History Main / FakeMixedRace

* Justified with Solid Snake in the ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' series, who is remarked upon to have Japanese ancestry by Vulcan Raven despite looking wholly white. [[spoiler:His Japanese "ancestry" comes from a Japanese woman, who donated the enucleated egg cells which were injected with Big Boss' DNA to clone him. Snake was ''engineered'' to look and act like Big Boss, along with his brothers Liquid and Solidus, "ancestry" be damned. Originally, the twist was that Big Boss was half-Japanese himself in which the previous game [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed portrayed him with Sean Connery as a stand-in]]; this has been retconned]].

* The film version of ''Film/TheCrow'' has Michael Wincott (white) as Top Dollar and Bai Ling (Asian) as his half-sister Myca. Lampshaded in dialogue:

* Creator/GeorgeClooney's main character (along with most of the characters) is part-Hawaiian in ''Film/TheDescendants''. It's partly [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] by Clooney's line to one of his cousins: "Listen, we're haole [white] as shit, but we have Hawaiian blood in us."

* After much backlash, Creator/CameronCrowe apologized for the casting of Creator/EmmaStone as a half-white quarter-Asian, quarter Hawaiian character in his film ''Film/{{Aloha}}''. Stone later [[SelfDeprecatingHumor poked fun at herself]] in an ''[[Series/SaturdayNightLive SNL]]'' guest appearance by suggesting she'd be a great pick for ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' because she has experience playing an Asian woman.

-->'''Rufus:''' The blood that flows through your veins shares a chromosome or two at the genetic level with the one you call Jesus. Bethany, you are the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandniece of Jesus Christ.
-->'''Jay:''' So... that would make Bethany part black?

* Subverted InUniverse in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'', when Barney meets the father of his black half-brother and thinks the guy is his father as well, and he's just never realized he was mixed race. Played straight in that his half-brother was played by the very dark-skinned Creator/WayneBrady. Plus, Barney has [[CloudCuckooLander never been QUITE on everyone's wavelength in the first place.]]
--> '''Barney:''' I always thought I was a pale white guy, but it turns out I'm actually a ''really really'' pale black guy!

* The fully black Ben Vereen played Chicken George, the half-white son of a slave and her master in ''{{Series/Roots|1977}}''.

** Played straight and also lampshaded later in the same episode when Liz and Criss meet their foster children, who are [[{{Expy}} Expies]] of Jenna and Tracy: a black boy and white girl. They are apparently full biological siblings and fraternal twins.

* While the player can customize [[VideoGame/FallOut3 The Lone Wanderer]] to look any way they want in the game proper, all official merchandise depicts them as a pale young man with reddish hair despite his mother being canonically black.

* Unless you listen to the audio files and piece together his past, it's impossible to tell that Booker Dewitt from ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite'' is supposed to be part-Native American. It's not some distant ancestry either, as Booker can speak Sioux fluently at an age when receiving education on such a topic would be highly unlikely.

* In ''Series/{{Watchmen|2019}}'', full-blooded Vietnamese actor Hong Chau plays the daughter of a Vietnamese woman and [[spoiler:Adrian Veidt]], who's white.

* Unless you listen to the audio files and piece together his past, it's impossible to tell that Booker Dewitt from ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite'' is supposed to be part-Sioux. It's not some distant ancestry either, as Booker can speak their language fluently as a teenager.

* For some time, ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' had UsefulNotes/BarackObama portrayed by Fred Armisen, who is mixed-race (half-Asian father, Hispanic mother), but not remotely black or African. They recast the role to avoid further controversy once another black comedian joined the cast.

--->'''Jay:''' So... that would make Bethany part black?

--->'''Rufus:''' The blood that flows through your veins shares a chromosome or two at the genetic level with the one you call Jesus. Bethany, you are the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandniece of Jesus Christ.

* Juni Cortez, the son of Creator/AntonioBanderas and Creator/CarlaGugino in ''Film/SpyKids'', is played by the Jewish/German Creator/DarylSabara.
** except both Gugino and Banderas are white.

* In ''Film/CharliesAngelsFullThrottle'', Creator/LucyLiu's father is revealed to be... Creator/JohnCleese?

* Justified with Solid Snake in the ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' series, who is remarked upon to have Japanese ancestry by Vulcan Raven despite looking wholly white. [[spoiler:His Japanese "ancestry" comes from a Japanese woman, who donated the enucleated egg cells which were injected with Big Boss' DNA to clone him. Snake was ''engineered'' to look and act like Big Boss, along with his brothers Liquid and Solidus, "ancestry" be damned]].

* In the film adaptation of ''King of Fighters'', Kyo Kusanagi is played by the whitest guy ever while having a Japanese father and being called half-breed by Iori Yagami.
-->'''Spoony:''' Yeah you're about as Japanese as Goku from ''Film/DragonballEvolution''.\\
'''Iori:''' Kyo is a half breed.\\

** "Running Zack" has Zack Morris saying he has Native American Ancestry and then proceeding to do a very stereotypical and offensive class presentation. When called out on this is sent to study with Chief Henry to learn some actual facts. This leads to Zack going on to give a presentation in full costume complete with headdress, which is only marginally better but enough to allow him to compete in the Track Meet.
** Creator/MarkPaulGosselaar who plays Zack Morris is however of mixed race (describing himself as half Asian) as he has a Dutch-German Father and Dutch-Indonesian Mother and had to dye his hair to Zack's trademark blonde.

* The movie ''Film/AMightyHeart'' about Mariane Pearl had this. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marianne_Pearl.jpg Mariane Pearl]] was born to a Dutch-Jewish father and an Afro-Chinese Cuban mother. She was played by Creator/AngelinaJolie. However, it should be noted that Jolie was Pearl's personal choice to play herself.

* In the 1999 comedy Film/Dogma, Rufus first asserts that Jesus was a black man. Later, there is this exchange between Rufus, Jay, and Bethany, played by Italian-American actress Linda Fiorentino:

* In the 1999 comedy Film/Dogma, Rufus first asserts that Jesus was a black man. Later, there is this exchange:

* White Canadian Creator/AlysonCourt played the Chinese-American Jubilation Lee in WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries. The 2023 revival of this show, ''X-Men '97'', is averting this at Court's behest, so Jubilee will feature a new voice actor, and Court herself will play a new character.

This is due in large part to the lack of mixed-race actors in the American television/film industries--although one should point out that this is largely due to the biases of the industry itself, which has a tendency to shy away from performers who [[AmbiguouslyBrown aren't readily identifiable as members of a particular race/ethnicity]].

A variant is often used in a comedic contexts, such as animation or sitcoms. A character will discover obscure roots in another ethnic group, usually by way of a distant ancestor. The character will often proceed to redefine their whole identity in a ludicrously exaggerated manner based on this information, regardless of the fact that the person lacks any substantive cultural or physical resemblance to the group in question. This plotline's persistence can perhaps be explained by its versatility as a vehicle for dissecting and/or subverting ethnic stereotypes and assumptions.

* ''Film/TheAdventuresOfBuckarooBanzaiAcrossThe8thDimension'': The eponymous Buckaroo Banzai is Japanese-American. He is played by Creator/PeterWeller, who is American but not Japanese. This is {{Lampshaded}} in the DVDCommentary by (the "real") Reno, who [[{{Mockumentary}} claims the movie]] is a {{Docudrama}} inspired by real events. He praises Weller's acting, but admits he doesn't look much like (the "real") Buckaroo Banzai.

* Denzel Washington as the long lost son of a white man in ''Carbon Copy.''

'''Iori:'''Kyo is a half breed.\\
'''Spoony:''' Yeah half white and the other half white.
* Kenneth Branagh's film version of ''Film/{{Much Ado About Nothing|1993}}'' has Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves as half-brothers. Somebody's got to be half-something. (Keanu Reeves is actually half-English... though the other half is a mix of Chinese, Hawaiian, English and Portuguese.)

** The 2014 ''Lupin III'' film once again has Lupin, who, again, is of Japanese-French descent being played a full-blooded Japanese actor, Shun Oguri.

** In the manga, Jotaro Kujo is ¼ British-American (from his Grandfather Joseph), ¼ Italian (from his Grandmother Suzi Q) and ½ Japanese on his Fathers side. In the live-action movie, he's played by Yusuke Iseya, who is 100% Japanese and not biracial.

* In ''Film/TheInnOfTheSixthHappiness'', German-Austrian actor (Creator/CurdJurgens) played a character who's said to be half-Dutch, half-Chinese. In the original memoir the film was based on, he was fully Chinese.
* ''Film/WhenEvilCalls'': Samantha, the main character, is shown as having a white father and East Asian mother. The actress playing her, Jennifer Lim, is only of East Asian (Chinese/Korean) descent.

* ''Film/YellowHairAndTheFortressOfGold'': The main characters, who's supposed to be mixed race (white and Native American) is played by entirely white Canadian actress Laurene Landon.
* ''Film/SanAndreas'': Caucasian Creator/AlexandraDaddario plays the daughter of Creator/DwayneJohnson (mixed Samoan/Black ancestry) and Carla Gugino (Caucasian). Her onscreen sister Arabella Morton is Caucasian too.

* The show ''Series/PairOfKings'' revolves around two mixed-race fraternal twins, who are played by Mitchel Musso (white) and Doc Shaw (black), respectively. This is {{handwaved}} in the show by explaining that they each take after a different parent. It's rare, but has happened [[http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=Ap.tYHx868Y2gpslJeg8o_2vulI6?p=black+and+white+twins]].

** With TGS soon to be cancelled, Tracy (played by the the very dark-skinned Creator/TracyMorgan) and Jenna (played by the white, blonde Creator/JaneKrakowski) decide their next project should be a movie where they play ConjoinedTwins, the joke being that they are both too stupid to realize that non-identical or opposite-sex conjoined twins are impossible, and that neither of them could conceivably pass as mixed race.

* ''Series/FeelGood'': Ritu Arya was born to Indian parents. On the show her character Laura's mom is white, with her unseen father presumably of South Asian ancestry.
* The half-Hawaiian, half-white titular character in ''Series/DoogieKamealohaMD'', is played by the half-Chinese, half-White Peyton Elizabeth Lee.

** Creator/MarkPaulGosselaar who plays Zack Morris is however of mixed race (describing himself as half asian) as he has a Dutch-German Father and Dutch-Indonesian Mother and had to dye his hair to Zack's trademark blonde.

* Justified with Solid Snake in the ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' series, who is remarked upon to have Japanese ancestry by Vulcan Raven despite looking wholly white. [[spoiler:His Japanese "ancestry" comes from a Japanese woman, who donated the enucleated egg cells which were injected with Big Boss' dna to clone him. Snake was ''engineered'' to look and act like Big Boss, along with his brothers Liquid and Solidus, "ancestry" be damned]].

** InUniverse: Apu pretends to be married to Marge when his mother comes to visit, hoping this will get him out of the ArrangedMarriage she wants to foist on him. By extension, Bart, Lisa and Maggie pretend to be Apu's children, despite clearly being too light-skinned to pass for Anglo-Indians; the option of pretending to be Apu and Marge's ''adopted'' children also didn't occur to them. At one point they ask her why she has a dot on her forehead and she questions whether they know anything about their "Brahmin heritage".

* In ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'', Peter discovered one of his ancestors on his father's side was black. While Peter did play his new-found "blackness" for all it was worth, it understandably wasn't visible, due to said ancestor living before the American Civil War. In any case, Peter's biological father later turned out to be a full-blooded Irishman.