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All Trolls Are Different
aka: Our Trolls Are Different

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Thor: I think trolls should be hardworking blacksmiths, toiling away underground forging magical weapons.
Hades: No! Trolls should be vile monsters, living under bridges and harassing goats!
Pig: You're both wrong! Trolls should be tiny wrinkled men with big poofy hair that are collected by old women!
The Order of the Stick (depicting the gods during the creation of the world)

Elves have Pointy Ears and live for a very long time out in the magical forest. Dwarves live underground, dig up jewels, and are short and like to grow long beards. Merpeople live underwater, have sea-creature features, and sing. And Trolls...

Err? Well, they're always big, ugly, brutal, and stupid, right? Except when they're small, Ugly Cute and friendly.

Should they be giants with scaly green skin that rapidly heal from any injury except fire or acid? Or something that's literally made of rock and gets smarter when it's in the cold? Or are they grey-skinned aliens from another universe that can use computers and wear glasses? Tusked and mohawked practitioners of Hollywood Voodoo? Or perhaps something that guards bridges from errant goats? Or could they simply be beings who entertain themselves at the expense of others?

All right, let's admit it. Trolls, despite being one of the Standard Fantasy Races, are diverse. It's not even a matter of everyone wanting them to be different; there are so many clashing ideas of trolls in mythology itself that it's hard to decide what they are. Pretty much the only standard thing about trolls is that they are ugly — or at least Ugly Cute. So, really, you can't blame modern creators for putting their own spin on trolls. If there is any consistency, it is that the less cute the troll, the meaner the troll, but even that tends to be subverted.

Quite a few depictions of trolls have them as being vulnerable to fire. Some fictional interpretations give them ridiculously fast regenerative powers, such that they can heal themselves even as you're cutting them down, making them seemingly invincible. In these interpretations, fire is the only way to prevent their injuries from healing and thus the only way to defeat them. Others have them harmed or petrified by sunlight. In some fantasy settings, trolls also tend to have a habit of allying themselves with orcs, goblins or both.

Many of the differences stem from language barriers. When translating a myth from another culture, it was common habit for a previously unknown creature to be stamped as a troll. The terms "ogre", "giant" and "troll" were also interchangeable for many storytellers, resulting in further confusion.

Even within Scandinavian folklore trolls are extremely diverse, and range from magical mischievous goblins to huge dumb giants who roamed the forest and could sniff out a Christian man's blood. Part of this comes from the isolated nature of Scandinavian communities; localized versions of monsters destroying crops and eating your porridge appeared. The word troll in Norse languages, similar to trolleri/trylleri which means magic, is basically a blanket term for any creature that's strange, unusual, poorly understood, seemingly supernatural or vaguely inhuman, similar to the Japanese concept of youkai.

Has nothing to do with trolling (which is actually named after a method of bait-fishing), except when it does.

See also Our Orcs Are Different, Our Goblins Are Different, Our Pixies Are Different, Our Giants Are Bigger, and Our Ogres Are Hungrier. Compare Our Ghouls Are Creepier, another fantasy creature with inconsistent portrayals.


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    Anime & Manga 
  • Berserk: Trolls are nasty, nasty predatory monsters straight out of the Qliphoth, a nightmare realm connected to the astral world, essentially making them Made of Evil. They have taken to kidnapping children and carrying women off from villages for Eating and breeding purposes, respectively. Like many of Kentaro Miura's monsters, Berserk's trolls are Mix-and-Match Critters, and in their case look like a hairy cross between a star-nosed mole and a monkey.
  • Dororo: One of the friendlier youkai is called a troll, at least in the English version. Here it's a green-skinned humanoid with a swollen head that points the way to buried treasure.
  • In Saint Seiya, one of Hades' Specters is Troll Ivan. His armor represents the troll as a humanoid being with pointy ears, claws and a tail.
  • In Toriko, there's a creature called Troll Kong, a massive four-armed gorilla known for being dangerous, and the Troll Cheese, an incredibly stinky but delicious cheese. Later on, Taste Hermit Kaka reveals that the Nitro are actually a type of Troll, in this case being the incarnation of Gourmet Cells and appetite. Though we are told that there are several types of trolls, most of them looking like the typical portrayal, Nitro themselves do not look the part, being furry humanoid lizards.

    Arts 

    Comic Books 
  • Astro City: "The trolls of Glittertind" are shown to be one of the factions that rise up to repel the Enelsian invaders. The trolls essentially look like large (in the 15 ft-range) big-nosed and coarse-featured humans who dress in stereotypical 19th-century Norwegian clothes and are strong enough to bodily hurl alien tanks into the ocean.
  • Black Moon Chronicles: In this case, similar in abilities and weaknesses to both D&D and Warhammer trolls, but 20+ feet tall, with a more-or-less caucasian skin tone, giant noses, and they look a bit like they came out of Jim Henson's creature shop.
  • Bodie Troll: The titular character is small, furry and absolutely cute. Something he hates because he wants to be scary. Oh, and he has a taste for dried roots and moldy bread.
  • In ElfQuest, trolls are short, stocky, warty, grey-green, ugly and materialistic. They are also more technologically advanced than most of the rest of the world, live underground, and have beards, making them stand-ins for Dwarves. Naturally, the elves and trolls don't get along well. And when you cross an elf with a troll you apparently get a dwarf who's a Trickster with a major Freudian Excuse.
  • At the climax of the graphic novel Foiled, this is revealed to be Avery's true form.
  • In Gold Digger, trolls are green-skinned tall and strong humanoids who heal fast and grow larger and stronger with age. Young ones of both sexes are often quite attractive. They've got something of a reputation as being less civilized, but that's largely because of prolonged wars with the elves that wrecked a lot of their old civilization; there are plenty of smart trolls including martial artists and archmages and as a species they come off no worse than the other humanoids. They have a grudge against elves, but that goes both ways and isn't universal. There's some evidence trolls and elves are even distant relatives.
  • Hellboy: Due to its policy that All Myths Are True, the comic ends up with more types of troll than you can shake a Red Right Hand at.
  • The trolls of Lanfeust are 7-8 feet tall fur-covered humanoids that live in their own villages. They're known for being extremely strong and tough, have a cultural love of filth (their inability to cross water isn't supernatural, they just really don't like being clean) and usually have a jovial, friendly temper with a major love of food and drink. The problem being that they also have a general disregard for the life of things that are more fragile than them, and are near-Extreme Omnivore who aren't adverse to hunting and eating humans, pets, or really anything that isn't a rock. They can get used to life in society (and even then they can be bloodily clumsy), and human sages know rituals to "enchant" them (a pacifying kind of mind control). Darshan, Troy's totally-not-Asia country, has its own subspecies of trolls; they're smaller and have panda-like fur patterns, but unlike the standard trolls they're pretty much fully feral.
  • At least three different kinds of trolls have appeared in the Marvel Universe:
    • The first are Asgardian trolls, exemplified by Thor-villains Ullik and Geirrodur. Asgardian trolls very much resemble the Scandinavian trolls mentioned below, but are superhumanly strong — Ullik is on par with Thor, for example. One-time Thunderbolts member Troll is half-Asgardian, half-Asgardian troll, and looks like a teenage human girl with Wild Hair.
    • A second kind of trolls are a group of myriad-seeming humanoid creatures of various colors who, among other things, hunt a young mutant for his ability to transmute elements; this group has had two story appearances to date spanning four comics.
    • A third type exists, but they're aliens, not mythical creatures. Pip Gofern, a.k.a. Pip the Troll, is minor royalty of the Laxadazian race, and more resembles a short, hornless, potbellied satyr than a troll — including in his appetites. Laxadazian trolls aren't a species, however. Normally, Laxadazians are more standard humanoid in appearance. Trollism is a side-effect of abusing a particular mind-altering alcoholic beverage, although once triggered, the change is permanent.
  • Finnish comic book Ontot Kukkulat ("Hollow Hills") features trolls who used to be Neanderthals until their Eldritch Abomination god transformed them to save them as a species. They are seven-foot tall humanoids with jet-black skin, wild mane and wolf-like jaws and claws. They can use illusions to appear like humans or anything else they want, or even turn invisible, but any reflection or shadow reveals their true form. They are practically immortal unless killed, in which case they dissolve into crude oil ("black blood of Mother Earth"). They have a fairly civilized society in danger of being wiped out by modern humanity, but they have fair helpings of Blue-and-Orange Morality, for example being obliged to ritually mutilate and eat all humans who end up in their underground homes.
  • Poison Elves: Trolls are like taller, uglier elves with horns and the ability to reproduce by bleeding. In the case of Dark Trolls they are also 15 feet tall. They were created to destroy all life. Elves were made from trolls with the evil burned off by mystic flames to make a counter force.
  • Shazam!: In Golden Age Captain Marvel Jr. comics, trolls are a race of cute, tiny magical people. The guys are just funny-looking, but the girl, Ny-O, is very pretty, albeit having a head the size of a bobble-head doll relative to her body.
  • Sojourn features Trolls who look more than a little like the Uruk-Hai from The Lord of the Rings films, being human-height but bulky, green- or brown-skinned, with glowing green eyes and often with massive horns. They were first an Always Chaotic Evil mook army, and eventually became a Proud Warrior Race who were more attuned to nature than humans.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) portrays trolls as a mostly human-like race of wizards with lizard-like tails.
  • Troll Bridge features a troll with a nose keen enough to "smell the dreams you dreamed before you were born". It eats a person's life and takes their place, leaving them, in exchange, to take the place of the troll.
  • Valhalla, being based on Norse Mythology, has plenty and plenty of examples: first and foremost, it considers Jotuns as a subrace of Trolls, usually having an ample variety of physical traits: they're usually ugly, large humanoids slightly bigger than humans and Aesirs and tend to look like orcs/Ogres of sort, while actual Trolls tend to be hairy and tailed. All Jotuns have Pointy Ears, a trait which is retained by those Jotuns who became Aesirs such as Skadi, Tyr and Magni (who all look perfectly human safe for the pointy ears). A volume has a human villain who had two Jotun daughters (appearing as tailed, feral-looking women with muzzle-like mouths and talons) and also was so corrupt he became a Troll himself, causing him to turn to stone as he dies.
  • Though he's not actually a troll the fear god Phobos manifests as a large, brutish, red-eyed troll in Wonder Woman (1987).
  • In "A Beautiful Tale", a story in Phil Foglio's adult comic XXXenophile, trolls are a species possessed of superhuman strength and glaring sexual dimorphism. We only ever see the females (called "huldra") who are sharp-toothed Cute Monster Girls with long tufted tails.
  • Youngblood (Image Comics) includes a short, scrappy member with Wolverine-inspired hair named Bartholomew J. Troll, or simply Troll. Alan Moore later established via Retcon that Troll literally is an ancient magical troll.

    Comic Strips 
  • In Dilbert, trolls are human-sized creatures who work in the accounting department, which for some reason resembles a castle dungeon. It's stated several times that the trolls were once humans who slowly mutated. This partially happened to Dilbert once.
  • One regular character in Broom Hilda was Irwin Troll, a Cloud Cuckoolander Friend to All Living Things who looked like a human-sized hairball with arms, legs, and a face.
  • One series of FoxTrot has Paige creating a fairy tale-themed comic strip of her own. In one strip, the hero encounters a troll tied to a tree that looks like her brother Jason with goat legs and fangs. The hero wonders if he should free the creature or leave it tied up, knowing that a boar would eventually come along and kill it. When the actual Jason insults Paige in the last panel, she asks him if he knows whether or not "boar whistles" are a thing.

    Fairy Tales 
  • In "The Cat on the Dovrefell", they invade the home at Christmas time. Same thing in "Tatterhood".
  • In "Soria Moria Castle", they have three, or six, or nine heads, own swords and magic potions because the swords are too heavy for anyone to lift without the potion, and live in castles with no one in the lands about except the princesses they hold captive.
  • In Asbjørnsen and Moe's "The Old Dame and her Hen", the Man o' the Hill is sometimes called an ogre, but he has all the traits of a Norwegian troll: he is a member of the "hill-folk", he is big and ugly, he lives underground, he is harmed by sunlight, he hoards riches, he is amazingly strong and just as dumb.

    Fan Works 
  • Alexandra Quick: Like in its source work Harry Potter, Trolls are none too possessed of smarts, making them ideal for dull, monotonous work. Hence Wizarding America employs them in tollbooths for the Automagicka.
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami: The focus of the "Strange Trolls" chapter. They're green-skinned humanoids.
  • The Freeport Venture: In Freeport Venture: Come and See, Heritor Azurite's palace is guarded by enormous ice trolls. Going by the description, they resemble fairly typical mythological trolls, with shaggy hair and thick fat to ward off the cold.
  • A Future of Friendship, a History of Hate: The second challenge Twilight has to pass in order to rescue her friends from Ruinate is a bridge guarded by Craggle, a troll made out of rock — specifically, a mineral that blocks magic (keeping her from just teleporting past him). He's rather dimwitted, but also seems to have an honor code, as he not only gives her a fair chance to get past him, but when she saves him falling to his death upon his defeat, he not only lets her pass, but saves her from a pack of shalehounds.
  • Harry Potter and the Guardian's Light: Hogwarts is subjected to a mountain troll attack on Halloween, as per canon. This time, however, there's more than one troll. A subsequent search party by the BPRD uncovers the trolls' leaders, Orikal and Ulik, both from Marvel Universe. Orikal is an ugly clawed grey creature who mainly appears masked, and can magically combine living entities, while Ulik is a yellow-skinned, brown-haired thug, but more intelligent than he appears, and speaks with the Funetik Aksent of an Ork from Warhammer.
  • Ice and Fire (Minecraft): Trolls are huge, grey-skinned, tusked humanoids that live in caves, and are always hostile. Frost, forest and mountain trolls, with different colorations, spawn beneath different biomes. They fight with huge, crude clubs and turn to stone when in direct daylight. Troll hide can be used to make armor that repels projectiles.
  • Nine Days Down: Swamps trolls are huge, lumbering creatures covered in carpets of moss, bark, and mushrooms, and surrounded by clouds of toxic spores that pose a deadly threat to anything near the beast. The condition is curable, but the trolls themselves refused this treatment and were banished to Tartarus as a result.
  • Under the Northern Lights: Tarandroland is home to trolls called Stalu (after a Sami myth in real life). They are huge, misshapen cervines who live deep in forests and use forest lakes for gardens. They are infamous for eating reindeer. They are actually moose, driven to hiding after the genocidal efforts of the reindeer. While they might be hostile in self-defense, they most certainly don't eat people.
  • George knows this in With Strings Attached and The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, as he observes one kind in the former and becomes a second kind (the classic Dungeons & Dragons kind) twice in the latter.

    Films — Animation 
  • The Boxtrolls are short, Ugly Cute scavengers who wear discarded cardboard boxes (to the point of living in them, like a turtle's shell), live in the Absurdly-Spacious Sewer beneath the town of Cheesebridge, and love to tinker. The citizens of Cheesebridge see them as a menace (mostly thanks to the propaganda spread by Mr. Snatcher), but they're Not Evil, Just Misunderstood.
  • Frozen: The trolls are small, have rock bodies, and are very friendly to people going as far as to use their magic to help them. They, however actually like trolling (pun intended) when they try to get Kristoff and Anna married the first time they see them together.
  • My Neighbor Totoro: Would you believe that "Totoro" is actually a mispronunciation of "troll"? Totoro is the leader of a family of friendly forest monsters, and he looks like a big, furry cat-owl-rabbit thing.
  • Shrek:
    • In the Norwegian dub, the word "ogre" is replaced with the word "troll". Apart from being green and lacking a tail, Shrek looks like the Scandinavian idea of a troll, anyway.
    • In the Swedish dub (a closely related language), Shrek is a "swamp troll".
    • In the fourth movie, a troll is seen briefly, being mistaken for Shrek. They're slightly taller and bulkier than ogres. Or at least, that particular one was anyway. This is interesting because the tie-in video games had already brought in trolls as a type of enemy. Of course, they looked completely different.
  • A Troll in Central Park had a friendly troll who was tiny with big ears, a tail that ends in a tuft of fur, and a literal "Green Thumb" that could make plants grow. He's the only troll that looked and acted like this in the movie though, and all the other trolls are ugly human-sized flower-hating monsters with warts, large thick tails, and a thumb that turns objects into stone.
  • Trolls: The title characters are small, colorful, cheery Ugly Cute beings, deliberately designed after the Troll dolls. They can also freely move, stretch and shape their hair and change its color any way they want as a form of defense and camouflage, even making it glow to imitate fire.
  • Discussed in Trolls World Tour, when Peppy tells Poppy about the other troll tribes that are different from them, she asks if she means different like the trolls in their village; Legsly, who can stretch her legs instead of her hair, Fuzzbert who's covered entirely in hair, or Skyscraper who is multiple troll heads and arms stacked on top of a single body. What he means by different are how trolls from the other tribes center their culture around different genres of music and don't understand or like that of the Pop trolls. The trolls of the other tribes have physical differences that allude to other mythical creatures.
    • Rock trolls are most similar to Pop trolls, but with messier hair, angular features and muted colors in grey tones that make them look like they're literally carved out of stone. Their music is aggressively defiant.
    • Country trolls are like centaurs in body structure. Their music is mournful and low-key.
    • Classical trolls are small, glittery and winged, resembling cherubs. Their music has no lyrics as they follow a conductor in an orchestra.
    • Techno trolls live underwater and are like mermaids, but they can also float through the air. They have features and markings so angular as to resemble pixels, most signified by a pixelated heart on their chests, with bodies that can move as smoothly as a synth or as erratic as a dubstep mix. Their bodies also glow in bright neon colors, with their hair resembling fiber optic wire. Their music is centered around the long setup of a vibe before dropping the beat.
    • Funk Trolls are the most open to other types of music as their princes are respectively also into Hip-Hop and Pop, showing their appreciation of highly eclectic sources. They're also the most alien compared to every other kind of troll, as they're modeled after the Troll giraffe toys; they have long limbs and long legs in a quadruped body structure and are covered in fur. Following this their tribe has the most advanced, sci-fi like technology, their entire kingdom housed in what's basically a terrestrial spaceship with futuristic devices like tractor beams and floating platforms.
    • There are other, smaller tribes of trolls for different kinds of music, but physically they all resemble Pop trolls.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Absentia trolls are huge insect creatures which live beneath tunnels and bridges. They abduct humans who enter their territory and trap them in their dimension. It's possible to barter with them, though you'll have to figure out the rules on your own, but it's ill-advised as it also attracts their attention to those around you.
  • Border: In this Swedish film, Tina is a rather ugly woman who works as a customs agent, and can smell peoples' emotions. She learns that she is a troll, and that there are small numbers of other trolls out there.
  • Cat's Eye: The troll is a vicious, small creature who emerges out of children's bedroom walls to kill them by stealing their breath. While intelligent, it can't talk, but does have humanlike clothing and a small knife for defense.
  • In Ernest Scared Stupid, Ernest faces off against a troll named Trantor who his ancestor Phineas Worrell sealed under a great oak tree long ago. Trantor was big and ugly and liked to go after children, who he turned into little wooden dolls which gave him his power and who could use the voice of anyone he turned into a doll. He could only be stopped by "the heart of a child and a mother's care," which turned out to be unconditional love and... milk.
  • In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, creatures of every shape and size are seen at the Troll Market. At least some of them aren't trolls, but the one creature explicitly identified as a troll was spindly-limbed and hairless, casting a glamour to make her look like an old human woman. She also eats cats (which our cat-loving half-demon protagonist takes some serious issue with) and is terrified of canaries.
  • The Lord of the Rings: Trolls are about twelve feet tall, with thick, doughy physiques and brutish faces with widely set eyes and very flat noses. They are extremely stupid and violent. In The Fellowship of the Ring, the cave troll fought by the Fellowship in Moria is a somewhat pitiful figure; Word of God is that it was being forced to fight by the goblins, and its club has to be chained to a collar around its neck, as it might otherwise lose it. The Return of the King features far more fearsome Mordor trolls who wear heavy armor and wield great war hammers, and Aragorn's last foe is an elite Olog-hai, a relatively intelligent troll who wields a sword with some dexterity.
  • The Troll "series" of films.
    • Troll: The troll in this movie is the villain of the film. It's a small, ugly, hairy creature that used to be an elf. He turns people into mythological creatures and causes other mischief.
    • The trolls in the infamous Troll 2 aren't trolls at all, but goblins. There are no trolls whatsoever in the movie, and it has nothing to do with the original.
    • As if to prove a point or something, there are two different films called Troll 3 and a Troll 4, and not a one of the sequels has anything to do with the original Troll film. Truly, All Trolls are different.
  • The Troll Hunter shows off this trope like a peacock displaying his feathers. Let's see, you've got a very large three-headed forest troll, a big aquatic brutish troll that lives under a bridge and has a taste for small woolly hoofed mammals, a whole pack of large furry cave trolls, and a colossal mountain troll who looks like what would happen if Clover was romantically involved with Gaius. All of them react badly to sunlight (or, more specifically, UV radiation) and can smell Christians.
  • Willow: Trolls are smelly, vicious apelike brutes who hate Nelwyns.

    Folklore 
  • Trolls originate in Nordic folklore, but there is some variation based on country.
    • The Norwegian trolls are the one most are familiar with. Hairy giants with tails and large noses and ears that live in forests and mountains and eat humans. Some of them also have multiple heads and a taste for kidnapping maidens (especially princesses), either to eat or as slaves. While they usually don't turn to stone during the day, they are prone to being tricked to their death by a Guile Hero like the Ashlad.
      • Huldra (the Hulder), found in Norway and Sweden, blur the line between trolls and The Fair Folk. They live in caves and often seduce men to lure them into the mountains, but have prodigious strength and a few troll-like traits, like a cow's tail and a "hollow" back, which is often interpreted akin to a rotten tree.
    • Icelandic trolls are much the same as Norwegian, but live only in mountains (there aren't many forests in Iceland to live in) and turn to stone during the day.

    Literature 
Examples by author:
  • In the works of Poul Anderson:
    • The troll in Three Hearts and Three Lions is subterranean, larger and stronger than a human, and is almost unkillable, regenerating from any injury and being able to move its severed limbs. Only burning it in a fire kills it. This appears to be where Dungeons & Dragons got its regenerating trolls from. Also, when a carbon-based troll turns to stone, it's dangerously radioactive.
    • The trolls in The Broken Sword, however, are somewhat different: they are the arch-enemies of the faeries, can also be powerful warriors and sorcerers, but still cannot handle iron or tolerate sunlight.
  • The trolls who appear in Jan Brett's picture books are little furry people with onion-shaped heads and long, lion-like tails. They're mischievous but nice guys.
  • David Eddings:
    • Trolls in The Elenium and Tamuli are semi-intelligent, simian creatures who can't die of natural causes. They (and their gods) become very important in the Tamuli. It's also interesting to note that it's later revealed that trolls and humans are related species, both evolving from creatures called Dawn Men.
    • Oddly enough, we never find out what trolls look like in The Belgariad, even though Eddings describes quite a few other monsters in detail, including some that he invented for the series. All we know about them is you do not want to come face-to-face with them.
  • Brian Froud:
  • Ursula Vernon's trolls, as seen for instance in Nine Goblins, are knobbly, semi-intelligent, generally benevolent as long as nobody panics at the sight of them, and related to goats.
  • In CM Waggoner's "Unnatural Magic" and "The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry", trolls are big, blue-skinned, sharp-toothed monsters who are also highly civilized philosophers, logicians, and artisans. Both sexes have sufficiently masculine appearance that most humans can't tell males from females by sight unless they're not wearing pants.
Examples by title:
  • In the Age of Fire series, trolls are large, bulbous creatures that walk more on their hands than their feet, have sensory nodes instead of heads, and both eat and excrete from the same orifice. Oh, and it's implied that they're aliens brought along by an Ancient Astronaut. And then there's the hybrid creatures created in the last book by Infamnia and Rayg breeding regular trolls for decades on meals of dragon blood and flesh, giving them dragon attributes, like wings and horns.
  • Artemis Fowl: Trolls are animalistic subterranean predators with retractable talons, venomous tusks, dreadlocks, and horns. And they are big. They're extraordinarily dangerous, both due to their strength and natural weapons and the fact that they find elven and especially human flesh delicious.
  • Bazil Broketail: Trolls are artificial creatures made by the Masters of Padmasa as heavy infantry, fighting the Argonathi dragon soldiers. Most of them are fairly unintelligent, though a few breeds are bright enough for using swords instead of axes. All stand around eight to nine feet tall, with an extreme resistance to magic, and have a mutual hatred with dragons. They have a vaguely humanoid frame, but with clearly inhuman features. They are also very resistant to magic, with spells cast on them not working at all or only weakly.
  • Book of Imaginary Beings: Scandinavian trolls were originally the giants of Nordic myth, before being downgraded with the onset of Christianity. They are stupid, evil creatures who live in mountain caves and ramshackle hovels that they think are palaces, and drink a foul concoction that they think is a delicious brew. Particularly noteworthy trolls may have two or three heads.
  • Bruce Coville's Book of... Monsters: The trolls from Timor and the Furnace Troll are basically tall, hairy humanoids, mostly covered with soft black fur (except for the occasional tuft of orange hair) and with a pair of sharp tusks. They also eat elves, and elves can become trolls by doing so.
  • The Child Thief: Tanngnost resembles a huge satyr and is apparently the Only Sane Man in Avalon. Although not called a troll, the short, squat, neanderthallic Moss Man who raises Peter and plays the role of Sink or Swim Mentor also fits.
  • In Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear's A Companion to Wolves, trolls fit into the "big ogrish" type physically. They can also move through rock and earth as easily as humans do through water and have a hivelike setup with a queen as the only fertile female, sterile female worker/soldiers and males whose only function is to impregnate the queen.
  • In Dean Koontz's Frankenstein, Harker, one of the doctor's New Race, gives birth to a creature in chestburster fashion that resembles an albino dwarf and is dubbed a troll by Frankenstein's wife, with whom it strikes up an Odd Friendship based on their mutual hatred of their creator, her husband.
  • Discworld:
    • Trolls on the Discworld are made of rock, with silicon brains and diamond teeth. This helps explain their natural rivalry with dwarfs: if you're a race made up entirely of miners, and you see a nice sleepy rock with diamonds in it, you're going to take a swing, right? Terry Pratchett actually uses the silicon brains to explain the "stone in sunlight" element listed above: as the temperature rises, a troll's brain can't work so well, so they practically go comatose in daylight in some regions. The opposite is also true in that trolls get smarter in cold weather; this is taken to its natural conclusion when the troll Detritus nearly comes up with a Grand Unified Theory when stuck in a magic meat locker. Trolls also act as a version of computer-driven robots — they can only properly count in binary, have thought processes running on silicon brain-chips, and can overheat, causing them to shut down.
    • Additionally, trolls are composed of "metamorphorical rock" (metamorphic + metaphorical) which means they look like the rocks where they grew up. Desert trolls look like sandstone, mountain trolls look like granite, etc. They also usually get named after the minerals they look like. This leads to the city-born troll Brick, who really does look like the side of a building.
    • Thud! introduces Mr. Shine. Other trolls say of him, "Mr. Shine, him diamond," which is true; Mr. Shine is a rare troll composed entirely of diamond. Since diamond trolls can regulate their body temperature by reflecting heat, Mr. Shine's brain works far better than regular trolls', even in high temperatures. As a diamond troll, Mr. Shine is the rightful king of the trolls, but isn't interested in ruling; rather he invests his energies into his efforts to bring about peace between trolls and dwarfs.
    • Other gemstone trolls also exist, and their composition may likewise entail high status among their kind. In Snuff, the viceroy of Mr. Shine, now the new Diamond King, is of black ruby.
    • There's also the gargoyles, which seem to be some sort of city-adapted troll, though a variant that's recently adapted to eat organic food such as pigeons. Earlier generations of gargoyles had to live off what they could filter-feed from the water in the gutters, which is why they'd spout water.
    • The Colour of Magic features a sea-troll, which Rincewind expects to be some kind of tentacled monster and turns out to be a humanoid figure made entirely out of water, with no visible means of support. Sea trolls aren't native to the Disc, but to a world called Bathys. Tethys ended up on the Disc after falling off of Bathys's edge.
    • Yeti and gnolls have both been described as kinds of trolls. Yeti are trolls that have grown a thick layer of silicon "fur" to keep warm (i.e., glass fibre insulation material)note  and gnolls are made of soil rather than rock.
  • The Dresden Files: Trolls are fairy creatures and come in two varieties, one for each Court.
    • Trolls of the Summer Court are haggish, stupid creatures that haunt bridges in dark corners and apparently have dominion over "naughty children" according to the prequel short story "Restoration of Faith". Also, when a troll is mortally wounded, its skin collapses and a veritable army of ant-sized trolls spill out, which then apparently need quite some time to grow up back into a full-sized troll and the majority of which will be killed off by other natural and supernatural predators, keeping the troll population from growing too much.
    • Trolls of the Winter Court are much more powerful, much more intelligent and are accomplished smiths and high-ranking enforcers of the Unseelie Court. Their opposite numbers in the Summer Court (literally; among their main jobs are to counter one another in the event of a fight) are gruffs, who work in threes.
  • In East, trolls are The Fair Folk. They live at the poles, have magical powers and extremely long lives, and abduct humans for slave labor. They are humanoid in their proportions, but have hard, ridged white skin and extremely rough voices. Only the human characters call them trolls; the trolls call themselves the Huldre, a Scandinavian term that usually refers to human-like women with animal tails.
  • Elemental Masters:
    • In Reserved for the Cat, the troll is an evil earth elemental with the ability to shapeshift into many different forms, including humans.
    • The fairy tale type of troll (turns to stone when exposed to sunlight, guards bridges, and eats goats) appears in From a High Tower. Most are evil, but the one that appears, named Pieter, was apparently taught to be good and helps out the good guys.
  • In Everworld, trolls are the Mooks of Loki, part of the series' Big Bad Ensemble. They're described as looking like humanoid, hornless rhinos, are unintelligent and are apparently made of "living stone" — any wounds that they receive quickly begin to petrify.
  • Fablehaven: Trolls are among the creatures living in the preserves, and come in several varieties:
    • Nero, the cliff troll in the first book, is an oversized humanoid reptile. He likes to make deals, and is quite a dangerous haggler.
    • Udnar the mountain troll is huge and with sword-like spikes all over his back, and is used by the centaurs as security.
    • Budba the hermit troll is small, goblin-like and, like all his race, extremely reclusive.
    • River trolls are scaly, aquatic creatures, some of which guard the Singing Sisters.
  • A Fantasy Attraction: A troll appears as gray, craggy, nasty creature... the only unusual thing is that it's a woman. Apparently, the way to tell is from her shapeless tunic; males only wear a loincloth.
  • The Girl from the Miracles District: Trolls vary wildly in size and degree to which they are humanlike, going from humanoid moving mountains to fanged people, but they all love to eat human meat.
  • Gnomes: Trolls are nasty, ugly, foul, cruel — every feature every bad troll ever had lumped into one bloated hairy little monster. There's a subspecies, the Snotgurgle, that's worse. Regular trolls may be dim-witted oafs who love to torment captured gnomes and kidnap human children, but they at least never try to kill anyone. Snotgurgles, by contrast, are horrible, filthy, cruel monsters who almost invariably kill the gnomes they capture, often in fairly nasty ways. By contrast, in the animated series, the trolls are all of this but more like bullies than outright villains. David the Gnome actually rescued one of their children once. (Of course, the baby troll in question was abandoned by his mother and there were other... complexities, we'll say. But it's enough to note that the Gnomes were all for saving him anyway).
  • Trolls in Teresa Edgerton's Goblin Moon and its sequel The Gnome's Engine are a crossbred or cursed offshoot of humanity, who resemble humans but sport bizarre, often bestial deformities. Their disfigurements are unique to each individual, which means that some can pass for human if they wear the right concealing clothes; it also means they hate their own looks. Trolls are carnivores, sometimes cannibals and are fond of human flesh, yet they're superficially very cultured and educated (particularly in black magic). Male trolls believe it's good for their health if they trick a human maiden into marriage, then drink some of her blood each night; this belief, which may just be a troll superstition, becomes a major plot point in the novels.
  • Goblins in the Castle: As revealed in Goblins on the Prowl, trolls in this setting bear a striking resemblance to goblins, but are twice the height of a normal human. Some of them, such as Wongo, also work with goblins by protecting the entrances to Nilbog.
  • Greystone Valley: The trolls are indeed all different, ranging from giant monstrous types to tiny house trolls. Their forms depend on the environment they're raised in — basically, trolls are evolution cranked up to 11. The only thing they all share in common is an aversion to sunlight.
  • The Hammer and the Cross: In One King's Way, a troll or "marbendill" is a large intelligent humanoid that sometimes feeds on human flesh, lurks in the water to pull unwary boaters under, but otherwise is rather likeable, actually. No, really. Distinguished from humans by, among other things, a much lower sex drive; human behavior in that regard rather amuses them.
  • Harry Potter: Trolls are strong, large, usually hairless, and not the sharpest tools in the shednote . They also tend to wield large clubs. The defictionalized Hogwarts text book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them goes into further detail by revealing how there are three types of trolls; mountain trolls (gray skinned brutes that live in mountainous regions, and the largest of the three species as a whole), forest trolls (green skinned monsters that dwell in forests, and sometimes possess just barely noticeable amounts of hair on their bodies), and river trolls (purple skinned beasts that tend to be found swimming in rivers, can occasionally be found possessing small horns, and serve the basis for stories of trolls under bridges). The same text book also reveals that trolls are believed to have first originated in Scandinavia before spreading throughout most of the rest of Europe. The first troll we meet (a mountain troll) is depicted like a wild animal let loose, but we later meet trolls who are somewhat smarter (at least in that they can be hired as thugs), and the aforementioned textbook even states that they possess a crude language of bestial grunts, and possess a limited ability to learn simplistic words in human languages. Apparently, a rather optimistic wizard once even tried to teach trolls ballet. It didn't end well for him. The trolls seen later were mentioned as "comparing the size of their clubs".
  • The Hollows: Trolls are the typical tall and strong type but are relatively well behaved and not prone to violence. They usually live as squatters under public bridges.
  • In The Iron Teeth, trolls are creatures that hunt within the northern forests. They are huge, man-eating, green-skinned monsters with two huge saber-tooth fangs that protrude from their mouth. They are capable of insanely fast movements and unexpected stealth. They smell the blood of their prey, and are capable of indefinitely stalking them if not put down first. They are also apparently distant relatives of goblins.
  • Let the Right One In: In "The Border", trolls look like unusually ugly humans, have a great sense of smell, and steal human babies and replace them with their own.
  • In The Long Earth, "troll" is the name given to a race of large, hairy, dimension-traveling humanoids by Lobsang. Their level of intelligence is uncertain, but they seem to have a language consisting of trills and whistles and are talented mimics and quite friendly. A human adopted by them when he crossed over into their world during WWI mistakes them for Russians and never realizes his mistake.
  • In the Malediction Trilogy, trolls live under the mountain but only because of the curse. They don't mind the sun and they are beautiful, although due to excessive inbreeding often also badly disfigured. And while they don't usually eat humans, they are very powerful, cure all injuries easily and they lust for gold.
  • Max & the Midknights: The Tower of Time: Trolls in the world of the book are giant (described as smaller than a crag, but larger than an ogre) humanoid creature who reside in hilly, mountainous regions. They wield giant clubs, and like to eat humans. They're also incredibly dim-witted and easily distracted.
  • Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn: Trolls are creatures that vaguely resemble dwarves in other fantasy worlds, and have a language and culture similar to Inuit. From the perspective of the immortal Sithi they are almost the same as humans. Should be noted that "troll" is what the ersatz Vikings in the books call them. Their name for themselves is Qanuc.
  • Mithgar has Trolls as another name for Ogrus, the largest members of the diverse species that also includes Rucks (Goblins) and Hloks (Hobgoblins or Orcs). They stand twelve feet tall, have stony, nigh-impenetrable skin, and enjoy indulging in petty sadism. One notable Ogru guards Modru's gatehouse, while another acts as his personal torturer.
  • Modern Faerie Tales: Trolls are slightly larger and much uglier than most faeries, with greenish skin, protruding teeth, and black-and-gold eyes. They turn to stone in sunlight, but will recover when no longer exposed. Troll blood breeds true even when mixed with human. Ravus, the one major character who's a troll, is a little intimidating but a genuinely good guy, although it's indicated in other books that this isn't true of all trolls.
  • In Monster, this trope even applies in-story — all trolls look different, although there are a few common characteristics. They're all small, between about one and three feet tall, all ugly, all smell horrible and they're all Extreme Omnivores with a particular fondness for candy.
  • In Monster Hunter International, trolls bear a strong physical resemblance to D&D trolls including the Healing Factor and vulnerability to fire but are also Internet trolls and spammers. One of them winds up joining MHI as their IT technician.
  • The Moomins are among the best-known friendly trolls. Moomintrolls are fuzzy and rather resemble tiny hippos. They occasionally interact with their ancestors, who live behind the stove, which are just called trolls. They seem to be smaller, darker, hairier and very feral. There seems to be different continuities, since there is an old Moomins story where they discover their mummified ancestors, who are very tall, stretched versions of the standards Moomins, and naturally come to life during the story.
  • In Myth Adventures, the male inhabitants of the dimension Trollia are trolls. The females are trollops. While the male trolls fit the big and ugly (but not the stupid) stereotype, trollops are gorgeous.
  • In Johanna Sinisalo's Not Before Sundown, trolls are a scientifically acknowledged class of mammal that live in the northern forests and tundras. They're so reclusive that they were thought to be legend until somebody found a real corpse. They're about human-sized, bipedal, combine feline and primate traits, and have sleek, black fur and whip-like tails. As it turns out during the story, their pheromones are strong enough to cause obsessive love, or even sexual attraction in humans in some circumstances. They're also sentient, and have just recently learned to use human firearms, and have started poaching for hunters.
  • Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Seen in Pasta and Penalties: The Redemption of Princess Isabel #1:
    The troll was an immense, lumpen caricature of the human form, standing almost ten feet tall as it stretched up

    Trollish brains were never renowned for their astute intelligence
  • Pugs of the Frozen North has Snow Trolls, stalagmite-shaped humanoid beings who live in a deep fissure near the Snowfather's palace. They like to eat anything that falls into their lair.
  • Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Trolls in this series are a species of demihumans that stand several times the height of a man. Wild trolls can be agricultural pests to mages (as Guy attests), but domesticated trolls, like Marco, a purebred Gasney, can be quite gentle and protective creatures. They also normally can't speak human languages, but Katie recalls being serenaded to sleep by her family's troll Patro as a child, and they're more intelligent than most mages give them credit for.
  • According to the Old Icelandic Saga of Grettir the Strong, Grettir fought and killed two murderous trolls that haunted Bardardal in Northern Iceland. They were giant-sized, enormously strong, and presumably man-eaters.
  • In The Sea of Trolls, the eponymous creatures are intelligent, massive, hairy, matriarchal people. They are often at war with their viking neighbors to the south, but somehow seem to be on good terms with them regardless. Also, due to being caught between two worlds and two races, human/troll hybrids are Voluntary Shapeshifters.
  • In The Secret of Platform 13, a troll named Henry Prendergast is one of the benevolent magical creatures living in London (in his case, the basement of the Bank of England). He is adept at Human Shifting but not much else is known about him.
  • In Shannara, there are several different sub-species of trolls. Rock Trolls live in the deep northland mountains and are shown to be about eight feet tall with thick black bark-like skin. While they work for the villain in the first book they are not depicted as evil and help the humans, dwarfs, and especially the elves in the latter books. They are a Proud Warrior Race, shown as incredibly loyal and brave, of normal intelligence, and have a good mind for battle strategy. In the 3rd book there is a race of creatures related to trolls, Mwellrets, who live in the northeast swamps. They are normally large bipedal reptilians but can change their shape rather easily. They are sinister, greedy, and crafty and are seen as godlike overlords by the feral gnomes that serve them. The remaining two that exist (the Forest and River Trolls) have little information given about them. Of course, this terrific variety is justified given their backstory of being horrifically mutated humans.
  • Slayers: Trolls (likely based on the ones in Dungeons & Dragons) are rather primal creatures, around twice the height of the average human, and come in a large array of colors. They possess an incredible Healing Factor that allows them to recover lost limbs in a matter of seconds. Some people are capable of making deals with them, but most avoid them; a rather good idea, seeing as they go in a ravenous frenzy of pillaging and destruction the second Shabranigdu is unleashed into the world, which happens quite often, it would seem. A minor character is part troll and part werewolf — he has human-level intelligence and apparently stronger regenerative abilities than a normal troll. Obviously a Munchkin...
  • The two trolls encountered in The Song of the Quarkbeast are twenty-five feet tall, have no nose or chin, although they do have tusks, dress primitively in loincloths and sandals, are heavily tattooed but are quite articulate. They also are unaware that humans are intelligent creatures, regarding the periodic invasions akin to pest infestations.
  • Sorcerer Stabber Orphen: Volkan and Dortin are explicitly described as trolls but don't seem to bear any of the monstrous/gigantic traits associated with mythological trolls. In fact, if they weren't given the label of being trolls, one would more likely assume they were dwarves, midgets, or a pair of naughty children who get into trouble constantly.
  • In Space Wolf, the trolls are Chaos-warped humanoids, which, in the Poul Anderson/D&D tradition, are harmed mostly by fire.
  • The Spiderwick Chronicles: Trolls are massive, vicious, hideous monsters that turn to stone under the light of the Sun, and appearance-wise draw heavily from Nordic motifs, being long-armed apelike things with long, pointy noses. The main kind seen in the novels is green-skinned, aquatic and lives in swamps and rivers — the classic troll under the bridge, in other words — but the tie-in field guide also depicts a mountain-dwelling species. Arthur Spiderwick himself has got... a bit of a beef with them.
  • Tales of Kolmar: The Trolls are all long dead, and as such never get described, but as the Trelli they were one of the four sapient species — the others being Kantri, Raksha, and Gedri — who were asked to choose between order and chaos. It's mentioned that Trelli had "only the merest beginnings of speech" but still conveyed their wish to not be governed by these Powers, which was "the seed of their ending". Only their name survives — there is a place in that world called the Trollingwood.
  • In the Norwegian fairy tale Three Billy Goats Gruff, the troll of the story is a great ugly monster trying to eat the titular goats who lives under a bridge and has "eyes as big as saucers and a nose as long as a poker". The folkloric portrayal of trolls solidified the perception of such beings outside of Norway when the book the story was published in, "Norwegian Folktales", got popular in nineteenth century Britain after being translated to English; thus, the image of trolls as gullible large long-nosed monsters dwelling under bridges, instead of the more diverse takes in Scandinavian folklore, was popular in Victorian depictions of trolls and has influenced many later portrayals around the world.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium: Trolls — torog in Sindarin, and olog in the Black Speech — are dumb, hulking brutes created by the Dark Lord Morgoth as a debased version of the Ents. While the three trolls seen in The Hobbit are just big bullies who threaten to eat our heroes, the species as a whole are used as elite shock troops by Morgoth and his successor Sauron, with their main weakness being that they turn into stone when exposed to sunlight, and often associate with orcs and goblins. It should be noted that trolls come in a few varieties, including cave trolls, mountain trolls, snow trolls and stone trolls (like the aforementioned Bert, Tom and Bill from The Hobbit). There are also the Olog-hai of The Lord of the Rings, stronger and smarter trolls created by Sauron that don't turn to stone in the sun. There are also references to two-headed trolls, as well as "troll-men" from Far Harad at the Battle of Pelennor Fields (though those might just be normal humans who look troll-like).
  • The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: Trolls are huge, strong, knobbly beings that live in moorlands, in hill country, and under bridges, and try to eat passers-by. Traditionally they were turned to stone by sunlight, meaning that they could be defeated by just keeping them busy until dawn; modern trolls seem to have become immune to this, and need to be destroyed the old-fashioned way. Jones speculates that they may be some kind of silicate lifeform.
  • The Traitor Son Cycle: Trolls are surprisingly slim and nimble large Horned Humanoids that have armour of rock-like plates and are used as counters to armoured knights as they're strong enough to smash through steel plate with ease. It's speculated that they were an artificially-created warrior race, but in the present day, they're just another species of Wild creatures.
  • Vainqueur the Dragon: As said in the first chapter, they're considered monsters.
  • The Wicked Years: Trolls are the squat albinos who toil in the mines for the emeralds that make up the emerald city. It's not clear whether they are a separate race of creatures from munchkins and humans or whether "troll" is just an unflattering, possibly racist nickname for this one demographic of people.
  • WorldEnd: What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?: Trolls are almost indistinguishable from normal humans and are usually pretty attractive by human standards as well. However, their behavior was anything but human, with many unfortunate travelers being lured into spending the night at the home of an attractive stranger only to be devoured by their host. They stopped this practice after humanity went extinct and most trolls now focus on catering to guests rather than eating them. Still, this doesn't stop Nygglatho from expressing a desire to eat certain characters. The main character, Willem, is a frequent target of her "affection" given that he's the last living human and therefore a rare delicacy in her eyes.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The 10th Kingdom: Trolls are human-sized, ugly, with overdone mullets, and an obsession with leather. Especially shoes. It isn't clear if the shoe fetish is a racial trait or not, all of the trolls who exhibit it are immediate family. Despite their human size, they are incredibly strong. At one point, one is hit by a car, leaving a deep indent in the front of the car but barely moving the troll.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: We meet a Troll a few times, and he's a fierce, hairy giant man with horns like a water buffalo. He has an... interesting back-story that involves Anya. He owns a Troll God's hammer. The fact that it is a godly weapon is not established until they need it to be, and how Olaf came to own it is never mentioned. At first, from Olaf being over two metres tall, it seems that Buffyverse trolls are very large — but we later find out that Olaf, a magically transformed human, was that size BEFORE he became a troll, and is by far the biggest troll his fellow villagers had ever seen.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Antonio, the Troll in Charlie's Nightman play, is a disreputable landlord/pimp who demands a "Troll Toll" in exchange for access to his boy's soul.
    Charlie: But, Frank, you keep pronouncing it boy's hole!
  • In Knightmare's first season the troll is huge (His head is larger than the dungeoneer), has horns and shaggy grey hair. He'll cheerfully eat people but is also susceptible to bribery and flattery.
    • Then there's Oakley who's a "Tree Troll".
    • In later seasons a third type of Troll appears who are pretty much human looking, made of living stone (making them look like statues when at rest), about twenty feet tall and not very bright. Their King, a particularly smart example "Has a vocabulary of twenty words, some of them pronouns and can count up to five."
    • And finally there are Mire Trolls described as even larger than normal trolls but "squishier."
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: A snow troll is encountered lurking in an abandoned evil fortress in Forodwaith in the first episode. Much like most of the other trolls seen in the franchise, it is a giant, brutish humanoid with pale skin that seems to have animal intellect, but appearance-wise it is set apart by huge tusks and a hairy body. Hills-trolls and cave-trolls are also said to exists by the Harfoots.
  • Merlin (2008): Lady Catrina, the troll in "Beauty and the Beast", is humanoid, but slightly shorter and fatter. She has a warty, ugly face with tusks, and is dirty and greedy, enchanting Uther to become queen and get his money. She loathes human food and prefers feasting in her nest on a diet of rotting fruit. Trolls here apparently have powerful magic that has the ability to prevent a human from seeing their true form and allows the troll to control them when used to enchant an amulet that the troll then convinces the victim to wear. Their blood, which is green, is used to do this. They can create a potion that allows them to take on human form temporarily. The only way to break their magic is for the victim (Uther in this case) to cry tears of true remorse.
  • Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Robert Troll, the Neighborhood of Make-Believe counterpart of Robert Trow ("trow" means troll in some dialects of British English), is a troll who could very well be a human without much difference; he's the same size and roughly as nice as any of them. He sometimes speaks in a kind of gibberish language called "troll talk", and even has a short song entirely in it.
  • Monster Warriors: In "Terror of the Troglothals", mischievous one-eyed troll-like monsters emerge from the ground hours before a Capital City gardening contest.
  • In Once Upon a Time two types of trolls have been seen. The Bridge Trolls are an angry race of monsters who have issues with human nobles, and who are also intelligent enough to make deals. They are of the large, ugly and greedy variety and yes, live under a bridge. Meanwhile, the Rock Trolls from Frozen appear more benign, and try their best to help humans who seek them out.
  • In So Weird, a troll runs a Scandinavian restaurant at the base of a drawbridge. Disguising herself as an unassuming elderly woman, she transforms visitors into vegetables for failing to answer trivia questions.
  • In The Storyteller, trolls are creatures with long, pointed faces and sharp teeth poking through their lips. They are so mean and nasty, they can't even stand each other and they also talk strangely to the point where they're always contradicting themselves.
  • The Terror: The crew of the Terror is hunted by a troll-like cannibalistic monster known as the Tuunbaq.
  • You're Skitting Me has a song called "I'm an Internet Troll Without the Internet". In it, the troll — who is reduced to roaming the street and insulting strangers to their face — is portrayed as a wizened figure, something like a human-sized Harry Potter goblin.

    Music 
  • All of Trollfest's music is about trolls, which are somewhat goblin-like, love mead and eat Christians. They also speak some weird combination of German and Norwegian, but some also speak English. There are many individual Trolls like the hunter Jeger Meister, the beekeeper Brumlebassen or Brakebein, the hero of their second album, who is searching for the Legendary beer.

    Myths & Religion 
  • In a significant number of legends from the Orkneys and Shetland Islands, trolls (trowe, from the Scots word) are explicitly described as shorter than humans, or even really small. They are also both shy and mischievous, as well as possessing a fondness for music. Hypothesizing, this may be due to cultural cross-pollination between the British goblin and the Scandinavian troll. Also, the word "trowe" is thought to be synonymous with old Norse's "svartalv", as they are depicted in nearly the same way.
  • As pointed out at the top of the page, a lot of myths paint contradictory pictures of trolls. Hence the trope name. Depending on the myth, they range from well-meaning and friendly, but terribly dim-witted and sometimes inadvertently harmful creatures to cruel man-eating monsters that abduct and devour children. And that's just their disposition. Getting started on ranges in size, ability, and other attributes would take up the whole page.
  • Even the etymology of the word "troll" has numerous meanings. Originally, the word in Old Norse seemed to serve as a catch-all term referring to any being or creature who was generally malicious, and could translate to anything from "fiend" to "demon," to "werewolf".
  • In some Scandinavian myths, trolls are pictured as roughly man-sized, hairy, swarthy and ugly beings who dwell in the mysterious forest. Trolls usually possess great mineral wealth, to the point that "rich as a troll" is still a figure of speech. Sometimes they switch one of our babies for one of their own, so they can use the human baby as a worker; the changeling doesn't really fit with human society, so it returns to the forest at some point. Plus, the worse the troll baby is treated, the worse the real baby gets it. If you treat it good enough, you might even get your baby back. And even this part varies. Some changeling stories instead say you should abuse the child, so that the troll will realize it made a bad trade and take its child back.
  • Icelandic trolls are considered the same as ogres and range from being about double the size of humans to being taller then mountains. They also eat children. Icelandic folklore is fairly consistent in that its trolls usually turn to stone if they are exposed to sunlight. There is also a version that turns to stone at the ringing of church bells, which would explain why trolls are so rare nowadays.
  • When it comes to mythological trolls, Kaja Foglio's adaptation of The Cat on the Dovrefjell actually hit the nail on the head. Certain legends even described the males of the species as being hideously ugly, but the females (tails and occasional other weird features notwithstanding) as quite attractive by human standards. (For an example of this in modern media, do a Google search for "Cutefase.") The beautiful troll females described in the story above (as well as in the Foglios' XXXenophile story, see the comic books folder) are known as Huldra. To further complicate matters, Huldra are considered to be related to both trolls and The Fair Folk. They prefer human men, though. This is consistent with actual Norse Mythology, in which a huldra (or huldre) is generally speaking a beautiful, if temperamental woman with a cow tail and unusual strength; they're both trolls, The Fair Folk, and confusingly, also a type of "Alf" (Elf, that is).
    • Little known fact, the Jotnar are also sometimes referred to as "trolls".
  • Another mythological creature comparable to trolls in their vagueness is the Bunyip, a creature in Aboriginal and Australian folklore. About the only common feature any rendition of the bunyip has is that it lives in swamps, and sometimes it's basically an Unseen Evil.
  • Most traditional Norwegian trolls are very large — ranging from slightly taller than a man to twice as tall as a tree. They live in the mountains, generally near large forests. Some may seem moss-grown; most are dimwitted. Certain trolls also burst and turn to stone in the sunlight, which kills them. All trolls can be killed like any other creature, they are just very hard to kill because of their size and strength.
  • Besides these general characteristics, few fairy tales portray the trolls the same way as another. The most famous might be the one who lived under a bridge and tried to capture goats. One story has trolls with multiple heads. Another tells of a very stupid troll who was tricked into cutting his own belly open. Yet another troll kidnapped girls and took them into his own to marry them. (If they wouldn't he tore their heads off. Somehow everyone got better.) Trolls are truly diverse creatures.
  • In Skáldskaparmál a troll describes her kind as dwelling on the moon, sucking up the wealth of jotnars, destroying a sun, serving seers, guarding graves and swallowing a wheel of heaven. Given that previous paragraphs were about Thor spending all day crushing trolls with a hammer, little of this was likely true but does suggest they are extremely arrogant.
  • To make matters worse, in Norwegian myth the word troll can be applied to almost any member of The Fair Folk, of which some are more obviously troll-like then others, but when it comes to naming and separating those creatures it is actually rather consistent:
    • Plain "Troll" or "Rise": Large, often evil, humanoids living in mountains. Often have pieces of landscape (like moss or trees) growing on them, multiple heads and other deformations. Are more prone to be vulnerable to sunlight than other variants.
    • "Skogstroll" (Forest Troll): Similar to the above, but forest-dwelling and often smaller (still larger than a human though). Often considered the same as the English Ogre.
    • "Havtroll" (Sea Troll): Similar to those above, but lives in the sea. Its body is covered in seaweed and its face is like that of a fish. Stories about this variant are increasingly rare.
    • "Nisse" or "Tomte"(depending on region): Small and friendly—thought somewhat mischievous—creature living in and near farms. Can be compared to more traditional depictions of Leprechauns. It's important to note that a "Nisse" or "Tomte" is considered to the personification of a farm or the spirit of the farm's original owner.
    • "De underjordiske" (the subterraneans): Small, usually evil creatures that live underground. Steal children either by swapping infants with one of their own (a "bytting"/changeling) or abducting lone children in the forest at night.
    • "Hulder" (hidden) or "SkogsrÃ¥" (forest lady): Beautiful women with cow-tails (and in some stories, a hole in their back. Somehow). Giving in to their seduction is usually not a good idea. Note however that "hulderfolk" is also used to refer to The Fair Folk in general.
    • "Nøkk": Shape-shifting water-dweller that lures people to lakes or rivers and drowns them. Always male. Usually sings too, but is not a siren.
    • A reoccurring plot point in the Icelandic sagas where some of the lesser known gods are called trolls by people who do not recognize them but can clearly tell they are not human. The men that know better are sometimes able to get these gods on their side.
  • In Sami mythology, trolls are evil spirit invaders from another realm or basically another name for demons.
  • Irish mythology holds that humans had to fight a long bitter war to wrest control of the land of Ireland from a race of foul, lumpen, mis-shapen, not especially intelligent, creatures with no table manners called the Fomorians — trolls by any other name. Given the cultural interplay between Ireland and Scandinavia, it is possible ideas concerning trolls cross-fertilised each other's folklore and mythology.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Lithuanian Snow Troll of Chikara, who is very small and purple.

    Radio 
  • M and 50, the Toll Trolls, voiced by 98FM's Dermot Whelan and Dave Moore, were a pair of trolls who lived under Dublin's M50 toll bridge. They would crack satirical jokes about modern Irish life and celebrities and are perhaps best known for a sketch about Northern Ireland.

    Theater 
  • Peer Gynt: According to Peer, the only difference between trolls and men is that men say "be yourself" and trolls say "be yourself enough".

    Toys 
  • LEGO brand building bricks depict trolls as either green men with tusks and red eyes that you'd be forgiven for mistaking for Orcs, or traditional troll-sized dumb brutes. Some of the giant trolls are tan, but they're still called trolls.
  • A number of years ago, it was something of a fad to collect small plastic humanoid toys that had large, brightly-coloured hair and were referred to as Trolls. And even then, they brought out a toyline aimed at MEN. MANLY MEN. with muscular, barbaric trolls who (according to the wrapping) were the enemies of the cutesy girly ones. Though they still sported the same hairdos. Original Scandinavian troll dolls were more Ugly Cute, and lacked the Anime Hair. They were created by a Danish fisherman in the 1950s.

    Video Games 
  • AdventureQuest Worlds: The trolls rule one half of the Bloodtusk Ravine (the other half being Horc territory). They have a love of literature and art, are quite adept in the use of magic, and in the art of combat are unparalleled strategists. Physically, they're not much larger than regular humans and have skin coloration ranging from a greenish blue to dark blue, with males having big ears and differently-sized noses and tusks depending on the troll, and females being Cute Monster Girls.
  • Age of Mythology, followers of Forseti can summon Trolls from the Temple. Trolls are depicted as rotund, long-armed gray humanoids wearing belts and pouches full of stones, which they use to attack from far away at a decent rate. Forseti's unique technology turns them into Hamarrtroll (adding a second head and increasing their stats). They do not have a Healing Factor per se, but they recover health equivent to the damage they do ala Life Drain and Forseti's God Power does allow you to create a healing spring...
  • Ancient Domains of Mystery: Trolls come in two distinct flavors, the standard hostile trolls and "civilized" trolls, the latter of which are a playable race. Hostile trolls are basically garden-variety, while player trolls start off considerably chaotic (though not as much as orcs), suffer massive price penalties with dwarf, elf and gnome shopkeepers, and have the lowest maximum hunger and second-lowest lifespan of any of the player races. That said, their Healing Factor can make them borderline game breaking if playing as a Healer.
  • The Bard's Tale: Trow (what people called trolls on the Orkney Islands) are short, goblin-like creatures that are an annoyance in the beginning. That is, until your average enemy becomes Clock-Work Knights and ten-foot tall undead Vikings. Even then there are two varieties of Trow: Kunal Trow are the bigger, more violent type, while Peerie Trow are the smaller, cunning variety. A Kunal Trow'll rip your guts out, a Peerie will sing about it later.
  • Trolls in Battle for Wesnoth are mixture of the "rocky" trolls of the Discworld and the regenerating giants of Dungeons & Dragons.
  • Trolls in Castle Crashers are huge-eyed black humanoidish stick-wielding forest creatures possibly made of hair. They are produced from the mouth of an insane crying black fuzzy square face with legs called a Big Troll. Ostensibly, these are hairballs of the "Giant Troll," a weeping cat-like monster of immense proportions and questionable motivation has hair that resembles its supposed progeny's "fuzzy" make up. You can (with a bomb) unlock a "Troll Orb" as one of many circular "animal" spirits. It does allows you to slowly regenerate health, so there's that.
  • City of Heroes: The Trolls are a street gang who all have green skin and grow horns and super strength as they move up in rank. These are all side-effects of a super steroid that they abuse called Superadine. They also tend to have stunted speech, but this is just an extremely limited side effect of the Superadine — a Troll retains their basic level of intelligence, even if they do start talking like a stereotypical caveman. Since the players can have green skin, horns, and the same superpowers, there are quite a few Troll heroes and villains out there. A lot of the player-made ones are cute monster girls since The Trolls are an all-male street gang.
  • Dark Age of Camelot: Trolls were a playable race in the Midgard realm who looked like hunchbacked, gray-skinned versions of The Thing.
  • Drakensang: Trolls are large humanoid giants full of hair who likes to eat "sweet stuff", especially honey and "sweet dust" (sugar). Other than this, they're quite likeable. In the second game you can fight a two trio of troll, but they're very dangerous.
  • Dungeon Keeper has trolls as one of the types of recruitable monsters. They are green, man-sized humanoids who are mediocre combatants, but are fantastic at Item Crafting in the workshop, especially at high levels.
  • Dungeons 2 features Trolls as the strongest type of creature recruitable by the Horde faction, which they serve as The Blacksmith, manning the Forge to create upgrades for other creatures and rooms. Standard Trolls are tall, green lanky creatures with clubs and oversized hands, feet and heads, and they can evolve into either a Rockthrower (muscular two-headed blue Troll with a mohawk and tusks who attacks from afar by throwing boulders) or a Juggernaut (humongous pink Trolls with horns, nearly as fat as they're tall and armed with a club made from a giant fang).
  • Dungeon Crawl: Trolls come in a few different varieties of fast-healing unarmed melee brutality, each one nastier than the last: trolls, deep trolls, rock trolls, and iron trolls. Trolls are also a playable race, notable for being able to eat everything, needing to eat everything due to lightning-fast metabolism, and not being very good at any class or role except for aforementioned unarmed melee brutality. To their credit, though, they are amazing at it.
  • Dwarf Fortress features two types of trolls:
    • The common "troll", a basically sentient but slow-witted beast which Goblins sometimes use as living battering rams to break fortress doors and cause havoc. Description text tells that trolls are "huge humanoid monsters with coarse fur, large tusks and horns." Now that shearing has been implemented, they are also goblins' source of wool which combined with their gray fur and black skin may mean they look quite a lot like giant, monstrous, humanoid sheep. They also have cyan-coloured blood, for some reason. These trolls are slow learners, but over their 800-1000 year lifespans can acquire a skilled trade, leading to butchers/bakers/candlestick makers accompanying a goblin invasion. Though they function the same in gameplay, individual members are about as different as any other sentient race.
    • The "night trolls" are a type of Night Creature (night troll is the common term, but each variant has a procedurally generated name like "moon hag", "shadow ogre", etc.) They are inherently hideous humanoids, but randomly generated and ergo completely different from even each other. The main consistency is that they butcher and eat sentients and steal mates of the opposite sex from nearby villages to breed with, turning their stolen mates into lesser versions of themselves.
  • The Trolls of Elden Ring are descendants of the extinct Fire Giants. They are huge, emanciated-looking humanoid with frizzy, branch-like hair and huge holes on their chest where vine-like things are wrapped around a huge stone. They are sentient beings and don't have any of the traits usually associated with trolls, such as man-eating, but despite this most Trolls are used as slaves; either as beasts of burden, miners or living siege engines in war. The wilder Snow Trolls located in the Mountaintops of the Giants share the basic look, but have white fur covering their bodies that make them less unhealthy-looking than common trolls, and makes them look more like Yetis.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • The series' standard trolls are big ape-like beasts with green, moss-like fur and three eyes. They have low-level health regeneration and can be killed by normal means, but are especially vulnerable to fire. Skyrim also has Frost Trolls, generally appearing in snowier regions.
    • Arena straight up has Dungeons & Dragons-style trolls. Unlike some of the other inconsistencies between Arena and later titles, this is never really addressed, beyond the trolls' more dramatic regenerative capabilities being written off as a myth.
    • Morrowind does not have trolls, but it does have Trollbone Armor. The helmet is a troll skull with a third eye socket, foreshadowing their codified appearance in Oblivion.
  • In EverQuest and EverQuest II, Trolls are a playable race based heavily on the Dungeons and Dragons version of trolls. They're the ugliest and stupidest of the playable races, but the second strongest (behind ogres), the highest base regeneration by far, and have a racial weakness to fire. Their skin is also usually a shade of green, from emerald green to an almost brown olive. EQ1 trolls are stout and burly like ogres, EQ2 trolls are tall, lanky, and have a wider range of skin tones (but still just shades of green and greenish-brown).
  • Trolls in Fable are huge golem-like creatures made of earth, rock or ice, and have high attack power, defense and health, but are immobile and very slow with their attacks.
  • Final Fantasy XI: Trolls are large, bulky, plate armor-wearing mercenaries. They, in the past, were allies of the player-friendly Empire of Aht Urhgan, but turned against them and are now in the employ of Moblins (Goblins with fancy armor).
  • In The Frostrune, an app adventure game in a Norse setting, a troll is the main and only antagonist: also called Jotunn, the Troll is a spirit of frost and ice from Hel itself, who has seemingly killed all the warriors of the island and frozen solid several sacred locations and places. Your quest is to find a way to bind the Troll to a dolmen and then banish it to Hel with the titular rune. This Troll can only be seen in the spiritual realm, and appears as a tall, highly-stylized spirit with horns, a long beard and a Nightmare Face with gaping eyes and rows of teeth.
  • God of War (PS4): Trolls are a roaming enemy that Kratos and Atreus run into, starting early on in the game when one of them grabs a deer Atreus had just killed and attacks father and son. They're massive humanoids, with mainly grey skin and wide, heavyset legs, they wear simple kilts, have huge curved horns on either side of their heads, and have their own language. They also carry massive stone totems as weapons, which Kratos can use as bludgeons to squash their own heads, apart from the first troll you meet in the game, or the Bridgekeeper of Helheim.
  • Gears of War: The Locust are arguably a Not Using the "Z" Word or Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp" version of trolls, given some of the parallels to the "repulsive underground dweller hostile to man" version of trolls — including being considered legendary monsters. They vary from diminutive humanoids to enormous pseudo-arthropods, using teeth, claws, or guns — either scavenged from humans, or their own designs — and seem to actually be fairly intelligent.
  • Golden Sun: Trolls appear as big hulking ogres with clubs in Imil Cave, and are the first truly difficult regular enemy you will face in the game.
  • Gothic: Trolls are huge ape-like creatures with massive arms and short legs, brown fur and incredibly tough skin, but no regeneration. A young troll is a tough fight for two skilled warriors, a fully grown troll requires the main character to be up to borderline-demigod prowess or competent at circle strafing, and the even bigger and scarier-looking black troll is stronger yet. Their punches will also send you flying. Luckily, there is a spell called "shrink monster" that will — well, you figure it out.
  • Guild Wars: Trolls are largely confined to the continent of Tyria. They appear somewhat reptilian with a single eye and tusks. They're roughly humanoid but possess no neck and have bony spurs along their shoulders. While they are all warriors, many have the healing ability "Troll Unguent" usually reserved for rangers. In Guild Wars 2, trolls appear to be an entirely different species, having a classic slouch caveman posture, digitigrade feet, and bat-like features. They have some rudimentary intelligence as they wear loinclothes, craft basic shelters, and display tribal markings.
  • Heroine's Quest, being based on Norse mythology, uses the classic trolls who are big green-skinned brutes, who are none too bright, fight with a club, and turn to stone in the daylight. As a nod to D&D, they also regenerate in combat. Their leader is the two-headed Thrivaldi who fancies himself The Chessmaster (and is really, really too stupid for that).
  • Kameo: Trolls are what most would consider to be "standard" trolls, to the point of being generic. Brutish, violent, fairly dim and always spoiling for a rumble. However, there are some sub-species that are encountered along the way, some lethal (Fire Trolls, Ice Trolls and Shadow Trolls) and some not so lethal (small Trolls who hide in metal balls, Trolls that are part plant). The "normal" Trolls stand out from the magical folk of the game by having a unique affinity with machines; a trait which forged the foundation of a shaky truce until Thorn (a "cunning Troll") took control of the entire race and began yet another war.
  • Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning: Trolls show up as a form of Giant Mook. They're big, hairy monsters with stone-like skin who use tree trunks as clubs.
  • In many game universes, trolls are at best a mid-tier threat (or lower, depending on how big a bestiary the game system has). In King's Bounty, trolls are Level 5 creatures. This tier is for the most powerful creatures in the game. This puts a troll on the same threat level as a dragon. In terms of abilities, these trolls have hardened fire-resistant skin in the morning and regeneration when it's night. These trolls also become more powerful as they witness someone die (friend or foe).
  • The Legend of Spyro:
    • The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning: According to extra material, Trolls are the undead ghouls infesting Dante's Freezer, skeletal monsters in Viking armor and armed with axes. They have a larger and more armored counterpart which turns into a floating wraith when defeated called "Ogre". Reskinned versions of these enemies called "Stone Trolls" appear in the sequel, guarding the ruins on the White Island.
    • The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon has humongous ape-like Trolls seemingly made of earth, stones and vegetation as the strongest troops under Malefor's control. They're impossible to flinch and hit very very hard, but thankfully are rare.
  • Legend (1994) has a troll as a boss, but this troll is a shaggy, yeti-like humanoid who spends the whole battle pouncing up and down a collapsing platform while trying to claw at you.
  • In Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, we have Pizza Trolls. They resemble animated dead trees, and love pizza. Unfortunately for the Zoombinis, they are also extremely picky about the toppings they will eat.
  • In Magicka, Trolls appear as large brutish giants with a small healing factor which can be counteracted by fire, but can still be killed with other elements. they also come in various Underground Monkey varieties, each with increasing levels of strength and speed. Their intelligence is debatable, as some varieties seem little more than animals, others use weapons advanced as BFGs, and the impressive ruins explored in the second to last chapter (which includes doors with magic based locks, some electronic equipment, and copious amounts of lava) was created by the trolls, leaving them as potential genius bruisers.
  • Majesty took the regeneration of trolls very literally, having them ooze together in the middle of the city to wreak havoc and then melt into a green puddle when defeated. Their appearance clearly points to Dungeons & Dragons as inspiration.
  • Might and Magic: About the only consistent thing with trolls is them being large humanoids with non-human skin colours, although pointy ears and noses are common. The game that gives the most focus to them is Day of the Destroyer, in which they are both a player and NPC race, presenting them as a somewhat primitive but not dumb, hard to kill through sheer toughness and healingnote  and with poor luck in their homes (their current home got hit by a storm of fire that left a lake of fire as a result of the event that start off the game, and they accurately say they had to flee from their old home several generations ago... because, as it turns out, it got infested with basilisks. Then the entire world gets destroyed a few years after the game.
  • The trolls from Monster Sanctuary are greyish-green humanoids with fur on their backs that live underground and eat rocks.
  • In Myth, there are the Trow (an alternate spelling of "troll"), twelve-foot-tall giants with bodies like stone. They're immortal unless killed, and incapable of reproduction (all existing Trow were directly created by the god Nyx at the beginning of the world according to the Trow's own legends). They're capable of surviving anything short of dismemberment, and wear belts of skulls about their waists. When fighting creatures smaller than they are (which is to say, most creatures) their combat techniques generally involve kicking those creatures across the landscape with messy results.
  • Nethack: Trolls have a large chance of spontaneously reviving if their corpse isn't taken care of in some way, like being eaten, disintegrated, or thrown underwater (fire does not, by the way, really help in this case). However, they lose a level every time and have a chance of not coming back anyways. They tend to make decent pets for the careless.
  • The original Nexus War had a giant mutated troll-golem created by the Sand Witch of Galmath, which roamed the ruins of its creator's desert fortress. It was one of the few wandering monsters that wasn't That One Boss, but it still regenerated health so quickly that trying to kill it was usually futile.
  • Ori and the Will of the Wisps has the Gorleks, a race of stocky four-armed three-eyed humanoids with lion-like manes and ears, who were once widespread in Niwen but driven underground by The Corruption. Most individuals are hostile Smash Mooks, but a few friendly NPC's remain, such as Grom in Wellspring Glades.
  • Pillars of Eternity: Trolls are huge humanoids absolutely covered with fungus and lichen. Their regenerative ability is represented as them getting one usage of the Second Chance ability when they would be killed the first time.
  • Pokémon Sword and Shield introduces Grimmsnarl, a big, ugly, hairy Pokémon that is Dark/Fairy type and resembles common depictions of trolls and ogres. Its evolutionary relatives, Impidimp and Morgrem, are trolls in the other sense of the word, being mischievous creatures who annoy humans.
  • In Puzzle Quest, trolls are large, grayish creatures with the annoying habit of regenerating health, though they are still perfectly killable. During a sidequest, however, you are told something that basically amounts to them being able to regenerate even after being eaten, which can be prevented by ingesting poison.
  • In RIFT, trolls are fairly standard hulking, stony-skinned brutes. What makes them different is that they are former servants of an ancient race of titans, who are not intelligent enough to form language, but can understand psychic messages left behind by the titans. Some of them have chosen to obey the giants, who used to be the middle managers between the titans and the trolls. Also, Asha Catari has one for a bodyguard.
  • Trolls in Röki are a Dying Race, depicted as large hulking humanoids made of stone and with Gag Noses and Pointy Ears. They're heavily implied enjoy the taste of human flesh, but can actually be quite friendly and helpful under the right circumstances. Two troll sisters are encountered by Tove in her adventure, but one can also find the petrified remains of their brothers elsewhere in the world.
  • In RuneScape, trolls are a diverse and wide-ranging group. The most common breed are mountain trolls, which have stony skin, are incredibly stupid, will eat literally anything and live in caves inside mountains. Occasionally trolls will raid human settlements for food. However, trolls are not always hostile and just don't seem to understand that humans would rather not be eaten. Trolls are named after the first thing they attempt to eat, leading to names like "My Arm" and "Dad". There are also sea trolls, river trolls, and ice trolls, with respective adaptations to their environment like fins or fur, although they are generally aggressive and none too bright.
  • In Sacred, Trolls are ape-like lanky creatures.
  • Sacrifice: Trolls are large, green humanoids with a Healing Factor that lack heads and have their faces on their chests instead. They serve the goddess of life, Persephone, and are as such benign. Pyro has a creature known as a firefist, which is a troll with flamethrowers attached to its fists — due to the resulting burns, they do not regenerate. Both variants communicate purely through Hulk Speak.
  • Spellforce trolls are large, grey-skinned humanoids who speak entirely in "whine", can do marvellous things with rocks, and are about the only Dark race with decent missile attacks that don't count as magical. Their turrets are also ludicrously overpowered.
  • Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! has two kind of trolls:
    • The Electrolls of Hurricos who look vaguely rodent-like. Also, they don't have eyes.
    • The Cloud Temples trolls who are waddling heads.
  • Stonekeep: Trolls are corrupted faeriefolk, and look as such (kind of like evil hobbits). They cannot cross iron spikes driven into the ground and have an aversion to faerie garb — if you equip yourself entirely in faerie clothing, you become completely immune to the attacks of trolls, even though you look very stupid doing so.
  • Broccoblin, Broccorc, and Broccolem from Temtem are anthropomorphic trees that live in symbiosis with the forests they call home. Broccolem is believed to have inspired legends of forest trolls.
  • In Tibia, trolls are a weak race of hominids with no special powers, but with an apparent appetite for dogs. A clan of swamp trolls are seen worshipping a soccer ball. The Swamp Trolls are green, and can poison the player, regular Trolls are brown as are Island Trolls, which wield Marlins as swords. There's also a blue race called Ice Trolls.
  • Titan Quest: The Ragnarök expansion adds Trolls to the list of enemies. They are Beastmen, you can collect their tusks to make talismans and their king Goldtooth is a boss you must defeat. They mostly look like gangly, pale humanoids.
  • Total Annihilation: Kingdoms: The trolls are generic monster men from Zhon, slightly stronger than most humans.
  • Total War: Warhammer: Trolls, as hulking, primitive humanoids with Healing Factors, appear as units for a number of factions. Their regeneration can make them very survivable in melee, especially if they can disengage for a bit before wading back in, but also makes them vulnerable to fire damage.
    • The Greenskins have basic, scaly trolls, who wield clubs and vomit acidic bile on their enemies. The Warden and the Paunch added river trolls, with fishlike fins and stench bad enough to drop the melee attack of enemies near them; stone trolls, bigger versions of the basic kind wielding huge two-handed mauls; and the river troll hag, a hero character in the form of an unusually big and smart river troll who can cast spells from the Lore of Death.
    • The Warriors of Chaos have chaos trolls, trolls mutated by the influence of Chaos into savage, horned and red-skinned monsters.
    • The Norscan Tribes have access to both chaos trolls and ice trolls, an ice-blue reskin of the first kind with a gelid aura that cuts the speed of enemies they engage in melee. There's also Throgg, the King of the Trolls, a gigantic troll with genius-level intellect, a burning hatred for humanity and a desire to plunge the world into a monster-ruled ice age, who serves as a general and faction leader for the Wintertooth Tribe sub-faction.
  • Troll And I revolves around the friendship of a young Scandinavian boy and his troll post-Second World War, where the whole game have you controlling said troll in battling ruthless hunters and various monsters.
  • Valheim: Trolls are giant blue-skinned creatures living in the Black Forest biomes, functioning as a kind of Beef Gate to players who haven't invested in bows, knives or spears. They come in barehanded and club (read: uprooted pine tree)-wielding varieties, can deal huge amounts of area damage (especially to buildings and structures- they can reduce several hours' worth of work to kindling in seconds) and are famous in the fandom for their Not the Intended Use quirk: the aforementioned area damage makes them able to clear out trees and metal deposits far quicker than you can. They drop coins and their lairs usually contain treasure, and their skin can be used to craft stealth-boosting clothes.
  • World of Warcraft: Trolls are almost as varied as the other examples on this page due to being split into several subraces. They live in tribal societies, are tall with short fur of various colors based on their subrace, have three fingers and toes, often speak with an Afro-Caribbean or Cuban accent, practice Hollywood Voodoo, and have varied regenerative powers. They have long pointy ears; males have big noses, large tusks, and walk with a hunch. Females have high-bridged but quite humanlike noses, small tusks, and walk upright. They live in all climes, usually adapting to the environment and forming distinct clans of Frost Trolls, Jungle Trolls, Desert Trolls, etc. Trolls were once the great superpower of Azeroth, with ancient civilizations spanning the major continents, but they're generally in decline these days, displaced by being on the losing end of many, many wars with other races.
    • Trolls are also typically savage, cannibalistic, and almost universally antagonistic, both against other races (particularly humans and PARTICULARLY elves of all stripes) and against different tribes of trolls. The Forest Trolls had a brief alliance of convenience with the Horde during Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, but after the war effort faltered they quickly reverted back to a sense of general hostility toward Horde peoples. There are notable exceptions: The Darkspears are a small tribe of island-based jungle trolls long persecuted by their own kind who allied with the new Horde when the orc leader Thrall saved their lives. Two other troll tribes ally with the Horde much later, though they don't seem to be very extensively assimilated into the larger faction. A few years back a great many troll tribes banded together in an unprecedented campaign of cooperation to reassert their authority in the world, but these efforts failed. The Vestigial Empire that attempted this would later simply join the Jungle Trolls in the Horde. And due to recent changes in the Character Creation screen for the Shadowlands Expansion, it seems that individuals of other Troll tribes have begun to join the Horde as well.
    • In general, trolls seem a bit genetically unstable. Indeed, Night Elves, and by extension all derivative Elven subraces, were originally a band of Dark Trolls who changed after exposure to the Well of Eternity (the other Elf types tend to spring up every time they find a new power source), although this point is still somewhat controversial, as the elves themselves don't really like the notion. Dire trolls are a genetic anomaly that causes some trolls to grow to gargantuan proportions.
    • Another hat of Warcraft Trolls is their preference for ranged combat, specificially with throwing weapons, such as the Amani's throwing axes and the Darkspear's javelins, both providing the Horde's of their time with ranged cover fire while the Orcs and others handled the melee fighting.
  • The Witcher: From the second to the third game, trolls shrunk and lost humanoid traits:
    • The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings gives a nod to the mythological notion of trolls being made of stone and petrify in sunlight. In reality, trolls are giant, butt-ugly humanoids, but made of flesh and blood all the same. According to the lore, they have a penchant for construction and alcoholism, and will often build bridges and charge travelers toll to cross them. The toll is always quickly blown on booze. Their relationship with humans residing in the area is often positive, as it is cheaper to pay the troll to maintain the bridge than to have other humans do it.
    • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: They are rotund creatures with bodies made primarily of stone, with the exception of a soft, fleshy abdomen. Their man-eating tendencies are also played up quite a bit. However, just like in the previous game there are many that are reasonable (if dim), and even friendly to humans and other races. A couple of examples include a troll who served the Redanian army by guarding their boats (by ripping them apart and building a barricade around where they used to be. At least he tried.), and another who reigns as the Champion of Champions among fist fighters.

    Web Animation 

    Webcomics 
  • Nearly every folkloric Troll makes an appearance in this Kaja Foglio illustrated story — at least, every nice one.
  • Charby the Vampirate: The first one introduced is pointy eared, horned and green with a Funetik Aksent with a design inspired by John Bauer's illustrations. There are also some that are visually inspired by Brian Froud's work.
  • Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures doesn't have trolls as such, but does have the 'Mythos', which is a catch-all term for any Creature race that doesn't fit into any other category.
  • Ursula Vernon's work features trolls that look like really rather adorable pudgy frog/goat things. Their eyes get huge at night, as the protagonist of Digger finds out. In Vernon's taxonomy, trolls and goats are actually descended from a common ancestor, which is why they're very embarrassed about that whole "billy goats" thing, and it's impolite to bring it up. Furthermore, the word "troll" also serves as a job title — meaning that the first "troll" we meet is actually a shrew.
  • Dungeon Damage had a number biological handwaves for their regenerating trolls— body parts designed to survive disembowelment and dismemberment, including primitive auxiliary "lungs" in the sinus cavities to keep the decapitated head alive, an oxygen-absorbing fluid throughout the body that seals wounds and prevents infection and blood loss, arteries with peristaltic pumping action, and a nervous system that produces bioelectrical pulses to control limbs physically separated from the body. The author likes to show his work.
  • Erfworld doesn't exactly have trolls. It does, however, have twolls (along with dwagons, gobwins, and spidews). They're large compared to Erfworld "humans", but Parson (the protagonist, a human from Earth) is approximately the same size as a twoll. This is a source of some humor in the early strips. Twolls are ugly, strong, and not very bright. Parson is ... well, certaily not attractive, strong by Erfworld standards, and extremely bright but also very much a fish out of water, so guess what a lot of people meeting him for the first time assume? The similarity is close enough to facilitate a Foolamancy trick to disguise a twoll as Parson at a key moment.
  • In Errant Story the trolls were one of the original species (possibly the second after the dwarves) to inhabit the world, though their civilization was destroyed and their numbers devastated once the various elven races got together and launched a long, though ultimately unsuccessful, campaign to exterminate them. They were likely created by Anilis and Senilis, the elven creator gods, though the elves believe that the mortal (albeit long-lived) trolls were failures and sought to wipe their creators' "failure" from existence. Humans and elves tend to have very little contact with them, considering trolls to be violent, unintelligent monsters. From what the audience has actually seen of the trolls they are large, strong, and matriarchal (as apparently only the women are able to use magic). They are cannibalistic, though it is more of a religious ritual than a survival mechanism — trolls don't believe in an afterlife and deceased individuals are thus eaten by their tribes so they may live on in another sense. Having your remains eaten after you die seems to be something of a compliment (they do it to humans only if suitably impressed). In fact, their culture's capital punishment specifically requires that the criminal's corpse be left for the worms. They consider cremation very offensive, and burning a troll's corpse will royally piss them off. Also, despite the cannibalism, they seem to have an Only Sane Man thing going compared to the other powers. Their reaction to the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds approaching them and asking for an alliance is to peacefully but loudly decline, then immediately decide to uproot their settlement and move to a place with less crazy.
  • Guilded Age: Trolls are a prominent part of the World's Rebellion. They have regenerative abilities, and it's mentioned that troll blood is a potential treatment for minor wounds and that in order to ensure they stay dead, they have to be decapitated. However, other than that they seem closer to Blizzard-style orcs than the general depiction of trolls.
  • In Hereville, Mirka dreams about a troll which is a large, bearded biped with too many eyes. Later, she encounters the real one, which has a blob for a body, six stick-thin limbs, carries a handbag, and likes knitting.
  • In Hetalia: Axis Powers, one of Norway's mystical friends is a gigantic green troll that protects him.
  • Homestuck plays with the dual meaning by having Internet trolls turn out to be actual grey-skinned creatures with horns. They're Humanoid Aliens, with Bizarre Alien Biology implying that they're closer to insects than humans, divided into varieties with different blood colors that to some extent determine traits, abilities, and lifespan. Their horns can come in any number of unusual shapes, from short nubs to long, waving spires, and adorned with several types of forks and prongs. They begin life as colorful insectoid grubs and pupate to become humanoid adolescents; younger trolls have light grey skin, but as adults their skin is black as coal. They're a Higher-Tech Species whose society runs on Blue-and-Orange Morality and lots of violence. They're almost all bisexual (their genders are vestigial and play no role in reproduction) and have weird forms of romance (troll reproduction requires this), and many are either psychic, psychotic, or both. Most of the less-savory aspects of their culture are not natural, but were engineered by malevolent outside forces. Prior to the pressing of an in-universe Reset Button, trolls were a peaceful species (though it's implied that their society had its own problems). Personality-wise, there's a great deal of variation within the twelve trolls in the cast (and their ancestors): from Anti Heroes to Anti Villains, Woobies to Smug Snakes, monsters to Messianic Archetypes. However, they are similar to mythological trolls in that they are nocturnal and sensitive to sunlight. As in, sunlight can blind them permanently. Only rainbow drinkers (analogous to troll vampires) can withstand the sun.
  • Played with in Looking for Group. Since the comic started as a World of Warcraft parody, it was assumed that Cute Monster Girl Benny was a troll since she resembles the ones in the game (three fingers, two toes, small tusks, pointed ears). However, once the comic developed its own universe, its own trolls appeared, and she looks nothing like them. Here, they're a warrior race of greenish/yellowish-skinned humanoids with glowing reddish eyes and humanoid (albeit large) hands and feet, live in a tribal culture and possess shamanic magic, and are as intelligent as any other humanoid race (except Tim, who's... special). They are initially introduced as antagonists, until Cale helps recruit them into the Kingdom of Kethenecia. As for Benny, she is later revealed to be half-elf half-minotaur.
  • In MK's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Mr. Hyde is a troll. He has yellow sharp teeth, a large ape like build, small pointed ears, very tall, has black spots on his back like a toad and he has a short stubby tail.
  • My Roommate Is an Elf features a troll named Dearg. He has green skin, yellow eyes, and ears similar to an elf's. He turns to stone when exposed to sunlight (but turns to flesh again as soon as he gets out of sunlight), and had to wear a cloak to attend a parade.
  • No Rest for the Wicked gives a troll a cameo under the bridge.
  • Lampshaded in The Order of the Stick, where the gods argue at creation what elves, dwarves, and trolls should be like (see page quote), with the massive disagreement creating the Snarl, which eventually forces them to remake the world from scratch. The only trolls we have seen in the strip itself are aquatic trolls called "scrags": Lord Hinjo and Lien discuss the differences between these and land trolls.
  • Pibgorn: Troll? Hardly! Bridge substructure symbiont.
  • Trolls in Prague Race are horned with tails which will just keep growing and lose their sense of self over time without taking the "changeling option".
  • PvP: Skull. Blue, horned, fat, farts a lot, genuinely nice and dorky. He's been with Scott Kurtz's work for a long time, serving as a mascot, comic relief and semi-Author Avatar since his Everquest-based comic Samwise in the 90's. His status in the comic as a mythical creature is subject to some Magic Realism restrictions; he was apparently assigned to Brent Sienna as an imaginary friend when Brent was a kid and just stuck around. Has recently struck up a friendship with The Freemont Troll (see below) since the comic moved to Seattle.
  • In Scandinavia and the World this comic shows that Norway's troll is giant, monstrous, and mostly used to draw in tourists, while Denmark's is a 'designer' troll small enough to fit in his arms and that if you touch him 'you better have a good lawyer'.
  • In Serenity Rose, trolls are big hairy creatures with almost completely featureless faces[1], conjured by witches to defend the Inconsolable Wood from intruders, and are specifically designed to take orders from any witch.
  • In Stand Still, Stay Silent, trolls are former humans who got infected by a plague. Now they look like blobs of mutated body parts that attack the main characters even as their last shreds of human consciousness beg for help. They seem to be vulnerable to fire, just like in Scandinavian mythology.
    • It's actually stated in-story that the term "Troll" was used simply because because people were already used to it meaning "big scary thing that wants to eat you".
  • In Swiftriver, trolls are blue skinned, hairy, and sport horns. They tend to be over six feet tall (not counting their horns) and have two rows of teeth. They are always of Norse or Scandinavian heritage and can project a glamour to make them appear human.
  • In Tales of the Questor, Trolls are a type of toadstool, which live centuries, can eat nearly anything, and are capable of turning the average human warrior into a small red streak across the ground. They're usually too stupid to be good or evil, but they do tend to make good guards for the treasures of bad people.
  • In Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic it's used as one of Fantastic Slurs... or, y'know, as a reference to the actual (monstrous) trolls.
    Giacomo: Gate operators prefer the term "Gate Master" or "Keeper" and since by and large most of them are honest...

    Web Original 
  • Arcana Magi: The trolls work for a Evil Corporation. One troll is on the Board of Directors while another troll works as their technology tester.
  • Codex Inversus: Trolls are barbaric humanoids found in the wild, snowy northlands of the Angelic Unison. They're about as tall as three humans standing on each other's shoulders, and their faces take up the entirety of their torsos, with a thatch of hair between their shoulders and thick beards covering their hips and groins. They are savage barbarians, speak an unintelligible grunting language, and are highly resistant to magic — mind control flatly doesn't work on them, and they can see through most illusions.
  • A variation on this shows up in the Metafictional wiki based on Tycho's Epic Legends Of The Hierarchs. In the entry on Orcs, it is mentioned that no-one can agree what on what an orc actually looks like.
  • Frederik KT Andersson's trolls suffer from "thick blood": pure trolls will degenerate into slavering monsters in only a few generations. Thus they try to breed with humans every now and then.
  • Trolls have made cameo appearances on Gaia Online in various promo art, even having special troll items released. As Gaia relies a lot on Internet culture for inspiration, Gaian Trolls are a bizarre combination of the bridge dwelling troll, and the Internet kind.
  • The troll in The Adventures of the League of S.T.E.A.M.'s webisode "Big Trouble" is of the big, dumb, lumbering kind. Also rather blind.
  • Animated troll dolls appear in the lonelygirl15 episode My Mom's A Freak!.
  • Looming Gaia's trolls are a little over five feet tall and have green skin and tusks, and some also have horns.
  • In The Midgaheim Bestiary, trolls are a type of boogeyman, a family of The Fair Folk which also includes orcs, bugbears and goblins and specializes in forming connections between Fairyland and the mortal world, allowing the fairy world to consume small portions of mundane reality to maintain some measure of internal stability. Trolls themselves resemble giant, apelike, trunked amphibians, and are distantly related to the likewise amphibious goblins. They originate from the country of Germanor, and have fought hundreds of wars with their human neighbors for territory.
  • The online Spec Evo project A Scientific Fantasy trolls are descended from the extinct primate Gigantopithecus, many different species are members of the Troll family: Satyrs, Minotaurs, Alpine Hunchbacks, Yetis and Sasquatches. Most species of Troll are semi-intelligent and Alpine Hunchbacks in particular will be found working in factories in what can essentially be called legalised slave labour.
  • Trolls in Tales From My D&D Campaign are mostly standard D&D trolls, but as a result of some meddling by a dark god, they can eventually regrow their bodies from nothing more than their jawbone, even if they were killed by fire or acid. Since the jawbone itself cannot be destroyed by any known force, this makes trolls true immortals.
  • Trolls in Tales of MU are said to have been made by the gods out of leftovers, as they come in many different heights, limb arrangements, and numbers of heads.
  • The Wanderer's Library:
    • Trollhood seems to be treated like a profession in The Troll's Introductory Handbook, where trolls appear to be creatures manifested from and residing in the human collective subconscious and apparently employed in keeping popular stories, motifs and storytelling symbology running.
    • In The Journal of Aframos Longjourney, trolls are hairy, horned humanoids who live in the mountains north of the protagonist's desert homeland and stand a good six to seven feet tall. Aframos' offhand comment that one particularly large troll stands almost as tall as he does is one of the first clues that he is not, in fact, a human.

    Western Animation 
  • Adventures of the Gummi Bears have also trolls as recurring villains, presented as a kind of Always Chaotic Evil small greenish humanoid.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball once featured a troll who (as a joke on Internet trolling) derived all his strength from insulting people and getting them upset. Unlike the Wander Over Yonder example below, this troll also ate the people.
  • Barbie & The Diamond Castle featured a troll that looked just like a short, bald guy that happened to have greenish-brown skin, carried a scimitar, and threatened to eat anyone who couldn't answer his riddle.
  • Trolls in Disenchantment are nearly identical to elves but with slightly shorter ears. They're also renowned scam artists, which may be a reference to the other kind of troll.
  • Even Dora the Explorer has a troll. He is a short, hairy humanoid with a huge beard who lives under a bridge. He claims to be grumpy, but it seems like he really just likes to sing a song that says he's grumpy. He also asks Dora riddles every time she tries to cross his bridge.
  • Fangbone! depicts trolls as green-skinned humanoids who serve as Venomous Drool's mooks.
  • Trolls appear in The Real Ghostbusters episode "Troll Bridge" as Always Chaotic Evil beings who take control of the New York bridge, and are more similar to the folkloric depiction. In Extreme Ghostbusters, trolls eat metal and multiply by mitosis.
  • On Goldie & Bear, the troll is a cranky toddler equivalent who throws a tantrum and blocks the bridge because he was woken up from his nap. Fortunately, Bear's Mama Bear is a master troll tamer and knows that the troll can be dealt with by using a firm tone, giving him a blankie and teddy bear, and redirecting him back below the bridge to curl up to finish his nap. Alternatively, giving him a balloon will also work, if you extract a promise from him to go back and finish the nap in exchange for it.
  • Hilda: Trolls have been a major part of the series from the beginning, show as having stony, rounded bodies, tiny glowing eyes, and extraordinarily long noses. They turn to stone in sunlight, but return to life once in darkness again and consequently generally prefer to live underground. The citizens of Trollberg generally assume trolls to be man-eating Always Chaotic Evil monsters, and defend themselves by ringing bells (as the sound causes great pain to a troll). The movie Hilda and the Mountain King goes into significantly deeper detail about their society and culture, showing they are in fact as intelligent as humans and that their bad rap is entirely due to the actions of a few individuals.
  • A pair of trolls appear as Fantastic Drug dealers in an episode of Little Wizards. They resemble goblins, with simian builds, elongated muzzles, exaggerated tusks jutting from their underjaws, and clothing and paraphenalia meant to evoke 80s stereotypes of drug dealers and gangbangers, including a hip-hop dance routine. They attempt to coax Boo into providing them with magical fertilizer for their Fantastic Drug of choice, puffpods, by playing on his anxiety and promising him that the puffpods can help him deal with his constant worries.
  • In The Little Troll Prince trolls are small, ugly underground dwelling and Always Chaotic Evil but the title character gains redemption and is turned into a gnome.
  • The '90s cartoon Magical Super Trolls features trolls who live like humans Beneath the Earth. Some of them possess magic powers, and three of them are granted super powers.
  • Mustakrakish the Lake Troll from Metalocalypse is several stories tall with red skin, gangly limbs, claws, and fangs. It appears to hate (or enjoy destroying) modern technology, or at least high-tension electrical lines, and its only weaknesses seem to be lullabies (which put it to sleep in the bottom of a lake) and sharp objects lodged in its throat. And it's summoned with The Power of Rock. Do note that the Scandinavian members of Dethklok recognize it.
  • Trolls in Mike the Knight are friendly, purple, vaguely monstrous humanoids, who live in small family groups in caves. The trolls seen in the series are Mike's friend Trollee and his parents, Ma and Pa Troll.
  • Monster Loving Maniacs has two kinds of trolls: regular trolls and mountain trolls. Regular trolls are burly, green-skinned humanoids with horns and tails that eat gemstones and live in invisible cottages, while mountain trolls are colossal rocky-skinned versions of regular trolls that spend most of their time asleep and camouflaged with their surroundings. One episode shows regular trolls seem to worship mountain trolls as gods.
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends:
    • The Grundles are a species of short, squat humanoids who live underground. Beyond this, they are themselves very diverse in appearance. All of them are varying degrees of Ugly Cute, with long ears, wide mouths and no visible noses, and they all have very sweet personalities, but otherwise vary widely in height, build, and coloration — they range from grey to brown in skin color, some are short and some tall, and most are stout and hairless but one is thin with a full head of hair.
    • Niblik, from "The Magic Coins", resembles an ugly human a little shorter than Megan, with long arms, a large mouth and heavy brows. He also wields magical powers, and is the only one who can undo wishes made with coins from his treasure.
  • Ned's Newt: Trolls are pretty much Mole Men. Scheming, smart, small ugly humanoids living Beneath the Earth, who wish to Take Over the World.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Homer, Bart, and a few others group write a children's novel about orphan troll twins who attend a magical school under the Brooklyn Bridge called Underbridge Academy.
    • The rather odd episode "Saddlesore Galactica" has Homer become a jockey, only to discover that all the other jockeys are inhuman creatures that have various traits of elves and leprechauns, except that they are also evil and cannibalistic. Homer refers to them as "murderous trolls."
  • Trolls from Slugterra are blue skinned, large, and renowned for their engineering skills.
  • The trolls in Sofia the First are a race of benevolent but poor-reputationed small, green, hairy apes with pointy ears who live underground, like to make music with their clubs, and sometimes come outside to look at the stars. They are smart, friendly, love music and were banned from the castle due to a simple, knee-jerk misunderstanding. The show being what it is, it's up to Sofia to fix this mistake and introduce the trolls to polite society.
  • In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Star accidentally (and permanently!) transforms her high school math teacher Miss Skullnick into a troll. Skullnick ends up with green skin, fangs, a huge nose, long red hair and a red gem in the place of her belly button. She's understandably upset by this, until a few episodes later when she learns that trolls live for over 400 years, can lift over 100 times their own body weight and are virtually indestructible.
  • One of the best variations we've found are the Stone Protectors. They were a toy line and short-lived cartoon series released on the heels of the troll doll revival in the mid-90s. These trolls were a literal Five-Man Band who protected the Stones of Power from an evil troll using The Power of Rock.
  • We can only assume that The TroubleMakers from Team Umizoomi are these creatures.
  • Trolls from Trollhunters are the most common breed of magical creature present in the series. They come in various shapes and sizes throughout the series, commonly seen for their tusks, stone skin, horns and large noses. Should they touch sun-light, their bodies turn to stone (with a few exceptions like the half-breed Changelings, and the flying Stalkling).
  • Trollz, as in the cartoon of the same name, are magic beings who resemble troll dolls that lean slightly more towards cute side of Ugly Cute. Also, Xtreme Kool Letterz!
  • Trolls in Ugly Americans are big, green, not very bright, live under bridges and really, REALLY like telling riddles. There's some sexual dimorphism evident. Males have long noses, jutting tusks and are bald, females have snub noses, blunt tusks and hair (or they get nose jobs, file down their tusks and wear wigs).
  • On Uncle Grandpa, the troll has a monstrous appearance and the weakness of turning to stone. It also harasses people anonymously over the Internet.
  • Trolls in Vikingskool are depicted as aggressive and ill-tempered Rock Monsters regularly fought by the heroes and occasionally brought in for curriculum lessons. Numerous types exist, from the classic cave troll to tiny pebble trolls to the gargantuan mountain king.
  • Wander over Yonder: In "The Troll", Wander and Sylvia are recruited to help the Baa-hallans defend their food stores from a troll. The troll starts out as an ugly little humanoid, but as he angers Sylvia and the Baa-hallans with his insults he gets bigger, stronger, and uglier. However, Wander realizes the source of the monster's power and convinces everyone to stop fighting and Just Ignore It, causing the troll to shrink back to its original, harmless size.
  • The Trolls from The World of David the Gnome are based on the Scandinavian troll myths: hairy, ugly, man-sized creatures who turn to stone in sunlight, and are extremely greedy.


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Alternative Title(s): Our Trolls Are Different, Our Trolls Are All Different

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Antonio, the Toll Troll

Antonio, the Troll in Charlie's Nightman play, is a disreputable landlord/pimp who demands a "Troll Toll" in exchange for access to his boy's soul.

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