Generation Xerox / Video Games

Generation Xerox as seen in Video Games.

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• In Alien: Isolation, a grown-up Amanda Ripley goes in search of her lost mother Ellen, and through the game ends up going through a number of the same situations her mother did way back in the original 1979 movie.
• Assassin's Creed, due to the bleeding effect.
• The Bubble Bobble series always features a green bubble dragon and a blue bubble dragon, regardless of setting. In games where the dragons take human form, they are always depicted as young boys in overalls, whose only distinguishing features are the color of said overalls and hair.
• The Belmont family from Castlevania. For hundreds of years, each generation's males (and many of the females) had to fight Dracula (or his offspring) at least once. This is due to some vague "curse" in the family (which also carried over to other family lines). The Sorrow games go even further. The six main protagonists are Soma (the reincarnation of Dracula), his "friend" Mina, vampire hunter Julius Belmont, witch Yoko Belnades, Genya Arikado (aka Alucard), and Hammer (who was originally going to be playable in Julius Mode in Dawn of Sorrow, and fanon suggests would have played like Grant DaNasty). Everyone is essentially a counterpart to someone from the story behind Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, except that Mina (the Lisa counterpart) isn't dead.
• The Yakras in Chrono Trigger. The original posed as the chancellor of Guardia to get closer to the Queen so that he could kill her and sever the royal bloodline (which includes Marle, a.k.a. the present-day Princess Nadia). All of his descendants followed a similar pattern, but you only get to kick the butts of Yakra I (600 A.D.) and Yakra XIII (1000 A.D., much later in the game).
  • Marle herself is the spitting image of Queen Leene, to the point that Yakra I (600 A.D.), his army of monsters, and the entire staff and residence of Guardia Castle mistook her for Leene, allowing what would have happened to Leene to happen to Marle instead. In the Imagine Spot where Lucca explains why Marle seems to have disappeared into the ether, the entire Guardia line seems more or less identical.
  • Ozzie (600 A.D.), part of Magus' Quirky Miniboss Squad, also has an identical (but Palette Swapped) descendant in 1000 A.D.
• Deus Ex:
  • An interesting example happens in Deus Ex: Invisible War, where the lead character turns out to be the descendant of the character from the first game, kind of, and he/she faces some similar obstacles and decisions as JC Denton did the first time around.
  • Also done in the prequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where Adam Jensen is heavily implied to be the ancestor of JC and Paul (and Alex, by extension). And of course, Adam's no stranger to fighting worldwide conspiracies, either.
• Devil May Cry:
  • The series does this with Dante performing similar actions to his father, Sparda, which in chronological order seems to be showing that Dante surpasses his father over time:
    • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: Sparda sealed Temen-ni-gru, Dante fights demons there but the tower's fate is never gone into.
    • Devil May Cry: Sparda defeated Mundus as does Dante.
    • Devil May Cry 2: Sparda defeated Argosax, Dante kills him.
    • Devil May Cry 4: Sparda sealed the Hell Gates, Dante destroys them.
  • There's also the fact that Dante wields his father's main sword in Devil May Cry 1 and one he inherited from him in all the other games. He also uses the one his brother inherited in Devil May Cry 4.
  • And Nero with his father Vergil as both use Yamato and Summoned Swords and come into conflict with Dante (and beat him the first time).
• Dot's Home:
  • Carlos refuses to leave the basement of his great-grandma's house despite his asthma attacks. He's implied to have been carried by Georgia between her and Alma, and his great-grandma remarks that he's like his grandfather Hank (Georgia's father) when he moved out in '86.
    Dot: I'm pretty sure flair for dramatics is a family trait.
  • Michael Murphy III looks exactly the same as his grandfather. He also tries scamming Grandma Mavis into selling her house for money to pay the bills, just like how his grandfather scammed her and Karl into buying the ill-repaired house back in 1959.
  • Grandma Mavis remarks that Georgia is an opportunist like her mother Evelyn, always taking every chance they can get.
• Dragon Quest V:
  • Played straight with Prince Harry's son Kendrick being the same selfish brat his father once was. He even does the same prank Harry first did to the Hero when he was a kid, this time to the Hero's children. Not to mention Kendrick shares the same sprite with the young Harry.
  • In another example, after the Hero's mother Queen Mada was captured by the Evil Order of Zugzwang, King Pankraz leaves his kingdom to go on a journey along with his son and Sancho in order to her after she had given birth to their son the Hero. Later, the Hero pursues the same quest while searching for his wife who was also captured by the Order of Zugzwang, right after giving birth to their son and daughter.
• The Elder Scrolls has M'aiq the Lair, a recurring Easter Egg Legacy Character who has appeared in every game since Morrowind. According to the dialogue of the M'aiq in Skyrim, they are all related. Each has the same traits of being a Meta Guy Author Avatar Fourth-Wall Observer (and Leaner and sometimes Breaker) who is fond of deadpan sarcasm, are untrustworthy, and who seems very detached from the game world. Based on the appearance of a M'aiq in the prequel The Elder Scrolls Online, which takes place in the mid 2nd Era, they've been at this for centuries.
  M'aiq: "M'aiq's father was also called M'aiq. As was M'aiq's father's father. At least, that's what his father said."
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Laguna Loire had a long-time crush on Julia Heartilly. When the two got to know each other more, Julia fell for him. However, he is given a mission and never returned leaving Julia waiting to meet him again. When Julia became an Idol Singer, she married General Fury Caraway and had a daughter named Rinoa. Laguna on the other hand was injured and nursed back to health in Winhill Village. He fell in love with Raine, the woman who took care of him, and they had a child named Squall. Seventeen years later, Squall and Rinoa meet and as the story progresses, they fell for each other.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Tidus travels with Yuna and several guardians including Auron on a pilgrimage to defeat Sin. Tidus, having come from an alternate world, hopes to find a way home as well. Ten years before, Tidus' father Jecht traveled with Yuna's father Braska and a younger Auron on a pilgrimage to defeat Sin, Jecht hoping to find a way home along the way. Turns out this is on purpose — Jecht as Sin arranged for Tidus to be called to Spira with Auron helping, and Auron later made sure Tidus stuck around with Yuna. Furthermore, Auron is attempting to subvert this trope because he's seen first-hand that the traditional way of fighting Sin that Braska opted for solves absolutely nothing, and thus he influences Tidus and Yuna to realize that and try to find another way.
  • Similarities between Zack in Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and Cloud in Final Fantasy VII are pretty much unavoidable. However, Zack's journey ends up mirroring Cloud's in ways far more extreme than Cloud's borrowed memories would suggest — for example, both Cloud and Zack end up accidentally falling through the roof of Aeris's church, doing squats to warm up their body temperature on missions in the snow, peering through keyholes, riding around on top of trains...
• Fire Emblem:
  • Genealogy of the Holy War manages to distill this into a single game. All of the characters in the second half are the children of the characters in the first half, and the female characters all have the same classes as their mothers (well, most of them, anyway — gender inheritance is reversed for Brigid's children and there were extenuating circumstances for Altenna kidnapped at a young age, brought up in a foreign land and Nanna her mother's class was "Princess", and, well, she kind of abdicated that when she joined Sigurd's army); likewise, Aless and Seliph, whose fathers are not up for interpretation, share a class with said fathers. (You can pair up the other members of your army such that the male children — and Brigid's daughter, Patty — have the same classes as their fathers, though you may get some slightly odd results.) Furthermore, it is quite possible by exploiting bugs to pair up Seliph and Julia, mirroring the romance between Sigurd and Diadora, and the fifth game strongly hints that Leaf and Nanna is more or less canon. As mentioned before, Nanna does not share a class with her own mother; she does have the same class as Leif's mother, so this would qualify as mirroring the relationship between Leif's parents. ( Actually, the same thing sort of applies the other way around, as Leif's class is Prince, which plays out only slightly different than Lachesis's Princess class in that Leif cannot use staves before promoting.)
  • The Binding Blade and its prequel The Blazing Blade have this, albeit mixed with Distaff Counterparts. Many characters who appeared in The Binding Blade had parents who served in The Blazing Blade. And sure enough...they look almost exactly like that one parent. The other parent is left rather open. For example, Roy looks exactly like Eliwood. His mother can be either Lyndis, Ninian the half-dragon girl or Fiora. None of which are shown or even mentioned in The Binding Blade, as they were specially created for Blazing Sword. Hector meanwhile has a daughter named Lilina who is pretty much a Distaff Counterpart of him (He's a fighter, she's a mage) and likewise, her mother is not shown or named. It can be either Lyndis (once more), Florina, or Farina (It is also important to note that Florina, Fiora, and Farina are the Pegasus Sisters in The Blazing Blade). Lugh and Ray are likewise basically Nino if she was genderswapped (Their fathers are either the Assassin Jaffar or the Mage Erk). Sue is also a Distaff Counterpart to Rath, and looks exactly like him if he were a girl; her mother is also not mentioned, but it's possible it was actually Lyndis due to one of her endings.
    • Meanwhile, several characters who have children in The Binding Blade do mention their parents. Fir the Myrmidon is a Generation Xerox of Lady of War Karla — and the resemblance between her and her uncle Karel (appears in both Binding Blade and Blazing Blade) are also obvious. But who's Fir's father? Well, it's actually Boisterous Bruiser Bartre — who actually can join alongside her and is in both Binding Blade and Blazing Blade(Amusingly, if he's defeated in Blazing Blade, Barte actually says "Uh oh, I'll be back when I heal this wound!").
    • Hugh is what happens when this trope is played with. Canas is softspoken, a bit of a Cloud Cuckoolander, and uses Dark Magic. (But don't call it Dark, please). Hugh is Only in It for the Money, can be pretty harsh, and uses Anima Magic instead. (He inherited the magic talents of Canas's wife aka Hugh's mother, strongly hinted in Blazing Blade to be the sister of Nino's murdered biological mom and a member of a powerful mage clan. Hugh is actually very concerned over how the war is affecting the children and reveals he "let" Raigh steal his Nosferatu tome because he felt bad for the kid, to which Niime remarks that "[h]e's just like his father".
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening brings back children and the pairing system a la Genealogy, albeit this time the kids are from a horrible future where the world is on the brink of collapse. All of the children are tied to their mothers, save for Lucina (tied to Chrom, the main Lord of the game) and a female Morgan (tied to your Player Character if he's male; a female Avatar brings a male Morgan instead), and all of them are similar to their parents in some fashion, either in personality^note Nah, while mature most of the time, can be extremely immature like her childish mother Nowi, Cynthia is as clumsy as her mother Sumia and Kjelle is as much of a Blood Knight as her mother Sully or in character class, albeit not to the same degree as Genealogy. The child who is most like his mother is Laurent, the son of the mage Miriel; both of them are mages, dress in the same black garb (his hat, he mentions, was actually Miriel's), speak with the same overly-complicated lexicon, and are highly intelligent; however, it's subverted to a degree — Laurent is nowhere near as stoic as his mother (whereas she is to an almost stupefying degree), and he prefers to pursue studies and experiment to serve others or find a practical need for them, whereas Miriel does most of her studies purely For Science!. All children also inherit their father's hair color (or mother's, in the case of female Morgan). And then Tiki takes this to a truly exaggerated level by telling Chrom that he resembles an ancestor of his who also always fought for what he thought was right, which doesn't reference even Marth (who already lived 2,000 years before Awakening began), but Sigurd, who lived in some age ancient to even Marth.
  • Fire Emblem Fates also brings the pairing/children system, with the kids being raised away from their parents in Pocket Dimensions and aging up faster than they normally would. These children are tied to the fathers this time, save for Shigure (tied to Azura) and a male Kana (tied to a Female Avatar, with a Male one bringing a Female Kana instead), and generally inherit the mother's hair color (or father's, for male Kana). The ones who resemble their parents the most are: the aforementioned Shigure (both he and Azura have light blue hair, are excellent singers, and are gentle yet very mentally strong), Benny's son Ignatius (both are Gentle Giants and Socially Awkward Heroes with tanned skins and starting in the Knight class), Xander's son Siegbert (tall mounted knights with honorable and kind natures), Odin's daughter Ophelia (very hot black mages with loud presences and the Mark of Naga in their arms) and Laslow's daughter Soleil (cheerful mercenaries who hit on girls)
• One of the racers in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, Kent Akechi, claims to be the son of famous racer Captain Falcon. He also drives a vehicle that greatly resembles the Blue Falcon.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn fell into this trope and subverted it at the same time. Of the first three known characters, two are virtually identical to previous protagonists. The third protagonist, a green-haired girl, drove the fandom insane from trying to figure out who she is.
  • She turned out to be the violet-eyed Wind Adept daughter of the original violet-eyed Wind Adept. Gasp, shock. At least she differs by having a series of healing spells and a more volatile personality.
  • And then along came our fourth party member who, aside from being a boy whose utility spell is Douse instead of Frost, is a perfect clone of the first-gen Water Adept (a point hammered home by his older sister, who differs from Mia only in attitude and hairstyle).
• Granblue Fantasy:
  • As the plot unfolds, it appears that the protagonist's Disappeared Dad took mostly the same path before them, becoming a skyfarer with similar goals and a very similar crew, including Vyrn, Rosetta, and Lecia's father Walfried. Rosetta even lampshades it when she finds out Lecia joined with the crew during her time stuck on Lumacie, ultimately chalking it up to fate.
  • This goes a bit further when you obtain Seox and play his second fate episode which hints that both the protagonist's father and Seox's father were good friends and the protagonist's father helped Seox out. So recruiting Seox can be seen like this.
• Harvest Moon:
  • In Harvest Moon DS (or Cute), all the characters are descendants of the characters from Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. They look the same (and most of them even have the same names, but only in the English version... although their original names were just small variations upon the ancestors' name, such as Sepiria [AWL!Celia] -> Serena [DS!Celia]), except for a few minor details in some of the characters (like eye color), act the same and fall in love with the same people. They wear similar wedding clothing to their (great-?) grandparents. For example, Celia. DS and AWL◊.
  • Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility takes this to an absurd point. If you start a New Game Plus you get to play as your son, or daughter, who looks exactly like you, or your opposite-gender counterpart. Also, the villagers revert back to their original statuses.
  • All the bachelorettes from Harvest Moon 64 bare some level of similarities to their grandmothers, the Harvest Moon bachelorettes. Maria (renamed "Mary" in future games) is the Token Religious Teammate like Maria, Popuri is the bubbly pink-haired florist like Nina, Karen is a bartender with emotional baggage like Eve, and Elli is sweet and looks near identical to her grandmother Ellen.
• Hearthstone has Cairne Bloodhoof, who, when killed, is replaced with his son Baine. This trope applies in that the two of them are statistically identical.
• Infinity Blade has this as a major element of the plot. In the prologue, a warrior ends up being killed by the God King, with the game than showing his son vowing to avenge his father and fighting his way to the God King. Unfortunately, due to inadequate equipment and level-grinding, the warrior ends up getting killed. Years later, his son (who somehow has the same level and equipment of his father when he died) vows to avenge him and fights his way up the tower. Rinse and repeat.
  • However, the first novel tie-in and the second game reveals it's not this trope happening and is and actually a case of Born-Again Immortality, with the main character getting his memories wiped and rewritten to believe he is avenging his "father"'s death. Also, the warrior in the prologue is revealed to be the character's actual son from one of his reincarnations, which would make your first playthrough an inversion of sorts.
• The Legend of Zelda does this as well, to the point of being lampshaded by the opening cutscene of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
  • And taken to ridiculous extents in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. As if an army of Links and Zeldas wasn't already enough.
    • Technically though, we only know certain Zeldas are related; and only two Links are explicitly related by blood, and generally they just seem to be random coincidences contrived by fate. However, as revealed in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword the truth is that each Link and Zelda are a reincarnation of the Link and Zelda in Skyward Sword in which Zelda is the Goddess Hylia in human form and Link is her childhood friend and chosen champion.
  • And it ain't just Link and Zelda. Many Zeldas were raised by an Impa. There's also more than one Anju who needs you to get her chickens back, and more than one Guru-Guru playing the Song of Storms in a windmill. (Interestingly, in both cases, you get the characters unnamed in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, named but with different roles in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, then they return in other games with their OOT roles but their MM names.) There are also a lot of identical mailmen — even the bird guy who's a mailman looks less like the other Rito and more like the usual mailman with wings and a funky 'do. That's just a taste; a full list would be endless. And then there are the slight name changes, like Marin and Tarin becoming Malon and Talon but essentially being the same. Other partial examples like the four carpenters (look alike, names change completely) exist.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is this trope personified. You've got the Link and Zelda as Legacy Characters. You've got the same world map as in A Link to the Past. The same music (for the most part). The same items (for the most part) used. Link ends up helped by the Identical Grandson of Sahasrahla. He explores Lorule, a location similar the Dark World complete with most dungeons having the same names and themes, fights bosses which are the Lorulean counterparts of the ones fought in the Dark World (like Arrghus, Stalblind and Grinexx), goes up against a villain with a similar plan to Agahnim and a design suspiciously like Ghirahim, Chancellor Cole and Ganondorf... Everything that occurs is basically a repeat of the Link to the Past storyline.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a single game example with Kodah and her daughter Finley both falling in love with Hylians (though the former didn't end up with the object of her affection).
• Lufia & The Fortress of Doom and its sequel Lufia: The Legend Returns, feature the same premise, a Reincarnation Romance and heroes gathering journey to slay four Big Bads with a magic sword wieldable only by the descendant of the legendary hero Maxim.
• In Mass Effect 2, Thane attempts to avert this in his personal mission, where he stops his son from carrying out an assassination and follow in his footsteps. It ends with father and son forced to confront each other after years of estrangement.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda plays with this, with the protagonists taking on elements similar to their Milky Way predecessors: the human thrust into a position of influence and responsibility (Shepard and Ryder), the inquisitive asari (Liara and Peebee), the cranky old krogan (Wrex and Drack), and the turian who doesn't play by the rules (Garrus and Vetra), to name a few examples.
• Sort of used in Mega Man Star Force, where Geo and all of his friends directly parallel Lan and company from Mega Man Battle Network. In fact, Echo Ridge looks almost exactly like AC/DC. Though in this case there's no biological connection, it's still one hell of a coincidence that many of the same events played out between two very similar groups of people two hundred years apart.
  • Specifically, it's Lan and Geo, Bud and Dex, Sonia and Mayl, Luna and Yai, and Zack and Eugene. Though it should be noted that the boys have far more in common with their counterparts than the girls do.
    • Although there are points where characters mix, such as Sonia being Geo's main backup, while Zack never gets a chance to help. But there are still parallels even then, as characteristics are still taken from the ordinal just being given to other characters, with Harpnote replacing Protoman as the reliable fighter aside from Mega Man.
• Metal Gear:
  • Subverted, deconstructed, and generally hashed into pieces by Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The new player character seems to experience a sequence of events extremely similar to ones experienced by the previous player character in the previous game, with note-for-note character analogues and extremely similar level design. The character noticed this, too, and began to get pretty existentialist about it, wondering if he was somehow insane and imagining the whole thing. It turned out it was all deliberately orchestrated to have precisely that effect on him. The game was a satire of reiterated sequels, hence the dark use of this trope.
  • An agent, codenamed Snake goes on a solo mission to rescue somebody. There he finds out plans to build a nuclear-armed tank. Eventually, he discovers that his mentor is part of the plot, and after a battle, kills the mentor in combat. Now, are we talking about Big Boss or Solid Snake? This is made obvious by the end of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots when Big Boss and Snake are standing next to each other. That said, the point of 4 is that Snake isn't exactly like Big Boss after all. At the end, he's the only one to be able to live his own life. Big Boss even acknowledges this by saying "If you were in my place back then, perhaps you wouldn't have made the same mistakes I did..."
  • A person who is surrounded by and exemplifies the savage joy of battle, whose life partner is a person who is surrounded by and exemplifies loss and regret, with the two eventually giving the world a prodigious child who saves humanity. Now, are we talking about Big Boss's mentor (the Boss) and her relationship to the Sorrow and Ocelot, or Big Boss's successor (Solid Snake) and his relationship to Otacon and Sunny?
  • In-universe, The main conflict began when Naked Snake/Big Boss killed The Boss. The main conflict finally ends when Solid/Old Snake (who is literally a a copy of Big Boss) killed (his FOXDIE did anyway) The Boss's son Ocelot.
  • Hal "Otacon" Emmerich was a peace-loving scientist who became a loyal companion of Snake, similar to how his own father was a loyal follower of Big Boss during the time of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. As of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, the similarities end there.
• Played subtly for drama in Middle-earth: Shadow of War, only obvious to those familiar with The Silmarillion. Celebrimbor starts out with a justified desire for revenge in the first game, but becomes cruel and tyrannical as he gains more power, causing much suffering and nearly becoming just as bad as Sauron. Celebrimbor is the grandson of Feänor, another elf who went on a justified crusade for revenge against a dark lord but caused much suffering in the process (and was a colossal ass).
• The H-Game Monster Girl Quest! follows the travels of Luka, a young human hero, and Alice, the Monster Lord. Eventually, Luka fights and defeats Alice in battle, and even kills her in one bad ending... just as his father Marcellus did to Alice's mother, the previous Monster Lord. To take this further, the ancestor of both Luka and Marcellus was Heinrich, a legendary hero who killed another previous Monster Lord, Black Alice... and as Monster Girl Quest! Paradox RPG reveals, this was preceded by him and Black Alice travelling around the world together, just as Luka and Alice do in the present!
• An example shows up between No More Heroes and Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes. In the first, one of the bosses is an Ax-Crazy bat-toting alcoholic with a BDSM theme by the name of Bad Girl. As it turns out in the latter game, she has a father looking to her avenge her death at the hands of the protagonist: an ax crazy, bat-toting alcoholic with a BDSM theme by the name of Bad Man.
• Potion Permit:
  • Runeheart is just as hotheaded as her mother Opalheart was when she was her age, and also hates feminine clothes just like her.
  • Lucke takes his stubbornness from his father Garret, like when the former insists on fixing the latter's wheelchair, who in turn insists that it's "okay" and it doesn't need fixing.
• Tekken: With Tekken 3 taking place over two decades after Tekken 2, some characters that had appeared in the previous games are succeeded by family members who practice the same martial arts as the original characters, such as Julia Chang (adopted daughter of Michelle Chang) and Forest Law (son of Marshall Law, inverting this trope), albeit with their own unique twists (Julia working professional wrestling techniques into her Chinese martial arts, for instance). Jin Kazama is a particularly interesting example, being the son of previous Anti-Hero protagonist Kazuya Mishima and deutertagonist of Tekken 2 Jun Kazama. In 3, he trained in Mishima-ryu Karate under his grandfather, Heihachi Mishima. In gameplay, this translated to him being practically identical in fighting style to Kazuya, with some cues from Jun. After being betrayed by Heihachi and subsequently disavowing his Mishima lineage, he would practice an original martial art in later games, which also helped to distinguish him from Kazuya after his return in Tekken 4. Tekken 5 would also introduce Asuka Kazama, Jun's niece, who would fight just like Jun did in previous games as a practitioner of Kazama-ryu Self Defense.
• A comment made by Palmer in Pokemon Platinum implies this. He says he and the protagonist's father were childhood friends who got their first Pokemon similarly to you and your rival.
• Resident Evil 6: Jake Muller and Sherry Birkin become very close over the course of this game (with quite a bit of Ship Tease). Jake is the son of Albert Wesker, who was close friends with Sherry's father William Birkin for many years. Jake is a snarky and intimidating, very skilled fighter with a military background and superpowers, who is arrogant and has Blood Knight tendencies, and is also very intelligent (even if not as obviously so as Wesker). Towards the end, he even starts wearing sunglasses like his father and has a similar fighting style. His similarities with his father are often commented on although thankfully he's a much better person. Sherry doesn't have quite as much in common with her father, but to a certain extent takes after him in appearance and in her general dynamic with Jake, as well as being infected with the G-Virus.
• Romancing SaGa 2 is this trope Up to Eleven. The game runs on generations system, but except for Leon, Victor, Gellard, and the Final Emperor/Empress, there will always be the same lines of characters available to provide you quests and similar recruitable characters with Palette Swap to fill your class rosters no matter how many hundred years have passed.
• The second episode of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse stars Sameth and Maximus, the titular duo's great-grandfathers. They look and behave exactly like our heroes, only Sameth has a mustache and Maximus wears clothes. Except for one thing: both Sameth and Maximus are killed at the end of their adventure, while only Max is killed at the end of the game (although, Sam is killed in an Alternate Universe, which could make this trope work fully).
• James McCloud, father of Fox McCloud from the Star Fox series, is basically just Fox with a pair of Cool Shades. Fox's own son Marcus McCloud also forms a peace-defending squadron in one of Star Fox Command's Multiple Endings.
• Star Wars The Old Republic: The Sith Inquisitor goes to Taris hoping to capture the Force ghost of former Jedi Master Kalatosh Zavros, who left the Jedi Order to follow Revan and Malak and fell to the dark side. In the process, they end up recruiting his descendant, Jedi Padawan Ashara Zavros, as a companion: she too ends up formally leaving the Jedi Order partially out of dissatisfaction with its attitude to the galaxy's more mundane problems.
• Tales of Phantasia reveals itself to be this in the opening cut scene. Playing the game shows that the kids are apparently more competent.
• Played with in Valkyria Chronicles. Everyone thinks Welkin is following in his war-hero father's footsteps, while what he really wants is to become a teacher.
• In the World of Mana games, the Vandole family suffers from this. It's vaguely established that the original Vandole was a young adventurer who stumbled upon and absorbed the power of the Mana Tree, which drove him insane and altered his body composition so that he was no longer quite human. His descendants (or at least the notable ones) are all addicted to Mana and eventually fall prey to their bloodline's need to seek it, which leads them to duplicate their infamous ancestor's empire and/or gambit for the Mana Tree. At this point, they all usually choose to go by their surname or start being referred to like it by those opposing them. Every one of them also seems to have bright red hair and very dark green eyes, and they may or may not be the reincarnations of the original.
  • This is a large part of the You Can't Fight Fate theme in Sword of Mana, where many of the heroes have similar roles to the Gemma Knights, and Vandole's only living descendant literally gets possessed by his ancestor (or something) and tries to carry out the same kind of plan Vandole did.
• The family of Fungalmancer Glop in World of Warcraft takes this trope to the most absurd extreme imaginable. Every generation of the Glop family line is identical to the one before, having the same name, same appearance, same occupation, and exact same response when attacked. Taking out the latest Fungalmancer Glop is a daily quest, and the trope is taken so far beyond eleven that you'd think you were killing the same stone trogg every day.
  • Certain Horde leaders tend to fall victim to this as well. You have Grom Hellscream from Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, a generally bloodthirsty and hotheaded orc to begin with, dooming his people to slavery via the demon blood because he wanted its power, and eventually had to be taken down by a combined Alliance/Horde force in Warcraft III: Reign Of Chaos. Fast forward to the World of Warcraft, specifically the Burning Crusade expansion, where we meet his son Garrosh, who is fairly youthful but otherwise not particularly aggressive Orc. However, after being told of his father's legacy, begins to take on many of his less-desirable traits, culminating in dooming his people to slavery via the Sha because he wanted its power, and eventually had to be taken down by a combined Alliance/Horde force in Mists of Pandaria.
• In Yakuza 5, Haruka Sawamura ends up going through what her adoptive father Kazuma Kiryu did back in 2005: After many battles, the death of a person close to them propelled them to the top of their career, where they both immediately give it all up for their family. And both times, the sequel proved that it was a horrible idea. Haruka even mimics Kiryu's iconic suit with her outfit having the same color patterns.
• Yandere Simulator: Implied to have happened since 1780, when the first Aishi was born: females born into the Aishi family are Yanderes that find their senpais and make them theirs, by force if necessary, and possibly eliminating all rivals for Senpai. Shown strongly with Ryoba and her daughter Ayano, since they're the protagonists of 1980s Mode and the main game respectively: both are Emotionless Girls, both are capable of murder and manipulation, and they even look very similar (and share the same voice actor to boot). Even their tastes in senpais run similar: Jokichi looks an awful lot like Taro (and they also share a voice actor). The S+ secret ending in 1980s mode reveals that, like Ryoba, Ryoba's mother kidnapped her Senpai, and Ryoba's sister 'eliminated' all other rivals for her Senpai's affections.

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