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Our Vampires Are Different
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"For one thing, rewriting the rules is just good storytelling. Upending conventions lets you surprise the audience. You thought garlic was going to ward off the boss vampire? Sorry. You planned to kill him with that little piece of sharpened wood? Good luck. These days, you'll see vampires slapping crosses out of the way more often than shrinking in fear. Variations on the vampire rules also make for some clever plot twists."
Subtrope of Our Monsters Are Different. This one deals with everyone's favorite undead bloodsuckers.
The baseline rules for vampires are:
- They need blood. Mostly. You can also have a critter that sucks out someone's youth, or soul, or "will". It's a whole sucking thing. Usually for a vampire, it is blood. Sometimes they can get by on animal blood, sometimes they can get by on stored blood, and sometimes all they require is a quick, easily healed swallow from humans from time to time, sometimes it has to be virgins blood. These can become Friendly Neighborhood Vampires. The ones who must drink live human blood in fatal amounts aren't so lucky. The ones who enjoy it, well... Kiss Of The Vampire is the option for Friendly Neighborhood Vampires. Otherwise? Vampire Bites Suck.
- Vampires are The Virus. They are capable of changing human beings into other vampires. Traditionally, this is accomplished via a bite; some more modern depictions make it a slightly more involved procedure, to explain why every victim of a vampire doesn't become one and, by extension, their rarity. These offspring are usually beholden as servants to the parent vampire. Very few have the Heroic Willpower needed to resist becoming fully evil. Attempts to change a loved one into an eternal companion this way rarely works.
- Recently, the idea has arisen that vampires judge each other by how far removed they are from a "source." The highest social status belongs to someone who somehow became a vampire without being turned by one via bite.
- Technically, classical vampires like Dracula did need to go through a more elaborate process to make another vampire, but bowdlerized versions of the Dracula story removed the detail where he made the victims drink his blood to begin the transformation.
- Modern versions that don't have such a process often blur the line between vampire and zombie, sometimes leading to a full-on Vampire Apocalypse. Worse, sometimes Vampires who don't keep fed turn into Zombies, a la Last Resort.
- They are Bad Ass. Vampires are almost always inhumanly strong and fast, as well as Immune To Bullets and most other mundane weapons.
- Achilles Heels
- Wooden stake through the heart. In most modern depictions, this is fatal; in the original folklore, it merely stops the vampire from leaving his coffin. Recently, it's become oddly easy to do by hand. Remember, the ribs are there to prevent just such an occurrence.
- Decapitation. Although, really, this one works on pretty much everyone. So do stakes through the heart, for that matter. Really, the only vampiric weakness unique to vampires is...
- Direct sunlight. Originally, they actually had to sleep in their coffin during the day, and sunlight wasn't fatal - they were merely dormant during the day, making it "easy" to sneak up on them. Nowadays, they just hole up inside, and sunlight practically has the power to make them spontaneously combust. Sometimes this is specifically ultraviolet radiation - sunlight is dangerous, but a lightbulb is not.
- Some stories claim the only way to permanently kill a vampire is to hammer a stake through its heart, shove garlic in its mouth, cut off its head, dismember it, burn the pieces in a fire, and scatter the ashes across holy ground. This will almost certainly also permanently kill most people, including pale spooky goths who happen to not be vampires.
- Harmful but not instantly lethal
- Attempting to cross flowing water (i.e. rivers and oceans).
- Holy water
- Crosses, but not necessarily other religious symbols. Originally, it had to be a full blown crucifix (that is, a cross with a figure of Jesus on it). In modern renditions, this is usually subject to the power of belief of either the wielder or the vampire. Then you can have a vampire who carries his own crucifix, as he is a believer too, like Henry Fitzroy in Blood Ties. He also prays and goes to confession (he figures that he is subject to the same sins as humans, and needs to do penance for them). Fortunately he is a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire
- Fire
- Garlic
- Silver or otherwise magically augmented weapons and ammunition.
- Mandatory tell-tale
- No reflection (often because the vampire has no soul, but see below).
- No heartbeat/breath
- Don't bleed
- Physical features, such as being exceedingly pale, having unusual eyes (see Glowing Eyes Of Doom), and, of course, fangs. In folklore, there were numerous physical telltales — eyebrows that met over the nose, fingers all the same length, hair in the center of the palms or backward-facing palms — that are mostly overlooked in modern versions. The original novel-version Dracula has practically all of them.
- Body temperature: Vampires, being dead, are almost always at room temperature or colder.
- Immortality
- Technically, they are dead. Pretty spry, though, for a dead guy.
- Vampires don't age as we mortals do. Sometimes, this is genuine eternal youth. Sometimes, long periods of time undead can result in a pretty inhuman-looking character, but in either case there is no threat of dying of old age.
- Rarely, the vampire is immortal but must restore his/her youth by drinking blood. In abstinence, they "age", and immediately begin to grow young after they've fed. This originated with Dracula and with persistent (and, disturbingly, likely true) stories about one Elizabeth Bathory's bathing habits.
- Interestingly, this isn't indestructibility, and sometimes the vampiric condition itself is reversible. What this means is that despite the above, Undeath Always Ends.
A show will usually address these baseline rules even if they're not enforced.
Somewhat-common additional (mostly modern) rules for vampires are:
- Cannot be photographed or caught on video (usually considered an extension of the "no reflection" rule; both of those may be related to the silver rule, as both mirrors and film emulsion were exclusively made from silver compounds in the past).
- In Moonlight, Mick explains in a voiceover that he could not be photographed when silver was used in film, but digital cameras have changed all that.
- In the TV series Ultraviolet (unrelated to the film), the vampire hunters use sights that pretty much amount to video cameras strapped to their guns in order to tell vampire from non-vampire.
- In the anime Magical Pokaan, Pachira does not show up on a normal digital camera but is perfectly visible when viewed with an infrared camera.
- Cannot be heard over phone lines.
- If there are any actual Holy Relics, these things will kill a vampire even if they're just in close proximity. However, these are rarely used.
- Some variations have the relics only being effective when the faith of the wielder is strong. In other variations, the relic is only effective if the vampire believes that it can harm them.
- Can turn into bats, wolves, or wisps of smoke for travel. (Bats are by far the most common.) A rare transformation featuring prominently in early literature (such as Dracula) was the ability to turn into elemental dust in moonlight.
- Can turn into other creatures that drink blood: vampire bats, mosquitoes, ticks. (Sometimes they become a single creature, more rarely a whole flock/swarm.)
- Unaided flight in human form.
- Wall Crawling.
- Have a hierarchy of strength or other powers based on age.
- Can pass through locked doors. Can sometimes alter their bodies to slip through impossibly small spaces.
- Cannot enter certain locations, especially homes, without invitation.
- Can mesmerize mortals into doing their bidding.
- If killed, can be restored to unlife with the proper procedure.
- One early version of this, appearing in both pre-Dracula stories The Vampyre and Varney the Vampyre, is that a vampire will be revived and healed automatically if its corpse is bathed in moonlight.
- Animals react with fear or aggression towards them.
- Sometimes, vampires have two options of converting their prey a la The Virus. With some effort and rule-following, they can be changed into full, if younger, vampires. Sometimes, they have the option of just making either zombie-like or less powerful vampire slaves.
- Must sleep in the soil from their homeland/original grave.
- There are two social profiles for vampires. The first is a loner who may keep a cadre of vampire slaves and possibly a mate. Dracula fits this profile. The second is a "vampire society" where houses of vampiric lineages act and compete within a Masquerade.
- Level of "deadness" varies. On one side of the spectrum, it's just lack of heartbeat and skin that's cool to the touch. On the other, they're literally a moving, rotten animated corpse.
- Modern updates of the vampire legend may completely avoid using the word "vampire" to describe them; see the Curse of Fenric, Ultraviolet, and Preacher examples below.
- Level of retained humanity also varies immensely, from being ravenous, soulless monsters incapable of passing for anything but the above, to being soulless monsters who are very good at pretending to be their former selves, to being basically normal folks Blessed With Suck (or Cursed With Awesome, depending on viewpoint) and most likely a desire to be human again.
- Occasionally suffer from severe OCD. One folkloric method of dealing with Vampires was to drop thousands of grains of rice in their coffin, the theory being they'd be compelled to count them all when they awake, wasting the whole night instead of getting up and terrorizing people.
- Talk like Bela Lugosi.
- May or may not be at war with werewolves.
Usually, their preternatural powers include:
The purpose of vampires in the story varies quite widely. They serve as the Big Bad or as a metaphor for something (communicable diseases like AIDS or STDs; alcoholism, drug addiction, denial of aging). There is some danger of the vampire character being too on-the-nose for the metaphor.
The "baseline rules" above are strongly influenced by Hollywood tradition, and not "real" vampire folklore, or even classic vampire fiction. For instance, as (properly) shown in the 1992 Dracula with Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, and in 2003's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Dracula and other "folkloric" vampires were at the most inconvenienced by sunlight, not killed instantly.
In Stoker's novel and earlier vampire lore, sunlight did not cause vampires to go up like flash paper. Several times in the novel, Dracula appears in broad daylight with no ill effects. He is simply incapable of using his vampiric powers during the daylight. Sunlight causing a vampire to suffer pain and damage, smolder, or go up like a one man pyrotechnic band was pretty much wholly created by Hollywood, and specifically, by F.W. Murnau in Nosferatu, the first film to use this idea and probably its inventor.
Note that having a heroic vampire no longer counts as "different". Vampire Refugees are also a frequently used trope.
See also Chinese Vampire, Japanese Vampire. If the differences are emphasized by overt mocking of other authors and unused vampire tropes it becomes Your Vampires Suck.
Examples
Anime
- The Vampires in Black Blood Brothers suffer from all these weaknesses — well, some of them do. Different bloodlines of vampires have different weaknesses; many, for example, can walk around in daylight, but our hero can not, as it is a weakness of his bloodline. Some bloodlines need invitations to cross barriers, but others do not. While the main bad guys of the series are the Kowloon child bloodline, who kill their victims because one bite is enough to turn someone, for almost every other bloodline, humans are lining up to be bitten, as it is seen as very pleasurable (not to mention briefly giving that human vampire senses).
- The Karin anime and manga series has a family of vampires, and they explain that it's not the fact garlic is harmful, they just have much more sensitive senses of smell. They have no idea where the running water weakness came from, can stand short stints in sunlight (which they can then heal with rest), and point out that "A stake through the heart would kill anybody!" They are pretty much all atheists, so religious icons have no power against them. As far as feeding habits are concerned, they don't suck their victims dry or really take over their wills. Instead, in a manner more reminiscent of Japanese Gaki than Western vampires, they suck out some aspect of the person they're drawn to — stress, lying, pride, sadness — erasing the victim's memory of that aspect in the process and leaving them less stressed, unable to lie, more humble, and very happy and energetic respectively. Oh, and they can be seen in mirrors, are the bearers of Cute Little Fangs, can't change into bats, and animals don't seem to be all that upset about them. It is also very on-the-nose: when Karin and Anju's respective first times at biting a victim are shown, with both of them having the fronts of their white dresses conspicuously covered in "virginal" blood. Afterwards, both are referred to as vampires and adults.
- As a double inversion, the eponymous character in Karin is different even from the vampires in the rest of the series. She is called a "blood-maker" by her family (when they aren't calling her "mutant" and "loser"). She produces too much blood, and must bite "victims" to give them her extra blood. As a side effect, the extra blood tends to cheer them up or make them feel better. If she fails to do so, she eventually has a spectacular nosebleed. On the other hand, she can eat normal foods, is immune to sunlight — she's actually quite a morning person — and in most respects resembles a normal human girl.
- Also, in this series, vampires do not transform humans into vampires, instead they reproduce the same way humans do.
- Hellsing's vampires diverge somewhat from the norms. Humans who are artificially "turned" via special chips or, in the manga's case, by surgically implanted bits of Mina Harker's remains exhibit "standard" weaknesses. However, more powerful "true" vampires can ignore the rules. This is especially notable in the series's Heroic Sociopath, Alucard, who survives decapitation, holy bayonets and any number of other attacks. He dislikes sunlight, but it won't kill him. (It's also been said by his boss that the organisation has spent 100 years "enhancing" his abilities beyond the normal limits.) In volume 8 of the manga, it is revealed that Alucard contains within him the lives of all those he has fed off of, making him nearly indestructible. He can also summon these souls forth into physical form to fight for him, at the cost of substantially reducing his own power.
- Alucard is also Dracula, and it currently at the center of a massive Xanatos Gambit that is finally paying off.
- Blood+ stretches Our Vampires Are Different nearly to the limit by including several different types of vampires — referred to under the general heading of "chiropterans," from the word for bat — none of which display many of the traits listed above.
- The source of all the various types of chiropterans are the chiropteran queens, of which there are apparently only two at a time, always born as twins. Each queen's blood is lethal to her sister and to any chiropterans created from her sister's blood. The queens have to ingest blood to live (transfusions work fine) and are basically immortal, but that's about where their resemblance to classical vampires ends. They also alternate between a few years of activity and thirty years of hibernation wrapped in a cocoon.
- The queens can create "chevaliers" by feeding a human some of their blood; the chevaliers, like the queens, are supernaturally strong, fast, and resilient, with the ability to shapeshift in various ways, most notably into monstrous batlike forms or into the forms of people whose blood they have drunk. Unlike the queens, chevaliers never sleep, don't get hungry, and don't appear to require blood to live, although drinking blood helps them heal when injured.
- They actually do require blood, though they can go a while without it. In the supplemental manga Nightwalkers, Haji is seen to be slowly dying because, in honor of Saya, he stops drinking blood all together (until some is shoved down his throat in a strangely sexual manner, and he goes to town on that guy that fed it to him).
- The application of Mad Science to a queen's blood created a drug called Delta 67, which turns humans into huge, batlike, mostly mindless monsters who feed on the blood of other living things. These are slightly easier to kill than the queens and chevaliers, but still resilient enough that the two best options are either the opposite queen's blood or encasing them in concrete and dumping them in the ocean.
- Then there are the Schiff, a group of people created via experimentation with chiropteran blood to be weapons; as incomplete beings, the Schiff are the closest thing the series has to classical vampires, mostly in that they're the only kind of chiropteran which is injured by sunlight (it causes them to burst into green flame). They are afflicted with a disease they call Thorn, which gradually crystallizes their bodies.
- The vampires (True Ancestors) of the Nasuverse weren't actually human, but spirit beings so powerful they can manifest in a physical form. They were willed into being by the planet itself as a self-protection program against the spread of humanity. They don't need to drink blood at all. Unfortunately, they get the urge to, because the planet picked the wrong target to copy off of to create vampires; the Crimson Moon (the guy, not the moon) does like blood.
- The other kind of vampires, Dead Apostles, are in fact bloodsucked humans. There's no real "stage" between "rotting corpse" and "Dead Apostle / Dead Apostle's slave", except that a corpse that comes back to eat flesh and suck blood will do so for a couple hundred years before gaining back some sort of intelligence.
- In any case, neither are susceptible to water, stakes, or the traditional anti-vamp weapons. While the bog-standard Mook vampires can be harmed by guns and swords, most of the stronger Dead Apostles (and all of the True Ancestors, as well as the strange group of Dead Apostle Ancestors) cannot be harmed by "real" weapons. By the rules of the Nasuverse, this means something mythical on the same scale as a "mythical" being like a vampire. Not to mention, even if they are hurt, the stronger ones can come back to life by reversing time. The most extreme example? Roa regenerating himself after being slashed apart down to his ankles by Arcueid in Tsukihime. Granted, that was under the full moon.
- Technically it's not the blood being sucked that turns them into vampires, but the host vampire pouring some of their own blood into the person. This can be done even without sucking their blood, Arcuied pours some of hers into Shiki's mouth on one of the routes in Tsukihime, not enough to change him into a vampire, but enough to connect them
- Of course, there are no normal vampires in Tsukihime, except the nameless ones killed by the dozens. Even Yumizuka Satsuki is abnormal; jumped from Ghoul to Dead Apostle in a few days (when it should've taken centuries), and a Reality Marble.
- The Nasuverse probably features some of the weirdest "vampires" imaginable; a mobile bloodsucking forest, a phenomenon that doesn't actually "exist", a crow-man/thing, a little boy with demons for limbs, a ship captain, and some other oddities like a padlock.
- Basically, the one "weakness" common to all Nasuverse vampires (True Ancestors and Dead Apostles) is sunlight. On one end are most Dead Apostles, for whom sunlight greatly hastens their bodies' degeneration; on the other end is Arcueid, who during daytime ranges from "somewhat weaker" to "sluggish and lethargic" (on the sunniest of days).
- Arcueid also seems to have a callback to one "traditional" weakness: she's apparently allergic to garlic.
- Battle Angel Alita: Last Order's vampires have a lot of notable differences from the mythical standard. First, they're more literal representations of The Virus; their condition is due to genetic modification from a factor called the V-Virus, which transforms them via an excruciatingly painful experience called Altered Shock. (They consider "vampire" to be an insult, and prefer the term "Cognate".) Less than one percent of individuals bitten by infected hosts survive this process, and those that do often commit suicide out of inability to cope with the increased carnivorous urge colloquially termed the "thirst for blood." Cognates don't have any particular aversion to sunlight, holy symbols, or garlic (though individual tastes and cultural stigma, as usual, do vary), and they do show a reflection. However, they also lack many of the more fantastical abilities of mythical vampires. They are not truly immortal (aging is halted, however), as their mechanism for fending off physical injury and aging (unlimited cell division) makes them highly susceptible to another means of death: cancer. Their regenerative capabilities can also be overridden with enough damage (decapitation and striking vital points are handy). The shapeshifting and hypnotic powers are also lacking, though individual Cognates that are very long-lived can sometimes undergo second "Altered Shocks", which tend to grant them unique and powerful abilities such as the ability to read minds by detecting neural pulse flow or the like.
- Jojos Bizarre Adventure is rather... complicated about vampires. For starters, the most powerful ones are created by Mayan artifacts called the Stone Masks. While they have fangs, they feed through their fingers. They are not adversely affected by water, but direct exposure to sunlight means instant disintegration and permanent death for them. They don't need to drain blood constantly, but doing so keeps them young and, if the person they drain was particularly powerful, it makes them exponentially stronger. Those killed by Stone Mask vampires rise again as undead, but are much weaker and are usually called "zombies"; this variety has a simple personality based on their most outstanding personality trait and, unlike Stone Mask vampires, cannot heal wounds. The only method short of sunlight or the Ripple that slays a vampire, Stone Mask or zombie, is grievous head trauma; decapitation merely leads to a living, severed head that can then attach to and take over any handy body, as Dio did to Jonathan Joestar's corpse. While it was never 100% explained why blunt head trauma was deadly to the vampires, it is most likely due to the fact that the vampires in Jo Jo were originally humans that had specific points in the brain exposed to a severe acupuncture, which awakened what was supposedly a human's "true potential". That being said, getting punched in the head really hard may damage one of the activated brain points. Their powers are also outside the norm, including (but not limited to) the ability to shoot high-pressure liquid metal from their eyes, blood freezing, and the ability to walk on walls and ceilings.
- And that's not even counting the Pillar Men vampires, which created the Stone Masks because their favorite food are those vampires. Needless to say, nothing short of top-tier Ripples can can kill them, and even that takes an eternity to work. Sunlight only turns them to stone for as long as they're exposed, and even if you were to grind up the remains into dust, Ripple is still needed to finish the job. They feed by absorbing anything they touch (typically vampires and humans), and can shapeshift their bodies around to utilize their bones and veins for weaponry or to fit into tiny drainpipes and stretch their body parts. Also, they have horns on their heads, and the number of horns denotes their potential power levels. Oddly enough, vampires and zombies are portrayed as Always Chaotic Evil, but their more superior and deadly creators the pillar men were mostly honorable warriors.
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle features a variation on the standard vampire tropes, although since Tsubasa is essentially a multiverse AU it is not clear whether this particular vampire definition applies to the whole CLAMP multiverse or just the unknown world the vampires in question originated from. So far, the established rules are that vampires can be both "pure blood", presumably by birth, or "turned", by drinking the blood of a vampire. Kamui and Subaru are pure blooded and Kamui is responsible for turning Fay. Vampires are explicitly stated not to be vulnerable to sun or holy water and while they are long-lived and have incredible healing capacity, they are not outright immortal. (This is also basic rule of the CLAMP-verse, everything no matter how powerful dies eventually.) Vampirism comes with a couple nifty side effects like enhanced speed and strength, nails that can turn into massive claws, and golden, slit-pupiled eyes like a cat's. There is also an interesting twist on the need to drink another's blood, at least for turned vampires, as when the turning is performed, the old vampire's blood can be mixed with the blood of a human who will become the new vampire's sole host. This bargain comes with a lifespan for the host to match that of the vampire, although the mechanism for this is left unexplained. Kurogane agrees to become Fay's host in order to save his life. The only on-screen feeding seen so far has NOT gone for the usual jugular-biting, but rather from an intentional wound in the wrist. The relationship between the particular vampire and host may have had something to do with it...
- Bisco Hatori's manga Millennium Snow features vampires similar to the ones in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle: they are not hurt by sunlight or crosses, and are not really immortal, living for about a thousand years. Millennium Snow's vampires do not strictly have to drink blood to survive, although doing without requires them to eat a lot of food to keep up their energy. When one of these vampires drinks the blood of a human, it forms a bond between them which extends the human's lifespan to match the vampire's, and that human becomes the vampire's sole source of blood. These vampires are also able to fly, and drinking some of their blood can heal a human, although It Only Works Once.
- Evangeline McDowell from Mahou Sensei Negima.
- Bleach's first filler arc focused on the Bounts, a tribe of artificially developed supernatural soul-suckers. Historically, they've been known as vampires although they notably don't conform to many of the usual tales; for example, people simply die after being a Bount's meal. And no one knew about the talking supernaturally powered dolls, all with German names and summon commands.
- How different are the "Vampires" in Osamu Tezuka's "Vampires"? Well, they're actually werewolves.
- In Vampire Hunter D movie the mere presence of a vampire noble causes all sorts of minor disasters - crosses bend out of shape, mirrors crack, flowers die...They must find it hard to make any kind of casual visits.
Comic Books
- In the Marvel Universe, it is clearly established that a believing Jew can use the Star of David to ward off a vampire just as well as a Christian using a cross can. Conversely, a cross won't work for an atheist or a Jew. If you're an atheist, it might be a good idea to keep some garlic or one of those little Darwin fishes handy.
- The Marvel Universe also has a large variety of vampire types, from Dracula himself to those based on the patterns of insects or "pseudo-vampires" created by science, a large selection of which can be found here
 .
- Cassidy from Preacher is a vulgar, foul-mouthed, grungy character. Holy symbols have no effect on him, he casts a reflection and can be photographed, he eats and drinks (and drinks, and drinks...) like a mortal, and only needs blood for healing wounds and prolonging his life. He can get this blood from rare meat, and only bites humans if they're trying to kill him. Stakes don't kill him, but they hurt. He can't change shape. Sunlight causes his body to burst into flames. Further subversions occur in the story. Despite this, the word "vampire" is never used. The closest the book comes is Cassidy referring to himself as "the V word".
- A spinoff book contrasts Cassidy with a Gothic poseur vampire in the Lestat mold, to the detriment of the poseur, who gets killed by Cassidy after Cassidy discovers that he is feeding off a group of human Lestat wannabes using the false promise of turning them into vampires, and for being "too much of a wanker to live".
- In an issue of Badger, Norbert "The Badger" Sykes sets out to fight a vampire. Being politically correct (he lives in Madison, Wisconsin), he realizes that one cannot assume that everybody has the same culture as oneself, so he carries a variety of Christian, Jewish and Muslim relics to cover different eventualities. Badger is helped by a pig who can snuffle out vampires, although she confuses their scent with that of IRS employees.
- In the first storyline of the Jack Staff comics, tabloid reporter Becky Burdock (known in her paper as "Becky Burdock, Girl Reporter", much to her distaste) is killed and transformed by an evil vampire. However, it turns out that she doesn't have to drink blood to survive, and even has no trouble standing in sunlight. She's more concerned by the vampire hunter who's now fallen in love with her and the demonic hounds who want her to join their evil army. Worse, her newspaper has given her the even tackier title of "Becky Burdock, Vampire Reporter"...
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe has the Anzati, essentially a race of psychic vampires, featured prominently in the comics about Anti Hero Quinlan Vos, whose parents they killed. Anzati live for millennia, have no pulse, can regenerate from a lot of grievous injuries. They feed by mesmerizing they preys, before inserting the proboscises extending from their cheeks into the nostrils of the victims, and drinking their "soup". That is, their brains, and their imprint in The Force. Weirdly enough, they're also the resident ninjas.
- They started out as mere brain-suckers, but the pull of this trope proved too strong, and each subsequent material after their introduction added to the vampirism comparisons.
- In Grendel, Tujiro is an asian vampire who has a largely different set of rules from the traditional European type. For one thing, he seems to change only into a cat, being hit with water is highly painful and fire are a concern. However, sunlight is no impediment for him, which he uses to maximum effect to give the Christine Spar Grendel the scare of her life when she wakes up in the middle of the morning and finds the vampire waiting right at her bed just to taunt her.
- Aside from being Several Hundred Years Old the vampire in Theo's Occult Curiosities displays none of the traits usually associated with vampires: He is unaffected by sunlight (he spent 150 years living in the jungles of South America) doesn't seem to be able to transform himself into a Bat, etc. He does drink blood, but that is more because of a warped sense of duty, he is a devout christian who believes that God has chosen him to purify the souls of sinners by drinking their bloood, than out of necessity.
- The Vampires in Jack Chick's First Bite are not only capable of getting pregnant (and impregnating others), but also lose their fangs once converted to Christianity. Of course, Jack Chick's work has never made the slightest bit of sense, but still...
Film
- George A. Romero's movie Martin features a main character who so grossly avoids every major Vampire-related trope, that there is some debate whether he actually is a vampire, or just a very disturbed boy. Specifically: he occasionally drinks blood but he admits that it's not necessary in order to keep him alive, he can go outside during the day with no ill consequences, and he has has no apparent supernatural abilities (except that he claims to be several hundred years old).
- In Lifeforce, a.k.a. The Naked Space Vampire Movie, there is a naked vampire from outer space who sucks out people's lifeforce (duh). Humans killed in that way rise as lifeforce-sucking vampires themselves, but they're still not from outer space if they weren't before, and they're only naked underneath their clothes.
- Plus they can be killed by a lead spike through the 'energy centre' two inches below the heart.
- In Blade, the title character is the son of a woman who was bitten by a vampire and went into labour. He's inhumanly strong, fast, and tough; he can stand sunlight, silver, and garlic; and he craves blood (which he avoids by using a serum, though at least once per film he drank blood and got "supercharged"). The vampires fear him because he hunts them down; in the second film, they want him so they can figure out his immunities and create vampires with them.
- Incidentally, these vampires are ludicrously vulnerable to their traditional weaknesses, to the point where their survival for more than five minutes is quite impressive.
- This is actually a bit of flanderization; in the first movie they are rather resilient; one was set on fire and had multiple limbs cut off, but escapes and returns after regenerating his wounds, and one vampire goes for a stroll in the sunlight while wearing sunscreen. the only way to kill a vampire was to destroy their heart, but as the movies went on they became progressively weaker and weaker, to the point that just being touched by silver or a flashlight beam would kill them.
- The Little Vampire based on a children's story has vampires that drink the blood of cattle like vampire bats do in real life.
- The Hunger featured David Bowie as a vampire who loses his immortality and gradually ages later on in the film.
- Near Dark featured Adrian Pasdar as one of a band of vampires who feed on blood, catch fire in direct sunlight, and can be cured with a blood transfusion.
- Vampires in The Lost Boys have the well-known weaknesses of garlic and holy water (and especially both at the same time), but don't seem to be severely harmed by sunlight as with other movie vampires (though they're sensitive to it and wear sunglasses at all times during the day). Humans turned into vampires (by drinking the blood of another vampire) don't become fully vampiric until after feeding on a human. The curse can be reversed before this happens if the head vampire is killed. In addition, stakes aren't the only weapons that can pierce a vampire's heart (practically anything that can be shoved through a vampire's chest will kill it). Expect the staking to leave a mess.
- The direct-to-DVD sequel Lost Boys: The Tribe does an... interesting job of embracing the whole "stay young and sexy forever" thing by making most of the vampires adrenaline/extreme sports junkies (or their groupies). They also tend to party on a rock-star scale, play video games and piss off cops in their spare time, and stab each other in the stomach for fun. As far as the whole staking thing goes, Edgar Frog bluntly states that whatever you stab them with doesn't even have to be sharp, it just has to pierce the heart.
- Once Bitten has a female vampire that requires the blood of a virgin to look beautiful. This one bites her victims on the inner thigh not the neck.
- The movie Fright Night also played with this trope.
- In Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, vampires can go out into the sunlight if they receive skin grafts from lesbians. No, really.
Literature
- Terry Pratchett really goes to town with this trope in his Discworld novels. Specifically, everything you've ever heard about vampires is true on the Discworld, but any two vampires are unlikely to have the same rules. In "Carpe Jugulum", Count Magpyr and his family appear to have overcome many stereotypical vampire weaknesses through conditioning (at least temporarily). By contrast, his uncle, "the old Count" (named Bela) was quite willing to give people a chance to kill him, since he could always come back to life again. Later books demonstrate that vampirism on the Discworld is more like an addiction than a physical affliction: vampires can give up these cravings (for human blood, at least), given time and something to obsess over besides blood (like photography, or coffee), though they remain inhuman. There's even a support group for "recovering vampires", the Uberwald Temperance League.
- In another Pratchett novel, Reaper Man, a man becomes a vampire simply through inheriting a certain spooky mansion (which was, traditionally, inhabited by vampires, and tradition has this amount of power on the Discworld); as he half-jokingly puts it, he was bitten "by a lawyer". This means he is now capable of transforming into a bat, and forced to wear evening dress all the time. He does not suck blood from virgins, since his wife (who only acts like she's a vampire, and speaks in Vampire Vords if she doesn't forget to) wouldn't approve that.
- The novel I Am Legend is set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, in a world where most of the human population have been transformed into vampires by a plague. The novel goes to great length to set up biological and anatomical reasons for why these vampires behave in accordance with traditional vampire tropes, i.e. psychological aversion to mirrors and religious symbols, lack of skin pigmentation causing intense pain on exposure to sunlight, and so on. Many future vampire novels drew on the book for its inspiration. Its major film adaptations, The Omega Man and the eponymous 2007 film, retain the photophobia and albinism but drop the vampire conceit — The Omega Man simply refers to them as mutants, and I Am Legend gives them no particular name (though they are referred to as "Dark-Seekers").
- The Vincent Price B-film The Last Man On Earth, also based(-ish) on the story, does refer to them as Vampires, but also plays up the disease/sci fi elements.
- Mercedes Lackey's book Children of the Night has a vampire who has to explain to the protagonist that some of the "classic" stuff is true, but some was made up. Specifically, he describes the "crossing water" limitation as "We are territorial, and often mark our borders with rivers. You might as well say that we do not cross major roads, or mountain ranges." He also has Super Strength, no reflection, serious burns from sunlight (but still able to escape captivity and cross half the city to find shelter), and greater damage from wooden weapons. However, he's not affected by garlic (in fact, makes a joke about being able to smell it from some garlic soup), and when confronted with a cross takes it out of her hand, kisses it and returns it to her. Drawing blood gives the "victim" intense pleasure, too.
- Another type of vamp in the books is the "psi-vamp", which draw energy from the emotions of its victims. Psi-vamps can draw from "higher" energies (excitement, pleasure), or from the "darker' ones — anger, hatred, fear. They can also directly trigger the emotions they want from their victims, and if they feed fully can kill or "burn out" a victim. They have super strength, can live entirely off the energies (don't need to eat, and don't derive value from it anyway), but are badly affected by sunlight or any bright light (worse than Andre, the classic vampire).
- The Dresden Files books and TV series have three different kinds of vampires. White Court, Red Court, and Black Court; splitting up different traits and weaknesses among them.
- Interestingly enough, in the universe of the book series, Bram Stoker was urged to write Dracula at the behest of the White Court, so that all of humanity would know about the weaknesses of the Black Court. This led to the slaughter of most of the Black Court, with only the strongest and most craven of its members surviving.
- A fourth, the Jade Court, has been mentioned, but has never appeared in the books. Presumably, they cover the Asian vampires, which are quite different from Western ones.
- In the novel Blindsight, science fiction author Peter Watts has come up with another take on vampires: that they are predatory subspecies of humanity with specific genetic markers, including a neural miswiring in the visual cortex that causes epileptic seizures when near-perpendicular lines are seen (referred to as "the crucifix glitch"). This was not a major handicap in prehistoric times, but once architecture was invented, it caused the vampires' extinction. The genetic code for vampires is resurrected by a medical research corporation; Watts rationalizes each of vampires' traditional strengths and weaknesses using a scientific explanation in a PowerPoint (ostensibly from this corporation) on his Web site. Several traditional vampire traits are explained here as a result of their being nocturnal, solitary predators who hibernate for long periods of time to keep from hunting their slow-breeding prey into extinction. In the novel, a vampire is the captain of the protagonists' starship.
- In Nick Polotta's Bureau 13 series, the characters use "scenario loads", which are ammo magazines preloaded with one silver bullet, one of blessed wood, another of cold iron, etc. "Well, the ones shot with silver just fell down, but the ones shot with wood turned to dust...." At one point, they turn to a cape filled with indexed pockets of assorted "banes", to deal with an unexpected were-squid.
- Anne Rice, who can take a lot of the credit for the modern Goth, angsty, bisexually curious, gender-ambiguous portrayal of vampires, had them originating through accident: an Egyptian Queen was accidentally bonded to a mostly harmless (if annoying) spirit during an assassination attempt, and became the first vampire. The more distant a vampire's connection to the oldest vampires, the weaker they were. One attempt to end the curse (by exposing the Queen and her husband) to the sun resulted in their skin barely darkening, older vampires being mildly discomforted, and "younger" vampires bursting into flame and dying. The vampire weaknesses to religious artifacts were psychosomatic: Lestat, a non-religious (almost atheist) person in life, found they didn't affect him at all. Interestingly, despite this, it is revealed in later books that God and Jesus exist, and Lestat actually meets Him. And apparently, neither God nor Jesus give much of a damn about Lestat being a mass-murdering monstrosity. (Wasn't there a commandment against murder?)
- Traditionally, the Christian punishment for sin comes after you die. Being immortal might delay this for a while, but the fun has to end eventually.
- Stephenie Meyer's vampires, from the Twilight series, are also a little different from the norm. The main vampires fall into the category of "Friendly Neighborhood Vampires", subsisting on animal blood only, but there are "evil" vampires, who are portrayed a little like Anne Rice's vampires: callous and indifferent towards humans but not at all villainous. The Twilight vampires are beautiful humans who have an entrancing smell and voice. They can only be killed by ripping them to pieces and burning these pieces; a feat made all the more difficult by their granite-hard bodies, unnatural strength and speed. Though they defy many of the traditional myths about vampires, they have been accused of being Mary Sues due to their beauty, perfection and seeming lack of character depth.
Also, they sparkle.
- And then there's Bunnicula, from the Bunnicula series of children's books. You're reading that right. A vampire bunny, yes. He sucks the juice out of vegetables. A good bit of The Celery Stalks At Midnight was spent finding vegetables he had drained and staking them with toothpicks.
- Vampires in the Undead and ___ series by Mary Janice Davidson are relatively "traditional" — they need to feed on blood, can't take the daylight, get burned by holy water, and so on. Not only does the cross hurt them, but hearing "holy names" (God and Jesus) does the same thing. The main character, Betsy the Vampire Queen, is a prophesied exception and is unaffected by most of the rules.
- In the Russian Night Watch book series, vampires can stand in direct sunlight without ill effects (though it does dull their senses), have no issues with garlic or religious artifacts and reflect in mirrors. Alcohol, on the other hand, has much the same effect as holy water is supposed to - in one scene, the main character splashes a vampire he's fighting with vodka from his hip flask. Silver bullets and stakes slow them down, but neither is fatal. However, they can't enter another person's dwelling uninvited. They are stronger and faster than normal humans and possess heightened regenerative abilities. The more powerful vampires can change shapes, fly and hypnotize, but such vampires are rare. Like all supernatural creatures in the Watch universe, they can enter the Twilight, another "level" of reality that renders them invisible to the mundane population. Also, like all supernatural creatures in the Watch universe, they can only legally prey on humans if they have proper licenses, which forces them to rely on blood banks as primary source of sustenance. Some vampires attempt to feed without said license, forcing the Night Watch to hunt them down. Despite these advantages over humans, amongst the 'others' they are pretty much the lowest of the low and often used as cannon fodder by the more senior dark others.
- Both light and dark others actually act as 'psi-vampires' amongst other methods they can draw energy by draining people's good and bad emotions respectively.
- In Stephen King's novel Salem's Lot, the most powerful vampire (Barlow) must lie still in his coffin during the day, but is still conscious and can use psychic projection and control the will of humans if they look in his eyes. The humans that he bites turn into a kind of semi-conscious vampiric drone, which exist primarily to serve him and infect others.
- Vampires also appear in the Dark Tower series, in which they are classified into three types. Both Type I and Type II vampires are fairly traditional; the former are ancient and can transform humans into Type II's. (Crosses work, but are subject to the power of faith. The priest from Salem's Lot, whose cross failed when his faith did, reappears and is able to ward them off with belief alone.) Type III vampires drink blood, but are immune to sunlight, and cannot turn pople into other vampires, although they can pass HIV. They dissapear when killed.
- In Christopher Golden's Shadow Saga, almost all of a vampire's supposed weakness are psychosomatic. Any vampire who actually believes that sunlight will destroy them will be destroyed by it, but one who doesn't believe can walk around during the day comfortably. The Roman Catholic Church actually captured many early vampires and brain washed them into believing these things would kill them in order to control them. The only thing actually capable of harming a vampire is silver. In the third book of the series, though, a serum is invented that will stop a vampire's cellular reconstructive abilities and allow them to be killed.
- Vampires in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series come from a number of various "Bloodlines", but are considered biological entities with "just a touch" of magic (they don't cast reflections, for example). Some may be able to transform, while others have corpse-like features, and others suffer from blood frenzy. Religious symbols and even Garlic only affect those vampires who believe they can. Sunlight only hurts younger undead, and Silver only serves to counter their regeneration abilities; any sufficient organ damage (like, say, a stake though the heart) can kill them for good.
- In Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls, vampires are an predatory subspecies of humanity, living alongside, feeding, and interbreeding with humans. Being bitten by a vampire doesn't transform the victim into a vampire. Giving birth to a vampire/human fetus kills the mother, and the hybrid will manifest the thirst for blood at puberty. Interestingly, the younger vampires have lost a lot of the traditional vampire weaknesses, such as aversion to sunlight, along with their fangs, because of their mixed human ancestry. The older vampires still retain these traits.
- The vampires in The Saga of Darren Shan lack fangs and the ability to turn into bats. There's also a supspecies of purple-skinned Always Chaotic Evil vampires called the Vampenze.
- In Christopher Pike's Last Vampire series, vampires are invulnerable to a completely ridiculous degree.
- The vampires in Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist possess most of the classic vampire features, but also have a number of deviations from the norm; a stake to the chest just above the heart heart kills them because they have a second rudimentary brain there, their fangs can be grown at will (along with claws and a wing-like membrane), and vampires who are killed in any way except sunlight, fire or staking will continue on as mostly mindless "undead", who are extremely strong and seem to be nearly unkillable (fire is apparently all that will put them down for good). Eli also subverts the whole "sexually ambiguous vampire" trope by actually being a cross-dressing boy whose genitalia were removed by the vampire who bit him.
- Amelia Atwater-Rhode's vampires take nearly every vampire trope in existence and throw them out the window. They don't have any of the usual vampire weaknesses, and are all very much human in their emotions and motivations. They can, on the other hand, be killed by a stake through the heart, decapitation, etc. and need to drink blood to survive. Unusually, they are a breed of vampires that have a long process to turn someone else into a vampire, which involves the vampire drinking the human's blood, and the human drinking the vamp's blood. A vampire's power post-bite is determined by how much they fought the change, so vampires who were changed by force tend to be exceptionally powerful.
- Steven Erikson's Malazan Book Of The Fallen is not traditional about its vampires. For example, they can go on just fine without drinking blood. Kettle, the undead child, however does prey on people for their blood, and after killing and draining one hundred passers-by she has accumulated enough lifeforce to turn into a living little girl.
- Vampire Hunter D (novels) the vampires do suffer from many of the traditional weaknesses outlined here, but none of the humans ever know this, due to long years of conditioning against the information by the vampires who ruled humanity for centuries after the nuclear war that led to the setting. This lends the titular character an unexpected advantage on several occasions.
- In Vampirates, most of the crew drink only once a week, and that from voluntary donors who are well-treated by the crew; the captain does not need blood at all. Also, Darcy can remain outside during the day by turning into the ship's figurehead.
- Barbara Hambly's two novels featuring vampires tweak the concept quite a bit: Vampires grow slowly more resistant to their banes (silver, certain woods, sunlight) as they age past their "death." This comes with occasional side effects: Don Simon Ysidro and his sire Rhys developed a condition called bleaching, where they turned into near-albinos, and the Bey of Constantinople became unable to fully create new vampires — attempts simply produced a functioning mind in a rotting body. They're also psychic, able to affect people's minds — the famed "dissolve into mist" act is just mentally blanking a person's ability to focus on them, and since they feed on the psychic energies of their prey's death-by-bite, they cannot feed without killing.
- Simon R. Green's vampires (only seen in brief detail in Hawk and Fisher) fall under the "rotting corpse that clawed out of its grave" category, right down to mold growing on the skin. They generally have a servant known as a Judas Goat, who (by virtue of appearing outwardly sane, unlike Dracula's Renfield) acts as the vampire's protector.
- Simon R. Green's other series of books, Deathstalker, includes a race of humanoids who have had their blood flushed out of their systems, and replaced with a liquid that basically makes them immortal. This liquid is also a well-known drug. These beings are known as Wampyrs, and they freely distribute vials of their blood in a known rat's nest the titular Deathstalker and his entourage eventually end up on. The love interest, upon reaching this rat's nest, proclaims that she has been hooked on Wampyr blood before, and sweated it out.
- The Young Adult novel In the Forests of the Night (by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes) has vampires with effectively no weaknesses outside of one particular Witch Species' blood. They have some vague mental powers and Voluntary Shapeshifting, and pretty much do whatever they want, though they don't 'turn' people often.
- Robin McKinley's book Sunshine has vampirism being technically illegal in a world full of various types of demons and other supernatural beings which are as morally varied as normal people. Wood is only the best option for staking (specifically applewood grown alongside mistletoe), as other materials may work with much more difficulty. In contrast to other styles of 'aging,' the older a vampire gets the weaker he is physically, to the point where even reflected sunlight (ie: moonlight) can burn them, even through buildings, although they typically get mad mental powers in compensation. There are "different" ways of being vampires, however, meaning there is at least one friendly vampire.
- Very old vampires can't even say the word Sunshine — conveniently for the heroine, because they also have name magic, and her nickname is Sunshine.
- Scott Westerfield's young adult novel Peeps gives several scientifically backed explanations for vampiric symptoms: Vampirism is actually caused by a parasite that's evolved over centuries (thanks to natural selection) from a nasty case of rabies to a disease that causes the victim's mind to shun the things and people he/she loves. The pale, gaunt look of vampires is caused by the parasite burning away their bodies' calories, which also requires that they eat a lot to keep their energy up. Vampires won't perish from sunlight; they just really, really don't like it because the parasite knows that being out in the sun means a greater risk of capture and a dead host, which is also the same reason why vampires feel compelled to run away from the human beings they're familiar with. And that thing about the "vampire's kiss" is only the parasite's way of spreading itself to other hosts - for additional measure, the disease makes its victims easily turned on to make swapping fluids even more likely. Peeps's main character got lucky and became only a carrier, which gives him the superhuman strength and speed benefits without the "going insane and attacking the ones you love" condition. There are some other properties he finds out about vampires later on, but this entry is ridiculously long already, so read the book if you want to know what they are!
- Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series keeps some tropes, tosses some, and invents a couple new ones.
- When vampires are starved for blood, they seem invariably to pick a target of their gender preference and are inclined to have sex with it while feeding from it, whether the target is willing or not. Ew.
- When vampires are staked, their bodies do disintegrate into flaky ash, but it isn't necessarily instantaneous. It can be, or it can take a few minutes.
- Sharing blood is an erotic experience on par with sex if the vampire has an emotional attachment to the person sharing it.
- Vampires regard themselves as a different, superior species from humans, seeming to be embarrassed by [or forgotten] that they were human once.
- Vamps can and do just stop and go into what Sookie calls "vampire downtime", where they become statues until something needs their attention.
- Fairy blood is a particular delicacy to vampires, nigh-irresistable.
- Vampires have complex and convoluted politics and laws.
- The human world is aware of vampires, and has varying reactions to this knowledge. Despite this, Arbitrary Skepticism prevails.
- The creation of synthetic blood is what caused the vampire populace to go public. They can drink it and survive on it, but they still prefer it straight from the real source. Truth In Television indicates synthetic blood is becoming available in Real Life. Let's hope it stops there.
- In Brian Lumley's Necroscope series of novels, vampires have a telepathic, semi-symbiotic parasitic fungus and humans are merely their hosts. They are still vulnerable to daylight, silver and garlic, and can be killed by bubonic plague and leprosy.
- C. E. Murphy's Heart of Stone features gargoyles along with vampires. Gargoyles turn to stone while the sun is up, and a gargoyle speculates that confusion is the source of the (incorrect) belief that vampires are harmed by daylight.
- In The Hollows series by Kim Harrison, the saliva contains neurotransmitters that make the pain of a vampire's bite feel like pleasure. Vampires can also sensitize their victim's bite so that only that vampire can affect the victim, leaving the victim mentally bound to that vampire. There are two kinds of vampires, living and undead.
- Living vampires are normal humans infected with the vampire virus. They are divided into two groups, high- and low-blood.
- Low-blood vampires are normal humans that have been infected by an undead vampire, and have only a small amount of the benefits the virus grants, such as increased strength and speed, as well as the craving for blood. When low-blood vampires die, be it of natural causes or otherwise, they simply die like any other human, unless an undead vampire is there at the moment of death to bring them back as an undead.
- High-blood vampires are vampires that were born already infected by the virus, and having been their development in the womb influenced by it. They have increased strength and speed, more so than low-blood vamps, but not as much as the undead. They also have a greater craving for blood than low-blood vampires, but it is not essential to their existence. When a high-blood vamp dies, no matter the cause, they rise again as an undead the next sundown. When vampires become undead, they gain the full physical benefits of the vampire virus, but lose their souls in the process. They now have the ability to turn humans into vampires and bespell even unwilling hosts.
- In the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, vampires become weak if they don't drink blood every once in a while. Most vampires keep a "flock" of humans at their house to feed on. They can avoid killing if they want to, but only Stefan really makes an effort to do so. Being a vampire's "sheep" has fringe benefits - it extends your natural lifespan, and gives you resistance to blood-borne diseases like HIV or leukemia. Vampires are dead during the day (but they don't need to return to their original coffin - at one point, Stefan spends the day in Mercy's closet), but come back to unlife at night. They can be killed by the standard methods, but the best one is fire.
- In the Vampire Earth series by E.E. Knight, most people are familiar with Reapers, nearly indestructible beasts that drink human blood to survive, and drain human life force to transmit to their masters. They are sluggish and half-blind in sunlight, but are not actually harmed significantly by it. Their masters, psychic aliens that eat human life force, have hypnotic powers, making it dangerous to meet their eyes.
- In the Thrall series by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp, the Thrall are parasites that lay eggs in the bodies of psychics. Not only are they not immortal, they make the Host infertile, and use up the body's resources and die within 3-4 years. They have dependent Herd members to feed off of, and if a queen dies without laying lasting eggs in a new host, all of the people she "made" die.
- The Destroyer's vampires are an order of blood drinkers who also poison meat eaters. The main one is called the Leader and later in the series he is the last of his kind.
- In the vampire romance novels of Kerrelyn Sparks the vampires burn in the sun and are allergic to silver. They can be killed through a stake and turn to dust. They are really, really strong and fest, they can teleport and can have a telepathic chit-chat... just that every vampire can hear their telepathic chit-chat what somehow defies the advantage of telepathy. They have to drink blood urgently, after "Be still my vampire heart" they can survive a maximum of three days before they turn into uncontrollable bloodsuckers, but the fangs "jump out" even if they are only hungry. Also, if they are sexually aroused their eyes become red. There are two known kinds of vampires:
- The Malcontents are the evil race of vampires, they didn't care for their investment fonds and therefore have rarely money, also they see themselves as the true ones and feed from humans. They enjoy killing and torturing them and think of themselves as superior from normal vampires who already think to be superior from everyone else.
- The Vamps are non-human-bloodsucking vampires who thank their being to the ex-monk and chemical genius Roman Draganesti, the protagonist of the first book "How to marry a vampire millionaire". He has found a way to make artificial blood which not only saves thousands of human lifes but also makes human-sucking futile and Roman very, very rich.
- From the usual bloodtypes filled in bottles which have to be warmed up in microwaves he as developed a "fusion cuisine" with chocolood, bubbly blood (champagner blood), blood light (against the consequences of chocolood) and even blisky, which makes the scottish Highlands-Vampires very happy.
- A serum is developed which can make vampires stay awake during the day, but for every day awake they age one year.
- Thanks to Roman, youg vampires of whom there is a blood sample can be made mortal again, but the process is riky.
- Again thanks to Roman, it is possible to genetically engineer a vampire sperm so he can have a baby with a mortal woman, which doesn't seem to be neither vampire nor normal human
- In China Mieville's The Scar, the Brucolac, a member of a species known as "vampirs", has many of the usual traits, but is surprisingly ineffectual and comes from a land where vampires are basically nothing more than pathetic beggars and junkies looking for their next hit.
- While Silas in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book is never explicitly called the v-word or seen drinking blood, the evidence leaves little to the imagination: active only at night, no reflection, flight, hypnotic abilities, sleeps in a dirt lined box "when away from home", etc.
Live Action TV
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer's vampires are described as a type of demon (just one of many) and are said to lack souls, explaining their amoral behavior. They have "demonic" faces that only appear just before they feed (or during a fight, or any other time the writers want them to look more intimidating). They have many of the usual vampire traits otherwise, including sensitivity to sunlight (although very much the direct-sunlight-only variety; put them in any kind of shadow and they're quite cozy) and the stake-through-the-heart kill. When killed, however, they turn to dust instantly.
- In the Doctor Who serial "Curse of Fenric", "Haemovores" can be repelled by a focus of belief. A Soviet soldier is therefore able to ward them off with a red star, while the Doctor can summon enough belief without a focus, by thinking of his companions. The doubting priest on the other hand had some trouble.
- In the new series story "Smith and Jones", the blood-sucking Plasmavore (not the same kind of vampire) is impervious to sunlight, looks completely human and drinks blood from human necks with a plastic straw.
- The serial "State of Decay" had traditional vampires... IN SPACE!, on a Planet Of Hats version of Uberwald. The Great Vampire, however, is a giant bat-monster, the last of a race wiped out by the Time Lords.
- Rare commercial version: A famous Rayban commercial suggested that seeing direct sunlight was what harmed vampires. It showed a group of them gathered on a seawall, watching the sun rise over the ocean; it's only when one fails to put on his shades (and suffers the consequences) that we find out what they are. Maybe it wasn't the seeing of sunlight. Maybe the glasses were just that good.
- Reactolite did the same in England. Count Dracula no longer dies when people throw open the curtains, as he wears Reactolite Rapides.
- The series Ultraviolet has "leeches" (vampires) who are susceptible to ultraviolet rays (found in sunlight), do not show up on any equipment, and are injured by carbon-based bullets.
- Kamen Rider Kiva has the Fangires, stained-glass based creatures (resembling different animals and monsters) that can masquerade as humans and suck the "life en
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