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Rule 63
aka: Rule 63

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It's-a me, Maria!note 

"I'd make a sexy chick!"
Brodie Bruce, Mallrats

For every given male character, there is a female version of that character, and vice versa.

They may be canonical. Most of them aren't. The internet has a fascination for producing gender swapping regardless of the context of the original character. Canon-derived examples of the trope tend to outlast their actual-canon inspirations (which are often single stories, or even short throwaway gags.)

No character is immune to this effect — not Darth Vader, not Master Chief — no one. note 

Closely related to Gender Flip. When a separate character is a female knock-off of an existing male character, you have a Distaff Counterpart. Crossdressers, of course, provide their own version of this. There's a good chance that you'll see the character in question in a Gendered Outfit (like our lovely Maria at right, here).

One of the Rules of the Internet. Can (and often does) overlap with Rule 34. Since these female versions are often much cuter than their male counterparts, it can also overlap with Self-Fanservice and Fan Disservice. A whole world of them is a Gender-Bent Alternate Universe.


Examples

    open/close all folders 

Distaff Counterpart/Gender Flip

    Anime & Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • DC Comics actually has an Alternate Universe devoted to this: Earth-11, featuring Superwoman and Batwoman as well as the very Spartan-looking Wonder Man.note  Fun fact: 11 + 52 (the total number of alternate Earths after Infinite Crisis) equals... 63.
  • DC's Animesque Ame-Comi Girls line has female versions of many male characters, but not vice versa, and not for all male characters. Most are actually the Distaff Counterparts of the male characters, "promoted" in their absence. But there are a few straight examples of this trope, including a female Sinestro, and an Indigo made indistinguishable from a female Brainiac.
  • Marvel Mangaverse: Characters who don't start the story off already female are replaced by females very quickly.
  • One comic had The Authority meet their gender-flipped Alternate Universe selves, where they are called The Meritocracy.
  • The Fantastic Four once visited an alternate universe where Tony Stark was female... and married to Captain America.
  • Marvel has come out with six Alternate Universe version of Captain America to celebrate his 75th birthday, and two are female. One is Sharon Rogers (Steve Rogers' daughter from a world where he was never frozen) and Peggy Carter (a Super-Soldier from the same program, in a world where Rogers is assassinated during World War II.)
  • An issue of Uncanny X-Men featured an evil team of male versions of several X-Women fighting Captain Britain. Most of them looked very flamboyant in those costumes.
  • Exiles once visited an alternate Earth with female Magneto and Quicksilver, and Scarlet Warlock (male Scarlet Witch).
  • The Joker:
    • He's a woman named Bianca Steeplechase in Thrillkiller and its sequel, which are set on an alternate Earth in the early '60s. Batgirl and Robin goes up against her. Harley Quinn is still a girl.
    • In the Flashpoint arc, the shots in Crime Alley that night killed Bruce. There's still a Batman; though; Thomas Wayne wound up becoming the (really) Dark Knight as a result. The Joker exists too, as a direct consequence of the same evening: Martha.
  • Dennis the Menace (UK) had a female cousin who looked exactly like him but wore a bow in her hair and a skirt. Also her name was Denise The Menace.
  • The cover of issue #8 of the second volume of Young Avengers depicts the main team as how they look in many alternate universes. One of them is a universe where all the female characters are male and viceversa. The section showing that universe is rather tiny but at least fans of male Kate Bishop won't have to adapt the character anymore (and fans of female Prodigy at least know she has short hair like her male counterpart).
    • This is lampshaded in the parody title Secret Wars Too, for the 2015 Secret Wars. America Chavez and 1602!Kate Bishop are traveling the domains looking for Pizza and come across the Rule 63 Domain and see gender-flipped versions of the MCU Avengers.
  • X-23 is pretty much an invoked version of this: A female clone created by a project attempting to recreate Weapon X, but because the genetic sample was too badly damaged on the Y chromosome, the scientist who created her decided to double the X and make the clone female, instead. Of course, that's not to say that Rule 63 versions of Wolverine weren't popular in fanart even before her creation...
  • Star Trek Expanded Universe:
    • The Star Trek: The Original Series comic All of Me had a brief appearance via Negative Space Wedgie of one Jane T. Kirk, captain of the Foundation starship Enterprise.
    • The comic book series based on the 2009 film eventually introduced an alternate universe containing gender-swapped versions of the entire Enterprise crew, complete with a version of Jane Kirk.

    Fan Works 
  • One of the topics for Literary Challenge #64 on the Star Trek Online forums was to write a story where your captain ended up in a gender-flipped universe via a Negative Space Wedgie.
  • Many fanfics for The Hobbit gender-swap either Bilbo or one or two of the dwarves. Then there is The Monstrous Company of Thorin Oakenshield whose title is rather unsubtly based on Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment. Accordingly, the whole company with the exception of Bilbo and Gandalf turn out to be female.
  • Endemic in Harry Potter fanfics.
    • Female!Harry is the most common. Moratorium and the So Bad, It's Good Becoming Female are two examples on this wiki.
    • Female!Ron is also occasionally seen. Case in point: Weasley Girl.
    • Female!Tom Riddle/Voldemort and Female!Draco crop up sometimes, though not as often. Thunderstorm is an example of the former and Twixt Truth and Dark Deceit is an example of the latter.
    • The internet being what it is, this is bound to go the other way too. Look long enough and you'll find male!Hermione and male!Ginny fanfics/fanart somewhere.
    • And there's probably at least one fic out there that gender flips the entire cast.
      • Harry Potter and the Distaff Side has Harry enter a parallel world with gender-flipped versions of himself and the other characters.
      • And Holly Potter and the Witching World depicts an alternate universe where most of the male characters have been gender-flipped but none of the female characters have, which creates a "witching world" where witches outnumber wizards about ten to one.
    • The fic Hermione Granger's Guide to Gender Flip Fanfiction takes a very meta look at this phenomenon in the Harry Potter fandom.
  • In The Bridge when the kaiju are warped into Equestria, they take on native forms and Mothra gets to be a Changeling Queen. When she first starts practicing her changeling transformations, she can only do other females. When she tries to jokingly copy Godzilla Junior's unicorn form, she becomes a mare version.
  • This fanfic, a tag to The Mysterious Affair at Styles, features only the main characters gender-bent, not the suspects.
  • The X-Men: Evolution fanfic XXY:Evolution has most of the characters with opposite genders. The notable exceptions are the younger X-Men's parents, Sabretoothnote , Irene Adler, Tony Starknote , and Spider-Man and his supporting cast.
  • Bad Press: Several of the fanfics referenced in the story depict gender-flipped versions of Starscream. The actual Starscream is highly displeased about the matter, though it's unclear if he's more offended by their being female or the fact they're also consistently portrayed as Autobots.
  • Not So Evil is one for the Cybertronian characters of Transformers: Prime, with Arcee being the only member whose gender remains the same.

    Literature 
  • The anthology Star Trek: The New Voyages contains the story "Procrustean Petard", in which a Negative Space Wedgie gender-flips the crew of any starship that comes within range (except for the strongest male aboard, who gets an extra Y chromosome).
    • Nope, not Kirk—he gets gender flipped too. It's Spock!
  • From The Elder Scrolls In-Universe Books, The Sultry Argonian Bard is a gender-flipped Self-Insert Fic of The Lusty Argonian Maid.
  • Frank Richards' greedy overweight schoolboy, Billy Bunter, had a sister just like him called Bessie, written by "Hilda Richards" (who in fact was just Frank Richards under another name!)
  • Stephenie Meyer's latest Twilight novel rehashes the story of the first book, but the protagonists are now the human named Beaufort (Beau for short) and the vampire lady Edythe. And it also changes the ending where Beau fakes his death since he turns into a vampire instead of having the venom sucked out.
  • The Reunion With Twelve Fascinating Goddesses: Tooi is famous enough that, in-universe, several series of books have been written about his exploits. He's disturbed to discover that two of them involve gender-bending: one turns him female, while the other turns the twelve goddesses male. The latter is mentioned to be popular with the female readers.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Red Dwarf had an entire alternate dimension where Lister, Rimmer, and Holly had female counterparts; Cat, meanwhile, had a male dog counterpart. Because dogs and cats are different genders.
  • Pops up every now and then on Sliders, Most notably in the episode Double Cross where there is a female counterpart of Quinn named Logan St.Clair.
  • The sketch TV show In Living Color! had Kelly Coffield as Andrea 'Dice' Clay.
  • Doctor Who has had a couple of unusual examples where due to the randomness of regeneration, it's possible for a male Time Lord to become his own distaff counterpart (as occurred when The Master regenerated and became Missy), and for a female Time Lord to become the Spear Counterpart (as occurred with the female Time Lord known as the General who spent one incarnation as a man). This finally happened to the Doctor directly, with their thirteenth incarnation being a woman.

    Music 
  • The video for "Bye Bye Beautiful" flips almost at random between portraying Nightwish and Nightwish-as-a-Girl Group (starting as the latter), with then-lead singer Annette Olzon the only member staying the same in both versions.

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 
  • Lost Saga not only loves to include BlazBlue characters into its game, but also allows you to buy an item that lets you play as a female version of that character; examples include Ragna and Hazama. Jin is the only exception, as his female version is Noel Vermillion.
    • Within BlazBlue itself, there exists official artwork of a character called Alpha-1, essentially a gender-flipped Ragna as a Murakumo Unit.
  • There are genderbent chibi figures of several famous Metal Gear characters. These are an official product distributed for nothing more than fanservice. Snake is rather cute...
  • An official version in Super Robot Wars Reversal in the case of Raoul/Fiona Gureden. Fiona is basically Raoul as a girl (and vice versa). In Original Generations, they decided to keep both branches and make them Half-Identical Twins.
    • Original Generation: The Moon Dewllers did almost the same thing with Super Robot Wars GC protagonist Akimi Akatsuki, turning them into older brother and younger sister, with the latter being renamed "Akemi".
  • Koihime†Musou, an erotic game based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which most of the novel's male characters are female. Diao Chan is now a muscular man in bikini, voiced by Norio Wakamoto.
  • In Aura Kingdom, for some odd reason, the Eidolons based off of the archangels are all female.
  • Word of God states that Paine from Final Fantasy X-2 was essentially thought up as a female version of Squall, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VIII.
  • Five Nights in Anime features female versions of Freddy Fazbear, Golden Freddy and Springtrap.
  • Haven (2020) received an update in March of 2022 which adds the option to swap the gender of one of the protagonists upon starting a new game, allowing them to be played as a same-sex couple.
  • Pizza Tower: Peppina Ramen, an unofficial mod that replaces Peppino with a female relative of his named Peppina (unofficial). Said mod also replaces almost every member of the cast with a female counterpart. Gustavo and Brick are Gustava and Renga, Peperman becomes Peppergirl, The Vigilante becomes The Vigil, The Noise becomes Noise-Chan, Fake Peppino becomes Fake Peppina, and Snotty becomes Snottia. It's also worth noting the mod doesn't actually remove the original characters in replacement of the female ones, but rather implies the male counterparts are captured, as Peppina saves them all during the final level and Peppino appears in Peppina's P-Rank screen. The mod is also a reference to the animation style, with Peppino being reminiscent of old American cartoons and animation style, and Peppina being Japanese and modeled after older Anime character behaviors and visual gags. Completely Safe For Work as well, containing nothing explicit.

    Web Animation 
  • Red vs. Blue:
    • Played with: In addition to the six inept, clueless, lazy, and outright idiotic men, who because of the series being a Halo machinima all look identical with only different color, there is a single female character in the form of Tex, who is almost completely sane in comparison and a more capable soldier than all the others combined.
    • Later, (Griff's) Sister is introduced, who is as dumb as Caboose but insanely hot. At least so we are told.
  • The RWBY series had an entire team (JNPR) composed of genderflips of legendary figures: Joan of Arc , Mulan, Thor, and Achilles. All four of whom having at least one myth involving them cross-dressing (the characters are of the disguise's gender, meaning Joan and Mulan are represented as boys while Thor and Achilles are represented as girls).

    Webcomics 
  • Ménage à 3:
    • Although "Garii" is just a figment of Yuki's imagination, she's close enough.
    • There's also an "official" manifestation of this trope as a bonus story in the series' fourth book collection.
    • Yuki dreams Zii into the role of Captain Harlock, and Gary into that of Ulala.
  • Scandinavia and the World has a male and female version of most commonly mentioned countries; they are generally very similar in appearance. (Sister Germany even has her brother's mustache).
  • Many characters in Arthur, King of Time and Space have different genders based on their arc. Tristram, in particular, is female in every arc besides the baseline, and Morgan and Nimue are actually male in the M*A*S*H* arc.
  • El Goonish Shive has a great deal of actual Gender Bender activity, which also inspires a lot of fan art.
  • This April Fools strip of Kevina And Kelly
  • An official version of this occurs in Ears for Elves. The last panel here calls the rule by name and shows what Tanna and Luero would look like when gender-flipped.
  • Jix has a story arc that revolves around a device that might as well be called "The Rule 63 gun." Lauren spent the majority of the arc as a feminine looking man.
  • Unwinder's Tall Comics: Amy drew a picture of BBQ She-Sauce and Unwinder finds that she's attractive.
  • The art gallery of the EATATAU!!! website contains this gender-flipped picture of the two leads.
  • Ennui GO!: A series of strips shows us the world of Earth-11, where the genders of all characters are flipped.

    Western Animation 
  • Generator Rex has an awesome in-universe example of this in "Beyond the Sea," although the similarities between the Cabo Luna beach babes and Rex and Noah go unnoticed. Yay for surprise fanservice!
  • Metalocalypse. Dethklok had a tribute band that was composed of all women, giving each of the band members a female counterpart. Dethklok rejected them, as they found them rather creepy. Though Toki admits the female Pickles was cute, and Nathan agreed she did have nice eyes.
  • Superjail! had an early episode where opposite-sex counterparts of the staff ("Ultraprison") appear along with a bunch of female inmates, complete with a transgender man to compliment Alice. These characters would be reused for a cameo at the end of season 2, setting up a cliffhanger for the following run of episodes. Within season 3, the Ultraprison characters appeared again in the premiere, while two other episodes had brief cameos. The cliffhanger for season 3/premiere of season 4 also revisit this concept yet again.
  • The episode of Adventure Time titled "Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake" used this concept, and in a reference to this trope, the entire episode was revealed to be a fanfiction by Ice King.
    • Another episode, "Bad Little Boy", shines focus on some more gender-swapped characters.
    • "Five Short Tables" The fourth episode starring Fionna and Cake kicks it up a few notches. Ice Queen has her own fanfiction with gender-swapped counterparts to the already gender-swapped counterparts, starring Flynn the Human Being, Jacques the Raccoon, and Ice President. Ice Queen's fanfiction has Ice President reading his own stories, starring Lynn the Person and Janet the Fox.
  • "Neutopia", the seventh season premiere for Futurama, features Gender Bender versions of each character. The episode even lampshades this trope when a calendar of the sex-changed characters makes a huge profit due to the "creepy fans" of Planet Express.
    • Also, Coilette, Bender's attempt to join (and win) the 3004 Olympics as a bending competitor, in "Bend Her"
  • In-universe, the Rowdyruff Boys to The Powerpuff Girls.
  • In an early episode of Young Justice, Miss Martian uses her shape-shifting powers to imitate Kid Flash, Robin, and Aqualad — but female versions, because her powers aren't developed enough to readily do more complex shape-shifting stunts such as mimicking the opposite sex. Kid Flash approves.
  • Family Guy has an in-universe example. In a Cutaway Gag, Peter and Lois agree to make out in one of the restaurant bathrooms. When Peter comes out of the bathroom thanking Lois, she says she didn't go in with him. The person who he made out with turns out to be a male clone of Lois, who sits at a table with a female clone of Peter.
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: An in-universe example occurs in "Destination Imagination", in which Mr. Herriman hires several potential replacements for Frankie when she disappears, one of them being basically a male Frankie.
  • The Chipettes—Jeanette, Eleanor and Brittany—to Alvin, Theodore and Simon.
  • Grojband has the title band's rivals, The Newmans, which is made up of female versions of Corey, Kin, and Kon, as well as a male version of Laney.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: During "The Spider-Verse" five-parter, one of the alternate realities visited by Spider-Man is one where everybody's gender is flipped. He meets his counterpart from this world, Petra Parker/Spidergirl, and teams up with her against this worlds version of the Green Goblin: Norma Osborn.
  • In the The Loud House episode "One of the Boys", Lincoln uses a dimension-jumping device created by Lisa to go in a dimension where he has 10 brothers instead of 10 sisters. When he tries to go back, he then accidentally ends up in a dimension where he is a girl named Linka with 10 brothers. Then, it turns out that it was All Just a Dream.
  • The Simpsons
    • When the Simpsons travel to England, Homer meets Abe's illegitimate child from a wartime fling. She is a dead ringer for Homer.
    • In another episode, Homer's new coworker Mindy is basically a female version of him, if not in appearance, then definitely in taste and personality. Somehow, in spite of her eating habits, she manages to stay thin and shapely. Homer's guardian angel even (unintentionally) shows him that his life (and Marge's) would ultimately be a lot better if he were married to Mindy instead of Marge.

    Real Life 
  • Among Mixed Martial Arts fandom, Cristiane "Cris Cyborg" Santos is considered to be Wanderlei Silva's female counterpart.

Gender Bending/Cross-Dressing

    Anime & Manga 
  • Naruto examples:
    • The title character's sexy jutsu turns him into a nude female version of himself, with convenient Censor Steam.
    • Konohamaru uses it too.
  • Pokémon has several prominent examples:
    • In the first season, Ash Ketchum dressed up as 'Ashley', a little blonde girl in an orange dress.
    • Ash has been forced to cross-dress once each region after this—as a one-shot female NPC in Hoenn, and as a French Maid in Sinnoh. The fandom took these examples and ran with them.
      • He later ended up doing it again in Unova, this time by insistence of Iris. He brought the Ashley name back for this one.
      • He managed to avoid it in Kalos, though in a sense he was still involved; Serena had to crossdress as Ash himself to battle in his place, as Ash was ill at the time. James had previously done so in his partner Jessie's place under similar circumstances.
    • The banned episode "Beauty And The Beach" features James entering a swimsuit contest with inflatable breasts.
  • Code Geass:
    • Lelouch is forced into a dress in one Picture Drama, and into an incredibly skimpy belly dancer uniform in another. As a result, the fandom really likes to run with that idea.
  • Black Lagoon does the gender inverting in one of its Omake specials seen here on youtube, including an awesome male Balalaika (and Eda looking an awful lot like the cowboy mercenary she had a Gun Kata duel with). Hilarity bonus also runs for the Creepy Twins. The best part is that, in spite of having their genders swapped, the characters still have the same voice actors, who make no attempt to sound more gender appropriate.
  • Blue Exorcist: Recently, creator Kato Kazue posted on Twitter sketches she made of the main cast gender swapped.
  • A recent chapter of the Soul Eater manga made this canon. Most of the main characters (including Blair, but sadly, not Kid) became gender-swapped. How long a character stayed in his/her gender-bended form depended on how much of a Covert Pervert that character is.
    • Then again, there's still one character that seems immune to Rule 63. Then again...
  • Hayate of Hayate the Combat Butler was found to play a very convincing female (even attracting the romantic attention of three male characters in that form). His female appearance has since made several more appearances and its own name (Hermione Ayasaki) and Hayate has been fandom-paired with his gender bent form.
  • One chapter of Interspecies Reviewers has the reviewers visit the Genderswap Inn, where they take an Easy Sex Change potion. For Crim, not much changes other than his dick vanishing.
  • Ren/Run from To Love Ru can somehow change genders by sneezing. Lala also invents a device that temporarily causes someone to switch genders.
  • The title character of Ranma ½ is a canonical Gender Bender, being cursed to change into a sexy, female version of himself on contact with cold water, because he was once tossed into a cursed spring in a training session by his idiot father. While obviously a "real" aspect of the Ranma character, fandom has taken the concept even farther, naming the female side of him "Ranko" and making her an actual character in countless fan works, (many of them extremely NSFW).
    • Surprisingly, despite the Nyanniichuan's existence in canon, Rule 63 depictions of Ranma's rivals, two of whom were cursed at the same set of Transformation Ray springs, are extremely rare. Not non-existent, but drastically rarer than depictions of "Ranko".
  • Princess Jellyfish has Kuranosuke cross-dressing as a hobby. This is justified since his mother is somewhere else. Tsukimi often says that he looks good as a woman, despite her fear of men.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga and one of the video games both have scenes in which Shinji Ikari dresses up like a schoolgirl complete with wig. Asuka and Rei are both unnerved at how cute Shinji looks like a girl.

    Comic Books 
  • An issue of Lobo has the Main Man dying and going to the afterlife... only to be reincarnated as an extremely masculine female version of himself.
  • A canonical Superboy story, "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister"note  has Superboy transformed into a girl. It's not permanent (and, as it turns out, the whole experience was just a mental illusion), and the story is mostly forgotten today, except as another take on the Supergirl concept. Mostly. There is quite a lot of fan art, and several Fanfics, based on the premise that Clark was permanently stuck as Claire.
  • Loki is mentioned under Fanverse... as of Loki: Agent of Asgard Loki's genderfluidity is canon in the comics. So they will change gender at will for no other reason but because they can or feel like it, and will refer to themself as goddess (and 'she' in the third person) when in their female form and god (and 'he') when in the male one. You're welcome internet!
  • An S Club 7 tie-in magazine has the band interviewing a new assistant, who happens to be a witch. She demonstrates her powers by turning Jon and Bradley into 'Joni' and 'Bradie'.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Star Trek: The Original Series, in its last-aired episode, "Turnabout Intruder", tells the story of a forced Body Swap between Captain Kirk and his crazy ex-girlfriend Janice Lester. Of course, everything is sorted out at the end... though that hasn't prevented a plethora of Fan Fics, fan art, and photo manipulation about alternate scenarios where Kirk is stuck permanently in Janice's body (usually due to Janice-in-Kirk's-body being killed.)
  • Peter Capaldi, Doctor Who's 12th incarnation, has gone on record as saying the next incarnation of the Doctor should be a woman. They've done it with the Master, so why not? (In fact, BBC has announced a female for the next incarnation.)

    Video Games 
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Zelda goes in disguise as Sheik, a masculine version of herself.
  • Final Fantasy VII's Cloud and Sephiroth are already very pretty. The former was even forced to cross-dress once. Guess what happened?.
  • Iori Yagami of The King of Fighters. SNK's acknowledgement: by courtesy of Demitri's Midnight Bliss here. Also, Gals Fighters (Queen Of Fighters) has a character called Miss X. She's Iori dressed as a woman. Oh, and Orochi Iori's blissed form is Miss X too!!!.
  • Terry Bogard receives this treatment in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, finding himself in an alternate dimension where he's shocked to discover that he's suddenly a she!
  • Shovel Knight has a customisation feature called "Body Swap", which allows the player to customize the appearances of any of the twelve main characters and their pronouns as well (so that a masculine-looking character uses female pronouns and vice versa). Each of the alternate designs were carefully crafted without resorting to blatant Tertiary Sexual Characteristics and to compliment the base designs. One of the biggest challenges of the designs was to make each gender-swapped counterpart distinct visually, yet identical functionally.
  • Terraria allows players to create a potion using all seven herbs in the game. It's named the Gender Change Potion.
  • The first game in the Galaxy Angel II trilogy sees this happen to Kazuya, but only if players aim to go on the Natsume route. He ends up forced to dress as a maid named 'Katherine'; the other Angels eventually bust him. Continuing the Natsume route in the third game has it almost happen again, but Lily stops it almost immediately.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • One particularly nice example of the Metalocalypse band getting genderbent exists here.
  • The fandom’s tendency to swap genders for the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is played with in "Magic Duel": Twilight Sparkle transforms Applejack into a stallion for a short time for a competition on who has better magical ability. It's later revealed that it was actually her brother painted in Applejack's mane and coat colors.

Fanverse

    Anime & Manga 

    Comic Books 
  • Genderbending Loki from The Mighty Thor isn't that difficult to imagine since not only is he a shapeshifter normally, but he assumed Sif's form for several story arcs for the lulz. Princesses Thor and Loki aside, The Warriors Three have also enjoyed time as the fairer sex.
  • The Avengers trio, in a fan art depiction.
  • Watchmen fandom has a fairly established body of Rule 63 fics, especially on the Kink Meme. Get used to Danielle, Wanda, Adi, Laurence, Joan Osterman, Sal and Edie.
  • Common in fan art too, as a search for "Genderbent Joker" on Google will reveal. You may want to keep safe search on.
  • The Archie Comics gang, like most comic book Print Long-Runners, have attracted the occasional Rule 63 interpretations. A 2012 story, "The Great Switcheroo," provided official examples in Archie #636.note  In the story, Sabrina the Teenage Witch's cat Salem casts a Gender Bender spell on the entire population of Riverdale, not to mention Josie and the Pussycats too.
  • Behold, a sketch of genderswapped Rogue and Gambit. This was met with enthusiasm, mainly because it would mean Gambit were a hot, flirty French chick.
  • Brazilian webcomic creator Priscilla Tramontano has taken this rule and applied it to some of Marvel’s most popular villains, and the results are absolutely glorious

    Film 

    Literature 

    Live-Action TV 
  • A short-lived 1991 revival of The Carol Burnett Show had a gender-flipped Star Trek sketch, so Carol could have a go at playing Captain Kirk. Take a look.
  • Saturday Night Live has a sketch called "What Up With That?" in which a cavalcade of groovy, costumed background folks help obnoxiously interrupt the guest's interview, whenever the host compulsively re-sings the theme song. Among them on the Christmas edition is "Grinchina". Played by Nasim Pedrad, she makes for a freaky but Cute Monster Girl.

    Tabletop Games 

    Video Games 

    Webcomics 

    Web Original 
  • Examples from Channel Awesome:
    • Anne Onymous of The Wotch drew a Worksafe image of The Nostalgia Critic.
    • At one point, there was also an amusing series of videos created by (female) TGWTG fans dressing up as their favorite (male) reviewers and demanding that the fandom fix this crackfic singularity gender bend... thing.
  • For their crossover review of Sherlock Holmes (2009), The Agony Booth's Sofie Liv and Stuff You Like's Sursum Ursa dressed up (and did the review) as Holmes and Watson.
  • Happy Tree Friends plays this differently depending on which side of the fandom you are looking at. Among Japanese fans, the characters that get genderbended the most often are the four originally female characters. Out of the boys, designing female Russell, Lumpy and possibly Flippy seems to be the most common, although it is easier to tell who never is bent.
  • Even The Runaway Guys get the female treatment. If them dressed as The Powerpuff Girls doesn't count then this totally does.
    • JoshJepson plays the role of Maya Fey in this pic if that counts too.
    • Of the three Runaway Guys, ProtonJon gets a lot of fanart of many distaff counterparts of himself during his livestreams. Popular depictions are Pon-Pon, which spawned from a fanartist giving him the Bowsette treatment, Jontae, a version based on Shantae, and Rosajon, a version based on Rosalina plus a Buxom Beauty Standard figure. Another known distaff counterpart is a parallel universe depiction of him as a female streamer, complete with a dog named Biscuit (as a counterpart of Jon's cat Bagel, who is often seen changing forms based on which alt he's paired with (such as Rosajon getting Bagel as a Luma)). Stephen Georg even asks him about the alts during episode 3 of the Disc Only Podcast, and was surprised that there are "three boob timelines", one for Rosajon, one for Pon-Pon, and a much older one for an alt named Electron Jen (likely the above-mentioned female streamer alt).
      • Lately a Rosajon variant for Emile, dubbed Daisille (a fusion of Emile with Daisy) has been popping up, and the guys have commented on one fusing Tim with Pauline. One such conversation was started by Tom Fawkes, who admitted he's seen fanart of him fused with Tharja and was now expecting to be fused with Jessica.
      • Even one of Jon's mods, Ryan, has been on the receiving end of this. Most likely suspect is someone using the animated Mystery of the Ghost Fart to depict Ryan as Shantae (who maintains the half-genie's normal colors of red clothing and purple hair as Jontae has teal clothes and platinum-blonde hair, along with Ryan's Shantae look retaining her hoop earrings (Jontae wears star-shaped ones that, along with silver shoes (Ryan's fusion maintains Shantae's normal red ones), appear to indicate a hint of Rosalina also being involved in the fusion)).
  • The concept has gotten so wide on Danbooru that the previously unified "genderswap" tag has been split into "genderswap (mtf)" and "genderswap (ftm)".

    Western Animation 
  • There is an entire Alternate Universe Fic of Ed, Edd n Eddy where the entire cast is of the opposite sex. It's made by the same author who gave us Ed, Edd n Eddy Highschool.
  • The Adventure Time blog posted a series of Rule 63 drawings by one of the concept artists, much to the amusement of fans.
  • Given the high female-to-male character ratio on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, it was probably only a matter of time before male versions of the six main characters came out. A fan artist named Trotsworth has probably the most famous examples. There's even fics about it, such as The 63rd Rune and On a Cross and Arrow.
    • If there's ever going to be a fic or discussion about the gender-bent characters, there's a host of widely accepted Fanon names. Twilight Sparkle is Dusk Shine, Rarity is Elusive, Fluttershy is Butterscotch, Rainbow Dash is Rainbow Blitz, Pinkie Pie is Bubble Berry, Spike is Spines (or Barb/Barbara), Only Applejack remains the same.
      Other counterparts include Discord —> Erisnote , Celestia —> Prince Solaris, Luna —> Prince Artemis, Cadence —> Bolero note , Shining Armor —> Gleaming Shield, Queen Chrysalis —> King Metamorphosisnote , and King Sombra —> Queen Umbra note . Heck, even one-off characters get in on this, like Cheese Sandwich being rule 63'd as Grilled Cheese.
    • In Vinyl and Octavia Fight Ten Thousand Ninjas, the climax reveals that the leaders of the ninja clan are Rule 63 versions of Octavia and Vinyl Scratch from another universe.
    • A Chance Meeting of Two Moons: Starts with Princess Luna meeting her alternate-universe counterpart Prince Artemis, and continues with most of the main cast doing the same. The only known exception to the opposite-gendering is Starswirl the Bearded, who is male in both worlds.
  • The main characters of Miraculous Ladybug are frequently subject to this. Notably, Marinette and Adrien's gender-bent counterparts are generally referred to as Marin and Adrienne, respectively.
  • Osmosis Jones fan art examples have been seen, including cosplay of a female Thrax.
  • This piece of Thunder Cats fanart will likely murder your childhood in an entirely worksafe way.
  • The Fire Ferrets from The Legend of Korra as you've (probably) never seen them before.
  • And now, The Simpsons are victims of this. (Granted this had happened in the show, albeit on one of their Treehouse of Horror specials).
  • Fairly popular in Star vs. the Forces of Evil fandom. Like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic there are generally accepted names for the gender bent Star and Marco, Comet Dragonfly and Marcia respectively.
  • After The Loud House episode "One of the Boys" premiered, several fanworks (such as One Girl with Ten Brothers) were created to explore and examine the lives of the Loud siblings' opposite-sex counterparts.

    Other 
  • Every Vocaloid (including Rin and Len) and almost every UTAUloid tend to have a genderbend. In the UTAUloid's cases, many are made by the authors themselves. People have also edited their vocal files to create a masculine/feminine version of the characters.
  • The Female Fellowship - a counterpart to the lineup of heroes from The Lord of the Rings.

Grand Unification

    Anime & Manga 

    Video Games 

You know, Sieglinde Freud would have something to say about all this genderbending....

 
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Video Example(s):

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Eddsworld

In-Universe. As it turns out, Matt's new mirror leads to an alternate reality, where everyone's flipped genders.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (15 votes)

Example of:

Main / RuleSixtyThree

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