Fur Against Fang

This is when you come back on a different day in the Lunar cycle.


In many ways, the legends of werewolves and vampires spring from similar sources, but recently popular fiction has fleshed them out, made them into species, and given them cultural traits.

Total opposites.

Like Elves vs. Dwarves (or pirates vs. ninjas) they probably don't like each other. Wouldn't it be awesome if they fought each other?

And they did. And it was awesome.

Old World of Darkness popularized this trope, but there were some earlier examples. Compare Monster Mash, where they're cooperative, if not friendly. A subtrope of Cool Versus Awesome.

May result in a Vampire-Werewolf Love Triangle, the result of which will be a Hybrid Monster... or a childless marriage.

As a whole, this trope might be Newer Than They Think. In many legends and folklore that mention both vampires and werewolves, the two are not only not antagonistic, they are often connected, such as one belief that an improperly disposed of werewolf would actually come back as a vampire.

And yes, we know werewolves have fangs too. We just like the alliteration. Plus, just as how you don't think "zebra" when you hear hoofbeats, you don't think "werewolf" when you hear "fang".[1] But on to the examples...

Examples of Fur Against Fang include:

Individual Battles

Anime and Manga

  • Digimon Adventure: Myotismon, the third Big Bad, was a vampire Mon. The Lancer had a werewolf mon, WereGarurumon, as a partner. This was inevitable.
    • It also played straight the idea that vampires and werewolves are roughly equal in power. Whereas Myotismon soundly routed all the other Ultimate-level partner Digimon he faced later on up until his death, WereGarurumon successfully held his own in a single duel against Myotismon for quite a while. Then Angemon intervened.
  • Seras Victoria and The Captain fight from Hellsing.
  • In the Soul Eater manga, Death The Kid (who, for bonus points, is a shinigami) teams up with the immortal werewolf Free to fight the bloodsucking Mosquito, who eventually takes on a very vampiric form. Partially subverted because, once Mosquito takes on this form, Free doesn't actively participate in the battle and it becomes a one-on-one fight.
  • While mostly averted in Dance in the Vampire Bund, where werewolves are elite bodyguards for the vampiric royal lines, Mina forces her Bodyguard Crush to fight her in a brutal hand to hand fight at the end of an early arc.
  • In Millennium Snow, Toya (a vampire) and Satsuki (a werewolf) are rivals for Chiyuki (the heroine). They also generally rub each other the wrong way personality-wise.
  • Averted in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX; assuming werewolfs exist at all in this setting, lady vampire Camula has no animosity towards them, using the card Zombie Werewolf in her otherwise vampire-themed deck.

Comic Books

  • In 1974, the Dracula/Wolfman rivalry was present in Marvel Comics, and could be seen throughout Tomb Of Dracula #18 and Werewolf By Night #15.

Fan Works

Film

  • The Wolfman first fought Dracula in visual media in the 1948 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein where the Wolf Man is depicted as a hero who rescued the titular duo.
  • The 1971 Spanish film La Noche De Walpurgis a.k.a. The Werewolf Versus The Vampire Woman had several ordinary people pursuing a story getting caught up in a battle between a rather compassionate and gentlemanly werewolf under a curse and a Satan-worshiping vampire witch. In the end, the humans win.
  • The 1991 direct-to-video film The Howling IV: The Freaks had a werewolf protagonist fighting against a vampire villain.
    • Just for fun they also had some carnival freaks in the fray.
  • Only a werewolf can kill Dracula in the 2004 movie Van Helsing, which the title character himself inadvertently becomes, briefly.

Literature

  • The Dresden Files features a group of college-age, amateur monster-hunters known as the "Alphas", who have learned how to turn themselves into enormous wolves. They use their abilities to protect Chicago's university district from various monster threats, including the occasional vampire attack. Later on, in Turn Coat, two of the Alphas fight a White Court vampire straight-up and manage to defeat her with repeated hit-and-run attacks.
  • In Tolkien's The Lay of Leithian, Luthien disguises herself as a vampire and her lover as a werewolf in order to infiltrate Angband. The door is guarded by the werewolf Carcharoth, and despite the fact that werewolves and vampires both serve Morgoth, Carcharoth threatens to torture and kill Luthien as soon as he sees her - which is strange considering Luthien is disguised as Sauron's messenger who lived in Sauron's werewolf-infested fortress.

Live Action TV

  • Two episodes of Tales from the Crypt had this as a twist ending, with opposing conclusions:
    • In the episode "The Secret", an orphan is adopted by a wealthy, childless couple, who turn out to be vampires. After they hunt him down at the end, the child reveals he's a werewolf, and promptly kills them.
    • In the episode "Werewolf Concerto", a group of guests at a secluded hotel suspect one of them is a werewolf. In the end, the guest played by Timothy Dalton turns out to be the lycanthrope, but is killed by another guest, Beverly D'Angelo, who turns out to be a vampire.
  • Interestingly mostly averted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There is only one meeting between Angelus and werewolf Oz, in which they merely growl at each other until Angelus backs off. Of course, Oz does occasionally stake vampires, but that's because he's a Scooby, not because he's a werewolf.
    • In his own series, Angel dates a werewolf for a while. It doesn't work out, but again, that has nothing to do with her lycanthropy.
  • In Big Wolf on Campus, a couple of episodes feature vampires who Tommy has to defeat.
  • Kamen Rider Kiva has it, though it's more of a part of the larger case of Everything Against Fang. The vampiric Fangire race hunts and kills the other 12 Demon Races as well as humans, which includes their killing all but one of the Wolfen, Merman, and Franken races. Thus the last Wolfen, Garulu (AKA Jiro) has a well-justified hatred for Fangire and is all too eager to battle them in 1986 with the prototype IXA System. He mellows out later on and makes a blood oath to watch over his friend Otoya's son, resulting in the eponymous Kiva being able to call upon Garulu's power in battle.
  • Averted in the upcoming episode of Deadliest Warrior where they'll be pitting Vampires against...zombies. Yeah...

Magazines

  • A recent article in Pyramid role-playing magazine combines this with the "Ninja vs Pirate" internet meme, and indeed Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie. Yes, it's Werewolf Pirates versus Vampire Ninjas!

Video Games

Web Comics

  • Cry Havoc features a short battle between a platoon of zombies and a vampire against a squad of werewolves. The werewolves win easily thanks to a combination of heavy weapons and body armor.
  • The webcomic Shifters includes a deadly rivalry between were-creatures and vampires and reveals what many consider an abomination as the protagonist finds herself a hybrid of the two as she's attacked by a vampire and infected triggering her latent lycanthropy.

Western Animation

  • J. Michael Straczynski wrote an episode of The Real Ghostbusters, "No One Comes To Lupusville" (they never come to Lupusville), in which a group of vampires lure the Ghostbusters to an isolated town filled with odd but friendly people. Once they realize what's going on, the Ghostbusters free the captured townsfolk, only to find them more than eager to take on the vampires themselves. Angry and now under a full moon, they transform into werewolves and proceed to kick vampire ass. The 'busters do the rational thing and get the hell out of Dodge, destroying the only bridge out of town on the way (imprisoning the were-vamps, as anything vampiric could not cross running water).
    • Hilariously, as the two sides fight, whenever any combatant from any side bites an enemy, said enemy instantly becomes the other type of critter.

Egon: Think about it, Peter. When a vampire bites someone, he becomes a vampire, right?
Peter: Right...
Ray: And when a werewolf bites someone, he becomes a werewolf, too!
Egon: Precisely, so what happens when a werewolf bites a vampire, and a vampire bites a werewolf? (shows EXACTLY what happens)
Winston: Man, talk about democracy in action!
Peter: I'm hip! But guys! Don't you want to stick around to see who wins?
Egon, Ray, and Winston: NO.


Fantastic Racism

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

  • The comic Werewolves on the Moon: Versus Vampires, seriously.
  • Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose has a were-cat named Boo Cat in a sexual relationship with a vampire named Liquorice Dust. At least 3 of the vampire's friends don't mind, and have joined in. However, the same issue had a werewolf who had very different ideas on inter-species romances. It also featured an Anvilicious speech, a Stripperiffic Little Red Riding Hood costume, and an example of why you shouldn't try to force your tongue down the throat of an angry were-creature.
  • Subverted as a joke in the comic Supernatural Law. The receptionist for the titular law firm is dismayed to realize that she's booked appointments for a werewolf and a vampire at the same time: "You know what happens when they meet. You can't pull 'em apart..." Cut to the two merrily exchanging jokes. "...when they're into their shop talk."

Film

Literature

  • In the book series Dark Hunters, the Were Hunters and the Dark Hunters tolerate each other. But just barely.
    • The Dark-Hunters are mostly faux-vamps though. However, the Were-Hunters do have a rather complicated relationship with the more vampiric Daimons. Even though they are related races, Daimons will eat the souls of Weres, and the Weres will kick Daimon butt.
  • The Anita Blake novels. Generally the vampires in this universe view shapeshifters as animals, or at best moderately useful tools. Jean-Claude is very rare among vampires in that he has alliances with many of the local were-groups. This is so unusual that he says at one point other vampires with an eye toward conquering his territory will think him weaker than he is because they won't view as relevant any weregroups other than his "animal to call". (Animal with which he has magical affinity- in Jean-Claude's case this is wolves and werewolves.) Then again you can't entirely blame them for thinking that, since different were-animal groups usually can't even get along with each other, much less anybody else.
  • This comes up a lot in the Discworld novels. Clear rivalries exist in The Fifth Elephant and Thud.
    • The antagonism is said to come from the fact that werewolves are jealous of vampires being thought of as suave and sophisticated, while vampires are jealous of werewolves being able to fit more easily into human society (when in human form, obviously).
  • The vampires and werecreatures in The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries don't like each other either. Of course, the vampires consider themselves superior to everybody else, including humans; and even werewolves look down on all werecreatures who don't turn into wolves.
  • In the Horror-tropes dimension Skeeve visited in one of the Myth Adventures novels, vampires are city folk, and look down on werewolves as country bumpkins (who likewise look down on vampires as shallow yuppies).
  • In the urban fantasy series the Mortal Instruments, the werewolves and vampires generally hate one another. It is explained that the two demon species which originally infected humans, giving rise to the vampires and werewolves, were rivaling species who hated one another.
  • In New Moon, a group of werewolves kill a vampire.
    • Also, the Twilight werewolves have actually been created exclusively to fight vampires - the tribe members get shapeshifting abilities only when a vampire is in the area, and it appears that most vampires and werewolves harbor prejudice towards each other, at least to a level.
    • They each have their own racial slurs, such as "leech" and "dog".
    • Real werewolves are mentioned, but unlike the ones we see, they can't control it, and are so powerful one can take down 20 vampires with ease.
      • That's what they say, but considering that every vampire, except for like 3, has Plot Armor thicker than Sasuke's, and the fact that at least one vampire is mentioned to have fought one to a draw, that seems like a gross overestimation.
    • The trailer for the third film is dominated by shots of a full-scale melee between the two. Boyfriends beware, though. It's a trap.
    • For some reason, all the "werewolves" are Native Americans.
    • Of course, the heart of the story is a Werewolf and a Vampire fighting over the heart of Bella.
  • In the erotic werewolf novel Master of Wolves, werewolves were created by the same wizard who'd created vampires, and tasked to monitor the vampires' behavior while concealing their own existence. If the vampires ever stepped out of line and enslaved humanity, it'd be the werewolves' job to take them down.
  • Vampires and werewolves just don't get along with each other in Tom Holt's Barking. However, out-and-out war has been replaced by competition between law firms.
  • Werewolf/vampire antagonism comes up a lot in the Kitty Norville books, but there's no actual rivalry because werewolves are greatly outmatched. Werewolves are as vulnerable to vampires' hypnotic powers as normal humans are, so when Kitty goes vampire hunting she relies on the traditional weapons like stakes and crosses. It's stated that when the two groups exist in any numbers in an area the werewolves are often subservient to the vampires.
  • In Seven For A Secret by Elizabeth Bear the main character, a vampire, implies that he had a hand in the extinction of werewolves.
  • The Dragonlance spinoff A Practical Guide To Vampires briefly references the idea, explaining that the two races don't really hate each other but individuals or even clans will sometimes clash when they both want the same thing. It also breaks down a Who Would Win scenario: werewolves are stronger, vampires are faster, both have about the same intelligence; vampires have a huge advantage around cliffs or forests due to climbing ability but werewolves gain just as big of an advantage during a full moon.
  • In The Last Werewolf, vampires and werewolves are sickened by each other's presence and tend to keep their distance. And then the vampires realize that werewolf bites confer resistance to the sun.

Live Action TV

  • In Being Human (UK), vampires loathe werewolves, for whatever reason: they're called "freaks" and "dogs" to their faces, and vampires are seen to beat up werewolves with no provocation. What werewolves as a group think of vampires isn't really known—especially since werewolves seem to be extremely rare—but apparently they just steer clear of the "psychotic bastards".
    • Averted in Mitchell and George's incredibly rare case: they're BFFs against all odds.
    • It's suggested that the vampires' hatred of werewolves stems from fear. When transformed on a full moon, a werewolf can rip even the most powerful vampire to shreds, but for the other 27 days of the cycle they're (usually) just a normal human, so vampires kill them when they get the chance or make sure they can keep werewolves locked up during the full moon. This prejudice also backfired, inspiring some werewolves (e.g. MacNair) to hunt vampires even while they're in human form.
    • Werewolf blood is also toxic to vampires, another reason why the vampires would hate werewolves.
  • Kamen Rider Kiva has 16 demon races, most of which bear a severe grudge against the Fangire because they've hunted the others to near-extinction. Of course, this includes the Wolfen, whose last survivor Jiro/Garulu really despises the Fangire in general and Rook, the one who actually did the job, in particular.
  • The Vampire Diaries has introduced the idea of an instinctive rivalry between the two groups, in the second season. A (transformed) werewolf's bite is fatal to a vampire (causing nasty sickness and Sanity Slippage before their inevitable death), while vampires were created specifically to be able to kill werewolves.
  • Happens in CSI of all shows during a Halloween episode where a Lycanthrope is beaten to death by Sanguinarians. Turns out he used to be a Sanguinarian and when he decided to change things up both groups got pissed and killed him.
  • In True Blood, the first few encounters between vampires and werewolves (starting with Bill and some weres in Season 3) are what we modern folk expect—seemingly standard Fur Against Fang encounters. But then the situation is subverted, because all of the werewolves are under the control of a vampire, which is one of the first clues about his awesome level of power. It's still not clear whether the standard version of the trope would be in effect if not for that, but it seems to be implied, since edgington's control seems to be based on the vampire blood he's giving the wolves, which makes it like a drug addiction.

Tabletop Games

  • Of course, the example that catapulted this concept into recent memory would be the Old World of Darkness, where werewolves and vampires hate each other. Later versions downplayed the Crossover aspect of this, but this is what stood out. The reason for the original hatred was because werewolves saw vampires as agents of their sworn enemy, the Wyrm (a Cosmic Horror bent towards eternal suffering and decay) -- and since most of the vampires in the setting see killing as "just another thing" after a while, they're not entirely wrong. However, their tendency to strike at vampires regardless of how corrupt they are drives it into dickery.
    • Vampires, for their part, didn't have any special hate for werewolves. What they had was pure unmitigated fear—a werewolf was stronger, faster, and did aggravated damage (damage a vampire couldn't soak away with unnatural strength or outright ignore). Vampires had... the low cost of silver-plating their weapons and enough sense to not pick fights with werewolves when at all avoidable.
    • It is thus ironic that in both versions of The World of Darkness (although especially the original one), getting a vampire and werewolf to team up could be amazingly effective. Werewolves, with their sturdy constitutions and Healing Factor, could function as walking blood banks for the vamps, as well as safeguard their lairs during the day—while vampires had a lot of blood-fueled magical or semi-magical abilities that could make them temporarily (or situationally, if you need to use something other than the wolves' brute force) more powerful. Which is not to mention the fact that in the 1st Edition, at least, drinking werewolf blood would supercharge vamps, making it even more of an exploit.
  • This trope has been excised from the New World of Darkness (Vampire: The Requiem & Werewolf: The Forsaken.) Whether vampires and werewolves fight against each other or work together is wholly dependent on their personal choices, although the standard seems to be that they are content to stay away from each other out of mutual fear of the unknown. In mixed groups, Interspecies Romance is usually the first thing that happens.
    • One of the first books in the Werewolf: The Forsaken line, Hunting Grounds: the Rockies, parodies the trope with Black Moon Extreme, a pack of young cubs who decide the best way to aid Denver is to hunt down vampires and look cool while doing it. While some pack members have good reason to hate vampires—and Denver has had a bad history with the bloodsuckers—the pack's alpha is basically just doing it for an ego trip, and a lot of the other packs think they're posers who are going to do something hideously stupid one day.
  • The finalized edition of fan-made expansion Genius: The Transgression has a take on each of the above with a Mad Scientist faction; Geniuses and vampires actually get along pretty well (fittingly), though Genius blood is no different from mortal blood (how Wonders can help a vampire is another story entirely...). Also fitting, Geniuses and werewolves don't get along at all, but the interaction between Geniuses and Mages is... interesting. The main Ancient Conspiracies of the two groups actually seem to be incapable of noticing each other.
  • Since it has roots as a fan-made expansion of the Old World of Darkness above, Tech Infantry of course carries over the hatred between vampires and werewolves. Once the Earth Federation was established, all werecreatures (wolves, tigers, rhinos, etc.) are drafted into the titular Tech Infantry Space Marines to fight the alien Arachnids. Since the bugs threaten them too, the Vampire Kingdom of Enoch sends occasional ghouls and low-level vampires to join the Tech Infantry, and they do work together surprisingly well. But for the most part, vampires are hated and hunted throughout the Earth Federation and later the Middle Kingdom.
  • In the old Basic/Expert/etc D&D system, powerful vampires could use their ability to control wolves, rats, and bats to control their lycanthropic equivalents as well. Not surprisingly, this made the not-yet-controlled werewolves, wererats and werebats extremely leery of vampires, though they weren't openly at war with them.

Video Games

  • The online game Adventure Quest borrows much from the Underworld movies, and the Vampire/Werewolf conflict consumes most of the Hammer Horror section known as Darkovia.
    • And then there are the Werepyres.
    • And then they added DRACOpyres. In case that didn't make sense, it's vampire, werewolf, and DRAGON.
    • Darkovia in Adventure Quest Worlds was locked in a conflict between the vampires led by their queen Safiria and the Lycans led by the Werewolf King (the title of which changed hands when the player arrived!). The player was sent there in order to get support for both sides against the Chaos Lord Wolfwing, a Werepyre who has been chaorrupted by the game's Big Bad Drakath, who created an army of werepyres and chaorrupted certain werewolves and vampires and sent them against their respective opposing faction, culminating in having a dragon captured and turning it into a Dracowerepyre, the Chaos Beast of that particular saga. There was even a war that went down where the players threw in with either the Vampires or the Lycans and tried to beat the other faction to 100%. The Lycans won the war.
  • The X-Box 360 game Operation Darkness has werewolf Allies fighting vampire-aided Hitler and his Ghostapo.
    • Which is kind of ironic, since in real life the Nazis had a division called the "Werewolves" (not actually shapeshifters, as far as we know).
    • Especially ironic because the Brits had (have?) an Vampire Squadron, who were pretty heavily decorated in WW 2.
  • In the game Fatal Hearts, the vampires and the werewolves each think the others are soulless murderers who must be destroyed at all costs, and woe to anyone who gets in their way.
  • BiteFight, Game Forge's browser-based RPG, is just that.
  • The King's Quest II Fan Remake uses this to great effect. In the original game, the monk gives you a key to the vampire's castle, you trick your way into the castle, stake the vampire, and grab the key. The remake version subverts the hell out of it. The "friendly" monk at the local church is leader of a werewolf pack that has been mercilessly hunting down the ruler's family. In fact, THEY were the ones responsible for turning the count of Kolyma into a vampire in the first place. It also turns out that the grandma and Little Red Riding Hood expies are the Countess and the Count's granddaughter, forced to flee for their lives due to the persecution.
  • Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines is the above (tabletop) Old World of Darkness example in a video game. In the game, the rivalry/hatred/fear of werewolves is mentioned. The PC faces a werewolf, who is terrifying, immune to the PC's attacks, and unkillable except through a good, old-fashioned Guide Dang It strategy.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has The Companions, who are Friendly Neighborhood Werewolves who were Cursed with Awesome by Daedric Prince Hircine who are opposed by the Silver Hand, who while not outright stated to be vampires seem to occasionally drop Vampire Dust when killed.

Web Comics

  • Nina Delacroix in Eerie Cuties upon meeting a werewolf boy discovered that "vampires and werewolves don't get along" and proposed her pet theory (sorry) of the origin.
    • It probably helps that her mother is nice and polite to everyone (and probably would consider such petty squabbles beneath herself anyway) and her sister is nice and rude to everyone (with a few exclusions). At least, when Ace visited Delacroix house, you couldn't tell there could possibly be any problems of this sort from the way Maria The Perfect Hostess treats him. Conversely, Ace didn't even think about this until Nina mentioned it - his father only mildly grumbles at a mention of vampires.
    • Diodore, a vampire from Europe and Layla's fiance, later tried to twit Ace about how "our kind bested yours in war centuries ago"... it could even work, if only he didn't start by making himself look like a moron and previously demonstrated that when the going really gets tough, Dio himself freezes in indecision.
  • Parodied in Sam and Fuzzy, were it turns out that vampire bites turn people into werewolves. For some reason, being physically assaulted by someone's teeth and suddenly morphing into a half-ton of animalistic rage gives the newly minted werewolf some severe aggression to work out, and the assaulting vampire tends to become the first target.
  • Shown in Shifters where Werebeasts and Vampires most definitely do NOT like each other.

Other

Literature

  • Inverted in The Saga of Darren Shan. In the books, vampires and Wolves are from the same bloodline.
  • Averted in the books of Mary Janice Davidson because neither race believes in the existance of the other.

Live Action TV

  • Inverted in the NBC mini-series House of Frankenstein where it's mentioned that vampires love lycanthropes, treating them like beloved pets.
  • Averted in Angel when the title character dates a newly turned werewolf. Of course, he had been in love with a vampire slayer...
  • Averted in Sanctuary. While there are plenty of issues between different species of Abnormals, vampires and werewolves don't seem to have any particular animosity. Tesla's interactions with Henry do manage to have a bit of this, though, but only because Tesla is kinda misanthropic and thinks all non-Vampires (minus Helen) are idiots compared to him.

Video Games

  • Battlefield Heroes just recently added vampire skins for the Nationals and werewolf skins for the Royals.
  • Subverted entirely in BlazBlue. Valkenhayn R. Hellsing, a werewolf, is the faithful butler of Rachel Alucard, a vampire.
  • Played with in Free Realms. Both races show up for the Halloween event, and they do have a rivalry with each other (with players encouraged to choose sides)... but this is a family-friendly game, so they settle things with dance-offs.
  • The Sims Social on Facebook once advertised a "Werewolves vs Vampires Week".
  • Averted in The Elder Scrolls games. Vampires and werewolves don't really care about each other. They also have surprisingly similar origins. Both are creations of the Daedric Princes -- Molag Bal created the Vampires, and Hircine created the Werewolves. They did not get along.
  • A natural result of the AI in Dwarf Fortress, whose latest release added vampire immigrants and wandering werecreatures. One player found a random peasant in a cage trap, and when the full moon rolled around and he turned into a werepanda he was introduced to one of the resident vampires. They did not get along.
  1. ↑ Technically, it could also be said that vampires have fur. Or at least hair. And depending on how bat-like they may be...nevermind.
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