On the Origin of D&D Species

[Yora]

Every so often, I come upon an old work of fantasy, or even science-fiction, and realize there's a creature I've seen in a Monster Manual somewhere.
Please share all the cases you know or find about D&D creatures taken from other sources.

The Monster Toys: A well known story about early D&D monsters is that there was a bunch of them which were visually based on some cheap monster toys and given a description regarding their abilities and behavior. These include the carrion crawler, bulette, owlbear, and rust monster.

Grimlocks are a pretty straight conversion of morlocks from The Time Machine (1895)

Thri-kreen are the Green Martians from A Princess of Mars (1917). They are not clearly insectoid in the book, but otherwise it matches. Tall, green, four arms, big eyes, large tusks/manidibles, living semi-nomadic in the wilderness of a desert planet.

Girallons are White Apes, also from A Princess of Mars. Huge white gorillas with four arms. Perfect match.

Yuan-ti are the Serpent Men from the stories of Kull (The Shadow Kingdom, 1929). Humanoids with snake heads, magic powers, and the ability to disguise themselves as humans, and they worship the Great Serpent and Set.

Kuo-toa are very similar to Deep Ones from The Shadow over Innsmouth (1931), though with a few additional traits.

The Gibbering Mouther is a downscaled Shoggoth from At the Mountains of Madness (1931).

Displacer Beasts are from Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950), as the Ceurl. (Final Fantasy still calls them that.)

The Xill is the Ixtl from the same book.

The Lich is based on a specific character from slavic stories, Koschei the Deathless. A powerful immortal wizard of incredible age, who is more corpse than living man, who has become immortal by hiding away his soul in a special box in a remote and secret place.

[Eldan]

There's a very useful list here.

[Yora]

There are indeed a few more which are not only from mythology, but specific literary creations:

The Orc of D&D is a straight copy of the Orc from The Hobbit (1937).

Same could probably go for the giant talking Eagles.

And certainly for Worgs, which are just a slightly altered spelling of Wargs.

Purple Worms seem to be very closely connected to Dholes from The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927).

[Red Bear]

There's a very useful list here.

Wow, very interesting link. Thank you for sharing

[Extra Anchovies]

Thri-kreen are the Green Martians from A Princess of Mars (1917). They are not clearly insectoid in the book, but otherwise it matches. Tall, green, four arms, big eyes, large tusks/manidibles, living semi-nomadic in the wilderness of a desert planet.

Girallons are White Apes, also from A Princess of Mars. Huge white gorillas with four arms. Perfect match.

Wow. I'd caught the White Ape link, but I'd never noticed the Thri-Kreen <--> Thark connection before. Even their names sound similar...

Gotta be sure to never leave one of those guys with his head and one hand...

[hamishspence]

I thought they were similar - but more different from Tharks than Girallons from white apes. Tharks are about twice the height of humans for one thing, whereas thri-keens are much closer to human height.

[Yora]

They are not the same. But the similarities are so great that thri-kreen are clearly based directly on the Tharks.

Though Dark Sun wasn't the first to generously take things from the Mars series. That would have been Star Wars.

[hamishspence]

I thought Star Wars drew more from the Dune series?

[GungHo]

I thought Star Wars drew more from the Dune series?

A lot of it's from Lensman, Kirby's New Gods, Flash Gordon, and a bunch of other stuff. Lucas was the BASF of space opera.

[Yora]

Not too familiar with Dune, but I can't think of any element there that I connect directly to Star Wars.

Princess of Mars seems to have the original ideas for Sand People (Tharks, again, who also build their own rifles), Banthas (their pack animals), swordfights in a space setting, a human hero who can make huge jumps, a space-princess who gets captured by villains, but isn't intimidated by the super scary warlord (and gets dressed like a Red Martian princess in the third movie); speederbikes (in freaking 1917!), fleets of battleships fighting in the sky and getting boarded, ... And there are the Jeds and the Padwars (though in that world, the words mean chief and lieutenant)
And probably some more I can't think of right now.

[Eldan]

Yeah. Honestly, one can point at Princess of Mars for about half of the general plot, setting and setpiece ideas of any fantasy or science fiction of the 20th century. It's also one of the very few older pieces of fiction that I still find quite entertaining and well-paced today.

Edit: multiple sentient non-human species living in the same setting, each with their own society, instead of being monsters.

For words: Sith, Bantha, Jed.

PPS: there's also apparently an early draft where General Skywalker must win the trust of the barbaric Wookie nomads by defeating their chieftain in combat after they take him prisoner.

[hamishspence]

Not too familiar with Dune, but I can't think of any element there that I connect directly to Star Wars.

Spice mines.

Banthas (their pack animals), .

"Banth" rather than bantha - it's not a pack animal, but a "Barsoomian lion".

[Talyn]

Mind Flayers borrow heavily from Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, especially in their giant, telepathic elder brains. Obviously, there are strong Lovecraftian influences as well.

[Belkarseviltwin]

The ELH Hagunemnon comes from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series.

[Yora]

The Frost Worm is the same as the Remora from the story The Lair of the Ice Worm.

I am not quite sure which story it originated in, but the Conan RPG has a creature called Foaming Blasphemy which is identical to the Chaos Beast. And as far as I know, all monsters of that game are taken from Conan stories, not taken from other games.

I am not sure if they were ever in a D&D book, but the Zuvembie from Pathfinder is from Robert Howards "Pigeons from Hell".

[Talyn]

The Frost Worm is the same as the Remora from the story The Lair of the Ice Worm.

I haven't read that one, but I can't help but surmise that the Remorhaz is also based on that monster.

[Illogictree]

In addition to the obvious Tolkien inspiration, the name Balor actually comes from Celtic mythology. Balor was a warlike Fomorian chieftain with an 'evil eye' that could wreak destruction when it was opened; at one point he wipes out an entire army with it. Perhaps this is the inspiration for the D&D Balor's ability to cast blasphemy?

[SiuiS]

Darn, I was hoping that I could find some greater origin for rust monsters than "toy". Like, where did the toy come from?!

[Eldan]

A packet of Chinese plastic "Dinosaur" that Gygax bought somewhere, apparently. Given that therew as a rustmonster and owlbear in there, someone really had no idea what a Dinosaur was.

[daremetoidareyo]

And then there are the creatures specifically designed by teenage DM minds to trick hack'n'slashers. Cloakers, piercers, lurker above, trappers, mimics, lock lurkers, etc. Cheesy trickery.

[SiuiS]

A packet of Chinese plastic "Dinosaur" that Gygax bought somewhere, apparently. Given that therew as a rustmonster and owlbear in there, someone really had no idea what a Dinosaur was.

Oh, I know. I had those as a kid. I just always wondered why rust monsters were in there. The answer – they just are – is unsatisfying.

[Yora]

I haven't read that one, but I can't help but surmise that the Remorhaz is also based on that monster.

Apart from being somewhat worm-shapes and living in cold environments, those two have very little in common. The frost worm has a cold breath, hypnotic voice, and causes devastation when it dies, which matches the creature from the story. The remorhaz has none of those, but instead is glowing hot and burns anyone who touches it and can melt weapons that hit it. Seems like a very different creature.

[Serpentine]

The Tarrasque is taken straight from real-world legend. It's named after a French town, where a dragon with a lion's head, a turtle's carapace, and big claws and tail turned up and flooded the place, ate people, the usual. A girl, a saint, tamed it and took it peacefully back to the town, where it was promptly dismembered by the townspeople.

[Jeff the Green]

Barghests, shadow mastiffs, and yeth hounds come from the black dogs of Celtic origin.

Lemures were the vengeful dead in Roman myth.

Dire animals are analogies to the real dire wolf, which lived in North America during the Pleistocene. It actually wasn't larger than an average wolf, merely more robust.

Elementals were creatures supposed to exist by the alchemist Paracelsus. Specifically, they were gnomes (earth), sylphs (air), salamanders (fire), and undines (water). All except undines were statted as separate creatures.

Etins are the English cognate to the Norse Jotuns (giants). The Red Ettin was a fairy tail in which the eponymous character had three heads. Specifically having two heads may derive from C.S. Lewis's Narnia.

Annis hags comes directly from the English Black Annis (or Agnes).

Hippogriffs were originally metaphors for something impossible—griffins like to eat horses, not mate with them.

Scorpionfolk were offspring of the Babylonian Tiamat.

Vargouilles almost certainly come from the Malaysian penanggalan.

Giant insects come from pulp films of the '50s and '60s, particularly ones like Ray Harryhausen made.

[Serpentine]

Oh, Redcaps! They're some nasty old fey.

[Eldan]

Lemures were the vengeful dead in Roman myth.

One should also mention that a good chunk the entire infernal and abyssal nobility comes from medieval books of demonology like the Lesser key of Salomon and the Pseudomonarchia Daemonorum. Or at least their names do. Allocer, Amon, Asmodeus, Berith, Glasya are from The Goetia, as an example. Demogorgon is around there, too. And pretty much every Vestige in the Tome of Magic comes from those books, too.

[Jeff the Green]

One should also mention that a good chunk the entire infernal and abyssal nobility comes from medieval books of demonology like the Lesser key of Salomon and the Pseudomonarchia Daemonorum. Or at least their names do. Allocer, Amon, Asmodeus, Berith, Glasya are from The Goetia, as an example. Demogorgon is around there, too. And pretty much every Vestige in the Tome of Magic comes from those books, too.

Various other ones come from older sources.
Archon means "ruler" and comes to D&D as a group of "angels" who rule the material world as tyrants and impede human enlightenment.
Dispater comes from Dis Pater, a Roman equivalent of the Greek Plouton/Hades.
Mammon literally means "wealth" and was used as the personification of such.
Belial means "worthless" and was used to mean wicked people and eventually devils.
Baalzebul roughly means "King of Heaven", but gained its association with flies and evil by the insulting twist baalzebub, "Lord of Flies".
Mephistopheles is from Faust.
Abraxas is a mystic word, concept, or possibly archon. Possibly the origin of abrakadabra.
Ahrimanes comes from ahriman, an alternative version of angra mainyu of Persian religion.
Azael is a truncation of Azazael, a variant of Azazel (who is a separate demon lord), which means "scapegoat" and was sometimes used to refer to demons.
Baphomet is the fictional demon the Knights Templar were alleged to have worshiped. Possibly a corruption of "Mahomet", the Medieval French spelling of "Muhammad".
Baltazo comes from Balthazar, which is just a name derived from Phoenician but still used (and rightly so, as it is awesome) and I can't figure out where it became associated with demons (or in some media angels).
Bechard is another one that's just a name (in this case a French surname).
Dagon was originally a god but then was turned into a sea monster worshipped as a god by Lovecraft. The fish thing may be a mistranslation.
Demogorgon was supposed to be a demon/Greek god but was apparently made up from whole cloth. The name doesn't really mean anything and was chosen mostly because it sounds evil.

I can continue the list later.

Edit:
Some more:

Eblis is from Iblis, the Arabic name of the devil.
Lamashtu is a Sumerian demon who particularly harmed women during childbirth and babies, gnawing on bones and sucking blood.
Pazuzu was a Babylonian demon of wind. He was a horrible portmanteau of a beast: had a head of a lion or a dog, talons of an eagle, two pairs of wings, a scorpion tail, and a snake for genitals. (Yes, I typed that correctly. Not "genitals of a snake", which would be disturbing enough. Like he had a snake hanging about down there.)
Zzyczesiya comes from someone sitting on their keyboard.
Mariliths are almost certainly inspired by Indian mythology, where demons (and gods) often have multiple arms and/or animal body parts).
Oozes are probably a combination of slimemolds and unicellular organisms.
Father Llymic is the Welsh name for Santa Claus.*
Dendar the Night Serpent is obviously Apep of Egyptian myth.
Kyuss and the Worm that Walks are from Lovecraft:

Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.

*This may not, strictly speaking, be true. I wish it were, though.

[Yora]

Since we're going into mythology:

Naga: Are a race of human-serpents, that are depicted both with human arms and heads, entirely as snakes, or as giant snakes with many heads. They can be evil, but generally seem to show up most commonly as benevolent river spirits with control over weather.
Rakshasa: A race of demon-like monsters from India.
Deva: A benign race of celestial spirits from India, often quite comparable to angels. The name has the same ancient origin as "divine", "deus", and probably even Vanir, one of the two races of Germanic gods.
Asura: The counterparts of the Devas, though not necessarily evil, but with a tendency to chaos. Probably the same origin as Aesir, the dominant race of Germanic gods.
Ogre Mage: Japanese monsters known as Oni. While the word oni is often translated as demon, the specific kind of oni that is the template for the ogre mage is more like a kind of troll. Like most creatures from Japanese mythology, it has many magical powers.
Kappa: A Japanese river spirit. Similar to a man-like turtle, it carries some of the river water in a dent on its head, so it can move outside of its river. Can be defeated by spilling the water, but it's difficult, as they are excelent sumo wrestlers for just that reason. They are said to hide in rivers to drown children who are not careful.
Nymph: A cetegory of nature spirits from Greece that appear in the form of human women. Specific classes of nymphs are Dryads, Nayads, Oreads, and others.
Bunyip: A river monster from Australia. Descriptions tend towards something like a big seal or otter.
Ki-Rin: Basically a chinese unicorn.

[Serpentine]

Wait, there's a bunyip in D&D? Neato!

[hamishspence]

I would guess that the bunyip's in 2nd ed - I haven't seen one in any WOTC 3e-4e book (maybe Dragon Magazine or Dungeon had them).