8 Weirdest Video Game Enemies (And What They Represent)

8. Mantiqueen - The Outer Worlds

Pop culture reigns free in The Outer Worlds, with Firefly and Serenity, Red Dwarf, and Futurama laying claim to parts of the world building and dialogue, but The Outer Worlds takes its enemies and makes them completely their own - like the oft found Mantisaur that has been blown up to epic proportions by failed terraforming.

Mantisaurs are your average space-age preying mantis gone rogue, taking their inspiration from the mantis name and turning it into some twisted version of a giant dinosaur. And whilst a big old insectoid monstrosity is enough for some good plasma battles, the message of the Mantisaurs seems to be representative of the fear of the future - the fear of building, the fear of technology gone wild, and the fear of a habitat coming back to claim what once was.

That the Mantiqueens are designed with some serious trypophobia - the fear of clustered holes - seems to want to reinforce this blind fear of nature even more intensely. Perhaps it's a comment on the invasion of home turf and possession of land, and these native creatures appear so terrifying because they're so different from humanity in a stark reminder of our own problematic pasts.