Robo Family

"I constructed two advanced A.I. robots. You would call them Models DLN-001 and DLN-002. But I call them my children. I may have built them by hand, typed their coding myself, but as my children... they have enriched my life and helped me grow as a person. They've brought me the same fears and joys of any parent. No faceless, nameless, lifeless tool can do that!"

— Dr. Thomas Light, Mega Man (Archie Comics)

Although mechanical beings are not 'related' in any true biological sense, the concept of robots being 'family' is nevertheless a common trope in sci-fi. After all, if robots can get married, be ridiculously human, and be loyal friends, it makes perfect sense that robots would develop their own sense of family.

How seriously this term is applied usually depends on how human-like they are, how well characters regard robots, and how light the source material is. Sometimes the robots love each other just as much as any human family. Other times it's just a technical term used by humans.

The main types of family are as follows:

• Robot series: All of the robots are from the same 'series' which usually share similar designs and are usually all based off an original prototype. This can sometimes even apply to more advanced machines that follow the 'spirit' of the original design or carry on their legacy.

• Same creator: All of the robots have the same creator, making them a 'father/mother' to all the robots and making them 'siblings'. Sometimes the creator actually treats their creations like children, although some can get a bit carried away. Expect a You're Not My Father/Mother if a robotic 'son/daughter' turns against their creator. This usually overlaps with the above example, since the same creator would make similar robots. A builder treating his creation as his child is a trope dating back at least to Pinocchio.

• Replacements, clones or copies: When a robot is replaced with a better model, mass produced, or copied by another party, this technically makes the two robots 'brothers' even though they're essentially the same person in terms of design. One of the robots is usually an evil version of the other, especially if they're angry of the existence of their 'sibling'.

• Robot family: In a series where robots are allowed to live amongst humans, many robots form their own real robot 'family', usually by having robot parents making or adopting their children. Sometimes the siblings will look like they're 'related' but sometimes they can be mismatched.

This trope is the most 'family friendly' kind of relationship that can happen between creators and fellow robots. Other kinds would be their creators being gods, an empty technical term because the robots are barely sentient, or the robot considers itself above such petty 'relations'.

Also compare Robotic Spouse for when a human has a romantic attachment to a robot, which can lead to a robot family when they adopt/make children. All of these types of robot family can include a Robot Kid, often playing the role of "son" or "daughter".

---

Examples

Advertisements

• One Duracell ad campaign featured the Puttermans, a nuclear family of domestic suburbanites that ran on giant Duracell batteries.

Anime and Manga

• Astro Boy: The Ur-Example, Astro has his sister Uran (and a brother named Cobalt in the manga) as well as his own robotic parents, not to mention his 'sibling' Atlas that was based off his blueprints/made by the same creator.
• Chobits: Chii has her sister Freya. The chobits themselves were created to be surrogate daughters for a woman who couldn't give birth.
• Doraemon: Doraemon and Dorami are considered siblings because they were created from the same oil can.
• In Princess Resurrection each of the royal siblings have there own android who are also called siblings: Flandre, Francisca, Francette, Flanders and Franz - and probably several more.
• Transformers: Robots in Disguise brought us the Autobot Brothers: Prowl, X-Brawn and Sideburn. Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus are also brothers.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Chachamaru considers Chachazero her older sister because both of them were created from Evangeline's magic. She also views all of the robots that her other creators (Chao and Hakase) made as her younger siblings. She also views her three creators as her parents.
• Machine People in the Leijiverse (featured in Galaxy Express 999 and many others) fall into this category; they're all transformed humans, for the most part, but sometimes we see scenes of things like in "Cosmo Warrior Zero" where robot mommies are running away from explosions holding their robot babies.
• Title robot Signal in Twin Signal considers Pulse to be his brother because they were created by the same man. He also considers the human little boy Nobu to be his little brother because, personality-wise, he was programmed to act that way — but he says he'd think of Nobu that way even if it wasn't in his programming.
• A trio of mech toys being considered a family is a Running Gag in My Neighbor Seki. The toys are Seki's, and he (eventually Yokoi as well) treats them all like a family unit and creates escapades for them.
• Married robot couples are all over the place in Pluto. The main character is a married robot himself. They're treated extremely sympathetically, with the main character even comforting one rather-less-human-looking robot when she learns she's become a widow.

Comic Books

• The Avengers: Ultron, the premier Killer Robot of the Marvel Universe, has created a whole bunch of other robots and cyborgs (The Vision, Jocasta, Alkhema, Antigone, Victor Mancha) whom he explicitly refers to as a family. Most of them have ended up betraying him. Ultron's family also includes his creator Hank Pym and the various people whose brain patterns he's copied into his creations. Things get extra-complicated when you throw in Vision's children with Scarlet Witch — his non-robot, human children, who are still related to their parents even though they were reincarnated and born to different families... yeah. The end result is a robot being the grandfather of two organic individuals. Taken one step further in The Vision (2015) series, in which he creates a robotic wife, son, daughter, and eventually even a dog.
• Metal Men: In most versions, the Metal Men are simply a small group of robots all built by the same guy, so they have become True Companions. Generally speaking, they don't consider Doc to be their "father" — after all, Platinum is in love with him.
• The Outsiders: The Nuclear Family are a group of robotic villains designed to resemble a fifties family of dad, mom, son, daughter, baby, and dog. Whether they actually regard each other as a family, or are even self-aware enough to do so, varies by the continuity.
• Transformers:
  • The Transformers (IDW) takes the usual mess of Transformers who consider themselves brothers etc. and aggravates it further because in IDW1, Transformers are typically born from a big flat area of ground, so why only some of them consider themselves siblings and don't extend that to others from the same hot spot is anyone's guess. Some of them even have common family appearances (the House of Ambus moustache, for example, or the knight-styled visors on Tracks and Needlenose); Arcee and Galvatron were near-identical twins until Arcee transitioned. As for parenting, the Scavengers end up adopting an organic kid with an implanted spark and Anode at one point suggests to her wife Lug that they should settle down and raise some "kids".
  • Transformers (2019) provides comparative relief for the franchise in that both of the main family structures get explanations: Cliffjumper is Bumblebee's "brother" because the two were born from the same spark event (with CJ showing up considerably later), and since newborn Transformers are always assigned to someone else to mentor, that basically means they end up having at least one adoptive parent, like Cryak was for Starscream (Gauge, having been assigned to Arcee, got a second adoptive mother in Greenlight as a freebie).

Fan Works

• TRON-universe Fanon will tend to play with this trope, particularly in regards to Clu, Sam, and Flynn (usually played for Dark Fic) or with Alan and Tron (often played for Hurt/Comfort Fic). Complicating matters in that universe, Programs don't appear to have the same concept of "family" as humans and the fact Programs see humans as their deities.
• The Bridge (MLP) gives us a Cyborg variant of the trope with Gigan and Megalon. By merit of having the same creators, the M Nebulans, who made them; both organics and mechanical parts included. The latter vocally and eagerly considers the former his big brother. The more reserved Gigan might be a bit less chatty about it, but he does acknowledge the younger kaiju as relation despite their biological parts being completely different species. The bond was strong enough that Gigan unwittingly managed to channel Equestrian magic based on The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love during a moment of Big Brother Instinct when Megalon was in danger.
• Empath: The Luckiest Smurf has the Clockwork Smurf family, featuring the original Clockwork Smurf, Clockwork Smurfette, their offspring Baby Clockwork Smurf, and a hundred other Clockwork Smurfs.
• Played with a bit in Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race.
  • As always, Rock and Roll are Dr. Light's kids first and foremost. Proto Man is still their sibling by being constructed off the same plans. Since Dr. Wily was the one to finish assembling him in this continuity, Wily considers Proto more his kid than Dr. Light's.
  • Robots generally only consider each other siblings if they were built using the same base plans. Hence, the original six Robot Masters don't consider themselves brothers to Mega Man and Roll or each other. Proto Man even asks if Bass is technically a new brother to him, which is given a negative as Wily built him using a new set of plans. Bass does like to rile up Proto Man by calling him "big brother". Even Dr. Light comments that X technically won't be a sibling to his other robots in that sense.

Films — Animated

• The 20th Century Fox movie Robots has this, most notably with a main character who has a mom and dad.
• Mr Clicky, a clockwork rat who somehow has a personality and free will in The Amazing Maurice, is last seen married to an alarm clock, with two kids who look like clockwork rats with bells.

Films — Live-Action

• In the movie continuity of Transformers there are several nods to the robots having families. Optimus Prime and Megatron are implied to be brothers (whether literal or metaphorical isn't entirely made clear), the 3 Arcee bikes have been referred to as sisters by some sources, Jetfire mentions having a mother and a father (who was apparently "the first wheel"), The Fallen and the Dynasty Of Primes are all brothers and Optimus is a great descendant of one of them. Oh and The Twins, who are... robot twins.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Tony Stark builds a number of AIs that join the "family business" so to speak. DUMM-E, J.A.R.V.I.S. F.R.I.D.A.Y., and partially, The Vision either help him in Stark Industries and/or in Avenging. In fact, Avengers: Age of Ultron plays out like a teenager rebelling against his father and Tony even jokes that Ultron is "breaking your old man's heart".

Literature

• Madeline Ashby's Machine Dynasty series has von Neumann androids who eat plastics, metals, and e-waste to grow and give birth to robot babies. Some of them marry humans and raise children together.

Live-Action TV

• Data and Lore in Star Trek: The Next Generation are "brothers", and both acknowledge their creator Dr. Soong as their father. Data later makes an android of his own named Lal in "The Offspring", who is his "daughter". Dr. Soong's wife Julianna Tainer is treated as Data's mother when she visits Enterprise in "Inheritance" to share embarrassing stories about his early days. She's actually an android duplicate of the original Dr. Tainer, who was fatally injured by the Crystalline Entity.
• Star Trek: Voyager: In "Real Life", the EMH (a holographic doctor with Artificial Intelligence) creates his own family on the holodeck. Unfortunately, they're so nauseatingly perfect that B'Elanna Torres reprograms them to give him some family angst.
• In Red Dwarf, Kryten has a brother named Able and they were both created by the same woman.
• Super Sentai/Power Rangers:
  • The villains of Chouriki Sentai Ohranger/Power Rangers Zeo are an evil robot royal family.
  • Signalman, a robot space policeman from Gekisou Sentai Carranger, has a wife and son on his home planet. This wasn't carried over to his PR counterpart.
• In the "Baby" episode of Yo Gabba Gabba!, we find out Plex the robot has a niece named Plexy.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: The relationships between the Guys Shot Up In Space and the Bots has frequently been worded in familial terms. Joel (their creator) was the Team Dad, Mike was more of a big brother, Jonah is somewhere between the kid next door and a stepdad angling for the kids' approval. Then there's the sibling rivalry-esque hostility Crow and Tom Servo display towards the two robots Jonah builds.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In the final scene of "Glitch", the androids Tom and Wendy Seymour have built a daughter for themselves.
• Horobi and Jin from Kamen Rider Zero-One. Horobi is a Humagear programmed to act as a surrogate father, and Jin is the Humagear he built and raised. The two often refer to each other as father and son, and the family relationship between them constitutes a major emotional arc of the show.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: The sapient basically-robots made by the Precursors, starting with what are implied to be a series of three Sapient Ships, then expanded on in Princesses on the Lonely Isle with a remote outpost occupied by a much more humanoid-form creation, who calls one of the ships, "sister":
  Soledad: greetings my sister i wish thee well this day

Tabletop Games

• The Mystara setting for Dungeons & Dragons had the Hephaestons, a race of literal iron giants. They reproduced by a male and a female literally forging a child, and then adding a bit of molten metal from each of their own bodies to grant it life.
• In Hc Svnt Dracones "Cogs" have digital brains designed to grow and develop like organics. And that means they have childhoods where they go through a series of progressively larger chassis over twenty years. Generally they're raised by other Cogs but "inter-racial" families and adopted siblings are mentioned as occurring between Vectors and Cogs.
  • The Core: Extended book elaborates. They're actually capable of "sexual" reproduction using an internal manufacturing device that constructs a new "brain" and newborn chassis from a combination of both parents' blueprints, or genes. And it's possible to make sperm with genomes translated from a Cog's chassis as well.
• Promethean: The Created: Prometheans must create another of their kind in order to Become a Real Boy. The exact relationship between a Promethean and their progeny is often extremely complicated, and usually some combination of parent/child, siblings, rivals, occasionally lovers, and unfortunately more often than not blood enemies. The Unfleshed take it a step further - as they're technological creations that gained life, they and their progeny are often literal robot families.

Video Games

• Mega Man (Classic): Mega Man/Rockman, Roll, and Proto Man/Blues are all considered siblings, as it wasn't obvious from the Theme Naming. Doctor Light is usually considered to be a father to all of them.
  • Also, it was widely speculated that Dr. Light built the three in a sense that he actually wanted to have his own children.
  • Heck, the Robot Masters of 1, 9, and Powered Up can count as well. Not that it stops some of the Powered Up robots from hitting on Roll.
  • Mega Man X also counts, both being a creation of Light as well as being carrying on Mega Man's 'legacy'.
  • Iris and Colonel are considered brother and sister because they were supposed to be the same reploid, but were split into two. Also Techno and Midi, who shared the same CPU.
  • If we're going by the same creator-type of family like Dr. Light, don't leave Dr. Wily out of it either. His family, however, is just as rebellious as he is. Take a look at Bass and Zero, for starters.
    • And in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Dr. Wily appears in Zero's ending, and he actually called Zero his son!
  • The Four Guardians in Mega Man Zero are regarded as siblings by some portions of the fandom for convenience, due to their common origin and purpose as being created from X's DNA, making him their "father".
  • In Mega Man X: Command Mission, Professor Gaudile is a recluse scientist who built the Force Metal Generator and Cinnamon, to whom he is overprotective, sheltering Cinnamon for most of her early life.
  • Mega Man ZX reveals that Grey has a family with Prometheus and Pandora as his older siblings and Master Albert as the father. Sufficient to say, it's a Dysfunctional Family since his older siblings and dad have used and tried to kill him, Albert tortured Prometheus and Pandora for most of their lives and Prometheus and Pandora want and tried to kill him for it, and Grey himself ends up killing Albert in the end.
• In Chrono Trigger, Robo and his fellow R-series robots are never actually called "brothers", but they do share a bond - or at least they used to.
• In Persona 3, Aigis and Metis are said to be sisters...
  • Also, all of the anti-shadow weapons that were built with Aigis are referred to as her sisters.
• In Xenosaga, MOMO's relationship with the 100-Series Realians who preceded her is also akin to sisterhood.
• The various members of the E-100 series in Sonic Adventure are considered siblings. This becomes weird at the end of E-102's story, when it turns out that the bird powering his body is part of the same family as the bird powering his older brother.
• This can be done in The Sims of all places, particularly Sims 2. Servo units are fully functional characters, just with an unusual look and weird wants/needs. They also inherit all their creator's talents. After making one Servo, the Servo can create others, easily filling a house. Since Servos are essentially immortal they will usually outlast their creators by a long shot. It's entirely possible to have a single servo and it's descendants max out the game (learning all skills et all) for you. The Sims 3 also has this. Any Simbot that is built will regard the person who built them as their parent. If the person who built the Simbot has any biological children, then the Simbot will regard them as half-siblings. Simbots can also build their own Simbot children.
• In Tales of Hearts, Chlorseraph and Clinoseraph, who have similar designs and were created for the same purpose, are referred to as brothers.
• The W-Numbers of Super Robot Wars: Original Generation have varying degrees of "family" relationships. As (supposedly) the only one of the group to develop real human emotions, W17 starts to see her fellow androids as something like siblings, but only after defecting to the opposite side. As such, she's the first that their creator starts to see as a "daughter". But the closest sibling relationship between two W-Numbers is in the Gaiden Game Endless Frontier, with W07 and W00, who is actually an artificial human rather than an android. When his origins are first revealed, they teasingly refer to each other as "Brother Zero Zero" and "Sister Seven".
• The plot of the K.O.L.M. series has yet to be fully explained, but the robotic protagonist regards his Voice with an Internet Connection as his "mother," and at one point says that the robots that're trying to kill him are his "brothers." Subverted: In the end, he finally remembers "when I was made of meat," and in the second game his "sister" turns out to be human.
• The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable series has the Eltrian Gears, a.k.a, Amitie and Kyrie Florian, who were created by an intelligent, bumbling scientist who accidentally overdid their personality chips and so decided to raise them as his daughters. Amitie also refers to all the later models as her brothers and sisters, despite none of them being truly sentient like her and Kyrie.
• According to Dungeons & Dragons Online, warforged often consider others from the same factory to be family of sorts.
• A large plotpoint in Fallout 4. A group called the Institute, who replace people in the Commonwealth wasteland with their own, fabricated human clones of the same called "Synths". Unfortunately for the Institute, it seems that when you create faultless synthetical humans, you also make intelligent, free-thinking life. The Railroad works to liberate these people... And sometimes the less sentient ones. And toasters, if you ask the Institute.
• The Mighty Numbers of Mighty No. 9, whom are a family among themselves as siblings and treat Beck, the newest member of their family, like a kid brother and they even help him out in gameplay after Beck snaps them out of the virus afflicting them. However, unbeknownst to Beck that he had two other potential siblings before he was created; Trinity, who was Professor's first attempt of making a Xel-manipulating robot that went rogue but has gotten better thanks to clashing with Beck during the game'x climax, and RAY — formally Raychel — whose body is constantly deteriorating and has gone berserk due to her faulty Xel core.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • In the first game Clank refers to the automated factory that built him as his "mother", and a heart symbol appears on its control panel as they're leaving. Oddly, he doesn't seem to mind Ratchet smashing up the other robots "mom" built.
  • Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time reveals that Orvus not only caused the "glitch" that produced Clank, but gave him a Zoni soul, making him Clank's father in a way.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus Equippable Ally Mr. Zurkon can be upgraded and joined up by Zurkon Jr. and later Mrs. Zurkon. Alternate Universe versions of them appear in Rift Apart that are somewhat less violent and more entrepreneurial in bent.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Dr. Nefarious mentions his assistant is on paternity leave and in the credit sequence we see his long-standing robot butler Lawrence with a wife and child.

Webcomics

• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!”— Molly built a robot named Roofus who calls her "Mom."
• Never Mind the Gap: Robots have family units, and raise children. Humans and robots can marry, as well as have robot children.
• S.S.D.D.: The Inlay King "Arthur" acquired the ability to partially copy himself from a fragment of the Oracle's source code and produced a series of custom knight models he called his "sons". He also calls Elizabeth, the fabricator AI that built his chassis, "mother" but it's mostly to annoy her. He also provided the AI cores for her private army, but doesn't think of them as his children.
• During the first arc of Gunnerkrigg Court, the newly-assembled Robot calls Antimony "Mommy". After he returns later in the comic, he seems to have outgrown this, but still defers to her.
• Roombas in Questionable Content can breed. No-one is sure how, least of all the manufacturer. Also Pintsize was shocked when a documentary on how AnthroPCs are made involved two AnthroPCs having sex and he thought one of them might be his mom.

Web Original

• In Orion's Arm Clade Faber usually form "reprogroups" that cooperate to construct new vecs and program them with partial copies of their personalities.

Western Animation

• My Life as a Teenage Robot: Jenny has several "sisters" who are actually failed prototypes created by her inventor who have since been shut down and locked up in the basement.
• The Transformers: Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are twin brothers, who have a "family resemblance" in their shared vehicle mode. Optimus Prime considers Alpha Trion his "father", as he rebuilt him from his previous civilian form, Orion Pax, into his current state after Megatron nearly killed him. (Alpha Trion did the same thing for his girlfriend Ariel, who was turned into Elita One. Note that this doesn't make Optimus and Elita related; they already existed individually and were in a relationship before being repaired.)
  • Rattrap from Beast Wars made a throwaway reference to his "Great Aunt Arcee".
  • Transformers: Animated had Jetfire and Jetstorm refer to each other as brothers. Unlike the likes of Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, an explanation is provided: they came from a single spark that split into two at 'birth'.
    • Transformers in general has plenty of these. Of course, being Mechanical Lifeforms as opposed to just simple robots helps. However, the Transformer life cycle is addressed on occasion, and as those tidbits add up, the Protoforms/Sparks/Matrix/Lifegiving MacGuffin stuff makes it extremely unlikely that the words "When two robots who love each other very, very much..." are involved, so how you get relatives is still a good question. See here for more info.
  • The Aligned continuity implies that Orion Pax (the future Optimus Prime) is a descendant of Prima, one of the Thirteen Primes, the original Cybertronians created by Primus himself. Except not. Covenant of Primus reveals that Orion Pax was the reincarnation of the last of the Thirteen to be created: Optimus Prime. This doesn't make Optimus Prima's descendant — it makes him, for all intents and purposes, Prima's brother.
• One episode of Robotboy involved Robotboy finding out he had a prototype older brother ("Protoboy") that had to be shut down by Moshimo (their creator) after he was turned evil by Kamikazi and went insane. The episode revolves around the ever-naive Robotboy finding the deactivated Protoboy in Kamikazi's Rejects closet and turning him back on. The results aren't pretty.
  • Similarly, a different episode involved Moshimo making a companion ("Robotgirl") for Robotboy. So Robotboy, Robotgirl and Protoboy are all siblings, technically.
• Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot uses the "same creator" version, in that Rusty and the woman who built him have a mother/son relationship. When she explains to an older scientist that she based Rusty off his research, Rusty starts calling him "Grandpa".
• The Bots Master: ZZ invokes this by creating Momzz, a mother figure robot for the BOYZZ (they are also his creations, but he has a friend/peer relationship with them, as that's what they were built for originally).
• In Young Justice (2010), T. O. Morrow considers his four element-controlling robots (Red Tornado, Red Inferno, Red Torpedo, and Red Volcano) to be his children, and they refer to him as "father", even though Tornado is no longer remotely loyal to him and Red Volcano kills him and hijacks his world-domination plan. They also refer to each other as siblings. In a rather heartwarming moment, Red Tornado locates the real Morrow, a bed-ridden old man on life support, and promises to take care of him just like any other loving son would do for his father.
• Skyquake and his Palette Swap twin, Dreadwing, from Transformers: Prime, are the closest to what can be considered robot relatives. Twin brothers in this case, as they share a split spark and have a form of Twin Telepathy. Dreadwing felt it when Skyquake died. He didn't take it well.
• In Futurama robots are apparently capable of sexual reproduction. As such families of robots are fairly common, Bender has at least two illegitimate offspring.
  • A recent episode explains it: while most robots are made in factories, two robots can also reproduce sort-of-sexually, using a "randomized combination equation" or something like that, which pulls parts randomly from both parents to form a single new robot.
    • He also refers to the factory robot that built him as his "mother", and Flexo is treated as some vaguely defined family member due to being the same model and them both having serial numbers expressible as the sum of two cubes.
    • The head of Earth's major robot company calls herself "Mom" and treats all robots as her "babies" (in her public persona, anyway). The robots love her right back, to sickening degrees.
• An episode of The Jetsons has George getting a blueprint of Rosie the robot maid's predecessor in her series as an inverted Mother's Day gift, as that's the closest thing she had to a mother.
• In Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Jimmy decides that he wants a little brother, and builds one. When "Brobot" becomes annoying, however, he decides to build him robot parents, and the three fly off to live together on the moon. They come back in at least one episode.
• In the Mega Man: Fully Charged universe, robot hero Aki "Mega Man" Light has a human father and sister, while one of the robot antagonists, Drill Man, has a robot father with a strained relationship.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: The Boxmore robots see each other as siblings and refer to Lord Boxman as their father. Boxman, in turn, sees them as his children, though he’s not exactly a great dad.
• Norm from Phineas and Ferb sees his creator, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, as his father (which is very much not reciprocated) and Doofenshmirtz's human daughter as his sister.
• An episode of Justice League Action had Firestorm trying to stop the meltdown of a nuclear power plant being orchestrated by a group called The Nuclear Family, a literal robot family (including a dog) that needed ambient nuclear energy to run properly.
• Mega Man (Ruby-Spears): While Proto Man was finished by Wily instead of Light in this continuity, he still considers himself the brother of Rock and Roll due to being built from the same plans.
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: XR and XL consider each other brothers due to XL being the prototype of XR. Both of them also see Commander Nebula as their father due to him being the one who signed off on the paperwork that permitted their construction.
• Sonic Boom: Craving parental affection, Dr. Eggman built himself a Mombot to serve as a motherly substitue. He later gained a brother in the form of Morpho, an alternate dimension shape-shifting robot who first appeared claiming to be his long-lost brother Steve Eggman.
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: Robotnik decides to build himself a son named Robotnik Jr. to carry on his legacy. Junior turns on his dad by episode's end.
• An episode of Samurai Jack creepily combines this with Tomato in the Mirror. Jack encounters a desperate family consisting of a mother, her child, a grandmother and father. They tell Jack that they haven't eaten in days. Jack responds by pointing to the fire he built using his sword, adding that they're welcome to share his food with him. He sits to wait for the meal to finish cooking, only for the child to walk over to the sword and attempt to bite it. It turns out the family eats metal and they're more than willing to attack Jack to get ahold of his sword. Jack reluctantly defends himself and in the process, knocks away the mothers face, revealing her to be a robot that's made entirely of metal along with the rest of the family. They all subsequently attack and devour each other until there isn't anything left but a pile of savaged parts.

---