Ambiguous Gender in Western Animation.
A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples for episodic works shouldn't be added until end of season for the season introducing the ambiguity (or after 3 months, for episodic works without seasons). This is to allow time for the story to develop the character and resolve ambiguity. There is no waiting time for non-episodic works.
- The Squeaky Peepers from Abby Hatcher have feminine-sounding voices, but their genders have not been specified. Little Do was the first established as female in "Abby's Squeaky Peeper Panic". Big Do was originally called female in "Abby Loses Elvin", but was later established as male in "Abby's Track and Field Day" and "Grumbles the Squeaky Peeper". La was established as female in the short "Fuzzly Treasure Hunt".
- Adventure Time has BMO aka Beemo, a living video game console voiced by a woman. Some characters refer to Beemo as female, while some refer to it as male. In "BMO Noir" BMO has a fantasy noir adventure in thrall to a femme fatale. In "BMO Lost" BMO acts as a surrogate mother for a baby and "marries" a comparatively masculine bubble. In a couple episodes BMO is seen speaking to their reflection, and pretending it's a relatively feminine alter-ego called "Football". When Football asks if BMO is a robot, BMO says, "I'm a little living boy." Later, Football calls herself a "real baby girl". In "Be More", BMO's creator calls BMO "he".
- Roger from American Dad! is an alien and always referred to as male, but is apparently able to produce an egg and transmit it through 'kissing' someone. He also lactates. It doesn't help that on one occasion, he claimed he "doesn't have a wang," yet in another episode he claims he's just really small due to steroid abuse. He's also implied to be sexually attracted to both males and females at different points, has camp tendencies and assumes identities of both genders with his many disguises.
- Amphibia gives us Mr. X's sidekick Agent Jenners aka "Jenny", who has a masculine wardrobe and hairdo but has a rather feminine-looking face, and is often called by their feminine-sounding nickname. And they aren't referred to with gender-related pronouns to date, and is yet to speak a single word.
- Beast Wars:
- Although stated as female, Airrazor was physically ambiguous enough that when the show was dubbed for a Japanese audience, her gender changed. The odd part is that the toy was ostensibly, but not obviously, male. The character profile used male pronouns, but the show writers wanted more female presence. The blurb was rewritten and the character portrayed as female on the show. She was changed back to male in Japan because they thought it might sell more toys. This had some unintended consequences later on, when Tigatron and Airrazor's romance went beyond Implausible Deniability, and the writers just went with it after that. The self parodical Legends manga, aimed at an older audience of Beast Wars and Generation 1 fans, seemingly changed Airrazor back to female — except not actually, instead portraying him as an effeminate crossdresser along with decidedly male Beast Machines character Nightscream for some reason.
- Transmutate's gender was a mystery. Other characters mostly referred to the deformed Transformer with "it". Aside from that, there was one utterance of "she" as a pronoun, and Transmutate was given voice by the show's voice director and Transformers alum Susan Blu, leading to the prevailing contention the character was female. This was later confirmed in the IDW Beast Wars: Uprising comics where she uses the same design as Arcee from Transformers: Prime but with the pale gold and teal coloration from Beast Wars.
- The snake from the Big City Greens episode "Cheap Snake" was called a female by the pet store owner, whereas it was referred to as male by Cricket and his family.
- Blaze and the Monster Machines:
- The three baby T. rexes in "T-Rex Trouble" had rather ambiguous-looking faces. None of them were referred to with gender-related pronouns, which led to confusion over what their genders are. The only exception is Chompy, the red T. rex, who was called female by Blaze.
- While the monkey and elephant that help AJ in "AJ to the Rescue" were male, the firefly was never referred to with gender-related pronouns, and even had ambiguous-sounding vocal effects.
- Out of all the animals in the Great Forest in "The Flying Lion", only the panda was referred to with gender-related pronouns as male.
- Craig of the Creek: In "Beyond the Rapids," Craig's expedition leads them to a "Merkid," a child who wears a mermaid tail and flippers while swimming in the creek. The Merkid is perfectly androgynous, chubby with buzzcut hair and wearing a gender neutral swimsuit (even their clothes, briefly glimpsed on the bank, look unisex). On top of that, they never speak. Craig and his friends never even debate if the kid is a boy or girl, and simply refer to the Merkid as "they/them."
- Parodied in The Critic where someone is on Saturday Night Live flat out asking Pat from It's Pat! is a boy or a girl. Jeremy Hawke just comes from off screen and outs her as a girl and takes off her wig showing she has much longer hair. Pat tells Jeremy that was her whole bit and he has ruined her career. He just states "oh well" and moves on to announcing the opening.
- Fluffy and Uranus from Duckman. The title character's teddybear secretaries, they have distinct feminine voices, wear bows around their necks, and their behavior is mostly feminine, but apparently they have male genitals as they were humping a woman's leg in one episode and they say that they haven't been neutered. This is lampshaded in a later episode where the men and the women are separated from each other and forced to live on opposite sides of the city, but they can't decide on which side Fluffy and Uranus belong on so they make them crossing guards.
- Face's Music Party: Although Face has a masculine voice, they don't have any definite masculine or feminine features due to only being a face. They have both male-presenting and female-presenting forms which they turn into, sometimes in the same episode. Word of God is that Face has no defined gender, and episode descriptions explicitly use "they/them" pronouns when referring to Face. Face's official character bio on the Nick Jr. website takes it one step further, and avoids using any third person pronouns for them.note
- In the Gravity Falls episode "Soos and the Real Girl", there is a scene where Soos is trying to figure out the gender of a goth at the mall. "So you're probably a girl, right? Wrong? Nah, I was right. Wrong?"
- The titular character of Kaeloo, in-universe. While she uses she/her pronouns, none of the cast members are sure of her gender. Word of God says that Kaeloo is a hermaphrodite, but the other characters clearly don't know.
- In an episode of Lloyd in Space, the characters spend an episode trying to figure out the gender of a new kid named Zoit. When asked about it at the end of the episode, Zoit reveals that members of its (alien) species have no gender until they turn thirteen, at which point they have to decide to be male or female. Zoit chooses a gender, but it's never shown or told which.
- Middlemost Post: Per the
creator, Parker has no true gender, as of course clouds do not have genders. That said, Trabbic has actively avoided using labels such as "agender" or "non-binary" to refer to the character, his stated philosophy being that "the neat thing about a cloud is that different viewers will see different things", and that he hopes anyone watching relates to Parker regardless of their gender. Pre-release materials largely use masculine pronouns to refer to the character, whilst Parker's voice actor, Becky Robinson, is female. - In Mission Hill, the gender of Carlos and Natalie's baby was never revealed, and on top of that its name wasn't mentioned at any point in the series; everyone called it "The Baby".
- Molang: The titular Molang and his friend Piu Piu are stated on Wikipedia to be neither male nor female, but "beings".
- The Owl House:
- The Collector is referred to with masculine pronouns by Philip, who has yet to meet them at the time, and has an androgynous voice, though "Hollow Mind" implies that they're (at least physically and a bit mentally) a child, so the voice makes sense. Dana later revealed in a tweet that the Collector uses he/him and they/them pronouns.
- Malingale the Mysterious Soothsayer from The Good Witch Azura is never referred to by any gendered pronouns, and they look vaguely masculine the one time we see them in a piece of self-insert romance fanart Amity drew. The closest thing we get to confirmation on their gender is Dana saying that they're not "necessarily" a boy, which considering how LGBT friendly the series is could point to literally anything aside from cis or trans male.
- The Collector is referred to with masculine pronouns by Philip, who has yet to meet them at the time, and has an androgynous voice, though "Hollow Mind" implies that they're (at least physically and a bit mentally) a child, so the voice makes sense. Dana later revealed in a tweet
- One episode of The Penguins of Madagascar had an annoying kid at the zoo informing Alice that the only way to tell a male penguin from a female was with a DNA test. The penguins laugh at his naivety until Alice declares that she only knows they have three males and one female, and "the birds know which is which." All four had been assuming they were all male, leading to a mass identity crisis as they tried to figure it out. According to their DNA test, all four ARE male. Alice is using an incompletely printed report.
- The caterpillar in Disney's Pluto the Pup short "Springtime for Pluto", who first seems to sing with a deep voice, which is later revealed to be a gag because it was underground and its voice was echoing through the tunnel, because once it emerges, its voice is very high-pitched and falsetto. However, during its Transformation Sequence, it again sings in a deep bass, though its mouth is never shown to move in sync with the words so it's questionable whether the caterpillar is even singing the song at this point. However since when it finishes its metamorphosis and emerges as a Spicy Latina butterfly, this could be a case of was female all along or a Gender Bender.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Bullet the squirrel from "Stray Bullet" is all but stated to be this. In addition to having an ambiguous-looking face like the girls, Blossom and Bubbles refer to Bullet with female pronouns while Buttercup thinks it's a boy. Lampshaded during the Debating Names segment:Buttercup: Well, how do you know it's a girl?
Blossom: How do you know it's a boy? - Ridley Jones features the character Fred, a bison statue with a masculine name and a feminine voice and appearance.
- Kodos of The Simpsons, thanks to a throwaway line in the seventh Halloween special where Kang introduces Kodos as "my sister", is under scrutiny by fans on what gender they actually are. Previous and later episodes would indicate that Kodos is male, but in one of the video games Kodos is able to take part in a mission that only female characters can do (while Kang isn't). The Futurama crossover has a Post-Credits Scene where the pair meet Lrrr and Ndnd, who are having a fight. Ndnd runs off, and Lrrr asks "the one of you who is female" to go and console her, and both of them go. In the eighteenth Halloween special, Kodos mentioned her "700 testicles", but in the twenty-second Halloween special, an unambiguously female Rigelian named Kamala also mentioned having testicles, and in the thirtieth Halloween special, Kodos reveals that she has "32 sexual identities", further complicating matter by bringing Bizarre Alien Sexes and Ambiguous Gender Identity into the mix.
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Rock Bottom", it's hard to tell what sex any of the Rock Bottom residents are. Not helping matters is that one of them lays an egg (through its mouth) and another is a male-sounding anglerfish with the glowing lure of a female.
- Steven Universe:
- Gems appear feminine, use female pronouns, and are almostnote all voiced by women, but that is simply a projection, their actual bodies being their gems. And while Rose is consistently referred to as Steven's mother, Gems usually reproduce asexually, his conception being completely unique, and they seem to be borrowing Earth terminology. Word of God is that they have No Biological Sex and no human genders. ("There are no female Gems. There are only Gems.")
- As Steven's Half-Human Hybrid status makes him the only Gem with a gender at all, him fusing with anyone but another male human introduces some level of androgyny:
- Stevonnie, the fusion of Steven and Connie, has feminine and masculine traits, a voice that could be described as either, and has female and male characters attracted to them. Characters familiar with Stevonnie use "they" pronouns, though it's often ambiguously worded whether said pronouns refer to Stevonnie or Steven and Connie collectively. An online profile Stevonnie makes for themselves in one of the Dove Self-Esteem Project shorts lists them as being non-binary and intersex.
- Steven's fusion with Amethyst, Smoky Quartz, is also androgynous, has never been addressed by any third-person pronoun in-show, and the show's crews have never specified an appropriate pronoun. However, his other fusions with gems are less androgynous, and the staff have stated "they/them" and gendered pronouns are equally valid. With Sunstone (Steven+Garnet) and Obsidian (all of the main Crystal Gems together), Steven is outnumbered by female-presenting Gems in both cases (as Garnet is herself a fusion), so female pronouns are also OK with both. Obsidian in particular is by far the most feminine-looking of Steven's fusions with other Gems, although less so than when Rose was a component. On the flip side, Rainbow Quartz 2.0 is unique in that he is much more boyish than any of Steven's other fusions, and as such male pronouns are absolutely OK for him. He's also the only Gem fusion to be voiced by a man. After all, Pearl has been known to rock a tuxedo.
- Gems appear feminine, use female pronouns, and are almostnote all voiced by women, but that is simply a projection, their actual bodies being their gems. And while Rose is consistently referred to as Steven's mother, Gems usually reproduce asexually, his conception being completely unique, and they seem to be borrowing Earth terminology. Word of God is that they have No Biological Sex and no human genders. ("There are no female Gems. There are only Gems."
- Alice from Superjail! used to be this for fans until the second season (and Word of God beforehand in a 2009 interview) confirmed her as being a transgender female.
- Thomas & Friends: Despite being male in the books, Rusty wasn't referred to by gender-specific pronouns in the first four seasons he appeared in, and had a rather ambiguous-looking face and persona. This was dropped when HiT Entertainment took over, but he was accidentally referred to as female in a few episodes.
