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"Just So" Story
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The "Just So" Story (also known as a "pourquoinote French for "why?" story," "origin story," or "aetiological tale"note from the Ancient Greek αἴτιον, "cause") is a myth or folktale which, to quote Wikipedia, "purports to describe the origin of some feature of the natural or social world." The question, often posed to an adult by a child, could be "why do the seasons change?", or "why do zebras have stripes?", or "why do people speak different languages?" The answer given is usually that some god(dess), hero(ine), or mythical ancestor did something a long time ago that caused that thing to become that way: "Because Hades abducted Persephone and took her to the underworld", or "Because the zebra's son burned himself in the baboon's campfire", or "Because God punished humanity for trying to build a tower to heaven." Typically, inanimate forces of nature are personified as gods or spirits, complicated variables are simplified in order to identify one clear-cut cause, and explanations of natural phenomeona that contradict modern scientific knowledge are accepted in a culture which lacks modern scientific methods, instruments, and theories. Some of these stories are weird enough that relating these to modern ears may elicit cries of Values Dissonance. Still, even modern people are entertained by these stories despite knowing better than to believe them literally. Also, Lies to Children is the easy way out whenever a small child asks you about something you don't know how to explain: the real explanation is often too complicated for them to understand, and you might not even know the answer yourself, so you can use the "Just So" Story to satisfy the kid's curiosity and get them out of your hair. This can backfire if the kid gets into trouble by naively believing what you told them. Named for a collection of children's stories by Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories, which included tales like "How the Whale Got Its Throat" and "How the Camel Got Its Hump" (Kipling had written a kind of tryout called "How Fear Came", explaining how tigers got their stripes and why they aren't herbivores, in The Jungle Book). See the sister trope, Painting the Frost on Windows. These stories often assume that Lamarck Was Right, proposing that some modern person, animal, or plant inherited an acquired, non-genetic characteristic from a particular ancestor. Turning to Kipling for another example, the elephant's child ended up with a long trunk because a crocodile bit his originally short nose and stretched it out: even though no genetic mutation is said to have occured, the story claims that his long trunk somehow got passed down to all elephants ever since. Interestingly, paleontologist Stephen J. Gould also termed "just so stories" certain stiff explanations by evolutionary biologists about traits that they consider they were necessarily outcomes of natural selection and must be adaptations, like "chins must have been selected by evolution because they ultimately fit this or that result", instead of being just neutral byproducts that have no effect on the fitness of an individual and simply happened to evolve without being selected out. A Creation Myth is a particularly ambitious "Just So" Story regarding how Life, the Universe and/or Everything began. Compare Peeve Goblins, Painting the Frost on Windows, and Griping About Gremlins, for when smaller-scale occurrences are attributed to supernatural beings. See also the Fable, a short story intended to convey a moral lesson. Not to be confused with Superhero Origin. |
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"Prince Ivan, the Witch Baby, and the Little Sister of the Sun": The Arthur Ransome's version is framed as Old Peter telling two children one story which, among other things, explains why there are starless nights. | |
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Song of the South: Towards the beginning, the protagonist comes upon a gathering of black sharecroppers in the shade, singing about Uncle Remus' tales, which tell how the leopard got his spots, how the camel got those humps, and how the pig got a curly tail. | |
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Mount Fuji's volcanic activity is explained in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter to be because the emperor burned an elixir of immortality in an attempt to reach Kaguya. | |
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The Silmarillion: Although this is not its main purpose, a large portion of the book makes efforts to explain a number of things, such as why the stars were made, why there are seasons, where the Sun and Moon came from and why the Moon is marred and why it deviates from its course to occasionally eclipse the Sun, why the center of the Earth is molten, and why the Earth is round and not flat. The beginning of the book features a proper Creation Myth, which is more spiritual and predates all of these celestial advents. | |
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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: A Stable worker says that the Dueling Peaks used to be a single mountain before the spirit dragon Farosh carved a path through it. | |
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Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The gargants have a number of myths attributing the traits and features of other races to the deeds of their godlike progenitor Behemat. The reason why a race of elves lives under the ocean, for instance, is because Behemat flooded an elven city when he fell into the sea and many elves hid under the ocean to avoid a repeat of this disaster; the dwarves are short because Behemat stamped them flat when fighting them; the Seraphon were created when Behemat threw a great stone at the star-dragon Dracothion, causing many of his scales to fall to earth and spring to life as a new race to harry the gargants forevermore; and Shyish is filled with walking skeletons because Behemat ate away all their meat during an eating contest. Notably, all of these claims are completely and demonstrably wrong. | |
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Achewood: It has a number of strips involving made-up mythological origins for the characters, sometimes written by themselves. For instance, in Lyle's story, he came into being as a three-year-old, from the wreckage of an exploding pickup truck being worked on in the driveway by God and the Devil. They asked his name, and he defiantly chanted "Ace of spades! Ace of spades!" That's nothing compared to "The Todd Creation Myth". A stork drops a burrito into a volcano, and Todd crawls out of it 100 minutes later muttering "frick". After the stork calls him an asshole for eating his burrito, Todd strangles it to death and it morphs into a squirrel-sized van. It's... it's something. |
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The Paul Bunyan myths were parodied on The Simpsons. Bunyan smoking a bunch of cigars is the origin of The Great Smoky Mountains, trampling a forest resulted in Death Valley, and him dancing around while getting drunk is what created the Big Holes With Beer National Park. | |
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According to Melody Time's Pecos Bill segment, coyotes howl at the moon out of sympathy for a man who lost his love. | |
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Double Agent Vader includes several Tatooine legends about the trickster hero Ekkreth, some of which are "just-so" stories. One tells how Depur (the character in the stories who represents every slaveowner) punished his slaves by taking the moon out of the sky and locking it away; Ekkreth stole it back, but had to smuggle it out in three pieces, and that's why Tatooine has three moons instead of just one. Another recapitulates the increasingly elaborate methods used by Depur to keep his slaves in line, and how with Ekkreth's help the slaves found ways to escape each one. | |
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According to Disney's The Princess and the Frog, stars are actually created from the ghosts of dead fireflies, a story that also appeared (in a slightly different form) in The Lion King. | |
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In The Last Hero, the N'Tuitif tribe, an entire culture with no imagination, has such "myths" as How The Giraffe Got Its Long Neck: an ancestor of the giraffe had a slightly longer neck than other animals, and could reach higher leaves, with the longer-necked giraffes surviving more easily to pass their long neck to their children... sound familiar? Their stories seem to end with a phrase like "This is just a thing that happened" or "and so it is". | |
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Spoofed multiple times in Discworld: In Pyramids, the citizens of Djelibeybi believe a number of different stories on why the sun moves through the sky: it's being rolled by a dung beetle, carried by a boat, pulled by a chariot, etc. (Most of which are based on real Egyptian Mythology — over time, different deities fell in and out of popularity, so there were several Egyptian sun gods at different times). A freak accident involving pyramids traps the country in a pocket dimension where all these stories are true, which results in about a dozen sun gods fighting over who gets to carry the sun. This segment even includes one of the priests calling the play-by-play as if it were a rugby match (before being promptly killed for his heresy). In The Last Hero, the N'Tuitif tribe, an entire culture with no imagination, has such "myths" as How The Giraffe Got Its Long Neck: an ancestor of the giraffe had a slightly longer neck than other animals, and could reach higher leaves, with the longer-necked giraffes surviving more easily to pass their long neck to their children... sound familiar? Their stories seem to end with a phrase like "This is just a thing that happened" or "and so it is". Another Pratchett example is from Nation, where the prologue is titled "How Imo Made the World, In The Time When Things Were Otherwise And The Moon Was Different" and manages to combine three explanations from one story. Dwarf mythology contains this for the differences between dwarfs and humans (and trolls). Tak created a geode underground which hatched into two brothers. One left the cave for the outside world, and with no roof over his head he grew too tall and became a human. The other brother remained underground and thus stayed the "proper" height, becoming a dwarf. Extremist dwarfs claim that a portion of Tak's spirit became trapped in the geode, bringing it to life as a troll "unbidden and unwanted", and this is used to justify hatred against trolls. But an ancient recording is discovered containing a much older version of the myth, which is far kinder. |
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The Story of the Weeping Camel: Opens with an old man telling a story about why camels don't have antlers. It turns out that once upon a time a camel lent his antlers to a deer, who made off with them. | |
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Invoked in Dream Park, when an important in-Game info dump about the Haiavaha is conveyed to the South Seas Treasure players in the form of a folktale which incorporates a "why dogs can't talk" example. | |
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Penny Arcade makes one up: The tooth fairy turns teeth into clouds. This is a story about the creation of clouds, but also explains why the tooth fairy takes teeth. Which may make this a culturally-extended Digging Yourself Deeper. | |
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Civilization: Beyond Earth has a whole slate of what might be called "new folk tales" in its setting, told among the colonists of whatever planet you arrived on. The most prominent, the Uncle Nevercloned Stories, contain no small number of these, usually involving Coyote, Anansi, and John Henry (he of the race against the steam engine). | |
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Pecos Bill dug the Rio Grande to irrigate his ranch and the Grand Canyon while prospecting for gold. He lassoed a storm cloud from California to solve a drought, but brought too much rain and the flooding created the Gulf of Mexico. He invented centipedes and tarantulas as practical jokes, taught the bronco how to buck, and made Death Valley when he fell off a tornado and left a crater in the ground. | |
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Forgotten Realms has one to explain how Bane, Myrkul and Bhaal became the gods of tyranny, death and murder respectively. They were once mortal adventurers who got ambitions of godhood, and decided to challenge Jergal, the god of death, the dead and tyranny. Once they did so, however, they learned that Jergal had grown tired of his post, and willingly gave it up to them. Of course, they started fighting over who would get which domain, so Jergal suggested a game of knucklebones to decide. Bane won, and demanded rule over all that lives, so Jergal gave him tyranny. Myrkul scoffed, because what good is rule over those who will one day pass from this world? He'd rather rule over the dead, who will be his forever, so Jergal gave him what he asked. Finally, Bhaal declared that his two fellows would each be beholden to him, as he would decree how people passed from Bane's rule to Myrkul's. Jergal gave him Murder. Jergal is still around, by the way, serving as the seneschal to whoever currently occupies the god of death position. | |
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A Pinky and the Brain episode subverts this: in Brain's tall tale in the making, Big Johnny Brain Jones Peachpit Bill Boone Crockett is tossed away and lands in a canyon that is, to this day, known as... the Grand Canyon. | |
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Keychain of Creation: In one strip, Marena tells a story about how shadows were created when a hero tore out the dark steel that lined a dragon's belly, preventing it from being able to eat the sun. The metal melted on the ground and its substance hid behind anything it could find to avoid the gaze of the sun. Over time, people forgot where these pools of darkness came from and took to calling them their shadows. | |
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Palworld: The Paldeck has a few of these for the entries of some Pals. Cawgnito are crow-like Pals that cannot fly and instead wander on the ground. According to the Paldeck, Cawgnito once soared the skies freely, but lost a contest to Galeclaw and thus abandoned the skies to live a quiet nocturnal life. Jormuntide is said to be a sage who was wrongly accused of a crime and thrown into a whirlpool, and returned as this dragon Pal to seek revenge on those who wronged him. Likewise, Jormuntide Ignis is said to be a warrior who was wrongly accused and thrown into a volcano, returning as a fiery draconic Pal to exact revenge on his convicters. |
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Phineas and Ferb had three episodes that had its characters transplanted into different times and places with their punchlines being origin stories for famous landmarks. "Doof Dynasty" takes place in Ancient China and tells us that the Great Wall of China was made from the remains of a giant mechanical Terracotta warrior. "Excaliferb", which takes place in medieval times, has a brief gag in which Ferb transforms himself into a gorgon to turn giant meatlings into stone, and they all topple over forming Stonehenge. "Phineas and Ferb and the Temple of Juatchadoon", the Raiders of the Lost Parody episode, "teaches" us that the Panama Canal was formed by the destruction of the titular temple by a corn colossus. |
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In The Prophecy, Gabriel (the angel of Death) claims to Daggett that the indentation on a person's upper lip is created when he tells them a secret and then puts his finger there and says "Shhh". | |
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In C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, the narrator mentions a sacred story as to why pigs are an abomination to the local goddess, but does not tell it. More importantly, at one point she comes across a priest in a forest shrine who tells her a story explaining why the seasons change, which she realizes is a retelling of the story of her sister and a local god. Angry that the gods have planted their version of the story in the imagination of storytellers, she resolves to write a book giving her own version. | |
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RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant is a collection of these that explain why the world of RWBY is the way it is; The Shallow Sea and The Judgement of Faunus both recount the origin of the Faunus. In Shallow Sea, the god of animals chose a group of people to come to a sacred island where only animals could live, transforming them in the process. In Judgement, the Faunus were created as an attempt at making peace between humans and animals, once that failed spectacularily. The Two Brothers is a Creation Myth about how the God of Light created animals and natural beauty, while the God of Dark created the Always Chaotic Evil Grimm in jealousy. They collaborated on creating humanity, who has the power of creation and destruction in equal measure. This one is true, though it's not the whole story. The Gift of the Moon explains how Remnant's moon shattered, having originally been the sun that overexhausted itself trying to fulfill humanity's requests. Afterward, humanity gathered the spilled light and put it into a new sun, tying it to the old one and letting it moon across the sky at its own pace. This one is a lie. The moon was always the moon, and it was shattered by the God of Dark in a last act of spite before abandoning Remnant. |
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God was in a bad mood one day, so he took a piranha, gave her legs, a snake's head and gorilla hands then left her to her own devices. The mountaintops froze from her sight and the sun was ignited by her breath when she caught a cold. | |
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Anansi Boys: the story of how Anansi won all stories from Nyami the sky god is treated as a "Just So" story, explaining how his winning the stories led to humanity's evolution. Anansi told this story to Maeve's ghost, and he observed that before his bargain with Nyami, all stories were "Tiger" stories ("Tiger" in this case meaning any big predatory cat), in which the protagonist won by pure strength, and the stories were always dark and violent, relaying the message that only the strong prevailed. Once Anansi won the stories, they became "Spider" stories, in which the protagonist prevailed by his wits and trickery instead of brute strength. Thus by making all stories "Spider" stories, Anansi caused people to become more intelligent. | |
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Little Fires: Clan cats have a "just so" story about why winter days are so short. LionClan and TigerClan would argue about the sun often: The lions wanted more sunlight so that they could bask in sun's warmth, while the tigers wanted more darkness so they could hunt more in the shadows. A war broke out and so StarClan intervened. Half the year would have long days and half would have long nights. | |
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A modern variation happens in The Rocketeer when the HOLLYWOODLAND sign was partially destroyed in the climax and leaving just the word HOLLYWOOD. | |
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One Popeye short has him spinning a fanciful tale on why the sea is salty (involving a magic device which punishes its owner for being greedy by creating endless salt instead of gold). After the story is told, Swee'Pea lampshades it by given the actual explanation, including detailed scientific terms; Olive Oyl chimes in with, "Anybody knows that, Popeye." | |
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"The Frost, the Sun, and the Wind": Why does the wind usually prevent walkers and trekkers from getting overheat or frostbite? Because a traveller was polite to it. | |
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Goofy: Tiger Trouble has a bit of a Gainax Ending, where in the midst of the madness of the chase, Goofy's elephant, Dolores, accidentally sits on the titular tiger, and the tiger notices he is missing his stripes and sees them on Dolores's bottom. | |
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Moana: A few natural phenomena happen because the demi-god Maui (see Pacific Mythology below) did it, as he boasts in the song "You're Welcome." The movie itself can also be seen as a Just So Story on why the Polynesians stopped voyaging for a thousand years (known as the "long pause"). |
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The first chapter of Star Wars: Kenobi opens with the Tusken Raider story of how the younger of Tatooine's Binary Suns committed a transgression, "showing his true face"—anathema to a people that always goes masked. The older star tried to kill the younger, but failed, and now the younger sun continuously pursues the older across the sky, and in their anger the suns scorched the planet into a desert forevermore. The actions of the two suns inform the Sand People's philosophies. | |
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Watership Down includes a generous helping of rabbit mythology. The creation tale has the sun, Frith, make all the animals, only they're all the same and all eat grass. The rabbit, El-ahrairah (Elil Hrair Rah — "Prince with a Thousand Enemies," obviously not his name at the time), began making babies so abundantly that they ate most of the grass, leaving the other animals hungry. They complained to Frith, so Frith blessed them with teeth and claws that made them into the creatures they are today. Many of these changed creatures had a hankering for rabbit meat, and when El-ahrairah heard of it, he began to dig a hole in which to hide. Frith moseyed on up to the burrow and there is the following basic exchange: | |
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A Song of Ice and Fire has lots of these. Because Legend Fades to Myth, it is unknown how many have plausible explanations and how many are purely supernatural. The Children of the Forest's Hammer of the Waters spell (used to stop the invasion of the First Men) is what destroyed the land bridge known as the Arm of Dorne (now known as the Broken Arm) and what flooded The Neck and turned it into a swamp. How the plant and animal life adapted into their new aquatic environment is not explained. Castles are so huge and grand that people believed that they must have been made with magic. Winterfell is believed to have been built by giants. Storm's End was built to withstand the storms sent by the Lord of the Skies. Harrenhal was built with human sacrifice (though this might just be a metaphor for the workers who died building the thing). Word of God claims that the mythical ancestors of the noble houses are just myths. The true story of how the nobles rose to prominence will never be known. |
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A really cute animation in Die Sendung mit der Maus explains many nature phenomenons by anthropomorphing the sun. (For example, she thought that everybody hates her, but it was just too hot so everybody took cover... and when she goes down in the evening, all people applaud her and her face gets red with abashment.) | |
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The Cold Moons: Logos cursed the earth for human's disobedience. Originally, there were only pleasant-smelling plants and edible plants, but after the curse came thorns, thistles, and other dangerous plants. The curse is also why malicious individuals exist. | |
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Oracle of Tao has inverted just-so storytelling. That is to say, such stories are usually set from long ago, to explain why something currently is. This is set in the future to explain why things in the present exist. One such example is that apparently, hero sandwiches are called this because Lilith gained a sword after slaying a dragon, which she later used to cut the pork to make the sandwich. It kinda Makes Just as Much Sense in Context. On a macro scale, the entire book explains why the Earth is no longer flat, and why reality is now real also as an inverted just-so story, since this is five millennia in the future. Think carefully about what this says about our current existence. |
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The The Three Caballeros segment "The Cold-Blooded Penguin" is essentially an origin story as to why there are penguins in the Galapagos. | |
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In Pyramids, the citizens of Djelibeybi believe a number of different stories on why the sun moves through the sky: it's being rolled by a dung beetle, carried by a boat, pulled by a chariot, etc. (Most of which are based on real Egyptian Mythology — over time, different deities fell in and out of popularity, so there were several Egyptian sun gods at different times). A freak accident involving pyramids traps the country in a pocket dimension where all these stories are true, which results in about a dozen sun gods fighting over who gets to carry the sun. This segment even includes one of the priests calling the play-by-play as if it were a rugby match (before being promptly killed for his heresy). | |
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Paradise has a just-so story on how pegasi came to be: a smart earth pony named Quick Wit outwitted a hungry griffon by telling the griffon that he was blessed by the moon. He told the griffon to take him to the sun first. While there, Quick Wit told a lie about how the moon had blessed him so that ponies will favor her over the sun. The sun became jealous of the moon and so she gave the pony a set of wings so that, when he flies, others will look up into the sunny sky. | |
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Son of the Desert: Sins of the Father describes how, in Ishvallan folklore, the creator god Ishvala had a brother, the destruction god Natan. While they made the world together, Natan grew jealous as everyone paid more attention to his brother. So he tried creating things on his own, becoming the first alchemist. One day, Natan crossed the line by attempting to create life, resulting in an abomination so horrible that Natan’s hair immediately went white and he gouged his eyes out. Ishvala banished his brother for his failure, but created humans in Natan’s new image to keep him company. So Natan was the first alchemist and the first Ishvalan. | |
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The Bible: According to Genesis, women endure painful childbirth, humanity in general works for a living, and everybody eventually dies because Adam and Eve ate fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but God evicted them from the Garden of Eden before they could eat fruit from the Tree of Life so that they would not have to live in that state forever. The snake which tempted Adam and Eve to sin is condemned to lose its legs and crawl on its belly. For murdering his brother Abel, Cain is condemned to become a wanderer because the soil will no longer bloom. He builds his own city and probably became the first king on Earth. Also, why are there multiple nations in the world with different languages? Because God wanted to stop us cooperating with each other so we could never again build something like the Tower of Babel. Rainbows are a promise from God to never flood the entire world again. According to a highly heterodox interpretation (i.e. followed by a few conspiracy theorists and cultists) the word "Elohim" in the original text of the Tanakh is not a majestic plural of the word "god" (Eloh= "god"; "-im"= Hebrew pluralization suffix), as accepted by virtually all Jews and Christians (and, for what it's worth, Muslims and other random Abrahamic faiths like the Baha'i and Rastafari). Instead, they put forward that "Elohim" is a literal plural referring to a whole species of gods of varying appearance. Genesis 1 thus "accounts" for the racial differences between groups of humans by stating that the Elohim made men each in their own image and likeness. This, according to the followers of this theory, "explains" why each nation's gods look remarkably like their people. |
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"Heart of Ice (Andrew Lang)": The tale concludes saying that "The Prince, out of grateful remembrance of the Princess Sabella's first gift to him [a cloak of marten's fur], bestowed the right of bearing her name upon the most beautiful of the martens, and that is why they are called sables to this day." | |
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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Seeing that Elrond refuses to tell him Durin's secret, Gil-galad asks Elrond to recount the apocryphal tale known as The Song of the Roots of Hithaeglir, which talks about the origin of mithril. The song talks about the battle between an Elf-warrior and a Balrog over a certain tree in the Misty Mountains that contained the light of the last Silmaril. During their battle, lightning struck the tree, sending out tendrils of ore into the roots of the mountains beneath. Gil-galad and Celebrimbor believe this tale to be true, and furthermore, that the remnants of the Silmaril's light in mithril could save the Elven race from fading and being forced to return to Valinor. | |
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Magic: The Gathering: The Seer's Parables is an epic poem describing the Demigods of Shadowmoor. The poem is supposedly being told by a seer to a kithkin who is curious about the nature of the world. The Overbeing of Myth created the world, with each of its races of beings coming from one aspect of her (the boggarts came from her hunger, for example). She did this because she was dissatisfied with the empty void that predated the world, and now she watches over her creations and learns from them. The Deus of Calamity spends most of his time asleep, but causes earthquakes whenever he wakes up and starts moving. The Demigod of Revenge is responsible for Shadowmoor's endless night. He hated the light, so when he found a tiny hole in the sky he expanded it until all the sky was consumed in darkness. The Oversoul of Dusk gives the elves of Shadowmoor hope despite the gloom around them. She may have hidden the sun to prevent its extinction, she may be seeking the sun, or she may be lying about the sun's existence to prevent the elves despairing — nobody knows for sure. The Nobilis of War incites people to constant war, being a Blood Knight who feeds on war and would cease to exist without it. The Dominus of Fealty is the reason why the races other than the kithkin don't have a Hive Mind. The Dominus' ability to steal others' possessions causes people to be suspicious of others and hence unable to unite. The Deity of Scars drives people to continue living no matter what. He was once an old wolf, who howled to the skies that he didn't want to die yet. His wish was granted and he became incredibly powerful. However, he still feared that someone would eventually be mighty enough to kill him, and his urge to survive infects everyone else. The Godhead of Awe is the reason the moon has phases. The moon is actually her eye, which has an extremely oppressive effect on the people of Shadowmoor when it's open. The people begged her to stop looking at them and she agreed. However, she cannot resist the urge to open her eye again for long. The Ghastlord of Fugue is effectively the Grim Reaper. He seeks the souls of the dying, with mist acting as his eyes and fingers, and eventually takes their souls. The Divinity of Pride is the seer telling the story. She claims to know how the world will end and imparts this knowledge to the kithkin, causing her to Go Mad from the Revelation. |
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Tolkien's Legendarium: In The Hobbit, an aside about Hobbit history states that "Bullroarer" Took smote the head clean off the head of an invading goblin warlord known as Golfimbul, which landed in a rabbit hole—thus saving the Shire and inventing the game of golf at the same time! (For fun, try saying Golfimbul's name out loud.) The Silmarillion: Although this is not its main purpose, a large portion of the book makes efforts to explain a number of things, such as why the stars were made, why there are seasons, where the Sun and Moon came from and why the Moon is marred and why it deviates from its course to occasionally eclipse the Sun, why the center of the Earth is molten, and why the Earth is round and not flat. The beginning of the book features a proper Creation Myth, which is more spiritual and predates all of these celestial advents. Beren and Lúthien: The earliest version of the story, "The Tale of Tinúviel", has it that the enmity between dogs and cats stem from Huan humiliating Tevildo and undoing the spell used by the evil cat to hold all felines under his sway and fill them with an evil power. |
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According to Oglaf, telling such stories can be dangerous to your health, as one guy who keeps telling trite and unimaginative just-so stories finds when his audience loses his patience with endless variations on the theme of "this thing has this characteristic because some guy changed it to have it". (This particular strip is safe for work, unusually.) | |
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VG Cats: In one comic, Leo claims that a long time ago a faraway land was ruled by a tyrannical rabbit lord, who enslaved the native fairy people to dig for the mineral eggs he craved. The fairies eventually overthrew him, but as they had no weapons to do so with they tore out their own teeth and pelted the tyrant to death with them. When the rabbit lord died, his chocolate blood ran into the land's rivers of milk, creating the world's first chocolate milk. This is apparently also behind the origin of tooth fairies, as modern fairies still collect teeth in case the bunny should ever come back. | |
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Snowdrop (2013) is a story detailing the origin of snowflakes. The titular Snowdrop, a blind pegasus filly, carved the first snowflake from her frozen teardrop, in a tribute to the season of winter and to the stars she could never see. | |
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In Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear, Elodin asks the main character Kvothe during his exams. "Where does the moon go when it is not in the sky?" It was the one question he genuinely did not know. Cue several chapters later, a companion of his tells a childhood story explaining how a young boy learned the moon's name and trapped part of the name in a box. Later events show that the Just So Story is essentially true (except it was a Master Namer, not a boy, and the "box" was actually Another Dimension where The Fair Folk live). | |
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A Nenets fairy tale, "The Blueberry", is about a girl who was kidnapped, then managed to escape, but couldn't go back home because her clothing caught on a branch and she was so tiny she couldn't get off it by herself. So she cried and cried until she turned into a blueberry. And since it was her kidnapping that started all that, blueberries are very hard to find because they always hide from humans. | |
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Beren and Lúthien: The earliest version of the story, "The Tale of Tinúviel", has it that the enmity between dogs and cats stem from Huan humiliating Tevildo and undoing the spell used by the evil cat to hold all felines under his sway and fill them with an evil power. | |
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The Calf of the November Cloud: The Dorobo hunter tells young Masai Konyek a story on why the Sun shines so brightly and the Moon is crescenth-shaped: | |
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The Doctor Who episode "The Eaters of Light" turns out to be, among other things, a just-so story about why crows say "Kar! Kar!". They're remembering the sacrifice of an ancient army, led by a Pictish chieftan named Kar, who saved the world by engaging an extra-dimensional monstrosity in a Sealed Evil in a Duel. | |
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Lumbanico, the Cubic Planet: Aralia knows and likes telling many old legends about the origins of the people, the cities and the culture of the Arista. What is the origin of the narelina (a strange, double-piped, v-shaped flute)? A blue bird, the last of its kind, teached a shepherd how to make a narelina so humans remembered its singing. Why are Aristans blue-skinned instead of pink-skinned like other Lumbanicians? Because the Creator wanted humans inhabit the Arista again after the original inhabitants killed each other into extinction, and their water-blue skin was a sign for animals and plants that the new humans will respect nature. According to a legend told by Risperim, the old Guardian, Astrópolis' name means "Star City" because its buildings are made from the core of a blue star who so loved the Aristans that she descended from the sky to live with them. |
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In The Hunt for Reactron, Thara Ak-Var tells Kara Zor-El that, according to the myth, Krypton's Fire Falls were created when the god Rao cried tears of flame for a hundred nights after being tricked into imprisoning the goddess Cythonna. | |
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Another Pratchett example is from Nation, where the prologue is titled "How Imo Made the World, In The Time When Things Were Otherwise And The Moon Was Different" and manages to combine three explanations from one story. | |
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Negat's story in Order of Tales explains how Dorlish wood, an important part of Overside, came to be. | |
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Superman: A story depicted Krypton as tidal locked at one point in its history, with a twilight area the only habitable zone fought over by two different tribes. Eventually they decide to have one final battle between their champions, during the course of which they discover that the metals they use for their weapons interact to generate a rotational field. Informed by this both tribes come together to gather as much of these metals as possible in a giant chasm, finally making all of Krypton habitable through a proper rotation. In The Hunt for Reactron, Thara Ak-Var tells Kara Zor-El that, according to the myth, Krypton's Fire Falls were created when the god Rao cried tears of flame for a hundred nights after being tricked into imprisoning the goddess Cythonna. |
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Warriors Redux: Clan cats have a story about how their forest came to be. It involves a monstrous creature called the Mother eating smaller monsters and then giving birth to three children: Rokhar (Tiger), Suriin (Leopard), and Horoa (Lion). Her children created the water, trees, clouds, etc. The Mother created the wildlife, with some being made out of the monsters she had ate. Her greatest creation was the domestic cats and as a result she gifted them the forest. The sun and moon are the eyes of Horoa and Suriin respectively. A cat named Mernatha convinced them to each give up an eye to keep watch over cats. Cats mark their territory because Mernatha had the forest marked with the Mother's blood in order to scare off cat-eating monsters. As a result, cats do the same for their own enemies. |
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Star Wars: Galactic Folklore and Mythology: In Gamorrean myth, sleep paralysis is caused by Dormin, a ghost who was cursed by the gods to never sleep or enter the afterlife, sitting on mortals' chests to steal their sleep. On Orto, local myth credits the giant Big Bloqo — an Expy of Paul Bunyan — with the creation of numerous landmarks. A river was created when he drooled in his sleep, while the moon's cratered surface comes from his habit of spitting fruit seeds at it. Some Sullustan tales state that echoes in caves are the voices of misbehaving children stolen and hidden by the Voice-Taker, a popular boogeyman figure. On Tatooine, earthquakes are said to be caused when the giant bantha who carries the planet on its back sneezes. In Toydarian myth, a kindly spirit saved the ancient Toydarians from a divinely-sent flood by giving them the wings of the predatory amsulcras, and was punished by the gods with being turned into a rodent-like animal and banished to the largest of the planet's moons. This is used to explain the moon's rodent-like markings, as well as why amsulcras are hostile to Toydarians and why they howl to the moons — they're cursing the being who robbed them of their flight. A Kitkoak legend states that death came into the world when a foolish and greedy man cut down the Tree of Life that had grown all living creatures on its branches. |
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In Nomine: In the early days of creation, when the angels were laboring to create animal life, a terrible creature was made by mistake, something that resembled but wasn't an insect. The Archangel David imprisoned it by sealing it within an immense amber gemstone — in fact, within the first, prototypical amber, which he still keeps in his domain in Heaven. His angels claim that, in so doing, David fundamentally altered the nature of the amber mineral, and that this is why ambers trap and hold small animals into the present day. | |
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League of Legends: In the world of Runeterra, there have been a few stories of gods or some kind of otherworldly being that shaped the landscape before them. Given that some of the mentioned deities are playable characters creates some ambiguity on whether they actually are real or merely folklore: Mount Targon is the absolute highest peak in all of Runeterra, and was believed to have been the result of some ancient entity drawing up the earth into an enormous, twisted pillar whose peak reaches the heavens. It's seemingly verified by the fact that those who can make up the journey to the summit without perishing become imbued with the cosmos and become Physical Gods themselves. The Freljord was also said to have been shaped by the existence of the various elemental "demigods". The legends of Ornn, the Fire Below the Mountain, say that he was responsible for sculpting the land, bringing it snow, as well as other structures for humanity such as the bridge over the Howling Abyss. The legends of Volibear, the Relentless Storm, meanwhile claim that they were shaped by fierce battles with other titanic beings, such as carving out the Five Fjords with his claws, and creating the first river by killing a magma serpent and spilling its blood on the land. |
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The Sandman (1989): In the issue "Tales in the Sand", part of the story of Dream and Nada's affair includes an explanation of why weaver birds are brown: a weaver bird got burned by the sun while retrieving a fiery berry for Nada that would allow a person who consumed it to instantly be brought to the side of their true love. | |
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Wicked: There are several Ozian creation myths on the sapient Animals. One involved the traditional Oz goddess Lurline causing Oz to spring up when she beckoned water from a desert. She was so thirsty that she peed a large river, which became the Gilikin River. Animals thought it was a flood and those who faced their fears and crossed the river became sapient. A similar, less pagan and more Unionist, origin story says that the Unnamed God was crying one day and ended up causing a flood. Animals who drank enough of His tears became sapient. Several characters discuss pour quoi tales about the origin of evil. According to the Origin Story of the Oziad, there was a great battle sometime after the flood that created Animals which led to evil spilling into the world. Others argue that this "The world was originally pure" viewpoint is wrong and that older tales that are only known from word-of-mouth show that evil existed before goodness. |
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In the Rivers of London series, Abigail Kamara befriends a colony of talking foxes. In "What Abigail Did That Summer", one of the talking foxes tells Abigail the story of How Man Gave Back His Gifts, a fox legend in which Man was once a normal animal until he traded away his fur, claws, tail, ability to walk on all fours, etc. in return for being the only animal who could talk. (Thereby also explaining how the squirrel got its bushy tail, the dog its strong claws, and so on.) The story also notes that although Man kept his intelligence, he gave away his wisdom (to an animal which immediately, but too late to warn anybody, realised what a bad development that was). At the end of the story Abigail asks how, if Man is the only animal who can talk, the talking foxes exist, and the fox replies that that's a different story, and one that they'll need to trust her more before they'll consider telling. | |
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In the Warrior Cats guidebook Secrets of the Clans, there are stories explaining how adders came to exist and how tigers got their stripes. There used to be only one adder in existence, a monstrously large serpent named Mouthclaw that lived near Snakerocks when LionClan still ruled. She was a feared and dangerous monster, capable of swallowing a lion whole, and had killed all warriors who tried to take her down. A warrior named Sunpelt eventually decided to destroy her to win fame and respect, and when he went to fight her he dodged and avoided her attacks until she was too exhausted to defend herself any longer. Realizing she could not win, she promised Sunpelt that she would grant him any one wish in exchange for her life. Sunpelt wished for her to become the length of a cat's tail, as she would then be too small to be any real danger, but in doing so Mouthclaw's might was split into a thousand smaller snakes. These adders continued to breed with one another in Mouthclaw's old realm, becoming the adder population native to Snakerocks in the series' present day. "How TigerClan Got Their Stripes" describes how the first tigers were entirely orange, without any markings. A tiger named Thorntooth, envious of the leopards' spots and the lions' manes, decided to kidnap the daughter of the LionClan leader; in retaliation, the other two clans banned the tigers from being seen in the light of day for a moon's time, forcing them to only come out in the dark of night instead. When the moon was over, the time spent living in darkness had marked the tigers' coats with deep black stripes. |
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"Everything You Know About The Powerpuff Girls Is Wrong!" has the students of Pokey Oaks Kindergarten telling their own versions on how the Powerpuffs were created using the origins of Superman and Spider-Man as inspirations. The girls step up to tell how they were really created—only to get a failing grade as the stories were part of a class in creative storytelling. | |
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Family Guy parodied this twice. First by explaining where fat people come from: three groupies hug too closely when trying to make a selfie and merge into one really fat chick. Followed by a narrator explaining "And that's where fat girls come from." Second by explaining what the term "Croc" means in slang: When a Crocodile ruins an Alligator-themed pep rally by suggesting they do Crocodile things, only for one of the Gators to call him a "Croc" . Followed by the same narrator explaining "And that's where we get the term." |
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Transformers (2007): Optimus Prime's Opening Narration gives us a brief history lesson on how the AllSpark created Cybertron and its inhabitants: | |
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Hunter's Moon (1989): In the days of Firstdark, when the universe was dark, Groff came and created the sun for humans to hunt. He plunged his hand into the dirt and came up with a ball of fire. When he threw the sun into the sky, its soul detached into the moon. | |
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The Flower's Dream: While the events in the story's creation myth are implied to have happened, at least in some form, in-universe it is presented as a bedtime story used to explain to children why the world exists and why the breezies must go on their pollen runs. | |
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The Red Mars Trilogy has Big Man, a two-magnitudes-larger Expy of Paul Bunyan, where many of Mars' features are due to Big Man's actions (and with him getting into a competition, and later a fight, with Paul Bunyan himself). | |
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The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: The annual contains one of these, explaining the origin of Cybertronian civilisation, and the nature of the mysterious Guiding Hand, who are apparently gods created by Primus at the beginning of time, who created Cybertronian civilisation with "a wave of their hands", and that Cybertronians are supposedly immortal since they killed their god of death. Later revelations in the series show two claims from these stories, the aforementioned immortality and the fact that one of Cybertron's moons was destroyed are patently untrue (they aren't, and it wasn't, respectively). | |
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The reason Virgil tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in The Georgics is to explain how bees came to be, since it turns out they emerged from a corpse offered to the gods by a shepherd responsible for Eurydice's death. | |
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In The Hobbit, an aside about Hobbit history states that "Bullroarer" Took smote the head clean off the head of an invading goblin warlord known as Golfimbul, which landed in a rabbit hole—thus saving the Shire and inventing the game of golf at the same time! (For fun, try saying Golfimbul's name out loud.) | |
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