Our Manticores Are Spinier

The manticore (from Persian martyaxwar or mardkhora, "man-eater") is a legendary creature typically thought to come from Ancient Persian folklore, said to stalk the jungles of India. Its favourite prey was humans, which it would devour without leaving any remains behind. These tales were recorded by Ancient Greek naturalists (although the lack of corroboration from Persian or Indian sources raises the possibility that they made it up themselves) and were among the many creatures featured in the bestiaries, where they represented tyranny and envy. From there, it found its way into popular culture.

What nearly all manticores have in common is a leonine body (traditionally with red fur) ending in the tail of a scorpion or, more rarely, a dragon. However, usually, it will also possess at least some of the following attributes:

• Instead of a stinger, the tail may end in a cluster of spikes, which can be launched in deadly volleys. Both versions are almost guaranteed to be venomous. In a few bestiaries, the manticore could also shoot from its mane. Also, many ancient texts stated only elephants were immune to a manticore's spikes.
• The classical manticore had the face and the ears of a human and three rows of razor-sharp teeth. In fiction, the face can range from feline to human to wholly monstrous. May also have horns.
• While sapient and capable of speech (speaking in a melodic voice reminiscent of trumpets or pipes) in the original version, in some adaptions, manticores possess only animalistic intelligence.
• May occasionally have bat wings, which are only found in modern fantasy depictions.

For another mythological monster with a human head, a lion body and sometimes wings, but very different connotations, see Our Sphinxes Are Different. Compare also the Classical Chimera.

Subtrope of Our Monsters Are Different and Mix-and-Match Critters. See also Nue.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Magi: Labyrinth of Magic: Manticores, also known as Scaled Wolves, are some of the many non-human people of Alma Toran. Unlike most portrayals, they are colossal, humanoid wolf-like beasts with scales, with their own civilization, culture and tools. Their leader, Agares, became one of the 72 Djinns, currently in possession of Ren Kouen and can also take the form of a comparatively smaller cat-like being with scales on his body.
• One Piece: Manticores are man-eating animals found in Level 2: Beast Hell of the prison Impel Down. They have lion bodies with large, caricature-like human faces that differ between individuals. They can imitate human speech because their face is human-like, but do not understand what these words mean and just repeat whatever sounds they hear prisoners making. They can also stand on their two hind legs and pose like a human would. They first appeared in Chapter 529 and Episode 430.
• Soul Eater: Arc Villain Noah summons a Manticore from the Book of Eibon to fight the Shibusen staff: this manticore has a rather abstract appearence but overall resembles a leonine machine/creature with a scorpion tail attached to the spine, shoulderpads on the legs reading "Man", hammer-like front paws and a vaguely humanoid head with a single eye and a huge mouth full of square teeth. As he summons the monsters, the Kid-Rescue team manage to grab ahold on its tail and escape from the Book at last. The manticore is quickly killed by Kid and Black*Star.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Manticores appear as an uncommon creature type, resembling winged lions with human faces, scorpion tails and mouths with far too many teeth. Their wings are normally batlike, but the manticores from the plane of Mercadia have feathered wings instead.
  • The manticores of Theros live in the wilderness well beyond the reach of civilization and are said to be the reincarnated spirits of great warriors. According to myth, they were created when a mortal army was destroyed by the archons who once ruled the plane; unwilling to let their valor and vitality die, the gods transformed them into the first manticores.
  • The manticores of the Egyptian Mythology-inspired plane of Amonkhet break from the pattern, instead resembling wingless tigers with scorpion tails and with their lower legs covered with black, spiked natural armor.
  • There are also masticores, mechanical wingless manticores. At least one seems to have been able to superheat its stinger in lieu of poison.

Comic Books

• A manticore is one of the first monsters Tim Hunter faces in Books of Magic, initially appearing as Faux Affably Evil human who seeks to destroy all mythical creatures, with the only clue to its nature being its large number of teeth. It later takes its monstrous form when Tim angers it, and has a venomous bite that Tim almost succumbs to.
• The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): The first time a young Diana leaves the city of Themyscira to explore the island she is attacked by a manticore, with a leonine body, human head, a swarm of pupils in each of it's eyes, a scorpion tail dripping corrosive poison, and sharp spikes between it's shoulders that elongate into Spider Limbs on the shoulders.
• The John Ostrander Suicide Squad featured a Greek terrorist named Manticore as a member of the Jihad. Several successors have taken the name, usually villains, but on one occasion a member of the Global Guardians. They're generally some form of leonine Beast Man with a scorpion tail.

Fan Works

• Harry Is a Dragon, and That's OK features a manticore named Dominic Alexander as one of the new students arriving in Harry's sixth year. He has wings and a stinger tail, but apart from that seems fairly bog-standard, though Harry feels a little guilty upon realizing that he's worked with manticore-skin gloves throughout most of his lessons.
• Family of the Shield has Naofumi Iwatani start up a family of his own made up of Monsters that he hatches from eggs and raises as his children, with the first one being Monti, whose Egg was recovered from the stomach of the Chimera Wave Boss. Despite his ferocious appearance and numerous abilities offered to him via his Cannibalism Superpower, Monti is rather quiet and self-conscious when talking with other people and is filled with many anxieties over being the offspring of a Wave Boss, but regardless he is willing to put in hard work, look out for others and watch over his younger siblings that Naofumi admits Monti would be the kind of son he'd proudly show off to others back in Japan.

Film

• Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: despite being based on the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the manticores introduced in the movie are a colony of cat-sized, scorpion-like monsters with four chitinous tentacles tipped with a secondary mouth full of feelers, with their queen being a colossal version big enough to impale a person on its stinger tail and swallow them whole. They become aggressive when the light is out, but can be distracted by moving in a certain way, waving the arms in imitation of their tentacles. These beasts reside in the Erkstag prison, where Theseus Scamander is imprisoned by Grindenwald's men. Amusingly, these manticores were later incorporated into official canon as a secondary breed of manticore in existence within the wizarding world alongside the traditional human faced and scorpion tailed lion-like breeds previously established to exist in the franchise, with individuals of this more scorpion-like breed being responsible for mating with fire crabs to produce blast-ended screwts.
• The Last Unicorn: A manticore is among the animals on display in Mommy Fortuna's travelling show. It's actually a decrepit old lion enchanted to look like a manticore; almost all of the "creatures of night" on display are bogus.
• Onward features a manticore named Corey (voiced by Octavia Spencer) who assists the Lightfoot brothers on their quest. She's basically a humanoid lion with horns, bat wings, and a scorpion tail, and breathes fire, but her head is as leonine as the rest of her. She's also a former adventurer who once ran a tavern, which she converted into a family restaurant in the modern day as a sign of How the Mighty Have Fallen.

Gamebooks

• Fighting Fantasy frequently have Manticores showing up as boss battles.
  • Deathtrap Dungeon: The very last boss of the book is a Manticore, who launches a barrage of spikes from its tail towards you before leaping into battle. If you didn't read a scroll about the Manticore beforehand, you will be caught off-guard by the spike attack and lose numerous STAMINA points, but if you did, you can suffer either minor or no injury at all. It's still a difficult battle, since your STAMINA is likely rather low at this point of the game and you're fighting an enemy with SKILL in double digits.
  • Sorcery!: The first book, The Shamuntanti Hills, ends with a boss battle against a Manticore whose stats a higher than the aforementioned Deathtrap Dungeon example. Not only that, but this Manticore has a barbed tail that can make you lose up to 6 STAMINA points of damage each round.
  • Downplayed example in Master of Chaos. You might battle a Chaos Manticore, but it's tail isn't poisonous and its stats are quite low.
  • Averted in Magehunter with the Golden-Lion Lord. It's a lion monster with a human's head, but it lacks a barbed tail.
  • Inverted in Stormslayer where you can fight a captive Manticore. However, the monster looks like the classic depiction of Manticores, complete with a barbed tail, but it has been de-venomed and held in a cage for a long period of time, and as such it has pathetic stats and a much easier fight than previous Manticores in the series.

Literature

• Baudolino: A manticore shows up while the heroes are trying to find the kingdom of Prester John, along other strange creatures found in bestiaries.
• Book of Imaginary Beings: The manticore, or martichoras, is a monster like a blood-red lion with a human face, three rows of teeth, a tail ending in a stinger and a voice like flutes and trumpets. It can fling the barbs of its tail like arrows, and is fond of human flesh.
• Dracopedia: Dracopedia: The Bestiary depicts manticores with the front bodies of tigers, the hind bodies and wings of dragons, and scorpion-like tails, as well as human-like ears and noses. They are described as fierce predators from the Middle East that developed a taste for human flesh as a result of frequently coming into contact with human settlements to hunt livestock, resulting in them going extinct during Roman times when humans hunted them all down.
• Fighting Fantasy: Manticores of various types are often encountered as dangerous monsters in the series. The Sorcery! spin off has a massive one in a cavern as the Final Boss of the first book.
• Harry Potter: Manticores are mentioned in passing when the heroes are looking for cases of dangerous animals being spared execution. They find such a case with a manticore, but lose hope when it turns out that was because everyone was too scared to go near it. According to supplemental materials, they are sentient monsters with a leonine body, a humanoid head and a scorpion's stinger. Their poison kills instantly, while their hide deflects all charms, placing them into the most dangerous category of magical creatures. Rather disturbingly, they also croon to themselves while devouring their prey.
• Jedi Academy Trilogy: In Dark Apprentice, the Holographic Zoo of Extinct Animals includes an exhibit on manticores, depicted as creatures with humanoid heads, venomous fangs, feline bodies, and scorpion tails, and living in a desert environment. Threepio is surprised at their inclusion, stating that the creatures had been proved to just be a jumble of mismatched fossils.
• Impossible Creatures: Manticores are some of the few creatures in the Archipelago who hunt for sport. They smell of decay and, according to The Guardian's Bestiary, have "the personality of a self-righteous politician." Some subspecies have a spiked ball at the end of their tails.
• The Last Unicorn: A captive manticore is on display in Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Circus. It's actually an illusion laid over an ordinary lion. Mommy Fortuna is a fraud and most of her fantastic beasts are bogus.
• Many Waters takes place on Earth before The Great Flood, and we see various fantasy creatures like unicorns, griffons, and manticores. Manticores are shown to lack human intelligence, although their human-like faces can at least speak basic words, like "hungry" when they're stalking prey.
• Myth Adventures: Class Dis Mythed features manticores as dimension travellers from Manticora. They have average human intelligence, and can shoot lightning from their tail. Skeeve and his apprentices must save a town from a rampaging manticore. The manticore is a soldier on leave, drunk and unable to speak the local language. Trapping him and using a translator pendant allows them to communicate with the demon and befriend him.
• Ology Series: Monsterology depicts manticores as lions with human heads, three rows of teeth and scorpion tails that can shoot poisonous, invisible barbs
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: In The Titan's Curse, the manticore Mr. Thorn acts as The Dragon to Luke and the General. He has heterochromatic eyes and his poison only paralyses. While his true form follows the classical description, he is capable of assuming human guise, and can use Partial Transformation to still launch spikes. He is extremely powerful physically, but psychologically degrades over the course of the story due to being put under pressure by his superiors.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, a manticore is just a monstrously large scorpion-like arthropod (large by arthropod standards — they can still fit inside a human hand) with deadly venom and a pattern resembling a human face on its front.
• The Spiderwick Chronicles: In the tie-in guide, manticores are depicted as cougar-sized panther-like creatures that live deep in tropical forests. They have monkey-like faces and clusters of poisonous quills at the end of their tails, which they can launch at their prey and continue to pump out poison even after being expelled.
• Voyage of the Basset: The party encounters a manticore. He is leonine with a human face and intelligence to match. He initially decides he has to kill them, because he's under orders by the fairy king Oberon as a guard, but when the fairies tell him otherwise, he backs off.
• Xanth novel A Spell For Chameleon. While trying to enter the Magician Humfrey's castle Bink encounters a manticora ("a creature the size of a horse, with the head of a man, body of a lion, wings of a dragon, and tail of a scorpion. One of the most ferocious magical monsters known."). Bink manages to out-think the creature and continue his quest. The following book, The Source of Magic, reveals the creature was guarding the castle as a service to Humfrey to find out if it had a soul.
• The Worm Ouroboros: Mantichores (variously also spelled "mantycores" and "mantichoras") inhabit the high mountains of Impland "below the snow fields". They are given their usual appearance as similar to lions but bigger, of "dull red" colour, with "prickles" like a porcupine, a hideous-looking "man's face", "elephant ears", and huge teeth. Their name is (correctly) explained as meaning "man-eater", and they are said to be especially fond of human brains. Because of the mantichores, the inhabitants of Mercury consider it impossible to scale the mountains of Impland; when Lords Juss and Brandoch Daha nevertheless ascend Koshtra Pivrarcha, they are attacked by a mantichora, which however they manage to kill. Fortunately mantichores are solitary and repelled by the smell of mantichore blood, so after being soaked in the blood of the mantichore, Juss and Brandoch are no longer troubled by other mantichores.

Live-Action TV

• In Grimm, Manticores are a particularly dangerous type of Wesen. They resemble Löwen, but are distinguished by their teeth, longer, stringy manes, and having a scorpion tail (being one of only two tailed Wesen mentioned, and the only to appear). They are fierce and are not afraid of death, and often serve in the military.
• In Merlin, the Manticore was a creature of the Old Religion, directly connected to the spirit world. It could be summoned to the real world through a portal in the form of a box, but would die if the box was destroyed. It was rather small, though had many of the classic features: scorpion tail with extremely dangerous venom, feline body, humanoid face, mane, and sharp teeth. It could force people to do things against their will, and forced Gaius's old flame, Alice, to try and poison Uther, after she summoned it intending to use its powers for good. The plot was found out, but she was helped to escape before she could be executed for magic use. The manticore itself was destroyed by smashing its box to bits.
• In Power Rangers Mystic Force, using their Legend Powers allows the rangers to transform into a firebird and a lion. When the firebird attaches to the lion's back, it can then rise up on its hind legs and transform into the Manticore Megazord (a Winged Humanoid with a lion's face on its chest). This may be a Woolseyism from Mahou Sentai Magiranger, where the combination is simply named "MagiLegend".

Music

• "Manticore" is a Ninja Sex Party song from their first album NSFW, describing it as a powerful and vile creature capable of despicable acts such as "inventing death", "killing your sister just for fun" and "making out with your dad". It has been referenced in several other songs and music videos from the group. The funniest might be that despite being described as a 10 feet-tall creature from ancient Greece with eyes of flame and teeth of steel, it is played by an half-naked man with a mask.^note  Brian Wecht, half-physicist, half musician, and half-ninja.
• In Super Planet Dolan's darker version of Hickory Dickory Dock, a manticore appears from a descending beam of light and somehow telekinetically lifted the clock.

Mythology and Folklore

• The Book of Revelation mentions locusts showing up during the Apocalypse. Except that these "locusts" have human heads, lion teeth, scorpion tails and wings that sound like an Onrushing Army.
• The manticore legend originates from Persian folklore, and is thought to have originated as essentially overdramatized accounts of tigers. Its name in Pharsi, "martyaxwar", means "man-eater", and while this was usually translate phonetically into Greek to become "martichora", from which we get "manticore", it was sometimes translated literally as "androphagus", again meaning "man-eater". Originally depictions had it as essentially a tiger with a human head and a mouth with three rows of razor-sharp teeth, as well as a tail tipped with spikes it could launch like arrows. Over time, in medieval and later depictions, the tail-spikes became a scorpion stinger and the beast gained bat wings, leading to the manticore's most common depictions in modern fantasy.
• In Spanish folklore, as recently as the twentieth century, the manticore was known as a type of werewolf that Eats Babies.

Tabletop Games

• The Dark Eye: Manticores resemble lions with flattened human faces, three rows of teeth — typically some combination of human and feline ones — and scorpion tails. They're creations of dark magic, as all chimeric beings are, and are typically considered the most perfect product of the craft. They're intelligent enough to speak and have distinct personalities, but not enough to reliably control their animalistic side. Some exceptional specimens can master themselves enough to find a place in a royal court, a mage's tower or a temple as councilors guards or exhibition pieces; most live as beasts and die violent deaths.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Manticores are Lawful Evil Magical Beasts that can fly and launch spines, while the dragonne is a dragon with the head and overall body shape of a lion. Most editions have given manticores a fairly straightforward appearance with a lion body, batlike wings, a human head with three rows of shark-like teeth, and a tail tipped with a cluster of spines, but the 3.5 Monster Manual depicts them with low-slung, leopard spotted bodies and heads resembling twisted, monstrous monkeys more than anything else. Regardless of appearance, they're evil, aggressive beings with a taste for human flesh — and human flesh specifically; other humanoids who expect to go through manticore territory have been known to hire human guards in part to attract the beasts' attention away from themselves in case of an attack.
  • Mantidrakes, described in Dragon #170, are hybrids of manticores and evil dragons, resembling regular manticores with a draconic, instead of humanoid, head, but retaining a mane. Their draconic parents are usually blue dragons, as they share the manticores' preference for arid, open environments.
• Exalted: Manticores are creatures of the Wyld, and resemble lions with three rows of shark-like teeth and scorpion tails tipped with potent venom. They're as smart as apes, and can flawlessly imitate human voices and project the apparent origin of their calls to anywhere within a thirty-feet radius of themselves. While native to the Bordermarches of the Wyld, their biology is stable enough that they can survive indefinitely within Creation. They're no real threat to experienced Exalted or Fair Folk, but are terrifying foes for mortals, lesser fey, and inexperienced Terrestrials.
• Godforsaken: A manticore is a fearsome predator that resembles a maned red lion with a human head and a scorpion's tail. The head is bearded and has three rows of teeth in the upper and lower jaws, like a shark. The scorpion tail is covered in multiple barbs, and the creature can flick its tail to hurl these barbs at its prey. Classical manticores were not described as having wings; modern interpretations often give them wings (perhaps due to crossbreeding with chimerae) but say they are poor fliers.
• Palladium Fantasy: Manticores are foul-tempered predators resembling lions with goblin-like humanoid faces and tails tipped with clusters of poisonous quills. In addition to being dangerous hunters, they also have sadistic streaks a mile wide, something luckily tempered by their rarity.
• Pathfinder: Manticores are monsters with leonine bodies, batlike wings, tails ending in clusters of poisonous spikes that they can launch at their prey, and either human or lion heads. Female manticores with human heads grow beards the same as males; likewise, lion-headed females sport full manes. They can breed with most other kinds of lion-bodied creatures — including regular lions, dire lions, lamias, chimeras, and sphinxes — to produce hybrid offspring resembling their non-manticore parents with a manticore's spiked tail.
• RuneQuest: Manticores are lion-bodied Beast Men with scorpion tails and human heads. They are surly and independent, and have little to do with their fellow beasts.
• Shadowrun: Manticores (proper name "martichoras") are Awakened lions with rows of sharp teeth and a porcupine-like bundle of spines at the end of their tails which are barbed and venomous. They never use their spines to hunt, however, and never eat prey they kill with them — they're immune to the venom, but apparently don't like the taste. Their prides are led by the females, unlike how regular lions operate. They prefer unspoiled and untainted environment and have a mild allergy to pollution.
• Warhammer: Manticores are creatures of Chaos with spiked tails, bat wings, leonine bodies and vaguely humanoid heads. They're most common in the Chaos Wastes, but often fly south to lair in the mountains and forests of southern lands. They are commonly captured and broken as steeds by the warlords and champions of Chaos hordes. They beastmasters of the Dark Elves, who have a history of treating Chaos entities as a resource to corral and control, also use them as war animals and mounts.

Video Games

• In Age of Mythology, they are the myth unit for Apollo. They are red, have (non-functional) wings and launch volleys of spines.
• In the Age of Wonders franchise, manticores are lions with wings and scorpion tails and are Tigran units in II/Shadow Magic. In Age of Wonders 3, they serve as mounts for the Warlord's ultimate unit, and are also a powerful mount for heroes; their tails now end in several spines, but they still cannot shoot them.
• ARK: Survival Evolved: The expansion pack Scorched Earth adds a manticore as a boss, along with many other mythical creatures. It's a huge, horned, feline, monstrosity with leathery wings and the stinger of a scorpion which can shoot purple bolts and thorns, and is able to inflict torpor with its tail.
• Manticores are encountered in the Caves of the Dead in Cadash. Their strength is medium, but they are fast. On the upside, their speed means they need to find their momentum to turn around once past the player, leaving them open for a counterattack.
• The first boss of Chesters Revenge is a fierce manticore who attacks by shooting energy bolts from it's tail, besides unleashing a thick beam attack with each roar.
• In Civilization: Beyond Earth, the Manticore is an alien lifeform that can shoot spheres filled with Miasma from its tail, making it the only ranged alien.
• Dark Souls features the Sanctuary Guardian, which is a manticore with pure white fur and four feathered wings, but lacks a human's face and has goat-like horns on its head. It can also shoot balls of lightning out of its mouth. The game's description states that no one really knows what this thing is, and the prevailing theory is that it's something like a demon.
• Digimon: Manticoremon, a "Demon Beast" Digimon debuting in the Digimon Pendulum Z II virtual pet, is a rather unusual take on this trope. It's got the leonine body, human head, sharp teeth and stinger-tipped tail as usual, but has three tails instead of one, a metal mask completely covering its face, a freakishly long tongue, tattered wing-like projections growing from its facial mask, a bib-like cloth inscribed with Japanese kanji, and fanged mouths on its feet. Personality-wise, it's a savage hunter of other Digimon, driven by nothing more than a mindless hunger for their data, but its marked preference for viruses and demonic Digimon as prey has led to it often being employed by angelic Digimon.
• Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: A monster-class exclusive to the first game, the "Beast" demon has a lion's mane, monkey's face, bat wings and a stinger tail. Notably, their tail is used for a Life Drain maneuver, and cannot inflict poison. Higher classes of this monster are named Nue, Chimera and Sphinx. The HD remake replaced them with the Skeletal Dragon, although they function the same.
• Dragon's Dogma Online: A manticore with a red-hued leonine body, bat-like wings and a scorpion's tail can be found as a boss in the Northern Betland Plains. Its head is that of a human, with Pointy Ears and a Bald of Evil as well as a Beard of Evil.
• Dungeon Crawl: Manticores can flick volleys of spikes at you, which become lodged in your body, and make moving dangerous. However, they are not poisonous.
• Final Fantasy XVI: This is the true form of Ultima's species, which consists of the lion-like head of Ifrit and the wings possesses by Phoenix. The Manticore's association with tyranny is also reflected in how Ultima is the resident Demiurge Archetype of Valisthea, believing only himself to be worthy of consciousness and sapience as opposed to mankind, and he expresses that entitlement though the various miseries he puts the people of Valisthea through. Additionally, his obsession with Clive Rosfield becoming his chosen vessel Mythos parallels the Manticore's devouring of humans, seeking to use mankind only to satiate his own well-being.
• God of War: Ascension: A manticore appears as a miniboss fought in Delphi. It is portrayed as a wyvern-like beast with a lion-like head, jaws like those of a shark which can become unhinged, dragon wings, human arms and torso, a scorpion tail and plates running down its back. The monster reproduces by laying eggs, and manticore hatchlings can breathe fire. Another one is found at Delos.
• Golden Sun: A truck-sized manticore (scorpion tail, red lion body and the head of an old man) serves as the boss of the Lamakan desert, blocking an invisible cave entrance. The first time you walk up to it, it roars and pushes you away, the fight starting on the second try. Underground Monkey variants include a green Magicore and a purple Manticore King.
• Grim Dawn: Manticores appear as enemies, infesting the Pine Warrens area and the Blood Grove, taking the appearence of massive,white or black lion-like monsters with humanoid heads, spiky manes and a long tail tipped with massive blade-like spikes. Manticores corrupted by the Void or the Aether do appear in some areas.
• The first boss of Hero of Sparta II is a huge, fearsome Manticore, the size of a building who assaults you in am amphitheater. After a lengthy battle you kill it by shoving it's barbed tail into it's head.
• In The Legend of Dragoon, Manticores appears as common enemies as you climb the Tree of Life in the fourth act. They can attack either with their stinger tail (causing Poison) or get up close to your character and roar at him (causing Fear).
• Melfand Stories have a stage where you're flying on the back of a giant parrot and must battle a winged manticore while airborne.
• In Might and Magic series Manticores are common monsters.
  • In Enroth their origins are unknown, but in Ashan they are described as magically created beings, who mutated into what they are under the influence of dragon blood. They mostly look like lions with scorpion tail and bat wings, but in later depictions they get horns. Their stronger breed is called "Scorpicore".
  • In the very first game they rather inexplicably breath fire.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic III and VI has manticores and scorpicores as units of the Dungeon faction.
  • In HoMM V and VII, meanwhile, they appear as neutral units.
• The Mo' Creatures mod for Minecraft includes manticores among its many other creatures. They come in green and dark varieties by default and in snow and fire varieties in cold biomes and the Nether respectively. They're inherently hostile, but if killed will drop an egg that hatches into a tame manticore you can ride. Tame manticores and big cats will attack each other out of hand.
• Monster Hunter: The Manticore serves as the inspiration for the monsters Teostra and Lunastra, which debuted in Monster Hunter 2 (dos). Male and female versions of each other respectively, they have a leonine body (red for Teo, blue for Luna), Batlike wings, and a long tail, but with several differences; Scale-covered bodies, thicker tails, and horns on their heads. And they breathe fire.
• Monster Sanctuary: Manticorb is named after the manticore. It's a Waddling Head with tiger fur and a stinger in its tail.
• Odin Sphere has Manticores as the mini-boss of the Elrit Forest map. Aside from stinging the player with their scorpion-like tail, they can launch poisonous globs with it, and can extended their rows of teeth to bite the player. One trial stage in Leifthrasir has the player fight two of them at once.
• Outward: Manticores are just about the most dangerous thing you can encounter outside of a boss arena, thanks to a combination of fast reflexes, brute strength, and an incredibly potent venom. The Royal Manticore is even worse; it could easily give any boss a run for their money, but freely roams the countryside, waiting to eviscerate any unlucky travelers.
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown: One of the game's bosses is a giant manticore named Jahandar, which attacks with both the scorpion tail and its lion body.
• Scribblenauts: A manticore is among the many things that can be summoned in the game. Its design is rather simplified compared to manticores in other media, simply appearing as a red-eyed lion with dragon wings and a scorpion tail. However, its sharp, angular design is a noticable contrast to the more rounded features of "normal" lions in the game. In the later games in the series, adding adjectives allows the player to give a manticore whatever personality they desire.
• Slashout have a two-headed Manticore as it's first boss, having a leonine body and dragon-like wings as it swoops down a chapel's roof to chew at you. It doesn't have a barbed tail though, subverting the "Spinier" part.
• SMITE had manticores originally as NPC Training Dummies, however the developers made an April Fools' Day video about a playable manticore which garnered over 2 million views and the community turned it into a meme. In 2023 it reached Ascended Meme status as one of the new playable characters added that year is Martichoras, an Original Generation character made up by the developers who in the game's lore is the king of their species due to being the oldest and strongest. According to Word of God he's based on the original manticore which is first encountered and described by the Greek author Ctesias when he travelled to India.
• Titan Quest severely upgrades the Manticore and turns it into a superboss in a deep cavern in the Egyptian desert (on Normal difficulty you'll find just its skeleton). The Manticore here is a massive black lion with bat wings, a skull-like face and a spiked tail that shoots venomous darts. Its most dangerous feature is the electrical Breath Weapon which can obliterate the player if he doesn't get out of the way in time.
• Total War: Warhammer:
  • Manticores are ferocious, horned leonine monsters with bat wings and scorpion tails and found in the Chaos Wastes, which the mightiest champions of Chaos can, at great personal peril, attempt to capture and break into a war mount. They're available in this capacity as a mount for Hero Units of the Warriors of Chaos.
  • A Feral Manticore, by itself, is also a unit in the army roster of the Chaos Warriors, the Norscan Tribes, the Beastmen and the Dark Elves.
  • Hero Units who use the Lore of Beasts, including Beastman Bray-Shamans, Imperial Amber Wizards, Skink Priests and the treeman Durthu Oakheart, can learn a spell to summon a manticore in the middle of battle.
• Which Way Adventure has a manticore that pops out randomly to kill the player.
• Warcraft has monsters with lion head and body, bat wings and scorpion tail, obviously inspired by manticores... called wyverns.

Web Animation

• RWBY: While Manticore Grimm do have a scorpion tail and a mammalian body with four taloned paws, they also possess feathered wings. Their heads are bestial, almost dog-like, with large horns curving out of the foreheads like cattle. Instead of a mane, they posses a ruff of bone spikes that frame their heads like a drawn depiction of the rays of the sun. The ones that appear in "Argus Limited" hunt as a pack led by a Sphinx.

Web Comics

• Charby the Vampirate: Daray buys a manticore to ride since he's never gotten along with horses, she is very fluffy and red and makes trumpeting vocalizations. Kavonn considers her to be a ridiculous mount since she poses a danger to her rider and has a craving for human flesh.
• Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell: Skittles is a manticore, with a lion's body, a face with a mix of human and feline features, and a scorpion's stinger. Skittles has roughly human intelligence and interests, but as a 2000-year-old tween he is relatively immature.
• In El Goonish Shive, there is an Aberration described as a Scorpion Bull Centaur Vampire which, while lacking explicit lion aspects, does have a mane and a great deal of chest — all in all, it ends up looking like a manticore/centaur cross.
• Girl Genius: The Phlogiston-Powered Mantigoons, leonine machines with segmented tails tipped with powerful flamethrowers.
• Skin Deep: Manticores have lion-like bodies, bright red fur, poisonous tail darts (usually bandaged up or removed to avoid accidents), teeth that can bite through anything, and either humanlike or lionlike faces depending on the subspecies. They can also produce a great variety of sounds such as whistles, trumpeting, fluting and other musical noises, which they use in a language of their own know as Manticorsi. They are defined as monsters since they have no "natural" way to assume human form, but are no more or less civilized than anyone else; despite this, however, they are subject to a great deal of Fantastic Racism in the magical community. Ike Sanford is half-manticore-half-buggane.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Betelgeuse is a manticore with a feline body, draconic wings, ram horns, a scorpion tail, and a forked tongue. She's also so large that she never leaves her cave to avoid accidentally demolishing her village, and her usual form is that of a person.

Web Original

• Codex Inversus: The true manticores were torturers in Hell, punishing sinners through mockery and humiliation. Their modern descendants, the imperial manticores, live among the ruins of the Circles of Hell and retain the ability to induce shame and embarrassment through their laughter. They use this to throw prey off balance and goad it into either attacking their tormentor, at which point the manticore subdues it with its venomous claws and sting, or fleeing, which will lead it into an ambush prepared by the manticore's mate. Their venom is incredibly painful, as it induces both physical and mental anguish described as feeling like being doused in acid while reliving your worst memory.
• Lioden: Manticores are intelligent creatures with the bodies of lions, six horns, bat-like wings, and a scorpion tail. One of them, Nirah, is encountered during the October storyline. He’s not at all malicious, and when he’s battled while exploring he’s not much tougher than the regular lions who can be fought. Befriending him instead of siding with the armies of Heaven or Hell is the neutral option during the October storyline.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: A small manticore appears trapped in a jar by Magic Man. Finn frees it, but it later appears back in the jar, complaining that it has "some sort of hostage syndrome".
• Class of the Titans: The season 1 finale "Time After Time" features a manticore which looks like a big lion with red eyes, a bat's wings and a scorpion's tail. In an alternate present created by Cronus, Odie is killed by the beast.
• The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: A manticore appears in an episode where it saves Flapjack and K'nuckles when they are almost killed on one of their misadventures. Also counts as a Brick Joke, as Flapjack had initially imagined the manticore for a story he was telling K'nuckles.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Manticores are recurring creatures in the show's world. The first one is seen in the pilot, and it mostly serves as an Establishing Character Moment for Fluttershy who recreates the Androcles' Lion scene with the beast, foreshadowing that she is the Element of Kindness. Another one appears in "No Second Prances" as part of Trixie's magic act, with a slightly reworked design, including a small pair of horns. Since there aren't any humans in the setting, their faces are lion-like. They also have bat wings and scorpion tails, and may or may not have horns depending on the individual manticore. Overall, they usually serve the same roles which lions have in many works of fiction. Furthermore, supplementary material reveals they all have names starting with the letter "M" and possess some level of sapience despite their bestial appearance and behavior.
• Tangled: The Series features a creature known as a Sneezeweasel in "Goodbye and Goodwill". Despite its name, the Sneezeweasel is a lion-sized creature with a spiked tail that lives in the forests near Vardaros. It fits the traditional appearance of a manticore, and Lance and Hook Foot end up causing problems for Rapunzel and friends when they capture a Sneezeweasel, somehow mistaking it for a gopher.
• A manticore appears in one episode of Wishfart as a pet. It's a pretty standard-looking individual, but acts more like a giant dog than anything else.

Real Life

• It's thought that the idea of the manticore was derived at least partly from early encounters with tigers, with which the ancient Greeks would not have been familiar. They were, however, familiar with lions, which is why the manticore as traditionally envisioned has a lion's body.
• The so-called "manticore beetles" of the genus Manticora, which can grow more than two inches long and are capable of preying on scorpions and tarantulas, were named after the legendary manticore. They obviously don't prey on humans, but in some African cultures they are considered symbols of death.

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