Hippogriff in popular culture



Hippogriffs feature in many works of popular culture:

"HIPPOGRIFF, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.  The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.  The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold.  The study of zoology is full of surprises."
 * Don Quixote, in which the title character's horse Rocinante is said to be faster than Astolfo's hippogriff.
 * Agesilan of Colchos, a sequel to Amadis of Gaul, published in the 1530s.
 * Ambrose Bierce's satiric "The Devil's Dictionary" (1911; before "The Cynic's Word Book", 1906):
 * Eric Rücker Eddison's 1922 novel The Worm Ouroboros.
 * Many role-playing games . In the Eberron campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons, the hippogriff is the heraldic beast of the dragonmarked House Vadalis.
 * Various books of Piers Anthony's Xanth series, most notably Xap Hippogriff.
 * In the Digimon Frontier movie HippoGryphomon is the leader of the beast Digimon.
 * The Super Nintendo video game Demon's Crest, which has a winged miniboss referred to as a hippogriff.
 * The PC game series Warcraft, as a flying combat unit of the Night Elves in Warcraft III and as player transportation in World of Warcraft
 * The MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, roaming in areas added in the Chains of Promathia and Wings of the Goddess expansions.
 * The Harry Potter series, particularly a hippogriff named Buckbeak [aka Witherwings] that is owned by Hagrid and Sirius Black and befriends Harry. Hagrid explains that hippogriffs are very calm, powerful giants, but are touchy creatures and demand respect. One must bow and keep eye contact before approaching. The film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire features Jarvis Cocker singing a song called "Do the Hippogriff".
 * The video game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Sony PlayStation, which has a hippogriff as a boss.
 * The Lake George Monster hoax.
 * Warhammer Fantasy Battles, as a monstrous mount available to the army of Bretonnia.
 * The Magic City (novel), by Edith Nesbit in which the two main characters ride around on hippogriff
 * Heraldry, in which the hippogriff figures (rarely) as a charge.
 * The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, in the chapter "Mahound"
 * Mentioned in Herman Melville's Moby Dick in Chapter LV, "Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales" (courtesy of Ben Jones).
 * In the video game Suikoden II, hippogriffs sometimes appear as enemies in random battles while in Rockaxe Castle.
 * In the Circe chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses, the apparition of Leopold Bloom's grandfather likens a woman's exhibitionism to a Hippogriff's prideful strutting.
 * In the comic book series Sandman by Neil Gaiman, one of the three gatekeepers of the Lord Dreams domain is a Hippogriff.