Have you ever wondered why Orcs in anime often look like fat pigs, even though you know them as muscle-bound green skins? Or why they are spelled with “k” in Warhammer 40,000, but almost everywhere else with “c”? In different worlds, Orcs – or Orks – look different and have their own interpretations. MeinMMO presents to you 5 of them.
Like hardly any other race, Orcs in fantasy (and even science fiction) are frequently represented, but they almost never look the same. Whether as a playable character or as an opponent, the representations differ in almost every medium.
You probably know them as large, green warriors who avoid no fight. Especially Dungeons & Dragons and Warcraft have shaped exactly this image of the race. Particularly well-known are Blizzard’s Orc statues that stand in California and (again) in China.
Much earlier, however, there were already descriptions of Orcs that looked quite different: small, brown, and reminiscent of what you would probably describe today as goblins or kobolds.
To take you a little deeper into the diversity of Orks and Orcs, we present to you here different types of the race that shares the name but not much else.
Tolkien’s Orcs, the oldest modern representation of the monsters
In the book “The Hobbit” published in 1937, Orcs appear for the first time in many years and are considered the origin of many subsequent representations. Unlike in later media, Orcs are significantly smaller than what you know today.
J.R.R. Tolkien invented different types of Orcs. The most common ones, and those you are likely most familiar with from the “Lord of the Rings” cosmos, are probably the Moria and Mordor Orcs:
Small, sadistic, and hate-filled creatures, often with brown, black, or gray skin, little hair, and often slightly deformed appearances. Most of them are about the size of hobbits and brutal, but neither courageous nor particularly strong warriors. They mainly served as cannon fodder for the armies of the Dark Lord Sauron. However, in Tolkien’s stories, there are other types of Orcs:
- Uruk-Hai are the “evolution” of the species, driven by Saruman. They are an artificial crossbreed of human and Orc and are considered the strongest of their kind.
- Half-Orcs are, unlike Uruk-Hai, a “natural” mixture of evil humans and Orcs. Unlike their cousins, they are not a “perfect” breeding. They are said to have originated during Morgoth’s time, the
original
Dark Lord. - Hobgoblins are described as “larger” Orcs, although it is unclear whether they represent a separate subspecies or simply a general term.
Even though most of Tolkien’s Orcs are rather expendable soldiers, there are several warriors among them who are formidable opponents and instill fear among their enemies. We have listed the strongest of them for you here: The 5 strongest Orcs from Lord of the Rings in the power ranking
