Related in the Adaptation

In a work of fiction, there are two characters who aren't related in any way. The creator may not have intended for them to be related (at least, not at the time, anyway). But when that work is adapted to another form of media, suddenly the people in charge decided to make them relatives. This can be for a variety of reasons including (but not limited to):

• A pragmatic change to eliminate some exposition; it's easier to introduce Alice and Bob as siblings than to introduce Bob as Alice's Like Brother and Sister childhood friend staying at her house while his parents are dead, missing, or off being the Hero of Another Story.
• The characters have something that makes them very similar (be it superpowers, appearance, motivations, what have you), and thus linking them together makes sense thematically.
• By making the characters relatives the stakes are raised and there's a more personal connection between them than if they were just friends.
• Avoiding the Unfortunate Implications of an adult being One of the Kids by making said adult a (grand)parent, uncle/aunt or an elder sibling to at least one of the kids they're running around with.
• Trying to stomp out homosexual undertones in the original work by making the affection characters share familial instead.
• Adding a twist to a remake of a story that is subject to It Was His Sled.
• The result of creating a Composite Character or being Named by the Adaptation.

May result in an Adaptation Name Change, particularly surnames. When it's specifically love interests being turned into family members in the transition, the casting equivalent would be Cast Incest.

Compare or contrast with Everyone Is Related, where it's done within the original work. Sub-trope to Adaptation Relationship Overhaul. Often a part in an Adaptational Upbringing Change. See also Adaptation Origin Connection.

Please do not list inversions here, for that we have Unrelated in the Adaptation. In cases where the characters were related in the original and the adaptation changes how they're related, see Related Differently in the Adaptation. In cases where characters from different works are made relatives in a crossover, see Crossover Relatives.

See Historical Relationship Overhaul for when this happens to real people.

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Examples:

• Fan Works

Anime & Manga

• In the Ace Attorney games, Celeste was Adrian's mentor; in the anime adaption, they're sisters instead.
• The Amada Anime Series: Super Mario Bros version of Momotaro turns Mario and Peach into siblings. It's not mentioned directly in the narrative but the two were raised by the same couple, thus making them related. The short ends on a platonic note, avoiding any incestuous undertones.
• Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad: Due to the series being an Adaptation Amalgamation of various stories from Arabian Nights, this happens with evil wizards Satajit (who was adapted from "Aladdin") and Balba (who was adapted from "The Enchanted Horse"). While in the original story collection these are two standalone stories, and the two wizards are thus unrelated, the anime turns them into brothers, and they frequently team up against Sinbad.
• The 80s and 2000s adaptations of Astro Boy made Atlas, a minor antagonist from the manga, into Astro's "brother."^note The 80s version of Atlas was created from the stolen blueprints that had previously been used to build Astro, while in the 2003 version, he was built by Astro's creator Dr. Tenma.
• In the Italian dub of Attacker You!, it’s mentioned You is a cousin of Kozue, the protagonist of Attack No. 1 (an earlier volleyball anime that was successful in Italy), even if the two series are completely unrelated.
• The 2004 Black Jack anime features appearances from The Three-Eyed One's Hosuke Sharaku and Chiyoko Wato, but with Chiyoko as Hosuke's older sister rather than his classmate and love interest.
• When Nelvana Macekred Cardcaptor Sakura into Cardcaptors, they made two of Sakura's classmates who were clearly fond of each other, with a snarky, cute relationship, into cousins. Then they removed the fact that Meiling and Syaoran were cousins by changing Meiling's surname to Rae.
• Chobits: The anime made Yumi Omura the daughter of the owner of the pub where she worked. They weren't related in the manga, where she was just another employee.
• Digimon Adventure: Originally, the DigiDestined hitchhiked with a total stranger. The American dub, with its concerns about stranger danger, made it so that he's Sora's cousin, thus giving a reasonable explanation why the kids would trust him.
• The 2007 remake of Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld adds a subplot absent in the 1985 movie or original manga, where Demaon's dragon, Medusa, is actually the mother of Miyoko who sold her soul for a Deal with the Devil in order to save an infant Miyoko in the past, getting transformed into a Gorgon-like demon in the process.
• In the F-Zero game continuity, Captain Falcon and Jody Summer aren't directly related; one unlockable video in F-Zero GX hints that the two may have been or currently are dating. In the anime F-Zero: GP Legend however, Jody and Falcon are siblings since in this universe Captain Falcon's identity is Andy Summer.
• Several of the Homunculi in the first Full Metal Alchemist 2003 anime are reimagined as "undead" family members of several main characters from the source material:
  • Sloth turns out to be the Elric brothers' mother.
  • Envy is revealed to be Hohenheim's first son from long ago, making him the Elrics' half-brother.
  • Lust is revealed to be Scar's sister-in-law.
  • Its version of Wrath is revealed to be Izumi Curtis' "resurrected" unborn child.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, which is a modern-day retelling of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, has it where Kaguya is related to the emperor's counterpart (who was her love interest in the original story). More specifically, he's Mikado Shijo, the twin brother of her cousin Maki.
• In one of the manga adaptations of The Legend of Zelda, Link and Zelda are half-siblings. Link doesn't realize this and has a crush on Zelda, but she only likes him in a familial way. Link is half-elf and an illegitimate child from an earlier romance Zelda's deceased mother had, so he was raised separately from Zelda and does not know of his royal heritage.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT:
    • INNOCENT made Linith and Teana (two characters whose only connection in the original continuity is a Master-Apprentice Chain, and they aren't even the same species) into sisters. The same is done with Jail and Quint, which makes their children all cousins. Somewhat downplayed as the Numbers were all sisters, but not biologically related.
    • Downplayed with the six Nakajima sisters, who were all adopted in the original continuity but were changed to be the biological children of Genya and Quint. Even more downplayed with Ginga, Subaru, and Nove who were originally Quint's clones.
    • Also downplayed with Uno, Due, Tre, Quattro and Sette who were still Jail's children in the original continuity, but were changed to all be his biological children. Even more downplayed with Uno, who's a female clone of Jail.
    • Played for laughs when it's jokingly suggested that Sacred Heart is a descendant of Vita's stuffed rabbit.
    • Vivio is implied to be Nanoha and Fate's biological daughter instead of being adopted.
    • Inverted and downplayed regarding Fate. She was never adopted into the Harlaown family in the INNOCENT continuity since Precia is both alive and sane, but the family bond still exists due to Precia and Lindy being Heterosexual Life-Partners who are raising their kids side-by-side.
  • Downplayed with the Takamachi siblings. In Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever, Nanoha and Kyouya are half-siblings and Miyuki is their first cousin. In Lyrical Nanoha proper, there's nothing to suggest that they're not all full-blooded siblings (other than the fact that it would mean that Momoko gave birth to Kyouya at 14).
• Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: In "A New Translation," Stephanie Luio is introduced as Wong Lee's daughter, whereas the original series they weren't related and she was instead his Distaff Counterpart. This would only be canon for the New Translation movies as Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative would introduce her father, Woomin Luio.
• The My-HiME manga made Natsuki an older sister to Alyssa, when their anime counterparts weren't related.
• Pokémon: The Series: Inverted when Professors Kukui and Burnet are colleagues instead of being married like in the games. This is subverted at the conclusion of the Nebby arc when they get married.
• The Sailor Moon Cloverway English dub rather infamously made Sailors Uranus and Neptune cousins as something of a lazy fix to cover up the flirting between the two so it was appropriate for a '90s American kids' show. Unfortunately for the Moral Guardians, the change not only still made them come across as lesbians, but also incestuous lesbians. Which was so much better than just being lesbians. What was really ironic was that the change could've worked had Cloverway bothered to edit out any of the flirting between the two. Instead, the scenes were kept and characters repeatedly referred to them as cousins, even when they were villains who would logically have no way of knowing of their civilian identities.^note For instance, Kaolinite captures Neptune in one episode and tells Uranus "Surrender, or this is the end of the road for your cousin here," while in the original Japanese version, she simply calls Neptune "Your friend." It wasn't so much the change itself that's infamous as much as how poorly it was done. It just made the fact that they were trying to hide what was really a lesbian relationship that much more obvious.
  • Pulled again by Cloverway in a fourth season episode. Two one-shot characters were made brothers when they weren't related in the Japanese dub. Due to this the fandom suspects they were supposed to be a gay couple and this was the dubbers' way of hiding that. The fact that one of these characters was targeted by an undisguised Fisheye and the other one appears to have gotten jealous when Fisheye hit on him seems to support this notion. Also the fact that the Victim of the Week had a job stereotypically held by gay men: fashion designer.
  • The Polish dub turned Kunzite and Zoisite into brothers to hide that they were very obviously a gay couple in the Japanese dub. Seems to have worked, though Zoisite was such a gay stereotype so obsessed with Kunzite that there was only so much the dubbers could do and sometimes the original romantic intentions slipped through, making it seem like dub!Zoisite was in love with his brother. Ironically this change was closer to what their relationship was in the manga; they're a gay couple only in the anime.
• This trope is averted hard in all the anime adaptations of Saint Seiya. In the manga, is eventually revealed the five main characters are half brothers, and their father is Mitsumasa Kido. All the anime versions and spin offs omit this information, leaving the main characters as friends, with only two of them being brothers.
• The manga Sensha Otoko: A True Tank Story is an AU of the Fate Series with no supernatural elements. Waver Velvet (who is Gender Flipped into a girl) and Diarmuid are siblings and the children of Kayneth and Sola-Ui.
• In a bit of Canon Welding, the Twist Ending of the 2007 Skull Man anime reveals that the main character is actually the father of the title character from Cyborg 009.
• In the 70s manga adaptation of Spider-Man, Spidey's primary love interest in the early chapters is a teenage girl named Rumiko "Rumi" Shiraishi. While it's debatable as to whether she's a closer analogue of Mary Jane Watson or Gwen Stacy, Rumi turns out to be Electro's little sister, something that isn't true of either girl in the American version.
• An odd case in the manga adaption of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: Yuya came from the future in this continuity, with the other three Yu boys already being in his mind at the start. In the end, Yuzu marries Yusho, and all four are her sons. They never acknowledged her as their mother during the entire series.

Comic Books

• Sam Simeon of Angel and the Ape being related to Grodd was added in the post-Crisis Phil Foglio book; in The Silver Age of Comic Books, he was just a talking gorilla with no explanation whatsoever. Then inverted in the New 52, where Forever Evil (2013) introduces Sam (also known as Primeape) as having no relation to Grodd and not even a gorilla, but a human who suffered an accident with enhanced gorilla DNA.
• Batman '66, the comic book continuation of the Batman (1966) TV show, has several instances of making characters who originally had no connection to one another related.
  • The Clock King is revealed to be Morris Tetch, brother of the Mad Hatter/Jervis Tetch. This relationship was not alluded to in the show and does not come from the comics, where the Clock King is William Tockman.
  • The one-shot crossing over with Legion of Super-Heroes establishes that the villain Egghead is the ancestor of the Legion's enemy Universo.
  • The Archie Comics crossover reveals through dialogue that Robin and Betty Cooper are second cousins once removed through Robin's Aunt Harriet.
• Batman/Lobo establishes that Batman and the Joker are twin brothers, with the Joker's real name being given as Joey Wayne and turning to a life of crime because Joe Chill kidnapped him the night his and Bruce's parents were shot.
• Following the 2010s Soft Reboot of The Beano, the website and character guide say that Dennis the Menace (UK)'s mother Sandra is the sister of Minnie the Minx's mother Vicky, making Dennis and Minnie cousins. They was no prior indication of this, and until the reboot there was a mild Ship Tease. (And since fans never let go of a ship, Fanon now has it that, since 2010s Dennis's Dad is more-or-less confirmed to be 1980s Dennis, Sandra is in fact the previous version of Minnie.)
• DC Comics Bombshells:
  • Stargirl's family was the one who found Supergirl's rocket when she was sent to Earth as a baby. Stargirl was also an infant at the time, so they were raised together as sisters.
  • Killer Frost, Zatanna, and Raven are the adopted daughters of the Joker's Daughter.
• DC: Earth One:
  • In Superman: Earth One, General Zod is Jor-El's brother and hence Superman's uncle.
  • Teen Titans: Earth One: Both subverted and inverted with Rita Farr (renamed Rita Markov) who is now Tara Markov’s mother although they're still not biologically related, but is no longer Garfield Logan’s adopted mother or married to Steve Dayton.
  • In Wonder Woman: Earth One, it's revealed that Wonder Woman is the daughter of Hercules, who raped her mother Hippolyta.
• DC's adaptation of Demolition Man was an Early Draft Tie-In where one of the sewer refugees is Spartan's daughter.
• In the European Disney Ducks Comic Universe comics, it was for the longest time assumed that Uncle Scrooge and Grandma Duck were brother and sister, what with her being one of the few people that Scrooge respects and act kindly towards and her refusing to let him put on airs around her—the idea being that he left the farm to make his fortune and she stayed and used the same grit to be a farmer and home-maker. When The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck explained their actual relation, that Grandma's son Quackmore married Scrooges youngest sister Hortense (who is about fifteen years younger than Scrooge, explaining the generational gap) and became the parents of Donald Duck, it actually drew headlines.
• Princess Petra/Spinstress from Edge of Spider-Verse (2022) is the daughter of Queen Mysteria, her world's version of Mysterio.
• In Fables, this happens a lot, in part due to use of Composite Character
  • Snow White becomes the sister of Rose Red. They hadn't even met in their original stories and Rose's Snow White was a different (and blonde) sibling, but they managed to compensate for this by combining the two Snows into one.
  • Jack Frost turns out to be son of the Ice Queen and Jack Horner, who himself is every single other Jack from fairy tales and nursery rhymes (except Jack Sprat).
  • Prince Charming is ex husband of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cindirella and father of abovementioned Jack Horner.
  • Bigby, better known as the Big Bad Wolf, is son of North Wind, explaining where his power to huff and puff comes from.
• G.I. Joe: Reloaded makes it so that Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are half-brothers.
• IDW Publishing's GoBots miniseries ends with strong implications that the GoBots are actually precursors to the Transformers, one example being that it is hinted that Road Ranger and Bug Bite are the respective fathers of the Autobots Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.
• In Gotham City Garage, James and Barbara Gordon are Kara Zor-El's adoptive family. For years, Kara and Barbara thought they were biological sisters.
• Heroes Reborn's Rikki Barnes's paternal grandparents are implied to be Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter.
• Hanna-Barbera Beyond: In the 2017 Comic-Book Adaptation of The Jetsons, the Jetsons' Robot Maid Rosie is retconned into George Jetson's mother living with her mind in a robot body.
• An unusual example in that it wasn't actually an adaptation, just a strip with No Continuity—when the UK Anthology Comic Hoot! was merged with The Dandy, Hoot's strip about a troublemaking baby, Cuddles was combined with The Dandy's similar strip, Dimples. The first Cuddles and Dimples strip showed Cuddles' family moving next door to Dimples' and the two babies becoming friends. At some point over the next year, Cuddles' parents stopped appearing and the babies were portrayed as twin brothers.
• In the Injustice: Gods Among Us comics, Connor Hawke's mother is Black Canary rather than Sandra "Moonday" Hawke. This entails Connor's surname being changed to Lance-Queen.
• In the Jem cartoon, Aja and Shana became Kimber's and Jerrica's foster sisters at a young age, but are treated more like close friends. In the IDW comics, they make it a point to show that they are all sisters.
• In the 39th issue of the Justice League Unlimited tie-in comic, Detective Chimp mentions that he has a cousin named Sam who is a cartoonist, implying that he's related to this continuity's Sam Simeon.
• In Legion of Super-Heroes (2020), Mon-El's a distant descendant of Superman and Superboy. He never had any familial ties to Superman in any previous continuity, though the pre-Zero Hour and Retroboot continuities established him to have met Superman during his days as the original Superboy and being mistaken for Clark's older Kryptonian brother before exposure to lead caused him to regain his initially lost memories.
• The Marvel Comics hero Mercury was originally stated to be the son of Zeus and cousin of Pluto, in a clear case of either Sadly Mythtaken or just not caring about accuracy. He was soon retooled as "Hurricane", still a god, but now the son of Thor and still cousin of Pluto. That was all tossed aside when both were retconned into being the ''Eternal Makkari, and Pluto was retconned into being Warlord Kro, deviant enemy of the Eternals, in disguise, making them now an example of Unrelated in the Adaptation.
• In Mega Man (Archie Comics) series, Ra Moon from Super Adventure Rockman is the creator of Shadow Man, the Stardroids, and Sunstar, as well as the master of the evil robot Duo fought at the start of Mega Man 8. In the original games, absolutely none of these alien robots were said or implied to be connected to one another (not even in the manuals).
• The Mighty Thor: This series has a habit of completely screwing with the gods' relationships to each other as compared to the source material. Even more shocking since not many characters from the myths actually make it into the comic.
  • Sif and Heimdall are siblings in the comic, but have no relation to each other in mythology. The only relatives of the latter that are mentioned are nine mothers and of the former are her son and husband.
  • May have happened to Thor and Tyr, but mythology's not clear on their relationship to begin with. In the comic, they're explicitly brothers. One version of Tyr's genealogy has Odin as his dad, which would make him Thor's half-brother, so the comic wouldn't really have changed their relationship. Another version of his parentage gives a completely different figure as his dad, making them unrelated in myth, but related in the comic adaptation.
• Muppet Classics had two miniseries where the story was spiced up by making characters who weren't family in the original story relatives in the adaptation.
  • Muppet Robin Hood establishes that Maid Marian is Prince John's niece.
  • Muppet Sherlock Holmes had the twist of Irene Adler (portrayed by Miss Piggy) turning out to be the adopted sister of Professor Moriarty (portrayed by Uncle Deadly).
• The New 52:
  • Wonder Woman is now the daughter of Zeus and aunt of Wonder Girl (Cassie). Diana was already Zeus' great-granddaughter and had previously been Cassie's grand-niece but writers often ignored this as it would require them to draw attention to Ares' being Diana's grandfather. Nothing in the New 52 hints Ares is no longer Hippolyta's father meaning this version of Diana is the product of some serious Royal Inbreeding.
  • In the The Forever People, Serafina (the Gender Flipped version of Serifan from previous continuity) is Vykin the Black's sister. This also entails giving the blond Serifan a Race Lift.
  • In the Villains Month Origins Episode for Darkseid, he was the brother of Avia, and therefore the brother-in-law of Highfather. (Avia herself remains a Posthumous Character.)
  • In Shazam! back-up strips in Justice League, Billy and his Flashpoint friends are now foster-siblings.
  • The New 52 version of Arthur Light (who is not a villain) is married to Kimiyo Hoshi, the heroic Dr Light II in the previous continuity.
  • Earth 2: Before the New 52, Fury was the daughter of Earth-2's Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor. She is still Wonder Woman's daughter, but she's born illegitimately after her mother was manipulated by Fury's father Steppenwolf.
  • In Justice League Dark #19, it is revealed that Madame Xanadu is the mother of Dr Destiny. Pre-Flashpoint, his mother was established in The Sandman (1989) to be a woman named Ethel Cripps.
  • In the Superman/Wonder Woman tie-in to Superman: Savage Dawn, Angle Man is the son of Vandal Savage.
  • The valkyrie Gundra, an obscure Wonder Woman villain from Earth-2 continuity, is revealed to be the ancestor of a long line of Amazon-haters, whose name evolved over the centuries from "von Gundra" to "von Gunther". As in Paula von Gunther.
• Shazam!:
  • In the first Post-Crisis revamp, Shazam!: The New Beginning, Captain Marvel's arch-nemesis Dr. Sivanna is his step-uncle (making him a Composite Character with Billy's Evil Uncle Ebeneezer) and Uncle Dudley is his real uncle (instead of an honorary one) named Dudley Batson. Both were later Ret Conned.
  • As a form of Canon Welding, DC Comics made Freddy Freeman (Captain Marvel Jr.) and Kid Eternity brothers after acquiring both characters from separate companies. They had remarkably similar origin stories (Raised by Grandparents, grandpa died in a boating accident, they got a power that activates By the Power of Grayskull! and includes lightning), and since the Kid had No Name Given until then they could easily reveal he was Christopher "Kit" Freeman.
  • The Power of Shazam adds a couple of these to Mary's backstory. She was still raised by the Bromsfields, but Nora Bromsfield is now a cousin of Marilyn Batson. In addition, Sarah Primm was the sister of Theo Adam, Black Adam's present-day descendant and host body. In the Fawcett comics, Adam didn't need a host body and had no known connection to Primm. Combined with making Theo responsible for the Batsons' death, her backstory goes from "Nurse randomly gives orphaned baby to rich lady rather than tell her her child died" to "Nanny is worried about what her brother might do to orphan, so takes her to live with relatives". (And she'd have done the same for Billy if he hadn't dropped off the grid by then.)
• If you consider Spider-Ham to be an adaptation of Spider-Man, then the Spider-Ham 2099 story in What The-?! has Piguel O'Malley refer to Peter Porker as his ancestor. When Peter David created Spider-Man 2099, the first thing he decided was that Miguel O'Hara wasn't descended from Peter Parker.
• Spider-Man: Chapter One makes Norman Osborn and Sandman cousins to explain their similar looking hair. Became this trope once the book was (very quickly) declared out-of-continuity and simply an alternate reality take on the Spidey mythos.
• In Street Fighter, Alex is descended from the same ancient bloodline as Gill and Urien. This allows Gill's spirit to return and possess him in the finale of Street Fighter Unlimited.
• In the author's notes page for the first issue of the Superfriends comic book tie-in, E Nelson Bridwell reveals that he has decided (in lieu of early scripts naively trying to make her Batman's niece) to make Wendy be Harvey Harris' niece, instead. Harvey Harris was a detective who helped young Bruce Wayne learn the ropes of the profession. He also speculates that the Wendy Harris who is Hourman's wife on Earth-Two could be her counterpart (the two admittedly look similar). As for Marvin, he was the son of Daniel White and Diana White, the former Diana Prince, who let Wonder Woman assume her identity. All this was intended to explain just why the Superfriends would let these seemingly-random kids (and their dog) tag along with them on adventures. The former retcon was referenced in The Batman And Scooby Doo Mysteries, where Harris mentions his niece Wendy briefly.
• Superman & Batman: Generations: Lois Lane is Supergirl's mother in this continuity, partly due to Supergirl being Superman's daughter instead of his cousin.
• The Superman Monster, a DC Comics Elseworld consisting of a retelling of Frankenstein with Lex Luthor in the role of Victor Frankenstein and Superman as the monster he creates, has Lois Lane's equivalent Eloise Edge (the story's take on both Victor Frankenstein's fiancee Elizabeth Lavenza and the monster's bride) being the daughter of Morgan Edge's counterpart Burgomaster Edge.
• In the Superman/Frankenstein Elseworld mashup The Superman-Monster, the Lois Lane (and Elizabeth) counterpart is Eloise Edge, daughter of Burgomeister Morgan Edge. Lois and the WGBS boss aren't related in normal continuity (and, for that matter, Elizabeth isn't the daughter of the burgomeister, even in adaptations where the burgomeister is a significant character).
• In Superman: Red Son, Kal-L is the last descendant of Lex Luthor sent back through time, as it was Lex's progeny that ensured that the Earth would become Krypton in the future. Superman was fighting his great-something grandfather the whole time.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW):
  • In previous incarnations Karai was either unrelated to the Shredder or related to him by adoption. Here she is his biological granddaughter, making this the first time they’ve been portrayed as blood-related.
  • Hun is Casey Jones’ father, when ironically his original counterpart killed Casey’s father.
  • A variation with the Turtles and Splinter. While, like previous versions, Splinter isn’t biologically related to the turtles now, they are the respective Reincarnations of a ninja master and his sons, meaning they were biological relatives in a past life, when prior iterations had no such relation. One could say this technically makes them "spiritually" related.
• IDW did this a lot in their 2005-2018 run of The Transformers comics. For example, Arcee and Galvatron were revealed to be siblings in Transformers: Robots in Disguise, while Tracks and Needlenose were likewise in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye. How exactly familiar relationships work in a mechanical species that doesn't engage in sexual reproduction is not explained.
• Transformers vs. G.I. Joe:
  • The Decepticons Shockwave and Soundwave have had no confirmed familial ties in any other continuity, but this continuity made the two brothers.
  • Most continuities had Serpentor be an Artificial Human cloned from various infamous historical figures by Dr. Mindbender. In this comic, he is the future son of Cobra Commander and the Baroness, which also makes him half-brothers with Cobra Commander's son Billy.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Spider-Man
    • In the main Spider-Man comics the name Spider-Woman has been used by a number of ladies, all of whom have almost nothing do with Spider-Man other than having similar names and powers. In Ultimate Spider-Man Spider-Woman is Peter Parker's Opposite-Sex Clone; in civilian life she goes by the name Jessica Drew, which happens to be the civilian name of the first Spider-Woman in the mainstream Marvel Universe. Additionally, Tarantula and the original Scorpion are clones of Peter, too.
    • In the Ultimate verse Liz Allan is made a Composite Character and thus is not only the alter ego of Firestar, The Blob is now her biological father.
    • Morbius is the brother of Dracula.
  • The Ultimates:
    • M'Baku the Man-Ape is Black Panther's older brother.
    • The Red Skull is the bastard (in both senses of the word) son of Captain America and Gail Richards from the Republic Pictures serials.
    • As opposed to being The Mighty Thor's step-brother, Loki is his half-brother, with Odin fathering both of them.
    • Gail Richards from the Republic Pictures Captain America serials married Bucky Barnes.
  • In Ultimate Fantastic Four:
    • Doctor Doom is a descendant of Dracula. This in turn makes him a distant relative of Morbius.
    • Thanos is the father of Ronan the Accuser.
  • While Professor X and Moira MacTaggert of the traditional Marvel Universe have had romantic feelings towards each other, they ended up marrying different people. In Ultimate X Men, they did get married and later divorced. This resulted in their respective spouses (Gabrielle Haller and Joseph MacTaggert) being adapted out, the sons they had being the same character and two cases Adaptation Name Change (Moira's maiden name in the classic universe was Kinross, "MacTaggert" being the result of a very bad marriage and Proteus being named David Xavier).
• The Unstoppable Wasp: Both inverted and played straight for Nadia Pym, as despite being based on the Red Queen and Hope van Dyne, Janet van Dyne serves as a surrogate mother, but isn't her birth mother—that instead being Hank Pym's first wife, Maria Trovaya.
• X-Men: In the main universe, there's no sign that Bolivar Trask and Moira MacTaggert knew each other in person. In the Age of Apocalypse, they're married.
• In the comics based on Young Justice (2010), the storyline "Gorilla Warfare" reveals that Primat (a member of the Dreambound in Kurt Busiek's Trinity (2008)) is the mate of Grodd in this universe, possibly because she's the only named female Gorilla City resident in The DCU. Their son, Simeon, is presumably meant to be Sam Simeon from Angel and the Ape, who is Grodd's grandson in the comics, but no known relation to Primat.

Fairy Tales

• In Kaja Foglio's "The Cat on the Dovrefell" webcomic adaptation, the traveler is Halvor's niece.

Films — Animation

• Disney Animated Canon:
  • Bambi: Bambi's father is left vague in the books however it isn't implied to be the Great Old Prince Of The Forest (who is an elderly and seldom seen figure). The Disney adaptation combines Bambi's father with the Great Prince.
  • Frozen is also loosely Inspired by… The Snow Queen. In the original, Gerda and the Snow Queen are totally unrelated (indeed, the Queen is closer to The Fair Folk); here the Queen (Elsa) and Gerda's equivalent (Anna) are sisters, and their relationship is the main theme of the movie. Early on in development, the two were unrelated. This was changed so that the two could have a closer relationship, originally of the Cain and Abel sort but later of the distant siblings kind.
  • Hercules: The title character is the legit son of Zeus and Hera instead of only Zeus's by a mortal woman.
• In the film of Horton Hears a Who! JoJo is introduced early on as the Mayor of Whoville's oldest child and only son. In the book, JoJo only appears right at the end, which could easily be the first time he and the Mayor have ever met. See also Seussical below.
• The Lion King II: Simba's Pride:
  • In a few dubs , Kovu is Scar's son. In the original English version of the film, Kovu was originally planned to be Scar's son, but this was changed late in development and a few lines were mentioned clarifying they're not related.
  • In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio is a kinsman from Prince Escalus; he hangs out with Romeo because he's his friend. However, In TLKII his closest character counterpart, Nuka, is Kovu's (allegedly) half-brother.
• Meet the Robinsons was based on the William Joyce book A Day With Wilbur Robinson, where the unnamed protagonist meets his friend Wilbur's family. In the film, the protagonist, Lewis, meets Wilbur because Wilbur is his Kid from the Future, a fact not revealed until the third act.
• The Prince of Egypt: In the Book of Exodus, Rameses and Moses are commander and soldier. In The Prince Of Egypt, they are Cain and Abel like brothers.
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:
  • In the original booklet, Rudolph has parents, but they never make a physical appearance (although he's seen writing a letter to his parents before helping Santa), and they're not members of Santa's team. In the Rankin/Bass special he is Donner's son, while in Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer: The Movie he is Blitzen's son.
  • Comet, Cupid, Dasher, and Blitzen are brothers in Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer: The Movie. No such relationship is implied in 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.
• In the original The Snow Queen, Gerda and Kai are very close friends and implied love interests who grew up together. In the 2012 adaptation, they're biological siblings who were separated until right before Kai gets kidnapped.
• Son of the White Horse flips almost every relationship on its head:
  • In the folk tales, Treeshaker, Stonecrumbler and Irontemperer are unrelated, while in the film they're the White Mare goddess' three sons. In most versions of the original story, the White Mare's Son is a separate character from all three.
  • The king, the mysterious old man from the forest and the evil goblin are also originally unrelated characters, but the movie not only reimagined them as different forms of the same deity, it also made him the three brothers' missing father and the White Mare's "husband".
  • Oddly, the three princesses who become the brothers' wives still call the king their father like in the original tales. The movie made this relation metaphorical rather than biological to avoid Unfortunate Implications. The princesses were merely created by the king's magic to be his actual sons' brides.
• Because Otter is Adapted Out of The Wind in the Willows (1985), but it does include "Piper at the Gates of Dawn", which features his son Portly, the film makes Portly Badger's nephew instead.

Films — Live-Action

• In the Barry Humphries vehicle The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, McKenzie, from Humphries' comic strip in Private Eye, is revealed to be the nephew of his stand-up character Mrs. Edna Everage. The films are apparently canon for Edna because she gets a damehood at the end of the sequel and has been Dame Edna ever since.
• The Alvin and the Chipmunks films has Dave adopt the Chipettes, which makes them and the boys all adopted siblings. It however didn't change the Ship Tease between the girls and the boys. They're Not Blood Siblings but it's jarring to see Brother–Sister Incest in the franchise.
• Barbarella: For the film, Creepy Twins Stomoxys and Glossina were made into the nieces of the Black Queen, while in the comics they had nothing to do with each other and appeared in different stories. They're still not shown interacting in the film.
• In Batman & Robin, Batgirl is made Alfred's niece (instead of being Commissioner Gordon's daughter).
• In Black Adam (2022), Ahk-Ton is the ancient ancestor of Sabbac.
• In Casper, the Trio become Casper's uncles.
• In Count Dracula (1977), the BBC version of Dracula, Mina and Lucy are sisters whereas in the original novel they were childhood friends.
• In the original book of The Devil's Arithmetic, Rivka and Chaya are girls from two different villages who end up in the same concentration camp. In the film adaptation, they're cousins.
• The Doctor Who film Dr. Who and the Daleks had Susan and Barbara as Dr. Who's granddaughters (with the surname "Who" no less), with Ian being Barbara's boyfriend.
• Dracula (1979) makes Lucy the daughter of Dr. Seward and Mina the daughter of Professor Van Helsing.
• The G. I. Joe Film Series sees Cobra Commander and Baroness being made into siblings in the movies. In the comics, Baroness's brother was an unrelated character who was killed off.
• In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Marlow and Kurtz are strangers to one another. In the 1958 television adaptation, Marlow is Kurtz's protégé and adopted son.
• Kirsty in Hellraiser was originally a neighborhood love interest for Larry/Rory Cotton in the novella The Hellbound Heart. In the movie she becomes his daughter.
• In the 1968 TV-movie of Heidi, Herr Sessemann is Heidi's uncle and Klara is her cousin. This change was probably inspired by The Secret Garden, the other famous children's novel about a young orphaned heroine who helps a wheelchair-bound Lonely Rich Kid Throw Off the Disability. Heidi's Aunt Dete, her Missing Mom's sister, also becomes the Grandfather's estranged daughter instead of being unrelated to him, as in this version he's Heidi's maternal grandfather instead of paternal.
• Horror of Dracula: Arthur and Lucy are revealed as siblings in this one whereas in the original Arthur was her fiancee. (This also ends ups swapping their spouses. Arther is with Mina in this one and Harker before being turned and staked by Van Helsing is Lucy's fiancee.)
• Jem and the Holograms (2015):
  • Ms. Bailey is Jerrica's aunt instead of a woman that helps with the Starlight Girls.
  • Rio is Erica Raymond's, a gender-flipped version of Eric, son. In the cartoon, there was only a few years difference between them.
• It's played with a bit in Joker (2019). Arthur Fleck suspects that his biological father may be Thomas Wayne, which would then indicate that him and Bruce Wayne are brothers this time around. However, it's never clarified if it's the case, and Fleck's status as an Unreliable Narrator make it impossible to discern if he and Bruce are related.
• In Living Dark, Ted's friend B is changed into his estranged younger brother Brad.
• Ingmar Bergman's and Kenneth Branagh's film adaptations of The Magic Flute both make Sarastro Pamina's father.
• In the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Thor and its sequels:
    • Variation with Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. In the comics, she is Loki's biological daughter or was at least created by him. Here, she is actually Odin's biological daughter and the long-lost older sister of Thor (and Loki by adoption). This means that while she is no longer biologically related to Loki, she is now related to Thor. This also makes her a Composite Character with Angela, who is the comic universe's lost sister.
    • In the comics, Frigga is Thor’s stepmother. Here, she is his biological mother.
  • In the comics, Ultron was built by Ant-Man and considers him his father. The MCU hadn't debuted Ant-Man yet, so the relationship was transferred to Iron Man instead, complete with the resulting daddy issues.
  • In Guardians of the Galaxy (2014):
    • In the comics, Gamora is Thanos' adopted daughter and top assassin, and Nebula is an independent space pirate who claims to be his biological granddaughter, but it's left ambiguous as to whether or not this is actually true. In the film, both women are adopted "daughters" of Thanos, and consider each other sisters. Other "children of Thanos" are shown in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame; in the comics they're Thanos' Quirky Miniboss Squad the "Black Order" but for the most part not a family^note Corvus Glaive and Black Dwarf are brothers and Corvus is married to Proxima Midnight; but the rest are unrelated and have no direct connection to either Gamora or Nebula.
    • In both the comics and film, Peter Quill is a Half-Human Hybrid with a human mother. While the original film left the identity of the father open as a Sequel Hook, Word of God stated that it is not J'Son of Spartax as it is in the comics. Vol. 2 reveals that Quill is now the son of Ego the Living Planet. The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special subsequently confirms that Mantis was another of Ego's children, making her Peter's half-sister.
  • In Spider-Man: Homecoming, the Vulture turns out to be Liz Allan's father. This ended up making them both Composite Characters of, respectively, the Ultimate Marvel version of The Blob (being a supervillain who's the father of his universe's Liz Allan) and Valeria Toomes from the mainstream continuity (being the Vulture's daughter).
  • Black Panther films:
    • Erik Killmonger turns out to be the cousin of T'Challa and Shuri, which is a connection that doesn't exist in the comics. By extension, this makes T'Challa and Shuri's father T'Chaka the older brother of Killmonger's father N'Jobu.
    • There is also Ramonda. In the comics, she is the stepmother of T'Challa and served as a surrogate mother to him after T'Challa's own mother died giving birth to him. In the MCU, Ramonda is T'Challa's biological mother.
    • Shuri is T’Challa’s half sister in the comics but is his full sister in this universe.
    • Okoye is W'Kabi's wife.
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp portrays Ghost as Elihas Starr's daughter, with Bill Foster becoming her surrogate father after her real parents are killed.
  • Avengers: Endgame:
    • During the Time Skip, Tony and Pepper end up married. In the comics, during the few times their relationship turned romantic, it never got that far. Combined with Related Differently in the Adaptation, Age Lift, and Gender Flip, Morgan Stark is their daughter; in the comics, Morgan was a male cousin of Tony's around the same age as him (and combined with Adaptational Heroism as the Morgan of the comics is a Corrupt Corporate Executive and a dick to Tony).
    • Steve ends up going back in time and marrying Peggy Carter.
  • In Black Widow (2021) Yelena Belova and Natasha Romanoff are portrayed as sisters, while their comic counterparts were childhood rivals. In the comics there is flirty back and forth between them. Furthermore, Melina Vostokoff (Iron Maiden) and Alexei Shostakov (Red Guardian) are portrayed as their foster parents... sort of (it was a cover identity, but Yelena and indeed most of them felt like it was real). Alexei is Related Differently in the Adaptation to Natasha, however, as his comic counterpart was her ex-husband.
  • In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Shang-Chi is made the son of the Mandarin, a character he has no connection to in the comics. This is because his original father, Fu Manchu, was off limits for legal reasons (as well as widely being considered a racist caricature). This also extends to his sister, Fah Lo Suee (who is renamed Xialing).
• In the 1996 film of Matilda, Miss Trunchbull is the stepsister of Miss Honey's late mother rather than her biological sister as she is in the book. It seems the screenwriters didn't want the Big Bad to be the biological aunt of Matilda's loving Parental Substitute. The stage musical, on the other hand, keeps her as a sister, but the film of the musical also changes her to a stepsister, likely because Miss Honey and her parents are given a Race Lift, but Trunchbull isn't.
• In the 1980 Miss Marple film The Mirror Crack'd, Inspector Craddock is Miss Marple's "favorite nephew". In The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (and only in that book) he calls her "Aunt Jane", but she's only an Honorary Aunt.
• In Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Raiden and Shao Kahn are revealed to be brothers. And later it's revealed that Shinnok is their father. Which isn't canon in the video games, except for the equally non-canon Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.
• The Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV movie made Viper the daughter of Baron von Strucker.
• Oz the Great and Powerful keeps the Wicked Witches as siblings and also makes Glinda the daughter of the former king of Oz. When the former king exists in the book series, he has no relation to Glinda, being the father of Ozma (who tends to be Adapted Out), making the film's Glinda a Composite Character of the two.
• In Paddington Bear, Mrs. Bird was originally the Brown's housekeeper. It would be very unusual for a present-day middle class English family to employ a live-in housekeeper, so in Paddington (2014) she is described as a relative, though what relationship she has to any of them is never stated.
• Punisher: War Zone:
  • In its use of characters from both the mainstream books and the MAX series, makes Jigsaw the nephew of Jennifer Cesare's grandfather, Don Cesare as Jigsaw didn't appear in the MAX series until the "Girls in White Dresses" arc a few months before the film's release where the Heavy was revealed to be Jigsaw's MAX incarnation.
  • Nick Cavella's henchmen, Pittsy and Ink, are unrelated thugs in the comic but father and son in the film.
• The Secret Garden: Both the 1993 and 2020 adaptations make Colin and Mary's respective mothers into twins, presumably to a.) emphasize their Bonding over Missing Parents and b.) facilitate the idea that Mary resembles them both. It's combined with Unrelated in the Adaptation, since in the book, Lillias was Mary's father's sister, not her mother's. Also see below under "Theatre."
• Silent Hill: Revelation 3D makes Claudia and Vincent mother and son, whereas they are unrelated individuals in Silent Hill 3. Also, the filmmakers apparently forgot this, but in the original film, Christabella is Dahlia's sister, which means that Claudia is Heather's aunt and Vincent is her cousin.
• In the 1916 film adaptation of Snow White, Snow White and the prince are Kissing Cousins.
• In Spectre, we find out that Blofeld is Bond's older stepbrother and that his entire motivation stems from the belief that their father loved James more.
• In the Stargirl book, Hillari Kimble and Danny aren't related. They're siblings in the Stargirl film. Hillari now hates Stargirl for getting her brother into a bike accident, rather than just hating Stargirl because she's an Alpha Bitch.
• In Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Rose is M. Bison's young daughter.
• Timeline: Chris is turned into Professor Johnston's son whereas in the book the latter is only a father figure for him. Claire becomes Arnaud's sister.
• May have been intended in the Transformers film franchise when Optimus Prime calls his arch-nemesis Megatron "brother" even thought they're robots. Also making this example a sort of Cain and Abel.
• Many (but not all, there's a lot of debate in that area, even in ancient times) scholars believe that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers (Patroclus definitely was a close friend and mentor to the somewhat younger Achilles), but they were made cousins (and the age and mentor-student relationship reversed) in the 2004 movie Troy and the insistence on this being the reason for their closeness (and Achilles' Roaring Rampage of Revenge when Patroclus is killed) bordered on Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?. Cleolinda Jones mocked this change mercilessly in her parody of the film.
  • This example is a subversion however, as Patroclus and Achilles really were related, albeit in a different way from the movie: Patroclus' grandmother Aegina was Achilles' great-grandmother, making Patroclus Achilles' first cousin once removed.
  • In the same movie, Briseis is the cousin of Hector and Paris while in The Iliad, she's not even a Trojan.
• Warcraft (2016): Happened to several characters from the game in this film.
  • Orgrim Doomhammer and Durotan were originally from different clans, Blackrock and Frostwolf, and their friendship was considered unusual among orcs. Here, Orgrim is a Frostwolf and Durotan's second in command.
  • Taria Wrynn, Llane's wife and Lothar's sister, didn't exist in the original and so didn't this link between Lothar and Llane.
  • Garona, who was Medivh's lover (see Fanon Discontinuity) in the original, is implied to be his daughter here.
• In The Wizard of Oz (1925), Dorothy, not Ozma, is the daughter of King Pastoria.
• The Wizard of Oz turns the Wicked Witches from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz into sisters. Quite a few later adaptations of the book also make this change with some, such as The Wiz and The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, even turning all four of the witches into sisters.
• X-Men Film Series
  • X2: X-Men United did this with Jason Wyngarde/Mastermind by making him a Composite Character of his comic self and William Stryker's unnamed mutant son from God Loves, Man Kills. This also entailed Jason getting an Age Lift, as his comic counterpart was far too old to have been William's son.
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine makes Sabretooth Wolverine's half-brother (as opposed to simply being another Weapon X experiment). Though it seemed to be Fanon before the movie was filmed, due to Dog Logan (Wolverine's half-brother in the comic) having a resemblance to Sabretooth in the end. This also makes him a Composite Character.
  • In X-Men: First Class, Charles Xavier and Mystique are foster siblings.
  • Logan sees Rictor as part of the same program that created X-23. Additionally, his source DNA/biological father is listed in his file as Dominic Petros^note which itself in an alias in the comics, as his real name is Dominikos Petrakis, a.k.a. Avalanche.
  • Deadpool 2:
    • Hope Summers is Cable's biological daughter instead of a child he adopts.
    • Juggernaut wears a helmet to stop his wheelchair-bound brother from reading his mind. He doesn't mention Xavier by name, but he says brother rather than stepbrother.

Gamebooks

• Lone Wolf: In Fire on the Water, Lone Wolf meets separately with both Durenese Lord Axim of Ryme and Viveka the mercenary woman, but there is no hint they could be related. In the Legends of Lone Wolf novelization, those two are father and daughter.

Literature

• Always October (by Bruce Coville):
  • In the original short story "My Little Brother Is a Monster", Jason Burger and his mom adopt Dum Pling / Little Dumpling as a part of their family, but do not share blood with him. In the full novel, Jason is replaced with Jacob Doolittle, whose grandfather Arthur was married twice; his first wife, Tia LaMontagne (alias Teelamun) had two children, Meer Askanza (the mother of Little Dumpling) and Mazrak. After she disappeared and Arthur remarried, his second wife bore him a son, Jacob's father. This makes Little Dumpling into Jacob's paternal cousin by blood (and by extension his mother into Jacob's aunt), and Mazrak into both Jacob and Little Dumpling's uncle.
  • In the original short story, only one member of the Council of Poets — Keegel Farzym — was related to Dum Pling. In this version, another of them is his maternal grandmother Teelamun.
• In the Sherlock Holmes spin-off novel The Beast of the Stapletons, a sequel to The Hound of the Baskervilles by James Lovegrove, the villain is revealed to be Doctor Mortimer, who Holmes learns is the step-brother of Professor Moriarty.
• The book By Pipe or Pen is a prequel for several fairy tales, but the big twist of who the two protagonists, Felix and Robin, become means The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the half brother of Rumpelstiltskin.
• The Mists of Avalon practically condenses all of Arthurian Legend into one Tangled Family Tree, possibly just to facilitate lots of incest.
  • Most notably, this is the Trope Codifier of Morgan (or in this series, Morgaine) le Fay being Mordred's mother instead of Morgause (his foster mother in this version). Also, Igraine and Viviane (The Lady of the Lake) are sisters (as is Morgause, who's normally Igraine's daughter). Igraine's father is the first Merlin, whose youngest daughter is Niniane. Viviane is also the biological mother of Lancelet, as opposed to his foster mother, meaning that he is now Kissing Cousins with both Morgaine and Arthur. She's also the mother of Balan, which becomes his motive for killing his (now adoptive) brother Balin.
  • Gwenhwyfar's sister is set up to be this setting's version of Isolde, only to suddenly die before that story can happen. Meanwhile Maleagant may or may not be their half-brother. (This doesn't stop him from raping Gwen.) The Elaine of Corbenic analogue is their cousin, whose father is King Pellinore. Nimue (who's different than Niniane or Viviane) is her and Lancelet's daughter.
• In Evangeline Walton's The Song of Rhiannon, a retelling of the third branch of The Mabinogion, Manawyddan, who is Pryderi's step-father in the original legend, is his biological father instead, having conceived him of Pwyll's behalf after the latter realized he was infertile. Everybody however still believes the boy to be Pwyll's son.
• In The Squire's Tales, Tristram and Dinadan are brothers who hardly know each other instead of being friends.
  • Bedivere is referred to as both Kai and Arthur's cousin. (Whether that means he's related to both of them by blood or he's Arthur's cousin by adoption isn't clear.) In contrast, Culloch and Arthur are Unrelated in the Adaptation.
  • Luneta is the daughter of Gaheris and Lynet, which also makes her Ywain's cousin.
• The Surviving Twins is a retelling of Snow-White and Rose-Red that reveals the dwarf to be the girls' father whose memories have been stolen.
• A Tale of...:
  • A Tale of the Wicked Queen has the Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs being the daughter of the Man in the Mirror. This explains her obsession with it. Her father was extremely abusive and hated his daughter in life. He died scorning her and ended up causing her to have major self-esteem issues. As the Slave, however, he cannot tell a lie and is forced to tell her what she wants. She takes comfort in having her father tell her that she is the most beautiful in all the land.
  • In A Tale of the Sea Witch Ursula is Triton's sister. This is reused from early The Little Mermaid scripts.
  • A Tale of the Dark Fairy reveals that Maleficent is the adopted niece of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother. Maleficent is also the mother of Aurora, who was born from a magical spell.

Live-Action TV

• The New Addams Family:
  • The show is a remake of The Addams Family that used elements of the film series. The remake of the original series' Halloween Episode "Halloween with the Addams Family" had the notable change of making it so that the two crooks attempting to rob the Addams Family were father and son.
  • Like the movies, this series made Fester into Gomez's brother instead of Morticia's uncle, but kept Grandmama as Gomez's mother instead of making her Morticia's mother as the movies did, so for the first time in the franchise, Grandmama and Fester were mother and son instead of just in-laws.
• All the Light We Cannot See: In the book, Mme. Manec is Etienne's Kindly Housekeeper. In the show, she is his sister and thus also Daniel and Marie-Laure's aunt.
• In Altered Carbon Reileen was compiled with Takeshi Kovacs' unnamed sisters. And acquired an almost incestuous obsession with him.
• The Arrowverse:
  • Arrow:
    • Thea Dearden Queen is basically Mia Dearden reinvented as Ollie's sister. Additionally, she turned out to be the biological daughter of Malcolm Merlyn, Green Arrow's Arch-Enemy in the comics, after having an affair with Oliver's mother. For the matter, Walter Steele becomes Oliver and Thea's stepfather while in the comics he's just a minor character.
    • Yao Fei and Shado are re-imagined as father and daughter. The comic book counterparts have never even met.
    • Nyssa Al-Ghul (Nyssa Raatko) was married to Oliver in the show. They are total strangers in the comics.
    • Noak Kuttler aka The Calculator, a Birds of Prey villain, becomes the father of Felicity Smoak, a minor Firestorm (DC Comics) character.
    • Husband and wife John Diggle and Lyla Michaels-Stewart/Harbinger ended up becoming this after season 7 revealed that Diggle was a case of Canon Character All Along: John Stewart (which ended up leading to Expy Coexistence in the comics, as Diggle was ported over to the comics prior to this point). In the comics, Stewart and Harbinger were only allies. Also, thanks to Ollie's son becoming a Decomposite Character, they're the parents of Connor Hawke.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • The show makes Barry an honorary member of the West family, after they took him in when Barry's mom was murdered and dad was jailed for it. While Barry does see Joe West as something of a Parental Substitute, his relationship with Iris West is unchanged, making it more of a Childhood Friend Romance in this verse.
    • Also involving the West family, Wally West is introduced as the brother/son that Iris and Joe never knew they had, where in the comics he's Iris' nephew. This in turn makes Barry his surrogate brother instead of his uncle or merely his aunt's boyfriend.
    • In the comics, Axel Walker is a Legacy Character inspired by the original Trickster. In the show, he turns out to be the original Trickster's bastard son. As the main Trickster is played (as always) by Mark Hamill, we did get to hear the appropriate line from The Empire Strikes Back when their relationship, a surprise to the viewer and the second Trickster, was revealed.
    • Ronnie Raymond and Caitlin Snow are engaged throughout the first season and then married as of the first season finale. In the Firestorm (DC Comics) comics, they're enemies as Caitlin's comics counterpart is an evil supervillain, Killer Frost. Caitlin did eventually start turning into Killer Frost thanks to With Great Power Comes Great Insanity, but by that point she had been widowed for some time, as Ronnie had made a Heroic Sacrifice almost immediately after they eloped.
    • Jesse Quick is the daughter of WWII heroes Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle in the comics; in the show she's the daughter of Canon Foreigner Harrison Wells.^note Well, an Alternate Universe Wells; the main-universe Wells died childless.
    • Savitar is Iris' fiancé through his own past/alternate self, Barry.
    • In DC Rebirth, Barry had a daughter named Nora with Jessica Cruz, the first female Green Lantern from Earth. Here, Iris is her mother.
    • Jay Garrick and Barry Allen have no familial connection in the comics. On the show Jay is the Alternate Universe counterpart of Barry's father Henry Allen, giving them a kind of father-son relationship, biologically at least. Likewise, Jay's wife Joan Williams, who also has no family-relationship with Barry in the comics, is a doppelganger of his mother Nora Allen in this verse.
  • Legends of Tomorrow: The show features Sara Lance donning the White Canary identity, making the character related to the entire Black Canary family. In the comics, the White Canary is a villain and self-appointed Arch-Enemy of Black Canary.
  • Supergirl (2015):
    • The show re-imagined Non, one of General Zod's Co-Dragons in Superman II and the comics, as Supergirl's Evil Uncle through his marriage to her mother's Evil Twin. This also makes him a part of Superman's extended family.
    • The show's version of Otis is the brother of Mercy Graves.
  • Superman & Lois:
    • In the Steel comics, Natasha Irons is the titular character's niece. Here, Natasha is the daughter of Steel and an alternate universe version of Lois Lane.
    • In a Season 1 twist, Morgan Edge is revealed to be Lara Lor-Van's son from a prior marriage, and thus Superman's older half-brother.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003):
  • Word of God from the showrunners of the Galactica prequel Caprica is that the Eights are based on Admiral Adama's deceased half-sister Tamara. Which, if true, means that she is in fact, like, a niece.
  • Boomer is also an instance of Number Eight in the re-imagined series, so this Lieutenant Boomer and Lieutenant Athena are "identical twins", whereas the original Galactica's Lieutenant Boomer (who was a man) and Lieutenant Athena were completely unrelated.
• The Boys (2019): The penultimate episode of Season 3 reveals that the unrelated in the comics Soldier Boy and Homelander are here father and son, respectively.
• Camelot does likewise - Morgan and Arthur are related through Uther rather than Igraine.
• The Chosen: In The Four Gospels, Simon the Zealot and the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda have zero relation to one another. In the show, Simon and the man (given the name Jesse here) are brothers.
• In Cloak and Dagger comics, Tyrone Johnson had a friend called Billy who he saw get shot by a cop. In the TV series, Billy was his older brother.
• In Doom Patrol (2019), Niles Caulder is Dorothy Spinner's father. In the comics, they were not related and the only information given about Dorothy's parentage was that she was raised by Abusive Parents who were retroactively established to be her adoptive parents in John Arcudi's run with no information given about her biological parents aside from her birth mother still being alive, but unable to meet with her for unexplained reasons.
• "A Fanatic Heart", the last episode of season 1 of Fate: The Winx Saga reveals that Beatrix was adopted and raised by Sky's father, technically making them adopted siblings. Sky had no such connection to any of the Trix in the Winx Club.
• The Flash (1990):
  • The series re-imagined Jay Garrick as Barry Allen's older brother. In the comics, Jay Garrick is merely Barry's predecessor as The Flash.
  • During the series's later crossovers with the Arroverse, it's revealed Barry and Tina got married. In the comics, Barry never even met Tina, who interacted with Wally West shortly after Barry died.
• Game of Thrones
  • A major Story Arc in Season 5 has Sansa Stark being put in an Arranged Marriage with Ramsay Bolton. In the source material, this storyline belongs to Jeyne Poole, the first spoiler-tagged character's best friend.
  • An inverted example happens in Season 6. In the source material, Arya Stark is the actress playing "Sansa" in the Essos theater group. The show pulls a Decomposite Character move by making a Canon Foreigner unrelated to the Starks fill the role and giving Arya a slightly altered arc.
  • The Season 7 finale reveals that Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark eloped and secretly married. While a very popular theory (if not the most) among book readers, the source material has yet to officially confirm this matter.
• In the Sky1 adaptation of Going Postal, "Princess", the very young clacks tower operator, becomes the granddaughter of Grand Trunk engineer Mr Pony.
• Freddy Martinez and Cara, best friends in the Goosebumps book Vampire Breath, are said to look like siblings. When it was adapted into a TV episode, they are actually siblings. They learned that they're vampires and Count Nightwing is their grandpa. While in the book, only Fred is a vampire, while Cara becomes a werewolf...
• Gotham:
  • Silver St. Cloud is a member of the Dumas Family (a.k.a. the Order of St. Dumas).
  • Jervis Tetch's Alice is his sister. This does not alter the nature of his obsession with her in any way.
  • In the comics, Jim Gordon was married first to Barbara Kean and then to Sarah Essen, and Leslie Thompkins has never been married (she's occasionally Alfred's Love Interest) but they’re married here.
• The Haunting of Hill House (2018): In the original novel, the characters come from different families and are not at all related to each other. The Netflix adaptation shows all the main characters as part of the Crain family, with most of the major characters being siblings and the children of Olivia and Hugh Crain.
• The remake of Hawaii Five-O made Chin Ho and Kono cousins.
• In Hawkeye (2021), Kate's aunt, whose apartment she's using as a base, is Moira Brandon. In the comics, Moira Brandon is the previous owner of the building that became the West Coast Avengers Compound. First mentioned as an Unseen Character in the eighties, she made one appearance (and died) in Avengers West Coast #100, more than a decade before Kate's comic book debut, and there is no known connection between them.
• In the made-for-tv movie Hercules:
  • Antaeus - one of the many enemies Hercules fought during his labors - is made Herc' true father instead of Zeus.
  • Iole is made the daughter of Eurystheus and Megara.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: Aphrodite, Apollo, and Artemis are all the children of Zeus and Hera. In the original myths, Apollo and Artemis were the children of Zeus and Leto, while Aphrodite was either created spontaneously when Ouranos' genitals were thrown into the sea or was the daughter of Zeus and Dione.
• In Jessica Jones (2015), Jessica is the adopted sister of Patsy Walker, a character she has no connection to whatsoever in the comics.
• Krypton takes a cue from Superman: Earth One and makes General Zod the uncle of Superman.
• In the Land of Oz books, Princess Langwidere is merely the niece of the King of Ev. In Emerald City, she is his daughter.
• In the novel of The Leftovers, Matt and Nora are not related at all; in the television adaptation, they are brother and sister.
• Let the Right One In: Mark (Håkan's equivalent) is the father of Eleanor (originally Eli) here. Originally they weren't related at all.
• In Luke Cage (2016):
  • Cottonmouth and Black Mariah are now cousins; they originally had no connection to one another. The second season ties a third previously-unrelated villain into the family, bringing in Nightshade as Mariah's estranged daughter.
  • Luke Cage and Diamondback are made half-brothers. They were always friends-turned-enemies in the comics, but now Diamondback is a Bastard Bastard and has resentment for their father's legitimate son to fuel his hatred.
• Merlin (2008):
  • Morgana turns out to be Arthur's half-sister through Uther. Traditionally, Arthur's mother Igraine is their shared parent.
  • Inverted with Gawain. He's Morgause's son in most of the legends, but here is a separate character. Morgause isn't even old enough to be his mother. Agravaine was also Morgause's son in the legends and actually Arthur's nephew - but in the series is Arthur's uncle, and is unrelated to Morgause because he's Igraine's brother and Morgause is no longer Igraine's daughter.
• The Olden Days, a Gag Dub sketch based on Rush (1974), uses footage of Miss Hawk (Mary Ward) as Ma Frontbottom, the Governor's mother. Miss Hawk had no relationship to Commissioner Fitzalan in Rush.
• Happens at several points in Once Upon a Time. Due to the Arc Welding between several different tales, unrelated stories and characters are tied together into the same family.
  • Rumpelstiltskin is the son of Peter Pan.
  • Regina, the Evil Queen from Snow White, is the daughter of the Queen of Hearts (who is also the miller's daughter from Rumpelstiltskin, with the Evil Queen being a Gender Flip of the baby from that story), and the sister of the Wicked Witch of the West.
  • The families of Regina and Rumple are also tied to Snow White and Prince Charming through Emma, Neal, and Henry.
  • Gerda is the mother of Elsa and Anna, and the original Snow Queen is her sister Ingrid.
  • Played straight and inverted at the same time with the New Enchanted Forest version of the Tremaine family. The "wicked stepmother" (in addition to being Rapunzel) is actually Tremaine's first wife, meaning he's the biological father of Anastasia and Drusella and the stepfather of Ella; the exact reversal of the traditional version.
  • In the spinoff series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, it's implied but never confirmed that the Red Queen of Wonderland (who later marries the Knave of Hearts, who is actually Will Scarlet) was one of Cinderella's stepsisters. (Since they're so often combined in adaptations, it should be noted that the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts are not the same person in Once, although the former was a friend and pupil of the latter in this version, whereas the originals didn't meet).
  • The seventh season has Henry fulfilling the traditional role of Cinderella's prince, so now Cinderella's prince is the son of Snow White's Evil Queen.
  • The version of Alice who appears in Season 7 is the daughter of Captain Hook and Mother Gothel.
• The Japanese remake of Orphan Black made the counterpart of Sarah Manning and Helena's birth mother Amelia and the counterpart of Siobhan Sadler (Sarah's foster mother) sisters. They're complete strangers to each other in the original.
• Peacemaker does this by way of Composite Character, having Christopher's father Auggie Smith also be the racist supervillain White Dragon. In the comics, White Dragon was a completely unrelated character named William Heller.
• The Agatha Christie's Poirot often adds familial relationships not present in the original Hercule Poirot novels.
  • The adaptation of Cards on the Table adds a mother-daughter relationship between two of the suspects, partly in order to make the older woman's protection of the younger woman more plausible.
  • In Third Girl, Frances Cary becomes a half-sister of Norma Restarick, whose father left her mother for her teacher, Miss Battersby, with whom he had a relationship.
  • The adaptation of Appointment with Death makes both Dr. Theodore Gerard and Dame Celia Westholme the actual, biological parents of Jinny Boynton. In the novel, Jinny is the only biological child of Mrs. Boynton, is unrelated to Celia Westholme, and is the eventual Love Interest of Dr. Gerard.
  • Agent Colin Lamb from The Clocks is heavily in the books to be the son of Superintendent Battle. In the adaptation, he's renamed to Colin Race, and is explicitly said to be Colonel Race's son.
• The main characters of The Princess Wei Young are highly fictionalised versions of historical figures, and the series takes liberties with how some of them were related to each other. Historically Tuoba Hong was the son of Consort Li (fictionalised as Li Chang Le) and the step-son of Empress Feng (fictionalised as Xin Er). In the series Hong is the son of Xin Er and isn't related to Chang Le, who died before he was born.
• In the TV adaptation of Runaways (2017), Molly is now Gert's adopted younger sister.
• Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace: Records are scarce, but it's unlikely Empress Xiaojingxian was closely related to Empress Nara. (In fact it's debatable if they even belonged to the same clan.) In the series, on the other hand, they're aunt and niece.
• Smallville: Doomsday is the son of General Zod and Faora (he was conceived from their genetic samples and experimented on to receive his advanced powers).
• The Snow Queen (2002): The witch, the princess, and the robber girl's mother are turned into the Spring Witch, the Summer Princess, and the Autumn Robber, Anthropomorphic Personifications of the seasons like the Snow Queen, and are the Snow Queen's sisters.
• Done multiple times in adapting Super Sentai into Power Rangers:
  • In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Season 3 introduces Rita Repulsa's family; her brother Rito Revolto and father Master Vile. While Vile's and Rito's counterparts were father and son in Kakuranger, Rita's was part of another series altogether. Additionally, Dai Satan was Witch Bandora's boss and Emperor Gorma XV likewise never met Bandora, Yokai Daimao, and Gasha Dokuro, but Lord Zedd, a fusion of Dai Satan and Emperor Gorma XV/Lt. Colonel Shadam^note with a side of Decomposite Character as Dai Satan's footage was used for Lokar and the Gorma costume was the basis for Master Org years later, married Rita and thus has Rito and Vile as in-laws.
  • Megaforce would do something similar, making Vrak, the counterpart of Tensou Sentai Goseiger's main antagonist, Brajira, part of the Royal family of the Armada, whereas in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger Brajira never personally met any of the Zangyack's royal family.
  • Inverted and played straight in Ninja Steel. In Ninninger, the Red and White Rangers were siblings and the other core Rangers were their cousins, while Starninger was unrelated to them. In Ninja Steel, the core Rangers are unrelated while the Red and Gold Rangers are brothers.
  • During their appearance on Ninja Steel, it's revealed that Tommy and Kat got married. None of the Sentai Rangers that made up Tommy married their respective series' Pink Ranger^note Burai died, Kōu was a kid, and Ninja Sentai Kakuranger and Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger didn't even have a respective Pink Ranger for their teams (though Asuka was married to one of the villains in the latter).
  • Power Rangers Operation Overdrive's Thrax-while sharing a counterpart to Bandora's son Kai-his Sentai counterpart from Overdrive isn't related to Witch Bandora either, nor Dai Satan, Emperor Gorma XV, or Lt. Colonel Shadam.
  • Power Rangers Mystic Force...kinda does this? While Witch Bandora and MagiMother are played by the same actress, it's only in Mystic Force that they're the same person. Inverted and somewhat played straight with the main Ranger team as well. In Mahou Sentai Magiranger, the entire team is related somehow, but not in Mystic Force; in fact, Mystic Force plays more into the Unrelated in the Adaptation trope. Nick is the only character related to Leonbow and Udonna. Daggeron is only connected as a 3rd mentor and never marries any of the female members of the team nor is in any relationships with them beyond mentor^note  to most of the team/student^note  of Leonbow prior to the start of the show/fellow Ranger. Madison and Vida Rocca are sisters, but they don't have any other siblings. None of the other characters are mentioned as having siblings save Nick, who was adopted and has at least 1 sibling-an older sister.
• True Blood: Tara and Lafayette were not related in The Southern Vampire Mysteries, but in the show, they are cousins.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Shadow Play", two characters in Adam Grant's recurring nightmare, Father Grant and Carol Ritchie, are his late father and his sister in the real world. In the original episode, the priest was Father Beaman, an actual priest who died when Adam was ten years old, while it is never said whether or not Carol is based on anyone from Adam's real life.
• In the English dub of Ultraman, Tagalong Kid Hoshino is the younger brother of Fuji, the sole woman on the team. Although quite fitting, given the two's relationship, the problem is that Fuji is shown to have a little brother later on in the original Japanese version. The dub adjusts by changing the later-introduced kid to one of Fuji's brothers.
• The Walking Dead:
  • The Greene family Zig-Zagged this as the family relationship got shuffled a bit. In the comics, Hershel only had one late wife, while the TV show split them in two. Of his canonical children, only Maggie retained her original status being his child from his first wife. Shawn was only his stepson here, while Arnold became the nephew of his first wife instead. The rest of the canonical children were Adapted Out and was filled/replaced by a daughter named Beth.
  • Another possible remix. In the comics, Tyreese has a daughter named Julie. In the show, he has a younger sister named Sasha with no sign of Julie.
  • Speaking of Tyreese, he and Carol are essentially in a Common-Law marriage in the comics. They're not related at all in the show, and their only Story Arc together are during Season 4 and the premiere of the fifth involving her mercy killing his Love Interest in the show and them being stuck in the same party after their home base is destroyed.
  • Lilly Chambler became related to the Chambler (Chalmers in the comics) family in virtue of being a Composite Character of Lily Caul (her main counterpart) and April Chalmers. This also extends to Lilly's daughter Meghan, Caul's stillborn child in the comics.
  • Due to Andrea's early death in the show, Michonne fills her role in the comics as Rick's second (Common Law) wife and stepmother to his children.

Puppet Shows

• In Tales from Muppetland: The Frog Prince, Robin not only isn't Kermit's nephew, he isn't really a frog. They gain their relationship in The Muppet Show and it's been that way ever since.

Radio

• The BBC Radio Four series The Rivals, in which Inspector Lestrade assists great 19th century detectives other than Sherlock Holmes, the episode based on Arthur B. Reeve's Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective, makes Dunlap into Lestrade's niece. This involves Adaptational Nationality (Reeves's Constance was American), probably Age Lift (Reeves's Constance was a married woman; the BBC version has just left university) and if not Adaptational Heroism, exactly, then Adaptational Lawfulness (Reeves's Constance was a criminal as much as a detective).

Theatre

• Beetlejuice: In the film, Juno was merely BJ’s former boss. Here, she’s his mother.
• In Verdi's opera Falstaff, based on The Merry Wives of Windsor, this trope is both played straight and inverted as Anne Page becomes Nannetta Ford, with her now-father Master Ford taking on Master Page's role in the action (the latter being Adapted Out) as well as his own, and her original mother Meg Page relegated to a smaller role.
• In the stage adaptation of "Farewell, my Turnabout" from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All, Celeste Inpax is Adrian Andrews's cousin rather than her mentor.
• In the 2014 American musical adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Claude Frollo is Quasimodo's uncle, his brother Jehan being the father.
• In The Kansas Collection, Glinda is sisters with the Wicked Witch of the East. The Wicked Witch was once good before finding the Slippers.
• Garsington Opera's version of L'Orfeo made the messenger Sylvia also Eurydice's mother, making the moment where she had to break the news of her death even more tragic.
• In the stage musical of Disney's The Little Mermaid, Triton and Ursula are siblings. This was part of Disney's original concept for the movie, but it was dropped in development.
• In The Marriage of Figaro, Barbarina is the daughter of the gardener Antonio, and Susanna's cousin, while Cherubino is a page with no connection to the judge Don Curzio. In ¡Figaro! (90210), a 2015 adaptation of the opera reset in contemporary Beverly Hills, Barbarina's counterpart "Barbara" isn't related to Susana or to Atzuko (Antonio), but is the daughter of the Count and Countess's counterparts, Paul and Roxanne Conti. Meanwhile, "Li'l B-Man", Cherubino's counterpart, is the son of Don Curzio's gender-flipped counterpart Donna Curson.
• In Persona 3, The male protagonist and female protagonist of Persona 3 Portable were counterparts that existed in parallel dimensions. While they still take each other's place in Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade, they are siblings there, with the performance featuring either one being the world where the other sibling died in their backstory.
• Word of God is that the Pokémon musical Pokémon Live! implies that Giovanni is Ash's biological father. Delia was a part of Team Rocket as a teen and dated Giovanni, but left after meeting her future husband.
• In The Queen of Spades, Liza, while still a distant relative of the Countess, is treated pretty much as a servant, or even worse sometimes (it's mentioned that her salary is paid very inaccurately). In the opera, however, she is the Countess' granddaughter, thus having a much better social standing.
• In the original cartoon version of Really Rosie, Chicken Soup is Rosie's "boyfriend." In the 1980 stage musical, which played off-Broadway and is now a staple of schools and children's theatre, he's her Annoying Younger Sibling. Kathy and Alligator also became brother and sister.
• The Secret Garden: As in multiple films, Mary's mother Rose and Colin's mother Lily (whose name was Lilias in the book) were twin sisters, while in the book, Mary's father was Lilias's brother.
• In Seussical, JoJo is an Ascended Extra and the Mayor of Whoville's son, a move which was repeated in the Horton Hears a Who! film.
• In the original penny dreadful and early theatrical treatments of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Johanna has no personal connection to Sweeney and only investigates him because she suspects her missing boyfriend has been done in by the Serial Killer barber. Starting in the 1973 stage adaptation, she's Todd's daughter, whom his arch-enemy adopted after having convicted him on a false charge.
• In the 1994 musical A Tale of Cinderella (not to be confused with Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella), Cinderella's fairy godmother, La Stella, is also her grandmother, the mother of her Missing Mom Giametta.
• In the 2013 Starkid musical, Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier (a parody/retelling of Disney's Aladdin), Ja'far is revealed to be Jasmine's father.
• A Very Potter Sequel, Draco finds out that he is not truly Lucius's son, but rather his biological father is Dobby, born after Narcissa had an extramarital affair with him.
• Wicked:
  • Subverted. In the original book it's intentionally vague if Nessarose is Frexspar's or Turtle Heart's daughter. The musical Adapted Out Turtle Heart, making Nessarose into Frex's biological daughter for sure. Two books later it was confirmed that Nessarose is also Frexspar's daughter in book canon.
  • This trope is played straight in books and musical alike with Nessarose and Elphaba, though: the two wicked witches in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz aren't related, but here they're sisters (actually half-sisters), as in the classic film.
• In The Wiz, Addapearle, The Good Witch Of The North, mentions that she is the sister of the Wicked Witch Of The East, Evamean. It also makes her sisters with Evillene, the Wicked Witch Of The West.

Video Games

• Alice in the Mirrors of Albion, which is set in the Fairy Tale Free-for-All city of Albion, has the Little Red Riding Hood appear as the Mad Hatter's niece.
• In Capsule Servant, Master Artoria has Lancelot and Bedivere as brothers in addition to her actual brother Kay. Downplayed with Gawain and Mordred, who are still related to her but as respectively her father^note rather than nephew and cousin.^note rather than child
• Castlevania: Dracula X, a remixed and pragmatic port of Castlevania: Rondo of Blood for the SNES, made Annette and Maria siblings whereas they were unrelated in Rondo proper. The original English localization of Symphony of the Night actually kept this change in, leading many to continue to believe they're sisters even after the matter was officially cleared up.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Though they lived centuries apart in their original lives, Arjuna and Minamoto no Raikou are half siblings. Arjuna's father is the Hindu God Indra and Raikou's father is the Shinto God Gozu Tennō, but in the Nasuverse, the two gods are one and the same.
  • It is revealed that Morgan Le Fay and the Lady of the Lake are split personalities of each other. This means the Lady of the Lake's adopted son, Lancelot, is the adopted sibling of Morgan's children Agravain, Gawain, Gaharis, Gareth, and Mordred.
• Zig-zagged with Harvest Moon. The transition of Harvest Moon 64 to Harvest Moon: Back to Nature changed a large portion of the characters' relationship with one another.
  • Karen used to be Sasha's and Gotz's daughter; however, in Back To Nature her father became Jeff, who was originally Elli's father figure (and love interest). Gotz is now a widower.
  • Stu is Elli's little brother in Back To Nature. Originally he was unrelated.
  • Rick was originally Gray's and Ann's cousin. In Back To Nature he is Popuri's older brother instead, despite still looking related to Ann (they're redheaded while Popuri has pink hair).
• In the original Metal Gear games for the MSX2, Big Boss was simply Solid Snake's commanding officer who ends up becoming his nemesis. When the franchise was later revived with Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake was revealed to be Big Boss's son, or more specifically a genetically modified clone of him, with one CODEC conversation implying that Big Boss imparted that knowledge to Snake during the events of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, even though no such scene actually occurs in that game. This eventually allowed a younger version of Big Boss to be introduced in the prequel Metal Gear Solid 3, where he goes under the codename Naked Snake.
• The Hēibái Wúcháng in Taoist mythos are not related, but Kuromujō and Shiromujō in Onmyoji are actual siblings.
• Pokémon Gold and Silver:
  • No relationship between Silver and Giovanni was ever specified in the original games. In the remakes, as per Pokémon Adventures, Silver is Giovanni's son, and the way Silver is treated (as seen in Celebi's DLC event) is the reason he wants to wipe out Team Rocket itself.
  • While Clair and Lance were originally unrelated, Pokémon Crystal obliquely implies that they are — the guard stationed at the entrance of the Dragon's Den explicitly declares that the master is Clair's grandfather, while one of the master's attendants implies that Lance has a Strong Family Resemblance to the master. Pokémon Adventures and Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver would make their relationship as cousins explicit.
• In The Punisher, Jigsaw turns out to be the son of Howard Saint, the Big Bad of the 2004 live-action movie.
• The tie-in game for Spider-Man 3 made Morbius and Shriek husband and wife—despite their comics counterparts being enemies in Maximum Carnage, where the latter also had the hots for the titular Carnage.
• In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, John Wraith is heavily implied to be Nightcrawler's father. This actually lines up rather nicely, indicating Nightcrawler got his teleportation powers from Wraith and his blue skin from Mystique, who was Wraith's lover in this continuity.

Web Animation

• Knights of the Old Republic Cinematic Universe: Visquis and Saquesh, the two Quarren crime lords based on Nar Shaddaa, are brothers in this universe, whereas they weren't stated to be related in the source material. After Hanharr kills Saquesh and lies to Visquis that Meetra Surik did it, Visquis gets a more personal reason to capture the Jedi Exile than he has canonically.
• In the Robin Hood legends, Guy of Gisbourne is a hitman hired by the Sheriff of Nottingham. In the cyberpunk miniseries Sherwood (2019), Lord Nottingham and Gisbourne are father and son.

Webcomics

• Arthur, King of Time and Space:
  • In the modern day setting, Guinevere is the biological mother of both Mordred and Galahad; their respective fathers remain the same. Morgan is Mordred's mom in the space arc, as is common in modern works.
  • Pelleas is related to the Pellinore family, since he fits their Family Theme Naming.
• In the Batman comics, Duke Thomas was just a partner of Batman's. In Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, much like Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Cassandra Cain, Duke is adopted by Bruce.
• Darths & Droids:
  • Rey is Rey Solo, the daughter of Jim's serial identity-stealing character (the film's Han Solo) and Princess Organa (Leia).
  • Kylo Ren is the son of the actual Han Solo whose identity Jim's character stole (the film's Greedo).
• Dumbing of Age: Played straight with Clint, when Ruth and Howard's grandfather suddenly turns out to be the Dumbiverse version of a character who appeared in a single Shortpacked! strip. Of course, in that appearance it's never specifically stated he's not Ruth's grandfather.
• HSETAU: Karkat and Kanaya are brother and sister, and Tavros is Nepeta's nephew.
• In Kid Beowulf (an Alternate Universe retelling of Beowulf), Beowulf is related to all three of his adversaries - Grendel is his non-identical twin brother, Grendel's mother is the mother of both of them, and the dragon is his grandfather (as is Hrothgar).
• MoringMark - TOH Comics takes several cases of characters being Ambiguously Related in The Owl House and makes the relationships more definitive:
  • The two potion track witches from Eda's Whole Episode Flashback show up several times in the present day as Boscha's mothers.
  • Vee is adopted by Camila and has several strips devoted to her and Luz's relationship as sisters. In canon, she is shown to still be treated as a member of the family by the time of the epilogue, but her legal status went unspecified.
• In Transformers Legends, Windblade is the little sister of Nijika, the Zamojin android from the original '80s Transformers cartoon.

Web Videos

• In The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, Adele is the biological daughter of Rochester and his first wife "M.", whose postpartum depression after Adele's birth and resulting self-medication with drugs led to her current status as the Madwoman in the Attic. In the original novel, Adéle is just Rochester's ward, the abandoned daughter of his ex-mistress Céline Varens (although Céline claimed Rochester was her father, he doesn't think he is), and she has no connection to his mad wife Bertha.
• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries inverted this several times:
  • The Bennet family Zig-Zagged this as the family relationship got shuffled a bit. In the novel, there are five Bennet sisters. Here, only the eponymous protagonist, Jane, and Lydia retained their original status as sisters. Mary was only their (paternal) cousin here, while Kitty became Lydia's pet cat instead.
  • Mr. Collins in the novel is a cousin to the Bennet girls who wants to marry one of them (specifically, Jane first before setting his sights on Lizzie), then ultimately settles for Lizzie's best friend Charlotte Lucas after being rejected. Here, he is not related to the Bennets and he never marries Charlotte (he becomes her boss instead).
• The Perfect Castlevania Timeline:
  • While Simon Belmont's father was never identified in the original game timeline, the series hypothesises his father to have been Desmond, the protagonist of Castlevania: Order of Shadows.
  • Shanoa's Mysterious Past is never elaborated on in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, what with her being an Amnesiac Hero. The Perfect Castlevania Timeline reveals in Chapter VII: The Heroic Morris Clan that she is descended from Hector and Julia.
• In "What if DC and Marvel Share the Same Cinematic Universe", Ego planted a seed on Krypton which, due to the innate power of Kryptonian psychology, became the being known as Doomsday. This would also make it and Peter Quill half-brothers thousands of years apart.

Western Animation

• In Avengers: Black Panther's Quest, the Barons Zemo are descended from Morgan le Fey. This is not the case in the original comics.
• DuckTales:
  • In the original 1987 series, Bubba the Caveduck was apparently a random prehistoric duck that ended up coming back to the present with Scrooge and the others during a Time Travel excursion. In the 2017 reboot, it's shown that Bubba is actually a prehistoric ancestor of the McDuck Family which regrettably meant that he had to stay in his own time rather than become a series regular.
  • The reboot's series finale reveals that Webby Vanderquack is also a McDuck — she's Scrooge's daughter via cloning, created by F.O.W.L. to use against him. By extension, her clones May and June (who are based off two of Daisy's triplet nieces in the comics — Webby herself is a Composite Character with April, the third triplet) are also Scrooge's daughters.
• Gargoyles:
  • Word of God says that the events of A Midsummer Night's Dream are at least loosely based on Oberon and Titania's actual past, but that in this version Oberon's interest in the changeling child comes from him being his son with a mortal woman.
  • Word of God says that in this show's version of Arthurian myth, Nimue is Arthur's biological half-sister but was switched for the changeling Morgana le Fay.
• G.I. Joe: The Movie turned Lt. Falcon into Duke's half-brother. The later G.I. Joe: Renegades series take it a step further by revamping him into Duke's full-blooded brother Vincent Hauser, who is considerably younger in this incarnation (not even old enough to join the military yet).
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2015) sees Korath as one of Thanos' "children" and thus is the adopted brother of Gamora and Nebula, whereas even the film suggests Korath is a member of the Kree Empire.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002) made Man-At-Arms and Fisto brothers. Also there was some implication (though never confirmed) that either Man-At-Arms or Fisto was Teela's biological father. In the Filmation cartoon Teela was Man-At-Arms' adopted daughter and her biological father was an unnamed soldier who had died years before, while in the original minicomics Teela was a clone of the Sorceress created by Skeletor.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021): The season 3 finale reveals Hordak is Evil-Lyn's father. In all previous continuities, they have been unrelated.
• In The Incredible Hulk (1996), Ogress is one of the Gamma Warriors cloned from the Hulk's DNA, in contrast to the comics, where she was simply a lawyer who was mutated by the Leader's gamma bomb.
• Both inverted and played straight with Madame Masque in Iron Man: Armored Adventures as she's reimagined as the Iron Monger's daughter, yet her comic book father, Count Nefaria, also appears.
• Little Shop, the Animated Adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors, makes Audrey into Mr. Mushnik's daughter, rather than just his employee.
• In Marvel's Spider-Man, Gwen Stacy turns out to be the niece of Raymond Warren/The Jackal.
• My Adventures with Superman portrays Silver Banshee and the series' version of Mist as siblings, despite Silver Banshee having never been related to any character who goes by the Mist identity in the comics.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the original TV special, Scorpan was Dragon to Tirek. In Friendship is Magic, the two are brothers. In both cases, Scorpan pulled a Heel–Face Turn and helped the ponies defeat Tirek.
  • In the franchise's previous incarnation, Rarity and Sweetie Belle are unrelated. In Friendship is Magic, the two are sisters, with Rarity being the elder of the two.
• The New Adventures of Jonny Quest introduced a redheaded young girl named Jessie as a potential new companion for the heroes. The character was revived for Jonny's Golden Quest, Jonny Quest vs. the Cyber Insects and The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, where she was reimagined as Race Bannon's daughter.
• In the 2014 Rainbow Brite reboot Brian is a descendant of Krys. In the original continuity they co-exist in the same time period, but never meet each other.
• Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch:
  • Shinji is Enchantra's son.
  • Enchantra and Della (renamed Spella) are sisters.
• In the Donkey Kong segment of Saturday Supercade, Pauline was Mario's niece, rather than girlfriend. (Luigi had not debuted in Mario Bros. yet, making this adaptation very Hilarious in Hindsight.)
• Seven Little Monsters establishes that the titular monsters are siblings, when the original book, in spite of depicting the monsters living in the same house, gave no indication whatsoever that they were related.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
  • Adora and Catra are turned into Shadow Weaver's adopted daughters.
  • Castaspella is turned into King Micah's sister, making her Queen Angella's sister-in-law and Glimmer's aunt. This entails Castaspella getting a Race Lift, since this version of Micah is Asian.
• Skylanders Academy:
  • Cynder is the daughter of Malefor.
  • At the end of the show, Master Eon reveals to Kaos and the audience that he is the latter's father. And since Eon also adopted Spyro when he was an orphan, this makes Spyro and Kaos adoptive brothers.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man:
  • In the Spider-Man comics Silver Sable and Silvermane are a completely unrelated mercenary and gangster. In The Spectacular Spider-Man Silver Sable is Silvermane's villainous daughter. Thus her real name was changed from Silver Sablivona to Sable Manfredi.
  • The series also combines this trope with Composite Character. In the comics Uncle Ben's killer is a nameless street thug. In the cartoon, he's Black Cat's father The Cat.
  • In the comics, Liz Allan has a step-brother named Mark Raxon with whom she's very close; in this series they're blood siblings with the surname Allan.
• Spider-Man (1967) had Mary Jane Watson as the niece of Captain Stacy, to whom she was unrelated in the comics. This let her carry some of the role of Gwen Stacy, Spidey's other major love interest in the comics, who wasn't used in the series.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series sees the Red Skull as the father of Electro and the Chameleon (the former being Electro in-name and costume only, the latter was adopted). Also inverted with the latter as the Chameleon isn't the half-brother of Kraven.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Karai in the original Mirage comics was simply Shredder's top agent. In the 2003 cartoon, she is his adopted daughter. In the 2012 cartoon, she appears to be Shredder's biological daughter, but it's later revealed he kidnapped her in infancy and raised her, but she's actually Splinter's biological daughter (making her the turtles 'step'-sister.) In Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Karai is Splinter's distant ancestor and founder of the Hamato clan. This is in addition to being the Shredder/Oroku Saki's biological daughter (making Splinter and Shredder related as well).
• Teen Titans Go!: The Doom Patrol are introduced in the sixth season, with the show's interpretations of Robotman and Negative Man (or rather, Negative Girl) being Beast Boy's adoptive siblings (which by extension makes Elasti-Girl their adoptive mother as well as Beast Boy's) and the Chief taking Mento's place as Beast Boy's adoptive father.
• In the original Tiny Toon Adventures, one of the major running gags for the show was Buster and Babs Bunny clarifying that they weren't related when they introduced themselves. In the Looniversity reboot, however, they're fraternal twins.
• Total DramaRama: In the episode "Dissing Cousins", Total Drama Pahkitew Island competitors Max and Ella are written in the series as the respective cousins of Total Drama Island contestants Owen and Gwen, despite having never interacted with them in the original series.
• In the British television series, TUGS, Ten Cents and Sunshine were best friends, and were both male. In the American translation, Salty's Lighthouse, Sunshine became female and Ten Cents' younger sister.
• In Voltron: Legendary Defender, Haggar is Zarkon's wife and Lotor's mother. This serves as a Mythology Gag as Haggar's Golion counterpart is Zarkon's counterpart Daibazaal's mother.
• Wacky Races (2017) established that the Gruesome Twosome are brothers, when the original cartoon never indicated that they were related.
• X-Men: Evolution: Xavier and Juggernaut are changed from step-brothers to half-brothers.
• Young Justice (2010):
  • Cheshire becomes the sister of Artemis, and therefore the daughter of the original Huntress and Sportsmaster. This entails Artemis and Huntress getting a Race Lift.
  • Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian are uncle and niece, while they're unrelated in the comics. Word of God confirms that this is true, despite the revelation that M'gann is actually a White Martian, later, Ma'alefa'ak also is changed from Martian Manhunter's brother to Miss Martian's.
  • Lynn Stewart, Black Lightning’s ex-wife, is also the sister of John Stewart, the Green Lantern.^note Her name being Stewart was intentional on the part of her creator, Tony Isabella. He didn’t make her John’s sister but decided to leave the door open if someone else wanted to do it. This just happens to be the first time someone took the opening.
  • Nabu was one of Vandal Savage's countless children. Season 4 subsequently reveals that the Atlantean sorcerer Arion was also Savage's grandson.
  • Played With: In the comics, Halo's real name was Violet Harper, but she had no connection to Roy Harper. Here, Halo uses a pseudonym, and Roy casually offers his surname when she can't come up with one. Similarly, in the comics, Guardian's real name is Jim Harper. In the show he's a Roy's "uncle", who is actually his clone artificially aged to adulthood.
  • Baron Bedlam is now the Markov children's Evil Uncle.
  • Onyx is the granddaughter of Will Everett, the All-Star Squadron member Amazing-Man.

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