Goddamned Bats - Television Tropes & Idioms

One of the Trope Namers here is Castlevania, which had bats that continually respawned from the side of the screen you were facing, usually during sequences in which you were trying to jump from one moving platform to another. Medusa Heads were a worse variation of these bats: their moving patterns were very erratic, making them hard to hit. The designers appeared particularly fond of barraging you with Medusa Heads while you were climbing up the staircases while fleeing from an Advancing Wall Of Doom. You couldn't jump over them, couldn't jump off the staircase, and were stuck with a fixed speed of ascent (so you couldn't outrun or dodge them). One particularly nasty section of the game has you fight your way through a hallway full of these things, in addition to combating Axe Armours, one of the toughest regular enemies. Oh, and guess what boss is waiting for you at the end of said hallway? Death, That One Boss. Damn it, Konami!
- There were actually two versions of the Medusa Heads. The blue type, that were a standard annoyance, and the brutal yellow type, which would turn you to stone!
  - And speaking of Medusa Heads, why is it that they always seem to show up during the inevitable clock tower level where every single platform is moving and there are spikes on the walls, ceiling, and floors, and just as you jump to the next platform one of the bastards hits you, you turn to stone, and hit the spikes on the floor and take damage repeatedly until you die? AGH.
- There's also Fleamen and their nasty cousins, the Rippers. Fleamen bounce around the screen smacking into you, while Rippers do the same thing, except that they also throw knives at you. There's also the Fleaman Knights that turn into Fleamen when they die, and the WakWak tree that spawns Fleamen constantly.
- One particular song in Castlevania Chronicles is called "You Goddamned Bathead."
- Presented for your approval — a musical tribute to Castlevania's Birds by Let's Player Deceased Crab: video
  - Dracula in Order of Ecclesia actually uses bats in one of his attacks; which is the most annoying attack he has, and trying to escape means he will fry you with a pillar of fire.
- Castlevania also has Imps, tiny flying critters that move erratically, trying to stay out of your weapon's range, and when you're busy trying to take one of them down, another will move in from in behind and jab you in the head from behind with their spear, taking control of your body and then proceed to either make your character attack repeatedly or walk constantly in one direction without accepting any other input. Once that happens, you're completely helpless until they've had their fun. That is, unless one of their friends doesn't immediately re-control you the second you're freed. If you get caught with other enemies or spikes in the room, you're pretty much dead.
- Hard modes in any post-Symphony title more often not turn Goddamned Bats into Demonic Spiders. See that bat that used to do only 1 damage? Well, now he does at least 60.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption introduced the Phazoids, an altogether uninteresting enemy with a weak but difficult-to-avoid area attack. It was simple to kill, but was immune to all weapons save the gun that costs health to fire. Many players took to simply running through an area instead of dealing with them, as it often cost more health to kill them than to just soak up their attacks. Adding to the joy was a plot justification for them appearing in every area Samus had 'cleared,' meaning that the further the player is in the game, the more of them she had to deal with.
- Screw ~~those barb enemies~~ Nightbarbs, too.
- Metroids in general. In the 2d games they are difficult enemies that you only encounter near the end. In the Prime series, they're Goddamned Bats. They can be killed rather easily (at least after obtaining Ice Beam or Power Bombs), but attack by latching into your face and blocking your vision, forcing you to go to morphball mode just to get them off. Also, they tend to lurk in dark places and attack from behind, their screech is pure Nightmare Fuel, and there are several times when there are metroids behind a forcefield and you know that sooner or later you have to cut the power and be forced to fight them in the dark.
- The Invincible Minor Minion Rippers.
  - Fission Metroids in Prime. It's bad enough that that they split in two when you shoot them enough or hit them with bombs three times, and the two parts are only vulnerable to one type of beam, but not the same beam. But when you encounter one, it's during a platforming segment, so when it charges, it'll either knock you off the platform you're standing on, knock you off-course if you were in the middle of a jump, or cause you to panic and risk falling down as you try to bomb it off you. It also respawns after you kill it, and when you get half-way up the room, the game goes "here, have another" and now you have 2-4 Metroids charging at you.
  - And they show up in greater numbers in the Trilogy edition, and in new places too.
  - This can be abused, though, with a door. If you walk through a door while a Metroid (including Fission Metroids) is attached to you, the Metroid explodes. I have no clue why, but you can use this to easily restock your health, missiles, and power bombs for the final battle. At the top of the room, enter the next tunnel, then turn around and open the door. Walk forwards until you hear a Fission Metroid screech, then stop. The Metroid will fly to you, so attack it until it splits. When one of the two spawned F Ms attaches to you, take one or two steps backwards, entering the tunnel (the door remains open if you're close enough to it). The Metroid explodes, so grab any item it drops. Keep doing this until you're at full. Thank God for GD Bats!
  - In both the NES Metroid and the GBA remake Metroid: Zero Mission, Tourain will make you pull your hair out. First, you got the Metroids themselves who are very hard to shake off once they stuck to you. Second, you got the slow moving energy ring things that advance towards you and will most likely get in the way of your shots as you try to freeze and/or missile a Metroid. Third, the said ring things will likely push you back if they touch you and most likely push you right into a Metroid. Fourth, once you actually get to Mother Brain's room, trying to stand on 1 block platforms as those flying rings and defense turrets (and the turrets can't be destroyed) try to push you into lava as you pump Mother Brain full of missiles will very likely cause you to scream. The remake makes fighting Mother Brain even harder by making it where it's only vulnerable if its eye is open and when it does open, it will shoot an energy wave at you.
- Elsewhere in Prime, we have Chozo Ghosts, which have earned a very special place in Chozo Hell for their teleporting tactics, their invisibility to everything but X-ray imaging, their invincibility to everything but the cheesy default beam, their refusal to appear in any number smaller than three, and their visor-screwing, charge-killing lightning attacks. Their nasty habit of dousing the lights and shrieking like demented fangirls doesn't help either.
  - Additionally, the first encounter is preceded by fleeting glimpse of a white figure shooting down the hall in front of you...too fast to make out what it is. Also, before you pass the invisible line in a room that triggers the encounter, the room tends to be "shadowy" and you hear random screeches, letting you know SOMETHING is coming...just enough to keep your nerves twitching.
- Space Pirates, if only for their habit of locking all the doors till you kill them all and playing their scary theme music until you do.
  - Unlike the pirates, you can skip fighting Chozo Ghosts when they appear.
  - Except sometimes, like the Pirates, they also lock the doors. AAAAAAAGH!
- A very minor enemy, but Metroid Prime's Burrower and its Phendrana counterpart the Ice Burrower were pains in the neck. They spend half their time digging through the dirt, in which case they're invulnerable, then leap up to spit a very fast-moving visor-splattering gobbet of acidic blue slime at you before digging into the ground again. Your window of opportunity to shoot them is very brief, and basically you can only kill them with the Power Beam, as the Plasma Beam doesn't work (at least on the regular Burrower) and the Wave and Ice Beams are too slow firing.
- Two Words: War Wasps. To clarify, these little bastards hide in hives that are really, REALLY hard to see if you aren't looking. And just to make sure you are paying attention, they have a very annoying tendency to shoot you in the back with their stingers, which can and will knock you off a cliff if they happen to be positioned correctly.
- The puffers and their various incarnations are a regular annoyance. They like to float around, shooting off a noxious gas that can do a lot of damage fairly quickly. Thankfully, you really only run into them in the air, so contact is limited. However, in Metroid Prime 2 Echoes, there are these cyborg puffers called Preeds, which have the same mechanism. You shoot them? They blow up, releasing a rather large payload of kill-gas. Also, by the time the gas has dissipated, a new one has spawn 9 times out of 10. Have fun.

Mega Man series is well-known for its challenging enemy designs and placements where every enemy is determined to hit you at least once before dying which they usually manage when not suspecting them.

Metools/Mettaurs in the Mega Man series are near-invincible mooks with their unbreakable hard hats, which they hid behind indefinitely and only peek out to attack, meaning you have to time your shots perfectly to nail them before they duck back under, and avoid being hit.
- Made even better in MM9, where you at one point encounter Mets disguised as extra lives. Until they start shooting at you. Thanks, Capcom, you're a pal.
The Sniper Joes and their cousins are worse, as they pack a much bigger punch than the Mets with the same invincible body armor/shield and limited time frame to counterattack.
- Mega Man 9 takes some of the scrappy out of the Joes with several special weapons, including Laser Trident; it pierces their shields, and you only need three to put each one on ice.
Crashman's stage in Mega Man 2 had those floating cylindrical robots called Tellys or Pipe Bombers endlessly spawning from pipes on the sides of the screen, which really messed you up when riding the Floating Platforms. Stage 4 of Dr Wily's Castle took this to near Demonic Spiders level with moving platforms over Spikes Of Doom. The Tellys also appeared in Heatman's stage, where they could knock you into a Lava Pit.
- Mega Man Zero 2 brought them back in the Temple of Fire.
And then there are the jumpers, normally cyclopean bobblehead-on-a-pogostick like things that deal massive amount of Collision Damage while still having the irritating weaknesses of the above two. Oh, and they take much more punishment than them, as well, and can jump nearly the entire length of the screen, making even dodging them a chore.
- And when they die in Mega Man 2 (where they can even shoot)... they drop Sniper Joes. Just Mercy Invincibilitying through them tends to be the best idea.
Don't forget those horrible birds in Mega Man 2 that would drop eggs full of mini-birds on you, usually making you fall off a ladder, or into a pit.
But Spines/Gabyoalls or any of its variety is a special pain. They move left and right along the surface (usually speeding up when being at the same altitude as it is) and can be destroyed only with some special weapons. Just try Concrete Man's Stage or Elecman's stage, using no special weapons or items. Not to mention their location which is often on tiny platforms which have to be jumped on.
In general, pretty much every enemy in Mega Man is designed to either damage you or knock you into a Bottomless Pit, especially if they rise from there.

The Legend Of Zelda games are absolutely full of these:
- The Goddamned Like-Likes in nearly every freaking game. They eat your shield, sometimes for good, have ludicrous amounts of health, and are extraordinarily hard to avoid at times.
- Wall Masters, in all incarnations of The Legend Of Zelda series, have the power to send you back to the beginning of the dungeon you're in, which is every bit as annoying as it sounds. Not to mention that they drop from the ceiling, climb out of walls, or extend from pools of shadow, making it easy for them to catch you by surprise. And they're really creepy.
- Worse yet, some traps release invisible Wall Masters. Fake Difficulty at its finest!
- And worse, the Floor Masters, which cross the line to become Demonic Spiders. They can turn temporarily invincible, are sometimes invisible, stun you, and split into five smaller floormasters that regrow into the full-size version if you don't kill them fast enough.
  - In the Wind Waker they're essentially floor-bound Wallmasters that warp you around. They're very fun in the Earth Temple, where they're often hidden by clouds of fog so you walk right into one and are grabbed before you even know it's there, where said fog actually stuns you so you can't use any items, and can grab nearby skulls, vases, etc. and throw them at you. And then there are the parts where you have to control Medli through these, because if they grab her, you have to run all the way back to the beginning of the dungeon just to get her back, and has utterly no way of defending herself.
- The Skultullas (all types).
- Let's not forget the Keese (literal bats) and Bubbles (flying skulls). While they were merely typically erratic and annoying flying enemies in the 2D games, the 3D games made them model examples of incredibly frustrating little a... well, you get the idea. First off they are an immense pain when you attempt to lock on to anything else (or manually aiming for something in 1st-person mode, which will often prompt them to swoop up on you from behind for a cheap shot), as half the time you'll end up targeting an out of range bat, which allows the nearby ground enemies to eat you alive or fall off a ledge while you attempt to target something else. Second, they are often wrapped in magical flames, meaning that you'll be walking along and suddenly get set on fire, cursed (unable to use weapons), or frozen solid in a giant ice crystal when one hits you (and then skitters out of range while the effect wears off). Third, they love to hang around underneath tricky platform segments and behind climbable objects, often swooping in to knock you off at a critical moment.
  - In Ocarina of Time, you get a spell called Din's Fire, that expands in a sphere, damaging many types of enemy you run into. Keese, however, aren't fazed by it: instead, they catch fire, becoming the aforementioned burning Keese (who can not only set you on fire, but burn up your wooden Deku Shield.)
  - The Game Boy versions also had bats, which often would let out a rupee. For greedy players, this would get endlessly frustrating when the rupees would end up three tiles into a cave wall.
  - Other enemies acting exactly like Keese are Guay (Like Keese, only outdoors) and Bad Bats (Like Keese, only bigger.)
  - The little blue Goddamned Bats in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link are very often placed so that they sweep across lava/water pits, knocking you to instant death. If you try to kill them you'd better hope that you can get them to sweep at you without jumping across the pit, because even if you do manage to hit them in mid-air, the odds are very big that you STILL fall in the pit because of the slight pushback you suffer from just hitting things with your sword, which will cause you to stop in mid-jump so you fall straight down.
  - Oh and in one town of the game has people who turn into bats. Invincible bats.
  - Another example frustration from the Zelda Game Boy games comes in parts involving platforming and standing on moving platforms... when all of a sudden Keese appear, and both hurt and push you into spikes/pits.
  - The Blue Bubbles from the Wind Waker. Because getting hit with one keeps you from using items for a while, you have to put out the flames first. The only way to do THIS is with ice arrows or your deku leaf. Easy enough, except in a certain few rooms in the Wind Temple. You have to get from a lower level platform to a higher one to advance. The only way to do this is by hopping from a series of platforms across a non-bottomless chasm. You can't do this without controlling Makar to have him plant trees that you can use your hookshot on. The room is full of them, bobbing along above you. This makes the deku leaf worthless, because it only works on a vertical platform, leaving you only ice arrows. However, because of the sheer number of Wizzrobes in the dungeon, you're low on magic and arrows at this point, and the Bubbles are moving, and sometimes even blocked from view. Once you DO manage to get one, it falls into the chasm, which you have to jump down to and kill it BEFORE it becomes unstunned and the flames return and it flies back up so you have to do it all over again. If that weren't bad enough, they jerk you out of controlling Makar if they hit him, causing him to fall to the bottom of the chasm, where infinitely regenerating grabby-claws mean you have to hop down, cut him free, and carry him to a safe location before you can do anything else.
- And what about the Wizzrobes? In any of the 2D games, they hang out in groups of three or so, teleporting randomly around the room and sending off magical bursts before disappearing once more. You kill them by getting behind them and slashing their behinds — assuming another Wizzrobe doesn't appear behind you and fry your tush.
  - Pah! These are nothing compared to the Wind Waker Wizzrobes, who teleport, can summon more enemies, and laugh at you. They even made a Room of Doom out of them, where there were 3 Wizzrobes who continuously spawn monsters. If you don't kill them off immediately with ranged attacks, you'll never have the chance to again.
  - And they themselves can't hold a candle to the wizzrobe boss who had all of the aformentioned abilities, as well as being able to summon more wizzrobes who could in turn continuously summon enemies (including keese and bubbles), leaving you quickly fighting a small army of bats.
  - Wizzrobes are only a minor annoyance in the 2D games. It is the combination of Wizzrobes, Bubbles, and Like-Likes in Zelda 1 that introduces you to true terror. Wizzrobes teleport and shoot a lot. For later reference, what they shoot can only be blocked by your special magic shield. Wizzrobes can only be killed with your sword, bombs, or possibly the staff (not sure about that). Bubbles take away option 1 whenever you hit them, as they make it impossible for you to use your sword for a time. Like-Likes will grab you; the only way to escape is to cut them open from the inside with your sword. And if you don't do it fast enough, they eat your magic shield, which was the only thing that made fighting Wizzrobes even possible. So if a Bubble hits you and knocks you into a Like-Like, you're basically screwed. Oh, and the game absolutely loves putting groups of all three monsters in the same room towards the end of the game.
  - Minor annoyance? You must mean the orange wizzrobes that teleport, as opposed the the blue ones that glide through you whenever they feel like it and unleash volleys of beams when they're facing you, making it impossible to escape if you're close to them. Which you have to be to kill them unless you have full life. Blue Wizzrobes are more like Demonic Spiders than Goddamned Bats. And when there are six in one room? At least the ones with Bubbles and Like Likes restricted the Wizzrobe count to about 3. Those were manageable.
- The ghost rats from Twilight Princess are invisible (and unkillable) unless you're in Wolf mode and using your senses, and while they don't do any damage, they reduce your movement to molasses on a cold day WITHOUT ANY APPARENT REASON. This turns into a nightmare in the Bonus Dungeon when you're dropping in on a room of difficult enemies and you inexplicably find yourself moving incredibly slowly while getting whacked to death, and then you have the hassle of becoming the more vulnerable wolf to kill the rats, all the while taking damage from the REAL enemies.
  - Let's not forget the Nightmare Fuel aspect of wondering why on earth you're walking so slow, then turning on your wolf instincts and noticing that YOU'RE COVERED IN SKELETON RATS.
  - Made all the more disconcerting as you see Midna visibly freak out and try to swat the rats away.
  - And also typically the rats slowed you over quicksand in the first dungeon you meet them.
  - In a less annoying fashion, the same dungeon that housed the ghost-rats also had huge swarms of (thankfully visible) insects that would cover Link and crawl all over his body (with Link looking only mildly creeped out by this). This was really only a case of bats in rooms that also had quicksand, where stopping to swing your sword and knock them off might slow you down enough to sink into the sand if you aren't quick enough.
  - This game's version of the Gibdos can prevent you from obtaining Chu Jelly, your only source of health in the aforementioned Bonus Dungeon... I was often reduced to a snarling mass of obscenities as he got paralyzed by Gibdos' scream, only to watch yet another Blue or Gold Chu get absorbed by a Purple and rendered useless.
  - They're Redead Knights, not Gibdos. And losing good Chu Jelly because they stunned you isn't the worst part of it; if they paralyze you, you WILL get hit by their BFS.
  - Not if you mash buttons. You'll be able to escape more quickly and avoid being hit; however, that doesn't prevent other Re Dead Knights from screaming and putting a whole rinse-repeat on the process...
- Don't forget Leevers. They appear from the ground, slide, and hit you, and never stop coming. In at least one game, killing enough makes a gi-normous Leever appear.
- ReDeads paralyze Link with their scream and then proceed to hump him to death. I wish I was kidding. In Ocarina of Time, Nintendo really screws you because the marketplace in the future is full of these things.
  - It's made a little easier by the fact that ReDeads can't paralyze you in the market square, thanks to the fixed camera angle.
  - You can also play the Sun's Song to turn the tables and paralyze them instead.
  - No such song in Twilight Princess, however.
  - The ReDeads in TP also ramp up the annoyance by carrying around a rusty BFS that they smack you with after paralyzing you with their scream. There's a part in the Arbiter's Grounds where you face two of them at once while a swarm of Stalkins (tiny skeletons with tridents) try to skewer you at the same time. Not fun at all.
- And lets not forget the shitty Peahats. They fly around in the air attacking you. In the first Zelda they're completely immortal unless they stop and land. And then only vulnerable for brief periods so you need to try hitting them while dodging the other 10 on the screen. The ones in Oo T were no less annoying even given the ability to attack them in the air.
  - Even worse were the Nightmare Fuel Seahats in The Wind Waker.
  - Although Twilight Princess renders them completely harmless and even helpful (as clawshot targets)....
  - Those Ocean Octoroks in the Wind Waker always seemed to show up at terribly inconvenient times. In fact, pretty much any sea-born enemy in that game is a pain in the ass.
  - Such as the Gyorgs- once they start following your boat, manoeuvrability goes down the toilet. Not to mention what happens if you get knocked overboard
- The Skullfish in Majora's Mask counts since they're virtually everywhere in the Great Bay and can come out of nowhere.
  - The Shell Blades in Ocarina Of Time are this type, they tend to swim up and attack Link aggressively, while you can only use a hookshot on them, and hope you get past their hard shells to their ONE Weak Spot.
- The rats of Twilight Princess, especially in the Bonus Dungeon, where they come in large groups. Unlike the Ghoul Rats, they damage you, and their sudden leaps are likely to hit you. Not very dangerous, but incredibly annoying.
- That Twilit Bloat that is the last Tear of Light in Twilight Princess. First of all, it's electrified- imagine the unholy union of Barinade from Ocarina of Time and a gigantic tick. He flies, naturally. You're on this floating wooden platform in the middle of Lake Hylia, that of course tilts with your weight, and that he can swim under and knock you off of. The only time you can attack him is after he tries to attack you (for a FULL HEART of damage- and you only have five at this point), assuming you managed to both dodge him and are still close enough to reach him. And if you've managed to do this three times, you have to leap on top of him and attack his little tick legs all at once- bonus points if after you've died a ridiculous number of times and are about to throw the controller through the screen, you remember that that's even possible.
- While certainly difficult to knock out, once you get on the bug's belly, you CAN use Midna's B attack to select and kill all 6 legs at once, making the battle much quicker.
The Bari in Ocarina of Time. Floating Jellyfish that are immune to the slingshot and hurt you when you kill them with the sword. That leaves three options of killing them without getting hurt: Din's Fire (which many won't have at that point and wastes magic), Deku Sticks (which break and are in limited supply in the dungeon), and the Boomerang (which you don't get until halfway through the dungeon).
- Actually, they can also be killed using the Spin Attack. If you're good at doing quick spin attacks, they become significantly less annoying.
- You also have the option of using a Deku Nut to stun them and then following up with an ordinary sword strike. They're not so hard or annoying so much as requiring a bit of experimentation.
- A fit of annoyed rage led to the discovery of a non-standard Bari kill: pick up Princess Ruto and toss her at the damn thing. It dies, and Ruto is fine.
Also in Jabu-Jabu's Belly are Shabom, large kamikaze bubbles that reflect most projectiles, and Stingers, large flying fish that stalk you as you move around.
- Like the Bari, however, Shabom are also very weak against Deku Nuts.
The RED EFFING BUBBLES from the original game's second quest. Get hit by one, and you permanently lose the ability to use your sword. There are only three ways to regain it: Find a Blue Bubble and get hit by it, drink the Water of Life or visit a Fairy at an Overworld spring (that last one is a bit difficult since Bubbles are only found in the labyrinths).
The Oracle games, manage to avert this trope quite well on the other hand. Wallmasters and floormasters are signifcantly easier to dodge and destroy while other enemies are easy to kill or few in number.
Poes in Twilight Princess are extremely aggravating until you obtain the Master Sword and gain the ability to shift between human and wolf form at will. You can only see (and kill them) in wolf form, but for the first half of the game, you only ever run into them when you are in human form. Your only choices are to run away or get beat to death by a floating lantern. It is extremely cathartic the first time you run into one in wolf form and get to rip its soul out with your teeth!

Pitfall II was a 2D game which had bats that simply provided a moving obstacle. The bats would fly across the screen and you had to time Pitfall Harry so he passed under the bat while its wings were flapping up rather than down. (Pitfall Harry couldn't just crawl or stoop, nossir!) Unfortunately this was used for about 15 floors in a row and got old REAL fast.
Tomb Raider has bats, rats, baby dinosaurs, big burly gunmen, scorpions...each game has at least one pain to deal with.
The bats from Captain Comic 2 were dangerous and annoying, and they showed their worst in a particular cavern in the Arctic World, which was nigh impossible to traverse without losing half of your health to them.
The decidedly unpleasant Fallen enemies in Devil May Cry 3. Not only do they have a (respawning) shield in the form of their wings, which you must break before actually dealing damage, a fair amount of health, and strong attacks with a variable-length short sword, they also can phase through walls and tend to stay in the air. Because the game rewards based on combo level, and your combo ability is limited in the air, this means that after going through all the trouble to kill them you receive almost no reward.
- In the same game, you have the Dullahans, which are floating armor invincible except for a certain move and an Achilles Heel on the back. Not only are they almost fast enough to keep up with Dante or Vergil trying to circle around them, they can also turn while under attack, an upward thrust attack makes the vertical route difficult and they usually appear in tight quarters. On higher difficulties they never die in one hit.
- There also are the Soul Eaters, which do not appear unless Dante or Vergil has his back to them. Their dash attacks carry them in and out of the camera's view. They also do not die in one hit. And if they hit you, they drain your Devil Trigger. The best way to fight them is to keep your back turned until they solidify, wait for them to move (which prevents them disappearing), and then turn around and gun them to pieces. Of course, on higher difficulties, they become especially annoying... Especially on Dante Must Die, where they activate their Devil Trigger and gain annoying amounts of vitality.
- While Hell Lusts stay on the ground and can be combated like most of their cousins, they have an annoying uppercut which can come out faster than anything Dante or Vergil can do. Also, it is prefixed by a dash which is usually a feint, making it very difficult to tell when they're gonna pull it off. Any self-proclaimed "true fan" who doesn't have sharp words about the "Lustercut" isn't as hardcore as he'd want you to believe. Furthermore, they are apparently enough of a Determinator demon-type that they can hit with it even when dead. Behold.
- Devil May Cry 4 brings us the Gladius demons, which transform between a sword and a reptile form, and both fly. They love striking you out of combos, and they never come alone.
  - DMC4 also has the particularly annoying Chimera enemies. Alone, they're not a problem, but they have the ability to latch on to other enemies. They're still not particularly dangerous, but they increase the health of whatever enemy they latch onto, and they can attack while their host is flinching, which is hell on your style meter. Furthermore, there is one bonus mission that has you facing six Chimerea-possessed Assaults (which are tougher enemies on their own) and requires that you take no damage. I found that mission impossible to beat using conventional methods.
- The first Devil May Cry game presents this trope with the Plasma enemies. They literally are bats, split into and spawn more of itself (restoring its HP to full), shoot light beams from their eyes in both horizontal and vertical paths, render Alastor ineffective, and in Dante Must Die mode are seemingly put there to screw the player over (or force them to use Ifrit, whichever is worse).
The satyrs in God Of War are a source of eternal frustration for many a player, thanks to their seemingly immaculate ability to dance away and smack you whenever you dare to contemplate hitting them.
- Wraiths and Harpies, especially after they've learned that Firebomb attack. Their death animations are too perfect. It's like the designers came up with that first, then said "What attacks can we give them that will make the player want to do just that to them?"
- In God of War 2 there is a level where the player must climb a long chain to get to the top of the level. Along the way there is an endless supply of Bats that you can not attack from the rope and can throw you from the rope. I have yet to finish God of War 2.
To a lesser extent, the robotic Mousers in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2.
Most of the enemies in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 are bats, and many of those are Demonic Spiders as well.
The mantis badniks in Sonic The Hedgehog 2 are horrid examples of this trope; they have blades on their arms that they can throw, but while doing so renders them mostly harmless, the blades themselves have an uncanny homing ability that makes it nearly impossible to kill or get past them without getting hit. Worse yet, they always seem to appear at crucial jumps, making them an even worse threat than usual.
- Also the Firefly badniks, possibly the closest things in Sonic 2 to actual bats, had the same tendency to be placed right in the middle of crucial jumps, and ALWAYS turn on their flashing light invulnerability the instant Sonic tries to attack them.
- The bomb types in the 2D games have an annoying tendency of timing their explosions in such a way as to be near unavoidable.
- All three badniks from Metropolis Zone (the aforementioned mantises, the starfish bombs and the always-awkwardly-placed crabs-with-giant-fists) stand out as being pretty much the only badniks in a classic Sonic game that actively make their level hard, as opposed to, say, environmental hazards (which Metropolis also has plenty of as well, being the Scrappy Level that it is).
- The Artificial Chaos enemies in Sonic Adventure 2 are incredibly hard to hit (because the Homing Attack has terrible lock-on, and in the mechs, you'll probably accidentally shoot a Dynamite Pack and get sucked into space), and they can stretch their arms and attack from a distance. Then, in Shadow's very own game, you are expected to kill forty of them...
  - Not to mention. Making the Collect 100 Rings A Rank stuff for all the emblems tedious, and to some, impossible.
- Anybody remembers those scorpions in Sandopolis Zone in Sonic 3 & Knuckles?
- The little known spinoff Tails' Adventure on the Game Gear featured honest to God robotic bats in cave levels, whose whole purpose in existence was to knock you off ledges and disrupt precision platforming.
Prince Of Persia: Sands of Time has swarms of bats that tend to show up when you're perched on a ledge hundreds of feet above ground. A couple of unlucky hits will have you falling.
- The archers in The Two Thrones probably count. While not small, and not flying, they are weak (they go down with one quick-kill and have very little fight in them), ubiquitous and very annoying. Their arrows, which they'll launch across entire rooms, don't do much damage, but they stop whatever action the prince is doing, including attacks and especially combo moves. They also make you instantly fall to your doom if you get hit in the air.
- Heck, just about every enemy in that game serves no purpose but delay you from your scheduled awesome running up walls and jumping around like crazy. Plus they just keep spawning with no end in sight until the game is bored of annoying you with them.
The beggars, drunks, lepers, and crazy people in Assassins Creed are annoying as heck; the former follow you around, nattering your ears for money and getting in your way right when you're trying to stealthily assassinate that oblivious guard up ahead. The latter simply smack you violently and shove you into walls, guards, and off ledges. It quickly becomes an exercise in patience to not simply draw your sword and start satisfying that Videogame Cruelty Potential.
- Tip: use your hidden blade. Not only is it an instant-kill, it's more humiliating!
- In fact, the hidden blade works extremely well on ANY NPC you get into a fight with. Just throw them to the ground, and commence the brutal stabbing. It's somewhat of a Game Breaker when you learn to use it.
  - And it becomes even more of a Game Breaker when you get the hang of countering with it in a stand up fight.
The hawks from Ninja Gaiden. A lot of people will tell you they're at least as bad as Castlevania's flying Medusa heads. A lot.
- So much so that they've been incorporated into I Wanna Be The Guy for exactly this reason.
  - Oddly, the hawks and medusa heads in IWBTG are one of the few things that CAN'T directly kill you. And yet they're more annoying than most of the other enemies, particularly since they have the annoying habit of knocking you into spikes right after you finish a rather annoying segment.
  - And for some reason, for a few seconds after they hit you, your gun fires backwards, as do the flying Shyguys.
- As well as featuring bats, the Xbox Ninja Gaiden [Black] includes ghost fish enemies towards the end of the game. They attack in large numbers and can only be safely defeated with a continuous flail combo - pause for a moment to pick up the blue health orbs they leave behind, and they'll be on you in an instant.
- And the grenade spamming dogs in NG II
The weird glowing slugs in Battle of Olympus for the NES.
Super Mario Bros had several levels of flying Bats in the form of Cheep Cheeps.
- Super Mario Bros 3 had Boss Bass, a huge fish that would jump out of the water and swallow you whole, no matter what powerups you were using. He could be killed, but would come back after only, say, ten seconds.
- There's also the Angry Sun, which flies erratically all around the screen. Fortunately, it only appears twice in the entire game, and can be killed for good for the rest of the level provided you have the ultra-useful Hammer Suit or hit it with a Koopa shell.
- Super Mario Bros 2 had Phanto. He really didn't like you taking keys, and was the thing nightmares were made of.
- Super Mario Sunshine, how I hate thee. Let me count the ways: Boos, Smolderin' Stus, Cataquacks, Electro-koopas, Klambers, Coo Coos, Seedy Pods, Swipin' Stus, Wind Duppies...
- Everything in Super Mario Land is a pain in the arse by world three. Especially those flying head things that always bounce around on a series of platforms that you have to jump onto. Also, in any mario game, Spiders manage to be a pain whenever they appear.
- Super Mario Galaxy has literal Goddamned Bats in a few levels. Usually, they just bump into you and are a pain in the ass to kill. But put them in the Slippy Slidey Ice World and you get Bats that freeze you solid, and can only be killed by the temporary power-up that is difficult to aim at stationary objects, let alone flying ones.
- Bloopers/Bloobers in Mario 1 and Lost Levels. Especially when they decided to pop up in the middle of an overground level for no reason. Squids in mid-air! What the hell, man!
- Lakitu. Just Lakitu.
Many Nintendo Hard games like Contra or Metal Slug were filled with Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders, especially during a boss fight.
The bats in the Dungaga mines and Grodol caverns in Eternal Daughter. As if the floating carnivorous strawberries, summoner rabbits, spiked slimes, sneaky earth elementals and rib-launching skeletons weren't bad enough, there's also the Goddamned Bats popping up at random, aiming to disrupt you whenever you're doing anything remotely requiring precision.
La-Mulana has a disgusting variety of enemies which fly or jump around erratically, and often through walls as well. The bats (two varieties, in fact; one of which moves faster and is more annoying) are especially noteworthy because they fly around in a completely random pattern, with no warning as to where they're going to turn next, and fly through walls as if they aren't there. And then there are the magical staff-wielding monkeys, the singing witches and the Frickin Laser Beams-spamming blue imps. All can flood the screen with wall-penetrating projectiles in a matter of moments, and the monkeys are invincible except when firing, while the witches and imps fly around randomly in a similar fashion to the bats.
- Large part of the abundace of annoying enemies are because of game mechanics too. Character is sent flying backwards every time after getting hit, often to another screen, which, combined with Respawning Enemies, can be quite an annoyance.
- Not to mention that when the bats fly through water they're invisible.
Impossamole has origami birds, ninja rats, and acid-raining clouds in the Orient level, as well as UFOS that can pass through walls and invincible the pirate ghosts in the Bermuda Triangle (the Amiga/C64 version also featured literal bats in the Klondike Mine, many of which were invincible, some unavoidable), and Action Bomb enemies in the form of walking dynamite sticks. In the TG16 version, they can also knock you backwards (although you have Mercy Invincibility), interfering with already difficult platform jumping and sometimes causing you to miss one of the scrolls. In both versions, they often endlessly spawn from Mook Maker doorways. In fact they usually respawn when you return to an area, and you often can't tell whether you're going to land on one when falling.
- Some egregious Scrappy Levels in the TG16 version: Bermuda Triangle Level 2: The "Hallway Of Doom", where you have indestructible falling blocks that can be kicked out of the way, but bounce back and forth, along with Mook Makers churning out unkillable ghost pirates and barrels, living cannonballs, and in a really cruel item placement case, a health powerup blocked by a falling block which you can't jump over, and will take damage kicking it out of the way, which can render your efforts to get it in vain. At the end of the same level, you have to walk under a series of falling blocks to get the last scroll, then swim back through a field of randomly moving water mines. In Orient Level 2, the Ninja Mice/rats are more agile and have projectile attacks, making you a sitting duck without a ranged weapon. AND you have to fight through a swarm of them, dodge rain from invincible killer clouds, and negotiate platform jumps at the same time JUST to get one of the scrolls. This where they cross the line to become Demonic Spiders. In the same level, you also have to jump over Spikes Of Doom pits with falling boulders conveniently placed over them (no Mercy Invincibility to spikes). And the underwater sections of the Amazon (luckily Monty doesn't have drowning skills, unlike Sonic). Since you can't attack underwater, all such enemies are effectively invincible.
Bonk has dragonflies, birds, Evil Florets, jumping fish, grasshoppers, crocodiles (an Invincible Minor Minion in the first game), electric lizards, flying frogs, you name it.
Late in Psychonauts you wind up in an insane asylum. There are swarms of rats that explode into confusion-causing clouds, and there's usually five or six in each group. Three groups is usually enough to kill you outright unless you've been making it a point to collect all the brains you can.
- And even if they don't kill you, the confusion gas rearranges your controls, so you usually run off a ledge, fall eight stories, and have to climb the whole tower again. By which point, usually, more rats have appeared.
  - It's worse when you try and Psy-Blast 'em with your rearranged controls, because you don't know where to aim.
  - It gets even WORSE when you try to shoot and you end up using a useless skill like Clairvoyance or Telekinesis, because looking through a rat's eyes while tossing it around with a hand made out of psychic energy will really help when they're exploding on you. Yeah.
- The rats appear where rats are drawn on the walls.
- Double-Jump straight up and PSI-float down. That avoids most of the follow-on attacks.
- Use the bacon to consult Ford. He's got the answer to the Confusion Rats Pyrokinesis!
  - Yeah, that works. "Oh no! rats!" *sizzle sizzle sizzle* "Come on! burn faster!"
- Though not as bad as the rats, the meat bunnies of the Scrappy Level also qualify. They spawn at a regular rate that ensures there'll be plenty to ambush you by the time you finally get up to their next platform... assuming they haven't killed your charge first.
- The confusion rats "seem to be unanimously reported as one of the most hated creatures of the whole entire game." Those are the exact words of the creators of the game.
The flying heads in Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame were very quick attackers who liked to push you off a platform and then fly down to the lower platform and continue their attack. Worse, you've lost your sword when you first meet them, and can only fight them with a wimpy little dagger, which makes it trickier to hit them, and not hitting a head means getting hit by a head, which could cost you as many as three units of health. The game gives you a real sword after a couple of levels, and right after that makes you fight 9 heads in a row.
Disney's Aladdin had literal Goddamned Bats. They flew along complicated and unpredictable paths, were very fast and hard to hit and could cause you plenty of damage.
The Donkey Kong Country games have Zingers and Buzzes, i.e. Goddamned Bees.
Abe's Oddysee has Goddamned Bats. They are the only enemy that flies, can't be killed, instakill Abe if he touches them and while they do follow predetermined patterns, it's impossible to predict what the pattern will be without watching for a few seconds first — a luxury the player doesn't always have. Unlike the other enemies in the game, they have no AI whatsoever and so can't be tricked, possessed, distracted or otherwise moved out of the way. They're just there, fluttering around the screen, waiting patiently to kill you yet again. The game knows full well players will hate them: in the first screen that features a bat, the player is likely to ignore it as background detail, and read the more obvious firefly hint instead. This requires holding down 'Chant' and waiting while the fireflies form into words. "WATCH... OUT... FOR... THAT... BAT" - upon which the bat flies into you and you promptly die.
Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver has its own Goddamned Bat in the FIRST BOSS LEVEL. On your way to defeat Melchiah, you meet his brood that have the same "abilities" as he. What's that mean? Simple: they heal REALLY quickly from just about any wounds you inflict, and if they are killed, but the soul not taken? They come back just as quickly. Oh, and the best part? They can dig underground and pop out at the worst possible time, thus making them invicible while you try to dodge their attack (and they almost always hit). Doesn't help that lethal weapons are kinda hard to come by in that level....
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed gives us Stormtroopers with electric pikes (in the Wii version, anyway). Not only do they take forever to kill and can block your physical attacks with ease, but they can also shock you, leaving you stunned while the inevitable second pike trooper goes all Vlad the Impaler on your ass. Flying enemies are also evil, since you can't throw them.
- The PS 3/360 version has imperial snipers. They have sniper rifles; you have a fancy sword and an assortment of medium-range force powers. Flying enemies are less annoying in this version, because you can short out their jetpacks with lightning sending them screaming and flying randomly to their doom.
It's hard to go anywhere in Beyond Good And Evil without encountering huge swarms of Goddamned Rats. Although a single kick or Gyro-Disk will kill them, they often come in such enormously massive numbers, at least one of them will manage to nibble Jade's health down before you're done with them all. A few areas also have large numbers of slugs, who will OM NOM NOM the heck out of your legs if you let them.
Yakuza throws a random encounter at you almost every block. It wouldn't be so bad except they're hard to pick out in the game's massive crowds, they tend to approach you when you're right on top of them, and you don't usually have time to avoid them. If you're sharp, you do run notably faster than them, so getting away can be easy on occasion. Yakuza 2 seems to have toned down the random attack rate.
With a list of enemies as long and diverse as the one in Zombies Ate My Neighbors, you'd think there'd be several Goddamned Bats. You'd be right:
- Killer Dolls: Fast, will swarm and attack you with axes, will throw said axes at you, will duck your most powerful standard weapon (the bazooka), and in certain levels will swarm you while on fire .
- Martians: Incredibly weak, but they attack in numbers, they're the fastest enemy in the game, and getting hit with their Bubble Guns will set you up for double damage when hit by any other enemy.
- Vampires: Ridiculously powerful, but doesn't attack often. Prefers to soak up your most powerful ammo, then fly away before you can finish him. Killing him does grant a nifty score bonus.
- Football Players: Can't hurt you, but will bounce you around the screen, while running over victims and setting you up to get hit by other more powerful enemies.
- Don't forget the Spiders. They're small and hard to hit, AND are fast; As well as the Giant Ants, which came in black and red. The red ones ran as fast as the main characters did, and both types could climb over walls and carry items into their nests, effectively destroying them. The spiders were weak, but the Ants took multiple hits of anything that wasn't the Bazooka or Bubble Gun.
  - Also, every single non-boss enemy in the game continuously spawned (except the Pod Plant). Zombies burst from the ground, Evil Dolls hacked their way out of boxes, Mummies emerged from sarcophagi. ...In fact, I think it's safe to say that nearly every enemy in the game is a Goddamned Bat
The Little Big Adventure games have Goddamned Bats and Goddamned Fireflies. Being small and quick, they are incredibly hard to kill, and while they don't appear in swarms, they have a tendency to fly over water or lava — if you are using a jetpack to fly over these, and get hit by such creature, you are dead.
Fester's Quest had this very annoying green sphere that would forkbomb on every hit, and the longer you took to kill each semi-overlapping new sphere, the more likely each one had of forking again. Worse yet, the game had a nasty feature in the form of negative powerups. So at the end when you had killed them all off, usually you had to avoid the huge pile of treasure completely.
The Pygmy Bulborbs in Pikmin 2, and their close cousins the Water Dumple. While they'll die fairly quickly (and a single WHOOMP from a Purple Pikmin will kill them), they occur in large numbers, and the likelihood that at least one of them will manage to munch a 'min is high. Unfortunately, they tend to serve as only a distraction for a much larger, more dangerous enemy...
Funny enough, the NES version of Dragons Lair subverts this, as every enemy kills you with one hit except for the bats, which only take off some health and won't even make you flinch.
Turkey Commandos from Maple Story. They spawn alongside weaker enemies in the starting areas of the game; they move faster than a low-leveled player normally does; their touch attack deals more damage than the local enemies; they have a laser attack that can hit you from off-screen; they can jump; they have high avoidability, making them hard to hit (especially at low levels). Luckily, they only appear during the Thanksgiving events.
- And also, the enemies in the Jump Quests. They're invincible and their only purpose is to knock you back down to ground level, forcing you to restart. God help you if you accidentally try to hit one that flies, since it'll follow you around for a good five minutes. Note that all enemies in the game move around in a random pattern until hit (at which point they follow their attacker), save for the enemies that can't move at all. Monsters that fly move in an even more random pattern because they move in two dimensions instead of one.
- Please note that Jump Quests are Maple Story's answer to the Scrappy Level. Nothing is more annoying that those damn J Qs!
in Custom Battler Bomberman, you'll start hating those red balls that come out of the teleporters in Zone G. Why? well, let's start listing them:
- if the teleporter's tile gets hit with a bomb's explosion (even if it's not your bomb), it spawns a ball.
- in some levels, security systems spawn MORE of those balls if tripped. Scrappy Level, Anyone?
- if even ONE ball is in the level, it has to be destroyed before you can use the teleporter, even if the "mission" requirements are met.
- all of the level timers going on do not wait for you to clear them out.
- and let's not forget they can always go faster than you. Always. well, unless you have one specific ability which you'll probably have used a lot by the time your reach Zone G thanks to Ridiculously Hard Levels (some of which teeter on being a Luck Based Mission due to block placement and strict timers), but even then, faster than your running speed.
Ecco The Dolphin features Goddamned Trilobites, of all things.
The flying and armor Gaudis in Cave Story like to hang around ledges and lob projectiles at you, which are liable to level down a weapon you'll want for taking down That One Boss (whose Boss Room contains a whole bunch of them). Earlier on, the Sand Zone has flying projectile-spewers in the form of Crows carrying Skullheads, two enemies more annoying together than when separated. And there are the Butes, who help put the "hell" in the Bonus Level Of Hell.
The Troopers in Metal Arms: Glitch in the System dodge your shots, move around quickly, have many hit points, powerful attacks, and can fly.
- Troopers are easy to deal with if one can find cover and then blast them with a shotgun as they try to melee you, as they actually have only a few more HP than your average grunt. You also have great weapons to kill them at that point, such as a rivet gun, SPEW or cleaner. The really evil opponents are Guards and Zombiebots- both have hugely powerful melee; it deals knockback, and drains your health in seconds. Furthermore, when you encounter them, good weapons are either rare or require multiple shpots o kill them.
Entirely avoided in Shadow Of The Colossus, which features no random encounters whatsoever - the player is a lonely, lonely man in a lonely, lonely landscape. There's exactly one very short cave with bats, but killing them is about as pointless as shooting at trees.
- Heavily lampshaded in the opening sequence: something eerily similar to the main enemies from ICO appear for a split second, but are instantly killed by Wander's sword. They never bother him again (not when he's conscious, at least) and neither does anything else apart from the titular colossi.
In Thexder, both the 1985 original and the 1995 remake, a great many enemies fall into this category - which is quite impressive considering that the titular character's laser has auto-targeting.
Heart of Darkness has a variety of enemies like this, though it's hard to tell if they're just Goddamned Bats, or outright Demonic Spiders. There's literal spider enemies that appear on climbable walls (who jump around erratically, dodge your shots almost constantly, and create acid globs that can make you lose your grip on a wall if you touch one), flying bat-like enemies who can throw fireballs in all eight cardinal directions, and worms that pop out from climbable walls and can snatch you in a fraction of a second. In the case of the spider and bat enemies, they sometimes have the gall to survive an abnormal amount of shots from either your blaster or your magic attack, depending on which level you're in. Even the normal shadow enemies have this trait, which may or may not be randomized amounts of health for each individual enemy.
Rastan has some levels with Goddamned Bats that are hard to hit, suck out your life, and throw off the timing to the rope swing challenges. Very, very annoying.
The unlicensed Famicom game Thunder Warrior is riddled with bats, especially literal bats, as well as WallMasters, exacerbated by Bottomless Pits, slippery controls, and the hero's hard-to-aim projectile attack.
Wonder Boy and Adventure Island: In addition to the literal bats, there's frogs, coyotes, fireskulls, and wasps/crows and rocks.
Home Alone 2 has literal bats too which very often knock the player off of tiny platforms. In addition, rats are almost as big nuisance.
First Wizards and Warriors game has many Goddamned Bats, including literal ones.
Kid Icarus: There's the Reapers and their Reapettes, the Mono-eyes and other flying enemies, and the jumping crabs, which are a major pain in stage 1-3.
The bats in Star Tropics. In the first game, they were common enemies that flew in a pattern, took one hit to kill, and would stop every few seconds. In the second game, they don't appear until Chapter 7, but they take two hits to kill, fly much faster, have no set pattern that they fly in, and don't stand still. The problem is amplified because the game lacks Mercy Invincibility, so if they corner you they could wipe away your hearts in a few seconds. Plus they're always in groups of at least three.
The bats in Beyond Oasis for the Genesis, first appearing in the fifth dungeon, are textbook examples. They're extremely difficult to hit, come in groups, and do enough damage to kill you in no time.
Virus detectors in Prototype can see through Alex's disguise, making sneaking difficult until you learn how to sabotage them. Then the un-sabotageable UAVs appear to take up the slack. For extra "fun", attacking these even with guns will still give Alex away. Plus Strike Teams usually come with at least two. At least they can't directly attack.
The whirlwinds inspired controller-flinging fits in Toejam & Earl. There's nothing quite like a hazard that spawns without warning, scoops you up in its inescapable embrace, and drops you anywhere it can reach, including over pits that will drop you back down to the previous level. Even worse, you have to sit and watch for 10 seconds or so while the tornado moves around randomly deciding where to dump you.
- The hula dancers, who pose no direct threat but will randomly cause Toejam or Earl to stop what they're doing dance in place, even if they're surrounded by bogeymen.
The goddamned blockers from Wet, which have to be killed via manually-aimed head shot, or explosive, or melee, because they'll stand there and block your off-hand gun if you auto-target them. And to top things off, these guys do very nasty damage with their melee attacks. The icehouse arena level from stage 8 is when these guys first appear, and it's part of the reason the level is considered That One Level.
Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires features various kinds of goddamn tigers and wolves, which move around in highly erratic patterns and can apparently only be killed by hitting one specific point in the middle of their spine. Yes, you can be wailing away on what appears to be their face and nothing will happen. Some breeds can also shoot lightning or freeze you in ice, both of which will temporarily paralyze you - this usually isn't fatal to the player, but the same cannot be said for any hapless civilian you may happen to be leading on an Escort Mission...
Sküljagger: Revolt of the Westicans has a number of annoying flying enemies, including giant insects, large birds, and monkey/bird hybrids. If they aren't trying to run into you, they're dropping rocks and coconuts on you.
In the first Ratchet And Clank game, Planet Orxon gives us an example of combining goddamn bats with Demonic Spiders. Orxon is overrun by Land Lobsters, very tough, very mean enemies that come in packs and love to surround you and kill you dead. Fortunatly, the Land Lobsters tend to sleep alot, and will likely be sleeping when you encounter them. Enter the (goddamn) Screamers, who will fly in the air and screech obnoxiously, waking up and attracting nearby Lobsters. Screamers can be taken out with one hit, but if you miss or accidentally hit a Lobster, well...
- In the second game, once you got used to killing the YETIs they stopped being Demonic Spiders and instead turned into these. They do pose a significant threat, and are better classified as Demonic Spiders, but since you have to face about three thousand of these to get all the crystals in their area, one will inevitably find a way to kill them fairly easily. The problem then stops being staying alive and turns into avoiding situations where you're surrounded and not running out of ammo, both of which are rather difficult since every time you get a crystal some of them will pop up around you (or some spawning points will open up and throw around ten of them at you each, one at a time), surrounding you in a split-second; and since they have rather high health, which, combined with the whole three thousand of them thing, means you're going to run out of ammo very frequently. They can also tend to be annoying to hit since their attack quickly moves them towards you and then back a significant distance away, and they counterattack anything.

Collectible Card Games have their Goddamned Bats, too. Duel Masters, for example, has Pyrofighter Magnus, who comes out of nowhere, gets in a cheap shot, and disappears back to his owner's hand. You can only attack an opponent's monster on your turn, which means you can't kill him. If you have a blocker that can kill him, your opponent probably won't summon him, but he'll show up again once the blocker dies.
- Yu-Gi-Oh also had them in the form of Spirit Reaper/Marshmallon and Treeborn Frog/Sinister Serpent. The first two cannot be destroyed in battle, and have weak enough stats to make them safe from most of the popular monster-destruction cards, while the latter two are easily able to return to your hand/field shortly after being sent to your graveyard, no matter how they're sent there. Fortunately for players, all but Sinister Serpent are limited to 1, with Sinister outright banned. There's also Tsukuyomi (a Spirit monster that flips a monster on the field face-down upon summoning, and bounces back to your hand at the end of the turn), and Yata-Garasu, a Game Breaker if there ever was one. With the ability to prevent the opponent from drawing cards normally and the ability to return to its owner's hand due to it being a Spirit-type, it was essentially an "I win" card that still causes eye twitches when mentioned around seasoned Yu-Gi-Oh! players.
Stinkweed Imp is the ultimate G Oddamned Bat of MtG. Weak p/t-wise, but an evasive little sonofagun that'll kill whatever it touches. Oh, and did I mention it comes back from the dead while accelerating the opponent's plan?
- Also, blue decks chock full of cheap counterspells. On their own, these cards will never make one win (though they do help make one not lose, a good first step :)). To the opponent, they're goddamn bats as every. Single. Fucking. Card they try to play immediately ends in the graveyard.
- The S Tar Wars CCG had a similar card- Jar Jar. Besides being The Scrappy, the original Jar Jar could blow up an enemy with a little luck, but die in the process. A few sets later... Brisky Morning Munchen let you recur him. For a fairly cheep activation price, as far as named characters from the movies go. Throw in a couple of equally annoying cards built around him, and... you get the picture.
Shadowfist, the card game that spawned Feng Shui, may have the king of CCG Goddamned Bats: Vivisectors. How many other cards can you name that had a mechanic (Showdown) created to deal with them?

Moon Patrol has blue aliens whose bombs create craters. These aliens also love to fly out of range of the moon buggy's aerial blaster, which makes stopping them nearly impossible (in the Atari 2600 version of the game, this tendency promotes them from Bats to Piece of Fecal Material Bats).
Not technically an enemy, but get into first place in a Mario Kart game and you will come to dread any opponent finding a blue shell, a weapon that can be fired from any location on the track to automatically cause the guy in first to wipe out and which is literally unavoidable unless you have a star (which you can't even get when you're in first).
- In Double Dash, it's actually possible to dodge if you're playing on Co-Op mode. The "gunner" just has to do a rather precisely timed side-tackle.
- In Double Dash, you can also avoid it if you have three mushrooms or are near boosts, but you have to hit the boosts at just the right time, three times in a row. After that, the shell will veer off course and explode in the distance.
- If you get targeted by a blue shell in a level with a cannon you can avoid getting hit if you enter it at the right time... although this does require a of a lot of luck.
- Mario Kart Wii has a literal form of Goddamned Bats. Wario's Gold Mine has bats at the entrance that push you and slow you down if you get hit by one. Dry Dry Ruins have Goddamned Bats at two spots: One in the entrance to the temple and one by the big jump at the exit. The ones by the big jump fly towards the ramp and if they touch you in mid air, they can knock you way off course and out of bounds from a simple bump. Goddamned Bats to the max!
The more-or-less randomly-generated yellow traffic cars in Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, which are the main reason Maximum Tune is one of the very few competitive racing games in which the catch-up feature is not taboo among players.

Pretty much every cop in Mirror's Edge exists solely for the purpose of interupting some otherwise fun parkour platforming. This applies especially to the ones that you have to kill to move on, despite the fact that you have no body armour and are totally unarmaed. And they have fucking machine guns.
Unreal's expansion, Return to Na Pali, features 1-foot tall creatures called "predators." They always attack in groups, run at least as fast as the player, and have a tendency to appear out of nowhere. On top of this, their hit-boxes are far smaller than their actual models, so things that SHOULD hit them end up missing entirely. They also have a full 100 Hit Points despite being only a little bigger than the Nali Rabbit, which dies in one shot from anything.
Sharks and those tiny flying things in Quake II.
- Scrags and Spawns in Quake I.
The Lost Souls in Doom and Doom II. These nasty little flying skulls are even more of a pain in the original because your main weapon for close-up killing, the shotgun, takes two blasts instead of one to kill each one, which doesn't exactly help when you're wall to wall in them. In the latter, they could be infinitely produced from a Mook Maker aptly called the Pain Elemental, but at least you have a Double Shotgun that can kill the little buggers in one blast.
- The Lost Souls in Doom 3 were even worse, as they tended to fly in random directions when not charging at you, making them a pain to shoot down, and potential Demonic Spiders. Not to mention that it takes two pistol bullets to take one down while it takes ONE NORMAL PUNCH to take one down.
  - The Lost Souls get their finest bat moment in the Hell level of Doom 3, where they get a chance to knock you off of floating platforms into a bottomless pit. Fortunately they won't show up if you avoid jumping on the platforms that trigger them.
- Don't forget Ticks/Trites.
- Also the Cherubs. However, the addition of the grabber gun in Resurrection of Evil effectively neuters all of the bats in the game, as it will pick up the smaller enemies, allowing you to deal with them easily (although this does afford you some unattractive closeups of the critters). Cherubs in particular are an effortless kill with the grabber.
The Halo series has many examples. First, of course, are The Flood. The sequels add Drones (swarms of annoying flying things that WON'T FECKING DIE), and sniper Jackals.
- Many of those, of course, cross the line into Demonic Spiders territory on Legendary. Especially the Flood in the later levels of Halo 2 and 3(their melee attacks kill you instantly). And those "Demonic" Drones. Try to hide from them, they will swarm your position from all sides and render you a plasma-carbonized corpse.
- The worst is basically EVERYTHING in the Library level of Halo: Combat Evolved. There's goddamned millions of Flood forms and you have to kill every. Single. Last. One. Meanwhile, 343 Guilty Spark annoys the hell out of you.
- Those Ultra Elites have an ungodly amount of shield energy, are resistant to assassination and plasma grenades, and regenerate almost instantaneously when they take cover. Can be demonic spiders on Legendary, where they can kill you instantly if dual-wielding plasma rifles, and can berserk with the lethal plasma sword.
- The sniper Jackals all go from Goddamned Bats on Easy through Heroic and straight to Demonic Spider territory on Legendary, when their sniper rifles will always instantly kill you and even their weaker carbines will tear you to shreds. The regular Jackals (with the shields) are just your default annoying-but-useless enemy on every difficulty.
The Dark Forces Saga game series had seeker remotes (the thingy Luke practice lightsaber skills with in the first movie). They weren't powerful, they weren't tough, and they would require a day or two to actually kill you, but not with a blaster pistol, a lightsaber, a rocket launcher, or a plasma cannon was there an efficient way to destroy those little bastards. It took either a lot of time, ammo, or luck to take them down, even with the games' auto-aim feature turned on. In most of the games, by the time you got probably the only efficient way of killing them (full-power Force lightning), they either didn't appear anymore or that particular game didn't give you lightning anyway. Thank the Force they were rare after the first game (and that you could use them as weapons yourself in the second).
- Dark Forces also had bats in another form: mines. Innocuous little disks, they had a proximity sensor and left off a boom bigger than a thermal detonator when you got close enough. A clever player could turn this against his enemies... when he knew the mines were there.
- Jedi Outcast also deserves a special mention for a few... inspired inventions. First, the little critters with teeth in the Kejim missions, which were tiny and so hard to hit with anything approaching accuracy. Thankfully, the stun baton was efficient at dealing with them... but if they'd stuck with bare hands as your backup weapon until you got the lightsaber, it could have been a lot worse. Second, the Rodian snipers in the Nar Shadaa and Cloud City missions. They were worse than sniper enemies in other games because if you tried to snipe Force-sensitive enemies with the same weapon, they would dodge (the weapon's shots couldn't be blocked by a lightsaber)... but did you get such an ability, despite being a fairly powerful Jedi? NOOOOO (most of the time).
  - In Jedi Academy at least (which has nearly identical gameplay to Jedi Outcast) the ability to dodge energy missiles for the player character exists but is not described in the manual and is activated in such an obscure way it can take about ten times of playing through the entire game to notice it. Apparently you have to stand very still and be shot at for it to activate, possibly with your lightsaber off, too.
  - Also, if you hold alt and left/right, you can do the dodge yourself. If you do it the right way, you don't even have to time it. It actually is in the controller configuration, hidden as a little side note. Very useful against those annoying snipers :) Also make sure you never run out of The Force, most of your deflecting and stuff gets much worse when you're dry...
- The thermal-detonator-tossing Grans that show up in several of the Dark Forces games. They have perfect throwing aim from absurd distances, never run out of grenades, and (in Jedi Knight at least) they appear as early as the second level and are completely indistinguishable from their rifle-wielding and fistfighting brethren until they start chucking explosives at you.
Heretic II featured heavily annoying "Harpies," essentially gigantic bat things. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't a third-person game and therefore featured imprecise aiming, and even your most powerful spell could be easily avoided, as they could strafe in mid-air.
Every House Of The Dead game has zombie bats as enemies, but House of the Dead 2 adds to the madness by having the even harder to hit zombie owls, which fly on screen and then automatically head straight for the player in a kamikaze rush.
Half Life 2's Antlions. Especially in the levels where they respawn if you even so much as look at sandy ground.
- Not to mention the Manhacks. OH HOW I HATE THE MANHACKS.
  - Though they start out as veritable Trope Namers, they become easily destroyed cannon fodder once you obtain the Gravity Gun. Just grab them and smash them into the floor for a one-shot kill, or you can fire them at enemies for extra fun.
- The Scanners also definitely fall into this category, as they have an annoying habit of flying in your face and blinding you. They have an uncanny knack for doing this exactly when you really need to focus.
  - Usually "When you really need to focus" == "when you're hiding from a Strider". Which the Scanners can alert. Dammit.
- The regular and fast Headcrabs, which jump all over the place and frequently end up behind you, often behind furniture. They don't do much damage or have much health, but they are very hard to hit. The poison headcrabs, however...
- The worst part about Antlions is that they have an annoying habit of pushing you off of your little island and make even more of them appear.
- The original Half Life and the Xen Masters. Little guys with big heads that fly around flinging electricity orbs with great accuracy and screeching creepily. They're much harder to take down than they appear at first. Thankfully, they only show up during the final levels of the game.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s hound-like enemies epitomize the Goddamned Bats. They are extremely difficult to hit due to their random movement, small size, and instantaneous 180-degree direction-change; travel in swarms; offer absolutely no reward upon their deaths; block your movement by swarming around you; and, worst of all, frequently appear at a bottleneck between you and a place you really need to be, most often when enemies are already at your back.
System Shock 2 had Goddamned Spiders. They were fast, they were resistant to several types of damage, and they poisoned you (and unless you had an anti-toxin hypo, the poison NEVER WENT AWAY). Also toward the end of the game they were translucent, meaning that in dark places (i.e. 98% of the places you end up) they were nearly impossible to see. By the end of the game even the faintest trace of their hissing sound was enough to make me cringe and start shooting wildly in every direction.
- So, more or less the canonical Demonic Spider.
Dead Space includes inch-high swarms of Goddamned Bugs. They have no annoying qualities (other than being small and in groups), but can be dangerous if a bunch of them manages to latch on a player.
So you're playing Fallout 3, and you come across a Giant Fire Ant in the "Those!" quest. No problem, Giant Ants are easy pickings. You just mosey up to it, getting ready to bash its head in with your lead pipe when suddenly — it shoots a jet of flames in your face! Multiply this giant, flamethrowing nuisance by about 50 and you now know what you're in for for the next half an hour of playtime.
- Savvy Fallout players, knowing the propensity of the series to pull this sort of crap out of nowhere, saw it coming. The kid who gives you the quest even says his dad called them "Fuckin' ants".
- The fact that everything in the neighborhood is on fire in the aftermath of the ant attack also gives a clue. What's much more surprising is just how far the things can spit their fire.
- Fallout 3 has it's share of annoying adversaries. Most notably the Radscorpions, nigh-unkillable, hugely damaging ninja arachnids scourging the wastelands. Unlike 98% of the game's other enemies, they have no heads to shoot For Massive Damage, shooting their legs will pretty much do nothing at all (while other enemies would be crippled and have their movement speed significantly lowered), they always come in pairs. AL WA YS. And never make a sound. Your companions mysteriously disappeared when you weren't paying attention? Backtrack to find their corpses and two Giant ~~Rad~~Ninjascorpions. They do poison damage, come in "small and big and albino variants, each successive tier often accompanied by several members of the "weaker" tiers. The only way to defeat them is to kite them through rocky terrain, use the Fat Man for great justice or risk the lives of your Power Armor Wearing/Super Mutant NPC companion tanks in order to get a clean shot at them. Hell, when the albino radscorpion was added through DLC, a previously useless perk (Entymologist = 50% extra damage against insects) was made hugely useful just to deal with a single type of enemy monsters. I mean, seriously!
In the original Descent series, there was the Thiefbot. This nasty little creature would come sneaking up on an unsuspecting player (typically in the middle of a fight with other enemies), zap you with a special shot that made your view go all wonky, steal some powerups, and then zip off to the furthest corners of the level in an erratic evasion pattern.
- Not to mention that the Goddamned Thiefbot is among the fastest and most heavily-armored enemies in the game. It's not atypical to have to spend half of a given level chasing after the Thiefbot to get a vital weapon back, making desperate potshots and trying to chase it into minefields.
- And there were the ITDs (which can summon larger robots), Sidearm Modula (blinding flash missiles), Hornets, ITSC, Seekers(outright Demonic Spiders, in fact), etc.
Resistance 2 has the Chimeran drones, which are really annoying - they fly about and are hard to hit, distract you when there are worse enemies around, and can't be dodged.
Many flying enemes in Serious Sam 2. Especially small floaters and witches. Try fighting them on multiplayer to understand, why they belong in this category.
- Heck, every enemy in Serious Sam was a Goddamned Bat in one form or another. And it worked.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Those damned Femme-Nazi Elite Mooks in the church mission.
The common infected in Left 4 Dead have this wonderful ability to slow your movement speed when they hit you, which is so effective that if two of them are attacking you at once you're practically immobilized. It makes it great fun when you're trying to run away, or heck, even just walk across the room, when you CAN'T FREAKING MOVE because no matter how many you kill, more of the bastards keep trickling in and slowing you down or just physically blocking your path.
The Scout, of Team Fortress Two fame, is generally agreed to be the most annoying class in the game. Absurdly quick, highly-damaging weapons, and that's not getting into the unlocks, which allow, with some tradeoffs, temporary invincibility, stunning (which brought him to Demonic Spider levels until the Nerf), and knockback. The only decent way to kill them is to get as many sentries as you can, or bring out Natascha. That and his dialogue makes you want to murder him. Which you will.
[[YMMV YMMV]]. Seriously. If you can't kill a scout you're just bad at the game. They have next to no health and there's no class that isn't capable of getting the job done. (The Demo probably would have had a hard time pre-update but the Targe lets you go faster).
The Shock Troopers from Killzone 2, all three types. They run around, stay behind cover while hitting you with walls of lead and grenades and they never come at you alone. A lot of players tend to die quite a few times against these guys.
Will Rock has Goddamned Rats... Explosive rats. Small, blazing fast, hard to hit, and chase you relentlessly. There's a level where you are assaulted by dozens of them, but thankfully it's in a wide, open space; much worse when it happens again, in a much smaller circular hall.
Borderlands Goddamn Rakks. Spiderants and the Bandits probably count too.
- Don't forget the Skags and Scythids. In fact anything in that game that isn't a Demonic Spider or That One Boss.
Anything that latches on to the player in Blood and it's sequel. Leeches, Ticks, even zombie hands have a bad habit of crawling around places you are supposed t go through, then jump at you by surprise. They're small, quick, and once they catch you, you might as well reload, because they're damn near impossible to remove without destroying your keyboard. Even if you do manage to get them off, all you can do is run as far as possible and shoot them from afar, or they'll jump back at you. You could just ignore themeven with the continous damage, but they obscure the entire screen, and they're damn ugly up close.
Operation Body Count has the goddamn rats that make up the majority of the first 5 levels and continue to appear throughout the rest of the game. one or two aren't an issue. 4 or 5 might make you worry. 10 to 20 of them coming at you at the same time is when you start bringing out the uzi and doing the old "Spray 'n' Pray". Oh, and they come in to sizes: Small minor nuisance and Giant notable nuisance. It Gets Worse, since the annoying parts of the rats carry over to those shock drones...

The 1972 Interactive Fiction game Hunt The Wumpus included a colony of Super Bats that couldn't be killed and didn't harm the player, just moved you to a different part of the cave... making your all-important map useless. This was before save points.
- They also had a tendency to drop you into a pit, or better yet, in the cave where the Wumpus was, ending the game right there.
- Zork included a bat with a similar mechanic as an homage, but it was significantly less annoying because the geography was more varied, thus making it far easier to reorient yourself.
  - Of course one of the locations it loved to drop you off in was the Gas Room, which was death while carrying the torch. Odds of being dropped off there when you didn't have the torch? About 30% Those odds shot up to at least 90% if you were carrying the torch.

The Devouring Earth Swarms in City Of Heroes. Not actually that hard to beat, but they're an annoyance mainly because their attacks can cause status effects while you're fighting the significantly bigger and more dangerous Devouring Earth.
- Those are the regular Swarms. The ones actually called "Devouring Swarms" will literally eat you alive as well as make it impossible to jump, fly, or teleport. Thankfully they only appear in two areas of the game that are totally optional to visit.
  - In the "superswarms'" defense, they are more of a Enviromental Hazard. A way of saying "don't go here."
- Oh, and Rikti monkeys. Evil, evil little beasts.
  - Don't forget Rikti Drones. No minion should have higher defense than most archvillain have, plus they can see right through stealth and warn everyone around them to your presence. Because just about every Rikti spawn, and every Rikti boss for sure, has one for company they are the bane of any Stalker who enters the Rikti War Zone.
- The Red Caps of the Croatoa zone spawn from ambush in annoyingly high numbers, do a lot of damage and have a nasty tendency of turning into harder versions of themselves when you're just about to beat them.
  - And some of them have an attack involving throwing another Red Cap at you that, if it hits, clings to your head beating you, blinding you and doing a load of damage. It's a hilariously horrible way to die.
- Or the annoying habit of Swarms to wander off during "Kill All" missions, requiring you to search every nook and cranny of the map to find the last one and complete the mission
- The Malta Group would be a thousand times easier to bear if the Sapper was not included among their ranks - an enemy whose sole purpose is to drain away the Endurance that fuels every single power in the game in less than five seconds, whether or not your bar is full, turning you from a god-killer into a panting old man who can't recover fast enough to handle the swarms of the other Malta troopers descending upon him.
  - And then they chainstun you and Cherry Tap you to death. If you're lucky. If you're not, might as well log out.
  - The rest of Malta aren't pleasant either- just for starters are the Engineers, who drop a gun turret that does little damage but takes forever to kill and unlike nearly all other pets, does not go away after a set duration or after its summoner is defeated...
  - Malta are one of the few groups that makes the endurance drain resistance in Dark Armor, and the endurance drain immunity in Electric Armor, suddenly mean something.
- The knives of Artemis and their caltrops. You go to a spawn, and a bunch of them toss them down, and the speed debuff STACKS. They do minimal damge but you can't move when they're near.
- Both the Cabal and the Circle of Thorns Casters have an infuriating habit of running away as soon as you land a solid hit and never coming back, making you chase after them howling "Coward!" It's a tossup which is worse - the Cabal because they can fly, or the Casters because they lead you into the maw of a horrible Spectral Daemon Lord.
World Of Warcraft has quite a few Goddamned Bats. Examples include wolves, ravagers, quilboars, troggs, kobolds, harpies, Lost Ones, and the almighty murloc. When a game has basically two types of quest, you can get annoyed very easily.
- Boars. That is all.
- As part of the new Argent Tournament, there's a new daily sidequest with what are, quite possibly, the WORST bats in the game. They're gargoyles; they fire lightning bolts that do very little damage on their own. The problem is that they take away one layer of defense (part of the new 'jousting' mechanic)...and they are flying ALL around the area where you need to 'joust' with rather tough NP Cs with the same jousting abilities. They fly rather high, too, so it is rather simple to overlook one or two, then get repeatedly zapped while you're trying to not be murdered by the horseman. It gets...vexing.
Korean MMORPG La Tale Online has literal Goddamned Bats. There is a cave area where these incredibly nasty, powerful, hard to kill bats show up, frequently in swarms, blocking your path to a fetch quest item. Their sonic attacks are difficult to avoid, and running from them is often impossible, as they chase you around, and if you're trying to climb a ladder and get hit by their sonic attacks...yyyyeah.
Storm Riders in Guild Wars are very strange-looking critters that tend to be fast and have wide patrol routes. Which is itself not bad, but almost all of them are mesmers, meaning they will rapidly stack up a wide range of hexes on the party, and interrupt spells with regularity. And they're fast enough to interrupt spells with 1/4 second cast times. Good luck being a caster against these things.
While they might not be something to worry about for most high-level players, Ragnarok Online had places that were full of Goddamned Bats in the form of anything that could use long ranged attacks, given that long ranged attacks cause most characters to flinch for a second, making it possible for other enemies to catch you in case you were running away from them. With the exception of the Swordsman class, that posses the ability Endure, preventing them from flinching, every other character would be annoyingly slowed down in a place that was filled with Kobold or Goblin Archers, mostly when they were running away from a mini-field-boss
- There are also Familiars and Drainliars, actual bats that although never the strongest enemies in a map were aggressive, spawned often and common in maps that were frequented by classes that had trouble dealing with them such as healbomb acolytes, mages and dodge-based melee fighters. More annoying was their Demonic Spider cousin the Hunter Fly, which was aggressive, attacked quickly, couldn't be outrun without buffs and often appeared in areas that would otherwise be great low or mid level training spots. They were even patched into many favored leveling areas from the game's beta.
Every single creature in Rune Scape's Ape Archipelago can be stuffed into the category of Goddamned Bats or Demonic Spiders. Set foot on that island and you'll be bitten by omnipresent super-poisoning spiders, perforated by archer monkeys, thrown in jail by ninja monkeys, beaten senseless by ridiculously high-leveled guard monkeys, or attacked and (guess what?) poisoned by undead monkeys. The good news is that there's an item you can get that makes all of these things stop attacking you if it's equipped. The bad news is that you have to traipse all over the place completing Fetch Quest after Fetch Quest just to get the thing.
In the action MMORPG Ghost X, there are enemies called Draks, which are man-sized goddamned bats. They most often use their stunning attack, which has deceptivly-long and wide range, and the timer for it can stack should you get hit by it while stunned. They often come in pairs or trios, and hang out with large groups of heavy-hitter enemies.
- Mission 4 has an entire area filled to the brim with bats, and also a few tough enemies spawn there too.
  - The boss of Mission 4 is a giant bat, which can spawn smaller bats, which can spawn even smaller bats. The bat-spawns aren't much of a problem themselves, but the boss spawns them when he uses his own stunning attack. The boss also has a very large and very fast shockwave attack, which can easily do 1200+ damage if you forget to attempt to dodge it.
- Mission 5 is of high annoyance, due to the cramped areas it has and that they are filled with Draks and many enemies.
Dungeons & Dragons Online has bats which, although quite rare, are decidedly Goddamned nonetheless. They go down in one hit from pretty much any weapon, but you can spend minutes swinging away at them until you finally hit one. Your Mileage May Vary depending on your class, though (not to mention lag).

Any rocket infantry in any Command And Conquer game. Individually weak and vulnerable, but just strong enough against tanks to put a dent in yout army.
- More specifically, Flamethrower infantry in Tiberian Dawn. These little shits were fast and as such would dodge attempts to squish them, they were damn cheap to train, and did ungodly amounts of damage to almost every unit/structure in the game. In the later GDI missions, the AI would spam these bastards on a frequent basis, and often melt a few of your lighter vehicles (and typically, these would be your most effective anti-infantry vehicles) during the imminent scuffle. No wonder they were nerfed in Red Alert.
Ahem...ZERG RUSH KEKEKEKE!!!
- Zerglings are nothing compared to probes when it gets to progaming. Initial scouting probes are the most annoying worker units to deal for the enemy since they can also start building assimilators and pylons in opponents' bases easily.
Skullmages in Grim Grimoire. Essentially useless to the human player due to Crippling Overspecialisation but can throw an ethereal based stratergy right off if the computer starts with lots of them.
Battalion Wars has Gunships. In both games, you generally get only Anti-Air Vets to kill them with. If you get Fighters or Anti-Air Vehicles in a mission with enemy Gunships, enjoy the time you get with this, but do not assume your ground forces are safe. If you want to manually destroy Gunships with the Anti-Air units, you have to focus your vision on the skies instead of worrying about anything on the ground, like freaking Heavy Tanks. Mercifully, units that have been commanded to move to a location with the Y button in the first game will be active in attacking (most noteworthy in Road to Xylvania, which despite four infinitely respawning Gunships can be done with a Perfect S-Rank without the Battlestation), but this is not possible in the second game, which is part of why it is worse about Gunships, because you'd want your units in Follow Mode where the Gunships will end up shooting your following foot soldiers. The other part of the reason? A higher percentage of maps with Gunships give you only AA Vets—which do lousy damage against them for the fact that they lack defensive power to begin with—to deal with the buggers, and if you have anything else that can really do so, apply one of the following:
- Shipyards Ablaze, where you'd have to learn how to control the Fighters or else they could wander into the AA Vets' range
- That One Level thanks to Demonic Spiders (there's two of them in single player)
- A level where you're using Frigates, which could just as easily have to deal with submarines. (Mercifully, Frigates are fast enough to evade the battleship fire, but this results in Character Select Forcing because of the AI's stupidity.)
- A level with Anti-Air Vehicles....and either you get only one of them for the enemy force to destroy, the enemy force gets a Battlestation that can easily destroy the vehicle, or both.
- The first part of Under Siege, which for similar reasons to Road to Xylvania with Y button spamming is easy. (Under Siege is Co-Op's That One Level for a No Casualties Run but for different reasons relating to the second and third parts.)
- Late enough into Apocalypse that further Gunships will only try to threaten the objectives.
- One of the messed up Assault maps.

Diablo has literal bats in it. They teleport. In Diablo II, their place is taken by Flayers, Maggot Young, Flesh Beasts, and Imps. The Imps teleport. Both games have Fallen/Carvers.
- Actually the bats in Diablo aren't literal bats, but tiny humanoid imps that look exactly like bats in the game and probably have bat-related names, too.
- To explain... Flayers, Fallen, and Carvers all tend to swarm and can be resurrected by their respective Shamans (except for the undead Bone Flayers, which explode for a nasty chunk of damage when they die). Sand Maggots and Flesh Beasts spawn Maggot Young and Flesh Spawn, respectively. Imps are spawned by huts. Also, there are Blood Hawks, almost literal Goddamned Bats spawned by nests, mummies spawned by sarcophogi, greater mummies that can resurrect almost any type of undead, and Putrid Defilers, which enchant other monsters to spawn Pain Worms upon death. Oh, and all those monsters that can be resurrected? You don't get more experience for killing them again.
In popular — well, as popular as they get — roguelike Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, Giant Bats have a penchant for not doing any significant damage, but running away just barely faster than you can chase them in most cases, and moving erratically when you try to attack.
- Imps, which will barely give you a chance to swing at them before they teleport somewhere outside your range of vision, forcing you to wait while they navigate back to you and do the same thing again.
- Unseen Horrors. They do not fly, but are (as name suggests) invisible. They have pretty strong attack (easily stopped by good armor, but deadly against mages, stalkers and giants), speed of a bat and on top of that they flee when heavily hurt. Their erratic movement pattern means that you can't just find it and blast it to death, unless you are standing in a corridor.
While most of the Goddamned Bats in Net Hack are actually Demonic Spiders, the floating eye is harmless in and of itself — but if you bump into (attack) one, you're likely to get paralysed long enough to be killed by some ignominiously weak enemy such as a newt. When a floating eye is blocking your passage ahead, it can be immensely frustrating trying to kill it if you don't have enough spells or ranged weapons yet. Ironically, the corpse it may or may not leave behind is extremely useful— mainly since it allows you to fight floating eyes and not be affected!
In Alpha Man, Grey Mold resists 1/3 of physical damage, making it nearly impossible to kill with normal weapons until halfway through the game. The only choice is to use a special weapon, like a phaser, blaster, or flamethrower on it, or fight until you're almost dead, run away, then re-fight, until the mold dies or you accidentally die.
In the Japanese Rogue-like, Elona, There's Goddamned Bats and Goddamned Hounds. The only bat that might kill you is the bloodsucking vampire bat, unless you have severely low health (i.e. you just started.) The bloodsucking attack is a 100% hit attack, fortunately if you feel like wasting a feat slot you can utilize it yourself, or start learning some good magic and get magic missile. One shot usually takes them down. However the bats' TRUE purpose is to screw you badly in farming quests where you will be constantly interrupted by offscreen bats while trying to pick the produce, as they flit in, strike, and wander away erratically. Even being interrupted once is enough to fail the 100+ weight missions, as you use up the entire amount of turns normally needed but don't manage to pick anything.
- Imps are of a lesser nuisance, they are like slower magic-casting bats, however they're easier to kill unless they are Boss or Arena versions of themselves. You may get killed once or twice by a nether imp's magic, but as they are not as fast you can just find an object to hide behind and naturally heal, then pop around the corner and stab them until they die/blink away, finishing with projectiles. Hounds have elemental breath attacks that, while not very damaging unless you're weak to that element, are fast enough to do it a couple times in a row to slower characters, and nether, illusion, and sound hounds afflict you with status ailments on top of that, which allows them even more free hits. They also have a VERY wide range and the breath may go around 'open air' corners, so you may even die if you distract them with a pet or an NPC. ~~Thankfully drakes and dragons only breathe fire, ice, or lightning.~~
  - Not anymore! Drakes have received no upgrades, but dragons now come in as many flavours as hounds. Also, you forgot to mention bells and quicklings. They're both Metal Slimes combined with Bats. Both are rare spawns however, which may put quicklings more onto the level of Boss In Mook Clothing. Especially since quicklings may spawn with artifact/Great! items as ammunition or projectile weaponry. Bells barely attack, but the reward for killing them is a giant bonus. Silver bells give small medals and platinum coins, and gold bells can give anywhere from 20k to 100k in gold. They have very high magic resist as well as insane speed.
In the multiplayer graphical roguelike game Crossfire, most monsters spawn from generators — but a few, notably mice and centipedes, can simply multiply — if not exterminated rapidly, they can fill the entire dungeon level. The literal bats probably qualify, but I've never gotten far enough into a swarm to see if they actually have generators or not.
- Also in any version of Angband or Angband variant. However Lynch Mob Members in Steamband deserve special mention, as they spawn with weaponry, thereby doing decent amounts of damage, they can armor pierce, have above average health, evasion, and defense, they bring their own lightsources (torches) thereby alerting other monsters, and yet STILL SPAWN LIKE MICE. Needless to say, if you first encounter one not in a corridor but an open room, get the HELL out of that dungeon floor immediately. The only surefire way to deal with them is to flee around them, closing all doors, then go down the last remaining open one and kill them on the door itself. Depending on how many times you avoided them while running, you may or may not need a batch of potions to deal with them. Even then, if you aren't killing them fast enough you'll eventually be overran as the critical hits will eventually take their toll on your regenerative abilities.
Ancient Domains Of Mystery introduces giant ants in the first dungeon, which, because of their high natural armour and your low level, will almost certainly not be scratched by almost any weapon you might have or find. If you ever get the message "You hear clicking sounds", run for the fucking stairs. And the quest that unlocks the dungeon ensures that you will be at a low level — rescuing a puppy before it dies of starvation. THEN escorting it back to the surface, back through the ant room. No wonder the puppy's nicknamed Kenny.
- ADOM has a late-game enemy, the Cat Lord, which will be friendly and give you an amazing artifact if you have never killed any cats, but is extremely lethal if you have. This means that cave lions, cave tigers, and wild cats are very annoying to deal with (requiring specialized non-lethal tactics) and an unlucky early-game spawn can ruin your chances at the Ring of the Master Cat.
In platformer Roguelike Spelunky, just about every enemy moves fast enough to be a bat, except the snakes, and ironically, the bats. The spiders (not demonic, just regular kind) in the first area in particular jump extremely erratically, much like the La-Mulana bats.
- I'll see your spiders and raise you frogs. These area 2 enemies stand still until you get near them, then jump towards you in a completely random manner. In addition to that, the main character's whip is too short and slow to be actually useful against this kind of enemy.
- Bats, while slow, have a tendency to fly just above your whip, which means you have to jump to kill them. When you realize this, they are usually too close to allow you to do that.
Though a Pokémon game, the Roguelike Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (And Explorers of Darkness) feature two lines of pokémon that explode upon defeat, and said explosion cuts your health in half (unless said victim is a fire type). Stunky and Skuntank don't do much else, but Drifloon and Drifblim have the ability to attack twice when they're not holding an item. And enemies in these games don't spawn items. And they can learn the all-room-hitting, stat-and-speed-raising Ominous Wind...
In the obscure Atlus Roguelike Baroque, the enemy Sin Monis (Y'know... that big fat mushroom-y thing? Me neither...) has a high defense, and can suck away at both your Health and Vitality. There are floors with millions of the things.
- If you end up trying to kill Glues without a sword ( Which happens pretty damn often, since they only show up at the beginning of the tower) they can be a pain. Unless you just want to step on them, but then No Rewards For You.
- Gliros also qualify. These grinning red bastards like to steal an item at random (and no, your equipped items are not exempt), then scamper off at top speed. If you manage to catch up to the Gliro, it might even throw the stolen item at you—which not only causes damage if it hits, but also prevents you from reclaiming the item!
- Plus, the game has two different Goddamned Bats of the "inescapable" variety:
  - The Bubugel, which completely blends in with the walls until you wake it up by getting too close or hitting it. Strays into Demonic Spider territory with its habits of a) smacking you in mid-combo, b) taking forever to kill, and c) falling on top of you when it finally dies. ...Not to mention Nightmare Fuel.
  - The Sun, which has three or four different attacks that all cause the Lethargy status effect, making you move and attack at a painfully slow speed. Plus, once you cut it down from its corridor-blocking webbing, it will scuttle away, forcing you to chase it down (and subject yourself to more Lethargy) if you want to kill it for good.
Zephyr hounds in Angband appear in groups and almost every kind possesses some sort of breath weapon, perhaps one that can't be resisted. Many players make a habit of using scrolls/spells of genocide on 'Z'.
- There are also the Blink Dogs, which also come in packs and can randomly either summon the player to them or teleport themselves away. You'll feel like a ping pong ball if you ever run into them, and you will. A lot.
- And then there are the Goddamned Rats and Lice, which reproduce with no difficulty or penalty except for an Arbitrary Headcount Limit. If you wake one up and don't immediately kill it, you will quickly have several rooms and all connecting hallways blocked off by swarms of rats that are absolutely impossible to completely exterminate without a genocide spell. If you're stuck in the middle of that swarm, you're not likely to manage to hack your way out unless they literally deal no damage to you. Some variants add a monster called "Cheerful Leprechaun", which multiplies at the same rate and also steals your money.

In every installment of the Pokemon games to date, you will have different Random Encounters in different areas of the map. Pokemon that are numerous in one place are often unknown in another... except for the bats. Zubats, that is. Each and every cave is filled with them. Unlike the great outdoors, where you would usually be able to avoid random encounters by staying away from the tall grass, when you're in a cave everywhere is a danger zone and you find yourself traversing vast underground mazes laden with complex rock-smashing and rock-pushing puzzles while every third step you take, the screen flashes and you find yourself fighting yet another Goddamned (Zu)bat. These things are very fond of using a move called "Supersonic" to confuse your Pokemon into attacking itself. Later in the game, they learn "Confuse Ray," which is like Supersonic but 100% accurate, and even gain the power to prevent you from running away, or even switching Pokemon, with the move "Mean Look." (They're hard to run away from even when they don't use Mean Look, because running is determined partially by speed, and the bats have a pretty darn good speed stats.) Oh, and they evolve twice, into Golbat and Crobat. To exacerbate things further, they happen to be unusually popular among whatever evil cult you're foiling. Popular enough to warrant carrying three or four of them. In generations three and four, they (logically, but frustratingly) even appear when you're swimming in water. They will also, in generations two and four, appear in the grass at night. While this is less annoying than in caves, they still possess their aforementioned annoying arsenal.
- Taken from a report on Mount Moon in a Fire Red Let's Play Thread by RedChocobo:
  Report: ...I'd like to make an aside and say this: Mount Moon has made be hate Zubats with no end. Zubat Zubat Zubat. Endless swarms of damnnable Zubats. I was breathing Zubats with every breath. I couldn't move my arm without hitting a dozen Zubats into about a hundred other Zubats, causing them to all get pissed off and start divebombing me... (it goes on and it found about 3/4 down the page).
- And if you think Zubats are annoying in themselves, in Pokemon Platinum there's actually a part with wild Golbats... at level 10! But in actuality, because its only in a side-cave, and only has a 1% chance of appearing, you're more likely to want to try and catch this one. Because not only is it a good Pokemon itself, but it evolved into a rather powerful Pokemon just by happiness, making it something of a Disc One Nuke.
- In later games, Zubat's evolved form (Golbat) gets Poison Fang at high levels, which has a decent chance of inflicting high-strength poison on its target. If you didn't stock up on Antidotes and don't have the extremely rare "Aromatherapy" or "Heal Bell" moves, you'll either have to leave the cave to visit the Pokemon Center and start the dungeon over again or just watch as your monster slowly dies (with annoying screen flashes to indicate HP loss every few steps). Golbat also gets Air Slash and Bite, which has a 30% chance of making the target "flinch", essentially forcing it to skip a turn. Bear in mind that Zubat and Golbat do not learn too many moves while levelling up, so they can still be expected to have Confuse Ray and Mean Look at those levels.
  - There is a bright side to this. The frequency with the Zubat encounters make it a little easier to actually catch one. They are one of the best Pokemon in the series once they evolve to their final form, Crobat.
  - Then again, you only need the one. Any more than that is, well...yeah.
- In the same series, we have the equally frequent Geodude, and later, Graveler (often in the same caves, at that). While they tend to go down quicker (provided you have a Pokemon on hand that does extra damage to Rock/Ground types), they have an inexplicable tendency to use the insanely powerful "suicide" moves "Self Destruct" and "Explosion" before you manage to land the final blow on them, which - apart from avoiding what would be a gross retroactive violation of the law of natural selection only via the presence of Non Lethal KO - usually screws you out of experience points and a usable pokemon. Lovely.
  - Not to mention their fondness of the move Defense Curl, which increases their already-high Defense stat, meaning it takes forever to beat them. Particularly irritating in trainer battles, where you don't have the option of simply fleeing.
  - Gravelers can learn other powerful moves, including Earthquake and Double Edge. This becomes extremely aggravating in some of the caves, like Iron Island and Victory Road, in the later parts of Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, where Gravelers are very common and each of them has Explosion, Earthquake, and Double Edge in their moveset. If you don't KO them in your first move, they'll probably KO your Pokemon in their first move. Lovely.
- Another example is the Tentacool in watery areas. Aside from also learning Supersonic, they learn a move called Poison Sting, which come with a possibility of poisoning your Pokemon and eating its HP every turn while battling, and every step while moving about the world. The fact that the screen does this flashy-glitchy thing every other second to remind you adds to the irritation.
- Also in watery areas (starting from the third generation) are Wingull, who can learn Supersonic, like Zubat, but fortunately can't naturally learn Confuse Ray or other status moves. They are also fast. Fortunately, due to their typing, they are extremely weak to Electric attacks-meaning that strong Electric Pokemon can engage in Wingull massacres. Their evolution, Pelipper, is also found in the wild-though, unlike Zubat's evolution (Golbat), they are still a non-threat.
- Generation 3 also gave us Zigzagoon and Linoone. Also hard to run away from due to speed, and able to lower accuracy with Sand-Attack. And they're everywhere.
- Continuing the trend in the fourth generation, you have Bronzor. A Steel/Psychic type whose only weaknesses are Fire and Ground, and both of its abilities can cancel out one of the two weaknesses. In addition to that, they also come with the move Hypnosis that can send a Pokemon to sleep, and have some of the greatest defense stats in the game. And there's only two fire-type Pokemon (not counting their evolutions) in the game, pre-National Dex. Luckily, they're rather slow, so you can get away.
  - And one of the fire types is a starter.
  - Thankfully, they added more Fire-types in Platinum.
- Furthermore, Sinnoh's grass patches are infested with Roselia, which learns several status-inflicting moves such as Poison Sting and Stun Spore. It doesn't help that half of them possess the ability Poison Point or that they have annoyingly high defenses.
- Very rare but still worth mentioning are wild Wobuffet in Generations III and IV. These come with the Shadow Tag ability, which essentially turns every single encounter with them into a fight to the death with no possibility of escape. Oh, and they have immense HP and can counter your own damage back at you if they select the right defensive option. Luckily, the AI is dumb.
- Special mention also to Raticate. Early on in the game, Rattata is just an annoying Com Mon, no real threat. Once it learns Hyper Fang, though, it becomes a force to be reckoned with.
- And then there's the inevitable power station levels, in which the Magnemites are customarily flying so thick it's amazing your character can actually walk through them. This would be merely annoying if you lead with a Ground type, which is immune to their electric attacks...if they didn't have one move that does a flat 20 damage with no resistances (Sonicboom) and a confusion move (Supersonic). Did we mention that the Geodude family, the easiest Ground types to locate (seriously, they're everywhere), has a fairly low HP stat because it depends mainly on a good Defence and Resistance to normal damage?

In the first Final Fantasy, given the randomization of damage, frequency of encounters, and general Nintendo Hardness of that game, pretty much every enemy is a Bat. Especially the 9 billion enemy types that can poison you. Or paralyze you.
- None of those hold a candle to the Sorcerers in the first game, which had a random chance to instantly kill you with every attack. Nothing like getting ambushed and losing your entire party before you can even take a turn to make you call them "Goddamned Sorcerers!"
- In a less battle-oriented sense, the bats are still annoying from a room in the first dungeon to the most pointlessly sprawling caves, little bats move around, often blocking your way. If you're in a slim corridor, the chances of the bat moving right where you were trying to walk around the damn thing become exponentially higher. Get out of my way, you goddamn bat!
Pretty much anything in Final Fantasy II that has ridiculous defense against melee and thus needs spells to defeat it, given one, the way you gain MP in that game requiring planning and forethought to get more; two, the fact that the more you use your spells—yes, they do get more powerful, but they also cost more MP, which is maddening when Fire 5 would be sufficient but you can only cast Fire 10, and artificially keeping their level low while obtaining more MP is ...doable, but requires skilled Sequence Breaking; and three, ethers cost a staggering amount of gil and restore a paltry amount of MP. Combine this with the fact that running away from many enemies ranges from difficult to impossible depending on how lucky you got with agility boosts and the utterly insane random encounter rate in that game and you have a recipe for frustration. Let's not even talk about what happens in Deist, which contains a dungeon FULL of those enemies that you must go through TWICE, all while being fifty country miles away from civilization.
In Final Fantasy IV, we have bats of various types and colors. All of them love a certain move; Bloodthirst. It's not very strong, but it heals the bat, harms one character, and inflicts Sap. And it has an animation that takes about a second to complete. Now factor in the fact that these bats are fast, often get the first move, and can come in groups as small as two, or as many as six. Oh, and when they get a turn, they all go at once. Now imagine getting back-attacked by six of these buggers, and having to sit through their predictable, annoying, overly long attacks while you frantically mash Teleport, Run as fast as you can, or futiley try to summon something big enough to clear them all out in one move. Screw those bats.
- Other annoyances are the Evil Dreamers in the Sylph's Cave. They're fast little buggers that can come in groups of up to six and thus all of them generally get the first turn. They have three moves—a weak fire spell, global sleep, and global silence. They like to cast the status spells most often—which have loooooong animations—and even though their spells are weak enough not to connect all that often, after being hit with six of them, the odds of a good percentage of your party being downed are high. So after sitting through that, you get to slooowly get the party back up and slooowly pick them off, as the Evil Dreamers have much more HP than they deserve. You get nothing of value for killing them, either, and when they AREN'T coming in huge packs, it's because they're accompanying the Malboros. This is just so wonderful.
Final Fantasy X has several enemies like this, but the most maddening would have to be the Zaurus in the bonus Omega Dungeon. Terrible EXP, insanely high encounter rate, and very high evasion. Thank god they don't actually have wings...
- ... but there's plenty of in the chocobo race. Apparently, these seagull-like creatures are jealous of their large golden-feathered cousins the chocobo, and will fly like homing missiles directly towards you. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that the chocobo is damned hard to steer, and to get the ultimate weapon for your main character you need to avoid hitting these birds AND hit as many balloons as possible. No, these birds can't actually do any damage to you, but they'll probably force you to cause a lot of damage to your Play Station controller when you throw it in fury trying to get that perfect time in the race.
Final Fantasy XI has some particularly evil examples. First, the three beastmen strongholds are filled with, well, beastmen. While they only detect by sight or sound, you will soon find out that there are plenty of other enemies that detect by the other method of detection, making it a scramble to find a spot without enemies at all, which will be next to none. Then there are the areas in the game with undead, which detect by sound and low HP, the blood-aggro being not only a longer radius than sound detection, but also not being able to be covered by a spell (Unless it heals HP, obviously). Then we have the monsters that detect people casting magic (ninjutsu isn't detected, though), which seems to have the same large radius as blood-aggro. By Chains of Promathia the developers said "screw it" and added monsters that would detect by sight or sound no matter what stealth buff you had on you. Treasures of Aht Urghan actually had it worse by including not only the above examples, but mobs that could detect by Job Abilities, as well as chigoes, which are microscopically small mobs that are hard to see... and can't be targeted outside of fighting them. Arrapago Reef is pretty much a giant middle finger to stealth as a whole. And they actually didn't run out of ideas in Wings of The Goddess, as they added gnats, which aggro dead people. As in players, not undead.
- Note we haven't even gotten started on combat. Remember the chigoes? Not only can you not target them at first, but regular attacks and most magic spells are pretty much ineffective. They can, however, get one-shotted by weaponskills or physical attack Job Abilities. Then we have colibri and imps, the former of which can mimic most spells cast on it back immediately, and the latter can detect by sight no matter what, and also regularly silences and disables use of Job Abilities and weaponskills, while casting all sorts of Black Magic, normally of the Area-of-Effect type. This is made up for their stupidly weak defense, but that's a moot point when a party of mid-60s goes up against an 80-81 Heraldic Imp...
- Amphipteres are a new addition. Not only are they hard to spot unless you look up all the time(Similar to Yovra, UFO-ish enemies in the last areas of CoP), but they have a special move that has them stop attacking, but also constantly knocks players back a set distance.
The Abysteels from Final Fantasy XII, particularly the ones from Phase 2 of the Henne Mines.
- The Baknamies can be just as bad, mainly for having a buttload of high powered attack options and always coming in groups of three or more.
  - Not to mention their godly dodging skills. Baknamies who are one hit away from death can parry five or six attacks in a row many times.
  - And they steal your loot, too.
  - And some start off being invisible.
Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 has the bunny monsters. Not only do they have some decent evasion, making hitting them boil down to chance sometimes, but the stronger forms will run around the battle field beefing up their allies strength and spamming Haste on them. I was tempted to get up and walk away to make a sandwich once all 6 hasted enemies finally ended their turns. At least the bunnies are weak to fire attacks.
- Speaking of Whoring, there's also the purple turtles who will constantly spam their special move that inflicts Disable on any unit who use stabbing/slashing weapons like swords, katanas, etc. If you even try to cure Disable, they'll just inflict it again. Oh and it never misses.
- Oh god, the Blackwinds in Brightmoon Tor. Just when you think the the AI's dozen free turns are up, they cast a spell that gives protect and Haste to EVERYTHING, tripling the number of turns you have to wait before your first action.
Final Fantasy Tactics has several Goddamned Bats. These include:
- Chocobos. The yellow variety is fairly frequent in the early game, where you can't do jack for damage. They have decent attack, movement of six panels, and can heal themselves and anything surrounding them. The black and red varieties, while unable to heal, have even more amazing mobility (Fly and Ignore Height, respectively), and both have crazy-strong ranged attacks.
- Ahriman. The two stronger forms have skills that cost no MP, and can cause instant doom, petrification, and permanent Brave decreasing, which affects the strength of knight swords, katanas, and bare-handed strikes, as well as your counter abilities.
- Chemists, who in the late game start wielding guns, which have 100% accuracy, and have a habit of reviving dead enemies seemingly moments after they've been killed. Their massive attack range is even more fearsome if they're lucky enough to have the knight's break skills.
- Summoners. Oh dear god. Their most basic summons have the power of level three black magic with the speed of level one black magic, meaning they deal massive damage in a near instant. Furthermore, in almost every battle you fight them in, they're completely out of your effective range, meaning they're pelting you with massive summons before you can even touch them.

Anything with a Sleep or Berserk staff in the Fire Emblem series.
- Hector mode for the 7th game adds Pegi Knights to early chapters, before the player has a method of countering them. One annoying one is in chapter 14. If it gets low on HP it will flee to a fortress to recover health. While a logical move, this is annoying for 2 reason 1. you can't reach said fortress, as it is over water. 2.It is a kill all enemies chapter. 3.If you are going for rankings (where you are ranked on, among other things, the number of turns you take), it will add about 4 turns to your total.
The Kudan enemy in Shin Megami Tensei : Devil Summoner:Raidou Kuzunoha VS the Soulless Army. She's of the Metal Slime variety.
Dark Cloud 2 has little baby dragon enemies (each a different element). At a distance, they stun you with fireballs. At close range, they roll towards you and knock you down. And then they spit fireballs a split second after that. The regular bats aren't nearly as annoying.
- ...unless you're trying for a "Defeat Enemies With Items" medal, at which points you'll be damning those high-flying, nigh-unreachable bats quite often. And loudly.
  - Or a "Defeat all enemies using only Max's right-hand weapon" medal. Since Max's weapons deflect fireballs, and a deflected fireball counts as a magic/gun attack. The only GOOD thing one can say about Gemrons is that once you get the Gemron badge for Monica, and level up her monster forms, you can have a LOT of fun flying around dungeons in Gemron form blasting away with fireballs...
Dragon Quest and its ilk pretty much burns an unpleasant association with the phrase "Slime Summons Reinforcements!" The worst offender of this was Shining the Holy Ark, where you could start with enemies A, B, and C and have cycled through the entire alphabet before killing the last one.
- Dragon Quest III for GBC has the unbelievably obnoxious Catfly enemies, who use "Stopspell", an annoying-as-shit move that causes all party members to lose the ability to cast any spells. It doesn't always work, but they nicely balance this out by having them appear in large groups and spamming Stopspell until your entire party is crippled. What's worse is that their attacks also do good damage and they're fast, so you can practically NEVER kill them before they use Stopspell or run away from the bastards.
- And don't forget the Bell class of monsters, who appear in large groups, summon more bells and other monsters...and certain types of Bells, once they've gotten 8 or so of them on-screen, either play a level-up song or an instant-kill song...
The cliffracers in The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind. Annoying because 1) they're everywhere; 2) they can keep up with you even if you max out your speed, acrobatics and athletics stats; and 3) you can't sleep when a cliffracer is near. If you play an archer, though, cliffracers made wonderful pincushions - once you grow accustomed to the wrong hitbox, which adds the annoyance of having to shoot at their legs to hit their torsos.
- Amusingly, in the sequel Oblivion, you can hear people discussing "Saint Jiub, who drove the Cliff Racers from Morrowind". Jiub was a fellow prisoner on the ship at the start of Morrowind, never seen again in-game.
  - Also there's the drunk who sings about them.
- So many people hated cliffracers that in the PC version of Morrowind, someone modded a downloadable "cliff racer killing ring," that when equipped, automatically killed any cliff racer who came within 50 yards of the player with a "zap!" sound. There are other mods of this sort, including some that make a lot of sense, such as one that removes all cliffracers (useful, but creates a scarcity of cliffracer plumes, a potion ingredient), and one that modifies all non-diseased creatures to be nonhostile to the player (including cliffracers). Since normally in the game, virtually anything is instantly aggressive towards the player, this is a welcome change.
The SNES game Soul Blazer has two varieties of bat-form Goddamned Bats that try to circle you in swarms just beyond your sword-reach and swerve to strike if you ignore them and try to walk normally. And they can fly through the walls.
- Soul Blazer is also one of the rare games where one might be incited to proclaim "Butterflies!''"
  - Heck, the game is full of non-bat Goddamned Bats. You've got jumping caterpillars — in fact, several types that only move into your sword range once you get in a spot where they're gonna hit you. You've got giant flowers that put out tiny bees that you practically cannot kill until they get you — very hard if you're trying for a no-damage run. There's dragons that leap out of the water at you with no visible sign that that's an area to watch out for. And then there are the non-spawned guys whose only purpose is to make killing the spawned guys that much harder, and who are unkilled whenever you return from freeing another citizen — the pillars of fire that spit fireballs at you are slightly annoying, but the freaky face statues that conjure up icicle death in your path, that's somewhat more than merely annoying (because you would be perfectly safe from the forewarned icicles conjured 2 spaces away from you... if you weren't trying to lunge at bats and sorcerers).
Quest For Glory IV had an enemy which combined the Demonic Spiders trope and this trope. BADDERS. Spider-Bats with poisoneous attacks which flew at you one at a time so you could only attack them when they were swooping at you, so that meant that the only time you could make an defense was when THEY were making an OFFENSE. GODDAMNED BATS and DEMONIC SPIDERS, ARG.
Neoshadows, Darkballs, and Defenders in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. All of them are fond of using high-level cards (like 8's or 9's) that will stun you if you try to hit them with a lower-level card. The former two are also prone to chase you, which can lead to you running away while you look for a card that will stop them. Neoshadows are particularly annoying, both because they travel in swarms (so you end up getting repeatedly pounded after a single card-break), and because they can flatten themselves against the ground to avoid your sleights (normal Shadows can do this, too, but they're much weaker).
- Kingdom Hearts II provides you with various Nobodies; such as the Berserkers and Dancers, both of which boast impossible-to-block attacks; the Samurai, who boast a reaction command that requires a very fast reaction time if you want to avoid getting damaged by it instead; and the Assassins, who self-destruct in your face if you don't kill them fast enough, taking their delicious EXP with them into the abyss.
- Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days manages to be even more annoying than Darkballs, Neoshadows, Dancers, Berserkers, Samurai, etc. with the Emerald Serenade Heartless. It's incapable of attacking and only being able to move on a set path.... But it always runs away, is rather fast, and has a boatload of HP, making it an extremely annoying enemy to kill. Oh, and at least two missions require you to kill it. One of them is in a fucking maze.
- Oh, and basically all the Wonderland Heartless count as this. There's ones that teleport when you hit them, ones that teleport you when you hit them, one that causes random status effects, one that emits a POISON that can EASILY kill you if you try to attack it. They fly too. And they all appear in the aforementioned FUCKING MAZE. Plus, they respawn several times. Usually Heartless don't respawn after you've killed them.
- The Shadow haeartless in Kingdom Hearts 1 and, to a lesser extent, 2. In most fights you're surrounded by them. Eventually you should be able to kill them with a single hit, but they are still figging annoying.
The Imp enemies in Disgaea appear designed to drive players into a rage. They have very long movement and jump ranges, and their Hell Pepper attack deals surprisingly large amounts of damage and poisons survivors.
- Imps are also one of two monsters with a healing special, which uses a separate targeting algorithm from attacks. allied/neutral units. Unfortunately, it still counts as an "attack" for the purpose of turning neutral Dark Assembly monsters against you...
- The enemy Thief and Kunoichi classes in Disgaea 2 can lean towards this. As no matter how many thousands of levels above them you are, they still land their status moves on you almost 100% of the time while your own tend to fail about half the time. Little is quite as annoying as having a lvl 4000 die because two lvl 10 kunoichi poisoned it and put it to sleep at the same time. Prinny Dance comes close for the same reasons but it actually tends to miss or at least not always inflict an affect if the hits fail to do damage.
- Of course, the bright side of this is that almost every unit used against you can be used by you. And yes, it is satisfying to inflict three different status effects on one bigass enemy.
- The Imps were replaced by the much less annoying Mothmen in Disgaea 2... only for the Mothmen to become Goddamned Bats themselves in Disgaea 3. Thank goodness we've never seen both of them in the same game, huh?
- The Ambling Pirates in Disgaea 2 definitely qualify for the "appearing too often" category. To get to the best endgame areas, you must encounter and defeat 16 different kinds of pirates, all of which will appear at random in the Item World (randomly generated levels you can go through to make equipment more powerful.) It's frustrating as hell when you're down to the last one or two kinds and two out of every three encounters is with this guy.
The Bat in the Atari 2600 Adventure cannot harm you, but it can fly through the maze with the magnet, dragging objects inside walls... or steal the sword right out of your hands and give you a live dragon in trade.
- In fact, this is the very first Goddamned Bat. And it is VERY VERY annoying.
The Poison Lilies in Phantasy Star Online. Not only do they spit out the titular poison, they also can paralyze you, making you unable to do anything but use items. Ob Lilies in the Ultimate difficulty level are even worse, spitting out the instant death technique Megid. Oh yeah, and they can still paralyze you.
- In fairness, Poison Lilies are a joke once you get to know them. Goading a Lily into trying to peck you but failing is a trivial affair, and while it's doing that you can simply shoot at its friends - the pecking lily will never stop trying and failing, and once its friends are dead you can turn your attention to rapidly attacking the pecking lily before it has chance to paralyse you. In addition, armour upgrade units which prevent paralysis are not difficult to acquire, and poison is probably the least annoying status effect in the game once you reach a decent level.
Oh, where to begin in Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant...
- How about with Fish? Red Piranhas and Piranha Sharks are about the only things you'll meet out on the ocean, come in large numbers, don't give much exp, and hit decently hard.
- Or Birds. Spectral Crows blink in and out of existence randomly, meaning magic is unreliable, ditto your heavy melee weapons. They also like to inflict fear on multiple characters, giving them a chance to run away from combat. Dragon Rooks breathe acid on multiple characters, fire crows breathe fireballs, and vampire vultures hit fairly hard, have a lot of hit points, and can drain maximum hit points-from which there is no recovery.
- Moths, too. Spectral Moths do the same thing as spectral crows, while other moths enjoy blinding, poisoning, and paralyzing party members.
- Ghosts-virtually Metal Slimes. Very resistant to magic, can inflict all the worst Standard Status Effects, can hit hard on multiple characters when they wish, and like to vanish when low on hit points.
- G Rattkin. Fast, appear in large numbers, and can usually do a lot of damage before the AoE spells clear them out.
- Yeah, Wiz7 was that kind of game. See its entry on Demonic Spiders.
In Wizardry 8, any large gathering of monsters (usually eight or more) can turn into a Goddamned Bats scenario, since fighting them is often extremely time-consuming, and they all get to attack...
- Not to mention the fact that if you scare them away they high-tail it into the distance leaving you stuck in combat whilst you try and catch them because you can only get out of turn based play once they die!!!
Mr. Battys.
- The Spiteful Crow is another infuriating EB enemy that was found very early in the game (and twice more after Onett) — they were faster than you (and were quite evasive), and could steal one of your items!
  - Neither of them are as bad as the Nuclear Reactor Robot. Its attacks are relatively weak, but if you leave it alive to try and focus on the more dangerous enemies in the battle, he'll spend practically all its turns "replenishing a fuel supply", which fully refills the HP of one enemy, thus undoing all the damage you dealt. If you try to take it out first, though, you'll promptly be rewarded by it blowing up in your face For Massive Damage, which almost always kills at least two out of four of your party members.
  - For similar reasons, the Territorial Oak could be annoying (exploding trees, anyone?). But at least it usually showed up alone, so you could click through its death message to end the battle before it killed you.
- Another enemy in the same area as the Territorial Oak is the Mobile Sprout, which fits this trope to a T. It can heal with Lifeup, it can suck away your PP with PSI Magnet, and it can create more Sprouts. At this point in the game, you only have one party member, so it can get very annoying fighting them.
Krogan in Mass Effect have a combination of sheer cussed durability, including the ability to stand back up after being reduced to zero health and regenerate all their damage, and a sprint ability that lets them get in your face in a heartbeat, where they start whaling away at you in melee. Because of their enormous strength, it only takes a couple of hits for a krogan to kill anyone in your squad, so when you see one of them charging you, it's generally an Oh Crap moment.
- Tip: Pyro, cryo and radiation rounds will negate their ability to stand back up, as they destroy the corpse.
- They also take a while to fully regenerate and don't stand up until their health is above a certain level. Unless the krogan falls down behind something that gives it cover, you can keep pumping rounds into it to finish it off. If you're really on the ball and have enough damage-boosting skills and weapon mods, you can actually kill them before they even get a chance to stand back up again.
- Also in Mass Effect: Thresher Maws, which spawn whenever you're driving the Mako through a large enough open area, are frustratingly time-consuming and boring to kill. What's particularly pernicious is that, when they appear, they sometimes spawn directly under the Mako, killing you instantly without warning.
- Husks are also annoying and tough to fight in large numbers. In the second game, this gets pushed to a Demonic Spiders level when they're accompanied by Scions.
- Geth hoppers can jump from surface to surface effectively instantly, and do it a lot. Fortunately, they can be targeted with biotics rather easily.
  - Saren becomes an uber-hopper after Sovereign animates his implants. Again, biotics are extremely useful.
In Shining Force, the Giant Bats, and their later incarnation, Seabats. Each is a flying enemy with a large movement range and higher Agility than other enemies for that part of the game (meaning your attacks are significantly more likely to miss). The original Giant Bats can even randomly put your characters to sleep with a physical attack, making them skip at least one turn.
- Shining the Holy Ark — many, many creatures could call for reinforcements or duplicate themselves in some way, making random encounter battles go on for 10 minutes or more. Bear in mind these aren't boss battles. Saying that, a couple of the bosses had endless mooks appearing to help them out.
The World Ends With You has a few of these. Among them: Goddamned Bats that are fairly difficult to hit in combat, Crows that steal your pins during combat (disabling that attack until the crow is killed off), Porcupines that drop exploding needles on the battlefield, and Jellyfish that, on harder difficulties where you do less damage with attacks, can often be very difficult to kill off-they summon more of themselves, often faster than you can kill them.
- Don't forget Elephants that spam ridiculously long-lasting stomp attacks that do no damage but interrupt whatever action you're currently in progress of performing, even if you're floating a good 7 feet off the ground and the actual footprints that spread out and cause the stun effect are several inches in height at best.
  - No damage if you're not getting hit by the attack itself, you mean. It's freaking painful if you don't avoid them, especially if you're playing at level 1 to boost drop rates. Also, the interrupting "whatever action you're currently in the process of performing" is worse than it sounds because there are a lot of attacks that take more time to ready than the stomps allow for.
- And Pigs; while harmless, they run away from battle in seconds unless killed quickly.
- And Taboo Noise, which will actively seek you out during a scan.
- And Frogs, who latch on to your characters and attack, and will absorb either short- or long-range attacks depending on their color, along with Shrews that plant deadly bombs and launch drill-like attacks at your characters, and burrow underground to make themselves more difficult to hit. The former is especially a pain in the ass because not only does Joshua get knocked out of the air if he is hit, but he has to come back down to the ground to dodge them.
- And the Sharks, which eat other noise to make themselves stronger and hide under the ground while you're trying to hit them so you have to guess where the hell they're going to pop up.
The second expansion pack of Neverwinter Nights gives us Duergar, or dark dwarves. Every single one of them has the ability to cast improved invisibility, and every single one does so the moment they realize that you're there. And the worst part? They're the second most common enemy in the campaign. The loading screen tips weren't lying when they said that you were going to die often.
- Your Mileage May Vary but at the epic level ranges where the expansion is located, you can have an overabundance of spells and - even better - artifacts giving you true seeing, rendering their little trick useless to begin with.
- However, custom module designers always find a way to screw you over. There is a module where a boss always made sure a pair of harmless ghosts with 5 hitpoints each were present. The problem? They were invulnerable to magic and spam-dispelled everything that moved.
- Duergar were also in the original campaign. This was a pain because a) an entire region would spawn NOTHING BUT SQUADS OF DUERGAR, and b) if you'd reached a certain level they'd hit you with Phantasmal Killer. What does this do, you ask? Unless you pass your Will and Fort saves, it does Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Having to respawn 10 times per level because the Random Number God leads to a handful of bad saves? Does horrible, horrible things to your money and XP.
In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the Crazee Dayzees, which tend to pop up on narrow pathways, making them hard to dodge — and should you succeed in slipping past one, there'll be another a little further along, leaving you trapped between two. In fact, the whole turn-based fighting set-up of the game turns all the minor opponents into potential time-wasting Goddamned Bats — although they are useful for Level Grinding.
- Towards the end of the game, you actually run into bats, which swoop down from the ceiling and are very hard to avoid or get an initiative hit on.
In both Paper Mario games, there are ridiculously annoying little creatures called fuzzies. They suck your health, can split in two, and have really hard to time action commands. What's more, they're everywhere and are among the hardest enemies to avoid. Be warned.
- However, use of the Zap Tap badge renders them unable to damage you, as it electrocutes enemies that directly touch Mario; the only way Fuzzies can hurt you. But they're still annoying, because they will keep dividing. As soon as you kill one, another will take its place...
In the earlier Ultima games, Gremlins EPITOMIZE this trope. They're small, attack (usually) in packs, and on their own don't do a lot of damage. Doesn't sound like much, until you realize they steal food from the party. Food in those games served as a counter for how long the party could stay in a area — run out of food, the party starts losing health until they either reach a town or die. So, Gremlins could steal ALL your food — condemning your party to a slow death if you couldn't reach a city in time.
In the turn-based online RPG DragonFable, any mushroom-type monster is ridiculously hard to hit. This gets even worse when they're level-scaled.
- The Minx Fairies are incredibly aggravating — if you manage to get them down to less than half of their HP, they'll Full Heal themselves, which costs them only one MP. If you don't stun them or drain their mana so they can't use the move, you're in for a long fight, especially on the higher levels when they have about 200 MP. And worse, they're strong to Light, unlike just about every other monster in the game, making one of the two most powerful weapons of the game useless against them.
Minecrawlers. Minecrawlers. They have pretty nasty damage considering the stage of the game where they're first encountered, but wouldn't be nearly as bad if they weren't... well... in the mines. Which means that you're in a confined space, which is occasionally dark, with blind corner after blind corner, plenty of fatal dropoffs, infinite opportunity for them to sneak up behind you and to top it all off nicely, the "helpful" NPCs that would otherwise be looking after you have no idea how to climb ladders and so end up running in circles while the minecrawlers eat your face. Oh yeah, and did we mention they're giant, hissing, screaming ants?
In the Might And Magic series, from the point battle started to be open as opposed to having "battle-areas" (like JRPGs), that is, from M&M 4 onwards, any enemy in great quantity could surround your party and start to plummet you. The best skills you can use against them, that is, area damage effects, will also affect your party, and you're down to using less effective multiple projectile spells like Poison Spray or Spark. The worst of the lot, you guessed it, are Goddamned Bats (and Rats), who have the annoying habit of diseasing or poisoning your party members, rapidly deteriorating their stats and health unless you have some pretty advanced Body Spells or alchemic potions (which are fairly wasteful mana-wise, the first, and rare/waste of ingredients for other potions, in the later.)
Seiken Densetsu 3 has the line of "Dark Priest" enemies. All of them are spellcasters who love to spam Healing Light. The Necromancers in the final dungeons are the worst of the lot, responding to everything with at least one casting (usually two) of Healing Light that heals them for over 400 health. They have 800 or so and you can do about 400 with one move if you're lucky, and can maybe hit them with two before they respond with Healing Light if you're really lucky. What's really annoying is that they don't even attack. They just continually cast a spell that drops every aspect of your ability to deal damage, making fights with them nigh unwinnable unless you can clear the effect. Oh, and they usually spawn in rooms that trap you until all enemies are dead.
The Tigers in the second dungeon of Persona 4 spam the an all-party-damaging attack and seem to constantly critical hit your party. On top of that, they take a LONG time to kill. I recall spending at LEAST fifteen minutes on one set of two.
- The trick to the tigers, at least in their later appearances when you have more levels, is that Yosuke's Tentarafoo always hits them with confusion, which happens to disable enemies quite thoroughly.
Brave Fencer Musashi had some of these too. In underground dungeons there are some bats among the other enemies, who are just IMMENSELY annoying: they move randomly, are pretty hard to hit due to the weird camera and they follow you through the floor (so you can't simply run away from them).
Monster Hunter has the Cephalos and Cephadrome, which swim around in the sand faster than the player's sprinting speed, with only a very small fin exposed for the player to (hopefully) hit. And then there's the Monoblos and its relatives, which have an annoying habit of burrowing into the sand and staying there, thus being undetectable by any normal means. If you lose track of a Monoblos and have no extraordinary means of locating it again, you're hosed. Thankfully there are countermeasures which can be used to somewhat ameliorate the annoyance posed by the above monsters.
- And don't forget the Cats. How to grief another player: kick a cat and bugger off sharpish before all its friends show up with bombs.
- The Bullfangos are basically boars that travel in groups and will charge you the instant they see you. Getting hit by one will send the hunter flying. Whoever thought of delivery missions with parcels that break if you drop them should be beaten. Whoever thought of Bullfangos should be shot. Whoever thought of putting Bullfangos in delivery missions should be beaten, shot and beaten again for good measure.
- Don't forget Vespoids, the flying wasps. Most times they only do just a small amount of damage, but they can sometimes paralyze your character causing him to fall down for about 20 seconds and twitch on the ground helpless. And in most cases, this is going to be just before a wyvern of some sort decides to charges at you turning you into a hunter pancake. It's less dangerous but still just as annoying, when you get paralyzed while carving or trying to harvest items as well.
Throughout Wild Arms 3, you encounter a variety of owl monsters. The ones earlier on usually do their worst by simply being airborne enemies, meaning that it's slightly tougher to hit them overall, inflicting Disease on your party, and stealing an item that usually isn't too hard to replace like a Heal Berry, but the ones later on do all of the above, but when they steal, they steal and run, meaning if they successfully steal that precious Ambrosia or 2 you've been saving for an abnormality whore, then they're gone for good.
Spiderweb Software games:
- In the Geneforge series it was the Vlish, flying tentacled creatures with ranged attacks that had effects that made every combat longer; either stun, terror, poison/acid, some of them could even heal their allies. They ran to call on the assistance of others, came back to swarm in packs, then ran away when taking too much damage. And throughout the series, many entire zones were dedicated to these damn things.
- In the Avernum series it was the Imps, who were not nearly as bad, less frequent, and the rewards were better. They also assembled in packs, used ranged mental effects such as stun, charm, fear, and ran away at low health.
In The Witcher, Drowners (and their improved counterpart drowned dead). They're no threat to the player unless he accidentally runs into them early in the first chapter, and can be killed in seconds en masse. What makes drowners a pain is that they are still all over major locations in chapters 2 and 3 (the swamp and sewers), take longer to loot then kill, and simply force you to kill them before you can end combat.
- There is a special item that makes them flee when equipped (and the ring slot it takes up has no other items outside of signet rings, a mechanic used 3 times in the entire game, and a similar item for wraiths), but it is a Power Up Let Down and makes them WORSE. What makes them so annoying is that during combat, you can't interact with items (such as opening a chest or door). The item keeps the drowners at a distance that STILL keeps them in combat, and keeps them too far away to instantly kill in group style.
"I kicked him in the head til he was dead!" Baldur's Gate features any number of annoying, easilly-killable mook enemies that love to disrupt your sleep/waste your spells/run away into areas with stronger enemies, activating them if you pursue. They drop minimal, useless treasure and are worth little XP, but you fight them -all the time-. I remember returning from one trip through the wilderness with around 60 suits of leather armor looted from bandits.
Baldur's Gate II has its entire first dungeon filled with Mephits, Fire Mephits, Air Mephits, and Mephit portals. Goddamned Bats indeed.
- At higher levels, Baldurs Gate II does hand you the incredibly "all bats must die" Death Spell, which is guaranteed to be of absolutely no use except for butchering monsters that go bump in the night within 3 seconds.
Any enemy with an activable shield in Zoids Legacy. You usually have to waste at least two party members' attacks to bring the shield down, plus the user can still attack through it. Fortunately, when these become common, the party should be strong enough that they do not become Demonic Spiders.
The .dotHACK// series of games has a few. The standout performers are Killer Bees and Mimics, both of whom are difficult to kill and spam negative status effects. In the words of Black Rose, "Confusion and Charmed are the worst!"
Any enemy with a "Evading" attack in Sonic Chronicles and high attack. And any enemy that you need to have "Piercing" to do damage to. And enemies with a high Defence. In short, around 30% of the enemies in the game probably qualify for this status.
Geckos in Fallout 2. Those damn things are everywhere. Thankfully, a few of them tend to be nonhostile unless provoked.
Grand Chase features Harpies: starting from Kerrie Beach towards Marsh of Oblivion, your life will be made miserable by these flying creatures, even more so in Champion Mode, when they're buffed with all sorts of goodies. And then they make a grand comeback in the Battle for Bermesiah as Violent Harpies. What fun.
The Slimes in Odin Sphere's Titania level. They don't take a lot of damage from normal or Psypher attack. But the worst part is that if you don't get away, they will cling to you, and stick you in place, dealing their damage, while opening you up to attacks from Wizards. Generally a Napalm will kill them, but good luck if you don't have the stuff to make one, or had wanted to save them for a boss.

The Gradius series had Zubs that teleport onto the screen and will most likely kill you if you are not prepared for them, and some volcano stages have Erupting Rocks that will force you to the top or bottom of the screen.
- The rocks in Gradius III AC's lava stage were more like Demonic Fireballs, they appear in large numbers, split into indestructible fragments when shot, and to make it worse, the passage gets narrow near the end of the level.
- Salamander/Life Force (arcade version)had that ship that causes the screen to flash, potentially inducing seizures.
- And the, er, demonic Option Hunter.
The Touhou series has Lily White. In the ninth game, Phantasmagoria of Flower View, she will randomly appear in both player's fields and rain down hell upon you for no reason other than she can. Sure, you can shoot her down, but she comes back a minute later. This is especially irritating when fighting Medicine or Sikieki. Goddamned Lily.
- Don't forget about Orin, who makes her appearance in the 11th game, Subterranean Animism, as the Stage 4 mini-boss... twice (like Alice in Perfect Cherry Blossom), then as the Stage 5 mini-boss... then as the Stage 5 boss... and finally as the Stage 6 miniboss. I don't care what you have to say about Lily, at least she only stays for one wave. This bugger tails you through three stages, and only lets up when Hell's fires get too hot for even her.
- As the stage 5 boss, Orin comes with her own army of zombie fairies too. They trail you as a large swarm, block your shots, explode into a shower of bullets when hit, then come back to life again in a matter of seconds.
Metal Slug has Helicopters that constantly hover overhead and fire on you. On their own, they're not too bad, but they have a habit of attacking you while being backed up by tanks, soldiers with knives, and other such ground infantry, making it very difficult to kill them off due to the wave of attacks coming from both ground and air. It's even worse when they come in a row and start circling overhead, constantly raining down bullets everywhere. In those cases, at least, shooting the leader causes a chain reaction to take out the rest, giving a nice score bonus.
- You know what's worse than the helicopters? The normal soldiers that throw fireworks at you. Despite having the same amount of health as other soldiers, the player can hit their projectiles, not only blocking your shots but also making the objects much more unpredictable to dodge. Add in the usual threats(including the helicopters) and you're all but guaranteed to die many times.
Spheres Of Chaos has black holes. Those which attract objects aren't too bad, but those which repel, are, making objects to go fly everywhere and player has to fly very close to them to shoot them due to their repelling force. This is especially bad with multiple black holes.
- They also have Dodgers which are normal enemies with the ability to dodge player's fire, often making them hard to catch.
Star Control II's Slylandro Probes. (Warning: Link contains the 'f' word.)
- Fortunately, the Probes can be easily beaten for easy money if you have a Spathi Eluder, one of the best ships in the game.
  - ...which you have in a limited supply, because the damned Spathi chicken out on you with no — OK, little — warning. The genuine 'fortunately' is that you can obtain a deactivation code from the Slylandro themselves, which not only blows up the little bugger immediately, but also deactivates all future probe encounters.
  - The worst place to encounter them just HAS to be in Ur-Quan space. Especially the border. It is entirely likely you will be stuck in an impossible-to-escape series of sequential battles as more Ur-Quan and Slylandro continuously spawn.
R Type players hate Cancers with a passion. Why? Though extremely easy to kill (one shot from anything makes them dead), they home in on you while firing shots with near-perfect accuracy, and often (this is the kicker) come in on the left side of the screen. Unless you are powered-up, you cannot fire in that direction. Use your imagination...

In the Resident Evil series, bats, crows, and insects all serve as major annoyances, especially considering the fact you often have to save the precious few ammo you have, and back tracking through the areas is required, so you often have to decide if you want to waste your ammo fighting weak but numerous enemies just to clear the area, or let them be and risk losing your equally precious health if one managed to catch up. It came to an extreme in Code Veronica when a certain part of the level that is well-traveled came complete with respawning moths that could also poison you, which made that area a nightmare in terms of healing.
In Alone In The Dark, Vampirez are bats that attack if the player gets too close and are almost impossible to hit. Since they look like bats and are minions of Lucifer, they could be literally considered to be Goddamned Bats.
Shibito Brains from Siren. In some stages where they're present, you need to defeat them to win. In others, it just helps a lot, as if they're knocked out, so are all other shibito on the stage — and these are generally composed primarily of the extremely nasty Crawlers. Where they enter Goddamned Bats territory is that they can detect your presence without actually seeing or hearing you, and their usual response to this is to suddenly run away. It's actually a comparatively good thing when you instead get the sort of Brains that respond to your presence by charging in and attacking you.
Silent Hill does this. The cockroaches in Silent Hill 2, those flying bugs in Silent Hill 4, and the Pendulums in Silent Hill 3 (they were particularly bad making a terrible screeching noise and being impossible to find much less kill. Ditto the slurpers.)
Dead Rising: Chop 'Til You Drop, the Wii port of the original Dead Rising, features zombie parrots and zombie poodles alongside regular zombies. The parrots fly around squawking and stalking you until you stand still long enough for them to divebomb you. The squawking is rather annoying. The poodles move quickly, are hard to hit, and will lunge at you and tear off a piece of Frank. Oh, and a few bosses from the original were removed as bosses, and are now featured as special zombies. Note that they seeemed to use only the most annoying bosses that everyone hates. The fat policewoman? Now she's everywhere, and dual-wields tasers, and takes more bullets to take down than a regular zombie. A taser dual-wielding fat zombie that charges at you whenever you come near. The annoying photojournalist who you wanted to kill from day one? Now he's a running zombie that kung-fu kicks you in the face and throws Molotov cocktails. A running zombie that impersonates Jackie Chan and throws Molotov cocktails. And no matter how many times you kill them, they will come back. There were probably more, but I just gave up at that point and returned the rented game.

Battle For Wesnoth's bats were always irritating, but a recent upgrade made them harder to hit, and made them living, rather than undead, which allows them to have attributes that make them even better. Not to mention the fact that they replenish their health on successful hits, all of which makes them horrible to kill.
In the Nintendo Wars series, foot soldiers can be spammed for the most part — the worst offender by far is the well-known 'mech rush' tactic, using bazooka infantry known as 'mechs' that have the offensive power of a tank and a third of the cost. Not only are they frighteningly effective in large mobs, but they can function as meatshields for range-fire units and only high-cost units are able to insta-kill them (and being mobbed by three of its compatriots, who cost about as much as the unit you used, will usually cripple it). This is, however, averted in Game Boy Wars 3 (where plenty of units can wipe them out in a single attack, including the 3rd cheapest unit in the entire game).
Dominions 3 has several spells that serve this function. They summon large numbers of 1 Hit Point, fast-moving, hard-to-hit units that do minimal damage but distract enemy armies, who stop to kill them while your troops shoot/cast spells/get into formation. Nothing is more annoying than having your 50-man army swatting dragonflies while arrows rain down on them from the 20 enemy archers who by all rights should be being slaughtered by your infantry.
Trolls from the game Dark Legion aren't very deadly, but have high health, and if facing another unit that is melee only, will wear them down considerably through chip damage. Killing them at long range is just plain annoying shoot-n-scoot...for about three minutes apiece.
Europa Universalis has any poor country with a lot of winter in it. Tibet and some of the russian steppe-nations in particular. Sure, they can only raise a few thousand men. Too bad you still need at least 5000 men to besiege their fortresses and they can only support 2000... You can easily lose hundreds of thousands of men besieging piddly tax-base 1 or 2 provinces. Especially in winter.
Super Robot Wars W has an exceptional number of Super Small-sized units compared to other games, mostly due to the inclusion of Tekkaman Blade and Detonator Orgun, both Metal Hero series with a bent towards Powered Armor. This means lots of very small, very hard-to-hit enemies, such as Sol Tekkamen, Birdmen, and Alien Tekkamen that you usually have to use your Spirit abilities to get rid of. Especially aggravating in the fact that the game freely gives Birdmen to the Gao Gai Gar and Full Metal Panic bad guys to fill out their ranks.
- Replace "Orgun" and "Tekkaman" with Banpresto Original mooks, and you have this for Super Robot Wars D. Armor Is Useless in this game, requiring the usage of Fragile Speedsters. Too bad your those mooks are faster and more accurate than most of the end game bosses.
- R-Einst in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2. Not horrendously strong, but their high Mobility sucks the SP of large units like Daisanger dry. Especially when you're trying to take them out on a time limit - most of the units that would have trouble hitting them would probably still win in a duel if properly armored, but with OG's fondness for "win in 4 turns"-esque Skill Points...
- Also from OG 2, the damned Gespents that the Shadow-Mirrors brought with them. The ones that require either Focus and just plain luck, throughout the first half of the game and a bit beyond that point, or Focus -and- Strike(spending even more of your precious SP, yay![/sarcasm]), and then just a bit more luck for their return fire, no matter how good a chance to dodge your own unit has. Large amounts of HP(for so early in the game on 'fodder' units), quite decent armor, and some heavy-hitting weapons. This player has ended up cursing enough to peel paint thanks to the amounts of restarting those bastards have caused...
- Bartolls that runs on ODE in OG Gaiden might count as well. Basically, these units have a shared morale pool, and killing one of them INCREASES the morale. The more you kill them, the more you'll need to consume your SP to make them get hit by your attack, and for them to miss their attack. You could try to take them out with area attack maps (like the Cyflash), but... well that'll waste SP. As if there's not enough reason to make the ODE and its creator (Juergen) scrappies...
Phantom Brave featured a mushroom that would rip the weapons out of your hands and throw them Out Of Bounds. Forcing you to return to Phantom Isle to re-equip your units.

Many street racing games (such as the Burnout series, the Shutokou Battle series, and the Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune series, and such) have Traffic that can force you to immediately get out of its way or risk a ruined race. However, traffic can be used in Burnout to your advantage to take down other opponents, and launched into the paths of opponents in Maximum Tune.

A game called Pharaoh's Curse for the Commodore 64 has a very pesky bat (or is it a bird?). It doesn't kill you at all. No, what it does is swoop down, pick you up, and carry you to a random spot, forcing you to drop any key you were carrying, leaving yourself unable to open the locked door you were planning to. Of course, you can only shoot sideways, so you would be often helpless to avoid it when it swooped down from above at high speed.
In a game called Spelunker on one of those 9999999-in-1 NES pirate carts, there's a literal bat enemy whose poop killed everyone in the room. This is definitely a Goddamned Bat. To get past it, you fire one of your flares. If you still got one. Come to think of it though, falling two inches kills the spelunker in that game, and it's not the best game in the world to begin with.
- And there's that ghost that appears every 30 seconds or so.
  - That is a Demonic Spider. Unless you are far enough away from it to waste some of your air to kill it, you MUST flee until you are far enough. And it had an annoying habit of appearing JUST offscreen on the side of the screen you were, meaning you would scroll the screen and suddenly it's RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.
- The Atari 8 bit original had the same Goddamned Bat, dealt with the same way. And it had the same ghost. Except the "ghost nearby" tune was pumped out at max volume, and was the sole ingame music. You WILL be afraid.
Anything with an Ion Disruptor in X3: Reunion. This weapon is extremely effective against shields, automatically locks on to anything in a wide fire arc, and has no travel time. While it can't damage your ship's hull, it is extremely effective against shields and can destroy equipment once your shields are down, as well as making you easy prey for lasers, missiles or collisions. Since all ships are susceptible to friendly fire, even friendlies using the Ion Disruptor turn into Goddamned Bats. As if it wasn't already annoying enough, using the weapon yourself when there are non-player-owned friendlies around turns you into a bat, and they'll instantly attack you.
Not even Puzzle Quest goes without them. Normal bats can be quite annoying, but the real Goddamned Bats depend on your class choice. For instance, Fire Elementals are Goddamned Bats for a Wizard due to their high fire resistance, and the fact that they can drain your entire red mana pool and heal themselves for every point. In fact, anything with some resistance borders on this since the resistance works against any spells that use the respective kind of mana, and most likely half of your spells. And for extra fun, resisted spells end your turn even if that spell normally wouldn't.
- And for the added "That Makes No Sense" award, enemies would often resist spells that you were clearly casting on yourself!
Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The Subspace Emissary has a number of Goddamned Bats, but dodging and defensive techniques mitigate some of the aggravation.
- Glire, Glice, and Glunder all attack you in a disproportionately large proximity to them with elemental discharges. Glice, in particular, can chain freeze you to rack up damage quickly unless you struggle to break out.
- Floow have a nightmarish shriek that causes damage despite your shield, chase you everywhere, and regenerate when not under direct aggression. Furthermore, elemental attacks (like PK Fire, given you're playing as either Lucas or the Pokemon Trainer when you first find the bastards) don't work at all. Cluster frag the bastards if more than one come at you.
- Armights have a creepy laugh when they arrive on the scene, slash at you in a close enough range (which is longer than most characters can reach) and throw their swords at will.
- Mites do pretty weak damage, but their vast numbers can overwhelm you and deny you a chance to counter if they're feeling particularly vicious. Their small size makes them a little harder to hit.
- Bytan is another swarmer, spawning more Bytans by popping them out of its eyeball, meaning that anywhere that starts with more than one bytan essentially promises a swarm by the time you're done. Unlike the Mite, they deal normal damage. They also come in a giant version that can take a crazy amount of damage.
- Buckots. They swoop in when you're fighting other enemies and dump hot bricks on you. It's annoying. Plus, they fly, so they can be hard to hit sometimes.
- Bucculus, which lurks in the ground where you can't hit it, mostly hidden, and latches onto you when you get close. The worst part is that if you don't kill it quick, it goes back underground, and you have to lure it out again by getting within grabbing range once more. The worst part is when they're in an area you haven't been to before, because you don't know wher they're buried and might be looking at something else rather than watching the ground.
- Roaders are very fast so it's hard to get a hit in first (if at all), come roaring off from the side of the screen so you never know what's coming until you've been smashed into a bloody pulp, and have huge knockback. Oh, and think you can beat them because you're on a platform out of their reach? The bastards can jump. That's right, an armored, motorized unicycle can jump to get you. Being stronger than most enemies listed here, they wouldn't normally be under this trope, but the fact that you run into them so often (and sometimes in groups too boot, especially on higher difficulties) makes them annoying enough to mention.
In Metal Gear Solid 4, the "Scarabs" — the little three-limbed orb/camera sentries — are a massive headache. They swarm at you twenty at a time, and if they get too close they can either knock you down (typically when you're in the middle of reloading) or latch on to you, therefore forcing you to do a little analog stick-wiggling QTE to shake them off.
Space Invaders Extreme has Reflector Aliens, which bounce your shots off, Assault Aliens, which take two hits to destroy, the first making them fly down to kill you, Flipping Aliens, which turn on their sides to become harder to hit, and much more.
Neopets has a flash game that's pretty much your basic Breakout, only with a pair of bats flying around to get in your way. If you're extremely lucky, you can get a falling potion that'll make them go away. But that's rare.
The Gadget Drones in Magical Battle Arena. Their attacks are slow and weak and they die from one or two special attacks; however, their attacks can still interrupt you while you're charging, they come in swarms that pepper you from many directions, their concentrated fire can break you out of your super, and they accompany That One Boss and the Final Boss. Few things are more annoying than getting struck by one of their stray shots while in the middle of attacking or running away, leaving you wide open for the more dangerous boss to pummel.
- Not to mention you face three of them on the first level, where you're also expected to get used to the controls. Learning how to play a game as technically difficult as MBA while having your character interrupted every half a second by a stray shot (not to mention the occasional "rush up, combo yo' ass and send you flying to the pavement" attack) is just about as impossible as it sounds.
The first Gears Of War had the lambent wretches at the immulsion factory.
- The explosion is also a guaranteed down on Insane, which makes the parts where they swarm you, and especially the mine cart section, very frustratingly difficult even on co-op.
There's a certain type of robot enemy in Wario Land 4, found only in Hard mode and above which pretty much covers this. It's what appears to be some kind of metal bird creature, flies in the air right near platforming sections and charges at Wario when he gets near. Not hard to defeat (one hit kills it), but considering that it's found in narrow spaces, doesn't give you anything for killing it, and respawns when you re enter the area, even though every other non transformation enemy doesn't come back unless you win/lose the level, it's freaking annoying. Plus, Pinball Zone (yes, that Pinball Zone that named the trope) is annoying enough without them.
There's a perfect example in the first boss (arguably a mini-boss) in Ys Origin. One of it's attacks is turning into a swarm of GoddamnedBats and chasing you around/moving in your path to swarm and bite you. It's made worse when the monster splits into two and has one of them swarm you as said Goddamned Bats, while the other tries to attack you with magic or some such. The bats they turn into are even an enemy you can find shortly after the battle!
- A similar boss is the boss of the abandoned mine in Ys Book I and II. It's one of That One Boss, especially in the Eternal'' remake.
Spore's space pirates. Nuff said.
In the weeks following a Team Fortress 2 class update, expect to see a flood of three classes: the class that was updated, the class that counters it, and Pyros (who are quite numerous year-round and have not yet lost their Bats qualities since their own update).
The freakin' tanks in the PS 2 version of Godzilla: Unleashed. They're tiny so they're hard to destroy, and sometimes they're virtually impossible to see...especially when they blend in with the rest of the scenery. To make matters worse, they attack you at the worst possible moment (Usually when you're trying to use a beam-attack or are about to throw an enemy) which slowly but surely drains your life-bar. Oh, and. They. Respawn! CONSTANTLY! making them even more aggravating.
- In fact, the ONLY way to escape the tanks is to go into deep water. Unfortunately, apart from a handful of levels, this is easier said than done. Tokyo and the Mothership are the only levels not to feature the tanks. Unfortunately, the Mothership replaces the tanks with the equally-annoying saucers.
Trine has literal bats that: Always appear at the worst moment (like when you're trying to avoid falling into a Bottomless Pit), always travel in packs, are hard to hit (only one of the characters has an air attack) and deplete your Health Meter very rapidly.
The original Streets of Rage had killer clowns. Apart from constantly runing away from you and taunting you, they also attack in large number or with other minions to help them. They are always one inch to far for you to hit them, and if you do manage to hit them, combos are nigh impossible since they constantly produce torches or axes out of thin air (you have to punch all of those out his hands before you can attack him). They are even worse in Streets of Rage Remake, where the new AI makes them even more difficult to hit or grab.
The Chrysalids from UFO: Aftermath. They can't actually harm you, yet they are among the worst things to meet in the entire game. Why? Because their only attack is a stun, that has longer range than some sniper rifles and a high enough duration and rate of fire to be able to single-handedly lock down your entire squad if you let them. And that's when they're alone. Should you run into three or more you might as well just give up and load.
Here's one from an old-but-good flight sim, Total Air War: any form of antiaircraft gun. Particularly the ZSU-23-4s and Vulcans. Normally they're not a threat if you fly high or if you're packing guided missiles, but when some bright spark in mission control decides that the best way to use your F-22 is to load it with unguided bombs, rockets, and cannon shells, all of which require that you fly low to attack with any kind of accuracy, those AAA vehicles with their mixture of More Dakka and Improbable Aiming Skills can and will turn your aircraft into shrapnel. And worst of all? They're everywhere!
Whether they're Goddamned Bats or Demonic Spiders is down to the individual, but Batman Arkham Asylum has four up for debate. In approximate order of annoyance, they are: normal mooks with guns, who drain Bats' health like there's no tomorrow; normal mooks with throwable items, who frequently throw from off-screen and hit you out of a combo because once it's thrown, the item's unblockable; knife-wielding mooks, who must be stunned before being hit and who have killed many a combo and stun baton-wielding mooks, who can't be attacked from the front period and can stun Bats if he pulls them in with a Batclaw and doesn't get out of the way in time. They're all very annoying in the Story, but it's in the Challenge mode that they take on new degrees of irritation.
In the 1978 Avalon Hill board game Magic Realm the giant bats are among the most dangerous of all monsters. They are too fast to run away from or hit reliably, kill unarmored characters instantly, and wound to death those with heavy armor.
In the Ace Combat games, normal mook planes and SAMs become annoying when you need to kill aces while they're around. They may ascend to Demonic Spiders level in Ace mode, where a single missile hit will almost always destroy your plane. The ballistic missiles in Ace Combat 04 are just really annoying to shoot down. If you watch the flight path replay at the debriefing, you'll notice they goes side to side and up and down in a sawtooth pattern. Even the Game Breaker QAAM missiles have a hard time with this one.

Yes, there's a Fighting Game example. BlazBlue's "Unlimited" Rachel can summon a Frog. It's easy to overlook, shocks you for multiple hits if it connects and unlike her regular frog, doesn't vanish after a hit so you just keep taking hits from the frog while trying to handle all Rachel's other attacks.
The Guilty Gear series contains 3 examples of this: Bridget's teddy bear, Roger, almost all of Zappa's summoned ghosts and any of Dizzy's projectile attacks. Admittedly, I am almost always on the giving end of this, but the murderous looks I receive from my opponents (my friends have all but refused to play against me if I choose to use any of the aforementioned characters) upon their defeat is the main impetus for their inclusion here. Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Eddie/Zato-1 is the very personification of Goddamn Bats (in my opinion) and often causes me to be the the one giving my opponents looks of murderous intent. And Chipp is no slouch, either.
- Eddie is considered God Tier for a good reason. He fills the screen with so much crap your opponent simply cannot do anything without getting hit.

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