Sometimes, whether due to a specific visual style or use of anthropomorphism, a character who belongs to a clearly-identified Real Life species ends up looking nothing like what said species actually does.
Some examples are understandable and forgivable, but for the most part Tropes Are Tools and so is making a character look less like their real-world species counterpart due to The Law of Conservation of Detail, being able to tell a story easier (as Most Writers Are Human) and sometimes simply because it looks cool and/or fun. See also Viewer Species Confusion for a subtrope based on the audience's reaction to a creature, and I Am Not Weasel for in-universe reactions. This can lead to Adaptation Species Change or Dub Species Change into something the character actually resembles.
While this primarily applies to animal characters, it can also apply to anthropomorphic objects.
Related to Cartoon Creature (whose actual species is entirely ambiguous) and Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit" (which is about the name of their species, and not the species itself). White-Tailed Reindeer is a subtrope; particularly severe cases of Penguins Are Ducks may also qualify.
NOTE: This trope is NOT "animal has qualities that differ from their real counterparts", note this trope is "animal mainly does not look like their general species". As a rule of thumb, ask yourself if you could recognize the animal's correct species without being told (hence the name, Informed Species).note If not, then this is the correct trope. Also, keep MST3K Mantra in mind and only point out details that are mostly obvious and that the general audience would notice, not minor, nitpicky ones only zoologists would care about. Also, this trope is specifically about non-human animals. If there is a character that is supposed to be human but doesn't look human, don't list them here. They belong at Ambiguously Human.
Example subpages:
Other examples:
- The University of Minnesota's mascot, Goldy Gopher
doesn't look much like a gopher. Upon consultation
the conclusion was he looks more like a chipmunk.
- Many Sanrio characters only vaguely look like their official species. A prime example is Cinnamoroll, a white floppy-eared dog drawn in such a simplistic style that he almost looks like a rabbit.
- Sea-Monkeys.
The cartoons on the packages look nothing like the brine shrimp they are in real life. They are not monkeys either. This is probably an intentional attempt to fool gullible kids into buying them — a kingdom of merpeople in your aquarium sounds cooler than a bunch of brine shrimp.
- Sonny, the mascot of Cocoa Puffs cereal, is said to be a cuckoo looks more like a dodo than an actual cuckoo.
- The tanukis in Animal Land look less like real life tanukis and more like small humans in bear-like costumes.
- One episode of Bumpety Boo involved a Killer Gorilla, which looked little like a gorilla and resembled a Bigfoot instead.
- You would be hard-pressed to believe that the earless Doraemon is actually a cat. However, a flashback in the manga's volume 6 reveals that Doraemon used to have ears and was colored yellow, and does resemble a cartoon cat, before an accident turns him into what he looks like for the rest of the show. Compare Doraemon past. vs. present.
◊
- In NEEDLESS, Miu's "teddy bear" is actually a rabbit, except it looks like a teddy bear, not a rabbit. Even the characters are like "That's a RABBIT???" upon finding out.
- The titular Pikaia in Pikaia, rendered as a Pokemon-esque Ridiculously Cute Critter rather than the worm-like creature it actually is. Which is ultimately pointed out by the show itself.
- Plue from Rave Master is supposedly a dog. Despite not having any ears, having a drill as a nose, loves lollipop candies, can walk on two legs, deflating when exposed to hot water, and generally looking for all the world like a tiny snowman, Plue is a dog. Elie thought Plue is an insect instead.
- The cats from "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1971)" don't really look like cats, they look more like little bears with whiskers that look like they might have been designed by Dr. Seuss.
- Ringing Bell actually invokes this: when Chirin (a male sheep) is fully-grown, he looks very little like a normal ram. Not only is he lithe and lanky rather than stocky, but his horns point forward rather than curling back. He looks much more like some kind of goat or antelope than a sheep. Given that the point of the film is that Chirin isn't a sheep anymore after being twisted by hatred, this is pretty intentional.
- Ichigo from Tokyo Mew Mew is supposed to have the DNA of an Iriomote Wildcat. Despite this, she looks and acts like a domestic cat. Her cat form also looks like a normal housecat.
- Mughi, Yuri and Kei’s pet from Dirty Pair, is meant to be a giant genetically engineered cat, but in the anime adaptation he more closely resembles some kind of mixed breed of dog. Given the shape of his head and snout, the only cat-like things about him are his ears and claws. The fact that he acts like a dog doesn't help. Mughi does look like a cat in the original novels, but his design was a Shout-Out to the Coeurl from The Voyage of the Space Beagle, so it was changed to avoid copyright issues.
- Tippy from Is the Order a Rabbit? is supposed to be an Angora rabbit, but her ears look more like a cat's ears than a rabbit's, being very short and pointy. It's especially noticeable since the other two rabbit mascots, Anko and Wild Geese, look much more like actual rabbits than Tippy does.
- The title character's airplane in Porco Rosso qualifies as a mechanical example. It's identified as a Savoia S.21, but looks nothing like the real airplane by that name, apart from its distinctive top-mounted pusher prop engine, and that gets replaced with a standard propeller after the plane is shot down and rebuilt.
- Yans and Gans of Meat Or Die are said to be dinosaurs, but come out looking like vaguely reptilian vinyl toys.
- It's almost never brought up anywhere, but the eponymous main character of Ojarumaru is apparently a fairy; in Series 1 episode 1, King Enma calls him a "fairy brat", and NHK's official description of the same episode refers to him as a "fairy aristocratic child". However, Ojarumaru does not display any traits one would normally associate with fairies and he could easily pass for a normal human otherwise.
- One Piece:
- For reasons unknown (perhaps to censor religious references), in the 4kids dub, Miss Merry Christmas received a Dub Name Change to Miss Groundhog Day, and an accompanying Dub Species Change to the animal she turned into. It was originally a mole, but it was referred to instead as a groundhog. No edits were made apart from the dialogue, leaving her long nose, massive claws, and the fact that her fight is clearly based on whack-a-mole untouched.
- Most of the fishmen are pretty easy to discern as their species, or at least bear enough in common that you wouldn't be surprised at all upon being told about it. Then there's Jimbei, who's said to be a whale shark. Whale sharks have dark blue or gray skin over most of their bodies with a distinctive "checkerboard" pattern of lighter spots and stripes, and teeth so small as to be practically invisible (they're filter-feeders, after all). Jimbei is powder-blue all-over with no spots or stripes, and has two massive tusks sticking out of his lower jaw. He also lacks the dorsal fin seen on several other shark-type fishmen, and while he is a big guy, this isn't very reliable when plenty of fishmen are shown to be bigger than him (Fisher Tiger was almost twice as tall as him, and was classified as a sea bream). It's really only the gills and webbed fingers that mark him as based on a fish at all, rather than just being an Oni or something similar. This is especially notable because at one point in the manga, he summons a school of whale sharks, who are drawn far closer to life and therefore look nothing like him.
- In the Elbaph Arc, Hajrudin and Stansen are shown just having taken down a "moose" to provide a feast for the Straw Hats. Said "moose" looks more like a Tyrannosaurus with antlers and a mane. When Luffy eats some of it, he even says the taste reminds him of dinosaur meat (which he ate when he was back on Little Garden).
- The Carta Marina, a decorative sea map famous for the immense variety of sea monsters it depicts, includes a number of creatures that are meant to be representations of real animals, but don't really read as such to modern eyes. In addition to the stylized, dragon-like "whales", there is also a "sea-hog" that was probably based on a description of a walrus, and a "marine unicorn" most likely inspired by accounts of a narwhal.
- Because only the ivory made its way to Europe for a long time, walruses were initially depicted as elephants,
and later as pig-fish hybrids.
- Given that seeing a lion in 18th-century Brazil was difficult, the ones made by local sculptor Aleijadinho
looked like monkeys
◊ — most notably in his statue of Daniel
◊ in a series with The Bible's prophets. (This includes another example, the whale carved on Jonah's statue.)
- The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs include a number of reconstructions of prehistoric animals whose species are not immediately recognizable to modern viewers. These include the infamous example of Iguanodon depicted as a massive rhino-lizard hybrid, a giant frog that's supposed to be Mastodonsaurus, Dicynodon as a tusked turtle-like creature, and the early horse Paleotherium as a kind of tapir. To be fair, they were considered accurate at the time.
- Since lions are not native to China, many Chinese guardian lion statues don't particularly resemble actual lions, looking more like dogs. For this reason, they're alternatively referred to as "Fu dogs".
- William from Baby Shark's Big Show! is meant to be a pilot fish, but has an orange color scheme that more resembles a goldfish.
- Blazing Teens 2010: You really have to take the series' word for it when the Spirit of the Dashing Eagle yo-yo claims to be an eagle, as his yellow color makes him look more like a canary.
- One of the main characters of Fun Alliance, Thunder Mouse, is a rectangular animal who doesn't have any features to immediately distinguish them as a mouse.
- You wouldn't know the titular protagonists of Kit And Kate are meant to be cats unless you were told so. They look more like blue alien frog creatures. The other animals are more recognizable though.
- Max from Miniforce is said to be a beaver, but he looks more like a squirrel or chipmunk due to his tail not being flat.
- The fireball aliens from the Motu Patlu (2012) episode "Fire Ball Aliens" are an interesting variation. While they do have enough features to make them recognizable as fireballs, literally the only indication that they're aliens at all is how they're referred to as such in the title and in the episode itself; they are never stated to come from another planet, don't own any spacecraft for travelling, or anything like that.
- Rat-a-Tat features a bulldog named Rox who looks less like a bulldog and more like a Great Dane.
- Cerebus, in the very early issues, looked reasonably like a bipedal aardvark, but as the comic progressed and Dave Sim's art improved, Cerebus looked less and less like an aardvark and more like a gray pig-creature.
- Happens a bit in Albedo: Erma Felna EDF:
- Alliusiz, a minor character, is supposedly a possum, but he looks more like a monkey.
- Invoked with the titular heroine: According with Word of God, Erma and her family are not based on any Feline breed or sub-species, albeit some fans pointed out they look like between the Manx cat,
a breed from the Isle of Man in the U.K., the Abyssinian cat and the Japanese bobtail cat
.
- Guess which species these
◊ two
◊ characters from German comic Fix und Foxi are supposed to be. The first one's a wolf named "Lupo" and the second one's a raven named "Knox", but honestly, could you have told? To set things straight, Lupo hardly looks like a wolf due to the way he's drawn, a really thin tail with a tuft of hair at the end and floppy ears that look more like dog ears than wolf ears. Knox, on the other hand, has a large curved yellow beak which makes him look more like a toucan or puffin than a raven.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
- As noted by the page image, the Beagle Boys, who despite being more canine than the other Dog Faces (Especially in Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers and DuckTales (2017)), still don't look enough like beagles. In Italy, they're known as "Banda Bassotti" (Dachshund Band) but don't resemble dachshunds either.
- In a minor case, while Donald Duck's cousin Gladstone Gander is a goose there's basically no difference between him and the ducks, apart from being slightly larger than Donald in the early Carl Barks stories.
- Gyro Gearloose does not resemble a chicken.
- Launchpad McQuack, with his big chin, looks more like a pelican than a duck.
- Journey Of The Diplodocus Dragon: Diplodocus, who is supposed to be a young sauropod, but doesn't resemble one; he has big mammalian ears and walks on two legs. This trope gets worse when he is next to his parents who do resemble actual adult sauropods.
- Brazilian comic Monica's Gang has three dogs, Fluff, a hairy and nearly featureless one that does resemble a lhasa apso,
◊ Blu, who is not immediately recognizable as a Schnauzer,
◊ and Glu,
◊ who is... an egg-shaped dog. And that's not mentioning how their fur is green, blue and yellow.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Dr. Starline is supposed to be a platypus, but rather than the beaver-like tail of platypuses, he has a long crooked tail like Knuckles' albeit thicker. He also has long hair that looks like a feathery crest. These features make him look more like a dinosaur instead.
- From ''Wonder Woman volume 2 onward it was decided to change the Cheetah from a woman in a catsuit to a Beast Man/woman. From the start she had some striking un cheetah features like hands and feet full of sharp, retractable claws, when real cheetah only have one sharp claw out of five on each of their four paws and cannot retract any of them. Her eyes have golden irises and house cat like slit pupils while cheetah typically have brown irises and always have round pupils, like humans. She has a monkey like Prehensile Tail, when cheetah tails are purely to help steady and steer them while running. Her vocalizations also range from growls, roars to meows, when actual cheetah chirp like birds. Tellingly the Brazilian translation did not consider Barbara Minerva the new cheetah but called her "leopard woman" instead. By New 52, Cheetah was often drawn with leopard or jaguar spots instead of cheetah spots anyway.
- Lampshaded in Bloom County that eventually Opus looked more like a puffin than a penguin.
- Dilbert: Dogbert barely looks like a dog. There are a few small, white, and fluffy breeds he could be, but his general shape resembles a Cephalothorax, and it's easy to forget his nose isn't actually his mouth.
- FoxTrot: Jason's pet lizard, Quincy, is supposed to be an iguana, but he mostly just looks like a generic green lizard. He also has a row of circular plates along his back, rather than spines like a real iguana.
- Garfield: Jim Davis declared Odie to be a beagle, but is even less similar to it than Snoopy (in the live-action movies he's a dachshund; in this strip
◊, Garfield declares he's a "purebred clown").
- Krazy Kat is not readily identifiable as a cat. (S)he looks somewhat like Yakko, Wakko, and Dot from Animaniacs, but with a flesh-colored face and pink nose.
- Mister Jack from the comic strip of the same name by Jimmy Swinnerton barely looks like the tiger he is supposed to be, lacking a long tail and the stripes just barely visible. Source
.
- Mooch the cat from Mutts is not readily identifiable as a cat and looks rather like
◊ Yakko Warner
◊ from Animaniacs, except with smaller, more pointed ears, a bigger nose, and without the cheek tufts and tan colored pants. The resemblance would be even more noticeable if Mooch were drawn in the same style Yakko is drawn, or vice versa.
- Peanuts
- More of an informed breed, but Snoopy and his brothers (and sister) look nothing like real beagles. Notably Snoopy wasn't originally intended to be a beagle, and even denied being one in an early strip. In fact, the character was roughly based off of Charles Schulz's childhood dog, a Pointer named Spike who was "a mixed breed of some kind"—by Schulz's admission, Snoopy was only a beagle in the strip because it was a funny word. Snoopy's black and white coloring seems to be more of that of a Pointer's or a Dalmatian's, although there are black and white beagles as well. Regardless of whether or not he resembles a real beagle, Snoopy is a perfect portrayal of the standard breed: smart, playful, affectionate, hard-headed at times with a stubborn and independent streak that real beagles are famously known for having.
- Woodstock doesn’t even seem to resemble a bird, with his beak looking more like a big human nose due to the simplistic art style. A Running Gag is that he doesn't know his own species, and Snoopy's attempts to narrow it down only reveal that he's (probably) not a crow, an American bittern, a Caroline wren, a rufous-sided towhee, a yellow-billed cuckoo, a Canada goose, a warbler, or a duck. One story treated bird species in terms of rank, with Woodstock going to "Eagle Camp" to learn how to be an eagle (and flunking out due to a tendency to get "beak bleeds" at high altitudes).
- Winslow from Prickly City is supposed to be a coyote pup, but he looks more like a cross between a bobcat and a Cairn Terrier. The fact that he's colored bright yellow and has a small, stubby tail doesn't help.
- The titular protagonist of Pogo looks nothing like a possum; he looks more like a monkey.
- In Mother Goose and Grimm, while Grimm is clearly a dog, he doesn't really share much of resemblance with Bull Terriers, which he's stated to be, so he just looks like a generic yellow dog with an enormous nose. Combined with Art Evolution, in the earlier strips he actually did look a lot like the particular breed.
- Hungarian Folk Tales: The pelican looks like any generic fantasy bird with a normal-sized beak. This is justified though, as the episode in question follows the depictions of pelicans found in medieval bestiaries and religious imagery. People, especially from landlocked countries where pelicans were rare, used to believe these birds bled themselves dry to feed their young, making them symbols of Christ, while their real-life traits were ignored.
- The water spider protagonist of Vízipók-Csodapók doesn't look much like a spider; he's a purple cartoon bug with a generally humanoid body shape and beak-like mouth, with only his numerous legs and eyes indicating his species.
- The picture of Undertow, the Pristichampsus in Nathanoraptor's Ice Age 5 fanfic, on the author's deviantART page, reveals he looks more like a featherless Velociraptor than a Pristichampsus, or even anything vaguely crocodilian.
- Pokémon Defeatist: The Balatigans look gigantic reptilian humanoids with gorilla like forearms, but are actually evolutionary relatives of pangolins.
- 65: The small four-legged carnivores are supposed to be Lagosuchus according to the soundtrack. However, not only are they much larger than that animal, but they're depicted as quadrupeds when the real creature was probably bipedal— to say nothing of the fact it didn't live in the Cretaceous.
- The large prehistoric feline from Alpha is supposed to be a cave lion, but it is depicted with saber teeth, making it resemble a Machairodus.
- Benny from Benny Loves You is a living toy that his owner, Jack, refers to as a "bear" — he looks (and sounds) more like a floppy-eared Elmo expy, complete with bright red fur.
- Cool Cat Saves the Kids: Cool Cat's features don't quite come across as feline. In fact, he vaguely resembles a fox. His excitable personality isn't very catlike either.
- Zilla, a.k.a., the American Godzilla, is an interesting variation. He's supposed to be a mutated marine iguana, but his physical structure is more akin to that of a theropod dinosaur. Since he is mutated, this might be justified.
- Ironically Godzilla himself , who was in fact supposed to be a mutated theropod of some variety, doesn't really look like any real dinosaur so much. Part of this is Science Marches On, since back in the '50s when Godzilla was created, the classic 'tripod' pose for theropods was still in vogue, but even taking that into account, his head is way too small to be a theropod. Granted, this may be justified on account of his mutation, as his original form, the Godzillasaurus, has a bigger head in proportion to its body. Some fans also interpret other incarnations of him as a synapsid.
- May be the reason why in the 2014 reboot he is portrayed as a type of Permian reptile instead of a dinosaur. However, suplementary material in the special features of the home release of this movie states that yes, the Monsterverse Godzilla is a dinosaur as well, but given he originates from the Permian era, it means his species were either the very first dinosaurs or extremely derived dinosauriforms. There's also the fact that he has gills, which means that MV!Godzilla technically wouldn't even be a reptile, but some kind of non-amniote amphibian.
- Anguirus in Godzilla Raids Again, despite the claims of the contrary, doesn't really look much like an ankylosaur. He is more like some kind of Styracosaurus/crocodile/armadillo hybrid.
- Likewise, Rodan doesn't really look like a Pteranodon. He's got a small head reminiscent of a bird of prey and lacks pycnofibres, but at least he possesses membranous wings like real pterosaurs. His Heisei version has a more Pteranodon-like head as well as a slimmer body build closer to real pterosaurs, but he unfortunately has bat-like wings which other versions of the character lack. In the Monsterverse Rodan is now an ancient organism from a time before pterosaurs emerged, making his inaccuracies more justifiable, as that version of him isn't a pterosaur at all.
- The MUTOs featured in the MonsterVerse continuity are described by the MPC visual effects supervisor in Godzilla: The Art of Destruction as probably being mammals based on the fact they possess skin, bones and muscle, but he also admitted that they do look more insectoid than mammalian. To say nothing of the MUTOs' reproductive cycle, which in light of this information makes the platypus look like nothing to gawk about.
- Ironically Godzilla himself , who was in fact supposed to be a mutated theropod of some variety, doesn't really look like any real dinosaur so much. Part of this is Science Marches On, since back in the '50s when Godzilla was created, the classic 'tripod' pose for theropods was still in vogue, but even taking that into account, his head is way too small to be a theropod. Granted, this may be justified on account of his mutation, as his original form, the Godzillasaurus, has a bigger head in proportion to its body. Some fans also interpret other incarnations of him as a synapsid.
- Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008): The large carnivorous dinosaur is supposed to be a Giganotosaurus, but it looks more like a three-fingered Tyrannosaurus.
- Jurassic Park is notorious for this:
- Jurassic Park (1993):
- The Velociraptor are an infamous case of this, resembling the larger Deinonychus. This is because the novel the film was based on described Deinonychus as being synonymous with Velociraptor, a now-discredited hypothesis proposed by Gregory S. Paul, and also because Michael Crichton thought Velociraptor sounded much cooler than Deinonychus. And let's not get to the fact raptors should have feathers (granted, it was only discovered in 1997, shortly after The Lost World, but later films don't have Science Marches On as an excuse).
- The Dilophosaurus not only possess non-existent neck-frills (which wasn't even present in the novel) and venomous spit but also a more broad skull similar to that of its relative Sinosaurus (which was thought to have been a species of Dilophosaurus), and are also too small (about on par with the Velociraptor in real life, funnily).
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park: The Mamenchisaurus look more like Diplodocus or Barosaurus in that they don't have a hump or a tail club, as well as a longer skull rather than the boxy one the real animal had. Most glaringly, they don't have the extra-long neck this dinosaur is famous for, meaning that they mostly just look like generic sauropods. This may be because Mamenchisaurus was originally thought to have been a diplodocid and in fact, the Mamenchisaurus were actually meant to be Diplodocus based on pre-production materials (although the species that was meant to be featured went by Seismosaurus).
- Jurassic Park III:
- The Ankylosaurus possess pointed osteoderms and large spikes protruding from their sides, which nowadays make them resemble their spikier relatives such as Tarchia or Zuul (the real Ankylosaurus had smoothed or rounded armor). This was because the nodosaur Edmontonia was thought to have had a tail club, which nodosaurs are now known for lacking, and this portrayal resulted in confusion between it and Ankylosaurus, thus the latter became portrayed with spikes. This depiction got carried over to later films, although the prologue of Jurassic World Dominion tries to make the prehistoric Ankylosaurus look more like the real animals by using the lighting and shading to hide most of the spikes.
- The Pteranodon have teeth, especially ludicrous considering its name literally means "toothless wing" and there were many other species of pterosaurs that did possess teeth.
- Jurassic World:
- The Gallimimus have broader skulls and beaks full of small teeth, which is jarring since the ones that appeared prior looked somewhat more like real Gallimimus. This seems to be because they were based on concept art and early stop-motion models for the original film which gave the Gallimimus a skull that looks more like that of a juvenile than an adult. They also should have feathers.
- The Dimorphodon have heads shaped more like a typical carnivorous theropod than the real animal. Perhaps this could be the reason why they are ferocious carnivores rather than inoffensive insectivores. They do have pycnofibres unlike the Pteranodon; the problem is that they don't have enough.
- There's a Hand Wave by Dr. Wu that all the dinosaurs were purposely modified to look "cooler" rather than biologically accurate, as their purpose was to serve as theme park entertainment. This is true even in the books; it is explicitly explained that none of them are perfect replicas because of all the modifications and substitutions that had to be made. The use of frog and modern reptile DNA rather than bird DNA to fill the gaps in the sequences is a major reason for this.
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom:
- The Baryonyx is a major offender. It has a considerably shorter and smaller skull than the real animal as well as atrophied forelimbs, lacking the prominent thumb claw that is literally Baryonyx's most distinguishing and namesake feature, both of which make it look more like a generic theropod than a spinosaurid. Especially jarring seeing as promotional art for the website of the previous film featured a Baryonyx design much closer to its Real Life counterpart (as this one was drawn by a renowned paleo artist).
- According to the script, the ceratopsian skull that the Indoraptor is impaled on is that of an Agujaceratops, not a Triceratops, as viewers commonly assume. The thing is, the skull's frill is clearly solid, a feature only Triceratops had. The producers, on the other hand, claim the skull wasn't meant to be any specific type of ceratopsian. Interestingly, the junior novelization identifies it as a Triceratops horridus.
- Likewise, the movie's Sinoceratops have holes in their frills. While real Sinoceratops—and most other ceratopsians—did have these holes, in life they would have been covered by skin, not exposed like they are in the movie. The Sinoceratops also have a horn that is also much broader than the real animal's, bizarrely curved cheek spikes, a long tail, and they also have small spikes on the center of the frill like a Pachyrhinosaurus. The latter was because they were originally going to be Pachyrhinosaurus, which would have played this trope even straighter since Pachyrhinosaurus is famous for not having horns, although an actual Pachyrhinosaurus appears in Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, and it is correctly portrayed with no horns and no holes in its frill.
- Jurassic World Dominion:
- The Giganotosaurus is shown with a prominent dorsal hump and Spikes of Villainy, making it look more like an Acrocanthosaurus or an oversized Concavenator (though those species have very different humps). It also has an undersized head, with crocodilian teeth instead of the bladelike teeth its family were infamous for.
- The Atrociraptor are basically slightly larger recolors of the JP Velociraptor, ignoring that the real Atrociraptor was even smaller than Velociraptor. The only indication that they're Atrociraptor is that they have the distinctive square-shaped snout of the genus and the proportionally longer legs of the saurornitholestine subfamily they belonged to.
- Likewise, the Pyroraptor looks more like a reasonably-accurate Deinonychus (though with a lizardlike head), when the real animal was also smaller than Velociraptor. However this is somewhat justified as the Pyroraptor remains are from a juvenile and very poorly preserved leaving much of its appearance a mystery.
- The Dreadnoughtus look more like a modified version of the Brachiosaurus. Granted, brachiosaurs and titanosaurs are very closely related, but the Dreadnoughtus also has an elongated tail and torso which make it resemble a diplodocid, which were much more distantly related. It’s also significantly larger than the real thing, which was only slightly larger than Brachiosaurus.
- The Iguanodon are a mild example. They have smaller forelimbs than the real animal, making them look more like similar ornithopods such as Mantellisaurus. This is especially noticeable in Jurassic World: Evolution 2, which featured a more accurate Iguanodon.
- Jurassic World Rebirth:
- The Titanosaurus bear little resemblance to the real animal, which is known from fragmentary remains but was likely similar to its relative Isisaurus. The animal in the film is many times larger than the real thing (which was not a very large sauropod despite its name) and has a whip tail like a diplodocid. Besides the tail it most resembles a giant titanosaur like Patagotitan, though with speculative tissues on its face and dorsal regions.
- Dolores the Aquilops has a generically ceratopsian face with big doe eyes, a tall beak, and a frill. The real thing was named for its tapering face and aquiline scowl, and lacked a real frill. The end result is an animal with almost nothing in common with Aquilops other than being a small ceratopsian.
- The film uses Quetzalcoatlus like the previous...but Ingen's clones are nothing like Biosyn's, with a head that looks more like Hatzegopteryx.
- Jurassic Park (1993):
- Osmosis Jones: In-universe, Drix mistakes Chill for a virus, and figures they should arrest him, until Ozzy informs Drix that he's a flu shot, to which he replies "That's funny, he doesn't look fluish."
- The turkey from ThanksKilling looks more like a vulture.
- The giant ground sloth from Unknown Island barely resembles the real animal, instead looking more like a bizarre hybrid between a bear and an ape. And then there's the fact that it's carnivorous.
- In a similar case to Fantasia, the eponymous Allosaurus from The Valley of Gwangi looks more like an old-fashioned three-fingered T. rex.
- The titular werewolf of The Wolf Man doesn't really look like a wolf and instead looks more like a cross between a bear and a gorilla. This is because of Technology Marches On, since at that time special effects and make-up were not sophisticated enough to go beyond adding just hair and fangs or having a dog (or hyena) play the role of a werewolf. The 2010 remake sticks with the classic design while adding in more wolf-like features such as pointy ears and a muzzle, although the redesign still looks more like a bear than a wolf. Especially due to possessing sharp claws, which wolves don't possess but bears do. The 2025 remake, on the other hand, is much less canine-like than even the original, looking more like a human with long hair, fangs, and claws.
- Utam, The Mighty Peking Man, is supposedly a giant orangutan (hence his name). But he's got black fur like a gorilla (fitting, as he's a King Kong Copy) and his features are much closer to an early hominin than any living ape species. He's also supposed to be a Yeti, but he's WAY bigger than yetis are usually described as.
- The title monsters in The Monster That Challenged the World are supposed to be snails, but other than the fact that they have shells, they really look like insect larvae such as grubs or caterpillars. The scene where a scientist shows footage of real snails and talks about their "remarkable similarity" to the giant monster only makes it hard to ignore the fact that they don't look alike at all.
- The titular monsters in the film Monster from Green Hell are supposed to be wasps and yet look more like horseflies.
- The VelociPastor, being a film with its tongue buried firmly in its cheek, does this with the titular monster: Doug's dinosaur form barely even resembles a Jurassic Park raptor, much less a real one. Even aside from the fact that it's clearly a man in a costume, said costume, with its upright tail-dragging stance, thickset build, huge head, and tiny arms, looks more like a stylized T. rex.
- While the other monster-ized residents of the Hundred Acre Wood in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 are more or less recognizable as the animals they're based on (e.g. Pooh is humanoid bear, Piglet is a Pig Man, Tigger is a humanoid tiger), the same cannot be said for Owl. With his prominent nose/beak and bald head, he looks more like a vulture.
- The eponymous Arthur of the picture books and later animated TV series is billed as an aardvark. In the earliest books there is some trace of a resemblance, and the elongated nose is actually relevant to the plot (though it resembles that of an anteater's more than an aardvark's.) Later in the series, you wouldn't know unless you were told.
- The eponymous raven character from the German picture book series Raven the Little Rascal (Der kleine Rabe Socke in German) has a yellow beak and red feet, which makes him look more like an Alpine chough.
- Lowly from Richard Scarry's works is supposed to be a worm, but he looks more like a snake.
- The Wind in the Willows: Mr. Toad is described as having paws, and there's a scene where he shakes leaves out of his hair.
- The illustrations of Roo in the original Winnie-the-Pooh books look more like a cat than a joey. Averted with Disney's Roo.
- This is a major plot point in A Dog's Way Home. Bella is a nondescript mutt but is repeatedly referred to as most likely being a mastiff or Rottweiler mix. A man at the local shelter, however, believes her to be a pit bull. Though various characters (including his co-workers) try to argue against this, it still causes trouble for Bella because her county has strict BSL laws. Bella is almost euthanized several times because she's erroneously dubbed a pit bull. As a result, Bella's owner sends her into foster care out of town until he can move out. Bella doesn't understand this and believes Lucas abandoned her. The day before he's set to come back for Bella, she runs away trying to get to him herself.
- The Banana Splits:
- Bingo is supposed to be a gorilla, but he looks more like a generic ape with a dog's nose and orange fur. In Jellystone!, he was redesigned as a Top-Heavy Guy, making him resemble a gorilla more.
- Drooper is supposed to be a lion, but his longer snout makes him look more like a dog.
- Binyah Binyah Polliwog from Gullah Gullah Island looks more like an adult frog that still has yet to lose its tail than a polliwog.
- Professor Bobo in Mystery Science Theater 3000 is stated to be a highly-evolved gorilla, but he really looks like a chimpanzee.
◊
- In Power Rangers, Animal Mecha often don't look much like the animal they're supposed to be. Sometimes, however, the zord's name is changed from Super Sentai, where it resembles the animal it was originally named for.
- The second season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers had this issue when it had to rename the Yellow and Blue Rangers' Thunderzords to Griffin and Unicorn, when they were originally a Kirin and a Pegasus in Gosei Sentai Dairanger.
- Power Rangers RPM also had it bad when it took Birca (an orca), Gunpherd (a German Shepherd), and Toripter (a rooster) from Engine Sentai Go-onger and made them into the Tail Spinner (shark?), Wolf Cruiser, and Falcon Chopper Zords.
- Power Rangers Beast Morphers did it again, changing Beet Buster and Stag Buster, who were Japanese Beetle Brothers, to being based instead on a Mantis and Scarab respectively, despite them not looking like those at all.
- Dooly the Little Dinosaur:
- Many sources claim Dooly is a Ceratosaurus. While he is vaguely a bipedal dinosaur with horn on his nose, his resemblance to a ceratosaur is zilch.
- Ddochi is supposed to be an ostrich, but she looks more like some kind of white humanoid with bird-feet and a feather tail.
- One episode of the 2008 series had an orangutan which looked more like a gorilla with an orange mane.
- René la Taupe
(René the Mole) is a virtual character from France singing some songs for children. Except its design evokes much more a marmot or gopher than a mole.
- Baby Bop from Barney & Friends has been identified as a Triceratops, but other than having a head frill she barely resembles one at all, as she has no horns, mammalian ears and a face like a hippopotamus. Her brother, BJ, does however more closely resemble a triceratops, but that makes him an example as well, since he’s meant to be a Protoceratops.
- Dinosaurs:
- Earl Sinclair is said to be a Megalosaurus, but looks nothing like the actual dinosaur.
- Likewise, his wife Fran is supposed to be an Allosaurus. Allosaurus never had that Dilophosaurus-like crest on its head.
- Their youngest child Baby was called a Megalosaurus by Earl in "Germ Warfare", but he doesn't resemble the dinosaur any more than his father does. When we see him as an adult during Fran's nightmare in "Out of the Frying Pan", he is clearly a Ceratosaurus complete with a nose horn. It is sort of justified, given how he was born from a different family, whose father IS a Ceratosaurus.
- B. P. Richfield is meant to be a Triceratops, but has the spiky frill of a Styracosaurus.
- Spike is presumably a Polacanthus, but he looks more a stegosaur (he even has a spiked tail, which Polacanthus lacked) with the head of a Pachycephalosaurus.
- On the topic of Pachycephalosaurus, the recurring puppet character Howard Handupme is said to be one according to supplementary material, but doesn’t look like one.
- A more literal case with the one-off character Gary from the episode "High Noon". He's said to be a Dilophosaurus, but all we see of him is his gigantic foot, which dwarfs Earl. There's also the fact that the real Dilophosaurus was much smaller than Megalosaurus.
- Five Minutes More: Faraway is supposedly an aardvark, but has a short, rounded snout and blue fur. At least they got the ears right.
- It's a Big Big World: Snook is supposed to be a modern-day tree sloth, but he looks more like a prehistoric ground sloth instead.
- The Muppets:
- Pepe — if he didn't tell you he was a king prawn would you have any idea what he was? He's clearly some kind of crustacean, so...they got us to "within a subphylum", anyway.
- Beauregard, who was based on Wendell Porcupine from Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas , by the time he appears in the movies and the TV series, doesn't look too much like a porcupine, with the rats convincing him that he was an honorary rat in the TV show (even though he doesn't resemble one).
- Sam the Eagle, while clearly a bird, doesn't really look much like an American Bald Eagle as he has none of the standard markings and is blue.
- Gonzo, whose species has been the subject of much guesswork due to his hooked nose/beak, started out evolving from Snarl Frackle in "The Great Santa Claus Caper". Kermit once mused that "he looked a little like a turkey, but not much" in The Muppet Movie. In The Great Muppet Caper, he's put in a crate with "whatever" marked on the side. In Muppets From Space, he is revealed to be an alien from a far away planet, and his alien relatives come to invite him back to his homeworld, and when he sees how he would be missing the other Muppets whom he considers his close friends and family, the aliens respect his choice to stay on Earth.
- Kermit himself isn't particularly froglike in appearance. His snout is pointed and while his hands and feet could be called flippers, there's no webbing, so overall he looks more like a tailless lizard than anything else. Jim Henson had, in fact, been using the character design for years before identifying it as a frog. Funnily, he's an excellent match to the Diane's bare-hearted glass frog (apart from not having the transparent underside that gives it its name), which, like Kermit, has bright green skin, minimal webbing on its toes, and large white eyes with wide black horizontal pupils... and it was discovered in 2015.
- Joe the Legal Weasel from Muppets Now was originally a prairie dog puppet on The Muppet Show, and still looks more rodent than mustelid. He could maybe pass for an otter, but he lacks the pointy snout of a weasel.
- Sesame Street:
- An animated music video about animal families featured featured a chickadee as one of the featured animals, but the chickadee looked more like an Baltimore oriole (a bright orange bird) than an actual chickadee (actual chickadees have gray bodies, black heads, and white cheeks).
- Rosita was meant to be a fruit bat but she looks more like a blue Elmo or a mutated flying squirrel than a bat. After 13 years they removed her wing flaps and retconned her into being a Monster. The in-series reason for this is that she 'lost' her wings while flying through a cave. (The wings later returned, but she's still officially a Monster, just a winged one.)
- Although Big Bird's exact species is debatable depending on the source, he doesn't resemble many of the species he has been identified as. For example, some sources have identified him as a canary. To say nothing of his size, he doesn't really look like a canary at all apart from being bright yellow. Some sources have even identified him as a condor, which he also looks nothing like. He looks more like a giant yellow silkie chicken than anything else (which he ironically has never been identified as).
- While none of the animal characters in Peter Jackson's raunchy Muppets parody Meet the Feebles look particularly close to their real species, most of them are at least recognizable to a point. The same cannot be said of drug lord Mr. Big. Word of God says he's a whale (a line implies he's specifically a sperm whale, given that they mention ambergris when driving through his body), but if so, he's a pretty weird-looking one, with rough greenish skin and a wide mouth full of sharp teeth.
- In the British children's series In the Night Garden..., one of the main characters, Igglepiggle, is stated on the show's official website to be a teddy bear. He barely looks like one, though — apparently, blue humanoid things with bean-shaped heads are considered "teddy bears" in this show's universe.
- The titular character in H.R. Pufnstuf is ostensibly a dragon but looks more like a prototype McDonald's mascot, especially with his round yellow oversized head that resembles a wide-mouthed saggy-eyed human Muppet rather than a dragon. However, Pufnstuf has the torso, limbs, and tail of a stereotypical dragon mascot.
- Don't Hug Me I'm Scared has Duck. He is green, which matches up with a male mallard's green head, but the green covers his entire body rather than just the head, and it's such a dark green that in many shots (particularly in the first short) it looks more like black. He also has a narrow pointy beak that doesn't much resemble a duck bill (though it is yellow), and has no sign of webbing on his feet. Since his official "name" wasn't revealed for a long time, a lot of people were outright confused as to what kind of bird he was supposed to be. One of the openings of the TV series jokingly nods to this, having him call himself "a talking crow-like thing."
- In its initial incarnation
◊, the owlbear of Dungeons & Dragons, despite supposedly being a hybrid of bear and owl, was pretty hard to identify as such: it has bearlike arms and a thickset furry body, but the only owl-like trait it has is a beak, which certainly doesn't look like an owl beak (it looks more like a parrot's, if anything), and feathers on its head, which are so sparsely drawn that they look like scales or armor instead. Add in the gizzard neck, the hunchback, the oddly reduced fur on its limbs (to the point that its paws and feet seem to be hairless), and the T-rex stance with a long thick tail dragging behind it, and one could be forgiven for thinking it's some kind of fantasy dinosaur or possibly an obscure kaiju, rather than the Mix-and-Match Critter that it is. This owed to its original design being based less on owls or bears and more on a knockoff dinosaur toy
◊ Gary Gygax had used as a miniature in his home games. Later redesigns have tried to make it more like its inspirational critters, usually by shortening the tail considerably to give it a bearlike silhouette and giving it a rather obvious owl head.
- Starland Krew: Naarky is supposed to be an aardvark, but has a snout with a black nose and whiskers, making him look more like a dog or rat. His tail also appears to be obscured by his cape.
- BIONICLE mostly featured fantasy beasts that were sometimes designated as real animals despite resembling none, but the Hapaka is an odd example. Officially labeled a hound-like creature, it's actually a miniature elephant, with an obvious trunk, tusks and large ears. It was even called an elephant in LEGO's website URL. It's unclear why the toyline's fiction changed it to a dog, unless "hound-like" was only meant to describe its behavior. And the physical model's feet are very big, which makes it look like a frog as well.
- The "Mission Deep Sea" sub-series in LEGO Alpha Team revolves around the premise of villain Ogel mutating sea animals into super-powered minions. Most are still fairly recognizable, but the "Ogel Mutant Killer Whale" looks more like some kind of prehistoric sea reptile, with its horizontal tail being the only thing remotely marking it as a whale. A big reason for this is that it uses the same body mold as the Mosasaurus from the short-lived LEGO Dinosaurs line.
- LEGO Dino Attack was infamously ambiguous about whether its dinosaurs were meant to be mutants, robots, or cyborgs. None of them are especially accurate, and most skew more towards the pop-culture versions of their respective species than anything else, but the only one that really goes into Informed Species territory is the Raptor. It doesn't even look like a stereotypical pop culture raptor, let alone a real one— it's three times the height of a minifig, with horns on its head, Stegosaurus-like spikes on its tail, and, oddly, no obvious sickle claws.
- "Chinasaurs", generic toy dinosaurs named for the only identifiable mark on them being the "Made in China" stamp, can form an entire spectrum of this ranging from "not entirely accurate but recognizable as the intended species" to "it's labeled as a Dilophosaurus but it looks more like a Carnotaurus" to "this looks like it belongs in a collection of alien toys not dinosaur toys". Some of the more baffling cases found a new life as Dungeons & Dragons monsters (due to Gygax using them as miniatures), including the owlbear, bulette, and rust monster.
- My Little Pony:
- G2 bombed in most places, bar a few European countries, because of this. The toys no longer resembled ponies, they looked like ordinary horses. While there is a lot of overlap between the two due to being the same species, ponies are overall shorter and stockier than other horses.
- G1 had "Dream Beauties" which were essentially a predecessor to G2. They didn't look like ponies, with the official consensus seeming to be that they were "teenage ponies". That didn't make much sense though, since most previous ponies were adults and ponies don't suddenly become long-legged during adolescence.
- G3.5 ponies just look off. They don't really resemble anything, besides maybe some sort of dog-horse mix. Their proportions are completely wrong even for Super-Deformed ponies.
- Just like the cartoon, G4 ponies less resemble horses and more resemble deer with manes or weird looking dogs or cats without paws, due to their short muzzles. Celestia and Luna resemble horses, though they're supposed to be tall ponies.
- Squishmallows: Elda is an ostrich, but doesn't look the part due to her shaggy rainbow feathers and beak that looks like the snout used for horse and cow Squishmallows.
- Many animals in Transformers are informed species. Birds in general often fall victim to this, as do most cats. The toys of feline characters tend to fall into a very similar (but not actually resembling any actual cat) build. Often, this owes to the fact that they have to turn into a humanoid robot, but even then, there are some weird standouts.
- Laserbeak and Buzzsaw are probably the first major examples: they're supposed to be condors, and Laserbeak's Japanese name is even Condor. But even allowing for the artistic license of being a robot that turns into a tape, their heads have what looks like a crest rather than rounding off, their wings are short and stubby rather than massive and square, their faces are streamlined rather than droopy, and their personalities are very aggressive rather than relatively docile scavengers, all of which suggest a small bird of prey, likely a falcon. It doesn't help that Laserbeak and Buzzsaw are consistently shown as relatively small Transformers, easily fitting on the resident Decepticon leader's arm or shoulder—condors are some of the largest flying birds and wouldn't easily pull off that kind of pose with a human.
- Ravage is meant to be a jaguar, but is so stylized that it was half-jokingly debated for years in the fandom whether he was a dog instead. His face is rather long and thin, and his tail is short and stubby, neither of which are jaguar traits. This varies Depending on the Artist, though; later artists tend to make him more obviously feline.
- The G1 Decepticon Headmasters all have animals as their alternate modes. Weirdwolf, Skullcruncher, and Mindwipe all manage to look like the species their alt-modes are supposed to be (a wolf, a crocodile, and a bat, respectively), and even Apeface, who is considerably more stylized, is relatively easy to peg as a gorilla. Others are not so lucky. Horri-Bull is, as his name suggests, supposed to be a bull. He has bull-like horns but his head has a broad snout full of sharp teeth, his feet have claws instead of hooves, and his tail is broad and forked (as it's his robot mode gun). Overall, he looks more like Zuul than any sort of actual bull. His wavemates Squeezeplay and Fangry are so far beyond this that they're well into Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit" territory: Squeezeplay's "crab" mode is more like an alien monster with crab claws, while Fangry's wolf mode has a wolf head on a bipedal body with bat wings.
- In the Beast Wars toyline, Snarl (and his Japanese mold-mate Tasmania Kid) are stated to be Tasmanian devils. They really aren't; for one thing, Tasmanian devils are black with a white stripe down their fronts, but Snarl is light brown with a black stripe down his back. Snarl is also a lot chunkier and has a bushier tail than a Tasmanian devil. He's not a bad match for a dunnart or quoll, which are close relatives of the Tasmanian devil, though. His Legacy United Core Class is more accurate.
- The Beast Wars version of Iguanus is very clearly a frilled-neck lizard. The name is, admittedly, a reuse from a G1 character, who was kinda-sorta an iguana monster.
- Cheetor's first toy is a lot stockier than an actual cheetah, which are known for being lithe and lightweight, making him look more like a leopard with cheetah spots. It's often theorized that it was intended as a generic big cat and the decision to make it a cheetah happened fairly late, a theory that is borne out by the fact that it got a recolor into Tigatron, a tiger, and looks a lot more natural that way. The cartoon redesigned it significantly to look more like a cheetah.
- Dinobot's toy has a lot to be excused about it, being a Velociraptor toy in the post-Jurassic Park (1993) mid-90s (featherless, hands are wrong, way too big). What can't be easily excused is that he's incredibly chunky, with tiny arms, legs barely long enough to lift his belly off the ground, and gigantic hips, when Velociraptors were even then depicted as slim and slight with lanky limbs. He was redesigned somewhat in the cartoon, but even then, he's still a lot thicker than a real Velociraptor. If not for the sickle claw (which is small enough to be mistaken for a big toe), you'd probably think T-rex or Allosaurus first. His Universe and Kingdom toys managed to fix this a fair bit by slimming out his proportions, though his design is still outdated.
- Tarantulas's first toy is meant to be... well, a tarantula, but appears to be more of a generic spider. This is most obvious in the legs, which are very spindly, when tarantulas are known for their thick, bulky legs, the complete lack of any kind of fur, the weird clawed mouthparts that more invoke a solifugid, and the fact that he has nine eyes. Once again, the cartoon redesigned him to look more like a real tarantula, if you forgive the fact that he's bright purple and still has nine eyes. Blackarachnia, his repaint, is at least identifiable as a black widow spider, even though her legs are inexplicably orange. His Legacy toy bucked the trend by redesigning him to look more like an actual spider, and though he's still purple, thanks to his big forward-facing eyes, small downward-pointing fangs, and arching cephalothorax, he is indeed easy to identify... as a wolf spider note .
- Based on his name, B'Boom seems to be intended as a baboon, when he's rather clearly a mandrill, down to having a mandrill's signature bright-colored snout.
- Proving Mix-and-Match Critters can get this, too, Torca, and his repaint, Elphaorpha, are meant to be half-orca, half-elephant. The orca part is definitely there; the elephant part, not so much.
◊ He does have tusks and leathery skin, but his posture is more like a big cat, his mouth looks more like a wolf, and his feet are three-toed claws rather than elephant feet. Even his ears are way off from elephant ears, and his skin is either metallic gold or bright blue. He looks more like some kind of fantasy monster, or possibly a case of Speculative Biology. Concept art has surfaced suggesting that his design may have originated from a different project.
- Despite his name, the Beast Machines character Night Viper is very clearly a cobra.
- In the Power Core Combiners line, Grimstone is called a Triceratops, but the spiky frill and very small brow horns make him look more like a Styracosaurus, or the later-discovered Regaliceratops. And that's not getting into one of his drones being labeled a Spinosaurus on the box, when it's very, very clearly a Dimetrodon.
- The Arms Micron portion of Transformers: Prime could get pretty abstract, owing to how simple the toys are. Gabu
, apparently a horseshoe crab, looks more like a pile of robot parts with a tail. Noji's
meant to be a boar, but is mostly a gun barrel with arms and legs. And Bogu
, a mole, would probably be more accurately be described as a spiky orange blob.
- In an infamous PAW Patrol fanmade webseries Cat Pack Tales, Veronica (one of the protagonists) is supposed to be a Devon Rex cat, but she looks more like a tuxedo American Shorthair instead.
- The Grim: The pilot episode, "Fox", has Gertrude Byrnes meet an animal that's supposed to be a fox. The thing is, said fox's appearance could make one think that it's a lemur at first glance.
- Dreamscape: In the flashback in "A Curse or a Blessing", Melinda's curse's second form is supposed to be a dog, but it looks like a pink serpentine creature with two canine-like heads with huge teeth.
Dylan: Oh come on! That's a dog in the loosest definition of the word!
- DSBT InsaniT: Frog barely looks anything like a frog. He looks more like a gumdrop with webbed limbs.
- Parodied in asdfmovie, where some kind of sauropod calls itself a Stegosaurus.
- Sherlock from Homestar Runner is said to be a mix between a cow and a helicopter. He has faint spots and four hanging appendages that could be legs, and that's about it for his cow similarities - you could just as easily call him a jellyfish.
- The wolfiin of Wings are meant to be wolves, yet they look more like dogs or cats depending on the shot.
- Happy Tree Friends:
- The deliberately over-the-top cutesy artstyle means that a lot of characters end up defaulting to a kind of "brightly-colored bucktoothed teddy bear with a big round head and Fingerless Hands" look, with the most common way to distinguish species being their tail. This leads to some characters that are supposed to be more generic mammals, such as Giggles (chipmunk), Russell (otter), or Cro-Marmot (guess) being hard to pick out as such.
- The Mole is nigh-impossible to identify as a mole by appearance, given that the show's artstyle means he lacks the most distinguishing traits of one (clawed forelimbs, black or gold fur, a long snout). The only thing marking him out as a mole is his blindness, a trait associated with some moles, but even that could easily be a disability (especially since he also appears to be deaf and mute). Other than that, he looks more like a bear with unusually small ears.
- In Helluva Boss, much like its parent series Hazbin Hotel, animal-based demons don't come across as Animalistic Abominations so much as having vague Animal Motifs.
- Stolas and his family members are meant to be owl demons, but have a tall and lithe humanoid shape, their feathery tails too long to suggest those of owls, and their faces only barely seem avian; it's most obvious when they're viewed from the side. Going beyond that, Stella and her side of the family are actually meant to resemble peafowl, despite their design barely differing from that of Stolas's side.
- Asmodeus is described as a rooster demon. He has the tail and the strutting posture, but is otherwise humanoid and unlike Stolas and kin, his face isn't even slightly bird-like. If anything he resembles a moth more.
- Mammon is meant to be a spider demon. While he does sit in the center of a web, if anything he looks like an anthropomorphic Christmas tree.
- In Mo And Coocoo, the titular Coocoo, at best, barely looks like a pigeon (despite being supposed to be one), and because of his yellow beak, his white plumage and his red nostrils, he looks more like a chicken.
- Laverne from Cursed Princess Club is said to be a llama. Between her short neck and wooly-looking fur, however, she could have been labeled a sheep and no one would question it.
- Carson the Muskrat in Dork Tower. He looks more like Snoopy than like an actual muskrat. This is lampshaded in one strip where he goes as himself to a costume event and gets told "Worst muskrat costume ever!"
- In Narbonic, none of Helen's gerbils look anything like real gerbils. Whether they look like in-universe gerbils that are not the creations of a Mad Scientist varies between strips.
- Layla Flaaffy from Sonichu looks absolutely nothing like the Pokémon Flaaffy except possibly for her curly hair, instead just being a sort of generic furry. Word of God (well, word of troll) says that she was created by one of the author's internet girlfriends and it was his idea to make her a Flaaffy despite not changing her design at all.
- Chiro in The Fuzzy Princess is a bat, but she looks more like a flying cat.
- In El Goonish Shive, Adrian Raven initially doubts
Grace is part-squirrel because her part-squirrel form has a very humanoid face with non-squirrel-like teeth. He is convinced
when he sees her full-squirrel form though.
- In a real-life example, it's a known issue that many dogs in animal shelters are mislabeled. They don't give them DNA checks, so the people just check if they have enough characteristics of a certain type of dog and categorize them as such. Due to how dogs work, mixed breeds can look a variety of ways despite their heritage. This means that just about any dog could be called a "Lab mix" or "Pit Bull/Staffie mix" even if they contain very little or none of those breeds in them, and often times they don't truly resemble the breeds much either.
- This is common with paleontologists, as they often have very little fossil evidence of what certain creatures looked like in life. As a result, many reconstructions of animals look very different from what the animal is later discovered to have actually looked like thanks to Science Marches On. One of the biggest examples in history is Iguanodon. The earliest reconstructions of Iguanodon looked more like a giant iguana or a synapsid reptile with a nose horn (which was actually a thumb spike) than what the dinosaur is actually known to have looked like now. If you compared the earliest reconstruction of Iguanodon to modern reconstructions, you wouldn't believe they were meant to represent the same animal. In the early 19th century, dinosaurs were often depicted as more closely resembling giant lizards or crocodiles.
- As well, there are quite a few examples of dinosaurs that were eventually concluded as being "chimeras", which is basically what happens when a paleontologist finds bones of different animals in one area and assumes they're from one animal. Saurophaganax, which was long believed to be an Allosaurus relative or species, was later found to be a bunch of mixed up animals including a sauropod. Dakotaraptor, a large droemaeosaur described as living in the same time period as T. rex, is most likely a combination of several unrelated animals, including turtles and lizards.
- Medieval bestiaries are notorious for frequently having illustrations of animals that look absolutely nothing like the animals they are supposed to represent. Reptiles are always depicted with mammalian features making them look more like very strange dogs or weasels; marine invertebrates like crustaceans and cephalopods will get drawn as fish with legs; and almost every bird gets drawn as a generic sparrow. While these seem easy to ridicule to modern eyes, most people back then rarely traveled much, if at all, and without photos or the Internet, they only ever had other's descriptions to go by, which were in turn typically not first-person accounts and were frequently garbled by what was effectively a very long game of telephone. As a result, if you didn't know what a crocodile, a lobster, or an ostrich was but had to draw one based on what some thousand-year-old author or guy whose uncle's friend worked as a spice merchant in the Middle East for a few years said, you'd probably end up with something akin to what you see in medieval art.
- For similar reasons in East and Southeast Asia, notably during Ancient and Imperial China, as lions don't live there, imperial guardian lions vaguely look similar (at best) to their real-life counterparts. It's even worse for the female ones
◊ as they look nothing like actual lionesses
◊, the same being said for cubs.
- For similar reasons in East and Southeast Asia, notably during Ancient and Imperial China, as lions don't live there, imperial guardian lions vaguely look similar (at best) to their real-life counterparts. It's even worse for the female ones

