Basic Trope: Calling a fictional creature by another fictional creature's name.
- Straight: Alice calls Danny a "pegasus" when he is really a hippogriff.
- Exaggerated: Alice thinks Danny is a pegasus when he's really a troll.
- Downplayed: Alice sees a hippogriff called Danny and says "What's that? A griffin?"
- Justified:
- Alice doesn't know what hippogriffs are called, so she calls Danny by the first winged mythical animal she can think of.
- In this setting, mythical creatures can vary significantly from their usual portrayals, and Alice is Wrong Genre Savvy.
- Alice couldn't see Danny that closely, and the two species she was thinking of were similar enough to get confused for each other.
- Subverted:
- Bob corrects her. "That's a hippogriff, Alice." "Oh."
- Alice calling the pegassus Danny a hippogriff wasn't recognizing an existing mythical concept (she lacks the background) but naming one based on shared linguistics. Alice was working backwards from etymology rederiving the common name. She mistook thought pegasus wings resembled a bird of prey and recognized the horse body - essentially saying "bird of prey-horse". Meanwhile pegassus's etymology is derived from either spring or well associated with the myth or lightning which leaves her utterly puzzled at the apparent nonsequitor - the creature has nothing to do with lightning and no more relationship to springs than any other animal.
- While at first it seemed like Alice was mistaking a hippogriff for a pegasus, she was actually calling him by name.
- Double Subverted: Turns out Bob was joking- he also thinks Danny is a pegasus.
- Parodied: Danny can talk, and he's very offended at being mistaken for a pegasus.
- Zig Zagged: Alice can't remember Danny's species so she zigzags between calling him by his real species name, other magic creatures' names, and normal animal names.
- Averted: Alice calls Danny a hippogriff.
- Enforced: It's a Harry Potter fanfiction and they want to make Alice offend a hippogriff to show non-familiars that they are easily offended.
- Lampshaded: "That's not a pegasus."
- Invoked: Bob switches the labels of the pegasus and hippogriff cages.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice does a lot of research on magical creatures.
- Discussed: "I can't tell the difference between all these magical creatures."
- Conversed: "Can't these characters tell that's a hippogriff, not a pegasus!"
- Implied: Danny eats out of a bowl marked "PEGASUS", and with an offended expression to boot.
- Played for Drama: Alice is in a situation where calling magical creatures by their proper names could mean the difference between life and death.
- Played For Laughs: Alice calls a Nemean Lion Cerberus. The lion is so emotionally hurt at mistaken for a mutant hell-spawned canine that Alice can pass by. Later the poor lion is seen later seen bawling in therapy.
Back to Call a Pegasus a "Hippogriff"
