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When is the last time you heard of a Half-Human Hybrid who was human on his or her father's side? As stated under Dhampyr, these creatures' mothers tend to be human, and their fathers... something else. In the case of Vampires and Little People, a human just seems more likely to successfully carry a hybrid to term. It's also perhaps the natural outreach of Mars Needs Women. If everyone finds human chicks attractive, it stands to reason that human chicks would have more mixed kids. On the rare occasion that Venus Needs Men, the Venusians will almost always be sexy, scantily clad and conforming to Western norms of beauty, in an outgrowth of the Male Gaze. Or maybe the idea of an innocent human lady being seduced and ravished by some dashingly handsome male vampire/werewolf/demon/angel/alien/whatever is just a lot more alluring to an audience than the opposite for whatever reason.

Additionally, a lot of half-human hybrids are the product of rape, love-em-and-leave-em seduction, or tragic romance. Generally, it's much easier to justify a Glorified Sperm Donor if he's Not Even Human. Out of our traditional assumption that it is the men who travel and the women who stay home, or the simple biological fact that if a relationship ends or never existed in the first place while the woman is pregnant, she'll end up with the baby, which tends to allow the child to be brought up among humans.

If the father does stick around in a mixed marriage with the mother, that's still no guarantee of a happy childhood. All will be discriminated against, and chances are one or both parents will be killed by bigots... sometimes inside their own family.

See also I Hate You, Vampire Dad. Could be considered a fantastic extension of Ugly Guy, Hot Wife.

Note that when this trope is inverted (in other words, Human Dad, Nonhuman Mom), the female tends to a): be really really beautiful, b): die before the story begins, and c): if she stays alive, be the queen of her race. Also, inversions may have the male as a Retired Badass and the female as part of the Standard Hero Reward.


Straight Examples[]

Anime & Manga[]

  • Vampire Hunter D: Count Magnus Lee to D: 'Was your sire ... Dracula?!?' Also, it's revealed the Count's daughter Lamirca was the result of a fling with a mortal.
    • In the Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust movie, Left-Hand briefly implies that D's motivation for Charlotte Ellborne isn't money, it's the possibility that she and Meir Link could conceive another danpeal/dhampyr.
    • This seems to hold true for all of the (natural) dhampyrs in the books.
  • Inuyasha: Tends to hold true for canon hanyou; the title character, Shiori, and Jinenji are all the product of youkai fathers and human mothers. The only exception appears in a filler arc in the anime where Gyuuoh is the son of a human male and a cow youkai.
  • Dai no Daibouken has Dai and Lahart.
  • Dragon Ball Z spat out four of these: Gohan, Goten, Trunks and Bra.
    • Technically Pan counts, too. Gohan isn't fully human, but Videl is.
  • Nurarihyon no Mago has an Obake grandfather and a (spiritually strong) human grandmother, his mother is human and his father is half-human.
  • Ichigo, Yuzu, and Karin Kurosaki in Bleach had a normal mom and a Shinigami Dad. Technically human, but being a ghost in a fake body qualifies on a technicality.
    • Their mom has also shown signs of not being human long before their father.
    • And, not a complete subversion but it should be noted that when Isshin was assumed a normal human and the kids inherited their spiritual awareness from mom. Also, to him, SHE would be dead....food for the thought.
  • Rally Cheyenne's mother is human and her father is a Lucifer Hawk (basically a demon).
  • Zenki has Prince Inugami, whose mother was a human lady named Rengetsu.
  • In Soul Eater, we have Maka. Her mother is human, while her father is a Magic Weapon, who just looks human most of the time.
  • Kongoh Bancho (and his brother and sister). Worth noting is that their father is roughly the size of two or three houses stacked up. (Oddly, while the two males are Nigh Invulnerable ten-foot-tall mountains of muscle, their sister appears to be a totally normal teenage girl.)
  • Rei Ayanami might count, due to the fact that her human "parent" was female. As for the non-human... Lilith is canonically female even though she lacks everything that identifies her as such.
    • Alternatively, she could qualify through the human male who, while not having contributed to her genetic material, created and raised her, influencing her personality and (lack of) body language.
    • Kaworu on the other hand is exactly the opposite of this trope: he had a human father (confirmed by Rebuild 2.0) and an Angelic mother (yes, it appears to be canonical that Adam was female).
  • The protagonist Yusuke in Yu Yu Hakusho is the descendant of a union between a female human doctor in feudal Japan and Raizen, one of the strongest demon lords of Makai.
  • Borderline case: In Fullmetal Alchemist (manga and Brotherhood), Ed and Al have a human mother and a father who is a living Philosopher's Stone. While said father is technically still human, he's also far from normal.
  • Meet the Okumura twins: the offspring of a human mother and Satan. Rin's the only one who inherits the demonic tendencies, however.
  • La Blue Girl: Miko is the daughter of King Seikima (a demon king) and Maria, a human woman.
  • In Saint Beast, Kira and Maya's mother is human, and their father is the angel Lucifer. They are raised in heaven by neither parent, but kept away from others due to Fantastic Racism.

Comic Books[]

  • Hellboy is the son of the human witch Sarah Hughes and demon prince Azzael.
  • Invincible is the son of the Ersatz Superman, Omni-man, with a human for a mother.
  • Raven from Teen Titans has the demon Trigon for a father.
    • And Trigon himself is the result of a union between a female member of a sect and the god they worshipped, both from another dimension.
  • Likewise, her teammate Cassie "Wonder Girl" Sandsmark is the daughter of Zeus and a human woman.
    • To be fair, Zeus has been with a lot of human women
  • Also Nightcrawler, of X-Men fame, is the son of Mystique and some ancient mutant whose family is widely known as demons and/or were the inspiration for demons. Technically half human(mutant) and half human(mutant), but half human and half demon if you ask his father's family or any of their enemies. Not counting the fact that Mystique was originally intended to be Nightcrawler's father, so if not for some editor, he'd fall into the HumanMomFemaleDad variety.
  • Fire Breather is the son of a 300-foot firebreathing dragon and a human woman.
  • Smax and his Half Identical Twin are the product of an ogre raping a human woman.
  • Genis and Phyla, the children of Kree Captain Mar-Vell and Elysius, who confusingly was an Eternal artifically created by a super-powerful computer named ISSAC. Their father is an alien, while their mother is a member of a human subspecies. Oh, and their grandpa is a computer.
    • Similarly, Suzy Sherman, aka Ultra Girl, is the daughter of a Kree father and a human mother.
  • From Marvel's mythological side: Ares, the Greek God of War, has a half-human, mortal son named Alexander. Loki, the Norse trickster god, also has a half-human daughter named Tessa Black.
  • Ron Peterson/Captain Clarinet in PS238, son of the local Superman and Lois Lane equivalents.
  • Katar Hol's father is a Thanagarian and his mother is a Cherokee woman.
  • The Lilim, most famously as portrayed in Lucifer, is an entire race of this. Being the first woman, we can't even say Lilith just looks like a human. And she has at least one child with seemingly every living thing in creation except man.

Fan Fiction[]

  • Annabelle from 'Shadows Of The Past' is with with a human mother and a Decepticon father. How this works is still trying to be decided.

Film[]

Cquote1

 I can brave the nastiest weather.

Even if it's 80 below.

My pa was an elephant, but that's irrelevant.

My ma was an eskimo.

Cquote2
  • The Fly: Seth and Ronnie's unborn child would have been this. If only the movie had received a sequel... What, there was a sequel? What sequel?
  • Beowulf in the 1997 film adaptation.
    • In the CGI adaptation, it gets inverted with Grendel, whose mother is a hideously ugly snake-beast (that can make herself look like Angelina Jolee). Also Grendel's half-brother, Beowulf's son with the same creature
  • In Star Wars, Anakin's father is nonhuman regardless of which origin story is the truth. Either he was conceived by The Force or he was created by Darth Plagueis, a Muun and Palpatine's Master.
    • A little more straightforward example: Darth Maul is a Dathomirian... a hybrid born of a human (Witch of Dathomir) mother and a Zabrak father. This trope then becomes genetic: male Dathomirians resemble their Zabrak fathers, where female Dathomirians resemble their human mothers.

Literature[]

  • Renesmee from Twilight. It's apparently only even possible for a male vampire to have a child with a female human; they can't even have children with female vampires (who can't have children at all).
    • Although Leah is the only female shapeshifter ever, it's speculated that it's the same with her. If so, there's a few Unfortunate Implications...
  • Played sort of sideways in Animorphs. Tobias is the son of a human woman and an Andalite, an alien, but is fully human himself since his father was in human form when Tobias was created.
  • The interbreeding with fairies in The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries always seems to follow this pattern.
  • Most of the half-faerie characters in The Dresden Files.
    • Played with a bit too. One of the changeling characters mentions they were born when a male troll raped a female human.
    • Harry himself is something of an inversion. His father was a stage magician, his mother a powerful, mysterious wizard.
    • Thomas and most of the Raiths.
      • Interestingly, from a breeding standpoint, all White Court vampires, like Thomas, start out as vanilla full-blooded humans at birth (they may or may not even know they're anything but). A sort of symbiotic demon wakes up within them when they're around 18, and gives them little subconscious nudges telling them to feed. If they do, it awakens fully and turns them into proper vampires, but if you can keep them from feeding, it "starves" and they live out their life as vanilla humans.
  • Toyed with in Bruce Coville's Rod Albright series. The title character's mother is human; his father is... well, actually human as well. Thing is, he's an Atlantean human, off a different genetic road.
  • The children's book My Dad, Atomic Ace. As the title implies, his father is a famous superhero with powers on the scale of Superman, while his mother is perfectly ordinary. The end of the book reveals that he's starting to develop his father's powers, on the somewhat weaker scale of his father's early years.
  • This is the case for Vladimir Tod in The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. Partially subverted though in that his parents actually got married and led a very happy, normal life together until they were murdered.
  • The Whately brothers from H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror. Their father is Yog-Sothoth.
  • Played straight in the Percy Jackson and The Olympians series, when Percy is a demigod and the son of Poseidon, as well as the existence of children of all the other male gods. There are plenty of inversions as well (characters who are the offspring of Aphrodite et al), and the first one is Lampshaded: Percy knows that the girl he's talking to is a human/god half-breed like himself, and he asks her "Who's your father?" The girl patiently explains that her father is a normal human, and it's her mother who is one of the goddesses.
    • Strictly speaking, it's not an unfair assumption, considering Greek Mythology. A lot of goddesses simply would not have demigod children. Hera, goddess of marriage, wouldn't cheat on Zeus. Artemis was an eternal virgin. About the only god who wouldn't jump on anything in a skirt was Hades.
  • In the Night Huntress books, Cat's human mother was raped by her vampire father, resulting in Half Vampire Cat's conception. Taken a step further when her mother teaches her Fantastic Racism against all vampires. Yes, including Cat, the subject of much self-loathing.
  • Most of the vampires in Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls are born of human mothers and vampire fathers. Brite's vampires are a predatory subspecies of humanity, that interbreeds with and preys upon their human cousins. Interestingly, the younger vampires, such as Zillah and his lover and son Nothing, have so much human ancestry that they've lost almost all the 'classic' vampire traits such as fangs and vulnerability to sunlight. One character refers to a vampire woman who became pregnant when she was raped by a human, but her fetus killed her before its birth.
  • Werewolves in the Mercy Thompson series are biologically locked into this trope, as a female werewolf that gets pregnant will miscarry when her next lunar transformation kicks in. The one exception was Charles's mom, who suppressed her changes with Native American shamanic magic long enough to give birth, and her mate was also a werewolf, not a human. So, male werewolves must pair up with humans if they want to father kids.
    • Mercy herself is the product of a one-night stand between a human mother and a male coyote shapeshifter.
      • It wasn't a one night stand. It's just that he got killed before she knew she was pregnant.
  • In the Prydain Chronicles, the Sons and Daughters of Don — that is, most of the royalty in Prydain — are thus called because they are descended from a union between Lady Don (who is implied to be human) and the sun god Belin.
  • Played straight in Chronicles of the Kencyrath with Kenan who is the product of a Shifter father and a human (well, Kencyr Highborn) mother.
  • Played straight in Mikhail Akhmanov's Invasion, where Lieutenant Abigail McNeil is captured by the Faata and impregnated with the seed of a high-caste male (i.e. a powerful psychic). The resulting child, named Paul Richard Corcoran, develops his own telepathic abilities and uses them against the Faata, who have pretty much raped his mother. Averted with his descendants in the sequels, who can get the lineage from either the mother or the father (e.g. Corcoran had no sons, only two daughters).
    • Also averted with Mark Valdez's half-brother, whose mother is a Lo'ona Aeo. In fact, the half-brother himself is completely Lo'ona Aeo, as their reproduction is purely telepathic. Mark's father Sergey was only the catalyst to conception (this method is similar to Asari in Mass Effect). Then again, given the Sergey Valdez is himself descended from Paul Richard Corcoran, he is not entirely human either.
  • The mother of Vlad and Lacrimosa in Carpe Jugulum was originally a human, whereas their father was born as one of the de Magpyr vampires.
  • The Last Apprentice: Both Tom and Alice fulfill this trope. Tom is the son of the Lamia (a Greek demi-goddess) and a human sailor. Alice is the daughter of The Fiend and a human witch.
  • In Women of the Otherworld, half-demons are always born from a human woman and a demon. The demons take on humanoid form to seduce, and apparently one of the ways cacodemons (chaotic demons) cause chaos in the human world is...fathering babies.
  • The Obsidian Trilogy: Vestakia's mother was a Wildmage human, and her father a Demon prince in disguise. When her mother found out the truth, she cast a spell to ensure that Vestakia has a human mind and morals, at the cost of Demonic physical features. Vestakia thus has a difficult childhood until she meets the heroes.
  • Played with in Harry Potter with Teddy Lupin, Remus Lupin's and Tonks' son, and therefore the product of a werewolf father and a human mother (who does have extraneous abilities). However, despite his father's worrying, he doesn't seem to have any werewolf traits, instead taking after his metamorphagus mother.
  • Space Captain Smith has Rihanna Mitchell. Comes in handy quite a bit.

Live Action TV[]

  • Scorpius from Farscape, who is the product of a Scarren male raping a Sebacean female.
    • The Scarrans originally lied to him, claiming he is the result of a Sebacean male raping a Scarran female. To be fair, due to their Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, Scarran females don't look too different from humans, while Scarran males look downright monstrous.
    • There's also Jothee, whose father is D'Argo, a Luxan, and whose (late) mother was Lo'Laan, a Sebacean.
  • Spock.
    • K'Ehleyr, mother to Worf's son Alexander, is also a hybrid, though she embraces her human half rather than her Klingon half. It is, however, common to invert or subvert this in the Star Trek universe - T'Pol and Trip's son Lorian and daughter Elizabeth, Deanna Troi, Benjamin Sisko (indirectly), and B'Elanna Torres all have non-human mothers and human fathers. Benjamin and B'Elanna also face the problems inherent to the trope: Benjamin's mother walked out on him when he was a little boy, and B'Elana grew up resenting her mother for driving her father away.
    • Played straight with Naomi Wildman, whose mom is human and whose father is Ktarian.
    • Also averted with Kirk's son in the "Shatnerverse" novels, whose mother is a genetically-engineered Klingon-Romulan-human hybrid. According to Spock, the kid is also Vulcan by virtue of his Romulan blood. The boy turns out to be genetically identical to the Precursors found by Picard in "The Chase", even though he should be missing many other genetic markers, such as that of the Cardassians.
  • In Doctor Who, the Doctor once claimed to be "half-human, on [his] mother's side." Both fans and creative teams doubt the veracity of the claim, but if he is a Consummate Liar, it's at least a form of Conversational Troping.
    • The Vespiform in "The Unicorn and the Wasp" plays this trope a bit straighter though.
  • Evie from Out of This World.
  • One of the experiments in V. Robin Maxwell gets pregnant by a Visitor.
    • The Visitors' plan seems to be to capture human females and impregnate them.
  • Angel's Doyle is perfectly human--on his mother's side. His father was a Brachen demon.
  • On Sliders, Wade got Put on a Bus by sending her to a breeding farm, where she presumably had babies with the CroMags as fathers.
    • Justified in that, thanks to Quinn and Colin's parents, the Kromagg females always die at childbirth. This necessitates breeding Half Human Hybrids, while trying to keep their human emotions in check.
  • Earth: Final Conflict: Lili had a half human/half Jaridian baby.
  • Kousoku Sentai Turboranger. One of the Dark Chick Half-Human Hybrid, Kilika, is born out of a male Bouma and a female human. We never know the gender of the parents of Yamimaru, however.
  • In Mahou Sentai Magiranger, Isamu was one of the Magitopians who went missing with Hikaru after their ill fated fight against Infershia and Meemy's Face Heel Turn, Miyuki was a mere human at that point until she asked Magiel to give her holy saint powers to fight against the forces of Infershia and to give her children a chance
  • Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess had a few human women who had children by male centaurs. Pass the Brain Bleach.
  • In the original Outer Limits episode "The Children of Spider County", the main character learns he's one of a group of Half Human Hybrids whose father is an alien.
  • Alluded to in "Tracker", where the main character, Mel, discovers that her grandfather was an alien
  • The Fallen mini-series (and the original novels) are based on the myth of Fallen Angels coming to Earth after the defeat of Lucifer, many of whom impregnate human women. These children are Nephilim, half-angels who have their parents' angelic abilities (e.g. speaking any language, flying, creating flaming swords and throwing fireballs) but not the experience to use them. The angels who fought in the war, called the Powers, hunt down the Fallen and their offspring, believing it to be the Creator's will (Archangel Michael later reveals that is not so). It can be assumed that angels cannot reproduce amongst themselves, even though two are shown having sex. Also, it is implied that only male angels are fertile. No child of a female angel is ever mentioned. Additionally, all human women carrying Nephilim die at childbirth, which usually leaves the Nephilim resentful towards their fathers.
    • The protagonist is a special kind of Nephilim known as the Redeemer, prophesied by Lucifer to be able to redeem fallen angels who wish to return to Heaven. Apparently, for a fallen angel to die before redemption is a Fate Worse Than Death (i.e. nothingness).
  • Scott Hayden, Jr., in Starman.

Mythology and Religion[]

  • Most of the demigods and other Half Human Hybrids in Classical Mythology. Hercules, the Minotaur, Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux, Minos, Helen, maybe Dionysus... There are some exceptions, but they're significantly outnumbered.
  • Merlin had two mothers (maybe three): one Human who bore the child; one Human who raised the child to puberty; and one Fairie (Queen Mab) who helped raise the child, taught him his magic and was, in fact, the being that impregnated Merlin's Human mother.
    • Of course, this varies depending on the version; Merlin's father is most often described simply as a demon in other stories.
      • Or Satan. I've seen more than a few things that mark his father as Satan.
        • Geoffrey of Monmouth, often credited as being the oldest source for Merlin, had it be an incubus and his mom a nun.
  • Jesus Christ. His mother was Mary, a human, and His father the Almighty God. How much that counts depends on your beliefs on the relationship of the human race and God, and where/what the difference is.

Tabletop RPG[]

  • In the Dungeons and Dragons Greyhawk setting, the evil deity Iuz was the child of the human wizardess Iggwilv and the demon lord Graz'zt.
  • Both played straight and inverted in Ravenloft, where the Gentleman Caller makes fathering half-fiends on human women a hobby. Hags, on the other hand, are a One-Gender Race who must invert this trope to reproduce. Harkon Lukas does the former a lot as well, red widows do the latter, and dread doppelgangers do both.

Theatre[]

  • Dionysus of Euripides's Bacchae. Interestingly, his case is the result of tragic romance, as opposed to how most of Zeus's children were conceived... The fact that his aunts and cousin deny his divine parentage sparks the conflict of the ancient play.

Video Games[]

  • Dante and Vergil from Devil May Cry.
  • Laharl from Disgaea is the product of the demon king's marriage to a human witch.
  • Cecil and Golbez in Final Fantasy IV; human mother, Lunarian father.
  • Terra's mom and dad in Final Fantasy VI. He's an esper, she's a human.
  • Seymour from Final Fantasy X. Daddy was a made-up, vaguely plantish-elvish critter called a Guado. It, ah, caused problems, one might say.
    • Nothing helps an outcast child cope like losing a parent in favor of controlling a horrific killing machine. His mom is/was DUMB.
      • Supplemental material implies that she was dying at the time, and it was the only way (that she could think of) to still be able to support him.
  • Alucard from Castlevania. His nonhuman dad is Dracula.
  • Naja from Sands of Destruction, his nonhuman father is the previous Lupus Rex.
  • In Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, Syrus Darkhunter has an elven dad and a human mom, and is discriminated against by the elves of Silvermyr because of it.
  • Hakha is Killzone is half-Heghan, half-human. It's never stated which parent is which but Rico suggested shoving his Chaingun up his papa's butt, presuming that he was Helghan from his fathers side.
    • Strangely, at one point, Rico tells Hakha that a bunch of Helghast Elites "look just like [his] mama!"
  • Played straight (and inverted) in Fire Emblem : Seisen no Keifu, depending on your pairings : indeed, characters with Holy Blood can be seen as not totally human, since they're the descendants of warriors who got special powers by drinking the blood of ancient Dragons.
  • Kokonoe in Blaz Blue has a human mother (Nine) and a cat father (Jubei), which explains her nekomata appearance.
  • Final Fantasy VII invokes this trope, with Hojo trying to pair Red XIII with Aerith; they're both nonhuman, but Aerith is basically a humanoid with special powers, while Red XIII is an Intellectual Animal.
  • Octodad, in which the main character is... An octopus who is a father to human children.
  • In Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, party member Syrus Darkhunter had an elven father and a human mother. As a result, he's not particularly welcomed by either race, which partly accounts for his brooding solitude and Deadpan Snarker personality.

Web Comics[]

Cquote1

 College Girl #1: If your parents find out you're dating an illegal alien they'll flip.

College Girl #2 (grinning): I know!

Cquote2

Web Original[]

  • Played straight with the main Half Human Hybrids in Tales of MU, Mack and Steff.
    • Gender-flipped with Steff's boyfriend, Viktor.
  • Whateley Universe example: Sara Waite (Carmilla) had a (mostly) human mother and a powerful lust demon for a father. Dad liked mom so much that Sara is his only child.
  • The Loved Ones in Day Of The Barney. When the girls that Barney has taken under his wing as his Special Friends turn thirteen, they are taken away and out of sight. Meanwhile, Barney rapes them and impregnates them with the Loved Ones; the girls die giving birth to them.
  • Chatoyant College: Corrie finds out, in Books 5 and 6, that her (missing) father is actually a werewolf. The reason why he was not within her life is because her mother chucked him out because he neglected to mention that fact until she was pregnant.

Western Animation[]

  • Raven, from Teen Titans.
  • As with the Mythology example, according to Word of God, this is played straight with Merlin in the Gargoyles universe, being the son of Lord Oberon and a human woman. This is also gender-flipped with Fox, who has a human father and Titania as her mother. Not that she knows this.
    • Thailog was grown in lab, but refers to Sevarius (the geneticist involved), Xanatos (the financier and mentor), and Goliath (the genetic donor) as his three fathers. He later created Delialah, who is 90% Gargoyle (on her mother, Demona's, side) and 10% human (on her mother, Elisa's, side).
  • In one The Simpsons' Halloween special, Maggie's father is one of the green tentacled cyclops aliens, Kang, who abducted Marge and impregnated her with some sort of ray.
  • An often-forgotten part of the backstory of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe involved a rocket ship from Earth crashing on Eternia. The pilot goes on to marry the king. So He-Man and his twin sister She-Ra are half earthling and half Eternian. Not that you can tell the difference.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy has Nergal Jr. - his father is (obviously) Nergal, a Humanoid Abomination from the centre of the Earth, and his mother is Aunt Sis.
  • Leela and Kif's offspring on Futurama.
  • Human Tracy + dog Brian = Dylan on Family Guy.

Inversions/Aversions/Subversions[]

Anime & Manga[]

  • Dragon Half has the title half-human half-dragon have a human father. This is mostly so one of her friends can question how someone hatched from an egg has a belly button. . It also features a Human Dad/ Slime Mom .
  • Krillin and Android 18 are an inversion of the norm for Dragonball Z, though admittedly she is human, too, just enhanced.
  • Macross: The children of Max and Milia. He is a human, she is a Zentraedi. They have seven children.
  • Chibi-usa of Sailor Moon has a human father and a goddess mother.
  • Momoko in Wedding Peach has a human father and an angel mother. The others love angels are full angels born to human mothers when their bodies, but not their souls, were destroyed.
  • Inverted in Lotte No Omocha. Asuha has a human father (Naoya) and a non-human mother (the succubus queen Mercelida, who is also Lotte's mother).

Comic Books[]

  • Namor the Sub-Mariner is an inversion, but his cousin, Namora, plays it straight.
  • In an odd case, Superboy is the genetically engineered offspring of Superman and Lex Luthor. That's Ho Yay, Foe Yay, and Human Dad, Nonhuman Dad.
  • The Korean manwha Faeries Landing stars a half human half faerie girl who is human on her father's side.
  • Pre-Crisis, Aquaman's father is a human lighthouse keeper and his mother is an exiled Atlantean princess/outcast.
  • Skaar and his twin brother Hiro-Kala, born to Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, and his alien wife Caiera, a native of the planet Sakaar.
  • Holly Black's The Good Neighbors inverts it to a Human Dad Faerie Mom ... but female faeries conform to a Western norm of beauty (sometimes a bit goth). Dad is certainly not a Retired Badass.

Fanfic[]

Film[]

  • Men in Black 2. Laura's parents are implied to be the alien Lauranna and Agent K, played by Tommy Lee Jones.
  • Inverted in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, following the literary source. Aragorn and Arwen are a human man and an elvish woman.
    • It's a little more complicated than that. Aragorn is in fact a Mortal Man with Elvish ancestry and Arwen is an Elf with Mortal ancestry. Both are descended from the union between a Mortal Man (Beren) and an Elf maiden (Luthien), whose descendants intermarried. This eventually produced Arwen's father, Elrond, and his twin brother, who were allowed to decide whether to share the fate of their Elven ancestors or their Mortal ancestors. Elrond, Arwen's father, chose to live among the Elves, while his twin, Aragorn's ancestor, chose a Mortal fate.
      • For bonus hybridism: Luthien was half demigoddess on her mother's side (elf father, Maia mother).
      • Of course, there have been more than sixty generations since Aragorn's last nonhuman ancestor, so for all intents and purposes, he's pretty much human.

Literature[]

  • Jim Butcher likes this one - in his Codex Alera books, this trope is inverted in First Lord's Fury when Kitai, a non-human Marat woman, has a child with Tavi, a human man
  • Inverted in all cases in JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth (The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, etc): The father is always the more 'mundane', the mother the more 'exotic' parent (e.g. several human/elf and one elf/divine spirit couple). Additionally, any misfortune happening to the family and the children is never a result of the mixed marriage being rejected by society.
  • Inverted in Thief of Time, in which the (female) Anthropomorphic Personification of Time bore a child to a mortal man.
  • Inverted in Dragonlance, with Tanis. Yes, his father was a rampaging pillager who raped his mother while raiding her village. No, his mother wasn't human, she was an elf. His father was the human one.
  • Harry Potter has a notable inversion: groundskeeper Hagrid is revealed mid-way through the series (to the surprise of practically no one, except Ron) to be half-giant, but human on his father's side.
  • Implied future inversion: In the Elenium and Tamuli trilogies by David Eddings, it's strongly implied that Sparhawk's daughter Danae will marry the young thief Talen when she grows up. Their children will fit this trope, since Danae is really the Child-Goddess Aphrael.
  • Damsel from Soon I Will Be Invincible has a human father and a Green-Skinned Space Babe mother, but was created in a laboratory, as her parents were reproductively incompatible.

Live Action TV[]

  • Inverted in Kamen Rider Kiva, where Wataru is the son of a Fangire woman (Maya) and a human man (Otoya). There doesn't seem to be anything that would stop Fangire and humans from mating except for the rules of the species.
    • But played straight in the Kamen Rider Decade version, where AR Wataru had a Fangire father and human mother.
  • Bewitched. The show inverts this trope when Darren and Samantha have their baby Tabitha.
  • Charmed uses this, depending on whether you view witches as human or nonhuman. If they're nonhuman, the trope is inverted in the case of Prue, Piper, and Phoebe (human dad/nonhuman mom). If they're human, the trope is played straight in the case of Paige (human mom/nonhuman dad). If they are human, Piper's sons and Phoebe's children have this true about them as well. Whether they're human or not, the trope is inverted in the case of Paige's children, since she married a "mortal" human, Henry, and is half Whitelighter (and thus, technically, nonhuman). Of course, Paige, as well as Piper's sons Wyatt and Chris, is half dead person, so I'm not sure how that works, but their fathers are still nonhuman.
    • Brandon, the half-warlock from the first season, played this trope straight as well. Cole was half human half demon as well, but his mother was a demon, while his father was human.
    • Phoebe's children are this played straight if the sisters are human - she married a Cupid, who is not.
  • Both inverted and invoked in Battlestar Galactica Reimagined. The inversion is obvious first: Boomer is a Cylon. Then we learned who it was invoked by: Teyril & Cally
    • That second actually becomes an aversion when we learn that the boy is actually Hotdog and Cally's son - two humans
  • D'Argo Sun Crichton has a human father and an alien (Sebacean) mother.
  • Inverted in Babylon 5, when John and Delenn give birth to David Sheridan. Many episodes reference extensive medical intervention that is needed despite Delenn's transformation in order for this to happen, so it's not likely that humans and Minbari are naturally interfertile.

Mythology[]

  • While Greek Mythology plays it straight most of the time, there are many inversions of this trope as well. Achilles is a notable one. Usually a demigod's father is one of the male Jerkass Gods who bed anything in a skirt, but his father is a human Happily Married (We Are as Mayflies notwithstanding) to a nymph. Furthermore, Hercules and so on are usually taken to owe their heroic power to divine inheritance. Achilles' invulnerability doesn't come from this.
    • An Enforced Inversion in Achilles' case. His mother, Thetis, caught the eye of Zeus, until Gaia predicted that any son that Thetis bore would be more powerful than his father. Zeus wanted to avoid that, so he dropped Thetis like a hot potato, and (if memory serves) forbade her from marrying a god. He actually set her up with a mortal man who was described as being weak (so that Thetis's child wouldn't be that much stronger) but he was Badass Normal enough to hold onto her no matter what ugly form she took.
      • In The Iliad, Achilles' mother was Thetis but his great-grandfather was Zeus. When boasting about his godly parentage, it's always his descent from Zeus he mentions, never his (much more direct) descent from Thetis. In this sense, he plays this trope straight.
    • And from The Aeneid, Aeneas. Not only was Venus his mother, according some legend his human father Anchises was also half-naiad on his mother's side too. In any case, being the founder of Rome, this divine parentage was vital to Roman Cultural Posturing.
  • Inverted with the most popular legend about the Yukionna in Japan. A man married a Yukionna disguised as a human woman and has several kids with her.
    • Japanese Mythology would invert this all the time, especially with myths about the kitsune. A kitsune would marry a human man and have a happy life and numerous kids with him, only for her cover to be blown by a person/a dog/alcohol, and forcing her to leave her husband and children forever. Depending on the story, either Love Conquers All and the kitsune wife comes back to be with her husband at night (when no one can see her), or she leaves forever.
  • There are also the Scandinavian myths of Huldra (female forest-spirits), who will occasionally marry and start families with human men. The same thing goes for selkies in scottish mythology. Selkies are human woman/seal shape-shifters, who will do the bidding of any man who hides their "seal-skin".
  • In one Lakota creation story, the first two people are both male, so they take wives from the animal kingdom. Eventually, they stop doing so when this starts creating monsters.
  • Hrolf Krakis Saga has an inversion where the main character's half-sister is half-elf on her mother's side. It also featured Bodvar Bjarki who might be a straight example, as his father was cursed to turn into a bear by day and no longer fully human due to that curse.

Tabletop RPG[]

  • Commonly averted in the cases of Half-Elves in earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Background material tend to have a large portion of half elves being the result of rape on Elven women by human raiders or mercenaries, seeing as how Our Elves Are Better, thus male (and female) Elves tend not to seek out females outside of other Elves.
  • Scion averts this, as a Scion can be the child of a human woman and god or the child of a human man and a goddess.
    • In fact, the vast majority of the goddesses are just as busy making Scions as their male counterparts. Even Hera, in the Dodekatheon, is known to take human men to give her Scion children. Of the original six pantheons (Pesedjet, Dodekatheon, Atzlanti, Aesir, Amatsukami, Loa), only three deities refuse to make Scions naturally at all: Artemis (devoutly lesbian; when she wants sex with a human, she's always chasing skirts), Athena (who for some reason just can't shake that "virgin goddess" thing) and Osiris (who is less unwilling and more unable; he's castrated).

Video Games[]

  • Inverted for Shantae, who has a genie mommy and a human daddy.
    • The ending of Risky's Revenge implies her father might have been more than a normal human, as Shantae's Prehensile Hair is not a genie power.
  • Averted in Mass Effect, for a certain definition of "mother" and "father." Half-anything hybrids are impossible due to each species being very different from each other. The only exception is with the Asari. They're a mono-gendered race that reproduces by melding their nervous system with that of someone else; this act scrambles some of the DNA in one of their eggs, producing the genetic diversity necessary for continuing adaptation. The asari is always the "mother" if one takes a mother to be the one to bear a child.
  • Flipped in PoPoLoCrois, in which Pietro and his sister are indeed half-dragon, with a draconic ruler being their grandfather, at that, the mother is actually the dragon.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Aerith's father was human and her mother was Cetra, an ancient race that had long since left the planet.
  • Final Fantasy X plays it both ways. Yuna's father is human and her mother is an Al Bhed, a race of atheists with swirling green eyes. She also has a relationship with Tidus, who is a dream.
  • Notably inverted in the Fire Emblem series. In the sixth game Sophia mentions in a support conversation that her mother was a dragon. In the seventh game Ninian and Nils were the children of a female ice dragon and a human druid. In the ninth and tenth games once again the half-dragon receives his non-human blood from his mother. Aside from Soren, the only other branded to have his precise parentage confirmed is the unnamed first branded, who plays this straight.
    • In Hasha no Tsurugi, the manga adaptation of Fire Emblem 6 , Al is the child of human leader of the Eight Divine Generals Hartmut, and a female Ice Dragon.
    • And in Fire Emblem 6, it's possible that Roy is actually a quarter dragon becuase his mom could have been Ninian. However, it's left very ambiguous as his mother could have been very easily been Lyndis or Fiora.
  • Played straight in Lunar: Silver Star Story with Jessica's beastman father and human mother. Potentially inverted with Jessica and her love interest Kyle - although they don't have children during the story, it seems inevitable that they will live happily ever after (in a Slap Slap Kiss sort of way).
  • Inverted in Tales of Symphonia with Raine and Genis Sage, who had an elf mother and a human father.
    • Played straight with Lloyd who has a human mother and angel father. Played with if you realize his father was originally a human who transformed into an angel.
  • Breath of Fire II inverted this trope. The hero is a child of a human priest and a dragon: that white dragon sealing the entrance of the caves at the back mountains.
  • The Dragon Age setting inverts this trope with the elves, who can interbreed with the humans but the offspring is apparently fully human, or close enough. Given their status as Enslaved Elves, it almost always means Human father, Elven mother.
  • The epilogue of Baldur's Gate indicates that the male player character can end up having a son with Viconia (so long as you complete that romance and choose to remain mortal), so he is half drow on his mother's side and half human/surface elf/whatever on his father's.
  • Inverted in Dragon Quest IV. The Chosen One's mother was a Zenithian, while daddy was a mere mortal woodcutter who got incinerated by the Zenith Dragon before he forced mommy to abandon her half-human infant on earth. Some Fantastic Racism there... On top of this, mommy is still alive, and reveals the whole story while trying to hide her own identity... poorly, as she can hardly hold back the tears while talking about how painful it would be for the hero's mother to see her child again.
    • Also inverted in Dragon Quest VIII, which has a similar setup for the hero's parents, with the added twist that daddy was also royalty, making this legacy even more extra-special. Lampshaded by Angelo after The Reveal, when he makes a comment to the effect of "One is special enough; being both is just RUDE."
  • Gender-flipped in Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny - Jubei Yagyu's mother is an Oni who fell in love with his human father.
  • One of the Multiple Endings of Star Ocean: The Second Story has one of Claude and Rena's endings with the latter, a Nedian, announcing to the former that she's pregnant with their child.
  • Inverted in Guilty Gear. Dizzy's father was a human (unknown, but often thought by fans to be either Kliff Undersn or Sol Badguy, despite the latter also being a gear) and her mother was a gear (Justice). In Guilty Gear 2, Sin's father is human (Ky Kiske) and mother is a "gear" ( hinted to be Dizzy).
  • In The Sims 2, your male Sims can get pregnant by male aliens. Of course, this means that the human, despite being male, plays the "Mom" role, so this trope arguably still applies.
  • Inverted by Eddie Riggs from Brutal Legend, whose mother is the Emperor of the demons, Succoria, and whose father is the leader of the human rebellion, Riggnarok.

Web Comics[]

  • Consciously inverted in The Order of the Stick, for the half-orc ninja (Therkla). Not only was her father human and her mother an orc, but they broke the stereotype the second time by actually being in love. Sickeningly so.
  • So far, inverted in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic. We've seen some five half-breeds so far; each time, the nonhuman was the mother.
  • Usually averted in Dela The Hooda, as well as in the more erotic comics made by Style Wager and Greg Older. In human/furry relationships, the human is usually a man, and the furry is a woman.
  • In Darken, Mink and her siblings' mother is a huge dragon, though she is often seen in a human form. Since they're all half-dragons, their father is presumably some manner of humanoid.

Western Animation[]

  • Stargate Infinity had Ec'co, who got the gender-flipped version of this, as his father is human. In a further subversion, his species is only remotely human. see this picture? He's the green guy all the way on the right. And the females aren't that much different from the males.
  • Inverted for the sequel to The Little Mermaid. Melody's father Eric is human; her mother Ariel was born a mermaid.
  • Roxy of Winx Club has this with an inverse of a father for a human and a fairy for a mother.
  • Keith from Voltron: Legendary Defender was born to a human father and an alien mother.
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