Rule 63

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Thank you Maria, but your masculinity is in another article.

"I'd make a sexy chick!"

Brodie, Mallrats

For every given male character, there is a female version of that character, and vice versa.

They may be canonical. Most of them aren't. The internet has a fascination for producing gender swapping regardless of the context of the original character. Canon-derived examples of the trope tend to outlast their actual-canon inspirations (which are often single stories, or even short throwaway gags.)

No character is immune to this effect—not Darth Vader, not Master Chief, not Jesus—no one.[1]

Closely related to Gender Flip. When a separate character is a female knock-off of an existing male character, you have a Distaff Counterpart; if it's male, then you have a Spear Counterpart. Crossdressers and Half-Identical Twins, of course, provide their own version of this. There's a good chance that you'll see the character in question in a Gendered Outfit (like our lovely Maria at right, here).

One of the Rules of the Internet. Can (and often does) overlap with Rule 34. Since these female versions are often cute, it can also overlap with Self Fanservice.

Examples of Rule 63 include:

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • DC Comics actually has an Alternate Universe devoted to this: Earth-11, featuring Superwoman and Batwoman as well as the very Spartan-looking Wonder Man.[3] Fun fact: 11+52 (the total number of alternate Earths after Infinite Crisis) equals... 63.
  • Marvel Mangaverse: Characters who don't start the story off already female are replaced by females very quickly.
  • Genderbending Loki from The Mighty Thor isn't that difficult to imagine since not only is he a shapeshifter normally, but he assumed Sif's form for several story arcs for the lulz. Princesses Thor and Loki aside, The Warriors Three [dead link] have also enjoyed time as the fairer sex.
  • The Avengers trio, in a fan art depiction.
  • One comic had The Authority meet their gender-flipped Alternate Universe selves.
  • The Fantastic Four once visited an alternate universe where Tony Stark was female... and married to Captain America.
  • Watchmen fandom has a fairly established body of Rule 63 fics, especially on the Kink Meme. Get used to Danielle, Wanda, Adi, Laurence, Joan Osterman, Sal and Edie.
  • An issue of Uncanny X-Men featured an evil team of male versions of several X-Women fighting Captain Britain. Most of them looked very flamboyant in those costumes.
  • Exiles once visited an alternate Earth with female Magneto and Quicksilver, and Scarlet Warlock (male Scarlet Witch).
  • The Joker:
  • An issue of Lobo has the Main Man dying and going to the afterlife...only to be reincarnated as an extremely masculine female version of himself.
  • The UK Dennis the Menace had a female cousin who looked was exactly like him but wore a bow in her hair and a skirt -- and was called "Denise The Menace".
  • A canonical Superboy story, "Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister"[4] has Superboy transformed into a girl. It's not permanent (and, as it turns out, the whole experience was just a mental illusion), and the story is mostly forgotten today, except as a tryout of sorts for the Supergirl concept. Mostly. There is quite a lot of fan art, and several Fan Fics, based on the premise that Clark was permanently stuck as Claire.

Film

Literature

Live Action TV

  • Red Dwarf had an entire alternate dimension where Lister, Rimmer, and Holly had female counterparts; Cat, meanwhile, had a male dog counterpart. Because dogs and cats are different genders.
  • Pops up every now and then on Sliders, Most notably in the episode Double Cross where there is a female counterpart of Quinn named Logan St.Clair.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series, in its last-aired episode, "Turnabout Intruder", tells the story of a forced Body Swap between Captain Kirk and his crazy ex-girlfriend Janice Lester. Of course, everything is sorted out at the end... though that hasn't prevented a plethora of Fan Fics, fan art, and photo manipulation about alternate scenarios where Kirk is stuck permanently in Janice's body (usually due to Janice-in-Kirk's-body being killed.)
  • A sketch on The Carol Burnett Show featured gender swapped versions of the cast of the original Star Trek.

Tabletop Games

Video Games

Web Comics

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Generator Rex has an awesome in-universe example of this. Yay for surprise fanservice! [3] [dead link]
  • Metalocalypse. Dethklok had a tribute band that was composed of all women, giving each of the band members a female counterpart. Dethklok rejected them, as they found them rather creepy. Though Toki admits the female Pickles was cute, and Nathan agreed she did have nice eyes.
    • One particularly nice example of the band getting genderbent exisists here
  • Superjail has an episode where female versions of the entire cast appear, complete with a female-to-male transgender to compliment Alice and a lesbian couple in the place of the gay couple in SJ.
  • Happy Tree Friends will prove this rule disturbingly true for Flippy with a simple Deviant ART search. Although, use caution with that one, because it's usually not a female version of Flippy they're making, it's their own characters and a separate entity that's basically just if they made Flippy as a girl and then ship them with the real Flippy.
  • The Adventure Time blog posted a series of Rule 63 drawings by one of the concept artists, much to the amusement of fans. The episode "Adventure Time with Fiona and Cake" used this concept, and in a reference to this trope, the entire episode was revealed to be a fanfiction by Ice King.
  • Given the high female-to-male character ratio on My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, it was probably only a matter of time before male versions of the six main characters came out. A fan artist named Trotsworth has probably the most famous examples. There's even fics about it, such as The 63rd Rune and On A Cross And Arrow.
  • "Neutopia", the seventh season premiere for Futurama, features Gender Bender versions of each character. The episode even lampshades this trope when a calendar of the sex-changed characters makes a huge profit due to the "creepy fans" of Planet Express.
  • Osmosis Jones fan art examples have been seen, including cosplay of a female Thrax.
  • In-universe, the Rowdyruff Boys to The Powerpuff Girls.
  • This piece of Thundercats fanart will likely murder your childhood in an entirely worksafe way.

Other

  • Every Vocaloid (including Rin and Len) and almost every UTAUloid tend to have a genderbend. In the UTAUloid's cases, many are made by the authors themselves. People have also edited their vocal files to create a masculine/feminine version of the characters.
  • Among Mixed Martial Arts fandom, Cristiane "Cris Cyborg" Santos is considered to be Wanderlei Silva's female counterpart.
  • The mythological "earth monster" Tlaltecuhtli was not known to archaeologists to have a gender due to ambiguities in the corresponding oral tradition, but was assumed to be male because of the 'tecuhtli' ('lord') suffix. However, subsequently studied artifacts portray clothing and poses associated in Aztec art with women. How scholars interpret this varies, but Wikipedia notes: "Rather than signal hermaphroditism or androgyny, archaeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan suggests that these varying embodiments are a testament to the deity's importance in the Mexica pantheon." Which seems to be another way to say: sooner or later, a popular character will get his or her rule 63 version.
  1. Not even Chuck Norris. Rule 61 lied to you.
  2. (Ashachu = Ash turned into a Pikachu)
  3. (no relation)
  4. Superboy #78 (1960)