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Be it because of its outlandish sound or its harsh structure, there seems to be a trend of naming sci-fi villains—and especially stereotypical ones—after these three consonants (sometimes with a K instead of a G), with a random vowel in-between and possibly some letters before or after.
Compare Law of Alien Names, Xtreme Kool Letterz, Names to Run Away From Really Fast.
Examples of A Villain Named Zrg include:
Anime and Manga[]
- King Zarkon from Voltron would be a near-example.
- Zork from Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Also the cards "Dark Master Zorc" and, flipping the letter order, "Gorz the Emissary of Darkness."
Comic Books[]
- Spoofed in Spirou and Fantasio with Zorglub (portmanteau of Zorg and "Arglub" which is a standard Written Sound Effect for accidental strangling in Franco-Belgian comics). Notable in that it is currently the older example known—even before Starcraft—and already a parody.
- Calvin and Hobbes loved this trope. Besides the evil aliens called the Zorgs, there were the Zargs, Zorkons, Zogwargs, and Zogs (close).
Film[]
- The Fifth Element: Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg. Especially significant as the whole movie is a reconstruction of sci-fi movies and comics of the 1970s and 1980s.
- In the film Zathura, the evil lizard race are called the Zorgons.
- A case of Aerith and Bob occurs in Betty Blue, where Zorg is a perfectly normal handyman in the France of the Eighties.
Literature[]
- Emperor Zhark from the Thursday Next books is a near-example (in two different ways). He's the villain of his own pulpy sci-fi series, but in the metafictional main story, he's one of the good guys.
- The Ax Crazy Prince Serg from the Vorkosigan Saga might count, because his name is pronounced "zerg".
Live Action TV[]
- Babylon 5 has a humanoid predator species named Zarg.
- Barizorg from Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. The name is presumably a corruption/portmanteau from 'cyborg'.
- Zurgane from Power Rangers Ninja Storm.
Newspaper Comics[]
- Inversion: Hans Zarkov from Flash Gordon, who's one of the good guys.
Toys[]
- Transformers has the Decepticon Scorponok's head, Lord Zarak.
Video Games[]
- Starcraft: What four tropers out of five thought when seeing the title.
- Zorg: An alien race in the video games Strange Adventures in Infinite Space and Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space.
- They weren't exactly villains, though. Just... alien.
Western Animation[]
- The archnemesis of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 2 is called Zurg. Another reconstruction, by the way.
- Space Ghost's arch-nemesis Zorak.
- The alien villain in Space Chimps is named Zartog.