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Half-elf

Now that's just being too literal!


Mix-and-Match Critters with a dash of human thrown in!

This is present in most unrealistic fictional genres, including Science Fiction (or, rather Space Opera), fantasy, horror, etc. In reality, many closely related Earth species share over 99% of their DNA, but cannot produce viable offspring. This makes it extremely unlikely that creatures of different planets would be able to interbreed, but then again, Mars does need women.

In fiction, human beings can conceive children with any intelligent species in existence. Demons, elves, aliens, vampires, you name it — not only will a human sleep with it, they'll engender children. The mother is in a majority of cases the human. If they are not physically viable, rest assured there are scientists somewhere who will fiddle with DNA until a hybrid is created. They'll do it if there's no reason to think the creature should have DNA in the first place. That's earth's solution for storing your genome. It requires a lot of supporting stuff in the cells, and not even everything on earth uses it. Thankfully, the Rule of Cool and Rule of Sexy let us mix it up with whatever the Green-Skinned Space Babe's ancestors evolved to store their genomes in. Good thing there are No Biochemical Barriers! And if you can't find a scientist to do it for you, you're in luck. A Wizard Did It is just as handy a Hand Wave.

Rarely does either species accept the mixed marriage, much less said hybrid, though. After all, What Measure Is a Non-Human?

If the hybrid is a positive character, it connects the audience with them, giving them familiar characteristics and a closer point-of-view into the otherwise alien culture, or else, an "outsider" character for protagonists to befriend... or at the very least, they'll have the power to fight one-half of their heritage, almost certainly if that one-half is vampire.

Positive characters also tend to pick up all the advantages and powers of their component races with no or lessened weaknesses. A Half Vampire might pick up Super Strength and Voluntary Shapeshifting without having a weakness to sunlight or a thirst for blood, for example, or a half-elf gets magic and an extended lifespan (funny, that). Being a half-breed is almost always a plus for protagonists, although the characters usually don't think so. Frequently it's because of self image issues, possibly due to people getting freaked out at them having horns and hooves or the like. Females tend to be luckier about this than males, due to being seen as an "exotic" beauty.

If the hybrid is a negative character, this will make their inhumanity more personal. They might be a Tragic Mulatto, representing what prejudice on both species' part can produce. For extra angst, the character's conception might have been less-than-consensual.

The concept as a whole, thanks to A Wizard Did It, tends to fly better in supernatural settings - when it comes to, say, demons, who can say it wouldn't work that way? It's not like we can do a DNA test on the Prince of Darkness. Yet. For those who turn into hybrids, see Animorphism and Biological Mashup. If the character was already a different non-human species, or gets hybridized a second time, they become a Hybrid Monster.

Also see Catgirl and Unusual Ears for examples of Kemonomimi, cute animal girls that are usually treated as a separate race rather than actually having an animal somewhere in their ancestry. Beast Folk are seldom so cuddly, what with the Pointy Ears, Fangs of Evil and claws. In mythology and folklore, this is known as a "liminal being", like Merlin or centaurs.

See also Interspecies Romance. A common result of a Fantastic Romance. May lead to Heinz Hybrids, if the family tree does not end with them. An inter-species halfbreed that averts the "half human" part is a Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid. If the non-human parent is from an Always Chaotic Evil race, this trope may result from the human being Raised by Orcs.

Examples of Half-Human Hybrid include:


Anime and Manga[]

  • Silver Diamond has Chigusa: half-man, half-plant. Which apparently makes one damn near immortal. Apparently, it's a family trait of the Senroh clan, earning them the title of Immortal Monsters.
  • Seriously handled in Bagi, the Monster of Mighty Nature: Bagi is a human/lion hybrid created in a lab. She's somewhat rare in being half human behaviorally as well. While obviously intelligent and capable of talking, she keeps many animal behaviors and displays emotion in a quite cat-like way.
  • The Arume in Blue Drop regularly have offspring with earth women - which takes some help from technology, since they are all female themselves.
  • The series Otome Yōkai Zakuro is set during the Westernization of an alternate Japan, where humans and spirits (yōkai) coexist. To solve the problems that arise between the two, human lieutenants are partnered with half-spirit girls to form the Ministry of Spirit Affairs.
  • The manga and anime series Bleach gives us Ichigo Kurosaki. His mother Masaki was, as far as we know, a normal human. His father Isshin is a retired Soul Reaper, meaning that he's basically a human/ghost hybrid.
    • Though not shown, his sisters may also be hybrids as well, if they could unlock their powers.
    • And later it's revealed that Masaki was actually a Quincy, aka one of the human mediums that have the ability to detect the existence of Hollows.
  • In the manga version of Chrono Crusade, it's implied that Chrono and Aion, as well as possibly the other sinners are like this, since their mother was a human woman turned into a demon when she was still pregnant with the twin boys. On top of that, there's a cryptic scene that implies that Satella and her sister Florette are hybrids as well. Aion claims that he's a "distant relative" of their parents. This could just be speaking about his human heritage, but he also says later that Satella's father was "our senior" and had defected "like us"... implying he was a demon, as well.
    • Also from the manga, there's Remington, who infused his body with demonic legion, making him about 40% demon.
  • In the manga/anime Claymore, the heroes are a sect of all female half-human, half-youma who hunt full youma, although the main heroine Clare is actually only a quarter youma. A fallen Claymore warrior is called an "Awakened One" and is far more powerful than a pure-blooded youma.
    • A Claymore warrior is somewhat different from other half-breeds in that they are born human and become half-youma by having youma flesh implanted into their body. Claire is a quarter youma because she requested to have a certain Claymore's flesh used instead, . This turns out to be a critical plot point because quarter-youma are physically weaker but have a far greater degree of control over their abilities and are more likely to survive Power Incontinence.
  • The Crow special agents in D.Gray-man are half-human and half-akuma - they're akuma enough to set off Allen's eye, but human enough to not actually be seen with it. Exactly how they got that way has yet to be revealed, but Black Religious Order experimentation by Hitler their Chief is a big part of it.
  • Gohan, Trunks, Goten and Bra from Dragonball Z were half-Saiyans, an alien race. Apparently, humans and Saiyans are the same species, because they're capable of producing fertile offspring: Gohan has a quarter-Saiyan daughter named Pan, and Pan has at least one child and one grandson.
    • Furthermore, in Dragonball Z, Saiyans are capable of rapid gains in strength, and the ability to transform into special forms such as the Oozaru (giant ape) or the Super Saiyan (a golden haired warrior of incredible power), while humans take much longer to train up to the same power levels. However, while pureblooded Saiyans have thus far only ever achieved the level of Super Saiyan as adults, all of the male hybrids gained power extremely rapidly and attained the form as children, and Gohan was the first character ever to reach the level of Ascended Saiyan and by the end of the series was the most powerful (unfused) being in the universe by a long shot.
    • Going even further, Dragon Ball Online takes place far enough in the future that Saiyan DNA has pretty well proliferated all of humanity, giving everyone exceptional combat strength and the ability to go Super Saiyan.
  • There's a strange version in Elfen Lied. All Diclonii, drones included, can infect humans with a virus that causes all future offspring to be Diclonii drones, incapable of reproducing sexually. These drones are also always female. However, there is one Diclonius, the queen, who can reproduce sexually, and if her mate were human, her offspring would probably be some kind of half human hybrid. There are a bunch of powerless male half-human Diclonii wandering around, probably a result of something of that nature happening up in the family tree.
    • In the manga version, the male Diclonii are revealed to be descended from a family of humans who merely have a weird skull defect.
      • Which clears up a lot of Fridge Logic-induced confusion on my part, since if I understood correctly, Lucy was supposedly the first Diclonius ever discovered. Hence her name.
    • Diclonii are mutants since Lucy is probably the only one to be born naturally. All the others are essentially her clones, which is why they all look more like her rather than their "biological parents." This is also why they are always female and always infertile, though why not being the original makes them infertile is probably never explained.
      • Also, since Lucy can still reproduce with humans, she would most likely still be classify as a human, making Diclonius more a sub category of the human species.
      • The clones are incidentally usually called Silpelits, rather than Diclonius, for extra confusion.
  • In the anime Gall Force, the Hybrid between the all-female Solonoids and the monstrous Paranoids turned out to be a human male. The first one, at that.
  • In a cyberpunk, non-DNA variant, the original Ghost in the Shell movie ended with Kusanagi merging with the Puppet Master's formless entity to become something else entirely.
  • Inuyasha:
    • Inuyasha is half-dog-Youkai and has a mixture of dog and human traits. He's basically human in appearance but has dog fangs, golden youkai eyes and claws. His sense of hearing and smell is very much sharper than a humans. However, he lacks his full-blooded youkai brother's strength and his senses are duller than his brother's as well. However, being the son of a daiyoukai means he's much stronger than ordinary (and even strong) youkai even if he's not a physical match for his daiyoukai brother. He's also inherited some magical abilities from his father's side. However, along with this, he has one night a month when he's forced to transform into a human and if his life is in grave danger, a Super-Powered Evil Side takes over where his youkai blood takes dominance over his mind and body, although even in that state he doesn't transform into a dog the way a full-blooded dog youkai can.
    • Jinenji is also half-youkai, half-human, but the species of his youkai parent is unknown. Unlike Inuyasha, his appearance is much uglier and more beastial. However, he's inherited healing powers from his youkai side and is incredibly gentle: a sharp contrast to Inuyasha who, while much prettier to look at, is much more aggressive and violent in personality. Along with his healing abilities, Jinenji has also inherited phenomenal physical strength, but he almost never uses it due to being a pacifist.
    • Shiori is the daughter of a human woman and a bat-youkai. Like Inuyasha's father's species, Shiori's father's species can transform between a human form and an animal form (a monstrously sized humanoid bat-creature). Aside from her white hair, violet eyes and very dark skin, Shiori looks almost human. She has inherited her father's barrier-generating abilities, however, a power she freely gives up to Inuyasha's sword after he saves her life from her own (youkai) grandfather.
  • In the manga of Mahou Sensei Negima it is revealed that Setsuna is half-tengu, a variety of humanoid crow Youkai. This is hinted at in the last episode of the anime, but never said outright. The manga also features Kotaro Inugami, a boy who is half-Dog Demon/Youkai..
  • In Kishin Houkou Demon Bane the Big Bad is revealed to be the offspring of Nero and Yog-Sothoth. It's never explained how this happened, which, for the sake of our sanity, is probably for the better.
    • Not to mention that he burst out of Nero's body, fully grown. And that his birth happened several episodes after he was killed.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Kaworu Nagisa is strongly implied to be a result of an experiment where an unidentified human donor's DNA "dove" into Adam. (The technobabble almost sounds like a euphemism for insemination.) Whether he is actually a half-Angel/half-Lilin hybrid who for some reason looks human, or a straight-up clone of the genetic donor, is unknown.
    • Rei Ayanami has a connection to Lilith, as well, but printed sources only say that she is a clone of Yui and contains Lilith's soul. The idea that she is a genetic hybrid, or some such, remains strictly within the realm of fanon.
  • In Please Teacher, the female protagonist, along with her sister, are half-alien, half-human.
  • Both Averted & Justified in Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix series, where there is only one species capable of breeding with others, the Moopies, who are able to do this due to Voluntary Shapeshifting (which is a completely different scientific impossibility, but what the hey).
  • Rue from Princess Tutu has been raised on the Raven's blood, and it's implied that it's made her a sort of hybrid.
  • Somewhat justified in an arc exclusive to the Ranma ½ manga that has members of The Musk Dynasty, men who are half various animals. This was only possible because their ancestors used the cursed springs to turn animals into women, but they somehow inherited incredibly useful traits of their mothers' true forms (such as an acute sense of smell, superhuman strength, and, in the half-dragon's case, flight.)
  • In the manga/anime Saiyuki, humans and demons may interbreed, but the offspring are discovered to be infertile.
  • Super Dimension Fortress Macross is certainly full of these, usually Zentraedi/Human hybrids. Justified in that the entire premise of the show is that Zentraedi and humans are two genetically modified offshoots of the same species.
    • The original was baby Komillia (literally, "little Millia", after one of her mother's various romanized name spellings).
    • In Macross 7, we meet Mylene, the series' Genki Girl, who is naturally also a hybrid (Komillia's little sister, at that). In fact, when they discover an ancient (yet remarkably still functional) ruin, it's Mylene's hybrid nature that unlocks the final chamber, allowing the ruin's computer to see that the different races had stopped fighting and even had children together.
    • In The Movie to the same series, we meet Mylene's other older sister Emillia, though their relation is only confirmed by a few seconds of dialogue.
    • And it doesn't stop there, as official material has also confirmed that there are actually four MORE sisters never seen in the series. Max and Miriya apparently REALLY hit it off.
    • And, by the time we hit Macross Frontier, we have at least one character who is quarter Zentran, as enough time has passed for grandchildren of the original Zentraedi defectors to begin to reach maturity, and there are mixed-heritage folks running around all over the place.
      • Michael Blanc and his sister Jessica Blanc are hybrids who has the heritage all the known subspecies the Protoculture created. Humans, Zentradi and Zolans being the member races of the new UN Government now New UN Government. Zolans who come from the planet Zola unlike Humans were evolved from marsupial ancestry by the Protoculture.
      • As Ranka is also part Vajra, a species that is known for altering their genes and biology practically in realtime, and as of the ending has access to the Vajra collective memories, it's really anyone's guess what species she should count as.
  • Maka is a possible example, being the daughter of a Technician and a Weapon. It's a rather borderline example though as it's unclear as to whether or not Weapons are actually another species.
    • A scene in the manga dealing with Soul's origins says that him being a weapon is a throwback, the rest of his family being normal humans, implying it's a genetic trait that occasionally pops up rather than a separate species.
      • It did sort of imply that his grandmother was one.
    • Being a Weapon is a genetic trait that Arachne created by mucking around with witch and human souls 800 years ago.
    • It's one theory on Kid's heritage that he's got a human mother and death-god father. Depends on how you interpret the Sanzu Lines issue in the manga.
      • That theory has been killed dead as of the latest manga chapters, where it's revealed that Kid is actually a split-off piece of Shinigami-sama
  • Shuffle has Rin being chosen as the husband of either Sia, a princess of the Gods, or Nerine, a princess of the demons. He chose Asa Shigure however, she also happens to be a half-demon since her mother was also the first test subject of Project Yggdrasil.
    • Mayumi is also a half-demon.
  • Everyone except the hero in Utawarerumono has a varying combination of wings, long furry ears, and tails. It is revealed in the end that they're all descendants of genetically engineered research experiments who escaped shortly before the end of mankind. Despite having only minimal animal features, they were on the level of lab rats and even dissected for research.
  • In Voltes V, the Go/Armstrong brothers are revealed to be half-Boazanian.
  • Slayers has Zelgadis, an artificial example of this trope. He was born pure human, but was merged with a Blow Demon (a kind of Astral Goblin, basically) and a stone Golem through the magic of Rezo, the Red Priest. This gives him pointed ears, blue skin, purple/lavender hair, patches of pebble-like "growths" all over his body, and either skin or flesh of solid rock.
  • Vampire Hunter D has D. A Dhampir created by Dracula himself after something like 5,000 years of trying.
  • Dragon Half has the heroine Mink, whose mother was a dragon and whose father was a (human) dragon hunter. And Princess Vina whose father was a king, and whose mother was a slime (similar to those in Dragon Quest)
  • Guu is... just Guu. She's a half human, half Humanoid Abomination. She's basically a mix between Merlin and Loki (but maybe that's just with Haré). To everyone else, she's just a Creepy Child, and even then they don't seem to mind. They just think she's a little odd, but nothing to worry about.
  • The Karin manga: Yuriya is a half-vampire, half-human. She isn't affected by vampire weaknesses (i.e. sunlight, the smell of garlic, etc.). Unfortunately, she also has to drink blood, and she doesn't have any vampire powers, either. She's also completely sterile. Karin and Kenta's daughter, Kanon, is the same deal.
    • actually Kanon can be debated because Karin's parents mentioned that she had become like a normal human so isn't it possible for her child to be normal?(since Kanon doesn't seem to have any vampiric tendencies at all unlike Yuriya
      • The key phrase here being "like a normal human" as she still has her fangs and her powers are more likely dormant rather than her DNA completely changing into another species.
  • Being a D&D Expy Record of Lodoss War has a few of these, the most traditional of these being Leaf, the Shaman from the Chronicles of the Heroic Knight TV series. Being Half Human and Half Elven, she is correctly referred to as a Half-Elf.
  • The heroine Chisaya from Onikirisama No Hakoirimusume is half-human and half-yokai, with a giant Kitsune as a mother.
  • This seems to happen a lot in One Piece. There are several variations between common species, including but not limited to; Humans, Mermen, Fishmen, and Giants.
    • And since One Piece usually adheres to the Rule of Cool most hybrids get strengths of both parents' species with few, if any, of the relative weaknesses.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has the Beastmen, an entire race of Hybrids that serve as the antagonists for the 1st Season.
  • In Nagasarete Airantou, we have Michiru.
    • Her father is human while her mother is a Yuki-onna.
  • Rin from Blue Exorcist, of course. It is a little played with though: although Rin gets the usual treatment hybrids get in fiction, it is later revealed that it isn't exactly because he is a half-blood - apparently, a lot of exorcists have mixed heritage - but because he is a son of Satan himself.
  • Nao from Bloody Cross is half human half angel.
  • According to Pokémon Special, Mewtwo was partially augmented with human DNA.
  • In Saint Beast, brothers Kira and Maya are half-angel (their father) and half-human (their mother) and suffer Fantastic Racism as a result.


Comic Books[]

  • Avengers: The Initiative has Trauma, the son of the demon lord Nightmare and a human woman.
  • Vampire hunter Blade (of the Marvel Universe, a successful film franchise, and an unsuccessful television series) is half vampire, half human (his mother was the human). His mother was turned into a vampire while Blade was in utero--not quite the usual situation, and seems to have given Blade most of the good vampire bits (increased strength and speed, heightened senses, good dark vision) without most of the bad bits (he's not vulnerable to sunlight, but does get cravings for blood).
    • This is probably derived from actual folklore, specifically the Balken dhampir, which is even more of a vampire-human hybrid (see Dhampyr The Trope for more examples).
  • In Gold Digger, the platinum dragon D'bra is actually a hybrid between two differing tribes of dragons, platinum on her mother's side and iron on her father's. This is notable as full dragons are rare enough between two partners of the same tribe (most eggs hatch into less drakes or wyrms), and hybrids are thus extremely powerful. However, not only are they extremely rare (six have been recorded in the entirety of draconic history), but also card carrying demonstrations that With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. D'bra's own explosive temper is a considerable worry to the other dragons who are afraid of her snapping like all the others.
    • Also in Gold Digger one of the three Diggers sisters, Brianna Diggers, is a half-werecheetah half-human. Any questions on how that could happen genetically are neatly bypassed by her being the combination of her two other sisters via a combination of a magic curse and mad science (the werecheetah and human siblings being sisters in the first place by the simpler mechanism of adoption).
    • Of course, we also have the aforementioned Werecheetah sister marrying a feline humanoid alien and having a child. How did that work out?
      • This is one of those instances where "It's magic, silly!" might be a completely reasonable answer for a change.
    • More recently, it has been revealed that the Diggers sisters' father is also a hybrid - his father was human, but his mother was a living alien (albeit of Terran origin) supercomputer with a humanoid body. Ah, love... Anyway, while the Diggers sisters' mother is unquestionably human, she is from another planet and her parents are also from two completely different cultures. One might theorize a strong genetic resistance against inbreeding...
      • In addition said feline humanoid (Kryn) is actually another type of humanoid entirely (Gaoblin) that ages ago killed off and replaced four separate races (Kryn, Elves, Trolls and Atlanteans) as a way of hiding from the universe who wanted them dead for their service to the Dynasty. AND he's been bonded with several highly powerful artifacts. So he's an alien with an outer shell of DNA from another race and who knows what else affecting his gene pool. The world's resident gene-expert says that the husband's DNA is probably the most complex he's ever seen.
  • Hellboy is half-human, the result of a union between the witch Sarah Hughes and a demon prince.
  • Jack of Hearts, a Marvel Comics superhero, was half-human, half-Contraxian (his powers had little or nothing to do with that, it was a Freak Lab Accident).
  • Raven of the Teen Titans is half-demon in both the comics and the cartoon.
    • Many other Titans are half-human/half-non-human as well.
  • Phyla and Genis are the children of a Kree father and an Eternal mother, the Eternals being an offshoot of humanity.
    • Mar-Vell's other kid, Hulkling of the Young Avengers, is his son by a Skrull princess. As one can imagine, the news of this has not gone over well with either the Kree or Skrulls. Also, note that Captain Marvel never met any of his children: Hulkling was kept by the Skrulls, and Genis and Phyla were created using his DNA after his death.
      • The Kree most likely wanted to kill him (the Kree have been known to put people on death row just for sleeping with a Skrull); the Skrulls on the other hand see him as The Messiah.
  • An interesting example of a hybrid from two offshoots of humanity, Luna is the daughter of a mutant (Quicksilver) and an Inhuman (Crystal).
    • They may actually be basically the same thing, though. The Inhuman's Terrigen Mist which gives them their powers works by unlocking the mutant X-gene that's dormant in normal people. At least in some versions.
      • But the Inhumans themselves were genetically engineered by the Kree, using Eternal and Kree as well as human DNA. So, even before getting Terrigen powers, they're not Homo Sapiens.
    • Another cross between human-offshoots is Maelstrom, an Inhuman/Deviant cross. His son Ransak is a one-quarter Inhuman, three-quarters Deviant.
    • Still another example, the Ritter twins are Eternal/Deviant hybrids.
  • Northwind, a member of Infinity Inc in The DCU, was half-human, half-Feitheran (the Feitherans being a hidden race of bird people).
  • Adam X the X-treme, part of the Summers' Tangled Family Tree, is half-human, half-Sh'iar.
  • The Wild CATS are mainly half-Kherubim, an immortal super-powered alien race. It's not until many years after they were created that this was Justified Trope by having Earth be a planet terraformed by the Kherubim billions of years ago for their own needs, basing our DNA on theirs.
  • In Preacher (Comic Book), Genesis is the offspring of an angel and a demon.
  • Averted in Runaways. The Majesdanian Karolina found herself betrothed to the Skrull Xavin as part of a peace treaty between the races; however, it is unlikely that they will have children. Not because it's impossible, but because Karolina is a lesbian, and Xavin assumes a female form accordingly.
    • Unless Xavin gives himself a female shape but certain male... parts...
  • Many Superman stories show a future child with Lois Lane, up to and including an entire human/Kryptonian Superman Dynasty lasting tens of thousands of years.
    • However, many post-Crisis stories portrayed a human/kryptonian hybrid as impossible. One of the reasons is that if a solar powered Kryptonian mated with a human female-the force of the ejaculation would act like a shot gun... in the middle of the woman's body. And its further elaborated with kryptonian and human DNA not being compatible.
      • The "too-powerful-ejaculation" theory has never appeared in a comic book; it's from a short story (print only) by Larry Niven called Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex. It is in no way any sort of comic book canon, and probably shouldn't be mentioned here. As for post-Crisis continuity and genetic incompatibility... that was how many Crises ago!?
      • The existence of Superboy proves that at least artificially created hybrids are definitely possible.
  • Marvel's Thor is actually a hybrid of two different species of gods. He's half-Elder God on his mother Gaea's side. This is the reason he's so much stronger than the other Asgardians.
  • Rosie from Elf Quest: The Rebels is an artificially-generated blend of human and preserver.
  • Tigra of The Avengers is a human woman turned half-tiger thanks to magic. And then she... went and got knocked up by a Skrull pretending to be Henry Pym. Which I suppose makes her child half-Skrull, one-quarter human and one-quarter magic tiger.
    • According to the more recent Avengers Academy, the disguise was so good that the Skrull imposter only gave Hank Pym's DNA, so the child is three-quarters human, one-quarter magic tiger.
  • The titular hero and his half-brother in Invincible are both Viltrumite hybrids. Mark is human on his mother's side while Oliver is part sapient alien insect on his mother's side. Since Viltrumite reproductive DNA is just as aggressive and ruthless as the race, a Viltrumite hybrid usually turns out to be all but identical to a full blooded one. Mark is indistinguishable from other Viltrumites, and Oliver, despite being part sapient alien insect, only has purple skin and very fast physical maturation to distinguish him.
  • Parodied in Scott Pilgrim, where Roxanne is described as being "half-ninja".
  • Prior to the DC reboot, Cassie Sandsmark aka Wonder Girl was the half-human half-Olympian daughter of Zeus. After the DC reboot, this applies to Wonder Woman herself.
  • The Destines are the children of the genie Elalyth and Adam of Destine, a human who was granted immortality and invulnerability by said genie after he rescued her and they fell in love. The kids are all incredibly long-lived, but not immortal, and have superpowers of varying degrees of usefulness.
  • Jimmy Marks aka Hybrid, the son of a human woman and a Dire Wraith. Recently appeared in Avengers Academy. Don't worry, he's not as bad as a typical member of his father's race. He's worse.
  • Yet another Marvel example is Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, a human/Atlantean hybrid with a touch of Mutant thrown for good measure.


Fan Fiction[]

  • All Yuki/Kyon fanfics in the Suzumiya Haruhi fandom inevitably, in their far and unwritten future, lead to this.
    • Don't forget the Kyon/Ryoko ones!
    • I have to ask this: Do interfaces have, you know... parts?
      • Of course. They're biologically perfectly human. Making a copy of an existing template is simpler than making something entirely new, and non-human physical traits like that could potentially arouse unwanted suspicion.
  • The Mega Crossover Halloween World and various side stories thereof are awash with Half Human Hybrids of one sort or another, some of them distinctly unlikely, plus numerous half anything but human hybrids and outright Heinz Hybrids. Justified in that magic in this verse has a tendency to get out of hand and a few people rather foolishly cast love/lust/fertilty spells that got really out of control.
  • Mary Sues. Just... Mary Sues. Amusingly, Mary Sues can be "half" more than two species. For example, they will be "half" human, "half" X, and "half" Y all at once.
  • Even though it's been established that Irken are born from test tubes and have no concept of human affection, this trope is agonizingly common in Invader Zim fanfiction. Brain Bleach, please.
  • In Divine Blood The Demons and Gods actively modified their DNA so as to be more human and allow them to infiltrate and manipulate humanity against each other. This led to them not only being genetically compatible with humans, but also with each other.
  • Averted in Chocobo Nights: the baby Tifa gives birth to is apparently a purebred chocobo. Its only mammal characteristic is that it attempts to suckle. Yeah, it's that kind of fic.
  • Deconstructed in Morphic, a Pokémon fanfic about this sort of thing.
  • In The Tainted Grimoire, there is the Feol Viera who are half Hume and half Viera. Kanin is one of them.
  • PurpleGreen Clouds has David Karofsky from Glee as a half-human, half-alien of the Grey variety.


Film[]

  • Barf the Mawg from Spaceballs, played by John Candy. "Half man half dog, I'm my own best friend!".
    • Even worse, the gangster Pizza the Hutt is described as half-man, half pizza. So that's how those Pizza Boy Special Delivery scenes really end...
  • Partially Justified Trope in Species. While alien/human hybrids are created through Hand Waving, most of them have extremely unstable biochemistry that results in their early deaths.
    • Though, let's be honest, you really shouldn't try to apply any kind of logic to Species. It's just not going to end well.
      • Also, the half-human hybrids Sill and Eve are healthy. It's only the three-quarters human children of The Virus infected astronaut in Species II who are sickly and (apparently) sterile. Which means the whole thing makes even less sense. Not to mention it retroactively ruins the entire premise of the first two films, though the idea that a species with a starting population of one or two individuals could outbreed the six billion humans on Earth is fairly silly to begin with (realistically we'd just absorb them in a few generations, or they'd quickly become ridiculously inbred).
      • Oddly enough, inbreeding doesn't actually cause direct problems, or cause mutation or anything like that. It just increases the chance of already existing genetic "defects" (color-blindness for example) popping up. There is a small chance that no genetic problems would occur and a decent chance that those that do pop up would only be minor, if the two original beings have no expressed problems of their own. Not accounting for mutations, which always have the same chance of occurring, no matter what, of course. God I love biology.
  • In Roger Avary's film adaptation of Beowulf, Grendel is a Half-Human Hybrid. He may be sterile (given his apparent lack of reproductive organs), and though it may just be because he's a monster he gives a good impression of being sickly. He's hideously deformed, has what appears to be a nasty skin condition, and is sometimes heard whimpering as if in pain (though that's probably just because loud noises irritate his super-sensitive ear). The dragon at the end of the film is also a Half-Human Hybrid, born of a mating between Beowulf and Grendel's mother. This is also very much unlike the original poem, where no human ancestry was suggested for Grendel except that he was a distant descendant of Cain.
    • In Sturla Gunnarsson's Beowulf & Grendel (2005), Grendel is referred to as a troll but his mother is some sort of sea creature. His son with Selma is this trope played straight.
  • B-movie Arachnid has a gigantic alien spider giving birth to all kinds of other huge bugs. Sometimes it is required to lay the eggs inside a human. We never get any clue exactly what, if anything, it was mating with.
  • Alien: Resurrection has a half-human half-Alien squickfest born, appropriately enough, via a bizarre halfway-house between Facehugger egg-hatching and human pregnancy.
  • Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Lightning Thief postulates that the Roman and Greek gods are still around, and have been mating with humans a lot , with hundreds of demi-gods sprinkled through human society. Some of them know their parentage, some don't.
  • In Splice, two married scientists pioneer a new technology to 'plug and play' any number of different animal's DNA together to produce new unique organisms. They decide to take the next step and insert human DNA into the mix. That worked out about as well as you would expect.
  • In Dreamscape, the nightmares of a young boy Alex is trying to help take the shape of a half-man/half-snake creature. One of the villains also later assumes this form while in the dream world.


Literature[]

  • An early modern version is the boy Jervase Cradock, who is part Fair Folk in The Three Imposters by Arthur Machen.
  • Averted in Poul Anderson's short story, The High Crusade,which includes an instance of the humans finding one or more green-haired, feathery-antennae'd space babes. In the words of the narrator, "Nor was there any possibility of issue between [the Space Babe's] species and our own." Nevertheless, he indicates that the complications didn't stand in the way of Interspecies Romance.
    • Though being a priest, he does worry that "the prohibitions of Leviticus might apply," i.e. that it counts as the sin of coupling with beasts.
  • Piers Anthony's Xanth series, filled with Interspecies Romance (including much Love Potion-induced "romance") as it is, has a number of Half Human Hybrids; such hybrids are always fertile, and in some cases entire new races are created this way. It can be taken to ridiculous extents, such as a character who is 1/2 brassy 1/4 human 1/8 ogre and 1/8 nymph.
    • In cases where the two species involved are otherwise physically... incompatible, love springs have an inherent magic that overrules the laws of biology, allowing for even more bizarre blendings. When the two species are simply too different to coexist in a single form, they become were-creatures, able to transform from the one species to the other.
  • Harry Potter gives us Hagrid, who had a human father and a giant mother. Madame Maxime is also at least part-giant, but trying to pass as "pure human." This isn't the only Interspecies Romance suggested, but they're the only characters we meet who are exactly half-and-half.
  • Shadow from American Gods was the son of Odin and a mortal woman.
  • Similarly, Charlie and Spider from Anansi Boys are the sons of the spider god Anansi and a mortal mother.
  • Tobias from Animorphs. His parents are Elfangor, the Andalite prince who gave him and the other Animorphs their abilities, and his human companion, Loren. Tobias' birth was possible due to Elfangor's own shapeshifting abilities, living as a human until the Ellimist takes him away to become the hero he was meant to be. While this would seem to make Tobias all human, in the book The Illusion, he is able to have a vision of Elfangor, an utzum, which occurs to comfort an Andalite warrior on the verge of death. This could be explained as a side effect of having aqcuired Andalite DNA from his uncle, Ax, previously to his near-death experience.
    • And some totally non-human examples:
    • Jara Hamee and his daughter Toby (named for Tobias) are descended from an Andalite female who married a Hork-Bajir, though, again, she used morphing technology to actually become a Hork-Bajir.
    • The Ellimist had children while living among the Andalites in a genetically engineered body millions of years ago, so a great deal, if not the entirety, of modern Andalites should be his descendants. Which means Tobias and the Hamee family are his descendants, too.
      • And, indeed, it is implied the modern Andalites inherit their built-in Translator Microbes (i.e. "thought-speak") from his artificial body. The primitive Andalites he lived amongst spoke only sign language.
  • Marion Zimmer Bradley's The World Wreckers includes a romance and eventually a child between a human and an alien chieri (one of a race of space elves). It is also suggested that the psychic powers of the Darkovan humans are partly due to early interbreeding with the chieri in Darkover Landfall.
    • Its explicit in a number of the books that the Chieri and humans have been interbreeding infrequently for a long time now. In fact, it was the breeding program that created powerful psychics as well as leaving the nobility inbred with a number of "lethal recessives" was brought about to strengthen the psychic gifts inherited from the Chieri. Also, a number of Chieri features show up now and then in the noble families, particularly the ruling Hastur, including abnormally long life, tall slim builds, six fingered hands, and low fertility rates, even compared to the already low norm.
  • In Patricia Briggs' Hurog novels half the cast have a dragon ancestor several generations back.
    • Handwaved in that dragons can assume human form.
  • Terry Brooks' Landover series has Willow, born of two different kinds of faerie, whose status complicates both her relationship to Ben Holiday, and later their child's gestation and birth-- as the child of a wood nymph, she has to spend part of the time as a tree.
  • There are a few examples of hybrids in Terry Brooks' Shannara books (the Urda, for example, are Troll/Gnome hybrids). Justified, in one sense, by the fact that dwarves, gnomes, and trolls are simply different subspecies of human mutated by the apocalypse. Less explicable is how humans can interbreed with elves, who are just fae evolved into humanoids...
  • Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga has Taura, who's a genetically engineered remnant of a Super Soldier project, with horse genes somewhere in there (among others). She's friendly, cheerful and her favourite colour is pink, but she's also eight feet tall and looks quite a lot like a werewolf. People tend to misjudge her on these grounds.
  • John Carter of Mars, the hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars and subsequent books, had two children with Dejah Thoris, a red Martian princess. Martians lay eggs. Go figure. Then again, John Carter may not be human; he says he is very old and can recall no childhood. There is no mention of the other human/Martian couple in the series (Ulysses Paxton/Valla Dia) having children.
    • Made even stranger because it's strongly implied the various Barsoomian Human Aliens can't even fully interbreed with each other; In The Gods Of Mars the White Martians try to expand their gene pool with outbreeding, and get a bunch of pitiful monstrosities that are kept hidden away.
  • Averted in C. J. Cherryh's Brothers of Earth. A human man is isolated amongst humanoid aliens, but finds a place with them and gets married. Nobody expects the marriage to produce children and it is agreed that he and his wife will try for children for a year and after that the head of the household will step in.
  • In David Eddings' The Dreamers series, That-Called-The-Vlagh (or just 'The Vlagh) is a giant female insect who creates thousands and thousands of eggs, and whenever she sees a characteristic she likes, she mixes and matches animals with the characteristics she likes... creating the craziest creatures ever. But very, very, deadly.
  • Damsel of Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible is not the actual child, but the genetic combination of her father's DNA and that of the Green-Skinned Space Babe he fell in love with. This is actually addressed with Damsel confessing that the combination isn't stable and she is constantly sick because of it.
  • Saaski, the protagonist of the Newbery Medal-winning novel The Moorchild is born among the Folk, which are basically the traditional Northern European idea of fairies (ie, pagan spirits of nature fond of music and games, and completely amoral as long as something looks to be fun). However, she is actually the hybrid child of a Folk woman and a human man who wandered into their domain. Unable to exercise all the powers of the Folk, and seen as a danger to them, the Prince declares she must be sent out among the humans as a changeling child. Naturally, she doesn't fit in their either, as she still retains a hatred of everyday features of human life like crosses, yellow flowers, salt, and iron (particularly unfortunate as her "adoptive" father is a blacksmith).
  • In William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land, the Giants are an extremely unpleasant example, "fathered of bestial humans and mothered of monsters". While generally humanoid in form, they're hideous, squat, furry, warty, and bigger than elephants.
  • In the books by Ian Irvine there are four humanoid species: Charon, Faellem, Aachim and old human. Those with ancestry from two of the above are blendings, three makes a triune and four makes a tetrach. This may be slightly played with as the books state that many hybrids are sterile, have a short lifespan and various mental and physical problems, these worsening the more "mixed" the blood is.
    • Also, at least some of these human species are directly derived from others. While it's likely there'd been enough genetic drift to make separate species, it's possible that at least a couple of these races are in fact from the same species. There are other non-human species in the series, but no-one's particularly keen to mate with them to see what happens.
  • Diana Wynne Jones has played with this several times.
    • Justified in Dark Lord of Derkholm in which Derk is a magician specialising in genetics and creates griffin children using his and his wife's DNA as well as cat and eagle DNA. However, it is implied that Derks' griffin children will have no problem having children with the "real" griffins that turn up in the second book (well their Dad can help them out).
    • In Deep Secret a couple of centaur characters have human fathers. It's pointed out that it has to be that way round because a hybrid foetus would be too big for a human woman to carry.
    • In House of Many Ways, the insectoid lubbocks reproduce by laying eggs in humans. If the victim is male and doesn't have the eggs surgically removed, he will die, and the resulting offspring is another lubbock. If the victim is female, the victim will usually die in childbirth, and the resulting offspring will be a lubbockin (a Half-Human Hybrid that can interbreed with humans).
    • The mysterious gualdians of A Sudden Wild Magic. It's not very clear how they're not human, but they consider humans to be a different species and prefer not to interbreed, although it's definitely possible and humans often consider it desirable (to the extent of having very nasty plans for a captured gualdian).
  • Showed up fairly often in the works of H.P. Lovecraft: The inhabitants of the titular town in The Shadow Over Innsmouth come to mind in particular, but there were also The Dunwich Horror and the Jermyn family in Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family. There's a bit of Subtext reflecting Lovecraft's famed racist views in how the interbreeding is portrayed as so extremely unnatural.
    • Your Mileage May Vary - Lovecraft's racism was rather open and casual (and not atypical for the time). Those stories involve humans interbreeding with Eldritch Abominations, Fish People, and gorillas, respectively, so "unnatural" might stand to reason.
      • The extremeness and breadth of Lovecraft's racism actually was pretty extreme, even for the time, and he maintained it until the day he died, despite science marching on. And it doesn't take a genius to recognize a subtext of miscegenation in his writings involving Half Human Hybrids. The problem is not that he presented breeding with a gorilla or a "frog-fish" to be unnatural, the problem is that there was an unspoken component (you know, Subtext) that breeding with a non-white race is also unnatural, because they are no more human than a gorilla.
    • In Robert Bloch's Cthulhu Mythos story "The Brood Of Bubastis", he takes this trope Up to Eleven, with an ancient Egyptian cult that'd managed to bring their animal-headed deities into being in the flesh, by quite primitive methods.
  • Averted entirely in Anne McCaffrey's Freedom's Landing series. There's only one species humanoid enough to be attractive to humans, and it's outright stated that they can't have children together. The children the heroine and her love have are from affairs on her part and a previous marriage on his, both with their own species.
  • If anyone deserves mention it is Renesmee from Meyer's Twilight series. A half human half vampire Dhampyr, she is the reason for the main conflict with the Big Bad in the end of last book, and her birth is the biggest plot element for most of said book.
    • Don't forget Nahuel, who is also a Dhampyr and is the main factor in halting combat with the Big Bad
    • This one might be considered an aversion since vampires are not actually a "species". All vampires were humans once, and have simply been transformed into a post-human state. It is only the fact that female vampires cannot successfully become pregnant that prevents them from procreating as a separate species. But since they were all human at one time, and have merely been altered via supernatural means, there is no genetic reason that they could not breed with other humans, with the supernatural aspect simply "infecting" the resulting progeny much the same was as it is spread from vampires to other humans to create more vampires.
  • In Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, the character Hemi is half ghost, half human.
  • In Eric Nylund's A Pawn's Dream, all the Dreamers are half (or less) human, as a child born of two Dreamers is incredibly powerful and therefore forbidden, as it would disrupt the balance of power. In this case the intermarrying isn't very far fetched, as the only differences from regular humans are the existence in both worlds and the ability to use magic.
  • James Patterson's Maximum Ride. Six kids with wings and the ability to fly hundreds of kilometres. On top of that, one six-year-old can also breathe underwater, speak to fish, change her appearance at will and read and control minds.
    • This is more a case of Lego Genetics than Half-Human Hybrid, since the kids were all created by lab experiments and claim to be only 2% bird (as if that made any more sense).
    • All of the members of the "Flock" have powers not related to birds at all, with the possible exception of Max with her super speed. Apparently she's part falcon.
      • Maximum Ride came from James Patterson's earlier novels When The Wind Blows and The Lake House, also featuring flying kids. However, they are slightly creepier. This Max lays eggs.
  • Tamora Pierce's Wild Magic--Daine Sarrasri is the child of a human woman (Sarra--thus the name) and the god of the hunt (Weiryn). Her mother later becomes a goddess in her own right (The Green Lady). Aly and Nawat's baby from the Trickster books might also count--half human and half crow.
  • Lampshaded in H. Beam Piper's short story When In The Course. One human female character is reminded several times throughout the story that, even though the inhabitants of Freya appear human, the two races "started in two different puddles of living slime, seven hundred light-years apart." At the end of the story, she announces that she's pregnant by a Freyan.
  • Half-Giants, Half-Veela, Werewolves, Centaurs, Merpeople and Half-Goblins in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter. Collectively referred to as 'half-breeds'. They suffer a lot of prejudice from the rest of the Wizarding world.
    • Only the first two are definitely hybrids; werewolves are made by 'infecting' people, and centaurs and merpeople are traditionally species unto themselves. What, you took the term half-breed literally? The characters who use it probably don't care much about accuracy.
      • The half-goblin example is also definitely hybrid, at least according to Word of God.
  • Played with in Brian Ruckley's "The Godless World" series. The world in question contains 4 sentient species (previously 5, before the werewolf race got wiped out). Of these only two are humanoid, the Huanin (humans) and Kyrinin (elves, but not as long-lived, wise or peaceful as elves tend to be.). The two races can interbreed, but the offspring, called Na'Kyrim, are always sterile and generally conform to real-life hybridization in terms of appearance and shared traits. They also develop a form of magic, known as the "Shared", which given the primary way to become a powerful user of it, tends to cause a great deal of mistrust in the average person. By the way things are looking by the end of the second book, they are very, very justified.
  • In Christopher Stasheff's Warlock books, Gwendylon Gallowglass of Gramarye is one-quarter elven (and her children are one-eighth). This is weirder than usual, because on Gramarye elves were originally an alien fungus shaped by the beliefs of humans with Psychic Powers.
  • In JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth books (The Lord of the Rings, etc) there are a few human/elf children. Only one human/elf-descended family (descending from two separate mixed marriages, whose descendants married each other) is actually confirmed and appearing in the plot. The surviving members of that family later have to each make a choice to be counted among either Elves or Men, due to the fact that elves and men have totally incompatible afterlives and cosmic reasons. It is also speculated in-book that Saruman produced human/orc hybrids. In one of his letters, Tolkien said that biologically, humans and elves are the same species (though they are spiritually different), which is why they can interbreed; since Orcs are presumed to be degraded creatures created from elves or humans, they would be able to interbreed with us as well.
    • The Uruk-hai engineered by Saruman are implied to be made of orc and human stock.
  • S.L. Viehl is fond of this trope. Humans can interbreed with all kinds of freaky aliens—from blue-skinned humanoids, to avians, to something that looks like a human-sized three-way hybrid of a mudpuppy, a catfish, and a lamprey. The aforementioned blue people seem to be able to hybridize with even more races... including some that are really bizarre.
  • In David Weber's Bahzell stories , humans have split into 5 separate species. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Hradani, and Halfings. It is possible for any of the species to interbreed although only Elf-Human hybrids (Half-Elves) are common--several of the other matches produce offspring that die young or are infertile, although most of the human population of the Axeman Empire have some Dwarf blood. Half-Elves consider themselves to be the fifth species (since they came about before Halflings); however while breeding with each other and with full Elves preserves both the Human and Elvish traits, the offspring of a Human and Half-Elf will show a significant reduction in the Elvish traits. Finally it is established that only Humans and Half-Humans can be wizards or magi.
  • Anthrozils in Dragons in Our Midst.
  • Used early on but mostly averted in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Two unconnected characters are said to be "hybrids", and it's never explained exactly what species they're hybrids of. Since a lot of different species are related--humanity, for instance, has a long list of "near-humans", offshoots that can in some cases look very unusual--these hybrids might well be more plausible than some of the others on this page. There are also enough mentions of bio-engineering that some species might well be able to make a hybrid. However, in the few examples of Interspecies Romance, it's generally proven true that "the parts match up just fine, but that's about it", as Gavin says of Asyr.
  • Hybrids ("breeds") are so common in Glen Cook's Garrett P.I. fantasy series, they sometimes outnumber the human characters. Exempting non-humans from military conscription, then inviting them in to work while your human subjects are off fighting a hundred-year war, can have unintended consequences...
  • Human/fairy hybrids appear prominently in Goblin Moon and The Gnome's Engine. They are prone to psychological instability and have unique responses to emotional stress, a fact which is central to the plot. A mixed dwarf/human marriage is also mentioned, although it's unstated whether children are expected to follow.
  • Averted in Neil Gaiman's Stardust, as Tristran and Yvaine get married despite their inability to interbreed.
    • A straight example would be Tristran himself, as his father was mortal and his mother was a fairy.
    • The Film of the Book, however, ends with mention of Tristan (different spelling) and Yvaine's children and grandchildren.
  • When the Evilutionary Biologists in Jack Chalker's The Moreau Factor crack the secret of Involuntary Transformation, what's the first thing they do? Turn their lab staff into sexy Half Human Hybrids, of course. Being Chalker, the new designs combine roughly equal measures of utilitarianism and Fetish Fuel; unlike most Chalker the Fetish Fuel aspects are deliberately lampshaded as being caused by the effect of the Power Perversion Potential on the scientists.
  • In Iain M.Banks Culture novels, Culture citizens have 'genofixing,' one result of which is that they can reproduce with other species (if desired, as other modifications allow the whole pregnancy cycle to be averted, paused indefinitely or aborted at will). Its immediate usefulness is in allowing the many similar but unrelated pan-human species to interbreed, but this being the Culture, plenty of people take it to more exotic extremes.
  • Isaac Asimov's 'Tweenies' short stories features Martian-Human hybrids. There most noticable features are large white mohican crests and high intelligence. They are outcasts of both species. In the stories a sympathetic human ends up looking after several Tweenies, later becoming a small commune. Once older, they leave Earth to have adventures colonising Venus.
  • Both protagonists of the Saga of the Noble Dead series are Half Human Hybrids. Magiere is a dhampir whose birth was only possible because an Evil Sorcerer intervened (and it took him years to get the spell right). Leesil is a half-elf, born the usual way.
  • Michael Crichton's Next has Dave, the son of a researcher who manipulated his DNA and a chimpanzee's donated cells. He displays both human and monkey aspects, especially in personality, where he flings poo. It's also implied, that, playing with the theme of genetic engineering gone insane and that people never expect problems with their newfangled tech, he's aging rapidly.
  • Caspian's tutor, Dr. Cornelius, in Prince Caspian is secretly part dwarf, and it's implied that Caspian's childhood nurse is also descended from dwarfs who'd avoided Telmarine pogroms by passing themselves off as short humans. Caspian's own son is half star, stars being glowing humanoid beings in the world of Narnia. Furthermore, The Magicians Nephew states that the children of Narnia's first human king and queen married wood-nymphs and river-spirits.
    • In The Magician's Nephew, we also learn that the White Witch--and indeed, all people of Charn--is part giant.
      • Subverted in Jadis/the White Witch's case, as she only pretended to be part human to assert her claim to the throne. Her non-giant blood is actually genie (jinn), not human.
  • Vestakia from Mercedes Lackey's The Obsidian Trilogy is, by definition, hellspawn. Around eighteen years before the start of the books, a powerful wildmage discovered she had been seduced and impregnated by a demon who styled himself a Prince of Shadow Mountain. Casting something halway between a prayer and a spell, she was given a choice between making sure the child would be born looking normal and hoping a mortal upbringing would counter the evil in its soul or making sure the kid's soul was free of demonic taint while dealing with the outward effects of its parentage. She chose option B, confided in her sister, and (with said sister's help) ran.
  • Mordred in the final volume of Stephen King's The Dark Tower is the child of two full-blooded humans, one demon elemental who was turned human by Magitek, and one Physical God who had at least one human ancestor and may be as much as half-human. It's a Long Story.
    • Also in The Dark Tower series, the Can-Toi, or the "low men" are half-human, half-taheen.
  • In the X Wing Series, a minor villain named Zekka Thyne is described as a halfbreed. It's never said what he is besides human, but he's got several Red Right Hands, namely very mottled skin, pointed teeth, and Hellish Pupils that catch the light.
    • One of the early Star Wars Expanded Universe books has a crossbreed mechanic whose parentage is also never described, who admits to Han Solo that he's not wholly of either species and is relieved when Han is okay with that.
    • The Star Wars Expanded Universe is filled with hybrids, due to the large number of "Near-Human" races, which aren't so much alien species as subspecies of humanity that descended from early space explorers who were cut off from the original human homeworlds thousands of years earlier, only to be rediscovered later. How far they diverge from regular humans varies; some just have different skin colors, while others have more extreme differences (the Miraluka, for example, have no eyes and see using The Force instead). On the other hand, species that aren't Near-Humans explicitly cannot interbreed with humans, no matter how human-like they appear to be.
      • The Miraluka are humanoid, not near-human, which is quite different (humanoid refers only to the basic body design).
      • Recent additions to the lore rendered near-human argument moot as not only near-humans can interbreed with humans but also species like Zabrak and Twi'lek.
  • In Tehanu, Therru turns out to be half dragon at the end of the book. Which really makes no sense, since she was only previously indicated to be a poor girl who was raped and then burned alive by thugs.
    • She's not half-dragon, she's something closer to a dragon in human form, and she's not the only one. Dragons and humans in Earthsea are strongly implied to be descended from the same original species, and Tehanu and other "dragon-people" such as Irian and the Woman of Kemay are not actual hybrids, but rather some sort of mystical throwback.
  • An interesting example occurs in The Godless World Trilogy. The na'kyrim are the offspring of a Kyrinin and a Hunin. They cannot reproduce but they do gain access to the Shared, which appears to be something magical. Na'kyrim can communicate with other na'kyrim through it. It can also be used to control the minds of others, plant suggestions, or see the truth. There are legends quoted that ancient na'kyrim could perform magic and even conpletely repair their bodies.
  • The Halfblood Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton focus mainly on characters who are the results of elven lords impregnating their human slaves. The half-bloods/wizards are implied to be infertile, though it's never directly stated. The wizards find and save new half-bloods in order to perpetuate themselves as a society; they are never seen to have children of their own loins.
  • The Dragonlance series of books started the original Chronicles Trilogy off with one of the main characters as a half-elf, the conflicting emotions he felt stemmed from the mixture of his two races and serves as the character's main plot for most of the books; his name Tanis Half-Elven
  • The Bedlam's Bard series by Mercedes Lackey (and varying co-authors) has half-human, half-elven characters, but also states that the species are not cross-fertile unless deliberate actions are taken to make them so. One plotline in one of the books is Beth and Kory searching for a means to accomplish this without resorting to the means used by Perenor to father Ria (Which involved forcibly draining other humans of magic - with frequently lethal consequences).
  • Humans in Black Dogs seem to be able to hybridize with almost anything, from the plausible elves, Fridge Logic dragons and even demons that vary wildly and posess more random body parts in otherworldly dimensions than you can shake a stick at. A couple of these hybrids are even main characters.
  • Kingdom Keepers has fairlies, which are human and fairy offspring.
  • Though hybrids have yet to appear prominently in Discworld, it's mentioned a couple of times that humans with dwarf or elf blood exist. Nanny Ogg is the most prominent human character with a trace of dwarf blood, which may explain her short stature and hard-headed ability to survive ballistic farmhouses. It's also mentioned that humans can interbreed with werewolves, with unpredictable results, and at least one major character is a demigod.
  • In Kit Whitfield's In Great Waters all the royal houses of Europe (except Switzerland which is landlocked) have Deepman blood. Any hybrid not of royal blood is termed a Bastard and summarily executed, usually by burning. All hybrids have small, needle like teeth, black eyes with no white, clawed and webbed fingers and "legs" that are actually bifurcated tails which force them to use canes to walk. Because of inbreeding royals sometimes exibit other Deepman traits like bioluminescent blue skin (rare even among Deepmen) like Anne or tails that are whole down to the knees like Philip.
  • In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Shadows in the Moonlight" Olivia dreams of a godlike being arriving to where a partly human, partly godlike being was tortured to death, and turning the torturers to stone.
Cquote1

 "The youth they tortured was like the tall man who came?" he asked at last.

"As like as son to father," she answered, and hesitantly: "If the mind could conceive of the offspring of a union of divinity with humanity, it would picture that youth. The gods of old times mated sometimes with mortal women, our legends tell us."

Cquote2
    • In "The Scarlet Citadel," the alleged Backstory of Tsotha-lanti
  • In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero's Daughter, Miranda learns that her mother was not who she thought she was, and therefore the demon that addressed a "nephilim" in her presence might have meant her.
  • The Nephilim of Angelology who are descended from Fallen Angels called Watchers and are a race of Complete Monsters. They look like tall, pale and beautiful humans,have lifespans measured in centuries and have wings like their fathers. They also have a warrior caste called Gibborim who are pure white with red eyes but red wings which they can use to create and incendiary wind.
  • In Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten, the Bradshaws explicitly avert this; they don't have any children because he's a man and she's a gorilla. For double irony — they are fictional characters within the story.
  • Meredith Gentry, in the series of the same name by Laurell K. Hamilton, is Unseelie Sidhe on her father's side and (I believe) human, brownie, and Seelie Sidhe on her mother's. In fact, about half the cast are hybrids, half-human or otherwise. This is to say nothing of her kids...
  • The D'Artigo sisters of Yasmine Galenorn's Otherworld series have a human mother and a fae father. Aditionally, Delilah was born with the powers of a werecat, and Menolly was turned into a vampire. Camille is a Moon Witch, but that's not exactly a species designation. Aditionally, it would seem that interbreeding is reasonably common since "ordinary" humans are referred to as FBH's. (Full Blood Humans)
  • Half-Elves form a whole race in Chronicles of the Emerged World, while true elves aren't really present but said to be extinct. Also the Big Bad is part Half-Elf and part Human.
  • Bruce Coville's book Half Human is a collection of short stories all about this trope. These half-human creatures range from the traditional to the unexpected, with just a few examples being a girl who discovers one morning that her hair has turned into snakes overnight and that her mother doesn't wear a turban all the time just for the Nice Hat factor, another girl who was conceived when her mother drank dragon blood and begins exhibiting dragon-like mannerisms and sprouting ridges on her back when she grows up, and a tree transformed into a man who must learn how to be human.
  • In Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, the character Helen Vaughan embodies this trope as played for Body Horror.
  • Also present in Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner and Tamir series, wherein the Aurënfaie and humans can interbreed, and such interbreeding is the reason some humans possess the ability to use magic. Such mixed-race individuals are know as Ya'shel (they would be half-elves in almost any other universe). This is all made even more interesting by the fact that the Aurënfaie are themselves part-dragon.
  • Hemi From Un Lun Dun. He's half ghost, although it's implied that it's extremely rare, and frowned upon by ghosts and humans, for such a pairing to occur.
  • Fablehaven has Kendra who is part human,part fairy. Curiously this was because fairies kissed her
  • The Dresden Files has a couple of variants on these. There are changelings, who are the scions of humans and one type or another of the Fae. Outwardly, they look human, but as they grow older they take on characteristics of their Fae side; for example, a scion of a human and a troll would become large and brutish and with odd-colored hair. Eventually, the changeling has to "Choose" whether to embrace their fairie heritage and become a full-blooded faerie, or to remain human and lose the faerie powers. There's also Kincaid, a centuries-old hitman who is a the scion of a human and something from Down Below.
    • And let's not forget Thomas Raith, who's the son of the King of the White Court of Vampires and a human wizard called Margaret Le Fay Dresden making him Harry's older half-brother.
  • In Aleksandr Zarevin's The Lonely Gods of the Universe, many humans are descended from a mix of the original humans and Human Aliens from planet Oll (who pretended to be Greco-Roman gods). Unlike their non-human ancestors, the hybrids are not immortal (the immortality is not due to genetics, though, but due to consuming an alien plant named Ambrosia that gained different properties on Earth). The only thing that appears to be the result of these inter-breedings is humans having different hair colors (apparently, original humans all had dark hair), thanks to the Ollans being redheads.
  • Completely rampant in Cassandra Clare's "The Mortal Instruments." Let's see; Nephilim are the offspring of humans and angels, fairies are part angel/part demon, and warlocks are half demon/half human.
  • Turns out James Stark in Sandman Slim is half angel.
  • Apparently, a human can produce viable offspring with anything in Jane Gaskell's Atlan series. The invader from the first novel, The Serpent, is the product of a reptile mother and a human father, and later impregnates the heroine, Cija. In the fourth installment, The City, a red ape breeds with Cija, but her mother urges her to abort the resulting fetus.
  • In Jacqueline Carey's The Sundering, Ushahin Dreamspinner (one of Satoris's three lieutenants is half-human, half-Ellylon.
  • In The Griffins Daughter Trilogy, half-human/half-elves - like the title character, Jelena - are known as hikui among the elves, and are treated as second-class citizens, at best. Which is still far better than half-elves are treated in the (human-ruled) Soldaran Empire, where the local religion says elves are demons looking to steal human souls and half-elves are creatures of evil.
  • John's daughters in Dirge for Prester John: Sefalet (half-blemmye) and Anglitora (half-crane). Anglitora is considered fairly lucky to be a human-looking woman with a crane's wing while Sefalet has no face, instead having eyes and mouths in her hands.
  • In Wandering Monsters by Elliott Kay: Scars, a half-orc and the only son of the heroes Kyerva the Slayer (orc) and Mitchell Brightsong (human).

Live-Action TV[]

  • Star Trek is awful about this, having numerous half-Earthling half-aliens in the various series (as if we wouldn't be able to relate to the characters otherwise). Spock was half-Vulcan. Troi was Half-Betazoid. B'Elanna Torres was Half-Klingon.
    • That's not so the audience can relate to the characters, but so the writers can do episodes about racism, or the problems people have adapting to different cultures when they're torn between two worlds. B'Elanna rejected her own culture because she blamed it for her bad temper and lousy life.
      • Hybrids apparently have a much harder time dealing with their dual heritage than most of their friends and colleagues.
    • Sarek rejected Spock for choosing to join Starfleet rather than the Vulcan Science Academy. They make up later. (If Sarek had actually had issues with humans, he wouldn't have married Amanda or had Spock.)
      • The book The Science of Star Trek revealed that a Vulcan-Human hybrid is a biological impossibility to begin with--copper (the base of Vulcan blood) and iron (the base of Human blood) are chemically incompatible, and wouldn't be able to carry oxygen if they were somehow combined. And yet some Expanded Universe species have both chemicals in their blood, in separate cells.
    • Eventually the writers tried to mitigate this by establishing that although interspecies reproduction does occur, the probability of success is very low. As well, one episode shows that all the Human Aliens and Rubber Forehead Alien races share similar genetic stock planted by Precursors, which makes the whole thing a little more believable.
    • Ensign Tarses (introduced as part-human, part-Vulcan) is the accidental victim of a witch-hunt on board the Enterprise. Hounded by the over-zealous persecutor for a sabotage conspiracy, it ends up being revealed that the secret he's hiding has nothing to do with the sabotage. He lied to Star Fleet about his heritage to avoid persecution in the first place: his heritage isn't Vulcan, it's Romulan.
    • This actually becomes a plot point in Star Trek: New Frontier: An enemy of the Federation is busy studying hybrids for hints as to how to make the perfect body so that one of their own can wear one and infiltrate And it turns out it works, as either Nechayev was a hybrid all along, or she was kidnapped and a hybrid made to look like her infiltrated Starfleet.
  • Doyle from Angel was half-demon. In fact, most of the demons seen in the Buffy/Angel universe actually had some degree of human blood. "True" demons --such as the one the Mayor turned into --are monstrous, primal creatures with more in common with Lovecraft's gods than humanity.
    • Aside from the Nazi-esque "pure demons" The Scourge, who claimed not to be hybrids, but weren't any more powerful or less humanoid than other demons.
    • Connor is an interesting case. Both of his parents are vampires (who normally can't have kids, but there was magic involved), but he seems human at first, though it's later revealed that he's part demon.
    • Or Cordelia, who starts out perfectly human but then gets "part demon" sort of magically grafted into her DNA. Assuming demons have DNA.
  • There is some debate over whether the Doctor Who TV movie on FOX was canon, and if the Doctor is in fact half-human, half-Gallifreyan, as was stated outright in that movie.
    • There is also some debate over whether the statement was intended to be true, within the context of the movie...etc, etc....!
    • In the new series episode "The Doctor Dances", although no Half Human Hybrids appear, it's mentioned that by the 51st century humanity has spread out among the stars, and has apparently had interbred and mixed into with every intelligent species possible. In fact, in about 5 billion years, pure humans are extinct, leaving only hybrids, engineered variants, and so on.
    • Likewise, "Gridlock" included a cat man (supposedly evolved from humans) having children with a human women. They looked exactly like normal kittens.
      • Expanded Universe sources claim that the cat people evolved entirely independently of humans, on a different planet in a different galaxy, and just happen to be genetically compatible with humans (the offspring always being the species of the father).
    • "Evolution of the Daleks" is probably the most extreme example. Not only does Dalek Sec fuse himself with Mr. Diagoras to become a Human/Dalek hybrid, the "new Daleks" in the same episode, while looking human, are in fact humans whose DNA was replaced with a mixture of Dalek and Time Lord DNA. The latter was "accidentally" added into the mixture due to the Doctor's intervention and a very convenient lightning strike.
    • "Journey's End" had not one, but two half human, half Time-Lords showing up. One had only one life and heart though and the other could only be an extremely temporary thing. This is because it's more or less stated that it was just impossible to properly work. This would also seem to officially make the movie's claim about the Doctor's heritage Canon Dis Continuity.
    • King Peladon, ruler of the planet Peladon, in The Curse of Peladon was half-Pel and half-human. His mother was a human princess. He later had a daughter, Queen Thalira. It's unknown who her mother was.
  • Half-human hybrids were one of the threats in The X-Files. (most notably the alien hybrids and the Flukeman)
  • For the most part averted in Babylon 5, where human/alien pairings and pairings of different aliens are rare and can't produce children (except for two very special cases).
    • In both cases, the groundwork was laid by extremely sophisticated biotechnology effectively indistinguishable from magic (see Clarke's Third Law) and far beyond the biotech capabilities demonstrated elsewhere. Delenn used a Chrysalis device to become a human/Minbari hybrid, later having a son, David, with John Sheridan. Jeffrey Sinclair/Valen travelled back in time and became mostly Minbari using the device, later having many Minbari descendants - including Delenn. Not many people can say they were friends with their own multigreat-grandfather.
    • However, G'Kar specifically mentions that a direct mating with human telepath, Lyta Alexander, could be used to reintroduce the telepath gene into the Narn species with the aid of genetic engineering. Narns are marsupials, by the way. Of course this could just be written of as G'Kar being a bit pervy, particularly in the pilot where he was portrayed as a villain. However, it is mentioned again near the end of the series.
  • The existence of Cylon/human hybrid children is a central plot point of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica: There has been only one recorded case of a Cylon-Human hybrid. The other turned out to be a subversion, as although we were led to believe Nicholas Tyrol was one of these, turns out the mother had been with another man around the same time she got together with her eventual husband.
    • The Finale reveals that Hera is the Mitochondrial Eve, and thus a common ancestor of all modern humans. In addition, Baltar and Cottle discussed interbreeding with the natives of the second (our) Earth. This means that modern humans are actually a mix of Cylons and two types of human, while what the Colonials would call pure humanity is extinct.
  • In Farscape. Scorpius is a hybrid of two alien races, Scarrans and Sebaceans, but suffers from many physical difficulties as a result, the most notable being maintaining an unusually high body temperature while being unable to tolerate heat. Also unusual in that Scorpius' conception and birth both took place under lab conditions, and prior to him, there had been over ninety failed attempts at creating such hybrids--all of which had resulted in the death of both the mother and the hybrid offspring.
    • But also played perfectly straight as well, with D'Argo's son Jothee, and John and Aeryn's baby.
      • It should be pointed out that the spoiler above is explained by (one of) the big reveals in the Peacekeeper Wars--Jothee is still a mystery though. Sebaceans are actually genetically engineered offspring Humans taken from Earth 10,000 years ago.
        • It is revealed in the ongoing comic series (the D'Argo's Trial storyline) that Jothee's conception required assistance from an expert doctor.
      • It is rather ironic that Sebaceans, with their emphasis on genetic purity, were the only race that was shown to have hybrids with more than one species.
        • Well, why would a race care about genetic purity if they couldn't hybridize easily with other races?
    • Another straight example: John was the only one who could have a child with a Sebacean princess whose genes were poisoned.
      • And for the record, in the same episode it was revealed that Luxans (D'Argo) and Nebari (Chiana) are not compatible.
      • Sebaceans and Hynerians are also shown to be incompatible.
    • Aeryn also technically qualifies, due to a Mad Scientist's experiment she ended up gaining some Pilot DNA.
  • Evie from Out of This World derives her powers from her Antarian father.
  • Saul Malone of Saul Of The Molemen seems to parody this, as in the second to last episode of the first season he finds out he is somehow half-rock.
  • Smallville has a Kryptonian exile on Earth who fathers a child with a human woman. It's also implied that a Native American tribe of skinwalkers derives their power from a combination of part-Kryptonian ancestry and Green Rocks.
  • Stargate Atlantis had an entire species of these, the Wraith, who were apparently a hybrid between humans and a beetle-like insect that sucks the life out of you. It gets even more confusing with the introduction of Michael, who is half-human, half-Wraith, and seems to oscillate back and forth on a regular basis.
      • Actually, the wraith were caused by half a million years of the bugs feeding and connecting to humans, to the point where they started to become just one creature.
    • Michael is a case of Unstable Genetic Code resulting from the Atlantis team's experiment at suppressing the bug genes of a Wraith. He's not so much half-Wraith as Not So Wraithy.
  • Earth: Final Conflict has an odd example in Liam Kincaid more properly Liam Sandoval-Beckett but no one calls him that, ever. He has three parents, two human and one Kimera and ends up with a kind of triple stranded DNA helix and a few special abilities. The entire manner of it is convoluted but the Kimera race were extremely advanced and had a demonstratable skill in genetic manipulation.
    • In one episode, Sandoval is revealed to be dying and requiring a transplant from a close relative. Unfortunately, his parents are dead (supposedly, killed by Zo'or when he leveled Sandoval's home island), and he has no children (none that he knows of, at least). Liam secretly donates the required materials for his genetic father, which brings to question why the doctor who tested the sample never commented on the triple-helix DNA, and why a proper doctor would even inject that into a human.
  • Averted on Monsterquest, where believers in the Monster of the Week occasionally claim to have found bones, hair, or living examples of this trope. To date, genetic or medical analysis has always concluded these either come from humans with physical abnormalities, or from known misidentified animals.
  • Wataru Kurenai from Kamen Rider Kiva is later revealed to be the result of his human father winning over his Fangire mother. Although Wataru's heritage was hinted early on whenever he transforms into the titular Rider by Kivat.
  • The Fallen miniseries is all about the Nephilim, the offspring of fallen angels and human females. The main character is a special kind of Nephilim known as the Redeemer, who can send repentant fallen angels back to Heaven. All Nephilim are orphans, as their fathers either don't know about them or don't care, while their mothers die at childbirth. While there are female angels, it appears they cannot get pregnant from a human male. Nephilim have some of the powers of angels, including wings, ability to speak and understand any language (including animals), and pyrokinesis (such as throwing fireballs and creating flaming swords). Like the fallen angels, the Nephilim are being hunted by the Powers, a group of non-fallen angels, who see them as abominations. A small group of humans also knows of their existence and wishes to use the Redeemer to get to Heaven.
  • The titular character in the 1998 Merlin series is a half-human hybrid born from a human mother and fairy magic. This becomes an important plot point in the novelizations.
  • Mel in the series "Tracker" finds out she is part Cirronian in the series' next-to-last episode.
  • The four "pod squad" characters in Roswell; Max, Michael, Tess and Isabel. And their "dupes", Rath, Zan, Lonnie and Ava.
  • The Chicken Lady in The Kids in The Hall.
  • Charmed first had Cole who was half human and half demon. He had demonic powers but have the power to actually feel. Then, Paige who is half whitelighter and half human. She had a hard time using her powers at first and it took her years for her to learn how to heal all by herself.
    • An then, Piper (witch) and Leo's (whitelighter) kids.
      • It is strongly implied that Whitelighters are all "ascended" former humans who either lived a life of service and self-sacrifice or died saving someone, so it doesn't seem exceptionally unreasonable that a magically enhanced ex-human might be able to sire children with a magical "regular" human. Still doesn't explain Cole though.
  • a variant in Tracker: Mel was one quarter Cirronian, with her grandmother being human and her grandfather being Cirronian.
  • The titular protagonist of Merlin, who is the son of a human mother and a Dragonlord father, thus making him technically a creature of the Old Religion.


Music[]


Mythology and Religion[]

  • In fact, this is Older Than Dirt. Half-human children of the gods go back almost 4500 years with the Sumerian (Mesopotamian) myth of Gilgamesh, who was supposedly one third man and two thirds god — a heritage which would require an infinite number of ancestors, according to modern biology.
    • If I remember correctly the two thirds god means he got two of three divine attributes that defined the sumerian gods. In his case he got divine strength and divine valor but not immortality. His mother was a goddess and his father was a king elevated to godhood. Biological thats more like 3/4 god.
  • Other mythologies such as Greek are filled with the half-human children of gods and monsters as well. Zeus being particularly infamous, with upwards of 30 noted hybrids by mortal women, several of his hybrids ascending to the pantheon, such as Heracles and Dionysus. Even Judeo-Christian legend has Lilith's demonic children and the nephilim, the result of "unauthorized" human/angel relations.
    • Of course, presumably, if you were a god, you could use some miracle to make it work out between yourself an a mortal, meaning that as silly as it sounds, this might actually be justified.
    • Both Loki and Thor from Old Norse religion are half-Aesir half-Jotun hybrids - Loki on his father's side, Thor on his mother's.
      • Loki is full Jotun. His parents are the Jotuns Laufey and Farbauti. Odin himself is half-Jotun and half-Aesir...his father Bor was Aesir but his mother Bestla was a frost giant. Thus making Thor three quarters Jotun and one-quarter Aesir. Loki's children Narvi and Vali born of the Goddess Sigyn would qualify as half-Jotun and half-Aesir. Magni, Thor's son with the giantess Jarnsaxa would be seven eighths Jotun and one eighth Aesir.
    • Loki was willing to have sex with just about anything and he pretty much did. In various stories he both fathered and mothered a great number of children, several of which were extremely important in the cosmology. (For instance: Hel, Fenrir and Jormugand--children of Loki and his Jotun/Giant wife despite the latter two appearing like animal-monsters--and Odin's horse Sleipnir.) Since Loki is not human and is also a shapeshifter most of these technically don't count as half human hybrids, but they are hybrids of a sort.
  • Merlin is traditionally depicted as the son of a woman (sometimes a witch, occasionally a nun) and an incubus. Or, sometimes, a man and a succubus. This is often given as an explanation for his magical and prophetic abilities. Modern interpretations of the legends vary significantly on Merlin's parentage.
    • This was the result of the Christianization of the legend, to explain how Merlin could wield magic powers (which are always Satanic), but still be a good guy. The woman incidentally is nearly always a raped nun who dunks her newborn into holy water to wash evil away from him as soon as he is born, but he still grows up a horny bastard with a taste for young virgins--the modern tellings tend to forget that aspect of his character.
    • Pretty sure in both the Christian and non-Christianized versions of the Arthurian Tradition Merlin was depicted as something of a fey spirit. So, half fairy was more like it. See works like the Elfin Knight, which predates most of the Malory as we know today. In the History of the Kings of Britain Merlin was depicted as born from a rather consensual experience. Try not to think about that too much.
    • ... And if you want to go back to the source material with the myth of Myddrin and his sister, it's implied that they both have 'magical' heritage. However, the emphasis is more on Myddrin's far-reaching Sight than anything else.
  • In Greek Mythology, the minotaur is of course one of these. The minotaur's origin is rather convoluted. The King of Crete asked Poseidon for something marvelous he would then sacrifice to the sea god; Poseidon sends a magnificent white bull. It's so awesome a bull that the king didn't want to actually sacrifice it, and instead offered one of his own bulls. Naturally, Poseidon was annoyed, so he caused the queen to fall in love with the bull, have sex with it, and get pregnant by it. The offspring? The Minotaur.
  • From Eastern Europe (especially, but not limited to, Roumania) there is the Dhampir or dhampire, child of a vampire and a human. Dhampir are meant to be excellent vampire hunters, but have a nasty habit of becoming vampires themselves when they die in many of the stories. Most half-human half-vampire characters in fiction draw on the dhampir mythology to some degree.
  • Then we can go to Japan. Japanese folktales are rife with henge, usually Kitsune, taking the form of human women, marrying humans, and having children. Abe no Seimei, a surprisingly close parallel to Merlin, was reputed to be half Kitsune.
  • A minor figure in the mythology of The Church of the Sub-Genius is Saint Oliver the Humanzee, who even has his own feast day. There really was a chimp named Oliver who was suspected of being a Humanzee, but DNA tests eventually revealed he was just a funny looking chimp.
  • In some cultures in South America, there are tales of half-dolphin half-humans (the river dolphins, botos, can turn into people who almost always wear white hats) who end up with blow holes on their heads and pink-white skin.
  • The Bible is very hush-hush on what the Nephilim were, but the most common theory is human-angel hybrids.
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 "And the sons of God looked upon the daughters of men and saw that they were fair, and took wives of all that they chose-- and there were giants in the land in those days."

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Radio[]

  • Alex Campbell from the Eighth Doctor Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories An Earthly Child, Relative Dimensions, Lucie Miller and To the Death was the son of Time Lady Susan Foreman (The Doctor's very first travelling companion) and human David Campbell.


Tabletop Games[]

    • Mortasheen has an entire class of monsters based on this concept. But, given the nature of the series, you probably won't be surprised to learn that they're Brundlefly-style arthropod-human hybrids of about every notable insect one could think of.
  • Series in the fantasy genre descended from Tolkien usually just use "half-elves", with the occasional half-orc, half-dwarf, half-minotaur (minotaurs themselfs in mythology being an example, see above.), etc.
  • Dungeons and Dragons has taken this trope to nearly ridiculous levels, up to and including half-dragons. (This last has been explained by the fact that dragons often have the ability to polymorph, or change their shape.)
    • In addition, "Half-breed" could be both a race and a template. Half-Orc and Half-Elf were races, but Half-Dragon and Half-Fiend were templates that could be added on to any sentient race. Applying one to the other yields results like, "Half-Dragon-Half-Half-Orc". What would that family reunion be like?
      • Probably because dragons can take any humanoid form so it would depend on what form the dragon was in at the time of the breeding.
    • Another example would be the Muls from Dark Sun, who are obviously based off of mules. They're half-dwarves, and lack the ability to reproduce. They are usually purpose-bred, being stronger, and having far greater endurance (can, literally, work for days), than either parent species, but their chances of surviving to come to term, and of the mother surviving bearing them, are somewhat low. Still, their great value as slaves means that the casualties are worth it.
    • In Dragonlance, the hero Tanis Half-Elven. He seems to have increased life-span, pointy ears, but no other benefits. Spends a fair amount of time sulking about how rejected he feels by both races (don't call him "Half-Man"!).
    • In the Eberron campaign setting, half-elves have graduated into being a full-blown "race" in their own right. Their earliest ancestors were human aristocrats and elven opportunists looking for an inheritance from the short-lived humans (not knowing at the time that their species were mutually-fertile). Born into the aristocracy, these half-elves had an easier time marrying their own kind since noble marriages are typically limited to other nobles. Eventually they went on to become a true-breeding race and most modern half-elves are born to half-elven parents, with only a small minority coming from human/elf pairings. They have even developed two Dragonmarks, which are generally unique to specific bloodlines within specific races, thus further cementing their perceived status as race unto themselves apart from elves and humans. Half-elves (or Khoravar as they like to call themselves) can still interbreed with humans and elves, as well as with the Kalashtar.
    • Averted by Ravenloft's "half-Vistani", as Vistani are simply a human ethnic minority, albeit with some unusual supernatural baggage. Averted differently by several Ravenloft monsters, including red widows and dread doppelgangers, which mate with humans but produce their own kind rather than hybrids.
    • In Al-Qadim (Arabian Adventures setting) locals consider marriages between different creatures pretty normal as long as they are interfertile. This includes, of course, half-elves and half-orcs, but also it's specifically said that a proper Magically-Binding Contract allows a Demi Human and a genie to have children.
    • In 3rd edition, a fairly substantial chunk of the populace (and two player classes) was descended, at least remotely, from dragons.
    • 2nd edition lampshades it with the Mongrelmen, a monster race that's said to be the result of centuries of cross-breeding and tend to have mismatched bits of fur, scales, hide, etc.
    • 4th edition half-elves, gain bonuses that correspond to neither of their parents.
    • You'd think the above would be enough but there are also people who are 75% humans, 25% something else. These including planetouched (Aasimar, Tiefling-descended from angels and demons/devils/daemons) Genasi (descended from elementals- Air, Earth, Fire, Water) and Yuan-ti (part reptile). And that's before we hit heritage feats and bloodlines. You've got to wonder if there is such a thing as 'pure' humans in the D&D universe.
      • It's somewhat notable that, in Fourth Edition, Aasimar, Tieflings and Genasi were all retconned to remove the half-human background. Tieflings are the descendents of humans who made a corruptive pact with devils, Aasimar (now renamed Devas) are Angels that gave up their "angelhood" to become more like mortals and who continuously reincarnate/resurrect (Time Lord style) rather than breeding, and Genasi are humans infused with the energy of Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Storms, or any combination of the five.
      • Earlier editions also featured the unusual Cambion and Alu-fiend demons, who were the half-human children of incubi and succubi respectively. Interestingly, both had a slim chance of not having the ethics of a Complete Monster, which put them heads and shoulders (morally speaking) over most other fiends.
    • Perhaps most disturbingly, the Book of Erotic Fantasy includes a table of crossbreeds, which implies that humans and dragons are the only two species which can have sex with virtually anything and produce viable offspring.
    • Dragonlance also gave us such a creature as half-kender (!). Yes, half-kender.
      • At least two half-kenders (Tarli and Scrounger) appeared in the Dragonlance novels, so it's canonical that the two races can crossbreed — albeit for obvious reasons it isn't something that happens often. There's even stats for them in the game at both the Dragonlance Nexus and Kencyclopedia. They also happen to be the one race on Krynn with even more angst than half-elves, due to being torn between their human and kender instincts/desires (mainly the border-line kleptomanical curiosity of their kender side and the fact their human side actually gives them the ability to understand such concepts as "ownership" and "private property") and the fact that no other race on Krynn trusts them. The average human, elf, etc basically considers a half-kender to be a "stealth kender" you can't even realise is a kender and so realise you need to protect your stuff from them--and thusly folks are quick to turn on half-kender when they realise their origin.
      • In the third book of The Cloakmaster Cycle one joins the crew and, of course, Hilarity Ensues. She "picked up" stuff out of curiosity as kenders do, but wasn't too distracted to remember where and put it back after examining. All this was pulled so well that instead of being a Sue Bomb she ended up praised as one of the best sidekicks ever and fan-preferred Love Interest. Later she was able to concentrate long enough to learn psionics (which in AD&D era implied above-average Intelligence and impressive Wisdom score, whether the teacher is an ancient supra-genius slug or not).
    • That said, this trope is averted in Classic D&D, which has races as classes. An elf and a human can certainly start a family with each other if they wish, but the result of their union will be either an elf or a human.
    • And then, Pathfinder. The following is a current (early 2012) list of things which have created bloodlines for sorcerers, meaning your ancestors interbred with them and you were born with innate magic: Aberrant (think Cthulhu Mythos like monsters), Abyssal (Demons or worse), Accursed (Hags), Proteans (chaos spirits), Aquatic (anything from sea elves to deep ones), Arcane (plain ol' A Wizard Did It - and how!), Boreal (giant & troll kin ala Norse Myth), Celestial (heavenly creatures), Deep Earth (earth spirits), several different kinds of genies and all four Western elemental types, Draconic, Fey, Infernal (Devils), Maestro (some musical monster from trumpet-wielding angels to shoggoths), Orc, Rakshasa (evil spirits of Buddhist myth), Serpentine (your friendly reptoids), Shadow (another dimension), Starsoul (spacefarers), Storm (unknown elemental spirits), Undead, and Verdant (plants). It's probably better not to ask how some of those happened. There are even more bloodlines available from third party developers or for characters with unusual archetypes.
      • There's no rule that says such a sorcerer can't also belong to a race which is already a half-human hybrid. A dhampir (half human, half vampire) sorcerer could have an Abyssal bloodline and the half-celestial template. Special Snowflake Syndrome can really run amok here if a GM allows it to.
  • Munchkin offers a Half-Breed card that will allow a character to be two species or one species without any of that race's disadvantages.
    • The seventh expansion, Even More Good Cards, gave us the Chimaera and One-Third-Breed cards. Does it make your brain hurt? It should.
      • The One-Third-Breed makes some sense. Say there's a half-human half-elf who has children with a full dwarf. Then you have a human-elf-dwarf.
  • Cthulhu Tech features both positive and negative examples. Nazzadi, essentially humans engineered to match the Proud Warrior Race Rubber Forehead Aliens tropes that ended up a bit too good on the Honest Warrior Poet side of the scale, are essentially recognized and treated as humans by almost all of the New Earth Government. They're genetically similar enough to interbreed with humans. Such hybrids are supposedly treated like anyone else. Outsider Taint is a more magical sort of hybrid, formed either the natural way with The Deep Ones or through the wrong sorcery roll, and are treated a bit less kindly by the NEG--the lightest Outsider Taint makes you legally inhuman. Of course, since it tends to come with unnatural cravings, freakish appearances, and whispers of ancient gods in the ear, that might be justified.
    • This might be an aversion regarding the Nazzadi hybrids, since Nazzadi are literally humans with very slightly altered DNA. It's similar to two humans with different color skin having kids.
  • Exalted has lots of these, but with a slight twist: God-Bloods, Fae-Bloods, Demon-Bloods, Beastmen, and Ghost-Bloods are actually significantly weaker than the "normal" races available for play. They're a step above ordinary humans, sure, but the titular Exalted outclass them by far. Beastmen, by the way, are exactly what they sound like.
  • Averted for the most part in Rifts; Dog Boys and their ilk are NOT Half Human Hybrids. They look it, and in the hands of lesser players may act it, but they're really just very smart dogs who were raised by humans. Half-breeds are specifically said to be impossible, unless one parent is a God or Demon.
  • Scion: Part of the premise.
  • Played with in Warhammer 40000 in a typically horrible fashion with genestealer hybrids, though in an unusual take the original Genestealer itself is never a parent--it infects another creature with its genetic material, and when that creature reproduces normally with another of its kind, the offspring will be part Genestealer. Necron Pariahs are horrifying hybrids of Untouchable humans and Necron technology.
    • There was mention of a human/Eldar hybrid who became a chief librarian in Rogue Trader fluff. Rick Priestley himself has said that the 2 races are close enough genetically to interbreed to have viable offspring. Of course, what Eldar would bring itself so low as to mate with those filthy mon-keigh. And official Imperial policy is to, ahem, greet the Xenos warmly.
    • Since Retconned, however. Humans, Eldar, and Tau are humanoid. That's where the biological similarities end.
      • Not necessarily - Xenology has already been partly retconned, and the designers of the new Dark Eldar codex mentioned that among other things, there are legions of Eldar-human hybrids in Conmorragh - it makes sense in context, since it among other things helps counter the Eldar birthrate problem. Dark Eldar, being what they are, don't have qualms against mating with and loving humans.
        • Given that the average Dark Eldar is a Complete Monster and the remainder are worse than that, "love" likely never enters the picture.
  • Nearly every werewolf in Werewolf : The Forsaken or Werewolf: The Apocalypse is the product of Interspecies Romance (or not romance, as the case may be), and all have some human or normal wolf in by two rungs of the family tree. In the Old World of Darkness, the natural result of a werewolf-werewolf mating is deformed and sterile, so werewolves had to cruise the bars or the woods to propagate their species. In the New World of Darkness, only werewolf-human mating produces living children, while a pair of werewolves bumping uglies end up with spiritual Ghost Children trying to kill the mother. Hybrids that couldn't transform became the Kinfolk and Wolf-blooded of the respective games.
    • Vampire: The Masquerade had dhampirs and dhampyrs, the offspring of extremely thin-blooded vampires and humans. Thankfully, they haven't returned for the New World of Darkness yet.
      • Speaking of the Updated Rerelease, Ghouls in both games are an aversion--while they do have some vampire-like powers and are immortal, that's beacuse they're normal humans who have drunk vampire blood--more Touched By The Undead then Half Vampire. They are occasionally referred to as halfbreeds by ignorant Hunters.
      • The NWOD's version of half-vampires turn up in Night Horrors: Wicked Dead: Dampyr, the children of vampires and humans, walking curses on the Kindred. The presence of a Dampyr can utterly ruin a vampire's life, and the Dampyr may never realise what happened, because the effect they have on the Kindred is completely unconscious on their part.
    • Changeling: The Dreaming featured kinain, changeling-human hybrids whose closest claim to fame was not driving fae sane.
      • Changelings themselves were half-human hybrids, as they were the result of a fae soul merging with a human soul. The Dark Ages book contrasts changeling with fae by showing how... well, off some of the Good People could be.
    • Hunter: The Vigil features the Lucifuge, a Conspiracy made up of the six hundred and sixty six individuals on Earth at any one time who believe themselves to be children of pairings between humans and demons — if not blood relatives of the big guy himself — and have chosen to defy their heritage. Their powers, which lean towards the conjuring of Hellfire, summoning of imps, and a stare that makes you relive all your worst sins, definitely lend credence to that belief.
      • Then there are "L'Enfant Diaboliques", the Lucifuge's evil counterparts - they're the ones who chose to embrace their heritage...
  • Averted in Shadowrun, where the various metatypes (humans included) can breed freely with one another, but their offspring don't blend the traits of their parental strains. A child of different metatypes will have the type of its father, that of its mother, or (rarely) a completely different type. This is because metatypes are really more akin to breeds than separate species - elves and dwarves spontaneously began to show up in human births around 2010, while the first orcs and trolls were caused by a bizarre biological process called "Goblinization" that struck random humans shortly afterward.


Theatre[]

  • This was already being parodied by the Victorian period: in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe, Strephon is half a fairy, "The upper half, down to the waistcoat", and worriedly ponders what he'll do when his lower half grows old and dies.
  • Bat Boy: The Musical, which is based off the Weekly World News story.


Video Games[]

  • The computer game Arcanum carries the usual run of fantasy hybrids - half-elves, half-orcs, etc. Of particular interest here are the half-ogre race as an example of hybrids viewed in a negative light: Half-ogres are a race created by a crude eugenics program. The game's rich gnomish society required a race of bodyguards, and found the rare half-ogres ideal. Because human mothers were a lot easier to obtain, this led to the mass kidnapping, rape, and eventually fatal impregnation of human women until there were enough half-ogres to continue the race in perpetuity. Gnomes are not nice people in this game.
    • All the races are evolved from either humans or dwarves. Orcs, ogres and elves all came from humans; gnomes and halflings from dwarves. (Why we don't see gnome-halfling hybrids is less clear.)
      • They wouldn't be much different from either race, one can assume.
  • Alucard, Dracula's half-vampire son in the Castlevania games, though the vampires may not neccesarily be a non-human species in Castlevania.
    • It is stated in at least one of the games that Dacula was a human, but when he lost his faith in God, he became something akin to a demon/vampire.
  • In The Elder Scrolls universe, the Bretons are a racial blend of men and Altmer (elves), a result of generations of humans being enslaved by elves. As a result, the Bretons have more skill with magic than any of the other humans races but lack the physical vulnerabilities of the elves.
    • Also, Oblivion has a rare example in which a family descended from the union of man and dragon is actually worshipped and glorified; however, it makes perfect sense as the dragon in question is also the god Akatosh, and the current emperor is one of them.
  • Asellus from Saga Frontier, is a Half-mystic. In her case, she was an ordinary human given a blood transfusion from the Mystic who accidentally ran her over with his carriage.
  • The Shokan in the Mortal Kombat series are said to be half-human dragons, despite looking like the long-lost children of the Hindu cosmology's Shiva (which, coincidentally, one of the more popular Shokan is named after). Furthermore, the Shokan Kintaro is also part tiger, thus further muddling the waters of Shokan DNA. (To be fair, though, Kintaro was originally going to be a simple tiger-man, which would still make him a Half-Human Hybrid.)
    • Similarly, Mileena is a half-Edenian, half-Tarkatan Mutant, though due to her nature as an artificial clone, she could arguably also be considered a Biological Mashup.
    • Finally, Mortal Kombat Armageddon protagonist/antagonist Taven and Daegon are half-Edenian, half God. Technically, Rain is also one, but that goes into Retcon territory.
  • Even the Final Fantasy series falls into this;
    • In Final Fantasy IV, Cecil and Golbez are half-human and half-Lunarian.
    • Final Fantasy VI has a number of Magitek soldiers, though Celes and Kefka are the two most reputable. In order for Magitek soldiers to even go into production, the Gestahlian Empire needed a living sample as a template--the half-Esper Terra. Celes is what happens when they get it right; Kefka's the result when they get it wrong.
    • Final Fantasy VII has Aerith, the last of the Cetra or "Ancients", who had a human father and a Cetra mother. According to Professor Hojo, she's 18% less Ancient-y than her mother.
    • Final Fantasy X had a typical villainous example in the form of Seymour, a half-human, half-Guado. Yuna was also half normal human, half Al Bhed, though Al Bhed are clearly just a human ethnic group with swirly pupils.
    • Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings introduced the offspring race of an Aegyl and Viera ancestor.
      • It's probably safe to assume that if viera and aegyl can interbreed, so can viera and humes.
  • Shin Megami Tensei has the more horrific hybrids created by direct human-demon fusion. As so many other attempts at creating a cheap and fast way of empowering oneself, it never works. Permanently.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, half-elves are treated as their own race, distinct from either humans or elves. They're also subject to prejudice from both species. It's never outright stated what degree of the other species makes one a half-blood, but there was a testing system in place to see if they were. Ironically, it's revealed that one has to have elven blood to use magic; thus, almost every single member of the team is descended from the offspring of elves and humans.
    • Other than Genis and Raine (who are of elven blood), and Sheena (a far-removed descendant of elves), everyone eventually manages to work around this limitation in some way to use magic anyway. Zelos and Kratos both have Magitek implants which let them cast spells, whereas Collete, Kratos, Presea, and Lloyd all learn non-traditional magic abilities due to the Cruxis Crystals slowly turning them into "angels" and/or eating them from the inside. Regal is the only one that never uses any real magic, as all of his techniques are ki attacks. In the sequel, Marta has far-removed elven ancestors like Sheena, and Emil is actually a summon spirit.
  • Since Tales of Phantasia is the distant sequel of Tales of Symphonia, the half-elves prejudice continues. One of the half-elves joins you. Her name is Arche Klein.
  • In Tales of Rebirth, elves are replaced by beastmen/Gajuma. Those born between Huma (humans) and Gajuma are called 'Halves', and not only they suffer the heavy prejudice, they're also stuck with a weak body, which means, unless miracle happens, they tend to have short lifespans. There are two Halves existing in the game: one of the Four Shields Militsa, and fortune-teller Hilda Rhambling, the latter joins you.
    • The party also finds a village with a significant population of halves.
  • Dante and Vergil of Devil May Cry, sons of the devil Sparda and his human wife Eva.
    • If you're willing to look past some story difficulties, Nero's a quarter-devil.
  • Averted, subverted AND played straight in the 9th and 10th Fire Emblem games, the Laguz can only breed within a tribe (Beast Birds and Dragons) but each can breed with other groups in the tribe(Ravens with Herons, Red Dragons with Black Dragons) but can't breed with other tribes (no Hawk/Dragons), but any of them can breed with humans beorc. It should be noted they play the 'outcast of society part' to a T as well, and that for whatever reason a Laguz that breeds with a Human loses their ability to transform. Branded (as Half-Human/Half-Laguz are known in the games) are outcasts of society and generally pitied or hated (or both). Turns out that the reasoning behind the hatred towards Branded is entirely false. As Yune (a godly being) explains there was no great god-made edict that everyone thinks there is. Notable Branded characters include Micaiah, whose grandmother was the Apostle of Begnion, who had planned to reveal her Branded status to the nation before she was assassinated, Soren, who is the son of Ashnard and Almedha, a princess of the Dragon Laguz tribe, Stefan, who is heavily implied to be descended from Soan, one of Ashera's three heroes, and lives in a village of branded that he eventually turns into a powerful country that he rules over as king, and Zelgius, whose Branded status is what led him to becoming Sephiran's most trusted servant.
    • Fire Emblem also had a few human-dragon hybrids in the 6th and 7th games: Sofiya in Fuuin no Tsurugi and Ninian and Nils in Rekka no Ken.
      • Furthermore in the 6th game, depending on your pairing preferences, Roy can end up three quarters human and one quarter dragon, since Ninian is one of the three main characters that Eliwood can end with.
    • In Fire Emblem Awakening, Nono and Tiki of the Manakete race, and Velvet of the Taguel race can each potentially become the wife of one of the human males in the cast, which eventually leads to their half-breed children from the future assisting them.
    • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Flayn is the daughter of a human woman and a Nabatean man.
  • Mass Effect plays with this; the asari can mate with and produce offspring with any species, but that offspring is always an asari; the mating process randomises the asari partner's DNA, no DNA from the other partner is carried on. Asari continue to take this urban myth as fact, however, leading to a great deal of prejudice against the daughters of asari/asari unions.
    • Not entirely a myth. Offspring are always asari, but these asari often seem to have traits taken from their fathers. A matriarch you can meet who has a krogan father is gleefully coarse and violent and has had more children than her species normally seem to give birth to. Whether this is due to genetics or being raised is up in the air. Mordin once sings a snippet of a patter song that included the lyrics "Asari-vorcha offspring have an allergy to dairy", implying that there is some physiological difference.
    • The prejudice is also supported by the extremely rare birth of a type of monstrous asari variant from asari/asari mating. This variant kills anyone she mates.
  • Samus Aran, the protagonist of the Metroid series of videogames, technically qualifies. Though born to human colonists, she was raised by a race of humanoid birds called the Chozo; at the age of three, she was genetically manipulated into a half-Chozo hybrid, to allow her to survive the harsh conditions of the Chozo colony world Zebes. Despite being a hybrid, the changes to her DNA haven't altered her appearance. It's pretty clear she's not entirely human when she can jump twice her own height outside of the Power Suit, though.
    • Complicated to the point of Biological Mashup in Metroid Fusion, wherein Samus is injected with Metroid DNA in order to save her life from a parasitic organism. This actually does alter her appearance somewhat, in that her Power Suit--which is biologically linked to her--grows a layer of Metroid flesh on its exterior.
  • Youmu Konpaku, a half-ghost (don't ask) bodyguard from the Touhou shooting-game series. Youmu is described as "half-human and half-ghost, half-dead and half-alive, half-phantom and half-reality, and altogether half-baked. Yet she has two swords." The supplemental serial, Curiosities of Lotus Asia, stars the half-youkai Rinnosuke Morichika; however, this latter example is more notable for being the only Canon humanoid male (aside from a couple of Posthumous Characters who exist only as names in the backstory) in the entire series, and a Non-Action Guy to boot.
    • One thing to note, however, is that instead of one body like most hybrids, Youmu's ghost half exists as a separate entity that follows her around. Kind of like a daemon in His Dark Materials.
    • Backstory also gives us Youki Konpaku, Youmu's half-ghost father. And that just raises further questions.
      • Canonically though, we don't know whether Youki is Youmu's father or not even if they share the same family name. Backstory only mentioned that Youki is Youmu's predecessor and former teacher which means he can be either her father, grand father, or even uncle.
  • Laharl of the Disgaea series is this. He has a human mother. Beyond a single character noting he is half-human after being told of his mother, no one ever refers to him as anything but a demon.Though being an overlord/prince might have something to with why he always called a demon(or for simplicity's sake). Plus, call him anything else, and he will send you straight to hell.
  • A half-sepp, half-human appears in Endorph's ending in Soul Nomad and The World Eaters.
  • Lilica (half-demon) and Konoha (half-dog) from Arcana Heart.
  • In a rare example of a hybrid between two non-human species, the World of Warcraft universe includes the Mok'Nathal, who are half-orc and half-ogre.
      • Orc/ogres also exist in D&D: the offspring of a male ogre and female orc is a large, intelligent orc called an orog, whereas a female ogre and male orc produce a short, stupid ogre (covered, for no apparent reason, with bony protrusions) called an ogrillon.
    • Warcraft also features Garona Halforcen. Originally she was described as half-orc and half-human; when changes in the timeline made that impossible, she was said to instead be half-orc and half-Draenei. Later continuity changes made this seem unlikely...but it was finally confirmed in the latest issue of the comic series. Which would also explain why she still looks fairly young.
      • And then, there's her son Med'an. Who looks more like a draenei than his mother does...despite the fact that his father is a human. (Then again, he was a mage, which might have something to do with it...) And he's The Chosen One.
        • Also, consider that draenei males look, well, more draenei than the females.
      • In the Burning Crusade expansion of World of Warcraft, there is one half Orc half Draenei. He looks mostly like an Orc but with different skin colour and slightly different face.
    • Warcraft also has half-elves, whose most famous example is the paladin Arator the Redeemer (the half-elven son of Turalyon and Alleria Windrunner).
  • Dragonfable from Artix Entertainment gives us Nythera, a half dragon NPC. In a rather hilarious scene in one of her flashback quests, Nythera's parents, a human wizard and a dragon mother are sitting down at dinner. Said dinner is a live Chickencow (half chicken, half cow), and her mother is in dragon form about to devour it. Her father sees nothing unusual about this at all.
  • Spoofed in Sam and Max, in which Bosco's avatar in an MMORPG is elf on one half of his body, and human on the other, as seen in the image for this page. Also used straight in a later episode, where Bosco changes time so that he's part cow. Dialogue in this part also implies that Sam and Max are "freakish animal-human hybrids", not just funny animals.
  • Happens a few times in the Star Ocean series. First is the second game where in one of Claude and Rena's endings Rena is six months pregnant. The third game reveals that modern Expellians are the result of several millennia of this. Last is a hidden ending in the fourth game where Crowe not only survives, but marries Elayna, thus becoming Roddick's ancestor.
  • The Tohno and Kishima families in Tsukihime and the supplementary materials like Kagetsu Tohya. Part demon, incidentally. Also Altrouge Brunestud, who is half human Dead Apostle and half True Ancestor. In her case it's not actually entirely clear if True Ancestor's are a genetically different species, however. Or if it was actually a cross breeding, though at least one has been confirmed.
  • A number of the Servants in Fate/stay night are partially divine. Lancer is the great grandson? of Balor, Hercules the son of Zeus and Gilgamesh is 2/3 god. What exactly constitutes a god in the ((nasuverse)) is incredibly vague, however. Except they all seem to be jerks.
    • How so? Sure, Lancer is a bit of a dink, but he gets a nice role as The Lancer in UBW and he can be an all-around good guy, being very popular with the fans. Herc is fiercely loyal to Ilya, but without Mad Enhancement, he wouldn't be a Berserker. It's only Gilgamesh who remains a tried and true unrepentant Jerkass, though you could make an exception with his chibified self...
  • In the Myst/Uru games, the D'ni are capable of interbreeding with humans, despite their far longer lifespans and light-sensitivity. Gehn, a half-human, seems to have lived nearly as long as a full-blooded D'ni (350+ ), whereas his quarter-D'ni son Atrus was an old man before 200. Atrus's children, being 1/8 D'ni, lack the light-sensitivity of their father and grandfather; their potential lifespan is unknown, but longer than a full-blooded human's.
  • Jessica D'Alkirk from Lunar: The Silver Star and its remake is half-human and half-beastman.
  • Partially subverted in Dragon Age. The offspring of elves and humans are always human, although there appears to have been rare cases of half-dwarves.
    • Dragon Age II, though, includes Feynriel, the son of a human man and an elven woman, whose features are a mix of the two races. He may still be fully human but with having a hybrid appearance (namely, a more angular face and pointy ears).
  • Sands of Destruction's Naja is half-feral, being the offspring of a human woman and the previous Lupus Rex.
  • Brutal Legend has Eddie, the offspring of a human and a demon. Considering what the demons look like, the romance between Succoria and Riggnarok must have been a very, very special one.
  • Phantasy Star IV has the eventual offspring of Chaz, an ordinary human, and Rika, a genetic construct. This doesn't really explain all the Newmans in the PSO games, though.
  • This is the premise of Hybrid Heaven, in which synthesized, half-human Hybrids are living in a secret underground facility underneath Manhattan, and each and every one of them (well, not ALL of them) have a superiority complex to humans, and simply want to take over the world because they think they're better. They plan to replace the President of the United States with an analogue so he can launch a world-wide invasion. In reality, they are led by 'the Master', a Gargatuan who is ultimately revealed to be a parasite that took over the Master's body who is called 'the Traitor' by fellow Gargatuans because of his take over the world plans. Of course you, as Secret Service Agent Johnny Slater, who the Hybrids cloned to get close to the President can't let this happen.
  • The main character of Rune Factory 3 is a half-Wooly (A sheep-like monster on the game), which leaves some questions about his conception who are best kept alone. He can also marry a Mermaid and have 3/4 Fish, 3/4 Sheep and 1/2 human children! He can also pick a Phoenix and have 3/4 Bird, 3/4 Sheep and 1/2 human children!
  • In Lost Kingdoms, the Dragonoid and Dragon Knight monsters are half-dragon, half-human. How this works is not entirely certain, as all of the dragons in the game are much bigger than humans...
  • Dragon Quest games have half human hybrids.
  • In Golden Sun Dark Dawn, Sveta, Volechek, and to varying extents, a majority of the Beastman populace all fall under this trope, having been formerly human just before and just following the Golden Sun event. It's uncertain if perhaps Volechek, as a boy (or if he's even the right age), underwent the transformation that many elderly Beastman recall throughout the game. It's also never mentioned if both of their parents were Beastman (their father definitely was), which might explain why Sveta appears as human as she does. It's also heavily implied at the end of the game that a majority of Belinsk's inhabitants — including all members of the band that played 'Arangoa Prelude' earlier — were formerly human, as only the 'human-borns' developed aesthetic, and in some cases, 'super-Beastman' ([seemingly] only increases in vitality, IQ, etc.) alterations following the blast from the Apollo Lens and the end of the Grave Eclipse.
  • The protagonist of the second Onimusha, Jubei Yagyu, is part demon (or Oni) by way of his mother, Takajo.
  • Despite fitting into the standard Mass Effect-y Star-Trekky milieu, this is happily averted in Sword of the Stars - interbreeding is impossible (obviously with the insect and aquatic races) but refreshingly so with the two ape-based humanoids, the Humans and th Tarka - they can, hypothetically, have intercourse but without offspring due to genetic differences.
  • Aselia expresses a wish to bear Yuuto's child in Eien no Aselia, however, it's unclear whether spirits can actually bear children at all since they are a One-Gender Race that merely pops into being rather than being born.
  • In The Sims 2, if a male Sim gets abducted there is a small chance they will be impregnated and have one of these. The aliens have black eyes, similar to The Greys. They also often have extreme facial appearances (no nose, small nose) and personality (often will be mean and neat).
  • One of the bosses of The Gunstringer is a half-lumberjack, half-alligator monstrosity.
  • In the Assassin's Creed series, Adam and Eve were two humans who were part of a breeding program that was started by the First Civilization to create hybrids of the master and slave races that possessed the sixth sense of "knowledge." Unfortunately, all that the humans carried over was the "Eagle Vision" that their descendants would possess, coupled with a natural resistance to the powers of the Pieces of Eden.
  • Roddy, the main character of the Playstation sequel to Blaster Master, and his sister Elfie are the offspring of the previous game's protagonist, Jason, and an alien female. However, Eve was a Human Alien and the two have no discernible features from full humans, unless one counts that nonsense Eve tells Roddy how his alien half makes him more susceptible to evil.
  • Expressly defied, for the most part, in Rift: No hybrids between races unless planar beings such as shalastir (or, by extension, bahmi) are involved.
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles, the royal family of the High Entia race has a tradition of accepting a Homs consort for the purpose of bearing half-breeds. The only distinguishing trait most of them have are slightly smaller headwings, and they still possess the long lifespans and ether manipulating abilities of their pureblooded kin. They also have no risk of becoming monstrous Telethia, which is the primary reason that they were created.
  • The Shining The Holy Ark introduces a half dragon hybrid by the name of Basso.
  • Dark Souls has Crossbreed Priscilla, who is half dragon half humanoid of vague origin. She was shunned and hated her entire life for being an "abomination", eventually ending up within a Pocket Dimension called the Painted World of Ariamas. Interestingly, she is a Non-Malicious Monster, and the only boss who doesn't immediately try to murder the player, instead kindly explaining how to escape the Painted World.

Web Comics[]

  • Cade Masters from Twice Blessed is 3/4 human, 1/4 elf. (His father was a human and his mother a half-elf).
  • Akaino Fenrir, from Academicon Ex Virtus As revealed in his character profile, Akaino's parents were a Mage and a Werewolf. Assuming Mages are human, that qualifies him for this trope.
  • Grace Sciuridae, from El Goonish Shive, is a hybrid of a human and two alien species (one of which is non-sentient), as well as a terrestrial squirrel, having been created by Mad Scientists through a combination of Bizarre Alien Biology and genetic engineering as a Tyke Bomb.
    • Also her "brothers" Guineas, Hedge, and Vlad/Vladia.
    • Dan at least explored some less glamorous possibilities — in more or less ideal circumstances of the Second Life Alternate Universe, a lot of awkwardness and heart-breaking happened just because Archie inherited anatomy mostly from human ancestors and psychophysiology mostly from tele-empathic shapeshifting androgynous Uryuoms. Vlad was a broken result of the same progeny-shaping experiment as Grace.
  • In Triquetra Cats, the Soricha family has an :adopted" sister named Vyolette who is half demon. Vyolette was raised by Ariel Soricha after Ariel was contracted to kill Vyolette's demon father.
  • In the webcomic Errant Story, half-elves are often magically powerful, but prone to With Great Power Comes Great Insanity, provoking a war of near-extermination by the elves in the distant past.
    • And the whole reason that the Errants were formed was because it was found that Elves could breed more easily with Humans than with other Elves for some unknown reason. It was only decades later that Errants suddenly started going bad at random.
      • Part of the appeal for a human lover was that elves idolized the concept of losing a lover before you grew tired of each other, so you could remember them for how much you loved them. Humans, with their comparatively short life spans, were very well suited for this.
  • Parodied here, in the Web Comic Starslip Crisis.
  • Veser in Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name is the child of a human and a selkie.
  • And then there's Kevin and Kell. The central family is itself several mixed species, and while the setting has a bias against interspecies romances, it really is more inter-diet relationships (carnivore vs herbivore vs insectivore). As far as strict species goes...
    • Rudy Dewclaw: half grey wolf, half red fox. Lives and looks like a wolf.
    • Fiona Fennec, his girlfriend: half red fox, half fennec. Lives as fox and fennec, and aside from an ethnic pride group, no one cares.
    • Coney Dewclaw, his half-sister: half grey wolf, half rabbit. Rabbit looks, wolf appetite.
    • Lindesfarne Dewclaw, his adopted stepsister: former human, then hedgehog, then talked into being a porcupine, then realised is a hedgehog, dating a bat. 'Diaper a flying hedgehog', indeed.
    • Corrie Dewclaw, Rudy's ... cousin, I guess. Half grey wolf, half sheep. Lives and looks like a sheep, but don't get her mad.
      • Yes, she's Rudy's cousin. Corrie's father Ralph and Rudy's mother Kell are brother and sister.
    • Francis Fennec, Fiona's new half-brother. God knows what he is--the geneticists can't figure it out either. Looks like a ball of fluff. Father is a fennec, mother's a former human, current rabbit with the old human preferences.
      • Turns out, he's human, due to Danielle being originally human. Lindesfarne theorizes the same would happen to her children.
    • And there's some minor mixes, like a half-moth half-firefly who orbits himself, or the illicit baby between a turtle and a weasel. Confused yet?
    • There is a bit of a subversion though: as revealed on Lindefarne's blog, human genes are dominant — no matter what the offspring of a human or former-human relationship looks like at birth they will always become completely human within a few months. This is based off of the discredited theory that people "evolve" from single-celled organisms, to fish, to reptiles, to mammals, to monkeys, and so-forth, all while they're still in the womb, but what the hell, certainly makes for a few interesting plot points.
  • Lorenda of DMFA is half demon mare, half... cow. This essentially makes her a carnivorous cow, but to the chagrin of her demonic mother, she only eats evil creatures--like door-to-door salesmen!
    • Now she's grown wings... but they're hilariously tiny and useless. Her demon mom is embarrassed.
    • Also Jyrras, whose father is a pureblood Kangaroo Rat, but his mother is only half that... the first half.
    • Creator Amber Williams has created a side comic arc to describe exactly what species of furre can inter-breed and exactly what will result from such a breeding.
  • In Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, the character of Glon is a (much put-upon) half-human half-orc.
    • And there's the unanswered question of what, exactly, Eric IV of Drostardy (half-human/half-halfling) will look like when he grows up.
  • The D&D example(s) above were parodied in Order of the Stick, which, being derived from D&D rules, has no shortage of its own examples, the most notable being the half-orc Thog; others with significant screen time include half-elf Pompey and the subject of the aforementioned strip, half-orc Therkla.
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 "I want to be able to hear the pitter-patter of little feet--or the whoosh-whoosh of little wings, as the case may be."

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    • A literal-minded orc also lampshades the assumption that "half-X" assumes the other half is human. "Grog half orc. Other half, also orc."
    • Enor the bounty hunter is a Half-Dragon Half-Ogre: Half blue dragon, one quarter ogre, one quarter human.
    • Most recently, Girard Draketooth's surname is revealed to have originated from him being the son of a half-dragon. Unfortunately, his dragon grandfather was a Black Dragon of a certain family tree...
  • Parodied in Eight Bit Theater, where the character Ranger is half-elf, who is also one-quarter Leifinish. The final quarter is "half-orc". (He is also actually a dual-class character, but both classes are "ranger".)
  • Parodied in a Sev Trek cartoon about what characters might appear in the next Star Trek series. The winner was: a Klingon/tribble hybrid torn by hatred for its two sides and constantly annoyed by questions of how its parents got together to mate.
  • Benn'Joon, the priestess from Looking for Group. If we go by appearances, she's a Blizzard troll...but she's definitely not one of the setting's trolls. Her race is never out-and-out stated; she's referred to as a "female of unknown pedigree." And speculating about her ancestry on any appropriate forum will lead to heated debate.
  • The genetic cocktail that spawned Molly and Galatea in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob did contain some human DNA, albeit not much. In fact, it was Jean's, making her their biological mother, just "a little bit."
  • The Challenges of Zona has Ginsha, a half human/half Urrt woman. There's also a Snake Clan among the Erogenians many of whom have varying degrees of Urrt blood
  • Fetch Quest Saga of the Twelve Artifacts has quite a few---Angels (half-avian), Dragons (half-lizard), Merfolk. There's even a Half-Human Hybrid made by mating the Angels and Dragons together, though it's very rare for that to happen.
  • MSF High: Most demi humans are these on varying human to animal ratio's with domestic's being on the human end of the scale and martials being on the animal end.
  • Dolly Bird and G-Nat from Everyday Heroes are both half-human genetically engineered beings. They are two of the few successful experiments by their creator/father, the Somewhat-Below-Average Evolutionary.
  • Goblin Hollow: Half-giant
  • In Juathuur, Thoss and Thlassa are half-solluu (fish people) and half-juathuur (humans with powers).
  • A Magical Roommate has an interesting example in the case of X and Alexis. Their mother, who was born a black fairy, shapeshifted to a human form she kept for her pregnancy... well, for the most part. This has made the twins roughly ninety-eight percent human and two percent fairy.
  • And parodied in Ansem Retort, where when Zexion insists that Hercules be one of these, Hercules replies that his top half is centaur and his bottom half is human.
  • The amorphs from Schlock Mercenary are capable of creating offspring with any species, although the children are identical to normal amorphs. An offer to make children to Breya by Schlock causes a lot of Squick reactions, but although she turns him down, they are able to talk about it in friendly terms after the humans realize amorph reproduction doesn't involve sex.
  • In Gunnerkrigg Court Antimony is part Fire Elemental.
  • In Strays, such half-breeds are one target of the Fantastic Racism.
  • Impure Blood Roan's mother
  • In Trying Human, 6 seems to be an artifically engineered human-Grey hybrid. Although...
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 Roger: So you're half and half then?

6: I'm not HALF anything!

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  • In Endstone, Cole. Half-deer. Then, her mother Kyri is a full deer — really, ignore how she looks.
  • In Accidental Centaurs, the two main characters appear to be half-human/half-equine beings.
  • Mara from Elf Blood is half dark elf, half human. According to TKO, there aren't that many half-elves, most likely to do with the hidden nature of the elves.
    • Carlita Delacroix is also half-human. Her other half is feline spirit incarnum (fleshy forms of natural spirits).
  • In Sinfest, Lil' Evil, apparently.
  • In Wapsi Square, Shelly is a human/sphinx hybrid. This gives her most of the powers of a sphinx, but with a human lifespan.
  • Fans! deconstructs the trope with Zaha, an engineering student who was merged with her pet cat in a freak accident, and ended up a Catgirl. She has to take several kinds of medicine daily just so her body can function, and longs for humanity. Eventually she exchanges bodies with a member of Furry Fandom, who is thrilled.
  • One of the main Characters of Fungus Grotto has ended up in world dominated by faeries, and a scene that was shown with her mother implies that she might be some kind of Human/Fey hybrid
  • Wyrmspawn in Wizard School is a half-dragon, half-human hybrid leading the Dragonkin.
  • Keti of Footloose is half human, quarter werewolf and quarter nymph.


Web Original[]

  • In The Gamers Alliance, there are half-demons, half-dwarves and half-elves.
  • There are, in the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, a number of half-human Agents. These come from a great many different continua.
    • Especially the ex-sues.
  • Shane Myers from Strange Little Band is half alien, half human but most of his colleagues don't know this. The identity of his alien father is important later in the story.
  • Several characters in the fantasy webnovel Tales of MU. Most notably Mackenzie, a half-demon.
  • Caleb "Half-Face" from Little Lenny Penguin And The Great Red Flood, tween-turned-eldritch.
  • Elcenia: Rhysel is a halfblood, which is an interesting version of this trope. Though she, specifically, is half-elf and half-human, she would have the same characteristics were she 1/256th human or elf, hence "halfblood", since "half-elf" would limit the term to genotype rather than phenotype.
  • Yet another joke on the subject of the other half being assumed human. Half-elf, yes...


Western Animation[]

  • In Gargoyles, Dr. Savarius tried to create hybrids with the same abilities as gargoyles. To do that, he injected human test subjects with the DNA of jungle cats, bats and electric eels. Later, Thailog has him create Delilah by combining DNA from Demona and Elisa.
    • Of course Gargoyles also has an aversion: Word of God has stated that Goliath and Elisa Maza cannot have children normally (confirmed in the recent comics), which should be obvious given that gargoyles lay eggs and humans give birth live, though allowed that magically or scientifically aided conception might be possible, but Greg Weisman intended to have a series that would involve the descendant of their adopted (human) son.
    • Fox, on the other hand, is a straight version and was "created" the old fashioned way. Of course, she is half human and half Child of Oberon, which are magical shapeshifters, allowing them to breed with anything that can breed. And then she and the human Xanatos have a child, Alexander...
  • Rex Stewart aka Warhawk, the son of Green Lantern (John Stewart) and Hawkgirl (Shayera Hol).
    • Static: "Shayera was one cranky pregnant lady. Although to be fair, if I'd laid an egg that size..."
  • Robotech naturally picked this up from Macross, but had notable examples of its own.
    • Komillia Jenius from Macross became Dana Sterling, both in her initial appearances during the Macross Saga and in the overwritten Robotech dub of Super Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross, renamed "The Masters Saga". The reason given for her hair changing from blue-green (in the Macross segments) to blonde was the increasing amounts of anti-Zentraedi (and Zentraedi-hybrid, naturally) prejudice in the Armies of the Southern Cross. As a result, Dana dyed her hair to avoid the hassle. As both Southern Cross and The Masters Saga had a rather anti-alien, xenophobic military as a major plot point, this Retcon was actually rather well done.
    • Near the end of The Masters Saga, Dana has a protoculture-induced vision of a sister she's never known, born to her parents after they left Earth on the SDF-3. In the Robotech novel continuity, this character became Aurora Sterling. In the animated continuity as progressed by Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, this became hot shot fighter ace Maia Sterling.
    • In the "The Next Generation" saga that made up the last third of Robotech, we were treated to Marlene, an amnesiac young woman who was actually Ariel, the first attempt of the Invid Regis to further evolve her race into human form. Furthermore, the Invid prince Corg and Invid Princess Sera are both Invid-human hybrids, due to the Invid Regis's belief in humanity's evolutionary superiority to her own race's original form.
  • Ben 10 Alien Force has Ben training a band of kids with powers similar to his original aliens (or at least he SHOULD be training them, but the animators don't seem to want to have to draw massive amounts of cast members each episode, so the status quo of three is maintained) to fight the alien Big Bad. Interestingly, these kids are all hybrids of aliens of varying species and children of Plumbers (who have all been given badges that act as tracking devices, making them easy to find), which makes you wonder if an interest in alien reproduction is a requirement to join the Plumbers... And the fact that a human shouldn't even be able to touch an alien made of lava can be handwaved with the use of alien technology, should any fan get a case of Fridge Logic.
    • Ben and Gwen's grandmother was an Anodite, making them only three quarters human.
    • Kevin.
  • Used disgustingly in Superjail. During the season one finale, the Warden--who has been stuck in an extra-dimensional temporal prison--returns to the titular Superjail to find that the inmates have been forced to rebuild society in his absence. They didn't have any women, so they had to make do with the canary.
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 Warden: What has gotten into the inmates?

Alice: Looks like a whole lot of bird dick.

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Other[]


Real Life[]

  • Conspiracy Theorist David Icke claims in his book The Biggest Secret that the world is secretly ruled by reptilian aliens who can take human shape and interbreed with humans.
    • Specifically, 12-foot tall specimens that drink human blood. Apparently, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League got annoyed, and cited the whole Elder Protocols schtick to suggest that when talking about reptilians, he meant Jews. Those that know him suggest that when he talks about reptilians, he means it.
    • Sounds like he read a little too much Robert E. Howard pulp novels. 'King Kull' pretty much has the same plot points.
  • The Weekly World News creation Bat Boy is apparently half-bat and half-human.
  • It's possible that very early in human history, other species of proto-humans (think Neandertals, but not quite) interbred with humans. The human species as we know it eventually out-competed all other variants, though.
    • Actually, there is very strong evidence that homo sapiens did mate with Neandertals and a significant portion of non-African people's genomes are of Neandertal origin [1].
      • The same is true for the Melanesian people of Oceania, whose ancestors include members of the species Denisova hominin who interbred with their homo sapien ancestors [2].
  • There was a Russian scientist in the early 20th century who attempted to create a Humanzee, but apparently none of his experiments panned out & his funding was eventually cut.
    • Interesting that in all accounts of trying to inseminate human women with ape sperm, the ape always happen to die shortly before the scheduled date.
    • For the curious, said scientist was Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov (#5 on the list, bottom of the first page). Apparently, the story gets even stranger.
    • Thoroughly examined here. Ivanov can be conservatively described as having been a completely insane crackpot, but stories of surviving Humanzee creations are the accounts of conspiracy theories with pretty much no evidence behind them and most of what we know of biology arguing for its near impossibility.
  • Subverted with Oliver, a wild-born chimpanzee raised in a human household. Because of his bald features and preference for bipedal walking, he was long suspected to be a human/chimp hybrid, but DNA tests eventually determined that he's a chimpanzee from a wild population with slightly less fur and smaller heads than most. Walking upright is a behavior he learned by copying humans.