Born of Heaven and Hell

Concordant Killer by Wayne Reynolds

Born of Heaven and Hell is a being whose parents are from Heaven and Hell or its equivalent. Largely being part angel or God/Deity, and demon/Devil. They may be referred to as a Nephilim. This may be justified when Fallen Angels or Ascended Demons are involved.

More often than not they will be portrayed as an Anti-Hero thanks to the contradiction of their very being; while they may want to do good (Heaven), their actions would be seen as violent or destructive (Hell).

May face the brunt of the Half-Breed Discrimination from both species. If they are lucky they may be left alone. However, they may be targeted for death for either being born or fear their hybrid nature would make them more powerful. If not, they may actually be accepted by one of the groups. Though, they will feel uneasiness about their hybrid nature.

A Fusion Dance or a case of one gaining attributes of the other can accomplish the same effect.

Most likely the end result of a literal Angel/Devil Shipping.

Also see Divine Parentage and Semi-Divine. Compare Human-Demon Hybrid.

Sub-Trope of Child of Two Worlds and Oxymoronic Being. If they have supernatural abilities, they might manifest as a Yin-Yang Bomb.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Ah! My Goddess: Urd is half-god, half-demon. In fact, her parents are the series' versions of God and Satan. Her hybrid nature also caused her Angel's, World of Elegance, hair and wings to be part white and black. She is also self-conscious on her hybrid nature.
• Love Tyrant: Guri is a daughter of God and a female demon. Her appearance is a mixture of angel and demon with black angel wings, dark hair, pointy ears, and fangs. She also gets white and black striped horns, hair color becomes white in a Light Is Not Good way, and black bat wings as a demon, while as an angel, she gets a halo, and white angel wings.
• Rage of Bahamut: Genesis has Amira, who is angel on one side of her family and demon on the other. Still, she looks like an ordinary, if very pretty, human girl.

Comic Books

• Hellboy is an artificially created example. He was originally born from the union of a human witch and a male demon, but somehow got his right hand replaced with a massive stone hand—which came from a Hyperborean statue infused with the creative magic of the Archons.
• Preacher: Genesis (an entity as powerful as God) was created by a male angel impregnating a female demon, the resulting child escaping from containment and implanting itself within Jesse Custer, giving him the power to force anyone to do his bidding as long as they understand English (a literal Word of God). Its entire creation was orchestrated by God (who already feeds on the love and faith of humans despite his making the Earth a Crapsack World), who wanted the love of a being as powerful as Himself.
• PS238 has Malphast, the child of a male angel and a female demon (who represent Order vs. Chaos). He's apparently the first, and nobody's quite sure of the extent of his powers.
• Spawn: The original Hellspawn was created when the demonic Serpent and the angelic Deceiver merged the skulls of the Black Angel and White Demon, creating an entity that possessed the powers of both.
• Witchblade itself was a union between the Angelus which represents light and looks like an angel and the Darkness which represents dark and looks more demonic. Its creation was so it could act as a balance between its parents.

Films — Live-Action

• The titular character from Little Nicky is revealed to be the son of not only the Devil but a female angel, which is why he's a nice guy who does enjoy darker things. He is well-liked by both the denizens of Hell, with the exception of his half-demon brothers, and Heaven. He also has the ability to travel to Heaven or Hell after "death" on Earth, which requires him to do something good (Heaven) or bad (Hell) beforehand.

Literature

• The Beginning After the End: Sylvie turns out to be a variation of this trope. Her mother Sylvia was the daughter of Kezess, the Lord of the Indrath Clan and the Top God of the setting as the ruler of the Epheotus, the land of the Asuras and the equivalent to heaven. While her mother's side of the family are dragons, Dragons Are Divine in the setting and thus are analogous to angels. Her father turns out to be Agrona, the Lord of the Vritra Clan and the resident Maou the Demon King and Satanic Archetype. While her father's side of the family are basilisks, they resemble horned demons and were exiled from Epheotus by the Indrath in the distant past, as such fulfilling that role in the setting's cosmology. Amusingly, despite both sides of her family being no better than the other, Sylvie turns out to be the only decent living member of both clans thanks to Arthur raising her away from the influence of either.
• High School D×D.
  • Akeno and Rossweisse are a variation of this. The former is a Fallen Angel while the latter is a Valkyrie who became reincarnated devils for Rias Peerage while retaining their original powers along with gaining devil powers.
  • Issei (part devil and dragon) would have children with all his girls, including Akeno (Human/Fallen Angel/Reincarnated Devil), Irina (Human/Reincarnated Angel) and Rossweisse (Valkyrie/Reincarnated Devil).
• Momo Kyun Sword. It's revealed that sisters Momoko and Onihime were children of a Celestial Maiden and Oni.
• The Mortal Instruments:
  • Faeries are believed to be descended from the offspring of angels and demons, and as one character puts it, they have the cruelty of demons and the beauty of angels.
  • Tessa Gray, the protagonist of the prequel series The Infernal Devices, is a Warlock (part Shadowhunter and a Eidolon Demon).
  • Jonathan Morgenstern is a shadowhunter, who is also largely demonic through Valentine's experiments. Lilith even claimed that she sees him as her own child, for she has given her blood to Valentin to make Jonathan the one he has become.
• A Most Unlikely Hero. Angelisians and Daemons are alien species that are similar to angels and demons respectively. Alex Ryker is part Angelisian and Daemon which explains his Destructive Savior tendencies.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Whistler is the product of an Interspecies Romance between a pure-blood demon and an agent of The Powers That Be (basically an angel, although not depicted with wings). The Powers and the demons banded together to kill his parents for their transgression, but the Powers spared Whistler to serve as an agent of balance.

Mythology and Religion

• Classical Mythology: Downplayed, since "Heaven" and "Hell" aren't quite the correct words here, but the Greek Goddess Melinoe is often portrayed as the daughter of Persephone by both Zeus and Hades, hence why it's stated that her limbs were "partially light and partially dark" — denoting her as a child of both Olympus and the Underworld.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Concordant killers are powerful outsiders that are part-celestial and part-fiend, rumored to have been created by gods of Neutrality to preserve the Balance Between Good and Evil. These True Neutral beings wield Concordant Greatswords that are simultaneously holy, unholy, axiomatic and anarchic, know powerful magic like blasphemy, dictum, holy word and word of chaos, and can shift their magical defenses to protect them against foes of a certain alignment. They work as hitmen for demon princes and deities alike, accepting favors instead of treasure, and collectively track their kills to make sure their operations don't favor one alignment over another.
  • Infernals, described in the Epic Level Handbook, are the offspring of gods and fiends. They take after their non-divine parents.
  • A nonliving example would be the physical copies of the Pact Primeval, stored in Mount Celestia, Mechanus, and the lowest reaches of the Nine Hells of Baator. These powerful magical artifacts document the ancient accord between Asmodeus' devils and the deities of law that gave the baatezu permission to punish mortal souls in Hell, and thus register strongly as lawful, good and evil artifacts. Mortal characters who encounter this aura must make a saving throw or become confused at its oxymoronic nature, but outsiders suffer a more drastic reaction — devils may suffer a spontaneous demotion to a lower rank of baatezu and will eventually dissipate entirely. Thus, Asmodeus guards his copy of the Pact Primeval with exclusively mortal cultists.
  • And that's not even getting into the dozens of homebrew aasimar/tiefling hybrids...

Video Games

• Bayonetta: A variation. Bayonetta's mother was an Umbra Witch with connection to the demons of Inferno and her father was a Lumen Sage who are aligned with the Angels of Paradiso. Being female, she was raised as a witch and shows no particular affinity for the heavenly side of her ancestry, not the least because Angels in this series are abominations hostile to humanity.
• In Cassette Beasts, companion character Felix is an artist, and while going through an anime phase in his teenage years, he drew the character Kuneko, a cat-girl with angel and demon parents (and one angel and one devil wing) who was left with a ninja clan as a Doorstop Baby. Kuneko turns out to be real on the island of New Wirral and references her parentage during Felix's sidequest, but her backstory is not elaborated on further.
• Darksiders, Darksiders II, Darksiders III, and Darksiders Genesis feature the Four Horsemen, last of a race of half-angel, half-demon Nephilim.
• The ancestors of humans in the Diablo series are half-angel half-demon hybrids called the Nephalem. In Diablo III, it turns out your character is the first of the new Nephalem.
• A Fusion Dance example in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth with Mastemon who is a fusion of Angewomon and LadyDevimon.
• Sicily from Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness is a demon-angel despite the fact that her brother Laharl is a Demon-Human. This is due to their human mother, who was pregnant with Sicily at the time of her Heroic Sacrifice, refusing the chance to become an angel and gave it to Sicily instead.
• DmC: Devil May Cry turns Vergil and Dante from Half-Human Hybrids into half-angel, half-demon Nephilim. They are both hunted down by Mundus' demon army partly for their father betraying him and because Nephilim can kill demons.
• Zagreus of Hades is the son of Greek mythology's original Olympian-Chthonic power couple, Persephone and Hades. Consequently, he has received the dubious honor of being a life god who cannot live outside the Underworld.
• Invoked by the Pale King in Hollow Knight. The Hollow Knight and Knight/Ghost alike are vessels, beings created from the empty shells of the King's children that were hollowed out and filled with the mysterious substance known as Void. The King's only dialogue in the game describes them as "Born of God and Void."
• Super Paper Mario: Luvbi is the daughter of Queen Jaydes of the Underwhere and King Grambi of the Overthere, though she isn't actually their biological daughter.

Visual Novels

• Sisters Lisianthus and Kikyou of SHUFFLE! are half God (father) and half Demoness (mother). Primula is a genetically-engineered hybrid of half-Goddess and half-Demoness

Webcomics

• Demonseed Redux:
  • Chica's and Dee's children would be angel-incubus hybrids, but due to unusual circumstances behind the conception, characters question how they'd really turn out.
  • Chica's biological parents are a rogue succubus Serenity and a Fallen Angel Galadrel, which explains why demons are naturally attracted to him.
• Hero In Training has Sanyiel. His hybrid "species" is said to be extremely unstable, but he manages to keep himself from exploding by isolating the bulk of his angelic and demonic powers into a pair of swords.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: In "Breaker of Infinities", there appears a being called Aspected Chaos, born from the Symbiotic Possession of a human being by both a devil and an angel at the same time. Her powers seem to be on the same level as local Dimension Lord Physical Gods.
• Nodwick: In the June 12, 2001 strip, Our Heroes encounter a real-estate dealing demon who claims his mother was a seraphim -that's how you know her cookies are sin-free!
• Your Wings And Mine: Shealtiel is this, having one demonic and one angelic wing, as well as a demonic wolf form and the ability to grow fangs and extra eyes. It then turns out that he's actually more like 3/4ths demon and 1/4th angel: he's the child of Abaddon, the first demon king, and Mettatron, the last remaining member of the common ancestor between angels and demons.

Western Animation

• Hazbin Hotel: Charlie's mom is Lilith, a human-turned-demon, and her dad is Lucifer, a fallen angel.

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