Combat Tentacles



""I'm warning you, I'm armed... Eight-armed, that is! Uwee hee hee!""

- Ultros, Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls

Tentacles used for assault.No, not THAT kind of assault! Well... not necessarily. More specifically, throwing cars at people or strangling them or impaling them or crushing them. They may also be used as (somewhat oversized) whips or bludgeoning weapons, as a tentacle is basically a flexible mass of muscle, and as such can impart a lot of force.

This may also happen with serpents, worms, or other similarly long-bodied creatures, using their whole bodies as such. Combat Tentacles are frequently utilized by Stock Ness Monsters and, of course, Cephalopods. Possibly because of the unusual nature, the association with strange creatures like squid and its common use in Japan for molestation of innocent, attractive women, this is commonly a power associated with evil characters or at least dangerous animals that the protagonist needs to beware.

Often a form of Lovecraftian Superpower. Compare Multi-Armed and Dangerous.

Compare Tentacle Rope. See also Spider Limbs, Partial Transformation and Tail Slap.

Anime and Manga

 * Suzumiya Haruhi has.
 * One of the magical creatures in the second season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha had these, as did the Book Of Darkness since it absorbed its Linker Core.
 * Sugiura from Call Me Tonight becomes a non-hentai tentacle monster whenever he gets turned on.
 * Several of the Awakened Beings in Claymore
 * from Claymore is nothing but these in her Awakened form. She actually uses them for...other things, tough.
 * And she is not the only one either. Standard Youma often spring spear-like tentacles from their hands, and then there is, first seen in Scene.
 * In an interesting variation, Lucy from Elfen Lied visualizes her telekinetic powers and those of other mutants in the form of long translucent arms. To normal people they are completely invisible, simply causing everyone who gets to close to her to seemingly randomly explode in a fountain of blood.
 * Several Mechanical Beasts from Mazinger Z sported Combat Tentacles: Stronger T4, Megaron P1 and its "siblings", Gumbina M5... Needless to say, so did other Robeasts from Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer. And in Shin Mazinger Zero
 * Pantyhose Taro from Ranma 1/2, whose Jusenkyo form is a two story-tall chimera that resembles a giant ox with wings and sasquatch arms, eventually added octopus tentacles to the mishmash. He can smash through concrete with these, either by jabbing their tips at people, or whipping them down like enormous flails. At one point, he used them to rip a bathhouse's smokestack in half.
 * The Guardians from .hack//Sign, buggy freudian nightmare monsters from a Virtual Reality MMORPG who not only stab you with their tentacles, but put you into a short-term coma in real life.
 * Kekkaishi has Princess, a Kitsune whose nine tails can be used in this fashion. She's even seen nearly mummifying opponents in them on occasion. Made even more formidable in that they can grow to a huge size.
 * Karasu from Noein has a power similar to Omega Red, where he has wires as extensions of his body.
 * Shadow type magic in Mahou Sensei Negima acts in this manner: creating physical darkness in the form of black tendrils which violently cut things, which one shadow-user Kagetarou used to slice the titular character's right arm clean off. Being that they were in a magic world which had advanced medicinal techniques, he had it re-attached. Recently, a shadow mage has appeared who's so powerful he's capable of pulling Haruna's Cool Airship out of the sky (along with several others). It's explicitly compared to Cthulhu.
 * Paio's sandworms.
 * Naraku from Inuyasha mainly fights by turning parts of himself into a mess of these to immobilize, crush, impale or outright devour his foes.
 * Several of the Angels in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shamshel has two tentacles instead of arms, Zeruel's "arms" are technically very long, sharp and flexible blades, and Armisael is essentially a giant, glowing-white tentacle.
 * Several Radam in Tekkaman Blade can spit tentacles. In part II, some of the alien Tekkamen have them as well.
 * The Maguar from Figure 17 fall under this trope, being as their tentacles are in all cases their primary means of defending themselves.
 * The titular creatures from Parasyte turn parts of their bodies into razor-edge Combat Tentacles capable of slicing through humans like butter.
 * The Benizakura from Gintama, wielded by Okada Nizou before fusing with his arm like a parasite. He first takes advantage of this by strangling Matako when she talks out of turn. And then later on it gets worse.
 * The ribbons Wilhelmina uses from Shakugan no Shana are used much like tentacles. Also Shana gets captured in Episode 13 by the using vines.
 * There's a ninja in Basilisk who does the same thing as Wilhelmina. In fact his hair is so strong that when it gets turned against him he ends up suspended in a doorway with all his limbs shattered.
 * In Saint Seiya, Specters of the Worm (such as Raimi, in the Sanctuary Saga) can use their Surplice's earthworm-like appendages to ensnare, whip, crush, or slice (with sufficient force.) A favorite tactic of this Specter is to burrow underground and let his tentacles burst up to entangle his foe, at which point he'll run a few more tentacles through the enemy.
 * Dark Nova and its Novaroid Mooks in Transformers Return of Convoy all have tentacles.
 * Luppi's release form in Bleach gives her him eight large tentacles. At one point it seems she's he's going to use them for perverse purposes with Rangiku...but subverted the next moment when she he tried to stab her.
 * Used by at the end of ROD the TV to prevent the heroes from interfering with the process.
 * Pride of Fullmetal Alchemist is a Living Shadow / Eldritch Abomination who can form endless amounts of "shadow tentacles" which he uses to rip people apart.
 * Sloth from the first anime frequently turns her arms into liquid tentacles used to drown or immobilize people.
 * The Sailor Moon anime has the Makaiju tree, who uses its branches as this during the climatic fight against the Senshi. More than one Monster of the Week had similar attacks.
 * Every opponent that Chrome fights uses these in some way. Mammon uses illusion tentacles, Glo Xinia uses a squid, Verde uses an octopus...
 * Shikamaru from Naruto has his "Shadow Sewing" Jutsu, which is basically shadow tentacles. And let's not forget his Shadow Neck Bind. And, of course, Kakuzu has the ACTUAL physical version of these, being basically a human ragdoll.
 * The host of the 8-tailed demon, an ushi-oni, or, in layman's terms, an ox combined with an octopus, can use this battle style in his fully released state but he seems more fond of spitting out a giant blast of chakra. However, he does often do "partial transformations" where he just has one or a couple tentacles sprout from his body.
 * In Code Geass, Knightmare Frames generally have rocket propelled "Slash Harkens", which are knives on retractable cables. It's spin-off, Nightmare of Nunnally, however, has Mark Nemo, whose rocket propelled Blonde Knives... float in mid air when they aren't being used, as hair-like tentacles.
 * Tetsuo from Akira develops these as his Power Incontinence grows, cranking up to Lovecraftian Superpower levels as the anime progresses.
 * Ika from Shinryaku Ika Musume has ten of those (she's a moe-fied squid girl). They are absurdly strong, faster than sound, can reach ludicrous lengths but are also precise to put a string into a needle. And they can regenerate just as fast.
 * Medusa from Soul Eater has her "vector arrows" function half like Combat Tentacles half like a bunch of spears.
 * When the demonic Yuragi of Mahou Shoujo Ai aren't using their tentacles for... other things, they're breaking bones and punching holes in people with them.
 * In Saiyuki, has vines that can be used this way, overlapping with Tentacle Rope.
 * One of the first monsters encountered in Devil & Devil is a weird-ass tentacled monster. These tentacles' main use is to suck time out of their victims, reducing them to cute, helpless infants. The monster can, however, use the tentacles to attack its foes directly. It was offed very quickly though, returning its victims to normal.

Comic Books

 * Spider-Man nemesis Doctor Octopus has a harness with four superstrong robotic arms that he uses for battering and throwing objects and opponents. The claws on each arm can rotate like miniature sawblades. The comic writers go back and forth on whether or not he can remove 'em, though the Spider-Man movie and The Spectacular Spider Man animated series had them fused to his spine in a Freak Lab Accident, apparently for good. Too bad about that attitude adjustment the tentacles' software gave him.
 * Comic book Spider-Man also had Dr. Smythe and son, creators of 'Spider Slayers', as enemies. These always had multiple tentacles used pretty much the same as Doc Ock's. Even if built bipedal with two arms, Spider Slayers would have hidden hatches to throw out extra appendages mid-battle, usually with some kind of trap, such as gas, electricity, webbing, etc.
 * Spider-Man had for a short time additional mechanical limbs created by Iron Man. Though not as long and flexible as Doc Ock's tentacles, they served a similar function.
 * And a more minor Spidey foe is the Squid, who is essentially a slender, not especially bright, and organically tentacled Doc Ock.
 * Venom and Carnage are also capable of using parts of their symbiote bodies as combat tentacles, as well.
 * X-Men foe Omega Red, whose tentacles can bash and smash as well as transmit his "death spore virus" (its name changes from one appearance to the next, but he's got a fatal disease he's gotta give to victims periodically or it'll turn back upon him. It becomes his best weapon, though he doesn't appreciate it.)
 * Jackie Estacado of the Top Cow comic book The Darkness fights with this.
 * The strictly C-list Marvel villain Constrictor. Think Doctor Octopus...now take away two of his tentacles, put the other two on the ends of his normal arms (taking away the "multi-armed" aspect), and take away the grippy claws on the ends that Doc Ock has...and there you have it, the Constrictor. Now you see why he's considered C-list?
 * The tentacle creatures in Amulet.
 * Callisto from the X Men books. Thanks to fellow mutant Masque, her arms were altered into a set of multiple prehensile tentacles on both sides
 * Wildstorm Comics character [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlash_

Film

 * The trees (roots) in the Prince Caspian movie.
 * Pirates of the Caribbean, pictured. See Folk Lore.
 * In At Worlds End, Davy Jones himself pulls this one off with his tentacle beard.
 * The various spawn of the Ogdru Jahad in Hellboy.
 * Biollante (A massive plant-human-Godzilla hybrid monster) falls under this trope.
 * Also, there's the Giant Octopus from King Kong VS Godzilla
 * And Gezora from the obscure film Space Amoeba
 * Deep Rising.
 * Irys from the 1999 film Gamera 3: Incomplete Struggle not only has these, but he can also use them to fire energy blasts and suck the life outta ya.
 * The Moorwen from Outlander is a giant, lizardish thing, but its prehensile tail can be used to grasp, slice, or impale its victims.
 * The tyrant from Resident Evil: Extinction.
 * Scorpion's rope spear from the games becomes a living snake-like tentacle in the film Mortal Kombat.
 * A giant animated vine crushes and drags away a police car in Jumanji.
 * Monsters 2010
 * The Thing, especially in the 2011 movie where they're used to kill as well as assimilate humans.

Folk Lore

 * The kraken is a textbook example. See That Other Wiki for more examples.
 * The Kraken in Pirates of the Caribbean.
 * Davy Jones suffocating a man with his tentacle beard also counts.
 * The giant squid fought by Ned Land and the Nautilus crew in Disney's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
 * Yuuzhan Vong yammosks and dhuryams from the Star Wars EU are giant squids, with giant brains (the title "war coordinator" isn't for nothing). On the rare occasion one actually has to fight something in close quarters, various tentacles are their only weapons (though they usually do pretty horribly in close-quarters).
 * And then, they had an armada whose formation was based off the yammosk. Yes. Tentacles made of warships.
 * Jonathan Coulton's "I Crush Everything" is about the angst suffered by a lonely giant squid who can't get close to ships without destroying them. "Octopus" also features combat tentacles, but much less angst.
 * There's a kraken that's a boss in Golden Sun.
 * In the Council Wars book Emerald Sea, the krakens serving the bad guys, which at several points are used to attack good guy ships in the traditional "crush" method, are the result of Nanotechnology.
 * Visser Three's tentacle swinging morphs in Animorphs Also possibly the Leeran-Controllers in "The Decision".

Literature

 * Cthulhu's tentacles can gobble up 1D3 investigators per round.
 * The Watcher in the Water from Lord of the Rings too.
 * The Games Workshop tabletop game didn't even have a body for the Watcher, you just got to place a whole load of tentacle models in a body of water on the board.
 * In The Mist (the novella), there is a huge mass of tentacles complete with rows of suckers that cut into human flesh.
 * The Dresden Files: Deirdre combines this with Prehensile Hair. Razor-sharp Prehensile Hair.
 * In Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce, Daine has to summon up a kraken to defeat the Carthaki "pirates" threatening the Swoop.
 * From Andrew Boland's Hells Children: "Several bloody tentacles shot out from Offal’s body and proceeded to rap around Z.Y.9.0 and drag him screaming like a child into the nightmare that was Offal. A moment and quite a few screams later Offal threw up a mangled and twitching robot body."
 * In the short story "Epinikion" by Desmond Warzel, the alien Squids have tentacles that can effect a Clean Cut on a human--and secretions that keep the victim alive for hours after being bisected.
 * The eponymous antagonists from John Christopher's The Tripods use these to ensnare, crush or whip any opposition.
 * The kossief and shan-kossief from the Icerigger trilogy.
 * In EE Doc Smith's First Lensman, we get to see what the Rigellians are like in hand-to-hand combat. They have four tentacle arms with hands on the end, each arm as long and strong as an elephant's trunk. Dronvire goes into a zero-gee battle carrying four space-axes but ditches two of them, using the free arms to grasp space pirates and drag them in to be beheaded, two by two.
 * In EE Doc Smith's First Lensman, we get to see what the Rigellians are like in hand-to-hand combat. They have four tentacle arms with hands on the end, each arm as long and strong as an elephant's trunk. Dronvire goes into a zero-gee battle carrying four space-axes but ditches two of them, using the free arms to grasp space pirates and drag them in to be beheaded, two by two.

Live Action TV

 * The second Vorlon ambassador uses a blow from his tenticle to knock a security guard over a railing.
 * The smoke monster on Lost usually turns parts of itself into tentacles with which to drag people along the ground or throw them into things.
 * Villainess Camille can use her tongue as one of these in Power Rangers Jungle Fury.
 * Kamen Rider Gills from Kamen Rider Agito can use these, especially in his Exceed Gills Super Mode.
 * Kamen Rider OOO has these, when using the Tako Medal.
 * In the 2009 remake of The Day of the Triffids the Man Eating Plants used these to immobilise people even more than their stings.
 * The tentacle monster in Angel that lifts Fred and Angel off the ground until Angel stabs it.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a few as well, one example being the Hellmouth creature in 'The Zeppo'.

Tabletop Games

 * Especially common in Mortasheen, most notably with Malignus' homage to the Cenobites, Septacle, who also happens to be a toilet and Underfiend, whos tentacles are of both the combat and naughty variety.
 * The Tyranids in Warhammer 40000 have a variety of specialized, weaponized appendages, running the gamut from the flesh hooks a lictor uses to grapple up a cliff, to the feeder tendrils genestealers use to eat your brains, to skyscraper-sized tentacles their living spaceships use to break enemy vessels apart. Quite a few of them are also bladed.
 * Daemons of Slaanesh have weaponized Naughty Tentacles, and given their nature it can quite difficult to tell how they're using them at any given time.
 * The Dungeons and Dragons spell "Evard's Black Tentacles" can summon a bunch of these. Also in D&D, Displacer Beasts have two hook-tipped tentacles for tearing things apart.
 * D&D has tentacles by the bushel: krakens, mindflayers, phantom fungus, otyughs, chaos beast, many of the Elder Evils, and dozens of others in too many splatbooks to list.
 * Players can get in on the Combat Tentacle action with a feat from the Lords of Madness (Book of Eldritch Abominations) source book. The Aberration blood feats represent a character having a common ancestry with Eldritch abominations, and the aberration blood feat Deepspawn causes the player to sprout two tentacles which can be used for attacking.
 * And as usual, anything worth doing can be done with magic, so there are spells like Evard's Menacing Tentacles that let the caster sprout his own combat tentacles.
 * A common weapon on Engels, Dagonite mecha, and monsters in Cthulhu Tech.
 * The Lasombra clan in Vampire: The Masquerade had the ability to grow these out of shadow with the Obtenebration discipline.
 * Exalted has these as a Wyld mutation, though Lunars can get them less riskily. Since this is Exalted, they're useful for enhancing your Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot-ness, but the main book doesn't really cover the other uses, oddly enough for this game. Additionally, She Who Lives in Her Name (and some Infernals) has a psychic version of this, producing tendrils of solidified force to fight, pick things up etc.
 * Tsk, tsk. Are we seriously forgetting the Celestial Circle spell Magma Kraken?
 * Many units/monsters from the Lords of Cthul faction in Monsterpocalypse use tentacles as their main weapon, but Ancient Osheroth really takes the cake. Hell, he even has names for four of them.
 * Tentacle arms can be purchased in GURPS: Bio-Tech. There's tentacles hair in Ultra-Tech.

Toys

 * Bionicle: Kalmah and Nocturn

Video Games

 * The Resident Evil series has Plant 42 from the first game, the lickers from the second game (which like to use their blade-tipped tongues for this), and Nemesis from the third.
 * Many enemies, like Garradores or Gigantes in Resident Evil 4 sprout "tentacles" (Actually the Plaga inhabiting their body) when hit hard enough. Also, Plagas will randomly grow their tentacles out of an almost-dead Ganado.A nd then there's Uroboros which is basically nothing but a giant wriggling mass of Combat Tentacles.
 * Osmund Saddler also uses one to kill Luis, and sports a different one during the final boss fight.
 * The exoskeleton used by Solidus Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2, and Laughing Octopus in Metal Gear Solid 4.
 * Octopi and squids are recurring boss creatures in Final Fantasy:
 * Ultros, from Final Fantasy VI, a recurring joke villain with an impeccable sense of timing.
 * A writhing, sentient mass of tentacles which entangles the engine room of Figaro Castle and prevents it from returning to the surface. The tentacles can ensnare individual characters and drain their HP.
 * The Final Fantasy XI playerbase has many bad memories of the Sea Horror, a 60+ monster that, while very beatable by most jobs at 75, almost always spawns when the highest level player in the area is around level 30. Fun times.
 * Kraken, Fiend of Water in Final Fantasy I, Xande's minion in Final Fantasy III, and one of the Four Chaoses of Memoria in Final Fantasy IX. He can even get critical hits for each of his eight tentacles in Final Fantasy I.
 * Octomammoth in Final Fantasy IV, which bars the waterway between Kaipo and Damcyan.
 * In Final Fantasy X,  has these in her second and third forms.
 * More common occurences are creatures with tentacles-as-whips, such as Molbor and Ochu. However, they're more dangerous/annoying for the status ailments they can inflict than their tentacular assault.
 * The Alura Une soul in Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow gives this ability to Soma Cruz.
 * Ultimate Venom does this, though mostly in the Ultimate Spider-Man video game.
 * Mainstream Carnage can also put you under wraps, though being much more Ax Crazy than Venom (and given some of Venom's finer moments, that's saying something!) he's just as likely to make 'em pointy and impale you.
 * The Dahaka in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.
 * Flaaghra in Metroid Prime, as well as Metroid Prime's final form.
 * Gooper Blooper in Super Mario Sunshine.
 * Ming Xiao's war form in Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines
 * Clive Barker video games are another.
 * The Memory of Richard Grady, a boss from Silent Hill Origins, has several tentacles hanging from the ceiling as Travis fights it. If you're too close to them, they'll loop around Travis's throat and attempt to strangle him. Also, in Silent Hill 2, the final boss does this as well, only with some kind of scorpion tail.
 * Majora's Wrath in The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask.
 * ...and its The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time predecessor, Morpha, the giant amoeba who poses as water until you get close and its tentacles getcha (think that creature from The Abyss, only evil). Morpha's inspired a lot of Rule 34 art.
 * Kalle Demos, the second boss in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker is a giant Korok eating plant that uses this with it's vines to attack Link.
 * The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess: Midna's
 * Halo - Flood combat forms. In the second and third games, at least on the higher difficulties, they can insta-kill MC with a single swat.
 * In Super Robot Wars Original Generation (PS 2): Judecca's Final attack uses this at the end.
 * World of Warcraft has more than one tentacled horror, although in general they stick to oversized humanoids for their dungeon monsters.
 * Notable example would be the raid boss C'thun (a literal Giant Eye of Doom), who in addition to having a nasty one shot kill eye laser, spawns tentacles, eye tentacles that fire Eye Beams and giant versions of the two. One of the items he drops is the Vanquished Tentacle of C'thun, which allows the player to summon his very own combat tentacle to attack an enemy for a short time.
 * While the attack on the tentacle has been sadly outleveled into oblivion, some people still use it for kicks.
 * C'thun's spiritual ancestor, the unnamed Forgotten One in WC3, also spawned tentacles.
 * Yogg-Saron, end boss of the Ulduar raid dungeon, also appears to use tentacles as weapons. It seems like there's a theme developing here around the Old Gods...
 * Having noticed the popularity of the Vanquished Tentacle of C'thun, Blizzard introduced an improved version, the Vanquished Clutches of Yogg-saron. The concept's the same, but now it can summon 3 types of tentacles! One of them shoots acid.
 * The Magus in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning can extrude a massive tentacle from his disc ( yes, disc) to swipe across enemies' faces. The Marauder class may come under this also, as his arm can be mutated into a variety of goopy shapes, some more tentacly than others, but all quite nasty.
 * The Zerg base defenses, Sunken Colonies, attack with a giant burrowing tentacle.
 * The Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi probably didn't get much to eat on Tatooine. The Force Unleashed has another one on Felucia, and that one has grown much bigger, slapping at you with arms 3 meters in diameter.
 * A couple of City of Heroes giant monsters - Lusca (big octopus) and the Hydra (big slime thing) both spawn extra tentacles to fight with. The Hydra is so damn big it's tentacles can attack you from anywhere in the thousands of meters of tunnels making up the abandoned lower level of the city sewer network.
 * Also evoked by a few powers. The Plant Control ability Carrion Creepers causes huge vines to sprout from the ground and lash at enemies, and the summoned pet Fly Trap from the same set attacks with whip-like vine arms. And, of course, there's the Dark Blast power Tenebrous Tentacles.
 * One of the Sai units in the game Stormrise can generate energy tentacles from their lower arms to clobber their enemies with. They can also learn to electrolute said tentacles, further increasing the damage they do.
 * When she's not forming blades with them, Morrigan from Darkstalkers Sometimes use her wings/bats as these (see her standing and jumping Fierce Punch attacks). This is made much more explicit in the anime OAV, when she's shown using them like that in a fight. Not to mention the official names of the said attacks are apparently stuff like Orgasm Wire.
 * In Skies of Arcadia,
 * The Smoker from Left 4 Dead can lasso the Survivors with his tongue.
 * It's debatable if it's tongue after all, as he has six, still using only one, in the sequel. Fans speculate it could be intestine or something.
 * In an unusual variation, angels in Diablo 2 have those in an imitation of wings.
 * Strictly speaking, they're beams of light that assume a form resembling wings. But close enough...
 * Alex Mercer of Prototype has this as a combat power, called the Whipfist. It is notably effective against helicopters, and has some particularly cool consumption animations.
 * Tendril Barrage Devastator. Area of Effect combat tentacles!
 * The Hydra enemy is just one giant Combat Tentacle that can split into three at its tip.
 * Sgt. Heller from Prototype 2 seems to specialize in his basic combat with tentacles (As opposed to his predecessor, who only had them as a Limit Break and whipfist, and used blades the rest of the time.) He gets rather...inventive with them.
 * Early promo shots and concept art for Half Life 2 featured translucent blue tentacles bothering the leads. The tentacles would've been the surface manifestation of a huge under-ground being bothering City 17. Ultimately it was decided that it just wasn't a fun opponent.
 * Any Pokémon capable of using Vine Whip or Power Whip. Also Tentacool, Tentacruel, the Attack Form e of Deoxys, and others.
 * The Cloud of Darkness in Dissidia Final Fantasy has two tentacles attached to her, which she uses to strike at mid-range opponents.
 * The Tentaclaws in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, which at first seem like seperate enemies.......but then it's revealed that they're part of the Leechgrave.
 * In Dead Space several necromorphs have these. The lurkers are infected infants with three tentacles; which can either shoot spikes or tear into a foe that they latch onto. Guardians are corpses stuck to the walls; immature guardians can only flail their intestines at Isaac, but advanced ones can shoot out pods with tentacles similar to the lurkers. In addition, if Isaac gets too close, the lurker will decapitate him. There are also tentacles which grab Isaac around the legs; if he doens't break free in time, they'll drag him to a gory death sequence. Finally, all three bosses (the Leviathan, the Slug, and the Hive Mind) all use these as their primary means of attack.
 * The Broodmother from Dragon Age is stationary, but has four tentacles that can pop out of the floor to make life difficult for ranged characters.
 * It also has a number of larger, thicker tentacles that it can use to grab anyone closing in melee. It then violently shakes them and vomits poisonous bile all over them.
 * Burn the Trash:
 * Rise of the Kasai features this as a reoccuring boss type; tentacles from an underground monster will burst out in a large area and the player has to hack them apart one at a time. Some are thin grabbers, some are spiked with mace heads, some are armored, and one has a grasper, or possibly the creature's mouth.
 * Arguably, Mr. Game & Watch's Final Smash in Super Smash Brothers Brawl, when he turns into an octopus.
 * Quite a few monsters in Dominions, what with it being the universal grab bag of mythologies it strives to be. Krakens, bukavacs, void lords, you name it. Oddly enough, aboleth ones are just for show - guess you don't really need base, squick weapons when you can turn brains into quivering goo at will.
 * The Kayran in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a mutant hybrid with disproportionately huge mouth tentacles attached to a smaller, crab-like body. It attacks by slamming these tentacles to the ground, using them to throw rocks and whipping them across the entire battlefield (allowing the player to grab hold with a quicktime event).
 * Cuttlefish in Battle for Wesnoth. Heck, there's even a monster called Tentacle, which is described as the tentacle of a larger, unseen monster.
 * The final boss of Borderlands has two sets of tentacles. There are four purple flailing tentacles which shoot explosive spikes and two red tentacles which are slammed into the ground to create shockwaves.
 * In Starcraft and Starcraft II the zerg have defensive structures called sunken colonies and spine crawlers, respectively. The former sends a spiked tentacle underground to attack intruders while the latter is above ground and simply whips them.
 * Octo Diablo in Phantasy Star Zero. You can then turn one of his tentacles into a weapon yourself - but it becomes a rocket launcher.
 * The disembodied tentacles in Ecco the Dolphin that latch on and won't let go. Plus the giant octopus which sits on a ledge and slaps Ecco with a tentacle as he tries to pass.
 * The demonic foliage in Dark Souls have these in place of arms. The Pisaca in the Dukes Archives have this on their head, which they use to restrain you and deliver an extremely deadly attack.

Webcomics
"Trigak: We're not comfortable being grappled there!"
 * Seen a couple of times in Girl Genius.
 * The 'Cubi in Dan and Mabs Furry Adventures have these.
 * In The Order of the Stick, V once used "Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion" on a chimera.


 * Mike of College Roomies From Hell acquires a single tentacle early in the comic's run as a result of drinking from and swimming in a polluted lake.
 * Ikago, the titular Squid Ninja, does this during transformations.
 * In Spinnerette, Legion of Canadian Superheroes member Katt O' Nine Tails is able to use her... er... nine tails this way.
 * Some were seen in a battle near the final one in Adventurers.
 * Howard the Tentacle Beast in Tales Of Gnosis College suddenly manifests powerful tentacles with razor-sharp edges when a human being he cares about is threatened. The series also contains an panel in which a character imagines huge tentacles wrapping up and attacking an aircraft carrier.

Web Original

 * In The Gamers Alliance, the Shadow loves morphing his hands into shadowy tentacles and attack with them to dispose of his enemies.
 * Alloy in The Descendants has a pair of sapient tentacles name Isp and Osp. They get extra points for themselves having Rubber Man powers.
 * Carmilla (Sara Waite) in the Whateley Universe works of fiction. Not too surprising given that her father is Gothmog, demon of lust, while his mother is Shub-Niggurath - and she's related to Cthulhu on her mother's side. She can launch tentacles out of any part of her body, and those tentacles may then have mouths or eyes or worse if she wants. She has killed several people (and a LOT of animals) by thrusting her tentacles into them and eating their souls. She has used them as Naughty Tentacles too: at least one side character is now pregnant from this. Oh, by the way, she's one of the good guys in this universe.
 * The Slender Man's default appearance is a faceless, abnormally tall and thin man, but his arms will sometimes become these (or be supplemented by them) if he's feeling particularly aggressive.
 * Lasher is a mercenary supervillain whose costume includes two coiled, steel whips he can use to great effect.
 * Psionic hero Gray Matter can create multiple "tentacles" of purple-colored mental energy that array themselves around his body like a halo. He uses them in combat when his opponents get too close.
 * Squid Kid has black, hyper-elastic tentacles that grow out of her back.
 * This is a standard feature of all Terronians in Cordless. What exactly is on the end of them varies from person to person: fists, drills, rocket boosters...
 * Remember Game & Watch's tentacles mentioned in Video Games? They're in There Will Be Brawl too, and much more lethal.
 * EAT of The Fear Mythos. We're still not entirely sure what EAT is, but we do know there are tentacles. Tentacles that grab people and drag them, screaming, into ponds.
 * 99% of the Eldritch Abominations in Little Lenny Penguin and The Great Red Flood possess Combat Tentacles. Not only do they pack a punch, but, given the right circumstances, they can morph virtually anyone in their grasps into fellow eldritches.
 * Grin, one of the enemies from A-GENTS, has these as his most used ability. They're twenty feet long, can sprout out poisonous teeth, easily take the equivalent of a few anti-tank rounds, and seem to have minds of their own. Grin usually has a...different use in mind for them, though...

Western Animation

 * Nergal and Junior from Billy and Mandy have retractable tentacles that can shock people with jolts of electricity and even mutate people by zapping them with red energy.
 * Doctor Drakken from Kim Possible got an equivalent to these with his mutant vines, using them in one scene to crush an enemy gun.
 * Waterbenders in Avatar: The Last Airbender frequently use a form of this that involves surrounding themselves in water that they extend into tendrils (fittingly called the "Octopus Form").
 * Transformers Animated has Spittor who uses tentacles from his beast mode mouth to drag in victims and spit them out in explosive goo.
 * Transformers Prime has Soundwave, who used his tentacles to hack a radio telescope and fought the humans from a distance when they tried to block him out of the network.
 * The Teen Titans encounter these on a pretty regular basis. Alien police bots, various goo monsters, and anyone passing by a supervillain garage sale have some of these. Even Cyborg and Raven on occasion.
 * Alpha from Men in Black: The Series, who grafts alien body parts onto himself.
 * On Futurama, Bender's jointless arms can twist and coil as freely as tentacles, and are certainly strong enough to invoke this trope if necessary. Subverted in that he's more likely to use their enhanced flexibility to pick your pocket than kick your ass.
 * Batman Beyond's shapeshifting blob Inque uses this as her primary method of attack and they're stronger than steel, no less, though in some instances, her body usually slides into either one single, thick tendril or a plethora of them at once.
 * Ursula does some tentacle combat at the end of The Little Mermaid, trying to hit the heroes with some after she grows to giant size.

Politics

 * This 2005 Party Political Broadcast by UKIP, the UK Independence Party, whose main schtick is Euro Scepticism "personifies" the EU as a evil giant blue octopus that takes over Parliament and uses its combat tentacles to attack London.

Real Life

 * Many sperm whales have heavily scarred heads from fights with giant squids. However it's now believed that in most cases the squids don't have much of a chance of winning these fights.
 * Octopi have been observed to ambush sharks and kill them.
 * Played straight with Jellyfish and Anemones who line their tentacles with Cnidocytes (stinging cells) that deliver toxins into their prey. This system is so effective that they usually just wait for the prey to come to them.
 * An elephant's trunk functions very much like a tentacle in its muscle mechanics, and can be quite a dangerous weapon.