Your Vampires Suck - Television Tropes & Idioms

Karin gets a lot of mileage out of this. Especially in the anime where Winner's earliest episode contains a montage of Winner's various vampire traps based on traditional vampire slaying methods...with an explanation from Karin about how silly some of them are. Carrera also looks horrified when Kenta mentions the stakes to the heart - because that would kill anyone. Though apparently not everyone as a few vampires are shown living quite well post-staking...
Alucard from Hellsing take this to the extreme. Wooden stakes? Silver bullets? Beheading? Starved of blood? Dismembered? Running water? Garlic? A half dozen magically enchanted holy bayonets made of silver? Direct sunlight? None of them stop Alucard. In fact the only thing that eventually stops him is being deleted from reality by quantum effects. Other vampires are shown having fairly typical weaknesses.
- In all fairness to the character, A), Alucard actually is the original Vlad Tepes Dracula; and B), Alucard's boss makes a point of stating that "The Hellsing family has spent one hundred years gloriously building him into the ultimate undead." Presumably he was far more manageable when he was originally defeated/recruited by Abraham Van Helsing.

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The Preacher one-shot starring Cassidy makes tremendous mockery of Anne Rice and the Universal horror versions by way of Eccarius, a self-indulgent vampire whose pretensions and assumptions about his origins and weaknesses Cassidy mercilessly removes. And then Cassidy kills him after Eccarius reverts to type and plays out a "conversion" scene with a female admirer with lethal consequences. Of course, Cassidy eventually proves to be no better in his own way...
Lampshade Hanging in Alan Moore's Top Ten story "Deadfellas," where Hungarian vampires are analogous to Sicilian mobsters. The younger vampires laugh at the older "widow's-peak Vlads" for their horror-movie behavior and dress style, much as the real-life "Mustache Petes" were derided and ousted by younger and less honor-bound mobsters. It's then subverted when all the vampires turn out to have the usual weaknesses of the pop-culture versions.
Runaways has a vampire mockingly describe how "[Joss] Whedon got it wrong." after taking a wooden staff through the heart. Amusingly enough, several years later Runaways was being written by... Joss Whedon.
- Considering the guy who wrote that, Brian K. Vaughan, ended up writing an arc of Whedon's Buffy: Season 8 comic around the same time Whedon started on Runaways, it pretty much had to be good-natured ribbing.
- It should be noted that in the Marvel Universe vampires do have all of the classic weaknesses, with a few rare exceptions.
In the comic book Scare Tactics, resident vampire Screamqueen is mightily pissed when the band's manager/minder Arnie Burnsteel lines her coffin with grave dirt. She rails at the stupidity of a man who believes that the movie JFK was part of a massive disinformation campaign (Arnie is a Conspiracy Theorist) but accepts everything he sees in a Universal horror film as gospel.

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The Beatles Fan Fic archive Rooftop Sessions had a piece titled "The Hunter," narrated by a mostly Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who briefly gets mixed up with Brian Epstein and The Beatles. This story is a sequel to another story where a vampire who acted vulnerable to the classic vampire weaknesses had selected George Harrison as a potential lunch, and so John recognizes our narrator as a vampire, calls him on it, and eventually tries to fight him off. Our narrator is resistant to most of those weaknesses, though (sunlight doesn't harm him); when John tries to ward him off with a silver crucifix, our narrator takes it and kisses it!
In an interesting inversion of the norm, Dracula himself gets to give one of these speeches to the rest of the worlds vampires in a Cat Tales spin-off called Capes and Bats.

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John Carpenter's Vampires made fun of anything but stakes and sunlight working against the undead.
While not really making fun of it, the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula comments on the fact that vampires aren't killed by sunlight, just as Dracula wasn't in the original novel.
In the film The Fearless Vampire Killers, someone holds a cross up to a vampire, only to hear:
Oy vey, have you got the wrong vampire.
The Frog brothers in The Lost Boys get most of their vampire-hunting lore out of comic books. When their information proves incorrect ("Garlic don't work, boys!"), it could well be taken as a Take That to comic-book vampirism as well as Dracula, or even to comic-book reality in general.

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Both the book and movie versions of Interview With The Vampire contains shots at Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. For some strange reason, the characters seem to think that something being killed by a stake through the heart is a ridiculous fairy tale, even though it would kill pretty much any other creature on the planet. (Maybe they're commenting on it having to specifically be wood; i.e., a metal stake to the heart doing jack.)
The Dresden Files book Grave Peril makes fun of the notion of vampires giving interviews, and says that they'd almost certainly kill anyone who tried. Of course, the protagonist being a pop-culture-obsessed Deadpan Snarker, he makes similar comments for most supernatural nasties he meets. Making fun of fairy tales when compared to The Fair Folk, or for Zombies, Demons, etc., and he's not always right. The very next book begins with him and a vampire on a talk show, being interviewed. The vampire is posing as human and rubbishing the idea of magic. The subversion is that Harry mentions that Dracula was written on orders of the White Council to help muggles fight Black Court Vampires by exposing their weaknesses and abilities, and was pretty successful at that. Nowadays only a handful of Black Court Vampires still live.
The Noble Dead series had an unusual way of doing this. It was set in a sword-and-sorcery world, but was still able to do this by explaining that certain folklore about vampires had been passed down until even the vampires believed them. Until they found out it was a myth, the vampires carried around coffins filled with native soil, and let victims they wanted to turn drink their blood (it was actually the act of draining them very quickly that turned them).
China Mieville does it in The Scar. Though for him it's more like "all vampires suck," as vampires are described as having a reputation as "junkies" among the other undead.
Carpe Jugulum. Starts out as a send-up to the "traditional" vampire model, then turned around when the New Age-ish vampires start to lose their cool and resistance to traditional vampire wards, and the villagers reveal that they prefer the Large Ham old vampires.
- Wouldn't you prefer the ones with Contractual Genre Blindness?
In The Saga Of Darren Shan, Larten Crepsley mocks many assumptions about vampires ("Bite people? Only stupid vampires use their teeth!"), sometimes to the extent of bursting into laughter when one is suggested. When he's threatened with a bottle of holy water, he drinks it. One character relates how he attempted to stake a sleeping vampire, but since the series's vampires are Made Of Iron, the vampire woke up and nearly killed him before bleeding to death.
- It is pointed out, however, that many beliefs about vampires are based on distorted details of their culture (vampires use stake-filled pits in executions, for instance, and believe that dying in running water traps a person's soul).
Scott Westerfeld's urban fantasy Peeps starts off with a discussion of how vampires can't turn into bats, still show up in mirrors, etc. Vampirism is a parasitic infection that grants super strength and senses, sometimes super libido, and makes you hate whatever you used to love (including crosses for devout Christians). And makes you hate giant worms, even if you didn't used to love them.
In Mercedes Lackey's Children of the Night, vampire Andre dismisses several traditional limitations as "silliness," in particular the inability to cross running water, which he ascribes to a misunderstanding of their tendency to set territorial boundaries.
A running gag in Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story is Tommy attempting to use Ann Rice's The Vampire Lestat as a "vampire handbook" for Jody, his vampire girlfriend. It isn't long before she gets angry from just hearing Lestat's name.
Chapter two of Book II of “The Lonely Winds” , entitled “Vampire 101” seems to be a reverent embodiment of this trope. A central character is introduced to the characteristics and mechanics of the mythos’s vampires in a diatribe that takes shots at [RPGs], cinema, and what appears to be the setting’s equivalent to Anne Rice.
Noted in Garry Kilworth's Welkin Weasels: Vampire Voles. Count Flistagga mentions that most vampires dislike crossing running water, but he has "long since overcome that weakness". It should be noted, however, that the other vampires are defeated with ridiculous ease.
Shows up (mildly) in Harry Potter, where vampires are described as wan (and thus bloodless) individuals.
Twilight. When Bella asks vampire Edward if he does things like burn in the sunlight, he laughs and says it's a myth. He then shows her what really happens when he goes into the sunlight.
- Twilight's vampires, in turn, are one of the reasons it has its own Hatedom.
- They also have reflections in mirrors, have super human strength, don't bite at the neck, can enter a house uninvited, and feed on deer. Also to kill one you have to chop it up and throw it into a fire instead of a wood stake through the heart and severing the garlic stuffed head. This troper wants to know how the fuck they're still considered vampires.
  - Tsukihime handled this, with Aruceid. "A being beyond that of a human, filled with the desire for human blood. What else can it be called but a vampire?"
  - A Parasite? Human/Leech Hybrid? Mosquito People?
  - This troper wants to know where the hell the fangs are.
  - That little bit of Fridge Logic is explicitly stated by Word Of God as the reason they don't have fangs. They get blood by ripping things apart with their super strength.
  - Well, the feeding on deer and other animals was a specific lifestyle choice on their part, one that is considered unusual. And the part about having to burn its chopped up remains to keep it from regenerating is actually fairly normal. (Garlic-stuffed head? What the fuck is that?) But, yeah, they're an interesting type of vampire. And to the latter troper, they do have fangs, albeit not nearly as pronounced.
  - The most common traditional method of vampire slaying is staking the heart, cutting of the head, and filling the mouth with garlic. Miss any of the steps, and it may still regenerate, or possibly the head can do some malice without the body. Of course in the old days the concept of vampire was far more variable and fluid than the modern human-like bloodsuckers.
  - Eucharist is a common substitute in the above "Stake-and-Bake" recipe.
  - If the modern concepts of biology has taught us anything, your average vampire doesn't require fire to slay. Sufficient brain damage can prove to prevent the regeneration process seeing as the brain sends commands to the rest of the body (unless of course the dude became a vampire because of some sort of sorcery, which of course implies that most forms of improvised slayings would backfire).
  - Modern concepts of... they can turn into BATS, man! They can live for hundreds or thousands of years without aging a day! Their bodies are made of some substance that can be seen just fine, but somehow is invisible in reflective surfaces! What kind of science explains ANY of that? If there isn't a trope called You Fail Magic Forever, we need to invent one right now.
  - You Fail Magic Forever... wouldn't that be Scully Syndrome?
  - I think what the above troper was trying to say was that if You Fail Magic Forever, your systems and ideas go beyond Applied Phlebotinum and A Wizard Did It, and just don't make any sense at all... although the concept of the ageless vampire shows up in a lot of folklore, making it Older Than They Think.
Brian Lumley's vampire series Necroscope outlines a very interesting type of vampire, also called wamphyrie or vamphyrie in many places within the novels, as well as one book title.
- They are actually from a parallel dimension, birthed from spores from a type of mushroom, which, when inhaled, lay an egg inside the host body. The egg hatches into a leech which adheres to the spinal column and runs tendrils into the brain, causing both mental and biological changes.
- Most of it makes fair sense in even how they are killed. The stake through the heart pins the leech so it cannot escape the body once the head has been decapitated. Without the head, the body dies, as does the leech.
- However, being infected with vampirism here comes in a variety of forms which lead most of the primary cast to treat it more like a disease (getting their blood on you, being bitten, getting touched or touching a leech egg, or even letting a vampire telepathically communicate with you can turn you into one).
- In some instances, there are nods back to the classic vampire weaknesses, running water, silver, and the like. Some of these are even rather humorous. In one of the later books, one vampire traverses from Sunside/Starside (parallel Earth) to our world, stuck in an underground cave, with only one exit, with running water. Around him are evidence of previous vampire exiles, all of which sat and died, fearing to tread the water to attempt escape.

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While it seems strange given the show's heavy use of folklore, Supernatural did this heavily by throwing out virtually all traditional vampire traits, and starting from scratch. The most notable example of this was that the vampires were sensitive to sunlight to the point of getting a sunburn, not to the point of being disabled, let alone killed, which to Stoker, whose Dracula was merely less powerful in sunlight. See the oft-maligned DeLaurentis version, in which the Count walks around with a parasol and dark glasses.
Shows up several times in Buffy The Vampire Slayer:
- The episode "Lie To Me," when the Scoobies encounter a group of would-be vampires who have bought into the idea of vampires as romantic and misunderstood. Angel grouses at moderate length about their misapprehensions, noting in particular "Do they really think we dress like that?" ...Only to have one of the groupies push past him wearing his exact outfit.
- In his first appearance, Spike expresses incredulity that people still buy into "the Anne Rice routine" about romantic, tortured vampires.
- Later, in the Fifth Season opener, much fun is had at Dracula's expense, except that he actually is more powerful than most vampires, even if Spike dismisses his mind control, shapeshifting, and apparent unkillability as "a few Gypsy tricks". The trope is played straight in the same episode when Buffy mentions meeting more than a few pasty-faced, pimply vamps who called themselves "Lestat." Apparently Joss Whedon only thinks that Anne Rice's Vampires Suck. Except for the part where Angel was practically lifted wholesale from the Anne Rice template...though it could very easily be argued that Angel is a mild but very effective subversion of that template. Namely the fact that he's consistently mocked by the other characters for possessing the classic "Anne Rice" vampire traits (i.e. brooding, vanity), and ultimately overcomes them to become the most accurate depiction of Friedrich Nietzsche's Ubermensch since Nietzsche brought it up in the first place.
  - Alternately, he could be not mocking Anne Rice at all, and Buffy simply meant that she's run into a lot of vampires who were basically posers who thought it would be cool to name themselves after more famous fictional vampires
- Angel is also (due to his curse) essentially a Celibate Hero. He can have sex, but it's dangerous and he can't let it mean anything, similar to Anne Rice's vampires—except it's a physical disability with Rice and a voluntary decision by Angel.
- In one episode, Angel becomes offended when asked by a demon if he should be sleeping in his coffin.
The X-Files episode "Bad Blood," already mentioned on the Our Vampires Are Different page, played with this trope as well. One deluded teenager in a town full of nonstandard vampires blows the whole deal for the rest of them with his media-inspired Universal Horror vampire playacting.
Subverted in Big Wolf On Campus, where a group of vampiric teenage malcontents are subject to all the classic weaknesses, and agonize over it. To their particular chagrin is their inability to enter someone's house without an invitation. One protagonist's knowledge of this limitation comes from... Buffy, season 2.
The series Special Unit 2, about a division of the police force which deals with supernatural crimes, begins with the chief telling a new recruit that every myth and legend is real in one way or another. Except vampires, the whole idea of which he waves off as being ridiculous.
Sanctuary.
And not only did they hunt them down, kill them off, but they turned our species into a cultural joke...
And now people think that we're allergic to garlic and that we can turn into bats at will. It's beyond insulting...
Or vile, stale, water blessed by some priest would have any other effect than a bad taste...
— Nikola Tesla (Yes,really).
When Bon Temps' resident vampire Bill Compton is invited to speak before a historical society in True Blood, the meeting is held at a church. Someone hurriedly throws an American flag over a big cross, but Bill prefaces his speech by collecting the flag and rehanging it, saying that he is "one of God's creatures" and has no trouble standing in front of a cross or on holy ground.
- Sunlight doesn't kill these vampires immediately either, and Bill later tells Sookie that garlic is only mildly irritating. However, silver is dangerous for them, burning their skin and suppressing their powers on contact.
Moonlight's vampires are immune to garlic and holy water, and wooden stakes only immobilize them. They are affected by sunlight, but only after prolonged exposure.

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Both Vampire role playing games by White Wolf have a section at the beginning that explains which vampire tropes the game does and does not follow. It often acts with derision towards the tropes that it doesn't use. For instance, it points out that if every vampire victim became a vampire, the world would be swarming with them, and if vampires couldn't cross running water, they wouldn't be able to walk around a modern city, what with all the pipes and such underground. In the old World of Darkness, they did allow characters to be "mutants" with such flaws, allowing themselves to be slightly more powerful out of the gate but having more ways others could mess with them.
- Further, while the classical weaknesses and unusual powers of Dracula and so on are incompatible with the system, the systems—particularly the new version—explains that since Dracula was a very old vampire with a very strong will, he might well be able to do things other vampires, even older and ostensibly stronger ones, simply can't. And, last but not least, there's plenty of weaknesses and powers, both made-up and referencing old myth, in various clans, bloodlines, and rarely individual characters.
- In the old world of darkness you can certainly create a vampire who is repulsed by garlic, cannot cross running water and cannot enter a home uninvited. But then you can also make one who resembles a more lifelike version of The Count from Sesame Street if you really want to. Don't see why you'd want either set of flaws personally.
Similarly, the army book of Vampire Counts in Warhammer explains the various vampire weaknesses. For example, inability to cross running water or having to sleep in a coffin filled with grave dirt isn't true, unless the water has some mythical properties that harm the undead or the dirt is from a place tainted by dark magic in which case it can help recharge the vampire's powers. Sunlight doesn't kill vampires eighter, exept for very weak ones (they become less powerful in sunlight, tho).
The Ravenloft campaign setting for Dungeons And Dragons does come with all the standard vampiric weaknesses... Plus a few more, and some that are downright bizzarre. But not only takes pains to explain that a given vampire may possess many or none of these... But also explains how vampires can get around them. A vampire might still be carried over running water in a carriage for instance, or use their Charm Person ability to enter a house. More than anything it is stressed that vampires are smart. And patient.
- Vampires in 4th Edition seem to have done away with many of the weaknesses of "traditional" vampires, at least as far as building them into the mechanics. The lore entry even makes mention of it: "Contrary to popular folklore, vampires are not hampered by running water or repelled by garlic, and they don't need invitations to enter houses." Likewise, a (true) vampire in direct sunlight is merely unable to regenerate.

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Remilia Scarlet of Touhou Project actually likes cross imagery (she uses them in her spellcards), and is absolutely baffled as to why people think she should be weakened by it.
- Not to mention she apparently has little problem with sunlight, and has gone outside during the day several times, albiet usually with a parasol, though This Troper recalls her getting direct exposure at one point with no ill effects. She merely dislikes sunny weather.
Smiling Jack in Vampirethe Masquerade Bloodlines gives you a crash course in vampire weakness in the beginning of the game:
Jack: Well, you can still be destroyed, but forget the books and the movies. Garlic? Worthless. A cross? Ptth. Shove it right up their ass, heh. A stake? Only if it catches you in the heart, and even then it just paralyzes you. Running water? No problem. I bathe... O-occasionally.
Now, a shotgun blast to the head: That's trouble, kid. Fire? That's real trouble. Sunlight? Well, you catch a sunrise and it's all over kiddo, get it?
- Although somewhat subverted by the fact that you later do encounter a vampire hunter who DOES hurt you with his crucifix — but he is one of perhaps no more than a few dozens of humans on the planet Earth that possesses True Faith, which does hurt vampires.

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In Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures, vampires became extinct years before the comics events, mostly due to harsh competition in the whole prey-by-night business, being weak against sunlight (and usually living in crypts with unlockable doors), and the last remaining group of them being accidentally stomped by a dragon.
Charby the Vampirate pulls this on itself as it has both regular vampires and the Elites, who have many more strengths and none of the weaknesses. Neither get along.
In a Sluggy Freelance storyline, Sam goes to an Adventure Town that's an obvious parody of Sunnydale, and mocks the vampires there for turning to dust at a stake to the heart (in contrast to Lysinda-circle vampires, who follow Anne Rice's or of Vampire The Masquerade's rules).
Tales Of MU takes a "Your baseline expectations are our stereotypes" variant with elves (both in general and drow), demons, mermaids, nymphs...
Used in Nodwick when Yeager refuses to acknowledge that Count Strahd von Zarovich is a vampire because he doesn't have a single piercing.

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The TV show Mighty Max featured an episode, "Fly By Night", with a horsefly vampire, who thought bats were laughably inferior to insects. The episode also made a point of debunking many of the popular myths about how to destroy vampires, and in the end the vampire was defeated when Norman crushed it with a giant pillar he used as a makeshift club.
Lucy The Daughter Of The Devil has an episode centering around the Special Fathers fighting an invasion of altar boy and choir boy vampires who have been ~~praying~~ preying on Catholic priests. They meet up with a guy who is supposed to get them reacquainted with vampire hunting, with amusing results:
Nightshade: As I'm sure the Special Fathers will tell you, hunting vampires...well, forget everything you've seen in the movies. It's all bunk.
Sister Mary: Sunlight?
Nightshade: Oh, no, actually, ok sunlight is real. Sunlight can kill a vampire.
Sister Mary: Stake in the heart?
Nightshade: Y-yeah, hold on, let me give you my spiel, okay?
Sister Mary: Sorry.
Nightshade: Forget what you've seen in the movies. It's all bunk.
Father Cantalupi: You know, Nightshade, I've heard that line in the movies.

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