Insectoid Aliens

aka: Insectoid Alien

In space, bug zaps you.

It was no accident that they looked insectlike to human beings. Though their internal organs were now much more complex and specialized than any insects, and they had evolved an internal skeleton and shed most of the exoskeleton, their physical structure still echoed their ancestors, who could easily have been very much like Earth's ants. "But don't be fooled by that," said Graff. "It's just as meaningful to say that our ancestors could easily have been very much like squirrels."

— Ender's Game

You've got Humanoid Aliens, and you've got Starfish Aliens. Somewhere in between are the Insectoid Aliens: aliens modeled after Earth arthropods.

Often, inspiration for this trope comes from "eusocial insects," including many species in the order Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps) and insects in the infraorder Isoptera (termites), who are able to create societies with caste systems and complex habitats similar to that of human cities. Thus often these aliens will invoke Hive Mind, Bee People, Horde of Alien Locusts and a philosophy of We Have Reserves, Zerg Rush and Attack! Attack! Attack!.

Insectoid Aliens not based on eusocial insects also exist, and are much more likely to be individualistic or live in smaller societies. In cases where the eusocial insectoids are portrayed as The Empire, these may be more peaceful and perhaps form La Résistance. They may also be In Harmony with Nature, in contrast to the eusocial insectoid empire who feel a constant drive to expand. Alternatively, the eusocial insectoids may be portrayed more positively, in which case the individualist insectoids may instead be monstrous and animalistic or Always Chaotic Evil.

Due to What Measure Is a Non-Cute? (and arthropods are specifically known to provoke fear in humans) such aliens are likely to be Always Chaotic Evil, though exceptions do exist. Overlaps with Big Creepy-Crawlies, though this trope deals specifically with extraterrestrial bugs. The Xenomorph Xerox also owes a lot to this trope. A Bug War will often (although not always) feature opponents that actually look like bugs.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Anpanman: The Baikins, despite being called "alien germs", are more insect-like than anything else. They have antenna (most have only one, some have two), most of the males have mandible-equse teeth structures, and a few of them have tiny fly-like wings that they can buzz around with. Their smaller minions, the Kabirunrun, look like vaguely bug-like blobs, having four arms and antenna.
• Macross Frontier: The Vajra can not only survive in space, but are perfectly capable of both fold communication and fold travel. While also producing the biological equivalent of missiles in their bodies.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S introduces Lutecia, who has the ability to summon these. According to side materials, the giant Jiraiyo beetles come from the mountainous region of an uninhabited planet, while the insectoid Kaiju Hakutenou is a rare creature from a planet outside TSAB jurisdiction.
• Star Blazers / Space Battleship Yamato has the Bee People from planet Beeland who look and act like humanoid bees.

Comic Books

• Asterix: Subverted in "Asterix and the Falling Sky". Nagma at first appears to be a cockroach-like creature until Asterix gives him a Megaton Punch, at which point the Nagma's armor falls apart and he is revealed to be a yellow-skinned, pointy-eared humanoid.
• Fantastic Four: Annihilus is technically supposed to be a kind of humanoid bug, with chitinous skin and a vaguely mantis-like head, but his general proportions are so humanoid it can be hard to see the resemblance.
• Invincible: Thraxans, the native population of the planet Thraxa, are blue-skinned humanoid mantids — emphasis on "humanoid" in the case of the women. Their most notably traits are an insect-like lifespan, which sees them dead of old age by 9 Earth months, and the corresponding Instant Expert power they have as compensation.
• Legends of the Dead Earth: In Catwoman Annual #3, an insectoid alien visits a museum and hears the story of the heroic Commissioner Joker's battle with the villainous Batman and Catwoman on Old Earth.
• Micronauts: The hero Bug, and his race the Insectivorids.
• Nemesis the Warlock: The planet Arachnos is inhabited by a sentient race of Giant Spiders. Most of them are quite friendly, however.
• New Gods: The "bugs" of New Genesis evolved as a result of biological weapons used by Apokolips. They're an intelligent race, though still animalistic in their culture. They're treated with terrible Fantastic Racism by the planet's Human Aliens, who regard them literally as vermin. Forager, a new god raised by the bugs, tries to be a bridge between the two peoples.
• Omega Men: Katydid.
• Planet Hulk: Miek is a member of a race of humanoid beetle-ants native to the planet Sakaar. Their race relies on much larger and less humanoid-shaped female "queens" to reproduce, and he himself undergoes a metamorphosis into a larger, more powerful form when he becomes the "king" of his people. He later enters into a relationship with No-Name of the Brood who is from a different race of insect aliens.
• Psychonaut has the Xenosians, which look like giant alien millipedes.
• Shazam!: Captain Marvel's worst enemy (not his most frequent — that'd be Dr. Sivana) has always been Mr. Mind, a tiny caterpillar-like alien with enormous psychic powers.
• Sojourn: The Urnethi.
• Superman:
  • Bizarrogirl: The Ash'ka'phageous found by Supergirl are a race of planet-eating aliens resembling bipedal insects (unless they're traveling between worlds. Then they look like giant winged cocoons). They spawn swarms ofbug-like critters.
  • Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom: As camping on a faraway planet, Kal and Kara run into a group of humanoid aliens with crayfish head, pincers and legs. They were twice taller than a human, and their rudimentary stone-and-wood weapons suggested they were sapient.
• Superworld Comics: The Antarenes look like large green ants. They attempted to push the Earth into the sun and replace it with their own planet.
• The Brood from X-Men are Xenomorph expies drawn to look more like actual Earth insects (wings, lots of legs, don't stand upright).
• Yoko Tsuno: The Titans are giant grasshopper-like aliens that walk upward. Their bodies are laced with titanium to withstand the stronger gravity on the planet Vinea. The Titans are also highly technologically advanced and their bodies are grafted with equipment and cybernetics.

Fan Works

• The Night Unfurls:
  • A portion of artificial mutants under Shamuhaza's creation are "men fused with insects and other creepy crawlies", with bug heads, wings, stingers, and all. Durable, quick, and numerous, they are more formidable than the average mook. It is worth mentioning that some of them had their formerly human heads replaced by a bunch of eyes and stingers, uncannily resembling the Garden of Eyes from Bloodborne.
  • Even Shamuhaza himself gets turned into an arthropod as One Wing Angel.

Films — Animation

• Treasure Planet: Mr. Scroop combines features from a spider and crab.

Films — Live-Action

• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: The Lectroids are ant people (hence the red and black factions). They're not evil as a species. The bad guys in the movie are rogue criminals hated by their own government because of their Fantastic Racism.
• Alien: The titular aliens aren't strictly insectoid, but they do have biomechanical-looking exoskeletons and an ant-like society.
• Alien Apocalypse: The aliens are locust-like and feed on trees.
• District 9: The Prawns are Humanoid Aliens with an insectoid slant.
• Godzilla vs. Gigan: The villains are cockroaches from space.
• High Plains Invaders: The invaders (dubbed "Bugs" by the townsfolk) are giant four-legged bugs with stinger tails.
• Men in Black: Edgar the Bug, the main villain from the first film, is a twenty-foot-long cockroach from outer space.
• Moscow — Cassiopeia: Lob is a sci-fi fan and is constantly spouting his expectations of aliens. In his mind, they should look somewhat like dragonflies (he calls them "strekozoids" formed from "strekoza", Russian for "dragonfly" and the "-oid" suffix). Unfortunately, he's Wrong Genre Savvy, and the aliens are humanoid.
• Starship Troopers: The Arachnids come in various shapes and sizes — the common "infantry", so to speak, consists of pretty large (taller than humans, but not by much), four-legged, shrieking horrors, but there are also giant fire-breathing beetles, dragonfly-wasp-fly-like flyers big enough to grab and lift a man from the ground and, best of all, enormous brain-eaters that resemble bloated larvae. They seem to have a hive mind system.
• Star Wars:
  • Attack of the Clones features the Geonosians, who resemble giant humanoid locusts and live in immense earthen hives, as prominent villains.
  • The Empire Strikes Back featured a brief cameo by Zuckuss, a bounty hunter who was part of an insectoid species known as the Gand.

Literature

• The Qu of All Tomorrows look like giant damselflies.
• In Angel Station, many servants of the Beloved, like the navigator race, are insectoid or crustacean-like.
• Animorphs:
  • The Taxxons resemble gigantic monstrous centipedes.
  • In this series, The Greys are called the Skrit Na, the "Skrit" being a sort of larval stage that looks like a giant cochroach.
  • The Nesk from In the Time of Dinosaurs are alien ants which swarm together to take on large shapes.
• In The Balanced Sword, the world of Zarathan has many sapient races of a variety of shapes and sizes, including an unnamed insectoid race whose members tend to show up as mooks.
• Children of Time (2015): The large intelligent spiders. Although the term "alien" is arguable, as they're transplanted Earthly jumping spiders mutated by an ancient human experiment gone awry on a terraformed planet.
• Confederation of Valor: The Miktok are giant spiders that are renowned for the beauty of their art.
• Cthulhu Mythos:
  • The Mi-Go are vaguely insectile and winged, although in their introductory story "The Whisperer in Darkness" they're more commonly described as crustaceans.
  • Also "the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter" mentioned in "Beyond the Wall of Sleep".
  • Not extraterrestrial, but "The Shadow Out of Time" indicates that a race of giant sapient beetles will emerge on Earth in Humanity's Wake.
• Dykstras War: The Phinons are not only insectoid in appearance, but mentally, they are nearly mindless hive insects. All of their "technology" consists of structures that they evolved to make, like bees making beehives. They're tremendously formidable, but not adaptable, and there's absolutely no negotiating with them because they're basically animals.
• Ender's Game: The Formics are insectlike with a Hive Mind. They are also nicknamed "Buggers". They're expanded upon in the Ender's Game Alive audioplay, where Ender explores the Formic-made tunnels on Eros and notes that Formic ship movements sometimes mimic these tunnels, resulting in a "Eureka!" Moment when Ender realizes that this must mean that the queens aren't always in direct control over all the drones, and those that are left "on automatic" go back to their pre-sentience roots and try to "burrow" through space.
• Everworld: The Hetwans, which act like mindless drones in service of their god, Ka Anor. Particular focus is paid to their pedipalps (though they're never called that), which still move after they're killed. They came from another universe separate from either Everworld or ours.
• The First Men in the Moon: H. G. Wells's Selenites, the race of intelligent insectoids with a Hive Caste System who farm giant caterpillar-creatures on the moon, are the indisputable Ur-Example of this trope.
• The Flight Engineer: The narrator remarks that the Fibians seem to be tailor-made to push all of humanity's arthropod-related fear buttons. Take the body of a spider and inflate it to five feet tall with males and over ten feet tall with females. Replace the front pair of legs with hands. Add a whiplike stinger to the abdomen.
• The History of the Galaxy: The appropriately-named Insects look like upright-walking black ants about the size of a human who communicate via telepathy. While each Insect is an individual, the Hive "mental field" can be used to remove an Insect's individuality, turning it into a mindless drone for use as cheap workforce or soldiers. Because of this, the Insects have never developed cybernetics and are baffled by human-made cyborgs and Humongous Mecha.
• Humanx Commonwealth: The thranx resemble giant, four-legged insects, and typically live in complex underground hives that humans would find horribly sweltering, humid and claustrophobic — for their own, the thranx find human cities much too open, bitterly cold and unpleasantly arid. They used to reproduce through queens, but readapted to reproduce individually on their way to sapience. Unlike what their respective environmental preferences and trope conventions would suggest, humans and thranx are fast allies.
• The Insects From Shaggai, by Ramsey Campbell, has a race of small insectoid interstellar refugees called the Shan, who arrived on Earth centuries ago from a planet named Shaggai that orbits twin emerald suns.
• In "Missile Gap", by Charles Stross, some of the alien species present on the disc are insectoid, varying in size and degree of anthropomorphism, and live in hive-based caste systems. The ending states that these species make up the majority of life there, and that they — not humanity — will inherit the future.
• Mission of Gravity: The Mesklinites, who live on a high-gravity world where it helps to be close to the ground, resemble centipedes. Unlike many examples of this trope, they avert Big Creepy-Crawlies — Hal Clement was aware of the Square-Cube Law, which is even more of an issue on a world where four times Earth's gravity is as forgiving as it gets — and are not much bigger than giant centipedes on Earth. As Heavy Worlders, Mesklinites are prodigiously strong for their size, and they are much more durable than comparable terrestrial organisms. However, despite their very alien appearance, they have a surprising amount of psychological common ground with humans.
• El Nino Mariposa: The Ferrotophagous are big metalic insectoid iron-eaters.
• The Madness Season: The Tyr, the Saudar, and one slave race are, respectively, ant-like aliens (in habit if not in exact appearance), beetle-like aliens, and spider-like aliens.
• Maria Nova's pet space-bugs in Orbital Lily are grasshopper-like things that are slightly larger than a human.
• Retief: The Groaci are vaguely insectile.
• The Science of Discworld: One of the first sapient species the wizards notice on Roundworld is a race of intelligent city-building crabs. Which are crustaceans, but close enough.
• Starship Troopers; The Pseudo-Arachnids/"Bugs" are an early example of this trope, being described as looking like "a madman's conception of a giant, intelligent spider". Unlike their later movie counterparts, these Bugs are technological peers of humanity.
• Star Trek Novel 'Verse: Several races resemble arthropods. Most are highly conservative cultures, and range from the peaceful Nasat, who resemble giant pillbugs and are known for their desire to avoid conflict (see Starfleet Corps of Engineers in particular), through the Orishans, to the hostile Cheka, who resemble spiders. There are also Kaferians, Jarada and the wasp-race in the first Starfleet Corps of Engineers story.
• Star Wars Legends: Numerous insectoid species are present in the franchise:
  • Dark Nest Trilogy: The Killiks resemble giant, sapient ants capable of carrying their anterior bodies upright. They were the original natives of Alderaan, and the ruins of their immense hives are still found on the planet.
  • Galaxy of Fear: The S'krrr in The Swarm, who even communicate with Bug Buzz and believe themselves descended from their planet's beetles.
• Well World: The Akkafians are a species roughly resembling eight-legged, four-winged insects in the same generally size range as human beings. They eat their food live, stinging it into quiescence during the meal, and live in a rigidly hierarchical society modeled after a feudal monarchy.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5: A crime lord in the early seasons is basically a sapient praying mantis. There are also the Shadows, which basically look like human-sized, black, spiky spider people, and the Gaim (who underneath their environmental suits look like giant ants).
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Web Planet": The titular world is inhabited by two insectoid races, the friendly Monoptera and the sinister Zarbi. The Zarbi are naturally like cattle but are being controlled by Eldritch Abomination the Animus.
  • "The Monster of Peladon": The ambassador from Alpha Centauri (who returns a few more times over the course of the series) is a green caterpillar-like creature with multiple limbs, and a face consisting of one gigantic eye. Combined with its high pitched voice and gentle nature, it's weirdly adorable.
  • "The Ark in Space": The Wirrn are a race of giant, parasitic, wasplike creatures who are widely believed to have been an inspiration for the film Alien.
  • Mentors, seen in "Vengeance on Varos" and "Mindwarp", resemble slimy, wormlike bugs, but with semihumanoid arms and faces.
  • "Utopia": Chantho, the last of the Malmooths. She looks like a blue humanoid bug; incidentally, she takes great offence to being compared to a grasshopper.
  • "The Unicorn and the Wasp": The threat turns out to be an actual (giant extraterrestrial) wasp.
  • "Planet of the Dead": The Tritovores are humanoid flies. The TARDIS is not present in this episode to provide Translator Microbes, so you get to hear their actual language (which is composed of clicking sounds). The Doctor translates and makes his own clicking sounds to talk to them.
• Chapter 10 of The Mandalorian has Peli Motto playing sabacc against Dr. Mandible, a large insectoid. Peli wins with an Idiot's Array.
• The Outer Limits (1963): "The Zanti Misfits" has the Zanti, a race of intelligent ants about the size of rats, but with human-like faces.
• Power Rangers: A number of aliens tend towards this, although being played by men in suits, they're usually still bipedal. Most notably are the Barillian Bugs that wiped out most of Andros' homeworld of KO-35 from Power Rangers in Space. They are The Virus — get stung by one, and you slowly turn into one.
• Quatermass: The Martians from Quatermass and the Pit look like large locusts.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: One of the five Xindi races is the Insectoids, which look like human sized mantises.
• The Twilight Zone (1985): In "A Day in Beaumont", Dr. Kevin Carlson and Faith frantically try to warn the authorities that a race of insectoid aliens, whose Flying Saucer they saw crash, are planning to invade Earth in 1955. Kevin and Faith later discover that they are members of this race themselves and that what they think is Earth is really Altair IV. H.G. Orson explains to them that they are taking part in a commando training simulation for their race's planned invasion of Earth and that they are experiencing memory loss.
• Ultra Series has plenty.
  • Ultra Q: The Cicada People are Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • Ultraman's most famous and popular enemies, the Baltans resemble wingless humanoid cicadas with lobster-like claws. Some books on Ultraman kaiju claim they're related to the Cicada People.
  • Ultraseven introduced a number of these, like the Shaplay (who resemble humans with the heads of horseflies) and the Pitts (an all-female race of Creepy Twins with dragonflies' heads)
  • The franchise also has a number of aliens consciously modeled after the Baltans, like the Temperor of Ultraman Taro and the Sran of Ultraman Max.

Pinball

• Asteroid Annie and the Aliens: Many of the aliens have insectile exoskeletons and carapaces.

Radio

• Big Finish Doctor Who: In "Sisters of the Flame" and "Vengeance of Morbius", the Trell are ten-foot centipedes. They are a peaceful and law-abiding race and Police Marshal Rosto proves helpful to Lucie.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Thri-kreen, predating but popularized in Dark Sun, are basically humanoid praying mantises with Psychic Powers.
  • Spelljammer has several: the Xixchil, the K'rrr, the Rastipedes (actually a Canon Immigrant from Star Frontiers), and the evil Neogi.
  • The dromites of 3rd Edition are a downplayed example, in that they look something like genderless halflings with compound eyes, antennae, and patches of chitin instead of hair.
• Starfinder: The Shirren, former members of a Horde of Alien Locusts and one of the game's playable races, resemble human-sized, bipedal insects.
• In Starfire, the enemy aliens-bent-on-genocide during the Fourth Interstellar War are called the Arachnids. I'll give you one guess as to what they look like.
• Star Fleet Battles has the Seltorians, that have brought to the Milky Way the war they had in their home galaxy with the Tholians.
• Warhammer 40,000: One of the races that the Tau are allied with are the insectoid Vespid. The Catachan Devils look like a centipede-scorpion hybrid the size of a train. The Tyranids are also heavily modeled after Earth insects, having six limbs and chitinous armor (though thankfully, no Earth insect we know of has More Teeth than the Osmond Family or Combat Tentacles).

Toys

• LEGO:
  • The backstory of the late 90's Insectoids Theme featured a planet populated by various giant insect species — therefore, the ships of the planet's colonists all had deliberately bug-like features, as a means of disguise from the local wildlife.
  • The antagonists of LEGO Galaxy Squad were insect-like Humanoid Aliens who came into conflict with humanity due to taking over human territory with their hives and abducting civilians in coccoon-like People Jars.
• Sectaurs: Warriors of Symbion was a line of action figures with an insectoid theme. They received a Marvel comic and a Five-Episode Pilot for a TV series.
• The action figure line "Bug-Men of Insecta."
• Boogly from Mixels, in contrast to the other Glowkies, who look like bats, is a beetle-like Mixel.
• Tamagotchi: The Mushitchi (a subspecies of bug Tamagotchi) resemble many conventional Earth bugs. There are a number of normal Tamagotchi who resemble insects as well.

Video Games

• Brawlhalla: Reno, a cowboy alien, is very similar to a locust, including having wings and four arms, both of which he uses in some of his signature attacks.
• Civilization: Beyond Earth: All of the native fauna you can encounter is insectoid, with the occasional bit of Sand Worm or Giant Enemy Crab features mixed in.
• Colobot: All alien lifeforms you come across are for some reason just large insects, such as ants, wasps or spiders.
• Destiny: Two of the four enemy factions are insectoid aliens. The Fallen are most obviously, as twitchy, six-limbed, four-eyed aliens with extensive exoskeletons and a language full of hard consonants. The Hive are more subtle, resembling alien skeletons in bony armor, but they’re actually eusocial Bee People (unlike the Fallen) who undergo metamorphosis into various biological castes.
• Destroy All Humans!: The Blisk in the second game are Martian aliens described as a cross between cockroaches and lobsters. We don't learn much about their society, but they're stated to have an imperviousness to radiation, and are implied to have manipulated all Russian history since a warship of theirs crashed in Tunguska in 1908. The Cold War was part of their attempt to remake Earth In Their Own Image.
• Earth & Beyond: The V'rix and their ships were very insectile. Design documents released after its servers were shut down revealed that this was not their true form, but one chosen specifically to play off humanities deepest primal fears and their technology was a perversion of human tech.
• EXTRAPOWER: The Spy Fly troop type under Mensouma's bioroid units. Bipedal dragonflies the size of an average human adult with a hardened, knife-sharp tail, they're one of the most common troop types for Dark Force's conquest of the universe.
• Far Cry 5: The Arachnides from the Lost on Mars DLC borrow design elements from insects and crustaceans (the two protagonists usually call them "crabbies"), come in various castes with queens at the top, build insectoid nests and generally fulfill just about any stereotype of Insectoid Aliens you can think of — just as intended.
• FTL: Faster Than Light: The Mantis look like, well, human-sized praying mantises. Their culture is stated to be aggressive and violent and they get bonuses to combat and movement speed, but halved repair rates.
• Halo:
  • One of the races of the Covenant are Drones, or Yanme'e, insectoid flying aliens who are organized into eusocial hives.
  • The last Precursor has been described as an unholy combination of mammal and insectoid, with special mention going to a fat spider body and legs and jewel-like, compound eyes. Turns out it's just one of an infinite number of forms they can take, though.
• Half-Life: Opposing Force: The main antagonistic force beside the Black Operatives, Race X's Shock Troopers are bipedal, four armed giant insects that communicate with each other in electronic-crickets. They serves as the main work and military force due to their high intelligence and strength.
• Half-Life 2 has Antlions, which are (presumably) from Xen. They have a King instead of a queen, for variety.
• Inazuma Eleven GO Galaxy: The inhabitants of the planet Ratoniik are humanoids with insect traits (antennas, wings, sometimes insect eyes etc.) who are said to have evolved from bugs. Because of their evolution, they have shorter lifespans than normal humans (they don't live more than an year). For example Banda Kologyu died after his match with Earth Eleven.
• The Sectras of Kirby: Triple Deluxe are a race of bug-like aliens from the kingdom of Floralia, located in the skies of Planet Popstar. Encountered high above the rest of Floralia in their stronghold, Royal Road, their race consists of parasitized versions of Kirby's usual enemies, insectoid knights called Antlers, the mysterious spider-like Taranza, and the Big Bad and Final Boss of the game, Queen Sectonia.
• Mass Effect: The rachni have mandibles and antennae, and are divided into different castes (workers, soldiers, queens). In Mass Effect 2, the Collectors (formerly Protheans) have chitinous exoskeletons and insect-like heads and wings. Collector ships also resemble termite mounds.
• Metroid:
  • The Space Pirates seem to switch between this and humanoid crustaceans which are more fleshy or scaled creatures that wear insectoid armor. Metroid Prime also wears insectoid armor it stole from the Pirates but is something entirely different underneath. There are plenty of straight examples of course, like the Ki-Hunters and Kanden.
  • Metroid II: Return of Samus: Pincher flies, glow flies, gulluggs are also vaguely mosquito looking, although they don't suck blood(or don't attempt to such blood from an armored being). Yumbo sprites look like flying chainsaws but official art makes them look like mosquitoes with feathers. Motos have beetle like sprites but official art makes them look more like mask wearing reptiles. Mumbo sprites look like blobs but official art makes them look like insectoid versions of Samus's helmet. Skorps look like scorpions with two buzz saws where they head should be, in official art anyway.
  • Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: The Luminoth are a race of moth-like people. Their archnemeses the Ing are also fairly insect-like, in a Lovecraftian sort of way at least.
• Mortal Kombat X introduces the Kytinn, a race whose humanoid^note exactly how humanoid varies somewhat depending on the skin you select bodies have characteristics of a variety of arthropds, including spiders, scorpions (no, not him), and beetles. They are represented in the game by D'Vorah, who does prove to be chaotic evil from the aspect of most of those outside The Hive.
• Otherspace: The Odarites, ant-wasp things forced into a mafia-like corporate structure from birth.
• Pokémon Sun and Moon introduced alien Pokémon called the Ultra Beasts, two of which are bug types. Buzzwole and Pheromosa look like a humanoid mosquito and cockroach respectively. The Grass/Steel-type Kartana, which resembles an origami samurai, is also kind of mantis-like. The Poison/Dragon-type Naganadel is an alien dragon wasp.
  • The ladybug-like Ledian and Orbeetle also invoke this, the latter even being based on a UFO.
  • It's rumored that the Future Paradox Pokémon Iron Moth, which resembles Volcarona, is an alien drone.
• SimEarth: If insects reach sapience, this can happen.
• Skullmonkeys: The Ynts themselves are this.
• Not exactly insects, but two of the alien races in Star Control are the centipede-like Ur-Quan and the spider-like Ilwrath.
• StarCraft: The appearance of the Zerg units borrows from all kinds of animal sources, including insectoid or arthropodal traits. The Zerg are also ruled by a Hive Mind.
• Stellaris lets you play as a variety of arthropod aliens, all nicely varied in terms of limb number and body strucure. Uniquely, there's also a selection of mollusc aliens. Their natures are procedurally generated and vary as widely as any other kind of alien, but the two "canon" (i.e. pre-generated as examples) species are the Ix'Idar Star Collective (Dirty Commies that look vaguely like giant termites with spindly arms), the Kel-Azaan Republic (humanoid Proud Warrior Race Guys), and the giant cockroaches that might be running around a post-apocalyptic Earth and can be uplifted.
• The Nu version of the 4X game VGA Planets has the Horwasp as one of the factions a player can lead; they're basically a sentient Horde of Alien Locusts. The game also has Insectoid natives occupying some planets.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X: The Orphe are bipedal with two major arms, but otherwise look and act insectoid, being linked to each other by a force called the Ovah giving them a hive-like mind. They are technologically astute, but socially limited, and like to eat plants.
• Yars' Revenge. They're actually originally Earth insects that became mutated into alien creatures.

Web Comics

• Cassiopeia Quinn: The Kyre normally resemble gigantic, monstrous arthropods, although their ability to passively assimilate other species' traits into themselves means that ones who travel a lot tend to be varying degrees of humanoid, varying from "oddly-colored human with antennae and no pupils" to "upright warrior ant".
• Captain Ufo has the scorpion pirates from season one. Also, several background characters in crowd scenes seems to belong to some kind of insectoid race.
• Galaxion has the Miesti, roughly the size of a butterfly.
• Homestuck: The trolls look like ordinary humans with horns, yellow eyes, and grey skin, but they are apparently more akin to insects by way of Bizarre Alien Biology. They're born from eggs laid by a "Mother Grub" and, after that, they're Raised by Wolves. They resemble large grubs with humanoid heads when first born and later cocoon themselves to emerge as humanoid adolescents, and there's some Expo Speak coming from them about internal body parts that would make more sense on an insect. Additionally, trolls who reach the God Tiers, and occasionally some regular ones, grow colorful butterfly-like wings.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: The Nemesites are a race of butterfly people, though they frequently use technology to disguise themselves as humans.
• The Junk Hyenas Diner (made by the creater of Slightly Damned) has the Grom-Grom which look like seven-foot four armed preying mantises, however they are typically laidback herbivores, they also sometimes eat rotting plant matter.
• The Last Human In A Crowded Galaxy: The title character's (presumably) adoptive mother is Shenya the Widow, a retired archaeologist who happens to be a human-sized arachnid "nightmarish death machine" from a Proud Warrior Race. She does admit that it can be occasionally isolating, even in the vast diversity of galactic society.
• Leaving the Cradle has Insectoids, which appear as something inbetween an ant and mantis. They subvert most of the usual associated tropes though, being rather small, having individuality and the queen being important for egg-laying ability, rather than being absolute monarch.
• Outsider: The Umiak are visually very reminiscent of arthropods, being six-limbed, seven-eyed and covered in a chitinous exoskeleton in their natural state. Internally, however, they're more similar to vertebrates, as they need internal skeletons in order to support their own weight and complex respiratory and circulatory systems to keep their large bodies oxygenated. Their insectoid nature also impacts their language — as they have rigid mandibles and no vocal cords, they cannot pronounce vowels or labial sounds, and their vocal range is limited to a small group of mandible clacks, tongue-clicks, inhalations and chitters.
• Runaway to the Stars: As most of the aliens in the setting are Starfish Aliens, two of them end up resembling arthropods.
  • The first are the bug-ferrets, which as the name suggests, are a mix and match variation that has a long, ferret-like body with six limbs and and and insect-like face. They have something similar to an insects exoskeleton but on the inside of their body. They are also highly collectivistic, having difficulty operating alone and can suffer Go Mad from the Isolation after only a few days. They're also hermaphroditic.
  • The second are the Scuds, which are a small, semi-aquatic species that resemble bipedal crustaceans. They aren't highly communal like the bug-ferrets but they do possess Organic Technology technology as their ocean dwelling lifestyle prevented them from developing fire or electricity.
• In Spacetrawler, the first alien female Dimitri scores with is a green insectoid. Unfortunately, Shuar turns out to be a Clingy Jealous Girl... and a hitwoman for the GOB. She alternates between pursuing him for the former and latter reasons for most of the comic. Meanwhile, her mother convinces Dimitri to license his grandmother's cookie recipe through her, and becomes wealthy when Russian tea cookies become popular throughout the galaxy.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: SCP-875-1 are flying insects that are different from any known Earthly species, indicating that they are from another world. SCP-875-3, the large creatures in the cryogenic stasis chambers, are also insectoid in nature and are presumably from the same source.

Western Animation

• Ben 10: There are many species of these throughout the universe, which the main character can transform into with the Omnitrix. The Lepidopterrans, Stinkfly's species, look like giant flies. Necrofriggians, the species of Alien Force alien Big Chill, are humanoid moth-like aliens resembling The Mothman. Eatle is a giant humanoid beetle. Crashhopper from Omniverse is a humanoid grasshopper-like alien that can jump really high.
• Dex Hamilton: Alien Entomologist: Dex has dedicated his life to studying alien insects.
• Futurama: The Cygnoids are a race of vaguely cockroach-like aliens who behave (and speak) like stereotypical Italian-Americans.
• Invader Zim: The Irkens look sort of like a cross between Insectoid Aliens and Little Green Men.
• Looney Tunes: Marvin the Martian, while not obviously insect-like and more of a Little Green Man, was apparently supposed to be ant-like. In a way, this makes sense; he's completely black and has no mouth and huge eyes, with a diminutive stature to match.
• Men in Black: The Series: There are plenty of these; some of the more notable are the Lilliputian Warriors Fmtek, the Hive Mind Skraaldian and the Bugs (see the film section).
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: The Cluster are also Mechanical Insects. They usually resemble beetles (Smytus, Krackus, the mooks) or wasps (Vexxus and Vega), though a mosquito-like individual appeared as head of the Secret Police in "Escape from Cluster Prime". Most of their subjects are standard robots assimilated by them though.
• Changelings from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic are a race of shape-shifting, insectoid equines who feed on love. Think of a G-rated succubus who walks on four legs like a horse, but is covered with black, chitinous carapace, has big compound eyes, buzzing fly-esque wings and fangs and feeds by kidnapping someone you love, impersonating them and draining you until you are left an empty husk. They were initially antagonists, ruled by evil Queen Chrysalis — who held them in line and used them to her own ends by deliberately keeping them in state of Horror Hunger. Eventually, though, they performed Heel–Race Turn, forgoing their old ways, learning to share love instead of draining it... and gaining a new, more colorful and prettier look as a consequence.
• The Gromflomites of Rick and Morty are pretty much just human-sized talking bugs.
• Samurai Jack: One episode has Jack rescuing a pair of butterfly-like aliens from Aku.
• Shadow Raiders: The inhabitants of Planet Ice are insectoid aliens.
• Space Ghost
  • Zorak is a giant praying mantis. He has unintelligent insect servants called mosquitoids in "Zorak".
  • Lokar is a large locust. He has unintelligent insect servants (giant metal-eating locusts) in "Lokar — King of the Killer Locusts".
  • Giant ant/spider hybrids are minions of the Spider Woman in "The Web".
• Star Trek: The Animated Series has the episode "Beyond The Farthest Star" in which the Enterprise encounters an alien spacecraft orbiting a lifeless planet at the edge of the galaxy. Its organic shape resembles the chambers and tunnels of an ant colony, and its metal hull isn't rolled or cast, it's been drawn into filaments and spun like spider silk. When the away team attains the ship's command section, they activate an Apocalyptic Log which shows the insectoid captain on a viewscreen.
• Transformers:
  • Beast Wars: A portion of the antagonist Predacon faction transform into various Arthropods including wasps and spiders (the female forms, ironically despite being apparently male). One former protagonist Maximal, Blackarachnia, is also a spider. Note that while alien in nature, their insect forms are specifically scanned from Earth insects.
  • The Transformers:
    • The more robotic Insecticons can clone themselves and perform locust like swarms, unlike other Transformers (at least at the time) they can digest organic matter alongside Energon.
    • "Quest For Survival" involves a species of alien plant that finds Insecticon clones delicious. After conveniently eating the Insecticons' army, the Autobots load them all onto a spaceship and send them to "a planet of robotic insects." Sure, okay.
• Woody Woodpecker encountered with the Termites from Mars.

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