Superpowerful Genetics - Television Tropes & Idioms

Having a Superhero parent is like being Blessed With Suck. There’s the bi-weekly kidnappings, frequent Parental Abandonment, being constantly lied to if your parent has a Secret Identity, being forced to lie to maintain your secret, and constant worry that your parent(s) or you will be killed by a vengeful supervillain. But look! You can fly!

Um. Okay.

Normally, heredity is a messy affair; it's often described as a game of chance. Thanks to Darwin and Mendel it can be explained a good deal better, but much like AI Is A Crapshoot, what traits a child will inherit from each parent are mostly random. Not so with superpowers. Children of "supers" can have a limited number of things happen:

Develop identical powers to their parent(s).
Develop radically different (and usually insanely powerful) powers from the parent(s).
Inherit their parent's skills; see Lamarck Was Right.
Inherit no powers or skills at all, then eventually inherit them.
Inherit no powers or skills at all, for keeps this time.

Super-power inheritance tends to happen more often than could be ascribed to chance; a non-powered child of even a hero and a normal person is an exception. Super-powers seem to be "more dominant than dominant".

If a parent's powers are caused by gene splicing, or from being born a mutant or part or full alien, then it gets interesting. Specific powers actually have a higher chance of not being inherited. In such cases, the child usually gets a completely different power, or at best one that's only tangentially related. This becomes much likelier if both parents have different powers. Only occasionally will they just have a combination of their parents' powers; this tends to happen if the parents' powers are very simple, or if the series was designed around the child, and the parents were brought in as part of the Back Story as a Secret Legacy. If this happens often enough, it may be revealed that all the powers of that family are just different expressions of the same gene as a Meta Origin.

If only one parent has powers, however, the child's powers are much more likely to be a straight copy of those, though often at a higher level. This may encourage the writers to give that power its own Meta Origin.

Examples

Anime

Dragonball Z repeatedly shows that hybrids of humans and superpowerful aliens produce insanely powerful offspring. Lampshaded by Vegeta, when he notes that he trained intensely to unlock his Super form, while his hybrid kid can do it for fun. If a child is conceived after the father has unlocked said Super form, that child will be able to do so with essentially no effort, in a case of Lamarck Was Right. If the child was born beforehand, it's quite a bit more difficult. They're crazy powerful regardless, though.
In Hunter X Hunter, insane Nen-potential seems inherited just like insane physical potential.
Tenchi Masaki of Tenchi Muyo is one quarter Juraian. Juraian's are an alien race with a tendency to develop Jedi-like powers with training (the royal family being stronger as well). He's also the most powerful "Juraian" in existence; capable of manifesting three "lighthawk wings", one of the most powerful defensive/offensive attacks known. A typical Juraian space ship is capable of manifesting only one.
In Ranma 1/2, the Musk Dynasty bore offspring through wild, powerful animals that had been thrown into the Spring of Drowned Girl, thus turning them into women. Their children would then inherit traits exhibited by, or closely related to, their mothers' natural form. Hence, Mint's superhuman scent, hearing, and speed (born from a wolf); Lime's grotesquely overpowered physical strength (born from a tiger); and Herb's ability to fly and discharge his ki in devastating streams (born from a dragon). One episode of the anime hinted that children of a cursed parent will inherit that parent's curse- but that episode was all one of Ranma's nightmares, so it's not canon.
Type 1 was intentionally done by the Kings of Ancient Belka in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The modifications on their bodies were not only meant to turn them into Persons Of Mass Destruction, but to force the powers they gained unto their future descendants as well.
A number of ninja clans in Naruto have special genetic powers, referred to as "kekkei genkai", or "bloodline limit". These range from eyes that can copy others' abilities, growing mirrors out of ice that you can use to Teleport Spam, and being able to manipulate and regrown your own bones, and several which let you combine Elemental Powers (which can't normally be done). Granted, there are also abilities that seem like this, but are actually just well-kept clan secrets, and the tendency of the village leaders to be related to each other is simply because they often receive training from said leaders (usually before they actually became leaders).
In Bobobo-boBo-bobo, Maitel is a 3rd cousin of Medusa. Naturally, this means he can turn people to stone too.
Joseph Jostar from Jojos Bizarre Adventure could use his father's sun channeling abilities from a very young age. Subverted somewhat in that he had to train them for them to be effective against Pillar Men.

Comic Books

The children of Fantastic Four members Reed and Susan Richards show two variations. Their daughter, Valeria, has been shown in a future timeline to have a more advanced version of Susan's invisibility powers (other alternate Valerias have been shown with a variety of powers), whereas their son Franklin is sort of... intermittently omnipotent. Also a case of Lamarck Was Right, as the FF acquired their powers as adults.
- One theory is that the same event that gave them their powers also altered the genetic information carried in their sperm/eggs, creating "de novo" mutations like real radiation— well, the comic book version of real radiation, that give Mutants superpowers instead of horrible genetic disorders.
  - In fact the Handbook of the Marvel Universe describes the FF as having "uniform body-wide mutagenic changes", which probaly means that all cells were affected the same way, including reproductive cells.
Descendants of the Flashes pretty much universally inherit Super Speed; The DCU's "meta-gene" was called in to explain this. Many other DC characters avoid this trope by having their successors or apprentices come with their own origins.
- Recently, the current Flash (Wally West) fathered twins. While both children apparently have superspeed, the son also has superstrength and the daughter does not share this power.
The main characters of Runaways tend to have superpowers corresponding to those of their parents. Of course, many of these "powers" are magical or technological gifts.
The comic PS238 both uses and subverts this trope. The premise of the comic is an elementary school for children with superpowers, many of which have heroes as parents. The main character, however, is a new student, the child of two of the most powerful heroes in the world, who has no powers whatsoever. (His parents, of course, are simply convinced that their son's powers have not yet manifested, as he will of course be as powerful as they are.) As the story has developed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the character is the school's Badass Normal in training.
The X-Men had mixed up examples of 1 and 2; while Jean Grey (psionics) and Cyclops (Eye Beams) gave birth to ~~one~~ two of the most powerful psychics in existence, Magneto (with powers of magnetism) fathered a speedster, a probability manipulator and a magnetism user like him.
- At least one version of Wanda's origin had it that her "natural" mutant ability was some form of energy manipulation, like her father, but she "attuned" to the magical energies around Wundagore Mountain, resulting in her "Chaos Magic". (This was before Dr Strange said there was no such thing as Chaos Magic).
- Wolverine's recent Ret Con backstory posits that he is descended from two powered families, one with bone claws and one with a Healing Factor. Nightcrawler is likewise (supposedly) the child of an ages-old mutant clan with interdimensional powers, and Angel is implied to be from a mutant bloodline as well. Clan Akkabah is a mutant family descended from Apocalypse.
- In Young Avengers on the other hand, the "brothers" Tommy and Billy apparently got the same powers as [spoiler:their "mother" Wanda (it's complicated) and Quicksilver - Tommy has superhuman speed and Billy can manipulate reality by expressing a desire for it. Any powers from their "father" the Vision seem to be nonexistent possibly because Wanda "gave birth" to them herself, though given the incestuous overtones there've been between her and Pietro this leads to some Unfortunate Implications]]. Cassie Lang shares the same growth powers as her father Scott, however this was from her stealing Pym particles and not inheritance (her father's superpowers weren't genetic). While Patriot has no powers from birth, he does get superhuman strength from his grandfather (formerly one of the Captain Americas) via blood transfusion.
Averted in Rising Stars; it's explicitly stated that the children of the Specials inherit no powers.
The WildC.A.T.s are all descendents of the Kherubim and/or the Daemonites, super-powered alien races, and inherit their powers— since both races have a vast array of potential powers, the humans usually only get a random fraction of them.
Gen 13 and their Evil Counterpart team DV8 inherit powers from the genetic Super Soldier project that produced Team 7 and other gen-actives. Naturally, these powers have nothing to do with their parents' powers.
Zenith is a slight subversion; he does get his parents' powers, just not all of them, and they don't work all the time.
Marvel's Eternals avert this; they can breed with mortals, but the kids are just normal humans. This plays a part in Ikarus' tragic Back Story (here's a hint; he took the name Ikarus in honor of his late son).
Lampshaded in Invincible. Invincible's super-powered alien dad explicitly has genes that beat up and take over the genes of whatever he mates with, creating offspring that are almost identical to himself, powers included. Case in point, he also mates with a humanoid praying mantis girl and produces a child who looks perfectly human except for his purple skin.
Superman has no canonical descendants though the issue has been explored in many "imaginary" stories. Clasically his children with a human wife have all his powers at half power level. The Generations storyline affirms this with halving occurring with each successive generation. One Elseworlds had one of Kal-El's Ancestors land on Earth and takeover, with each successive generation being less powerful to the point that Kal-El himself had no powers and his father was barely superhuman.
- More recent examples of his offspring include a child of Superman and Wonder Woman who ended up being an alternate version of the Phantom Stranger. In DC One Million, his offspring apparently retain their powers through successive generations and gain new ones by intermarrying with various species including a 5th dimensional being. Superman himself returns in this timeline after hundreds of thousands of years transformed by exotic energies and gaining the ability to bestow additional powers on his offspring. The Superman of the 853rd century, a direct descendant of Superman, is like our Superman on steroids.
- The aforementioned Generations storyline has an odd instance of a type 5 in Superman's son Joel Kent who would have had his powers had he not been exposed to Gold Kryptonite in the womb. Much to Joel's bitterness and dismay, his younger sister was not exposed and ended up a type 1.
The Hulk's kids are an interesting case. His son, Skaar, inherited both his parents' power sets - giving him the power to control the earth /in addition/ to the Hulk's powers. His daughter Lyra, created via genetic engineering, got only a measure of the Hulk's superstrength; instead, she developed the ability to attune herself to gamma radiation - in combat, she can almost always position herself exactly where she needs to be. Unfortunately, thanks to deliberate tampering in her creation, the angrier Lyra gets, the /weaker/ she gets.
In Runaways, Molly Hayes initially appears to have not gotten the mutant gene despite her parents both having it. Early on in the story however, she is discovered to have super strength (while both parents had mind controlling powers). Karolina has exactly the same alien powers as her parents which her mother points out means that none of them can hurt each other.

Film

A particularly bad example occurs in the second X-Men movie; the mutant gene is said to be located on the Y chromosome. The implications for the mutants who look female are not explored. Though given the tenor of the scene, it seems likely that Pyro was simply exploiting Mr. Drake's ignorance to make him squirm.
Sky High goes with the fourth option twice. After spending a long while thinking he would never develop powers, the main character inherits his father's Super Strength and his mother's Flight powers separately (both were Die Or Fly situations, the second a Suicidal Gotcha using flight). The bus driver, and only other person on record to have super parents and not get powers, just exposed himself to toxic waste and grows 50 feet tall on demand. Nurse Spex also states that sometimes powers just aren't passed on at all.
Necessary Evil seems to be reaching for both 4 and 5, with the brothers.
Ang Lee's The Hulk gets the same aftermarket add-ons as his father, which Banner Sr. spliced into himself in a failed attempt to make a Super Soldier. It takes both Gamma rays and Nanomachines to finish the job.
In The Incredibles, the children of Mr. Incredible (who has super strength) and Elastigirl (who has stretchy powers) pretty much all get powers of their own: Violet has the power of invisibility and shields and Dash has super speed. The baby Jack Jack however does not have any powers (until the end of the movie when he, among other things, transforms into a stone statue, flaming ball, and demonic creature. A bonus movie shows that while the rest of the family was fighting on the island, he demonstrated the ability to fly, teleport, burst into flames, and shoot lasers from his eyes.)

Literature

Avoided in Charlie Stross' Merchant Princes series - the single superpower is caused by a recessive gene, and the inheritance is consistent.
Averted in the Wild Cards shared world anthology series: superpowers are caused by the Wild Card virus, but the virus can be passed by either parent to a fetus in the womb - increasing its chances of "drawing a card" at any point from birth onwards. With particular poignancy, the one percent chance of "drawing an ace" (i.e. gaining useful superpowers instead of becoming a hideous mutant or simply dying) is unaffected by the outcome of the parent's manifestation; in other words, the children of aces are far likelier to die or become warped wrecks than to be aces themselves (the one exception mentioned, Mistral, is explained as a result of subconscious telekinetic genetic manipulation on the part of her father). This causes one ace character to terminate his engagement to a childhood love when he discovers she also carries the virus.
A version occurs in one of the Serendipity books (the title of which this editor is too lazy to go look up), wherein a pegasus mare mates with a mortal stallion. When she turns out pregnant, a wise old mare explains that the child could be born with either legacy. Turns out he's born with tiny, tiny wings, obviously unable to let him fly - but still the mother thinks perhaps they'll grow. However, by the time she must leave (for if she stays, she too will lose the ability to fly), the wings are as small as ever. She wings away into the clouds, trying to ignore the cries of her terrified child. But of course, the series being full of magic and generally using happy endings (even with bittersweet overtones), the foal comes up after her, in those few minutes having sprouted (through willpower alone) wings large enough to carry him.
Anne Mc Caffrey's Talent series follows a large clan of Talents with Psychic Powers over numerous generations.
In the Young Wizards series, wizardry is known to run in families, though it probably has more to do with inherited traits The Powers think make a good wizard more than any "wizardry gene" since the power has to be offered by them and accepted through the Wizards Oath. In Nita's family there's Dariane, her aunt and offscreen, her great-grandmother, all on her father's side.
In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Force Sensitivity is clearly heritable. It's kind of annoying how each new child of the Skywalker line is touted as having the Strongest Potential Ever. In I, Jedi Corran learns that the creation of illusions and permutations of the Jedi Mind Trick, ability to absorb and convert or channel energy, and the inability to use telekinesis unless currently channeling energy are all Corellian Jedi traits, and his grandfather was a Corellian Jedi. Over time he manifests each trait. Jedi who are not Skywalker-descended can have non-Jedi siblings and relatives whose weak Force-Sensitivity manifests as things such as a bit of "luck" and accurate hunches.
- And it seems like that if a Force-Sensitive is cloned, the clones will themselves be Force-Sensitive, as shown with Jorus C'baoth and Joruus C'baoth. Though the clone's origins are mysterious enough that for all we know, Palpatine created and discarded dozens of C'baoth clones before getting one with the original's power. The clone also makes a clone of Luke, but the Luke clone might not have been a Force user.

Live Action TV

Heroes goes with the second of the four options; the children of heroes are almost certain to have powers of their own, but the child's powers are rarely related in any way to the parents'.
- This one seems to go both ways. While Matt seems to have the same powers as his father; Nikki, with super strength, and DL, with phasing powers, somehow manage to have a kid who can talk to machines. The latter example is ridiculous, as the entire premise of Heroes revolves around human evolution. Someone should tell them that this isn't how natural selection works. (As if they'd care.)
  - This also provides a lovely Wall Banger, as the whole reason Micah (the aforementioned technomancer) even exists is that Linderman arranged for Niki and DL to meet, marry, and have children, so that he could then use Micah to (in a roundabout way) seat Nathan in the Oval Office. How he figured out that breeding super strength with phasing would lead to technomancy is anyone's guess.
  - Most likely, Kaito Nakamura helped him. It's revealed in a deleted scene on the Season 2 DVD that his power is the ability to look at a complex situation with a lot of variables and correctly predict the outcome.
  - Another option, with the possiblity that the scene was deleted so they could have Kaito have a different power, is that Angela (revealed to have precognitive dreams in Season 3) was able to predict that their child would help save the world. They just didn't get how he would.
  - Or maybe getting DL and Niki together really was just an experiment, and using Micah to rig Nathan's election was how Linderman exploited its lucky (for him) outcome. Had Micah's power been different, Linderman would've found some other means to railroad Nathan into office, and probably other uses for the kid as well.
  - Nathan is perhaps the exception to this rule. He's the only one in the family who wasn't born with powers and instead got them from a Super Serum. He manages to keep both this and the fact he has a power at all a secret from many characters, eventually leading to him having some sort of Hitler-esque Fantastic Racism against people with abilities. He gets over it.
Disney Channel's original movie, Up, Up, and Away features the fifth example, in which a teenage boy and his superhero family come to terms with the fact that he will never develop superpowers. Just for the record, yes, the movie does actually end with them doing just that and him not gaining superpowers. Quite possibly the sole example, at least in regards to main characters who we're actually supposed to care about.
Medium has variant 1, as all three of Allison Dubois' daughters inherited psychic powers. Her half brother also has them, which raises as yet unanswered questions about whether any of their parents were psychic too.
In Stargate SG-1, some humans inherit Ancient genes, though the only "super power" they provide is the ability to be recognized as a valid user by Ancient technology.
Thats So Raven has Psychic Powers that skip a generation, making them most likely recessive.
Wizard powers seem to breed true, even if the father is no longer a Wizard. It suggests that whatever takes away a wizards power after the tournament or if they marry a mortal doesn't fundamentally alter their connection to their power.

Tabletop Games

Warhammer 40000's Space Marines are the genetic children of the superhuman Primarchs, inheriting their comprehensively superhuman biology... and a few other things.
- They are not "children" of the primarchs in a true sense. They are born normal but then become Space Marines only through a regime of gene-therapy, hypnotic suggestion, artificial biological implants (extra heart, venom glands etc.) and mental, physical and spiritual conditioning. It is not genetics alone that grants them super powers. Because of the hypnotic and mental conditioning, it is also possible that they do not have "genetic memory" but have certain memories implanted (such as Sanguinius' death for the Blood Angels).
  - The gene-seed, containing "mental, physical, spiritual, martial, and fraternal characteristics" and being collected from any casualty and passed down, counts either way.
Exalted's Dragon-Blooded work this way. For any given child of a dragon-blood, case 4 or 5 will be in effect. There's about a 60% chance of a child of two dragon-blooded parents Exalting, and that decreases if one of the parents is mortal.

Webcomics

Girl Genius uses genetics to pass down the "Spark" - a superhuman talent for and obsession with a particular branch of science or technology. Although as yet there's not that much data to go on, the Spark appears to have greater strength in successive generations, especially when combined across multiple ancestral lines.
- Of course, the greater your spark, the crazier you are. Maybe the inbreeding helps a little with the craziness, too.
In Evil Inc, Captain Heroic and Miss Match's son, Oscar, appears to be an example of Option 5 (Though he's only five, that so that could change). He uses a suit of Powered Armor provided by his grandfather, Commander Heroic, to keep up with his peer group.
In Everyday Heroes, the original Mr. Mighty was the grandfather of the current Mr. Mighty. His wife is a normal human; one child is a mix of Options 1 and 2 (her Dad's powers, plus shoots force beams from her eyes), the other is Option 5 (no powers).
- Also, Dot Dash's son appears to be Option 5 as well.

Web Original

In the Whateley Universe, pretty much all of the above (well, really all but #3). Mutants are people who have manifested (usually around age 14) powers based on a 'meta-gene complex' in their DNA. For unknown reasons (since no one understands why some people with this complex become mutants and others do not), children of mutants are much more likely to also become mutants. At the Whateley Academy (a high school for mutant kids set in scenic Dunwich New Hampshire), there are currently kids who have powers utterly unrelated to their parents' powers. But there is one girl who looks just like her mother used to, and has an exact copy of her mother's powers, right down to the ability to manifest something that looks like a big ol' flaming sword. There are also two students who are the kids of one of the world's most notorious supervillains, and they have his trademark forelock horns (along with his unattractive facial features), but different powers.

Western Animation

The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible, with his super strength, and Elasti-Girl, with her elasticity, get married and have Dash, a superspeeder and Violet, who has invisibility and force fields and Jack-Jack, who seems to have a full combo platter.
In American Dragon Jake Long the gene that gives you dragon powers is apparently recessive as it skips a generation. This means Jake, his sister, and his grandpa all have dragon powers while his mother doesn't.
- That wouldn't make sense unless his father was a recessive carrier as well. Possibly it has a low degree of expression... Or it's X-linked recessive and his sister is a Gender Bender... Or quite possibly that whole 'mystical dragon transformation' thing isn't a genetic trait.
Kim Possible plays this to a lesser extreme: the titular character's father was a rocket scientist, her mother was a brain surgeon, her grandmother was a kung-fuing underwater-demolitioning aviatrix, her brothers are practically miniature mad scientists, so of course Kim Possible would be a world-saving She Fu cheerleader.
Kim: I guess my genetics rock.

Real Life

Ligers are an example of number 3. They are the offspring of a lion and a tiger. Both are very big cats, but the liger is about twice the size of either parent. The theory is that the gene that limits growth is in the opposite sex in both parents, so it does not get passed to the liger.
- Size by itself isn't a superpower, unless it comes with proportionate strength and stamina. Also, their gigantism isn't inherited by their offspring, which is what the Super Powerful Genetics trope is about.
  - Except, ligers are sterile...
  - Misconception. Male ligers are sterile. Females tend to fertile more often than not. The same is true for tigons (in which mum's a lion and dad's a tiger- meaning the portmanteau is in the more traditional malefemale order). And the reason they believe they grow to be so large is because the males are (supposedly) trapped in the prepubescent growth stage, so they just keep growing and is, in fact, thought to be caused by the sterility. It could also have to do with the father's genes counteracting in a certain way with the mother's, as is the cause of mix dogs being larger than either parental breed. That being said, further crossbreeding would dilute the effect, showing why it isn't inherited to later generations.

Lego Genetics

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Taxonomic Term Confusion

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