X-COM
After having been disbanded following their victory on Cydonia, X-COM has become something of a mining operation, collecting the remaining Elerium on Earth. However, when the new hordes of aliens rise up, X-COM reclaims government funding and sets out to save the world once again.
The Organisation in general
- Back from the Brink: They'd been all but dishonourably disbanded following their conquest of Mars leading to a severe economic collapse and political incident and became little more than aquatic alien material miners. However, when the second Alien Invasion occurs, they quickly bounce back.
- Bag of Spilling: X-COM was disbanded after the First Alien War thanks to politics, reduced to an underwater Elerium salvage team financed by a tycoon, before the arrival of aliens prompted the re-constituted Funding Nations to reboot the program. In addition, you will start out with basic weapons and no Armor because all the research from the First Alien War is functionally useless underwater: alien alloys react poorly to seawater, meaning they can't be used for armour or weapons (invalidating plasma weaponry), and lasers are impractical underwater due to blooming and other issues (invalidating laser weaponry). Of course none of this explains why you can't simply use the old alien weapons for missions when you aren't underwater, such as terror alerts or base defences, but the game still doesn't let you.
- Boarding Party: They do this when they have to engage aliens attacking civilian ships.
- Used Future: They have this motif as much as the aliens.
Aquanauts
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: The end of Terror from the Deep results in T'leth's destruction spreading chemicals all over the world's oceans and thus snapping a few links off the food chain. Oops.
- The Captain: The highest rank a aquanaut can achieve. You can have one Captain for every 30 Aquanauts you employ.
- Commanding Coolness: The second highest rank they can achieve.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In addition to many of the stronger aliens, they eventually manage to kill a Cthulhu Expy.
- Do-Anything Soldier: Any XCOM Aquanaut can fulfill the role of flight trooper, frogman, and medic, regardless of background.
- Freeze Ray: Thermal Tasers and the Thermal Shok Launcher, which induce Harmless Freezing and are used to capture aliens alive.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Their detonation of T'Leth, taking the aliens with them. As the X-COM: Interceptor manual states "In destroying the power nodes of the lead alien's cryogenic coffin, the aquanauts set off a chain reaction that destroys the alien colony ship just as it is rising above the surface of the water.
All the aquanauts aboard are killed, but in dying they ensure the safety of the people of Earth."
- Not Quite the Right Thing: Destroying T'Leth stops the aliens, but it also wrecks the Earth's biosphere, turning it into the ravage wasteland seen in Xcom Apocalypse.
- Primary-Color Champion: Much of their equipment is blue or yellow.
- Water Is Air: They're able to do ridiculous things like throwing grenades underwater. They also are unable to float or swim (instead just tromping around on the ocean bottom) until you research the Magnetic Ion Suit (This is kind of justified by the fact that they are in extremely heavy diving suits, so that the ocean current doesn't pull them away from the battlefield).
Aliens
The second bunch of aliens out for control of the Earth, although these ones may be a bit more connected to the planet than the star-faring cousins were...
Tropes applying to all aliens:
- Aliens Are Bastards: Just like the ones that came before them, they are a Always Chaotic Evil bunch of creatures intent on wiping humanity out.
- The Aesthetics of Technology: Unlike the aliens of the first game, these aliens have a Diesel Punk / Ocean Punk Used Future look to their technology.
- Aquatic Mook: With the exception of the Calcinite and Triscene (which are land-only), all Aliens are aquatic. All but a few underwater-only Terror units can also function on the surface well enough, so Amphibious Mooks would be more precise.
- Colony Drop: How they came to Earth - in a massive Lost Colony that crashed into the ocean, wiping out the dinosaurs and creating the Gulf of Mexico.
- The Dreaded Dreadnought: Their most powerful ships are literally called "Dreadnoughts", and even more powerful than a alien Battleship from UFO Defence.
- Eldritch Abomination: Many of them are Starfish Aliens heavily based upon creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos. Their leader is even a Captain Ersatz of the Big C himself, providing that it's not actually him.
- Hot Sub-on-Sub Action: Your subs versus their USOs.
- Humanoid Abomination: The majority of them.
- Human Popsicle: They've used cryogenic stasis chambers to remain dormant for thousands of years. You can also sell these chambers, because apparently X-COM scientists and engineers can't seem to find any usage for them.
- Lovecraft Lite: Very lovecraftian ... and very defeatable.
- Make Me Wanna Shout: They mainly use sonic-based weapons.
- Ocean Punk: They're still alien invaders. Just underwater.
Aquatoids
The aquatic ancestors of the Sectoids, who fulfil a very similar role to them. They're a little stronger, but still easy to defeat with a couple of harpoon bolts.- Alien Blood: They bleed yellow. When you're picking up a corpse from the battlefield, though, they appear to have red blood like humans.
- Ancient Evil: Are said to have be a aeons-old society, having existed millennia before "man's first faltering steps upon the world".
- Clone Army: Like the Sectoids, all Aquatoids are clones.
- Cthulhumanoid: Essentially a Spawn of Cthulhu crossed with The Greys.
- Half-Human Hybrid: While these don't appear, they are stated to have spawned multiple hybrid races during their cruel experiments upon captured humans. Becomes Hilarious in Hindsight when you take into account the Hybrids in the sequel, making you wonder if they had any involvement.
- The Goomba: They're a bit more durable and faster to react than the Sectoids, but can still be brought down by the otherwise useless Dart Gun and Jet Harpoon. Ironic for what appears to be the main field commanders of the alien legions.
- The Greys: Not as apparent as a Sectoid, but they do have the small figure, bulbous head and giant eyes. Not to mention their love of experimenting on humans.
- Mad Scientist: They experiment on humans they abduct, primarily in a effort to propagate their sterile race.
- Obviously Evil: Just look at them!
◊ - Psychic Powers: Similar to the Sectoids, higher-ranking Aquatoids can use "molecular control" to make your soldiers panic, or even take control of their minds.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Unlike their Sectoid cousins, they have smaller, red, glowing eyes reminiscent of Cthulhu and his spawn.
- Underground Monkey: They're aquatic Sectoids.
Calcinite
The assigned terror unit of the Aquatoids, who are completely different than what X-COM is used to. They're giant green blobs of protoplasm that steal diving suits and fill them up into Animated Armor that can use its sharper-than-steel claws to tear through anything.- Animated Armor: They're giant blobs of protoplasm which seek out antique diving suits strewn across the sea floor. Once they've filled the suit up, it springs backs to "life."
- Beware the Silly Ones: For a Ro-Man Expy, they are very dangerous.
- Blob Monster: Their true form outside of the suit.
- Humanoid Abomination: If they can get their hands on a diving suit.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: As the official wiki states "Unless you have an agent obsessed with yellow diving suits (and refuses to take off his helmet on land), there should be no problem identifying this armored blob."
- Shout-Out: They bear a laughable resemblance to Ro-Man, the main antagonist of the hilariously bad B-movie Robot Monster, with them both being large and melee-specialising monsters who impersonate old-school divers.
- Super-Strength: Their claws, which are a One-Hit Kill on anyone who's not got Ion Armor. Grab one of their corpses and you can research Vibro-Blades.
- Violation of Common Sense: The old diving suits they wear actually give them more than twice as much protection as X-COM's useless new diving suits!
Hallucinoid
When underwater, the Aquatoids will employ the service of the Hallucinoids - gigantic jellyfish the size of a tank. They have inbuilt freezing technology and can destroy your soldiers VERY quickly if you can't regain control of the situation.- Achilles' Heel: Small spaces — while they can pursue even "flying" Aquanauts, their massive sizes mean that they can't pursue you into hidden places or through doors.
- An Ice Person: Their weapons are all ice-based thanks to a chemical freezer in-built into their bodies.
- Artificial Stupidity: They have a very poor AI in the older versions of the game, and will usually just float around and wander aimlessly, only rarely attacking your Aquanauts. Newer ports make them significantly more dangerous.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The UFOpedia openly states "Do not be lulled into a false sense of security when facing these harmless-looking sailors of the deeps".
- Giant Mook: They're larger than your water-tanks.
- Informed Ability: The UFOpedia claims they have a ranged attack, but this never appears in-game.
- Kill It with Ice: Despite their attacks sounding like electric shocks, it's stated that their attacks are based on chemical freezers.
Gillman
A race of aquatic Reptillians who are actually a Earth-native race that have been enslaved by the aliens and serve as expendable soldiers. They can tank more damage than the Aquatoids, but are poor soldiers and slow to react.- The Goomba: It's tied with the Aquatoid as this. While somewhat tougher than an Aquatoid, it still dies easily to anything stronger than a Harpoon Gun, and its fighting skills are quite poor.
- Human Subspecies: The scientists examining them theorise that they may be some distant offshoot of humanity.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: While the UFOpedia talks them up as being "extremely powerful and fast in the water" (they're not), in actuality they're slow, bumbling Mooks who are viewed as totally disposable to the aliens. This, combined with their more human-like appearances, can make them quite sympathetic to players.
- Lizard Folk: They look like humanoid aquatic reptiles.
- Psychic Powers: Their Commanders can use "molecular control" and are surprisingly good at it, but are one of the most rarely-seen aliens in the game.
- Shout-Out: To the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Lovecraft's Deep Ones (even though there's an entirely different race in the game actually called "Deep Ones"). They also have some similarities to the Sea Devils and Silurians from Doctor Who.
- Ultra Terrestrials: They were a offshoot of human evolution who apparently went into the water rather than staying on land and were enslaved by the aliens when they arrived.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Unlike the aliens, it's actually possible to feel a little sorry for this Human Subspecies that's enslaved by the aliens and are considered completely disposable to them. They're not even that good at fighting you, and are pathetically easy to defeat.
Deep Ones
Described by the UFOpedia as a "biological nightmare" for good reason, the Deep Ones are a race of horrible Mutants created by the Aquatoids from captured humans. They're armed with powerful weaponry and can spit acid, but stunning and capturing them alive is vital for you to unlock proper armour.- Achilles' Heel: Subverted. A lot of information sources, including the official wiki, claim they cannot reaction-fire and are completely harmless during your turn. However, this only applies to the original game. In OpenXcom, which is the version most people play today, they can.
- Alien Blood: They bleed green.
- Body Horror: How they're created - capture a human, tear out most of their brain, implant control electronics and a new brain in its place, cut open their stomach and put a alien embryo inside it, and let said foetus devour the host's body as it grows into one of these subhuman abominations.
- Glass Cannon: Deep Ones possess an powerful gauss/electricity-based attack that follows a grenade-like trajectory (it can shoot over walls), but are fairly easy to kill, even with basic weaponry. They do, however, get a lot of attacks.
- Humanoid Abomination: Essentially a underwater Frankenstein's Monster.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: They have red visor-like eyes.
- Shock and Awe: They carry electric rifles. Although in-game, it functions like a Gauss weapon.
- Was Once a Man: And now the only part of the original human body that remains is the eyes. Although you won't see said eyes under their red visors.
Xarquids
A race of Earth-borne nautilus, made gigantic by alien drugs and Applied Phlebotinum. They only appear underwater, and serve as snipers. While dangerous early in the game, once you get Ion Armour they become more of an annoyance and distraction than a threat.- Giant Squid: Of a sort. They're large, fast, can tank quite a lot of damage, and have a fairly accurate and powerful ionic particle blast. They also "fly" backwards.
- Gonk: Being a giant nautilus and all. Strangely, the UFOpedia refers to them as creatures of "great beauty and danger", although that can be explained away as your scientists being marine biologists.
- Informed Ability: The UFOpedia claims they can also shoot ink in a similar fashion to a smoke grenade. They never do this in-game.
- Jack of All Stats: Has the best damage/health/speed ratio of the early-game enemies.
Lobstermen
Essentially a Muton on steroids, these six-armed scumbags form the main muscle of the alien forces. Possessing incredible strength, decent speed, and near-invulnerability, as well as packing sonic cannons and BIG. MEATY. CLAWS!!! (Ahem) You'll need either a crafty tactic or a MASSIVE amount of firepower to bring one down.- Achilles' Heel: While even the aliens' own Sonic Cannons can barely scratch them, they are surprisingly vulnerable to both melee attack and thermal weapons. There are few things in the world more satisfying than shoving a Thermal Taser or Vibro Blade up their asses or blasting them with a Thermal Shok Bomb.
- Alien Blood: They bleed teal.
- Commanding Coolness: Their Commanders are best captured alive, as they are in the know-how of some information that will be VERY valuable to you.
- The Dreaded: Both in-universe and to many players. The UFOpedia even describes them as "nothing short of a aquatic demon", and for DAMN good reason.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Well, lobster, to be specific. But still.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Lobstermen are so well armoured they can absorb an obscene amount of damage. If you have the bad luck of running into these guys before you've researched anything beyond the starting weapons, leave immediately. Darts and Harpoons are about as effective against them as tennis balls. This is explained in-universe by their reinforced shells, titanium skeletons, and eyes that are encased in harder-than-steel Aqua Plastics.
- Implacable Man: They. Will. Not. DIE. Let's put it this way... unless you drop them with the heaviest melee weapons, chances are, they're actually unconscious, not dead (unless you were just trying to stun them, because that'll work wonders).
- The Juggernaut: Outright described as "a behemoth of the deep" by your scientists, and they certainly live up to the title.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They have four arms, and are very, VERY dangerous.
- Power Pincers: Very useful for holding a cannon, or ripping open a pesky human with one or two swings.
- Running Gag: A small one amongst veteran players is that bases which see regular combat against the Lobstermen often requisition suspiciously large amounts of butter.
- Super-Soldier: Tough, skilled and heavily armed, Lobstermen are ideal shock troops.
- Uplifted Animal: Unlike the Gillmen, they're actual lobsters who were genetically engineered by the Aquatoids into their powerful humanoid forms.
Bio-Drones
Probably the biggest example of how evil the aliens are, the Bio-Drone is a brain, often human, inside a miniature Flying Saucer that fulfils the role of the Cyberdisc from the previous war. They accompany Lobstermen and Tasoths on surface missions.- Action Bomb: Like the Cyberdisc, it explodes when it dies.
- And I Must Scream: That doesn't even BEGIN to describe it.
- Brain in a Jar: This is your brain. This is your brain in a jar. This is your brain in a jar after being endlessly tortured and butchered into submission. This is your brain in a jar after being endlessly tortured and butchered in submission then weaponized so that your screams of terror are capable of melting your fellow humans.
- Flying Saucer: A miniature, underwater variant.
- Human Resources: Bio-Drones are piloted by brains that were butchered into submission, and use a sonic beam based on their original vocal cords to scream their enemies to death. The UFOpedia notes that "Most of the brains that power them are alien in origin, but nothing can compare to the horror of finding a human based unit."
- Make Me Wanna Shout: Its sonic weapon is based on the original vocal cords of the brain that pilots it, meaning that it literally screams its enemies to death.
- Tragic Monster: No, you can't save them. The best you can do is give them a Mercy Kill.
Tasoths
The Elite Mooks of the aliens, these humanoid fish-like creatures are engineered Super Soldiers who are birthed in their hundreds in massive breeding vats deep beneath the ocean.- Alien Blood: They bleed pink.
- Ambiguous Robots: Tasoths outwardly appear to be reptile-like aliens, but the Alien Autopsy done on one reveals no internal organs and a power cell with some other odd devices where they should be.
- Implacable Man: The UFOpedia openly states that they "often form the spearhead of an alien attack and never seems to shrink from the fight even in the face of overwhelming odds". This is actually an Informed Attribute, as in-game Tasoth Soldiers have much lower Bravery stats than other aliens.
- Lizard Folk: In appearance only (see above).
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Powerful and vaguely reptilian humanoids with sonic weapons and Molecular Control powers.
- Shout-Out: They heavily resemble the original Lovecraftian idea of the Deep Ones, especially since their original description (which was replaced in the final version of the game) had them being converted humans (much like the actual Deep Ones of the final game).
- Super-Soldier: They aren't as tough or resistant as the Lobsterman, but they do have very high stats and their leaders are capable of Molecular Control. They also lack the Lobstermen's glaring weaknesses to certain forms of attack.
- Was Once a Man: Some
Dummied Out data shows that they were originally going to be modified humans under Molecular Control. This backstory was scrapped and given to the Deep Ones.
Triscenes
Rare but powerful terror units used by the rare Mixed Crews (mostly Tasoths plus some Aquatoids), these dinosaur cyborgs are armed with enormously powerful sonic cannons and razor-sharp teeth, and are greatly resistant to attacks. Thankfully (or not so thankfylly), they exclusively appear on land-based terror missions.- Achilles' Heel: They are immune to most small arms and, especially on the higher difficulty levels, even Sonic Cannons will struggle to damage them. However, they can be easily killed even with beginning-tier explosives to their virtually non-existent under-armour, and a Thermal Shok Launcher guarantees a one-hit stun.
- Armless Biped: Like the Reapers, they don't have arms. Unlike the Reapers, they make up for it by carrying two Heavy Sonic Cannons strapped to their bodies (though in-game it is treated as a single weapon).
- Giant Mook: They're the biggest enemy in the game.
- Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: Heavily armoured Cyborg dinosaurs with shoulder-mounted Sonic Cannons.
Tentaculats
Thought the Chrysallid was bad? The Tentaculat is WORSE. Essentially a giant flying brain with octopus-like tentacles, these creepy bastards are only found in the most vital alien sites, can zombify your soldiers, and can move quickly in the water. Suddenly Chrysallids don't seem so dangerous.- Achilles' Heel:
- Displacer tanks are almost totally immune to their attacks and cannot be zombified, but Tentaculats will still move up and attack them, leaving themselves exposed during your turn. Coelacanth tanks are not nearly as resistant, but at least they cannot be zombified.
- They are vulnerable to explosives — a Sonic Pulser is almost guaranteed to One-Hit Kill them even on Superhuman difficulty.
- If you're brave enough to get close, you'll find that they're surprisingly vulnerable to melee attacks. This is much more dangerous in OpenXcom because that version allows all units to use melee attacks instead of reaction fire.
- Alien Blood: They bleed yellow when you examine their corpse in the Battlescape, but during the Alien Autopsy screen they appear to have red blood.
- Body Horror: Just like Chrysallids, they turn anyone they can get their tentacles on into a shambling undead horror who will attempt to bash their former companions' heads in, and upon being killed will burst open into a new Tentaculat.
- Brain Monster: A giant alien brain with tentacles and a ... eyeball? Beak? ... THING on the front.
- Eldritch Abomination: It provides the image for Terror From the Deep's Nightmare fuel page for a damn good reason. To quote the UFOpedia: "Not even the depths of a Lovecraftian nightmare could spawn such as this indescribable creature. No comparison to any Earth animal exists - the environment that could produce such as this beyond imagination."
- Lightning Bruiser: Fast, tough and a One-Hit Kill attack.
- Nerves of Steel: They're immune to panicking.
- Shout-Out: To the Grells from Dungeons & Dragons.
- Spawn Broodling: Like the Chrysallids, but unlike them how the Tentaculats can do this is never explained.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Averted, unlike the Chrysallids - they don't show up on terror missions, so you don't have to worry about one of these on your hands.
The Ultimate Alien
The Big Bad of the game.- Big Bad: It's the mastermind of the alien invasion.
- Captain Ersatz: It's either this to Cthulhu, or — given that it has influenced the dreams of humanity for centuries — is Cthulhu himself.
- Diabolus ex Machina: Its origins and true nature are completely unknown. Nobody on Earth can guess where the creature came from, and as it turns out, none of the aliens know either. It also appears that it can't be killed — all X-COM can do is stop it from ever waking up, but whether or not this actually kills it is unknown, like everything else about it.
- Eldritch Abomination: By far the biggest in the game. It's a completely incomprehensible terror, stated to be "so vile and powerful that not even death itself can claim it", that we have next to no information or knowledge on other than it exists, that it is the master of T'Leth and the alien invasion, and that it is the Great Dreamer, and It Waits...
- Meet the New Boss: Although "not alive but somehow not dead", the Ultimate Alien is subliminally commanding the submarine fleet. It fills the old role left over by the Alien Brain back on Mars.
- Non-Action Big Bad: For all the spookiness of its lore, it doesn't actually do anything in the final battle.
- No Name Given: It's officially unnamed, so we only know about it through its nicknames. The Ultimate Alien, the Great Dreamer, the Mastermind, Cthulhu...
- No Ontological Inertia: Killing it and destroying T'Leth makes all the remaining Zbrite inert, only good enough in large numbers, which is how they managed to send an Avenger to Mars for Elerium-115 prospecting.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Just what the hell IS this thing?! Where did it come from? How did it even evolve? How long does Earth have before another of its kind finds us? Not even the aliens themselves know!
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Its coffin is connected to multiple tanks containing weird alien foetuses, which are presumably keeping it alive. Killing the alien foetuses stops the life support system.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: It's sealed within a coffin in T'Leth, as seen here◊. Your final mission is to go to T'Leth and make sure it can't escape.
- Taking You with Me: It just narrowly averts pulling off this trope for humanity. The destruction of T'Leth and the consequences thereof render Earth almost uninhabitable, to the point that by the time of X-Com: Apocalypse, humanity survives in only a few scattered mega-cities.
- Time Abyss: It's been slumbering on Earth since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. How long it existed before that will never be known.
