History Main / CallAPegasusAHippogriff

** Kingdra is based on a creature called a weedy sea dragon. Goomy is a dragon-type slug, probably based on the Blue Dragon sea slugs. Dialga isn't much like a dragon, though Palkia has more similarity to the European dragon, and Giratina's Origin Forme bears its resemblance to the Chinese dragon. Really, considering that most of the types don't refer to specific lifeforms (dragon being joined by bug and ghost in doing so), it's not surprising.

** Kingdra is based on a creature called a weedy sea dragon. Goomy is a dragon-type slug, probably based on the Blue Dragon sea slugs. Dialga isn't much like a dragon, though Palkia has more similarity to the European dragon, and Giratina's Origin Forme bears its resemblance to the Chinese dragon. Really, considering that most of the types don't refer to specific lifeforms (dragon being joined by bug and ghost in doing so), it's not surprising.

* There is a ''Creator/MarvelComics'' villain named Griffin, presumably because he's a winged beast, but with his humanoid face, lion-like mane, and spiked tail he more resembles a [[OurManticoresAreSpinier manticore]]. It seems like he's only called griffin under the presumption people would be more familiar with that mythical creature.

-->'''Rourke''': Tell Cookie to melt the butter and break out the bibs. I want this lobster served up on a silver platter!

-->'''Rourke''': Tell Cookie to melt the butter and break out the bibs. I want this lobster served on a silver platter!

-->'''Rourke''': Tell Cookie to melt the butter and break out the bibs. I want that lobster served on a silver platter!

** The Innistrad blocks feature "Griffins" that look an awful lot like hippogriffs... which is particularly confusing since "Hippogriff" is a separate creature type in the preceeding Scars of Mirrodin block. On Innistrad, the Hippogriff creature type is still used... but for the gryffs, creatures resembling pegasi with the heads and tails of herons more than anything else.

Compare IstanbulNotConstantinople, which is similar but for place names.

* ''Literature/{{Elvenbane}}'':
** There are carnivorous "Alicorns" (also called "One-Horns", but guess what unicorn means) in this series as well. Traditionally, this word refers to either {{winged unicorn}}s or the horn of a unicorn, although it's likely a result of centuries of RecursiveTranslation from English <-> French (unicorn -> ''une icorne'' -> ''l'icorne'' -> a licorn -> alicorn).

* In Creator/ENesbit's ''The Book of Beasts'', the hero must summon a creature identified as a hippogriff to save his city from a dragon. The creature that appears is what most people would identify as a pegasus, a winged horse. To be fair, you can't say that a hippogriff ''isn't'' a winged horse (or that a pegasus isn't technically [[MixAndMatchCritters part horse, part bird]] for that matter). It's also possible that Nesbit figured that the word pegasus must only refer to ''[[AKindOfOne the]]'' Pegasus. (Though Pliny the Elder mentioned Pegasi living in Aegypt, so the idea of multiple Winged Horses is OlderThanPrint.)

* One of the stranger examples is in the book ''Thorn Ogres of Hagwood''. A character wanders into the action about halfway through the story. He is a short humanoid with a big, big beard and he carries a lot of different tools and has a great talent for metalwork. He is [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame identified as a dwa...]] no, wait, he is a Pooka. [[TricksterMentor Pookas]] technically can [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith appear as dwarves]] but they also tend to be a lot weirder.

* ''Elvenbane'':

* In ''Film/DragMeToHell'', the classic "man-goat" demon that is after the (female) protagonist is oddly called a lamia, a creature with vastly different representations in the folklore of different European countries but that is always said to be female and most often [[EvilIsSexy a beautiful seductress]]. This is acknowledged in one scene where the demon's shadow briefly resembles that of a young woman before morphing into its usual figure.

* The undead from the original ''[[Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968 Night Of The Living Dead]]'' were called ghouls rather than zombies. Though at this stage, the idea of zombies converting people by biting them was an Inbuilt trope and most later zombie movies were influenced by this one.

* In Creator/ENesbit's ''The Book of Beasts'', the hero must summon a creature identified as a hippogriff to save his city from a dragon. The creature that appears is what most people would identify as a pegasus, a winged horse. To be fair, you can't say that a hippogriff ''isn't'' a winged horse (or that a pegasus isn't technically [[MixAndMatchCritters part horse, part bird]] for that matter). It's also possible that Nesbit figured that the word pegasus must only refer to ''[[AKindOfOne the]]'' Pegasus. (Though Pliny the Elder mentioned Pegasi living in Aegypt, so the idea multiple Winged Horses is OlderThanPrint.)

* The how-to-draw book disguised as a field guide ''Dracopedia'' claims that some mythical creatures are actually dragons. Example include:

*** The Blue Ranger's mecha was shifted from a Pegasus (by its Chinese name "Tenma" in ''Dairanger'') to a Unicorn. This could have been done to smooth over the change from the prior season's blue mecha, a Triceratops, by making a 'horned beasts' connection. The fact that the mecha has no wings[[labelnote:*]]The details painted on its sides appear to be meant as stylistic wings, but are abstract enough that they can potentially go unnoticed.[[/labelnote]] but does have a small blaster "horn" extending from the front of its mane.

In case you're wondering, the most commonly accepted generic term for [[{{Pegasus}} winged horses]] is "''pterippi''", an modern construction of the Ancient Greek words "pteron" ("wing") and "hippos" ("horse"). However they're often simply called "pegasi/pegasus" after the most famous example -- see AKindOfOne.

When a completely fantastical character is named after a commonly-known creature, see CallASmeerpARabbit, which is a sister trope. The title is a takeoff on CallARabbitASmeerp, and is a reference to one of the best-known examples.

In case you're wondering, the most commonly accepted generic term for [[{{Pegasus}} Winged Horses]] is "''pterippi''" (which is Greek for, well, ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin). However they're often simply called "pegasi/pegasus" after the most famous example -- see AKindOfOne.

** Get a drink for this one. [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/gorgon.htm Gorgons]] are a variation on the creature known as the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catoblepas catoblepas]] in more classical bestiaries. The creatures that resemble the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon Gorgons of Greek mythology]] are named [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/medusa.htm medusas]], after [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa the best-known Gorgon]]. And as if that weren't confusing enough... the catoblepas, by that name, has actually appeared in some editions of [=D&D=]. (And while -- unlike the previous two -- it's always ''fit'' one version or another of the catoblepas myth, it's always been notably distinct from the gorgon.)

** ''D&D'' has had {{Baku}} since 1st Edition, but other than having an elephant's head and trunk, these creatures had nothing to do with the DreamEater of legend -- instead they were denoted by having PsychicPowers and dwelling in the Upper Planes. So when the Asia-themed supplement ''Oriental Adventures'' was released, the result was a separate entry for a dream-walking, trunked spirit, which was dubbed "shirokinukatsukami," which might be an attempt at saying "white silk spirit" or "bedsheet spirit."

** While most of ''Magic'''s [[KrakenAndLeviathan Krakens]] are at least sea creatures, some of them stray away from the "giant squid" aesthetic that most Krakens have. [[https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/404/shipbreaker-kraken Shipbreaker Kraken]] and https://scryfall.com/card/clb/724/hullbreaker-horror Hullbreaker Horror]] have more of a crustachean aesthetic than a cephalopodal one (with [[https://scryfall.com/card/znr/49/charix-the-raging-isle Charix, the Raging Isle]] bringing the same GiantEnemyCrab aesthetic to the Leviathan subtype), [[https://scryfall.com/card/vow/246/runo-stromkirk-krothuss-lord-of-the-deep?back Krothuss, Lord of the Deep]] and [[https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/359/wrexial-the-risen-deep Wrexial, the Risen Deep]] look less like traditional cephalopods and more like Cthulhu,[[https://scryfall.com/card/cmr/403/scourge-of-fleets Scourge of Fleets]] looks like a monstrous whale, and [[https://scryfall.com/card/9ed/105/tidal-kraken Tidal Kraken]] has no tentacles and is really buff for some reason.

** The [[https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?multiverseid=2457 Hyalopterous Lemure]] borrows the name of the lemure, [[Myth/ClassicalMythology a shade of the dead in Roman myth,]] and attaches it to a lemur, a small, fuzzy animal that climbs trees. Whether this was a pun or a wacky artistic miscommunication is a riddle for the ages.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' has the problem with giving Wyverns four legs, though it often switches between the two. One time, even in the same game, as in ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones Sacred Stones]]'', promoting a Wyvern Rider into a Wyvern Knight seems to result in the Wyvern losing its front limbs and thus resembling a true Wyvern. The remakes of the first and third games changes it so domesticated Wyverns have four legs and wild wyverns have two. Part of this is because the Japanese version refers to them as "''hiryu'', which basically means "wind dragon"--"wyvern" is an attempt at a less clunky-sounding CulturalTranslation. The ''Sacred Stones'' Wyvern Knight is one of the few times that the term "wyvern" actually does show up in the Japanese version.

* ''Film/RubyGillmanTeenageKraken'' zigzags this. While the Giant Krakens are ''very'' much reminiscent to krakens of folklore with multiple tentacles and whatnot, regular krakens are human-sized and only have two legs, which make them more in-line with [[FishPeople gill-men]], pun not intended on Ruby's surname.

** Large predatory cats with bat wings and scorpion stingers. They are called manti... no, they are called ''wyverns''. Whether this is a mistake or an attempt to establish a distinct bestiary is unknown; however, these days "wyverns" are now almost exclusively referred to in the game as simply "wind riders". Early material also described them as a Gryphon and Dragon [[HybridMonster hybrid.]]
** Winged Dragons without forelegs are called ''Chimeras'', even though they fit the Wyvern definition moreso then the actual wyverns.

** ''Hippogryphs'' in the Warcraft universe look like raven-stags instead of eagle-horses and are often green, making them more resemble the semi-mythological peryton (actually a fairly recent creation, by Creator/JorgeLuisBorges). The main reason for this is likely that hippogryphs are the official flying mounts of the night elves, while the rest of the Alliance already use regular gryphons as their flying mounts, so the hippogryph designs were meant to both strongly differentiate the two and to better fit the night elves that use them.
** Also, dryads are deer-night elf centauroid hybrids, not tree spirits (these are known as wisps).
** KrakenAndLeviathan have their names switched around: "Kraken" is a massive reptilian-fish-whale while "Leviathan" is a giant octopus.

** The game is generally a straightforward FantasyKitchenSink, but for some reason the developers decided to call its tree people "dendroids" [[note]]Dendroid being a rarely-used word that means "tree-shaped"[[/note]]. Later installments switched to calling them the more common "{{treants}}".
** Like ''Dungeons & Dragons'', medusa and gorgon are split into two creatures, with gorgons being scaly bulls. This was also dropped after ''III''.