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"Count Nefarious Vile, who has recently conquered the world with his army of monsters, demons, and those flying things that always knock you into pits when you're trying to jump."

An infamous class of enemies in Platform Games, that use Knockback to ruin your jumps, even when they are otherwise not that dangerous.

Every veteran gamer knows what it's like: You're jumping across a series of platforms ... and then you spot that little bird roosted on solid ground on the other side. There's a pretty good chance that the bird will completely spook and defend its terrain the moment you try to cross the last gap. Although your HP would be hardly worse off for what damage it can inflict, the main threat is that the aforementioned knockback. If you are really lucky, you may land back on the platform and get another chance to try again. But far more likely, you'll get knocked off these ledges entirely, usually leading to:

  1. You fall into Bottomless Pits, Spikes of Doom, or anything else that costs you a life.
  2. You fall down a Non-lethal Bottomless Pit, or down to the bottom of the area and must climb all the way back up to try again.

These guys can also come in the form of an Airborne Mook, flying right into you and knocking you backwards into the pit when you jump over it.

Of course, if you have some kind of ranged attack at your disposal you may be able to dispatch the creature and make this jump in safety. Otherwise, you'll have to settle for striking it down in midair, and carefully time your attack to hit it before it can inflict its Collision Damage.

Some games may double the challenge by putting these enemies in Gusty Glade.

Very common in the arcade and 8 bit era, due to needing to keep the quarters pumping, and console games following that mold. 16 bit games began to phase them out, though they are still present in games.

A Sub-Trope of Goddamned Bats. A fixture of the Level of Tedious Enemies, particularly platformers.

Compare to Instakill Mook (which this trope can be if the pitfall is fatal), and Pushy Mooks, which are less an enemy, due to being unable to harm you directly, and more just a mobile wall, shoving you places.


Examples:

  • Named for the Goddamned Bats in Castlevania, which are prone to this. Other examples are crows and the Medusa heads.
  • Metroid:
    • The fission Metroids in Metroid Prime end up like this, as the area you find them in requires a lot of platform climbing. Plus they are quite powerful and difficult to kill without Power Bombs (which you must stand still to use), and if you do kill them they respawn. Fortunately, Fission Metroids stay still for several seconds to divide. Unfortunately, they're invulnerable for that time, and afterwards there are twice as many Metroids chasing you. Whether stunning them and running is worth it is a personal decision.
    • From the original Metroid, there are Wavers, a fast, slender, irregularly-moving annoyance with the ability to interrupt Samus' jump by knocking her into an uncontrolled fall if they collide with her in midair. Given that most of them show up in areas with irregularly placed platforms over lava, their irritation factor is understandably high. The Ice Beam and the Screw Attack go a long way towards mitigating their threat and are extremely cathartic besides.
    • When escaping from the Restricted Zone in Metroid Fusion, the room containing the exit is filled with Metroids. They don't hurt Samus, but colliding with them while performing the Space Jump negates Samus's momentum and you have only one minute to escape before the area is shot into space and blows up.
  • Afterimage: In the Columns, there are Sharklings that are scripted to spawn or roam around platforms, with the express purpose of trying to knock you off or mess up your landings while platforming.
  • Xenogears manages to introduce the trope to the role-playing genre. When a random battle is triggered, there is about a one second lag between the trigger and the actual transition to the battle. During this time, you can still move around, but thanks to a bug, you lose the ability to jump, which frequently leads to you falling down several levels and forcing you to backtrack, thus making Ledge Bats out of invisible random encounters. A large reason why Babel Tower is That One Level.
  • Ninja Gaiden: The birds, and just about every other enemy in the heavy platforming areas.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has the batlike Aches, which are a deadly nuisance around pits, but at least easy to kill. Moas, on the other hand, marry the worst traits of Ledge Bats and Demonic Spiders by having an unpredictable flight pattern and much higher attack and defense, and they're all over the place during the final trek to the Great Palace.
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Moldorm (the boss of the Tower of Hera) has the additional challenge of knocking you back to a lower floor if it hits you or you hit it in the wrong spot in addition to the damage it would do you normally (you'll have to climb a lot of stairs to get back to the fight, and the boss will of course heal during this).
    • The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening:
      • Moldorm reappears with the same gimmick — get pushed off of its now-smaller platform, and you'll need to slog back up to the boss battle.
      • The Evil Eagle in the seventh dungeon also works like this, flapping its wings to blow you off the tower. If you fall off, the Eagle gets all of his health back before you climb back up, but you don't.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The last Death Armos you fight in the Stone Tower Temple (which unlocks the chest you need to Hookshot to in order to reach the boss) is positioned on a narrow ledge and usually knocks you into the abyss when you try and jump to it.
  • Mega Man loves these. Almost every level has at least one platforming section with flyers that knock you into the Bottomless Pit below.
    • Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 9 have respawning drones that slowly home in on the player. They especially like to hang out around the infamous pop-in-and-out Temporary Platforms.
    • Bright Man's stage in Mega Man 4 has a moving platform section with ledge bats that also serve as the area's only sources of lighting, so you'll either have to put up with them or not see the platforms' tracks.
    • A fun variety are enemies who will jump out of Bottomless Pits. Particularly the ones that jump out, stall, and fall back in. If you are moving at top speed you will jump into one and recoil into the pit. Go play Mega Man 10 and start Commando Man's stage. They're all over the place.
    • Rockman 4 Minus ∞ makes this worse and gives us many varieties of the Up'n'Down.
  • Banjo-Kazooie:
    • This perfectly describes the behavior of "Big Cluckers", birds which pop out of holes in the wall to knock you off ledges in the final level. The designers even included a progressively more difficult gauntlet of ledges guarded by these. Earlier levels have Chompas, green (or, in one level, skeletal) fanged monsters that pop out of grates, but not with the same frustrating skill level as those cluckers.
    • In the second game, there are clamp monsters that snap out of the wall when you pass near their hole. They usually only appear when you're grip-climbing across a crack, and getting hit guarantees falling.
  • Many La-Mulana enemies, from bats to birds to Surprise Fish to Invisible Monsters, to Medusa Heads can and will push you off platforms, making you fall down ladders and ruin your jumps. Perhaps the worst single example is a certain Mini-Boss/Unique Enemy in the Confusion Gate which is called a bird but moves and looks like a giant bat and whose room is almost entirely made of narrow ledges. The remake notably has the Scriptures item, which renders the player completely invincible to bats (including the knockback!). Unfortunately, you get said item at around the time that bats are largely replaced with more dangerous, non-bat enemies, but better late than never.
  • Freeware platformer Ninja Senki has ghosts on Sections 1 & 2: they get killed in one hit, but often appear in groups, spawn right when you're about to jump and are omnipresent when you're trying to navigate Temporary Platform. Then, Sections 5 & 6 feature demon heads: these have doubled health and they fly in circles around you, passing through physical objects and coming back if they miss you the first time.
  • A secret mission in Devil May Cry 4. You have to traverse disappearing platforms without falling, while under attack from several flying enemies at once who are exceptionally difficult to finish off quickly. And yes, practically ANY hit will knock you off.note 
  • The pink Koindozers from Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, mooks who all carry large shields with which to ram you off cliffs. The good news is, they only appear in one level in the game. The bad news is, they're all over That One Level. You can't kill them, just avoid them (and it gets pretty difficult to time your jumps properly so that you land safely on top of their shield rather than right in front of it at perfect bulldozering range), suggest that the good people at Rare do something physically and anatomically impossible with their mothers, and never play the level again. According to one walkthrough:
    Dixie's helicopter spin is invaluable in this level. If you lose her, you might as well save yourself the trouble and simply commit suicide.
  • I Wanna Be the Guy has the Medusa heads from Castlevania (which temporarily turn you to stone and knock you backwards), as well as the Cheep Cheeps in the Road to Guy's Castle (which push you around randomly, usually off the cart and to your eventual death), as well as the aforementioned Ninja Gaiden birds in the Ghosts and Goblins section, which try to push you around into spikes or falling tombstones. It's worth noting that these are the only enemies in the game that don't kill you with one hit.
  • Several mooks in the Metropolis Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 function as this.
    • Almost every long stretch of running and boosting or blind jumps in Dimps-developed Sonic games ends in you running into a badnik.
  • Bug! features a few of these, especially one area in Splot where you had to jump from small platforms platforms with enemies on them.
  • Hollow Knight, being a Nintendo Hard game with platforming as a focus, has several species of Ledge Bat:
    • Mantis Youths in Fungal Wastes, which aggro the second you get close and repeatedly try to sting you (most likely knocking you down during a wall jump).
    • Mantis Petras in the Queen's Gardens, which throw boomerang projectiles at you on collapsing platforms over spike pits.
    • Several kinds of bees in The Hive.
    • Squits in Greenpath, where there's acid pools everywhere - they divebomb you.
    • The Medusa Head type ghosts that No Eyes uses to attack you, conveniently located over spike pits in the dark.
    • Flying Guards with weapons in the City of Tears and Ancient Basin.
    • Crystal Hunters in the Crystal Peaks, which also are rude enough to transform platforms into spike obstacles with their projectiles.
    • Flukefey in the Royal Waterways, which is already a Sewer Level.
    • And lest we forget, the Primal Aspids in Kingdom's Edge, which somehow manage to be this as well as Demonic Spiders thanks to their spread shot in a game with platforming and melee combat.
  • The Oddworld 2D platforming series makes a habit of placing insta-kill bats near ledges, either to tell you to find another path or to take a leap of faith. And the game doesn't even tell you that these bats are deadly. Then again, everything kills Abe in 1 hit anyway.
  • Airborne enemies in Journey to Silius typically appear in areas with bottomless pits.
  • Songs for a Hero: Several enemies can make the Hero fall into the Bottomless Pits, especially actual bats inside of the cave in the third level.
  • Terraria: Nearly every enemy in caves and the underworld can act like this if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fortunately, you can find an accessory that makes you completely immune to knockback in the dungeon, or you can use grappling hooks and wings among other items to largely negate this threat. Unsurprisingly, bats are indeed some of the most likely to do this, as they fly, move in quick and somewhat erratic patterns, and are hard to hit.
  • Every jump quest in MapleStory is chock full of these.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game features hordes of flying bats and Medusa Heads which fill the exact same niche.
  • Skunny: Save Our Pizzas: Crows can fly into Skunny as he jumps, causing him to fall.
  • They Bleed Pixels has the flying octopodes. They attack by dashing a third of the way across the screen; they usually hover far out of reach while they get ready to attack you.
  • In Iji, some Komato Skysmashers (flying turrets) do this, especially on the left side of the last level.
  • The bats of Spelunky can disrupt your jumps and result in your injury/death.
  • Almost all enemies and bosses in Wario Land 2 and 3 are like this, because Wario cannot physically die via collision damage, bottomless pits or just about anything else. So instead, the game puts enemies around ledges and places you need to carefully jump across, and then them knocking you back simply wastes time instead of causing damage. In Wario Land 4 these exist too (despite you having a health bar), with examples like the robo birds in factory-themed levels and the stationary head things that shoot spikes in Pinball Zone. Oh, and from 2 onwards, Frozen Wario is pretty much entirely based around this annoyance, since it's used to send Wario flying back off ledges uncontrollably until he hits a wall or obstacle.
  • The underground stage in Tiny Barbarian DX has bats that fly along at regular intervals to make life uncomfortable for the player.
  • Shovel Knight has rockets in the Clockwork Tower level which use the same movement pattern as Medusa Heads and only appear on screens where the ground has been replaced with either a pit or spikes.
  • Frankenstein's Monster on the Atari 2600 has every enemy knock the player back, but never kill them... it's the water that's lethal, so of course they have spiders that mess with your jump and send you into the water.
  • Literal bats in The Lion King's eight level named "Be Prepared". While during the first half of said level they are already plenty irritating with them swooping down on you while you're trying to jump over lava geysers, they are easily at their worst during the segment where Simba has to ride a river of lava on small rock slab, and any of these can easily push you off it with their Collision Damage for an instant life loss.
  • Valheim:
    • Most enemies in the swamps can fill this role. Like with every enemy in the game, their attacks will knock you back, and the swamp is full of watery areas infested with giant leeches and often deep enough that falling in puts you into swimming animation and sheathes your weapon.
    • Stone Golems in the mountains cause massive knockback even with basic attacks, and since it's the mountains, you can easily be sent flying off a cliff.

 
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Folded Fuzzy

Folded Fuzzies are not battled like other enemies in the game. Instead you'll take damage and be knocked off the ledge if you touch them.

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