Achaierai: Okay, so it’s a bird... thing. A brightly-coloured bird thing with four legs. It is CR 5, Lawful Evil, from Acheron, can release insanity-inducing gas and like torturing people.

What the hell, Wizards. What the hell.

Animated Objects: Actually this happens a lot but I’ve only ever seen boring stuff like desks and chairs and beds and tables. Why would you animate a table? What benefit is there to taking something intended for the placing of objects upon and allowing it to move around violently?

What about animated cardboard boxes? Animated toasters? Animated butter-churners? Animated backscratchers? Where is my ambulatory shoehorn?

Athach: Abberant giants with an extra arm on their chests. The drawing in the Monster Manual has a pig skin on its shoulder. I wonder what the females look like.

Cockatrice: Okay, whose idea was it to give a save-or-die to a CR 3? (Editor's Note: Gygax?)

Delver: I don’t know about you but I can’t think of a use for a lump of rock that eats other rocks and gets wasted off metal.

Actually, yes I can.

Hellcat: Actually I’ve had a DM who put them in. I was a malconvoker and got one to let me ride it. It was fun.

Still, invisible devil-cats. What the fuck?

Digester: This thing looks retarded. Seriously, open your MM up. Page 59. It looks like it just walked off the set of Cthellytubbies. It looks ridiculous. It’s like a dinosaur flumph.

Brass Dragon: Screw you, brass dragon. Get a job.

Dragonne: Because dragons and dragon turtles aren’t enough, what we clearly need is a cross between a lion and a brass dragon. Where exactly did this come from? Did a brass dragon use polymorph and mount the king of the desert?

Gray Elf: I’ve got sub-race fever! (Sub-race fever!) It’s driving me crazy! (Driving me crazy!) I’ve got sub-race fever! (Sub-race fever!) I’m going out of my mind! (Going out of my mind!)

Ethereal Filcher: I think this thing does get used, but no player wants to admit being robbed by a monoped with a Muppet face on its belly.

Its description doesn’t say what that thing on its “neck” is, but since it doesn’t say it has two faces, I’m going to assume it’s the other end of its digestive system. Yuck.

Ettin: What? Don't look at me like that. I mean it!

Formian: Modrons were here. Formians are losers.

Frost worm: Basically the purple worm’s less cool cousin. If the 4e version turns out to be like the Warcraft one, you know who called it.

Fungus: HA!

Girallon: oh my god is that a gorilla with its head removed and the upper torso of another gorilla stitched on top of it

fuck yes

Gorgon: What the shit is that thing? It’s a metal cow that breathes petrification gas. Save-or-die on a CR 8. Better, I suppose.

Grick: A snake with a parrot beak and tentacles. It bites people. Um.

Tallfellow: Halflings that are taller and hang around elves.

I make frowny faces at people who complain about elves being “mary sues” and even I think that’s pretty gay.

Hippogriff: I’m sorry, but the WoW version is better. It really is. Probably because it does not look like a horse with a stupid beak. It’s like a girl had a pony and got a little too excited with the feathers and the glue brush at Halloween.

Eleven-Headed Cryohydra: I’m writing this down with the firm belief that anyone who can get this specific with their memory is probably lying.

Invisible Stalker: I’m kind of lost for words on this one. It’s an air elemental you can’t see. Yippee.

Krenshar: Exactly how would this species come about anyway? They are described as being “catlike” and combining the “worst features of a wolf and a hyena”, though I don’t think either of those species are able to peel its face-skin back to reveal muscle and bone.

The funny thing is I’m sure there’s someone out there who finds that sexy.

Lammasu: Oh my god, it’s a winged lion with a manface. It now comes in a celestial half-dragon version!

Locathah: Apparently they were created by Eadro, who also created the merfolk. I like a god with a sense of humour.

Wereboar: It’s not even included on the big picture of lycanthropes they did with the fur-bait werewolf and the werebear that looks like a gorilla in a mask. Poor guy.

Hill Giant Dire Wereboar: Okay guys, seriously, what the hell.

Gray Ooze: You’d think that out of all the oozes, the one discriminated against would be the black one. Nope.

Phantom Fungus: Take the invisible stalker and a fungus and put them together. You now have an invisible fungus that waddles around biting people. What?

Phasm: It’s an amorphous blob that can turn into objects and sometimes leads a life of “philosophical contemplation”. And the art makes it look like vomit. I hope the artist is aware that he drew a penis.

Aasimar: “Even now I struggle to type that word without spelling it like buttocks.”

Just kidding. Actually I just wanted an excuse to cast weird looks over the Internet at Rob Heinsoo. Ignore this.

Rast: Firey spiders with what look like goblin-rat heads! THEY DRINK BLOOD!

Fuck this. I’m going to paste a statblock for star vampires over its entry. Take that, rast.

Ravid: Dumb floating one-armed snakes that animate chairs for fun. Hurray. (Editor's Note: Further evidence that many MM entries were constructed via Mad Libs.)

Remorhaz: I don’t know why, but every time I look at its picture I get the urge to make it into an image macro.

Roper: Ditto. It looks like a tentacle tree stump and whoever drew it gave it an “OH SHIT” face, like it just saw a white man tell a particularly hilarious joke about black people.

(Editor's Note: My 2nd Ed. Monstrous Manual has a particularly amusing bit under the Roper's entry: "Habitat: Ropers are not social and rarely cooperate with one another, though a group of them may be found in a good hunting spot. A group of ropers has been named a 'cluster' by scholars with nothing better to do.")

Shadow Mastiff: Emodog. (Editor's Note: Boxdog is a CR5 Outsider?)

Spider Eater: What the hell is this thing? It’s described as a bat-winged hornet and it doesn’t eat spiders. It has Freedom of Movement though. Guess it’s a swell mount.

Grig: Half-cricket pixies, have the world’s smallest violins, enjoy tiny watermelon. Hmmm.

Hellwasp: Show of hands here: Who has actually fought a swam of foul-tempered Lawful Evil bees? That can possess people and corpses by flying up their butt? Well, wasps, but this is close enough and lets me make terrible “lawful beevil” jokes.

Tojanida: I don’t even know what this is. What is that? Why did this get included and not modrons?

Triton: The merfolk’s inbred extraplanar cousins. Pass.

Celestial Charger: Or, to describe it fully, the celestial unicorn cleric of Ehlonna. What is this, My Little Pony?

Vargouille: Other people have explained flying demon heads that kiss people to make their ears turn into wings and fly their heads away better than I have. Let’s... let’s leave it there.

Winter Wolves Talking frosty wolves. Er... Okay, let’s leave it there.

Xill: What the balls? Take me back to the wolves!

Well, I guess evil four-armed dudes who lay eggs in people is at least original and the art doesn’t make them look stupider than a particularly dim brick sandwiched between some planks. Let’s be nice to them!

Yrthak: Thak yr too.

It’s a pterosaur with a sonic unicorn horn. It’s at the end of the Monster Manual so I don’t know if they were phoning this shit in by the end or not.

Manta Ray: ...Okay, okay, looking through the appendix is cheating. That’s enough.