"Meow."
- Arcane:
- As the Adult Jinx, Powder gains one in the form of Creepy Crows, which constantly show up around her, including a noticeable scene where she returns to the arcade when Vander's kids hung out and gets startled by one, even mimicking it's chirpy head movements before blasting it away on a whim. They seem to be symbolic of how Jinx is a harbinger of bad luck and misfortune to those around her, intentionally or not. It gets driven home in the climax of Episode 7, in the showdown between Jinx and the leader of the firelights, Ekko. A stylised flashback to their shared youth has their younger selves playing a game where the young Poweder tries to nail Ekko with a harmless paint gun as he tries to tag her, in a twisted mockery of their current situation, with both the young Ekko depicted alongside a Firelight bug, and the young Powder have a crow flying behind her.
- Predatory fish and Silco. He speaks of how he admires the gigantic aquatic predators lurking in the waters of the Undercity, similar to his own status as an unseen threat plotting against Piltover in the shadows. Silco also has a strong association with water thanks to his Near-Death Experience of almost being drowned. It carries over to the hextech weapon Jinx develops to pursue his dream, which has cosmetic features that evoke a skeletal shark.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Four Nations all have their own animal motifs.
- Water Tribe: The koi fish Tui and La are the mortal embodiments of the Moon and Ocean Spirits, and associated with waterbending. Warriors' helmets are often shaped like wolf heads, and a particular hairstyle is known as a "warrior's wolf-tail".
- Earth Kingdom: Badgermoles, who first taught humans the art of earthbending.
- Fire Nation: Dragons, who were the original firebenders.
- Air Nomads: Sky bison, the original airbenders and the nomads' preferred form of transportation. Winged lemurs are a common pet among the Nomads.
- Egyxos: The heroes have several, including the falcon-headed Horus. Among the villains are Anubi, a humanoid jackal and Sobek, a humanoid crocodile.
- Ever After High:
- The Cheshire Cat's descendant is fittingly enigmatic and manipulative, in addition to having a cat's ears and tail.
- In the Hale novelizations, each character is able to summon a familiar: Raven summons a powerful, intimidating dragon. Apple summons a fox, which is sly yet adorable. Darling summons a white horse.
- Hazbin Hotel has several demons with animal-like features in both their appearance and personalities:
- Protagonist Charlie Morningstar has a subtle dog motif. She has a little black dot nose, Cute Little Fangs and a perky, energetic personality resembling a Big Friendly Dog.
- Angel Dust has a spider motif — he has multiple arms (six in total, though two of them are retractable) and six additional eyes that resemble little pink freckles, and in the music video for his song "Addict", he's shown dancing in front of a luminous spider web. His sister Molly and brother Arackniss both share this motif. Word of God says that all of Angel's family members are spider demons (or in Molly's case angels), to represent their vast "web" of crime.
- Alastor, the infamous Radio Demon, has a deer motif, with antlers, hoofprints on the soles of his shoes (and apparently actual hoves underneath those) and pointed, deer-like ears.
- Niffty, the Hotel's housekeeper, has several motifs related to the 1950s, but she also has an insect motif, shown through her small stature, skittering and her extremely large eye. Mimzy at one point calls her a "little bug".
- Husk, the Hotel's bartender, is an anthropomorphic cat with wings, fitting with his prickly but ultimately caring personality.
- Sir Pentious is a cobra demon, appropriate for his Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain status. It also works for his ascension in the finale where he appears before the Seraphim, as Seraphim were said to be angelic serpents.
- Valentino, Angel's abusive boss is a demon resembling a moth, insects commonly associated with beauty, lust, decay and death.
- Mimzy, an old associate of Alastor's, is described by series creator Vivienne Medrano as being "vaguely based on a chicken", with her plump body type, pointed, beaklike nose and feathered headdress. Given her status as a cowardly Gossipy Hen, the motif works.
- The weapons-dealing Overlord Carmilla Carmine has a subtle bat motif, with her Devilish Hair Horns resembling a bat's ears and both her large hands and pointed skirt resembling the wings of a bat. She also shares a name with a famous literary vampire.
- Zestial, another Overlord, is another demon with a spider motif, shown through the giant spider-like brooch on his cape and the interior of said cape resembling a spider web.
- Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: The titular character is associated to the ram, since she was born as an Aries. But as the series progresses she gets a new one in the form of a jaguar, thanks to her Half-Human Hybrid status.
- Legend of Korra: The names of Pro-Bending teams are typically a combination of a location and an animal, such as the Ba Sing Se Badgermoles, the Ember Island Eel Hounds, or the White Falls Wolfbats.
- Molly of Denali:
- Tooey Ookami is sssociated with wolves. Both his first and last name mean 'wolf' (his real name Teekone, means 'wolf' in Denaakk'e, and Ookami means 'wolf' in Japanese), he wears a wolf on his pajamas, and his dad Kenji calls him 'little wolf'.
- In the episode "Art From the Heart," Molly and Tooey find Northwest Coast designs of animals in Randall's sketchbook, and learn about how they each mean something. For example, a frog stands for wealth, strength, and power. Later on, Uncle Jack uses the Tlingit raven and eagle story as a motif. He compares Molly to an eagle: strong, proud, and not afraid of anything. He then compares Tooey to a raven: smart, wise, and has a plan for every situation. The two of them eventually decide to use an eagle and raven for Jack and Merna's anniversary drawing. It is through this motif that Molly and Tooey are indirectly compared to a married couple.
- Moral Orel: Has a blue bird appearing in key shots throughout the two-parter "Nature." The bird also appears in Beforel Orel. Dino says the bird represents Orel's innocence.
- Motor City: The main characters all have Cool Cars named and designed after animals:
- Mike: Mutt (dog)
- Julie: 9 Lives (cat)
- Dutch: Whiptail (scorpion)
- Texas: Stronghorn (rhino)
- Mummies Alive!: Each mummy has an animal motif for their Powered Armour - falcon (Ja-Kal), cat (Nefertina), ram (Armon) and snake (Rath). Big Bad Scarab also has one in his (much less friendly-looking) transformed state.
- Over the Garden Wall: Adelaide has a spider theme: there's a black widow's hourglass symbol on her clothes, her Early-Bird Cameo has her sewing, and she has a web of string set up in her home that she can use to tie up and capture people.
- The Owl House
- Luz Noceda has a subtle association with snakes, from her introductary scene where she accidentally unleashed a horde of them on her school, to her habit of mockingly hissing at things, to her thinking that she had snakes for arms while she was delirious with a fever. Even her doppleganger and palisman turn out to be shapeshifting snakes. Snakes are also historically a symbol of both healing and rebirth, which fits perfectly for the daughter of a veterinarian who's building a new life for herself.
- Eda Clawthorne moniker is "The Owl Lady", she has yellow, owl-like eyes, has a staff that ends in an owl figurine, and then there's the eponymous house she lives in. Although it turns out the reason she's called "The Owl Lady" is because she's cursed to become an owl-like monster if she doesn't drink a special elixir on a daily basis. Judging from the "Hoot" graffiti she left at Hexside, she had an interest in owls even before becoming cursed.
- In contrast to Eda and owls, Lilith Clawthorne's theme is ravens, as seen with her spells and her staff.
- Emperor Belos
- Much like the protagonists he seems to have bird motifs, albeit expressed differently. His mask resembles a crow's beak (with the "antlers" possibly being plumes) and his cape wings; the iconography of his coven system and his own staff bear feathered wings, and his gloves resemble talons in paintings (and most of the gloves he wears are golden and segmented, making them look like avian scaled feet). The aforementioned iconography and white clothes brings to mind doves, but he is often posing calculatingly like an eagle. Overall, while the protagonists seem to have natural, clear bird associations, his is a bizarre, monstrous amalgam, which fits with how he's basically turned himself into an artificial witch through his centuries of studying the magic of the Boiling Isles, all in order to better fit in and trick others into trusting him for his grand plans to work.
- As more is revealed about his true nature, it's shown that he actually has a Deer motif. The wooden childhood mask Caleb carved for him has deer-like antlers on it, and his true monstrous from's gangly limbs, elongated body and facial structure resemble a deer. When possessing animals on Earth to reconstruct himself, one of the first animals he's shown to possess is a deer, and every being he possesses eventually sprouts the antlers from their heads as a sign of his possession over them. Looking at his mask for 'Emperor Belos', it seems to be a cross between a bird and a deer's facial structure, symbolising how he's merely mimicking the surface-level appearance of an all-powerful witch who rules over others, and thus shares in the bird motif of the rest of the cast, whilst his true nature is actually quite different to theirs.
- Not nearly as heavy as Eda or Lilith, but Hunter has an association with birds. The mask of his Golden Guard uniform resembles a barn owl, he has a cape with a bird on the sigil, and Flapjack, his Palisman, is a red cardinal.
- Fittingly for a witch with a cat palisman, Amity Blight is proud and somewhat standoffish but affectionate once you get to know her. Further, she is also fiercely protective of those close to her, especially her girlfriend Luz and she has a very strong desire to experience love and affection as a result of her thoroughly lackluster upbringing, and has a hidden but exceptionally strong desire to exercise independence and free will by choosing her own path in life, free from any outside influence. There are many instances where Amity's facial expression is catlike. While her childhood nickname, "Mittens", has different origins that are explained in the show, "Mittens" also happens to be a very popular cat name.
- Boscha gets a crab-like palisman named Maya that reflects her tough outer shell and fiercely competitive nature.
- Ready Jet Go!: Mindy seems to have a bear motif going on. She wears a brown bear hat, and she wears a koala bear hat when she goes to sleep. She has a teddy bear named Stuffy Bear, who she dresses up as for Halloween. And her space helmet has bear ears on it.
- The Simpsons:
- Homer loves primates, has been portrayed as an ape, and has been compared to a gorilla by Bart. Attempts by scientists to determine his species have been... inconclusive. "He is either a below average human being, or a brilliant beast."
- Chief Wiggum has been called a pig for more than just being a cop. He even appeared as a pig man in a WoW parody.
Wiggum: Sideshow Bob has no decency! He called me "Chief Piggum!"- Mr. Burns is often associated with birds in general, and vultures specifically. His general design is birdlike, his home has several of them, and shots of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant that he owns are accompanied by the sound of a crow cawing.
- Steven Universe:
- Steven's favorite ice cream treats are Cookie Cats, he has grown cats on his fingers, has a Leo horoscope, spawned a wrestling persona named "Tiger Millionaire", and even got a pet lion.
- Quartz gems seem to be associated with felines in general. Amethyst has a cleft lip resembling a cat's mouth, frequently shape-shifts into a cat, and has a wrestling alter-ego known as the "Purple Puma". Jasper's striped form, golden-stilted eyes, and cat-like gem-nose makes her resemble a tiger. Rose Quartz seems to be associated with lions, stated to be a deliberate allusion by the creators to the goddess Ishtar who was said to have seven lions pulling her chariot. Smoky Quartz is explicitly modeled on a Maneki Neko.
- Because of her beaklike nose and panicky nature, the fandom have nicknamed Pearl "Bird-Mom".
- Peridot reacts to being captured in much the same way as a cat: hiding in corners, clambering over furniture, and developing a fascination with mirrors. The metaphor fits well with her cunning, distrustful nature.
- More cats- in the crossover episode with Uncle Grandpa, he pulls out a checklist of other Cartoon Network series he's visited. Smack-dab in the middle are the SWAT Kats. (They were likely included because Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe, stated in an interview that she watched the show back in the 90s.
Perhaps that's why there are so many cat motifs in this show, then?) - Sardonyx, the fusion of Pearl and Garnet, produces an aura that takes the form of a swarm of dragonflies. Sugilite, the fusion of Amethyst and Garnet, produces an aura that takes the form of a dragon. Garnet herself has the animal motif of the butterfly, another flying creature, as seen in “Mindful Education”.
- Transformers: Prime: Megatron has rather shark-like facial features, which fits into his powerful, bloodthirsty and frightening character.
