Twincest - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Weasley Twins give their opinion on the topic.

Popular culture often expects twins to share everything, including, it seems, their beds. It's a particularly common trope in Slash Fic, Hentai, and porn, though it does occur in mainstream fiction often enough to be a discernable trope. It's especially common as a way of making Creepy Twins just that much more disturbing.

Note that Twincest is not necessarily homosexual: That's what fraternal twins and Half Identical Twins are for.

A common twist, in this and in Brother Sister Incest in general, is for a couple to fall in love, only to find out later that they were Separated At Birth. (See genetic sexual attraction

.) How far their relationship goes before they discover this generally depends on whether the plotline is supposed to be humorous or tragic.

The mentalities of twincest are generally vastly different from Brother Sister Incest in general. BSI usually caters to siscon, "sister complex", where a male wishes to protect a helpless little girl that looks up to him to the point of idolization -- and her cute cries of "oniichan!" don't hurt. If it's notable, it's usually an Official Couple and the focus of the series. Twincest, however, is almost always composed of Yaoi Guys, both of whom are much more mature than the cute little sister, and aimed at fangirls; if it's not canon, there will be plenty of girls shipping it.

An old Japanese myth says that if two star-crossed lovers commit dual suicide, they get reincarnated as twins. This may be one of the factors in the frequency of Twincest stories in anime.

Of course, sometimes even Twincest isn't quite incestuous enough for the writers.

Examples:

Live Action TV

In the final episode of Arrested Development, Michael's twin sister Lindsay admits that she's attracted to him. However, this is only after the revelation that Lindsay is adopted.
It's impossible to watch the Maya and Alejandro Herrera in Heroes without thinking about it. After all, Maya killed everyone but Alejandro and herself during her twin brother's wedding after she learnt that his bride to be was cheating on him...
House points out that two identical twins who are both fighting to join his team are "distracting to every man and lesbian in the room".

Anime

A non-canon pairing trope popular with fans of the Digimon series. Kouji and Kouichi from Digimon Frontier were Separated At Birth and, to a much lesser extent due to their limited involvement (but still plausible... we're talking one of the most messed-up fandoms in recent memory in regards to who they pair up), Ai and Makoto from Digimon Tamers fall into this. Camp Gay Rhodo-Knightmon (Crusadermon) makes thinly-veiled Twincest jokes about Kouji and Kouichi in one memorable episode.
Subverted in Gundam SEED: Kira and his Separated At Birth twin sister Cagalli meet in the first episode (neither knowing they're related), and when they reunite further in the series, Cagalli comforts the emotionally ragged Kira in a purely platonic way. This is ironically taken as a threat by Flay, Kira's sort-of girlfriend (it's not a healthy relationship), despite the fact there's no romantic attraction to it. Further toyed with when Cagalli displays a Luminescent Blush at overhearing Flay admit to her ex-fiancé that she and Kira have slept together.
.hack//tasogare no udewa densetsu hints strongly at incest, or at least lust, between two characters who are twins. This is basically a Flanderization of subtler jokes in the manga, where it was the sister's completely different-looking and skimpily-dressed computer avatar that set off the whole thing.
- It can't be helped either that the anime altered the storyline near the end where their relationship is implied to be much stronger.
In Revolutionary Girl Utena, Half Identical Twins Miki and Kozue have a bizarre relationship which may involve twincest, particularly in the movie.
Onegai Twins features a boy who is not sure which of the two girls in the story is his long-lost twin sister. They both fall for him, making one a case of twincest and the other not. Now, if only they knew which...
Chobits has some extremely un-sibling-like touching between Chi and the "Dark Chi" that appears in her mind. This proves to be her sister, Freya, whose mind was downloaded into Chi.
In a similar CLAMP example, see Hinoto and her hallucinatory evil twin in X1999.
The Hitachiin twins in Ouran High School Host Club play this up for their fangirls for the purposes of their club. They also seem to be very affectionate toward each other when the fangirls aren't watching, but this, too, could also be a game they play.
Boku wa Imouto ni Koi o Suru ("I'm In Love With My Little Sister.")
- Wow... everything's in the title, it seems.
In Black Lagoon, Hansel and Gretel. Given their history, this is possibly the least disturbing thing about them.
Myself Yourself has twins Shuri and Shusuke with a particularly strong relationship in the face of Parental Abandonment, with a later rumor even claiming a more illicit relationship. Under threat of separation, they run away together near the end. The Distant Finale strongly suggests that the twincest subtext has become canon.
The Kannazuki no Miko manga ends with Chikane and Himeko reincarnated as twin sisters. Oh, dear. At least they didn't have to go far to find each other again.
Many fans pair Vash and Knives from Trigun. To be fair, it's strongly implied that Knives has one heck of a brother complex. The first big confrontation between Vash and Knives at the very end of the first Trigun manga really looks like a metaphorical rape scene complete with grotesquely obvious phallic symbols. Which wasn't even the most disturbing thing about this scene in the first place.
And let's not get started on Rociel / Roshiel's 'ambiguous' attitude towards his twin-sister-Alexiel-reincarnated-into-Setsuna in Angel Sanctuary. But then again, Rociel isn't a paragon of sanity, and brother-sister incest is one of the main themes of the manga.
One of the fanon yaoi pairings in The Prince of Tennis also involves a set of twins: the Kisarazus, namely Atsushi from Saint Rudolph (short hair, a red bandanna) and Ryou from Rokkaku (long hair, a white hat).
Candy Boy is entirely about yuri twincest, in that Yukino does like to tease her sister Kanade quite a bit. There's nothing explicit going on, since Kanade decides to keep a cool outer appearance, although she is obviously enamored with her sister.
There are multiple examples of pairing up Netto and Rockman from Mega Man Battle Network/Mega Man NT Warrior. It's up to the Gentle Reader to decide which squicks him or her more - the game version, where this trope applies in full, or in the anime, where he's just a computer program.
Amiboshi and Suboshi in Fushigi Yuugi, though a lot of this is fan speculation. Especially because Suboshi feeds Amiboshi a mind-erase drug with his mouth in episode 40.
- In an author's note in the manga, Yuu Watase claims that she didn't mean for that particular incident to seem so sexual. Sure she didn't.
The revelation at the end of Chrono Crusade that Chrono and Aion are twins hasn't stopped some fans from shipping them. The fact that Aion really does seem to have a brother complex doesn't help dissuade them.
Zero and his long-lost twin Ichiru in Vampire Knight. The 'cest is entirely irrelevent to the plot. It just needed that extra element.

Comic Books

In the Ultimate Marvel Universe, there were hints about Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch going down this road from the beginning, until It was confirmed outright in a recent issue of The Ultimates, immediately before her death.
Marvel Comics' Fenris twins (Andrea and Andreas Von Strucker) play with this idea (and likely, each other!) fairly frequently. Shudder.
- It gets worse. Andrea has since died, and since their energy blast powers relied on them touching to function, her brother had her skin made into leather and wrapped his sword hilt with it. On top of that, he is nothing short of fanatically obsessed with finding a way to resurrect her. The whole thing is portrayed just as creepily as it sounds, with even other characters around him being squicked by it.

Film

Narrowly averted (at least according to Fanon) in Star Wars: the viewers (and the characters themselves) are initially led to expect a love triangle between Luke, Leia and Han, but then it is revealed in Return Of The Jedi that Luke and Leia are actually twins.
- However, the novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye was written and takes place before their relationship was revealed and so features romantic scenes with the two.
David Cronenberg's 1988 film Dead Ringers features some creepily sexual scenes between Jeremy Irons and Jeremy Irons as twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliot.
Creepy Twins Wendell and Darlene from the horror film The Hamiltons.
Pretty much the basic plot of The House of Yes, with Parker Posey.
Julie Taymore's film version of Titus Andronicus portrays Chiram and Demetrius this way. They're just as touchy-feely with their mom, too. It's okay, though, because Anthony Hopkins puts them in a pie.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Okay, the twincest doesn't actually happen, but boy, does Prince Badass Bishonen Faerie want it to.

Literature

Cersei and Jaime Lannister in A Song Of Ice And Fire. Jaime is revealed to be true father of Queen Cersei's children, thus making them false heirs to the throne. This eventually is one of the main causes of the following civil war.
Implied in Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic horror story The Fall of the House of Usher.
Robert Heinlein's recurring hero Lazarus Long has two Opposite Sex Clone copies of himself, which seem very, very twincesty, on top of the hero sleeping with them both in the first place.
There's a rather bizarre example in Fifth Quarter by Tanya Huff. The soul of Bannon is forced to share the body of his twin sister Vree when another man steals his body. Vree goes after her brother's body, and when they find it, they devise a plan that Vree will distract him by seducing him, and Bannon will "push" the interloper out his body. Partway through, Vree realizes that Bannon is more interested in seducing himself than in getting his body back, and calls it off.
Twins Charles and Camilla from Donna Tartt's The Secret History are revealed to be sleeping together towards the end of the book, although it is hinted at earlier in the book.
Twins Estha and Rahel in Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things.

Truth In Television

Ho Yay example: Kyle and Lane Carlson, twin male models. This editor would like to go no further.
A case of separated at birth twins getting married has recently been in the news in the UK. They called off their engagement when they found out.
Real Life example (NOT REALLY, but just ask the fangirls): Bill and Tom Kaulitz◊, of German band Tokio Hotel.
- So...much...fanfiction... It's staggering how... dedicated these fangirls are.
- At least once when performing live Bill has dropped to his knees in front of Tom, while singing a song supposedly about Tom and a groupie.

Video Games

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, because Eirik and Ephraim's supports are all but... huh.
- Speaking of Fire Emblem, Blazing Sword wasn't very subtle at all with Raven and Priscilla.
Resident Evil: Code Veronica implies that Alfred's devotion to Alexia goes some way beyond mere intense admiration.

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