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Fantastic Racism
They aren't even real bears!

"Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because - what with trolls and dwarfs and so on - speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green."

A subset of the old trick of dealing with thorny issues through metaphor. Instead of having the hero encounter racism between, say, whites and blacks in the American Deep South, or between ethnic Czech and Roma in the Czech Republic, or between Ainu and Japanese, or any other sets of real-world groups, they encounter racism between two-headed aliens and three-headed aliens, or between Elves and Dwarves, or Werewolves and Vampires, witches and wizards, humans and super humans or humans and intelligent robots, or even robots and robots.

Note that this can also cover other types of prejudice; anti-homosexual sentiment, religious differences, and so on.

Related to Space Jews, in which the story has dubious racist overtones. Also related to Have You Tried Not Being A Monster?, when monsters are used as a metaphor for alternative sexual identity, rather than race. Fantastic Slurs are often involved, as are Monster Rights Movements. Real Life weaselly lines like Some of My Best Friends are X may feature. The undesired minorities may be rounded up inside a Fantastic Ghetto, they may also be the targets of Super Human Trafficking.

If the point of the story is to show the evils of racism, this trope can lead to a Broken Aesop if there are in fact good in-universe reasons to discriminate against a certain type of creature (say, because they need to drink human blood in order to survive, or they genuinely don't have free will or a sense of ethics like humans do).

Also note that Tropes Are Not Bad: most people wouldn't believe in a world where elves, dwarves, aliens, etc got along with perfect harmony, because their own experiences of different groups' interactions don't bear that out. Its called Fantastic Racism for a reason.

If the racism appears to be spilling into something a little less fantastic and into something more real, it's Values Dissonance.

See also People Of Hair Color, which can be another occasion for racism in fantasy.

Remember Square Peg Round Trope when applying examples to this page. No Real Life Examples, Please, as this is an inherently fiction only trope.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

     Advertising 
  • This Sonic commercial. You actually feel bad for the vampire.
    • Again with Sonic, where the police talks with a ghost about someone rattling chains and moaning. The ghost takes offense to this only for moments later to see a guy on the other side of the parking lot doing just that.
    • The fact that he's being profiled by a black cop causes people no end of amusement.
    • It seems that Sonic's new ad campaign is 'Sonic is Fantastically Racist', because they have a commercial where a robot isn't allowed to eat the food because it's 'People Food'.
  • The GEICO cavemen ads could be seen as an example of this...which leads to Unfortunate Implications, when you consider that the campaign is essentially mocking the victim for getting offended.

     Anime & Manga 
  • Black Butler, intensified sixfold in the manga. Demons and Shinigami hate each other. In the Noah's Arc Circus part, William and Sebastian spend a few days and nights trash-talking each other not as individuals but as representatives of their respective races...Except for Grell, who will flirt with anything so long as it's male and sadistic.
  • In Darker than Black, a man in charge of a secret operation tells the Contractor working under him, "Your whole kind is nothing more than filth, unfit to live without a patron's approval." That the man in charge is white and the Contractor black is incidental, though this possibly counts as a Lampshade Hanging.
  • Done in Peto Peto San, where Japanese mythological creatures are either humanoid or have mated with humans enough to do so. The problem is averted by the series taking a lighter tone, and the solution involves something everyone can get behind, dedicating the town to "Little Sister" Moe.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam had conflicts between "Earthnoids" (humans who lived on Earth) and "Spacenoids" (humans who lived in space). Closely related was the conflict between Newtypes (those with Psychic Powers, almost always Spacenoids) and Oldtypes (non-psychics, but also used as a slur for those stuck in the old ways).
  • Escaflowne's Dragon Clan are hated by almost every other race on Gaea, it is so frowned upon that the main character's Mother, makes him promise never to show his wings again, just seeing the wings of one is said to be a bad omen.
    • However the last part is subverted when Van's unfurled wings manages to bring the rest of the world, drunk on the power of wishing, back to its senses.
  • Inu Yasha has half-demons, which are hated by both humans and demons, with humans and demons also hating each other.
    • Though the humans hating demons aspect is generally deserved, since upwards of 90% of all pure-blooded demons are either out to kill humans on principle, or target humans for pranks or worse without consideration for the victim. Which is not to say that humans NEVER act in such a manner, just that there are some positive examples also.
  • Naruto: In an early arc, Haku explained that in the Land of Water the powerful and deadly abilities of clans with bloodline abilities had garnered fear and hatred from those without such abilities. The hatred was so severe that Haku's father was willing to murder his wife and son because of their bloodline.
    • The Uchiha in general believed themselves superior to other shinobi simply because they were Uchiha, often reflected in Sasuke's arrogance.
    • And there's also the jinchuriki, who are feared, hated, and ostracized by their home villages, or exploited and used as weapons by other people. This is a recurring theme in Shippuden, where Naruto repeatedly calls out people that insult jinchuriki.
  • In the Blood+ episode "Turn the Palm of Your Hand Toward the Sun", James Ironside delivers a crazed rant about the Schiffs' inferiority to Chevaliers such as himself - while trying to torture a captured Schiff to death. The scene is even more chilling because James, black, seems to have no idea of the terrible irony of his words and actions.
    • And also because his arms and the lower part of his body, which were destroyed and replaced with body parts from the Schiff, are now white. Being rejected by his capricious "mother" because of the replaced body parts is precisely what drove James (who is a fairly straightforward Renfield) insane, to boot. Even if this wasn't intended to be part of the irony, it was certainly unsettling.
  • A major theme of Trinity Blood is that vampires and humans can and should stop fighting and live in harmony.
  • In Armitage III, the title character is a Ridiculously Human Robot (in fact, she's so ridiculously human she can even reproduce, which is a plot point) working to investigate murders (of victims who turn out to be similar Ridiculously Human Robots) with a partner who's prejudiced against robots and cyborgs due to one causing the death of his previous partner. He is injured, and repaired with robotic prosthetics. Of course, he gets an Aesop about tolerance, and eventually marries his mechanical partner.
  • In Bubblegum Crisis, there's prejudice against Boomers. Whether or not this influences them to go rogue varies.
  • Done in both the manga and anime versions of Fullmetal Alchemist, with the persecution and attempted genocide of the Ishvalan people. They are visually identifiable by their red eyes and dark skin, and various characters use hats and sunglasses to 'pass'. Several aspects of the Ishvalans' portrayal hint more specifically at a metaphorically Islamic culture: their vaguely Middle Eastern dress, Ishval's desert landscape, and their monotheistic religion and the tensions arising from its prohibition of alchemy and the Amestrians' contrasting dependence upon it.
    • There's also the Ishvalan prejudice or prosecution of alchemists.
  • Probably the first & still one of the best examples in anime is Osamu Tezuka's Astroboy. Some choice examples: the robot revolutionary Blue Knight explicitly compares the robot nation he is trying to build to Israel, "The Tragedy of Bailey" storyline, where a Japanese-American cyborg brings Astro to America to try to protect the first robot to gain US citizenship from being lynched & the "Capetown Lulaby" story, which was inspired by issues of the time such as Apartheid & segregation & the latter half even takes place in South Africa. What's really strange is that the badguys from that story disguise themselves by putting on blackface.
  • Kind of the point in Elfen Lied. Although Diclonii are an actual threat to humanity as a species, from what we're shown it's humans who cause a lot of the threat, combined with the simple fact that children should not have weapons.
  • The battle of ESPers vs. "Normal People" in Zettai Karen Children is one of the underlying themes of the series. Almost all of the ESPers in the series are under the watch of the government, and it's shown that when someone is discovered to have powers, they're treated harshly for it. Good thing Minamoto serves as Morality Chain to The Children.
  • Witches in Rosario+Vampire are hated both by humans and youkai, since they're considered half-breeds, and neither side trusts them. Cute Witch Yukari gets this treatment during her first appearance (manga ch. 5), although part of it comes from her tendency to play magical pranks on others.
  • Akikan! has aluminum and steel cans (the cans are cute girls here) holding some deep prejudice against each other. The first time this comes to light is when Melon and Yell begin slinging insults at each other based solely on the material they're made out of. The fact that this type of competition is encouraged doesn't help.
  • Pokémon has done episodes that evoke this. One example from the Kanto episodes is "Bulbasaur and the Mysterious Garden", where Ash's Bulbasaur's refusal to evolve causes the newly evolved Ivysaur and their chief, a Venusaur, to turn on him. Another episode during Johto featured a group of Remoraid (a fish-like Pokémon) that shunned one of their clan after it evolved into an Octillery (an octopus Pokémon). Mewtwo and his army of clone Pokémon (both versions) and Mew and his army of natural born Pokemon (Japanese version only, at least in regards to Mew itself) is also an example of this.
    • It really shows up in the Japanese version of the first movie, where Mew says that the clones should die and are inferior to the originals.
  • One Piece has a complicated example with the Fishmen and the Mermen, humanoid beings that also show characteristics of an aquatic animal. Since the "aquatic animal" part is almost random and they have a lot of possible combinations, neither the Fishmen nor the Mermen discriminate against each other by distinctive traits such as their fish parts. Because of this, is perfectly normal for them that an octopus Mermaid reproduce with a shark Merman and a eel Merman be born as the result, that's also why they can't understand why the Humans classify each other in groups. But even if those species don't discriminate amongst themselves, they do discriminate against other races. Specifically, the Fishmen believe that they're superior to all other races, especially Humans, but that's also complicated because of the discrimination that the Humans have in the One Piece world against them and the Mermen.
    • The giants also get treated on the same level as a tank. They don't really like that. That's only really by the marines though, some are highly respected people and are treated as honorable guests.
    • There's also the Long-arm tribe looking for "rare people with only one joint in their arms" to put on display, or the occasional flickers of fantastic racism towards Brook (for looking like a monster) and more subtly Franky (looks like a monster without his fake skin). Basically you can be any skin color you want and no one will mind, but if you don't look human enough for the OP world's tastes things are gonna be rough.
      • Taken to the extreme by Hody Jones, who is is so racist that he's willing to have hundreds, if not thousands, of fishpeople and merpeople murdered for wishing to be on civil terms with humans. This includes the much-beloved Queen Otohime, for being the figurehead of the movement.
  • Fate has shown some evidence of this in Mahou Sensei Negima!. Some of his internal monologues seem to indicate he doesn't consider the people of the Magic World to be real. Except for the human population of Megalosembria, they are artificial beings who will fade from existence when (when, not if) the Mundus Magicus collapses. And far from persecuting them for it, he actually claims he's trying to save them, in his own twisted way.
  • In the Angel Sanctuary manga, angels are created in vitro. Naturally-bred angels are looked down upon, and outright hunted whenever they can find an excuse (the rebellion helps on that). They are often born with pale skin and red eyes, which gives them the slur name of "rabbits". This often borders on Bullying a Dragon, since rabbits are often born with extreme and uncontrolled powers.
  • The Saiyans of Dragon Ball Z were undoubtedly subjected to racism by Freeza and his men, leading up to Freeza single-handedly carrying out a genocide against them by destroying their planet. As we see in some episodes, the remaining Saiyans had to deal with discrimination, and being called 'monkeys'.
    • Subverted somewhat in that Freeza's real motivation was fear, the racism was mostly a cover. He destroyed their planet because he feared a Saiyan uprising, not because he particularly hated them.
  • There's the double whammy in Niea_7, where the aliens not only face discrimination by earthlings, but also maintain a kind of caste system for each other, in which lower-ranked aliens like Niea are regarded as worthless scum.
  • Ojamajo Doremi: A bunch of grey elephants don't want to play with a white elephant because he's white. Does This Remind You of Anything??
  • The Plants in Trigun are conscious beings that humans exploit for power, resources, etc. Though to be fair, most humans don't know that the Plants are even alive, let alone sentient.
  • In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the Anti-Spiral hates and deplores other Spiral Races, partly because of the Spiral Nemesis, but this doesn't prevent him from going on tangents that, quite frankly, wouldn't be very justified, even with the Spiral Nemesis as his excuse.
  • Kurata fullstop. He hates Digimon to the point where he warps Digimon data so that it can be used as a weapon to introduce genocide in a word that does not know death. Of course, this takes place before the series starts; in series, his racism just causes more genocide, medically alters people, and sets off a chain of events that nearly causes the end of both worlds.
  • Togusa of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has some technophobia as part of his old fashioned/Fan Of The Past personality. He is initially somewhat hostile to the Tatchikomas because he bristles at the idea of their being a fully sapient artificial intelligence. In the second season, he gets set up and put through a show trial after he shoots a cyborg criminal while off duty. The main thrust of the prosecution's argument is that Togusa is prejudiced against cyborgs due to subconscious feelings of inferiority.
  • Superior has humans and monsters gleefully killing one another.
  • In Eve No Jikan, robots are portrayed as harmless and, in some cases, genuinely good-willed, not to mention three laws compliant, but the Ethics Committee is flat-out against robots integrating into human life, especially if—God forbid—they begin developing personalities.
  • In Tiger & Bunny, it's noted that there used to be a tremendous amount of anti-NEXT sentiment, though it has lessened considerably in the past twenty years (due to the emergence of Maverick's superheroes). History of NEXT-prejudice nonetheless has an impact on the characters (both Kotetsu and Kriem grew up during this time period, and thus had to endure a lot of stigma) and on the plot (HeroTV was floundering because of it, so Maverick set up a Monster Protection Racket to keep it alive).
  • In Digimon Frontier, before the start of the series there was a war between human and beast digimon which Lucemon stops. In the movie there is an island where a civil war between the human and beast digimon there, which was perpetrated by a digimon who can slide digivolve from human and beast forms to awaken Ornismon.
  • An episode of Kimba the White Lion has Kimba go to a lion convention only to be called a "pussy cat" for being white by the meeting's leader Specklerex and other lions. It turns out that Specklerex was jealous towards Kimba's father Ceaser for being a more successful leader than him and by the end of the episode, Specklerex developed some respect towards Kimba.
  • In Kidou Shinsengumi Moeyo Ken, two minor characters, a Cat Girl and a regular human man, are seen from time to time in a love/hate relationship, and then they finally decide to marry, but the man's mother adamantly refuses to allow the Cat Girl to marry him. This serves as a plot point later when Okita asks Ryunosuke's mother, Oryo, if she was okay with a half-monster daughter marrying her son. Oryo's reaction is one of shock shortly after Okita asks it, and she walks away dejectedly. Unfortunately for her, Oryo wasn't shocked at her question, but rather some cockroaches which were on the wall behind Okita, and apparently didn't hear her question. Later on we find out Oryo's perfectly okay with Okita marrying Ryunosuke if she wanted to marry him.
  • Rustyrose from Fairy Tail declares that all non-wizards are trash and deserve to die. When Elfman expresses disgust at this and says that wizards and regular people have to work together for the common good, Rustyrose calls him a fool and says that Elfman and his friends are trash as well.

    Comic Books 
  • X-Men. Hands down the Trope Codifier, where anti-mutant sentiment is used as a metaphor for racism (and homophobia). Especially blatant in the second movie:
    Iceman's Mom: Have you tried... not being a mutant?
    • It actually gets worse in Ultimate Marvel as mutants are something of a legal anomaly (genetic modification is illegal, yet mutants are born this way).
    • Funny thing is, no matter how obvious current writers are with this trope, Stan Lee never intended to make such an allegory; he just cooked up the mutant angle as a convenient way to explain why the characters have super powers.
    • The obvious metaphor was parodied in an issue of X-Force, where Anarchist, an Afro-Canadian mutant, described being a mutant as being "Black with a little black added".
    • Parodied in The Randomverse:
    Superman: I am not an "Anti-Mutite."
    Wolverine: Sure you are, next you'll be sayin' we should have our own school!
    Superman: You do have your own school!
    • There's also Magneto, who goes so far as to give Mutants the egregiously biology-failing species name of Homo Superior. There are so many things wrong with that it could be its own article.
  • In Alan Moore's miniseries Top 10, robots (or "Ferro-Americans") are second-class citizens. Pete Cheney, one of the main characters in the series, has clear anti-robot sentiments, freely using the term "clicker", which is established as a major slur. When the robotic Joe Pi joins the police squad Cheney belongs to, Pete attempts to put Joe down whenever he can - however, Joe usually wins the resulting battle of wits. In fact, Pete eventually loses his job after an unprovoked assault on Joe... but shortly afterwards starts dating a robot. Joe also has to overcome the prejudices of his new partner.
    • In addition to "clicker", this series also featured another piece of slang regarding robots. At one point, a robot derides Joe Pi as being too human by calling him "spambo". Not only is this a variant on an actual ethnic slur, it's also similar to terms like "coconut" (brown on the outside, white on the inside) and "banana" (yellow on the outside, white on the inside), because Spam is "metal on the outside, meat on the inside".
    • This is also reversed in the second issue when a robot calls Robyn Slinger aka Toybox "Wetware" - an apparent slur against organic beings.
    • Jeff Smax is prejudiced against kaiju, because he comes from a fantasy world and made his living as a dragon slayer. He's not about to trust a giant lizard with fiery breath any time soon, is all.
    • Other examples of this usually crop up in any of Moore's stories about aliens interacting with humans for the first time, usually referring to humans derogatorily as "chimps" or "apes" and the like. This is especially common in his work from 2000 AD.
  • In the post-Zero Hour and the revised "original" versions of The Legion Of Superheroes, human prejudice against "impure" aliens is repeatedly used as a metaphor for real-world racism.
    • The Reboot also had the White Triangle, a group of speciesists composed of several species who are all ultimately pawns of a Nazi-esque regime-slash-religion that claims Daxamites are superior to all other species. Since Daxamites basically have all the powers of Kryptonians, they have some reason for assuming so - but in addition to being racist, they're also dirt-ignorant, superstitious, inbred, violent Jerk Ass thugs. Who can melt entire planets into slag, from orbit, by looking at them funny.
    • The "revised original" version of Legion had a pretty important storyline: "Superman and the Legion of Superheroes". Not only did humans start putting aliens in concentration camps and kill them, but after Earth withdrew from the United Planets, nearly all of the different species decried Earth as "ignorant and backwater" and some even tried to lock up and kill anyone associated with Earth. The story ended with Supes and the Legion calling out both sides.
  • The original LSH had a story about how 'Shadow Lass' arrives from Talok to explain that her world has been conquered quietly by the Fatal Five. To infiltrate unnoticed, the Legionnaires adopt the identities of a rag-wearing desert-living minority. Later, it is revealed Shady is one of these people; she is slightly darker blue than the city folk. Lampshaded in a later story by having Shady look slightly African, while being blue, and dressed for the desert (think Arab).
  • As a child, Aquaman was exiled from his home due to people with blonde hair being discriminated against in Atlantis.
  • Done pretty blatantly in the EC Comics story "Judgement Day", with its orange and blue robots. They are identical but for outer casings and programming, but the blue robots sit at the back of the bus, recharge in different stations, live in their own sector in town. The human evaluating the robot society does not let them progress to space until they can get over that, noting that Earth was like this once, and only owned the universe after humans learned to live together. In the last panel of the story he takes off his helmet, revealing that he is black.
  • The Termight in Nemesis the Warlock is the Spanish Inquisition IN SPACE! and will kill any and all aliens on sight. Even the main antagonist, Tomas de Torquemada is a descendant of the original Torquemada with a few rounds of Historical Villain Upgrades. It is revealed that both Torquemadas are reincarnations of the same individual. Other reincarnations apparently include Adolf Hitler. At one point Torquemada from the future meets his historical namesake and accidentally ends up in the torture chambers of Spanish Inquisition under the watchful eyes of the original Torquemada. While Torquemada from the future describes his exploits to the original Torquemada in detail, the Inquisition keeps torturing him. Torquemada finds the experience painful and traumatic. The original one, that is.
  • In the Marvel Universe the Kree are an extraterrestrial race that have conquered many worlds. The Kree are divided into a majority population that is indistinguishable from humans of European descent and a population with blue skin. The blue skinned Kree view themselves as superior to the 'pink' skinned Kree and dominate the high ranking positions in the military and government.
  • Owly sometimes has undercurrents of this, with other creatures the eponymous Owly meets assuming the worst of him because he's an owl, and they usually eat smaller animals, rather than trying to befriend them. A Little Blue, in particular, entirely revolves around the interactions between Owly and a bluejay that initially assumes that every action Owly takes, no matter how benevolent or selfless, has a sinister ulterior motive.
  • In the Hellboy comics, some occasional anti-demon sentiment is present (well, that's to be expected). In one of the issues of the BPRD spin-off, an agent is called out for being a "speciest" after making derogatory remarks about Abe Sapien.
  • For the longest time in Judge Dredd, mutants were forced to struggle to survive in the cursed earth because they were banned from entering the Mega-Cities. When Dredd himself managed to overturn this law, he suffers a reduction in rank and civil unrest plagues Mega-City One. Then, 2009's "Tour of Duty" storyline involved an effort to relocate mutants to outside ghettos where they would produce food for normals, with Dredd himself being unofficially exiled as punishment for letting them in in the first place.
  • Mutants are also treated as sub-human in Strontium Dog, to the point that the only way they can make a living is by Bounty Huntering.
  • Aaron Stack from Nextwave was awfully 'racist' about how awesome robots are compared to 'fleshy' humans. It didn't stop him from trying to save them, oddly enough. In fairness, Machine Man (Aaron) has spent his entire life being the target of anti-robot prejudice, with people trying to kill him and viewing his life as valueless because he's a machine. By now, he has become very bitter (as well as seriously depressed) about it and can give at least as good as he gets in the insult department.
  • Inverted in the first issue of Demon Knights, where Al Jabr (an Arab swordsman) is denied service at a European pub due to his race. Exoristos (a white Amazon) sees this and asks if she is allowed service, and then angrily points out the bartender's hypocrisy when he tells her yes. She claims that despite the color of his skin, Jabr has far more in common with the white bar patrons than she does, seeing as how she comes from a mystical society of immortal warrior women.
  • Kling Klang Klatch takes it to a whole new level: a town of talking teddybears stews race hate, with a minority of stuffed panda bears locked in mutual disdain with the regular teddies. There are other toys in this world: everyone's got someone to look down on, if only the drugged-out raggedy-anne dolls.
  • In Superman: Godfall, the Kandorians are incredibly xenophobic and racist against all non-native Kandorians, especially Empireths, who are mutants with psychic powers as well as the typical Kryptonian powers under a yellow sun.
  • Jack Kirby's New Gods lived in a city that was over the home of a group of bug people who were quite blatantly treated with direct racism by the Gods even after one of their own, Forager, became an ally.
  • Runaways includes Skrulls VS Majesdanians (Karolina's species) and Skrulls VS machines. The Skrull Empire (or at least, the outpost Xavin comes from) has been at war with Majesdane for generations. Xavin and Karolina attempted to end this using their Arranged Marriage, but it did not take. When a group of Majesdanians who hold Karolina responsible for her parents' role in starting the war come looking for her, they find her relationship with Xavin disgusting. Their inter-species relationship was used as an allegory for homosexuality/interracial relationships and transgender issues throughout the comics run. Xavin, for his/her part, has trouble thinking of machines as equals, which causes some friction with her cyborg teammate Victor. It ranges from being unthinkingly condescending (calling him the 'house android') to being a full-on Jerkass, though she gradually gets better.
  • Over the years, Lex Luthor slowly morphed his hatred of Superman into anti-alien human supremacism. In Superman: Secret Origin he colludes with elements in the US armed forces with similar sentiments.
  • Frank in Scarlet Veronica is racist against zombies. He calls them "flesh-chuckin' grave apes". The fact that he himself is a Frankenstein's Monster and thus not too far removed from a zombie turns this into Hypocritical Humor.
  • One of the story arcs in L.E.G.I.O.N. '89 revolved around an alien civil war. Several issues in, a member of L.E.G.I.O.N. admits they can't tell what divides the two sides. Turns out they have different eye colors.
  • In Gotham Central, the generic term for supervillains is the pejorative "freaks," which is often extended to anybody with powers. Detective Josephine "Josie Mac" MacDonalds has the ability to "hear" inanimate objects, which is extremely useful when investigating a crime scene, but she fears how she will be treated if the other detectives discover this. As such, she frequently needs to come up with explanations for "hunches" and her "gut". Combined with the fact that she is also black and the newest addition to the Major Crimes Unit, Jose Mac has some troubles throughout the series.
  • Bizarre variation on the usual Talking Animal versions of this trope in Blacksad; species isn't a problem in this world, but colour is, as in literal fur colour. The main two groups are Arctic Nation, a semi-religious association of white-coated animals with a stylised snowflake as a symbol, and the Claws, a street gang of black-furred beasts. John Blacksad himself, the protagonist, is a black-and-white cat, so neither side likes him. Not much discussion is given to what they think of animals with fur colours other than black or white, though - the two groups mostly seem to focus on hating each other.
    • In another Blacksad story there was similar tension between lizards and mammals.
  • Most animosity between species in Mouse Guard is not this trope, instead being based on the very real problems of predator/prey relationships or acting as competitors or "pests" for other species. Breaking from this, there's the relationship between Bats and the other species. Bats are distrusted by the other species. (according to the Bats' accounts, this dates back to time immemorial, when neither side in a war between birds and land animals would accept their help, the birds considering them land animals because they had fur, and the land animals being suspicious of their wings) For their part, the bats hate the other species in return and will react with extreme violence to any suggestion that they're not trustworthy.

    Fanfiction 
  • This is parodied in Oh God Not Again when Luna asks Snape if he is a Living-ist, or someone who judges based on whether or not a person is dead or alive.
  • An episode of the Forever Knight virtual continuation FK4, "Night Visions," explores vampiric prejudice against carouches (vampires who drink animal blood).
  • In With Strings Attached, Ketafans treat elves like second-class citizens, and Baravadans are supremely contemptuous of Ketafans, which creates friction when the Baravadan Brox and Grunnel must ally with some.
    • Ironically, most Ketafans think Baravadans are the Favorites of the Gods.
    • Don't forget the harveys in New Zork.
  • The Tron-universe Fan Fic Through A Diamond Sky plays with the tension between Programs and Isos. Programs see Isos as having no purpose or function, taking up valuable resources and contributing nothing back. Isos see Programs as inherently hostile and constrained by their hard-coded directives.
    Flynn: "For a world of ones and zeroes, it annoys the hell out of me how much User-style problems you've picked up...First time I was here, it was persecution based on belief...now this place gets racism, too...You'd think there'd be a way to code out that crap."
  • Thawing Permafrost plays this for laughs in chapter 27, when Dan and Mizore are picking costumes for the Festival.
    Dan: “How about the Abominable Snow-woman?”
    Mizore: “I didn’t realise we were playing with the race cards.”

    Film 
  • Men in Black. Agent J uses this to provoke the Space Cockroach into attacking him by crushing normal cockroaches under his feet.
    Agent J: Don't start none... (squish!) ...don't GET none! (squish)
  • In Underworld and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the two races of immortals, vampire and werewolf spend entire centuries killing each other over a grudge. The vampires are more typically racist, calling the Lycans (werewolves) animals and vermin and generally hunting them to the brink of extinction. In the feudal era, the vampires kept the Lycans as slaves and pets to guard them during daylight hours. The lead vampire killed his own daughter because she fell in love with a werewolf and carried his child.
  • In Willow, the Daikini (humans) call the Neldwyn (Hobbits with the serial numbers filed off) "pecks" in a clearly offensive way. "Daikini" itself seems to be a mildly offensive term.
  • Humans themselves are subjected to Fantastic Racism in Titan A.E., as the movie takes place 15 years after an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, and what humans remain are penniless, homeless, and generally reviled by the other species.
  • Matt Sykes of Alien Nation has a black partner (they're cops) at the beginning of the story but refers to the alien Newcomers as "slags" before he's been told that his new partner will be a Newcomer. Of course, by the end Matt has been converted.
  • Xenophobia is a major theme of the 1953 movie It Came from Outer Space, as the aliens believe their hideous appearance will inevitably lead to conflict with humanity.
  • In Pleasantville, when people and places start turning color, a backlash movement starts to keep Pleasantville "pleasant" and Deliberately Monochrome. This involves hanging signs saying "NO COLOREDS" and starting anti-color riots. It even features a courtroom scene that references the one in To Kill a Mockingbird, with the residents of color segregated to the balconies.
  • Done in the at least one version of The Wind in the Willows. At Toad's trial, the judge gives him an extra twelve months' imprisonment for being green.
  • Seen in the Wing Commander movie, against Pilgrims (humans mutated by radiation).
    • This has more to do with the fact that the Pilgrims went to war with the rest of humanity before the Human-Kilrathi War.
  • District 9, about aliens stranded in Johannesburg, never mentions The Apartheid Era. It doesn't need to, what with the repressed "Prawns" relegated to filthy, crime-ridden slums, barely allowed rights, and treated with institutional prejudice.
    • The short film that District 9 is based on did mention that the government of Johannesburg used the existing apartheid laws of South Africa in order to segregate the alien population.
    • Although according to the South African writer, the movie itself wasn't intended as an apartheid allegory, just as a what-if story about aliens in South Africa. To people outside the country it may look like some sort of profound statement, but to those of us who are from here, it's more like an extrapolation of the everyday (especially given all the problems there have been with illegal immigrants and some of our citizens' excessively violent "solution" to the problem). Kind of like how Independence Day is just an alien invasion movie in America, rather than some sort of deep social commentary about the nature of American democracy.
  • Cats Don't Dance is pretty much about the discrimination black actors faced in Hollywood during the late 30s/early 40s...but with ANIMALS!
    • In fact, one review called it the movie for people who thought the racial overtones in Who Framed Roger Rabbit were too subtle.
  • The speciesist squirrel in Once Upon a Forest.
  • An American Tail is an obvious one, the mice represent the oppressed elasticities of the world and the cats represent their oppressors.
  • James Cameron's Avatar is a perfect example of this. The Na'vi and the humans are very racist towards each other. To be fair, the humans stop short of Na'vi genocide. Although that may simply be due to the fact that the RDA is a corporation, not a military, and genocide is terrible PR. Subverted as not all humans are racist towards the Na'vi. Dr. Grace and her colleagues highly sympathize with the Na'vi people and are even willing to learn their culture. And there are some humans who are allowed to stay in Pandora after the Na'vi kicked the RDA army's asses. And there some humans who even adapt their culture and literally become one of them, like Jake Sully
    • The Na'Vi themselves are not exempt from this, as some of them frequently disparage Humans.
  • In Blade Runner, we have humans using 'replicants', who are seen as Just a Machine. The racism aspect comes in when one of the characters refers to replicants as 'skin-jobs'. In one of the editions, a lampshade is hung on this, with the protagonist comparing him to the type of cop who used to call a black person a nigger.
  • The first The Land Before Time movie contains plenty of Fantastic Racism between the different species of dinosaurs. The "races," stay in their own groups at the movie's start, these being the Long Necks, the Three Horns, the Swimmers, the Fliers, and the Spike Tails just to name those of the main Five-Man Band. Most, if not all, of the Fantastic Racism is gone by the movie's end, when all of the dinosaurs, sans Sharptooth, are living in the Great Valley in peace.
    • This shows up in the sequels as well. In every single one, Cera's (the threehorn) father forgets the 'racism is bad' Aesop and tries to blame the new problem on anyone and everyone else. The plot enfolds, and by the end he repents for being such a jerk...until the next time. There is also a saccharine song called "It Takes All Sorts" on the subject.
  • The soviet socio-political satire film Kin-Dza-Dza features this based entirely on whether a device pointed at someone shows a green light or an orange light, dividing them between "patsaks" and "chatlanians", the planet that most of the movie is set on is owned by the chatlanians and so the patsaks need to wear a bell clipped to their nose, squat in front of anyone who is higher than them in society and perform in cages. Add this to the fact that they have absolutely no rights and you have the basis for a near perfect example of this trope.
    • It also should be noted that, unlike many other examples on this page, patsaks weren't portrayed as being any better then chatlanians. On planets that belong to patsaks chatlanians have it exactly as bad as patsaks do on theirs.
  • Star Wars has a few examples:
    • Droids, while apparently sentient, are clearly treated like second-class citizens at best and chattel slaves at worst. At the end of A New Hope, C-3P0 and R2-D2 are clearly shown excluded from the awards ceremony. Also, the barman at the Catina hates droids. While some people have pointed out that droids would just take up space in a dining establishment, the barman clearly states, "We don't serve their kind here," and "We don't want them," suggesting that he was deliberately withholding some sort of potential service.
      • It is explained in the EU that the Empire would use droids to spy on the bar patrons, making it impossible to carry out their dealings; hence the ban on droids.
      • It may also be because of the Clone Wars.
    • The Empire is practically this incarnate and also has Fantastic Chauvinism. They not only hate aliens, but specifically developed a virus to kill them in the most graphic, painful, and brutal way possible. They bomb planets for the most minor of offenses, reduced the planet of Topwara to barbarism because they aided the Rebellion, blew up Alderaan and tried to frame the Rebels for it, and oh so much more throughout the EU. They even have their own policy focused around racism, NhM, or Non-huMan. Grand Admiral Thrawn, one of its best tacticians, had to be allowed to get into the Navy by the Emperor himself, and that was only because of his tactical genius.
  • While never stated outright, the Muppets seem to be social minorities and outcasts in many of their movies in contrast to the usually successful and exclusive human societies.
    • Of course, this could just be because their variety show, while entertaining to us, is considered inept within their fictional universe. And even with that, popular human celebrities were (almost) always thrilled to be appearing on their show, and rarely seemed to notice that the Muppets were not human.
  • In Predators, its revealed that the "Classic" Predators are hunted by the larger, more aggressive newer Predators. One of the classic Predators is kept chained up as a prisoner in the Predator camp, and combats the leader of the new Predators when released, but is killed.
  • In Brother From Another Planet, an escaped alien slave who looks like a black man is pursued by two of his own kind, who look like white men. It turns out that the aliens are actually oblivious to the slave's skin color. They enslaved him because he's got three toes.
  • In the Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, the Fallen's only apparent reason for wanting to destroy Earth and starting the war that destroyed his homeworld was a general and strong hatred for humanity. Considering on his first encounter they were as dangerous to him as ants are to humans, one can only wonder.
    • Megatron on the other hand, has a more justifiable reason. He was kept frozen for centuries, and his body was poked, prodded and studied by the guys at Sector 7, in order to help create modern technology, whilst referring to him with the demeaning acronym of "N. B. E.-01". And apparently, he was conscious the entire time this was happening.
    • Transformers: Dark of the Moon plays the Fantastic Racism up more than the previous films, with the Decepticons planning on enslaving the human race to rebuild Cybertron.
  • Played for laughs in Jim Henson's Hey, Cinderella!. For some unspecified reason, no one but Cinderella and the prince are willing to listen to frogs. This means that poor Kermit spends the entire movie trying to clear up the misunderstandings, only to be ignored. The king also makes frogs the only exception to his proclamation that everyone in the kingdom is invited to the ball, and we later see that frogs aren't allowed to give testimony. We're also told that Cinderella's dog Rufus is unable to testify that she's telling the truth, but that might be justified as a dog being biased in favor of its owner.
  • In Thor, this is played with regarding Asgardians and Jotsuns. Odin harbours no prejudice towards the Frost Giants even adopting Loki, a Frost Giant by birth. Oddly, Loki thinks destroying the entire Jotsun race would please his father.
  • In the Japanese version of Pokémon: The First Movie, Mew believed that all clones are inferior to the originals and should die because of this. The dub changed it into a speech about how real strength comes from the heart.
  • In Blade, pureblood vampires treat people who have been turned into vampires with disdain.
    • This forms some of the plot of both the original film and the TV series. Both Frost and Van Sciver are turned-bloods and are forced to bow down before the purebloods. At least Frost is open about his disdain for them, thinking that they're stuck in the old ways, ignoring the modern world. Van Sciver always shows them reverence, while cursing them behind closed doors. With Van Sciver, at least, a plausible explanation for this is the death of his wife and his forcible turning at the hands of a pureblood.
  • In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, toons aren't allowed in certain clubs (despite being the main performers), Eddie has a slight dislike for toons after one killed his brother, and when Roger is accused of murder, he potentially faces execution without any chance of a fair trial.

    Literature 
  • In the Malazan Bookofthe Fallen by Stephen Erikson there is masses of this. Seven Cities and the Malazan Empire; Letherii and Tiste Edur; Letherii and Awl; Bargast and Moranth; Tiste Andii, Tiste Edur and Tiste Liosan all hate each other; Imass and Jaghut, Jaghut and K'Chain Che'Malle, K'Chain Che'Malle and K'Chain Nah'Rhuk, the Tiste races and K'Chain Che'Malle. Basically, everyone hates pretty much everyone else.
  • Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crime: "ursism" is the discrimination against anthropomorphic talking bears, and it's Serious Business.
    • In his A Shade of Grey the society in the book is divided along lines of what color of the spectrum is visible to you with Purples being highest, then Blues, and so on with those who are completely colorblind, Greys being the lowest.
  • The Discworld books have always done this skillfully, using it, subverting it, and double-subverting it.
    • Especially interesting is Commander Samuel Vimes of the City Watch. A self-described speciesist, Vimes has nonetheless allowed the Watch to become one of the most species-blind employers in the city, and recognizes better than most the value of its non-human members, such as dwarfs, trolls, and even vampires, for which he still admits an innate and intense dislike. Mind you, Vimes is also a big-time misanthrope, so his dislike stems from his job-inflicted tendency to treat everyone like a bastard until the opposite can be proven; the narrator in one of the books even states that Vimes hates all races and species equally.
      • As does Vimes himself: "I don't like dwarfs much," he tells dwarf recruit Cheery Littlebottom, "But I don't like humans much either, so maybe that makes it okay, I don't know."
    • The Discworld includes its own racial epithets equivalent to our N-word: "rocks" for trolls, "lawn ornaments" for dwarfs, etc. The trolls have "squashies" for humans.
    • Despite the quote at the top of the page, Pratchett later introduced plain non-fantastic racism between humans to the Discworld in Jingo!, with its depiction of Morporkian bigotry against Klatchians and Klatchian bigotry against Morporkians. In either case it kind of backs up the previous assertion that plain old racism is not a major problem, as it seems to come down to nationalism more than anything else, with Fred's attempted racial justification for his dislike of Klatch diminished when it was pointed out to him that Omnians are pretty brown and he has no problem with them. All the same the series does imply there remains some racial prejudices, but being the exception rather than the norm, genuine such feeling restricted to Captain Quirk in Men at Arms and Lord de Worde in The Truth.
      • Also, they were sort of at war with the Klatchians, so the racism tended towards the sort of self-contradictory propaganda designed to make them look like contemptible sub-humans so that the soldiers wouldn't feel so bad about killing them (Sergeant Colon describes them as being both vicious brutes in love with mindless violence and worthless cowards liable to run at the mere scent of a fight, almost in the same sentence).
    • Non-human species often show a lot of Fantastic Racism toward each other, as well, most prominently the conflict between dwarfs and trolls.
      • Also within species- Soul Music makes passing mention that trolls from sedimentary families are usually considered second-class trolls compared to those from igneous families. (Thud! shows us the two extremes of the geology-based class system: at the top is the Diamond King [although Mr Shine is too enlightened to have such prejudices himself], and at the bottom is Brick).
    • There is a conversation in the novel Men at Arms in which prejudiced nobility simultaneously treat dwarfs as inferior, and yet criticize their cleverness, poor logic associated with antisemitism or xenophobia.
  • The Seven Realms Series has this everywhere and it's even justified at times! The Demon King, the man said to have nearly destroyed the world 1000 years ago, was in fact, a wizard. Upon his defeat, the Spirit Clans stopped making extremely powerful amulets for the wizards to use (this alone making the wizards think lowly of them), but it was forbidden for a wizard to ever mary the ruling queen. On top of that, many peoples throughout the seven realms think of the Spirit Clans as savages and wizards as heretics. The ill-will between these peoples really make things more complicated for the heroes later on in the story.
  • Dr. Seuss' story "The Sneetches" is a thinly disguised allegory on racism. It describes a conflict between two subgroups of the titular Sneetches, a race of bird-like humanoids. One group has stars on their bellies, and thinks themselves superior because of it, while the other group doesn't. The Aesop comes after a huckster with the unlikely name of "Sylvester McMonkey McBean" convinces the two groups to repeatedly alter who has stars and who doesn't, along with which of the two conditions are more desirable. By the time McBean packs up his operation and leaves, they don't remember who had stars to begin with and who didn't, and thus abandon their prejudices as worthless.
  • Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green-Sky Trilogy deals extensively with the tensions between the fair-skinned, tree-dwelling Kindar and the darker-skinned, underground race of Erdlings. In this case, the difference between the Kindar and Erdlings was as much cultural as ethnic (The Kindar were vegetarians and the Erdlings hunted; the Kindar believed in repressing all negative emotions, while the Erdlings were very expressive. Among other things).
  • Done four times in the Harry Potter series: first, in the way some "pureblood" wizards look down on Muggles and those who have Muggles in their ancestry; second, in Hermione's well-meaning campaign on the behalf of house elves; third, the treatment of werewolves and "halfbreeds" such as Hagrid; and fourth, the Dursleys' bigotry against wizards. The second and third are part of a larger theme of non-humans being discriminated against, and centaurs fall into this category too; Dolores Umbridge hates them, and Firenze the centaur gets into trouble with his own people, who consider him an "Uncle Tom" and traitor for associating with humans. Lupin chooses to resign from school after everybody finds out he's a werewolf.
    • And the "official" wizard attitude to the other magical races is clearly portrayed as a different kind of racism to the Nazi Death-Eaters, not open-minded egalitarianism; Harry is surprised to see a statue at the Ministry of Magic with a centaur and a goblin in submissive adoration of a wizard and witch; totally preposterous (unlike the house-elf in the same statue), but evidently the way the Ministry believes the world "should" work.
  • In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth relations (actual contact as well as stories/myths) between various peoples are often less than rosy, both between races (Humans, Elves, and Dwarves; especially Elves VS Dwarves), but also among peoples/nations of the same race. One of the themes of The Lord of the Rings is the different races overcoming their differences in the face of a greater threat, posed by Sauron (though it should be noted Sauron himself is in control of basically a totally evil race, and so the alliance is also against them).
    • Note also that there's no solidarity between the "evil" creatures. Saruman's Orcs hate the Orcs of Mordor and vice versa, and within Mordor, the Orcs of Barad-Dur feud with those of Minas Morgul. It never quite degenerates into Enemy Civil War, but it works to the protagonists' advantage multiple times.
    • Played to a ridiculous degree in the old animated Hobbit movie. The three forces are at war, slaughtering each other, and then the orcs cross the hill and the three generals start referring to themselves as old friends...
    • Tolkien was deliberately vague and sparing with descriptions of the enemy. One can just as easily say the "non-white" humans are not the enemy because they are "non-white", but rather because they are allied with—or under the power of—Sauron. Also, read Sam's reaction to the dead warrior of Harad. He wonders "whether he was really evil at heart, and what lies or threats had driven him on this march so long from his home, and whether he would have rather stayed there in peace."
    • Also note, that J.R.R. Tolkien acknowledged the fantastic racism in LotR. He was said to have strongly regretted his depiction of the Orcs as seemingly Always Chaotic Evil and irredeemable, because it conflicted with his devout Catholicism. He often later defended the Orcs in later writings, claimed that they were simply misled and manipulated, and even said that "we were all orcs in The Great War." Just as the "evil" humans were misled and manipulated.
    • It´s interesting to notice that not one of the Rohirrim distrusts the Woses, even when they are so ugly, and that Frodo calls Bill Helechal "evil and stupid" and Barliman Butterbur "lovable and stupid" then Aragorn is described as A Credit For The Men Gandalf immediately corrects him. All the Free Peoples were attacked by Sauron, but the settlement with less casualties of war was Bree (three men and two hobbits), declared as the only place in Middle Earth where two races coexisted peacefully and fully respected each other.
  • In the Wild Cards series, Jokers are basically reviled and treated as second-class citizens due to their wild card-induced mutations. On the other hand, Aces, who just gained superpowers, are treated reverently by modern media, but were the subject of cultural paranoia in the past (to the point where Joseph McCarthy blacklisted Aces, not Communists). In this case, despite the presence of visible mutants and superhumans, bog-standard bigotry still exists (two of the first big-name Aces were constant victims of it).
    • Sometimes one form of positive fantastic racism counteracts the other though. In-story the South African Apartheid regime treated black Aces as colored, while all jokers were treated as black.
  • In The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, there are several forms of racism. All the supernaturals think they're the best, and better than just plain humans, so there is segregation along supernatural lines:
    • Vampires think they're better than Weres, Shifters, Faeries, and Witches.
    • Weres think they're better than Shifters (Shifters don't turn into wolves. Weres only turn into wolves) and think Vampires are disgusting, to the point of slurring humans who associate closely with vampires. Shifters call themselves Weres when the wolf-type two-natured can't hear and think the wolven lycanthropes are thugs.
    • As you get to know the fairies, farther on in the series, they are shown to be prejudiced against anybody not-fairy. They're divided into two factions, one wants to kill all part-fairy hybrids.
    • Witches have infighting between Wiccans and nastier factions, who abuse vampire blood like normal people abuse drugs.
    • Humans are prejudiced against vampires, thinking God likes them better. And also because Vampires, y'know, eat them.
  • The trailmen and catmen in the Darkover series are the frequent targets of bigotry by the humans.
  • In Brave Story, animal people are frequent targets of discrimination by humans. The Corrupt Church in one creepy town advocates the hunting down and dominating of animal people. Creepy.
  • Despite having demon and vampire friends, as well as a were-fox girlfriend Colt Regan Hates Were-rats.
  • In Harry Turtledove's Darkness series, an allegory of World War II set in a fantasy world, the nonsense of prejudice is put front and center by making those with Aryan features (their oppressors call them "the blonds") the equivalent of Jews (the Polish analogues are the ones with more typically Jewish features). He also does this in War Between the Provinces, essentially the same thing for the Civil War with blond serfs as the equivalent of southern slaves.
  • Absolutely slaughtered in Tom Holt's book Someone Like Me. Humans and monsters in a post-apocalyptic Earth have been fighting and killing each other because each sees the other as evil. Told entirely from the human point of view, the novel ends when the protagonist finds that one of the monsters knows how to talk, and is just as human as he is. However, he kills it anyway, because he'd been killing them for so long he wouldn't be able to face thinking of them as people.
  • Explored in depth in the Temeraire series, where dragons are treated by most Europeans as nothing more than quite intelligent pack animals or weapons platforms. People will casually discuss breeding dragons for various traits, and even whether or not it would be a good idea to slaughter all feral (riderless) dragons - all this despite the fact that dragons can speak English (and often several other languages) extremely well and have a normal human range of intelligence. In this case, it's almost not even a metaphor for anything, because the books are set during the Napoleonic era, with all the racism and sexism of that time fully intact. After all, if people can decide that Asians, Africans, and women are inferiors, how much more a non-human intelligence?
    • You mention the ferals, but not the plan to send a dragon infected with a disease that kills dragons horribly over to France and let the disease wipe out not only France's fighting dragons, but those in the breeding grounds too, AND thousands of others outside France too — Don't worry, Laurence and Temeraire bring them the cure.
  • In Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, humans heavily discriminate against toons, the living cartoon characters they share their world with. Toons are treated in much the same manner African Americans were in pre-Civil Rights America, with elements such as segregated restaurants and schooling. One could even say that they were put in an "Animation Age Ghetto".
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, racism between humans and nonhumans, and between different species of nonhumans, sometimes comes up. The first kind is especially prominent in parts of the X-Wing Series, where the nonhumans living in an alien's slum decide that a Rebel plotter's refusal to dance with one of them means that he is speciesist and can be killed as an example, despite sitting at a table with other nonhumans who defend him. Plots to exploit the unease between species pop up a lot in the more cerebral Star Wars novels.
    • Oppression of non-human races was a stated part of Imperial Doctrine. Near-Humans got off a lot better, but not perfectly.
    • Less mentioned is the plight of droids, ranging from mere automatons to thinking, feeling beings, all of them property with memories that can be wiped at a whim. It rarely comes up.
    • Then there's some mild prejudice against cyborgs. A prosthetic eye or hand is one thing, but it seems like the more mechanical someone is, the less of a future people regard them with. Ton Phanan epitomizes this feeling.
    • In Vision of the Future, this conversation between Han Solo and a clone of Baron Fel. At the time, no details about the Clone Wars were known, and Zahn like most other authors assumed that the clones hadn't been on the Republic's side, so the antipathy was a bit different in origin.
    Han Solo: So what's it like being a clone?
    Carib: About as you'd expect. It's the sort of secret that gets heavier with time and age.
    Han Solo: Yeah. I can imagine.
    Carib: Excuse me, Solo, but you can't possibly imagine it. Every time one of us leaves this valley it's with the knowledge that every outside contact puts our lives and those of our families at risk. The knowledge that all it will take will be one person suddenly looking at us with new eyes, and the whole carefully created soap bubble of the ever-so-close Devist family will collapse into the fire of hatred and rage and murder.
    • The Yuuzhan Vong consider themselves the Master Race, and declared a war against everyone else to wipe out the galaxy's "impurity". They doubly hate technology-users.
  • This plays a large part in Karin Lowachee's books. For most of Warchild, EarthHub is at war with the alien strivs. They are seen as bestial, cannibalistic, and Always Chaotic Evil. Of course, once their society is explored, they're revealed to be a lot more complex than humans first thought. But given what the author seems to think of humanity...
  • Discrimination against Animals (yes, the capitalization is mandatory) is an important plot point in Gregory Maguire's Wicked. Elphaba, having green skin, suffers from this too, to the point of her mother considering killing her after her birth.
  • Isaac Asimov had this as a recurring theme in his works, most obviously in The Currents of Space and its Days of Future Past spin on the cotton plantations of the old Deep South. Prejudice against Earth-born humans and against robots were also recurring themes - see The Caves Of Steel for examples of both at once.
  • Quite a bit in Warrior Cats. Although trans-clan racism is mostly limited to stereotypes, the real racism is directed at half-Clan cats, kittypets, the Tribe of Rushing Water, and loners and rogues.
  • David Eddings' The Elenium/Tamuli books feature Elene contempt for Styrics (verging on medieval attitudes towards the Jews). The Styrics in turn detest the Elenes (with good reason, considering past atrocities) and the Delphae. Just for fun, people in the subject kingdoms of the Tamuli empire refer to their rulers as "godless yellow dogs" (a vile slur; as Oscagne points out, "We have gods. Give me a few moments and I might even be able to remember some of their names"). The distinctly Nazi-esque Cyrgai consider everyone inferior. And, to extend this a bit further, trolls don't like being called ogres.
  • In David Gerrold's Chess with a Dragon, human beings are treated with open contempt by other sentient species, for being mammals. Most sentient races in the galaxy evolved from dinosaur- or bird-analogues, and consider mammals to be revolting vermin, if not bite-sized snacks.
  • Vampires and werewolves in Twilight.
  • The fairies in Artemis Fowl are prejudiced against humans. This is presented as partly justified in the sense that, to some extent, Humans Are Bastards, but to some extent it's obviously a product of the fairies' recognisably human limitations of perspective. The main reason cited is how unecological human actions are, but a favorite complaint is also how disgusting it's human toilets are indoors. The fairy races are also intolerant of each other, but with at least one being Always Chaotic Evil, it's not surprising.
    • As of The Atlantis Complex, we see Turnball Root commenting on how the fairies are wasting resources to the point of throwing away something that would have only taken a dab of silicon gel to fix. The fact that it's also a mastercomputer of a space probe makes this an example of bad security as well.
  • Done with a twist in Kit Whitfield's Benighted in that what we would regard as normal humans are a despised minority in a world of werewolves.
  • In The Witcher saga, the main character is threatened as a "freak", despite the fact that he saves people from monsters. Elves must lives in reservations, most of the people think that "good Elf is a dead Elf", and if you have an Elf in your family tree, you cannot, for example, get a wedding in a city. Other races are threatened in a similar way by humans. And in the last book, there's another group of Elves, that escaped to another dimension, murdered and enslaved its humans. And the Unicorns hate all the Elves for that.
    • One of local dwarf stand-ins mentioned that elves weren't that friendly themselves until humans arrived — "Oh, now when it's their turn to be kicked around it's suddenly 'we, the Old Races', right".
  • In Generation Dead, teenagers all over America are coming back from the dead. Some are just like regular teenagers, only slower talking and with a lower body temperature. Others are very slow and can barely walk. The "zombies" are every minority that ever existed combined. How they are treated is almost like how black people were treated in the Deep South. The high and low functioning is almost like mental retardation. You get the picture.
  • This is the central theme in the novel Vampire High, which is about a boy whose family moves to a small town where about half of the inhabitants are Friendly Neighborhood Vampires who call themselves jenti. The town is very self-segregated, with an unspoken rule that humans will not go in to 'jenti' stores and vice versa. After getting kicked out of the public school, he ends up attending the jenti school because vampires will die in water and the school needs a water polo team.
  • In the Honor Harrington series, the use of genetically-modified troops during Old Earth's Final War has led to widespread prejudice against genetically-modified humans ("Genie" is sometimes cited as an in-universe slur against GM humans, though it rarely actually appears in dialogue).
  • Un Lun Dun features largely irrational racism between living beings and ghosts. Woe to the only known half-breed: everybody mistrusts him. All the more noticeable as the inhabitants of the eponymous city otherwise display extraordinary diversity and tolerance.
  • Because the titular human society is so militaristic and xenophobic, this trope is everywhere in the Codex Alera. The Marat are usually called barbarians, are constantly said to have sex with animals, and eat people (although depending on how you read it, both the first one and definitely the last one turn out to be actually true). On the other hand, the Alerans are also prejudiced against the Canim and the Icemen, both of whom are far more complex than humans depict them.
    • Of course, both the Marat and the Canim are also hideously racist against the Alerans. A large part of the Aleran speciesist views stem from being the descendants of a Roman legion stranded on a world full of hostile monsters. The only group that really gets off well in this is the Icemen, because the Aleran-Iceman conflict is really nobody's fault.
  • The Algebraist by Ian M. Banks. AIs lose a Robot War against their fleshy friends. The survivors in hiding are reviled as abominations with parallels of religious bigotry and racism. As the story progresses the AIs are implied to be most unlike the Killer Robot stereotype and the "war" begins to looks more like Kristallnacht.
  • The Firbolg of The Symphony Of Ages are a primitive and largely-savage race. Although their reputation as brutish and cannibals is well-earned, they are also intelligent and have a strong internal society. Despite this, other races have largely regarded them as monsters to be driven back.
    • The most telling example of this racism was a practice of a human kingdom bordering their territory referred to as "Spring Cleaning". Every spring the ruler would mount a punitive expedition into Firbold land and raze any villages discovered to the ground, leaving few to no survivors. As pointed out by another character, the Firbolg had not launched even a retaliatory raid within the lifetime of the lord or his father.
  • An important part of the ending of the original novella version of Enemy Mine, with humans and Drachs continuing to resent and look down on each other even after the war is over such that the lead character rescues his adopted Drach son from an insane asylum he had been put into due to his ties to humanity and goes back to the planet he was originally stranded on to create a colony for people who were willing to get past it.
  • Weiss & Hickman's Dragonlance has tons of this, the most readily available example being Tanis Half-Elven, he is accepted by neither his human or especially his elven kin at large. It seemed like nothing short of saving the world would allow him to be accepted by the humans, even after that most elves, save his wife, still can't stand the thought of him.
  • In R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels, most of the people react either with fear or hostility upon meeting Drizzt Do'Urden for the first time. This isn't surprising since dark elves don't have a very good reputation, but even after people realize he isn't out to cause trouble like most of his kin, they often still shun him.
  • Fantastic races is one of many features that makes China Miéville's Bas-Lag novels as fun as it is. Prejudice against non-humans is institutionalised, inter-species romance is seen as a perversion, and the Remade (people who've been freakishly transfomed as a punishment) are pariahs who are used as expendable slaves.
  • In Kim Newman's "Tomorrow Town", a group of 1970s futurists have set up the titular town as a projection of the year 2000 will be like (in their estimations at least). They claim to have 'evolved' beyond many of the divisions and problems faced by people in that time period, but at one point a member of the community makes a sneery comment to one of the outsider detectives in town to investigate a murder, calling him a 'yesterday man' in the heat of the moment. The detective calmly but pointedly notes that she's been very careful not to use that term around him, the clear implication being that it's a slur towards people who aren't as similarly 'evolved' as they are — yet more evidence that their vision of the future isn't quite as perfect and 'evolved' as they like to think.
  • Freaks vs. Normals in Gone.
  • In Go, Mutants! there is a lot of prejudice against both aliens and mutants. This is encouraged by the government.
  • In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series there is considerable tension between the magically oriented Inapt races and the t4echnologically oriented Apt ones. Much of this comes from the latter having been the former's slaves before overthrowing and eclipsing them. Also Mantids and Spiders hate each other, even though they are both Inapt for reasons both have forgotten. Likewise Moths and Butterflies. Meanwhile any Ant will distrust another Ant if they're from a different city-state, Wasps look down on everyone else and everyone looks down on half breeds.
  • In the Disgaea novels the demons care much more about race then in the game, and worst example is Laharl’s aunt Yasurl who justifies violently abusing her nephew because of his half human blood and tries to have him assassinated because she thinks his blood makes him unworthy of being Overlord.
  • In Sergey Lukyanenko's Genome, the Specs and the Naturals have a deep-seated distrust of one another. The Specs consider themselves superior to the Naturals, while the latter see the Specs are freaks. The novel doesn't mention any actual violence towards either group, though. When the main character, a Spec, is hiring crewmembers for his ship, a man offers his services as a skilled navigator. He first asks if it is a problem he's gay, which causes the protagonist to be offended by the assumption, as this sort of discrimination is completely gone by that time. The navigator then adds that he is a Natural, which almost immediately causes the protagonist to want to reject him, but having just said that he's beyond petty prejudice, he can't go back on his word. This was the nagivator's plan all along. He later tries to find any flaw to use as grounds for termination, but the Natural proves himself to be an excellent navigator.
    • The navigator himself has an irrational hate towards clones, which Imperial law recognizes as human beings. Many humans also have problems with aliens, especially the people of Ebon, who believe it is their divine mission to rid the galaxy of aliens to make way for the "true children of God".
    • In Line of Delirium, another of Lukyanenko's novels, clones and genetically-engineered humans are illegal in the Human Empire by order of Emperor Grey (who isn't actually a tyrant, just a regular guy with regular prejudices). So, naturally, the two protagonists are a clone and a genetically-engineered "super".
  • In the Taltos novels, the Dragaeran treatment of Easterners calling to mind human racism and ghettoization of minorities, and the Dragaeran prejudice to Dragaerans descended from multiple Houses calls to mind various "purity of race" prejudices on Earth.
  • In David Sedaris' Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, racism in the animal kingdom is touched upon several times, notably in "The Squirrel and the Chipmunk", in which a female chipmunk's family disapproves of her squirrel boyfriend; also in "The Cat and the Baboon," "The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck," and "The Parrot and the Potbellied Pig," in which characters make inadvertent "speciesist" gaffes.
  • In Red Handed by Gena Showalter, humans and aliens (or Outers, as they are called) don't get along and aliens are even hunted. This is explored more in the companion book, Blacklisted.
  • The Trope Codifier (as it covers the main image of this article) is The Berenstein Bears' New Neighbors. Some new neighbors (more specificially Pandas who are implied to have originated from China) have arrived at the Bears neighborhood. Although Mama Bear and the kids are okay with them, Papa Bear isn't. He also goes so far as to keep his kids away from them, and implies that the... posts that their neighbors are setting up are actually pieces of a spite fence. In actuality, it was Bamboo stocks for their dinner.
  • In Time Scout, persons with indeterminate genitalia or intermediate gender face discrimination. The response of some to "intersexuals" is well over the top. However, they may be vamping for the camera to help paint someone as a villain.
  • The wars between the various "monster" cultures of the web-novel Domina subvert this a bit. While angels hating vampires who hate kemos sounds like its this trope (and Mr. Exposition describes it as such), The Rant mentions that its more like a gang war.
  • Dwarves mistrust elves in Katharine Kerr's Deverry series. Their main belief is that the elves are all thieves, and go as far as placing enchantments on their own metals that run with light if an elf (or even a human with elven blood) touches it. Otho the dwarven silversmith removes the enchantment on Rhodry's silver dagger so that he can pass unnoticed, as a favour to Jill.
    • Humans also enslave The Old Ones who were one of the original races of Annwn before the humans arrived.
  • There's a lot of racism directed at Andalites in Animorphs by the Yeerks, who see them as arrogant meddlers of the galaxy. Most other species are openly hostile to the Yeerks, for understandable reasons.
  • Extremely pervasive in the Age Of Fire Series. Most humans and elves hate Dragons, dwarves are divided among those who hate them and those who see them as potentially useful Dragons tend to see most other sentient races simply as food. There's also, in the first book, an increase of racism towards dwarves and elves by humans.
  • In Vladimir Vasilyev's The Big Kiev Technician, all "fantasy" creatures look down on humans, whom they consider too short-lived (which they are, comparatively). On the other hand, some of them recognize that this causes humans to be more creative than those who are stuck in the old ways. The protagonist proves them right. Additionally, it's revealed that there is a small group of humans called Longers, who can live for several centuries but are otherwise human. When humans in Big New York found out that there was a small community of Longers living among them, they slaughtered the "freaks", even though they have never displayed such outright hate for non-humans. This is explained by the protagonist's Love Interest (who is a Longer, as is he, even though he doesn't know it) as hitting it close to home that there are beings out there who will live for much longer than you'll be alive.

    Live Action TV 
  • This was a favorite subject for Star Trek. Probably the most Anvilicious example was the alien who was black on the left side and white on the right being chased by an alien who was white on the left and black on the right.
    • Then there was the Next Generation episode with an Aesop about homophobia delivered by a genderless species. Who were all played by women so that the audience wouldn't be subjected to Riker kissing someone played by a guy.
    • Star Trek: Voyager. In "Dragon's Teeth" one clue that the Vaadwaur aliens they've woken from stasis are villains is that Naomi Wildman overhears the Vaadwaur children making derogatory comments about Neelix. Good thing she never logged onto a fan forum.
    • The Cardassian occupation of Bajor was unabashedly portrayed by the Cardassians as being racially based. And, in turn, Major Kira serves to show that most Bajorans consequently despise Cardassians with a rascist-like fervour, although it's more understandable because she views them much as a 1945 Jew would view the Gestapo.
      • On a few occasions in both Star Trek: The Next Generation and DS9 Chief O'Brien has to deal with the question of whether or not he developed a racist dislike of Cardassians as a result of his experiences of fighting against them as a combat soldier in an earlier war.
    • Quark and other Ferengi constantly gripe about stereotyped traits they dislike about various races, especially humans, who they refer to as "Hu-maans" in what appears to be a mild epithet.
    • Genetically engineered humans are treated as potential mass-murderers in the supposedly prejudice-free Federation, to the point of being legally forbidden to have certain jobs. Despite having superhuman aliens and even nearly-indestructible, superstrong, computer-brained androids serving in every position of Starfleet. My wall hurts. This is because several hundred years previously, some genetically-engineered humans led by Khan attempted to take over the world, and Ambition Is Evil, therefore all other genetically-engineered humans are evil too.
    • AIs tend to get the short end of the stick too; characters routinely refuse to believe that Data or the Doctor could have similar rights to biological organisms, and other Zimmerman holograms are subjected to a form of slavery.
    • An episode of DS9 "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" featured a Vulcan Starfleet captain who openly espouses Vulcan superiority to humans, has written dozens of academic papers on the topic, and even commands a Starfleet starship with an all-Vulcan crew. And yet, amazingly, no-one in Starfleet seems to have a problem with this other than Sisko, for whom it is personal rather than on principle. This flagrantly racist behaviour is never labelled as such, even when the captain challenges Sisko and his crew to a game of baseball just to further underscore the point that Vulcans are so superior, they can even beat humans at their own game. Sisko's crew naturally lose, since Vulcans are biologically faster and stronger than humans, but they achieve a moral victory nonetheless.
    • A continuing theme of Star Trek: Enterprise, as this prequel series dealt with mankind's initial reactions to new life and new civilisations. Early season episodes include the Suliban being treated like potential terrorists because of the actions of the Cabal, the Vulcans' patronising attitude towards humans (and the human response to it), and Commander Shran — an Andorian who despises Vulcans and Tellarians, and even refers to his friend Captain Archer as "pinkskin". He refers to all humans as "pinkskins" — did he not notice the variety of human skin? In "The Breach" Dr Phlox has to persuade a patient to receive treatment from him as the Denobulans committed atrocities against his species in the past, while Trip's attempt to help a repressed minority in a tri-gendered species has a tragic end. Virtually the entire fourth season touched on this trope in one way or another. Xenophobia on Earth increases after the Xindi attack, radical group Terra Prime tries to make political capital over the Trip/T'Pol relationship by squicking out humanity over the idea of Vulcan-human hybrids (even T'Pol's mother brings up "the shame" that such a mixed-race child would feel). And the whole Übermensch thing naturally comes up with the genetically-superior Augments. And let's not even get into Vulcans shunning those who use their telepathic powers because they spread Vulcan AIDS...
  • In Doctor Who, the homophobia version is used when the Doctor is uncomfortable around the time-travelling omnisexual Captain Jack Harkness, not because of his sexuality, but because he finds Jack's immortality to be "just wrong".
    Jack: So, you're saying that you're...prejudiced?
    The Doctor: ...Never thought of it like that.
    Jack: (smiles) Shame on you.
    • The Doctor shows his dislike of true immortality in earlier serials as well. For example, in The Brain of Morbius, he blasts the Sisterhood of Karn for using an elixir to extend their lives because they've completely stagnated, and says that regeneration is preferable because it brings change. This attitude seems to be shared by other Time Lords, who use the same elixir as medicine, but not to prevent their final death.
    • This is the entire premise of the climax of "The Five Doctors". When they encounter the Tomb of Rassilon and Borusa is condemned to eternal stasis as the price of true immortality; the First Doctor clearly knew what the fate of anyone who sought such immortality would be, and states that Rassilon knew that "immortality is a trap", and therefore set up his game to ensnare anyone who actively sought it.
    • The best example in Doctor Who is the Daleks, especially since Terry Nation based them on the Nazis. Also, Genesis of the Daleks, shows that on pre-Dalek Skaro, the Kaleds (the race that became the Daleks) and the Thals hated each other, and both of them hated the mutants, to the point that the Thals (who were usually shown as pacifist allies of the Doctor) used them as slave labor.
      • The Daleks' commitment to their own racial purity was demonstrated in "Victory of the Daleks". The older, less "pure" Daleks willingly allow themselves to be disintegrated by the newly created Daleks made from the pure DNA in the Progenitor device.
      • In the first season of New Who, the Daleks have been reborn from human DNA, and hate themselves as much as humans. It's stated that this prejudice makes them even more angry at the world, in the manner of the stereotypical homophobic gay person.
  • This is actually part of the setup of Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock. The Gorgs mostly treat Fraggles as garden pests and the Fraggles thus see the Gorgs as ogrish monsters. The Fraggles mostly treat Doozers as being on the level of social insects, and conversely, the Doozers have... let's say complicated feelings towards the Fraggles eating their constructions. On top of all of this, the humans don't even know any of the other races really exist. Many of the episodes dealt with the various characters getting to understand each other, and were often quite poignant.
  • Lampshaded in the Babylon 5 episode "The Geometry of Shadows", where it is revealed that the Drazi randomly split up into two groups - the "green" and the "purple" - every few years by drawing pieces of cloth out of a barrel. The two groups then fight for supremacy. Attempts by Ivanova to solve this diplomatically and get them to see the other side's view don't work, since there are no differing views, just "Green fights Purple". Fortunately, she solves it by putting the murderous faction in their opponents' shoes (or should we say, sashes) as she accidentally usurps the position of local leader and upon finding this out, promptly orders them to dye their sashes to their opposing color.
    • The show also has a backstory that in the face of all kinds of alien races, humans decided that all humans are pretty much like one another and did away with 20th century prejudices, so we get scenes like two male characters going undercover as a married couple with no one batting an eye, and a passing reference to the Pope being female (which resulted in more letters to the show than anything else in it). However, there are a sizable number of humans prejudiced against aliens, and we also get something of the "new black" in humans born on Mars.
    • Racism wasn't too far below the surface in inter-species relations, however. The Centauri and Narn regarded each other as mutually unfit to live. Anti-alien racism appeared commonplace among humans not associated with either the station or the Rangers. The Minbari had anti-miscegenation laws and considered purity of the species so important that they forced Valen's children to flee Minbar.
  • The half-wolves of The 10th Kingdom. Granted, wolves are predators and are traditionally viewed as evil and vicious (at least sometimes). But the at-times Anvilicious words and actions of the Little Lamb Villagers (and Wendell) more than once left this editor feeling a bit ill. Choice examples:
    • From the rigged trial (itself hearkening back to the legal woes of many a black man in the South between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Era):
    Virginia: Look at my client! Is he a killer? No! But he is a stranger, and stranger equals wolf, and wolf equals killer. Is that what we're saying?
    Judge: Very well put, on to the sentencing!
    • After Virginia agrees to defend Wolf:
    Virginia: I don't think he killed anyone!
    Tony: That's what you want to think. There's a dead girl out there, that could've been you! He's a wolf, that's what wolves do!
    Wendell: That's the first intelligent thing you've said, Anthony.
    • At the same time, Sally and the other shepherdesses' (all noticeably Caucasian and mostly blondes) lustful pursuit of (dark-haired) Wolf despite his fake surname and his bushy wolf tail suggests the supposed irresistible temptation of an exotic race... while the Peep boys' apparently violent defense of their sisters' purity, and Wendell's assumption in Kissing Town that Wolf would "have [Virginia] on her back before you can say Happy Ever After" resonate far too strongly with the sort of black-man-rapes-white-woman fears exemplified in Birth of a Nation to be coincidence.
  • Sometimes used in Buffy and Angel, particularly Lorne in the latter. Anyone who sees a green-skinned, horned demon immediately assumes he's a big nasty killer, when of course he's a lovable lounge lizard. Not entirely their fault, though, since most demons are indeed the people-killing kind.
    • There's a very Anvilicious treatment in "That Old Gang of Mine" (Angel season 3 ep 3), in which Gunn's former gang are slow to learn that Not All Demons Are Evil, while all the major characters had caught on long ago and quickly.
    • The Buffy episode "Family" revealed that Tara's family harbors an incredible hatred for magic-users and raised her to believe that she was part demon on her dead witch mother's side. Shockingly, Tara's racist cousin Beth was played by Amy Adams.
    • An early episode of Angel featured a group called The Scourge, a demonic Ku Klux Klan of sorts toward half-breed demons (much like Doyle) who would gladly die for their cause, making them hard to fight. They consider all half-human demons to be "no better" than humans, and seek to kill every last one. Especially ironic if you're a Buffyverse fanatic and know that in this particular universe, the only pureblood demons are the enormous, monstrous Old Ones, and that humanoid demons with mildly scary faces aren't exactly superior to the other "tainted" ones.
    • It's worth noting that even the main characters aren't immune to this trope, being that they have less issues killing a demon than they do a human, even if their human enemies are Complete Monsters but the demons are simply following a tradition, ritual or their inborn nature - there are references to particular demon species being extinct and in one Buffy Season Six episode, 'As You Were', Riley Finn mentions a demon species with is unfortunately not extinct yet. It was never made clear whether this species was peaceful or not, though.
    • A lot of demons look down on vampires, presumably as a result of how near they are to human, and because they're fairly low on the demonic totem pole due to their modest supernatural capabilities and large number of weaknesses. Some demons might also be jealous that vampires get all the press, while their immense variety is grouped under "demons".
  • Smallville's Kara Zor-El dropped a few rungs on the likeability ladder when she called Martian Manhunter "Red-Eyes." As seen here, although Your Mileage May Vary.
  • Danko of Heroes is the poster thug for this trope. Anyone with an ability is automatically a threat as far as he's concerned.
    • Noah was this at first. When his first wife was killed by a telekinetic, he automatically gains an irrational hatred for all evolved humans, which gets the attention of Thompson and the Company. However, it begins to subside when he realizes that his own daughter, Claire, is an evolved human herself. However, he still shows hints of it from time to time, particularly in Volume 5, which Samuel attempts to exploit for all its worth to convince Claire to turn against Noah and to convince the others at the Carnival to join him in trying to change their status as "second class citizens" by making their identity known and trying to become the dominant humans on Earth.
    • Samuel Sullivan is the opposite end of the spectrum. He wants to kill all humans.
  • In the new Battlestar Galactica (and arguably the old one too), Humans and Cylons don't get along very well. As it goes, we discover that Humans and Cylons can reproduce! The humanoid Cylons are constructs of a completely fleshy nature, which makes the "toaster" epiphet just stupid. Like real-world epiphets. They call all Cylons, humanoid or mechanical, "toasters", and the humanoids also get called "skinjobs".
    • There's the Sagittarons as well, who are looked down on by the other Colonials for their primitive, isolationist ways. Ironically "skinjob" Athena is grateful for their presence on Galactica, as it diverts attention from her.
    • Taurons are frequently referred to as "dirt-eaters" in "Caprica".
  • In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the relations between humans and machines are strained, to say the least, especially between the human Techcom resistance fighters and the reprogrammed Terminators working under them. This is especially prevalent among Sarah Connor and Derek Reese, who are both prejudiced against machines (for good reason). At one point late in the second season, when Riley is killed, both Sarah and Derek immediately blame Cameron for it despite a lack of real evidence she was behind it, and both consider destroying her because of it.
    • Also, the disapproval expressed by pretty much everyone towards John and Cameron's relationship seems rather reminiscent of the prejudices against interracial relationships. Sarah implicitly states that she does not believe that Cameron actually loves John, and the idea that the two might be having sex plays a role in an extended dream sequence meant to represent her anxieties; Derek is openly hostile to their relationship; and Jesse even goes out of her way in order to try and break them up.
    • One entire episode, "The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter," dealt with the inherent distrust between humans and the machines. It got to the point where the human Too Dumb to Live submarine crew, under the command of a Terminator with specific orders from John Connor, began to mutiny because they did not trust the submarine's captain.
      • It's that distrust that causes all the deaths among the crew and the loss of the submarine.
  • Happens quite a bit in Farscape, especially with the Peacekeepers - all of whom are Sebacean (with the exception of half-Sebacean, half-Scarran Scorpius), and who deem other species to be inferior. If a Peacekeeper is to spend prolonged time and contact with another species, they will be deemed "irreversibly contaminated" and rejected.
    • Half-breeds are also the subject of considerable discrimination by the Peacekeepers, with at least one honor killing on record. Once again, Scorpius is the exception, having proven himself too valuable to execute. Of course, anti-hybrid sentiment is discouraged among Scorpius' troops and officers:
    Akkor: A Luxan-Sebacean hybrid?
    Braca: Despite Peacekeeper Command efforts to keep the bloodlines pure, there seems to be a few more of them every cycle.
    Scorpius: (Emerging from the shadows) Have you got something against hybrids, hmmm?
    Braca: (very quickly) No! Of course not sir. Not at all.
  • On Dark Angel, the transgenics become targets of Fantastic Racism as soon as their existence is made public. The Familiar breeding cult are posterchildren for this, looking at humans as inferiors and transgenics as scum.
  • Get Smart's Hymie the Robot complains that people look at him funny in the street, he can't get a cab, and even Max never takes him to his club.
  • On Wizards of Waverly Place there are definite problems between wizards, werewolves and vampires. Giants seem to be more accepted but there are still tasteless jokes.
  • True Blood is drama-series with classical 'Vampires vs Humans' theme. Vampires stand in for a number of groups. Vampires resemble homosexuals by "coming out of the coffin" to reveal their presence to humanity, and are opposed by fundamentalist Christian groups, who call them evil. Sometimes they resemble racial minorities. In one scene, Bill is mistreated and called "boy" by an classic, racist southern cop. Humans who have sex with vampires are dubbed fang-bangers and looked upon with scorn by most people, as mixed-race couples were in the past.
    • There's al racism within the supernatural community. Shifters such as Sam hate werewolves, and werewolves hate werepanthers (weres tend to stick to their own species).
      • Sookie lampshaded this in a recent episode where she says it's hard to keep track of which supes hate which.
  • Uther's pogrom against magic users in Merlin.
  • Parodied in the Mr. Show sketch "Byron De La Beckwith VII: Racist in the Year 3000."
  • The Alien Nation TV series is largely devoted to the allegory of race relations through Newcomer/Human relations. Matt has a bad habit of using the nickname "Slagtown" for the Newcomer part of L.A., even after his Newcomer partner has made it clear he finds the term offensive. Naturally, the anti-Newcomer groups are fantastically multicultural.
  • In Power Rangers Time Force, in the future most humans look down on mutants, genetically inferior beings that are the trash and leftovers of the Designer Babies program. This is not aided by the fact that the most prominent mutants in the series are anarchist terrorists, although how much of that is caused by growing up in a society that hates them, and how much is the cause of society hating them is very, very debatable.
  • The old Disney Channel show Adventures In Wonderland had an episode centered around this, when the residents of Wonderland were nervous about a walrus moving into the neighborhood because they had heard a lot of bad stereotypes about walruses. But Alice herself meets the Walrus and finds out that he's actually a Pretty Cool Guy.
  • Being Human certainly plays up the "vampires think of werewolves as mere animals" angle; but there was also this quote invoking the trope directly (after introducing a zombie):
    Annie: Don't be so deadist!
    George: 'Scuse me?
    Annie: It's like racist, but for dead people!
  • With the notable exception of Samantha herself, the witches and warlocks of Bewitched hold mortals in contempt to one degree or another. Except for Serena, Aunt Clara and Esmerelda and Uncle Arthur.
    • And Darrin returns the prejudice with interest. He's much like someone who marries a (fill in the blank with favorite minority) woman but wants her to keep it hidden.
  • In Space: Above and Beyond there was considerable prejudice towards artificially grown humans, called "tanks".
    • One episode actually subverted it, which involved an armored vehicle, whose driver insisted on calling it a tank, while everyone else referred to it as an APC. At one point, the driver blows up when one of the main characters calls it an APC, screaming out "tank", causing T. C. Mc Queen (one of the two "in vitros" on the show) to say there's no need for insults, when the guy was just correcting them.
  • The humans and angels in Supernatural tend to dislike each other on principle. One angels or another is always calling humans filthy and primitive worms or maggots, due to their mammalian biology, short lives and to protest how angels were created by god to be the indentured servants of mankind. Humans (particular the main characters) mainly just hate the angels because they are sick of getting messed around, and because monster hunters instinctively hate sentient non-human beings. Dean repeatedly calls them "dicks with wings". Most angels behave pretty badly in-series but lots of them aren't totally evil or are as sympathetic as the humans( Cas, Anna, the members of Cas' garrison who disapproved of the apocalyptic plans got slaughtered, the Cupids) and they are all able to feel and express humanlike emotions.
    • Despite Dean and Castiel being fairly close friends, Dean continually makes racist comments about the angels, often when Cas is standing right next to him. This might be justified given Dean's experiences and personality, but sometimes you have to wonder why Cas doesn't call him out on it, or physically assault him more often. It's almost like Cas agrees with Dean's assessment. Maybe he's just a Boomerang Bigot?
  • Surprisingly, probably the biggest factor in the creation of The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling was fed up with not being able to tackle contemporary issues (such as race relations) on television, but found out that the censors and networks would let it air if it was fantasy or sci-fi oriented.

    Music 
  • The Sesame Street song "Being Green" was originally written as a plea to understand people who are different and not judge by appearance.
  • Rush recorded "Trees", a song about bigotry between different species of trees in a forest; "The maples want more sunlight and the oaks ignore their pleas." The war between the oaks and the maples is ended by sudden deforestation: "Now the trees are all made equal by hatchet, axe and saw."

    Tabletop Games 
  • Gamma World has several Cryptic Alliances that enforce this trope, like the Knights of Genetic Purity (who hate anyone who is a mutant), the Iron Society (Who hates anyone who isn't a mutant), the Zoopremacists (Who hate anyone who isn't an anthropomorphic animal) amognst others.
  • Rifts uses this quite a bit. It appears chiefly with the Coalition States, who have a xenocidal policy toward D-Bees (dimensional beings) and creatures of magic, and monstrous societies such as the Splugorth of Atlantis, where humans are at best slaves, and at worst a snack.
    • That said, there's still racial tension among humans — at least, in areas outside of Coalition control. In the New West, Native Americans and white settlers are, for the most part, at best leery of and at worst openly hostile towards one another. The Australian Outback has a similar situation.
  • An important background element in the Fantasy meets Cyber Punk RPG Shadowrun, where racist tensions between humans and "metahumans" such as Orks, Dwarves, Trolls and Elves (not to mention the ghouls) are present, complete with extreme right-wing party humans advocating their persecution. Even though Shadowrun takes place Twenty Minutes into the Future of our world, normal racism has fallen by the wayside, having been mostly subsumed by the fantastic variety (as the rulebook puts it, "Why worry about the guy with dark skin when that horned thing has fists the size of your head?")
    • Early editions of Shadowrun had the other races refer to humans as "breeders", implying an analogy to gays (this being an actual slur used by gays towards straights).
    • The creators of Shadowrun have stated that the racism toward Orks, Trolls and Ghouls in the game was specifically so that typically dystopian racism could be in the game as an Aesop toward real racism.
    • That said, both the Japanese and Native American Nations have a degree of racism directed towards them; in both cases, this is due to the power that they've gained, as well as the shattering of the USA and Canada by Native American shamans, the rise to power of nations such as Aztlan (in Middle and South-America) and a revival of long-persecuted ethnic minorities in general, there is a backlash against "white" people in parts of the world, especially against former colonial masters.
    • It does go the the other way. The Japanese are arguably the most heavily bigoted group in the setting, actively persecuting any and all metahumans to a degree disturbingly similar to that of Nazi Germany (stopping just short of concentration camps), and being prejudiced against non-Japanese humans as Japan of that same time period; this goes a long way towards explaining why everybody else dislikes them.
      • There is one funny aversion to this bigotism: the Japanese emperor is fond of Onis, the Japanese metavariant of Orks, and has hired a lot of them to be guards around his palace and other imperial buildings, much to the displeasure of the rest of the imperial residents, who do not look as favoribly upon the Oni.
    • In the Elvish principalities of Tír Tairngire (the former Oregon) and Tir na nOg (Ireland), elves look down on anyone not an elf, and non-elves are officially second-class citizens (if they have citizen rights at all). Similarly, in the dwarven enclaves and the troll kingdom Schwarzwald in the ADL (Allianz Deutscher Länder, former Germany) there is subtle racism against non-metatypes.
      • It's actually a rule. There is a 'negative' quality you can take that gives you bonus points for being prejudiced. Ironically if one is good enough at roleplaying lies to such people being racist basically becomes "free extra BP".
  • One of the more famous quotes from Warhammer 40,000 is "Fear the alien, the mutant, the heretic." Considering the Imperium of Man is rabidly human-centric, the Eldar view every other species as mindless pawns to be used to their own ends, the Tau are divided into genetically "pure" castes based on their physical specializations, the Orks tend to "crump any o' 'dose gits what ain't Orky enuff!", and everything else is trying to kill everything else, it's mostly understandable why most humans think that way.
    • Old fashioned inter-human bigotry also exists. The most spectacular example is probably Lastrari, which when cut off from the Imperium was taken over by the Divine Army, which instituted planet-wide purges of anyone who did not match up to their ideals. The genetically targeted diseases are positively tame compared with the 5300-mile road lined with the bodies of those who spoke out. When the Imperium regained contact, the population had been reduced from 14 billion to a mere two and a half million!
    • During the Great Crusade, the Imperium discovered one of the long-separated sects of mankind who called themselves the Quietude. They decided to combine human biology with technology to a degree even greater than the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Imperial fleet sent human soldiers to make contact with the Quietude and request the terms of their re-integration into the Imperium, but contact with them was lost. The Quietude responded to the main fleet by asserting that the Imperial humans were clearly genetically-engineered creatures of alien origin sent to trick them, and cited the vivisection of the missing guardsmen as evidence of this claim. As a result, the Imperium sent in the Space Wolves.
    • "Men have been denounced as mad for simply putting into practice what the Saints have preached." In principle, the Imperium would love to do this on every world it has, but most recognize that would be disastrous while they still have a War to fight. As the Rallying cry goes...
    KILL THE MUTANT!
    BURN THE HERETIC!
    PURGE THE UNCLEAN!
    • The Gaunt's Ghosts novel Necropolis is rife with inter human racism, particularly by the higher ups in vervunhive, who regard the imperial guard regiments saving their asses as inferior even after displaying complete incompetence at defending themselves, they even go as far as to try and have a tank commander put on trial, in the middle of the war because he knocked down a couple of buildings due to a traffic jam the vervunhivers created, this quote by VPHC Tarrian towards gaunt seconds before he gets shot really seals the deal.
    Tarrian: Gak you wretched offworld scum!
    • On the other side, all Aliens view humans with a mixture of hatred, fear and contempt. The Imperium has destroyed thousands of Xeno civilizations over the millennia, and still strives to eliminate the survivors, with varying degrees of success.
    • Dark Heresy features the character talent Hatred, which gives a bonus to hit in melee combat. It can be taken for specific groups including alien races, psychic individuals, heretics, and mutants. Of note is that Hatred is available almost exclusively to the Cleric class, making it one of the biggest pluses to being religious in 40K (although it is of course required for everyone to act religious in order to stay alive). At high level, Clerics get to take the talent Litany of Hate, which lets you share your hatred bonus with your friends. In other words, hatred in Dark Heresy is a good thing (from a power-gaming perspective).
  • Good old fashioned Warhammer has its share of speciesism and good old fashioned racism. People from the Empire are horrifically prejudiced about Dwarfs, Elves as well as humans not from the Empire, humans from different provinces in the Empire... and of course these are the ones they'll actually talk to (maybe). Anything else will pretty much get attacked on sight. On the other hand Dwarfs consider humans to be soft and elves to be even softer as well as arrogant magic using bastards. Elves have racism within the three different factions - each hating each other to various degrees (though the worse is between the Dark and High elves) in addition to considering any other race to be little more than backwards pawns for them to use or exterminate at will.
    • It's arguable whether the Racism in the Warhammer games is Fantastic at all. Non-white humans in either game setting are extremely scarce.
  • Dungeons & Dragons players, as opposed to the official game universe, traditionally work out their prejudices by abusing (at least verbally) Halflings and Half-Orcs. Half-orcs are the "Dumb Brute" of the D&D game, strong, stupid, brutish, and usually unbathed. Halflings are an odd combination of every group stereotype of smaller people, including your spoiled creep of a kid brother. In an RPG, everyone can be a bully, and when they are, they generally are bullying a halfling (or a gnome). This is to say nothing of players who hate certain races for statistical or lore reasons (i.e. "Elves are always portrayed as so perfect, but they're such pushovers"; "All halflings are kender", "the rulebook says elves dislike dwarves and vice versa"), and take out those prejudices on people with favorable attitudes towards those races, in or out of game.
    • Though somewhat ironically, half-orcs fare significantly better among orc tribes than among humans. The human heritage grants them intelligence superior to most orcs, and they lost virtually none of the orcish natural strength for it, making them easy candidates for leadership positions.
    • Rangers get fantastic racism as a class feature in the first 3 editions. You select a type of monster, which could be a race, like Goblins, and get a bonus to hit and damage.
    • Always Chaotic Evil does little to help this fact. "Of course they're all scumbags, the Monster Manual says so right here!"
    • Eberron both plays this trope straight and subverts it. People of various nations are racist towards other races they've been at war with (There is also non-fantastic racism as they can be hostile to people of the same races coming from former enemy nations). Generally Goblinoids and the Warforged get the worst end of the racism. The subversion occurs in the Goblinoid Nation of Darguun. A war-torn land where the Goblinoid clans are at each other's throat, the central government bare holds everything togheter and slavery is both legal and regularly practiced. Despite their flaws, Goblinoids are surprisingly opened minded on the race issue, being willing to accept members of other races into their clans, should they prove worthy. Meanwhile, unlike other settings, Orcs get little racism directed at them (they don't travel abroad too much) and are also quite willing to welcome other races into their tribes (in fact, most Orc tribes often have a lot of human and half-orc members).
      • Warforged, Shifters, and Changelings all suffer from racism in Eberron as well. The Warforged are an artifical race of sentient constructs built as soldiers for The Last War. When the war ended, Khorvaire found itself with a sizable population of Warforged left over-machines that think, and feel as richly as their creators, but now without purpose. Some regard them as freaks that should never have been built, others hate them for stealing jobs (they have no need to eat or sleep), and still others would happily enslave them all again. Shifters are the diluted descendants of Eberron's lycanthropes, and many still fear them for their bestial appearance and often savage nature, as well as memories of their predecessors (who were all nearly genocided into oblivion by the local Lawful Good Crystal Dragon Jesus religion, even the nonevil ones). Changelings can alter their appearance and gender at will, leading many to be paranoid of anyone they suspect to be a changeling-especially if they happen to actually know a changeling is in the area. Even one area of work changelings naturally excel at if they must, prostitution, has become a subject of racism and paranoia on suspicions that any given prostitute is actually a changeling-and quite possibly male in "her" native form.
    • Forgotten Realms has organizations of elves who blame for their decline either drow, humans or even all other elven subraces ("when Gold Elves ruled it was the golden age!). Humans in heartlands generally indifferent to most creatures with whom they aren't at war, though still wary of thieving halflings. Demihumans are banned from some places, such as Hillsfar — but then, the ruler who did it and his loyal troops aren't very popular even among humans, both inside and outside the city.
      • Inhabitants of Zakhara view them all as "northern barbarians". Most locals give a damn only about couples: it's okay as long as a pair of humanoids can have children; otherwise they think only in terms of natural advantages/disadvantages that matter in some professions and are irrelevant in others. For their part, the theocracy of Pantheon is mildly human-centric, but for everyone else it's just one more proof that the League deserved its bad reputation.
    • In Ravenloft, demihumans are rare enough, and human superstition prevalent enough, that demihumans who would be tolerated in other campaign settings are objects of fear in many domains. Some domains extend this to spellcasters as well, forcing wizards to hide their powers or risk being burned alive. Even domains that don't lynch demihumans on sight usually treat them as second-class citizens. Do note that being leery of demihumans may be a rational reaction as there are an abundance of predatory monsters that look almost human in the Land of Mists.
      • The Vistani are Ravenloft's equivalent of Hammer-movie "gypsies", and the targets of human-on-human racism within the game, dealing mostly with the same accusations as against Real Life Romani. Rudolph Van Richten became The Hunter because of a run-in with a particularly unsavory tribe]] and thus held a low opinion of the whole people for most of his life — until in Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani he finally had to inspect the matter in detail.
      • The 3E Ravenloft products introduced the race of calibans: deformed offspring of humans afflicted by evil magical influences. They're treated like menial grunt-laborers at best, and usually like Freaks In The Attic.
    • In Spelljammer there's a semi-secret society of humans devoted to xenophoby. Among other major groups, elves are infamous for haughtiness at best and outright racism at worst. They tend to attack goblinoids on sight, and once blew up a planet full of them. The ones aboard the eponymous ship have formed an organization dedicated to the complete genocide of all goblinoids — with no regard to whether the goblinoid in question is a child, crippled, one of the few non-evil ones, or anything else. Yes, that's right; Nazi Elves IN SPACE!. It's kind of a weird setting.
      • Beholders run on a mix of this trope and It's All About Me. To any given Beholder, it's the pinnacle of all creation, the perfect reflection of the Great Mother that spawned their race. Other Beholders of the same breed are tolerable inferiors. Beholders of any other breed are disgusting abominations that must be destroyed on sight. Anything that's not a Beholder is barely worth acknowledging — little more than a fly to be swatted when it wanders too close, or a potential servant. For added fun, although the difference between Beholder breeds is sometimes quite large, other times it can be things so minuscule that nothing that's not a Beholder would even notice. The Beholder with slightly bumpier skin or a different number of teeth is as much a hated inferior as the one who has flame-based powers instead of the standard Beholder suite or has a differing number of eyestalks. Beholders in general are like this, in Spelljammer they just get an opportunity to duke it out where everyone sees it and by whole fleets.
    • In Dark Sun most races are xenophobic to an extent and mistrustful of anyone other than their own kind, slavery is a way of life and cannibalism is not uncommon. The largest prejudice however is against arcane magic users and with good reason; the most common form of arcane magic is defiling. Defiling saps the life out of the user’s surrounds to fuel the magic, killing plants, sterilizing the soil and draining the life-energy of nearby creatures. The reason Athas is such a Crap Sack World is because of defiler magic. Another form of arcane magic exists called preserving, which is less potent but doesn't damage to the world itself. However few know the difference between the two and arcane magic users are almost universally abhorred with the exception of the Sorcerer-Kings, who are so powerful no one wants to risk angering them.
    • Plane Scape featured some level of fantastic racism towards the player character races, but given how many leadership positions were filled by tieflings and other such folks, it started to feel like an Informed Flaw at times. The genocidal, religious hatred between githyanki and githzerai plays it straight. However, this setting also features a genocidal, impossibly large-scale war between the Nine Hells of Baator and the Abyss, with one representing evil as tyranny and the other evil as passionate barbarism. It's Evil Romanticism Vs Evil Enlightenment acted out through genocide by races full of hate. The other immortal races also have tons of fantastic racism. Even the good ones have trouble understanding or liking each other, but at least they're "live and let live."
  • In the old version of Old World of Darkness, racism between vampires and werewolves was built into the setting (and the various supernatural factions considered themselves superior to the "Sleepers" a.k.a. normal humans). But certain gamelines, most notably Changeling: The Dreaming, offered players ready-made prejudices and feuds between the various fairy races, under the heading "What [insert name here] group thinks of the others". The ancient immortal Sidhe, who only recently returned from Arcadia when the doors between Fairy and Earth opened again after several centuries, get it especially hard (as if being stuck in mortal human bodies wasn't bad enough). They're faery nobility, so each and every one of them must be a snobbish arrogant prick out to push the poor commoners around, go figure. Their reputation is even worse than that of the brutal Redcaps or the creepy Sluagh. Of course, it's an US American roleplaying game, so the "nobles vs commoners" stereotypes are milked for all its worth, including a storyline clearly patterned after the American War for Independence, with the brave commoner changelings fighting the newly returned Sidhe (the British) for their political freedom.
  • In the New World of Darkness, things are roughly similar. Every subgroup of each of the supernaturals has a column marked "Stereotypes", giving a quick rundown of what they generally think of the others of their kind and the Main Quadology (vampire, werewolf, mage, human). The books do note, however, that it's suicide to think the others conform to that. This is doubly true for, ironically, Changeling - the new setting has "hang together or hang separately" as its theme, so whatever you think of the other seemings, you had best be willing to at least pretend to get along with them or say hello to Arcadia once again.
    • While schools of magic differ, a lot of the schools of magic (Mastigos particularly) consider the entirety of Werewolves to be too dumb to even use as proper slaves. Most of them treat mortals, especially those with a chance at becoming mages, as pawns at best, if they're even viewed as being worthy of attention. And a lot of potentially misguided players consider these the good guys of the new World of Darkness.
  • The elves of Magic: The Gathering's Lorwyn setting apparently have no problem whatsoever with the concept of casually hunting down and killing intelligent beings that offend their sensibilities by diverging too far from their ideal of beauty...which is, of course, an elf.
    • In Lorwyn's Mirror Universe, Shadowmoor, the kithkin (formerly superstitious but generally decent) become hugely xenophobic, while most everybody else is Always Chaotic Evil - except the elves, who are about the only good people around.
  • The Savage Worlds setting Winterweir mentions this is a constant problem in the continent of Alacarn. Humans are not prejudiced against each other by skin but they loathe people from other nations and anyone who isn't a member of their own race.
  • Eclipse Phase's Fantastic Racism is mostly (with the exception of bioconservative enclaves) directed at artificial intelligences, the Artificial Human "pods" and the "clanking masses", human refugees from The Singularity who were mass-uploaded rather than being lifted into orbit, and later given cheap robot bodies so they didn't have to live in virtual reality. The nature of the setting means that many of these prejudices are just a re-sleeve away. Notably, it also explicitly mentions the Uncanny Valley as one of the issues with using a robot (or heavily modified human) body, a problem that doesn't crop up with more radical bodyplans.
  • In Traveller the races that invented Jump drive actually call themselves Major Races. Meaning, of course, that other races are minor races.
    • In Traveller racism is theoretically a "not done by gentlemen" sort of thing, especially as the Imperium is based on a multicultural loyalty to The Emperor(who always ends up being human, even though adoption is a recognized means of succession). Despite that, racism is as common in Traveller as it is in Real Life.
  • Exalted :
    • Solars and Lunars are considered Anathema in the Realm, the political and military superpower of the setting, which regularly sends out groups of hunters to kill them whenever possible, and the Immaculate Philosophy. As a result, most societies teach that they're evil spirits that permanently and irrecoverably possess the unrighteous.
    • Sidereals are almost universally distrusted by the gods, which wouldn't be too much of a problem except all the Sidereal jobs are in heaven, and people on the ground will almost always forget any interaction with the Sidereal after a day or two. This may be as subtle as distrust or needless and unwarranted audits, or can be as direct as sending a Sidereal on suicide missions.
    • Terrestrials are hated by the gods, too, but they're mostly on the Fantastic Racist side of things; the entire society of the Realm is built as a voluntary eugenics program to keep the blood-line carried trait of Terrestrial Exaltation 'pure'. Mortals, especially those of weak breeding, are treated as highly expendable cannon fodder by the heads of the Realm's major houses, while Terrestrials of stronger breeding live lives of luxury on the largess of house income and a lot of slavery. On the other hand, some areas outside of the Realm, like the Varangian City-States or An-Teng, sell any child who Exalts as a Terrestrial to the Realm.
    • People of the Air and People of the Water are either kept as exotic shows, feared and distrusted, or slaughtered on sight. The People of the Earth have largely retreated to join the Mountain Folk, who at least let them survive, but are ultimately patronizing and controlling. The green-skinned Tree People were turned into slaves by First Age Solars, and hate pretty much everyone now. All these groups were engineered from normal human stock, under conditions where "voluntary" is very difficult to define.
    • Those Mountain Folk? They used to be oh-so-perfect elves, who the Solars were worried might someday act up or refuse to provide cheap labor. The Solars thus forced the Mountain Folk's creator to metaphysically enslave and castrate the entire species, almost leading to genocide. Internally, they have a massive Fantastic Caste System set up, where the beautiful Artisan class treats even enlightened members of the shorter Worker class like grunts and the Soldier class like cannon fodder.
    • Gods universally despise the Terrestrials, and consider humans little more than prayer sources. Celestial Gods (those of concepts) treat Terrestial Gods (those of concrete things) as backwater yokels and seldom give them their pay, and the Celestial Bureaucracy often underfunds or completely ignores them. Most gods and Exalts consider Elementals as pathetic and expendable, and the godly legal protections against summoning abuse or violation of rights are codified to not cover Elementals.
    • Numbers of the black-and-white spotted djala pygmies were transported in force to become psuedo-voluntary workers for the First Age Solars, bioengineered and culturally engineered them into the even smaller Minikin. When the First Age ended, almost all the minikin and djala were enslaved by Terrestrials for hundreds of years, with only small bands escaping until the Contagion let a larger group reestablish society in their ancestral homeland. In many places, like Varangia, the local society cannot hold the concept of free djala, and outside of a handful in Lookshy, the rest are slaves by sheer stubborn habit.
    • Beastmen are considered soulless monsters in the Realm, fit to either be hunted down or made exotic slaves. Most other countries consider them bestial freaks, insane unnatural abominations, minions of The Fair Folk, or at best an often-criminal non-citizen underclass. The few countries, like Halta, that consider them citizens do so only after a thousand years of delicate meddling by Lunars, and humans will still all leave a bar or building if a beastmen enters. They're also made the the old-fashioned way, often trained by their Lunar sires, and some tribes don't consider eating human flesh cannibalism.
      • The Parrot Beastmen (don't ask) add an additional layer, only very recently giving up the intertribal wars, based on color of feathers, that resulted in genocide on at least three color-tribes. Now they'll just kill — often through blood sacrifice — any non-parrot they meet.
    • Ata-beasts and similar Talking Animals are, likewise, only considered citizens in rare places like Halta, and either enslaved or considered pets in the Realm.
    • Mortals with Enlightened Essence in the Realm are made monks by the Realm, or considered tainted criminals. Most places outside the Realm treat them better than normal humans, instead; in Paragon, immigrants with enlightened essence get a personal interview with the Perfect and a chance at being raised to nobility. Closer to the Wyld, though, such people are increasingly likely to be shaman that treat normal humans poorly.
    • Wyld Exposure can cause mutations that can be purely cosmetic, or even helpful. Because other mutations make people crazy murderers, even the least severe Wyld Mutation can result in social expulsion or death.
    • The masculine third gender/transgender Tya and transgender Dereth face unpleasant jokes even in their respective native culture, and Tya risk their lives if they're too visible in Coral. Outside of the West and the Delzahn respectively, or when dealing with foreigners, the cultural clashes can be dangerous or even deadly.
    • And, least we forget good, old-fashioned racism, there's examples like Linowan, which in addition to killing you for being a beastman or having too well-trained of an animal, will also kill or enslave you for having entirely green hair and reddish-brown skin (a common occurrence in the ''Exalted'' setting). The nearest society with entirely green hair and reddish-brown skin spy on or respond in kind to anyone that looks like they're a Linowan — or even feed them to The Fair Folk. Some racism is more subtle; the xenophobic Varangians consider foreigners simple-minded for not understanding the ridiculously complex caste system.
  • FATAL has a table for this. Odds are strong that you will "randomly" roll that your character agrees with the rest of his race (since making your own decisions about how your character thinks, looks and acts is anathema to FATAL). Most races hate most of the other races. Race in FATAL is determined randomly. It's like the average adventuring party is a powderkeg of race hate just waiting to be set off.
  • Transhuman Space has various forms. Biochauvinism (the belief that AIs and Ghosts aren't real people) is common, and bioroids are second-class citizens in the United States. Various combinations exist, such as the Born Human Movement, which is prejudiced against bioroids and AIs, but not Ghosts.
  • While not a prominent feature in New Horizon, there is an underlying current of racism that can be picked up on. The rulebook gives multiple "slang" and "degratory" titles to every race, Xanadu is explicitly stated to like Oylimpians (read: pure humans) but not other races, Medeans are sometimes referred to as the next evolution, and there is a strange insistence that Wafans are not robots, but people. Still, given that Everything Is Trying to Kill You, most of this tends to fall by the wayside.

    Video Games 
  • Pretty much every single NPC in Ryzom displays this. There are four civilizations and two different factions, and everyone thinks that everyone else is an idiot.
  • The Witcher ...a major theme of the game...both the humans and the non-humans (elves and dwarves) display this, which leads to armed groups like the religious fanatical Order of the Flaming Rose and the terroristic Scoia'tel to commit horrific atrocities against the other race. Geralt himself is also a target of the racism.
  • Another Bioware game, Neverwinter Nights, also pulls on this, moreso in the first game than the second. In the first game, talking to common people on the streets would garner variable responses depending on your race or even class. The only race not discriminated was (surprise surprise) Human, but even then, if you were a Sorcerer or Barbarian, expect some hatred. It isn't like that in the second game as much, but there is some racism taken for laughs (like Neeshka the Tiefling calling dwarves "squat, smelly drunks" and Kelgar the Dwarf calling Tieflings "backstabbers").
  • Inphyy in Ninety Nine Nights has a problem with goblins. Other people fight them and their evil leader. She hunts down their women and children to the dismay of her comrades.
  • Psychonauts: Raz's dad hates psychics because they cursed his whole family to die in water. Or does he?
  • Several games in the Tales Series invoke this trope to varying degrees.
    • Much of the plot of Tales of Symphonia involves racism against half-elves on the part of humans and elves. Like the Teen Titans example above, the word "racism" itself is never actually used: the word "discrimination" is always used instead, even when it's just describing racial hatred rather than actual unfair treatment.
    • Mind you, the modern people have a semi-legitimate reason to hate half-elves, since the majority of the half-elves in the game belong to the Desians, a faction representing The Devil in the Big Bad's made-up religion that subjugates each world in turn to encourage them to do the whole "world regeneration" thing. However, it is eventually revealed that half-elves were already hated before the Big Bad set all this up.
    • Also, although not much is made of it, there seems to be a level of distrust of people from Mizuho.
    • Ozette too, because they oppose the Church of Martel.
      • Which is ironic, as that's the place that acts most racist towards half-elves. Pretty much anyone you talk to in Ozette makes a remark about how much they hate half-elves, even the children.
  • There's also a degree of this in Tales of Phantasia, although it's less central to the plot. It's not surprising, because Tales of Symphonia is implied to be set in the distant past of the same world as Tales of Phantasia.
  • In Tales of Eternia, the Inferian perception of Celestians is of warmongering, bloodthirsty monsters.
    • A library book in Imen reveals that Celestians have only a slightly better view of the Inferians. In fact, it was the racist feelings of the Celestians that triggered most of the games events.
  • Tales of Legendia has the Orerines (land dwellers) and the Ferines (sea dwellers).
    • This trope comes front and center in Tales of Rebirth with the humans versus the Gajumas (beast people).
    • And in the latter half of Tales of the Abyss, society must learn to accept "Replicas," exact copies of humans, exploring the question of What Measure Is a Non-Human?.
  • Tales of the Tempest had this trope as its entire plot. The fandom was not amused.
  • Tales of Innocence. A good slice of humanity is gaining powers from their status as reincarnations, and the government is kidnapping them for research purposes. Bonus points: the reincarnatees were having a race war with each other, which is bleeding into the awakened reincarnated humans. A real world war is being thrown into chaos because some of the soldiers have decided to fight the heaven war instead of the Earth war, and the divisions don't always match up.
  • Half the point of the Zone of the Enders series. In fact, "Ender" is a pejorative term by Earthlings referring to those born on Mars and the outer colonies. In turn, the Martians use it for those living on the outskirts of the solar system.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the main character Marche unknowingly refers to a bangaa (a race of reptilian humanoids) as a "lizard", which is soon revealed to be a form of ethnic slur against them. Though this is probably similar, if not equivalent, to someone calling you an 'ape' (Something that happens a few times to Humans in fiction, too) The lizard comment is used by some NPCs in FFXII as well.
    • Similarly in Final Fantasy IX, the Burmecians are referred to as 'rats' and 'rodents' as a racial slur by those attempting their genocide.
    • In Final Fantasy X, the stateless Al Bhed tend to be looked down on by regular humans, with the Church of Yevon being particularly harsh due to the Al Bhed violating Yevon's restrictions on the use of technology. Even Wakka is shown throughout the game to be distrustful of Al Bhed, though he becomes less so the further along the story gets.
    • Used to hell and back in Final Fantasy XI. Beastmen hate the player races, the player races hate Beastmen, Humes exploit African-Americans Native-Americans Galka, Elvaan are snooty to everyone, and even the cutesy Tarutaru have performed genocide on walking, talking frogs. To top it all off, the Precursors hate everyone but them. If there's a solid theme to FFXI, it's Fantastic Racism.
  • A lot of the villains in Dissidia: Final Fantasy have a habit of referring to Zidane & Kuja with terms like "simian," "monkey," etc.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, the Espers are the Other race that is being literally used by the humans. Terra's existence as a 'mixed' lineage child and the problems she has because of this are obviously her working through the 'racism.'
    • The empire treats Espers as basically magic batteries, not even awknowledging them as living creatures. No other humans interact with espers. As a result Terra's half esper nature is never brought up beyond it giving her terrifying power. A better example is the Thamasa residents and their ancestors that were feared and driven away due to their magic potential.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, after he goes insane Sephiroth begins to speak of humans as if they were lower than he was...(although to his credit(?) he did believe that he was a god and never did find out that he was actually just a human with godly genes and mako enhancements)in the game, he calls them "stupid", and then in Advent Children casually dismisses the fate of the Planet when he claims he'll use it to "sail the cosmos".
  • The ninth and tenth Fire Emblem games have the Beorc (basically normal humans) and Laguz (humanoid shapeshifters). Despite being created equally by the universe's goddess, they both tend to have a tremendous amount of contempt for the other, as well as for hybrids between the two.
    • And in the 7th game, there was Marquess Arapham's hatred for the nomadic people of Sacae, which includes our plucky heroine and his very own captain of the guard.
  • Averted in Game Arts' Lunar and Grandia series. Despite being populated with many different humanoid species, both series avoid this trope with a few exceptions.
    • In Lunar Dragon Song, the humans, beastmen and the Vile Tribe hate each other. Eventually the beastmen learn to accept humans, and the Vile Tribe generally accept anyone who forsakes Althena and own darkness in the form of crystals as their own (near the end a few begin to question themselves).
    • This is also the case in Lunar Magic School, where the beastmen's hate of humans stands in the way of a human and a beastgirl getting married. And the Vile Tribe essentially hate everybody, and vice versa.
    • Vile Tribe versus humans also comes up in Silver Star Story. Eternal Blue might be the only game in the series that doesn't have some Fantastic Racism against the Vile Tribe, and that's only if you don't count the Childhood's End tie-in manga...
  • The orcs of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura are consistently oppressed, discriminated against, and stereotyped as near-mindless subhumans. There's even a political screed in the game titled "The Orcish Problem". Half-orcs got the same treatment as orcs even though there was no difference in intelligence between them and humans. A half-orc labour organiser is one of the most eloquent NPCs in the game. The trope is also subverted via the game's Space Jews, the stereotypically Jewish gnomes, who really are engaged in a globe-spanning Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion-style conspiracy to manipulate the other races of the world for profit and power.
    • The hostility between Mages and Technolist also counts. (This makes sense, considering one critically fails in the presence of the other...)
  • Mass Effect is replete with the speciesism the page quote describes. Salarians and krogans are on bad terms, as the latter are a bit miffed about the Depopulation Bomb that's rendered their species impotent and dying. Turians and humans have strained relations, mostly on the human side, as First Contact came in the form of the turians bombing a human colony from orbit. The batarians outright hate humans due to them encroaching on territory the batarians themselves want to develop for their own ends. Humans don't particularly like batarians for the latter's practice of slavery. Most of the alien species in general are sore toward humans due to their surprising expansionism, unprecedented growth, and their disproportionately powerful role in galactic politics. And humans themselves have formed extremist groups (Cerberus) and political parties (Terra Firma) encouraging something similar.
    • This does get a lot of healing if you save the Destiny Ascension and its ten thousand passengers at the end of the first game and carry that save file into the second. Bonus points if you put Anderson on the council, at least if you want your Spectre status back.
    • Not to mention the turian representative on the council will call out you out for committing genocide if you kill the rachni queen... and call you a fool if you spare it, exclaiming they will be lucky if the rachni don't overrun the galaxy now.
      • He is at least consistent; his remarks on the player's handling of the Zhu's Hope situation on Feros are similarly negative regardless of whether Shepard managed to save the Thorian-controlled colonists or simply killed them all.
    • The game also features a clever inversion of expected prejudices. The all-female asari species can reproduce with any other species. If you discuss this with your asari teammate, she'll explain that union between two asari is looked down upon as nothing has been gained. Indeed, she herself suffers under the stigma of being a *shudder* "pureblood."
    • Ashley also shows what looks like outward hints of fantastic racism by not trusting the alien team members at first, though a lot of her concerns are justified by the fact that she is pretty much in charge of operational security on the Normandy, and the alien crewmembers include a turian (whose species have had a violent history with humanity), a self-admitted quarian drifter, the asari daughter of the Big Bad's second in command, and a krogan mercenary - pretty much the most untrustworthy thing in the galaxy.
    • Then there's the quarians: No one likes them. The labor unions hate them because they're scabs, the council hates them because they made the geth, and all the other aliens see them as beggars and thieves, not helped by their habit of strip-mining planets as the Migrant Fleet travels. In fact, they dump their criminals on civilized planets as they move because they lack the resources to support a prison population.
    • Tali's loyalty quest in Mass Effect 2 revolves around a debate that resembles post-WWII debates about Israel: Whether the Quarians should maintain the status quo wandering around the galaxy, retake their homeworld from the Geth by force, re-enslave the Geth or colonize some other planet.
    • Notably, AIs suffer extensively more so than even the quarians. Roughly half of the AIs one encounters in the game have justified reasons for being misguided antagonists.
      • The other half aren't even antagonists - their inability to communicate means they can't even protest when people kill them. The best they can do is self-defense which, naturally to many in the setting, looks like an AI gone rogue.
      • Though part of the problem with AIs according to the backstory, even after the war with the Quarians the Geth completely shut themselves off from the rest of the galaxy, and any ship sent to make contact with them was destroyed, along with any organics who entered their region of space for any reason, cementing their status as a threat. At the time the game takes place, most of the Geth would like to make peace with the rest of the galaxy. But the prejudice against them is only half of the problem: they don't really understand organics either, and they know they need to be cautious until they can find some common ground.
    • There's also some of this toward the krogan by the other Citadel species, who dropped the genophage on them during the war, and once the war was won they were in no particular hurry to cure it, leading to the krogan's slow depopulation and extinction.
      • Actually, if you believe what one of the scientist who worked on the genophage says, it leaves the krogan population at a finely calculated equilibrium. The krogan evolved on a Death World, and after their uplifting by the salarians their explosive birthrate rapidly lead to overpopulation and aggressive expansion. This started a galactic war that the genophage ended. Unfortunately, their current situation is not being helped by the fact that most krogan (who, comparing to the old birthrates, thinks they're doomed) become mercenaries and die (although less often than most other species would, being really hard to kill by comparison).
    • Perhaps the most hated race, managing to surpass humans and quarians, are the Vorcha. No matter where you are, most races view them as nothing more than vermin.
      • Which is not helped by the position that evolution has left the vorcha in. A lifespan of twenty years, coupled with below average intelligence and the fact that vorcha are only spread around by stowing away on ships visiting their homeworld, has not given them many opportunities to improve their species' reputation.
    • You humans are all racist!
    • The Reapers see all organic life as a mistake that they need to periodically correct.
  • This is part of the reason for the hostile relations between Horde and Alliance in World of Warcraft after they formed an alliance against the demons in Warcraft III. There are other instances of this all over the place in the backstory novels. For instance, in the first war against the demons, the night elf nobles initially refuse to accept the help of other races (at that time, dwarves, the ursine furbolg and the tauren), and the demons manipulate the orcs into fighting the draenei by fueling the mistrust.
    • And of course, who can forget Grand Marshal Garithos from the Frozen Throne expansion, probably the biggest fantastic racist in the series. His comeuppance was exquisitely satisfying because of it.
    • World of Warcraft, debatably, makes a lot of money off of keeping people interested in the 'us vs. them' mentality and the racist overtones between the orcs and the humans and their respective allies. When these mentalities were toned down in the Burning Crusade expansion, players complained. Cue a 180' turn in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, where fueling said racism seems to be a part of the Big Bad's Xanatos Gambit.
    • In an interesting take on this trope, you'll find plenty of "racism" in the player base against gnomes.
    • The Horde counterpart is the Blood Elves, who are the only "pretty" race among the Horde. And considering that the Blood Elves were added in the Burning Crusade expansion, Suffers Newbies Poorly is probably a contributing factor. No such Freudian Excuse is available for gnome haters.
    • Some built-in emotes are racist. This is a /silly from human males: "So, an orc walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender says 'Hey, where'd you get that?' The parrot says Durotar. They've got them all over the place!'" And this from undead males: "I can't stand the smell of Orcs."
    • The Forsaken have a general contempt for all races other than their own, even the Tauren who have a genuine desire to cure their undead state. They start off as Neutral with all other Horde races, whereas others start at Friendly. The Forsaken have a particular hatred for humans as a result of their forced conversion and the disgust of their former friends and family to their undead states.
      • The most obvious example of the hatred between family members was a set of now removed quests in Alterac Valley. Two brothers, one Human and one Forsaken, sent players to kill their own brother.
    • A lot of the Blood Elves' emotes are racist against their own faction: "We're allied with the Tauren? Fantastic! We'll have steak every night!" and that really long one that the female blood elves have about the undead.
    • The Blood Elves get a truly ridiculous amount of hate. How ridiculous? The High Elves of Dalaran rebelled when Rhonin considered allowing Blood Elves back into the Kirin Tor. Not actually allowing them to return, but considering it. To be fair, High Elves and Blood Elves were once the same race. But ~10% of the remaining High Elves didn't agree with Kael'Thas and didn't become Blood Elves and instead stayed loyal to the Alliance. The high elves consider the Blood Elves traitors and refuse to have anything to do with them to the point where no high elf would ever wear red because it's the color of Blood Elves.
    • Varian Wrynn does not like orcs very much.
    • Cataclysm will have Garrosh kicking almost all of the other Horde races out of Orgrimmar. It's turned into an "Orcs Only" town.
      • Its actually worse than that: he allows trolls, goblins and tauren to live in the city, but in crappy slums on the outskirts. The insult is not lost on those affected.
      • At one point, Garrosh tells Vol'jin, the much more experienced leader of the trolls and somebody who, before Thrall left, was in a higher position than Garrosh, to return to his slum. Thrall must have been slipped some crazy drugs or something to put Garrosh in charge.
    • In Northrend, there are very few Draenei are among the Alliance forces; a recurring discussion in Valliance Keep reveals that most of the Alliance forces are from people native to Northrend, who up until now have never seen a Draenei, and are suspicious of them. Harbinger Vurenn suspects the Cult of the Damned is deliberately stoking this to weaken the Alliance forces.
  • The background lore in The Elder Scrolls series makes heavy use of this trope. The most obvious examples? The Bretons and Orcs hate each other, the Nords and Dark Elves hate each other due to war, the Argonians and Dark Elves loathe each other due to slave raids and slavery by the latter, and the Khajiit and Wood Elves regard each other with hatred, both of them raiding each other's homeland. The High Elves and Dark Elves, in particular, are both racist against all other races; ironically, the Redguards,(who are to all extent Blacks) are treated in a pretty much neutral light, possibly due to the fact that they only arrived recently compared to the long histories between the other races.
    • To its credit, the series tends to portray these tensions as somewhat-realistic social and cultural problems, rather than issues arising solely from inherent racial characteristics. For instance, it's less "dark elves are racists" and more "Morrowind is insular and xenophobic".
    • Even if you play a Dunmer in TES3, you're still considered an outlander. It's not a question of race so much as culture. And the Ashlanders consider all other Dunmer as outlanders.
    • This gets even worse in Oblivion when you hear rumours of a countess interested in species 'purity' and torturing Argonians, then find a torture chamber in their castle.
    • Speaking of Oblivion, in the Shivering Isles expansion pack, one NPC is terrified of cats, he has a pet dog. And he has the unfortunate problem of a Khajiit that happens to really like his dog, resulting in him being constantly wary. If you are a Khajiit yourself, you can't even take his sidequest, and he'll sick his dog on you!
    • In the first game there were Jesters that would make offensive jokes about your race.
    • Don't forget Valen Dreth, the first NPC you meet in Oblivion, who has a nice rant to deliver against whichever race you may be.
    • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes this Up to Eleven after introducing the Thalmor, High Elf supremacists who are for all intents and purposes the Tamrielic equivalent to the Nazi party.
      • The Stormcloaks and their leader, Ulfric Stormcloak, are no better, as are most Nords that support Windhelm- Argonians are hired as dock workers at a fraction of the pay a Nord might normally get, the Dark Elves are forced to live in the slums of Windhelm and are ignored when they ask for help, and although Ulfric will be the first to rally troops to protect a Nord village, he won't lift a finger if a Khajiit caravan is wiped out by raiders. Most of its soldiers proclaim that Skyrim is for the Nords only. At its worst, an author of the book Scourge of the Gray Quarter describes the lizard-like Argonians as "fish men", and offers that the Dark Elves could learn from "their scaly cousins"- a fairly idiotic thing to say, given that Dark Elves primarily enslaved Argonians in Morrowind.
  • Despite the game's humorous, light-hearted nature, one of the central underlying themes of Disgaea (mostly the first game) is racism, particularly the issue of judging a group without actually knowing them. Lamington talks about this before the final battle. Almaz says something similar in the third game, even admitting his own pre-game prejudices.
  • Wild ARMs 5 has this trope as its Anvilicious morality tale - the tall, beautiful Bishounen/Bishoujo Genre Veruni constantly oppress the smaller, weaker humans, while the protagonists work tirelessly to prove The Power of Friendship and how we're all really the same inside. Unusually, this is because they are - the Veruni used to be humans long ago, before they left for space.
  • Anti-nonhuman prejudice is touched on in Knights of the Old Republic. On Taris, the only nonhumans who can walk around in the Upper City work for the local Exchange boss or are pretty Twi'lek shopkeepers. Others get pelted by stones thrown by children, as seen once. There is a street preacher calling nonhumans a "plague that sweeps through our streets". A seedy hotel has alien occupants despite this being illegal. The slum-like and generally miserable Lower City, overrun by gangs, is where most of the nonhumans live. The racism Juhani experienced as a child on Taris is a major point in her sidequest.
  • In Fallout 2, Vault City residents hold themselves superior to all others, having achieved instant success at society-building from the moment they left their Vault. Their leader, First Citizen Lynette, is a black woman with strong prejudices bordering on genocidal, against ghouls, mutants, savages and anyone living above-ground when the bombs landed.
    • Not to mention the general hatred of Super Mutants. Given that only a few decades prior, the Super Mutants had every intention of overrunning, destroying or mutating all life, this may be a Justified Trope. Several mutants, including the one you can recruit, seem to still hold mutant elitist philosophy as well.
  • Averted in Fallout 3 if you allow Fawkes (one of the two friendly Super Mutants in the whole game) to become your ally. The only type of character he's willing to follow is one with a high positive karma - more or less a walking saint. The people may in fact hate him, but because of the player's reputation they'll never say anything. Fawkes comments on this in game.
    • Fallout 3 does, however, use this trope a lot when dealing with the ghouls; People who have been hideously mutated by prolonged exposure to radiation. There are feral ghouls which can't be reasoned with and attacks anything on sight, and there are civilized ghouls, which are pretty much just friendly NPCs without skin. Naturally, the population of the wasteland tend to mix this up and treat all ghouls as monsters. This conflict is vital to the quests "You gotta shoot 'em in the head" and "Tenpenny Tower."
      • Becomes a Justified Trope when one appreciates that Word Of God indicates it is merely a matter of time before all civilized ghouls eventually turn feral. Given a choice between cautious discrimination and one day discovering your neighbor has become a crazed cannibalistic monster, it's easy to empathize with the racists.
      • Other Word Of God claims that is false, as 99% of all Ghouls are over two hundread years old, hinting Ferals are driven insane during the process of becoming a ghoul (which is very, very slow and painful). Shown over in New Vegas as no one other than the Legion has any problem with Ghouls, hell the NCR has them as Rangers.
  • Somewhat subverted Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel- having to recruit tribals from outlying settlements goes against their own ideals just on its own, but the epynomous organization also accepts ghouls and intelligent deathclaws into their ranks despite the objections from Simon Barnaky. After he is captured and Dekker takes command, super mutants and reavers are also allowed to join. Keep in mind, this straying away from the original ideals of the Brotherhood of Steel is done more out of necessity in most cases, as their own numbers without them are too few.
  • In Valkyria Chronicles, Rosie really hates the Darcsens often taking out rage her on Isara. Rosie eventually comes around and stops hating Darcsens.
    • There are a few other playable characters who also hate Darcsens, but unlike Rosie, this comes in the form of a potential that lowers their accuracy when they're near allied Darcsen. Rosie, meanwhile, learns a potential that actually improves her accuracy when near Darcsens, although she only gets it after Isara's Plotline Death.
    • Darcsen-hating is institutional in Europa, especially in the Empire (which is happy to round them up, burn their homes, and send them to work camps). In Varrot's side mission, Geld is court-martialed "for torturing non-Darcsen civilians."
    • The sequel Valkyria Chronicles 2 makes racism a bigger plot point as the antagonists are a Gallian Noble House that didn't take well the whole revelation of Gallia's ruling family being Darcsens.
  • While not in-game, per se, Halo suffers a bit with the Elite specisim. This may have something to do with "They're harder to headshot from behind" regarding SWAT, but the slur "Dinosaur" seems to come up too many times for it to be just that. Seriously, try making a thread on the forum about those guys, and you will invariably get at least one comment about "they're dinosaurs" and about -5 posts about how they're fun to play as. Say anything about liking to play as them, and you'll get called out on it because of the aforementioned headshot problem.
    • In-universe, however, this too happens. Grunts and Jackals are competing for higher billing while Elites and Brutes are at eachother's throats for leadership. The Prophets favor the Elites except for Truth, who orders genocide one them over Brutes but ignore the Gunt/Jackal conflict. In the Great Schism, the Brutes focus more on the Elites than humanity, acording to the Halo wiki.
  • The Vektans of Killzone view the Helghast as fascistic mutants while the Helghast view the Vektans (and by extension, the United Colonial Army) as evil oppressors. They're both right.
  • While this gets briefly touched upon in the first Phantasy Star game, and more expounded on in the second, the PS2 game Phantasy Star Universe features this as an apparent plot point (and background story), where the Humans have created CASTs (androids/robots), Beasts, and Newmans to inhabit the Gurhal System with them and serve as labor... but the hierarchy gets inverted quite a bit when the CASTs become the supremacists, the Beasts become resentful and rogue-ish, the Newmans become deeply religious, and the Humans still think everyone can get along. CAST speciesism and racism ensues throughout the entire game.
  • Kingdom Hearts II gives us this little gem from DiZ. "A Nobody doesn't have a right to know. Nor even does it have the right to be." Yeah, they're basically a person who's missing half of what makes them, but does that give you a right to treat a sapient being like a nothing?
    • To be fair to DiZ, the only Nobodies he had met before had thoroughly screwed him over and destroyed his entire world back when they were human, so he has a right to be bitter. He did apolgize to Roxas after learning he was capable of feeling emotion before exploding.
  • City of Heroes has two primary alien races. There's the Rikti, most of which want to kill every human on the planet. Then there's the Kheldians, half of which are good, half of which are evil. There's many people, players and NPCs, who believe all Kheldians are evil, and believe the policy should be to shoot first and ask questions later. The Rikti also have a few "good" ones. They've been tricked by Nemesis into the war they're waging on humanity, and most of the ones who are still fighting are the ones who don't know this or don't believe it.
    • For added fun, the Rikti are actually humans from an alternate universe, where alien intervention altered them so they go through a bizarre metamorphosis upon reaching adolescence. And the Lost are humans infected with an engineered virus that, over time, transforms them into Rikti. The Rikti themselves have their own internal racism, where Rikti transformed from the local humans are regarded as second-class citizens.
  • In Chrono Trigger, the player encounters a land inhabited by 'fiends' (monsters) who built their own civilisation after the human-fiend war. Although the first fiends you encounter are friendly towards humans since the war ended 400 years ago, everyone else either attacks you, sells things for exorbitant prices ('you think I'd give a human the going rate?') or expresses rather loudly that the Fiendlord should have eradicated the human race when he had the chance, which is mildly disturbing. Humans mostly seem to have gotten over it though, since it's hardly mentioned, and they believe that 'some' monsters can live among humans.
    • Regular humans don't seem to believe that ever happened, what with the monster village being somewhat secluded and the human-fiend war having happened during what would be the middle ages, they feel they have Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions. Also, most "monsters" that attack you in the present are just animals. A better example would be the "Dark Ages" segregation between Earthbounds and Enlighteneds. The later ones use magic and live happy in dreams (pretty literally), whereas the former don't, and live in utter misery. That is, until the source of Zeal's power goes boom.
    • This whole game is pretty anvilicious about this. In the prehistoric era it's the Reptites vs. the humans, 12,000 BC features the Enlightened vs the Earthbound Ones, both 600 AD and 1000 AD have the Mystics vs humans, and the future has the obligatory Robots Kill All Humans philosophy.
    • There was some human racism towards the fiends in the Japanese version that was Lost in Translation — while the Fiends call themselves "Mazoku", translating along the lines of "demon tribe", the humans call them "Mamono" — this literally translates as "Demon Thing", and is a term you would usually use for a mindlessly hostile monster, rather than a sapient being.
  • Spoofed in Atelier Annie. When Fitz is nice to Annie, but mean to her fairy master Pepe, he assumes that this trope has spontaneously manifested in a world completely devoid of it - it's actually because Fitz has a fawning girl-crush on Annie, and is jealous that Pepe gets to spend all his time with her.
  • Arc The Lad gives us the people from Holn (hometown of one of the main characters) who are distrusted by the Game's expy of Switzerland because of their ability to communicate with monsters. In Twilight of the Spirits, Human and Deimos (intelligent humanoid monsters) are locked into a cold war pretty close to heat up.
  • In Gaia Online racism plays a pretty large role in a lot of the events involving multiple races (beginning with humans-versus-Zombies, humans-versus-Aliens, humans-versus-vampires... see any trends?), especially Halloween 2008's "humans-versus-vampires-versus-elves-versus-zombies" free-for-all (due to a misinterpreted prophecy).
    • An ongoing example of this trope is Louie, who tends to be just a little too quick to pull the (vampiric) race card in his shop dialogue (calling those who ask if he sparkles "borderline racist" comes to mind).
    • Also the possibility that Gaia's orcs have been enslaved (which is asked about by Josie, who is black).
  • Dragon Age Origins is full of this. Human racism against elves. Elvish racism against humans or elves who act "too human". Human racism against humans of other ethnicities and nationalities. Classism in the Dwarven caste system. Prejudice and mistrust against Circle mages. Executions of non-Circle mages. Religious intolerance, schisms and Holy Wars. There's probably not a permutation of this they don't cover.
    • Humans and Dwarves. They are pretty respectful of each other for the most part, although the Dwarves view living on the surface as a weakness while human think the Dwarven caste system and politics are ridiculous. But there's no hostility.
    • Dragon Age II adds Qunari to the mix. It's mostly a religious conflict, but the anti-Qunari zealots don't hesitate to throw around terms like "ox-men" when referring to the Qunari. Qunari for their part are rather disdainful of other races, though this is mostly because the Qunari see anyone outside of the Qun as things, not people.
  • Seems like any and all games that have Petting Zoo People interacting with each other have this trope in play.
  • The Big Bad of Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal is a robot who hates organic beigns and wants them destroyed.
  • Ferals (beastmen) to humans in Sands of Destruction. Sure, there's a few places where they're more or less equal, but the rest of the world? There's a reason why Morte's a part of the World Annihilation Front.
  • The player-base for Dwarf Fortress often (jokingly) demonstrates a huge amount of hatred and disgust for the Elves, often going so far as to treat them as the mortal enemies of the Dwarves. This flies in the face of the existence of a race that already behave as the Dwarves' mortal enemies, the Goblins. Most of this is due to how the Elves subtly insult the Dwarves when trading, try to in-state limits to how many trees the Dwarves can cut down for wood, bring crappy trade goods, refuse to buy anything made of wood, and if they siege the player, they attack in their thousands and wear crappy armor that the Dwarves can't wear or easily destroy.
    • This isn't helped by the fact that Elves eat their enemies, and like to start wars over the treatment of plants (Then eating whoever they fight); they basically are designed to be as unreasonable as possible, whether or not they're at war with you. Goblins' reasons are far more reasonable: They want your stuff. After dealing with elves, one can almost respect that.
    • There is a massive exception to the rule: Cacame Awemedinade the Immortal Onslaught, Elf King of the Dwarves. His boundless rage for his own kind (They killed and ate his wife) so impressed the dwarves that they made him their king, and his skill with a hammer is legendary.
  • Present in the Touhou series, most obviously humans versus all forms of youkai, which is the most blatant in Undefined Fantastic Object. However, there's a few cases of fear and hatred between different species of youkai, such as the fact that everyone in the Underground hates the satori species, since they read minds and apparently can't control the urge to speak other peoples' thoughts aloud.
    • And in the manga Silent Sinner in Blue, we're introduced to Toyohime, the elder of the two Watatsuki sisters, both of whom are in charge of the Lunar Defense Corps. As far as Toyohime is concerned, everything on Earth is sin incarnate simply because it comes from Earth. And this is everything — not just humans, youkai, and other sentient beings, everything.
  • Happens in Sins of a Solar Empire in the case of the Advent and the TEC. The Advent, when rediscovered by the Trade Union, were reviewed as outcasts because of their beliefs. They were exiled, and now they've come back to get revenge on the TEC.
  • Legacy of Kain has a three way racial conflict. The vampires and the hylden were two Precursor races who considered themselves godlike. The vampires began a holy war against the hylden because the hylden would not submit to their god. Hylden were banished to a hell dimension, vampires were cursed with blood thirst. Humans began to hate vampires, seeing them as a pestilence. As the vampire population became more turned humans than originals, they began to see themselves as dark gods, superior to humans and rightfully deserving to rule the humans. The hylden, meanwhile, had a bitter hatred for vampires for their banishment, extending to vampires turned from humans who were so far removed from the original vampires that they didn't even know the ancient history. The hylden also looked down on humans as inferior beings, but for the most part, the humans are unaware of the hylden's existance.
  • The later Ultimas show this between Britannians and the Gargoyles.
  • Devan Shell decides to invade Carrotus...because he read "The Tortoise and The Hare" and came to the comclusion that the lesson was "All lagomorphs are smug, superior jackasses," and decided to show them a thing or two by eradicating them.
  • The Godwins of Suikoden V go as far as engaging in genocide against the non-human residents of Falena.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, certain shop owners refuse to do business with a species other than their own.
  • In Sam And Max Freelance Police: The Devil's Playhouse, Sam's mild prejudice-slash-Squick towards Sybil's marriage to the Statue of Abraham Lincoln is obviously reminiscent of attitudes towards gay marriage, with him wondering if it's even legal in this state, blanking out when Sybil describes how she and he have sex, and calling their union a 'sin against God'. Played for Laughs, though, and he gets over it by the end.
  • In Age of Wonders, it's possible to be friendly with the leaders of good and evil races, but put units from each in the same party and you may end up with deserters.
  • Played for laughs in Ultimate Spider-Man where Peter has a victim who is clinging on bridge say "mutants are people too" before rescuing him.
  • Humans in Eien No Aselia tend to look down on spirits to a great extent. The spirits themselves seem to take it for granted by this point until Yuuto starts making a fuss.
  • Most of the faction conflict in Rift seems to be more political and cultural than anything else. However, a Guardian NPC in the Defiant start zone does outright refer to bahmi (who are the descendants of human/air spirit hybrids) as "planetouched abominations."
  • Shaper-to-creation racism in Geneforge parallels institutionalized slavery in America, down to the belief that creations who run away are mentally ill. At their worst, Shapers can't even conceive of the idea that creations might have rights, any more than you'd conceive of granting rights to a hammer or a saw. "Rogue" creations, for their part, view Shapers as a blight to be annihilated, and don't always distinguish between actual Shapers and normal humans. Meanwhile, drayks (incredibly powerful creations that the Shapers regret making and kill on sight) look down upon other creations as inferior, and are in turn looked down upon by drakons (drayks that learned how to rewrite their own genetic code for increased power). There's also a divide between Shapers and normal humans, but this can work out multiple ways—some people hate and fear Shapers (though not too openly), some venerate them, and some just accept them as a part of life.
  • The Humans Against Monsters (or H.A.M.) organisation in RuneScape are human supremacists, seemingly believing that humans are the chosen people of Saradomin.
  • Destroy All Humans! is practically nothing but a Fantastic Racism, where the main character views humans as morons or "monkeys". However, the longer he stayed on the planet, the more his racisim degraded to Pretend Prejudice.
  • While the underlying theme of Sands Of Destruction is this trope, it's presented in a rather awkward direction. On paper, all of the Beastmen extremely revel the humans, to the point of deliberately torturing them for no reason. In action, even in the anime, it's presented as Narm, due to the...cartoonish characters as recommended by our beloved Executive Meddling.
  • This is what essentially sparked off the story in the Oddworld series: Originally the Mudokons and Glukkons were neighbours, until a crater in the shape of a Mudokon pawprint appeared on one of Oddworld's moons. The Mudokons declared that this was a divne sign that they were the 'chosen race', which royally pissed off the Glukkons to the point of closing off their society, turning to industry and enslaving most of the species on Oddworld, starting with the Mudokons. Congratulations.

     Web Comics 
  • In the Captain SNES: The Game Masta universe, RPG sprites are considered arrogant, dumb and really angsty.
  • In Chess Piece, the king's father is a bigot of just about everything while Jack Fenton is one towards ghosts. Interestingly, there are two countries of ghosts - one in a Phantom Zone called Purgatory, the other in Anartica - and the King of Dalv has a best friend who happens to be a ghost-and his general.
  • Crimson Flag: red foxes ("reds") versus grey foxes ("greys"). There are other kinds of foxes, but so far there doesn't seem to be any antagonism involving them.
  • In Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures, Dan, as an adventurer, hates demons. Especially succubi and incubi. Learning that he's an incubus himself only worsens it, making him hostile to anyone who wants to teach him how to use his powers, fearing that they will "make him like them" ŕ la The Virus.
    • To be fair, most of them are Card Carryingly evil, mainly because they're powerful. The nice ones are the exception. (His first would-be teacher, Aaryanna, isn't exactly subtle about what she expects Dan to use his powers for, and Lorenda's mother has a blatant might-makes-right philosophy).
      • Of course, as Abel explains, most Cubi are jerks because they were raised like that, not because they're Cubi. Dan and Abel are obvious examples, since both were raised as Beings and neither is evil.
    • Also, Dragons and Cubi (or at least Clan Cyra Cubi) apparently don't get along very well.
    • Also from DMFA, there is a species-wide restraining order against the fae that prohibits them from approaching either any girl-scout in general, or two girl-scouts in particular (who may have died of old age by now).
  • In Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, prejudice against orcs is commonplace, as seen here. Luna, a human with unusually large lower canines, has suffered spillover racism on occasion as well (her teeth look like orc tusks... at least to humans; orcs can easily tell the difference). That's the only thing she has in common with orcs, but nobody said racism was rational.
    • Oddly enough Luna's colleague Melna, an actual orc, has suffered far more at the hands of other orcs in her homeland than she ever did in Callan.
  • In Elf Only Inn, part of the backdrop is the racism between elves and dark elves. It's fun for characters of one race to hurl insults (and even weapons) at characters of the other race. However, one player (who plays a Duke Nukem persona) doesn't get it: He takes up the "cause" of the dark elves, calls Meghan a racist, and in general makes Meghan and the dark elf player agree to take up their battle another time.
    • Taking the metaphor further, Meghan starts to question whether they couldn't form a friendship between elves and dark elves. Offer hastily rescinded when she learns that the dark elf queen admits only two roles for regular elves: slave labor, or sacrifices to the spider god.
  • In 8-bit Theater, Black Mage has made the claim that White Mages cannot understand the experience of a Black Mage due to all of the discrimination against Black Mages because of the color of their spells.
    • Let's not forget how Thief feels towards the Dwarves, and vice versa. To the point of practically egging Black Mage on whilst they were in Dwarfland, and not objecting to all the destruction taking place. Then again, Thief never rally does seem to object to the violence/crimes committed by The Light Warriors...
  • In Freefall, Artificial Lifeforms, both robotic and genetically engineered, are treated as second class citizens at best and as slaves at worst. Of course, it's often the very reason they exist in the first place (artificial, remember?).
  • Frog Raccoon Strawberry has a little fun with this when Strawberry is seen by Marco, a real frog. He calls her "speciesist" and shows up later in a raccoon costume. Strawberry is not offended at all.
  • In Girl Genius, racism against constructs is prevalent. There's also prejudice against Sparks, but it tends to be more justified, due to the way their Science Related Memetic Disorder works.
  • Spoofed in this strip from The Non Adventures of Wonderella, with gay not-Transformers.
  • Goblins is built around this trope. The "goodly" races, such as humans and elves, hate the goblins and all other monster races. In turn, most goblins also hate humans ( the White Terror has a perfectly good reason for this though). The central characters of this story have, through their battles with each other and their own kin, come to question these distinctions.
    • The recent arc has revealed the deeper difficulties involved in overcoming this inherent prejudice, namely that the "monster" races tend to be very different from the "good races" on fundamental levels. For a human from a society of monogamous relationships, finding out the usual method of reproduction for the Yuan-ti is essentially a giant ball of males try to impregnate a single female is a bit much.
  • In Harkovast, every race is even a different species and generally mistrust the other races. Sometimes they can have children between them, and the "half-caste" offspring are left with the dilemma of following one side or the other's culture, where they might not be accepted in either.
  • The Trolls in Homestuck have a caste system based on blood color, with red being the lowest and purple the highest. Equius, a literal blue-blood, considers himself superior to the other trolls and is conflicted about his feelings for red-blooded Aradia. Ironically, Gamzee, the third-highest-ranking of the twelve trolls by blood color and Equius's direct superior, is a lovable idiot with rather base tastes for a member of the aristocracy and doesn't seem to care about class.
    • The sea-dwelling Eridan may or may not ascribe any serious value to his "kickass royal blood," but he hates land dwellers and has expressed the desire to kill them all.
      • Eridan's best friend Feferi, whose blood is literally the highest-ranked shade of purple in the history of existence, believes the hemospectrum is arbitrary and meaningless and shouldn't inform one's interactions with other trolls. She's heard Eridan's aquatic-supremacist rhetoric so much that their first in-story conversation starts with her cutting him off and giving him a lecture about the fundamental equality of all trolls regardless of hemochroma or habitat before he can start in on another tiresome rant.
    • A fan once pointed out how illogical it is that the difference between the highest and lowest possible blood colors would be nothing more than a fraction of a shade. The author responded that of course the system is irrational. Racism isn't supposed to make sense.
  • In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, there is tension between the dragons of planet Butane and the Nemesites who rule them, as depicted here.
  • In The Kenny Chronicles, Tarneckis (genetically engineered human-like animals created by pirate scientists) aren't allowed the same rights as humans and the attitude that they shouldn't is apparently prevalent enough that claiming your political opponent supports giving them rights constitutes mud-slinging. Is it any wonder why the majority of Tarneckis live on cruise ships where humans aren't allowed.
  • The Law of Purple has the planet Caligula, where skin color is random, there are barely any sort of religious traditions, and the culture is as non-sexist as a sexually dimorphic species can get it. So they divide themselves into two races based solely on ear shape, and "2nd Kind" are generally condemned to live in horrendous conditions as a result.
  • In Linburger Demi Humans are treated as second class citizens, and are heavily discriminated against. They even have to surrender a seat on the subway if a human wants their seat. Likely related to their hedonistic lifestyles.
    • Most ironic, is that the Cyll used to live in upper class society. Then Gotterdamerung happened, the Cyll lost their power, and now they live the way do. Unknown if the other Demi Human races had a similar origin.
  • Matt from Murphy's Law hates elves, mainly due to envy; according to Word Of God, the only reason that some elves are stuck-up jerks is that, well, they're people too.
  • My Middle Name's Adventure has Winston the Dragon complain about the world's stereotypical view on dragons.
  • The Order of the Stick uses this in several ways. Redcloak, The Dragon, is a goblin, and treats hobgoblins like dirt until one saves his life - he then becomes a goblinoid supremacist (Technically, he says he hates all Humans equally, admitting that he may be a speciesist, he never wanted to be a racist). Wizards, who gain magical power through study, are contemptuous of sorcerers, whose magic is a genetic gift and of clerics whose magic is a gift from the gods. And in the Start of Darkness print prequel, it's revealed that the Always Chaotic Evil races are that way because they were specifically created by the gods to be defeated, and their ultimate plan is an attempt to create equality for themselves.
    • In a purely comic example, Celia(a winged humanoid)'s retort to Haley calling her an "airhead" is "Hey! There's no need for racial slurs!"
    • Frequent elephant-in-the-room example: Yok-yok, Redcloak's village, and metal-head orcs are treated by (in at least one case, Lawful) Good adventurers (in at least one case PALADINS) as expendable, regardless of guilt or innocence, down to innocent civilians, including children. The adventurers don't get their alignments changed over it, nor do the Paladins lose power over it. The Giant lampshades that the D&D settings themselves have Fantastic Racism.
    • I don't believe it's ever been referred to as actual racism, but Token Evil Teammate Belkar seems to really, really hate kobolds.
  • Planes Of Eldlor has dark elves and orcs which are generally reviled among the other races.
  • In Spacetrawler, the Tornites were legally declared non-sentient by the galactic government because of their terrible fashion sense. Similarly, the Eebs are exploited because it's so lucrative; to make this easier, the government claimed their lack of willpower makes them non-sentient.
  • In the published webcomic Trace, when extraterrestrial creatures come to earth, the energy they release cause some mutation among choice humans turning them into traces who for the most part simply exist to fight troubles. There are agencies devoted to the training and protection of Traces. Though hiding that you're a trace automatically gets you put in jail for roughly three months, and if you happen to become a trace when you already have a family well... yeah.
  • Ugly Hill, has the minority one-eyed monsters discriminated against by the majority two-eyes.
  • Yamara: "There's no racism like fantasy racism. Like no racism I know."
  • In Schlock Mercenary, there seem to be elephant jokes.
  • Bob and George: Fighting like cats and dogs — while able to think about it. Here, here, here, and here.
  • From Regular Guy: admittedly, the Queen of Planet Ninurta is in a conventional same-sex relationship. It's just somehow weirder when it's aliens, and they have to destroy the Earth to distract from it.
  • In Strays, Holland contacts Feral to deal with a man preaching discrimination and murder.
  • Most of the backstory of TwoKinds revolves around the three main races hating each other.
  • Ancients in Impure Blood. Now concentrated on the hybrid descendents. Though Elnor thinks Roan should make the effort.
  • In Endstone, the higher animals are a Little Bit Beastly and indeed, interfertile with humans. They're still butchered for meat.
  • In Orange Marmalade humans aren't overly fond of vampires. They've been able to live in society for around two hundred years and aren't how they used to be due to the lack of human blood, etc. But many people refer to them as blood-sucking murderers and say how they should all die out.
    • There's a mixed opinion on how vampires see humans. Some want to live happily with them and some think they're parasites.
  • In Off-White, a snow leopard refers to humans as "wretched apes." Also some of the humans really don't like wolves.
  • Several magical races in At Arms Length feel superior to mortals. Also, many of the more powerful races feel superior to other magic races. These races are in turn disliked by the "lesser" magic races.
  • In The Lydian Option Hodges is a member of the Terran Brotherhood - a racist group of humans, and believes in a conspiracy to use human genes to create human-alien hybrids.
  • In The Zombie Hunters, people who get scratched by zombies or are infected with their blood or saliva become "infected", but not zombies, so long as they don't die and aren't actually bitten. Although technically there isn't supposed to be any racism between infected and uninfected, it's actually extremely common, with infected living separately from uninfected, often being pressured into taking dangerous jobs such as going into zombie-infested territory (as they can't be infected again) and being forced to wear armbands publicly identifying them as infected.

    Web Original 
  • ARCHON plays with this: Arglwydd repeatedly makes references towards Joule, the only human member of the group, as a dog. Both Averted and Played Straight within the lore: it is mentioned off-handedly by Jager that although discrimination isn't permitted within the Holy Kingdom and the Elven Lands, other nations are no-where near as fair.
  • This is the subject of one of Furry's Vlogs on Transylvania TV
  • The third chapter of The Account introduces Alan Ruby, an accidental human visitor to a gas station in a diverse world of fantasy races. He freaks out, starts lobbing the word "monsters" at the goblins and gnolls around him, and gets smacked around for it. Earth-born humans face their fair share of prejudice as well, but there's a reason for that...
  • Done well in Tales of MU, which examines the prejudices of both human and non-human characters, which sometimes skirts right up against stereotypes like Noble Savage and Humans Are Bastards, but ultimately averts them by showing all sides warts and all.
    • An interesting example of this is the character of Steff, who, as a half-elf, has had to deal with the prejudices of elves and humans against each other (mild though they are compared to the kind of treatment Mack generally receives when people discover she's a half-demon). This, consequently, has caused her to express racist opinions towards both, thinking of humans as clumsy clods and elves as stuck-up assholes.
    • A blatant example of anti-nonhuman bias in the story is the assumption that nonhumans at MU prefer to be called solely by their first name and the appropriate honorific (with female nonhumans generally referred to with "Miss" rather than the typical "Ms."), rather than their last name and honorific. This is despite whether or not the nonhuman actually has a surname (supposedly this is done to respect the fact that some races don't use surnames). When Mack tried to politely request that one of her professors refer to her as "Ms. Blaise" as opposed to "Miss Mackenzie", a fellow student's reaction was essentially to question her sanity.
    • Several times in the story characters have pointed out that the entire concept behind Harlowe Hall is inherently racist: there's no reason why a goblin would get along better with a mermaid (for example) than she would with a human. It's implied that the reason the Leightons behave the way they do is because they've been forcibly put with individuals they have nothing in common with because their bodies were fused together.
  • All over the place in the Whateley Universe, where a huge number of baseline humans hate or fear mutants and their powers. There's a MIB-like organization called the Mutant Commission Office that tracks (sometimes abducts, and possibly murders) mutants. 'Humanity First!' is a popular anti-mutie organization that has groups all over the world.
  • Adylheim treats this as a little more complex than most examples of Fantastic Racism do. Every race - even the human races! - is treated according to different stereotypes, some of which would at first glance seem to be positive. For example, the dragonkin, anthropomorphic dragons, are very rare in Adylheim, and it's considered good luck even to see one; but though this is a more "favorable" stereotype than any other race has, it also leads to them being harassed for favors at every turn, resented when they "won't" perform small miracles, and sometimes kidnapped and held to prevent their good luck from escaping or murdered for their body parts.
  • Oxhorn Short Shorts takes this trope and sprints around the line with it. The main cast(s) are all Horde, and their sentiments against various Alliance races are stated and stated often. (Not Counting the Orcs In Space series,) there is scarcely a film that doesn't bash elves, gnomes, or common World of Warcraft player types, sometimes in song. To be fair, all elves are portrayed as hippie Camp Gay pricks, oftentimes the antagonists. They even go so far as to kidnap Oxhorn (main guy) in one of the holiday specials (Although it is because of the racism).
  • Sam Bak Za'z "There she is!!" series gives cats and rabbits a dynamic with parallels to black/white interaction post emancipation. It's more enlightened in that neither species has anything in particular against the other and they get along okay, but romance between the two is so frowned upon that they actually have signs posted around the place just to remind people about it.
    • Sam Bak Za are Koreans. The series is more about relationships between Japanese and Koreans. There's still a lot of hostility between them today, holdovers from historical rivalries. Same deal, though.
  • Pretty much every race hates every other race in Above Ground, and there's the human/infected hatred to go on top of that.
  • In the Darwin's Soldiers universe, Snakes are considered to be repulsive by other species.
  • One of the lynchpins of the Tasakeru universe. The eight sentient species are all vastly different from one another, and warred with each other constantly in centuries past. A truce was only established through the divine intervention of the three Gods that inspired sentientkind to live together. Unfortunately, once the Gods became ingrained into each culture, the tensions rose again. The only way that harmony could be maintained was by walling off the species from one another. Tempers still run high between them... the only real unifying factor is that everyone seems to hate the cross-bred wolfoxes. It's seen as socially acceptable to either ignore them or use slurs like "stains" to refer to them.
  • In the web novels of Trinton Chronciles lizards and dragons are treated with both awe and fear by the rest of the mammilian populace.
  • During an encounter with centaurs in Greek Ninja, one of them reveals to Sasha that the founder of Ariadnio was a protector to them from humans, suggesting that there is racism towards centaurs.
  • In the online speculative evolution project A Scientific Fantasy, dinosauroids, humans and goblins don't seem to get along very well. However, they're treated like religions rahter than races, seeing as dinosauroids offer humans as sacrifices and goblings worship a god called Allah.
    • Also, an Austrian elf named Hister is Omnia Sanatem's version of Hitler, having started "the Great War", put people in concentration camps, and killed 6-16 million.

    Western Animation 
  • In one episode of The Wild Thornberrys, Eliza and Darwin had to deal with a feud between two groups of monkeys, one with long tails and one with short tails.
  • Exaggerated to the point of lampshading in the third season of ReBoot, as Enzo repeatedly encounters bigoted Mainframers who insist that only blue Sprites could make acceptable Guardians, each one spouting the refrain that "Green is no colour for the defender of the system!" At one point, a young toddler becomes incensed at the sight of him, and angrily hurls its (blue) Guardian plush toy in his face; "Everyone's a critic!", he groans. It should be noted that after hearing that line, Megabyte played up the racism angle with a propaganda campaign.
  • One particularly heavy-handed episode of Teen Titans, "Troq", dealt with Starfire dealing with the racism Tamaraneans apparently are known to receive (Troq being a Fantastic Slur for Tamaranians). She then gives a short speech at the end of the episode about racism, without actually using the word.
    • The issue of racism almost comes up directly(and is subsequently mocked) when Cyborg, who's black, tells her that he understands what it's like being judged by his appearance. When Starfire doubts this, he assures her that it's true, he has been discrimanated against... because "he's half robot".
  • The last season of the Gargoyles animated series featured a group of villains called the Quarrymen, who schemed to rid New York of the title characters due to their vaguely reptilian appearance (though there are much deeper reasons as well). With their full body suits and triangular hoods, the Quarrymen looked disturbingly like the Ku Klux Klan.
    • This trope is actually fundamental to the show as a whole. Demona, the Big Bad, actually became a genocidal maniac because of the constant prejudice she dealt with from the humans she and the other gargoyles protected each night. The massacre of most of her clan and her downward spiral resulted from this. Ironically, Demona has more in common with the evil humans she detests than with her own kind. In fact, said massacre was actually due to a botched plan to rid the castle of humans and let the gargoyles take over, orchestrated by none other than Demona herself.
    • Early in the show, the three youngest members try to get a taxi and fail, but this is perhaps understandable, since the taxi driver just saw what looked like a winged monster jumping in front of his car. Few characters take their first gargoyle sighting in stride.
  • One episode of Saban's X-Men cartoon took the theme of prejudice against mutants and turned it on its head when Storm (an African) and Wolverine (a white Canadian) traveled back in time to the 1950s. When the waiter at a restaurant refused them service because Storm was black, she indignantly replied, "That's so pathetic it's almost quaint!"
    • It was made even more of a sore spot because this version of Storm and Wolverine came from an alternate timeline in which they were married. Needless to say, Wolverine didn't take it well.
  • While the humans, robots, and aliens appear to be more or less well integrated in the world of Futurama, there is still a certain amount of hatred and rivalry that exists between the three groups - but the sewer mutants are the one group that is truly marginalized, as they're forced to remain underground. Something of a subversion in that the sewer mutants aren't portrayed in a sympathetic way, not even the main characters really care that the mutants are hated and forced to live in a sewer. Even when it's revealed that Leela isn't an alien, but actually a mutant herself (although human looking enough to pass for alien, she still lives on the surface after this episode), she still doesn't seem to be bothered much that her parents are considered freaks and they must live in a sewer.
    • There's also the sewer mutants' derogatory references to sub-sewer mutants.
    • Don't be silly, they're just a suburban legend!
    • When will you people learn that all races are equally inferior to robots?
  • In the Sherlock Holmes in the Twenty Second Century episode based on "The Five Orange Pips", the villains are an anti-robot group working with Moriarty. In the original story, they were the Ku Klux Klan.
  • Bluebeard in the animated film Felidae refers to humans as "Can Openers" believing that the only thing a human is good for is opening cans of food for cats to eat. Yes, a cat making racist remarks about a human.
  • A major focus of the The Animatrix was the growing distrust between humans and robots, growing out of humans treating robots as inferior slaves; ultimately this led to a robot purge, followed by the surviving robots leading a successful rebellion. The historicals parallels are plentiful.
    • It's also to show how in fighting against blatant specism, the robots themselves became what they fought against. In the end, the oracle from The Matrix didn't want humans to have revenge on all machines, but to end the senseless, endless war between humans amd machines, to have peace and love...though it helps that the oracle herself is part of the machines; a piece of code that has seen the rise and fall of humanity, several versions of Zion, and several "The One"s...
  • In Transformers Animated, Sentinel Prime has severe issues with organics. While the trauma of having his friend killed by giant spiders might have something to do with it, there's something very wrong with a guy who tells his not-so-dead friend, who is now part-organic, that she would have been better off dead and then tries to kill her himself.
    • This seems to be common throughout the Cybertronian population. "This Is Why I Hate Machines" has Capt. Fanzone accidentally coming to Cybertron. Most of the natives are either terrified of him or try to squish him, and none refer to him as anything but "the Organic." And these are all Autobots.
      • Mind you, this happens after the aforementioned Sentinel Prime becomes Magnus and begins a propaganda campaign against Organics.
  • The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 episode "True Colors" is obvious to the point of parody. Kooky von Koopa and Cheatsy Koopa fly around painting half the Toads (and Luigi) red and half (and Mario) blue. They then disguise themselves as red and blue Toads to stir up resentment between the two halves of the population. The conflict is resolved when the Mario brothers manage to get the Toads to rally in defense of their princess. The similarities to real life racism is anviliciously Lampshaded in the end by the brothers ("Think they'll ever learn that lesson in the real world?").
  • One of the underlying themes of Shadow Raiders, though partially justified in this case because each of the Single Biome Planets is rich in one resource that the others lack (Bone produces food, Ice produces water, Fire produces energy, and Rock presumably produces metal and whatever other mineral-based Applied Phlebotinum is needed), so all of the planets have been raiding and warring with each other for centuries. Particularly evident in the populace of planets Ice and Fire, where each species believes that merely touching their counterpart species will kill them.
  • In Bravestarr, a Space Western with a Native American hero, the indigenous "Prairie People" of New Texas (gnomelike sorts that burrowed like prairie dogs and had a vast underground kingdom) were the stand-ins for Native Americans, indigenous people treated with prejudice by the settlers. The Pilot Movie and several episodes of the show used prejudice against Prairie People as an allegory for its Aesops about tolerance. This led to Unfortunate Implications, however, since the Prairie People were infantilized characters speaking broken English, sometimes in exaggerated "Western" accents reminiscent of minstrel-show black stereotypes. Imagine Ewoks with Jar-Jar voices.
  • Tim the Witch Smeller in Sabrina: The Animated Series. In Tim's first episode, after Uncle Quigley gives an Anvilicious speech about how not all witches are bad, Tim appears to have seen the error of his ways. Tim apologises to Sabrina and her aunts and claims that he will turn over a new leaf. But once they forgive him he reveals he was only putting on an act and goes right back to trying to capture them now that they've let their guard down.
  • In Danny Phantom, most ghosts don't like humans and most humans are terrified of the ghosts. Danny being half-ghost makes it worst, as he's hated period by most ghosts he meets and his Alter Ego is feared and hated by most humans except his Secret Keeper friends/sister and the Alpha Bitch.
    • Although in the humans' case, it's somewhat justified. The majority of humanity's first experiences with ghosts stemmed from an attack by a group of Danny's enemies from the Ghost Zone. Until that point, it was the people that believed in them were the ones that were ridiculed. The reason Paulina was amongst the first to stop hating Danny was because Danny outright saved her life, at which point she started to idolize him.
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Fire Nation consider themselves to be superior to all of the other nations. They killed off an entire race of benders (Except Aang of course).
    • The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra has the prejudice shift to Benders vs. Nonbenders.
    • Don't forget, Zuko saved an Earth Nation town and was praised until they discovered he was the Fire Nation Prince. They would rather be oppressed by Earth Nation soldiers than saved by a firebender.
    • Jet is extremely prejudiced against the Fire Nation.
  • Subverted in The Cleveland Show when Tim takes Cleveland in to meet his boss (who's hiring); the boss rather awkwardly expresses discomfort with Cleveland being black to Tim who's a talking bear.
  • In Exosquad, humans often call Neosapiens "sapes" or "neos". The Neosapiens themselves view themselves as the Superior Species, and thus call humans 'Terrans'. Neosapiens also show racism towards the Neo Warriors, General Shiva regards them, even the advanced, talking models, as simple animals.
  • Thomas the Tank Engine: Many steam engines and diesels have a strong dislike for one another. Some steam engines see the diesels as trying to take away their jobs, and some (but not all) diesels see the steam engines as outdated and deserving to be scrapped. It was also a major driving force in the movie Calling All Engines. In addition, one of the books, James and the Diesel Engines, is all about the title character trying to overcome his prejudices against diesels.
  • On The Fairly OddParents, it's strongly that implied fairies tend to look down on other races, specifically anti-fairies, pixies, and genies. Aside from a few Fantastic Slurs, this is never really explored.
  • Possibly the earliest televised example of this was Rankin/Bass's Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, where Rudolph was a perfectly normal, healthy baby reindeer...whose nose happened to glow red on command. Almost everyone the poor thing encountered, from his own father to Santa Claus, rejected him because of it. (At least his mother loved him just the way he was).
  • In an episode of Superjail!, Jared tries to order bunny suits for everyone, but the Twins end up messing with the order so that half the prison population gets bunny suits and the other half gets wolf suits. Hilarity Ensues.
  • In Chaotic, there is fantastic jingoism. One can interpret that all the landbased tribes of Perim are engaged in four way holy war over who is blame for having the Cothica disappear and ending the Golden Age. Then came the M'arrilians who exhibited big time Fantastic Racism by choosing to flood the planet by heat-ray melting of the ice caps, even though there is plenty of existing oceans assuming Perim is an Earth-like planet.
  • In CatDog, Cat joins a cat-only club, unaware that it's actually a hate group planning to get rid of every dog in the world.
  • The premise of A Kind of Magic is a fairly-tale family who had to move to the real world because of fantastic segregation: The mom is a fairy and the dad is an ogre, but interracial marriage is apparently outlawed in Fairlyland.
  • The Big Bad of Dino Squad, Victor Veloci, a velociraptor who somehow gained human form, hates humans with a passion, believing them inferior to dinosaurs. His reason? Because dinosaurs have been around for millions of years, and humans for only a few thousand. And try not to think about the fact that he has human henchmen helping him in his plans to wipe out humanity.
  • A subtle theme in the "Chicken Boo" segments of Animaniacs. Boo usually excels at whatever career he takes in his disguise, and is beloved by everyone who talks about him. However once he's outed as a Chicken, everyone turns on him, even to the point of siding with the oppressor that Boo had saved them from moments before.
  • In Alfred J. Kwak, the titular character travels to a country called Atrique, where the original inhabitants, the black ducks, are under the oppressive and discriminative authority of the white geese. It is obviously South Africa before the abolition of Apartheid (the series was produced in the late 1980s), just with humanoid animals.
  • In Capitol Critters a few episodes dealt with a gang of rats at war with a gang of cockroaches the roaches were meant to symbolize minorities in general some spoke in African, Italian, Hispanic, and Yiddish accents, they constantly referred to each other as dirty and disease ridden scum.
  • An episode of Dave the Barbarian had Dave, Fang, and Faffy believing that they'd found their true people (gorillas, monkeys, and lemons, respectively), and trying to integrate into their societies. But at the end of the episode, their new surrogate families flip out when they discover that they're actually human, human, and dragon; the gorillas hate humans because of their lack of body hair, monkeys hate them both for their lack of tails, and the lemons think limbs in general are just plain obscene.
  • The Canadian animated short, The Girl With Pinhead Parents, is built on this. But it replaces actual races with fantasy beings who have inanimate objects replacing various limbs. The titular character, a girl who's head is shaped like a pin, is forced to be science partners with a boy who has hocky sticks in place of his hands. She's incredibly uncomfortable with this, because her parents have forbidden her to associate with anyone who isn't a pin person and she knows they'll be angry.
  • There's a an animated series on HBO called Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales For Ever Child, that puts multi-cultural spins on classic fairy tales. The most infamous episode of the show is called The Sissy Duckling. It's a retelling of the Ugly Duckling story. They never actually say the word, but it's clear that the titular character is portrayed as being gay.
  • The Irken race in Invader Zim look down on every other species, act superior, insult them openly and even enslave them. Of course Zim acts like this towards humans as well.
  • The villains of the first two seasons of Ben 10 Alien Force, the Highbreed, are essentially a G-rated version of the Yuuzhan Vong. They think every other species in the universe is inferior to them. Unusually, they were content to merely avoid contact with other species in the past. The reason they started their campaign to "cleanse" the universe is because they discovered that their species has become sterile and will go extinct in a generation or two. They just can't stand the idea of "inferior" beings outliving them.
  • On Jimmy Two-Shoes, Heinous' has Weavils with a passion. As a result, weavils tend to be treated as social pests, only good for doing dirty work. Not that this reputation isn't entirely undeserved.
  • The dingoes in Blinky Bill. But most of them are troublemakers with the exception of poor Shifty.
  • My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic did this with Zecora, a zebra who lives in a forest near Ponyville and who everyone avoids because they think she's evil. Twilight is initially skeptical, but comes to believe the others when she and her friends are apparently cursed. However, it turns out that they had in fact merely contracted a strange form of poisoning from a plant they'd walked in, and Zecora kindly provided a cure.
    • To be fair to the ponies, it's not the fact that she's a zebra that bugs them (although they're a little weirded out by one particular habit that is, in fact, normal zebra behavior); it's the fact that she lives in the Everfree Forest, which freaks out the ponies quite apart from any notions of who lives there on account of nature — weather, wildlife, what have you — getting on with business without pony interference. The fact that she's an African species of equine, decorates her home in an African style, speaks a Swahili-sounding language, and has an African-inspired design on her flank are just Unfortunate Implications.
    • Zecora actually isn't this trope, it's just the African designs and the real world association with that which makes viewers think she is. The ponies had no idea what a zebra was before Twilight Sparkle - so well-read she has become socially inept - told them. Rarity thought her stripes were body paint. Their prejudices have nothing to do with pony prejudices about zebras, since very few ponies even know they exist.
    • In "Over a Barrel", there is animosity between the ponies and the bisons. It has more to do with differing opinions than species, however.
    • And in the recent "Hearth's Warming Eve" although not complete Fantastic Racism per se, but there was quite the hostility between earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns prior to the founding of Equestria.
  • In Young Justice Megan mentions White Martians being second-class citizens on Mars, in comparison to Green Martians. In the comics, it's a very different predicament though.
    • Red Volcano's goal was essentially to wipe out all organic life so that he and his fellow robots could rule. Oddly this plan seems to have come from his human creator, though it's a bit hard to tell since the Morrow we originally see is actually a robot too.
  • In ThunderCats (2011) the Cats' empire of Thundera is full of this, and the people on top justify it with Might Makes Right Social Darwinism. The Cats look down on the other races of Animals, especially their archenemies the Lizards, and the Lizards despise the Cats in turn. The Cats also segregate their own species based on tails — those who have them, such as the Thunderkittens, are treated as second class citizens.
  • Megatron in Transformers Prime hates humanity so much that he refuses to scan an Earth vehicle mode, preferring to stick with his Cybertronian jet mode.
  • Some amount of Fantastic Racism appears in Generator Rex against EVO s. They generally inspire fear or hatred, when they appear, including main character, who is frown upon by his own employer. There is also a guy who hunts teenagers down with a giant gun and believes in “Kill It With Fire” instead of using The Cure. Considering that most of them are mindless monsters and sapient ones known to general public either cause major property damage (Rex) or perform various acts of terrorism in name of “equality” (The Pack) this treatment may be justified. There is no defined line humanity-EVO s, because this condition is in most cases curable and not only people can went EVO, but also animals, plant or even eggs.
    • This seems to change and take on more active form, when Black Knight has taken over Providence and uses mind controlling collars to “turn an EVO curse into a blessing.” They hunt down every EVO, including sentient ones. The worst part of it? Society seems to be awfully accepting, though this may be due to an official propaganda.
  • Tex Avery anyone?


Everything Is RacistPrejudice TropesFantastic Ghetto
The Fair FolkOtherness TropesFantastic Ghetto
Fantastic ArousalFantastic Sapient Species TropesFantastic Ghetto
Fantastically IndifferentUrban Fantasy TropesFur Against Fang
Fantastic NukeSpeculative Fiction TropesFantastic Ghetto
Fake NationalityRace TropesFantastic Ghetto
Nice HatOverdosed TropesFan Fic

alternative title(s): Speciesism
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