The Infested

I hope this doesn't bug you.
Image used with permission.

A Primal Fear, especially for those with arachnophobia or entomophobia or any number of other phobias: This man is absolutely filled with creatures. Be it flies, bees, spiders, maggots, a Horde of Alien Locusts or whatever mass of creepy crawlies you can imagine, this man is infested with them. If you attack this guy, bugs will probably fly out of his wound. It could be a parasitic relationship where the host is nothing more than a hive, or perhaps a symbiotic one where the host benefits from the bugs' presence. In the second case, the "residents" will often swarm out of their host to protect them from attack. In some instances, the host may be a Pest Controller explicitly capable of controlling and directing the creatures residing inside of them.

This commonly overlays with the The Symbiote when this is a permanent arrangement. If these swarms are parasitic, they often find a way to control or subvert the mind of their host for their own benefit. In mutualistic examples, the host typically uses the swarm as a form of defense against foes, while the swarm benefits from a "nest" capable of moving around and actively searching for beneficial conditions.

Compare Chest Burster and Bee-Bee Gun. Normally played as Parasitic Horror. Sub-Trope of The Swarm. Potential Sub-Trope of The Symbiote, Friend to Bugs, and/or Puppeteer Parasite. Expect some Orifice Invasion. For when the character IS the swarm of bugs, see The Worm That Walks.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• My Daemon: The main protagonist, Kento Tachibana, can be considered as one, since it’s established in the first episode that his red mark on his face contains a Daemon Particle (Daemon’s equivalent of “Egg”) that would kill him the moment it hatches. And sure enough, due to the true Big Bad’s machinations in the penultimate episode, the Daemon Particle finally hatches, by violently bursting out from Kento’s head, instantly killing him in the process. Luckily, he gets better.
• Naruto: The Aburame Clan are infested at birth with Kikaichu, a colony of insects that feed off one's chakra. They live off each other symbiotically, with the Aburame's providing chakra for the Kikaichu to feast on, while the Kikaichu will follow their commands.

Comic Books

• Immortal Iron Fist: The character "The Bride of Nine Spiders", when she lifts up her Stripperiffic top, reveals that her chest is a mass of rotted, webbed flesh swarming with spiders that she can use to Zerg Rush her enemies. She's an unusual Dark Is Not Evil example of this, as she's a neutral-to-good Perky Goth. Still not somebody to upset, though.
• Monica's Gang: In the Monica Adventures spin-off, the heroes visit a hospital and find a mysterious old man with unusual symptoms. He believes his symptoms are due to an infestation of bugs crawling under his skin, and tries to back up his claim by showing them a live cockroach, which he apparently ripped from one of his blisters. His theory is later proven to be correct: He turns out to be the White Horse of Pestilence, and the bugs are working on his master's behalf to monitor the man's activities.
• Uncanny X-Force: Ichisumi is a Japanese woman whose mutant power is to house countless Yume beetles inside her body. Envious of her fellow geisha, who all manage to marry wealthy men, Ichisumi regurgitates the insects and orders them to disfigure her rivals, but the telepathic link she shares with the beetles drives her completely insane in the process. She is later chosen by Apocalypse to be his final Horseman of Pestilence.
• Wonder Woman (2011): Milan is one of Zeus' few surviving bastard children. His eye sockets are empty and serve to accommodate a swarm of maggots, though he can still see through the eyes of any fly on the world, a power which causes him so much discomfort he has to wear a blindfold at all times to nullify it.

Fan Works

• In Boo! Haunted House, a The Loud House fanfic, when Lori asks what's "gotten into" Luan, Luna says, "The real question you should be asking is... what's gotten into me?" and vomits up a whole lot of bugs. Subverted, since it later turns out to have been All Just a Prank, and Word of God reveals that it wasn't even the real Luna; it was an animatronic.
• Nobledark Imperium: Malaria, the Living Hive, is a Chaos Eldar in the service of Nurgle. After Isha's rescue, she offered herself to the Plague God to act as a replacement guinea pig for his experiments; he eventually let her go since she couldn't match Isha's endless regeneration that had made her an ideal test subject, but in the process she became... changed. In the present, Malaria's body is a mass of honeycombed insect nests in the rough shape of a person, covered in some parts by a thin layer of skin and elsewhere open to the air, which is home to immense swarms of daemonic wasps, flies, and maggots, which fly out of her in clouds so dense that they can blot out the sun.

Film — Animated

• The Lion King II: Simba's Pride: Zira's son Nuka is for some reason infested with termites.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: It's unclear if Oogie Boogie is a sentient burlap sack filled with bugs, or if Oogie is the bugs themselves and the sack is just something they use to appear relatively humanoid.
• Ninja Scroll: One of the villains is a hunchbacked old man who turns out to have a hive of wasps living in the hump on his back that follows his commands.

Film — Live-Action

• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: The game's Big Bad, Van Pelt, was cursed so that his body is filled with rats, spiders, millipedes, and various dangerous creatures. He seems to have complete control over the creatures, as he uses them to kill any henchman who disappoints him.
• Slither: After Grant infects her with The Long One's embryos, Brenda's body swells like a balloon as they grow inside her. Then, she explodes, showering the protagonists with thousands of slugs.

Literature

• Abarat: The Sacbrood are a strain of hideous insect creatures bred on one of the Night Islands as a weapon of war. Their keeper and breeder is described as a man who, in his love for insects, has allowed insect life to colonise his own body and act as a parasite in him; he is described as revelling in the feel of maggots crawling on and underneath his skin.
• Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: In the short story "The Red Spot", a girl develops a red bump on her face. She doesn't know what it is, her family can't figure it out, and even a doctor they bring in can't work it out. The whole time the bump is just growing and itching. At the end, the red bump suddenly bursts while the girl is taking a bath, a swarm of small spiders crawling out from where their mother had laid eggs in her cheek.
• Slaves of the Abyss: One of the many monsters you can encounter is the Ant Symbiote, a zombie-like corpse animated by a colony of ants living in the body. Upon being killed, hundreds of ants disperse from the carcass instantly.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Conspiracy", a man explodes, revealing himself to have been full of alien parasites.

Multimedia Franchises

• Fate Series: The Matou clan make up for their diminishing magical potential by having penis-like, mana circuit-enhancing "Crest Worms" infest their bodies. The process is extremely violating, and both Kariya and Sakura were subjugated to it.

Tabletop Games

• Chronicles of Darkness:
  • Hunter: The Vigil: One of the implants used by the Cheiron Group is a swarm of man-faced hornets that live in their host's arm and fly out to attack when their host becomes angry at something.
  • Vampire: The Requiem: The Melissidae vampire bloodline can learn to shelter swarms of bees or wasps within their bodies as part of their Hive Queen-themed powers. They can control and enhance the insects, but, for obvious reasons, can't pretend to be living humans while using their lungs as beehives.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Spawn of Kyuss are undead who are infested with worms that they can weaponise in combat. The worms can burrow into humanoid victims and multiply, eating them from the inside out and animating the body as new Spawn.
  • Hell Wasps are a species of wasp native to the Nine Hells. They kill humanoid creatures with their stings, then build hives inside the body, which they animate like a zombie.
• Exalted: The Hive abomination, gained by direct exposure to the depths of the Wyld, causes mutants to develop some kind of animal nest — a beehive, ant colony, rodent or snake nest or something like that — somewhere on their bodies, giving them the ability to call forth a swarm of their... residents... in exchange for an extremely obvious disfiguration. Gaining an additional rank in it causes the nest to expand to the rest of the body, turning the unfortunate into a hollow skin moved about by the creatures inside; whether the original being is still alive at this point is a highly dubious matter.
• Pathfinder: Korir-kokembes are a type of tropical dragons that live symbiotically with swarms of arthropods such as wasps, army ants, or spiders, which they host in nests within their gullets and can vomit forth at will.
• Warhammer 40,000: The notorious Chaos Space Marine leader Typhus is a living hive for a swarm of demonic disease-carrying insects. Normally, these insects swarm into hosts and cause them to become bloated with pestilence and burst into a new swarm. When Typhus was infected in this way, he was able to survive by permanently bonding with the creatures.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: The Tome of Corruption from 2nd Edition has several Mutation options to this effect:
  • The Swarm of Flies mutation causes a swarm of horseflies — or cockroaches, beetles, termites, or whatever else — to decide that the mutant is a perfect host and make themselves at home in their nose and mouth, emerging in an angry, biting cloud if their new home is threatened. The insects themselves have human heads and hands, and weep piteously if separated from their home and swarm.
  • The Blood Substitution mutation grants various kinds of Alien Blood, including swarms of poisonous insects, burrowing leeches or worms, mice, and even birds. The infestation sprays onto attackers when the mutant is wounded and bursts in a 6-to-60-foot radius if they're killed.

Toys

• Garbage Pail Kids: The Itchy Richie/Bugged Bert card depicts a baby covered in black bugs emerging from a slit on his leg.

Video Games

• Battle Realms: The Lotus Clan's Infested One allows his body to become a breeding ground for maggots that he can then use to attack enemies in close combat.
• The Binding of Isaac:
  • The Duke of Flies is a bloated corpse filled with flies that bounces around, spitting out flies to attack you. You can also encounter its Undead Counterpart in a later chapter, The Husk, which is even more degraded and is filled with spiders as well as flies. Repentance added another alternate version, Lil' Blub, which is filled with leeches.
  • Mulligans are Mook Maker enemies. They're bloated humanoids infested with flies, which run from you and cough up flies. They become progressively more infested as you advance into the game, culminating in Swarmers which are nothing but mobile fly nests built into the rotted face of a Mulligan. Some alternative versions of them are infested with other things, like spiders, grubs, and fetuses.
  • Several items can turn Isaac himself into a walking hive. Infestation and The Mulligan fill Isaac with flies which he releases when he takes damage or hits an enemy respectively. Spider Baby does the same with spiders instead of flies, and Infestation 2 fills every enemy with friendly spiders.
• BioShock: The Insect Swarm plasmid causes the player character to become one of these, able to store killer hornets in his body (which turns into a hive-like structure) and then have them home in on enemies.
• Dishonored 2: Nest Keepers are humans that have become living hosts to Bloodfly eggs after a swarm of them forcibly laid eggs inside them. Nest Keepers act practically zombified and are brainwashed to become fiercely protective of their eggs. They'll explode out a swarm of Bloodflies when they're sliced open.
• Hollow Knight: Downplayed. The Husk Hive is a zombified beetle with a beehive surrounding its torso. It's implied the hive runs into its hollowed-out belly, but how deeply they're merged is left ambiguous. Notable this would be a case of bugs inside bugs, and upon its defeat, the bees inside it emerge to continue fighting.
• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: The Pain of the COBRA Unit is a "Hornet Soldier". He was infected with a parasite that caused him to secrete insect pheromones, giving him control over insects, especially bees. He has bees to use in combat that he stores in his clothes and body.
• Mewgenics: The Mangey enemy type is a long-ranged foe whose spit shots can inflict poison, but the main trait they possess is a huge amount of maggots infesting their entire bodies, who fall out and join the fight whenever their host gets damaged. It looks the part too, being diseased and half-rotten.
• Minecraft: Snapshot 24w13a introduced the "infested" effect for mobs in Trial Chambers. When hit, the mobs may spawn silverfish.
• Pokémon: Downplayed by Vespiquen, whose abdomen flares out in a ring of six hexagonal cells. These serve as nurseries for infant Combees, which shelter in these spaces in their mother's body until large enough to fly out on their own. They also presumably come out to help her when she uses her signature moves: Attack Order, Defend Order, and Heal Order.
• Resident Evil 4: Osmond Saddler, leader of Los Illumanados, has made it so nearly every character in the entire game is this. Las Plagas are a parasite that Saddler can use to control those infested. By the end of the game, the Plagas have infested him so much that they've taken over his brain and reduced his plan to nothing more than "infest more people with Las Plagas".
• StarCraft: Infested Terrans are, well, infested by the Zerg, who have altered their biochemistry to the point that they become violently explosive. The concept art shows them to be so chock full of alien parasites that they're bursting out of their spacesuits.

Web Animation

• Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged: Vincent Valentine is filled with spiders that crawl out of his eye socket.

Websites

• Mortasheen: Plenty of the morbid monsters serve as living hives to smaller vermin.
  • Arachtus is a mobile cactus creature that serves as a nest for a swarm of highly venomous, eusocial spiders, which it controls through a complex pattern of vibrations. The creatures retrieve insects to feed themselves and their host, and can be sent swarming out en masse if the Arachtus is threatened.
  • Buzzilisk is a lizard with twin beehives where its eyes should be. These bees act as both digestive system and sense-organs.
  • Catoplagas is a camel-like creature whose "humps" are in fact giant cysts home to huge numbers of fleas, which pour forth in huge numbers if their home is attacked. Catoplagas is a herbivore by default, but also consumes dead fleas, and through them, the blood drained from attackers while cleaning itself.
  • Fearlobe has parasitic earwigs living in its skull, which repeatedly eat its constantly-regrowing brain. Predictably, it's dumb as a post and often blunders into walls. It lives off of dead earwigs and their wastes.
  • Female flysores have swarms of flies that live inside their hollow and pus-filled skulls, and act as limbs for the otherwise sessile creature. They use them to kill prey, which rot into sludge the flysore can then eat. Male flysores are themselves parasitic, but allow their hosts similar abilities to the females (although they will hijack their hosts motor functions if they detect a viable female nearby).
  • Mongrunge is a doglike creature mostly comprised of bones, with millions of fleas making up its other tissues. It's known to lie down and die of grief if all its fleas are killed.
  • Scabberant is a small humanoid with a mantle made up of its hypertrophied scalp, and is infested with scabies that range from "microscopic to nearly pea-sized". These mites are a potent defensive and offensive weapon, and also compose some of its immune system. Uniquely, while they also will lie down and die if all their mites are killed (of terror instead of grief), they will actually help their denuded fellows regain their symbiotes if they find them in time.
  • Snagnant is a plantlike monster with recesses and hollows filled with a liquid absolutely perfect for Anopheles mosquitoes, who give the creature's prey malaria when they bite them. The mosquitoes themselves often attract frogs and bats, who make themselves at home within the Snagnant. This is how it got its nickname of "the Wandering Swamp".
  • Wormbrains are an entire Type of monster comprised of a mindless (or near-mindless), human-descended host and a number of specialized "brain fluke" parasites.
  • Swarmlings are a subclass of Zombie Spawn ("naturally born" zombies, as opposed to turned humans) who live in symbiosis with carrion-eating insects, which they utilize as replacements for a digestive system and/or other organ or limb. They can weaponize these ravenous parasites by spitting them out and telepathically commanding the resultant swarm.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: In "Mother of Olms", the titular character complains of a really bad headache that feels like "the flapping of thousands of tiny wings". When Anne, Sasha, Sprig, and Polly investigate the inside of her skull (it’s that big) they find it infested with a huge swarm of "batsquitos".
• Ben 10: The villain Clancy carries swarms of multiple insects inside his clothes. He possesses a unique empathic connection to them, which allows him to direct them in battle.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "House Worming", SpongeBob becomes this when worms use his body as a condominium.

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