Bats and owls and coiled sea dragons
Crocodile and carrion beasts
Swirling in the growing darkness
Join us in the coming feast
Spectre, wraith, and apparition
Spirit, demon, phantom, shade
Salamander serpents, dog-faced devils
Dance and watch the dying sunlight fade!
Crocodile and carrion beasts
Swirling in the growing darkness
Join us in the coming feast
Spectre, wraith, and apparition
Spirit, demon, phantom, shade
Salamander serpents, dog-faced devils
Dance and watch the dying sunlight fade!
This index is for Animal Stereotypes tropes in which Real Life categories of animal (other than humans) are depicted as evil, scary, creepy, or threatening. See also Good Animals, Evil Animals, What Measure Is a Non-Cute?, Unpleasant Animal Counterpart, and Evil Race Tropes.
Contrast Pleasant Animals Index.
Tropes
- Amphibian Assault: Frogs, toads, and other amphibians portrayed as threats.
- Angry, Angry Hippos: Hippopotamuses that are portrayed as particularily aggressive and brutish creatures.
- Angry Guard Dog: Large canines used for security jobs.
- Animal Stampede: Hundreds of herbivores running together and trampling everything in their path.
- Ant Assault: Ants portrayed as the source of trouble.
- Bad Ol' Badger: Badgers portrayed as aggressive and vicious.
- Bat Out of Hell: Monstrous bats.
- Bat Scare: When characters who are exploring an apparently-deserted location unexpectedly disturb a colony of winged animals.
- Bears Are Bad News: Bears portrayed as vicious and dangerous.
- Bee Afraid: When a character, or characters, is chased by a swarm of angry stinging insects.
- Beware of Vicious Dog: A dog who hates everyone and everything.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Giant insects and arachnids.
- Bloodsucking Bats: Bats who consume blood.
- Brutish Bulls: Bulls portrayed as violent, ill-tempered, and aggressive.
- Bugs Herald Evil: The use of insects, arachnids, or other arthropods to indicate a greater evil.
- Bull Seeing Red: Red as a common provocation of a bull's anger.
- Bully Bulldog: Bulldogs depicted as vicious bullies.
- Cats Are Mean: Cats who are mean.
- Clam Trap: Clams and other bivalves can bite people or trap them in their shells.
- Creepy Centipedes: Centipedes portrayed as frightening and unnerving monsters.
- Creepy Cockroach: Cockroaches depicted as vile.
- Cruel Elephant: Elephants that are violent and aggressive.
- Cunning Like a Fox: Foxes depicted as crafty, wily and unscrupulous.
- Devious Dolphins: Dolphins as evil and malevolent creatures.
- Dire Beast: Larger versions of common beasts.
- Dreadful Dragonfly: Giant, vicious dragonflies.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: A fairly common reaction towards small rodents, particularly mice.
- Electric Jellyfish: Jellyfish portrayed as Psycho Electro.
- Escaped Animal Rampage: When an animal escapes from a zoo, a circus, a pound, a laboratory, or some other kind of area where it formerly lived in restricted conditions.
- Feathered Fiend: Evil birds.
- Brutal Bird of Prey: Birds of prey are portrayed as menacing and scary.
- Circling Vultures: Vultures circling around someone when they're at death's door.
- Cocky Rooster: Roosters depicted as fierce, aggressive birds or with a smug, snobbish attitude.
- Creepy Crows: Crows depicted as creepy animals associated with unpleasant things.
- Kidnapping Bird of Prey: Predatory birds that snatch people from the ground and carry them off into the sky.
- Ominous Owl: Owls portrayed as creepy or scary.
- Pesky Pigeons: Pigeons are evil.
- Fed to the Beast: Feeding people to either monsters or man-eating animals.
- Fiendish Fish: Dangerous, sometimes outright evil, fish.
- Alluring Anglerfish: Anglerfish used in media for surprise value.
- Painful Pointy Pufferfish: Fictional pufferfish seen stabbing things with their spikes.
- Pike Peril: Pike portrayed as evil or vicious.
- Piranha Problem: Piranhas portrayed as far more vicious than they are in reality.
- Psycho Electric Eel: Electric eels portrayed as much more powerful/dangerous Psycho Electro than they really are.
- Slippery as an Eel: Eels depicted as sly, conniving, and untrustworthy creatures.
- Threatening Shark: Sharks portrayed as evil, vicious man-eaters.
- Megalodon: A large, prehistoric shark.
- Flies Equals Evil: The arrival of flies, mosquitoes, wasps, or other creepy crawlies to indicate something horrible is about to happen.
- Full-Boar Action: Dangerous pig- or boar-based monsters.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Outsized, dangerous crabs.
- Giant Squid: Gigantic squid depicted as sea monsters.
- Gruesome Goat: Goats portrayed as aggressive or Satanic creatures. Occasionally Rams due to being more aggressive and unpleasant compared to lambs.
- Hair-Raising Hare: Rabbits depicted as dangerous, evil or scary, as a deliberate subversion of the association between bunnies and cuteness or goodness.
- Heinous Hyena: Hyenas portrayed as vicious, underhanded, cowardly or otherwise unpleasant creatures.
- Hell Hound: A big, supernatural dog that is evil.
- Hellish Horse: A monstrous horse.
- Instant Leech: Just Fall in Water!: Fall in suspicious water, emerge covered in leeches.
- Killer Gorilla: A violent gorilla.
- Killer Rabbit: When a monster is much more dangerous than it appears.
- Macabre Moth Motif: Moths depicted as a bad omen.
- Maniac Monkeys: Monkeys and apes are the bad guys.
- Messy Maggots: Something gross can be easily be pictured as even grosser if swarms of maggots are covering it, while characters that happen to be maggots themselves have this gross trait often magnetized towards them in their personality.
- Mister Muffykins: Small dog breeds that are yappy, or even horrendous.
- Monster Whale: Whales depicted as gigantic sea monsters who swallow ships and people whole.
- Monstrous Seal: Seals portrayed as aggressive, dangerous predators.
- Mosquito Miscreants: Mosquitoes being portrayed as either evil or annoying.
- Moth Menace: Threatening (and often giant) moths and butterflies.
- Parasites Are Evil: Parasites and parasitoids depicted as villainous and morally repugnant.
- Parasitic Horror: Parasitism being played for horror and squick.
- Pest Episode: When a household pest moves in, and most of the episode is spent trying to catch it.
- Predators Are Mean: Carnivorous animals are depicted as villainous much more often than herbivores in fiction.
- Prehistoric Monster: Prehistoric animals portrayed as far more deadly and vicious than they might have actually been.
- Headbutting Pachy: The unrealistic portrayal of Pachycephalosaurid dinosaurs headbutting things.
- Ptero Soarer: Generally, these tweaks make the pterosaurs scarier and nastier.
- Raptor Attack: Unrealistic or inaccurate portrayals of Dromeosaurid dinosaurs.
- Savage Spinosaurs: Spinosaurid theropods are portrayed as scary predators.
- Temper-Ceratops: Ceratopsian dinosaurs described as being akin to bulls and rhinos; temperamental and aggressive by herbivore standards.
- Prickly Porcupine: Porcupines and hedgehogs who are mean, or with Spikes of Villainy.
- Psycho Poodle: Poodles portrayed as vicious, or even evil.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Reptiles are evil.
- Malicious Monitor Lizard: When monitor lizards in a work are portrayed as evil.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: Crocodilians depicted as evil man-eaters.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Snakes portrayed as creepy or evil creatures.
- Rhino Rampage: Rhinos portrayed as gigantic brutes always ready to charge down anything that gets them mad.
- Right-Hand Attack Dog: A villain's active fighter pet.
- Right-Hand Cat: The villain is often seen stroking a cat.
- Savage Wolves: Wolves as nasty, savage, rapacious predators; if intelligent, they may be sadistic and cruel, as well.
- Scary Scorpions: Scorpions portrayed as terrifying, dangerous and aggressive, often far more so than they actually are in real life.
- Scavengers Are Scum: Scavenging animals portrayed as evil in fiction.
- Screwball Squirrel: Squirrels are depicted as aggressive and sadistic.
- Sea Hurtchin: Urchins existing only to hurt people with their spines.
- Slaying Mantis: Praying mantises portrayed as badass and scary.
- Smelly Skunk: Skunks are portrayed as smelly and unclean, sometimes evil and dangerous.
- Spiders Are Scary: Spiders portrayed as terrifying, venomous and dangerous, often far beyond any threat they actually pose in real life.
- Creepy Camel Spider: Solifugids portrayed as hyperaggressive desert terrors, often well beyond what they are in reality.
- Giant Spider: Impossibly large spiders are especially scary.
- Sneaky Spider: Spiders are portrayed as cunning and devious (though not every Sneaky Spider is actually a villain.)
- Spider Swarm: Swarms of improbably social spiders moving — and hunting — as one.
- Super-Persistent Predator: A predator that goes to unrealistic lengths to catch its prey.
- Swarm of Rats: A large group of rats added for scare factor.
- Tentacled Terror: Cephalopods, cephalopod-like creatures, and just anything with tentacles being portrayed as alien and terrifying.
- Termite Trouble: Termites portrayed as a terrifying invisible force that rapidly disintegrates wood.
- War Elephants: Elephants as Beasts Of Battle.
- Wicked Wasps: Wasps portrayed as mean or evil.
- Wicked Weasel: Weasels portrayed as shifty, untrustworthy creatures.
- Wily Walrus: Walruses portrayed as villains, jerks, or antagonists.
- Xenophobic Herbivore: Herbivores depicted as wary of strange or unfamiliar creatures, or even cruel and evil, often to the point of Fantastic Racism.
- You Dirty Rat!: Rats are dirty and disgusting.
