Sand Worms in Video Games.
- Age of Wonders: Enormous, funnel-mouth sand worms appear as units in the Azrac army.
- In Akuji the Heartless, giant sandworms roams the shores of the river Styx, and attacks by lashing their heads out at Akuji. They're among the first enemies encountered during gameplay.
- Alone in the Dark (1992) features the Chtonian, a great burrowing worm that lives in caverns and makes new tunnels. He's the one independent monster not under the control of Pregzt.
- The first stage of Andro Dunos has scorpion-like creatures that burrow under the sand and then emerge to fire off shots. They're not that large or aggressive, though.
- ANNO: Mutationem: At The Consortium's underground facility, there are Sandpit Worms that evolved from Native Grubs after adapting to a barren desert environment. Like their sewer counterpart, they're easily disposable.
- ARK: Survival Evolved: The Scorched Earth expansion packs has giant deathworms in the sand dunes surrounding the map that attack any creature that enters the area. The lore gives them the scientific name Khorkhoi arrakis, and reveals they were placed there by the artificial environment to prevent inhabitants from wandering outside the designated area. They appear in the desert biomes of some other maps as well, along with a blue "Iceworm" variant that only appears in a specific dungeon on the Ragnarok map; this includes an "Iceworm Queen" boss enemy.
- Armageddon 2, a map-pack for Skulltag, has a pair of these as bosses in the "Sand Worm Trench" level. They don't swallow people, just breathe fire at them (and are lanky, looking somewhat like snakes).
- Battle Axe has gigantic worms that resembles cephalopod tentacles as enemies, who pops up from underground to attack. They can be spotted before appearing thanks to Worm Sign.
- BattleForge:
- The game has rare, artificial versions of these for all terrains in Core Dredges, enormous worm-like constructs built from temple ruins, ice and tree roots weaved together into a cohesive, enormous creature
. Its wormsign alone can knock down and damage smaller enemies, and it breathes blasts of crushed eye that will utterly demolish either structures or frozen enemies, depending on the version you have. It's also one of the earlier XL units you can get, which is a plus all by itself. - Fire Worms are more traditional examples, while still being all-terrain and spewing magma to attack. Everything they do seems to cause massive geological instability: summoning them is destructive, and their movements through the earthknock enemies around if they're anywhere nearby; furthermore, they can cause an Earthquake that damages and knocks down everything in a wide area.
- Black Sigil has a desert in which are sandworms. You can avoid them by walking through a specific path, but going out of said path leads to interesting items (in chests, of course).
- Blue Archive has Binah, a giant robot sandworm roaming the desert of Abydos. Fought as one of the game's raid bosses, Binah is equipped with missiles, can fire a massive plasma beam from its mouth, and can whip up a highly-damaging sandstorm in the final stage of the fight.
- Body Harvest: Some of the aliens in the America stage are giant worms who burrow through the ground throughout the desert level.
- Threshers in Borderlands 2. Threshers tend to live on fertile ground near water, and they have squid-like tentacles that they use to either pummel or throw rocks at you. The "Captain Scarlett" DLC campaign introduces actual Sand Worm enemies, which are found in an arid desert; they don't seem to be related to Threshers, appearing and behaving quite different from them.
- Breath of Fire IV actually has a dragon that resembles a sandworm with fins. It wrecks your ship, enabling you to find the Heroic Mime Ryu.
- Bug had a really nasty swamp worm as the boss of Splot.
- These pop out of the sand in the Egyptian stage of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.
- Civilization: Beyond Earth has the Siege Worms, massive, Boss in Mook Clothing aliens that spawn in the world starting from turn 1. Luckily, they aren't automatically hostile; aliens are only hostile to humans if humans have a reputation for attacking aliens. If you get lucky, it's possible to get one for yourself, long before the other factions have access to anything that stands a chance against them. In addition, because of the Affinity's Nuclear Weapons Taboo, Harmony players can instead send spies to set up a Thumper in an enemy city, summoning a horde of Siege Worms to ravage it.
- In Clicker Guild, the Sand Worm is a segmented and toothed worm in the Desert Zone.
- Contra: The red Crawler Tank/Twilobite in Stage 5 of Contra III: The Alien Wars, the "Snow Worm" in Contra: Shattered Soldier and the "Land Worm" in Area 3 of Neo Contra are the most obvious examples of this trope.
- Creature Shock have those giant alien worms as recurring enemies, though they turn out to be of the Fake Ultimate Mook variety; despite their size, they go down after spamming enough shots with your blaster, and they're hard to miss because they take up more than half a screen.
- Crying Suns features Sandworms as one of the Major Threats that your commandos may encounter during expeditions. They’re so dangerous that you get an achievement just for completing an expedition where a Sandworm appears.
- Darksiders has these in a desert called the Ashlands, with an even larger one as the boss of the area.
- Dark Souls III: A unique miniboss in the Smouldering Lake is the Carthus Sandworm. Highly aggressive, heavily armored, and large enough to swallow several men whole at once. It can also, for some reason, shoot giant beams of lightning out of its mouth. Speculation abounds as to its origin, since it is the only sandworm that has ever been seen in the franchise.
- Death Worm, in which you play a giant worm, leaping from the ground and eating people to grow larger.
- The Burrow Beast in Destroy All Humans! 2, a Tremors Shout-Out that Crypto summons by dropping bait, whereupon it starts popping up from beneath any mook in the surrounding area and dragging them underground to feed on.
- Diablo II has the burrowing Sand Maggots, which the official backstory points out are actually arthropods and not worms at all. A gigantic boss variant named Coldworm the Burrower was so bloated it resembled a worm more than the normal Sand Maggots. Diablo III once again features desert locations with giant worms, this time the far more traditional Rockworms, which can swallow players whole and spit them out. The Cave of Burrowing Horror has the corpse of a truly immense specimen winding through the floor. This game also features the dinosaur-like Dune Threshers swimming through the sand like sharks, and one particular unique giant rockworm, Shaitan The Broodmother - Great Maker, explicitly references Dune.
- Dune, Dune II (and its remake Dune 2000), and Emperor: Battle for Dune, of course. In the first game (which doesn't actually share any continuity with the others) they mostly serve as Paul's means of transportation and to occasionally eat a spice harvester if your troop does not also have an orni to watch for Worm Sign, while in 2 they show up semi-randomly to eat units. In Emperor they mostly do the same thing, but Fremen can intentionally summon them and temporarily control them.
- Dusty Raging Fist have giant worms in the underground temple stages, who sticks their heads out trying to chomp on Dusty. They're immobile however and relies on the element of surprise - Dusty can simply dodge them, then backtrack and shoot the worms from a distance.
- Sandworms are a recurring enemy in the desert stage of Dyna Gear, sticking their heads out from sand pits when you're trying to jump over.
- The Effing Worms series, a small franchise of games where you are the Sand Worm. Where you spend entire levels tunneling in and out the ground, devouring hundreds of people and growing larger as you advance into later levels. You can even gain power-upgrades of your choice, like giving your worm wings or a more streamlined body for easier tunneling.
- Mother Predator from Evil Genome is a tunneling worm monster (with centipede-like feet, somehow) who pops in and out of the area trying to chomp you down. She can even spawn smaller versions of herself as backup - the smaller versions which becomes common enemies in a later stage.
- E.V.O.: Search for Eden featured these in one level. Notably, they are the only invincible enemy in the game, fortunately they wouldn't attack you actively, though one might pop out of the ground under or in front of you. A later level featured sand-dwelling dinosaur-like creatures called Mosuchop which would jump out and bite you before retreating under the sand. (Real Moschops, the mammal-like reptile on which it was based, were not known to do this.)
- Fallout 4: The Nuka World DLC introduces Bloodworms, creatures roughly the size of a large dog at their biggest that like to burrow through the earth and ambush their prey by erupting out at their feet. Background information indicates they used to be an aquatic species that mutated and/or evolved to survive living inland, where they reproduce by laying eggs in the bodies of their prey, preferably those with large bodies like brahmin to accommodate as many eggs as possible. A single Bloodworm "queen" is found in the Dry Rock Gulch theme park, but its name is the only distinguishing feature as it is the same in appearance and strength as other bloodworms.
- FAST Racing NEO and RMX: The background of Scorpio Circuit features giant worms to complement the futuristic setting.
- In Fe, the iguana-like Lizard Folk mature into burrowing serpents, which the protagonist can ride a la Dune, and their leader is a ginormous version of the latter.
- A recurring enemy in the Final Fantasy series.
- In V, the defeated worm's corpse provides a stable path across the desert.
- A particular area of the overworld in V has a winding path of greenery passing through the desert. Simply traveling across the desert is faster, but you run the risk of encountering these things, which will almost certainly kill you at that point of the game.
- In VI, being eaten by a specific one on a specific island leads to a hidden dungeon and party member.
- These monstrosities are living, breathing, adventurer-eating entrances to special boss fights in Final Fantasy XI. There are also much smaller person-sized worms that cast magic— although considering they are immobile in combat, it's needed to prevent them from being too damn easy to kill with ranged attacks.
- The first time you face a Sand Worm in Final Fantasy X, it has the most HP of any enemy you've faced thus far and it's only a random encounter! Fortunately, it's not too deadly, and it's vulnerable to attacks that remove fractions of the enemy's HP, so if you have some Shadow Gems lying around, you can make quick work of one. And if you don't, you can steal Shadow Gems from the Sand Worm itself.
- The Abyssal Worm in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon can be farmed for the very valuable items that allow you to exceed the 9999 damage cap. Unfortunately, they're located after the Point of No Return.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses features Giant Crawlers as enemies in its desert map, which, despite their name, are effectively giant sandworms. They give Agarthium when their armor is broken.
- F-Zero GX shows a sandworm in the background of the Sand Ocean stages, though since this is a racing game, you (thankfully) don't interact with the scenery in any way.
- Gears of War 2 features the Riftworm, a gigantic worm that the Locust use to sink cities, awakened by the detonation of the lightmass bomb in the first game. "Giant" doesn't even BEGIN to describe it — it'd probably be around 4 kilometers long. It's also Hand Waved as far as biology and physics go. It's supported by a skeleton, and doesn't seem to be carnivorous. Also it has red blood, and a lot of it.
- One of the bosses in Ginormo Sword is called "Sand Worm".
- Gradius series:
- Golden Force has gigantic worms sticking out of the ground as enemies, though instead of a splayed mouth they have gigantic mandibles for heads.
- Giant Worms or "Wurms" are recurring monsters in Guild Wars. They come in a wide variety from basic Sand Wurms in the Crystal Desert, Frost Wurms in Shiverpeaks of Tyria, the Desert Wurms and unique undead Junundu wurms of the Elonan Desolation and the Chaos Wurms of the Fissure of Woe. They're by far the biggest monsters in the game (with the exception of one of the endgame bosses) and the boss versions of some of them, (and unique ones such as the Canthan Leviathan) are absolutely TITANIC. Very intimidating. The expansion pack Eye of the North gives us even more Wurms, with a whole dungeon dedicated to them. The end boss of that dungeon is the second largest enemy in all of Guild Wars, only bowing to Abbadon. Yes, they surpassed their previous records of gigantic Wurms with even more gigantic Wurms.
- One appears in Halo 5: Guardians as an Easter Egg. Activating several secret triggers on the desert map "The Rig" causes one to rise in the distance, consume a mining platform, and slowly sink back into the earth.
- Heavy Weapon has the robotic Mechworm boss, fought in Antagonistan. It jumps out of the sand and spams missiles and bombs.
- In Hollow Knight, the Pale King's original form prior to his arrival in Hallownest and subsequent metamorphosis was that of a gargantuan Graboid-like Wyrm.
- The Rockbreaker in Horizon Zero Dawn has a design more like a mechanical Mole Monster, but its role in combat suits a sandworm instead: drawn to the sound of movement, leaves wormsign as it tunnels, and its main attack is to attempt to swallow its prey whole. Its ability to tunnel through sand and dirt at a massive size is also justified by its being made of metal.
- Horn of the Abyss, a Game Mod for Heroes of Might and Magic III, has Sandworms as a tier 5 creature of the new faction Factory. They move by burrowing through the ground, which makes them mechanically similar to flying creatures. However, they can't burrow through certain terrain types, such as ship decks. Physically, they have Lamprey Mouth, and, weirdly enough, several pairs of chitinous legs. Their upgraded version, Olgoi-Khorkhoi, comes from Mongolian folklore, and can eat corpses to gain additional attacks.
- The Immortal features these as recurring enemies up until level five. Level four is dedicated to avoiding them by floating around on a magic carpet with extremely bad handling.
- The planet Blenjeel from Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is loaded with them. There's a reason why you only have to do 4 of 5 missions in each act. Perhaps as a shout-out, you can trick them into eating explosives to distract them from chasing you.
- Jewel Master have sand worms as large enemies in the desert stages, leaping in and out of the sands trying to chomp on you.
- In Kaiju Wars, the kaiju Duggemundr resembles a gigantic armor-plated serpent with tusks and tiny arms ending in finned hands. Its body never fully emerges from the ground, and it can burrow through the earth as quickly as the other kaiju can walk or fly.
- The pop culture reference-heavy Kingdom of Loathing has a quest that involves sandworm riding.
- Scorch from Krazy Ivan is a robot sandworm who spends the whole fight tunneling in and out the ground to attack you randomly.
- Last Train Outta' Worm Town is set in a Dying Town in the Weird West which has been overrun by these, forcing Pardners to work together in order to get the titular train up and running. It's also an Asymmetric Multiplayer game where you can play as a Worm, burrowing around and aiming to devour anything that moves.
- The Sian Captain must fight one called Wahsh Al-Sahraa to rescue an expedition in one raid in Legacy of a Thousand Suns.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has Geldarms, centipede-like creatures that emerge out of the sand in desert-based Random Encounters.
- A recurring boss enemy in the series, often fought multiple times in any given game, takes the form of a giant worm- or centipede-like monsters fought in a sandy arena, where it burrows in and out of the sand to attack Link. These enemies include the Moldorm in the first game, the Lanmolas in A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, Twinmold in Majora's Mask and Molgera in The Wind Waker. Oddly enough, most of them can fly for short durations.
- On a more minor scale, Leevers, fat leech-like creatures that appear in some beach and desert areas, are able to hide themselves beneath the sand before suddenly emerging to attack Link.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess sizes down its Moldorms to a more reasonable size and populates the Gerudo Desert and the quicksand pits in the Arbiter's Ground with them. They leap out of the sand like fishes to attack Link, and must be pulled out with the Clawshot to be defeated.
- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has green worm-like enemies (which are literally called Sandworms) that chase and try to eat Link if he moves any faster than walking speed across certain sandy areas.
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has a variant of the shark-like Gyorg seen in Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass called Malgyorg who swim in the desert of Sand Realm.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild features the Molduga, a field boss in the Gerudo Desert that's basically a whale crossed with this trope. It detects something moving on the surface of the sand, wormsigns its way under it, and lunges out of the desert like a shark. If that's Link, he can say goodbye to ten of his hearts. If it's not...
- Lethal Company: The Earth Leviathans are roaming outdoor enemies that swallow players whole if they don't get out of dodge when the world shakes and dust picks up around them. They can also devour the otherwise unkillable Forest Keepers if they are underneath one when it grabs a player.
- Lost Land Adventure has a sand worm boss in the underground crypt levels, which attacks you as you're in a minecart finding a way out of the tunnels. It blocks your way at the tunnel's exit, at which point you're required to shoot it's fangs and head to avoid getting chomped by the worm.
- Lost Planet features a giant snow worm in one of its missions.
- Lunar: Eternal Blue has Sand Sharks in the Salyan Desert.
- Mabinogi has two different types of these.
- One is an odd twist on the traditional sandworm type; which bizarrely occurs in normal terrain rather than sand, including inside certain dungeons, moving indiscriminantly through turf, rock, and soil. Possibly justified, in that it appears to be partly supernatural in nature. This was the first version developed. There is a high-level field boss version, the giant sandworm, which does occur in desert sand dunes; and a minor variant, the ice worm, found only in snowfields. Both of these are played completely straight.
- A second type is called a "lungfish" (and looks vaguely like a real-life lungfish). Although the appearance is actually that of an eel-like fish, it acts like a straight sandworm, and is found in desert sand dunes.
- One of the earliest obstacles in Majyuo is a giant sand worm which serves as an Advancing Wall of Doom, pursuing your hero down a tunnel, which your handgun couldn't do any sort of real damage on it because you're not a demon yet. Once you gained demonic powers, you fight the worm as an easy-to-beat Mini-Boss.
- Mass Effect:
- Thresher maws, apex predator of the Death World that raised the krogan. They don't exclusively appear on desert planets, but the only one that's actually necessary to fight in order to complete a mission does. Others can be found here and there, but they can be avoided with no ill effect beyond missing out on the experience from killing it. The codex also explains that they never fully leave the ground. The Alliance's first contact with them was when they destroyed a colony on Akuze. If you chose the Sole Survivor background for Shepard, Shepard was one of the marines sent to investigate and was the sole survivor of the squad.
- The lore also explains what in the hell they eat to maintain their mass: metal. That is, underground ore, usually. This also explains why they attack things like tanks and settlements: plenty of metal to munch on. It even explains the damaging acid they can spit, as they would need some pretty potent acids to digest metal.
- Mass Effect 3 introduces Kalros, planet Tuchanka's guardian, the ancient and exceedingly large "Mother Of All Thresher maws". She gets into a fight with a Destroyer-class Reaper, and wins.
- To further the Dune comparisons, they can be summoned by massive devices called "Maw Hammers" (Dune had similar devices), and Javik can make an offhand comment that Protheans could ride them. They gotten a lot bigger since his time, so that isn't possible anymore.
- Elaaden in Mass Effect: Andromeda has a variant, the Remnant Abyssal, more commonly simply called "the Worm". This is actually a Humongous Mecha left behind by Precursors and is just a terrain hazard, not an enemy that needs fighting (not that the krogan haven't tried).
- Master of Magic has the fantastic unit Great Wyrm of the Nature school of magic. This is giant worm with a green dragon head, it's the physically strongest creature in the game in pure stats and it also has a poisonous bite to inflict heavy damage on its victims.
- Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar has a seldom seen sandworm virus that leaps in and out of panels, periodically appearing in front of or behind you before trying to plow through you. Its chip summons worms from behind your foes to attack in the same fashion.
- Melfand Stories have a sand worm boss in the desert level who repeatedly leaps in and out of the sands to ambush you until you kill it.
- Meatgrinder have some impressively massive worms. One Womb Level happens after a sand worm suddenly pops up and devours everyone, including you, and later during a train chase you'll need to leap between carriages because there are other worms trying to swallow the whole trains!
- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes features Amorbis, a trio of Sand Worms, as the boss of Dark Agon Wastes, which is a huge scaled-up version of the light world critter the Sandigger, which are about 6 foot long and spit acid.
- The Desolation of Mordor DLC expansion for Middle-earth: Shadow of War reintroduces the were-wyrms, now properly occupying the desert region of Lithlad where a clan of Marauder Orcs have set up shop in the local fortress. Baranor even loses what's left of his Gondorian brigade to them while trying to locate the Vanishing Sons mercenary company. Of particular note is a were-wyrm called the "Rumbler", and it earns the name by being thrice the size of regular wyrms, large enough to destroy whole rock cliffs as well as completely devastate the Orcs' fortress when baited by Baranor with several gallons of spilled grog.
- Monster Hunter: While the series doesn't have actual worms (so far), these dragons still serve this trope's role:
- Monster Hunter (2004): Cephalos and Cephadrome are sand-swimming Piscine Wyverns which are designed like Hammersharks. The latter is a King Mook of the former, and is part of the list of boss monsters to hunt (strangely, it has no unique drops; they're all shared with Cephalos).
- Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): Jhen Mohran is a 350-feet Elder Dragon with a whale-like appearance and two large tusks, and is capable of swimming within the sands of the Great Desert. The Updated Re-release 3 Ultimate introduces the subspecies Hallowed Jhen Mohran, which not only attacks more aggresively but also has a very powerful attack that allows it to vomit a gigantic torrent of sand.
- Monster Hunter Portable 3rd: The Nibelsnarf is a three-way cross between a sandworm, a sand shark and a submarine. It even has the distinctive "burst up vertically from the sand and eat something on the way" move.
- Monster Hunter 4: Dah'ren Mohran is a close relative of the Jhen Mohran with one front tusk instead of two front ones. It borrows many of the attacks from its cousin, and in G Rank (only available in 4 Ultimate) it will start the second phase of the battle very close to the Sandship.
- Monster Hunter: World: Iceborne: Beotodus is a Piscine Wyvern that swims through the deep snow of Hoarfrost Reach.
- Mousehunt has the "Big Bad Burroughs Mouse" and its smaller brother, the Itty-Bitty Burroughs Mouse. They're a cross between this trope and a mouse.
- Giant sand worms, or their burrows at least, are among the field hazards in Mutant Football League. If a player (on either team) gets close to a worm hole, the worm will pop out and take a bite, killing any player instantly and forcing a fumble if they had the ball. If the field has worms, you're going to lose a few players to them, primarily slower/less agile players on your kickoff and return teams (linemen, 3rd- and sometimes 2nd-string defensive backs etc).
- Mystik Belle has a Cave Worm in the Detention Dungeon, which Belle needs to ride on to reach the higher platforms.
- Mystic Defender have a giant green worm-monster sticking out the ground in the first stage, serving as an easily-killed mid-boss. Later on you encounter demon cultists, who can Fusion Dance themselves into gigantic worm monsters sticking from the ground.
- NetHack features both D&D Purple Worms, and lawyer-friendly versions of Dune's sandworms. Neither actually burrow through the ground, though.
- Noita has the Matot (Worms in Finnish), they are monsters which can burrow through any substance, leaving behind tunnels. They come in various sizes and small ones can even be hatched from eggs the player finds. they diverge from the small Pikkumato, to the massive Jättimato. And the biggest of them all, the Helvetinmato, lives in Hell.
- No Man's Sky: A few are seen at the end of the VGX reveal trailer, though its scaly exterior suggests it has more in common with a snake than a worm. Absent from launch, finally added in the 3.0. updates.
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps has relatively normal-sized burrowing worms in the Windswept Wastes, and a gigantic one that resembles a cross between a Dune worm and a Graboid during an Escape Sequence at the end of the Windtorn Ruins.
- Overlord features giant sand worms in the later levels.
- Pankapu has Sah'laks, which are large, black, one-eyed worms that start appearing in the Starry Deep. They burrow back and forth in the ground until Pankapu gets close, whereupon they burst out of the ground to attack.
- Panzer Dragoon has plenty of examples; they make an especially prevalent appearance in the second level of the first game. A pair of these worms also show up as Dual Mini Bosses in the second stage of Orta, although that stage is a lush rain-forest instead of an arid desert.
- Patapon has Zaknel, a worm freqeuently encountered in deserts and so large it has palm trees growing on it. Its primary attacks consist of slamming itself against the earth for massive damage. Its more dangerous counterpart, Dokaknel, averts this by being encountered in ruins instead.
- Penumbra has these deep inside an old mine. They are mutations of indigenous rock worms. They are "only" about four to eight feet in diameter...
- Phantasy Star IV had these infesting the planet Motavia, with an enterprising farmer deciding to open a sandworm ranch. Unfortunately, it gets too big for its britches, and thus becomes one of the first (and hardest) Optional Boss fights in the game at that point. You often fought baby Sandworms in Random Encounters, and at least one variant, if you left a single one alive, would run off and summon Mama (another full-sized one like the boss mentioned above). When you get the Land Rover, one of the enemies you ran into was a Palette Swap of the Sandworm, while swaps of both the small and large kind could be found in the planet's oceans.
- Pikmin:
- The Burrowing Snagrets are functionally similar to these, though they're technically bird-headed reptiles and can burrow through the dirt as well as the sand.
- Pikmin 3 has the Sandbelching Meerslug, an Antlion Monster resembling a fat worm with a vertebrate mouth that serves as the boss of the Tropical Wilds, where it's fought in a large sandpit. Much of the fight has you track it down as it tunnels about in the sand, then Feed It a Bomb once it makes the sand funnel with its mouth at the bottom. Ironically, since Pikmin are little more that 10cm tall, the Sandbelching Meerslug wouldn't be considered giant to us.
- Pokémon:
- Onix and Steelix are Rock Pokémon that resemble giant snakes made out of boulders or iron. Fittingly, their respective types are Rock/Ground and Steel/Ground.
- Gible and its kin resemble sharks in their design, but they're really Dragon/Ground types.
- This is probably the most apt description of the legendary Zygarde's default form, an enormous Dragon/Ground, glowing green worm creature.
- Orthworm is a Steel-type earthworm-like creature that lives in arid deserts. It eats the iron in the soil to maintain its metal body, and its Earth Eater ability turns its weakness to Ground into a source of healing.
- Potion Permit: While not worms, Ironfins are long sand dragons that live in the Barren Wasteland. They burrow underground to ambush you by lunging.
- Pronty , being a game set underwater, features a giant Bobbit Worm boss fought in a cavern who behaves like the usual depictions of sand worms - tunneling in and out of the floor of the cavern it's fought while trying to chew you up, requiring you to float in the middle of the screen to avoid getting swallowed.
- There were a couple of these in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando. Some were real sand worms, and some were ice worms.
- In Reksio i UFO, giant sandworms known as The Great Worm are part of the fauna of the desertic planet Kurakis, which was based directly on Arrakis. The first challenge on this planet is to go through a maze full of these enemies. Any encountering with a worm forces the player to start over.
- Resident Evil – Code: Veronica has the Gulp Worm. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis has the Grave Digger, though it is based on the millipede.
- Rigid Force Alpha has Clapworms, who dwell in the sands of the planet Vurgos, which also features an Ohmu-like miniboss, and snow/ice worms on Creeo.
- Rogue Galaxy has them. And they're huge, even by this trope's standard.
- RuneScape has the Strykewyrms, which come in Jungle, Desert, Ice, and Lava varieties. There also is a giant Lava Strykewyrm called the Wildywyrm. They're normally unagressive and can only be fought as a Slayer task.
- The land shark variety is in Saints Row: The Third and a League of Legends champion, released at about the same time. You shoot or throw a fish at the target, and after a short delay a shark breaks through the pavement and takes a big bite. SR3 claims it is a sewer shark. LoL does not explain anything.
- Sands of Destruction has sandwhales. They look like large, green worms with flippers and vaguely-whale-like heads. They're also supposed to be gentle, but the impending end of the world has turned them violent.
- In the Scribblenauts games, you can conjure these up. Said monsters can be rideable, too. They instantly die when exposed to water.
- Serious Sam 3: BFE has gigantic creatures called Sand Whales living in the Egyptian desert. Contrary to the usual example, these (unkillable game-wise) bad boys eat mineral matter without a damn to give about mostly everything. Sand Whales are extremely territorial though, which makes them a perfectly diegetic example of Border Patrol in the more open-ended levels. They even play a very important role in the game's final level, as one of them keeps attacking and distracting the Final Boss, allowing the player to go on the offensive.
- Shadow of the Colossus: Dirge, the tenth Colossus, is a giant sand worm. Except it hits you. At high speeds. And it's hard.
- Shantae (2002) has these in the desert area near Oasis Town. They're long, durable, and look menacing with their mandibles and single eye, but they're mostly harmless since they just sit there in their hole in the sand.
- Shining Wisdom has a Sand Worm as the boss of the Sand Labyrinth.
- The Silent Hill series has the Twinfeeler, a giant burrowing caterpillar fought in a sand pit, in the first game; and the Split Worm, a Whack-a-Monster worm with Xenomorph-like jaws, in the third game.
- Sonic the Hedgehog series has some robotic ones in Sonic 3 & Knuckles located in Sandopolis zone. Giant stone sandworms appear in Sonic Adventure. Alien worms appeared in Shadow the Hedgehog. More organic and fiery ones can be found in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) although the latter two seem to prefer any surface, not just sand.
- Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter uses one of these to prevent the player from venturing into the open desert.
- A variation in Splatoon 2 is the Maws, a mutant salmon which travels through ink in the same physics-defying way as the inklings, only to emerge and devour an unsuspecting player, sand worm style. If the player is quick, they can get out of the way and leave behind a grenade instead.
- StarCraft:
- Nydus Worms in StarCraft II are an improvement on the first game's Nydus Canals: Load a bunch of units into a Nydus Network building, and have it grow a giant underground worm in another area. The creature bursts out of the ground and begins disgorging tons of units all at once.
- One mission in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm features an "ash worm" that pops out of the ground to spit acid at your units before burrowing again and popping up somewhere else. It apparently killed a Brood Mother that way. When slain the Zerg use its DNA to enable Swarm Hosts to move while burrowed.
- In Star Fox Zero the boss of Titania is the Scrapworm, a giant mechanical worm that lives in the vast sandy desert of the planet.
- The first Star Ocean game features Sandworms in the deserts of planet Roak, and also their cousins, called "Fellworms," in the mountains.
- Starsand is set in an alien desert planet, where spiky giant sand-worms are a recurring threat. One even shows up on the game cover.
- Steel Harbinger have giant worm enemies in the last few stages, spawned by fully-hatched alien pods, depicted as a gigantic worm-like head attached to the ground and comes at you with a biting attack.
- Star Trek Online has aehallh worms, first seen on the desert planet Nimbus. They are sessile predators that sprout from the ground and let their prey come to them. The name refers back to the TOS novel The Romulan Way, where it is the Romulan word for "ghost" or "monster".
- Stellaris has a possible archaeology site called "The Echoes Inside" that has a chance to occur on Barren Planets. Completing the event reveals that a giant burrowing worm is the reason that the planet is now devoid of other life. The ominous final lines of the event reveal that the unnamed ancient alien empire apparently already "seeded" every habitable planet in the galaxy with a larval form of this biological doomsday weapon.
- In Street Fighter 2010, sandworms appear as enemies on the desert planet. The mid-level boss can summon them, and the end-of-level boss appears to ride in on one.
- Subnautica: Below Zero has the Ice Worm, which is more or less an expy of Dune's own sandworms brought to arctic ice (complete with thumpers drawing their attention away from you). Anything they hear on the surface of any ice floes they stalk is likely going to get eaten.
- Sundered has Wurms, burrowing robots that are found only in the Valkyrie Encampment. They attack by bursting out of the ground beneath Eshe’s feet, leaping high into the air, and then releasing an electrical discharge when they land. They can only spawn on rocky surfaces, and will not spawn on metal floors or scaffolding.
- Starlink: Battle for Atlas has sandworms on the first planet Kirite, a desert world. Their scales are very valuable and a sandworm would blindly chase one down, beliving it to be another of its species.
- Super Cyborg have a deformed sandworm-like monster called an Evevva Parasite, which chases you down a narrow corridor as an Advancing Boss of Doom
- Super Mega Worm is yet another unique game that casts you as the titular worm, a gigantic monster that feeds on humans. It turns out you're the product of Gaia's Vengeance - because of pollution and rapid development by humans, you're spawned by Mother Nature to reclaim the surface world and wipe out humans.
- In Super Star Wars, the Saarlac Pit Monster is depicted this way despite it barely being seen in the original trilogy.
- Tales Series:
- Terraria has quite a few giant worms, all of which mainly tunnel into blocks and try to ram into the player. The basic giant worm is twice as long as a human, and it only gets bigger from there, as they're replaced with the bigger and faster Diggers in Hardmode. Devourers are corrupted giant worms, replaced in Hardmode with World Feeders; tomb crawlers are desertic sand worms, bigger and tougher and much faster than giant worms, replaced by enormous and lightning-quick Dune Splicers in Hardmode. The Eater of Worlds is the King Mook of Devourers, with the added ability to split into smaller Eaters when its segments are destroyed; the laser-spewing Destroyer is its robotic Hardmode version.
- TimeSplitters Future Perfect has twenty-foot-long vicious dirt-worms in the backyard of the haunted mansion. The player gets to rescue a scientist who had taken refuge in a tree by defeating the worms with a flamethrower. The scientist also references Tremors by name, in keeping with the game being filled with movie Shout Outs.
- Toukiden has the serpentine minor oni Earth Fang that burrows underground and may pop up beneath a character. There is also a rare variant known as a Frost Fang that gains some ice powers.
- The Subterranean in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and the Swamp/Cave Worms in the sequel.
- Viva Piñata doesn't technically have a sandworm, but the Whirlms can dive into the ground without making a mark and pop out again without any dirt on them, so they could easily burrow through ground like a sandworm if they wanted.
- One of Wario World's bosses is named one of these, but in reality it's more like an antlion with scythe-hands. It still tunnels through the sandpit it's found in at high speed.
- World of Warcraft has a few, the first being Ouro, a then-unique model boss in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. The Burning Crusade expansion introduced acid-spitting worms capable of tunneling through solid rock in Hellfire Peninsula and the Bone Wastes in the middle of Terokkar Forest. In homage to Frank Herbert, one quest chain ends with summoning a giant undeground worm named "Hai'shulud" with a "fumper", and gives "Dib'Muad's Crysknife" as a quest reward. Jormungar of Northrend are quite a bit smaller, but adhere to the same principles (and spit acid too). With the release of the Cataclysm expansion, World Of Warcraft got sandworms that are made of stone Stargates and magma wurms.
- Writhe have you fighting oversized sago worms in Bangkok, with the largest of them emerging from the ground and are as large as common depiction of sandworms.
- The entirely desert-set FPS, Wrought Flesh, have one of these called a "Terraworm" as it's first boss. Who attacks you by pouncing in and out the sands trying to chomp on you, and you'll need to shoot it's head and underbelly when it's above you.
- Xenoblade Chronicles X: Sabulas, which can be found in certain sandy terrains (though, oddly enough, not the actual desert region). They're about thirty to fifty feet long, but are mostly docile, only attacking if attacked first. However, there are certain individual Sabulas that are gigantic (on the order of a mile or more in length) that serve as optional post-game bosses... two of which are named "Atreides" and "Gesserit".
- Zombies Ate My Neighbors the excellent but Nintendo Hard Lucas Arts game for the SNES is filled with homage monsters for the two teens to battle, and of course, has a gigantic people-eating worm. It lashes its tongue in and out at people.
- The Superboss of zOMG! shares its name with this trope's alternate title/humorous variation: Landshark. It is, quite literally, a shark that swims through (and appears to be made of) sand. Other than its anatomy, it acts almost exactly like a sandworm, burrowing underground and eating unsuspecting Gaians. (It can kill a CL 10.0 Player with multiple armor buffs and a health boost in 3 hits, and unbuffed players in less than that. It took three 6-Person Crews of CL 10 players to take it down. Plus the area it spawns in is usually filled with CL 5 players).
