History Main / HordeofAlienLocusts

* The Vord of ''Literature/CodexAlera'' are a CaptainErsatz of the [[VideoGame/StarCraft Zerg]] in a lot of ways, including this trope. Their HiveMind is, unlike some other examples, based on a queens who personally direct their brood, with the Vord becoming more or less animals (some even surprisingly docile) when not being directly controlled or if their queen is killed. The heroes are able to take advantage of the fact that the queen has a limited focus and is unable to direct the other vord at once. The queens attitudes towards anything but other Vord (and sometimes other Vord) can easily be summed up as "assimilate and eat". It should also be noted that while [[KeystoneArmy killing a Queen effectively decapitates their Vord swarm]], this is [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking easier said than done]], as [[LightningBruiser each Queen is terrifyingly fast and tough and able to tear through fully-armored humans like tissue paper]], and this is before they learn how to [[ElementalPowers furycraft]].

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'': The Rachni, although only due to mischievous meddling. They are composed by massive swarms with a queen, but they are not inherently a horde of locusts. The Protheans tried to uplift them and turn them into bioweapons to be deployed in war, until they lost control and the experiment backfired with the most aggressive queens turning against them and becoming the trope. Ultimately the Krogans were uplifted too to deal with them.
** To a certain extent, Reapers too count: they periodically harvest all advanced civilizations in the galaxy, rendering suitable ones down into a slurry used to build new reapers and eradicating the rest.
* ''VideoGame/{{X}}'': The [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon]] are the mechanical version: being rogue terraforming robots, their only purpose is to [[RecursiveCreators build more of themselves]], and to "[[ColonyDrop terraform]]" everything in sight. They fit here from moonlighting as technological locusts as well. ''X3: Terran Conflict'' even calls them the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known due to their exponential rate of expansion and processing power.
* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'': The Zerg have a fairly similar approach, including the [[CannibalismSuperpower assimilation of new species into the Zerg swarm based on their useful traits]] -- although they were [[BrainwashedAndCrazy forced into this]] through Xel'Naga modifications, after previously being a race of docile, harmless worms. Though they infest and consume the resources of planets, their goal under the [[TheChessmaster Overmind]] was actually [[spoiler: the achievement of physical purity by genetically assimilating the Protoss. The sequel gives more background information on the Overmind, which infested Sarah Kerrigan to eventually relinquish control of the Zerg swarm to her. This would thereby prevent an EldritchAbomination from using them as an army for universal genocide]].

* ''VideoGame/MortalKombatArmageddon'': Smoke's ending has him fusing with his fellow {{Cyber Ninja}}s Sektor and Cyrax and doing the Nanomachine version of this.
%%* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': The Flood is somewhere between Alien Locusts and TheVirus.
* ''VideoGame/SevenKingdoms'': The Frythans gain one of their primary resources, HitPoints, mostly by killing enemies, and it's required to breed more.

%%* ''VideoGame/ConquestFrontierWars'': One of Mantis' dreams is to "mush Terrans into a milky white paste and dance over the earth drunk on their liquefied corpses".%%OmnicidalManiac yes, but is it this trope?
%%* ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'': The Strogg. On a couple of occasions, you get to see the [[{{Squick}} inside of their factories.]]

* ''VideoGame/SwordOfTheStars'': Locusts and Silicoids each embody this in a different way. Silicoids, also known as "Swarms", are silicon-based space-bugs who live in asteroid belts and are mainly pests -- a Swarmer Hive will send out a Silicoid Queen every ten turns, aimed at a nearby planet with an asteroid-field, and establish a new Hive there if it isn't killed on the way. That Hive will send out a new Queen ten turns later, and so on. Attacking either a Hive or a Queen gets you a fight with a swarm of angry Drones, so you better hope you remembered to bring point-defense systems. The Locusts, meanwhile, are not actual bugs but robots, and as such consume inorganic material, but they otherwise follow the trope to a tee (they're not PlanetLooters because they're utterly mindless and attack in bug-like swarms). The Locust Hiveworld will move slowly and deliberately across the map, draining the resources out of every planet it comes across (rendering them functionally useless), and -- once it has gathered enough resources in this way -- it will spawn a second Hiveworld. Left to its own devices, the Hiveworlds will turn every last bit of resources in the galaxy into more of themselves. Most players would rather face the [[ThatsNoMoon Deathstar-like]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast System Killer]] than the Locusts...
** The Von Neummans are an intelligent example: while they are certainly resource-hungry robots, they react to someone blasting them apart by sending an [[CoolShip ultra-cool looking]] "Berserker" to eradicate the colony (presumably so that they can mop up the pieces later), and if ''that'' fails, they send a [[WeaponOfMassDestruction Construct]], because at that point, the potential resources from the [[EarthShatteringKaboom soon-to-be annihilated]] planet just isn't worth the threat of the base on it. They even create their own homeworld in some games.
* The Eaters from ''VideoGame/ChimeraBeast'' are mindless aliens that eat everything organic to grow stronger, starting from their own planet. This time, though, [[VillainProtagonist you play as one of the Locusts]].
* The aparoids from ''VideoGame/StarFoxAssault'' qualify due to the fact that when you fight the queen at the end, she insists that the entire universe and everything in it would be consumed by them.
* The Mycons of ''VideoGame/StarControl'' certainly qualify for this trope. Though they are a bit slower than other examples of this trope, they see it as their long-term goal to [[ScaryDogmaticAliens convert all "Non" to "Juffo-Wup".]] They turn out to be [[spoiler: a terraforming biotech whose programming has drifted from its original purpose over thousands of years. Nice job breaking it, Precursors.]] Also the robotic Slylandro Probes, which are a more urgent problem, [[spoiler:and are also the result of faulty programming]].
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'':
** The Qiraji are insectoid monsters under the control of [[EldritchAbomination C'thun]]. While they don't come from space, they were sealed away from the rest of the world for millenia, giving their sudden reappearance a similar effect.
** The Devourers in ''Shadowlands'' are mindless creatures which emerge from the In-Between to devour anima. When there aren't easy sources to consume, they'll devour the fabric of the afterlives themselves, causing entire portions of the realms to break off and drift into the In-Between.
* ''VideoGame/BioMetal'': The titular Bio Metals are said to be this in the game's intro.
* The [=DomZ=] from ''VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil''.
* The [=BETAs=] from ''VisualNovel/MuvLuv''.
* The Horde in ''VideoGame/BattleRealms'', no one knows where they came from or what they are, other than they kill everything in their path, and leave nothing alive, not even trees.
* The Kreegan of ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' are in-between this and PlanetLooters: their leadership is intelligent, but the common ranks aren't, and the reason indicated by someone that was around for the beginning of the [[{{Precursors}} Ancient]]-Kreegan War for why the Kregans continually travel, land and then conquer is that they rapidly outstrip the resources of their newly conquered planet due to their breeding cycle and need to move on to one or more other planets.

* The Cravers of ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace'' are a playable example. As a species of biomechanical insects created as a LivingWeapon, their racial traits[[note]]bigger fleets, cheaper ships, rapid exploitation of newly-colonized worlds which eventually depletes it, etc[[/note]] encourage continuous expansion and {{Zerg Rush}}ing other empires in the early game. Their '[[ForeverWar Eternal War]]' trait [[EnemyToAllLivingThings renders any form of peace with other empires impossible]].
** The Necrophages of ''Videogame/EndlessLegend'' are no longer ''forced'' to expand like the Cravers, but still have many of the same traits, along with reduced food output, so they have to [[ImAHumanitarian eat the dead]], and the ability to sacrifice citizens to appease their gods. Like the Cravers, they cannot engage in any diplomacy bar temporary ceasefire treaties.
* ''VideoGame/{{Turok}} 2'' has the insectoid Mantids, who exist solely to further their own existence and lack the ability to feel sympathy, kindness, pity, or remorse.
* ''Infested Planet'' on UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} is a game where alien bugs are so numerous they flow like water.
* ''Videogame/GreyGoo2015'' has not one but two of these; the titular Goo and the Shroud, respectively. One's an exploration probe. The other's something two of the factions (the beta/morra and the goo, respectively) are freaking out about.
* From ''VideoGame/{{Battleborn}}'' are the Varelsi, a legion of extra-dimensional [[EldritchAbomination cosmic horrors]] who have been [[TheStarsAreGoingOut consuming stars]] to a point that only one star Solus is all that remains in the entire universe.
* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' has the Prethoryn Scourge end-game crisis. They invade the galaxy from the outside and invade anything in sight, killing off any native pops on planets they conquer and [[HostileTerraforming turning fallen planets into 'infested worlds' that spawn more Scourge]], repeat until the galaxy is all Scourge.
** With the ''Utopia'' DLC, Psionic races can telepathically communicate with them. [[spoiler:Asking them why they're here will have them tell you that like the Tyranids, they're running away from someone even worse, a species called the Hunters. The name "Prethoryn" means "survivors," as they're the last survivors of their war against the Hunters, who are still chasing them and will eventually arrive in the galaxy. The "HAK HAK HAK" laughing they make is not a standard EvilLaugh, but rather one mocking you for thinking that you could possibly defeat the Hunters.]]
** If the player is so inclined, they can play as their own horde by creating a Hive Mind empire with the "Devouring Swarm" civic.

* ''VideoGame/SwarmSimulator'' is an IdleGame where the player builds an empire of these. The bugs are controlled by several {{Hive Queen}}s and {{Hive Mind}}s, breed ''[[ExplosiveBreeder extremely quickl]]y'', and easily capture territory and collect meat as resources even faster. "Ascension" is performed by sending your units into space to find a new planet to start over.
* ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'': The Hive are an odd example in that they're superficially similar to the conventional locust horde, being a swarm of insectoid BeePeople with an unpleasantly organic aesthetic who go around overrunning planets and moving on, but they're also {{Abstract Eater}}s who feed on death and destruction, as well as religious adherents of SocialDarwinism. As such, they're motivated both by hunger and by a holy imperative to purge all "weakness" from the galaxy, and "feed" by killing indiscriminately with guns, swords, and space magic. The extermination of sentient species isn't a consequence of them satisfying their hunger, but the intended result.

* The eponymous Creepers in the ''VideoGame/CreeperWorld'' games are masses of blue goo that have invaded countless planets and devoured all life that it comes in contact with. The Creepers are said to be truly ancient and unstoppable, having persisted even billions of years from the past and into the future. It's theorized they're attracted to "complexity", typically targeting sufficiently advanced civilizations and wiping them out completely.

* The Kvrk Chk from ''Webcomic/QuentynQuinnSpaceRanger''. They consider all sentient races as food, including themselves. With shells as tough as battleship hull, and enduring unimaginable hazards on their homeworld, the only thing that makes them listen is [[spoiler:the use of StarKilling WeaponsOfMassDestruction]]

** The Witchlight Marauders. A sequential bioweapon made by the Orcs during the Unhuman Wars with the intention of [[KillEmAll completely devastating entire Elven worlds]] via consumption and ultraviolence. After they kill every living thing on the planet they then turn on themselves.

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* ''FanFic/{{Hands}}'': As noted below in Western Animation, [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic the Changelings]] already give off this vibe. This story takes it further by actually making them aliens, who go from world to world, feeding on the emotions of whatever species they find. [[spoiler: Prior to Equestria, they tried to invade Earth. [[HumansAreWarriors Humanity fought back, and destroyed their Hive]].]]

* In ''Literature/WorldEater'', UsefulNotes/BlackHoles are revealed to be astronomically vast, implicitly birdlike predators. On hatching from their star-incubated "planets," they eat matter, light and ''time'',

* The Garuda come across this way to the ''Manga/KnightsOfSidonia'', though their true end goal is not known. What is known is that they react with hostility to the lances that are their KryptoniteFactor, and attack anything that uses the power-source that most Sidonian technology runs on.

* In ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'', one of the earliest [[ArcVillain arc threats]] was the Bohrok Swarm, [[TheSwarm a horde of insectoid drones]] that [[BeneathTheEarth emerged from the tunnels of the island]] and attempted to destroy everything, from structures, to plantlife, to the people living on it. While they were quickly defeated, [[ChekhovsGunman they were mentioned years later]] alongside a huge twist explaining their behavior: [[spoiler:[[GoodAllAlong it turns out they were designed in service of the Great Spirit Mata Nui]], made to [[SaltTheEarth scrub the island clean]] as a preparation for when he would reawaken -- Mata Nui was actually a universe-sized HumongousMecha, and the island was his ''face'' all along. The only reason they were a threat was because [[BigBad Makuta]] awakened them prematurely -- once the Toa finally succeed in reawakening the Great Spirit (and civilization had long evacuated the island), they consciously reawakened the Bohrok to do their job.]]

* The Boglodites in ''Film/MenInBlack3'' move from planet to planet to consume everything on it.

* The Cy-Bugs in ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'', the villains of the sci-fi arcade shooter ''[[ShowWithinAShow Hero's Duty]]''. Since the game resets for new players every time, they're not actually a real threat. [[spoiler:At least, not within the world of ''Hero's Duty''. When they infest the world of the [[MascotRacer kart racer]] ''Sugar Rush'', on the other hand...]]

* The Forerunners in Andrey Livadny's ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' series were the first semi-biological creatures in the galaxy (possibly, the Universe). Composed of proto-matter encased in a magnetic bubble, they move in a giant swarm and consume all matter in their path, save for stars which are too hot. They reproduce by mitosis (i.e. division), and killing one usually results in the creation of several smaller ones. Like moths, they are guided by starlight but are smart enough to avoid getting too close. The Forerunners were responsible for wiping out three [[{{Precursors}} Precursor]] civilizations 3 million years ago, the descendants of only two of these still remain, mostly unaware of their former greatness. They were only stopped by the HeroicSacrifice of an entire race of FishPeople, who suicide-bombed ''[[EarthShatteringKaboom stars]]'' to burn the swarm until all their stars were gone, but all the Forerunners were dead as well. Even their natural enemies the [[SpaceWhale entriphages]] could not keep the Forerunners in line. When the humans later found several inert Forerunners, a CorruptCorporateExecutive decides to see if they can be useful and [[TooDumbToLive has them revived]]. They nearly wipe out two battle fleets before being destroyed for good.

* The Kreegan of ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic'' are in-between this and PlanetLooters: their leadership is intelligent, but the common ranks aren't, and the reason indicated by someone that was around for the beginning of the [[{{Precursor}} Ancient]]-Kreegan War for why the Kregans continually travel, land and then conquer is that they rapidly outstrip the resources of their newly conquered planet due to their breeding cycle and need to move on to one or more other planets.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'': The Rachni are precisely this trope, a massive swarm with a queen, involved in a difficult war that compose the pre-game story.

* ''Franchise/MassEffect'': The Reapers periodically harvest all advanced civilizations in the galaxy, rendering suitable ones down into a slurry used to build new reapers and eradicating the rest.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has the Qiraji, insectoid monsters under the control of [[EldritchAbomination C'thun]]. While they don't come from space, they were sealed away from the rest of the world for millenia, giving their sudden reappearance a similar effect.

%%* ''VideoGame/EccoTheDolphin'': The Vortex and Foe, though with the Vortex it's more explicit.

* The Evronians of ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'' are a mix of this and TheEmpire. They're a nomadic empire who travells from planet to planet, taking all the resources they can and draining the inhabitants of emotions until they become [[EmptyShell enslaved husks]], then moving on to the next one. They have a fair bit more understanding of tactics than your typical horde, however, as they have been known to pull of WeComeInPeaceShootToKill on civilizations that are too strong to conquer outright. [[spoiler:They are also not the only evronian empire out there, as an empire typically splits in two when population becomes a problem. There is an unknown number still out there]].

* In ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' we have the Insecticons, a literal swarm of alien locusts (and weevils and stag beetles). Unlike most Transformers, they don't live simply on energon. Instead they eat ''everything''--including, in the comics, meat.

* ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'': The Hive are an odd example in that they're superficially similar to the conventional locust horde, being a swarm of insectoid BeePeople with an unpleasantly organic aesthetic who go around overrunning planets and moving on, but the thing is they're also AbstractEaters who feed on death and destruction, as well as religious adherents of SocialDarwinism. As such, they're motivated both by hunger and by a holy imperative to purge all "weakness" from the galaxy, and "feed" by killing indiscriminately with guns, swords, and space magic. The extermination of sentient species isn't a consequence of them satisfying their hunger, but the intended result.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Starfinder}}'': The Swarm is a hive-minded horde of pseudo-insectoid horrors with the traditional single-minded motivation of consuming all biomass they come across and adding it to themselves, in addition to producing a large number of highly specialized warrior forms for dealing with lifeforms that object. They were a major antagonist force that was only barely repelled by the combined strength of the Pact Worlds and the Veskarium, and still poses a real danger to travelers in the Vast. One of the playable races, the insectoid Shirren, originated as a sub-hive of one such Horde, the Swarm, until a mutation granted them sapience and free will. Once they had the ability to control their own lives, they chose to reject the Swarm's life of mindless, constant and aggressive consumption, and decided to try living alongside other lifeforms instead of eating them.