Basic Trope: A female or minority takes up the mantle of an existing superhero.
- Straight: Bob, the Caucasian male Secret Identity of Superio, is replaced by Adelita, a Hispanic female.
- Exaggerated: Every single member of the Justice Consortium is replaced by a female or a minority.
- Downplayed:
- Bob's successor appears to be another Caucasian male, but is explicitly stated to be a mixed race.
- Adelita becomes Bob's prominent Sidekick
- Adelita becomes Superio in the Shared Universe, not replacing Bob but rather working aside from or with him.
- Justified:
- Adelita was adopted as a fellow super with the same powers and to atone for being unable to save her father, she decides to honor him by taking up his mantle.
- Adelita’s mentor faces a challenge that requires someone of either a different gender or a different skin tone than his own to face (for example: infiltrating a community made up entirely of either women or people whose skin color closely matches Adelita’s for spying and intel-gathering purposes), so he can’t do it on his own. Therefore, he recruited Adelita, who has what she’ll need for the job, trains her, and lets her take up his mantle because he knows that when her training is complete, she’ll have a better chance at completing that specific mission and saving the day than him. And when she completes the mission and proves herself, she impresses him so much that he decides to make her his partner in heroism and names her his successor.
- Adelita is Bob's mixed-race daughter, so she inherited his powers due to Superpowerful Genetics. When her father retires, she takes up the mantle due to her superpowers.
- Inverted: The Hispanic female Adelita is replaced by the Caucasian male Bob.
- Subverted:
- Bob's replacement Adel has jet black skin. He later states that he was actually a pale Englishman before the transformation.
- Adelita is actually a Super Gender-Bender form of Bob.
- Bob's replacement Adrian turns out to be a white male like Bob.
- Double Subverted:
- Except 'pale' in this case was relatively speaking - he was still quite tan even without any sun exposure.
- Later, Bob retires and gives his superhero(ine) identity to Charlotte, a black woman.
- Adrian turns out to be gay; Bob is straight.
- Parodied:
- A confused Bob is replaced by the suddenly appearing Adelita, who declares she is there to carry on his legacy but also appease certain demographics.
- The Flawless Sorceress, a petite woman who wore a skimpy outfit, is replaced by her fat and hairy nephew who explicitly is not trans yet goes by "Flawless Sorceress" and somehow wears the same much too small outfit.
- Zig Zagged: Adelita and Bob have consistently wound up taking up a mantle of the other in adaptations. Bob is usually the first and a Caucasian male while Adelita has been every known ethnicity or LGBT. In a few cases Adelita was the first Superio and replaced by Bob.
- Averted: Bob's successor is another Caucasian male.
- Enforced:
- The creators make the hero's successor a minority to try and be more culturally diverse and to avoid accusations of bigotry.
- The actor who plays the hero's successor happens to be of a minority group, so this is worked into the plot.
- Lampshaded: "So what if I'm a different gender or ethnicity from my predecessor. I still stand for the same things he did."
- Invoked: After Superio dies or retires, a fan of his who happens to be a minority volunteers to continue the legacy.
- Superio specifically chooses Adelita as his successor.
- Exploited: Evulz sets up an Amazon Brigade to not be plausibly imitable by someone who remotely looks like Superio. Adelita infiltrates and then reveals herself as the new Superio.
- Defied: Superio's mantle is based upon being a very close match for the first one in mind, body, and spirit. Being a different natural hair color shade or height could disqualify a candidate - being a different ethnicity or sex is right out.
- Implied: Superio wears body concealing Powered Armor with a masked voice. At one point the new Superio says "unlike my predecessor I am not a man in a metal suit". Given that the suit is explicitly metallic it is unclear if the new Superio is a woman, genderqueer, a Brain in a Jar cyborg or something non-human.
- Discussed: "Wasn't Superio a white guy last week?"
- Conversed: "I heard that Adelita will be the next Superio after Bob decided to retire. I'm excited to see how she carries on his legacy!"
- Deconstructed: Adelita suffers from public backlash after taking the mantle of Superio. While many arguments against her are clearly the product of Straw Misogynists and racists, many reasonable cases exist stating she is not fit to be Superio as she does not have Bob's same experience, knowledge, and restraint. Adelita eventually gives in to the controversy, constantly having to justify her existence and competence as a superhero, which leads to her screwing things up, proving the public's point. In addition, Superio's old Rogues Gallery are all too eager to bully an inexperienced protector.
- Reconstructed: This is a Coming of Age Story. Adelita eventually takes the rational complaints to heart, and decides to better herself either in the image of Superio or her own. She eventually proves the competence she already had, finally gains the respect of both the Rogues Gallery (except for maybe Electro-Man, who Hates Everyone Equally) and the public, and eventually makes a name for herself as Superia.
- Played For Drama:
- Superio is struck in battle, goes flying, and falls at the feet of Adelita, a random Hispanic woman running away from the battle. She recognizes the shattered superhero and does her best to comfort him in his final moments...Superio takes her hand and tells her that she must take up the mantle he can no longer bear. Adelita feels a surge of power within her and Superio crumbles to dust in her arms. The newly-empowered Adelita tries to put a brave face on things, but she's freaking out. Her life and background are different from Superio's in ways that make her feel unworthy of the title, she's been doing what feels right with her new powers, but people are complaining that she's not performing grandiose deeds as Superio did. Not only that, but bad footage and word-of-mouth (aided perhaps by her minority status) lead some to the conclusion that this random chick somehow stole Superio's powers and maybe even killed him in the process. She's not so sure they're wrong, she doesn't know what's going on, but she believes she's shaming his name. The voice of Superio tells her that's nonsense, and he chose her for her selfless compassion and that nothing matters but her will to do good.
- "The Superior Superio" is a story about the Troubled Production of the titular Show Within a Show and how hiring Adelita to play Superio began innocently (by Hollywood standards), with the production team aiming for Ability over Appearance when the casting call became a train wreck and they decided that anybody who could act their way out of a paper bag and willing to wear the Superio outfit for 17 hours a day for five months would do, but executives (as they are wont to do) were quick to drum out the Notre Dame University marching band of being progressive for marketing purposes, which led to a Flame War of people who hate progressiveness as a whole and changes to Superio in specific, which led to bad publicity and boicots and the Superio film becoming a Box Office Bomb even without taking Hollywood Accounting as a factor, which led to everybody in the production entering the living hell of being a Hollywood has-been.
- Played For Laughs: During training, Bob lists off a bunch of Names to Run Away from Really Fast, namely Electro-Man (who's actually an Empowered Badass Normal even without his electricity), Hellraiser The Uncontainable, and Dark Pharaoh. Adelita accuses Bob of demeaning her as a woman and she is just as strong as him, when he really means she is inexperienced, and even at his current level Hellraiser has nearly killed Bob 15 different times, Electro-Man once removed his powers briefly (while also engaging in a comically petty competition that's treated as Serious Business with Hellraiser in who brought Superio closer to death, right now they're neck and neck with 15 different times each), and Dark Pharaoh had caused some of the craziest Flame Wars known to man in forums about Superio. Hilarity Ensues.
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