It may be something in their face or their hair. It may be a specific accent, Character Tics that seem familiar, or a specific talent. At any rate, there is something about this person that makes you convinced that this person is related to someone you're familiar with. Except that there's no relation whatsoever.
Mistaken For Related can take two forms. The first is when a person assumes that somebody is actually related to them. The second is when some third party assumes that two or more other people related. In any case, there's no actual blood relation despite appearances.
The reasons for this error can vary. They may have the same family name, or a physical resemblance, especially if it's a Shared Unusual Trait. There may be rumours that someone has a Long-Lost Relative and this person seems to fit the bill. They could have a particularly close bond to said family, to the point of sharing Character Tics or have a Big Brother Instinct or something similar towards its members (like being a Mama Bear). They may be in the same — unusual — field of work. There's also a chance they're part of a minority small enough to be noteworthy. In less realistic settings, people may assume that Superpowerful Genetics are in play.
At any rate, this character has a number of traits that lead them or other people to believe that they are somehow related to a specific someone.
Keep in mind that this trope still applies in case a person who is adopted or married in the family is mistaken for a blood relative.
The results of this may vary. This person may use their resemblance in order to trick other people (for example claim part of the family inheritance) or they may get caught up in a family drama that they have nothing to do with. It can also lead to this person and the family actually developing a close relationship via Commonality Connection. Many times, this kind of setup can lead to The Reveal that they really are a Long-Lost Relative, but in this case, this trope is Averted. If this happens a lot, this person may point out to strangers that there's no relation.
This trope also does not apply in the case clones, Alternate Selves, or Reincarnation — in the former two a DNA check would probably produce a "related" result, while in the latter it's literally the same person.
Compare with Ambiguously Related, when neither the characters In-Universe nor the audience knows for certain if there's a relation or not. Also compare with Family Relationship Switcheroo for when somebody confuses what type of relative someone is (a child as opposed to a sibling for example). Don't confuse with Like Brother and Sister, where people know that the two characters are not related. Inversion of Relative Error, where people assume that two people are a couple when they're actually family. May overlap with Mistaken Identity, Alleged Lookalikes, and Identical Stranger (if they assume this person is a specific member of the family tree), as well as Inexplicably Identical Individuals. Relatively Flimsy Excuse is when someone pretends to be someone's relative. Supertrope to Is That Cute Kid Yours?, where it's assumed the two characters have a parent-child relationship. Contrast to Luke, I Am Your Father, Luke, You Are My Father, and Surprise Incest, where the characters discover they're related. Not related with Pretending to Be One's Own Relative.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In Chapter 74, Kusuri's family is attacked by a pharmaceutical spy, who Rentarou initially thinks is another member of the family before Kusuri corrects him.
- Even Though We're Adults: Akari initially mistakes Ayano's husband for her brother. She didn't know that Ayano was married.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid: Vivio is mistaken for the child of Nanoha and Fate due to her strong resemblance to both adoptive parents.
- In My Hero Academia, Todoroki notices the similarities between Midoriya's Quirk and All Might's, asking if Midoriya is All Might's secret love child. Midoriya denies this, of course, but this confrontation over Midoriya's alleged secret father is what leads Midoriya to learn about Todoroki's troubled home life.
- One Piece Film: Red: The Five Elder Stars assume that Uta is related to the Figarland family when they learn that she is Shank's daughter and believe they are biologically related, which makes one of them briefly hesitate to send the marines after her. In truth, Uta is Shank's adopted daughter and has no relation to the Figarland family.
- In Pretty Face, Masashi Randoh is mistaken by Rina's long-lost twin sister, because of the facial reconstruction he suffered while he was in a coma. It Makes Sense in Context.
- During the Sailor Moon: S Arc of the '90s anime, Mamoru tells a disguised Mimete that he's having lunch with his family (Usagi and Chibiusa). While Mimete assumes that the two girls are his sisters and tells him as much, Mamoru clarifies that they're his future wife (Usagi) and child (Chibiusa).
Audio Play
- In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio Wirrn Isle, at different points all three members of the Buchman family assume that new companion Philippa "Flip" Jackson is the daughter of the Sixth Doctor, and the Doctor and Flip have to correct that assumption.
Comic Books
- Asterix: In "Asterix and Son", when Asterix asks the chief Vitalstatistix, his wife Pedimenta, and the druid Getafix why there is a Doorstop Baby at his place, they all assume the baby is Asterix's. (Despite the title, Asterix is not in fact the baby's father).
- In Super Sons, Kid Amazo sees how much Jon and Damian bicker and assume they must be a Sibling Team given Kid Amazo's own animosity with his own family. Jon and Damian quickly deny this, but it becomes a Running Gag that Jon is mistaken for Damian's older brother due to being taller than him and sharing his hair color despite Jon being younger than Damian.
- Watchmen: Rorschach's Cynicism Catalyst was a little girl who'd been kidnapped by a man who thought she was related to a rich family due to having the same surname. On realizing his mistake, the kidnapper murdered her and fed the corpse to his dogs. Rorschach burned the man alive and became the '90s Anti-Hero we all know.
Comic Strips
- Calvin and Hobbes: One Story Arc has Calvin and his parents going to the zoo. While there, Calvin follows a woman he assumes is his mom around, and only realizes she's not his mom when she's revealed to have light hair and glasses (Calvin's mom has brown hair and no glasses). He apparently thought she looked like her from the legs down.
Fan Works
- In Anyone, Shouto is absolutely certain that Izuku is All For One's son, and even made an excessively long Power Point presentation on the subject. Dabi on the other hand thinks Izuku is related to All Might. Averted from Shouto's side when a one-shot from All For One's point of view reveals that he really is Izuku's father.
- The entire premise of Are you my dad? is that Izuku and All for One mistook each other for family.
- In Blank Canvas, Shouto thinks that Izuku and maybe Shinsou are related to Aizawa due to him being a Parental Substitute to them. Later Aizawa actually adopts Shinsou.
- Cor Autem Aurora: Riku ends up at the receiving end of this quite frequently. Some people assume that he's a Royal Bastard of the Fleuret family — as he shares the family's trademark silver hair and light eyes, as well as their talent for magic — while others assume he's somehow related to Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum due to them being (almost) Identical Strangers. A tabloid even calls him Noctis' long-lost twin. In reality, there's absolutely no relation because Riku is from a different universe.
- Crimson and Noire: Due to the Glamour covering the Miraculous wielders and believing that their powers are inherited, Alya thought that the Fox Heroes Citrine Húlí and Foxglove are grandfather and grandson, unaware that they are actually Wang Fu and Nino Lahiffe respectively and don't even look alive as civilians, much less are even related.
- The Dragon King's Temple: Teal'c is surprised when Janet reveals Toph and Zuko aren't brother and sister, because the Jaffa saw them interact and their relationship had all the hallmarks of siblinghood.
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: Invoked in "Recovering", where a group of three, a romantic couple and their friend, deliberately hide as a set of siblings by altering their hair color so they match.
- In the Psychonauts fanfic, Family Swap AU
, Lili is under the belief that Raz is the son of Milla and Sasha until the end of the arc based around the first game, where he unintentionally corrects her.
- In the Star Wars fanfic The Father, a kidnapped Han Solo is mistaken by The Emperor as being Darth Vader's son, as Boba Fett (Han's kidnapper) hadn't suspected there to be more than one teenager living at Bast Castle (Han had been living there with Luke and Luke's younger twin sisters). Han decides to play along with the assumption.
- The Mountain and the Wolf: The Wolf believes Jon Snow and Ramsay Snow are brothers, being unaware of the Westeros convention of giving bastard children a generic last name (similarly not knowing why the recently-legitimized Ramsay went by Bolton). He praises Jon for being a much better fighter than Ramsay, but because he's also currently murdering unarmed Lannister prisoners the mistake goes uncorrected.
- In one of the most awkward scenes in A Song of Ice and Fire Modern AU Fic The New Girl, a photographer assumes Stannis and Sansa are father and daughter. Sansa is actually Stannis's girlfriend.
- In The New Man: An Adam Smasher SI, a rumor goes around that Adam didn't kill David at Corpo Plaza because the boy is his son, and that the whole Cyberskeleton incident was an Arasaka operation against Militech that both were involved in.
- In The Single Father, a Harry Potter fanfic which diverges from canon during the events of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Peter Pettigrew and Lord Voldemort are constantly mistaken for father and son.
- In A Song of Ice, Fire and Heart, several people first assume Roxas and Ventus hail from the Lannister family, courtesy of their golden blond hair. Even Jaime Lannister actually wondered if the Keybearer wasn't some kind of a distant cousin — but since Ventus and Roxas are interdimensial travelers, there's really no blood relation at all.
- The Sponge House: In "Rock-a-Bye Bunny" (parodying the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve") when Leni and Luan are taking their pet rabbit Cinnamon for a walk in a pram, a stranger mistakes them for his two mothers.
- Swords and Sorcery: Emiya Shirou initially gets mistaken for a Weasley by some people because he's a redhead, but that assumption is soon dropped. The funny parts start when people start assuming that he's related to the Emiya Kiritsugu of the Harry Potter universe because of their strikingly similar personalities - a.k.a. their Combat Pragmatist approach to problem-solving - to the point that Kiritsugu himself starts looking into it. Ironically, back in his own universe, Shirou was adopted by Emiya Kiritsugu, but he has absolutely no clue that he was an assassin, and his Kiritsugu never trained him so the Combat Pragmatist attitude was something Shirou developed on his own. There really is no relationship whatsoever between Shirou and HP Kiritsugu.
- In the Persona 3 fic Wh-WHAAAAAAAAAAT, a rumor is spread around Gekkoukan High School that Makoto and Yukari have a child after they were spotted hanging around a child by the Naganaki Shrine, who Makoto referred to as their family. The child in question was Ken; as Aigis points out, he is ten years old, while Makoto has been in Iwatodai for less than a year and has only been dating Yukari for three months. In addition, though it isn't stated, Yukari and Makoto would have been several years younger than Ken is now when he was born.
Films — Animated
- Monsters, Inc.: When a daycare teacher sees Sully (a monster) being affectionate to Boo (a human girl disguised as a monster), she assumes they're father and daughter.
Films — Live-Action
- In one of The Addams Family movies, somebody mistakes a family whose last name is "Adams" with one "D" as being relatives of the eponymous Addams family.
- After the Dark: It's mentioned that Jack once brought his boyfriend to a party and people thought they were cousins.
- In Avengers: Infinity War, Dr Strange initially assumes that Peter Parker is Tony Stark's ward when meeting the young man (he's not).
- Little Women: In the 1994 film adaptation (starring Winona Ryder), Jo's suitor Friedrich Bhaer calls at the house, where Hannah the housekeeper mistakes him for a European friend of Amy's and informs him that "Miss March and Mr. Laurie are livin' next door". Friedrich takes this to mean that Jo has married her old friend Laurie, but Jo hurries down the road after him to explain that it's her sister who is married.
- National Lampoon's European Vacation: While the Griswalds are in Germany, they decide to pop in and visit relatives that they have there. All they know about them, though, is that they live at a house with the address number 6. They find a house marked with that number, and introduce themselves to the people inside, even spending the day with them and leaving the next. They missed the 1 in the address number.
- Saw IV has A single-receptor variant involving multiple relatives. In his last meeting at the police station with Strahm and Perez before he's abducted, Hoffman shows up carrying a teddy bear. Looking at the teddy bear, Perez assumes that Hoffman has a wife and a child, which he denies as being a "short story". The teddy bear is actually a hint at what's revealed at the end of the movie, since it's the same one that Corbett Denlon had in Saw III.
Perez: I didn't know you were married.
Hoffman: I'm not. It's a short story, believe me. - Snow Dogs: When Ted Brooks inherits his biological mother's house and sled dog team, he decides to seek out his biological father, assuming it must be the only other Black man in the tiny backwater village of Tolketna, Alaska. He is wrong — it's actually the gruff white mountain man who's been giving Ted a hard time ever since he got there.
Literature
- Adrian Mole: Averted by Adrian himself in Secret Diary, when he refuses to go on holiday with his father, his father's mistress "Stick Insect" Doreen Slater, and her son Maxwell, because people will assure that Doreen is Adrian's mother, and Maxwell is his brother.
- Fox Demon Cultivation Manual: Because Song Ci drank Rong Bai's blood, his own blood smells like Rong Bai's. This prompts Zhu Yishu and (briefly) Rong Bai himself to assume they're related. The misunderstanding is cleared up long before they start a relationship, though.
- In Harriet the Spy, when Harriet Welsch and her best friend Simon "Sport" Roque meet the mother of Ole Golly (Harriet's babysitter), Mrs. Golly asks Sport if he's Harriet's brother.
Harriet: No, he's my husband.Ole Golly: Don't be snarky, Harriet!
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Professor Slughorn asks Hermione Granger if she's related to another famous potionmaker with the name Granger due to her knowledge of the subject. She replies that she doubts it because she's a Muggleborn, so she has no other wizard relatives.
- Towards the beginning of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo Baggins is going by the codename "Mr. Underhill" to steer clear of the Black Riders who want to know where "Baggins" is. This comes back to bite him when he encounters other hobbits who actually do have the family name of "Underhill", who take him for a long-lost cousin and start asking him questions about "their" family's activities in The Shire.
- Malory Towers: In the third book, Gwendoline tries to befriend the shy new girl, introduced as the "Honourable" Clarissa Carter, only to lose interest when she sees Clarissa being picked up by a dowdy-looking woman in a plain car during mid-term break. Gwen assumes that the woman is Clarissa's mother, and her plain appearance means that Clarissa is not so "Honourable" after all. However, the woman is only Clarissa's governess, not her mother.
- Savvy: In the sequel book, Scumble, when Ledge finds out that some relatives of his crush SJ have also had "savvies" (i.e. superpowers), he fears that they are cousins, since having a savvy is genetic. However, it turns out that she isn't his cousin after all.
- In the book Teeny Tiny which teaches you how to crochet small stuffed toys, the description for two sentient fried eggs that have joined together in the pan is "Conjoined twins? Hardly— they're not even related!", implying that people have mistaken them for conjoined twins before.
- In Unseen Academicals, a bledlow at the university, Alphonse Nobbs (no relation), is mistaken for being related to a certain Corporal "Nobby" Nobbs of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Possibly motivated by his namesake's reputation, Alphonse is quick to quash any speculation about this.
- Warrior Cats: In Sunset, there's a line about Floss where Brambleclaw incorrectly thinks she might be a littermate of one of the other barn cats simply because she looks like them. Whether it's referring to Daisy or Smoky varies by edition: the original mentions that her fur was "gray and white like Daisy's", and even if Daisy had gray and white fur, there's nothing else in the books supporting them being family, and the official site's family tree depicts them as unrelated. The 2015 reprint just says "her fur was gray and white" after describing another gray and white cat, Smoky, who is her mate and certainly not her sibling.
- Winnie the Pooh: In "Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest and Piglet Has a Bath", Kanga bathes Piglet, but he's (apparently) usually such a Messy Pig that Christopher Robin doesn't recognise him when he's clean. Thus, he believes Piglet is actually Pooh's nephew or uncle.
Live-Action TV
- Birds of a Feather: In "Model", Sharon manages to get a job at a modeling agency for plus-sized women. When Dorien, her friend, comes in afterward, Babs, who is part of said agency, happily remarks how Dorien must feel like a proud mother for seeing her daughter take on the role, much to Dorien's annoyance. Sharon makes no attempt to correct this and even suggests later on that Dorien is her grandmother instead.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer had an Amnesia Episode where, while trying to figure out who they were, almost all of the main characters failed to figure out their relationship to each other. Willow thinks her friend Xander is her boyfriend and her girlfriend Tara is her "study buddy", Anya thinks she is engaged to Giles instead of Xander, and Giles and Spike think they are father and son.
- Chance in a Million begins when a man named Tom Chance decides to go on a blind date with a woman named Alison, which occurs at the same place and time as a separate woman named Alison is waiting for her long-lost cousin, who is also named Tom. Thanks to a misunderstanding, Alison ends up thinking that Tom Chance is said cousin, even though he isn't.
- Cheers: When Gus, the former owner of the bar, meets Woody, he assumes Woody is Coach's son. Sam says it's a good guess.
- Doctor Who:
- In one episode, the Doctor is travelling with a man and his baby son Alfie. A shopkeeper sees the trio and assumes the Doctor is Alfie's other father.
- In "The Fires of Pompeii", the Doctor and Donna both claim they are Spartacus. The local Romans first guess that they are married, which they immediately deny, before assuming they must be siblings.
- In the Fifth Doctor story "Black Orchid", the TARDIS crew meet Ann Talbot, a young woman from 1920s England who looks so like the Doctor's companion, Nyssa, that people assume Ann and Nyssa are somehow related. However, there is no family connection between them. In fact, Nyssa isn't even human, but an alien from the planet Traken.
- Friends: In one episode Joey is trying to get back together with an ex-girlfriend and arranges for a double date by telling his ex that Monica is his girlfriend while pretending to Monica that he's got a date with his ex who will be bringing her brother along as a date for Monica. Monica grows increasingly uneasy over the course of the evening at the behavior of the people she thinks are siblings. She figures it out when she sees the guilty look on Joey's face.
- In Happy Days, one episode involves Fonzie meeting his pregnant ex-girlfriend Louisa. He thinks the unborn baby is his, but it isn't.
- The Last of Us (2023): Henry mistakenly assumes that Joel and Ellie are father and daughter. They emphatically correct his mistake.
- Modern Family: Jay Pritchett's much younger second wife Gloria is occasionally mistaken for his daughter. Depending on the circumstances Jay finds this either embarrassing or gratifying. Gloria doesn't particularly mind but Claire, Jay's daughter from his first marriage who is older than Gloria, finds it mortifying.
- In a Monk episode, Sharona and Monk are in a record store. The rather gruff store owner is very obsessive-compulsive about the records being in a precise order in the bins, yet Monk manages to point out a cover that is out-of-order. Sharona asks if they are possibly related; Monk and the store owner reply "What makes you say that?" in unison.
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: Princess Leia knows that she was not born an Organa, and as she interacts with Obi-Wan she realizes that he knows more about her than he's letting on. In Part III, Leia asks Obi-Wan if he is her long-lost biological father; he says that he wishes he could say that, but he's not. Given who her father really is, Obi-Wan isn't eager to get more specific than that.
- Sesame Street: In one skit, Mr. Johnson shows Grover a picture of his elderly wife. Grover assumes the woman is his great-grandmother.
- In Trace episode "Children in a Cage", the kidnappers want to abduct a rich businessman's wife and child. However, instead of the former, they kidnap a journalist who is no relation to the baby. Justified, since the little girl's mother leaves her in the journalist's care to pretty herself up for a picture, and the journalist is genuinely affectionate with the child. Ironically, at the end of the episode, the girl's father divorces his wife and starts a relationship with the journalist, making her an actual Parental Substitute for the girl.
Theatre
- Avenue Q: In the prelude to the song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist", Kate Monster gets very offended when Princeton asks if she and Trekkie Monster are related because they have the same last name.
- Groovelily's Striking 12: Used in the imaginary party sequence. The protagonist can't bring himself to tell an acquaintance he's broken his engagement to Diane, so when Diane arrives with another man, the acquaintance assumes it's her brother. She ends up saying, "I don't think I've ever seen two siblings kissing quite like that..."
Video Games
- In the first Nintendo Direct to feature Doug Bowser (the E3 2019 direct to be specific), Bowser the Koopa King appears to give announcements on upcoming games before Doug arrives to inform him that he isn't the Bowser that is scheduled for the presentation, prompting Bowser to walk away awkwardly. Afterward, Yoshiaki Koizumi asks Doug Bowser if he and Bowser are related. Doug tells him that they get that a lot.
Visual Novels
- Virtue's Last Reward: When Sigma sees a young girl in a picture Tenmyouji has, he mistakenly thinks that the girl is Tenmyouji's granddaughter. Quark then clarifies that the girl was Tenmyouji's first love. Tenmyouji denies. Sigma doesn't buy his denial and calls him "hopeless romantic".
Web Comics
- El Goonish Shive: Susan and Diane live in the same town (though they go to different high schools), look nearly identical to each other, have the potential for the same type of magic, and were born within hours of each other. Diane is even adopted, while Susan's father left after having an affair when she was a kid. But after much speculating, it turns out that they are not twins. Downplayed, since they are revealed to be distantly related through the same half-immortal ancestor, owing to the strong resemblance.
- Inverted in Jupiter-Men. When Nathan brings the twins to his base without blindfolds, they find a picture of Daejung Mun, the wealthy CEO of Mun Tech Industries. Quintin asks if Nathan admires him to have a picture of a celebrity in his home. Nathan replies that Daejung Mun is his dad.
Web Original
- Not Always Right:
- In this story, a boy and girl are out shopping; when the girl wants to leave, she puts her hand in her boyfriend's back pocket, leading another customer to promptly start berating her for "grabbing [her] brother that way". Despite being repeatedly told they aren't related (and backed up by the guy the boyfriend was talking to), the woman continues to call them all liars before storming off.
- In this story, a woman is commonly mistaken for the mother of the children she babysits. This is partly because (due to the real mother having a medical condition that means the babysitter is needed a lot) they've become attached to her, and partly because they mishear her name (pronounced "Ah-mee") as "Mommy".
- In this story
Western Animation
- The Loud House: In "Not a Loud", Lincoln finds that his birth story isn't written down. This, in addition to his white hair that none of his sisters have, makes him think that his parents had a daughter but swapped her with him because they wanted a boy. When he and his friend Clyde see a girl his age with hair like one of his sisters, a personality like several of his other sisters, and white-haired parents, they assume she is this daughter and her parents are Lincoln's.
- In The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode "Owl in the Family", Owl realises he hasn't seen any of his relatives in so long, he's forgotten what any of them look like. When some crows arrive, he assumes they're his relatives.
- Phineas and Ferb: When the boys go to Tokyo, one of them assumes everyone is Stacy's cousin, since he can't tell Asian people apart.
- Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World: In the first episode, when Kirsten is pretending to be a man to get sperm from another gay man to impregnate herself with, Dana inadvertently reveals that the other gay man is really a woman. The woman then begs Kirsten for sperm, her and Dana, whom she mistakes for Kirsten's father.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Rock-a-Bye Bivalve", SpongeBob and Patrick raise a baby scallop and roleplay as his parents (with SpongeBob even dressing in drag and pretending to be a mother). This causes a couple on the street to assume they really are his parents.
- Tiny Toon Adventures pre-empts this assumption every time Buster and Babs introduce themselves. Since they have the same 'last name' (Bunny), they chorus the words "No relation" to assure the viewer that no, they are not related.
