An IN, ANY, or EXISTS subquery evaluates to true if there is at least one row that causes the subquery to evaluate to true. These semantics make a DISTINCT within an IN, ANY, or EXISTS subquery unnecessary.
The following two queries are equivalent, and the first is transformed into the second:
SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE c1 IN (SELECT DISTINCT c2 FROM t2 WHERE t1.c3 = t2.c4) SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE c1 IN (SELECT c2 FROM t2 WHERE t1.c3 = t2.c4)