Son of a Whore

Hunter: You have been found. You are dead. Just like your whore mother!
Dante: Whore mother? I don't know my mother, but if you're calling me a son of a bitch, you wouldn't be the first!

— DmC: Devil May Cry

A character whose mother is a sex worker. A "lady of the evening" is typical, but other "adult entertainment" jobs are depicted. Expect the kid or teen to be fatherless, implied to be the product of one of her many horizontal business dealings. Sometimes the character was merely raised in a brothel or No-Tell Motel, without either of their parents working there, or being born of a Sex Slave. Expect either angst over their origin. More common amongst Anti Heroes than others.

Don't remind him of his origin too much, because in some languages this trope name is the worst insult there is. ^note Some could take it more calmly, however, and give the offender a good retort; others would just smash his face in, since Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas. This is also commonly used as a Freudian Excuse to explain why a character might be rather messed up; in some works of fiction, characters whose mothers were sex workers have a high rate of becoming Serial Killers (although there's usually some other form of abuse involved as well).

For some reason, this character is almost Always Male. But in the rare case where the character is a daughter of a whore, there's the additional baggage that she may be expected to follow in her mother's footsteps, which either the mother or the daughter (or both) may be determined to avoid.

If the Son of a Whore is lucky, their mother was a Hooker with a Heart of Gold. In less fortunate cases she may have been a Predatory Prostitute. The trope is adjacent but distinct from the Single Mom Stripper, a mother who became a sex worker to feed her child, but only after giving birth to them, and who usually knows the child's father well. The Son of a Whore may be a Heroic Bastard, a Bastard Bastard, or anywhere in between; at the very least, he'll have Disappeared Dad or Loser Son of Loser Dad issues to work through.

Of course, sex workers do get pregnant and have children, all around the world. Any specific Real Life examples would thus be redundant.

noreallife

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

7 Seeds has Semimaru, whose mother was a night-worker and she didn't tell him who his father was, though he obviously wanted to know. Because he was the son of a prostitute, Semimaru was often bullied by other children that were egged on by their families.
In Osamu Tezuka's Apollo's Song, Shogo's mother is a bar hostess who often sleeps with her customers, leading to many jarring moments in his childhood.
Attack on Titan:
- Historia Reiss was born to a domestic worker that became her master's mistress. The mother's resentment over the child's birth led to a neglectful and abusive relationship. Eventually, the mother was murdered to clean up loose ends.
- Likewise, Levi's mother is implied to have been a sex worker whose brother Kenny sought her out because the rest of their family had been killed or forced into hiding, and once he found them he took the child she had with a client under his wing.
In Bakemonogatari, while she doesn't appear to have been an actual prostitute, the fact that Tsubasa Hanekawa's birth mother had a reputation for promiscuity and gave birth to her when she was only 17 means that Tsubasa gets the stigma attached to this trope and has no idea who her biological father is. The verbal abuse she gets from her step-parents (when they aren't outright ignoring her) is implied to be based around this.
Mako "Nakama" Nakarai from Bokurano. Her mother Miko is an ex-prostitute, now bar hostess (which in Japan is often considered as "dishonorable" as prostitution); Mako's been bullied all of her life because of this, but she nevertheless loves Miko since otherwise she's a genuinely good mom. At some point, Mako tries to get into Compensated Dating to get the money she needs for a small goal she has, but is steered away from it since the guy she tries to get as her Sugar Daddy is a friend of her mother.
In Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto, 16-year-old Cesare Borgia tells main character Angelo, "My mother is a whore, and my father is a monster." His close friend and real-life right-hand enforcer Miguel clarifies that Lady Vanozza isn't a whore, or at least, not that kind of whore. It doesn't stop that quote from being the headline of the back cover copy, and Cesare's first line in the musical adaptation. In real life, Vanozza dei Cattanei was a successful businesswoman with fingers in many pies, who did at least rent rooms to prostitutes, and who was the mistress of several cardinals before becoming the mother of Rodrigo Borgia's four most famous children.
Kai of Forest of Piano is the son of Reiko, who's explicitly shown to be a prostitute in the manga, and lives with her in the red light district at the start of the series. The anime movie, geared toward a more general audience, downplays this aspect.
Satellizer L. Bridgette, the lead female from from Freezing, as the daughter of a nobleman and said nobleman's mistress.
In Fullmetal Alchemist, Roy Mustang's (foster) mother was revealed to be one Madame Christmas, proprietor of a brothel/pub. It's stated in one of the guidebooks that she's really his aunt, his biological parents died when he was young.
It's almost easier to list the characters in Gangsta. who aren't this trope, as Ergastulum is home to many prostitutes, many of whom are Twilights forced into the business because no one else will accept them, who in turn have Twilight children. Main characters Nicholas and Worrick actually bonded over their shared background, and the young head of the Cristiano family, Loretta, tells Alex (herself a former prostitute) that her mother was a prostitute who caught her father's eye and retired from the business prior to having her so casually that it's apparently not a source of shame in that world.
In Gate, Princess Piña Co Lada is the daughter of the Emperor and a concubine. She is acknowledged and holds a position as leader of the Rose-Order of Knights, but it is clear that her father doesn't really care about her that much.
The title character in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War is revealed to be the daughter of a prostitute in the final arc. While they were raised as their father's legitimate child, they didn't exactly have a good family life though it probably wouldn't have improved much even if her parents had been married.
Magi: Labyrinth of Magic:
- Alibaba is the son of Anise, a servant who had an affair with the king of Baldhad, and once this was discovered she was thrown out and forced to sell her body to care for herself and her son.
- Princess Kougyouku's mother is also revealed to be a harlot too, which prompts her to ask Alibaba to be her friend.
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation: It is revealed that Sylphiette's grandmother is none other than the adventurer Elinalise Dragonroad, who is infamous for her curse that requires her to have sex on a daily basis in order to live. Although she enjoys how she Really Gets Around, she knows that her proclivities would shed a negative light on any of her children as she lets them go once they are old enough to fend for themselves. It is this association that led to Sylphiette's father facing much difficulty in his life.
My Hero Academia: The final arc reveals that All for One and his brother were the children of a prostitute from the time before Quirks became public knowledge. In a disturbingly young example of Self-Made Orphan, it's heavily implied his Quirk drained her life and Quirk while he was still in the womb, entirely out of instinct.
Record of Ragnarok: Jack the Ripper's mother was a prostitute named Mary who aborted all five of her previous children and only spared him because his father promised to one day come back and marry her. When his father breaks his promise by marrying someone else, Mary shows her true colors by revealing she never cared about Jack, leading to her becoming his first victim.
This is Laertes Montague's Freudian Excuse in Romeo × Juliet. His father was supposedly a Capulet noble whom could have taken his son and his prostitute mother out of poverty but didn't, causing the death of the latter as well as making the first an incedibly broken and bitter Street Urchin. This provides a convinient Freudian Excuse for Montague's murderous rise to power, in which he works his way to the top of the rival clan and then massacres everyone in the Capulet group — save for a two-year-old Juliet who barely manages to escape thanks to the family retainers.
Rurouni Kenshin:
- While one bad guy tries to play on Yahiko's supposed shame over his origin, he defends his mother and doesn't seem ashamed at all. Quite the contrary, as Yahiko takes pride in that his mother did whatever she had to in order to raise him until it killed her (syphilis eventually did). This also works as an Establishing Character Moment.
- Seta Soujiro exemplifies this trope straight, as his mother was The Mistress of a rich man. When his parents died, he was taken in by his evil paternal family (the old man's widow as well as his younger uncles and stepsiblings) and from there it went From Bad to Worse. So much that he snapped and killed them all.
- In the sequel Ashitaro Zenka Ari, Ashitaro's half-breed Only Friend Alan Inoue is very strongly implied to be the son of one of the prostitutes that "service" foreigners (especially Americans) in Japanese harbors. He not only has two names of different ethnicities, but has natural blond hair that he dyes black to avert being abused and he dreams of leaving Japan and go to America at the beginning. When the Big Bad of Ashitaro Zenka Ari properly sees his blond hair, he lampshades the trope in a very cruel Breaking Speech he deals to the tearful young man; Ashitaro defends Alan and tells the Big Bad to shut the fuck up and stop judging people for their origins.
According to Soul Eater chapter 78, Liz and Patti Thompson are an example of both this and Parental Abandonment.
Liz: I hate the mother who abandoned Patti and me... But I guess since she was the most beautiful whore in town... I should thank her for bearing two pretty girls...
Soichirou Ashida from Stepping on Roses. His mother was the concubine of a rich man, and that's why his family loathes so much.
Draken in Tokyo Revengers. He was born the son of a prostitute, not knowing who his father is, who left him when he was two. His home is a brothel and he states that he grew up around pink towels and the smell of lube.
Ryuuji Takasu from Toradora! is the illegitimate son of a beautiful bar hostess and a Yakuza. And he was born when his mom was, at most, 16-17 years old.
Prince Seiliez from Vampire Game. This made him The Unfavorite of his family's three adopted kids. Thing is, though, this also makes him the only legitimate heir to the throne of his country - while his mother was a whore, his father was the king.

Comic Books

In the adults-only comic Betty By The Hour, Betty's son Pepito qualifies.
Blade, at least the comic version. Spending a chunk of his childhood in a whore house didn't have any lasting affects on his psyche surprisingly. He has issues, but more from having his mom, father figure, childhood friends and girlfriend all murdered by vampires as he grew up. The Tomb of Dracula actually has him console another character on her sexual insecurities.
Deathstroke: Rose Wilson is a rare female example. Her mother worked in a brothel in New York where Rose would spend the first 14 years of her life.
The Eagles of Rome: Priscilla is revealed to be the daughter of Morphea, a High-Class Call Girl in high demand in Rome. It speaks greatly to Morphea's social status that Priscilla was legitimated as the legal daughter of the Roman patrician who sired her.
Tommy Monaghan from Hitman (1993) was the son of a town whore back in Ireland. All her children were the offspring of one of her various clients all around town, who all treated her like dirt, but she took some small measure of revenge by giving them a name based on their father. This had disastrous consequences when she became pregnant with Tommy, whose father was a violent psychopath who decided to brutally murder her and her entire family for "sullying his good name", and followed her all the way to the U.S just to do that. She lived long enough to give birth to Tommy, then died of her injuries at a convent. As an adult, Tommy returns to Ireland and kills his monster of a father to avenge his mother and siblings.
John Difool, the main character in The Incal series by Mœbius was born in the red light section of a soulless world-encompassing city in a dystopian future.
Watchmen:
- Rorschach developed a number of sexual hangups thanks to growing up around his mother's work. Well, that and being beaten and verbally abused by his mother, and bullied by other kids for his upbringing.
- About the only known instance of Rorschach showing mercy was when he refused to take revenge on his landlady for lying about him to the TV reporters. When he called her a whore she begged him not to say that in front of her children: "they... they don't know". He let the matter drop, after a short silence in which he may well have been thinking that at least she was a better mother than his.
- Laurie in Before Watchmen receives a watered-down version of this trope — Sally's former career as a pinup/B-movie star/Tijuana Bible favorite is more intensely stigmatized and repellent to her teenage daughter, as well as more known, than if she had a Single Mom Stripper. Her hangups about her mother never really go away, but the trauma of the sexual element is temporary.

Fan Works

Overlaps with Child by Rape in Control (Azumanga Daioh). Yukari ends up pregnant by her drug dealer and pimp Hyang-sung. She's certain it's him because he's the only man who didn't use protection. Yukari contemplates getting an abortion, but ultimately decides to keep the baby.
In the Discworld works of A.A. Pessimal, Rebecka Smith-Rhodes is a pupil at the Convent School of the Spiteful Sisterhood of Seven-Handed Sek. She reflects that her friends come from all families in all walks of life, and that she wouldn't be seeing the same mix of social backgrounds had she gone to the Assassins' School. She considers her friend Joyce, who is a perfectly normal, sensible, level-headed girl with no hang-ups or issues, and reflects that while Joyce is from a single-parent family, her mother runs a clean happy home, Joyce and her sisters are well fed, well clothed, have more than one pair of shoes each, and are happy and loved. And that their mother works a very specialised night shift two or three times a week as a Seamstress. Bekki considers the morality of this and asks if it might be more ethical and moral somehow, than her own mother's profession of Assassin. After all, Bekki mused, clients of Joyce's mother get to walk away afterwards, feeling happier and healthier and refreshed...
- When "Shauna's Gang" leave their school, they get together to compare notes about the wonderful world of work. Joyce has joined the Seamstresses' Guild and has been offered lucrative training which will lead to a well-paid career. Joyce notes that people tend to give her funny looks when she mentions this. Why is that so funny? If one of my parents was a plumber and I went into plumbing, nobody would think twice about it, but just because it's the Seamstresses...^note.Joyce even calls out Shauna, who describes Lady Regina Rust as "a whore's get".^note
  Shauna? I'm a whore's get. Literally.
With Foundling implying that Yukari was prostitute, Ran, adopted by the former, would be this, though she doesn't quite know that, just that Yukari's past wasn't a happy one.
Being a struggling single mother in the Earth Nation, Ursa sometimes prostitutes in The Masks we Wear (JiggleWigs). She also gets her son out of trouble with her body. Zuko is horrified when he learns this, but his sister refuses to believe him.
Once Upon a Time was a Backbeat: Minx's mother got pregnant at fifteen and was kicked out of her rural home. She became a prostitute in the city in order to take care of Minx, but she soon became drug addicted. When Minx hit puberty, she forced her daughter to prostitute as well.
Empath: The Luckiest Smurf: In "Smurfed Behind: Smurfing In Heaven", Empath refers to Heftargan as a "motherless beast" after hearing how he (supposedly) raped and killed Smurfette.
The Land of Dragons and Dungeons: Karkat grew up among the dirt-poor people of the Shanties around Gholgesi, and his mother was a prostitute. He is very touchy about the topic, not least because like most in her profession, Marah found herself with a steady stream of eggs that she had no hope of raising and, also like most other prostitutes in this situation, sold most of these eggs to the alchemists to be turned into driders; Karkat was the one that she kept. After this comes out, Sollux reflects to himself that he probably should have wondered why Karkat reacted so negatively to being called a whoreson.
Of the River and the Sea:
- Ryuishi was supposed to follow into her mama's footsteps but was snatched by the shinobi because she was very much a tempting prospect. She wasn't really unhappy there and her later life keeps many ties with various brothels.
- Naruto himself is quasi-adopted by sex workers who give him the love and attention his own village denied him. It also left him a healthy understanding of the female psyche, hobbies such as shopping and hair-styling and a very expanded vocabulary.
RWBY: Scars: Summer was raised by her aunt, Ivory, who was a prostitute. Though her aunt was nice, Summer didn't like her home life and seldom visited her aunt after going to Beacon. Ruby didn't even know her mother had extended family until she coincidentally ran across Ivory.
Part of Tsuna's backstory in the Reborn! (2004) fanfic The Sky That Accepts All is that she was practically raised by prostitutes since the age of ten because her own mother had mental health issues that made it difficult for her to properly raise a child.
Ganondorf from A Tale of Two Rulers was raised in a brothel. His mother, the only other Gerudo he's ever known, was a prostitute who was considered "exotic" by Hylians. Ganondorf's mother died he was a toddler.
The Mountain and the Wolf: One of the Wolf's go-to insults. On learning Ramsay goes by Bolton instead of Snow (and not knowing how Westerosi naming conventions work), he asks if Ramsay's mother was a whore who slept with a man called Snow and another named Bolton at the same time and couild never figure out which was the father.

Film — Live-Action

In 3:10 to Yuma (2007), one of the robbers states Ben Wade to be the offspring of a hooker and makes the idiotic mistake of insulting dear old mom in front of him. Wade kills him and notes that he loves her anyway.
Audrey (actually named Doris) in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is by her own account the daughter of one.
The title character of the 1961 Biblical epic Barabbas.
Byzantium: Eleanor, whose mother was a sex slave.
As far as a family film can take it, The Christmas Bunny implies that Julia's mom, Pamela, is a prostitute. That, and a drug addict.
This is why Scott in Day of Anger is mistreated by the whole town he lives in.
Sonoko in Doctor Akagi.
Someone tosses this in the face of Teri Hatcher's character in Heavens Prisoners (1996). She calmly replies that her mother was a good businesswoman.
The Austrian movie Hurensohn is about a teenage boy who discovers that his Yugoslavian mother is actually a sex worker.
The title character of Richard Pryor's Jo Jo Dancer Your Life Is Calling is the son of a presumably married prostitute working in a whorehouse with her sisters. This is based on Pryor's own life, as his mother worked in the brothel that his grandmother operated.
Heavily implied to be the case with Bill in Kill Bill. The only person who knows his whereabouts just happens to be a pimp who apparently raises the sons of his prostitutes to become his enforcers. Totally explains the big age and appearance difference between Bill and his brother Budd as well as his penchant for getting women to do his dirty work for him. Snake Charmer indeed.
Subverted in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Arthur is told that he is the bastard son of a prostitute who died in childbirth. In reality, he is the lost son of the murdered King and Queen, and the rightful heir to the throne of England.
A Deleted Scene of Little Nicky reveals that Adrian and Cassius' mothers are not angels but are prostitutes.
Most of kids, including Momo, in the titular Madame Rosa's care are these. Momo's mother was murdered by pimp.
Brian in Monty Python's Life of Brian. He also gets the bonus points. His father is a Roman he never knew.
Mythica: Dagen's mother was a sex slave.
Cheyenne in Once Upon a Time in the West describes his mother as "the biggest whore in Alameda, and the finest woman who ever lived".
Or (My Treasure), an Israeli film about the title character and her mother, a prostitute. She later goes into the profession herself when her mother is growing too old for it and has been raped by a client. Her mother is implied to be very upset by this unsurprisingly, but says nothing.
Violet, the character played by Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby.
Sweetwater: Sarah's former madam is revealed as also being her mother at the end of their conversation.
Watchmen: Just as in the comic book, Rorschach's mother (pictured above) was an abusive prostitute.
True Lies: In a throwaway line in the opening mission, Faisil mentions that he was born in a whorehouse.
Cosmo (Luis Guzmán) in Welcome To Collinwood uses this insult as blistering abuse (he is Latino, after all), but after his death another character casually remarks that Cosmo's mother was of that profession.
Mel Gibson's character in What Women Want was the son of a Las Vegas Show Girl of the Ostrich Feather variety, but still about the same story.

Jokes

An argument overheard in a bar:
Man 1: Lawyers are sons of whores.
Man 2: You take that back, or else!
Man 1: What, you're a lawyer?
Man 2: No, my mom is a prostitute.

Literature

From Almost Night, Stella's mother is a prostitute. The whole reason the plot happens is because she has to move away so that her mother can open a legal brothel.
The protagonist of John Burdett's Bangkok novels is the son of a Thai prostitute who works her way up to becoming the madam of her own brothel. The protagonist is a cop who also works part-time as an organizer/benevolent pimp in his mother's business.
In Barrayar Sergeant Bothari reveals that his mother was a whore. Cordelia is unsurprised by this (Betan, you know), but expresses outrage when Bothari reveals that his mother used to sell him to her clients.
Belisarius Series: Belisarius' stepson Photius started his life as this, and when he was formally adopted by Empress Theodora this aspect of his status did not in fact change.
The Bone Wars: While the word prostitute and its synonyms are never mentioned, Thad's mother worked in a rough saloon where she would spend time with men who would give her money while having Thad stay under the bed or go to another room down the hall. She throws Thad a meager but touching birthday party every year and talks about saving enough money for a better life, a dream that never comes true before a customer strangles her when Thad is five.
Simona Ahrnstedt does this with Markus Järv, who's the male protagonist in her novel Betvingade. His mother was thrown out of her home when she became pregnant without being married, and that gave her no choice but to become a prostitute.
John the Savage in Brave New World was an outcast among his peers because he was born to a stranded outsider woman who offended the locals with her open sexual mores. In this case, however, he was conceived before he wound up there and knows who his father is.
The official story behind the eponymous villain's ancestry in Brokenclaw, is that his father was a Chinese trader who was captured by Native Americans and later made part of them, with him as a result. The rumours indicate that he was an illegimate child of a Chinese tailor and a prostitute. James Bond uses the knowledge of latter to insult him as he is about to be fed to the guy's pet wolves.
There are two kinds of prostitute in the world of A Brother's Price. There are whores, women who sexually pleasure other women for money, and there are the much less fortunate crib captives, men who for whatever reason - usually they lost their virginities and/or are popularly thought to have sexually transmitted diseases - could not get married and were sold to "cribs" and kept drugged. Women without the resources for a husband pay the crib owners for nights with different men, trying to get pregnant. Most women without much in the way of land ownership have crib fathers, making them this trope, and it isn't seen as shameful. Cira mentions that she had a lover whose mother was a whore and who must have gone to the cribs, making that unnamed woman technically double this trope.
Cal and Niko, from the Cal Leandros series. Their mother Sophia was a Gold Digger of the worst sort, abusive, violent and an alcoholic and made no attempt to hide that she thought of Cal as a monster. He usually pretends to not care much, but when, in Deathwish, Cherish accidentally calls him a whoreson, Cal takes it personally, assuming his heritage is obvious even to outsiders.
David Wingrove's Chung Kuo has Stefan Lehmann, the son of a woman who has been a concubine to many different men.
In one of the Circle of Magic books, there is a serial killer killing performers and dumping them in highly-respected places, which really causes problems because of that city's superstitions about death. It turns out the killer was the son of a whore and a noble.
- The little we hear about Briar's mother implies that she may have been a prostitute. In Street Magic, he remarks that if she'd had magic (i.e., a way to earn a living), "she wouldn't have been out late the night she got killed."
Felix and Mildmay of Doctrine of Labyrinths, though technically she didn't become a prostitute until after Felix's birth. But she was a bit... free with her affections even then. Neither knows who their either of their fathers is, it never becomes a plot point despite Felix's remarkably strong magical abilities, and neither particularly cares.
The protagonist of the Chinese classic Duke of Mount Deer (adapted countless times into movies and serials), Wei Xiaobao, rises through a series of misadventures from the mere son of a whore (one adaptation even shows an altar to seven men suspected of being his father) to the chief confidante and best friend to the Emperor himself.
A huge theme in East of Eden is that Aron and Cal are this trope. They've been told that their mother is dead. Cal finds out the truth, but he keeps the knowledge hidden from Aron, since he know his brother wouldn't be able to take the news. In a moment of fury, he leads Aron to the brothel to meet their mother, effectively breaking him.
Brutus in Conn Iggulden's Emperor series. Though if memory serves, his mother became a prostitute after he was born. Still, she pretty much abandoned him in order to pursuit that career, so that ought to be pretty scarring.
Evillious Chronicles:
- Gatt Coulomb cites his mothers profession, along with their being descended from the infamous mercenary Gast Venom as the reason he's unable to advance further in the Asmodean military.
- Lemy Abelard's birth mother was this as well. She attempted to drown him as a young child, which leads to him developing an utter contempt for prostitutes and recurring nightmares of drowning.
Amos of The Expanse, as he reveals in Caliban's War.
In Lilian Lee's novel Farewell My Concubine, main character Douzi/Cheng Dieyi is the son of a prostitute who, after seeing a performance by a group of boys from an opera training school, puts her son in the school in the hope that he might have a better future there. The other students initially treat him as an outcast because of his mother's profession.
Fifty Shades of Grey: Christan Grey's biological mother was a drug addicted prostitute who committed suicide when he was four because her pimp was abusive.
In Forbidden Fruit, this is an extensive theme throughout the book.
- Hope is the daughter of an infamous brothel madam named Lily Pierron, and despises their relation because of the shame and social ostracization it brought her as a child. Because of this, she worked obsessively to hide her true background and cut all ties with her mother after Lily sent her to a boarding school with an invented backstory to give her a fresh start. She only comes back into contact with Lily as an absolute emergency last resort to get money to pay back her husband Philip's hotel loan, which is what inadvertently leads to Santos' first meeting with Hope's daughter, Glory, when Santos delivers Lily's money to Hope for her.
- Santos' mother worked as an exotic dancer to support herself and her son, and had to occasionally prostitute herself to her customers to get the money needed for Santos' clothes and school supplies. She's ashamed when Santos reveals to her he knows that the male "friends" she brings home are actually her clients, and Santos has to assure her he doesn't think any less of her for it and loves her regardless, though he hates that she has to degrade herself for him. After her murder, he's furious that she's posthumously treated like a Disposable Sex Worker in the news and becomes hell-bent on hunting down her killer.
In Gone there's Sanjit, although in the one mention we've got of his mother he doesn't really seem to mind it.
- Hinted at with Drake. Diana asks, "What is it with you and hating women, by the way? Found out your mother was a whore?" Drake then gets so enraged that he whips Diana to the point of fainting.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi: Meng Yao, later renamed Jin Guangyao, is the son of Sect Leader Jin Guangshan and the prostitute Meng Shi. Calling him "son of a whore" is an excellent way to get killed, as Nie Mingjue learns the hard way.
Harry Bosch is an LAPD detective whose mother, a prostitute, was murdered when he was young. The crime was never solved, but her death was a motivator for Bosch.
In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Esmeralda's birth mother Paquette became a prostitute after being seduced by a noble man. Paquette was lonely until her daughter was born, however Esmeralda (then known as "Agnes") was stolen by Romani thieves and replaced with the deformed Quasimodo.
Daine, in The Immortals series. While her mother isn't a whore, it is implied throughout the series that she was rather loose, sexually. (Daine says at one point, "Ma had a lot of men friends" or something similar.) Daine's real sore point, however, is in her last name: Sarrasri - meaning "Sara's daughter" in Daine's home country; it's a statement that Daine's mother never married, and Daine doesn't find out who her father is until halfway through the last book. There are several quiet hints scattered throughout the earlier books, though, that Daine's father is at least a minor god. Not just anyone can get a badger god to watch over their kid, after all. It turns out that Daine's father is a god of the hunt from her home region - which rather neatly explains just why she's so filled with Wild Magic that animals see her as one of their own.
In Death
- Series star Eve Dallas is the Daughter Of A Whore, and really lost the parent lottery all around. Her mother was an awful person who hated her, and her father planned to sell her. Her name is a Line-of-Sight Name from the DCFS-equivalent that found her, because her progenitors (hard to call them parents) never gave her one.
- John Blue from Visions In Death. His mother was a hooker who abused him, and when he got older and refused to give him anything in her will, he responded by raping and murdering her, and then raping and murdering women who resembled his mother.
In Iron Dawn, the villain is the son of a small-town prostitute and the heir to the throne of Egypt. Unusual in that it's the latter connection that led to his being spoiled rotten, as prostitution wasn't as demonized in ancient Egypt as today; his half-brother and chief henchman plays it straight, having been forced to work in the brothel from an early age.
In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a character tries to insult Childermass by calling him "whoreson." Childermass simply shrugs it off, commenting "Better a whoreson than a thief."
Phèdre from Kushiel's Legacy describes herself as a "whore's unwanted get." Less of a stigma about the "whore" part than is usual with this trope, because prostitution is a sacred calling in Terre d'Ange culture and women don't conceive unless they want to (she was also married to Phèdre's father). If anything, the fact that Phèdre's mother deserted her is really more shameful.
In The Lark and the Wren, while her mother wasn't a whore, Rune was born out of wedlock. Despite Stara claiming to be a widow, the village figured out the truth, and because Stara acts like a loose woman, several teenage boys have told Rune that she is the daughter of a whore/slut and will end up one herself.
Newt from Lonesome Dove was the son of the town's 'sporting woman', Maggie.
In the Malazan Book of the Fallen, Koryk grew up in a whore house, although it's not specified if his mother worked there, merely implied. What he took away from it was that innocence is sacred, as the whores used to try to protect the children growing up among them, and a deep dislike for priests and religion, as the local priests used to make a show of stoning any sex worker they came upon on holy days.
In Steven Perry's Matador Series, there are several:
- Dirisha, one of the Matadors, is the daughter of a whore from planet 313-C, commonly known as OhShit (the first thing most people say when they see it). She ran away rather than follow in the family trade. She's rather matter-of-fact about her background, but it does inform her personality (specifically her cynicism about love) and determination that she will never be another person's belonging.
- Markus Jefferson Wall is the son of an Albino Exotic, a mutant strain of humans who were genetically designed to be the ultimate sex object (including the ability to consciously control their pheromones to enhance or diminish sexual attraction in the people around them). Most Exotics become sex workers of some nature; the only real difference is how high up the ladder from street whore to High-Class Call Girl they end up. Markus's mother was on one of the lowest rungs. Markus was expected to also take up the trade, but murdered the pimp and ran away instead. He has completely disguised his Exotic background, (although he still occasionally uses the pheromones and charisma he gets from it,) and is deeply upset when Khadaji lets him know that he knows about it.
- Juete and Veate, respectively Khadaji's true love, and her daughter by him, who pairs off with Saval Bork. Both of them are Albino Exotics, fully aware of what that means, and are quite matter-of-fact about it. Juete was an exotic dancer and sometimes High-Class Call Girl. Her position (and Khadaji's financial support) made it possible for Veate to stay out of the sex trade completely.
Les Misérables:
- Cosette is the illegitimate daughter of Fantine and a man who abandoned her. After her birth her mother became a prostitute and Cosette never explicitly finds out her mother's story.
- Inspector Javert was born in a prison- he says his mother was a Roma Fortune Teller and his father was a galley slave. It's entirely possible his mom was turning tricks. In any case, even if he's not a Son of a Whore, he's still a Son of Criminals, which is quite a big Freudian Excuse.
Sunny McCreary in My Godawful Life, a parody of Misery Lit. His mother was a quadriplegic so he was forced to move her limbs for her to give the punter the impression that she was enjoying it.
Keith in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! is the son a minor Sorcier noble and a prostitute. He was legitimized by his father by the age of three and lived with him, yet he's been continuously insulted for his parentage while he lived there. Whatever timeline he was in, he was no longer insulted as this after he was adopted as heir of Duke Claes at eight.^note
Bones from the Night Huntress books was the son of a prostitute, and was raised by the madam of the bordello. He grew up to adopt the profession himself, since he had no family connections for a respectable career and he turned out to be rather good at bedsport.
"You bastard!"
"Since the day I was born."
Swedish writer Vibeke Olsson gives us a subverted example with Onesimus, a poor slave boy in the ancient Roman empire. his mother was a prostitute for some twenty years, but she was sold away from the brothel before Onesimus was conceived. And thus, she technically wasn't a whore anymore.
Otto Stahl, the Anti-Hero protagonist of the WW2 action-comedy novels by Leo Kessler.
Out of the Easy has Josie. Her mother Louise is a prostitute and took up work at Willie's brothel. Oddly, Willie (and the other prostitutes) acts more akin to family to Josie than Louise does.
Fergus from Outlander is one of these— raised in a brothel, unsure of which of the girls there was his mother. It's strongly implied (and shown, once) that male customers also took advantage of him, simply because he was there.
Mary Brown's medieval fantasy novel Pigs Don't Fly has the rather memorable opening line "My mother was the village whore and I loved her very much." Obviously, the heroine has fewer issues with her mother's profession than most characters of this sort do.
The unnamed son of Belle Watling and Rhett Butler in Rhett Butler's People.
The Riftwar Cycle: Jimmy The Hand's father was the Upright Man, which Jimmy wasn't supposed to ever know, but eventually found out or figured out on his own.
Molly Bolt, the protagonist of Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle, finds out from her adopted mother that she's the daughter of local whore during an argument:
"You ain't so fine as you think you are, and you ain't mine neither. And I don't want you now that I know what you're about. Wanna know who you are, smartypants? You're Ruby Drollinger's bastard, that's who you are. Now let's see you put your nose in the air."
"Who's Ruby Drollinger?"
"Your real mother, that's who and she was a slut, you hear me, Miss Molly? A common, dirty slut who'd lay with a dog if it shook its ass right."
Sharpe: Richard Sharpe fits this trope exactly. In his own words on the miniseries, "I was born in a whorehouse and hope to die in the army." Total badass.
The Ship Who...: One of the secondary protagonists from The City Who Fought describes himself as "the son of a pimp and dockside whore".
Apropos of everything, Sir Apropos of Nothing.
No. 72 of Chuck Palahniuk's Snuff thinks he's the son of porn queen Cassie Wright. Turns out it was her assistant.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, there's a minor character named Satin who was raised in a brothel in Oldtown. It's heavily implied that he worked there, too. Robert is also stated to have scored illegitimate children with prostitutes.
- The series also has a female example in the form of Obara Sand, whose mother was also an Oldtown whore. But as she is one of the Dornish prince's brother's acknowledged bastards (and lives pretty well in the Dornish palace), she doesn't seem too impeded by it. She does have a fierce hatred of Oldtown, however, and would leap at any excuse to burn that city to the ground.
- The prequel novella The Mystery Knight features Ser Glendon Ball, the son of a camp follower who slept with famed war hero Quentyn Ball the night before his death. Glendon's mother brought him up to believe he's Quentyn's son, but the chivalry of Westeros point out to him repeatedly that his mother very probably slept with a dozen other men as well.
Shakur of The Sovereign Stone trilogy is this; with the addition of his mother allowing her clients to pay for his services when he was a young boy. Perhaps one of the only examples of actually pitying a bad character for a horrific background.
The title character of Jacqueline Wilson's The Storyof Tracy Beaker series is implied to be this. Although Tracy believes that her mother, Carly, is a Hollywood movie star, it is clear to an adult reader that the latter is actually a pornographic actress. Tracy does eventually learn that Carly is neither famous nor in Hollywood, but as she is only ten, she still does not realize the "pornographic" part of her mother's career.
Drefan Rahl in the Sword of Truth series.
Scarpa from The Tamuli is stated to be the child of an Arjuni whore and a Styric renegade who happens to be Zalasta, the guy running the mortal side of the bad guys.
Dimitri from Vampire Academy is a minor example, since the dhampir women who end up single mothers (blood-whores, as they're called) genuinely thought that the Moroi guys they slept with loved them.
Warhammer 40,000: Talos, Hunter of the One Soul and prophet of the VIII legion is in his own words, the son of a hereditary murderer and an indentured teenage prostitute. He averts most of the baggage associated with the trope, and generally shows little emotion at in relation to his paternity. However, a dream flashback shows he genuinely cared for his mother, at least as a child.
Whoreson, obviously.
In The Wolf Den Trilogy, Paris and Felix are both the children of prostitutes.
Waln from Wolfs Head Wolfs Heart is a prostitute's son. The thing he seems to hate most is that his mother named him Walnut (he insists on going by Waln), and has never told him why.

Live-Action TV

Patsy's mother from Absolutely Fabulous was a self-absorbed bohemian who was prone to mood swings and treated Patsy like a a hindrance to be dismissed or swept away, never caring enough to find out who her biological father was. Very little is made of her sex life, but the fact that she's abusive enough to make Patsy look sympathetic is no small feat.
Connor from Angel, technically. Darla was a prostitute dying of syphilis (and not the funny kind) in Colonial Virginia when the Master (not that one) turned her. Of course, by the time he was born Darla had been a mass murdering vampire for a couple centuries, so her previous occupation probably rated low on his list of concerns.
In Being Human, Hal claims he was both in a brothel and never knew which of the six prostitutes was his mother. As each of them died due to illness, violence or old age; he mourned each of them as if they were his mother.
Boardwalk Empire: Jimmy Darmody was born when his mother was 14 years old, after she was pimped out by Nucky to the Commodore, who had to have been in his sixties even then. And no, you should not say a single ill word about his mother.
As in the Michael Connelly novels, Harry Bosch is portrayed as the son of a prostitute in Bosch. His efforts to close her unsolved murder make up an overarching sideplot of the series.
According to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer book Go Ask Malice, Faith's mom did some hooker work. Faith's father was not a customer. He was a convicted murderer who rotted in prison since Faith's childhood. No wonder she preferred the Mayor.
Karen, the adopted daughter of Vietnam War vet Boonie on China Beach, is actually the daughter of KC Koloski, the base tramp back in Vietnam, and Lt. Col. Mac Miller, one of KC's main customers.
Pops up from time to time in Criminal Minds, given the association of this trope with serial killers. Two prominent examples are Frank and The Prince of Darkness.
One killer on CSI was the son of a hooker. When she brought in a John, he was forced to hide under the bed while she worked. Watching her perfectly painted toenails hang over the edge of the bed was what gave birth to his trademark foot fetish later in life.
On Dark Angel, Max compares the surrogate mothers paid by Manticore to carry her and the other X5s to term to "girls looking to get paid."
In the Emerald City episode "Mistress - New - Mistress", Anna is dismayed to learn her mother was one of the prostitutes in West's brothel. It seems the Wizard was a favorite client, though West claims he isn't her father.
A variation in The Feast Of All Saints. Cecile, mother of main character Marcel and his younger sister Marie, isn't actually a prostitute. However, Marie does view the practice of placage (formalized relationships between white men and women of color) with disdain since she thinks of it as being owned by the man, like a slave. When Cecile tries to force Marie into placage to help the family financially, Marie realizes that her mother is completely willing to sell her (literally AND figuratively) and says she has the "soul of a whore."
An episode of Firefly called "Heart of Gold" is about the crew protecting a brothel from a man wanting to kidnap his unborn child. As the battle is going on the "whore" gives birth. Once the man is captured she goes out to show him his son, looks him in the face, and puts the man down with one shot.
La Croix's daughter Divia in Forever Knight. It's not stated explicitly, but can be inferred based on dialogue with a little knowledge of Roman customs of the time (first century AD).
Game of Thrones: In "Breaker of Chains", Daario Naharis admits this about himself without shame.
House of the Dragon: Hugh Hammer turns out to be the bastard son of a daughter of Jaehaerys I who worked in a pleasure house (the show never actually names her, but judging by the books, she is Saera Targaryen, Jaehaerys' fifth daughter). She once told him that his parentage doesn't make him any less worthy than his trueborn cousins Viserys I and Daemon, but he admits that he is kind of ashamed of her background.
Holocaust: Invoked. Nazi officials in Auschwitz make the Jewish prisoners call their parents pimps and whores while taking their personal details. Those who naturally object are beaten for it.
Iron Reign: Victor takes pity on a boy who lives near him whose mother is a drug-addicted, poor streetwalker, with him often shown getting into trouble.
Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He seems to be pretty oblivious to this until Mac explains to him what all of those "Santas" were at his house for on Christmas. He doesn't react pretty well when he sees Santa at the mall. There's a good chance that Frank, one of her customers, is his father.
In the first season of Law & Order: SVU, there's a serial killer cop who has been killing prostitutes for thirty years because of the Freudian Excuse that his mother was a prostitute. When she had a john in, she'd leave saltines out on the porch as a signal not to come in the house. It was the only thing he'd get for dinner and he had to stay out there even when it was rainy or freezing cold until she was done.
Implied to be Vicky Pollard's situation in Little Britain. When Vicky discovers that she is pregnant, the doctor asks her to be chaperoned to her first scan, to which Vicky says that she isn't going to take Shelly with her because "she's a slag". The doctor recommends her mother but it turns out that Shelly is Vicky's mother.
Jin of Lost. It's unclear if he knows. But when Sun spoke to her, she made it very clear that if Jin were to ever find out his mother was alive, she wouldn't be for long. The man who raised Jin isn't even sure if he's actually Jin's biological father, but he doesn't care and loves him anyway.
Luke Cage (2016): Famed stockbroker Raymond "Piranha" Jones was born to one of Mama Mabel's prostitutes, with his biological father being a married banker who used her services. While he's not on speaking terms with his father, he has a very good relationship with his mother and, after becoming a success on Wall Street, set her up for life financially and gladly showed his father the door when he came looking for a handout.
Dick Whitman in Mad Men. Also known as... Don Draper. His birth mom, a prostitute hired by his father, actually died in childbirth. His alcoholic dad followed a when he was about 10, leaving him in the care of his stern stepmother. She remarried a brothel manager, where he spent a good chunk of his childhood and even lost his virginity to one of the girls.
Buck Wilmington of The Magnificent Seven is entirely angst-free about it; it just makes him even fonder of prostitutes than he would be otherwise. (And god help you if you mistreat one in his presence.)
Played with on Murdoch Mysteries. Constable Crabtree was a foundling raised by a preacher and several "aunts" - all of them prostitutes who the preacher housed in order to keep them safe.
In one episode of NCIS, a serial killer's Freudian Excuse was that his mother was a prostitute. She was his first victim. When he was a teenager.
Possibly Trigger on Only Fools and Horses, whose birth certificate states his father as "some soldiers."
Sacred Games: Ganesh Gaitonde's mother worked as a prostitute to supplement the family income, given that her husband's work as a beggar did not make much money. It seems to have been an Open Secret around the town, and we see a young Ganesh get bullied for it. "Yayati" reveals that Ganesh himself murdered her and her client when he returned home one day, framing his father for it.
Toral, the illegitimate son of Duras who first appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-part episode "Redemption", was spoken of disparagingly by Gowron as likely being found in "a harlot's bedchamber". (It's never established who his mother actually is.)
Taboo: Daughter of a whore, but it turns out that Winter is actually Helga's daughter. She's also a mulatto, which makes her a double pariah in conservative Regency England. She gets along fine with James though, because of his connection to the paranormal.
Time After Time: Antagonist John's mother it turns out was a prostitute. It's mentioned this might be why he killed prostitutes as Jack the Ripper, but he denies this, saying it was just because they're vulnerable.
The Untamed: Meng Yao/Jin Guangyao, like in the novel. The angst this causes him is downplayed in the series, but mentioning it remains his Berserk Button.

Music

"Fils de joie" by Stromae is about a deceased sex worker. The chorus is sung from the point of view of her son, whereas the verses are respectively done by a customer, a pimp and a policeman.
In the Dear Hunter's Acts I, II and III, the eponymous Dear Hunter was the son of one Ms. Terri, a whore, and one of her patrons.
Metallica's music video for Turn the page features a much-abused stripper and her daughter as the main characters. The video's Twist Ending is that she's also a whore.
The titular character of the Queen song "Great King Rat" is called a son of a whore. This is as he's being described as a foul-mouth, outlaw, and Dirty Old Man, so it's hard to tell if the description is literal.
OC Smith's Son of Hickory Hollow's Tramp.
In Randy Travis's Three Wooden Crosses, it turns out that the preacher telling the story to his congregation is the son of the hooker who survived the crash, who read the Bible that the preacher who died gave her to him.
Frank Zappa's Idiot Bastard Son, whose mother's a hooker somewhere in LA.

Professional Wrestling

Jon Moxley is this, and its an important part of his backstory/psyche. His rival Jimmy Jacobs has scathingly said, "You've said your mother is a whore... I can only assume you were named for what your father was."

Mythology & Religion

Jephthah, one of the Biblical judges. His original band of soldiers were also various kinds of social outcasts, but prove remarkably effective against the invading Philistines because of God's favor.
The prophet Hosea married a prostitute, who notably did not give up her profession, making the parentage of her children dodgy at best. (For the record, God ordained the marriage to make a point about His relationship to Israel even as they "whored" themselves out to other gods.)
According to the New Testament, Boaz, the son of Salmon, was the son of a woman named Rahab, presumably the reformed prostitute from the Book of Joshua. (Jewish tradition, however, says that Rahab married Joshua.)
Possibly Romulus and Remus, the founders of Ancient Rome. The most well-known story is that they were raised by a she-wolf as infants, but many think that their foster mother may have been a human prostitute, since the word used to describe their adoptive mother in the earliest versions could have meant either "she-wolf" or "prostitute" in context.
Hindu Mythology: The Chandogya Upanishad relates that the sage Satyakama Jabala was the son of the whore Jabala, who did not know who Satyakama's father was. As a child inherits the caste of the father, this meant that Satyakama did not know his own caste. When Satyakama wished to study the sacred knowledge, although only Brahmins are allowed to study the Veda, Jabala advises him to call himself Satyakama Jabala (Satyakama son of Jabala), which conceals that Jabala is a woman. When Satyakama goes to the teacher Haridrumata, Haridrumata asks from what family he came. Satyakama replies that his mother had been a prostitute and does not know who his father is, and that therefore she has advised him to call himself Satyakama Jabala. To which Haridrumata replies that only a Brahmin could have told the truth so openly, and therefore agrees to teach Satyakama.

Theater

The trope name is actually used in the opening lines of Hamilton ^note:
How does a bastard, orphan
son of a whore and a Scotsman
dropped into the middle of a
forgotten spot in the Caribbean
by Providence, impoverished, in squalor
grow up to be a hero and a scholar?
Aldonza in Man of La Mancha.
And, of course, there's my father. I'm told that young ladies
Can point to their fathers with maidenly pride.
>Mine was a regiment, here for one hour;
I can't even tell you which side!
The Engineer in Miss Saigon. Turns out he began his career as a pimp as a child, helping his mother find customers.
- Tam, Kim and Chris's son, come to that.

Video Games

Drirr from Albion. He doesn't like to talk about his past for this reason until he gets to know the protagonist better, but that's about all it ever amounts to.
According to supplementary materials, Nero of Devil May Cry 4 is the son of a prostitute and Dante's twin brother Vergil.
In Dishonored, Slackjaw, leader of the Bottler's gang, was raised by prostitutes and born illegitimate, implying this trope. The Heart, who knows the secrets of the people who you interact with, notifies you that he's actually royalty and doesn't know it.
Dragon Age: Origins: Zevran's past has him raised in the brothel until sold to the Crows.
Yuri's description in Fire Emblem: Three Houses matter-of-factly states that his mother is a prostitute, which is weirdly straightforward for a game that is otherwise very coy, nudge-nudge, wink-wink about sex. Most of this more questionable actions are done to protect her.
The late Johnny Winter from Heavy Rain applies. Before his death it's implied he constantly stood up for his mom when her profession was brought up. In one of the epilogues, his mother avenges him.
Tiffany Maye of HuniePop is a female example, being the daughter of porn star Jessie Maye. Needless to say, this mere fact alone has put quite a strain between the two's relationship, to the point where the latter outright blocked the former on social media in the sequel.
Goro Akechi from Persona 5 is revealed to be this; his mother was Driven to Suicide when he was a child due to her family's abuse over having a child out of wedlock, resulting in him being passed around a number of neglectful foster homes. If any of it became public knowledge, it'd almost certainly destroy his career. To make matters worse, his biological father is Corrupt Politican Masayoshi Shido. He's hellbent on making said father suffer for what he and his mother went through.
Implied in Psychonauts, with the campers' fake social media accounts. Elton, a wimpy boy who wears a sailor's hat, says that his father died at sea, but his mother often receives visits from other sailors who are paying their respects...at the "special hotel for all ladies" where they live. Elton is usually instructed to practice his accordion in the closet during such visits.
Red Dead Redemption: John Marston and his son Jack are both this, but it doesn't have any Negative effects on either. Heck, Jack's mother is actually a pretty nice person.
- It's still used as a taunt by the Bureau toward Marston though.
John Marston: Son of a whore.
Edgar Ross: As I recall, it is you who is the son of a whore, Marston.
Two of Saori's potential love interests in Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow were mothered by prostitutes, were bullied and harassed due to their "muddled" origins, and have developed lots of emotional/mental issues as a result. One of them is Saori's fellow Vigilante Yuzuki Hirano (who for worse has come to distrust all women since he can't forgive his mother for leaving him) and the other is Tsubaki Kusunoki (who is the son of a rich Dutch man, meaning he also was subjected to Half-Breed Discrimination).
The artbook in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse all but states that Hallelujah's mother Ayako was a prostitute.
Implied in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, as the dressing room in the brothel has children's crayon drawings hanging on the walls. Upon examining them, Harry muses, "Everyone loves their kids."
Vernon Roche, King Foltest's spymaster/special forces commander, is one of these in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Call him "whoreson" at your own risk.
- Of course, that doesn't stop him from calling others "whoreson" at every opportunity.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon's prologue chapters reveal Ichiban Kasuga had been raised by the manager and the working girls of Kamurocho's soapland, Shangri-La, since his mother left him there. It left him no hurry to know who his mother was, but it does leave him with a Chekhov's Skill later on when he and the party do end up working in Otohime Land, a rundown soapland in Ijincho. He's also not ashamed of fact and thinks fondly of his adopted family.

Visual Novels

Wolfgang Schreiber from Dies Irae was born the son to a prostitute mother. However, his childhood was anything but a nice one. His mother specifically wanted a daughter for the sole purpose of continuing the family business, so she really didn't take kindly to Schreiber being born a boy. As such she castrated him and forced him into prostitution anyways under the name of Anna. And when he ended up popular with the patrons she grew even more abusive from envy eventually culminating in her gouging out one of his eyes. And all this while Schreiber himself only wanted to be a good son/daughter to make his mother happy. Eventually he snapped and killed her before going on a giant murder spree while at the same time having developed a severe aversion to physical touch.

Webcomics

It's heavily implied in Ennui GO! that Izzy and Addy were the result of their mother prostituting herself for drug money. Admittedly, the prostitution was less of an issue for them than the fact that she was a violent psychopath.
Junuka from Far to the North. It's one of the reasons he comes across as something of a Heroic Bastard even though he's part of a gang of slavers.
Bernadette in Flipside, which is ironic because her girlfriend can best be described as a nymphomaniac.
Geilein in Garanos, who herself is a prostitute. She's not ashamed of it, and seems to genuinely enjoy her profession.
I Belong To House Castiello: Estelle's mother was a prostitute who had a fling with the Duke of Castiello that produced Estelle.
MegaTokyo: Megumi's grandmother used to be a prostitute, and casually references "your grandfather, whoever he was." When Ping is naively trying to have sex for money (everyone involved is jumping to many conclusions), Megumi's grandmother gives her some very frank business advice on the subject without judgment.
Two examples from Questionable Content:
- Faye has a short Freak Out when she realizes one of her Civil-War-era ancestors was a whore, rather than Faye's preferred interpretation, that she was a pirate. (The point of commonality? A "boarded by se(a)men" joke.) Dora tries to calm her down by pointing out that "it is The Oldest Profession — statistically, we probably all are".
- Marten's mother is a successful fetish model. He says it's not weird to him, but it's still very awkward whenever she comes to visit.
Oscar in Sister Claire was raised by Sabine, whom she called Maman, a transgender Hooker with a Heart of Gold who shelters the downtrodden in her home. Additionally, it's implied Oscar's biological mother may have been one too and her father is none other than the King of Thronum Mare, with all that's known about her mother at this point being that she was not the King's legal wife.
Terinu was of the "raised in a whorehouse" variety, albeit a PG-13 "Gentleman's Cabaret". The pirate the club owed to tithe dropped him off there as an infant, and he was raised there until he was eight by the cabaret's bookkeeper, who regarded him as her own son.

Web Original

Joff in Addergoole.
TeamFourStar gives us Giuseppe's son in Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged, who is upset that his father demands I Want Grandkids from “those-a big girls,” to get his father’s respect, and even more upset to learn this is how his parents met.
David Wong in John Dies at the End.
Killerbunnies:
- According to the Evans Triplets' profile, their mother, Ange was known to be fairly promiscuous but stopped when she had her daughters, though to better take care of them, she landed a job as a stripper, often working nights.
- Constance was born to a prostitute named Wilamina.
In Overlord Ascendant the main Alex is the daughter of a prostitute and a non-human client. She has absolutely no problems with this, nor with the expectation that she was to enter the "family business". Her father was eventually revealed to be the Dragon who guards the treasury of a nearby city, who is apologetic for not being there for her growing up.

Web Video

Jester Lavorre from the second campaign of Critical Role: her mother is the famous courtesan the Ruby of the Sea. As a child, Jester was kept secret to not impede her mother's career and rarely left the house. This left her rather sheltered and with a crude sense of humor and pranks.

Western Animation

Beavis And Butthead claim each of their mothers are sluts.
- In one episode, Beavis specifies that his mother isn't a whore, she's a slut because she doesn’t charge for it.
Skwisgaar Skwigelf from Metalocalypse. Sadly, his mother was psychologically abusive, as she frequently exposed him to scenes of her having sex with unrelated men, not caring that seeing such things would deeply scar a child.
Joe, the bully from Moral Orel. He's glad to meet his mother, Nurse Bendy though, as his father was too old to be a good parent and he didn't get along with his Promotion to Parent older sister. The episode where they reunite ends with them bonding (by sticking their tongues out at each other) and a cameo in the final episode shows them skating together.
The PJs: Walter Burkett was raised in a whorehouse. One episode has Thurgood telling a scary story about Red Moley, "the bastard son of a thousand maniacs", and Walter takes offense.
Walter: Thurgood! I told you about my childhood in confidence!
The Simpsons:
- Homer Simpson's half-brother, Herb Powell, had a mom who worked at a carnival and did things Grampa Simpson's wife never did (i.e., have sex for money). When Grampa found out that he had a son with the carnie lady, Herb was given up for adoption and Grampa moved on, marrying Homer's mom (who knew about Grampa's affair with the carnie lady) and promised Grampa never to tell Homer about it. It didn't work.
- Frank Grimes, Jr., who tried to kill Homer to avenge his father's death. When Homer expresses surprise at the fact that Grimey had a child, he replies "My father happened to like hookers, okay?"
- Jimbo may also fall under this category.
- Nelson as well, though in his case, his parents were actually married, but his father left to buy cigarettes several years ago but never came back.
South Park: "Cartman's Mom is a Dirty Slut" is the name of an episode for a reason — Liane Cartman has slept with half the town, including the entire Denver Broncos team, one of whom was Cartman's real father, which the town covered up. She's also done German pornography and posed suggestively for Crack Whore Magazine, neither of which Cartman is happy to know about.

Examples:

Alternative Title(s): Daughter Of A Whore, Children Of Whores

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