> For example, the game Demon's Souls have Mind Flayers, they are called Mind Flayers and look the part. I doubt From Soft and/or Sony are paying royalties for such minor enemy.
Do they behave like mind flayers? Mind flayers have always been known for their ability to instantly kill a player by using a special attack that extracts his brain; that kind of prevents them from being "minor enemies".
They have an attack which stuns the player, followed up by a grab attack which looks a lot like them trying to bite(?) your head across a few seconds, doing immense damage.
I haven’t played demon souls but if they’re like the other mindflayer equivalents that fromsoft has made for their other games (the lanterns from bloodborne come to mind or the Elden ring dlc insta kill madness guys) they absolutely do instantly kill players with some mind based shenanigans.