The Mole Monster spends most of the battle underground, generally only leaping upwards to attack you. Unlike the Whack-a-Monster, however, the Mole Monster often likes to home into your position from underground, as oppossed to popping up at predictable locations. The end result is that you often either have to force it out of the ground, or leap out of the way at the last second for a counterattack.
May or may not come with Worm Sign. If they don't have a Worm Sign, they can easily develop into Goddamned Bats or even Demonic Spiders; in these cases, they will also overlap with Ambushing Enemy. Related to Sand Worm, although Mole Monsters are not necessarily giant worms (or giant monstrous moles, for that matter)
Examples:
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Action
- Chipmonk!: Literal mole enemies attack by ambushing from beneath the ground.
- The Suffering has Burrowers, Malefactors that burrow through the ground and emerge to attack by whipping chains at Torque. The basis of their form is people being Buried Alive.
Action-Adventure
- The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer has one kind of robot that occasionally folds up and drills down into the ground, and then comes shooting back up elsewhere and tries to clobber you as it comes back down.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Leevers are recurring enemies that burrow around randomly, remaining invulnerable to attack as long as they're beneath the surface and only exposing themselves when they pop out to attack.
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages: The Moonlit Grotto miniboss, Subterror, is a mole-like creature with a drill for a nose. It chases Link around its room while burrowing in the ground, leaving a small raised trail to mark its position, and attacks with its drill when it's directly under Link. It cannot be harmed while in this state, so Link must use the shovel to dig it up and expose it to attack.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Moldorms are wormlike creatures that live in the sand of the Gerudo Desert and in quicksand pits in the Arbiter's Grounds, where they move around beneath the surface and periodically jump out to attack Link.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: The Lanayru Mining Facility boss Moldarach will burrow beneath the sand of its arena after its claws are damaged, striking at Link with its stinger from beneath the surface. In order to defeat it, Link must use the dungeon's item to remove sand and expose the beast.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Moldugas are giant monsters that live in the desert and tunnel underneath you before leaping jaw first out of the sand. Fortunately, they navigate by sound and can't tell the difference between footsteps and a bomb being thrown.
- Shadow of the Colossus: The colossus Dirge, a gigantic Sand Worm, spends the majority of its time burrowing around beneath the sands of its arena, visible only through geysers of sand that it emits and only beginning to emerge when it approaches you.
MMORPGs
- World of Warcraft: Sand worms are centipede-like enemies that move swiftly underground and burst out only to attack players. They can only be tracked by bouncing rocks above them but can't actually be targeted until you enter within melee range of them, making them a headache for Glass Cannon casters.
Platformers
- Super Catboy has literal moles as enemies in the underground stage, where they randomly pop out the ground, hurls an exploding projectile at you, and slinks back in.
- Mega Man 4: Drill Man likes to dig into the ground and strike an unsuspecting player from underneath.
- Mega Man X5: Grizzly Slash/Crescent Grizzly can burrow into the ground with his large drill claws and either pop out of the background to slash at X/Zero or from the floor to stab them with his drill.
- Pankapu has Sah'laks, which burrow back and forth underground, emerging only to attack Pankapu when he gets close.
- Primal Light: One enemy encountered in the game are giant underground worms. They move back and forth along the ground with their teeth protruding from it. If Krog walks over them, they'll launch themselves upward to atack.
- Shovel Knight: Mole Knight is thematically a humanoid mole and spends all of the fight attacking you from holes in the walls, ceiling, or floor.
- Wario Land 4: Moguramen are Drill Mole enemies that are often found moving around beneath the ground, where they throw spiked balls up at Wario while remaining safe from retaliation unless he uses a ground pound to force them to the surface.
Real-Time Strategy
- Kingdom Rush: Frontiers: Dune Terrors are small Sand Worm foes that tunnel under the sand, rendering them immune to attacks until they are forced into combat against barracks troops, which causes them to surface.
- Mini Robot Wars:
- The Driller enemies tunnel underground, making them immune to most attacks. They only surface when they encounter a Minirobot to attack, or if they're affected by the Radar. However, certain attacks (particularly bombs from the Dropper Bot) can damage them even if they're underground.
- The Mole enemies also tunnel underground, making them immune to most attacks. Unlike the Driller, they also count as a Stealthy Mook, attacking entire columns of Minirobots above it without surfacing, and most units cannot target them unless the player has means to remove the Mole's stealth.
- Pikmin 3: The Sandbelching Meerslug spends a good portion of its boss fight lurking beneath the sand, well beyond your reach and only trackable by the trail of raised sand it leaves behind as it moves. It's only possible to attack it when it emerges onto the surface to attack you and your Pikmin, or by feeding it a bomb-rock when it tries to create a funnel of sand leading down to its mouth.
- Starcraft: Zerg Lurkers in Brood War can only attack when burrowed, sending out trails of spikes from underground (and burrowed creatures are invisible).
Role-Playing Games
- Bug Fables has Arrow Worms, who spend the entire battle underground, lunging at party members from the underground to attack. Because they are always underground, they must be unearthed to become targettable, either by Leif's base attack or attacks that can hit burrowed enemies such as Kabbu's Under Strike.
- Fallout: Mole rats are burrowing rodents that were created by a pre-War US government program aiming to use them in China, survived the nuclear war and bred since. Most times you only know they're present when they burst from the earth right in front of you. Later games introduce other burrowing creatures with a similar M.O.
- Golden Sun: The King Scorpion boss spends most of his time under the sand, and you have to force him out to fight him.
- Horizon Zero Dawn: The Rockbreaker is a rare worm-like machine monster that can dive around the ground like a fish in water, which makes it nightmarishly hard for damage. Typically, the best way to fight the beast is to first use tear blast arrows to remove its diggers, thus preventing it from being able to burrow underground. However, this does not prevent it from still being a dangerous opponent.
Roguelikes
- Crypt of the NecroDancer: Moles move around underground in cardinal directions and are only vulnerable right when they surface next to you before they attack.
- Spelunky 2 has Cave Moles, Demonic Spiders found in the first area that switch between digging around and emerging and running around the surface before doing it again. They have enough HP to tank an arrow, can't be damaged while (un)burrowing, and have the tendency to drop down right on top of you.
Shooters
- Majyuo: The garden stages have plant-enemies that shoot out from the ground under Abel's feet to ambush him.
- Metal Slug 7: The first level has tiny mole-like robots that periodically lunge out from underground and charge at the player. If they miss, they disappear back underground and try lunging out again and again until they either self-destruct after colliding with and killing the player, or get shot in mid-air.
- Mutant Night: There are spherical, mechanical critters with chains for tails that pop up from underground to attack Mutron-kun. As they appear from literally out of nowhere, with no visual indicators of the direction they're popping from, it's best to keep on jumping when in any areas infested with this particular enemy type.
Simulation Game
- In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, dustmoles are molelike aliens that breed rapidly and destroy fields to build their underground nests. One guard duty event has you and Vace acting as pest control for them, but Cal protests that the dustmoles should just be sent away because he believes they're harmless creatures.
- In Potion Permit, Spook Diggers are mole-like monsters that burrow underground and ambush you by throwing Quality Nuts at you. They're featured the Whack-a-Monster minigame at the Arcade Centre.
Wide-Open Sandbox
- Terraria: Most of the wormlike monsters are found underground. They burrow within the dirt while homing in toward you, launching out to do damage before going back into the dirt.
Non-Video Game Examples
Comic Books
- MonsterVerse: The MUTO Prime mainly moves around the world by burrowing underground, and it usually only emerges from the earth once awakened to feed, or do battle with Godzilla, aiming to weaken the latter battle by battle.
Fan Works
- Vow of Nudity: The savannah Fiora grew up in is home to ankhegs, insectoid predators who burrow through the terrain and hunt by bursting from the ground underneath their prey. They're so feared that when she's cornered by axebeaks, she scares them off by magically conjuring the scent of an ankheg under them to invoke Summon Bigger Fish.
Films — Live-Action
- Tremors: the monstrous Graboids, the series' primary antagonists, begin their life cycle as massive worms that can tunnel underground with dizzying speed; it enables them to snatch victims from beneath, dig trenches as traps, and even collapse buildings by undermining them.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: One of the earthbenders at Earth Rumble 6, appropriately named The Gopher, uses tunneling attacks.
