Horned Humanoid

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Molting season is not kind to his self esteem.

Whether huge and hideous or helical and handsome, having horns can hamper the head of hatless heroes and their hated foes. Habitants of Hell have traded Holy Halos for hot horns. Horns also adorn hairy hombres and hembras hermosas like crowns, highlighting the Half Human Hybrids' heterogenous heritage that fuses human with hoofed animals.

The Horned Humanoid hails from the Hellenic, characteristically hefting the horns of haughty rams, honored stags, hilarious goats and hoary bulls. Humorously, holding a single horn hardly ever confers holiness.

Not be confused with succubi and the like, they might have horns too.

Examples of Horned Humanoid include:

Anime and Manga

  • Nosferatu Zodd from Berserk. He loses one of his horns after fighting against Griffith.
  • Sabato from Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan.
  • The characters who are souls encased in armor from Fullmetal Alchemist tend to have these, notably Al and Barry the Chopper.
  • A little hanyou girl in the Inuyasha movie has tiny curling horns rather like a ram. The many oni are depicted with the traditional single horn.
  • Tony Tony Chopper from One Piece has horns coming from holes in his hat.
    • Word of God also says that horns are not uncommon on species of humanoids in the world like humans and giants, being analogous to buck teeth. For example, Moria (a human) and Oars (a giant) both have horns.
  • Several citizens of the Magic World in Mahou Sensei Negima! have these, most notably Princess Theodora, President Seras, Shirabe and Tamaki.
  • Hanyuu from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni has two horns on her head, one of which is chipped slightly. No one ever seems to notice them, or at least never comments on their appearance.
  • The demons in Chrono Crusade all have horns that mind link them to Pandemonium. Pandemonium controls their actions to a certain degree via this link and constantly supplies their "legion" cells with energy. If their horns are ever removed they must find an alternate source of power, such as a human's soul via a contract, or else they will die after their "legion" is depleted.
  • Scanty and Kneesocks from Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt, beings demons, naturally have horns. Scanty has two curved ones on the back of her head while Kneesocks has a single sharp horn on her forehead.
  • Freeza, King Cold, Captain Ginyu and Dabura of Dragon Ball fame. In Freeza's case, they're most prominent in his first and second forms (the second, in particular, looks rather Satanic), and vanish entirely when he crosses the Bishonen Line.
  • The Boazans in Voltes V.
  • The Oni in Urusei Yatsura.
  • Diclonii. That is all.
  • Aries, The Spirit King and Capricorn from Fairy Tail
    • Also Elfman while using full body Take Over, Fried while using Dark Ecriture: Darkness, and Natsu in one of the original sketches.
  • Onimaru and most of his demon servants from Yaiba.
  • Son Goku the Four-Tails from Naruto
    • And Kinkaku and Ginkaku. And Kabuto in Sage Mode.
  • Ririchiyo and Shoukin from Inu x Boku SS is this when they access their youkai heritage.
  • The two princesses of Ledomiam in Drakuun.
  • Humans posessed by demons in Blue Exorcist often look like this. The protagonist himself gains a pair of fiery horns when using his flames.
  • Digimon: Devimon, Wargreymon Flamedramon (a rhino-like nose-horn) Agunimon and Yakasmon
  • The Santovasku of Royal Blood in Outlanders have cute horns that curl over their face like big eyebrows.


Comic Books


Films


Literature

  • The beast in some versions of Beauty and The Beast, most predominantly the Disney version.
  • The Horned King in The Chronicles of Prydain.
  • Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: In the main character's dream, the king of the elves has a rack of horns like a deer. For most of the book, that's what he thinks it is. It's not until he sees the king in person that he realizes it's a crown of branches.
  • True Blood: Maryanne builds an effigy featuring a man with horns, and when she sees a pure white bull, she calls it her god. Presumably she is referring to Dionysus.
  • Thomas Burnett Swann's mythological fantasies have lots of fauns and satyrs. Even his minotaurs (both of them) are more like bovine satyrs than the classical description.
  • The Damiani in the Star Trek Novel Verse. Damiani have three sexes, with the number of horns signifying which sex an individual belongs to. The loose equivalent of females have three, one on the forehead and one above each temple, the loose equivalent of males have only the forehead horn, and the third sex has only the two on the temples.
  • This is part of what identifies demons in the web-novel Domina, along with red eyes, fangs, and (sometimes) a tail. Note that none of these are natural; demons are humans modified in specific ways by the toy maker.

Live-Action TV


Myths & Religion

  • Dionysus was often called "the horned god," and was depicted either wearing horns or actually having them.
    • And then there's Pan, the satyrs and the Minotaur.
  • Oni of Japanese legends had a single, sometimes off-center horn. Modern depictions in anime often have two-horned oni as well; when there's a literal Red Oni, Blue Oni pair, most likely one will have a single horn and the other will have two.
  • Classically, horns were thought to be a symptom, not of cheating on one's spouse, but the opposite: being cuckolded. Supposedly, the reason Oberon had horns was because Titania got around. (With no less than the personification of dreams, to hear some tell it.)
  • Cernunnos from the Celtic Mythology.
  • The male god in Wicca is often referred as "The Horned God" and is often depicted similarly to Pan and/or Cernunnos.
  • More folklore than mythology, but Herne the Hunter definitely fits this trope.
  • In ancient Canaanite mythology, bulls were an important symbol of power—hence why several major gods, including the wise, kingly El, are sometimes depicted as bulls or simply having bull horns.
  • Medieval and Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo often depicted Moses with horns, due to the Vulgate (Latin Bible translation) misreading the Hebrew of Exodus 34:35 as stating that Moses's face was "horned" (keren) instead of "shining" (karan). This contributed to the anti-Semitic belief that all Jews have horns.
    • The klezmer group The Klezmatics played with this stereotype by titling one of their albums Jews with Horns.
  • Satan is often portrayed as having horns, which probably owes something to the pagan gods describes above. Note that the only passage in the Bible that even gets close to assigning Satan a physical form describes him as a serpent instead.


Tabletop Games

  • Satyrs and Trolls in [[Changeling: The Dreaming]].
  • In [[Changeling: The Lost]], the Beast, Ogre, and sometimes even Fairest seemings sometimes have horns.
  • Horns are an option for the Fallen's Apocalyptic Form in [[Demon: The Fallen]], which, in addition to looking badass, also gives them an extra attack form.
  • Unsurprisingly a fairly common trait amongst the forces of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy Battle & Warhammer 40 K, most notably the daemons of Khorne, fitting as they do into the Big Red Devil archetype. Interestingly, many Nurgle demons have what appear to be antlers, which seems a bit incongruous until you realize that they're actually a reference to Shope papilloma virus, the so-called "Jackalope Disease".
  • In D&D from Planescape up until 3.5, tiefling characters could have horns as a mark of their fiendish ancestry. In 4th Edition, all tieflings fit the trope. (And as one might guess from that, so do several sorts of actual fiends in every edition.)
    • While Pathfinder follows the earlier editions' lead in terms of keeping horns optional for tieflings, you'd be hard-pressed to find one without them in a Pathfinder illustration prior to the release of the tiefling-specific splatbook Blood of Fiends. And even in said supplement, those with horns outnumber those without nearly two to one.
  • Standard Trolls in Tabletop Game/Shadowrun sport a variety of different types of horns, as do the Fomori, Cyclops, and Minotaur subtypes.


Video Games

  • The Hero of Fable will end up growing a nice set of horns if one is particularly evil.
  • The Succubus class from Disgaea, as well as Taro and Raspberyl from Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories and 3
  • The Desire Demons in Dragon Age look like beautiful, scantily-clad women... with horns.
    • Dragon Age II shows that the Qunari are also horned, though the ones you meet in the first game are hornless. It's stated that naturally hornless Qunari aren't all that uncommon and it's a sign that they're meant for a special role, while the others are members of a merchant caste. The mercenaries and the merchant in Awakening apparently removed their horns, something that Qunari who have abandoned their people's dogma decided to do. Despite this, interestingly, there seems to be a positive correlation with horn size and rank—Qunari grunts in the second game have unimpressive horns, more skilled soldiers larger ones, and then the Arishok's set puts Texas longhorns to shame.
  • Final Fantasy: Most notably on the summons Bahamut and Ifrit.
  • Some creatures and units in the Warcraft games. Malfurion Stormrage is an example.
    • Malfurion's brother Illidan grows horns after the Skull of Gul'dan turns him into a partially demonic being. The Satyrs are similar, being former Night Elves that were corrupted by Fell magic.
  • In World of Warcraft, female Draenei have horns, while males have large bony crests. Some ogres also have a single horn.
  • Horns are surprisingly rare in Touhou. They seem to be exclusive to Oni, and they're not the most common species.
    • Keine Kamishirasawa has a pair in her beast form as a were-hakutaku, which she decorates with a pretty ribbon.
  • Multiple types of horns are some of the many, many costume options in both Champions Online and City of Heroes.
  • Poor little Ico's fairly bovine horns are seen as a curse, and he's left to die in a haunted castle because of them.
  • Playing the Endless Setlist in Rock Band 3 will unlock one horned hairstyle for each gender of rocker.
  • Rider, from Puyo Puyo, has horns which she is ashamed of and covers with her Odango Hair. However, she learns to accept them after meeting Satan, another character with horns.
  • Legacy of Kain: Many demons, the magic missile shooting creatures in Blood Omen, and in some concept art for Soul Reaver, Kain. What he has now may or may not qualify. Precursor murals sometimes add horns to their enemies.


Web Comics

  • This is a racial feature of all the Trolls in Homestuck. The actual styles vary wildly from individual to individual though. You can get standard 'devil horns' like Terezi, curled ram horns like Aradia, goat like horns on Gamzee, even lightning bolts on Eridan. You can see all of their horns here.
    • Some of the Trolls point out how annoying their horns can be. Tavros's are so large, he cant get into his bed. Karkat gets picked on because his aren't pointed at the end, they're round. Equius is so strong, he no longer has two arrow shaped horns, he broke one off, so he has a flat one on his right side.
  • Evil Diva All the devils have them. Tails too.
  • Nudge from Wapsi Square is a trickster demigod who looks mostly humanoid, although she has long, curly mountain-goat horns, as well as hooves and a tail.


Western Animation


Real Life

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