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Benicio del Toro in the 2010 remake of The Wolf Man. Even a man who is pure in heart
and says his prayers by night,
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright.
— from The Wolf Man (1941)
Subtrope of Our Werewolves Are Different, dealing with a Beast Man that has wolf features, but retaining human proportions. Together with Count Dracula, the Mummy, and Frankensteins Monster, this is generally considered to complete the set of "classic" horror monsters. Unlike the other three, however, there is no single specific source of popular werewolf lore. The closest claim to one would be Lon Chaney Jr.'s character from the film The Wolf Man.
However, far and away the most popular conceit is that a werewolf is a human who has somehow ( especially against his will) become able to temporarily transform ( usually unwillingly) into a wolf. Usual methods include a Viral Transformation spread by being bitten, but a lot of depictions show lycanthropy as solely hereditary. Other popular causes include curses and typical Mad Scientist experiments.
In '50s horror films, the transformation usually took the form of getting hair and fangs but otherwise remaining almost entirely human. (The "classic" Wolf Man appearance is not entirely dissimilar to the symptoms of a rare genetic disorder, hypertrichosis.) With the advent of more sophisticated make-up and visual effects, techniques have been developed that allowed more wolflike features on humanoids, such as giving a character a wolf's muzzle and ears. Phlegmings are popular for modern versions.
Depending on the adaptation, he may or may not have nards.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Liru from Magical Pokaan turns into a cute little puppy with anything round, strangely enough, except for the full moon.
- Wolf familiars Arf and Zafila of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, who are shown as capable of shifting from giant wolves, to this, to full human (i.e., no wolf ears or tails), to Fun Size versions of the first two forms. And just to punctuate the Wolf Man image, Arf's first on-screen transformation into a wolf was accompanied with a full moon in the background.
- Just to be pedantic, I believe the correct romanization for him is Zafira, in keeping with the Theme Naming. (Named after the Opel Zafira) Btw, one time that Arf appeared in Striker S, the English lettering on the screen (that wasn't added by a fansub) mis-romanized her name as Alf. The animation department sort of missed out the gag with her name. (A canine familiar called Arf. Think about it.)
- Kotaro Inugami of Mahou Sensei Negima is technically a dog boy, but he associates himself with wolves. He's also proven capable of turning into a really Big Badass Wolf at full power.
Comic Books
- Werewolf by Night at Marvel Comics. The main character is named Jack Russell, which is a breed of terrier.
- Mikola Rostov from The Warlord was a Russian fencing instructor cursed to become a werewolf every full moon. he tried to escape his curse by moving to world of perpetual sunlight. This was not as successful as he might have hoped.
Film
- The Wolf Man (1941) as stated above one of the main Trope Makers, though perhaps it is more the Trope Codifier and the slightly earlier Werewolf of London (1935 - not to be confused with the much later An American Werewolf In London) was the Trope Maker. (The now-lost 1913 Thanhouser film, The Werewolf, was perhaps the Ur Example.)
- The movie Teen Wolf and the Animated Adaptation, Teen Wolf The Animated Series, featured a light comedy version of this.
- Jack Nicholson in Wolf.
- In the Harry Potter 3 film, Lupin's transformation has him with human-like proportions, bald, and extremely underfed.
Literature
- The "Wolf and Raven" stories, which are part of Shadowrun's Expanded Universe, feature a man who is posessed by Wolf, one of the many animal totems of the world, which grants him powers and mannerisms similar to the classic Wolf Man (as well as a Split Personality, of sorts). It should be noted that this is very different from the game's usual take on werewolves.
- The Canim of the Codex Alera are a whole species of wolfmen.
- The Bordertown series has Wolfboy, a human who was targeted by an offended elf, and found himself permanently transformed into this. (She was actually meaning to transform him into a dog, but magic doesn't work so well in Bordertown.)
Live Action TV
Music
Tabletop Games
- Not surprisingly, the game Werewolf: the Apocalypse was all about these, as is its successor, Werewolf: The Forsaken.
- Not to mention the wide range of other werecreatures in both old and new Worlds of Darkness.
- Shadowrun has a virus which turns people into mindless Neanderthal types which get stronger and vicious during the full moon. However, they don't gain animal traits, beyond the extra hair. What Shadowrun does have are Shapeshifters, as in normal animals of all varieties spontaneously giving birth to magically active stock able to take on human form. Not to mention all the dragons who've learned the ability...
- Warhammer 40000 brings us the Wulfen, werewolves In Space. With guns.
Video Games
- Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within
- Averted: Von Zell, Von Glower, and Gabriel all turn into full-fledged wolves, albeit obviously computer rendered ones. However, the in-game opera "Der Fluch Des Engelhart" plays this trope straight with the actors donning wolf masks.
- One level of Osu! Tatake! Ouendan 2 has the group cheering on a werewolf as he struggles to keep from transforming in front of his girlfriend. Made more difficult for him because he transforms just by seeing things that are round, including balls, ice cream, and bald heads. If the player fails the song, the poor lug gets carted off to the pound. The actual ending of the stage has him finally transform in front of his astonished girlfriend, who turns out to be happy because she loves dogs.
- Werewolves are a common enemy in the PC game Nocturne, appearing in all but one chapter, and they can be killed with any weapons; it's just that silver bullets kill them a lot faster.
- Saberwulf of Killer Instinct & J. Talbain of Dark Stalkers.
- Tinek/T'Nique/whatever from Star Ocean. Despite the series borrowing heavily from Star Trek he's the only thing that comes close to being a shapeshifter in any of the games.
- Kevin from Seiken Densetsu 3 is a beastman that turns into a full wolfman at night. This effectively gives him two sets of moves to the other characters' one.
- Berserkers in Battle Realms can be given the Lycanthropy ability.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- Freakazoid did a parody of the original The Wolf Man with an obvious Lon Chaney Jr. parody coming to Dexter for help with his werewolf problem. Freakazoid, after forcing him to suffer numerous indignities, ultimately cured him by dumping him into the internet and back out again.
- This same episode even parodied the fake frame-by-frame transformations of the original Wolfman, for both the Lon Chaney Jr. Expy and Freakazoid himself. It was, in this tropers opinion, the best Crowning Moment Of Funny in a series full of them.
- The Simpsons did it during a Treehouse of Horror episode where Ned Flanders becomes a werewolf.
Web Original
- Averted in this Cracked.com article, when the campers are attacked by what is obviously Bigfoot Man
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