History Main / OurGnomesAreWeirder

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'': Gnomes are drawn as circles with arms and legs, rather than traditional stick figures like everybody else. They are desert dwellers living in a ''Film/MadMax''-inspired ScavengerWorld, although for the most part it's nowhere near as crapsacky. They're technologically a bit advanced, but their main [[PlanetOfHats hat]] is that they use "gn" in place of "n" in all their words. Gnorm the Gnome teaches the skill "Torso Awaregness", for example. There are also the [=Sk8=] Gnomes, who sk8board.

* ''WebOriginal/LoomingGaia'': Gnomes are five to eight inches tall and known for their ability to enchant animals. As a fae species,they are weak to iron and cannot tell lies. Typically only males wear the iconic cone hats.

* ''VideoGame/{{Overlord}}'': Gnomes are more or less tiny beards with legs and funny hats and glowing eyes that can only say "eep", also some can explode by humping your legs and [[spoiler: are planing to kill you in the end]]. They declare war early on against the EvilOverlord and you're given a sidequest to kill 1000 of the little buggers, which is reasonable since their only gameplay purpose is to be farmed for Lifeforce (your reward for doing so earns you an Achievement/Trophy and a NiceHat for your minions). They're also an [[EvilCounterpart Good Counterpart]] to your minions -- both are numerous, individually weak creatures that come in color-coded elemental varieties. And by "declare war" we mean one bumped into you.

** A few core ''D&D'' supplements have introduced some new and different subraces. The ''whisper gnomes'' from ''Races of Stone'' are incredibly stealthy rogues with subdued, suspicious personalities that clash with other gnomes and find easy employment as spies. ''Chaos gnomes'' or ''imago'', from the same book, are cheerful nomads who possess uncanny luck and crank the other gnomes' flamboyance UpToEleven. An issue of ''Magazine/{{Dragon}}'' introduced the ''arcane gnomes'' and ''river gnomes'' -- pompous spellcasters and simple fisher-folk (with webbed fingers) respectively.[[note]]Along with a suggestion that, as gnome subraces are adapted to their natural environment, the city-dwelling arcanes were what you got when that ''didn't'' happen.[[/note]] ''Frostburn'' introduced the arctic ''ice gnomes'', who have an affinity for [[AnIcePerson ice magic]], while ''Stormwrack'' gave us the island-dwelling and seafaring ''wavecrest gnomes''.

** Modern gnomes suffer from "the Bleaching", a loss of color and life that they stave off through a lifelong search for new knowledge and experiences. Otherwise, they can literally be bored to death -- a gnome who stopes experiencing new things gradually becomes more and more colorless and listless and eventually dies.

* [[https://xkcd.com/1704/ Gnome Ann]] is ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' is an incredibly powerful gnome: she was born wise, she can control time and tides, she persues the wicked and can negate marriages, she travels ahead of [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries the starship Enterprise]] and she killed [[Literature/LordOfTheRings the Witch-King of Angmar]]. (It's all a FunWithHomophones reworking of "no man".)

** In ''WesternAnimation/WinxClub'', when the gnomes were introduced in the [[CanonImmigrant eighth season]], they're referred to as [[CallARabbitASmeerp "Muppies"]].

* A species of gnome that appears in ''WebComic/AllSaintsStreet'', the Roachgnome, is a mutation of regular gnomes that are treated like household pests. They multiply in abundance, [[ExtremeOmnivore eat any material they can get their hands on]], and none of them speak. Roachgnomes in Southern China are this, but burly, also muscular human-sized terrors and can ''fly''.

* A species of gnome that appears in ''WebComic/AllSaintsStreet'', the Roachgnome, is a mutation of regular gnomes that are treated like household pests. They multiply in abundance, [[ExtremeOmnivore eat any material they can get their hands on]], and none of them speak. Roachgnomes in Southern China are this, but burly, muscular human-sized terrors and can ''fly''.

* A species of gnome that appears in ''WebComic/AllSaintsStreet'', the Roachgnome, is a mutation of regular gnomes that are treated like household pests. They multiply in abundance, [[ExtremeOmnivore eat any material they can get their hands on]], and none of them speak. Roachgnomes in England are this, but burly, muscular human-sized terrors.

* A species of gnome that appears in ''WebComic/AllSaintsStreet'', the Roachgnome, is a mutation of regular gnomes that are treated like housold pests. They multiply in abundance, [[ExtremeOmnivore eat any material they can get their hands on]], and none of them speak. Roachgnomes in England are this, but burly, muscular human-sized terrors.

** The Literature/NomesTrilogy stars the "nomes", a [[spoiler:stranded alien]] race of [[MouseWorld tiny humanoids]] who move, think, and age at ten times human speed. They also have a tendency to create very literal relogions, such as the ones who live in a department store, and believe that the store's founder is the creator of their world, and garden gnomes are somewhere between grave markers and passed-on spirits of dead nomes. They don't appear aware that humans actually create them -- they just see them appear periodically in the garden section.

* ''TabletopGame/TheChroniclesOfAeres'': The gnomes, or "Draemyr" to give them their proper name, were an attempt by the trickster god Brena to create its own personal race, taking inspiration from the [[OurElvesAreDifferent Silverleaf elves]] and redesigning them with a personality more in line with Brena's own. Draemyrs resemble small elves with random [[LittleBitBeastly minor bestial traits]], such as animalistic ears, horns or a tail, and [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair vibrantly colorful hair]]. During the last war, the evil Vulgraks manipulated many Draemyrs into following them, and although they turned on their former allies once they realized what was going on, their exposure to the Vulgraks' BlackMagic corrupted them, giving them [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent green skin and more feral appearances]], as well as the ability to [[ElementalShapeshifting turn into living obsidian for brief periods of time]]. These corrupted gnomes are known as "Drauglirs".

* ''TabletopGame/TheChroniclesOfAeres'': The gnomes, or "Draemyr" to give them their proper name, were an attempt by the trickster god Brena to create its own personal race, taking inspiration from the [[OurElvesAreDifferent Silverleaf elves]] and redesigning them with a personality more in line with Brena's own. Draemyrs resemble small elves with random [[ALittleBitBeastly minor bestial traits]], such as animalistic ears, horns or a tail, and [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair vibrantly colorful hair]]. During the last war, the evil Vulgraks manipulated many Draemyrs into following them, and although they turned on their former allies once they realized what was going on, their exposure to the Vulgraks' BlackMagic corrupted them, giving them [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent green skin and more feral appearances]], as well as the ability to [[ElementalShapeshifting turn into living obsidian for brief periods of time]]. These corrupted gnomes are known as "Drauglirs".

** Amazingly, the Gnomes returned to the ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'' iteration of the setting in its 4th edition, debuting in the adventure {{sourcebook}} "Rough Nights & Hard Days". In this new iteration, they are described as resembling a crossbreed between [[{{Hobbits}} halflings]] and [[OurDwarveAreAllTheSame dwarves]]; small, slenderly built humanoids with large noses and ears, skinnier than halflings and, whilst able to grow beards, completely unattached to them. They have a racial affinity for [[CastingAShadow Ulgu, the magical wind of shadows, illusions, and deceit]], and can only learn to cast spells from it, [[{{Necromancer}} Necromancy]] or [[BlackMagic Dhar]]. Even non-wizard gnomes have some innate magical abilities based on this affinity, and because of this they have been viciously persecuted by Imperial witch hunters and mobs for generations. Already clannish, stubborn and surly to begin with, they have gone into seclusion, and usually disguise themselves as halflings when they interact with humans.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Arcanum}}'', Gnomes have a knack for money and trade and thus are [[SpaceJews used in the same role as Jews generally were in Victorian fiction]]. They have also [[spoiler:engineered the serial rape of human women by ogres to breed half-ogres to use as body guards]].

* Gnomes in ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' probably are the base species of the People. They are probably one of the fairy species that gets the least attention, however, at least in terms of description, although their rear ends are also known to be extremely large, so much that they get in the way of traffic in the first book. Must be weird going through life known only as the "Species with the tremendously large ass". Let us all pray that Haven never discovers cheap Mexican food...

* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'': [[TheVamp the Emerald Witch]] uses gnomes, who the protagonists at first think are demons but turn out to be a type of earth elemental, as her slaves. Amusingly, they show more variance than all the other examples on this page combined, differing wildly in height, build, color, number of heads, etc.

* In ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'' gnomes are an [[OneGenderRace all-male race]]. They are capable of piling on top of each other and work in unison to function as a much larger creatures--like a "giant gnome" so to speak. They also puke rainbows. It's implied they [[FantasticDrug snort fairy dust]] as well, and at least one of them, Shmebulock, only speaks in PokemonSpeak. As the page image shows, they do have a "weakness" to leaf blowers, although that's more due to them being a foot tall than any specific weakness.

** ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' gnomes are six inches high, and manage to have both the strength and the ''leverage'' of six-''foot''-tall humans. They're described as having the same belligerence as a human, only compressed. Gnome Watchman Buggy Swires catches birds and rides them. Their [[TheFairFolk Elfland-refugee]] cousins the Nac mac Feegle share these qualities in addition to being ViolentGlaswegian [[Franchise/TheSmurfs Smurfs]]. Their very first appearance was for the sake of a pun, what Twoflower calls "reflected-sound-of-underground-spirits" when trying to explain the concept of insurance and other financial matters (echo-gnomics).
** The Literature/NomesTrilogy stars the "nomes", a [[spoiler:stranded alien]] race of [[MouseWorld tiny humanoids]] who move, think, and age at ten times human speed. They also believe that garden gnomes are somewhere between grave markers and passed-on spirits of dead nomes. They don't appear aware that humans actually create them -- they just see them appear periodically in the garden section of a nearby supermarket.

* The Gnomics[[note]]"Gnomic" is a word for a cryptic aphorism derived from the same Greek word as "gnostic" and ''entirely'' unrelated to "gnome"; it's likely that this is not the only example of gnomes as scholars which plays off this pun.[[/note]] Engywook and Urgl are minor characters in ''Literature/TheNeverEndingStory'', who are important to Atryu's quest to cure the Childlike Empress. Engywook is a GrumpyOldMan who loves science and is dedicated to studying the mysterious Oracle; his wife, Urgl, is just as grumpy, but is more interested in medicine. In the AnimatedAdaptation, the MagicVersusTechnology aspect of the relationship is played up more, but, though they bicker and quarrel, the gnomes are a loving couple. They also both offer their skills to Bastian when he needs them; Engywook's airplane comes in handy when Falkor is unavailable.

* The Gnomics[[note]]"Gnomic" is a word for a cryptic aphorism derived from the same Greek word as "gnostic" and ''entirely'' unrelated to "gnome"; it is likely that this is not the only example of gnomes as scholars which plays off this pun.[[/note]] Engywook and Urgl are minor characters in ''Literature/TheNeverEndingStory'', who are important to Atryu's quest to cure the Childlike Empress. Engywook is a GrumpyOldMan who loves science and is dedicated to studying the mysterious Oracle; his wife, Urgl, is just as grumpy, but is more interested in medicine. In the AnimatedAdaptation, the MagicVersusTechnology aspect of the relationship is played up more, but, though they bicker and quarrel, the gnomes are a loving couple. They also both offer their skills to Bastian when he needs them; Engywook's airplane comes in handy when Falkor is unavailable.

* The alchemist Paracelsus, describing elemental creatures, called earth elementals "gnomes".

* The Gnomicss Engywook and Urgl are minor characters in ''Literature/TheNeverEndingStory'', who are important to Atryu's quest to cure the Childlike Empress. Engywook is a GrumpyOldMan who loves science and is dedicated to studying the mysterious Oracle; his wife, Urgl, is just as grumpy, but is more interested in medicine. In the AnimatedAdaptation, the MagicVersusTechnology aspect of the relationship is played up more, but, though they bicker and quarrel, the gnomes are a loving couple. They also both offer their skills to Bastian when he needs them; Engywook's airplane comes in handy when Falkor is unavailable.