History Main / FantasticVermin

* ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' has [[AllTrollsAreDifferent trolls]] as vile, horrid, [[MixAndMatchCreatures pig-dog-monkey-monsters]] that have taken a liking to ransacking the countryside. [[CrapsackWorld Being a grim and dark world]] of [[DarkFantasy medieval horror that the setting is, trolls do more than just kill cattle and raze crops, and have been known for eating children and raping women.

* ''WebOriginal/CodexInversus'': Manticorats are bat-winged hopping rodents from the Valley of Delights, with a taste for magic. In nature, they feed primarily on magical insects, but, after the Valley became settled by wizards, the rats' numbers exploded thanks to a suddenly booming food supply. Provided with inquisitive intelligence, strong prehensile tails and the ability to literally eat protective enchantments and wards, they can be very difficult to keep out of where they aren't wanted. Finding a horde of these critters in your laboratory, eating ingredients and gnawing on wands, is bad enough, but the creatures are also prone to dramatic mutations from eating dangerous spells or blowing up towers and villages by chewing through the wrong enchanted scroll.

Another common aspect of this is the exploration of day-to-day issues in fantastic settings. If regular rats and pigeons already cause a fair amount of damage and headaches through their activities, then pests that can drool acid or set things on fire must be even more problematic to deal with, and can thus provide challenges even to cultures armed with magic or more advanced technology than ours. These effects may also be tailored to a world's endemic technology or magic, affecting it in specific ways beyond what mundane pests could do -- for example a creature whose secretions harm the local {{Unobtanium}}, or which feeds on magic.

-->-- '''Hiccup''', ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon''

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': The Unseen University is saturated with sometimes dangerous levels of magic, which has given rise to some rather unusual pests and indoor fauna. These include .303 bookworms, which feed on dangerous magical tomes by burrowing through them at extremely high speeds and present a potentially significant danger for anyone in their path when they shoot out of a bookshelf's far end, ants intelligent enough to pull carts and use beetles as beasts of burden, cockroaches that can march by the billions with their steps perfectly in time, escaped demons in the cellars, rats capable of understanding or even using human speech, and "that very rare indoorovore, the Uncommon Sock Eater".

* In the third season of ''WebVideo/CriticalRole'', Fearne Calloway, herself a Fey creature considers Faeries to be the Feywild equivalent of rats or pigeons, to be ignored when possible, shooed away when not, and disgusting at all times.

* In the third season of ''CriticalRole'', Fearne Calloway, herself a Fey creature considers Faeries to be the Feywild equivalent of rats or pigeons, to be ignored when possible, shooed away when not, and disgusting at all times.

* [[WesternAnimation/GravityFalls Gravity Falls]] has a rather bizarre example. In the episode “Boyz Crazy,” after [[ItMakesSenseInContext Mabel releases her pet boy band out into the wild,]] one of them is seen rummaging through Stan’s trash like a raccoon.
-->'''Stan:''' Darn [[HoYay beautiful men.]] Always… eating, eating out of my trash. ({{Beat}}) Wait, what?

* ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'': Waterwomen are viewed as a common pest for sailors, commonly drowning sailors and sometimes causing violent storms when they're upset.

* ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' has [[AllTrollsAreDifferent trolls]] as vile, horrid, [[MixAndMatchCreatures pig-dog-monkey-monsters]] that have taken a liking to ransacking the countryside. [[CrapsackWorld Being a grim and dark world of medieval horror that the setting is]], trolls do more than just kill cattle and raze crops, and have been known for eating children and raping women.

* In ''Film/TheFifthElement'', spaceport ground crew use flamethrowers to deal with the problem of alien lifeforms hiding in spacecraft landing gear wells.

** Mynocks are bat-like SiliconBasedLife that like to chew on starship power cables. As seen in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', a mynock infestation can quickly drain a ship's entire power supply.
** Tatooine is home to [[RodentsOfUnusualSize two-meter-long womp rats]] that can birth litters of sixteen or more at a time and are aggressive predators and scavengers, making them a severe pest to local human and alien populations. This led the government of Anchorhead to place a bounty of ten credits per womp rat killed, something Luke Skywalker and his friends took advantage of to help pay for their education and upgrades to their speeders. In ''Film/ANewHope'', Luke mentions "bullseyeing womp rats in [his] T-16" when another Rebel pilot claims hitting the similarly-sized exhaust port on the Death Star is impossible.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS05E06TrialsAndTribbleations Trials And Tribble-ations]]", Worf says that Klingons view tribbles this way, since they endlessly eat and reproduce, to the point that they eradicated the tribble homeworld in the 23rd century. However, the episode ends with tribbles being reintroduced into the 24th century thanks to the crew bringing back at least one tribble from their trip to the 23rd century into the events of the TOS episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E15TheTroubleWithTribbles The Trouble With Tribbles]]".

* In ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', "vermin" refers to tiny parasitic creatures infecting the bloodstream. They are invisible except to a certain magical vision, but are theorized to manifest themselves in the "slow poison" status effect within gameplay. A group known as the League has discovered the vermin and hunts down infected humans and creatures, collecting and destroying the vermin in their blood.

* Apart from the usual [[BatOutOfHell Morgul Bats]] and [[YouDirtyRat Mordor rats]] of ''VideoGame/MiddleEarthShadowOfMordor'' and ''VideoGame/MiddleEarthShadowOfWar'', {{Mordor}} seems to suffer from a country-wide Ghûl infestation. [[OurGhoulsAreCreepier They are a pestilent species of nocturnal, small, hairless bipedal things with glowing yellow eyes, long, dog-like skulls, and sharp teeth and claws]]. While weak individually, [[ZergRush Ghûls come in large swarms to overwhelm foes]], [[PoisonousPerson some spitting poison on their unfortunate prey]]. It's implied in the Appendices that the Ghûls are growing in number due to the dramatic increase in unburied corpses littering Mordor in the wake of Sauron's return and the spread of the Uruk-hai.

** In "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS1E5PizzaDeliveryHomeSweetPineapple Home Sweet Pinapple]]", a herd of nematode worms quite literally eats Spongebob out of house and home. [[spoiler: They do, however, leave behind a seed, which Spongebob mistakes for a pebble, buries, and cries over, and from which a brand-new, fully-furnished pineapple house grows.]] Nematodes are later mentioned by a realtor who is helping Squidward sell his house ("Opposite Day"), and it's implied that they are the undersea version of termites.
** In "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS9E5EekanUrchinSquidDefense Eek, An Urchin!]]", a sea urchin invades the Krusty Crab's kitchen much like a mouse would, and the crew trying to find a way to get it out of the restaurant.

* ''WesternAnimation/OKKOLetsBeHeroes'': Gloops are {{Blob Monster}}s that, while seemingly harmless, can multiply and infest any place they're in within short periods of time, consuming everything in their path. If left unchecked they can grow big enough to consume whole buildings and even ''entire cities''. The best way to get rid of Gloops is to [[KillItWithIce freeze]] and then [[LiterallyShatteredLives shatter]] them.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Chowder}}'' has Fuzzballs, which are literal balls of dirt.

These creatures will often be treated as FantasticFaunaCounterpart to real-life pests species such as rats, mice, pigeons or raccoons. See also AlienKudzu, for the closely related concept of fantastic weeds, and ExplosiveBreeder, which may of these creatures often are. Contrast EndangeredSpecies.

* ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' has [[AllTrollsAreDiffernet trolls]] as vile, horrid, [[MixAndMatchCreatures pig-dog-monkey-monsters]] that have taken a liking to ransacking the countryside. [[CrapsackWorld Being a grim and dark world of medieval horror that the setting is]], trolls do more than just kill cattle and raze crops, and have been known for eating children and raping women.

** ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' has Scraplets, tiny, vicious robotic life forms native to Cybertron that consume any and all metal in their path, including whole Transformers. They can be killed easily by luring them out into extremely cold temperatures.

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': [[OurGnomesAreWeirder Gnomes]] -- tiny, ugly, stupid and sharp-toothed humanoids -- take the role of outdoor pests in a manner similar to gophers, infesting the gardens of wizarding families.

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