Pokemon Headcrabs

Half-Life 2: Episode Two sometimes takes ages to load, leaving my mind time to wander. I started thinking about how there are normal and acid antlions and normal, fast and poison headcrabs, and ended up thinking of what other variations of headcrab you could have. My first association was the types in Pokemon and that got me started on further evolutions of the headcrab.

Upper left is the ice headcrab that thrives in the freezing cold. It has claws and teeth that work like icepicks, and it makes a nice warm hat once it's dead.

Upper right is flying headcrab, which produces copious amounts of hydrogen, stored in special expanding bladders to create buoyancy. Rather than hindlimbs it has two funnels for releasing the gas for propulsion. Danger: explosive.

Mid left is the psychic headcrab or braincrab, physically weakest of them all. Soft, squishy and unable to jump it seems helpess, but by hijacking your brainwaves it can force you to pick it up and place it on your head.

Mid right is the water headcrab, also known as headcrayfish. Using its paddle-like limbs and lobed tail it can swim efficiently searching for hosts underwater.

At the bottom, appropriately, is the ground headcrab or mole headcrab. Its front claws have changed into digging appendages that allow it to burrow through the ground. They tend to wait for promising tremors to dig their way up and leap at the nearest cranium.