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Characters appear to be able to inherit their parents' personalities, behaviour, and morality, in addition to their physical traits.

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.

Compare Strong Family Resemblance, where a character physically resembles their relative, and Family Eye Resemblance, a subtler way of hinting at the inheritance using eyes. Supertrope to Heroic Lineage and Villainous Lineage, where the inherited personality traits are, respectively, heroism and villainy. See also Shared Family Quirks and It Runs in the Family.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • The goddess Urd of Ah! My Goddess is a near expy of her mother, the demon and ruler of Hell, Hild. Even though she identifies as a goddess and it is her affiliation, people have told her more than once her temperament is closer to demon — or rather, nearly exactly like her mother, which is the same for all intents and purposes. This even though she was only raised by Hild for a few early years, and has been a goddess as long as she can remember. Her power is also in the leagues of her mother.
  • Beastars:
    • Legoshi is a 3/4 wolf and 1/4 Komodo dragon hybrid. While he looks like a normal wolf aside from his subtly reptilian eyes, his personality is nearly identical to his Komodo dragon grandfather's. They are both very reserved and do their best to be non-threatening, but have a hidden heroic side, and have a tendency for Interspecies Romance.
    • The villainous Melon was the son of a female leopard who was mentally unstable and a male gazelle who was a selfish scumbag. He received the worst personality traits of both parents which was made worst by the genetics of his two parents combining very poorly and leaving him with messed up senses, little to no capacity for love or sexuality, and two sets of conflicting instincts.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • Being created from the DNA the Saiyans and Frieza, Cell shares many of their traits, such as Goku's love for a good fight and Vegeta and Frieza's massive egos.
    • Gohan plays with this. It's been stated that he has the potential to straight up be a superior version of Goku, because he inherited all of his father's talent for combat and tenacity. But his personality is about as far from a Saiyan's as you can get.
  • 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 LFOs, 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).
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers: insanity certainly seems to be in the blood for the Soviet family. Also, North Italy and Romano are both weak when it comes to warfare and share their love of food and women with Grandpa Rome. Germany and Prussia both have ambition and a love of power. Ironically, it's never clear how countries reproduce or whether they are actually related, and it's implied that they might actually not be related in the traditional sense, but those who call themselves family do seem to have a lot of traits in common.
  • Hunter × Hunter: The Ant King Meruem was born full-grown, intelligent, utterly selfish, and with the mission to conquer the world. Most of his character development as he grew up just reinforced his Blue-and-Orange Morality Evil, but he eventually, after a few months and under the influence of a sweet little blind girl with a perpetually runny nose whom he couldn't beat at a strategy game, developed into an honorable adult being. Still very cruel and arrogant, but given he was possibly the most powerful thing on the planet it would be hard not to be. Given his mother's attitude and the fact that he presumably contains bits of the sentience of various humans she ate during his gestation, because that's a chimaera ant ability, it's hard to say what can be called In the Blood for him, but he seems to have risen above his nature.
  • In Inuyasha, Half-demons are usually avoided by both humans and Youkai. While the demons believe that half-demons are too weak, humans believe that half-demons are just as vicious monsters as pure demons. But almost all naturally born hanyou in the series were benign. However, it should also be mentioned that there are many benign demons, and the half-demons in the series have a benign demon as a parent.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • The Joestar protagonists all share the same undying resolve and strong sense of justice since Jonathan Joestar. All of Jonathan's descendants also share the same star birthmark on the back of their neck.
    • DIO's children in both Golden Wind and Stone Ocean all inherited certain traits from him, despite DIO only being a head controlling Jonathan Joestar's body. Ungalo is cruel and shares the same hatred of the world as him, Rikiel his determination attitude and respect to a Worthy Opponent as DIO does, and Donatello his selfish and ambitious attitude. Giorno inherited DIO's determination, ruthlessness, and even his famous "Wry" cry. However, he also inherited Jonathan's compassion and dedication to punish those that harm the innocent.
  • Played for Laughs in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War. Chika Fujiwara is a member of one of the most prominent families in the history of Japanese politics, and this often expresses itself with her less noble attributes.
    Kaguya: It runs in the family, doesn't it? She has the tainted blood of a politician in her veins.
  • Lyrical Nanoha: When Victoria Dahlgrun of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid goes to battle, Sein notes that it's weird that a person claiming to be descended from the Thunder Emperor could act in such a refined way. Turns out, she was right. While Victoria will fight like a Lady of War at first, she will show the ferocity of the Thunder Emperor once she gets annoyed enough, and will, for example, proceed to spam Anti-Army attacks in a competitive duel.
  • 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.
  • This is part of the reason why it was feared Soul Eater's 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.

    Comedy 
  • Christopher Titus has made a career of 50% Dysfunction Junction and 50% this trope. A lot of his material comes from the fact that he can't escape the habits that he seems to have learned, or genetically inherited from his parents, including the nervous breakdown he had when he read so much as the title of a Life magazine article titled: "Mental Illness: Genetic?" His father had an extremely promiscuous and addictive personality and his mother was crazy (paranoid delusional schizophrenic, to be precise).
    Titus: And when I say crazy, I don't mean, "My mom is insane!" I mean, "We, the people, find the defendant...."

    Comic Books 
  • In Angel & Faith, Faith's own father tells her that, no matter how much she tries to change or how much she tries to be one of the good guys, she will always be in trouble simply because she is a Lehane, which drives Faith into a brief Heroic BSoD.
  • Firefly: Brand New 'Verse: Emma Washburne, daughter of Zoe and Hoban Washburne, is a pilot and semi-leader on Serenity (Zoe is captain and no word where Mal went) just like Wash was its pilot. She also seems to like bright shirts with patterns like her dad. But she has her mom's warrior side and stubborn streak leading to some butting of heads between her and Zoe.
  • The Flash:
    • Bart Allen — better known as Impulse/Kid Flash/Flash — doesn't give a second thought to their villainous ancestry. It's common knowledge that he's the grandson of the Silver Age Flash. What isn't common knowledge is that he's also descended from Barry's psychotic Evil Counterpart, Professor Zoom. He's known this fact since Impulse #25, 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!
    • However, other than Bart and Meloni, the Thawne line plays this entirely straight. "Chain Lightning" showed that, for centuries, the Thawnes would be villains to the West and Allen families of Flashes.
  • In Hellboy, Hellboy himself is the son of a demon prince but is a good guy in spite of his pedigree. The various other demons he meets are all convinced that he should be allied with them, and will make a Face–Heel Turn eventually. Hellboy himself is initially dismissive of the idea, but has become increasingly worried that there may be some truth to this. It's also played rather more literally than most examples: in "The Island", a man drains HB's blood and uses it to reanimate himself, and the blood causes the man to transform into the demon Hellboy "should have been". He also steals his crown and his name, which Hellboy then uses as a weapon.
  • Kingdom Come:
    • Orion has deposed Darkseid and taken over Apokolips. He tried to institute a democracy and positive change, but the people just elected him dictator and didn't participate in changing anything, so he's ruling hell and says that "all men eventually become their fathers." He also has his father's control of his legendary temper, as Superman notes. He seems resigned to being Darkseid, only without the universe-conquering ambitions - rather, he's still protecting the rest of the universe from Apokolips, just as its ruler. However, he does seem to be hoping the Scott and Barda's efforts (mentioned below) will come off.
    • Scott and Barda are working among the groundlings, trying to raise awareness and instil morality. Superman gets them to come build a superpower-proof gulag in the nuked remains of what used to be Kansas. In a nod to Orion, Scott now resembles a younger version of his birth father, only while Orion wears a white version of Darkseid's clothing, Scott dresses as High Father but in black.
  • Legends of Baldur's Gate: Coran the thief has apparently reformed and ended up a member of parliament, but his son Krydle is a thief following in his footsteps. They both think they're the one who's right.
  • New Gods:
    • Scott Free, Mr. Miracle the escape artist superhero, is the son that the Highfather (who raised Orion) traded to Darkseid in exchange. He was raised with the other children of Apokolips under Granny Goodness, but he and his Apokoliptan girlfriend, Big Barda, broke out. It's hard to say how much of a factor his New God blood was, but that he developed a coherent sense of morality under Granny's regime probably has to be attributed there.
    • Orion is the son that Darkseid (who raised Scott Free) traded to Highfather in exchange. He's a good guy, but he inherited Darkseid's inherent rage and bloodlust, and requires a Mother Box to keep his temper in check. However, he was also raised well by the Highfather and aided by his friends to channel that rage become a hero in defense of his adopted home.
  • Sabretooth's family seems to have this going, at least with the men. Victor's father is noted in all recaps of Creed's past to be an abusive asshole, chaining Creed to the basement and ripping out his teeth. Victor himself, of course, is just as bad if not worse, delighting in every evil thing he does (and he once ate a baby!). Victor's brother Saul is basically Victor but without as much muscle to back him up. Victor's son Graydon despised his parents for abandoning him and became an anti-mutant activist who also had ties to murderous youth gangs. The only exceptions we've seen to the "Creed = asshole" law is Victor's brother Luther who we barely saw (and who was just a bratty kid when he was killed), his mother who we don't see much of, and Clara, Sabretooth's sister who doesn't demonstrate any of the evil tendencies of her family.
  • Used 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 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. However, Peter has suspicions along these lines, so doesn't entirely trust him.
  • Superman:
    • Superboy (New 52): This series' version of Superboy shares Superman's instinctual affection for farms in rural Kansas. Accompanied by him completely ignoring someone in a burning building. Red wonders if this means that he has a "deeply pathological, megalomaniacal narcissist, the likes of which the world has never known" as a donor. However, it turns out that Lex is not one of his donors, and this Superboy is actually the clone of a future son of Clark and Lois, and Superboy was aware that the people in the fire were just part of a simulation. He was just giving them the same concern that most people give random NPCs. At his worst, he's got a bit Blue-and-Orange Morality from his unusual upbringing, and he ends up turning into every bit the All-Loving Hero that Superman is.
    • Subverted in The Girl with the X-Ray Mind. When the F.B.I. learn Lena Thorul is Lex Luthor's sister, they refuse to hire her just in case that she becomes a criminal like her brother. When she learns Lena has joined a criminal gang, Supergirl wonders if being a criminal really runs in the Luthor family. Then, it turns out Lena only joined the Bank Busters to have an opportunity to take them out from inside.
      Inspector 1: So Lena is Lex Luthor's sister, eh? I'm afraid that makes three strikes against her, Supergirl!
      Inspector 2: Suppose she became a criminal like Luthor? Working in the F.B.I., her telepathic powers could discover our country's most vital secrets!
    • Subverted in The Last Days of Superman. Brainiac 5 declines to help his fellow Legionnaires fulfil Superman's pending tasks and shuts himself in his lab. His teammates — including his own girlfriend, who should know better — start wondering if he will not be a Superman-hating criminal as his ancestor after all. Finally, Supergirl confronts him, and Querl Dox reveals he has been working on a cure for Superman's illness.
    • Supergirl's Three Super Girl-Friends: Kara freaks out when she meets Querl Dox and realizes he resembles Brainiac. Querl confesses he is his great-great-grandson, but the first Brainiac is hated by all his descendants, who have spent ten centuries atoning for his misdeeds.
  • X-Men:
    • The Lensherr/Eisenhart/Maximoff/Dane family (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 (and all the times before).
      • In the cases of Magneto and Polaris, it's implied that their powers render them literally bipolar when used to excess. Wanda, meanwhile, has been getting therapy and suspects that she's depressive, and points out that she also researched her brother's mental health - and reckons he's a textbook sociopath.
    • Defied by Sunspot after learning that his father performed a Face–Heel Turn and joined with the villainous Hellfire Club. Despite the belief of multiple characters that he would end up like his father, and the attempt from some villains to corrupt him since they think him an easy target, Sunspot remains staunchly on the side of good, and in fact uses his father's fortune to buy out the villainous organisation A.I.M. and gear it towards heroic purposes.
  • Nadia Van Dyne, the The Unstoppable Wasp, has plenty in common with her biological father, Hank Pym, the Ant-Man. On the plus side, she has his knack for science. On the negative side, she has his bipolar disorder. Thankfully, that one is caught before she did any real damage like it did her father.
  • Vandal Savage's daughter, Scandal, usually seesaws between Anti-Villain and Anti-Hero, though that's a lot better than her father, who's a full-time villain.

    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Not only is Vivienne Graham's Bone Singer potential hereditary, but the first chapter also hints that it might have influenced her Xenophilia regarding Godzilla and the other Titans.
  • In An Acceptable Arrangement, Hou Yue is shown to be very intelligent and calculating with an artistic streak, not to mention fiercely loyal to her family and willing to do what needs to be done for them. Just like her son would end up being. What makes their resemblance this trope is that she dies giving birth to him, meaning he would have no way of picking it up from her.
  • At The Food Court: Played with. Ash's father suffered from ADHD and psychosis, but eventually got effective treatment and lived a normal life before he died a hero. Ash did not directly inherit his father's madness, but he did inherit a genetic predisposition to it that would have gone undetected if it hadn't been for the trauma of being brutally assaulted by Team Rocket. This made him develop a far worse disorder than anything his father suffered.
  • Child of the Storm:
    • Harry is noted to have inherited the potential for 'The Warrior's Madness' from his father's line (Thor was James Potter. It was a first run at the humility thing. Long story). Most of the inherited traits are more positive, though, such as a natural inclination towards Chronic Hero Syndrome, even if he does become a Knight in Sour Armour for a while. He also gets an inclination towards fire magic, thoughtless kindness, and secretiveness from his mother — to the point where he demonstrates an increasing number of Lily's mannerisms as he gets older.
    • Carol is noted early on as a remarkably gifted strategist with a knack for a command and a proclivity for using shields in combat. All of this, plus her appearance, hints that she's descended from Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter.
    • It's soon noted that Hermione gets a certain tone of cold-blooded detachment and a profoundly ruthless streak from her biological grandfather, Magneto.
  • Inheritance: Played for laughs. Princess Skystar is the product of an arranged marriage between Queen Novo and the Storm King, and inherited a predisposition towards comic book supervillainy from her dad.
  • Read the Fine Print (Evangelion): Shinji sells his soul to Asuka in exchange for some chocolate as a joke, only later finding out their contract is real and legally binding. As it turns out, his father Gendo also sold his soul to his love interest.
  • Second Bite of the Cherry: A persistent fear in the Twin Jades' family (paternal AND maternal) is the possibility of them being so overwhelmed by lust that they would force a girl into marrying them.
    • Granny Zhou brazenly confronting a wealthy young cultivator because she feared he was mistreating his fiancée? Lan Wangji certainly inherited his ironclad morality from his grandmother. The old woman also comments that his softness towards Wei Ying is very reminiscent of his mother happily doting on other girls.
    • Both Yu Ziyuan and her son Jiang Cheng envy Lan Wangji and Wei Ying's happy relationship.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 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, Biff matures either into an abusive boss, a crime lord, or a bitter old man. Biff's grandson is a bully and a thug. However, it's implied that — absent all the time-travel anomalies — he does experience a Heel–Face Turn. Instead of making Biff heroic, it turns him into a pathetic weakling who is forever sucking up to the man he bullied in high school.
  • Claude Leffingwell from The Black Stork seems perfectly normal, but he has a "blood taint" from his grandfather's affair with an impure servant. As a result, his child is born hopelessly defective, with severe deformities.
  • Bones & All: The cannibal urges Maren and Lee have are hereditary, as each had a parent with this as well.
  • 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."
  • 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 genetically 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.
  • Ghostbusters II: When Dana finds herself and her infant son Oscar being menaced by the ghost of medieval tyrant Vigo the Carpathian, a deleted scene has her wondering why she attracts supernatural and paranormal threats, with Egon theorizing that she may have some genetic susceptibility to spectral interference.
  • 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.
  • Aragorn in the film version of The 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.
  • The Lost Medallion: The Adventures of Billy Stone: In the past, Cobra took over a kingdom, and searched for the magic medallion. In the present, a man who looks just like him and is part of his lineage is continuing the legacy of trying to steal the medallion.
  • A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger's paternal lineage, combined with his mother abandoning him, him facing mean orphans and an alcoholic asshole, helped make him the man he is today. Yup all 100 of his psychotic inmate fathers.
  • Jack Sparrow tells Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl 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. 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.
  • In Psycho IV: The Beginning, a reformed Norman Bates nearly murders his pregnant girlfriend Connie out of fear that the child will inherit his mental problems. Connie manages to talk him down by telling Norman that he isn't a monster anymore, and that together they can make sure their child won't become one either.
  • 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, Shilo sings it after realising that she hasn't inherited her mother's disease after all, but that her father was keeping her sick.
    • 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.
  • Parodied lots in Tongan Ninja, with the evil Mr Big and his long-lost son, Action Fighter:
    Mr Big: Make my coffee extra strong.
    Action Fighter: I also take my coffee...extra strong!
    Asian Sidekick: It is as foretold in the prophecy!
  • A different and literal take in the movie Twins (1988). An experiment was conducted where a machine was used to filter positive and negative genetic traits from 10 different men and impregnate a woman. However the experiment failed: rather than making one genetically perfect baby they had twins — one who had the best traits of all his parents (Arnold Schwarzenegger) while his twin brother (Danny DeVito) got all the undesirable ones, literally being made of 'genetic garbage'.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • Although Charles Xavier grew up resenting his mother's Parental Neglect, he nevertheless shares some traits in common with her. He picked up her posh English accent, her genteel mannerisms, her vanity, and he's so proud of his English heritage that he had spent several years studying at Oxford University. His heavy drinking in X-Men: Days of Future Past is a Mythology Gag to Sharon Xavier's alcoholism in the comics.
    • William Stryker's father, as shown in X-Men: First Class, was a high ranking CIA agent and also hated mutants once he saw what they could do.
    • In The Wolverine, Shingen Yashida just like his father, is evil.
  • 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.

    Literature 

General

  • Agatha Christie was a big fan of this trope, often referring to families having a "taint" in their bloodline. But as she was one of the first mystery authors to consider the impact of psychology on a person's mind, she gets something of a pass. It's also partly justified in that many of her novels feature the British upper class; marriage between relatives (ranging from distant to first/second cousins)in that class was somewhat common to keep the bloodline "pure," and mental instability/illness is a proven side effect of closely-related people marrying and having children, as there's simply not enough genetic diversity to defend against mutation.
  • 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. In the Vulgate and Mallory, Mordred is a conventionally noble knight of the Round Table, until he's hit with his illegitimate and incestuous birth and foredoomed treason by a prophetic hermit and suffers an instantaneous BSOD and Heel–Face Turn. Can you say "self-fulfilling prophecy"?
    • 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 inherits the powers but not the evil, and he receives some powers from God as well.
  • Many of the families in Edward Rutherfurd's multi-generational Historical Fiction Doorstoppers pass on not only telltale physical traits, like a skunk stripe or an embarrassingly-long nose, but also personality traits like loyalty, ferocious temper, stubbornness or scheming. These behavioral traits persist, or at least recur, in the same bloodlines for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Individual Works

  • In his 20 novel long magnum opus examining the life of a coal mining family during the Second Empire, Émile Zola gave free rein to his simplistic personal theories on genetics, and included pie charts in his notes with each character's propensity for laziness, alcoholism, etc.
  • In After the Golden Age, supervillainy seems to be hereditary, since, though Mayor Paulson never met his father (Dr. Simon Sito, a.k.a. the Destructor) or knew of their relationship, he still ends up emulating many of his megalomaniacal tendencies. Justified since Simon Sito became evil after some radiation messed up the wiring in his brain, and the condition appears to extend to the genetic level.
  • 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.
  • Invoked in the BattleTech novel Star Lord. The eponymous character, a distant descendant of Stephan Amaris (the man whose actions brought down the Star League), decides upon discovering his legacy that it must therefore be his destiny to step into his ancestor's footsteps, topple the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere, and take over himself. He's unambiguously crazy, but wholeheartedly embraces his belief and proves charismatic enough to attract a number of down-on-their-luck followers to stir up trouble for him.
  • In The Belgariad, Urgit, King of the Murgos, believes he will go insane like his father Taur Urgas did because the Urgas dynasty is plagued by hereditary insanity. His father, however, was not Taur Urgas but a Drasnian diplomat, making Urgit more a Drasnian than a Murgo.
  • In The Barrakee Mystery, the first of the Bony'' novels, it's taken as read that a person with Aboriginal ancestry will never be entirely comfortable in white society and will always sooner or later hear the call of the bush — to the point that a character who was raised as white starts reverting to the traditional lifestyle and manifesting skills like animal tracking even before they learn about their ancestry. (Bony himself has found a balance: he has his niche in white society, but there are also times when disappears into the bush for a while to live in the ways of his ancestors.)
  • Inverted in Mark Billingham's novel "Bloodline", in which the descendants of a notorious serial killer's victims are being killed off one by one, then later played straight when it is revealed that the illegitimate son of the original killer is committing the murders, after discovering his father's identity.
  • Played straight with Jerin in A Brother's Price, who resembles his grandfather who was a royal prince in looks and behaviour. Discussed with Neddie Whistler, who is adopted into the Whistler clan despite her family being villains. The Whistlers obviously don't believe in this trope.
  • In Roger Zelazny's Changeling, the infant son of an infamous wizard from a fantasy world is swapped for a child from another world that might as well be ours. Growing up in each other's worlds, it's perhaps no great surprise that the former son still eventually turns out to be a wizard himself because magic, but what's interesting is that the "normal" child grows up to be a gifted (if not precisely well-adjusted) engineer — that's right, apparently an instinctive understanding of the technology of one's birth society is In the Blood here as well.
  • 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 The Count of Monte Cristo, Benedetto is a bad guy because of the evil inclinations of his father Vilefort. 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.
  • The Enchantment Emporium: Allison Gale is worried that her family may decided to 'eliminate' her brother David under the belief that any men in the family with 'too much' magical ability will certainly become Drunk on the Dark Side, and they believe in being preemptive. Not helped by the revelation that the Big Bad of the book, an actual sorcerer, is a member of the Gales that spent the last 15 years collecting power and artifacts
  • Flawed: In-Universe, this is what The Guild believes. Children born to two Flawed parents are taken away and raised by the state, for fear that they'd be inherently Flawed otherwise.
  • Played horribly straight in Gene Stratton-Porter's 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 Abusive Parents. The hero turns out to be a good and decent and upright man — precisely and specifically because his parents were all those things.
  • 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.
    • They address this trope directly at one point, with Crowley pointing out that Lucifer was originally an angel, so the idea that Adam is destined to become evil due to demonic genetics is absurd. Incidentally, in this story demons and angels even have identical wings; falling from grace just changes what team you're playing for.
  • Her Father's Daughter: Linda receives a direction to a letter when she turns eighteen. However, blood had told before then.
    Before I open this envelope I am going to tell you what I believe it contains. I have not the slightest evidence except personal conviction, but I believe that the paper inside this envelope is written by my father's hand and I believe it tells me that he was not Eileen's father and that I am not her sister. If it does not say this, then there is nothing in race and blood and inherited tendencies."
  • The Hobbit: The narrator compares Bilbo's actions and choices to either one of his two contrasting parentages depending on which one's propensities said actions align closer to: Bilbo's Took heritage were the adventuring sort, while his namesake heritage preferred to stay at home.
  • A more mundane example of this (and some Nature Versus Nurture) is discussed in the poem In the Blood, as it's wondered if the subject had learned to be aggressive and cruel or if she would develop those traits because of her genetics.
  • In Nancy Freedman's political novel Joshua Son Of None, Joshua Francis Kellogg is a clone of John F. Kennedy raised to become the President of the United States. You can already guess how the story ends...
  • The blurb to each of the three Kaywana books goes on and on about how the tainted blood of the van Groenwegels drives them to evil.
  • All over the place in The Kite Runner: 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.
  • Imriel in the Kushiel's Legacy books is the son of the biggest traitors to his country, and despite him being a good-hearted person (and raised by other goodhearted 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.
  • In "The Lady, or the Tiger?", the "semi-barbarian" princess of an ancient nation must decide the fate of her lover (the titular question). The choice seems to come down to whether the reader thinks her civilized half or her barbarian half came out on top.
  • The Legend of Drizzt:
    • Drizzt Do'Urden seems to get a break from the drow characteristic of being Always Chaotic Evil because his father is an exception, too. This also affected his upbringing, but there's a sense a "biological" excuse is seen as necessary. Interestingly, some other drow are implied to have had the potential to be good, but to have lost it due to the lives they've lived. Drizzt's sister turned evil due to their mother's influence, and Jarlaxle (who isn't even from Drizzt's family!) demonstrates what Drizzt observes as an odd sort of sanity for a drow, despite being a ruthless mercenary. Given Mooshi's comment that the children of evil species often demonstrate "not-so-subtle differences" from good races, a mutation is looking more and more probable, albeit a mutation that's struck more than one family line.
    • In a later book, Catti-brie gives Drizzt a spiel about the inherent evil of goblinoids, who are apparently even more irredeemably evil than drow. When he points out that he's met a decent goblin before, she replies that he probably had something not-so-evil somewhere in his family tree.
  • There are several examples of this in The Mortal Instruments. Jace thinks he is evil because he is the son of Valentine, and because he believes that Valentine has been experimenting with demon blood on him and that it is corrupting him into evil. But Clary realizes early on in the plot that Jace is not half as bad as he thinks he is, even though he sometimes behaves like a jerk.
    • As it later turns out that he is not the son of Valentine, and was not even made by him partially demonic, his attitude changes. He is still the son of fanatical demon hunters.
    • Clary Fairchild is actually the daughter of Valentine. But she also inverts it, because she is not evil at all.
    • But it's playing straight with her brother Jonathan Morgenstern. He is a cruel and sadistic person. The reason for this is not that he is the son of Valentine, but that he was partly a demon due to the experiments with demon blood, and thus was corrupted into evil. Valentine hoped to create a stronger kind of nephilim, but he was horrified by his demonic leanings.
    • There has been a long history of racist reservations about warlocks who are born between demons and humans. Demons are always evil, but warlocks are not very different in their morale from humans.
    • Fairies are also considered evil. They are the descendants of angels and demons, and they are said to be as beautiful as angels, but as evil as demons. However, the books also show many benign (or at least neutral) fairies, and even the most vicious fairies are not as evil as demons.
    • Mark and Helen Blackthorn from The Dark Artifices are two half-fairies and they will be cast out of the community because the shadowhunters believe that the fairy-blood in them will lead them to evil and they will betray the nephilim. But actually it is nothing more than a racist reservation.
  • A recurrent theme frequently discussed in Murderess. Lu was warned not to reveal her heritage to anyone, for fear of people reacting based on this; some apparently do, others don't. Lu herself struggles with this notion, wondering whether or not she is naturally inclined to kill, but seems to be too horrified when she has to kill even to save her own life.
  • Near the end of the North and South trilogy, the recurring villain (and increasingly Ax-Crazy Elkanah Bent is revealed to have been conceived when his mother's father raped her. Upon learning this, another character freaks out and ends an inner monologue with "his blood, his brain poisoned by his birth."
  • Old Kingdom: It is implied that being a berserker runs in the Royal blood. Also, Charter bloodlines seem to share certain personality trains, most prominently in the heads of the bloodline (i.e. tendancy towards soliture in the Abhorsens, charisma in the Royal line, a certain airiness in the Clayr). Admittedly, it is sometimes unclear whether these are in the Blood, or the result of familial culture. Certainly they're related to the Charter abilities that run in the Blood (Clairvoyance for the Clayr, the Death sense for the Abhorsen, innate talent with creating things for the Wallmakers, innate abilities to lead(?) for the Royals).
  • 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.
  • Discussed in Shadow of the Conqueror. Lyrah initially believes a monstrous parent will create a monstrous child, insisting that the son of Dayless the Conqueror wouldn't even be capable of a Heroic Vow to fight evil, which is why she so intensely distrusts Daylen even with his cover story. Ahrek takes the opposite view, and frequently ends up defending Daylen when she or other characters attack Daylen based on his "parentage."
  • 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", to which Holmes admits that he doesn't "insist" on it.
    • Holmes made similar allusions to Moriarty himself. ("A criminal strain ran through his blood...")
    • In another case, Holmes deduced that a nice-seeming man was a closet villain because his young son was cruel to animals. While this isn't an implausible deduction, Holmes attributed the boy's misbehavior to this trope rather than to the trauma of abuse at his father's hands.
  • In the Middle English Chivalric 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.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • The Targaryen royal family line is said 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 mad ones. This may be explained by the family becoming seriously inbred due to repeated Brother–Sister Incest and Kissing Cousins; the inbreeding results in a fair number of this line having physical problems (fewer than you'd think, though, all things considered) and/or serious mental and emotional instability, while the luckier ones inherit the family's strong points and best qualities, managing to miss the damaging recessives. Others of a less practical bent also point out that messing with dragons for centuries might have accounted for some of their... quirks.
    • The Starks are also known for having "wolf blood", denoting wildness and rebellion. Ned Stark reflects that his brother Brandon and sister Lyanna had it and, of his children, notes that his younger daughter Arya has inherited those traits.
    • Sansa is told she has "traitor's blood" by her family's enemies in King's Landing.
    • Jon, who is already recognizable as Ned Stark's illegitimate son, is said by Janos Slynt to be "untrustworthy" due to his "wolf" blood as Jon's father "died a traitor".
    • Whatever it is in the Bolton linage, you know it ain't good news when enough sadism of various descriptions has cropped up to get you a flayed man as a readily identifiable House sigil — as well as a broad collection of very nasty rumours piling up over centuries around your family name. Added to all that is a House seat called... The Dreadfort. You can't say you're not warned...
    • The Lannisters who appear in the books share the traits of snark (in various degrees) and (as an effect of the former) of complete inability to shut their mouths, even at sword-point or crossbow-point. Fire & Blood shows that Tywin and Cersei's fondness for looting, pillaging, burning their enemies to the ground and salting anything that remains goes back several generations — Jayne Lannister (nee Westerling) wanted to kill every man, woman and child on the Iron Islands after one raid too many by the Red Kraken. She settled for burning and pillaging, along with abducting one of the Greyjoys, gelding him and turning him into her fool.
    • Whether it's due to genetics or upbringing, most members of House Frey resemble their patriarch Walder Frey in looks and morality (not a good thing).
  • A Swiftly Tilting Planet: Played straight with Gwydyr's descendants and the Mortmain family.
    • All of the descendants of Gwydyr are bad news: Gwydyr arrogates himself to the position of king of the People Across the Lake; later, his descendant, Gedder, uses scheming and murder to gain prominence of Vespugia. Even Gedder's seemingly harmless sister, Zillie will, if she marries Bran, become the ancestor of the Omnicidal Maniac Mad Dog Branzillo, who plans to destroy the world in a nuclear war. Later, in the revised timeline, in Troubling A Star, another descendant, Guedder, is the dictator of Vespugia, whose scheming ensnares Vicky.
    • Similarly, anyone with the last name Mortmain is similarly tainted. During Colonial times, Pastor Mortmain and his son Duthbert attempt to railroad Zylle for witchcraft. Later, during Beezie's childhood, a descendant, Duthbert Mortmain (II?) is a competent businessman — who beats his wife and makes passes at his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter. His son inherits his criminality but none of his competence and dies in prison.
    • The Maddoxes, Llawcaes, and O'Keefes are an interesting example. The Maddoxes and Llawcaes are generally good families, but one person's intermarriage, as with Gwen and Gedder or Bran and Zillie, can spoil the entire family tree from that point forward. The O'Keefes are generally a degenerate family, including Jack, who flings homeless puppies to death against the wall of the barn, and Paddy, who schemes with Duthbert the Younger to have Chuck committed. However, when Paddy and Beezie marry, although most of their children take after their father, becoming bullies and thugs, Calvin inherits the Maddox traits and becomes one of the heroes of A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door Later, all of Calvin's children inherit the good Maddox traits rather than the bad O'Keefe traits.
  • Averted with the Sword of Truth. Richard Rahl spends several books explaining that he's nothing like Darken Rahl. It turns out that way back when, the Rahls were some of the champions of order and good, but were corrupted by several thousand years of uncontested rule. Richard takes after the parents who raised him, not his genetic ancestors. However, there are Rahl traits — like arrogance, determination, cleverness, and absolute ruthlessness — that the character in question develops over time.
  • Helen's father and her husband were alcoholics in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, leading her and Frederick to fear for her son's susceptibility to the problem.
  • Madness seems to be a family trait for the Angelfields in The Thirteenth Tale. George, Charlie, Isabelle, and the twins are all off.
  • Christian and Tasha Ozera from Vampire Academy, are thought to be tainted due to Lucas and Moira Ozera being Strigoi. They were respectively Christian's parents and Tasha's brother and sister-in-law. Tasha turns out to be a villain after all.
  • An issue in the Wheel of Time: one of the protagonists was adopted, but was assured that he is considered the son of the one who raised him. His genetic family does still take him in, but that probably also has something to do with him being the Dragon Reborn.
    • Thoroughly averted by the end: he specifically credits his ability to pass through a particularly bleak existential crisis with the fact that he was so well-raised by his adoptive parents.
  • 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.

    Live-Action TV 
  • One of the main sources of dramatic tension in American Gothic (1995) 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. 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.
  • The Groosalugg from Angel also inverts it. He is a demon with human ancestors, and because of atavism he almost looks like a human being. And although most demons in his society are evil, he is really good.
    • Later it turns out that many half-demons invert it. Half-demons are more likely to choose goodness than evil, and the evil half-demons have almost always been motivated by human motives, making it questionable whether their demonic origins made them evil.
    • Not only half-demons, even pure demons are by no means always evil. Many demons in the series are more neutral than evil, and some are even good. Lorne is not only a good demon, but also more moral than most humans seen in the series.
  • Bones:
    • In the Season 1 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 in a sensitive position; 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.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a somewhat more realistic example of this: Xander ends up cancelling his wedding because he fears turning out like his parents (his father, especially), who are abusive alcoholics.
  • 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 Carnivàle 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.
  • The ability to have powers is, obviously, inherited by all magical species in Charmed (1998). Crossing that blood with mortals is very dangerous. The series also has half-demons. Demons often have offspring with humans because they can inconspicuously reside in human society. For half-demons, the temptations of evil are very strong, but if they really want it, they can be good too, because they have human souls and can feel human emotions.
  • Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. have numerous second-generation firefighters and cops, including Severide, Mills, Voight, and Ruzek.
  • Chicago Justice: "Double Helix" has the defendant use a defense based on her genetics providing a propensity to kill because her father is a serial killer.
  • Plenty of contestants on cooking-competition shows like Chopped seem to have a colloquial belief in this trope, citing parents' or grandparents' culinary skills as evidence they were pre-destined by heredity to be chefs.
  • Chou Sei Shin 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 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"...
    • That's just chemistry. When it gets to the metaphysical, people take the moral implications a lot more seriously. Which makes sense, since the metaphysical is generally a moralistic construct, so if it's real....
  • 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. Justifiable discussion, since psychopathy is suspected to have mainly genetic predispositions, whereas Sociopathy mainly environmental. Not all people predisposed to become Psychopaths become such, and not every Psychopath becomes a Serial Killer.
    • Spencer Reid worries a lot about becoming a paranoid schizophrenic — like his mother, as there is a higher chance of it occurring 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. However, his half-brother by one of his father's victims who escaped appears to be a decent guy with no inherited tendencies towards murder or rape, though he may have inherited his father's alcoholism.
    • 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.
    • "In the Blood" was actually used as the title of an episode. In it, a man with a history of mental problems finds out he's the descendant of William Stoughton, chief justice in the Salem Witch Trials, and begins to imagine himself as The Witch Hunter; he kills his first two victims using Salem's actual methods, pressing and hanging, before deciding to Burn the Witch! for his final one.
  • Langston of CSI assures the adopted stepson of Serial Killer Paul Milander that this trope doesn'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.
  • The Dukes of Hazzard has a number of examples in relation to the Dukes: They've been making moonshine ever since before their ancestors came to America. They've been "fighting the system" for as long as the Duke Clan and corrupt politics have coexisted. In the old west, the Duke's ancestors displayed an affection for fast horses; in modern times, they prefer fast cars. The Dukes' ancestors have also been allied with some other clans as far back as those clans have coexisted; this sometimes leads to Uncle Jesse recruiting the descendants of those clans as modern day allies by reminding them of that fact. Boss Hogg and Rosco's ancestors in the old west were also shown to be corrupt.
  • In the Elementary episode "A Burden of Blood", a serial killer's pregnant daughter is murdered. It turns out she and her brother had made a pact never to have children in case they had a genetic predisposition to commit murder. Ironically, her brother killed her to keep that from happening.
  • In Flashpoint both Jules and Sam are examples of this. Jules' father is/was a cop and Sam used to be in the military before joining the SRU and his father is a General.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • The Targaryen dynasty has always walked a fine line between brilliance and madness, a trait they cannot shake because of their three-hundred year old tradition of incest to keep the "blood of the dragon" pure, which is also believed to be important to their Royalty Superpower of connecting with dragons. While those seen in House of the Dragon hadn't gotten there just yet (though shades of this showed up in Aemond, ironically from a non-Targaryen contribution in the family, his mother Alicent Hightower that is), their descendant Aerys was certifiably insane and he passed at least part of this on to Viserys. As well as Daenerys, as it turns out in the end.
    • Sansa Stark faces accusations of "traitor's blood" because of the actions of her father and brother.
    • As an armorer's apprentice, Gendry has inherited both his father's hair and his affinity for hammers.
    • The Boltons of the Dreadfort have had enough sadists and torture technicians in their bloodline to put a flayed man on their banners.
  • Gotham Knights (2023): Harvey, after learning about his split personality, believes he's inherited this from his father, reflecting about how his dad would alternate between being loving and caring or a drunken, abusive nightmare at other times.
  • Interview with the Vampire (2022):
    • Lestat de Lioncourt acknowledges that he's cursed with his father's temper, who had beaten him when he was a boy. Later as an adult, Lestat physically abuses his boyfriend Louis de Pointe du Lac and his vampire daughter Claudia.
    • Claudia takes after Lestat, her maker; they're both vicious killers, prone to histrionics, fond of jewelry, have fallen madly in love with a mortal, hold little regard for human etiquette (e.g. they're both rude at funerals), are stalkers, and on at least one occasion, are peeping toms. They both adore Louis and want him for themselves, plus they disapprove of him being a Vegetarian Vampire. Louis himself says that they are more like each other than they want to admit, and that they both like to identify and exploit each other's weaknesses.
  • Into the Dark: In "Blood Moon", Luna becomes a werewolf because his father was one as well.
  • In the Law & Order episode "Born Bad", a teenager on trial for murder has his parents put this forward as a legal defense — due to a unique genetic condition, the teen is predisposed to a life of violence, and thus not wholly responsible for his actions. This backfires in the most spectacular way possible, as the teen himself decides to plead guilty after hearing his own defense talk about how he's destined to be a violent criminal.
  • Law & 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. She went through a very complicated situation where it seemed her fears were 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.
    • 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. Munch's fear isn't 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 & Order: Criminal Intent has the same concerns due to a family history of schizophrenia.
    • One episode has the defendant's lawyer claim he was genetically predisposed to rape. His father was also a rapist, and in fact conceived him this way. The jury doesn't buy it, though.
  • Legion (2017):
    • David Haller inherited a lot of traits from his biological father Charles Xavier: they're both incredibly powerful telepaths, they share a Sweet Tooth (which includes a mutual fondness for cherry pie, and in "Chapter 26", David serves his father knowledge in the form of a cake slice knowing that Charles would be tempted to eat it), they both enjoy stargazing, and they're both brown-haired Pretty Boys who are of the exact same height (their actors, Dan Stevens and Harry Lloyd, are 183 cm / 6'0"). Like David, Charles also fell in love with a troubled woman while they were institutionalized at a psychiatric facility. David lampshades this in "Chapter 22."
      David: Wow. This is how they met? My parents. In a mental hospital. I guess it just runs in the family.
    • In "Chapter 26", Gabrielle Xavier discloses to Sydney Barrett that insanity runs in her family, and Syd concludes that Gabrielle's son David got his madness from his mother.
      Gabrielle: My grandmother had the sickness. She was, uh... vrăjitoare. note  Spells, moods, she spoke in tongues. I remember her eyes. Miserable and giddy, like a happy death. My mother was 16 when the sickness hit her. In the witching hour, she woke up laughing. Didn't stop for 14 days.
      Syd: You're talking about mental illness.
      Gabrielle: Such a clinical name for something so raw. Like an animal with its heart on the outside.
      Syd: It's so odd, I never thought of that. It's hereditary, what's wrong with [David]. Why he's like this.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Feeling hopeless in the face of the menace the Orcs are, Bronwyn wants to propose to just bow down to the enemy because her people are maybe really meant for darkness just like their ancestors, who stood up with Morgoth.
  • NCIS:
    • Season 14 introduces Agent Nick Torres, a deep cover government agent who later joins the NCIS team. Unknown to Nick, his father, Miguel, was a former Panamanian police officer turned CIA asset and does not learn the truth until the Season 18 episode Sangre, establishing that the two men took similar career paths, but have an estranged relationship because of Miguel abandoning the entire family for their safety.
  • 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.)
  • Once Upon a Time
    • Cora came to believe that love was a weakness that had to be removed, so she used her dark magic to take out her own heart, preventing her from making such attachments. She went on to force Regina to conform to a path that gave her power, leading to Regina asking Rumpelstiltskin for power, eventually turning her into the Evil Queen. This can also apply to Zelena too, as Cora abandoned her and favor Regina, fostering the envy that turned her into the Wicked Witch.
    • Rumpelstiltskin was a cowardly man whose parents both abandoned him just as his own father was abandoned, and as he did to his own son who ended up embracing the temptation of power via the curse of the Dark One and becoming one of the most powerful practitioners of dark magic in all the realms. His mother became the Black Fairy, a being so adept in dark magic that she claims to have "invented it" and nearly destroyed all of the realms of story by herself. His father Malcom who became Peter Pan was a sociopathic man-child who abandoned his own son so that he could gain immortality and power through Neverland's magic that and he unfairly blamed him for what his wife turned into. If anything, it would have been a miracle if he didn't turn evil.note  His son Baelfire almost went down the same path in "Ill Boding Patterns", but Rumpelstiltskin drugged him with a memory potion to prevent him from remembering the allure of Rumpel's dark magic.
  • A heartbreaking example of this on Party of Five; in the episode "Intervention", the entire family is staging an intervention for Bailey to get him to admit he's an alcoholic, which he refuses to do. Then Joe, the family friend who once owned the family restaurant with their late father, shows up. Bailey at first thinks Joe is going to talk about how disappointed Bailey's father would be if he were still alive, but Joe reveals he would say instead, "Not you, too." Bailey thinks this is just another ploy, until he sees how shocked Charlie, Julia and especially Claudia are at the news. What makes it worse is this (temporarily) convinces Bailey he's better off staying an alcoholic.
  • A slight bit of this in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers where Skull is shown to have inherited his laugh from his mom. There's also a bit of WMG when it comes to being a Power Ranger in general: Rocky, Tommy, Kimberly, Billy, Aisha, and Adam all have ancestors who were Power Rangers (Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers in Season 3's Wild West episodes) and Tommy and Kat's son JJ becomes a Power Ranger in the Soul of the Dragon comics. Aiden and Brody's dad in Power Rangers Ninja Steel is also a Power Ranger. Power Rangers Mystic Force also has Udonna, Leonbow, and their son Nick as Power Rangers. That's not counting the number of siblings who are Power Rangers-either on the same team or on different ones.
  • 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.
    • Clark himself believed this of "Luthor blood", until the episode "Luthor" where he discovers that his alternate self, raised by Lionel Luthor, was monstrous as an actual Luthor even without the blood relation. This realization allows him to accept that Tess Mercer, the biological daughter of Lionel Luther, can be trusted to be a subversion of the trope. However, she apparently did inherit Lionel's Manipulative Bastard ability along with his tendency for pulling a Heel–Face Revolving Door.
  • The Sopranos shows that Tony seems to have inherited his parents' worst traits due to a combination of genetics and a volatile upbringing. From his father he inherited his temper and propensity for violence while from his mother he inherited her depression as well as her narcissism. When his own son AJ is revealed to suffer from panic attacks he laments that his own "putrid blood" cursed his family to his psychiatrist.
  • Supernatural's Sam Winchester develops psychic powers slightly before the start of the show, which eventually turns out to come from their family's demonic nemesis having fed Sam his own demonic blood in the cradle. Fear about destiny and inevitability increase as more and more of the other children so marked go 'darkside,' or in one case kill their psychotic brother who had, and their father's final words to Dean are that if he can't save Sam, he may have to kill him. Sam resists the original 'destiny' associated with this status by not killing during the demon's little Deadly Game, but the other survivor opens the gate to Hell anyway.
    • Later, after he developed his powers further by drinking more demon blood to exorcise demons so he could prevent the Apocalypse and became addicted, it turned out that he'd been being prepped for years to open a different door, the one to Lucifer's cage.
    • This gets treated as In The Blood despite it just being a few drops of ingested liquid rather than actual heredity. Once it turned out their mother Mary sold Azazel the right to take 'something' from her house in ten years, and that in cases where he wasn't interrupted no one was killed or kidnapped, it seemed the demon did in fact have the rights of a parent over the kids he'd bought, and the blood thing was claiming that and preparing them to open the doors and enable the endgame. Presumably, he was only in charge of opening doors, given that Sam was the favorite but not necessary to his understanding of the endgame, and chance or destiny or Lilith arranged the rest.
    • Destiny also grabbed the Winchesters by the veins in that they are apparently descended on both sides from a line of archangel vessels, and were born to house Lucifer and Michael for their final apocalyptic battle on earth. Lucifer says, "It had to be you, Sam. It always had to be you." Presumably, the Campbell line was Lucifer's vessels and the Winchester was Michael's, and the reason they had to bring the two together in John and Mary was that the final vessels needed to be brothers. Lucifer's lack of interest in Adam and Michael's in Mary might point this way, but it's not conclusive. The idea of destiny is thrown about a lot here, but given how hard Heaven and Hell both had to work to make it happen, Destiny may just mean 'the plan.' See also, The Call Knows Where You Live.
    • There is an in-universe procedure for breeding actual half-demon children. The one who turns up in season five is apparently the Antichrist, a decent little kid named Jesse with enough power to hypothetically threaten the Heavenly Host. The Winchesters talk to him a bit, borrowing help from Spiderman, and the kid becomes an Anti Anti Christ by running away from home and vanishing so he couldn't be used in any war, despite the fact that he could have saved the world from many of its major threats since and might be a major resource against the Leviathan in the current storyline. In the Blood apparently defied here.
    • In Season 10, Cain snaps and goes on a killing spree targeting his descendants, believing that they inherited his murderous taint and that the world would be better off without them. This is especially bad since Cain, being the son of Adam and Eve, is one of the first humans who ever existed. His descendants make up a good chunk of humanity.
  • That '70s Show: Played for Laughs when it is discovered that Hyde's father is black. While everyone else is clearly trying not to freak out, Hyde is ecstatic, because it explains his otherwise bizarrely anti-authoritarian personality and overall mistrust of white people.
    Hyde: Hey, who do you think killed JFK?
    Hyde's Father: I don't know — because They don't want me to know.
  • In the two-parter "Insanity Genetic," Titus loses it after his mother dies and he finds out insanity may be hereditary.
  • Played humorously on Top Gear (UK), 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.

    Music 
  • Jeff Buckley was raised as Scotty Moorhead by his mother and stepfather. He hardly knew his father Tim Buckley, only having met him once when he was eight. When Tim died in 1975, Jeff found out who he really was and decided to go by his real name. Not only do Jeff and Tim look similar, they both played folk music (to some degree) and died young. Although their music isn't really similar, Jeff's success has been enough to make Tim Buckley much more popular than he was when he was alive.
  • The Fray's "Turn Me On".
    There's a sentence on my father,
    On my sister, on my brother
    There's a terror in the corner
    That will make your blood run cold
    And it goes back in my bloodline
    And we tried to walk away...
  • mothy: The Marlon family generally play antagonists, with two exceptions, and even then, one of them was possessed by a demon. As for the others...

    Pro 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."
    • The Rock's first gimmick in the-then WWF was of Rocky Maivia, the name being a combination of his father, Rocky Johnson's name and his grandfather Peter Maivia's surname. Initially, he was pushed as a face but people hated him. After he joined The Nation of Domination and later became The Rock, he became one of the most popular wrestlers of all time, so popular that he was able to retire from wrestling and has had a successful movie career. His ancestry has paled in comparison to his success.
      • Though he is in the Real Life bloodline of the Anoa'i wrestling dynasty, which is a vastly sprawling family of Samoan-Americans known for their professional wrestling careers. This is actually a subversion, though, as many Anoa'i wrestlers rarely bring up their connections to the greater family (usually it's the commentators who discuss the heritages that they're descended from).
    • Though not directly descended from a professional wrestler, Rey Misterio started off as Rey Misterio Jr. He is a second-generation wrestler as his uncle (Rey Misterio Sr.) was a successful luchador. This is rarely brought up other than mentioning that Rey is a Mexican icon.
  • 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
  • Alberto Del Rio has recently taken this trope to absurd levels, even claiming to be descended from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.
  • Ohio Valley Wrestling had Smother's Twisted Daughters: "Second generation female sensation wild eyed southern girl Jessie Belle Smothers, beauty brawn bloodline breeding of a champion" and Isabella Smothers, the supposed spawn of Tracy Smothers.(also a supposed third in Christie Belle, but they don't talk about her much)

    Religion 
  • Older Than Feudalism: Played straight and averted in The Bible. All humans end up inheriting original sin and death from their ancestors Adam and Eve. Averted with Abraham and David, where God makes a covenant with them to set up a nation and monarchy, respectively, with their descendants hoping that they will be as faithful as their ancestors. Save for a few notable exceptions, this has not come true yet.

    Roleplay 
  • In Dino Attack RPG, this was the primary reason behind Rev Raptor's Heroic Suicide just after defeating his Mad Scientist father, Dr. Jecht "Landro" Raptor, in battle. Landro told Rev that it was in his destiny to follow in his footsteps, and Rev was so afraid of the possibility that, rather than risk letting it come true, he was willing to die to prevent it from happening.
  • In The Gamer's Alliance, every demon is essentially faced with this choice because their very nature compels them to act in destructive and manipulative ways. Half-demons suffer from this even more so as their demonic side often tries to goad them to act on impulse and self-gratification. The descendants of the infamous warlord Sydney Losstarot also have to live under the shadow of their ancestor, and every Losstarot is feared more or less.

    Tabletop Games 
  • At least one branch of the Liao family ruling the Capellan Confederation in the BattleTech universe is all but canonically predisposed towards eventually going megalomaniacally, bat*** insane. This may or may not have started with Maximilian Liao, definitely affected his daughter Romano and her daughter Kali, and her son Sun-Tzu, who is otherwise a Magnificent Bastard, has had cause to worry about his own sanity. (Interestingly, Maximilian's other daughter Candace and her descendants aren't similarly afflicted, definitely suggesting an actual genetic component that she simply didn't inherit.)
  • Champions supplement The Blood and Dr. McQuark. The Blood have a hereditary tendency to both superpowers and insanity, the result of a bargain one of their ancestors made with a demon.
  • The descendants of extra-planar creatures in Dungeons & 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 a Generally Chaotic Good Nymph and a Always Lawful Evil Devil is a Neutral Evil, misshapen, 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(It's all but stated that they're a result of rape) causes them to murder a member of the party.
    • Played with in the race of tieflings, who are the descendant of humans and devils. The race itself is actually an aversion in that despite being descended from devils, tieflings are no more predisposed toward good or evil than their human cousins. But many people believe they are and treat them accordingly. Ironically, this does lead some to embrace their heritage, which then reinforces their evil reputation. Nonetheless, there are heroic tieflings who try and convince people that the tieflings are not evil by nature and many more who simply try and keep their heads down.
    • Half-drow are hated and avoided by other people because they are related to the drow. In addition, they have a great similarity with them on the outside. Most people can not distinguish a half-drow from a drow. However, half-drow more quickly recognize the lies in the doctrine of Lolth, and can better resist the evil than pure drow. Although there are still many wicked half-drow, most of them go to the surface to become an adventurer, and, to prove others, that they are not like the drow.
    • Always Chaotic Evil is at least slightly subverted however because "Always" doesn't actually mean "Always". Even a demon, who has pure Evil as part of their very substance, has a non-zero chance of not actually being evil. We're talking maybe 1% who are Neutral, and 0.1% who are good, but it does explicitly happen (though they are still made of Evil, and can be affected as such by spells). This has led to endless debate among players over whether or not this makes beings who the books say are "always evil" okay to kill on sight, even with the slight chance that they don't live up to their stat-blocks.
      • The Book of Exalted Deeds (a handbook for being Good) says that killing them is wrong, but also points out that if the DM pulls a bait-and-switch too often by having monsters the players have been merciful to betray them, its understandable that they will be upset and less trusting in the future.
    • Birthright all rotates around bloodlines (duh) carrying little portions of lost godly powers.
    • The Ravenloft supplement Legacy of the Blood uses this trope extensively.
  • 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.
  • Pathfinder often emphasizes the influence of the parent for half-human races. Tieflings, being descended or somehow infected by fiends, have a strong tendency towards evil while aasimar, the celestial equivalent, are predisposed towards good. Half-orcs suffer violent urges, and dhampirs may feel the urge to drink blood, even if they gain no particular benefit from it.
  • On the rare occasions in Promethean: The Created, the eponymous creatures have true children rather than reproduction through reanimation, they're likely to be immune to Disquiet and the illusion of humanity Prometheans automatically project. The kid may grow up somewhat skewed by a childhood of seeing reanimated corpses hanging around, but when word gets around that there's a human they can talk to who won't go Torches and Pitchforks, Junior will have plenty of protectors.
  • The Shadows of Mexico setting for Vampire: The Requiem portray the Daeva native to that region, called Xoxocti, as priests of the gods. Thanks to centuries of foreign influence, their present day childer don't care about the old ways anymore. Instead, they use their vampiric powers to become sexy Latin pop stars, forcing their ancestors to view them as the children of kings who've been screwing whores. This Cultural Posturing is actually a large part of the setting's plot.
  • Used extensively in Warhammer 40,000. 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 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 Space Marines, however, are subjected to extreme hypnosis and mild brainwashing at the same time as they receive the gene-seed. This is mostly to make sure all their implants work, but the result is that they end up more like their Primarchs than when they started — and they were selected in the first place due to their similarity.
    • Somewhat subverted as well. The God Emperor was possibly the most powerful psyker to ever live, supposedly because he was the result of an entire generation of ancient psykers sacrificing themselves to become one combined soul. Out of all of the Primarchs, Magnus the Red, Sanguinius, Konrad Curze, and Lorgar were the only psykers. And only Magnus developed and trained his psyker abilities. The Primarchs' appearances were also radically different from each other: Magnus in particular was a red-skinned cyclops (though later editions claim that Magnus lost the eye as part of his deal with Tzeentch rather being born a cyclops).
  • "Wolf-blooded" descendants of Werewolves and humans in Werewolf: The Forsaken are immune to the lunacy most mortals experience when they see a transformed Forsaken. They also have a good chance of producing werewolf children with another wolfblood or a full werewolf, making them prized as mates.

    Theatre 
  • In Arsenic and Old Lace, one of the dramatic tension elements is the insanity suffered by every single member of the Brewster family. The protagonist worries that he will eventually succumb to the same hereditary madness, and tells his fiancée that "no Brewster should ever marry." Fortunately, it turns out in the end that he was adopted.
  • Cyrano de Bergerac: When the warrior Cyrano reacts with shock at Roxane's intention to remain with them during the battle, she responds, "Monsieur de Bergerac, I am your cousin.". Their respective obsessions and denial of reality also fulfil the sinister implications of this trope.

    Video Games 
  • The plot of the Assassin's Creed series run on this trope.
    • The gameplay is In The DNA, a lineage going from Altaïr Ibn La'Ahad ("Eagle, Son of No One") to Ezio Auditore da Firenze (Ezio derived from a Greek word for Eagle) to Desmond Miles. Later implied to be literal, as Altaïr's bloodline may all be descendants of a past human-Those Who Came Before hybrid, partially since Altaïr's bloodline are the only Assassins known to use the ability of Eagle Vision in the games, though Project Legacy revealed that Giovanni Borgia — whose father was an Assassin also had it too.
    • Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag reveals that although Desmond's family history is rather more full than others with traits from Those Who Came Before, the Eagle Vision isn't unique to his bloodline. Some people have enough TWCB DNA that they simply express Eagle Vision traits naturally, while others can learn to do so. Edward Kenway had innate, untrained Eagle Vision but was utterly unrelated to the Assassins before the events of this game. Desmond, with multiple Assassin lineages behind him (including Edward) had to go through Training from Hell to express it.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops II's two protagonists Alex and David Mason are father and son. You see David as a young boy in a flashback to the mid-1980s when his father is called back to the military to save an old friend and then by the year 2025, he's serving as the Lt. Commander for SEAL Team Six.
  • 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 descendant of Dracula, and has lost his mind thereby.
  • Likewise, in the Divine Divinity series, the Hero spares The Antichrist because he's just a little baby, and tries to raise him as his own son and a champion of truth and justice. This does not work out, at all (although the failure was at least in part caused by external factors, namely the Religion of Evil sending an agent to tempt him to the Dark Side).
  • Gotha's family in Dragon Quest V starts from a masculine Pankraz, having a son who has as much masculinity as him when he grows up and suffers very similar fates as him when he's married. While this guy's not as strong as his father, he has an ability to use healing spells, which carries onto his son, who can even cast a better multi healing and revival spells while still being a hard hitter. Also in the game he wonders if he can catch and train monsters like his daddy does.
  • The priestess character in Duel Savior Destiny has an exhibitionist kleptomaniac split personality called Black Papillon, which claims that it exists because of a combination of stress and because all her family were thieves. However, it turns out she was adopted, making this rather dubious.
  • This is how Heroic ability is passed down in the Fable series. The main series focuses on members of a particular bloodline who all have Heroic ability off the charts.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • In The Blazing Blade we have minor villain Erik, son of the corrupt Marquess Darin. In the next game in the continuity, Erik has grown up to be the 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 Erik seemed repentant after being defeated by Eliwood and Hector.
    • Also in The Blazing Blade, we have Canas, who agrees to teach Nino how to read and write and is overall nothing but kind to her. In the next game, his son Hugh is brash and rude... unless he can help out one of the orphans in the army (minus Raigh, but even then, Hugh let him run off with his Nosferatu tome after figuring he could make better use of it), whereupon he drops the attitude and is similarly kind to them. Niime, his grandmother, even remarks that he's "just like his father" upon learning of the Nosferatu incident.
    • Very subtle in 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.
  • Hades has a field day with this trope. Much of the game's central themes deal with family and how not even gods can escape the lot they're born into. The main character Zagreus is clearly the son of Hades, with a black eye with red iris, smoldering feet, hair as black as night and a royal, burning wreath, and of Persephone, with the same hairstyle, one normal eye with green iris and red blood from her mother's partially-mortal heritage. He also inherits personality traits of both; from Hades he has stubbornness, pride and unwillingness to change, and from Persephone he has his free-spirited nature and gentle demeanor.
    • On top of all this, being a game based on Greek Myth, the gods and their relationship to each other is at the forefront of the story. As the gods of Olympus begin to support Zagreus' escape attempts, he goes from being ecstatic about getting to finally hear from his relatives to slowly realizing just how messed up his extended family is. In fact, he begins to begrudgingly respect his own father, Hades, who he otherwise have no positive feelings on, for being principled, honest and forthright - the same qualities that Persephone saw in him.
    • This is a game where you play as the only god that bleeds human red blood, emerge from a bloody pool every time you time without fail, where the entirety of the plot concerns Zagreus' attempts to find his mother, reconcile with her, mend your own Cthonic family and finally mend the rift between yours and the extended family you have on Olympus, and where the theme is that you cannot escape your birthright, no matter how grim it may seem. The song that plays when Zagreus meets his goal? "In The 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.
  • Metal Gear Solid has the Emmerich family, who is all but cursed to be tied to nuclear weapons. Hal "Otacon" Emmerich was tricked into developing the Metal Gear REX under the pretense that it was made for intercepting and destroying nukes, when it was actually built to launch nukes. His father, Huey, was born on August 6, 1945: the exact same day as the bombing of Hiroshima. Huey was also involved in the development of the Metal Gear ZEKE and Metal Gear Sahalanthropus. Meanwhile, Otacon's grandfather was one of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the aforementioned bombing of Hiroshima.
  • My Child Lebensborn: One of the reasons given for the community's rejection of the child is that many people believe the child will inevitably grow up to betray Norway because his/her father was a (long-departed) soldier from Nazi Germany.
  • The Overlord's son in Overlord II has the same tendency towards magic and creepiness as his father even before the minions show up.
  • Persona 4: Arena has a robotic example, oddly enough. Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapons had the data of their predecessors transferred into them, resulting in shared memories and combat experience. They're not quite a Hive Mind, but strong traits (such as an affinity for dogs, gregarious personality, and drive to protect life) always reoccur in some way. They also had an organic base- a hospitalized girl who volunteered to have her brain scanned- which is why Labrys has an accent and fixation on human institutions she's never seen or been taught about.
  • This is why the Medic in Team Fortress 2 is a Mad Scientist; the whole family is full of them, according to Word of God.
  • One of the biggest spoilers in Yandere Simulator is that Yandereness runs in the Aishi family. Yandere-chan's mother Ryoba murdered a rival and kidnapped her senpai, who becomes Yandere-chan's father. The Basement Tapes hint that Ryoba's mother did the same, and Word of God says this goes back many generations. Whether this continues or is averted is ultimately up to the player.

    Visual Novels 
  • Nasuverse:
    • Tohno Shiki lived of Tsukihime 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 from The Garden of Sinners also received powers from supernatural blood.
  • It's regularly noted in Umineko: When They Cry that Battler has more than a few similarities to his grandfather, Kinzo. Considering that Kinzo is certifiably batshit insane in every sense of the word, as well as the fact that crazy seems to run in the family in general, we can assume that this is not a good thing.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • A general rule in Alice and the Nightmare is that a child of two Suits will be of the same Suit — e.g., two Spades will produce a Spade — and child of mixed Suits will inherit Suit after one of its parents.
  • Ciem Webcomic Series Candi Levens' ancestry includes Honeybee Samuel and Dwayne Lloyd. Sure enough, she and her sisters are completely obsessed with sex.
  • Invoked, then subverted in Everyday Heroes by Jane Mighty; originally from a family of villains, she follows her best friend and joins an Anti-Villain team who find stolen items and steal them back for their rightful owners. She quit villainy after her friend is killed by her backstabbing boss.
  • Girl Genius:
    • Agatha has seemingly inherited much of her father and uncle's heroism, despite having been raised in secret away from anything that would particularly require her to be heroic. Othar even lampshades this when he mentions that she ran straight at danger without thinking twice, despite her claims that she wants to stay normal and hidden. But there are also many however, especially Klaus Wulfenbach, who refuse to be convinced, and believe her to have inherited the evil of her mother and the old Heterodynes in full.
    • Various other characters speculate about which lot of relatives she's going to take after.
    • Sometimes she's just as crazy, even though in more benign ways:
      Agatha: I believe another forty-five point three seconds, and I would have exploded or something.
      Castle Heterodyne: ...or something. Under the circir/circumstances I/I am forced to admit that yo/you are most most likely oneoneone of the family...
      Agatha: Oh, yeah... I have got to try that again!
      Castle Heterodyne: yesss... most likely, in/in/indeed.
  • In Misfile the main reason Cassiel is treated as being dangerous and untrustworthy is because her uncle is Lucifer. One wonders how much of her Jerkass nature is precisely because of this treatment; certainly both Vashiel and Rumisiel bring up her family tree at every opportunity.
  • Cited by name, then later justified in Narbonic: Helen notes that she didn't always want to be a mad scientist, but then notes the trope name. Justified later in that Helen is a clone of her mother — so it wasn't just in the blood, but likely during the whole child-making process.
    • Less explicable for Lupin Madblood, who's a mad roboticist like his father before him.
  • In Plume, Corrick invokes this after telling Vesper his family's history, depressedly stating that fraticide must run in their blood.
  • Precocious:
    • The Pingos are often joked to reproduce by cloning. As they all look similar and are great at library science.
    • Joseph, Casey, and Bud Oven are all dangerously creative scientists.
    • Yvette's two moms are a Granola Girl and an Amoral Attorney. She has a lot more in common with her birth mother, the hippie.
  • This is the whole plot behind Sire. Each character is descended from a literary character. Anna and Susan are descended from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emile is descended from Javert from Les Miserables, and more are soon to follow.
  • The sons of Luk River from Irregular Elis. They formed a Badass Family of Superheroes with a lot of hereditary powers.
  • Ada Lovelace from The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage inherited a poetical disposition from her father, Lord Byron. Ada's mother taught her mathematics to hold back this pernicious influence.
  • In The Order of the Stick, Elan inherited his alignment (Chaotic Good) from his mother and his sense of dramatics from his father. Meanwhile, his Evil Twin, Nale, inherited his alignment (Lawful Evil) from his father and his Complexity Addiction from his mother.

    Web Original 
  • In the Whateley Universe, 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 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 ruthless, 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. Carmilla has Deep Ones in her mother's ancestry, and is the grandchild of Shub-Niggurath on her father's side; she's taking the Screw Destiny approach right now. And so on... It's worth noting that membership in the Bad Seeds does not in itself infer an intention to become a supervillain (some do, some don't, and the setting makes plain that either is no more likely than any other high school career ambition) they're just more-or-less stuck together for mutual protection because everyone else fears that evil is in their blood.

    Western Animation 
  • In BoJack Horseman, the title character is given a call from his mother, who after reading the tell-all book about him has come to regret her poor treatment of him. She states that having been the child of two broken and miserable people, he is by nature a miserable wretch and there's nothing he can do about it.
    Beatrice Horseman: You were born broken, it's your birthright.
  • In Gargoyles, Goliath initially feared that his daughter would be affected by Demona's hatred and paranoia, but Angela subverts this.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero'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.
    • They didn't manage to get Sun Tzu's DNA (who was targeted specifically to give Serpentor wisdom and prudence), so they replaced it with Sergeant Slaughter's, whose strategic abilities can be summed up as punching people in the face while insulting them. Hilarity (and failure) Ensues.
  • Kim Possible: "Anything is possible for a Possible!" And the show more or less follows that idea. The entire Possible family has some sort of badassness in them.
  • The Legend of Korra gives us Tarrlok and Noatak, who inherited Yakone's insanely powerful bloodbending, and, in spite of originally good intentions, his lust for power.
  • Superman: The Animated Series: After Bizarro stays behind so that Superman and Lois can escape:
    Lois: You think he survived?
    Superman: I hope so, he had a good heart.
    Lois: Of course, he came from good stock.
  • The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries: One episode features a distant cousin of Pepé Le Pew. That cousin behaves like Pepe and has a car that hops around the same way Pepe does while chasing female skunks or whatever Pepe and his cousin mistake for them. Pepe's cousin even mentioned the kinship to explain the behavior similarity.
  • Teen Titans (2003): Robin actually told Raven he admired her Screw Destiny response to the prophecy she would help her demon father destroy the world.
  • Played for Laughs in Wacky Races (2017), Dick Dastardly's caveman ancestor invented the concept of cheating, while in an episode set in the far future, his distant descendant announces, "I plan to cheat a lot," at the start of the race.
  • Played with in W.I.T.C.H. when Caleb finds out that Nerissa is his mother. She tries to convince him of this and he flat-out denies it.
  • Yogi's Space Race: Phantom Phink was described in a Space Race Biography as a descendant of Dr. Jekyll. The narrator said it explains about Phink being a bad guy. (And that's because he doesn't know (or knows but refuses to believe) Captain Good and Phantom Phink are one and the same)
  • Played for Laughs in Young Justice (2010), as Lian giggles while watching her parents beat up ninjas.
    Red Arrow: Should I be concerned over the obvious delight our daughter takes in the ultra-violence?
    Cheshire: It's genetic.
    Red Arrow: Great.

    Real Life 
  • Psychological research shows that a lot of our personality traits are partly inherited from our relatives. For example, a child born from parents with deficient levels of Monoamine oxidase A (a neurotransmitter that helps to control aggression and impulsivity) is likely to be more aggressive than a child with normal levels of the "warrior gene". However environmental factors are just as likely to inhibit those chances they will be exhibited in behavior if the child was born in a supportive household rather than an abusive one, the latter which makes the likelihood of them exhibiting aggression 10 times more likely.
    • The factors of environment on actually changing bloodlines is the basis of a field of study called epigenetics. Twins with similar diets and lifestyle turned out exactly as planned (so to speak), while those who were separated at birth would have some similarities due to genetics but other traits would change or form differently due to lifestyle, including appearance.
  • In regards to genetics and personality, approximately 40-50% of things such as depression, extraversion, neuroticism or anxiety are underpinned by genetics, but the environment one grows up in is equally important in order for these and other traits to manifest. For example - Ronald Raegan may well have been a punk-rocker were he born in 1961. in New York.
  • This is a common subject of debate concerning "dangerous" dog breeds such as pitbulls.
  • Recent research indicates that some animals have a so-called "domestication gene," and some do not. It's the reason why horses have been domesticated for thousands of years, but zebras have not despite efforts and despite their otherwise being closely related. Interestingly, foxes that are bred to select for the domestication gene not only become more docile and friendly to humans, they also begin to take on physical characteristics and behaviors of domesticated dogs, such as tail-wagging when happy.
    • It's the other way round. Animals that are selected for domestic traits (eg being less fearful of humans, or less aggressive) tend to have a similar suite of genes across species. Also, some physical traits that aren't deliberately selected for (eg white markings, lop ears) seem to be linked to desirable behavioral traits, so turn up in a lot of domestic species. It probably should be possible to domesticate zebras, but they reproduce fairly slowly and it takes many generations.
  • Former American Idol contestant Creigthon Fraker, an adopted son, says he understood why he has singing in his blood when he met his biological father, Flotsam And Jetsam's frontman Eric A.K.
  • Not so recently, people born with deformities or severe physical abnormalities had no opportunities besides joining circuses or freak attractions, and would have a social circle composed solely of other "performers" and a few "normal" individuals, which would often lead to family lines of "freaks" with similar conditions.
  • Attainder, also known as "corruption of blood", was a nasty legal concept that originated in medieval England; it allowed nobles convicted of capital crimes and their descendants to be stripped of property and titles, effectively reducing them to commoners.note  It was used by whichever family held the kingship at the time to keep the lesser nobles in line, and to punish people whose guilt could not be proven in court (or did not exist at all). It was explicitly forbidden in Sections 9 (for the federal government) and 10 (for the states) of Article One of the United States Constitution, and was forbidden in the England and Wales by an Act of Parliament in 1870 (although it hadn't been used since 1798).
  • Adolf Hitler's last living descendants (actually the descendants of his younger sister Frydda from his nephew William; Hitler himself fathered no known children) swore an oath to never have children of their own. Many people saw this as a great victory, and celebrated that Hitler's family will eventually be extinct... although the morality of deliberately wiping out a bloodline merely because of one very evil man who is long dead is treading dangerously close to what the Fuhrer himself believed. Saner heads hopefully realize that if Hitler had any surviving children or grandchildren, they would be no more inclined towards evil and genocide than you or I. And if they were indeed evil, it would be for the same reason Hitler himself was; not because of genetics but their own choices.

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