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alt title(s): Mix And Match Critter; Mix And Match Creatures 
I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you, But I get the feeling that you don’t like it. What's with all the screaming? You like monkeys, you like ponies. Maybe you don’t like monsters so much. Maybe I used too many monkeys. Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?
A common way of making monsters or fantastic creatures is to simply take existing animals and combine their parts. For instance, the Chimera (lion head, goat body, snake tail) or the Minotaur (bull head, human body - a Half Human Hybrid). Also common is to simply take an existing animal and vary it a simple way - Pegasus is a horse, but with wings, hippocampi have the heads and front bodies of horses but the tails of fish, etc. As these examples from Classical Mythology show, this is Older Than Dirt.
Cat Girl and Petting Zoo People are subtropes. Compare Biological Mash Up, which is when two characters are combined after the fact; Mix And Match Critters are supposed to look like that. Mix And Match Critters may be the result of Hot Skitty On Wailord Action. If both creatures are already mythological/magical/whatever and get mixed, they become a Hybrid Monster. Application of the principle to humans may count as Bio Augmentation, see also Mix And Match Man.
Examples:
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Anime
- The world of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is populated with creatures ranging from the apparently delicious Molepig, to the truly bizarre Grapehippo
 ◊.
- Then, of course, there's the Beastmen.
- The Grapehippo is the director's favorite character.
- The Chimera Ants in Hunter X Hunter are like this, as the queen can spawn soldier/grunts with traits from any creature she has consumed. And by the end of the arc, she has consumed pretty much an entire country's worth of animal life, and it's almost impossible to tell just how much of what creature went into her final creations.
- In an early episode of One Piece, Luffy and his crew stumble upon an island full of creatures like this, including a fox with a coxcomb and rooster's tail, a pig with a lion's mane, and a snake with rabbit ears.
- Zentradi on Macross Frontier farm Hippocows.
- I just had to post this◊... XD. (DragonFall)
- Violinist Of Hameln presents Guitar, an anthropomorphic dog that, almost like a centaur, is a deer from the waist down. As in, an entire deer, four legs, head, and tail, is connected to his waist. Hamel, being either unusually obtuse or merely true to form, misunderstood the head peeking out from Guitar's "groin" as something else entirely, to Guitar's annoyance and Flute's embarrassment. Worse, when he suggested that Guitar wear pants, the image of the enormous BULGE (caused by the deer's head) under the warrior's waist horrified Flute.
- In Naruto the three-tail beast is a cross between a turtle and a prawn (most noticeably its tails), while the eight-tailed is a giant bull with octopus tentacles for "tails" and large humanoid arms. We see in an artbook that the Five-Tails is a dolphin-horse.
- Danzo's summon is a Baku, a creature in Japanese mythology said to have an elephant's trunk, a rhinoceros' eyes, an ox's tail, and a tiger's paws. It's capable of sucking up everything in a large area.
- Fullmetal Alchemist has chimeras, which are regular animals alchemically combined. And sometimes they talk. Which becomes High Octane Nightmare Fuel when you find out that a talking chimera indicates one of the 'animals' used to make the chimera was a person.
- Jojos Bizarre Adventure, Dio Brando loves to make creatures zombies and the fusing their parts.
- The Digimon villain Kimeramon, based on the mythical chimaera, is... let's just say if it's not cybernetic and there's a Digimon based on it, chances are it's part-one.
- All the Tenchi Muyo series and spinoffs contain Ryo-Ohki, a cat-rabbit hybrid, often referred to as a "cabbit."
- In Ranma One Half, Jusenkyo has a spring called "Niuhomanmaolenniichuan" (or variations thereof), which translates as "Spring of Drowned Yeti Riding Ox While Carrying Crane And Eel" and is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Anyone who falls into this spring gains an alternate form that is considered exceptionally formidable. In essence, it's a giant minotaur (legs and head of an ox, body and arms of a yeti) with an eel growing from its spine to form a tail and a tiny set of crane wings sprouting from its shoulders. It's inhumanly strong, surprisingly quick, massively tough, and capable of flight. Needless to say, the one character who has this spring considers himself Cursed With Awesome and has no desire to remove it. In fact, possibly because this form was created by such a mixed up spring, he later manages to assimilate a Spring of Drowned Octopus curse, giving himself Combat Tentacles and the ability to spray ink from his fingers. (Though it still begs the question of how these springs can exist, considering the inherent difficulty in drowning an octopus and/or an eel)
- Plenty of Berserk's Apostles and other monsters can be described as these, ranging from Zodd (Bull/tiger/ape) to the ogres (Giant humanoids with sperm whale snouts and elephant tusks) to the trolls (Rat/monkey/pig). Then there's the Pisacha, they look like those sea monsters from old sea maps, with elephant trunks, made by mutating a whale.
Comic Books
Film
- Parodied by Woody Allen in White Feathers with the Great Roe, which has "the head of a lion and the body of a lion, although not the same lion".
- Romero's animals in Spy Kids II: The Island of the Lost Dreams.
- The Beast in Disney's Beauty And The Beast has the head of a bison, the brows of a gorilla, the mane of a lion, the tusks of a boar, the body of a bear, and the tail and hindquarters of a wolf.
- Q The Winged Serpent has the head of a vulture, feathered wings, a snake-like tail, and four limbs sort of like an iguana.
- One of Flint's failed inventions on Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is the rat-bird.
Literature
- In the Discworld novel
Faust Eric, the demon-god Quetzovercoatl is described as "half-man, half-chicken, half-jaguar, half-serpent, half-scorpion and half-mad".
- Making for "a wossname total of three homicidal maniacs."
- Discworld also has the chimera in Sourcery. Unlike the Greek version, the Disc's chimera has the legs of a mermaid, the hair of a tortoise, the teeth of a fowl and the wings of a snake. It's similar to the Greek chimera in having the breath of a furnace, and the temperament of a rubber balloon in a hurricane.
- From Going Postal: ...it was said that there was one horse in Ankh-Morpork that had a longitudinal seam from head to tail, being sewn together from what was left of two horses that had been involved in a particularly nasty accident.
- John Dies at the End has a lot of fun with some of its monsters, such as this one that took form as the narrator watched: "A hand formed, in the middle of the floor. A human hand, pink and the size of a baby’s. Stretching out from behind it, instead of an arm, was something like an insect leg. It was a foot long, springing out to length before our eyes like a radio antenna. Something like a shell took shape. I saw an eye, red and clustered like a fly’s. Another eye, this one with a round pupil, like a mammal, grew in next to it. Then another eye, yellow with a black slit down the center. Reptilian. [...] I wish I had a photograph of the thing, because describing it is a bitch. The finished creature seemed to be assembled from spare parts. It had a tail like a scorpion curling up off its back. It walked on seven — yes, seven — legs, each ending in one of those small, pink infantile hands. It had a head that was sort of an inverted heart-shape, a bank of mismatched eyes in an arc over a hooked, black beak, like a parrot’s. On its head, no kidding, it had a tuft of neatly groomed blonde hair that I swear on my mother’s grave was a wig, held on with a rubber band chinstrap."
- In Mary Stanton's novels, Anor, a demon in horse mythology, is a red horse with feline eyes, claws, and fangs, and an appetite for red meat.
- The Dark Tower had several: Billy-bumblers combined traits of a raccoon, a badger, and a dog. Taheen looked like humans with the heads of birds. The Low Men looked like humans with rodent-like heads — they usually wore masks and tried to pass as humans. Then there's the "lobstrosities", who were half-frog, half-lobster humanoids.
- The lobstrosities - 50% frog, 50% lobster, and 100% delicious.
- Not sure what book you guys were reading, but the lobstrosities were ALL lobster, and not humanoid, just very large, with odd vocalizations. Also, the taheen were not only birds. In fact, Finli O'Tego, one of the main antagonists in the final books, was a weasel.
- Michael Moorcock got into the act too. His Elric of Melniboné stories included the clakar (winged apes), Dharzi hunting dogs (half dog, half bird), myyrrhn (a winged Half Human Hybrid) and vulture lions (vulture head, lion body).
- Othello Bach's Whoever Heard of a Fird? has the title character, Fird, who is a fird (part fish, part bird). Aside from Snyder Spider and the Boogie Monsters, the rest of the cast is entirely two-feature creatures: dickens (part dog, part chickens), hyenant (hyena/ant), woose (worm/goose), shamels (sheep/camel) dryders (dragon/spider), the Blizard (bird/lizard), burtles (bear/turtle), Ms. Girouse (giraffe/mouse), the snoose (snake/mongoose), and, finally, bishes (part bird, part fish). There's also talk of a snog (snail/hog), and the sequel includes a snig (snail/pig). Oh, and almost the entire cast exercises a healthy Arbitrary Skepticism, seeing as they're convinced that there's no such thing as a fird.
- There was also a very short-lived line of stuffed toys by Remco based upon these characters, which identified these hybrid creatures as "Firffels". Coincidently - or not - they arrived a few years after the Wuzzles toy line was launched. (This webpage has a few pictures and was likely written by someone who had no idea they were based on a book.)
- Piers Anthony has quite a lot of these. In his Apprentice Adept series, he uses classical mythology. His Dragon's Gold books feature multiple hybrids.
- And, of course, who can forget Xanth. Aside from "ordinary" creatures like centaurs or harpies, there are also things like flying centaurs, half-demon anything, winged mermaids, and mer-nagas. If all that is not enough for you, how about a half-car, half-harpy?
- Older Than Feudalism, True History (from around 200AD) mentions "horse-vultures" among the armies of the Moon King.
- Dune has the Bene Tleilaxu's Sligs - slugs and pigs genetically mashed together. Apparently it makes the meat tender and succulent.
- Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake has quite a few including wolvogs - genetically modified wolf/dogs designed for home defense.
- JackChalker's Well World is filled to the brim with semi-mythological mix-and-match critters, justified as the result of lazy alien species designers cribbing each others' work. Meanwhile, the mix-and-match critters from mythology are justified as legends and "racial memories" stemming from our own species' creation on the Well World.
- The Wizard Of Oz and its sequels had such creatures as the Winged Monkeys, the Kalidahs (part tiger, part bear) and the Li-Mon-Eags (lion, monkey, and eagle, with donkey tails). Not to mention the Gump (made from two couches, some palm fronds, a broom, and a taxidermed stag head).
Live Action Television
- Merlin has featured a hippogriph. This one didn't appear though.
Mythology
- The Chimera is probably the most prominent of these, to the extent that a number of works of fiction use "Chimera" as a generic term for Mix And Match Critters of all sorts.
- Many mythological creatures - the Chimera, the Minotaur, the Sphinx, the griffin, centaurs, Pegasus, Sleipnir (although he's a mash-up of a horse and... another horse), Cerberus (who sometimes had a snake for a tail), the unicorn...
- Many works of fantasy using these exact same mythological creatures.
- The Egyptian gods are often depicted as humans with animal heads.
- Parodied in Discworld, "Gods are human-shaped. Even Offler the crocodile god is only crocodile headed. Ask humans to imagine an animal god and they'll come up with someone in a really bad mask."
- Ammut the Devourer was depicted as having the head of a crocodile, the forequarters of a leopard or lioness, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus — three vicious and deadly creatures (Hippos, while vegetarian, are incredibly strong and fiercely territorial, and responsible for more deaths in Africa than lions). Jackal-headed Anubis weighed your heart against the Feather of Truth: if it was heavier, he'd toss it to Ammut.
- Given her hindquarters, they obviously went right to her hips.
- No joking please. Having your heart weighed was a Ma'at-er of great importance (If you get that you need to stop studying Egyptology and go and play in the sunshine).
- *headdesk* lol
- If you're studding, you aren't going to want to go out.
- *slinks off to go play in the sunshine*
- Two-headed dogs seem to be very common, possibly as a lesser version of Cerberus. They are already present in Greek Mythology, e.g. Geryon's watchdog Orthus from the tale of Heracles. (I believe he actually was Cerberus' brother; when they were puppies Orthus must have been jealous of his brother's extra head)
- Most of the monsters from Greek myth were siblings. That is, all those that didn't have some other origin story were.
- Both Orthus and Cerberus must have been insanely jealous of two of their other siblings; the Hydra that started out with nine heads and could generate more, and Ladon, a dragon with 100 heads.
- Both of whom are beaten out by daddy dearest, Typhon, who had a hundred serpent's heads—ON EACH HAND.
- In a deliberate subversion, 16th-century Italian author Ludovico Ariosto created the hippogriff — a beast that is part griffin and part horse — for his epic Orlando Furioso as a joke on a line from the Roman poet Virgil which used "when griffins are mated with horses" as a synonym for "impossible" or "never". Although it never was truly "mythological" it is considered so today.
- Hippogriffs have appeared in Flash Gordon, Dungeons and Dragons, Warcraft and, of course, Harry Potter.
- One of Dream's three guards in The Sandman is described as a hippogriff but is drawn as a Pegasus-type winged horse.
- In the webcomic Dragon Mango, one of the many main characters summoned a hippogryff... Half-hippopotamus, half-griffin.
- Card game Munchkin also has a hippogriff - a hippo with small fangs and two small wings.
- The earliest civilizations, such as Sumer, Minoan Crete, and pre-dynastic Egypt had various beasts with human or bird heads. The early Sumerians had gods that were part man and part fish. And some sculptures found in villages older than the first cities also reflect this motif.
- The alicorn, pegasus crossed with unicorn — is actually a Dead Unicorn Trope (pun intended); the mix is a modern creation, and there is no mention of winged unicorns in any mythology, Or So I Heard.
- How'd the term Alicorn get associated with those? From what this troper's seen, it's the proper term for a unicorn's horn.
- Well, Latin ali- means "winged" and cornu means "horn", so the association seems natural enough.
- "Cerapter" has been suggested as a less confusing name for winged unicorns — but anything's better than "Unipeg".
- Numerous Iranian mythological creatures were in this style. Their gryphon was quite popular (and likely originated from Aryan aka Iranian peoples), but one of the main ones was the senmurv, or Simurgh, a bird with the head of a dog and the claws of a lion◊
- The Shedu / Lamassu of ancient Sumeria were heavenly protective deities with the head of a man or woman, wings, and the body of bull or lion and were seen as servants of higher gods and protectors of households. Historians believe they later had a large influence on the creation of the lore about the sphinx, Arabian Djinn, Judeo-Christian Angels (particularly the Cherubs), and the worldwide practice of placing gargoyles on buildings. Also, one of Gilgamesh's greatest feats was defeating Isthar's pet Shedu.
- From the Book of Revelation, chapter 13: 1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
- And from the Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 1:5-11 5 Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. 6 And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. 7 And their feet were straight [4] feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass. 8 And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. 9 Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward. 10 As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle. 11 Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched [5] upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.
- And Ezekiel 41:18-19 18 And it was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub; and every cherub had two faces; 19 So that the face of a man was toward the palm tree on the one side, and the face of a young lion toward the palm tree on the other side: it was made through all the house round about.
Newspaper Comics
- Bloom County had Rosebud the basselope, a basset hound/antelope mix.
Real Life
- The platypus, an animal originally considered so bizarre that it was dismissed as a hoax. It seems fairly benign today, but imagine someone in 1798 receiving pelts of a creature that looked like equal parts duck, beaver and otter◊ that also laid eggs. And that was before it was discovered to be poisonous.
- This troper would like to add only the male platypus is venomous - and that it's not deadly, just horribly, horribly painful.
- Also note that the platypus injects its venom through the spurs on its FEET. While not stolen from another animal, it is still a damn freaky thing to do.
- The female, on the other hand, sweats milk. And both of them can sense electric fields...
- And the best part: this semi-aquatic duck-billed web-footed egg-laying poison-spurred milk-sweating electricity-sensing furred creature is a mammal. Nature Fails Biology Forever.
- Ancient Greek texts described the "cameleopard", a creature with the body of a camel and the markings of a leopard. What they were actually describing was the long-necked, "spotted" giraffe.
- Furthermore, the Greeks and Romans believed the spotted leopard itself was born from a mating of a lion, or "leo" and a black panther, or "pard". Yeah, as wise as the Classical civilizations were, they knew squat about zoology.
- It was believed for a long time that African and Asian elephants couldn't interbreed. This was proved wrong by the rather unexpected pregnancy of an Asian female in a zoo where the only males were the African variety. The resulting offspring, born in 1978, had physical traits of both varieties, but unfortunately died of septicaema aged 12 days.
- Technically, since they're both elephants, the result would simply be of two different races/breeds. Considering them completely different species is totally racist when you think about it.
- Actually, iirc African and Asian elephants are not just different species, they're not even in the same genus.
- Ligers (bred for their skills in magic, of course) and tigons. and bears, oh my!
- Kirk Cameron's fictitious "Crocoduck", which he believes scientists believe would be the ultimate proof of evolution.
- Hmm.... snout filled with nasty teeth and a long, powerful tail, but at the same time bipedal and feathers? Wait, we have something like that. Its called a dinosaur (more specifically, a theropod, and if you want to get really specific, only maniraptoran theropods have vaned feathers).
- Anatosuchus, a small extinct crocodile with an unusually broad snout has since, rather cheekily, been nicknamed the "Crocoduck".
- Some biologists hypothesise that some animals that undergo metamorphosis do so due to hybridisation in their evolutionary past eg. Luidia sarsi a jellyfish that becomes a starfish.
- A "jellyfish" is not any animal that happens to be transparent - that larvae has bilateral symmetry and three tissue layers for crying out loud! The only scientist who has this point of view is Williamson and it is increasingly likely that he's a crackpot - Google the review of "The Origins of Larvae" by Greg Rouse (stupid URL won't work because it has brackets).
- Sheep-goat chimeras can actually live and they indeed look like both sheep and goat.
- Actual experiments conducted recently. Implanting a human-shaped ear on a mouse? Sure. Firefly-tobacco hybrid - a leaf that glows in the dark? Why not.◊ With current technology we could go much further were it not for those pesky ethical considerations.
- The Charles R. Knight reconstruction of the dinosaur Agathaumas (now suspected to be the misidentified remains of another dinosaur) mashed the spiked frill of Styracosaurus with the three horns of Triceratops, despite the only fossil evidence being of the dinosaur's rear end.
- According to a theory by one philosopher of ancient Greece, all animal parts appeared independently and were combined in different possible ways to form whole creatures, but natural selection pruned out all the silly combinations.
Stand-Up
- Mocked by comedian Demetri Martin in his "visual enhancers" act, in which he declared that you could make a fantasy animal by taking any existing animal and adding wings. He gave as examples the pegasus (horse) and the griffin (lion)... and then a hawk, displaying a picture of a four-winged hawk saying "I'm awkward."
- Further parodied when he suggested creatures no one ever heard about, like a mermaid that's half fish but split vertically instead of horizontally. Another was the "Zebratard" who was 1/2 zebra, 1/2 hawk, 1/2 pig and thus was an improper fraction.
Tabletop Games
- Look at an old Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual sometime. The Displacer Beast (a six-legged panther with tentacles on its shoulders that is never where you see it) and Owlbear (guess!) spring to mind. The new Monster Manuals continue this fine tradition with such gems as the Howler Wasp (half-wasp, half-monkey) and Yak-People.
- That's not the worst of it, they had bunnyducks, whose only purpose was to be an experiment for low-level sorcerers.
- Order Of The Stick, which is explicitly set in a world based on D&D, naturally takes this one on.
- Although This Troper would like to note that an owlbear would have pretty good night-vision combined with the strength and fury of a bear...
- The B Movie Comic does too, despite not being based on Tabletop RPGs.
- Goblins: Life through their eyes plays it straight, however.
- It's very likely that the aforementioned Platypusbear is an Owlbear tribute.
- In answer to Vaarsuvius' question, wouldn't you get a bear with great night vision and a highly rotatable neck?
- KILL IT! WITH FIRE!
- The cavalcade of "Half-Something" templates combined with the weird sense of humor gamers tend to have ensures that whatever can be spawned with D&D 3+ tools will be spawned. Whatever cannot be spawned, thanks to the stated rules, will be spawned anyway — but put in separate cage with the disclaimer "it cannot be made because of rules, but if it could, it would be like that". The clear implication being that nothing but limitations in rules prevents things like the Half-Dragon Werewolf, the Ooze Vampire, or the Angel/Demon.
- That last one's already in use in the Antiheroes webcomic.
- A Prestige Class, the Master Transmogrifier in 3.5 can do this, combining the traits of at least two creatures when using a polymorph or shapechange spell, such as combining a squid's tentacles with a dragon.
- The Fighting Fantasy gamebook Citadel of Chaos featured two monsters: one with a wolf's head and an ape's body, the other precisely the reverse.
- Magic The Gathering uses a lot of the same Mix And Match Critters as does Dungeons and Dragons (above), but outdid themselves in the Alliances set, with the Phelddagrif—a winged hippo with a lot of weird abilities. They later came out with Questing Phelddagrif.
- The Phelddagrif, mind, is a deliberate in-joke. Its name is an anagram of 'Garfield, Ph. D.' after the creator of Magic. That said, Magic has played with the 'build your own creature from individual parts' concept from time to time — the chimeras from Visions come to mind, for one.
- Shadowrun 4th Edition has this, with more rules on Mix And Match Critters given in Running Wild. This includes critters who are dangerously magical, technomantic, or cybered. This Troper is unsure if previous editions had them, though it is entirely possible.
Toys
- Disney's The Wuzzles, somehow making insect/mammal creatures cute and cuddly, rather than an unholy vision from H.R. Giger's nightmares.
- 'Magna Morph' toys are animals made of separate body parts held together by magnets, and so can be disassembled and reassembled into interesting combinations. Stephen Colbert pointed out that the set includes a grizzly bear and a bald eagle, which means it's theoretically possible to create a Greagle - "Aah! Kill it! Kill it!"
- According to the back-story of the Jurassic Park 'Chaos Effect' toy line, InGen hybridized various extinct species (whose genetic material was presumably just lying around) because why the hell not? Most fans disliked the premise and considered this a "very ugly" toy line (the garish paint jobs didn't help), but they did have a cult following. This troper, who has a soft spot for mixes-and-matches in general, personally thought they were awesome and wished she could have gotten her hands on more of the toys when she had the chance.
- Somehow they combined a Pteranodon with an Ankylosaurus and made it awesome.
- Another troper was able to collect as many Jurassic Park Chaos Effect hybrid dinosaurs as he could. He provides the following list of hybrids:
- "With the exception of Tyrannonops (t.rex + tiger-like Lycaenops), I collected the following:
- Amargospinus - (Amargasaurus + Spinosaur)
- Ankyloranodon (Pterandon + Ankylosaur)
- Compstegnathus (Compsognathus + stegosaur)
- Paradeinonychus (deinonychus + parasaurolophus)
- Tanaconda (tanystropheus + anaconda)
- Velociraptoryx (velociraptor + archaeopteryx)" (Huh. You don't say...)
- Finally, someone was nice enough to devote a deviant art page to the overlooked toy series.
Video Games
- This is the entire concept of the Real Time Strategy game, Impossible Creatures, wherein you can make an entire army of chimeras from your choice of a few dozen base animals.
- Dingodile and Rilla Roo of the Crash Bandicoot series, both anthrophomorphic, are near-equal parts dingo and crocodile, and gorilla and kangaroo, respectively.
- The now-defunct epilogue of CTR said that Dingodile went on to form him own highly sucessful business which made even more of them, including the Gir-Bat, Kanga-Rooster and Dingo-Rilla. "Combine them all", indeed.
- The newer games has mix and match critters in the form of the mutants. Examples of such are the Scorporilla (Scorpion/Gorilla), the Snipe (Fox/Tropical Bird) the Rhinoroller (Rhino/Armadillo) and the Battler...which is half Bat, half Switch Blade!
- Oy, no Jak and Daxter? All five of the games contain examples, the case-in-point being Ottsels (otter-weasels,) as one of the main characters no less; Yakkows, crocodogs, and a monkaw (monkey/macaw) named Pecker. YES. PECKER. The character in question makes fun of his own name, so you can too!
- There are also a number of unnamed animals running around in the games that could be a part of the mix and match critter trope, though as there are normal animals in the game as well, it's impossible to know for sure without the word of god.
- Variation occurs in Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, where the Chao develop physical traits similar to the small animals fed to them (bunny ears, peacock crest, tiger arms...).
- Part of the appeal of Spore is the ability to build your own Mix And Match Critters, among other possibilities.
- The picture at the top of the page shows just a few of the many examples found in Mother 3.
- The online game Dragonfable inflicted the Dreaded Chickencow upon the world. Head, wings, breast, and front legs of a chicken, hindquarters of a cow; all of which adds up to the meat industries' dreams manifested in flesh.
- The Final Fantasy series features mole-bats, or moguri, known in English as Moogles. The fact that they end up looking more like teddy bears than anything else can be chalked up to the Rule Of Cute.
- Warcraft games contain many mythological mix and match critters, such as gryphons, hippogryphs and chimaeras. Then there are wyverns, which are lions with batlike wings and scorpion tails, magnataurs (essentially a wooly mammoth centaur) and zeghwas (zebras with a small horn on their forehead). There's also creatures that look mostly like real-world ones but with few parts added, liek giraffes with gazelle-style horns and crocolisks (6-legged crocodiles).
- World Of Warcraft includes Moonkin, which are owlbears, as well. Druid characters are shapeshifters, and if one takes the offensive spellcasting talents, you can change into one.
- World Of Warcraft also has the wolpertinger. It has the body, head, feet, and tail of a hare... and fangs, wings, and antlers. They can also only be seen when drunk...
- Yoshi is supposed to be a dinosaur... with a turtle-like shell that doubles as a saddle, a chamelon/froglike tongue that swallows everything, and has been known to grow (feathered) wings and breathe fire... and he wears boots.
- The ratigators from Sewer Shark.
- Quite a few of the hatchable animals in Billy Hatcher And The Giant Egg, including a kangaroo/lion, a sheep/camel/ostritch, a monkey/bat, a cheetah/gazelle, and a rhino/bird...thing.
- Of course, several Pokemon, especially plant/animal hybrids under the Grass type.
- Aion's natural wildlife would fit right at home with the Woozles or Avatar the Last Airbender, amongst the combination seen in the game: Faurons (ram/wilderbeasts), Airons (crane/peacocks), Brax (boar/bison), Snufflers (armadillo/elephant), Sparkies (beetle/firefly), and of course, pangolin squirrels.
- Halo 2: Everyone say hello to Doberman-Gator! http://img92.imageshack.us/i/dobermangatorpu4.jpg/#q=doberman gator
- Kingdom Of Loathing has the Lobsterfrogmen. Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
Web Comics
- Muut from Gunnerkrigg Court is shown as a human with the head and feet of an owl. (The original character from Cahuilla Native American myth was just a giant owl.) Gunnerkrigg Court has also featured the classical Minotaur as a character.
- Inverloch had D'akor: furry, humanoid goat-wolves.
- Sarah Ellerton's followup project, The Phoenix Requim, also has Dakor. This time, she left out the humanoid and just made wolves with goat horns.
- Triquetra Cats takes this trope to the extreme with Splio Beasts — animals which are ultimately the genetic crossbreed of every known member of the animal kingdom all mixed into one.
- In Irritability, Exoth keeps a stock of modular chimaera parts in one of his labs that can just be snapped together.
- El Goonish Shive with its chimerae and Shape Shifting devices. Also, this critter in filler.
- The Princess Planet often have whole strips devoted to Princess Christi and other princesses trying to outdo each other by showing all ever weirder Mix And Match Critters than the other.
Web Original
- Lots of "fursonas" are this way, to the extent that there are bird-mammal hybrids, or fish-mammal hybrids, or insect-mammal hybrids. For whatever reason, part-wolves and part-Blue Jays tend to be especially popular, with griffon-like Jay/Wolves essentially being the Holy Grail of animal avatars.
- HumanDescent on deviantart.com loves doing digital manipulations of this nature.
- ZOOFIGHTS on Something Awful features a few of these, notably the infamous SwanMass (it kept absorbing things and just wouldn't die) and Hydrafficus/Hyperfauna (who might also be SwanMass).
- Rather Good Flash animation "Zoology Dragon" that is about a Dragon that combines animals... Into cubes.
- Deviant Art: Meet the Baterpillar Farret - http://imaginism.deviantart.com/art/Baterpillar-Farret-58083850
- This "chicken" probably would qualify.
Western Animation
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