- This trope is a common practice in fanart (usually involving not just physical characteristics from both parents, but their powers, clothes and personality as well) to the point of having its own tag on image sites (such as "if_they_mated
" and "Let's Make Touhou Kids!").
The Amazing World of Gumball
- At least one fanfic, The Wacky World of the Wattersons, as well as various fan images depict the future child of Gumball and Penny (a blue anthro cat and a glowing, yellow, fairy-like creature with shape shifting powers, respectively) as a green (blue mixed with yellow) cat reminiscent of his father, but with luminescent fur, wings, and shape-shifting abilities inherited from his mother. Though other works have their child taking physically after one or the other.
- In Arthur Goes Fourth, Beatrice "Beat" Simon has a rabbit's ears and an aardvark's nose due to her mixed heritage.
- Better Off Not Knowing averts this: Hakini is implied to mainly take after P'Li—inheriting the height and the firebending at very least—although something about Zaheer's mugshot (Word of God says it's the cheekbones) seems vaguely familiar to her. As her biological parents have (luckily for her) played no role in her life, it's unlikely that they were the ones to name her.
- Downplayed in Leave Your Spirit. Kya is a Chocolate Baby who predominantly has Katara's features, but her nose comes from her biological father Zuko. It's so subtle that no one but her mother notices, even when Kya begins reaching middle-aged.
- The Bolt Chronicles: Subverted in "The Kippies." The initial section of the story suggests Bolt and Mittens have produced hybrid offspring that feature both canine and feline traits equally. It's revealed later that this is all a daydream conjured up by Mittens, who is unhappy that she'll never have offspring with Bolt or otherwise.
- Painfully common in the Harry Potter fandom. One particularly clichéd,
Mary Sue-ish example is: "Nami Weasley Potter, daughter of Harry and Ginny, is a very beautiful girl. She has black hair and one brown eye and one green eye. She is a famous supermodel."- This seems slightly justified in Harry Potter fanfics, because it happened with Harry himself, at least in appearance (he's repeatedly described as looking almost identical to his father, but with his mother's green eyes). But that didn't happen with anyone else. Not even the Weasleys. Arthur and Molly, being redheads, obviously have redhead children, but beyond that, don't look like copies. And their children's children seem to be about half and half. (And magical skill seems utterly unrelated to genetics beyond "children of people with magic almost always have magic." Harry didn't inherit his mother's intuitive skill in potion-making, or his father's brilliance at Transfiguration, though he was by no means bad at either subject, instead excelling in Defence Against the Dark Arts.)
- Child of the Storm actually subverts a canon example, with Harry Potter (son of Thor, in this universe - being incarnated as James Potter was a first run at the humility thing. It worked out very nicely right up until it didn't) going from 'identical to his dad but with green eyes and a scar' to, after a growth spurt, his features being more of a mixture of both parents, with characters repeatedly noting that they're starting to see more of Lily in him.
- When the parents are Kim and her rival Shego, having children with green skin and red hair, black hair with a red streak, plasma powers, or cutting out Kim's genetics altogether and making them clones of Shego is very common in fanfics.
- In the fanfic A Small Possibility, Kim and Shego's daughters take after them. Sheki is a mini clone of Shego while Kasy takes after Kim but has Shego's green skin.
- Fans have crafted Roxel, the child of Roxas and Axel (both of whom are very male). He has Roxas and Axel's traits smashed together. During the year or so after Kingdom Hearts II came out, he was all over DeviantArt's front page; every other day you'd see fan art of him. There are even cosplays of him.
- The most popular are the presumed cubs of Kiara and Kovu, whom are usually portrayed as color/gender-swapped versions of their parents. Fans have also used this trope in reverse to design canon characters' parents, such as Scar and Mufasa's.
- The Pride That Never Was: Chaka has Simba's features but Nala's green eyes.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- The Greatest Gift tended to go that route with the children of the Mane 6 and their respective partners (where applicable), and if it's not an exact patchwork, it at least makes sense genetically. Barring two Earth ponies somehow producing an alicorn. Given the parents are Reality Warpers, though...
- In When the Bough Breaks, Cadance and Shining's stillborn son was pink-furred like his mother but had a blue mane like his father. He was also a pegasus, which was what Cadance was born as.
- In Naruto fandom, Naruto's children always have blond hair, Hinata and Neji's children always have Blank White Eyes, and Sakura's children are mostly pink-haired (especially if they're Sasuke's and the writer doesn't really like him).
- Cori Falls loves this trope. Jessie and James's kids are not only clones of their parents, but the youngest daughter has her mother's love of sweets and the son wants to be an artist like his father. Jessie herself is a mishmash of her mother and father in both looks and personality.
- One inside joke in the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl fandom has it that Volkner is the Patchwork Kid of Cyrus and Cynthia (never mind that Volkner is around the same age as those two...). Well, there IS a time traveling Pokémon...
- The Pokémon fic My Little Pumpkin inverts this with Ash and his OC father. Ash gets his skin colour and black hair from his father Victor but has his mother Delia's brown eyes. Considering how different Ash looks from Delia, it makes sense he'd get his traits from his dad, but genetics can be unusual in the anime so it's not for certain in canon.
- Yamujiburo:
- Ash and Misty's son Cane has reddish brown hair, which is a mix of Ash's black and Misty's red, and his mom's eyes,
- Brock and Nurse Joy's daughter Joyce has Eyes Always Shut like Brock, as well as his skin-tone. Her hair resembles her mother's, albeit a darker reddish brown.
- Jessie and James' kids have Jessie's eyes but varying shades of purple hair like James.
- In After the Fall of Giants, Chi Tsu physically resembles his father Wing in every way except his hair colour, which is as blue as his mother Ling's.
- There are numerous Sonic/Amy children who are part-blue, part-pink; if children worked this way in The 'Verse, there must have been SOME extensive pure-breeding program in place to keep most characters a single color! Some fans avoid this confusing conclusion by making their child(ren) purple.
- E-vay's Sonic Boom-verse Sonic/Amy fan-child Aurora has her mother's pink fur and her Tuft of Head Fur, but her dad's upright quills.
- Knuckles/Rouge fan-kids usually have bat wings like their mother but also have echidna traits like Knuckles.
- Single Parents Night: Amy gets her pink fur from her hedgehog father, but her green eyes from her elephant mother.
- The prevalence of fusions between two or more characters in the canon show leads to this trope being the default in human AUs. Justified if the two characters in question have fused in canon and the resulting character is written as their child.
- Garnet herself is probably the poster child for this phenomenon, as she herself is a permanent fusion of an Official Couple. In stories where Ruby and Sapphire exist, Garnet is commonly written as their child.
- Given that most Touhou Project characters already appear to be mashups of mythological elements and symbols and are defined by them, it's not surprising that most fan-conceived kids turn out like this.
- Possibly as a parody of this, it's reached a point where canon characters are being considered to be Patchwork Kids of other canon characters.
- Possibly as a parody of this, it's reached a point where canon characters are being considered to be Patchwork Kids of other canon characters.
Miscellaneous
- One particular fic in the Iron Man/Captain America fandom justifies this by making the child essentially a clone (or a highly engineered child).
- Some Bolt fanfic has Bolttens spawning half-kitten, half-puppy offspring.
- It's popular in X-Men fanfics for the mutants' future offspring to have powers that are a combination of their parents' (for instance, a child of Storm and Bishop absorbing energy to fuel his weather control). It's worth noting that there is no precedent for this in the comics. Most second-generation mutants either inherit one parent's powers, develop original ones, or none at all.
- Although at least Nocturne's powers — very similar to those of her father Nightcrawler — also extend to an attack called "hex bolts" (named in reference to her mother, Scarlet Witch). The physical principle behind it still goes back to Nightcrawler's powers, though.
- Ruby Summers, the possible future daughter of Scott Summers and Emma Frost, can transform into a diamond that looks red because of her optic blasts that actually look black. In most (non-616) realities where major Marvel heroes have kids, their powers are combinations of their powers. For a very obvious example, Reality-9811 (What If? v2 #114, "What If the Secret Wars never ended?") where EVERY child of two heroes or villains has a form of powers inherited from both parents. e.g. Wasp + Human Torch = Firefly who shrinks, has wings, and flame powers; Hawkeye + She-Hulk = Mustang, who is green, strong and resilient, with inhuman archery skills.
- Happens very often in Percy Jackson and the Olympians fanfiction. Example:
- "Holly Athena Jackson is the daughter of Percy and Annabeth. She has strawberry blonde ringlets and green eyes. In case you can't tell, she looks exactly like Annabeth only with Percy's eyes."
- ... and that's not even getting into all the Percy/Annabeth children with one gray eye and one green eye.
- ... and that's not even counting the absurd amount of children that have blonde hair with black streaks or green eyes with grey flecks.
- In Finding Nemo fanfic, Dory and Marlin are often given "patchwork" offspring, i.e. a clownfish with blue stripes instead of black-and-white, or a blue tango with a few orange scales here and there.
- Quite common in Tokyo Mew Mew fandom; there's a fic somewhere in the net where Kish and Ichigo have a half-human, half-alien baby. She had green hair with red streaks and amber eyes with brown flecks (Kish has green hair and amber eyes, Ichigo has red hair and brown eyes).
- With Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, fans are very fond of giving Simon and Nia's child Nia's eyes. Fan art tends to make fans cry, since Simon and Nia never got a chance to have children.
- Fans of the Super Smash Bros. series or Nintendo in general have done this with various pairings, most of them from male/male pairings.
- Happens in The Nightmare Before Christmas fandom quite a bit. These "skeledolls" are a mixture of ragdoll and skeleton and very rarely, if at all, male. Then again, if two undead people can reproduce successfully, why should the fans pay attention to the rest of the biological rules?
- Patchwork kids are starting to pop up in the Monster Buster Club fandom. An example would be Anneliese and Jake, Cathy and Danny's children. Jake has brown hair and blue eyes while his sister, Anneliese, has brown hair and one blue eye and one green eye. And she has Psychic Powers.
- The Banjo-Kazooie fandom occasionally spawns offspring for the title two, who are a bear and a bird. The result? Half-bird, half-bear offspring (if they don't follow the Gender Equals Breed trope). However, to be honest, they'd be far from the weirdest things in their universe.
- Some people in the Superjail!! fandom tend to give the Warden and the Mistress's bastard children their parents' personalities or unique traits. Sometimes, the children are given gap-teeth like their dad! Or they could simply just wear their parents' clothes, usually with different colors.
- In Housepets! the Series, Peanut and Grape have their own children with a little mystical intervention from Tarot. Grape ends up having five kittens, each looking different. Dayshaun looks like Peanut, Tarot looks like Grape, then Parnok is solid white with a purple tail (which gives Plausible Deniability; the "official" story is that Alcor, another cat, is the "donor"), while Louise and Nutella are both solid dark brown.
- Empath: The Luckiest Smurf inverts this trope by having Hefty and Handy's father be a Patchwork Parent.
- The Daria fandom has an interesting example with Veronica, the third Morgendorffer sister who shows up in various Alternate Universe stories. In this case, it's more Patchwork Sibling; she is usually depicted as looking identical to Quinn, but with Daria's glasses and personality.
- Dante and Lucia's kids in Devil May Cry: Revelations and its mini-sequel Dante's Night at Freddy's don't have a lot of features mentioned, but they are all dark-skinned with white hair, borrowed from both of their parents. Their eldest daughter, Evie, is mentioned to resemble Dante's mother Eva in her adult years.
- Done in a literal sense by the 9 fandom, what with the main characters essentially being living ragdolls. While there are a few exceptions, the majority of fan children will be made with the same fabric and materials as one or both parents. Another common tactic is their name usually being some combination of the parent's numbers, though this is done less often since some fans will try to give them more creative names.
- Downplayed in Justice Society of Japan; Electra Pendragon is implied to be the daughter of Saber and Gilgamesh from a post-apocalyptic future, so it's fairly reasonable for her to be a red-eyed blonde. On the other hand, her powers are absolutely nothing like the ones either of her parents posses.
- As listed under Film, Kermit and Fozzie's father in The Great Muppet Caper is an inversion. Joe Apel's fanart plays it straight by pairing the green-furred, cross-pupiled bear with a brown female frog with Fozzie's eyes (and a polka-dot necktie).
- It's common in Zootopia fan-works to give Nick and Judy a rabbit/fox hybrid child.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil fanfics usually have this happen with a Starco (Star/Marco) child. Many times the kid will be a girl like Star (often so she can be next in line for the throne) and have markings on her face like all Butterfly women, but dark skinned like Marco. The opposite can happen as well.
- Ella from the Wicked fic Promises Kept looks like a copy of her mother Glinda, except with sandy brown hair and dark blue eyes from her father Fiyero.
- Snowflake of the RWBY fic Snowflake! gets her skin-tone and hair colour from Weiss but her purple eyes from Yang.
- Undertale fan kids are notorious for this. Just look up fan kids for any given Undertale ship, and nine times out of ten, they will be a combination of their parents' species (for instance, a child of Toriel and Sans being a goat/skeleton hybrid). Additionally, said fan kids usually dress and act like a mix of their parents.
- Marie Flynn a very popular Original Character kid for Phineas and Isabella. Later on, Ferb and Vanessa's son Tom Fletcher was introduced. Marie is functionally identical to Isabella, but has her father's coloring and sharp angles in her hair, while Tom is basically Vanessa as a 9-year-old boy with a smaller version of Ferb's cube nose.
- The Rabbit Returns to ToonTown is a genderswapped Who Framed Roger Rabbit fic where Jesse (Jessica) and Rhoda (Roger) separated because Rhoda thought Jesse was cheating on her. Rhoda was pregnant when she left her husband. 15 years later, their kids are a humanoid Toon with rabbit ears and a rabbit Toon with her father's green eyes.
- In DiscordantPrincess' The Great Mouse Detective fanfictions, her main OC Danielle Ratigan has gray fur and black hair like her father Professor Ratigan, but has her late mother Mary's dark blue eyes. Likewise, Danielle's children with Basil have this dynamic as well; oldest son Padraic has Basil's light brown fur and Danielle's blue eyes, oldest daughter Mary has Danielle's gray fur and black hair and Basil's green eyes, and twins Vincent and Emily look like gender-reversed versions of their parents.
- The fan children in the Touken Ranbu fanfic series This Citadel is Truly Blessed are guilty of this. Nichibotsune, the son of Mikazuki and Kogitsunemaru, has blue hair with matching fox ears and tail, and his eyes include Mikazuki's blue and gold and Kogitsunemaru's red. Shizennocho Samonji-Aoe has pink hair like his "mother" Souza with a splash of Nikkari's green, and one green eye and one gold eye.
- Kaitō Kokoro: Two of Kiku's and Feliciano's children pretty much inherit their hair colors and hairstyles."...Sure." The elder sibling took two of them, emerald hues filling with wonder as he took in their sleeping forms. "They're...beautiful." Jade depths turned, glancing upon a boy who had locks styled like the father's, eyes revealing to be the same limpid brown of the mother's as they opened. "So this one's name is Nihon, right?" Those same jade depths switched to the second bundle, the other another boy who had brunet hair like his mother's and the same piercing ebon orbs as his father's. "And this one's name is Ren, right?"
- Another DiscordantPrincess example; in her Hazbin Hotel fanfictions, Alastor and OC Megan have twins that have a blend of each parent; boy Almer has Alastor's red-and-black hair and antlers, and eyes with Al's blood red sclerae, but with Megan's brown irises, and girl Almor has Megan's black hair and eyes with black sclerae (Megan has brown eyes with one black sclera and one red sclera) and Alastor's pale red irises.
- BlueButt05 created a whole series of drawings designing children of characters from Fate/Grand Order by merging elements from both parents together. While most of the pairings involves either Protagonist and one of their Servants, some of them include stuff like Caesarion who has Caesar's hairstyle with Cleopatra's hair colour.
- My Deepest, Darkest Secret: Solon is mentioned to look more like his mom Selene with his blue hair and blue right eye, facial features and even personality. Plus, their wolf forms are also similar-looking, the only difference being Solon's left eye color and lighter blue tones. But he has some traits of his father Apollo, like his left eye color, eye shape, Big Ol' Eyebrows and pale skin, and they were enough for Khan to say that he looks more like a pure vampire than an actual hybrid. Even his name is a mix of theirs.
