Looks Like Orlok

Top: Count Orlok himself.
L - R, top to bottom: Kurt Barlow, Turok-han, a Nosferatu,
and Hordak.

History time: In the original folklore, most vampires were peasants little different from the people they preyed upon, with the occasional blatant walking corpse among them. A succession of nineteenth century authors — Polidori, Rymer, Le Fanu, and ultimately Stoker — made them elegant aristocrats, whose attractiveness and dignified bearing disguised an inner corruption. And we all know what happened since.

In 1920, a team of German filmmakers had a great idea. Since the German Expressionist movement was all about stylization, why not apply this to vampires? Why not create a vampire that looks the part of a monster, in this case like a humanoid plague rat? And so, Nosferatu got made, and very nearly destroyed.

But Nosferatu's title character, Orlok, played by scary-ass stage actor Max Schreck, has become one of the most iconic vampires ever, and has spawned a flock of imitators, typically used as a contrast to the elegant, pretty vampires, who for some reason are more likely to be treated sympathetically, or at least respectfully.

In order to qualify as a character who Looks Like Orlok, they must possess some combination of the following:

• Completely bald, or with very little hair
• Sharply pointed ears, often inhumanly large
• Hooked nose
• Claws, especially if they're long and talon-like
• Creepy Long Fingers
• Incisors as fangs instead of or in addition to canines (like an actual vampire bat).
• Skin that's either extremely pale or a cold unnatural color
• Standing or walking hunched over, if not a full hunchback
• Long, heavy coat, ideally with oversize lapels

Surprisingly, Orlok's look is not that far off from how Dracula himself is described (in the early chapters, before he regains his youth, anyway), where he's also described as a pallid, balding man with pointed ears and an aquiline nose. So although this design is sometimes seen as a radical departure from the "conventional" vampire, it's actually a lot Truer to the Text - both Stoker's novel and the older folklore - than you might expect.

A form of Our Vampires Are Different; see also Classical Movie Vampire (resembling Bela Lugosi, who codified the look). Compare Looks Like Cesare and Lorre Lookalike (for characters based on classic German Expressionist horror films) and Feral Vampires for similarly outwardly monstrous vampires. Also known for their Pivotal Wake-up.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Count Chocula, the spokes-vampire for General Mills' chocolate/marshmallow cereal, is a kid-friendly blend of the Lugosian vampire (dark hair, widows's peak and tidy, aristocratic clothing) and the Orlok vampire (pointed ears, extra-long fingers with claw-like nails, narrow, hooked nose, and pointy little rat-fangs in place of his incisors rather than as canine teeth).

Anime and Manga

• Hellsing: The antagonist Incognito's appearance seems to be based on that of Count Orlok. By contrast, Alucard is based on the more popular imagery of the suave Dracula. Then again, Alucard is Dracula.
• Black Cat gives us Preta Ghoul. He used to have hair, though, until it rotted out.
• The lizard chimera Bido of Fullmetal Alchemist is completely bald (with a speckled head) and has the requisite pale skin, hooked nose and sharp teeth, and he furthers the similarity by the cloak he always wears, so he can hide from normal humans. Granted, he also has a rather large tail.
• Abidani of Gamble Fish. He's a vindictive, macabre, sadistic character with a bald head, a very angular face, spindly limbs, a hooked nose, elf ears, a slight hunch and spiky teeth. This appearance was caused due to Abidani being nearly electrocuted to death by an electric chair as a young man.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders: The lecherous Serial Killer J. Geil has a number of Orlokian traits, such as a bald head, hunched posture, pointed ears, and sharp fingernails. The OVA gives him an even more Orlok-inspired design by adding a sickly gray complexion, rat-like incisors, and a narrow, bony jawline.
• In Dragon Ball Z: The World's Strongest, Mad Scientist Dr. Kochin is an old man with a pale complexion, a large bald head, pointed ears, and a hunched back… and it says something that he's the most normal-looking villain in the movie.
• Voltes V: Zuhl is blue Starscream Mad Scientist Orlok IN SPACE!

Comic Books

• Dr. Sivana the Mad Scientist from the Shazam! comic books.
• Moloch from Watchmen, especially after he gets cancer.
• Count Ambrosio from The Unwritten.
• In a Jhonen Vasquez comic, an angsty teenage boy desperately wishes to be made a real vampire— and his wish is granted by one. Instead of becoming a hip and stylish regent of the night, though, he gains a hideous form whose oversized bald cranium and tusk-like fangs only keep growing as he drinks blood. The final page shows him far into the future, with a head the size of a van, watching TV and thinking "That fucking vampire."
• The Carnival Geek Cannibal version of The Vulture in Spider-Man Noir is based on Orlok. The main Marvel Universe Vulture almost fits the trope to begin with.
• A short Sam & Max: Freelance Police Halloween comic featured what might be Orlok himself as the villain. Sam kicks him in the face.
• The vampire in the Cal McDonald miniseries Two Red Eyes is a homage Orlok and is known only by the name Nosferatu.
• In The Punisher's "Franken-Castle" arc, artist Tony Moore drew Morbius a little more like this than he's usually portrayed.
• Lord Cryptos and Black Sabbat in Requiem Vampire Knight are very unconventional takes on this trope. They are bald vampires with pointy ears and sharp teeth, but the former looks like a baby and the latter has pitch-black skin.
• Lafayette "Laffy" Arkham in Batman: Curse of the White Knight was a noble that ran Fort Arkham in the 17th century who suffered from consumption and a spinal hump caused by arthritic inflammation. He would eventually be given a Historical Villain Upgrade over the years, with rumors saying that he was a vampire that hunted children.
• Brother Grylok, a member of the Vampire Alliance that fought the ancient Gallifreyans in the Doctor Who Magazine strip "Monstrous Beauty", is a classic example, in keeping with the suggestion that the Alliance includes every kind of vampire.

Fanfic

• The Watchmen/Dracula Fusion Fic Bram Stoker's Ozymandias features a vampiric version of Adrian Veidt who looks a bit like this (though with pointed canines instead of incisors, a full head of hair even if it's a bit thin, and an age-related stoop rather than a real hump) before he regenerates to his handsome, canon form.
• Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: Inquisitor Tahr Whyler, the Arc Villain of Seasons 2–3, is a pale-skinned man clad in a black hooded cloak who has no hair, pointed ears, shark-like teeth, and long-fingered hands with talons.

Films — Animated

• Gru from Despicable Me looks like a taller and more rotund Orlok with a scarf.
• One of the vampires in Halloweentown from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
• Dracula's father, Vlad in Hotel Transylvania 2.

Films — Live Action

• The Strangers from Dark City (1998), while not as facially deformed as Orlok himself, do strongly give off the same impression with their pallor, baldness and eerie movements.
• Riff-Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show was partly patterned after Orlok - dark overcoat, balding, thin features and a (fake in-universe) hunchback. Richard O'Brien would later play the creepy Orlok-alike Mister Hand in Dark City (1998).
• Werner Herzog's movie Nosferatu the Vampyre, staring Klaus Kinski, which is sort of a remake, keeps this character design, but changes Orlok's name back to Dracula.
• Shadow of the Vampire: Willam Dafoe as Max Schreck playing Orlok, but he really looks like that because he really is a vampire.
• The Reapers from Blade II, formed by a plague within the vampire community. The plague turns the sexy normal vampires into Orlok style monsters.
• At one point in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dracula himself turns into a bat monster that has many of these characteristics, such as huge bat-like ears, claws and fangs.
• Freddy Krueger's appearance in A Nightmare on Elm Street is somewhat based off of this. In fact, Robert Englund even once stated that he based some of Freddy's movements on Orlok's.
• The vampires of 30 Days of Night are a successful balance of a Nosferatu-like vampire and the prevalent "pretty" vampire, so much so they seem to have sparked a revival of the former appearance. They have black irises, pasty-white skin, claws, and shark-like teeth.
• While not vampires themselves, the design of the male Crawlers in The Descent was inspired by Nosferatu; particularly evident in the bald heads, pale skin, and pointed ears.
• One of the running gags in the MSTing of Escape 2000 is that the main female character looks like Orlok.
• The mutated vampires from Daybreakers seem to be heading in this direction. Lack of blood in their diet causes them to revert to a feral state indicated by loss of hair, bulbous head, elongated face, pointy ears, and growth of claws. Of course, these are accompanied by several non-Orlok characteristics like loss of higher brain function, and even arms devolving into wings in extreme cases.
• In Van Helsing, Dracula and his wives all play out the One-Winged Angel trope and can transform from their good-looking normal appearance into bat monsters. In the case of Dracula himself, his "true form" is an Orlok-looking creature with bat wings.
• The chief librarian of the monastery in The Name of the Rose looks like Orlok. It's set in The Dung Ages, so all the ugliest monks seem to wield high influence.
• Star Trek:
  • The makers of Star Trek: Nemesis were going for this look for the Remans. According to makeup supervisor Michael Westmore, "Stuart [Baird] handed me a picture of Nosferatu and said that was exactly what he wanted. He said, 'I need an alien that looks like this.'"
  • Krall in Star Trek Beyond also looks like Orlok. It's later revealed that he's a heavily mutated human, having turned his DNA into genetic soup due to stealing Life Energy from various aliens to extend his own lifespan.
• In The Lord of the Rings, Gollum looks like a wet version of this.
• The night-terror creatures in They have heads that Look Like Orlok, while their bodies are even more extreme in their bestial, spindly twistedness.
• Timothy Spall's Peter Pettigrew in Harry Potter has elements of this, though he's only balding and he ditches the longcoat for a much-less-impressive cheap suit. He's The Renfield, and the character, like Orlok, is associated with rats, so it's kinda fitting.
• Nicolas Cage does a rather impressive physical impression of Orlok in Vampire's Kiss.
• The Pau'an species, as seen in the Star Wars prequels, are obviously based on Orlok's looks; though in a subversion of the expected demeanor, they're actually a very decent people, who usually do their best to take the more moral side in a conflict.
  • A more famous Star Wars example would be the Emperor himself, who plays the evil part straight.
  • Darth Vader also qualifies when unmasked in Return of the Jedi. He has pale skin due to his 24-Hour Armor, as well as somewhat deformed facial features and no hair thanks to being burned to near death in Revenge of the Sith. Chronologically earlier depictions downplay the paleness and make him look more scarred.
  • Another one would be the alien cyborg General Grievous in Revenge of the Sith, whose general appearance combines this trope with SkeleBot 9000. Though he doesn't have the huge nose (or any nose at all), every other aspect is present: his metal suit is bone-like pale, his head has sharp edges reminiscent of both fangs and bat ears, his fingers and body proportions are very long and pointy, and he visibly hunches for most of the movie, drapped in a black cape.
• Radu, from Subspecies, looks like Orlok with long hair. Sort of like the bastard child of Orlok and Wiseau.
• Dracula's brides in House of the Wolf Man are explicitly based on the trope's namesake.
• The Penguin in Batman Returns, though shorter and stouter than most examples, shares Orlok's sunken eyes, elongated nose, pointy fingers, and hunch, although he's more clearly modeled on Dr. Caligari.
• The Elder Vampire from Dracula Untold is bald, white-skinned, has pointy teeth, and long claws. He lacks the elongated nose, but other than that he's pretty much Count Orlok. Subverted in the present-day epilogue, where he's still the same ancient vampire, but has reverted to or assumed his fully human appearance.
• Petyr from What We Do in the Shadows, seemingly due to his immense age (8000 years old). The other, younger vampires are pallid but otherwise human looking, though Vladislav shows some decrepit appearance when he's feeling particularly down before the big gala event.
• Goosebumps (2015) has Count Nightwing, who has a few Orlok-like features.
• Bright: While not a vampire, Serafin is an elf that highly resembles this trope due to having bald hair, pointed ears and sharp teeth.
• From Dusk Till Dawn: When Santanico Pandemonium fully transitions into her vampire form, she basically looks like a reptilian version of Orlok: bald, pointy ears, fangs, and scales.
• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has an amusing case, where the director's Gothic Horror approach led him to ask the effects crew to use Nosferatu as a reference for the Indoraptor. Hence the new hybrid dinosaur has gangly limbs ending in huge claws, a hunched posture and weird front teeth. There's even an homage to Nosferatu's famous shadow-ascending-a-staircase scene, where all we can see is the Indoraptor's shadow.
• Jax-Ur in Man of Steel, the Kryptonian who experiments on Clark while he's held on Zod's ship.
• Alexander Nevsky: While he's not a vampire, the Obviously Evil Teutonic Knights have the black-robed monk◊ working for them, a bald, Sinister Schnoz-bearing man who looks like an evil High Priest crossed with a vulture.
• The 1957 film Blood Of Dracula (which does not have Dracula in it and could have easily been called I Was a Teenage Vampire) has a high school girl turned into a vampire by hypnosis. While she still has a headful of long hair, the rest of her look definitely qualifies.◊
• Nadja in Blood Red Sky is a woman infected with vampirism who takes regular treatments to prevent a full Viral Transformation. At the start of the film, her hair has already fallen out, forcing her to wear a wig. When she finds herself in a "Die Hard" On a Plane scenario and gets shot trying to protect her son, she fully transforms into a vampire, with her ears turning pointy, her eyes changing color, and her mouth filling up with gigantic fangs.
• Beyond the Black Rainbow: This is what Barry looks like sans wig and makeup. This was a side effect of...whatever it was that happened during his trip in 1966.
• Frostbite has the head vampire transform into a Orlok-like creature when going on a hunt, after experiments to "improve him". He looks normal when not transformed, unlike the other vampires who appear mostly human most of the time but very pale with creepy yellow and red eyes.
• Thor: Love and Thunder gives Gorr the God Butcher, who has a distinctly alien appearance in the comics, a more vampiric look with a bald head, pale skin, an emaciated body and sharp teeth. His actor, Christian Bale, has cited Count Orlok as one of the main influences on his portrayal of the character.
• The Master in Jakob's Wife looks like Orlok - other vampires, like Anne, look like ordinary (if pale) humans until they feed, at which point they grow rat-like incisors and their eyes turn red. The Master is also associated with rats, and a character is devoured by rats in his lair.

Literature

• To some extent, Count Olaf from A Series of Unfortunate Events is a non-vampiric example.
• Jean Mark from the Dora Wilk Series, who tries to look like a "classic" vampire despite the fact that in setting, Vampires Are Sex Gods. Effects are... mixed.
• Harry Potter:
  • Voldemort seems inspired a bit by the look of Orlok, only without a nose.
  • Severus Snape, everyone's favorite gaunt, pallid, hook-nosed recluse. (In fact, for a while, fans used to speculate that he was a vampire.) Instead of the trenchcoat, though, Snape chooses to wear a long black, batlike robe. And the movies kinda ditched this look when they hired Alan Rickman to play Snape.
  • Ironically, actual vampires in the series don't fall under this trope, being more or less humans with fangs.
• In the Discworld series:
  • Bob in The Discworld Reformed Vampyres' Diary 2003. Subversion in that, over the course of a series of notes between the Black Ribbon leader and the woman who plays the harmonium, it becomes apparent that he isn't actually a vampire at all.
  • Count von Magpyr's grandfather's portrait in Carpe Jugulum.
  • In The Film of the Book Going Postal, Mr. Gryle, the assassin sent by Reacher Gilt to kill Moist, is this. He's described in less detail in the book but gives off a similar impression. He's a banshee rather than a vampire, although since Discworld banshees prey on humans (the scream isn't an omen of death, it means the banshee is tracking you and will actively kill you) they're similar to vampires.
• Vampire from LoLo Apollo: I'm Afraid of Americans is a mixture of this and Skull for a Head. Despite looking about as ghoulish as it's possible for a humanoid creature to look, she's rather twee and is a snappy dresser.
• The Master's appearance from The Strain is heavily influenced by Orlok - though much more physically imposing. On the TV adaptation, he is portrayed by pro wrestler-turned-actor Robert Maillet, who is 6'11".
  • Most of the elder vampires have aspects of Orlok in their appearance, with uncommonly pale skin, pointed ears, and bald heads - though it's also established that their noses usually atrophy away and vanish over the centuries.
• Vampires in Night Watch (Series) look like this, when they shed their human disguise and reveal their true appearance.
• The vrykoloi in The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum look rather like this; rather bestial, even the prettier ones, starving-thin, bat-like ears, animal fangs, light-sensitive eyes.
• In the Laura Caxton novels, vampires have the bald head and pointy ear thing going on, and some let their fingernails grow long and claw-like. However, instead of two front teeth fangs, their whole mouths are full of row after row of sharp teeth, like a shark. Oh, and they're also albinos.
• Concept art for the Yuuzhan Vong depicts them as this. One major difference is that instead of a hooked nose, they have no nose whatsoever. Their warriors at least are also very fit and athletic-looking.
• Vampires in Monster Hunter International look like this in their true forms without their human disguises.
• Charlie Manx in NOS4A2 is described as looking like this although he's not a vampire in the traditional sense; instead, he maintains his youth by his car draining the souls of children as he kidnaps them to a semi-imaginary realm.
• Not a vampire, but Ixion looks like this when he's introduced in the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. It later turns out that he's essentially possessing a magically-created clone of himself (the original Ixion having been killed shortly before the first book), and the reason he looks like he does is because a Gardier officer had him pulled out of the vat before he was done. The clone body stabilizes during the second book, and Ixion turns out to actually be moderately attractive, if somewhat into the Uncanny Valley.
• In Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series, Baron Orlok looks like himself (and moves with a weird jerkiness).
• This is the inevitable fate of all vampires in Straight Outta Fangton, part of the The United States of Monsters world. If you live to be an Ancient One, over a thousand years old, you gradually start becoming a deformed demonic-looking creature. The protagonist, Peter Stone, says the men look like Orlok and the women look like Medusa. Thankfully, they can all shapeshift so it's actually less of a curse than it sounds but most don't care enough to bother.
• Explored and justified in-universe in The Vampire Combat Manual. Regular vampires just look like humans with fangs, but in this universe vampires are actually allergic to non-human blood. Drinking animal blood causes the vampire to become permanently deformed into something pale, twisted and grotesque. Unfortunately, newly-turned vampires who don't know this rule will sometimes try to drink animal blood, and have this reaction without realising why.

Live-Action TV

• There was a Nosferatu look-alike in an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? titled "The Tale Of The Midnight Madness". It should be noted that the "look-alike" actually was Nosferatu, come to life from a version of the film where he kills everyone and wins! Sleep well, kids!
• The aptly-named Nosferatu clan from Vampire: The Masquerade and its spin-off TV series, Kindred: The Embraced. Their curse is hideous looks, no matter how pretty they used to be as mortal humans.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • The Master. The interesting thing is that the vampires in that world usually look like normal humans most of the time and then put on their vampiric Game Face when they're about to do some vampire shit. The Master is so old that he's now in permanent Looks-like-Orlok-mode, and the other vampires are pretty impressed by it.
  • The Turok-han ubervamps from the final season also followed the Orlok mold.
  • The Prince of Lies in Angel (episode "Why We Fight") is probably the most explicitly based on Orlok, with trademark pointed ears and long fingers. Like other Buffyverse examples, his appearance is credited to age. (It is not stated whether or not his evident senility could also be so credited.)
  • Simone Doffler, once sired by Maloker (the progenitor vampire/Old One). Aside from her freakish vampire bat Nightmare Face, she also becomes emaciated, pale, and grows long taloned fingers.
• The Na'kuhl from Star Trek: Enterprise also have the Orlok look. The Ferengi aren't far off either, oversize ears notwithstanding.
• The TV-movie version of Salem's Lot makes the character Kurt Barlow look like Orlok, although in Stephen King's original novel he's depicted more like the Classical Movie Vampire.
• Scorpius, the Big Bad for much of Farscape, is dubbed "Nosferatu" by John Crichton in their first meeting thanks to his pale look, black costume and pointy teeth. In one of Crichton's Imagine Spots involving the Scorpius neural clone, he actually appears as Orlok rising from his coffin in a scratchy black-and-white movie.
• The look of a horror character from a running sketch on The Fast Show was based on Orlok; he would emerge out of the night to awaken a young woman in black and white, but would answer her scream only with non sequiturish betting tips.
• The League of Gentlemen contained a rare female example in Frau Lipp. Well, the character was female. But was played by a male actor, Mark Gatiss.
• While Sylar from Heroes certainly doesn't resemble Orlok himself, Nosferatu was an early inspiration for the character. While most of the original idea was changed, it is held over in his depiction in the prophetic paintings from first season. This is most obvious in Sylar's own rendition of himself posing as Nathan in that season's Bad Future, which featured long, taloned fingers. Also, he stole Orlok's coat.
• The X-Files: The episode "Hungry" involves a brain-eating mutant with pale skin, jet-black eyes, and no ears.
• Perhaps Uncle Fester of The Addams Family, although he's a much cuter version.
• Mr Gryle the banshee in the TV adaptation of Going Postal.
• Not an actual vampire, but Lx-3, the failed Lex clone in Smallville's tenth season premiere, "Lazarus" definitely has this going for him. Between the Bald of Evil, Pointy Ears, protruding front teeth, and grey, wrinkled skin he could easily pass for one of Orlok's relatives.
• The Space Vampire episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century featured a vampire that was very Orlok in appearance with the exception of his huge eyebrows.
• The Doctor Who episode "The God Complex" introduces a cowardly, rodent-like Rubber Forehead Alien who looks like this. Ironically, his planet is the most invaded in the Galaxy, the people happily accepting invaders.
• The older vampires in The Strain (TV series) gradually take on this appearance, with the variation that their noses seem to rot right away. The one known as The Master resembles a bodybuilder version of this trope, and is portrayed by 6'11" actor Robert Maillet until he has to switch host bodies. Played straighter, however, with the dhampyr Mr. Quinlan. In the books, the Nosferatu look was kind of implied, but a little less overt.
• Near the end of Season 13 of Supernatural, the heroes travel to an alternate earth where the Apocalypse was never averted. Because the angels have slaughtered most of humanity, the vampires regress into a more feral, bestial state resembling this trope's namesake with little hair and pointed ears as a result of being deprived of human blood.
• Murciélagos from Grimm are a vampire-like kind of Wesen with bat-like traits that look a lot like Orlok.
• They weren't vampires (though they did like to eat human eyeballs), but the Kromaggs from Sliders tick a lot of these boxes, especially after their redesign in the later seasons.
• The Terror in The Tick (2016) is a bald ghoulish-looking geezer who wears a dark red coat as his supervillain outfit.
• American Horror Story: Double Feature: The Pale Ones are people who took the Muse in hopes that it would enhance their artistic talents, only for them to turn out to be naturally talentless. As a result, they've mutated into bald, feral albinos who have twitchy body language and are driven only by a need to feed on blood.
• What We Do in the Shadows (2019):
  • Baron Afanas is even more monstrous than Petyr from the movie, with wrinkled grey skin, a completely emaciated body, a batlike face and huge pointed ears. As of season 4 however, he's returned to a more youthful human form as the result of a Djinni wish, losing this look altogether.
  • The Monster Progenitor of vampires known as the Sire is a comically exaggerated version of this to the point he resembles a gargoyle more than a human. He's mistaken for a mindless beast, but in fact is just angry and speaks a language too ancient for most younger vampires to understand.
• Svengoolie has a recurring character called Nostalgiaferatoo, who has all the features except the hunched posture and Sinister Schnoz—and he even exaggerates the grotesqueness by having long black fingernails. He also wears white makeup over his facial hair, like Cesar Romero's Joker.

Music Videos

• Ian McKellen plays a vampire like this in the video for Pet Shop Boys "Heart," though he is not bald nor does he have pointy ears.

Print Media

• Bat Boy (of the Weekly World News) is an Ugly Cute variation. He has a bald head; pallid skin; pointed incisors; large, pointed ears... and a little snub nose.

Tabletop Games

• Deadlands has the Nosferatu as a subspecies of vampires. They look like Orlok. And ride macabre trains when raiding for victims.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Basic sourcebook GAZ3 The Principalities of Glantri has the vampire-like nosferatu monsters, whose illustration looks like this. The text doesn't mention them looking weird or standing out in a crowd, however, and later appearances by Mystaran nosferatu show them passing for human.
  • D&D also has the Keepers, which are basically an Expy of the Strangers from Dark City (1998).
  • Ravenloft: The third edition books introduce the Vrykolakas, a subtype of vampires that look like Orlok. They are specifically described as "night scavengers and plague-carriers" to play up Orlok's plague rat aspects. One key difference is that instead of fangs they have a long, barbed tongue.
  • Varrangoins, bat-like 3e magical beasts from the Abyss, have Orlok-style heads.
• Magic: The Gathering: Vampires vary heavily depending on the set and artist. Some of the earlier ones like Sengir Vampire head in this direction.
• The Master from One Night Ultimate Vampire looks less human than the other vampire roles, with his pale grey skin, bald head, pointed ears, and upward pointing fangs.
• Pathfinder: Nosferatu are one of several types of vampire in the game setting; and yes, they look like the gentleman pictured at the top of this page. They even have different abilities than the common-or-garden vampire, all of which are taken from the original film, such as telepathy, telekinesis, and the ability to turn into a swarm of rats, but just like Orlok, they can't create new vampires by drinking blood.
• Talislanta: Some of the races look a bit like this, such as the Na-Ku cannibals, Marukans, and Nagra. Even the Kang might fit, if Max Schreck had gotten really ripped at the gym and suffered a bad sunburn.
• Shadowrun: Ghouls and Nosferatu both have this look. They're both humans (or other metahumans) that have mutated as the result of viral exposure; they've lost their hair, grown fangs, have pointed ears, claws, and are generally pretty hideous.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: Many of the Nosferatu in game art take on this appearance, but it can differ quite a bit from the Orlokian norm, as long as it's hideous. This is likely intentional, since the clan has the same name as the movie Orlok came from and has abilities similar to his. The version of the Nosferatu in Vampire: The Requiem can take on many forms foul and fair, but regardless of appearance always has an unsettling aura that makes social interaction difficult.
• Warhammer: Vampires of the Necrarch bloodline often resemble rotting or desiccated corpses with long ears and hairless skulls, while the Strigoi are giant, mutated batlike bloodsuckers that are barely human. Necrarchs get this way due to being immersed in dark magic, while the outcast Strigoi developed it from drinking the blood of vermin, the diseased, and the dead.

Toys

• Carpathias in the Four Horsemen's Mythic Legions line starts at "Orlok" and goes in a more bat-like direction.

Video Games

• Castlevania:
  • Two examples: Olrox from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (his name is a giveaway) and Brauner from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. It should be noted that while Brauner physically resembles Orlok (except he doesn't have the pointy incisors), he dresses like the later, classier versions, making him a weird hybrid of the two designs.
  • In a more direct Shout-Out, Orlok himself is seen in the background of a stage in Castlevania Chronicles, frozen in a block of ice for some reason.
• The Council's Vampyri in City of Heroes look like this, although they are not actual vampires. They are the result of a super-soldier program inherited from the 5th Column, which they overthrew. The highest-ranking of them is actually named Nosferatu.
• Ninja: Shadow of Darkness: The Big Bad called the Shadow Demon is a green-skinned version of Orlok. See how he looks in-game and after the battle.
• Baraka from Mortal Kombat was visually based on an Orlok mask. The costume used for his first appearance in Mortal Kombat II was, in fact, an Orlok mask with silver-painted false fingernails added for his teeth.
• Chrono Trigger: Though Magus is often drawn as a Pretty Boy in Fan Art, and his sprite could be mistaken for one. His character portrait is basically Orlok with long, blue-white hair and red eyes. The redrawn art for later releases made his face more conventionally attractive, however.
• Medeus from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon fits this despite being a dragon instead of a vampire. He's got the bald head, clawed hands, fangs, and batlike ears. All of these traits make him a dead ringer for the Count.
• These appear as (low level) monsters in The Witcher alongside more traditional Vampires.
• Eternal Evil has the ghoul lords, Sefar and Saron, looking like Orlok-clones. Pale skin, bald-headed monsters with sharp teeth, and all that.
• Vampires from the Legacy of Kain series go through a progression of appearance as they age: They start out fairly human-looking, develop into a more elven/bishonen form with talon-like nails, further evolve to gain more bestial traits like three-clawed hands and feet, and the really ancient ones like Kain and Vorador end up with a far more monstrous look that features pointed, bat-like ears (the shape seems to vary) and mottled skin (compare Kain's appearance in Blood Omen to Soul Reaver, for instance). The games also show vampires evolving out of humanoid form entirely, given enough time and the right circumstances.
  • There's a much more direct Orlok homage in Blood Omen 2. Marcus, one of the bosses, dresses in a voluminous black overcoat and has the requisite pale complexion, bald head, angular features, and spindly fingers.
• Ordinary Vampires in RuneScape look like this. The more powerful and civilized Vampyres, however, are more human-looking. (Sans the Vyrewatch, who are completely different.)
• The Vampire units (as well as many of the Heroes) of Necropolis city in Heroes of Might and Magic III. Especially notable, since HOMM II and IV vampires are Classical Movie Vampires with some minor Orlok-ish traits like gray skin, and HOMM V and VI vampires look like undead nobles in battle garb.
  • The playable and NPC vampires in Might and Magic VIII aren't quite close enough to fit (they've got the pointy ears, but their other inhuman traits, like their gray skin and red eyes, aren't on the Orlok list). The hostile vampires, on the other hand, add in baldness, longer fangs that seem to be closer to the front teeth and fingers that are longer enough that it is noticeable when they slash at you with them (they also have bat-like wings along their arms).
• Dracula himself in Bookworm Adventures, oddly enough. Like Brauner, he was much more sharply dressed than Orlok.
• Warcraft:
  • Though they are demons instead of vampires, the Nathrezim Dreadlords look much like demonic versions of Orlok and possess several typical vampire abilities such as the ability to control bats, hypnotize victims to sleep, and occasionally life-draining powers.
  • While the more standard-variety vampires in World of Warcraft, the undead blood elves known as the Darkfallen, are not monstrous enough to fit this trope, their original concept art was heavily based on Orlok and indeed titled "High Elf Nosferatu".
  • Wretched elves (blood elves who couldn't control their magic addiction), might not be undead, but they look the part. They have pale grey skin, hunched backs, bald or balding heads, long fingernails, and have the long pointy ears of other elves. Notably, they share the same basic skeleton and animations with the playable Undead.
• Markus from Beyond the Spirit's Eye Looks Like Orlok, but with shark teeth rather than rat-like incisors.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The series' vampires tend to become increasingly more monstrous in appearance the longer they go without feeding,^note from Oblivion onward, as the peculiarity of the dominant strain in Cyrodiil — other strains, like the ones in Morrowind and Daggerfall, remained monstrous even if they had just fed. Skyrim made it apply to a strain previously indicated to have another quirk. with their faces becoming gaunt and weathered. Vampires of Elven origin, with their already slim builds and pointy ears, are particularly prone to looking like Orlok. The trope is played most straight with the Volkihar Clan in the Dawnguard DLC of Skyrim, who have the power to transform at will into a Vampire Lord◊ with grotesque features, slate-gray skin, pointed ears, deadly claws, vestigial wings on its back and a partially bald head. Unlike Orlok, Vampire Lords wear loincloths (although Lord Harkon also wears a cloak with a high collar) and have impressive physical builds, skeletal wings and claw-like feet.
  • Scamps are the weakest and smallest known form of lesser Daedra, and they check every box for looking like Orlok save for the hooked nose (Scamps have nostril slits instead) and the trenchcoat (Scamps don't wear clothing).
  • The Falmer have elements of this trope in their design, although their noses are shriveled rather than long.
• Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Roughly half the Greater Vampires have this appearance, as does the Count.
• The Higher Vampires seen in Blood & Wine expansion of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt bear varying degrees of resemblance to this trope when they put their Game Face on. Dettlaff even has the iconic greatcoat, although his facial features are more wolf- than ratlike, while Regis gets the iconic sharp incisors-look. And then there's the Unseen Elder who doesn't even try to pass for a human, although his face isn't quite as monstrously deformed as a full-on Game Face.
• The Sims 4: The Vampires gamplay pack re-introduces the Vampire life state from previous Sims games and comes with the premade neighbourhood of Forgotten Hollow, whose most prominent resident, Vladislaus Straud, looks almost exactly like Schreck's portrayal of Count Orlok in his Dark Form.
• Adrien Toomes, alias The Vulture, appears like this in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Bald head, pasty complexion, hooked nose, Pointed Ears, Black Cloak with red highlights, emaciated frame, Creepily Long Arms, Creepy Long Fingers, hunched posture, More Teeth than the Osmond Family... yep, he's got it all! This is not helped by his inhuman levels of agility, the powers he gains from his fragment of the Tablet, his dietary habits, and the fact that he can't stand bright lights.
• The Didact from Halo 4 is a villainous Forerunner who has protruding fangs, pale skin, almost no hair, long clawed fingers, and darkly colored Powered Armor that resembles a science fiction take on Orlok's outfit. The monstrous look is the result of a failed attempt to immunize himself to the Flood.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: The Nosferatu Vampire Variety are all bald, fanged, pointy-eared, and grey-skinned, and many have even more substantial deformities. Fat Larry calls a Nosferatu Player Character a "Halloween-lookin' S&M gremlin" and they automatically violate the Masquerade if they're seen by most humans.
• Indie Castlevania homage Toziuha Night: Dracula's Revenge has the plot twist that Dracula, apparently the Big Bad of the story, was actually Nosferatu, who is also a demon (one of the titular Toziuha) Dracula made a pact with years before. Nosferatu looks like Orlok if he came from a gothic anime instead of a German Expressionist movie. He's more like The Man Behind the Man who possesses another character, who then becomes the final boss.

Webcomics

• Imp of School Bites is said to be a "Nosferatu prince". However, he's actually generically cute.
• Camille, the main vampire character of Bloody Urban is essentially the Cute Monster Girl version of Orlok- she has sunken in eyes, pronounced fangs on both her front teeth and canines, and large, bat-like ears.
• Vampires in TRU-Life Adventures start out looking like themselves, but grow to resemble Orlok as they lose their humanity.
• In Shadowgirls, a very Orlok-looking member of EoD was sent to eliminate a hospitalized cop. It 's a bit unclear if he was a vampire or something else, although the almost certainly wasn't human.
• Although Count Chocula blended Dracula and Orlok as a cereal mascot, in Breakfast of the Gods, Brian Sanderson subtly played up the Orlokian aspects more. While he kept the elegant clothes and dark widow's peak, he's far more ratlike and sinister: his face is more pointed, his fangs are longer and more wedge-shaped, and his hands look more like the paws of a rat with long thin fingers and prominent knuckles.

Web Original

• Count LeShoc of Transylvania Television is based on this type of vampire.
• Zellie T of ASCZ's Horrorshow compares this video of El Chupacabra to Count Orlok.
• The creatures guarding the statue in the aquarium warehouse in The Out Crowd look like this.
• The eponymous character from Salad Fingers, despite not having any nose or ears, fits the bill. His gaunt figure, bald head, Creepy Long Fingers, misshapen teeth, and red eyes make up for it.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons: The gaunt, balding, comically sinister Mr. Burns looks like Orlok even when he's not a vampire. Especially when he wriggles his fingers. In "Treehouse of Horror IV", Mr. Burns is Dracula and a few of his underlings look very Orlokian. Burns himself is primarily a parody of Gary Oldman's portrayal of Dracula in the Coppola movie, but he does look a little Orlokian, too.
• Botticelli, the leader of the rats in The Tale of Despereaux, looks like a furry version of Orlok.
• At the end of the Graveyard Shift episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, the lights start to flicker, and thinking that it's the Hash Slinging Slasher's doing, everyone looks over and is relieved to find that it was only that silly Nosferatu!
• The Modifyers: Baron Vain can be considered a caricature of Orlok, given the similarities in appearance (bald, blueskinned, etc.), complete with having a rat for a henchman —named "Rat". However, Vain was hardly menacing, nor did he seem to be a vampire.
• In the animated series School for Vampires the vampire kids' main teacher is based on Orlok's appearance. Somewhat subverted in that we see, through flashbacks, that he once had a long, flowing mane of blonde hair.
• In episode 6 of Ugly Americans, Blake is a blatant Expy of Edward from The Twilight Saga, while Blake's father was obviously modeled after Orlok.
• Mighty Max gives us Skullmaster, an ancient warrior-sorcerer with chalk-white skin, fangs, claws, pointy ears and lack of nose (who's also very buff). His menacing voice was provided by Tim Curry.
• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, The Wasp watches a horror movie featuring a very Orlokian-looking vampire.
• Dr. Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb looks a lot like this (hunchback, long fingers, pointy nose), except he has hair.
• The Grand Inquisitor from Star Wars Rebels fits this greatly. He's bald, has bone white skin, sharp teeth, and golden Sith eyes. With tattoos for extra evilness. Makes sense since he is a Pau'an, the Orlok-looking species mentioned above in Revenge of the Sith, but unlike most of them, he's as evil as he looks.
• The five humanoid figures in Balance are bald, have whitish-gray skin and huge blank black eyes, and articulated skeleton fingers. And they were long trenchcoats.
• Von Kreepsula, supposed nemesis of Mona the Vampire. He's an in-universe comic book character with a bald head, green skin and pointy ears.
• Count Orlok appears in Mary Shelley's Frankenhole alongside Dracula. He's a mute, so whenever he talks, title cards pop up along with the sound of a dramatic piano.
• In the American Dad! episode "Enter Stanman," Stan Smith meets Stanferatu, the metaphysical embodiment of Stan's insecurity. Stanferatu looks like Stan but with Orlok's bald head, Undeathly Pallor, Pointed Ears, Sinister Schnoz, fangs, hunched back, Creepy Long Fingers, Creepy Long Arms, and Black Cloak.
• Hordak from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is a downplayed example; while he breaks a few of the norms associated with this trope (he has a slicked fauxhawk instead of the traditional bald head, an upright posture instead of a Primal Stance, and a small, upturned nose instead of a Sinister Schnoz) he still has a pale complexion, long pointed ears, claws, red fangs, glowing red eyes, thick black eye makeup, and black cloak with a high collar that all combine to make him resemble nothing so much as an extraterrestrial vampire.
• DuckTales (2017): In the Halloween Episode "The Trickening", a vampire character named Nosferatu makes an appearance. He's a skinny anthropomorphic vampire bat with pointy ears, sharp incisor teeth and a grey complexion.
• In The Loud House, one of the members of Lucy's Mortician Club is Boris, a tall boy who is pale, bald and has pointy ears and pointy buck teeth.

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