Stationary Enemy

An enemy that remains in one place, unless involuntarily moved by player intervention.

In Role-Playing Games, these are usually Pre-existing Encounters since it's hard to tell that they're not moving if they're invisible.

Since they can't be avoided, instances often overlap with Beef Gates, as they wouldn't be blocking anything if they could move and unblock the way. If this trope applies to Invincible Minor Minions, then this keeps them from being too dangerous as they can't hunt down the player and may serve as a more dangerous form of wall, if placed in the right place. Sort of like Pushy Mooks, for mooks that push the player around, which can overlap with this if it's only their feet that's stationary.

The other type of guard is one that moves around, and that's likely a Patrolling Mook if on a set pattern.

In other types of games, this may be used to weaken enemies by making them or their attacks more avoidable by having a fixed starting point / location, instead of chasing the player around.

Although, an enemy can be both this trope and technically still move around, if, for example, they are stuck on a moving platform. In that case, they're stationary, but it's the ground that's moving. Or if have enough reach with their arms, to inflict damage without moving their feet.

Stationary Boss is this, but for bosses, usually in arenas. Its Sub-Trope, Pivotal Boss, is that, but it also turns. Sentry Gun is yet another subtrope because it's fixed in place as a matter of course and are typically enemies.

In military-ish games, there's there's a variant of this, in gun emplacements, guns mounted into the ground, waiting for a crew to come and operate them, so the weapon itself is stationary, but only is an active enemy when operated by the enemy basically dead without operators, but can possibly be revived if there's any valid operators on the field making their way to it.

An Anchored Attack Stance user may involve this trope if all its attacks mandate it, as an inability to move while attacking, mandates not moving at all, if you're attacking all the time.

Lastly, Man-Eating Plant and other Plant Mooks has heavy overlap with this because a key idea of plants is that they can't move. Otherwise, they'd go in Planimal.

Not to be confused with a Stationery Enemy who's Animate Inanimate Object of memos, box files, pens, ink, staplers etc, possibly from an Art Course level. Although, such enemies, if they can't move, would fit this trope.

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Video Game Examples:

Action-Adventure

• ANNO: Mutationem:
  • The Trans Grub at Freeway 42 conceals itself underneath the ground until it senses any target walking on top of it and then swiftly emerges to swallow whoever triggered it.
  • The Demolition Attack Drone remains motionless in air being surrounded by a Living Motion Detector radius. When the overlay is penetrated, it automatically flies itself towards the target before self destructing.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Deku Babas, a type of Man-Eating Plant, can't move from their base, but can still lunge as far as their stem will reach. This is subverted with Baba Serpents, a stronger variant, which can slither after Link if their stem is cut.
  • In the 3D games, certain types of Living Statue enemies don't move from their position on the floor but rotate, shooting lasers at Link if they see him.
  • Sea urchins, which appear in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and For Swords Adventures, serve as living obstacles more than anything else and never budge from their spots unless pushed away with the shield.
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link:
    • Geldarms extend and contract vertically when struck, but that's the extent of their movements. They act more as a roadblock with contact damage than anything else.
    • Some Octoroks and Aneru jump up and down in place, while others are entirely immobile. Either way, they never leave their spots and rely on their ranged attacks to damage Link.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The large Freezards of the Icepeak Ruins are rooted to their spots, only rotating around their axes to aim their icy breath at you.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Decayed Guardians and Guardian Turrets are rooted to their spots and cannot move — the former having lost the use of their legs and the latter having been built that way — and instead rotate in place, firing their lasers and acting as automated gun emplacements.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Like Likes anchor themselves to cave walls, and less commonly to outdoors cliffs, and never move. The regular variety relies on baiting Link close enough to itself to snatch him up and try to eat him, while the more specialized kinds can fire off fire, electricity, frost or rocks to fight from a distance.

Action RPG

• Avencast: Rise of the Mage ends with a sequential fight against a colossal Demon Lord, including two stationary stages:
  • In the first stage, the ground erupts with Combat Tentacles that launch projectiles and Spin Attacks from their point of origin.
  • The final stage exposes the demon's crystal heart, which is naturally anchored in place but summons a variety of energy attacks.
• Transistor:
  • Weeds are tendrils that erupt from the ground and heal other Processes that wander near them, while damaging Red when she gets near.
  • Operators are rectangular boxes that are just Mook Makers, and have no other way to damage Red.
  • There are some Cluckers on a rooftop that are set to only rotate to aim at Red, even though they have the space to walk around.

Card Battle Game

• Mega Man Battle Network: One of the earliest viruses in all games except 4 is a cannon that sends out a moving crosshair whenever Mega is in line with them (Canodumb in 1-3, CanGuard in 5, Gunner in 6). Should he touch the crosshair, the virus will fire after a split-second. The latter two appropriately give Mega Cursor-element chips upon defeat.
• One Step From Eden: There's multiple enemies that just stay in place and attack things in their row:
  • Spintails are plant-like enemies that fling leaves across their row and then stop for a few seconds before attacking again.
  • Hostages can be threatened by ChargeCannons, RapidCannons, or Exploders, where the cannons shoot like their name, Charged Attack or rapid fire, and Exploders are bombs that take up a tile and start near the Hostage.
• Shanghai.EXE: Genso Network: Multiple enemies just stand in place unless moved by external forces, such as:
  • Ray Canns are cannons that send out a crosshair whenever Shanghai on the same row as them, but the shot can be dodged when it goes off by moving onto any other tile, even if it stays on the same row as the cannon.
  • Junks: Stay on one tile and fire bombs to wherever Shanghai is.
  • Screwns, that charge up their attack before launching it, no matter where Shanghai is.

Eastern RPG

• Bug Fables: Wasp Bombers, Security Turrets, Wild Chompers, and Dead Lander Alphas are completely immobile and attack simply by launching some attack at the party^note bombs, honey shots, seeds, and poison liquid respectively, initiating the encounter if hit.
• The Other series: The Other: Airi's Adventure and The Other: Rosie's Road of Love: The series shares enemies and almost all enemies are Pre-existing Encounters and don't move, generally, its only the Flying Mooks like bats that move. For example, tree enemies are represented outside of battle as immobile trees, and battles start when they're bumped into or interacted with.
• Parameters: The game has only one screen, where enemies are represented by different-sized, immobile boxes.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Red and Blue has two places where a sleeping Snorlax blocks the path. It can only be engaged and forced to move by playing a Pokeflute at it.
  • Pokémon Gold and Silver has a path blocked by a Sudowoodo. It only reveals itself as a Pokemon, rather than a real tree, when it is watered.

Fighting Games

• Super Smash Bros. Brawl: In The Subspace Emissary, the R.O.B. Launchers and some R.O.B. Blasters do not move, instead remaining rooted to their spot and essentially serving as stationary gun emplacements.

First-Person Shooters

• Brothers in Arms has some gun emplacements. MG 42 gunners and Pak 36 anti-tank guns from the first two games, and the 88mm Flak 36 gun from the second and third. They're all capable of performing a One-Hit Kill on either you or your teammates (or, in the case of the Paks and 88mm guns, destroying any tanks that are accompanying you), but they're wildly inaccurate unless you're within point-blank range, and their crews can be picked off by flanking them. They're also positioned on the map in a way that makes it mandatory to take them out, lest you want to lose all of your AI teammates and die.
• Doom on occasion will enclose a mook in a confined space, always overlooking a critical area of the playfield. The Downtown area has 16 imps embedded in the exterior walls of various buildings, sniping the player through their windows. The Tenements has a revenant in a tiny cage that overlooks a narrow walkway; it also has an archvile in a booth-like compartment watching over the approach to a critical switch.
• Medal of Honor:
  • Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Among the many enemy types faced in the game are various German fixed gun emplacements, which include the MG 42 machine gun, the Nebelwerfer 41, and the 88mm Flak 36 gun. The former can be dealt with by sniping the gunner, while the latter two must be destroyed with explosives such as a Satchel Charge, a radio-directed air strike, or a tank's gun. These gun emplacements are usually placed in strategic locations, and are often mandatory to take out in order to advance or complete the current mission.
  • Medal of Honor: Frontline: In addition to the ever-present emplacements such as the MG42 machine guns and mortars, several of the Panzer IV tanks that Patterson encounters remain stationary, only turning their turrets towards him and other friendly soldiers rather than moving around and facing them. The latter examples become subversions later on, as the last few Panzer IVs encountered do move around.
• Putrefaction has the Wall Putrids, tumor-like enemies growing from walls. Killing them will collapse the part of the wall they're growing from, revealing the next area you'll need to cross.
• Remorse: The List has the wall demons who grows in a single corner and attacks by spitting bloody projectiles from a distance.
• In the Timesplitters games, snipers tend to be assigned to a location and fire from a distance, never moving from their spot, never flinching from damage. You can't re-create this phenomenon in the map maker mode.

Hack & Slash

• Gauntlet: The baddies have archers, often perched in a compartment or tower with no direct route to engage them. From their vantage point, these mook archers have a near-perfect field of fire, and are only vulnerable to return fire from Questor or the wizard Merlin. Of course, they also have limitless quivers of arrows.

Platform Games

• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: G Axe Outsiders stay in one place and either smash their axe down in front of them for close quarters combat, or throw it as basically a boomerang that returns to them for reuse.
• Hollow Knight: Several enemies are completely stationary:
  • Fool Eaters, Gulkas, Sporgs, Bluggsacs and Mawlurks are grounded in one place and cannot be moved, not even by the knockback from the player character's weapon
  • Charged Lumaflies and Wingmoulds are also immobile and float in the air in one place, and they are Invincible Minor Minions, with the latter even being used for puzzles, which require bouncing on them by striking them while they are below the player, so that the player could bounce off them before they split into pieces and get reassembled.
• Jazz Jackrabbit: One of the few enemies that never move are the small dragons from the second game. Instead, they shoot flames larger than themselves.
• Kirby: Many Gordos stay in one place since they're more living obstacles than active enemies, though some may move back and forth along a track.
• The Shantae series:
  • Shantae: Risky's Revenge: The plant-like enemies in Squid Baron's labyrinth that are potted in place, spit out spit that travels with no arc, as their attack.
  • Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Rocket Archers stand in one place and fire their Music Is Eighth Notes, hoping for the Homing Projectile to home in on Shantae, but they have a turning radius that's larger than Shantae, so there are places where she can stand and be totally safe.
• Super Mario World has the Volcano Lotus, which is also a Plant Mook.

Puzzle Games

• Helltaker: The primary enemies are skeletons, who only move due to player attacks shoving them.
• PsyCard: Pre-existing Encounters in the Friend's Quest Faux First Person 3D-type Minigame. The corridors aren't wide enough to go around them, but some can be skipped.

Real-Time Strategy

• Dawn of War: The Imperial Guard's Heavy Weapons Teams and the Tau's Broadside battlesuits have lackluster damage while mobile, but they can entrench themselves to deploy much more powerful weapons (heavy bolter/autocannon/lascannon and railguns respectively) at the cost of their mobility.
• Red Alert 3:
  • The Tesla Trooper can switch to Disruptor mode, where it becomes immobile and can't attack in exchange for shutting down any enemy vehicle that endters its area of effect.
  • The Sickle is a Spider Tank that can jump to damage and knock over infantry. The Reaper can do the same thing, once, after which it acts as a stationary turret. The upshot is that is one-shots anything it lands on, including MC Vs.

Roguelikes

• Sponges and their derivatives are present in Dwarf Fortress; in previous iterations, they were really dangerous due to their lack of any center for thought which could be harmed, and the inability of bleeding them to death.
• Drones in The Persistence never actually move, they just float in place and wait for you to pop your out before gunning you down.

Shoot 'em Ups

• The Princess Remedy series:
  • Princess Remedy In a World of Hurt: There's one in each world, except world 5:
    • World 1 has Breadcrumbs, whose script comment is "sit still".
    • World 2 has Flames, whose script comments say "sit still, fire".
    • World 3 has Jellies, that sit still and return fire.
    • World 4 has Dragons, which sit still and fire straight forward constantly.
  • Princess Remedy In A Heap Of Trouble: There's a few, like in Normal Mode, Proudbloom is afflicted with two somethings that look like flowerheads that stay still and swap between visual states, along with two moving flowers.

Space Management Games

• Factorio: Worms stay on the same place, attacking the players and their infrastructure when nearby.

Stealth-Based Games

• Sniper Elite 4 has two prominent enemies that fall under this category: the Pillbox, which is a bunker built into the side of a cliff or wall with an MG34 machine gun, and the Pantherturm, a tank turret built into the ground. The former is impervious to small arms fire, but can be destroyed by planting a satchel charge on it, while the latter's gunner can be killed by sniping its gun sight.

Strategy RPG

• Fire Emblem: Some enemy units, usually Mighty Glaciers like Generals or their equivalents, don't move on the map, usually to defend a chokepoint or other location of importance.

Tower Defense

• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: Many special zombies will appear at the last column of the lane and remain there forever until defeated:
  • The Zombie King in Dark World does not move an inch after appearing on the field nor does he attack the house. However, he instead powers up zombies by "knighting" them and giving them knight helmets to increase their defense, he can do this to any zombie on the lane, making him a massive nuisance.
  • The Cardio Zombie from Battlez is a downplayed example. It does move around when appearing on the board and when defeated the first and second times (he dies in the third defeat) to retreat. Other than that and his idle animation, his "attacks" consist of enhancing fellow zombies making them bigger, faster, tougher and stronger.
  • The Zcorpions, also from Battlez, are another example as the catapults don't attack the house on their own but do send out zombies to attack it.

Western RPG

• Dark Souls has the Parasitic Wall Hugger, a giant Unique Enemy in Blighttown. As the name implies, it is affixed to a wall (feeding on the runoff from the Depths) and doesn't move, only attacking you with its claws when you enter melee range.
• Demon's Souls has special enemies called "Primeval Demons" (often incorrectly labeled as a boss, even though they don't get any of the usual boss cues), bloated creatures that are immobile and can only attack straight ahead without turning. They spawn only in Pure Black World Tendency and serve primarily to revert their respective world (there is only one in each major game area) back towards White Tendency.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Justified with the Shriekers, Human Weapons who are crucified to the spot.
• Fable: In Fable and Fable II, trolls are Elemental Embodiments who rise up from the ground to attack with their fists and various projectiles. They have legs but never move from the spot where they appear.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Minecraft: Shulkers cannot move from their place, and instead shoot at you like turrets.
• Terraria: Angry Dandelions do not move and only attack by spitting seeds.

Non-Video Game examples:

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami:
  • In one chapter, Emperor Zarekos is stuck right at the Third Eye of his statue because that specific spot is keeping him alive.
  • In one chapter, Ami uses Demonic Possession on a plant, which is stuck to the ground because of its roots literally rooting it to the ground, but also because loosening itself enough to move would mean be being blown into a temple and incinerated. So as long as Ami is possessing that plant, she's stuck in place as well. But she can cast magic at range.

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