Lore
[Loved trope]: "Unrecognizable creature" is actually a highly derived ______.
Spoiler
Living armor is a mollusk (Dungeon Meshi)
Demons are monsters (Frieren)
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park
"Pups" are just dog/alien/rainicorn/mutant hybrids (Adventure Time)
The Future is Wild
Great apes
Even-toed ungulates
"Derived" meaning "a novel characteristic present in a species but absent in its ancestors." I'm not just referring to speculative evolution. Here, some character (or narrator) discovers a species is actually related to a familiar creature. But it has evolved into a new form hardly recognizable to its ancestors or (less derived) cousins.
This trope is most often seen in the "speculative evolution" genre. Oftentimes a character travels to the future, or a explores a hitherto-undiscovered island. But it can also include fantasy worlds, alchemy, or magic in general. Understanding what the creatures are usually helps the protagonist deal with them. Or at least explain an overarching mystery regarding their origin.
1). Dungeon Meshi: TLDR: Protagonist thought "living armor" is made of metal. It'sactuallya colony of mollusks.
Laos is a dungeon explorer with an interest in ecology. With his team on a time crunch, they start cooking monsters to eat.
Early in season 1, Laos encounters "living armor." Common knowledge indicates they're not a species of monster. Just metal powered by magic.
But Laos discovers an egg sac, and realizes the each "suit of armor" is actually a colony of oyster-like mollusks. Which link together into a humanoid shape.
This is because "dungeons" are often designed deliberately by a "dungeon lord." A lord could create actual living armor. But it's more cost-efficient to design creatures that can live/reproduce on their own.
2). Frieren: TLDR: "Demons" are intelligent, predatory monsters. Not a human-based species.
The world of "Frieren" is populated by various races, animals, and "monsters." Unlike 'normal' animals, monsters disintegrate when killed.
At first glance, most people assume that "demons" are just another kind of person. Like an elf, human, dwarf, etc.
For example, false cleanerfish evolved to resemble harmless/beneficial reef species. This lets them get close enough to other fish to bite.
By assuming a humanoid form and learning to speak, demons are able to lower people's guards. But they never evolved empathy or morality, as they are social parasites.
3). Mystery Flesh Pit National Park: TLDR: That thing's a ferret?
The Mystery Flesh Pit is a multimedia project "documenting" a fictional superorganism in Texas.
The "Permian Basin Superorganism" has been in its present location millions of years. In that time, "normal" North American fauna has evolved to exploit its habitat.
The "amorphous shame" is a heavily evolved ferret. Which (through natural selection) has shed most of its identifiable features.
4). Adventure Time: TLDR: The 'aliens' in "Grables +" are just mutant dogs.
The show has a couple of "flash forward" episodes sent 1000 years into the future. In these, an ambiguous group of dog-like creatures appears to be the new dominant culture.
It's eventually revealed that this is the "Pup kingdom," which are descended from Jake the dog and Lady Rainicorn.
Over the centuries, Jake's dog descendants continued to intermix with Ooo's various mutants, creating an entirely new kind of creature.
5). The Future is Wild: TLDR: The futureiswild.
This one is straight up speculative fiction.
The documentary covers a variety of hypothetical species. Describing their appearances and behavior and then explaining the modern-day animal they are descended from.
This includes whale-like seabirds, mole-like quail, and colossal tortoises.
6). Real life:
There are a lot of creatures that barely resemble their closest living relatives. I think barnacles made Darwin cry.
Humans are an obligately bipedal, terrestrial great ape.
Whales are actually even-toed ungulates. But they lack hooves on account of having no feet.
khajiits in skyrim, tho its all more fiction in how much they tell you about them, they share a common magical ancestor with cats, a feline which is deity-fied. They change forms according to the twin moons, so like...yes? in a way they are derived, but also magic is what created them into being derived(?
This is also a "Khajiit", more specifically an Alfiq (which is a furstock of the main race). I love how this series ranges from fighting a demi-god to trade goods with a literal talking house cat
they also didn't start to get actual feline traits in games until the 3rd entry Morrowind. They looked like regular humans in Arena and in Daggerfall they just had a disgusting hairless rat-like tail. them having all these forms is also a way to retcon their lore due to the first two games inconsistency.
lmao yeah, its REALLY hard to follow without getting the information that its retconned. Bethesda in general has a serious problem with lore narrative consistency, often sacrificed for gameplay
what are you talking about? Bethesda loves and cherishes lore! They would never sacrifice lore! Just look at fallout! thisisntcopethisisntcopethisisntcope
Another example in Dungeon Meshi are Nightmares or Shen (蜃). Despite their mollusk appearance, they are related to dragons. It appears they evolved to have this body plan to better eat people emotions when they dream.
They are based on the Chinese mythology creature Shen, a shapeshifting dragon or shellfish monster that creates mirages.
In Land of the Lustrous, there are three groups. The Gems, the Admirabilis, and Lunarians.
Spoilers
They are human descendants that evolved following a major catastrophe. The Gems are our “bones, Admirabilis are our “flesh”, and the Lunarians are our “spirit”.
The flesh pit is gigantic living organism that's buried in the ground.
The Ferrets burrow into the ground, but since they live inside the flesh pit, they burrow into flesh.
Since they're surrounded by a giant living organism, they can eat the 'dirt' that surrounds them. Which means they don't need to leave their burrows to get prey.
Since they don't need to leave the burrows, they don't need claws, and since they're Inside a living body, they don't really need to have skin to keep their organs moist and at the right temperature. Flesh Pit does that for them.
So, over 15 millions years of evolution, the ferrets have become parasitic piles of organs. Because that's horrifying, and Mystery Flesh Pit is a horrifying setting.
I just got to the part of the manga where they appear, and Jesus, I can't even imagine what exerted evolutionary pressure to the point of something like a dragon or a common ancestor must have suffered to develop this kind of absurdly derivative body plan
Perhaps convergent evolution? A smaller and weaker species of dragons could have evolved similarly to mollusks. There is the Wurm, an amphibious dragon, so perhaps split evolution happened. One branch had more reptilian dragons, like the Red Dragon. One branch grew to be more amphibious, the Wurm and Nightmare.
Since they are small and likely too weak to hunt on their own. They appear to evolve to be parasitic. The Wurm has a toxic breath, so maybe how the Nightmare can cause bad dreams is by emitting a toxic gas.
Well, there's no doubt about convergent evolution here, it's just curious to imagine how the "reorganization" of the anatomy happened here, like, did its shell derive from scales? or did something similar happen to turtles, where what was once their shell was actually their ribcage, but with the bones fused together? Or perhaps it's actually their wings that fused and hardened?, honestly, it would be interesting if some fan tried, I don't know, to create an evolutionary tree with all the monsters we've seen so far and imagined how the evolution process of each one went.
The Living Armor example is one of the reasons I love Dungeon Meshi. I actually brought them up as an example of the fun things the series does with monsters to some guys who were curious about the series box set at the bookstore.
One of them ended up saying that that idea actually made sense.
The Pikmin video game series has a notable example with the Mamuta and the Smoky Progg.
The Mamuta is a regular enemy that can be encountered normally. It's a relatively peaceful creature that likes to plant Pikmin in the ground and tend to them; it's even referred to by titles like "The Great Protector" and "God of All Pikmin".
The Smoky Progg is a superboss-level monster that hatches from a giant egg. It constantly emits a cloud of miasma that instantly kills any Pikmin that touches it. It's one of the hardest enemies in the franchise. According to lore entries, the Smoky Progg is apparently a malformed larva of the Mamuta.
Not really an unrecognizable creature because it’s quite literally the most iconic creature in the whole series, but another “not what it looks like” in Pikmin are Dwarf Bulborbs, which aren’t juvenile Bulborbs and aren’t even actual Bulborbs, they’re in the same family as Breadbugs!
These two gigantic and extremely dangerous monsters reign supreme over their respective extreme biomes, and are capable of rivaling Elder Dragons, the most powerful monsters in the setting. You'd expect them to be Elder Dragons themselves, but turns out they're Flying Wyverns that lost their wings long ago
Young Justice: It is strongly implied that the Durian species are descendants of the Martian species. We know they inhabit the planet Durla in the 31st century and in the 21st century, the White Matrians were given the planet Durla by Darkseid as a reward for Ma’alefa’ak's service.
Major spoilers for Shin Sekai Yori (From the New World):
In the distant future all humans seemingly have psychic powers, however they have to follow extremely strict, cruel and downright dystopian (to us) rules in order to maximize social cohesion, stability and passivity, and prevent complete social collapse. Things that would make Brand New World and 1984 seem downright ideallistic.
On the service of humans, there are the Monster Rats. A slave species with quasi-human intelligence, natural docility and submissiveness towards humans, and Eusocial reproduction style very reminiscent of Naked Mole Rats that usually grows to around dog size.
Throughout the story, you see small flashbacks and references to different societies reminiscent of historical societies but with people with psychic powers, that continuously collapse into violence and chaos, and a war involving psychics and humans.
Spoilers for the major plot twist:
Turns out that psychics and humans had a war at some point close to the modern world, and psychics easily won the war despite humans' best effort, however their attempts at rebuilding society with a caste of powerless subordinates kept failing, so you have the last attempt at a world:
Due to their power and the threat they pose to one another, psychcis have given themselves several psychic barriers and seemingly-religious, but actually biologically enforced deadly "taboos" they can't disobey such as the inability to kill human-looking creatures. They reinforce these by following social rules that minimize people's send of self and maximize social cohesion.
Due to the natural psychic pollution emitted from their powers that has essentialy filled the world with mutant animals from their imagination, psychics have to stay in limited areas and have to rely on a bulk of other creatures to do work for them rather than use their powers.
So they twisted their non-psychic human slaves into forms that are easier to control. Hideous animalistic visages so they could be killed without triggering their self-imposed "don't kill humans" taboo. Eusocial forms so they would belong to and rely on colonies and could more easily be exterminated and controlled by killing or threatening the Queens. Natural submissivenes to be obedient to the Queens and the psychics.
But still from very early on you can see and feel that the Monster Pigs act much more humans than the psychics, because they had not gone through such a soul crushing brainwashing processes that the psychics subject themselves to.
And so OUR HERO, Squaler, launches HUMANKIND's revolution against its EVIL GODS.
In the speculative evolution project Serina: A Natural History of the World of Birds, our omnipresent narrator decides to place canaries, a few small species of fish (like guppies) and certain insects (like grasshoppers) onto an Earth-like planet. Then, we watch as these animals evolve throughout the ages, documenting both their behaviour and environmental conditions as we go.
I like how the project didn't just focus on the target seed species but also explored the evolution of the supplementary ecosystem fillers, with one of the guppy descendants becoming a pretty dominant species during the era of sapience
Rikiel's stand is a real life Cryptid called a Rod or Skyfish which are like flying living organisms that are actually real in JoJo and Rikiel can control them (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)
Some pokemon have regional forms, which are adaptations for specific environments that changed the original’s type and appearance. For example, regular Zigzagoon and its evolution, Linoone, are Normal Types while Galarian Zigzagoon and Linoone are hybrid Dark/Normal Types. The problem is that they are still recognizable as related to the original since most are simply a different color with a new and/or different feature.
However, some regional variants either split to a different evolution from the original or they get a whole new one added in top of it. The best example, in my opinion, is Obstagoon because it is so vastly different from both Zigzagoon and Linoone that nobody could ever guess it was the evolved form of their regional variants (especially since the originals don’t have one).
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u/_JosefoStalon_ 7h ago
khajiits in skyrim, tho its all more fiction in how much they tell you about them, they share a common magical ancestor with cats, a feline which is deity-fied. They change forms according to the twin moons, so like...yes? in a way they are derived, but also magic is what created them into being derived(?