Hell Hound

Abandon all tennis balls, ye who enter here.


Dogs. The oldest of the domesticated animals and man's constant companion throughout history. Cute, loyal, and steadfast. Except when they, you know, aren't.

Hellhounds have been appearing since Hesiod wrote his Theogony, making this one Older Than Feudalism. Standard hellhounds are black with glowing red or flaming eyes. They may have two or even three heads. Famous hellhounds are Cerberus and the Hound of the Baskervilles. Fenrir may also fit, and Garmr certainly does.

As their name implies, they are generally thought to originate in the underworld, but this has become a relaxed requirement for modern incarnations.

Although their origins are impossibly varied, they can generally be lumped into three categories:

Hunter

Escaped or deliberately released from Hell, these hellhounds exist only to hunt and kill. These are usually "hellhound classic," appearing as black hounds with red eyes. The eponymous hound from The Hound of the Baskervilles is probably the most famous example of this type, although it turned out to be a fake.

Guardian

This version is usually just as dangerous as the Hunter, but it is tasked with guarding a location or person. If they're guarding a person, that person is usually associated with Hell. The most famous guardian hellhound is of course Cerberus. Garmr is the same but with a Northern accent (lots of Hells have a North).

Portent

The sight of one of these black dogs was a Portent of Doom. They might be malevolent or outright dangerous. Myths are split between the sight of the Black Dog being the cause of the misfortune or merely a symptom. The Barghest of Yorkshire may be the best known example, although the Grim from Harry Potter may be replacing it due to Popcultural Osmosis.

Classical hellhounds are immune to Kick the Dog, and its obvious menace makes its counterattack less a case of The Dog Bites Back than a result of Bullying a Dragon. It's almost impossible to scare these dogs, so any character who can is one to be very cautious around. May occasionally overlap with Big Badass Wolf, but these are generally more supernatural/evil. May also overlap with Evil Versus Evil if they exist in a world where Cats Are Mean.

They may be part of The Wild Hunt or the Legions of Hell. Compare to Hellish Horse. Contrast Heroic Dog and Big Friendly Dog.

Examples of Hell Hound include:

Anime and Manga

  • Berserk has an example of this trope in the form of the Beast of Darkness. It's a vicious, sadistic pointy-snouted wolf-like creature with lighting-bolt shaped eyes that seeks to corrupt Guts. The disturbing part is that the Beast exists entirely in Guts's head. The Beast is the embodiment of Guts' own rage and hatred at the Godhand, the Apostles and especially Griffith after the Eclipse. Among other things, it wants Guts to kill Casca so that he can get back to seeking revenge.
  • Hellsing has Alucard able to summon a hellhound, explicitly named as The Hound of the Baskervilles. He also takes on the form of one in the TV series.
  • There's an Ultimate level Digimon known as Cerberumon. There's also a card-game-only character named Anubismon. However, he's an aversion of Everyone Hates Hades - the manual treats him as mythology treats death gods. Whether you're going to the Dark Area or eligible for reconfiguration is up to him.
  • For the second Monster of the Week in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, a cute little puppy was transformed into a huge, black, four-eyed hellhound with many bony protrusions.
    • In the third season, a mage named Verossa was introduced who has the power to summon packs of ghostly, classic hellhounds for hunting down his targets. He's one of the good guys, though.
  • In Naruto, Pain's Animal Path is fond of summoning a gigantic hellhound with multiple heads that can split into lots of smaller ones.
  • One Piece's Thriller Bark arc had a Cerberus-style "Frankensteined" dog (actually two dogs and a fox) seen here, but it was actually pretty friendly.
    • Admiral Akainu makes one of these via his Logia element to attack Whitebeard during the Battle of Maineford.
  • Asuna and crew in Mahou Sensei Negima found themselves facing a Cerberus guarding the room Negi was held in during the Mahora Festival arc. It was the classic depiction of Cerberus too, complete with three heads and a mane of serpents.
  • In the first (in TV order) episode of Rental Magica the team had to deal with a rather impressive entity Nekoyashiki described to his chief as a "dog" because it's a "four-legged mammal with teeth that barks", despite glowing red eyes, ability to catch up with a truck on an empty road and so on.
  • One filler episode of Chrono Crusade featured a demonic canine that was slaughtering New York's organized crime families.


Film

  • Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell bases itself around this
  • The Chronicles of Riddick has alien dogs, named hellhounds, that guard a prison. They look like a cross between a dog and a pangolin.
  • The movie Black Dog is about hellhound that will take everything away from greedy truckers.
  • In The Omen, Damien is protected by black dogs.
  • Although called Terror Dogs, Zuul and Vinzclortho from the first Ghostbusters movie could be considered hellhounds.
  • Apparently, the Master's doberman in Manos: The Hands of Fate was meant to be a hellhound, although the cosmology of the Manos cult is a bit vague. Some people even think it was a battleship.
  • There's also a representation of Cerberus in Disney's Hercules. This version also appears as a boss battle in both Kingdom Hearts games.
  • Hellboy has Sammael, a tentacled, insectoid devil dog. It's also the "Hound of Resurrection": it can immediately recover from any non-fatal injury, and every time it is killed, two more of it are born to take its place.
  • Lost Boys calls a vampire's canine daylight guardians the "Hounds of Hell".
  • Gmork in the film version of The Neverending Story fits the hunter form of this trope well, as the agent of the Nothing sent to kill Atreyu.
  • One of several manifestations of "The Bell Witch" in An American Haunting is a demonic looking wolf. This mostly fits the Hunter type, as it stalks members of the Bell family and attacks those that try to leave their property.
  • In Predators the early stages of hunting the human group is done with alien creatures that resemble huge hellhounds, (huge as in waist high or taller, and very thick) with tusks. Lots and lots of tusks.
  • Scrappy-Doo becomes one of these at the end of the first live-action Scooby Doo movie.
  • The Chatter Beast from Hellraiser Bloodline, though background material indicates it Was Once a Man.
  • Belladonna from An All Dogs Go To Heaven Christmas Carol and All Dogs Go To Heaven: The Series.


Gamebooks

  • Various types of Hellhounds serve as recurring enemies in the Lone Wolf books. In earlier adventures, Lone Wolf has to face the Doomwolves, the (barely) tamed pets/mounts of the goblin-like Giaks. Then he has to face the Akataz, the warhounds of the Drakkarim. Book 18 has as one enemy encounter the Hounds of Vikkak, described as "hellish beasts born of dark sorcery". Finally, Book 19 introduces a mecha version of one, aptly named Mech-Wulf.
    • And let's not forget about Demon Lord Tagazin, a recurring villain with the appearance of a sabertoothed jackal.


Literature

  • Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody has the Welsh Cwn Annwn version, complete with The Wild Hunt.
  • In the Heralds of Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey, this role is filled by the wyrsa, which are a half-viper, half-greyhound.
  • In Harry Potter, Fluffy is a three-headed hellhound. It guards something and, like Cerberus, can be put to sleep with music.
    • The Grim could also be considered a hellhound. However, it's uncertain if the Grim exists as an actual creature rather than just an omen.
  • The two dogs in RL Stine's "The Barking Ghost". The title is somewhat misleading as the dogs are not ghosts; they're really two people whose souls had been traded into the bodies of dogs by a magical cabin in the woods.
  • Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. (Actually an Invoked Trope since the ghost hound was a hoax.)
  • The Wheel of Time has darkhounds, corrupted wolves which are associated with The Wild Hunt. Of the hunter variety, they can track their prey across any terrain, though they can be impeded by running water. Their blood and saliva is poisonous, and they leave pawprints on stone, but not earth. There are also two classes; greater darkhounds can recover very quickly from any injury, and can only be permanently killed by magic.
  • Pratchett and Gaiman's novel Good Omens has a hellhound named, of all things, Dog.
    • Who quickly mellows out. Having the surprisingly nice Antichrist, Adam, for an owner probably contributes.
      • Dog's existence is shaped by Adam's desires. Originally more like what you would expect from a hellhound, he is transformed into a flopeared, terrier-style mutt, due to Adam's expectations of what his ideal dog would be like. He quickly adjusts, due in no small part to the fact that female dogs don't exist in Hell if you catch my drift.
  • Grimhounds appear as straight-up villains in The Wee Free Men. Notably they have orange eyebrows, after several non sequitur references in earlier books about "never trust a dog with orange eyebrows".
    • Amusingly, up until that point, Pratchett always insisted he was talking about Rottweilers.
    • Referenced in the webcomic True Magic, in which the Light Bringer's first commandment is, "Trust not any dog which hath orange eyebrowes."
  • The Sword of Truth series has Heart Hounds, which are tan, but otherwise fit the trope to a T.
  • Sorrow and Rage, as well as the rest of the black hounds that accompany Alain in Kate Elliot's Crown of Stars series, are hellhounds of the Guardian type. Interestingly, Alain is implied to be a saint or messiah rather than from hell.
  • Christopher Moore's novel A Dirty Job has two hellhounds tasked with guarding a little girl because she is Death. Their names: Mohammad and Alvin. They're basically normal dogs, except for being huge, fiercely loyal, and apparently unkillable. And they burp flames when fed with propane tanks!
  • In Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Hounds of Shadow are powerful and terrifying supernatural beasts that do the bidding of Shadowthrone, and the Hounds of Darkness are even more powerful and terrifying, but they do no-one's bidding... And there are the T'lan Ay, the primitive undead semi-domesticated dogs of the T'lan Imass.
  • H.P. Lovecraft's The Hound.
  • Sauron took the form of a werewolf/hellhound in The Silmarillion.
    • All werewolves can probabaly count as this, as they were basically spirits on the same level as Balrogs only in wolf-form. Carcharoth was the greatest of these, and he only became more hellish after ingesting one of the Silmarills, which started burning him from the inside, driving him mad.
  • In The Dresden Files novel Grave Peril, Harry and Michael spend a little too long in the Nevernever and end up drawing the attention of the Leanansidhe, Harry's fairy godmother (and no, not the good fairy godmother), and her pack of hellhounds.

"Holy shit," I breathed. "Hellhounds."
"Harry," Michael said sternly, "you know I hate it when you swear."
"You're right, sorry. Holy shit," I breathed, "heckhounds."

    • Also, the mercenary Kincaid's nickname is "the Hound of Hell" or just "the Hellhound," and he's not entirely human. He displays senses much sharper than any human, including being able to identify a specific type of antipersonnel mine because "the Brits use a different chemical primer."
  • The dogs of Gwyn the Hunter in Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain.
  • The unnamed dog pack in Riddley Walker, although not actually supernatural, do represent the wholly supernatural dogs Folleree and Folleroo from their equivalent of Punch and Judy shows.
  • Mrs. O'Leary in the Percy Jackson series is definitely a Hell Hound, but she doesn't really fitt the archetypes. The closest fit would be guardian.
  • In The Gnome's Engine, a troll makes several references to the troll king's "hounds". When a half-fairy guest of the trolls notices some extremely large, fearsome dogs in the courtyard, she's informed that they're merely the king's dogs: if she met his hounds, she'd know the difference. An aversion? We'll never know...
  • Snarleyyow, from "Snarleyyow" by Captain Frederick Marryat is a dog believed by the ship's crew to be straight out of hell. With good reason... Doesn't quite fit the three standard models given at the top of the page though, Snarleyyow is a miserable thing that backs down when faced with any real resistance, only reason it hasn't gone overboard is that it belongs to the captain.
  • The Hounds of Tindalos created by Frank Belknap Long for the Cthulhu Mythos are Hellhounds mixed with Eldritch Abomination. Their existence predates multicellular life on Earth, they are immortal, and they can travel freely through time and space. Since they can exist in the "angles" of time (everything else lives in the "curves"), they can manifest through any corner (120 degrees or less) anywhere. The Hounds aren't named as such for their appearance (the original story implies a more bat-like appearance but later illustrations depict them as canines) but for their relentlessness. The Hounds hunger for something other living creatures possess that they lack; once they become aware of something or someone they will never stop hunting them. An easy way to gain their attention is to travel through time.
  • Two variations in Kate Daniels:
    • In "Magic Mourns", Cerberus is sent from Hades to retrieve the stolen corpse of a Greek pagan priest. He's described as a three-headed dog the size of a two-story house with a barbed tail. Thanatos mentions offhandedly that he owns several of Cerberus' puppies.
    • In Magic Bleeds, Grendel turns out to be a Black Dog, which appears to be a regular dog until danger threatens. Then it transforms into its true shape of a giant black dog with burning blue eyes and huge fangs.
  • In The Guardians, Hellhounds were bred by Lucifer by crossing dogs with wyrms, and are used by him to keep his subjects in line. They are giant, demonic, three-headed dogs completely loyal to their chosen masters and their venom can paralyze and kill demons. Sir Pup is a "bad" hellhound more mischievous than evil, and he prefers the form of a three-headed Labradour.
  • In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero Lost, the barghests combine this trope with Living Shadow.
  • In Roger Zelazny's This Immortal, the narrator refers to his mutant dog Bortan as a hellhound:

The Kouretes screamed, for his eyes are glowing coals and his teeth are buzzsaws. His head is as high above the ground as a tall man's. Although they seized their blades and struck at him, his sides are as the sides of an armadillo. A quarter ton of dog, my Bortan ... he is not exactly the kind Albert Payson Terhune wrote about.
He worked for the better part of a minute, and when he was finished they were all in pieces and none of them alive.


Live Action TV

  • In the series Reaper, there is a small dog from Hell named Spike, who can transform into a big, nasty hellhound.
  • Supernatural also has invisible hell hounds that work for demons. They can only be seen by the people they've come to kill.
  • The original Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode "The Devil's Platform" had a Devil worshipper who could turn into a Hell Hound (portrayed by a Rottweiler).
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tucker Wells unleashes some hell hounds he's trained to attack people in formal wear at the Prom to exact his revenge.
  • In Big Wolf on Campus, Tommy befriends an escaped hellhound.
  • There's a pretty ridiculous 1978 TV movie out there called Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell. Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • A "webisode" of Rescue Me features the firemen hunting a mysterious, possibly dangerous animal (one of them thinks it's a chupacabra) that has gotten into their station it turns out to be an Irish Wolfhound. In their defense, they're pretty friggin' huge dogs
  • Lost Tapes features one as one of its monsters.


Myth and Legend

  • Cerberus was the guardian of Hades in Greek myth.
  • The British Isles have many legends of ghostly hounds, referred to as black dogs. Most of them are portentous, some were actively malevolent and a few are actually benevolent.
    • Probably the best known malevolent example is Black Shuck, which according to folklore burst into a church in Blythburgh on 4 August 1577, killing a man and boy and causing the church tower to collapse through the roof. As the dog left, he left scorch marks on the north door which can be seen at the church to this day.
    • On the benevolent end of the scale are the Gurt Dog of Somerset, which was said to protect children and lone travellers, and the Friend of the Moore, a rather obscure example from the north-east of England which also aided travellers.
  • Garmr from Norse Mythology is a dog who guards the gates of Niflheim, the realm of death. At Ragnarok he will kill Tyr.
  • Many in the various incarnations of The Wild Hunt
    • In Britain, Yeth hounds chase sinners or the unbaptized.
    • In Wales, the hellhounds ('Cwn Annwn') accompanying the Wild Hunt were white with red ears.
    • Another version gives them mirrors for eyes.
  • In Norse mythology, one of the Black Dogs could appear on your hearth. If it did, you'd have to care for it for a year.
  • A Barghest is a monstrous black dog with large teeth and claws. It was either a portent of death or it preyed on lone travelers.
  • The Grimhound (portrayed, typically, as a black dog with fiery eyes, the same as half a dozen other examples of this trope) are both guardian and portent. They're the protectors of the dead...but if you can see one of them, it's because you'll soon be one of those it's guarding.
  • The Egyptian jackal god of the dead Anubis can be interpreted this way. On top of that, there's also his white wolf cousin Wepwawet (a war god associated with Anubis and the dead, making him a Hunter to Anubis' Guardian), Duamutef, a jackal god assigned to protect the stomach and intestines of the mummified, though his history made him more of a Hunter than a Guardian, Sed, a minor jackal god associated with Wepwawet with a festival named after him celebrating the anniversary (and imminent demise) of a Pharaoh's reign, and Khenti-Amentiu, a jackal god of the dead much older than Anubis that is likely his direct predecessor.


Music

  • Robert Johnson sings about the third type in Hellhound On My Trail.
  • Black Shuck by The Darkness descibes a hellhound, the Black Shuck of the title, which has the distiction of being one of the best known of the British Black Dogs/Hellhounds.
  • The Metallica song "All Nightmare Long" was written about the Hounds of Tindalos, though most only remember the zombies from the video.


Tabletop Games

  • Early Dungeons & Dragons had several types of hellhounds, including one that could breathe out fire and one as part of The Wild Hunt. By 2nd Edition and onwards, actual hellhounds were established as huge, fire-breathing dogs literally from Hell that are used by devils to hunt mortals or summoned by evil spellcasters. Other similar monsters include the shadow mastiff and the yeth hound. Their Good Counterpart is the blink dog.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Flesh Hounds of Khorne, although they look more like lizard-dog hybrids than the traditional hellhound.
    • A Flesh Hound special character Karanak has three heads, and is used by Khorne to hunt down and catch those mortals who earn his ire.
      • Just to note, there's also an Imperial Guard unit called the Hellhound, but it's simply a tank with a really big flamethrower. Although any soldier seeing one on the battlefield, and it's not on his side, is usually doomed.
      • The new Imperial Guard Codex introduces two variants called the Devil Dog and the Bane Wolf. The Devil Dog has a melta cannon, a melta weapon with AOE. Tanks and Terminators don't stand a chance. The Bane Wolf has a Chemical Cannon that's really short ranged but is AP3, wounds on a 2, and ignores cover saves. All three variants are fast tanks now, meaning that they can move and fire more weapons than normal. The rightly feared Bane Wolf with multi-melta variant can momve 12 inches and fire both weapons, meaning most heavy infantry are absolutely screwed and to top it off, this variant is really hard to kill in assault because it moved fast.
  • Magic: The Gathering has the Hollowborn Barghest.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has Messenger From the Underworld, with bonus points for being a Tuner Monster that has a ridiculously high level (7), admittedly one that can be weakened to drop the level to something usable (5).
    • There's also Twin-Headed Wolf, based on Cerberus (or, more correctly, Orthrus, Cerberus' two-headed brother), and, of course, several cards based on the mother of all hellhounds, Anubis.
    • There also are a couple associated with fire: There's the original Flam Cerberus, as well as Flamvell Firedog, which appears to be made out of lava and has two protrusions coming out of it's shoulders, which vaguely makes it look like it has 3 heads.
  • Munchkin Bites has a monster called the Heck Hound.
  • Shadowrun had several Awakened (magical) canine monsters.
    • The Barghest had a protruding spine on its back, glowing red eyes and glowing teeth. It could cause fear and had a paralyzing howl.
    • The Hellhound could breathe out fire and was immune to fire.
    • The Gabriel Hound could freeze you in place and was a terror in combat.
  • In Vampire: The Masquerade a human can become absolute thrall (called a "Ghoul") to a vampire by tasting its blood. The same practice can be applied to animals and a ghouled dog is known as a hellhound.


Theater

  • Mephistopheles first appears as a black poodle in Faust.
    • Back then they were the Standard (i.e: Big) Hunting Dogs, not the smaller prissy dogs we think of today.

Video Games

  • Final Fantasy IX has an enemy that is a dual jawed dog named Cerberus.
  • Pokémon has Houndour and Houndoom as the hunter/guardian types, and Absol based on the Barghest as the portent type.
    • Fittingly enough, Houndour and Houndoom are Fire/Dark types.
  • Cerberus is a summon in Final Fantasy VIII.
  • Deformed zombie dogs called Cerberus appear in Resident Evil.
  • World of Warcraft has several supernatural canine types. The Duskhound is an agile, bony and furless creature found in the Forsaken starting areas and also trained as pet by the Vrykul. The Core Hound is a massive, slobbering, two headed beast which breathes fire and smolders. The Felhound is a dog in name only, being a quadruped minor demon with Combat Tentacles, red scaly skin and an appetite for mana (However, it has explicitly doggy behavior. It's often referred to as a Felpuppy). Ghost Wolves are animated animal spirits, often capable of talking. Finally, Omen is an unique two-headed silver wolf which awakens during the seasonal event of Lunar Festival. Most of these may be tamed by the hunter class (Except Omen, though he has a twin that can be tamed, and felhounds, which may instead be summoned by warlocks).
    • In Cataclysm, the Molten Front and Firelands have hounds that appear to be flaming dog skeletons, about twice the size of the characters.
  • Harry Potter also had the Gytrash, a giant ghostly dog, which appeared in some of the games.
    • It's based on a Lincolnshire myth, although the original gytrash was sometimes a horse or a crane as well.
  • Several games in the Zork series, notably Wishbringer and Return to Zork, directly connect hellhounds and poodles. This is probably a Shout-Out to Faust (see above).
  • "Heck Hounds" in Secret of Mana were a Bowdlerization of hellhounds.
  • Barghests are an enemy in the Wild ARMs series.
  • In the MMORPG RuneScape, hellhounds are a fairly strong standard monster that look like giant red dogs. There's also a quest boss called a skeletal hellhound, which is both Exactly What It Says on the Tin and, strangely, weaker then a normal hellhound.
    • Without muscles and skin, you'd be weaker too!
  • The second Kingdom Hearts game features adorable Heartless versions of hellhounds inhabiting the underworld, in addition to the aforementioned boss monster, Cerberus.
  • The first boss in Devil May Cry 3 is Cerberus, here portrayed as being frozen in ice and chained in front of the door to Temen-Ni-Gru. You have to shoot the ice off before you can effectively hurt him, and he can refreeze himself at will. As he loses health, two of his heads get blown off, and halfway down his health bar he Turns Red and snaps some of his chains.
  • A number of these appear in Shadow Hearts; perhaps the most notable are the Mailmen, demons that appear as hounds with human arms jutting from their mouths. In the first game, when backed into a corner, the mayor of Bistriz turns himself into a hideous, giant dog made of flayed flesh, named Tindalos.
  • Cerberus is very popular. In the first Parasite Eve, a police dog transforms into a giant three-headed monster.
  • Castlevania, being the Fantasy Kitchen Sink that it is, features a few games with these, plus one as a miniboss in Bloodlines.
  • NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams' Cerberus.
  • Most Silent Hill games include creepy dog monsters as normal enemies.
  • The first boss in Lost Kingdoms 2 is a monster called Hell Hound, the best Jump card. There's also the monster Cerberus. It too is a Jump card, but not as good.
    • The first game has the Demon Hound card, based on the Cu Sìth, a black dog that haunts the Scottish Highlands.
  • Somehow, Quest 64 gets away with this one. Naturally, it's a one-headed wolf that breathes fire.
  • An enemy in some of the Castlevania games. The N64 ones feature double headed ones, whilst Bloodlines features one with a rotting rear end as a miniboss.
  • Both episodes of Penumbra have evil dogs akin to the ones in Resident Evil and Silent Hill. They feature more prominently in Overture.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic III has Hell Hounds and Cerberi in the Inferno castle.
    • IV, V, and (coming soon) VI also have them.
  • Call of Duty World at War has literally named Hell Hounds in the later Nazi Zombies maps, which charge at the player on fire and sometimes explode. All prefaced with a creepy voice saying 'Fetch me their souls!' and the map getting foggy.
  • In Dungeon Keeper, you could get the Hellhound minion, a two-headed firebreathing monstrosity, that would... water the corpses of you enemies, or just the floors for lack of corpses. Poor pup kept running off and getting killed though.
  • The barghests in The Witcher certainly qualify, ghostly, monstrous dogs brought about (like many monsters in the setting) by the evils of the village they haunt.
  • In the Greek-themed Quest for Glory V, you literally journey to Hades and meet Cerberus himself. You can either bribe him with food (each of his heads has a different favorite) or whack him with a sword until the three heads get tired of telling you they're immortal.
  • In Deadly Premonition, gigantic Doberman-like monsters appear when you drive around town after midnight.
  • In Dokapon Kingdom, there are no hell hounds, only heckhounds. They use heckfire, obviously.
  • Cerberus appears as a demon or persona (depending on the series) in almost all the games in the Shin Megami Tensei family. Interestingly, he frequently appears as a white lion with a snake-like tail. It's only in Persona 3 and Digital Devil Saga that he is a three-headed dog.
  • Kid Icarus has Twinbellows. Like his name implies, he has two heads.
  • Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: Multi-headed dogs that exhale fire can be encountered in a cave with lava.
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones has Mauthe Doogs and Gwyllgis (the latter having three heads).
  • In the later games of the Avernum series, hell hounds show up.


Web Comics


Web Original

  • AH Dot Com the Series has Sudanases Hunting Dogs (based on a forum running joke) which shoot clouds of bees from their mouth when they bark. As a Shout-Out to Discworld's Grimhounds, they have orange eyebrows.
  • Marmaduke is this to The Comics Curmudgeon.
  • Not only are there hellhounds in the Whateley Universe, but in the novel "There's an Angel in Father John's Basement", the techno-mage Korrupt has figured out how to summon a really nasty mecha variant of his own devise.


Western Animation

  • Robots In Disguise had toy-only character Bruticus.
  • Doomageddon from the League of Super Evil is a hellhound known for teleportation to and from an alternate dimension.
  • Parodied in Phineas and Ferb with the Black Knight of Worcestershire and the Hounds of Heck who chased after him through all the moors and lands because his suit of armor was recycled dog food cans.
  • Grim from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy apparantly owns a Cerberus who for some reason has the head of a poodle.
  • Crunch the Rockdog from the original My Little Pony series. Guardian type, created to protect the Heartstone of a living mountain and armed with a jewel that could petrify enemies. Unfortunately, said mountain had forgotten the need for Crunch to have a heart and as a result Crunch eventually ran wild, turning everything he could reach to stone. The Little Ponies were able to subdue Crunch long enough for him to be endowed with a sliver of the Heartstone, making him both kinder and loyal enough to do his job right.
    • The My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "It's About Time" has Cerberus making an appearance in Ponyville, complete with references about how he's supposed to be guarding the gates of Tartarus to make sure that the evil creatures imprisoned there doesn't escape. Fluttershy pacifies him by giving him a belly rub.
  • One cybersite featured in Cyberchase was Classical Mythology-themed, and one of its residents is another Cerberus with the head of a poodle.


Real Life

  • This could be related to the reluctance for adopting large black dogs, dubbed Black Dog Syndrome.
  • A common nickname for US Marines? Devil Dog. Owing to an anecdote about the German soldiers' reaction to seeing Marines in gas masks frothing at the mouths as they clawed their way up a hill to get at the German defenders during the Battle of Belleau Wood.
  • The Israeli anti-terrorist dog that bit off a terrorist's arm. Even the IDF's drug-sniffing dogs are really freaking scary, and this holds true for most military dogs around the world.
  • Winston Churchill used to refer to his chronic depression as "the black dog on my shoulder," in reference to the portent variety of this trope.
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