A Villain Named Zrg



Be it because of its outlandish sound or its harsh structure, there seems to be a trend of naming sci-fi villains—and especially stereotypical ones—after these three consonants (sometimes with a K instead of a G), with a random vowel in-between and possibly some letters before or after.

Compare Law of Alien Names, Xtreme Kool Letterz, Names to Run Away From Really Fast.

Anime and Manga

 * King Zarkon from Voltron would be a near-example.
 * Zork from Yu-Gi-Oh!
 * Also the cards "Dark Master Zorc" and, flipping the letter order, "Gorz the Emissary of Darkness."

Comic Books

 * Spoofed in Spirou and Fantasio with Zorglub (portmanteau of Zorg and "Arglub" which is a standard Written Sound Effect for accidental strangling in Franco-Belgian comics). Notable in that it is currently the older example known—even before Starcraft—and already a parody.
 * Calvin and Hobbes loved this trope. Besides the evil aliens called the Zorgs, there were the Zargs, Zorkons, Zogwargs, and Zogs (close).

Film

 * The Fifth Element: Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg. Especially significant as the whole movie is a reconstruction of sci-fi movies and comics of the 1970s and 1980s.
 * In the film Zathura, the evil lizard race are called the Zorgons.
 * A case of Aerith and Bob occurs in Betty Blue, where Zorg is a perfectly normal handyman in the France of the Eighties.

Literature

 * Emperor Zhark from the Thursday Next books is a near-example (in two different ways). He's the villain of his own pulpy sci-fi series, but in the metafictional main story, he's one of the good guys.
 * The Ax Crazy Prince Serg from the Vorkosigan Saga might count, because his name is pronounced "zerg".

Live Action TV

 * Babylon 5 has a humanoid predator species named Zarg.
 * Barizorg from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger.
 * Zurgane from Power Rangers Ninja Storm.

Newspaper Comics

 * Inversion: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon, who's one of the good guys.

Toys

 * Transformers has the Decepticon Scorponok's head, Lord Zarak.

Video Games

 * StarCraft: What four tropers out of five thought when seeing the title.
 * Zorg: An alien race in the video games Strange Adventures in Infinite Space and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.
 * They weren't exactly villains, though. Just... alien.

Western Animation

 * The archnemesis of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 2 is called Zurg. Another reconstruction, by the way.
 * Space Ghost's arch-nemesis Zorak.
 * The alien villain in Space Chimps is named Zartog.