Panthera Awesome

aka: Cool Big Cat

"I wanna be a lion.
Yeah! Everybody wanna pass as cats."

— Counting Crows, "Mr. Jones"

Let's face it: Cats are a huge part of the human experience. They make things cuter, they complement schemes to take over the world, their ears and tails are often added to the human form (and indeed, the feline face itself has long been described as vaguely humanoid in appearance), but there's another class of cat altogether. Ever since the first anthropoid was dragged off and eaten by a sabertooth, the large cats have invoked fear and awe in the hearts of humans. They've become the symbols of kings, empires, even gods and demons. Their pelts are gorgeous and carry with them a sense of awe. And, obviously, they have a profound impact on humans and the fiction they produce.

See its Analysis page for ways this trope applies to specific cats.

See Cool Cat for when this applies to regular cats. Regular cats and big cats like lions, tigers, or leopards and panthers (not a separate species, since panthers are merely black leopards) are an extremely popular choice as mounts or chariot pullers in fairy-tales and fantasy settings. See Horse of a Different Color and Chariot Pulled by Cats. Lions also get their own page as the King of Beasts. Also note Our Gryphons Are Different, when big cats (specially lions) are mixed with other awe-inspiring creatures, the birds of prey.

See Great White Feline for when this applies to big cats with white fur that are positioned as powerful, heroic, important or mysterious.

Despite the popular name, the Tasmanian tiger (also called the Tasmanian wolf or thylacine) is not a cat, but a marsupial. Civets are also sometimes called "civet cats" despite belonging to an entirely separate family (although they do belong to the suborder Feliformia, making them at least somewhat related to cats). By the by, these are the animals that produce the famous "poop coffee." (It is not, despite what some people think, cat poop coffee!)

While this trope is about big cats, it should not be confused with Mega Neko, which is about cats that are exceptionally large for their species.

Also not to be confused with the metal group Pantera, which is indeed awesome, but not feline.

And a different sort of Panther, Tiger and Leopard found in Germany at various times comes under the heading of Tank Goodness. Under the heading of Tanks, but No Tanks, numerous armored vehicles of all types except tanks have gathered feline nicknames. Cougar, and lynx to name just 2.

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Examples

In General / Multiple Types

Advertising

• The Magnum Double Release the Beast commercial has a black panther, a tiger, a jaguar, and a male and female lion. And a Threatening Shark.

Anime & Manga

• Animal Land features several of these among its animal cast. They range from Kurokagi, a gigantic lynx, to lions the size of small skyscrapers.
• From Cardcaptor Sakura, the true forms of Kerberos and Spinel Sun.
• Byakko from Fushigi Yuugi. He is one of The Four Gods, and his animal form is a white tiger. Made even more awesome by the fact that his humanoid form is a white-haired Bishounen.
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Island of Miracles ~Animal Adventure~: The titular island is a futuristic sanctuary for prehistoric animals, and one of it's many inhabitants is a massive sabre-toothed tiger. When Nobisuke accidentally ends up on said island, he fell off a cliff and had his fall broken when he lands on said tiger.

Comic Books

• Ka-Zar: Ka-Zar is usually accompanied by his sabretooth tiger sidekick Zabu.
• Stan Winston's Realm of the Claw comic strip prominently featured a clan of god-like anthropomorphic cats of various species. With only a handful of comics and the passing of its creator, it's hard to examine it further beyond its preservation-versus-exploitation story concept and its rather messed up royal-divine feline family (a very apt summary is available here). However, the figures remain very detailed in typical Stan Winston style and feature, among other things, Nakuru the cougar, Tare the leucistic leopard, Tswana the melanistic leopard, Kaela the cheetah, Zynda the lynx, and Sabyr the sabertoothed cat.
• Wonder Woman: In Wonder Woman and the Star Riders Purrsia's mount is a large purple cat that appears to have a mane around its neck and can fly.

Fan Works

• In the Discworld fanfic Whys and Weres, the werewolves of Überwald realise — belatedly — that they are not the only were-creatures on the Disc. For, from out of Darkest Howondaland, the Leopard Society has stirred and come to town. And when a werewolf meets were-leopards, never has the phrase "they fight like cat and dog" been more appropriate....
• In Fate of the Clans, Beast of Revelation is described as a gigantic seven-headed big cat with ten horns.
• All the cat shifters in this series of paranormal themed Emergency! fics. Except maybe Chet, who people tend to laugh at because his fur is a patchwork of various cat coat patterns.
• In Prehistoric Park Reimagined, a sizable number of prehistoric species of cat end up rescued from extinction to be put on display at the titular Extinct Animal Park. And amongst the many such species rescued, standout examples include Diego the smilodon fatalis (who proves himself quite the spirited fighter in two separate battles against Smokey the arctodus), Simba and Nala the cave lions (who prove the subject of great respect from their primary caretaker by virtue of being lions), and Eshe the American cheetah (who proves to be majestic and charismatic enough to form a strong bond of companionship with her own primary caretaker).
• Realistic Pokémon: RJ's take on Arcanine has much more pronounced feline features than the canon version, being a tiger/lion/dog cross. Raikou is also depicted as a saber-toothed cat.

Film

• Burning Bright: The Bengal tiger John bought serves as the main antagonist for much of the film.
• Similarly, although multiple animals appeared to converse with, the Eddie Murphy remake of Dr. Dolittle focused a great deal on a tiger and the movie's climax revolved around an operation to save his life, with the doctor's conversational talent critical to making this possible (first by identifying what was wrong with him, then being used to help soothe and calm him while he was being operated on).
• In the 2011 movie We Bought a Zoo, although the movie is about the zoo in general, the animal that gets the lion's share of the story focus is tigers. A male lion also makes an appearance. Jaguars are also mentioned but they never showed up.

Literature

• Two of the guardian beasts in The Darkangel Trilogy: Pendarlon is a glowing ivory lion associated with the sun; Zambulon is a four-winged silver panther. Terralon and his consort, being respectively a gryphon and a sfinx, both partly qualify as well.
• Alan Dean Foster's works:
  • In Kingdoms of Light a spell transforms a bird, a terrier, a snake and three cats into humans to return color to the drab Kingdom of Gowlands after it was taken over by an evil warlock and his goblin hordes. During the Final Battle all the animals transform into larger wild animal counterparts of their respective species. The bird turns into a firebird, the terrier into a large wolfdog, the snake into a reticulated python, and the three cats into a lion, a panther, and a leopard respectively.
  • The Journeys of the Catechist series has Ahlitah, a hybrid of lion and cheetah, who possesses his father's strength (the lion), and his mother's speed. He serves as The Snark Knight throughout the series, and The Big Guy for the first book.
  • Spellsinger doesn't have many feline characters appear, but among those which do many cats are Mooks for the bad guys: one, the sadistic Sasheem, is the first mate for Pirate Parrot Corroboc; and the heroic, badass, Dual Wielding Amazonian tigress with a Southern drawl, Roseroar, becomes a great ally to the hero of the series.
• Fengshen Yanyi: Zhao Gongming shows his taoist prowess by facing two monstrous, gigantic tigers at once (one black and one orange), taming them both with just one extended finger and using the black tiger as his docile mount. Other eminent Immortals often use tigers or leopards as mounts.
• The Honor Harrington series and its Young Adult spinoff Stephanie Harrington:
  • The hexapuma, a six-legged felinoid that only vaguely resembles Earth "big cats", and can grow up to three meters long, massing several hundred kilograms when mature. To the other six-legged felinoids, the Treecats, they're known as "Death Fangs", and with high-powered human rifles (civilian, anyway) can take several shots to kill.
  • Treecats themselves deserve an honorable mention here; they're not much larger than an Earth housecat, but they can do a remarkably good impression of a self-propelled buzzsaw if threatened.
• Naturally, both Shere Khan (tiger) and Bagheera (melanistic leopard) of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (and all of their various adaptations) fit into this category.
• Killer Species: The fourth and final book features the Swamp Cat, a hybrid of a Florida panther and a hyena (which may look like a canine species, but is genetically feline), intended to hunt and kill a single human. It doesn't succeed in this goal, but that's more through Emmet's ingenuity and other people coming to his aid than any weakness on the Swamp Cat's part.
• Although, as the title indicates, it mostly focuses on lions, Lionboy also features other types, such as tigers and leopards.
• In Moreau Series novel Forests of the Night and the sequel Fearful Symmetries the hero is Nohar Rajasthan, an 8-foot anthropomorphic tiger.
• In the Obsidian & Blood trilogy, people born on the day of the Jaguar in the Aztec calendar can summon jaguar spirits. Most people can only manage insubstantial kittens, if that; but someone with enough training can summon a war-beast capable of splitting bone with its claws.
• The early human protagonists of Quest for Fire face threats from many kinds of big cats once the titular fire is lost, most notably a giant lion (which is said to be more powerful than a rhino) and his mate, a tigress.
• The moor cats of Shannara are a fictional species resembling the panther with the ability to blend into their surroundings. They are a match for most of the franchise's monsters, including the werebeasts and the Shadowen.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, numerous fictional species of great cat appear. Westeros has the shadowcat, an animal resembling our snow leopard, except striped like a tiger. Essos has the hrakkar, a lion-like steppe cat, presumably social, like the lion.
• In Warrior Cats, the cats' mythology says that they're descended from a LionClan, TigerClan, and LeopardClan, and they have folk tales about these Clans (which Word of God says are just stories - the big-cat Clans did not actually exist). One big cat does actually make an appearance in the series — a mountain lion that preys on the local cats, who have dubbed him "Sharptooth".

Live-Action TV

• Big Cat Diaries focuses on the lives of three real big cat families each season — a cheetah family, a lion pride, and a leopard family. You get to see the real-life awesomeness of these cats in this show, although with just how hard it is to be a wild animal.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider OOO has this as Kazari's Animal Motif, with Lion, Tora (Tiger), and Cheetah Core Medals.
  • Kamen Rider Zero-One has some cats included in its assortment of animal powers: Kamen Rider Valkyrie uses Rushing Cheetah as her default form, Zero-One has Flaming Tiger as an alternate powerset, and Dynamiting Lion is used by a Monster of the Week.
• Kitty the black cat, one of the pets of The Munsters looks like a normal cat at first but he roars like a lion. Pretty Awesome.
• Super Sentai (and by extension, Power Rangers) seasons that have any animal theme at all will have at least one big cat in the mix, unless the theme specifically excludes them (Jetman is bird-themed, and there have been multiple dinosaur seasons). The one time that a general animal theme was used and there was no cat was Kakuranger/MMPR Season 3.
  • Special notice goes to Gekiranger/Jungle Fury, in which "big cats" were the de facto theme: the three core Rangers had tiger, cheetah, and jaguar powers, the Big Bad was a lion, and one mentor type Sha Fu/Master Mao is apparently a caracal.
  • Cats also make their way into the "mythical creature" seasons; as Dairanger/MMPR Season 2 and Magiranger/Mystic Force both have lions and the former also includes a white tiger. Even those that don't have cats have cat-like beasts: a griffin in Changeman and in MMPR Season 2 (which was Saban's attempt at localizing a Kirin) and a sphinx in Ohranger/Zeo.
  • Even the dinosaur seasons may not be able to escape having a cat in their ranks. Zyuranger/MMPR Season 1 and Ryusoulger/Dino Fury each include a sabertooth tiger (though Ryusoulger claims that theirs is a reptilian version of a sabertooth called a "Tigersaurus").
• Wild New World features all the big cats that used to roam ice age North America; the iconic sabretooth (Smilodon), its cousin the scimitar cat (Homotherium), the American cheetah (Miracinonyx), the Beringian cave lion (Panthera spelaea), the giant American lion (Panthera atrox), and the ice age jaguar (Panthera onca augusta), the last of which kills a glyptodont by biting through its skull! There's also the still-living cougar, who was Overshadowed by Awesome back then.

Music

• Subverted with Neko Case, who has two songs about big cats ("Last Lion of Albion" and "The Tigers Have Spoken"). Case has deep respect and sympathy for the lion and tiger in these songs, but unfortunately she seems to be the only one, as both cats ultimately suffer and die from human cruelty in their respective songs.
• Peter Criss of KISS was a "Catman". (current drummer Eric Singer also uses that make-up)
• PANTERA. Nuff said!

Pinball

• The playfield for Atari's Middle Earth pinball is dotted with several exotic cats, all of which are large, fanged, and ferocious.

Tabletop Games

• Anima: Beyond Fantasy has Arturia, the white lion that was the companion of Zhorne Giovanni, the first Emperor and Dakku, a black panther in lots of steroids that's the companion of Lucanor Giovanni.
• A fair number of units in BattleTech are named after big cats. They tend to be much more dangerous than their size implies.
  • Oddly enough, many examples share a very specific weight class—35 tons. This specific category includes light Battlemechs such as the Panther, the Puma (properly known as the Adder in Clan circles), the Cougar, the Ocelot, and the Jaguar.
  • There is also the larger Lynx medium Battlemech.
  • Tiger and Puma tanks.
  • Aircraft with Panthera family names include the Cheetah light fighter and Lion and Leopard DropShips.
  • An honourable mention must go to the infamous "Mad Cat," so named because the targeting computer of a Mechwarrior encountering them in battle for the first time couldn't decide if it was a Marauder or a Catapult and kept switching the letter code in the HUD between MAD and CAT. The nickname stuck.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Rakasta, humanoid big cats who come in much the same types as Werewolf's Bastet.
  • Catfolk appear in both 3rd Edition and Pathfinder. They seem to be based roughly off of lions in the former, leopards in the latter.
  • Third Edition also featured numerous feline based prestige classes, usually centered around gaining the ability to transform into cats, gain catlike senses or other traits, or summon various types of felines. Or any combination of the above.
  • Cats of some size has been a potential animal companion since Third Edition. In 3.5 specific kinds could be picked at higher levels at the cost of not gaining the full animal companion levelling boost, in Pathfinder from level 1 druids can have big cats (representing the big big cats, like lions and tigers) or small cats (representing smaller big cats/not-strictly-big-cats-but-larger-than-housecats cats, like cheetahs and leopards) as animal companions (rangers, when they get their animal companions, are limited to small cats, but given even those end up roughly human-sized and terrifyingly strong, agile and armoured compared to their non-companion relatives...).
  • The Epic Level Handbook also features the Tayellah, an house-sized, three-headed panther-lynx hybrid with a poisonous stinger in its tail. This thing has a Challenge Rating of 24, meaning it can eat most dragons for breakfast.
• The Lyran Empire in Star Fleet Battles names all its ship models after species of big cats, e.g. the Tiger cruiser, Saber-Toothed Tiger mauler, Cheetah frigate...
• Traveller: Played with, with the Aslan. The Aslan look like lions, however they are not even mammalian and act like many tribes of humans do.
• The Bastet werecats from Werewolf: The Apocalypse. There are nine tribes, each based on folk depictions of the animals. Simba werelions style themselves as natural leaders, Swara werecheetahs are messengers, Khan weretigers are warriors and heavily involved with the Hengeyokai, Bagheera werepanthers/leopards are judges/justice-dealers, Pumonca werecougars are travellers, Qualmi werelinxes are mystics/riddle-lovers, the Ceilican are faerie-touched Eurasian wildcats, and the Bubasti are mysterious Egyptian black cats. Unfortunately, the Bastet as a whole are difficult for players to portray. They're solitary by nature except for the Simba and Khan, but only in the context of an African or Asian setting. And like other Changing Breeds, they're an ill fit for the social dynamic of a werewolf pack. This does not stop players with Special Snowflake Syndrome from insisting on playing one.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • The Sylvan Morigami Alsei, which is a gigantic plant-like tiger.
  • Naturia Leodrake has the highest attack power among the Naturia, but has no effects whatsoever. It later becomes Leoh, Protector Beast of the Sacred Tree, who is enhanced with the armors worn by the "Constellar" and the "Evilswarm", respectively. Leoh is also a shortened version of "Leodrake". Gao is one Level higher than "Naturia Leodrake" and has 100 more ATK and DEF.
  • The very purple, very humanoid Panther Warrior is probably meant to be a melanistic leopard, but it's hard to say. It's a four-star monster with a fairly high attack rating, but one that comes at a price (requiring tributes every time it attacks).
  • Soul Tiger, a soul-eating ghost tiger, is a four-star monster with no attack power, but a very high defense rating of 2100 at no price.
  • Amazoness Tiger is another four-star tiger monster with the potential to balloon up to a beefy 2700 attack rating just by being around other Amazoness cards.

Toys

• Primal Rage's toyline had the, well, toyline only Slash Fang, a character who was supposed to show up in the cancelled sequel, and showed up in the novelization of the story. He's a giant two-legged sabretooth tiger, as his name implies.
• Transformers. Every group of animal-based 'bots will have at least one cat in the mix, sometimes breaking the only-one-of-each-type rule that most such teams would be expected to have. (The original Predacons have a lion and a tiger, the early Maximals have a tiger and a cheetah). Even several series with mostly vehicle types tend to have a kitty as one of the few animal-based 'bots.

Video Games

• Age of Empires series:
  • Age of Empires III: The whole package of big cats appears with Asian Dynasties expansion. Jaguars, cougars, lions, tigers, white tigers, snow leopards and leopards, in the form of black panthers. They are all quite nasty to face, especially the ones available as trainable units.
  • ''Age Of Empires II: The Conquerors only has jaguars. And the elite unit of Aztec Civilization is Jaguar Warriors.
• Bayonetta: The Umbra Witches can use the Beast Within to turn into felines so they can run faster. Bayonetta can turn into a panther, Jeanne into a lynx and Rosa into a tiger.
• Bloody Roar went nuts with the were-felines as the series progressed. It started with Gado (lion) and Long (tiger), then introduced Shina (leopard), Shenlong (another tiger), and Uriko (Cat Girl).
• Dynasty Warriors series. Players can ride tiger or sabretoothed tiger using saddles or have the as companion using collars.
• The Elder Scrolls Online includes Senche cats native to Elsweyr and Valenwood. They come in several forms, including Senche-Tigers, Senche-Panthers, and Senche-Lions. While they are not related to the Cat Folk Khajiit, they are commonly found as Khajiit pets and guard animals. While other races see them as little better than wild animals, Khajiit are said to "sense an intelligence" in them that the other races do not.
• With Everything Trying to Kill You in the Far Cry franchise, starting from the third game onward, that includes big cats. Far Cry 3 introduces leopards and tigers (not out of place in the vaguely Indonesian setting of the Rook Islands), along with a few mountain lions (which are out of place). Far Cry 4 keeps the tigers, but due to the Himalayan setting, replaces the leopards and pumas with clouded leopards and snow leopards. Far Cry Primal introduces prehistoric big cats, such as European jaguars, sabertooths, and cave lions, but they're considerably less dangerous towards Takkar, since he's The Beastmaster, and can tame them. And in Far Cry 5, you have a pet puma called Peaches who you can use against the Project at Eden's Gate.
  • Special points go to the white tiger who accompanies Kalinag in the Shangri-La missions in Far Cry 4, a mystical creature with Resurrective Immortality and a penchant for killing Rakshasas.
• Coeurls in the Final Fantasy series tend to appear as large cats with long whiskers, and have a powerful psychic attack.
• The Ronso, a Proud Warrior Race of tribal, one-horned big cats found in Final Fantasy X's Spira.
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn have the Beast tribe laguz which consist of lions, tigers, and "domestic" cats, among other things. King Caineghis (lion), Skrimir ('nother lion), Giffca ('nother lion) and Ranulf (cat) are the most badass of the bunch. The backstory has the White Lion, Soan, who's halfbreed descendent is a recruitable Master Swordsman in both games.
• The Shaolin Temple stage from Gang Wars have a Wolfpack Boss, a trio of tigers that attacks you from all sides. They can maul off plenty of health from your life meter if you're not careful.
• Guild Wars has the charr, who are playable in Guild Wars 2. Also, they have horns.
• Jitsu Squad have the boss, Frost, who's a white tiger-humanoid and one of the game's most powerful bosses, and rules the winter-themed Frosthaw Fortress level. He's also An Ice Person who uses his powers to antagonize the players.
• All the Knights of Valour games have panthers and lions as recurring enemies, usually appearing in forest environments and commanded by barbarian warriors. There is a stage in an enemy battleship where you can access a secret area... and end up in a room full of panthers you'll need to slay to escape.
• While Polterkitty from Luigi's Mansion 3 is usually a ghostly housecat, she will transform into a large, dangerous panther-like monster whenever cornered.
• Primal Rage's cancelled sequel was to have a giant sabretooth tiger amongst the pantheon of pre-historic gods, named Slash Fang.
• The Warcraft series and its sequel MMO World of Warcraft
  • Large cats are particularly associated with night elves. Priestess of the Moon heroes and huntress units in Warcraft III rode Nightsaber^note Think of a black panther, but with a tiger instead of a leopard or jaguar, and sabre-toothed mounts, and these same animals became the racial mount for night elves in WoW. In addition, night elf hunter characters start with a nightsaber as their pet when they are first created.
  • Druids learn Cat Form early on the in the game, which is the form that allows them to deal melee damage. Night elf druids become panthers, trolls become tigers with tusks, and tauren and worgen become lions.
  • Lions feature heavily in the heraldry of the humans as well. Anduin Lothar, a legendary human warrior from the Kingdom of Stormwind, was called the "Lion of Azeroth," and a lion emblem is front-and-center on the crest of the Alliance, one of the two major playable factions. Many players have pointed out that this makes little sense, as no lions can be found on the Eastern Kingdoms, the continent where humans hail from.^note When asked about this, the devs' retort was that Uther Pendragon's crest had dragons on it, but there were none of those in England!
  • The Shado-Pan, an elite society of Pandaren warriors and monks introduced in Mists of Pandaria, use variously-colored tigers as mounts. Players can ride them as well upon reaching sufficient reputation with the faction.
  • Also introduced in Mists was Xuen the White Tiger, one of the four Celestials who watch over the continent of Pandaria. Xuen embodies the "warrior spirit" of Pandaria and especially the Pandaren.
  • Finally, many, many varieties of Cat exist for hunter characters to tame. They can be found all over the world, and some are unique in some fashion and highly sought after.
  • The Legion expansion introduces panther Wild God,^note An alternate name for the Ancients Ashamane. Her fangs form a pair of daggers which Feral Druids use as their artifact weapons, which alters their Cat Form to look like her.
• The superboss in The World Ends with You, Sanae Hanekoma Panthera Cantus. His noise form is a Palette Swap of Tigris Cantus and Leo Cantus at the same time.

Webcomics

• One of the shapeshifting Beings in But I'm a Cat Person is normally a tiger. In spite of the usual one-species-only limit on its kind, it can also turn into certain related cats like a leopard and an Iberian lynx. (The reasons are only apparent if you study ancient Greek and Sanskrit.)
• Panthera. It's about a bunch of teens with attitude who can use magic to transform into giant feral cats.
• The Suburban Jungle: The star, Tiffany Tiger is a Siberian tiger. One of her coworkers, Dover, is a cheetah. The owner of the local watering hole is a lion. Tiffany's sister, Comfort, and Dover eventually get married and their daughter winds up getting her own comic.
• TwoKinds: From the first page, this Furry Webcomic has featured a tiger Kiedran. Recently, it added a snow leopard barkeeper and her shy but adorable young daughter.
• The Whiteboard has several feline characters listed on the cast page.
  • Primary supporting characters:
    • Pirta, a snow leopard
    • Cassiopeia, and her daughter Kassi, cheetahs
    • Robert "Snowshoe", a Canadian lynx
    • Tawny, a bobcat
  • Background characters:
    • Mr. Quisenberry, Jake the skunk's boss at the bank, is a lion
    • Duncan, One of Jake's coworkers, is a puma
    • Anthony, a tiger contractor who repairs Doc's oft-destroyed shop

Web Original

• The Wanderer's Library has Nigerian lava cats.
• A series of YouTube videos that showed that big cats can (and do) sometimes behave like large versions of domestic cats. (Which, biologically, they are.) For example, this one that shows them playing in cardboard boxes.

Western Animation

• The Mutates from Gargoyles were Xanatos and Sevarius's attempt to recreate the eponymous creatures via LEGO Genetics; they used DNA from various big cats as the best counterpart for a gargoyle's strength and agility, and the finished Mutates each resemble a different big cat- panther (Derek Maza/Talon), lioness (Maggie), mountain lion (Fang) and tiger (Claw).
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): Cringer/Battlecat is a tiger, specifically an Eternian tiger which means his coat's background colour is green and his stripes are yellow. His Evil Counterpart was Panthor, a giant panther.
• The Pink Panther, who would go under Black Panthers if he weren't, you know, pink.
• ThunderCats (2011) have its Beastfolk Cats who tend to work under the principle of Animal Theme Naming/A Dog Named "Dog".

Real Life

• Big cats, but especially the Lion, are amongst the most common devices in heraldry.
• The German Army has gotten in on the trope via Theme Naming of their armored vehicles: Pumas and Panthers and Tigers, oh my. Leopard II tanks are the most modern in the series. (The whole "big cat" thing might have something to with the fact that the German word for armor in general is panzer...) There was also a Lynx light recon tank in Hitler's menagerie. This trope is somewhat subverted in that — seemingly having run out of cat names - the very largest tank fielded by the Germans, at way over 100 tons, was called the Maus.
• Apple has codenamed every version of OS X from 10.0-10.8 after one of the big cats. xkcd even pointed out sabretooth tigers need to come next... but to everyone's disappointment, Apple decided to switch to names of places in California, starting with the Mavericks surfing area. It's a shame we're never going to get a Mac OS X Ocelot.◊
• Pitting lions and tigers against each other has been a common theme throughout history in both literature and real life, ranging from scholarly comparisons to actual arranged fights.
• Lions are a favorite heraldic symbol competing with eagles in popularity. Some heraldic artists Take a Third Option and use a Gryphon which is after all both an eagle and a lion so to speak. Venice used the "Lion of St Mark" (a winged lion) as a national symbol and England uses a Lion. You would think naval power like England would prefer a shark or some other badass sea creature. No matter.
• Related to the above, the Royal Coat of Arms of England has three lions, and those have represented the country or the UK everywhere, from coins of the pound sterling to several emblems of English national sports teams (such as the England football one - the English Premier League also had a a lion at their logo before a rebrand).
• Big cats of all types are far and away some of the most popular mascots for universities and sports teams, owing to their popular image of awe and ferocity. Among the most common are Tigers (Princeton, RIT, LSU, for example), Panthers (Pittsburgh, Florida, Georgia State), Lions (Columbia, Penn State), and Wildcats (Arizona, Kentucky, Kansas State). Of course, these are just a few examples, and it would be impossible to list them all — and that's without even getting into any high school teams.
  • RIT in particular went the extra mile with this in the 1960s, by purchasing a live tiger whom they named Spirit^note short for Student Pride In RIT to care for and bring to sporting events as their athletics mascot. Sadly, he eventually had to be put down due to a rare bone disorder; today, he is immortalized in the form of a bronze statue in the center of the campus, overlooking the Quarter Mile.
• Unusually badass Sherpas are honored with the title of "Tiger".
• Whether it's positive or not, it's up to you: in Brazil, the nickname since 1979 for the income tax is "lion", originating from a campaign from the local IRS associating said tax with the animal.
• The Aztecs had Jaguar Warriors.
• Two of the Shaolin Animals are big cats, the Tiger (brute strength) and Leopard (agility/stealth). Actually, technically 3, if you count Snow Leopards (in addition to the main 5 animals).
• Some models of car are named after big cats, such as the De Tomaso Pantera, the Mercury Cougar, and the Sunbeam Tiger.

Lions

Anime and Manga

• In the old anime Beast Fighter, Shinichi Kuruma can transform into a mishmash of animals, a lion being one of them.
• Leone in Akame ga Kill! wields the Imperial Arms "Animal King: Lionelle", which gives her lion-like features as well as enhanced physical strength.
• Beast Wars II had Optimus Prime (Convoy in Japan) expy and white lion Lio Convoy leading that series' group of Maximals (Cybertrons).
• Mila-Rose from Bleach.
• Kerberos/Kero from Cardcaptor Sakura, specially in his true form.
• Digimon:
  • Provides an extensive family of lion-based Mons, all of which are afflicted by a Running Mythology Gag: if you see one in an incarnation of the franchise, it's a pretty good bet that he'll be a literal Sacrificial Lion. The most well-known and founder of the gag is Leomon of Digimon Adventure and Digimon Tamers; other lions include Loewemon, BantyoLeomon, MadLeomon and Apollomon. All these characters died at some point; Apollomon even died twice!
  • Some other examples that exist outside of the "running gag": Baihumon, one of Digimon's Four Sovereigns; Mihiramon, the Tiger Deva from Digimon Tamers; Lynxmon, who is also on fire; and many, many more.
• Leonmichelle and Gaul from Dog Days.
• Heinkel the Chimera in Fullmetal Alchemist transforms into a Lion/Human hybrid.
• The lion's share of entries in the Brave Series have leonine features (almost always having a lion head somewhere), a fair amount turning into giant robot lions themselves.
  • Brave Exkaiser has the titular Exkaiser, who has a lion head on his chest in every form except for that of Dragon Kaiser. The lion head is also armed with fire breath and laser eyes.
  • The Brave Fighter of Legend Da-Garn has Ga-Orn, who turns into a lion. In robot mode, the lion head is his head, with face inside the jaw. He's armed with missile launchers in the shoulders called the G-Ballista, a machine gun called the G-Vulcan, and a laser cannon called the G-Cannon. The latter two can combine into the G-Buster, but Ga-Orn can't handle the recoil.
    • In episode 29, Da-Garn X combines with Ga-Orn to form Great Da-Garn GX. In addition to inheriting the above weapons, Great Da-Garn GX can actually use the G-Buster, renamed to the GX-Buster. He can also use a rapid-fire variant by putting the G-Vulcan in front of the G-Cannon.
  • The Brave Express Might Gaine features Lio Bomber, who also turns into a bullet train and a lion. He combines with Bird Bomber and Dino Bomber to form Tri Bomber, Later on, Triceratops robot Horn Bomber joins the group, allowing them to form Battle Bomber.
  • The Brave of Gold Goldran has Kaiser, the lion companion of Leon. They combine to form Leon Kaiser, who, like Ga-Orn before him, uses the lion's head as a headpiece. He largely fights with the Kaiser Javelin, used for Finishing Move Great Punishment.
    • Also shared with Ga-Orn is the ability to combine with the nominal Brave Robot, in this case Sky Goldran. The result is Great Goldran, who keeps Kaiser's head on his chest. There's a large portion of Kaiser's body that doesn't have anywhere to go on the body after the combination. To rectify this, the torso is used as the Great Archery, a bow longer than Great Goldran is tall. Usually when Great Goldran is formed, he instantly shoots at the Monster of the Week with Golden Arrow - Final Shoot. This more often than not gets the job done.
  • Brave Command Dagwon's Lian is an giant alien robot who turns into a sword and has a lion's face on the hilt/chest. He seeks revenge against Arch Seijin after he caused a Glacial Apocalypse on his homeworld, the Sword Planet, and upon finding out that Sargasso, where Arch Seijin is confined, just had a mass breakout and all of the prisoners are running roughshod on Earth, he travels there. Serves as an Equippable Ally to En in all of his powered-up forms.
  • GaoGaiGar in GaoGaiGar is made of a robotic lion named Galeon and other mecha. Pilot Gai Shishio's last name means "Lion King".
    • Gai's father Leo and uncle Liger have a lion theme in their first names.
  • In GaoGaiGar FINAL Renais Kerdif Shishio, Gai's cousin, lacks a lion first name, but has the title of 'Lion Reine'.
    • GaoFighGar, the upgrade to GaoGaiGar in FINAL, lacks a lion head due to not having Galeon as a component.
    • Galeon returns later on in FINAL with a suite of robot animals to form Genesic GaoGaiGar.
• Kimba the White Lion: Kitty's uncle Specklerex is a spotted Lion, most likely actually a Leopon (Leopard/Lion Hybrid).
• Teika from Kyouran Kazoku Nikki.
• Post-timeskip in Naruto, Hinata Hyuuga begins using an attack called Gentle Step: Twin Lion Fists, coating her fists in purple energy in the form of lion heads. She later upgrades it to Eight Trigrams Twin Lions Crumbling Attack.
• Saint Seiya:
  • Leo Aioria wears the Leo Gold Cloth, based off the zodiac sign. His eyes and explosive personality are often compared to that of a lion, and he's nicknamed "The Golden Lion".
  • His Expy ancestor from Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas Leo Regulus, as well as his Parental Substitute and former Leo Saint Ilias.
• Season 3 of Shakugan no Shana had minor villain Purson, a man with a lion's head and a lion's roar.
• In Shinzo, Kutal's Hyper Mode turns him from a fat cat into a powerful lion.
• In GoLion (and its american adaptation Voltron), the titular Humongous Mecha is formed by five lions.

Art

• The Lion Monument in Lucerne commemorates the Swiss Guards who died in the French Revolution by depicting them as a dying lion.

Comic Books

• Living in the savanna with a pride of lions is what turned Catman from a joke-villain into an incredible badass.
• In Usagi Yojimbo, Usagi's sensei is a lion. It also features cat-ninja. His previous master also appeared to be a lion.

Fan Works

• George does a lion at one point in With Strings Attached to knock Aurion over while she's wielding the mind-controlling sword Brox's Kiss. He had intended to knock the sword from her grasp, but she kept hold of it. Being an Actual Pacifist and still fairly new at this shapeshifting stuff, he finds himself clueless as to what to do next, since he's obviously not going to chew her face off. At least his paws on her chest prevented her from screaming out an order to her minions.
  • Having learned his lesson, the next time he needs to do something like this (in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World), he becomes a gorilla, though this also proves problematic since he can't talk in this form and he desperately needs to tell Paul something.

Film

• The 1965 movie Clarence the Cross-eyed Lion and the 1966 spin-off TV show Daktari both featured Clarence, a male lion who happened to be cross-eyed. In the movie, he's captured after raiding the livestock of a village — it's discovered that due to his crossed eyes he sees double and cannot hunt wild game. He's taken to the local vet clinic and adopted by the veterinarian's daughter. The TV show focused more on the vet, his family, and dangers-of-the-week (often poachers or criminals trading in wild animals,) but Clarence was still a major character.
• In Jumanji, the game conjures a huge male lion to menace the protagonists. Alan traps it in a bedroom and it spends the rest of the movie sleeping, only getting out near the end.
  Peter: [reading the Jumanji rhyme] His fangs are sharp, he likes your taste. Your party better move post-haste.
• At the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Rexy the Tyrannosaurus rex breaks into a zoo and roars at a male lion. Facing up against an animal much bigger than him, the lion roars right back at the dinosaur.
• With The Lion King (1994), the Disney Animated Canon shows how lions literally rule.
• In Robin Hood (1973), Prince John and King Richard are depicted as lions (Richard with a mane, John without).
• Rogue (2020): At nightfall, the group find themselves stalked through the ranch by a lone lioness who had slaughtered the previous occupants after escaping from her cage.
• From movies based on the Ultra Series:
  • The Don Dragon from Ultraman Cosmos: The First Contact is a peaceful monster modelled after lions, with a furry mane to compensate. It didn't have much of a role here, but shows up in the sequel, Ultraman Cosmos vs. Ultraman Justice: The Final Battle, eight years later (In-universe) where it assist humans to defend the world from the Gloker invasion.
  • Gukuru Shisha from Ultraman Geed The Movie: Connect The Wishes! is based on an Okinawan shisa, and a benevolent guardian monster who assists the Ultra-heroes in defending Okinawa (and to an extent, the world) from the Galactron army. Despite having only claws and fangs, it can defeat Galactrons, Humongous Mecha monsters armed to the teeth with lasers and missiles.
• Samson and his son Ryan the Lion from 2006 movie The Wild.

Literature

• David in Animorphs acquired this morph and for a while displaced Jake as the only big cat in the group. They even had a big cat showdown where David nearly killed Jake when Jake's usual bite-the-neck tactic didn't work thanks to the mane. Later, James, the leader of the Auxiliary Animorphs, also had a Lion battle morph.
• Born Free: book in 1960, film in 1966. A lioness, raised from a cub in captivity, is rehabilitated to life in the wild. In the late 50's the idea of rehabilitating captive animals for successful life in the wild was not widely accepted or attempted. The Adamsons may have been the first to try it.
• One of the protagonists of Erin Hunter's Bravelands series is a lion named Fearless. He lives up to his name.
• The Chronicles of Narnia:
  • Aslan — Jesus Christ is a lion, get in the wardrobe!
  • Another lion was petrified for most of the first book. He eventually fights alongside Aslan in the final battle against the White Witch after being freed.
• In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "The Tower of the Elephant", the title tower has lions in the garden to guard it.
• In Sarah A. Hoyt's Draw One in the Dark, Tom and Kyrie are aided by a mysterious lion, which they deduce has to be a shape-shifter, like them.
• The Mummy Monster Game: In book 1, during the challenge for the final piece of Osiris's mummy, the third and final monster that tries to kill the player is the front legs and torso of an enormous lion, bigger than the Sphinx, which is initially mistaken for a cliffside due to its size.
• Lions (called "Numa") appeared in several of Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan stories.
• The Way of Kings (2021) is novel by Louise Searl about a pride of lions. They see themselves as the King of Beasts.
• Zamba, the story of Dr. Ralph Helfer's tame lion who was his first and biggest example of successful affection training, and a star of numerous TV commercials and movies in the 60s and 70s.

Live-Action TV

• The house pet of The Addams Family is an adult lion. For them is like a kitty and he behaves as such. But for the unfortunate visitants is very often the reason why they end running scared out of the property Benny Hill style.
• Old Tokusatsu show Kaiketsu Lion-Maru, whereas the protagonist is a mystical swordsman named Shishimaru who can turn into an even more fearsome swordsman with the head of a lion, called 'Lion-maru'.
• Super Sentai and Power Rangers tend to include a lot of big cats in their series, and a large majority of them are lions. See the entry in King of Beasts for details.
• Ultraman Leo, complete with the theme song verse "The eye of the lion is shining" and a lion's head (it roars in Episode 2) standing in for Leo's home planet in the L-77 nebula.

Music

• Beckah Shae's song "Lioness" uses lionesses' grace and strength as a metaphor for empowerment.
• Xandria's song "The Lioness" describes a lioness hunting in the desert — from the perspective of her prey.
• Counting Crows' song "Mr. Jones" contains the lyrics "I want to be a lion / We all want to pass as cats."
• Annihilator's song "King of the Kill" viscerally describes an apex predator prowling the jungle at night. Jeff Waters said in an interview that he and John Bates wrote the song to be about a lioness on the hunt, but decided against calling it "Queen of the Kill" because it "sounded like something from The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack."
• Commander Meouch of Tupper Ware Remix Party is a humanoid lion who can play the bass like no other.

Mythology

• One of Hercules's Twelve Labors is killing the powerful Nemean lion that's apparently invulnerable. When no weapon seemed to harm it, he choked the lion to death. Then, he used its own broken off claw to skin it, and wore the pelt as armour.
• The Greek goddess Rhea is sometimes shown riding a chariot drawn by lions.
• David, in The Bible, bragged to Goliath about killing lions with his sling and staff as a shepherd.
• Ancient Egypt admired and feared the strength of the lion. As such, many of their deities are depicted as leonine.
  • Some of the most famous are the goddesses Sekhmet ("the powerful one") and Bastet (though she became more associated with housecats starting in the Late Period).
  • Sphinxes — lions with human, ram, or hawk heads — are associated with divine power like that of Horus (especially in the case of hawk-headed sphinxes) and of the aforementioned Sekhmet. Pharaohs were often depicted as sphinxes; for example, the famous Great Sphinx of Giza is widely believed to feature Khafra's face.
  • The demon Ammit, which ate the hearts of people who were judged to be sinful, had the body and head of a lion, but the jaws of a crocodile and the hind legs of a hippo. Because those were the three most dangerous animals the Egyptians knew.
  • The god Maahes ("he who is true beside her", "one who can see in front"), whom many scholars believe was a foreign deity (specifically from Nubia and the Western Desert) who was later added to the pantheon, is depicted as a lion-headed man and is usually styled as the son of whichever deity was considered chief at the time (Ra or Ptah) and either Bast or Sekhmet. A god of war and weather, he was called upon to fight the serpent Apep during Ra's nightly voyage; he was also considered the protector of the innocent and the slayer/devourer of the guilty, in a more good-aligned mirror of Ammit, and as such also had the titles Lord of Slaughter and Wielder of the Knife.
• The Asian Lion Dogs found all throughout eastern Asia as statues or grotesques (variously known as Shishi, Haetae, Chinthe, and Shisa). They were thought to bring about good fortune and drive away evil spirits, and, most importantly, looked completely badass.

Professional Wrestling

• George Hackenschmidt's Red Baron was "The Russian Lion." He was born in Estonia, but it's not a case of Fake Nationality, since, at the time he was born (1877), Estonia was part of the Russian Empire.
• Chris Jericho used the Red Baron "Lionheart" prior to coming to WWE in 1999. His Boston Crab Finishing Move, later renamed the "Walls of Jericho", was called the Liontamer, and his second-rope moonsault is called the "Lionsault".
• Distaff Counterpart: The Japanese woman wrestler Lioness Asuka.

Sports

• The Detroit Lions football team. Considering their typical performance, it's a subversion.
• The Brisbane Lions of Australian rules football.
• In the other big four American sports, most teams with a regal name have a lion as mascot (Los Angeles Kings, Sacramento Kings, Kansas City Royals) and might have them right in the logo (Manchester Monarchs, Reading Royals).
• In Association Football, there's Major League Soccer's Orlando City S.C. (and Distaff Counterpart Orlando Pride) and Brazil's Sport Recife.

Tabletop Games

• Wemics, the tribal liontaurs of Dungeons & Dragons.
• Kings of War has Basilean Grand Master Gnaeus, who rides on a lion.
• The White Lions are chariots used by the High Elves of Warhammer, drawn by (you guessed it) white lions.

Theatre

• In the Play Within a Play in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Thisbe is menaced by a lion.

Video Games

• Leonyx, from Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2, is a colossal, humanoid lion that dualwields swords. He is also one of the strongest monsters in the game. He's Leomon on steroids.
• In The Elder Scrolls series background lore, werelions are a type of were-creature most commonly found in Elsweyr, Black Marsh, and Cyrodiil. They've yet to make an appearance in-series, however.
• The Piraeus Lion from God of War: Ghost of Sparta, a really big lion with a bloodstained mane and old weapons lodged in its skin. A cowardly acolyte of Ares who refused to accept Kratos as his replacement sets the Lion on the Sociopathic Hero. Kratos being Kratos, the Lion eventually loses.
• Mareg from Grandia II is a Little Bit Beastly warrior (although his thick, mane-like hair and strong sense of smell add to the trope) who makes for a powerful ally. Too Cool to Live, however.
• Leongar from Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a humongous lion who serves as the Beast Pack's leader, and he puts up a fierce fight with the titular pink puffball upon encountering him in Lab Discovera.
• Slash Beast from Mega Man X4 has a lion design despite his name. His Japanese name (Slash Beastleo) shows it, though.
  • From Mega Man ZX, Fistleo the Predatoroid. He even gets a fire mane when he powers up to fight.
• The "Garu" breed introduced in Monster Rancher 4 is a humanoid lion.
• Jax's Animality in Mortal Kombat 3, a lion.
• Pokémon:
  • The Growlithe family are inspired by guardian lions/foo dogs.
  • Entei has characteristics of lions.
  • The Shinx family are lions with elements of Egyptian sphinxes.
  • The Litleo family is another candidate most notably Pyroar.
  • Solgaleo is a giant white lion with a sun motif.
• Liontaurs, the official race of the land of Tarna in Quest for Glory III. Most of them are badass warriors or mages and obsessed with honor and glory. One of the main characters of the game is Rakeesh the paladin, who is a sort of mentor to the hero.
• Spelling Jungle: One of the four deadly animals in Spelling Jungle, lions guard their den fiercely and charge Wali if he gets too close, but retreat when he gets far enough away.
• In freeware video game Stranded, you could encounter lions in the deserted island where you are marooned.
• That One Boss from The World Ends with You, Sho Minamimoto as Leo Cantus.

Webcomics

• Unsounded: The ancient Gefendur invaders of Tain rode giant lions more intelligent than those in our own world. After lions were used to hunt down and tear apart the traitor twice over Ssael the nascent religious cult he was building used them as a symbol of being freed from an imperfect body, and the Gefendur started slaughtering their lions, in their fervor eventually killing off not only all the lions but every cat in Kasslyne. Thus cats are extinct by the time the story starts.

Web Original

• SCP-1732. Apparently, the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus was in actuality a sentient talking lion...who took a decidedly hands-on (paws-on?) approach to Christian dissidents.

Western Animation

• Tangath Toborn of Chaotic.
• Kalus from Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5.
• Lambert the Sheepish Lion wherein Lambert was mistakenly delivered to a flock of sheep by a confused stork and grows up thinking himself to be a funny-looking sheep until the day when he saves the flock from a wolf.
• Since The Lion King has lions as most of the cast, they would qualify. Protagonist Simba, antagonist Scar, love interest Nala, mentor figure Mufasa, the list goes on.
• Steven Universe has his Lion (that's his name), a mysterious, silent, magical lion that Steven found in the desert. Lion seems to have all sorts of powers, like a pocket storage dimension in his mane, can unleash sonic roars, Walk on Water, open portals to places by roaring, and is implied to have been linked to Steven's mother (an alien who gave up her physical form to have him, and passed her magical gem to him, making him half-human). The fact that Lion's fur is pink contributes to this idea.
• In ThunderCats (1985) and its reboot ThunderCats (2011), young protagonist King Lion-O is, respectively a Little Bit Beastly or Beastfolk member of a race of Catfolk where Lions have right to rule as King of Beasts.
• Transformers: Generation 1:
  • Razorclaw, the leader of the Predacons
  • Steeljaw, the Recordabot
• Weebl & Bob: "Where can you see lions? Only in Kenya! Come to Kenya, we've got lions!"

Tigers

Advertising

• Tony the Tiger, longtime mascot for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes cereal. ("They're grrrrrreat!")
• Esso gas stations (the forerunner to today's Exxon Mobil) had a popular advertising campaign in the '60s featuring a cartoon tiger and the slogan, "Put a tiger in your tank." They even gave out little (fake) tiger tails to attach to the back of your car.

Anime and Manga

• Tigrerra from the first Bakugan season.
• Blue Exorcist's mangaka has drawn the titular main character Rin as a tiger and in general he seems to have a lot of cat traits added to him. As a bonus, Rin uses Blue Flames as part of his status as the resident Anti-Anti-Christ...which is hilarious when compared to the current trope image.
• Atsushi Nakajima, the main protagonist of Bungo Stray Dogs. He can transform into a white tiger or change his limbs into that of a tiger to give himself enhanced strength, speed and agility in human form. He also possesses a very powerful Healing Factor.
• In Brave Police J-Decker, the Build Team combine to form Build Tiger and Super Build Tiger, who has a tiger's head on his chest. This was added to the Build Team's designs because the man who oversaw their development thought it would look cool.
• Tama from Hayate the Combat Butler, an African white tiger. Possibly North Eastern Africa, in the land bordering Eurasia. While still far removed from their normal habitats, hunting for food and being driven away by man could account for the journey and explain why he was found orphaned (parents killed, finally, after being driven so far South).
• Naruto: Might Guy uses a move called Afternoon Tiger to defeat Kisame, which is a taijutsu move that fires a massive pressure bullet in the shape of a tiger's head.
• Similarly there's the Byakko from Onmyo Taisenki, Kogenta and Rangetsu (a white and black tiger respectively, though Rangetsu has white stripes instead).
• In Ranma 1/2 one of Gosunkugi's cunning plans to expose Ranma's fear of cats was to set a tiger on him. There is also the character of Lime who is descended from Tigers (on his mother's side).
• Ryo Sanada from Yoroiden Samurai Troopers (Ronin Warriors) has Byakuen aka White Blaze, his white tiger pet.
• Dr. Gein from Saber Marionette J To X has a trio of robot marionettes based off The Four Gods, with Byakko (an humanoid white tiger) being one of them.
• Saint Seiya has the Libra Saint Dohko, who is represented by a tiger motif and has even a tiger tattoo on his back. Since he's the teacher of Dragon Shiryu, this is meant as a symbol of balance. From Anime Filler there's Ohko, Shiryu's rival, created to display the same premise (predating Dohko's revelation of his tiger motif).
• Kotetsu T. Kaburagi from Tiger & Bunny has tigers as his Animal Motif. His name has the kanji for tiger in it; his superhero persona is Wild Tiger; the scriptwriter has stated that he had the tiger of the Chinese zodiac in mind when he wrote his character; he even has a tiger cellphone background.
• Aileen Rao in Yu-Gi-Oh! Season 0 has a pet tiger, to which she threatens to kill Anzu if Yugi loses to her in Raijinhai.
• The tiger-demon Byakko from the early YuYu Hakusho arcs.

Comic Books

• Greer Grant-Nelson aka Tigra of The Avengers. Originally she started out as a superhero called the Cat but then was transformed into a tiger-like werecreature by the Cat People.
• The obscure Silver Age DC hero, Desmond Farr aka Tiger-Man, a sometimes-associate of Guy Gardner. Originally one of a pair of twins with a Synchronized Psychic Link, he ends up becoming a tiger after ingesting a special potion, in order to track down his twin who has lost his mind to the same potion. Eventually, after both are cured, the Psychic Link is broken, and his twin dies in a later incident, Desmond somehow inherits his brother's tiger powers and becomes one permanently.
• Artemis Crock a minor villain for the Justice Society of America uses the alias Tigress.
• Mr. Tawky Tawny in the Shazam! franchise. He's an urbane and well mannered humanoid tiger who chooses to live in Human society. That said, if he is forced to fight, then he is deadly in combat with his strength, fangs and claws.
• Bronze Tiger a member of the Suicide Squad is a ferocious and highly-trained martial artist who wears a tiger mask and has bested Batman in hand-to-hand combat.
• Those who wear the mantle of the White Tiger are avatars of an ancient white tiger god.
• Wonder Woman (1942): Tigra Tropica is a villain who has tamed herself a bunch of tigers, and rides one.

Fan Works

• In the Naruto fanfiction Kitsune's Power, the titular hero ends up befriending the Tigers of the Forest of Death and riding them on missions and into battle.
• In the Peggy Sue fanfic Chunin Exam Day, Naruto's newfound family decide that they need animal sidekicks. One raid into the Forest of Death later...
• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters: Calisto, one of the Shapeshifter co-wardens of Cavigor, has an alternate form of an unnaturally giant tiger.

Film

• Rajah, in Aladdin (spin-offs included), although he acts more like an oversized housecat. Tigers don't live in the Middle East today, but there was once a subspecies of tiger called the Caspian tiger, which was found as far west as Turkey and Iraq. It is unlikely that the filmmakers knew this, and most fans generally assume Jasmine must have bought him as a pet at some point (although that may still have been the case).
• Army of the Dead has a zombie tiger.
• The Chronicles of Narnia film series:
  • The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: White tigers can be seen in the White Witch's army, contrasting with the good lions.
  • Prince Caspian: Standard orange tigers side with the good guys.
• The Hangover has four drunken guys dealing with, among other problems, a tiger in their hotel suite, and how to get it back to its owner in one piece.
• Marilyn Monroe wears a spangly tiger-striped gown during the "piano fantasy" scene in The Seven Year Itch. It's very stylized (the black stripes look a lot like lightning bolts).
• Two Brothers is about the adventures of two tigers in 1920's French Indochina.

Literature

• Animorphs: Jake's preferred battle morph, and the only big cat in the main team.
• William Blake's Tiger is awesome indeed.
  • Blake's Tiger would go on to inspire the alternate title of The Stars My Destination: Tiger! Tiger!
• In The Jungle Book, Shere Khan is a Bengal tiger that was born with a withered leg, thus lacking the "fearful symmetry" of Blake's Tyger. He regards himself as the lord of tigers (apparently the meaning of his name) but is really a coward and a bully. He's still a dangerous and scary man-eating tiger and proves to be quite cunning and manipulative. He also frequently undergoes Adaptational Badass in most adaptations.
  • His TaleSpin counterpart, however, is decidedly less so.
  • In The Jungle Book Disney adaptation, Shere Khan is a Badass Bengal tiger and Knight of Cerebus who is feared by everyone in the jungle and can easily defeat other animals such as bears and wolf packs. He certainly lives up to the name "king of tigers" and this trope. Taken even further in the sequel.
• The central dilemma of Frank Stockton's short story "The Lady, or the Tiger?" hinges on which fate a princess sends her lover to — a beautiful woman who will become his wife or a savage tiger who will tear him apart. This particular tiger is exceptionally fierce, so death is certain... but she hates the other woman to the point where the tiger might be preferable.
• The Land of Oz cast includes the Hungry Tiger, a companion to the Cowardly Lion, who is quite certain he would love the taste of fat little babies - but his conscience won't allow him to actually eat one.
• Life of Pi is mostly "a boy stranded on a boat with a Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker." Said tiger is mostly done through computer graphics in The Film of the Book.
• The second Winnie the Pooh book, The House at Pooh Corner, introduced Tigger, who is not vicious at all, but overly enthusiastic and, like Hobbes, fond of pouncing on those he likes. The fabled Jagular are not so friendly, though they are never actually seen.

Live-Action TV

• Ruh in Beastmaster.
• Shiva from The Walking Dead (2010) is King Ezekiel's loyal pet tigress, having been rescued from a zoo when she was a cub. She loyally stays beside Ezekiel and is a force to be reckoned with in battle, such as ambushing Negan's Saviors at the end of Season 7. Unfortunately, she dies fighting walkers to save Ezekiel.

Music

• "Hunting Tigers Out in Indiah", a venerable music hall song covered by The Bonzo Dog Band.
• Jonathan Young: In "Army of Tigers", Jonathan describes his plan to defeat the sun with an army of tigers.

Mythology

• Chinese Mythology:
  • There is the White Tiger of the West, one of The Four Gods.
  • The third animal in the Eastern Zodiac is a tiger.
  • The King of Beasts in Chinese culture are not lions (which never existed in China) but tigers.

Newspaper Comics

• In Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes is Calvin's best friend, but has no reservations about stalking and pouncing him.

Professional Wrestling

• The Tiger Mask manga series spawned a wrestling gimmick of the same name. It was first used by Satoru Sayama. Then Mitsuharu Misawa got it and it eventually became a Legacy Character.
• The Wizard (King Curtis Iaukea) called Hulk Hogan "the rare, white Bengal tiger" on the October 14, 1986 WWF Prime Time Wrestling. Iaukea later became the Master of the Dungeon of Doom in WCW in 1995, and he, "The Taskmaster" Kevin Sullivan and the Giant would again refer to Hogan that way.
• While known in his home promotion of World Class as "The Modern-Day Warrior," and in WWE as "The Texas Tornado," Kerry Von Erich's Red Baron in Japan was "Tora no Tsume" ("Tiger Claw.")

Sports

• The Detroit Tigers baseball team and the Cincinnati Bengals football team.
• Many schools, especially in the U.S., tend to have tigers for mascots. Two Southeastern Conference schools, Auburn University and LSU (Louisiana State University), are probably the best-known examples.
• The UANL Tigers soccer team from Monterrey, Mexico.
• The Richmond Tigers of Australian rules football.
• Leicester Tigers, a noted English rugby union club.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Weretigers, which are the second most powerful lycanthropes, but generally neutral, meaning they're more interested in being left alone.
  • Rakshasas (loosely based on demons from Hindu myth) are ever-reincarnating fiends that resemble humanoid tigers.
  • On the good side, the leskylor is a winged white tiger from the Book of Exalted Deeds that is highly intelligent, has a frost Breath Weapon, and will sometimes ally themselves with characters as companions or mounts. There's also a three-headed variety that's even bigger.

Video Games

• Altered Beast (1988) has the protagonist becoming a weretiger in one level.
• The "Woren/Furen" clan from Breath of Fire is a race of tigermen. In terms of individuals, we have Katt, Tiga (Breath of Fire II), Rei (Breath of Fire III) and Cray (Breath of Fire IV).
• Cannon Dancer has a tiger mook appear in two stages.
• In the Rajas of India DLC pack for Crusader Kings II, Indian rulers can organize tiger hunts. Killing one yourself nets you a nice prestige bonus. At the same time, it's possible for the tiger to turn the tables on the hunter and make you into its prey instead.
• Dark Souls II's third Downloadable Content has Aava the King's Pet, who is a gigantic tiger coated in ice, can cast powerful ice-related spells, and is initially invisible, meaning you won't know what is causing those roars until you undo its invisibility. Later in the same DLC, you can also meet Lud and Zallen, two massive tigers coated in darkness with similar casting powers as Aava and the added bonus of wreathing themselves in darkness once their health goes down.
• Snowflake, the zombie-slaying tiger in Dead Rising 2.
• Evil Islands: Tigers appear in both of the two first islands.
• The boss Fenrir in Final Fantasy XII appears as a large Behemoth-type enemy with the head and fur of a white tiger (in spite of being named after a giant wolf).
• Jagged Alliance 2 features Bloodclaws, huge wildcats roughly double the size of a normal tiger. Some characters shout "Tiger!" when they see one approaching. They are mostly encountered in wilderness sectors as well as in a arena of some sort, where they can be released from their cages. Bloodclaws, despite only being able to attack in close combat, are very dangerous enemies even for well-armed mercenaries. They are fast and take multiple hits to kill. Loading hollow-point ammunition is strongly advised.
• Neon Tiger from Mega Man X3.
• Man-eating tigers stalk the heroes in some levels of the twelfth installment of New Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
• Ōkami has Gekigami, the lightning-god, who is an enormous white tiger. There are also smaller (though still larger than Amaterasu) orange tigers found in various areas.
• Growlithe, Arcanine, and Electabuzz from Pokémon have traits of tigers. The Legendary Pokemon Raikou is an actual tiger with traits of saber tooth cats.
  • Litten's final evolution, Incineroar is a humanoid tiger/wrestler.
• Solatorobo: Cool Old Guy Québec is a tiger. Though he uses a cane, he's still quite capable of kicking ass.
• Spelling Jungle: One of the four deadly animals in Spelling Jungle, tigers follow Wali's movements after they see him and mimic them if he's close enough.
• In the Star Ocean series, Highlanders, native to the planet Roak, are said to have evolved from tigers, and have a similar genetic relationship to their Felpool cousins that Neanderthals had to humans.
• In Super Mario 3D World, Bowser gets his own Cat Power-Up form with the appearance of a tiger.
• Super Robot Wars already had an example of this in KoOhKi, a badass tiger and one half of the Guardian Beast machines that form RyuKoOh, but one of the more recent games further introduced KyuukiOh, who is ALSO a very big and badass tiger monster. See him in action yourself.
• Kotaro, the pet of Byakko and boss in Ayame's storyline in Tenchu 2.
• Shou Toramaru of Touhou Project has a tiger motif, and fanart often shows her accompanied by a very large tiger.
• The Puzzle Boss from The World Ends with You, Mitsuki Konishi as Tigris Cantus.
• Yakuza 2: Kiryu fights two tigers as a Dual Boss after they are unleashed by the villainous Sengoku while Kiryu is trying to rescue Haruka from the man, with their fearsomeness being reflected in how their Boss Subtitles and the objective text refers to them as "Fierce Tigers", and in the title of the battle's theme music in the remake being "Demon Tigers". The fight ends with Kiryu knocking the last one head over paws with a Tiger Drop.

Webcomics

• But I'm a Cat Person has the shapeshifting Being owned by Ann Walker, who usually keeps it in tiger form because (a) it's intimidating and (b) it matches her hair.
• The Meek has Dagre, a giant tiger-like spirit with glowing eyes and far too much neck. He likes to push people over the line to madness. Sleep tight...

Web Original

• DSBT InsaniT: Discussed in 'Untamed and Uncut'. Tiger's are Killera's favorite animal, but what she, Killer, and Whitney think is is a tiger exhibit, is actually a Liord exhibit.
• "Where can you see tigers? Only in Kenya! Lions and tigers only in Kenya!"
  • The "remix" version by Weebl and Bob animator Peabo features the fine print disclaimers "Good luck actually finding tigers in Kenya" and "Not sure about the tigers".
  • Forget Norway!

Western Animation

• Animaniacs for some reason actually featured tigers living in Africa.
• Tigatron from Beast Wars.
• Rath of Ben 10: Alien Force is an alien called an Apoplexian who looks like a humanoid tiger, speaks with all the hamminess of a wrestler, and has the muscle to match.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: In "Beast of the Temple", the Planeteers have been sent to Thailand. While Nuo, one of the locals, is guiding the team through the country, Wheeler encounters a tiger. Luckily, it's not interested in him, but he's a bit shaken and Kwame teases him about letting the "pussycat" scare him.
• Jay Ward created Crusader Rabbit, a very early TV cartoon series; a sort-of proto Rocky the Squirrel, and sidekick Rags the Tiger, his Bullwinkle.
• In Defenders of the Earth, The Phantom could call upon "the power of ten tigers" to fight evil.
• A tiger can be seen hugging the nephews near the end of the DuckTales (1987) opening theme.
• A family of tigers appear as background characters in Dumbo.
• The Goofy animated short Tiger Trouble.
• The Jonny Quest TOS episode "Riddle of the Gold" had a tiger hunt, where the hunters became the hunted.
• Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures: A monstrous, scary, and dangerous beast is loose in the city... no, it's just a misplaced white tiger loose in the sewers, frightened and running, but no less dangerous. They manage to un-misplace it safely.
• Cool Cat, a late-'60s Looney Tunes character who should in no way be mistaken for the Pink Panther.
• Vitaly from Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted is a play on the trope, since he was once awesome but has fallen into bitterness and despair thanks to screwing up his ring jump; now he's let himself go (gaining a gut), drinks borscht all day, and barely even goes through the motions with his act. Being inspired to do the impossible again by Alex restores his awesomeness.
• One of the animals Mad Madam Mim turns into during the Wizard Duel from The Sword in the Stone is a pink tiger with purple stripes (the tail eventually becomes part of that of a rattlesnake).
• Tygra from ThunderCats (1985) and ThunderCats (2011) is a Catfolk Tiger, as is Bengali, a White Tiger.
• Rampage, the Predacon from Transformers: Generation 1 (not to be confused with the Beast Wars Predacon Crab of the same name).
• Uncle Grandpa has Giant Realistic Flying Tiger.

Jaguars

Anime and Manga

• In One Piece, a Jaguar Mink named Pedro fights alongside the Straw Hats during the Whole Cake Island arc.
• One episode of Pet Shop of Horrors featured a jaguar, in an episode about an underground South American terror cell seeking to overthrow the current regime and restore the glory of their ancient civilization. Complete with the ancient religion, which is where the jaguar came in: she was attached to the family of the cell's charismatic leader. At one point she fell out of a helicopter, and D jumped after her; they were rescued mid-air by a condor... yeah.
• Chocolove (aka Joco) McDonnell in Shaman King has a jaguar spirit named Mic.

Comics

• Jaguar God from Verotik.

Fan Works

• A jaguar makes a brief appearance in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. It breaks a lot of teeth when it tries to bite Nigh-Invulnerable Paul, which makes him feel terribly guilty. After it runs off, Spectrem does NOT endear himself to Paul or George when he talks about how he would have mounted the jaguar's pelt on his wall.

Film

• A black she-jaguar becomes the unlikely savior of a fleeing slave in Mel Gibson's jungle thriller Apocalypto.
• In Encanto, a jaguar named Parce is part of Antonio’s entourage of animals, since Antonio can talk to animals. He’s a very cool mount for Antonio.
• Black jaguars were seen chasing Kuzco in The Emperor's New Groove.
• In Hellboy (2019), Ben Daimio can transform into a were-jaguar under extreme duress. The transformation appears to be quite painful.
• In Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the main characters must return the jewel to the Jaguar Shrine in order to finish and leave the game, only to find it being protected by actual jaguars.
• In Jungle Cruise, Frank has a pet jaguar named Proxima. He exploits her awesomeness by training her to fake fights to make him look badass. Previous pets of his include a cougar, a black jaguar, and an ocelot.
• A 400lb white jaguar let loose on a cargo ship is one of the antagonists in Primal.
• In The Road to El Dorado, Tzekel Kan controls a giant jaguar statue to terrorize the city.

Literature

• The Animorphs minus Tobias, still unable to morph at the time, used jaguar morphs in "The Forgotten" but they were never used again because they were sario rip morphs and unusable afterward.

Live-Action TV

• In The Sentinel, Jim occasionally sees his spirit animal, a black jaguar. A two-part episode shows his Evil Counterpart's spirit animal, a spotted panther.
• CSI: NY: In a recurring role, Nelly portrays Terence Davis, a former drug dealer turned night club owner, who keeps his pet jaguar on the premises. He tells the detectives that she's a bigger draw to the club than he is.

Music

• For the cover of a The Rolling Stones album, a photographer planned on having Mick Jagger sitting in a convertible with a jaguar. This proved to be EXTREMELY dangerous, so they had to build a partition out of fiber glass to keep Mick (or maybe the jaguar?) safe. While this was happening, the photographer took a photo of the jaguar's face, then drew on his viewfinder where the jaguar's eyes and nose were. Then he took some shots of Mick on the same frame of the roll as he did the Jaguar. This is the result. This was before photoshop.

Sports

• The Jacksonville Jaguars football team.
• In Rugby Union, a jaguar appears on the crest of Argentina's national federation. However, the country's national team is nicknamed Los Pumas instead of Los Jaguares.
  • The Jaguares name (without the article Los) is now attached to Argentina's Super Rugby franchise, which began play in 2016.

Video Games

• The main character is guided by a talking jaguar in The Amazon Trail. It intervenes to scare off two conquistadores that have cornered you (if you didn't take the other option, tricking them into eating a powerful laxative).
• Curse of the Dead Gods features T'amok the Jaguar God, who also has associations with fire and strength. He boosts your constitution attribute and heals you if you donate enough money to him in the Tomb, but you'll also have to face off against Infernal Jaguars, some of his servants. The Physical God version of him that has been corrupted by X'belz'aloc, the Dark Avatar of the Jaguar, is a half-man half-jaguar monstrosity that hits very hard, fights like a pro wrestler and constantly bursts into flames.
• Maplestory's Wild Hunter class lets you ride one while shooting all sorts of arrows and artillery. If you decide to get off, you can also have it attack while you shoot from a safe distance. If NPC Blackjack is any indication, they also talk.
• Kung Lao's Animality in Mortal Kombat 3. In Mortal Kombat 11, Kotal Kahn can turn into a black jaguar for some of his attacks, and one of his fatalities.
• In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, jaguars are a common enemy that Lara has to defend herself from, in addition to moray eels when she's underwater.
• King and Armor King from Tekken both use jaguar masks and speak exclusively through roars.

Webcomics

• In Three Jaguars, three jaguars are indeed the main characters.

Web Video

• TierZoo ranks the jaguar as S-tier.

Western Animation

• Baby Jaguar from Go, Diego, Go!.
• The titular character of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts discovers she can transform partially into a purple jaguar halfway through the first season. In the second she learns this is due to her parents' genetic experiments and eventually how to become a mega-jaguar the size of a building.
• Yaotl from Onyx Equinox is a magical black jaguar who's an emissary of the gods.
• In ThunderCats (1985) and ThunderCats (2011), Jaga is a Catfolk Jaguar.
• In one episode of Time Warp Trio, the kids go back in time to the ancient Mayan civilization. They are kidnapped by soldiers who take them to be eaten by jaguars.
• Ravage in Transformers: Generation 1 is stated to be a (black) jaguar.
• Shadow, a black jaguar cub, is one of the Wild Kratts' most frequently-recurring animal characters. Played with in that, while Shadow himself is too young to be powerful, Chris and Martin often use him to activate Jaguar Powers, which are.

Real Life

• The Jaguar sports car (usually pronounced Jag-u-ar in the commercials).
• The Jaguar knights (ocelotl in Nahuatl) themselves, especially since they are meant to evoke the image of the jaguar god Tezcatlipoca himself.
• The SEPECAT Jaguar Anglo-French attack aircraft, still in use today by the Indian Air Force. Can carry nukes, but is more commonly seen with conventional munitions.

Leopards, Snow Leopards and Clouded Leopards

Anime and Manga

• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid: The people of Shutra often kept snow leopards as pets and considered them to be excellent guards. Einhart (a direct descendant of the last king of Shutra) has a snow leopard kitten device.
• One Piece's Rob Lucci can transform into a half leopard or full leopard.

Card Games

• One of the errands in Ninja Burger is walking the store's pet leopard. Why your store has a pet leopard is never explained.

Fan Works

• Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic Hakkōna: When Kiku attacked those who trespassed in a portion of a Japanese forest at night, he did so in the form of a pitch-black leopard to instill fear into the hearts of the people he sought revenge against.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic Kaitō Kokoro: For much of the story, Kiku took on the form of a Clouded Leopard, despite them not being native to Japan. He most likely chose that form because of its awesomeness—although he would never word it like that.

Film

• Bringing Up Baby is a comedy starring Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and a leopard. There are actually two leopards in the story - the first is Baby, who is a tame leopard that David and Susan have to take care of. The second is one that escapes from a zoo around the same time that Baby runs off the grounds of Susan's Aunt Elizabeth's property. Hilarity Ensues, especially when Susan somehow manages to wrangle the wild leopard thinking it's Baby.
• Kung Fu Panda:
  • Tai Lung, the Big Bad in the first movie, is a snow leopard.
  • The Wu Sisters are clouded leopards.
• Luchino Visconti's film of The Leopard; see more under Literature.
• Rugrats Go Wild!. "I'm Siri, the clouded leopard." And quite the antagonist too. Her and Spike's point/counterpoint song is awesome.
• Sabor, from Disney's Tarzan and, subsequently, Kingdom Hearts.
• Fabienne Growley, the snow leopard news anchor in Zootopia.

Literature

• The presence of tame Leopards were a big factor in the belief that the man in the mountain had access to heaven in The Alamut. It's only later pointed out that this isn't particularly heavenly and it's only the viewers inexperience that makes it seem so.
• Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo, named for the Salina family's coat of arms. Although the English-language translation renders the title as The Leopard, "serval" would be more accurate.
• Stelmaria, the snow leopard daemon of Lord Asriel in His Dark Materials.
• Leopards bear the standard and crown of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. They are also seen fighting in his army against the White Witch.
• In The Jungle Book, Bagheera the black leopard was born in captivity but escaped into the jungle, becoming one of its most feared and respected predators. His cunning and bravery make him one of the best teachers a young man-cub could ever want.
• In Lynda Robinson's ancient Egyptian mysteries, King Tutankhamun is often accompanied by Sa, a black leopard, as a protector.
• Uraza of Spirit Animals. One of the fifteen Great Beasts, and patron of the realm of Nilo.

Live-Action TV

• Newsanchor Wendy Riger often wore this leopard print blouse on the air throughout The '90s.
• ''The Regime: The leopard is the autocratic country's national symbol. The flag consists of a field split diagonally into a red and a blue area, with a leopard in the center. Promotional materials show Chancellor Vernham sitting or riding off into battle with a leopard at her feet. Leopard statuettes decorate the palace.

Sports

• They're not as commonly used as mascots among U.S. colleges as other big cats, but a few can be found, most notably Pennsylvania's Lafayette College.
• In rugby union, the Leopards Rugby Union represents most of South Africa's North West province. The senior team competes in the Currie Cup, the country's main domestic competition.

Video Games

• Clawroline from Kirby and the Forgotten Land is an agile leopardess with Wolverine Claws, and she serves as the second-in-command of the Beast Pack.
• Octopath Traveler has snow leopard Linde, the Loyal Animal Companion to H'aanit.
• In Pokémon Black and White, Purrloin's evolution Liepard speaks for itself, with combined coloration traits of spotted and black leopards and physical traits of domestic cats.
• The Leopardmen in Quest for Glory III, who are a race of cunning shape changers and magic users who can make themselves appear as upright leopards and live in the dark jungle. They value intelligence and stealth and are proof that Dark Is Not Evil.
• Ose, a bipedal leopard, is a recurring demon/Persona in the Shin Megami Tensei series.
• Ernst from Suikoden V is a wereleopard.

Web Animation

• DSBT InsaniT: Angie, Whitney's pet snow leopard.

Webcomics

• In Off-White, a malevolent snow leopard causes trouble for a group of sledders.

Western Animation

• The Legend of Tarzan has Queen La, a human sorceress with Leopard motifs, and her Leopardman minions.

Real Life

• Jayne Mansfield probably did more than any other celebrity to make leopards sexy, thanks to the leopard-spotted bikini she began wearing in public semi-regularly in the late 1950s.
• Bodybuilder Angelo Siciliano — whom you probably know better as "Charles Atlas" — also was famous for wearing leopard-print bikini briefs.
• The Leopard series of tanks, made by (West, later Federal) Germany. Both the Leopard 1 and 2 were highly successful tanks and were arguably the symbol of NATO in Europe.

Generic Black Panthers

Anime and Manga

• Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez from Bleach. His Zanpakutou name is 'Pantera', thus he turns into a bipedal panther-like humanoid. He gets black hands and feet, but the rest of his new form is standard Hollow white.
• Cardcaptor Sakura: Spinel Sun's true form is a panther with blue butterfly wings. He is the Darker and Edgier Expy of Kero.
• Pantherlily from Fairy Tail is an Exceed (a race of magic-using cats) that looks more like a humanoid panther than a bipedal cat like the rest of his kind.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 1st, instead of turning into an ordinary Mega Neko, the little kitty that encounters a Jewel Seed instead turns into a giant, demonic, black panther, with white markings, bony protrusions, and large bat wings.

Comic Books

• Black panthers inspired Marvel Comics' Black Panther and The Black Panther Party (separately).
• Black panthers are a recurring motif in Diabolik:
  • When Eva Kant first appears it's stated her husband was killed in a hunting accident, with George Caron accusing her of setting the whole thing up. It's later explained that, even if Eva did want her husband dead (she had only married him to have the Kant last name: he was her uncle who had murdered her mother and sent her to an Orphanage of Fear taking advantage her parents had not married, and when they met years later and he didn't recognize her she manipulated him into marrying her-and revealed her true identity before they could consume the marriage), it was a genuine accident.
  • When the title character's Origin Story is finally revealed, Diabolik explains he's named after a terrifying panther named Diabolik due it being just that fearsome ("Diabolik" being derived from "diabolico", meaning "devilish" in Italian) that King, his father figure, killed after a long struggle and had stuffed. When the then-nameless Diabolik realized King was about to kill him and struck first, the dying King compared him to the panther, and the boy decided to take Diabolik's name.
  • "Eva Kant: When Diabolik Wasn't There" shows the exact circumstances of lord Anthony Kant's death: he had decided to take advantage of their fights about his love for hunting and her love for animals by making it look like she had tried to free the panther he wanted to hunt but was mauled by it, but Eva managed to free herself and found that the panther liked her, accidentally setting it on Anthony. Insisting it was a complete accident is her private joke she'll never explain to anyone.
  • After first coming to Clerville, Diabolik met the local boss of all bosses Natasha Morgan and became her apprentice and lover, and when she retired he left her a bracelet decorated with a panther head. Years later he realizes she was the one who brought down a plane in his name because one of the bodies was wearing the bracelet.
  • In "Diabolik's Treasure" it's revealed that Diabolik didn't took the panther's name but the panther's stuffed body too, and included it in his treasure, composed by stolen pieces that have a particular meaning for him. By the end of the story the panther is the only part of the treasure still in his hands, as some of his former victims stole everything else, most of the pieces were destroyed in the explosion that killed the ringleader, and Diabolik decided to let the others be and keep what they took.
  • Diabolik the stuffed panther also appears in the DK Alternate Continuity. One of the first signs that DK is very different from his main continuity counterpart is when he has to destroy the hideout where he was keeping the panther and doesn't bother to move it somewhere else before he sets off the incendiary bombs.
  • The animated adaptation is named "Diabolik: Track of the Panther".
• In the reboot Sheena, Queen of the Jungle starting in 2007, Sheena had a panther ally named Yagua who battled alongside and occasionally even acted as a mount for her.
• Pantha, a friend and ally of Vampirella, can shapeshift into a black panther.

Film

• The 1942 horror classic Cat People is about a Serbian woman who fears that whenever she gets jealous or sexually aroused, she will turn into a black panther and attack her loved ones. The first scene in the movie is the woman at a zoo, sketching a picture of a black panther.
• As with their Comic Book counterparts, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's take on the Black Panthers have powers and appearances based on the cats.

Literature

• Ronan from Philippa Ballantine's Digital Magic has the Code Name "Panther" because he spends a lot of time in the form of a black panther. Turns out he's Puck from the first book, Chasing the Bard; the panther was one of his favorite forms.
• "The Eyes of the Panther" features two members (father and daughter) a family of were-panthers whose pelts are described as being black.
• Mindstar Rising: The Big Fancy House where Julia Evans lives is guarded by gene-tailored sentinel panthers. When the house security system goes into Lock Down, the protagonists have to fight their way past them.
• In The Moomins, the Hobgoblin rides a flying black panther. The panther gets a few lines in the TV series.
• In O.G.P.U Prison, by Sven Hassel. Porta adopts a black panther called Ulrich, and there's a Running Gag of it giving heart attacks to everyone it meets. Ulrich is actually quite friendly and just wants to play with them, but they don't know that.

Live-Action TV

• In the Angel episode "Home", a black panther represents Wolfram and Hart's senior partners in the white room.
• Charmed (1998)'s first season villain, Hannah Webster, had the power to transform into a black panther, and she was intending to do so to attack the powerless Charmed Ones.
• On Merlin, the Lady of the Lake is cursed to turn into a massive winged panther every night.

Music

• Model Amanda Lear leads a roaring panther on a leash on the cover of Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure.
• The Weeknd uses a black panther to symbolize him in his "MANIA" short film.

Tabletop Games

• Drizzt Do'Urden of the Forgotten Realms Dungeons & Dragons setting has a magical pet panther named Guenhwyvar — or, to be more precise, the magical pet panther. She's the divine conceptual embodiment of the panther from the realm of the nature-goddess Mielikki, and is twice the size of the 'real' animal, highly intelligent, and unkillable on the material plane — lethal damage will simply result in temporary banishment back to Mielikki's domain. Needless to say, befriending her was a tremendous stroke of luck for the young Drizzt.
  • In D&D as a whole, there's the Displacer Beast, a panther with tentacles on its shoulders and six limbs. Most notable for being hard to hit, because it's actually several feet away from where you think it is.
  • There is also the massive black panther which Kelemvor of the Avatar Trilogy, now god of the dead, transformed into as a result of his Hereditary Curse.
  • Urik von Kharkov, one of the darklords of Ravenloft, is a vampire who shapeshifts into a panther form rather than a wolf form, and has other panther-like qualities. That's because he actually started out as a panther, but was transformed into a human by magic, then later became one of the undead.
• Kings of War features Basilean panther cavalry.
• Numenera has the Sarrak, which appears to be a panther with a sphere of energy for a head and mind control abilities.

Video Games

• Brütal Legend features ridable black panthers with Eye Beams. They're actually the most normal species in the game's setting.
• Chronos "Evil" Lait from classic video game Golden Axe 3, the most powerful character in the game, mainly due to his super move in which he lunges across the screen in an unstoppable and unblockable attack.
• Hero of Sparta, like the name states, is based on Greek myths. And has the Nemean Lion from the myths as a powerful enemy.
• The Russian Boss from Hotline Miami has a pair of panthers guarding his penthouse office, and Jacket must defeat them using only a trophy as a melee weapon.
• Black Orchid from Killer Instinct can morph into a panther for some of her special attacks.
• The King of Fighters:
  • Rugal Bernstein has a pet panther named Rodem which appears with him on occasion, and some comics also give him a very loose leopard motif. Similarly, fellow boss (Original) Zero has a genetically engineered black lion pet named Glaugan that also assists him in battle as a striker.
  • Rugal's children, Adel and Rose, have a pet panther kitten. Presumably it's Rodem's baby.
• Panther Flauclaws from Mega Man Zero 2.
• Monster Hunter: Nargacuga, of Freedom Unite fame, is a black beaked Wyvern with a catlike face and claws. It's a ferocious monster that attacks with lightning-fast pounces and launching spikes from its tail; its eyes turn bright red when it's angry. Portable 3rd introduces a green-colored subspecies that is more agile in battle, and its eyes glow orange when it's angre. 3 Ultimate adds the Lucent rare species in G Rank, whose silver fur allows it to turn invisible and throw venomous thorns from its tail.
• In Quest for Glory I, monsters called Cheetaurs roam the forests at night, which actually are more like huge panther-creatures. There's also the cute little kitty owned by the old lady in town, that turns into a giant panther if you try to harm its owner.
• Awilix from Smite has her pet Zuku. He can become a jaguar, however, with her Blood Moon skin.
• Panther Caroso of the Star Wolf Team from Star Fox.
• Eugene Gallardo from Tales of Rebirth is a Gajuma in form of a Black Panther. And he is the token Cool Old Guy. And badass.
• Them's Fightin' Herds has large panther enemies made of shadow, which the game calls Flopsie.

Webcomics

• Looking for Group has Sooba, Cale's black panther which appears to be almost sentient.
• Out of This World has the black panther-like Shadow Beast that chases Lester in the first stage.

Web Video

• YouTuber Luna The Pantera features a solid black leopard rescued from a circus as a week old cub and raised as a housepet. Has a big rotweiler as a best friend.

Western Animation

• Attacat from Chaotic.
• Data Seven from Cybersix.
• In Defenders of the Earth, The Phantom's daughter Jedda had a pet black panther named Keisha.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): Panthor, a giant black panther ridden by Skeletor, was the Evil Counterpart of He-Man's companion Battlecat.
• The Jonny Quest TOS episode "Pursuit of the Po-Ho" had a magnificent black panther snarling as Dr. Quest performed his God Guise act. It was also featured in the opening credits.
• The Legend of Tarzan has Nuru and Sheetah, who have taken the place of the long-dead Sabor.
• The Pink Panther is this, except he's pink instead of black.
• She-Ra: Princess of Power has antagonist Catra, who's able to use her mask to transform into a purple panther with Super-Strength.
• An episode of The Simpsons has ex-con Jack Crowley (voice of Michael Keaton) painting a mural for Springfield Elementary showing a Xena-like female warrior riding on what appears to be a panther (it's actually a puma, the school mascot, but it sure looks like a panther). The kids love it, but Principal Skinner is disgusted: "The female form has no place in art!"
• In Disney's TaleSpin, Shere Khan's pilots are all black panthers (and obvious clones of Bagheera).
• Panthro from ThunderCats (1985) and ThunderCats (2011) is a Catfolk Black Panther.
• Whether Ravage from The Transformers is a jaguar or a panther depends on who's writing... in Japan, his name is Jaguar but in a manga he sometimes masquerades as a human called the "Black Panther Man!"

Real Life

• Panthers are actually melanistic leopards or jaguars. The name originally applied only to black leopards, but in common usage these days can mean any large black cat. Black mountain lions are a popular subject of urban legend, but have never been confirmed to exist. As members of the genus Panthera, melanistic lions or tigers would also count as black panthers, though reports of such specimens are questionable at best.
• The Black Panther Party For Self Defence, which took its memorable signature animal from an area high school football team.
• The Carolina Panthers football team.

Pumas (or Cougars, Mountain Lions, Catamounts, etc., etc., etc...)

Advertising

• The Most Interesting Man in the World seems to keep one as a pet in one Dos Equis ad.
• Ford Motor Company perched one atop their dealership sign logo back when they were still building the Cougar.

Comic Books

• Spider-Man: Thomas Fireheart, also known as Puma, is a Magical Native American who can willingly transform into a puma-like werebeast.

Film

• The Big Cat (1949), the trials of life in rural Utah during the 1930s is complicated when the drought putting pressture on ranchers and farmers drives an aggressive cougar down from the highlands.
• Return of the Big Cat (1974), no relation to the 1949 film. The older brother in a fronteir family in the 1890s swears revenge on a cougar that terrified his little sister so badly she was rendered mute.
• Disney's Charlie the Lonesome Cougar has an orphaned cub raised by a worker at a logging company. After several misadventures and living in the wild for a time, Charlie is released into a game reserve and meets a female cougar in a happy ending.
• Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey has a mountain lion chase Shadow and Chance midway through the movie.
• The Pumaman. "He flies like a moron..."
• Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby: Ricky Bobby's outlaw deadbeat dad Reese comes back into Ricky's life to help Ricky regain his confidence as a NASCAR driver by putting him through Training from Hell. Part of this involved making Ricky drive Reese's 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle with a live cougar riding shotgun. Ricky is terrified at first, but he later overcomes his fears and tames the cougar in the process, naming her Karen.
• Who's That Girl has a rare cougar (a Patagonian Puma concolor) that Louden Trott has to deliver to a Mr. Bell, whom Nikki Finn takes a liking to and tames, calling him "Murray". It even comes to Nikki's rescue a few times, and at the end of the movie chases after her bus with his mate.

Folklore

• Before taming his horse, Widow-Maker, Pecos Bill rode one of these.

Literature

• Power: The panther is incredibly important to the people in the story, especially the Taiga Clan, who consider the panther to be their older sister and revere it. Omishto is fascinated when she sees one, describing it as beautiful and calm, even while being hunted. Interestingly, the panther discussed is described as golden, making it more likely a puma. (Pumas found in Florida are known as Florida panthers, but the "Florida" is important here — without it, you're talking about a melanistic leopard/jaguar).

Live-Action TV

• 24, obviously.
• In an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, Hal and the boys realize they've wandered onto an artillery range when a mountain lion blows up.
• Steve French in Trailer Park Boys.

Newspaper Comics

• In Peanuts, Snoopy once pretended to be one, and pounce on its victim. (The last step did not work well.)

Sports

• The Florida Panthers hockey team.
• The Argentina national Rugby Union team is nicknamed Los Pumas, despite a jaguar appearing on their crest. Apparently, when the team visited South Africa in the 1960s, a local reporter mistook the jaguar for a puma, and the (mistaken) nickname stuck.
• Many U.S. schools are nicknamed after this animal, in one form or another. Notable examples are Brigham Young University, better known as BYU (Cougars), the University of Houston (Cougars), Pennsylvania State University (Nittany Lions), the University of Pittsburgh (Panthers), the University of Vermont (Catamounts), and Washington State University (Cougars).
• The UNAM Pumas soccer team from Mexico City.
• The Olney Cougars softball team.

Video Games

• Nidalee from League of Legends was raised by cougars and trained by them to be a warrior of the jungle, and can even transform into one.
• Pokémon:
  • Despite its name, the Persian has more in common with these than actual Persians.
  • Absol, debuted in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, has its traits drawn from and is partially inspired by cougars.
• Mountain lions are used as the main mooks in Stage 2 of Prehistorik Man, with a spotted one being the one Sam is looking for.
• In Psychonauts, Camp Whispering Rock had pyrokinesis using cougars that could set you ablaze from a distance.
• Red Dead Redemption:
  • You can find cougars, or rather, the cougars will find you.
  • They return for Grand Theft Auto V where they lose some of their demonic traits. While still capable of One-Hit Kill, they're scared off by cars (as opposed to RDR where they could easily kill a horse). Also protagonists have easier time killing them thanks to modern weapons and special abilities.

Web Video

• YouTuber I Am Puma features Messi, a puma rescued as a sickly runt from a russian zoo. Taken home and nursed mostly back to health (he would be unlikely to survive in the wild even under ideal circumstances) Messi was raised like a proper housecat. He even attends dog obedience training classes.

Western Animation

• Louie the Mountain Lion, Goofy's archnemesis from the Classic Disney Shorts and House of Mouse.
• Pumyra from ThunderCats (1985) and ThunderCats (2011) is a Catfolk Puma.
• Pounce in The Transformers. Also Quickswitch is stated to be (among his 6 modes) a flying Puma.

Cheetahs

Advertising

• Chester Cheetah would like you to know it's not easy being cheesy. Oh, God, there's no fucking drummer better than Neil Peart!
• Hyundai's 2012 Super Bowl ad had a cheetah race their new Veloster Turbo. Of course since it's advertising Hyundai's car, the cheetah loses... but gets its revenge by attacking its trainer.

Anime and Manga

• The Jewelpet Jasper is a cheetah.

Comic Books

• Gold Digger prominently features Brittany Diggers, a werecheetah
• Wonder Woman regularly fights super-villainess Cheetah.

Film

• Duma, from the movie with the same name.
• Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle features a scene where Harold and Kumar encounter an escaped cheetah. Then they get STONED with it. Then ride it.
• A cheetah appears as a background character in The Lion King.
• The Walden Media film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe had cheetahs in Aslan's army.
• The Wild Thornberrys Movie: Tally, the cheetah cub whom Eliza spends most of the movie trying to rescue. There's also his mother, Akela. She has a history with Eliza, and when the Blackburns kidnap her son, she charges to his rescue (though sadly, her efforts are in vain).

Literature

• Animorphs The Weakness had cheetah morphs.
• One Torenthi ambassador makes his first appearance at Kelson's court with his pet hunting cheetah draped across his back (and the back of his horse) impersonating a cape.
• Pern's southern continent is home to large feline predators, which apparently derive from semidomesticated cheetahs released by the original colonists. As Pern's native terrestrial predators had mostly been wiped out by Thread, these cats had no competitors and could afford to evolve a greater body size.

Live-Action TV

• The Cheetah People from the Doctor Who story "Survival".

Music

• Cheetah by Rocket From The Crypt.

Sports

• The Free State Rugby Union, representing the South African province of the same name, calls both of its primary teams — the Super Rugby side for which it provides most of the players, and the senior provincial side that competes in the domestic Currie Cup — the Cheetahs.

Theme Parks

• Cheetah Hunt at Busch Gardens Tampa is a thrilling high-speed roller coaster naturally themed around cheetahs.

Video Games

• Action 52 was supposed to be a launch pad for a new series, the Cheetahmen. As there was never any Cheetahmen franchise, it's not hard to guess how well that went.
• Kung Lao's Animality in Mortal Kombat 3 is a cheetah.
• In Pharaoh, it's possible to improve your status in the kingdom by sending dimplomatic gifts (read: Bribing Your Way to Victory), cheetahs being among the high-end choices
• The Eeveelution Jolteon and the Legendary Pokémon Suicune from Pokémon share many traits with cheetahs. The Electric-type Jolteon even has speeds comparable to cheetahs.
• In Solatorobo, Cassis the racer with a slight resemblance to Kamina is a cheetah.
• In Spyro the Dragon one of Spyro's allies, introduced in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!, is a fast-talking, bow-shooting Bad Butt cheetah named Hunter.

Web Video

• YouTuber I Am Cheetah features the same couple featured in I Am Puma above taking in and caring for an adult cheetah. Gerda the cheetah gets along just fine with Messi.

Western Animation

• Cheetor from Beast Wars.
• A cheetah is one of the good guy football players in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. It's the fastest on the field, but his pants/lower fur keep falling down.
• The Lion Guard has main cheetah character Fuli, the Fastest member of the titular Guard.
• Cheetara from ThunderCats (1985) and ThunderCats (2011) is a Catfolk Cheetah.
• The Venture Bros.: Iggy Pop would like to remind you that he is a streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.

Real Life

• In medieval Persia and India, tame cheetahs were status symbols, the equivalents of fast sports cars today. Kings, emperors, princes, and high-ranking officials would keep cheetahs to hunt gazelles and deer. The Persians even taught cheetahs to ride on horseback behind their trainers until they got close enough to their prey. At one point, Mughal princes would keep hundreds or even thousands of hunting cheetahs and the fastest cheetah of all would be treated like royalty herself and carried to the hunting grounds upon an elephant with musicians and trumpeters announcing her arrival, while the less successful cheetahs would be kept hungry in order to make them more competitive. Unfortunately, since it's so bloody difficult to breed cheetahs in captivity, this cheetah-hoarding contributed to the species' extinction in India, and nearly destroyed Iran's population.

Lynxes

Comics

• Bubastis, Adrian Veidt's lynx-like creature in Watchmen.

Film

• A constellation shaped like a grinning bobcat's face appears briefly during the song "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas.
• Sing 2 has a street-dancing lynx named Nooshy as one of the supporting characters.

Sports

• The Charlotte Bobcats basketball team, until they became the Charlotte Hornets in 2014.
• Many U.S. schools with the nickname "Wildcats", with some of the more notable examples being the University of Arizona and University of Kentucky. It's such a common name that we have a page just for this phenomenon.

Video Games

• Bubsy the Bobcat.
• Big Bad (actually, The Dragon) Lynx from Chrono Cross.
• Wild Jango from Mega Man X: Command Mission.
• UnReal World features the Lynx at top of the food chain. It is incredibly agile, resilient enough to shrug off a couple of arrows before approaching the hunter. It can kill an average person (including you, the protagonist) with a single blow, posing as a serious threat in a world where death is permanent. It is no surprise that Lynx fur is the most prized commodity by foreign merchants. It has been somewhat toned down in the more recent versions of the game, though.

Webcomics

• Stand Still, Stay Silent: Lalli's luonto is a lynx, which is quite appropriate as his behaviour was already quite cat-like before this was revealed.

Western Animation

• Bonkers D. Bobcat
• Lynx-O of ThunderCats (1985) and ThunderCats (2011) is a Catfolk Lynx.

Ocelots

Comics

• Empowered has Ocelotina who is supposed to look like an ocelot, but because of some in universe ignorance looks more like a black panther.

Live-Action TV

• Private Detective Honey West has a pet ocelot, named Bruce.

Video Games

• It's not clear why Revolver Ocelot chose that particular codename. Presumably it's to reinforce his obsession with The Wild West.
• In Minecraft, ocelots are a mob found in jungles, can be tamed with raw fish, and creepers are scared of them.
• Solatorobo:
  • Béluga is a lynx and Calua is an ocelot (who seems to be lacking in the spots). Naturally, they're members of the antagonistic Kurvasz.
  • The Lions, Precursors to the Felineko, did not rely on magic like their descendants, due to their sheer physical strength.

Western Animation

• Archer: Cheryl, the secretary, is revealed to be independently wealthy and has a pet baby ocelot. Archer quickly falls in love with the little guy.
• Dr. Doofenshmirtz of Phineas and Ferb was known to be raised by ocelots in his Hilariously Abusive Childhood.

Real Life

• Salvador Dalí allegedly kept a pet ocelot on his adventures.

Servals

Comic Books

• In the early translations of X-Men comics into French, Wolverine's name was changed to Serval (the wolverine is called "glutton" in French — it's also an alternative English name). Ironically, the name Serval actually makes more sense, given the character's retractile claws, which servals have and wolverines lack!

Literature

• In P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath, heroine Jame has a hunting-cat, Jorin, as a Bond Creature. He's identified as an "ounce", which is in modern times generally associated with the snow leopard (Panthera uncia), but the author has clarified that she means the older definition of that word, which applied to any spotted wild cat, and he's actually supposed to look like a serval. Jorin is blind from birth, but manages to see through the mind-link, borrowing his mistress' vision.

Other Small Cats

Anime and Manga

• Sakaki adopts an Iriomote yamaneko (or possibly vice versa) near the end of Azumanga Daioh.
• Played with in Tokyo Mew Mew. While Mew Ichigo's cat features technically come from the Iriomote yamaneko, a highly endangered mountain cat, this only matters to the actual story. Once she gains Shapeshifting (sort of) to transform into an animal, however, it seems to be a generic housecat. Granted, real Iriomote cats are about the size of a housecat and could easily be mistaken as one, especially if one didn't expect to see an endangered wildcat...

Literature

• The Moon of Gomrath: The palugs are a pack of what might be related to the native wildcat of the British Isles, but are larger, have a greater pack intelligence, and something of the sabre-toothed about them.

Video Games

• Venture Kid: The first boss of the game is a giant orange bobcat with no stripes... that attacks by throwing bouncing balls of fire(?).

Saber-Toothed Cats

Anime and Manga

• Sabertooths naturally appear in Cage of Eden as one of the many, many hazards of the island. There's also a mutant "chimera", which looks like a three-headed sabertooth with human arms and scales on its back.
• SaberLeomon of the Digimon franchise, who was actually the Mega-level form of the lion-based Digimon Leomon in Digimon Adventure.
• One Piece has Who's-Who, a high-ranking member of the Beast Pirates who ate an Ancient Zoan of the Cat-Cat family which allows him to transform into a massive sabertooth tiger or a large sabertooth man in his hybrid form.
• In the third Rebuild of Evangelion movie, EVA Unit 02 gets a sabertooth cat Beast Mode to go with Asuka's already-present cat motif.
• The motif of the sacred robes/armors used by the twins Cid and Bud in Saint Seiya are inspired by saber-toothed cats.

Comic Books

• Zabu, pet/companion of Marvel Comics' character Ka-Zar.
• The Transformers (Marvel): Catilla was an Autobot Pretender. He was a robot that turned into a mechanical sabertooth cat, with a Pretender shell that looked like an organic sabertooth cat.

Film

• Diego, the resident badass of the Ice Age series.
• Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger features a giant Smilodon as the guardian of the shrine the heroes are searching for. It's initially found frozen in ice, but is freed when the evil sorceress Zenobia transfers her spirit into its body before doing battle with a giant Frazetta Man.

Literature

• The Book of the Named features a race of intelligent prehistoric cats called the Named, and their unintelligent counterparts, the Unnamed. They are not sabre-toothed, but in the second book, Clan Ground, they meet one individual, Orange-Eyes (later Shongshar) who is.
• Conan the Barbarian: In "Beyond the Black River", Zogar summons a sabre-toothed tiger. Which happens to be prehistoric even in Conan's time, adding to the horror for the prisoners.
• Lionboy by Zizou Corder stars a number of felines, ranging from domestic cats to the leopard who gives the eponymous protagonist his ability to speak fluent Cat (and learns how to speak fluent Human!) through a blood exchange to the tigers of real life cat trainer Mabel Stark to a whole pride of lions he rescues from a circus and returns to Africa, but the most startling and audacious example is the cat eventually named Primo: a humongous sabretoothed cat created by the resident evil MegaCorp through genetic engineering as part of their experiments to use cat allergies and the medication to treat them to monopolize the economy. Contrary to his appearance, though, he acts only as a very sad character, being the Last of His Kind and, at one point, manipulated into appearing as the Lion of St. Mark so as to prop up the crumbling rule of the Doge of Venice.
• Star Wars: The Expanded Universe has "tusk-cats", giant saber-toothed felines used as mounts by the people of Naboo, as well as for herding livestock and guarding estates.

Live-Action TV

• The Smilodon Dopant from Kamen Rider Double blurs the line between this and Mega Neko by virtue of its user being a cat.
• The motif of Tiger Ranger Boi and his American counterparts the Yellow Mighty Morphin Power Ranger Trini and later her successor Aisha. Naturally, this extends to their mecha, Guardian Beast SaberTiger / Sabertooth Tiger Dinozord. Somewhat dodged by Towa with the claim that Kishiryu TigerLance is based on a dinosaur that happens to look like a reptilian smilodon, though their own counterparts Izzy and the Tiger Claw Zord go back to playing it straight.
• Appeared as the threat of the week in one episode of Primeval.
• Featured prominently in The BBC's Walking with Beasts, and the sequel Prehistoric Park. In the latter the narrator incorrectly informs us that the sabre teeth are "enlarged incisors" (they're actually canines).

Sports

• The Nashville Predators hockey team has a saber-toothed cat as a mascot.

Tabletop Games

• Ogres in Warhammer capture and tame Sabertusks (the teeth are on the lower jaw). The Mournfangs are big enough for ogres to ride.
• Warhammer 40,000 has a Carnodon, a vicious lion-maned creature with huge fangs.

Video Games

• Great Sabrecats are a staple monster of the Dragon Quest series, but can also be befriended in a few of them. Saber, a Great Sabrecat cub is the first monster to join you in Dragon Quest V, and the reward for a sidequest in Dragon Quest VIII is a bell that summons a sabrecat for your character to ride on, multiplying your movement speed on the world map tenfold (said sabrecat is also part of a rather sad subplot with his former master).
• Drakensang 2: the Zanth Demoness fought inside the Bosparanian Ruins acts as the Disc-One Final Boss of the game and takes the appearence of a massive sabertooth tiger with a humanoid body made of greenish-white light. The appearence of Kazak in the expansion implies that it's common for demons to look like beastmen.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Sabre Cats (both the normal brown variety and the tougher Snowy Sabre Cats) can be found in the wilds of Skyrim... if they don't find you first.
• Final Fantasy XI:
  • Sabertooth tigers (in-game they're just called tigers) are regular enemies of various levels. For their level, they're stronger than many other monster types, as they have strong attacks, their Roar attack causes paralysis, and they're too fast to effectively run away from.
  • One of the Shinjin notorious monsters you fight in "Sky," Byakko, is a unique color scheme and larger model of the typical sabertooth tiger enemies. Of the four Shinjin, Byakko is usually regarded as the toughest to fight, due to him having Roar, aggravatingly high evasion, and his Claw Cyclone being able to one-shot everything that isn't a tank.
• Saber-toothed tigers are mobs in Hytale. They hunt in packs, crawling their way through undergrowth to ambush their target. Just remember — they're as likely to use that tactic on you as they are with their prey animals, so it's best to keep an eye out.
• The Barioth of the Monster Hunter series is a snow-white Wyvern with the claws, face, and one assumes mannerisms of a Saber-toothed cat. It typically lives in frigid areas, from the Tundra of Monster Hunter Tri to the Hoarfrost Reach of Monster Hunter: World: Iceborne. There is also a reddish subspecies called the Sand Barioth that lives in deserts.
• Pokémon Gold and Silver: Raikou, one of the Legendary Beast Pokémon.
• The Option B Assist Character in Strider is a saber-toothed tiger robot (or robo-panther, as its known in English...)
• Titan Quest: Act III features Sabertooth Lions encountered on the Iranian mountains on your way to China: sometimes they act as wild beasts, other times they're tamed and rode by Neanderthals.

Webcomics

• In Yokoka's Quest, Misha can shapeshift into a big saber-tooth cat, large enough for Azha to ride as a mount.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender brings along a Mix-and-Match Critter known as the Saber-Toothed Moose Lion. Ridiculously Cute Critter as a baby. Creature of the damned when it's all grown up.
• The aptly named Smilodon of Chaotic.
• One episode of Dinosaucers had the characters facing Space Pirate Smilodons.
• The Flintstones apparently own a small saber-toothed cat who serves as their equivalent of a cat. It only appears in the show's opening and credits sequence however.
• Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous: In season four, the main characters run into a Smilodon, marking the first cloned prehistoric mammal in the Jurassic Park canon.
• Grune from ThunderCats (1985) and ThunderCats (2011) is a unique case. He has only one giant tooth.

Ligers

Anime & Manga

• In Reborn! (2004), the Varia boss Xanxus has a liger named Bester, who is a mix of the Sky Lion and Storm Tiger. Xanxus increases the awesome by rhetorically asking who decided mixed breeds are inferior to pure breeds, insulting his royal opponent.
• Zoids features a number of Liger-type Humongous Mecha, traditionally as the Zoid piloted by the main character. Most notable are the Shield Liger, Blade Liger, Liger Zero and Murasame Liger.

Film

• Napoleon Dynamite drew an amazingly realistic sketch of one.

Webcomics

• Get Medieval had a traveling menagerie from Spain - which included, amongst other things, a deceased cameleopard, a half-tiger, half-lion mix named 'Estelle', and a spaceship.

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