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Worms
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Worms (Video Game)
"Oi, nutta!"

"Incoming!"

In the early 90s, bedroom coder and Amiga fan Andy Davidson decided to make an Artillery-style Turn-Based Strategy game with a large arsenal of outlandish comedy weapons and — because they were about the only animal yet to be represented in a video game, as Earthworm Jim had yet to help fill the gap, and to let the public know about their violent side — warring annelids. Showing his game idea, Total Wormage, at a games fair, Andy caught the eye and imagination of games company Team17, who offered to help with the game.

The result was Worms.

The games are usually played on fully-destructible Randomly Generated Levels, where up to four players control teams of four worms (with some games increasing the limit to six and eight respectively) and have to defeat everyone opposing them either by reducing their health to zero or making them fall into the water below. To accomplish this, each team has an access to weapons ranging from the relatively sane Bazooka, Grenade and Shotgun to the bizarre Sheep, Banana Bomb, and the devastating Holy Hand Grenade.

Worms games throughout the years have included:

First Generation

Second Generation3D GenerationThird GenerationFourth GenerationPost-GenerationSpin-offsOther
  • "Wormsong" (1995-2011)
  • Worms: The Board Game (2024)

The most popular game is probably Worms Armageddon, which is still being patched and modded to this day to keep compatibility with modern machines despite its age, and is even available on the Steam service.

Worms provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 
    A-L 
  • Abnormal Ammo: Sheep and Pigeons can be shot at opposing Worms, and you can call in airstrikes for more sheep, carpets, explosive mail, and who knows what else.
  • Accidental Aiming Skills: The AI tends to make some of the most spectacularly improbable shots purely by accident, as the A.I. Roulette decides that they'll pick this turn to miss their intended target. Human players frequently do these too.
  • All There in the Manual:
    • Worms World Party included a handy little guide named the Wormopedia that gave rundowns and extra tips on all the weapons in the game, the passive effects gained from utility crates and even some extra trivia like the origin of the Concrete Donkey, Light Side Vs. Dark Side, and fort building with Girder Starter Packs.
    • According Team17's official description of Worms Pinball on YouTube, the pinball machine you're playing was made by Boggy B, the protagonist of "Wormsongs", as a distraction from the horrors of war.
  • Anvil on Head: In Blast, both this and various other heavy items will be dropped on a player's head if they shoot a bazooka off the screen (as dropping it into the water on their side causes it to rise). It is possible to fire a shot and quickly move out of the way which is useful for getting rid of a color you don't want/need and the AI will do the same. Said weighted item can also bounce off of your head and into the opponent's field to hit them.
  • April Fools' Day: Several hoaxes and jokes were laid out in the early days by Team17 to fool players, ranging from a Worms game on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, A UFO Weapon in Worms 2, an expansion for Worms 2 that consists of baby worms dressed up for bedtime called Night Fight, etc.
  • Artillery Game: A comedic take on the genre, with ballistic-toting cartoon worms in place of tanks.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • The Armageddon weapon's meteors take out almost the whole map. It's down to luck as to whether any of your Worms will survive. It helps if you burrow one or more of your worms deep into the ground first.
    • Worms 2 allowed players to edit weapon settings to crank up or down the damage weapons do and how many times certain weapons could fire per turn. Setting weapons to their maximum stats results in them being so destructive that they can take out large sections of the map in one go, often damaging its user in the process. The minigun, in particular, can either wipe the entire map in one go, or cause your worm to take damage and fall into the hole it's just made after one shot.
  • Artificial Stupidity: It's easy to make an AI that can hit the target every time. It's hard to make one that can convincingly miss.
    • The AI in second generation games does insane efforts to never hurt a teammate, even if choosing to hurt them would allow them to kill the only enemy worm left that has only 1 health point. Given the Improbable Aiming Skills with the Bazooka of higher AI levels, and the final Deathmatch level in Worms 2 (Two worms of yours vs 15 Level 5 ones), this needs to be exploited to win (Though sometimes they forget about it and they Fire Punch you and any unlucky teammate). With enough practice, no amount of enemy worms will be enough to beat you. They also never take grenade bounce into account - if it does not blow up on your worm when it hits the ground, they will not do that shot. Similarly, when setting up dynamite, they merely walk away instead of jumping away - as a result, they always get caught in the blast.
    • If you are unlucky enough, the AI in World Party may attack your worms that are standing on another enemy worm.
    • The AI in the mobile game Worms 3 does incredibly stupid things like setting up dynamite next to an enemy worm... and stay still, no further from the dynamite than its target. More often than not, they kill themselves and the opposing worm does not die.
    • The AI will also occasionally make some very strange choices in the usage of their weapons (e.g. Bazooka tunneling instead of hitting the obvious target nearby, or using a bazooka to shoot someone right next to them). In some installments, they cannot use the variety of weapons. In some games they are all too happy to tunnel with air strikes, even if they have limited ammo for them.
    • Sometimes they'll skip a turn for no apparent reason, even if their enemy is literally in front of them.
    • The Stupid AI in Reloaded deliberately invokes this trope. The improved smarter A.I.s will sometimes do stupid things as well like getting caught in their own explosions, or maybe they're making a sacrifice for some higher strategic value. It's hard to tell.
    • As of Revolution, the AI will often fail to account for the game's newest features - physics objects and water physics. The AI will sometimes destroy physics objects next to them during their turns, even if it results in water bursting out from a water bottle and washing them into the sea. And the AI will sometimes leave the water if they're submerged... Only to go back in before their turn ends. And they don't account for indestructible terrain, either.note 
    • The AI in the DS version of Worms: Open Warfare probably takes the cake for doing the stupidest things in a Worms game, even on the highest difficulty. Some problems include attempting to fire Bazookas through obstacles and damaging itself; walking off cliffs and losing turns; and whiffing Fire Punches.
  • Baa-Bomb: Sheep exploding. Flying sheep with capes exploding. Flying, swimming sheep with capes and snorkels exploding. Sheep that have been launched from cannons exploding. Sheep spawning from destroyed weapon crates, then exploding. Cloned sheep exploding in herds. Sheep dropping from a plane and exploding. Sheep that have been set on fire dropping from a plane and exploding while La Marseillaise blares in the background. And, in Director's Cut, sheep using Ninja Ropes and exploding.
  • Baby Planet: Worms World Party features one in the background of its title screen.
  • Bag of Holding: Some games include a Plunder setting, that let worms keep any kind of weapon they had in the last round, while replenishing all their starting weapons.
  • Bag of Sharing:
    • All worms on the same team have access to the same pool of weapons and items.
    • Zig Zagged with World Party's wormpot setting "specialist worm" that gives each worm on the team specific weapons, but once that worm died, the respective arsenal is transferred to another worm.
  • Bag of Spilling: In a multi-round versus match, the Regular arsenal setting gives each player a fresh arsenal of weapons and items each round, ignoring what they had remaining in the previous round. Averted with the other settings; the Plunder setting allows teams to keep what they had in the previous round as well as giving them a new arsenal each round, and the Survival setting gives each team only one arsenal at the very beginning that carries over but is never replenished.
  • Bananas Are Funny: As befitting a game series that features many absurd and hilarious weapons, one staple is the Banana Bomb, a banana bundle that explodes like an upgraded cluster bomb, splitting into multiple bananas that explode upon contact.
  • Baseless Mission: Inverted in Forts Under Siege. This game puts a bigger focus on constructing "forts" over worm-on-worm combat, thus a team can be eliminated not only by losing all of its worms, but also by having their fort's stronghold completely destroyed.
  • Batter Up!: The baseball bat deals modest damage but a large amount of force, making it incredibly useful for knocking other worms into the water. The home run jingle will play if you knock them off the edge of the screen.
  • Bigger Stick: Parodied in one of the intro videos for Worms 2, where the two worms pull out bigger and bigger arsenals to threaten each other until one literally drops the hammer on the other.
  • Bloodless Carnage: The titular invertebrates get flung around by baseball bats, blown up by grenades or land mines and the such, but they never bleed. Even animal-based weapons don't leave a speck of blood after exploding. Though few of the early games do have the option to turn blood on,note  the series usually runs on bloodless, slapstick-style violence. Averted with the spinoff title Flockers, which involves the sheep getting brutally massacred by deadly contraptions.
  • Bond One-Liner: When a Worm is killed, a comment like "Playername is 6 feet under" or (in the case of falling into the water) "Playername sank like the Titanic" is displayed at the top of the screen.
  • Boring, but Practical: A few weapons, but exemplified by the Shotgun which has great range, good damage output, and is usually readily available.
  • Character Customization:
    • In the most basic form, you get to name your worms and choose their team's soundbank, gravestone, and victory fanfare.
    • Every game since the 3D Generation allows you to customize the appearance of worms, such as giving them hats, gloves, or other features.
  • Cherry Tapping: The "Prod" does no damage whatsoever, other than pushing your opponent a bit, but it's still possible to nudge them into water or off high cliffs. Worms 2: Armageddon/Reloaded awards the player an achievement for winning a game this way.
  • Circling Birdies: In 3D installments. The star variation in 3D, and the bird variant in Forts: Under Siege.
  • Cool, but Inefficient: Several of the weapons, as well as some methods of getting around.
    • The MB Bomb and Mail Strike from the second generation games are two of the weakest super weapons in the game, as while they deal a lot of damage (particularly the former), they are also wind-reliant, which means that you need to place the target off from where your enemy worms are instead of a direct hit. And even that isn't always effective since sometimes they can get too far.
  • Combat Pragmatist: One of the easiest way to kill an enemy worm is to make it fall in the water - instant death assured.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Because of how turns work, when a team of worms starts to dwindle down, they "move faster" than they did before. The game always ensures that players alternate turns, and because there's fewer worms on the team to cycle through, they get to act more frequently. At the extreme end of 1 vs 8, the 1 worm is basically moving eight times as fast as all the other worms. This helps narrow the advantage the 8 might have in such a situation, making spectacular (and usually hilarious) comebacks more likely.
  • Cowardice Callout: Whenever any player decides to use Skip Go, Freeze, or Surrender, a random enemy team's worm will call them a coward (depending on the soundbank).
  • Crapsack World: Played with. Despite being presented as over the top, comical and colorful, the world of Worms nonetheless is seemingly caught in nonstop wars. Granted, the Worms don't seem to mind too much, but in several Wormsongs they do lament having to watch their comrades fall and their world be blown apart.
  • Crate Expectations: Crates are parachuted into the battleground, presumably by the same air force responsible for the air strikes, napalm strikes, mail strikes and concrete donkeys. They can give weapons, tools or health, and explode if you shoot them. Also, depending on the game, if there's an animal inside a weapon crate, destroying it might also release a sheep, which will also explode if it touches solid ground.
    • Worms 2 includes booby-trapped crates, which are crates that explode on impact when a worm collects one.
  • Critical Existence Failure: In many of the games, the Worms blow themselves up with a demolition plunger when they run out of Hit Points. This "corpse explosion" will occasionally damage or even kill other worms that happen to be in the area of effect. It can turn the tide in close matches.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: The amusing opening animations tend to feature stuff that couldn't happen in game.
  • Darker and Edgier: Worms Armageddon is much darker in its premise than any of its earlier and later incarnations. The notable detail is an ambient style soundtrack ranged from dark and atmospheric tracks to an arguably nightmarish ones.
  • Death by Irony: All crates explode if shot at, even the health crates. Meaning that it's entirely possible for a worm to die from the explosion of a health crate.
  • Death from Above: Air Strikes, Napalm Strikes, Mail Strikes, Flaming Sheep Strikes, Carpet Bombs, Concrete Donkeys. There are plenty.
  • Death Is Cheap: Fallen worms are back for the next battle as if nothing had happened. This is most noticeable in campaign mode and especially the more story-oriented entries, where no discontinuity can be implied – sometimes a single worm survives the battle, yet the whole team is back for any following cutscene and the next battle in the story.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: The general rule of Worms weapons is the more powerful the weapon is, the harder it is to use right. The poster child for this is probably the Super Sheep, which while finicky, can fly to any place on the map and explodes upon contact. In fact, Armageddon and W.M.D have one Tutorial campaign based on using the Super Sheep alone.
  • Disaster Dominoes:
    • Some of the most spectacular and memorable shots set off chain reactions of exploding barrels, crates, mines, etc., killing worms which then explode, setting off more barrels...
    • The "Bow 'n' Arrow" scheme is this personified. Played on maps that resemble giant pachinko boards with mines on all the dots not occupied by worms, players shoot at the mines with bows and arrows to send them flying. Maybe the mine will take out the worm you want. Maybe it'll miss everything. But most likely the chain reaction will take out half of the worms on the map, including several from your own team.
  • Disc-One Nuke:
    • Players will often use the Ninja Rope item to grab crates and boxes with powerful weapons early in the game, though the AI can do this as well.
    • The thing about getting a crate shower from a utility crate in the second generation games is that they have an equal chance to spawn any weapon in the game even if they were set to never spawn in that particular scheme. Case in point: this game that was meant to rely heavily on melee weapons winds up a lot shorter than intended due to one player getting an Armageddon on the very first turn from a crate shower.note 
  • Edible Ammunition: The Banana Bomb, also known as the "soft fruit of doom". Not that any worms are likely to survive eating it, of course.
  • Enough to Go Around: Many of the superweapons are like this, where uses are 'in' crates that anyone can grab.
  • Exploding Barrels: Starting with Worms 2, oil drums full of napalm (except for Worms 4: Mayhem, where they're poisonous instead) often appear on the map and will explode should they be hit by a weapon.
  • Exploited Immunity: Some games have Armageddon; an indiscriminate meteor storm that targets the whole map. It can be used to invoke this trope if you've prepared a lot of girders and/or dug your team deeply into the ground.
  • Face Palm: In Reloaded, worms will smack themselves in the face when they hurt themselves.
  • Fartillery:
    • The Skunk from Worms Armageddon onward releases poison this way.
    • The Old Woman farts in a few games as she walks. It's only cosmetic in some games, but actually poisons worms in others.
  • Fixed Damage Attack: In the second-generation games, using the Intermediate scheme, the Fire Punch and Dragon Ball always deal 30 damage and the Longbow always deals 15 damage. Since it's unreasonably difficult to aim a bazooka or grenade well enough to deal their theoretical maximum damage, this is quite helpful.
  • Floating Limbs:
    • Worms' hands ever since the third generation and onward. Furthermore, they disappear when not in use. Worms 3D in particular played with this in the cut-scenes where worms would be knocked away by something but their limbs would stay, moving around as if still attached.
    • If one looks closely at the Homing Pigeon's design in the 3D games, its feet aren't attached to its body.
  • Floating Platforms: Terrain continues to hang in the air after you blow up the land supporting it. It just wouldn't be the same without it. It also leads to some of the more amusing moments where chunks of terrain can be reduced to tiny little dots that still register collisions with worms, ropes and weapons. Cue players blowing themselves up by firing a bazooka at a dot of terrain in front of them that they didn't see.
  • Forced Tutorial: Worms Armageddon forces you(r team) to play the basic training disciplines before you can start the campaign with that team.
  • Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics: Most versions of the game have the Wormsong refrain without the lyrics.
  • Game Mod:
    • The second generation games and Reloaded allowed the player to create their own sound schemes using .wav files. A massive amount of fan made schemes abound, ranging from Duke Nukem one liners to Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 quotes.
    • Worms Armageddon in particular is still being maintained by fans of the game employed by Team17, who have added many, many things to keep it up-to-date and relevant with modern computers.
  • Gatling Good: The Minigun, a super weapon in the original but more common in the second-generation games. In Worms 2, cranking all of its stats to the maximum makes it the most overpowered weapon in the entire game, making it capable of wiping out literally the entire map in one turn.
  • God Is Good: God himself is the announcer in Worms Forts: Under Siege, is in charge of the tutorials, and will happily help His followers below if they can find the ammo to invoke His miracles.
  • Have a Nice Death: "_____ is an ex-worm" is a classic example, as is "_____'s team is no more..." Later games add more death messages, such as "_____ is six feet under."
  • Heroic Comedic Sociopath: VERY prevalent in every game. The Worms seem to be not only desensitized to death, but occasionally laugh whenever someone dies.
  • Hero Must Survive: Some games include these types of missions, such as "Countdown to Armageddon!" in Armageddon and Mission 6 in Reloaded's Forts pack.
  • The Holy Grail: One of the missions in the Medieval campaign of Worms Forts: Under Siege involves completing three trials in order to acquire the Holy Grail. The mission ends with the player's worm concluding that the Grail isn't really all that it's cracked up to be, and abandoning it.
  • Holy Hand Grenade: A literal version of this trope is a staple weapon of the series. It comes straight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and hits hard as hell with its huge blast radius.
  • Home-Run Hitter: The Baseball Bat, even though many of the more powerful weapons can easily send worms flying off the map as well. In some of the 2D games, batting enemy worms into the water will prompt the 'Charge!' theme to play.
  • Homing Projectile: The Homing Missile (obviously), the Homing Pigeon, and Patsy's Magic Bullet, in increasing order of reliability. There was also the Homing Strike only found in Worms 2 which unleashed a whole swarm of Homing Missiles.
  • Idle Animation: Several to choose from. Worms can look behind them, munch up the ground, or do a little dance.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills:
    • AI driven worms throwing Grenades down a shaft so that it bounces off of an object, rolls up a crater and gets lodged inbetween your worm and a wall half a second before exploding is not uncommon. The improved AI in Worms Reloaded plus the fact that grenades stop dead when they roll into a worm makes this more common.
    • The "Cocky" AI in Worms Reloaded does this on purpose. It chooses to do the most difficult (but still viable) shots possible in order to show off.
  • In a World…: Invoked by the "Movie Trailers" voice option in Reloaded. "In a world where worms can't trust one another..."
  • Innocent Innuendo: One of the stages in Armageddon is named "Horny". It's a cavern full of alien-like stalactites and stalagmites (horns) protruding from the floor and ceiling.
  • Instant Gravestone: The games have dead worms blowing themselves up with a dynamite plunger and instantly being replaced with a gravestone.
  • Internal Homage: One Forts mission in Reloaded is a remake of the final mission of Worms 4: Mayhem's story campaign mode, with a similar premise and enemy worm names.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: The Dragon Ball weaponnote  involves the user throwing an energy ball at the target, knocking them a decent distance away.
  • Large Ham: The Thespian voice set, which is basically worms trained in classical acting. Has gems such as "FEEL THE POINT OF MY RAPIER, YOU SCOUNDREL!" for damaging an enemy worm, "'ZOUNDS! I AM UNDONE!" after killing an enemy and "A DONKEY, A DONKEY, MY KINGDOM FOR A DONKEY!" , a Richard III quote rendered in-context, upon collecting a crate.
  • Last Ditch Move: Worms blow up when they die, damaging others near them.
  • Lethal Joke Item: The silliest weapons also tend to be the most deadly ones.
  • Lies to Children: The origin of the Concrete Donkey. Andy Davidson as a child was led to believe by his parents that the concrete donkey in their garden was a real donkey encased in concrete and held at their leisure.
  • Lighter and Softer: Worms 2 and onward, save for Worms: Armageddon, and especially, Flockers.
    M-Z 
  • Made of Explodium: EVERYTHING! Nearly all weapon attacks result in explosions that damage the terrain and blow away nearby worms. Even animals blow up.
  • Magikarp Power: Everything you consider useless as a weapon - because in Worms, there is actually no such thing as a useless weapon.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: At least in Armageddon, worms have two different animations that play some random time after receiving damage - one being waving their fist angrily, and the other being an annoyed side glance. The first animation plays when the worms receives enough damage, while the second plays when the worms receives very little damage or just under the arbitrary limit. Since each shotgun shot deals maximally 25 points of damage, and the minimum for the first animation seems to be either 26 or 30, worms usually react to being shot with a shotgun with an annoyed side glance. It gets even more ridiculous if you shoot them twice, resulting in them losing 50 points of damage - the first animation will play if you shoot them fast enough not to let them play the second animation, but otherwise, they'll just make the second animation after each shot. Considering that worms usually have 100 points of health, it comes out as "Oh, I just lost half of my health. Annoying."
  • Mission-Pack Sequel: Worms World Party. Although it did add a few new modes and restored a number of Worms 2 features that had been left out from Armageddon, it is otherwise the same game as the previous two entries before it.
  • Multiplayer-Only Item:
    • Both Worms Armageddon and Worms World Party feature Invisibility, an utility that renders the entire team invisible to other players, which lasts until someone from the team fires a weapon. It appears only in online battles, which by default are restricted to human players.
    • In Worms Blast, there are a few weapons that are useless against AI-controlled opponents. A good example is the tentacle monster, which, if it catches a player, requires you to quickly mash a button in order to not get killed - AI enemies ALWAYS come out of it unharmed, meaning that it only causes them to be immobilized for like 5 seconds. The utility that reverses the controls doesn't seem to have any effect either.
  • Nerf:
    • In most games after Worms 2, the Bazooka and Grenade had their base damage reduced from 50 (2-hit kill on perfect hits) to 45 (3-hit kills).
    • In Worms 2, the player can invoke this trope with the custom weapon schemes by cranking all the damage settings to the absolute minimum.
  • Nerf Arm: As a rule of thumb, the more unlikely a weapon sounds, the more powerful it will be.
  • Non-Action Guy: Certain campaigns have civilian worms appear, usually as someone who you must protect at all cost. They cannot fight at all, and are easily recognizable by a top hat they are wearing.
  • Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: Prod does no damage but moves the enemy 10 feet away. Its most efficent use is to push the enemy off a ledge or into a booby trap.
  • Non Sequitur: The 'Cricket' soundbank adds completely unrelated comments to the end of its cricket phrases, such as commenting on a lovely flock of birds or informing the player the worm likes wine before blowing themselves up. This is a reference to real life Cricket commentators who, as a result of how much standing around and waiting for the weather to clear can occur in a typical test match, often go off on fairly long tangents about nothing in particular.
  • No Plot? No Problem!: Worms are trying to kill each other with nasty weapons. Why? Who knows? More to the point, who cares? Later games have a Story Mode that still doesn't really explain why the worms goes out into war to solve their problems. The closest there is to an overarching story is in "Wormsongs".
  • Not the Fall That Kills You…: Worms will take damage if they strike the landscape at a fast enough speed, and if this happens to the active worm, the turn will end... except with some transport tools.
  • Oh, Crap!: Worms will respond to timed explosives that are a second from going off. Starting with Open Warfare 2, they actually scream whenever they see it coming.
  • Pathetic Drooping Weapon: A Worms 2 cutscene includes a Worm pointing a gun at an enemy Worm wielding a sword, only for the latter to pull out a shotgun that leads to the former Worm's gun to droop in response.
  • Percent Damage Attack: The Battle Axe cuts the target's HP in half.
  • Perfect Play A.I.: CPU opponents on the highest settings are able to perfectly calculate bazooka shots to compensate for the wind, and can fire off grenades and related weapons such that they explode right as they hit the target worm.
  • Pictorial Letter Substitution: Most games' logos change the "o" of "Worms" to a grenade. It's occasionally something different such as a nuclear symbol, a planet, a water balloon, a spiked metal ball or a crosshair. Worms W.M.D introduced a new logo where every letter is normal, which was used in later games such as Worms: The Board Game and Worms Across Worlds.
  • Pinball Spin-Off: Worms Pinball for the PS1 and PC.
  • Power-Up: Many, such as Double Damage, extra superweapons and health.
  • Press X to Die:
    • Most of the games have an item called the Surrender. When used, the player's team will be removed from the match, although its members remain on the landscape waving white flags and can be knocked around by the remaining teams.
    • The Kamikaze weapon causes the worm who uses it to shoot forward in a straight line before exploding. This can be useful if you've got a worm on its last legs (figuratively speaking) and you want to knock some enemy worms into the water or other hazards.
    • Heck, all weapons can be used to to kill yourself (or your teammates), and it regularly turns out that having one or two worms sacrificing themselves for the greater good is a good idea. Or you just want to show your opponent that you can use your team as a suicide squad and still kick his ass.
  • Priceless Ming Vase: Available as a super weapon in second generation games. Like everything else, the vase explodes. More specifically, it is a dynamite-like weapon which yields a very large explosion after 5 seconds and sends shrapnel everywhere. Then the shrapnel explodes too.
  • Pun: Mail strikes, literal carpet bombs, mine strikes, cloned sheep, magic bullet, mad cows... and probably a lot more.
  • Punny Name: Some worms in Reloaded's Forts campaign and W.M.D.'s mission campaign contain some fake Chinese-sounding worm names that are on par with "Sum Ting Wong" and "Bang Ding Ow".
  • Random Drop: All sorts of weapons, items and even health pickups can be randomly dropped in crates scattered around the map.
  • Randomly Generated Levels: The games provide randomly generated maps that determine the map's shapes, the terrain types used, how many bridges and objects, et cetera. In the second generation games, deathmatch battles take place in randomly generated maps instead of predetermined maps like in missions.
  • Rise to the Challenge:
    • One of the most common effects during Sudden Death. The water will rise after each turn, slowly taking the map down and eliminating worms that weren't able to save themselves.
    • In Blast, shooting a bazooka into the water on your field causes the water to rise, potentially bringing you closer to hitting your head on blocks and being sunk. Collecting a star lowers the water level and a special weapon lets you equalize the water level between both fields.
  • Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: How the Armageddon works, and its typical results.
  • Scratch Damage: The Battle Axe weapon usually deals damage equal to half of the target's HP, rounded up. This means that the only way of dealing a killing blow with it is to hit a worm who has 1 HP.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: Inverted in most the Worms games, with the shotgun being your primary sniping weapon. Played straight in Worms Rumble, in that it fires a spray of shots that is more likely to kill quickly if you're up in your target's face.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The most notable examples being the Fire Punch and Dragonball weapons, homages to Street Fighter's Shoryuken (Dragon Punch) and Hadouken (Fireball). Some of the default voice packs actually have worms say "Shoryuken!" or "Hadouken!" when using these two. The beta demo of the game made it even more blatant as it just called them 'Dragon Punch' and 'Fireball' before they were swapped around for the actual release.
    • The Holy Hand Grenade ("Haaaa-llelujah!") comes straight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
    • Speaking of Monty Python, many of the Have a Nice Death messages are taken literally from their famous Dead Parrot sketch.
      <Insert Name Here> is an ex-worm!
    • The Priceless Ming Vase references an ancient comedy trope, French and Indian Nuclear Tests, Mad Cows, and most of the Strike weapons (particularly the French Sheep Strike, with its burning lorry...) also shout out to other events, things and tropes.
    • Mike's Carpet Bomb is initially a reference to Mike's Carpets, a carpet store located in Yorkshire, the headquarters of Team17, though later installments would drop the "Mike's" from the weapon name.
    • The two main playstyles of "Lightsiding" and "Darksiding" reference, of course, Star Wars. (The styles seem inverted: in Star Wars, Light Side fighting is mainly defensive while in Worms, Lightsiding is offensive; with the Dark Side seeming vice versa. However, what the two Dark Sides have in common is that they engage in tactics that can be seen as sneaky/cowardly. So in Worms, Light vs Dark is more of a case of overt versus covert.)
    • There are Shout Outs just about everywhere in the Worms series, right down to the voice sets: "Formula 1" is the Worms doing the best impersonation their squeaky voices can handle of legendary British motor racing commentator Murray Walker. "There was definitely contact there!"
    • The classic Ninja Rope was a Shout-Out to Batman and his Grappling-Hook Pistol. The beta even called it a Batrope.
    • One of the hats in Worms 4 and Worms W.M.D., Unicorn, has hair that resembles Rainbow Dash's mane.
    • The "Stooges" soundbank features various catchphrases from The Three Stooges shorts, saying things such as "Spread out!" when an explosive lands nearby, "Look at the grouse!" when launching an air raid or "Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk" when using an animal or "drop and run" weapon. The voice itself sounds like a strange mix of Moe and Curly, sounding more like one or the other depending on the voice clip.
    • The "Double-Oh-Seven" soundbank from the second generation games is a Sean Connery impersonation, though without the secret agent references.
    • The Jamaican soundbank may have a worm say "Mista lova-lova!".
    • Armageddon's Deathmatch mode contains a team mostly composed of historical British Royal Family members, another composed of famous British celebrities such as Vinnie Jones and George Graham, and a team called "Dodgy 8" that acts as a Stealth Pun for the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
  • Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Way down the silly end, and loving every second of it.
  • Smelly Skunk: A weapon introduced in Armageddon. Once deployed it will walk around and, after a few seconds, spray toxic fumes which poison nearby worms.
  • Sniper Scope Sway: Averted in the early game, where weapons always have perfect stability. Slapping a laser sight on a weapon allows for perfect aiming even at improbable distances.
  • Sphere of Destruction: The explosions of most weapons in the 2D games leave perfectly circular craters.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Title: The spin-off Worms Pinball was originally named Addiction Pinball on its PC release (and featured a table based on another Team17 game, World Rally Fever, alongside the Worms-themed one) before being renamed for the PlayStation port.
  • Stalked by the Bell: When the round timer runs out, varying things can happen: all Worms reduced to one health, all Worms poisoned (via a nuke), and/or the water level starts to rise. The latter is a problem due to Super Drowning Skills.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • Homing pigeon. It's of course a type of a pigeon, but here it's also "homing" in a way a homing missile is.
    • One of the default AI teams in Armageddon's Deathmatch mode is called "Dodgy 8", with "El Presidente" and "The Intern" as its members. This refers to the infamous scandal between US president Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky, where they are involved in something "dodgy".
  • Stereotypical South Asian English: One of the voices you can select for your worms in Armageddon is "The Raj", in which the worms speak with an exaggerated South Asian accent. Features of this voice set include the singsong cadence of speech, use of the present participle, and a somewhat verbose vocabulary (for example, when other voice sets would respond to a missed shot with lines like "Missed me!" or "Bad Shot!", The Raj's line is "You are having bad eyesight!").
  • Stock Animal Diet: One of the Idle Animations present across multiple games is a worm picking up a piece of dirt from the terrain and munching on it.
  • Stuff Blowing Up:
    • There's stuff you'd reasonably expect to explode, like grenades and bazooka rockets. Then there are sheep, bananas, pigeons, carpets, concrete donkeys, more sheep, cows, envelopes, and grannies. Shoot a supply, health, or utility crate, and it will explode, and if the crate contained a sheep-based weapon, the sheep might jump out of the crate and then explode when it lands. Kill a Worm and it explodes, leaving behind a small gravestone which given enough provocation also explodes.
    • This is also the only reason why an entire team can get wiped out with one prod. That and really lucky placement.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Being submersed in water kills instantly regardless of health unless you skip over it. Then again, if you're being skipped over water, odds are you're flying off the side of the level...
  • Symmetric Effect: The titular "Armageddon" airstrike launches highly destructive asteroids randomly across the whole map, causing tremendous devastation that can potentially reduce the entire landmass to a few small islands. A worm very deep underground, or protected by electromagnets, may be able to withstand it; otherwise, it's just a way of quite literally leveling the playing field.
  • Taking You with Me: The worms self-destructing upon death can be a (usually) unintentional example: if there's a nearby enemy with very little health left or inches from being knocked off stage, the small explosion can kill them. As for straighter examples, there are the Kamikaze and Suicide Bomber weapons: the former does more damage and has higher knockback and range, while the latter does little damage upfront but poisons nearby worms, potentially making it the more devastating option during longer games.
  • Teleporters and Transporters: At least few different varieties of teleporters are available:
    • The classic Teleport lets worms move almost anywhere on the map, but immediately ends their turn when used.
    • Reloaded's Emergency Teleport warps every worm on a team to a random spot on the map.
    • Clan Wars introduced the Teleport Gun, which allows worms to shoot a spot on the map and immediately warp there without wasting a turn.
  • Theme Music Power-Up: Used in Blast when Blast Mode is activated and a remix of Wormsong starts up.
  • They Killed Kenny Again: Any worms who died in a war during gameplay always come back alive and well for the next round.
  • This Banana is Armed: The sillier a weapon is, the more dangerous it will be. Sheep, literal Banana Bombs (a Banana as a Cluster Bomb but stronger), little old ladies can and will explode violently, and the Concrete Donkey, which plows its way through the entire stage when dropped and is guaranteed to kill any worms it falls on.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: When a worm is about to get royally fucked by a weapon, they'll either nervously say something like, "Oh dear!" or just plain scream in panic.
  • Throw the Pin: Played straight in one cutscene in Worms 2: We see a worm pulling the pin from a grenade, the camera cuts to the "victim" worm - who is hit on the head by the pin. Cut back to the attacking worm, who proceeds to do an Evil Laugh - then notices that he's still holding the grenade.
  • Title Drop: The Armageddon weapon in Worms Armageddon.
  • Tongue-Out Insult: In the 3D games, if your worms approach an enemy worm, there is a chance that the enemy worm will taunt you this way.
  • Too Dumb to Live: The worms have no sense of fighting back or fleeing when they're attacked.
  • Trash Talk: If you screw up a shot, expect other worms to point out your stupidity. "OI, NUTTA!". They'll also chew you out for skipping turns or running out of your turn time. "BORING!"
  • Trope Codifier: For Artillery-style turn-based strategy. Despite being preceded by a number of similar games, newer games with a similar style of play (such as Hogs of War) are inevitably known as "Worms clones".
  • Tunnel King: Some weapons, such as the Blowtorch, allow the player to quickly dig through terrain. Becoming one is quintessential to being on the Darkside and some games will note what worm fell to this side in the post-match screen for using said tools.
  • Variable Mix: Blast uses this across the game, even changing in the main menu depending on where you are. For gameplay, the music will become more intense and rapid as blocks inch closer to either player or in puzzle mode (such as when time is running out).
  • Video Game Stealing: Reloaded introduced the ability to steal a weapon from another team. This was reworked into the close-range Stick Up in Revolution.
  • Visual Pun:
    • Worms will pull out a skipping rope when skipping a turn.
    • The Carpet Bomb is literally an air strike that drops explosive bouncing carpets.
  • War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Particularly with the cartoony direction of the series from Worms 2 onwards.
  • Weapon Tombstone: If Donor Cards are set, the last worm on a team can drop such a card upon dying instead of the usual Instant Gravestone. Picking up this card gives all the utilities and superweapons that worm's team had. It can be blown up, too.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Your worms will berate a teammate for getting them caught in the crossfire.
  • When It Rains, It Pours: Happens in the 3D installments.
  • Whoopee Cushion: Clan Wars introduces the Whoopsie Cushion, which bounces around the battlefield while emitting poison gas when used.
  • You Fight Like a Cow: PLENTY of this going on. Enemy worms will take any opportunity they can to lambast your combat skills.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: The second generation games have a setting where the last worm in a team drops a donor card when killed. Whoever takes the donor card gets all extra weapons that team had.
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Worms: Open Warfare

Perhaps the worm on the cliff should've payed more attention to what he's thrown at his enemy.

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Throw the Pin

★★★★★ 4.88 (8 votes)
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Worms: Open Warfare

Perhaps the worm on the cliff should've payed more attention to what he's thrown at his enemy.

(Leave a comment)

How well does it match the trope?

4.88 (8 votes)

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