History TheLordOfTheRings / TropesPeoples

* KeystoneArmy: Due to most of them being cowardly, simple-minded, poorly-organized, and prone to fighting other orc tribes as often as other races, the Orcs are reduced to minor threats in the Dark Lord's absence. After Sauron and his lieutenants are dealt with, the grand host assembled at the Black Gate quickly routs despite outnumbering their Gondor-Rohan opponents ten to one. By contrast, even as their allies flee, isolated pockets of Easterlings and Haradrim Men are described as fighting stalwartly. It's suggested that the remaining orcs are gradually hunted to extinction in the aftermath of the War of the Ring, never again able to muster large-scale organized resistance.

* OurOrcsAreDifferent: To a degree they ''are'', despite being the TropeNamer. Tolkien's actual orcs are much more advanced and intelligent, and not as physically powerful, than the crude barbarians AlwaysChaoticEvil orcs are generally portrayed as. They're a very diverse lot, and numerous varieties were around during the War of the Ring, largely as a result of the various dark lords breeding them like livestock to suit their needs.

** The Orcs of Mordor, also called Black Uruks or just Uruks[[note]] Uruk just means "Orc" in the Black Speech[[/note]], are the "main" breed of Orcs during the War of the Ring, large and strong and ferocious (at least, compared to other orcs; they're still shorter than Men and prone to [[DirtyCoward fleeing at the slightest chance of defeat]], hence the need for the half-human Uruk-hai). Sauron bred them during the late Third Age from the remnants of Morgoth's armies, in order to obtain a superior fighting force.
** Saruman's Uruk-hai of Isengard are more-or-less explicitly created from crossbreeding Orcs and Men and created by Saruman as elite soldiers. They're larger than other Orc types, and more upright and humanoid -- the other Orcs are usually described as hunched over and ape-like. They do not fear the sun (most of Sauron's and Morgoth's creatures cannot stand sunlight and do not travel by day) and are usually described as being better-organized and more dangerous foes than "common" Orcs.

** Adaptations portray them with distinctly non-human attributes such as green/grey skin and tusks (see for example Tim Kirk's art), but none of Tolkien's writings and letters describe such attributes. It's perfectly possible that they're just a particularly ugly and selectively bred race of Man/Elf hybrids, and thus human (which is further hinted at by the fact that Orcs and Men are apparently inter-fertile). Notably, ''Morgoth's Ring'' contains a note from Tolkien on ''The Silmarillion'' saying: "Alter this. Orcs are not Elvish."

** The section of ''Morgoth's Ring'' titled ''Myths Transformed, text ix, comments on this:

** The same source also notes that the elves called any creature that caused fear and/or horror "orc", and that they applied to the same label to what men called "trolls", so it's likely that multiple distinct breeds were simply being lumped under one term for convenience.

*** The same source also notes that the elves called any creature that caused fear and/or horror "orc", and that they applied to the same label to what men called "trolls", so it's likely that multiple distinct breeds were simply being lumped under one term for convenience.

* AmbiguouslyHuman: Adaptations portray them with distinctly non-human attributes such as green/grey skin and tusks (see for example Tim Kirk's art), but none of Tolkien's writings and letters describe such attributes. It's perfectly possible that they're just a particularly ugly and selectively bred race of Man/Elf hybrids, and thus human (which is further hinted at by the fact that Orcs and Men are apparently inter-fertile).

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: Monstrous, evil, greedy serpents directly inspired by Germanic myth; Tolkien's drawings portray them as winged, four-legged and very long and snakelike, with no horns but possessing external ears; the wings were a secondary addition, however, and the first dragons lacked them. They can hypnotize with their gaze and reach titanic sizes, and are divided between cold-drakes, who cannot breath fire, and the later ''urulóki'' fire-drakes, who can.

* OurElvesAreBetter:

* PunchClockVillain: Most of them fought for Sauron because he'd deceived and/or threatened them into joining him, and many more had legitimate grudges against the Númenóreans in general and Gondor in particular.

* MadeOfIron: They are adapted to volcanic regions, and so the fumes in the Sammath Naur did not kill Frodo, Sam, or Gollum.

* MadeOfIron: Played straigh. Literature/TheSilmarillion actually mention that Aulë make them that way, in order to resist against Morgoth and his armies.

* BornUnderTheSail: The Falmari elves were taught shipbuilding and seacraft by Ossë, a Maiar -- demigod -- of the sea, and consequently loved it more than any other elven people. They were the ones who built the swan-ships of the elves, and unlike the other elves of Aman dwell chiefly in the port city of Alqualondë and the island of Tol Eressëa.

** The Orcs of Mordor, also called Black Uruks or just Uruks,[[note]] Uruk just means "Orc" in the Black Speech[[/note]] were the "main" breed of Orcs during the War of the Ring, large and strong and ferocious (at least, compared to other orcs; they're still shorter than Men and prone to [[DirtyCoward fleeing at the slightest chance of defeat]], hence the need for the half-human Uruk-hai). Sauron bred them during the late Third Age from the remnants of Morgoth's armies, in order to obtain a superior fighting force.
** Saruman's Uruk-hai of Isengard are more-or-less explicitly created from crossbreeding Orcs and Men and created by Saruman as elite soldiers. They were larger than other Orc types, and more upright and humanoid -- the other Orcs were usually described as hunched over and ape-like. They did not fear the sun (most of Sauron's and Morgoth's creatures could not stand sunlight and did not travel by day) and were usually described as being better-organized and more dangerous foes than "common" Orcs.
** There are also several lesser Orcs in Mordor and Isengard, usually referred to as "Snaga" (meaning "slave" in the Black Speech). These appear to be used for labor and garrison duty, and are sent out to war when soldiers when numbers where needed. They tend to be described as small, impish and sneaky, preferring ambushes and other cunning tricks, while the bigger, stronger Uruks and Uruk-hai emphasize brute force and military discipline.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: Monstrous, evil, greedy serpents directly inspired by Germanic myth; Tolkien's drawings portray them as winged, four-legged and very long and snakelike; the wings were a secondary addition, however, and the first dragons lacked them. They can hypnotize with their gaze and reach titanic sizes, and are divided between cold-drakes, who cannot breath fire, and the later ''urulóki'' fire-drakes, who can.

** The Orcs of Mordor, also called Black Uruks or just Uruks,[[note]] Uruk just means "Orc" in the Black Speech[[/note]] were the "main" breed of Orcs during the War of the Ring, large and strong and ferocious. Sauron bred them during the late Third Age from the remnants of Morgoth's armies, in order to obtain a superior fighting force.

Immortal beings of unearthly beauty. Elves were "the Firstborn" -- an older race than Men, more powerful, more learned, more beautiful, and (from a mortal point of view) more "magical." They are not TheFairFolk, though, for they are no more ethereal or amoral than Men. Elves are nearly immortal -- they live forever without aging, and while their bodies can be killed, their spirits can never leave the world until the end of time.

* ProudScholarRace[=/=]ProudWarriorRace: Both, to varying extents (the Noldor are more the former, while the Sindar are more the latter), though all of them become more the former as they fade into their twilight.

* ImprobableAimingSkills: The prologue of the Lord of the Rings establishes that Hobbits are scarily accurate marksmen, not only with bows, but with stones. The films showcase this ability on occasion with Hobbits consistently making difficult shots by throwing rocks. [[RealityIsUnrealistic Fans often criticize these scenes for being unrealistic]].

* PlantHair: Depicted with this in both the book and [[TheFilmOfTheBook the movie]]. Treebeard himself has this in WeirdBeard form.
* StarfishLanguage: Just like the Ents themselves, Entish is not a hasty language. It is a tonal language filled with subtle vowels and is extremely long-winded. It is unlikely that any other race could speak Old Entish, for example the word "A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúme" is part of their "word" for "hill" (or even a part of one specific hill in Fangorn Forest).
--> '''Treebeard:''' You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Basically a racial trait. Hobbits in general are bucolic hedonists and tend to disdain nasty business like wars and adventures. However, those who push hobbits into conflict tend to find out that the pudgy little gardeners are seriously tough when they put their minds to it, and while they ''prefer'' frequent large meals, they're absurdly durable when pushed to it.

* {{Arcadia}}: Subverted. Although Tolkien's love of the English countryside are part and parcel of the Shire's conception, effort is made to show that it is no more a utopian paradise than any other nice place to live. While the Shire does have the idyllic, rural and unspoiled look of the typical Arcadia, Tolkien portrays the Hobbits as very parochial, somewhat small-minded, and generally uncaring of what goes on outside the Shire.

* BigEater: Hobbits are really, really into food. Maybe it's their small size giving them a hyperactive metabolism, but they eat more than full-sized Men. Legolas at one point comments, while Aragorn tracks Merry and Pippin, that the mere fact that they sat down to eat immediately after [[spoiler:escaping from Orcs]] proves the tracks were left by Hobbits.
* BindingAncientTreaty: The Shire is theoretically a protectorate of the King of Arnor and while Arnor no longer exists, the Rangers do, and protect the Shire from nasty artifacts of the ancient wars. Hobbit laws are based on the laws of Arnor.

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: Basically a racial trait. Hobbits in general are bucolic hedonists and tend to disdain nasty business like wars and adventures. However, those who push hobbits into conflict tend to find out that the pudgy little gardeners are seriously tough when they put their minds to it.

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: The culture of the Shire is based on Tolkien's idealized view of the English countryside... though they're also not without rural England's perceived faults as well, such as small-mindedness and an overly provincial worldview.

* {{Jerkass}}: Only a couple, like the Sackville-Bagginses and Déagol. Sméagol rather transcends Jerkass.

* MustHaveNicotine: Tolkien liked his pipe, [[AuthorAppeal so he decided to make smoking A Thing]] for Hobbits, with the Shire a major producer of excellent pipeweed.

Humans[[labelnote:*]]Tolkien preferred "Men" and "Mannish" over "human", probably because of the former words' Germanic roots[[/labelnote]]. Men are the last of the Free Peoples to come into existence (aside from hobbits, who are really an offshoot of Men) and are the most easily swayed to darkness. They possess "the Gift of Men" -- mortality and freedom from fate -- and unlike the Elves, they depart the material world after death.

** The template for modern fantasy elves, being neither the divine beings of Myth/NorseMythology nor the little pixies of Victorian time, but essentially unfallen humans. A lot of characteristics assumed in posterior works [[UnbuiltTrope are already addressed here]], however: in spite of their superiority in many aspects, Elves are still prone to mistakes and outright evil, and their immortality is treated as a curse.
** That said, much of that addressing happens in the ''Silmarillion'' and ''Unfinished Tales'', with the remaining Elves having mellowed considerably by the time of the far better known works, ''The Hobbit'' and ''Lord of the Rings''. Elrond and Galadriel, as their OlderAndWiser selves, are far better known than Feanor (who created the Silmarils and led the first Kinslaying on the way to get them back), the Sons of Feanor (who led the second and third Kinslayings, also trying to get the Silmarils back), or Maeglin (who betrayed Gondolin).
* PermaShave: In general, Elves don't grow beards until they're almost prehistoric. [[note]]Specifically, in their "third cycle of life" according to a footnote in ''The Shibboleth of Fëanor'', which also notes that Fëanor's father-in-law Mahtan was a rare exception who had one in his "second cycle."[[/note]] The only Elf in ''The Lord of the Rings'' who has one is Círdan, who's well over seven thousand years old.
* ProudScholarRace / ProudWarriorRace: Both, though more the former as they fade into their twilight.

* HeroicWillpower: Race-wide (and justified in [[Literature/TheSilmarillion the story of their creation]]). To cite the most evident example, Sauron's One Ring utterly enslaved the wearers of the Nine (and supposedly would have done so for the Three as well): the seven dwarf-kings wearing the Rings of the Dwarves were pulled toward TheDarkSide to some extent, but retained their own wills. Even their aging wasn't affected.

* OneGenderRace: Subverted. They all ''look'' male to non-Dwarves, because the women are just as flat-chested and beard-y as the men, and they all sound male too, leading some Men to think they're all guys. But Dwarves themselves can tell the difference, somehow. This is subverted in [[Film/TheHobbitAnUnexpectedJourney the first part]] of the film adaptation of ''Film/TheHobbit'', where in the prologue, the dwarven women of Erebor are depicted as noticeably more feminine.
* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: ...Kind of. Obviously, these dwarves are the template from which the modern fantasy dwarf was built, and share the now standard profile of a short, proud, mountain-dwelling and often fading people fond of smith-work and highly unfond of orcs and dragons -- but there are notable deviations.
** For just one example, these dwarves love music and song more than strong drink. Every dwarf in ''Literature/TheHobbit'' is an adept musician, and a great deal of their history and culture is passed down through song -- and among these songs, the melancholy poem of Durin in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' devotes an entire verse to the instruments that played in Khazad-dûm when the people relaxed after the day's work was done.
** Strongly averted for the Dwarven language and conceptual background -- in contrast to the stereotypical Norse or pseudo-Scottish dwarves of virtually all later fantasy works, Tolkien's Dwarves are actually a FantasyCounterpartCulture to the Jews. Their language, Khuzdul, was actually developed by Tolkien (through nowhere near as extensively as the Elvish languages) and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuzdul was explicitly based on Semitic languages]], with the intended direct comparison explicitly stated by the author himself. The backstory of the Dwarves losing their ancestral home and being forced to live in a diaspora among other cultures, with partial assimilation occuring over the centuries despite strong attempts to keep their identity, also fits the bill. The Norse-derived names of all Dwarves are mentioned to be "outer names", pseudonyms for interaction with their host societies and likely taken from these cultures (hence the similarity between the Norse-sounding names of e.g. the men of Dale to the Dwarven names) - the true Khuzdul names are never revealed to outsiders and only used in secrecy among themselves, just like the language. Think of, for example, the Spanish "''marranos''", ostensibly converts to Christianity, many of whom remained "crypto-Jews"...see the pattern? So, Tolkien's Dwarves are essentially fantasy Jews masquerading as fantasy Vikings, in a way.
* ParadoxPerson: Dwarves were not created with the world and therefore would not exist in its first designing. They were created when Aulë, the smith god, grew impatient for the first of Ilúvatar's children (the elves) to awaken; he decided to create creatures for himself. However, because he didn't have the power of true creation, they were originally little more than automatons, with no free will. Ilúvatar questioned Aulë's intentions for stepping outside the plans for the universe which led to the creation of a mockery of real life. Aulë responded that he did it only because he was compelled by his love for creating which drove him to give life to creatures to share in that love. He then repented and was sorrowfully preparing to destroy the first dwarves but because unlike Melkor he genuinely respected his creations and didn't see them as an extension of his will, Ilúvatar, seeing Aulë's grief, gave the dwarves free will. As a result, the dwarves exist in Tolkien's world, but they occupy a strange place in it: they are like the Children of Ilúvatar (elves and humans), and yet separate from them as they technically were made by the force of craft and skill.

* AmbiguouslyHuman: Per ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'', wizards are [[OurAngelsAreDifferent Maiar]]. However, what they are exactly is not explained in either ''The Hobbit'' or ''The Lord Of The Rings''.

* PowerCorrupts: Out of the five, Gandalf is the only one who we know saw through his mission to the end, and he has a decisive role in the winning of the War of the Ring. Saruman, the most powerful wizard and their leader, ends up turning to evil. Radagast the Brown appears to have gotten lost just tending to animals, and we don't hear much about the two Blue Wizards (although supplemental materials by Tolkien suggest that they stirred up some rebellions in the Eastern lands Sauron ruled).

* TokenGoodTeammate: Gandalf, although Radagast remains on the side of good but doesn't help much with the war against Sauron.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The two blue wizards are unnamed in the book and go into the east and south of Middle-Earth. What they do there, and their ultimate fate, is unknown, and Tolkien's ideas of what they did there changed throughout his life.

* NoCureForEvil: Averted. Orcish medicine is pretty good, though it tends to be somewhat painful and causes scarring. It's designed to get you back into the fight as quickly as possible, and if you're not tough enough to take it you don't deserve it.

** Firstly, there are the [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent goblins]] of the Misty Mountains, also referred to as northern Orcs or "Northerners". They're generally assumed to have descended from the survivors of Morgoth's First Age armies, who fled beneath the Misty Mountains following their lord's defeat. They're usually described as smaller than other kinds, possibly from having lived underground and on their own for so long, possibly from their ancestors not being as "refined" for war as later breeds.

* {{Arcadia}}: Subverted. Though Tolkien's love of the English countryside are part and parcel of the Shire's conception, effort is made to show that it is no more a utopian paradise than any other nice place to live. While the Shire does have the idyllic, rural and unspoiled look of the typical Arcadia, Tolkien portrays the Hobbits as very parochial, somewhat small-minded, and generally uncaring of what goes on outside the Shire.

* BadassNormal/ BadassAdorable: The Shire has only ever been invaded twice, three times if you count the wolves during the Long Winter. All three times, it ended ''very'' badly for the invaders.

* {{Hobbits}}: TropeNamer, TropeCodifier, and quite likely the UrExample.

The greatest civilization in history was Númenor, home of the Dúnedain, or Men of the West. Númenor fell to hubris and its successor states were destroyed or weakened by Sauron, leaving only the crumbling kingdom of Gondor and the scattered Rangers of the North as heirs to Númenor's glory.

* DyingRace: Dwarves have an abysmally low birth rate due to men outnumbering women three to one, and the women's frequent unwillingness to take a husband. The constant warfare after the fall of Khazad-dûm didn't help. It's implied that they become extinct some time in the Fourth Age.
* FightingForAHomeland: Erebor in ''Literature/TheHobbit'', Khazad-dûm in the {{Backstory}} to ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''.

* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: ...Kind of. Obviously, these dwarves are the template from which the modern fantasy dwarf was built, but there are notable deviations. For just one example, these dwarves love music and song more than strong drink. Every dwarf in ''Literature/TheHobbit'' is an adept musician, and the melancholy poem of Durin in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' devotes an entire verse to the instruments that played in Khazad-dûm when the people relaxed after the day's work was done.
** Seriously averted for the Dwarven language and conceptual background--in contrast to the stereotypical Norse or pseudo-Scottish dwarves of virtually all later fantasy works, Tolkien's Dwarves are actually a FantasyCounterpartCulture to the Jews. Their language, Khuzdul, was actually developed by Tolkien (through nowhere near as extensively as the Elvish languages) and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuzdul was explicitly based on Semitic languages]], with the intended direct comparison explicitly stated by the author himself. The backstory of the Dwarves losing their ancestral home and being forced to live in a diaspora among other cultures, with partial assimilation occuring over the centuries despite strong attempts to keep their culture, also fits the bill. The Norse-derived names of all Dwarves are mentioned to be "outer names", pseudonyms for interaction with their host societies and likely taken from these cultures (hence the similarity between the Norse-sounding names of e.g. the men of Dale to the Dwarven names) - the true Khuzdul names are never revealed to outsiders and only used in secrecy among themselves, just like the language. Think of, for example, the Spanish "''marranos''", ostensibly converts to Christianity, many of whom remained "crypto-Jews"...see the pattern? So, Tolkien's Dwarves are essentially fantasy Jews masquerading as fantasy Vikings, in a way.

* {{Treants}}: The {{Trope Maker}}s. In-universe, the Ents were explicitly created by the nature goddess Yavanna to protect the wilderness from the axes of civilization (and to keep the trees from becoming homicidal). They have an odd sort of immortality: they don't age and live more or less forever, but over time become stiffer, sleepier and more "treeish", rooting themselves and not stirring for increasingly long periods, eventually becoming indistinguishable from normal trees. They still live extremely long before this happens, giving them a very patient and long-term view on things: they consider reaching a decision after three days of continuous debate almost unseemly hasty.
** In a mild case of UnbuiltTrope, they have a number of characteristics later imitations lack, such as a highly variable numbers of fingers and toes and a form of gender dimorphism: male Ents live in deep forests and guard nature like later examples, but the women, the Entwives, favor agriculture and farmlands and resemble various crops and domestic trees, and were the ones who taught agriculture to early Men.

* DeusExMachina: Frequently in ''Literature/TheHobbit'' and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings''.
* GiantFlyer: Big enough to carry multiple human beings.

The sole surviving Númenórean Realm in Exile following the fall of Arnor and Arthedain and the corruption of Umbar. An exceedingly ancient civilization of learning and tradition, now a VestigialEmpire fighting continuously to survive. For all of its history Gondor has fought territorial wars against the Southrons of Harad and the Easterlings of Rhûn, and now contends with the threat of Mordor rebuilt. Hundreds of years ago the last king of Gondor was killed by the Lord of the Nazgûl, leaving no heir, and the nation is ruled by the line of the Ruling Stewards -- currently Denethor -- until the day a rightful heir -- i.e., Aragorn -- returns. See ''Characters/TheSilmarillion'' character sheet for its founding rulers, Elendil and his son Isildur.

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: If Gondor is the Byzantine Empire, then by extension Arnor is the Western Roman Empire in the period between the sacking of Rome by the Goths and the crowning of Charlemagne as the Holy Roman Emperor. The parallels are actually quite striking once you look for them: Arnor/Gondor and Rome/Constantinople both trace their lineage to a mythical homeland from which they were displaced due to a great and self-inflicted tragedy (Numenor and Ar-Pharazon's rebellion against the Valar/Troy and Paris' abduction of Helen), Arnor/Rome's fall coming after a lengthy period of decline caused by a combination of bad luck and poor decisions by their rulers, and the eventual "resurrection" of the land by a great leader (Aragorn/Charlemagne).
** The biggest differences are that Rome was the historical (as opposed to mythical) origin of the unified state, whereas Gondor doesn't trace its historical origins from Arnor, and that the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne and his various successors was very different to the former Western Roman Empire - for starters, Charlemagne had no blood connection to the Western Empire. And complicating things, like Arnor, Charlemagne's Empire fractured into three after the death of his son Louis, whose three sons claimed various pieces of the Empire). In general though, Tolkien was fairly explicit about the Roman parallels with the two Numenorean successor kingdoms.

* EliteMooks: The Uruk-hai ("Orc-people" in Black Speech, the language of Mordor), a stronger and tougher type of orc. It appears there were two distinct kinds called "Uruk", both superior to the average orc - the Black Uruks of Mordor and the Fighting Uruk-hai of Isengard - though the latter group uses the full name much more often despite appropriating it. The Uruks of Mordor were broader and were more ape-like, while Saruman's Uruks were brand-new, taller and more humanoid - and could function in sunlight. At least one Uruk of Mordor was a captain among the Moria orcs, who struck Frodo and was killed by Aragorn.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: They regard accusations of cannibalism (that is, eating other Orcs -- eating other races is fine) as a grave insult. (Though whether or not they do it anyway is an open question...)
** They regard leaving their wounded comrades behind as disgraceful: "A regular Elvish trick". On the other hand, when they find an old comrade trussed up to be eaten alive by Shelob at her leisure, they leave him to his fate... after having a good laugh at the expression on his face.
* EverybodyCallsHimBarkeep: In ''The Return of the King'', an orc called Snaga is bullied by bigger, stronger orcs. In the Appendices it's revealed that ''snaga'' is the Black Speech/Orc-language word for "slave" and the Uruks of Mordor called lesser common orcs that.
* EvilIsBigger: ''Inverted'', atypical for fantasy. On average, orcs are much shorter than men let alone elves, closer in size to dwarves and hobbits; a "huge orc chieftain" is described as Frodo as "nearly man-high." Their posture is also said to be crooked, with bent backs, making them look shorter than they already are. Only the Uruk-hai of Saruman were as tall as men, being part-human hybrids. However, the shorter breeds of orcs were also often described as very broad, so these may have been "bigger" than men in that way.

* OurOrcsAreDifferent: To a degree they ''are'', despite being the TropeNamer. Tolkien's actual orcs are much more advanced and intelligent, and not as physically powerful, than the crude barbarians AlwaysChaoticEvil orcs are generally portrayed as. And there are umpteen breeds of orcs, both because Morgoth and Sauron bred them for different uses and because they absolutely refuse to mate outside their own tribe.
** There are many variations within the Orcoid race, making each variant different from the rest - Moria or Misty Mountain Orcs are more goblin-like, while the Mordor Uruk-hai and Orcs are ape-like and muscular. In general, regular Orcs around are small, impish and sneaky, preferring ambushes and other cunning tricks, while Uruk-hai are human-sized and muscular and emphazise brute force.

* AllTrollsAreDifferent: Tolkien's trolls are giant-like monsters and beast-like intelligence.[[note]]Though, since Aragorn recognises their old cave as a typical troll-cave (which had a hinged door), trolls smart enough to build simple shelters are implicitly at least relatively common.[[/note]] (The talking trolls in ''The Hobbit'' may or may not have been artistic license on Bilbo's part.) They permanently turn to stone when exposed to sunlight. The exceptions are Sauron's Olog-hai, more intelligent trolls that are resistant to the effects of sunlight.

* "Troll-men" or "black men like half-trolls," black-skinned people from Far Harad. (Whether they're just ordinary Men with black skin that the westerners are unfamiliar enough with to find strange or actual men altered with magic to resemble trolls is unclear and varies with the source. In the original text, whether the two are even supposed to refer to the same race is unknown.)

* BarbarianTribe: The Dunlendings.

* HeelFaceTurn: After the War of the Ring, they're implied to mostly live in peace with Gondor and Rohan. (Though in the Appendices both Aragorn and Éomer waged war in the East and South in the early Fourth Age because of Sauron's still potent legacy of hatred, but even here the wars are noted to be not clashes between good and evil but simple disputes between ordinary men.)

* HordesFromTheEast: The Easterlings and Variags.

* {{Pirate}}: The Corsairs of Umbar.

Created by Morgoth in mockery of the Ents, Trolls are hulking, brutish giants with rocky skin who turn to stone when exposed to the light of the sun. Most Trolls are barely more intelligent than wild beasts and live in small groups in the hills, mountains, and caves of Middle-Earth. Shortly before the War of the Ring, Sauron bred the Olog-hai, a more intelligent breed of Trolls that were extremely resistant (or even immune) to the debilitating effects of sunlight and may have been totally unrelated to the Stone-Trolls.

* AllTrollsAreDifferent: Tolkien's trolls are giant-like monsters with rocky hides and beast-like intelligence.[[note]]Though, since Aragorn recognises their old cave as a typical troll-cave (which had a hinged door), trolls smart enough to build simple shelters are implicitly at least relatively common.[[/note]] (The talking trolls in ''The Hobbit'' may or may not have been artistic license on Bilbo's part.) They permanently turn to stone when exposed to sunlight. The exceptions are Sauron's Olog-hai, more intelligent trolls that are resistant to the effects of sunlight.

* DumbMuscle: Aforementioned trolls were also stupid enough to be easily tricked by a wizard mimicking their voices until the sun came up and they literally argued themselves to death.

* MadeOfIron: They die hard.

* TakenForGranite: Sunlight permanently turns them into stone, although the Olog-hai, a variant bred by Sauron, are immune to this.

* EliteMook: The Attack Trolls, followed by the Olog-hai.