History Main / ChangelingTale

* In ''Manga/TheAncientMagusBride'', Shannon is a changeling who was swapped out with a human boy named Shanahan. As she explains most changelings are killed or abandon the human world when discovered, but hers were rather understanding and left her alive. She only discovered that she wasn't human when she stopped aging and Shanahan came to visit her, having become a fae himself after being in their realm for so long. She ended up marrying him and returning to the fae realm after her co-workers noticed her longevity.

* In ''ComicBook/CourtneyCrumrinAndTheNightThings'', Courtney encounters a genuine changeling, but decides the baby's parents deserve it and the kid is better off among the Night Things (a.k.a. fairies).
* Referenced in ''ComicBook/IronMan''. As Malekith the Accursed [[TheWildHunt hunts]] Tony Stark, he taunts him [[spoiler:with the knowledge that he was adopted and compares him to changelings, saying that Tony has been one of Malekith's subjects his entire life.]]
* In ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' {{Elseworld}} ''Avataars: Covenant of the Shield'', those who develop strange powers in their childhood with no obvious cause are believed by the superstitious to have been "exchanged" for a fairy child, and are therefore known as [[ComicBook/XMen X-Changelings]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Estranged}}'' focuses on both a fairy prince, now being raised as "Edmund" and aware of his true nature,[[note]]Fairies apparently have NoInfantileAmnesia[[/note]] and his human counterpart, [[NeverGivenAName only called "the Childe"]] and treated as a sort of exotic pet. The two are forced to team up when the fairy king and queen are overthrown, putting them both in danger from the usurper's assassins.

* ''Fanfic/TheCrystalCourt'': Spring has a habit of collecting human babies to play with (usually till they die), and replaces them with fae babes that she felt were unfit for her court like in the case of Amethyst.

* ''Film/{{Changeling}}'' (2008) is a modern version of the same ancient fear, with TheFairFolk replaced by [[SevenBasicConflicts society]] as the antagonist.
* ''Film/PansLabyrinth''. Although Ofelia rather loves her human mother, and seems to have loved her long-dead father, it's presented as an unambiguously better thing to live in the underworld full of magic. Mostly because dad is dead, mom is very weak-willed, and new stepdad is a zealous fascist. Unlike most examples, Guillermo del Toro actually takes into account [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters the implications of such a statement]].

* ''Film/{{Djinn}}'': It turns out that [[spoiler:Sarah killed her own son because she subconsciously realized that]] the child was actually replaced with a baby djinni.
* ''Film/{{Us}}'': Red, a.k.a. [[spoiler:the original Adelaide, was kidnapped and replaced by her Tethered counterpart in 1986, and the Adelaide we've been following this whole time has actually been the replacement. Adelaide's parents raised the Tethered version of their daughter as their own and, though distressed by their child's seemingly sudden muteness, never suspected a thing. Interestingly enough, by the time the movie takes place, the Tethered Adelaide has started a family and has become a loving mother while Red has been driven insane, suggesting that Tethered [[NurtureOverNature are not inherently evil but are simply a product of the conditions they are raised in.]]]]

* In ''Film/TheDaisyChain'', an autistic girl is the subject of neighborhood gossip, with people wondering if she's a fairy changeling. [[spoiler:She is.]]

* Mentioned in {{Literature/Christine}}. When recounting his family history to protagonist Dennis, George [=LeBay=] notes that his brother Roland was apparently a very nice baby once, but ''something'' happened and Roland grew up to be a violent, hateful piece of work who took pleasure in hurting George, to the point of giving young George a permanent scar and expressing precisely zero remorse about it. Otherwise, though, there's no implication that Roland is anything other than human before his death.

* In "Literature/FairestOfAll," this is a common belief among humans, and although Siofra and Mahon really are their parents' biological children, they're subjected to horrific abuse as their parents try to get their "real" children back.

* Several of Caitlin R. Kiernan's novels feature "the Changelings": human children who have been abducted from their birth families and inducted into a cabal of subterranean monsters as servants and soldiers. A few of the so-called "Children of the Cuckoo" express longing for normal, human lives.

* ''Literature/TheSpiderwickChronicles'': Changelings don't appear in the series, but they are detailed in ''The Field Guide'', which explains them to be a form of faerie that assume the appearance of a human child whilst the original child is whisked away to be raised by faeries. Due to their supernatural origins and BlueAndOrangeMorality, changelings are prone to strange behavior (one might only eat flowers and leaves, another might speak entirely in songs and riddles) and often have strange traits (for example, appearing extremely old despite still having the size and proportions of a child). While many changelings eventually leave their human families and return to their faerie kin, some end up BecomingTheMask and lose their faerie qualities entirely to live their lives as regular humans.

* Triss in Literature/CuckooSong wonders why her family is acting so oddly. It's because [[spoiler:Triss ''isn't'' Triss, she's a changeling mockup made out of branches and other odds and ends by the [[TheFairFolk Besiders]]. The story actually follows the Triss-copy as she tries to both save herself before she falls apart, and rescue the original Triss.]]
* ''Literature/TheFiveBlackSwans'' by Sylvia Townsend Warner takes place at the fairy court of Elfhame, where Queen Tiphaine has adopted humans twins Morel and Amanita and allowed them to do whatever they pleased. They cause a terrible ruckus by killing the dying queen's pet monkey, and [[spoiler:shortly after Tiphaine dies the other fairies strangle them and throw their bodies on the moor to be eaten by crows.]] The other stories by Townsend Warner taking place in Elfhame mention other changelings. They are treated as precious pets, kept as lovers by the queen and other fairies, and when they get old they are thrown out of Elfham, which leaves them confused and obsessed with the idea of going back there.
* In ''Literature/InCryptid'', Johrlac (also known as "cuckoos") leave their offspring as {{Doorstop Bab|y}}ies with human families, and their natural BackstoryInvader powers make their MuggleFosterParents believe that the cuckoo was their own child all along. They have no interest in taking human children, though.
* "Literature/FairestOfAll": {{Deconstructed}} and {{subverted}}. Mahon and Siofra are both thought to be changelings by their parents as a result of being autistic, with abuse because of it. Both initially believe this and live with (also abusive) fairy folk, but ultimately realize they are indeed human, just different from most. It's clear this is simply a way to explain autistic children by people who don't understand them (as some scholars posit that such tales were for autism and other conditions).

* An episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' has a piece on a woman with Capgras syndrome (see below). The suspect, a video game addict with a nasty boyfriend, kept her daughter [[Literature/HarryPotter under the stairwell]] and refused to believe she was real, but had been [[{{Doppelganger}} replaced with another]] -- unless she only heard her daughter's voice. But the minute she saw her daughter, the delusion would set in again.
* One of the mysteries of ''The Family'' is whether or not the youngest son whose disappearance altered his family's dynamic and whose reappearance almost ten years later is disrupting things again is really the same kid. One of the ads shows him watching a video of "his" birthday on repeat until he can mimic the kid on the screen; in the series the older brother points out that he likes eggs now when he hated them as a kid.

* In the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E02TheKidsAreAlright The Kids Are Alright]]"... they're not. They've been replaced by changelings, who kill their human fathers and feed on their mothers. Meanwhile, the Changeling mother feeds on the replaced children.
* The ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E5SmallWorlds Small Worlds]]" involves a girl who is a changeling (unbeknownst to her or her family), and the fairies come to get her back.
* An episode of ''Series/Merlin2008'' has a variation on this one, in which a princess is not replaced, but is possessed by a Sidhe in infancy, as part of a plot to put a Sidhe on the throne of Camelot. The princess doesn't know the Sidhe is inside her, although its presence makes her very clumsy and uncoordinated. The plot is that once she's married Prince Arthur the Sidhe will take her over completely.
* ''Series/{{Highlander}}'' has Duncan being called a changeling by people in his clan, as he was found as a baby after his parents' true child died at birth. There's no proof immortals were really changelings.

* Rather early on in ''Series/FateTheWinxSaga'', Aisha deduces that [[spoiler:Bloom is a changeling who replaced her parents' stillborn biological daughter. Bloom decides to tell her parents that she's a changeling at [[Recap/FateTheWinxSagaS1E6AFantaticHeart the end of season 1]]]].

* ''TabletopGame/ArsMagica''. Faeries do the standard "kidnap children and replace them with changelings" routine. In one inset story, a villager talks about having killed the faerie creature that had been left in their baby's place -- and a nearby wizened stranger disgustedly mutters that they would have traded the brat back if the humans had only asked.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'':
** The Wood Elves are not above this kind of thing, although they seldom leave anything behind as a replacement. They tend to steal away beautiful boys from the land of Bretonnia surrounding their forest home, who then become ageless servants at their feasts. It is possible that stolen girls are returned to Bretonnia as its damsel sorceresses.
** There is also a daemon called The Changeling, with the ability to impersonate others flawlessly. Though it tends to impersonate full-grown and important people to cause mischief, rather than replacing babies.

* In ''TabletopGame/GrimHollow'', the wechselkind race are sapient {{golem}}s in the shape of human children which are created by the FairFolk to act as decoys when the fey steal human children. Etharis being [[CrapsackWorld the kind of world it is]], these {{Artificial Human}}s are hated and feared by humanity.

* The InteractiveFiction game ''VideoGame/TheWarblersNest'' is about a woman trying to figure out if her baby is a changeling or not. [[spoiler:There are two possible endings to the game, but both [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane leave it ambiguous]] as to whether the baby is truly a changeling or her mother is simply cracking under the stress of taking care of it.]]
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' [[spoiler:Kilia]] is this. [[spoiler:The party returns to Palmacosta only to discover that Governor-General Dorr has been working with the Desians in order to acquire a cure for his wife, who has been transformed into a monster]] prompting a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech from Lloyd. [[spoiler:Dorr]] is then stabbed in the back by [[spoiler:Kilia, who reveals herself as a doppleganger.]] leading to his death after the ensuing boss fight. [[spoiler:It turns out the real Kilia died some time ago, and the fake one replaced her in order to keep an eye on Dorr, and monitor the experiments at the ranch from behind the scenes.]]
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'', this happens to [[spoiler:Luke Fon Fabre. He was kidnapped from his home, and replaced with a Replica copy. The copy is revealed to be he character the player knows as Luke. The original Luke never returns to his old life, becoming the God General Asch the Bloody]].
* In ''VideoGame/TheSims3: Supernatural'', the backstories for some of the families in the new Moonlight Falls neighborhood are variations this. The fairy Flora Goodfellow switched Linda Rodgers' adoption to that of a fairy baby and took the human baby she was supposed to adopt. Flora Goodfellow also accidentally turned the Hoppcraft toddler into a fairy.
* In ''[[VideoGame/NancyDrew The Curse of Blackmoor Manor]]'', one of the Penvellyn ancestors was rumored to be a fairy's child, foisted off on her presumptive father by means of this trope. She was actually a foundling whom the man had adopted on the quiet.

* In ''VideoGame/KingsQuest2015'' Episode 2, Graham discovers that the Goblins have modeled their entire society after fairy tale books they found, including one that details this specific practice. Later on he encounters a human [[RaisedByWolves raised by Goblins]] as a result of such a swap, who unfortunately has to put up with AllOfTheOtherReindeer. [[spoiler:This man eventually meets the Goblin with whom he was traded and they become surrogate brothers, eventually becoming Manannan and Mordack, the {{Big Bad}}s of ''[[VideoGameVideoGame/KingsQuestIIIToHeirIsHuman King's Quest III]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/KingsQuestVAbsenceMakesTheHeartGoYonder King's Quest V]]'' respectively.]]

* Several subverted changeling tales (the Erlkönig tried to steal Toby but the Jareth and Javert stopped him, Jareth ''babysat'' Lír but King Haggard sent the Red Bull after them etc.) appeared in ''{{Webcomic/Roommates}}'', but you know it must be common if the token [[TheFairFolk fair]] teammate (Jareth) refers to the practice as ''[[InsistentTerminology babysitting]]''. And he never [[GoneHorriblyWrong messed up so badly to kill anybody]], his father was ''not'' this lucky.
%%* In the webcomic, ''This Is the Worst Idea You've Ever Had!'': One of the characters is this %% Zero Context Example. Please write up a full example
* ''Webcomic/{{Otherworldly}}'' is a subverted tale in this regard - the five leads are [[TheFairFolk Fair Folk]] swapped with human infants and raised in the human world. However, ''none'' of their parents (human or magical) were in on this as it was done by a (currently) unknown third party, the Fair Folk parents were left to think their children were dead or gone forever, and the fate of the original human changelings is still up in the air.
* ''{{Webcomic/Nimona}}'': A flashback to Nimona's past reveals that she was once a little girl who lived in a village, when it was attacked by raiders. Nimona seemingly inexplicably gained shapeshifting powers and killed all the raiders, but her parents feared her and no longer viewed her as their child, and so gave up to the sinister Institute for experimentation. Legends aboard about a shapeshifting creature that on occasion assumed the identity of those it killed, and it's left vague if Nimona was actually replaced by such a creature or became it or in some way merged with it.

* ''Literature/TheNewHanselAndGretel'': In one of Mathair's books, it is mentioned that at some point, kidnapping human children became forbidden. Mathair gets around this by ensnaring and infantilizing adults and caring for them instead.
* ''Literature/LoomingGaia'': Changelings are a type of monster created by the divine Allmother that takes the form of a normal-looking child, which constantly cries without sleep and is always hungry, while the real child is taken away to be raised by Allmother and her followers. She only sends changelings to replace the children of abusive and neglectful parents to ensure that they never want to have children again.

* Happens to Bloom, the protagonist of ''WesternAnimation/WinxClub'': First she learns that she's a fairy, and then is revealed that her parents aren't her real parents, and that she's a [[ChangelingFantasy princess of another world]].
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' uses the term "Changeling" to describe a race of shape-shifting [[BeePeople bug ponies]] [[ThePowerOfLove that feed off of love]]. While they don't go around kidnapping children and replacing them with their young [[EpilepticTrees (as far as we know)]], they did [[spoiler:kidnap Princess Cadence on her wedding day so they could replace her with a doppelganger]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Trollhunters}}'' has changelings as a troll species created by the evil Gumm-Gumms, capable of assuming human form by swapping with a human infant taken through a portal to the Darklands. The baby has to be alive for them to retain this ability, and they don't age while in the Gumm-Gumms' care. The changelings can assume their true form at will, which is notably more humanlike than most other trolls.
* ''WesternAnimation/FrankeldasBookOfSpooks'' has gnomes operating this way, offering their services to children in exchange for their names as a front to steal their identities and turn them into new gnomes. Though everyone perceives the gnome as the child it replaced and concept art shown in the credits shows this clearly, the victim child and viewers only see the gnome in a PaperThinDisguise, which carries over into cameos in later episodes.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheWorldOfDavidTheGnome'': Ends up biting a troll mother in the butt. She switches her baby with that of a farmer (because it smells better and is quieter), taking the human back to her cave to raise. however the farmer discovers the ruse and trails the troll back home, stealing his baby but not returning hers. He instead places the troll baby on a rock in the middle of a roaring river. Since trolls can't swim, the mother is powerless to save her baby. David agrees to save the infant, but only after getting her to promise never to try such a stupid trick again.

The earliest fairy tale versions are OlderThanPrint. Contrast MosesInTheBulrushes, where the parents do the switching. See also DoorstepBaby. Compare [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Persephone]], YearOutsideHourInside, and its inverse YearInsideHourOutside.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'', changelings are the daughters of Hags, who copulate with (usually unwilling or bewitched) human men. As in classic versions of the legend, the changeling will be [[DoorstopBaby left on a doorstop]] or swapped for a regular child. In the latter case, Hags being irredeemably evil, it's probably best not to speculate [[ImAHumanitarian what happens]] to the original baby. Changelings are AlwaysFemale(until 2nd Edition, but even in 2e male Changelings are relatively rare), and generally grow up to be rather attractive, although there is always some physical abnormality that identifies them for what they are, most commonly heterochromia. They are not inherently evil like their mothers, nor are they all destined to become witches when they grow up, although if they do so they will likely have a natural aptitude for it. At some point in their young adulthood, changelings will experience a psychic call from their biological mothers. If they choose to heed this, they may decide to undergo a ritual in which they pledge themselves to the cause of evil and are transformed into Hags themselves. However, they are free to ignore or reject this summons and choose their own path in life, making them an appropriate race for player characters.

The earliest fairy tale versions are OlderThanPrint. Contrast MosesInTheBulrushes, where the parents do the switching. See also {{Foundling}}. Compare [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Persephone]], YearOutsideHourInside, and its inverse YearInsideHourOutside.