Vegetarian Vampire



"Hey won't bite beast or man, cause he's a vegetarian; and things never run to plan for...DUCKULA!!!!"

- Theme song for Count Duckula

"For vampires with a conscience."

- Item description for Chicken Blood, Disgaea

Vampirism is a nasty, nasty business. By nature, vampires have to kill to survive, and the existence of just one vampire means the death of countless innocent people. Right?

Well... not always.

Some vampires have a moral code and are aware of all the suffering their bloodlust can cause, so they go out of their way to not kill humans. They find other sources of blood such as animals (often cattle) or blood banks, or restrict their sources to Serial Killers and other unsavory types. This often has drawbacks: The blood either might not be fresh or tastes unpalatable compared to (innocent) human blood. It allows the story to play up the "can the vampire control themselves" angle.

The really lucky ones can substitute tomatoes.

A common strategy of Friendly Neighborhood Vampires and Vampire Detectives who feel grief at what they've become. Often overlaps with Cursed with Awesome. These are the friendliest vamps on the Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness.

Anime and Manga

 * Gabriel from Tenshi ni Narumon has been seen drinking tomato juice in lieu of blood.
 * In the Hellsing TV series, Seras has an aversion to drinking human blood, even from medical bags. Eventually she does drink from medical blood bags, but she never drinks blood directly from a human in the series.
 * In the original manga, Seras abstains from blood completely except for one instance where Integra offered her some, and then later when
 * Played for Laughs in Rosario + Vampire: Moka drinks tomato juice, which makes her anemic, despite the fact that her bite doesn't kill.
 * And subverted right off the bat when her first act upon running into Tsukune is to bite his neck. She becomes instantly addicted to Tsukune's blood, commenting that "a girl never forgets her first time." Doubly subverted by the fact that her bite is treated like necking Tsukune, though it does deplete his energy.
 * Arcueid from Tsukihime doesn't actually needs blood since she's a "True Ancestor", but she does craves it badly, and yet she can mostly fight off the urge to bite.
 * In Trinity Blood the vampires can substitute a substance called Aqua Vitae for blood, though it apparently tastes horrible.
 * In Karas the Mikado need to drink blood (other than that they're not really vampires.) Nue is one that's had a Heel Face Turn and refuses to harm humans. When he's severely weakened from a battle, the moth Youkai that befriended him promises to get some human blood, prompting him to grab the boy's hand in a crushing grip. Turns out he meant from a blood-bank.

Comic Books

 * A lot of vampires in Marvel don't drink blood directly from humans. Blade's the only one who refuses any type of blood though, relying on a synthetic serum. (Well, besides the species that don't even drink blood to begin with.)
 * Cassidy in Preacher does drink human blood, but he only eats people who piss him off/try to kill him/both. Most of the time he just eats very rare steak.
 * My Life as a Vampire also has an alternative to blood that does not cause vampires to gain a Bloodlust.
 * The titular character of The Tenth has used blood banks and villains for this purpose. Notably, he isn't actually a vampire—he's a sort of genetically-engineered alien hybrid that needs the blood to prevent himself from involuntarily shapeshifting into a hulking monster.
 * Dave in the graphic novel Life Sucks refuses to kill anyone, and as a consequence his vampire powers are weak and he can't use the cooler ones like flight.

Fan Works

 * NGE: Bloodlust have an example: Rei's first feeding came up as an emergency. When Maya noticed that Rei doesn't cast a mirror image, she immediately realized that Rei became a vampire and tried to flee. Rei however caught and drained her just enough so that Maya won't be able to resist her memory-altering powers. She also announced that Tokyo-3 belongs to her which the vampire clans didn't give a damn to - good for her since she doesn't have to feed on humans.
 * Somewhat similarly, Kaji apparently doesn't have a problem with werewolf-Asuka releasing her pent-up aggression via massacring street thugs.

Film

 * In The Littlest Vampire, vampires survive on cow blood; rather than death, the cows gain vampiric powers briefly as a result.
 * In Innocent Blood: Marie can only make someone else into a vampire or kill them, so her solution is to bite criminals and then decapitate them with a large shotgun.
 * My Best Friend Is a Vampire: Friendly Neighborhood Vampires can buy blood at butcher shops.
 * In the Underworld series, one of the vampires' many legitimate businesses is that of making artificial blood that has uses both for them and the medical community at large.
 * This is not by choice, though. The non-killing policy was instituted by Victor in order to keep humans from attacking them. A policy he himself routinely violated but strictly enforced. They started with animal blood, then donor blood, then blood substitutes, then cloned blood.
 * Semi-averted by Caleb in Near Dark, who foregos killing personally but drinks from the wrist of his vampire girlfriend, Mae. Whether she has to kill more people than usual in order to sustain him in this way is unclear, but the other vampires sure think it "ain't right!" for her to have to feed him.
 * Inverted in Blade. Deacon Frost is exceptionally evil because he wants to industrialize blood production.
 * Subverted hard in Daybreakers.
 * It also shows the logical outcome of the blood farming. The vampire population has eclipsed human population long ago, so they're rapidly running out of humans. As the supply diminishes, poor vampires starve and They do try to ration the remaining blood, but it's too little and too late and causes riots.
 * The main character is a vampire scientist working on a blood substitute. In the end,.
 * In The Twins Effect, Razaf refuses to kill humans for their blood, and expects the rest of his family to do the same.
 * The Hong Kong movie Vampire vs. Vampire includes a jiang-shi who is a child and sucks the juice from tomatoes.

Literature
"Lestat: All I need to find you, Louis, is follow the corpses of rats!"
 * In Discworld, there are reformed vampires called "black ribboners" who fill their urge for blood by becoming obsessed with something else, e.g. Otto Chriek with taking pictures and Maladict with drinking coffee. They still need to drink blood to survive, but they don't do it very often and use animal blood.
 * The Countess Notfaroutoe, while quite keen on her husband taking up most aspects of the vampire lifestyle, has told him that he can have rare steak, and like it.
 * The protagonist of The Vampire Files, a Vampire Detective Series of novels, "lives" in Depression-era Chicago and visits its slaughterhouses to drink blood from there.
 * Chernobog in American Gods. He is something of a God of Evil in Slavic Mythology, and it's mentioned that he previously worked at a slaughterhouse, killing cattle with a hammer. Given that one scene shows him gaining power by going to a site where serial killers buried their victims, the implication is that he probably could have powered himself by murdering people but chose not to... usually. During his initial appearance, Shadow needed to convince him to join their side of the war, and did so with a game of checkers, with the condition that if Shadow lost, he would get his skull smashed by Chernobog.
 * Pyotr in Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. He's an old style vampire, who originally got a job at an inner-city sell-your-blood blood bank, where he became an alcoholic because the blood he was skimming out of inventory mostly came from winos. He eventually gets sober and winds up a regular at Callahan's, where he becomes the resident designated driver. Saying more would spoil the story.
 * The Cullens in Twilight call themselves "vegetarians" because they feed on animals, not people. Obviously it's not the same as Real Life vegetarianism; it's more of a Cullen family in-joke.
 * Vampires in The Saga of Darren Shan don't kill the people they drink from, but the main character still refuses to do it and feeds from animals instead. This isn't quite as nutritious though, and he comes near death. Mr. Crepsley is known to keep bottles of blood which he has with meals like wine, though this won't sustain a vampire for very long either.
 * There is also a scene in which a starving vampire steals a blood bag from a hospital.
 * In The Dresden Files, Thomas is an energy-based vampire who feeds by inducing sexual desire and then partaking of the emotions. After he nearly kills his girlfriend by overfeeding, Thomas . That is, until he.
 * Louis from Interview with the Vampire subsisted upon rats when he was first turned into a vampire, for which he was mocked by his sire Lestat as a coward and a weakling.


 * These vampires don't need to kill the victim to drink their blood. However, most do so because blood has an intoxicating effect on them, so they just keep on drinking until, suddenly, there's no more. Also, some older vampires just outright rip off the head and drink from the open neck. It's not clear how they can drain a human body of all blood in a few seconds, but then again they're supernatural creatures.
 * In one Doctor Who Expanded Universe book, Nyssa is bitten by a vampire and tries to create a synthetic blood substitute so she doesn't end up killing people. It just makes her throw up.
 * Bunnicula parodied the classic vampire with a "vampire bunny rabbit" who, instead of seeking out humans to feast on, preyed on all the vegetables left around the house. While this is not quite the same as the trope, it is more true to the trope name. Pretty hilariously, Bunnicula manages to get a little closer to the trope when it's discovered that he likes vegetable juice more than draining vegetables dry - sort of the "blood bank" variant. With vegetables.
 * The Lightbringer series had a character who, infected with vampirism, fed indirectly, one character leeching themselves and giving her the leeches to eat.
 * Averted/Subverted in Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire series. Alisa/Sita will drink the blood of people she has to kill because, well, why let it go to waste? But, she has the power to control people and wipe their memories, and will avoid killing them if possible - drinking only some of their blood, then wiping their memory. In Monster most
 * In The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, a synthetic blood replica has been developed, allowing any vampire this status. It's a major factor in their deciding to reveal their existence to the world.
 * Subverted in Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck. When Jody's normal source of blood runs dry, she and Tommy decide to try the animal blood route borrow a gargantuan stray cat for such purposes. Not only does it end up tasting awful (even after they deal with the problem of fur), but it turns out that drinking the blood of an alert and terrified ball of fuzz, fangs, and claws takes a lot more effort than finding a passed out hobo to drink from.
 * Navarre House vampires in Chloe Neill's Some Girls Bite refrain from drinking directly under any circumstances, leading to a not entirely mature but still rather satisfying taunt by a member of another house:
 * The Dracula from Dennis Jürgensen's Freddy series has learned to subside on red, raspberry flavored soda, which also happens to have the side effect of removing his weakness to sunlight.
 * The vampires of The Reformed Vampire Support Group subsist on gerbils, although they have to take supplements to counter both the lack of certain nutrients that are only found in human blood and the impurities that animal blood contains. It's also incredibly messy (the protagonist prefers to feed in the bathroom, to make cleanup easier) and results in them lacking the strength a vampire who feeds on human blood has - in addition to causing nausea and a general malaise. But they consider it better than the alternative since, in-universe, vampirism spreads like an infection - causing them to turn any humans they bite.
 * Kostya and his parents in the Night Watch series are introduced as this as well as Friendly Neighborhood Vampires. They're nice people and besides drinking animal blood, it's shown that Kostya, a medical student, figured out the benefits of donated blood (and it's discussed how vampires had a role in advances in this area of medicine because it helped them to feed without killing). This is subverted later on though.
 * Brian Lumley's Necroscope universe features vampires that are everything you'd expect and more. When  is finally turned, he settles for near-raw steak until his hunger for blood threatens to become insatiable, at which point he   There, among others of his kind, he makes the fatal mistake of   It doesn't end well for him; he is , the agony only ending for her when she   and for him.
 * The book Vampire High is a very clever comedy book about a normal boy whom, after flunking out of every single one of his classes, including homeroom, is sent to a high school for vampires, being among the only humans there. At some point in it one of his vampire friends requires blood or else he'll end up dying. How does his friend get it. By having his mother use a needle to draw blood from the main character and transferring it to him. Other than that, they usually just get it from the blood bank.
 * In the Ravenloft novel Vampire of the Mists Jander Sunstar in centuries he existed on Faerûn (after getting rid of his vampiric master and before being caught by the Demiplane of Dread) fed mostly on lowly animals. When it wasn't enough, on inmates of an insane asylum—they didn't object much, especially those who saw worse things all the time and eagerly informed him on details.
 * In The Hollows series, living vampires don't need to drink blood at all (the undead ones aren't so lucky). Ivy is completely off at the start of the series; she starts again after a nasty encounter with Piscary.
 * In Family Bites by Lisa Williams, the Alfonz family believe in drinking animal blood (in a glass, drained from prepared meat) and leaving humans alone. Except for Cousin Edgar, a nasty-minded traditionalist, and the younger son John, a Casanova who sees turning attractive women as part of his seduction technique.
 * Nathaniel Cade from Christopher Farnsworth's The President's Vampire series only drinks animal blood, refusing even voluntarily donated or blood-bank-derived human blood. As a result, he's less powerful than other vampires, can't shapeshift or fly, and it's said that his health will eventually deteriorate.
 * Felix Gomez, the protagonist of Mario Acevedo's Vampire Detective Series, subsisted on animal blood from the time he was turned until near the climax of the first novel. This led his powers to gradually fade to the point where it became clear that he would have to change his diet in order to survive the story.
 * Spoofed in a short story in which the vegetarian vampire is killed with a steak through the heart.
 * There's a book called Suck It Up where the main character is a vampire who's never drunk blood of any sort; instead he lives on a soy substitute.

Live-Action TV
"Josef: You seriously drink this stuff? What is it? Like not-fat, soy, vegan blood?"
 * Moonlight:
 * A vampire working at the coroner's office does a good side-business in bags of blood.
 * Other vampires like Josef Kostan prefer to keep a harem of human women (or men) to feed on occasionally. They usually don't mind.


 * Josef himself is shown occasionally drinking bottled blood like it's alcohol. In one episode, after the death of one of his old friends, Mick leaves him a bottle of the stuff, and Josef drinks it as a human would drink booze in order to forget.


 * Forever Knight: Vampire Detective Nick drinks cow blood. There's also a vampire in season 3 who prefers to feed on rats, but that's nothing to do with ethics; apparently whatever species you first feed on as a vampire, you'll have a taste for forever after.
 * Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries embodies this trope, preferring to feed from animals to maintain his humanity. His friend Lexi averted/subverted this by using blood banks instead, saying she was too weak to fully resist human blood. Not drinking human blood does make them weaker however.
 * According to Damon, Stefan's favorite blood is puppy, though he was probably just trying to disturb Elena.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
 * Angel and later Spike (after they regained their souls) bought cow and pig blood from a neighborhood all-night butcher. Fortunately, that is a profitable business in Sunnydale for a variety of reasons. Later, it's apparently "spiced" with a bit of otter.
 * Harmony was told to do the same when Angel hired her to work at Wolfram and Hart, although since she only had a contract and not a soul, it's not entirely clear whether she stuck to the diet.
 * Given that one episode centered around her thinking that she'd unknowingly drunk human blood and panicking that the blood inspection would pick this up, it seems pretty clear that she did. For a while, anyway.
 * In True Blood synthetic blood is sold in bottles for all your Friendly Neighborhood Vampire needs. Comes in different flavors supposed to imitate the four blood types, but the taste is still described as "It keeps you alive, but it'll bore you to death".
 * In Being Human, vampires' need for blood is more of a craving than a biological necessity. The main vampire works at a hospital so he can drink the donated blood, but it's not fresh, so it barely does anything for the cravings. It's unclear whether vampires really can survive indefinitely without any blood at all.
 * Morgan Freeman played a vampire on The Electric Company, who at first was supposed to be Dracula himself but later became Vincent The Vegetable Vampire. Response to Moral Guardians, a bout of Early Installment Weirdness, or just plain Rule of Funny?
 * An episode of Supernatural had a group of vampires who fed on cows to avoid notice from hunters. Gordon didn't care.
 * The fact that they had to kill the cows is something of a head scratcher, because it was made pretty clear the previous season that it took an entire coven of vampires weeks to drain a pair of victims. Why not just drink a little from a different cow every night? How much blood could they really need if it takes them so long to kill humans?
 * it's probably that they need more blood from animals than from humans.
 * While Henry Fitzroy in Blood Ties feeds on humans, he makes it a point not to kill anyone and usually does it during sex, so the "donor" thinks he's just being kinky. He does vaguely mention that, occasionally, someone does die. However, the person he mentioned in relation to this was not, in fact, dead but a vampire.
 * In Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, Witch Bandora's moronic henchman Totpat (the original version of Rita Repulsa's equally-moronic henchman Baboo in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) is a vampire who has never tasted human blood, not because of any morals on his part, but because he is a Dirty Coward who tends to flee from them.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

 * Most if not all vampires and vampire-like creatures in many mythologies don't need to kill their victims at all. That said, some may also simply be Exclusively Evil and kill you anyway just for the lulz.

Tabletop Games

 * Vampires in Vampire: The Masquerade can subsist on animal blood if they wish, but it is not very palatable and only recovers about half as many Blood Points as human blood. Those who feed exclusively from animals are often mocked in Kindred society, and are called "vegetaries" or "farmers" among neonates. In addition, some neonate vampires have been known to engage in "banking" or raiding blood banks, a practice that is frowned upon in Kindred society, not the very least because of the threat to the Masquerade. Preserved blood is also substantially less "nutritious" than fresh blood, so it's mainly used for emergency rations.
 * In both Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem older vampires can't feed on animals. Drinking animal blood just doesn't do anything for them. Even older vampires can't even feed on humans - they need other vampires to feed on. A vampire can reduce his vampiric age by going into hibernation for a longer while (25 years per "blood potency" point - 1 is minimum, 10 is maximum, 3 needs humans, 7 needs vampires). This of course may reduce vampire's power. After a certain Generation a vampire couldn't subsist on animal blood. Elders of a certain level could only feed on other vampires. Methuselahs could only feed on Elders. The big bads of the setting, the Antediluvians who founded the clans, could only feed on Methuselahs. It's unknown if Caine himself needed to feed at all, but it seems unlikely.
 * Although the Ordo Dracula have found ways to survive on human or animal blood even after reaching the heights of power. But then again, they're vampiric transcendentalists—it's what they do.
 * Ventrue in Vampire: The Masquerade]] had the weakness that they could only feed on one type of blood. Depending on what was chosen at character creation, they could be barred from this... or forced into this. This only applied to mortal sources - they were always allowed to indulge in the vampiric version of I'm a Humanitarian.
 * Haven't I got a good news for you, fellow kindred: if you can get a Sin-Eater to bring you to the Underworld, you can actually subsist on the abundant blood-like drips there. Just don't cross path with the local Kerberoi, OK?

Video Games

 * Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. Players can opt to buy from the blood bank rather than feed on humans. Most can feed on rats - Nosferatu can thrive on rats.
 * However, Ventrue get no nourishment at all from feeding on rats (or prostitutes or the homeless). This is because their weakness in the tabletop game is that Ventrue can only subsist on one specific type of blood, softened here to "Only well-off humans".
 * The "vampires" in Fallout 3 can be convinced to live off of blood packs instead of attacking people and animals.
 * Demons in the Disgaea 'verse are already fairly on the noble side of Noble Demon (except those few Complete Monster types), but the self-proclaimed delinquents of the evil academy in the third game do things like organize blood drives as part of their thing.
 * Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten brings us Valvatorez, who's been sustaining himself off of sardines for four-freakin'-hundred years as a promise to another individual. His powers have waned as a result, but he intends to find an alternative in regaining his power despite this setback.
 * Spike McFang and his cohorts in The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang were Bowdlerized into literal examples. Originally, they ate hearts to recover health; these were changed to tomatoes.
 * Loue from A Witch's Tale habitually snacks on tomatoes. In fact, they are used to revive Liddell if she is killed.
 * The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has Count Hassildor, though it's never specified what he drinks it becomes clear through several quests that he is very careful to not let his urges turn him evil, and despises other vampires that have. All he really wants is to help his wife, also a vampire but comatose because she couldn't come to terms with her condition.
 * of course, Elder Scrolls vampires -- or at least the Cyrodiil strain -- don't seem to require blood to survive (one that you meet has survived trapped in a room for several decades with no source), but they tend to go completely insane after being denied blood for too long. In fact, as the player character, if you contract vampirism, you actually become stronger if you do not feed for several days, although you will become more sensitive to sun damage.
 * King's Bounty: Armored Princess features one of those... unfortunately, he feeds on the sap of living trees instead.
 * The Sims 3. When a sim with the Vegetarian trait becomes a vampire, they can't drink from other sims without getting sick. Instead they subsist on plasma fruit or plasma juice.
 * In Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, the main character has written an article for a tabloid about a vegetarian vampire.
 * Vampires Dawn offers you to buy blood from secret traders. Sure, it's said to be a mixture of human and animal blood, but you don't have to kill humans yourself to get your blood, keeping your humanity value high if you so desire. The second game additionally offers you to kill animals to keep your blood levels high and your humanity value unaffected.
 * Rachel Alucard from BlazBlue only sucked someone's blood once, and that's because said person is dying and can only be saved by turning him into a Dhampyr through the bite. And for the rest of time, she prefers drinking high class tea, when she's not snarking everyone she comes across or beating up her familiars.
 * In The Witcher the Queen of the Night makes no secret to the fact she and her brothel girls are vampires; they drink the a small amount of the blood of customers, never killing them, while considering the blood payment for their "services". In the Queen's eyes, this benefits everyone.

Web Comics

 * Nina Delacroix in Eerie Cuties doesn't drink blood. She craves chocolate instead. Presumably because she was born on Easter.
 * An interesting variation, since she doesn't see anything wrong with drinking someone's blood except for some embarrassment from the victim.
 * Vampires in Orange Marmalade have been drinking pig blood for decades - they can even buy cartons of it for lunch. This is due to their trying to fit in with society and be somewhat normal.
 * School Bites includes a vegan vampire. Good thing the school can accommodate her.

Web Original

 * Draculaura from Monster High isn't just a vegetarian- she's a vegan, and subsists on a variety of fruits and vegetables, with heavy doses of iron supplements on the side to make up for the blood she's not getting.
 * Even hearing the word or seeing blood makes her faint now. It's also heavily implied that she wasn't always this way.
 * Shadowa Moon (and the rest of her family) from The Questport Chronicles.
 * A meme image circulating in 2022 argues that since blood is a non-meat animal product, like dairy and eggs, it counts as vegetarian, thus all vampires are vegetarians.

Western Animation

 * Count Duckula (pictured above) is a literal Vegetarian Vampire, due to a botched reincarnation ritual (Nanny mistook tomato sauce for blood).
 * Marceline from Adventure Time is a subversion: she doesn't feed on blood, just the color red (as she demonstrates by sucking a strawberry dry, leaving it gray), but is as unrepentantly self-centered as they come.
 * An episode had of Garfield and Friends had Garfield as Count Lasagna, a vampire cat who only ate Italian food.
 * In Growing Up Creepie, Creepie's cousins, two vampire-like mosquitoes, revealed they are now vegans.
 * One episode of DuckTales featured several movie-monster characters, including a vampire who could survive on apples. As a bonus, he claimed, they were good for his teeth, a claim often made by dentists.

Real Life

 * Vampire bats rarely (if ever) bite humans; they prefer blood from animals such as pigs and cattle, which are more likely to be found sleeping outdoors than people. Human skin is also more touch-sensitive than that of livestock, making us more likely to flinch in our sleep and scare a blood-seeking bat away.