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When the tentacles aren't used for This And That, as much as they are being used for throwing cars at people or strangling them or impaling them (no, not in that way) or crushing them (no, still not in that way). They may also be used as (somewhat oversized) whips (again, not in that way!) or bludgeoning weapons, as a tentacle is basically a flexible mass of muscle, and as such can impart a lot of force ( again...).
This may also happen with serpents, worms, or other similarly long-bodied creatures, using their whole bodies as such. Combat Tentacles are frequently utilized by Stock Ness Monsters and, of course, Everything's Squishier With Cephalopods.
Often a form of Lovecraftian Superpower. Compare Multi Armed And Dangerous. Contrast ( or compare) with Naughty Tentacles, when it is in that way.
Compare Tentacle Rope. See also Spider Limbs.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Suzumiya Haruhi has Ryoko turning her arms into energy tentacles when fighting against Yuki.
- Aren't those more like giant energy lances/knifes/blades/spears?
- In the anime, yes. In the novel, they are specifically described as tentacles.
- That might speak more to Kyon's subconscious wishes than her form of attack at the time.
- One of the magical creatures in the second season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha had these, as did the Book Of Darkness since it absorbed its Linker Core. These enter borderline Naughty Tentacles territory when they bind Signum and Fate.
- Several of the Awakened Beings in Claymore, most notably Riful of the West, in her case, they double as Naughty Tentacles.
- In an interesting variation, Lucy from Elfen Lied has Psychic Powers that manifest as four, very long phantom-like "arms" that sprout from her back.
- Pantyhose Taro from Ranma 1/2, whose Jusenkyo form is a two story-tall chimera that resembles a giant ox with wings and sasquatch arms, eventually added octopus tentacles to the mishmash. He can smash through concrete with these, either by jabbing their tips at people, or whipping them down like enormous flails. At one point, he used them to rip a bathhouse's smokestack in half.
- The Guardians from .hack//Sign, buggy freudian nightmare monsters from a Virtual Reality MMORPG who not only stab you with their tentacles, but put you into a short-term coma in real life.
- Karasu from Noein has a power similar to Omega Red, where he has wires as extensions of his body.
- Shadow type magic in Mahou Sensei Negima acts in this manner: creating physical darkness in the form of black tendrils which violently cut things, which one shadow-user Kagetarou used to slice the titular character's right arm clean off. Being that they were in a magic world which had advanced medicinal techniques, he had it re-attached.
- Several of the Angels in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- Several Radam in Tekkaman Blade can spit tentacles. In part II, some of the alien Tekkamen have them as well.
- The Maguar from Figure17 fall under this trope, being as their tentacles are in all cases their primary means of defending themselves.
- The titular creatures from Parasyte turn parts of their bodies into razor-edge Combat Tentacles capable of slicing through humans like butter.
- The Benizakura from Gintama, wielded by Okada Nizou before fusing with his arm like a parasite. He first takes advantage of this by strangling Matako when she talks out of turn. And then later on it gets worse.
- The ribbons Wilhelmina uses from Shakugan No Shana are used much like tentacles. Also Shana gets captured in Episode 13 by the twincest twins using wines.
- There's a ninja in Basilisk who does the same thing as Wilhelmina. In fact his hair is so strong that when it gets turned against him he ends up suspended in a doorway with all his limbs shattered.
- Riful of the West from Claymore is nothing but these in her Awakened form.
- And she is not the only one either. Standard Youma often spring spear-like tentacles from their hands, and then there is former #2 "Red Blood" Agatha from the new arc, first seen in Scene 75.
- In Saint Seiya, Specters of the Worm (such as Raimi, in the Sanctuary Saga) can use their Surplice's earthworm-like appendages to ensnare, whip, crush, or slice (with sufficient force.) A favorite tactic of this Specter is to burrow underground and let his tentacles burst up to entangle his foe, at which point he'll run a few more tentacles through the enemy.
- Dark Nova and its Novaroid mooks in Transformers Return Of Convoy all have tentacles.
- Luppi's release form in Bleach gives
her him eight large tentacles. At one point it seems she's he's going to use them for Naughty Tentacles purposes with Rangiku...but subverted the next moment when she he tried to stab her.
Comic Books
- Spider-Man nemesis Doctor Octopus has a harness with four superstrong robotic arms that he uses for battering and throwing objects and opponents. The claws on each arm can rotate like miniature sawblades. The comic writers go back and forth on whether or not he can remove 'em, though the Spider-Man movie and The Spectacular Spider Man animated series had them fused to his spine in a Freak Lab Accident, apparently for good. Too bad about that attitude adjustment the tentacles' software gave him.
- Comic book Spider-Man also had Dr. Smythe and son, creators of 'Spider Slayers', as enemies. These always had multiple tentacles used pretty much the same as Doc Ock's. Even if built bipedal with two arms, Spider Slayers would have hidden hatches to throw out extra appendages mid-battle, usually with some kind of trap, such as gas, electricity, webbing, etc.
- Spider-Man had for a short time additional mechanical limbs created by Iron-Man.
- X-Men foe Omega Red, whose tentacles can bash and smash as well as transmit his "death spore virus" (its name changes from one appearance to the next, but he's got a fatal disease he's gotta give to victims periodically or it'll turn back upon him. It becomes his best weapon, though he doesn't appreciate it.)
- Jackie Estacado of the Top Cow comic book The Darkness fights with this.
- The strictly C-list Marvel villain Constrictor.
- The tentacle creatures in Amulet.
Film
- The trees (roots) in the Prince Caspian movie.
- Biollante (A massive plant-human-Godzilla hybrid monster) falls under this trope.
- Also, there's the Giant Octopus from King Kong VS Godzilla
- And Gezora from the obscure film Space Amoeba
- Irys from the 1999 film Gamera 3: Incomplete Struggle not only has these, but he can also use them to fire energy blasts and suck the life outta ya.
- The Moorwen from Outlander is a giant, lizardish thing, but its prehensile tail can be used to grasp, slice, or impale its victims.
- The tyrant from Resident Evil: Extinction
Folk Lore
- The kraken is a textbook example. See That Other Wiki for more examples
 .
- The Kraken in Pirates Of The Caribbean.
- Davy Jones suffocating a man with his tentacle beard also counts.
- Another Kraken: the one Kratos fights in God Of War II.
- The giant squid fought by Ned Land and the Nautilus crew in Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
- Yuuzhan Vong yammosks and dhuryams from the Star Wars EU are giant squids, with giant brains (The title "war coordinator" isn't for nothing). On the rare occasion one actually has to fight something in close quarters, various tentacles are their only weapons (subverted in that they usually do pretty horribly in close-quarters).
- And then, they had an armada whose formation was based off the yammosk. Yes. Tentacles made of warships.
- Jonathan Coulton's "I Crush Everything" is about the angst suffered by a lonely giant squid who can't get close to ships without destroying them. "Octopus" also features combat tentacles, but much less angst.
- There's a kraken that's a boss in ''Golden Sun
Literature
- Cthulhu.
- The Watcher in the Water from Lord Of The Rings too.
- In The Mist (the novella), there is a huge mass of tentacles that impale and dissolve anything that they can lay their hands on.
- Carmilla (Sara Waite) in the Whateley Universe works of fiction. Not too surprising given that her father is Gothmog, demon of lust, while his mother is Shub-Niggurath - and she's related to Cthulhu on her mother's side. She can launch tentacles out of any part of her body, and those tentacles may then have mouths or eyes or worse if she wants. She has killed several people (and a LOT of animals) by thrusting her tentacles into them and eating their souls. She has used them as Naughty Tentacles too: at least one side character is now pregnant from this. Oh, by the way, she's one of the good guys in this universe.
- The Dresden Files: Deirdre combines this with Prehensile Hair. Razor-sharp Prehensile Hair.
Tabletop Games
- The Tyranids in Warhammer 40000 have a large variety of flesh hooks, feeder tentacles etc that they use to climb cliffs/rip you apart/eat your brain, running the gamut from Face Full Of Alien Wing Wong on Genestealers (which would be more Naughty Tentacles if it weren't quite so appallingly unpleasant) through brain-munching tentacles on Lictors and tank-munching ones on assault spawn right up to tentacles the size of buildings on spaceships, designed to break enemy vessels in half. Quite a few of them are also bladed.
- And, of course, daemons of Slaanesh have weaponized Naughty Tentacles, and it can quite difficult to tell how they're using them at any given time.
- The Dungeons And Dragons spell "Evard's Black Tentacles" can summon a bunch of these. Also in D&D, Displacer Beasts have two hook-tipped tentacles for tearing things apart.
- D&D has tentacles by the bushel: krakens, mindflayers, phantom fungus, otyughs, chaos beast, many of the Elder Evils, and dozens of others in too many splatbooks to list.
- A common weapon on Engels, Dagonite mecha, and monsters in Cthulhu Tech.
- The Lasombra clan in Vampire The Masquerade had the ability to grow these out of shadow with the Obtenebration discipline.
- Exalted has these as a Wyld mutation, though Lunars can get them less riskily. Since this is Exalted, they're useful for enhancing your Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot-ness, but the main book doesn't really cover the other uses, oddly enough for this game.
- Many units/monsters from the Lords of Cthul faction in Monsterpocalypse use tentacles as their main weapon, but Ancient Osheroth really takes the cake. Hell, he even has names for four of them.
- Tentacle arms can be purchased in GURPS: Bio-Tech.
Video Games
- The exoskeleton used by Solidus Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2.
- Octopi and squids are recurring boss creatures in Final Fantasy:
- Ultros, from Final Fantasy VI, a recurring joke villain with an impeccable sense of timing.
- A writhing, sentient mass of tentacles which entangles the engine room of Figaro Castle and prevents it from returning to the surface. The tentacles can ensnare individual characters and drain their HP.
- The Final Fantasy XI playerbase has many bad memories of the Sea Horror, a 60+ monster that, while very beatable by most jobs at 75, almost always spawns when the highest level player in the area is around level 30. Fun times.
- Kraken, Fiend of Water in Final Fantasy I, Xande's minion in Final Fantasy III, and one of the Four Chaoses of Memoria in Final Fantasy IX. He can even get critical hits for each of his eight tentacles in Final Fantasy I.
- Octomammoth in Final Fantasy IV, which bars the waterway between Kaipo and Damcyan.
- The Alura Une soul in ''Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow" gives this ability to Soma Cruz.
- Ultimate Venom does this, though mostly in the Ultimate Spider-Man video game.
- Mainstream Carnage can also put you under wraps, though being much more Ax Crazy than Venom (and given some of Venom's finer moments, that's saying something!) he's just as likely to make 'em pointy and impale you.
- The Dahaka in Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within.
- Flaaghra in Metroid Prime.
- Not to mention Metroid Prime itself, in its final form.
- Gooper Blooper in Super Mario Sunshine.
- The Resident Evil series is one example of this kind of monster.
- Specifically, Plant 42 from the first game, the lickers from the second game (which like to use their blade-tipped tongues for this), Nemesis from game 3 and the final boss from Resident Evil 4 are prime examples.
- Certain forms of the Las Plagas infections manifest like this too, sometimes with sharp scythes attached at the end for massive pain if they get too close to you. And then there's Uroboros which is basically nothing but a giant wriggling mass of Combat Tentacles.
- Clive Barker video games are another.
- Majora's Wrath in The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
- ...and its Ocarina of Time predecessor, Morpha, the giant amoeba who poses as water until you get close and its tentacles getcha (think that creature from The Abyss, only evil). Morpha's inspired a lot of Rule Thirty Four art.
- Halo - Flood combat forms. In the second and third games, at least on the higher difficulties, they can insta-kill MC with a single swat.
- In SRW Original Generation (PS 2): Judecca's Final attack uses this at the end.
- World Of Warcraft has more than one tentacled horror, although in general they stick to oversized humanoids for their dungeon monsters.
- Notable example would be the raid boss C'thun (a literal Giant Eye Of Doom), who in addition to having a nasty one shot kill eye laser, spawns tentacles, eye tentacles that fire Eye Beams and giant versions of the two. One of the items he drops is the Vanquished Tentacle of C'thun, which allows the player to summon his very own combat tentacle to attack an enemy for a short time.
- C'thun's spiritual ancestor, the unnamed Forgotten One in WC3, also spawned tentacles.
- Yogg-Saron, end boss of the Ulduar raid dungeon, also appears to use tentacles as weapons. It seems like there's a theme developing here around the Old Gods...
- Having noticed the popularity of the Vanquished Tentacle of C'thun, Blizzard introduced an improved version, the Vanquished Clutches of Yogg-saron. The concept's the same, but now it can summon 3 types of tentacles! One of them shoots acid. If You Know What I Mean.
- The Magus in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning can extrude a massive tentacle from his disc ( yes, disc) to swipe across enemies' faces. The Marauder class may come under this also, as his arm can be mutated into a variety of goopy shapes, some more tentacly than others, but all quite nasty.
- The Zerg base defenses, Sunken Colonies, attack with a giant burrowing tentacle.
- A couple of City of Heroes giant monsters - Lusca (big octopus) and the Hydra (big slime thing) both spawn extra tentacles to fight with. The Hydra is so damn big it's tentacles can attack you from anywhere in the thousands of meters of tunnels making up the abandoned lower level of the city sewer network.
- Also evoked by a few powers. The Plant Control ability Carrion Creepers causes huge vines to sprout from the ground and lash at enemies, and the summoned pet Fly Trap from the same set attacks with whip-like vine arms. And, of course, there's the Dark Blast power Tenebrous Tentacles.
- One of the Sai units in the game Stormrise can generate energy tentacles from their lower arms to clobber their enemies with. They can also learn to electrolute said tentacles, further increasing the damage they do.
- When she's not forming blades with them, Morrigan from Darkstalkers Sometimes use her wings/bats as these (see her standing and jumping Fierce Punch attacks). This is made much more explicit in the anime OAV, when she's shown using them like that in a fight. Not to mention the official names of the said attacks are apparently stuff like Orgasm Wire.
- In Skies Of Arcadia The Final Bosses' most devastating attack involves you being paralyzed, lifted, impaled by fluid tentacles and blasted by the creature fused with him
- The Smoker from Left 4 Dead can lasso the Survivors with his tongue.
- In an unusual variation, angels in Diablo2 have those in an imitation of wings.
- Strictly speaking, they're beams of light that assume a form resembling wings. But close enough...
- Alex Mercer of Prototype has this as a combat power, called the Whipfist. It is notably effective against helicopters, and has some particularly cool consumption animations.
- Tendril Barrage Devastator. Area of Effect combat tentacles!
- The Hydra enemy is just one giant Combat Tentacle that can split into three at its tip.
- Early promo shots and concept art for Half Life 2 featured translucent blue tentacles bothering the leads. The tentacles would've been the surface manifestation of a huge under-ground being bothering City 17. Ultimately it was decided that it just wasn't a fun opponent.
- Any Pokemon capable of using Vine Whip or Power Whip. Also Tentacool, Tentacruel, the Attack Form
e of Deoxys, and others.
- The Cloud of Darkness in Dissidia: Final Fantasy has two tentacles attached to her, which she uses to strike at mid-range opponents.
- The Tentaclaws in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, which at first seem like seperate enemies.......but then it's revealed that they're part of the Leechgrave.
Web Original
Webcomics
Western Animation
- Nergal and Junior from Billy and Mandy have retractable tentacles that can shock people with jolts of electricity and even mutate people by zapping them with red energy.
- Doctor Drakken from Kim Possible got an equivalent to these with his mutant vines, using them in one scene to crush an enemy gun.
- Waterbenders frequently use a form of this that involves surrounding themselves in water that they extend into tendrils.
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