User blog comment:Immolator1001/Reaper design/@comment-5070549-20120501234703/@comment-893816-20120502045229

I suspect you are close to the truth Zxjkl. I can distinctly remember there being mentions within the trivia of the Sovereign or general Reaper page that the Reaper forms are similar to that of the reaper cuttlefish. I suspect that the game creators decided on calling the central machine antagonists something menacing, eventually settling on Reaper. They had also planned to give them cephalopod appearances, and as it turns out, there is a cephalopod species known as the reaper cuttlefish. Add some more insect-like characteristics to tie it together with the Geth and viola.