Hybrid Monster

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Human + Horse = Centaur. Centaur + Dragon = Hybrid Monster.
I'm sorry, no, I won't take it. If we accept orc zombies, then we open the gate to all kinds of crap. What's next? Centaur dragons? How about demon fairies? Maybe buffalo elves? Heck, why not whale vultures? I'm going to make a stand for plausible monsters everywhere. Who's with me?
—Black Mage, 8-Bit Theater, #406

The logical conclusion of Half-Human Hybrid, Monster Mash, and Mix-and-Match Critters. A Hybrid Monster is a creature made up of two or more mythological, alien, monster, or fantasy creatures... or all of the above!

Despite the near infinite combinations possible, there's only a few variants of these creatures:

Note: This is NOT Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot, it can be considered a Sub-Trope of it, but differs in that it relates exclusively to non-human creatures. Compare Shapeshifter Mashup and Partial Transformation. May lead to authors using Hybrid Overkill Avoidance to limit this.

Examples of Hybrid Monster include:

Anime and Manga

  • Mahou Sensei Negima has the Griffin Dragon that Yue Ayase takes down with a ceremonial dagger.
  • The Darkness of the Book of Darkness at the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, likely a result of the Wolkenritter collecting Mana from alien magic beasts as well. Its body included the black wings and upper torso of Reinforce, the rocky protrusions and and metal plates of the giant turtle-like beasts, and the tentacles of the Sand Worms, along with other parts like giant red horns and spider-like legs it got from who-knows-where.
  • The monster from WXIII:Patlabor The Movie 3 is part human, part alien & later absorbs a Humongous Mecha as well. It also inexplicably has fish & lobster bits.
  • Ranma ½ has Pantyhose Taro's cursed form, which in his first appearance is a Yeti/Bull/Crane/Eel hybrid. By his second appearance he has also added Octopus.
  • In Pokémon Special, there is a stone statue in Eterna City that features a cross between Dialga and Palkia. This is later explained as people once thought the two beings as one.
    • And of course, there's the Zapmolcuno Biological Mashup in the first arc of the manga, a chimera created by Team Rocket by fusing the bodies of the three Legendary Pokemon, Zapdos, Moltres, and Articuno.
    • Speaking of Pokemon, Venastoise from the anime deserves a mention.
  • The Hybrid Bakugan of Bakugan Battle Brawlers are sort of the biological mashup variety in that they were created from the collision of two elemental planes. As a result, all six of them are sort of cruel mockeries of their combined elements with personalities to match.
  • Digimon Adventure 02 took quite a shine to this trope - it pretty much started with Chimeramon (and by extension, its evolved form Millenniummon from the Wonder Swan games), then proceeded to combine this with Fusion Dance for Paildramon and Silphymon.
  • The Nyokai from The Twelve Kingdoms. The more varied animal parts they have, the better. Special mention goes to Taiki's own, Haku Sanshi: she has the head and torso of a White-Haired Pretty Girl, the eyes of a fish, the tail of a lizard, and the lower body of a leopard.
    • Even her personality is Hybrid. The transfer to Wa (Neo-Japan) changes her mode of thinking from gentle mama-tiger to homicidal guardian who knows how to cause car accidents. And somehow, the demon lord that guards Taiki (don't ask) doesn't seem to care...

Art

  • Fredrik K. T. Andersson (creator of the webcomic Pawn) loves this trope, though most of his pictures are NSFW. Said dragontaur even shows up with a potential daughter in law in one of those pictures: Click here (NSFW)

Comic Books

  • Marvel Zombies had just about every Marvel Comics hero and villain turn into a zombie. Which was a space virus. We'll let you ponder the ramifications of Zombie Wolverine, Zombie Human Torch, and Zombie Hulk for yourself.
    • One of its titles crossed over with Army of Darkness Ash, it ends the comic with him escaping to a world where all the heroes are infected with lycanthropy.
      • So how would that affect say... Werewolf By Night, Beast and Tigra?
  • Disregarding the whole "space alien" backstory thing, Two-Edge from Elf Quest would technically qualify, being half-elf, half-troll.
  • The titular Monster Plus is a one-man Monster Mash - he's a vampire werewolf Frankenstein's monster zombie mummy witch doctor. Originally, he was just a Frankenstein's Monster, but when you get into the kind of scrapes he does you pick up some unique skillsets and/or bite marks.
    • You could arguably include his enemies Hitlerfist and Supermane; Hitlerfist is the monster with Hitlers for hands, while Supermane is, well, Superman with a lion head.
  • Hulkling of the Young Avengers is Half-Kree and Half-Skrull.

Film

  • This is the driving force behind the plot of Underworld, Lucian wants to create a hybrid of the (biological) vampires and werewolves so he can finally win the war between both species in his (the werewolves) favor.
    • The sequel gets interesting in this regard. While Michael is a Werewolf-Vampire hybrid, Marcus becomes a Vampire-Werewolf hybrid (which means he gets wings, but is still nocturnal). Selene herself gets "hybridized" with Alexander's blood, making her not so much a Vampire-??? as pure Badass, as well as immune to sunlight.
  • The Predalien in Alien vs. Predator.
    • Technically, the warrior aliens we are so used to seeing in the Alien series would be a alien-human hybrid (The Newborn from Alien Resurrection also would count), and the creature from Alien 3 would be an alien-dog hybrid.
  • The Fly has Brundlefly, a six foot, 185 pound, acid spwewing man/fly hybrid.
  • Splice has Dren, a female creature that is part human, and any number of other animals, depending on how many 'plug and play' samples were inserted into her DNA at the time of her conception.
  • The talking-donkey/dragon hybrids from Shrek 2 qualify.
  • In The Monster Club, vampires, werewolves and ghouls can all mate together. These hybrids can then mate to produce further hybrids.

Literature

  • The City of Dreaming Books has harpyrs, a cross between a harpy and a vampire.
  • The Xanth series abounds with this, due to the magical love springs which created the world's Half Human Hybrids in the first place.
  • Although the White Witch from the Chronicles of Narnia claimed to have at least partial human ancestry, she was actually a hybrid of giant and jinn (genie).
  • In one of Christopher Stasheff's books, there's a dracogriff. He's half griffin, half dragon. Unfortunately, this is not quite as awesome as it sounds, since griffins and dragons are bitter enemies and he's hated by both.
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; the Gryphon, obviously, and Alice also meets a Mock Turtle, a turtle with the head, hooves, and tail of a calf. The Queen of Hearts claims mock turtle soup is made from mock turtles, the joke here being that said soup is actually made of veal.

Live-Action TV

  • The cockatrice on Merlin was originally going to be one of these - [1]. But somewhere along the way it just became some kind of dinosaur thing. The makers apparently saw sense and cast the creature pictured as the Questing Beast, of which it is a fairly mythologically-accurate portrayal.
  • Big Bad Burajira Tensou Sentai Goseiger uses these as his MOTWs. Examples include an Ortaurus (Orthus + Taurus) and a Uniberus (Unicorn + Cerberus).
  • Power Rangers Mystic Force has Phineas, who was a Troblin. Half troll, half goblin. Surprisingly nice guy, all things considered.
  • Eve, the Mother of all supernatural monsters from Supernatural, is finally released from Purgatory and spent some time combining various monster traits. Dean calls them Jefferson Starships, because they're horrible and hard to kill.
  • Besides the aforementioned Tuvix, Star Trek: The Next Generation featured at least one half-klingon half-romulan. Also, of most species featured in the Borg's species registry, there exists (or existed) a cyborg-zombie variant.
    • Except for the Kazon, the only species ever deemed unworthy of assimilation. In a universe with thousands of species, that's a major burn.

Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons loves this trope:
    • There are the basic Half-Elves and Half-Orcs. However, 3.5 edition brings us Bastards and Bloodlines, a book containing of over 30 different half-breeds, from the believable (Mergs [human/merfolk]) to the silly (Aellar [elf/giant eagle]). They also provide the option of creating your own, if you find the options unappealing.
    • The monster sourcebooks contain lots of hybrid monsters, like the Drider, which is like a centaur but with a Dark Elf top half and giant spider bottom half.
    • Also, there are rules for "templates" which graft part of one monster type onto any existing one. This can be used to make half-dragon wolves or half-angel kobolds. Templates can even be stacked, to make stuff like half-fiendish half-troll half-elemental pseudonatural vampiric werecrocodile goblins.
    • There was an essay exploring the possibility of a vampire werewolf,with one of the major points of contention being whether the undead nature of the vampiric template would override the lycanthrope's shapeshifting ability. Of course this requires the templates to be applied in the proper order, as lycanthropy is a disease and undead are immune to all disease, so a vampire cannot contract lycanthropy.
    • And then, of course, there is the dreaded owlbear.
    • One of the strangest examples was the thoul. First appearing in the Mystara setting, it is a cross between a troll, gnoll, and ghoul. Exactly how two living monsters could be combined with an undead monster to create a living one is something of a mystery; one source suggested it was the result of divine magic through the cult of Yeenoghu. Even stranger, unlike most hybrids, a thoul is not sterile, a male and female thoul can mate to produce young thouls, meaning whoever created the first ones created a race onto itself.
  • Deadlands: Hell On Earth has vampire werewolves in the main handbook.
  • Magic: The Gathering has Zombie Centaurs. Does more need to be said?
  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle has, among other things, Dragon Ogres) which, confusingly enough, are not related to normal Ogres at all), Skeleton Giants, Zombie Dragons, Chaos Dwarf Bull Centaurs and Chaos-corrupted versions of just about anything.
  • This happened rarely in the Old World of Darkness—more common in the early editions, but then the writers decided that such a thing was too gimpy. There were some exceptions, such as the Abominations (werecreatures who'd been Embraced, forced to live out a hollow and torturous existence as the natural world rejected them utterly) and the infamous case of Samuel Haight, the Kinfolk turned werewolf with vampiric Disciplines and Awakened magic (who eventually got killed and turned into an ashtray).
    • Largely impossible in the New World of Darkness, where being one type of supernatural creature cuts off the chance of being another type. Werewolves are immune to the static effects of vampire blood because they're shapeshifters (though they can still be addicted to it...), mages are killed if you try to Embrace them, Prometheans don't retain any supernatural qualities of the body used to make them, and so forth.
  • Feng Shui has Abominations: all kind of demons and supernatural beasts or monsters turned into cyborgs by fascist Mad Scientists from THE FUTURE!. They even serialized the production of Jiangshi, the Chinese hopping vampires, calling the cyborg version "Bouncing Benjys." If you use your Arcanowave gear too much, you run the risk of becoming one of these things yourself!

Video Games

  • Monster Rancher, a popular take on the monster-raising genre, has this as the main monster differentiation. In any one game there'll be 20-25 base breeds. Main/Sub is the most common shorthand i.e. Golem/Golem for a Main Golem/Sub-breed Golem "purebreed." If you mix it with a Hare/Hare you might get a Hare/Golem or Golem/Hare. As such there's never less than around 250 monsters in any main game
  • The Zerg and Protoss Hybrids are part of a major story arc in StarCraft. It started in the secret mission of Brood War with Zeratul finding them in cryo-suspension on a remote dark moon, and by Star Craft 2 it has been confirmed that not only are they spread throughout the Galaxy, but they are waking up and will bring forth the end of the Universe under the command of the Fallen One.
  • World of Warcraft has Cyborg Demons, Zombie Giants, Skeleton Dragons, Vampire Elves, 10 feet tall Zombie Vikings and many more.
    • Druids can shapeshift into a Moonkin, a combination of the wisest (owl) and strongest (bear) animals.
  • Doom has Mancubi, which is a demon with guns for hands and robot legs; Arachnotrons, which are giant brains with robotic spider bodies; and Cyberdemons, which have a rocket launcher for an arm, one robotic leg each, and wires for a midriff.
    • Those aren't really hybrids, they're more like a demonic Hollywood Cyborg. Doom 3 did include a few, though. The Cherubs (half-infant-half-insect, and the Vagary (half-lady-half-spider).
  • Whilst the Castlevania series uses a lot of mythological monsters, it also creates its own, like a monster which is half zombie skull half butterfly. And half naked chick and half dinosaur.
  • Nero Chaos in Tsukihime. Technically, he started out as a human but now shares his identity with 665 other creatures, so the actual humanity he has left is essentially negligible. Capable of some degree of shape shifting between forms and also something of an ultimate killing form that isn't described very well. His body includes dogs, tigers, at least one doorshark, bears, dragons, unicorns, a blue crow, one vampire, some jaguars, giant crab monsters, stags, wolves and who knows what else.
    • Add a deer to the bunch. Or that was for his cat counter-part, Neco-Arc Chaos.
  • Touhou has Keine, a were-hakutaku. Umm... a hakutaku is something like a giant lion with extra eyes and horns. In practice, this really means that on nights of the full moon, Keine grows horns, a tail, changes in power and hair color, and gains new superpowers. Because people don't really know what a hakutaku, much less a were-hakutaku, is, fan jokes tend towards portraying her as a cow.
  • Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland has terrifying crab-slug hybrids lurking within the labyrinths found inside the park's trash cans. It's never explained what exactly they are or how they came to be; even the name of their species is only found in the manual.
  • Belial, the protagonist of Painkiller Overdose, was fathered by an angel and born from a demon, making him a half-angel half-demon. Which he will constantly remind you of just in case you happen to forget.
  • A recurring monster in the Suikoden series is the Zombie Unicorn.
  • Final Fantasy VI had the Skull Dragon, a skeleton dragon who is an optional boss that you have to defeat to get the Crusader magicite and the powerful Meltdown spell.
    • Final Fantasy XII and Vagrant Story also had skeletal dragons, and the latter threw undead variants of ogres and minotaurs into the mix as well.
    • Final Fantasy XIII gives us, at the very least, cyborg wolves and Behemoths (with Tron lines, no less!); however, as well as "recognisable" hybrids, the game also treats us to a whole menagerie of weird and wonderful mash-up monsters that defy description. In particular, this Troper isn't entirely sure what certain Annihilators like the Proudclad are supposed to be, but it can't be pleasant.
  • In Strange Journey, the crew of the Red Sprite find a demon in Mitra's palace being tortured by the other demons. An examination reveals it's made with equal parts demon and human DNA. Jiminez, showing a softer side for the first time in the game, saves its life by adding it to his Demonica and names it "Bugaboo" (the only word it can say).
  • RuneScape has Newtroosts, Unicows, Spidines, Swordchicks, Jubsters and Frogeels. You make them yourself, player.
  • Night Stalkers in Fallout: New Vegas are a cross between a coyote and a rattlesnake. They look about as strange as you'd expect.
  • Adventure Quest has Fur Against Fang as a major theme in the Darkovia region. There are also a few Werepyres running around. And then someone had the bright idea to take a Werepyre and add some Dragon to the mix, creating Nightbane the Dracopyre. His bite also infuses ordinary Vampires and Werewolves with some draconic traits.
  • Black Kyurem and White Kyurem in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2.
  • The Chimera of the Tomb from Dark Souls is a white lion with ram horns, four bird wings and a scorpion tail.
  • Monster Girl Quest Paradox has many monsters with more than one race, the pinnacle of this being the Monster Lords, who are mixtures of every natural monster race (i.e. alraune, beast, demihuman, dragon, elf, fairy, harpy, insect, kitsune, lamia, land-dweller, mermaid, scylla, sea-dweller, slime, succubus, vampire, yoma). On top of that, completing certain sidequests allows Promestein to inject your characters with monster DNA to give them additional races.

Web Comics

strip name: Uryuom Sitcoms are Insane.
William: The current known record for number of parents to a single child is twelve, and only nine of those were Uryuoms.

Web Original

  • Equestrian Legends has the Kirin. Half pony, half dragon. On a larger note, it's implied that dragons really sleep around and use life-altering magic to make sure the babies survive.
  • SCP Foundation:
    • SCP-1156 AKA Wellington Garrett Wonderhorse, as he calls himself. At first, he seems to be a typical talking horse (if such a beast could indeed be "typical") but the Foundation is big on research, and found he possesses the genetic material of horses, humans, and one other species (exactly which is classified). Oddly, Wellington claims he is one of many, though he is the only one that has been seen.

Western Animation


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