Recessive Super Genes

In genetic biology, some alleles within DNA have effects that are suppressed by other alleles of the same gene. These genes are called "recessive", and the suppressing genes are said to be "dominant". Because many organisms have at least two copies of each gene, it is fairly common for a recessive allele to exist hidden within a family's genes for what can be many generations before two carriers create an offspring that inherits both copies of the recessive allele, letting it finally express itself.

In fiction, it's not uncommon for things like superpowers to be hereditary, but sometimes the powers "skip" a generation or two rather than being inherited by children. However there's sometimes a bit of Hollywood Genetics thrown in as well if the writer doesn't get how traits skip generations.

Compare Randomly Gifted, when the powers don't necessarily have any relation to genetics.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The ability to use Hamon, a form of biological energy that fuels an anti-vampire martial art, seems to be a recessive gene. Jonathan Joestar had it, but not his son George Joestar. However, George's unrelated wife did, and their child Joseph Joestar had it to such a degree that it manifested even before he had any training.
• Mobile Suit Gundam Age: Flit Asuno and his grandson Kio are X-Rounders, while Flit's son/Kio's father Asem isn't.

Comic Books

• In the Marvel Universe, the genes that give mutant super powers appear to be recessive. There are plenty of people with the genes that don't have any mutant abilities at all, but they can have children that do. And it's been shown that there are ways to activate someone's dormant X-gene, as well.

Fan Works

• Collated Accounts of the Infinity Train: A summary: The author offhandedly mentions that Lake's metal abilities are present in some, but not all, of her descendants.
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, several characters are known to have bloodliner ancestors, but the powers and abilities have gone dormant for several generations until something awakened them.
• Son of the Sannin: Hashirama's Wood Release skipped two generations before finally being inherited by his great-granddaughter Kaida. It's theorized in-universe that the reason why it took so long is because it only manifests if the user has abnormally high chakra levels at birth (though the fact that Tsunade was wearing Hashirama's special necklace throughout the pregnancy might have also played a role).
• Stars, Eyes of Heaven: Despite the various changes in the new timeline, Holy Kujo nee Joestar didn't inherit the ability to use hamon like her father Joesph, though her son Jotaro and her granddaughter Jolyne are able to learn and utilize it.

Films — Animated

• In Norm of the North, Norm and his grandfather have the ability to speak to humans, but Norm's father does not.

Films — Live-Action

• Carrie (2013): Carrie discovers that this was the case with her telekinesis. Her grandmother had it, her mother doesn't, and now Carrie does.
• The Rise of Skywalker establishes that Rey's unusually strong connection with the Force is inherited from her grandfather, Palpatine. However, her father, Palpatine's clone-son Dathan, lacks his predecessor and daughter's powers, and was deemed as a "nobody".
• Teen Wolf: Scott turns into a werewolf and discovers he gets it from his father's side. He never told him because their lycanthropy sometimes skips a generation and, with the way things were going, they thought they were in the clear. So until it manifested, there was no need to worry Scott.

Literature

• In Avalon: Web of Magic, Kara is revealed to be a descendant of the Fairy Queen, Lucinda, who was the Blazing Star before her. None of Kara's family shares her affinity to magic, and it is handwaved as fairy blood skipping generations.
• In Bedlam Boyz, Elizabet’s parents had no magic, but her grandmother did, and taught Elizabet everything she knew.
• Carrie: The titular protagonist's telekinetic powers are genetic, and her mother Margaret states that they skipped two generations, as her grandmother had them and now her daughter does too.
• Harry Potter:
  • According to Word of God, Muggle-born witches and wizards have magic-using ancestors somewhere. It skips several generations to manifest randomly. There're Muggle-born characters who have Muggle siblings as well as Muggle-born characters with wizard siblings. Harry's mother Lily was a witch but her sister Petunia isn't. One of the Gryffindor boys the year below Harry, Colin Creevey, is a Muggle-born and his brother, Dennis, comes to Hogwarts in the fourth book. Hermione was supposed to have a Muggle sister but she got the ax once Rowling got to the fifth book and hadn't found a way to work her in.
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: When Professor Umbridge interviews Trelawney, the Divination professor, she notes that while Trelawney is the great-granddaughter of a noted seeress, her family hasn't produced one of that talent since (the readers are already familiar with Trelawney's own very hit-or-miss record from Prisoner of Azkaban). Trelawney nervously states that the talent often skips several generations. This doesn't stop Umbridge from having her sacked.
• Sometimes the case in Heralds of Valdemar. Certain mages are able to inspect people and determine that they have "potential" for various Gifts that will be passed to their children but are unlikely to manifest themselves. The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy's Vanyel Ashkevron was one of these but had all his potential powers activated at once in a unique and traumatic event. Van had four children, one of which straight up inherited his powerset and looked very like him. The other three carried it in potential but only manifested their mothers' Gifts, and passed that potential on. His Adopted into Royalty daughter marries a prince and some of their descendants, even centuries later, are strongly gifted, though the royal line starting with King Valdemar had also carried the Mage-Gift.
• In InCryptid, sorcerers rarely have sorcerer children — the last one in the Price family before Antimony was her grandfather Thomas, and neither of her siblings have any magic powers. Averted with James's family, since his ancestor made a deal with the Crossroads that his line's magic would always breed true.
• In The Lost Years of Merlin, magic skips generations in Merlin's family; his grandfather was a wizard, but his father only had powers when he had magical items and made a Deal with the Devil. The Sequel Series continues this with Merlin's Muggle son and wizard grandson. Interestingly, though, even the non-magical generations are subject to centuries-long lifespans.
• In Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Miss Peregrine explains to Jacob that peculiar traits often skip generations.
  Miss Peregrine: Peculiar traits often skip a generation or ten. Peculiar children are not always, or even usually, born to peculiar parents, and peculiar parents do not always, or even usually, bear peculiar children.
• Erast Fandorin's "superpower" is his incredible luck, which is also the case with his grandfather and his grandson, but absolutely not the case with his father and his son. He eventually concludes that luck seems to skip every other generation in his family for some reason.
• Shannara: The Wishsong’s presence throughout the history of the Four Lands ebbs and flows throughout the generations of the Ohmsford family. Only one parent and child are ever both shown to be capable (Bek and Penn), and centuries can pass between documented cases. As magic actively resists being fully understood in the Shannara books, exactly why and when the Wishsong turns up when it does is unknown.
• Due to a major magical disruption about three thousand years ago, a rule rather than an exception in the Sword of Truth books. Adie and Verna were both born to skips.
• Sunshine: Demonic heritage can skip several generations, so someone may have no idea what lurks in their blood until they start growing horns or their skin turns blue. This is especially problematic because having both human magic and even the tiniest hint of demonic ancestry gives you about a ninety percent chance of going spectacularly, violently insane. As a result, most prominent magic-handling families are pretty badly inbred.

Live-Action TV

• The Babylon 5 episode "Dust to Dust" has G'Kar state that the Narns' telepaths were all killed off centuries ago (indicated later to have taken place during the previous Shadow War), and the gene has never been strong enough among the remaining population to produce more. They still carry the genes, though, or else the telepathy-boosting Fantastic Drug "dust" wouldn't work on them.
• Legend of the Seeker: Zedd's daughter did not inherit his magical powers, but Panis Rahl chose to make her the mother of his child in order to combine her bloodline with his own to create the most powerful offspring possible. It worked, Richard inherited the combined powers of both sides of his family.
• Stargate Atlantis establishes that the Ancient Technology Activation (ATA) gene that enables the use of many technologies of the Ancients is recessive, meaning it tends to die out of the smaller captive populations of Transplanted Humans in the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies. Earth is an exception whose population is large enough to maintain it, and Stargate Command eventually develops a gene therapy to add it to their other personnel.
• In That's So Raven, Raven gets her psychic powers from her mother's side of the family. Her maternal grandmother is also a clairvoyant, however her mother Tanya is not. Subverted in Raven's Home as one of Raven's twins (her son Booker) inherits her psychic powers, however Raven doesn't know this at first.
• The Witcher: Pavetta's grandmother also had her ability, but it skipped her mother.

Mythology and Religion

• Irish Mythology: Fionn Mac Cumhaill seems to have this from both sides of his bloodline. On his father's Cumhaill's side he's distantly descended from the Fir Bolg, a race of demihumans who once inhabited Ireland and fought the gods. On his mother's side he is distantly descended from the god Nuada Silver-Arm. However despite their mighty ancestry neither appear to be especially powerful, Cumhaill Mac Trenmor's battle prowess not withstanding. Fionn by contrast, not only has incredible fighting skill, but the kind of Super-Strength capable of throwing islands and reshaping the landscape, Super-Speed, and Healing Hands, all from his two powerful ancestries.

Tabletop Games

• In Exalted, the potential for Dragon-Blooded Exaltation is inherited, but whether someone will Exalt is at the behest of the Five Elemental Dragons. Having a strong bloodline makes it more likely, but does not guarantee it. As a result, it may be that none, any, or all of a Dragon-Blooded's children also Exalt as Dragon-Blooded, or that any number of generations pass before someone in the family is Chosen again.
• The Forgotten Realms 3.5 Edition supplement Races of Faerun states that the Uneven Hybrid planetouched races (chiefly part-angel, mostly-human aasimar, part-fiend tieflings, and part-elemental genasi, though there are other combinations such as elf/fiend fey'ri) can sometimes have the Outsider portion of their bloodline go dormant. This leads to several generations of the base species that may then have the Outsider traits reemerge much later.
• Leviathan: The Tempest: Due to the unnatural nature of Leviathan biology, it is not at all uncommon for a Leviathan's genetic heritage to go dormant until the right combination of environmental or metaphysical factors appears, causing Leviathans or Hybrids to be born from bloodlines that have produced only (apparently) pure humans for the past several generations.
• In Warhammer 40,000, being a Navigator (a type of Psyker) is a recessive gene. As psykers are typically avoided by the general population and Navigators are very egotistical, this suits both parties just fine. However it also means that the Navigator Houses are extremely inbred.
• In both Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Werewolf: The Forsaken lycanthropy is explicitly stated to be recessive, mating between werewolves and ordinary humans (and wolves in the earlier game) rarely produces werewolves. Mating with carriers of the werewolf gene, who can't shift but can develop some minor powers, has a much higher chance of making werewolves. In the former game two werewolves could breed but their progeny (called metis) had deformities from metaphysical inbreeding and were sterile, the latter has gone back and forth on whether anything happened when werewolves mated with one another.

Video Games

• Anna's Quest: While both Anna and her Grandpa have telekinetic powers, Prologue reveals that Anna’s parents didn’t have it.
• In Tekken, this seems to be the case with the Devil Gene at first, as Heihachi Mishima is the only member of his clan not to have the Devil Gene, which is something that his father, Jinpachi, his son, Kazuya, and his grandson, Jin, all possess (not that he really needs it). However, 6 introduces Lars Alexandersson, Heihachi's illegitimate son who doesn't possess the Devil Gene, Word of God has retconned Jinpachi's demonic powers to be an unrelated phenomenon, and 7 reveals that the Devil Gene actually came from Heihachi's wife, Kazumi Hachijo.

Webcomics

• In Charby the Vampirate, Victor inherited his quick healing, magic resistance and Weirdness Magnet tendencies from his paternal grandfather, whose own grandfather is also revealed to have had it, but Victor's father was a "dud" without any such aptitude.
• In The Cyantian Chronicles Elite genes seem to be recessive. Cousins Darius and Kela Akaelae are Elites who have normal parents but their grandfather, Alpha Akaelae, was the last of the first generation wolf Elites. And it seems that most of the cubs sired by the first generation Elites didn't express the gene.
• Fate/type Redline: Kanata Akagi, his younger sister, and his grandmother have magical powers, but his father doesn't.
• In Skin Deep, fantastic creatures can use magical amulets to become human. Any children inherit both the parent's species and a modified version of the human-shape spell that keeps them human all the time (so-called Unturned), and so do their children. Unless an Unturned gets a medallion of their own (breaking the modified spell), the trait can remain dormant through many generations of Unturned. This leads to everything from the supposed extinction of sphinxes^note All Turned sphinxes were wiped out along with the dragons in a war between the two, but... to Alec's insistence that all horror writers are Unturned bugbears.
• In Steel City Moon, lycanthropy is specifically stated to be recessive; the protagonist has it, while his parents are normal humans who each have had werewolf relatives. (Whether his younger brother will get it remains to be seen.) His main mentor is his paternal grandfather, whose deceased brother was the most recent werewolf in the family.

Western Animation

• In Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Krumm's ability to produce a powerful stench has been passed down in his family for generations, but supposedly skips a generation, and thus his father does not possess the ability.
• In American Dragon: Jake Long, dragonhood skips generations in Jake’s family. Jake, his sister and maternal grandfather are Weredragons, but his mom is normal (as is his dad, who doesn't even know about any of this).
• In Ben 10: Alien Force, we learn that Gwen's paternal grandmother was an Energy Being with magic-like powers, which is the reason why she became so skilled with using magic. Gwen can also become an Energy Being herself when she needs a power boost. Her father's generation was skipped however, and neither her cousin Ben or her older brother Ken display signs of these abilities (not that the former needs them).
• Juniper from The Life and Times of Juniper Lee is the Te Xuan Ze, the chosen guardian of the border between humans and monsters in Orchid Bay. This title originally belonged to her grandmother; Juniper's father can't see the supernatural and is unaware of his mother and daughter's activities. Interestingly, while Juniper's younger brother Ray Ray can see and interact with the supernatural (but lacks any powers), her older brother Dennis has no such gift. Ray Rays' abilities are shown in the Origins Episode that after Juniper first manifested her powers, a trio of powerful Monsters attempted to use a ritual to destroy her, only for Ray Ray to leap into the fray, causing a portion of Junes' newfound power to seep into Ray Ray.
• Star Trek: Prodigy has the minor mystery of what alien race Dal is before finally revealing he's actually not some super rare alien species but instead is a genicially modified human featuring recessive genes from 26 different species. After learning this he undergoes a prodeedure that would "activate his dormant genes" which results in disaster. He does however use his recessive telepathic ablities later in the series to save the day.
• Superfriends: According to the origin story given in the tie-in comic Super Friends #7 (October, 1977), the pre-Crisis version of the Wonder Twins got their powers this way. Originally, the intelligent species that inhabited their home planet Exor consisted of two distinct races: a "normal" race and a race of Shifters, who could take any form they wanted. The Shifter power was controlled by a recessive allele. When the two races began to intermarry, the recessive shifter allele was nearly bred out of the species, but even centuries later it still cropped up on rare occasions. Exorian kids who got two copies of the shifter allele usually developed one specific, limited shifting power.

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