Killer Rabbit

LOOK AT THE BONES!

"That's no ordinary rabbit! That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!"

—Tim the Enchanter, Monty Python and the Holy Grail[1]

It's small. It's fluffy. It's adorable. And if you get on its bad side, your death will be painful, but swift.

Related to but distinct from Fluffy the Terrible, as well as being sort of a subtrope to Our Monsters Are Weird, the Killer Rabbit is any monster that's far more dangerous than it looks. Maybe it's strong for its size, poisonous on a massive level, has flesh-rending pointy bits that aren't readily apparent, or can just turn into something far more dangerous. Either way, it can make a person wary of picking on small, defenseless animals, much like the Old Master can make a person more eager to respect their elders. In many cases, the creature isn't even all that harmful unless you actually mess with it, whether intentionally or not.

This trope takes its name from the "Dread Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which seems to be a completely ordinary bunny rabbit, with the notably unusual ability to leap through the air at high speed and tear out people's throats.

This creature is also known as a "Vorpal Bunny", a name which comes from the monster of that name in the original Wizardry game from 1981, possibly inspired by the Monty Python movie and is named after "The Vorpal Blade", a fictional sword used to kill the title creature in the Lewis Carroll poem "Jabberwocky". The name also spread (via Dungeons & Dragons) to other games such as Quest for Glory and Ultima Online.

There's enough truth behind this that one of the first things many children are taught is "don't try to play with any animal until you know it's friendly." (Another lesson, learned later in life by many, sometimes too late, is: "Animals can become unfriendly pretty damn fast.")

Specific types of Killer Rabbits include Evil Girl Scouts and Ridiculously Cute Critters that are secretly evil. Civilizations that are more dangerous than they look are Superweapon Surprises. Killer Rabbits are the most notable subversion of What Measure Is a Non-Cute?, which is pervasive enough for everyone to assume that cute animals are friendly.

This trope is pervasive enough that if any of the Five Races in games seems to be cute and harmless, they would by definition have to be occasional Killer Rabbits to make them viable to play.

For cases where the Killer Rabbit is a literal rabbit, see Hair-Raising Hare.

If it has a scary name, but not a scary demeanor, it's Deathbringer the Adorable.

Compare: Happy Fun Ball; Beware the Nice Ones; The Catfish; Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass; Cute but Cacophonic; Badass Adorable; Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom;Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon; and The Not-So-Harmless Punishment. If the video game character becomes a Killer Rabbit only when you hamper him, then he's Savage Setpiece.

Contrast: Level Five Onix; Holy Hand Grenade (which is often the most effective way to deal with this).

Not to be confused with Kill da Wabbit.

Examples of Killer Rabbit include:

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Anime and Manga

  • In the manga of Fullmetal Alchemist, Pride, the oldest and arguably strongest homunculus, has the physical appearance of a child.
    • Wrath in the first anime.
  • The Puchuus in Excel Saga. They resemble adorable teddy bears, but plan to take over Earth by any means necessary, even if it means blowing up major population centers. They also have a piss-ugly Game Face when struck and/or in pain, which happen to look like Golgo 13's.

"AUGGH! You make-a me bleed!"

  • Galaxy Angel had a cute little pink hamster that was in fact a bioweapon that is capable of destroying worlds. It also had a penchant for exhibiting Glowing Eyes of Doom and blowing things up with energy blasts from its mouth.
  • Bakemonogatari has this in Black Hanekawa. Is she adorable? Yes. Did she hospitalize over a dozen people and paint a bridge with Koyomi's blood? That's a yes.
  • Tenchi Muyo!
    • Ryo-Ohki can transform from a cute little bunny-cat thing into a spaceship (or a mecha, depending on which permutation you're watching). A spaceship that can destroy entire planets.
    • How about the knife-shooting stuffed animals in Yuzuha's dimension from the second movie? Borderline Nightmare Fuel as well.
  • In Paranoia Agent, one should stay VERY wary of the cute, pink, cuddly little plushie Maromi, who is nothing short of a powerful Chessmaster.
  • Azumanga Daioh:
    • Kamineko, a.k.a. the Biting Cat, deserves mention. While he hasn't killed anyone, the façade of a cute, irresistible little gray kitty that poor Sakaki can't resist petting hides unearthly speed, a rotten attitude, and a set of teeth that resemble nothing so much as a bear trap. His life's mission seems to be to continually tease and beat up poor Sakaki. Most cats seem to attack her out of fright, but Kamineko tends to seek her out with malicious intent.
    • Maya could also be seen as an example. The cutest ever kitten to come out of a species of wildcat that can kill wild boars. Not only survives a trip from a western island to the mainland, but emits a big enough Battle Aura to scare off Kamineko AND HIS POSSE. Then he collapses.
  • Elfen Lied could be described as a manga series about a race of Killer Rabbits. The Dicloni look like little girls/young women with pink hair and a slight skull deformation in the form of two horns. They are in fact the most dangerous creatures on Earth, with enormous telekinetic powers and the natural instinct to Kill All Humans. The series begins with one of the most powerful of their kind breaking out of a high-security research facility stark naked. Shes slaughters about 60 guards with automatic weapons and survives a round from an anti-materiel rifle to the head.
  • Kirara from Inuyasha is usually a small and cute kitty, but can transform into a giant, flying, saber-toothed, flaming version of itself at will.
  • Slayers
    • The first episode of Slayers REVOLUTION introduced Pokota, a small creature entirely suitable as the possible Non-Human Sidekick... until he was upgraded (almost immediately) to The Rival status with the town-destroying Dragon Slave spell in its arsenal. It's later revealed that his true form is a Cute Shotaro Prince of a lost kingdom.
    • And let's not forget that the first season gave us Tiiba, who just looked like a chicken but was, in reality, a massively powerful monster once he put on his mask.
  • Japoro from Shamanic Princess, being a ferret-like creature who is also the Battle Butler to Tiara.
  • The Moon Rabbits from Yaiba. In particular, Commander Mangetsu, Tsukikage and the Black Moon Rabbit Gekko.
  • Reinforce Zwei and Agito from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Their adorable, six-inch tall stature belies the fact that they were designed to be weapons and can encase you in ice or launch giant fireballs even without their masters.
  • Bleach
    • Ururu, despite being extremely timid and withdrawn, possesses otherworldly strength that is revealed when she detects a threat. She goes into a sort of "berserker" mode, and will not stop until either her opponent drops dead or she is immobilized. A prime example of this is her ambush and beating of Ilfort Granz, who manages to wound her in his release form.
    • Yachiru might be one. While not yet shown in combat, she's a pink-haired allegedly six-year-old Cheerful Child who's the vice captain of a division of Blood Knights, was raised from a baby by the baddest Blood Knight of them all, and can scare grown men with her Battle Aura. Her subordinate, third seat Ikkaku Madarame, is stronger than the other vice captains and would probably be eligible for a captaincy if his true power was known to his superiors. There's almost nothing he fears...not even his insane captain. He is, however, terrified of Yachiru.
    • Kon appears to be a useless, perverted stuffed teddy bear making it easy to forget that he was actually created to fight Hollows. His revealed powers include being capable of scaling skyscrapers and being able to jump incredible distances. He doesn't tire, and his kicks are powerful enough to crack open the skulls of Hollows, something only special magical powers and weapons are able to do.
  • The Dark Magical Girl Rosine from Berserk appears as a cute little fairy with butterfly wings, antennae, a furry collar and a butterfly's proboscis on her forehead. But she's also an Apostle. Her proboscis is a Whip Sword, the dust of her wings is highly poisonous and if you really piss her off, she'll simply turn into a giant moth capable of supersonic speed, among other things...
  • Full Metal Panic!'s Bonta-Kun, the series' mascot which Sôsuke Sagara just so happened to convert into Japan's most adorable little harbringer of destruction. And God help you if you ever have to face more than one...
  • Cat Shit One (known in the US as Apocalypse Meow) replaces people with animals depending on their nationality. The American soldiers are rabbits—because they're U.S.A. GIs. Animated Series Trailer here.
  • Hiyokokko from Tokimeki Memorial ~ Only Love definitely qualifies, though she doesn't actually kill anyone.
  • Satchii from Dennou Coil looks like a giant, squishy beanbag chair with a big smiley face that announces its own arrival with a bright, "Me Satchii!" every time. It also fires laser beams that kills kids' digital pets and breaks expensive cybernetic glasses.
  • See the ridiculously cute lion and kitty in this picture from Katekyo Hitman Reborn? Well, they sometimes turn into this and this.
  • Mappy from Dragon Half. Looks like a cat-sized ball of mousy fluff, but can spontaneously transform into a huge, bear-like hulk.
  • Hayate the Combat Butler: Hayate buys Maria-san a cute little bunny as a present. She then sees the bunny in its TV show, where it declares, "I am Muffy! An assassin from hell! OK! Today, we'll happily cause chaos!"
  • Kyo Kara Maoh's tiny, yellow, and bred-by-humans Bearbees (which are actually mud with magic on it) will turn into fierce, dark colored beasts that try to kill you if you get them wet. If they're not wet, hey, they're freaking adorable and cuddly. (Those are magical counterfeit bearbees. Real bearbees are cute, huggable, completely non-dangerous, endangered, and their dung makes high-quality paint.)
  • Mugetsu from xxxHolic is an adorable tube fox who takes to Watanuki and can be seen glomping him, slithering through his clothing, or hanging around his neck - until Watanuki is in danger, at which point he transforms into a normal Kitsune who can detect evil spirits and produce fire.
  • Digimon
    • For a literal example, in Digimon Tamers Terriermon transforms into a trigger-happy rabbit.
    • And of course, even earlier in Digimon Adventure, Patamon digivolve into... Angemon! Heck, forget the digi-volving, Patamon is the Digimon version of the trope namer. Just look at those teeth!
    • Before you look at Patamon, look at Tokomon FIRST.
    • Guilmon is usually adorable and childish, but when in a fight he transforms into a feral beast.
  • Kirby: Right Back at Ya! features the Devil (or Demon) Frog. Not quite a killer, but instead a mind possessor who infects the victim and forces it to go on a rampage (also increasing its physical capacities by quite a bit). An infected Kirby, due to his normal innocence, merely becomes a mean trickster bent on breaking everything and anything he sees. A (voluntarily) infected Dedede, on the other hand, becomes even more evil than normally, and comes dangerously close to killing Kirby.
  • Pet Shop of Horrors features another literal example in its first episode "Daughter," which involves a rich couple that recently lost their daughter Alice paying a visit to Count D's eponymous shop. Count D sells them a very rare species of rabbit that looks just like Alice. Things go well for the couple until the mother concedes to the rabbit-Alice's request for sugar instead of the water and vegetables indicated in the rules of the contract. It goes very badly for the couple VERY quickly. It turns out that feeding sweets to this rabbit will cause it to "give birth" to (read: get eaten from within by) dozens of flesh-eating killer bunnies that go forth, kill, eat, and "give birth" to more killer bunnies until the town is overrun.
  • The Teez in D.Gray-man are golems that look like pretty purple butterflies. And then they eat you. Or Tyki places them inside you so that you can act as a nursery for them to grow and breed in and THEN they eat you from the inside out.
  • Haro's. Those adorable little balls couldn't possibly harm anyone, right? Well, unless you try to mess with Uso Evin. His haro will uppercut you, if you hadn't already frozen up due the machine gun noises it made. If that isn't enough it will use the Gundam, by itself, to destroy you.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima
  • A very early episode of Sailor Moon featured adorable "chanela," rabbit-like long-haired creatures that are pastel-colored, smell wonderful, and are adorable as they come. Oh, and they're evil little monsters; THEY GOT FANGS!
    • There's also a couple killer cats. The first is Rhett Butler, a fat and lazy tomcat who also happens being the reincarnation of the STRONGEST YOUMA EVER (thankfully, he's not hostile). The second, more prominent one, is Artemis: while he's usually on the sidelines, on one occasion he had to fight a Monster of the Week that had just steamrolled Sailor Moon, and actually held his ground long enough for Sailor Moon return with a Mid-Season Upgrade.
  • Pokémon. Most Pokémon that qualify as cute will qualify for this.
    • Arguably, none of them hold a candle to this little bundle of doom, though. Pikachu in-game isn't particularly powerful, relatively, despite its billing. But the one in the anime has become seriously powerful. Ash even warns people that his Pikachu is stronger than your average 'Chu. Don't be fooled by the colorful cheeks, the beady, curious eyes; the cheerful smile, the baby-like chubbiness, the way it scampers about on two/four legs, or the adorable way its ears wilt to the side when it's confused. This thing - one (1) of them - has demolished most countries' national defense budgets in buildings, delicate equipment, and Humongous Mechas, and can pack enough explosive force in a single attack (that by all physical constraints shouldn't even have explosive force) to level forests and send several human bodies flying through the air for miles. Notice that we didn't say "can" or "could". We said "has" and "did".
    • Chimchar. It looks like a cute, playful little fire-monkey at first, but when the heat of battle activates Blaze, RUN FOR COVER!!
    • Still worth mentioning is the Togepi from DP142, "Where No Togepi Has Gone Before." It's very, very mischievous and knows friggin' Flamethrower, Extrasensory, Attract, and Substitute.
    • Dawn's Buneary is a literal example. Granted, she's more of a lover than a fighter, but she can still kick some massive amounts of ass.
    • In Pokémon Special, the most Badass Pokémon on Gold's team happens to be his Togepi, always doing something Crazy Awesome whenever it fights. It actually took down two pseudo-legendaries!
    • Bianca's Oshawott gets thrashed by a particularly evil-looking Audino.
    • Another prime example is Mew. The adorable pink floating kitten that can pretty much learn 99% of ALL Pokémon moves ever created. Do NOT be fooled by the lovable appearance—it is extremely cunning as well as powerful. If you piss it off, it will thrash you. Hard. And then it will float away to go play on a windmill.
      • Hilariously, Mew's voice gets surprisingly much deeper when it was focusing its power in the Lucario movie.
  • In Murder Princess, Ana and Yuni are two unbelievably cute little girls with wacky Anime Hair and sweet little giggles. They're also androids equipped from head to toe with a seemingly endless array of high-tech weaponry (while almost everyone else in the setting is wielding swords). And Ana is just plain bloodthirsty.
  • The title character in Kimba the White Lion fits this trope to a T. He may be a wide-eyed lion cub, but the fact that he takes on multiple foes several times his size at once, including a group of rhinos, would make you grateful that he's a Martial Pacifist.
  • Luki and Noki from DOGS Bullets and Carnage. They're two adorable twin girls... but heaven help you if you agree to "play" with them....
  • Charlotte is by far the cutest thing in Madoka Magica, which is saying something given the art style. She's also the most dangerous of the non-Walpurgisnacht witches, as poor Mami found out. Kyubey is starting to show signs of this, though more with how sinister he acts than because of his actions.
  • The whole premise of Mao-chan was that an alien race was trying to take over Japan, but were simply so adorably cute in physical appearance that no adult wanted to fight them. So the military heads had to employ their granddaughters (including the titular character) as the front line in the war so they could fight cute with cute.
  • The mad parade in Paprika, a collection of cartoon animals, inanimate objects, and cultural icons that looks incredibly silly and cute. It also happens to be a living Shared Dream born from the minds of a meglomaniac and the insane, and it has the power to drive people to cheerful madness almost instantly-adding them to it's march.
  • The Dark Mage Zeref from Fairy Tail. He looks so young and is unbelievably adorable, especially when he cries, and despite not showing up until chapter 200, he's cried on screen more most of the main characters too. You can also die just by getting too close to him, and that's when he isn't trying to kill you.
    • Let's not forget Pantherlily. When not in his "cute" cat form, he transforms into a human-sized Panther with a Badass BFS
  • Dragon Ball has Gohan, who is normally a sweet little kid who enjoys school. But if you try to kill his loved ones, he will go crazy, transform into a Super Saiyan 2, and slaughter you. It will be quick, it will be painful, and it will be SCARY.
  • Rabbit like beasts feature in the final episode of Blood-C
  • In Amagi Brilliant Park, there's Moffle, who looks essentially the same as Full Metal Panic's Bonta-kun, and does NOT like having people say he's an Expy. He's a mascot at the titular Amusement Park. He's also strong enough to deck a huge dragon with a single punch.
  • Team Rabbit in Girls und Panzer is a metaphorical example. Their emblem is a cute little bunny with a bow... and two knives ready for use. "To everyone across the country, please be gentle with us", they say as they load their 75mm and 37mm guns.

Comic Books

  • In the Marvel Universe, a powerful hero is Squirrel Girl, a young woman with the powers of squirrel-agility and control. Thanos, Doctor Doom, MODOK, and Deadpool, among others, have all (somehow) fallen to her. She is Marvel's Lethal Joke Character. Almost all of her victories are off-panel, and it's a bit of a running gag to jump back and forth over whether it was the real Doom and Thanos she defeated (as robot duplicates and clones, respectively, are common retcons used to explain particularly embarrassing defeats by those villains).
  • Also in a Marvel Vein, during Civil War (specifically Runaways and Young Avengers crossover) when the Young Avengers arrive to find the Runaways lair, they meet 11 year old Molly Hayes outside. Due to a mix-up, Molly assumes they are bad guys and "hides under their car". Now by "hide under their car" we mean find a better place to lift the car and throw it at them. Yeah, they were not really expecting that. Well before, when Wolverine scared her at the front of a cathedral, the comic cuts from him starting to threaten her to shut her up... to him flying across the street outside.
  • In both the animated Sonic the Hedgehog and the Archie comic series, Bunnie Rabbot has brute strength coming from being a cyborg, although you probably won't see her killing anything more objectionable than a few (dozen) robots.
  • Nextwave features some "Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction", including the Drop Bears—koala bears trained to kill, which are deployed by throwing them out of an aircraft. "Cuddly widdle bears of DEATH?!" This is based on a joke played by Australians on tourists. See the Real Life section below.
  • Lockheed, the tiny sapient alien dragon that befriended Kitty Pryde of the X-Men. He's so adorable that most people tend to forget the "sapient" and "dragon" parts.
  • The Doctor Who Magazine comic, "The Star Beast", features the villain "Beep the Meep", a wide-eyed alien ball of fluff who just happened to be an unrepentant omnicidal bloodthirsty intergalactic war criminal. Beep proved memorable enough that he got two followup strips and an audio drama.
  • In The DCU, there is a Rival group to the Green Lantern Corps called The Red Lantern Corps, whose rings are powered by rage. One of the members of the Red Lanterns is a cute-looking kitty... and he is just as dangerous as any other member. Don't fall for Dex-Starr's "innocent" act....
  • Knights of the Dinner Table. There was the 'squirrel as a fifth level' monster from the strip "The Most Dangerous (Small) Game". Also llamas in B.A.'s campaign have horns and gore people.
  • Pinocchio Vampire Slayer—The Rabbits of Ill Portent. They don't actually kill but they are quite creepy.
  • Max from Sam and Max Freelance Police mixes this with Psychopathic Manchild and Ax Crazy to an eerie extent...
  • Jahf, from Marvel Comics, is a little cute purple dwarf toad-like android, which protects the M'Kraan Crystal. It kicked four X-Men's asses. At once.
  • 3 from Grant Morrison's WE 3 is literally a Killer Rabbit.
  • Gold Digger: Tangent features the "Death Lepus", also known as Wabbits—relatively small, rabbit-like creatures that look pretty cute, but are intelligent, pack-hunting carnivores capable of bringing down fully-grown dragons. The cute is also negated somewhat by their prehensile tails all ending in deadly magically-enhanced bladed weapons.
  • Miyamoto Usagi of Usagi Yojimbo, who, as you may have guessed, actually is a rabbit. And a samurai.
  • The Mouse Guard is a band of skilled warriors who are also, as the title indicates, mice. They've been seen taking down predators many times their size, from snakes to owls and even a bear, although that was only seen in Legends of the Guard.

Films -- Animation

  • The main villain of |Toy Story 3 is an adorable pink teddy bear ("And he smells like strawberries!").
  • Watership Down. [In]famous for its rabbit violence.

Woundwort: I'll tear out every throat in the place!
Holly: Both his ears were ripped to shreds. He was lucky...

  • Wallace and Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
  • After the end credits of Finding Nemo, an angler fish approaches a tiny fish... which then opens its jaws wide enough to swallow the angler in one gulp.
  • The title character in Riki Tiki Tavi. Awww... he's so cute and fuzzy... HOLY SHIT LOOK WHAT HE DID TO THAT COBRA! However, Riki Tiki Tavi isn't malevolent. He's actually trying to kill the cobras because they're harming the humans, so this is a more traditional example of Reptiles Are Abhorrent and possibly also What Measure Is a Non-Cute?. He does display slight Heroic Sociopath tendencies, however. It was justified to kill the cobra and his eggs to protect his owner, it is a little darkly to outright gloat about it to his widow's face (especially since preserving her family was the whole point of their attack).

"And Nag was dead before the big man blew him up! I killed Nag! Come and fight with me, Nagaina!"

  • The rabbit in the 2010 film The Illusionist likes to bite people and snarls like a raving monster, though isn't as deadly and terrible as it believes it is.
  • Would Lord Shen count? He's a peacock, not something you expect to be a villain, but, well...

Films -- Live-Action

"Look at the bones!"

  • Given a Lampshade Hanging in Galaxy Quest: while the rest of the crew is Squeeing about how adorable the child-like alien miners are, the very Genre Savvy Guy worries, "Oh, sure, they're cute now. But they're going to get mean. And they're going to get ugly somehow. And there's going to be thousands of them." Seconds later, he's proved right.
  • Early in Barbarella, the title character is similarly menaced by a group of dolls whose mouths show very pointy teeth. Later in the movie, she is nearly killed by vicious killer budgies (parakeets).
  • The Mogwai in Gremlins, except the original Gizmo; fluffy and adorable, they are cruel tricksters who eventually turn into hideous (yet still somewhat cute) monsters which go on a deadly rampage. Indeed, every imaginable variant on this trope seems to run through most, if not all, Gremlin folklore.
  • Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park gets killed by a fairly harmless-looking dilophosaurus... after it spits poison in his face, then ambushes him when he tries to get back to his truck.
    • It should be noted that dilophosaurs probably couldn't do that. Then again, we really have no way of knowing, but they certainly did not have those nifty-looking frills.
    • Also, Dilophosaurs were much bigger than the one in the movie. Which is ironic, considering that the diminutive Velociraptors, actually the size of a dog and covered in feathers, were sized up by Rule of Scary. In the movie, the "Velociraptors" looked more like Utahraptor, a big raptor (related to Velociraptor) found in North America (Velociraptor is from Asia). A more realistic raptor would've been the perfect Killer Rabbit.
      • The first Utahraptor fossils weren't discovered until shortly after the book that the movie was based on was written. Presumably the movie version stuck with the book's name instead of calling them Utahraptors because Velociraptor sounds cooler.
      • The comment that the raptors look like turkeys becomes Hilarious in Hindsight in light of subsequent advances in palaeontology revealing that dinosaurs did indeed resemble birds a lot more than we thought.
    • Furthermore, there are small, harmless-near-cute-looking Procompsognathus/Compsognathus in Jurassic Park: The Lost World, whose packs is enough to turn a healthy adult male into...

"Did you find him?"
"...Just the parts they didn't like."

    • Still played straight in Trespasser. The Velociraptors are still closer to Utahraptors. And the actual Utahraptor that's the Final Boss? It's closer to Talon in scale.
    • And the newest addition to the list is Troodon, which will make its debut in the upcoming Jurassic Park: The Game. They're tiny (by dinosaur standards), but if even ONE of them bites you (They're venomous too, just like the dilos!), it's probably too late to run away.
  • Night of the Lepus, a movie about Giant Killer Bunny Rabbits. It is intended as a horror film.
  • The gopher in Caddyshack.
  • Cats and Dogs had their antagonist Mr Tinkles—the cute cat who's also a Diabolical Mastermind.
  • Let's not forget Screamers. Can I come with you?
  • The Vampire Pomeranian in Blade: Trinity named Pac-Man.

Hannibal King: You made a goddamn vampire... Pomeranian?!?

    • It appears to have the split-mouth of a Reaper.
  • In Mom and Dad Save The World, Dick Nelson encounters a group of cute mushroom-like creatures which appear to be friendly... until he tries to pet one. It opens a huge mouth with sharklike teeth and almost takes off his hand.
  • Star Wars' Ewoks. Yes, they're cute. Yes, they're fuzzy and huggable and all that. Yes, they're adorable miniature bears. Think about that one. Miniature bears! With astonishing engineering skill for a neolithic materials base, extensive knowledge of sophisticated warfare, and a willingness to kill and eat other sapient beings. Think of them as armed, sapient, and highly sophisticated sociopathic bipedal giant koalas who regard you as potential food, and you'll start to understand exactly why the Ewoks qualify for this trope.
    • Still don't believe us? Go read Apocalypse Endor (Star Wars Tales 14). That's right -- Endor is The Empire's 'Nam.
    • Also from Star Wars is Yoda, the cute little floppy-eared goblin that talks funny. Even Luke and R2-D2 thought he was harmless when they met him. In actuality, he is a Badass jedi that can pull a triple backflip and chop off your head before you blink
  • The title character in the Leprechaun series.
  • Chucky from the original Child's Play films (before his Frankenstein makeover).
  • On the good ship Serenity, who's the most dangerous crewman? Is it the wily and wary captain Malcolm Reynolds? The calm, stoic, and deadly first mate Zoe? The giant, burly Jayne with enough weapons to outfit a revolution? Nope. Look behind them. Not at the pilot, or the preacher, though they're deadly enough in their own right. Not at the mechanic, and not the doctor or the Companion. Yeah, There. That teenage girl in the back, with the unwashed hair, pale skin, glazed and distracted eyes, who's mumbling something about hummingbirds? Her name is River. Get on her bad side, and she will fucking end you.
  • This Spanish student film uses this trope quite deliberately with its genetically altered Death Rabbit.

Literature

  • The Plague Star, by George R.R. Martin (of A Song of Ice and Fire fame) featured creatures called "hellkittens." These were much like the Arduin "killkittens" (see their entry in the Tabletop RPG folder). Except rather than secreting their paralytic venom through hollow claws, they spat it in wads of powerfully acidic saliva.
  • Another literal killer rabbit is the Miraj (also rendered Al-Mi'raj, or various other variations on the two) of Islamic/Arabian poetry and folklore. A yellow rabbit with a single large horn, it can kill and eat things much larger than itself. It appears in early editions of Dungeons & Dragons—with a third-party company porting it to 3e—where some of them have Psychic Powers. It also appears in Dragon Quest where, due to the translators apparently flipping coins, it's sometimes called the "bunnicorn".
  • Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake includes wolvogs, creatures that look like friendly dogs, and when they are not ruthlessly killing other creatures, they act like friendly dogs. They can go from friendly to homicidal, and back, quickly.
  • Bunnicula has a vampire-like rabbit that Chester assumes is a killer rabbit, but there's no evidence that he ever actually does any harm whatsoever besides draining vegetables.
  • Norska in the Dragaera series are carnivorous rabbits that eat dragons.
  • In Terry Goodkind's Soul of the Fire, an embodiment of evil either possesses or impersonates a chicken. Strangely, the main characters are capable of realizing this... which means you have two badasses who rule the known freaking world and who can alternately make people her slave or destroy armies with a wave of his hand scared shitless by a goddamn chicken.

"This was no chicken! This was evil manifest!"

  • In the Robert Heinlein juvenile Tunnel in the Sky, a group of teenagers on a survival-training exercise are stranded on an Earthlike planet when the wormhole they used to get there malfunctions. One local animal is the "Dopey Joe", a stupid, slow-moving cat-sized reptiloid which appears utterly harmless... until the season comes when it, well, swarms.
  • Redwall: EULALIA! And that's just the badgers. The other species like hares, mice, otters, squirrels, hedgehogs, and even moles are also quite capable of fucking up the shit of any vermin that threaten them. (Although a badger isn't exactly in a Killer Rabbit scenario when what it's fighting is a rat.)
  • Watership Down: Gen. Woundwort, who can fight (and beat) many of the beasts that prey on rabbits. As opposed to Bigwig, who is One Badass Rabbit. Also of mention would be the Black Rabbit of Inle, the most extreme version of this Trope, being he's basically the Grim Reaper in rabbit-form.
  • The bunnydogs from The War Against the Chtorr series by David Gerrold appear to be the only friendly Chtorrans encountered by the humans. Unfortunately they also represent humanity's future in the Chtorran ecology: as passive, contented creatures who are glad to be eaten by higher members of the food chain. There are also meeps. A mother rabbit will reject her own young to nurse meeps, who will then suckle her to death. One character darkly theorizes that the excessively cute bunnydogs are meant to be the equivalent for humans.
  • Mr. Rabbit from Rainbows End qualifies as "the next bad thing" in the eyes of one expert character. The previous "bad thing" was a plaque worse than bubonic, and the one before that was the nuclear destruction of Chicago. It's never made clear how much rabbit-nature he actually has.
  • The political satire The Year of the Angry Rabbit by Russell Braddon. The rabbits are infected with a highly toxic (to humans) strain of myxomatosis. Rather than trying to wipe them out however, the Australian government is more than happy to possess the most feared biological weapon in the world. Was the inspiration behind the classic B-Movie Night of the Lepus.
  • The Edge Chronicles is covered in The Lost Woods and full of all manner of horrific animals and plants, but the effectively undisputed top of the foodchain are Wig-wigs. Small, orange fluffballs that also happen to be pack hunters that can and will kill anything they can reach, no matter how big or strong it is. Their only real weakness is their inability to climb.
  • Most of the "Furies" from the Star Trek novel series "Invasion" resemble demonic creatures (because they're the beings that spawned the legends). A few, however, are fluffy and cute. They're still vicious killers who want their ancestral home back, though.
  • Treecats in David Weber's Honor Harrington series are cute, fluffy, six-limbed felinoids who are great with children, wonderful, supportive companions for life who'll be with you through thick and thin... and will turn into fuzzy, flying buzz saws if they think you're a threat to their kittens or adopted humans. Treecats think that enemies come in only two states: those that have been properly dealt with, and those that are still alive.
  • In China Mieville's The Scar, the head of Armada's underwater police force is a sadistic dolphin named Bastard John.
  • Found in James Thurber's The Last Flower
  • The Sten series has Doc, an alien who resembles a cuddly koala bear. His species are in fact vicious predators which act cute to lure in prey; Doc is so bloodthirsty that he has to be fitted with a Restraining Bolt in order to interact with his teammates without killing them out of instinct.
  • In The Hunger Games, there are carnivorous squirrels, poisonous butterflies, killer monkeys, and much much more.

Live-Action TV

  • In one episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, sidekick Gabrielle must fend off a vicious attack by what is essentially the Rabbit of Caerbannog.
  • The original Basil Brush.
  • The Furbie-esque Nubbins in Sanctuary are a variant of this—they're only dangerous in large groups and when being directly attacked, but their extremely high reproductive rate and lack of predators outside their natural environment make them potentially highly destructive to the ecosystem. Unfortunately, they're a Hive Mind far brighter than they seem, and are more than willing to sacrifice individual lives to escape and spread.
  • In an episode of Honey I Shrunk the Kids called "Honey, the Bunny Bit It", Nick Szalinski revives the school mascot à la Frankenstein, and chaos ensues as it runs amok.
  • An America's Funniest Home Videos episode features a rabbit fighting a snake. The rabbit kicks the snake's proverbial ass, forcing the reptile to retreat up a low-hanging tree, despite the rabbit attempting to yank the snake down for more.
  • When Count Duckula asks a spaceman to take him to the most dangerous planet in the galaxy he gets to meet the Fluffy Bunnies of Planet Cute, who want everything to be sweet and pretty and cuddly, and get very mean when Duckula and co. persist in being grouchy and sour.

Music

New Media

  • As a general rule, message boards such as Spacebattles.com generally agree that the sillier a character is, the more dangerous they are and the higher they place on a Cool Versus Awesome combat tier. As a result, "whacky cartoon" characters like Bugs Bunny and Kirby are described as being able to easily defeat more (relatively) "realistic" characters like Jedi or Master Chief. This is largely due to them not being bound by the laws of reality and thus able to do things like shrug off rocket fire and swallow man-sized creatures whole.
  • Not physically dangerous, but the subjects of the website Disapproving Rabbits can cause a severe feeling of inferiority. Especially this one.

Newspaper Comics

  • Twisted Toyfare Theater usually brings in unpopular characters in order to gruesomely kill them for a Take That. The Ewoks, however, instead became a race of vicious, psychopathic Killer Rabbits who dismember, kill, and eat anything that crosses them. Mostly because they are little carnivores with no regards for intelligent life, from the original canon.

Puppet Shows

  • Fizgigg from The Dark Crystal. If a tribble and a bear trap had a baby....
  • "HI, I'M A BUNNY!" This is a subversion. You don't need to be a genius to realize how dangerous Carl is...especially if you fit in his mouth.

Radio

  • In the the radio show Old Harrys Game, Satan finds the most evil being in the world is a Dolphin. Called Chuckles.
  • In one episode of A Prairie Home Companion, cowboys Dusty and Lefty come across "The Free-Range Chicken", which they then engage, and nearly lose to, in a gunfight.

Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy

  • Richard Pryor's "Africa" routine has a passage invoking this, when he's saying that animals in the jungle have "a different attitude" from those you see in a zoo. He portrays a man telling his wife to roll up the car window; when she protests that the creature outside is just a rabbit, the man insists, explaining, "Ain't no rabbit ever looked at me like that.

Sports

  • The South Sydney Rabbitohs have won the more premierships than any other Rugby League team in Australia.
  • The Pittsburgh Penguins. Penguins are not exactly known for their toughness.

Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • There's old "Cats vs. Commoners" meme. The common housecat is a serious threat to all 1st level characters, even those with class levels. This is because all successful attacks deal at least one point of damage, and cats get up to three a round. A level-appropriate encounter of four stray cats can easily wipe out a 1st level party, especially if the cats use their racial stealth bonuses to launch a surprise attack. This is why 1st level Commoners don't walk down alleyways at night. Commoners were viable for a while when Player's Options introduced formidable advantages of the size[2] and Guard action[3], but then came D&D3, where such things don't exist, but Dexterity gives a cat good bonus both to attack and defence in addition to initiative, and cats became deadlier than ever before. See 3.5 stats.
    • The original "Arduin Grimoire", a very early third-party supplement, included among its bestiary a creature called the "killkitten". Resembling normal kittens, these beasts were actually cunning pack predators whose hollow claws could inject a paralytic poison. Their normal procedure was to set one of their number as bait to attract a potential victim by acting like an injured kitten, while the remainder of the pack lurked, hidden, nearby. When the unsuspecting schmuck picked the "kitten" up, it would paralyze him with its venom, after which the rest of the pack would swarm and eat him.
    • The Tibbit, a player race introduced in Dragon Magazine, are perfectly normal humanoids that happen to be able to take on housecat form at will. One of the illustrations on their section in the Dragon Compendium is man lying facedown in a pool of blood, with a metric ton of cutlery jutting from his back and a glowering kitty crouched on top of him.
    • Kobolds, having low HP and a reputation for cowardice, are frequently slaughtered in the open by first-level parties. They're also known for their trap-designing prowess, meaning that a clever DM can make a trap-filled death maze that can frighten well-prepared parties. The most popular recount of this happening is "Tucker's Kobolds", named after a particularly nefarious DM.
    • The 3.5E Monster Manual IV introduced the Skiurid, an evil squirrel from the Plane of Shadow, and generally regarded as one of the worst monsters D&D ever introduced. Then an infamous column on the Wizards of the Coast D&D section came along, specifically looking for ways to make Skiurids lethal. The squirrels are quite capable of bringing even a mid-level party of well-equipped adventurers to their knees.
    • The giant shrew, a critter from Basic D&D, looked like a normal-sized grayish rat, yet could do a pretty good Vorpal Bunny impression on low-level adventurers.
    • Quite a few fey arguably qualify—the well-known nymph, for example, has one ability you don't hear about too often: if you happen to catch a sight of the nymph naked, she can force you to make a fortitude save or die on the spot. Other kinds of fey are more "harmlessly cute" than the nymph, but tend to have a wide range of powerful magical abilities. Very few fey are harmless. In fact plenty of them will do horrible things to you given the chance.
    • Then there's the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, a rival with the skiurid for one of D&D's worst monsters. It's not the bunny you need to beware, so much as the stump it's sitting on...
    • "Blink bunny", called Al-mi'raj ("experiment 72") by the gnomes of Krynn. It's just a stupid bunny, but it can teleport around, is nearly fearless and have an unicorn-like horn which it doesn't hesitate to use if threatened. Oh, and it's a herd animal. Now the bad news: one of ten adults have Psychic Powers with ridiculously large power pool. The dreaded rust monster may decay one's sword or armor if manages to hit it with antennae, but a psionic blink bunny can blast it into cloud of shrapnel just by looking at it. It also can set stuff afire and control flames so that it or its nest isn't hurt. While flying around. It first appeared in 1st/2nd edition Dungeons & Dragons in the original Fiend Folio, and is based on the Miraj (see Literature). The very first version of the Al-mi'raj was just an ordinary, very fast, dimwitted, unpredictable rabbit that appeared in packs of 2-20 and which could deal damage as per a dagger by stabbing someone with their horn.
    • Brain moles, which absorb energy from psions to turn them into life, and which spread a psionic disease. They're not hugely lethal, but their challenge rating is still about on par with that of a level one warrior.
  • Deadlands: The Weird West features jackalopes, which are evil and carnivorous versions of the infamous "rabbits with antlers" from Wild West folklore. They kill their prey by cursing them with bad luck, then stalking them until they suffer a fatal accident.
  • GURPS IOU includes lethal versions of rats and squirrels.
  • Gamma World has a hilariously literal version with the Hoops, a race of bunnymen who "want to be the master race" and who can turn metal into rubber by touching it.
  • Warhammer 40,000
    • The setting, known for a habit of Everything Trying to Kill You cropping up everywhere, brings us the Catachan Barking Toad: a large, sad-looking amphibian sometimes dubbed the "Ronery Toad". If attacked, hurt or even surprised, it explodes into a cloud of obscenely virulent toxins, killing absolutely everything for miles around and poisoning the earth so that nothing will ever grow there again.
    • The original "Rogue Trader" book for Warhammer 40K also featured the "Catachan Face Eater" a carnivorous creature that looked quite a bit like an ordinary wash cloth.
  • Plenty of the weapons in the (coincidentally-named) Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot game fall under this. Included:
    • Quite Irascible Diffractable Cheese Balls.
    • (Bitter-Sweet) Chocolate Covered Anti-Matter Raisins.
    • Europan Robotic Titanium Termites.
  • Wastits in Human Occupied Landfill a.k.a. HoL — small, cute waddling soft creatures resembling animated teddy bears that will suddenly "explode into a maw of teeth the diameter of a whale's privates". For added fun, until they attack they're almost indistinguishable from wastems, completely harmless creatures that are the primary food source of HoL's inhabitants.
  • Most of the creatures that Shadowrun‍'‍s shapeshifters start out as are pretty dangerous on their own (lions, bears, eagles, etc.), but a fox magician character can lead to a cute little ten-pound fox hurling fireballs.
  • Magic: The Gathering
    • The Unglued expansion set gave us the Infernal Spawn of Evil, a powerful beast from the darkest pits of hell. This is what it looks like. Not to be outdone, the Unhinged set introduced its even stronger child, the demon known only as the Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil.
    • Then there's that other Unhinged set card, When Fluffy Bunnies Attack.
    • The real "killer rabbit" of the Magic world is the squirrel'. Some squirrel-themed cards, such as "Deranged Hermit" and "Squirrel Nest" have seen extensive Tournament Play.
    • Hyalopterous Lemure. The artist didn't know what a "lemure" is (a ghost) so he drew a "lemur" instead (a fuzzy rodent).
    • Also, Jackalope Herd. A bunch of bunnies with antlers, amazing combat stats for their mana cost, and a drawback (returning to your hand when you play another spell) that can be turned into an advantage fairly easily.
  • Munchkin has a level 2 monster that's basically a rabbit with a switchblade, where the Bad Stuff is "you die" (yes, a literal Killer Rabbit; not surprising since he's actually Bun-bun, the Sluggy Freelance character mentioned below). One time in six, it turns into a level 15 monster, as "That One Rabbit from That One Movie", and it's too late to get help.
    • The Munchkin Bites! expansion has 17th-level monster The Evil, also from Sluggy Freelance. For those not versed in the webcomic, it's an adorable cute kitten. It steals a level from you just by meeting it.
  • Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! gives us Mokey Mokey. It looks cute and harmless, and it is, but with this card present on the field at the same time, you will not want it to get angry.

Toys

  • The Werebears toys were seemingly adorable teddy bears with reversible heads and paws that would reveal their "nasty" face when turned inside out.

Video Games

  • Fantastic Dizzy has cute little snails. Yes, snails. These loveable, unkillible, little geranium-munching monsters are really good at chipping away at your health normally, but if you drop from any ledge on the right-hand side of Dizzy's village you risk the humiliation of being stripped of your entire health bar in moments as one cheerfully and aimlessly wanders past Dizzy while he is stunned. Do not mess with the snails.
  • Kingdom Hearts
    • Several of the weaker Heartless fall under this, especially the Shadows, which are the first type of Heartless that you encounter in the original game.
      • Wyverns too. Yes, they're man-sized dragons, but they're very cuddly-looking man-sized dragons.
    • And in the prequel game, Birth by Sleep, some of the Unversed may or may not qualify, but they also notably feature a literal Killer Rabbit amongst their ranks, called (amusingly enough) the Hareraiser, which is described as being "the anti-cuddly".
    • Pay the Pride Lands a visit in Kingdom Hearts II and Sora turns into one of these. A cute little lion cub who is more than cabable of taking on all the Heartless the world can offer, including the effing ginormous Groundshaker.
    • The Me Me Bunny dream eater in Kingdom Hearts 3D is another literal killer rabbit, and it also has a nasty magic using cousin that appears in the final world.
  • An almost literal example from Odin Sphere is Prince Cornelius. He looks all cute and stuff, but easily he'll hand you your ass with his Zero-like fighting style.
  • Dragon Quest
  • Mana (series)
    • Similarly, the Rabites from the Seiken Densetsu or Mana series, which are sort of blobby killer rabbits. Although the yellow ones are little more than a nuisance, even to a small child, some of the other colors really are quite dangerous, especially the black ones.
    • The Black Rabite, one of the adorable little creatures mentioned above, with the respective color, is the most dangerous thing in the game. It looks like a small black bunny slipper until it opens a can of whoop-ass on you. The Black Rabite can be tamed a great deal by avoiding the use of spells or any tech stronger than the basic one, as these will not trigger its ferocious counterattacks. It also helps to use stat-affecting magic like the Necromancer's Black Curse spell and the Nightblade's Deadly Weapon spell.
  • The Fairy you can recruit in Romancing SaGa 3 is a very versatile character, good with Spears, and Bows.
  • Nippon Ichi
    • The knife-carrying, explosive and possessed-by-the-souls-of-criminals penguins known as Prinnies from most of the games since Disgaea. And as if the regular ones weren't bad enough, the final ultimate form of Overlord Baal, the most powerful Bonus Boss in all said games is a prinny as well.
    • Starting with Dark Hero Days, the position of most powerful bonus boss has been usurped by Pringer X, a tiny robotic Prinny that doesn't look threatening, aside from its red angry eyes.
    • Before even prinnies, we had Eryngi, cute little mushroom creatures that call up mushrooms to attack and say 'gii!' a lot. One of them actually demands that you kneel down and beg for your lives lest "your blood will rain on me, gii!" I don't need to say who. Another Eryngi appears in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten as the True Final Boss. It is also a God Is Evil.
    • The Catsabers, present in multiple Nippon Ichi games, resemble children in cat costumes, but are generally no less deadly than any of the other species of monsters you're likely to run into. They also have a more diabolical relative called the Deathsaber, with an appearance resembling a bat, rather than a cat.
    • Desco from Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten Daw, isn't she just the cutest little wannabe-Eldritch Abomination ever? You just cant help but want to give her a hug... at least until she pulls out her ultimate attack: the very aptly titled Yog Sothoth.
  • LittleBigPlanet: Sackboy. He's adorable, perpetually happy and silly, and wants to pal around with his friends. He's also a reality altering super-powered entity who can create whole worlds with pure thought, alter the state of any object, fly, control time, and has a mean right hook.
  • The old adventure-game series, Legend of Kyrandia, has the Kyrandian Killer Squirrels. In the third installment, Malcolm's Revenge, there's one on the very first screen—allowing you to produce one of the fastest Game Overs in video game history, simply by teasing the squirrel twice—at which point it'll leap at your face, kill you, and drag off your corpse to feed its young.
  • Final Fantasy
    • The Tonberry and all its variations in the series. Tiny. Strangely cute. Its first moves are to walk slowly towards one of the heroes, until it gets close enough, and... doink. Then you start taking it seriously. Yeah you see that thing it's carrying that looks like a garden spade? That's not a spade, that's not a spade at all!
      • Lampshaded by Legendary Frog, when Cloud thinks that he can take on the cute little Tonberry, despite the Narrator's warnings telling him that this would be a good time to use the "Run Away" option.
      • Somewhere on Gran Pulse, you find an Undying Cie'th—and people know what kind of bad news those are. And then he dies. Any thoughts of "O YAY" immediately disappear when you see who Doink'd him—only to be replaced by "O FUK". I don't need to explain any further, do I?
    • Also apropos to this, Final Fantasy XI features a number of cute-but-deadly monsters, including rabbits, composing families with level tiers reaching up to very high levels in most cases. Rabbits are one of the more powerful mob-families in general, leading to the saying: "No matter how powerful you are, somewhere in the world there is a rabbit that can kick your ass."
    • From the same game, the Tarutaru race are adorably short and cute; with adorable pointed ears and button noses to boot. They're every bit as powerful as any other player race, though, and especially skilled in magic. Of particular note is NPC Professor Shantotto, who flat-out scares a good number of the heroes and villains in Dissidia Final Fantasy.
    • Mog from Final Fantasy VI can do quite a bit of damage with his dances. This ad for the SNES version of the game is a bit of an exaggeration, but just a bit...
    • Final Fantasy XII has several classes of cutesy enemies, including mandragoras, onions, cacti, and some fiends that actually look like rabbits. The cute enemies your party encounters early in the game generally will not attack unless you attack them first, but later versions are more hostile and can inflict lots of nasty status effects. The king of them all is Fury, a cute little boss bunny who lives in the Necrohol of Nabudis.
    • There's also an enemy that's actually called the "Vorpal Bunny".
    • The bunnies (okay, "Dreamhares") in Final Fantasy Tactics A2 aren't all that killer—they can mind-control your allies, but they're easily set on fire. In one mission, however, you encounter a slightly odd-looking variant of the species deep underground, and one of your moogle allies shakes in fear at the sight of it. Turns out it's a "Mooglebane," named for its favorite food.
    • Cactuars. They look like cute little cactus people. but they have a Fixed Damage Attack that can deal 1,000 damage, no matter what. Even worse is that some games have a second version that can do 10,000 damage, more than the normal HP cap, meaning instant death to anything it hits.
    • In Final Fantasy V, there's a cave where you are attacked by "nut eaters"- squirrel monsters, who are not very dangerous, having only 1 hit point each... but frequently, you'll run into a "skull eater" instead, which looks identical (except for being black) and who is powerful enough to kill your whole party! (Ironically, it still only has one hit point, so if you manage to penetrate its defense, it goes down in one hit.) Not to mention that if you try to use magic against it, not will it not work, but you'll now be faced with five of them! The Updated Rerelease introduced another Palette Swap in the Bonus Dungeon, called Soul Eater. However, this one is more like a Demonic Spider, nasty but doable without special tricks.
    • Chocobos can take you to school too. Not so surprising really, with those big clawed feet. Taken Up to Eleven in Final Fantasy XIII with Sazh's pet baby chocobo, who is not only insanely intelligent, but takes out an armed soldier by itself.
    • Final Fantasy IX: Yan. They're so adorable... but they're the strongest monsters in the game, and can easily take out a full party in seconds with Comet, which they will take full advantage of, Virus Power, which will prevent the afflicted from gaining any EXP you get in the battle, and has Float/Snort combo, which blows away one of your party members and counts them as Dead.
    • The Fury creatures of Final Fantasy XII are rabbit-like creatures that are insanely fast and have high attack power. One of them is even a hunting mark for a sidequest.
  • The Cuccos in The Legend of Zelda games are perfectly harmless chickens for the most part. If attacked though, they are clearly being hit and react with distress, they suffer no ill effect. If attacked persistently, the Cucco will begin to hit back, and an endless swarm of other, equally invulnerable Cuccos will come to its aid, pursuing the player and attempting to peck him to death.
    • Their chicks are also masters of deception. In The Minish Cap, the bouncing yellow babies with their cute chirping noises appear to be completely harmless. That is, until you turn Minish-sized and enter Anju's house, where about fifteen or twenty chicks will take notice of you and chase you around in an attempt to eat you.
    • In Skyward Sword, we've got those little cat-raccoon-pet-things in Skyloft. During the day they meow, follow you around, and look absolutely adorable with those huge Bambi-eyes. During the night, they're actively trying to rip your guts out.
  • Mortal Kombat
    • In Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, there is a secret, unlisted move called Unfriendly Rabbit. That thing is MURDEROUS! The enemy just sits there and pets it while you get the hell back, and then, out of nowhere, the little lagomorph suddenly tears INTO the enemy. When it says Fatality, the rabbit POPS out of the enemy's... maybe it was stomach. Then it is sitting there as if nothing happened. Nightmare Fuel if you ever saw it.
    • And Kung Lao can use a bunny to beat his enemy to death. These are based on Kung Lao's Friendship where he pulls a bunny out of his hat. Only here, it's turned into a Fatality.
    • In Mortal Kombat 3 (and the Ultimate version), the characters have special finishing moves called "Animalities" where they turn into animals and attack their opponent. In Ultimate, the character Kitana turns into a white rabbit, before mauling the enemy's happy sacks.
  • The creature from The Last Guardian. This adorable thing that makes you love it just from the trailer also managed to splatter an armored guard against a wall with a swing of its claw.
  • The insanely difficult Bonus Boss in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer is a giant badger. Badgers are actually incredibly vicious and dangerous, a giant one even moreso.
  • Monster Rancher
    • The Hares, in a very literal sense. They're glass cannons who can deal very high amounts of damage.
    • The Pixies are also pretty bad: Cute Monster Girls with Squishy Wizard powers. They can also breathe enormous sheets of flame, suck you of your Life Energy, and claw your friggin' eyes out. Also, one particularly nasty spell pixies can use called appropriately "bang" which is a one hit kill on just about any monster and makes the same sound as the spell indicates when it knocks your monster flat on its ass and straight to the hospital.
  • In the MMORPG Asheron's Call, the second most powerful monster in the entire game was the level-666 White Rabbit, nicknamed "Pookie" by players. It was not uncommon for Pookie to slaughter entire parties of high-level characters using spells such as "Bunny Smite".
  • Dungeon Siege
    • In the secret quest of the first game, you fight Killer Chickens.
    • In the secret quest of Dungeon Siege II, you fight Killer Prairie Dogs.
  • Arguably, many Pokémon would fall under this. For that matter, many Mons series critters and cute anime mascots fall into this trope.
    • Several of the incredibly powerful "legendaries", like Mew and Jirachi, are certainly small and harmless-looking. However, in the game, Mew has good stats and can learn every available technique. And Jirachi has a powerful Steel-type Signature Move called Doom Desire, which lets loose a devastating bundle of light on the foe.
      • Victini, another example, seems to be all happy-go-lucky and such, yet it learns V-Create/V-Generate - the strongest Fire-type move in existence.
    • Best example: Manaphy. That thing seems so harmless, but when it was recently tested in Over Used, it centralized the game so much that it was banned again. Basically, it is harmless without the rain, but as soon as, say, Kyogre sets up an infinite rainstorm via the Drizzle ability, that thing becomes a little monster!
    • The only Pokemon that can learn Metronome, an attack that can randomly use nearly any move in the game, by level up are cute Pokemon.
  • Commander Keen 4
    • The game features an enemy that looks like a teeny-tiny green ball (described as a plant in the manual). Approach it and a gigantic mouth extends from it, killing you instantly—although if you know what you're doing, you can paralyze it in the split-second that it takes for the mouth to reach you.
    • There are actual deadly living rocks in the game, and plenty other creatures that look either goofy or cute, but can kill you with a mere (venomous) touch. Or by breathing fire. Or pushing you into a death trap. Or gobbling you up.
  • In the MMORPG EverQuest there are certain fish considered sacred by a god. A god who sometimes poses as one of the fish. Attack them at your extreme peril.
  • World of Warcraft
    • This trope was parodied (before the Cataclysm) in a Warlock class quest. After fulfilling the desires of a clearly insane Gnome warlock NPC, he attempts so summon a powerful demon... but gets a giant chicken named "El Pollo Grande" (The Great Chicken) instead which, despite its appearance, isn't much a challenge.
    • Some gnome players. Yes, they may be small but that means they have the smallest game avatars to target and can pack the same punch as their peers in terms of class and level.
    • The female gnome Death Knight NPC with puffy pink ponytails, Darkrider Arly, deserves special mention. And special art.
    • And then there was the accidental Bear Reaver. Normally, a bear isn't that small and non-threatening, but when that model accidentally, in a Beta realm, replaced the gigantic Fel Reaver model in Hellfire Peninsula, and the thing went around looking like a medium-sized, low-level beast but still shaking the ground as it walked and remained capable of killing players with one hit, that sounds like an example of this trope.
  • Kirby
    • Kirby himself. Adorable little pink puffball with a black hole for a stomach that frequently trounces Eldritch Abominations.
    • Scarfy. Try to have Kirby inhale this cute little cat, and he gets ugly and chases you around until he explodes.
  • Pretty much every enemy in Maple Story falls into this trope. As a rule, the cuter the creature is the faster it will kill you.
    • There are tons of high-leveled monsters that would like to object to that, but examples do exist, especially when low-leveled. See: Slime King, Mushmom, (Dark) Yeti and Pepe, and Bob the Snail. Be especially careful with that last one.
    • A more recent addition is Pink Bean, a pink, Pikachu-like boss that eats, sleeps, and plants flowers during the first half of the fight, and then starts killing half of your party members off in a single attack.
    • The Elemental Kittens of Doom (Jr. Cellion, Sakura Cellion, Jr. Lioner, and Jr. Grupin). They act all pathetic when getting beat up and all but they mob like crazy and can spell doom for those who are more than a few levels below their Level 33.
  • The Rabbids from Rayman: Raving Rabbids aren't quite literal killer rabbits (their violence tends more towards slapstick Amusing Injuries), but they're still violently insane and insanely violent. And they're trying to take over the Earth and television. They're succeeding.
    • Back when Rayman: Raving Rabbids was going to be a platformer, the Rabbids were going to be hideous, vicious, and downright horrible creatures, instead of the insane but humorous critters they are today.
  • The Orz from Star Control II seem relatively harmless: they talk funny, and resemble disembodied heads with tentacles and parrotfish-like faces. But their ships are actually quite powerful. And then the game starts dropping hints that they're extensions of a sinister extradimensional monster and were responsible for the disappearance of the Androsynth... and if you continue to pester them with questions about the Androsynth, the Orz won't hesitate to silence you violently.

Orz: Nnnnnggggaaaahhhhh!!!!!! It is dancing!!!!

  • The Memaus in Startopia are cute little cat-like creatures that wander around the station. They eat litter, and any guests who pet one get a bonus to happiness. The problem is that, if it's been well-fed, it simultaneously infects the petter with a parasite which will transform the guest into a decidedly not cute "Skrasher" which cuts a swathe of destruction and can absorb a terrifying amount of damage before keeling over. And if your security can't kill the Skrasher fast enough, it explodes... into more Memaus.
  • EarthBound brings us the Clumsy Robot, whose combat actions include sweeping up dustbunnies, picking up nuts and bolts that jiggled loose from its body, eating bologna sandwiches, accidentally firing party-devastating beams and missiles while tripping over its own two feet and being completely unkillable by all normal forms of attack. The party eventually has to be bailed out by the Runaway Five...who simply run in while it's distracted and turn it off.
  • Ratchet and Clank
    • Ratchet. Small, fuzzy, and carries around more firepower than even the Pentagon could dream of.
    • Also, from the second game in the series, we have the Protopets—cute, Tribble-like critters that have rows of shark-like teeth, a nasty temperament, and the tendency to eat anything or anyone they encounter. Oh, and they have the reproductive ability of the original Tribbles as well.
  • The Precursors from the Jak and Daxter games, the most powerful beings in the universe, are revealed towards the end of Jak 3 to be Ottsels, just like Daxter. Ever wondered why you never saw one?
  • Earthworm Jim
    • There is a part in the level "Down The Tubes" where you ride on top of a huge hamster that can eat pretty much anything. And that's the least of the harmless-looking things in Earthworm Jim that can beat you to a bloody pulp.
    • On that same level are small red creatures about half the size of Jim that resist gunfire and if he approaches too close, they slam him against the ground.
    • In a later level, a slime-dwelling creature dwells at the bottom of a massive chasm that looks like a little tan balloon with a smile unless you get too close to it. If you do, it will swiftly start to resemble a tyrannosaur.
    • Then, of course, there's quite possibly the reigning king of this trope (screw seniority) Peter Puppy. A little, pink puppy who, if he gets hurt, changes into a massive, purple, spikey monster with lots of teeth and drains a third of your heath as it literally chews you up and spits you out.
  • The deadliest monsters in Valkyrie Profile are neither dragons nor demons. No, the deadliest creatures in the game are... hamsters. And they will slaughter your party if you don't know how to handle them. In the Bonus Dungeon of both games, there is a possibility that you may fight hamsters right before the Bonus Boss ...it's actually worth killing the Angel Iseria Queen, Bonus Boss of the game, 10 times to receive the Angel Slayer as it may give you a chance to hurt the hamsters.
  • Similarly, in another one of tri-Ace's games, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, the Sooties (little balls of soot with eyes) are by far the most difficult regular monsters you'll ever meet. They're insanely fast and strong, and due to their tiny size are really difficult to hit. Incidentally, the first Star Ocean 1 includes a "Vorpal Bunny" as one of its enemies. Though it does look cutesey, it's also twice the size of a human, so not all that cute.
  • This is pretty much the entire point behind the Gaia Online MMO: zOMG!. Yes, that is actually the name. The basic plot is that relatively harmless inanimate objects such as garden gnomes, cotton balls, and cloves of garlic are somehow becoming animated. A literal case of Everything Trying to Kill You, if you will.
    • The result can be best summed up in a promotional poster featuring a musclebound, heavily armored Orc trapped up a tree by a Lawn Gnome, "Cute? Cute never tried to eat your leg."
    • Not to mention those damn Cherry Fluffs, toward the beginning. After easily dispatching three other varieties of Fluffs, you might try your luck on one of these pink fluffy whatsits, only to have the entire thing blow up in your face.
    • The Garlic Animated (a chubby garlic bulb with feet and Moe eyes) might be even cuter than the Fluffs (cotton balls with Moe Moe eyes), but its breath weapon is a force to be reckoned with.
    • Gaia's original Killer Rabbit, Grunny, is now piloting Humongous Mecha submarines in the last two areas.
    • Arguably, Frank. He's effectively a male Meganekko of the "shy sweet Hollywood Nerd" variety. And he's a Mad Scientist working with the Big Bad to destroy Gaia For Science!!
  • Braid: Killer Rabbits squared. Or cubed. Not only are these rabbits vicious, but they initially disguise themselves as flowers and sound like cats. No matter what you find cute and charming, there's a good chance Braid's rabbits will undermine it.
  • Pick a Fire Emblem game. If it's a cute little girl that doesn't seem to belong in a battle and looks to be about 10, she's most likely a dragon who can eat most enemies faces without ANY worry of being hurt. Otherwise characters like Est (Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light/Mystery of the Emblem/Shadow Dragon) and Nino (Fire Emblem) are Magikarp Power housed and fit this trope too.
    • One exception: Mist from Path of Radiance. She looks no more than a petite 13, can't fight until she gets a class change, and then deals substandard damage. Not quite as young or ineffective in Radiant Dawn, but still unimpressive. She's far from ineffective though, although it takes a bit of work and luck, she can be capable of almost soloing whole maps thanks to her high luck.
  • The MMO La Tale has so many of these that a good rule of thumb is "if it looks cute, run like hell." Especially annoying are the Prring Palette Swaps and Shaggies, which mob you and jump behind you to deliver devastating back attacks.
  • Kukuri in Magical Battle Arena. She's a Super-Deformed sorceress that uses hilariously cute spells and out-adorables every other character by miles (which is saying something since this game is filled to the brim with Magical Girls), but good grief, she is deadly. Between the strawberry firing Strawberry Snake (read: Machine Gun), the smiling pink Mini-Planet (read: Gravity Sucks Mines), and the cat totem-pole Long Voiced Cat (read: Mana Drain), all of which she can cast nigh-instantaneously, she's a deceptively dangerous fighter in the battlefield.
  • Near the end of Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge, you may run into faeries in the same areas you're routinely facing down dark crusaders, greater demons, elite samurai squads, and mind flayers. The faeries are much more dangerous than any of the enemies just mentioned, and indeed one of the toughest enemy types in the game. Just be glad these unassuming Demonic Spiders don't show up until around the final dungeon.
  • Perfect World has antelope. They look almost harmless compared to the typical werewolf or protoplasmic ooze, but they are both aggressive and equipped with a dangerous Mana burn.
  • Every single monster in the obscure Game Boy Color RPG Lil' Monster is like this. Although some of them are meant to be fierce and imposing, every monster in the game is rendered in a cute, Super-Deformed style. Even the final boss, portrayed as a kind of Eldritch Abomination, still has a head that's half the size of his body and dewy eyes.
  • The Hairy Bulborb from Pikmin 2 has huge blue eyes, a tubby round body, and is covered all over in incredibly soft-looking white fuzz. It's downright cuddly. However, as with any enemy in Pikmin games, if you so much as look at it wrong, the Pik-carnage will be endless.
  • The Liir from Sword of the Stars are a playable example. They look like friendly whales and dolphins, and are, whenever possible, Actual Pacifists. However, if you push them to the point that this is no longer possible, it can easily lead to bad things. The game's resident Abusive Precursors, the Suul'Ka did this by enslaving the Liir and threatening to pollute their oceans to an uninhabitable state. There are no more Suul'Ka in this sector of the galaxy, and possibly in the universe; the Liir used their talent for biotechnology to wipe them out with a genetically engineered retro-plague.
  • You know what rabbits stereotypically like to eat? Carrots. However, as anyone who has ever played Mushroom Men can attest, this is a damn lie. They actually enjoy eating tasty little mushroom boys. Take one step toward one of those Green Rocks-possessed, lapine monstrocities, and just watch how fast you die.
  • The Rampage Rabbit from Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2. After you beat it the first time, it trains itself so that it can beat you afterwards, and is aiming to be the most powerful rabbit.
  • Paper Mario
    • The original game brings us Anti-Guys. So you're in the Shy Guy Toybox, and you've been running around fighting all these Shy Guys. They aren't too hard; there are a ton of different kinds, but most of them have between 7-9 HP and 2-4 attack. Nothing you can't handle. Then you see a Black Shy Guy with a gray mask, who tells you to get away from his treasure chest. You fight him anyway, and he proceeds to kick the crap out of you, because he is an Anti-Guy, and has 50HP, and 12 attack. So you learn from your mistake, and give him a Lemon Candy in exchange for his chest. And everything is right with the world. Until Bowser's Castle. You go through most of Bowser's Castle, and you get to a big talking door, who says he won't let you through unless you answer five questions correctly, and if you get three wrong before you get five right, he'll mess you up. So you get three wrong, but figure "What's he gonna do about it? He's just a door." But then, instead of fighting you himself, he releases three Anti-Guys into the room. The Anti-Squad is harder than the final boss and the Bonus Boss, so you almost invariably die in a horrible fashion. These are the only times Anti-Guys are ever encountered, and there is no warning that you are about to get your ass handed to you on a platter made of your friends' asses. Good thing the questions are so easy. Still, if you've properly level ground, that could make for an interesting challenge... after all, the lone Anti-Guy in Shy Guy's Toybox wasn't that hard. (Kent C. Koopa was tougher, as he had 70 HP and a legitimate defense score.
    • On the topic of the Paper Mario games (first and second), Amayzee Dayzees. Cute, shiny anthropomorphized flowers, have a tendency to just run away from the battle... and when they don't, WATCH OUT!!! 20 HP, 20 attack, and 1 defense. Good luck taking one out, as it'll either run before you get the chance, or kill you.
  • The Pig Butoh in The World Ends With You. Usually, pigs are cute, harmless Puzzle Mooks. Then you find the second-to-last of them. Unlike his fellows, he can be simply beaten to death... but can attack. And his attack stat is five times the final boss'.
  • In Dark Cloud 2, Dark Emperor Griffon's true form is that of an adorably cute bunny person. Even the protagonists are surprised. But then the boss battle starts, his true skill as a master mage surfaces, and the infinite power of his Cosmic Keystone shines forth. Hint: Max and Monica embody the Earth and Moon in their Atlamillia. Their foe wields the Sun.
  • One of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake's most Guide Dang It obstacles is the MSX cartridge guarded by 'deadly poisonous Zanzibar hamsters'. At this point, Snake's life bar is as long as it can get, and he has shot down a Hind D helicopter, and Metal Gear D's guided missiles only take off about a sixth of his health bar, but touching one of the tiny brown rodents causes instant death. That said, they die in one hit, so once you've worked out the puzzle to lure them from their hiding place you only need to stand in front of the hole and fire.
  • Cave Story
    • The Mimigas, friendly anthropomorphic rabbits that are your main allies throughout the game. But, give a Mimiga a red flower to eat, and... they enter a "frenzied" state, which means they mutate into horrific, bloodthirsty, mindless monsters that simply kill and kill and kill until they die. Even the weakest Mimiga becomes powerful enough to be an early-game boss in this form. The Mimigas are aware of this power, but only use it as an absolute last resort.
    • And then there's an optional late game boss, Ma Pignon, which is a small, smiling blue mushroom. A smiling blue mushroom that begins rocketing around the room hard enough to cause landslides to fall from the ceiling.
  • The SNES action-RPG The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang features rabbits that will suddenly open their large mouths filled with sharp teeth in order to latch onto the hero. They are called Python Bunnies.
  • The Nintendo DS game The Dark Spire features Killer Rabbits. Ok, bunnies. Close enough. Subversion in that they are not only not that dangerous but are the least dangerous enemies on any floors they appear.
  • Dwarf Fortress has carp. It became a memetic fish—as in "Oh, carp!". The reason was that fish trained strength by swimming just like dorfs would, and carps are big, so this quickly resulted in super-monsters.

Dwarf Fortress Wiki: [T]here is only one thing to do if you come across a river full of carp and you don't want your dwarves to die... Run. Run and never look back.
Toady One: I think I made the fish too hardcore.

    • Carp have stepped down from this position in favor of giant sponges, which will kill your dwarves if they get close to it. Not bad for an animal who shouldn't be able to even move.
    • This deadliest arises from two things about the sponge; firstly, due to having only one body part, its effectively invincible to brute force. Other by pulping or bisecting, but it's not easy to inflict on "giant"-anything. While it doesn't chase your dwarves down, if its located in a river, it's bound to cause mass job cancellations. The deadly part comes in when one realizes just how heavy giant sponges are; even with the pathetic push attack that a creature with no natural attacks recieves, a giant sponge can easily shatter a dwarf's spine. If you ever encounter the illusive vampire giant sponge, which can not only move but can also leave the water, may the gods protect you.
    • Common keas are thieving parrots. The giant keas are the same, but with enough of strength and lifting capacity to steal anvils and ability to crack skulls, so you are stuck with rampaging homicidal kleptomaniacal psychopaths, in the form of parrots. Also, they come in groups of 5-10. And once your archers arrive to take care of the problem, keas will fly away, to return another day. Unless you moved everything and everyone in the embark belowground and closed the door before you met them, your dorfs probably are in for it. If you did, crossbows from cover can clear the area. Even better, the their thieving habits can lead them into cage traps with mine carts as bait: they are tameable and valuable… just make sure you won't accidentally release a half-feral giant kea inside the trade depot.

DF wiki: Their habit of going into your fort and stealing your stuff will mean these monsters will come right into contact with your dwarves and fight. And do not expect a civilian, unarmored dwarf to win any of these fights. Giant kea will kill your dwarves faster than you can say, "It's just a big parrot, what harm could it do?"

  • The Chichifa from Starflight 2. You never see a picture of them. But the Humna Humna trade buoy orbiting their homeworld describes them as "A race of highly prolific, small, furry creatures with long, upright ears and puffy tails. Extremely aggressive, they will swarm to any heat source and attack. Recommend caution."
  • Baragon in the game Godzilla: Unleashed certainly applies... even if he is a giant dinosaur-thing. Sure, he's the smallest monster in the entire game, and he is adorable in an odd sort of way, but he's more than able to take down his opponents including the biggest monster in the game, Biollante.
  • In the Guild Wars: Eye of the North expansion, the player can be lured by a cute little bunny into a small hollow filled with cute little bunnies... that then turn into a LOT of nasty Vaettir with a named boss in their midst.
    • And in Nightfall, we have the beetles, basically spherical creatures that move by rolling around and make pretty cute noises. While the original beetles are a nuisance, the Madness titans later on can mess your party up.
  • Since animals available as starting pets in Nethack are designed to be viable combat escorts for the Player Character, they tend to be disproportionately powerful. This includes ponies, dogs, and kittens; kittens that can kill a squad of grown men and clean the flesh from their bones in seconds. Oh, and the fluff quote for kittens? A passage from The Cats of Ulthar.
  • Okamiden, a Nintendo DS followup to Okami, stars Chibiterasu, a puppy replacement for Amaterasu. Being the main player character in an Action Adventure game, how couldn't it be a Killer Rabbit?
  • There's a Killer Rabbit terrain in Populous. Piglet World is a land of pleasant, grassy meadows and flowering trees... and is apparently so deadly that your little piggy people will start dying immediately after leaving their homes.
  • If you think about it, the Sparda family in Devil May Cry is a family of Pint-Sized Powerhouse Killer Rabbits for other demons, looking a lot like humans until they are attacked and survive mortal wounds as if it was nothing, dash under their legs and slice them repeatedly to death. And they even can Devil Trigger. Of course, we can't say much about Sparda himself, but most of this is because Dante, Vergil, and Nero are Weak but Skilled. Trish and Lucia also could qualify. Then there's Lady...
  • Arguably anyone from the Touhou Project series.
  • Quest for Glory IV has actual killer rabbits. Then there's the old lady's pet kitty in the first game, if you're a thief. And those pesky antwerps...
  • Lucky from Whacked!
  • When you finally catch up to the Girl in Black in Persona, she pulls out Robo-Rat. It's a giant mechanical rat that makes cat-like noises. Any females in your party will Squee over it... until it opens fire. Kei then mocks them for falling for it. Robo-Rat's the boss of the area.
  • Gameplay example in The King of Fighters. Hotaru seems harmless and in terms of personality but is a monster in the hands of a skilled player (and is generally high to top tier).
  • While headcrabs in Half-Life are generally not considered cute, with the possible exception of Lamarr, they fit this trope by being small, innocuous, apparently harmless, and by far the most horrific thing in the series, latching onto an unfortunate host and commandeering its nervous system to create a delightful monstrosity known as a headcrab zombie. And the Fast and Poison variants are even worse.
  • Arcanum
    • The most powerful nature summon is an ordinary white rabbit. And by "ordinary" we mean that it's called a vorpal bunny. It is level 50 (with level cap being 55) and can be summoned at level 5 with right character. At this level (and for the most of the game) it tends to invoke Chunky Salsa Rule in a single bite. And you can have several of them. And they gain levels if you don't unsummon them.
    • Also in Arcanum is the Stillwater Giant, a brutal and deadly monster whose default form is a small blue rabbit.
  • With enough modification, Forza 3's 1964 Volkswagen Rabbit will eat Ferraris and Lamborghinis and crap them out as Yugos and Trabants.
  • In addition to Kirby, mentioned above already, Super Smash Bros. has a few other innocent-looking death machines. Jigglypuff earned its place as a Lethal Joke Character for its ability to one-shot players at relatively low damage with its stupidly powerful "Rest" attack, along with an effective aerial moveset that players have dubbed the "Wall of Pain".
    • Toon Link also could count. He's a cute-looking kid with a toy sword who can also kick your ass eight ways to Sunday with an array of weaponry (and the skill to use it) that's just as impressive as his adult self.
  • Jubei from the BlazBlue series is a traditional nekomata, appearing in the form of a small two-tailed cat that stands upright. He also happens to be one of the six heroes, carries the most powerful katana in the world (the Nox Nyctores Musashi), and is stated to be the most powerful living creature in existence. To give you an idea how strong he is, he turned back Iron Tager's attack effortlessly, and Tager outweighs him by about a ton.
  • Dubloon features Fire Ants. These small ants may and will burn you to crisp if you don't act quick. There also literal killer bunnies, but they are Obviously Evil.
  • Ys: The Ark of Napishtim has Majunun, a cute little robot so comically tiny he's not actually visible in most screenshots of him. It's a lie to say he's the most powerful boss in the game -- "most powerful enemy, period" is more accurate, as he technically only counts as a miniboss. He's capable of one-hit-killing a Level 31 Adol... and to get one useful accessory, you have to either kill him, or manage not to be killed by him long enough to grab the chest and escape.
  • Metroid
    • The eponymous Metroids themselves are an inversion of the trope, since your first impression is how deadly they are, but if you come across one that isn't trying to consume your soul... d'awwwwwwwww. They're typically babies when encountered, make an adorable chirping sound, eat[4] by glomping, and if you're lucky enough to have one imprint on you, you don't even need to stick your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye.
    • Metroid: Other M gives us "Little Birdie", a little white fluffy thing that looks sort of like an armless mouse standing on chicken legs. It was considered to be a failure as a bioweapon, so the scientists kept him as a pet. And then it ate one of them. To be fair, it should have tipped them off with its malevolent, soul-piercing gaze. And it wasn't a failure at all. The scientists who cloned the Space Pirates didn't realize that Ridley had a larval stage.
  • Both chapters of SSI's Wizard's Crown duology featured these, as "white rabbits" in the first game and "snow rabbits" in the second. In the former case, they're a set-piece encounter more dangerous than just about any other pure-melee opponent in the Ruins, and provide a ridiculous quantity of high-quality loot. In the latter, they're wandering monsters in the toughest of the three wilderness areas, so their lethality is rather less inappropriate.
  • Little Mac from Punch-Out!! is roughly half the size of the majority of his opponents, yet he can throw lightning fast punches so powerful he can topple them with ease.
  • Gharbad, the Goat boss from Desktop Dungeons, appears relatively harmless. Then you see his Base Attack. He has an attack score of 255. Nothing else in the game comes close. Unless you have some way to kill him indirectly, you've lost.
  • Mega Man Zero 3 has a literal example with Childre Inarabbita. His battle form is that of a rabbit, and his humanoid form, is that of a child. He's also one of the Eight Judges that govern The Empire alongside Mega Man X and his Fake King replacement.
  • In the Terra Tubes of Battletoads, there are enemies that look like rubber ducks. Not only are they vicious menaces, they cannot be killed, only stunned.
  • The final boss of Let's Go Jungle is a giant killer butterfly. Because after all the other giant creepy crawlies in this game, why not butterflies?
  • Usagi from Mr. Driller is literally this trope.
  • Dragon Age
    • Deepstalkers from Dragon Age Origins are surprisingly cute for a bunch of flesh-eating, poison-spitting, lamprey-faced compies that burst from the ground in the dozens hoping to tear you limb from limb.
    • The baby dragons are almost too adorable to kill.
    • And in Awakening, Anders tells the tale of his pet cat back in the Circle Tower, Mr. Wiggums, who was possessed by a rage demon and killed three templars.
    • A long-standing joke, even with the creative staff is that your pet Mabari's name actually is Rabbit.
  • Jack Frost in the Shin Megami Tensei games, when he appears as a Bonus Boss.
  • Golden Sun
  • The player character in Rune Factory 3 can turn into a powerful monster that can beat the crap out of his foes with brawling skills that would put a Bare-Fisted Monk to shame. It looks like this.
  • Divinity 2 has the Killer Bunny, which appears if you kill enough bunnies. It has huge fangs and blood-mottled white fur, and is level 22. A particularly sadistic player can encounter it very early when they're likely dangerously underleveled, and score a massive XP reward... or, more likely, a brutal death. There's a special achievement for killing it, too.
  • Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee's Fuzzles, looking like furry cute big-eyed blob types... which happen to be voracious carnivores and can be used like attack animals by Munch with More Teeth Than the Osmond Family.
  • Adventure Quest milks this trope for all it's worth.
    • With no exception, whenever you come across an opponent that looks small and cute, you'd better be prepared for a long, horrible, grueling and deadly fight. The dialogue in the game is rife with enemy descriptions saying, "this little creature looks harmless at first..." whereupon it proceeds to shred and/or cremate your ass big time. In fact, small creatures in this game are usually much, much tougher than most of the big and scary opponents due to the fact that they are usually given incredibly high evasion stats. Basically, if you come across an enemy with the word "dragon" in its name that takes up the entire other half of the screen, you'll probably breathe easy once you get used to the fact that big creatures in the game are generally fairly doable opponents. However, you'll groan whenever you encounter something tiny and cute-looking, because it's likely that the cute little "bun bit" you're fighting is going to be about three times as difficult to face as the previous so-called "behemoth".
    • And then we have Sally, the Supreme Necromantress of the Tower of Necromancy, in Adventure Quest Worlds. Sure, she may be a little girl, but she brought back Noxus as a lich and even helped create Hero-Killer Vordred.
  • Mokomoko from Lightning Legend Daigo no Daibouken is pretty much a near-literal example of this: it's a legendary creature looking like a big furball rabbit, which runs at a blazing speed and can pull off strong and fast combos.
  • God Hand has Poison Chihuahuas.
  • Iris of Rosenkreuzstilette counts as well. While she may be a cute little girl, she's more of a Complete Monster than expected because she delights in causing as much chaos as possible and manipulating others because she thinks it's fun. And, being the Magnificent Bastard she is, she even manipulated RKS into attacking the Empire just for the fun of it! And no one knew she did just that because they all thought her to just be a kind, innocent girl. And since she's Affably Evil, she just happens to be that damn proud of it. The only ones who could see through her were the Empire, Karl, and Grolla, but Iris, being The Chessmaster, always has a backup strategy so that she outsmarts them at every turn. And her being "kidnapped" doesn't help, either.
  • The Kamis from Ryzom are kinda cute, but if you do too much harvesting in one area, their magic shall fall on you like the hammer of god.
  • Peter the Puppy from Earthworm Jim. The levels where he appears consist solely of trying to keep him—or his puppies, in the sequel—from getting hurt so he doesn't turn into a horrifying mutant and maul Jim.
  • Later versions of Terraria feature bunny rabbits hopping around the landscape... which during a Blood Moon turn into Corrupt Bunnies, which can be fairly deadly foes for characters just starting out.
  • The 3DRealms game Shadow Warrior plays this entirely straight in a shout-out to the original. Through-out the game, you can find little rabbits running around and can even kill them without a problem. However, in one secret area, you will find a rabbit that's out for blood, complete with a discarded helmet and grail. Your character even exclaims "That's no ordinary rabbit," as the little furry menace rushes at you and begins to gnaw away your health!
  • In Enchanted Arms, the golem APO looks like a couple of gumdrops with small, cartoon arms and legs. No, really. It's one of the most devastatingly-effective golems in the game.
  • The Basilisks in Dark Souls. They look like deformed frogs with their small size and bulging eyes, but they're the first enemy that can inflict the dreaded Curse status effect, which instantly petrifies you and leaves you at half-health for the rest of your lives until you get an expensive cure.
  • In Fable II, one of the contestants in the Crucible waiting room is Gorgoron, a cute little girl with a deep, menacing voice who claims to be a shape-shifter and master of disguise.
  • In Ragnarok Online, everything is cute. And higher level monsters love to occasionally hang out in lower level areas - while looking just as cute. A newbie character goes out in the field and merrily slaughters giant pink blobs, caterpillars and bunnies - but death awaits him, dare he lay a hand on a butterfly or a rare big blue bunny. A quest to become an acolyte entails a pilgrimage across a couple zones to a monastery - and those who undertake it should not attack the cute little monkeys, no matter how annoying the are, lest they will be torn to shreds by them. Later, after taking down ferocious looking wolves (and some giant violinist grasshoppers) you may think that you can take on the ladybug that stole the drops from said wolves? Nope. The list goes on.
  • Planescape: Torment has the Lim-lim. You can buy one on the market as a cute pet, and it doesn't do much. Then in a different area of town, you meet a circle of magicians that attempt to summon a wild one... and it promptly slaughters all of them. It's also pretty dangerous to you should you provoke it.
    • From the same game, both Morte the floating skull and Nordom the four-armed cube thingy are much more dangerous than they seem.
  • Phantasy Star has giant zombie rabbits that despite being, you know, undead, still look pretty cute with their missing ear and all, then they split in half and fire acid at you.
  • Galactic Civilizations has a race of evil space squirrels known as the Snathi, whose portrait is available to player empires. Some famous Let's Plays featured the "suspiciously rabbit-like" Spectres of Agony, who ate their enemies' eyeballs and ended up ascending to godhood, and their distant relatives, the Spatial Hares, who were supposed to be diplomatic and peaceful, and ended up destroying no less than 21 stars - making them the rabbits with the highest killcount on this page, measuring in the tens of billions.
  • Maximo vs. Army of Zin has the Rarbite, an ordinary looking rabbit that, when attacked, transforms into a vicious demon that latches onto your ankle and gradually drains your health until removed.
  • Any Yordle character in League of Legends would qualify for this trope, but easily the best example would have to be Teemo, a huggably adorable little chipmunk-like boy scout who will pump you full of poison darts and trap you in a minefield of toxic mushrooms. Bonus points for his Cottontail skin, making him even more of a literal killer rabbit.
  • Fantasy Quest offers a giant bunny rabbit that proves surprisingly lethal. The sequel kicks it up a notch with a herd of carnivorous giraffes.
  • Another literal example: the rabbit-people in Utawarerumono seem peaceful and diplomatic, at least compared to all the Blood Knight nations around them. People wonder how they haven't been conquered yet. Then, when they get attacked, they show it's because they still have Humongous Mecha from before the apocalypse.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has hardcore horses. Champions and Heroes dedicated a few comics to the "[ //www.smackjeeves.com/discover/detail?titleNo=98261&articleNo=508 Murder Horse]".

I was quite horrified when two blood dragons attacked me out in the woods. I was even more horrified when I turn around, having killed one of them together with Lydia, only to find that Frost had dealt with the other by himself.
Could it have been a bug? It’s Bethesda, there are more bugs than lines of code. But. BUT. Frost is also the most terrifying creature in Skyrim. Dragonborn included.

Web Animation

  • The Bunnykill web animation series. A liberal exercise in the trope of Killer Rabbitry (and Katanas Are Just Better).
  • The Metal Gear Solid short "Crab Battle!", where Naked Snake gets his ass handed to him by a Kenyan Mangrove Crab.
  • Happy Tree Friends has several small animals that are for some reason vicious. Whistle, the man-eating puppy, a man-eating baby turtle, and a flock of man-eating ducks have all appeared. Plus, well, most of the cast.
  • The short animated film Red, where Little Red Riding Hood refuses the advances of the wolf (who looks like a slightly feral child wearing a wolf costume) after spilling the cakes she was going to bring to her grandmother. After leaving brokenhearted, Red encounters a unicorn-horned rabbit, which she hugs (not noticing the evil toothed grin it makes before it mutates into a bear-sized horned monster that was ready to devour Red before the wolf comes back in time to save the day.

Web Comics

  • Kevin and Kell:
    • Coney Dewclaw might as well be the Trope Codifier. Nobody who doesn't know her beforehand would be able to tell by looks alone that her mother is not only a wolf, but a top-notch hunter. She definitely got her appetite from the same, having left a long trail of the blood and bones of anybody who has attempted to prey on her, her family and her friends in her wake. The picture at the top might as well be a real-life image of what she is capable of. She has directly saved her siblings, her father, her grandmothers, her grandfather, the entire Rabbit Council, R.L., and many others in separate incidents via her skills/appetite.
    • Her dad, Kevin, might count as well. He's three times the size of any other rabbit we've seen in the strip (including his parents and sister) and mostly muscle (in fact, he used to have a side job as a masked wrestler).
  • Sluggy Freelance:
    • Bun-Bun. He once skeletonized a shark that had the misfortune of attacking him, and went on a holiday-massacring rampage as part of his vendetta against Santa Claus.
    • Also in Sluggy Freelance there's "The Evil", 18 (6 + 6 + 6) "demon kittens" that go on a killing spree if they have not had milk in the last 24 hours. Of course, these kittens are literally the spawn of Satan. They show up in two story arcs found here and here.

"Kicking a kitten... A grown man punting a kitten who was looking the other way... It was the bravest thing I've ever seen."

  • Kieri from Slightly Damned. When she first meets Buwaro, she changes into a bunny and then chases him around Rhea's house with a steak knife. Link.
  • The superhero Furry Comic Supermegatopia features a number of characters who are more dangerous than they appear. The mute and docile-seeming Zippy the Sloth is able to defeat hulking supervillain Brute Force with one punch, while Anti-Hero Hell Kitty of the Offenders is a bratty little girl... with razor-sharp claws, super-healing, and a hair-trigger temper.
  • El Goonish Shive:
  • In Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, the Norse trickster god Loki walks the earth in the body of a stuffed animal.
  • 8-Bit Theater featured the diminutive but dreaded camel spider (based on a real-life arachnid, whose threat is greatly exaggerated), which "viciously attacks anything it perceives as a threat, which is anything it can perceive."
  • Arguably, the entirety of Bunny is based off this trope, particularly Orange Bunny.
  • Slim the Jackalope from NeverNever has sixguns. Very tiny sixguns. And he bites. Extremely hard.
  • Schlock Mercenary features a species of "cute and cuddly koalazoids" known as the Tausennigan Ob'Enn. The Ob'Enn, despite their small size and disarming appearance, are referred to as the "psycho bears" by every other species in the galaxy, as they have one of the most powerful and advanced interstellar militaries in the galaxy, and are led by a xenocidal doctrine that calls for the destruction of every other species in the galaxy. At one point a mob boss even mockingly calls Petey—an A.I. created by and resembling the Ob'Enn—a "hairy, scary drop bear."
  • Lepus, the awakened Fiendish rabbit from Dungeon Crawl, inc. As the page's title suggests, he was originally a homage to the original Killer Rabbit (before he became a full-fledged character).
  • Deadly venomous chipmunks in Loserz!
  • In Adventurers!, Ardam finds out the painful way that a Devilrabbit is no ordinary Cuterabbit.
  • Reynardine, in Gunnerkrigg Court. He's apparently a cute little stuffed toy. He's actually a fearsome possessor demon that kills the body of whoever he takes over. He just happens to be stuck in Antimony's toy. For now. An illustrative example.
  • Tales of the Questor:
    • The Racconans. They're cute, fuzzy two-foot tall talking raccoons... who turn into lightning-flinging shredding whirling balls of death when backed into a corner. A typical saying in the Questorverse is "there's no such thing as an unarmed Racconan."
    • And Quentin Quinn, Space Ranger lampshades it about the title character's own race to a guard suffering from Suicidal Overconfidence...

Quentin: You know, Groonch, there is an old saying in the seven systems about an unarmed Racoonan... pity you never heard it.

    • Alternatively, the Redcaps, who bear a marked resemblance to the little dancing mushrooms from Fantasia, till the needle-sharp claws and fangs come out and they leap into your face. Those bright red "mushroom caps" they wear are actually BLOOD SACS, and they've been known to drain an ox dry of blood in moments...
  • The Video Games section paid plenty of attention to Gaia Online's MMO aspect, but Grunny from the webcomic has yet to be mentioned. It is a predatory green rabbit that also carries the G-Virus and turns its victims into zombies.
  • Char Cole gives us Maoh the Magnificent. Not all Mew have pleasant temperments...
  • Dolphins in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. You could punch out and kill all the gorillas, dinosaurs, giant lumberjacks, ninja, vampires, and ghosts you want, but if you treasure your continued existence, leave the dolphins alone.
  • Voodoo Doll in The Repository of Dangerous Things. Little. Funny. Quiet. Won't get in the way. Does not object when grabbed and carried. But throwing it around is a really bad idea. Even for a vampire.
  • Coleman of Sore Thumbs. A tiny blue polar bear that served in Iraq alongside its owner. You've never seen such an adorable terrorist-slaughtering machine.
  • Digger and other wombats may look small and chubby, but they spend most of their lives swinging heavy pickaxes, and are, as she once put it, "like biceps with feet." When pressed into battle, Digger has shown herself to be an effective combatant, not only soundly defeating a gang of bandits, but also lecturing them on what poor condition their weapons are in.
  • Mr. Boodles, an average-looking cat from Eerie Cuties, proved to be this in the November 18th update. He is also the pet of a vampire queen.
  • Nature of Nature's Art is populated almost entirely by killer animals. Literally, they live to fight!
  • In a filler strip for Something*Positive, Peter Rabbit gets his revenge.
  • Lars, Allie's pet Dalek in Search for the Truth
  • Northern Edge, Fred perry's web original Gold Digger tie-in prominently features Wabbits. Cute little rabits with sharp weapons on their tails and mostly nasty personalities.
  • Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic goblins created a funny midget direwolf breed, Wargi. The little bastards are nastier than they appears. Their cuteness is weaponized too.
  • Subverted in these two Dominic Deegan strips. At first it seems everyone's just being Genre Savvy, given how deceptive appearances can be on the Wild Edge. Turns out the little furballs really are harmless. They're just accompanied by Big shaggy parents who will rip your head off if you mess with them.
  • Erfworld's Transilvitoan bats are among the weakest units in the world (generally only useful as scouts). However, when boosted by the right leadership bonus (and with sheer weight of numbers), they become capable of taking on boosted dwagons.
  • Swedish online RPG satire Rubicon survival guide use a killer hamster to demonstrate the dangers of taking the rules too literally:

Horrified Barbarian: A HAMSTER!!! OH MY GOD!!!
Confused Wizard: What????
Horrified Barbarian: A hamster bite is one damage point, and it bites and bites and bites! It can take hours before you die! A slow, agonizing death ... LOOK OUT, IT'S ATTACKING!!!

Web Original

Western Animation

  • Peter the Puppy from Earthworm Jim fits in here nicely. Usually an affable, even borderline-cute sidekick, but get him pissed and he immediately transforms into a super-strong, slavering, werewolf-like critter...
  • In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Eddie Monster", "the Champ" of the imaginary friends fighting league is a harmless looking Pikachu-esque rabbit thing... that sprouts huge electrified tentacles when provoked.
  • One episode of Men in Black, in an obvious jab at ET the Extraterrestrial, has a cute and cuddly alien... which could transform into a hideous behemoth on a second's notice when hungry, and was preparing to devour the young boy who had "bonded" with him.
  • Nibbler of Futurama. It's not his fault he's an unstoppable killing machine... who can devour several hundred times his own body weight in a matter of minutes. His entire species are superintelligent warriors working to save the universe, but it's a Running Gag in any episode they appear in that they're also adorable and cuddly. His very droppings are dark matter more dense than the material in a neutron star.
  • Several of Stitch's "cousins" from Lilo & Stitch: The Series. Let's not forget Stitch himself, a synthetically crafted living war machine... In a cute fuzzy body. According to Jumba, this was an accident.

Jumba Jukiba: I tried to give you my good looks, but let's face it, something... went wrong.

    • A Disney Adventures comic showed that this is because somehow one of the creatures he was created from was... a puppy.
  • One of the "Aesop and Son" segments from Rocky and Bullwinkle has a wolf attempting to steal the dentures from a sheepdog in order to render him harmless. After actually managing to succeed, he proceeds to attack one of the sheep, immediately getting fought off by one of the sheep since it also has dentures.
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force uses this trope a lot, whether it's a little yellow dog that assrapes guys, a murderous, cokehead duck made out of used condoms and drug needles, little midgets who look like white rice and carry fishhooks to rip your dick off with...
  • Looney Tunes
    • The character Slowpoke Rodriguez is Speedy Gonzalez's cousin, and "the slowest mouse een all Mexico," but he knows hypnosis and carries a .45 revolver.
    • Bugs Bunny. Once something means war, there's no stopping him. To make that point all the clearer, at the end of this clip there's even an ominous drum boom as he says it.
  • Droopy the dog looks like he is an innocent helpless little dog but when he gets angry he will slam the villain many times before tossing them away into something that hurts even more like a cactus.
  • Tom and Jerry and friends are a cat and mouse who always have something to argue about including sometimes trying to kill one another over the simplest things how ever in certain cartoons if there is a bigger problem they are usually working together
    • Two episodes had Jerry buy a dog that was SMALLER THAN HE IS. But this dog was so fast and violent that Tom was overwelmed. The dog is actually stronger than Tom despite being 20 times smaller.
  • The deadpan little Mynah Bird in Chuck Jones' Inki series. He can demolish anything up to and including a brontosaurus, but always offscreen.
  • The Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy in Dave the Barbarian, who is a cute little piggy and a dark lord of evil.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
    • Played rather straight when Pud'n wishes for a cute bunny that will love him forever... and it immediately reveals itself to be a psychotic, murderous nightmare.
    • Also, the Happy Huggy Stuffy Bears, adorable stuffed bears that were created by Eris to sow chaos in the world by hypnotizing their owners to do their bidding. Eris' scheme is undone when one angers Mandy by saying that she'll be only the second most powerful in the world, at which point Mandy orders Grim to decapitate all of them.
    • Inverted with Billy's "son" Jeffy, a huge, hideous spider who's extremely friendly and wants only to be loved.
  • The Chubb Chubbs, from the video of the same name, are the terror of the galaxy. They look like a combination of the cutest features of piglets and ducklings... except when they're baring their several rows of shark-like teeth and eating barbarian invaders alive. They also enjoy cuddling and karaoke.
  • Catscratch had an episode which had a duckling in it—and Gordon was extremely terrified of said duckling because of an incident that happened when he was a kitten (the duckling beat the snot out of him with tremendous superhuman strength and horrific fighting skills), but later on Gordon musters up the courage to finally defeat the duckling—after it's beaten the snot out of him AGAIN.
  • Johnny Test has a cute kitty cat as one of its villains; said kitty cat possesses a cannon that turns people into cats.
  • The Fairly OddParents played with this trope as well. The Gigglepies are a race of cute little bunny like creatures that are a cross between Care Bears in terms of looks and cuteness and Pokémon in terms that they are apparently collectible. They roam the galaxy, coming in cereal boxes and use their cuteness and mind-controlling rhymes to subjugate the population, force them to buy them in excess and eventually cost the planet its freedom. Of course with the Yugopotamians, who fear anything cute, making the populace afraid of them works just as well. Once they're done looting the planet they destroy it and move on to the next one.

"ISN'T THAT CUTE!?"
"No! It's horrible! And didn't rhyme!"

  • "Cujo" the ghost dog in Danny Phantom. A small, playful, super adorable ghost puppy... that can turn into a twenty-foot monster who's aggressive meter is off the charts. "Beware of Dog" signs would be an understatement.
  • Metalocalypse: The band buys an island full of nuclear mutants and converts it into a home for "wayward kitties." The kitties kill everyone on the island.
  • Ling Ling from Drawn Together, like the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends example, is an adorable Pikachu-esque rodent... who is also a murderous Heroic Sociopath who kills at the drop of a hat (in the beginning of the show anyway). In just the first episode, he brutally kills and devours another house mate because his name is uttered 3 times. This applies to any of the Pokémon spoofing characters on the show though, as it takes the battling aspect of the series and cranks it up to Grotesque Cute levels.
  • Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, quoting Johnny: "I told you bunnies would take over the world, Plank!"
    • In that instance, the bunnies weren't so much attacking as they had reproduced so much that they flooded the cul-de-sac. A better example would be the rooster Rowlf sics on Eddy in the episode when Eddy loses his voice.
  • In the The Life and Times of Juniper Lee episode "Welcome Bat Otter", the eponymous bat otter looks like an adorable little otter with bat wings. It's threat level is hyped by the antagonist of the episode, the corrupt businessman mummy Skeeter Khommen-Gettit. It turns out it's threat isn't just hype when it eats Skeeter. The expression on the bat otter's face at the end of the episode hints that its diet isn't limited to evil magical creatures...
  • Beast Wars had a flower that looked harmless, but got its point across to Proud Warrior Race Guy Dinobot, by nailing him with a spiky seed right where he couldn't reach.

Dinobot: From now on I shoot my dinner salad before I eat it!

  • "Attack of the Twonkies" says it all in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron.
  • The "psycho duck" that Penny Proud adopts in one episode of The Proud Family. It even beat up the Gross Sisters, the neighborhood bullies!
  • South Park
    • The Pandemic episodes feature giant guinea pigs (which were actual guinea pigs filmed and placed into the cartoon), which are repelled by Peruvian pan flute bands. Several of the guinea pigs wear costumes, such as bee, dinosaur, mouse, and pirate costumes.
    • Also the Woodland Critters, who seem cute but are actually rapists with satanic powers.
    • And the cute, little goldfish who wrote murderous messages on its bowl and then followed through with them.
  • An episode of Eek! The Cat features a cute, seemingly-harmless bunny arriving at Eek's family door, as it turns out the bunny is a deranged psychopath who plots to kill Eek's family after they've thrown Eek out.
  • The Warners in Animaniacs, three cute "puppy children" who are basically avatars of chaos. And you really don't want to piss off Wakko.
  • Duck Dodgers: In "Pet Peeved", Duck Dodger's selfish demand for a pet results in him adopting "Koo-koo", an energy mutator that happens to look like a cross between a puppy, rabbit, and kitten. It becomes larger, stronger, and uglier as it absorbs electrical energy.
  • Sabrina's Secret Life. Sabrina conjures up an adorable pet, but Salem discovers that she has actually summoned an evil warlock who is trying to drain her of her powers. Unfortunately, Sabrina does not believe Salem which leads to further complications.
  • The Snork-Eater-Eater from The Snorks. Said creature was a tiny fish that could open its mouth to a massive size in order to devour the enormous Snork-Eater.
  • The Wunny Sharbit from Spliced is a cute little rabbit, WITH THE TEETH OF A SHARK AND A CHAINSAW!
  • Total Drama World Tour
    • The panda pair. Played straight with the panda that clobbered DJ, subverted with the panda that was given to Alejandro.
    • Any small and cute animal in general, for example, the baby seal. It bites Izzy in the intro.
    • Plus in "Walk like an Egyptian Part 2", Chef sent scarab beetles after the contestants. Sounds harmless, right? Wrong, a few crawled onto an intern and they ate him alive into just a skeleton in less then ten seconds
  • Invader Zim has Ultra Peepi, a classroom hamster that Zim affects to grow to the size of Godzilla. Why it grows spikes, has cybernetic parts, and breathes fire is probably Rule of Cool. However, even at his enormous size, with him rampaging the city, everyone stops to say how incredibly adorable is. In one case, as he's using a skyscraper as a toothpick after he just ate a school bus.
  • Dragon Hunters (Chasseurs de dragons), a French/Chinese cartoon series (plus one CGI movie) produced by Futurikon, has Hector, a blue-furred, dog-sized tame pet dragon with rabbit ears who accompanies the two protagonists Lian-Chu and Gwizdo on their quests and carries their weapons and equipment. (In the world of Dragon Hunters, "dragon" is merely a catch-all term for all monsters of various sizes that are not normal animals.) Hector is often mistaken for a dog by bystanders, although normal dogs do exist too and Hector can walk on his hind legs, has small fingers, is at least semi-intelligent, often sarcastic, and talks in pidgin language. In somewhat of an inversion, while he looks the part of killer rabbit, fluffy but with very sharp teeth and the ability to create small fires and explosions by piddling on things, he is a bit of a coward and serves as comic relief. In one episode Hector meets a fully grown member of his species, Big Blue, who is the size of a house and, while not very aggressive, slowly wanders around the countryside gobbling down everything he comes across in one gulp: whole cows, horses, trees, dung heaps, other dragons, people... Hector on the other hand is thoroughly domesticated; he prefers his food cooked and has shown no inclination to devour actual people.
  • "Mist Opportunities," an episode of My Life as a Teenage Robot, there is said to be a fire-breathing monster downtown, and Jenny goes there and finds a little bunny. Said bunny turns out to be the monster. So, she unsuccessfully attempts to fight it. Later on it is defeated, but now there's several more of them...
  • On Jimmy Two-Shoes, in an animal prison, a fox tries to pick a fight with a chicken. The chicken responds by eating him whole.
  • Sym-Bionic Titan gives up Mushy/Terax/497, an adorable little alien blob like thing. Did i also mention that when he dies, and no matter how that happens, he explodes with enough force to destroy an entire planet? Yeah.
  • U.S. Acres has an episode where a little creature named Al wanders onto the farm from underground. He's small, well-mannered, and speaks with a timid voice, but when Orson's evil brothers show up to steal the farm's previous water supply, he drives them off by shooting laser beams from his eyestalks.
  • In the Samurai Jack episode Jack and the Creature, an annoying but seemingly harmless creature hulks out when Jack is wounded by a robot gang.
  • In Krypto the Superdog, Mechanikat's minion Snookey Wookums, though cute-looking, is a cunning and vicious little thing.
  • In The Twisted Whiskers Show, a kitten named Cutie Snoot, although cute and sweet, she causes trouble for a dog named Goosers to earn the affection of her master.
  • Sidekicks has Laser Rabbits.
  • Snarf from Trollz is an example of this. He normally appears as a red cute-looking puppy/wombat creature, but get him mad and he turns into a vicious, hulking ogre."

Real Life

  • THIS rabbit.
    • Indeed, rabbits are an actual example. With those teeth, they can inflict quite a bit of damage, and rabbits are hardly docile creatures. Male rabbits will castrate rival males to ensure their own breeding rights. Yeah. Rabbits castrate each other. They also headbutt, and their kicks pack quite a bit of power for their size, to the point that they can break their own spine if they kick hard enough. Some rabbits are known to attack snakes. One gained fame for trying to board Jimmy Carter's fishing boat in 1979. It even was nicknamed "Killer Rabbit" by the media.
  • Domesticated dogs and cats still have hunter's instincts, and will often attack small animals they come across even if they're not hungry. Cats in particular, due to their mobility and stealthiness, are well equipped to hunt down various small animals such as birds and rodents that might be lurking in your back yard. Because they don't need the food, cats will often just play with their catches rather than eat them. For an added bonus, cats have a lot of bacteria in their mouths, which can make their bites surprisingly nasty.
  • Koalas. It's not hard to piss them off, especially if you interrupt one of their 19 hours of sleep, and they have huge teeth and claws that can do some real damage when you rile them up. Please stay away from them. Fun fact: they are always POed at you because they're coming down from a high. Eucalyptus leaves actually contain a mild toxin, to which they have built up a resistance that instead makes them stoned. Hence the sleeping 19 hours a day.
  • Wombats can do a fair amount of damage too - one naturalist ended up with a 2 cm deep bite in his leg. Through a gumboot, trousers, and thick socks. And if they get some speed up (40 km/hr at maximum, despite being generally slow) they can knock grown men over. This being Australia, their main defence against predators is to hide in a hole and use their cartilage-heavy, armour-plated arse to keep themselves from serious harm—and their modified pelvic bone that forms the aforementioned armor-plating is sturdy enough to crush a dingo's skull, if one manages to get its head into the hole before it's completely blocked off. Australia is potholed to Death World for a reason.
  • The platypus looks like an adorable beaver-duck, but the poisonous stinger of the males contains one of the nastier venoms known to man. It causes immediate hyperalgesia in humans, which is acute hypersensitivity to pain that can't be dulled by painkillers and can last weeks to months. Yikes!
  • The kangaroo. Awww, itsh godda baby in itsh pouOH GOD, THE PAIN, WHAT WITH THE KICKING AND THE RUPTURING OF THE ORGANS AND THE CRUSHING OF THE BONES!
    • You know how a kangaroo likes to deal with dingo predators? By luring them to a lake, pulling them in one by one, and drowning them. Kangas are not afraid to kill.
  • Due to causing vehicular accidents, the deadliest animal in the USA is the deer. Moose are even worse. Think you're safe in your two-ton cage of speeding metal? Think again! Hitting a deer or moose can easily cause a fatal accident. Moose legs are also uniquely suited to slide up a car hood and through the windshield in a collision.
    • Not to mention their antlers, sharp hooves, and teeth. An annoyed horse will just bite your hand really hard then let go, to tell you stay away. A deer that thinks you're trying to kill it, however, bites your hand then tries to rip your hand off.
  • While emus don't fall under the generally accepted category of "cute", they are essentially human sized birds with fluffy feathers and big, expressive eyes. They can also kick you to death in a matter of seconds. Most of those tall, long-legged, flightless birds aren't that harmless. Ostriches are reputed to be able to disembowel a lion. The emu's relative the Cassowary is essentially a Velociraptor with a beak. Also, Eye Scream, they are attracted to shiny objects, like human eyes. Which are at beak level.
  • The blue-ringed octopus. Not exactly cute, but it definitely wouldn't look very threatening, despite being one of the most poisonous sea creatures known to man. As comedian Billy Connolly says "It wouldn't fit in the palm of your hand, but if this thing's in a bad mood you don't make it to the ****** phone!"
  • Octopi are mostly known as tiny and occasionally even cute little animals that have amazing abilities of fitting into the smallest cracks and change their skin to match any surface. So when the staff of a marine aquarium decided to move their North Pacific Giant Octopus into a tank with their sharks, they didn't expect it to have any trouble staying safe. And then each night more and more of the sharks were disappearing or found dead.
  • Ferrets, minks, weasels, martens, sables, badgers and wolverines are unbelievably strong for their size. They are not afraid to fight back fiercely when threatened by greater predators, despite their cute, fluffy appearance. There's a reason why badger is a verb and Wolverine is a superhero.
    • It should be noted, though, that the European Badger is a shy social animal (they live in small family groups) that prefers to avoid confrontation and will only fight back when it is unable to escape. The badger's dubious reputation as a feriocious animal actually comes from the old "sport" of "Badger Baiting". Which, sadly, pretty much consisted of trapping a badger and forcing it to fight to the death against hunting dogs.
  • The Giant Panda. Another contender for "cutest bear" (it is a card-carrying member of the bear family, as shown by molecular genetics), a truly ridiculous amount of time, effort, and money has gone into saving these fat and lazy animals. Some people might think pandas are vegetarians because they only eat bamboo. They only eat bamboo because it's one of the only things that can't outrun them, being plants. Give an adult 200 pound panda a chance, and it will kill and eat small animals, possibly including children. Fun fact: Pandas actually have a carnivore digestive system. Its round face is the result of powerful jaw muscles, which attach from the top of the head to the jaw.
  • A article in the London newspaper Metro involved a viper that was rescued from a house in China. The rescuers tried to feed it a live mouse and the mouse killed it after a half-hour struggle. They could only theorise it had run out of venom during the capture.
  • Raccoons, anyone? They look like fuzzy little puppy-cat things with domino masks, but their teeth and claws can kill pets and send people to the emergency room. To top it off, they're the biggest carrier of rabies in North America (though domestic dogs are the biggest rabies vector in general). That's not mentioning the fact that they also tend to have really, really nasty tempers and utterly zero fear of humans.
  • Dachshunds, a.k.a. wiener dogs. They look adorable. They're also bred to go into badger holes and lure the badger out, making them cute Killer-Rabbit Killers, or at least the Hyper Competent Sidekicks thereof. "It should be no surprise the dachshund was also used to hunt wild boar in some instances. Hell, drag them to Africa and take them on a big cat safari. They just don't give a fuck. It is a good day to die.
  • Popular perception of dolphins pictures them as happy and cheerful, but their bodies have more than enough strength to severely hurt and even kill sharks and humans, two species that generally have no natural enemies. And then there are the bottlenose dolphins, which could very well be described as Flipper's evil twin. They are also known for hunting female dolphins to rape them.
  • There are some tree frogs, small and rather beautiful. And whether they are alive or dead, merely touching them with one's bare skin is a bad idea. With a tip of blowgun dart, on the other hand.... Fortunately, the ones in captivity are not fed the ants that cause them to produce said toxins.
  • Shrews are fuzzy and tiny, which is a recipe for textbook cuteness. Gram for gram, they're also the most voraciously-bloodthirsty predators on the planet, killing prey many times their own size and eating anything that moves, and consuming triple their body weight daily. Some of them have venomous saliva as well, so be glad these things are so little.
  • The honey badger is kinda cute, but it has thick, tough skin that acts as some sort of body armor, giving it some protection against the claws of large animals such as lions. Its skin is too thick for the fangs of venomous snakes to penetrate, so it can eat those. It sometimes attacks (small) crocodiles.
    • these things have been know to chase off, if not kill full grown lions. How? it uses it's small size and speed to run right under the lion, and try to rip it's balls off. Oh, and the name? Comes from the fact that they really like honey, how does it get said honey? by shoving it's face into an occupied bee hive and chowing down while ignoring the bees protests, and keep in mind, these are African honey bees, aka Killer Bees.
      • Actually, there is no conclusive evidence that the Honey Badger rips the balls off of predators to drive them away. What they really do is no less badass, though. These little guys will growl hiss and charge at their attackers to frighten them away. And, if that doesn't work? They produce a rather foul smell from their behinds, much like skunks. And, yes, it's quite effective in driving predators away.
    • They're also very smart, being one of the few animals that have been documented using tools (A Honey Badger was filmed using a log to help it reach a small bird that was tangled in some vines).
    • However, it should be noted that the Honey Badger's Memetic Badass status has been exaggerated somewhat. While they are fearless and will fiercely defend themselves when cornered, they prefer to avoid confrontation and will often try to burrow/run away if they can.
  • Chimpanzees. Most funny and human among the whole lot of funny monkeys, right? In reality they are insanely strong (a 70 kg male can lift up to 300 kg; less surprising when you take a look at those muscles) and very dangerous when pissed off. Some have killed adult people and even kidnapped and eaten human babies. Intra-species murder, wars between bands, and even cannibalism aren't unknown in them either. And yet people still think worse of the comparatively harmless gorilla...
  • Pigs are generally thought of as ugly, fat, listless, and generally harmless creatures... unless you are a pig farmer. Editor has been told that a farmer being trampled (and subsequently eaten) is not unheard-of.
  • While Bulls are already perceived for being badasses, Cows aren't that much far behind in that regard.
  • Squirrels are cute, nervous, and fuzzy. Harmless, right? Or are they arboreal piranhas?
  • The Cone Snail. Many people pick them up because they're pretty... and get a deadly neurotoxic harpoon stuck right into them! Due to the speed at which the snail fires the harpoon, they are actually the fastest snails on earth.
  • From the right perspective, jellyfish can look like gracefully-flowing gossamer, living chandeliers. But one touch and you'll know what days of agony is like if you're lucky; if not, and it's one of the nastier species, you'll learn what a few minutes of agony and the afterlife are like.
  • Man-o-wars. Look like jellyfish but are really a colony of different organisms where one is a purple floating sac and the rest are tentacles that make digestion and attack. From outside the water, it looks beautiful. Under the water, they are goddamn painful and, in some cases, can kill a person.
  • Great tits. They're relatives of the chickadees, have a name that induces giggles, and in winter they prey on hibernating bats by ripping their heads off.
  • Chow Chows basically just look like big balls of fluff, but they have a reputation for being aggressive - to the point that the words "chow" or "chow mix" are basically code for "be on your guard" in your average veterinary clinic.
  • Sloths. They're big, sleepy, slow-moving critters... living in jungles. Y'know, where EVERYTHING tries to eat you. Think about that for a second.
    • Not to mention that their ancestors were roughly the size of elephants and could basically do whatever the fuck they wanted without having to fear predators.
  • Anteaters don't even have teeth, but they've got claws to compensate. And if you ever see one of these walking on their hind legs, run. It wants to hug you, and if you put two and two together, you'll realize it isn't a friendly hug (the biggest anteaters kill predators that way).
  • The clione, nicknamed the "sea angel," sure looks pretty as it peacefully swims through the water...until it opens its many-tendriled mouth to catch its prey.
  • Poison ivy is gorgeous. It has glossy green leaves which are red when new, and a stunning purple fall color. It also has attractive white berries that birds love. It causes ferocious allergic reactions. Once it's on the skin, most efforts to alleviate the pain will only serve to spread the irritant oils. It grows quickly, and with its berries so appealing to birds, spreads rapidly. If burned, its irritants will be carried in the smoke, and will tear up the lungs of anyone who inhales that smoke. It also seems to be responding to elevating atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by increasing the potency of its irritants.
    • On the other hand, half of the population likely to be exposed to it is just flat out immune. Amusingly, when the MythBusters attempted to test poison ivy home remedies, none of them proved to be susceptible, though admittedly it could conceivably have been a false negative, as it's possible they had never been exposed to it before; like all allergic responses, the initial exposure does not produce an effect but every exposure thereafter does.
  • Skunks. They're cute, gentle, and will totally ruin your day if you even make a wrong move around them.
  • A lot of plants look totally harmless but are actually quite dangerous. For instance, Oleander has beautiful flowers but it is very toxic.
    • Special mention should go to teddy bear cholla, a cactus which, despite the name, is phenomenally un-cuddly. The name comes from the fact that it looks almost fuzzy, which, combined with the strange shapes it tends to grow in, makes it look kind of comical. The "fuzz," however, is actually thousands upon thousands of hair-thin, transparent, barbed thorns that come out at the slightest touch and lodge in your skin. Guess everything really IS worse with bears.
      • Honourable mention must go to the giant stinging tree. It does the same while looking EVEN more unassuming. One slight breeze and everything in a 3 block radius suddenly feels like it's ON FIRE!
  • Grasshopper mice are tiny, fuzzy, and cute. They also howl like wolves and supplement their usual diet of insects with the occasional snake.
  • Inverted with the Hickory Horned Devil caterpillar, the largest caterpillar in North America and larval form of the regal or royal walnut moth. It's five inches long, covered in menacing-looking spines from head to end, and yet it's completely and totally harmless.
  • Show breeds of Cocker Spaniel are subject to a phenomenon known as "Cocker Spaniel Rage," in which they flip out and attack for no apparent reason. That's right, Lady may one day try to kill you out of the blue.
  • Leopard Geckos are adorable, harmless-looking desert lizards, more well-known for their easygoing nature as a pet than for their ability to kill venomous scorpions twice their size.
  • The cassowary, a rather silly-looking flightless bird best known for having an oddly-shaped head, also sports a set of claws that make it pretty much the closest modern-day equivalent of a velociraptor. If you manage to piss one off, it can and will eviscerate you, and there are numerous cases of death-by-cassowary on record.
  • Swans: graceful, regal, a symbol of love ... and equipped with wings strong enough to break your arm at a blow if you come near their eggs.
  • Velvet worms. Probably another Ugly Cute example, but they're soft and squishy things that crawl slowly over the forest floor on stubby legs. And are predators. That can kill prey the size of tarantulas. (They do it by spraying a sticky slime that quickly hardens into a net to trap their prey. And then they close in and eat the helpless prey alive.)
  • Norway lemmings. Some local names for them reportedly translate to killer mice!
  • Moles. That's right, the blinky/blind, fuzzy, shy-but-friendly little guys. These guys may be cute, but they are vicious little blighters: they are predators capable of hunting underground, and burrowing their own tunnels to do so, and are incredibly territorial. Oh, and cannibalistic- put two moles together for any length of time and you end up with one fat mole.
  • Do not go to pet a dingo. They might look like Labrador Retrievers, but they're very much not domesticated, so for the love of god and for the love of your future children, do NOT pet it!
  • Tasmanian devils. They're actually much cuter in real life than the cartoon character, but they are obligate carnivores with the strongest bite of any mammal, able to take down prey as large as a kangaroo. Not to mention they're extremely temperamental and loud.
  • Inverted with the Horseshoe Crab. They have dangerous-looking spikes on their tails and bodies and tails that look like stingray tails, but they're harmless and can't really hurt you.
  • The mantis shrimp is a small, often colorful little critter that lives in coral dens and mostly keeps to itself. To eat it's dinner of molluscs and crustaceans though, the mantis shrimp doesn't bother with prying them open: it BLASTS them open with it's clublike arms, which strike with the acceleration of a .22 BULLET. The force generated per area is so powerful that the mantis shrimp can COMPLETELY MISS it's target and STILL do damage by force alone. Captive mantis shrimp have been known to crack or shatter aquarium glass with a single blow.
  • An awful lot of tropical reef fishes and invertebrates, including the drop-dead gorgeous ones popular for saltwater aquaria, are deadly poisonous, and even the nonvenomous species may sport razor-sharp spines for protection. Heck, even the coral can cut you to ribbons if the current makes you bump into it.
  • Shrikes are small, cute songbirds that kill mice and lizards by impaling them on thorns, then use the neatly strung-up corpses as a larder.
  1. ↑ It's not a rodent, it's a lagomorph!
  2. ↑ both in critical hits and attack options, i.e. the big combatant can try to crush the small one with sheer weight without having to crawl a maze of wrestling rules
  3. ↑ i.e. in the first melee round a prepared defender may attack first, ignoring Action Initiative
  4. ↑ you
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