Toothless

No one on Berk has seen a Night Fury up close, until Hiccup downs one with his launcher. The dragon survives but loses half its tail fin and can't fly.

Hiccup can't bring himself to kill it and keeps coming back with fish. Bit by bit, the dragon lets him close. Hiccup builds an artificial fin that only works with a rider, and the two learn to fly together. In the fight with the dragon queen, Toothless saves Hiccup from the flames. In the end, each is missing a piece: him a tail fin, Hiccup a leg.

Five years on, Toothless and Hiccup explore the world together. Drago Bludvist arrives with a giant alpha, a dragon that can control the others. It seizes Toothless, who fires at Hiccup; Stoick throws himself in the way and dies.

Hiccup doesn't blame his friend. Toothless breaks free, takes on Drago's alpha alone and wins. The dragons follow him now: he's the new alpha.

As king of the dragons, Toothless meets a white dragon much like him and falls for her. She was bait for Grimmel, the hunter who killed the other Night Furies. With a new tail fin, Toothless learns to fly on his own.

He follows her to the Hidden World, the dragons' home at the edge of the map. After they beat Grimmel, Hiccup lets him go to stay with her. Years later, Toothless shows up with three young ones to see his old friend.

In the 2025 live-action film, Toothless is the computer-generated half of the duo, and his design sticks close to the animated one. The story is the first film's, from the shot in the woods to the battle with the queen.

In Cressida Cowell's books, Toothless is very different: a tiny, common green dragon with no teeth, bossy and spoiled. Only in book 11 do we learn he's a young member of a giant species. The sleek black Night Fury is a DreamWorks creation.