Long-Lost Relative



Our hero or heroine meets someone who they seem to be sharing a number of traits with. The story progresses, and they find themselves working together, at cross-purposes, or drawing together romantically.

And then -- The Reveal. The reason our hero has found that other person uncannily familiar or compellingly attractive is that the new person is a Long-Lost Relative they may never have known they had, or had believed gone forever. Variations include blood siblings, parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins once removed, and so forth. This trope is an integral part of the plot in stories where Everyone Is Related.

Often this is hinted before it happens -- thanks to Superpowerful Genetics members of the same family usually share a number of trademark traits and habits that you can easily spot them by.

Once reunited, the reunited relatives may form a Brother-Sister Team or join up with the rest of their Badass Family, since blood is Thicker Than Water.

See Luke, I Am Your Index for more subtropes.

Fair warning. Since this trope involves finding out about long lost relatives -- it's rife with spoilers!

Anime

 * Sket Dance dropped a shocking yet somehow logical bombshell when it was revealed that . Before The Reveal, several characters commented on the similarities between the two.
 * Creepily, because of their constant bickering (read as Slap Slap Kiss) and amusing degree of being similar-yet-opposite, they had a whole contingent of shippers. Not all of them gave up when the truth came out.
 * A subversion in Speed Racer. Racer X knows he's the long lost brother, but no one else does. This is also true in The Movie, wherein they made a plausible explanation for it because movie Speed wasn't quite as stupid innocent as his anime counterpart.
 * To Love Ru has Kurosaki Mea who claims to be Yami's little sister. Considering they have similar traits (Shapeshifting abilities, assassins, from outer space and being Expies from Suou and Eve respectively) the claim has a little backup.
 * Slayers plays with this; Word of God confirmed that Lina's first traveling companion, the flaky Naga the Serpent, is in fact Gracia Ul Naga Seyruun, the first princess of Seyruun and the long-lost sister of one of Lina's later companions, Amelia. They sort of meet three times in continuity: the Slayers Evolution-R anime had Naga's soul trapped in a suit of armor and became an ally for the group for five episodes, Slayers Premium had Amelia be blasted away before Naga appeared, and the radio drama following the movie had them briefly meet, but Naga simply told Amelia (who didn't recognize her) that she was a friend of Lina's.
 * In Dino Breaker/DICE, Jet Seigel's brother Zack carbon-copies Racer X pefectly - he fakes his own death, then returns under the guise of Phantom Knight, with only his driving skills clueing Jet (and the audience) in on who he is.
 * Dragonball Z kicks off with the dual revelations that Goku A) isn't human and B) has a much stronger evil older brother.
 * More than a decade later, the new Dragonball Z special gives Vegeta a brother as well. His brother, however, is younger and much weaker, and apparently Vegeta knew of his existence already.
 * In the first anime series of Fullmetal Alchemist, during the climatic final battle,
 * On the other hand, in the manga storyline it turns out that the Big Bad is kind of Ed and Al's elder brother, since he recognized their father as his father, back before he pulled From Nobody to Nightmare, and turned Hohenheim into a monster, too. Complicated by the fact that this 'son' was also kind of his mentor, giving him a name instead of a number and teaching him to read.
 * This relationship means that the homunculi are all technically Ed's nieces and nephews. But no one makes anything of this within the series.
 * Even when they first meet Father, he fixes them up since they're his precious human sacrifices and is fascinated to discover that they're Van Hohenheim's sons and Hohenheim is still alive after all these years, but doesn't therefore think of them in even vaguely familial terms. He seems to restrict those completely to his children; he also doesn't address Hohenheim as his father. Ed and Al return this lack of regard, though since they don't view the flashbacks they may never actually see it put in these terms.
 * Genetically, since Hohenheim was his only parent, once he gets a body Father is Hohenheim's Evil Twin, making him also arguably the brothers' uncle. When he crosses the Bishounen Line during the finale, he gets described as 'the one who looks like Fullmetal without the automail,' although he's actually prettier and has somewhat different hair.
 * Mahou Sensei Negima: if the source is reliable, it has been confirmed that
 * Char Aznable and Sayla Mass from Mobile Suit Gundam are brother and sister; though they've been separated for years, they instantly recognize each other when they accidentally cross paths in the second episode. Thus, "Long Lost Little Sister" is often considered one of the defining traits of a Char Clone, as seen with Zechs Merquise.
 * In Tokyo Godfathers: first Hana and her "mother" (though she's not a blood relation), then.
 * In Seto no Hanayome, it's revealed that.
 * In Chance Pop Session,
 * In Fairy Tail, a recent chapter has
 * In Future GPX Cyber Formula,
 * In Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, it's revealed that Emperor Neo is

Comics

 * Charles Xavier has an Evil Twin sister who he didn't know about, who says he tried to kill her in the womb.
 * Orphan twins Northstar and Aurora did not know they were twins until they were recruited into Alpha Flight. After their parents death Northstar went to live with distant relatives who adopted him while Aurora was raised at a strict catholic all girls school.
 * Polaris is un-retconned and re-revealed to be the daughter of Magneto thus she is the half-sister of the Scarlet Witch and her former X-Factor team mate Quicksilver (and their dead sister Anya).
 * Professor X also hid the existence of Cyclops and Havok's younger brother, Vulcan.
 * Since his introduction in the 1960s is full of Fridge Logic (if Cyclops had been visiting Havok all along, what was the point of: A) keeping his existence a secret from all of his friends, and B) not telling Havok that they were mutants?) Alex Summers is usually introduced as Cyclops's long-lost sibling in newer adaptations (X Men Evolution, for example).
 * X-Man Storm has no siblings, but she does have a long lost branch of her family on her mother's side that was RetConned into existence to help justify her going back to Africa so she could marry the Black Panther.
 * A subversion occurs with other X-Men: Longtime teammates Nightcrawler and Rogue are step-brother and sister.
 * Although the trope was also played fairly straight with Nightcrawler's half-brother Graydon Creed (the non-mutant son of Mystique and Sabretooth). Rogue also has a few "adoptive" relatives on the side of her other mother, Destiny, including young X-Man Blindfold.
 * Satana Hellstrom may count, though when her brother Daimon (Son of Satan) Hellstrom finally met her again, she was kinda sorta mistaken for being on the other side. (And weirdly, even though they hadn't met since being separated as young children, he'd previously had hallucinations about her with her correct current appearance and costume.)
 * Spider-Girl (Mayday Parker), last we saw her, still was not aware that Darkdevil is her cousin (son of her father's clone).
 * In some continuities, Aquaman has a long lost brother in.
 * In Adèle Blanc-Sec: Le Mystère des profondeurs, Adèle's little sister Mireille, who not only looks like her but dresses very similarly, with the same taste for ugly hats.
 * During the "Elegy" story arc of Detective Comics, it's revealed that . This revelation is not taken well.
 * In Marvel Comics, Ka-Zar, Lord of the Jungle, is the long lost brother of deadly pirate the Plunderer, a fact initially only known to the Plunderer himself.
 * One cartoon Charles Addams did for the The New Yorker shows two identical men, with identical inventions, sitting side by side in a patent attorney's waiting room. The caption: "Separated at birth, the Mallifert twins meet accidentally."
 * Dwayne Taylor the first Night Thrasher of the New Warriors finds out that Donyell aka Bandit is his half-brother. What makes this really odd is that there had been a previous story where Dwayne and Donyell's father Daryl had been commanded to marry and mate with one of the Daughters of the Dragon's Breadth Cult by Tai but he refused on the ground that he was already happily married to Dwwayne's mother.

Fan Fiction

 * More Fan Fiction than you can shake a rolled-up newspaper at. Long Lost Siblings are always crawling up out of the woodwork.
 * More Harry Potter fanfics than you can count feature Harry's long-lost sister, Mary Sue Potter.
 * A lot of Animorphs fanfics feature Tobias's long lost sibling, usually his sister. It was parodied in one fanfic; Tobias complaining about having to take of so many siblings.
 * A lot of Phineas and Ferb fics are about this, nearly always the missing biological parents. "First Contact: A Gemini Story", on the other hand, is one about Ferb's.
 * Having Mulder's sister turn up is common in The X Files fanfics. One troper read one, and is sure that one wasn't unique.
 * These were as common as grains of sand in the early days of the Sailor Moon fandom. They'd almost universally be either Usagi or Mamoru's long-lost sister, though once in a great while Usagi would have a brother (since apparently she doesn't get enough grief from Shingo) or one of the other senshi would suddenly sprout a sibling or two. What was particularly odd with Usagi's many sisters was how often they were her older sibling, but were still usually banished (and thus forgotten by everyone until after the canon series) for breaking the "one heir" rule. Because it makes perfect sense to banish the firstborn for being an extra child.
 * On the other hand. Dance of Shiva by John Biles, crosses Sailor Moon and Bubblegum Crisis (among other sources) to make Priss Asagiri the time-shifted younger sister of Usagi's previous incarnation, Princess Serenity.
 * Justified example in the Detective Conan fandom. This is a popular fan theory for Detective Conan's lead Kudo Shinichi and his Foil and Worthy Opponent the Kaitou Kid. (Who had his own very brief manga series before Aoyama started Conan and folded Kid into it.) Generally they're either twins and don't know it, or first or second cousins, but there have been considerable variations.
 * This is all based on the fact that they canonically look ridiculously similar, when seen in 'normal' form. Interesting meta-use of Only Six Faces, since what the manga-ka actually did was use the same basic design for two heroes and then Lampshade it--specifically, by showing that Kid, a Master of Disguise who usually relies heavily on Latex Perfection, can dress as Shinichi without a mask. Just has to change his hair and body language.
 * Wasn't that just in some of the movies? Those are canon, though.
 * The backstories fans produce for these Epileptic Trees can be epic. One nightmare scenario from a world where they had been Separated At Birth had them not having been Separated At Birth, and instead raised by the Black Organization as evil Single Minded Twins.
 * A few horrible shippers use this theory for Surprise Incest Squick.

Film

 * Star Wars, natch. Luke and Leia.
 * Oddly, Obi Wan Kenobi was mentioned a few times to have a brother, but I don't think he's ever actually showed up.
 * The original idea was that Owen "Luke's uncle" Lars was Obi-Wan's brother, not Anakin's.
 * And Gunn Yage is Cade Skywalker's half-sister in the comics, making this trope In the Blood. Makes me wonder if when Luke and Ben reach the Fallanassi leg of their journey, they'll discover that Akanah has a child.
 * The Addams Family is kind of an inversion. Fester is returned to the family by a con woman who thinks he's not the real long-lost Fester, brother of Gomez. But he is. Only with Trauma Induced Amnesia.
 * There have been a few variations on this with twins who were Separated At Birth, such as The Parent Trap and Twitches.
 * Zorro The Gay Blade has a Separated At Birth sitch with Bunny Wigglesworth. Bunny knows they're brothers, but Diego hadn't known he had a brother.
 * Diego did know he had a brother. But he hadn't seen his brother in years since Bunny had been in the Navy. Also, Bunny's birth name was Ramone and Diego wasn't aware that he had changed his name.
 * Spock's touchy-feely half-brother Sybok in Star Trek V the Final Frontier.
 * was the unknowing long lost twin sister of Buckaroo Banzai's wife, Peggy. Tragically, the sisters never had the opportunity to meet.
 * Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito portray the titular long lost brothers in the comedy film Twins. In an unusual departure from the twin trope, they are fraternal twins.
 * Cameron Vale and Darryl Revok in Scanners. Revok is trying to get Cameron to join him, but when the reunion comes,  Probably.
 * Raymond from Rain Man.
 * In the movie Soapdish, soap opera costars Lori and Jeffery nearly kiss before Celeste breaks them up to reveal that Lori is his daughter. Ew.
 * In Desperado, El Mariachi and Bucho are brothers.
 * In Scaramouche, the villain is revealed to be the hero's half-brother.
 * In the original book, the villain was the hero's father.

Literature

 * Feirefis, Parzival's Moorish long-lost half-brother and ancestor of Prester John is only one of several long-lost relatives in Wolfram von Eschenbach's epic poem Parzival where Everyone Is Related.
 * The titular character in Sir Apropos of Nothing discovers he has a long lost sister, not quite in time to escape Brother Sister Incest, but at least to escape marrying her. Unfortunately, he doesn't tell her, which results in her hating him for dumping her so unceremoniously.
 * Harry Dresden discovers fairly early in his adventures that he has a long lost half-brother,.
 * The Baudelaire siblings encounter two of a set of triplets in A Series of Unfortunate Events -- the third triplet is a Long Lost Sibling who eventually reunites with his brother and sister.
 * Arthur Spiderwick is the long lost Disappeared Dad of The Spiderwick Chronicles. The same is true for The Movie.
 * In the first book of The Obsidian Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, Kellen Tavadon finds that Idalia, the person who nurses him back to health, is his sister (and that their father gave him Laser Guided Amnesia to avoid bothersome questions from a six year old).
 * The Kite Runner reveals that  in a climactic reveal.
 * In Havemercy Thom eventually realizes that is his brother, leading to a lot of protest among fans who insist that their UST is undeniable (and it really is....)
 * Something like this happens in the "Black Fleet Crisis" of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In one of the two ultimately pointless major plotlines, Luke meets a woman who claims to be close friends with his mother. Apparently a lot of people claim that kind of thing, but he believes this one, since she's Force Sensitive. But she's part of a sect of extremely strict Actual Pacifists and she gives him a bunch of Secret Tests Of Character to see if his mother would approve of him, and since Luke readily uses weapons to defend himself and her, he fails all of them. And then it turns out that no, she was lying about knowing his mother and apparently just wanted a chance to moralize on Luke.
 * Turns out Sabriel has a, which is a very good thing considering that neither of her kids is Abhorsen material.
 * The Molly Moon series is full of these. In the course of four books,
 * Oh, also in the Mortal Instrument series by Cassandra Clare, Jace and Clary end up being siblings... though not before they've sort of fallen in love with each other. Oops...
 * Once you get to the 3rd book,.
 * The Percy Jackson and The Olympians sequel series, The Heroes of Olympus:
 * In Ender's Shadow (the parallel novel to Ender's Game) we find out the backstory of Bean, a super-smart little genetic experiment who was kidnapped as an embryo, escaped captivity as a baby, and made it to the orbital battle school as a small child. He managed to forge a real friendship with exactly one other person in the school, who turns out to be the son of the people whose embryo was stolen, meaning Bean sought out and befriended his long-lost brother.
 * Jessie Shimmer finds out she has multiple long lost relatives  and   in Shotgun Sorceress.
 * In The Vampire Diaries: Midnight it is revealed to Meredith Sulez, by her parents no less, that she has a twin brother who was kidnapped by Klaus when she was just a baby.
 * Played to a ridiculous level in the Wuxia Demi Gods and Semi Devils with the protagonist's father, Duan Zhengchun, being a big case of Casanova. Every single Love Interest his son, Duan Yu, meets in his journey turns out to be his half-sisters.
 * In the eleventh Haruhi Suzumiya light novel,  The alleged sibling denies it, but the two of them seem to have some history together,
 * In the eleventh Haruhi Suzumiya light novel,  The alleged sibling denies it, but the two of them seem to have some history together,

Live Action TV

 * On 24 the nemesis who appears to have orchestrated most of the events of the fifth season is revealed in the sixth to be Jack Bauer's estranged (and never before mentioned) brother Graem who was also being manipulated by their father.
 * In House,
 * Something similar happened in Law and Order SVU, where a teenager found out he'd been dating/sleeping with his (now-murdered) half sister. He was originally a suspect, but Stabler considered him innocent when the revelation actually made him throw up.
 * On Pushing Daisies, Ned's Disappeared Dad started a new family after abandoning Ned at boarding school, then pulled the Disappeared Dad thing again. As a result, the Pie Maker has twin half-brothers.
 * In a bit of a subversion, Ned's always been aware of the twins' existence; he just didn't want anything to do with them until recently.
 * And  has just turned up, making one more Ned-relative who has returned from being long lost.
 * Jessi of Kyle XY is not Kyle's sister, but she was born in the same laboratory and was cloned from
 * At least until the ending which made them not be clones without explaining it very well.
 * A straighter use of the trope occurs in the not-really-a-finale:
 * Due South's Constable Benton Fraser meets his half-sister in the show's penultimate episode.
 * On Heroes two opposing factions played on  mental issues to manipulate him. The vehicle they used to do this? They lied, telling him he was a long lost family member.
 * A better example lies in Alice, 's never-before-mentioned sister.
 * Monk discovers he has a long lost brother.
 * Star Trek the Next Generation pulls this one, with the twist of it being the android who's mother has shown up.
 * And a couple of his brothers have shown up too. One is evil, the other just dumb.
 * Worf's long lost brother Kurn also shows up as well as his long lost son Alexander. Picard visits his estranged brother Robert and meets his nephew Rene for the first time. Riker's estranged father visits. Troi finds out she had an older sister who drowned that she never knew existed. Tasha Yar's sister also visits the Enterprise after her death.
 * Kamen Rider Kiva has Wataru Kurenai learn that
 * Kamen Rider Double has find out that  is his sister. After he's been acting rather close to her, but apparently it was sibling love all along, so it's okay.
 * This trope is the only thing that saved Charmed after Shannen Doherty left the show and her character, Prue, was Killed Off for Real. In the first episode of the fourth season, Piper and Phoebe find out that the affair their mother had with their Whitelighter (that was fortunately established a season and a half earlier) led to the birth of their younger half-sister, Paige.
 * In the 4th season Supernatural episode "Jump the Shark," Sam and Dean meet a young man named Adam, who says John Winchester was his father, making him their half-brother. After spending much of the episode trying to determine if this is true (while also trying to help Adam find out what happened to his missing/ possibly dead mother), they discover that he's lying...
 * As of season 6 we now have Gwen, Christian, Mark and Johnny Campbell
 * In The X-Files, we find out the Jeffery Spender, who was working for CSM and managed to steal the X-Files from Mulder and Scully with Diana Fowley, is not only CSM's son but that CSM is also Mulder's biological father...making them half-brothers. Ouch.
 * Presumably this revelation also makes Mulder's long lost sister Samantha his half-sister.
 * And that Scully had a daughter she never knew about thanks to some ova-stealing.
 * On Alias, Sydney discovers a long-lost sister, Nadia, at the end of season 3. Said sister goes on to:
 * Turns out that Dexter has.
 * In True Blood, Vampire Bill discovers  that the Bellefleur siblings are his great-great-great grandchildren.
 * On Boy Meets World, Shawn runs into his long-lost half brother Jack when Jack arrives in Philadelphia to go to college. Shawn knew he existed before this but they were so estranged that none of the other main characters (or the audience) knew about him.
 * Has reached epidemic levels in Merlin; there's been Morgana's long-lost sister Morgause, Merlin's long-lost father Balinor, Guinevere's long-lost brother Elyan, and Arthur's long-lost uncle Agravaine (who has apparently been there all along).

Myth and Legend

 * Oedipus, long-lost son of Laios (whom he kills) and Iocaste (whom he marries). A pattern repeated with Telegonos, son of Odysseus and Circe. He winds up accidentally killing his long-lost father, and in a creative instance of Pair the Spares, he marries Odysseus' widow Penelope, while Penelope's son Telemachus marries Circe.
 * Morgan le Fay, who comes with extra disturbing quotient in the form of their mutual child he just sort of forgot about.

Theatre

 * Siegmund and Sieglinde find this out at the end of the first act of Die Walkuere. This does nothing to avert Brother Sister Incest.
 * A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum:
 * An interesting aversion of sorts in Into the Woods, where the baker and Rapunzel are these, but neither realises and nor does their being related have any effect on the plot.
 * At the end of the opera Il Trovatore an old gypsy reveals to the villain that he has just killed his long-lost brother. Since this is the last line of the libretto (and there are just 2 bars of music left to go), the baritone is reduced to making a face at the audience to express his dismay as the curtain comes down. And this troper has seen some truly ridiculous grimacing. Verdi must have been under deadline pressure.

Video Games

 * in Apollo Justice Ace Attorney
 * Oh boy, Trials and Tribulations. In the last case not only do we find out that
 * in Mother 3. Though, really, if you didn't see it coming...
 * In Final Fantasy IV,.
 * In Final Fantasy V,.
 * In Final Fantasy IX,.
 * Almost everybody with a sibling in Fire Emblem Rekka no Ken seems to have been separated, but  are the ones who fit this trope best.
 * Also, Arthur and Tinny in Seisen no Keifu. And Leaf and Altenna in the same game. In both cases, the latter has to be convinced by their brother to do a Heel Face Turn. Finally, we have a particularly sad case with Leen and Corple, who don't even know they're brother and sister.
 * in The King of Fighters.
 * A mix of Luke I Am Your Father and dead big brother happens with Valkyria Chronicles 2, when Avan and co. was desperately trying to defend the school from Rebel forces, a Heroic Sacrifice by Juliana reveals that Leon is Dirk Gessernel, one of the three Gessernel siblings.
 * In the NES classic, Pirates!, you can purchase maps that lead to where your long lost sister is hidden on a plantation. Once you have rescued her, you can also find your long lost father, mother, brother, cousin, etc. They might give you a map that leads to lost Aztec treasure!
 * Heavily implied in the first Rune Factory game.
 * Hoo boy, Ever 17.
 * Non-protagonist example: In Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches, it turns out that the guy you exchange e-mails with is.
 * Subverted (!) with Ivan in Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age. In the first game, he makes the acquaintance of spiritual leader and martial-arts master Hama, who acts as a mysterious mentor figure and refuses to bond closely any more than is needed to teach him to Reveal illusions. In the second game, Hama is revealed to be Ivan's sister... but neither one was lost to begin with: Ivan was sent away to be raised by non-Adepts so he would be in the right place at the right time to join Isaac's quest, and Hama has been discreetly keeping tabs on him the whole time, while pushing him away to keep her emotions from causing trouble. He's annoyed at this point, because she's the only blood relative he has, he wants to learn more about his past/family/etc., and she's still pushing him away because his destiny isn't done yet.

Web Comics

 * in General Protection Fault
 * Blue and Isaac in Namir Deiter - Blue was four years old when their mother kicked his father out. Issac didn't know about his other sister, Roxanne (who had already left home when the elder Deiter met his father). They've since all gotten to know each other.
 * Girl Genius has who was heavily implied (good resemblance) to be a relative of  and thus . And eventually was revealed to be.
 * Homestuck:  are Half Identical Twins, as are , and they were split up via the Reckoning. This reveal had the side effect of sinking two of the biggest ships in the fandom.

Web Original

 * Theatrica

Western Animation

 * Mickey Mouse - Remember Oswald the Lucky Rabbit? You probably don't. He's Mickey's long-lost older half-brother. Walt Disney created him before Mickey, and he laid the groundwork for Mickey's rise to stardom. Disney ultimately addressed Oswald's return in the video game Epic Mickey.
 * The Secret Saturdays - Drew yoinks off the helmet from VanRook's apprentice, gets a look at his face, and has a Flash Back which makes her realize he's her brother, which leads to his Heel Face Turn.
 * There's also Homer's brother Herb in The Simpsons.
 * Who was raised in an orphanage run by Dr. Hibbert's long-lost brother. In Round Springfield it was then revealed that Bleeding Gums Murphy was the long-lost third Hibbert brother.
 * Homer also has a long-lost half-sister in England.
 * Hank of King of the Hill was revealed to have a Japanese half-brother.
 * From the standpoint of every other toon on The Warner Lot, Animaniacs Yakko, Wakko and Dot are Long Lost Siblings. But the truth is they were locked in the water tower because they're completely nuts.
 * Motor Ed turns out to be Dr Drakken's cousin in the first episode of season 3 of Kim Possible. Not so much a long lost sibling as a wish he were still lost cousin, but it still counts, especially after Drakken starts taking Motor Ed's fashion advice.
 * 4Kids editing of Winx Club provides an example of this trope being undermined by editing: The Trix exposit about the Dragonfire to Bloom.  Video.
 * In s more recent episode of The Fairly Odd Parents, it turns out that Cosmo and Jorgen von Strangle are cousins, and that fact was kept a secret for obvious reasons. Bonus points if you throw in Talking to Himself, since both characters are voiced by Daran Norris.
 * In Family Guy, Lois has a long lost brother Patrick who was put in a mental hospital.
 * Kevin's stepfather shows up in the finale for season 1 of Ben 10 Ultimate Alien -- he's been with Kevin's mother since the Ben10 days, but this is the first time he appears onscreen.
 * The Christmas Episode of Hey Arnold features the
 * He-Man and The Masters of The Universe happens to have a twin sister from whom he was Separated At Birth. Hordak attempted to kidnap them both due to a prophecy but was only able to get Adora. This backfires when Adora, learns her true heritage, does a Heel Face Turn and becomes She-Ra.
 * Hank Venture from the Venture Bros finds out that his best friend Dermott Fictel is the illegitimate son of his father Rusty Venture and Nikki Fictel. Nikki Fictel was a teenager when Dermott was born and Dermott was raised to believe Nikki was his sister and his grandmother was his mother. Hank finds this out shortly AFTER losing his virginity to Nikki but has his memory wiped.
 * Eric Cartman from South Park finds out his old ginger nemesis Scott Tenorman is his half-brother in the episode 201. Eric had previously orchestrated the murder of Scott's parents (and thus Eric's own father) and tricked Scott into eating their remains at the Chili Con Carnival. When Eric finds out he becomes depressed...at the thought of being half-ginger.