History Main / WickedWasps

'''This is not a list of all wasps in fiction. This refers specifically to wasps being either portrayed as more monstrous than they are in RealLife or defined by their monstrosity.'''

'''This is not a list of all wasps in fiction. This refers specifically to wasps being portrayed as evil, monstrous or terrifying.'''

* One Website//{{Tumblr}} post has a chart that shows [[https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/624/231/c9a.jpg things to release at a wedding ceremony]], sorted according to coolness, with "prisoners" as the least cool and "[[Film/ClashOfTheTitans2010 the Kraken]]" as the most cool. "Wasps" were listed as the second-least cool thing to release at a wedding. However, according to Tumblr user the-fandoms-are-cool, that wasn't enough and "wasps" should have been below "prisoners", because prisoners at least have the capacity to sit politely and congratulate the married couple, while wasps would only cause pain.

* One Website//{{Tumblr}} post has a chart that shows [[https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/624/231/c9a.jpg things to release at a wedding ceremony]], sorted according to coolness, with "prisoners" as the least cool and "[[Film/ClashOfTheTitans2010 the Kraken]]" as the most cool. "Wasps" were listed as the second-least cool thing to release at a wedding, but according to Tumblr user the-fandoms-are-cool, that wasn't enough and "wasps" should have been below "prisoners".
->''PRISONERS AT LEAST HAVE THE CAPACITY TO [[EvenEvilHasStandards SIT POLITELY AND CONGRATULATE YOU]] WASPS ARE THE PHYSICAL INCARNATION OF METATRON'S DICK FUCKING YOU IN THE ASS WITH NO LUBE''

* Thanks to their agonizing stings (Only a little behind the three wasps at the top of the Schmidt Pain Scale in terms of severity) and their "Cow Killer" nickname, velvet ants have developed a reputation of being terrifying, highly lethal little monsters. Like other solitary wasps however, they're fairly docile and would prefer to run away rather than sting people, and they don't even kill cows either. But if you sufficiently provoke them, you absolutely ''will'' regret it.

** Soldiers from the Wasp Kingdom are set up as an antagonistic faction to the Ant Kingdom the protagonists hail from. [[spoiler: Subverted, as it turns out the Wasp Kingdom was under some kind of mind control from the king, who isn't even a wasp himself.]]

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Lancers are [[AnimalisticAbomination Creatures of Grimm]] that take the form of huge hornets around the size of a person. They live among the floating islands of the Lake Matsu in Anima and attack any airships that attempt to travel through their airspace. They have the ability to use their stingers like grappling guns, hooking onto ships and reeling them in where they use their powerful mandibles to chew their way through the ship's hull. A small swarm of Lancers can be enough to overwhelm even airships that have [[CreatureHunterOrganization Huntsmen]] on board. Queen Lancers, however, act alone; they're [[GiantFlyer mammoth creatures]], easily dwarfing cargo ships, and have the ability to [[FlechetteStorm fire darts]] that burst out of each side of their bodies, on top of being able to use their mandibles and tail stingers. A Queen Lancer is so tough she can easily survive an explosion caused by multiple crates of [[PowerCrystal Dust]] igniting at the same time.

* ''WesternAnimation/BeastWars'': Waspinator is one of the evil Predacons, a group made of Transformers based on traditionally "evil" or unpleasant animals such as a {{sc|aryScorpions}}orpion, two {{spiders|AreScary}}, a PteroSoarer and a ''TyrannosaurusRex''. [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain He's the least scary amongst them.]]

While bees have long been viewed as a friend to humanity, people have not, historically, had many reasons to like wasps. They don't make honey or (most of them) pollinate flowers, are far more aggressive, and can sting as many times as they like. They're also highly territorial and easily roused, even by mistake, in defense of their nests. People have therefore learned to associate them with [[BeeAfraid angry swarms]] and impending pain.

Often found in the HornetHole. See also UnpleasantAnimalCounterpart and AnimalJingoism for when villainous wasps are matched with VirtuousBees or ants, and BeeAfraid for when the wasps (or bees) go out in force to sting and harass their victims. Compare AntAssault.

-->-- '''Blathers''', ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossingNewHorizons''

* ''Literature/InCryptid'': Apraxis wasps are voracious predatory wasps about the size of a man's foot which attack and consume anything they come across. Apraxis wasps implant eggs in their hosts which hatch into nymphs inside the host, releasing a paralyzing agent that sends their host into a coma. These vile wasps are also highly intelligent and even sapient with the ability to mimic human voices to get closer to their prey and catch then unawares.

* In the short story "[[http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/yu_04_11/ The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees]]", the titular wasps are tyrannical and imperialistic [[FantasticRacism Fantastic Racists]] who, on settling in the area where the bees live, swiftly impose themselves on their fellow social insects, kill the envoys the bees send to parlay with them when these suggest anything beyond the bees' complete surrender to them and turn their hive into a tightly controlled puppet state, forcing the bees to give them heavy tithes of food and of larvae to raise as servants.
* In ''Literature/TheFairyRebel'' the wicked fairy queen commands wasps and will sometimes imprison fairies who defy her inside wasps' nests, which is more or less a death sentence. Bees are stated to be reasonable creatures, since if they sting a fairy, they'll die as well. But wasps will sometimes sting fairies for the fun of it, just because they can.

* In the InteractiveFiction story ''Sting of the Wasp'', the protagonist is repeatedly likened to one; it's both a pun on the acronym for "white Anglo-Saxon Protestant" (the game takes place at a [[AcceptableTargets country club]]) and to how unpleasant, vicious, and cruel the character is.
* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry'': One of the most common enemies encountered in the series are the Zingers, gorilla-sized yellow jacket wasps whose spike-covered bodies make them immune to all the attacks. The Kongs would need to either chuck a barrel at them or get help from an Animal Buddy to defeat them. Two boss variants exist: Queen B in the [[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry1 first game]] and King Zing in the [[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest second]]. A SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute appeared in the [[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry3DixieKongsDoubleTrouble third game]] called Buzz. Aside from being robotic wasps with buzzsaws on their abdomen, they are mechanically identical to their predecessors.

%%* ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'': In "Revenge of the Fly", April O'Neil is turned into a wasp.%%Where does wickedness come in?
* In ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'', Rick goes to a reality where people evolved from bugs rather than apes and meets their version of the Sanchez family. [[SubvertedTrope Defying expectations]], the Wasp!Sanchez family are at worst AffablyEvil and ObliviouslyEvil and at best JerkWithAHeartOfGold. Wasp!Beth and Wasp!Jerry seem HappilyMarried and Wasp!Rick even explains that if your species' reproduction cycle involves laying eggs in another creatures' eye sockets, then you have to compensate by having a little empathy for someone in need of help. Though they do eat Caterpillar!Goldenfold and [[MisterSeahorse his babies]] off the dinner table while he screams in agony and pleads to die a quick death.

Often found in the HornetHole. See also UnpleasantAnimalCounterpart and AnimalJingoism for when villainous wasps are matched with VirtuousBees or ants, and BeeAfraid for when the wasps (or bees) go out in force to sting and harass their victims.

* ''Manga/DailyLifeWithMonsterGirl'' has Killa the Killer Bee. She's drawn far less human-looking than other monster girls and can [[BeebeeGun control]] Japanese Giant Hornets. [[spoiler: It's actually a subversion, as it turns out that she's actually not evil or even hostile to Kimihito. Her venom is actually quite weak and the only reason she got labeled a dangerous species is because when she was going through customs she stupidly tried to attack Rachnera in revenge for the latter having humiliated her years ago]].

* ''Videogame/FalloutNewVegas'': Cazadores are giant mutated [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_hawk tarantula hawk spider wasps]], created by gene-splicing experiments in a military research lab. They are incredibly fast and carry a deadly venom, making them one of the most formidable enemies in the game.

* ''Videogame/{{Minecraft}}'': The ''Biomes [='=]o Plenty'' GameMod includes Nether wasps, which are only found in giant hives in the Nether -- {{Hell}}, for all intents and purposes -- and unlike other animals are hostile and attack on sight.

* ''WebComic/GirlGenius'': Slaver wasps are the most ubiquitous servants and forces of [[BigBad the Other]], make up the bulk of its armies, and are the main threat associated with it in-universe. They come in two types: flightless warrior forms half the height of a man, with forelegs capable of impaling a human being, and the regular-sized slaver wasps proper, which true to their name work by flying into a person's mouth and [[PuppeteerParasite turning them into a mind-controlled revenant]] to serve the Other as either a shambling zombie or a spy.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet Asian Giant Hornet]] ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7zWGOGjLxs video from National Geographic here]]), a massive wasp with a needle-sized stinger, is a terrifyingly aggressive large insect with alarm pheromones that call her sisters to the hunt. The thing that makes these killer wasps absolutely feared by humans is that their stings inject a venom that partially digests the victim, which normally renders the innards of insect prey into a protein soup for their larvae to consume, and is potent enough to do severe damage to human flesh (potential side effects include severe bleeding due to destroyed red blood cells, necrosis, and kidney failure), in addition to making their stings excruciatingly agonising. These menaces are so feared by humans that on at least [[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2465276/Killer-hornets-nest-destroyed-FLAME-THROWER-Chinas-army.html one occasion in China]], the villagers called for the People's Liberation Army to deploy men with [[KillItWithFire flamethrowers]] to burn out their nest when it was too close to a farming settlement. These hornets are documented to have a legitimate death toll of humans on an annual basis, and against unprepared honeybee hives, a handful of them can slaughter hundreds of bees effortlessly. As of late April 2020, they've been spotted in the USA, resulting in a mad rush by ecologists to destroy their population before their mating season can come around (the official reason is that they're an invasive species in the US whose presence there would cause immense amounts of damage to the local environment, but the general public also tends to attribute it to the species's not-entirely-undeserved reputation as "murder hornets").

* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry'': One of the most common enemies encountered in the series are the Zingers, gorilla-sized yellow jacket wasps whose spike-covered bodies make them immune to all the attacks. The Kongs would need to either chuck a barrel at them or get help from an Animal Buddy to defeat them. Two boss variants exist: Queen B in the [[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry1 first game]] and King Zing in the [[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest second]]. A SuspiciouslySimilarSustitute appeared in the [[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry3DixieKongsDoubleTrouble third game]] called Buzz. Aside from being robotic wasps with buzzsaws on their abdomen, they are mechanically identical to their predecessors.

* ''VideoGame/BugFables'': Soldiers from the Wasp Kingdom are set up as an antagonistic faction to the Ant Kingdom the protagonists hail from. [[spoiler: Subverted, as it turns out the Wasp Kingdom was under some kind of mind control from the king, who isn't even a wasp himself.]]

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet Asian Giant Hornet]] ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7zWGOGjLxs video from National Geographic here]]), a massive wasp with a needle-sized stinger, is a terrifyingly aggressive large insect with alarm pheromones that call her sisters to the hunt. The thing that makes these killer wasps absolutely feared by humans is that their stings inject a venom that partially digests the victim, which normally renders the innards of insect prey into a protein soup for their larvae to consume, and is potent enough to do severe damage to human flesh (potential side effects include severe bleeding due to destroyed red blood cells, necrosis, and kidney failure), in addition to making their stings excruciatingly agonising. These menaces are so feared by humans that on at least [[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2465276/Killer-hornets-nest-destroyed-FLAME-THROWER-Chinas-army.html one occasion in China]], the villagers called for the People's Liberation Army to deploy men with [[KillItWithFire flamethrowers]] to burn out their nest when it was too close to a farming settlement. These hornets are documented to have a legitimate death toll of humans on an annual basis, and against unprepared honeybee hives, a handful of them can slaughter hundreds of bees effortlessly. As of late April 2020, they've been spotted in the USA.

* ''VideoGame/{{Daxter}}'': The Strip Mine Hive Queen, although not an actual wasp, is a colossal Metal Bug that serves as the second full-fledged boss of the game and strongly resembles a hornet due to its body proportions.

* ''Videogame/FalloutNewVegas'': Cazadores are giant mutated [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_hawk tarantula hawk spider wasps]], created by gene-splicing experiments in a military research lab. They are incredibly fast and carry a deadly venom, making them one of the most formidable enemies in the game.