Rule 63

It's-a me, Maria!^note Original image from Pixiv.

"I'd make a sexy chick!"

— Brodie Bruce, Mallrats

For every given male character, there is a female version of that character, and vice versa.

They may be canonical. Most of them aren't. The internet has a fascination for producing gender swapping regardless of the context of the original character. Canon-derived examples of the trope tend to outlast their actual-canon inspirations (which are often single stories, or even short throwaway gags.)

No character is immune to this effect — not Darth Vader, not Master Chief — no one. ^note Not even Chuck Norris. Rule 61 lied to you.

Closely related to Gender Flip. When a separate character is a female knock-off of an existing male character, you have a Distaff Counterpart. Crossdressers, of course, provide their own version of this. There's a good chance that you'll see the character in question in a Gendered Outfit (like our lovely Maria at right, here).

One of the Rules of the Internet. Can (and often does) overlap with Rule 34. Since these female versions are often much cuter than their male counterparts, it can also overlap with Self-Fanservice and Fan Disservice. A whole world of them is a Gender-Bent Alternate Universe.

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Examples

Distaff Counterpart/Gender Flip

Anime & Manga

• Hetalia: Axis Powers, as a series where gender is essentially an arbitrary distinction, actually has official art fulfilling this rule.
• A canonical example for Yu-Gi-Oh! would be the Dark Magician Girl that appeared in the Battle City arc.
• Code Geass Mao in the Alternate Universe series Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally is one of these. In the regular series, he was a dude Lelouch's age. In the spin-off, she's a girl Nunnally's age.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi literally has a Rule 63 in regards to Fate, and her name is Sextum because she's the 6th Averruncus series.
• According to the backstory of Fate/stay night, Saber is a gender-flipped version of King Arthur, who pretended to be male during her life, with some help from Merlin.
  • She has a male counterpart in Fate/Prototype - un-63'd or double-63'd, depending on your point of view. He's also a summonable Servant in Fate/Grand Order, and you could theoretically have them both on the same team.
  • The Fate franchise has gone on to feature a startling array of gender-flips of real, fictional and mythical people, some with in-universe justifications (or excuses), some without.
• Parodied in the anime version of Cromartie High School. The first half of the last episode is devoted to reusing jokes from the beginning of the series, but with the central cast's female versions, who have the exact same voices and unattractive faces as their male counterparts. (Fan art of these versions is very rare.)
• The author of Attack on Titan has released artwork of what Eren would look like if he were a girl.◊ Later, that design was reused to make Gabi, a character who wanted to kill Eren.
• Zekkyou Gakkyuu claims in Boys And Girls that there are alternate universes where someone may be one gender, while being another in a different universe. And this includes an appearance of a gender-bent Yomi, who became very popular with the readers after one short appearance.
• One of the many Alternate Universes depicted in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Official Doujin is a world where Shuchiin Academy is an all-girl's school, resulting in Kaguya and Shirogane's Duel of Seduction being reinterpreted as a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship.

Comic Books

• DC Comics actually has an Alternate Universe devoted to this: Earth-11, featuring Superwoman and Batwoman as well as the very Spartan-looking Wonder Man.^note (no relation) Fun fact: 11 + 52 (the total number of alternate Earths after Infinite Crisis) equals... 63.
• DC's Animesque Ame-Comi Girls line has female versions of many male characters, but not vice versa, and not for all male characters. Most are actually the Distaff Counterparts of the male characters, "promoted" in their absence. But there are a few straight examples of this trope, including a female Sinestro, and an Indigo made indistinguishable from a female Brainiac.
• Marvel Mangaverse: Characters who don't start the story off already female are replaced by females very quickly.
• One comic had The Authority meet their gender-flipped Alternate Universe selves, where they are called The Meritocracy.
• The Fantastic Four once visited an alternate universe where Tony Stark was female... and married to Captain America.
• Marvel has come out with six Alternate Universe version of Captain America to celebrate his 75th birthday, and two are female. One is Sharon Rogers (Steve Rogers' daughter from a world where he was never frozen) and Peggy Carter (a Super Soldier from the same program, in a world where Rogers is assassinated during World War II.)
• An issue of Uncanny X-Men featured an evil team of male versions of several X-Women fighting Captain Britain. Most of them looked very flamboyant in those costumes.
• Exiles once visited an alternate Earth with female Magneto and Quicksilver, and Scarlet Warlock (male Scarlet Witch).
• The Joker:
  • He's a woman named Bianca Steeplechase in Thrillkiller and its sequel, which are set on an alternate Earth in the early '60s. Batgirl and Robin goes up against her. Harley Quinn is still a girl.
  • In the Flashpoint arc, the shots in Crime Alley that night killed Bruce. There's still a Batman; though; Thomas Wayne wound up becoming the (really) Dark Knight as a result. The Joker exists too, as a direct consequence of the same evening: Martha.
• Dennis the Menace (UK) had a female cousin who looked exactly like him but wore a bow in her hair and a skirt. Also her name was Denise The Menace.
• The cover of issue #8 of the second volume of Young Avengers depicts the main team as how they look in many alternate universes. One of them is a universe where all the female characters are male and viceversa. The section showing that universe is rather tiny but at least fans of male Kate Bishop won't have to adapt the character anymore (and fans of female Prodigy at least know she has short hair like her male counterpart).
  • This is lampshaded in the parody title Secret Wars Too, for the 2015 Secret Wars. America Chavez and 1602!Kate Bishop are traveling the domains looking for Pizza and come across the Rule 63 Domain and see gender-flipped versions of the MCU Avengers.
• X-23 is pretty much an invoked version of this: A female clone created by a project attempting to recreate Weapon X, but because the genetic sample was too badly damaged on the Y chromosome, the scientist who created her decided to double the X and make the clone female, instead. Of course, that's not to say that Rule 63 versions of Wolverine weren't popular in fanart even before her creation...
• Star Trek Expanded Universe:
  • The Star Trek: The Original Series comic All of Me had a brief appearance via Negative Space Wedgie of one Jane T. Kirk, captain of the Foundation starship Enterprise.
  • The comic book series based on the 2009 film eventually introduced an alternate universe containing gender-swapped versions of the entire Enterprise crew, complete with a version of Jane Kirk.

Fan Works

• One of the topics for Literary Challenge #64 on the Star Trek Online forums was to write a story where your captain ended up in a gender-flipped universe via a Negative Space Wedgie.
• Many fanfics for The Hobbit gender-swap either Bilbo or one or two of the dwarves. Then there is The Monstrous Company of Thorin Oakenshield whose title is rather unsubtly based on Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment. Accordingly, the whole company with the exception of Bilbo and Gandalf turn out to be female.
• Endemic in Harry Potter fanfics.
  • Female!Harry is the most common. Moratorium and the So Bad, It's Good Becoming Female are two examples on this wiki.
  • Female!Ron is also occasionally seen. Case in point: Weasley Girl.
  • Female!Tom Riddle/Voldemort and Female!Draco crop up sometimes, though not as often. Thunderstorm is an example of the former and Twixt Truth and Dark Deceit is an example of the latter.
  • The internet being what it is, this is bound to go the other way too. Look long enough and you'll find male!Hermione and male!Ginny fanfics/fanart somewhere.
  • And there's probably at least one fic out there that gender flips the entire cast.
    • Harry Potter and the Distaff Side has Harry enter a parallel world with gender-flipped versions of himself and the other characters.
    • And Holly Potter and the Witching World depicts an alternate universe where most of the male characters have been gender-flipped but none of the female characters have, which creates a "witching world" where witches outnumber wizards about ten to one.
  • The fic Hermione Granger's Guide to Gender Flip Fanfiction takes a very meta look at this phenomenon in the Harry Potter fandom.
• In The Bridge when the kaiju are warped into Equestria, they take on native forms and Mothra gets to be a Changeling Queen. When she first starts practicing her changeling transformations, she can only do other females. When she tries to jokingly copy Godzilla Junior's unicorn form, she becomes a mare version.
• This fanfic, a tag to The Mysterious Affair at Styles, features only the main characters gender-bent, not the suspects.
• The X-Men: Evolution fanfic XXY:Evolution has most of the characters with opposite genders. The notable exceptions are the younger X-Men's parents, Sabretooth^note the author can't really picture him as a female, Irene Adler, Tony Stark^note he was mentioned as the creator of Female!Nightcrawler's image inducer, and Spider-Man and his supporting cast.
• Bad Press: Several of the fanfics referenced in the story depict gender-flipped versions of Starscream. The actual Starscream is highly displeased about the matter, though it's unclear if he's more offended by their being female or the fact they're also consistently portrayed as Autobots.
• Not So Evil is one for the Cybertronian characters of Transformers: Prime, with Arcee being the only member whose gender remains the same.

Literature

• The anthology Star Trek: The New Voyages contains the story "Procrustean Petard", in which a Negative Space Wedgie gender-flips the crew of any starship that comes within range (except for the strongest male aboard, who gets an extra Y chromosome).
  • Nope, not Kirk—he gets gender flipped too. It's Spock!
• From The Elder Scrolls In-Universe Books, The Sultry Argonian Bard is a gender-flipped Self-Insert Fic of The Lusty Argonian Maid.
• Frank Richards' greedy overweight schoolboy, Billy Bunter, had a sister just like him called Bessie, written by "Hilda Richards" (who in fact was just Frank Richards under another name!)
• Stephenie Meyer's latest Twilight novel rehashes the story of the first book, but the protagonists are now the human named Beaufort (Beau for short) and the vampire lady Edythe. And it also changes the ending where Beau dies after the vampire attack instead of having the venom sucked out.
• The Reunion With Twelve Fascinating Goddesses: Tooi is famous enough that, in-universe, several series of books have been written about his exploits. He's disturbed to discover that two of them involve gender-bending: one turns him female, while the other turns the twelve goddesses male. The latter is mentioned to be popular with the female readers.

Live-Action TV

• Red Dwarf had an entire alternate dimension where Lister, Rimmer, and Holly had female counterparts; Cat, meanwhile, had a male dog counterpart. Because dogs and cats are different genders.
• Pops up every now and then on Sliders, Most notably in the episode Double Cross where there is a female counterpart of Quinn named Logan St.Clair.
• The sketch TV show In Living Color! had Kelly Coffield as Andrea 'Dice' Clay.
• Doctor Who has had a couple of unusual examples where due to the randomness of regeneration, it's possible for a male Time Lord to become his own distaff counterpart (as occurred when The Master regenerated and became Missy), and for a female Time Lord to become the Spear Counterpart (as occurred with the female Time Lord known as the General who spent one incarnation as a man). This finally happened to the Doctor directly, with their thirteenth incarnation being a woman.

Music

• The video for "Bye Bye Beautiful" flips almost at random between portraying Nightwish and Nightwish-as-a-Girl Group (starting as the latter), with then-lead singer Annette Olzon the only member staying the same in both versions.

Tabletop Games

• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Here's Fabled Dianaira. Its name might come from Deianira, the wife of Hercules in Greek mythology. While this card is obviously male, a fan artist "corrected" this mythological error.
• Adam Rebottaro, artist and co-creator of Sentinels of the Multiverse, drew some so that you don't have to as part of Swaptober.

Video Games

• Lost Saga not only loves to include BlazBlue characters into its game, but also allows you to buy an item that lets you play as a female version of that character; examples include Ragna and Hazama. Jin is the only exception, as his female version is Noel Vermillion.
  • Within BlazBlue itself, there exists official artwork of a character called Alpha-1, essentially a gender-flipped Ragna as a Murakumo Unit.
• There are genderbent chibi figures of several famous Metal Gear characters. These are an official product distributed for nothing more than fanservice. Snake is rather cute...
• An official version in Super Robot Wars Reversal in the case of Raoul/Fiona Gureden. Fiona is basically Raoul as a girl (and vice versa). In Original Generations, they decided to keep both branches and make them Half-Identical Twins.
  • Original Generation: The Moon Dewllers did almost the same thing with Super Robot Wars GC protagonist Akimi Akatsuki, turning them into older brother and younger sister, with the latter being renamed "Akemi".
• Koihime†Musou, an erotic game based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which most of the novel's male characters are female. Diao Chan is now a muscular man in bikini, voiced by Norio Wakamoto.
  • So are Sengoku Rance (partial example, as many characters remain in their original gender, e.g. Oda Nobunaga) and Sengoku Hime, with the Sengoku Jidai as backdrop.
• In Aura Kingdom, for some odd reason, the Eidolons based off of the archangels are all female.
• Word of God states that Paine from Final Fantasy X-2 was essentially thought up as a female version of Squall, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VIII.
  • Likewise, Final Fantasy XIII's Lightning was originally conceived as a female Cloud Strife.
• Five Nights in Anime features female versions of Freddy Fazbear, Golden Freddy and Springtrap.
• Haven (2020) received an update in March of 2022 which adds the option to swap the gender of one of the protagonists upon starting a new game, allowing them to be played as a same-sex couple.

Web Animation

• Red vs. Blue:
  • Played with: In addition to the six inept, clueless, lazy, and outright idiotic men, who because of the series being a Halo machinima all look identical with only different color, there is a single female character in the form of Tex, who is almost completely sane in comparison and a more capable soldier than all the others combined.
  • Later, (Griff's) Sister is introduced, who is as dumb as Caboose but insanely hot. At least so we are told.
• The RWBY series had an entire team (JNPR) composed of genderflips of legendary figures: Joan of Arc , Mulan, Thor, and Achilles. All four of whom having at least one myth involving them cross-dressing (the characters are of the disguise's gender, meaning Joan and Mulan are represented as boys while Thor and Achilles are represented as girls).

Webcomics

• Ménage à 3:
  • Although "Garii" is just a figment of Yuki's imagination, she's close enough.
  • There's also an "official" manifestation of this trope as a bonus story in the series' fourth book collection.
  • Yuki dreams Zii into the role of Captain Harlock, and Gary into that of Ulala.
• Scandinavia and the World has a male and female version of most commonly mentioned countries; they are generally very similar in appearance. (Sister Germany even has her brother's mustache).
• Many characters in Arthur, King of Time and Space have different genders based on their arc. Tristram, in particular, is female in every arc besides the baseline, and Morgan and Nimue are actually male in the M*A*S*H* arc.
• El Goonish Shive has a great deal of actual Gender Bender activity, which also inspires a lot of fan art.
• This April Fools strip of Kevina And Kelly
• An official version of this occurs in Ears for Elves. The last panel here calls the rule by name and shows what Tanna and Luero would look like when gender-flipped.
• Jix has a story arc that revolves around a device that might as well be called "The Rule 63 gun." Lauren spent the majority of the arc as a feminine looking man.
• Unwinder's Tall Comics: Amy drew a picture of BBQ She-Sauce and Unwinder finds that she's attractive.
• The art gallery of the EATATAU!!! website contains this◊ gender-flipped picture of the two leads.
• Ennui GO!: A series of strips shows us the world of Earth-11, where the genders of all characters are flipped.

Western Animation

• Generator Rex has an awesome in-universe example of this in "Beyond the Sea," although the similarities between the Cabo Luna beach babes and Rex and Noah go unnoticed. Yay for surprise fanservice!
• Metalocalypse. Dethklok had a tribute band that was composed of all women, giving each of the band members a female counterpart. Dethklok rejected them, as they found them rather creepy. Though Toki admits the female Pickles was cute, and Nathan agreed she did have nice eyes.
• Superjail! had an early episode where opposite-sex counterparts of the staff ("Ultraprison") appear along with a bunch of female inmates, complete with a transgender man to compliment Alice. These characters would be reused for a cameo at the end of season 2, setting up a cliffhanger for the following run of episodes. Within season 3, the Ultraprison characters appeared again in the premiere, while two other episodes had brief cameos. The cliffhanger for season 3/premiere of season 4 also revisit this concept yet again.
• The episode of Adventure Time titled "Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake" used this concept, and in a reference to this trope, the entire episode was revealed to be a fanfiction by Ice King.
  • Another episode, "Bad Little Boy", shines focus on some more gender-swapped characters.
  • "Five Short Tables" The fourth episode starring Fionna and Cake kicks it up a few notches. Ice Queen has her own fanfiction with gender-swapped counterparts to the already gender-swapped counterparts, starring Flynn the Human Being, Jacques the Raccoon, and Ice President. Ice Queen's fanfiction has Ice President reading his own stories, starring Lynn the Person and Janet the Fox.
• "Neutopia", the seventh season premiere for Futurama, features Gender Bender versions of each character. The episode even lampshades this trope when a calendar of the sex-changed characters makes a huge profit due to the "creepy fans" of Planet Express.
  • Also, Coilette, Bender's attempt to join (and win) the 3004 Olympics as a bending competitor, in "Bend Her"
• In-universe, the Rowdyruff Boys to The Powerpuff Girls.
• In an early episode of Young Justice, Miss Martian uses her shape-shifting powers to imitate Kid Flash, Robin, and Aqualad — but female versions, because her powers aren't developed enough to readily do more complex shape-shifting stunts such as mimicking the opposite sex. Kid Flash approves.
• Family Guy has an in-universe example. In a Cutaway Gag, Peter and Lois agree to make out in one of the restaurant bathrooms. When Peter comes out of the bathroom thanking Lois, she says she didn't go in with him. The person who he made out with turns out to be a male clone of Lois, who sits at a table with a female clone of Peter.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: An in-universe example occurs in "Destination Imagination", in which Mr. Herriman hires several potential replacements for Frankie when she disappears, one of them being basically a male Frankie.
• The Chipettes—Jeanette, Eleanor and Brittany—to Alvin, Theodore and Simon.
• Grojband has the title band's rivals, The Newmans, which is made up of female versions of Corey, Kin, and Kon, as well as a male version of Laney.
• Ultimate Spider-Man: During "The Spider-Verse" five-parter, one of the alternate realities visited by Spider-Man is one where everybody's gender is flipped. He meets his counterpart from this world, Petra Parker/Spidergirl, and teams up with her against this worlds version of the Green Goblin: Norma Osborn.
• In the The Loud House episode "One of the Boys", Lincoln uses a dimension-jumping device created by Lisa to go in a dimension where he has 10 brothers instead of 10 sisters. When he tries to go back, he then accidentally ends up in a dimension where he is a girl named Linka with 10 brothers. Then, it turns out that it was All Just a Dream.
• The Simpsons
  • When the Simpsons travel to England, Homer meets Abe's illegitimate child from a wartime fling. She is a dead ringer for Homer.
  • In another episode, Homer's new coworker Mindy is basically a female version of him, if not in appearance, then definitely in taste and personality. Somehow, in spite of her eating habits, she manages to stay thin and shapely. Homer's guardian angel even (unintentionally) shows him that his life (and Marge's) would ultimately be a lot better if he were married to Mindy instead of Marge.

Real Life

• Among Mixed Martial Arts fandom, Cristiane "Cris Cyborg" Santos is considered to be Wanderlei Silva's female counterpart.

Gender Bending/Cross-Dressing

Anime & Manga

• Naruto examples:
  • The title character's sexy jutsu.
  • Konohamaru uses it too.
• Pokémon has several prominent examples:
  • In the first season, Ash Ketchum dressed up as 'Ashley', a little blonde girl in an orange dress.
  • Ash has been forced to cross-dress once each region after this—as a one-shot female NPC in Hoenn, and as a French Maid in Sinnoh. The fandom took these examples and ran with them.
    • He later ended up doing it again in Unova, this time by insistence of Iris. He brought the Ashley name back for this one.
    • He managed to avoid it in Kalos, though in a sense he was still involved; Serena had to crossdress as Ash himself to battle in his place, as Ash was ill at the time. James had previously done so in his partner Jessie's place under similar circumstances.
  • The banned episode "Beauty And The Beach" features James entering a swimsuit contest with inflatable breasts.
• Code Geass:
  • Lelouch is forced into a dress in one Picture Drama, and into an incredibly skimpy belly dancer uniform in another. As a result, the fandom really likes to run with that idea.
• Black Lagoon does the gender inverting in one of its Omake specials seen here on youtube, including an awesome male Balalaika (and Eda looking an awful lot like the cowboy mercenary she had a Gun Kata duel with). Hilarity bonus also runs for the Creepy Twins. The best part is that, in spite of having their genders swapped, the characters still have the same voice actors, who make no attempt to sound more gender appropriate.
• Blue Exorcist: Recently, creator Kato Kazue posted on Twitter sketches she made of the main cast gender swapped.
• A recent chapter of the Soul Eater manga made this canon. Most of the main characters (including Blair, but sadly, not Kid) became gender-swapped. How long a character stayed in his/her gender-bended form depended on how much of a Covert Pervert that character is.
  • Then again, there's still one character that seems immune to Rule 63. Then again...
• Hayate of Hayate the Combat Butler was found to play a very convincing female (even attracting the romantic attention of three male characters in that form). His female appearance has since made several more appearances and its own name (Hermione Ayasaki) and Hayate has been fandom-paired with his gender bent form.
• One chapter of Interspecies Reviewers has the reviewers visit the Genderswap Inn, where they take an Easy Sex Change potion. For Crim, not much changes other than his dick vanishing.
• Ren/Run from To Love Ru can somehow change genders by sneezing. Lala also invents a device that temporarily causes someone to switch genders.
• The title character of Ranma ½ is a canonical Gender Bender, being cursed to change into a sexy, female version of himself on contact with cold water, because he was once tossed into a cursed spring in a training session by his idiot father. While obviously a "real" aspect of the Ranma character, fandom has taken the concept even farther, naming the female side of him "Ranko" and making her an actual character in countless fan works, (many of them extremely NSFW).
  • Surprisingly, despite the Nyanniichuan's existence in canon, Rule 63 depictions of Ranma's rivals, two of whom were cursed at the same set of Transformation Ray springs, are extremely rare. Not non-existent, but drastically rarer than depictions of "Ranko".
• Princess Jellyfish has Kuranosuke cross-dressing as a hobby. This is justified since his mother is somewhere else. Tsukimi often says that he looks good as a woman, despite her fear of men.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project manga and one of the video games both have scenes in which Shinji Ikari dresses up like a schoolgirl complete with wig. Asuka and Rei are both unnerved at how cute Shinji looks like a girl.

Comic Books

• An issue of Lobo has the Main Man dying and going to the afterlife... only to be reincarnated as an extremely masculine female version of himself.
• A canonical Superboy story, "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister"^note Superboy #78 (1960) has Superboy transformed into a girl. It's not permanent ( and, as it turns out, the whole experience was just a mental illusion), and the story is mostly forgotten today, except as another take on the Supergirl concept. Mostly. There is quite a lot of fan art, and several Fanfics, based on the premise that Clark was permanently stuck as Claire.
• Loki is mentioned under Fanverse... as of Loki: Agent of Asgard Loki's genderfluidity is canon in the comics. So they will change gender at will for no other reason but because they can or feel like it, and will refer to themself as goddess (and 'she' in the third person) when in their female form and god (and 'he') when in the male one. You're welcome internet!
• An S Club 7 tie-in magazine has the band interviewing a new assistant, who happens to be a witch. She demonstrates her powers by turning Jon and Bradley into 'Joni' and 'Bradie'.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: The Original Series, in its last-aired episode, "Turnabout Intruder", tells the story of a forced Body Swap between Captain Kirk and his crazy ex-girlfriend Janice Lester. Of course, everything is sorted out at the end... though that hasn't prevented a plethora of Fan Fics, fan art, and photo manipulation about alternate scenarios where Kirk is stuck permanently in Janice's body (usually due to Janice-in-Kirk's-body being killed.)
• Peter Capaldi, Doctor Who's 12th incarnation, has gone on record as saying the next incarnation of the Doctor should be a woman. They've done it with the Master, so why not? (In fact, BBC has announced a female for the next incarnation.)

Video Games

• In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Zelda goes in disguise as Sheik, a masculine version of herself.
• Final Fantasy VII's Cloud and Sephiroth are already very pretty. The former was even forced to cross-dress once. Guess what happened?.
• Iori Yagami◊ of The King of Fighters. SNK's acknowledgement: by courtesy of Demitri's Midnight Bliss here. Also, Gals Fighters (Queen Of Fighters) has a character called Miss X. She's Iori dressed as a woman. Oh, and Orochi Iori's blissed form is Miss X too!!!.
• Terry Bogard receives this treatment in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, finding himself in an alternate dimension where he's shocked to discover that he's suddenly a she!
• Shovel Knight has a customisation feature called "Body Swap", which allows the player to customize the appearances of any of the twelve main characters and their pronouns as well (so that a masculine-looking character uses female pronouns and vice versa). Each of the alternate designs were carefully crafted without resorting to blatant Tertiary Sexual Characteristics and to compliment the base designs. One of the biggest challenges of the designs was to make each gender-swapped counterpart distinct visually, yet identical functionally.
• Terraria allows players to create a potion using all seven herbs in the game. It's named the Gender Change Potion.
• The first game in the Galaxy Angel II trilogy sees this happen to Kazuya, but only if players aim to go on the Natsume route. He ends up forced to dress as a maid named 'Katherine'; the other Angels eventually bust him. Continuing the Natsume route in the third game has it almost happen again, but Lily stops it almost immediately.

Web Original

• In-universe of the That Guy with the Glasses, a female version of The Nostalgia Critic (the title card version) was dressed like a sultry-looking hooker for his review of Moulin Rouge!.

Western Animation

• One particularly nice example of the Metalocalypse band getting genderbent exists here.
• The fandom’s tendency to swap genders for the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is played with in "Magic Duel": Twilight Sparkle transforms Applejack into a stallion for a short time for a competition on who has better magical ability. It's later revealed that it was actually her brother painted in Applejack's mane and coat colors.

Fanverse

Anime & Manga

• Bakura has been struck! After all, "There are no women in Yu-Gi-Oh..."
  • Jonouchi's been treated like this as well.
• Naruto's sexy jutsu: "Naruko" is considered an entirely separate character by many fans.
  • "Sasuko"◊ is also susceptible to this.
  • Haku, who appeared early in the Manga (and again much later). A large portion of the community (especially Fan Fic writers) seems to like the idea of Haku actually being a girl, either omitting the one actual indication of his gender or just simply having Haku and Zabuza lying about his gender.
  • Project Naruko Gender Flips the entire universe of Naruto.
• In response to a fan letter, Eiichiro Oda of One Piece fame drew reverse-gendered versions of the main cast in chapter 545's SBS Corner. This has spread like wildfire among One Piece fans — try finding any characters that haven't been gender flipped. Not even Big Bads are immune — Crocodile? Nope. Enel? Nuh-uh. The three Marine admirals? Seriously, NO EXCEPTIONS. (Images are NSFW.) This goes so far as to include The Thousand Sunny. Then we get Ivankov, whose canonical powers (gender bending) not only mean that he/she can do this to him/herself, but to other people as well. Did we already mention Crocodile? Comes from the crazy theories of his third weakness, but it's gotten to the point where there's stuff that isn't just the character gender flipped anymore.
  • More SBS Corner illustrations by Oda: the Eleven Supernovas◊ (Luffy and Zoro were done before, of course), the Seven Warlords of the Sea◊ (except for Buggy and Whitebeard Jr.; Law was done before as part of the Eleven Supernovas).
• Despite being Rated M for Manly, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has quite a good amount of this. One of the main reason genderflip happens is because people wonder how women would look with those fabulous clothes, but since there are so many muscular half naked men, they usually turn into gorgeous half naked women (and lots of genderbent porn). Expect "Joanna" and "Josephine" to have their muscle mass replaced with large breasts.
  • Artist btanselanoican has some more tasteful genderbends of all eight JoJos and their allies and the main villains. And yes, Yoshiko Kira has a man's hand.
  • Given the popularity of Jotaro x Kakyoin, it was only a matter of time until someone made a lesbian version.
• Pokémon:
  • The aforementioned 'Ashley' from the Anime is still drawn by the fans, has her own fan clubs, and some people consider her a different character. And, yes, Ash/Ashley exists. Wouldn't be surprising if there was also Ashley/Ashachu or Ashley/Ash/Ashachu ^* (Ashachu = Ash turned into a Pikachu) out there. There's also an Ashleychu out there.^note Though it failed to take into account the gender-based features introduced around 5 years before the fanart was made.
  • Hun, a Team Rocket member from The Legend of Thunder special was (a very girly) male in the Japanese version. The 4Kids dub team didn't get the memo about his gender, though he's never referred to as "she", and is often considered by fans just to be a man with a very feminine voice. However, the Latin American Spanish dub repeatedly calls him a woman.
• Baccano! character Claire Stanfield has a sadly feminine name,right? Here, the name fits the character better. Fem!Graham is on that page, too, as is Chane Laforet as a well dressed, Tall, Dark, and Handsome Bishōnen. *Dreamy sigh*. Curiously, Ladd Russo and Christopher are on that page too, but they're completely unaffected.
• From this page's counterpart on the /tg/ wiki, I give you Eduarda Elric and Rowena Mustang◊. Our poor title character doesn't seem too comfortable with that outfit, despite the fact that no tiny miniskirts are involved.
  • Maybe she's just wondering why she got her leg back?
• Befriending people (through giant energy blasts or otherwise) is now twice as easy with Nanoha's male self!
  • Nanoha x Nanoha OTP?
• Through the magic of pitch-adjusting technology, many of the K-On! songs have been gender-flipped. As have the main four characters. Azusa doesn't seem to be gender-flipped yet since they seem to have been made before she was introduced. Here's the Season 1 opening (Cagayake! Boys), and the rest can be found here. The real kicker? It's actually pretty darn good. And then there's the fact that the K-On girls themselves are essentially gender-flipped versions of The Beatles.
• 4chan is already doing this with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, with Madoka being a pink-haired Boy, Mami looking like a prince, and Homura as a long-haired Bishōnen. There are a number of cases of gender-flipping only one member of a pairing to make them a heterosexual couple, but we don't talk about those.
  • Pixiv user Yuu Kurono made some comics of the latter, now dubbed. Interestingly they predict a human Charlotte despite having been made before Rebellion was released.
• The Genderbending of Haruhi Suzumiya does this to the Haruhi Suzumiya cast, and the "new characters" it created are permanently entrenched in the fandom. "Kyonko" in particular is probably more popular than the male Kyon, and is paired with even more characters than him.
• There's also the fanfic Nerima Magistra Nelly Magi, which was an attempt to Gender Flip the Negima manga without the result being "too creepy".
• Dragon Ball examples can be seen here, here, and here.
  • Dragon Ball Multiverse had this happen to an alternate-universe Vegeta in one battle. His opponent thought it would throw him off...and Fem!Vegeta quickly proved her wrong while mocking her for assuming a seasoned warrior would let something so trifling get to him.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00 recently got a lot of such art, mainly directed at Tieria but no one is immune: the Gundam meisters, Graham, Billy, Patrick... even the Gundams themselves.
• Alas it seems only with this will you find a badass woman in the Death Note fandom. the main (formerly male) cast as women, fem!L, fem!Light and male!Misa, and (SFW) lesbians Light and L. [1] and fem!L with Light.
• All of Pretty Cure has been subjected to this◊.
• In the one shot preview arc for Y: Ruler of Time's Let's Bible review, the heroine, Iesus, is Rule 63 Jesus Christ.
• Main characters of Durarara!! also aren't safe from this. Here's the proof◊
• A particular fanart (second image down) of Higurashi: When They Cry actually spawned some discussion on what a gender-flipped version would be like... before someone pointed out that this would make Male!Rena into a guy who regularly kidnapped children and gushed about how they were 'cute.' The conversation was more or less sunk after that.
• There is a meme among Neon Genesis Evangelion fans that gender-flipping the cast would actually make them fit their roles much better, mostly the◊ children◊ and especially Shinji◊. It got even better once the Western fans found out that in one of the spinoff games, Fuyutsuki (who had a crush on Shinji's mom) actually dressed Shinji up into drag!
• In the early 2010s, lots of people started writing stories where Daisuke/Davis from Digimon Adventure 02 was a female character. Oddly enough, they frequently referred to her as "Daisuke", even though that's technically a male name (but many of the authors shorten it to "Dai" to make it more feminine).

Comic Books

• Genderbending Loki from The Mighty Thor isn't that difficult to imagine since not only is he a shapeshifter normally, but he assumed Sif's form for several story arcs for the lulz. Princesses Thor and Loki aside, The Warriors Three have also enjoyed time as the fairer sex.
• The Avengers trio, in a fan art depiction.
• Watchmen fandom has a fairly established body of Rule 63 fics, especially on the Kink Meme. Get used to Danielle, Wanda, Adi, Laurence, Joan Osterman, Sal and Edie.
• Common in fan art too, as a search for "Genderbent Joker" on Google will reveal. You may want to keep safe search on.
• The Archie Comics gang, like most comic book Print Long-Runners, have attracted the occasional Rule 63 interpretations. A 2012 story, "The Great Switcheroo," provided official examples in Archie #636.^note Meaningful Number? In the story, Sabrina the Teenage Witch's cat Salem casts a Gender Bender spell on the entire population of Riverdale, not to mention Josie and the Pussycats too.
• Behold, a sketch of genderswapped Rogue and Gambit. This was met with enthusiasm, mainly because it would mean Gambit were a hot, flirty French chick.
• Brazilian webcomic creator Priscilla Tramontano has taken this rule and applied it to some of Marvel’s most popular villains, and the results are absolutely glorious

Film

• Star Trek (2009) has inspired Gender Flip fan art. For example, see a different take on the Power Trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy here. Chekov, Sulu, Scotty, and Pike show up here. On this page, we see that this trope can go in both directions.
  • The tie-in comic book series played with this; see the Comic Books section.
• Not even our favorite slasher movie kings are immune to this rule
  • Even better/worse, the upcoming "Bishoujo Horror Series".

Literature

• The 2013 Check These Out! Calendar of literary pin-ups by Lee Moyer includes a bikini-clad female Rincewind (approved by Sir Terry Pratchett).
• Gender swapped versions of the Marauders, the Golden Trio, the Silver Trio and other characters from Harry Potter.

Live-Action TV

• A short-lived 1991 revival of The Carol Burnett Show had a gender-flipped Star Trek sketch, so Carol could have a go at playing Captain Kirk. Take a look.
• Saturday Night Live has a sketch called "What Up With That?" in which a cavalcade of groovy, costumed background folks help obnoxiously interrupt the guest's interview, whenever the host compulsively re-sings the theme song. Among them on the Christmas edition is "Grinchina". Played by Nasim Pedrad, she makes for a freaky but Cute Monster Girl.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000 examples:
  • Cultist-chan shows up in many /tg/ Warhammer 40,000 memes. Now, meet Cultist-kun!◊
  • Female Space Marines◊ pop up now and again, but are often met with cries of Canon Defilement (also known as HERESY!) due to a supplement which states that Space Marines are explicitly all-male.
  • And then there's Warhammer 63K, which does this for the entire universe. PRAISE THE EMPRESS!

Video Games

• Partly thanks to the entire cast being male, a significant amount of Team Fortress 2 fanart/fanfiction is Rule 63. The most frequent target is Medic. As stated below, Nerf NOW!! has them as characters.
  • ChemicalAlia has a mod to replace the Scout, Heavy, Engineer, Medic, and Spy (with more coming) with female models and fan-made female voices.
  • There are several mods for a female Pyro. Not a lot changes, really.
    • Heck, people have been having fun with making exaggerated male and female Pyros, either with a Heroic Build and firefighter suspenders (if male) or a toned body wearing a bikini top (if female). Since Pyro is also The Faceless, both genders wear his/her full-face gas mask.
• Link from The Legend of Zelda gets hit hard with this, possibly because he gets called "Zelda" all the time. Also, Zelda herself, if to a lesser extent...
  • There is actually a female version of Link in Hyrule Warriors, but she uses a crossbow. And talks.
• "Tailsko," a female version of Tails, is likewise a popular subject for Sonic the Hedgehog fan works.
• Fans don't even need to make them themselves for the bloodlines of Bloodline Champions - they all have an outfit which is the opposite gender of the original bloodline outfit.
• Even Altair from Assassin's Creed had one. Altair looks like Yuki Nagato; he just needs glasses. Shame they didn't exist back then.
• Sol Badguy of Guilty Gear has some◊ fan-art◊. Also there's the cosplayer known as Sol Badgirl◊.
  • Bridget has a lot of fanart (pornographic or otherwise) that averts the Unsettling Gender-Reveal by simply making her biologically female.
• From the same maker, BlazBlue experiences the same thing with female versions of Ragna, among others.
• Mother:
  • It's become surprisingly popular to depict EarthBound Beginnings' big bad, Giegue, as a female. Since Giegue's a skinny grey alien, some non-canonical anatomy comes into play.
  • On the EarthBound end of things, we have Nell, Paul, Jess, Pu, Porkie, and Toni. (Definitely SFW)
• Most of The King of Fighters have been subject to this at some point or another (save Mai for some reason). But the one that gets it the most (even more than Iori) is Leopold Goenitz of the Wildly-Blowing Wind. Yes, that guy... Oh and yes, Demitri's Midnight Bliss is the one to blame for Goeniko. There are other characters based on this concept that simply run with the idea, and the M.U.G.E.N fanbase tend to make a character out of this.
• Nobody's surprised to see Tales of Vesperia's Yuri Lowell genderbent a lot. Since, well... y'know.
• In addition to the depiction of Maria, the pretty girl plumber at the top of this page, Mario and friends have been frequent subjects for this trope. See Maria's sister Luisa◊, for example. (As a bonus for straight males, the previous two examples feature "Grade A" Zettai Ryouiki.) There's also this group shot◊. You might not want to see Bowser as a girl, but you can◊.
  • Though Bowser as a man has certainly been drawn thinner in Fan Art before, one would think a female Bowser would more likely be a Big Beautiful Woman.
  • Female Bowser, or "Bowsette" took off in a big way in September of 2018 when a Power-Up known as the Super Crown was revealed for New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, which can change Toadette into a Peach-like form known as "Peachette". Bowsette (conceptually Bowser under the effects of the power-up) is basically a Cute Monster Girl version of Peach with Bowser's characteristics.
  • Futako, the artist who drew the top picture, has since drawn both Mario and Luigi as females. She calls them the Super Mario Sisters.
  • One shouldn't forget the very much official Toadette.
  • Gender flipping Mario and Luigi goes back to The Great Giana Sisters in The '80s, possibly the first video game example.
  • Speaking about the group shot, Vivian was officially male (but dressed female) in most non-English versions of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
• This◊ Warcraft fan art piece.
• Mega Man (Classic): Fan-art depicting female version of the robot master are not unheard of, probably due to the small number of female robot master in canon. Main character MegaMan isn't imune to this either. The results range from simple female versions of their standard design to what look like a woman in a Sexy robot master Costume Costume.
  • The female version of Zero is quite popular on pixiv. it originated from Demitri Maximoff's Midnight Bliss attack in SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos and have been adopted by the fandom. She is sometime treated as a different character from Zero.
• Touhou Project fandom, due to the Improbably Female Cast and the First Law of Gender Bending, has relatively little of this considering the sheer number of fan works. Regardless, plenty of the characters have been subjected to this, including Marisa, Parsee and Yuugi, Yukari and Reimu, the Tengu trio, the IN playable characters, the Scarlet Devil crew, and even Rinnosuke (images are slightly NSFW due to advertisements). And the less said about Cho-Marisa, the better.
• PotatOS aka GLaDOS of Portal 2 fame has gotten this treatment too.
• Star Wolf of Star Fox as females, by Fumicaworu. Creatively done, and Wolf's gender flip even looks vaguely like a cross between his character and Katt Monroe as a pink wolf.
• An odd in-game example in Super Monday Night Combat: Unlockable uniforms turn Combat Girl and Megabeth into Cosplay female versions of the Engineer and Soldier, respectively, from Team Fortress 2.
• On the Dragon Age: Origins front, we have 'Ms Alistair', as well as 'Madam Zevran', male counterparts of Aveline and Isabela, one of Merrill and Fenris and yet another of Fenris, possibly because he's quite the effeminitely pretty character.
• This piece of art featuring the party members of Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
• This bit of art featuring female versions of Zacharie and the Batter.
• Huniepop has Hunkiepop, which goes as far as making hypothetical gameplay footage to see how it would all unfold.
• Some fans have wanted to see what Rean would be like as a woman in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel series. The result is a female character coined as◊ "Reana" by fans. Some fans also genderbend Crow as well just for kicks.
• After the Release of DOOM (2016), some fans have wondered what would Doomguy look like as a female. The results◊ produced◊ are exactly what you would expect.
• As a followup to a Sonic Generations mod where Modern Sonic is dressed in Rouge the Bat's outfit, Lady Luna created an actual Female Sonic mod for the same game. Her Twitter features additional art of this version of Sonic, as well as Tails and Shadow. She even has an alternate account for more lewd art.

Webcomics

• Nerf NOW!! has produced female versions of all the Team Fortress 2 characters, as well as several characters from other games, such as Starcraft. And they're all adorable.
• Seeing as anyone and everything gets shipped together in the Homestuck fandom, this was inevitable. Gender-bent versions of Dave, John, and the Midnight Crew are particularly popular though.
• Fans of Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name have made sure that Hanna isn't... well, a boy's name. And everyone else too. Fem Conrad is pretty much a fandom meme. And that's just the tip of the genderbent iceberg.
• Tumblr users really like making female versions of Gabe and Tycho (named "Gabbie" and "Tyche", respectively). Zeboyd even responded to it by adding a patch to On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3 that allows players to play as the gender-flipped Gabe and Tycho if they want.

Web Original

• Examples from That Guy with the Glasses:
  • Anne Onymous of The Wotch drew a Worksafe image of That Guy with the Glasses.
  • At one point, there was also an amusing series of videos created by (female) TGWTG fans dressing up as their favorite (male) reviewers and demanding that the fandom fix this crackfic singularity gender bend... thing.
• For their crossover review of Sherlock Holmes (2009), The Agony Booth's Sofie Liv and Stuff You Like's Sursum Ursa dressed up (and did the review) as Holmes and Watson.
• Happy Tree Friends plays this differently depending on which side of the fandom you are looking at. Among Japanese fans, the characters that get genderbended the most often are the four originally female characters. Out of the boys, designing female Russell, Lumpy and possibly Flippy seems to be the most common, although it is easier to tell who never is bent.
• Even The Runaway Guys get the female treatment. If them dressed as The Powerpuff Girls doesn't count then this totally does.
  • JoshJepson plays the role of Maya Fey in this pic if that counts too.
  • Of the three Runaway Guys, ProtonJon gets a lot of fanart of many distaff counterparts of himself during his livestreams. Popular depictions are Pon-Pon, which spawned from a fanartist giving him the Bowsette treatment, Jontae, a version based on Shantae, and Rosajon, a version based on Rosalina plus a Buxom Beauty Standard figure. Another known distaff counterpart is a parallel universe depiction of him as a female streamer, complete with a dog named Biscuit (as a counterpart of Jon's cat Bagel, who is often seen changing forms based on which alt he's paired with (such as Rosajon getting Bagel as a Luma)). Stephen Georg even asks him about the alts during episode 3 of the Disc Only Podcast, and was surprised that there are "three boob timelines", one for Rosajon, one for Pon-Pon, and a much older one for an alt named Electron Jen (likely the above-mentioned female streamer alt).
    • Lately a Rosajon variant for Emile, dubbed Daisille (a fusion of Emile with Daisy) has been popping up, and the guys have commented on one fusing Tim with Pauline. One such conversation was started by Tom Fawkes, who admitted he's seen fanart of him fused with Tharja and was now expecting to be fused with Jessica.
    • Even one of Jon's mods, Ryan, has been on the receiving end of this. Most likely suspect is someone using the animated Mystery of the Ghost Fart to depict Ryan as Shantae (who maintains the half-genie's normal colors of red clothing and purple hair as Jontae has teal clothes and platinum-blonde hair, along with Ryan's Shantae look retaining her hoop earrings (Jontae wears star-shaped ones that, along with silver shoes (Ryan's fusion maintains Shantae's normal red ones), appear to indicate a hint of Rosalina also being involved in the fusion)).
• The concept has gotten so wide on Danbooru that the previously unified "genderswap" tag has been split into "genderswap (mtf)" and "genderswap (ftm)".

Western Animation

• There is an entire Alternate Universe Fic of Ed, Edd n Eddy where the entire cast is of the opposite sex. It's made by the same author who gave us Ed, Edd n Eddy Highschool.
• The Adventure Time blog posted a series of Rule 63 drawings by one of the concept artists, much to the amusement of fans.
• Given the high female-to-male character ratio on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, it was probably only a matter of time before male versions of the six main characters came out. A fan artist named Trotsworth has probably the most famous examples. There's even fics about it, such as The 63rd Rune and On a Cross and Arrow.
  • If there's ever going to be a fic or discussion about the gender-bent characters, there's a host of widely accepted Fanon names. Twilight Sparkle is Dusk Shine, Rarity is Elusive, Fluttershy is Butterscotch, Rainbow Dash is Rainbow Blitz, Pinkie Pie is Bubble Berry, Spike is Spines (or Barb/Barbara), Only Applejack remains the same.
    Other counterparts include Discord —> Eris^note Eris was the Greek goddess best know for the Apple of Discord that ended up kicking off the Trojan War, Celestia —> Prince Solaris, Luna —> Prince Artemis, Cadence —> Bolero ^note Cadence's full name is in Spanish and 'cadence' is a rhythm term, so her counterpart is named after a Spanish rhythm, Shining Armor —> Gleaming Shield, Queen Chrysalis —> King Metamorphosis^note  a chrysalis is the cocoon that a caterpillar builds for itself as it metamorphoses to a butterfly, and King Sombra —> Queen Umbra ^note Sombra is Spanish for shadow, whereas Umbra is shadow in Latin. Heck, even one-off characters get in on this, like Cheese Sandwich being rule 63'd as Grilled Cheese.
  • In Vinyl and Octavia Fight Ten Thousand Ninjas, the climax reveals that the leaders of the ninja clan are Rule 63 versions of Octavia and Vinyl Scratch from another universe.
  • A Chance Meeting of Two Moons: Starts with Princess Luna meeting her alternate-universe counterpart Prince Artemis, and continues with most of the main cast doing the same. The only known exception to the opposite-gendering is Starswirl the Bearded, who is male in both worlds.
• The main characters of Miraculous Ladybug are frequently subject to this. Notably, Marinette and Adrien's gender-bent counterparts are generally referred to as Marin and Adrienne, respectively.
• Osmosis Jones fan art examples have been seen, including cosplay of a female Thrax.
• This◊ piece of Thunder Cats fanart will likely murder your childhood in an entirely worksafe way.
• The Fire Ferrets from The Legend of Korra as you've (probably) never seen them before.
• And now, The Simpsons are victims of this. (Granted this had happened in the show, albeit on one of their Treehouse of Horror specials).
• Fairly popular in Star vs. the Forces of Evil fandom. Like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic there are generally accepted names for the gender bent Star and Marco, Comet Dragonfly and Marcia respectively.
• After The Loud House episode "One of the Boys" premiered, several fanworks (such as One Girl with Ten Brothers) were created to explore and examine the lives of the Loud siblings' opposite-sex counterparts.

Other

• Every Vocaloid (including Rin and Len) and almost every UTAUloid tend to have a genderbend. In the UTAUloid's cases, many are made by the authors themselves. People have also edited their vocal files to create a masculine/feminine version of the characters.
• The Female Fellowship - a counterpart to the lineup of heroes from The Lord of the Rings.

Grand Unification

Anime & Manga

• Kallen Stadtfeld of Code Geass is considered by some fans to be the Distaff Counterpart to Mobile Fighter G Gundam's Domon Kasshu.
• Ryuko Matoi of Kill la Kill is considered by some fans to be this to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's Simon the Digger as well. There's also a camp that considers her to be the Moe Anthropomorphism of Shadow the Hedgehog.

Video Games

• Touken Ranbu's Shokudaikiri Mitsutada is considered to be the Spear Counterpart to Tenryuu of KanColle.

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You know, Sieglinde Freud would have something to say about all this genderbending....

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