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When this trope shows up in media, it's usually used to highlight the specific psychological issues that a character has, particularly if it features in the [[Backstory]] of a [[Serial Killer]] or other psychopath, or [[Villainous Incest|to give an already nasty villain that extra bit of shudder factor]]. Incest between a father and daughter is often portrayed in media as being predatory on the part of the father, and in a lot of cases when it's revealed, it's a crossing of the [[Moral Event Horizon]] that serves to get the audience completely against the father in question. When the daughter is the aggressor in the relationship, it usually means the daughter is seriously twisted in some way or at least has serious issues. In cases of mother and son incest, the usual scenario is a case of a [[My Beloved Smother|Beloved Smother]] or other [[Evil Matriarch]] who loves her son (often a [[Momma's Boy]]) in all the wrong ways, though there tends to be less focus on the predatory when compared to incestuous fathers and more focus on the issues of the son in question whether or not the mother or the son is the aggressor. Conversely, it's often played for comedy, with the son understandably freaked out due to the mother's advances.
 
This trope appears with step-, foster, or adoptive parents as well as biological ones (see [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attraction:Genetic sexual attraction|genetic sexual attraction]]), sometimes to [[Bowdlerise]] it somewhat, although the power dynamics are still much the same as in parent/child incest. [[Wife Husbandry]] is one way to [[Bowdlerise]] it still further -- though not out of [[Squick]] range.
 
Also see [[Surprise Incest]], where the couple involved do not know they're related, also [[Brother-Sister Incest]] and [[Kissing Cousins]]. When children who don't know any better innocently suggest this, it's [[Father, I Want to Marry My Brother]]. See [[Pervert Dad]] for parents who don't ''quite'' go this far, but still have a healthy dose of [[Squick]]. See [[I Love You, Vampire Son]], when the "parent" is the vampire that sired his "son".
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* The anime villain Furumizu from ''[[Witchblade (Anime)|Witchblade]]'' has some creepy implications of this. Doesn't help the man has a very messed up reverse [[Oedipus Complex]].
* ''[[Berserk]]'' has an incredibly creepy example in the King of Midland and his feelings for his only daughter, Princess Charlotte. After {{spoiler|Griffith has sex with Charlotte following Guts' leaving him and the Hawks, the King goes crazy, and after throwing Griffith into the Tower of Rebirth to be put to the torture and declaring the rest of the Hawks [[Outlaw]], he tries to rape Charlotte. She barely manages to fight him off, and the experience wracks him with incredible guilt, to the point where he visibly ages and falls ill. Charlotte (very understandably) wants nothing to do with her father afterwards, and won't even see him on his deathbed}}.
* Sakurazuka Seishirou and his [[Hot Mom]] [[The Ophelia|Setsuka]] in ''[[Tokyo Babylon]]'' and ''[[X 1999]]''. No evidence about sexual encounters, thank God, but the [[Subtext]] is ''incredibly'' strong -- specially in the CD dramas. {{spoiler|Not helped by their [[Last Kiss]] in the manga, which comes ''after'' a teenaged Seishirou [[Self -Made Orphan|fights, defeats and kills Setsuka]] as the requirement to become the Sakurazukamori.}}
* The main couple in the yaoi series ''Papa to Kiss in the Dark''. {{spoiler|Technically, Kyousuke is Mira's uncle, but ''still''...}}
* It's implied in ''[[Naru Taru]]'' that this trope is the reason why Akira is such a suicidal [[Shrinking Violet]].
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* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' had an... unusual case with [[Mad Scientist|Scaglietti]], {{spoiler|who impregnated his cyborg daughters with [[Cloning Gambit|clones of himself that had all his memories]].}} There's no indication that any actual sex occurred, but it's still incredibly creepy.
* It's very, very heavily implied that {{spoiler|Sho Shibuya}} from [[Great Teacher Onizuka]] was sexually abused by {{spoiler|his mother}}. Not only that, but {{spoiler|nobody believed him when he went to the authorities, so he murdered her (or at the very least attacked her with murderous intent) and then attempted suicide.}}
* Implied for [[Magnificent Bastard]] [[Four Eyes, Zero Soul|Kazutaka]] [[Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate|Muraki]] of [[Yami no Matsuei]]. His mother had a huge doll collection (which he has inherited and apparently maintains) and treated him as part of it. There is some highly symbolized flashback imagery of him as a little boy trapped by her with her terrible smile. Slight spider vibe; definitely playing up the 'predator' side. And look how he treats ''his'' human dolls...
** Also, he killed her. [[Unreliable Narrator|According to him.]] Note that all of this is only in the manga; the [[Gecko Ending]] of the anime is an adaptation of the same volume most of this comes from, but they left out all the child abuse and focused on making his [[Flat What|vendetta against his half brother's severed head]] make some kind of sense.
 
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* ''[[Chronicles of Thomas Covenant]]''. Subverted slightly in that Elena, who is the product of rape between Thomas Covenant and her mother Lena, actively pursues a sexual relationship with her father, without his knowing for most of ''The Illearth Stone'' that she's his daughter.
* In Henry Fielding's ''The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'', Jones sleeps with a woman who, it is later revealed, is thought to be his mother. (Turns out she isn't.)
* [[Robert A. Heinlein]] is notable for the [[Free -Love Future]] portrayed in many of his novels, in which familial relationships are sexually taboo only by tradition, which most sensible people discard as long as the matter is consensual and there's no genetic risk.
** His protagonist Lazarus Long sexes up his mom towards the end of ''[[Time Enough for Love]]''. He goes back in time to when he was 5 or so. At first he's [[Squick|Squicked]] out by the thought, but then realizes they're not procreating so it's OK. After all, he has sex with his female half-clones, and most other people he has sex with are his descendants at some level already. (Not to mention that genetic testing indicates that he has absolutely no harmful genes whatsoever -- so even if he did get his mom pregnant, the baby would be perfectly healthy.) Later, in ''[[The Number of the Beast]]'', he rescues her from death and brings her to his present (her future) so the relationship can be formalized.
** And let's ''not'' get started on Heinlein's ''[[All You Zombies]]''. {{spoiler|The protagonist is a hermaphrodite, who travels through time, [[Selfcest|has sex with him/herself]] and becomes both his/her own father and mother. And son and daughter, logically. And is also the same person who took himself back in time to meet herself.}}
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* In ''[[Book Girl]] and the Famished Spirit'', one character is implied to have been sexually abused by her uncle/guardian, {{spoiler|who is eventually revealed to be her real father -- which she knew, but he didn't}}.
* In one of his columns, [[Dave Barry]] called for readers to send in candidates for what should be the national insect. In his next column, he mentions that someone wrote in saying "My vote for the national incest is mother-son. Thank you for asking."
* ''[http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man:Invisible Man|The Invisible Man]]'' by Ralph Ellison contains a scene where the narrator finds a man with two pregnant women in his yard. It turns out one is his wife and the other his daughter whom he accidentally entered (they shared a bed) while dreaming. She enjoyed it so much she [[It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It|begged him to continue]] resulting in both his wife and daughter being pregnant by him at once.
* This is actually the {{spoiler|motive}} behind the major case in the novel ''Case Histories'' and its subsequent TV adaptation. {{spoiler|The little girl at the center of case was murdered by her oldest sister because the sister realized that their father had the intention of sexually abusing her like he had been doing with the sister. In order to spare her little sister from the same fate, she murdered and buried the little girl in their neighbor's yard and subsequently entered a convent.}}
* ''[[In Death]]'': Eve Dallas was subjected to this by her own father. She had to kill him to get out of it. ''Born In Death'' reveals that Madeline Bullock and her son Winfield Chase had been in a sexual relationship for years. [[Squick]].
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** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KTWjgb6EYo Another infamous episode] of Steve's show featured a woman who'd molested her daughter orally and offered to make child pornography of her.
* On ''[[Roar (TV)|Roar]]'' Fergus is initially quite attracted to Molly until he realizes that she's his daughter.
* In the [[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]] episode ''Father's Day'', Rose's father Pete unknowingly invokes it in a hypothetical remark of "if I was going out with you" and is confused about her emphatic, repeated protests.
* In ''[[Boardwalk Empire]]'', this is revealed to be in the back story of {{spoiler|Jimmy Darmody and his mother Gillian}} and was at least partially the cause of {{spoiler|Jimmy enlisting in [[World War One]]}}.
 
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** Seeing as [[Something Something Leonard Bernstein|no-one has ever understood a word Eddie Vedder sings in any of their songs]], this has yet to be confirmed or refuted.
** It's explained in [http://www.fivehorizons.com/archive/articles/rs102893.shtml this article]. "Alive" is the story of a young man who never knew his biological father until he was told the truth by his mother later in life (a true incident from Eddie Vedder's own life). In the song, the mother is sexually attracted to her son and the relationship is consummated, [[Go Mad From the Revelation|leading the protagonist to become so messed up]] that he becomes a [[Serial Killer]] of prostitutes (the song "Once"), and ends up on death row (the song "Footsteps"). However, Vedder has veered away from this interpretation in later years, claiming that the fans "lifted the curse" off the song, and he now sees it as a life-affirming anthem.
** "Daughter" ''sounds'' rather explicit in its subject matter (Father/Daughter incest), once you get past Vedder's nigh-unintelligible singing voice. Though it reads like that ("she holds the hand that holds her down"), "Daughter" is actually about a child with dyslexia ("mother reads aloud - child tries to understand it"), whose parents don't understand her disability and use harsh physical punishment to deal with it ("the shades go down"). Explained [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughter_%28song%:Daughter chr(28)songchr(29)#cite_notecite note-3 |here]] on [[The Other Wiki]].
* No sex happens, but the video for "[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LE06lqT0Y2g Lemon Incest]" by Serge Gainsbourg and his young daughter Charlotte is extremely creepy.
** The video for "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g-NhUk_voc&feature=related Charlotte Forever]", on the other hand, feels more romantic than creepy. Of course for some that may make it all the creepier.
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== Religion and Mythology ==
* This is absolutely everywhere in ancient mythology and folklore. [[The Other Wiki]] has a fairly comprehensive list [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_folklore:Incest in folklore|here]].
* The most famous example of [[Parental Incest]] comes from Greek mythology with ''[[Oedipus Rex]]'', about a prince who is prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother. After being left to die by his father and then found by someone else, he meets him unrecognized on the road and kills him. He has several adventures (including solving the riddle of the Sphinx) before heading home and marrying the Queen, who, yes, turns out to be his mother. He spends years with her -- and they have ''children'' -- before finding out the truth about what happened, and is so horrified by it all that he goes into exile, after exacting the punishment on himself for killing the old king to end a curse on the land, while she commits suicide.
** [[Distaff Counterpart|Electra]], if [[Freud Was Right]] about her desires. She murdered her mother, and her name was used for the gender-inversion of the Oedipus complex.
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* [[Shakespeare]]: Gets the plot rolling in ''Pericles''. Pericles want to marry the daughter of King Antiochus but the king demands Pericles solve a riddle; the riddle basically says the king is having sex with the daughter. Pericles figures out the riddle but doesn't actually answer, but the king figures out that Pericles figured it out and sends goons after Pericles to silence him. In the end, both Antiochus and his daughter [[Karmic Death|spontaneously combust]].
* Emperor Nero with his mother Agrippa, both (rumoured) in [[Real Life]], and in ''[[I Claudius]]''.
** If such a thing did happen in real life, then Nero was [[Abusive Parents|a victim of sexual abuse]]; he actively hated his [[Evil Matriarch|overbearing, controlling mother]] who had essentially forced him into emperorhood in the first place, taking the benefits and leaving him the problems (judging from the few reasonably accurate records, he was a tyrant out of indifference rather than malice). [[Self -Made Orphan|And then he had her killed]].
* The plot of Paula Vogel's ''How I Learned To Drive''. (Well, actually her uncle, but Peck is as close to a father as L'il Bit has.) Oddly enough, the relationship is presented as sympathetically as possible, without downplaying the fact that Peck does horrible things.
* ... [[Running Gag|Oedipus Rex?]]
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== [[Real Life]] ==
* Thomas Mann's diaries record that he felt strongly attracted to his son Klaus, the second of his six children, when Klaus was 14.
* Kathryn Harrison, had a incestuous relationship with her biological father and later wrote an autobiographical account of it, "The Kiss", which helped publicize the then-undocumented phenomenon of [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_sexual_attraction:Genetic sexual attraction|Genetic Sexual Attraction]].
* [http://www.anorak.co.uk/246946/strange-but-true/incest-watch-pearl-carter-is-having-her-grandsons-phil-baileys-baby.html Pearl Carter bears her grandson Phil Bailey's baby]
* Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter Elisabeth and fathered seven kids by her (in addition to the seven-counting-his-daughter that he sired by his wife).
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** Naturally, Brooke angrily [http://rumorfix.com/2011/08/brooke-hogan-im-not-sleeping-with-my-dad/ denied] they were incestuous lovers.
*** However, she admitted that ''she [http://kbrocking.com/2011/08/14/thought-is-hulk-hogan-and-his-daughter-brooke-into-incest/ revealed] to him a nude poster of herself in a PETA anti-fur campaign''.
* TV actress [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackenzie_Phillips:Mackenzie Phillips|Mackenzie Phillips]] recently told Oprah Winfrey that her father, musician John Phillips, raped her when she was nineteen on the eve of her wedding while she was passed out. An allegedly "consensual" sexual relationship ensued for several years after that. Ms. Phillips ended it when she became pregnant and had an abortion because she didn't know if the father was her husband or John Phillips.
* Donald Trump has [http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/11714379/ns/today-entertainment/t/trump-jokes-hed-date-daughter/ joked] on national tv about dating his own daughter, if only he weren't her father. ''You know what they say about jokes being half-meant.''
* Serial killer [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_West:Fred West|Fred West]] was raised in a household were incest was considered fine, his father told him to "do whatever [he] wanted, just don't get caught", and his mother allegedly sexually abused him from age 12. His wife [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_West:Rosemary West|Rosemary]] also grew up in a home where incest was accepted and her father would visit their house after they were married to have sex with his daughters. West also raped his own daughters.
* Casanova once planned to get married, but it turned out that the woman in question was his own illegitimate daughter. So they just had sex instead. [[Squick|Along with her mother.]]
* Anais Nin wrote that before age 11, she was accustomed to her father photographing her naked. Her family told her he had beaten her frequently, but she couldn't remember it. She suspected he had also molested her. When she was about thirty he came back into her life and had an intense sexual affair lasting several months. Recently discovered letters confirm this was not a mere fantasy episode on Nin's part.
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* Comedian Billy Connelly was the victim of parental incest perpetrated by his father as a child.
* Though not ''technically'' incest genetically, [[Jake Roberts|Jake "The Snake" Roberts]] was conceived when his father raped his stepdaughter (Jake's older stepsister); this revelation led to Roberts' long bout with alchoholism and substance abuse.
* Happens more often than people might think with long-lost relatives, be they parents and children or [[Brother-Sister Incest|siblings]] thanks to [http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2003/may/17/weekend7.weekend2 genetic sexual attraction]. There have been several cases around the world where two children who were adopted have met and married one another with no idea they were siblings, because it's theorized that, lacking the [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermark_effect:Westermark effect#Westermarck_effectWestermarck effect|Westermarck Effect]], two people can be drawn to one another because of similar pheromones and other physical cues. Nearly always extremely traumatizing to the parties involved, so much so that the actual percentage of those who experience it is unknown, as many people are understandably hesitant to come forward about it.
* One of the ''many'' accusations thrown at [[Marie Antoinette]]. At her trial during the height of the Terror, she was accused by Hebert of personally teaching the Dauphin to masturbate, in order to weaken his character and control him. She refused at first to answer to the charge, but when one of the jurymen insisted, she turned to the women in the court, appealing to them as mothers. This nearly secured her acquittal, much to the fury of Robespierre.
* Billionaire Bruce Mcmahan [http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-09-26/news/daddy-s-girl/ seduced] his biological daughter and had a long secret affair with her, which continued on even when she was already legally married to someone else.
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[[Category:Main/Sex Tropes/And Related/Sandbox]]
[[Category:Parental Incest]]
[[Category:Trope]]
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