Ninjas versus spiders

Playing Ninja Blade today made me realize that every ninja video game ever created has some sort of gigantic spider boss. As I was hacking the legs off the spider I wondered what it is that makes spiders the natural enemy of ninjas.

Is it perhaps because they regard one another as grotesque, perverted reflections of themselves? The ninja, a master of stealth, wall-jumping and not using guns, views the spider as what a ninja might look like if he happened to have born with an exoskeleton, several legs and venomous fangs. The spider, recognizing in the ninja a similar ability to stalk and trap its prey without resorting to boorish assaults, imagines that he might have been born a ninja had he lacked web-spinning ability and been blessed with the power to sever henchmen's spines with shurikens.

Taking all that into account, it would not surprise me if the spider-ridiculing films "8 Legged Freaks" and "Arachnophobia" were written and directed by covert ninjas. Likewise, the blatantly anti-ninja movies "Three Ninjas" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze" were produced by spiders who had managed to work their way up through the Hollywood system by masquerading as humans (advanced knowledge of makeup effects would have been an absolute necessity to pull off this ruse).

While the opposing forces have battled to a draw in the realm of film, it's sad in this age of affirmative action and equal rights that the video game world continues to be vehemently ant-spider and pro-ninja. We're led to believe that spiders, even in gigantic, mutated form, are no match for an average-size ninjas with never-ending continues.

Oh, for a spider-based game in which the end boss is a tiny ninja. That would be one for the ages.