Disappointing Heritage Reveal

Kylo Ren: Do you know the truth about your parents? Or have you always known? You've just hidden it away. Say it.
Rey: [tearfully] They were nobody.
Kylo Ren: They were filthy junk traders. Sold you off for drinking money. They're dead in a pauper's grave in the Jakku desert. You come from nothing. You're nothing. ]But not to me.

—The Last Jedi

A character who was raised apart from their birth or ancestral people will often seek to find and reconnect with them. In some cases, this is a joyous, fulfilling, or otherwise positive reunion. On other occasions, however, the character will find their birth folk to be deeply disappointing. Depending on the specific situation, their people may simply fail to live up to their expectations, they may be wildly unlike the stories the character grew up hearing, or they may be outright immoral or despicable.

At this point, several things may happen. The character may wholly renounce their heritage and either reinforce their belonging to whatever group they were raised among in the meantime or simply choose to forge their own identity. Alternatively, they may disdain the group that they met but continue to search for someone to connect with, and eventually come across a group that they can respect. Finally, they may learn to appreciate their people after all; this version is most common in cases where the birth people simply fail to live up the shining pedestal that the character built and the seeker comes to appreciate them for what they are, bumps and all.

This is often what a Deceptive Legacy leads to, as a result of a child being told falsified stories about their missing parent. A "Rediscovering Roots" Trip or Gene Hunting story can also lead to this. A subversion of the Changeling Fantasy. See also Broken Pedestal and My Species Doth Protest Too Much. Family of Choice is often part of the Aesop in this sort of stories. Unpleasant Parent Reveal is this when it happens between the character and his or her parents, rather than their people. Related to Orc Raised by Elves, in which the bad guy raised by good people reencounters with their birth people and is disappointed with them.

As this is a form of The Reveal, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Doraemon: "Chin Up to the Ancestors" has Nobita seeking his heritage after his classmate Suneo boasts about his Blue Blood due to being descended from a Samurai bloodline. After asking his father Nobisuke and getting an unclear answer, Nobita and Doraemon decide to travel to feudal Japan via Time Machine to seek the truth. It turns out that Nobita's ancestors were peasants and hunters who earned a bare living when Nobita's great-great-great-grandfather Nobisaku unexpectedly shoots Doraemon with an arrow and proudly proclaims he "hunted a racoon-dog". What's even worse is that Nobisaku is both near-sighted and a coward who "hunts only rabbits and tiny birds", fleeing at the sight of a wild boar.
• Ninja Senshi Tobikage: Played With. Joe Maya has always wanted to return to Earth, having grown up on the Mars colony. As he, Maiku and Rennie are able to pilot the three mecha that can combine with the titular Tobikage (and this suggests that they're descended from the legendary ninjas who'd helped the Radorian people in the past), the Radorians agree to bring them along as they leave Mars and head for Earth, hoping to ask them for aid. While they do successfully arrive at Iga Village, homeland of the ninjas, they find that it's become a tourist attraction. The ninja elder observes that they'd be willing to help, but based on his observation Joe, Maiku and Rennie are vastly more skilled than they are simply because they've actually survived real combat. The Radorians are disappointed, but the possibility that the ninjas wouldn't be able to help or might not even exist anymore had been brought up previously and so they were at least braced for bad news. At the very least, the Iga ninjas are able to provide Joe and the others with actual ninja training to improve their skills.

Fan Works

• My Deepest, Darkest Secret: Coming Out has Solon reveal to his brothers that he's half-werewolf. They don't take the news well.

Film — Animation

• In Coco Miguel goes most of the movie believing Ernesto de la Cruz is his great-great-grandfather and wanting to be a great musician just like him. He meets him and gets to spend time enjoying various activities with him but when Héctor finally catches up with Miguel, he reveals that Ernesto's songs- which he allegedly wrote himself- were actually composed solely by Héctor... and soon after, he also learns that Ernesto poisoned Héctor in order to steal the songs, leading him to feel quite uneasy around him. A little later though, he finds out that Ernesto is not his long-lost great-great-grandfather... it's Héctor, who he is far prouder to call his family even if Héctor himself feels he's a sorry excuse for a grandfather.
• The Prince of Egypt: Moses is initially horrified when he discovers he is of Jewish heritage, since the Jews are enslaved under his adoptive family (and he has grown up believing that the Jews are lesser because of this). This leads to his BSoD Song "All I Ever Wanted", where he tries to deny this and say he's still a prince of Egypt. This is subverted when he discovers that the only reason he was given away was because his adoptive father was murdering Jewish infants, leading to a Heritage Face Turn.

Film — Live-Action

• Star Wars:
  • The Original Trilogy centers around Luke Skywalker, a young man with astonishing Force potential. While he always knew that his father was Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan and Yoda never told him that Anakin had become Darth Vader. In A New Hope Obi-Wan tells Luke that Vader had betrayed and murdered Anakin, while in The Empire Strikes Back Yoda merely mentions that he knew Anakin. It is Vader himself that reveals to Luke that he is Luke's father to Luke's shock and horror. Obi-Wan and Yoda finally admit the truth in Return of the Jedi, and Luke comes to terms with his father's fall to the dark side. Armed with this knowledge Luke helps his father return to the light in the last few minutes of his life. Luke also has the task of sharing this information with Leia, who he discovers is his twin sister. She takes much longer to come to terms with it than he did. The junior novelization of The Rise of Skywalker says that Leia did not truly forgive or feel love for Anakin until her own death 31 years after Anakin's passing.
  • The Sequel Trilogy centers around Rey, a Randomly Gifted nobody with astonishing Force potential who has no idea who her parents are. As such, she manages to hit this trope twice. During The Last Jedi, she searches for answers to this question, and learns that her parents were nothing more than junk traders who sold her for drinking money — her worst fear of an answer to that question. Then, during The Rise of Skywalker, she learns that the answer is actually even worse: she has Villainous Lineage as the daughter of (a clone of) Big Bad Sheev Palpatine, who seeks to corrupt her and turn her to the side of evil.
• Thor: Loki is a Jötnar, the son of the Frost Giant king Laufey, but was raised as an Asgardian and Odin's son from infancy. When he discovers the truth, he's furious because, besides feeling deeply betrayed by Odin's ruse, he despises the Jötnar and, in a twisted attempt to prove his loyalty to Asgard, devises a plan to trick them into thinking he's loyal to them in order to then wipe out his own species. Loki (2021) later continuing to use Asgardian sayings and mannerisms, showing that he continues to carry his adoptive culture with him.

Literature

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Tom Riddle, the future Voldemort, grew up in a Muggle orphanage and discovered that he was a wizard at age 11. Through painstaking research, he found that he was descended from the legendary wizard and Hogwarts founder, Salazar Slytherin. He tried to track down his relatives, believing they would be wealthy, aristocratic purebloods. The one living member of his mother's family he did find, his uncle Morfin Gaunt, turned out to be a violent, inbred hillbilly living in a dirt-poor shack, surrounded by filth and empty alcohol bottles. Riddle proceeded to murder his own Muggle father and grandparents, frame Morfin for the crime (complete with altering his memory to make him think he did it), and rob him of the one valuable thing he owned — the Gaunt family's golden signet ring containing the Resurrection Stone.
• Kingsblood Royal: The main character, Neil Kingsblood, starts researching his family tree because he thinks he might have Native American ancestors. Instead, he finds out that one of his ancestors was black, meaning that, according to the One-Drop Rule, he himself is black. Since the novel takes place in 1940s America, this revelation deeply disturbs Neil.
• The Masked Empire: Briala grows disillusioned with the urban life and the passivity of her fellow city elves in the face of their mistreatment by humans. Under the influence (but against the intentions) of her Dalish mentor Felassan, she comes to idolize the life of the Dalish clans (elves who refused to submit to the humans and roam the wilderness as nomads), and seeks contact with them in the first half of the book. What she discovers, however, is that the Dalish are a xenophobic and myopically traditionalist bunch who don't want to have anything to do with their city brethren in general and with her in particular.
• Men at Arms: Big Fido the poodle is a canine supremacist who praises the ideal of wolves over civilized dogs. While he never finds out about the real thing, Angua's narration makes it clear he would suffer from this, as real wolves are nowhere near as big or strong as Fido makes them out to be and don't match his highly romanticized concept of the Noble Wolf.
• Ratburger: On the list of hypothetical embarrassing situations to happen at school, one was discovering that you're related to the headmaster.
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth: Near the end of the book, the narrator discovers that he is a distant descendant of Obed Marsh, and is therefore destined to change into a Deep One. Although he becomes increasingly horrified and contemplates suicide, he eventually accepts his fate.
• Tunnels: The main character discovers that he is in fact a member of an aristocratic family. However, his biological father is a lot worse than his adopted dad.
• Wings of Fire: As the main characters in the first series were all separated from their tribe and family, most of them experience it when they get to meet that tribe and family again. Clay is disappointed to find that MudWings don't take care of their children after spending his whole book hoping to find parents who love him. Tsunami ultimately has an ambivalent relationship with her family and respects her mother in some ways, but is disappointed that she isn't exactly The High Queen that Written by the Winners history made her out to be. Glory ends up disappointed by the RainWings because most of them fit the stereotypes that she's spent her life being stereotyped as herself. Starflight ends up especially disappointed when he finds out that his tribe, which he was told was made up of wise and powerful dragons, is actually planning the genocide of another tribe and spreading propaganda to make themselves look infallible.

Live-Action TV

• 30 Rock: In one episode, Tracy learns that he's a descendant of Thomas Jefferson. This bothers Tracy as he always saw himself as a black man and now has an identity crisis. After a dream sequence, he comes to terms with his heritage and decides to make a biopic about Jefferson, where he plays all the parts. In the same episode, there's a joke where Toofer learns that his ancestor was a Confederate (he had previously thought his ancestor served in the Union army).
• Black Books: One episode has Fran seeking out her heritage and finding that she has some relatives in England who still have ties to the Old Country. She quickly grows disillusioned with them after realizing that they're just using her for her car.
• Frasier: In "A Tsar Is Born", when Frasier and Niles find out Martin has a very valuable old clock which is a family heirloom, they start to believe that they are descended from Russian royalty. They eventually learn that they are related to the maidservant who stole it just before the Revolution, and worked as a prostitute in New York before marrying their great-something grandfather. They take some solace by speculating that their great-something grandmother might have slept with Henry James.
• NCIS: The B-plot of "Incognito" has Dinozzo finding out that he is descended from someone who is supposedly of royal blood and trying to find out more about them. It turns out that said ancestor was actually a thief and a con man who died in prison and was suspected of having been Jack the Ripper. Dinozzo is less than enthused upon learning about it.
• Smallville: Lionel Luthor fabricated a story about being descended from Scottish nobility, and propped up this lie by claiming that the Luthor mansion was their ancestral home which he moved from Scotland to Smallville. Lex was surprised to find out that his grandfather was actually a petty criminal who was arrested for armed robbery in Smallville. Downplayed, since Lex never thought much of his family, and as such this reveal about his grandfather isn't much more disappointing than what he already knew about his father.
  Lex: You always said your father was a hard-working entrepreneur descended from Scottish nobility.
  Lionel: Well, not all entrepreneurs have the luxury of being both successful and honest.
• Star Trek:
  • Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation grew up with his own image of the Klingon Empire and its culture as a Klingon raised by humans. Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the first few seasons never knew his heritage. Both had to confront the reality of their cultural heritage. The Klingon Empire is mired in plots and schemes by those without honor. Odo's people — the Founders — are tyrants who oppress non-shapeshifters and run a brutal regime. This trope gets lampshaded during a conversation in between Odo and Worf in the season four opener "The Way of the Warrior".
  • Star Trek: Voyager, "11:59": When Neelix becomes interested in Earth history, Kathryn Janeway decides to look up history about her identical ancestor, Shannon O'Donnell, whom she believes was responsible for allowing the fictional Millennium Gate tower to be built, and was later part of NASA's missions to Mars. She does find that Shannon helped bring about Henry Janeway, Kathryn's distant grandfather, to sell his bookstore, just in time before the year 2000 was over, to begin work on the tower. However, what disappoints Kathryn is that Shannon was never part of the NASA Mars missions, as she had looked up to Shannon's seeming history as an inspiration to join Starfleet.
  • Star Trek: Discovery: After having his memories and personality grafted on to the heavily modified body of the Klingon Voq, Ash Tyler has to come to terms with being a Klingon/Human hybrid who has all of Voq's memories when the truth is revealed to him.

Video Games

• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: Magnus Shalefist is a city dwarf born and bred and is secretly ashamed of this (his real name is Malcolm Schulefest), as he really wants to live up to the Our Dwarves Are All the Same ideal (live under a mountain, be good at mining, etc.). He can be taken along an early quest involving a dwarf clan and is severely disappointed, since the dwarves in question are hideously mutated, but keeps going and he eventually finds out he's related to a legendary lost dwarf clan.
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The half-orc Agronak gro-Malog proclaims believes himself to be the bastard son of a human, Lord Lovidicus, and one of his orc maids, and sets the Player Character a quest to break into Lovidicus' castle and steal a journal that he can use to demonstrate his noble heritage. It turns out that Lovidicus isn't fully human, but is actually a vampire, and if you present Agronak with the journal, he'll be so disturbed to learn the truth about his heritage that he'll cross the Despair Event Horizon and, if you end up facing him during the Arena questline, he'll refuse to fight back and insist that you Mercy Kill him as he can't live with the knowledge that he was spawned by a monster.
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: Soren, whose parents abandoned him at birth, was taken in by a mage who believed a distinguishing mark on Soren's forehead meant that he could naturally interact with magical spirits. He later researches his heritage, and is devastated to learn the mark is a "brand" denoting that his ancestors were a mix between beorc and laguz, meaning that his prodigious magical abilities are a result of his dragon heritage. Not only that, his father ends up being the Big Bad, Mad King Ashnard, although Soren never learns that detail.
• Team Fortress 2: In the comics, upon discovering that he's adopted, the Sniper goes to meet his birth parents, only to discover that they're a pair of dimwitted scientists who not only tried to abandon him when he was an infant to save themselves, but also unintentionally caused the destruction of an entire nation. And then they proceeded to abandon him to save themselves again, visibly hurting him. It's telling that when he's shown in the afterlife in the next issue, he's actually at peace with his death... with his foster parents, making it rather clear who he considers his actual parents.

Webcomics

• Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic: Glon Smitharm believes himself to be half-elf and half-human, hence his pointy ears, although anyone who looks at him can tell he's half-orc. When he meets his birth mother Maula Bloodhand he rejects her at first, but eventually embraces who he is (it helps that his father genuinely loves Maula and that both are Good Parents even if they can't live together).

Web Original

• Critical Role: While Vax and Vex always knew they were half-elven (the pointed ears made it rather obvious), getting sent to live with their elven father in Syngorn after their human mother's death earned them a rather cold reception from the other elves, leading them to hate Syngorn and run away the first chance they got.

Western Animation

• Arthur:
  • In "Background Blues", Muffy and Francine go digging into their family backgrounds for class projects. Muffy fantasizes about being the lost princess of some Ruritania, while Francine just gets competitive with her. Muffy is disappointed to learn her dad is strictly Nouveau Riche and got lucky with his car business (her grandmother lives in a small house and collects garden gnomes), while Francine is disappointed that her grandfather is merely the longtime operator of a gimmicky burger joint — although their classmates think that being the granddaughter of the owner of the Hamburger Castle is pretty cool.
  • Later down the line in "Fountain Abbey", Muffy is disappointed to learn her great-great-grandmother Mary Alice Miller was a mere maid at the English estate Fountain Abbey, who happened to work for Binky’s great-great-grandfather Lord Bantam.
• Gravity Falls: In "Irrational Treasure", Pacifica Northwest's great-great grandfather was the founder of Gravity Falls and held in high esteem. However, Dipper and Mabel reveal that he was actually a "local nobody" and village nutcase. Pacifica, who is highly proud of her status as essentially local nobility, is horrified to learn who she actually descends from. However, that was just the tip of the iceberg—her parents already knew that for quite a while and more. Her great-great grandfather was one of the lowest, most corrupt people to have ever existed in Gravity Falls, and his family were thieves and liars who exploited those lower than them. His family secretly had paintings that would immortalize their evil deeds while having alternate paintings that portray him and his family as upstanding citizens.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "Spike's Search", Spike sets out to search for dragons to learn from once he realizes that he has nobody to guide him in growing up as a dragon. He comes across a group of wandering dragons and is initially very eager to meet and to learn from them, and is extremely disappointed when he learns that they're selfish, cruel jerks. At the end, however, Danny assures him that surely there must be more to dragons than what that lot was like and he'll find better role models eventually.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Dragon Quest", Spike, a dragon raised among ponies, realizes that he knows very little about dragons and has no connection to that part of his heritage. As such, he decides to join the Great Dragon Migration in order to meet other dragons and find out who he is. Once he finally meets up with actual dragons, however, they turn out to be a bunch of unpleasant, thuggish and cruel frat boy stereotypes who spend most of the remaining screentime bullying and belittling him. By the end of the episode, Spike decides he wants nothing to do with them, and happily embraces pony culture.
  • This is however somewhat mitigated in the later episode "Gauntlet of Fire", where Spike develops a more positive relationship with another dragon. His experiences from "Dragon Quest" are brought up early in the episode, where Spike's memories of his less than stellar first exposure to dragon culture makes him apprehensive about meeting other dragons again.
• The Owl House: Subverted in "Edge of the World", when Hooty vomits a letter King was sent a few episodes back, assumed to be from his father, or at least a close relative. Turns out it was sent from a cult whose goal is to take out his entire species (though they mistook him for one of their own rather than trying to lead him into a trap), and he's likely been living on his father's corpse for most of his life.
• The Simpsons: In "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", the self-made car magnate Herbert Powell was given away at birth and grew up wanting to know who his birth family was. As such, he is delighted to learn that he has a half-brother and, in fact, an entire family, to the point that he readily puts his half-brother to work designing his company's new car. Unfortunately for him, that half-brother is Homer Simpson, and the resulting car is an unmarketable disaster that bankrupts his company.
  Lisa Simpson: Poor Herbert. His life was an unbridled success until he discovered that he was a Simpson.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Plankton's Army", Plankton calls on his many relatives to help him get the Krabby Patty formula, assuming that they're all criminal masterminds like him. Imagine his disappointment when they turn out to be dimwitted backwoods hicks.
  Plankton: I've been away from home longer than I thought.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: Downplayed. When Keith discovers he is half Galra, although he learns this from a sect of Galra who are not aligned with Emperor Zarkon and the tyrannical regime that most of the species is aligned with, it's still a blow to him as well as to his camaraderie with Princess Alura.

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