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He's got too much of his father in him.
''I am the guilty one
Ball and chain around my leg
I am the cursed one
Black cloud hangin' overhead
Fill the heart that pumps bad blood
All inside of me.''
— Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Killer Wolf
Genealogy and Ancestry are really popular tropes in fiction. It makes a great Secret Legacy, a source of fraternal conflict, adds drama with an unexpected family reunion, and can set up a host of different conflicts and relationships. Just like in real life, a person's ancestry can determine their genes and, to a lesser extent, their personality and even their talents; but in fiction this extends to skills, superpowers, and even moral alignment.
Sometimes even The Messiah and the most valiant Knight In Shining Armor are at risk of going insane, or over to The Dark Side, if a parent or grandparent was a Villain By Default or member of an Evil Race. This inevitably leads said character into a Wangsty existential crisis that comes completely out of left field, since they rarely ever struggled against villainous impulses before this revelation.
The reverse is not always true though. A Card Carrying Villain with a good family is rarely compelled towards good — though it does inform a possible Heel Face Turn later on thanks to The Power Of Love from their family.
The hero's fear in this situation is that their "evil genes" will inevitably doom them to become as evil as their ancestors Because Destiny Says So, it's written In The Blood — despite the fact that up to the point before The Reveal they had a solid reputation, moral compass, and personality, capable of using Heroic Willpower to resist just about any evil supernatural coercion. It seems heroes are as insecure about their ancestry as their reputation.
The inevitable conclusion to all this navel gazing is either the character going " Screw Destiny!" or a friend slapping some sense into them; if he has been raised in ignorance so that he would not Turn Out Like His Father, it is quite likely to actually work. On the other hand, this can end up being a Self Fulfilling Prophecy, in that the angst leads to fear, then hate, then evil, as the character either does a full Face Heel Turn or becomes Necessarily Evil. For a comparison, the Reluctant Monster bypasses this nonsense entirely and is simply "themselves," albeit with a healthy heaping of introspection.
Now, get an Evilutionary Biologist who thinks the same thing, and they'll try and splice together a clone Super Soldier of the hero using such donors as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Scrappy Doo, under the logic that their creation will be "the most powerful and evil creature alive! Bwahahahaha!" Which, of course, should only produce a clone with a penchant for mustaches and Scooby snacks, but invariably is pretty evil.
A pretty common twist for heroes with Muggle Foster Parents is that they are the child of the Big Bad who has been spirited away and raised like an Ordinary High School Student in the hopes that Nurture can beat out their inherently evil Nature. In extreme cases, this "Nature" can manifest as an Enemy Within or a Super Powered Evil Side. Again, this twist can lead to a Shower Of Angst. For some reason, the parent they get the bad blood from is usually the dad. Another twist is the son of a mighty warrior becoming a mighty warrior themselves, even if they were orphaned as a baby.
Sub-trope of Not So Different. See Freudian Excuse for when the Nurture position applies. Compare Lamarck Was Right for children inheriting non-moral traits that shouldn't even be genetic. A big issue for anyone with a Mad Scientist Truly Single Parent. Creates numerous problems if the blood it is in is Royal Blood. The more light-hearted version is It Runs In The Family. Compare Raised By Orcs, where someone raised by evil people/ races turns out good due to not actually being related to them and Heroic Lineage from their true parents. Compare Loser Son Of Loser Dad, where everyone else thinks this will be the case.
Examples
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Anime
- In Code Geass, Lelouch vi Britannia has become a rebel trying to overthrow his tyrannical father, Emperor Charles. However, his methods rely heavily on manipulation and XanatosGambits and Xanatos Roulette ... just like his old man's own actions. Also, Charles himself seems to mirror his trope in regards to his twin brother, cult leader V.V. And let's not forget that Marianne purposely hid herself from Lelouch and make Nunnally suffer just so they can use Lelouch to draw C.C. out for the Assimilation Plot and create the perfect world where their kids would "live in happiness". Receving scheming blood from both his parents definitely helps.
- In Princess Tutu, Fakir is a descendant of Drosselmeyer. It follows that he has the same story-spinning powers as Drosselmeyer, and this ends up being crucial to the plot.
- Not to mention that the blood of the Raven will turn people towards evil and give them dark magical powers if it's somehow absorbed by their body, even if they're not related to him.
- Being connected to a criminal by blood seems to be quite a stigma in the One Piece world, mainly from the World Government who are afraid that it really is In The Blood. Nico Olvia separated herself as much as she could from her daughter Robin when she set off to be an illegal Adventurer Archaeologist to try and keep Robin from being the "child of a criminal." When the Franky Family are trying to convince the Straw Hats to take Franky with them, one of the reasons used is "he's the son of a pirate, anyway." Most recently, when Vice-Admiral Garp tells Ace that he'd wanted him and his brother Luffy to become great Marines, Ace tells Garp that their fathers' blood assured they could never be Marines. Ace himself was hunted by the Marines even before his birth because they wanted to nip the potential danger of his father's continuing bloodline in the bud. Only an extreme Mama Bear act by his mother prevented him from being found.
- Averted in Whitebeard's beliefs, though. Upon being informed that Ace was the son of Gold Roger(a major rival of Whitebeard), the pirate captain didn't care in the least, saying it was an inconsequential detail. During the war with the World Government, he is stabbed by one of his allies, who's crew had previously been wiped out by Roger and felt betrayed upon finding out that they were going to such lengths to save Ace. Whitebeard simply tells him that Ace himself had done nothing to the guy, and that it was ridiculous to blame Ace for his father's actions.
- Actually in spite of the rather crazy lineage of Luffy's family (The marine's hero, the most wanted man in the world, The future pirate king), one of the major themes of One Piece (confirmed by Word Of God) is that heredity doesn't matter, and family is who you choose. Of the strawhats, only Usopp grew up with a parent related by blood, and she died when he was quite young. Of Sanji, Zoro, Nami, Chopper and Franky, none had significant blood relative parental figures, Robin only met her mother briefly, We don't know about Brook, and Luffy was raised by his grandfather until he was shipped off to stay with his grandfather's friend. Luffy also rather significantly had a brother unrelated by blood.
- The Uchiha Clan from Naruto is the embodiment of this trope with the clan founder, Madara, even saying that revenge is the destiny of each and every Uchiha.
- However, there are two subversions: First off, and most notably, Obito, Kakashi's Unlucky Childhood Friend. He acts pretty normal and even clumsy, and the usual Uchiha-appearance is toned down with a ridiculous pair of goggles. Secondly, though not to the same extent as Obito, Itachi was easily one of the strongest Uchiha and possessed many typical Uchiha-traits, but by all appearances attempted to avoid going too far overboard in the pursuit of his revenge.
- Itachi wasn't even out for revenge against anyone at all. His motivations were for the prevention of a world war. Everything he did was to help the very village that Madara claims is the enemy of all Uchiha. Itachi and Obito easily both completely subvert the "destiny" of the Uchiha.
- Sasuke, however, plays it horribly, horribly straight, arguably even more so than Madara himself.
- How did Itachi subvert this trope after he forced his brother on the path of revenge? Twice
- Good luck arguing that on the internet. Fans will go out of their way to justify every single thing that Itachi does.
- The most common reason is that Itachi wanted the path of Sasuke's revenge to stop with him; he was willing to die to stop Sasuke's revenge. The subversion is that Itachi wanted revenge against no one. However, he knew that Sasuke would, so he made himself the target to protect Konoha. If Sasuke had gone his way, he would have headed back to the village alright. But then Madara purposely screwed it up by telling Sasuke about Danzo.
- Dragonball Z: While Frieza was a Complete Monster and Buu was in it For The Evulz, Cell was born with no other purpose other than becoming more powerful.
- Somewhat arguably, Yusuke from Yu Yu Hakusho. Though it's not dwelt on much, partly because by the point in the series it comes up things have gotten to be semi-pure action, far far away from the series' roots as a chronicle of the reflective character-building experiences a delinquent can have while a ghost, probably because Togashi had gone mad with power by this point, a while after our hero has come back from the dead as a demon because of Mazoku ancestry, he has become relatively okay with the less uncivilized gradations of human-eating, and when Raizen is about to die due to self-imposed starvation offers insistently to go find him someone to eat right away. Earlier in the series he got incredibly angry about any cannibalistic tendencies, and drew huge lines between 'killing demons,' which he had done a good deal of, and 'killing humans,' which he really really did not want to have to do. Could just be an implicit redrawing of the Fantastic Racism lines, with demons no longer suffering from What Measure Is A Non Human. So it might just be a really strange form of a perfectly reasonable Aesop, and/or Reverse Getting Crap Past The Radar due to not treating it like it's important. Intended to cause Fridge Logic, probably. Altogether weird.
- Of course, in the middle of world-saving before the race thing came out he insisted on fighting the villain at full power, for the awesome of it, and got himself killed. Again. The first death was considerably more morally praiseworthy, although this one provoked revenge and a great deal of sorrow. Said 'screw the world' or words to that effect. Because he'd rather have an awesome fight and risk the deaths of everyone he loves than save the world by kicking Kazuya's psychotic ass.
- Uhmm. And of course mocked the hell out of by the SDF guys getting sent to obliterate Yusuke before he rises again as a Mazoku hanyou, predicting incredible overwhelming evil, and shitting their pants at his colorful Omnicidal Maniac spiel when they fail to get to that. Then: "PSYCH!" And he's got his shoe on his head.
- If the above scene description didn't tell you what character name is under the spoiler tag, you don't know this show.
- Hiei, on the other hand, turns out to be the victim of the idea of this in his back story: being male shows he has outcross blood, which among the Ice Maidens means (precedents apparently show) that if they keep him around he will grow up to kill everyone. So they throw him over the side of their Floating City, the woman doing the throwing whispering that she expects him to come back and please kill her first. They may or may not have been correct: yes, he is a psychopath from childhood, and actually mellows out the more grown-up he gets, and yes, judging by his facial expressions he was one evil baby, but that could be a combination of Self Fulfilling Prophecy (though come to think of it, it doesn't), the trauma, and the fact that all babies are extremely selfish little creatures and if they were sapient they probably would be kind of evil. He understood everything. (Of course, the 'source of evil' here is either 'every race except our own' or 'the male sex,' or both, because they don't have males. They clone themselves every hundred years.)
- Jury is out on Yukina. She may or may not share Hiei's father's blood, and has been known to express genocidal sentiments toward her own kind. Hiei told her that if she wanted them dead she should do it herself, not rely on some imaginary brother who might be dead. Since he'd decided it was crueler to let them live, and all.
- This is part of the reason why it was feared Black Star would end up on the 'path of a Kishin'; his father ended up destroying himself and his clan. A comparison between father and son is made by Sid, who raised Black Star and played a part in killing the rest of the Star Clan.
- This is very likely to become a problem for Death the Kid, to some extent even if the great old one is lying. He already had his suspicions about Shinigami, more misinformation won't help any.
- In Eureka Seven, the Thurston family (especially the males) are all well-respected and loved people. Axel Thurston was respected by the military for his design and contributions for the LF Os, Adrock Thurston was remembered by the people for his Heroic Sacrifice to save the world, and Renton Thurston was also known by all for saving the world and became a hero (his name is displayed on the moon for all to see, as well as a street named after him in the ending).
Comic Books
- Orion, son of Darkseid. Orion's a good guy, but he inherited Darkseid's inherent rage and bloodlust, and requires a Mother Box to keep his temper in check.
- In Teen Titans, Superboy fears this after discovering Lex Luthor is one of his genetic fathers. It worsens to the point of a Heroic BSOD when it turns out that Luthor had implanted the ability to control him, and forced him to attack his friends.
- Titans also has an actual example in Raven, who spends much of the 90s evil, due to her demonic heritage.
- This is a legitimate worry for the Runaways at first, before they decide to Screw Destiny and stick it to their parents. Most of them anyway.
- The comic version of Wanted features the character Shithead (a Captain Ersatz of Batman villain Clayface), made of the feces of the 666 most evil people in history. You can bet good money on this oh-so-witty character getting cut from the movie.
- Used to particularly annoying effect in Spider-Man and Spider-Girl, with the "Osborn Legacy" ending up twisting three generations of Osborns. There's no evidence that any of them were evil before Norman, and even if his formula affected his genes, Harry was already a teen at that point.
- Harry's son Normie, however, turns out to be an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, and gets better real quick.
- One story suggested Norman's father wasn't a terribly nice man; he may not have worn a funny costume, but he had the same obsession with "a strong heir" that Norm inflicted on Harry.
- In X-Men, the Lensherr/Eisenhart/Maximoff/Da— Oh, hell, Magneto's family seems to have a lot of issues with this. The man himself tends to go mad fairly regularly, Scarlet Witch was responsible for Avengers Disassembled and House of M, Polaris also seems to spend half her time as an evil lunatic, and Quicksilver (getting off more lightly than the others) went kind of crazy after getting his powers back following the decimation.
- That... was not the first time Quicksilver went crazy.
- Wielding one of the four fundamental forces of the universe at the level that Magneto and Polaris do is explicitly stated to cause them to go nuts.
- Depsite the fact that plenty of characters who are more powerful than Magneto, and even wield powers that transcend the "fundamental forces of the universe" manage to not go insane, even ones with pasts just as tragic as Magneto's. Silver Surfer, I'm looking at you.
- Umm, some characters transcend human ways of thinking and can cope with the power bestowed upon them.
- Half the time? Polaris spent a stint in the 80's as an evil lunatic when she was possessed by someone else. Then she later turned evil and insane again after Genosha was destroyed (and discovered her paternity) under Chuck Austen's pen but recovered by the end of his run.
- This trope often serves as an explanation for why the children of established superheroes and villains inherit their parents' powers, as the abilities are, quite literally, In the Blood. Spider-Man and the Flash are perhaps two of the most famous examples of heroes passing their abilities on to their kids, although there have been numerous other examples.
- For an example of someone who doesn't give a second thought to their villainous ancestry, look no further than Bart Allen - better known as Impulse/Kid Flash II. It's common knowledge that he's the grandson of the Silver Age Flash. What isn't common knowledge *
I think only about a dozen or so people in-universe know this is that he's also descended from Barry's psychotic Evil Counterpart, Professor Zoom. He's long known this fact * Impulse #25. He's more upset that Meloni didn't spill the truth earlier. , but doesn't really think about it, let alone talk about it, unless someone explicitly brings it up, and more-or-less laughs off Zoom's accusation of "bloodline betrayal":
Professor Zoom: Your mother may be a Thawne, but your father was an Allen. Your blood is polluted.
Bart: Look on the bright side, Professor Plum. We're only half related!
- Captain America has two examples. Helmut Zemo, son of Heinric Zemo and Sin, son of The Red Skull.
- Doctor Strange's girlfriend Clea has avoided this. She's the daughter of Umar and the niece of Dormammu and she's still on the side of good.
- Vandal Savage's daughter, Scandal, usually seesaws between Anti Villain and Anti Hero, though that's a lot better than her father, who's pretty much a fulltime villain. It's plausible that without her father's interference, she could have become a normal young woman or a heroine.
Film
- Star Wars plays with this, Luke's Final Temptation to join The Dark Side hinges on him being his father's son and heir to his evil. Luckily, he inherited a few traits from his mom too.
- What? A weak mind and a tendency to attempt suicide in moments of traumatic revelation? No, I think Luke's positive traits were due to his personal experiences more than anything.
- In "Return of the Jedi" Luke was on the edge of turning to the dark side since the beginning of the movie. I think the troper was talking aboiu this film, not "The Empire Strikes Back".
- The fact that Luke doesn't turn would probably make this more of a subversion than anything.
- In the Expanded Universe, his GRANDSON turns for this reason, more or less.
- More or less? He was fine until Lumiya started with the mind games.
- Did you ever bother to read the Dark Hive trilogy? Jacen was well on the path to becoming Vader 2.0 once he decided that genocide was an acceptable tactic to employ in his pursuit to safeguard his babymomma and his daughter. Note: Lumiya had yet to come into any sort of contact with him. At all. In fact, it's exactly the same thing that happened with Anakin. You'll note that Anakin slaughtered an entire settlement of Tusken Raiders. Jacen attempted to wipe out the entire Kilik species. Both actions occurred with relatively no Sith influence. One will further note that the evil actions undertaken by both Anakin and Vader - at the urging of Sith, were for the primarily to save their loved ones from perceived threats, secondarily to "make the galaxy a better place," and tertiarily - due to a both of them being a touch power hungry. As such the only argument against this being a valid trope for Jacen Solo is that it skipped a generation. However, that doesn't appear to matter when referring to this trope, now does it...
- Jacen was trained by Vergere. She turned gave him the power to destroy the Y. Vong, but also taught him that the difference between the Dark Side and the Light Side lay only in the mind of the wielder. Whether true or not, it may have primed him to accept the temptations of power.
When Vergere discovers that Anakin became Darth Vader, she seems geniunely distressed. And she gives her life to save not only Jacen but other Jedi in the big facedown between the New Republic and the Vong. This seems to argue that she is not (as some suggested) Sith. It also means that she was not around to continue to teach him. Whether her teachings opened for Jacen the door to darkness or her death prevented her from closing it is nowhere answered. It's a loose plot point, along with Vergere's species and the rest of her kind.
In any event, the desperation of the Vong War (in which the death toll was measured in the hundreds of trillions) led many characters in the story to cross the moral line.
- Vergere was written straight, originally. That is, she was in all honesty a Jedi who's teachings were not corrupted or influenced by Sith ideals, and she was reintroducing a legitimate Jedi philosophy. through her teachings, she was in effect bringing Jacen closer to the Jedi Order of her own time. To prepare for the Dark Hive trilogy as well as the Legacy of the Force books, she has been retconned and is now officially stated to have secretly been teachings him the ways of the Sith, in order to bring him to a stage where he could grasp her intended destiny for him - that of becoming a Sith Lord.
- A comics arc in the Star Wars Expanded Universe had the Emperor returning. Early on, Luke took control of a massive ship and landed it safely on Coruscant's surface with minimal casualties - since this was long before Revenge Of The Sith came out, this was likely coincidence. Later he found out about Darth Sidious and confronted him - but stopped and joined him, then became the Emperor's apprentice, right hand man, and Supreme Commander of Imperial Forces. Apparently Palps was delighted at the chance to make as many parallels as possible. Luke was redeemed by the love of his sister, and for years after that was just a little tainted by the Dark Side.
- Except Luke joined the Emperor to be The Mole. Of course, Palpatine knew this, and also knew that The Dark Side is addictive, so he determined that this wouldn't be a problem; Luke ended up Becoming The Mask. And Palps would've been right about it not being a problem if Luke had stayed corrupted.
- So, to sum up, Anakin: The Dark Side for 23 years. Luke: The Dark Side for a decade. (He seemed to be going there in TJK too.) Jacen: The Dark Side since at least his Mind Rape of Ta'a Chume until he died. Jaina: The Dark Side for less than a year. (I can't remember NJO timing.) Ben: The Dark Side for a few months. No wonder the Skywalkers bring balance to The Force.
- A History Of Violence uses this when Tom's son, upon discovering his father was a brutal hitman, abandons his earlier pacifist stance and brutally beats up a bully (who he'd previously handled with wit), having "inherited" his father's violent fighting style.
- Used for comedic effect in Children of the Revolution, a black comedy about the illegitimate son of Joseph Stalin, who ends up starting a totalitarian communist revolution in Australia without ever being informed of who his real father was - even going so far as to grow the "Stalin mustache."
- In Young Frankenstein, the titular Dr. "Fronkensteen" tries to avoid following in the
footsteps vootshtaps of his famous relative. He can't, if only because the servants won't let him.
- The Doom movie uses Genetic Engineering Is The New Nuke this way. The Precursors of humanity living on Mars developed a new chromosome that wiped out disease and made them super human... or super evil (You can guess what wiped them out). Apparently the chromosome reacted to the something in the "unmapped 10% of the human genome" that unlocked a person's latent "evil" and mutated them into a monster; the best these gentically evil people can hope for is a Heroic Sacrifice before they fully mutate. So Rousseau was wrong, technically people are genetically evil, and all it takes is a little help from The Virus to bring it out.
- A gene for evil? Wasn't it all about hell and daemons?
- This editor thought it had something to do with the fact they were insane or at least mentally unstable, before they were inject, or infected.
- One of the characters, who was extremely patient, temperate and religious, managed to get infected. Turns out he had evil genes.
- Well, if you have evil genes, you're bound not be an entirely nice guy. The magical evil virus just makes it obvious on the outside.
- Despite his -* snicker* - evil genes turning him into a demon, Goat was still a decent enough guy to off himself before he could hurt anyone.
- The implication is that the marine squad has been engaged in many questionable actions... but it's best not to try and apply logic to this film.
- The forever brutish Tannen bloodline in the Back To The Future movies. The line goes back to "Mad Dog" Tannen, a murderous Wild West outlaw who kills Doc Brown in one timeline. In 1955, Biff Tannen is a bully who tries to rape Marty's mother. In various timelines, he matures into an abusive boss, a crime lord, and a bitter old man. Biff's son is a monstrous thug.
- Jack Sparrow tells Will Turner in the first Pirates Of The Caribbean movie that "Piracy is in your blood," since his father was also the pirate "Bootstrap Bill" Turner. Later on it turns out to be an important plot point, and Will embraces his pirate heritage. Of course, no mention is made of whether Bootstrap Bill's father was a pirate. One pirate parent is apparently enough to turn his heirs into pirates as well.
- Aragorn in the film version of Lord Of The Rings has deep seated fear he will prove to have "the blood of Isildur" and choose to use the One Ring, which extends to him being fearful of taking up his mantle as king. Still, the Ring has a rather good track record on the whole evil tempting and corruption thing, so it's not like he's inheriting weakness so much as not inheriting super resistance to its influence.
- Detective Conan: The Phantom of Baker Street starts out with sensible social commentary on Japan's hereditary culture but hits this trope around the revelation that Schneider is a descendant of Jack the Ripper and thus couldn't stop the murderous nature in his genes.
- From the 1999 movie Wing Commander, Pilgrims.
- In Repo! The Genetic Opera, this is used in a more literal sense—Marni died from a rare blood disease, which her daughter, Shilo, inherited. 'Genetic Emancipation' is also based on this trope.
- Only that she didn't, her dad has been poisoning her all along
- But she did. Remember that Marni didn't die from the disease, that was just what Nathan told Shilo to avoid admitting that he accidentally killed her, or so he thought. Marni died because Rotti poisoned her, and Shilo's sickness was due to Nathan drugging her 'medicine'. The blood disease is, as far as we know, fairly harmless.
- Actually, it's never confirmed that Marni's blood disease is genetic or that Shilo has it.
- Also played with in a figurative sense when Rotti is trying to get Shilo to kill her father. She claims she's not a murderer to which Rotti responds, "But you share your dad's genetics. What if he passed this to you?" Making reference to his murderous occupation.
- In The Bad Seed, Rhoda is the granddaughter of a serial killer and has genetically inherited the inability to feel guilt.
- Serial Killer Mr Brooks worries that his daughter has inherited his homicidal urges.
Literature
- Ur-Example: The work of H.P. Lovecraft. From Shadow Over Innsmouth's Deep One-blooded protagonist to the protagonist of The Rats in the Walls having a predisposition toward cannibalism and insanity; this is not to mention The Tomb's family links between the dead and living, it's completely pervasive.
- Imriel in the Kushiel books is the son of the biggest traitors to his country, and despite him being a good-hearted person (and raised by other good-hearted people), everyone around him suspects that someday he might take after his mother. Later on, a group of people have a psychic prediction that Imriel's son would take after his mother and destroy their nation, and kill his pregnant wife to make sure this doesn't happen. This editor presumes that evil skipped a generation.
- Played with in A Song Of Ice And Fire: The Targaryen royal family line is known to be "tainted" with madness; one character says that every time a new Targaryen was born, the country would hold its breath to see if the new Targaryen would be one of the good ones or one of the bad ones. However, this is justified. The Targaryens are seriously inbred due to repeated Brother Sister Incest; the inbreeding results in many of this line having physical problems and/or serious mental and emotional instability, while the luckier ones inherit the family strong points and manage to miss the damaging recessives.
- Also, Sansa being told she has "traitor's blood", because of her father's actions.
- Averted in Good Omens. The Antichrist, through a variety of mix-ups, ends up being raised by a normal British family. He ends up like a normal kid with some special powers he's only partially aware of. Even his hell hound ends up being like a normal dog, though with some worry on its part.
- All over the place in The Kite Runner, as: Hassan's son is said to be very much like him, which plays this straight. Seemingly subverted with Amir and Baba, as Amir believes Baba hates him for not being the image of a man as he was, but played straight and noted by Amir when his hatred of him may have stemmed his guilt from how Baba was Hassan's actual father with an affair with Hassan's mother, and they both had past shames. Averted with Hassan, as he is a much more kindly person than his biological father, and said to be near-impossible to anger as opposed to Baba, which is much like Hassan's perceived father.
- Played straight in the Redwall series, where certain species are always designated as "good" or "bad." Even when a ferret (one of the "vermin" species) named Veil is raised from infancy in the abbey, he ultimately turns out to be evil. "The goodies are good and the baddies are BAD, no grey areas." (Weirdly, cats are one of the few species that's an exception to this rule, being good or evil—in a series where mice are the standard heroes.) There are occasional exceptions, with good-aligned "vermin species" or evil-aligned "good species" but they are few and far between.
- In Discworld, things like scars, charismatic royalty and skills as a clown can be hereditary. As Death explains to his adopted granddaughter, not all that is hereditary is genetic.
- The original meaning of "charisma" is "favour of God", and the idea that it was hereditary was the reason/justification for hereditary titles at least in Europe (don't know about elsewhere).
- The entire plot of Wilkie Collins' 19th-century thriller Armadale revolves around this trope; a young man who has (for unrelated reasons) adopted a pseudonym meets another young man who shares his birth name of Allan Armadale. They become fast friends, until the first young man discovers that his father had murdered the father of the other Allan Armadale. He spends much of the rest of the novel haunted by his father's conviction that the sons are destined to repeat the fathers' fatal feud.
- Averted in Harry Potter, in which the power of both parenting (i.e. "nurture") and personal choice over blood is a major theme. Examples include Barty Crouch, Jr.(a young man of very "good blood" choosing the wrong path), the Weasleys (each Weasley child's destiny is shaped more by his own decisions than by Being a Weasley), Sirius Black, and many others. Harry's own role as the Hero is presented as his choice, not merely his destiny. Though in the case of Voldemort, he seems pretty much born evil.
- Is it averted though? Barty Crouch Sr is shown to be quite bastard, with regards to locking people up in prison without a trial, and abusing his slaves. So while Barty Jr's choice to become a Death Eater wasn't inherited, it seems his being a nasty piece of work was.
- Free will means you don't have to end up unlike your father eitiher.
- Averted how? Harry and Neville had nasty childhoods but were good people while Voldemort, and to some extent Snape, had bad childhoods as well and they weren't. The difference between them: Harry and Neville had parents that were great, heroic people, Snape had nasty parents and Voldemort had narcissist parents. Somewhat subverted with Sirius because, while he rejected his evil family's politics, he wasn't as well adjusted as Harry.
- Tom Riddle was a narcissist, not Merope.
- One could argue that this is because Voldemort honestly believed that, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy of Lamarckian proportions.
- Plus, Voldemort's mother was heavily inbred, so in a similar case to the Targaryens above, he could have inherited some instability from there.
- Word Of God also says that Voldemort was born without any capability to love because he was conceived under the influence of a love potion.
- In the final book [[Remus Lupin worried about this when he and Tonks had a child, because he didn't want the child to be a werewolf. Instead, the kid is a human chameleon.]]
- And then the misaimed fandom insists on making Lily some kind of secret pureblood princess.
- In the Whateley Universe this is played straight, subverted, inverted, and generally abused. Whateley Academy has an official 'club' known commonly as The Bad Seeds. Admission? One or both of your parents must be a supervillain. Some kids take to this like ducks to water, some resist, some don't know what the heck to do, some are pretty clueless even for teenagers. Nacht has a supervillain mother who is constantly trying to get Nacht to use her powers to help mommy commit crimes; Nacht doesn't mind the crime part, but she really doesn't want to spend time with her mother. Jobe is a ruthess, amoral genius bio-devisor who even looks like his supervillain dad; his dad hates that junior doesn't have a flair for mechanical devises instead. And so on...
- And what about Carmilla? She has Deep Ones in her mother's ancestry, and is the grandchild of Cosmic Horror Shub-Niggurath on her father's side. She's taking the Screw Destiny approach right now.
- In The Count Of Monte Cristo, Benedetto is supposed to be a bad guy because of the evil inclinations of his father Vilefort. Adding to the Unfortunate Implications is that like Oliver Twist (and likely many other orphans in 19th century novels), he is naturally educated and well-spoken, despite receiving little schooling, simply because his father is an aristocrat.
- In Arthurian literature, Mordred, the born-by-incest, sometimes-tragic nephew-son of the King, is a villain BECAUSE his parents consummated in sin. This is often the reason for the fall of Camelot as well. And Despite that in the original Welsh legends had Medrawd as a hero and unrelated enemy of Arthur's, with Arthur as the villain, and the incest originated in the Vulgate Lancelot-Grail Cycle, this still makes the trope Older Than Print.
- In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles Of The Kencyrath series, Shanir (magic) powers are inherited genetically among the Highborn race. Incestuous breeding programs in the past to breed stronger Shanir have led to some very damaged bloodlines, exacerbated by dwindling numbers (and probably causing them, too, due to impacts on fertility). Heroine Jame and her twin brother Torisen are of the "royal" house of Knorth, inheriting both powerful abilities and the possibility of insanity; Torisen constantly worries that he carries the Knorth madness and worries he'll become his father. One of those abilities is also In The Blood; blood-binding. Anyone who consumes their blood will be bound to them mind, body and soul until death and beyond. Creepy stuff.
- In L.J. Smith's ''Night World''
 , lost witches, called psychics, don't know about their powers until somebody tells them their descended from the witches.
- In The Genes? One half of The Thrawn Trilogy's Big Bad Duumvirate is the clone Jedi Master Joruus C'baoth, known for being insane, obsessed with training new Jedi, domineering, prideful, and absolutely convinced that command of the Force makes him right in all things. Outbound Flight introduces us to the original, Jorus C'baoth, who has every one of those traits, though not quite as strongly expressed. In the beginning of the book, at least. Both of them had fallen to the Dark Side at one point or another.
- I believe it's implied that the clone had some parts of C'baoth's memories and personalities implanted.
- Drizzt Do'Urden seems to get a break from the drow characteristic of being Always Chaotic Evil because his father is an exception, too. Of course, this also affected his upbringing, but there's a sense a "biological" excuse is seen as necessary.
- In the Middle English romance Sir Gowther, the title character is the son of a devil (the same devil who begot Merlin). He kills several nursemaids by suckling them to death, then grows up as a naturally horrible person who eventually goes so far as to lead a gang rape of a convent full of nuns whom he then locks up and sets on fire. However, when someone actually tells him that he is the son of the devil, he repents immediately, goes to the Pope for penance, and eventually becomes more or less a saint.
- Merlin himself is alternately an example and an aversion of this trope. In some medieval texts, he inherits his incubus-father's powers and his evil or amoral nature; in others, he inherents the powers but not the evil, and he receives some powers from God as well.
- Played horribly straight in the 1904 novel Freckles, in which it's accepted by everyone — including, too obviously, the author — that an abused child must be unworthy of compassion, because it is the offspring of abusers. The hero turns out to be a good and decent and upright man, of course — precisely and specifically because his parents were all those things.
- Sherlock Holmes speculates that the reason Colonel Moran from "The Adventure of the Empty House" started out as a fine, upstanding soldier of the Empire and then suddenly joined the Moriarty gang might be because "the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family." Watson calls this "rather fanciful".
- Captain Pausert in The Witches of Karres had to listen to Councilor Onswud saying he'd known Pausert would go bad (as Onswud saw it), "Just like his great-uncle Threbus! It's in the blood, I always say!" And then Threbus' daughter told Pausert her father had predicted Pausert would break with his home planet — and he said it was in the blood.
- Played straightish in The Count Of Monte Cristo. The character Bendetto is the illegitimate son of Vilefort, a fairly bad guy, and Benedetto's adoptive father comments several times on how Benedetto is evil because of who his father was. Vilefort's legitimate son, Edouard is also shown to have marked malicious tendencies. On the other hand, Vilefort's father is a good person as is his daughter.
- This is implied with the Rahl family in The Sword Of Truth, where it's explained that from his Rahl blood Richard got the "rage of anger" and capacity for violence, while he got forgivness and love and understanding from his Zorander blood. You'd think that unless the Rahls were really into inbreeding this mixed blood thing would apply to all of them, but maybe only wizard blood carries personality traits.
Live Action TV
- Law And Order Special Victims Unit: A recurring fear for Olivia Benson is that deep inside her is a violent, sadistic criminal spawned by her rapist father. John Munch has also voiced concern at least once that he may end up committing suicide like his father. There was also an episode where a man who was violently molested by his father worries about becoming just like him and his felon brother — and does so.
- Note that Munch's fear isn't entirely unreasonable: his uncle Andrew (played by Jerry Lewis in an episode) had mental problems, and that sort of thing, which can result in suicide, can be heritable. Goren on Law And Order Criminal Intent has the same concerns due to a family history of schizophrenia.
- Also, Olivia went through a very complicated situation where it seemed her fears her coming true... and not through her, but through her half-brother Simon, who was accused of raping a handicapped woman who later killed herself. He was framed by the victim's sister, though.
- Holling from Northern Exposure didn't feel he should ever have children because every Vincoeur from the cruel French aristocrats down to Holling's foul-tempered father had been some sort of sadistic monster. Holling himself was a perfectly sweet and kind person, and didn't seem to fear turning into a jerk himself — but at the same time was convinced that the vileness would carry over to his kids should he ever have any. (In fact, one child of his did turn out to be a money-grubbing con woman.)
- Chouseishin Gransazer has a lot of hand-wringing wangst near the end when it is revealed that some of the heroes, and possibly all humans, are descended from the Bosquito, an evil race of monsters that feed on the life force of others. But in the end it turns out that they aren't related to the Bosquito at all; it was just evil propaganda. A rather nasty Warped Aesop.
- Also conveniently ignores the fact that humans are descended from creatures that feed on the "life force" of others, and still do. It's called "eating meat"...
- A more realistic version of this was done in Smallville, where Chloe is afraid she'll end up like her mother. But it's not evil, it's insanity, which often is genetic. Lex on the other hand, has evil genes, although the nurture side isn't helping either.
- One of the main sources of dramatic tension in American Gothic is the question of Caleb's parentage—not just whether he really is Buck's son, but whether he can actively resist becoming corrupt and evil just like his father. And it seems he and Merlyn are right to worry, since the more time he spends with Buck, and the more he learns from him, the more cruel, amoral, callous, and sadistic he becomes. Of course this is likely helped along by his near-death experience, Buck's powers, and being possessed by Buck but the simple fact is after ten or so years of showing no signs of evil, once he learns of his (possible) heritage, Caleb's fall into darkness is somehow inevitable.
- Towards the end of the epic miniseries Centennial, the evil Wendell clan comes along. Perhaps we can blame them for how the quality of the series really started to deteriorate around that point.
- The Avatara in Carnivale get their powers and Dark or Light natures genetically. Siblings of the Avatara, called Vectori, are said to have minor abilities of their own and tend toward insanity.
- On Criminal Minds, the profilers always debate the possibility of a serial killer's offspring growing up to be like their parent whenever one of them is revealed to have kids.
- Spencer Reid worries a lot about becoming a paranoid schizophrenic- like his mother, as there is a higher chance of it occuring in him if a family member also has had it.
- In "Birthright", a man who never knew his father found his journal detailing his killings and decided to become his copycat.
- Averted by the wife of a serial killer who was on death row for killing her infant son to prevent him from growing up with the Awful Truth about his father except she secretly gave him up for adoption as a baby to a loving family and was willing to face execution because the truth would exonerate her but also burden her son with the knowledge of his parentage. Even the BAU decides she did the right thing in the end even if they wouldn't have made the same choice.
- Langston in CSI assures the adopted step-son of Serial Killer Paul Milander that In The Blood dosesn't exist (especially since they aren't blood relatives and Milander never acted like a serial killer to his family) and that there is no record of a serial killer's children becoming killers themselves in Real Life. Meanwhile, Langston himself is worried that he might have inherited a violent streak from his father.
- In the Bones Season One finale, The Woman in Limbo, upon learning that his parents were bank robbers who were part of a strong-arm crew, Russ Brennan, a felon on parole, says "Guess a criminal nature runs in the family."
- Booth is a little sensitive that he's both a crack sniper for the government and related to Lincoln assassin John Wilkes-Booth. This is brought up when he (thinks he) proves that one person could've done the JFK assassination. When the others point out that A: he's a professional, B: the experiment was indoors and evidence suggests a cover-up, his confidence in himself and his government almost goes to pieces.
- Inverted humorously on Top Gear, in an episode featuring the presenters' mothers. While some personality influences are obviously present, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond's mothers are slow, careful drivers, and James May's is remarkably aggressive and fast.
- Justified does not state this trope but is highly influenced by it. Raylan shares a lot of character traits with his father Arlo and does not want to be an angry, violent manipulative bastard like him. The show likes to show how much alike the two of them are even though one of them is a good guy and the other a bad guy.
- This trope is twisted all around with the Crowder family. The patriarch Bo is a brutal career criminal who easily steps into Complete Monster territory. Boyd is a villain from the beginning but is revealed to operate on very different motives then his father and does an actual Heel Face Turn after Raylan shoots him in the series premiere although it takes an entire season for the other main characters to believe that he changed. Bo Jr was a star football player and thought to have a great future but ended his life as a wife beating brute whose own family did not feel like avenging. Cousin Johnny is first shown to be the one who has gone straight but in the end is just as bad as his uncle Bo.
Professional Wrestling
- Just try to find a second- or third-generation wrestler whose gimmick doesn't center around wrestling being In The Blood, face or heel. Probably the best example is WWE's Randy Orton, a third-generation wrestler who believes that his lineage automatically makes him the greatest wrestler ever (never mind that dad, grandpa, and uncle Barry were all midcarders at best...). Orton went on to found a Power Stable called Legacy, where the biggest entrance requirement was that you must be at least a second-generation wrestler. Their motto? "Born better."
- This example is a little more successful in Mexican Wrestling, where second generation wrestlers like Hijo del Santo and Perro Aguayo Jr. are huge idols in their own right. They do play this trope straight, with Santo always trying to be the "hero" his father was and Perro Aguayo having many of the same storylines as his father
Real Life
- When eugenics were popular in the early twentieth century, this trope was Serious Business. This largely ended after World War II due to the Nazis making eugenics not look so good.
- This troper regards the In The Blood thing as being very American, having learned whilst studying for a diploma in teaching people with disabilities that eugenics laws were on the books up to the 1960s in the USA! She also remembers watching an American cop show sometime in 2008 or 09, where the crime was solved when cops found out that the serial killer had had two sons, and although neither son knew who his father was, both were suspects and one was guilty! Apparently, being a serial killer of random young women is 100% heritable, as was actually stated by one of the cops. Utterly insane thinking! How is such a thing even supposed to be possible?
- Presumably it was some organic brain disorder that was inherited, and its psychological result was to make one of the sons susceptible to becoming a serial killer (e.g. born a sociopath). But it's still freakin' stupid if the cops disregarded other suspects.
- Since when is this weird? 'Normal' mental illnesses are very much hereditary, so why would "criminal insanity" be different? Also, hormone and neurotransmitter production is hereditary, making a penchant for violence or hypersexuality very much hereditary. Despite most impulses being controllable, that still hinges on the subject wanting to control them. In other words, wifebeaters' sons won't necessarily be actual wifebeaters themselves, but will most likely experience the urge to get a little physical every once in a while.
- Uh uh, physchologists still aren't 100% sure of how much genetics can affect certain mental disorders, especially with the trickier ones, like schizophrenia. Normally, many mental illnesses can also have an environmental factor, like exposure to chemicals or job types. Also, there's the whole nature vs nurture debate that the above poster is ignoring, since being a wifebeater is much more than just genetics ('monkey see, monkey' do, like with many abuse cases).
- The University of Minnesota's study of identical twins, particularly those separated at birth, uncovered a number of traits which appear to have an inherited component. Mostly it's things like preferences in ice cream flavors or clothing styles, which are explicable as both twins' sharing identical taste buds and body shapes.
Tabletop Games
- Used extensively in Warhammer 40000. The God-Emperor of Man created the twenty Primarchs, and when each wound up being raised on an alien planet by whoever happened to stumble across them, each become an immensely skilled warrior, and most of them ruled a planet or ten. The modern-day Space Marines are all genetically modified with gene-seed based on one of the Primarchs, and all exhibit behavior similar to that Primarch-the Blood Angels and their descendants, for example, all tend to be pious, noble, and prone to turning into [literally] bloodthirsty kamikaze maniacs intent on ripping the enemy limb from limb and drinking their blood.
- The Tyranid genestealers use this trope as their means of infiltrating other races. They implant their victims with Tyranid genetic material which subverts the genes of the victims. The victim's children are born as hybrids and become genestealer cultists by default.
- The descendants of extra-planar creatures in Dungeons And Dragons tend towards the alignments of their forebears. Thus, half-celestials and half-fiends are almost guaranteed to be good and evil. Their descendants, aasimar/deva and tieflings, are also predisposed (though not guaranteed) to maintain their ancestors' alignment.
- Half-orcs, no matter how civilized their upbringing, favor the barbarian class (especially in 3rd Edition), apparently inheriting the Orc's wild nature.
- The offspring of Generally Chaotic Good Nymph] and a Always Lawful Evil Devil is a Neutral Evi,, mishapen, goat legged midget called a Forlarren. They typically befriend the party with tales of their tragic past but the evil inherited from their Devil father(Its implied that the coupling is a result of rape) causes them to murder a member of the party.
- Actually, D&D tends to subvert this with that fact that many evil races are simply nurtured that way. Orcs and many others worship evil gods, live in brutish societies, and can be very strict. Hell, even the devils must follow their evil tenets, otherwise they'll remain the useless lemures, or get demoted to into the short and blind nupperibo. It's less because your father was evil, and more because your whole village is evil that leads you down the same path. Read up on D&D lore, and you start to notice a lot of instances of Nature vs. Nurture.
- This trope is Justified much more easily in Standard Rules Dungeons and Dragons and similar settings that have a definite and quantifiable universal morality (as little sense as this actually makes if you think about it for very long).
- The Ravenloft supplement Legacy of the Blood uses this trope extensively.
- Champions supplement The Blood and Dr. Mc Quark. The Blood have a hereditary tendency to both superpowers and insanity, the result of a bargain one of their ancestors made with a demon.
- In Hunter The Vigil, the Lucifuge all believe they are descended from Satan/Lucifer/Beelzebub/whatever name you want to tag the Devil with today. They've decided to Screw Destiny and fight against the creatures of the night... using the powers of Hell. Problem: the later World of Darkness book Inferno introduce their cousins, Les Enfants Diabloque, who also believe they're descended from the Devil and like it. The two groups are at odds.
Theater
- One of the dramatic tension elements in Arsenic And Old Lace is the hereditary insanity suffered by every single member of the Brewster family, and the protagonist's fear that he will eventually succumb to the same madness. Fortunately, it turns out in the end that he was adopted.
Video Games
- In the game D, the main character must find her father, a doctor at a sanitarium who has gained some kind of supernatural power, causing him to go batshit insane and slaughter apparently everyone in the hospital and reality warp the living shit out of it. It is eventually revealed that he is a decendant of Dracula, and has lost his mind thereby.
- If the sequel D2 in any indication, though, she took it pretty well.
- In Metal Gear Solid, Revolver Ocelot's already evil but gets possessed by Liquid Snake through his arm transplant, which is only possible because of Ocelot's father being a medium
- Except instead of going that path, which this troper believes was well done and fit with the theme of the series, Kojima decided he should basically retcon that by making Ocelot having just been ''acting the entire time''. ARGH. Oh yea, and he was also the good guy since the beginning of MGS1, working to destroy the patriots and free the world.
- The downloadable database says he wasn't faking during MGS2. Liquid's arm was having a severe impact on Ocelot's mental stability, forcing him to amputate Liquid's arm and replace it with a prosthetic. He was faking possession during MGS4, but in MGS2, Ocelot was genuinely possessed by Liquid
- Not to mention Liquid Snake himself, who expounds at length about heredity, instinct and how being the clone of a notorious supervillain leaves him with no choice but to relive that man's life in miniature.
- He is talking about this to his nemesis Solid Snake, the other clone of the same supervillan
- On the other hand, we're also told whatever skill at
mass slaughter espionage Raiden has comes from having been his life manipulated to closely match Snake's. Nature, nurture, if you're in the MGS universe, you are just screwed.
- This trope is played straight in the ''Baldur's Gate'' series in regards to the main character and several of the villains, who are Bhaalspawn; children of the now-dead god of murder.
- This could just be selection bias, though; the evil Bhaalspawn have been busily killing off the good ones, and the good ones are less likely to appear on the PC's radar in any case. The PC him/herself can be a solidly Lawful Good Knight In Shining Armor if the player so chooses.
- Tohno Shiki of Tsukihime lived most of his life normally, yet can somehow instinctually remember all the assassination techniques of the Nanaya clan through his blood, which conveniently powers him up whenever something serious happens. Judging by appearance, you might as well call it his Superpowered Evil Side. Explained in Canon by the fact that the Nanaya were incestuous and grounded in tradition to hold onto their supernatural powers, which are only supposed to last one generation.
- Being another member of the Demon Hunter's Association, the Ryogi family's daughter also received powers from supernatural blood.
- Agent 47 from the Hitman series is a genetically engineered assassin, created from the DNA of 5 of the world's most dangerous criminal masterminds. Except he's a cold-blooded assassin, not a power-hungry megalomaniac, so the analogy doesn't seem to quite work out.
- This could be considered averted. He isn't an assassin because he's made from criminal DNA, he's an assassin because he was raised from birth to be an assassin.
- It probably has as much to do with nurture (or lack thereof) as nature, but Dahlia Hawthorne is at least as great a petty, murderous Complete Monster as her mother Morgan Fey in Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations. Fortunately it seems to have passed over Pearl and Iris.
- And in Investigations it's all over the place. Both Ernest Amano and his son Lance are no strangers to crime and for Kay Faraday it's noble thievery that runs in the blood. Granted it's also a Take Up My Sword situation, but Faraday was dead before Kay even found out he was the Yatagarasu.
- Rock Howard from Mark of the Wolves seems to suffer from this. He struggles with his "evil side" inherited from Geese Howard, despite being rised almost entirely by Terry.
- Very subtle in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, but present nonetheless: One of the most amoral members of the Greil Mercenaries turned out to be the son of the Big Bad from the previous game. Possibly averted in that despite being amoral, he is also fiercely loyal (ahem) to Ike, and for lack of a conscience of his own, he often follows Ike's.
- In Fire Emblem Blazing Sword we have minor villain Erik, son of the corrupt Marquess Darin. In the next game in the continuity Erik has grown up to be exact same tyrannical ruler his father was, and repeats his predecessors mistakes step by step even going so far as to kidnap a little girl(for different reasons but still). This is bothersome as Darin wasn't truly evil until he met Ephidel and Erik seemed repentant after being defeated by Eliwood and Hector.
Web Comics
Web Original
- In The Lazer Collection 3, detective Randall Octogonapus ends up with his dad's powers. We don't know if he'll turn evil yet, though.
Western Animation
- Teen Titans: Robin actually told Raven he admired her Screw Destiny response to the prophecy she would help her demon father destroy the world.
- GI Joe's Serpentor, made with the DNA of Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Attila the Hun, Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Hannibal, Genghis Khan, and Grigori Rasputin to be the world's most evil and effective military leader. So naturally, his plans fail.
- If I remember correctly, they didn't manage to get one target's DNA, so they replaced it with Sergeant Slaughter's, whose strategic abilities can be resumed to punching people in the face while insulting them. Hilarity (and failure) Ensues.
- Zuko of Avatar The Last Airbender is a painfully complicated (as usual) case — according to Iroh, his inner conflict and insanity in Season 3 is revealed to be due to inheriting the blemish on his soul from Fire Lord Sozin through his father and a purity of soul from Avatar Roku through his mother: "...[U]nderstanding the struggle between your two great-grandfathers can help you better understand the battle within yourself. Evil and good are always at war inside you, Zuko. It is your nature, your legacy." What else would you expect from someone related to Mark Hamill?
- Probably this had a hand in Azula's insanity.
- The strange thing is that Azula of course is in theory just as much the grandaughter of Sozin and Roku as Zuko is. However, Ozai neglected Zuko all his life while focusing his attentions on Azula, so it's most likely that the goodness in Azula just never got a chance to grow thanks to how Ozai brought her up. For all his angst about it, Zuko's lucky he never had his father's "love and affection".
- Azula still was not nearly as vicious as the Firelord. She definitely had a concern for family (while simultaneously manipulating them). She messes with Zuko constantly, but also does seem to want him safe and unhurt, and even in her father's good graces. She also never kills anyone and usually avoids lethal attacks except against very poewrful enemies.
- Though it is not just those two. Megalomaniacal-insanity runs dangerously through that family (Particularly in the younger sibling). If anything Zuko was more on the benign side.
- The Simpson gene, anyone?
- Fortunately for Lisa, the the only ones who can inherit the gene are men, since it's part of the Y-chromosome.
- The Lion King 2 used this with Nuka the only son of Scar. He is evil, very ugly and receives a Disney Villain Death. Ironic as the film was supposed to be subverting In The Blood.
- Nuka could be seen as a subversion as well, since his main motivation for villainy is to earn his mother's love and approval.
- The film was supposed to have Scar's son as a protagonist, but that wasn't possible because it would've made its Romeo and Juliet cousins.
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