Because there are tons of people who like fantasy out there? And I can’t imagine a string of random characters is going to beat it out.
mustang - lots of car fanatics out there
master - “master password”, I’m guessing.
monkey - haven’t you always wanted a monkey?
shadow - probably at the top of a “top 10 pet names” list
ranger - no idea
hunter - maybe a common pet name
People need to remember their passwords, and often don’t realize how easily they can be guessed. So many are taken from favorite popular culture references (I knew a fundie whose password was “god”) or things they can easily remember.
You know those emails telling you your Myspace/Facebook/BoA/Goatsx account was going to be closed if you didn’t fill in the form right away? That wasn’t a scam. It was just this site doing legitimate research!
Looking at that list, I wonder if online games are included in the source of passwords/accounts. If yes, that would explain dragon, hunter, ranger and possibly shadow, monkey and master.
What’s even more interesting is that my default password for signing up to low-priority stuff (newspaper sites, frex) isn’t on the list. Who knew that adding a couple of numbers at the end would make it “safe”?