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Studded Shell - TV Tropes
Oh, shell, no!
When a turtle or other shelled animal's natural defense isn't enough to fend off attacks, best turn it into a Natural Weapon and add Spikes of Doom.
While such things as spike-shelled turtles do exist — like the black-knobbed map turtle or the alligator snapping turtle — their spikes are more like blunt knobs and are certainly not capable of seriously injuring anybody. In fiction, spikes on a turtle shell can be used as a weapon that can seriously injure somebody.
If the spikes are custom added to our anthropomorphic turtle, then expect them to have either been glued on or being a custom-made Removable Shell. If the spikes are natural, then the turtle is most certainly a made-up species, being either a mutant or an alien.
As mentioned above, turtles are the most common animals to be given this trait in fiction, but other shelled animals have also been portrayed this way, such as snails, crabs (especially those of the giant enemy variety), beetles, and armadillos. It's a bit more plausible with snails, some of which really do have impressive and sharp spikes on their shells.
A common trait of The Spiny if their spikiness is related to their shell.
Examples
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Comic Books
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: While the Ninja Turtles all have normal turtle shells, Slash is often characterized as having massive, prominent spikes on his shell, though the severity depends on the continuity. The IDW comics are the most subdued, directly modeling him off a snapping turtle (As he was one, pre-mutation) while the video games and original toyline made them yellow and quite pronounced.
Fan Works
Films — Live-Action
Literature
- Harry Potter: Streelers are some kind of snails with spikes on their shells that are poisonous. They are first introduced in the video games, where they appear as giant orange snails.
Live-Action TV
- The Masked Singer: Season 3's 2nd place contestant was the Turtle, who sports a shell adorned with large silver spikes. Downplayed as it's a singing competition, and the spikes are for aesthetics rather than combat: the Turtle goes for a punk-rocker theme, dressed in all black leather with silver studs and the spikes on his head shaped like a mohawk. Unmasked in the finale and revealed to be Jesse McCartney.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Dragon turtles are giant turtle monsters that have spiky protrusions on their shells. These serve more as a means of letting the dragon turtle disguise itself as a submerged rock or coral reef than to provide any sort of protection.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- "Steel Shell" is an equip-spell card that takes the form of a turtle's carapace covered in large spikes. It can only be equipped to WATER-attribute monsters and while it increases attack points by 400, it decreases defense points by 200.
- "Monsturtle" is a WATER-Attribute, Aqua-type monster portrayed as a giant turtle with sharp teeth and spikes on its shell.
Toys
Video Games
- CookieRun: Kingdom: The character Stink-Eye Tortuca is a large pirate turtle with a spiky durian-like shell.
- Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back: In the first few beach levels, one of the earliest enemies Crash can encounter are turtles with spikes on the sides of their shells, which prevent Crash from knocking them aside with his usual Spin Attack, the only way to defeat them being jumping over their sides and knocking them backwards with a Goomba Stomp.
- Dillon's Rolling Western: The armadillo protagonist, Dillon, can attach metal spikes to his shell that enable him to follow up his Rolling Attack with a grinding attack.
- Final Fantasy: The Adamatoise type enemies have sharp spikes on their turtle shells. Later, more animated versions will even tuck themselves inside their shells and attack by spinning at the heroes.
- Jazz Jackrabbit:
- The boss Schwartzenguard is a tortoise with a spiky shell. However, his signature weapon is a spiky flail.
- The boss Uterus is a crab-like clam with spikes on his shell. The spikes are mostly visual since every part of him hurts the player.
- Kameo: Elements of Power: Major Ruin, an armadillo-like creature who can roll into a stone ball, can be upgraded to have spikes on his shell.
- League of Legends: Rammus is a strange mix of armadillo and turtle-like features, part of which includes a thick shell covered in spikes. He can damage enemies by letting them strike him, causing them to stab themselves on his spikes.
- Mega Man X6: One of Rainy Turtloid's main attacks is to retract into his shell and deploy spikes out of the sides before rolling across the screen.
- Palworld has Digtoise, who is covered in mining drills. They're functional, too—Digtoise can be instructed to use its Spin Attack next to a rock and it will get to work gouging chunks of material out of anything it's told to mine.
- Pokémon:
- Omastar is a Pokémon based on an ammonite, an extinct type of mollusk. The top side of its shell has a line of spikes running down the middle.
- Turtonator is a turtle-like Pokémon with a shell sporting black spikes that resemble rock shards. Its Secret Art Shell Trap has the spikes explode if the opponent makes contact with it.
- Cloyster is a Pokémon based on oysters with a spiked shell whose spikes can be shot off when it uses its Spike Cannon attack.
- Downplayed in The Sapling, which has a shell inspired by alligator snapping turtles (and thus more like raised bumps rather than outright spikes) as a skin type.
- Skylanders: Warnado has these, and he uses them as a Natural Weapon when he spins into opponents, and the shell becomes even spikier when he gets his Soul Gem, which increases his armor.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Bowser is a giant, dragon-like turtle with massive spikes on his shell. While they're mostly to indicate that he's the Big Bad, he also uses them as a Natural Weapon. In the Mario Kart series, his shell is even used as an accessible weapon that can crash through other racers and obstacles. Bowser Jr. and the Koopalings have similarly spiked shells as part of their resemblance to him, as does the recurring Mini-Boss Boom-Boom in Super Mario Bros. 3.
- Mario Kart: The Spiny Shell series is a rather infamous weapon in the franchise for being a Game-Breaker; a blue Koopa shell covered in spikes (sometimes with wings) that is inescapable, unblock-able, and is designed to target whatever character is in first place.
- Spinies are quadrupedal shelled enemies with backs covered in spines, which will harm Mario if he tries to jump on them. Spike Tops, a variant of Buzzy Beetles first appearing in Super Mario World, have a single spike on their shells for a similar effect, which combined to Buzzy Beetles being Immune to Fire — the main way to deal with regular Spinies — makes them a bit of a problem to deal with.
- Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story: Midbus, being an Evil(er) Counterpart to Bowser himself, has a spiked yellow shell. He's not a turtle, though, more like a cross between a boar and an armadillo, and his spikes are curved instead of straight.
- WarCraft III:
- Turtles have the Spiked Shell ability, which causes melee attacks to deal damage to the attackers.
- The Crypt Lord (undead mantis-beetle-spider... thing) hero has the similar Spiked Carapace, which deals damage to melee attackers and increases the Crypt Lord's armor.
- The Horde's Spiked Barricades upgrade deals back fixed or percent-based damage (depending on the patch) to enemy attackers.
Western Animation
Real Life
- Many species of dinosaurs in the suborder Ankylosauria actually did possess large spikes on their armored shells. While many of them were blunt, some species had sharp spikes arranged along the bottom of their shells that were obviously useful as weapons. Edmontonia, a species of nodosaur, had sharp, forward-facing spike protruding from its shoulders that it is believed to have used to ram predators with, inflicting serious wounds.
- Many species of marine snails have spikes on their shells, making them less palatable to predators.
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