Brother-Sister Team

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

The convention in kids movies and TV shows to make the Kid Heroes a brother and sister. This way, both the sexes are represented and they can be very close, while any thought that they'll end up together is, at least theoretically, killed off immediately. These teams can also bicker a lot more than teams of friends usually do, like siblings in real life, and there's no need to worry that they might "break up".

A subtrope of Sibling Team. They may also be part of a Badass Family.

Examples of Brother-Sister Team include:

Anime and Manga


Comic Books

  • The DCU
  • Marvel Universe.
    • The Invisible Woman and the Human Torch as a subset of the Fantastic Four.
      • Also in the younger generation: Franklin and Valeria Richards in the mainstream continuity and the Thing's two kids in the MC-2 timeline.
    • Northstar and Aurora
    • Fenris
    • Power Pack has two brothers and two sisters.
    • Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, when they first appeared with the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants, and occasionally since then.
    • Spider Girl and Darkdevil. Who are technically half-brother and sister.
      • More like cousins. And they never really formed a permanent team. However, Mayday and her baby brother Benjy have the makings of becoming one in the future.
    • In Excalibur Alistaire and Alysande Stuart, a military officer and a scientist working for the Weird Happenings Organisation.
    • Captain Britain and Psylocke, although they did not team up that often.


Fan Works


Film


Literature

  • Tony and Tia in Alexander Key's Escape to Witch Mountain and The Film of the Book.
  • Harry Potter's friends, the Weasley family, are an all-family team, but Ginny and her brothers work together regularly.
  • Princess Andromeda and Sir George (actually Georgina) in One Good Knight from Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. Andie proposes that they become blood-siblings to invoke this trope, since otherwise The Tradition (the ambient magic in the land) would do everything it could to make her fall in love with the knight who rescued her.
    • Lackey's books in general have a tendency do do this whenever the main character isn't a total orphan, which is rare. Notably in the series with Andre Norton, where there are siblings everywhere.
  • Artemis Fowl features brother and sister Butler and Juliet.
  • The Pevensie brothers and sisters in CS Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia.
  • Leto and Ghanima of Dune.
  • Vree and Bannon, assassins of the Empire, in Tanya Huff's "Quarters" novels.
  • Going into the New Jedi Order (and admittedly earlier), we have Jacen, Jaina and Anakin Solo.
  • Subverted by Sookie and Jason in The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries. Jason is a user who puts Sookie over a barrel so he can do whatever he wants.
    • In Dead Until Dark, he doesn't believe her when she tells him she was molested, because the molester was their uncle and seemed like a nice guy.
    • In Dead To The World, he volunteers Sookie to babysit an amnesiac vampire who's being headhunted by vicious witches, so he can get a cut of the reward money. His contribution was to loan Sookie a shotgun.
    • In From Dead To Worse, after his manipulation and cowardice forces her to smash a friend's fingers with a brick, she finally tells him she never wants to see him again.
  • Alec and Isabelle Lightwood in the Mortal Instruments. Also, there's Jace Wayland, who's technically their foster brother, but that tends to be over looked.
  • Maya and Joey from the Maradonia Saga.
  • Eomer and Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings are almost this but not quite.
  • Maura and Patrick O'Connell in Beyond the Western Sea
  • Dagny and James Taggart, sibling executives of a large railroad company in Atlas Shrugged. Subverted in that all of James' plans tend to either harm the company, or aid it by using legalization to crush their competitors, Dagny is the competent and underappreciated one who really keeps the company going and bail it out of James' mistakes. James does not appreciate this.
  • The 39 Clues has Dan and Amy Cahill. Also, Ian and Natalie Kabra and - sort of - Hamilton, Reagan, and Madison Holt and Ned, Ted, and Sinead Starling.
  • Carter and Sadie Kane take on the Egyptian gods in The Kane Chronicles.
  • The Brothers Grimm quite liked this trope. In addition to the obvious "Hansel and Gretel", there's also a Fairy Tale by them simply called "Brother and Sister".
  • The Earth's Children series has Iza and Creb in the first book—aging sister and brother who are allowed to set up a hearth together. She's the clan medicine woman, and he's the clan shaman. Then in the third book, the Mamutoi custom is for the co-leaders to be a brother and sister. If somebody doesn't have a sibling and wants to set up a separate cave, they may adopt one.


Live Action TV

  • The Go-on Wings, Miu and Hiroto, in Engine Sentai Go-onger. Also, The Landick sibling, Agri and Moune from Tensou Sentai Goseiger.
  • Annie and Tom on The Edison Twins. (They also have a younger brother, Paul, but he's mostly comic relief.)
  • A Brother/Sister team is part of the grifter gang from Season 5 of Hustle.
  • Simon & River Tam from Firefly.
  • Guy and Isabella of Gisborne in Robin Hood. At least in some episodes. The rest of the time, they're trying to kill each other.
  • Brian and Julie on one episode of the reality show Mantracker.
  • Justin and Alex of Wizards of Waverly Place, when they actually decide to work together.
  • Luke and Sky in The Sarah Jane Adventures started to become this in the final episode. It's a pity we didn't get to see more.
  • In Stargate Atlantis, McKay's little sister Jeannie pops up a few times to help him solve various problems. They have great sibling chemistry (read: they're pretty mean to each other), largely helped by the fact that the two actors are siblings in real life.


Mythology

  • Older Than Feudalism: Classical Mythology has several pairs:
    • Artemis and Apollo]]
    • Heracles and Athena
    • Zeus and Hera, king and queen of the Olympians
    • Orestes and Elektra, already mentioned under Theater.


Theater

  • Orestes and Electra of Electra are a brother-sister team, but not the kid-friendly sort. Their principal objective is to kill their mother and step-father.


Video Games


Web Comics


Web Original


Western Animation

  • Zack and Ivy from The Carmen Sandiego cartoon
  • Wilykit and Wilykat from Thundercats and Thundercats 2011.
  • Yin Yang Yo has the eponymous twins.
  • Villainous example: Ravess and Snipe from Storm Hawks
  • Edgar and Ellen are a two-twin pranking duo.
  • Juniper Lee and Ray-Ray ...kind of. He's more of a hyperactive Annoying Younger Sibling who tags along.
  • Kim Possible and the tweebs in season four just barely fits the team trope. They outfitted the Kim-mobile with all its neat gizmos, and were very displeased when Motor Ed blew their doors off.
    • Ron and Hanna Stoppable fit the trope in Season Four as well.
    • Shego's Backstory also fits the trope as she and her brothers formed the heroic Team Go.
  • In Legend of the Dragon the twins are a team at the beginning until Ang gets the power of the Golden Dragon. Ling, jealous, takes off, and in her rage and confusion, meets up with the Zodiac Master, and turns into the Shadow Dragon. But at the season finale, Ling comes back, and they end up sharing the power of Golden Dragon, thence to take out the Zodiac Master and his boss together.
    • Season 2 had yet another example in Yin Wi and the Emperor of the Darkest Yin.
  • Kim and Kam in Class of 3000.
  • Danny and Jazz (kind of) in Danny Phantom, particularly in "Secret Weapons".
  • Grossology
  • American Dragon: Jake Long almost subverts this trope. Jake and Haley have been known to work as a team, but it's usually reluctantly as they're most frequently at each other's throats.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Sokka and Katara
    • And subverting the trope, Zuko and Azula who, after years of mutual animosity, finally worked as a team until Zuko realized what he was doing and completed the Heel Face Turn he'd started.
  • Hanna-Barbera's contributions feature:
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra, from their respective cartoons, are fraternal twins. Though they live on separate planets and usually operate independently, they fit this trope on the occasions when they work together, such as in the She-Ra pilot and the Christmas special.
  • Bart and Lisa Simpson, frequently.
    • In one of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes, Bart and Lisa become crime fighting supersiblings Stretch Dude and Clobber Girl.
  • Martin and Diana in the western animation version of Martin Mystery. Note that in the original comic, they were both adults, and lovers...
    • The cartoon series has them as stepsiblings. And there's still a vibe.
  • Canon Immigrant Expy twins Downpour and Shifter, of the Justice League Unlimited series.
  • Dot and Enzo Matrix from ReBoot.
  • Jackal and Hyena from Gargoyles.
  • ZZ and Blitzy from The BOTS Master.
  • Jules and Julie from The Twins of Destiny.
  • Mahad and Lena in Skyland.
  • Elastika and Kewl Breeze in Zevo-3.
  • Doug and Judy became this on occasion, such as the episode Doug's Babysitter.

Real Life

  • Hans and Sophie Scholl who were part of the White Rose league against Those Wacky Nazis.
  • Edward the Elder and Æthelflæd Lady of the Mercians
  • Rukhsana (sister) and Adaz (brother) Kauser helped fight off Islamist extortioners at their farmhouse on the Indian-Pakistani border. While they were busy beating up the parents Rukhsana seized an ax and whacked one on the head with it. Then the two siblings held off the terrorists with captured rifles. According to The Other Wiki, one of them was a "distinguished" terrorist with a 4000 pound bounty on his head.
  • In the field of music you have Wolfgang and Maria Anna Mozart and Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, although society being what it was, in both cases the female half of the team was not allowed to pursue her career to the full extent.