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Well, you call this guy. He isn't just ''one'' bug, he's ''[[The Swarm|millions]]''! Millions of tiny creepy crawlies make up his body, as if his entire body is composed of [[Synchronized Swarming]] controlled by a [[Hive Mind]]. Sometimes it's worms, sometimes it's insects - [[Everything's Worse with Bees|bees]] are always good - and sometimes it's just any creepy thing you can think of. Don't worry; The Worm That Walks can make them all into [[Nightmare Fuel|fuel for subconscious terrors]].
Monsters like this aren't always the most lethal, but are often very hard to hurt. Trying to punch one is like trying to punch water (only far more disgusting). In some cases, they are almost impossible to kill, because if even one of the creatures that makes up its body survives, there is the possibility that [[From a Single Cell| it will return]] (though it may take a while). [[Kill It with Fire]] is often your best bet.
An extreme version of the [[Totem Pole Trench]]. See also [[Combining Mecha]] for the mechanical counterpart of this trope.
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* An ad for [[The BBC]] had a head made of disembodied heads. People complained.
* This [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OHY-2bv0vk Duracell Ultra commercial] accidentally evokes this trope. Anyone else thinks that these little pink Duracell Bunnies look like...a mass of squirming maggots?
* There's a recent{{when}} Prius commercial that centers on a human...made out of dozens of tiny humans. The horrifying beast gets out of bed, brushes its "teeth," etc. Yes, a link to it or something might be more informative, but really, you don't [[Body Horror|want to]] [[Uncanny Valley|see this]].
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
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* In Peter Jckson's ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Lord of the Rings]]'': The Fellowship of The Ring, the Ringwraith that searches for the four hobbits after they leave the Shire and hide in a small cave beside the forest road is (probably) not made from worms, but worms, maggots, spiders and other unpleasant things crawl from his robes.
== [[
* In Book 14 of [[Lone Wolf]], one boss is an [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|armored, fire-breathing, demonic monkey]]. After it is killed, its corpse turns into a swarm of man-eating insects for you to contend with.
** Notably, the insects are an illusion. At that point, Lone Wolf has achieved a level of mental discipline that allows him to simply ignore them.
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** He also gives us the 'throng-bear', an unintelligent variant from ''[[Iron Council]]''.
** Don't forget {{spoiler|Skool, who is a bunch of fish inside a wetsuit. He's also a rare heroic version of this.}}
* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld]]'', a vampire can only change into a single bat if they've been feeding on human blood, since it takes great magical power to change one's bodymass in the setting. Belonging to the teetotaller Black Ribboners, Sally in ''[[
** Also in a Discworld book (''[[
** A more comical example from ''A Hat Full of Sky'', reappearing in the subsequent book ''Wintersmith'', is [[Totem Pole Trench|the Nac Mac Feegles disguising themselves as a human (singular) by stacking themselves up inside several stolen items of clothing]].
** Borrowing a swarm of bees is a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] for Granny Weatherwax in ''[[
** A minor version of this occurs in the character of Hex in the Unseen University... a 'computer' controlled by the ant colony living inside it... a similar type of machine can be seen in the Glooper in "Making Money", although that one is controlled by water and tides and the economy...
* The Vermiform in Steph Swainston's ''Castle Circle'' series is one of these.
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* In Niven and Barnes' ''The Barsoom Project'', the sins of humanity make an appearance in the Fimbulwinter Game as a swarm of monstrous insect-like vermin, which assemble themselves into four giant humanoid figures to put [[Humanity on Trial]].
== [[Live
* Norman Pfister from the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' episodes "What's My Line, Part One" and "What's My Line, Part Two." He's a group of maggots that can appear like a man (but not for very long, as he starts to go all [[Uncanny Valley]]). Xander and Cordelia manage to kill him with [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|a bucket of glue]].
* ''[[Reaper]]'' had an episode with a woman made of bugs.
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* In ''[[Andromeda]]'', a guest turned out to be composed of nanobots.
* In ''[[Smallville]]'', Clark Kent battles a [[Spider-Man]]-esque villain named Greg Arkin in episode 2. When Greg gets crushed by falling debris, his body breaks up into dozens of beetles.
* Based on how he escapes being trapped in Crowley's answering machine, this seems to be an attribute of Hastur in the Amazon Prime production of ''[[Good Omens (series)|Good Omens]]''.
== [[Music
* The [[Music Video]] for
* The music video for [[Rammstein]]'s Links 2-3-4 has a horde of giant insects coming to destroy some ants. The ants then eat the giant insects, and then ''dance on their corpses'
== Myths
* Partial example: Azhi Dahaka, a three-headed dragon associated with the Zoroastrian apocalypse, has scorpions instead of blood.
== New Media ==
* Diana from ''[[Descendant of a Demon Lord]]'' became this after people slit her throat and threw her into a bog. Despite her 'biological integrity', she is nervous she'll fall apart (and die for real), and studied magic that would go towards preventing that (like binding). Despite that, she thinks her 'body' has enough benefits that she wouldn't exchange it for a conventional body. She also maintains a sense of modesty, such as covering her chest when it isn't
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* While they can't construct a bipedal form and go for a walk ...[[Paranoia Fuel|yet]], South American army ants regularly form nests and bridges from their own massed bodies.▼
* Blister Beetle Grubs form themselves into the shape of the female of a certain species of bee, in order to lure it into trying to mate with the bee-of-worms, which secretes pheromones to help the process along ("Hey, that doesn't look like a bee and * sniff sniff* Oh Baby..."). Then they cling to the male, transfer to the female when Real Bee-boinking goes on, all to hitch a ride to the female's nest, which is full of tender bee larvae...▼
* [[wikipedia:Portuguese Man o' War|The Portuguese Man o' War]] looks like a floating jellyfish, but is in fact a colony of countless tiny animal-like organisms known as zooids. Its tentacles can grow to twenty metres in length (ten is average) with a sting that can be very painful. Definitely not something you want to get tangled up with, especially since Portuguese Men o' War are most commonly found in large groups.▼
* Slime molds, are essentially single-celled organisms that every now and again come together to form composite creatures, up to roughly 30 cm x 20 cm in extreme cases.▼
* [[Pantomime Animal|Animal costumes]] that require multiple people, the most famous examples being 2-person horse costumes and Chinese New Year dragons.▼
* Evolutionary biologists believe that multicellular organisms are descended from single-celled organisms that formed 3-D colonies.▼
** Likewise, eukaryotic cells probably arose when some oxygen-utilizing eubacteria set up housekeeping inside of anaerobic archaean bacteria, creating composite protists and fungi. When cyanobacteria joined the party, we got algae and (eventually) plants.▼
*** More in the now, multicellular life (Yes, including [[Humans Are Cthulhu|you]].) tends to host multitudes of bacteria and other single cell-organisms to mutual benefit.▼
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
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** It was based on a creature that appeared in the [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraft]] story "The Festival":
{{quote|''"[H]appy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For…the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."''}}
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]
** Ravenloft
** In the [[Epic Level Handbook]]'', and [[Pathfinder]] Bestiary (part II), there is a monster called "Worm That Walks", a dead spellcaster that has become the [[Hive Mind]] for an army of worms - gaining insect-related powers and a great deal of additional resilience. Usually it's the evil ones that choose this method of life after death.
** Players can actually turn themselves into a Worm That Walks, although it carries a chance of failing and just leaving them as a rotting corpse.
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** The Worm That Walks shows up again in 4th Edition as the "Larva Mage." Not quite as evocative...
*** The Larva Mage has some cousins, too. The Larva Assassin is the soul of a [[Psycho for Hire]] given form through a swarm of hornets and centipedes. Larva Snipers were [[Cold Sniper]]s (or at least sadistic marksmen) in life, now an undead composed of wasps. Larva War Masters were [[General Ripper]]s, [[Blood Knight]]s and similar depraved, insane warriors in life, their souls called back and thrust into undeath as the [[Hive Mind]] of a swarm of carnivorous beetles.
*** And Kyuss himself is back, one of the [[Eldritch Abomination]]s of the ''Elder Evils'' sourcebook, plus the one on the cover art.
** The [[Call a Pegasus A Hippogryph|Lamia]] from 4th Edition [[Dungeons & Dragons]] is an evil fey creature which is a seething swarm of scarab beetles wrapped around the flesh-stripped bones of a powerful fey creature. Many lamias take the form of eladrin that they've hollowed out this way.
** The great-granddaddy of all these D&D Worms That Walk was the cifal ([[Fun with Acronyms|Colonial Insect-Formed Artificial Life]]), a rather forgettable colonial-insect monster from the 1E ''Fiend Folio''.
*** Whom they just dumped into the recent{{when}} version of ''[[Gamma World]]'', along with [[Our Monsters Are Weird|all the other effed-up D&D monsters]]
** A rare Good-aligned version appears in, of all places, the [[Eldritch Abomination]]-filled ''Lords of Madness'' 3.5 sourcebook, with the silthilar—sentient swarms with just a touch of the [[Mad Scientist]] when they fuse into their solid form.
** Roach thralls in ''D20 Modern''.
** Yet another version from 3.5, in the ''Exemplars of Evil'' book (for designing villains) is the former archmage of the Tolstoff family who researched the deceased god the Worm That Walks, learned evil spells, acquired foul magic items, and made pacts with dark entities. Eventually the deity noticed him and "rewarded" him with its filthy blessing, an attack of ravenous worms and maggots that ate his physical body but which absorbed his soul. Sealed in a vault within the catacombs beneath the mansion by his horrified daughter, he then proceeds to whisper and corrupt his grandchildren into evil servants who will stop at nothing to free him from his tomb. He later appeared in the aforementioned ''Elder Evils'' as [[The Dragon]] to Kyuss.
* ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' includes the Ananasi, werespiders who, in their animal form, turn into their weight in spiders. Since they can eventually regenerate their entire bodies from even one of those spiders, it makes for a great escape technique.
** Also in ''Werewolf'' are the Hollow Men, a breed of fomori (humans under the thrall of [[Demonic Possession]]). The Hollow Men specifically are humans who were killed and whose bodies were mostly emptied out (hence the name), the insides replaced by a swarm of small animals controlled by the demonic spirit in question. Doesn't have to be insects/arachnids; reptiles and rodents are also popular choices. They're capable of speech and can ''try'' to pass themselves off as fully human, but generally, even other fomori find them creepy as hell.
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** She's also one of the sample NPCs that made the transition when the game was converted to its own rules system.
* [[Scarred Lands]]: One of the monsters described in the "Creature Collection II: Dark Menagerie" are vermin hosts, former human vagrants who were cursed by one of the evil gods who was angry that they happened to pray to another god other than him to let them live another day in their dismal squalor. From this [[Disproportionate Retribution]] he had various vermin (rats, roaches, leeches, spiders) burrow into their skin, giving them [[Cursed with Awesome]] powers as they are able to use their new abilities to control their own swarm of vermin, turn into giant anthropomorphic versions of those vermin, and disintegrate into swarms to help escape enemies or commit espionage (which the spider vermin hosts do most of the time). As a side note, they're able to reproduce [[The Virus]] style by allowing one of their vermin to infect a person, whose whispers of power and whatnot usually cause them to accept them thereby summoning a larger swarm of that vermin which turns them into new vermin hosts while inheriting some of the memories of the previous ones. This is also [[Squick]] because, mind you, the vermin are always moving under the host's skin to find more comfortable areas to rest. Remember one of those vermin are large rats!
* ''[[Earthdawn]]''
== [[Toys]] ==
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* While it isn't entirely clear, one of the [[Big Bad]]'s lackeys in ''[[Dead of Summer]]'' may be one of these. He summons a swarm of insects seemingly out of nowhere (the art suggests they either come from around him or ''inside'' him) to attack {{spoiler|[[The Protomen|Commander]]}}. He's swarmed and bitten so much his movements are slowed, and he screams that they're eating him alive.
* Gavotte, the head of the''[[Skin Horse]]'' department, is a sentient swarm of bees. She (?) is surprisingly congenial and enjoys having a cup of tea with her employees, but they're often somewhat unnerved by the disembodied voice and the offers of free honey.
* ''[[Dilbert]]'' had [[Pointy-Haired Boss]] [https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-07-29 mention] that he somehow hired termite colonies disguised with clothes and makeup… three times in a row. The readers, of course, pointed out that employees as organized, hard working, goal-oriented and adaptable as termite colonies probably were the best hires in his department, or maybe in that entire corporation.
== [[Web Original]] ==
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* In an episode of ''[[Goof Troop]]'', Pete gets turned into a fly and is forced to train with other flies. Pete's family gets him back to change him back, but before they do, the whole swarm of flies comes to the door wearing a trench coat to attempt to steal Pete back.
* One episode of ''[[Mucha Lucha]]'' was about Ricochet, Buena Girl, and the Flea confronting a giant spider-themed wrestler named Black Widower, who has been beating several insect-themed wrestlers all over town, and is threatening to do the same to the Flea. At the end of the episode, the Black Widower is defeated, and as a result his costume comes off to reveal... ...the aforementioned insect wrestlers.
▲== [[Real Life]] ==
▲* While they can't construct a bipedal form and go for a walk ...[[Paranoia Fuel|yet]], South American army ants regularly form nests and bridges from their own massed bodies.
▲* Blister Beetle Grubs form themselves into the shape of the female of a certain species of bee, in order to lure it into trying to mate with the bee-of-worms, which secretes pheromones to help the process along ("Hey, that doesn't look like a bee and * sniff sniff* Oh Baby..."). Then they cling to the male, transfer to the female when Real Bee-boinking goes on, all to hitch a ride to the female's nest, which is full of tender bee larvae...
▲* [[wikipedia:Portuguese Man o' War|The Portuguese Man o' War]] looks like a floating jellyfish, but is in fact a colony of countless tiny animal-like organisms known as zooids. Its tentacles can grow to twenty metres in length (ten is average) with a sting that can be very painful. Definitely not something you want to get tangled up with, especially since Portuguese Men o' War are most commonly found in large groups.
▲* Slime molds, are essentially single-celled organisms that every now and again come together to form composite creatures, up to roughly 30 cm x 20 cm in extreme cases.
▲* [[Pantomime Animal|Animal costumes]] that require multiple people, the most famous examples being 2-person horse costumes and Chinese New Year dragons.
▲* Evolutionary biologists believe that multicellular organisms are descended from single-celled organisms that formed 3-D colonies.
▲** Likewise, eukaryotic cells probably arose when some oxygen-utilizing eubacteria set up housekeeping inside of anaerobic archaean bacteria, creating composite protists and fungi. When cyanobacteria joined the party, we got algae and (eventually) plants.
▲*** More in the now, multicellular life (Yes, including [[Humans Are Cthulhu|you]].) tends to host multitudes of bacteria and other single cell-organisms to mutual benefit.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Invertebrate Index]]
[[Category:Evil Is Visceral]]
[[Category:Villains]]
[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
▲[[Category:The Worm That Walks]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Worm That Walks, The}}
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