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The offspring of the Missing Link and a mule, if happily married to the promising child of a Manx cat and a penguin, would not outrun centaur and griffin; it would be something lacking in all the interesting features of man and beast and bird.

In science fiction and fantasy, there are lot of different species. Often they interbreed, however implausible this is (for multiple reasons). One result of this is Half-Human Hybrids, but in other cases things get a little more complicated. This trope is when two different hybrids breed and make a new hybrid. (One common definition of "species" is a group in which interbreeding can produce fertile offspring — try not to think too hard about it. However, it should be noted that this isn't absolute: there are confirmed cases of hybrid fertility and introgression — which is how modern Homo sapiens have genetic admixture from other members of the Homo genus, most famously Neanderthal DNA.)

Sometimes the Science Fiction version of But Not Too Foreign, Ambiguously Brown. The writer may deploy Hybrid-Overkill Avoidance to avert the problem entirely. See Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot for when the Rule of Cool takes this to another level. For combinations of only two species, see Half-Human Hybrid, Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid, or for second-generation hybrids and on, Uneven Hybrid. If two hybrids of the same type breed to make another one of themselves, it's True-Breeding Hybrid.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Bleach: There are four souls, representing four races (Shinigami, Hollow, Quincy, Human), each with their own set of special powers that defines them (Zanpakuto, Hollow Masks, Spirit Weapons, Fullbring). Ichigo is a natural hybrid of all four souls, due to some extremely unique circumstances surrounding his birth. His parents were Isshin (Shinigami) and Masaki (Quincy). An experimental Hollow of Aizen's got out of control and attacked Masaki (Fullbringer- they get their powers from their pregnant mothers having some interaction with Hollows) and was later sealed in Ichigo and fused with his soul (Hollow). A follow-up novel has the villain attempt to create an Artificial Human hybrid between the four types of soul. He succeeds, though he has some problems keeping the hybrid's patchwork body stable that Ichigo didn't experience due to his natural birth.
  • Slayers: Zelgadis is 1/3rd human, 1/3rd golem, and 1/3rd "blow demon" (whatever that is).note  He's not a natural hybrid of the species, but was cursed with this state by his teacher Rezo. The chimerical form does actually increase his strength and magic potential, but at the expense of a disfigured appearance.

    Comedy 
  • From a widely circulated list of music history jokes:
    "Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large."

    Comic Books 
  • DC Future State: One of Superman's descendants in the year 3000 was mothered by a Tamaranean (Starfire's species). As Superman is Kryptonian, and his bloodline was given rise by the very human Lois Lane, Theand'r Ban-El is evidently a three-way hybrid.

    Fan Works 
  • Casey Steele: Rebecca Clause has Dragon Ancestry, but just that she's "descended" from them so presumably she's majority human.
  • In Child of the Storm, Harry's father is Thor (who was incarnated as James). This means that he's half Asgardian. So far, so simple. Except that he was conceived his father was a human wizard, leaving him with three sets of biological grandparents. Furthermore, Thor is one quarter Titan thanks to Bor, Odin's father, marrying Theia. Lily, meanwhile, was a witch and a latent mutant, and, to complicate matters further, it's implied that the Asgardian side of the family intermarried with the House of El a very long way back. No one's quite sure, and in any case, the genetic influence would be minimal. Initially, all this confluence of heritages really seems to succeed in doing is giving Harry a few Psycho Active Powers that make him more dangerous to himself than anyone else, and a headache when it comes to trying to figure out his family tree. The powers are resolved by the end of the first book. The family tree, however, only gets worse.
  • This piece of Dragon Ball Z fanart making fun of the various Author Avatar characters that are a bane to DBZ fanfics.
  • Fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic have produced quite a few. Most common are Satyrs, the offspring of a human and any character from the franchisenote  which are basically human from the waist up and pony from the waist down. There are also Kirins the offspring of a pony and a dragon, Hippogriffs, the offspring of a pony and a gryphons (which are in fact canon), and strangest of all, the eerily cute Tatzlpony, a hybrid of a pony and that huge worm thing from Three's A Crowd. Basically if there are two different species in this show, you'd better believe a hybrid has been made of them. Naturally, centaurs are also a thing.
  • For a specific fan example from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, we have Badumsquish who is very fond of creating hybrids from the series. Among others he's hybridized a pony with a toaster and a lamp, a human with creatures such as timberwolves and windigos. Fluttershy with a squirrel, Applejack with applesauce, and for the absolute oddest example, Rarity with one of the dress monsters from Do Princesses Dream Of Magic Sheep. Unsurprisingly, he's a big fan of Tatzljack as well.
  • In Strange Scales, after Jacob imprints on the mermaid Riana, Edward wonders what their child will be like considering that it will be half-mermaid and half-wolf.
  • The Shin Sekai: Through their father Rikuo (1/4-Nurarihyon, 3/4-human) and their mother Tsurara (pure Yuki-onna), Ritsura and Rihan are effectively half-human, 1/4-Nurarihyon, and 1/4 yuki-onna.
  • In Snow Angels, a Haruhi Suzumiya fanfic which is now deleted, Kunikida turns out to be part Humanoid Interface, part Time Lord, part Saiyan, and part Vulcan. His son adds being half-human to that.
  • From Memory Gamma, a Star Trek fanon wiki, the Warship Voyager version of Rachel Leslie. Part human, part Klingon, part Andorian, and part Cardassian. Apparently done by use of Borg nanoprobes to alter her DNA.
  • Where in the World Is Harry Potter? parodies this with Dubya, an elf Dobby fought in a dream/memory Harry has. Dobby suggests Dubya is "Half elf, half goblin and half tree. (The extra half being because of the tree.)"
  • All Mixed Up!: Diesel, the shark that Mariana Mag has at her aquarium, is friendlier than other sharks, although he is fond of roughhousing. According to Mariana, he's half-dolphin on his mother's side, which would explain why he averts the Threatening Shark trope despite looking like a shark through and through.

    Film 
  • In The Monster Club, interbreeding between vampires, werewolves and ghouls is how you get a "shadmock" like the one in the movie. Additional examples are named (raddies, maddies, shaddies, mocks), but not shown.

    Literature 
  • Dark Reflections Trilogy has Merle, whose mother is a sphinx, and father a demon/human hybrid. Despise this she looks completely human.
  • Discworld
    • In Making Money, Moist is asked to guess what breed Mr. Fusspot is, and can only manage to say, "Er, all of them?" He's half "spoon hound," but whatever else he is is unknown.
    • The recurring character Nobby Nobbs is the subject of massive speculation about his ancestry due to his appearance. He eventually becomes a card-carrying human. Not figuratively; he was always human, he just now literally carries a card to prove he's human. In later books there's speculation he might be part goblin, and he's apparently fairly attractive by their standards.
    • Eric introduces (and extroduces) the demon god of the Tezuman empire, Quetzovercoatl, the Feathered Boa. Half-man, half-chicken, half-jaguar, half-serpent, half-scorpion and half-mad (a total of three homicidal maniacs).
  • In M.C.A. Hogarth's furry fantasy web serial/novel Flight of the Godkin Griffin the Godkindred Kingdom believes that by interbreeding they can become gods, the ruling caste, known as Godkin, have ten or more bloodlines. Angharad Godkin (the eponymous griffin) is part coatl, crane, fisher, hawk, lion, phoenix, puma, ringtail cat, Siamese cat, and snake.
  • In Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. novels, hybrids between the various fantasy races have become so common that the ancestry of some of them can be almost impossible to guess. Really complex blends are referred to as "uniques".
  • In The Great Tree Of Avalon, Tamwyn is referred to as a human, which is odd, because technically he's half flameon, one-quarter deer man, with a mermaid great-great-grandmother. So, a bit less than 20% human overall.
  • Played for Squick in "Auguren", a subterranean segment of the Brian Lumley novel Iced on Aran. Possibly a parody or Take That! about Lovecraft's miscegenation hang-ups, it describes the systematic crossbreeding of captive human perverts with tick-men and giant parasitic worms, generating increasingly-deformed monstrosities.
  • Bair from Mithgar is one of these, known as "the impossible child". His bloodline is a mix of elf, human, Mage, demon, and probably one of the various breeds of Spawn, though this is never confirmed and if so which kind is never stated. Bair's dad, Urus, from whom he gets most of these bloodlines, is a less extreme example. It's explicitly stated by Dalavar the Wolfmage that it's the contribution of the demon and its inherently magical blood that permits all this hybridization; in most cases the different races in this 'verse are infertile with each other.
  • In On Fairy-Stories, J. R. R. Tolkien warns of the dangers of this being a muddier and less impressive creature the more parts get spliced in.
  • Pollen goes into a little more detail on the matter. The source of the whole thing was a sort of fertility plague released from the dream world... men afflicted with it would pretty much go out and inseminate anything that seemed like a good idea at the time. Whether this was an intentional side effect was unclear.
  • Star Trek Expanded Universe and Novel Verse:
    • Sonek Pran is one quarter Betazoid, one quarter human, one quarter Vulcan, and one quarter Bajoran. He refers to himself on one occasion as a "quadroon".
    • One world called Helena, values diversity, to the point where the more different species you have in your ancestry, the more honored you are. If you're all one species, though, you will have to use that other, less attractive dining hall, among other things. (Naturally, and ironically, Tuvok gets to experience that.) They'd be very happy to meet Mr. Pran, if he doesn't turn out at some point to actually be from Helena.
    • Kirk's son in the Star Trek Shatnerverse books has 1/4 Klingon, 1/4 Romulan, and a strange mix of human ancestry from Kirk and his Chalchaj'qmey mother (an artificial Klingon/Romulan hybrid race with the addition of human organs). Additionally, according to Spock, the boy's Romulan ancestry also makes him part-Vulcan. Interestingly, Joseph Kirk's unique genetics make him an Ancient, among those who seeded most of the galaxy with life.
    • Commander Phillipa Matthias, a minor recurring character in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch books (also appearing as ship's counselor of the USS Enterprise-F in Star Trek Online), is mostly human but has a Vulcan grandfather. She's married to a Bajoran named Chon Sibias and has two children with him.
  • Tales of MU:
  • Touch (2017) gives this a darker twist—Caleb and his fellow "assets" fulfill this trope because their owners have captured various Half-Human Hybrids and selectively bred them to create slaves with a wide variety of different powers.
    • At the end of book one we learn that Sarah is an elf. Her kids, James and Bex, were already one-quarter elemental on their dad's side.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth has the so-called Half-elven family, which contained several Elf-Human intermarriages, and has also a divine Maia ancestress. Members later got to choose to be counted among the Elves or Humans (which results in (im)mortality and a different fate after death) so as not to give the Valar a headache trying to figure it out how to treat them. The two lines of intermarriages resulted in the twins Elrond and Elros, who respectively chose Elfdom and Humanity. Their daughter Arwen and distant descendant Aragorn later rejoined their lines once more.
    • Aragorn and Arwen's son Eldarion beats them all; he has the blood from all three elven clans, and that of the human lines of the West, as well as Maia blood. And all those bloodlines are via royal families, meaning Eldarion is royalty amongst all High Elves and Elf-Friend humans, in the entire world.
    • When asked how was that possible, the Professor gave this explanation (it's all in one of his Letters): Biologically, the bodies of Elves and Humans had to be the same, otherwise they would not be able to reproduce. The Elf-Man difference was not organic, but spiritual. Elves had been made by Eru to be bound to the world and unable to leave it by dying (even their bodily death is followed by either reincarnation, becoming a ghost, or eternal imprisonment in the Halls of Mandos), while Men had been granted a short life and their spirits must leave the world after dying. This is why an Elf-Man hybrid can be given a choice of what would happen to them after death.
    • It is possible that this is how Hobbits came to be, since they share traits with humans (mortality, ingenuity), elves (love of nature, pointy ears) and dwarves (living underground, small stature). It is also mentioned in a few places that different hobbit populations share traits with whichever of the other races they are closest to. This is almost entirely speculation, however, since Tolkien never said anything definitive on the subject.
  • Vurt does it in fives—most of the five races can have sex with the others, but there are only five combinations that produce viable offspring. Some of those can interbreed to produce five possible three-way combinations, and those can interbreed to produce five possible four-way combinations. Of course, there's only one five-way combination, but so far one of those has never been born. (This makes no sense from a genetic standpoint, of course, but a): cyborgs apparently pass down their robotic limbs to their children, and b): human plus dog is a viable two-way pairing.)
  • Xanth is full of characters like this. Thanks to the influence of "Love Springs" note , the magic of the realm taking care of any chromosome issues, and various magic spells compensating for any extremely incompatible pairings, such mixed critters are actually fairly common.
    • For example, Esk is half human, one quarter ogre and one quarter nymph. He marries a living statue called a brassie, and their children are one half brassie, one quarter human, one eighth ogre, and one eight nymph. Esk's grandchildren are set to be even more complicated given their love interests- his son is engaged to a shapeshifting human half-dragon.
    • Some are actually common enough to become established species in Xanth, such as winged centaurs, who come from various combinations (one being a cross between a centaur (human/horse cross) and a hippogryph, which is itself another Heinz Hybrid, being a horse/gryphon cross), and the mer-naga, which are a cross between mermaid (human/fish) and naga (human/snake).
    • Taken to extremes in one novel when the characters pass through a number of alternate Xanths in search of one particular alternate, basing their assessment of whether or not they've made it on who Jenny Elf married and the resulting "species" of her daughter. In one universe, she was half-skeleton. (it's a long story...)
    • Taken to its Logical Extreme on one of the moons of Ida, where only interspecies pairings are fertile- combinations encountered there include a Goblin-Harpy-Dragon-Sphinx...that's the part of his pedigree that he remembers anyway.
  • In the Hollow Kingdom Trilogy, goblins choose their mates by who will provide them with the strongest children, regardless of species or consent, and their offspring inherit whatever the parents like most about each other, along with random body parts from other ancestors. Consequently, they tend to be a disfigured mashup of wildly different body parts, and most can't even travel in human lands without heavy disguising. For example, the royal family is prone to heterochromia, Extra Digits, and animal paws.
  • In the Franny K. Stein book series, Franny's lab assistant Igor is described as not being a pure Lab and also being part poodle, part Chihuahua, part beagle, part spaniel, part shepherd and part some weasely thing that isn't even a dog.
  • The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
    • Luke Garroway is a Shadowhunter (half-human half-angel) who was bitten and subsequently turned into a werewolf (human with a demonic mutation). Since then, however, Luke mostly acts as a full werewolf, having lost his ability to use runes or angelic weapons.
    • Tessa Gray, the miracle daughter of a Shadowhunter and a demon. She is considered a warlock, but since all other warlocks have human mothers, Tessa is a bit special. She does not have a mark and can have children, whereas other warlocks are infertile. By extension, her descendants, which include Jace Herondale as well as the Blackthorn siblings, are part-demon, although none of them inherit her immortality.
    • Helen and Mark Blackthorn are the children of Nephilim and faerie (half-angel half-demon). The rules for half-faerie children is rather unique: they are born in a blank slate and their upbringing will determine which world they belong to. Helen and Mark, having been raised in the human world, are mortals, whereas the also half-faerie Meliorn became an immortal because he was raised in Faerie.
    • Kit Herondale is the son of a mundane and a Nephilim who has faerie ancestry. Unlike Mark and Helen, Kit's faerie trait is not apparent (e.g. he doesn't have pointed ears) but he does have a faerie-related supernatural ability.
    • Ash Morgenstern. His father is a Nephilim who was fed demonic blood, turning him into a black-eyed Nigh-Invulnerable monster, while his mother is a faerie. To top it all off, Ash has been experimented with various magical implements since he was born. The result is a human/angel/demon/faerie mix who possesses wings, something that are previously seen only in honest-to-God angels.
  • Legion in Tasakeru is a hybrid of eight sentient species.
  • The Price-Healy family in InCryptid is mostly human, though great-grandma (to the main characters) Frances Brown wasn't fully human, since she passed down some genetic immunity to cuckoos' telepathy. Her granddaughter Jane married an incubus, Ted, and had two children who are half-incubus and half-succubus respectively. Sam is a fūri, though his mother was human, and if he and Antimony have children they'd be a quarter fūri and 1/16 whatever Frances was.
  • In one book of Dragonlance: The New Adventures, the characters come to an isolated mountain town whose inhabitants have a mixture of human, dwarf, elf, gnome, and kender ancestry, to varying degrees. It turns out the town is where the Sorceress Asvoria's fortress used to be, and the villagers are all descended from her slaves.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Bureau of Magical Things: Tri-Lings are hybrids of humans, fairies, and elves, with the magical powers of the latter two. Fantastic Racism between fairies and elves, along with their general disdain for humans, is what prevents them from being well-known. Kyra is the only known case in the modern day, and was thought to have been created by an accident involving getting blasted by elf and fairy magic simultaneously, though eventual evidence suggests that she had a Tri-Ling father, which her deceased human mother may or may not have known about.
  • Doctor Who:
    • This is the fate of all of humanity. In fact, it was even used as a plot point in the Eighth Doctor comics — humanity's genetic template had been so corrupted and augmented by interaction with various alien species by some point in the future the Cybermen eventually noted their cyberconversion process just didn't work on most humans anymore, forcing them to raid the past for viable converts.
    • "The End of the World" has Lady Cassandra, "the last human" (who at this point is a sheet of skin with a face). When Rose gets a moment to talk to her, Cassandra explains that humans haven't gone extinct but at this point the entire rest of what would be called "human" have various aliens in their ancestry, and thus she's only "the last human" by her Fantastic Racism standards. Rose doesn't stand for it.
  • Star Trek:
    • A time travel episode of Star Trek: Enterprise had a dead body (from the future) with genetic material from most of the eventual-Federation's species, and the (living) time traveller Daniels said he was Human "more or less" (meaning he's probably 50% human and 50% everything else).
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In an alternate timeline seen in "Children of Time" the Defiant crash-landed on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant 200 years in the past. The crew intermarried, with Jadzia known to have married and had children with Worf. By the time of the episode the planet's entire population of 8,000 people descended from the crew are Heinz Hybrids of (at minimum) human, Trill, Bajoran, and Klingon.
    • Star Trek: Discovery: President Rillak is apparently part human, part Bajoran and part Cardassian. The combination is...striking to say the least. Those cheekbones could cut glass. Not to mention symbolic, as the Cardassians and the Bajorans did not get along, to say the least.

    Music 
  • The song "Misconceptions" by Mercedes Lackey parodies it — "My mother never talks about that orgy..."

    Mythology 
  • Older Than Dirt: In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is 1/3 human and 2/3 god. His mother is a goddess, and his father is a human who became part-divine in life. It might seem odd, but genetical inheritance is not necessarily an even 50%/50% split, so it's in theory (assuming gods exist) possible.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The Orcs of Thar contains rules for interbreeding of humanoids. 2/3rds of offsprings from such breeding are the same as one of the parents, while the last are considered hybrids. Ability scores, appearance and other racial features are randomly determined among the two parents (although 2/3rds are generally the same species as one of the parents)
    • 3rd edition Mongrelfolk are exactly what they sound like, the result of generations of interbreeding among the humanoid races. Introduced as hideous goblin-like beings, these were later retconned as being rare mutants among a race who always look similar to, but not quite the same as, the observor's race, so a dwarf would see an unusually broad-shouldered and hairy elf, an elf would see a particularly tall and graceful dwarf, etc. This lets mongrelfolk get along with pretty much any neighbor, and most mongrelfolk are decent people regardless of appearance. After all, they're at least a distant cousin to almost any race out there.
    • Thanks to the proliferation of creature templates in 3rd edition, it was possible to start with a half-orc or half-elf character and slap on template after template, including half-dragon, half-fiend, half-celestial, half-elemental, and half-troll, to get an impossibly mixed up character with incredible powers (but only one hit die). For example, the Hulking Hurler record-breaker is a 10th-level character made by abusing loopholes in the Symbiotic, Tauric, and Lycanthropic templates. It does damage that can only be expressed via scientific notation.
    • The 3.5E Forgotten Realms: Underdark supplement has the baphitaur, a cross between a tiefling (Uneven Hybrid of human and fiend) and a minotaur. The fluff text notes this to have been done by magical experimentation rather than sexual reproduction.
    • Thouls, originally of Mystara but also found in the Nentir Vale, are a cross between trolls, hobgoblins and ghouls. This gives them superior (by trollish standards) intelligence, Super-Strength, a Healing Factor, and rending claws that also paralyze living creatures. In the Vale, the Super Breeding Program that created them ultimately deemed them a failure, because mentally they turned out more like their trollish relatives than their hobgoblin ones.
    • The fan-written sourcebook Book of Erotic Fantasy includes a chart over what races can breed. Notably, only dragons (who are Voluntary Shapeshifters) and Nymphs can breed with all other races.
  • Expansions in the card game Munchkin allow players to be "Third Breeds," three races at once.
    • The "Chimera" card permits the player to equip one or more of each race card.
  • Pathfinder has rules to represent different kinds of Half-Human Hybrid further interbreeding. The results are still mostly human, though (in game terms they're humans with alternative class features) ; while mixes in general are fairly rare, humans will have kids with pretty much anything on two legs.
  • Leviathan: The Tempest: Lahmassu Hybrids (who draw their inhuman ancestry from a single Strain of Leviathan) don't qualify as this, but there are also Hybrids who blend multiple Strains' influence, and who consequently have even nastier genetic conditions than the Lahmassu.

    Video Games 
  • Potentially taken to absurd levels in Agarest Senki. If you pick properly with each generation of characters, the fifth generation's hero (Rex) will be 1/8th Human, 1/16th Syrium, 1/16th Neocolom, 1/8th Dark Elf, 1/8th High Elf, and 1/2 Harpuia.
    • The second game has a more subdued example, as the third generation's hero (Grey) can potentially be 1/4 Human, 1/4 Neocolom, and either 1/2 Oneltes or 1/2 Harpuia.
  • God of War (PS4) has Atreus as a god and human on his father's side and a giant on his mother's side.
  • In Mortal Kombat, there we have the Sub Zero brothers wherein they are Chinese-American with a descent from cryomancers from Outworld.
  • In the Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion pack, Storm of Zehir, non-lawful, non-good humans can chose two heritage feats at level one, allowing them to become part human, part demon and part fey. Then they can take the Red Dragon Disciple prestige class and become half-dragon as well.
  • In Pirate101, while not directly stated, it is implied that the rare and powerful bumbleloon are the result of a giant hornet somehow managing to breed with a buffaloon (which looks like a buffalo crossed with a balloon with a tiny set of wings on its back added for maneuverability). It's also implied this happened naturally and fairly regularly since its meat has been used to summon a powerful spirit for generations.
  • In Rune Factory 3, the main character is a half human, half sheep monster hybrid, who can switch between human and sheep forms. His possible brides include an elf, a mermaid, and a girl who is a half human, half phoenix hybrid. All of these marriages can produce children.
  • Star Trek Online features Kal Dano, a character from the future (established in previous canon) who is now revealed to have amongst other things human, Vulcan and Lukari (a species you made first contact with literally a few minutes prior) ancestry. At the end of his two-episode story it turns out that due to temporal shenanigans and unfortunate accidents he is the corpse from the future mentioned for Enterprise in the Live-Action TV folder.
  • Med'an, the son of Garona Halforcen and Medivh from the World of Warcraft comic. His mother is half-orc, half-draenei; his father was human. As those species all originated on different planets, his epithet "child of three worlds" is literally appropriate.
  • In Hearthstone, the Nightmare Amalgam has the "All" minion tribe, which is treated as every minion tribe: Beast, Murloc, Demon, Pirate, Dragon, Totem, Mech, and Elemental. Every tribe synergy (and anti-tribe) effects works on it.
  • Lydia Greyrose from Wizard101 is half farie and and the other half hasn't been said exactly other than it's not farie and that her half sisters are evil witches that live in candy houses and eat children. Her farie blood broke the Always Chaotic Evil nature and gave her wings but made her smaller than her sisters.
  • Metroid: Samus Aran starts out as out fully human, but in the end, she's anywhere from as much as 95% human to as little as 10%. For most of the series, she's a human with enough Chozo traits to survive where they resided, but then Metroid Fusion brings in the vaccine made from the infant Metroid cells; which her unique organism adapts much in the same way her suit can adapt modular, alien technologies in order to fight off the infestation. From there, fans debate about whether exposure to absorbed X Parasites when recovering her arsenal has messed up her genes further; Nintendo itself has been silent on the matter. The game shows that the X Parasites were destroyed by her Metroid vaccine. Metroids eat life energy, not solid food, so she's not integrating absorbed X physically into herself, but it's implied that the X she gets abilities from had them biologically, rather than mechanically, so fans understandably still argue. Come Metroid Dread, Samus’s Metroid genes are revealed to be overtaking the other ones, meaning she’s gradually transforming into a humanoid Metroid; by the end, her powers have awakened in full force, becoming the most powerful Metroid.

    Webcomics 
  • Parodied with Ranger from 8-Bit Theater. After this strip it was established that he's 1/2 Elf, 1/4 Lefeinish Human, and 1/4 half-orc.note  According to Red Mage's calculations, he has seventeen grandfathers, two of whom haven't been born yet.
  • The Bird Feeder has Exotic, an exotic bird of unspecified species. The characters page states that "its mother was a Victoria Crowned pigeon, its father was a kingfisher, and its grandfather was an emperor penguin." It therefore claims to be of royal heritage.
  • Josh's character in the webcomic Chainmail Bikini is half-human, half-Dark Elf, and half-Orc. He justifies it by saying that Orcs and Dark Elves are okay with polygamy.
  • Double Subverted in Divided Sky. While Interspecies Romance is quite common, the child's species is either that of the mother or the father. Usually. Otherwise, the person will embody this trope.
  • Happens in Dominic Deegan. In this case it's confined to one area and is apparently caused by eating the food, so it might be that the people don't actually start out that way.
  • Elf Blood has Carlita Delacroix, who is a half-French half-Cuban half-Human half-Spirit Incarnum.
  • Ensign Sue Must Die, being a Parody Sue-pileup work, naturally makes Ensign Sue half-whatever-is-convenient-for-the-plot. She manages to rack up quite the number of halves.
  • Keti of Footloose is half human, a quarter werewolf and a quarter nymph.
  • El Goonish Shive:
    • Grace has a mixture of human, alien, other alien, and squirrel DNA. She's a voluntary shapeshifter, and an in-universe character who knows this sort of thing has mentioned that a human could impregnate her the old-fashioned way (unless she's in her human/squirrel hybrid form).
    • Then there are her siblings who, like Grace, were born from the same set of alien eggs that allow the DNA of any number of any species to be combined to create a viable creature (meaning the number of combinations is practically infinite). Beings born from these eggs are called seyunolu (chimera) who can shapeshift into any of their parent's forms as well as undergo Partial Transformation. However, with the exception of Vlad/Vladia, Grace's brothers contain no actual alien DNA (the shapeshifting ability is due to the eggs). Guineas is 50/50 Human/Guinea-pig; Hedge is 75/25 Human/Hedgehog; and Vlad/Vladia contains DNA from several bats, owls, hawks and even a leopard in addition to human and alien but who cannot shapeshift without risking her life.
  • Grrl Power: Dabbler's entry on the cast page says that she's "roughly 1/2 succubus, 1/3 doppleganger, and 1/6 some unidentified alien species". She also has a few cybernetic parts including an arm and eye, and on top of all that is also a mutant, though really, how would you tell?
  • In The Kenny Chronicles Tarnekis are genetically engineered Half Human Hybrids for whom species appear to be mostly cosmetic. The titular character is about 75% fox (both red and fennec) and 25% cat, while his girlfriend (later wife) is half-lemming half-baboon, needless to say in the sequel series their daughter is a bit complicated.
  • In Kevin & Kell. it turns out a member of a Fantastic Racism group of "purebred" canines is "23% coyote, 21% jackal, 48% dingo ... and 8% hamster". It's implied that many members of the group, and presumably a large proportion of the population who've never worried about who their ancestors were, have something similar. (One other canine made a Suspiciously Specific Denial about how he definitely didn't have a Berkshire pig in his ancestry after being questioned about his curly tail.)
  • Celeste in Last Res0rt try to breed with as many different species as possible. Veled for example is part Anyr, part human, part Vidian and part Zillan.
  • Ellen's D&D character in Leftover Soup is a "half-celestial half-dragon half-nymph half-elf." Which she claims makes sense because half-elves are their own race.
  • This is the official explanation in Roommates for supernatural abilities. One extremity is pure human (no magic at all) the other pure Fair Folk ("made of magic", extremely rare) anything between is a Heinz Hybrid (so most of the people considered The Fair Folk, the Mage Species and probably even a part of humanity). Every character can try to do the genealogical research himself if he cares what percentage fae he is (they normally don't because the magic family tree makes "1+1=<><" sense at times).
  • Ogrek the Undisciplined in Yamara is one-quarter orc, one-quarter pixie, one-eighth human, one-eighth ogre, one-eighth elf, and one-eighth... something.

    Web Original 
  • Coincidentally, or not, an old Brunching Shuttlecocks feature parodied this aspect of "Star Trek" with a character who was a "half-Romulan, quarter-Vulcan, one-eighth-Bajoran office manager, whose cold exterior belies a heart of utter aloofness."
  • A rather odd example with Dream SMP in the form of Fundy. Fundy's father, Wilbur, is the son of the winged human Philza and a Samsung Smart Refridgerator. Fundy is the son of Wilbur and a salmon, which Wilbur has confirmed multiple times to just be a salmon and not a shapeshifter. This would make Fundy 50% fish, 25% fridge and 25% human. What's odd about this example is that Fundy himself is a humanoid fox of all things.
  • Rampant in the Furry Fandom due to Special Snowflake Syndrome.
  • In Metamor City Callie Linder's mother was an ordinary human, but her paternal grandparents were an archon and a succubus. Her father's good and evil halves canceled each other out, leaving her with just the chaos.
  • Yahtzee's character Mortimer Rafflesworth Everton-Smythe of Adventure Is Nigh is only called a "half-elf" to save time explaining exactly what he is. Apparently, his grandparents were each two different pairings of two different kinds of Half-Human Hybrid. In artwork, Mortimer looks more or less like a normal human with pointy ears and an Ambiguously Brown complexion.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventure Time:
    • In a variation, Marceline "the Vampire Queen" is genetically half-demon, half-human. The vampire part resulted from when she was bitten as an older teen during a fight with the Vampire King. In fact, most of her amazing vampire powers (namely levitation, invisibility, self-healing, and shapeshifting), were actually obtained before becoming a vampire thanks to demonic-soul-devouring of some especially powerful vampires she hunted.
    • While her first appearance was just an easter egg, "Ocarina" reveals Jake has a bear/dog/rainicorn granddaughter.
    • Four episodes after "Ocarina"; "Joshua And Margaret Investigations" reveals Jake himself is a Non-Human Humanoid Hybrid, making all his kids dog/rainicorn/shape-shifter Heinz Hybrids and further complicating his granddaughter into a bear/dog/rainicorn/shape-shifter Heinz Hybrid.
  • Ben 10: Alien Force 's first arc ends with the Highbreed ending up this way. They're Nazis IN SPACE! to the point of having genocide as a hat, being themselves a Master Race and the only ones worthy to exist. It turns out that race itself is facing extinction due to generations of inbreeding and the Omnitrix's ability to repair genetic damage was broadcast through their Portal Network in the Grand Finale of the arc. The only way it could do this: the Omnitrix AI spliced them with the DNA of every species known, mixing up their genes enough to resolve their sterility.
    • The Omnitrix has done this more than once. Kevin 11 got his powers when he used his own energy absorbing abilities to try and take the Omnitrix's powers, resulting in a monster that's one-tenth every one of Ben's Omnitrix repertoire at the time. In one episode set in the future, he absorbed even more aliens and gained the ability to become a colossal monstrosity that he calls "Keven 11,000". Ben 10: Ultimate Alien has him absorbing the Ultimatrix, gaining access to both Ben's normal aliens and Ultimate aliens.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Irwin is revealed over the course of the series to be half-mummy, 1/4-human, and 1/4 vampire; his mother is a mummy, and his paternal grandfather is Dracula.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Parodied with Charlie the dog in a short where he tries to convince Porky to adopt him. He says he's "Fifty percent Collie, Fifty percent setter (Irish Setter!) Fifty Percent Boxer, Fifty percent Doberman Pincher, Fifty percent pointer -— there it is! There it is! There it is! — But, mostly, I'm all Labrador Retriever!" When Porky demands proof, Charlie's response is, "Just get me a Labrador, and I'll retrieve it!"
    • This joke was also used in another short featuring various breeds of dogs, with Charlie having that conversation with the narrator. It includes the immortal bit, "This is a Doberman Pinscher. *pan to dopey looking soldier* This, is Doberman. *pan back* And what does a Doberman Pinscher do? *The dog gets up, puts on a mischievous face, and goes off-screen to live up to its name.*
  • Lilo & Stitch: In The Origin of Stitch short subject, when Stitch enters Jumba's lab, he learns that his body is comprised of elements from other aliens which Jumba tracked down and used to create Stitch, his greatest masterpiece of creation, who surpassed Jumba's expectations when he found a family and a home.
  • Star Trek: Prodigy: Dal has no idea what species he was until it was revealed that he was a genetically engineered combination of over 20 different species.

    Real Life 
  • Modern humans. Current paleontology, anthropology, and genetics indicate that ancient Homo sapiens interbred with at least four other members of genus Homo, including the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly late-surviving Homo erectus. In particular Asians, Caucasians, and Native Americans share the majority of their immunity genes with the Neanderthals, and one family line of Africans and African-Americans originating in Cameroon carries a Y-chromosome that appears to predate Homo sapiens. PBS has a 2015 miniseries on the subject, First Peoples.
  • Most "mutts" you find in the local pound tend to have very colorful family trees. A dog could have had a pure Chow grandfather and Labrador mix grandmother on one side, and a Welsh Corgi/Standard Poodle grandfather and German Shepherd/American Heeler grandmother on the other. And, at some level, he'll likely show traits of all of them. However, it's worth noting these are all technically the same species, Canis lupus familiaris.
  • The Congolese spotted lion or lijagulep, a curiosity that's a cross between lion and leopard-jaguar hybrid.
  • F1 hybrids do exist in real life as well, though they are notorious for being sterile. Examples include:
    • Mules: a male donkey and a female horse produces an animal with the strengths of both and the weaknesses of neither. Females can theoretically breed but pregnancies are rare
    • Hinny: Their opposite, a female donkey and a male horse. They're also noticably harder to breed and are considered "hit or miss", and are smaller than mules due to their smaller mothers
    • Liger: Yes they exist, and they are awesome. The offspring of a male lion and a female tiger, they're also illegal as far as deliberate breeding goes because of the dangers such an enormous animal places on a mother.
    • Ti-Liger: Again, yes, these exist, but are insanely rare. Male tiger, female liger. A bit smaller than the Liger, but not by much.
    • Li-Liger: Just as rare as the Ti-Liger. Male Lion, female Liger.
    • Tigon: The opposite of a liger, a male tiger and a female lion offspring. These are also not sterile and have historically had kids of their own, but they're considerably smaller than ligers, more in keeping with the size of their Tiger parent.
    • Ti-Tigon: As rare as the Ti-Liger and Li-Liger. Male Tiger, female Tigon.
    • Li-Tigon: Also a rarity. Male Lion, female Tigon. Info on all four of these second generation hybrids can be found on The Other Wiki.
    • Leoger: These hybrids of male leopard and female tiger have occurred naturally in the wilds of India on enough occasions for them to rate a common name (dogla) among local natives.
    • Jaglion: A male jaguar and a female lion. The most well-known case involved the father being a melanistic jaguar, resulting in one of the two jaglion cubs being a panther.
    • Zebroids: There are so many different ways to make a slightly different but functionally similar zebra F1 hybrid that it's easier to class them together. Zebras can mate with any other equine and produce a zebra offspring, from mules to horses, with the child having a mix of the pattern and physicality of the parents (creating horses with zebra striped legs, for example). They're also notoriously aggressive.
    • Wholphin: Mating a female bottlenose dolphin with a false killer whale produces another type of hybrid, one that can produce offspring but with a success rate comparable to Krogan
    • Nanulak: Grizzlies and their polar cousins can mate to produce a Jack of All Trades ursa with an ashen coat that mixes those of its parents. Also nicknamed "grolar bears", they've become more common as populations of both species decline and females are unable to find mates of their own species.
      • Grizzlies bears can also breed with American black bears. Interestingly, black bears can't breed with polar bears. This means, that in theory, some combination of grizzly/black bear pairings may be able to breed with grizzly/polar bear pairings. The amount of selective breeding that mixing black bears with polar bears via grizzly bears would require is probably impossible without human interference.
    • Beefalo: the offspring of cattle and bison produces a meat machine that would give Epic Meal Time a run for its money. Best of all they're fertile. Unfortunately this also means that those interested in conserving the American Bison population are having problems since cattle are so prevalent in America. Only a minority of remaining bison herds are purely bison; the rest contain at least some cattle genes.
    • Savannah: Child of the serval and a common household kitty. While these too can breed, they're at their biggest and most powerful as first and second generation cats, as successive generations pull a Dragon Ball and result in smaller and weaker kittens that are more like their cat side than their Serval one.
    • Cama: Much like the beefalo, this offspring of a llama and a camel gives more wool than its llama parent with the temperment and domesticated attitude of the camel.
    • Dzo: Dzo are the ligers of the Bos family, becoming bigger and stronger than either their yak or cattle parents. The females are also fertile, allowing the generations to carry on.
    • Wolfdog: Like its name suggests, this is the child of a grey wolf and a common Dog. And since dogs and wolves are still genetically very close (being currently considered to be one and the same species), they have no fertility problems whatsoever. Breeding one carries all the pluses and minuses that must have plagued our ancient ancestors when they first domesticated Wolves, because these animals can vary between shy and submissive to as cunning and vicious as a regular wolf. However their strength makes them a promising means of immediately breeding out common weaknesses in purebred dogs, allowing their children to regain some of their durability and versatility at the cost of extreme variability.
      • Coydogs are crosses between domestic dogs and coyotes. They do not socialize well as coyotes usually don't form large groups but can be tamed if raised from birth. In some states they are menaces to livestock and pets.
      • Coywolves are fairly common, though there is some decrease in fertility. Coyotes in the Eastern states tend to be larger than 'yotes out West due to wolf genes. The red wolf is believed to be a coywolf variation that bred true and is of intermediate size between coyotes and grey wolves and formed packs bigger than coyote families but smaller than grey wolf packs, before they went extinct in the wild, fortunately there's a captive breeding program but many of those released have interbred with coyotes.
      • Golden Jackals can breed with domestic dogs but because of their differing chromosome counts many hybrids are sterile. The Soviet Union bred the Sulimov dog as airport sniffers by crossing jackals with Lapponian Herders and then breeding the resulting half-jackals with Huskies to make them more trainable. Since the 70s other breeds such as Spitz's and fox terriers have been bred into the line and 40 Sulimov dogs are in existence, all owned by Aeroflot-Russian Airlines and used for security.
    • At least one instance of an African/Asian elephant hybrid was born in the Chester zoo in 1978, named Motty. He died 12 days after birth from an intestinal infection. This example is considered unusual since both parent species belong to different genera.
    • Occasional hybrids between the closely-related fin whale and blue whale have been well-documented, and confirmed as such by genetic testing. Whether they can interbreed with fins or blues is questionable, not least because their mating-call songs don't match those of either parent species.
  • Since before the Internet, various amusing snippets of poorly-written homework assignments have circulated throughout the world. One of these boasts a claim that George Frederic Handel was half-German, half-Italian and half-English. "He was very large"


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Mary Sue

Mary Sue is a hybrid of everything.

How well does it match the trope?

4 (6 votes)

Example of:

Main / HeinzHybrid

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