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Little Red Howling Wolf - TV Tropes

  • ️Mon Feb 17 2025

Little Red Riding Hood remains an iconic folklore character, which naturally means that new versions of her shows up in a lot of adaptations where the writer wants her to be more badass for some classic female empowerment. And since her story features an equally iconic Animal Motif, it's become common to combine the two and make her a werewolf, or at least some other kind of vaguely wolfy monster.

This concept is most common in versions of Little Red Riding Hood's story where she's a teenager or adult, usually because the work is presented as a sequel, or for general practical considerations like the troubles of working with child actors. Sometimes, it's simply because transforming can give her some Clothing Damage, and the work is aiming for Hotter and Sexier. Works that do explore a preteen Red with this trope often feature a Hard Truth Aesop about the loss of innocence and how much Growing Up Sucks.

Occasionally, this trope is implemented backwards, with a werewolf using the imagery of the story, often intentionally. This version is especially common in modern settings where Little Red Riding Hood is a character in-universe, not a real person.

Often in these stories, The Big Bad Wolf is also a werewolf himself, and usually the one who infects Little Red. If any other characters are revealed to be werewolves, expect it to be Grandmother — the Huntsman is almost never given the wolfy treatment.

Sub-Trope of Little Red Fighting Hood, and a common feature of the Fractured Fairy Tale. Often goes hand in hand with Grimmification. See also Red Riding Hood Replica and Our Werewolves Are Different. This often overlaps with Composite Character.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga 

  • Queen's Blade Grimoire: The characters are re-imagined fairy tale characters. One of them is Zara, who is based on Red Riding Hood. She and her grandmother were eaten by the Big Bad Wolf but she survived thanks to her Healing Factor. And because of that she was able to turn the wolf into her own Familiar.

Comic Books 

  • Grimm Fairy Tales: Brittney Walters, codename Agent Red, is the stand-in for Red Riding Hood with the power to telepathically link with wolves and other animals, having unlocked it after a battle with a vicious werewolf. However, a scratch left by the monster turned her into a werewolf as well, which she has trouble controlling at first.

Fan Works 

  • Once Upon a Time: The Reboot: In season 1, episode 4, "Red Handed", a string of wolf killings happens in the nearby village just as exiled princess Snow White takes shelter with Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. Soon, with Snow's erroneous intervention, who wears Red's red cloak to trick the old woman, Red turns into a werewolf and kills her boyfriend Ezekiel.
  • Pretty much as soon as RWBY introduced the Hound, fan works sprung up about red-hooded protagonist Ruby Rose being turned into a hound herself, enough to have dedicated tag on Archive of Our Own.

Films — Live-Action 

  • In The Company of Wolves, an adaptation of Angela Carter's stories, Rosaleen, a version of Little Red Riding Hood ends up in a relationship with a werewolf composite of The Big Bad Wolf and the Huntsman, and becomes a wolf herself.
  • Trick 'r Treat: One of the film's protagonists is a young woman named Laurie, who wears a Little Red Riding Hood Costume and is later revealed to be werewolf at the climax of her storyline. As it turns out, her sister and their friends are also werewolves and conversations indicate that they are and have been werewolves all their lives, such as her sister referring to her as "the runt of the litter". They also inform Laurie that the Little Red Riding Hood costume is "traditional" for "losing her virginity" (which in the case of the film seems to be a metaphor the werewolves use for their first kill).

Literature 

  • Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms: Beauty And The Werewolf: Bella is like Little Red Riding Hood because she goes to meet a Granny and gets attacked by a wolf, but then it segues into Beauty and the Beast since she's locked in a castle with a prince due to concerns that she contracted lycanthropy from her wolf, now werewolf, attack.

Live-Action TV 

  • The 10th Kingdom: Downplayed and All There in the Manual — The DVD extras indicate that half-wolf Wolf is a descendant of Queen Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.
  • Kamen Rider Den-O has a downplayed example of merging the motifs of Red and the Wolf together, as the Wolf Imagin Monster of the Week has a red hood and cape in reference to the story (all Imagin have joint animal/fairy tale themes).
  • Once Upon a Time: This is the twist on its adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood: in episode 15, "Red-Handed", in the flashback, Red Riding Hood is revealed to be a werewolf whose signature red cloak is magical and prevents her from transforming. Granny also reveals she was a werewolf, bitten in her childhood, but lost her ability to shapeshift as she grew old.

Music 

Tabletop Games 

  • Magic: The Gathering: Innistrad, a plane based on Gothic Horror, is covered in dark forests teeming with, among other things, werewolves, many of which are based on specific wolf and werewolf stories. While not explicitly named as such, "Scorned Villager", which depicts a red-hooded and -caped young woman in its human face, is visually inspired by the Red Riding Hood story.
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse: The villain Grimm enthralls heroes into acting out the roles of fairy tale characters. One of his cards◊ shows the werewolf hero Alpha as Little Red Riding Hood (while fellow hero Scholar has the role and attributes of the wolf from the story).

    Rambler: I may be misrememberin', but this ain't the way the story goes...

Toys 

  • Ever After High features a downplayed version of this trope in Cerise Hood, the daughter of Little Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf (who in this version is a very wolfy person and not an actual animal). She has fuzzy, wolflike ears and some animalistic traits, but never actually transforms.
  • Monster High had a fairy tale themed line, "Scarily Ever After". Clawdeen Wolf, the franchise's main werewolf, donned a leopard print cloak and became "Little Dead Riding Wolf".

Video Games 

  • Cassette Beasts: Littlered is a monster based on Little Red Riding Hood that has a friendly and civil personality, but an inner bloodthirsty beast. One of its remasters is Scarleteeth, an anthropomorphic wolf that wears a shredded, red cloak.
  • Fire Emblem Fates: Velouria is dressed in a red hood, has a personal skill called Goody Basket, and is a Wolfskin, a member of a tribe who have wolf ears and tails and can transform into humanoid wolves using magical stones.
  • Grimms Notes: When it is revealed that the character Red Riding Hood is actually evil, she turns into a tall Wolf Woman called Little Red Wolf.
  • Moshi Monsters features a Moshling named Randall the Little Red Riding Wolf. The full moon would turn these wolf-like Moshlings into red-hooded little girls, instead of the opposite.
  • Overlord: Dark Legend: At one point in the game, Lord Gromgard goes into the woods from Meadowsweet to deal with a wolf. While there, he meets a little girl in a red hood who asks him to accompany her to her grandmother's house. When they get there, the girl is revealed to be a Wolf Queen who assumed the form of a little girl to lure him there to kill him. She did this to avenge her children... the wolves Lord Gromgard killed earlier.
  • Ravenswatch is an Action RPG Roguelike based on Fractured Fairy Tale characters. One of the playable heroes is Little Red, here named Scarlett, who's an ordinary young woman during the day and a hulking, bipedal wolf monster at night.
  • SINoALICE: While some of her other classes have wolf design motifs, Red Riding Hood's Act of Authors class has her sport a real wolf-like pair of ears and tail with her arms and legs becoming furred and clawed.
  • Toys Vs Nightmares: One of the enemies, the Big Bad Wolf, is a wolf monster who wears Little Red Riding Hood's iconic hood in addition to sharing his name with the fairy tale's character. The level in which he's introduced is also named "Red Riding Wolf."
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: In one sidequest, Geralt gets caught up in a conflict between a villager and a bandit clan led by a female bandit named Little Red. If Geralt chooses to protect the village, Red will transform into a werewolf in order to do battle with him.

Web Animation 

  • Nijisanji: One of the former members of Nijisanji and musical unit "Rain Drops" was Warabeda Meiji, an 11 year old whose clothing bring to mind the titular Red Hood, while also doubling as a Cute Monster Girl with her beastly elements from the Big Bad Wolf; she's got the unkempt and bushy tail, the wolf ears blending into her hair that also shapes her hood, and the big paws that act as removable gloves.

Web Videos 

  • Dimension 20: One of the player characters for the Neverafter campaign is Red herself, here named Ylfa Snorgelsson, who appears to have been turned into a werewolf after the events of her original story. The truth is much more complicated.
  • Pop Cross Studios: In What if FAIRY TALES Were LEGENDARY WARRIORS?!, the story of Lilith the Red, the supposed 'true' version of the tale. Lilith was a warrior who grew up on an island plagued by cursed dire wolves who turned those they bit but did not kill into werewolves. Because of this, most of the villagers refused to even go into the forests where the wolves lived, except for Lilith's reclusive grandmother, who decided to move in there and make a home for herself as a "weird forest monk lady" when Lilith was a child. As an adult, Lilith decided to prove her family's strength and grit by going into the forest and not returning until she found proof her grandmother (was was rumored to have been killed several years ago) had survived. She even deliberately wore a full red cape (a colour that attracts dire wolves), just to show how confident she was. On the first night, she managed to defeat a number of wolves, only for a fully transformed werewolf to arrive and bite her. Lilith, now concerned that with the next full moon, she too would become a werewolf, prepared to kill herself to make sure she wouldn't end up attacking her own village, only for the werewolf to stop her by transforming back at will into her grandmother. Lilith's grandmother explained that her own strength enabled her to gain become a mutolycan (a werewolf who can control their transformations and use their powers for good), and believed her granddaughter could do the same, but she needed to fight Lilith in order to prove it. Lilith's grandmother decided to stay living in the forest, but Lilith returned home to her village to defend it from other werewolves that would not control their transformations, and even centuries later, her similarly-lycanthropic descendant Layla the Red continues the family tradition.

Western Animation 

  • Sabrina and The Groovie Goolies: In one episode, the goolies put on a play that features Wolfie playing Little Red Riding Hood, who is about to visit his sick grandpa, played by Drac. He comes across a girl played by Frankie in drag who wants Little Red Riding Hood's basket of goodies. Frankie successfully catches Red's basket to expect some goodies only to find a basket of badges and gets chased away.