"Do you know how much money I spend on shoes?"
Chimeric beings with the physical characteristics of both humanoids and spiders. A common variant takes the form of a centaur-esque creature with the upper body of a human and a lower body of a spider, sometimes referred to as driders or arachne, but many other configurations appear in fiction. Naturally, they tend to have an Arachnid Appearance and Attire.
Most of the time, they are seen as females, to play off of the Black Widow trope and because female spiders are bigger and more dangerous than males. They're usually shown as Always Chaotic Evil, or at least as predatory and amoral, but they occasionally fall into the Cute Monster Girl or Friendly Neighborhood Spider categories. They commonly have access to a variety of spider-themed abilities, such as poison or the ability to spin webs.
Not to be confused with Spider-Man or Spider-Woman. See also the Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo, which are spider Youkai that can turn into people and often, but not always, have the mix-and-match shapes of this trope.
Sub-Trope of Beast Man. See also Our Centaurs Are Different when the spider person resembles an aranean centaur and Seductive Spider if they're sexy. For a different kind of arachnid-humanoid chimeras, see Scorpion People, who may serve as a more exotic or threatening replacement for Spider People.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- 3×3 Eyes: The unnamed Hyoma serving Gupta is allowed to make his first ritual of assimilation, which merges his body with a bat and a spider, resulting in a grotesque humanoid with the wings and ears of a bat coupled with the eight limbs, gaping fanged mouth and silk-spitting abdomen of a spider.
- In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, there's an entire family of Spider Demons living in mount Natagumo and acting as the first serious battle for the protagonists: Rui, the Sister and the Mother are all pale humanoids with Facial Markings and powers over webs (cutting, corrosive and puppeteering strings respectively), while the Brother is a large human-headed spider whose poison can turn people in human-headed spiders under his control and father is a large, muscular man with a spider's head resembling a monstrous tarantula.
- In Digimon Adventure 02, one of the main villains from the 2nd half of the series is Arachnemon (Arukenimon in the west). She's normally disguised as a human lady in a crimson red dress, but her true form is that of a centaur like monster with a spider lower half and a human upper half.
- Digimon Ghost Game introduces Gyukimon, who is a mashup of this and a minotaur. The lower half is a colorful spider complete with a venomous maw. The upper half is a purple anthropomorphic ox sprouting from where the spider's head would be. Its venom agonizingly mutates other creatures, including humans, into a form only partly resembles Gyukimon itself. The series also features another appearance of Archnemon, this time as a much more terrifyingly competent villain.
- Oddly enough the Youkai Nekosennin from GeGeGe no Kitarō, despite being a cat monster, is usually represented as a tall man whose face bears an uncanny resemblance to the face of a wolf spider (having four round, almost arachnid eyes, two big and two small).
- Obana from Jōjū Senjin!! Mushibugyō is a very unusual example: physically he looks like a normal human with marks on his forehead, segmented puppet-like arms and four striped spider legs coming out of his back. Personality wise, he's a very calm and analytical warrior moved by a genuine, unsatable curiosity and even quoting the Hagakure at one point. He can also produce silk from his fingertips and use it mostly to form massive staves and spears to attack in melee.
- Karakuri Circus: One of the top-class Automata serving under Faceless has the appearance of a beautiful woman in an old-style, high-class dress, including a large hat, gloves and umbrella, while her lower half is that of a gigantic hairy spider, which she uses to move fast enough to catch up with a train. She's also an Identical Stranger to the Missing Mom of the local circus troupe family and when they admit this to her face, she becomes deluded that they are her real family.
- Rachnera Arachnera from Monster Musume. She is an arachne with the common centaur-esque form of a human upper half and giant spider lower half. She also has six eyes, fangs and for some reason, her arms have a black exoskeleton over them. She also has the beginnings of human legs, which turn into the spider's pedipalps (fortunately, Word of God says there's no mouth down there).
- Kidomaru from Naruto has two extra pairs of arms, which essentially gave him a total of eight appendages, relating to his spider theme. Not only that, but he also has spider-like abilities.
- One Piece:
- Thriller Bark's Tararan is a literal Spider Monkey. As in, body and legs of a gigantic spider combined with the hands, head and tail of an equally big monkey.
- The aptly named Marine Vice Admiral Onigumo note can assume a spider-human form through his unnamed Devil Fruit which has him sprout spider limbs and abdomen from his back.
- The former pirate "Machete" Run was altered by Law's Devil Fruit powers and transformed into a massive human-spider hybrid, sporting six legs and a massive abdomen in lieu of a lower half, while the fourth pair of limbs is used as extra arms to hold his machetes.
- Black Maria reveals that she ate the Ancient Zoan Spider-Spider Fruit, Model: Rosamygale Grauvogeli. In her hybrid form, her lower body is replaced with the body of a whole huge spider, head included, rather than a form similar to Onigumo's. Word of God explains that Black Maria deliberately altered her transformation with a drug similar to Chopper's Rumble Ball.
- Taboo Gordeaux from Psyren is a massive humanoid whose head is covered in a hood, but shows the ability to sprout eight long spider limbs from his back to shoot beams of energy and in a close up the outline of some chelicerae and multiple eyes can be spotted under his hood.
- Keito from Rosario + Vampire is the local Jorogumo. She can switch between her human and spider forms at will.
Audio Plays
- Starboard: Arachne, the nurse of the outlaw ship Taranau, is a spider creature known as an arachnotaur. Despite her appearance, she is also one of the gentlest and kindest members of the crew.
Card Games
- Mystical Medleys: A Vintage Cartoon Tarot: "Five of Wands" features an anthropomorphic spider in a baseball uniform, wielding five baseball bats and a catcher's mitt with a baseball in it.
Comic Books
- Astro City: Little Miss Muffet was a short-lived local superhero; she resembled a blond young girl with six arms who could climb walls.
- Dark Avengers: The original form of Ai Apaec, South American chimera god and the Dark Spider-Man, is a spider-person with snake hair.
- The F1rst Hero: In one scene in the Extrahuman Task Force's Philidelphia headquarters, an extrahuman spider person manages to escape containment and go on a rampage inside the building attempting to escape. He fears that he'll be dissected for scientific purposes.
- The minor Ghost Rider villain Shelob is an arachnid-like demoness capable of wearing people's skin like a suit after liquefying and consuming their innards.
- Arachne appears in The Incredible Hercules as she battles (of all people) Spider-Man. She also saves Herc (who himself was turned into a Spider-Person by the Spider Queen). However, as she rescues him, she suddenly finds herself very attracted to his new form, and the two of them have sex. In public. In front of the (captive) X-Men!
- Wonder Woman appears as one in Justice League Adventures #21, but it's only on the cover and one panel in the book just to show what kind of unethical experiments an alien race is willing to do to our heroes.
- The Stalk in Saga is a more terrifying blend of human and spider elements — she has four rows of eyes, a human torso with no arms, and each of her spider legs ends in a human hand.
- Satan's Hollow: The Devil's Squire is a demon-spider hybrid.
- Spider-Man generally doesn't qualify, being just a normal guy with spiderlike powers — but he has occasionally mutated further into "Man-Spider", a far more monstrous form somewhere in between a bipedal human and a giant multi-armed spider.
- Swamp Thing: Anton Arcane was once a cybernetic monstrosity in his third appearance, half-spider, half-zombie, with one compound eye.
- The Ten-Seconders: One of the Gods is Arachne, a spiderlike humanoid with eight limbs who eats people for lunch. Incidentally, he's a Darker and Edgier Spider-Man Send-Up.
- Wonder Woman (1987): One of the first real signs that Circe is truly slipping mentally rather than just being exceptionally petty and cruel during "The Witch and the Warrior" is that she turned Lex Luthor into a poorly restrained giant spider-taur with his mind intact and kept him on the same ship her young daughter is strolling about.
Fan Works
- Rick and The Loud House: In IC2: Along Came a Sister, Leni is splashed with chemicals from Rick's lab while covered in baby spiders, turning her into a Drider-like monster who tries to eat Rick and her siblings.
Films — Animation
- Rosie from A Bug's Life actually looks like this, despite being an actual spider, due to being a heavily anthropomorphized black widow with a human face and a pair of human hands.
- Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen: Lord Odorom's henchman, General Spider, is a spider-human and one of his deadliest champions due to having six limbs wielding six poisoned rapiers at the same time. It takes the combined efforts of Nobitania, Shizukaria, Giantosu and Sunemisu taking him on in a lengthy Sword Fight, but then he pulls a Villain: Exit, Stage Left after having all six of his weapons snapped.
- According to the producers, the design of Mr. Waternoose from Monsters, Inc. was intended to be evocative of "a cross between a spider and a crab".
- One of the mutant toys from Toy Story appears to be a baby doll's head mounted onto a spider body made from an Erector kit.
Films — Live-Action
- In Gremlins 2: The New Batch, the gremlin Mohawk drinks a vial of spider genetic serum in Dr. Catheter's lab and turns into a half-spider/half-gremlin monster.
- At the climax of It: Chapter Two, Pennywise transforms into one of these — a Giant Spider-like creature with his clown form's torso growing out of it.
- A semi-inversion in Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back. The spider demons are basically bus-sized spiders, with the upper torsos of women dangling from behind the pedipalps. This does not deter Pigsy in the least.
- The spidermonkey in Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams is half-spider, half-gorilla.
- The Super Inframan has the Spider-Monster, a humanoid-spider hybrid, as one of the many monsters Inframan must defeat.
Literature
- Arachs in Domina are a bit of a twist on this, in that they're Little Bit Beastly versions of this. It's noted that they already have most of the Bio-Augmentation that lets them act like spiders (poison, silk glands, etc.), but they want stuff that makes them look like spiders as well — mostly extra arms.
- Philip José Farmer had a 1980s Shared Universe sci-fantasy series called The Dungeon in which alien beings are transported to a series of melded worlds for the amusement of an advanced civilization. Among the protagonists is a Shriek, a telepathic multi-armed, superhumanly strong spider person with poison-tipped spines. The main hero, Clive Folliot, is initially horrified at meeting the inhuman Shriek (her head is that of a giant spider and her whole body is covered in hairy spines like a tarantula), but the pair soon become staunch friends.
- Arachnea from Howl of the Werewolf used to be human and a Black Widow who murders her various lovers for wealth. After being hit by a curse, she becomes a hybrid between a human and a black widow.
- Entoma Vasilissa Zeta, one of the Pleiades battle maids in Overlord (2012), wears very form traditional and form concealing clothing, and for good reason: she's barely humanoid at all. When she's forced into a fight, it becomes only too clear that her true body is far more on the spider side of the spectrum with legs poking out of her "back" and her jaws being where her "chin" would supposedly be. What appears to be her face is nothing but an insect that attaches on top of her real face. Basically, imagine a spider walking on two legs, and only when it feels like it.
- A Poison Dark And Drowning: The familiars of Nemneris, who are referred to as "Lice", are giant human-spider monsters with eight legs and a set of mandibles in place of a human mouth.
- Tenebrites in Quest for the Fallen Star by Piers Anthony have this as one of their two forms (the other form is fully humanoid). They wear full plate in both states.
- Max in The Secrets of Droon is a spider troll, with the body of a spider and a humanoid head. He's friendly, and it seems the rest of his race is too.
- The protagonist of So I'm a Spider, So What? makes becoming an Arachne her primary goal to hopefully interacting with society because her current form is a terrifying spider the size of a large pig. She doesn't know for certain the biology of an Arachne but she assumes they'd at least have a human upper body and mouth and thus be able to speak to people. She does finally succeed, but she ends up being a Single Specimen Species as no spider monster has ever managed to reach that stage before. To her surprise, below the human upper body she still has a spider's head which contains its own functional brain, meaning she can look herself in the eyes if she wants. The human half also happens to be very beautiful, but this is implicitly unrelated to Arachne as a race: It's just how she looks.
- Tortall Universe: Spidrens have a spider's body and a human head. They're first seen in The Immortals and show up again in Protector of the Small.
Live-Action TV
- A trio of these creatures popped up in an episode of Big Wolf on Campus, with the modus operandi of picking out and "befriending" a social reject to fatten up and eat, knowing he won't be missed since he doesn't have friends. Unfortunately for them, they happen to pick out Merton Dingle this time who has one hell of a friend at his back who is willing to beat some serious spider ass to save him.
- Doctor Who: "The Runaway Bride" has the Empress of the Racnoss, who even has a web motif going on for her spaceship. Full spider below, but human upper torso and semi-human head (the actress wore a prosthesis with a big frill on it).
- A non-human example: the aliens in Falling Skies have spider-like bodies, but their heads and forearms are more like the creatures from Alien.
- The Saltici and the Wolaxian arachnids in Farscape. The first are slightly more humanoid (villain Natira is a member of the race and she have the spider legs in the head and use them to gouge other people's eyes out), the second are akin more toward Eldritch Abomination territory.
- The Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episode "Web of Desire" shows a different take on the Arachne myth. She was jealous of her daughter's beauty and drowned her in the ocean. Zeus cursed her into a Spider Person form and banished her on a deserted island.
- The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Bride of Chaotica!" features Janeway as Aracnia, Queen of the Spider People. Presumably, had we seen the spider people, this trope would have been involved.
Myths & Religion
- In Classical Mythology, there was a mortal weaver named Arachne. Arachne boasted of how her skills in making beautiful tapestries were better than those of Athena/Minerva, the Goddess of wisdom and crafts. What happened next depends on whom you ask: either Athena/Minerva grew so tired of her boasting, or won a weaving contest with the girl or lost and was so salty over it that she turned Arachne into either a spider woman, an ordinary spider or a Giant Spider depending on the adaptation.
- Japanese Mythology has the Yōkai jorogumo (literally "whore spider") and tsuchigumo. Both are spider-spirits that can adopt a wholly or partially human form, but jorogumos tend to be seductresses who live in disguise among human society, whilst tsuchigumos are Giant Spider demons who command armies of lesser yokai. The former is usually depicted as a woman with spider limbs emerging from her sleeves, while the latter is usually a spider with a monstrous cat-like head.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons has quite a few of these throughout its many editions and settings.
- Perhaps the most iconic of all are driders, who created the definitive "humanoid from the waist up, giant spider from the waist down" appearance that almost every spider-person has since used. These are drow transformed into their new form by Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders and racial patron of the dark elves. Traditionally, this is a punishment for the drow in question, although 4th edition pointed out the Fridge Logic of being made more spidery by a god of spiders somehow being a punishment and instead made it a blessing.note
- Lolth herself fits this trope, being capable of appearing as a drow woman, a giant spider, and either a drider, a giant spider with a drow's head, or both.
- Chitines are a race of spider-people created by the drow as a slave-race, appearing as bipedal figures with pronounced fangs and multiple elongated, multiply jointed arms. They are ruled over by female priestesses called choldriths, who, depending on edition, either look like
◊ spiders with elven faces or else something like a more hideous drider. Unfortunately for the drow, Lolth took offense to the fact that the chitines weren't "properly" consecrated to her, and inspired them to rebel. Now they constantly wage war on the drow to prove that they're Lolth's "true children".
- Ettercaps are extremely spidery humanoids, although how spidery has varied over the editions: they started out as trollish humanoids with the ability to secrete silk, gained very thin, spider-like hands and limbs in 2E — making them very spider-like without actually being spiders outright — became humanoids with spiders' claws and heads in later editions and, by 5E, transformed into large, bipedal and armor-plated arachnids. Characterization-wise, they're web-spinners who shepherd and guard spiders, commonly ally with Giant Spiders and spider-like monsters, and often have a particular dislike for fey creatures. One issue of Dragon gave them the reputed origin that they are the descendants of a druidic order that worshiped spiders and tried to become closer to their totem animals, only the whole experiment became a case of Gone Horribly Right, perhaps due to demonic intervention.
- In Mystara: Araneas combine this trope with Our Werebeasts Are Different. They're a race of sapient giant spiders who developed both an innate affinity for magic and the power to shapeshift into a partially or wholly humanoid form. In a rarity among such races, they're actually not evil, with a typical alignment of True Neutral; they mostly just want to be left in peace and live a quiet life.
- Ravenloft: Tristessa, a banshee darklord, became a pariah among her fellow shadow fey when she gave birth to a spider-legged daughter. It's unclear if the baby was a full-fledged drider or not.
- The 3rd edition Monster Manual 3 has the lhosk, which is half spider and half gorilla, drider-style, but is also a sapient race.
- GURPS Technomancer: Spider chimeras (Homo Sapiens Arachnae). Their human half looks perfectly human, but they do have a venomous bite.
- Magic: The Gathering:
- Tsabo Tavoc, the Phyrexian general, resembles a four-armed human with the lower body of a mechanical spider.
- Sheoldred of the New Phyrexians has a similar look, although the lower portion is more like a cross between a spider and a crab, with four legs and a giant mouth across its entire front.
- Tsabo Tavoc
- Numenera: The Westwood of Navarene is inhabited by the Culovas, which resemble giant spiders with a humanoid torso, arms ending in clawed fingers, almost no neck, a head with multiple spider-like eyes, and a mouth full of sharp teeth.
- Pathfinder:
- Dungeons & Dragons' driders are retained alongside the ettercaps and the araneas; however, the goddess Lolth is cut out of the process entirely — instead of being the fruit of a divine curse or blessing from the spider goddess, drow are now magically reshaped into driders by other drow as a punishment, although many have escaped to form their own colonies in the wilderness of the Darklands. Another difference its that, while females retain the appearance of beautiful drow with the lower bodies of gigantic spiders, the males have spider-like faces as well, with multiple eyes and lower jaws that open sideways like a pair of arthropod mandibles.
- Jorogumos, as in Japanese folklore, are a female One-Gender Race of humanoids resembling beautiful women with spider-like characteristics — in this case, eight jointed spider arms extending from their backs — as well as the ability to control regular spiders. They reproduce by seducing humanoid males, paralyzing them after copulation, laying an egg in their bodies, cocooning them and leaving them helpless and bound until the infant hatches and eats her way out of her father.
- 2nd Edition introduces the anandi, who resemble humanoids with the heads of jumping spiders. Notably, in a total aversion of what's usually expected from spider-people, they are Chaotic Good. However, the anandi are aware that their appearance is unnerving to humans, so they've developed the ability to magically shapeshift into humans as A Form You Are Comfortable With. A later book, in the course of making anadi a playable ancestry, specifies that the anadi's true forms are just giant spiders about the size of humans. By default, they have the ability to swap between spider form and aforementioned humanoid Form You Are Comfortable With; with a feat they can take the hybrid form mentioned above and access the abilities of both forms at once (e.g., climbing walls while still having hands). Most anadi are depicted as jumping spiders still, though some mechanics imply they could look like other kinds of spider.
- Rifts:
- The A'rac are spider-headed humanoids with a penchant for travel and exploration, whose endless roving led to them spreading throughout the Megaverse once they discovered dimensional travel.
- The Spinne are humanoid spiders mostly found in Germany, with two legs, four arms, rudimentary internal skeletons, and a spiracle-based respiratory system that draws air through their skin and consequently prevents them from wearing any but the loosest armor or clothing. They feed on the blood and liquefied organs of mammals, and Spinne females are much larger than the males. They're divided into two distinct bloodlines: the Starke are descended from web-builders and tend to be even-tempered, staid, and clinical; while the Schnellig, descended from hunting spiders, are much more aggressive and outgoing. Consequently, Starke tend to be researchers and engineers, while Schnellig are more often warriors and spies.
- Warhammer 40,000: The Necron character Illuminor Szeras is the robotic equivalent, sporting four spider-like legs. He takes the appearance one step further by having two small manipulator arms mounted on his chest that give him the appearance of having pedipalps as well as regular arms.
- Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Among the possible half-human half-spider forms of the werespider Ananasi are spider-centaurs, bipedal spiders with human heads, and a variety of other unnerving combinations.
- Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Azlu are hideous spider spirits that have monstrous physical forms are capable of merging with a human once they have gained enough power, becoming hideous human-spider hybrids called Azarath.
Video Games
- Bloodborne has Patches the Spider and Nightmare Apostles. The only thing human is the head, the rest of the body is a spider.
- In Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, the brothers save a young girl from what appears to be a sacrificial ritual while on their journey. She accompanies them on their way to the mystical tree that will cure their father's illness. The girl later reveals herself to be this trope, having led the brothers into a trap. Though she is defeated, she manages to fatally wound the older brother.
- Two appear in Dark Souls. The first is a boss fight; Quelaag is half-naked-woman, half-MAGMA-spider, so you spend quite a lot of time dodging flame bursts and lava flows. The other is her unnamed sickly albino sister. "The White Lady" is friendly enough (because she's so ill she thinks you're her sister) and acts as a fire keeper.
- Several Demons in the Diablo series are portrayed this way:
- Baal in Diablo II's Lord of Destruction expansion has a vaguely humanoid torso atop four spider-like legs.
- Azmodan in Diablo III, whose enormous bulk is supported by 6 legs.
- Also from Diablo III is Cydaea, who plays it straightest of the three, having a very spiderlike lower body with an attractive demon torso. Deckard Cain describes her as simultaneously beautiful and hideous to look at.
- The Vagary from Doom³, a demonic-spider-woman who appears to be telepathic and telekinetic.
- In Dragon's Crown, finishing the quest "Magic Carpet Secrets" rewards you with artwork of Arachne and gives you lore that says the Gods punished her by for her conceit by turning her lower half into a spider and that she went on to make beautiful Magic Carpets out of her own silk, which just angered the Gods even further.
- DragonFable has the Chaos Weavers from the Book 1 portion of the Ravenloss Saga, who had actually been ordinary humans until a curse was placed upon them by a wish-granting artifact built and used by their leader, Vaal. The curse gets lifted at the end, though, and the effects eventually disappear by the beginning of the next half of the saga.
- Dungeon Keeper 2 was supposed to have these, but although their development got far, they were ultimately not included. Their file and concept art names are "Maiden", "Dark Maiden", and "Maiden of the Nest", and in the fan mod that makes them playable they go by Maiden. Maidens are of the "centaurs but with a spider body instead of a horse body" variety.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Spider Daedra, as their name might imply, are a Spider People form of lesser Daedra. Physically, they appear as a naked humanoid torso attached below the waist to the abdomen, thorax, and legs of a Giant Spider. In the spin-off Dungeon Crawler game Battlespire, they have masculine upper human bodies. In Oblivion and Online, they have feminine upper human bodies.
- Mephala is the Daedric Prince of lies, sex, murder, secrets, and plots, and she is also known by the names Webspinner, Spinner, Spider, Teacher of the Secret Arts, and Queen of the Eight Shadows of Murder. Some depictions of her show her to have spider-like characteristics such as multiple arms. She's also the Daedric Prince whom the Spider Daedra work for.
- Drachnids in both EverQuest games. Upper body of a Dark Elf, lower half of a spider. Made as an experiment/wedding gift by an especially crazy sorceress toward an exceptionally powerful vampire. He didn't care for them, so he released them on Kunark where they quickly populated.
- The Arachnae monsters on the way to the Land of Summoned Monsters in Final Fantasy IV and their Palette Swap Alraune in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years are human from the waist up but have a spider's abdomen and legs below.
- Fresh Minty Adventure: The Spider Princess, Arachne, has a human upper body and head and a spider lower body.
- In Gems of War, two troops from Zhul'Kari, the Dark Maiden and the Spider Queen. The former can poison people, while the latter can ensnare them in webs.
- The Spider Witch boss from Ghostbusters: The Video Game. She started out as an evil human, but after dying, she was transformed into a humanoid arachnid by Ivo Shandor.
- The Final Boss of Gynophobia is a giant spider woman, which represents both the Player Character's arachnophobia and gynophobia.
- Heroes of Might and Magic: The Namtaru in Might and Magic: Heroes VI can choose to take the form of either a humanoid woman with six arms, or a woman's torso atop a spider's body and legs. Created to serve the goddess Asha as Angels of Death, the most powerful Namtaru have a limited ability to control the flow of time.
- I=MGCM: Arachne demon bodies resemble a combination of the body of a sexy woman with the body of a spider (as seen on these images). There's another demonic spider humanoid in the 1st season of Endless Battle mode called Tsuchigumo: she's female despite her name.
- Inverted for the Sharan, a race of spider people in the old Polish RPG Krysztaly Czasu — they are spiders from the waist up and look really awkward (even though their claws had enough dexterity to handle items).
- The penultimate boss of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. To be specific, Link botches Calamity Ganon's attempt to make a physical body. What Ganon manages to conjure consists of his rotting skull attached to a crude, multi-limbed mechanical torso, which in turn fixed to an old spider mech.
- In Lesbian Spider-Queens of Mars, your Villain Protagonist is an evil lesbian drider who reigns over a vast harem of female Martian slaves who have revolted against her. The title refers to the lesbian spider queen in plural because the endgame reveals the revolution was started by another lesbian drider, who used to be the player-character's girlfriend and is mad at her for being dumped.
- Mystic Defender has the cultists of Zareth's order, which are were-spiders despite their humanoid appearances. Even in human form their jumping motion with their hands outstretched in a clawed position looks like that of a trapdoor spider, and if left idle for too long, they can transform from humanoid forms to that of a Giant Spider.
- Onimusha has at least three notable examples:
- Ginghamphatts in the second game (though is eventually revealed in the last boss battle that his lower body is more like a separate creature).
- The third game's basic mooks in the 2004 timeline are genma with four spider-like legs and a normal torso.
- The fourth game has non-centaurid spider people in the form of Hell Spiders (multiple-armed humanoid with spider heads who can move really fast and attach themselves to the ceiling with webs).
- The Vithrack from Pillars of Eternity are an intelligent race of psychic humanoid spiders, and pretty much the setting's equivalent of Mind Flayers. Unlike most examples and the race they're Expies of, they're explicitly not Always Chaotic Evil, and you have quite a few peaceful interactions with them. They're often very isolationist and violently territorial, though, seemingly as a result of their extremely low birth rates. Amongst their own kind and people who have proven friendly to them, they're actually remarkably kind and altruistic.
- Pit People has Spidaurs, web-spinning centaur women with the horse part contorted into the shape of a spider. It's as weird as it sounds.
- Propagation have the spider-human-zombie hybrid as the Final Boss, who can Wall Crawl all over the place and spit webbing at you. For extra creepiness, you spend the prior area fighting hordes and hordes of Giant Spider enemies, ending with the Black Widow Queen, but after the Queen is down, her abdomen (who's taller than a human) then splits open to give birth to the hybrid monster.
- Resident Evil:
- Spider-Human hybrids were meant to be the next step up from the first Resident Evil's Chimera monsters, which were humanoid flies. Unfortunately, the concept was created during Resident Evil 2's 1.5 phase — famously abandoned during a late build by the creators, and the creature went along with it.
- The Jabberwock S3 B.O.W.s from Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles are a Spiritual Successor to the idea. Whilst not explicitly using spider DNA, they have multiple insectile limbs and protruding, spider-like multi-jawed mandibles, making them look like a horrific bipedal melding of human and spider.
- Marguerite Baker from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a less straightforward example. While normally a somewhat normal-looking old woman, in her mutated form her arms grow to freakish proportions and her lower torso bloats into something that looks like a spider abdomen. Then she crawls on walls while still taunting you...
- Jorou from Sable's Grimoire has four spider-like legs growing from her back and spider-like mouthparts hidden under her mask. She otherwise looks human.
- The final battle of Shadow Warrior 2 has Ameonna taking over Kamiko's body and becoming a giant spider-like abomination.
- Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: Shantae's spider transformation is redesigned from an actual Giant Spider into one of these.
- SMITE has a version of Arachne resembling a human woman mounted on a spider's legs and lower body.
- Yang Yuan's One-Winged Angel form in Swords of Destiny is a large spider-centaur form with four legs and six eyes. It makes her less nimble, but more powerful.
- The aptly named Arachnos in Titan Quest have humanoid torsos and spider bodies. Their queen Arachne is a giant boss monster. Later you can find the asiatic Arachnos, which are brightly colored and have the head of a tarantula, fangs and beady eyes included.
- World of Warcraft:
- One variety of the Nerubians are like this, with spiderlike lower halves and humanoid upper halves. They still look pretty spider-like on the humanoid part, with long, clawed arms and a spider's face. Other Nerubians have widely different body types, with the biggest ones being essentially giant scarab beetles.
- The Fal'dorei are mutated Night Elves with Nerubian-style bodies and elven heads hidden under hoods.
- The Aranasiare a race of arachnid demons of the Burning Legion, some appearing like Nerubians, but others have a humanoid appearance while standing on two legs with wing-like structures on their back.
- Yokai Hunter Shintaro has a Jorōgumo as one of the many Yokai-themed bosses, depicted as a woman with a giant spider as her lower half, just like in the myths.
Webcomics
- Cassiopeia Quinn: In The Body-Snatchifiers, Dr. Botz upgrades herself into a Cyborg version of this — her full form includes eight arthropod-like limbs, four as arms and four as legs, and capable of shooting jets of Projectile Webbing from her wrists.
- Drowtales: Driders are based off the Forgotten Realms version, with a few subspecies to boot: Waelinider are the original driders created by merging drow with the bottom halves of spiders, a process that renders them sterile, Streekaider are the result of Waeliniders going mad and losing their higher mental functions, and Ne'kalsaider are "natural" driders who were born with spider legs and are implied to be the offspring of Waeliniders who somehow managed to keep their reproductive functions after their transformation.
- In El Goonish Shive, a few strips feature Spider Grace with her having a humanoid body, three pairs of arms and the ability to shoot webbing.
- Exterminatus Now: Princess Vitani is a demonic form of this, being a daemon prince of the Patterner — a Chaos God heavily associated with spiders — whose physical form resembles a centauroid black widow with the spider's coloration extending over her humanoid torso.
- Spinnerette has a bad turn when her Lolth-worshiping nemesis "Evil Spinnerette" uses ancient relics and a first-edition Dungeons & Dragons manual to turn herself into a drider. Later she even cons Spinnerette into helping her repeat the feat with two of her minions — complete with a Gender Bender for the male that includes a Lampshade Hanging about the advantages of being female when you turn into a spider.
- White Dark Life: Driders are slightly prominent race, ranging from six-inch-tall black widows like Entegra and Mildred to human-sized tarantulas like Caroline. The Maid falls under this too by actually being Devin, Entegra's daughter after a serious accident.
Web Original
- The dridders from Felarya are a larger than usual (as in, really frickin' HUGE) example of this. (Will they eat you? Of course they'll eat you, this is Felarya.)
- Angel Dust from Hazbin Hotel is a "spider-demon" whose design is a unique one, being quite cute instead of scary or ugly; rather than the typical "spider centaur" design, Angel Dust has a bipedal, humanoid build, albeit with six arms (two of which are retractable.) He's also covered in soft fur, had a mouth full of venomous fangs, and overall is a Little Bit Beastly Pretty Boy who's considered quite attractive by both the characters and the audience. While "evil" might be a bit strong to describe him, he's definitely a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who loves to piss people off.
- Looming Gaia: Arachne are monsters with spider-like abdomens and humanoid torsos that feed on people and live in a symbiotic relationship with silkbeasts, beasts that look like giant spiders. They were created by the divine Morganya by combining a silkbeast and a vampire in hopes that Gaia would revoke her divinity for creating such a horrific creature.
- Arachnes are in The Monster Girl Encyclopedia, as well as their Asian themed cousins the Jorogumo and more monstrous looking Ushi-Oni, and the Ant Arachne patterned after the ant-mimic species of spider.
- Dr. Smith from The Nostalgia Critic, based off the character of the same name from Lost in Space. He's obsessed with spiders, and wishes to take over the world with a giant legion of spiders.
Western Animation
- Adventures of the Gummi Bears: The Spinster, an age-old Gummi antagonist in the episode "Thornberry to the Rescue", is a spider-like being with a taste for Gummies.
- Veronica from American Dragon: Jake Long. Jake is interested in asking her out... until he notices that her lower half consists of "eight hairy spider legs".
- Ben 10: Arachnichimps, such as Ben's morph Spidermonkey, resemble spider-like monkeys with four eyes and four arms; the Ultimate version of Spidermonkey resembles a gorilla with spider legs growing from its back, and Omniverse replaces the spider legs with six gorilla arms that the alien used to walk around, resulting in what visually resembles a sapient spider reskinned as a gorilla. Regardless of form, Spidermonkey combines the climbing skills of spiders and primates, and is used by Ben when he needs to navigate vertical surfaces.
- Frankelda's Book of Spooks has Procustes, the main antagonist and the Scare Kingdom's original Nightmare Writer. He's a grotesque green high society spider-centaur with feet resembling pen nibs that mysteriously merged with his mansion to trap the protagonists within its walls and within his consciousness.
- Miss Webner is a spider-monster teacher in Gravedale High. She looks like a nice old lady with six arms and knitting spider webs.
- In the Gravity Falls episode "Roadside Attraction", Grunkle Stan has a bad run-in with one named Darlene. She's a drider-like being who, rather than having a human torso on a spider body, has a humanoid body that is very spider-like as well, being covered in an exoskeleton and having spider mandibles instead of a human mouth. Her MO for trapping victims ties her in with the Japanese myth of the jorogumo (see above under Myths & Religion).
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: The title character of "The Wrath of the Spider Queen", Velma Green the Spider Queen, is a drider leading an army of regular (if very large) spiders to conquer the world. She's also an old schoolmate of Grim's and becomes romantically involved with Jeff, a talking Giant Spider and Billy's sort-of adopted son.
- Legends of Chima has the Spider Tribe after they are evolved by CHI. Similar to the Scorpion Tribe, they have variants of this trope within them; most Spiders have eight limbs (four spider limbs protruding from their backs and then normal humanoid limbs); Sparratus only has humanoid limbs, and Queen Spinlyn has a humanoid upper body and arachnid lower body. Apparently, this makes her extremely beautiful to the Spider Tribe.
- One episode of The Mummy: The Animated Series has the powerful undead Imhotep temporarily merge himself with an ancient Giant Spider named Nihansan, giving him typical spider powers.
- In the Muppet Babies (1984) episode "Muppets Public Broadcasting", for Kermit's story, he goes to save Piggy from a spider. It turns out to be a trap, as Piggy turns out to be a spider person who wants to eat him.
- The Real Ghostbusters has Spiderlegs, a powerful ghost who looks like a beautiful blonde woman from the waist up and a black widow from the waist down. She is already trapped in the Containment Unit, but her minions try to liberate her.
- In the world of Rick and Morty, Franklin D. Roosevelt was accidentally turned into one of these as a side effect of an experimental vaccine for polio.
- Rose Petal Place: Nastina is a humanoid spider with four arms and legs and a human appearance otherwise.
- The Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episode "Attack of the Arachnoid" involves a Mad Scientist named Zoltan who finds a way to imitate Spidey's powers, and impersonates him while committing crimes. Unfortunately, the formula then goes out of control, turning him into a full-fledged spider-centaur who calls himself the Arachnoid. Zoltan's assistant (and love interest, horrified at what Zoltan has become) helps Spidey and his friends turn him back to normal. The episode is, for all intents and purposes, a near-total remake of the earlier "The Web of Nephillia" story from Spider-Man (1981).
- Spider-Man: The Animated Series: Peter recalls having a nightmare about mutating into one when he got bitten by the spider. First, he was the size of a normal house spider, but after he got flushed down the drain by Aunt May, he woke up (in the dream) washed up on the riverbank, having grown to a monstrous size.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
- Darth Maul appears in the season 4 finale after having taken refuge in a Landfill Beyond the Stars, having assembled a crude, mechanical spider torso to replace his lost legs. He later one loses all but two robotic legs thanks to Mother Talzin's magic.
- Admiral Trench from earlier (and later) in the series is a humanoid arachnid with six arms and two legs.
- Baxter Stockman in one later episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), due to him losing his human body from the neck down.
- In the Teen Titans (2003) episode "Date with Destiny", Robin is forced to take Spoiled Brat Kitten to the prom, just to spite her ex-boyfriend Fang, who looks like a human from the neck down but has a spider head, as well as the rest of the spider's body. Or he may be a giant spider who just so happens to have a functional human body hanging from below its head. Whichever is more appropriate to describe him.
