When it comes to family, who a person is related to can control how people treat you; as a result, it's not uncommon for some people to lie about who they're related to in order to manipulate people. The targets of said manipulation might be the family members themselves or people outside of the family, and the reasons can vary, but they're usually of a sinister nature.
When trying to trick people other than the family themselves, the typical goal is to use the name of a powerful or well-respected family in order to manipulate people. An Attention whor* might try to get themselves attention by claiming to be related to someone respected. A person trying to intimidate someone might claim to be related to someone powerful, such as a politician, royalty, or a mob boss. Someone pretending to be rich might claim to be related to a rich family.
When trying to trick the family directly, the goal is typically to manipulate their "relatives" into doing something for them. Someone targeting a wealthy family might pretend to be related to them out of a desire to trick them into giving money. A person claiming to be related to a deceased person might do so out of a desire to get their hands on the inheritance. A person claiming to be someone's long-lost child might be doing so out of a desire to trick someone into giving them child support.
Typically these types of characters will be caught in one of two ways; either someone will notice that their story of being related to someone else can't be true (such as claiming to be the child of someone who's sterile), or the person/people they're claiming to be related to will clear up the confusion as well as get payback on their "relative."
Super-Trope to The Trap Parents. Compare with Relatively Flimsy Excuse, Pretending to Be One's Own Relative, and Invented Individual. Also Compare to Fake Relationship, where two characters pretend to be romantic partners. See also The Baby Trap for examples of women lying about who the baby's father is, Historical Character's Fictional Relative where the claim is usually true, but harder to verify, and Paid-for Family, where the character and their "relatives" are both in on it and the former is paying the latter. Overlaps with Celebrity Lie if a person claims to be related to a celebrity. Contrast Honorary Uncle for when others claim someone who is known not to be a blood relation as part of the family.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A Cingular Wireless
commercial that came out after Ken Jennings' famous Jeopardy! winning streak featured him being accosted all over town by people claiming to be distant relatives of his, clearly faking it so they might get some of his winnings. The joke is that he believes all of them, and signs up for Cingular's family plan to stay in touch with all of them.
Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In Chapter 158, Uto takes a picture of a student harassing Himeka in the hall and threatens to tell a police officer relative of hers unless he deletes a picture he took of Himeka without her permission. As soon as he’s gone, Uto tells Himeka that her claim of being related to a police officer was only Metaphorically True in the sense that everyone is technically a relative to everyone else if one goes back in their family tree far enough.
- Lady!!: In the manga, when Mary arrives in Japan, Lynn recognizes her and calls her her sister. Mary reacts by implying Lynn is this. Lynn later explains to her friends that since Mary's mother is courting her father, that means they're step-sisters.
- Nobody's Boy: Remi (1977): Mr. Driscoll claims he is Remi's father, even though he looks nothing like him and lives in extreme poverty, while Remi as a Doorstop Baby was wearing fancy designer clothes along with the pendant of the aristocratic Milligan family. Despite this, he manages to fool the police.
Comic Books
See Also
Awesomeness Is a Force - TV TropesStar Wars - Children of the Watch / Characters - TV TropesVariant Power Copying - TV Tropes- Batman:
- Invoked by Joker's Daughter aka Duella Dent, whose whole shtick was that she claimed to be related to the Joker (and/or other villains). Part of this is due to her unfortunate tendency to be affected by retcons (for example, it was initially shown that her real father is Harvey Dent aka Two-Face, but this was retconned away).
- In the Batman Gotham Knights storyline Tabula Rasa, Bane approaches Batman with the belief that Thomas Wayne may have been his Disappeared Dad and wants to know the truth. Bats is incredulous but decides to help him. Ultimately, blood tests prove that the two are not related and Bane leaves in peace.
- Robin (1993): Tim Drake's father was killed, and Tim didn't want Bruce to adopt him, so he hired an actor to pretend to be his uncle. Unfortunately, the fake uncle is killed soon after, and a year later Tim has been adopted by Bruce like the previous two Robins were.
- Shazam!: In the original Earth-S continuity, Mary and Billy were Separated at Birth because Mrs. Bromfield had a stillborn child and a nurse decided to pass one of the orphaned Batson twins off as her child.
- Spider-Man: The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) creates an Ambiguous Situation with this in regards to Teresa Parker, Peter's long-lost supposed sister. The Chameleon attempts to convince her that she is an unknowing Sleeper Agent who just believes she's the daughter of Richard and Mary Parker; while she refuses to believe this, it's ultimately left ambiguous as to who she actually is, and she hasn't appeared in any subsequent runs to clear it up.
Fan Works
- The Ranma ½ fanfiction Banishment Actually isn't so Bad, has a variant involving disownment rather than blood ties; Genma disowned his son Ranma, but keeps that fact secret in order to trick his debtors into going after Ranma note. Unfortunately for Genma, his debtors know he disowned Ranma, leaving Genma with no choice but to pay off his own debts.
- Inter Nos: Tomoe Marguerite is Senator/General Shizuru Fujino's cousin by marriage, meaning they have no blood in common. Tomoe wants to be Shizuru's wife and conspires with the Mentulean Empire to remove Shizuru from the battlefield (and put her in Tomoe's physical reach) by submitting her name as candidate for a position she doesn't want. Shizuru denounces Tomoe publicly, effectively burning any ties Tomoe has to the prestigious patrician Fujino family, forcing Tomoe to flee to Athens in exile.
Films — Animated
- The Emperor's New Groove: When Yzma attempts to track Kuzco at Pacha's house, she gains entrance by claiming to be Pacha's "third cousin's brother's wife's step-niece's great-aunt (twice removed)."
Kronk: Well, I had a great time. Let's not wait until the next family reunion to get together.
- Hotel Transylvania: In order to hide the fact that Jonathan is a human, both Dracula and Jonathan claim that "Johnnystein" is Frank's 6th cousin thrice removed on his right arm's side. They also claim that the right arm's original owner had a brother whose wife was killed for strangling a pig. Frank believes them.
- Madeline: Lost In Paris begins as someone named Henri claims to be Madeline's uncle named Horst, and he arrived from Vienna. When Henri smashes his feet with his suitcase and exclaims "Sacre bleu!" she realizes he's French, not Viennese, and from there figures out that he's not really her uncle. But by then it's too late and Madeline is forced into a corrupt lace-making business, making whether or not she had living relatives once again a Riddle for the Ages...
Films — Live-Action
- The Addams Family: Gomez Addams is looking for his long-lost brother Fester who went missing in the Bermuda Triangle 25 years ago. A pair of con-men consisting of Evil Matriarch Abigail Craven and her Dumb Muscle son Gordon are recruited by the crooked lawyer Tully Alford to steal the Addams Family fortune since Gordon is a dead ringer for Fester. However, it turns out that Gordon really is the real Fester Addams, having lost his memory. Abigail isn't really his mother, just some criminal who found and adopted him.
- Big: While applying for a job, a receptionist assumes Billy is Josh's son. The two are very amused by this, and play it up as he heads in for his interview. While it's never confirmed, its implied they keep up this lie throughout the movie, as Billy is allowed to go in and out of Josh's office as he pleases.
- Changeling: The police don't want to admit that they can't find the protagonist Christine's kidnapped 9-year-old son Walter, so they pass a similar-looking boy off as him, try to Gaslight her into accepting the phony, and have her Wrongfully Committed when she demands the truth. As for the impostor, the police paid him off, so he's happy to play along.
- In D2: The Mighty Ducks, Goldberg and some of the Ducks go around Rodeo Drive pranking some of the establishments there, but they enter an upscale modeling agency with Goldberg himself pretending to be Aaron Spelling's nephew to bluff their way in.
- For Richer or Poorer: bickering married couple Brad and Caroline Sexton, after being forced to go on the run for the IRS, end up hiding in an Amish village where they pretend to be visiting relatives. The Amish apparently buy the lie and allow the two to stay at their house, but at the end of the movie, they reveal they knew the truth all along.
- The Omen: Robert and Katherine Thorn's baby was a Tragic Stillbirth; Robert is convinced to adopt another child whose mother had died in childbirth. This baby, named Damien, turns out to be none other than The Antichrist.
- Oscar (1991): Zigzagged and Played for Laughs. On the day that "Snaps" Provolone is trying to become a legitimate businessman to honor a promise to his late father, he learns that his accountant "Li'l" Anthony has been fleecing his businesses because he has been dating "Snaps"'s daughter and wants to marry her. Except the girl that "Li'l" Anthony is seeing only told him that she was "Snaps"'s daughter to impress him. Except that she actually is his daughter (which she didn't know) from a tryst he had with a young woman when he was working as a driver for another mob boss some twenty years earlier, and her mother is the new maid, hired that day after the old maid quit to marry the man "Snaps" had set up to marry his daughter from his wife. It Makes Sense in Context...probably.
- There Will Be Blood: Daniel happily reunites with his long-lost half-brother Henry, but becomes suspicious and eventually uncovers the truth — the real Henry died of tuberculosis and one of his friends stole his identity as a con. Given that Daniel is a vicious, miserable man who had come to see "Henry" as a Morality Pet, he murders the impostor on the spot.
- Wedding Crashers: John and Jeremy often crash weddings by pretending to be distant relatives of the bride or groom.
Literature
- In Accel World Niko/Scarlet Rain masquerades as Haru's second cousin to get close to him in an attempt to trick him into joining Prominence so she can blackmail him with Judgement Blow. It fails as Haru is suspicious even of the unknown cousin he had never heard or met before to check.
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: One of the cons run by the Duke and King is pretending to be the brothers of a recently deceased guy named Peter Wilks so that they can steal his fortune, which would otherwise go to his nieces. The scam falls apart when two other men claiming to be Wilks's brothers show up and contradict their story. Fortunately for the con men, they're able to get out of town before being caught, but they lose all the money they'd invested in the con.
- Aesop's Fables: In "The Shipwrecked Impostor," a chimp is lost at sea and rescued by a dolphin. As they travel, the chimp tells the dolphin many stories about himself, which are a bunch of lies. The dolphin asks if he knows Herring Roads, and the chimp replies, "Do I know Rhodes? Of course I do! He's an old college friend of mine, and related to our family by— " The dolphin is so annoyed with the chimp's lie that he throws the chimp off his back into the sea and leaves him to drown.
- Aladdin: The Magrehbian sorcerer meets Aladdin and his mother and lies to them that he is Aladdin's uncle. This works and the sorcerer takes Aladdin with him.
- From Alice, Girl from the Future
- In One Hundred Years Ahead, the pirates attempt to abduct Alice from the hospital with Rat shapeshifting into a doctor, and Jolly U claiming to be her father.
- In the second part of A Million Adventures, Alice's fake identity is a relative of the king's widowed stepmother. The woman isn't fooled in the slightest, and even asks a few Bluff the Impostor questions, but decides to play along.
- Animorphs: Book 23, "The Pretender", has no less than three examples.
- First, Tobias (recently having re-acquired his ability to morph after a months-long period as a hawk nothlit) is contacted by Aria, a woman who claims to be his long-lost cousin, who is trying to get him to attend a reading of his father's will. It turns out that Aria is actually the Yeerk Visser 3 in Human morph, posing as his cousin.
- Second, Tobias discovers that the man he believed to be his biological father is actually his stepfather; his real father is none other than Elfangor, the Andalite who gave the Animorphs their powers in the first place!
- Finally, at the end of the book, Tobias acquires the DNA of a mother rabbit before killing and eating it, and then deciding to take care of her young.
- In Born Behind Bars, nine-year-old Kabir is deemed too old to stay in prison with his mother and is released into the custody of an "uncle" he's never met. Kabir runs away after discovering that the man is actually a child trafficker.
- In Cyberiad, "The Fifth Voyage", after Trurl's body is stolen by King Balerion who then twists Trurl's leg and steals another body, that of a sailor, the sailor-in-Trurl's-body is put into hospital under the sailor's name. Klapaucius pretends to be the sailor's relative to find out how much time it will take him to heal, though he avoids an actual meeting with the patient since the sailor doesn't know him.
- Good Omens: Due to a mix-up among the Satanic nuns who are attempting to deliver The Antichrist, the child of the Young family ends up with the Dowlings and becomes named Warlock. The Antichrist ends up with the Young family and is named Adam; it's never made explicit what happens to the third child in this arrangement, the son of the Dowling family, but a Brick Joke implies he's Happily Adopted in Lower Tadfield. None of them are ever the wiser about this until it comes time for the apocalypse.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Umbridge, while wearing Slytherin's locket which has a jewelled S on it, claims that it proves her descent from the pureblood Selwyn family. According to supplementary materials, she also considered her janitor father an embarrassment and pretended to be the daughter of a deceased Wizengamot member to climb the ranks of the Ministry of Magic (and covertly disposed of anyone who asked too many questions about her family).
- The Hound of the Baskervilles: Stapleton claims that he and Beryl are brother and sister. In fact, they're husband and wife, and he very nearly gives himself away by acting like a Crazy Jealous Guy on seeing Baskerville flirt with her, even though it was part of his plan all along.
- "Marsh Gods" by Ann Leckie: When Voud's brother Irris returns from a journey drastically changed, she quickly realizes her brother is dead and a god has possessed his body. However, the new "Irris" is a much better brother, husband, and neighbour than the original, so they all agree to maintain the ruse in exchange for the god's good behavior.
- In A Murder Is Announced, Miss Blacklock's cousins Patrick and Julia are staying with her. However, the person claiming to be Julia isn't actually Julia (Patrick was aware of this, but Miss Blacklock wasn't); she's the second in line, along with her sister, to inherit millions from her uncle and his wife—the first being Miss Blacklock's dead sister, who Miss Blacklock is pretending to be.
- Simon's Papa: Due to the other kids bullying him for being an illegitimate child Simon asks a local man named Philippe to be his father. Phillipe accepts, and due to spending more and more time with his mother eventually falls in love and marries her, allowing Simon to shut the other kids up as they certainly wouldn't mind having him as a father.
- One Sweet Valley Twins book features Jessica pretending to be related to a famous baseball player who also happens to be named Wakefield.
Live-Action TV
- 3rd Rock from the Sun: In the episode "Dick Solomon of the Indiana Solomons," Dick receives a letter inviting him to a Solomon family reunion. Since Dick's family are actually aliens, this was obviously sent to him by mistake and meant for some other Richard Solomon. However, he decides to go along with it and brings his family to the reunion anyway. As it turns out, the "real" Richard Solomon has been estranged from the rest of the family for a number of years, so no one even knows the difference. Dick spends the rest of the episode learning how "he" became estranged from "his" family and trying to find a way to achieve reconciliation with them.
- Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: The premise of #42 is that the team is trying to outwit a notorious con man by pretending to be Saruhara's family members. Taro is deliberately Locked Out of the Loop due to his notorious inability to lie. What results is a Trauma Conga Line that stresses the con man out into becoming the Monster of the Week. After he's returned to normal, the con man willingly turns himself in.
- Castle (2009): In "One Life To Lose", the Victim of the Week is a soap opera writer/producer who was put up for adoption when she was a child. One of the suspects is her recently reunited "mother", who turns out to be nothing of the sort, but a con woman who claimed to be the woman's mother to gain access to her wealth. Unfortunately for the con woman, the woman she was conning figured it out and was preparing to cut her out of her life altogether. The con-woman is not the murderer, though, despite having motive.
- Downton Abbey: A Succession Crisis occurs when the heir to Downton Abbey and his son Patrick both perish aboard the Titanic. The closest male relative is the Earl's cousin Matthew Crawley, who, though initially reluctant to be an aristocrat, eventually settles into his position. Sometime later, a disfigured soldier shows up claiming to be Patrick, having miraculously survived the shipwreck but suffered amnesia, forcing him to stay in Canada for six years before regaining his memories. Most of the family is highly dubious of his outrageous claims, but middle daughter Edith holds out hope that he is somehow the Patrick she once loved. He ends up leaving Downton after it becomes clear he will never be believed, but whether or not he was telling the truth is never established.
- Ghosts (UK): Series 3 introduces Lucy, who claims to be Allison's long-lost sister. In reality, however, she never actually was her sister — she only pretended as much to get cash from Alison.
- Ghosts (US): The Season 2 finale "The Heir" follows Sam and Jay dealing with a woman claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of Sam's uncle and the rightful heir to Woodstone Mansion. It ended up being a trick by the woman's lawyer to gain ownership of the mansion and sell it for a large amount of money.
- Glee: Attempted in Season 1. Terri, Will's Disposable Fiancé, has a hysteric pregnancy and her attempts to cover for it involve essentially buying Quinn's baby and passing it off as her own. She ends up being found out before this can happen, and Will is forced to sleep at the school.
- Las Vegas: A subplot in season 3 involved a mother and daughter pair of con artists who hatched a plot to steal money from Danny McCoy by having the mother pretend to be the significant other of Danny's late father while the daughter pretended to be a real estate agent trying to buy his father's house. Danny discovers that the photos showing his dad and the woman going out on dates were all faked, and he has both of them arrested.
- : In "Stranger," a teenage girl turns up at the house of the Hallander family claiming to be their daughter Heather, who disappeared years ago. She has a four-leaf clover tattoo on her arm that is the same as Heather's, but she's not Heather. She's actually a girl who escaped from her sexually abusive father and thought her mother was dead, and was desperate to have a family.
- In Ms. Marvel (2022), Kamala's older brother Aamir catches her hanging out with her crush Kamran. Not wanting Aamir to tell her parents that she's been seeing a boy, Kamala claims that Kamran is actually a distant cousin who was raised in England, and that she's been helping him adjust to life in New Jersey. Surprisingly, Aamir actually falls for this, only realizing that Kamran isn't his cousin when Kamala is forced to smuggle him out of New Jersey in the finale.
- Leverage: In "The Lost Heir Job" the team has been hired by a woman named Ruth to secure the will of Mr. Kimball, a philanthropist who was manipulated by his lawyer before he died into signing a bad will that leaves the charities he gave to nothing. After a failed gambit involving blackmail, Nate switches tack and claims that Parker is a lost heir to Kimball's estate. While this falls apart thanks to assassins coming after Parker and waylaying her attempts to get to court, Nate manages to prove that Ruth herself is the lost heir by showing that she shares Kimball's colorblindness, which is exceedingly rare in women.
- Mad Men: An elderly African-American woman breaks into Don Draper's apartment when his kids are home alone sleeping. When his daughter Sally wakes up, the woman claims to be Don's childhood nanny, Sally's "Grandma Ida". Since Don is incredibly cagey about his past (he was actually raised in a brothel by his cruel stepmother after his prostitute mother died in childbirth and his father was kicked in the face by a horse), Sally is unable to refute Ida's claims and only gets rid of her by calling the police.
- Murdoch Mysteries A woman claimed to be Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter, and was taking out huge loans with the promise her dad will pay for it, only to be exposed by Carnegie himself, and earned herself the ire of another woman who already was running the same scam (the fictional version of Cassie Chadwick).
- No Good Nick is about a teen con artist named "Nick" Franzelli pretending to be a long-lost member of the Thompson family to try to steal their savings, a con that runs into a number of complications both realistic (Nick is too young to just walk into a bank and request a massive withdrawal) and typical to the genre (she comes to love the Thompsons).
- The Really Loud House: In "The Princess and the Everlasting Emerald: a Royal Woods Fairy Tale", Flip's snooty brother Walter is visiting, and so, to avoid coming off as a loser for being unmarried, he pretends that Rita is his wife and five of her children (Leni, Lincoln, Lucy, Lana, and Lisa) are his.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): Count Olaf and the Baudelaire children seem to be Unrelated in the Adaptation, as Olaf has to trick Mr. Poe into putting them into his custody by dressing up as "Yessica Haircut" and claiming that Olaf is their geographically closest relative; the original novels had Olaf claim that he was either a "third cousin, four times removed or a fourth cousin, three times removed", but this claim was dubious, at best.
- Sloan turns out to be this in the final season of Republic of Doyle. In the previous season she came into Jake's life and, supposedly, put together that he was likely her father and then confirmed it with a DNA test. But near the end of the final season, her half-sister shows up and tells the Doyles that Sloan faked that test and had been conning them all along. While Sloan had grown to love the Doyles, she admits the deception and leaves the family without much fanfare in the end.
Music
- Kenny Chesney's "Out Last Night" has him using all kinds of aliases to pick up women.
I was a doctor, a lawyer, a senator's son
Brad Pitt's brother and a band on the run
Anything I thought would get the job done
Mythology & Religion
- Irish Folklore explains the phenomenon of changelings as The Fair Folk stealing away a member of one's family and replacing it with an imposter. Contemporary study now believes this was used to explain and cope with number of undesirable phenomena, ranging from Tragic Stillbirths or SIDS (as sometimes changelings were said to be logs or stones that were disguised as children) to manifestations of conditions such as Autism or cerebral palsy. In some cases, such as that of Bridget Cleary, it was even used as an attempted justification for murder.
Theatre
- The Addams Family: Grandmama Adams is implied to be not related to the Adamses at all when Gomez and Morticia reveal they both assumed she was the other's mother. This is a Mythology Gag to the rest of the Adams Family franchise, as the various installments have varied on whether Grandmama is Gomez's mother or Morticia's.
- The central part of Act 2 of the musical Annie is centered around a con by Rooster and Lily, conspiring with Miss Hannigan, to pretend to be Annie's long-lost parents so they can claim the $50,000 award from Warbucks. They are exposed because before Rooster and Lily could finalize their claim, Annie and Warbucks manage to learn the truth from the FBI's investigation into her parents, relayed to them via President Roosevelt.
Video Games
- Another Code: When Ashley first meets Bill, he successfully passes himself off as Ashley's estranged father Richard in order to trick her into helping him reactivate the DAS. His gruff attitude and single-minded obsession with fixing the DAS infuriates Ashley (who's already mad at Richard for abandoning her all those years ago) to the point where she openly doubts he's her father at all, but it's only when she stumbles across the real Richard Robins in the climax that she realises she's been duped.
Web Animation
- Etra chan saw it!: Akamatsu is a Dirty Old Man who tries to trick women at host clubs into sleeping with him by claiming to be the father of Hiiragi, a famous actor. When one of the hostesses asks for proof, he brings a photograph with him and a child Hiiragi. His lie gets exposed when Hiiragi actually comes to the club and reveals Akamatsu's lie, with the photograph turning out to be from a field trip with Akamatsu's son, who Hiiragi went to school with.
- Manga-Waido: Makoto seduced Reiko, a Gold Digger, by lying that he was the son of a company president. His lie gets exposed when said president shows up and reveals that Makoto isn't a relative, but an ex-employee of his. Said president then threatens Makoto to not use his name again, which he complies to.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation: SCP-2852 is a being that that shows up at baptisms, weddings, and funerals and gulls everyone into thinking it's a distant cousin. It then has anomalous effects on the attendants, which are often related to co*ckroaches and usually lead to deaths.
Web Videos
- Text Theater: Karen is a self-proclaimed "boss mom" who intimidates the other moms at her child's school by claiming to be the daughter of a mafia member. Her lie is exposed when Melanie, the wife of a police officer, discovers that the person who Karen claimed to be related to doesn't have a daughter and to make matters worse for Karen, said mafia member found out that she was using their name and forces her to compensate them.
Western Animation
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: In "Tails' New Home", Sonic leaves Tails in the care of who they're led to believe are his real parents. However, as he later reminisces on the day they met, Sonic realizes that Tails' parents had referred to him by the nickname he was given by Sonic as opposed to his real name, Miles. Sure enough, they were actually two of Robotnik's goons in disguise.
- American Dad!: In "Bar Mitzvah Hustle", Roger keeps going along with Steve to con Tom out of his Bar Mitzvah gifts. Long after Steven reconciles with Snot for getting him in trouble with his own religion's authorities, Roger continues to try the con with his personas, including pretending to be a distant relative.
Roger: Hello, Snot, I'm Ernest Shlumpel, your long-lost relative from Alsace-Lorraine by way of Mykonos.
- Amphibia: In the episode "Adventures in Catsitting," when Hop Pop is telling the story of "Cousin Stanley," a freeloader who once stayed at the Plantar's house, Sprig states that he doesn't think Stanley was actually their cousin, as he caught Stanley painting his skin orange. The implication being that Stanley only claimed to be related to the Plantars to manipulate them into letting themselves be mooched off of.
Hop Pop: Thankfully, he eventually left peacefully on his own…just kidding, we threw him out the window.
(Cuts to the Planters tossing the blue Stanley, and his stuff out of their window, as he screams to his doom)
- The Chipmunks has "Uncle" Harry, an anthro chipmunk who pretended to be the boys' Uncle and used them to get rich with the promise of reuniting with their mother.
- Dennis The Menace (1996): In one episode, Dennis' aunts arrive in Beanotown, having apparently returned from a vacation to the Limpopo, and babysit him while his parents take a much-needed vacation of their own. They eventually turn out to be a pair of (male) serial burglars, who have apparently pulled the same con on multiple other residences before robbing them blind. At the end of the episode, Dennis' family receives a postcard from their actual aunts, who are still in the Limpopo.
- One episode of Dudley Do-Right has Snidely Whiplash instruct his minion Homer to submit an article to the local newspaper that Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash are brothers Separated at Birth. Dudley reads this, believes every word, and promptly resigns from the Canadian Mounties to tend to his errant brother Snidely. And by tend, we mean be a smother mother, constantly fussing over him. It gets to the point where Snidely secretly instructs Homer to submit a retraction to his article, which he does.
- The Emperor's New School: In "Father O'Mime", Kuzco's father, thought to have been lost at sea, seemingly returns, only to be revealed to be a fraud hoping to take the throne.
- The Loud House: In "Fam Scam", Lola makes friends with a rich girl named Cricket, who wants to come visit her. However, Lola's siblings and parents are goofy and chaotic, and she fears they will make a bad impression on Cricket. So Lola pretends that Howard and Harold McBride, a politer couple, are her dads, and that their son Clyde is her brother.
- Miraculous Ladybug: Lila Rossi showcases her capacity (and vileness) as a Consummate Liar at one point by successfully pretending to be the daughter of three women simultaneously (one of them being deaf), and it eventually turns out that Lila Rossi does not exist. Her real name is Cerise Bianca, she is actually French, and she somehow managed to swindle the Italian Ambassador with the same con.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Father Knows Beast" a dragon named Sludge shows up and claims to be Spike's long lost father, but in the end he confesses that he's not, he was just pretending to so he could live with him luxuriously in Twilight's castle.
- The Owl House: Emperor Belos claims to be Hunter's uncle in order to get him to agree with his views and tells Hunter that he adopted him after Hunter's original family was killed by Wild Magic. The truth is more complicated: Hunter is a clone of Caleb Wittebane, Belos/Philip Wittebane's older brother who he killed. Belos has been continually killing these clones whenever they inevitably betray him, since he Copied the Morals, Too — so while Hunter and Belos are technically related, it's not in the way Belos claimed that they were. If you want to get technical, Hunter would be considered Caleb's son the same way Boba Fett is Jango's son, so that would indeed make Belos Hunter's uncle.
- The Simpsons: In the episode "The Principal and the Pauper", Seymour Skinner confesses that he's an impostor named Armin who served with the original in the Vietnam War. When Skinner was declared dead, Armin went to deliver the news to his mother Agnes, but Agnes mistook him for Skinner, so Armin caved in and assumed his identity. It turns out that Agnes knew, she just liked Armin better. The episode ends with the real Seymour Skinner run out of town, Judge Snyder declaring Armin to be Seymour Skinner and anybody who brings it up again shall be tortured to death and, other than one single Discontinuity Nod joke in "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot", the whole event has been Canon Discontinuity.
- Played for Laughs in the Spongebob Squarepants episode "I'm With Stupid". Patrick's parents are coming over and he asks Spongebob to be stupid so that he can appear smarter to his parents. When Spongebob finally bails in anger, they reveal their true names, which pings Patrick that they aren't his real parents. The two soon realize that they never had a son in the first place and take their leave. Patrick's parents? Over at Squidward's, harassing him by thinking he's their son. Moral of the story? Starfish are really dumb.
- The Raccoons: In "Simon Says!", Cyril Sneer's long-lost brother Simon Sneer shows up to claim an inheritance from the Sneer family. However, Bert senses that Simon isn't who he claims to be and searches for answers. Eventually, it's revealed that Simon is actually Sid Leech, an old rival of the Sneer family who stole Simon's identity to con the Sneer family out of their fortune.
- We Bare Bears, in "Kyle", Nom Nom, the internet sensation, becomes reminiscent of his family of koalas. But one day, another koala with big eyebrows comes out to claim he’s his brother, as he looks exactly like one of the koalas in his picture. So the two begin to bond, while his bodyguard is rather suspicious of this. But then, when Nom Nom checked on Kyle in the bathroom, he would find out that he was just a random koala wearing fake eyebrows, and was trying to steal his fortune and mansion. He is wanted by police and arrested in the end.
- Young Justice: Artemis is introduced to The Team by Green Arrow as his niece, but Red Arrow quickly susses out that she isn't. She is actually the daughter of supervillain Sportsmaster and former supervillain Huntress, the latter of whom had begged Green Arrow and Batman to help Artemis become a proper hero in the first place. The Light tried to use this information to blackmail Artemis, but she decided to trust the Team, who took it well. Downplayed since both Artemis and Green Arrow knew the deception, but most of The Team didn't until Artemis told them.
