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Winged Humanoid

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Angel? Nah.
Lina: How are your wings attached?
Serene: They just grow on my back.
Lina: They don't come off?
Serene: Do your arms come off?

Simply put, it's a human with wings sprouting from their back.

Biologically improbable due to human bone and muscle structure (though at the same time, usually easy to rationalize at first glance due to the nature of our shoulders), and if they're intended for actual flight, you may have to write off several laws of physics as well. Therefore, such characters are often assumed to be not entirely of this world, especially since the domain of birds shares a name with God's kingdom: Heaven. This ties into the classic depictions of winged angels as well.

The type of wing is usually indicative of the character's morality; see Good Wings, Evil Wings.

If there's something even slightly resembling feathers, expect a Perpetual Molt. Don't expect flapping — however, there will be plenty of floating.

Best done via animation, as live-action wings are bulky and can look rather silly. Animated wings are also easier to "tuck away", or may even vanish into hammerspace. If a character suddenly sprouts a pair, it's because Power Gives You Wings.

By welding Greco-Roman art and religion, The Renaissance artistic movement started the whole idea of Christian angels being winged humanoids.

Generally seen as highly attractive, even if the Wings Do Nothing. If you're looking for the flying partner of an Ace Pilot, try Wingman.

Subtrope of Vertebrate with Extra Limbs and Monstrous Humanoid. See also Draconic Humanoid, who may have dragon wings but looks decidedly less human. Subtropes include Wings Below The Waist, Bird People (usually), The Mothman, and Harping on About Harpies. Compare Peacock Girl and Pegasus. May become a Broken Angel if their wings are clipped.


Examples:

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Permanent Wings:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You, the God of Love resembles an old man with wings, and the God of Infinity resembles a young man with wings.
  • The goddesses' angels in Ah! My Goddess, like Holy Bell, have permanent wings. And ironically Lind, the "one wing", actually has two, though heaven help you when both come out...
  • Kanade Tachibana (aka Tenshi/Angel) from Angel Beats! doesn't have wings (due to not actually being an angel), but she's shown with them in the opening. Near the end of the series, she actually does create wings for herself, at Otonashi's suggestion.
  • Virtually everyone in Angel Sanctuary fits this trope. Some even have three wings.
  • Angels Feather. Given its title, it is not surprising that there should be plenty of winged people.
  • Cardcaptor Sakura:
    • Both Kerberos and Yue have angel-like wings, tinged gold and silver, respectively.
    • Spinel "Suppi" Sun and Ruby Moon, too. Subverted with Kero and Spinel because Kero is a winged lion and Spinel is... a panther, maybe? Some sort of big black cat with wings. Yue's wings are angel-like, and Ruby's are like a butterfly's.
    • Nadeshiko, Sakura's late mother when she makes an appearance now and then.
    • Sakura herself, while using the Fly card after converting it.
    • The Fiery Card takes the form of a young boy with large, fiery wings.
  • The Baam-Seijin in Daimos is an alien race of winged humanoids. Their wings are feathery and white and can be folded their backs.
  • Dragon Ball: Cell has large, insectoid wings in his first and perfect forms, seemingly from a separate source than his main genetic donors. While they tend to move when he is travelling quickly, he doesn't actually need them to fly.
  • In Eureka Seven, Eureka eventually grows large wings due to her inhuman physique. They're more reminiscent of a butterfly than a bird, and they don't seem to be able to give her the ability to fly. They were also the result of a rather Painful Transformation.
    • By the sequel she learns to hide and manifest them at will.
  • The crows in Free Collars Kingdom are shown as this. Justified Trope since the cats are all shown as cat people.
  • Subaru of .hack//SIGN, who has small, nonfunctional wings. Justified in that the show is set inside an MMORPG. Other examples in the .hack// verse are listed in the Video Games section.
  • In Haibane Renmei, the Haibane of the title are humanoids who hatch full-grown from mysteriously appearing eggs. They have small, non-functional wings, and are given metallic "halos" that float over their heads by an unknown force. In addition, certain Haibane will have their wings get darker or entirely black, the mark of a rather nebulously defined "sin".
  • All of the Tengu from Kamisama Kiss are this.
  • Yayoi of Koi Koi 7. This appears to be her only cyborg ability, though it has its occasional uses.
  • In Last Period, the race inhabiting the Sky Realm is the Angels, who are humanoids with wings.
  • The phoenix and dragon-based Machine Gods in Magic Knight Rayearth have the appropriate style of wings despite being humanoid in appearance. The leonine one gets Hot Wings since it's fire-elemental. Upon combining with Rayearth, the composite mecha has very deliberate-looking angelic wings and a smaller set of dragon-style wings underneath.
  • Every Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch villain introduced from Michel on had wings. Michel himself has white angel wings; Lady Bat's were, well, batlike; Lanhua/Ranfa/whatever had butterfly wings and Alala was a fairy (or a dragonfly?). Fuku's, as befitting a Sidekick Creature Nuisance, were tiny and lacking any detail that might align him to a particular animal.
  • A strange example is Tsubasa from Mikakunin Shounen Gedoh who had to train and build up muscles in order to flap her wings hard enough to fly. The results are... terrifying...
  • The "angels" in Mnemosyne are actually mindless killing machines and the male counterparts to the Always Female immortals.
  • Monster Musume: This is frequently deconstructed. Any species the size of a full-grown human with wings tend to be unable to actually fly due to the Square-Cube Law and need to be child-sized at the biggest. Flying species also tend to have wings instead of arms in order to get the most out of their pectoral muscles.
    • Harpies have feathery wings for forelimbs, but the digits of their wings are more human-finger-like, allowing them to hold objects. Vampires have the same sort of wing, but their wings are bat-like rather than bird-like
    • Dragonewts have the typical bat-like wings usually seen on dragons, although they're only useful for gliding.
    • Demons also have bat-like wings, but they're much smaller than dragonewt wings. They also cannot be used for flight.
    • Killer bees, being humanoid insects, have insect wings.
    • Mesuline are another species with bat-like wings, and while they can't use them to fly, they can use them to swim with.
  • In My Hero Academia pro hero Hawks has the quirk "Fierce Wings" which gave him long, feathered wings. Unfortunately, All For One steals his quirk near the end.
  • Subverted (and possibly lampshaded) in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Legend has it that a white-winged humanoid, clad in blue, would rise to lead the people to their salvation, as shown in an elaborate tapestry. Believers in this prophecy revere this savior as an angel, and when Nausicaä fulfills every one of their expectations, they wonder where her wings are. In response, Chikuku (a young acolyte) strongly insists that such a hybrid creature would be a monster; instead, he says, Nausicaä's "wings" are represented by her pure-white glider.
  • Haruna Tobita from Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary is still getting the hang of landing safely with her feathered wings. She mostly uses them to fly away from her responsibilities.
  • One Piece:
    • The sky island of Skypiea is inhabited by three races of winged people: the Shandians, the Skypians, and the Birkans. Their wings are purely vestigial, though, and do not provide flight. They do make some of them look like angels, at least.
    • The people of Merveille in the tenth movie have feathers growing on their arms, making them vaguely look like wings. Why they have them is never explained. (Realization of the people's lifelong dream to fly? Small mutation due to the SIQ? Natural evolution brought about by the fact that they live on a sky island?), but unlike the previous example, those wings do allow them to fly.
    • The Lunarians, a race of these with Significant White Hair, Dark Skin who have black wings. They also are Nigh-Invulnerable, capable of Playing with Fire, and once were worshipped as gods because of that.
  • Overlord (2012): Albedo has a pair of black bird's wings attached behind her waist. They only make her look clearly inhuman to the natives of the new world.
  • The people of Mt. Phoenix in Ranma ½ posit a bizarre case: in antiquity, they were normal humans who lived in the mountains. But for generations, their everyday chores and consumption had them draw water from Jusenkyō springs so high up in the mountains that they were accessible only to birds (who would subsequently drown there and imbue them with curses). Throughout generations of taking cursed water into their bodies, they eventually mutated to sprout massive, flight-worthy wings, also scaly, hawk-like talons instead of hands or feet, and, occasionally, shins and forearms covered in rough, stiff down, while looking otherwise completely human. Most of the people of the Mt. Phoenix tribe are also "descended" from specific avian species with which they have a particular affinity, like falcons, goshawks, doves, or, in the case of royalty, The Phoenix. Since the tribe is so reclusive, whenever they require soldiers or spies to infiltrate the outside world, they use Jusenkyō water from the main valley to transform into ordinary men and women.
  • The Rising of the Shield Hero: Filorial Kings and Queens can assume humanoid forms which sprout a pair of angelic wings from their backs.
  • In Rosario + Vampire:
    • Both Kurumu and Ruby become these in their true forms. Though technically Ruby MIGHT not have them without her magic, since hers is based more on shapeshifting (c.f. her turning into birds, etc.).
    • Tsukune also sports them in his One-Winged Angel state. And as of the finale, so does Moka.
  • Rozen Maiden Season 1's Big Bad, Suigintou, has a pair of black wings on her back.
  • The titular Sailor Moon occasionally gains a pair of wings after transformation (along with Chibi-Usa, especially after Helios is introduced) in the Stars season.
  • Sekirei: The eponymous Sekirei sprout wings upon "mucas membrane" contact with their Ashikabi.
  • A number of characters in Shinzo, including the Bird Enterrans and Celestial Mushra.
  • Soul Rescue is about Christian-style angels, complete with wings.
  • Haruka and Sugino from Tactics are tengu, human in appearance and crow in mannerisms with black and white wings respectively.
  • Aleksai Amigochaz from Tower of God has devil wings.
  • The human-like Babilar aliens from The☆Ultraman, are descended from eagles, and a such have telescopic vision, beaks, and wings.
  • The Onkamiyamukai in Utawarerumono are a race of angel-winged humanoids, who all have white wings except for the cutesy-ditsy princess Kamyu, who has black wings.
  • Van from The Vision of Escaflowne sports a pair of impressive white bird-like wings, though he feels self-conscious about them. His brother has a pair of black wings.
  • The Harpie Lady cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! Although their wings were actually attached to their arms rather than coming from their backs. Guardian Eatos, the native wind spirit and Raphael's trump card in the Orichalcos arc, has hers on her back above her shoulders.

    Art 

    Comic Books 
  • The Adventures of Peter Wheat: All of the hornets in the Hornet Kingdom have humanoid bodies and hornet wings on their backs. This is especially true of Queen Dragonel, who has a humanoid face.
  • Angel Catbird: Strig gains a pair of wings whenever he turns into the titular superhero.
    • There's also Ray, who can turn into a human-crow hybrid.
    • Book 2 has Athena, who's able to turn into a human-owl hybrid.
  • Swift of The Authority and Stormwatch is a "seedling" who grew wings out of the backs of her arms and talons on her feet once her powers were activated. She later gets upgraded to full wings coming out of her back. Her counterpart in the G7 Authority, Rush, also had full wings coming out of her back.
  • Hawkman: Thanagarians (inspired by Flash Gordon's Hawkmen), including Hawkman and Hawkgirl, use the Applied Phlebotinum of "Nth Metal" to provide antigravity. That metal is usually carried in the belt, the wings themselves are typically attached to a harness and are only used to steer in flight. In some continuities, however, the wings are a part of their body.
    • Hawkman continuity is also home to the Manhawks, enemies to the Thangarians who are much more hawklike and the Fetherians, a lost tribe of bird-people encountered by the Golden Age Hawkman, the best known of whom is Northwind of Infinity, Inc..
  • Demi The Demoness, and her heavenly counterpart Imed the Angel.
  • Jasmine, a human from the Dungeons & Dragons universe who is introduced in the Spelljammer comic book and is later transplanted to the Forgotten Realms novels. She gained her wings from a badly phrased boon from the Goddess of Luck, and they change form depending on what crystal sphere or plane she's on.
  • ElfQuest: Tyldak, who may be a bit of a subversion in that his whole body was (painfully) reshaped via magic so he could fly where most of his fellow Gliders would simply use their powers of levitation to float; for example, his batlike wings are clearly his former arms.
  • Empowered: The Superhero Divangelic is a pair of Conjoined Twins — her left half, Charity, is an angel, but her right half, Vanity, is a devil. They share a pair of wings (traditional style, that is feathery / bat-like, respectively).
  • Future Foundation: Al'ti Vidua is a Shi'ar Warbird, looking like a normal human women most of the time but able to sprout two huge wings when she wants to.
  • Green Lantern:
    • K'ryssma and her people develop wings that look like they're made of stained glass after going through a pupal stage and look otherwise relatively human other than their antennae and odd proportions.
    • R'amey Holl is essentially a butterfly girl.
    • Red Lantern Bleez and the people from her homeworld Havania naturally have feathered angel-like wings. Bleez's wings were torn from her body during her rape and imprisonment but she recreated them in skeletal form when she got her ring to take vengeance on her rapists.
  • Henchmen: One of the Superheroes who comes to save Gary's family is the Golden Arch Angel, a very fat man with large wings.
  • Inferior Five: The Inferior Five once encounter a team who are a parody of the original X-Men, who are genetic throwbacks. The team includes an Angel counterpart named Icarus who is a throwback to the birds (and, yes, the fact that humans aren't descended from birds is lampshaded). Somewhat ironically, and probably coincidentally, the actual X-Men would decades later have a member called Icarus.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes: Dawnstar is a woman with feathered wings.
  • The Marvel Universe also has the Bird-People, a technologically advanced race of winged humanoids who live on their floating Sky-Island. The Golden Age hero Red Raven is a regular human adopted into their civilization.
  • Nocturnals: Komodo used to have wings, but when he tried to escape the evil laboratory he was raised in by flying, his creators removed them. While taunting a guard who tries to re-capture him, Komodo indicates that he doesn't miss his wings, as they "itched like hell."
  • The Queen And The Woodborn: Morana appears this way in her usual form, as a beautiful young woman with large wings.
  • Runaways: Among the "wonders" encountered by the Runaways during their visit to the early 20th century was Tristan, a giant with mechanical wings that were apparently affixed to his back with some heavy-duty screws.
  • Saga: All aliens native to the planet Landfall look like humans with wings of one type or another. Some are feathered, some are bat-like, some are insect-like.
  • The Secrets of Willowmyst: Alexandra and Tavin are fairies who look like humans with fairy wings.
  • Sigil, from Shaman's Tears and the short-lived Bar Sinister spin-off comic, is a humanoid artificially evolved from a vampire bat who has, of course, bat wings.
  • CrossGen's Sojourn has a race of winged humanoids, who were depicted as black people with red wings, dressed in a vaguely Ancient Egyptian theme.
  • Spider-Man: The Jimmy Natale version of the Vulture (the previous Vultures all relied on high-tech flight suits).
  • Supergirl: Subverted during the Bob Oksner run in the mid-1970s. Linda encountered a young man who had assisted a Mad Scientist on a faraway island (before making off with a huge diamond from the head of an idol — there always is at least one). The professor had an idea on how to create winged humans and experimented on the locals by injecting them with DNA and other essentials from birds. Instead, he ended up with half-bird, half-human people who were very annoyed with what had been done to them.
  • Super Young Team: Shy Crazy Lolita Canary is an interesting case, as she's the size of an actual canary.
  • Swamp Thing: Cellanth, a pretty alien woman who was abducted by Solus and tried to help the other prisoners escape by pretending to be interested in her captor, looked pretty much like a human with antennae and wings.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The latest volume of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage) introduces Raptarr, a winged super-hero in the mold of X-Men's Angel.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942): Diana was close friends with Queen Desira of Venus. Desira and her people were humanoid women who had butterfly wings.
    • In the Golden Age Di had to protect Gerta von Gunther from a group of winged shark mermaids she'd created and then kept in tanks like pets which infuriated them.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): The gorgons are a trio of cruel beautiful sisters with feathered wings.
    • Wonder Woman (Rebirth): The Erotes, Eros/Cupid and Atlantiades/Hermaphroditus, are attractive winged love gods.
    • Wonder Woman: Warbringer: Nemesis's form is shadowy and humanoid, with glowing stips for eyes, a smattering of flecks of light and dark feathered wings. Eris is far more human in appearance and has large feathered wings.
  • X-Men:
    • Angel is a mutant with white feathered wings. He was later retconned into having super-strength and unbreakable, ultra-light bones, to explain away the biological improbabilities (he also has eagle-keen vision, though no-one seems to remember this). When transformed into the Horseman Death by Apocalypse, his previously amputated feathered wings were replaced by razor-sharp mechanical ones that shot poison-tipped feathers. His white-feathered wings returned eventually, having grown back underneath the metal ones. He can now switch between normal Angel and blue-skinned, metal-winged Archangel forms.
    • Angel Salvadore has fly-like wings sprouting from her back, though she was de-powered after House of M. Her husband Beak, who resembles a sort of human-chicken hybrid, also has bird-like wings on his arms, but he also lost them after M-Day.
    • Pixie of the X-Men originally had butterfly-like wings. Later, they change into fly-like wings.
    • The Shi'ar, being a race of humanoids descended from avians, usually have only a small tuft of feathers at most on their forearms at most. Deathbird, a recurring foe of the X-Men who is considered a genetic throwback among the Shi'ar, has fully functional wing-arms that allow her natural flight.

    Comic Strips 
  • The Hawkmen alien race, led by Prince Vultan, were the allies of Flash Gordon, whose original comic strip started in 1935. Noticeable in that they were big, muscular men, which would make flight more difficult. Their leader was memorably hammed by BRIAN BLESSED in the 1980 movie.

    Fan Works 
  • The fairies in The Blue Blur of Termina sport two pairs of wings.
  • Child of the Storm has Warren a.k.a. Archangel, with his current canon metal-wings-but-human-appearance. He had classic fluffy wings as a child, but his father tried to 'cure' him with Hank McCoy's personal mutation suppression serum. Emergency treatment stabilised him into the current metallic wings - and a museum exhibit in the sequel implies that he's not unique, before this is confirmed by book two's side-story, Unfinished Business. The wings themselves are more like the Stationary Wings of a plane than a bird, primarily used for aerodynamic purposes. They're also extremely sharp and very dexterous. On top of that, he's got his canon counterpart's hawklike vision, a Healing Factor, and the sort of enhanced physiology which means that being hit by a car would be a passing inconvenience and 'bench press a troll'. However, he's got a lot of trauma related to how they became metal and he's terrified that if he loses control for one moment, he'll slice and dice someone he loves with a single reflexive twitch (which is why slaughtering HYDRA's flying attack team initially leaves him utterly traumatised).
  • Casey Steele: Rebecca Clause has wings due to Dragon Ancestry.
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami, being set in the world of Adushul for the most part, the setting has fairies, angels, and dark angels who fit in this category.
  • Maesterus in Star Wars: Paranormalities is an unusual example. He didn't always have wings, and he didn't grow them until Vjun. He then grew second pair on those wings later and he's had them ever since. This is because he's actually a human mutated by a Forceless symbiote.
  • Navarone gains a pair of functional wings in Diaries of a Madman, due to a botched spell by Trixie.
  • Dawnstar from Hellsister Trilogy is a woman born with large, feathered white wings.
  • In Morphic, both Mia and Peter qualify. However, Peter's wings are explicitly mentioned to be small enough that he can cover them with a large enough T-shirt.
  • In The Little Pony Legend, The anthro transformations of Twilight, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy retain their pony-form's wings.
    • Korra's alicorn transformation in Book 2 gives her wings not unlike those of the aforementioned three above. The only difference, however, is that Korra's transformation is permanent whereas the ponies can change between forms at will.
  • Seventh Endmost Vision: Tifa has a PTSD-induced vision of her former best friend, Aerith, with one white angel wing in the aftermath of the first Reactor bombing. The Minerva summon also has these.
    • Furthering the allusion to canon Sephiroth, and adjacent to this trope, Aerith's cultists chant an english version of One-Winged Angel during one of her religious ceremonies.
  • Slayers Trilogy: At the end of Reflect, Lina gains butterfly-like wings. At the end of Chaos, all of the Wingless. At the end of Rebirth, everyone.
  • John in With Strings Attached. Turned into one by the Fans in order to prevent something worse from happening. Has big white and blue feathered wings. Humanoid now, not just a human with wings, and magic-based, which explains why he can fly. In fact, if he went back to the magic-free Earth in this body, he would instantly die. Ouch. And he can't float; he has to glide or flap to stay airborne.
    • Though he's never seen molting and never mentions it... of course, during the book, he only has the wings for about three months.
    • In the New Zork chapter, Ringo meets John's “Beagle” counterpart, who has small, useless wings “only good for attractin' birds,” heh.
  • In Zelda's Honor, Link gains a pair at the end of Act 2 due to Navi melding with him and this later plays a much larger role at the end of Act 3.
    • Saria also gets her own pair of wings at the end of Act 1 which foreshadows the above. Pretty much anyone who melds their soul with a fairy gets a pair of wings in this story.
  • Us and Them: Introduces Jenova's people as a race of winged humanoids known as the Seraphim. Since Sephiroth is partly Seraph, hence his single wing, his daughter also has a wing, though hers is tiny and functionally useless, and since it's prone to infections, she has it removed when she's fifteen.
  • Kitsune: Meliferra, bee-themed Animal-Themed Superbeing:
    Oh, and she had fairy wings. You know, pixie wings that looked like they belonged on a dragonfly or something.
  • Homecoming, 2026: Mothwing, who, in lack of other implication, is humanoid like most everyone else in the story:
    she unconsciously stretched her namesake wings.
  • Domoverse: From "For Master (Part 1)": The protagonist's idea of angels involve wings, and they're a permenant part of her digital form:
    [The Monster] took precious moments to turn its enormous body. Using that time to create angelic wings I took off, trying to stay ahead of the creature that clawed through the nothingness.

    The Net
    I rejoiced in the freedom of my true form.
    With my angel wings, silver armour and best of all my beautiful female form, I flew towards my goal.
  • Heal, one of the Original Character Sakura Cards in Inheritance of Cards and Demons, has feathered wings, which causes the Littlest Cancer Patient she's trying to cure think of her as an angel.
  • Blessed with a Hero's Heart: There's an early mention of the Avariel, a race of winged elves that were favored by Eris, as one of the races who went extinct in the last demihuman war. Wiz ends up becoming one of these when Izuku uses Reincarnation on her, and becomes the target of Chris who intends to use her to repopulate the race.
  • The Owl Lady's Chick: Strix has a pair of silver wings, a sign that Eda's curse passed onto him. In "Knock, Knock, Knocking on Hooty's Door", it's revealed he's had them since he was born, as he's also the Owl Beast's offspring.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Barbarella, there is a winged flying angel, Pygar.
  • The Beastmaster: The people who Dar runs into greatly resemble bats.
  • The Boy With Wings; an obscure movie about a boy born with feathered wings. He spends most of the movie hiding it and not doing anything cool, and at the end of the movie, the CAMERA flies around and it's IMPLIED that he learned to fly.
  • Michael and Gabriel in Legion.
  • Maleficent features the title character sporting wings, because, as Aurora asks later, "All the other fairies fly. Why don't you?" Unlike the other fairies, however, hers are eagle-like, rather than insectoid, illustrating her strength as compared to the rather inept fairies surrounding her. She also falls under Broken Angel when Stefan cuts off her wings and she decides to take on the 'Mistress of all Evil' persona.
  • Michael is about an actual angel (albeit a Jerkass angel), complete with wings.
    Huey Driscoll: Can I just pull on your wings to see how they're attached?
    Michael: Why don't you pull on your pecker to see how it's attached?
  • The Monkeybirds of MirrorMask, nearly all of whom are named Bob. They had gorilla-shaped bodies and only their faces were remotely bird-like. Strictly speaking, they didn't have wings, but they were able to glide with flaps of skin under their arms.
  • In Passion Play, Lily has wings and is displayed as a circus freak. Initially she doesn't believe she can fly, but she manages to by the end of the film. However she might not be real at all as the ending implies that the whole plot was All Just a Dream.
  • X-Men Film Series:
    • X-Men: The Last Stand: This is Warren Worthington III's only "superpower." Bonus science points in that his wings are probably large enough to actually lift a human, although there are still the typical issues of musculature and bone structure.
    • X-Men: First Class: Angel Salvadore's most distinct mutation is her dragonfly-like wings, and she's able to disguise them as tattoos.
    • X-Men: Apocalypse: Angel begins the movie with feathered wings, but they are later replaced by metallic ones by Apocalypse.

    Literature 

By Author:

  • Israeli writer Etgar Keretnote  wrote a short story entitled "a hole in the wall" about a man making a wish to have a friend. He gets a winged human who claims to be an angel but refuses to show the man how he can fly. After repeated Jerkass behaviour, the man gets angry and pushes the 'angel' off from a great height to force him to show his ability. He can't. That's when the man realizes that he wasn't an angel or anything; he was just a liar with wings. The film 9.99 is based on this story and two others, also by Keret.
  • Laurie J. Marks' Aeyries (hermaphroditic, furry, bat-winged monotremes) are both a justification and a deconstruction of the concept: their wings are huge, they have very high metabolisms, they depend a lot on air currents to stay aloft for any length of time, and — aside from strong shoulder muscles to power those wings — they're quite a weak and fragile species. (One Aeyrie self-deprecatingly describes the race as "ineffectual" and "too heavy to fly easily, yet too light to do anything else.")

By Work:

  • In A Court of Thorns and Roses, there are multiple species of fae with wings. In the sequels, a handful of the main characters are Illyrian, a Fae race with large bat-like wings e.g. Cassian and Azriel.
  • In All Tomorrows, one of the future human descendants shown is the Pterosapiens. Unlike most examples here, they have their forelimbs modified into wings rather than separate wings growing from their shoulders. They were genetically engineered to have an extra-high metabolism to support both their large brain and their ability to fly; the tradeoff for this is that they have short lifespans.
  • Ash from the Amaranthine Saga is one, due to being a crosser from the Crow clans. He typically uses copious illusions to hide the fact, although he also has to be careful with his clothing and his movements, as the illusions don't change the feel of his wings. His love interest finds his wings extremely attractive when she finally sees them.
  • Arcana Magi and Arcana Magi Zero feature naturally winged humanoids. Alysia Morales in Arcana Magi sprouts a pair of misty magical wings after becoming a Sentinel.
  • There is a race of winged people in Maggie Furey's The Artefacts Of Power books, introduced in Aurian and integral to the plot hereafter. They were somewhat shorter and slighter than humans, and possess 'large keeled breastbones'. Passages of description imply that their wings are enormous, reaching above their heads and sweeping down to the ground. In the book they were once mages of air, now bereft of power — however, their nonhuman advantages seem to serve them well enough to not have to rely on any dregs of power left.
  • The Bartimaeus Trilogy: In The Ring of Solomon, Bartimaeus likes taking the form of a "handsome Sumerian youth" with white wings, ironically he's actually a 2,000-year-old 'demon' with the in-human monster persona down pat...mostly. Also, it's only in the prequel, in the other books he's a 14-year-old ancient Egyptian kid.
  • Nefertari of Black Legion is Dark Eldar Scourge and thus has a giant, leathery wings. She wasn't born with them but underwent severe surgical operations to have them fitted on her back.
  • All of the Awians in Steph Swainston's Castle Circle series have wings, but only one character can use them to fly.
  • In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Queen of the Black Coast", winged humanoids are the Back Story behind the ruins and treasure they find. And the Sole Survivor of that civilization, now mutated into a winged demonic ape, is the Big Bad.
  • The Council Wars series has incredibly advanced genetic engineering that allows for two types of winged-humans. The first type look like normal humans with wings and can't fly without an outside power source. The second type can fly on their own but this is a much more significant modification so they look less human.
  • In Crescent City, angels are one of the many species of fantasy creatures in the series and have a heavy focus put on them. They have the large, bird-like wings typically depicted in drawings of angels.
  • Icari in The Darkangel Trilogy have a dozen black-feathered wings, which are attached by their witch creator at the age of sixteen.
  • Derk creates two of these in Dark Lord of Derkholm, though we don't see them till the sequel.
  • Devil's Cape has Osprey, Bedlam, and the Winged Tornado. Osprey is also mentioned as harboring a major vendetta against other winged supers, cutting the Winged Tornado's off in midair and changing targets to Bedlam midfight when she notices him.
  • In The Egg Man, everyone starts out with wings — in fact, each birth is of a multitude of creatures that look and behave a lot like flies, and only a fraction of them survive long enough to grow to resemble children. At that point, they are captured by one corporation or another and raised to be corporate citizens. They usually have their wings amputated after capture, since people find it unnerving to be reminded that they are the same species as those pests that they constantly see swarming over trash cans or dead in spider webs. However, Lincoln, the protagonist of the story, is one of the few people to have retained his wings into adulthood.
  • The people of Myyrrhn from The Elric Saga; although the only one with a speaking part happens to be a wingless individual, shunned by her race as a freak.
  • Fengshen Yanyi: the character of Leizhenzi eats two magical apricots that turns him in a tengu-like monster, complete with massive feathery wings which allows him to fly freely in the sky. Later in the story the bandit leader Xin Huan appears, described as an ogre-like red-skinned man with two "wings of flesh" (sic) on his back, and ends up dueling against Leizhenzi. Averted, despite the name, by the Immortal Yuyi/the Winged Immortal: despite being the Golden Peng in human form, he has a beak but not wings while in humanoid form, getting them back only when turning back into a colossal bird.
  • First Sword Chronicles gives us the aestivals, a winged race who represent air magic in the elemental spectrum. They are represented in the story by Octavia Volucris, who is only half aestival but still has the wings and the ability to fly.
  • In Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak's Forgotten Realms novels featuring Finder's Band, Jasmine is a woman with wings sprouting out of her back (eventually explained as being a "gift" from the Goddess of Luck, which is why she doesn't trust deities). What makes her particularly unusual is that the wings change based on what world or plane of reality she's on: in the Realms they're white dove wings, but they've been many other varieties of avian, insectile and even gargoyle and demonic wings.
  • Gaea, the ring-like artificial world of the Gaea Trilogy, has the angels: winged humanoids designed by the satellite's decidedly off-kilter "god". Since they had to obey the laws of aerodynamics, they come out looking a lot less human-looking (their wings have been moved to their center of gravity, for instance) than the angel-like creatures she desired, and they can only fly in low gravity (they live in the spokes, and most of them hate going down anywhere near the rim because it's very hard for them to get back up to where they can fly comfortably). There's an angel who saves humans who fall from the top of the spoke (he can't halt the fall, but he can slow it and steer them towards a lake, allowing them to survive impact). He does this because a lot of the human women he saves are rather grateful, and he's a chubby-chaser — all human women are "fat" compared to angels.
  • When using her full vampire form, Angelica of Girls Kingdom has batlike wings on her lower back, which give her the power of flight.
  • In Going Postal, Terry Pratchett makes an attempt to depict a Winged Humanoid while also managing a nod towards real-life physics: a flying banshee character has a slender lightweight frame, enormous flight muscles across his chest, and leathery wings that attach to his very long arms, rather than sprouting out of his back.
  • Grounded for All Eternity: All angels have wings, with powers, such as Malachi and his friends, having black-feathered ones.
  • Growing Wings, by Laurel Winter, features a girl named Linnet who, at puberty, starts growing large, auburn-feathered wings. It's revealed that her mother had them too, but her grandmother cut them off with a knife. Even later we find that that's what happened to the grandmother, too. In time she joins a little commune of people with a similar issue; the cutwings are normal except for the scars on their backs, there's a young man whose wings were bound instead of cut and as a result are tiny and stunted, and a few with whole wings. Notably, none of them can fly, though one is obsessed with the idea. They're just not adapted for it.
    Half of them were waiting around to see if they could fly. Half never would, but somehow they were always waiting too. Waiting to grow wings back or grow wings straight or lose enough weight for wings to lift an intentionally slender body.
  • Toothiana, Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies, from The Guardians of Childhood. She's actually half-human, with her mother being one of the Sisters of Flight, an entire race of winged women. Toothiana herself only grew her wings after losing her last baby tooth. And then everything went pear-shaped.
  • Barbara Berger's Gwinna starts out in classical fairy tale mode with the added twist that the little Wonder Child girl has wings, which her mom tries to bind to keep the child with her. Doesn't work, of course.
  • Halo (no, not that one), a Paranormal Romance series about a teenage angel in a Muggle and Magical Love Triangle. Angels have wings, but they're small and thin enough to hide under their clothes. Still provides a Plot Hole when the protagonist's older brother has a Shirtless Scene in front of their Nosy Neighbor; at that point the writer seems to have forgotten something important.
  • In Samantha Henderson's Heaven's Bones, a mad doctor in the 1860s uses radical surgery and clockwork to turn kidnapped women into Winged Humanoids, obsessively convinced that he's "making angels". Believe it or not, this one's justified, as he's being manipulated by a gypsy escapee from Ravenloft, and the Dark Powers are supernaturally ensuring his "creations" will survive and function, so he'll be pulled into the Land of Mists and drag this wayward Vistani back with him.
  • David, the mutant protagonist of Edmond Hamilton's Tear Jerker short story "He That Hath Wings", is explicitly stated to have both hollow bones and a skeleton adapted for flight. He's the basis for the cover image of both the American and British editions of Isaac Asimov's anthology Mutants, which includes the story.
  • In addition to her fly transformation, Beelzebub in I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level can perform a Partial Transformation that grants her human-sized fly wings to fly around even in demon form.
  • Joel Suzuki: In the main timeline, no lifeforms on Spectraland are capable of flying without magic, not even birds. But in Dance of the Darkeye, Joel and Felicity visit an alternate timeline where the natives evolved wings. In this timeline, some of the characters have different names, like Firefeather instead of Fireflower.
  • Last and First Men:
    • Among the various myths that arose in the First Dark Age about the glories of the bygone global civilization was one claiming that ancient men had been winged and capable of flight.
    • The Sixth Men — descendants of humans who had fled to Venus following Earth's destruction — became obsessed with flight, and, taking advantage of Venus's lighter gravity, ended up genetically engineering their own winged successors, the Seventh Men. Like bats, the Seventh Men's wings were part of their arms and hands, rather than being separate limbs, but they kept two fingers (thumb and index) reserved for use as actual fingers.
  • Book five of The Lost Years of Merlin series, called The Wings of Merlin, has characters earning wings as a plot point.
  • Andrea tries out Mail Order Wings in Beatrice Gormley's book by that name. It's a bit darker as she becomes more birdlike as she goes along and finally has to give them up.
  • The "bird kids" in the Maximum Ride series, including the title character, Max, are said to be the results of what happens when one splices hawk DNA into orphaned human children. It's worth mentioning that the kids are based on characters in an earlier novel, "When the Wind Blows" and its sequel "The Lake House". The kids there, however, have been extremely reformed to allow flight as well, creating a disturbing winged human-looking thing instead of a Winged Humanoid. Among these changes, as Max proudly declares, is that the bird-kids are oviparous. (They lay eggs.)
  • Aloisius, the eponymous angel in Der Münchner im Himmel, has a pair of wings, of course. How else would he be able to reach his cloud where his harp stands or return to his former hometown, Munich?
  • In Nights at the Circus, Sophie Fevvers is a Cockney aerialiste with wings, or so she claims. Walser thinks that the suspension of disbelief really lies in the fact she has six limbs, instead of wings-and-no-arms.
  • Perdido Street Station:
    • The Garuda are humanoid avians, though much more bird-like than person-like. A major character in the story is a garuda whose wings were cut off; he visits the city of New Crobuzon with the intent of finding someone to grant him flight again.
    • The Khepri have small, non-functional insect wings, but attached to their beetle-heads rather than their backs.
  • Three characters in The Questport Chronicles have these; apparently natural for two of them. The third was given wings through a spell.
  • In Renegades, the hero Thunderbird has functioning wings, letting her fly.
  • The extinct natives of Resurgam in Revelation Space were originally descended from birds, but a group of them did re-engineer themselves for flight and were found to have structural changes like a larger sternum for the wing muscles to anchor to.
  • Angels and demons in The Salvation War. They're rationalized, however, as using hydrogen-filled sacs within their bodies to fly and wings for maneuvering and thrust.
  • Self Portrait With Wings by Susan Kohn Green has would-be figure skater Jennifer idly sketching same with some iridescent pencils she doesn't know are magic. She wakes up the next morning with the huge gossamer wings she's depicted. They're invisible, but can be seen in a mirror. She has to go to school like that, and they're nothing but a huge, painful nuisance except when she's skating. Fortunately, she finds a way to get rid of them.
  • The Dark Elf Sorceror of Siege of Sardath has several winged Dark Elves as his personal guards, which he sends to patrol the borders of Sardath to spot intruders. The story's protagonist also obtains a tunic that grows wings on him in an infiltration process.
  • Skellig: The titular Skellig is noted to have a number of physical properties that would have once allowed him to fly, such as having wings and hollow bones.
  • Ray Cummings' Tama Of The Light Country, written in 1930, is a Planetary Romance about the social and political structure of the civilizations on Mercury. People there are generally small and slim and the women have enormous, functioning, feathered wings. The men are wingless. For centuries, the law has been that once a woman marries, she must have her wings "clipped", and for clipped, read hacked off without benefit of anesthesia. Tama is a very young woman who leads a "revolt of the winged virgins".
  • Terminal World has the angels, a race of humans bio-engineered and nanotechnology-enhanced for flight. In addition to being very light, they are noted to take advantage of the thermals rising from lower Spearpoint and to wear propulsion harnesses for additional thrust. And it helps that they're only in 1/3 gravity.
  • Ashlyn Nafina's To Dream, Perchance to Soar takes place in an alternative universe France (you know it is an alternative universe because it has zeppelins cruising overhead). Aile is a woman with a passion for flying, who has always felt she should have wings. Then one day the sky opens and les volants show up. They are called Ka'aulele and besides wings, the author has spent a considerable amount of effort on giving them a beautiful Conlang.
  • In Gabriel García Márquez's short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", the titular character is found in a small South American village. The villagers think he might be an angel, but he looks human: he's an old, flea-infested, wrinkled man with no teeth and crippled, barren wings. At the end of the story, he flies away, and we never find out whether he was an angel or just a Winged Humanoid.
  • Peregrine of Wild Cards fame. Interestingly, it's a form of telekinesis that lets her fly — her wings and hollow bones are a useless deformity, making her as much of a Joker as an Ace.
  • In the juvenile novel Wings 1991 by Bill Brittain, the main character is an Ordinary High-School Student who inexplicably develops a huge pair of fully functional bat-like wings.
  • The Witches of Eileanan: As the result of having spent several years in the form of a blackbird, Lachlan MacCuinn has a set of large, black wings. He doesn't initially think he can fly with them due to a Freakiness Shame, but eventually learns how to do so. His son Donncan inherits the wings.
  • The Simurgh from Worm and Ward is an unconventional Kaiju is just humanoid enough to count for this trope though exaggerated and Played for Horror. She is absolutely covered in wings, that sprout asymmetrically from everywhere on her almost five-meter-tall body. There are hints in fact that her body is nothing but wings in the rough shape of a giant woman.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In the 1970s, the series The Bugaloos depicts four winged teenagers who can fly.
  • Carnival Row: Faeries here are indistinguishable from humans except for their wings, and even can have children with them.
  • The Philippine TV series Mulawin depicts a race of bird-winged humans who can fly. Some appear to have been born with wings, others obtain them by magic. Some episodes also have winged flying fairies.
  • The Outer Limits (1995): In "The Origin of Species", Hope and the six students find the skeleton of a winged human, created using genetic engineering, on Earth in the future.
  • One of the most famous characters of Brazilian television, João Gibão of Saramandaia, who was born with wings and hides them from the rest of the town.
  • In Wizards of Waverly Place fairies, angels (both guardian and darkness), pegasi, and vampires have them.

    Manhua 

    Music 
  • Kim Jaejoong grows wings after breaking free of his chains in his "Mine" music video.
  • Miley Cyrus plays one (and also a Peacock Girl) in her "Can't Be Tamed" music video.
  • Progressive psy & bass-oriented artist Spundose features a winged woman on the cover of his release S Sacred Space.

    Myths & Religion 
  • The early Zoroastrians depicted a winged sun-disk called a farahavar. This later developed into the modern representation of the fravashis; the fravashi has the same "Assyrian" look as the angels of Byzantine iconography. Speaking of whom, the Assyrians depicted both gods and devils with four wings in a "fairy" or "butterfly" configuration.
  • Early Mesopotamic cultures had imagery of humanoids and animals (of non-winged species) with wings. Ancient Greece took that feature and incorporated it into its own iconography, resulting in various gods, personifications, and creatures with wings in Classical Greco-Roman Mythology and Imagery such as The Harpies. The wings depicted are usually feathered bird-wings, with the notable exception of Psyche's (Eros' lover) butterfly wings. Among the winged persons are among others: Nike (goddess of victory), Iris (goddess of the rainbow), Pegasos, gryphons. The Erotes Eros/Amor (love), Anteros (requited-love), Himeros (desire), and Pothos (longing) are usually depicted as young winged boys of various ages. Same as Thanatos (death).
  • Tengu from Japanese folklore. They're depicted as bird men with long pointed noses, mask-like faces, and feathered wings on their backs.
  • Oddly enough, few of the angels from the Abrahamic religions are this in the actual texts. They are usually either completely human in appearance with no wings or are Eldritch Abomination-like things that have wings but don't fit the "Humanoid" aspect of this trope. The only type that does explicitly fulfill this trope are the Seraphs that the prophet Isaiah sees around the throne of God, though they have six wings instead of two. The cherubs may arguably fit this idea as well, but they are not winged babies as commonly thought, but instead four-headed Mix-and-Match Critters with one human head and three animal heads. There are winged women mentioned in Zechariah and Revelation, but they are probably not actual entities, instead being symbolic of countries.
  • The badass Garuda from Hindu Mythology. In Japan where they're called karura, they're the precursor to the tengu.
  • Post-Norse depictions of Valkyries from Norse Mythology. Often depicted as winged maidens armed and in full armor who lifted the souls of the worthy from the battlefield and into Valhöll to train for Ragnarök. No such ideas known to be found in the original religion.
  • The gorgons. Yes, the Gorgons. They were said to have, as well as snaky locks, fangs and scales, wings of gold, and brazen claws.
  • When Egyptian gods have winged humanoid forms, they usually have the wings fused with their arms. But occasionally a deity will have two wings fused to their arms and one or more pairs sprouting from their back.
  • Alans in Filipino folklore. They're usually described as either half-human and half-bat or half-human and half-bird, but in all versions, they're at least partially humanoid. Another example from Filipino mythology is the manananggal, which is decidedly less friendly.
  • The Bible: In the Book of Zechariah, the titular prophet sees a vision of a woman in a basket in Chapter 5 (who represents Wickedness), with a lead covering over the basket, being carried by two women with stork-like wings to a place in the land of Shinar.

    Pinball 

    Pro Wrestling 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Certain demons in Demon: The Fallen have wings in their apocalyptic forms, usually either eagle, owl, or raven wings. Notably, most can only glide, but some of them can even fly. To quote the Player's Guide, "At the cost of one extra form point, the demon can take off from standing position and actually gain altitude by flapping her wings."
  • Dungeons & Dragons has the typical fairy, divine and demonic humanoids, who we could fill far too many pages listing.
    • Sylphs (female-only elemental kin here) are naturally levitating and use their gossamer wings only to move themselves around.
    • Many years earlier, a race of winged humans (called simply "winged folk") were described in a Dragon Magazine article, as an optional new race for 1st Edition AD&D.
    • Aarakocra have been described as a possible flying PC race, for Dark Sun in 2E, also present in Spelljammer and some locations in Forgotten Realms and for any sort of campaign in 3E. Their arms are feathered wings, so they don't fit the most common image for this trope, but are a lot more plausible. This changed in 5e, where they were redesigned to have seperate wings coming off their backs.
    • Mystara also has Enduks — winged minotaurs.
    • d20 made standard of previously exotic and case-by-case Half Human HybridsHalf Dragon, Half-Fiends and Half-Celestial.
    • The Winged template in the Savage Species splatbook lets anyone or anything have wings for a mere +2 level adjustment. It's actually one of the better templates for PCs to take.
    • Raptorans, added in Races of the Wild, are traditional winged humanoids, except for having taloned feet.
    • Any character with Dragon Wings (a 1st-level only feat that requires having a bit of dragon blood) is this. Dragonwrought kobolds (Races of the Dragon) are a bit funny in that they and only they are allowed to take it at third level, meaning that they can just suddenly wake up one day and have developed dragon wings overnight.
    • Avariel are reclusive race of winged elves.
    • Ravenloft features Diamabel, darklord of Pharazia, whose winged appearance is a gift — and curse — from the Dark Powers.
  • The German RPG Engel features these as the protagonists. It does at least try to accommodate physics by equipping angels with the physical appearance of 10-year-olds and 10-metre wingspans with massive flight muscles powered by nano-tech. The problems arising from these wings are also explored in the system — entering a common peasant's hut is difficult when the wings can at most be folded to occupy 3 metres, as is simply lying down.
  • Exalted:
    • The people of the air resemble slender humans with large feathered wings. The extreme improbability and impracticality of humanoids developing wings is justified by the fact that the titular Exalted created them with the secret arts and Lost Technology of the First Age, basically just to see if they could, and they require artificial wombs and specialized diets to survive. Bird-based beastmen also tend to sport wings, either as additional limbs or as modified arms.
    • Wyld mutants can also develop functional wings; in this case, it's justified because, well... it's the Wyld, although by the time you rack up enough Wyld mutations to develop functional wings, you rarely fit the "humanoid" part of Winged Humanoid anymore...
    • One of the Twisted from the Carnival supplement is a young woman with huge bat wings.
  • Games Workshop games:
    • Warhammer, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar & Warhammer 40,000 examples:
      • Many Champions of Chaos from grow functioning wings as a particular mutation, something that they maintain if they're fortunate enough to become a Daemon Prince.
      • The Bloodthirster Greater Daemons of the Blood God Khorne sport great pairs of bat wings, while the Lords of Change, the mightiest Daemons of Tzeentch the God of Magic, have wings of multi-coloured feathers that fit with their avian theme.
    • Warhammer 40,000:
      • The Blood Angels Primarch Sanguinius, known as "the Angel", had perfect white wings that were able to bear him aloft since he was a child. The mysterious Sanguinor, who first appeared after Sanguinius’ martyrdom, also sports a pair of angelic white wings leading some amongst the Chapter to believe that he is a manifestation of Primarch’s soul.
      • The Living Saints of the Adepta Sororitas are depicted as having angelic wings in artwork and background. The official model lacks wings but adding them is a very common fan conversion.
      • Some of the more mutated Chaos Space Marine Raptors and Warp Claws have biomechanical wings rather than the jump packs of their fellows. Chaos being what it is, the physical impossibilities of such wings are not much of an issue.
      • The Asuryani Swooping Hawks have advanced mechanical wings that generate an anti-gravity field, allowing them to fly with greater manoeuvrability than the jump pack equipped troops of lesser races.
      • Scourges are particularly courageous Drukhari who managed to get a Haemonculus to graft wings onto their backs. They do address some of the physics problems, as the Haemonculi have the medical technology to graft extra muscle across their chests and hollow out their bones. The wings are also realistically sized for their body. In Dark Eldar society Scourges serve as Flying Postmen, and act as agile skirmishers in battle.
      • Kroot of the Vulture Kindreds developed wings after consuming the bodies of winged enemies. Whether these wings are feathered, webbed, or just feathers extending off their arms depends on the creatures consumed.
    • In Necromunda, the suits worn by Yeld Spyre Hunters incorporate razor-sharp, chameleonic metal wings. Yeld wings aren’t as advanced as those used by the Swooping Hawks (see above) and are only used for short laborious jumps or to glide, rather than for true flight.
    • In Warhammer and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, Valkia the Bloody, one of the most favoured champions of Khorne, is modelled after a particularly sinister Valkyrie by her patron with a great pair of bat-like wings.
    • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
      • The Celestant-Prime, Knights-Azyros, Knights-Venator, and Prosecutors of the Stormcast Eternals are all borne aloft by glittering wings. This is to reinforce the Stormcast Eternals’ image as angelic warriors.
      • Alarielle, Goddess of Life Magic and Queen of the Sylvaneth, has a pair of branch-like wings with leaves for feathers growing from her back.
  • GURPS:
    • GURPS Fantasy Folk has the Winged Folk (Exactly What It Says on the Tin) available as a playable race.
    • GURPS Bio-Tech has the Camazotz, a bat-winged biomorph designed for colonizing a world with low gravity but a thick atmosphere.
  • Magic: The Gathering has standard angels, but also the diminutive fae, and the aven. Among others.
  • In Nomine: A few angels and demons have this sort of appearance.
    • Mercurians are the classic humans-with-avian-wings type of angels. Malakim are similar, but with black wings and shadowy bodies. In the process of becoming angels, Bright Lilim lose their horns and green skin in exchange for a pair of translucent wings.
    • Kalabim and Impudites both resemble archetypal red-skinned demons with bat-like wings.
  • Pathfinder has several winged playable races:
    • The Strix have sinister-looking bat wings, though they're a collective example of Dark Is Not Evil — only surly, viciously territorial, and misanthropic for very sound reasons.
    • The wyvarans are a rare winged offshoot of kobolds, believed to arise from interbreeding with wyvern. Thanks to the kobolds' fascination for all things draconic, their wings often win them leadership positions among the tribes, despite wyvarans being fairly unintelligent compared to kobolds.
    • The gathlain are a singularly odd variety of Fey whose wings are actually a unique plant species, inextricably bonded with the Gathlain in a symbiotic relationship.
    • A rare few of the Semi-Divine aasimar race quite literally earn their wings when their accomplishmentsnote  reach Living Legend status.
    • While the female Hulks of Zoretha are giant, rocky-skinned, seemingly sexless beings, the male Hulk resembles a beautiful humanoid man with vast dark wings. In battle, he mostly provides aerial support and performs flyby attacks while his mates keep targets bogged down in melee.
  • Rocket Age: The Jovians are gangly, elephant-trunked, winged sapients native to Jupiter.
  • RuneQuest: The Wind Children, descendants of the storm god Orlanth, resemble humans with avian wings. They love flying in wide-open spaces, and tend to be extremely claustrophobic.
  • Talislanta has the Gryphs and Stryx as winged humanoid races, complete with HUGE wings that actually look like they might get them off the ground. It also acknowledges the implausibility of this trope with the Aeriad (a race of bird-people who have lost their ability to truly fly—though they can still glide—in the course of adapting to a ground-based life) and the Muses (who have pretty butterfly wings, but can't stay aloft for very long).

    Theater 
  • A touring stage show Barbie Live! In Fairytopia in 2006 had many flying winged fairies. The title character was played by Erin Elizabeth Coors. Unfortunately, very little of the play has been posted online.

    Video Games 
  • The Master in Act Raiser 2. Can't truly fly, though. And in the first game, you got a flying angel armed with a bow in the simulation stages.
  • Agarest Senki series:
    • The first game, Agarest Senki, Harpuia and half-Harpuia in definitely qualify, even if the wings are from lower in the back. And while their neutral battlefield stance is standing, they do take advantage of it via the very useful Float willpower.
    • Agarest Senki 2 however has Yumil who always uses her wings in battles.
  • In Age of Mythology, there are the Caladria — a mythological unit that flies around and heals other units.
  • In Allods Online, elves have wings that they can use to float (but not really fly). You can also, regardless of race, buy yourself some prop wings.
  • Arcana Heart:
  • Arknights has the Sankta: Pseudo-angelic humanoids with wings as well as a halo that allows them to feel each other's emotions. Their wings appear as an array of Hard Light shapes behind their backs and their halos hover about six inches over their heads in a similar fashion.
  • Aerie from Baldur's Gate 2 was apparently a Winged Elf at one point, before being captured and caged made her wings atrophy and become infected, requiring amputation. The major result of this crippling confinement to the ground seems to be a tendency to bitchiness and whining.
  • BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has a sidequest involving seven of these. They’re siblings, each guarding a key to the Bonus Dungeon, so getting inside means tracking them all down. At least they’re pretty easy to find, y’know, thanks to the huge wings.
  • Breath of Fire:
    • In Breath of Fire II, Nina is looked down upon by the rest of her race because she has black wings, which are a bad omen. The females of the Dragon Clan (which the hero belongs to) possess wings as well, dragon-style of course.
      • Supplementary materials go out of their way to justify Nina's flight. Her internal anatomy is overall closer to a bird than a human, including things like hollow bones. So while she's incredibly light, 34kg including the wings despite being of average height, she's also incredibly fragile.
    • In Breath of Fire III, the Wyndians have long since lost their wings — Nina wears a fake pair.
      • Also in Breath of Fire 3, using the genes to turn Ryu into his Warrior Dragon or Myrmidon forms cause him to become a gargoyle-like Winged Humanoid. And then there are the Guardians, who look like winged gargoyles all the time.
      • The Goddess Myria has this in her normal form which also glow however the wings are upside down
    • And in Breath of Fire V, Nina has bright red abstractly wing-shaped appendages, but they're not actually wings.
  • In cat planet, you are an angel that must fly around and talk to cats!
  • In early 2007, City of Heroes added both feathered and bat-style wings to the character design options available to players. Oddly, these wings are not functional unless and until the player takes flight as one of the character's powers.
    • Since then the game has also added smaller versions of the bat and feathered wings, as well as dragon wings, insect wings (bee and butterfly styles), burned and bone wings (they have holes in the skin), and the cybernetic tech wings.
      • The wings were made to flap for any action which causes the player to leave the ground (I.E. Jumping, falling) by a later update.
  • Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: The titular people of the Wing were the rulers of Akoron who have roamed the sky freely. Gun is revealed to have wings, and is said to be the king of this world, but both points contradict a historical source.
  • The (arch)angels in the Diablo series are agents of Heaven with a rather unusual appearance. E.g. Tyrael's wings are actually tentacles made of light.
  • The angels in the Disgaea series predictably have wings, as do some of the humanoid demons, like Etna, Raspberyl, and the Succbus monsters. Only the angels are actually capable of flight in gameplay, though.
  • Dragon Quest:
  • Dungeon Keeper has fairies in the first game, then angels and dark angels in the sequel.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • In the series' mythology, Tava, the Yokudan/Redguard aspect of Kynareth, the Aedric Divine Goddess of the Air and Heavens, is typically depicted with bird wings and a bird's head. In that tradition, she is the patron of sailors.
    • Winged Twilights are a form of lesser Daedra who have humanoid bodies and bat-like wings. They are almost always hostile when encountered, but are said to be in service to Azura, one of the more benevolent and typically considered "good" Daedric Princes.
    • Umaril the Unfeathered, an Ayleid sorcerer-king who ruled the Ayleid Empire at the time of the Alessian Revolt, had unfeathered angel wings which came across looking more like Spikes of Villainy. He returns to serve as the Big Bad of Oblivion's Knights of the Nine expansion.
  • The Eternal Senia series: In all depictions, Eternal Senia and Eternal Senia: Hydrangea After The Rain, Little Fairy is a tiny Winged Humanoid.
  • Fairyside: The Luninsula guardian spirits, who have four wings in an X shape on their back are also sisters, who all start off as My Name Is ??? before they give their names.
    • Memory 7 has Shirley meet Fifi, pink wings, and red dress and hair. The hair has some orange parts in it.
    • Memory 8 has Shirley meet Evaline, blue winged and light green dress and hair, and Clara, green wings, purple hair, and dark green dress.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Dirge of Cerberus brings us Nero the Sable, who got wings installed on him via surgery.
    • Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings introduces the aegyl, a race of winged creatures living on a Floating Continent (or rather a floating archipelago).
      • Although the real-life implications of having wings do seem to come slightly into play here, because it's stated that having the wings puts an incredible strain on the aegyl's bodies, so they only end up living to around the age of 40.
    • Final Fantasy VIII: Sorceress Ultimecia has black-feathered, frazzled-looking wings.
    • The Black Waltzes that the Queen sends after Garnet in Final Fantasy IX have navy blue-feathered wings, matching their cloaks. The child Eiko wears a pair of tiny, decorative wings on her back, which are actually a hindrance due to the villains' fondness for catching her by them. Then, in possibly the strangest occurrence of the trope, the gigantic living castle, Alexander, grows shining white wings that it uses to defend Alexandria from Bahamut's attack; quite horrifically, Garland's fatal attack on Alexander causes the wings to rot.)
    • The Gria from Final Fantasy Tactics A2 are a race of dragon girls who have wings that magically increase in size while being used for flight. They allow them to bypass obstacles such as terrain height and enemy units that would limit the movement range of other races (Excluding the weak chocobo riders and those who have a pair of the elusive Faerie Shoes equipped). Coupled with their offensive prowess, this makes them extremely useful clan members.
    • The Goddess in Final Fantasy Legend II is one of these, as are the Goddesses of Destiny in the 2009 remake.
  • The bird Laguz tribes of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance retain their wings even in human form; all but one character can fly using them.
  • Glass Wing is an indie platformer game where you play as a fairy with wings made of glass (who knew?) sprouting from your shoulders.
  • Millenia from Grandia II. Justified in that she's the Wings of Valmar. Strangely enough, despite being a fragment of Valmar, she's not an Eldritch Abomination (actually mighty sexy).
  • Grim Fandango features a pair of child souls ("Angelitos"), who have the same skeleton/calaca appearance as all of the other souls, except with small white wings on their backs. Why exactly they have wings is never explained in-game. They're shown to be capable of flying, though Meche states that the Angelitos can't fly very far.
  • The chivalrous, winged Balmung is one of the iconic characters of .hack.
    • Minor character Terajima Ryoko also has wings, though hers are substantially smaller and less functional. She also sports a halo which is held in place by a rather obvious rod. Justified in that this, of course, is set inside an MMORPG, where such accessories are not only common but frequently highly desired.
      • Interestingly, Balmung is among the very few cases of a winged character who can use them to fly. A non-player example somewhat includes the avatars seen in GU, such as Skeith (moreso in its third evolution), Innis (not the straightest example since such wings were incorporated in the form of a halo on its back), and Tarvos (who had what appeared to be large wings attached to its head). All of them can levitate without using these features, however.
  • Angels by another name appear in several of the Heroes of Might and Magic games.
  • The elves in Kameo: Elements of Power, including Kameo herself, can spawn transparent, fairy-like wings which allows them to fly and hover.
  • Kid Icarus:
    • Kid Icarus (1986): Pit, being an angel, has white feathered wings. They don't become functional until the final stage, though.
    • Kid Icarus: Uprising: Pit's wings are still dysfunctional, but Palutena and later Viridi grant him the Power of Flight, enabling him to fly. Also in Uprising, there's his Doppelgänger Dark Pit, whose wings were functional due to using Pandora's remnants. He loses this capability as he saves Pit in a late chapter.
  • The Winged Ones of King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow are white-winged, but their pomposity and cowardice belies their angelic appearance.
  • In the Legacy of Kain series, we have the ancient vampire race, who are mostly humanoid in appearance (with the exception of blue skin and three-clawed hands and feet), only with large feathered wings sprouting from their backs. The Hylden have leathery wings with no "finger bones", kinda like a pterosaur's. Raziel also gains a pair of bat-like wings in the prologue of Soul Reaver but has them ripped to shreds by Kain immediately after growing them and spends the rest of the franchise with the torn remnants of his wings on his back (which are still pretty handy to glide around with).
  • Sadie, the Breeze Witch in Luminous Arc 2.
  • The Maid of Fairewell Heights: Fluffy wings are part of the Angel costume.
  • Tengu Man, from Mega Man 8 and Mega Man & Bass. His are thin, spike-like jets. Shademan in 7 has bat-wings. Bass fits the trope even further when using the Treble Boost. Mega Man himself has had the Jet and Super armors, with squared-off jets.
    • The Mega Man X series has Storm Eagle and Storm Owl.
  • Inverted in the Metroid series with the Chozo; rather than being humans with wings, they're birds without wings!
  • Humanoid Karuraten from Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA-. Given that he is the Garuḍa, the original tengu, it's hardly surprising. Averted in the anime where his human form has no wings.
  • Kaelyn the Dove in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer. They don't let her fly but do give a 20% speed bonus.
  • Angels and demons in Nexus Clash regularly have feathered or leathery wings, though flying this way is considered one of the less efficient forms of transportation (relative to various forms of Super-Speed) due to the need to land and take off.
  • Princess Gwendolyn (and by extension, the rest of the valkyries) from Odin Sphere has feathery wings that protrude from her hips. She dresses like a battle-ballerina for this reason.
  • The Ogre Battle universe has Hawkmen (Eaglemen & Ravenmen, too) the most famous being reoccurring character Canopus. Seeing how much of the series is based on Queen, it's not too hard to think the Hawkmen were based on the ones from Flash Gordon. In fact, one of the classes from Ogre Battle 64 is dubbed a "Vultan".
  • In Ōkami, the Celestials are humanoids with somewhat small wings growing out of their heads, just above their ears. They are divine beings, however, so it's unlikely their wings are actually useful. There are also the Blue Cyclops and the Great Tengu enemies when they transform into their human-like shapes.
  • Persona 5: The main character's eponymous Persona Guardian Entity, Arsène, is a masked man with giant black bird wings sticking out of its lower back.
  • Prayer of the Faithless: Confinement has the Druj enemy type, which is only seen from the back except for their faces turning towards the party, but they have a humanoid face and ears, but they sport wings, horns, and a tail, along with clawed feet.
  • Rave Heart: Tellians are a race from the Ursula Constellation, and they look like humanoid angels.
  • Runescape has Demons on any tier higher than Greater, Icyene, Vyrewatch, Aviansie, Dragonkin, and Zamorak.
  • SALVATOR: The Player Character is a humanoid angel with black wings.
  • Spiritual Assassin Taromaru have winged bird-men as recurring enemies, who have the ability to create tornadoes as projectiles and send them down from above to attack your characters.
  • Rouge the Bat from Sonic the Hedgehog.
  • StarCraft's Kerrigan has wings but they are useless for flight; instead they're just wing bones with armor-piercing claws on the ends.
  • Members of the Featherfolk race in the Star Ocean universe have wings, as well. The third game's dictionary handwaves this by explaining that, being descended from birds, they have hollow bones, and at some point in their evolutionary history, the humerus bone split in two. The vast majority can only fly for brief periods. A very small number can't fly at all. Although the only one we see that can't fly eventually learns.
  • The Siren race from Startopia are attractive human-looking winged people. Two things are unique about them: first, the Baywatch Babes are actually the males, and the Chippendales Dancers are the females. Secondly, their "wings" are their sex organs.
  • The aptly named Wingers of Suikoden.
  • Sunset Overdrive: If the Baby Angel outfit is any indication, then [[Our Angels Are Different angels are humans but with wings that are about as wide as the torso and as tall as a head coming out the back.
  • The robot Angelg from Super Robot Wars is practically this trope in Humongous Mecha.
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl:
    • Tabuu has an odd, technologically inspired evil kind.
    • Also, Pit, with Dark Pit joining him in for 3DS/Wii U.
  • The casual Hidden Object Game Surface: The Soaring City features a colony of winged humans, who were given the power of flight by a brilliant inventor whom the player must rescue.
  • The titular character of Sylphia originally starts off as a human warrior, but after she's chosen by the gods as defenders against The Horde, she then gains wings and flies all over the place kicking ass.
  • Touhou Project: Largely the domain of characters based on winged creatures. So you have the bird-girls Mystia and Utsuho and the vampires Remilia and Flandre (though Flan's wings are truly bizarre). The crow tengu may or may not have wings, or they may be of the vanishing kind. Then there's Nue with her tentacle-scythe/tail things coming out of her back. Of course, none of this really matters because everyone can fly to begin with.
  • ULTRAKILL: V1 and V2 are Humanoid Cyclopean Killer Robots with eight sets of yellow mechanical wings, and while they don't allow them to fly, they allow them to slide, dash, and in V1's case, carry their weapons. Gabriel the Archangel also has wings and a humanoid shape, but unlike most angels, his wings are blue and energetic instead of white and feathered.
  • Lydians from A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky are a less ridiculous depiction than most since their wings don't actually do anything; in particular, they don't let Lydians fly (by natural means, that is).
  • Will Rock has the Eroses, ugly, baby like monsters that shot arrows at you and Medusa, who looks like a fat gargoyle with a skeletal face.
  • The Firekkans from the Wing Commander add-on The Secret Missions 2: Crusade are only seen in cutscenes, but are pictured as winged humans with avian traits like beaks and talon-like hands.
  • The Reapers from The World Ends with You have abstract wing-shaped appendages coming out of their backs. While they CAN fly if needed, the wings don't really help with that and are instead a symbol of their status. The Stinger shows that Hanekoma has a pair of angelic wings as well.
    • Beat gains the wings upon becoming a Reaper, and thus the character sprite both in-battle and in the cut scenes display them.
      • This is foreshadowed cleverly in the game's artwork. Take a look at the tire marks on the pavement behind Beat. What do those look like?
    • And we also see in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] that Joshua not only has a pair of wings, but they are ANGELIC wings, which has some very interesting implications.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Wings are common among demonic races, going back to the Warcraft RTS series. Dread Lords, Succubi, Doomguards, and even the non-humanoid Pit Lords have bat-like wings, although only Doomguards have ever been shown flying in the game.
    • Spirit healers and more recently Val'kyr have angelic feathery wings; both are associated with guiding the souls of the deceased.
    • Kyrian, the race of the aforementioned spirit guides, have large, fully functional white-feathered wings. Unless they turn dark.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles:
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 1: The High Entia race are an odd version of this, the wings in question being on their heads instead of their backs. While they can be used for flight, one of them states that it takes too much effort for most of them to want to bother learning how. Instead, the primary benefit of the wings is that they help them shape ether, making them a race of excellent mages.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The High Entia return as part of the Kevesi army... except since no one knows what races are, to the soldiers random head-wings are no different than how some of their friends have gray steely skin. All High Entia in the game have short head-wings, going down to only their shoulders, which was a trait exclusive to half-Homs in the first game. Again, because of the general Weirdness Censor and lack of context the soldiers have, the only time their wings are actually mentioned is in the City.
      Zeon: I suddenly have this feeling of being watched...
      Eunie: Guess they've never seen folks with wings before. They're the weird ones, just stare back.
  • Chaos from the Xenosaga series utilizes the white-winged option. A couple of his Tech attacks in the first game involved taking flight with two small wings, and while not shown, even the third game had a tech called "Angel Wings". Of course, he is essentially God's failsafe.
  • The Eldeen in the Ys universe. Ernst also becomes one when he goes One-Winged Angel (pardon the pun).

    Visual Novels 
  • Magical Diary: Pastel Rao, as said in the opening ceremony, when pictured in Horse Hall:
    One girl has glittering wings.
  • Marco & the Galaxy Dragon: One of Astaroth’s minions, Ulginos, is a hooded figure with large black wings.
  • Two of the Dead Apostle Ancestors in Tsukihime are some sort of hybrid bird creatures. They haven't appeared in anything but supplementary material yet, though.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: Played with. Bodybuilders eventually grow organic jetpacks, which are directly compared to wings.
    Bandito: Wouldn't wings make more sense?
    Dr. McNinja: No. Animals get wings, humans get jetpacks.
  • Angel Moxie: Alex's magical form has wings. Better yet, they do allow her to fly.
  • Archipelago has Avians who can even fly quite a distance (including between the islands). Raven also has functional wings, one physical and one magical, though he's not much of a flier.
  • Aurora (2019): Cloudchildren, a humanoid species that was artificially created a few centuries before the comic's time, resemble small elves or humans (they're never over four feet fall) with either avian, chiropteran or insect wings, and are fully capable of flight.
  • Avialae: The main plot is about a teenage boy suddenly starting to grow wings one day. It turns out to be the result of him being a Half-Human Hybrid offspring of a human father and a mother from a secret Winged Humanoid race.
  • Charby the Vampirate: Fairies, the scotodino and some of the Anh Keth all have wings.
  • College Roomies from Hell!!!: Marsha develops wings after being bitten by a "batato" that developed in the guys' horrendously filthy kitchen.
  • In The Croaking, the world is solely populated by avians, winged humanoids whose wings differ by species (there are eagles, crows, kestrels, doves, sparrows, penguins...). The webcomic illustrates how everyone having wings and nearly everyone being able to fly might influence interieur design, clothing and architecture.
  • Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Most of the cast has wings of one sort or another, whether they're demons, angels, succubi/incubi, dragons, or anthropomorphic birds. The background materials explain that winged creatures are common, but a minority in the world as a whole.
  • The Dragon Doctors: Aki has pixie wings, explained as working by magic instead of physics.
  • Dubious Company: Walter, tends to forget he is a member of the avios race. The wings start out as cute but ineffectual appendages. Once aviousians become adults, however, the wings are fully-functional and capable of folding into their backs.
  • El Goonish Shive:
    • Nanase's Guardian Angel spell gives her white feathery wings, among other things.
    • Naturally, Nanase's fairy dolls have dragonfly-like wings.
    • Vlad was created from human, bat, and bird DNA, so he wound up with bat wings, with a few feathers here and there, in place of arms.
    • Sirleck is a borderline example; he has wings of uncertain utility but is not exactly humanoid. However, he possesses human hosts to live which does give him this appearance in the Spiritual Plane.
  • Girl Genius: One of the women in the Queen of England's garden is a purple-skinned humanoid with wings and antennae.
  • Goblins: Duv the White Terror has a single wing which marks her out as a chosen one of Maglubiyet, the goblin deity. Her backstory claims that she was born with two but the other one was burned off in a fire.
  • Hark! A Vagrant: Queen Bess has "[...] the wingspan of an ALBATROSS".
  • Homestuck:
    • The Summoner underwent an extremely rare secondary pupation in trolls sometime during his early adulthood and ended up with a large pair of butterfly wings. He could fly with them, too.
    • As part of to Sburb's game mechanics, any NPC wearing a royal ring from the first Sburb session gets a whole host of awesome powers, including flight and some wings. Flight in general is unrelated to wings; they're mostly there for flavour or mandatory part of a transformation.
    • The prototyping process also results in several of Sburb's internal enemies, including a number of humanoid ones, gaining feathered wings.
    • Davepetaprite^2 got Davesprite's wings which, combined with getting actual legs on becoming a sprite squared, puts them squarely in this trope.
  • Last Res0rt has the Celeste, which basically are a hybrid species effectively characterized as being "anything with wings on it". Only the ones with the largest wings (naturally, on their back) are useful for flight.
  • Linburger: Firne have bat wings. They aren't evil though, and so far they haven't shown any ability to fly.
  • Lotus Cobra Is Evil: A Holy Halo-wearing one is named as an angel in "Angel Beats".
  • Lovely Lovecraft: Night Gaunts have leathery wings.
  • Metompsychosis Union: Freya's wings are what made her attractive to the black market dealing in people. They are mostly transparent with swrils of light.
  • My Impossible Soulmate: Among Room P-1's students are Eiji and Nagisa, who have white wings and black wings, respectively.
  • In Oceanfalls, a race known as "the winged" exists, and is revealed to be able to awaken more than one ability.
  • The Order of the Stick: Celia, as a sylph from the Elemental Plane of Air, has dragonfly-like wings. The various Celestials, inspired by the D&D templates, have feathery wings. Kilkil the urd (a type of kobold with dragon blood in them) and Enor the dragon-ogre hybrid both have dragon wings.
  • Realta: Female Virgo are horned humanoids born with wings.
  • Sluggy Freelance: One of Aylee's transformations is mostly human, but with a set of leathery wings coming out of her back. When these wings aren't in use, she wraps them around her body so they form the shape of a dress.
  • Sombulus has two races, the Demshul and the Kanite, who look respectively like demons with devil wings and angels with feather wings. Astyr, one of the main characters, is a Demshul who somehow manages to fly with only one wing.

    Web Original 
  • In the Dream SMP, Philza canonically has a pair of wings, though they are not visible on his Minecraft skin (they are implied to be hidden under his cape), as a Mythology Gag to him almost constantly wearing a pair of Elytra in his Hardcore series. They became shredded after he used them to shield his son, Wilbur from the detonation of Manburg during his debut stream, to the point that he can no longer use them to fly. His Syndicate codename, "Zephyrus", is also a reference to this, as the Anemoi are depicted with a pair of wings when they are personified.
  • How to Hero claims that every superhero team has a guy with wings.
  • Some agents in the Protectors of the Plot Continuum have these.
  • Bookburners: In Badge, Book, and Candle, a magical "pair of wings that would let you fly if you put them on" is mentioned.

    Western Animation 
  • In Exo Squad, the Bat and Avian forms of Neo Warrior naturally have batlike and feathery wings respectively. The Neo Lords have rather small mosquito-style wings.
  • Gargoyles are a subversion of the "batwings are evil" variety. They only glide via their wings (that is, they state in the pilot that they can only glide, but are later seen to "glide" faster and more maneuverability than a military jet can fly!), and have the ability to tuck them around their necks like cloaks when not in flight. The series' creator openly admitted that he invented this ability because, otherwise, "staging scenes where many of the major characters have big, crazy wings would have been a right pain in the ass." The one exception is Lexington, whose wings are under his arms like a flying squirrel.
    • It should also be noted that feathered wings appear just as much in Gargoyles as bat wings do. In fact, Bat wings seem to be the exclusive feature of Scottish gargoyles, which is why the main cast has them. Gargoyles from England, Guatemala, and Japan show an even mix in wing type.
    • Notably, in an episode where Xanatos expresses his desire to create his own race of gargoyles, the myriad problems that make it nearly impossible for a human-size creature to fly are explained to him (and thus the viewer).
  • The title character of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law has (mostly unused) wings. Other characters such as Peanut and Birdgirl have metallic wings (that still do nothing).
    • This show was a recent-years parody of the original 1967 Saturday Morning show Birdman, of Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, in which his wings were used quite often. His power was derived from the sun/solar energy, and while his wings could change position (outstretched and at rest) they hardly ever flapped, mainly due to keeping the cost of animation down. Thusly he was able to float without flapping. The bird Animal Companion, Avenger, also suffered from this cost-cutting in that his wings never really moved, and he floated without flapping as well. His battlecry was an echoing "Biiiirrrrddd-MAN!!" The character 'Peanut' was known as Birdboy, his ward, and had artificial metal wings. How they were powered is unknown. Birdgirl never appeared in the original show.
  • A few of the people of Miseryville on Jimmy Two-Shoes have wings growing out of their backs, although usually too small to let them fly. Most are of the bat-winged variety, but some have fairy-like wings, notably a Cute Monster Girl TV reporter apparently named Apple.
  • Justice League's Hawkgirl (the animated version) is a member of the race of Thanagarians, who all have wings. (Word of God has said that these wings are a result of genetic experimentation and are not natural otherwise.)
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power has Harpies. Harpies in general tend to be an aversion of the Good Wings, Evil Wings trope because, although they're evil and look it, they have Avian wings, like angels, as opposed to the bat wings of most evil Winged Humanoids.
    • Queen Angella, in keeping with the theme of being an angelic being, has a gigantic pair of beautiful white feathered wings jutting from her back. For variety, there are also Sweet Bee and Flutterina, who possess more insectoid honey bee and butterfly wings respectively, while maintaining lovely human bodies. On the villainous Horde's side is Vultak, their zookeeper, who takes a more avian approach to his design.
  • In the 2018 reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Queen Angella has large translucent wings. Imp has been reinterpreted as a blue-skinned little boy with bat wings.
  • Star Trek: The Animated Series featured a race called the Skorr in a few episodes who, unlike most winged humanoids were far more bird-like than normal. Oh, and their feathers were yellow.
  • Talon, from Static Shock, has wings on her arms and talons for feet.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), Avians are a race of winged humanoids genetically engineered by Y'Lyntians as slaves. Now freed, they live in an undetectable city in the sky. One of these, Raptarr, is a recurring character in the series, and a member of the current Justice Force. The Inawashi Gunjin from Fast Forward also qualify.
  • Teen Titans (2003): Angel of the H.I.V.E. Academy has feathered wings she can shift the size of.
  • The main characters in W.I.T.C.H. have tiny wings on their backs which enable them to fly (in the cartoon. In the comic, only Hay Lin could fly until a power upgrade gave everyone the ability much later). However, these are just for show, and the flight is explicitly magical.
    • The second arc introduces the Knights of Destruction, a four-member Quirky Miniboss Squad. One has bat wings, one has white bird wings, and the leader has black bird wings.
  • Transformers often have these, depending on how they transform and what they turn into. If their alternate mode flies, their wings may let them do it in robot mode too. Otherwise, these "wings" are purely decorative, and generally an artifact of transformation. One of the most common is car doors projecting from the back, seen in virtually every series since the original (those that included vehicle transformations, anyway).
    • Incidentally, a running theme throughout the franchise is that the Decepticons are more flight-oriented than the Autobots, with the Decepticons having the Seekers and Megatron flying, regardless of whether his alt-mode can. Shockwave and Soundwave also fly; no idea how a giant gun and a Walkman manage that.
      • One piece of Fanon is that anyone who becomes a Decepticon has to undergo a painful and dangerous augmentation, which not only makes them physically mightier but fits them with anti-gravity generators allowing them to fly even when in Humongous Mecha mode.
    • Transformers: Armada Starscream, the perpetual jet of the series, has one of his wings turn into a sword.
  • Zap Monogan from Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist has a pair of insect wings because he has fly DNA mixed with his.

Vanishing Wings

    Anime & Manga 
  • Goddesses like Belldandy in Ah! My Goddess can sprout wings — apparently, "borrowed" from their angels.
  • Kanna of Air, whose wings are central to the story's plot.
  • Athena in Angelic Layer sprouts big white wings in some battles for little reason, other than it looks cool. In Hikaru and Athena's battle, Hikaru also sprouts wings, without any previous indication that she was able.
    • Well, it is CLAMP. Wings play into practically all of their works at some point. To that end, Sakura of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- may also count.
    • All of the angels (and "devils") from Wish.
  • Angel Sanctuary: All the angels, of course, and the demons too. The fact that their wings seem to appear and disappear as they're needed is never explained or commented on, despite housing the angel's immune system.
  • The Tengu in Black Bird (2006) have wings, but they do not appear when they are disguised as humans.
  • Black Butler: Angela hides her wings to appear human. As Ash, s/he does the same thing.
  • In Bleach, Hitsugaya's bankai gives him a pair of ice wings, though they seem to be just for show, as most Shinigami of that strength can hover in midair with or without the aid of wings.
    • More recently, Uliquorra's resureccion includes bat-like wings.
    • The Quincy: Vollstandig technique of the Vandenreich grants Quincies wings and immense power. They are meant to be parallels of angels, as they are given said power by their emperor and "God" Yhwach, but none of them have the traditional angels wings except for the Schutzstaffel.
  • Subverted somewhat in Buso Renkin in that the hawk homunculus can transform his hands into giant metallic wings sprouting from his arms, which is a bit more realistic. He does not have any feathers, he doesn't really use them for flying in his humanoid form, and his morally grey nature is not indicated by the wing type. The author explained that he hates usual winged humanoids, so this was his compromise.
  • In Cardcaptor Sakura, the Fly card initially puts wings on Sakura's staff, which she would ride on, broom-like. In a later arc, she modifies the card so that it gives her the wings (appropriately angelic and in Perpetual Molt) during a situation that requires her to both fly and use her staff as a sword (using, of course, the Sword card. Clow Reed was nothing if not straightforward in naming).
  • A Certain Magical Index: Ignoring the actual angels, both Accelerator and Kakine Teitoku, the two most powerful espers, have the ability to manifest wings. If they do, run, because it means their Story-Breaker Power just got amplified. Kakine's six white wings appear to be made of Dark Matter, the same exotic material he's able to produce en masse, while Accelerator's black, somewhat gaseous wings are made of... no one's really sure, but anything that touches them gets annihilated near-instantly.
    • In one of the SS novels, A Certain Scientific Railgun's Misaka Mikoto goes under a temporary faux-awakening due to perfect conditions for it to happen where she sprouts four purple plasma wings that allow her to fly like propellers.
  • There is an angel in Chrono Crusade but he is wingless, while the Apostles, though initially human, grow wings from time to time.
    • Many of the demons also have wings, although unlike the Apostle's feathered ones, they look more like a bat's wings. Strangely, only some of them have wings — and it seems like the ones that do are mostly, if not all, male.
  • Some of Corrector Yui's battle forms have wings of sorts.
  • Shinigami in Death Note have rather ragged wings of the retractable variety.
  • Digimon is replete with characters that have at least one evolution that fits this. Go ahead and try to find a season that doesn't, I dare you.
  • Dark of D.N.Angel. Black and feathery ones. But they actually are his shape-changing pet, With. (Conveniently explaining why they're not always there.)
    • Krad has white, feathery wings. These are apparently real in the sense that they're not shapechanged from anything. It's said that Dark can manifest his own wings, too, but doing so would damage his host, so he refuses to. These two also have an inverted color-code, because Krad is the bad guy (and, thus, willing to cause his host pain), and Dark the good one.
  • Dragon Crisis! features almost half a dozen dragons, all of which have retractable wings of various colors from the moment they hatch. Although identical to humans save for the wings and a small mark on their hands, they can turn into full-on dragons if they need to.
  • In ef: A Tale Of Memories, Chihiro is shown sprouting wings during the highlight moment of her story arc. It's likely just symbolic, although with that series you can't take anything for granted.
  • The final form of Monad Proxy in Ergo Proxy is that of angelic Re-l. Don't ask. It's complicatedly confusing.
  • In Eureka Seven AO Eureka, who previously had permanent wings, learns to hide them and is mainly shown wingless. She does use them in several scenes, though, so she's able to manifest them at will.
  • Nue in Harukanaru Toki no Naka de could achieve humanoid form and sprout wings in that form at will.
  • Ikaros of Heaven's Lost Property has pink wings. In fact, all Angeloids look like human girls with large wings.
  • The Angels, Fallen Angels and Devils from High School D×D all have these some of the time (mostly in certain combat scenes). Angels and Fallen Angels have the standard feathered kind (white for Angels, black for Fallen Angels), while Devils have bat-like or, perhaps, draconic wings instead.
  • Howl in the film version of Howl's Moving Castle occasionally turns into a bird-like creature. The markings on his wings are probably a Shout-Out/Continuity Nod to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, as they are the same as those on Nausicaa's sleeves.
  • Knight Hunters: The OP of Weiß Kreuz Glühen features the main characters with wings on their backs. Black ones, to boot, but feathered, not bat-like.
  • Yagami Hayate, who first appears in the second season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, sprouts 6 grey "Seraphim" style wings after her Transformation Sequence. This comes from her "unison" power with Reinforce, who also sports them in her original (evil) form. She seems to have given the wings to Hayate completely after her transformation into Reinforce Zwei, although she can still fly around.
  • In the Maximum Ride manga, the bird kids' wings disappear and reappear whenever they need to.
  • My Monster Secret: All the vampires have the traditional large, retractable bat wings.
  • Konan of Naruto is nicknamed "Angel" by the villagers of Amegakure because of the large pair of paper wings she can create and attach by will. She is however capable of hovering without them.
  • Setsuna from Negima! Magister Negi Magi is a Half-Human Hybrid of "the Bird Tribe" demons, which resemble traditional Japanese Tengu, but nobody says that out loud. Like Van, she can summon her wings at will. She has a sort of albinism, which makes her feathered wings white. While anathema to her demonic ancestry, her human friends think she looks like an angel. Occasionally, Setsuna will have her wings in a cute little 'cupid' form, although this might just be for laughs.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion and its follow-up movie End of Evangelion, various Angels are shown extending multiple pairs of energy wings.
    • The Mass Production EVA units from End of Evangelion are a particularly messed-up case. They enter their scene gliding on enormous, gliderlike wing-and-tailfeather sets. Upon landing, they retract their entire several-hudred-foot wingspan into a pair of small plates on their backs. At the end of the fight, they take off again and use their wings like actual birds, all the while in Perpetual Molt.
      • Not to mention Rei and Unit 01 who each sprout the Faux Symbolism set of twelve wings the size of the moon.
  • The unnamed winged girl from On Your Mark by Hayao Miyazaki, (who looks a lot like Nausicaa) is held prisoner by a cult.
  • In Pokémon Adventures, there are a few shots of trainers who appear to be winged; it's really just a Pokémon behind them. Pure Rule of Cool. Red once looks like he has Aerodactyl wings before it grabs his shoulders and flies off with him, and another features Cyrus with his Honchcrow, making him look like some evil angel. Of course, the most iconic is Yellow and her Butterfree, which actually does clutch onto her back while flying making as look as if she really does have her own wings.
  • In the epilogue of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Homura is seen sprouting a pair of giant wings out of her back before she fights a bunch of Grief Demons.
  • RahXephon had the titular mecha/Dolem having wings on it's head. In the penultimate episode, it grew proper wings from it's back, as did Quon's RahXephon as well.
  • Ruby Toujou from Rosario + Vampire is a crow-motif witch who is able to sprout six black wings with razor-sharp feathers.
  • Chise from Saikano has metallic wings that sprout from her back, causing her large amounts of pain, whenever she becomes the "ultimate weapon".
  • Sailor Moon's "Eternal" form costume seems to have purely decorative ones that cause nothing but inconvenience, like letting her be pinned to walls and squeezing through narrow doorways. However, in the first anime's final episode, Sailor Moon was stripped of her costume, but attained real (and realistic-looking) wings that allowed her to fly. The season's Big Bad, Sailor Galaxia, got red bat-like wings in the final episode, as a result of the transformation into her black "evil" form. In the manga, though, she had more realistic wings.
  • Shana in Shakugan no Shana, who grows flame wings during her second fight with Margery Daw.
  • Fumika and Chiaki from Shigofumi use their talking staffs to sprout wings and fly. However, they have a limited time in which this function can be used, after which they return to normal.
  • The Tenchi series and Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure have the Light Hawk Wings. They are implied to be the same artifact, but Dual's version only appears on a mech. These wings cannot be used for flight.
  • Mew Mint from Tokyo Mew Mew has lorikeet DNA, and therefore sprouts lorikeet-sized wings from her back. Despite their tiny size, she can fly with them.
  • The Crusniks in Trinity Blood have wings when the nanomachines in their bodies are at eighty and one hundred percent, although we don't get to see them use them until the last episode of the anime. In an inversion of the traditional color coding of wings, good guy Abel has black wings while his psycho twin Cain has white ones. This may be related to the fact that before Crusniks and Methuselah were sent to Mars, Cain was the prim and proper good brother while Abel was a rascal who engaged in borderline terrorism in order to exert vengeance for their very existence, with Cain secretly losing his mind during the exile and Abel choosing the redemption path at the end of the invasion after seeing Cain murder his love before his eyes.
  • Sakura in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- does not have literal feathered wings, but more fluid-looking wings which, we are informed, are composed of her collective memories from her birth and have the power to travel across the various dimensions without limit. When the wings are broken, they scatter into feathers of astonishing power, which do not look at all like they should comprise the wings themselves. However, the very first few panels of the first chapter seemed to indicate that Sakura's wings do allow her to fly, but that she does not control them, nor when they sprout from her back.
  • Van from The Vision of Escaflowne is a Half-Human Hybrid of the Draconian race, and has wings that he can "summon" when he needs to. His Aloof Big Brother also sports a pair.
  • Karura of Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs can sprout black feathery wings at will due to being a Tengu.

    Comic Books 
  • Swift of The Authority can grow both wings and bird claws.
  • The Wasp of The Avengers has insect-like wings that sprout when she shrinks.
  • Batman often squares off against or teams up with Man-Bat, who looks like a human-bat hybrid but can transform — with varying levels of control and success — back into a human form.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992), Roam's Dark World form gives him a pair of wings on his back. This allows him to both fly and fight at the same time.
  • Crux from Red Hood and the Outlaws can turn into a massive reptilian bat-like creature thanks to his mastery of reverse-engineered alien technology. He can also swim lightning quick in this form.
  • Vampirella: Vampirella and other vampires can grow bat wings when the occasion arises. Depending on the Artist, they usually come straight out of her back so she can do other stuff like pick people up, but sometimes her arms morph into wings instead, which is more in line with actual bat anatomy. Notably averted by Dracula, who just morphs into a giant bat instead.
  • Wonder Woman: Eros usually has feathered wings but can manifest without them.
  • Following Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!, Hawkman had actual wings which he can shrink out of and into his back, until being Exiled from Continuity for awhile.

    Fan Works 
  • A Crown of Stars: The Avalon Imperial Family has wings and built them into the genome of the Homo Avalonis species. The wings retreat into the back when they are not folded in a way reminiscent of the Baam-Seijin of Daimos.
  • Kingdom Hearts New Epic The First has the example of Wolfang Richler, though he seems to be more along the lines of Winged Humanoid Abomination. He occasionally manifests wings made of swirling black energy and dispels them easily and quickly. These really reinforce the thought that this guy doesn't come from this plane of existence.
  • In the Kilalaverse, pegasi in humanized artwork can summon and dismiss their wings at will, although they do so by sprouting and retracting feathers along their arms, faces, and chests, rather than sprouting a third set of limbs.
    • The wings of humanized bat ponies and winged draconies work in a similar manner but without feathers, although draconies sprout scales over their shoulders and faces when they summon their wings.
    • Alicorn wings, regardless of wing type, sprout from their shoulders when summoned as a third set of limbs.
  • In Children of an Elder God, Shinji and Asuka gain the ability to sprout wings and fly. Asuka in particular has fire wings.
    Shinji nodded. They stood, and formed wings, and rose into the sky as the sun began to peek through the trees on the eastern shore of the Rhine.
  • The Rukonians from the Pokémon fanfic "Wings of Hope" have wings that are hidden beneath the skin when not in use. Also, when they come into contact with the "Orb of Mew", they gain the same elemental powers as their Pokémon.
  • Luz Clawthorne: During her second cambionic transformation, Luz gains a pair of bat wings giving her the power of flight. It becomes more in line with the trope when she learns how to summon her wings without fully transforming.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier features Falcon, a superhero with no powers and a pair of mechanical wings.
  • Sometimes the possession of wings can be gender-specific: In The Dark Crystal, male humanoid Gelflings have no wings, while females have a pair of well-hidden fairy-like wings they can use for gliding.
  • Several major characters in Dogma are angels who generally go around with wings in Hammerspace, but bring them out to impress mortals or go on aerial killing sprees. Notably, in this film, cutting an angel's wings off turns him into a mortal human, subject to things like death and plenary indulgence...
    • Interestingly, Constantine (2005) — which is basically the bearded Spock version of Dogma — uses pretty much the same system, right down to their removal rendering the (former) owner mortal.
      • That was in Hellblazer too, long before the movie, where he used a chainsaw. Film or comic, John Constantine does not like angels.
  • In Splice, Dren's mature and male form has retractable wing-flaps in both arms.

    Literature 
  • In Arcana Magi Zero, Alysia Perez and Megumi Miyazaki sprout a pair of wings after they transform into their magical outfits.
  • Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Black And Blue Magic is about an adorkable pre-teen (named Harry, yet) whose mother runs a boarding house. A Traveling Salesman from what was not, in 1966, a Diagon Alley wizarding supply company (except it totally is), who is also a bit klutzy and appreciates Harry's help, gives him as a parting gift a mysterious bottle. When he uses the ointment in it and recites the first of two incantations, he grows a pair of fluffy white wings. The second rhyme gets rid of the wings (total secrecy is one condition of his receiving this gift and he can only fly at night). Interestingly enough, even though A Wizard Did It, some attention is paid to the energy requirements necessary with the protagonist having to eat substantial amounts of food to fuel himself, and losing most of his clumsiness in favor of a "real athlete's build". There's also some mention of him feeling like he either has "new muscles, or muscles moving in some new way" across his back and chest when he first spreads his wings out.
  • Good Omens: Crowley and Aziraphale (both angels) have these. They get them out just before the anticlimax. The reason is given as "If you were going to go, you might as well go in your own true shape." and they aren't used. It is specified that angel and demon wings look the same, but further description isn't given.
  • The Guardians as human-angel hybrids all have wings. They can make theirs appear and disappear by vanishing them into Hammerspace.
  • In Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom, wings are used as a mode of transport and can be taken off and shrunken. And the cheaper ones are made of paper.
  • Trapped on Draconica: Zarracka, Rana, Daniar, and Erowin, all have wings because they were blessed by the dragon god, Dronor. When not in use they disappear into Hammerspace inside the girl's back.
  • In The Vampire Diaries book series, Elena Gilbert is a Guardian and possesses special wings of power: These include Wings of Destruction, Wings of Redemption, Wings of Protection, Wings of Remembrance, Wings of Purification, and Wings of the Wind. Her wings only appear when she concentrates or when she wants to use them and they disappear when she is not using them.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Played with in the final episode of Game of Thrones, where a shot of Daenerys Targaryen, about to give a speech from the ruins of the Red Keep, frames her with her dragon's black wings spreading behind her. The symbolism suggests her to be either a dragon herself, or a Fallen Angel.
  • Hannibal has a subversion. The Angel-Maker rips out the lungs of his victims, flipping them to resemble wings in pure gornery.
  • Lyria from The Haunting Hour's third season episode "Intruders" is a member of The Fair Folk who has butterfly wings that vanish when she no longer needs them. Due to the show having a small budget, Lyria never flies onscreen, but simply teleports through the forest.
  • In the Odd Squad episode "The Odd Antidote", Oprah gains a pair of baby-blue angel wings as a result of an infection brought on by her plant, Mr. Greenjeans, spraying pink dust at her. The wings are comically larger than her and she doesn't use them to fly, and they go away once Dr. O throws the cure for the infection onto her.
  • In the Brazilian series Os Mutantes a young girl named Angela has wings that appear when she touches her upper back. She is able to fly long distances.
  • Several characters in the Philippine TV series Paroa Ang Kwento ni Mariposa have butterfly wings that appear whenever they are about to take flight and disappear after landing.
  • Castiel of Supernatural shows Dean his wings when they first meet, although most of the time angels opt for teleportation, with wing-y sound effects. They are invisible but somehow manage to cast shadows, sometimes seen when they're banished and when they die.

    Manhua 
  • In My Wife Is a Demon Queen, Tols Rennes has access to a dragon form with six wings. His brother Buno also has one, although his form only has two wings.

    Music 
  • SHINee has them in the end part of the music video of Ring Ding Dong.
  • UTAU Kasane Teto can sprout a set of striking red bat wings in her "Chimera" form.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Paloma Rouse as a gag during a World Wrestling League photo shoot.
  • Angel Azul of the Bolivian New Xtreme Order tends to have shots with transparent wings that later leave him.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Sort of in Anima: Beyond Fantasy with Fallen Angel Dinah as she's accompanied of two large angelical wings, one white and other black, that are actually immaterial spirit guardians of her that can vanish in certain conditions. However nothing stops you of to mount the miniature with one wing attached to her back in One-Winged Angel fashion.
  • There are probably god-knows how many ways for a Dungeons & Dragons character to get themselves a pair of wings, but common ones are:
    • The Dragon Disciple Prestige Class, which allows the character to unlock latent draconic abilities including leathery, draconic wings at the 9th level of the class.
    • The second is the Favoured Soul class from Complete Divine, who gain wings on their 17th level in the class, the style of which is determined by the character's alignment and, thus, Colour-Coded for Your Convenience.
    • Quite a few powers, paragon paths, and epic destinies in 4th edition let you manifest wings and make them vanish, either at will or for the duration of the power.
    • One of the very first introductory-level published D&D adventures, B1: In Search of the Unknown, included a room of magic wells, one of which caused the first character to drink from it to sprout wings. So many gaming groups started out with that module that having winged low-level adventurers in a campaign was common for several years.
  • In Exalted, Lunars can create this effect if they've acquired the right type of Heart's Blood or have the right spirit shape (anything with wings in either case) and the knack Hybrid Body Rearrangement.
  • Magic: The Gathering has numerous equippable or enchantable sets of wings. These fall off when the creature leaves the battlefield, and the first three examples can be removed by other, more conventional means. There's also one or two other enchantments that make your creatures into actual angels. This is only a half-example, however, as you can attach these wings to just about ANY creature, not just your humanoids.
  • In Pathfinder, exceptional members of the crow-like Tengu race can learn to manifest wings.
    • Among other effects, the spell Angelic Aspect causes its target to sprout wings for a limited time.

    Video Games 
  • This is the tagline of Aion, the player characters are daeva, basically humans mutated by the energy fields of the world (since they give them immortality and wings, they're often seen as servants of god), they can call and withdraw their wings at will, though they can only fly in designated areas.
  • Most of the inhabitants of the world in Baten Kaitos have "Wings of the Heart" — retractable wings of all different varieties that apparently respond to emotion. (Early in the game, one young woman's wings come out involuntarily when she's lost in a daydream.) The citizens of The Empire don't have these, and use mechanical wings instead; the hero has one real wing and one metal one. Notably, these wings aren't used for actual flight, except for short distances; long-distance travel is done in flying boats.
  • Additionally, Tsubaki from the BlazBlue fighting games manifests wings in a similar fashion. and her astral heat? Whadaya know, a giant spear from out of nowhere with which to, y'know...
  • Eddie gains a pair of demon wings halfway through Brütal Legend. They can only be used during strategic battles and simply vanish into his back when not in use.
  • Shanoa from Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia eventually can obtain the ability to conjure a pair of black wings for flight.
  • The two main heroes of Demon Front, Jake and Sara, both being Human Aliens, have foldable wings that allows them to hover around the area for quite a while until their power level is spent, by pressing jump while in mid-air. It's a very useful trick to execute in platform-laden areas.
  • In The Elder Scrolls series, this is a trait of the Mazken (aka Dark Seducers), an intelligent race of lesser Daedra in service to Sheogorath. In their Daggerfall appearance (where they are referred to as "Daedric Seducers"), they first appear as an attractive female mage before sprouting wings and becoming hostile. Those encountered in Battlespire have permanent wings, however, this is specifically stated to be part of a Superpowered Evil Side granted to them by Big Bad Mehrunes Dagon. Their appearance in Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion does not depict them with wings at all.
  • The Fairy Bloom series of games have fairies that look like human girls, except for Pointy Ears and magical wings:
    • Fairy Bloom: It's depicted on the protagonist's art in the manual.
    • Fairy Bloom Freesia: Freesia gets them when she jumps with a magical boost from the wings.
  • Quite a few Final Fantasy villains (and a few protagonists) sport wings representative of their status:
    • In Final Fantasy VI, the ascended Kefka gains two angelic pairs of wings and one pair of demonic ones.
    • The One-Winged Angel trope-namer, Sephiroth, in Final Fantasy VII. He actually has seven wings in his final form, but only one is on his torso where it replaces his right arm. It reaches uncomfortably absurd levels in the prequel, Crisis Core, where several other characters gain angelic wings mostly as symbols of their rank. Said wings are always only on one side and are white for the "good" character and black for the "bad" one.
    • In Final Fantasy VIII, The heroine Rinoa can sprout angelic ones during her "Angel Wing" Limit Break.
    • Rinoa also has white angel wings painted (or sewn) on the back of her sleeveless duster garment ... thing.
      • Also, Leon (aka Squall) has red angel wings shaped just like Rinoa's stenciled or sewn onto the back of his jacket in Kingdom Hearts.
  • Manaketes in Fire Emblem are dragons who take human form (typically old men, or young girls) to conserve their energy. They have retractable wings which are different depending on their dragon tribe of origin. The Majestic Divine Dragons have feathery wings resembling angels, Fire Dragons have wings made of solid flame resembling devils, and the other dragon tribes have reptilian wings in manakete form. Good Wings, Evil Wings may be at play as Divine Dragons have always been friendly, while the other types are usually hostile.
  • In God of War II, Kratos, after tearing them off their original owner, gains the Icarus Wings. They allow him to glide and vanish when not in use.
  • Dizzy, from Guilty Gear, possesses a light wing and a dark wing, which morph into an angel and a Grim Reaper.
  • Helen's Mysterious Castle: Zack's fairy is a tiny version of this that can fly.
  • Hero & Daughter: Holly, an angel is a girl with wings.
  • Jak gains wings in Jak 3, as a Light-based power. It's also the only power that doesn't force you out of the mode when the gauge runs out — they'll wait until you land.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker features the Rito, Bird People who gain wings after receiving the scale of a dragon. In The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Marin grows wings and flies away after the credits if you didn't die any time. The Rito are a special case, since their wings are on their arms rather than the back. The wings of male Rito turn into sleeve-like wrappings around their arms when not in use. The wings of the one female Rito, Medli, however, seem to just disappear when she doesn't need them, as she never has sleeves.
  • Mario Strikers: Peach's Mega Strike in Super Mario Strikers has her leap into the sky, grow a pair of Hard Light wings and then kick the ball.
  • A Primer on the Capture and Identification of the Little Folk Of Myth And Legend: Asking whether the "tiny humanoid" has wings, is the second question, if the tiny humanoid is about a hand span in size, and it's a trait of FAIRIES and PIXIES.
  • Sigma Star Saga gives you the girl wings. Like a girl! The logistics are somewhat addressed by the fact that you can't fly higher than a few inches off the ground, you move extremely slow, and you tire quickly.
  • Summoner has the Sudani, who in the mythical past lost their wings. They are the ancestors of all humans. Thus, almost every character in the games is a Winged Humanoid by descent.
  • In the fourth installment of Super Smash Bros., Palutena summons wings of light for a couple of her attacks.
  • Tales of Symphonia:
    • The organization Cruxis, which runs the Church of Martel, is made up mostly of angels, which are believed to be the Goddess' messengers. They're actually half-elves (most of them) with extra powers, most of whom have no souls, and their leader Yggdrasill is the game's Big Bad. The whole thing is his Evil Plan dedicated to getting his sister Martel a new body.
    • Lloyd also gets a pair at the very end of the game.
  • The titular Valkyries of Valkyrie Profile are capable of manifesting glowing, feathery wings. This is usually followed by summoning a ridiculously huge spear with which to stab the hell out of some poor sod.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • Paladins will sprout wings of light when using Avenging Wrath; it is iconic enough that the spell is often referred to as "wings".
    • Priests can sprout Yellow, Blue, or Shadowy wings depending on their spec and cosmetic glyphs. Which spells activate them has changed over time.
    • When Warlocks could transform into demons they had large wings that let them leap or deflect blows, though the animations did not show this.
    • However the first fully functional wings are those of Demon Hunters, who are infused with demonic power even more than warlocks. They can use these wings in the air to double jump and glide, giving them unique mobility on hilly terrain like Highmountain.

    Webcomics 
  • In Archipelago, those possessed by raven spirits have magical wings appear when the adrenaline gets flowing. Willium has a magical wings spell he uses whenever he wants to.
  • In The Beast Legion Ginta appears in Issue 5.
  • Charby the Vampirate: Mye and her brother Hex have wings in their bunny demon forms and Charby gains a pair when using the Staff of Oswego.
  • DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: The Dragon of the Brotherhood, Johann Sung has a maxed out Levitation that gives him several huge feathery wings which he can use as fists. Mooyoung gets bat wings after absorbing him.
  • The demon's wings in Friendly Hostility can vary from being tiny to large enough to be a beach umbrella. Though a lot of the times they aren't there at all.
  • One of Gunnerkrigg Court's plotlines revolves around the revelation of one of these creatures.
  • In Homestuck, trolls gain butterfly wings when they achieve god-tier. They are apparently able to do something to hide them, as Vriska has been seen without her wings.
  • In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Princess Voluptua's true form is a vaguely humanoid butterfly creature with a beautiful pair of huge multicolored wings.
  • MegaTokyo's "Dead Piro Day" sketches, as well as the "Circuity" omake, all feature the women of the comic with various styles of wings, including the haunting "Broken Miho" poster, featuring Tohya Miho with what look like broken mechanical wings with only a few feathers strapped to them. Fred Gallagher has said he is a big Haibane Renmei fan...
  • Rumisiel, Vashiel, and Cassiel from Misfile all have the standard feathery angel wings of the Hammerspace storage variety. They only pop out when they are wanted or needed, needs apparently include flying, though they seem stationary.
  • Sabine from The Order of the Stick has bat-like wings in her true succubus form, which she can make disappear at will by shapeshifting into a human.
  • The Senkari gain wings (with feathers matching their hair color) when they're resurrected.
  • Slightly Damned's angels are wingless by default; they have to earn their wings in the guise of Sun Pendants, which when worn give the wearer species and alignment appropriate wings.
  • Walking in the Dark has Naidashi Yoshimoto — a Tengu whose demonic form turns his eyes black and makes him sprout enormous black wings.
  • Zebra Girl: Definitely the evil wings variety, although it isn't really her fault.

    Web Videos 
  • Critical Role: Vax acquires the Deathwalker's Ward, which is a set of studded leather armor that can sprout functioning black wings.

    Western Animation 

 
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Hino-Enma have a pair of wings made of umbrella paper for flight.

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