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Secret Project Refugee Family
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You and your fellow Artificial Humans, kidnap victims or siblings have just escaped from the lab you all grew up in/were experimented on? Where the heck do you go now? Chances are slim that any of you still have a family in the normal world. If that wasn't bad enough, not many people will want to put up with freaks like you.
So what do you do? Adopt each other as a family! Because, let's face it, you more or less have nobody else.
A Breakfast Club, expect one to be (self) Promotion To Parent. Commonly the Secret Project Refugee Family will become Phlebotinum Rebels as they either try to elude or take revenge on their creators... and elder siblings. Or hey, they're just one Evil Overlord recruitment away from becoming a Quirky Miniboss Squad. Not to be confused with Guinea Pig Family.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- The Numbers in Nanoha StrikerS.
- From Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Allelujah and the Human Reform League supersoldier test subjects are implied to have tried to be this. Their very short-lived attempt doesn't work out very well.
- Full Metal Alchemist had both the Chimeras and the Homunculi.
- The Homunculi didn't seem to be on exactly familial terms with one another. Lust never showed any affection outside of "pet" for Gluttony, Envy was seriously hostile, Greed had severed all ties, Pride was more of a boss, and Sloth was an assistant. Wrath alone seems to fit this trope only because he had the mind of a child. In the manga, the other homonculi are outright terrified of Pride, and Sloth is really just a slave. The entity they call "father" seems to be called as such more out of fear than affection.
- But Wrath and Sloth's relationship in the anime does seem to fit this.
- Likewise, Gluttony seems to show this in the anime, in which he is visibly distressed about the knowledge that Lust has died. He pretty much shuts down, to the point where Dante has to remove his mind so he will finalize the Philosopher's Stone that Alphonse's body has become.
- The Schiff in Blood Plus.
- The cyborg characters in Cyborg009.
- It could be argued that this applies to the Soul Society in Bleach. They're not artificial, but they pretty much have no way to find actual relatives (except for Rukia's sister), so end up adopting each other as families.
- This is actually stated by Yuichi when he talks to Chad upon Ichigo and his group arriving in the Soul Society.
- As stated by many fans of Bleach: Worst...afterlife...EVER!
- Part of the premise of Kyouran Kazoku Nikki. A group of seven (later eight) people, most of them harboring the DNA of a creature that promised to destroy the world and all of them from a dark past, live together under "Operation Cozy Family" to prevent the world from blowing up. Family members include a robot, a catgirl, a lion, a jellyfish and a girl with demon blood.
- The cast of Read Or Die becomes this by the end of the series: the Paper Sisters, Yomiko, Nancy and Junior. With Nenene as the "normal" one. (Don't ever call her that.)
- The teens of Project ARMS end up as one as they are being hunted by Egrgori. Playing this trope even more straight, they all turn out to be specially bred to have ARMS implanted in them, directly going against the already established backstory.
Comic Books
Film
Literature
- The main characters in James Patterson's Maximum Ride series.
- The mutants who live in the fringes in The Chrysalids seem to adopt each other as a sort of 'tribe'/family.
- Durona sisters in Lois Mc Master Bujold Vorkosigan series are clones of their progenitor Lilly Durona, and are escapees from one of Jackson's Whole robber barons.
- The same series also has Terrance Cee, whose history is a pointed example of why these often don't work in real life (ie, they make you easier to find).
- Another (and more warlike) example is Audubon Ballroom from David Weber/Eric Flint, in the Honorverse, who are less of a family and more of a guerilla army of escaped Mesan slaves. It does help that their organisation is pretty big and have powerful allies.
- Connor, Risa and Lev in Neal Shusterman's Unwind, though what they are running away from is not a secret. They are running away from being "unwound", or having every body part taken away from them.
Live Action TV
- It's consciously averted in the first season of Dark Angel, as the escaping X-5's decide to split up to avoid capture. However, Max acquires one of these in the second season with Alec and Joshua and later a whole city of transgenics.
- Babylon 5: Telepaths who were not in Psicorps attempted to run away. Some were more successful than others.
- Kyle and Jessi from Kyle XY, to some extent. Partially subverted in that they had a normal, human family as well, and probably didn't see each other in quite such a brother/sister way in the end...
Tabletop Games
- A typical throng of Prometheans — not exactly lab projects most of the time, but often abandoned by their creators, spurned by humanity, and seeking someone for tea and sympathy.
- This is also how a motley or Freehold of Changelings can tend to look in Changeling: the Lost. They can afford to be a little pickier than the poor Prometheans, but honestly, when you've been kidnapped by beautiful and terrible Eldritch Abominations, tortured into a more pleasing (and utterly not human) form to suit their whims, survived this process, escaped back to Earth, and then found at best some Thing with your face in your place, and at worse found that Time has screwed you over quite severely in the bargain... well, as the book says, Changeling society tends to be pretty dang forgiving of its members' little.. quirks. Oh, and of course, we have the Summer, and to a lesser extent, Autumn Courts....
Video Games
- This is the backstory for Kadaj and his gang in Advent Children.
- This fits Team K' in the King Of Fighters games fairly well. Well, after they switch Whip out for Kula, anyways.
- Strega from Persona 3: They aren't actually artificial humans, but they were the only survivors of a secret project to create Persona-summoners out of humans who weren't born with the talent..... too bad they ended up with something a bit closer to Team Rocket instead.
- Jack and the little sisters in the good ending of Bioshock.
- The Cybran Nation of Supreme Commander began as this, complete with the mad scientist/genius responsible for creating them as their father figure-and said father figure is still alive and kicking one thousand years later. Although really now, they're more of a Obvious Project Refugee Country now.
- The Black Mage Village from Final Fantasy IX.
- Pretty much the whole premise of Family Project.
- Hermana Larmo in Tales Of Innocence runs a secret school to harbor "Gifted" children that would otherwise be captured and researched by the government.
Western Animation
- Double Subversion: Bionic Six. They were a blended family brought together when the parents adopted an Asian son and a black son. Then they were turned bionic to save their lives, after which point they were pressed into service for the government. So they were willing, given that they owed the government their lives, and the teen members got a kick out of being superheroes.
- The animals from I Am Not An Animal.
- The Mutates from Gargoyles except Fang after his Face Heel Turn— or, perhaps, after Maggie, Claw, and Talon's Heel Face Turn, depending on one's point of view. It's complicated. Later, most of the Gargoyle clones join them.
- Justice League features two approximate examples. The Joker's Royal Flush Gang was a group of metahuman teens (modelled on the powers of the Teen Titans and using the same voice actors from that show) which the Joker had liberated from the government's Project Cadmus and trained in supervillainy. The Ultimen (who were in turn a pastiche of the Ethnic Scrappy characters from Superfriends(and the Wonder Twins)) are a borderline case, since technically they never quite succeeded in escaping the secret project.
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