"...And sometimes, the whole creature is nothing but a hairy blob or fleshy sphere, distinguished only by the presence of six or more spindly limbs."
Unlike insects, spiders have only two segments: a cephalothorax, which is pretty much the head and body fused together, and an abdomen. This means that their bodies often have a simpler, stocky look compared to most insects... which could explain why some works make them look even simpler.
Spiders or spider-like creatures in drawn media are sometimes depicted as looking like a ball with eight (or fewer) legs. Depictions outside of the simplest ones usually have eyes, and often look fuzzy or hairy. Being a rather simple design, they tend to be a solid black in color, though more colorful variations aren't unheard of.
A Sub-Trope of Artistic License – Arachnids and Funny Animal Anatomy. Compare: Cephalothorax (For general cases of something's head and body being one).
Examples:
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Asian Animation
- Lamput: The spider in "Lamput and the Spider" is a simple sphere shape with six legs.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: The spiders seen in the tunnel in Great War in the Bizarre World episode 50 are round, fuzzy circles with six legs.
Comic Books
- Spider-Man: Depending on the Artist, Spidey's costume usually has a sharply-defined spider as the chest emblem, but the spider on the back is much less anatomically correct as the legs are shown attached to the abdomen instead of the cephalothorax. Sometimes, there isn't even a division between the cephalotorax and the abdomen, being just an 8-legged oval.
Comic Strips
- Garfield: Spiders are typically depicted in a very stylized manner, as small black dots with eight black stick legs. Sometimes a distinct head is visible, and sometimes not.
- Slylock Fox: Count Weirdly's lab is often depicted with at least one stylized, smiling spider hanging from a thread.
Films — Animation
- Monsters University: During the "field trip" to Monsters Incorporated, one of the monsters on the Scare Floor is a seemingly non-scary ball of purple fuzz, who then sprouts eight long legs and a sharp-toothed grin.
- Mune: Guardian of the Moon: The creatures that assist the current Guardian of the Moon are spider-like things with fluffy, round bodies, six spindly legs, two large eyes, and oddly enough, beaklike mouths. They are never specifically referred to as spiders, but they do spin webs.
- The Willoughbys: Tim Willoughby encounters and shoots away a spider, which is a purple ball with eight eyes and eight legs, while in the coal bin.
Literature
- Spiders drawn by Mauri Kunnas, such as Boris from Mr Clutterbuck, look like grey balls of fuzz with legs.
Live-Action TV
- Gilligan's Island: In "The Pigeon", the castaways run across a fuzzball with legs called a Black Mourning Spider. This venomous fellow is a crossover with Giant Spider, as the thing weighs 750 pounds, is a little larger than a human being and only has what look like vestigial legs that don't move or even touch the ground.
- Robot Wars: Panic Attack's mascot is a round grey spider with pointed legs and a large scowling face. Originally rather detailed despite the simplified shape in series 2, it was made far more cartoony for the next and every subsequent series after.
Puppet Shows
- Eureeka's Castle: Batly's pet, Webster, is a fist-sized ball of fur that's called a spider, even though he's only got five legs.
Toys
- Beanie Babies: Creeps the Spider in the Halloweenie collection is a fuzzy spider. He has a round, black head with yellow eyes and a smiling red mouth, along with orange-and-black-striped legs protruding from the sides.
Video Games
- Blues ABC Time Activities: The spider in the jungle minigame is a purple, fuzzy thing with a smiley face, along with eight legs protruding from its circular head.
- Cut the Rope: The enemies in the series are spiders, represented as puffy black balls with six spindly legs.
- Fate/Grand Order: The Tsuchigumo summoned by Rider Murasaki Shibibu looks like two large puffballs of darkness with three eyes and eight thin spider legs. This is noted to be just a subspecies of Tsuchigumo, as the actual ones who appear later as enemies look much more monstrous than the one Murasaki rides on.
- Just Shapes & Beats: In the remix of "Spider Dance" from Undertale, all of the spiders are just circles with legs, inheriting the simplicity from Undertale. This includes the screen-filling boss spider antagonizing you through the whole track.
- Kirby: The Mariel
in Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards looks like a black ball with four segmented legs and two white eyes.
- LISA: The Marty Spiders look like Marty's head on six thin spider legs.
- Rayman 2: The Great Escape: The Spiders are purple, spherical, multi-eyed things with a mouth and six legs coming from them.
- Super Mario 64: The Scuttlebug enemy is depicted as just a sphere with eyes, pincers, and four thin legs on it. All later games, including the DS remake, depict it as more similar to actual spiders.
- The Town with No Name: The spider whom the Stranger steps on in the introduction has a smiley face just as big as its body. Choosing to get back on the train leads the Stranger to crush it a couple more times, and it leaves a considerable pool of blood.
- Undertale: Muffet's spiders are drawn as barely more than squares with a few pixelated lines coming off them for legs, due to the low resolution of the game. Muffet herself is another trope entirely.
- Yoshi's Story: The Spider enemies look like striped balls with spike-like legs and two eyes.
Webcomics
- Thogy: Mola is a spider-like creature that looks like a ball of fuzz with legs and a face. Whether he's an actual spider or not is ambiguous, as more realistic spiders have been shown in the comic.
Web Original
- Bogleech: The Halloween Bestiary entry on Heebie-Jeebies starts by noting the various inaccuracies in spider-themed Halloween decorations, including that some of them look like blobs with limbs. This sets up for the text's reasoning that these creatures may not be spiders...
- CatGhost: Malone appears as a round, fuzzy, purple spider with four sharp legs.
- David Thorne has an article where he enlists the services of a "long-distance chiropractor", then attempts to pay his fees with a drawing of a spider. The spider he draws is a completely black ovoid with a smiley face and seven legs.
- Hungry Happenings: The Giant Cake Ball Spider and Oreo Spider Bites recipes both result in spiders that look like black balls with legs and eyes.
- Neopets: The petpet known as a "spyder" is just a black sphere with six differently-sized legs. It does get slightly more complex by having three pairs of red eyes, however.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: Mrs. Croaker’s pet spider Archie is essentially a ball of fur with eight legs. He also acts a lot like a dog.
- Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids:
- The Narrator's pet spider Spindleshanks is a purple ball with six legs, two hands, and two eyes.
- The New Nanny: The second nanny the Frightfullybesys had hired was a spider who looks like a furry ball with eight legs.
- A Tangled Web: The episode depicts the spiders as styled complete with a ball-like body, eight legs, and two eyes.
- Kick Me: The Giant Spider that attacks the main character is a one-eyed ball with eight small legs. In fact, it doesn't walk, it just bounces like a basketball.
- The Looney Tunes Cartoons short "Hex Appeal" revolves around Witch Hazel chasing after a spider that's designed this way.
- Minuscule has two kinds of spiders. Black ones look like this, while the brown ones are more realistic.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Luna Eclipsed", the spider toys used in a game have round, fuzzy bodies with eight stubby legs. When Luna's spell animates them, the resulting creatures look much the same but with pointed limbs instead.
- Peppa Pig: "Mister Skinnylegs" has a spider that's a fuzzy black ball with long, skinny legs.
- Phineas and Ferb: In "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted!", Perry the Platypus is seen fighting a giant robotic spider which is just a black ball with eight legs.
- Shaun the Sheep: The spider in... well, "The Spider" is just a little black pom-pom with legs and Aardman's trademark bead eyes stuck on. Everybody but Shaun still spends the episode freaking out about it, anyway.
- Spider! (1991): The titular spider is drawn with a round, hairy, one-part body, most of which is taken up by a pair of human-like eyes and toothy grin.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Spider with a Top Hat, one of the creatures living inside Star's wand, is just a ball with eight legs and a face. And, of course, a top hat.
- The Trap Door: Berk's pet spider, Drutt, has a gray, round body, six legs, two eyes, and a single tooth.
