Scary Animals Index

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!

— "Snuff Out the Light", Cut Song from The Emperor's New Groove

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 particularly aggressive and brutish creatures.
• Angry Guard Dog: Large canines used for security jobs or as Elite Mooks.
• Animal Stampede: Multiple, maybe hundreds of herbivores running together and trampling everything in their path.
• Ant Assault: Ants portrayed as the source of trouble.
• Atrocious Arthropods: Arthropods (insects, arachnids, crustaceans, myriapods) or arthropod-themed characters and creatures are portrayed as evil and dangerous.
• Bad Ol' Badger: Badgers portrayed as aggressive and vicious.
• Bat Out of Hell: Monstrous bats.
• Bat Scare: 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: Bees are portrayed as abhorrent invaders.
• Beware of Vicious Dog: A dog who seemingly hates everyone and everything.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Giant insects and arachnids.
• Bloodsucking Bats: Bats who consume blood.
• Brutal Bird of Prey: Birds of prey are portrayed as menacing and scary.
• 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.
• Cats Are Superior: Cats who are arrogant.
• Circling Vultures: Vultures circling around deserts and/or someone when they're at death's door.
• Clam Trap: Clams and other bivalves that can bite people or trap them in their shells.
• Cocky Rooster: Roosters depicted as fierce, aggressive birds or with a smug, snobbish attitude.
• Creepy Camel Spider: Solifugids portrayed as hyper-aggressive desert terrors, often well beyond what they are in reality.
• Creepy Centipedes: Centipedes portrayed as frightening and unnerving monsters.
• Creepy Cockroach: Cockroaches depicted as vile, filthy or unpleasant creatures.
• Creepy Crows: Crows depicted as creepy animals associated with unpleasant things.
• 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.
• Evil Egg Eater: If it eats other animals' eggs, it's depicted as being an evil trait.
• Eyeball-Plucking Birds: Crows, vultures, and other scavenging birds that will always go for the eyeball of both living and dead animals.
• Feathered Fiend: Evil or otherwise hazardous birds.
• Fed to Pigs: Feeding (usually dead) people to domestic pigs.
• Fed to the Beast: Feeding (usually live) people to man-eating animals or monsters.
• Fiendish Fish: Dangerous, sometimes outright evil, fish.
• Flies Equals Evil: The arrival of flies, mosquitoes, wasps, or other creepy crawlies to indicate something horrible is about to happen - or that, with their scavenging ways, something has.
• Foul Fox: Foxes portrayed as aggressive, cruel, or even outright evil.
• Foul Waterfowl: Geese, ducks, and swans, among other water fowl, are depicted as aggressive animals.
• Full-Boar Action: Dangerous pig- or boar-based monsters.
• Giant Enemy Crab: Outsized, dangerous crabs.
• Giant Spider: Impossibly large spiders are especially scary.
• 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.
• Headbutting Pachy: The unrealistic portrayal of Pachycephalosaurid dinosaurs headbutting things all the time.
• 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.
• Kidnapping Bird of Prey: Predatory birds that snatch people from the ground and carry them off into the sky.
• Killer Gorilla: A violent gorilla.
• Killer Rabbit: When a monster is much more dangerous than it appears.
• Land Shark: Shark or shark-like creatures that naturally appear on land, be it with legs or burrowing through the ground.
• Macabre Moth Motif: Moths depicted as a bad omen.
• Malicious Monitor Lizard: When monitor lizards in a work are portrayed as evil.
• Maniac Monkeys: Monkeys and apes are the bad guys.
• Messy Maggots: Something gross can 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.
• A Mischief of Mice: Mice that are portrayed in a more antagonistic light than Nice Mice.
• 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.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Crocodilians depicted as evil man-eaters.
• Ominous Owl: Owls portrayed as creepy or scary.
• Painful Pointy Pufferfish: Fictional pufferfish seen stabbing things with their spikes.
• Parasites Are Evil: Parasites and parasitoids depicted as villainous and morally repugnant.
• Parasitic Horror: Parasitism being played for horror and squick.
• Perverted Pig: Pigs depicted as lecherous or perverted.
• Pesky Pigeons: Pigeons depicted as filthy and unpleasant, sometimes evil and malevolent, creatures.
• Pest Episode: When a household pest moves in, and most of the episode is spent trying to catch it.
• Pike Peril: Pike portrayed as evil or vicious.
• Piranha Problem: Piranhas portrayed as far more vicious than they are in reality.
• 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.
• Psycho Electric Eel: Electric eels portrayed as much more powerful/dangerous/Psycho Electro than they really are.
• Psycho Poodle: Poodles portrayed as vicious, or even evil.
• Raptor Attack: Unrealistic or inaccurate portrayals of Dromeosaurid dinosaurs.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Reptiles are depicted as evil.
• 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.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Giant, destructive, sometimes man-eating rodents are featured in some horror movies.
• Savage Spinosaurs: Spinosaurid theropods are portrayed as scary predators.
• 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.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: Insects who come in swarms have stings that kill.
• Scavengers Are Scum: Scavenging animals portrayed as evil in fiction.
• Screwball Squirrel: Squirrels are depicted as unhinged and zany, if not aggressive and sadistic.
• Sea Hurtchin: Urchins existing only to hurt people with their spines.
• Sinister Stingrays: Rays are shown in an ominous and devilish light.
• Sinister Swine: Pigs are portrayed as cruel, aggressive, or scary.
• Slaying Mantis: Praying mantises portrayed as badass and scary.
• Slippery as an Eel: Eels depicted as sly, conniving, and untrustworthy creatures.
• Smelly Skunk: Skunks are portrayed as smelly and unclean, sometimes evil and dangerous.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Snakes portrayed as creepy or evil creatures.
• Sneaky Spider: Spiders are portrayed as cunning and devious (though not all are actually villainous).
• Spider Swarm: Swarms of improbably social spiders moving — and, often enough, hunting — as one.
• Spiders Are Scary: Spiders portrayed as terrifying, venomous and dangerous, often far beyond any threat they actually pose in real life.
• Spooky Animal Sounds: The calls of stereotypically ominous or scary animals being used to establish spooky or dark moods.
• Super-Persistent Predator: A predator that goes to unrealistic lengths to catch its prey.
• Super-Powered Shrimp: A creature based on a shrimp, typically one of the more eccentric species enhanced in some way according to the media it appears in.
• Swarm of Rats: A large group of rats added for scare factor.
• Temper-Ceratops: Ceratopsian dinosaurs described as being akin to bulls and rhinos; temperamental and aggressive by herbivore standards.
• 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.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Tyrannosaur dinosaurs are depicted as the ferocious tyrant of the Cretaceous period.
• Terror-dactyl: Generally, these tweaks make the pterosaurs scarier and nastier.
• Threatening Shark: Sharks portrayed as a likely danger, or as evil, vicious man-eaters.
• Tough Armored Dinosaur: Thyreophoran dinosaurs portrayed as formidable, aggressive, and frequently dim-witted juggernauts.
• Vile Vulture: Vultures are portrayed as amoral and villainous.
• Villain Holds the Leash: The villain's pet is the reason why they're a threat.
• Volatile Tasmanian Devil: Tasmasnian Devils are portrayed as Ax-Crazy and unpredictable, often hungry creatures.
• 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 seen as dirty and disgusting, hence calling a dishonorable person one.