Gender Equals Breed

""All of the girls look exactly like Mommy and all of the boys look exactly like Daddy! *beat* This is not how biology works!""

- The FanFiction Critic (review of 'The Affair')

Two-species couples open up a lot of questions about what their children will look like. This is avoided in many cases by having all boys look like their fathers and all girls look like their mothers. This can also apply to different types within the same species (e.g., in Lady and the Tramp, the eponymous dogs are of different breeds. Female offspring look like their mother, the one male like his father).

In American media, female dogs are often represented by poodles, and occasionally other elegant-looking breeds like Malteses, Salukis, or Bichons; other breeds, and mutts, are usually male.

It should be noted in male / female same species examples given here that it is possible for traits to be sex linked. Since human females have two X chromosomes and males have one X and one Y (usually; there are cases where it is not so clear), diseases or other things can be restricted to one sex. One example is color blindness, about 5.8 percent of males, but less than 1 percent of females, are color blind in some way or another (although it should be noted that males get their X chromosome from their mother, so whether ones father is colorblind has no influence on whether one is colorblind himself). This can be even more true with some insect species that have fewer chromosomes to worry about. At least one species of ants actually has the genetic material of the two sexes completely separate.

Compare with Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism, where a single species has very different-looking genders, and Patchwork Kids, where the children look (and often act) like a perfect mix of the parents.

You can expect this trope even more when at least one of the parents is a member of a One-Gender Race.

Advertising

 * In the latest Burger King commercial, The Burger King has a human wife, a human daughter, and a son with a freakish plastic head like his own.
 * Let's not forget the Whopper family, who consist of: Whopper, Mrs. Whopper (who is human), Whopper Jr. (which would make Whopper's full name "Whopper Whopper Sr."), Spicy Whopper, and teen-aged girl (who is also human). God help that girl, if they invent the Whopperette.
 * Since the late '90s Jack In The Box commercials have featured the eponymous "Jack" who has a ping-pong-ball head. In later commercials, his blonde normal-noggined wife Cricket was introduced. However their son Jack Jr. has the same gender-specific head defect as his father.
 * Jack's own father was also shown to have the ping-pong-ball head. His (normal-headed) mother even asks him: "Have I ever told you how difficult your birth was?"

Anime and Manga

 * Inverted in an unusual case in Trigun with the Nebraska Family. It's unusual in that the two species in question are not animals, but human and giant (The mother and son are giants, while the father and daughter are human).
 * And the three sons are somewhere in between.
 * Kimba the White Lion: Kimba's son is a white lion while his daughter is a normal lion like his wife.
 * In the ending of Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed's son retains the  racial traits of his father and grandfather, while his daughter is an ordinary Caucasian girl like her mother.

Comic Books

 * Subtly utilized in Usagi Yojimbo (all previous pairings being same-species), when Ino (a pig) and his wife (a... round-eared animal) are later shown with their daughter, a round-eared animal like her mother. According to Word of God, it always works like that - women are always the same kind of animal as their mothers, and men as their fathers.
 * This is the way Sonic and Sally's children are represented in all of the flashforwards in the Sonic The Hedgehog comic. The recent "30 Years Later" storyline shows this to also be true for Tails and Mina's children. This also applies to Bunnie and Antoine's chldren, though Depending on the Artist, the boy may have Bunnie's coloration and the girl Antoine's. Somehow, they both inherited robotic limbs from their mother.
 * A notable exception is Jon, the son of Rob O'Hedge and Mari-An. Despite being male, he is an Echidna like his mom.
 * Used in the third issue of the Spanish-for-a-French-market comic Blacksad, the chief of police is characterized as a German Shepherd, his wife is some sort of spaniel. Their son is also a German Shepherd, and their daughter the same spaniel breed as her mother.
 * Averted in the underground comic of "Dino-Boy". He's a human with a dinosaur body (or a dinosaur with a human head) who married a human woman. Their kids are both half-dinosaurs - but the son has a human body and a dinosaur's head, while the daughter is like her father.
 * Averted in Fables with Snow White and Bigby's kids; before they learn how to change shape, both boys and girls cover the spectrum from fully human-looking to human-wolf to fully wolf-looking, and one, well... takes after his grandfather.

Film

 * The Szalinski family in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Amy has Diane's blonde hair, and Nick is a brunette who wears glasses just like Wayne is. Averted in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, where Adam resembles his mother.
 * Averted in the sequels to Balto, where the eponymous wolf/dog hybrid's litter with his red-furred husky Love Interest Jenna all take after her, except for his youngest daughter Aleu, who looks even more like a wolf than he does.
 * The Muppet Christmas Carol: Kermit and Piggy's children are male frogs and female piglets.
 * In Mom and Dad Save The World, the planet Spengo has two humanoid sentient (?!) species, one of which resembles humans. The other consists of males that resemble bulldogs and females which resemble carp.
 * At the end of Lady and the Tramp, their puppies are three pure-bred cockers like Lady, and the boy Scamp who looks just as much a lovable mongrel as his father. They should ALL be mongrels to one degree or another.
 * In the film sequel Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure the cockers are all female, but the earlier newspaper strip on which it was partially based averts this by making one of the cockers a boy.
 * In Treasure Planet, the children of  display this. The three girls are clearly modeled after their mother and the boy is clearly modeled after his father. They aren't even the same species!
 * Unless they are, and the species has that particular sexual dimoprhism.
 * Heavilly averted in Shrek 2 with Donkey and Dragon's offspring. You would expect this trope to be played, and then the children show up - winged fire-breathing donkeyish...things.

Literature

 * In Northern Lights, witches are an all-female species that mate with human males. Female offspring are witches, male offspring are human.
 * In The Belgariad, dryads are a One-Gender Race. Dryads kidnap human males for re procreational purposes, after which they are killed, along with any male offspring. Females are apparently full dryads.
 * Of a sort in the Codex Alera. Though background Marat characters are of both genders, all named characters of any tribe are the same gender (All named members of Gargant, Wolf and Herdbane tribe are male, all named members of Horse tribe are female. There are no named members of Fox tribe, which was killed in its entirety before the start of the series, but the only Fox character discussed and described was female).
 * In Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, fauns and nymphs are males and females of the same species.

Live-Action TV

 * This concept is parodied and then subverted in Scrubs when the Almighty Janitor fantasizes about being married to Elliot. They are surrounded by little girls dressed as doctors like Elliot and little boys dressed as janitors like The Janitor. Elliot wonders if they're "pigeonholing the children," and The Janitor points out that it doesn't matter because they aren't their kids.
 * Subverted In Bewitched: the protagonists are a witch and her non-magical husband. Their daughter has magic powers, while their son at first does not seem to have powers. It turns out he does, but he just didn't use them because his father does not like for them to use their powers.
 * Centaurs on Xena: Warrior Princess are an exclusively male race, they mate with human females and if offspring are male, they are always centaur, female children are always human.

Tabletop Games

 * In Castle Falkenstein, there are only male dwarves and female fairies. The solution? Dwarves and fairies can mate - male offspring always become dwarves, females fairies.
 * Dungeons and Dragons:
 * The Eberron campaign setting uses this to escape having to make stats for half-Kalashtar. Justified by the spirits which define a Kalashtar bloodline having clearly defined genders.
 * In the Tormenta setting, minotaurs are a playable race with their own nation inspired on Rome. There are no female minotaurs. They mate with humans (generally their slaves) or Half-Elves, and the males are minotaurs, while the females are from their mother's race.
 * This was true of AD&D 2nd edition in general.
 * In the systemless Zodiacs campaign guide, it is mentioned that any child has roughly a 3 in 4 chance of being the same species as their mother.

Video Games

 * Pokémon averts this. The child of two different Pokémon will always be the same species as the mother, regardless of the father. Although if either parent is Ditto, the child will be the non-Ditto parent. For male-only species, such as Tauros and Hitmontop, they can only reproduce their own species by breeding with Ditto. This is justified, as all Pokémon species draw from the same gene pool, and are actually subspecies.
 * Played straight with certain Pokémon whose genders are so different that they are classified separately, but the above rules still apply when crossbreeding(e.g. the child of a female Nidoran will be a Nidoran of either gender, but the child of a male will be whatever species the mother is.)
 * See also: Improbable Species Compatibility
 * Lampshaded in Knights of the Old Republic 2, with a Human sub-species or variant species that specifically works this way, the Echani. The somewhat creepy Echani Handmaidens all look identical because Echani always physically take after the parent of the same gender. The one exception is a pariah because the fact that she looks different is a sign of their father's infidelity—and because she looks exactly identical to her mother at her age. The creepiness is enhanced by.
 * Chibi-Robo! extends this trope to Living Toys.
 * In the epilogue of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, the player learns that the children of half-human half-animal shapeshifters  are.
 * Averted elsewhere in PoR and RD however—notably, the child of a beorc and a laguz will not follow the species of either parent. They will instead have a human body, with heightened powers and longevity from their laguz blood. For a more specific example
 * In Genealogy of the Holy War the class of the Second Generation girls is determined by their mother's class: Lakche is a Swordfighter, just like Ayra; Fee is a Pegasus Knight, just like Fury, and so on. Averted with Patty, Nanna and Altenna.
 * Interestingly, many of the sons take the class of the first generation male character that is "most likely" to be canon.
 * In The Elder Scrolls series, the race of the child is determined almost entirely by the mother, with few of the father's racial traits making it through (with certain, often important exceptions).
 * The Argonian and Khajiit beast races may be aversions, as it's sometimes theorised in-universe that (maybe because of different evolutionary origins), they might not be interfertile with each other, elves, or humans.
 * The ending of Grandia shows Justin and Feena several years later, married, with a bunch of little-Justins and little-Feenas running around.
 * The Gerudo from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time...maybe. The Gerudo are an all-female tribe of desert bandits that produces a male every one hundred years. In order to procreate, they visit Castle Town to meet Hylian "boyfriends". It's possible that the union of a Gerudo woman and a Hylian male produces either a female Gerudo or a male Hylian, but other than the above information there is no evidence of this in-game.
 * In this Japanese commercial for the heavily advertised Solatorobo (a mecha game feature anthro characters), this trope is illustrated at first between an interspecies couple and then subverted when a hybrid is shown! Here’s to hoping Cheetahs and Bulldogs never mate.
 * In SaGa Frontier 2, Cordelia (called Cody by Wil) is Wil's initial love interest and the mother of Wil's son, Rich. Depending on the player's choice, though, Cordelia can die, leaving Wil to marry Labelle instead. However, despite obviously not being Cordelia, Labelle still gives birth to the exact same son.
 * Averted in Mass Effect's monogendered asari species. Any reproductive pairing will end up with the child being asari as well. This is because asari do not reproduce sexually like other species, but instead use their finite control over their nervous system to copy part of their partner's genetic code into their daughters', which is then carried to a full-term pregnancy as would be expected of a near-human humanoid.

Web Comics

 * Lampshaded in The Class Menagerie web-comic, where gender and species are explained as being based on that of the parents.
 * Averted in Kevin and Kell while still managing to fail biology, in which little Coney, daughter of a female wolf and a male rabbit, is an omnivorous bunny; she's mostly represented in the strip as being carnivorous, much to the surprise of a lot of her prey, but she can and does eat vegetables as well.
 * Jyrras and his sisters in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, their dad is a kangaroo mouse while their mom is a kangaroo. Yes, he gets glomped a lot by his much bigger siblings, why do you ask?
 * Though when beings and creatures (demons, etc.) interbreed their offspring look like their being parent with creature traits tacked on, regardless of gender. For example Lorenda is a half-demon cow, her mother is a demon mare and her father was a bull being.

Web Original

 * Somewhat justified with chakats and skunktaurs in the Chakona Space stories. They're both hermaphroditic species (though chakats are parallel and use more feminine terms, while skunktaurs are sequential and tend to be more masculine) and their genes are dominant to most dioecious species that they are compatible with. And when they interbreed their cubs are the same species as the mother, making it possible for a chakat to have a "brother" who is the same species as hir father, but a skunktaur's "sister" would be like hys father.

Western Animation

 * Family Guy: Herbert's dream sequence parody of "Somewhere That's Green" from Little Shop of Horrors. In it, Herbert is dressed like Audrey and Chris is his Seymour. And the son and daughter look like Chris and Audrey!Herbert respectively. It's really weird compared to where the parody came from which shows that Seymour and Audrey's children look like miniature versions of their parents.
 * The animated film Rover Dangerfield appears to have the "breeds" version of this, Daisy (a collie) has a litter to Rover (a basset hound) and produces several apparently male basset hounds and one possibly female collie.
 * Goof Troop: Pete (a cat) and Peg (presumably a dog)'s children. P.J. looks just like Pete (with less of the ugly), and their daughter Pistol looks more like Peg. However, given that the majority of the characters in the show are Dogfaces and the concept of "breeds" does not seem to exist in the Goof Troop continuity, Pete may in fact be a dog in this series, making this an example of the supertrope "Children are clones of their parents"
 * Played with in Rocko's Modern Life, where the children (born from an egg) of Filburt and his wife follow this trope, except for one steer who resembles the friend who actually sat on the egg until it hatched (a Shout-Out to the Dr. Seuss book "Horton Hatches An Egg").
 * Inverted in The Amazing World of Gumball: Gumball is the same species as his mom (a cat), his sister is the same species as his dad (a rabbit).
 * Hinted at in a painting that Painter Smurf had created of Papa Smurf and his prospective bride Flowerbell the woodnymph in The Smurfs episode "Papa's Wedding Day", with their offspring male Smurfs. Of course, the painting was done to dissuade Papa Smurf from marrying Flowerbell, as the other Smurfs knew the whole thing was a setup.
 * Averted in The Fairly Oddparents television movie, Channel Chasers, where in an improved future shows a grown-up Timmy (who has married his Abhorrent Admirer Tootie), with two children who both inherited both parents' traits.

Real Life

 * Calico cats are almost always female due to how coat colors are carried by the X chromosome. The only time a male cat can have a calico/tortoiseshell coat is if he has an extra X chromosome, in other words, if he has XXY or Klinefelter's Syndrome. If it does, said cat will nearly always be sterile.
 * A male cat can also get a calico/tortoiseshell if he has mosaicism (aka chimerism). In that case, said cat can be fertile.