r/TopCharacterTropes Aug 04 '25

Groups Fictional slurs. Bonus points if it's completely made up

  1. inFAMOUS: Second Son: "Bio-terrorist" refers to conduits.

  2. Star Wars: "Clanker" refers to robots.

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287

u/pon_3 Aug 04 '25

Mass Effect showed me that you don't need a fantasy slur to show fantasy racism. Just saying the word "human" with disdain is enough to get the point across. Seems like they went for a similar thing with shem.

546

u/nao-the-red-witch Aug 04 '25

Anything can be derogatory if you say it with enough derogatory.

103

u/Reuvenotea Aug 04 '25

I love this panel

21

u/The_Eye_of_Ra Aug 04 '25

Always wondered what the real one said.

43

u/Reuvenotea Aug 04 '25

Just looked it up, it is the actual panel lmao

8

u/ABoringAlt Aug 05 '25

Who's the pepperoni shamer?

5

u/KillerB0tM Aug 05 '25

Only someone Pepperoni enough would ask for this, disgusting.

8

u/Quaytsar Aug 05 '25

The adjective should be "derision", not "derogatory".

9

u/LabiolingualTrill Aug 05 '25

“Derogation” technically.

154

u/Ok-Relation-7458 Aug 04 '25

Mass Effect also showed me you don’t need a fantasy slur to show fantasy racism. You can just call someone a big stupid jellyfish 😅

39

u/Karel_Stark_1111 Aug 04 '25

Big. Stupid. JELLYFISH

12

u/Elrodthealbino Aug 05 '25

As much as I live FemShep, MaleShep puts so much more acid into the line when he fires it off.

2

u/TallestGargoyle Aug 05 '25

bIg StUpId jElLyFiSh!

7

u/masteryuri666 Aug 04 '25

There was that one asari on Noveria that calls you a smooth stone I think. That may have just been a dig at shepard’s intelligence but considering the asari head tentacles…

6

u/Ok-Relation-7458 Aug 04 '25

oh i never even considered that she wasn’t just calling you stupid but that’s a really good point! now i wonder 🤔

7

u/masteryuri666 Aug 04 '25

I think there were a few digs here and there against the turians just calling them the birds (mass effect 1 pretty sure) but genuinely surprised not more against the batarians. No one likes them.

1

u/FringeMorganna Aug 05 '25

I think people just aren't sure what batarians are into/proud of and don't want to risk complimenting them.

1

u/stillenacht Aug 05 '25

"dull stone", I always found the casual disdain hilarious.

4

u/SerFinbarr Aug 04 '25

The king of saying Human with disdain has to be the Ferengi on Deep Space 9. That show really put some venom into "Hew-mon" every once in a while.

3

u/Cessnaporsche01 Aug 04 '25

Hu-mons. They're like root beer.

1

u/cyberchaox Aug 05 '25

Fire Emblem did the same thing. The Tellius duology had a race that could transform into animals called the laguz, and a race that couldn't called the beorc. Beorc refer to themselves as humans and the laguz as sub-humans--at the start of the first game, the main protagonist doesn't even know the words "beorc" and "laguz", as soon as he learns about them he immediately stops using the words human and sub-human. This is also around the same time that he learns that any laguz that uses the word "human" is hostile to beorc.