History Main / InbredAndEvil

* In ''WesternAnimation/Ben10AlienForce'', the [[AbsoluteXenophobe Highbreed]], an alien species [[ANaziByAnyOtherName so obsessed with genetic purity that they seek to exterminate all other races due to their "inferior" gene pool]], are stated to all be inbred and sterile.

The reasons for this are varied. Taboos against incest are strong and have only gotten stronger with time and just as [[BastardBastard illegitimate children]] and [[ChildByRape children of rape]] have historically been shamed for their irregular parentage, so too are children of incest. This shaming may be strengthened by the fact that, outside of [[RoyalInbreeding certain royal families]] or cases of SurpriseIncest, children of inbreeding are likely to be illegitimate and/or the products of rape, worsening the negative connotations associated with them.

A staple of the HillbillyHorrors genre, this trope can be nevertheless be found on both ends of the villainous socioeconomic spectrum, overlapping with AristocratsAreEvil as often as it does with rural {{Bandit Clan}}s and {{Cannibal Clan}}s. Often overlaps with BastardBastard, VillainousIncest, and ChildByRape. See RedRightHand, EvilCripple, MentalHandicapMoralDeficiency, and TheCaligula for what the trope might be used to explain away.

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** Jaime and Cersei Lannister have a long-term {{twincest}}uous relationship going on, and they have three kids together. We know dwarfism is a genetic disorder that's present in their family--their brother Tyrion is a dwarf--but all three of their kids are of normal height. The eldest, Joffrey, is a blatant case of TheCaligula however, and it's heavily implied that this is the product of not one, but two generations of inbreeding [[KissingCousins (Cersei and Jaime's father married his cousin)]] coming back to bite them

A staple of the HillbillyHorrors genre, this trope can be nevertheless be found on both ends of the villainous socioeconomic spectrum, overlapping with AristocratsAreEvil as often as it does with rural {{Bandit Clan}}s and {{Cannibal Clan}}s. Often overlaps with BastardBastard and ChildByRape. See RedRightHand, EvilCripple, MentalHandicapMoralDeficiency, and TheCaligula for what the trope might be used to explain away.

** In the episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS01E15TheBenders The Benders]], a clan of hill folk are kidnapping people and [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame hunting them for sport]]. It is heavily implied that that the younger members are products of incest and likely also engaging in incest with the only female member of the clan.
** In [[Recap/SupernaturalS04E11FamilyRemains the episode, Family Remains,]] a suspected series of ghost murders turns out to have been committed by feral twins born out of the [[VillainousIncest incestuous rape]] of their mother/sister by their father/grandfather, which led to the mother/sister killing herself out of shame and the twins killing the father/grandfather out of rage. They then hid in the walls of the home to avoid detection but emerged to kill anyone who tried to inhabit the house.

* Robert Louis Stevenson's short story "Olalla" plays with this. When the soldier protagonist is sent to recuperate with a decayed noble family in Spain, he discovers that the family's isolation has resulted in extensive inbreeding, leaving them all with the same set of recessive traits, most notably [[EvilRedhead flaming red hair]], in addition to leaving the son, Felipe, and the unnamed mother, intellectually disabled. The protagonist nevertheless falls in love with the family's beautiful daughter, Olalla, and is pursuing a romance with her when he receives a cut on his hand that prompts the mother to attack him and [[CannibalClan try to eat him]]. Olalla sends him away after that, informing him that her family is too damaged for him to become a part of.

* In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince'', Dumbledore says her partially attributes the mania of the Gaunt family to frequent marriage between cousins in an effort to keep the bloodline pure.

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** Jaime and Cersei Lannister have a long-term {{twincest}}uous relationship going on, and they have three kids together. We know dwarfism is a genetic disorder that's present in their family--their brother Tyrion is a dwarf--but all three of their kids are of normal height. The eldest, Joffrey, is a blatant case of TheCaligula however, and it's heavily implied that this is the product of not one, but two generations of inbreeding (Cersei and Jaime's father married his cousin) coming back to bite them

* Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell from ''Series/PrisonBreak'' and ''Series/BreakoutKings'' is a SerialKiller and SerialRapist who is revealed to be the product of incestuous rape between his father and his father's mentally handicapped sister. It's made pretty clear that T-Bag never really had a chance of being anything other than a villain, with Lloyd noting that "some machines just come off the assembly line broken."

* ''Creator/DeanKoontz'':

* Robert Louis Stevenson's short story "Olalla" plays with this. When the soldier protagonist is sent to recuperate with a decayed noble family in Spain, he discovers that the family's isolation has resulted in extensive inbreeding, leaving them all with the same set of recessive traits, most notably [[EvilRedhead flaming red hair]], in addition to leaving the son, Felipe, and the unnamed mother, intellectually disabled. The protagonist nevertheless falls in love with the family's beautiful daughter, Olalla, and is pursuing a romance with her when he receives a cut on his hand that prompts the mother to attack him and [[CannibalClan try to eat him]]. Olalla sends him away after that, informing him that her family is too damaged for him to become a part of.
* ''Murder in Advent'' by David Williams has the Daras family, who [[ImpoverishedPatrician were aristocrats a few centuries back]], and are now reduced to an evil old recluse and his harem of female relatives, holed up in what was their estate's home farm.
* Phil Rickman's ''The Wine of Angels'' has a similar setup, with a reclusive farming family whose sons are expected to lose their virginity to their mother before going out to rape and murder innocent victims.

* ''Creator/DeanKoontz'':
** ''Literature/{{Whispers}}'': "Bruno Frye" is the [[SingleMindedTwins collective]] name for a pair of [[CreepyTwins murderous twins]] whose father was also their grandfather. Left completely unbalanced by her father's assault on her, Katharine Frye raised her twin boys to think of themselves as one person, and to see sexuality as a product of the Devil. The two become {{Serial Killer}}s who hunt down and murder women they believe to be possessed by the Devil.
** ''Literature/TheBadPlace'': Candy Pollard's grandfather was an incestuous rapist who impregnated his mentally handicapped younger sister. His mother was the hermaphroditic child of that union, who went onto repeatedly impregnate ''[[ScrewYourself herself]]'', producing four children, all with PsychicPowers. While youngest son Frank is emotionally damaged but moral, and twins Violent and Verbina are feral and amoral but not necessarily malicious, Candy is a genetically damaged, physically deformed monster, born with two sets of testicles and no external genetalia, who uses his [[VillainTeleportation teleporting]] and [[MindOverMatter telekinetic]] abilities to become a serial murderer of the women he desperately wants to, but physically cannot have, sex with.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'' featured an episode, [[BannedEpisode to great controversy]], about a murderous, inbred clan known as the Peacock family . The [[EvilMatriarch matriarch]], Mrs. Peacock, is involved in [[ParentalIncest incestuous relationships with her sons]], one of them being the father of the other two.
%% I don't know anything about this episode, and unless I get more info on it I'll mark it out
* On ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'', there have been two different episodes in which the villain ends up being an inbred human.:
** In the episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS01E15TheBenders The Benders]], a clan of hill folk are kidnapping people and [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame hunting them for sport]]. It is heavily implied that that the younger members are products of incest and likely also engaging in incest with the only female member of the clan.
** In [[Recap/SupernaturalS04E11FamilyRemains the episode, Family Remains,]] a suspected series of ghost murders turns out to have been committed by feral twins born out of the [[VillainousIncest incestuous rape]] of their mother/sister by their father/grandfather, which led to the mother/sister killing herself out of shame and the twins killing the father/grandfather out of rage. They then hid in the walls of the home to avoid detection but emerged to kill anyone who tried to inhabit the house.
* Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell from ''Series/PrisonBreak'' and ''Series/BreakoutKings'' is a SerialKiller and SerialRapist who is revealed to be the product of incestuous rape between his father and his father's mentally handicapped sister. It's made pretty clear that T-Bag never really had a chance of being anything other than a villain, with Lloyd noting that "some machines just come off the assembly line broken."
* ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'' has Darius Parker, whose father was also his grandfather. Abused by his mother, who was never able to forget [[ChildByRape how he was conceived]] Darius grew up to be a murderer and a rapist himself.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'': Julius was born of an incestuous relationship and bear the lineage of the evil dragon Loptyr.

* ''Film/{{Excalibur}}'' makes Mordred the son of Arthur and his sister Morgana (rather than his half-sister Morgause) and even more insane than he usually is. In the end he not only destroys Camelot, but murders his mother in a fit of rage before going down to a MutualKill with his father.

* ''Film/{{Excalibur}} makes Mordred the son of Arthur and his sister Morgana (rather than his half-sister Morgause) and even more insane than he usually is. In the end he not only destroys Camelot, but murders his mother in a fit of rage before going down to a MutualKill with his father.

** ''Literature/TheBadPlace'': Candy Pollard's grandfather was an incestuous rapist who impregnated his mentally handicapped younger sister. His mother was the hermaphroditic child of that union, who went onto repeatedly impregnate ''[[ScrewYourself herself]]'', producing four children, all with PsychicPowers. While youngest son Frank is emotionally damaged but moral, and twins Violent and Verbina are feral and amoral but not necessarily malicious, Candy is a genetically damaged, deformed monster, born with two sets of testicles and no external genetalia, who uses his [[VillainTeleportation teleporting]] and [[MindOverMatter telekinetic]] abilities to become a serial murderer of the women he desperately wants to, but physically cannot have, sex with.

** In [[Recap/SupernaturalS04E11FamilyRemains the episode, Family Remains,]] a suspected series of ghost murders turns out to have been committed by feral twins born out of the [[VillainousIncest incestuous rape]] of their mother/sister by their father/ grandfather, which led to the mother/ sister killing herself out of shame and the twins killing the father/ grandfather out of rage. They then hid in the walls of the home to avoid detection but emerged to kill anyone who tried to inhabit the house.

* In many versions of the myth of ''Myth/KingArthur'', Mordred is born of a union between Arthur and his half-sister Morgause. Mordred goes on to be an AntagonisticOffspring.

In the real world, the issue with inbreeding is that it increases the risk of a recessive genetic disorder popping up. In fiction, it seems that one common recessive genetic disorder is evil.

* While this was absent from the original ''Film/TexasChainsawMassacre'' and its sequel, later installments in the franchise declared that Leatherface's oldest brother was also his father, and that most of cannibalistic Sawyer clan were products of VillainousIncest.

* In ''WesternAnimation/Ben10AlienForce'', the [[AbsoluteXenophobe Highbreed]], an alien species [[ANaziByAnyOtherName so obsessed with genetic purity that they seek to exterminate all other races due to their "inferior" gene pool]], are stated to all be inbred and sterile.

In the real world, the issue with inbreeding is that it increases the risk of a recessive genetic disorder popping up. In fiction, it seems that one common recessive genetic disorder is pure evil.

In the real world, the issue with inbreeding is that it increases the risk of a recessive genetic disorder popping up. In fiction, it seems that the most common recessive genetic disorder is pure evil.

* [[spoiler:Sayo]] from ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'' is the product of her grandfather raping his illegitimate daughter due to believing that she was her mother's reincarnation As a result, [[spoiler:Sayo]] was hidden away, which is one of the reasons she's so [[BrokenBird messed up]]. While [[AmbiguouslyEvil most likely]] not outright evil, [[spoiler:Sayo]] is the GreaterScopeVillain of the series.

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** In the episode [[Recap/SupernaturalS01E15TheBenders The Benders]], a clan of hill folk are kidnapping people and [[TheMostDangerousGame hunting them for sport]]. It is heavily implied that that the younger members are products of incest and likely also engaging in incest with the only female member of the clan.