Huh, I thought it was a Hunter X Hunter reference with the huge tree (wasn’t metal though). One of the chimera ants is mixed with a shrike and impaled it’s victims as well. Got taken out quick though, once spoiler spoiler spoiler, so wasn’t that important an antagonist.
This is in no way a defense, but rather an accusation: many other companies pull or have pulled similar things. Hasbro famously used near slave labor when they partnered with Good Shepherd Sisters, one of many similar “Magdalene Laundries”; religious convents that some women were put in for sins as horrifying as “having a baby out of wedlock.”
Behind the Bastards discusses them in their episodes titled “How the catholic church murdered Ireland’s babies”