Goddamned Bats / The Legend of Zelda

Entire Series

• The Goddamned Like Likes in many games. They eat your shield, sometimes for good, have ludicrous amounts of health, and are extraordinarily hard to avoid at times.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you can kill them from a distance (most of the time). The only times you have to fight them head on is in the Spirit Temple and the Gerudo Training Ground.
  • They are suspiciously absent from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (though they were reintroduced in mercifully small numbers in the GBA version); that job is instead filled by Pikits, which can do everything Like Likes can at range. Later games introduced Rupee Likes, which steal money instead of shields, and disguise themselves as Rupees.
• The Wall Masters, in all incarnations, have the power to send you back to the beginning of the dungeon you're in, which is every bit as annoying as it sounds. Not to mention that they drop from the ceiling or climb out of walls, making it easy for them to catch you by surprise. Worse yet, in A Link to the Past, they keep respawning with no item drops and even when it has already landed it can still grab you, which can occur if an enemy either knocks you into it or you are too close.
  • Even worse are Floormasters, which cross the line to become Demonic Spiders. They can turn temporarily invincible, are sometimes invisible, stun you, and split into five smaller Floormasters that regrow into the full-size version if you don't kill them fast enough. At least they can be killed by area of effect attacks once they split, such as the magic spin attack, Din's Fire, or bombs.
    In The Wind Waker, they're essentially floor-bound Floormasters that warp you around. They're very fun in the Earth Temple, where they're often hidden by clouds of fog so you walk right into one and are grabbed before you even know it's there, where said fog actually stuns you so you can't use any items, and can grab nearby skulls, vases, etc. and throw them at you. And then there are the parts where you have to control Medli through these, because if they grab her, you have to run all the way back to the beginning of the dungeon just to get her back, and she has no way of defending herself.

• The Keese (literal bats) and Bubbles (winged airborne skulls that make generally unpleasant sounds). While Keese are merely typically erratic and annoying flying enemies in the 2D games, the 3D games make them model examples of frustrating little a...well, you get the idea. First off, they are an immense pain when you attempt to lock on to anything else (or manually aiming for something in 1st-person mode, which will often prompt them to swoop up on you from behind for a cheap shot), as half the time you'll end up targeting an out of range bat, which allows the nearby ground enemies to eat you alive or fall off a ledge while you attempt to target something else. Second, they are often wrapped in magical flames, meaning that you'll be walking along and suddenly get set on fire, cursed (unable to use weapons), or frozen solid in a giant ice crystal when one hits you (and then skitters out of range while the effect wears off). Third, they love to hang around underneath tricky platform segments and behind climbable objects, often swooping in to knock you off at a critical moment.
  • In Ocarina of Time, you get a spell called Din's Fire that expands in a sphere, damaging many types of enemy you run into. Keese, however, aren't fazed by it: instead, they catch fire, becoming the aforementioned burning Keese (who can not only set you on fire, but burn up your wooden Deku Shield). Fire arrows are not recommended either (as Awkward Zombie demonstrates).
  • Keese often let out a Rupee when defeated in the Game Boy games. For greedy players, this gets endlessly frustrating when the rupees end up three tiles into a cave wall.
  • Another example of frustration from the Zelda Game Boy games comes in parts involving platforming and standing on moving platforms... when all of a sudden Keese appear, and both hurt and push you into spikes/pits.
  • Other enemies acting exactly like Keese are Guay (like Keese, only outdoors) and Bad Bats (like Keese, only bigger).
  • Breath of the Wild's Keese are particularly bad, since not only are there several elemental types—including electrified ones which can zap you for serious damage even when they're dead, so in many cases you'll take one out only to have its corpse tumble into you and stun you—but later in the game the regular ones start appearing in giant swarms, which circle around well out of melee range until they suddenly dive-bomb you. Bombing them as they attack scares the survivors away, but this is a bit tricky, especially if you have some other enemy to deal with. Adding insult to injury, they all have only 1 hit point, but hitting one with a sword or arrow wears out your weapon just as much as any other enemy.
• In any of the 2D games, Wizzrobes hang out in groups of three or so, teleporting randomly around the room and sending off magical bursts before disappearing once more. You kill them by getting behind them and slashing their behinds — assuming another Wizzrobe doesn't appear behind you and fry your tush. There are two kinds: the orange ones, who are the teleport-happy jerks; and the blue ones, who are Demonic Spiders.
  • The The Wind Waker Wizzrobes teleport, can summon more enemies, and laugh at you. They even made a Room of Doom out of them, where there were 3 Wizzrobes who continuously spawn monsters. If you don't kill them off immediately with ranged attacks, you'll never have the chance to again.
  • They themselves can't hold a candle to the Wizzrobe boss, who has all of the aforementioned abilities, as well as being able to summon more Wizzrobes, who can in turn continuously summon enemies (including Keese and Bubbles), leaving you quickly fighting a small army of Bats.
  • The Wizzrobes in the Game Boy games especially fit this, as there is a very slim time during which you can hit them. You have to dodge their beam, get to the side of them, and then slash away at them, and if you miss any of those three steps by so much as a pixel or if you take too long doing it, you have to wait and try again. All this, combined with the fact that they usually appear three to seven squares off, makes rooms of them tedious, but not really difficult. It's even worse than that in Link's Awakening, where Wizzrobes do all this teleporting, and can only be defeated by bombs.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, the Wizzrobes return, and become a massive nuisance because of one simple thing; they can drain Link's collective wallets dry by stealing Force Gems, of which you need 2000 to complete the level. And they flee from Link rather than stand still like the fire-throwing Wizzrobes. Fortunately, in most cases, destroying them frees up most of the Force Gems it took. Keyword being most.
  medibot: He's casting a powerful spell!
  • Breath of the Wild's Wizzrobes are even worse. They come in elemental varieties, they hop around on thin air out of reach of any non-spear/bludgeon weapon, they're always moving around so you can't get a good shot, they turn invisible sporadically cancelling out a lock-on, they can summon elemental Keese and Chuchus as a distraction, and they can change the weather. Sure, the fire and ice varieties are relatively easy to deal with if you can hit them with an arrow opposite to their element before they spot you, but the electric ones? Good luck dealing with those.
• Leevers appear from the ground, slide, and hit you, and never stop coming. In Ocarina of Time, killing enough makes a ginormous Leever appear.
• ReDeads paralyze Link with their scream and then proceed to hump him to death. See here. In Ocarina of Time, Nintendo really screws you because the marketplace in the future is full of these things. You can play the Sun's Song to turn the tables and paralyze them instead — too bad there's no such song in Twilight Princess (which are technically Gibdos). They also ramp up the annoyance by carrying around a rusty BFS that they smack you with after paralyzing you with their scream. There's a part in the Arbiter's Grounds where you face two of them at once while a swarm of tiny skeletons with tridents try to skewer you at the same time.
• Peahats fly around in the air attacking you. In the first game, they're completely invulnerable unless they stop and land, and then only vulnerable for brief periods, so you need to try hitting them while dodging the other 10 on the screen. The ones in Ocarina of Time are rarer but no less annoying, even given the ability to attack them in the air.
  • Even worse are the gigantic Seahats in The Wind Waker. Hope you like falling out of your boat!
  • Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword render them completely harmless and even helpful (as Clawshot targets).
  • They're annoying in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap too, where they're completely invulnerable to your sword, and often found in places where you need to use an item other than the Boomerang or Gust Jar that works on them.

The Legend of Zelda

• The effing Red Bubbles from the original game's second quest. Get hit by one, and you permanently lose the ability to use your sword. There are only four ways to regain it: Find a Blue Bubble and get hit by it, drink the Water of Life, or visit a Fairy at an Overworld spring (that last one is a bit difficult since Bubbles are only found in the labyrinths), or collect a fragment of the Triforce. Of course, to do that, you'll have to defeat that labyrinth's boss... without your sword. But to some people that's a Self-Imposed Challenge anyway.
• Pols Voices, the hopping bunny ghosts that hate sound. In the original Legend of Zelda, they're obnoxious little buggers who love to swarm the screen and hop into Link, trying to deal damage. Of course, they can be dispatched with one arrow (or later on in the series, any musical instrument). What's worse is that they hop around the screen rather quickly, qualifying their status as Goddamned Bats. In the second quest Level 2, you have to face them with the sword, and they take about five to eight hits to kill. Fun if you're not at full health.
  • They're much easier to deal with in the Japanese version, as the Famicom controller contains a built-in microphone, and yelling into it kills them instantly (this is what the manual means by them hating loud noises). NES gamers have no such feature, making it much more difficult until you figure out their weakness to arrows (and confusing anyone who tries to kill them with the Flute. Later games will give them a weakness to whatever that game's musical instrument is).
• Unless you have the sword beam, Darknuts are torture because they can only be hit on the side and back. Arrows? They're immune. To make matters worse, Link's tank-ish control will cause him to get hit once in a while, the first hit depriving you of the sword beam. They also take a long time to kill. And there are many places where you have to defeat an entire room of them to get to the next room... which just might also be full of Darknuts you have to kill every single one of to move on.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

• Aches (little blue literal Goddamned Bats) in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link are very often placed so that they sweep across lava/water pits, knocking you into instant death. If you try to kill them, you'd better hope that you can get them to sweep at you without jumping across the pit, because even if you do manage to hit them in mid-air, the odds are very big that you'll STILL fall in the pit because of the slight pushback you suffer from just hitting things with your sword, which will cause you to stop in mid-jump so you fall straight down.
• The ubiquitous knife-wielding Wosu from the same game. They cause a pitiful amount of damage if they touch you, but they knock you around a bit and steal your experience point, which becomes worse the later you get in the game.
• The Mobys, the birds that drop down from the sky and come charging at you. Like the aforementioned Wosu, they steal experience if they hit you, and the experience you get for beating them is paltry (still better than the Wosu, who give you nothing). They truly never stop coming at you; once one is beaten or leaves the screen, another immediately follows. They also love to come at you in the swamp, where your movement is hindered and thus so is your ability to avoid them.
• Two towns in the game (Saria first, then Darunia later on) have monsters disguised as townspeople. Anyone Link talks to that doesn't have anything significant to say presents a random possibility of turning into an Ache afterwards. They can be defeated, but the amount of health the bats have seems to be COMPLETELY random as well... sometimes the bat will go down in one hit, sometimes the smug little jerk will take QUITE a beating to finally destroy. The problem with that? They're still worth no more EXP than the "one hit wonder" versions.
• The two different animated head statues, Ra and Mau. (Ras are the dragon-shaped ones, Maus are the panthers.) Both spawn infinitely and drain experience when touching Link. Ras double as Ledge Bats, Maus basically Zerg Rush Link. Another annoying monster of a similar nature is Bago Bago, the skull-fish that appear on bridges. Like the aforementioned monsters, they spawn infinitely and drain your experience when they hit you. To make things worse, the variety found in the Great Palace also spit fire at you.

A Link To The Past

• Flying enemies that home on you. Crows, Vultures, Dactos... you name it. They're often quick and awkward to hit. The bees count as well, especially if you get an entire swarm after you.
• This is also the case of enemies that move quick and have erratic movement patters, such as Octoroks, Sand Crabs and Deadrocks (the little rock dinosaurs from Death Mountain who are also unkillable, but can be stunned for a short while).
• The falling boulders from Death Mountain. Although technically not enemies, they're large, fast, can hit while you're climbing up ladders and deal decent damage (an entire heart of damage. Link will probably be at the 5-7 range at that point) when first encountered.
• Medusas are fireball-spitting statues that are also a big annoyance, especially when paired with other enemies. They're unkillable, so you can't do anything to them.
• The Thieves from the Lost Woods and the Pikkus (the fox-like enemies) from the Village of Outcasts are unkillable and will steal your belongings if you bump into them. Avoiding them, especially in a narrow space, can be very tricky. The positive side is that they don't cause damage.
• Hardhat Beetles are often found near chasms. Hitting them with your sword causes a lot of knockback to Link himself, who might end up falling down a nearby hole. In a way, they end up being the enemy equivalent of the Moldorm boss fight.
• Antifairies are those skulls with little balls floating around them. In the Link's Awakening and Oracle games, they're less of a threat because they can be obliterated with a boomerang — not so here. They'll bounce around the room and be eminently predictable, but they typically show up in closed areas and/or with other foes to distract, they suck away your magic meter like a thirsty kid with a soda, and their only weakness is Magic Powder, an item which for the majority of the game is just a gimmick.

Ocarina of Time

• The Shell Blades in Ocarina Of Time are this type; they tend to swim up and attack Link aggressively, while you can only use a hookshot on them, and hope you get past their hard shells to their one Weak Spot.
• The Biri in Ocarina of Time, floating jellyfish that are immune to the slingshot and hurt you when you kill them with the sword. That leaves five options of killing them without getting hurt: Din's Fire (which many won't have at that point and wastes magic), Deku Sticks (which break and are in limited supply in the dungeon), Deku Nuts (the most efficient method before getting the Boomerang, but easy to laugh off due to being non-lethal; Deku Nuts don't kill them, but stun them and then enable you to cut them without being shocked), the Boomerang (which you don't get until halfway through the dungeon), and Princess Ruto (yes, you can use her as a projectile and it won't hurt her one bit).
• Also in Jabu-Jabu's Belly are Shabom, large kamikaze bubbles that reflect most projectiles, and Stingers, large flying fish that stalk you as you move around. Like the Bari, however, Shabom are also very weak against Deku Nuts.

Majora's Mask

• The Skullfish in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask are virtually everywhere in the Great Bay and can come out of nowhere. Plus, the only way to kill them in the water is with Zora Link's electrical shield, or to dive all the way to the floor and punch them.
• The Guay, which are Goddamned birds. They're all over the place in Ikana Castle, spawn infinitely, and dive bomb you with little warning. Camera Screw makes it especially hard to auto-target them. Guay also have a really annoying tendency to strike while you are fighting the otherwise extremely easy Garo, often making you take hits from both enemies.

Oracle Games

• The The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games manage to avert this trope quite well, on the other hand. Wallmasters and Floormasters are significantly easier to dodge and destroy while other enemies are easy to kill or few in number. Like Likes still suck.

The Wind Waker

• The Blue Bubbles from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Because getting hit with one keeps you from using items for a while, you have to put out the flames first. The only way to do THIS is with ice arrows, your Deku Leaf, or the Hookshot. Easy enough, except in a certain few rooms in the Wind Temple. You have to get from a lower level platform to a higher one to advance. The only way to do this is by hopping from a series of platforms across a non-bottomless chasm. You can't do this without controlling Makar to have him plant trees that you can use your hookshot on. The room is full of them, bobbing along above you. This makes the Deku Leaf worthless, because it only works on a vertical platform, leaving you only ice arrows. However, because of the sheer number of Wizzrobes in the dungeon, you're low on magic and arrows at this point, and the Bubbles are moving, and sometimes even blocked from view. Once you DO manage to get one, it falls into the chasm, which you have to jump down into so you can kill the Bubble BEFORE it becomes unstunned and the flames return and it flies back up so you have to do it all over again. If that weren't bad enough, they jerk you out of controlling Makar if they hit him, causing him to fall to the bottom of the chasm, where infinitely regenerating grabby-claws mean you have to hop down, cut him free, and carry him to a safe location before you can do anything else. Thankfully, while you still have to deal the final blow if you use the Hookshot, a good aim can make the whole business moot, since doing so both draws the Bubble toward you and instantly puts out its flame.
• Ocean Octoroks in The Wind Waker seem to know when to show up so they can maximize their annoyance factor. In fact, pretty much any seaborne enemy in the game is a pain in the ass, such as the Gyorgs — once they start following your boat, manoeuvrability goes down the toilet. Not to mention what happens if you get knocked overboard. Sea Octoroks are particularly bad, though, because if you're in a place where they happen to hang out, they never. Stop. Coming.
• Miniblins in The Wind Waker. Little devils (literally), complete with pitchforks and ears just as pointy as Link's. They attack in swarms, making indescribably annoying sounds and jabbing you with their 'forks. In some areas of Forsaken Fortress and other areas, they literally spawn infinitely... from Hammerspace.

Phantom Hourglass

• The Skulltulas, specifically when you escort the Cubus Sisters. When they appear, kill them fast, or the Sisters will find an excuse to be scared and scream, alerting the Reaplings and making them charge at you.

Twilight Princess

• The ghost rats from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess are invisible (and unkillable) unless you're in Wolf mode and using your senses, and while they don't do any damage, they reduce your movement to molasses on a cold day without any apparent reason. Typically they slow you over quicksand in the first dungeon you meet them. This turns into a nightmare in the Cave of Ordeals when you're dropping in on a room of difficult enemies and you inexplicably find yourself moving incredibly slowly while getting whacked to death, and then you have the hassle of becoming the more vulnerable wolf to kill the rats, all the while taking damage from the REAL enemies.
• In a less annoying fashion, the same dungeon that houses the ghost-rats, the Arbiter's Grounds, also has huge swarms of (thankfully visible) insects that will cover Link and crawl all over his body, with Link looking only mildly creeped out by this. This is really only a case of bats in rooms that also have quicksand, where stopping to swing your sword and knock them off might slow you down enough to sink into the sand if you aren't quick enough. Thankfully, they flee from a lit lantern.
• The game's Gibdos can prevent you from obtaining Chu Jelly, your only source of health in the Bonus Dungeon. And losing good Chu Jelly because they stunned you isn't the worst part of it; if they paralyze you, you will have to mash buttons or get whacked; however, that doesn't prevent other Gibdos from screaming and putting a whole rinse-repeat on the process...
• Poes are extremely aggravating until you obtain the Master Sword and gain the ability to shift between human and wolf form at will. You can only see (and kill them) in wolf form, but for the first half of the game, you only ever run into them when you are in human form. Your only choices are to run away or get beaten to death by a floating lantern. It is extremely cathartic the first time you run into one in wolf form and get to rip its soul out with your teeth.

Breath of the Wild

• Stalmoblins are easily defeated, yet they pop out of the ground without warning, attack fast, and are capable of doing a good deal of damage. This is made worse when Stalmoblins are equipped with spears, giving them a much longer range; or even worse, a high-damage bow. They tend to spawn in groups of three, and you can easily get clobbered by one while trying to finish off one of the others... or by the enemy you were trying to fight when the skeleton squad popped up and distracted you.
• Pebblits, the juvenile form of the Talus overworld bosses, are annoying mostly because they can show up from practically nowhere (any old rock you see could actually be a Pebblit), they move quickly, and they're immune to your sword. Aside from a small subset of blunt/crushing melee weapons, the only effective tool against them is Bombs, and since they advance on you so fast, you'll often end up blowing yourself sky-high with your own Bomb explosion. Bonus points for their tendency to appear on high cliffs or mountaintops— hope you enjoy falling off. You can simply pick them up and throw them, which counts as a One-Hit Kill, but they usually spawn in threes, so it's easy to get blindsided by the other two while trying to deal with one unless you're quick.
• Wolves. They usually spawn in packs, they surround you so they can attack from any direction, you can't Z-target them, and they constantly run out of reach of your shorter weapons. Fortunately, once you kill one the rest of the pack will scatter, so you can avoid a lot of headaches if you can pick them off with a boomerang or arrow, but damn they are annoying. And then there's the bears, which escalate this to outright Demonic Spider levels.
• Yiga Footsoldiers, post-Master Kohga. Early in the game, they're Demonic Spiders, but few and far between. Post-Yiga base, though, they'll appear much more often than before and forgo the disguises. At this point, though, you likely have equipment capable of two-shotting or even one-shotting them, which makes them into nuisances. They also enjoy teleporting to dodge your attacks, and have a habit of popping up at the worst times. Got a plan to sneak up on that Guardian Stalker and take it out without much trouble? Okay, then, have fun getting the Guardian alerted to your presence by that Yiga Footsoldier who just randomly appeared in front of it!
• Octoroks. A trivial generic enemy in most Zelda games, here they are absolute pests. Many of them are found in water, and Link is unable to attack when swimming if he's not wearing the Zora helm. The trick of deflecting their rocks back at them is also much harder to pull off here due to the game's physics. God help you if you're in water, having to chase down a more deadly enemy with multiple Octoroks firing away at you. And they're smart enough to Lead the Target if Link is moving in a straight line—something that no other enemies in the game besides Lynels can do. If there's no water around, you may encounter burrowing "forest Octoroks" instead, with all the same annoying properties plus invincibility when they're underground (they will only pop out to snipe you when you're a good distance away, and can be difficult to locate, since while buried they just look like bushes). As if all that isn't enough, sometimes they will disguise themselves as half-buried treasure chests, catapulting themselves into your face when you take the bait (although the Magnesis rune can clue you in by showing that they aren't metallic chests despite looking like them).

Tears of the Kingdom

Alongside the above entries under Breath of the Wild (as Tears is a sequel), this game introduces a few new annoyances:

• First are the Aerocudas, which are like Keese, but substantially more irritating for a couple of reasons. First, they actively help monster bases by acting as defense systems from the air: while all monsters will sound the alarm if they spot Link, their line of sight is fairly limited. Aerocudas hover above the bases and don't have that disadvantage. The second irritant they pose is that they're one of the few non-Zonai enemies that can appear in the Sky Islands, and are more than happy to try and attack and knock Link off course while he might be trying to paraglide to a distant island. Having Tulin ready with a well-placed speed boost is the only reliable way to avoid getting hit, but even that isn't a guarantee if you find a flock of these things.
• The Little Frox enemies in the Depths are nothing but absolute pests. They're weak and exist solely for wasting time while exploring the wasteland. And they always come in packs so you have to spend more than enough of that time to deal with their crap. Oh, and if they're left to their own devices, they'll go for a snack: the Brightbloom Seeds that you're using to attempt to get from Lightroot to Lightroot without being in pitch darkness. Nothing is more annoying than wandering an area you've lit up than for it to get dark out of nowhere.
• The Evermeans aren't especially dangerous, having slow, easy-to-dodge attacks, and go down in a few hits from an axe-type weapon. The problem is that they're disguised as normal trees, meaning they have a tendency to attack you out of nowhere while you're busy with something else. The fact that there are a lot of trees in the game in general makes them tremendous Paranoia Fuel whenever you're exploring a wooded area.

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