The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter

While more cute than hot, the resemblance is uncanny.

Mokie: You do not know what it means to have a homely daughter, Mayhi. I'm ready to give him a cow, just to take her off my hands. This is what comes of having a two-cows wife. Look at you! You paid four cows for your wife—
Mayhi: Five!
Mokie: ... and she gave you beautiful daughters. Your investment has been doubled.

— Two incredibly ugly fathers in Johnny Lingo

So you meet and befriend some older guy on your quest to save the world. He's big, loud, much older than you, and probably ugly as sin—but he's fun to be around and you generally respect him. Some time after you become friends, you learn that he has a daughter. More than that, he's already got plans to pair you up, whether romantically or platonically.

Okay, you can deal with that. She won't be pretty, but she'll probably be nice enough. You don't want to insult the father, but then SURPRISE!

Congratulations, you've just met The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter. Sometimes, not only is there a lack of Strong Family Resemblance, but they barely even look like they're of the same species. Often this will be handwaved by either stating that the girl is a spitting image of her mother, stating that her father used to be as attractive as his daughter, and simply lost his looks with age, or just stating that she's Happily Adopted.

Usually the daughter of Ugly Guy, Hot Wife. The twin sister of the Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter. In Science Fiction and Fantasy stories, can combine with Cute Monster Girl as a form of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism. See also Monster Brother, Cutie Sister, where this is applied to brother and sister instead of father and daughter. May overlap with Chocolate Baby if the reason for there not being a resemblence is that he's not the true father.

noreallife

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball:
  • Pictured above: Chi-Chi, after the aptly named Ox-King produces a photo of her, the only response anyone has to offer is, "Whoa. She certainly doesn't take after you."
  • Videl from Dragon Ball Z. She is pretty cute, but her dad Mr. Satan is fairly average looking.
  • Played with by Krillin and Marron: Krillin, who's short, noseless, and (for most of the series) bald, could most favorably be described as Ugly Cute; Marron looks almost identical except with blond hair, but strangely manages to be rather cute. Played straight in Dragon Ball GT, as a teenage Marron no longer looks anything like her dad, instead looking like a younger version of her mother.
  • Bulma is one as well, with an elderly troll of a father and a bodacious mother.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Alex Armstrong gets the idea that Lt. Havoc would just love to date his sister Catherine. After Havoc spends a good deal of time freaking over what she'll look like after seeing her super-stout father and giantess mother (complete with the memorable "Pomato" theory), it turns out that Catherine is an adorable girl that looks nothing like her brother, father, or mother...who then promptly rejects him. Additionally, Alex also has the totally hot, absurdly badass sister Olivier Armstrong. (An omake from the manga shows that in addition to Alex's two gorgeous sisters, he also has two other sisters who look just like him,◊ only bigger.)
• In addition to placing in the Ugly Guy, Hot Wife trope, Mr. Kimura from Azumanga Daioh raises a cheerful and apparently well-adjusted daughter. However, she's only a little girl instead of someone who would be ogled over.
  • Chiyo looks like an average ten-year-old girl. The entity in Osaka and Sakaki's dreams that's referred to as Chiyo's dad, on the other hand, is a floating, cartoonish cat with large, unblinking eyes.
• Hashida Itaru from the Steins;Gate series is the stereotypical overweight shut-in Otaku, whereas Amane Suzuha, his Kid from the Future, is an athletic young woman.
• Urusei Yatsura: The huge, monstrous king of the alien Oni looks nothing like his green-haired bombshell of a daughter, Lum, who definitely takes after her mother. In fact, even compared to the other male Oni in the series (particularly Chick Magnet Rei), Mr. Invader is something of a Gonk.
  • And with Sakura there's a Ugly Gal Hot Daughter example, as her mom basically looks like her uncle Sakuranbo in a women's outfit and with hair.
• Ranma of Ranma ½ is a looker, as is his magical-change female form. His father Genma's appearance is noticably improved by being changed into a panda. And even then, a living doodle of a female panda (don't ask) commented that he was pretty damn ugly for a panda. This is explained by Ranma getting all his looks from his lovely mother Nodoka, since Genma apparently USED TO look attractive but didn't age very well.
  • Another example is a story from the anime version of The Martial Arts Takeout Arc. There's a noodle salesman whom Genma promised Ranma his daughter's hand in marriage in exchange for some food; he is a short fat ugly guy with enormous ears, but his daughter Kaori is quite attractive.
• Charles zi Britannia from Code Geass. Granted, he's not as hideous as some of the guys on this list and used to be a looker, he still gets credit for the sheer number of stupidly hot kids (Lelouch, Nunally, Cornelia, Schneizel, Euphemia, Clovis, Guinevere, Carline — and that's just the ones we manage to see onscreen) he's produced, male or female.
  • With Lelouch and Nunnally, their mother Marianne was incredibly beautiful. Strangely, Nunnally is a cute character who has the smallest chest of any of the Emperor's children even though Marianne has the largest chest of woman in the show, though she's still young and thus she has time to grow. Clovis is a particularly interesting case, since the unidentified middle-aged woman sitting in the front row at his funeral, presumably his mother Empress Gabrielle, is plain.
    • It's possible that wasn't her; it could have been another of the empresses or another noblewoman.
• Amelia and Gracia aka Naga from Slayers. Amelia is a cute, spunky little thing already showing signs of blossoming into quite a looker — especially as she is pretty well-stacked for her age. Big sis Naga is a gorgeous and ridiculously stacked woman who loves to run around in a skimpy outfit. Prince Philionel, the ugly dad in question, is described as looking like a rather homely dwarf taller than the average man, or else a particularly wild and rugged-looking bandit chieftain fresh off the mountain. The difference is more openly acknowledged in the novels.
• Ennis from Baccano!. No, she doesn't get a pass for being an Artificial Human: a significant majority of her body is made from Szilard's intact cells (though she does make mention of an unwilling female donor), meaning she may even be the creepy old guy's Opposite-Sex Clone for all we know. However, Szilard was already old by the time he became immortal, so that could be a factor.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Although Asuna would tell you different, veteran sword master Eishun has usually been described as plain-looking and unintimidating. He was much more handsome in his younger days, but this was usually offset by his serious personality and single-minded density. Despite all that, his daughter Konoka is one of the most naturally beautiful characters in the cast. This was later lampshaded by Eishun's old partner Rakan.
  Rakan: Ohhh? I suppose you must be Konoka-chan, then! Now this is a shock! How did that straight-laced old ponce manage to come out with a beautiful little girl like this?
• Porco Rosso: Piccolo is Ugly Cute at best, but his granddaughter Fio is a typical Miyazaki heroine.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, this is followed with Lord Genome◊ and his daughter Nia.◊ It's shown that Lord Genome looked exactly like his daughter back when he was young, which explains her looks. (As seen here◊, especially when compared with Nia when she cut her hair◊.)
• Ryoko and Sanzo in Angel Densetsu. Every time he comes to parent-teacher meetings is mistaken for a yakuza. Goes (a bit less) for Ikuno as well. And of course when you add in Kitano's father as well you have a Mêlée à Trois on school grounds. We conveniently never see the girls' mothers, but for Ikuno you just have to take a look at her Expy: Claire.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple has Kensei Ma and his daughter Renka. Kensei used to be quite attractive, though.
  • Kenichi's parents may also be an example, though his father isn't exactly ugly. On the other hand, the men in this manga can look very different in body structure, while the women have three body structures: preteen, smoking damn whOaMG hot, and Kisara.
• Ranzou Saotome of Macross Frontier is not an attractive man, either due to age or just being born rather plain. His son Alto is a gender-inverted example of this trope, is a pretty, pretty princess — and nobody will ever let him live it down. Apparently, he gets it from his mother Miyo.
• Xiang Ying from Angel Heart is quite the looker even though her real biological father (no not that lecherous dude) literally scares the heck out of people by his stare alone. There is indeed a scene where they are trying to figure out how to work a photo machine and end up having the same expression. It also helps to know that her mother, Xiang Ping, looks almost like her and is also quite the looker as well.
• Borderline case in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Gendo Ikari is a scary looking man with fierce eyes, even as a young man. His son Shinji is shy and awkward, and Bishōnen enough that his character design is lifted almost wholesale from a female character. Flashbacks in the series and other sources do give Shinji a slight but still quite noticeable resemblance to Gendo, but for the most part he takes after his dead mother Yui, who was very beautiful before becoming EVA 01.
• Death the Kid from Soul Eater. Not that his dad, Shinigami-sama, is ugly per se, it's just that all we see of him is a skull mask on a shadowy cloak with inexplicably large, goofy hands. His son? A pale bishonen with black hair (except for his 3 white stripes), and Supernatural Gold Eyes, who usually sports a suit.
• In Irresponsible Captain Tylor, the cute/pretty Single-Minded Twins are the granddaughters of a guy who is adorable-looking in an Ugly Cute kind of way- he looks about eighty and bears something of a resemblance to Hans Moleman. Also, he was definitely so old that he was a hero of the last great war and he dies of old age near the end of the TV series.
• Trigun: The only identified daughter of the Nebraska family, the first named villains to show up, is a fairly normal and physically attractive girl. Her dad looks like a horrifically ugly old guy with three teeth, and her mother is... younger looking, but pretty much a cybernetics-free Opposite-Sex Clone of her son, Gofsef. That is to say, a 20+ foot giant built like a bodybuilder and with a swollen, deformed head.
• Happens a lot in Et Cetera (although the daughters are more cute than hot). Luriele and her dad in the second book, Cornelia and her (literal) bear-looking dad in the eighth book, the priest and his daughter Coronet in the fifth book, hell, even Mingchao and her grandpa could count.
  • Also an Ugly Guy Hot Son variant, with the rather attractive Alternate being the the son of the giant, hulking Gordy.
• One of the secondary antagonists in Mobile Suit Gundam, Dozle Zabi, is a heavily scarred, hulking ogre of a man who in all likelihood wasn't good-looking even before the explosion that scarred him. 17 years later in Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, we find that his now grown up daughter Mineva Lao Zabi is quite attractive.◊
  • Quite the contrary, Dozle wasn't really all that ugly◊ — at worst he was just plain, or even attractive in a testosterone overdosed sort of way, if you just happen to like that.
• Fairy Tail has Lucy and her father. She looks almost exactly like her mother. Her father is by no means ugly though, mostly he just comes off as one because he's a Perpetual Frowner.
• In Bleach, there's Ōmaeda's little sister compared to the other members of the family; and he thinks she's the ugly one.
• Kurotsuchi from Naruto is at worst normal looking. Her father and grandfather have huge bulbous noses, and the latter also has Big Ol' Eyebrows.
• Pokémon Adventures: Bianca's father is a very short, very angry, mustachioed man. In the anime adaptation, her father, while more plain than outright ugly, is a large, bulky man.
• One Piece:
  • There's King Neptune and his only daughter Princess Shirahoshi. Though his sons have inherited his looks. The explanation is that they are merfolk. Their genes have a long memory, meaning that it's more likely that a baby takes after his/her ancestors than his/her parents.
  • There's also Charlotte Linlin, aka Big Mom, and her 14th, 29th and 35th daughters, Smoothie, Praline and Pudding. While Big Mom is huge, ugly and scary (though she used to be smoking hot), Smoothie is a really beautiful Statuesque Stunner, Praline is a rather easy in the eyes shark mermaid (save for her Scary Teeth), and Pudding looks absolutely adorable as long as she doesn't show her Third Eye or make nightmare faces.
  • Vinsmoke Judge is not necessarily a gonk, but he's VERY brutish looking. His daughter Reiju is a smoking hot babe and his four sons Yonji, Niji, Ichiji and Sanji are rather handsome.
• Vice-principal Uchiyamada and his daughter in Great Teacher Onizuka.
• Just about every single heroine from Mitsuru Adachi's works, of the she takes after her mom variety. Some of the dads aren't exactly ugly but they sure aren't a looker either. The hero's dads though, could very well pass for being quite a looker in their younger days.
• Tokimeki Tonight: pretty rich girl Yoko's yakuza father is horribly ugly, looking more like a shaved gorilla than an actual human, much to the dismay of main protagonist Ranze when she transforms into the doting father's daughter.
• Death Note has a male example. While Chief Soichiro Yagami isn't exactly ugly, his son the Bishōnen Light looks nothing like him.
  • And played straight in the case of Soichiro's daughter, Sayu. Again, Soichiro isn't ugly but Sayo is that adorable.
• Isshin Matoi from Kill la Kill looks almost old enough to be his teen daughter Ryuuko's grandfather. Though he actually gave himself plastic surgery to escape his wife, realising how screwed up the family is. In reality, before that took place he was rather youthful good-looking.
• Male example in Itazura Na Kiss: only Mrs. Irie's genes could explain how plain and bald Shigeki could have a ridiculously hot son like Naoki. In the first episode Kotoko moves in with the Iries, and meeting the father thinks that it must be another Irie family, since there's no way Shigeki could be Naoki's father. And then Naoki walks in the room. Kotoko's father even says in the manga that luckily for him, Naoki took after his mother.
  • After a Time Skip, Naoki's younger brother qualifies as well.
• The second Emperor of the Kou empire in Magi: Labyrinth of Magic was no looker but managed to produce some of◊ the prettier◊ cast.
• In Yona of the Dawn, Princess Yona◊ is far prettier than her plainer father King Il◊. The audience has yet to see Yona's deceased Missing Mom so it is possible Yona inherited her looks from her.
• In Gintama, we have Kagura who is the pretty daugther of Umibozu, the best Alien Hunter in the series. There is also Kagura's mother from whom kagura inherited most visual traits.
• Arslan from The Heroic Legend of Arslan resembles very little of his father, who is not ugly by any means but has a very stern and frightening face, whereas Arslan is young-looking and Moe. This is discussed in-universe that Arslan resembles his beautiful mother far more. It's later revealed that Arslan isn't even their real child.
• Sister variant in Slam Dunk: Nobody can believe that Takenori Akagi (who looks like Patrick Ewing, by the way, and has the In-Universe nickname of "Gorilla") and Haruko Akagi are related.
• In the classic anime Hakushon Daimaō, the titular Hakushon is a fat and gonk-like Benevolent Genie... and the father of Akubi, a really adorable-looking Genki Girl Genie.
• In Attack on Titan, Historia and Freida Reiss are both stunningly beautiful women in comparison to their short, balding lump of a father. In Historia's case, it's justified since her mother was an attractive domestic servant in the Reiss household.
• In Grimms Fairytale Classics (and the tales that inspired them), whenever a very old and ugly Wicked Witch has a daughter, one can expect said daughter to be very pretty. It takes place in "The Magic Heart" (with the Witch and her adoptive daughter and accomplice Lisbeth), "The Six Swans" (with the daughter doubling as a Hot Witch in her own right) and in "Rapunzel" (where the Witch pretty much kidnaps Rapunzel as a baby and she grows up to be a stunner).
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: There is a gender-inverted version with Ryuji Otogi, the very good-looking son of his rather unpleasant-looking dad.
  • Also another gender-inverted and downplayed version with Pharaoh Akhenamkanen and his son Pharaoh Atem: While Akhenamkanen is not exactly ugly, he just can't be comparable to his incredibly hot son.◊
• Tsuyu from My Hero Academia. While she's more "cute" rather than "hot", she's basically a Cute Monster Girl with some frog traits, while her parents, especially her father, look more like giant, human-shaped frogs rather than humans. Her little siblings are also better looking as well. Just take a look◊.
• In The Kindaichi Case Files, Kindaichi, Miyuki and Itsuki comes to investigate Eccentric Millionaire Shimon Madarame who, for all intents and purposes, looks like a wizened old monkey. He has three very beautiful daughters, to Kindaichi's surprise. However, it's eventually revealed that the three girls are not actually Shimon's daughters. Their mother, Midori, bore them by artificially inseminating herself using her dead boyfriend's sperm.
  Kindaichi: No way! Those girls are that old geezer's daughters? Something must've gone wrong with their genes somewhere.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: While Kimun Kamui isn't exactly ugly, you'd be hard pressed to find any similarity with his daughter Kanna (to the point that Kanna's best friend Saikawa mistook him for a pedophile when she saw the two of them playing tag in the park). This even extends to their dragon forms, where he resembles a giant shaggy bear while she is more avian.
• Berserk: During the Black Swordsman arc, one of the first villains is the Count, a massively-overweight, ugly Demon of Human Origin. His daughter Teresa, on the other hand, is rather adorable. It's not even a matter of Evil Makes You Ugly, as the only difference in the Count's appearance before and after becoming an Apostle is about thirty pounds.

Asian Animation

• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: More like The Not-So-Cute Dad's Cute Son. Wolffy has a very scraggly, unkempt appearance compared to his ridiculously adorable son Wilie.

Comic Books

• Shazam!: Doctor Sivana, Captain Marvel's archenemy, has four children: Georgia and Junior, who look just like him, and the subtly named Magnificus and Beautia, who take after their mother Venus. It's something of a sore point for Georgia as she is more than often jealous of her sister's looks.
• In Sonic the Comic's Mutant League comic (unrelated to the cartoon), we have Coach Brikka (orc-like mutant) and his daughter Brenda (apparently normal human, and a busty blonde one at that). Could be justified in that mutations may not be hereditary.
• Tenebris and Shun-Day from Les Légendaires both play with this trope; Tenebris, despite her father being the creepy old Evil Sorcerer Darkhell, is an incredibly sexy Dark Action Girl, though this is justified both because Darkhell, once brought back to his youth, is shown to be a quite attractive Bishonen, and because she is not exactly his daughter in the genetical sense; he created her through a formula that allowed her mother, Queen Adeyrid, to breed her without mating; Shun-Day, on the other hand, is the "daughter" of a bird-like demonical Evil Sorcerer who looks like a monster by human standards. While she is not his real daughter either, the fact she is a clone of her still makes it weird.
• Ra's and Talia al Ghul in Batman, although Ra's can be more attractive Depending on the Artist.
• The Ultimate Marvel version of Liz Allan is an attractive, voluptuous redhead. Her dad? Is one of Magneto's henchman, a mutant who goes by the all too appropriate moniker of The Blob.
• Wolverine and X-23 from the X-Men (although not in the traditional sense, since she's a test tube baby/partial clone). Justified in that her creator Sarah Kinney, who used her own genenetic material in her creation (on top of carrying her to term), happens to be a sexy scientist.
• Ellie Camacho, Deadpool's daughter. More "Ugly Guy's Cute Daughter," since she's a pre-teen, but when they first met, Deadpool thought she was too beautiful to be his kid.
• Tefé Holland from Swamp Thing. The Swamp Thing is a very polite and heroic Gentle Giant, but is also a Botanical Abomination made of moss and vines. His daughter, Tefé, on the other hand, is a very attractive young lady who definetely took from her mother Abbie Holland.
• In Valhalla, Jotunn Thiassi is a massive, ugly freak with a huge beaked nose who resembles an oversized goblin more than anything else, but his daugher Skadi is a red-haired Statuesque Stunner with pointy ears. It seems to be a trend with Aesir-turned Jotunn, such as Tyr.

Comic Strips

• Hägar the Horrible's daughter Honi is a beautiful, full-figured blonde. Even better, she can't be explained by Hagar's wife, Helga, who looks like a stereotypical Wagnerian soprano (as in: "It's not over until she sings") playing Brunnhilde. Though an early comic mentions that Helga was a lot lighter in her younger years, when Hagar stole her from her father's castle.
• Dick Tracy has Sparkle Plenty, stunningly beautiful daughter of clock stopper B.O. Plenty and his (former) Abhorrent Admirer wife, Gertie Gravel. In 2023 B.O. was revealed to have a beautiful spokesmodel cousin named Klinique, so Sparkle apparently benefited from recessive genes.
• The Malaysian comic strip Lawak Kampus, where one of the characters is a moe-ish girl named Lisa. Her father, on the other hand, is a badly-scarred Mad Scientist.

Fairy Tales

• Charles Perrault's "Toads and Diamonds" inverts this. The pretty daughter takes after her dead father. The ugly daughter takes after their mother.
• Gender-inverted in Andrew Lang's "Prunella". A Wicked Witch has a charming son.

Films — Animation

• Tanya Mousekewitz from An American Tail, particularly in the first sequel where she's older and more developed, bears little resemblance to her chubby father. It's possible she took after her mother, if she was quite a looker once.
• Barbie movies feature some notable examples, especially in the early films:
  • In Barbie as Rapunzel, King Frederick is short and portly while his son Prince Stefan is tall, strong, and handsome.
  • In Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, sisters Annika and Brietta more closely resemble their tall, slim mother than their short, portly father, with really the only father-daughter physical similarity being Brietta having her father's red hair.
• The Book of Life:
  • Maria Posada is extremely pretty, compared to her diminutive, grey haired, hunch-backed, big nosed, father◊.
  • Word of God that the cute pin-up girl hanging on the wall of a bar in one scene is based on the character design for Chela the Bandit Princess, adopted daughter of the plug-ugly Chakal the Bandit King.
• Merida in Brave has the wild red curls and blue eyes of her father, but apart from that more closely resembles her mother.
• The sheriff from Coonskin is a short fat ugly wrinkled guy with a toad like body, his daughter Marigold is a beautiful busty blonde woman.
• Both Victor and Victoria, who are Endearingly Dorky and a Proper Lady respectively, in Corpse Bride don't take after either of their more cartoonish-looking parents. What's interesting in the case of Victoria and her parents is that not only is her father not much of a looker, her mother is quite possibly worse.
• Eep is this to Grug in The Croods.
• Disney Animated Canon:
  • Gender-flipped in Cinderella. In the flashbacks to Cinderella's past, Cindy's Disappeared Dad was very Tall, Dark, and Handsome. Prince Charming, however, has a chubby and short dad who kinda looks like the Sultan.
  • The same can be said of Prince Phillip and King Hubert in Sleeping Beauty. Regarding Aurora herself, King Stefan is at least homely and Queen Leah is basically an older Aurora so they don't really qualify... but if one counts the Fairies as Parental Substitutes, it can be said to be played straight.
  • In Peter Pan, The Chief's Daughter Tiger Lily is drawn as a Nubile Savage, while the "Injun" chief himself is more crudely caricatured (this movie being from The '50s and all). A gender-flipped version also appears as a brief gag, when a bridegroom marries another Indian Maiden and is then shocked to see her grotesque mother.
  • Beauty and the Beast: One wonders how Maurice ended up with tall, slender Belle for a daughter.
  • Aladdin: Likewise concerning the Sultan and the lovely looking Jasmine.
  • A Goofy Movie features the hero's crush Roxanne, a short, curvy, pretty young girl with an extremely large, hairy, mean, overweight Boyfriend-Blocking Dad.
• Crysta from FernGully: The Last Rainforest has a father who closely resembles the Sultan from Aladdin as a fairy.
• Gender Inverted in Shrek 2: Fairy Godmother is short, plump and plain featured at best. Her son is literally Prince Charming.
• Marianne and Dawn's father from Strange Magic isn't too bad looking except that he's significantly older looking than what he should be.

Films — Live-Action

• In Barbara The Fair, the titular character's father is a hideous underwater monster. Played for Laughs because while he knows she is lovely he doesn't realize the trope applies to him.
  Tsarevich Andrey: Is your daughter beautiful?
  Chudo-Yudo: Very! Takes after me!
  Tsarevich Andrey: After you?! [drops in a dead faint]
• In Grown Ups, Rob Schneider's character has two beautiful daughters from previous marriages, and another one that looks exactly like him.
• In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, you look at Cedric Diggory and his dad Amos and you think Ced got all his looks from his mom.
• Paulie Bleeker of Juno is somewhat of a male example. Being played by Michael Cera, he is cute in a male-moe kind of way, with a frumpy mother described by Juno as "possibly was hot once, but now looks like a hobbit."
• Young, pretty Carina Smyth from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales turns out to be the daughter of none other than the grizzled Captain Hector Barbossa. Jack even lampshades it.
• In Run Fat Boy Run, Mr. Goshdashtidar is the father of the unbelievably, incredibly hot Maya.
• Senseless:
  • In this Marlon Wayans comedy, we learn this in reverse. Wayans's character, Darryl Witherspoon, spends the entire movie wooing a gorgeous, light-skinned black girl, and later on we find out that her father is Darryl's boss, who is both plain-looking and white.
    Darryl: Oooo, you took a dip in some chocolate I see!
  • Darryl himself is a gender-inverted example, being quite handsome compared to his burly Apron Matron mother.
• Subverted in Shallow Hal where Hal wonders how Rosemary can possibly be related to her obese father. Of course Hal has been hypnotised so that he sees Rosemary as a slim attractive woman when in reality, she's morbidly obese herself.
• The grouchy landlord Mr. Ditkovich's daughter in the Spider-Man Trilogy.
• In the classic monster movie Them!, the dorky Absent-Minded Professor who is sent to help shows up with another entomologist too. An incredibly gorgeous brunette. His daughter. How on earth this could have happened is stranger than the idea that atomic bomb tests could have turned ants into giant monsters the size of a truck.
• The Virgin Suicides, commented on in the movie.

Literature

• Kitai in Codex Alera is a beautiful white-haired girl. Her people bond with various animals and end up with some physical traits of their particular animals. Her dad, as chief of the Gargant tribe (more or less giant ground sloths), isn't particularly attractive and is absurdly over-muscled as a result. We like him anyway.
• Subverted in Cookie by Jacqueline Wilson. The main character, Beauty, was named such because her father was expecting his daughter to take after her gorgeous mother, but instead she took after him... her name doesn't suit her.
• In Discworld, the female offspring of Igors were described as uniformly lovely. Which makes one wonder how/why (at least) one of them could pass as a male Igor.
  • It's suggested that Igors are good enough surgeons that visible stitches, stoops, lisps etc are completely avoidable and are only kept for the sake of fashion/tradition - but this doesn't apply to Igorinas, who get the full benefit of cosmetic surgery with none of the mandatory hideousness (and the Uberwaldian blood probably helps).
  • Sourcery has Conina, the beautiful warrior-maiden (who would rather be a hairdresser) who happens to be the daughter of Cohen the Barbarian, who when we last saw him a few books ago, in The Light Fantastic, is a skinny, bald old man covered in scars. She says she got her looks from her mother (who was a temple dancer).
    • Even though Cohen takes into account the fact that he is ANCIENT. As a young man, he was the greatest barbarian alive, and probably way better looking.
    • It's possible that Twoflower and his at least one gorgeous daughter (depending on what you think of the description of Pretty Butterfly) could count. He's probably closer to "not handsome" than "ugly", though, so perhaps not.
• Mist, the princess of the titular Dread Empire is a stunningly beautiful, centuries-old sorceress. Her father, the Demon Prince, is... less beautiful. One character even wonders at the fact that "that ugly old madman" could possibly have sired her.
• Fleur Delacour of Harry Potter fame was easily the most beautiful good guy in the entire series. When we meet her parents in Deathly Hallows, her father is described as short and plump with a pointed black beard, and "nowhere near as attractive as his wife." (Whom Fleur of course closely resembles.)
  • Granted, Fleur and her mother are part Veela, so everybody next to them looks plain.
  • Also a Gender Inversion in the case of Tom Riddle. His mother Merope is rather unfortunate-looking due to inbreeding in the family, and used a love potion to snare handsome muggle Tom Riddle Sr. The head of the orphanage recalls that when Tom was born, Merope said shortly before she died that she hopes he looks like his daddy. Boy howdy, did he! And the woman who ran the orphanage told Dumbledore that she also hoped Riddle Jr. looked like his father because "[Merope] was no beauty". Ouch.
  • The two Weasley parents are described as "balding" (Mr. Weasley) and "plump" (Mrs. Weasley) almost every time they're mentioned. They're very poor, so their life has taken a bit of a toll on them. However their only daughter and youngest child Ginny becomes very pretty when she hits fifteen.
• Subverted in the Hurog series - rather than taking after her mother, the daughter of a not very handsome noble doesn't look better than him, but rather worse - Ward mentions that the nose that looks okay on her father makes her look intimidating. Double subverted, as Ward is totally smitten with her nevertheless.
• Gender Flipped in one of Neil Gaiman's short stories in Keepsakes and Treasures, in which a specific human bloodline is marked by the women all being hideous-looking and the rare male offspring being the most beautiful people in the world.
• In the book The Princess Bride, Buttercup's mother and father are both described as quite tiny and ugly, and neither of them are exactly sure how they managed to produce Buttercup, but they're not going to investigate the happy accident.
• Redwall has Bowfleg and Bluefen from The Outcast of Redwall. It explicitly states Swartt was VERY surprised that the ugly, stupid, overweight Bowfleg could father the frail and pretty Bluefen.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Roslin Frey certainly won the genetic lottery. Her father, Walder Frey, is described as weaselly (he was at best on the ugly side of average in his youth, but old age has deteriorated his appearance) and thoroughly unpleasant. Roslin, on the other hand, is a classic delicate beauty. It's worth noting that Walder Frey had 29 children, just counting the ones born in wedlock, and most of them were varying degrees of unattractive.
  • Sansa Stark could also count, since on a few occasions her father Lord Eddard Stark is described as having a plain and unremarkable appearance. Sansa, meanwhile, is beautiful with auburn hair, who takes after her mother Catelyn Tully.
    • ... Until Game of Thrones cast the very foxy Sean Bean as Eddard, though.
• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe novel The Bacta War, Corran Horn meets his girlfriend Mirax Terrik's father Booster for the first time. His immediate response is "Oh, I guess you take after your mother."
  • Actually his immediate response to meeting Booster Terrik is to threaten Booster Terrik with the reputation of Booster Terrik. He didn't know he was talking to Booster Terrik.
• From Warrior Cats: Dawn Of The Clans, we have Star Flower, who's the beautiful daughter of the hideous One Eye. Even Thunder wonders how a cat as beautiful as her ever came from someone so hideous.
• A subversion of the "looks like mother" explanation was used in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice where Elena Bothari has all the features of her father, but rather than being scary and ugly, they are beautiful. For example, Sergeant Bothari is a six-foot-six monster of a man, and quite imposing. Elena Bothari is a tall, slender woman. It becomes a painful plot point when after Bothari's death, Elena's mother can't stand to even look at her, because she looks too much like the man who raped her.
• The White Company: Lady Maude Loring. Her father is a short, slender bald man with a permanent squint. Her mother is a tall, stocky, dark and forbidding-looking woman. The lady herself is tall, slender and beautiful and kind enough to make an entire company of rough-and-tumble archers immediately swear to protect her honour.
• Eileen Stoker in The Butler Did It (by P. G. Wodehouse). Her father was a boxer.
  • Lampshaded in Indiscretions of Archie: "Your mother must have been terribly attractive."
  • In the Mulliner story, "Romance of a Bulb-Squeezer" this trope evokes the following dialogue:
    "What do you mean," [Clarence Mulliner] cried, "by saying that she took after you?"
    "She does."
    "She does not. She is the loveliest girl in the world, while you look like Lon Chaney made up for something."
  • Subverted in that the girl in question is implied to be quite plain, possibly even a bit homely. Clarence is a photographer and is so tired of taking photographs of lovely girls that she seems beautiful to him.
• In Alexandre Dumas' The Woman with the Velvet Necklace, Antonia looks like an angel. Her dad is wizened, pockmarked, and has a leg twisted like a corkscrew.
• E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros has Lady Sriva, the beautiful daughter of old, fat and ugly Duke Corsus.
• The Silmarillion has a gender-inverted example. Nerdanel is described as "not among the fairest of her people". Which, since she's a princess, probably doesn't mean she is merely plain. Her oldest son Maedhros is a Fiery Redhead and the only character specifically called sexy in the entire Legendarium. Not beautiful, not fair, but "comely". Interestingly, he seems to actually be the spitting image of his mother: which might imply that masculine women are not desirable in elvish culture, but feminine men are (and this Double Standard would make sense given what else we know of the culture). Although another possibility could be that Maedhros inherits his father's darker complexion, making him a dark-skinned redhead (a fairly common interpretation among fan artists). Unlike the norm for this trope however, Maedhros is not-canonically-anyone's love interest.
• In Amram Scheinfeld's popular (and not always accurate) book You And Heredity, he explains how two people considered ugly, some of whose physical features are due to lack of resources, can have a daughter who fits the popular definition of beautiful, while two people regarded as very good-looking can have a daughter who would be considered ugly.

Live-Action TV

• Invoked in Blackadder: Amy and Amiability:
  Blackadder: I can see where your daughter gets her ready wit, sir.
  Hardwood: I thank you.
  Blackadder: Although where she gets her good looks and charm is perhaps more of a mystery.
  Hardwood: No one ever made money out of good looks and charm!
  Blackadder: You obviously haven't met Lady Hamilton, sir.
• Similarly, Drew's cousin, played by Nikki Cox, on The Drew Carey Show; all of the Careys (and Drew's friends and acquaintances) marvel at her very existence.
• Frasier: Martin tries to set Frasier up with his friend Duke's daughter. Frasier is skeptical when he is told how attractive she is but the praise turns out to be accurate.
  Frasier: Yes, well, I have seen Duke, and unless he sired a love child with Catherine Deneuve, I don't like my odds.
• The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Will reluctantly agrees to go on a date with Jazz's sister, whom everyone assumes will look like Jazz in drag. In reality, she's very attractive, but she has other issues.
• Teddy Duncan from Good Luck Charlie is a tall, leggy blonde with a pretty face, played by Bridgit Mendler to top it off. Her father Bob, on the other hand, is an overweight middle-aged bald man who isn't so pretty. Justified since she got her good looks from her mom. In addition, Bob himself was a pretty boy until he hit 25, and he passed on his former good looks to PJ.
• Elle Bishop on Heroes: "And Stephen Toblowsky fathered Kristen Bell... how?"
• Just the Ten of Us: All of the daughters of Coach Lubbock. It's not as obvious with the grade-school age one and the one who's still an infant, and more prominent with the boy-crazy two of the four teenage daughters, but they are all much prettier than one would expect them to be.
• Al and Kelly Bundy from Married... with Children. His backstory has him being a football player good-looking enough to score with a cheerleader (which Peg used to be). The only reason Al is "ugly" is that he's gotten older and his diet hasn't helped any.
• In Ed O'Neill's new show Modern Family not only does he have a young, hot wife but his grownup daughter from a previous marriage is hot as well.
• The Munsters was a show in which the entire family were freakish monsters...except for Marilyn, the hot blond "black sheep" of the family. This was usually played for humor - a normal guy would get stuck having to meet what he assumed would be an even more hideous monster than her parents, while her family would try and talk down her "bad points"... and the guy would finally meet her.
  • Given the basic cast were a Frankenstein's Monster and a Vampire, who somehow produced a Wolfman son, Marilyn is probably the most least odd example of genetics on the show.
    • Considering that a made-for-TV movie depicted her parents as Bride Of Frankenstein and a meek mad scientist... no she isn't.
• On Night Court, Dan Fielding, Prosecutor and Man-Whore, is told by his boss the D.A. to look after the Boss's niece. As the D.A. is a Small Person, he expects the niece to be as well. Instead, she's an industrial-strength hottie. (And he's under orders to be a gentleman, which is difficult because he's a man-slut and she's handing out nude pictures of herself and bragging about being double-jointed.)
• Our Miss Brooks: Principal Osgood Conklin's daughter Harriet.
• Chris on Parks and Recreation has this exact reaction when he begins to date Butt-Monkey Jerry's beautiful daughter. In "Ron and Diane", it is revealed that all of his daughters (and his wife) are gorgeous.
• Scorpius and his daughter Trakeena on Power Rangers Lost Galaxy. She is supposed to evolve into a form similar to her father, but she dislikes the idea.
• In Saved by the Bell, Zack is forced to take Mr. Belding's daughter Penny out on a date. He pictures her as Belding in a wig and Uncanny Valley Makeup. Thus he gets Screech to pretend to be him on the date. Then they show up at The Max and Penny is HOT.
  • A similar issue was raised in an episode where Zack dates Screech's stunningly beautiful cousin Kimberly. Slater wonders how on Earth she and Screech are related. She's adopted.
• Donna Pinciotti on That '70s Show definitely takes more after her mother.
• 3rd Rock from the Sun:
  • In an episode, the Solomons befriend an overweight, unattractive couple. Tommy sees a picture of their hot daughter (which we don't) and describes her as "a triumph of aerobics over genetics".
  • In another episode Tommy meets his girlfriend's parents. When he sees her father, a bald, ugly man, Tommy's perplexed. Then he meets the mother, a perky blonde just like her daughter, he says, "Oh, now I get it!"
• One Three's Company episode had an Ugly Guy's Hot Cousin: Mr. Roper asks Jack to take his cousin Karen out to cheer her up (he thinks Jack's gay and won't make a move on her). Jack initially tells him that he can't do it because he has other obligations on the same night, he and the girls speculate on what a woman would look like with Mr. Roper's face and/or body... and then Karen shows up at the door. Jack very quickly changes his mind about turning down Mr. Roper's request (though it also was partly because Mr. Roper offered to pay him).
• Tiffany Malloy (played by the aforementioned Nikki Cox) in Unhappily Ever After (a blatant self-rip-off from the producers of MWC). One episode involves her father Jack suspecting that Tiffany is the result of his wife's affair with the mailman. She's not.
• Veronica Mars: A scene in season one has Abel Koontz, Lily Kane's supposed murderer who's now a death row inmate, taunt Veronica by asking if she really thinks she's the daughter of the schlubby sheriff. It turns out that she is.
• Downton Abbey: Susan McClare (played by Phoebe Nicholls in a good contestant for least flattering hair and makeup ever) basically looks like a bulldog sucking on a wedge of lemon. Her daughter Rose, on the other hand, is played by the absolutely gorgeous English Rose Lily James.

Myths & Religion

• More than one Norse and Celtic myth involves a god or hero falling for the beautiful daughter of a monstrous giant.

Pinball

• Occurs in Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons — Papa Mellon is a short, grizzled farmer with a big bushy beard, while his three daughters are so sexy that they make passersby get into trouble for gawking at them.

Professional Wrestling

• The most charitable thing you could say about the appearance of good old Mick Foley, after years of abuse and chair shots to the head, is that he's "homely". However, thanks to being enough of a Nice Guy to bag his lovely wife Colette, his daughter Noelle is nothing short of an absolute stunner, as can be seen in this image of dad and daughter together.◊ Mick used to be quite a handsome guy◊ in his youth, so Noelle didn't get all of her beauty just from her mom.

Theater

• Variation: "Meeskite" from Cabaret is the ballad of an ugly couple who eventually have a beautiful baby boy; the wife, Pearl, is even uglier than the narrator.
• Don't Drink the Water: Main character Axel is shocked when he meets the schlubby and crazy Walter's gorgeous and polite daughter, Susan.
• One of the twists at the end of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is that the elderly, often hunchbacked Erronius is the father of Philia and Miles Gloriosus.
  • This dynamic is oftentimes at play in the casting of Hero and his father Senex as well.
• Rimsky-Korsakov's Kashchey the Immortal features horribly ugly, Nothing but Skin and Bones Kashchey and his gorgeous daughter. Even their domains are different, his is an appropriately dark realm with Endless Winter and hers is a lovely flower field at the seaside.
• Pygmalion and My Fair Lady feature pretty Eliza Doolittle and her grubby old father Alfred. The contrast is visible even when they're visibly poor and ragged, but it becomes especially apparent once they both enter high society: She Cleans Up Nicely, while he's dressed better but remains a Kavorka Man.
• Rigoletto, an ugly hunchback, has a beautiful daughter, Gilda. (Based on Le Roi s'amuse by Hugo, who must've liked hunchbacks.)
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Sweeney Todd and Johanna. Averted in the movie, where he's allegedly ugly but it's still Johnny-frakking-Depp. Forced transport to Australia for years of hard labor probably do one's looks no favors. In the theater performances, Sweeney Todd more often looks like he's played by a foot. A fat foot.
  • And, of course, Johanna looks exactly like her gorgeous mother, and without ever having seen her, Sweeney is able to accurately guess what she'd look like:
    And are you beautiful and pale,
    With yellow hair, like her?
  • Yes. Yes, she is.

Video Games

• Princess Medea of Dragon Quest VIII is considered to be so beautiful that a tourism guide writes seeing her in person is worth the pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Trodain. Meanwhile, her father King Trode is an extremely short, ugly, foul-tempered green ogre, though in fairness his appearance is due to a curse. Though when he regains his human form back at the end, his physical appearance barely changes from his cursed form, so it's still played straight.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has father Tarin (who looks like Mario) and his beautiful daughter Marin (who is said to look like Zelda).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
    • There is a bit of a contrast, shall we say, between the esteemed King Zora XVI and his daughter Ruto.
    • Malon and Talon (modelled after Marin and Tarin) are pretty dissimilar as well, since one is a short, fat, balding farmer and the other a cute country girl. In Malon's case, there's one theory based off of one of Talon's remarks that her mother was a Gerudo or had traits of one, if her red hair is any indication.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mila and her father. Downplayed with Maggie and her father; while Maggie is nowhere near as pretty as Mila, she's still Ugly Cute compared to her more straightforwardly ugly Gonk of a father.
  • This also happens in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, where Ilia is quite cute compared to the Mayor of Ordon Village. This is lampshaded In-Universe. By a Goron.
  • And in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, where Zelda's cuteness has nothing to do with her owl-faced dad.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • This era has King Rhoam, who's not hideous, but still rather large and stern-looking. His daughter Zelda, on the other hand, is so adorable that she's still renowned for her beauty even 100 years later.
    • There's a similar dynamic between the Zora King Dorephan, a huge, old, fat monarch, and his daughter Princess Mipha, who is both prettier and less fish-like than the other Zora. Incidentally, Dorephan's son Sidon is also good-looking and an in-universe Chick Magnet, implying either that Dorephan was better looking long ago or that the kids got their looks from their unseen and unmentioned mother.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Hudson is a stocky and stern-faced Hylian man, while his daughter Mattison is a cute Gerudo girl. Given that her mother Rhondson is a beautiful Gerudo woman, and that Gerudo will always beget Gerudo, it's implied that the Gerudo genes are always dominant. Though Mattison does share her father's bizarre hairstyle.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem New Mystery of the Emblem, the family relation between bonus recruits Dice and Malice truly beggars belief.
  • Sonya in Fire Emblem Gaiden is the daughter of the evil priest Judah, but she doesn't have her father's freakish features or blue skin. Averted in the manga adaptation where Judah is a normal old-looking man, but emphasized in the remake Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
    • In Echoes, Celica's Disappeared Dad the King of Zofia is finally seen... and while he's not a gonk, he's quite creepy looking. It's a good thing that Celica (and in Echoes, her half-brother Conrad) only inherited the man's red hair, looks-wise.
  • Bartre's daughter Fir in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade. She takes after her mother. Bartre is not super hideous but more Hollywood Homely as well as REALLY big, and Fir looks a lot like her super beautiful mom Karla.
  • In Fire Emblem: Awakening, this can happen if the player styles his or her Avatar of either gender as being good-looking enough, since s/he is the son or daughter of the VERY weird-looking Evil Sorcerer Validar. Even if the player decides to keep their default looks, they're still considerably◊ more attractive than him.◊ And even if the player make a male Avatar big and more rugged-up than handsome (It's not really possible to make any Avatar a Gonk), then his daughter◊ will fit this trope.
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, the Gentle Giant Benny has a huge Face of a Thug case... but if he gets married, he can father the Socially Awkward Hero Ignatius and, potentially, the Cultured Badass Shigure (if his wife is Azura) and the Badass Adorable Kana (if she's the Female Avatar). The three young men have quite more flattering looks than Benny; even if Ignatius (the one who resembles him the most) does have a somewhat scary face and shares Dad's lack of eyebrows, he has softer features and a more flattering hairstyle, and is noticeably prettied up in some◊ illustrations.◊
    • In the same game, the monstrous-looking King Garon◊ has four kids, all of◊ which are◊ very attractive◊ (or at least cute◊ in Elise's case). This applied even before Garon being a reanimated corpse during the main story. According to his FE Cipher card, Garon was very gorgeous in his youth, the splitting image of his eldest son.
• In Dynasty Warriors, the daughter of Zhang Fei, Xingcai. Gender Inverted with Xiahou Ba, who is much more handsome and attractive than his father, Xiahou Yuan. Funnily enough Xingcai and Xiahou Ba were historically related.
  • Xiahou Ba's attractiveness is even lampshaded by Zhang Fei himself, who complains that Ba bears no resemblance to his father at all.
  • Even Xiahou Yuan can't seem to believe he fathered such a handsome son, failing to recognise him in WO3.
  • In 8, even Guan Yu gets in on the act (even if he more of a dignified Gentle Giant than rugged-ugly), with the introduction of Guan Yinping. She's really cute, but there's one thing she inherited from her father: her monstrous strength.
• President Shinra in Final Fantasy VII isn't exactly ugly, but is a fat man who wears his age heavily on him, even if he's got slightly skinnier in Remake. His son Rufus on the other hand? An absolute looker.
  • Similarly, Professor Hojo isn't really ugly so much as haggard and unkempt, but his son Sephiroth is stunning.
• Princess Garnet of Final Fantasy IX turned out not to be the daughter of the gigantically obese, blue, ogreish Queen Brahne, seemingly averting this, but then you remember that Garnet was picked for Brahne's adopted daughter because she looked nearly identical to the Queen's recently deceased baby and then your mind starts boggling again.
• A gender inversion happens in Jazz Jackrabbit with the beautiful Princess Eva Earlong's mother being fat and ugly making this a case of The Ugly Gal's Hot Daughter.
• Gender-inverted in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. Prince Peasley◊ is fair-faced and well toned, and the Bishie Sparkles indicate that he's a good-looking guy on Beanish terms. His mother Queen Bean◊, on the other hand, is a harsh-faced woman who's as round as a tomato and has the color scheme of one, too (though one Beanish tourist in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team thinks she's a Big Beautiful Woman — he's admittedly very homesick).
• Gender Inverted in Mask of the Betrayer. Want to know what Cute Monster Guy Gannayev's mother looked like? This.◊ Good thing he took after the father, huh? Of course, this is explained In-Universe as coming from the Power of Love, as his parents truly loved each other, while most hags take the I Have You Now, My Pretty approach to mating.
  • Plane Scape Torment featured the same trope with the same monster with a partial gender inversion. Kessai-Serris' avatar is limited by the graphics of 1999 but still looks like she would be rather endowed and shapely, but she is described as utterly gorgeous and sensual. She works in a Brothel where stunningly attractive women are paid for Platonic Prostitution only. Her mother is Ravel Puzzlewell, a night hag, the same type of creature as Gannayev's mother. Her father is also a rather ugly sort of demon, a cambion.
  • Additionally, Hags (including Night Hags) are known in multiple editions for changing shape and using it to trick victims or seduce mates.
• Sweet little Eliza from Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness always gets weird looks when she mentions that she's the daughter of the constantly scowling carpenter, Gannon.
  • The Tale of Two Towns has adult stunner Laney and her hulking, Camp Straight Gonk of a father, Howard.
• Meryl Oakland/Princess Natalia from Tales of the Abyss is considerably cuter than her father, Largo the Black Lion aka Badaq Oakland and her adoptive father: King Ingolbert.
• Not a real application, but invoked in Breath of Fire III: to smuggle Nina (an adorable little winged-human girl) out of Wyndia, Garr (a giant beast-man) claims she's his daughter. The border guard blanches for a second, then declares she must have a beautiful mother.
• Rayn from the Jak and Daxter series is the daughter to Krew. And if you've seen what Krew looks like, heaven help the woman he ended up with to produce her!
  Daxter: Who the heck call us to this shindig anyway?
  Keira: Krew's daughter, Rayn.
  Jak: Krew had a daughter?
  Daxter: Krew... REPRODUCED?!... Eeeuuugh! Can you imagine what that tub of jelly must look like!
  • And to a lesser extent, Keira and her father Samos.
    • And to an even lesser extent, Ashelin and her father, Baron Praxis.
• Ace Attorney:
  • While Manfred von Karma from the first game is rather weathered and harsh looking, his daughter◊ is rather more pleasant in court. If a bit harsh.
  • Case 3-3 features Viola Cadaverini◊ who is quite pretty (in a dark and edgy way) as opposed to her grandfather, Bruto Cadaverini, and her father who is never named but shown very briefly during the case.
  • Lauren Paups◊ is attractive while her father◊ is more on the unattractive side.
• Guilty Gear has a case of ugly woman's hot daughter: Dizzy is actually the daughter of Justice, a borderline Eldritch Abomination. Then it's subverted: Justice is revealed to have been a beautiful human woman, Sol/Frederick's old girlfriend and partner Aria. She's more or less revived in Xrd SIGN as her remaining halves (the weird-looking Justice and the smoking hot Jack'O Valentine) merge into one at the end.
  • In Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- it is heavily implied that Sol Badguy is Dizzy's father due to his relationship with Aria/Justice. While in his human form is a well-built and roguishly handsome man, his true Gear form has him resembling a humanoid dragon as well as being a Physical God whose power is so great it cannot be used without warping reality unless time itself stands still.
• Subverted in Disgaea 2: It's revealed at the very end of the game that Rozalin and the guy claiming to be Zenon are not in fact related by blood.
  • Played semi-straight with Mao in Disgaea 3: Mao's a somewhat cute (creepy Mad Scientist tendencies notwithstanding) nerdy humanoid-looking demon. Then you meet his father's Ghost. The guy's single finger is four or five times Mao's height! Pity his mother.
    • Hey they live long, they have a long time to grow big or get fat.
    • Remember that said overlord was extremely fond of using elaborate ruses to scare people away and a VERY powerful sorcerer if provoked into combat. That brings the question of how much of that was actual size and how much was illusion. Regardless he was probably pretty tall anyway, especially with that menacing armor to bolster said size.
• Hypothetically, Gen'an Shiranui and Mai Shiranui according to some fans. However, this is unconfirmed.
• The 'Father' version of Nier is a gnarled, hulking, prematurely aged brute of a man, however his daughter Yonah is delicate and angelic. Particularly when She's All Grown Up.
• The Sims 2 players who marry their sims to funny-looking townies often end up with surprisingly attractive sim offspring. Pleasantview townie Goopy Gilscarbo is particularly infamous for having gorgeous kids.
• Gender flipped in the Mushihime Sama series. Larsa is fat and her beauty or lack thereof leaves much to be desired. Yet her older son Aki is beautiful, and Palm looks to be following in Aki's footsteps.
• Dance Central's Oblio is a male example of this trope; his father Dr. Tan is horribly ugly, but Oblio is hot.
• Super Robot Wars Z Series: Kouji thanks Gou for the save, and Ryouma notes that Gou appears to have grown since the last time they met. Kei says this is a matter of course, she's with him from morning till night. This causes Benkei some distress, and Gai sheepishly reminds him that he's there too. Benkei replies that Gai being there is no cause for concern though, which brings Gai down a bit. Hibiki asks what Kei's relation to Benkei is, and Ryouma replies that she's his daughter. Suzune goes "EHHHHHH!?" causing Benkei to comment that she's a little too surprised. Kei may not look like Benkei, but he's the only real parent Kei's ever had.
• The de Sainte-Coquille fathers in the Rune Factory series have attractive-looking daughters who are eligible marriage candidates to the playable character. Max from Rune Factory 2 is a male example.
• A same-sex example in Stardew Valley: the loudmouthed, toad-faced town drunk Pam is the mother of the Shrinking Violet Hot Teacher Penny.
• The titular Hades is a giant, craggy monster of a man with a corpselike complexion◊. His son Zagreus◊, on the other hand, is a Raven-Haired, Ivory-Skinned Hunk who Aphrodite herself notes is quite the specimen. Naturally, he's instantly more popular with the Olympian pantheon than his father ever was.
• My Time at Portia: Gale is an oblate spheroid with some sketchy facial hair. His daughter Ginger is a slender moe sickly girl, his son Gust a tall Long-Haired Pretty Boy.
• Dead or Alive: Both Ayane and Honoka are quite hot; the only things they did get from Raidou appearance-wise are their unnatural hair and eye colors.
• Persona 5: Big Bad Masayoshi Shido is bald, and when his Shadow is fought, gets uglier in his muscular form. His illegitimate son that he groomed into becoming his disposable weapon, Goro Akechi, looks nothing like him - safe to say that he resembles his mama.

Web Originals

• Jobe of the Whateley Universe started out as a carbon copy of his unattractive supervillain dad: short, nerdy, weasel-faced,... But one lab accident later, and he's now the Beautiful (drow) Daughter of the Ugly Father.
  • Or Techwolf's (Harry Wolfe) father and his sisters. Due to a curse on an ancestor, the men in Harry's family look like the werewolves from The Howling. The daughters all look gorgeous.
• This is mentioned by The Nostalgia Chick in her Disney Princess review. She talks about how there is a period of time when the princesses seemed to have goofy, old dads who they tried to escape by getting married.

Western Animation

• In Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, we have the gorgeous Kathy Duquesne. She clearly didn't get her looks from her father Carlton.
• Family Guy:
  • Averted with Peter and Meg. Peter Griffin is no looker, but his daughter Meg is considered very ugly in-universe. Played straight when Meg gets a makeover in the episode "Don't Make Me Over." Too bad it's only temporarily.
  • Gender Inverted with Brian's son Dylan. While Brian is handsome-looking for a dog, his mother Tracy is hideous. (Though she did let herself go). Stewie is course implied to have a crush on him.
• The Flintstones early 1970s spinoff The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show where Fred Flintstone's daughter Pebbles is now a teenager. Bamm-Bamm qualifies as a male version of this trope to his (albeit adoptive) father, Barney Rubble.
• Hey Arnold!: Olga Pataki inherited her mother Miriam's genes, thankfully. Helga didn't, since she resembles their father Bob quite more - though she can look beautiful when she tries.
• Technically speaking, Kaz in Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi isn't Ami and Yumi's father per se, just their manager. He DOES, however, act like a father figure, even referring to himself as their "dysfunctional father figure" in one episode. Also, Ami and Yumi are pretty looking and cute in comparison to him.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius has Professor Calamitous and his daughter Beautiful Gorgeous (Yes, that is her real name.)
• Hiroshi Sato from The Legend of Korra is a downplayed example. He's not the best-looking guy, but he's not ugly either. His daughter Asami, though, is gorgeous.
• The Loud House: Lynn Loud Sr. (despite his good looks in his youth) is this to his two eldest daughters Lori and Leni Loud.
• Julie to her father Abraham Kane in Motorcity. Also another case of Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter.
• In Over the Garden Wall Miss Langtree is a lovely Gibson Girl while her father is... odd-looking to say the least.
• Phineas and Ferb has Dr. Doofenshmirtz, who was once hit by a ray meant to turn things ugly and was unaffected, as well as canonically the most repulsive being in the universe, and his daughter Vanessa, who's more conventionally attractive to where she was hit on by a couple of characters in the show.
• The Replacements inverts this trope, too. How the beautiful Shelton's mother could give birth to a two hideous abominations like Shelton and Shelly defies all rational explanation. Shelton, however, is handsome without his glasses. His sister Shelly, instead, is still very ugly.
• Samurai Jack Season 5:
  • The Scotsman's Daughters are an entire legion of tall, busty and gorgeous warrior women. Where precisely they got their good looks is anyone's guess, as they didn't seem to (directly) inherit it from either of their parents; the Scotsman is a massive and very ugly warrior, and his Wife (their mom) is a morbidly obese Brawn Hilda who's just as (if not more) ugly as he is (though her husband still thinks she's very beautiful).
  • Ashi and her six identical sisters are all conventionally attractive young women, who are heavily implied to be the spitting image of their mother, the High Priestess. Their father is another story however; it's Aku himself, who is a very monstrous-looking, semi-humanoid space demon who doesn't look anything like his Daughters. Well, at least until Aku finally meets Ashi and morphs her into a similarly scary-looking demon.
• The Simpsons:
  • In episodes taking place in the future, Homer and Lisa Simpson provide an example of this trope.
  • Future Maggie also resembles Future Lisa pretty closely.
  • In an episode set in the future, Lisa marries Millhouse and they have a teen daughter named Zia who resembles Lisa. She was genetically engineered to have the "best of their DNA" which meant mostly Lisa's.
  • One of Bart's love interests is Mary Spuckler, whose dad is Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel. It was even lampshaded by Millhouse.
    Millhouse: [looking at a photo of her from Bart] She looks pretty cute for Cletus's daughter.
• Cerina in Skysurfer Strike Force compared to her father, Cybron. To be fair, he took the Doctor Doom route and covered his entire body in Power Armor, so we never see his real face.
• Gender inverted in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Mother Talzin, with her chalk white skin, black tattooed gaunt face, and creepy aura is generally not considered to be attractive and is even the Token Wholesome of the scantily clad Nightsisters clan because she's so covered up by her clothes. By contrast, all three of her sons Savage Opress, Feral, and Darth Maul are shown to be quite attractive for being aliens and often get gratuitous shirtless scenes that show off their nice physiques. Considering Gender Equals Breed for Dathomirian Zabraks, it's implied they mostly took after their unseen father in looks.
• Sym-Bionic Titan has Ilana and her father, the King of Galaluna. This is similar to many Disney Princess examples.
• Teen Titans (2003) has Raven, a Half-Human Hybrid who looks completely human (most of the time anyways). Her father is Trigon, a giant red demon from Hell; while her mother Arella is a beautiful human lady, and Raven clearly gets all her good looks from her mom's side.
  • Even in Teen Titans Go! with its simplified artwork, it's still obvious. Trigon still looks like a huge, red, multi-eyed demon, while Raven herself looks like a gray goth girl, but still looks human without the Game Face.
• Transformers: Animated: When we first meet Sari Sumdac, one certainly can wonder what her mother looked like when her father was a dumpy, short old scientist and she was a pretty cute eight year old, and the question becomes even more pronounced when we see her as a teenager (she, for example, is taller than her father). Of course, as anyone who has seen the show knows, there is an additional question: Sari's half-cybertronian and scanned humanity from Issac, so how that led to Sari from her genetic sources is a question no one knows, reportedly not even the writers.
• Amalia and her dad, from Wakfu.
• Parodied in the Wander over Yonder episode "The Hotshot", where all the planets saved by Hotshot/Brad Starlight seem to be ruled by kings with a "surprisingly attractive daughter".
• Zak Storm: A rare gender inverted version of the trope. The old witch Sassafras looks nothing like her young, good-looking daughter Zephyra.

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