Unrelated in the Adaptation

Happens when two characters who were in the same family in the source material are unrelated in the adaptation of the work. This may be the result of a Composite Character, though also occurs often in fanfiction when the writer wants to pair two related characters together without incest.

The inverse of Related in the Adaptation. A sub-trope of Adaptation Relationship Overhaul. Compare to Promoted to Love Interest. See Related Differently in the Adaptation.

See Historical Relationship Overhaul for when this happens to real people.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Amada Anime Series: Super Mario Bros:
  • The Koopalings are just Bowser's minions. At the time of release, they were his children.
  • In the adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Queen Koopa (Bowser) isn't Peach's evil step-mother. They live in different kingdoms. Queen Koopa becomes jealous because Princess Peach from a neighboring kingdom is the most beautiful woman in the world.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, within the official High School AU spin-off, paradoxically in relation to the mainline series, the Kamado family are alive at the same time as their direct ancestors from 300 years ago, Sumiyoshi, Suyako, and Sumire. In addition, the Tokito twins are alive at the same time as their ancestors from 300 years ago, Kokushibo and Yorichii.
• In the God Mazinger TV show, Kaoru was Yamato's little sister. In the manga adaptation, she's instead depicted as his childhood friend and love interest, with her surname changed from Hino to Asahi.
• Episode 9 of Hell Girl features a pair of sisters who dream of opening their own cake shop. In the manga adaptation of this particular story, the two are just neighbours.
• Howl's Moving Castle: Both the movie and the book have a subplot about a missing prince. In the book, he's the King of Ingary's brother, while the movie changes him to a prince from a neighboring kingdom who disappeared while visiting. The neighboring kingdom blames Ingary and declares war, which massively alters the whole story's plot.
• In Komori-san Can't Decline!, Masako was the homeroom teacher's younger sister in the manga, but this relationship was never mentioned in the anime. In fact, he mentioned that Komori wouldn't need to deliver her handouts when she was out sick in the manga, since Komori was only visiting to see how she was feeling, but Komori delivered them to her in the anime.
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016) does this with the Hero's Shade and Link. In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the Hero's Shade is the ghost of Link's ancestor, the Hero of Time from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In the manga, the Hero's Shade states he and Link have no actual blood relation, although this doesn't stop him from treating him like his son.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT: Fate was never adopted into the Harlaown family due to Precia being alive and sane in this continuity. Of course, it's downplayed due to Precia and Lindy raising their children side by side.
• In the original The Moomins novels, Snufkin is Little My's half-brother. In Moomin (1990), their connection is never mentioned, and one scene has Little My ask Snufkin out on a date (to which he reacts with horror).
• In the manga of Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Chao Lingshen is Negi Springfield's descendant from the future. However in the two animated series, she's simply another one of his students.
• Powerpuff Girls Z:
  • One of the many ways that the anime differs from the original American-cartoon is that the three titular girls and Professor Utonium aren't related to each other in any way. In fact, the girls (who're teenaged middle school students rather than Kindergarteners) and Professor Utonium had never even spoken each other prior to the Chemical Z (not "Chemical X") incident.
  • Blossom and Buttercup live with their respective sets of parents while Blossom also has a younger sister while Buttercup's the middle child/only daughter of three kids—unlike her two BFFs, Bubbles appears to be an only child and also lives with her grandmother (not much is known about her parents).
  • Professor Utonium has a wife and son in the anime (and his son, like Bubbles, is an only child). However, even though he's not related to any of the three girls in any way, he still acts as a fatherly figure to them (to the point of being overprotective, especially when boys are involved).
• Record of Ragnarok:
  • Alcides/Heracles is not Zeus' son, but was adopted by him after completing his Twelve Labors and ascending to godhood.
  • Thrúd is explicitly Thor’s daughter in the Norse mythology, here there’s no mention of them being related nor do they share any screen time together.
• Saint Seiya: In the anime and most adaptations, the saints are not all the sons of Mitsumasa Kido, the founder of the orphanage they come from.
• Tenchi Universe: The entire main cast are this since they were all related to each other in some kind of way in the OVA. These include:
  • Tenchi and Katsuhito are no longer closely related to Ayeka or Sasami. Same goes to Nobuyuki, who isn't a descendant of Juraians and is just a normal human.
  • While Ryoko and Ryo-ohki are still partners, they aren't sisters. In turn, Washu isn't their mother.
  • Since Tsunami doesn't exist, she never assimilated with Sasami and thus isn't related to Washu.
  • Mihoshi isn't the great-great-granddaughter of Washu and great-grandniece of Ryoko and Ryo-ohki.
• The☆Ultraman has the titular hero, Joneus, and his sister Amia as a recurring character, unless you're watching some certain dubs in which case Joneus and Amia are lovers. The canon established by Tsuburaya states that they're siblings.

Asian Animation

• In the Motu Patlu TV show, Motu and Patlu are friends who are not related to each other. In the original comics, Motu and Patlu are brothers.

Comic Books

• Batman Beyond (Rebirth): One of the most notable discrepancies the comic has with the continuity of the original cartoon and previous comic tie-ins is that the 20th issue has Melanie Walker state that Terry McGinnis isn't related to Bruce Wayne, disregarding the revelation in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Epilogue" that Terry and Matt were secretly Bruce's biological sons.
• In Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers, Captain Victory is the grandson of the Big Bad, Blackmaas. Blackmaas is also the Big Bad of the Massive Multiplayer Crossover Legenderry: A Steampunk Adventure, but when a version of Captain Victory makes an appearance, he says he comes from a long line of Captain Victories, and no connection with Blackmaas is even implied.
• Earth 2 ran on the premise of the Golden Age DC superheroes being younger and the successors to the legacy of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman rather than the other way around. One of the changes is that the Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott is reinterpreted as a gay man and in his early 20's. A counterpart to Alan Scott's son Todd Rice/Obsidian later shows up in Earth 2: World's End, but is clearly not related due to no connections being brought up as well as the aforementioned changes made to Alan Scott's age and sexuality.
• The Hasbro Comic Universe still has Marissa Faireborne being the daughter of Flint as she was in The Transformers, but her mother isn't Lady Jaye and is instead a random woman Flint impregnated out of wedlock.
• When originally created, Huntress was Helena Wayne, the daughter of Earth-2's Batman and Catwoman. Post-Crisis, this backstory no longer worked, as not only were the mainline universe's Batman and Catwoman unmarried, but also far too young to have an adult offspring. Instead, Huntress was rebooted as Helena Bertinelli, a Mafia Princess-turned-vigilante with no familial relation to either character.
• Likewise, Power Girl was originally the Earth-2 version of Supergirl, making her the cousin of her world's Superman. After Crisis on Infinite Earths combined Earth-1 and Earth-2 and removed most of DC's other Kryptonian characters as part of John Byrne's The Man of Steel reboot, Power Girl was reimagined as an Atlantean unrelated to Superman.
• In the "Warpworld" created during Infinity Wars (2018), every character is a combination of two Marvel Universe characters. Sometimes relationships follow through, sometimes they don't. So Weapon Hex, the combination of X-23 and Scarlet Witch, has a sister named Speed Weasel, who combines Laura's clone "sister" Honey Badger with Wanda's brother Quicksilver, but has no apparent connection to the Wolverine/White Queen combo Diamond Patch at all.
• The tie-in comic for Justice League: Gods and Monsters features Francine Evelyn Lee, the eventual wife of Man-Bat in the comics—expect they don't get married in this universe.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: Dream Girl (Nura Nal) and White Witch (Mysa Nal) are sisters in the original continuity. In the 2004 reboot, when White Witch finally shows up in the The Dominator War story arc, there are zero indication that this is still the case. In fact, neither of them even talks to or acknowledges each other.
• In both the Marvel Comics 2 universe and Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hope Pym is the biological daughter of Janet van Dyne, the original Wasp. While still the biological daughter of Hank Pym, Nadia Pym's biological mother is Hank's first wife, Maria Trovaya, with Janet as her surrogate mother.
• New 52
  • In Shazam! (2012) reboot, Billy and his friend Freddy are now foster-siblings. However, he and Mary, former long-lost twins, no longer seem biologically related. (Also, she seems to be older than him.)
  • In the New 52 Tim Drake and Cassandra Cain are no longer Bruce's adoptive children.
  • Angel and the Ape: Sam Simeon is no longer Gorilla Grodd's nephew. In fact, he's no longer even really a gorilla.
  • Batman reintroduced Alfred's daughter Julia Pennyworth. Her mother's identity has not been revealed, but given both the timeline issues, and the fact she's now mixed-race, it's unlikely that it's WWII French Resistance operative Mademoiselle Marie.
  • Subverted in Justice League United, where Adam Strange's wife Alanna initially appears to be a human woman with no relation to Sardath, but near the end of the series turns out to still be Sardath's daughter after all.
• In the Muppet Classics miniseries Muppet King Arthur, Morgan Le Fay is neither Arthur's half-sister nor Mordred's mother, preventing the obvious problems that would've resulted from King Arthur marrying Morgan Le Fay rather than Lady Guinevere.
• In the Quake oneshot that was part of the S.H.I.E.L.D. 50th anniversary, Daisy meets an Inhuman named Jiaying, the same name as her mother in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series, who recognises her from somewhere. But comicbook Daisy's mom was almost definitely a woman named Jennifer Johnson.
• Teen Titans: Earth One: Both Elinore Stone and Slade Wilson are no longer biologically related to the children that they each raised, Victor Stone and Joseph Wilson, respectively.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: Ben Reilly, who is Peter's clone in the main comics (sometimes referred to as his "brother" or identical cousin), is an unrelated lab assistant in the Ultimate verse.
  • Ultimate X Men:
    • Professor X and Juggernaut are not adoptive brothers. Marko is also Rogue's age, rather than older than Xavier. As for Rogue, she has no relation with Mystique.
    • Cable isn't the son of Cyclops, but rather, he's a future Wolverine. Additionally, Stryfe isn't a clone of Cable, but a naturally born mutant.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Donna Troy was originally introduced as Wonder Woman's adopted younger sister. This relationship became impossible Post-Crisis, as George Pérez's complete Continuity Reboot of the Wonder Woman mythos now meant that Donna (a character more closely associated with the Teen Titans, and thus unaffected by Perez's revamp) had actually shown up on the scene as a costumed superhero years before Diana. To deal with this, Donna's backstory was changed to involve her powers having come from the Titans of myth, rather than Hippolyta and the Amazons. The fact that her codename, Wonder Girl, was so similar to Diana's moniker of Wonder Woman, was presented as a mere Contrived Coincidence.
  • When Wonder Woman (1987) reintroduced Nubia it made her the previous champion with no familial ties to Diana rather than keep her as Diana's long lost twin as she had been in Wonder Woman (1942).
  • Wonder Woman (Rebirth) depicts Aphrodite and Hermes' child Atlantiades/Hermaphroditus as Aphrodite's child alone despite maintaining both of their names, which both reference their father Hermes. Atlantiades relates to their being Atlas' great-grandchild—through Hermes mother—and Hermaphroditus is a name created so they could be named after both of their parents—Hermes-Herm/Aphrodite-aphroditus—who each symbolize one of the sexes therefore alluding to their own intersex nature.
  • The Infinity, Inc. member Fury was originally the daughter of Earth-2's Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, with her real name, Hippolyta "Lyta" Trevor, even serving as an homage to her maternal grandmother. Crisis on Infinite Earths subsequently made this impossible, so Lyta's Post-Crisis appearances retconned her to be the daughter of a previously unmentioned Greek heroine named Helena Kosmatos, with the surname "Trevor" now explained as having come from Joan Dale Trevor, her adoptive mother.
  • In Wonder Woman (2011):
    • Donna Troy is no longer Diana's adopted sister, and has been made an adaptational villain rather than Wonder Woman's ally.
    • In the original myths, and all previous iterations of the comics, Ares was Hippolyta's father and thus Diana's grandfather, which is not the case here.

Fan Works

• Aitran: Unlike their Myst counterparts, Cirrus, Archeon, and Aldro have no biological connections to Star Swirl.
• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: At the end of "What if they all had combat experience before the war?", a childless couple of vets named Walter and Michelle adopt Cassie — their biological daughter in canon.
• Pietro Polendina in BlazBlue Alternative: Remnant was one of the researchers who was brought on to help in Penny's combat testing after she was created, contrasting canon where he was her creator.
• By the Sea: A roughly teenaged Luke shows up being raised by his aunt and uncle the Larses, but they have no relation to Anakin Skywalker at all, and this Luke is much too old to be Anakin's kid, in any case.
• Cherry Blossom Boy: Because Sakura is male, he isn't Sarada's biological parent, with Sarada made from Sasuke's genetic material. He's still the one to raise her since she was an infant.
• Comatose: Here, Ariel's a human who was turned into a mermaid. As a result, she isn't related to Triton.
• A Diplomatic Visit: In canon, the Tantabus was created by Princess Luna to torment her. In the epilogue of the fourth story, The Diplomat's Life, they're mentioned as a naturally-occurring species of predators from the dream plane, and part of Luna's job is eliminating them for the threat they pose to dreamers.
• In Do You Believe in Fairies?, Luna is Candace's paternal half-sister and doesn't share any blood with their grandmother Shelly, though she stil sees her as her grandmother nevertheless.
• While Mirabel was the second youngest member of the Madrigal family and Isabela's youngest sister in Encanto, in El Encanto A Travez de mis Flores she was a regular girl in the village who ends up becoming a Madrigal by marrying Isabela.
• Family Guy Fanon makes it clear that Meg Griffin is not a blood Griffin and is an adopted child, with her real father is Stan Thompson. And the family hides this from her. This becomes important when in Season 21 she finds out the truth accidentally and sets out to find her real father, which she does in "How I Met Your Real Father".
• Happens in a lot of Frozen fanfics. Anna and Elsa are the Fan-Preferred Couple by far (at least with adult fans), however many are squicked about pairing up two sisters. Thus many AU fanworks depict them as childhood friends or meeting as teens/adults, for example:
  • Café Liégeois is a fic where they Meet Cute at Starbucks.
  • A Snowflake In Spring features Anna meeting Elsa at the asylum where her brother Hans (who is her unrelated love interest in the film) is.
• Popular in The Loud House fandom with Lincoln being unrelated to the titular family. Granted, lots of those stories end up with him being Happily Adopted by the Louds by the end of it but that doesn't stop shippers.
• In the Lucifer (2016) fic "City of Sin", Trixie has undergone an Age Lift and is Chloe's old high school friend rather than her daughter, allowing her to be part of Chloe's future 'harem' in her role as the soon-to-be Queen of Hell.
• A Moon and World Apart: In canon, Spike was effectively adopted as a member of Twilight's family. Here, he was hatched by Sunset instead and has no familial ties to Twilight as a result.
  • Movie Star Love portrays Frozen as a movie in-universe, with Anna and Elsa as unrelated actresses who only play sisters onscreen and fall in love off-camera.
• In My Fluttering Heart, Flurry is not Cadance's biological daughter. She is Chrysalis'.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Cynthia and Professor Carolina are not biologically related, although the latter still considers the former like a granddaughter.
• Queens of Mewni mostly delves in Related in the Adaptation and Related Differently in the Adaptation, due to being written before Seasons 3 and 4 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil aired, but there are a couple examples of this trope as well: Rhina the Riddled, one of the Mewni queens in canon, here is merely a simple fortune teller that angered Galaxia (not that one) with her predictions about her successor. And 'Jushtin', rather than being a would be male successor who got passed over as Queen by his younger sister Solaria, is merely the Sweet Polly Oliver disguise of Sideria.
• Remnants depicts Blake as an orphan. Kali and Ghira were close friends of her parents and were like an aunt and uncle to Blake as a child.
• RWBY: Scars: A Wham Episode reveals that Qrow is Ruby's biological father, not Taiyang. Summer and Qrow were High-School Sweethearts but they broke up when Ruby was a baby. She later began living with Tai, who raised Ruby as his own.
• Truth and Consequences follows the common idea of making Felix and Bridgette, the proto-version of main characters Adrien and Marinette, seperate characters; however, it was written before Felix got introduced as an actual canon character, Adrien's cousin, thus the two are unrelated in this story. Ironically, it does the inverse, making Bridgitte Marinette's cousin instead, with Felix as her husband.
• Scootertrix the Abridged does this as part of a twist regarding Rarity and her little sister Sweetie Bell. In canon, they're siblings, here that's just their cover story and in actuality they're not even the same species as the former is revealed to be a a changeling given asylum in Equestria in exchange for spying on her own kind, with the latter serving as her handler. (The last part makes sense in story.)
• Sixes and Sevens: In the comics, Brian Falsworth was the son of James Montgomery Falsworth. Here the two characters are unrelated, as Brian is actually Peggy Carter's brother Michael. A later chapter states that his cover identity was lifted from a child who died of meningitis, so it's possible the name comes from a brother of James'. Then there's Emily Gower, who's based on Jacqueline Falsworth - she was Brian's sister in the comics, but since both Falsworth identities are covers obviously she and Michael have no relation.
• Son of the Black: Unlike in canon, Barbara and Jim are not related. Here, Jatar and Barbara become close acquaintances, being two lonely people who needed someone to be around. Since he is still a teenager in troll-years and he learns how to turn himself human, she officially adopts him.
• Son of the Sannin: Mitsuki is no longer an Artificial Human created by Orochimaru since the latter was killed off during the Fourth Ninja War. Instead, he's the biological son of Hebimaru and Kagero.
• In RWBY canon, Ruby and Yang are half-sisters, Taiyang is their father, and Qrow Branwen is Yang's biological uncle as well as Ruby Honorary Uncle. In Summer Rose Court, Qrow is unrelated to Yang and Ruby is Taiyang and Yang's foster daugther and foster sister respectively.
• To Hell and Back (Arrowverse) both inverts this and plays it straight. Thea Queen is not Malcolm Merlyn's biological child with Moira — Oliver, however, is.
• True Potential: Onoki isn't the grandson of the first Tsuchikage. This was done to avoid making him related to the Kamizuru siblings, who are also featured in this fic.
• Watson's parents in Viper, Spider, Phoenix aren't her real parents. They're actors she payed to act as them.
• Like in Summer Rose Court, Ruby and Yang aren't half-sisters in Vale's Underground. In fact, the whole Rose/Branwen/Xiao Long has this. If they don't have the same surname, they aren't related in this story.
• Warriors Redux: Bluestar, Mistyfoot, and Stonefur have no relation anymore. They're just coincidentally similar looking blue-grey cats. According to the writer, they hated how Warriors added on more family drama into an arc already packed with family drama. They also found it nonsensical that no one ever guessed the twins were Bluestar's kits, so that plot point was removed in Warriors Redux.
• Warriors Rewrite:
  • Willowpelt is no longer Graystripe's mother.
  • Redtail isn't Sandstorm's father, with Lionheart taking the role instead.
• In Yokai Watch Re!, Nate is adopted. This is done to make him Lord Enma's son.

Films — Animation

• In the original Angry Birds series, Red and Terence are brothers, hence why they look alike. In the movies, there is no indication of this, with Red and Terence having just met at the Anger Management class.
• In the original Bambi books, Faline is Bambi's cousin. To avoid incest, this aspect of their relationship is never referenced in the Disney Bambi (though some tie-in books have referred to them as cousins).
• Hercules:
  • The franchise makes a lot of the gods unrelated to simplify or Bowdlerize mythology. We can probably assume that Zeus and Hera aren't siblings, for example. Even taking the TV show into account, references to the gods being one Tangled Family Tree are few and far between.
  • Hades is never referred to as Zeus' brother/Hercules uncle, though the tie-in show does (as does House of Mouse).
  • This version has Hera as Hercules' mom, while Alcmene is his Muggle Foster Parent. In the myths, Hera is Heracles' paternal aunt and stepmother while Alcmene is his biological mother and great-niece, her paternal grandfather having been Perseus.
• How to Train Your Dragon: In the books, Snotlout is Hiccup's cousin (their dads are brothers) who sees himself as a better choice as heir to the chieftainship. In the Dreamworks-continuity, it's neither confirmed nor denied if Hiccup and Snotlout are related to each other in any way—but Snotlout still (wrongly) believes that he'd be a way leader than Hiccup.
• In the 1973 Russian version of The Nutcracker, the heroine (who goes unnamed, since there's no dialogue) is a maidservant who works for the family that hosts the Christmas party. In the original book and the ballet, Marie (or Clara) is their daughter. This change makes her more sympathetic to Soviet audiences than a rich girl would have been, and it frees her to leave permanently with the Nutcracker Prince and presumably live Happily Ever After with him, instead of finding herself back home in the All Just a Dream or Or Was It a Dream? ending of other versions.
• Tarzan: In the novel Tarzan of the Apes, Tarzan eventually learns that his real name is John Clayton and he is the cousin of Professor Porter's colleague William Clayton. In Disney's film, Tarzan never learns the identity of his human parents, and there's no indication that he and Clayton are related.
• Wonder Woman (2009): Ares is made Hippolyta's evil former husband, despite their animosity for each other in the comics and the fact that he's her father as well as about the only Greek god who regularly protects his kids and avoids sleeping with any of his own descendants in the original myths.

Films — Live-Action

• Occurs in Asterix & Obelix: God Save Britannia, the fourth live-action Asterix movie. In the comic that it's primarily based on, Asterix in Britain, as well as its animated adaptation, Anticlimax is Asterix's cousin. In the live-action movie, they aren't related at all, seeing how neither of them recognizes the other during the first scene they share together.
• Batman & Robin sees Batgirl as Alfred's niece instead of Commissioner Gordon's daughter.
• The Blue Lagoon (1949): In the original novel, the leads are Kissing Cousins, but due to The Hays Code forbidding an incestuous relationship, the leads became unrelated.
• The Bravados: In the book, Sanchez's deputies are his relatives (Primo is his cousin and Pepe is their uncle), but they only are professional colleagues in the movie.
• In the comics, the Riot symbiote, like the Scream and Carnage ones, was the spawn of the Venom symbiote. In Venom (2018), no such ties exist.
• In Clash of the Titans (2010), two rather disturbing variants occur. For one, in this version, Perseus' mother, Danae, was a queen married to King Acrisius. In the actual myth, King Acrisius was her father. Furthermore, Perseus winds up with Io at the end of the film... a character who, in the story, would have been his great x 7-grandmother. Something this film shares with Clash of the Titans (1981) is that in the actual myth, Medusa and Poseidon were Pegasus' parents, but here, Pegasus is a sacred animal of Zeus and has nothing to do with Medusa or Poseidon.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • SHAZAM! (2019) follows the post-New 52 comics by making Billy and Mary foster siblings with an age gap instead of a pair of twins.
  • In The Suicide Squad, Flo Crawley does not appear to be related to her boss, Amanda Waller, even though she was Amanda's niece in the original comics.
• The Deep (1977): Kevin and Treece are cousins in the book, but seem to just be friends in the film.
• District 13 has Lola being changed from Leito's sister in the original to his ex-girlfriend in the remake Brick Mansions.
• DOA: Dead or Alive: In the video games, Ayane is Hayate and Kasumi's half-sister and cousin^note she is a Child by Rape born when Hayate and Kasumi's paternal uncle raped their mother. Here, she is a member of their ninja village in service to them and becomes Hayate's love interest.
• Fantastic Four (2015): Rather than have Susan and Johnny Storm be blood siblings, Susan was adopted into the Storm family. This was done so they could give Johnny a Race Lift to increase the team's diversity without having to do the same to Sue.
• G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra shows no sign that Heavy Duty and Roadblock are cousins.
• Danny Ketch isn't Johnny Blaze's brother in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
• Halloween (2018) ignores all the films after the first one, and thus the second film's revelation that Laurie Strode and Michael Myers were long-lost siblings will not apply in this continuity.
• While Andromeda Tonks (née Black) exists in the Harry Potter films, she’s never mentioned by name. Her name is on the family tapestry in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and her daughter exists but that’s about it. Sirius never calls her nor her daughter his cousin as he does in the book. Bellatrix and Narcissa also never say they have another sister so for all intents and purposes; this is played straight.
• Jem and the Holograms (2015) has this with Shana and Aja. In the cartoon, they grew up as Kimber and Jerrica's foster sisters, and this is kept in the film; however, here they are barely acquainted. The close bond between them from childhood is lost.
• King Arthur: Legend of the Sword plays this straight at the same time as Related in the Adaptation. Mordred, traditionally Arthur's bastard son/nephew who betrays him at the field of Camlann, is here depicted as a mage ruler who fights against Arthur's father Uther and is killed by him whilst Arthur himself is still a boy, so they're clearly not family. On the other hand, the Big Bad, Vortigern, was a Saxon overlord who Uther dethroned before ever conceiving Arthur with Igraine in the original folklore, but in the film, he's Uther's younger brother, who kills him, transferring his traditional enmity to Arthur.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service: The Secret Service has Jack London as Eggsy's uncle, but Jack's film counterpart Harry Hart isn't related to Eggsy in any way.
• In Land of Oz books, Dorothy is the biological niece of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry (though it's not mentioned which one is biologically related to her). In The Wizard of Oz (1925), she was a Doorstep Baby.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In the original mythology and The Mighty Thor, Lady Sif and Heimdall are siblings, but there's no sign of that in the movies. The fact that Heimdall received a Race Lift while Sif didn't makes blood relations unlikely.
  • While Odin appears riding the eight-legged horse Sleipnir in Thor, the Mister Seahorse backstory is never mentioned, specifically Loki shapeshifting into a female horse and getting impregnated.
  • In Thor: The Dark World, Tyr, who is Thor's older brother in the comics, is depicted as just another Asgardian warrior.
  • A variation with Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. In the comics, she is Loki's biological daughter, or was at least created by him. Here, she is actually Odin's biological daughter and the long-lost older sister of Thor (and Loki by adoption). This means that while she is no longer biologically related to Loki, she is now related to Thor. This also makes her a Composite Character with Angela, who is the comic universe's lost sister. Also played straight with Fenris. In the comics, he's Loki's son and Hela's brother. Here, she is simply Hela's servant.
  • In the Ultimate Marvel comics, it was heavily implied that the Chitauri were an offshoot or extremist faction of the Skrull race. In the MCU, the Chitauri are a completely distinct species and lack the ability to shapeshift like Skrulls, implying there is no common ancestry here.
  • A combination of this and Related in the Adaptation, but Star-Lord/Peter Quill is normally the son of J-Son of Spartax. Here, they are unrelated (and J-Son is only vaguely alluded to at most), and is instead the child of Ego the Living Planet, when in the comic, they are unrelated.
  • Since his redevelopment in 2005, Bucky Barnes has been Black Widow’s main love interest, but besides their mutual friendship with Captain America, they don’t really know each other in the MCU. It comes from the fact that in the comics, Widow has the same super serum as Bucky, and they trained together in the USSR whereas they don’t have that connection in the MCU. Comics Widow was born in the 1930s (the serum slows down her aging) but MCU Widow was canonically born in 1984 like Scarlett Johansson. MCU Bucky was born in 1917; so in other words, they’re not 15 years apart in age or so, he’s old enough to be her grandpa.
  • In The Avengers comics, Ultron was created by Henry Pym (who would later debut in the MCU with Ant-Man, released a few months after), and thinks of him (resentfully) as his father. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, this is instead his relationship with Tony Stark.
  • A deleted scene from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 featuring Simon Williams (as portrayed by Nathan Fillion) implies his role in The Vision's creation was essentially taken by J.A.R.V.I.S., but this remains to be seen with the character's official debut in the Wonder Man series on Disney+, where he will now be played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.
  • There's no evidence that the Tinkerer and Rick Mason are related — and even if they are, given the four-year age difference between Michael Chernus (Tinkerer) and O-T Fagbenle (Rick), it's very unlikely they're father and son like in the comics.
  • Phyla-Vell, the daughter of Mar-Vell in the comics, appears in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but whether or not they're genetically related has not been addressed, much less if the MCU's Mar-Vell even had any children of her own during her lifetime. In the credits, Phyla is officially listed without her surname.
• Les Misérables (1935): The Thénardiers disappear after the first act, and no mention is made of Eponine (here a "respectable" woman and the Amis' secretary) being their daughter like she is in the novel.
• Mrs Bluveridge, the owner of the Admiral Benbow Inn in Muppet Treasure Island, is very loosely based on Jim's mother in the novel, but is no relation to him as he's an orphan.
• In The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, the Nutcracker is an actual toy brought to life instead of Drosselmeyer's nephew under a curse.
• In the Swedish 80's adaptation of Olsen-banden, Jönssonligan, the brothers Harry and Benny had already been changed into cousins. Both of Jönssonligan's modern reboots took this a step further by making them unrelated; in Den perfekta stöten, they haven't even met each other prior to the events of the movie.
• Robin Hood: Men in Tights: In the original legends, Will Scarlet is usually said to be Robin's nephew. Here, there's no indication of any such relation.
• Roxanne: In the original source material, Cyrano and Roxane are cousins. Of course, a man being in love with his cousin would be rather less acceptable in modern-day America than 17th-century France, so C.D. and Roxanne are unrelated (in fact, she's only just arrived in town, and they've never met before the film begins).
• The 1987 adaptation of The Secret Garden makes Mr. Craven an old family friend rather than Mary's uncle, in order to have Colin Promoted to Love Interest while avoiding Kissing Cousins.
• In the Stuart Little book, Stuart is the biological son of the Littles who just happens to somehow look like a mouse and be extremely small like one. The Stuart Little films make him a Happily Adopted mouse.
• In the play of Thoroughbreds, Tim and Amanda are cousins. In the film, they're not related at all.
• In the V.I. Warshawski film, Bernard "Boom-Boom" Grafaulk, who was V.I.'s cousin in the original books, was changed to a potential love interest. Considering he was the murder victim in both, it didn't get far enough to start getting weird.
• William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet does this with Paris, Mercutio, and the Prince, who were all related in the original play. For the movie, Mercutio and Captain Prince were both Race Lifted into black men while Dave Paris is white. Almost all of the dialogue establishing the familial relationship between Paris and the Prince was cut^note The lone exception being the Captain claiming to have "lost a brace of kinsmen" at the end when Mercutio is the only relative of his we've seen die. and none of the characters are ever seen interacting.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • In the comics, Mystique is the stepmother of Rogue. However, in the film continuity, the two never meet each until after Magneto kidnaps Rogue in the original movie, and don't share any type of interaction whatsoever.
  • In X-Men: The Last Stand there is no relationship between Xavier and Juggernaut, while they are stepbrothers in the comics (with Juggernaut's hatred of Xavier being his major motivation).
    • This is later averted and made Truer to the Text in Deadpool 2 where in the new timeline thanks to a Cosmic Retcon, Juggernaut does state that Xavier is his brother.
  • In the comics, Cable is Cyclops' son and is genetically Jean Grey's child (his actual mother is her clone Madelyne Pryor). In Deadpool 2 he never interacts with either character and there's no suggestion that he's their son, although according to Word of God his real name is still Nathan Summers.
  • Happens again with Nightcrawler. The films give no indication that Mystique and Azazel are his parents like they are in the comics. In X-Men: Apocalypse a much younger Mystique has no significant reaction at all when she finds and rescues a young Nightcrawler. Although their relationship was alluded to in X2: X-Men United, where the two briefly have a conversation.
  • Banshee and Siryn are father and daughter in the comics, but Banshee is killed sometime between First Class and Days of Future Past, while Siryn shows up as a child in X2: X-Men United (which takes place decades later). The timeline means there's no way Banshee could have fathered Siryn in this universe, though it's possible they could be related in some other, unspecified way, as is possible for them to be related to Black Tom, who was Banshee's cousin in the comics.

Literature

• In Christian Jacq's five-part series about Ramses II, rather than him having 156 children by God know how many wives and concubines during his 90 year long life, all but three (Khaemwaset, Merneptah and Meritamen) are changed into students at the Academy Rameses set up in the palace, them being nicknamed "The Children of Ramses"
• A Tale of...: Queen Leah is not Aurora's mother despite their Strong Family Resemblance. Maleficent is, through a spell, and Aurora is the physical embodiment of all that was good in Maleficent.
• If we assume that Yeh-Shen really is the earliest version of Cinderella, then most subsequent versions of the tale apply this trope to Cinderella and her stepsisters. In Yeh Shen, the heroine and the nasty Jun-Li are half-sisters, each the daughter of one of their father's two wives. In later variants of the tale, from cultures that don't practice polygamy, Cinderella's two stepsisters are simply the daughters of her stepmother from a previous marriage.
• Thrawn Ascendancy: In Star Wars Legends, Thrass was Thrawn's biological brother, and the two were adopted together into the Mitth family. In the rebooted continuity, they're actually from different biological families, through both get adopted into the Mitth and grow to view each other as brothers anyway (Chiss families being more like political organizations with thousands of "relatives" it's unusual for two to bond that closely without actual blood, and using the title of "brother" is seen as a big deal).

Live-Action TV

• Arrowverse:
  • Arrow:
    • The Ravager. She's usually the illegitimate daughter of Slade Wilson. Here, she's merely his Dragon. Justified though, as she's a Composite Character of Isabel Rochev, who's the Ravager's actual civilian identity in this version.
    • Jean Loring and Ray Palmer are a married couple in the comics. In the show, she's given an Age Lift and is now old enough to be his mother, and does not appear at all in the season that features Ray as a guest star (before he moves on to Legends of Tomorrow.) Ray has a deceased fiancee whose loss is his reason for becoming a superhero... but her name is Anna. Legends reveals that Anna's last name was Loring, making her and Jean a Decomposite Character. Any connection between Jean and Anna is as yet unknown.
    • A weird example in a character initially introduced as Tina Boland before she reveals her real name "Dinah Drake"; which is the name of comic book Dinah Laurel Lance's mother. Thing is, the show already introduced Dinah Drake-Lance way back in the first season, who is Laurel's mother. The show's characters based on the Black Canary are a strange mix of Composite Character and Decomposite Character to the ones in the comics, making it hard to tie down which one directly adds up to which other.
    • In the comics Emiko Queen is the daughter of Robert Queen and Shado. In the series, she's the daughter of Robert and a woman named Kazumi Adachi, since the Shado who appeared in the first two seasons' island flashbacks clearly couldn't have a daughter Emiko's age, even if giving her an unmentioned relationship with Oliver's father wouldn't have been both contrived and squicky. Kazumi Adachi is briefly mentioned in Teen Titans Special #1 as Shado's grandmother's name, making her an example as well.
  • The Flash (2014):
    • Eddie Thawne, when compared to his closest comic counterpart Malcolm Thawne: in addition to being a much nicer person, Eddie has no blood relation to Barry Allen, whereas Malcolm was Barry's identical Evil Twin, which, along with Impulse, gives Barry familiar ties to his arch-foe, Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash. However, while he's not a blood relative of Barry's, Eddie is still an ancestor to Eobard.
    • Impulse also has no family connection to the Thawnes, since he's Barry's son rather than grandson, dropping Meloni Thawne out of the picture entirely.
  • Legends of Tomorrow: In the comics, Connor Hawke is Oliver's bastard son and successor as Green Arrow. Here, he's merely someone inspired to take up Oliver's superhero mantle. This is a result of him being turned into a Decomposite Character, as his original status as Oliver's illegitimate son was given to William Clayton in the show. Instead, he's John Diggle's son. If that's the case, then he is also Related in the Adaptation to Lyla Michaels, Harbringer from the comics, who is John Diggle's wife.
  • Supergirl (2015): The Daxamite hero Mon-El and the Kryptonian House of El. Although he had no actual biological relationship to them in the comics, he was treated as a surrogate brother by Superman and that is why he adopted the name "Mon-El" (his birth name being Lar Gand). In the show, this relationship with Superman doesn't exist. Yet he still goes by Mon-El, which is now his real name, with no explanation for why he has the same last name as Superman and Supergirl.
  • In a cross-show example, Ronnie Raymond and Felicity Smoak. In the comics, she's his Wicked Stepmother. On TV, he's a Recurring Character on The Flash and she's a regular on Arrow, and they've never even met.
  • In another cross-show example, Roy and Jim Harper. In the comics, they are nephew and uncle respectively. On TV, Roy is a regular character on Arrow while Jim's a guest character on Supergirl, and not only did they never even met, but they exist in different parts of The Multiverse.
• Lieutenant Sharon Agathon in Battlestar Galactica (2003). She has the callsign Athena, which makes her the counterpart to Admiral Adama's daughter Lieutenant Athena in Battlestar Galactica (1978), but here there's no biological relationship to Adama and his son Apollo at all (although, as he does with Starbuck and Dee, Adama does play a surrogate father role to her). In fact, this Athena is an instance of the Number Eight model of humanoid Cylon.
  • Word of God from Jane Espenson, however, indicates that the Eights were based on Adama's deceased older half-sister Tamara seen in the prequel series Caprica, so Athena actually was related to Adama and Apollo without any of them knowing it.invoked
• In Big Little Lies, Celeste's husband Perry and Jane's presumed rapist Saxon Banks were cousins. In Big Little Lies, they are not related at all, causing the Contrived Coincidence that Perry apparently just randomly chose the name of a gay guy living in the Monterey area when he raped Jane.
• In the comics, Jim Gordon was married twice, first to Barbara Kean and then to Sarah Essen. In Gotham, he has a relationship with Barbara but they don't get married, and he has no relationship with Comissioner Essen beyond a professional one.
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys: In the original myths, Hercules' sidekick Iolaus was his nephew, the son of his brother Iphicles. In the show, Iolaus is two years older than Hercules and is simply his best friend. (Interestingly, we do meet Iphicles. Worryingly, he shares an actor with Ares...)
• Inhumans: In the comics, Black Bolt and Medusa are Kissing Cousins, but in the TV show, Medusa's dialogue indicates that she and Black Bolt aren't related.
• The Legend of Mi Yue: Historically Huang Xie was probably the son of Mi Huai (which would make him Mi Yue's nephew). Here he's both unrelated to Mi Huai and the same age as Mi Yue.
• Narcos:
  • Isabella Bautista is an old friend of Félix-Gallardo, with enough Unresolved Sexual Tension for Félix's wife Maria to suspect they're having an affair. Félix does have several mistresses, Isabella is just not one of them. Félix dismisses this when his wife confronts him, pointing out that she's "like a niece to me". According to the Mexican authorities, her real life counterpart Sandra Ávila Beltrán actually IS his niece.
  • The Arellano-Félix clan is apparently unrelated to Félix-Gallardo (hint: the name is a big give-away). Not only is there no mention of any family ties, at multiple points they scheme against and attempt to depose him. They were his nephews and nieces in real life and were in those positions in the first place because the Guadalajara Cartel was largely a family empire.
• Played straight and inverted with the New Enchanted Forest version of the Tremaine family in Once Upon a Time. The "wicked stepmother" (in addition to being Rapunzel) is actually Tremaine's first wife, meaning he's the biological father of Anastasia and Drusella and the stepfather of Ella - the exact reversal of the traditional version.
• Downplayed in the Poirot adaptation of The Murder on the Links, where Jack Renauld is said to be the stepson of Paul Renauld, instead of his biological son, as in the books.
• Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace has an odd example. In the series Hongli is Zhen Huan's adopted son, and the fact he isn't her biological son is specifically mentioned as the reason for tensions between them. Historically, though, he was her biological son.
• Done multiple times in adapting Super Sentai into Power Rangers:
  • Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger Geki and Burai were brothers. This isn't the case for their Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers counterparts Jason Scott and Tommy Oliver.
  • Likewise, Goldar and Scorpina aren't shown to be married like their Zyuranger counterparts Grifforzer and Lamie were.
  • In Lightspeed Rescue and Mystic Force; their Sentai counterparts Go Go V and Magiranger were Super Family Teams composed of siblings, but none of the core Lightspeed Rangers were related^note Lightspeed's Pink and Titanium Rangers were siblings, but Titanium was a Canon Foreigner that didn't exist in Sentai and family relations of the Mystic Rangers were drastically reduced: the Blue and Pink Rangers were sisters, and only the Red Ranger was related to supporting characters instead of the entire team.
    • In the case of Lightspeed Rescue, the villains also fit this trope. In GoGoV, Grand Witch Grandiene is the mother of all her generals with the exception of Spell Master Pierre who is her family's butler, and thus all of them show extreme loyalty out of a (one-way) love towards their mother. In the case of her Lightspeed counterpart, Queen Bansheera, only one of them, Impus/Olympius, is her biological or otherwise children while the rest are just extremely loyal subordinates of hers.
  • In Bakuryuu Sentai Abaranger Geilton and Jeanne/Mahoro are siblings and they both hold a grudge against Asuka, though Jeanne executes Geilton after his failures in the second episode. In Power Rangers: Dino Thunder Elsa and Zeltrax (who inherits most of Geilton's traits and is the sole user of the Cursed Armor's suit in the adaptation) are Mesogog's Co-Dragons but aren't blood-related.
  • In Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger vs. Go-Busters, Neo-Geildon was a clone of Geildon. Neo-Geildon was adapted to Snide and has no connection to Zeltrax. Additionally, neither one is the brother of Elsa, Zeltrax's cohort, whereas the original Geildon was the brother of Elsa's Sentai counterpart, Jannu. This also extends to Tommy, as because of his already being a Composite Character who added Asuka to that mix, he isn't married to Elsa like Jannu was to Asuka, and thus has no familial connection to either Zeltrax or Snide.
  • Inverted and played straight in Ninja Steel. In Ninninger, the Red and White Rangers were siblings and the other core Rangers were their cousins, while Starninger was unrelated to them. In Ninja Steel, the core Rangers are unrelated while the Red and Gold Rangers are brothers.
  • Also done with the villains of Ninninger. Gengetsu and Ariake no Kata are husband and wife, Kyuemon is Gengetsu's illegitimate son, while Mangetsu is the couple's biological son. None of their Ninja Steel counterparts, Galvanax, Badonna, Madame Odious and Brax, are related at all.
  • While Zordon is a Composite Character from several sentai mentors, in Power Rangers Turbo, he shares Gekisou Sentai Carranger's Dappu's role with Dimitria. Outside of coming from Zordon's home world of Eltar, neither of them are connected to the Phantom Ranger in any known way, whereas VRV Master turned out to be Dappu's dad.
• While the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise rarely made the distinction on whether Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo were related by blood or adoption, Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation notably made it so that the brothers weren't related by blood so that they could have Ship Tease with the fifth female turtle Venus de Milo and have her established as having mutated with the other four before being separated from them without raising incestuous implications.
• A possible example in Tower of Terror. In both the TV film and the theme park ride it's based on, the five victims of the 1939 elevator crash were a stylish man and woman, a little girl, her nanny and a bellhop. Theme park goers have tended to assume that the man and woman were a married couple and the little girl was their daughter. In the film, however, they're an actor, a singer, and a Shirley Temple-esque child star, and none of them are related.
• Wonder Woman (1975): Carolyn Hamilton turns out (in the Wonder Woman '77 comic) to be an adaptation of Diana's twin sister Nubia. They are not related in this iteration.

Radio

• The BBC Radio adaptation of Wyrd Sisters bizarrely changed the Twist Ending so that while Tomjon is still the son of the elder Fool and the Queen, the Fool/Verence II is, as everyone believes, the son of Verence I and Mrs Fool, rather than being of entirely non-royal blood, as in the book. This of course, means that Tomjon and the Fool are not half-brothers, which breaks a couple of important scenes.

Theatre

• In Camelot, Mordred is still the child of Arthur and Morgause, but there's nothing to indicate that they were half-siblings who engaged in Surprise Incest.
• In some runs of Evil Dead: The Musical Ash's sister Cheryl is played by a black actress. If that's the case, her last words will be to tell Ash that he's adopted.
• In the original Les Misérables, Eponine and Gavroche were specified to be siblings, with the latter being the eldest son of the Thenardiers. They also have three other siblings. In the theatrical adaptation, there's no indication of them being related, or of them having any other siblings either.
• Thrill Me is based on Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, and their murder of Bobby Franks. In real life, Bobby was Richard's second cousin and neighbor, which he was able to use to lure him into his car—and probably how he knew his family had the money to pay a ransom. In the musical, Bobby is just a very unlucky kid chosen apparently at random.

Toys

• The fairy tales in Ever After High are a bit loose compared to the actual stories. For example, the future Snow White and the future Wicked Stepmother (referred to exclusively as the "Evil Queen") are the same age. There's never any mention of Raven being Apple's future stepmother. She's just expected to poison Apple one day.

Video Games

• Unlike in Blaster Master Blasting Again, in Blaster Master Zero II, Roddy and Elfie have no direct relations with Jason and Eve. Their namesakes in-universe, however, do.
• Harvest Moon: Back to Nature does this a lot compared to Harvest Moon 64:
  • Karen is not the daughter of Sasha and Gotz. She is the daughter of Sasha and Jeff.
  • Ann, Gray, and Rick were all related in 64 (thus their shared red hair) but aren't in Back to Nature. Ann and Gray were siblings and Rick was their cousin.
  • Stu's brother Ken was Adapted Out. Stu is no longer related to the Peddler and is instead Elli's little brother.
  • There's no mention to the original girls from the SNES title, thus making it ambiguous if the bachelorettes are still their granddaughters.
• Mega Man: in Mega Man (Classic), Mega Man, Roll, and the DLN series robots are "sibling bots" made by Dr. Light. In Mega Man Battle Network (an alternate universe/continuity), they're all unrelated; Mega Man, Roll and Guts Man are at least friends while others are either Mega Man's enemy or just a neutral presence.

Webcomics

• Darths & Droids:
  • Rey is the daughter of Han and Leia, which barring some even more surprising late revelations, presumably means she's not the granddaughter of Palpatine.
  • Kylo Ren, by contrast, is not the son of Han or Leia. Or at least, not the son of that Han Solo.
• Dumbing of Age, which adapts the author's Walkyverse comics into a College AU.
  • In the Walkyverse, Faz turned out to be Amber's half-brother, conceived from her dad's extramarital affair. In Dumbing of Age, Faz is apparently her stepbrother instead. (It has since been hinted that, nope, he's her half-brother, but not actually confirmed.)
  • Happens again with Carla, who is the Dumbiverse incarnation of Ultra-Car. UC sees Joe and Rachel as her parents because they built her. Carla is a human about the same age as Joe and Rachel and with no known connection to Joe at all, and the slimmest of connections to Rachel (they live on the same floor).
  • Youth Pastor Powers from Joyce's old church is the Dumbiverse counterpart of David Powers, aka Sal and Walky's real dad. As far as is known, he has no connection to them whatsoever in this universe.
• Lore Olympus removes the incestuous nature of the Olympian gods by making it so fewer of them are related, and none of those who are related are romantically engaged with each other.
  • Kronos and Rhea's only children are Hades, Posiedon, and Zeus. Hestia, Demeter, and Hera are not related to them by blood, so Hera and Zeus' marriage is not a brother/sister relationship like in the original mythology.
  • Likewise, Zeus and Hera's children are Ares, Hephaestus, Hebe, and Eris. Aphrodite and Hermes are unrelated, again removing the incest from her relationship with Ares and later Hephaestus. Also Apollo and Artemis are still Zeus' children, by Leto, but only Leto herself knew it until Persephone's trial.
  • Technically, Persephone was Hades' niece in the myth, since he and Demeter were siblings. Once again, that relationship was removed, so they remain unrelated.

Web Original

• In The Attic, a web series adaptation of Little Women in a college setting, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are college roommates instead of sisters. Their mother, "Marmee," is aged down and renamed Marlee, and she becomes their resident advisor and Meg's sister.
• The Shea Fontana iteration of DC Super Hero Girls features Beast Boy as a recurring character and occasionally shows his fellow Doom Patrol teammate Elasti-Girl as a background character among other students of Super Hero High. Given that this continuity's Rita is a teenager like Beast Boy, it's unlikely she is still his adoptive mother.
• In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Mr. Collins is unrelated to the Bennet sisters, rather than being their cousin as he is in Pride and Prejudice.

Western Animation

• The production bible for Action Man (1995) included details about Action Man's forgotten past, with one bit of information given being that his nemesis Dr. X is his adoptive brother. The 2000 animated series clearly shows Action Man and Dr. X to not have any familial ties.
• In The Avengers comics, Vision is based on the brainwaves of Simon Williams/Wonder Man, and sees him as his brother. While both Vison and Williams appear in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, there's no connection between them.
• In the Babar books, Babar married his cousin but in the animated adaptations he marries a childhood friend.
• Ben 10 (2016) subverts this as it initially sees Charmcaster as a normal girl who gained her power from buying Hex's spellbook with seemingly no connection to the man himself, but ultimately, it's revealed that like her original counterpart, she's indeed Hex's niece.
• Class of the Titans has Zeus and Hera as a married couple, but goes to great lengths to never mention the fact that they were brother and sister in the original Greek myths. In fact, the majority of the blood relationships between assorted gods/goddesses are not mentioned in the show, probably to keep the content as family-friendly as possible.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • The crew of Superman: The Animated Series wanted to use the original Kara Zor-El Supergirl, but DC's policy at the time following The Man of Steel was that Superman was indeed the last survivor of Krypton. They compromised and made her Kara In-Ze^note A Mythology Gag, as that's her mother's surname in the comics, a survivor of a nearby world that was wiped out by Krypton's destruction. The two decide to refer to each other as cousins, while in the comics they actually are.
  • Static Shock: Blood Syndicate members Fade and Flashback were brother and sister in the comics, but their counterparts in this continuity (the former being affiliated with a team based on the Blood Syndicate called the Night Breed and the latter being retooled as Nina Crocker/Timezone) have no indication of being related whatsoever.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • Due to the fact that her grandfather is presumed to still be alive, Gosalyn is never adopted by Drake (though he does appear to be acting as her legal guardian).
  • The series finale reveals that Webby Vanderquack is a Composite Character with April Duck, and has two clones, May and June. Consequently, the trio are not related to Daisy Duck, who was their aunt in comics canon. Instead, the three are clones of Scrooge McDuck.
  • Ludwig von Drake is usually portrayed as Donald Duck's uncle in the Classic Disney Shorts and the Disney Ducks Comic Universe. Here, he's the director of S.H.U.S.H. and a former friend of Scrooge McDuck with no hints at any relation with the Duck or McDuck side of the family.
• Gargoyles: While it never came up in the show, Word of God says that in this continuity, Morgana le Fay is a Changeling, and thus only Arthur's "adoptive" half-sister; however, he does not currently know the truth. Nimue is apparently the child with whom she was switched, and thus Arthur's biological half-sister in this version. invoked
• Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.: in the original comic books, Skaar is Hulk's half-alien son from Sakaar, whilst in the show, he's no relation to Hulk, though he admittedly doesn't know where he comes from.
• Iron Man: Armored Adventures:
  • Xin Zhang is based on the original Mandarin and Gene Khan is based his son Temugin ("Gene" even being short for "Temugin" here). However, Zhang is Gene's stepfather, rather than his biological one.
  • Sasha is Justin Hammer's personal assistant rather than his granddaughter. This is likely because the animated version of Justin is far too young to have an adult offspring, much less a grandchild.
  • Both inverted and played straight with Madame Masque as she's reimagined as the Iron Monger's daughter, yet her comic book father, Count Nefaria, also appears.
• In most Masters of the Universe continuities, Duncan is Teela’s father (either adoptive or biological Depending on the Writer). In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021), Duncan is much younger (about the same age or a bit older than Teela), and instead the two are depicted as foster siblings.
• My Little Pony: In the third generation cartoons that aired around the Turn of the Millennium, the characters Cheerilee and Scootaloo were sisters. In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, which premiered in late 2010 after the close of G3, Cheerilee is simply the town schoolteacher and has no relations to Scootaloo, redesigned as a young filly, beyond the typical teacher-student relationship she has with all her other students. Scootaloo herself is later revealed to be an only child, which is why she sees Rainbow Dash as an honorary sister.
• In the original Rugrats cartoon, Kimi became Chuckie's stepsister (and later his adoptive sister) after her mother Kira married Chuckie's father Chas at the end of Rugrats in Paris. In Rugrats (2021), she has no familial ties with Chuckie (though this will probably change).
• In the Rupert Bear comic strip, Jack Frost is King Frost's son and Billy Blizzard's cousin. All three characters appear in the animated adaptation and either interact or mention each other, but there is zero reference to any of them being related.
• The Chameleon from Spider-Man: The Animated Series is both this trope and its inverse, as he isn't the half-brother of Kraven like in the comics, but on the flip side, he and Electro are the sons of the Red Skull.
• Most Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles works keep it vague as to whether the turtles are biologically related, but they clearly are not in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as each one is of an entirely different species of turtle. Until it turns out they were made by combining regular turtles with the DNA of a single human—so they actually are related now.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • In the original comics, Pantha is Wildebeest's adoptive mother. In the show, they are just good friends.
  • Jericho in the comics was Deathstroke's son, but this continuity gives no indication that he's related to Slade.
• In Voltron: Legendary Defender, Romelle and Allura are unrelated, as Romelle was born in a secret Altean colony millennia after Allura went into stasis. This contrasts their relationship in the original Voltron show, where they are cousins.
• Winx Club has an odd zig-zagged case of this in the 4Kids dub with Bloom and Daphne. The original establishes that Daphne was Bloom's older sister (making Daphne's Heroic Sacrifice to save Bloom when she was a baby and subsequent role as a Spirit Advisor to her more poignant), but for some reason the dub never mentions it, implying they are not related. In season 2, Bloom sees a family tree of her biological line, which includes Daphne as her sister. This is left unedited in the dub, which was either an oversight or means that Bloom and Daphne are related after all (either is possible because 4Kids' dubs are known for being a little loose with consistency).
• In X-Men: Evolution, Amanda Sefton. In the comics she's Kurt's adopted sister whom he dates; here they keep the romance but cut out the sibling angle.
• Young Justice (2010) has this with Ra's al Ghul and the Sensei by Word of God. Despite "The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul" revealing that the Sensei was Ra's's father, Greg Weisman has said that isn't the case on the show.

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