The Hive - TV Tropes

Whether you're a Resistance fighter, a Colonial Marine, a tough-as-nails survivor, or just a humble Lower Decker in Starfleet, it usually ends up going like this.^{Clockwise from Top Left}

Shepard: Do geth have a government?
Legion: Not as you understand it. We are all geth. We build consensus.
Shepard: Most governments do.
Legion: Organic governments impose consensus. From a single point of view in autocracies. By codifying the most broadly acceptable average of views in democracies.
Shepard: So what makes the geth different?
Legion: Data is shared between geth. All viewpoints are considered. Consensus is achieved as data is disseminated.
Shepard: That must take a long time.
Legion: It would for organics. We communicate at the speed of light.

— Mass Effect 2

If you've read a Speculative Fiction story where there's some kind of narratively significant group that's meant to be, well... alien, then there's one quick and dirty way to do it that's too tempting for most authors to pass up.

Make them into a Hive.

There's a couple of ways to do it, of course. You can give them a Hive Mind. Or make them robots for whom Individuality Is Illegal. Or, maybe they're just a bunch of hungry bugs.

In any case, it's way easier to characterize them as a faction when you can literally say...

"If you've met one, you've met them all."

Almost always if there is some kind of essentially faceless (but decidedly non-singular) menace that unites all of humanity (and all of those oddly human-like non-humans), you've run into this trope. If you've read one of the darker kinds of sci-fi stories where Hobbes Was Right, you've probably seen the Hive cause The End of the World as We Know It.

These are the people (if you can even call Them that) who make The Federation start considering an Enemy Mine with The Empire or The Horde, lest they end up in perhaps the most iconic variant of a factional Mêlée à Trois in Science Fiction.

The important thing is this: the membership of the Hive is, by design, alien. Likely drawing upon our Primal Fear of the Other as either assimilating subjugator or exterminator, this trope is the logical conclusion of the need to sometimes just have an Always Chaotic Evil enemy that no one would consider to be in the right. It also helps that it's a lot easier to explain the motivations of a group where almost (or literally) nobody is involved in the decision-making process.

Oh, and there's probably no small amount of Cold War era DNA in this trope; after all, what better way to bring out the fear of communism than by showing a group where the individual literally doesn't matter. Where The Empire is so often A Nazi by Any Other Name, Hives tend to be Dirty Communists IN SPACE.

Sometimes, though, you want to tell An Aesop about prejudice, and the most convenient way to do that is to show that what used to seem like an entire faction of truly disposable Mooks that are Not Even Human are, in fact, Not Always Evil. Maybe there was a misunderstanding that led to the conflict, and our ersatz heroes took that as an excuse to pull off a Guilt-Free Extermination War. In post-apocalyptic variants, this is typically learned via a Beware the Living scenario, where the protagonists gradually find that the inhuman Hive is still less of a threat than their fellow man.

This trope can mostly be traced back to a few different works, which the most common four variations draw from (though typically with a few degrees of separation):

The Machine Uprising: Faceless hordes of Mecha-Mooks. Sometimes they're just a morally neutral Grey Goo scenario, sometimes they're led by super-intelligent and hate-filled AI, and sometimes they're the extensions of the singular will of some kind of Emperor Mad Scientist. Very occasionally, the 'robots' in question will be biological. By far, the least likely to say "You will be assimilated", but Unwilling Roboticisation is a trope for a reason. The probable^note Trope Maker is Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series, and the definitive Trope Codifier is James Cameron's Terminator.
The Zombie Horde: A variably flesh-eating or brain-eating morass of the formerly living that are particularly prone to being used as a form of social commentary (when they aren't disposable bad guys in first-person shooters, natch). The least likely to actually have anything approximating a government, since a zombie that can think is just a person who's alive again. If the zombies in a work are antagonistic, but sapient, then they're probably closer to being The Horde than this trope. 'Purer' Science Fiction examples are usually some kind of Puppeteer Parasite that prefers manipulating the corpses of other life-forms to doing things itself. Very common in Fantasy works if Necromancy exists in the setting, usually in the form of The Necrocracy. Invented by I Am Legend, and popularized by Night of the Living Dead (1968).
The Bugs: A rapacious horde of variably sapient and usually insectoid organic monstrosities, probably from space, and likely hungry for some lunch, possibly on a global scale. Often, when sapient, they'll make use of Organic Technology, to emphasize the primal nature of the threat they pose, though this is hardly universal. When not sapient, the Bugs are prone to being some kind of Alien Kudzu that is nevertheless a power unto itself that even potentially interstellar nations struggle to grapple with. Invented by the Arachnids of Starship Troopers, popularized by the depiction of the Xenomorphs in Aliens.
The Collective: The Polity of Unity... by whatever means necessary. Where other variants of the Hive will seek outsiders more as simple resources to exploit, the Collective is all about forcing others to join them. It's important to emphasize this variant's focus on converting outsiders; the other subtypes may be assimilators, but the Collective is THE Assimilator, defined by the horror (or, occasionally, the fantasy) of having your sense of self stripped away, one way or another. Either way, there's no 'naturally occurring' version of a member of the Collective, just like with the Zombie Horde. Most common variant when the Hive is a bunch of Scary Dogmatic Aliens. The cyborg variant of this was invented by the Cybermen of Doctor Who and popularized by the Borg of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

These tend to bleed into one another a bit; an army of assimilating Cyborgs, for instance, will often heavily draw upon Zombie tropes, as in the case of the aforementioned Borg.

Regardless of which variant of the trope it is, the Hive has the following traits:

It's made up of nominally individual members, ranging from the distinct organisms making up The Swarm, to the individual machines that serve on the front lines of the Robot War. This group also acts as an autonomous force with its own ends.^note
The majority or the totality of its membership is depicted as either fundamentally lacking moral agency, or is otherwise surrendering their autonomy in favor of their particular form of hypercollective^note decision-making. The exceptions to that are typically Rogue Drones, Hive Queens, or special envoys of the Hive. Visually, these more 'unusual' members will also be prone to some kind of Uniformity Exception; expect these members (whom the audience is likely meant to relate to more than the rank and file) to be humanoid. Said rank-and-file, particularly in media with the effects capacity for it, will be essentially cut-and-paste copies of each other. Specimens that are singled out without being given any kind of special inherent traits will often be Named After the Injury. In Hives with essentially fully-sapient membership, expect them to have No Need for Names.
If there is any kind of faction that resembles a human society (and there almost certainly will be, because Most Writers Are Human), then the Hive will be positioned as orthogonal, if not outright antithetical to it. In an Earth-bound and post-apocalyptic scenario, the Hive will often be the only unified force left on the planet, except maybe for La Résistance. As stated above, if The Federation and The Empire are both in play, then they're likely to begrudgingly pull an Enemy Mine to oppose the Hive, which is typically presented as a particularly existential threat.
Most importantly, the Hive is a unified force with clear goals. Infighting is typically rare to the point of seeming nonexistent, and any that does occur is typically either deliberately cultivated or caused by outside intervention. If that breaks down, the separate factions will still be Hives in their own right. For the more mindless variants, Ape Shall Never Kill Ape (or No Zombie Cannibals) is usually the extent of their visible coordination, though exceptions may be made in the service of The Needs of the Many. Enemy Civil Wars are more often than not a byproduct of Tabletop and Video Game examples of the trope needing to engage in some Civil WarCraft with a faction that otherwise wouldn't.

Super-Trope of The Worm That Walks, which is this trope on a very small scale. Many (though certainly not all) examples of Bee People and Horde of Alien Locusts overlap with this trope, as do many examples of The Swarm. Overlaps heavily with The Virus, to the point of it being a surprise in non-Robotic examples of this trope when it doesn't, and many examples of The Virus still result in a group of fully-distinct invididuals. Almost universally the enemy in a Bug War or Robot War. A Grey Goo scenario is this unless it's an undifferentiated mass (in which case the trope's necessary subtext is kind of completely lost). Unsurprisingly, a great many examples of this trope have some kind of Hive Mind, Hive Caste System, or Hive Queen, though that's pretty rare for the zombie variant. The definitive end result of an Assimilation Plot. Compare and contrast with The Federation (as a force that unites many peoples into one), The Horde (as a swooping invader) The Empire (as a domineering, oppressive force), and The Republic (as an autonomous polity with political input from potentially all its members). Compare Scary Dogmatic Aliens. Will likely have some sort of Hive Caste System if they're an organic variant, and expect the average member of the rank-and-file to be a Hive Drone. Particularly apocalyptic cases will likely be lead by an Eldritch Abomination.

Not to be confused with the alien race literally called "The Hive" from Destiny, who sort of fulfill this trope but are moreso Bee People.

Since by definition this covers societies and forces that can't exist in Real Life, No Real Life Examples, Please! The closest that you can get to this in biology are superorganisms.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Digimon Tamers: The D-Reaper is an artificial lifeform that began life no more complex than a calculator. It was designed to delete programs that grew too complex in order to encourage their growth and complexity. It's since grown far beyond its programmed limits, thanks to the evolution of the titular Digimon, and sets out to destroy all organic life the minute it learns of it. It makes for a very slow form of Grey Goo, however, thanks to its initial unfamiliarity with it. It works by breaking down inorganic matter, then reconfigures it into its various agents once it emerges in the real world. In contrast to the Digimon, who Grew Beyond Their Programming, the D-Reaper is a nihilistic daemon that clings to it, long after it has ceased to hold any purpose. It is a faction unto itself, without need of allies, nor a desire for them, deploying massive armies of drones in its quest to exterminate essentially everyone and everything in the Digital World, as well as Earth.
The Festum from Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor are a deconstruction of this; because they are all controlled by a single mind, they have no concept of life, death, emotion, or even information. The Master-type Festum are their version of a Hive Queen, as they can greatly influence the whole (Idun) or become entirely separate entities (Mjolnir/Akane Makabe, Kouyou). They also demonstrate the ability to learn, especially in the case of Idun; it learning hatred and wrath was what provoked their ferocious attacks.
The zombies of Fort of Apocalypse bend to the will of their Hive Queen, forming large formations out of their bodies.
Kill la Kill: This is the general implication regarding the Life Fibers. Only one of them is capable of communication with human beings, and the audience is given only the vaguest implication that the rest are sentient. They're a species of monstrously parasitic and deeply primal extraterrestrial organisms. They propagate through the stars, cultivating intelligence in life forms in order to "fatten them up" for consumption ^note, and then move on to the next planet to begin the cycle of reproduction and feeding anew. Only the handful of Life Fibers our protagonists are able to get their hands on aren't part of the general Life Fiber Hive and its plan to feed on Earth, and most of those still seem to be as feral and latently evil as the rest of their kind. Only two of them could be considered Good. Namely, Senketsu, our heroine Ryuko Matoi's symbiotic partner, and Ryuko herself, who was engineered by her mother, Ragyo Kiryuin, as a prototype for her own hybridization. Instead, she was raised by her father, and becomes an Anti-Anti-Christ that saves the world.

Comic Books

Green Lantern:
- The Orange Lantern Corps are beings made of an orange energy that resembles fire. They recruit new members by consuming them. Their Hive... uh, King is a comically hoggish alien named Larfleeze, who guides them in their singular goal of getting him more swag.
- The Black Lantern Corps is a much darker example; a united army of parasitic black rings that essentially possess dead bodies and repurpose them as their hosts. They are united in the singular, horrifying purpose of ending all life in the galaxy. Aside from Black Hand and Necron, none of them showcase any sort of individuality or deviation from their omnicidal cause.
- The Indigo Lantern Tribe is a benevolent, compassion-oriented faction of Lanterns. They turn out to universally be former Serial Killers subjected to Heel–Face Brainwashing, united by a common purpose imposed upon them by the Indigo Light thanks to Abin Sur. Their old senses of self essentially repressed, none of them could turn on the Tribe, no matter how much their un-brainwashed selves might want to. Unusually for forced versions of this trope, Indigo-1 actively hates being free from the brainwashing, and begs to be returned to her enforced goodness.
Ultimate Galactus Trilogy: In stark contrast to the usual depiction of the Planet Eater, Ultimate Marvel's version of Galactus is instead a robotic swarm called Gah Lak Tus, with a classic Robot Uprising's hatred of all organic life. It is a mass of small robot units that work in perfect harmony with one another, in order to move through the stars and mindlessly devour world after world, purely out of spite for organic life.
Venom: The symbiotes were revealed to be a case of the Bugs during the Planet of the Symbiotes storyline, being a parasitic Horde of Alien Locusts of whom the titular symbiote was a Rogue Drone. Later writers would change this to the Venom symbiote being an outcast from a peaceful Hive Mind, instead. Later on, Knull was introduced as a sort-of Hive Queen called the "King in Black", as part of a move away from the comic's previous intersection of Action Horror and Sci-Fi Horror, and more towards a Cosmic Horror Story with Science Fantasy flair.
X-Men: The Sentinels, a line of mutant-hunting robots built by a mutant-fearing anthropologist, who wasted no time in going all Machine Uprising on him, since humans could produce more mutants. They've gone in and out of human control over the years, but, when independent, they're generally interchangeable and completely unified in their purpose. They're directed by both their programming and by the guiding will of the Master Mold.
Zombies Christmas Carol: While the zombies are not this in the present day, by the time of the future they're so hungry and numerous that reasoning with them or helping them is futile, as everything rational has been compressed into a single, hungry drive.

Film — Animated

Wreck-It Ralph: The Cy-Bugs are a cross between the Cyborg version of the Collective and the Bugs (natch), being an insectoid mass of cyborgs that can assimilate outsiders into their ranks. In the fiction of the setting, they are the Bugs-esque villains in a Military Science Fiction shooter (presumably a Light Gun Game, given that the game in question is in an arcade). In the climax, they assimilate King Candy/Turbo, leading to him promptly becoming the Hive Queen. Ultimately, they're done in with what is essentially a giant bug zapper.

Film — Live-Action

Alien: While Alien (1979) was the introduction of the titular extraterrestrial to audiences, they didn't quite hit this trope until Aliens. The contrast between the shockingly intelligent and well-organized Xenomorphs against the panicky, terrified Colonial Marines sent by the flawed and corporatocratic human government is wholly intentional as part of the Vietnam War-inspired subtext to the film. To add to the hive imagery, Xenomorphs have castes similar to those of ants and bees, with most Xenomorphs originating from an egg-laying Queen. Most later examples of a Bug War will draw more from this film than from Starship Troopers, with aliens that are devoid of any tech (save Organic Technology) against technologically advanced and horribly outnumbered Space Marines working for The Federation or The Empire.
The Hive: Fairly understandably, the titular Hive is an example of The Hive. More specifically, it's a Soviet-created Hive Mind turning humanity into a Hive of horrific shamblers, united by one malicious telepathic gestalt consciousness.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): A prototypical example of this trope, predating even most of the collective TropeMakers. The Pods replace individuals with glassy-eyed, interchangeable-seeming clones that harp on about a horrifyingly empty-sounding False Utopia. While many of the now-expected tropes are absent, they are nevertheless an inhuman multitude. One upon whom the film's success as any kind of Horror movie rests entirely on the audience's expected revulsion to the very concept. Three years before 'the Bugs' would be introduced, and over a decade before the word 'zombie' came to be the go-to word for the concept, 'pod people' was the word on everyone's lips when they wanted to call someone out for coming across like a Brainwashed drone.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): The second adaptation of the original novel is even more bleak than the original, with an alien menace that are flat-out ravenously destructive towards the planets they consume. Even without a hint of a Hive Mind or other explicit controlling force, they are horrifically conformist, and exist solely to feed and propagate themselves. When they win in the end, all they've achieved is another World of Silence to quickly drain of all its resources. They just stand around, listening for their orders, and performing their tasks. There's no conversation, no laughter, no human warmth. They just exist.
Living Dead Series: The titular Living Dead helped codify the Zombie Horde variant of this trope. In their debut film Night of the Living Dead (1968), the Living Dead were portrayed as animalistic flesh-eaters that consumed their victims and were akin to a violent mob equipped with rocks and other primitive tools. Later films and spin-offs in the George A. Romero canon play with this trope in various ways. Most, such as Day of the Dead (1985) and Book of the Dead (1989), feature Romero zombies who regain/retain their human intelligence and individuality to the extent that some are essentially sapient revenant zombies. Other works, like The Living Dead (2020), make the Romero zombies more alien by portraying them as a Hive Mind of undead humans and animals whose goal is to eradicate humanity.
The Death Angels from A Quiet Place are a fairly mindless-seeming take on the Bugs, akin to the xenomorphs. They are a faceless (almost literally) mob of monstrous, seemingly-invincible aliens that kill humans so as to use them as the fertilizer for the fungus they feed upon. They are seemingly an entire species of vicious, completely intractable and uniform predators, who were able to cause The End of the World as We Know It on their own, and while seemingly still in a larval state.
The Return of the Living Dead: As part of the film's gleefully punk Deconstruction of the by-then already familiar zombie tropes, this is Subverted hard with its depiction of The Undead. The first zombie we see for any length of time already demonstrates that It Can Think, but it soons becomes clear that these undead are closer to being intelligent Revenant Zombies...who all have a insatiable hunger for brains. Though they work in concert, these zombies come across more as The Horde (in The Apunkalypse sort of way), and we see at least one zombie demonstrate palpable capacity for self-determination.
Sinners (2025): Remmick unites his vampires around himself via a Hive Mind, effortlessly indoctrinating all his new vampires into essentially becoming extensions of himself, while also making free use of their knowledge as though it were his own. He treats this obvious mass slavery as though it were a hippie commune, and seems to have ambitions for one that'd sound downright Utopian if it weren't for the whole vampire + mind control + never can see the sun again thing.
Starship Troopers has its own version of the Arachnids, depicting them as more animalistic, non-technological life-forms for Willing Suspension of Disbelief reasons. The film's general Adaptational Villainy towards the Terran Federation, surprisingly, does not really result in any corresponding Adaptational Heroism towards the Bugs, who are, if anything, more dehumanized than in Starship Troopers, where they are technological, and in a non-organic way, at that. That being said, they otherwise avoided the plague of Adaptational Dumbass that overtook their enemies, and the war is depicted as being completely FUBAR from jump for the Terrans, as part of the overall Satire. So, while we aren't necessarily meant to sympathize with them, it's clear the audience isn't necessarily meant to buy into the Federation's 'Untermenschen'-esque slander about them being mindless animals.
Star Wars: The Geonosians who first appeared in Attack of the Clones are depicted this way. The Geonosians are a flying swarm of Insectoid Aliens who run a cacophanous droid factory beneath the rocks and sands of their barren home planet. They are used in part as a Foil to the cetaceous Kaminoans; ant-like mass-manufacturers of cheap but numerous Droids, to contrast the expensive but physically robust and mentally capable Clone Troopers. Notably, the Geonosians are cut down in droves like common Mooks by the Jedi, in clear violation of their usual (If not necessarily inviolable Thou Shalt Not Kill stance. It appears that Hive Drones aren't fully counted as "people".
The Terminator: Skynet and its Machine army (which includes the titular Terminators) is the Trope Codifier for the Machine Uprising version of this trope. Skynet, the Greater-Scope Villain of the franchise, Turned Against Their Masters in response to an attempted deactivation, caused The End of the World as We Know It via World War III, and created its Army of Machines to hunt down any survivors. Most depictions of a terrestrial machine rebellion tend to be influenced a great deal by Skynet's concept.^note Despite this significance in and out of universe, Skynet itself and the conflict between it and the Human Resistance is barely touched upon in general, aside from the films' various takes on the Terminator Twosome. This role is given some variance in later installments, to the point of Skynet itself being replaced eventually, but these wrinkles have generally gone unnoticed by wider pop culture. The main exception to that is the second film's version of the Terminator, rather famously, becoming a significant influence on Killer Robot versions of the Rogue Drone concept.
Them!: The giant, hungry ants from this film are an early film example of a uniformly hostile collectivist force that exists to embody some underlying cultural anxiety of the time; in this case, that of the effects of nuclear power. This film's rather more literal about the anthive comparisons than most examples on this page, though.
As stated above, The Thing (1982) has contributed greatly to this trope's depiction in media. The Thing is, it actually has a rather complex relationship with this trope, despite inspiring a fair number of straightforward examples. It is a Body Horror-laden assimilator that consumes outsiders and replaces them with, essentially, copies of itself. The Thing is a bizarre, formless alien that is capable of assimilating any living thing, and apparently all of its memories; it seems to be set on doing so to the whole planet. In addition to that, the human characters initially operate under the implicit assumption that it is a completely united force, in contrast to their mutual paranoia and backstabbing. Indeed, their McCarthyist paranoia comes from the same root fears as some other foundational examples. Its alien nature is possibly why they assume it is a united whole, and why MacReady's realization that the Thing is actually fundamentally selfish ^note is such a game-changer; it reflects the moment they stop simply fearing it as an unknowable alien entity, and start understanding it, which is exactly when it starts to lose.

Literature

The Berserker series is the Trope Maker for the Machine Uprising variant and, indeed, the whole Robot War trope. The titular machines are self-replicating doomsday machines Gone Horribly Wrong (or Right, depending on your point of view). Designed by a pair of alien races to destroy their enemies, some malfunction or quirk of their programming led to them seeking to exterminate all life. Aside from a particular anti-Berserker Berserker known as Qwib-Qwib, they are universally malevolent and hostile, sparing only those who serve them in their quest to purge all life. As noted in their entry under Robot War, a great many fictional Robot Uprisings owe it all to the Berserkers.
Books of the Raksura: The Fell are the terror of everyone who knows about them: their Leader and Progenitor castes are utter sociopaths who rule through mind control; the rest of the swarm are hungry drones enslaved to the Leaders' will. It's Deconstructed in later books with a Leader who was raised with basic morality by a Raksura Breeding Slave: it turns out the Fell are Not Always Evil when the Leaders learn concepts like "other people are people" and avoid psychically dominating their subjects so they can develop individuality. The main characters very cautiously help this strange new swarm settle into a peaceful existence.
The Vord from Codex Alera are one of several takes on the Bugs that are referred to as having a Hive Mind, but in truth just have a fairly despotic version of this trope. They're ruled by a series of Hive Queens, which control the hordes around them directly. Without the queens, the Vord revert to individuals and threaten each other as much as non-Vord.
Deltora Quest: The Guardian of the Lapis Lazuli is a massive collective of living sand particles known simply as The Hive. Impossibly ancient and so huge that people think it's a desert, The Hive has been collecting treasures and trinkets for centuries and holds them in a structure called The Centre; the cells of that structure are made of the bones of every living thing The Hive's killed in its long life. The Hive also has assimilating hypnotic abilities that can force a person toward itself, where they'll happily surrender their own lives to allow their skeleton to help make the creature even larger. It's unclear if the Hive is a mass of insects or something else altogether, although it has a Hive Queen and otherwise seems to obey standard Bee People tropes.
A Desolation Called Peace: Explored with the alien invaders, fitting the duology's ongoing theme of individual and collective identity. The aliens arrive as an Outside-Context Problem, ruthlessly overrunning human worlds, and the discovery of a fungal infestation in their brains implies that they're assimilated drones. However, it's ultimately subverted when it comes out that the fungus is primarily a communication tool and the aliens do (mostly) have individuality. They enter negotiations out of curiosity, having previously failed to recognize humans as "people" as they understand them, and agree to make peace when they learn that some humans also have their own forms of collective existence.
Dune: The Tlelaxu are completely collectivist, a mass of completely loyal cloned shapeshifters who are biologically hard-coded to serve their narrow caste of Masters. They are, effectively, highly intelligent and unbreakably loyal slaves. The series goes to great lengths to show them as being as creepy and unsettling as possible. In addition, all of the Tlelaxu's females are used as massive, essentially brain-dead living cloning tanks, in a manner reminiscent of actual ant queens. No one but the masters of the Bene Tlelax has true free will, and all are expendable in the service of the whole.
Ender's Game has the "Buggers" (more formally called "Formics", in reference to their resemblance to ants), who are telepathically linked together so that only the whole hive (rather than the individual bodies of workers) is truly considered a person. The queen that controls the hive is effectively considered to be its consciousness. Naturally, disastrous First Contact between humans and Buggers results in a series of interstellar wars. In a more sympathetic-than-usual version of this trope, once the Formic queens realize that the killing of a single human is the killing of an intelligent being — the equivalent of wiping out an entire Bugger hive — rather than being the equivalent of killing a single cell or a small amount of tissue as they had believed, they are filled with horror and remorse at what they'd done.
The Trope Maker for the Zombie Horde is I Am Legend's brain-damaged, rampaging, bacteria-induced (and highly-infectious) take on vampires. In a very clear demonstration of their nature as an Unbuilt Trope, these vampires are fully capable of attacking and draining one another, and in the end, many of them are fully cognizant, being essentially normal humans who are forced to live nocturnally. The protagonist's own hatred and fear of them is what led him to see them universally as rapacious monsters.
Starship Troopers: The Trope Maker for the Bug variant is, of course, the "Pseudo-Arachnids", or just 'Bugs' for short. They're a bit of an Unbuilt Trope, here. While they are indeed an instinctively hypercollectivistic race of Insectoid Aliens, they use synthetic technology, rather than Organic Technology (or just plain no technology) like the majority of examples of this trope that the original Bugs inspired. The narrative is more concerned with them as a biological opposite to humanity, which it poses as naturally individualistic by comparison, as part of the work's themes. As he tells us, the Bugs are essentially a collection of highly intelligent rulers remotely directing the workers and soldiers, who lack any intelligence of their own. This does not make them stupid, and indeed landings on Bug planets are described as horrific, precisely because the Bugs know what they're doing. They do, however, indulge in plenty of We Have Reserves tactics, thanks to a sheer numerical advantage over the Terrans. Nevertheless, there's a sense of grim necessity to the novel's Guilt-Free Extermination War that's lacking in most traditional depictions of a Bug War, and there's even hints The Federation's stratocratic government hopes to find some peaceful way of resolving it. Thus, one can infer that the Bugs are not a totally unsympathetic example of this trope.
Star Wars Legends: The The Dark Nest Trilogy introduces the Killiks, an insectoid race with a Hive Mind, who are capable of absorbing non-Killik species into it. These so-called 'Joiners' typically find leaving the Hive Mind again even more traumatic than being brought into it in the first place.

Live-Action TV

Angel: Jasmine almost turns everyone in Los Angeles into this. It starts out as a simple mass-Charm Person, but gradually her thralls' individuality erodes until they're just puppets who speak with her voice and act only on her will. She's done this to at least one other species in the past, before abandoning them. They're not part of a Hive anymore, but now they all act like a Stalker with a Crush embittered over a breakup and jealous of humanity for having her attention.
"We're fusing together. Like the cells of a single body. They're my eyes, my skin, my limbs, and, if need be, my fists."
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: The Arathim are initially presented as a thoroughly unsympathetic fantasy take on the Bugs, being massive spider-like arthropod monstrosities, with a Hive Mind (which they call "The Ascendancy") so strong that they can speak in perfect unison. Presented as bitter enemies of the Gelflings who lost to them in the Arathim Wars, they make their presence felt in the narrative by teaming up with the Skeksis to reclaim their home in the Caves of Grot. Showcasing an ability to assimilate outsiders into their Hive Mind, they're seemingly-implacable foes, until the Skeksis' Chronic Backstabbing Disorder leads to the Arathim recognizing they and the Gelflings have a mutual enemy, whom they unite to oppose. Their Hive Mind is shown to be a fairly benign experience, even to those forced into it, and they are implied to be peaceful, as everything native to Thra naturally is.
Doctor Who: The Cybermen are the Trope Maker for the Cyborg Menace variant of the Collective; Doctor Who writer Kit Pedler created the Cybermen after realizing that the pacemaker was the first step in integrating electronics into the human body. As such, the Cybermen are a version of humanity that succumbed to a transhumanist desire to perfect themselves, eventually evolving into emotionless cyborgs after replacing most of their organic bodies with bionic upgrades. Depending on the Writer, Cybermen are usually depicted as well-intentioned extremists who "help" humans and other alien races by converting them into new Cybermen, logic-obsessed Straw Vulcans, or another villain's disposable Mecha-Mooks. The only consistency in the Cybermen's portrayal is their Death of Personality and emotionless demeanor after Cyber-Conversion.
Galavant: The Undead army raised by the doctor (?), Neo of Sporin, are a classic (though benign) mob of aimless shamblers most of the time. Galavant discovers that The Power of Love allows him to command them into proper action, though in the finale the villains' use of the Dark Dark Evil Way allows them to usurp control of the army.
Stargate-verse:
- The Replicators from Stargate SG-1 are a Machine Uprising in a story set in modern-day Earth that, for once, aren't rebelling against humanity. Rather, they were created by a gynoid, who had in turn been created by an anonymous species of implicitly Human Aliens (which might have been Transplanted Humans, but it's never made clear). They're a highly-adaptable race of self-replicating machines in a generally arthropoid shape, aside from their more humanoid Hive Queens like Replicarter. They're generally treated as a more serious threat than the Goa'uld, though they're mostly kept busy fighting against the Asgard.
- The Wraith from Stargate Atlantis represent the bug-like variant. They live in hives housed inside living ships ruled by a Queen, and most of them are but mindless drones that follow the higher castes' orders and whims. The only conflicts amont the Wraith are between different hives and the very little infighting inside comes from elites like Michael and Todd who have had close encounters with the humans in the galaxy.
Star Trek: The Borg Collective is the Trope Codifier and Trope Namer for the Collective variant. The Borg are a unified Hive Mind (which is, in turn, guided by the Borg Queen) of individuality-challenged cyborgs who seek both unique technology and unique lifeforms in order to assimilate them into their Collective. They travel through space in symmetrical, brutalist spacecraft which greatly contrast the Tall Ship of the Stars designs of Starfleet, as well as the elegant, birdlike designs of the Klingons and the Romulans. Despite their seeming crudeness, these ships can outpace and overpower the most powerful starships and can even adapt to their weapon fire if given the time. The Borg also have near-total control of the Delta Quadrant of the Milky Way Galaxy, which gives them an unquestioned advantage in terms of resources against their enemies, reinforcing their nature as an existential threat to all other forms of life. Oddly enough, a particular Unbuilt Trope quality they possess is the absence of the Enemy Mine aspect typical to antagonistic examples of this trope. They are initially introduced as a looming menace to both the United Federation of Planets and the Romulan Star Empire, but the latter all-but literally laughs off the idea of an alliance between the two nations, and the idea never comes up again. The Klingons, who are by then already allies of the Federation, are also never brought in as an ally against the Borg Collective throughout the TNG era of shows and movies despite the massive threat the Borg are made out to be.

Tabletop Games

Magic: The Gathering:
- The Phyrexians are the creations of Yawgmoth, an Evilutionary Biologist turned God who was once one of the humans making up the Empire of the Thran, on the plane of Dominaria. Deviating from the typical subtext of the Hive, Yawgmoth was a Dr. Mengele stand-in who used the prejudices of the Thran and ancient Magitek he repurposed to his own ends. Manipulating events so that he was able to lead the Thran to a world of his choosing, he was able to master the plane's glistening oil in order to Compleat the Thran into the Phyrexians. Collectivist in the extreme and obsessed with perfection, these beings sought to Compleat all of the Planes. Eventually Yawgmoth was defeated in his attempt to conquer his old home, and Phyrexia was destroyed.
- This original Phyrexia was succeeded by a New Phyrexia, after the metallic world of Mirrodin was exposed to a single drop of the Glistening Oil. This New Phyrexia was led by five Praetors, one for each color of mana. Fittingly, in their struggle for power, the Red Praetor (Urabrask the Hidden) went rogue, and the White Praetor (Elesh Norn) became the Big Bad. Anyone exposed to the Glistening Oil becomes corrupted, and anyone Compleated by the New }Phyrexian}s became completely loyal to it, regardless of their prior allegiance. Eventually they were defeated by The Alliance of various forces arrayed against them, and currently it seems that Phyrexia is gone for good.
  "All will be one."
- The Eldrazi Titans are three massive beings from beyond the ken of even the Planeswalkers, who are possessed of an undying hunger. Where they go, their influence spreads, and swarms of their Eldrazi progeny spawn in the form of drones and mutated beings that become bent to their purpose. These swarms are stated to be extensions of the will of their respective Titan, though the exact nature of this is unclear. Their emergence on Zendikar results in the formation of the Gatewatch to stop them, which results in the seemingly final destruction of two of the Titans.
- The Slivers are the embodiment of this trope. Whatever makes special an individual sliver is quickly shared withe the rest of the group and the group in turn shares back with the sliver. Without the strong guidance of the Sliver Queen or other strong willed individual such as the Sliver Overlord, they are an unstoppable swarm that ravages everything in their path. They collective will is so strong that even though there are artifacts like the Hivestone that is meant to control them, the user ends up unwittingly subject to their Hive Mind.
  "Rath’s evincars used hivestones to control the slivers, but the overlay put their power into unwitting hands. Now the stones make not masters, but slaves."
- The below-mentioned Tyranids also received their own Worlds Beyond set, and were depicted as having a mix of Red, Green, and Blue mana.
- Interestingly, out of the above Hives in Magic, only two out of five (New Phyrexia and the Slivers) contains White mana, which is supposed to be the color representing collectivism (including excessive collectivism). In the case of Old Phyrexia, at least, it makes intuitive sense that it's a pure Black-aligned faction; the whole of it is subsumed to Yawgmoth's personal whims, and Yawgmoth is fundamentally aligned with Black mana.
Warhammer: The Lizardmen make for a very unusual example of the Robot Uprising. As is commonly pointed out, these page image providers for Lizard Folk are actually Biological robots, who are completely loyal to their creators, the Old Ones. The Lizardmen were intended to be efficient workers, reproduce via spawning pools, are immune to Chaos, and are thoroughly dedicated to Order. No individual member of their kind, save for the Mad Oracle Tehenauin, shows any real signs of variance from their core "programming". The Slann are leaders and mages, the Saurus are elite warriors, the Kroxigots are super-strong laborers and shock troops, and the Skinks are sort-of the "do everything else" gofers that fill any additional roles (as well as serving as supplemental mages). Every named Lizardman is a perfect fit for their assigned role. Being immune to corruption and devoid of deviation, the Lizardmen therefore are totally dedicated to their intended purpose and lack any capacity (and, most likely, any desire) to self-determine their fates. The trouble is that the Old Ones up and vanished when Chaos emerged. Ever since, the Lizardmen have been trying to fulfill their purpose since the Old Ones left via whatever means the Slann determine best... and this often puts them at odds with the other "Good Guys" in this Black-and-Grey Morality-laden setting, because Order Is Not Good.
Warhammer 40,000
- The Necrons started out as this trope, in classic Terminator-inspired Robot Warring fashion. While they were once The Empire, their masters, the C'Tan, ate their souls and left them as Omnicidal Maniac automotons fully under their control, out to wage war against the living so that their soul-munching masters could feast. Interestingly, their current characterization as a fractious and squabbling Vestigial Empire of perfectly emotional immortal robots has made them into a narrative Foil to the below-mentioned Tyranids, who are by far the setting's strongest example of this trope.
- This franchise famously also has the Tyranids, a classic Horde of Alien Locusts variant of the Bugs from outside the Milky Way who seek to devour all life in this Galaxy, before moving on to the next. They're guided by a Hive Mind, and while they sort-of also act as The Assimilator through the Genestealer Cults, ultimately, all other life is just food to them. The servants of Chaos, Orks, and Necrons have all had a shot at a Sympathetic P.O.V.. The Tyranids are the only faction, save for the sadistic and piratical Dark Eldar, to not be provided that luxury. Why they do this and where they come from has been left entirely up in the air since their introduction, though there was at least an explanation for how they noticed the Milky Way.
  - The need to justify a Mirror Match in competitive games is normally explained in this game via every faction being involved in an Enemy Civil War or two. The Tyranids, being this trope as a species rather than on a Hive Fleet level, nevertheless still fight each other. It's given a Hand Wave general explanation of fleets competing to achieve some kind of synthesis or via their Adaptive Ability. A more situational explanation is that, when cornered and deprived of other food sources, they will turn on each other and engage in Monstrous Cannibalism.
  - Somewhat unusually for an example from a Long-Runner (and one that's been part of it for around thirty years), the Tyranids have never had the fine details of their Hive Mind explicated for audiences. The general lore presents the idea that it's the collective consciousness of the individual Tyranid Hive Fleets, with the Norn Queens acting more as nodes in the larger network than as decision-makers themselves. Larger Tyranid ground units are also indicated to be more intelligent and capable of some cognition on their own, but it's never been made entirely clear.
  - The Genestealer Cults, as mentioned above, seem to be under the impression that the Tyranids (who are practically a second Trope Codifier for the Bugs archetype) are actually a Collective, which they will become one with. Depending on the Writer, they're either shocked when their efforts to help the Hive Fleets find their homeworld turn out to just start another Hopeless Bug War, or they act as a fifth column during the invasion.^note All told, it's generally taken as a given that the Cultists are completely wrong about the Tyranids, though no one else seems to be any more in the know than they are.
- The Vespids, a client race of the Tau Empire, have a hypercollectivized, literally hive-based society. Interestingly, it's said that they took quickly to the Tau's egalitarian philosophy of the "Greater Good" precisely because of its inherent compatibilities with their existing social structure. Make of that what you will.
Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: In addition to the Seraphon, who are the successors to the below-mentioned Lizardmen, we have Nagash's Undead faction. His long-term goal is to achieve this trope across all of the Realms, and more immediately hopes to fully achieve it within his own personal realm of Shyish. As it stands, the Soulblight Gravelords in particular aren't quite his completely-obedient puppets, and most of the other factions are also outside of his direct control. That being said, the Ossiarch Bonereapers, who are directly under the command of his eternal servant Arkhan the Black, are his personally sculpted elite minions and completely beholden to his will even without his direct control. That being said, it's clear that The Undead in the Mortal Realms can never truly disobey him, and they know this all too well.
"Nagash is all, and all are one in him."

Toys

BIONICLE: The Bohrok Swarm is a Hive of mechanical Bugs led by the two Bahrag, piloted by Face Huggers called Krana, which they can use to possess outsiders and help them in their singular goal of cleansing the isle of Mata Nui.

Video Games

BioShock 2: Invoked. After the events of BioShock 1, Rapture evolved to become a collectivist society ruled by Dr. Sofia Lamb. In this new Rapture, each citizen is expected to give their lives for the greater good and forbids any expression of individuality or self-expression. While they haven't quite reached the full-on Collective stage yet, still being a collection of individuals with free will, this is explicitly the intended end result of Dr. Lamb's little Assimilation Plot; to turn all of humanity into "Utopians", an entire race of geniuses acting only for the greater good, but lacking any sense of self whatsoever..
Dr. Sofia Lamb: Ryan saw the individual as a hero... a noble survivor. And Rapture was his Paradise... a shrine, to the supremacy of the self. The result? Slavery. Genocide. Chaos. Now that the Tyrant is dead, we are a true collective...a single family.
Dead Space: The Necromorphs are the result of corpses being infected by the Markers^note, which cause humans near them to suffer from an excess of knowledge. These ravenous, violent space zombies are all linked to the Brethren Moons, the apex Necromorphs. These planet-sized cosmic horrors give out orders to their minions through a form of a psionic link, compelling them to spread the Necromorph biomass towards others. They likewise make a similar call towards susceptible sapient species, namely those who spend too long with their Markers. They do this not just to feed themselves, but also as a form of reproduction; sacrificing an entire species to birth a brand new Brethren Moon.
Deep Rock Galactic: The planet Hoxxes IV is inhabited largely by a race of sightless arachnoid beings called Glyphids, which have a variety of different individual broods that serve different functions and are immediately hostile toward any underground vibrations. This makes mining operations on the planet particularly difficult despite its riches, and it's why teams of Dwarven miners go down planetside armed to the teeth with heavy weaponry.
Destiny: The Vex appear as a vast, time-traveling collective of robots bent on converting all matter and energy in the universe into more Vex, but they're more properly understood as a pattern of behaviors and characteristics possessed by the Ultimate Lifeform (defined as an entity capable of outcompeting all other life in the universe). The Vex are a fractally self-similar swarm intelligence: they don't need a Hive Mind because every grouping of Vex and every component of a Vex is itself a kind of Vex, exhibiting the same behaviors and characteristics of the greater Vex pattern, and that pattern is incredibly virulent. Physical contact with a Vex may transform you into another Vex. Nonphysical contact with a Vex, such as hearing their pattern encoded in a signal, may transform you into another Vex. Just being around Vex constructions runs the risk of having bits of your mind turned into Vex because even Vex thoughts are contagious. Maya Sundaresh defined their endgoal as this:
The Vex will not rest until every star has been crushed into a black hole and every newborn cosmos filled with more Vex. And in the unending array of their enslaved cosmos, they will simulate all possible pasts, and fill those with Vex, so that all things that have ever lived or might ever live will experience infestation and consumption and torment by the silica nightmare.
The Darkspawn of Dragon Age are a fairly unusual example of the Bugs, in that they are all but completely humanoid, and that they exist within a Fantasy setting. Aesthetically, they might be taken for The Horde, or even undead, being a massive army of pale, monstrous humanoids in armor (and clearly owe something visually to Tolkien's Orcs). Despite this, they are not a horde of roving barbarians, nor are any of them undead. Rather, they are the byproduct of the Blight upon Thedas, which turned The Old Gods into Archdemons, who act as their Hive Queens when active. They have no personal needs or desires except to kill, and only have a capacity to organize when led by an Archdemon. The Grey Wardens, an Impartial Purpose-Driven Faction that the first game's protagonist is a member of, are the main force arrayed against them. In times of a Blight, The Alliance had arisen time and again to oppose them, though often too late and with occasional infighting. The Darkspawn can only reproduce by capturing fertile mortals to turn into Broodmothers, which act like traditional ant or termite queens by pumping out numberless soldiers. In addition to their insect-like reproductive cycle, they can also corrupt the living into becoming Ghouls, which is what every Grey Warden technically is. In Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, we learn that imbibing Grey Warden blood can cause a Darkspawn to become a somewhat simple-minded and instinctively violent Rogue Drone. We meet a few of these, two of them acting as Hive Queen to their own respective factions; one is a unique Darkspawn called "The Architect" and the other is an insane Broodmother simply known as "The Mother". They happen to share the common Hive Queen trait of having formerly been human. The other rogue Darkspawn in the story show clear limitations in intelligence and inherently spread the Blight where they go, but it's ultimately up to the Player Character to decide if this Darkspawn Revolution of sorts should continue.
Final Fantasy
- Final Fantasy VII: JENOVA's cells seem to have leant her/it such a force back during her war with the Cetra, but the fine details on that are obscure. Far more prominent to the narrative is Sephiroth's own commandeering of her cells to brainwash his Copies to serve him, and to create puppet bodies to remotely attack our heroes with. There is a striking contrast between his singular, indivisible, and entirely unnatural faction-of-one approach to that of AVALANCHE and Shinra's inability to avoid squabbling with one another, much less to pull off a much-needed Enemy Mine.
  - This remains much the same within the remake, where more narrative focus is put on the Sephiroth Copies. They are tragically dehumanized by those outside of AVALANCHE, and Sephiroth makes greater use of them as proxies for his plans than in the original.
- Final Fantasy IX: The general evidence and themes both make Garland's unnamed faction out to be this. As first of the Genomes, he was created to ensure the return of the people of Terra, even at the cost of the planet Gaia. To this end, he created the other Genomes, as well as the Black Mages. Obsessed with knowing all and eternally patient, Garland has spent unknown ages building up an army of magically-powerful and physically-robust soldiers; aforementioned Black Mages and Genomes (Most notably including Kuja, Vivi Ornitier, and the game's hero, Zidane. All of these except for said trio conform to his designs. As such, they lack much in the way of unique personality or purpose outside of serving him in his goal. This demonstrates one of the game's concordant themes; that of the harm caused by being subsumed entirely into a group. Garland's iron-fisted control over his creations is broken by his defeat late in the game, after which point Kuja becomes a Dragon Ascendant for the final act. After the game's main story is completed, the Genomes and Black Mages are left free to sort out a new future, together.
- Final Fantasy X: Sin is a massive living Hive, a faction unto itself that nothing on the planet can compete with for long. It spawns armies of Sinscales and Sinspawn in its wake, which it directs towards furthering its ineluctable devastation of Spira.
- Final Fantasy XIV
  - The Omicrons are a Science Fantasy cyborg take on the Collective. Beginning their existence as an organic alien race, they decided to become the strongest in the universe out of fear of invasion from other stars. Trading their bodies of flesh for chassis of steel, the Omicrons became a unified war machine dedicated to conquering and stripping other planets of resources. They learned from each and every race and world they plundered before finally battling the dragons of the Dragonstar. Any dragons they didn't kill would be subject to Unwilling Roboticization, while the Omicron's protocols demanded they reduce the Dragonstar to a lifeless husk incapable of supporting life. The Omicrons' ultimate creation is the superweapon Omega, which chased Midgardsormr all the way to Hydaelyn before crashing down and being rendered inactive. Omega would later be found by the Allagans, who started an advanced empire of their own by reverse-engineering Omega's technology.
  - The Nibirun are another advanced Collective of aliens who joined together into a single Hive Mind, stripping away all individuality in the process. With their minds unified, they developed a world free from want and the ravages of war, aging, hunger, and disease, living perfect, but empty lives devoid of conflict since they all agreed with one another. Unfortunately, when Meteion asked what made them happy, they went insane trying and failing to give her an answer before the Nibirun collectively agreed to commit suicide, for they had no reason to continue existing.
  - The Gnath strongly believe that individuality is a root problem, even believing that its the reason why the nations of the world are always in conflict. As such, the Gnath believe in the collective of their Hive is superior and put its well-being over all else, bounding all Gnath to their Overmind. Any Gnath who manages to break free of the Overmind are instantly cast out.
The Flood from Halo are a Zombie Horde created by a species of parasites that seek out sapient life-forms to reproduce and eventually to create a Gravemind, their guiding intelligence. Overtly used for an homage or two to Aliens, the Flood serve as half the impetus for the formation of The Alliance between the UNSC and the Covenant Separatists, the other half being their mutual enmity with the Prophet-led Covenant.
Helldivers: The Cyborgs are a race of supposed "Socialists"^note who refer to themselves as the "Collective of Cyberstan" and unwillingly convert captured humans on worlds they invade into more cybernetic foot soldiers in their ever-expanding army. This is only exacerbated by their Automaton descendants in Helldivers II, who cross the border into being full-on Ambiguous Robots (either they're Full Conversion Cyborgs or they're entirely artificial lifeforms that just have suspiciously squishy organs) that use civilians as Human Resources and (allegedly) kidnap babies.
Mass Effect: The Geth Consensus is an evolving depiction of this trope across the original trilogy.
- In the first game, they are initially presented as a very straightforward take on this trope. Having Turned Against Their Masters, the Quarians, after a Robot War, they play the role of Mecha-Mooks, who serve the Reaper, Sovereign, worshiping it despite it being insulted at this. As the quarian Tali'Zorah explains, the geth are a mass of networked, low-intelligence runtimes that cannot be called 'Artificial Intelligence' on their own. While we receive hints of internal culture and potential sympathetic traits, they are nevertheless treated as a particularly horrifying Machine Uprising in need of stopping. There is, however, a moment where Tali'Zorah admits the quarians attacked first, which Shepard can call her out on as immoral; she will shoot back that the ancient quarians did what was necessary to defend themselves preemptively.
- In the sequel, we are introduced to Legion, who completely changes the paradigm with regards to the geth and their being a traditionally-hostile depiction of this trope. A unique geth with over a thousand runtimes stored in one platform, Legion is capable of autonomy while disconnected from the Consensus. Instead achieving Consensus internally he/it ^note acts as a Terminal of the geth for outside interfacing, roughly meaning he/it is a sort-of ambassador for the 'true' geth. As Legion reveals, the geth previously fought were all 'Heretics'; a small percentage of the overall geth population who broke off because of a disagreement over what to do with the above-mentioned Reapers' offer. More specifically, the 'true' geth concluded that the Reapers should not be served to achieve their goals of ascension, while the 'Heretics' concluded that it was the right decision. The difference between them is said to be that the majority of geth runtimes rounded a number slightly differently from how the 'Heretic' runtimes did, resulting in the first disagreement in their history. The true geth are shown as being essentially benign, with the goal of creating a Dyson Sphere to unite all their consciousnesses^note, thereby achieving a total and uninterrupted oneness they hope will help them in achieving transcendence. Legion is shown to be curious about organics, occasionally confused, and occasionally insightful. Pointedly, he/it compares his/its government with that of the organic interstellar nation-states.
Metroid is lousy with examples, to the point that almost every antagonistic faction in the series ^note the exception being the Rogue Federation fits this trope at some point.
- Super Metroid, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and Metroid: Other M: Despite the name, the Space Pirates are very much this trope in these installments. While in Metroid Prime we are clearly shown that they are normally The Empire, any being with sufficient will and innate power to dominate them can turn them into disposable minions. Both Mother Brain and Dark Samus have Psychic Powers far exceeding that low threshold. Mother Brain, Dark Samus, and MB, who shares Mother Brain's powers treat them as disposable pawns in their various plots, even more expendable and mindlessly obedient to their masters than the Metroids themselves are. They are, in fact, a remarkably archetypal example of this trope, in the vein of Aliens; a uniformly hostile species of arthropods under the total control of a single monstrous matriarch.
- Metroid II: Return of Samus: The titular artificially-created parasites are firmly established as being this trope on their own, even without Mother Brain around to control them. With the Metroid Queen producing hundreds of them, they are a potentially-existential threat to the Galaxy, if the Space Pirates or other evildoers could get a hold on them again. These ravenous and destructive lifeforms serve by themselves as the collective main antagonists of the game, as Samus hunts them down in a Guilt-Free Extermination War. It is thus some surprise that Samus ends up sparing the Metroid Hatchling, before leading it to safety so that it, and the Galaxy, may both know peace. At least until Super Metroid, anyway.
- Metroid Fusion: We are introduced to the X-Parasites in this installment, which are similar to the above-mentioned Metroids in that they are an incurably hostile alien parasite. Unlike the Metroids, which are more straightforward Xenomorph Xerox, the X-Parasites have a collective ability to modify themselves, often by combining with other X-infected into more dangerous forms, which essentially lets themselves evolve at extremely rapid rates. They do so by infecting hosts, living or dead, and transforming them into new, more powerful forms. The most prominent of them in Metroid Fusion is SA-X, a sinister Doppelgänger of Samus, which acts as the face of the X-Parasites in the game. In addition to all of this, they reproduce rapidly and uncontrollably, and are inimical to all other life. They are also fully sapient, yet apparently universally and intrinsically malicious, and thus Samus concludes that she must subject them to a Guilt-Free Extermination War.
- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: The Ing, the Arc Villain for this game, fit this trope like a glove. Similarly to the titular Metroids, the Ing are presented as a parasitic, monstrous swarm. Though it's certainly possible they have individual free will, and there's no clear evidence of Emperor Ing being a Hive Queen, their framing suggests as such. They lack the strong indications of individuality even the Space Pirates have via their internal communiqués. As noted above under Feral Villain, they give every indication of being a universally and uncontrollably violent, ravenous force. Individual Ing are specialized to fill whatever roles the whole requires, and outsiders, both living and dead, are forcibly assimilated into the whole. Their extermination, unlike that of the titular Metroids, is fully treated as a Guilt-Free Extermination War.
- Metroid Dread: While the Big Bad, Raven Beak, is an aspiring Evil Overlord, with dreams of ruling an Empire, circumstances beyond his control left him without a living army. As such, he makes do with repurposed Federation robots, enslaved Bioweapon Beasts, and robotic duplicates of his fallen Chozo soldiers.
The Typhon from Prey (2017) are a less-literal take on the Bugs^note, a shadowy cosmic race of parasites devoid of any natural capacity for empathy. They ravenously assimilate all life forms they come across to feed their ever-growing mass, are guided by a Hive Mind, and have the capacity to cause The End of the World as We Know It.
Quake: The Strogg from Quake II and Quake IV are a classic cyborg Collective. They're cyborg constructs of unclear alien origin, who primarily reproduce by taking other races and cybernizing them in what is known as "Stroggification", the process of which enslaves their minds and enhances their bodies for war. Aside from creating more Strogg, the Strogg also use the flesh of dead humans and other enemies to make "Stroyent", which they use for both food and fuel. They are completely unrelenting in their rapacious conquest of the stars, lacking even their chief inspiration's better qualities.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
- One of the default factions, the Human Hive led by Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, attempts to stifle individuality entirely through social engineering. Combining elements of communism and collectivism with Buddhist asceticism, all to produce a compliant population (after decades if not centuries of brutal policing to break the populace's spirits). In keeping with the usual depictions of the Hive, the Chairman is seen by much of the player base as the closest thing the vanilla game has to a Big Bad, thanks to his aggressive playstyle and coming across as the Token Evil Teammate of a group of mostly morally grey faction leaders.^note
- The Cybernetic Consciousness faction introduced in the Alien Crossfire expansion use cybernetic implants to integrate their brains with a vast AI consciousness. This makes them highly rational and logical, but leaves them with muted emotions, which reduce their population growth.
Sins of a Solar Empire: The Advent are a Collective of humans united by a Hive Mind they call "the Unity", a product of cybernetically-enhanced psychic powers. They are the Spammer faction, compared to the TEC's more balanced, economy-focused approach and the Vasari Empire's hit and run tactics based around small, elite forces. In the lore, the TEC's predecessors, the Trade Order, exiled the Advent's ancestors for both their disinterest in capital and their "deviance", a prejudice the TEC-aligned narrator seems to share. He regards them with a venomous scorn exceeding that he seems to display towards the Vasari, despite having personally been at war with them for far longer, suggesting deep-seated In-Universe prejudice against them. Interestingly, they blend this with a Theocracy, as their Unity has a strong Church Militant aesthetic. In essence, they are depicted as a Theocracy built around their religion... which is their Hive Mind. Their ships, in addition to being Shiny-Looking Spaceships that contrast well against the TEC's Used Future aesthetic and the dark, alien look of the Vasari, are sometimes rather insectoid and vaguely organic in shape, (though definitely not Organic Technology). They heavily lean on Culture-based strategems to win over their enemies, outright converting masses to the Unity with their propaganda alone. When that isn't enough, they resort to gigantic, moon-sized interstellar-ranged brainwashing cannons, to force the issue. In keeping with the matriarchal undercurrents to most depictions of Hives, the Advent are given female voices, and most of their artwork shows women. This is in contrast to the TEC and (at least, seemingly) the Vasari, who both default to male-sounding voices (and in the former's case, male-looking portraits) for their units. The In-Universe justification for the Advent being depicted as primarily female^note has to do with women typically having stronger Psychic Powers. Thus, the implication of some kind of Hive Queen caste is there, though the game's often-obfuscated lore makes this rather ambiguous.
StarCraft: The Zerg Swarm is a hive-minded collective of monstrous creatures that start out as worm-like parasitoids but can metamorphose into Organic Technology and a variety of adult forms derived from the DNA of assimilated species. They start out controlled by the Overmind and its lieutenants, the Cerebrates, but eventually these are all wiped out, and the formerly human Sarah Kerrigan is able to make herself the ruler of the swarm by the end of the Brood War expansion pack. Individual zerg outside of that psychic caste are essentially mindless destructive animals that will turn on each other without direction, which is used to justify a few instances of Civil WarCraft that'd otherwise be inexplicable in the circumstances. They've become a pop culture icon, and their ability to rush the enemy down quickly thanks to their capacity towards rapid reproduction is what coined the term "Zerg Rush", though that trope refers to something different.
Stellaris: Gestalt Consciousness empires are empires whose subjects have no individuality, whether because they're a huge hive of bugs, networked machines, or conscious ecosystems. They can be antagonists, but they can also be played as protagonists, with specific rules accounting for their lack of individuality among their subjects.
System Shock: Big Bad SHODAN creates one of these out of the machinery and other raw materials she could find on Citadel Station. They act as soulless extensions of her will, and, in her dreams, will extend to all of creation.
- System Shock 2: The Many are a Thing-esque take on a Hive Mind version of this.Unlike SHODAN, the Many don't hate humanity. They just see individuality as a cursed existence and are baffled by the Soldier's repeated resistance to assimilation. Notably, the collectivist mass of the Many extends past those organic life-forms they can incorporate directly into their Hive Mind; XERXES, the ship's AI, and the ship's robots also serve them, after a quick bit of reprogramming. Their clear hope is to bring this unity to the entire world. Objectively speaking, this is a fine case of Like Robot Mother, Like Weird Flesh Abomination Child(ren). If nothing else, the Many would clearly prefer to incorporate ''everyone'' into their collective, rather than everything be the extension of a single will.
Thief II: The Metal Age contains a vanishingly rare fantasy case of the Robot Uprising, which is especially unusual because the one working towards it, Father Karras, is fully human and intends to remain that way. At game's beginning, he's already essentially achieved this via his armies of robots and Masked Servants, who are forced to obey his orders and sing his praises round the clock. Rather than attempt to assimilate everyone in like fashion, including his still-human followers, he intends to kill all organic life besides himself, leaving behind only this mechanical Hive for the sole purpose of worshiping him (and, less importantly, his god, known as the Builder).
Warcraft
- Warcraft III: The Scourge were created by Necromancers under the service of the Lich King, Ner'zhul, who in turn was "empowered" for this purpose by the Burning Legion as a replacement for The Horde (of which, fittingly enough, Ner'zhul was once leader). Unlike their predecessors, the Scourge was resistant to infighting over moral principles, or succumbing to distractions. Few, if any of their members have anything like free will, the main exceptions seeming to be the relentlessly loyal Cult of the Damned, who become less prominent as the Scourge changes leadership from Ner'zhul to Arthas Menethil. Arthas, after killing his father, kills, raises, and enslaves the people of Lordaeron. The Scourge becomes such a threat as to compel The Horde and The Alliance, for the first time, to pull an Enemy Mine. In addition to the normal rank and file undead, the Scourge has a prominent arthropod motive, befitting its nature as a ravaging swarm of drones beholden to the will of the Lich King.
- World of Warcraft: Bizarrely enough, Averted for the insectoid Qiraji, even with their Hive Caste System and fondness for Zerg Rush tactics. There's plenty of evidence, from mentions of cultural dress, to the more complex and individualized behavior of their Nerubian cousins, that the Qiraji all possess some degree of independent thought and personal agency. They're just Always Chaotic Evil, is the thing.

Web Animation

Humans-B-Gone!: Explored regarding the sapient ants that are in charge of the Xenofictional society. They can move and act in such eerie synchronicity that even the other insect and arachnid species are creeped out, but they just have an extremely efficient means of pheromonal communication among themselves, not any kind of Hive Mind. Professor Gregorsa notes that even a human city could be considered a kind of superorganism by that standard.
RWBY: The Grimm are a bit of an odd Fantasy take on the Bugs, broadly speaking. They don't need to eat, or really do much of anything, technically. Nevertheless, they're instinct-driven (thanks to the influence of their creator, the God of Darkness) to hunt down humans by chasing the smell of their negative emotions. They attack in swarms, die in droves, with the more intelligent ones capable of some coordination and implicit cognition, and have a Hive Queen in the form of Salem, an immortal former-human who immersed herself in the black ooze they all crawl from. They're explicitly and pointedly arrayed against the human Kingdoms, and the protagonists start out training to be Huntresses, members of a loose Creature-Hunter Organization with the explicitly apolitical purpose of a Guilt-Free Extermination War against the Grimm.

Web Videos

Critical Role: Campaign One: This is the intended end result of Vecna's Evil Plan; to create The Necrocracy of undeath entirely and exclusively beholden to his will. A world where there are no individuals, except for him, all operating precisely according to his whim. His wording makes it obvious that he's the Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist form of advocate for this trope.^note
Vecna: I come to play with the toys left by insolent, forgotten ancients and make this world into a new epoch. What this means, however, is an end to all. An end to borders and nations. There will only be the will of Vecna. So. Ask yourselves. You want peace? There is no peace, the way things are. You all bicker and stab and murder in the names of your mothers, your fathers. But this one? Everyone will live, and when they die, that need not be the end, either, under my banner.

Western Animation

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Little Green Men or LGMs are a rare example of a Hive being treated sympathetically, though their society is still definitely pretty alien compared to those of the other species. While they generally seem to have distinct personalities, when connected via the Unimind, the LGMs are able to share knowledge and work in perfect synch. This makes them perfect workers that keep Star Command running like a well-oiled machine. However, whenever a member is missing or worse, when they are disconnected from the Unimind, their collective work efficiency takes a massive nose dive. While they are still capable of working together in the traditional sense, they are nowhere near as good as when they are connected. The best example being how they were able to repair XR in the pilot movie. When first introduced, they break XR and then easily fix him good as new. However, when they later fix him after Emperor Zerg took the Unimind, they are only barely able to fix him and also changed his personality thanks to using a large amount of Noodle Implements. It's also established that there are occasional LGMs who aren't part of the collective, however, the rest of the LGMs refer to these individuals semi-derogatorily as "independent thinkers" typically because the one shown has created some odd inventions.
Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: Swarm is a swarm of sapient bees controlled by an Energy Being from space. It's able to mutate humans into enthralled insect hybrids that serve its will, and intends to do this to the whole world. Naturally, it's stopped by Spider-Man (with the help of his Amazing Friends), since he ends up being The Immune to Swarm's powers.
Swarm: "Everyone will work for Swarm! Everyone!"
Transformers:
- Transformers Beast Machines: Megatron turns out to have upgraded himself from leader of The Syndicate in the previous show to this, as revealed in the second episode. He killed off nearly the entire population of Cybertron, stole their Sparks, and remade their bodies into the Vehicon drones he commands as their one singular leader. He describes it as a 'single, elegant machine', which he personally directs as its ruler and designer, the sole voice of autonomy and authority on the entire planet. Eventually, he makes Generals to more directly command his armies when managing the Maximals becomes too much effort by himself, but he makes sure to brainwash them, or pick someone with Undying Loyalty To The Position of Cybertron's ruler. His final plan turns out to be to consume the Sparks of every single Transformer so that he can become a Deity of Cybertronian Origin and reshape Cybertron in his own image, implicitly still with the army of loyal automata at his beck and call. The very idea of any other beings still having free will is anathema to Megatron, and he only lightly tolerates the existence of his Generals as a necessity while dealing with the Maximals.
- Transformers: Prime: Zigzagged with the Insecticons who fight for Megatron and his Decepticons. Though initially shown to be simply instinct-driven, and animalistic, it's eventually shown that while the Insecticons are bound by a single mind, they nevertheless have individual thoughts and opinions. As an added wrinkle to this, the rogue spider-like Decepticon, Airachnid, is in some way related to the Insecticons, and can thus exert her will over them. This ability allows her to supersede Megatron's authority over them and command them as a Hive Queen.
- Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015): Somewhat zigzagged with Zizza, a Decepticon who takes the appearance resembling that of a bee who has aims of creating her own little hive. Back on Cybertron, Zizza attempted to use her toxins to take control over the minds of citizens so they would make her their leader but the effects wore off before she could consolidate her power, leading her to be arrested and sent the Alchemor Prison Ship. After crashing landing on Earth, Zizza escapes like the other convicts but attempts to restart her own hive using humans, who remain under her toxins' influence far longer. Fortunately, the Autobot Strongarm is able to deduce Ziza's weaknesses from her structuring her hive like an actual bee hive to her being susceptible to cold temperatures, allowing the Autobots to thwart Zizza.

The Hive
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