Wrathful Wasps

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It's hard to think of bugs that are more hated than wasps. While angry swarms of bees can inspire fear, they are generally beloved for having a more apparent positive effect on the environment as well as having calmer temperaments. Spiders are also notoriously scary, but there are just as many people who love them for keeping bug populations under control as there are those who loathe them. And even scorpions have a Creepy Awesome appeal going for them. But on a surface level, wasps are essentially nastier bees without any of their good traits: they're far easier to piss off, they can and will sting multiple times once angered, and in the cases of certain wasps, paralyze their prey with agonizing venom so they can lay eggs on them and have their young slowly devour the host bug after hatching.

And as one would expect, media portrayals of wasps tend to reflect on how your average Joe views them: wrathful, spiteful, petty little monsters that will sting people for no reason while sentient ones are savages fueled by bloodlust at worst and total jerks at best. And while there is some level of Truth In Television regarding their aggression, it's also a huge oversimplification. Social wasps won't just sting people for no reason, but they are territorial and will defend their nests from any potential threats... and a lot of the time, a "threat" just happens to be some poor schmuck who doesn't realize that they're dangerously close to a wasp nest until it's too late. Solitary wasps such as cicada killer wasps or infamously, the tarantula hawk are also a lot more docile than their social cousins and won't sting unless you really go out of your way to piss them off.

Compare to Bee Afraid, which is more of a bee-focused version of this trope.

Examples of Wrathful Wasps include:

Anime and Manga

• As befitting of a manga that revolves around insect-based fighting techniques, Arachnid has Hornet, an assassin codenamed after the terrifying Asian Giant Hornet. And much like the bug that inspired his name, his fighting style revolves around using analyptic shock-inducing stings to kill his targets.
• Soifon/Sui-Feng from Bleach is the Second Squad captain of Soul Society's Thirteen Court Guard Squads, and incorporates a lot of hornet motifs in her personality and fighting style... specifically, the infamously lethal Japanese Giant Hornet. Fittingly, she's a nasty and unpleasant little woman who bullies her subordinates, takes sadistic joy out of mercilessly crushing her opponents, and is capable of killing people in two hits with her Zanpakuto, which turns into a rocket launcher in its Bankai form. She does have a kinder side to her, but it's usually saved exclusively for Yoruichi, her former mentor who she may or may not have a crush on.
• Mushizo from Ninja Scroll is not only horribly ugly, but has a hornet's nest built into his back. He can use his hornets as living weapons against his enemies, as well as scouts to gather information with.

Comic Books

• Ethan van Sciver's Cyberfrog has the Vyspyzz, a race of aliens that look like huge wasps that serve as a major villainous faction.
• Yellowjacket is the superhero identity Hank Pym assumed during the mental breakdown that led to his brief outing as a supervillain: after being court-martialed for excessive force, Hank would create a robot that would endanger the Avengers while he would stop it and make himself look like a hero in an insane, desperate bid to avoid punishment. However, this stunt is greatly overshadowed by him striking his wife in a fit of mania, and despite Jim Shooter intending it to be the result wild, careless gesturing, the artist decided to frame it as him intentionally, viciously slapping her to the ground which has saddled him with the reputation of being an unstable wife-beater that he's never been able to entirely shake.

Film

• Corny 1950's horror flick The Wasp Woman has, you guessed it, the titular wasp woman. She was once a normal woman (albeit in charge of a company geared around beauty products), but thanks to taking an experimental treatment augmented with enzymes from wasp queen jelly (which doesn't exist, by the way), she periodically turns into a murderous wasp/human hybrid.

Video Games

• The "bees" from Animal Crossing are actually wasps, and are one of the series' few hazards. While they can't kill the player, disturbing a nest by shaking the wrong tree will result in an entire swarm of angry wasps chasing after the player. They can't be outrun (unless you're very close to a building you can duck inside of) and if you fail to catch them with your bug net, they'll sting you and cause one of your eyes to swell up for a while.
• The main villain of Bug Fables is the Wasp King, the merciless tyrant in charge of the Wasp Kingdom and has an entire legion of equally bloodthirsty wasp soldiers at his command. However, this is subverted in two different ways: the soldiers of the Wasp Kingdom military are actually brainwashed into being evil and are otherwise good-natured. And the Wasp King isn't even a wasp, but a wasp-mimic fly!
  • As far as individual non-brainwashed examples go, there's Zasp of Team Mothiva. He's more of a Jerk With a Heart of Gold than a true villain, but is a real ass towards Team Snakemouth when he first meets them, and even when he mellows out he's perfectly willing to attack them if it helps boost his partner/crush Mothiva's reputation as the best explorer around.
• The zombies of Dead Rising are unique in the sense that their zombification isn't the result of a virus or some kind of dark magic, but parasitic wasps with venom that zombifies people so they can serve as hosts for their young.
• Zingers from Donkey Kong Country are something of a mix between wasps and bees, and are a common enemy in the franchise. They're the size of gorillas and can only be killed with barrels thanks to their huge stingers and barbed bodies protecting them from the Kongs.
• The Cazadores from Fallout: New Vegas are some of the most infamous enemies in the franchise and are feared by many a series veteran. And they've got good reason to be afraid: these mutant wasps are huge, quick, aggressive, and can kill you very quickly with their deadly venom. Even worse, they're based on a real wasp (Which isn't aggressive, but packing one of the most painful stings known to man).
• Hornet Man from Mega Man 9 is a goodhearted beekeeping robot and a friendly creation of Dr. Light's, but goes on a rampage thanks to Dr. Wily manipulating him and his siblings into villainy. And thanks to the bee robots he shoots at the player, he's quite the tough adversary.
  • Blast Hornet from Mega Man X3 is in a similar boat: he was once a Maverick Hunter on the side of justice, but exposure to the Maverick Virus turned him evil. Unfortunately, while Hornet Man is rebuilt and turns good again, Blast Hornet gets no such happy ending.
• The Pokémon Beedrill may be named after bees, but its appearance and temperament are closer to that of hornets, only three feet tall and with a nasty pair of stingers for hands. They're Bug/Poison types known for their fierce tempers and tendencies to attack in swarms when they're riled up, but fortunately for the player this doesn't really translate into the gameplay where they're rarely seen in the wild, never attack by swarming, and are incredibly weak.
  • This is played a lot straighter, however, with Mega Beedrill, Beedrill's Mega Evolution introduced in the Gen 6 games. It's sleeker, meaner looking, has stingers on all its limbs, and is a lightning-quick glass cannon that can punch holes through entire teams thanks to its ridiculous Attack stat.

Web Original

• Downplayed with the wasp girl in this selection of anthro bug girlfriends: she's a scary-looking Ladette with an aggressive personality to match, but is surprisingly motherly and tender-hearted at her core.

Real Life

• This trope exists for a reason: as detailed in the description above, wasps have a bad reputation thanks to social species being very easy to provoke. And not only are they territorial to begin with, but swatting or squishing a wasp releases an alarm pheromone that will rally nearby wasps to swarm and attack the offender. But despite frequent claims that they're just a bunch of useless, mean-spirited good-for-nothings, wasps are every bit as important to the environment as bees are: while they don't make honey, some species do pollinate, and thanks to their carnivorous diet they can keep insect populations in check. So feel free to dispose of unwanted wasp nests on your property, but keep in mind that their total extermination would be a very bad thing for the planet at large.
• While they're far from the deadliest, yellowjacket wasps are especially aggressive and are one of very few species that are known to sting completely unprovoked. They're common pests that live all over the United States, and are one of the biggest contributors to the image problem that wasps have when compared to other insects.
• The bald-faced hornet, a white-colored relative of the yellowjacket is described as being "a black-and-white yellowjacket on meth, crack, and steroids" on TV Tropes' Scary Stinging Swarm article, and not entirely without reason. Not only do they defend their nests with aggression that's ridiculous even by wasp standards, but they tend to go for the face and can spray their painful venom right into your eyes. Yeesh. And yet, there are those who'd prefer to live near them than with yellowjackets since for all their faults, bald-faced hornets have obvious nests that are easy to see and avoid while yellowjackets like to build their nests underground or in hard-to-see nooks and crannies, making the latter a lot easier to piss off than the former.
• The Asian giant hornet, better known to screaming headlines across the United States in 2020 as "Murder Hornets". Aggressive, two-inch (5-centimeter) insect predators which had somehow made their way to North America -- and once the media freak-out over them had run its course, apparently disappeared.