Oedipus gets a bad rap; Freud should've named it a Jocasta Complex.
Women, listen to your mothers
Don't just succumb to the wishes of your brothers
Take a step back, take a look at one another
You need to know the difference between a father and a lover.
Don't just succumb to the wishes of your brothers
Take a step back, take a look at one another
You need to know the difference between a father and a lover.
— The White Stripes, "Passive Manipulation"
Something often depicted in media as much squickier than BrotherSister Incest, Twincest or Kissing Cousins is incest between a parent and their child. Sigmund Freud had a lot to say about the Oedipus complex, and could find subtext in quite a lot of places. But in Big Screwed Up Families, Deadly Decadent Courts, particularly abusive households and elsewhere, one is likely to find examples of this trope.
When this trope shows up in media, it's usually used to highlight the specific psychological issues that a character has, particularly if it features in the Backstory of a Serial Killer or other psychopath, or to give an already nasty villain that extra bit of shudder factor. When the parent is the aggressor in the relationship, it is usually quite predatory in nature, and in many cases (particularly in the case of fathers and daughters), it's a crossing of the Moral Event Horizon when it's revealed. If the child is the aggressor in the relationship, it usually means he or she is seriously twisted in some way or in the very least has serious issues. In non-consensual cases where the parent is the victim, its usually Elder Abuse. Sometimes this is played for Black Comedy, particularly in the case of mothers and sons, with the son understandably freaked out due to the mother's advances.
This trope appears with step, foster, or adoptive parents as well as biological ones, sometimes to Bowdlerise it somewhat, although the power dynamics are still much the same as in parent/child incest. Wife Husbandry is one way to Bowdlerise it still further — though not out of Squick range.
This is a type of Unequal Pairing, since the parent is almost always at least psychologically—if not always physically—in a much more powerful position than the child. See also Rape as Backstory and Abusive Parents.
Also see Surprise Incest, where the couple involved do not know they're related, as well as BrotherSister Incest, Creepy Uncle, and Kissing Cousins. When children innocently suggest this, it's Father, I Want to Marry My Brother. See Pervert Dad for parents who don't quite go this far, but still have an (un)healthy dose of weirdness, and Lecherous Stepparent. See I Love You, Vampire Son, when the "parent" is the vampire that sired his "son".
Older Than Dirt, thanks to Divine Incest examples.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
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Arts
- Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time: Cupid is one of Venus' many illegitimately born children and we can plainly see that the two of them are in the middle of sexual relations with one another. Incest isn't necessarily out of place among Classical gods, so seeing two gods of sexuality committing incest isn't out of place either.
Audio Plays
- Volume 3 of Yandere Heaven provides Hajime, the protagonist's stepfather. Like her twin brother, he desires a more intimate relationship with her and he wants to be seen as a man rather than a parental figure.
Comic Books
- In Fallen Angel, it is widely believed, but not confirmed (although he has not denied it, either), that Xia has this relationship with her son, Jubal.
- In the X-Men comics, Legion (a.k.a. David Haller), the psychotic, overpowered son of Professor Xavier with a legion of split personalities, time travels to the past and is implied to have raped his own mother Gabrielle Haller.
- In the dystopian divergent timeline of the Age of Apocalypse, Magneto and Rogue eventually marry and have a son despite their initial surrogate father-daughter relationship after she permanently absorbed the powers and part of the psyche of his own secretly long-lost biological daughter Polaris. In addition, Rogue is canonically even younger in this reality than any of Magneto's prior biological children: Polaris and their fellow X-men Pietro and Wanda. One saving grace might be the fact that the mainstream continuity hadn't settled on Polaris being Magneto's actual daughter when this story was written, so the Oedipal aspect wasn't as blatant originally. Though it still was a story where Rogue wound up in love with her main father figure...
- Their fellow AoA X-Men, the reformed berserker Sabretooth and the jailbait amazon Blink are a fan-favorite cult pairing despite having a surrogate father-daughter relationship, as he rescued her as a child from Apocalypse's slave pens and raised her to adolescence. This is due to the intense Beast and Beauty pseudo-Battle Couple nature of their relationship, which is exacerbated by the fact that they are both highly sensuous warriors with a deeply intimate psycho-emotional bond and physically demonstrative displays of affection. They were separated when they were both made to lead separate teams of inter-dimensional heroes known as Exiles, but were eventually reunited on a single team. In fact, Blink's then-boyfriend and fellow Exiles teammate Mimic was revealed to have known that she would never love him or anyone else as much and feared that she loved Sabretooth instead. This was shown by the fact that despite having proven herself as a leader, Blink deferred to Sabretooth during field missions. Despite later being separated again on different teams, they are currently still both single, leaving fans ever hopeful. The fact that Mimic resembled Victor in more ways than one though is hardly coincidental.
- Whenever they're together, their relationship is depicted as a mix of Battle Couple and Platonic Life-Partners.
- Fellow AoA mutant Nate Grey. The genetically-engineered son of his reality's Scott Summers and Jean Grey, he crosses over to the original timeline of Marvel-616 where he gets involved with Madelyne Pryor, the long-deceased clone of his biological mother. It is later revealed that he accidentally physically resurrected her with the sheer force of his immense mutant talent when he unconsciously and instinctively tried to psionically contact Jean Grey upon his arrival in the other reality (his interactions with 616!Jean as a rule, are all mother and son, which she reciprocates). He also later gets involved with yet another counterpart of his biological mother, when an evil counterpart of Jean Grey from yet another alternate reality disposes of and impersonates Madelyne Pryor. This Queen Jean, a Jean Grey corrupted by her own power, was revealed to have had a prior consort who was her reality's counterpart of Nate, essentially her own genetically-engineered son, who rebelled against her and was ultimately executed, but not before helping his alternate counterpart defeat his mother Queen Jean.
- It should at this point be noted that he only met AoA!Jean once, briefly (though there was an instinctive connection), and it was quite some time before he realized what relation either Jean or Madelyne had to him. After that, he backed off, fast, from Maddy's advances. Maddy, on the other hand, didn't seem to have the slightest problem with it and acted as a textbook, if somewhat homicidal, Tsundere towards him. And his relationship with Queen Jean (who, again, he thought was Maddy) was, at least on his part, platonic (it was implied that she wanted him as a sex slave as well as a Living Weapon). His mental fantasy of the perfect life, Greyville, had Maddy as his best friend. Further, it also doesn't really help that he was forcibly aged to 17 and for a number of his appearances had absolutely nothing in the way of life experience. Still, with all of the above experiences, it isn't exactly surprising that the first rule he made when he attempted to create a utopian reality was 'No Relationships'.
- Their fellow AoA X-Men, the reformed berserker Sabretooth and the jailbait amazon Blink are a fan-favorite cult pairing despite having a surrogate father-daughter relationship, as he rescued her as a child from Apocalypse's slave pens and raised her to adolescence. This is due to the intense Beast and Beauty pseudo-Battle Couple nature of their relationship, which is exacerbated by the fact that they are both highly sensuous warriors with a deeply intimate psycho-emotional bond and physically demonstrative displays of affection. They were separated when they were both made to lead separate teams of inter-dimensional heroes known as Exiles, but were eventually reunited on a single team. In fact, Blink's then-boyfriend and fellow Exiles teammate Mimic was revealed to have known that she would never love him or anyone else as much and feared that she loved Sabretooth instead. This was shown by the fact that despite having proven herself as a leader, Blink deferred to Sabretooth during field missions. Despite later being separated again on different teams, they are currently still both single, leaving fans ever hopeful. The fact that Mimic resembled Victor in more ways than one though is hardly coincidental.
- A plot line in Mighty Avengers has one of the characters (the gynoid Jocasta) ending her relationship with her grandfather (Hank Pym, who created Ultron who created Jocasta) when she realizes that he is still in love with her dead sister/mother (his ex-wife/on-off lover Janet van Dyne — whose brainwave patterns Ultron copied to create Jocasta's AI). She marries her father (Ultron) instead (that was why Ultron initially created her in the first place years ago, as he himself had a desire for his "mother", the wife of his creator-father).
- The main character of The Tale of One Bad Rat is trying to come to terms with having been molested by her father as a child.
- Crazy Jane from Grant Morrison's celebrated run on Doom Patrol is a multi-powered Metahuman who lived with multiple personalities after being raped by her father. Morrison based Jane on the Real Life Split-Personality Team memoirist Truddi Chase.
- Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors has a brief scene featuring Freddy making out with his daughter, who had just pulled a FaceHeel Turn.
- One Bronze Age Superman story told the tale of the end of the Golden Age of Krypton. An overprotective mother created a younger clone of herself and raised it to be her son's ideal wife and married them off, since she didn't think any other woman would be good enough for him. When the son found out, he snapped, killed his mother, his wife and then himself. This eventualy lead to a civil war which devastated Krypton and turned it into a xenophobic, compassionless society.
- The famous Twinkie House meme actually comes from a(n) (in)famous gay comic called My Wild and Raunchy Son 2. It's an entire series of exactly what you think it is from an artist (Josman) famous for that specific genre (once even involving a grandfather of all people). To avoid allegations that he had a serious thing for his own dad, the artist said in an interview what he really loved were twins doin' it, and drew a token twincest story to prove it. No one believed him when that story still somehow managed to involve an older man in the mix...
- One of the minor characters seen in hell in The Sandman (1989) tells the newly arrived young thugs that "I took my mother by force, and strangled my sister when she wouldn't submit to my advances."
- Such is the case in the Sin City short story 'Daddy's Little Girl'. Although it's unclear if they really are related, or it's just a fetish.
- Part of Willow's backstory in Dreadstar.
- Toyed with in the Golden Age comic book series featuring The Clock/Brian O'Brien (1936-1944). In a 1942 storyline, the eponymous hero is injured and dying. He is nursed back to health by preteen girl "Butch" Buchanan. She becomes his sidekick, legal ward, and surrogate daughter for the rest of his series. But she originally viewed him as a gangster and declares herself his "moll", doing her best to seduce him.
- The Walking Dead comic had a scene where the Governor kisses his zombie daughter. To make it worse, she can't be older than eleven. It could be seen as a platonic parental kiss, but that's screwed by the fact it's an open mouth kiss (he even removed her teeth in order to do it).
- In Barbara Slate's Angel Love, Angel finds out that her sister Mary Beth left home and changed her name to Maureen McMeal due to the shame she carried of Angel and Mary Beth's father sleeping with Mary Beth, and is even ashamed that she actually enjoyed it. After Angel's father left the house when this was discovered, Angel was told by her mother that her father died and went to heaven.
- A variation occured with the pre-Crisis Black Canary. Dinah was inhabiting the body of her (near identical) adult daughter when she fell in love with the alternate universe version of her deceased husband. Post-Crisis, the grossness and general oddness of the situation was fixed by simply making two Black Canaries: the modern day one is the daughter of the (now retired) original Black Canary from the '40s.
- The infamous Avengers #200 contained something of this. Carol Danvers was kidnapped, mind controlled, and impregnated by Marcus Immortus, the son of Immortus. Carol ends up having a Mystical Pregnancy with no memory of the incident. The baby grew into an adult in under a day and turned out to be another version of Marcus, reborn on Earth. Carol hated the baby, but when she saw Marcus as an adult, she fell for him. Eventually they left together to go to another dimension, and the crazy part was, the other Avengers seemed perfectly okay with it. Despite Marcus handwaving it as not really being pregnancy and just something that "resembled pregnancy", he still refers to Carol as "Mother" and she did give birth to him. Avengers Annual #10 brought Carol back, made it clear she was raped, and let her give a What the Hell, Hero? speech to the others (and by proxy, to the writers of the original story who thought this was acceptable).
- The eleventh issue of Spider-Girl had a time-displaced Spider-Girl encounter her father during his earlier days as Spider-Man. Much to her disgust, Spider-Man at one point hits on Spider-Girl, not knowing that she is his future daughter.
- The DC Comics standalone story "Smells Like Teen President" follows a disaffected grunge musician who believes he is the son of Prez Rickard. He isn't; he's the product of his mother being raped by his grandfather, but she lied to give him a father he could look up to.
- In Alan Moore's Lost Girls:
- While Dorothy Gale is recounting this version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, she reveals that her uncle is actually her father who takes her to New York under the pretense of seeking psychological help, but he has sex with her repeatedly while they're in the city. Feeling guilty for the pain the affair caused her stepmother, she leaves home to travel the world.
- In Alice Fairchild's retelling of her story, she attends drug-fuelled lesbian orgies, including Mrs. White and her daughter.
- The miniseriesDaredevil: Father retconned that the old man that Matt saved (in the accident that blinded him and gave him his radar sense) was molesting his own daughter, leading the daughter, Maggie Farrell, to kill several of the people Matt's helped over the years to get back at the continued abused she suffered because Matt didn't know he was saving a monster.
Fairy Tales
- Commonly referenced in fairy tales. The heroine's father decides to marry her — often because she resembles her mother, or because she is the only person who can wear something that belonged to her mother, and her father promised to marry only such a woman. Some of these include "All-Kinds-of-Fur"
, Allerleirauh, "Donkeyskin", "The King Who Wished Marry To His Daughter", "The She-Bear", "Margery White Coats", and "Golden-Teeth". She usually attempts to hold him off, demanding Impossible Tasks for her consent, but this always fails. The princess must run away to escape, before going to a ball and winning a prince. Many folklorists interpret tales where she must flee her father for other reasons, such as "Catskin", where her father wanted a son and so marries her off with no care, or "Cap o' Rushes" where he takes offense at what she says, or "The Bear" where she is smothered and wants to escape, as Bowdlerised variants. Note that BrotherSister Incest can substitute, with the brother taking the father's place for the threat.
- "Florinda" is a related story the begins with the title character escaping from her incestuous father Disguised in Drag. Over time, she finds that she prefers life as a man, and Jesus personally supplies her with a penis as part of her Happily Ever After.
- There is an extremely bizarre Russian fairy tale which involves a priest's daughter being tricked by a farmhand into having sex with him, without her knowing what it is (he tells her that his dick is a "comb" and that he is "combing" her). When her father finds out her confusion, he has sex with her and the tale ends with the narrator telling the audience that from then on, the priest had sex with both his wife and his daughter.
Fan Wotharks
- Empath: The Luckiest Smurf:
- While not biologically related, the MayDecember Romance of Papa Smurf and Smurfette in the alternate timeline story "Papa Smurf & Mama Smurfette" is disgusting enough for the other Smurfs to treat it as that to the point where some even cover their eyes when they kiss each other at the wedding. Otherwise averted in "Papa's Big Crush," where Smurfette confesses to Papa Smurf that she could never love him as anything other than a father (and this is after purging a horny Hulked Out Papa Smurf of his feelings with a Smurfette sex doll).
- In the Mirror Universe story "Smurfed Behind: The Other Side Of The Mirror", that universe's Smurfette is married to its Papa Smurf, although she admittedly doesn't stay faithful to him. The Empath of the normal universe is still disgusted to see that version of Smurfette and Papa Smurf kissing each other on the mouth.
- Hivefled: the Condesce and the Grand Highblood had kids specifically for this purpose.
- The Harry Potter fic "Apex Predator" has a few observations about such relationships in the exploration of the Blue-and-Orange Morality of Veela culture. One scene features Fleur's mother Apolline pledging "allegiance" to Fleur to affirm that she will respect Fleur's right to make decisions regarding her chosen mate, Harry Potter, with part of the ritual involving Apolline licking Fleur's clit. While Fleur and Apolline occasionally double-team Harry during some later sexual encounters, it's explicitly stated that attraction to other women is more situational in Veela than their attraction to men, and this kind of dynamic is still uncommon. Apolline later observes that while it's not uncommon for any male child of a Veela to become his sisters' "plaything", Veela will basically never have a sexual relationship with their own sons as male children are so uncommon that any Veela to have a son must have been engaging in regular sexual activity to conceive the child in the first place, so the mothers don't have any need for such an additional sexual outlet.
- What Lies Beyond the Walls has Log-a-Log Brugo, who raped his son multiple times in his life until he broke him into being his most trusted ally.
- Indirectly in Dead or Alive 4: The Devil Factor; in chapter 7, Dante and Trish briefly make out and begin to have sex, but it ends badly when Dante remembers that she looks like his Missing Mom.
- To Lead The Way's Serena is subject to this as part of her backstory.
- Bordering on Villainous Incest, there's Ashley's Troubling Unchildlike Behavior towards Blossom in Ladder. Ashley kisses Blossom (with tongue) twice and, though it's not described much, the Professor saw Ashley doing something to a (near catatonic) Blossom that made him so pissed he punched her. This also counts as Sister/Sister Incest, but Blossom has a near-maternal affection for Ashley and Ashley sees Blossom as her mother. To make everything worse, Blossom's only eleven while Ashley is physically five and chronologically a few days old. She doesn't seem to understand her behavior is wrong, but then again Ashley's behavior overall tends to be wrong.
- In Restraint, Azula reveals that her father Ozai began abusing her after she turned thirteen. Due to the trauma, she has a tough time being in a relationship with Ty Lee. When visiting him in prison, Azula ends up calling Ozai out one day and burning his face, like he did her brother's.
- The Troll Fic StarKitsProphcy takes this one step further. Firestar is in love with Jayfeather's daughter Stargleam. The writer never notes this, but this means Firestar is Stargleam's great-grandfather.
- You Are Mine: Frollo took in Esmeralda after accidentally killing her mother. The child, renamed "Agnes", is raised as his daughter. Frollo spends the first several years thinking of Agnes as simply his daughter, but things change when Esmeralda grows into adulthood.
- Things Jade Hates involves Jade's mom being let out of jail prematurely and coming back home. She was in jail for having abused Jade. Jade fears her mother might abuse her six year old brother, so she wants to live away from her mother.
- In UNDERTOW, Minx theorizes that her step-uncle and father were sexually abused by their father. This is why her Creepy Uncle abused her and why her father was so afraid to touch her.
- The anthology fanfiction Mother's Dark Love is devoted to mothers from different films/cartoons/etc. and their unhealthy obsession with their children.
- Enlightenments doesn't dwell on it too much, but given that the Queen of the Castle in the Mist is immortal through stealing her daughters' bodies yet has the same immortal husband through the ages, it's an odd example of father/daughter incest, one that the father very much does not want to participate in but is forced to go through with and the daughters themselves aren't aware of.
- Heavily implied in E350's Happy Fluffy Reviews of Really Bad Fanfics. While scrolling through the M-rated section of Fanfiction Dot Net's Danny Phantom fics, Danny comes across a fanfic that's apparently about him getting sent back in time to his mom's high school days when she makes a wish that she had a friend like him in high school within earshot of the series' resident Jackass Genie. He's okay with it until Tucker points out that the genre listed is romance, at which point he goes Green Around the Gills.
Film — Animation
- Meet the Robinsons: Averted/Inverted/generally weird example: Through Time Travel, Lewis is almost adopted by his own future wife. She looks understandably disturbed when she realizes who he is, though.
Jokes
- An old Jewish Mother joke: A psychoanalyst has finished talking with little Irving. His mother asks, "What's wrong with him?" The doctor responds, "I'm afraid he has an Oedipus Complex." "Eh, Oedipus, schmoedipus!" she responds. "Just so long as he loves his mother!"
- A girl asks her dad if she can get a tattoo for Christmas. He agrees, so long as she gives him a blowjob. She reluctantly complies, but then says, "Dad, your dick tastes like shit!" The dad replies, "Oh, yeah, your brother wanted a computer."
- A joke involves a father stating that his daughter has got to the age where she starts to ask awkward questions about sex, said questions involve sex with him.
- A young man is going at it hot and heavy with a young lady. He finishes, rolls off her, then says, "Gee, sis, you're even better in bed than Mom!" She says, "Thanks, I know, Daddy said the same thing!"
Music
- "The End" by The Doors from their debut album The Doors has the protagonist tell his mother he wants to rape her, but it is almost incomprehensible on the studio recording. Jim Morrison would actually sing "I want to fuck you!" during live performances of the song.
- "Alive" by Pearl Jam from Ten is - according to this article - about a mother who reveals to her son that the man he thought was his father was actually his stepfather (a real event in frontman Eddie Vedder's own life)... and then she seduces her son because he looks like his dead (birth) father (not a real event in Vedder's own life, one hopes), leading the protagonist to become so messed up that he becomes a Serial Killer of prostitutes (the song "Once"), and ends up on death row (the song "Footsteps"). However, Vedder has veered away from this interpretation in later years, claiming that the fans "lifted the curse" off the song, and he now sees it as a life-affirming anthem.
- "Daughter" sounds rather explicit in its subject matter (Father/Daughter incest), once you get past Vedder's nigh-unintelligible singing voice. Though it reads like that ("she holds the hand that holds her down"), "Daughter" is actually about a child with dyslexia ("mother reads aloud—child tries to understand it"), whose parents don't understand her disability and use harsh physical punishment to deal with it ("the shades go down"). Explained here on The Other Wiki.
- "Daughter" sounds rather explicit in its subject matter (Father/Daughter incest), once you get past Vedder's nigh-unintelligible singing voice. Though it reads like that ("she holds the hand that holds her down"), "Daughter" is actually about a child with dyslexia ("mother reads aloud—child tries to understand it"), whose parents don't understand her disability and use harsh physical punishment to deal with it ("the shades go down"). Explained here
- No sex happens, but the video for "Lemon Incest" by Serge Gainsbourg and his young daughter Charlotte is extremely creepy.
- The video for "Charlotte Forever", on the other hand, feels more romantic than creepy. Of course for some that may make it all the creepier.
- The video for "Charlotte Forever
- "The Father of a Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash - maybe. It's implied, but not stated out loud.
- "Magdelena" by Frank Zappa from Just Another Band from L.A. is a detailed confessional by a father to his 13-year old daughter of what he'd like to do to her.
- "Tier" (German for "Animal") by Rammstein tells the story of a man who rapes his daughter and her getting revenge by killing him. Made even creepier by the fact that one notable live performance included the presence of the young daughter of guitarist Richard Kruspe onstage. The song "Laichzeit" ("Spawning Time") also talks about a man who harbors sexual desires for both his mother and his sister.
- The song "Wiener Blut" ("Viennese Blood") from the album Liebe ist für alle da is about the Josef Fritzl case.
- The song "Wiener Blut" ("Viennese Blood") from the album Liebe ist für alle da is about the Josef Fritzl case
- Tom Lehrer:
- Played for laughs in "I Got It From Agnes" (which is probably about venereal disease) with the lines:
Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring
She got it from her daddy, who gives her everything. - An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer included this wonderful ditty about the most famous incident of this trope in the Western Canon:
There once was a man named Oedipus Rex
You may have heard about his odd complex
His name appears in Freud's index 'cause he
Loved his mother!
- Played for laughs in "I Got It From Agnes" (which is probably about venereal disease) with the lines:
- Also played for laughs with The Lonely Island's "Motherlover", where two studs agree to "fuck each other's mothers" for Mother's Day.
- "Janie's Got a Gun" by Aerosmith. "What did her daddy do?" indeed.
- According to Pop Up Video, the line "He jacked the little bitty baby" originally used the word "raped" instead of "jacked." It's little wonder she put one in his skull with the title gun.
- Motörhead's "Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me" from Bastards.
- "Royally Fucked" by Mindless Self Indulgence.
"Mommy, daddy, why don't you finger me too?"
- "Kiss Daddy Goodnight" by Carey's Problem is a blatant example of this.
- Big Black has "Jordan, Minnesota", inspired by an infamous case from the 1980s, which describes a man abusing his five-year-old son.
SUCK DADDY!
- "Amy in the White Coat" by Bright Eyes is about a teenage girl who is being molested by her father (and the lyrics outright state he's done the same to her sisters).
- Within Temptation's music video for "Frozen" has a man implied to rape his daughter. His wife poisons him at the end of the video and that's why she's in jail.
- Spawn of Possession gives us grandparental incest in the song "The Evangalist", as per The Reveal that the protagonist's mother was Father Dorian's daughter, and Father Dorian raped her until she gave birth to said protagonist... who was also raped by him. It's one big cycle of disgusting.
- Supplementary material for the Evillious Chronicles reveals that a mother/son relationship resulted in Nemesis Sudou. It's worth noting that the son was totally unaware that the woman he had an affair with was his long presumed-dead mother; while he did notice a resemblance, he figured that she was just a devotee of his mother and was too young to actually be her, not knowing she was immortal.
- The music video for Never Make A Promise by Dru Hill depicts a father-daughter relationship. It is very clear that the daughter is deeply traumatized by the non-consensual sex, and more disturbingly, when she finally gathers the courage to leave home, he is shown to be devastated by her departure.
Myths & Religion
Mortal incest within mythology goes here. For incest between the gods, see Divine Incest.
- Classical Mythology:
- Oedipus Rex is about a prince who is prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother. After being left to die by his father and then found by someone else, he meets him unrecognized on the road and kills him. He has several adventures (including solving the Riddle of the Sphinx) before heading home and marrying the Queen, who, yes, turns out to be his mother. He spends years with her — and they have children — before finding out the truth about what happened, and is so horrified by it all that he goes into exile, after exacting the punishment on himself for killing the old king to end a curse on the land, while she commits suicide.
- Electra doesn't canonically have any incest, but subtext is commonly read into it. Electra murdered her mother Clytemnestra in revenge for killing her father Agamemnon, and her name was used for the gender-inversion of the Oedipus complex. Of course, her father was already dead by that point, but she takes a very idealized view of him in the legend.
- Myrrha tricked her father Cinyras into incest, after Aphrodite inspired her with passion for him, and got pregnant. Cyniras, horrified and angry, killed Myrrha with an axe. Her corpse turned into a myrrh tree and, ironically, produced Adonis.
- Nyctimene committed incest with her father and was turned into an owl. Owls are therefore not seen by day because they are ashamed of themselves.
- Hippolytus: Phaedra's unrequited love/lust for her stepson Hippolytus, which ended with Hippolytus dead (or banished away and then taken in by Artemis in other versions) and Phaedra Driven to Suicide.
- Thyestes was told by an oracle that he could only avenge the murder of his three sons on his brother Atreus if he had a son by his own daughter. So he raped his daughter Pelopia (in some versions, though, he just raped a woman not knowing who she was), fathering Aigisthos, who, after being abandoned and nursed by a goat, was adopted by Atreus and raised as his own son. Later, after Thyestes was captured by Atreus' sons Agamemnon and Menelaos, Atreus sends Aigisthos to the dungeon... but Thyestes reveals the truth to Aigisthos and Pelopia. Poor Pelopia kills herself with shame, while Aigisthos kills Atreus.
- An aversion with one of Heracles' descendants, who was wed to a king's widow when a snake jumped up between them just as they were about to consummate the marriage. The snake had been sent by Heracles to prevent the man from bedding his long-lost mother.
- Book of Genesis:
- Noah cursed the entire family line of his youngest son Ham for Ham's having "seen his father's nakedness". Since a fair number of Biblical scholars doubt he would have punished him so harshly over merely a little embarrassment, they suggest this phrase was actually some kind of euphemism for molestation or even full-fledged rape. "Uncovered his (or her) nakedness" is often used as a euphemism to mean sex in other verses, supporting this.
- After Lot and his daughters escaped from Sodom's destruction, the daughters believed that since their fiancés were dead, they were the last living women and their father the last living man in the area. Having children to populate your locale being rather Serious Business back then, they got their father drunk and raped him in order to have his babies. Nine months later, they each had a son, Moab and Ben-Ammi. The former's name sounds something like the Hebrew word for "from father" and the latter's name means (literally) "son of my paternal uncle" or (figuratively) "son of my people" in Hebrew, and these boys eventually married and had families of their own that grew into two entire nations.
Some detractors contend that the Hebrews made up this story to smear the Moabites and the Ammonites, who were Semitic cultures like the Hebrews, though polytheistic and pagan. However, these particular acts occurred centuries before the institution of the sexual laws in Leviticus. As such, they may serve as a kind of retroactive Aesop: "This is the kind of skullduggery people used to do back before we had those laws against sleeping with close relatives, so aren't you glad we have them now?" Also, later books of The Bible clearly state without shame that the Davidic line (including none other than Jesus Christ) came from the Moabites through Ruth.
- The Talmud (Sanhedrin 103b), expanding on the evil deeds of the biblical king Amon of Judah, claims that he raped his mother, though not for quite the reason one might expect. Afterward, when she asked him bitterly, "Did you derive any pleasure, then, from the place whence you issued?" he allegedly responded "Did I do this for any other purpose than to provoke my creator?"
- In 1 Corinthians 5:1-3, Paul chides the Corinthian believers' fellowship for not having expelled a certain man for sleeping with his father's wife (probably referring to a step-mother), pointing out that not even the pagans around them (Corinth being a rather decadent and sex-obsessed city) would tolerate that kind of sexual immorality and that they ought not to associate themselves with it, either.
- Even after The Bible came to its close, certain Christian denominations' legends of the saints had some:
- The legend of Saint Dymphna says that, after her mother died, her father Damon fell for her due to how physically similar she was to her mother, went Yandere for poor Dymphna, and tried to force her to marry him.
- Saint Markella was a Christian girl from the Greek island of Chios, and her pagan dad wanted both to marry her and force her to renounce Christianity. After a very eventful pursuit, Markella's dad found her near a cave: the rocks had half-swallowed the poor girl, but her head stayed out, so he beheaded her (and in versions where she was swallowed only up to her waist, also mutilated her breasts) and then threw her head away, which is said to have floated to another island. Markella herself ultimately came to be considered a much-venerated Orthodox Patron Saint of Chios, with a monastery built in the place where her father is supposed to have murdered her.
- The legend of Saint Dymphna
- Indonesian folklore Sangkuriang, basically the country's very own Oedipus. Sangkuriang accidentally killed his animal father, driven away by his angry mother who regretted it big time and prayed for the Gods for a reunion that she was given immortality, only for her son with extra levels of badass to come back home, didn't recognize her mom and fell in love and tried so hard to marry her, with his horrified mother actively refusing him (and they ended up creating a "Just So" Story for one of the mountains in Indonesia) and ended up having to get God to turn her into a flower to get away from him, and Sangkuriang went insane because of it.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Belial and Fierna are an ambiguous example of father/daughter incest among archdevils. Being devils, it's very much a Big, Screwed-Up Family. Of course, both of them are embodiments of Lust, so it sort of makes sense. It's not confirmed in the books, but stated to be a rumour... one that isn't hard to believe.
- A grandparental example: Lolth, evil goddess of the drow, forced her grandson, a drow war-god, to be her bodyguard and consort for a long time before he was killed off. He apparently hated both positions.
- A rather unpleasant way of avoiding this due to Loophole Abuse is found in the Book of Vile Darkness, where it mentions a cruel tyrant who was a previous owner of the Despoiler of Flesh, a cursed artifact which could reshape the flesh of others. This despot was attracted to his very beautiful daughters, but he refused to force himself on them. Instead, to satisfy his urges, he used the Despoiler on his slave girls to make them look like his daughters, and used them instead.
- Van Richten's Guide to Witches tells the myth of how hags were first created, and this trope plays a vital part. note Van Richten himself admits in his narrative that the ghastly story is likely apocryphal, and a sidebar confirms this view.
- In Warhammer the Dark Elf Witch King Malekith and his mother Morathi were implied to be lovers in an early edition. Given that Morathi is a devoted follower of Slaanesh and will screw absolutely anything, this is likely true. Given that Malekith is a 4th degree burn victim permanently encased in full body armor, not so much. That being said, incest (no matter the exact kind) isn't unheard of in Druchi society.
- Exalted:
- The setting book for the Blessed Isle says that a high-ranking Mortal Realm official is in a relationship with her Dragon-Blooded father. It's apparently taboo enough for them to keep it a secret, but not so taboo that there are any consequences for the fact that the rest of the Dynasty knows anyway.
- One of the minor characters in Aspect Book: Wood was in a sexual relationship with his mother from the age of eleven. He Exalted — and went utterly insane — upon witnessing her death. These days, he's in the habit of having children brought to his manse, dressing as his mother, giving the children toys and sweets to win their trust, and then violating and strangling them.
Theater
- William Shakespeare: This gets the plot rolling in Pericles. Pericles want to marry the daughter of King Antiochus but the king demands Pericles solve a riddle. The riddle basically says the king is having sex with the daughter. Pericles figures out the riddle but doesn't actually answer, but the king figures out that Pericles figured it out and sends goons after Pericles to silence him. In the end, both Antiochus and his daughter spontaneously combust. Shakespeare is awesome.
- The amount of truly unsettling sexualized language in King Lear has led to a number of productions implying some kind of abusive relationship between the title character and one or more of his daughters. Notable examples include Jonathan Pryce's Lear forcibly kissing Zoe Waites' Goneril on the mouth, Anna Maxwell Martin's Regan climbing into Simon Russell Beale's lap to tell him how much she loves him (complete with him slapping her ass as she walks away), and about half of everything Anthony Hopkins does in the 2018 BBC adaptation.
- The plot of Paula Vogel's How I Learned To Drive. (Well, actually her uncle, but Peck is as close to a father as L'il Bit has.) Oddly enough, the relationship is presented as sympathetically as possible, without downplaying the fact that Peck does horrible things.
- There's an uncomfortable moment in act 2 of Wicked where the Wizard is trying to seduce Elphaba back to his side. The implication is there and you later find out that he's her father.
- In Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge the main character is in love with his niece, whom he raises as a daughter, but he can't even admit this to himself.
- There are no actual cases on incest in Eugene O'Neil's Mourning Becomes Electra (note the name) but the female lead character and the male (who are siblings) have serious cases of Elektra and Oedipus complexes, respectively, leading to the murders of both their parents.
- In Spring Awakening one of the boys is said to have had a wet dream about his mother, and also the characters of Martha and Ilse are/were both sexually abused by their fathers.
- In The Marriage of Figaro (both the Mozart opera and the original Beaumarchais play), Marcellina is determined to make Figaro follow through on a contractual obligation to marry her. Until it's discovered that Figaro is her long-lost bastard child.
- "Accidentally" implied (and, like everything, played for laughs) in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), when they combine all sixteen comedies into one.
The Play: The pages' clothes get ripped off, revealing female genitalia. The Duke recognizes his daughter's.
Everyone: ... - Some versions of the musical Pippin imply this with Fastrada and her son Lewis.
- In Richard Wagner's Die Walküre, Wotan seems way too fond of his daughter Brünhilde. His wife Fricka calling Brünhilde "the bride of his desire" also doesn't help.
- "Sie selbst war meines Wunsches schaffender Schoß" — "Herself was my wish's life-giving womb."
- Accidentally suggested via Ambiguous Syntax in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, briefly alarming the protagonists.
The Player: The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: Good God. We're out of our depths here.
The Player: No, no, no! He hasn't got a daughter! The old man thinks he's in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: The old man is?
The Player: Hamlet... in love... with the old man's daughter... the old man... thinks.
Rosencrantz: Ah. - In Lizzie, the titular character is being raped by her father. It's implied it's happening to her older sister, Emma, as well.
Video Games
- The patron saints of this trope have to be Aleph and Hiroko of Shin Megami Tensei II. Not only do they play the exact role of Official Couple Kazuya and Yuka from the previous game, but they set out to "rebuild the world" at the end of the game, possibly with Adam and Eve in mind (well, they did just fight God). Bear in mind that Hiroko is Aleph's mother...
- In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, The Truth takes umbrage at being called "motherfucker" by a gangbanger.
"Firstly, you are a real buzz killer, amigo. And secondly, I never made love to my mother — She wouldn't. And thirdly..."
- In Grand Theft Auto V, Trevor also reacts harshly to being called a "motherfucker" and starts rampages because of this. However, some of his missions imply it's true.
"It's not legally fucking if you do not penetrate!"
- Otacon reveals that he slept with his stepmother during a conversation in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. He was a teenager at the time, and it's implied that his stepmother was predatory. This was outright stated to be the reason why his father killed himself, cementing Otacon's Woobie status.
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines:
- It's revealed that Therese was raped repeatedly by her father as a child, which is part of the reason why she has a split personality (the other part being she's a Malkavian.)
- The player character can get this as well with the optional runaway backstory. It limits your social and seduction skills, but gives you great bonuses on hiding and staying quiet.
- Hitman (2016): If you read into Silvio Caruso's family tape's song as being a reflection of his adolescence, the "There were candles burning as we made love" gets a whole lot more disturbing.
- In Dragon's Dogma, it's possible for the Player Character to romance their adoptive father Chief Adaro.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- In Morrowind, the Mad Scientist Divayth Fyr created four Opposite Sex Clones whom he variously refers to as either his "wives" or "daughters".
- This is more of a fan reaction than anything that actually happens in the game, but for some reason, an alarming number of naughty Oblivion mods are targeted at Seed-Neeus and Dar-Ma, the mother-and-daughter Argonian team in Chorrol. (Some involve threesomes with the player character, some just have them directly go after each other, but most at least involve the two naked in the same room....) That, or when advertising more generic naughty mods (nudity mods, remodeled/textured female bodies, etc.,) Seed-Neeus and Dar-Ma seem to be the examples in the screenshots a disproportionate amount of the time.
- Maven Black-Briar of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is head of a family that includes Hemming, Ingun, and Sibbi Black-Briar. Hemming is indisputably her son. He may mention in conversation that Ingun and Sibbi are his children; Maven is listed in the Creation Kit as their grandmother. However, Maven explicitly calls Ingun her "favorite daughter", and both Ingun and Sibbi refer to her as their mother. Maven has no husband; Hemming has no wife. It's not hard to do the math, especially since both kids sound like Borgia expys - Sibbi is in prison for a murder even his mother/grandmother found unnecessarily heinous (though more from the bad publicity than the act itself), while Ingun, the only remotely pleasant member of the family, is fascinated by alchemy and its more lethal applications.
- Silent Hill:
- Angela Orosco in Silent Hill 2 is revealed to have been raped and abused by her own father. She eventually killed him, which led to her running away to Silent Hill.
- Some fans have actually shipped Heather, the heroine of Silent Hill 3, and her father in a combination of Wife Husbandry and MayDecember Romance. There are some mitigating circumstances, though the power dynamic can still make this one awfully disgusting. The fact that the opening song's lyrics, confirmed by Word of God as describing Heather's feelings about her father, use a lot of sexually charged metaphors certainly doesn't help matters any. The two were originally going to be named Humbert and Dolores in the original Silent Hill as a direct reference to Lolita, so the developers definitely wanted the subtext to be there.
- Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a sort-of remake of the original game, is a lot more forward with the subtext. This incarnation of Cheryl does indeed love her father. Very, very much. And this time, there's not even the mitigating circumstances anymore. She's his blood daughter, as far as we know.
- In Clock Tower 3, Lord Burroughs is so obsessed with his daughter that he ignores his wife, murders his son-in-law, and abducts his daughter. Later, he transfers his obsession to his granddaughter, the heroine Alessa, who's the very image of her mother. She manages to stop him though. Also a case of Love Makes You Evil.
- In the Princess Maker series, it is possible to make the girl marry her adopted father. (See Wife Husbandry.) They are not blood related and, some games let the age of the "father," be pretty low, so the age gap isn't big at all.
- In Anime/Manga, a 15-year-old raising a 10-year-old is often used in those cases of "older sibling raising younger sibling(s) due to being orphans." Considering the "father" is a war hero (there are just as many young heroes as there as old in Anime/Manga), it "should" be easier.
- In the second game... not only the ending is very hard to get (the daughter must have very low morals, to start), but it's frowned upon by the Gods and the townspeople. The Guardian Deity openly says they're very surprised that this is happening, and only (reluctantly) approve because they're not related by blood.
- This trope is a significant component of the premise of the bishoujo game Ko-ko-ro... The protagonist, Souji Kuonji, is tormented by memories of being sexually assaulted by both his parents long after their deaths.
- Warden Clement of House of the Dead: Overkill almost definitely had this relationship with his mother, transplanting her brain into the body of Varla Gunns and making out with her. In the end, after the main characters kill the giant mutant version of his mother, he insists on returning to the womb in order to undo his wrongs. Agent G then notes the irony of Cluster F-Bomb flinging Washington using Motherfucker all the time except with Clement, which he somehow relates into how deep down, Washington actually likes G as a friend.
- In Ending E of the PS2 adventure game Shadow of Destiny, Eike Kusch, a de-aged immortal bishounen with recurring permanent amnesia, gets together and lives happily ever after with his biological daughter Dana, who was switched with another child as an infant in medieval Germany, and brought to the present day as a baby by the manipulative djinn Homunculus, in one hell of an insanely convoluted backstory. Neither of them apparently know they are actually blood-related, and it is unclear whether or not Eike still has eternal youth.
- Characters in Medieval: Total War can have this as a surprisingly common trait, reducing their religious support if it's discovered. This can sometimes happen with rather unlikely characters, such as unmarried 15 year olds. Strangely, BrotherSister Incest never happens unless you specifically order it.
- Crusader Kings II:
- Can rarely happen in an event in which you can fall in love/impregnate a random adult courtier (below 45) in your court, and it doesn't check for blood relationship so it can be your daughter (or granddaughter even). If your character is lustful you can't say no.
- It is also possible via cuckolding to if not caught later marry your own daughter when she comes of age. Since as far as everyone else knows, you're not related.
- In the Old Gods expansion Zoroastrians were given the option of marrying close relatives, including children and parents, it gives a boost to vassal opinion as they view it as a holy marriage. Messalian Christians (treated as a heresy of Nestorianism) have a similar feature. Due to this, children born of "Divine Blood" marriages have five times less chance to acquire the Inbred trait as an Anti-Frustration Feature, though they are five more times likely to get the Lunatic trait.
- In the dimension of Praetoria in City of Heroes, the evil Emperor "Tyrant" Cole, mirror of the main hero "Statesman", has his needs attended to by the villainess "Dominatrix"—his granddaughter.
- As of a recent official Q&A for the Going Rogue expansion, this has been rather humorously averted. The devs of the game had actually failed to notice this implication when the Praetorians were featured originally, and several fans calling attention to it got a rather entertaining "oh, crap, we did not mean to do that" reaction from them. Content since has been revised to avoid any sort of implication along these lines.
- The comic actually implied it a lot more directly while at the same time pointing out the familial connection.
- As of a recent official Q&A for the Going Rogue expansion, this has been rather humorously averted. The devs of the game had actually failed to notice this implication when the Praetorians were featured originally, and several fans calling attention to it got a rather entertaining "oh, crap, we did not mean to do that" reaction from them. Content since has been revised to avoid any sort of implication along these lines.
- Sariss in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II was the daughter of the Dark Side cult leader Lord Cronal, who despised her over his Straw Nihilist ideology that made him see her as a tribute to creation rather than the destruction he idolized. As a result, he had her raped by his fellow cult members and often took part in it himself, making her almost as screwed up as he was and forcing Kyle Katarn to put her down.
- In Baldur's Gate III, Psycho Knife Nut Orin the Red was the granddaughter of Sarevok, the Bhaalspawn Big Bad of the first game. It's implied Sarevok fathered her with his daughter, and he states he "loved" her the same way.
- Used as a path to immortality by the villain Croesus Verlac in the interactive fiction game Anchorhead — and continues in the family for nearly four centuries.
- Since The Wolf Among Us features fairy tale characters in '80s New York, this was probably gonna happen at some point or another. But really, who expected the above-mentioned Donkeyskin to show up?
- The Dark Parables installment The Final Cinderella reveals that the second girl who was designated a Cinderella (and was in fact the Cinderella who married the Frog Prince, as shown in the second game of the series) ran away from home because of Donkeyskin-type circumstances.
- In Dreaming Mary it is strongly hinted that Mari's father (represented by Boaris) had been abusing and molesting her.
- Implied in Mass Effect 2. Though Miranda's stated reason for running away from her father/creator was that he was an overbearing Control Freak, she occasionally hints at other problems in their relationship that she'd rather not discuss.
- An odd indirect example can occur in Fire Emblem Fates. Nina has a personal skill called "Daydream," which grants her a Status Buff when she's adjacent to any two paired up men. This is not disabled for fathers and sons (such as Leo and Forrest, for example), meaning that Nina is fantasizing about this trope.
- In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Mercedes's supports with Jeritza reveal that their (technically adopted in her case, birth in his) father intended to marry the former to produce more children. Suddenly, no one feels very sorry for him when Jeritza kills him on the spot.
- This was part of the original conception of Summertime Saga, until Patreon objected to the direction the dating sim was taking; the Main Character is now renting a room in a house owned by a woman who is totally unrelated to him although she does look like she could be related when viewed from some angles, and is clearly old enough to be his mother. Amazing coincidence, what are the odds, eh?
- In the controversial Rapelay, you can force the mother to have sex with her daughters, just as you can force any of them to have sex with you or the daughters to have sex with each other.
- Okiku, Star Apprentice: Slightly referenced with an Sexual Euphemism-type Innocent Innuendo scene involving a son talking about his mother:
Boy: Is it just me, or is mommy's tummy getting bigger?
Okiku: It sounds like she had some fun.
Boy: We played together just yesterday, but...
Okiku: Uhhh, that wasn't exactly what I was talking about!
Okiku: Oh, never mind, Don't worry about it. - Annabelle (RPG Maker): It is heavily indicated that Jason Sunray sexually abuses his daughter Annabelle. The versions of him appearing in her nightmares tell her that she will be 'his' in a creepily lustful manner. He outright declares near the end of the first game's remake that she will dance, dress, and strip for him. Exorcism also has Annabelle recount an experience where Jason was on top of her while she was sleeping.
Visual Novels
- As indicated by the title, Daughter for Dessert revolves around this.
- Episode 7 of Umineko: When They Cry reveals that Kinzō had a child with an Italian woman named Beatrice, who died in the process. He then had the not so bright idea of naming the child after her, and since she grew up to look so much like her mother he convinced himself that his daughter was his lover reincarnated. The result was a Child by Rape, who would grow up to become the Big Bad of the first half of the story.
- In Mystic Messenger, a flashback of Jumin's backstory heavily implies that when he was growing up, one of his stepmothers tried to sexually groom him.
- Features into the backstory of Yaginuma and Shinji in Kara no Shoujo. The first's sister was raped by their father in an attempt to shield him, causing him to act like a jerk that you only get to see come down once. The latter was raped by his mother and accidentally killed her.
- Long Live the Queen has a couple of examples.
- A completely screwed-up example occurred when the Duke-Consort of Lillah seduced his stepson, the Earl of Io, which is part of what led to the boy going Ax-Crazy.
- The seduced bit is putting it lightly considering that, judging by his oldest half-brother's age, Kevan was 14 at most when it started.
- Conversely, an example that crosses over with BrotherSister Incest occurs in one ending, and is portrayed as completely benign. Elodie's lover Brin marries her father, and Elodie marries Brin's brother Banion, so Elodie is having an affair with her stepmother/stepsister. In this case, the relationship predates the marriages.
- A completely screwed-up example occurred when the Duke-Consort of Lillah seduced his stepson, the Earl of Io, which is part of what led to the boy going Ax-Crazy.
- The entire Overflow universe (including School Days) exist under the shadow of Tomaru Sawagoe doing this constantly with his daughters, their daughters, their daughters' daughters, etc.
- In Strip Battle Days 2, after defeating her in a rock, paper, scissors match, Makoto and his mother Moeko both admit to having feelings for each other and they have sex, which leads to her getting pregnant with his child/sibling.
- Thwarted hard in DraKoi, in which the protagonist's loli mom (it's a long story) has decidedly non-parental designs on him, and is extremely frustrated when attempts to raise him for reverse-Wife Husbandry are spoiled by the arrival of his girlfriend. All of this is played for laughs.
Web Animation
- Anime Toons: It is implied in Dragon Ball- Goten´s REAL Origin that Goten was born out of an incestuous relationship between Gohan and Chi-Chi. Both Goku and Chi-Chi denies it of course.
- This is brought up in the Dorkly Originals sketch, Inbred Yoshi where the yellow inbred yoshi talks about how his mom is also his dad's mom. The main green yoshi is naturally disgusted and would rather take baby Mario to the next level himself than to leave him with the inbred Yoshi.
- Otakebi: Kenji cheated on his wife Sayuri with his aunt. When the affair was exposed he was disowned by his family and he and Sayuri got a divorce.
Webcomics
- In Cheating Men Must Die, Su Lüxia adopts the young prince Yun Ling and raises him as her son, leaving the world and letting her host character die when he's ready to rule without her. A much later arc sees her return to the same world some years after the empress dowager's death, and her new incarnation catches the eye of the young emperor. While they eventually marry, the incest is mitigated somewhat when they speak frankly after the wedding, and all Yun Ling asks is for her to pat his head before she leaves his world again, like she used to do when he was a child.
- C-Section Comics: Implied in "Incestral History", where the boy's father tells him he's also his grandpa.
- Sexy Losers has the "Kenta's Horny Mom" arc, which was Exactly What It Says on the Tin. (It is unrequited, though, and most of the humor comes from poor Kenta's weirded-out reaction when his mom keeps all but throwing herself at him.) There were also a couple of fourth wall-breaking strips later where the author, in an interview, pitched the idea of a Gender Flip version of that same story with a father and daughter, and all of a sudden it went from funny to seriously creepy.
- And each such strip featured the author beaten to a pulp by the same people who had laughed at the original version.
- In an uncanny turn, this later changes gears to Kenta's mother relentlessly pursuing Kenta's girlfriend. To the point of death. And then some.
- Also played with in a one-shot strip, where a man, who is sleeping with his mother, thinks their secret is out because everybody (who he angers for unrelated reasons) keeps calling him "motherfucker".
- There's also a strip where a boss catches his employee, who called in sick, having sex with an older woman. The boss is angry, of course, as the employee can't be all that sick if he's bumping uglies, but he explains that he's actually very sick.
- Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures joked about this.
- Twice.
- Makes sense since she is a succubus.
- Twice
- This is one of the multiple reasons Lita in the webcomic Jack hates her father so much. It's also pretty clear that Drip raped his son Fnar; nothing was actually shown, but Fnar was found naked, weeping, and with Drip's trademark eye markings.
- Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff does this in one comic. The exchange goes something like this:
"I took [off my pants] because I was banging your mom for a minute there. And now you are banging her. HE HE HE."
- Questionable Content: in the very first appearances (only two or three strips) of Marten's mom, her face is drawn EXACTLY like Faye's - and Marten at the time has a crush on Faye. Her look changes quickly until she looks almost identical to Dora - who Marten will become involved with shortly afterword. Dora also used to masturbate to Marten's mom's image, the disgusting nature of which is brought up by a horrified Marten.
- In the old Drowtales, the manual stated exclusively that this is common practice among Drow. Since the number of children one has is a status symbol, parents often train their own children in the art of conceiving offspring. Drowtales has been dramatically toned down with each remake, removing all references to underage sex in particular, so it's very unlikely this still is the case.
- Implied but averted in Girl Genius, where Prince Aaronev of Sturmhalten was trying to download the mind of Lucrezia/the Other into his daughter's body. The process fails and eventually he kills her; but given just how obsessed he is with the Other, and how the Other in Agatha's body fawns all over his son saying how alike they look, what he appears to have had in mind for his daughter's possessed body becomes pure Fridge Horror.
- The doom cultists in 8-Bit Theater are implied to do this.
- The title character of Niels thinks of sex as the ultimate expression of paternal love (whether for an actual father, or merely a father figure.) The author has lampshaded the implications for when his foster son turns eighteen.
- Peter, Niels' rival and enemy is the leader of a Cult, but instead of convincing his followers that he is the messiah, he's told them that he will be the father of the messiah, and that the mother will be his own sixteen-year-old daughter.
- Sinfest has had many gags that imply Lil' E has a crush on the devil. Recent revelations about his relationship with the devil have moved that to this trope.
- In Erstwhile, the king resolves on this in "All-Furs".
- Homestuck has some awkward Surprise Incest Subtext revolving around Dave: firstly, we hear that he used to pretend to hit on Rose's mom to annoy her, which becomes a pretty weird memory when they later find out that, ectobiologically speaking, Dave and Rose are full-blooded siblings. Then, Dave encounters a hot girl in a dream bubble and wonders who she is...only to find out that she is the post-scratch, teenage version of the same mother. Dave is not amused. Rose, an amateur psychologist, finds the whole thing hilarious.
- Later, Cronus hits on Eridan, his genetic father (who, thanks to time-travel-related weirdness, is younger than him), and he reluctantly agrees to go on a date with him. However, since trolls have no concept of either parents or incest due the way their reproduction works, this isn't seen as anything more than awfully pathetic.
- Karin-dou 4koma: Elza is a Lovable Sex Maniac, and not even her adopted daughter Seren is exempt. Played for laughs.
- In Forest Hill, Benni is implied to have been raped by his father for running away from home. Later it is revealed that he ran away because his father and Talitha's father forced him to have sex with Talitha because she is too small for her father to do it himself.
- As part of the brainwashing both Chibiusa and Endymion go through at Servant Chaos's hands in Sailor Moon Cosmos Arc, they believe they are husband and wife, rather than the father and daughter they are. Luckily it doesn't get further than kissing before they break their brainwashing. Also sort of counts as Surprise Incest.
Web Original
- Subverted in Tea, Biscuits and Incest where Makayla is impregnated by her father Chad but neither of them know he's the father because it was artificial insemination by sperm donor. But then played straight (so to speak) when Chad finds out that Jayden, with whom he was having an affair, is his long lost son and Makayla's twin brother And then Chad reveals that their mother is also his daughter.
- Like other incest tropes, End Master's works feature parental incest frequently.
- Eternal: Semra had a child with her father. Apparently this is not abnormal in svelk culture.
- Repression: The main character ends up sleeping with his mother in certain paths.
- Suzy's Strange Saga: Suzy sleeps with her son Anu in one epilogue.
- Tales From The Basement: In one ending, the E-Bay escapist repopulates the earth with mutant children together with his mother after the nuclear apocalypse.
- In The Guild this is played with, and depending on how literal you take the Hinjew warlock, possibly played straight. This overlaps with over protective parental action...with naked baths and breast feeding till you're eleven. Predictably, Codex and the rest pity Zaboo, a lot.
- In The Nostalgia Critic's first commercial special, he riffs on a Does This Remind You of Anything? advert for a slide with an unfortunate name. When the mother slides down it, he shouts "Mom! Get off my wet banana! ...what would Dad say?" The joke is that if his (established to be very abusive) mother tried to be sexual with him, all he'd be freaked out by would be his dad's reaction.
- Earlier, in Drop Dead Fred, he says, "Yeah, I remember the last time I laughed at my mom's cooch" in a sarcastic but oddly sad tone.
- Heavily implied in Occupy Richie Rich, as one cover features Richie romanticizing his own mother.
- It doesn't go anywhere but a joke, but in Dragonball Z Abridged, Bulma starts hitting on Future Trunks. Trunks doesn't take it well:
Bulma: So hey, like just gonna throw this out there. You're really cute.
Trunks: Well, you know, my mom always said I was a cute kid.
Bulma: Oh a momma's boy huh? I'll be your mommy. *winks*
Trunks: [Strained smile] (thinking) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!- To be fair, Bulma didn't take it well either when she realized (three years later) what she had done.
Bulma: Oh my god, I solicited my son for sex.- Future Bulma, however, is completely unsurprised that her past self hit on Trunks.
Trunks: Before you found out I was your son, in the past, you... might have made a pass at me.Bulma: Well duh.Trunks: MOM!Bulma: Hey, it's not my fault your dad's genetics and mine got along like chocolate and peanut butter.
Western Animation
- Played with in Adventure Time when the Ice King, who cannot remember his own past, tries to kiss Marceline, whom he was once a Parental Substitute for. She's understandably disgusted.
- American Dad!:
- In "Pulling Double Booty", Hayley dates her father's identical body double. Her mother Francine is understandably uncomfortable with it, making her feel sick emotionally and physically. Stan and Francine get rid of the body double after he makes a move on Francine. But to make sure that Hayley doesn't lose it, Stan pretends to be his own double on the camping trip Hayley and body double planned together. Unfortunately for Stan, Hayley decides that they are finally going to have sex, and Stan has to fend off increasingly explicit advances Hayley makes towards him while being disturbed that she would do such things. Including a threesome with a waitress.
Stan: [crying] You used to watch Sesame Street.
- "Oedipal Panties" focuses on Stan's relationship with his mother.
- In "Francine's Flashback", Francine loses her memory and runs off with Hayley's boyfriend. Stan suggest that both he and Hayley should get back at them by dating each other. He quickly reconsiders.
- In "Rubberneckers", Steve literally sings twice about how he would have sex with Francine if she wasn't his own mother.
- In "Pulling Double Booty", Hayley dates her father's identical body double. Her mother Francine is understandably uncomfortable with it, making her feel sick emotionally and physically. Stan and Francine get rid of the body double after he makes a move on Francine. But to make sure that Hayley doesn't lose it, Stan pretends to be his own double on the camping trip Hayley and body double planned together. Unfortunately for Stan, Hayley decides that they are finally going to have sex, and Stan has to fend off increasingly explicit advances Hayley makes towards him while being disturbed that she would do such things. Including a threesome with a waitress.
- American Dragon: Jake Long: In episode wherein Jake return to the parents' past, his grandpa pairs Jake and his mother together, to their horror. He doesn't know the future, though, and later, when he says that they're on a date... they don't agree.
- BoJack Horseman:
- It's very strongly implied that Sarah Lynn was molested by her bear stepfather (as evidenced by: her telling Joelle that her stepfather is a photographer in a flashback; abandoning her own dressing room because he's in it "being weird"; being able to distinguish the taste of bear fur from any other fur; the bear's design meant to directly resemble Terry Richardson). It's usually used as Gallows Humor, although there's one episode briefly features him, and she seems to go from ecstatic to dejected.
- Although consensual and both being of age, as well as not actually being related in any way (BoJack played her adopted father in a 1990s sitcom), she had sex with BoJack, someone she'd previously seen as a Parental Substitute, while high and/or drunk. BoJack jokingly acknowledges the level of disgust, saying he would be flamed if it got out... which does actually happen much later.
- Todd of Code Monkeys makes several comments that imply he is at least attracted to his mother, though it's never made clear if they're in a sexual relationship or not.
- Drawn Together:
- Princess Clara's father loves watching strippers... even if they're his own daughter. He especially loves watching his daughter make out with her attractive black roommate, Foxxy Love. And Clara, naïve person that she is, equates his leering with paternal love.
"You smell like your mother..."
- The episode "Little Orphan Hero" ends with Captain Hero date-raping his parents to erase their memories.
- Princess Clara's father loves watching strippers... even if they're his own daughter. He especially loves watching his daughter make out with her attractive black roommate, Foxxy Love. And Clara, naïve person that she is, equates his leering with paternal love.
- Family Guy:
- The show plays up this vibe deliberately with Chris, who has a pretty obvious attraction to his mother Lois. She seems more or less oblivious to it, and it's always Played for Laughs as a Running Gag, but a brief scene in the extra material of Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story's DVD shows just what it would look like if the writers ever decided to do something serious with it.
- However, whenever Meg makes any advances towards Lois, even if Chris did so first with no repercussions or if it was only a joke (as both of these scenarios did happen), she is immediately reviled and forced from the house/room.
- Glenn Quagmire, on the other hand, goes beyond subtext several times. "Petergeist" has the Griffins interrupt his "family game night",note while "Brian the Bachelor" shows him setting up a threesome between the lovely girl-de-jour and his mother. One Cutaway Gag makes a gag about how he, as a baby, somehow got off on breast feeding, which explains a lot about his character. There's also the time he gets an erection while hugging his transgender mother. A later episode has Quagmire having sex with said transgender mother due to meeting a woman even kinkier than he is. Finally, after giving his daughter up for adoption in "Quagmire's Baby", Quagmire suggests that maybe he'll see her again when she's 18.
- One episode also has a joke in this vein about Gilmore Girls characters Lorelai and Rory Gilmore.
- From Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story: "Now that we've practiced kissing and cuddling, we'll practice eating out... at a fancy restaurant!"
- In "Airport '07", when Peter wants to be a redneck, he tries to hit on Meg, using the Yawn and Reach. She runs away screaming.
- "Peter's Progress" has Peter's past life involved with at least a woman identical to (and named) Meg, but is most likely actually Meg's past life. Lois' past life, on the other hand, marries Stewie's past life when she's misled to think Peter is dead.
- In "Dial Meg for Murder", Meg takes a level in badass after spending some time in prison. In one scene, she goes into a shower stall with her father Peter still in there, and does terrible things to him with a loofah. We don't see what happens, but considering what goes on in prison...
- Peter develops an attraction towards Meg in "Go Stewie Go".
- "Fresh Heir" is essentially a half hour of incest jokes. The main plot of Peter wanting to marry Chris is played as him wanting Chris' inheritance from Carter than anything sexual, but there are plenty of gags of Peter eying younger male teens or even prepubescent boys, implying that he certainly wouldn't hesitate if that's what it would take.
- Also in "Fresh Heir", Chris teaches Carter about masturbation by giving him a handjob, though the act is done off-screen and there's no indication that this wasn't anything but a (not-well-thought-out) desire from Chris to show his grandfather a handy trick to "relax" (something that could have been taught through letting Carter use his own hand). In fact, Chris and Carter have enough (non-sexual) fun time together that it's what prompts Carter to write Chris into the will.
- In "Mister Act", Stewie ends up falling for Lois after she bulks up with an exercise bike Peter bought her.
- In "The Munchurian Candidate", Peter performs oral sex on Babs, his mother-in-law, in a hypnotic trance thanks to his Trigger Phrase (the Extra jingle) going off at the worst possible time. When he and Lois find out what happened, they're both too horrified to talk about it until they get back home.
- Futurama: Fry became his own grandfather by having sex with his grandmother in "Roswell that Ends Well". "I did do the nasty in the pasty." That past nastification actually makes him the only person capable of saving the entire universe.
- In Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Phil constantly hits on Birdgirl, not knowing that Birdgirl is his own daughter Judy. Judy does know, but being a constant slave to the Superhero Sidekick Code of Conduct, she's willing to go as far as to marry her own father to keep him from finding out her secret identity. Luckily, he leaves her at the altar for Aunt Phyllis. He figures it out in the final episode, and promptly accuses her of deliberately hitting on him.
- In one episode of Kaeloo, Mr. Cat mentions having developed an Oedipus complex at some point in time.
- Rick and Morty: The episode "Final DeSmithation" is about Rick and Jerry infiltrating a fortune cookie factory to prevent Jerry's Misfortune Cookie — which predicts that he will have sex with his mother — from coming true, as testing shows that the chances of it happening are inevitable. The man writing the fortunes is sending many outlandish fortunes out like this one in hopes that someone will investigate the factory and expose the monster whose poop is used to make the cookies, and how all the fortunes given are coming true. Given that Rick and Jerry were the first ones to investigate, it's implied that all the others who got the 'you will have sex with your mother' fortune did have sex with their mother. As for Jerry, it's a really close call, thanks to fate literally conspiring to force him to bang his mom, but Rick writing a last-minute fortune — literally 'Jerry No Sex Mom' — and forcing the cookie down his throat prevents it from happening.
- Winx Club: In Season 3, it's learned that Lord Valtor is the "son" of the Ancestral Witches. Throughout the season, the Trix were competing for his affections. Since he is technically related to them, it makes him some sort of great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. The Trix, of course, were oblivious to that fact.
- Chase Young and Shadow from Xiaolin Chronicles often act affectionate to one another and are heavily implied to have some romantic thing going on. What qualifies it as incest is the fact that Chase created Shadow out of his rib (similarly to Adam and Eve's story). After Shadow finds out her origin story, she lampshades how inappropriate is to consider Chase her father. A few later episodes imply this might not be Shadow's actual origin story, but due to the show being a Short-Runner, this is never fully addressed. These implications go hand in hand with Shadow gradually growing a dislike for Chase until she leaves him for good.
