Fiery Salamander

The salamander does not care for the flowers. Or the thorns, for that matter. Her thick scales, as hard as glass and scorched black around their saw-toothed edges, brush aside the roses like they are nothing. She tears her way through the thicket, cauterizing a path that smaller game animals will use for years. The ground smokes where her claws touch.

—Natural Histories, "The Fountain"

In fiction, it's not uncommon to see reptiles being associated with fire. After all, Dragons are often portrayed as reptilian, and it's common knowledge that they breathe fire. Plus, dinosaurs have often been associated with volcanoes and lava. Being cold-blooded, reptiles are more comfortable with warm climates, especially lizards, who like to rest under the sun, which is pretty much symbolic of fire. And let's face it, the concept of a giant lizard breathing fire, swimming in lava and living in volcanoes is just plain awesome.

The trope is named after the salamander, a mythological animal depicted as a fire-breathing lizard or a wingless dragon. Nowadays, the name is given to a real animal who actually isn't a real reptile, but a small amphibian with a lizard-like shape. However, alchemists would often attribute them mystical properties, such as the ability to survive fire, or even extinguish it by the mere coldness of their blood. As a result, the legendary counterpart of the salamander stayed in the memory, and has been raised to the rank of Elemental Embodiment of Fire, and also part of its subtrope, Alchemic Elementals.

The exact reason for all these stories and the length of times through which they survived is often theorized to be due to a behavior of Real Life Salamanders. Being amphibians, they seek to lair in humid locales, like stacks of wood kept outdoors. People would then use that wood to make fires, which would wake the Salamanders and cause them to flee for their lives, leaving people convinced the creatures had been "birthed" by the flames through abiogenesis. As wood remained a primary source of heating for humans till the industrial revolutions, such events, though rare, would keep reoccurring, ensuring that the myths of the fiery Salamander would live on.

Since Reptiles Are Abhorrent, expect a frequent association to Demons, Hellfire and Fire and Brimstone Hell. Exceptions do exist, however: a dragon or dinosaur-themed protagonist can sometimes be associated with fire as a way to reinforce his hot-blooded temper and bravery rather than his evil nature. Those exceptions seem to be especially popular in Japanese culture, where the connection of reptiles and dragons with evil isn't as strong as it is in Occident.

Compare with Dinosaurs Are Dragons, where dinosaurs (usually portrayed as reptilians) share traits with dragons, most commonly the ability to breathe fire. Sister Trope to Fiery Lion and Hot Wings. For other animal-and-element combinations, see Earthy Tortoise and Thunder Beetle.

Note: Fiery Salamander is not to be confused with real life Salamanders which are actually amphibians that live in and around water. Also, this trope applies to reptiles and reptile-like beings as a whole, not just Salamanders.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk: The elemental fire spirits on Isidro's blade are shaped like salamanders. They are actually even referred as such, and the weapon itself is called "Salamander Dagger".
• Black Clover: The spirit of fire is Salamander. In its small form, it resembles a small, winged fire reptile. It upgrades to a dragon once it reappears in the Forest of Witches.
• Digimon:
  • Agumon and his digivolutions, who are all dinosaur-like, orange-coloured, fire-breathing digimons who tend to become more dragon-like in later forms.
  • Guilmon is an In-Universe Expy of the above mentioned Agumon. He is a red-skinned reptile with a fire-based attacks. His corrupted mega form in a dragon while his good mega form is a Dragon Knight.
  • Agunimon, who was vaguely a humoinoid Agumon warrior from the fourth series. Two of his attacks in Japanese were Burning Salamander and Salamander Break. Additionally his Character Song is named Salamander. Almost all Digimon related to the Agu/Greymon lines are this trope.
  • Shoutmon and his evolutions are depicted as fiery despite being sound-themed. The sounds are converted into flames. And then there's him being Hot-Blooded.
• Fairy Tail: Natsu Dragneel's In-Universe Nickname is "Salamander" for his fire powers.
• In The Familiar of Zero, Kirche's familiar is Flame, a fire-breathing salamander the size of a large dog.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Roy Mustang, aka "the Flame Alchemist", has a small salamander depicted on the back of his glove. It's part of the alchemical formula that allows him to Play With Fire.
• In Sword Art Online, the successor to the eponymous game, ALfheim Online, has a multitude of races, with the "Salamander" race being particularly adept with fire magic.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! has the Salamandra card, which Joey uses to power up his Flame Swordsman.

Audio Plays

• Zehirmann, one of Reflets d'Acide protagonists, is a Zorlim (a humanoid fire elemental) using fire-related spells and magical weapons. During a fight against Orcs in an early episode of the series, he summons Fire Salamenders to assist him.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering has a couple of creature cards that share the type of salamander, like Scalding Salamander, Pyric Salamander and Flowstone Salamander. They are all aligned with Red, the color most strongly connected with fire. There are also other fiery lizard type creatures, like Lava Runner and Bellows Lizard.

Comic Books

• Superfriends: The 1970s tie-in comic book features a team of four elemental superheroes; the fire-powered member is called Salamander, and got his powers because he was possessed by a mythological salamander.
• Swordquest: Queen Aquana from Swordquest: Waterworld commands a giant Sea Serpent that can breathe fire.
• The Terrifics: Creates a reference to Tom Strong and has Tom and Dahlua's daughter is married to Val Var Garm. He comes from an entire tribe of creatures called Salamanders, people who freely manipulate fire and heat.

Fan Works

• Child of the Storm has the Elder-Wyrm in the sequel - while it's a ridiculously ancient proto-dragon, being absurdly large, planet-breakingly powerful, and scarily smart, it's depicted closer to a mythical salamander. It lives in cold, damp caves, and once it does emerge, it unleashes volcanic hell (and enjoys swimming in lava).
• Contraptionology!: Salamanders are small lizards that burst into flames when they eat spicy peppers. Rock farmers use them to turn sand into glass in order to make rocks easier to move, although there is a fine line between the salamander catching on fire and it just exploding. Pinkie created a living mechanical version of the creatures, named Iggy, in order to have a reliable source of fire but without the explosions.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami:
  • Giant salamander eggs have been used as a source of warmth, in A Call from Home.
  • Ward Troubles has some connection between salamanders and what appears to be fireproof skin, presumably salamander skin.
• Hurricane Suite: Honosuke, one of Naruto’s closest friends among the salamanders, specialises in fire jutsus.
• Natural Histories: Salamanders are reptilian creatures native to the Everfree Forest. They smolder constantly with fire, scorching the ground they walk on and burning paths through vegetation through simple contact. They lay eggs like lumps of carbon, which feed on the energy of dying things until they have enough to hatch in a fiery, extremely destructive explosion.

Film — Animation

• Frozen II: Elsa, Anna and their friends encounter a series of elemental creatures in the Enchanted Forest. The fire elemental is a small, adorable lizard named Bruni who can move at remarkable speed and produces vivid purple flames from his body.

Literature

• Book of Imaginary Beings: Salamanders are lizards or worms whose skin is so cold that it extinguishes fire, allowing them to live amidst flames. Their legend eventually became conflated with that of the pyrausta, an insect that lives in fires and dies if it leaves them. Later myths described it as making cocoons that could be used to weave cloths that will not burn and can be cleaned by being placed in a fire; this was likely based on asbestos. In the middle ages, the salamander became an elemental spirit of fire.
• The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump: Salamanders have a Mundane Utility as a domestic heat source; Fischer complains that the one in his apartment building's water tank is sleeping when he takes his shower. There's also a reference to megasalamanders, which appear to be Magitek intercontinental missiles.
• The Chronicles of Narnia: In The Silver Chair, the freed gnomes tell the protagonists about their underground homeland Bism, which features friendly and talkative fire lizards that live in the lava rivers. As the gnomes leap down into the abyss leading to Bism, the heroes hear a voice urging the gnomes to hurry, which they wonder if it was a fire lizard.
• Discworld: Salamanders are creatures that absorb sunlight and store it in a special organ, then release it in a bright burst to scare predators. They've thus been adopted for use as flashbulbs in photography. In Moving Pictures, salamanders trained to maintain a more constant release are used in clicks projectors.
• Dracopedia: Salamanders are a subgroup of basilisks that possess ten legs instead of the basilisks' usual eight. They live around volcanoes and tend to be very localized, with distinct species inhabited the areas around Mounts Aetna, Vesuvius, Fuji and Kilauea. They can withstand intense heat, and often lair within steam vents and geothermal springs to avoid predators.
• The Dresden Files: In the fifteenth novel, Skin Game, one of the three gates protecting Hades' vault is the Gate of Fire, a hallway filled with fire hot enough to incinerate all but the most powerful of fire mages. The room is also home to a salamander capable of breathing fire of its own.
• Fahrenheit 451: The firemen are emblemized by a salamander, to go with their purpose of starting fires.
• A Fantasy Attraction has a small salamander being tossed around by a wyvern flock.
• Harry Potter: Some salamanders show up in The Prisoner of Azkaban, enjoying the roaring blaze they're in. The tie-in book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them explains that they can survive out of fire for six hours if regularly fed pepper.
• Honor Harrington: The title character bears "Salamander" as an In-Universe Nickname. In her case the name comes from her always being in the most destructive, plot-relevant battles; or rather for "always being where the fires burn hottest."
• The Lythande stories which cross over with Elizabeth Waters' character Eirthe Candlemaker include salamanders as Elemental Embodiments of fire, including Alnath, who hangs out on Eirthe's wrist and seems to like Lythande. Some of the salamanders live in candles or fireplaces.
• In Mermaid Moon, Thyrla demonstrates her magic by coughing a fire-breathing lizard out of her mouth. A few minutes later, she kills it with her shoe.
• In The Obsidian Trilogy, these and other elemental creatures sometimes make brief appearances when casting spells with High Magick. The High Mages teach that they're illusory, but an exiled High Mage discovers they're real, and can be negotiated with.
• Ology Series: Six-legged salamanders appear in both Dragonology and Monsterology. They're immune to fire, and their tongues, or a piece of their skin or of the wool that grows between their toes, can be used in rituals to protect oneself from extreme heat.
• Redwall: A prominent location in the series features the Mountain of Fire Lizards, named Salamandastron. There are actually neither dragons nor salamanders there, but the Badger Lords of the mountain encourage the myth.
• The Spiderwick Chronicles Field Guide details salamanders, portraying them as tiny, multi-limbed reptiles that ignite their bodies as a defense mechanism. Arthur Spiderwick speculates them to be actually infant dragons, but the kids disprove this after encountering actual baby dragons.
• Xanth: In the first book, Bink is transformed into a flame-throwing salamander so he can completely incinerate a swarm of teleporting wiggles, worms that create holes by teleporting short distances and telefragging everything they contact with.

Live-Action TV

• In Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, one Monster of the Week was a fire-breathing reptilian monster called the Salaguana (part salamander, part iguana) that Lord Zedd created from a class iguana. Fortunately, after its defeat, the iguana returned to normal.
• The Troop has the monster, the Fire Salamander.

Myths & Religion

• Satan sometimes is portrayed as a snake or a dragon. Since fire often is associated with Hell...
• The Seraphim, of all people. Some abrahamic depictions of the Angels distinctly depict them as dragon/serpent-like (their name is a corruption of "sarap", "fiery", more often than not connected with the word "nahash", "serpent") and associated with Fire.

Pinballs

• The Kiss (Bally) pinball table shows two snakes (with tiny green wings) leaping out of a mushroom cloud while breathing fire.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons have several examples:
  • Salamanders are cantankerous Snake People from the Elemental Plane of Fire that prefer to live in temperatures of 500 degrees or more.
  • The Fire Lizard is a large (30 feet long) lizard that is immune to fire and can breathe out a large (15 feet long) puff of fire from its mouth.
  • Firenewts, or salamen, are diminutive Lizard Folk found in volcanic regions that can breathe fire up to five feet away. They also ride upon reptilian ostrich-like beasts called giant striders that are noted for their ability to snort fireballs.
  • In the Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia, the Egyptian pantheon lists Apep, who has the form of a giant snake. Once every two minutes he could breathe out a 100 foot long by 40 foot wide cone of flame that does 6-60 Hit Points of damage.
  • Several variations of a creature called a Flame or Fire Snake appear in various editions of the game, appearing as either elemental snakes able to breathe fire or the juvenile forms of the aforementioned salamander.
  • An inversion is present in the form of frost salamanders, giant six-legged reptiles that hail from the Plane of Ice who ferociously attempt to consume any source of heat they encounter (including warm-blooded creatures) and can breathe out a blast of freezing wind.
• Pathfinder: Salamanders appear in the game's Bestiary, and are more or less identical to their D&D counterparts. There's also a Demon Lord called Flauros, who looks like a giant humanoid reptile made of lava. He's been trying to gain full control over the salamander race from the rulers of the Elemental Plane of Fire for centuries, so many salamanders worship him or inhabit his layer of the Abyss.
• Shadowrun has Salamanders, magical beings who look like a ball of fire with flames dancing around it. No one is sure what their motivations are or if they even are sapient, but rumor has it that some humans can seal a pact with them. On the astral plane, they reportedly resemble lizards made entirely out of flame.
• Warhammer: Salamanders are reptilian creatures with bright orange scales that inhabit the jungles of Lustria. They can spit fireballs, and are often tamed by the Lizardmen as war animals.
• Warhammer 40,000: Salamanders feature heavily in the mythology of the Salamanders Chapter of Space Marines, which has a big fire/forging image. They are large lizards, some of which can breathe fire, and aspiring recruits must defeat them in combat. The chapter itself makes heavy use of weapons like flame-throwers and meltaguns.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Aqshy, the realm of fire, was once home to Vulcatrix, the primordial Mother of Salamanders. She was destroyed in a Mutual Kill with the god Grimnir, but her legacy lives on in the magmadroths, reptilian beasts with lava coursing through their veins, and in other fiery, reptilian god-monsters such as the solar drake Ignax.

Video Games

• In AdventureQuest, the salamander is a fire-breathing creature the size of a horse.
• Afterimage: As it's already obvious with its name, a Lava Salamander is a flaming, Pyro-elemental red salamander with additional spikes on its body.
• In Age of Wonders, a Salamander is a third-tier unit in the Lizardmen's roster. It's a strong melee unit that unlike the rest of the army, is not aquatic. In-game description states that the primitive, water-dwelling Lizardmen see the occasional fire-attuned hatchling with fear and awe.
• In Aquaria, Newt Blasters are large, pink newts that shoot fireballs from their tails. They also camouflage themselves when they move, throwing off Energy Form's homing attacks. They're recurring enemies in the Energy Temple and are guaranteed to drop spicy meat, an ingredient in multiple foods that boost Naija's attacks.
• In The Battle of Olympus, the player gains protection from enemies' fireballs by collecting salamander skins and paying a weaponsmith to wrap his wooden shield in them.
• Castlevania: A flaming salamander is a boss in a few games, and in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon it's the fire elemental card in the "DSS" system.
• In Chrono Cross, Salamander is the stronger of the two red elemental summons. He's apparently the Red Dragon's pet.
• Dark Souls II: Salamanders are enormous fire breathing lizards about the size of a horse. Unlike most depictions of salamanders, these ones also have Reality Warper abilities, as their presence can turn the environment around them into something fitting for a creature of fire. They're encountered in a forest, but the actual area they reside in has been transformed into a rocky cavern, complete with jets of fire bursting out of the earth and lava patterns along the ground.
• Jake, the hero of Demon Front, has an alien salamander as his Loyal Animal Companion who can provide backup for its master by breathing an entire wall of fire covering the other half of the screen, incinerating enemies who got in the way.
• Demon's Souls' second world features the fire geckos, who are perpetually on fire (while alive) and are the only enemy in the game to deal contact damage. A group of them can be found clustering around a vat of molten slag, suggesting that they crave warmth despite being a source of it themselves.
• Disgaea 3's remake introduced Stella Grossular to the roster. Her final skill, "Flame Hazard", has her transform into what is essentially a gigantic Salamander made of lava.
• Dungeon Keeper 2 has Salamanders who can breathe fire and wade through lava without taking damage. They're human-sized, bright yellow-orange, and walk on their hind legs in a T. rex stance, but are otherwise lizardlike.
• Empire Of The Overmind: A small fiery salamander can be summoned to provide light with the command "Call Pyro".
• One of the races in Evolve Idle are Salamanders, a fire breathing race that gets a bonus to smelters by never needing fuel and always having a production bonus.
• The Fallout series has Fire Geckos, giant Geckos that breathe fire. They appear in Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas.
• Ghostlore has fire-breathing salamanders as enemies in the swamp stages. The entire game is set in Singapore and based on South-East Asian myths; the salamander is among the very few western-based cryptids to appear.
• Golden Sun: The first game's salamanders are small, dragonlike lizards. The sequel adds the Avimander boss and the Palette Swap enemies Macetail and Bombmander, which are bigger, stockier, and have a morningstar-like tail.
• The Fire Salamander is an enemy in the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Game Boy Color game. It attacks with an orange Palette Swap of the first-level Incendio spell. There's also a stronger variant called the Frost Salamander that is found in the Forbidden Forest and, oddly enough, attacks with a palette-swapped second-level Incendio spell despite also being weak against the spell line.
• Kirby:
  • In Kirby: Squeak Squad, one of the enemies that Kirby can encounter is Acchi, a large, salamander-like creature with a flaming backside that spits fireballs. Fittingly, inhaling Acchi grants Kirby the Fire copy ability.
  • Kirby's Epic Yarn has a common salamander enemy named Candlemander appearing in Dino Jungle that can turn into a ball of fire.
• In La-Mulana, the Tower of Ruin has salamanders that can float around as flames.
• In Lara Croft GO, large salamanders are enemies in the game. They sleep until disturbed, but follow Lara if she wakes them. They follow exactly the same path she does, even if there's a better one — this fact can be exploited to either lure them into a trap or get them to do something useful (like trigger a pressure plate).
• The Lord of the Rings Online has fire-breathing salamanders living on the shores of Lake Evendim.
• The Legend of Dragoon's Random Encounters in Volcano Villude contain a four-legged, fire-breathing monster simple called Salamander, but it looks more like a bull dog than anything else.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In various games, Death Mountain is filled with fire-resistant, fire-breathing lizards called Dodongo (their Twilight Princess design in particular makes them look like big geckos). Other reptilian creatures, especially dragons, have been known to breathe fire.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: The Heedles, the minibosses of the House of Gales, resemble bulky, salamander- or lizard-like beasts with fire-hot hides.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild features four animal-themed "Divine Beasts"; Vah Rudania, the one that lives on perpetually-erupting Death Mountain, is shaped like a salamander. There are also red Lizalfos that live in the area, breathing fire and swimming in lava pools, being the only thing in the game that can survive doing so. However, their appearance is based off chameleons in this game.
• Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): Agnaktor is a giant, magma-spewing reptile that can burrow underground and above the volcanic caves' ceilings and shoot powerful fire beams. Interestingly, the subspecies Glacial Agnaktor that debuted in Monster Hunter Portable 3rd is a frosty monster.
• Nuclear Throne: The toughest non-boss enemies in the Scrapyard are giant mutated Fire Salamanders. Their bodies are black, but have juts of flame coming from the sides of their heads, in a way that causes them to resemble axolotls.
• Pokémon:
  • The Fire-type Charmander (which references this trope in its name) and its evolutions are clearly reptiles, based on the mythological Salamander for the first two states and a dragon for the final state.
  • Salandit, another Fire-type, is a lizard-like Pokémon with a pattern on its tail that resembles lava and generates flames when it attacks. This also applies to its female-exclusive evolution, the sexy Salazzle.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has a Salamander as a collectible demon. Its bio even brings mention to the above-explained association with fire.
• Skies of Arcadia: Salamanders are common in the Temple of Pyrnn.
• Temtem has Pycko and Drakash, an evolutionary line of Fire/Earth-type geckos that live in volcanoes and deserts and can sprout flames from their sides.
• Titan Quest: Giant fire-breathing salamanders are encountered as enemies in the volcanic wastelands that surround the fire giant fortress in the "Ragnarok" expansion.
• Total War: Warhammer: Salamanders, creatures resembling bright orange, crested lizards larger than a horse, are part of the Lizardmen army. While not incapable in melee, their main feature is their ability to spit gouts of fire across the battlefield like living artillery units. There are also elder salamanders, much larger specimens recruited as single entities rather than as regular multi-model units.
• Viva Piñata: The Salamango is a salamander-inspired pinata with a general fiery theme; it's created by feeding a chili pepper to a Newtgat, it attacks by throwing burning matches at its target, and its home is shaped like a volcano.
• In Warcraft III, Salamanders are gigantic, fire-breathing, stegosaur-like lizards that live underground.
• The Witcher: The Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy calling themselves "Salamandra" is led by a mage specializing in fire magic, and many of their other mages specialize in fiery magic, too, probably giving the organization its name.
• World of Mana features Salamander as the elemental spirit of fire who grants the player fire magic in each game.

Webcomics

• Gunnerkrigg Court: When Antimony helps a boy in Good Hope Hospital pass on, the fire that killed him and his family is represented by a salamander until Antimony realises what happened.
• Heartcore features Carval Jarvoc and his predecessor Volaster, both Salamander demons. They specialize in a unique form of Blood Magic: their dark flammable blood can be used to create powerful explosives, ranging from bombs as powerful as dynamite to Fantastic Nukes.
• Lord Grallyx in Jenny and the Multiverse is only described as a "giant demon-thing", but he appears as a huge reptilian creature with six limbs, wreathed in fire.
• Sleepless Domain: This association ties into Team Alchemical's elemental Theme Naming based on the different alchemic elementals. Sally, the member of the team with control over fire, is named in reference to the mythological fire lizard.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: During the Elemental miniseries, Fire Princess becomes a salamander-like dragon when she fully becomes the fire elemental.
• Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters: most Fire Civilisation Creatures are portrayed as reptilians, including protagonist Tatsurion, who is a half-dragon, and Lord Skycrusher, who is a dragon-man.
• Legend of the Three Caballeros: A race of lava lizards lives in Easter Island; they can't leave the volcanic pit because otherwise the Moai will step on them... repeatedly. Thanks to the villains they are almost able to escape by going lava flow after lava flow into the sea, where the solidified corpses form a bridge for their gigantic, rotund queen to go to the mainland and "spread her goo". Thankfully they don't go far and she ends up dead in the sea. There's a bit of Shown Their Work here too; the lizards are clearly modelled after Lepidodactylus geckos, the only ones indigenous to Easter Island.
• My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "Flight To Cloud Castle", one of the creatures guarding the flying castle is a humanoid, red-scaled salamander capable of conjuring fire.
• Wild Kratts: The Kratts investigate the "salamander born of fire" myth when Martin reads about it in an old book, and learn that although they're not fireproof, salamanders do have some interesting Creature Powers.

Real Life

• French king François I had salamanders as his personal emblem along with the motto "Nutrisco et extinguo": I feed (the good fire) and extinguish (the bad fire). The creature was portrayed as a wingless dragon breathing fire.
• The symbol of the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers is a salamander perched on a pipe over a campfire.
• In the Wisconsin Dells attraction "Wizard Quest", there are four realms you explore, each representing a specific classical element. Each realm also has several different creatures which reside in them. Air has a gryphon, Earth has a troll, Water has mermaids, and yes, Fire has a Salamander.

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