Giant Enemy Crab

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Holy crab! Where the hell is the weak point?!

"Once... they were men. Now they are land crabs." —Scientist, Attack of the Crab Monsters

"A knife is useless against those massive claws! They could rip through a tank!" —Snake, MGS 3: Crab Battle

Crabs.

They've got big pincers. They've got googly eyes. They've got a thick exoskeleton. They've got a funny sideways walk. In some parts of the world, they make delicious meals.

But what happens when you decide to enlarge one? You get a scary-looking monster fit for a Boss Battle. And possibly an extra-large delicious meal if you decide to cook it afterward.

Like Big Creepy-Crawlies, insufficient oxygen use renders the truly huge ones impossible (however, around 450 million years ago marine arthrpods did grow to large sizes, up to 2.5 metres in the case of the Eurypterids).

According to Sony, Giant Enemy Crabs appeared in "famous battles that actually took place in ancient Japan". When encountering one, you may Attack Its Weak Point For Massive Damage, while using Real Time Weapon Change.

See Sea Monster for other monsters from the deep. Often similar to a Giant Spider, but not quite as creepy (and theoretically, giant enemy crabs are more tasty). A mechanical Giant Enemy Crab would be a form of Spider Tank.

Examples of Giant Enemy Crab include:

Giant Crabs

Advertising

• This commercial for Joe's Crab Shack.

Anime & Manga

• Harima takes on a Giant Enemy Crab in School Rumble in the middle of a search for cooking ingredients, and kills it offscreen with a trident. The anime exaggerated its size so that it towered over him.
• The Radham Beasts (called Spider-Crabs in the dub) of Tekkaman Blade.
• A crab larger than the trees of the jungle she fell into chases Chisame in Mahou Sensei Negima at the start of the Magic World Story Arc.
• In episode 4 of Tears to Tiara, the main characters accidentally call out an entire beach's worth of Giant Enemy Crabs. Since the hunting party has among their number two Badass Normal warriors, a White Mage, an Old Master cleric, and a resurrected demon king, the crabs still get slaughtered. The party celebrates with crab hot pot, using the crabs' shells as cooking pots.
• Mahoromatic features "Cloud Crab", a crab-like alien robot. Mahoro actually does Attack Its Weak Point For Massive Damage.
• The class bus in Pani Poni Dash! is captured by a Giant Enemy Crab. Even the aliens get worried at this one.
• The Inbit Mecha-Mooks from Genesis Climber Mospeada (a.k.a. Robotech's Invid.)
• A Chimera Animal from late in Tokyo Mew Mew is basically, well, a rather large crab.
• Terrorclaw from Bakugan is a giant crab. Gundalian Invaders will have another one called Lythirius.
• The Val Varo from Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory.
• Hitagi Senjogahara from Bakemonogatari starts out the series possessed by a Giant Enemy Crab. This leads Oshino to point out the real reason why Giant Enemy Crabs aren't to be messed with. They're hard to eat.
• The Animal Path of Pain from Naruto has this as one of its (many) Summons. In the video game, you attack its legs for maximum damage.
  • The Three-Tails has characteristics of a crab.
• Bleach anime episode #205. At the end, all of the spiritual energy being released in the kemari game summons a giant crab-like hollow. After Uryu and Chad attack it, Ichigo kills it with a single blow.
• A filler scene in the Namek arc of Dragonball Z has Bulma going after a dragon ball that's gotten away from her, and ends up fighting a giant Namekian crab. Turns out the crab was just protecting her eggs.

Card Games

• While Magic: The Gathering does have a literal Giant Crab, it looks absolutely puny when compared to the Wormfang Crab. Yes, those are mountains it's stepping over. Suffice it to say that there are other giant crabs as well.

Comics

• The first volume of Mouse Guard features a battle against several Normal-Sized Enemy Crabs, but since the main characters are mice...
• The ruler of Atlantis in Gold Digger has a crab big enough to put an aircraft carrier on its head as a pet.
  • It is also adorable.
• Stiff Stacy is attacked by an infestation of "crabes" in Red Meat, which are pubic lice the size of normal crabs.
• RELEASE THE HOMICIDE CRABS!

Films

• The Harryhausen Movie The Mysterious Island features a giant crab.
• Roger Corman's immortal Attack of the Crab Monsters—People are trapped on a shrinking island by intelligent, brain-eating giant crabs. Not only were they big crabs, they could imitate people's voices.
  • The acklay in Attack of the Clones is probably a homage to this.
• In the Toho film Space Amoeba, the eponymous alien takes control of a crab named Ganimes and enlarges it.
• Garthim, (which are only vaguely crab-like) from The Dark Crystal.
• Pinocchio in Outer Space. On the surface of Mars the title character finds animals made gigantic by atomic mutation, including huge crabs with fangs.
• Godzilla enemy Destoroyah is made of thousands of these - which are already giant by themselves.
• Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao fights one of these in Wapakman.
• In the live-action Transformers films (and especially in Revenge of the Fallen), Megatron's physical appearance was actually designed after that of a fiddler crab's (especially with his arms, his right arm is extremely huge and clawlike, while his left is extremely thin and bony). This even carries into his altmodes in those films: a jet-tank hybrid in the first two, and an armored truck in the third.

Literature

• Prador from Neal Asher's Prador Moon.
• Larry Niven's Beowulf's Children introduces the Scribe, which resembles a giant land-dwelling horseshoe crab. Fortunately, they're also Gentle Giants...with defenses that deter all potential predators, even the grendels and the huge flesh-eating "bees" with Super Speed. To get a feel for how big they are, note that the colonists name the first Scribe they meet "Asia".
• Guy N. Smith wrote a series of low-rent horror novels in which giant killer crabs run scuttle amok.
• Wall Around a Star has the glassy crabs grown by the Cuckoo cultists on Earth as well as found naturally on Cuckoo itself (if anything there can be described as natural).
• When you're a mouse, all Crabs are Giant. Case in point: In Mossflower, the Salamandastron Quartet end up having to get past a Mama Crab that's bigger than Chibb.
  • There was also a lobster in Mariel of Redwall
• The Last Olympian's first chapter features a Giant Enemy Crab. Percy even Attacks Its Weak Point For Massive Damage.
• In H. G. Wells' novel The Time Machine, the Time Traveler encounters some rather menacing giant crabs on his way to the end of the world.
• From Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Hagrid's infamous Blast-Ended Skrewts, a hybrid between Manticores and Fire-crabs. They start out as being merely a poor choice of a Care of Magical Creature class project, but fully mature they become so distinctly sinister and dangerous that they are employed for the Third Triwizards Champions task.
• In John Dies at the End, a gorilla riding a giant crab (or possibly a single creature resembling a gorilla riding a giant crab) violently escapes from a chemical plant that makes drain cleaner. No, it doesn't make sense in context, that's the whole point.
• There's also the memorable Crushtaceon from the novel Nuklear Age.
• Terry Brooks took one of these, and added tentacles to it in The Sword of Shannara. Later revisions added metal plating to them. And created multiples.
• Dr. No had Honey Rider tied down on the shoreline ostensibly to be eaten by a swarm of crabs, but more likely to scare her to death. However, she knew her sea life and knew them to be harmless, so she calmly let them march over her.
• In The Beyonders, the first word fragment is unintentionally guarded by a giant crab. Originally it was guarded by a hermit; the crab moved in on her own. She's terrifyingly fast as well as Nigh Invulnerable, and escaping her is a chore and a half for the protagonists.
• One of the monsters in the Erec Rex series is a type of giant crab called a ginglehoffer. They can be dangerous, but are held back by their crippling fondness combined with allergic reaction to marshmallows.

Live Action TV

• Kamen Rider Hibiki has a few of these.
  • And by extension, so does Kamen Rider Decade.
  • Not giant, but still related: Kamen Rider Scissors' contract monster is a humanoid crab.
    • Same goes for Scissors' American counterpart, Kamen Rider Incisor.
  • Before all of them was Marshall Armor from Kamen Rider V 3, who turns into a giant crab monster when he shows up in Kamen Rider Spirits (and yes, Riderman does Attack Its Weak Point For Massive Damage).
• The Doctor Who serial The Macra Terror is about a society menaced and brainwashed by creatures that look like giant crabs. Really low-production-value ones.
  • The Macra returned in CGI form the new series episode "Gridlock".
• While not actual crabs, the Shadows of Babylon 5 have enormous black spaceships called Battlecrabs. Living Ships, at that, with a memorable psychic scream (not without reason) and they can cut through pretty much any other warships like soft cheese.
• That Mitchell and Webb Look had a sketch about an alien invasion by vast metallic crablike creatures.
• A short promo for the Discovery Channel program Deadliest Catch featured a giant crab emerging from a lake and attacking some men in a boat.

Music

• One appears in the video for "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" by The Darkness, along with a giant space squid.
• An entire song about giant enemy enemy crab crab crab: "Giant Enemy Crab" by Kitsune^2. (Attack its weak point for massive damage!)

Mythology

• Carcinus, the delicious sidekick of the Lernean Hydra that was crushed by a foot of Heracles. It was the biggest crab in Greek Mythology.

New Media

• According to The Onion, Experts Agree Giant, Bioengineered Crabs Pose No Threat.

Tabletop Games

• Classic monsters in Dungeons & Dragons.
  • In module S2 White Plume Mountain, the PCs could fight a giant crab in a air bubble inside an area filled with boiling hot water. An illustration from the module.
    • Said crab has obtained notoriety for killing even well-prepared, powerful parties. Giant monsters in confined spaces can be very nasty.
    • The revised version for 3e uses an advanced version of the infamous That Damn Crab below. It's just as ridiculously deadly as the original.
  • The Apparatus of Kwalish is the Magitek version of this.
  • The 8 foot wide Lawful Evil Hydrax (ice elemental crab) in Basic D&D.
  • Eberron has the Carcass Crab.
  • The Siege Crab in the Monster Manual 3.
  • The Far Corners of the World brings the Monstrous Crab, better known as That Damn Crab for it's tendency to grapple party members and drag them to a watery grave as well as its insane damage output, high AC, and mindless immunity to illusions. It's listed as an appropriate encounter for 3rd level parties and is generally considered a match for 7th level parties and a total TPK machine if used as it's printed.
    • The monster was also reprinted with only minor tweaks in Stormwrack and given cousins of all sizes. The book also adds the Hammerclaw, which is a lobster with all the same strengths plus the ability to hide in coral/rocks and to stun the party with an at-will sonic attack for the same CR.
  • The first issue of Pathfinder Chronicles features a giant hermit crab that uses a giant's helmet as its shell.
• Baron Munchausen refers to "The giant crabs of Ancient Nippon, whose weak spots may be struck For Massive Damage."
• Eclipse Phase features Novacrab pod-morphs, vat-grown cyber-crabs that may be player characters. Due to the setting's ubiquitous Brain Uploading, players can select a novacrab body as well, providing a huge bonus to strength and able to survive in just about any environment.
• Steel Shell Crabs are a unit for the Tritons in Monsterpocalypse. Also, the Crustaceor Lobstroyer monster.
• While not strictly a Crab per se, Old One Eye and most Tyranid Monstrous creatures in Warhammer 40K can take Crushing Claws, which are described as crab-like. Being Monstrous creatures, they are quite large.
• How about Mortasheen's giant enemy man-crab? Or chicken-crab? Or perhaps the man-lobster would be to more of your liking?
• As ever, Dystopian Wars takes this up to eleven - the Covenant of Antarctica's Landship is a Giant Victorian Steampunk Enemy Crab.

Toys

• The Manas crabs in Bionicle. Subverted, however, with Ussals, who can only be described as Giant Friendly Crabs.

Video Games

• Most famously, Genji 2: Days of the Blade (Trope Namer via Memetic Mutation), which inspired the Stupid Statement Dance Mix, "Giant Crab, Enemy Crab." A game featuring "actual battles" that actually took place in Ancient Japan. At one point you have to flip it over and Attack Its Weak Point For Massive Damage (yes, the same meme named those two as well). Fortunately for Japanese civilization, the game features Real Time Weapon Change.
  • Interestingly, the massive damage part out-meme'd the historical accuracy of giant crabs.
• There was a mod for the standard headcrab in Garry's Mod that made it near-impossible to kill, screamed like Godzilla and devoured anything within seconds of it getting in range. It could be taken down with SEVENTEEN simultaneous rockets, something that could potentially crash the server.
• The mud crabs in The Elder Scrolls setting are rather large for the species. Also, Oblivion includes a literal giant crab as an Easter Egg enemy, although this is a coincidence since the game came out before the Genji incident.
  • I saw a mud crab the other day.
    • Morrowind also features a crab shell large enough to contain an entire district of one town. The "Emperor Crab" species it came from, however, is stated to be extinct.
      • Semi-official word from the writers says that the Emperor Crab was resurrected to battle a massive Daedric invasion during the events of Oblivion. We never see it though, as we're stuck in Cyrodil. I suppose this would be a case of a Giant Friendly Crab though.
  • Morrowind's Mudcrab Merchant subverts the enemy part of the trope. It looks the same as any other mudcrab (and has the same in-game name), but instead of being hostile it is a merchant, with the most gold in the game.
  • One quest in Skyrim pits you against a giant Mudcrab ghost.
    • Tsk, that's nothing. Give the Bethesda devs a week to put in whatever they want, and they make one the size of a Colossus.
• The 3rd Metal Slug has several of these in the first level ranging from man-sized creatures to a giant boss with cannons strapped to its back.
• Katamari Damacy. The first game even has a level ("Make Cancer") devoted solely to rolling up crabs. And yes, the coconut crab is one of the types to be rolled up.
• Clawgrip, a boss in Super Mario Bros. 2.
  • Also, Hermie from Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.
  • Also Sidesteppers, the crabs from Mario Bros..
  • Also, Huckits from New Super Mario Bros. Wii.
  • Also, Crabbers from Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2.
• The "Carcino" type of Noise from The World Ends With You: folk, ska, metal, samps, and punk.
• Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia features a "Wake-Up Call" Boss battle against Brachyura, a "giant crab from the depths of Transylvanian history" (the medal for defeating it without getting hit actually calls it a "giant enemy crab") whose attack patterns have much more internal variation than those of the first two. Also becomes That One Boss for people who can't figure out that they need to drop the elevator on it (which is probably the most satisfying boss gib EVER).
• An early boss and later Bonus Boss in Suikoden IV. The mandatory one required the protagonist to use the Rune of Punishment first to make it damagable.
  • Suikoden III also has multiple Giant Enemy Crabs; they're something of a Suikoden tradition.
• The King Crabber boss in Summon Night: Swordcraft Story. Go For The Eyes!
• There are quite a few of these in the Final Fantasy series:
  • Crabs are very common targets in Final Fantasy XI, as they're less dangerous than most monsters.
    • KRABKATOA!
  • The boss of River Belle Path in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is a nasty old crab with numerous weapons sticking out of its body from past battles. It reappears in the same position in Ring of Fates.
  • A giant fiend in the shape of a crab-like spider is the boss of the first dungeon in Final Fantasy X-2. A palette swapped version appears in Via Infinito.
  • An early boss in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is the Snow Crab, which despite its name is not weak to fire. Benjamin can Attack Its Weak Point For Massive Damage using an axe. A palette swapped version is used later as a normal enemy type, which also shares the weakness to axes.
• The Zeromus summon in Final Fantasy XII, associated with the Cancer Zodiac (which is a crab) has numerous crab-like attributes.
  • Final Fantasy V features the "Devil Crab" and later the palette swapped Acrophies as normal enemy types. Both of them have elemental weak points you can attack For Massive Damage.
• Vagrant Story had an entire family of palette swapped crabs, named "Iron Crab", "Giant Crab", and "Damascus Crab".
• Cool Spot toys with this: its crabs are regular-sized, but they're quite big from the viewpoint of the player character, the spot from the logo on a 7-Up bottle.
• Ecco the Dolphin has to face many Small Enemy Crabs along with the giant ones. There's actually an implied explanation for this at the end of Tides of Time; the Vortex ended up becoming the ancestors of arthropods, so it may be that these creatures hate Ecco due to species memories.
• In Darius II, look no further than Red Crab.
  • And then there's Darius Gaiden's Hysteric Empress. Since she's a Final Boss of a Darius game, she'll attack your weak point for massive damage to your continues.
• Ultimate Crab Battle, obviously, is a battle against one of these.
• One of the units the Sai in the game Stormrise have access to is the Matriarch, a giant, genetically engineered crab that has mouths on its pincers, can spawn smaller crabs called broodlings and can shoot acid over large distances.
• Bubble Crab from Mega Man X 2, and Cancer Bubble from Mega Man Star Force.
  • The Crab Puncher from Mega Man 10 is this as well. Hint: when the eyes are forward, fire the Commando Bomb at the mouth For Massive Damage.
  • Cancer Bubble has also a slight subversion to him, in that, while much larger than your average crab, he's the absolute smallest of all the bosses (then again, his human half, Claude Pincer, is only in third grade).
  • Gazamir from Mega Man Zero 2, Crabs-Y from Mega Man X 8.
• The Mirelurks in Fallout 3 are super-mutated, bi-pedal crabs.
  • It's worth noting that said Mirelurks have a weak point that you can hit For Massive Damage. Might I suggest using the Mysterious Stranger's Revolver that hits for 9000 hit points?
  • Mirelurk meat is also one of the better foods in the game, healing a large amount of health. Mirelurk cakes are a popular snack among wastelanders.
• Without a doubt, the most awesome food resource in Civilization IV is the crabs. Zoom in on them, and watch them wave their pincers at each other as though in animated discussion...
• There's a lot of crabs in various beaches in World of Warcraft, ranging from normal sized to big to a few giant ones.
  • Notably, in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion there is a Giant Friendly Crab as a quest-giver. Considering Blizzard's tendency to include ShoutOuts and IncrediblyLamePuns as Easter Eggs in their games, it's certainly possible this is a reference.
• Monster Hunter has approximately six different flavours of Giant Enemy Crab in its latest incarnation—two small ones ("small" being about twice human size), three large ones ("large" being about the size of a truck), and one absolutely huge one. Oh, and you fight them on foot, with approximately medieval-age weaponry.
  • Monster Hunter Freedom Unite even has a mission called "the giant enemy crab".
• Recurring Boss Full Metal Hagger in the World of Mana series. Usually fought near the beginning of the game.
• A giant crab spawning normal-sized crabs has to be fought in the adventure game Bargon Attack.
• Star FOX Command's Fichina stage has you fight against the thought-to-be-dead Andrew Oikonny, who battles you in a mech called the "Death Crab." You shoot off its legs, then its face for mass...oh forget it.
  • The original Star Fox has large mechanical crab enemies on Titania.
• Fraxy has the Original Cancer and the Giant. Enemy. Crab.
• Resident Evil 5 has you fight the U8 in an elevator shaft. Given Umbrella's penchant for using animal test subjects as B.O.W.'s, it's no wonder you'd have to fight a giant mutated crab at some point.
• God Hand, at one point, features a fight between Gene and a Giant Enemy Crane (complete with pincers). Also, the entirety of the game's fourth world takes place on a Giant Robot Crab.
  • God Hand even makes further references to this meme: one of the Chihuahuas in the Chihuahua Races is named "Massive Damage".
• The RTS Krush, Kill 'n' Destroy (KKnD) had the Evolved faction, who could train giant beasts to fight for them in place of armoured tanks. One of their largest units is a giant crab with a missile launcher strapped to its back.
• Blaster Master's fifth boss is one of these.
  • As well as the first and third bosses in its Enhanced Remake, Blaster Master Overdrive.
• The toughest beast that Nero Chaos in Tsukihime possesses is some sort of crab spider thing that is larger than an elephant. Presumably, it's tougher than the dragon he had used before, but it doesn't matter much when your opponent kills everything in one hit regardless of anything like armor or actually damaging you.
• The last level in the arcade shmup Strikers 1945 featured giant robot alien crabs as enemies.
• Patapon features two crab bosses named Cioking and Ciokina. You get to cook them.
• Dark Age of Camelot has a house-sized crab called the bone snapper.
• The original StarCraft's Zergs fielded Guardians: giant flying crabs.
• The Original Generation villain for the Pretty Cure series Crossover game on the Nintendo DS turns into a Giant BLUE Enemy Crab as its One-Winged Angel form. Worse, it fights with BeamingGrins (Shoop Da Whoop meets Giant Enemy Crab?). He's still easy as long you avoid said beams.
• One of the many enemies in Lost Kingdoms is a Giant Crab, and as said, it's an enemy, making it a Giant Enemy Crab. Their card attack is one the worst in the entire game, though.
• Crabs are among the last Mooks that Kay (from Legend of Kay) encounters on his quest.
• The following World of Mana games feature Giant Enemy Crabs as boss battles (usually called "Full Metal Hugger")
  • Final Fantasy Adventure
  • Seiken Densetsu 3
  • Legend of Mana
  • Dawn of Mana
    • There are also significantly smaller, but still much larger then normal crabs that show up as standard enemies in some games.
• Sin and Punishment has the Crab Seemer boss in the middle of the first actual stage.
• Inputting the trope name will summon one of these in Scribblenauts. One also appears in a level with three samurai (Hint: "For Massive Damage!")
• Borderlands has a giant enemy crab called a Larva Crab Worm. If you shoot it directly in its eye, you score a critical hit for thousands of damage, an ungodly amount at that point in the game, and one-shot it.
  • Recently, with the "Secret Armory of General Knoxx" DLC, the secret final boss (who is pointed out with signs saying "SECRET FINAL BOSS THIS WAY" from the Second area of the DLC) is Crawmerax, a Giant Giant Enemy Crab whose level is always three levels higher than the game's current level cap.
    • And who can only be hurt at all by hitting its weak points.
• Brave Story: A New Traveler has a Giant Enemy Conch named "Boogaboo Crab" in the Seaside Cave. It has trees growing out of the moss on its shell and the 'crab' goes "BOOGA-BOOGA-BOOGA-BOO."
• Parasite Eve has a giant crab boss in the warehouse.
• The third boss of Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat is a giant crab. And yes, the trick to beating it is by flipping it over onto its back and...well, you get the idea.
• Vega Strike has large friendly crabs, known as Rlaan.
• Irukandji‍'‍s ^{[dead link]} only boss is a giant crab. Even the page for the game calls it a "Giant Enemy Crab."
• Bio-Hazard Battle had one of these as a Mini Boss that spawned mini crabs that fired at the player. And it appeared twice in the same level.
• Alien Soldier has Madam Barbar / Madam Barber. It's claws are going to cut more than just your hair...
• The Ocean Hunter has "Karkinos" as one of the bosses (aka Cancer). Attack Its Eyes For Massive Damage!
• Depending on how you look at it, the third boss of Razing Storm is either a Humongous Mecha version of this or a Giant Spider Tank.
• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has you face the same one 3 times. And it can put a shell on its weak point whenever it wants the second and third time. And gets little ones to help the third time. And the third time, you need to transport Dark Ore.
  • Gohma in the first game. Later incarnations veer towards Giant Spider.
• Titan Quest: Immortal Throne has regular crabs (of beach and swamp variety), and then it has the Giant Karkinos (no prizes for guessing what it is). As with the rest of the game, this has some basis in actual Classical Mythology: according to some variants of the legend, when Heracles was fighting the Hydra, Hera sent the Karkinos to attack his feet while he was otherwise occupied (wrong hero, Hera), to no avail - but on its death, she placed it in the stars as a constellation. Which means... yes, Heracles beat Cancer.
• Umihara Kawase features one as the boss of field 56. It's one of the more sensemaking enemies in the game.
• Chip Wits has the "electrocrab."
• The first major boss in N64 game Body Harvest.
• In Monster Rancher 2, if you send your monster on Skill (accuracy) Errantry and it makes it to the final segment, it will have to "fight" a giant crab by throwing coconuts at it. If it fails, the crab will squash your monster into a pancake, adding a comical element to the training (as though everything else about the special training wasn't already laughable; fighting off sharks on a mere wooden raft? Really?)
• Rattlecrab from Scaler, who can fly.
• Brave Soul gives us the Giant Enemy Fire-Breathing Crab!
• X-Scape on DSiWare (made by the same company who made Star FOX Command and the director of the original Star FOX, both of which incidentally had Giant Enemy Crabs of their own) has a so-called "ancient" weapon called the Gigacrab, referred to in the Quest menu specifically as a giant enemy crab.
• From the world of Pokémon, we have a subversion in the Kingler species. Unlike most other examples on this page, you can actually recruit Krabbys and Kinglers to fight for you as part of your team. Several other species of crustacean also apply, under the Video Games heading below...
• Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards features a Slightly Larger Than Average Enemy Crab as a boss battle. There's also regular-sized crabs for Kirby to munch on.
• Planetarian features a mechanical Giant Enemy Crab.
• League of Legends features an alternate skin for their quadra-pedal undead cyborg Urgot called "Giant Enemy Crabgot." He fires his claw at his enemies.
• Banjo-Kazooie had you fighting a giant hermit crab in order to obtain the jiggy inside its shell.
• In Age of Mythology playing the Greeks you can get access to a giant crab unit called the Carcinos with the right god.
• The Kaiser crab of Shining in the Darkness is the first boss.
• The bosses of the beach in Donkey Kong Country Returns are the Scurvy Crew, a trio of Giant Enemy Crab pirates. They aren't monstrously huge, but they're slightly bigger than DK, which is still pretty giant. And yes, you do flip them over and attack their weak points For Massive Damage.
• The mine boss of Wild Guns is a giant robotic crab.
• One of the Bosses of Pirates The Legendofthe Black Buccaneer is a giant crab that you (As Francis Blade) can defeat using both hand grenades and the cannon that you used earlier to blow up the bars to get the trinket to turn into the Black Buccaneer.
• The sixth boss of Adventure Island III is a large crab wielding an Epic Flail. The second boss of Adventure Island II is large hermit crab.
• Alice: Madness Returns has a crab equipped with an Arm Cannon. It also outsizes every other creature that appears in its respective chapter. Oh, it is also a Cigar Chomper. Guess what it does with its cigar since its Arm Cannon is of the early Blackpowder-era variety?
• Recettear has Volcanicrab as a boss fought twice in the game. Its invincible until flipped over with bombs to Attack Its Weak Point for large amounts of damage.
• The boss of World 6 in Maze of Galious.
• Of the very few varieties of mooks in LostWinds, one is inexplicably a crab.
• The Chryssalids of X-COM: Enemy Unknown look like huge humanoid crabs with a black carapace and two huge pincers.
• Arc Angle has the Crabburn boss. It's larger than a small city and utilizes deadly Eye Beams and Macross Missile Massacre.
• Crabocolypse from Commando 2 is a robotic version. You stand on a train when you fight it, while it does a Wall Crawl on the train track support beams.
• Cangrejo, the first boss of Zeliard.
• The Crustacrab and its shell-less, baby variants (who are still as large as Red himself) from Solatorobo. Unlike many of the others on this page, you do not Attack Its Weak Point For Massive Damage. Instead, you catch the rocks it throws and toss them back to stun it, then steal its shell so you can toss the crab around. There are also even larger hermit crabs who have taken over entire battleships as their shells in the Fishing Minigame.
• The Stage 11 boss in Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair.
• One of enemies in Cthulhu Saves the World. As their description helpfully points out, they are immune to attacking their weak spot for massive damage.
• A common enemy type in the 3D games of the Tales (series). They're usually about the size of a small car.
  • Rather hilariously subverted in Tales of Phantasia, where you can fight an ordinary sized crab. The fact that the boss theme plays while you do so might give one the impression that it's actually dangerous, but it doesn't do anything other then run around at an absurd speed, which coupled with its sky high defense stat and tiny size, just makes it annoying for a lower leveled party to kill.
  • In Narikiri Dungeon X, Mel and Dio can be giant ally crabs with a certain costume, that while lacking in attacks, possess the same ridiculous speed and defense as the aforementioned crab.

Web Comics

• A Clank in early Girl Genius that attacked the traveling circus.
• Chapter 15 of Realms of Ishikaze has one of these as a boss of the Ruins of Amilleo. Arashiko must attack its soft underbelly for massive damage.
• In Nodwick, the party meeting a giant crab inspires them to pull out the Crab Cracker + 5, Decanter of Endless Butter and Bibs of Protection.
• Fire Slicer from Axe Cop, who after eating a crab, turned into a very tall crab with super-duper sharp claws that could stab bad guys in the heart and pinch.
• Karkat's guardian in Homestuck is two-and-a-half out of three. He's definitely giant and he's definitely a crab, but while Karkat does fight him, he's more of a parental figure than an enemy. Played straight, however, when crabdad dies and the comic's Mooks begin to take on his characteristics.
• One shows up out of nowhere in Chapter 32 of Gunnerkrigg Court.
  • It turns out to be Lindsey, the Giant Engineer Crab.
    • Subverted with her husband, a crab creature still significantly larger than most crabs but small enough to fit in a bucket and supervise the kids "sneaking out".
• In Drowtales, the Balvhakara make an entrance in a Humongous Mecha Spider Tank Giant Enemy Crab golem submarine. Or, rather, from the Sharen point of view, a Giant Ally Crab.
• There's one SpongeBob SquarePants episode where Plankton switches lives with Mr.Krabs, and the result is a giant Mr.Krabs enemy.
• Samurai Princess's Massive Antagonistic Crustacean

Web Original

• Tales of the Blode shorts on rathergood.com.
  • In Tales of the Blode: Episode 1, Blode and his friends are threatened by an evil Nazi crab the size of a tank.
  • They feature the characters' mentor, the Crab of Ineffable Wisdom.
• Zero Punctuation's Mercenaries 2 review uses the Giant Enemy Crab imagery to make a point about a certain habit of the average video gamer.

So we have scenarios where you're sitting on a nuclear stockpile to shame North Korea and are throwing peas at a giant robot crab on the off chance that there might be a bigger giant robot crab just around the corner.

• Dragon Ball Abridged references the Namekian crab scene, but being an abridged series, it cuts the Mama Bear angle altogether.
  • KILLING CRABS! IN THE OCEAN! KILL IT FAST! PAIN EXPLOSION, YEAH!

Western Animation

• Tiny Toon Adventures has a giant robot crab/factory that leveled entire forests to make elevator buttons.
• In one Futurama episode, the Decapodians conquer Earth. Their ships are all shaped like robot crabs, as is their Mobile Oppression Palace.
  • Let's not forget that episode where Zoidberg is 500 feet tall.
• The Jonny Quest episode "Terror Island" had a car-sized crab, a mutation caused by bacteria.
• Code Lyoko has aptly-named Krabes as virtual monsters.
• Exo Squad had a Neosapien E-frame design styled after crabs, which was admittedly one of the most powerful frames in the show (evident in the fact that Shiva, the best Neosapien General, preferred it to all others). Also, the crablike Neo Warriors were among the nastiest enemies the Terrans encountered.
• Rampage of Beast Wars is a Transforming Mecha who chose a crab to transform into. He's also quite a bit larger than most of the other Transformers in the series and something of a sadist.
  • Also Rampage is near immortal and his only weak point is his spark, which Megatron has split in half so that he can keep Rampage in line by squeezing it and essentially disabling the insane robot
• South Park: "Crab People! Crab People! Taste like crab, walk like people!"
• Theresa summons one in the finale of Class of the Titans.
• Stripperella once had to go to the supervillan Queen Clitoris hidden lair on a bushy island, downunder, that was infested and guarded by Giant Crabs. Yeah, It's that kind of show.
• My Little Pony had the Crabnasties from the episode "Fugitive Flowers". Despite a bad first impression, they turn out to be the good guys.
• Averted in The Little Mermaid where Sebastian is actually portrayed as a friendly, normal-sized crab.
• The crabs in Finding Nemo despite being normal-sized, are actually still pretty nasty.
• Waternoose, the main villain of Monsters, Inc. looks very crab-like in appearance.
• One of the animals Merlin turns into during the Wizard Duel from The Sword in the Stone is a blue crab.
• One of the microscopic monsters in The Herculoids episode "Tiny World of Terror" is a giant crab.
• Averted with Taxicrab, the cabana owner from Jungle Junction.
• Used in a Manatee Gag on Family Guy, where for no reason a giant crab repeating "no-no-no" is blocking people from entering the Griffins' home.
• Arthur once showed Bionic Bunny (Fictional Counterpart to Superman) fighting a giant crab.

Real Life

• Haha, just kidding. Crabs like that can't exist exist in real life, right? RIGHT!?!?.
  • Holy cow! What could possibly top that thing?!
• We're all going to be eating our words when palaeontologists find giant crab corpses in ancient Japan. It will be even worse when sword and arrow marks are found on their weak points. The official cause of death would be of massive damage.
• This video of ants attacking a crab for food, by attacking its weak points.
  • That video is nightmare fuel incarnate. Imagine, for a second, that small creatures were able to pry your mouth open so smaller versions of them could go inside and begin feasting on your innards...

Other Crustaceans of Unusual Size

Card Games

• In addition to the giant crabs mentioned above, Magic: The Gathering also gave us the Homarids (effectively barely-anthropomorphic lobsters at war with the local merfolk when introduced), some of which were clearly a bit bigger than the others...
• The collectible card/model series Pirates Of The Cursed Seas features a number of sea monsters in addition to its ships—amoung them, a handful of giant crabs.

Fan Works

• Nobody Dies has the Angel Shamshel take this form, giving us this little exchange.

Misato: The enemy is a Giant Crab! Rei: Hit its weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE! Misato: Rei! Get off the damn channel!

• A trio of giant lobsters attack Boston (under the direction of a human super) in one of the stories from The Teraverse; two are killed but one is driven off and is the subject of official interest and search for several stories afterward.

Film

• Ebirah from the Godzilla films.
• The Leviathan from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a giant mechanical lobster.
• Teenagers From Outer Space features the gargon, a space alien played by a lobster... 's shadow.

Literature

• The aptly-named Lobstrosities from Stephen King's The Drawing Of The Three.
  • They will constantly question you (dad-a-chick?) while ripping your extremities apart.
• The Stormlight Archive has the massive lobster-like creatures known as chasmfiends. They are powerful enough to flatten even somebody wearing the setting's resident Magitech Powered Armor.
• The various deadly Lost World life forms of Fragment are distant cousins of mantis shrimp, although they've long since evolved into whole classes, possibly even phyla, of their own.
• One of the bizarre inhabitants of Brian Lumley's Lovecraft-pastiche Dreamlands novels is a giant pillbug referred to as "the Running Thing". It's friendly to humans, and is a subterranean predator of various deep-dwelling nasties up to and including dholes.

Live-Action TV

• Countless ones in Power Rangers, though the most memorable one would be Captain Crayfish from the second season. He even comes with his own crew of Psycho Rangers.
  • An inversion of the "Enemy" part can be found in the Samurai Gold Ranger's Clawzord; it's a giant mech-lobster.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons. Early editions had giant crayfish as monsters.
• Monsterpocalypse the Tritons have a monster Crustaceous which is a giant bipedal lobster.

Video Games

• Warcraft games have Lobstrocs/Makruras (both names seem to be used interchangeably) and the Bogstrok, which are lobster people. They're about the same size as most other humanoids, making them very large for crustaceans. There's also the truly gigantic Rokmar the Cracker as a boss encounter.
• The Lobstermen from X-COM: Terror from the Deep. Very nasty aliens with insane defense that lets them laugh at rockets. You better hope your troops have drills by the time they appear.
• Crush Crawfish from Mega Man X 3.
• Corphish and Crawdaunt from Pokémon. Anorith and Armaldo are based on ancient ancestors of arthropods, while Kabuto and Kabutops are based on the living fossil that is the Horseshoe Crab. Like the Kingler species (see above), these guys are all subversions, since you can actually recruit them as part of their team and get them to fight for you.
• Crawdaddy from The Guardian Legend.
• The Blisk from Destroy All Humans!, aliens described by Pox as brutes with large claws who look like the result of a cockroach mating with a lobster.
• Claude the Lobster, particularly in Peggle Nights.
• Alien Soldier has a large unnamed lobster as a boss that appears in a Non Sequitur Scene. Your character saves a blue teddy bear from kissing aliens. Said teddy bear then decides to help you by driving a power boat to your destination. After fending off its minions, this big crustacean swims up to your boat, grabs the teddy bear and throws him off the boat, and proceeds to fight you.
• Ys: The Ark of Napishtim has Zonplas, a giant bat-winged lobster-type thing, somewhat reminiscent of the Mi-go from H.P. Lovecraft lore.
• Super Sonic Blast Man had one as the Level 4 enemy. This one was particularly horrifying since it could crush SSBM to death with its claws even after losing them.
• Final Fantasy V had the Karlabos/Cray Claw boss that resembled an lobster/earwig hybrid.
• Dreugh in The Elder Scolls. In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind they look like a cross between a humanoid, a crab, and a squid. In Oblivion, you get land dreugh, which is kinda like a crab/centaur mix.
• At least one boss in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is a Giant Crab, despite looking more like a lobster.

Web Comics

• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja has the Robster, a tricky lobster man.
• And lest we forget, Penny Arcade's Claw Shrimp.

Western Animation

• One of these, a lobster, appeared in a special episode of The Penguins of Madagascar during their battle with their arch enemy, the evil dolphin Dr. Blowhole, as a Giant Mook known as....

(With deep dramatic voice) CHROME CLAW.

• An episode of The Simpsons was about Homer adopting a lobster in which he named "Pinchy."
• Hanna-Barbera's Moby Dick. In the episode "The Crab Creatures", Moby has his tail pinched by a giant crab under the title creatures' control.

Real Life

• Giant marine cousins of the pillbugs (a.k.a. rolly-pollies, sowbugs, woodlice) you can probably find eating rotted plant matter in your compost heap are quite common around deep-sea hydrothermal vents.