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Giant Enemy Crab

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Holy crab! Where the hell is the weak point?!
Image by VegasMike

"Once... they were men. Now they are land crabs."
— Dr. Brewer, Attack of the Crab Monsters

Crabs.

They've got big pincers. They've got googly eyes. They've got a thick exoskeleton. They've got a funny sideways walk. They're capable of living both on land and in water. In some parts of the world, they make delicious meals. In others, they name deadly diseases after them.

But what happens when you decide to enlarge one? You get a scary-looking monster fit for a Boss Battle. And possibly an extra-large delicious meal if you decide to cook it afterward.

Like Big Creepy-Crawlies, inefficient oxygen use renders the truly huge ones impossible. However, around 450 million years ago marine arthropods did grow to large sizes, up to 2.5 metres in the case of the Eurypterids.

This trope is named for a mid-2000s meme, where during Sony's infamous E3 2006 presentation, the presenters for Genji: Days of the Blade claimed that Giant Enemy Crabs appeared in "famous battles that actually took place in ancient Japan". When encountering one, you may Attack Its Weak Point, especially if for massive damage while using Real-Time Weapon Change.

See Sea Monster for other monsters from the deep, and see Penny-Pinching Crab for other crabs. Often similar to a Giant Spider, but not quite as creepy (and theoretically, giant enemy crabs are more tasty). A mechanical version would be a form of Spider Tank. Can be found on an Isle of Giant Horrors. Subtrope of Dire Beast.

Examples of Giant Crabs:

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • This commercial for Joe's Crab Shack.

    Anime & Manga 

    Art 
  • The Carta Marina of 1539 shows a kind of giant lobster between Orkney and the Hebrides, holding a man in his claw. According to the commentary, this monster is called "Polypus" and is considered very dangerous (although he also claims it can change colour, so there may be some confusion with another multi-limbed marine invertebrate — the octopus; since "polypus" simply means "many-footed", it was often used as a catch-all term for anything with more than six limbs).

    Asian Animation 
  • In the Gaju Bhai episode "Tiku Thakela", the Monster of the Week is a giant red crab named Crabadu who uses a giant tank on its back to absorb energy from the people of Gajrajpuri.
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: A large red crab appears in Great War in the Bizarre World episode 12, waking up and chasing after the goats and Jollie after he's implied to be a large red rock. In the following episode, the goats are convinced that the crab is under Darton's power, and Jollie attempts to use the Luminous Ray to uncorrupt him. It doesn't work because the crab isn't corrupted, leaving him furious that they would bully him and causing him and an army of crabs to go after the goats. Later, the crab and his friends attack giant frogs for ruining the altar that they were building.

    Card Games 
  • One Pachimon collectible card depicts a giant crab monster from outer space descending on Paris Harbour, and about to crush an unfortunate passsing ship with it's foot.
  • While Magic: The Gathering does have a literal Giant Crab, it looks absolutely puny when compared to the Wormfang Crab. Yes, those are mountains it's stepping over. Suffice to say that there are other giant crabs as well — a whole creature type of them.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has Number 52: Diamond Crab King. It's certainly much bigger than any ordinary-sized human.

    Comic Books 
  • In Airboy Comics #103, The Heap battles the Great Black Crab of Brittany, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • Atomic Robo: Atomic Robo encounters a Mad Scientist in Japan who has turned himself into a giant crustacean monster.
    Robo: Why do we even have the Square-Cube Law?
  • Critter: In the "High Tide" arc, Schoolgirl is trapped atop a buoy by giant crabs, leading to a That Came Out Wrong moment as she calls for help.
  • Gold Digger: The ruler of Atlantis has a crab big enough to put an aircraft carrier on its head as a pet. It is also adorable.
  • Mouse Guard: The first volume features a battle against several normal-sized Enemy Crabs, but since the main characters are mice...
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): The first issue of the pirate story ends on a cliffhanger involving a giant crab rising up from a pit.
  • Nextwave: RELEASE THE HOMICIDE CRABS! The Homicide Crabs were one of H.A.T.E.'s many weapons used against the Nextwave Squad in War Garden 6, Wyoming. They were deployed to face off against the team's leader, Monica Rambeau, but were relatively easily fought off.
  • The Transformers (Marvel) has the Decepticon Squeezeplay, a Headmaster whose alt-mode was supposedly a giant crab (it actually looked more like a mutant gorilla with pincers instead of hands with a vaguely crab-like shell on its back). His Japanese version is even called Cancer because of it.

    Comic Strips 
  • The Far Side: A boxer's worst nightmare. "It's no use, doc. No matter what I do, he just goes to the side!"

    Fan Works 

    Gamebooks 

    Films — Animation 
  • The Crabs involves a Mad Scientist building an army of self-replicating, metal-eating robot crabs as part of an experiment in Mechanical Evolution. The crabs get bigger and more elaborate as they go along, until the only one left is a life-like giant crab that simply crushes its prey with rocks and its massive claws.
  • Gandahar: Enormous crablike creatures protect the city of Jasper. They serve as the city’s last line of defense against the invading Metal Men.
  • Ice Age: Continental Drift: When Manny, Sid and Diego encounter such a gigantic crab while being lost and facing a raging storm.
    Sid: HOLY CRAB!
  • Minions: The Rise of Gru: Since Jean Clawed is half crab, he rides in a multi-legged vehicle that's made to look like a crab, with giant pincers to destroy and grab things.
  • In Moana, Moana helps Maui recover his magic fishhook from Tamatoa, a vain, gigantic, talking coconut crab.
  • Monsters, Inc.: Mr. Waternoose looks very crab-like in appearance. His status as a villain, though, isn't revealed until near the end of the movie.
  • Pinocchio in Outer Space: On the surface of Mars, Pinocchio finds animals made gigantic by atomic mutation, including huge crabs with fangs◊.
  • The Sea Beast: One of the sea beasts is a gigantic purple crab that attempts to eat Jacob and Maisie, but the Red Bluster fights it off.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Aquaman (2018): The Brine have a giant crab as part of their arsenal.
  • Attack of the Crab Monsters: People are trapped on a shrinking island by intelligent, brain-eating giant crabs. Not only were they big crabs, they could imitate people's voices.
  • The Dark Crystal: The Garthim are hulking, crab-like creatures used as minions, solders and enforcers by the villainous Skeksis. They've even got a bit of Fiddler-Crab likeness to them. One arm is a massive slicing claw, the other is a powerful gripping hand.
  • Godzilla: Destoroyah is made of thousands of these — which are already giant by themselves.
  • Land of the Lost: A giant crab appears during one scene in which it tries to attack the protagonists while they are stoned. However, it is killed by a geyser and is then eaten by the protagonists instead.
  • The Lost Continent: Giant crabs are some of the many perils that the main characters have to endure besides killing sea weed and The Spanish Inquisition.
  • Love And Monsters: The pirates' attack animal is a mutant ten-ton crab they control with an electrical cable. Joel realizes it's actually a Gentle Giant tortured to do their bidding and once he sets it free, it immediately kills and eats the pirates.
  • The Mist: One of these is what finally takes out Ollie the assistant manager in the movie adaptation.
  • Monster Sea Food Wars is a kaiju parody film where three sea monsters attacks Tokyo, one of them being a giant crab (the other two are respectively an octopus and a squid).
  • Mysterious Island features a giant crab animated via stop motion. Supposedly, Harryhausen used the shell of an actual crab to construct the creature.
  • Pacific Rim has the crustacean-like Onibaba, the kaiju from Mako's RABIT memory.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: The villain is Davy Jones, who, while still being more-or-less humanoid, has a crab's leg instead of one of his human ones and a crab's claw instead of his left hand (meant to imitate the "traditional" peg-leg and hook hand normally associated with pirates). He's also significantly larger than most of the main cast.
  • Space Amoeba: The eponymous alien takes control of a crab named Ganimes and enlarges it.
  • Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones: The acklay is a monster that's part giant crab, part mantis, part lizard.
  • Transformers Film Series: Especially in Transformers Revengeofthe Fallen, Megatron's physical appearance was actually designed after that of a fiddler crab's (especially with his arms, his right arm is extremely huge and claw-like, while his left is extremely thin and bony). This even carries into his altmodes in those films: a jet-tank hybrid in the first two, and an armored truck in Transformers Darkofthe Moon.
  • Wapakman: The Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao fights one of these.

    Literature 
  • Animorphs: Visser Three morphed a chameleon-like color changing one in a book that took place Under the Sea.
  • Larry Niven's Beowulf's Children introduces the Scribe, which resembles a giant land-dwelling horseshoe crab. Fortunately, they're also Gentle Giants... with defenses that deter all potential predators, even the grendels and the huge flesh-eating "bees" with Super-Speed. To get a feel for how big they are, note that the colonists name the first Scribe they meet "Asia".
  • In The Beyonders, the first word fragment is unintentionally guarded by a giant crab. Originally it was guarded by a hermit; the crab moved in on her own. She's terrifyingly fast as well as Nigh Invulnerable, and escaping her is a chore and a half for the protagonists.
  • J. M. Busby's science-fiction horror novel Cage A Man features the Demu, a race of aliens who resemble human-sized crabs. They're Scary Dogmatic Aliens who believe they are the only true intelligence in the universe, and seek to turn all other intelligent species into more of themselves.
  • The Clickers by J.F Gonzalez is a splatterpunk story involving prehistoric, blood-thirsty giant crustaceans that can spit up acid and the larger ones have shells that'll easily stop anything short of a .50 caliber bullet.
  • Erec Rex: One of the monsters is a type of giant crab called a ginglehoffer. They can be dangerous, but are held back by their crippling fondness combined with allergic reaction to marshmallows.
  • Franny K. Stein: The Pumpkin-Crab Monster that Franny faces in the first book Lunch Walks Among Us is essentially a giant crab monster with a pumpkin for a head.
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Hagrid's infamous Blast-Ended Skrewts, a hybrid between Manticores and Fire-crabs. They start out as being merely a poor choice of a Care of Magical Creature class project, but fully mature they become so distinctly sinister and dangerous that they are employed for the Third Triwizards Champions task.
  • In John Dies at the End, a gorilla riding a giant crab (or possibly a single creature resembling a gorilla riding a giant crab) violently escapes from a chemical plant that makes drain cleaner. No, it doesn't make sense in context, that's the whole point.
  • Guy N. Smith wrote a series of low-rent horror novels in which giant killer crabs scuttle amok, beginning with Night of the Crabs.
  • Nuklear Age: There's the memorable Crushtaceon; a giant prehistoric crab formerly frozen in ice that is... attracted to the sounds of Angus's bagpipes
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Last Olympian's first chapter features one. Percy even Attacks Its Weak Point for massive damage.
  • Phantoms: The protagonists are in the lobby of the Hilltop Inn after dark. The Ancient Enemy sends two crabs, each the size of a car, to harass them. It has one climb up the side of the building and the other appear in the darkness at the limits of their vision to frighten them.
  • The Polity: The Prador from Prador Moon are giant enemy crabs. Giant, sociopathic, cannibalistic, man-eating enemy crabs with a penchant for enslavement and massive firepower.
  • Redwall: When you're a mouse, all Crabs are Giant. Case in point: In Mossflower, the Salamandastron Quartet end up having to get past a Mama Crab that's bigger than Chibb the robin. There was also a lobster in Mariel of Redwall.
  • The Spooksville book Attack of the Killer Crabs has giant crabs attacking the beach. They all turn out to be giant robot crabs.
  • The Sun Eater had the Enar. These extinct crustacean aliens were roughly about the half height of a human, but many times wider. The Enar were an Always Chaotic Evil species who were a Servant Race to the Watcher that successfully conquered the galaxy in an attempt to destroy the physical universe. But due to a Stable Time Loop, the Enar were incapable wiping out physical existence so they committed species-wide suicide. This ancient event allowed the rise and evolution of humanity, as humans expanded through the cosmos unchallenged until they met the Cielcin.
  • The Sword of Shannara has one with tentacles. Later revisions added metal plating to them. And created multiples.
  • The Time Machine: The Time Traveller encounters some rather menacing giant crabs on his way to the end of the world.
  • Wall Around A Star has the glassy crabs grown by the Cuckoo cultists on Earth as well as found naturally on Cuckoo itself (if anything there can be described as natural).
  • In The Wandering Inn, huge crabs appear, which should be bad enough for the characters, but furthermore it has a shell, similar looking to rock, thus giving it the name of, Rock Crabs, making it very hard to kill.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Babylon 5: While not actual crabs, the Shadows have enormous black spaceships resembling crabs. Living Ships, at that, with a memorable psychic scream (not without reason) and they can cut through any other warships like soft cheese.
  • Deadliest Catch: A short promo features a giant crab emerging from a lake and attacking some men in a boat.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Macra Terror" is about a society menaced and brainwashed by creatures that look like giant crabs. Really low-production-value ones.
    • The Macra returned in CGI for the new series episode "Gridlock".
    • Intelligent crab monsters show up in the Sixth Doctor Telos Novella Shell Shock, apparently for Author Phobia reasons.
  • The Goodies are attacked by a giant crab claw coming out of the ocean in the "Lost Island of Munga" episode.
  • Kamen Rider Hibiki has a few of these. And by extension, so does Kamen Rider Decade. Downplayed size-wise in Kamen Rider Scissors, whose contract monster is a humanoid crab. Same goes for Scissors' American counterpart, Kamen Rider Incisor. There's also Marshall Armor from Kamen Rider V3, who turns into a giant crab monster when he shows up in Kamen Rider Spirits.
  • That Mitchell and Webb Look had a sketch about an alien invasion by vast metallic crablike creatures.
  • Ultra Series features several crab or crustacean-based kaiju:
    • The original Ultra examples are Zanika and Yadokarin from Return of Ultraman, the latter being a monster from a planet in the constellation of (where else?) Cancer that was devoured by a Planet Eater, while the former was a hermit crab with vaguely mammalian features that turned a crashed space station into its home.
    • King Crab from Ultraman Ace doesn't actually look anything like a crab despite his name, but is able to transform into a horseshoe crab to hide from his enemies (though it must be noted horseshoe crabs are not crustaceans).
    • Ganza from Ultraman Taro was so giant that ZAT mistook him for an island when they encountered it sleeping. Fittingly, his name is derived from the Japanese word for crab, "gani".
    • Ultraman Leo's Black Dome was one of the Flying Saucer Beasts, appearing as a giant saucer-shaped fiddler crab able to spray acidic foam capable of turning a concrete building into mush in seconds.
    • Reicubas from Ultraman Dyna is considered to be the most popular and iconic of Dyna's foes and possesses the ability to switch between breathing fireballs and icy mist.
    • Crabgan from Ultraman Gaia was a symbiotic lifeform from the Cambrian period that returned in the present as a ghost seeking to reunite with its evolutionary partner Anemos.

    Music 
  • The Darkness: One appears in the video for "I Believe In A Thing Called Love", along with a giant space squid.
  • Kitsune^2: An entire song about giant enemy enemy crab crab crab: "Giant Enemy Crab". (Attack its weak point for massive damage!)
  • The Prodigy: The crab on the album cover The Fat of the Land, due to being shot in close-up.

    Myths & Religion 

    Pinball 
  • Crüe Ball: Crabula, who releases maggots and requires numerous hits to destroy.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Chaosium's All the Worlds' Monsters. The Giant Alaskan King Crab is a possible opponent of a player party. It is a huge version or a normal crab, measuring 20 feet across.
  • Arduin: In The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources, the Ghost Crab is a giant crab with up to 80 Hit Points and two Power Pincers that each do 4-48 Hit Points of damage and drain a point of Constitution on each hit.
  • Baron Munchausen refers to "The giant crabs of Ancient Nippon, whose weak spots may be struck for massive damage."
  • BattleTech has the King Crab, a 100 ton assault mech. Should you find yourself fighting it, rest assured that critting its ammunition bin will result in massive damage. Aside from being a Humongous Mecha, the King Crab has an additional claim to giant status: it has a smaller 45-ton counterpart simply known as the Crab.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • In module S2 White Plume Mountain, the PCs could fight a giant crab in an air bubble inside an area filled with boiling hot water. Said crab has obtained notoriety for killing even well-prepared, powerful parties. Giant monsters in confined spaces can be very nasty. The revised version for 3e uses an advanced version of the infamous That Damn Crab below. It's just as ridiculously deadly as the original. In Return to White Plume Mountain, a group of adventurers who explore the same dungeon many years later battle the invisible zombified shell of the crab. (May generate cries of Cool, but Stupid from your gamers.)
    • The 8-foot-wide Lawful Evil hydrax in Basic D&D is a crab-shaped water elemental composed entirely of ice.
    • Eberron has the carcass crab◊, a giant crab that adorns its shell with battlefield detritus such as bits of armor, weapons, body parts and bodies.
    • The siege crab of the 3.5 edition Monster Manual 3 is a 20-foot-wide, 15-foot-tall crab transformed by the kuo-toa (although the secrets to creating them have fallen into the hands of other aquatic races) into a living war machine, complete with a hatch that allows one to climb into the crab's insides and control it.
    • The Far Corners of the World brings the "monstrous crab," better known as That Damn Crab for its tendency to grapple party members and drag them to a watery grave (assuming they somehow manage to live past the first round) as well as its insane damage output, high AC, and mindless immunity to illusions. It's listed as an appropriate encounter for 3rd-level parties, but is generally considered a match for 7th-level parties, and will likely lead to Total Party Kills if used as printed. The monster was also reprinted with only minor tweaks in Stormwrack and given cousins of all sizes.
    • Stormwrack also adds the hammerclaw, which is a lobster with all the same strengths plus the ability to hide in coral/rocks and to stun the party with an at-will sonic attack for the same CR.
    • The little-known, Aztec-themed first edition module The Lost Shrine of Tamoachan presented the characters with a talking giant hermit crab, and his Kid with the Leash, a normal-sized talking lobster. Anyone fluent in their language was likely to be able to talk their way past the two, since "talking" didn't necessarily mean "clever" in this case.
    • White Dwarf magazine #39 article "Inhuman Gods". The deity of the crab men is T'Ka Boolk'na, who takes the form of a gigantic (20 foot diameter) crab with large Glowing Eyes whose shell is as hard as stone.
    • Ever since First Edition, D&D has had crab men. Back when they first appeared in the Fiend Folio, they were just armored humanoids with big claws and beaky faces; but in second edition, the artists took to depicting them as literally giant crabs walking around on two legs.
  • Dystopian Wars: The Covenant of Antarctica's Landship is a Giant Victorian Steampunk Enemy Crab.
  • Eclipse Phase features Novacrab pod-morphs, vat-grown cyber-crabs that may be player characters. Due to the setting's ubiquitous Brain Uploading, players can select a novacrab body as well, providing a huge bonus to strength and able to survive in just about any environment.
  • Hollow Earth Expedition: The supplement Mysteries of the Hollow Earth has a giant crab that can grow up to 25 feet long and has claws that are six feet long.
  • It Came From The Late Late Show. The Giant Crab is a Monster found on remote tropical islands. It can ruthlessly crush Cast Members caught in its Power Pincers.
  • Judges Guild adventure Tegel Manor (revised and expanded, 1989) has a giant crab creature in the Sauna that's posing as a statue. When the sauna activates, so does the creature. Not only do its pincers inflict serious damage, they can also each grab and hold up to three opponents.
  • Monsterpocalypse: Steel Shell Crabs are a unit for the Tritons. Also, the Crustaceor Lobstroyer monster.
  • Pathfinder:
    • Giant crabs can vary in size from rock crabs larger than a human to the appropriately-named shark-eating crabs to the literally giant-sized great reef crabs to whale-sized shipwrecker crabs.
    • The first issue of Pathfinder Chronicles features a giant hermit crab that uses a giant's helmet as its shell. The game's Bestiary features several sizes of giant crabs. Including one called a "Shark Eater".
    • The last book of the Skull & Shackles adventure path, From Hell's Heart, details some of Golarion's unique and legendary sea monsters. One of these is Buklok the Crabfather, a rock crab big enough to have a four-foot statue embedded in its shell. In battle, it can summon swarms of regular crabs, invoke foul weather and even affect its enemies' minds to force them to evoke unpleasant memories.
  • Titans from Pirates Constructible Strategy Game; each titan has four pincers that function as masts/cannons in game, and unlike the Kraken and Leviathan of the setting they can carry crew. However, they fall into Awesome, but Impractical for several reasons: They're usually ridiculously expensive, can only move with a certain facing at any one time, and without a crew they are useless as attack units and vulnerable to getting shot to pieces before having the chance to strike.
  • Rolemaster Shadow World setting, supplement Kingdom of the Desert Jewel. In the Halls of the Mountain King there's a beach next to an underground river. If the PCs come within 30 feet of its lair, a giant crab will attack them and try to turn them into dinner.
  • Tails of Equestria: Carcinuses are crabs the size of office buildings. They mostly live deep beneath the ocean, but occasionally attack coastal cities.
  • King Krabby is just one of three ultra-sized critters threatening The City in "Annoy All Monsters!", a B-movie style adventure in the Toon supplement Toon Tales.
  • Supplement Trollpak, "Book of Uz" part 2. The crabs tamed and used by trolls can weigh more than 2,000 lbs.
  • Warhammer 40,000: While not strictly a Crab per se, Old One Eye and most Tyranid Monstrous creatures can take Crushing Claws, which are described as crab-like. Being Monstrous creatures, they tend to be around tank-sized if not larger.

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE: The Manas crabs, extremely aggressive and powerful Rahi that are sometimes employed as guard animals for villains, namely Makuta.

    Video Games 
  • Adventure Island: The sixth boss of Adventure Island III is a large crab wielding an Epic Flail. The second boss of Adventure Island II is large hermit crab.
  • In Age of Mythology, playing the Greeks you can get access to a giant crab unit called the Carcinos with the right god.
  • Alice: Madness Returns has a crab equipped with an Arm Cannon. It also outsizes every other creature that appears in its respective chapter. Oh, it is also a Cigar Chomper. Guess what it does with its cigar since its Arm Cannon is of the early Blackpowder-era variety?
  • In ANNO: Mutationem, beneath Freeway 42 is a mini-boss, a large crab creature encased in stone, where it summons small crab-like variants while tossing debris and launching projectiles from its shell.
  • Arc Angle has the Crabburn boss. It's larger than a small city and utilizes deadly Eye Beams and Macross Missile Massacre.
  • ARK: Survival Evolved: Aberration introduces giant mutant spider crabs called Karkinos. Instead of tranquilizers, you have to knock them out with cannonfire or catapults to tame them, and they're big enough to dual-wield live Stegosaurus◊.
  • Avencast: Rise of the Mage: One of the handful of bosses in the cavern of trials is a giant crab lacking even a weak spot; it requires environmental traps to kill.
  • Banjo-Kazooie has you fighting a giant hermit crab (Nipper) in order to obtain the Jiggy inside its shell. It is the boss of the second world (Treasure Trove Cove).
  • Bargon Attack: A giant crab spawning normal-sized crabs has to be fought.
  • Battle Axe has a crab-like monstrosity on spindly legs walking sideways as the boss of the underground caverns. It lacks pincers, oddly enough, and has the ability to jump and crush you under it's belly.
  • Bio-Hazard Battle had one of these as a Mini-Boss that spawned mini crabs that fired at the player. And it appeared twice in the same level.
  • Blaster Master's fifth boss, Hard Shell, is one of these. As well as the first and third bosses in its Enhanced Remake, Blaster Master Overdrive.
  • Body Harvest: The first major boss, Leviathan, is a giant alien crab with missile launchers.
  • Bomberman '93 has a Dual Boss version in the Cockle Twins.
  • Borderlands has a giant enemy crab called a Larva Crab Worm. If you shoot it directly in its eye, you score a critical hit for thousands of damage, an ungodly amount at that point in the game, and one-shot it. Later on, with the "Secret Armory of General Knoxx" DLC, the secret final boss (who is pointed out with signs saying "SECRET FINAL BOSS THIS WAY" from the Second area of the DLC) is Crawmerax, a Giant Giant Enemy Crab whose level is always three levels higher than the game's current level cap.
  • Brave Soul gives us the Giant Enemy Fire-Breathing Crab!
  • Brave Story: A New Traveler has a Giant Enemy Conch named "Boogaboo Crab" in the Seaside Cave. It has trees growing out of the moss on its shell and the 'crab' goes "BOOGA-BOOGA-BOOGA-BOO."
  • Bravely Second has a monster literally called "Enemy Crab", which has an attack called "Massive Damage" and a defensive ability called "No Weak Point".
  • Brawl Stars: Tick has a skin called King Crab Tick which turns him into this. Fitting, considering it was released during the Summer of Monsters season.
  • Bubble Bobble: Bubble Symphony has a Giant Enemy Robot Crab that uses the Huge Battleship Yamato as a shell.
  • Bullet Heaven's tenth regular level is a boss battle against a giant crab.
  • Burai Fighter has Giganticrab, the first boss.
  • Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia features a Wake-Up Call Boss battle against Brachyura, a "giant crab from the depths of Transylvanian history" (the medal for defeating it without getting hit actually calls it a "giant enemy crab") whose attack patterns have much more internal variation than those of the first two bosses. Also becomes That One Boss for people who can't figure out that they need to drop the elevator on it (which is probably the most satisfying boss gib EVER).
  • ChipWits has the "electrocrab."
  • Clockwork Aquario: The second boss of the game is a mechanical version of this trope. It's a giant crab-shaped mecha piloted by Dr. Hangyo, who drives it back and forth on the stage while leaving little robotic wind-up crabs in its wake.
  • Commando 2: Crabocolypse is a robotic version. You stand on a train when you fight it, while it does a Wall Crawl on the train track support beams.
  • Cool Spot toys with this: its crabs are regular-sized, but they're quite big from the viewpoint of the player character, the spot from the logo on a 7-Up bottle.
  • Coryoon has a giant crab as a Mini-Boss in the underwater stage, who stays at the bottom of the screen but has extendable pincers snapping at you throughout the fight. And then you fight the stage's actual boss, a giant lobster.
  • Crab War features a variety of very large crabs.
  • Crossed Swords have two giant crabs as bosses in the first game, the first which is red and fought near a beach, while the second is blue and oddly enough, is fought in a volcano, an area you wouldn't expect to fight crustacean-based enemies.
  • The Crown of Wu has a robotic crab as one of the bosses, where it runs circles around you while spamming projectile attacks. You need to cripple the crab by attacking the legs; depleting the leg's health cripples it momentarily and exposes it's weak spot.
  • Crystal Story: The boss of the quest to rescue a missing cat, fully formed from Memetic Mutation, being referenced after Tristam notifies the party about it:
    Phoebe: Attack its weakpoint for massive damage!!!!!!
    Reuben: OK! That is really lame.
  • Cthulhu Saves the World: One of enemies. As their description helpfully points out, they are immune to attacking their weak spot for massive damage.
  • Among the various flying mechanical fish enemies in Darius, there's Yamato/My Home Daddy from Super Darius (a hermit crab) and the aptly-named Red Crab from Darius II (a giant fiddler crab). Darius Gaiden has Hysteric Empress, a Japanese Spider Crab, as one of its final bosses. Since she's a Final Boss of a Darius game, she'll attack your weak point for massive damage to your continues.
  • Dark Age of Camelot has a house-sized crab called the bone snapper.
  • Dark Souls:
    • Dark Souls has the Black Phantom Vagrant, a giant crab born from people in other worlds leaving their souls and items on the ground for too long. They have crab legs, crab pincers, and they happen to be able to shove a Macross Missile Massacre at you.
    • Dark Souls III has a few of these hanging around Farron Keep and the Smouldering Lake as a Boss in Mook Clothing. Their long reach, tough exoskeletons, and quick movements for their size make them very tough to fight. They're large enough that they're capable of eating a man whole (which they will do if they manage to grab you).
  • Darkest Dungeon: In the Coves lie the Ucas, gigantic crab enemies who have some of the highest protection and bleed on non-boss enemies. They stand upright, are decorated with bits of shipwrecks, and have a preference for using a more defensive style of fighting.
  • Densetsu no Stafy 4 has Choking, a crab with a change purse-like body who is one of Degil's minions and the boss of the Tree of Beginning.
  • In Don Doko Don, the Round 30 boss is a Giant Enemy Hermit Crab that, like other bosses, produces smaller versions of itself.
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns: The bosses of the beach are the Scurvy Crew, a trio of Giant Enemy Crab pirates. They aren't monstrously huge, but they're slightly bigger than DK, which is still pretty giant. And yes, you do flip them over and attack their weak points for massive damage.
  • Deadstorm Pirates have giant coconut crabs as a recurring enemy, with their massive claws capable of blocking gunshots. They thankfully lower their claws before striking players, revealing their weaker frontal bodies which is vulnerable. There's also an Advancing Boss of Doom Giant Lobster which pursues the heroes in a narrow canal.
  • Drakensang features enormous blue crabs as dangerous enemies both because of their shells and because of their powerful attacks (capable of dealing wounds to players, which cripples them). The prequel The River of Time has the Bonus Dungeon filled to the brim with many giant crabs, often attacking en masse, and the hideously mutated Crab Beast laying in wait at the very bottom of the temple.
  • Ecco the Dolphin has to face many Small Enemy Crabs along with the giant ones. There's actually an implied explanation for this at the end of Tides of Time; the Vortex ended up becoming the ancestors of arthropods, so it may be that these creatures hate Ecco due to species memories.
  • Elden Ring: The Lands Between is populated by massive, highly-aggressive crabs and lobsters that litter bodies of water. Some will remain hidden under the sand until the player steps into their aggro range, causing them to pop out and start wailing on you.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Mudcrabs are a moderately large crab, with several regional variations appearing throughout the series. Most are roughly the size of a large tortoise and aren't threatening in the least, being just a step above the series' Rodents of Unusual Size for low-level critter enemies.
    • Morrowind:
      • The buildings in Redoran lands are made out of the shells of an extinct giant crab species known as the Emperor Crabs. They range in size from small one-room homes to large enough to fit an entire district inside. According to one Loose Canon developer written supplemental text, the Dunmer resurrected the Emperor Crab to battle the hordes of Daedra during the Oblivion Crisis.
      • The Mudcrab Merchant subverts the enemy part of the trope. It looks the same as any other mudcrab (and has the same in-game name), but instead of being hostile it is a merchant, with the most gold for bartering in the vanilla game.
    • Oblivion includes a literal giant crab as an Easter Egg enemy, although this is a coincidence since the game came out before the Genji incident.
    • Skyrim:
      • Mudcrabs, but not just the ones that annoy you every time you come near a river. Just southeast of Rorikstead, there is a mudcrab-infested pool of water that appears to be ridged on all sides with rocks. On closer inspection, it turns out the "rocks" on one side are the corpse of a mudcrab bigger than everything except mammoths and dragons! And you can fight the ghost of said giant Mudcrab in a quest!
      • Give the Bethesda devs a week to put in whatever they want, and they make one the size of a Colossus. Which appears in the official "Fishing" Creation... as a ghost.
  • Fallout:
    • The Mirelurks in Fallout 3 are super-mutated, bipedal crabs. It's worth noting that said Mirelurks have a weak point that you can hit for massive damage. Mirelurk meat is also one of the better foods in the game, healing a large amount of health. Mirelurk cakes are a popular snack among wastelanders. Fortunately, they don't appear in Fallout: New Vegas... though their "relatives", the turtle-based Mirelurk Kings (renamed "Lakelurks") do!
    • Mirelurks reappear in Fallout 4, here redesigned to a more centaur-like body configuration, though still man-sized and grotesquely human-like crab-things. For their "relatives", the Mirelurk Hunters and Queens, as well as the Fog Crawlers and Hermit Crabs, see the Videogames folder under Other Crustaceans below.
  • Final Fantasy: There are quite a few of these in the series:
    • Crabs are very common targets in Final Fantasy XI, as they're less dangerous than most monsters. Case in point, KRABKA◊TOA
    • The boss of River Belle Path in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is a nasty old crab with numerous weapons sticking out of its body from past battles. It reappears in the same position in Ring of Fates.
    • A giant fiend in the shape of a crab-like spider is the boss of the first dungeon in Final Fantasy X-2. A palette swapped version appears in Via Infinito.
    • An early boss in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is the Snow Crab, which despite its name is not weak to fire. Benjamin can Attack Its Weak Point to inflict massive damage using an axe. A palette swapped version is used later as a normal enemy type, which also shares the weakness to axes.
    • The Zeromus summon in Final Fantasy XII, associated with the Cancer Zodiac (which is a crab) has numerous crab-like attributes.
    • Final Fantasy V features the "Devil Crab" and later the palette swapped Acrophies as normal enemy types. Both of them have elemental weak points you can attack for massive damage.
    • Final Fantasy XIV has a variety of crustacean enemies, the smallest of which tend to still be nearly human-sized. The largest are the megalocrabs, which vary in size anywhere between car and house. The meme is directly referenced in the English translation; a timed event featuring a huge crustacean in Upper La Noscea has the title of "Giant Enemy Crab".
  • Fraxy has the Original Cancer and the Giant. Enemy. Crab.
  • Freedom Planet 2: The end-boss of the Unexpected Shmup Level "Bakunawa Chase" is a colossal, crab-like robot called Crabulon. A model replica can even be constructed at the Avian Museum's Gallery section with a model of Zao's Airship to see how large it truly is.
  • Garry's Mod: There was a mod for the standard Half-Life headcrab that made it near-impossible to kill, screamed like Godzilla and devoured anything within seconds of it getting in range. It could be taken down with SEVENTEEN simultaneous rockets, something that could potentially crash the server.
  • Genji 2: Days of the Blade, the Trope Namer themself, "Giant Crab, Enemy Crab". A game featuring "actual battles" that actually took place in Ancient Japan. At one point you have to flip it over and Attack Its Weak Point . Fortunately for Japanese civilization, the game features Real-Time Weapon Change. Silliness aside, in-game the giant crabs were likely based on the Heike-gani, Real Life crabs whose shells actually resemble ferocious masks and were believed to host the grudge of the fallen Heike warriors.
  • Giana Sisters DS: Enemy Crabs are man-sized yellow spider crabs who will rush to pinch Giana.
  • God Hand, at one point, features a fight between Gene and a Giant Enemy Crane (complete with pincers). Also, the entirety of the game's fourth world takes place on a Giant Robot Crab. The game even makes further references to this meme: one of the Chihuahuas in the Chihuahua Races is named "Massive Damage".
  • Giraffe and Annika: One of the bosses Lily battles you with is a giant king crab (king in the sense that it wears a crown).
  • Grand Fantasia: The final boss of the first dungeon is Emissary — Greed, with the title Giant Enemy Crab.
  • Variant in Hoa. Your character is a finger-sized pixie-thing, and you encounter slightly-larger-than-average crabs in the underwater levels. They're among the few friendly giant crab creatures in video games, who offers you a ride and doesn't hurt you in any way.
  • The Shell-Walker in Horizon Zero Dawn is a Giant Enemy Robot Crab. Specifically, it's a walking transport vehicle based on a hermit crab, with its "shell" on the back being a cargo container that you can break off and loot.
  • Hungry Shark Evolution. The only boss is literally a giant crab that attacks you for a while and then gives you time to hit its weak spot.
  • In Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, there are Giant Crab enemies and a Giant Spiked Crab boss.
  • One appears in The Impossible Quiz Book: Chapter 2 very late into the quiz. Since this entire chapter is dedicated to video game references this question is very likely referencing the Trope Namer.
  • Irukandji's only boss is a giant crab. Even the page for the game calls it a "Giant Enemy Crab."
  • Jazz Jackrabbit: One of the bosses Jazz Hackrabbit 2 is a large crab in a green shell which has a circle of normal-sized crabs around him. After the player shoots all the crabs, he starts to spin fast towards the player, who can only attack him when he comes out of his shell.
  • Katamari Damacy. The first game even has a level ("Make Cancer") devoted solely to rolling up crabs. And yes, the coconut crab is one of the types to be rolled up.
  • In Keio Flying Squadron 2, the heroine is kidnapped by a giant rocket-powered crab at the end of one stage.
  • Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards features a Slightly Larger Than Average Enemy Crab as a boss battle. There's also regular-sized crabs for Kirby to munch on.
  • Knightmare II: The Maze of Galious: The boss of World 6.
  • Krut: The Mythic Wings have giant crustacean creatures as the first enemies you encounter, since the first stage is set on a beach. Later inland you can fight their cousins, giant conches. More giant crabs reappear in a later stage atop a floating Derelict Graveyard.
  • Krush Kill n' Destroy had the Evolved faction, who could train giant beasts to fight for them in place of armoured tanks. One of their largest units is a giant crab with a missile launcher strapped to its back.
  • League of Legends features an alternate skin for their quadra-pedal undead cyborg Urgot called "Giant Enemy Crabgot." He fires his claw at his enemies.
  • The first boss of Legaia II: Duel Saga is the Gather Crab, which is taller than the protagonist Land.
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails series, there are often requests to exterminate large monsters that appear in areas, with some being giant crabs such as the Helmet Crab or the Omegacean.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • In Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, one serves as the boss of the Sand Castle. As the battle takes place underwater, Mickey needs to mind his Oxygen Meter as he battles the crab. When Mickey defeats the crab, it is revealed to be Donald Duck under the Phantom's spell.
  • Let's Go Island, being a tropical-themed action game where your player gets attacked by hostile marine life, have giant crabs as enemies in the beach areas.
  • Lost Kingdoms: One of the many enemies is a Giant Crab, and as said, it's an enemy, making it a Giant Enemy Crab.
  • LostWinds: Of the very few varieties of mooks, one is inexplicably a crab. The Kalarab is an armoured, crab-like Glorb made of stone. Using the power of Vortex on a Kalarab essentially transforms it into a boulder.
  • Magicka 2 features crabs as enemies, first fittingly in a beach based level, then less so in a cave based one. The sizes range from mooks similar to the player character, through three times as big mini bosses, to the name-dropped Giant Enemy Crab which we only see a pincer of; it appears that the last one is roughly twice as big as mini boss variety.
  • Mega Man:
    • Mega Man V: Venus is one of the first four Stardroids Mega Man must fight. He is a very aggressive Robot Master that walks sideways like a crab, unable to walk forward. His main weapon is the Bubble Bomb, a heavy bubble made of a soapy substance that explodes on contact.
    • Mega Man 8: The boss of the tutorial level is a large mechanoid modeled after a hermit crab with a seashell-shaped carapace. To defeat it, Mega Man has to hit the face when the carapace isn't protecting it.
    • Mega Man 10: The Crab Puncher. When the eyes are forward, the Commando Bomb can be fired at the mouth.
    • Mega Man Legends 2: The Jagd Krabbe is a giant crab mech piloted by Tron Bonne. Its name is German for "hunter crab".
  • Metal Slug: In Metal Slug 3, several giant crab enemies appear in the first stage and fourth stage (one of the route), ranging from man-sized creatures to a gigantic hermit crab with tank for its "shell".
  • Metal Slug Code J brings back the giant crabs from the original series, with the Ohumein-Conga, usually depicted as Giant Mook enemies, being upgraded into Mini Bosses that takes several minutes to even defeat.
  • Monster Eye have a stage in a Marine aquarium where the crystal virus have caused the animals in it to mutate to hostile, savage monsters. The crabs, growing to the size of small boats, will crawl out of their pools and attack you with their pincers.
  • Monster Hunter has several different flavours of Giant Enemy Crab across all incarnations, all of which belong to an order of monster called a Carapaceon. Although there are other Carapaceons than described here, they more closely resemble giant scorpions.
    • Monster Hunter 2 (dos):
      • The game introduces the most common of the bunch, the Hermitaur and Ceanataur, led respectively by the Daimyo Hermitaur and Shogun Ceanataur, which have a pair of big meaty claws like a shield and a pair of thin, bleeding-inducing claws like scythes, respectively. They also wear monster skulls like hermit crabs and will dig underground to find new ones once their soft, fleshy abdomen gets exposed. Their brains are apparently a delicacy.
      • There's also the Shen Gaoren, an absolutely titanic crab that towers over buildings and unleashes tremors with every step. It's not so much a Giant Enemy Crab as it is just a giant crab; it's just too darn big to not cause mass destruction as it goes, hence why it has to be hunted.
    • Monster Hunter Freedom 2: While the game itself merely brings back the crustacean monsters featured in the second mainline game, the expansion Freedom Unite introduces the subspecies Plum Daimyo Hermitaur and Terra Shogun Ceanataur. The former has a tendency to jump in order to Ground Pound onto the hunter and also has a better control when shooting water, while the latter attacks more relentlessly and spends more time in the ceilings instead of the floor.
    • Monster Hunter Frontier introduces the Taiken Zamuza. In a similar gimmick to Shara Ishvalda in Monster Hunter: World, it's covered in armor that gets broken away as the fight goes on. When all of its layers of armor are removed, it's actually quite small for a large monster!
    • Monster Hunter Generations introduces the deviants Stonefist Hermitaur and Rustrazor Ceanataur; the former has a black claw sturdy enough to deflect any attack, unlike a normal Hermitaur, and the latter's become so addicted to sharpening its claws on its fancy new Glavenus skull that its claws can inflict Defense Down on top of bleeding.
    • Monster Hunter Online gives us the Baelidae, a Carapaceon with a skull marking on its back that glows red when it's angered. Interestingly, it mixes this trope with Giant Spider: it can shoot webs like a spider, walks like a spider, and even attacks like a spider, but on the inside, it's a Carapaceon through and through.
  • In Monster Rancher 2, if you send your monster on Skill (accuracy) Errantry and it makes it to the final segment, it will have to "fight" a giant crab by throwing coconuts at it. If it fails, the crab will squash your monster into a pancake.
  • In Miku Monogatari ~Yume to Taisetsu na Mono~, a gigantic crab (presumably an unusually huge specimen of the already large Japanese spider crab) serves as a boss in Stage 1 - 4. It shoots purple energy orbs to attack.
  • Mugen Souls has this as the name of an enemy in Water World, but strangely enough, aren't very large at all — their model is only about a quarter as tall as Chou-Chou. The Crab Catchers in the same area are much larger (slightly taller than Chou-Chou).
  • Nussoft's Neo Aquarium: King Of Crustaceans and Ace Of Seafood have YOU as a potential giant crab. A giant crab that shoots lasers against other giant crabs, barnacles, lobsters and fish.
  • Ninja Blade: The sub-boss of the third mission is the Carrion Claw: a giant mutant crab that you dismember limb by limb.
  • Ninja: Shadow of Darkness: Giant crabs are enemies you can encounter in the forest and mountain levels, when you attempt to cross rivers on shallow, underwater bridges. These enemies takes up entire sections of the bridge you encounter them on, so a battle is inevitable, although you can take them out from a distance thanks to your limitless supply of throwing knives.
  • Nioh 2: the first DLC features the Bakegani (Monster Crabs): massive, upright-walking crabs with a monstrous humanoid face on the shell. Again, they're a nod to the Heikegani.
  • The Ocean Hunter has "Karkinos" as one of the bosses (aka Cancer). Attack Its Eyes for massive damage!
  • Ori and the Will of the Wisps has crab mooks in and near the Luma Pools region. Ironically, knocking them into water kills them instantly, just like other land-borne mooks.
  • Parasite Eve has a giant crab boss in the warehouse. There's also one in the Chrysler Building.
  • Patapon features two crab bosses named Cioking and Ciokina. You get to cook them.
  • Perish, set in the Greek underworld, has a giant crustacean monster called Karkinos (named after the same crab monster from Greek myths) as a boss fought near an underground pool.
  • Phantasy Star Online 2: The Crabahda is more of an annoyance then a proper threat, due to its sluggish attacks, high damage resistance outside of its weak point (its eye), and ability to enter a defensive stance where it takes even less damage on top of concealing its weak point.
  • Phantasy Star Nova presents Erude, a truly gigantic Enemy Crab armed with Frickin' Laser Beams and tons and tons of missiles.
  • Pirates (NIX) have a giant crab as the boss of the underground cavern. It's as huge as the cavern itself, and will release smaller crabs the size of dogs to swarm all over you until it's defeated.
  • Pirates: Legend of the Black Buccaneer: One of the bosses is a giant crab that you can defeat using both hand grenades and the cannon that you used earlier to blow up the bars to get the trinket to turn into the Black Buccaneer.
  • Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat: The third boss is a giant crab. And yes, the trick to beating it is by flipping it over onto its back and...well, you get the idea.
  • Planetarian features a mechanical one.
  • Some crustacean Pokémon, especially the evolved ones, fall under this trope:
    • Pokémon Red and Blue has Kingler, which is a crab that is 4 foot tall.
    • Pokémon Sword and Shield: The Dynamax feature lets you make certain crustacean mons such as Krabby and Kingler bigger. Kingler even gets a special Gigantamax form, standing over 20 meters tall.
    • Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: The games introduced a Rock-type crab-like Pokémon species called Klawf. One Klawf is much bigger than the others and stands taller than an adult person, and is one of the Titan Pokémon (itself known as the Stony Cliff Titan) encountered in the game’s "Path of Legends" storyline.
  • In Potion Permit, Sunclaws are crablike monsters that reach up to the Chemist's waist. Their giant pincers, which they use to fight one-on-one to the death, are used as potion ingredients.
  • Pretty Cure: The Original Generation villain for the Crossover game on the Nintendo DS turns into a Giant BLUE Enemy Crab as its One-Winged Angel form. Worse, it fights with Breath Weapons (Shoop Da Whoop meets Giant Enemy Crab?). He's still easy as long you avoid said beams.
  • Pronty has a mini-boss called the Gatling Crab, a giant curstacean monster severaal times larger than your titular fish-boy. And since every enemy is bionic, instead of having pincers the Crab has cannons for arms.
  • The Rampage sequel, Universal Tour, starts with three new monsters as playable characters, one of them being Ruby the giant lobster. Her Lobster Corkscrew is one of the more devastating attacks in the game.
  • Razing Storm: The third boss looks like either a Humongous Mecha version of this, or a Giant Spider Tank.
  • Recettear: Depending on how you look at it, the third boss has Volcanicrab as a boss fought twice in the game. Its invincible until flipped over with bombs to Attack Its Weak Point for large amounts of damage.
  • RefleX has the close-combat hyperspace warship Cancer, whose design is actually more of a fiddler crab than the standard crab.
  • Resident Evil 5 has you fight the U8 in an elevator shaft. Given Umbrella's penchant for using animal test subjects as B.O.W.'s, it's no wonder you'd have to fight a giant mutated crab at some point.
  • In Rocket Knight Adventures, Sparkster battles a robotic version of one of these in the middle of Stage 3, which is piloted by one of Emperor Devligus Devotindos' Pig Soldiers.
  • R-Type: Course Crab in R-Type III is the boss of Heavy Metal Corridor and a giant crab-like Bydo , and Gironika in R-Type Final who is a large biomechanical Bydo, often used to guard areas or serve as heavy support for Bydo ground forces.
  • Scaler: Rattlecrab is a giant flying crab that chases Scaler while he is riding on the Repbaldactile.
  • Scribblenauts: Inputting the trope name will summon one of these. One also appears in a level with three samurai (Hint: "For massive damage!")
  • Shining in the Darkness: The Kaiser crab is the first boss.
  • Sin and Punishment has the Crab Seemer boss in the middle of the first actual stage.
  • Solatorobo has the Crustacrab and its shell-less, baby variants (who are still as large as Red himself). Unlike many of the others on this page, you do not Attack Its Weak Point for massive damage. Instead, you catch the rocks it throws and toss them back to stun it, then steal its shell so you can toss the crab around. There are also even larger hermit crabs who have taken over entire battleships as their shells in the Fishing Minigame.
  • Sonic Blast Man had a robotic one as the Level 4 enemy. This one was particularly horrifying since it could crush SBM to death with its claws even after losing them. Fortunately, he can take it out with a single Megaton Punch.
  • The first boss of Sonic Dream Team is a giant robot made of balloons named Dr. Crabulous, who looks like a Crabmeat Badnik with Eggman's mustache on it. If the player chooses Sonic to fight the boss, he'll even name drop the trope name in his pre-fight dialogue.
    Sonic: Seaside dream... giant enemy crab! Why am I not sur... wait, is that a moustache?
  • StarCraft: The Zerg's fielded Guardians: giant flying'' crabs.
  • Star Fox Command's Fichina stage has you fight against the thought-to-be-dead Andrew Oikonny, who battles you in a mech called the "Death Crab." You shoot off its legs, then its face for mass...oh forget it. The original Star Fox has large mechanical crab enemies on Titania.
  • Star Soldier: In Star Parodier, the Stage 3 mid-boss is a pair of giant cartoon crabs that move sideways.
  • Stormrise: One of the units the Sai have access to is the Matriarch, a giant, genetically engineered crab that has mouths on its pincers, can spawn smaller crabs called broodlings and can shoot acid over large distances.
  • Strikers 1945: The last level features giant robot alien crabs as enemies.
  • Suikoden IV: An early boss and later Optional Boss. The mandatory one required the protagonist to use the Rune of Punishment first to make it damageable. Suikoden III also has multiple Giant Enemy Crabs; they're something of a Suikoden tradition.
  • Summon Night: The King Crabber boss in Summon Night: Swordcraft Story. Go For the Eyes!
  • Sunless Sea has its share of these:
    • Auroral Megalops are the smallest of the lot, merely being the size of a fishing boat. They're stated to be able to messily and quickly devour an entire horse, and will charge any and all boats leaving London. Still, they're not too terrible.
    • Angler crabs, in their three different varieties, are the adult versions of the above. They're about as wide as a frigate is long, have pincers that could pinch a watchtower in half, and are quite hungry for zailors, attacking boats in a variety of areas to get at them. Problematic, to say the least, but not the biggest problem you will face, and also rather tasty.
    • The king of these in the game, however, is Temtum, the titanic crab that crawls along the zeefloor that carries the entire city of Hideaway on its back without complaint. Thankfully, it's a Gentle Giant that won't attack you and actually cares for its trainer and the city, but like any such giant it's best not provoked; if its trainer gave the order, it could tear down entire cities. This can be observed when going through the Immortality ambition's tale; if you wish to breach the walls of Nidah, you will either need nuke-yield experimental munitions or a favor from the trainer so Temtum can knock them over, and in the latter case he topples the gigantic basalt walls like they were made of meringue.
    • In the setting as a whole (which includes Fallen London and Sunless Skies) there's the Star Messengers, which are stated to look rather like absolutely humongous crabs (and among which is the Bazaar, who qualifies by both being notably crustacean and housing a good chunk of London on itself). In the latter game, the player can find the corpse of one floating within the Reach, and it looks big enough to build a proper metropolis on.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Mario Bros. has Sidesteppers, crabs that are over half the size of the eponymous brothers. Mario and Luigi have to hit the floor they're moving through from below; this puts them upside down and vulnerable to the brothers' next attack.
    • Super Mario Bros. 2: Clawgrip, the boss of World 5. It attacks Mario and his friends by throwing large boulders at them. These boulders can be seized once they're rolling on the floor or grabbed mid-air from above and then thrown back at the boss (it takes five hits to win the battle), but trying to catch them from below will only result in taking damage due to their weight.
    • Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island: Clawdaddies are large hermit crabs that can enlarge their claws to have a better chance at hitting Yoshi.
    • Yoshi's Island DS: The Crabbles are large, sturdy hermit crabs that can walk on the ground, walls and the ceilings; their color changes when Yoshi hits them with eggs (they cannot be stomped on): Blue by default, green after the first hit and red after the second. They're defeated with three hits, but they have Mercy Invincibility upon each hit so they won't go down so quickly.
    • Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2: Crabbers. Their claws and front body are hit-proof, but their backs are vulnerable. There's a cyan-colored variant that is more elusive and drops an extra life upon defeat.
    • New Super Mario Bros. Wii: Huckits have the looks and size of Sidesteppers, but throw small rocks like Clawgrip (though the stones aren't affected by gravity).
    • Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: Hermie III is the second one in the series to serve as a boss, guarding a fragment of the Beanstar. Unusually, his shell is themed after a Christmas tree. His claws serve as Cognizant Limbs, and must be destroyed at intervals to weaken him.
    • Super Mario Party: In "Smash and Crab" the three-player team controls a giant hammer-wielding crab mech, and must crush the remaining lone player with one of the hammers. One player controls the crab's body and can move the mech left and right, while the other two each control one of the hammers and can slam it down with a press of the button.
  • Tales of...: A common enemy type in the 3D games. They're usually about the size of a small car.
    • Subverted in Tales of Phantasia, where you can fight an ordinary sized crab. The fact that the boss theme plays while you do so might give one the impression that it's actually dangerous, but it doesn't do anything other then run around at an absurd speed, which coupled with its sky high defense stat and tiny size, just makes it annoying for a lower leveled party to kill.
    • In Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon X, Mel and Dio can be giant ally crabs with a certain costume, that while lacking in attacks, possess the same ridiculous speed and defense as the aforementioned crab.
  • In TERA, one of the many Big Ass Monster (or BAM; yes, that is an official name) types is a giant crab. Like other BAMs, they are not meant to be fought solo.
  • The Terraria mod Calamity has Crabulon, a large, mushroom-covered crab found within the Glowing Mushroom biome.
  • In The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, there are Crabby Crabs, hard-shelled monsters that snip at the air constantly.
  • Titan Quest: Immortal Throne has regular crabs (of beach and swamp variety), and then it has the Giant Karkinos (no prizes for guessing what it is). The sixth act features The Ancient One as a monstrous crab-like boss monster.
  • In Trials of Mana, the very first boss, Fullmetal Hugger, is a giant, evil crab.
  • Tsukihime: The toughest beast that Nero Chaos possesses is some sort of crab spider thing that is larger than an elephant. Presumably, it's tougher than the dragon he had used before, but it doesn't matter much when your opponent kills everything in one hit regardless of anything like armor or actually damaging you.
  • Twin Caliber have a giant crab monster as one of the few non-undead bosses. Your character lampshades it in the cutscene prior to the boss battle: "Glad I don't have crabs like this every day!"
  • Tyke & Sons Lumber Co. has Summercrab/Springcrab, an anthropomorphized, human-sized robot crab who is one of the killer robots you must defend yourself against at night.
  • UFO Aftermath has Car Crabs which are like hermit crabs except they are big enough to wear cars as shells.
  • Ultimate Crab Battle, obviously, is a battle against one of these.
  • Umihara Kawase features one as the boss of field 56. It's one of the more sensemaking enemies in the game.
  • Unravel: Mundane crabs become Giant Enemies when you are a tiny woollen creature.
  • Vagrant Story has an entire family of palette swapped crabs, named "Iron Crab", "Giant Crab", and "Damascus Crab".
  • Vega Strike has large friendly crabs, known as Rlaan.
  • In Viewpoint, the Stage 2 boss is a giant crab mecha armed with a Bubble Gun and Rocket Fist pincers.
  • Wild Guns: The mine boss is a giant robotic crab.
  • The old PC game Winged Warrior has a powerful Cave Crab serving as a Disc-One Final Boss. Unusually, you encounter it in a cave in the middle of the forest, instead of near a beach or anywhere a player would expect to encounter crab-based enemies.
  • The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has the Kayaran, the first boss of the game, who is a combination of this and a giant octopus, as it has the both body of a crab and giant tentacles.
  • Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair has Taramba, the boss of Round 11.
  • The Wonderful 101: The Deah-Kani enemy type, based somewhat on the Japanese Spider Crab. Yes, you Attack Its Weak Point for massive damage, by cutting off its legs to bring it to the ground and stun it, and pry open its shell using Unite Claw in order to expose the weak point. It's the only way to do any real damage to it most of the time, even.
  • The World Ends with You: The "Carcino" type of Noise—folk, ska, metal, samps, and punk—all take the form of giant crabs.
  • World of Mana: Final Fantasy Adventure, Trials of Mana, Legend of Mana and Dawn of Mana feature Giant Enemy Crabs as boss battles (usually called "Fullmetal Hugger"). There are also significantly smaller but still much larger than normal crabs that show up as standard enemies in some games.
  • World of Warcraft: There are a lot of crabs in various beaches, ranging from normal-sized to big to a few giant ones. Notably, in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion there is a Giant Friendly Crab as a quest-giver. Considering Blizzard's tendency to include Shout Outs and Puns as Easter Eggs in their games, it's certainly possible this is a reference.
  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown: The Chryssalids look like huge humanoid crabs with a black carapace and two huge pincers. Unlike the Chryssalids from the original X-COM (who were more humanoid in appearance), the remake's Chryssalids' attack is not a One-Hit Kill (except again civilians). Just like every other enemy, they must first batter down your soldiers' HP before they can be turned into zombies. Unfortunately, they are very good at said-battering.
  • XScape on DSiWare (made by the same company who made Star Fox Command and the director of the original Star Fox, both of which incidentally had Giant Enemy Crabs of their own) has a so-called "ancient" weapon called the Gigacrab, referred to in the Quest menu specifically as a giant enemy crab.
  • In the second installment of Yo-kai Watch Blasters, one of the boss Yokai is Kanibouzu (literally means "crab monk"), a giant crab-like Yokai. It is based on a dengerous Yokai of the same name.
  • Zeiram Zone have crabs the size of humans in the ruins, and three tank-sized crab monsters as bosses you have to defeat in different areas.
  • Zeliard: Cangrejo, the first boss is a giant crab who is The Boss of the Caverns.
  • Zero Divide: One of the fighters introduced on the roster of Zero Divide: The Secret Wish is named "Cancer" who in this case is a giant robotic crab equal in size to all the all the other combatants.

    Web Animation 

    Web Comics 
  • The Adventures Of The Great Captain Maggie: King Crab of Crab Cove is a giant crab wearing a crown on its head whose appearance by rising out of the sand under which he had been hiding causes the characters to flee.
  • Axe Cop: Fire Slicer, who, after eating a crab, turned into a very tall crab with super-duper sharp claws that could stab bad guys in the heart and pinch.
  • The Beast Legion: Shadow Nexus has Clawborr who actually transforms into a giant Rampaging crab.
  • A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe: While exploring a pier jutting out into the void, the Everyman and Mary are attacked by a large void spider crab about twice their height.
  • Cassiopeia Quinn: Clawlossus is a tremendously large, heavily armored, talking crab Bounty Hunter whose first appearance sees him coming after Cass. He doesn't have a weak spot, so Motor Minx just made her own by stabbing him through a claw.
  • In Drowtales, the Balvhakara make an entrance in a Humongous Mecha Spider Tank Giant Enemy Crab golem submarine. Or, rather, from the Sharen point of view, a Giant Ally Crab.
  • Girl Genius has a Giant Mechanical Crab type clank that attacks the traveling circus early on.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court has one showing up out of nowhere in Chapter 32. It turns out to be Lindsey, the Giant Engineer Merostomatazon. They have 47 eyes and 15 not-eyes, and their brains function partially in another dimension. Subverted with her husband, a crab creature still significantly larger than most crabs but small enough to fit in a bucket and supervise the kids "sneaking out".
  • Homestuck:
    • Karkat's guardian is two-and-a-half out of three. He's definitely giant and he's definitely a crab, but while Karkat does fight him, he's more of a parental figure than an enemy. Played straight, however, when he dies and the comic's Mooks begin to take on his characteristics.
    • A much bigger and meaner version of crabdad shows up on Jake's island later in the story, filling all three points.
  • The Horrifying Experiments of Dr. Pleasant!: Cathy. On one hand, she is an average sized girl. On the other hand (the other hand in this case being a giant crab claw), her claw is about 100 times larger than the average crab.
  • In Nodwick, the party meeting a giant crab inspires them to pull out the Crab Cracker + 5, Decanter of Endless Butter and Bibs of Protection.
  • Realms Of Ishikaze: Chapter 15 has one of these as a boss of the Ruins of Amilleo. Arashiko must attack its soft underbelly for massive damage.
  • Red Meat: Stiff Stacy is attacked by an infestation of "crabes", which are pubic lice the size of normal crabs.
  • Rough Housing has two characters call El Cangrejo Diablo aptly: "Giant crab!" "Enemy crab!" "Giant enemy crab!"
  • Saffron And Sage: Saffron, Sage, and Cassette encounter a massive crustacean monstrosity guarding a horde of treasure in chapter 1, Dr. Crabotnik.
  • Samurai Princess's Massive Antagonistic Crustacean
  • Vexxarr: The Lattroxx race, or at least the warrior drones. On the plus side, at about 10 feet in height they're not as big as some examples. On the down side...
    Captain bot: Status report! Where is my welcoming team?
    Vexxarr: Feeding the Lattroxx.
    Captain bot: I don't recall sending down food.
    Vexxarr: They improvised.
  • Awful Hospital: At the end of one of the first chapter's 'arcs', the protagonist Fern is put up against a creature called the [[Spoiler:Final Jayslob]] which, as a nod to the various themes of carcinisation present throughout the rest of the comic, resembles a massive crab made out of human bits.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • One of these appears in the Amphibia episode "Family Fishing Trip", with moss and flowers growing on it's back making it seem like an island.
    Anne: This crab is making me very scared... (mouth watering) but also very hungry!
  • Arthur once showed Bionic Bunny (Fictional Counterpart to Superman) fighting a giant crab.
  • The Babaloos: In “Castle Under Siege”, the Babaloos have to defend a sand castle from a crab intent on destroying it. This trope is subverted a bit in the sense that the crab isn’t actually larger than normal; the Babaloos are just tiny.
  • Rampage of Beast Wars is a Transforming Mecha who chose a king crab to transform into (or a tank-esque vehicle mode). He's quite a bit larger than most of the other Transformers in the series, frequently uses a giant-ass missile launcher, and is something of a Cybertronian Hannibal Lecter. Also, he's near immortal (having been a failed Maximal experiment to replicate Starscream's immortal "ghost" spark) and his only weak point is his spark, which Megatron has split in half so that he can keep Rampage in line by squeezing it and essentially disabling the insane robot.
  • Theresa summons one in the finale of Class of the Titans.
  • Code Lyoko has aptly-named Krabes◊ as virtual monsters.
  • In an episode of The Deep (2015), the Nektons end up discovering a species of giant hermit crabs who took a man's fridge and water tank to use as new shells.
  • The Cuphead Show!: In the episode "A High Seas Adventure", Cuphead and Mugman encounter a gigantic crab in Cala Maria's cove, resembling the Crabby Clawster from the original game.
  • In the Dr. Dimensionpants episode "Viking Games", Thora unleashes one of these crabs on Phillip and Kyle after the two refuse to fight each other any longer in the titular viking game. The crab even follows them back to their home dimension and is still bothering Phillip by the end of the episode, but Kyle, having promised to keep secrets from now on, refuses to tell Phillip about the crab's weak spot.
  • Exo Squad had a Neosapien E-frame design styled after crabs, which was admittedly one of the most powerful frames in the show (evident in the fact that Shiva, the best Neosapien General, preferred it to all others). Also, the crablike Neo Warriors were among the nastiest enemies the Terrans encountered.
  • Used in a Cutaway Gag on Family Guy, where for no reason a giant crab repeating "no-no-no" is blocking people from entering the Griffins' home.
  • In one Futurama episode, the Decapodians conquer Earth. Their ships are all shaped like robot crabs, as is their Mobile Oppression Palace. Also that episode where Zoidberg is 500 feet tall.
  • One of the microscopic monsters in The Herculoids episode "Tiny World of Terror'' is a giant crab.
  • The Jonny Quest episode "Terror Island" had a car-sized crab, a mutation caused by bacteria.
  • Averted with Taxicrab, the cabana owner from Jungle Junction.
  • Hanna-Barbera's Moby Dick. In the episode "The Crab Creatures", Moby has his tail pinched by a giant crab under the title creatures' control.
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends had the Crabnasties from the episode "Fugitive Flowers". Despite a bad first impression, they turn out to be the good guys.
  • In The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "You Snooze, You Lose", Buttercup takes instructions to find and retrieve a "crustacean" to mean "find and battle a giant crab".
  • The Real Ghostbusters face a giant crab Kaiju in episode "Attack of the B-Movie Monsters" right out of the movies. Probably an expy of Ebirah.
  • Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: A pair of bulky humanoid crabs called "The Sando Brothers" serve as recurring villains in this show.
  • There's one SpongeBob SquarePants episode where Plankton switches lives with Mr. Krabs, and the result is (from Plankton's perspective) a giant enemy Mr. Krabs.
  • South Park: "Crab People! Crab People! Taste like crab, talk like people!"
  • Space Ghost episode "Attack of the Saucer Crab". A flying saucer invades our galaxy and starts destroying buildings and killing people with a Disintegrator Ray. It can deploy 6 legs like a crab's to walk around on and can extend a huge claw to capture opponents.
  • In Steven Universe episode "Rising Tides; Crashing Skies", while Ronaldo is trying question Steven and the Gems, he comes by them fighting a large gem-crab creature by the beachside.
  • Stripperella once had to go to the supervillain Queen Clitoris' hidden lair on a bushy island, down under, that was infested and guarded by Giant Crabs. Yeah, it's that kind of show.
  • Tiny Toon Adventures has a giant robot crab/factory that leveled entire forests to make elevator buttons.
  • The Venture Brothers season 5 episode "Venture Libre" featured a giant crab as one of Venturestein's "science-abused comrades". While non-speaking, the creature had a gender-specific name and was mourned after being killed by a punji sticks pit. Hank Venture (on a caffeine-induced power trip as 'The Bat') later eats the meat and transforms the shell into a rocket-propelled "Hank Mobile."
  • In the Wakfu special The Legend of Ogrest, Ogrest has to fight a giant crab-like crustacean whose back is covered with corals and other underwater growth. He does so by climbing it and, with the crab being already blind in one eyestalk, going for the valid one.

    Real Life 
  • The overly large Macrocheira kaempferi, the giant Japanese spider crab, which can reach sizes of up to 12' 6'' across, making it the world's largest crab. And arthropod, for that matter. It is usually harmless to humans, but a few Japanese fishermen, who catch the crabs for food, have reported it can inflict serious injuries or even kill with its giant claws. note 
  • The Paralithodes camtschaticus, the Red King Crab is the second largest crab in the world. It reaches a carapace width of 11 in (28 cm) and a leg span of 6 ft (1.8 m).
  • Although they don't have the leg span of the Japanese spider crab or red king crab, Tasmanian giant crabs have absolutely monstrous carapaces, reaching widths of up to 46 cm (18 in). They're pretty massive too, reaching weights of up to 17.6 kg (39 lb), second only to the Japanese spider crab.
  • The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest living terrestrial arthropod, with a body length of up to 16 inches, a leg span of up to 3 feet, and a weight of up to 9 pounds.
  • With regard to crab intelligence rather than size: computer theorist Lucy Black has written about using the hive intelligence of a swarm of soldier crabs to power a working computer. Quite convincingly, too.
  • The crab from this video is this to the ants.

Other Crustaceans of Unusual Size

    Card Games 
  • In addition to the giant crabs mentioned above, Magic: The Gathering also gave us the Homarids (effectively barely-anthropomorphic lobsters at war with the local merfolk when introduced), some of which were clearly a bit bigger than the others...

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 
  • Nobody Dies has the Angel Shamshel take this form, giving us this little exchange.
    Misato: The enemy is a Giant Crab!
    Rei: Hit its weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE!
    Misato: Rei! Get off the damn channel!

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

    Literature 
  • The aptly-named Lobstrosities from Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three. They will constantly question you (dad-a-chick?) while ripping your extremities apart.
  • One of the bizarre inhabitants of Brian Lumley's Lovecraft-pastiche Dreamlands novels is a giant pillbug referred to as "the Running Thing". It's friendly to humans, and is a subterranean predator of various deep-dwelling nasties up to and including dholes.
  • The various deadly Lost World life forms of Fragment are distant cousins of mantis shrimp, although they've long since evolved into whole classes, possibly even phyla, of their own.
  • The Stormlight Archive:
    • The book has the massive lobster-like creatures known as chasmfiends. They are powerful enough to flatten even somebody wearing the setting's resident Magitek Powered Armor. Shallan notes that they should collapse in on themselves, but they bond with gravity altering spren to function.
    • Most creatures native to Roshar are actually crustacean in nature, and megafauna are fairly common. So there are many creatures that could probably qualify for this trope, it's just that so far in series, the chasmfiends are the only really huge crustaceans to have been actively battled.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Monster Warriors: In "The Giant Lobster Invasion", a giant lobster attacks the beaches of Capital City and the Monster Warriors learn an alien force might be behind it.
  • Countless ones in Power Rangers, though the most memorable one would be Commander Crayfish from the first season. He even comes with his own crew of Psycho Rangers. An inversion of the "Enemy" part can be found in the Samurai Gold Ranger's Clawzord; it's a giant mech-lobster.
  • Alien Bira from Ultraseven is designed after a slipper lobster, and its Boss Subtitles is "Space Shrimp-Man".

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Early editions had giant crayfish as monsters.
  • Monsterpocalypse: The Tritons have a monster called Crustaceous, a giant bipedal lobster.
  • Pathfinder has Giant Mantis Shrimp. The shockwave from their claw attack does sonic damage and stuns nearby targets.

    Video Games 
  • Alien Soldier has a large unnamed lobster as a boss that appears in a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. Your character saves a blue teddy bear from kissing aliens. Said teddy bear then decides to help you by driving a powerboat to your destination. After fending off its minions, this big crustacean swims up to your boat, grabs the teddy bear and throws him off the boat, and proceeds to fight you.
  • The Snow Beast Recurring Boss from Dead Space 3, which is a four-legged, crab-like necromorph. Lampshaded, as the audio-log dealing with it states one would expect to find such a creature on a deep-sea expedition, rather than an ice world. Makes more sense when you find the log showing that Tau Volantis was a water world before its inhabitants froze it over.
  • The Blisk from Destroy All Humans!, aliens described by Pox as brutes with large claws who look like the result of a cockroach mating with a lobster.
  • Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future has a boss fight with the giant Crayfish.
  • Dreugh in The Elder Scrolls. In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind they look like a cross between a humanoid, a crab, and a squid. In Oblivion, you get land dreugh, which is kinda like a crab/centaur mix.
  • Eternal Darkness has Chattur'gha, an Eldritch Abomination lobster.
  • Etrian Odyssey has some large, dangerous F.O.E. of this kind:
    • Etrian Odyssey: Aquatic Butchers are large crabs with overgrown pincers that appear in Azure Rainforest. At first, they lay hidden beneath the water; but when the character party enters a battle against normal enemies, a nearby Butcher will sense the violence and begin approaching the whereabouts of the fights to join the enemies. There's also the Iron Crab, a creature of exceptional strength that appears in the Bonus Dungeon, Claret Hollows.
    • Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth: The Iron Crustacean is a species of FOE that can lurk on land as well as underwater, which can make them difficult to evade because the party can only walk on the ground (though they're docile otherwise, so they won't attack the party unless there's a clash); during battle, the attack with a slice imbued with ice. There's also a Mini-Boss version called Hurt Crustacean, which is fought during a specific field event.
    • Etrian Odyssey Nexus: The game has the Platinum Pillbug in Western Shrine, as well as the related Silent Assassin in Abyssal Shrine. At first, they will be completely docile and can even be pushed up to twice (which is handy in Block Puzzle-type gameplay), but will chase the player's party if pushed for a third time. Their King Mook is the Bugbeast, a gigantic armored pillbug with a wide array of attack-based skills as well as the ability to self-heal up to three times during battle.
  • Evil Islands: The Armadillos in Gipath.
  • Fallout 4 has not only the crab-based Mirelurks, but several additions, some directly related to the family, others not so much.
    • Mirelurk Hunters are man-sized lobsters that use projectiles of corrosive (and sometimes radioactive) spittle and their huge claws to rip and tear whatever they encounter.
    • Resembling a semi-bipedal (in the same "tauric" fashion as the lesser Mirelurks) horseshoe crab, the Mirelurk Queen is one of the largest enemies in the game and one of the most deadly, easily dwarfing the Deathclaw and Super Mutant Behemoth in size and power. One of them is even fought as a boss with many allies helping the player out, and it can take out said allies (and the player) in one or two shots.
    • Far Harbor features the Fog Crawlers, mantis shrimps that grow two stories tall, with chitinous blades for arms that will rip you apart, and a hide thick enough to shrug off even a Gauss Rifle.
    • Hermit Crabs are, as their name suggests, once-harmless softshelled crabs that have grown bigger since the nukes dropped. Now they're big enough that they hide out in trailers, waiting for prey to wander by. And humans are just the right size to make a tasty snack…
  • Final Fantasy V had the Karlabos/Cray Claw boss that resembled an lobster/earwig hybrid, both of which reappear alongside similar enemies in Final Fantasy XIV.
  • Geist: The boss of Chapters 4 (Medical) and 7 (Captured) is a giant shelled pillbug capable of rolling around the battlefield and shooting numerous projectiles in succession.
  • Crawdaddy from The Guardian Legend is a giant crawfish encountered at the end of one of the Aquatic corridor levels that primarily attacks by throwing its pincers.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us Aquaman aids the heroes in rescuing Batman in Stryker Island, by summoning an army of giant lobsters to distract the Regime. Being King of the Seas doesn't seem so lame now does it.
  • The Char Clawbster and Chill Clawbster in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]. They have a pair of propellers on their backs for flight and claws that can fire a variety of weaponry such as bombs, sleeping gas, and lasers.
  • Crush Crawfish from Mega Man X3. Like his name suggests, he will crush you with those pincers for massive damage if it gets a hold of you.
  • One room in the first level of Monster Party has a giant dead crab, the name source for the LetsPlayer DeceasedCrab.
  • Claude the Lobster, particularly in Peggle Nights.
  • Phantasy Star Nova has Erude, a gigantic machine-lobster hybrid capable of launching a Macross Missile Massacre, firing miniature nukes, using twin laser cannons, and claw strikes.
  • Pikmin:
    • Pikmin 2: The Segmented Crawbster, a boss enemy, is a colossal elongated crustacean with a massive, club-like right arm. It trie to crush your leader by curling into a ball and rolling over him, but doing so can cause it to hit a wall and flip over on its back. When this happens, its only weak point — its soft belly — is exposed to your Pikmin's attacks.
    • Pikmin 3: The Bugeyed Crawmads are minibosses that appear twice in story mode and a few more times in bonus levels and resemble heavily built, heavily armored mantis shrimp. They're some of the largest non-boss enemies in the games by a fairly substantial margin, dwarfing both the player characters and the smaller Hermit Crawmads they sometimes appear alongside. Naturally, they too have weak points to attack — two of them in fact, their giant dangling eyeballs and then their soft belly.
    • Hey! Pikmin has the Armurk, a massive pillbug-like creature that can roll into a ball and try to squash the Pikmins. It appears as the boss of the Sparkling Labyrinth.
  • Pokémon:
  • Shantae (2002): One of the Elite Mooks are humanoid crawfishes that are first encountered in the Dribble Fountain.
  • Spyborgs has a robot crab monster called the Quad Hunter as the largest mook-variety enemy, towering over the heroes. They even have a King Mook version faced near the end.
  • Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: At least one boss is a Giant Crab, despite looking more like a lobster.
  • Subnautica 2 has Leviathan-class animals called Chelicerate that can best be described as whale-sized, man-eating shrimp.
  • Super Cyborg have a deformed, eldritch-looking crab-monster boss called the Seamegnon Creature, who's several times larger than you and uses pincers to attack.
  • in Touhou Chireiden ~ Subterranean Animism: A Shout-Out to this trope exists in the form one of Reimu's options, which has her identifying Yamame as a "giant enemy arthropod".
  • Total War: Warhammer: The Vampire coast has the large Rotting Prometheans and the huge Rotting Leviathans, massive undead hermit crabs who wear other monsters skulls and sunken ships, respectively, as shells.
  • Warcraft games have Lobstrocs/Makruras (both names seem to be used interchangeably) and the Bogstrok, which are lobster people. They're about the same size as most other humanoids, making them very large for crustaceans. There's also the truly gigantic Rokmar the Cracker as a boss encounter.
  • The Lobstermen from X-COM: Terror from the Deep. Very nasty aliens with insane defense that lets them laugh at rockets.
  • Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim has Zonplas, a giant bat-winged lobster-type thing, somewhat reminiscent of the Mi-go from H. P. Lovecraft lore.
  • Zeiram Zone have three humongous crab monsters in the ruins as bosses, which Iria must confront and defeat one at a time, at different stages. In-between, there are smaller crab enemies which still counts under this trope since they're individually the size of a human being.

    Webcomics 

    Western Animation 
  • Godzilla's very first enemy in Godzilla: The Series was a monstrous crustacean dubbed "C-Rex".
  • One of these, a lobster, appeared in a special episode of The Penguins of Madagascar during their battle with their arch enemy, the evil dolphin Dr. Blowhole, as a Giant Mook known as....
    (With deep dramatic voice) CHROME CLAW.
  • Skull Island (2023): One of the many creatures that attack the heroes in the titular island are gigantic crab monsters that hide beneath the ground, waiting to ambush prey.
  • Xiaolin Showdown: Master Monk Guan's monstrous form from the alternate timeline resembles some kind of crustacean.

    Real Life 
  • Giant Isopods, marine cousins of the pillbugs (a.k.a. rolly-pollies, sowbugs, woodlice) you can probably find eating rotted plant matter in your compost heap are quite common around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Unlike their terrestrial relatives, some species of giant isopods can grow as long as 20 inches in length, over double the size of your average housecat.
  • Lobsters. While people are probably most used to 1—2 pound lobsters (i.e. the kind you eat) those are around 7 years old and nowhere near as big as lobsters get. A very long-lived lobster is also a very large lobster, with a length of over 4 feet and a weight of over 30 pounds.
  • Barnacles are usually no more than an inch or so across, but one variety that lives symbiotically on the flukes and jaws of humpback whales can grow to the size of a plate. The whales carry their barnacles into swarms of plankton which both species consume, so they eat much better than sessile barnacles do. It was long thought that the whales didn't get anything out of the arrangement, but it's since been discovered that the barnacles' hard, sharp shells attached to the humpback's long pectoral fins are actually used by the whales to deal extra damage when they fight killer whales, making the barnacles the organic equivalent of brass knuckles.
  • Coconut Crabs (aka robber crabs) are giant shell-less terrestrial hermit crabs that live across the islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. They're the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and seriously big enough to ruin your day◊. They're not overly dangerous or aggressive, but they're notorious for not wanting to let go if they grab onto you, stealing shiny objects, and eating virtually anything from coconuts to corpses.

 
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Dr. Crabulous

When arriving, Sonic encounters a giant inflatable version of a Crabmeat with a mustache called Dr. Crabulous.

Red vs Crab

Tropical-Rouge ...

The Leviathan A...

Flapjack vs The...

Ice Age Contine...

Shen Gaoren

Mega Man 10

Alternative Title(s): Giant Crab, Giant Crustacean

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Dr. Crabulous

When arriving, Sonic encounters a giant inflatable version of a Crabmeat with a mustache called Dr. Crabulous.

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Dr. Crabulous

Red vs Crab

Tropical-Rouge ...

The Leviathan A...

Flapjack vs The...

Ice Age Contine...

Shen Gaoren

Mega Man 10