Lord Voldemort is basically a Lich

Note: This is a cross-post from my other blog, Giant-Size Nerd-Thing!.

Did he turn his nose into a horcrux too?

I had this realization late last night. If you think about Voldemort and his plan to achieve immortality, then he's really no different than a Lich from Dungeons & Dragons or Greyhawk. For the uninitiated, a Lich is a spellcaster who attempts to become immortal by creating an object called a phylactery and placing his soul into it. That sounds a lot like Lord Voldemort's horcruxes from Harry Potter, doesn't? Another similarity is that the phylactery must be hidden and protected, because if it's ever destroyed, then the Lich can then be killed permanently.

Now, I'm not saying that J.K. Rowling ripped off D&D, because she didn't. A quick check of Wikipedia shows that the Lich predated the latter, so more than likely, she took it from the same source. Even if she had taken it from D&D, then that just shows she has excellent tastes.

Pictures via Wikipedia and Greyhawkery.