Does He Have a Brother?

"Tell me more, tell me more
Could she get me a friend?"

— Sonny, Grease, "Summer Nights"

One of the romantic Stock Phrases. Often spoken by a character to indicate that she finds someone attractive, but doesn't want to actually pursue him because he's already in a relationship, usually with one of the character's friends. Of course, this question assumes that the siblings are exactly the same.

A common inversion is when the character in the relationship suggests this to her or his friend instead, by mentioning that their date has a brother/sister they can date too. It can also be gender reversed, and if spoken by men about a woman, it's often Those Two Guys saying it. These days it's also likely to be spoken by the Camp Gay in reaction to a straight man he finds attractive.

The ultimate outcome of this trope may be Settle for Sibling or Double In-Law Marriage, depending on the context.

Contrast Twin Threesome Fantasy and some cases of Sibling Triangle, where the third party goes for both siblings, and compare Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest, which operates under the same logic as this trope.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Jared, a chain of jewelry stores, runs commercials featuring two young women reading text/photo messages from a friend while she's on a date. Their reactions: "Aw, he bought her flowers." "They went to Chez Francois!", and the last one, following a photo of a piece of diamond jewelry, "He went to JARED!" The ad cuts to the couple in the restaurant with the woman showing her date a photo on her phone of the two friends with the message "Does he have brothers?"
• An ad for Pam cooking spray had a guy brag to his buddy that he made the dish they're eating "with Pam," to which his buddy asks if she has a sister.
• In this Australian beer commercial; the Farmer's Daughter sees a frog and hopes that if she kisses it, the frog will turn into a handsome sheep shearer. The frog does change accordingly, but then when he kisses her, she turns into a pint of beer. He then asks the girl-turned-into-beer if she has a sister.

Anime & Manga

• In the English dub of Pokémon: The Original Series, Brock remarks that Character of the Day Casey is going to grow into a "very interesting young woman", and wonders if she has an older sister.^note In the original version, Brock is willing to wait for Casey to be legal to date.
• In Wife and Wife, when Kanana decides to get serious about Shirayuki, Arata asks Kinana if she has ANOTHER sister.

Comic Books

• In an issue of the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel) comic, this question is asked, with the hilarious response: "Yes, and she's 9."
• Shade, the Changing Man: In issue 64 of the Peter Milligan series, Sinita tells some people about her relations with Shade and a woman responds by asking if Shade has a brother.
• Spider-Man: In The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #59, Mary Jane Watson is saved for the first time by Spider-Man. Afterwards, she asks him: "Don't you have any brothers?", making her the first woman to flirt with him both in and out of costume.

Film — Animation

• In the Corpse Bride, after Victor is dragged down to the afterlife, one of the corpse women asks, "Does he have a dead brother?"
• In a non-romantic example, Pleakley says this to the Grand Councilwoman in Lilo & Stitch:
  Councilwoman: A quiet capture would require an understanding of 626 that we do not possess! Who then, Mr. Pleakley, would you send for his extraction?
  Pleakley: ...Does he have a brother? (Councilwoman rolls her eyes) Close grandmother, perhaps?
• As Charlotte finds out in The Princess and the Frog, Prince Naveen actually does have a brother. He's six-and-a-half years old, though she does joke "Well, I've waited this long!"

Film — Live-Action

• Black Widow (1987). The female undercover FBI agent discovers that Femme Fatale Catherine's next potential victim is handsome and incredibly rich.
  "Does he have a brother? Cousin? Young grandfather?"
• George of the Jungle: One of Ursula's friends asks of George, who tells her "Have brother Ape." "Oooh, an ape".
• The Last Summer: Foster hopefully asks if Paige has a sister when she starts dating his friend Alec.
• From Man on Fire:
  Rayburn: Mariana!... Obey me, and I will love you.
  Creasy: So that's how it works, huh?
  Rayburn: That's how it works.
  [Mariana brings Rayburn his drink]
  Creasy: Does she have a sister?
• During the engagement party in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, one of Toula's cousins asks (as part of the few single women in their family) if Ian (Toula's fiancee and later husband) has any brothers, only for them to be told that he's an only child.
• Absurdly, this provides the solution to the tangled double-love triangle in The Palm Beach Story.
• In Revenge of the Nerds II, Poindexter is talking with a gorgeous woman by the pool. Two of his fellow nerds accost him on the way to get her a drink, and the gay one tells him to "find out if she's got a brother!" (Unfortunately, what none of them seem to have noticed is that the 'woman' in question is a cardboard cutout.)
• In Unwed Mother, grifter Don brags about his latest conquest Betty to his friends, exaggerating how well-off she is. One of them says, "Does she have a sister?"

Literature

• Played with in A Brother's Price: When Ren doesn't quite believe that main protagonist Jerin is really very handsome, Odelia tells her to remember how the Whistler women look, and then imagine those features with a male body and long hair. Ren then has to admit that she would like to pursue such a man. However, it is not clearly said whether the Whistler women are absolutely out of the question, especially since this culture seems to have no taboo about sexual relationships between women.
• Similarly, how the young Edward IV first hears about his future wife in the spoof The Daisy and the Bear.
  On the way back they went to Sandwich and found the Earl of the Rivers and his son and took them back to Calais to mock them. They got them out of bed so they were a bit disoriented and didn’t quite follow the mocking. The Earl of the Rivers had a son, who was also with him, called Anthony and [Edward] mocked him particularly mockingly then quietly so that no-one could see, he took him to one side and asked him if he had a sister.
• David Copperfield has a weird example, in which Steerforth asks David if he has a sister.
• In Lois McMaster Bujold's Komarr, Miles Vorkosigan meets the married Ekaterin Vorsoisson, and falls for her; he tells himself to ask if she has a sister.
  • In the following A Civil Campaign, Miles's cousin Ivan jokingly asks the same of Ekaterin, who is now either in mourning for her late husband or involved with Miles, or both. Unmarried women their age are in short supply on Barrayar.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Talon Karrde keeps quipping about just how handsomely Han Solo was rewarded for showing his altruist side. When the subject comes to Han eventually marrying Leia as "his biggest reward", Karrde asks the question in Specter of the Past:
    Karrde: I don't suppose she has a sister?
    Solo: Not that I know of. Though with the Skywalker family you never know.
  • She does, kinda. (Who'd been married for two years by the time Karrde thought to ask, and had been involved with her husband for years previously.)
• Older Than Print: A cross-gender example in The Tale of Genji occurs when Genji finds himself shot down by Utsusemi and more or less decides that her younger brother (who is about twelve) looks enough like her to... Well, you can guess. Back then, this wasn't that rare with the nobles.
• In The Time Traveler's Wife: A subversion: Clare's sister, Alicia, asks this of Henry, not because she wants a man like Henry (though she does like him) but because she'd met an older version of him before on one of his time traveling forays and wonders if it's the same person.

Live-Action TV

• On Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Amy is jealous of her brother, and rants about all his good qualities, leading to this gem.
  Hitchcock: Wow, he sounds great. Does he have a sister?
  Jake: Yeah... Amy.
  Hitchcock: What's her deal?
  Jake: You were at our wedding!
• Criminal Minds:
  • In a season one episode of Criminal Minds, JJ questions Garcia's attraction to someone on a MMORPG:
    JJ: Please don’t tell me you have a crush on a fictional character.
    Garcia: He’s not fictional. He’s the online alter-ego of a real person.
    JJ: Hmmm, you don’t even know anything about him, even if it is…him.
    Garcia: Look, we meet online at specified times that he is never late to. We spend hours adventuring and chatting during which time I have his undivided attention and he lavishes me with flattery. When was the last time you had a date go that well?
    JJ: See if he’s got a fictional brother.
• Forever Knight. In "Trophy Girl", Tracy Vetter is working undercover at an escort agency. She picks up a client at the Raven, where she's spotted by her vampire friend Vachon. Somewhat confused, Vachon wonders if it's Tracy's "evil twin sister", whereupon the female vampire he's with says, "She has a twin sister?"
• In Friends, after Phoebe finds out that the gay man she's been attracted to for years is straight, but taken:
  Phoebe: So, your brother's straight, huh? ... No, seriously.
• On How I Met Your Mother Barney and his brother exploit this to help each other pick up women/gay men respectively.
  • Barney also befriends women in the guise of a gay hairdresser named "Jack Fantastic", then sets them up with his "straight, identical twin brother".
• One episode of Night Court has Dan describing his recent adventures in the Arctic to Harry, and saying how he met a really beautiful Inuit gal who he now hears is coming to New York for a visit. Instead of the woman, a lovestruck seal comes flippering into the room, and Harry jokingly invokes this trope.
• A Saturday Night Live skit is on the topic of why women find assholes so alluring, when an audience member bolts up and starts acting like the world's premiere asshole. The women on the panel swoon; Nora Dunn, playing a man-hating lesbian sociologist leans in and asks "Do you have a sister?"
• An episode of Shake it Up plays with this as a Golddigger named Savannah who has been deceiving Deuce throughout the episode attempts one last trick after being thwarted in the end.
  Dina: It's all right. My dad owns this mall.
  Savannah: Do you by any chance have a brother?
• In Spin City, one of the ladies is talking about a guy she's dating. Apparently, he's charming, friendly, etc. Carter, the gay guy, asks:
  Carter: Does he have a gay brother?
  Woman: I don't think so. Why?
  Carter: Because I'm a gay brotha.
• The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Maddie asks Carey and Veronica for advice on whether or not she should date her friend London's ex, and describes him as "smart, cute, and rich". Carey (who is white) asks if he has a brother, while Veronica (who is black) asks if he is a brother.
• In the Supernatural episode "Tall Tales", Sam recounts how the past days went by to Bobby. When talking about the past night, he plays up his brother Dean's drunken sluttiness: Dean, well-intoxicated, is all over a random girl he picked up in the bar, and uses the inversion when he proudly declares to Sam that the girl has a sister and gives his own brother an obvious wink in case he didn't catch on yet. Sam isn't interested.
• Ted Lasso:
  Dani: We're not gonna make it. Tell my incredibly beautiful wife I love her.
  Zoreaux: I'm not gonna do that, 'cause you'll tell her yourself. Then you're gonna hook me up with her identical, beautiful twin sister.
• Similarly, in Will & Grace:
  Jack: Does he have a gay brother? Or even better, does he have a straight brother who drinks?

Theatre

• Inverted in Avenue Q: Rod never actually asks Nicky if he has a brother, given that he's an Armored Closet Gay (the fact that it's a Transparent Closet is irrelevant), but it turns out he does. Ricky looks exactly like Nicky, except is much more muscular, and avoids the Incompatible Orientation problem.
• An interesting use of the line occurs in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing when Beatrice (who has a Will They or Won't They? relationship with Benedick) is flirting with Prince Don Pedro. After indirectly implying that she's interested in him, Beatrice adds, "Hath Your Grace ne'er a brother like you?" While this can be played as straight flirtation, the implication is generally along the lines of "I didn't mean you!"
  • It's actually rather sweet, when taken in context with everything else that gets said. What she tells him is that she wouldn't marry him unless she could have another husband "for working days - Your Grace is too costly to wear every day." In other words, she thinks he's too good for her. He understands that she's complimenting him with the whole thing, and takes it well, calling her "a pleasant-spirited lady."
    • Played with in the David Tennant/Catherine Tate version, where this line is played as an excuse after she realises he's serious in the flirting, while she's not. Still a very sweet moment, though; she really does think he's great, and doesn't want to hurt him.

Video Games

• In Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 2: The Siege of Spinner Cay, when Anemone talks about Winslow after repairing the mast of the Screaming Narwhal, s/he says, "Your man Mr. Winslow took care of the bill. Nice guy, that Reggie. Does he have a cousin?" This indicates the start of Anemone's relationship with Winslow, which later blossoms in Chapter 5.

Visual Novels

• In Lucky Dog 1, Luchino asks Gian at one point if he has any sisters or female cousins who share the same bright hair colour as him because he has an affinity for blondes. Much to his disappointment, Gian doesn't have any to speak of, although later on in his route, Luchino settles on Gian himself after deciding that his blond hair is attractive enough.

Webcomics

• In Goblin Hollow, a goblin's reaction to being skritched behind the ears.

Western Animation

• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Pretty Poison" when Harvey Dent asks Bruce Wayne what he thinks of his sweetheart Pamela Isley, Bruce responds, "Does she have a sister?"
• Parodied in The Critic. Jay Sherman and his best friend's twin sister are in a planetarium, before Woody Allen interrupts them:
  Woody Allen: Jay, she's fantastic. Does she have a daughter?
• On Futurama the crew visits a company that specializes in romance and watch and experiment where wire dummies recite pick-up lines to female test subjects.
  Wire dummy: My two favorite things are commitment and changing myself.
  Woman: (love struck, embraces dummy and begins to kiss it)
  Leela: Does that dummy have a brother?
• The House of Mouse episode in which The Three Caballeros are performing features this variation:
  Daisy Duck: Are you guys here for the Three Candelabras' show? In case you didn't know, I'm dating the Third Candelabra. You know it's Donald Duck, right?
  Lumiere: Does he have a sister?
• Legion of Super Heroes (2006): In the episode "Legacy", the ultra rich Alexis Luthor invites Superman to a party as thanks for him saving her life. Before he leaves, Lightning Lad asks him to see if she has any (presumably wealthy) friends.

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