Line #1 Literature/TheRelic


1	[[quoteright:299:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/7c1a5910e10238b7bc5c172d4507eca4.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:299: ''Franchise/JurassicPark'' [[JustForFun/XMeetsY meets]] ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' set in the Museum of Natural History ]]
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4	''The Relic'' (or ''Relic'') is a novel by [[Literature/AgentPendergast Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child]] first published in 1995 and adapted into a [[Film/TheRelic movie]] staring Tom Sizemore in 1997.
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6	A string of gruesome murders plagues the New York Museum of Natural History in the days leading up to a massive gala to open a new exhibit. The strange mutilations of the bodies suggests the killer may not even be human. But with so much at stake, the museum officials decide to push through the opening despite the dangers. Has a followup called ''Literature/{{Reliquary}}'' and is the first in the series of novels referred to as The Literature/AgentPendergast Series.
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9	!!This novel provides examples of:
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11	* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The storm drains under the museum, which are so large that homeless people have taken to living in them, which gets them killed by Mbwun.
12	* AnimatedAdaptation: InUniverse example: The end mentions a Saturday morning cartoon based on the events of the novel. Given how horrific those events were, it's not surprising that the show was shortly cancelled afterwards, due to low ratings.
13	* AfterActionVillainAnalysis: After the monster is finally killed.
14	* ApocalypticLog: Whittlesey's expedition journal.
15	* AttackOfTheTownFestival: The Museum's biggest donors will be at the grand opening of the Superstition Exhibition, as will the Mayor and other important people. Let's not make any unnecessary fuss about all of these inhumanly savage murders...it would look bad.
16	* BoomHeadshot[=/=]EyeScream: Pendergast [[spoiler:slays the Mbwun by nailing it through the eye with his revolver.]]
17	* BrainFood: The Mbwun. Human brains aren't its first choice, though, it prefers to eat the plants from the Amazon used as packing material in some specimen crates (which have much higher concentrations of the hormones and such it needs). The events of the novel happen because the crates are moved to a more secure area of the basement after a curator notices they've been broken into, forcing it to search for alternatives (read: brains).
18	* BreakoutCharacter: The main character in ''Relic'' and its sequel ''Reliquary'' was anthropology post-grad Margo Green, with FBI Agent Pendergast being a supporting character alongside Lt. D'Agosta. Pendergast got his own unofficial series (see Literature/AgentPendergast), and Margo and D'Agosta show up several times.
19	* CassandraTruth: The idea that the killings may be caused by some inhuman creature is present early on, but most investigators are convinced its probably some deranged serial killer or less likely, an escaped animal. Even as evidence mounts at the killer being unnatural, such as how the blows on the victims could only have been caused by a huge three-clawed slashing utensil (a weapon which Dr. Frock tells the investigators does not exist) swung with the strength of at least two men, only near the end of the novel do they begin to believe a monster really is killing people, and even then Coffey finds the idea incredibly hard to believe.
20	* ChekhovsGun: Plenty: Moriarty's sundial watch, Margo's handbag, the broken AC unit in the Computer Room.
21	* ContrivedCoincidence: Dr. Frock is a scientist who creates a hypothesis where occasionally every sixty to seventy million years, evolution creates a grotesque, short-lived superpredator form as a result of a factor in its environment, an idea that others ridicule for lack of physical evidence. By incredible chance, the museum he works at is unknowingly the hunting ground of the sole living example of his theory, a creature that normally lives in South America to boot.
22	* DeathOfAChild: The first museum victims are two young boys who wander off in a closed area... who had their brains eaten. The movie turns and averts it though, changing the boys to the discoverers of the body and the victim becomes the [[BlackDudeDiesFirst old black security guard.]]
23	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The main antagonist of the book is Mbwun, a man-eating reptilian monster [[spoiler:although it was formerly human.]] This is a stark contrast to all future books in the Pendergast series, where the antagonists sometimes have unnatural abilities, but are nonetheless still always human criminals or villains.
24	* EvilLaugh: [[spoiler: Kawakita does one after his FaceHeelTurn.]]
25	* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Kawakita at the very end, as part of the SequelHook.]]
26	* FateWorseThanDeath: What really happened to [[spoiler: Julian Whittlesey. Imagine being transformed into a horrific monstrosity in a manner that forces you to consume a specific chemical found in a plant in order to not die a slow and agonizing death as the transformation reverses. Now on top of that, imagine that you have to live a lonely existence in a sewer due to your monstrous state, and when you are deprived of the plant that you need the only remaining option you have to keep from being driven insane by unimaginable agony is to brutally murder any human beings you can get your hands on, including small children and your former friends and colleagues, in order to eat their brains.]]
27	* GoMadFromTheRevelation [[spoiler: Cuthbert goes insane from being trapped with the monster.]] This is implied to be at least partially because [[spoiler: some part of him realized [[WasOnceAMan who the monster actually is]].]]
28	* HereWeGoAgain: [[spoiler: The ending of the novel reveals Kawakita has isolated the addictive substance in the grass the monster ate and is selling it as a street drug.]]
29	* HeroicBSOD: Smithback almost loses it in the subbasement, but D'Agosta [[GetAholdOfYourselfMan snaps him out of it]], reminding him that he's the only one he can rely on to get everyone out safely.
30	* HorrorHunger: For human hypothalamus.
31	* HumanoidAbomination: Mbwun, first shown as a statue, has a reptillian/dinosaurid bottom (tail, legs), and a more gorilla-like torso and head.
32	* ImmuneToBullets: Mbwun. At one point Pendergast shoots it in the head and the bullet merely ricochets off its skull "like a spitball."
33	* IndyHatRoll: Panicked party guests try to flee the museum as the security doors are activated. Some don't make it and are caught and crushed by the steel doors. Seeing as what the rest were [[EldritchAbomination trapped with]], they were probably the lucky ones.
34	* IntrepidReporter: Bill Smithback.
35	* ItCanThink: Mbwun is able to recognize traps, hide bodies, and do what it can to stay out of sight from humans. While checking out its lair, someone stumbles across a pendant, which no regular animal would have kept. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] by the fact that it [[spoiler: used to be human itself]].
36	* {{Jerkass}}: Rickman, Cuthbert, and Wright seem to be a trifecta of jerkassitiude. [[spoiler: They get what's coming to them when their dismissal of D'Agosta's protection and Pendergast's plan to get them to safety gets Rickman and Wright killed and Cuthbert ends up in an asylum.]]
37	* JurisdictionFriction: When the FBI agent Pendergast arrives, the NYPD do not take to him at first.
38	* KilledOffScreen: Several, but most significantly [[spoiler: the Mbwun]].
39	* LegoGenetics: See ViralTransformation.
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41	* LethallyStupid: In-universe. Agent Coffey intentionally causes a bottle neck when he leaves only one door out of the Hall of Heavens open and then refuses to let D'Agosta order a sweep of the exhibit because it's been "sealed" for dramatic reveal. [[spoiler: His actions directly lead to the discovery of a body in the exhibit by a packed crowd of people, which then panic and stampede out the bottleneck, killing at least a dozen people in the panic.]]
42	** It gets worse as the crisis escalates. Agent Coffey ignores all warnings from the (surviving) police officers about the Mbwun. ''Every single request for backup'' places a strong emphasis on high powered weapons being required; Coffey brushes them off. This directly leads to the SWAT team being wiped out, as they aren't expecting the Mbwun at all. [[spoiler: He's eventually relieved from his duty, but by then it's already too late for this to matter.]]
43	* LightningBruiser: The Mbwun is capable of disemboweling a man in one swipe, has a hide thick enough to deflect bullets, and can reach speeds of over thirty miles an hour.
44	* {{Lockdown}}: The damaged security system effectively locks everyone in the museum with the monster.
45	* MerchandisingTheMonster: Deconstructed in the epilogue, where its noted that in the aftermath of everything, there were some ''very'' [[MisaimedMarketing tasteless and tone-deaf]] attempts to profit off the Museum Beast's rampage from everything to documentaries to action figures to even a Saturday morning cartoon. Given that the creature in question was a horrifying monster that with a body count that includes two kids, these attempts fail. Badly.
46	* MisaimedMarketing: In-Universe, in the immediate aftermath of the story, there are attempts to profit from the Museum Beast Murders with everything from action figures to a Saturday morning cartoon show. Predictably, given that the subject is a horrific chimera monster with a taste for human brains, these cheap and tasteless cash-ins are all said to have failed rather quickly.
47	* MixAndMatchCritters: The Mbwun is part primate ([[spoiler:more specifically, human]]), and part reptile (heavily implied to be dinosaur).
48	* MonsterOrganTrafficking: At the end, the monster-creating reovirus is used by one of the survivors to concoct a new street drug, Glaze. [[spoiler: It turns out to have some ''nasty'' side effects in the sequel, and its derivatives are even worse.]]
49	* NeverFoundTheBody: All that was ever found of Montague was a pool of blood. [[spoiler: That is until D'Agosta and the others escaping through the subbasement find the Mbwun's lair.]]
50	* NeverMyFault: Agent Coffey refuses to believe any of the things that go horribly wrong at the museum gala at the climax are the result of his wrongdoing, instead pinning the blame on everyone else, mostly Pendergast.
51	* NonActionGuy: Bill Smithback, who is described as middle-aged, slightly balding and a BigEater, certainly not a badass of any kind.
52	* NonMaliciousMonster: At first, the Mbwun only kills the bare minimum it needs to survive, but this is averted near the end, where the characters speculate the Mbwun is sated from feeding, but continues to hunt because it is filled with rage from being shot.
53	* RedHerring: Frock speculates that the monster's most vulnerable points are its lower legs, but when they try it on the Mbwun, they don't have enough bullets to do sufficient damage to the creature, and they [[spoiler: kill the Mbwun with a shot through the eye instead]].
54	* RedShirtArmy: The SWAT team Coffey sends in to look for survivors are all massacred by the beast.
55	* ScienceHero: Margo Green, nerdy grad student and BrainyBrunette.
56	* SecretGovernmentWarehouse: At the end of the book, some government officials in an unmarked van come and take the creature's body, implying this is where it's going to end up.
57	* SendInTheSearchTeam: The SWAT team sent into the museum to rescue those trapped and kill the Mbwun.
58	* SequelHook: The second epilogue reveals [[spoiler:Kawakita, on leave of absence from the museum, has successfully begun farming the plant that contains the Mbwun reovirus, using samples from Margo's purse. He plans to maintain his own carefully controlled supply and is funding himself by selling the stuff as a drug on the street, as the plant also has a powerful narcotic effect.]]
59	* TooDumbToLive: [[spoiler: [[DoggedNiceGuy Moriarty]]]] decides to head out to the museum hall alone at night to cheer himself up, even though there's been a death there every night there and because of this the staff has made it perfectly clear nobody should be there after dark. It's later revealed that he was in fact another victim of the Mbwun.
60	* TragicMonster: Mbwun, once its full origin is revealed. [[spoiler: The monster was the long-missing Whittlesey, transformed into Mbwun by the Kothoga tribe's special plant. Trailing the expedition's crates back home to New York, he was desperate to get at the plant fibers whose hormones he needed to survive (the species was driven extinct and the only remaining specimens in the museum crates), and only resorted to killing humans once these were out of reach. In his lair, he keeps several mementos of his human form and even hangs up the corpses of his victims, rather than strewing them about like the animals he's killed, suggesting perhaps a sort of respect. Margo even remarks that she saw a 'deep sadness' in its eyes before it died]]
61	* TrappedWithMonsterPlot: The last third of the novel has the characters and numerous guests stuck in the museum with the Mbwun, after the security system malfunctions and steel shutters close off all exits.
62	* TheReveal: [[spoiler: The monster isn't just some animal that was transformed by eating the Mbwun plant, but was in fact a human being (specifically the missing Julian Whittlesey) that was transformed by the Kothoga tribe and must kill to [[HorrorHunger avoid going mad with pain]]]].
63	* ViralTransformation: [[spoiler: The reovirus in the Mbwun lily creates monsters out of anything that ingests it]] by inserting saurian and reptilian DNA into host cells; but the victim needs a steady supply of specialized hormones to [[spoiler: retain its new form, the victim-turned-monster]]; in order to acquire these hormones the victim must regularly eat the same plant that transformed it, but if the plant isn't available it must go to the next-best source and ''[[HorrorHunger eat the hypothalamus]]'' of its victims or go mad from the pain of being unable to sustain [[spoiler: its new form]]. [[spoiler:Notably, it is completely possible to engineer the reovirus to become a simply watered down version by using animals that aren't dinosaurs and angry killing machines (in Kawakita's case, rabbits) and diluting the reovirus's existing genes with their genes. Kawakita makes a tidy profit in the end by keeping a sample of the reovirus and being a drug dealer known for pushing "Glaze", a drug with no ill effects.]].
64	* VomitingCop: D'Agosta scolds himself for losing it at the second murder scene.
65	* WasOnceAMan: [[spoiler: The Mbwun]].

Context Literature / TheRelic