Generation Xerox / Live-Action TV

Generation Xerox as seen in Live-Action TV series.

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• In the Agent Carter episode "A Sin to Err", the search for the Black Widow requires Carter and Jarvis to dig into Howard Stark's personal life, which he has been conducting much the same way his son will 60 years later in Iron Man.
• Arrow: Flash Forwards show that Oliver and Felicity's children end up exactly like them. William is an adorkable computer nerd and literal genius just like his step-mother Felicity, while Mia is a stoic badass who is an unparalleled archer and all-around combatant but bottles up her emotions and only barely lets down her walls around family, just like her father Oliver.
• Ashes of Love:
  • The most beautiful woman in all Six Realms is caught in a love triangle with two power deities, one of whom is the Heavenly Emperor, which ends with her death. Are we talking about Jin Mi or her mother Zi Fen?
  • A prince removes his more popular brother to become Heavenly Emperor. Tai Wei or Run Yu?
• In Auction Kings, Bob runs an auction house. Paul runs an auction house. Elijah is considering joining the auction world as well.
• Belgravia: Charles Pope is a businessman like his grandfather James Trenchard. And like his mother Sophia, he falls in love with someone of the upper class who is several degrees above his station, though things end a lot better for Charles and Maria than they did for Sophia and Edmund.
• Although the various generations of the Blackadder family are accompanied by Baldrick and an Upper-Class Twit, it's not until Blackadder Goes Forth that we get a real sense of history repeating, with more recurring characters from previous series than before, including one-off characters who take their own plotlines from the earlier series with them (Bob\Kate the Sweet Polly Oliver, for instance, or Nurse Mary, who's a WWI version of Amy Hardwood from Third). The fact the basic set-up is similar to Blackadder II (Edmund, Balders, and the twit are all based in location 1. Blackadder is frequently summoned to location 2 where an obsequious hanger-on with equal status tries to get him in trouble (Lord Melchett in series II, Kevin Darling in series IV) with a psychotic loon who has power of life and death over everyone involved (Queenie in series II, General Melchett in series IV) is just the icing on the cake.
  • And they both have Lord Flashheart swoop in, steal the show with his Large Ham, and steal away Bob.
• On Boardwalk Empire, Jimmy Darmody and his mother Gillian both have their Start of Darkness as a result of sexual abuse.
• Played with in Season 7's first episode of Buffy — Dawn's arc is paralleled with her older sister Buffy's arc in Season 1. Dawn is joined by two outcast classmates — a mousy shy girl and a loudmouthed guy, paralleling Buffy becoming friends with Willow and Xander — and fights monsters on their first day at the newly rebuilt Sunnydale High. Dawn's new friends are subsequently forgotten. She talks to Mousy Shy Girl on the phone in "Conversations With Dead People," but other than that, Dawn's aforementioned friends are never mentioned again.
• Charmed:
  • Piper later discovers that her mother ended up falling in love with her whitelighter, as she did for Leo. At the time she realises this, she's dating Dan and leaves him for Leo. And their mother's affair with Sam produced a half witch, half whitelighter child — and Piper and Leo have a child, too.
  • It's shown in the last episode that each of the sisters will have three children each, who will be trained to follow in the footsteps of the previous generation.
• In Chinese Paladin, Ling'er, like her mother, is destined to die after saving the world, leaving behind a daughter to continue the cycle.
• In an episode of Derry Girls about the exploits of the girls' mothers in their own teenage years, they act exactly like their respective daughters will.
• The Scottish sitcom City Lights was about a Glaswegian bank-teller called Willie Melvin, whose attempts to publish his autobiographical novel My Childhood Up A Close were forever being derailed by his dodgy best friend, Chancer. In one episode he researches his family tree, and discovers the medieval Lord William Melvin, who was killed by Chancer the Bruce just after completing My Childhood Up A Castle.
• On Designing Women Julia and Suzanne's nieces bicker just the way they do but they've been doing it for so long they don't notice it until Mary Jo and Charlene point it out.
• Frasier (2023):
  • The revival sees Frasier's son, Freddy, having grown up to become more like his grandfather, Martin, than Frasier himself; his mother, Lilith; or his uncle, Niles, preferring to be a blue-collar guy like Martin was, dropping out of Harvard and even getting a job in emergency services (albeit as a firefighter as opposed to a cop like Martin was). He and Frasier even argue about decor like Frasier and Martin did. That said, it is revealed that Freddy did lie at one point about Fraiser being dead and his job, much like Frasier claiming that Martin was a deceased scientist in Cheers was retconned into being in the original Frasier.
  • Niles and Daphne's son, David, takes after both of his parents, being a caring Cloud Cuckoolander like his mother and a dorky hypochondriac with a haughty speech pattern like his father.
• Friends:
  • In the episode "The One Where Nana Dies Twice", Monica and Ross's mother reflects on how critical Nana was of everything she did, unaware that this is exactly how she treats Monica. Also, a photo at the end reveals that when Nana was in her twenties she looked exactly like Monica, and hung out with her friends at a coffee house.
  • Discussed in "The One with The Lesbian Wedding." Rachel's mom asks her "what's new in sex?" and Rachel snaps, calling her out for being so casual about her upcoming divorce, and she responds that she thought she felt unhappy in her marriage for a long time, but became sure she wanted to end it when Rachel ran out on Barry. When Rachel asks what that had to do with her divorce, her mom says: "you ran out on your Barry, but I married mine."
• In the Full House continuation Fuller House this is the case. D.J., Stephanie, and Kimmy being promoted into the Danny, Jesse, and Joey roles respectively. The first ones each being the responsible straight-laced single-parent, the second as the cool musically-inclined uncle/aunt who moves in, and the third as the wacky best friend who lives with them. When it comes to the kids Jackson, Max, and Tommy take up the positions D.J., Stephanie, and Michelle held in the original series as D.J.'s kids. The eldest and middle children similarly having a tenuous relationship with each other, including also like their predecessors having to share a room, and the third at least starting out the series as a baby who is played by a pair of twins.
• Game of Thrones universe:
  • Game of Thrones:
    • The Stark children have many similarities with their parents:
    • Like his father, Robb is a skilled tactician and compassionate leader (both in war and peace) with a sense of duty and honor who rebels against a king in the name of family — fittingly, as he is the heir of Winterfell. Richard Madden even mentions this in Robb's featurette. Though there is one crucial difference that separates them, as pointed out by Catelyn herself: Ned entered into a political marriage during the course of Robert's Rebellion, and honored that vow, refusing to Marry for Love even if there might have been another woman in his life (and allegedly the existence of Jon Snow would imply that there was).
    • Jon, the bastard half-brother, resembles his father Ned the most out of the Stark children and is a solemn, honorable (and known for this honor), and levelheaded leader and skilled swordsman like Ned, with Ned's sense of duty, compassion, and love for family, who carries out executions himself. All of this makes it even more ironic because Ned is not his biological father, but his uncle.
    • Sansa is a beautiful Proper Lady like her mother Catelyn — a few characters remark that she looks very much like Catelyn did when she was young. Littlefinger even says she's more beautiful than her mother was at that age. Appropriately enough, she gradually starts exhibiting more and more of Catelyn's character traits as she gets older, save for acquiring a cold pragmatism her mother lacked which Sansa likely acquired from her time around the court, particularly around Littlefinger. So, in a way, she became the child Littlefinger never got to have with Cat. This is even more striking in Season 6 as she has now taken over the role of The Consigliere to her brother Jon, like Catelyn used to do with her husband Ned and son Robb — Sansa and Jon's father and brother respectively. In regards to her father, despite her earlier infatuation for Joffrey, she has her father's idealism, patience, self-control, compassion, and love for her family and home, Winterfell.
    • Arya has her father's grim determination, a fierce sense of justice, and love and empathy for the smallfolk. She also ends up best friends with Gendry during the war — who is the son of Ned's friend Robert who he fought alongside during the last war.
    • Like his father, Bran is a Reasonable Authority Figure with an overriding concern for his subjects (literally begging for Ser Rodrik's life) with Nerves of Steel, like Arya his closest allies end up mirroring his father's, as he befriends the children of Howland Reed, Ned's best friend, and considering his resemblance to Kid!Ned in the flashbacks, probably the child who most closely resembles him physically.
    • Rickon has his father's compassion and love for family.
    • Ned comments that Arya takes after Lyanna (Ned's sister, Jon's mother) in both appearance and personality. The flashbacks of a young Lyanna show her as a spirited tomboy wearing boy's clothing, befriending smallfolk, and literally riding circles around her brothers — all supporting Ned's comments about Arya.
    • The Smalljon inherits his father's boastful nature, the size, the massive beard, the temper, and the brutal honesty. He just seems a tad more villainous.
    • Tytos Lannister's trait as a Weak-Willed, indecisive ruler with a strong desire to be liked and easily manipulated by the people around him was inherited by his great-grandson, Tommen.
    • Myrcella looks strikingly like Cersei did when she was young, though thankfully lacks her mother's temperament. By coincidence, the actresses who portray Myrcella and a young Cersei share an uncommon first name.
    • Drogon's features and temperament towards burning people in battle recalls the historical actions of Balerion the Black Dread, Aegon the Conqueror's own dragon. In the books, the coincidence is actually commented upon by Daenerys herself, even believing that Drogon is Balerion reincarnated — even if she gave him a new name to honor his new life.
    • Gendry is tall, strong, and handsome like his father, and his best friend is — just like his father's was — a Stark. Ned even realizes that he's Robert's bastard for certain when he stubbornly insists that his bull helmet's not for sale, even though slighting the Hand of the King could get his tongue ripped out. They also both prefer to use warhammers in combat. That said he's managed to escape on a lot of his father's worst traits such as his bloodthirstiness, arrogance, impulsiveness, and whoring, and is generally much kinder and more serious than Robert ever was.
  • House of the Dragon:
    • Rhaenyra Targaryen repeats the mistakes of her father, King Viserys. Both position their firstborn as their heir, but nonetheless choose to enter a second marriage which yields children with a more traditional claim, weakening their chosen heir's position. Both father and daughter deal with problems by avoidance. Viserys makes decisions as rarely as possible; Rhaenyra deals by saying Screw This, I'm Outta Here and removing herself from court for 6 years.
• Gilmore Girls:
  • Lorelai and Rory. It's mentioned several times in the series how alike their personalities are. Rory's first boyfriend reminds Lorelai of Rory's father, for example.
  • But also subverted in that the focus of Lorelai's life (to the extent she has focus) is to keep Rory from making the same mistakes she did.
    • This is being replayed with Lauren Graham's Parenthood character Sarah and her daughter Amber.
  • Also, Luke and his nephew Jess. They are both snarky, cynical, and totally in love with their respective Gilmore girl. Luke eventually hooking up with Lorelai and Jess with Rory only makes the whole parallel funnier.
• Ginny and Georgia:
  • The trailer for the series presents a subversion of this trope where Ginny is presented as being more mature than her mother. Then the first episode sees her smoking pot and losing her virginity to a boy she's only known for a day or two; while this can be attributed to being a teenage girl, it helps to show that the two are not so different.
  • As the first season unravels, Ginny starts to compare herself more and more to her mother (mostly when people call her out on her manipulative and selfish behavior), to the point that, in the final scene she runs away on a stolen motorbike with her brother, just like Georgia ran from her abusive family when she was a teenager with Ginny on tow. She even wears an old jacket from her!
• JAG: Harm's dad just so happened to look in his prime exactly like his son later does in his prime (save for the mustache).
• Parodied in Lizzie McGuire where Lizzie imagines becoming a homemaker like her mother. She ends up with the same glasses and hairstyle, as well as having two children identically like Matt and Lizzie.
• Lucifer (2016): When Lucifer's mother, the Goddess of Creation, gets a human body for the first time, she quickly turns into a hedonistic sex-crazed party animal who is dismissive of humans, focused completely on herself, learns all the wrong lessons whenever anyone tries to give her advice, is violently protective of the people she cares about, and is extremely short-sighted. Even humans who don't know they're related immediately recognize the massive similarities.
  Lucifer: What, you think I took after my dad?
• Pretty much the whole concept of the new series of Minder. Archie Daley, the nephew of Arthur Daley? Who picked up a taxi driver as an assistant? Okay.
• Once Upon a Time has Henry and Mary Margaret aka Snow White. Both had Regina as a mother figure. Both knowingly ate (the same) poisoned apple created by Regina to save someone they love (Charming and Emma, respectively). Both of them received True Love's Kiss from those specific loved ones to awake from their sleeping curses. Like grandmother, like grandson. In Season 2, this is sometimes Played for Laughs when Henry demonstrates traits of his biological parents.
  Emma: [after Henry has ditched his father] He's YOUR son!
  Neal: [after Henry demonstrates a signal Emma taught him] Oh hell no, I taught her that!
• In an episode of Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Parker's father gets back together with his high school buddies at a reunion and they all behave in the same manner as Parker's crew.
• In Power Rangers Samurai, Skull's son Spike is exactly like his father. Spike even laughs like his father.
• In Press Gang, it is revealed in a flashback that Spike's mom and Spike's dad were carbon copies of Spike and Lynda when in High School.
• In Princess Returning Pearl, Zi Wei and her mother Yu He are played by the same actress. This is a common trope in Chinese series in general.
• As much as neither of them will admit it, Shawn and Henry from Psych. At least Lassiter seems to think so.
  Lassiter: Working with [Henry] is exactly like working with Shawn.
• Robin Hood: In "Bad Blood" Flashbacks reveal that the enmity between the Gisbournes and the Locksleys started due to a love triangle between Guy and Robin's fathers, which ended with the woman involved being killed by one of them (Malcolm of Locksley, and unlike Guy's murder of Marian, it was an accident). Ghislane of Gisbourne also shows flashes of her daughter's political ambition, and gets shouted down by a sexist community leader in a similar manner to the arrival of Isabella's husband.
• Sadakatsiz:
  • Asya's mother killed her husband and then herself by driving their car off a cliff because he was cheating on her. As it turns out, Asya's mother Ayla got crazy from jealousy over Asya's father still loving his mistress with whom he was engaged until he cheated on her with Asya's mom. Because Ayla was pregnant, Asya's father married her. They died when Asya was ten years old.
    The situation is repeated with Asya, Volkan, and Derin. At first, it seems that Asya won't go her mother's route upon discovering Volkan's unfaithfulness as she only pulls an unhinged plot to keep custody of her son. The parallel comes with Derin whose jealousy over Volkan still loving Asya leads her to try and kill herself and Asya by driving the car off a cliff. While she doesn't succeed, this happens when she and Volkan's daughter Zeynep is a toddler.
  • Gönül is approximately two decades older than her brother Melih; therefore, their relationship is more akin to a mother and her son than that of an older sister and her younger brother. It goes to the point that Gönül wants to policy whom Melih dates (he's a 40-year-old man). Similarly, Derin is twelve years older than her teenage brother Demir; since both siblings are very immature, the gap causes a disconnect in their relationship—Derin thinks she always knows better and dismisses Demir's opinions because of his age. Despite all of this, both sets of siblings love each other and come through to support the other in rough times.
• Saturday Night Live has a Weekend Update segment in which an SNL ticket lottery winner named CJ (played by Sarah Sherman) comes on who turns out to be Colin Jost's estranged bastard son. CJ is dressed identically to Colin and shares many traits with him, mostly the unpleasant traits based on Jost's "rich sexist asshole punching bag" persona. He and Colin are the only ones to have a penis shaped like a pig's tail, and CJ has a tendency to sexually harass women, while also inexplicably ending up dating a popular girl who gets all the leads in the school plays, which Colin swears isn't like anything in his own life.
• In the Smallville episode "Relic", Clark sees flashes of his father's brief time in Smallville as a young man. Jor-El, Clark's dad, falls in love with Lana Lang's great aunt, Jonathan Kent's father is seen as a noble farmer who helps Jor-El, and the bad guy is a Luthor, Lex's grandfather. And a corrupt Sheriff. The first Sheriff in Smallville is also found out to be corrupt.
• A recurring theme in Sons of Anarchy is that the current generation of SAMCRO is following in the footsteps of the previous generation. Especially Jax, who is repeating the mistakes that both Clay and JT made. In the series finale Jax kills himself in the same way his father did, and sends his sons as far away as possible to make sure they don't grow up like he did.
• Played with in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Crystal Skull"; turns out both Daniel and his grandfather are right about their pet archaeological notions that were laughed at and dismissed by everyone else in the business, including each other.
• In the Star Trek universe Dr. Soong was an eccentric scientist, whose work on creating artificial humanoids made him distrusted. One of his more powerful creations turned out to be a conscienceless monster who had to be stopped by the crew of the Enterprise. Another, however, was a good person who aided the Enterprise crew in this. Arik (and Malik and Udar) from Star Trek: Enterprise or Noonien (and Lore and Data) from Star Trek: The Next Generation?
  • An in-universe example in a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, where Garak asks Bashir what he thought of a Cardassian best-selling novel. Bashir says he found it too repetitive, citing how the same thing happened to seven generations of Cardassians. Garak simply replies that he considers the repetitive epic the most elegant form of Cardassian literature.
• MTV's The State was a sketch comedy that featured a character named "Doug" who was a whiney emo teen who believed no one understood him, his parents least of all. Turns out his father was just the same, only where Doug's Catchphrase was "I'm outta here!" his father's was "I'm splittin'!" One sketch had Doug in an Imagine Spot where he was now an adult with a kid just like him.
• Supernatural:
  • They might have got better (kind of) but in "Mystery Spot", Dean died and Sam became a ruthless hunter, bent on revenge against Dean's killer. Their mother died (she didn't get better) and their father became a ruthless hunter, bent on revenge against her killer. And yes, it's as slashy as it sounds.
  • Sam is John 2.0 Period. (He did a less extreme version of this back in season one after Azazel killed his fiancee, but between having Dean to help him through it and it already being his father's quest, it just wasn't as all-consuming. John appears to have been orphaned even before he married.)
    • It explains why they didn't get on most of the time, they were just too damn similar.
    • Sammy's I Just Want to Be Normal also goes back to his mom. The demon deals thing is just a family tradition at this point. They even spread it to the adopted members, and back to people who died before they were born.
  • Season 5 also plays a weird version of it with generation one being God and two of his archangels, and the Xerox being the original Winchester triad. Dean being the 'good son' Michael the soldier, and Sam being Lucifer, the rebellious one. Gabriel makes this explicit. While at the same time, Castiel's quest for an unanswering God is clearly meant to parallel the original series premise of 'two brothers on a road trip, looking for their father and killing evil things,' with a smidgen more subtlety.
    • In all cases God is, if not evil, definitely a dick. This is a show that prefers lateral relationships in all cases to vertical ones. Equality fuck yeah.
  • In Season 7, after Castiel dies, Dean mourns the same way his father mourned his mother: by burying himself in work, drowning himself in alcohol, and becoming obsessed with taking revenge on those he holds responsible for his loss. And Castiel's death echoes Mary's: both made an impulsive deal with a powerful demon in order to protect the man they loved the most (although Cas had other reasons, too), and both paid the price for it.
• Taken:
  • In spite of his attempts to become a better man, Eric Crawford is very much like his father Owen. They are both ambitious, ruthless, and willing to step on anyone that gets in their way. In "God's Equation", he comes to feel guilty about all of the terrible things that he has done, something that Owen never does. Mary proves to be cut from the same cloth as her grandfather. Also in "God's Equation", Eric mentions that she possesses the same clarity of purpose as his father, which is probably related to their lack of morals.
  • In "Beyond the Sky", Sally Clarke is a lonely, unhappy woman whose husband Fred neglects and disrespects her. Her children Tom and Becky are her main source of happiness. Her unsatisfactory marriage leads her to have an affair with the alien John. In "Jacob and Jesse", she has a brief relationship with Owen but it turns out that he was merely using her so that he could have an opportunity to kidnap Jacob. In "Maintenance", Becky is married to a man named Ronnie, who treats her in much the same way as Fred treated Sally. Her children Kim and Andy are the only good things to come from her marriage. Becky's unhappy marriage leads her to have an affair with Eric. Becky and Eric's relationship differs from Owen and Sally's in that Eric genuinely develops feelings for her but Becky ends it when she realizes that she doesn't trust him.
  • Three generations of the Keys family, Russell, Jesse, and Charlie, fight valiantly against the aliens whenever they abduct them. Although it is secondary to their immunity to the effects of their technology, this is a source of great interest to the aliens. Furthermore, both Russell and Jesse are war veterans (World War II in Russell's case and The Vietnam War in Jesse's) who return home more traumatized by their abductions than by the war itself.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Wall", Major Alex McAndrews joined the military in order to defend the US and its citizens, as his father and grandfather did before him.
• The premise of Will & Grace was that years before the show's premiere episode, Will and Grace had met in college and dated until Will came out of the closet, and then had stayed close friends. In the series finale, the pair end up growing apart — until years later, when their kids meet in college and date (although their kids then go on to get married).
• In Wizards of Waverly Place, the three main siblings, Justin, Alex, and Max, have personalities similar to those of their father and his brother and sister — Jerry, Megan, and Kelbo — with Alex pretty much being the same as her aunt, an antisocial Deadpan Snarker, Max being The Ditz just like Kelbo and Justin, the mature and the oldest one, just like his father, Jerry. Not to mention the conflict between Jerry and Megan, which resembles a lot the antagonism Justin and Alex have most of the time. To cap it all off, Justin won the Wizard competition, but gave up his powers, just like Jerry, though both the reason he did it and the sibling he gave his powers to are different.
• Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor Sr. landed on Paradise Island, was discovered by Princess Diana who then took on the mantle, uniform, bracelets, lasso, tiara, and belt of strength of Wonder Woman, and escorted him back to America. Then she took a job as his subordinate so that she'd be in a position to watch over him and know when and where she was most needed. 35 years later, the exact same thing happened to Steve Trevor Jr. — who just happens to be a dead ringer for his father.
• A variation involving a future generation; in the Xena: Warrior Princess Clip Show episode "The Xena Scrolls", Adventurer Archaeologist Janice Covington (played by Renee O'Connor) and linguistics expert Melinda Pappas (Lucy Lawless) learn that they are descendants of Gabrielle and Xena respectively, and end up kicking Ares' butt all over again (complete with a possible descendant of Joxer).

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