The only things Demonic Spiders help to simulate are controller-tossing rage and loss of the will to go on living.
- Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown has the AD Tanks. Not only do these act as a cross between AA guns and SAMs with the toughness of tanks, but these units can destroy incoming missiles or bombs before they hit them, rendering your primary means of destroying these things useless. Trying to take them out with guns will have them trying to chew you up with their AA guns. Your best bet to deal with them is by using lasers, machine gun pods, or the Electromagnetic Launcher.
- Tarantulas and Scorpions in Animal Crossing will charge and knock you out in a single hit if you pull out your net near them. They will get you the first time you try to catch them, and the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time. Catching them is made slightly easier in New Horizons if you're patient enough to do a little Red Light Green Light, but they can still tag you if you're not careful in the dark. Then there are the wasps that attack when their tree is hit or shaken. The first hit messes up your face and the second knocks you out.
- In The Babylon Project, a Babylon 5 freeware game built using the FreeSpace 2 engine, any Minbari, Vorlon, or Shadow fighter if you're flying a Starfury, since all three species have way better tech than Earth Alliance. Frankly the Vorlon fighter qualifies no matter what you're flying.
- "I think I made fish too hardcore." — Toady One
- More recent versions of Dwarf Fortress have even outdone the fish. Giant sponges, for instance, have no vital areas and are too large for a dwarven atom-smasher, making them functionally unkillable save by air-drowning, and their "push" attack (the default attack for creatures that can't attack) deals damage based on their mass— read that "giant" part again. Even more "fun"? Undead giant sponges don't air-drown, since they don't need to breathe at all.
- The necromancy update has given rise to ambulatory disembodied organs... which have no vital areas and don't need to breathe, so massive damage is the only way to destroy them. These often are the first sign of a necromancer besieging your fortress.
- The Descent: Freespace series:
- The Shivan Dragon-class fighter, whose raw statistics, while fairly impressive off the bat, tell you next to nothing about how truly preposterously annoying it is. Oh, sure, it has a top speed comparable to most space superiority fighters, five gunpoints, and more shields than an Ursa heavy bomber, but surely that's balanced out by its thin hull... right? Right? Not a chance. The thing is tiny to the point of having practically no profile at all, is so agile that getting a lock onto it with missiles is next to impossible, mounts twin linked Shivan heavy lasers and tri-linked Shivan mega lasers (which combined mean that between two and four direct hits on any ship you can fly in either game will kill you), and to top it all off it has the most overcharged reactor of any fighter, meaning that its weapons, afterburners and shields recharge at a rate that makes it next to impossible to punch through its shields to hit its hull. It appears in wings of two or three most of the time, but they are occasionally introduced into the battlefield for the sole purpose of making you suffer. One Descent: Freespace mission asked you to protect weak, defenseless escape pods from a wing of Dragons, while you were equipped with Phoenix V missiles designed to kill bombers, with lock on times that made them useless even for that role, let alone hunting the fastest fighter in the game. Another Descent: Freespace mission tasked you with capturing one; the only way to do so is to use a very slow and energy hungry weapon. You had to do it solo, too, because the AI wingmen in FS1 interpret "Disable my target's engines" as "switch to Disruptors... then unload all of your missiles on the target." Fortunately, the Dragon's shields didn't regenerate in that mission. Afterwards you got to fly one... downgraded to be comparable to the shit-bucket you were flying before, with the maneuverability of a sack of potatoes and shields comparable to chicken wire. Finally, in a Freespace 2 Failure Is the Only Option mission, if you managed to defend the crippled rebel cruiser from the regular Manticore and Basilisk fighters, an entire squadron of respawning Dragons will appear. If you actually manage to kill all those Dragons (probably by cheating, because there's no way you'll be able to stop long enough to reload), nothing will happen—the return to base order only appears when the rebel cruiser is destroyed.
- While the ones featured in the Freespace 2 single-player campaign pretty much always appear in the losing side of a One Sided Battle (be it a friendly or enemy ship), the Aeolus-class Terran cruiser is a theoretical Demonic Spider with all of those flak cannons and 180-degree AAA beam lasers. No, wait, in multiplayer, they actually are, especially since you didn't have any long range anti-cruiser weapons in many of the multiplayer missions where this is featured. According to the tech database, only two dozen of these ships were ever produced because it was supposedly very expensive to produce. Which is unfortunate actually—while this means you don't see many rebel Aeoluses, the friendly ones you encounter later in the game when you most need them on your side are all crippled. (Take note that the rebels in this game are actually evil racist bastards and not the usual "good" rebels of fiction—it's good they don't have many Aeoluses.)
- The Aeolus' big brother. The Deimos is basically a heavily armored Aeolus with more guns. Thankfully, most of the time they are either on your side, or if it shows up as an enemy, you will have the support of friendly ships capable of destroying it by themselves.
- The Shivan Lilith cruiser class is one in Freespace 2. Not really dangerous to the player, as its point defenses are weak even for a cruiser, but in the second game it managed to acquire a Disproportionate Destroyer-level Quick Reloading Beam Cannon Of Doom (on the highest difficulty levels, the Lilith can start charging up its beam cannon for a second shot before it's even stopped firing the first). Coupled with the said thick hull (more than twice the average HP for its ship class, and nearly as much HP as that of the corvette class which is one ship class larger), if you haven't got Stilettos or Trebuchets to take down the main gun, this will take out destroyer warships (two classes bigger) with relative ease, and will make total mincemeat of your cruisers. And it's not like it's because of those incompetent Terrans, either — this thing tears apart the more common Rakshasa cruisers and Moloch corvettes from its own species! It's a good thing they're relatively rare, both according to the Tech Room Database and based on actual campaign appearances. And it looks just like the damned Cain, which is one of the weakest cruisers in the game, so the inattentive player is doubly screwed. You could always distinguish it from the ominous scream of its Wave-Motion Gun charging up, or the fan-made graphics updates color a Lilith black rather than the grey armor of a Cain, making them easier to tell apart.
- The fetus enemies in the penultimate level of Splatterhouse were apparently the result of a Demonic Spider screwing a Goddamn Bat, seeing how they infinitely spawn from the floor and ceiling, love to hover down directly over Rick's head where he can't hit them or avoid them, attack in huge numbers, and need to be shaken off to prevent them from taking multiple points of damage if they grab you. Did we mention that Rick's default number of hitpoints is four?
- Jet Pack for the PC has enemies that always fly towards you, are invulnerable, and can fly through walls. Apparently, the recommended way to keep from getting nastily killed by them is to turn off the game.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam: Zeonic Front, you play as the Zeon during the One Year War, meaning that in the first part, your only enemies are relatively-easy tanks and missile trucks, and annoying-but-not-too-bad fighter helicopters. The problem arises around mission 6, where you have to fight Federation ace Amuro Ray. Given that his Gundam (as well as his two friends the Guncannon and Guntank) are invulnerable and have one-hit kill attacks, maybe "fight" is a bad choice of words. The objective of the mission is to get within firing range of each suit individually in order to collect data on them; if said suit doesn't blow you away at the near-point-blank range you'll need to collect data, its other two buddies probably will. To wrap up the mission, you have to collect data on their spaceship White Base as well, meaning that you have to stand right next to it with your back to three hostile enemies who can kill you in one shot, even with armor upgrades because mobile suit armor is weaker in the back. To top it off, there is a simulator mission where you have to actually kill the Gundam, which, although no longer invulnerable, is more or less immune to bullets, meaning you have to walk up to it, get behind it somehow, and hit it in the back with your heat axe, and stealth is impossible due to the fact that the Gundam has three sensors (sonar, radar, and thermal imaging) in addition to line-of-sight vision.
- Hardwar has the pirates. Normally they pretty much qualify as Goddamned Bats, as they're lightly armed and fairly easy to dispatch, but a few — and it is important to note that you don't get to know beforehand who those few are — carry Groundbase or Fireburst missiles. The first type will suck you into the ground dealing a good amount of damage and making you a sitting duck for a good few seconds, the second does massive damage to your shields and will kill your engines, which will make you a sitting duck for rather a lot longer than that. A surprise encounter with one of these pirates will usually result in lots of cursing and tons of chaff and flare being expended, and very likely at least some damage suffered. The best way to deal with them is to lure them in the tunnels, where their AI routines become far more limited and this exploitable weakness of theirs can be utilized to your advantage at maximum effect.
- theHunter: Call of the Wild: Buffalo, both water and Cape. As in real life, they travel in herds, will attack without provocation or warning, and are extremely hard to kill. Not as in real life, they sometimes teleport to follow the player across the map, thanks to a longstanding bug.
- The Zombie Apocalypse simulator Infectonator! has the Secret Agents in World Dominator. These have a lot of health, shoot very quickly, deal lots of damage to zombies, and worst of all, cannot be infected by your virus clicknote !
- The sequel Infectonator 2 also contains Secret Agents, and introduces Hazmat Guys, basically Secret Agents but with more health and even greater firepower. If your zombies don't have enough attack/speed/defence, expect them to get mowed down by these yellow-suited horrors.
- MechWarrior 4: Black Knight, the expansion to MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, brings a lot of Mad Cat Mark II's in use by the player's enemy in that game, which pack quite a punch, can use jump jets, and are hard as hell to kill. You'll see more of these Clan 'Mechs in use by your Inner Sphere enemies in the last op alone than you'll ever see in Clan use in 4: Mercenaries, which is a standalone expansion to Vengeance.
- The Clans in the source material use very few Mad Cat Mark IIs as the design was created by Clan Diamond Shark specifically for export to Inner Sphere customers. The other Clans, noticing that it wasn't an OmniMech like the original Timber Wolf/Mad Cat and remembering how Clan Diamond Shark betrayed them to do business with "freebirth" Inner Sphere factions, stayed away.
- Before that there were the Black Hawks/Novas in Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries. The Computer controlled ones make up for their lack of torso twist with near perfect jump jet controls and they can tear apart your mech, especially blowing off arms where most of your weapons are, in seconds; they seem to have more armor than heavy mechs, taking 6 erPPCs to rescue one part to yellow status and even more to blow off a leg, which won't slow them down due to the aforementioned perfect control of their jump jets.
- Minecraft has the Creeper, a altogether too clever exploding phallic bush monster that can demolish all but the strongest structures with ease. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, they are the most iconic enemy in the game.
- Any enemy apart from the zombies really. Skeletons have a bow and arrows and can ride spiders, said spiders can crawl through 1-block-high(though not wide) gaps and climb walls, ghasts shoot fireballs at THE CAMERA, and if you attack a zombie pigman, all nearby ones gang up on you!
- To clarify, these enemies are programmed to be frustrating. The creeper approaches without a whisper and need only get close to destroy everything, the skeleton zig-zags away from you while firing, and the spider tries to jump on your head (often camping out right atop your roof or wall). The worst place you could possibly face them? A dark, mostly-flat plane that extends infinitely outward in all directions.
- There are a few counter-strategies for most enemies (circle-strafing for skeletons, spamming melee attacks for zombie pigmen, zombies and spiders, and dancing at the edge of the creeper's range), but more than one enemy and all bets are off. It doesn't help that they usually spawn around 5 at a time.
- Running isn't an option, either, at least against spiders and Endermen. Spiders are faster than you, and can jump farther than you and climb walls, and the Endermen can teleport.
- Additionally, the rare and fairly localized Cave Spider lacks the biggest weakness of normal spiders, their large size, and are poisonous. Furthermore, their turf is filled with webbing that will slow you down.
- In Plantasia, weeds and pests start out as minor annoyances in early gardens, but in later levels they're absolute monsters. A swarm of pests can devour all the flowers in your garden in less than 20 seconds if you can't get rid of them. Even a weak little caterpillar can quickly destroy the sun drop that cost you 2,000 mana to buy while you've been distracted killing that leaf-eating beetle that was chewing on your morning glory. The weeds are no better: your plants already need to be watered periodically or they'll die, but let weeds overrun your little field and pretty soon every plant in the garden will be crying out for water. That's bad enough, but if a weed is left unchecked for too long, it starts to spawn more weeds! You can buy multiple weeding tools, extermination tools, watering cans, and really expensive magic spells to help with the problem, but each successive one costs a bigger chunk of mana (the game's currency).
- Normally, stray pests and weeds only appear one at a time, but in some levels, a dark translucent cloud will form over the screen, accompanied by the sound of thunder, signaling a massive swarm. If you don't have enough extermination tools or weeding tools at hand, make no mistake, you are screwed.
- It gets better! Some gardens start off already overflowing with weeds, pests, or both. One garden has so many weeds that it's impossible to save all the plants that are already growing there; you have to choose which ones to keep alive.
- SimCity 4 has them, believe it or not, in trailer trucks. The Rush Hour expansion allows you to undertake driving missions in vehicles such as police cars, school buses, and fire trucks. Bumping into a cement truck is instant death to a police car, but turning on your siren makes them move out of the way (most of the time). Unfortunately, when trailer trucks run away, they leave behind their trailer for you to run into, which will ALSO destroy your car if you run into it.
- The Grox from Spore inhabit 2,400 planets and will attack in hordes as you go to the galactic core, and if you go to a planet to refill health the Grox's spaceships will all fire their destructive lasers. If you join them (which is very hard) every single other race will go to war with you!
- Any third generation VT in Steel Battalion counts. As they no longer appear on radar. Unless you see them in your incredibly narrow field of vision, the only warning you get is the incoming-fire readout. This would be bad enough if they didn't also travel in packs, which is worse if they're with second gen or lower enemies, as you'll probably not realize they're lurking while you deal with smaller fry. The Regal Dress type are particularly nasty, as they like to fire multi barrage incendiary artillery that has a far reaching AOE.
- The sixth to final levels of Theme Hospital have epidemics where contagious diseases spread throughout your patients while they wait for treatment. They usually occur when there are too many sick people waiting in the same area, which will happen often, depending on how popular your hospital is. To beat them, you either kick all of them out or cure them within an allotted time limit. Thanks to how hectic the game can be, it's usually easier to just take the fine and you'll be taking a lot of them.
- Earthquakes are also difficult to deal with from when they're first introduced; really bad earthquakes can destroy a couple of machines even when they're at full health. And once they're destroyed, the room stays there forever with no way to delete them, taking up what little space you have.
- Vector Thrust boasts the DDG-56 and Karel Doorman class destroyers and frigates. Alone, they're not much of a threat, but in a fleet, their combined missile barrages anihilate anything too slow to get out of the way, and if you try to get in close, their combined CIWS fire shreds everything caught in the crossfire. The best way to deal with them is to fly balls-to-the-wall at extremely low altitude at long range so their missiles won't hit you, while spamming long-range anti-ship munitions at them and hope that you don't run out of ammunition.
- The Huey gunships in Vietcong 2's VC campaign. If packing lots of M60 fire aren't enough, they're hard to hit even when using RPGs.
- The humans in Wolf (DOS). They're the only enemy that carries guns, which are loaded with Instant Death Bullets (if it's not a One-Hit Kill, it's definitely a Two-Hit Kill). They pilot planes and helicopters, which are always One Hit Kills and which are quite fast (fast enough that pausing to bark an alarm to your pack is probably the fastest way to get yourself shot). Ground-walking humans come in two flavors: armed hunters and unarmed hikers; it's impossible to tell which is which until you're shot. The game encourages you to behave as if Humans Are Cthulhu and to give them a wide berth, but even with the number of humans turned down low, they're still quite numerous.
- The Nebulon-B Escort Frigate in the original X-Wing. They have a lot of guns for their size, so unlike the much larger Star Destroyers they maintain excellent fire coverage over the whole ship regardless of how close you get, while giving you no gaps in their defenses to work from. Their armament is also nicely tailored to throwing up a wall of lasery hell, so it's not a matter of if you get hit, it's how much. Missions where you're ordered to actually attack one of these things can quickly become a nightmare. It makes it really satisfying to watch one blow up.
- The TIE Fighter version of this is the TIE Defender. It packs four laser cannons, large dual missile bays, ion cannons, shields, AND has the highest top speed of any fighter in the game (with the exception of the Missile Boat during its temporary boost). The fact that you are given one of these to fly yourself is no mitigation for the horror that is a dogfight with one or more of these things. Especially since the AI Defenders' speed and firepower are not affected by power allocation the way you are.
- Then X-Wing Alliance ups the ante with the Lancer-class frigate, essentially a mobile flak battery designed specifically to defend other capital ships from starfighter attack. If you've ever seen footage of American carrier groups under air attack during WWII, that's pretty much what it looks like to come under the guns of a Lancer.
- In the original, the Imperial Navy uses the Lambda-class Shuttle for passenger and light cargo duties, and the Delta-class DX-9 Stormtrooper Transport for ship-to-ship boarding and assault missions. They are both about as fast as your typical glacier, as maneuverable as a school bus, armed with forward firing weapons only, and are not particularly well armored or shielded, making them easy prey even for a novice pilot in a Y-Wing or TIE Bomber. TIE Fighter brought us the New and Improved versions, the Delta-class JV-7 Escort Shuttle and the Gamma-class ATR-6 Assault Transport, respectively. Faster, more maneuverable, well protected, and armed with turbolaser turrets that can cover every direction, they are easily capable of making your day painful, since you're usually trying to keep enemy fighters off of your back while trying to kill them.
- Wii Play Gives us the tanks game, which sees the player face a myriad of differently colored tanks. Green tanks will strike fear into all but the most skilled players. They are the only tank in the game that can lead their shots and can attack around several corners with impunity with their double bouncing rockets. You WILL learn to dread the sound of bells which signals their presence.
