At this point we've all had a laugh over the "giant enemy crabs" meme spawned at last year's Sony E3 press conference.  In case you missed it, the joke is that one of the game demos on display for Genji 2 (now known as Genji: Days of the Blade) for the Sony PlayStation 3 was introduced as being based on actual Japanese history just as a giant enemy crab appeared onscreen.  Like many of us I assumed that I must have missed the day in high school history class when the discussion topic featured Japan versus the giant enemy crabs.  Now I find out that not only are there giant enemy crabs in Japan's past, but there have been a number of animal-based invasions and military campaigns throughout history.  Metafilter's own "robocop is bleeding" gives us a little history lesson during yet another discussion of the giant enemy crab meme.

Listen, our forefathers did not risk it all fighting giant enemy crabs so that we could sit back today and laugh at some Sony jerk.  They did it for our freedom.

Great Historical Creature Fights:

10. Napoleon vs Giant Sting Ray (1807) Napoleon single handedly takes on the giant protector of of the Dutch harbor.
9. Third Battle of Ypres (1914) Bees, bees, bees!
8. Benedict Arnold vs "The Canadian Leviathan" (1775) Scholars now believe that Arnold's account of "a massife beaste covered in fangf, flame, and terror like unto Revelationf" was actually a wayward dairy cow.
7. Teddy Roosevelt vs the Lobsters of San Juan Hill (1898) Victory wasn't the only thing savored by the Rough Riders that night!
6. Tokugawa Ieyasu vs the Giant Ape of Marune (1560) Ieyasu-sama wisely planned ahead for this fight by bringing the Giant Ape's only weakness, fire and lots of it, to the seige.
5. Saladin vs Nur al Din (1169) Nur al Din, empowered by his horrible lycanthropy is dispatched in his sleep by his nephew Saladin with a silver scimitar. By freeing the Muslim world from the werewolf's curse, Saladin unites the people and later retakes Jerusalem.
4. Octavian vs the Walrus (31 BC) Anthony and Cleopatra, desperate to avoid a military confrontation with the future Emperor dispatch an unique assassin. The assassin fails, and later as Emperor, Augusts bans all walrii from the Empire.
3. George Washington vs Lakitu (1779) Our future First President stomps on spiny Hessian mercenaries before defeating their leader with a hammer.
2. Native Americans vs Microbes (1492 - 1860) Sadly, the beasts won this one.
1. Sparta's 300 vs Xerxes' Elite (480 BC) Herodotus records the perfect precision used by the Spartans to flip over Xerxes' elite giant crabs in order to deliver Massive Damage.

I always knew that those walrii were trouble.  But seriously, I think we've hit the high point of the giant enemy crab gag.  It's been a wild entertaining ride, but nothing new in the giant enemy crab genre is going to top robocop's historical review (unless, of course, Genji 3 allows players to take on missions as the giant enemy crab).