Monster Progenitor

"It seems that I've been asleep for a thousand years.
The way my world has changed, it brings me a thousand tears!
Prince of darkness that walks through the rays of light,
To this breed of vampire, I'm the prototype.
The shape shifting mirror image flash photo type.
The ever lasting indiginal red blood O type!"

— RZA, Fatal

The original member of a line of monsters and said line's progenitor. Thus the oldest and, often, the strongest of the line. Likely to be the top Monster Lord. In some settings, it is possible that killing him would cause all of his line to be exterminated (or, if each of those monsters Was Once a Man, return them to normal). It is common for the Monster Progenitor not to have the Kryptonite Factor or Weaksauce Weakness of his descendants.

Just how the Monster Progenitor came to be can vary. Maybe he has always been, or was divinely created. Maybe he Was Once a Man and was cursed or changed. Similarly, how he reproduces can vary. Maybe he does it the old-fashioned way, or via The Virus, for which he is Patient Zero.

Dracula is very often made into the Monster Progenitor of all vampires, as are Abrahamic baddies like Cain (see The Descendants of Cain) and Lilith. This is also a trait of darker Fertility Gods.

Related to Mother of a Thousand Young. Unlike her, however, the monster progenitor always is the same species as his descendants. He may be tougher, but he shares many of the same basic traits, while Mother of a Thousand Young may have nothing in common with her descendants.

In Japanese media, vampire progenitors often have the title Shinso (真祖 "True Ancestor"); the origin of this term is usually held to be Bastard!! (1988), itself referencing the homophonous Shinso (神祖 "Sacred Ancestor") of Vampire Hunter D.

The biological equivalent of Super Prototype. Related to Insect Queen, Maker of Monsters, Mother of a Thousand Young, Mook Maker, and Stronger with Age. The exact opposite of Last of His Kind. If his death destroys his children, he may be the eponymous keystone in a Keystone Army.

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Examples:

Dracula as the Original Vampire

Anime and Manga

• Hellsing: Alucard, who is said to be the first vampire. Dracula in this setting came into being after drinking the mingled blood of friend and foe on a battlefield right before his execution, while at the same time going through a pretty intense crisis of faith and identity. The implication is that Vlad Tepes didn't become the No-Life King because he was special by any means, he simply fit the conditions to become a monster.
• Vampire Hunter D: The Sacred Ancestor, aka Dracula.

Comic Books

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Inverted in season 10. Dracula is not the original vampire, but he is most universally-recognised one. However, Xander writes in the Slayer Handbook (a book that makes anything written into it reality) that Dracula is "the most powerful of all vampires". This results in Dracula transforming into the Old One Maloker, the real progenitor of vampires.
• Marvel Comics: Dracula isn't the first vampire, but he is the first vampire's chosen successor and the current leader of vampire-kind. His predecessor Varnae committed Suicide by Sunlight after growing weary of his unending mockery of life.

Film — Live-Action

• Blade: Trinity:
  • Dracula is said to be the ancestor of all vampires. Of course, he's also the strongest. Blade's Dracula (AKA Drake) is not only the strongest but is also immune to any vampire weakness and can make himself look like anyone.
  • Jared Nomak, the progenitor of the Reaper strain in Blade II, is also immune to all but sunlight. His heart is protected by a hard shell, except for under the armpits. Unlike his progeny, who are all ravenous monsters who die if they don't feed for 36 hours, he is smart and calculating.
• In Dracula 2000, he's not only the first, but he's also Judas Iscariot. He is nearly impossible to kill (the only way is to recreate the conditions of his origin) and is able to turn any other vampire back into a human (although the ending implies that this might be only temporary).
• Van Helsing: Dracula is the ancestor of all vampires. He's himself said to be the devil's son, but whether that's true or just propaganda is anyone's guess.

Literature

• Department 19: Dracula is explicitly the first vampire in existence, and the nearer to his transformation that one of his victims was bitten, the stronger they are in the present day.
• Dracula: In the original book, Dracula is the progenitor of his line of vampires, but may not be the first vampire ever.

Live-Action TV

• On Van Helsing (2016), it's stated that all vampires are descended from a being called "the Dark One", confirmed in Season 4 to be Dracula. Who in this setting is a woman.

Anime & Manga

• Attack on Titan: Ymir Fritz, the ancestress of the Eldian people and first person to possess the power of the Titans. The origins of her powers have been lost to history, with most either believing she made a Deal with the Devil or gained a divine blessing. Kruger offers another theory, suggesting she was merely a girl that stumbled upon some sort of meta-physical "source of creation" by accident. After her death, her powers were divided to create the Nine Titans and used to create mindless Titans as tools for the "people of Ymir".
• In Berserk, The Idea of Evil is the progenitor of all demons—including the five members of the Godhand whose job it is to create new Apostles.
• In Claymore the Yoma were created by the very organization that supposedly fights them from experiments on two Asarakam held captive by the Organization. What's REALLY disturbing is that one of them is a juvenile and the other is an adult, and by mixing their genetic material together, you get the parasitic worms that mutate humans into Yoma.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Muzan Kibutsuji is the original demon and created the other demons (in fact, only he is capable of creating other demons). He states that he actually hated doing it, but had to in order to find either a demon that could withstand the sun or the main component in the elixir that made him a demon in the first place.
• Elfen Lied: Lucy is the only fertile Diclonius, and spreads the mutation to the gametes of any human she touches with her vectors.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has the homunculus Father. The name speaks for itself. He was created as a homunculus some time before the start of the series, but he is responsible for the creation of the other homunculi.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, it is implied that Evangeline may be one of these. She's been around for centuries, has none of the classic weaknesses of vampires (nor do humans converted directly by her), and was not bitten by another vampire but transformed in an experiment by the Lifemaker. Eventually she's explicitly identified as a True Ancestor.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion has Adam, the first Angel. Lilith, the second Angel, is the progenitor of the human race, which is collectively the 18th Angel Lilin.
• Psychic Wars: The Demon Queen has been giving birth to demons by powerful fathers through the years.
• In Seraph of the End, the entire vampire race is descended from a group of obscenely powerful "Progenitors". By the time the series began, the First Progenitor (aka the first and the most powerful vampire) is said to have disappeared several centuries ago after siring Second to Fifth Progenitors, who in turn sired Sixth to Twentieth Progenitors. The Twentieth (weakest) Progenitors are still One-Man Army, whose physical abilities can't be matched by any human fighters, even those armed with the most powerful demon weapons. Therefore, they have to resort to teamwork and tactics in order to defeat lower-ranking Progenitors. Fighting higher-ranking ones is practically suicidal in most cases.
• Shiki: Sunako . While she isn't the creator of them and was turned herself, she is the main cause of the infestation when she comes to a secluded small town to make it a haven for Shiki, starting with biting a girl named Megumi who then goes on to turn others.
• Soul Eater: In the manga version, we eventually find out that Excalibur is the first demon weapon, upon which all others were based. It's still not clear where he came from in the first place. Though it's implied he's a benevolent facet of madness which would explain his annoying nature to most.
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime:
  • All demons in the world can trace their lineage back to the original seven Primordial/Progenitor demons, who before they themselves received proper names went by their colors: Red/Rouge (Guy Crimson), Black/Noir (Diablo), Green/Vert (Mizari/Misery), Blue/Bleu (Rhein/Rain), Purple/Violet (Ultima), White/Blanc (Testarossa), and Yellow/Jaune (Carrera). What lineage a demon's "color" aligns to influences their personality to something close to their progenitor. They're also the strongest of their kind by virtue of being some of the oldest beings in the world. Notably, Guy is the only one who truly fits the mold as he's not only the oldest of the Primordials, he's the only one who hasn't sworn himself to the service of another person (indeed, he was the one who named and is the master of Misery and Rein, who serve him loyally) and sees himself as someone destined to rule as one of the most powerful Demon Lords in the world. Diablo meanwhile technically roped in Ultima, Testarossa, and Carrera into working alongside him under Rimuru Tempest, and unlike the other Primordials he was never interested in even creating many demon subordinates to lord over in the first place, which was just one of his many "eccentrics" by demon-kind's standards.
  • The dragon race was born from the magicules of the discarded and decaying original body of True Dragon Stellar Dragon King Veldanava, who was forced to abandon it and incarnate as a human after his very existence became unstable from fathering and naming his daughter Milim Nava taking much of his divine power and incarnating the last of his strength to create a baby dragon that might one day become a new True Dragon. The Dragon Lords are the final evolutionary form of the dragon race that is the closest they can come to replicating the power of their divine forebearer, which is still barely a pale imitation of his true might. Veldanava is also technically the first of the True Dragons, but he wasn't involved in the birth of his "siblings" as he was with the "regular" dragons.
• In Tokyo Ghoul, When Ken Kaneki ate the entire Oggai unit, he transformed into a horrific monstrosity known as the Dragon. While in that form, he spawned a savage race of humanoid creatures known as the Dragon Orphans that eat any living thing they encounter, be it Human or Ghoul. They remained a threat to Tokyo even after Ken returned to normal — and became a key factor in uniting both peoples against a common enemy.
• Vampire Knight: Kuran Kaname may not be the original progenitor of the race, but he was one of the original purebloods, exerted a huge influence during his lifetime, and founded the royal line of purebloods who kept track of the species. Plus, he's totally badass in his current incarnation.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • The Ur-Dragon is the ultimate forebearer of all the dragons in the Multiverse, traveling the Blind Eternities and creating storms which produce dragons.
  • Baron Sengir is the progenitor of the Sengir vampires.
  • Edgar Markov, grandfather of Sorin Markov, made a Deal with the Devil for immortality and became the first vampire on the plane of Innistrad as a result — all of the plane's other vampires descend from him

Comic Books

• A Love Like Blood:
  • Lord Karkossa is the vampire from whom all others derive, who was apparently a Roman soldier who drank the blood of Christ. His direct offspring are also stronger than other vampires, such as his son possessing wings and being able to summon swarms of bats.
  • Lord Romulus is presumably the same for the werewolves, though we don't get any look into his backstory other than his name alluding to the two mythical brothers who were weaned by a wolf bitch before founding the city of Rome.
• Black Moon Chronicles: The dragon species was spawned by a single primordial dragon, who is of course the biggest. He doesn't show until the end of the world approaches when he wakes up from his centuries-long slumber to lead his children through the spacegate.
• Hellblazer had the King of the Vampires, who was the first vampire and the one from whom all others descend.
• The Marvel Universe has quite a few of these:
  • Varnae is the first vampire, created by dark magic; various demons like Chthon and Set are the progenitors of monstrous races like the N'Garai and the Serpent Men; and the demonic villainess Lilith, who resembles her folkloric namesake in having a legion of supernaturally-powerful children called the Lillin.
  • The Incredible Hulk:
    • In general, all Gamma mutates like the Hulk descend from one common ancestor who was the first person born with the specific genetic quirk that grants people superpowers when exposed to gamma radiation instead of death by radiation sickness.
    • In "Old Man Logan", Bruce Banner is the progenitor of the Hulk Gang.
• Superman: Bizarro is the progenitor of the entire Bizarro race, at least in Pre-Crisis continuity. The vast majority of Bizarros on Htrae are either copies of him or of his wife, Bizarro Lois Lane, and the only Bizarros he wasn't directly responsible for creating are Bizarro Jimmy Olsen and Bizarro Mxyzptlk. Also, the Bizarros are shown to be able to have children and their society lives on into the 31st century (maybe).
• Trakk: Monster Hunter has Vaquoul, an immortal alien creature who's blood has been used to create every monster ever recorded in Earth mythology.

Fan Works

• The Chaotic Masters: Alastor reveals that Grimhilde became the first Banshee after being given a torturous Fate Worse than Death by Snow White and the Masters, later giving birth to the rest of that species.
• Child of the Storm:
  • The so-called "Grey Court" (classic Dracula vampires) are, as their Marvel counterparts, descended from Varnae, an Atlantean experiment Gone Horribly Wrong/Gone Horribly Right (depending on your point of view). The Red Court, meanwhile, is said to be descended from the Mayan bat god Camazotz, while the Black Court were created by Apocalypse experimenting on members of the Grey Court to create Doom Troops to enforce his rule on his domain.
  • Jormungand is described as being one of Surtur's Great Captains, and "Father of Dragons" is apparently not just a fancy name — he's the original.
  • Gaea is mentioned as having produced any number of gods and monsters.
• Codex Equus:
  • The Changeling Progenitors, Empress Blackrose and Emperor Blackthorn, are the parents of all Changelingkind, with all Royal Changelings being their Semi-Divine children. Interestingly, they're not together, as Blackrose cannot stand Blackthorn (though Blackthorn still loves her). Instead, they're the matriarch/patriarch of their respective Courts, the Spring and Summer Courts.
  • Thorax, a newly-ascended Royal Changeling, is the Progenitor of a new species of Changelings, who purified themselves of their racial Curse by sharing love with Chrysalis. Because of this, Thorax and his hive are regarded as near-legendary figures and the greatest hope for all Changelingkind.
• The Sleeper from The Desert Storm series claims to be the oldest and most powerful of the Dathomiri Nightsisters, referring to itself as "the Witch from which all Witches descend".
• Pony POV Series: There are several examples:
  • Havoc and Entropy are the parents of the Draconequi, though it's noted they aren't actually Draconequi themselves, they merely made them in their image.
  • Azerhorse is the single parent of the Outer Concepts.
  • Lilith the Witch Queen is the ancient ancestor of Hydia's clan of Witches, and as would be suggested by her other epitaph "The First Witch", is the first witch to ever exist after discovering the Pandora's Box Morning Star sent to Equus as part of his rebellion. She is immensely powerful, to the point she is no longer even human and now composed of pure evil magic. She is so evil and powerful, even her own family is terrified of her, and considered releasing her from her prison a Godzilla Threshold. If she hadn't been defeated, she'd have likely destroyed all life on the planet. Even now her evil and unholy power remains, sealed inside and corrupting the Alicorn Amulet.
  • Lahb, one of Lilith's creations, is the first and most dangerous of the Polyphemus Gargantula, more commonly known as Giant Cyclops Spider. Being forty feet tall, Lahb was powerful enough to curbstomp a small army of centaurs singlehandedly, only meeting her end when Tirek hijacked the power of Pandora's Box.
  • Queen Tiamat and King Bahamut are both the most powerful of all dragons, as well as their Mother and Father deities, and thus this trope for the Dragons.
• Project Dark Jade: In both Queen of All Oni and Queen of Shadows (co-created by the same authors), the Shadowkhan originated when Kagehime, the daughter of Izanami and the lord of the Underworld, escaped to the surface world. Seeing her shadow for the first time (as there's no light in the Underworld) and mistaking it for a man, she politely asked it to get her some fruit from a tree that she couldn't reach; touched at her actions, the shadow transformed into the first Shadowkhan, Hiruzen, and all of the species later followed after from the two of them.
• Sharing the Night: Tartarus, in a somewhat roundabout way. In ancient times, he was an immensely old and powerful dragon who sought to contain the evils of the world by eating them. These horrors, devoured and digested, were transformed into a host of lesser entities that periodically crawl to freedom from his body. Manticores and chimerae are among the monster species produced by Tartarus in this manner, and Cerberus is also believed to be his progeny.
• The World is Filled with Monsters: Blightweaver is the progenitor of all the other Giant Spiders, which it refers to as its daughters. Doesn't stop it from eating them when they die.

Film

• Blade: Trinity: Dracula aka Drake is said to be the first vampire and the where many vampires in the series descend from. The heroes makes it their main goal to target him with the Daystar virus as they believe killing him will exterminate all vampires.
• Bordello of Blood: Lilith is of course the mother of all vampires. So powerful that the only thing those in the past could do was knock her heart of her body, split it into four and ship it all around the world to stop her. So of course some idiotic nonce goes out of his way to revive her.
• Count Yorga is this in both films being the main cause of vampirism. The first film implies he wasn't even bitten but turned himself in a vampire through occult magic, being a creature of his own design. One of the reasons he moved to L.A from whatever European country he came from (implied to be Bulgaria) was to see if the curse could take effect in a modern day foreign country. Indeed, though it's now the 70s, the vampirism works as strong as ever as shown with the two brides he claims at the start and one we see slowly transform after he bites him. By the second movie (which has it's own continuity separate from the first) he's already turned five women into his brides at the start and has at least a dozen near film's end.
• In Dagon it is revealed that all the fish-monsters in Imboca are either children or followers of Dagon.
• In The Faculty Marybeth is the alien queen. Killing the queen kills all of her alien offspring, freeing the hosts. This doesn't free the host of any injuries he might have received while infected, to one victim's dismay.
• The Fly II plays with this: The previous film's protagonist Seth Brundle became a Half-Human Hybrid of man and insect when his Professor Guinea Pig experiments in teleportation went tragically wrong. While he perished at the end of it, the sequel confirms that he sired an Uneven Hybrid son, Martin, via his lover Veronica beforehand. Unfortunately, Martin ends up in the hands of a Corrupt Corporate Executive and his lackeys (Veronica suffers Death by Childbirth) and their grand Evil Plan is to use his eventual monstrous form — which, due to Martin being born a mutant, is stronger than Seth's was — and Seth's telepod technology to create a race of monster soldiers, which would make Seth an unwitting version of this trope. At the end, Martin manages to genetically fuse himself with the evil executive and regains his humanity, while the executive himself becomes a helpless mutant and last of the line...only for the IDW comic sequel The Fly: Outbreak to see Martin create new monsters by accident when he tries to cure him.
• In The Forsaken the seven original vampires were Knight Templars who, fearing death make a Deal with the Devil and drank the blood of an eight knight, thus becoming the first vampires. If one is killed all the vampires of his bloodline die and any human who is still not a vampire yet but infected with the virus gets cured.
• Gojira: At the end of the movie, one of the main heroes suspects that Godzilla may be just the first of his kind. Cue the sequel, Godzilla Raids Again, and it's revealed that he's right as another Godzilla shows up.
• In Hellbound: Hellraiser II, it is revealed that the original creator of the cenobites is a giant, diamond-shaped deity named Leviathan, Lord of the Labyrinth and God of Hunger and Desire, torturing and tormenting human souls into cenobites to serve him for eternity.
• Howling II: Stirba: Werewolf Bitch features the queen and original werewolf Stirba.
• In John Carpenter's Vampires, Valek is the first vampire, accidentally created during a botched exorcism. He is the strongest, as the only thing that can hurt him is sunlight. He lacks every other vampire weakness. His goal in the movie is to complete the exorcism in order to become truly immortal. This would also allow him to make other vampires without weaknesses.
• The Lair of the White Worm: It's implied that the eponymous worm spawned a race of snake-like vampires. It's also possible that the film's antagonist was one of the first or possibly the first.
• The Librarian: In The Curse of the Judas Chalice, Judas was the first vampire, but Dracula is not him. In fact, Dracula was crippled for centuries after drinking plagued blood.
• In Nightbreed, the nightbreed worship a monster god called Baphomet who supposedly created them, having revealed at the end of the movie to be real.
• In Slither the alien that takes over Grant Grant acts as this, creating himself a "brood queen" which spawns the parasites that give the movie its title. These infect people, turning them into ravenous zombies. Some of them seek to merge with Grant, while others produce more parasites. Killing Grant ends the infection.
• In Underworld (2003), William Corvinus is the Progenitor of all Lycans. Markus Corvinus, his brother, is the progenitor of all Vampires. Unlike other Lycans, William cannot change back to a human. Markus was unremarkable, until he was accidentally turned into a hybrid.
  • Alexander Corvinus is the progenitor of all immortals, but he chooses to live like a normal human and displays no power outside of immortality, which gets him chewed out by Selene. Drinking his blood does give Selene enhanced strength, endurance, and resistance to sunlight.
  • Unlike other Lycans, William is an albino and has the most wolfish appearance. He can also spread the Lycan virus with his claws. This strain of the virus is so potent it can even turn the dead. These first-generation werewolves are mindless beasts with a wolfish appearance. Second-generation werewolves (the ones properly called Lycans) are the ones that are more civilized and can engage in Voluntary Shapeshifting.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: En Sabah Nur is the world's first mutant and the most powerful one. Over the millennia, he accumulates the abilities of all of his mutant hosts, so he's virtually god-like.

Literature

• Anita Blake : The Mother of All Darkness is the ancient progenitor of vampires and possibly werecreatures. Given the series has featured pre-Cro-Magnon vampires, that makes her pretty old.
• Beowulf: The Biblical murderer Cain is a Monster Progenitor by implication, as both Grendel and his mother are said to be his descendants, alongside all giants, trolls and elves.
• The Black Company:
  • The Dominator is the original creator of the northern empire, and the one who Took all of the Ten Who Were Taken.
  • Old Father Tree is the cause of the uncounted number of strange creatures on the Plain of Fear, or at least the change storms that caused them. HE also refers to the menhirs as his people.
• Cruel Illusions: Numerius is the first vampire. In ancient Rome, he was a magician who studied Blood Magic and discovered the ability to gain immortality. He discovered that when the Blood Magic is pushed to its brink and all blood within a magician is used, it results in an immortal body, albeit one that must now eternally consume the blood of others to keep itself going, and if it drinks a person dry of blood, it will turn that person into a vampire too.
• Cthulhu Mythos: Father Dagon and Mother Hydra as the parents of the Deep One race. Several of the Old Ones that appear in the mythos had different offspring, both as monsters races and as other forms of Eldritch Abomination.
• Domina: Lilith, the First Monster, is an honorary example. She was the first person to use the Bio-Augmentation device known as the toy maker, so everyone else who uses it sees her as the "Mother Monster." Lilith herself is annoyed at being called that, but still fills the role as best she can.
  Maria: It is a city of orphans. I suppose it's only natural they'd latch onto a mother-figure.
• In The Dresden Files, the Red King is the Red Court Vampire from whom all other Red Court Vampires are descended. This turns out to be a major weakness in Changes when a bloodline curse that was intended by the Red King to kill all members of Harry's family resulted in the death of every single Red Court Vampire when it was turned back upon the Red Court.
• Eden Green: Tedrin infects the main character and her best friend with an alien needle symbiote; Eden views him as Patient Zero and hopes that destroying him will save the world from his parasite.
• The Fell of Dark: Azazel is the creator of all of vampirekind. Azazel is shown to have created vampires before the series begins to act as his personal army.
• Hogfather: The Bogeyman was the original personification of primitive man's terror at the darkness and what hid within it. After they mastered fire other bogeymen were born, lurking in the shadows cast by fire but never knowing the primordial darkness that spawned their ancestor.
• Human (2015) by S.M. Carrière: The Nosphoros were the vampiric monsters who created the Opyri.
• The Last Vampire: Yaksha was once a stillborn infant in 3000 BC, but Demonic Possession revived him as the first vampire.
• Morganville Vampires: Magnus is the Master Draug. He acts as a Hive Queen, being able to manufacture all other members of the Draug species, with them effectively being extensions of his will.
• Necroscope: Shaitan was the first human (in his home dimension) to be infected with the lovecraftian parasite that causes vampirism, and the progenitor of all later vampires.
• Paradise Lost: While many of the demons are actual examples of Fallen Angels, others are the spawn of Lucifer/Satan and his daughter Sin, making them Monster Progenitors.
• 'Salem's Lot: Barlow is the cause of the vampires in the book. Having picked Salem's Lot because it's secluded and because the town holds so many dark secrets it practically attracted him like a moth to a flame. The Dark Tower reveals that, while he isn't only one of his kind being a Type-One vampire, he's still the main cause of events in the book.
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles: Lilith, the Queen of Demons, was originally a human, but became a Greater Demon upon her expulsion from Eden. It should be noted that Lilith is neither the original nor the strongest demon; she is not counted among the nine Princes of Hell, which comprise eight fallen angels and one Biblical monster (Leviathan). Nevertheless, because the majority of demons who currently exist are Lilith's children, the half-demonic warlocks are fond of calling themselves "Children of Lilith" (Magnus Bane in particular is a fan, despite being fathered by a Prince of Hell).
• The Silmarillion: Ungoliant, an ancient, monstrous arachnid, is the progenitor of all giant spiders in Middle-Earth, including those in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings's Shelob. There are also Draugluin, the first werewolf, and Glaurung, the first dragon and progenitor of his kind, also known as the Father of Dragons.
• So I'm a Spider, So What?: Ariel was created by Potimas's gene splicing experiments and dubbed the first "Taratect". The Taratect spider monsters are all descendants of the eggs she spawned, bound to serve as her loyal army by a soul magic-enforced hierarchy. In the present day, Ariel no longer spawns eggs having given that duty over to the Queen Taratects.
• The Vampire Chronicles: Akasha is the first Vampire, and the progenitor of all of them. She became a vampire when a demon entered her body and fused with her flesh.
  • She is the strongest, especially after draining her husband and second vampire Enkil. She can fly, hypnotize hundreds of humans at a time, incinerate almost any vampire she sees, and track any of her progeny, which she uses to kill off the majority of the world's vampires.
  • Additionally, any damage she sustains is mirrored by all other vampires to varying degrees. For example, when a vampire set her living statue out into the sun, many older vampires had their flesh seared, while the younger ones simply burst into flames. When Akasha is finally killed by decapitation, every vampire falls on the floor, feeling as if their heads were being removed. By eating Akasha's heart and brain, Mekare (the fourth vampire) becomes the host of the spirit Amel and the new queen.
• War With No Name: the Colony (which is a unique strain of intelligent ants) is currently ruled and enhanced by Hymenoptera Unus. But the actual progenitor is the Lost Queen who first battled humanity when humans were barely in their agricultural phase and was defeated causing her to disappear. But not before spawning the misshapen offspring, the Misfit Queen who would in turn spawn Hymenoptera Unus before being eaten by her.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. plays with this. Hive, is implied to be the first Inhuman created by the Kree, but it is not shown if his genetics were used in the creation of the rest.
• Being Human (UK): Mr. Snow is said to be ultimately the progenitor of every other vampire in the show. He may even be one of the first vampires ever, but this is unlikely since the first vampires are said to have been a pair of Ancient Chinese brothers who made a Deal with the Devil, and Mr. Snow is Caucasian-looking and ginger.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Most of the first vampires were sired by the Old One Maloker as soldiers to fight humans who rose up against the Old Ones. One of the most powerful vampire bloodlines (The Master > Darla > Angelus > Drusilla > Spike), though, was founded many eons later by another Old One named Archaeus, long after the other Old Ones had been banished from Earth.
• Doctor Who:
  • Davros, creator of the Daleks, isn't a Dalek himself, but with his Dalek-esque life support machine and Omnicidal Maniac tendencies, he's halfway there.
  • We also have General Sontar (of whom the Sontarans are all clones), Jamie (Patient Zero of the "Empty Child" gas-mask zombie plague), and The Master (founder of the "Master Race"). The last surviving Racnoss tried to become this and recreate her species, but the Doctor killed all of her babies.
  • Inverted with John Lumic, who created the alternate-universe Cybermen but only later became a Cyber-controller (against his will).
  • The Wirrn in The Ark in Space have a very complicated life cycle and figuring out how it works from the limited evidence is crucial to the Doctor's plan to stop them.The monster progenitor is a Queen who travels through space to find a suitable host. Once she finds one, she lays her eggs inside it, and the larva eventually hatches, consumes the host and goes on the move. Through consuming the host, the larva gains its knowledge and some elements of its personality, and it then goes on the move to find further hosts to transform into Wirrn by covering them in slime, causing the resultant creature to have the knowledge of the original host as well as of the further host. As the life cycle continues a "swarm leader" with a huge amount of knowledge is created and is capable of controlling other Wirrn.
  • The Timeless Children reveals that the Doctor is this to the Time Lords themselves, by virtue of the fact that as the infinitely regenerating Timeless Child, they are the genetic basis behind the Time Lords' ability to regenerate, which was spliced into them and was what allowed them to become Time Lords in the first place. Due to this, when the Master creates an army of infinitely regenerating Cybermen, he claims that the Doctor is also this to that army.

• Supernatural:
  • Season 6 involves the Winchesters tracking down Monster Progenitors, known as "Alphas". Alphas do not typically have the weaknesses of their children, and may share some telepathic connection to them. The respective Alphas are in turn topped by their progenitor Eve, the Mother of All Monsters. It was in turn implied in Season 7 that Eve is herself descended from the Leviathans, which were the first beasts created by God, even before angels.
  • Demons in the show come from two separate bloodlines. Lilith was the first demon, being a human soul that Lucifer personally twisted as an act of defiance against God. The biblical Cain was the other progenitor, who was given the mark by Lucifer after it had twisted the latter's mind. It had a similar effect on Cain, who committed suicide to escape it's effects, but the mark resurrected him as a demon.
  • Played with for Hellhounds. Season 12 reveals that Hellhounds were one of the first things created by God, to act as companions to Himself. The hounds proved to be too vicious, and so He had them destroyed. However, Satan was able to rescue a single pregnant female (Ramsey). So while she wasn't necessarily the first hellhound, all other hellhounds do come from her.
• True Blood has Lilith, the first vampire. However, she is long dead by the time the series takes place. A vial of her blood is stored in the headquarters of the Vampire Authority. There is a growing movement among vampires that opposes "mainstreaming" and integrating into the human society instead of trying to rule the humans and slaughter them like cattle. Bill ends up drinking Lilith's blood and becomes "Billith".
• The Vampire Diaries: The six Originals. They were the first vampires ever created by a witch, and all vampires in existence come from one of their bloodlines. Like all other vampires, they cannot enter the home of a human without an invitation, and vervain is still toxic to them and can block their compulsion. They have the same weaknesses as other vampires, but to a lesser degree: sunlight will burn but not kill them, and a wooden stake to the heart will only kill them temporarily. They are far more powerful than even the oldest non-Originals, have the ability to compel other vampires, and are practically impossible to kill. Unlike other vampires, they can be forced into a state of death-like hibernation with a special dagger dipped in the ash from a particular tree, and can only truly be killed by a stake carved from that same white oak tree. Additionally, when an Original is killed, all vampires descended from that Original's bloodline spontaneously die off within a few hours.
• What We Do in the Shadows (2019): Vampires in this series are descendants of the Sire, whom the Vampiric Council keeps under lockdown, lest he be destroyed and all vampires go with him. When Nandor and Nadja inherit the Council, they inherit the Sire. They promptly forget to feed him, and he gets out, creating a panic.

Mythology & Religion

• Lilith, Adam's first wife from a Middle Ages vulgar parody of The Bible, bred with demons and spirits of the earth and air and thus birthed the lilim, a race of half-demon, half-humans.
• Ymir of Norse Mythology is this of the Jotnar.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Forgotten Realms: The extremely ancient aboleths all descend from a single individual, the Eldest, that has lurked since the distant geological past on the floor of the ocean. As aboleths are asexual, this single survivor from primordial times periodically spawns offspring that depart to found new aboleth colonies, all descended from the Eldest.
  • Planescape: The roguge baernaloth Apomps is the progenitor and deity of the gehreleths or demodands, a race of fiends unique to the plane of Carceri. It was his creation of these chaotic beings that led to conflict with his fellows in the first place, as the other baernaloth are obsessed with the purity of the Neutral Evil alignment.
  • Ravenloft:
    • In the boxed set Castles Forlorn, it's suggested that Tristan apBlanc may be this trope for the race of living monstrous humanoids called "vampyres", by way of his half-human daughter.
    • In Tristessa's Gazetteer V writeup, she's Ravenloft's first widderribhinn (undead fey), a type of undead created when a fey dies through powerful magic or brutal violence. All widderribhinn who arise in the demiplane are compelled to travel to her domain and submit to her as their ruler.
    • Elsewhere in the Core, Doctor Heinfroth is the progenitor of the cerebral vampire strain of undead, and Harkon Lukas is the progenitor of the greater wolfweres.
  • 3.5 has the demon known as Pale Night. Her title is "The Mother of Demons", and while it is uncertain she actually fits the Trope, it is stated in several other sources that she is a mother to something, although they disagree on what. Many demon lords claim they are her sons, with another source claiming "she is the mother of several tanar’ri lords, including Graz’zt, Lupercio, and Vucarik of Chains." The Black Scrolls of Ahm claim she is the mother of nothing less than the tanar’ri race (the tanar'ri are by far the most common types of demons). Yet another source says she is not a mother of demons, but the mother of several monstrous races on the material plane. Pale Night will not confirm or deny any of this (and few are insane enough to try asking her, given what happens to most who are caught trespassing on her property.)
  • The deity Io, the Ninefold Dragon. He's the progenitor of all Dragonkind (and in some myths: the creator of the entire D&D multiverse), and the father of Bahamut and Tiamat.
• Pathfinder:
  • Ragadahn claims to be the father of dragons, a claim most true dragons consider heretical at best. Linnorms, on the other hand, generally consider him to be the first of their kind.
  • The demon goddess Lamashtu is known as "The Mother of Monsters". Several varieties of demon, as well as many monsters native to the Material Plane, are her creations, often having been literally birthed by her.
  • The demon lord Kabriri names himself the progenitor of all ghouls and the first being to commit cannibalism. This is disputed by the Leng ghouls, who claim that Kabiri copied them, while he says they abandoned him. Evidence suggests the Leng ghouls are indeed older.
• Warhammer:
  • The various Vampire clans are named after their progenitor (or their nickname, such as the case of Abhorash the Blood Dragon). The clans of vampires were in turn created by Nagash, the First Necromancer and the "creator" of both undead factions and who recently became the patron god of the undead.
  • In this setting and in 40k, it's implied that the Chaos Gods can create their Daemons as aspects of themselves, tearing bits of essence from their bodies which subsequently gain sentience. The Chaos Gods are also implied to simply be the biggest, oldest and most powerful Daemons of their kind, but the gap between them and their strongest lieutenant is so wide that no one, daemon or mortal, can ever challenge them for their titles (one tried to challenge Khorne, and was subsequently tossed so far into the sky that he flew for 9 days straight).
• Warhammer 40,000: Genestealer Broodlords/Patriarchs. Granted, an individual broodlord/patriarch is usually pretty "young", often "only" a hundred years old, but the cult he spawns certainly reveres him as this trope.
  • In a sense, the Emperor himself could be considered a Monster Progenitor if a breed of demigod Super-Soldier are included as monsters. Using his own superhuman DNA and powers stolen from the Chaos Gods, the Emperor was able to create the Primarchs as well as the Adeptus Custodes. The Primarchs themselves are also the progenitor of the various Space Marine legions including the monstrous Traitor Legions and the "Cursed" 21st Founding.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The ancient titan Behemat is the progenitor of the gargants, having birthed the first of their kind by vomiting them out from his mouth, and continued to birth new tribes of them in this manner until his eventual death.
• The World of Darkness:
  • Vampire: The Masquerade pegs Cain(e) as the First Vampire, cursed by God for his slaying of Abel. His line was then split down into three childer (destroyed before the Flood), and thirteen childer unto them, whose own descendants' ranks and divisions make up the thirteen clans of vampires who exist in the modern nights. The rules for fighting Cain, in their entirety, are "you lose".
  • Chronicles of Darkness:
    • Beast: The Primordial: Beasts believe themselves to be the children of an entity known as the Dark Mother, among other things. And they claim the progenitors of all the other "monster races" in the New World of Darkness as siblings.
    • Leviathan: The Tempest has the Progenitors, the seven children of Tiamat. Each Leviathan is descended from a specific Progenitor, which helps define which Vestiges it can most readily access, exactly how its Wake warps the minds of its Beloved, and in general what kind of God of Evil it is likely to be.
    • Promethean: The Created: Each Promethean Lineage (think Frankenstein's Monster) has at least one Progenitor, created by a human demiurge. Each Progenitor can create more of their kind by using human corpses in a ritual specific to the Lineage.
    • In Werewolf: The Forsaken the werewolves claim descent from Father Wolf and Mother Luna. However, there came a time when his children thought Father Wolf was getting too old to adequately guard the border between the mortal and spirit world, so they killed him.

Video Games

• Age of Mythology: While the mythological Fenris Wolf and Jormungandr (the Midgard Serpent) do not appear directly, they are represented by their smaller descendants, the Fenris Wolf Brood and Jormund Elvers.
• Darksiders: Absalom was the first Nephilim created by Lilith from the dust of angels and demons and the basis on which the others were made. Samael while fighting Death, who is the last of the "Firstborn" Nephilim after he and the other Horsemen betrayed and slaughtered the rest of their race and is considered the strongest of the four, notably referred to him as a "flawed casting from a perfect mold" and further stated that before the Horsemen were empowered by The Charred Council, Absalom was the strongest Nephilim. And this was all before Absalom Came Back Wrong as The Corruption that threatens the universe.
• Dragon Age: In the past, Tevinter Magisters entered and subsequently corrupted the Golden City of The Maker. This corrupted them into the first Darkspawn, who then spread this corruption as a Mystical Plague to start the First Blight. At least one of these Magisters, Corypheus, is still alive and more or less sane a thousand years later, as evidenced by the Dragon Age II DLC. He becomes the Big Bad in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
• Dragon Ball Online: Majin Buu begets an entire race of Majin creatures, which is one of the playable races in the games.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Series background lore tells of a woman named Lamae Beolfag, chronicled in the book Opusculus Lamae Bal. Created through a traumatic rape by Molag Bal, the Daedric Prince of Domination and Enslavement, Lamae became the first recorded vampire, dubbed "Blood Mother." It is believed that all Vampires descend from her, upsetting the balance of death and rebirth normally administered by the Aedric God Arkay. This would later be confirmed in the Skyrim's Dawnguard DLC. The DLC also shows the Volkihar Clan of eastern Skyrim, who are unlike their Cyrodilic cousins are Vampire Lords and owe their unique and more powerful form due to being gifted with vampirism directly from Molag Bal himself. They likewise share several traits of Molag Bal, such as voluntary shapeshifting, telekinesis, and the ability to permanently enthrall victims.
  • Were-creatures, also referred to in-universe as Lycanthropes, ^note Yes, this should technically only refer to werewolves, as "lycan" comes from the Greek word for "wolf", however it is frequently used to refer to all were-creatures similarly are a creation of Hircine, the Daedric Prince of the Hunt. He sees them as the embodiment of the spirit of the hunt, and they serve him in life as mortal agents and in death as the "hounds" of his Hunting Grounds realm. Unlike Molag Bal toward most vampires, Hircine maintains an active role in his creations existence, as he has been known to personally enhance favored Lycanthropes with increased abilities and rewards some with items of power, such as the Ring of Hircine, which allows a Lycanthrope to control his or her transformations. Hircine has even been approached or summoned by packs of werewolves to appoint a pack leader, thus serving as a advisor and an important figure among Lycanthropes.
  • The Minotaur race is believed to descend from the union between St. Alessia (the "Slave Queen" who led the Alessian revolt against their Ayleid masters) and Morihaus, the Aedric demi-god "winged man-bull" sent by the Divines to aid Alessia. Pelinal Whitestrake, Alessia's "champion" and Morihaus' divine "uncle," specifically warned Morihaus against this relationship, believing that they would "beget more monsters on this earth." (Which, if this is the true origin of Minotaurs, proved to be the case.) Their son, Belharza, was said to be the first Minotaur and became the second Emperor of the Alessian Empire following his mother's death.
  • Dragons are said to be the "divine children" of Akatosh, the draconic God of Time and chief deity of the Nine Divines Pantheon. Other sources indicate that they may be fragments of his very being, essentially serving as highly destructive angels.
  • The first mortal to transform into a lich was Mannimarco, a powerful Altmer necromancer and Immortality Seeker. By being the first, he naturally paved the way for others to follow in the same path.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • The unfathomably ancient and powerful wyrm Midgardsormr is the progenitor of all dragons. He sired the First Brood, seven dragons who would spread throughout the world and sire all other forms of dragonkind.
  • The Sin Eaters which ravage the First ultimately came from Eden, the first and most powerful of their kind. Eden's mere presence triggered a Flood of Light which turned most of the planet into a lifeless wasteland, and the creatures swept up in the Flood were transformed into Sin Eaters.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • Five Nights at Freddy's 2 reveals that the Puppet is the one responsible for causing the animatronics from the first game to act as homicidal as they are by haunting them with the souls of five murdered children. One minigame implies that it was the first animatronic to go wrong by being haunted with the soul of the aforementioned child murderer's first victim.
  • Fredbear, the animatronic that was involved in the first fatal accident (due to a prank that ended up in tragedy) in the history of the Freddy Fazbear's pizza joints, also counts as one, even though it was shown that Fredbear was just a simple animatronic at the time and he never meant for it happen in the first place. However, this didn't prevent Fredbear to kinda become the ultimate boogeyman in a game that is practically made of several dozens of boogeymen already.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • Subverted, in that the Pale Tree is the Progenitor of the entire Sylvari Race (or at least all the Sylvari that appear in the game except one), but the Sylvari are the exact opposite of a monster race. In fact, they are one of the playable races of the game.
  • Played straight, however, with the Elder Dragons, who are the progenitors of various types of monsters, including but not limited to Dragonbrand, Destroyers, the Risen (Undead), and various other monstrosities.
• Guilty Gear: Sol Badguy was once a brilliant scientist who tampered with biological augmentation and magic to create a new race of transhumans, the titular Gears. However, he was betrayed and turned into one himself by his evil former friend, and boy does he regret it all. He won't rest until all the other Gears and his former friend are lying dead. Guilty Gear actually subverts this trope in a few ways. Despite Sol being the Super Prototype, he's only a prototype in the sense that he's the first Gear to exist. It is Justice, Type-01 and the first "complete" Gear (though Xrd -SIGN- calls into question if she's the first Gear produced after Sol), who shares a genetic link to all other Gears and thus able to control them as a Commander Gear (though Sol is immune to her powers due to predating Justice; presumably, the handful of other Commander Gears are similarly unaffected by Justice's psychic commands). However, Justice is not directly responsible for the creation of other Gears with the exception of her daughter Dizzy (who is hinted to also be the daughter of Mr. Badguy himself). Justice's bloodline, consisting of Dizzy and Dizzy's son Sin, proves to be important in Overture because they carry a genetic key signature that is necessary for the plans of that game's Big Bad.
• Hades: It's implied that Dusa the severed gorgon head is the severed head of the Medusa, and that all the generic gorgon enemies were spawned from her blood.
• Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: Vanitas (Ventus' Enemy Without) is this, as the Unversed are spawned from his negative emotions. Even if they are slain, their essence just flows back to Vanitas. However, when Ventus and Vanitas forcibly fuse back together again, they cease to be.
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver:
  • Raziel's vampiric brethren all create fledgling vampires that share certain traits with their progenitors. Raziel and his brothers were themselves turned into vampires by Kain. It's worth mentioning, though, that the first human turned into a vampire is Vorador. He was created by Janos Audron, an Ancient of angelic shape and demonic skin.◊
  • Janos is indirectly responsible for Kain's vampirism since the Heart of Darkness that transformed Kain is his heart.
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The ancient Demon King Demise is the origin of all demons in the Zelda series. This seems to be a common feature among demons, since Batreaux also seems to summon monsters with his presence. During nighttime in Skyloft, Keese and Chuchus appear and the Remlits turn feral. Once Batreaux becomes a human, the monsters stop appearing and the Remlits remain tame at night.
• Mass Effect 3:
  • Krogan legend states that Kalros is this to the Thresher Maw species. This is probably just myth, but Kalros is by far the largest and most dangerous Thresher Maw in existence and proves perfectly capable of taking down a Destroyer-class Reaper single-handed. It's mentioned that Thresher Maws reproduced through spores, thus anyone encounter can possibly become a carrier and spread them across the galaxy.
  • The Leviathan DLC explains that Harbinger was the first of the Reaper, the one on whose pattern and under whose direction all future Reapers were created.
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: The Emperor Ing. Scan logs will tell you that it "is the strongest Ing in the horde, the alpha and the omega".
• Monster Girl Quest:
  • The original Monster Lord Alipheese Fateburn I is described as an "embodiment of darkness" and was the original creator of monsters by blending her own genes into various species and mutating them with her power.
  • The Six Ancestors, the first monsters Alipheese created, in turn became the basis and ancestral line through which all monsters can trace their original back to. Tamamo no Mae, the Ancestor who spawned the "Animal" line, is the only one still around in the present due to not being sealed away completely.
  • Goddess Ilias can be considered here as well since she was the one who created the angels (who frankly can be just as monstrous as the monsters themselves when they go all-out).
• Nasuverse: Crimson Moon can be considered the progenitor of True Ancestors and, through them, all vampires. While he didn't exactly spawn them, Gaia used him as a template for her purported defenders against humanity, which didn't go well, since all of them inherited Crimson Moon's Blood Lust alongside an unfortunate quirk of Gaian elementals: going insane when they drink blood. It's easy to see how this went badly.
• Of Orcs and Men has Styx, an Orc deformed by abuse of magic, as the progenitor to the goblin race — hence why he's the only intelligent goblin around. The prequel Styx: Master of Shadows shows that goblins are essentially just inferior clones created by Styx that he spawns for various purposes and the Styx that's the protagonist of the games is actually a clone himself that the real Styx infused enough magic for him to retain his intelligence.
• Onslaught sees you fighting a Bug War against hordes and hordes of alien insects, and by the end of the stage you're facing the Insect Queen in her hive, which is cluttered with eggs and swarming with lesser bugs.
• Othercide: A benign example. The Mother is the World's Best Warrior and a Chosen One. Unfortunately she fails to save the world one last time and gets killed. Because of her Psychic Link to an benign Eldritch Abomination, she becomes the ghostly Red Mother, who generates a small army of Daughters who are fighting to save the world from the Suffering.
• Pokémon: Mew is said to have the DNA of every single Pokémon within its own, leading many to theorize that it is the last common universal ancestor for all Pokémon. Arceus, likewise is considered the creator of Sinnoh and possibly the entire known universe (including, one would imagine, the Pokémon within it).
• [PROTOTYPE]: Alex Mercer. He was created by accident when the dead body of a human was infected with the most powerful mutagenic virus ever designed, he began the game as a Humanoid Abomination, was well on his way to Eldritch levels by the end, and was creating more of his kind by the second. Even the title of the game refers to the rarely-used definition of the word "prototype," meaning the first of a new species.
• Shadow of the Colossus: Wander is the progenitor of the horned boys and, by extension, shadow children in ICO.
• Stubbs the Zombie: You play as a recently-reanimated zombie who quickly creates an outbreak in a retro-futuristic city. While most of the zombies Stubbs creates are the normal shambling kind he's marginally more intelligent and gradually obtains a rather disgusting array of special abilities.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Most of the enemies that appear in the Subspace Emissary mode are made of Shadow Bugs extracted from Mr. Game & Watch's body.
• A Total War Saga: TROY: The Griffin Patriarch is a literal patriarch and ancestor of the lesser griffins that inhabit the northern mountains.
• Yandere Simulator: The First Aishi, a woman who emigrated to Japan from Parts Unknown in 1796 to be the first known woman of the Aishi family to have the "Senpai Effect": a genetic congenital disorder that causes the women of the family to be emotionless until they meet their senpai which would turn them into a murderous yandere.

Webcomics

• The Last Days of FOXHOUND has Berthold, the telepathic wolf. When he visits Shadow Moses Island for the first time he sleeps with a few of the guard dogs there, who in turn, give birth to the Wolf-Dogs that you encounter in the caves between the Commander's Office and the Comm Towers in the source material.
• True Villains has Malanor, a Sorcerous Overlord and the first vampire. He became a vampire through a deal with a demon of Galdara, the God of Progress — ironically, the same god that's worshiped by a large portion of the Mainland, a Floating Continent that's the only place free of his apocalyptic undead armies.
• Unholy Blood: The scourage of vampires that has infested Korea is shown to have been caused by a vampire called "God" who spread his vampiric infection throughout the population.

Web Original

• Taerel Setting: The kin'toni are vampire-like monsters who are organized into clans, each one typically led by the one who created the original group.
  • The clan founder of the Boughdyn Kin'toni Clan is Velis Runtumu, one of the first kin'toni made in a lab. They spread their vampiric traits by "turning" many others to form the clan.
  • The clan founder of the Invernus Kin'toni Clan is Dyndra Norot, who appointed Jualli as her vice-leader. Jualli disliked the religious dogma of his clan and recruited and turned others into kin'toni.

Western Animation

• Codename: Kids Next Door had an episode where Numbah 5's teacher, Miss Thomson, was the Queen were-dog responsible for turning her student into were-dogs, including Numbah 5's rival, who, as a were-poodle, ate her homework in a previous episode. Unlike the other were-dogs the queen were-dog was able to eat Numbah 4's awful homework without becoming sick. However, as soon as her cursed necklace was taken off, she and all the rest returned to normal humans.
• Futurama features the original were-car, Project Satan, who is the origin of the curse of all were-cars: as a robot's were-car curse can only be removed by killing the were-car that gave it to them, killing Project Satan removes the curse from all afflicted were-cars everywhere.
• In Skeleton Warriors, the first of the titular monsters is Baron Dark, created by the energy released from a sundered Lightcrystal. Thusly, he alone has the power to convert other humans into new Skeleton Warriors. This presents a dilemma when they learn that they aren't as invulnerable as they thought, and there is a way to cure the curse; if Baron Dark is returned to his human form, then the Skeleton Warriors are doomed to ultimate defeat, as they will be unable to replace any casualties they take. Destroying Baron Dark thusly becomes a key goal of the heroic Legion of Light.
• Thundarr the Barbarian: In one episode, the heroes ran into a conflict between an evil wizard and a pack of werewolves. The leader of the werewolves had turned innocent humans into his pack and he wanted to add the wizard to his ranks. The day is saved when the heroes discover a magical pool of water that can undo lycanthropy. All of the werewolf leader's victims are restored to normal after being bathed in the pool. When the werewolf leader is bathed in it, he turns into... a wolf. Ariel realizes that he was the original werewolf. He was never human in the first place.

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