her mother that she has to make a cultural food for school. Her choice? Nachos. Her family is horrified and they end up making flan instead.

* ''Anime/{{Daltanious}}'': Kento rejects his Heliosian heritage at every turn even though he's their AlienPrince. The opposite can be said of his Japanese side - his grandfather was a traditional Japanese kite painter, something the boy took great interest in.

* Similar to the ''Chihayafuru'' example above, Olivia in ''Manga/AsobiAsobase'' likes to pretend to be a ForeignExchangeStudent and speaks Japanese with a fake accent, but is actually the daughter of an immigrant family who grew up in Japan and can't even speak English.
* Langa Hasegawa from ''Anime/SK8TheInfinity'' is half-Japanese and half-Canadian, but he's lived in Canada for most of his life and he and his mother only moved to Okinawa after his father died, so he's out of touch with Japanese culture as a result. While he's mostly fluent in Japanese, he can't speak with keigo very well and his ability to read and write in Japanese leaves a lot to be desired.

* [[ComicBook/{{Nightwing}} Dick Grayson]] was {{retcon}}ned as Romani in the late 1990s. It's been shown that he doesn't know much about his heritage and doesn't understand the language.

* Downplayed in the ''Jem'' fic ''Fanfic/StarlightIsForAlways''. Because of her Latin surname, it's thought that Pilar can understand Spanish, but despite her Mexican-American parentage, Pilar only understands English.
* ''Fanfic/GoldEyesToRed'': Alphonse is half-Ishvalan through his DisappearedDad. He was raised by his mother and feels nothing towards Ishvalan culture. This gets him into arguments with Scar, who believes Al should learn about Ishvalans more. In the end, Alphonse decides to take up Scar's offer to educate him on Ishvalan culture.
* ''Fanfic/KimiNoNaIowa'': Inverted in that Imamura's traditionalism and insularity from the wider America means Ayaka is fully in touch with her roots; Japanese shipgirls are surprised by her cultural and linguistic abilities, joking about her secretly being one of theirs, and a friend of Nakahara's doesn't notice anything wrong when she uses a cover story of having come down from Gifu. Also discussed with both Japanese characters and older ex-Imamurans showing disdain towards ''yonsei'' and other subsequent-generation Japanese Americans who have lost their way.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}'', Quasimodo is raised by Frollo completely ignorant of his Roma heritage.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', while Mei as a Chinese-Canadian can speak Cantonese, her minimal knowledge of Mandarin is criticized by her aunties in the {{Novelization}}.

* ''Film/ShangChiAndTheLegendOfTheTenRings'': Katy Chen is Chinese-American, has a limited grasp of Chinese (she can't really ''speak'' it but she understands her grandmother perfectly well) and identifies more as an American than Chinese. Shang-Chi purposefully abandoned his lineage as the heir to the criminal Ten Rings, [[spoiler: but he and his sister Xialing are able to connect with their mother's mystical heritage in Ta Lo. Also, having lived their childhoods in China (unlike Katy), they ''are'' fluent in Chinese.]]

* One of the side characters in ''Literature/DebtOfHonor'' is Chester "Chet" Nomuri, a fourth-generation Japanese-American working as a CIA field officer in Japan. Several times, the narration of his parts of the story remarks on how different his ancestral homeland is from his birthplace.

* In ''Literature/WingsOfFire,'' Glory was stolen from the [=RainWings=] while still an egg, and raised in a multi-tribe collective that, while not necessarily favoring any one tribe's culture over another, still [[FantasticRacism looked down heavily upon RainWings.]] Thus, when she finally gets to visit her people in the third book, she ends up a BoomerangBigot who hates her own culture for being [[StopBeingStereotypical too much like the stereotypes she's been taught to hate]]. Her adoptive siblings of other tribes have to gently convince her that her own culture has value.
* In ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'', a ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel that explores [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent goblin]] culture, one character is Billy Slick, a city goblin who has no interest in any of that stuff. Captain Angua, herself a werewolf, reflects "And so, little by little, we all become human ... The melting pot only ever melts in one direction."

* Odette in ''Literature/ThePsychologyOfTimeTravel'' was born in Seychelles but has spent most of her life living in England. She has forgotten most of her Creole words, but is encouraged to relearn them at the end of the book.

* In ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', Raj - despite being an Indian - ''hates'' the idea of living in India. The unexpectedness of this is played for comedy, especially since he is stereotypically Indian in other ways - being a [[BollywoodNerd geek]], believing in Hinduism, etc. For instance, in one episode Sheldon's looking for mental challenges and Raj suggests learning Hindi, only to sheepishly admit he never learned Hindi when it turns out Sheldon already did.

--> '''Devi:''' Some old loser was telling me that I'm too Indian, and some other people think I'm not Indian enough.

* Ana Sofia from ''Series/{{Telenovela|2016}}'' is the lead of a popular Spanish-speaking telenovela but can't speak Spanish at all. HilarityEnsues.
* ''Series/{{Gentefied}}'': Because of his family moving to Idaho when he was young, Chris is not considered "Mexican enough" by his family and co-workers when he moves back to LA.
* Estranged sisters Emma and Lyn from ''Series/{{Vida}}'' are both Mexican-American. Lyn is mocked for not knowing Spanish fluently, while Emma made a point of learning it to grow fluent, since their family spoke only "Spanglish" before.
* ''Series/TheSopranos'': [[{{Recap/TheSopranosS2E4Commendatori}} "Commendatori"]] sees Tony, Paulie, and Christopher go on a business trip to Naples. Once they're there, they experience a big CultureClash between their working class Italian-American upbringings and authentic Italian culture and society. After Paulie asks for macaroni and gravy en lieu of the exquisite Mediterranean cuisine he's served, two of the Italian mobsters mock him in Italian (which he can't understand):
-->"And you thought the Germans were classless pieces of shit."

* In ''Roleplay/DawnOfANewAgeOldportBlues'', Daigo Hiraga is half-Japanese but white-passing. Combined with his tumultuous upbringing- his white father having abused his Japanese mother until she disappeared one day- he has some issues with his familial connections.

* In ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'', the episode "Orange You Sad I Did Say Banana" deals with Kahn's mindset about his home country. In the episode, Kahn begins to feel he's not in touch with his Laotian heritage after Ted Wasongasong calls him a "banana" (a derogatory term for an Asian person who acts like a white person). As a result, Kahn tries to act more like a "traditional" Laotian, much to the dismay of his wife and daughter. However, when Kahn finds out that Ted wants him to fight in a battle against the Laotian government, he calls Ted out on it and goes back to living the way he wants to.

* On ''WesternAnimation/BigMouth'', [[BlackAndNerdy Missy's]] older cousins point out that [[HippieParents her parents]] have been depriving her of her culture, in an attempt to raise her in a post-racial household. She doesn't know how to take care of Black hair (having followed her mother's example and used a ''six-in-one'' shampoo that's frankly not even appropriate for ''white'' people's hair, let alone Black hair), and the concept of code-switching is completely foreign to her, as is the idea of using sweet potato in a pie.
* ''WesternAnimation/BoJackHorseman'': Diane is ethnically Vietnamese, but her family all act like born-and-bred Bostonites she has little in common with. In season 3 she searches for belonging by travelling to Vietnam, but quickly realises that she just feels like any other American tourist there.

* ''Anime/{{Daltanious}}: Kento rejects his Heliosian heritage at every turn even though he's their AlienPrince. The opposite can be said of his Japanese side - his grandfather was a traditional Japanese kite painter, something the boy took great interest in.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', Mei as a Chinese-Canadian can't speak Cantonese fluently despite being raised by two Cantonese speaking parents. Her minimal knowledge of Mandarin is criticized by her aunties in the {{Novelization}}.

* ''Series/BoJackHorseman'': Diane is ethnically Vietnamese, but her family all act like born-and-bred Bostonites she has little in common with. In season 3 she searches for belonging by travelling to Vietnam, but quickly realises that she just feels like any other American tourist there.