Tropes about those (usually undead) people that suck your blood.
Also see Bloody Tropes, Undead Index, and Werebeast Tropes.
Tropes:
open/close all folders
General/miscellaneous tropes
Main trope:
Media index:
- Actually Not a Vampire: Someone who appears to be a vampire actually isn't a vampire.
- Creepy Cemetery: A haunted graveyard infested with vampires, and maybe other kinds of undead monsters as well.
- Fight Dracula: The story's premise is about the hero fighting Count Dracula himself.
- Flourish Cape in Front of Face: Classical Movie Vampires grab the hem of their capes and use their cape-holding arm to cover the lower portions of their faces.
- Fur Against Fang: Hostility between vampires and werewolves (or werebeasts in general).
- Hiss Before Fleeing: Vampires hiss and then run away when they are confronted.
- Immortality Immorality: Vampires can live eternally as long as they consume human blood, and they often don't care how many innocent people they have to kill and eat (or infect and turn) in order to indefinitely extend their lifespans.
- Living Forever Is Awesome: Many vampires hold this belief, which is also the main reason why some mortals wish to become vampires.
- Pivotal Wake-up: A vampire rises at a 90-degree angle when waking up.
- The Renfield: A vampire's loyal human henchman, often serving their master with shameless submissiveness.
- Undeath Always Ends: When even undead vampires can still die.
- Vampire Dance: Vampires are good at dancing.
- Vampire Detective Series: A story about a vampire who investigates crimes.
- Vampire Episode: A show has an episode devoted to the characters encountering vampires.
- Vampire Hunter: Someone who slays vampires.
- Vampires Are Rich: Vampires are portrayed as being wealthy (especially if compared to poorer werewolves). Bonus points if they're also feudal nobility, symbolizing the upper classes' parasitic relationship with the lower classes.
- Vampires Are Sex Gods: Vampires are stereotyped as being very sexually attractive and seductive.
- Vampires Own Night Clubs: A vampire runs a night club.
- Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Vampires are depicted as sleeping in coffins, to emphasize that they're undead corpses.
- Vampire Vords: Vampires pronounce W's as V's, usually with a stereotypical Eastern European accent.
- Vampire-Werewolf Love Triangle: Someone has a vampire and a werewolf competing for their affection.
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Innocent vampires who aren't even hurting anyone are murdered out of Fantastic Racism.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Self-hating vampires often find that eternal life/undeath actually sucks worse than being mortal.
- Your Vampires Suck: Vampires are unimpressed with how they are depicted in fiction.
Types of vampires
- Our Vampires Are Different: As you'll find reading through this index, vampires tend to be depicted very differently depending on what story you're looking at, and their abilities, appearances, behaviors, and overall nature are not always the same. The only thing consistent between (almost) all vampires is that they're predatory beings who feed on something from people.
- Chinese Vampire: An undead being from Chinese Mythology called the jiang shi, depicted as a hopping vampire/zombie that feeds on chi.
- Chupacabra: A monster from Latin American Urban Legends, believed to suck the blood of livestock animals, especially goats.
- Daywalking Vampire: Contrary to most depictions, some vampires may actually be immune to sunlight.
- Dhampyr: A vampire's half-human offspring.
- Demonic Vampires: Vampires are often depicted as unholy demonic beings, hence why holy sacred stuff like crucifixes are effective at deterring them.
- Feral Vampires: Savage, bestial vampires who behave more like stereotypical zombies rather than the more intelligent and sophisticated kind of undead monsters.
- Non-Human Undead: If humans and vampires coexist in a fantasy setting with plenty of other non-human races/species, then it's quite likely that some vampires were never born as humans to begin with.
- Raising the Steaks: Non-human animals can also be turned into vampires.
- Ridiculously Alive Undead: Even though vampires are typically described as being "living dead", they often don't look very corpse-like, and can probably pass for being fully alive in all but a few ways. And then in some stories, they're not even undead at all (see below).
- Technically-Living Vampire: There are occasionally some types of vampires who are not undead and are actually fully living beings, being more like a race of transhuman mutants, a Human Subspecies, or even another different species which was never human to begin with.
- Vampire Variety Pack: A work contains multiple different types of vampires or quasi-vampiric creatures.
- Vampiric Werewolf: A Hybrid Monster that is both a hematophage and a lycanthrope.
Specific vampire characters
- Alucard: Dracula spelled backwards, used as either the name of his son or as a Sdrawkcab Alias by the man himself.
- Blood Countess: Sometimes a female vampire who is always evil and dirty rich, and uses blood, sometimes not just to drink.
- Council of Vampires: A gathering of elite vampires who make important decisions for their community.
- Dracula: The titular vampire from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, who has appeared in many different adaptations and other works of fiction due to being a Public Domain Character.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: A vampire who isn't evil and just wants to live peacefully among regular people. Usually also a Vegetarian Vampire.
- Lesbian Vampire: Gay female bloodsucker.
- Monster Progenitor: The very first, original vampire who made all others.
- Religious Vampire: A vampire who practices a traditional religion. As it turns out, not all of them will necessarily fear a Christian cross.
- Romantic Vampire Boy: A male love interest who is a vampire.
- Vampire Doctor: A vampire who works in a profession which their own dietary needs and compulsions make extremely difficult and unexpected.
- Vampire Lolita Archetype: Vampires that take the form of short and young-looking girls with Elegant Gothic Lolita clothing.
- Vampire Monarch: The leader of a large group of vampires.
- Vampire's Harem: A male vampire has a group of lady vampires who he sleeps with.
Feeding habits and ethics
- Blood Bath: A vampire bathes in blood instead of orally consuming it.
- Bloodlust: Needless to say, they get very excited from spilling and feeding on blood.
- Breaking and Bloodsucking: Vampires break into bedrooms to attack women.
- Hemo Erotic: Sexual foreplay involving vampires feeding on blood.
- Horror Hunger: A person starts to feel intense cravings for blood after being turned into a vampire. How well they're able to resist these urges can vary.
- Kiss of the Vampire: Someone gets bitten by a vampire and enjoys it.
- Life Drinker: A vampiric being who maintains their immortality by consuming some vital force from their victims other than blood (typically some sort of mystical Life Energy).
- Literal Maneater: Sexually attractive vampires (of either gender) will often exploit their beauty and seduction skills to lure oblivious human prey to their doom.
- No Zombie Cannibals: Vampires usually don't feed on another vampire's blood, though depending on the story, there may be some exceptions to this rule.
- Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: The classes of vampires that range from benevolent to malevolent.
- Spiked Blood: A vampire gets high if they feed on the blood of a drug user.
- Vampire Bites Suck: Having your neck pierced with fangs and your blood drained gets downright ugly.
- Vampire Hickey: Vampire victims are left with a pair of neat puncture marks from the bite.
- Vampiric Draining: Sucking blood or draining life in a vampiric fashion.
- Vegetarian Vampire: A Friendly Neighborhood Vampire abstains from feeding on human blood, or at least avoids drinking blood using methods that require killing or turning people.
- Voluntary Vampire Victim: Someone willingly lets a vampire feed on them.
- Warm Bloodbags Are Everywhere: A vampire tries to live among humans while resisting the urge to feed on their blood.
Becoming a vampire (or reversing vampirism)
- Fully-Embraced Fiend: Someone turned into a vampire decides to embrace their transformation rather than fight it.
- I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Someone turned by a vampire despises the vampire who bit them for turning them into a vampire.
- I Love You, Vampire Son: A vampire turned someone into one of their own out of love.
- Stages of Monster Grief: The five stages of grief as applied to when the misfortune is being turned into a vampire.
- Staking the Loved One: Someone's loved one becomes a vampire, and the one not turned has no choice but to kill the one who's been vampirized.
- Tragic Monster: Heroic and/or sympathetic vampires usually aren't very fond of their conditions.
- Transhuman Treachery: Someone who has been recently turned into a vampire betrays their human brethren, especially if it's because vampires are Always Chaotic Evil.
- Turning Back Human: A common goal for people who've been involuntarily vampirized and don't want to stay this way.
- Vampire Procreation Limit: An explanation is given for how vampires don't outnumber the human population if they can turn humans into vampires as well as reproduce like most living beings do.
- Vampire Refugee: Someone turned by a vampire decides to find and kill the vampire that bit them to reverse the transformation.
- Vampire Vannabe: A normal human who wants to become a vampire. They will often beg or even suck up to the nearest vampire in hopes of getting bitten.
- Viral Transformation: Being bitten by a vampire turns you into a vampire.
- The Virus: Vampirism can be spread like an infectious disease, and physically transforms humans into vampires.
- Virus-Victim Symptoms: Someone recently infected with vampirism starts to show some suspicious changes.
- Zombie Apocalypse: This can happen if vampirism spreads until most people around the world have been killed and/or turned, leaving uninfected humans as a small minority in a world that's (literally) out for their blood.
- Zombie Infectee: Someone tries to hide the fact that they were bitten by a vampire. This is unlikely to end well.
- Zombify the Living: Living people are directly turned into (undead) vampires without having them die and rise from their graves first.
Physical appearance and telltale traits
- Absurdly Sharp Claws: Their nails may be sharp enough to be weaponized.
- Bat People: Vampires may be portrayed as being bat-like humanoid creatures, or at least have the ability to change themselves into bats.
- Casts No Shadow: Vampires may sometimes lack shadows. May be related to them also not appearing in mirrors (see below).
- Classical Movie Vampire: Vampires have widow's peaks and wear nice suits with capes. Typically a homage to Bela Lugosi's portrayal of the Count in Dracula (1931).
- Cute Little Fangs: Vampires with a pair of small fangs to make them look more adorable than frightening.
- Fangs Are Evil: Vampires almost always have sharp, pointy teeth (usually at least their upper canines) for drawing out blood.
- Fang Thpeak: A speech impediment caused by having fangs.
- Femme Fatalons: Vampires sometimes have long, claw-like fingernails.
- Frozen Fashion Sense: Vampires don't update their wardrobe with the passage of time.
- Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: Vampires with glowing eyes to underscore their undead state.
- Inhumanly Beautiful Race: Vampires often possess beauty far beyond average human standards, which is helped by looking eternally young.
- Looks Like Orlok: But not all vampires are pretty or sexy. Some of them more resemble Count Orlok from Nosferatu (i.e., being bald, having pointy ears, ghoulish eyes, beastly fangs, along with other hideously inhuman features).
- The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Noticing that someone lacks a reflection can give away that they are really a vampire.
- Missing Reflection: Vampires often do not reflect any image in mirrors. Sometimes extends to not appearing in photos, films or videos as well.
- Pointy Ears: Vampires commonly have elfin ears.
- Really 700 Years Old: It's quite common for older vampires to look far younger than they really are.
- Tainted Veins: Black veins are a common symptom of vampirism.
- Undead Barefooter: Vampires who either don't have or don't wear shoes.
- Undeathly Pallor: Vampires usually have very pale greyish-white skin, to emphasize their undead state (and/or their aversion to sunlight).
Common powers and abilities
- The Ageless: Vampires who will never die of old age but can still be killed through other means.
- Animorphism: Vampires commonly turn into bats (or other nocturnal animals, such as wolves).
- Barrage of Bats: Due to their dark powers and afilliation to darkness, vampires are able to control swarms of bats, and even conjure them.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Vampires are often able to exert partial or complete control over people they've turned into vampires, brainwashing them into obedient Slave Mooks who lack their own free will or human personalities.
- Cross-Melting Aura: Some vampires are powerful and evil enough to repel or destroy holy weapons.
- Healing Factor: Vampires are often capable of rapidly regenerating from most injuries, aside from those caused by their specific weaknesses.
- Heal It with Blood: Healing by consuming, absorbing, or transfusing blood.
- Hypnotic Eyes: Vampires may hypnotize uninfected humans by looking into their eyes, putting them into a trance which makes them suggestible to following commands. Very convenient for biting them without resistance or turning them into completely human slaves.
- Immortality: Vampires are commonly portrayed as being able to live forever, unless someone exploits one of the vampire's weaknesses to kill them.
- Innate Night Vision: Vampires can often see well in darkness due to being nocturnal predators.
- Long-Lived: If vampires aren't outright immortal, then they're usually this, with finite lifespans that last for centuries (or millennia), while aging much more slowly than normal humans do.
- The Nose Knows: Their keen sense of smell is very useful for finding the scent of blood.
- One to Million to One: Transforming into a swarm of animals then reforming from that swarm.
- The Power of Blood: Blood can fuel a vampire's powers in addition to keeping them nourished.
- Stronger with Age: The older the vampire, the stronger they are.
- Super-Hearing: Vampires can often detect sounds from farther distances.
- Super-Senses: Vampires often have superior senses of hearing, sight, and smell for detecting their prey.
- Super Smoke: Vampires can sometimes turn into smoke or mist.
- Super-Speed: Vampires tend to be much faster than normal people.
- Super-Strength: Vampires can often easily overpower an ordinary man in a fistfight.
- Super-Toughness: Vampires are usually much more durable and resilient to physical harm than normal people, often at least being Immune to Bullets if not outright Nigh-Invulnerable. Fortunately, they also usually have more than one Achilles' Heel, Kryptonite Factor, or Weaksauce Weakness (see the last folder below).
- Vein-o-Vision: Vampires may be able to see into humans' circulatory systems.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Vampires are often able to transform their bodies at will.
Common weaknesses and vulnerabilities
- Attack on the Heart: Even for the most Nigh-Invulnerable types of vampires, their heart is usually the weakest and most vulnerable area.
- Beat It by Compulsion: Vampires are defeated or delayed by manipulating their inability to move on without doing something specific (such as counting certain objects).
- Burn the Undead: When in doubt, fire is very effective at destroying vampires or kinds of living dead. Even sunlight (see below) can cause them to suddenly burst into flames.
- Cannot Cross Running Water: Vampires can't move across bodies of running water.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: If you want to defend against a vampire by using a holy book/object/symbol, then you better have genuine faith and sincerely pray to your god. Sometimes inverted, with the vampire's own religious beliefs being used against them.
- Holy Burns Evil: Sacred religious objects can harm or repel vampires, usually because of their demonic nature.
- Holy Water: Water that has been divinely blessed will burn their flesh like a corrosive acid.
- Improvised Cross: You can fend off a vampire just by forming a Christian cross with two sticks.
- Must Be Invited: Vampires may not be able to enter your home unless you invite them inside.
- Off with His Head!: Decapitation at the neck may be an effective way to kill them too.
- Silver Bullet: This weakness is more commonly associated with werewolves, but in some stories you can harm vampires by attacking them with weapons made from silver.
- Suicide by Sunlight: A vampire takes their own life by deliberately exposing themselves to sunlight.
- Vampires Hate Garlic: Vampires are repulsed by the smell and taste of garlic, and it can be used to keep them away from you. If you trick them into eating garlic, it will likely poison them.
- Weakened by the Light: Sunlight tends to be harmful to (most) vampires. It often causes them to be instantly incinerated into ashes; or at least just gives them painful yet non-lethal sunburns, or merely weakens their powers at best.
- Wooden Stake: Stabbing or impaling vampires through their heart with a sharp, pointy wooden stick is the classic method for killing them.
