History Main / CreepyCrawlyTorture

* ''LightNovel/Overlord2012'': The Guardians manage to completely and utterly break a criminal syndicate to their will by having cockroaches repeatedly devour them from the inside and then healing them back to full health before they die. Even once restored they can't eat solid food, but are desperate to do anything to please their masters for fear of it happening again.

->WHAT IS THAT? WHAT IS IT? OH, NO, NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAHHHHH! OH, THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAHHHHH! AAAAAGGHHH!

* ''The Homing'' by Creator/JohnSaul starts with a [[FriendToBugs bug-loving]] SerialKiller whose schtick is kidnapping runaway teenage girls, stripping them and having his little friends crawl all over them and sting them to death or eat them alive.

* ''The Homing'' by Creator/JohnSaul starts with a [[FriendToInsects bug-loving]] SerialKiller whose schtick is kidnapping runaway teenage girls, stripping them and having his little friends crawl all over them and sting them to death or eat them alive.

* In ''LightNovel/TheApothecaryDiaries'', [[spoiler: the main character is threatened with this while held captive. However, considering that she's rather levelheaded and has nothing against most creepy-crawlies, it's not terribly effective.]]

Compare FedToTheBeast and SnakePit, which usually involves larger creatures, as well as AnimalAssassin, where the animal is not used for torture but as a murder weapon. If it's a harmless prank rather than being used to mutilate someone, see SquirrelsInMyPants.

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* The final spirit in ''VisualNovel/DeathMark'' is Red Riding Hood. She was used in a torture session where a live spider was lowered into her mouth. This was a sexualized reenactment of a witch trial where swallowing the spider is the only path to an innocent verdict. It's implied she swallowed it, but the ordeal left her mentally broken and she committed suicide. She returned as a [[TsuchigumoAndJorogumo jorugumo]] with control over normal spiders.
[[/folder]]

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'''Brady:''' Really. That ''one'' tarantula got you down.\\
'''Boomer:''' Yeah but this one's digging for gold.\\

* PlayedForLaughs in the very first episode of ''Series/PairOfKings'': Boomer and Brady get captured by Tarantula People and are tied to boards with tarantulas crawling on them. Technically though, Boomer has only one large tarantula sticking its legs up his nose while Brady has multiple little tarantulas crawling ''everywhere''.

'''Brady:''' Yeah I got one digging too and it's ''not'' for gold.\\

'''Brady:''' Really. That one tarantula got you down.\\
'''Boomer:''' Yeah, but this one's digging for gold.\\
'''Brady:''' Yeah, I got one digging too and it's ''not'' for gold.\\

* ''Series/TheHauntedHathaways'': In one episode, Louie gets upset at Frankie and possesses the stuffed bird in the living room to hide from her. Frankie, knowing Louie's habits, goes straight to the bird and when talking to him doesn't work, puts a spider on it to scare him into coming out.

Compare FedToTheBeast, which usually involves larger creatures, as well as AnimalAssassin, where the animal is not used for torture but as a murder weapon. If it's a harmless prank rather than being used to mutilate someone, see SquirrelsInMyPants.

* The bible describes Hell as a place where "The worm never dies," implying that the damned are infested with maggots. One of Satan's titles (or one of his lieutenants, depending on who you ask) is "[[FliesEqualEvil Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies]]", some species of which are known for laying their eggs in living creatures.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder: Comic Books]]

[[folder: Fan Works]]

* In the ''Franchise/StarWars'' fic ''[[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/2696712/1/Important-Information Important Information]]'', Han Solo endures a variety of brutal tortures at the hands of an information-seeking Imperial. The sequel, ''[[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/2717781/1/My-All My All]]" , reveals that one of the things done to him was that his captor released a group of Cerean Blood Parasites onto his skin, allowing them to burrow into his wounds and make tunnels through his flesh.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* ''Film/TheAdventuresOfBuckarooBanzaiAcrossThe8thDimension'': The Red Lectroids decide to torture and kill Penny Priddy by tying to a table and having some kind of alien. . . slug. . . thing crawl down a track towards her ridiculously slowly (just slowly enough so Buckaroo Banzai can save her at the last minute).

* Implied in ''Film/FlashGordon1980'', where Aura is reported to have been tortured using things called "bore worms".

* In ''[[Film/TheMummy1999 The Mummy]]'', Imhotep is punished for murdering the Pharaoh Seti I by being subjected to the "Hom Dai", a torture that involves getting locked in a sarcophagus full of flesh-eating scarab beetles.

* In ''Film/StarTrek2009'', the BigBad Nero force feeds Captain Pike a Centaurian slug (a parasitic alien insect that, after being consumed by a human host, latches onto the brain stem and releases a toxin into the host's nervous system that leaves the host forced to always answer any and all questions asked).
* ''Film/TransformersRevengeOfTheFallen'' - The Decepticons capture Sam to gain the information he has absorbed from a fragment of the Allspark. To do this, the Decepticon MadDoctor Scalpel inserts two small insect-like robots into Sam's mouth who worm around in his skull. After Sam coughs them up, Scalpel extracts enough information from the robots to confirm that Sam does indeed have the information they want but they need to cut out his brain to get all of it. Fortunately for Sam, the Autobots come to his rescue before that can happen.

[[folder: Live-Action TV]]
* ''{{Series/Bones}}'': Kovac tortures Aldo Clemens with a form of medieval torture involving hearing one end of a cage filled with rats so that the rats burrow into the living victim.

* ''Series/CriminalMinds'': in the season 10 episode "The Itch", the [[MonsterOfTheWeek unsub of the episode]] suffers from an obsessive skin disorder that causes him to hallucinate live insects crawling under his skin. The unsub takes this out on other people, kidnapping his victims and subjecting them to being covered in bugs as a punishment for not helping him with his condition.

[[folder:Mythology and Religeon]]
* The bible describes Hell as a place where "The worm never dies," implying that the damned are infested with maggots. One of Satan's titles (or one of his leutennants, depending on who you ask) is "[[FliesEqualEvil Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies]]," some speceise of which are known for laying their eggs in living creatures.

** ''{{Series/Bones}}'': Kovac tortures Aldo Clemens with a form of medieval torture involving hearing one end of a cage filled with rats so that the rats burrow into the living victim.
** ''Series/TheDarkCrystalAgeOfResistance'': The sadistic skeksis have the Peeper Beetle when they want to torture and punish one of their own. The subject's head is locked in a cage with the purposely starved insect, which squirms around the victim's face until it finds their eye, which it then eats out. Skek-Tek the scientist suffered this fate early in the series, which is the reason one of his eyes is mechanical now.

* * ''Series/TheDarkCrystalAgeOfResistance'': The sadistic skeksis have the Peeper Beetle when they want to torture and punish one of their own. The subject's head is locked in a cage with the purposely starved insect, which squirms around the victim's face until it finds their eye, which it then eats out. Skek-Tek the scientist suffered this fate early in the series, which is the reason one of his eyes is mechanical now.

Adopted by Morgenthaler.