Follow TV Tropes

Following

Context Series / RiverMonsters

Go To

1[[quoteright:328:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/river-monsters-photo01_1310.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:328:...and you thought sharks were scary.]]
3
4''River Monsters'' is an Creator/AnimalPlanet series hosted by Jeremy Wade, a British biologist/extreme angler/writer/TV presenter/[[OverlyLongGag specialist in natural history]], and produced by Bristol's Icon Films. The series began in April 2009 to the best series premiere in Animal Planet's history, most likely because it features a man looking for [[TheCatfish monstrous freshwater fish]]. It is an extremely potent dose of NightmareFuel due to that last part.
5
6Its final season finished airing in 2017 and a new show, ''Jeremy Wade's Mighty Rivers'', began airing in 2018.
7
8----
9!!"Trope on! Trope on!" *cue fish line sounding*:
10
11* AbsurdlySharpBlade:
12** Piranhas have bitten through ''stainless steel'' multiple times in the show. In one episode, Jeremy holds a piranha in one hand and puts both kevlar and steel fishing line in its mouth, and the piranha bites through both effortlessly.
13** In "Prehistoric Terror", zigzagged with the ''Helicoprion'' -- although definitely incredibly sharp, its spiraling jaw was specialized for feeding on boneless prey like cephalopods and sharks -- and played straight with the ''Dunkleosteus'', whose shear-like jaws were evolved to crunch through armor and still be sharp enough to cut flesh afterwards. In the episode, he notes that it's been estimated that the "Bone Cruncher" had a bite force in the range of 8000 pounds per square inch, which makes it one of the most powerful bites in the history of the animal kingdom.
14** The freshwater pufferfish's beak is shown to be capable of easily biting through strong nets and human flesh. One victim of a pufferfish bite ended up bleeding to death after an artery was severed.
15** The Season 8 episode "Razorhead" showed that a barracuda's teeth are so sharp that they can [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe slash a fish in half]] just by ramming it with their mouth open. In fact, it's reports of people being injured by jumping barracudas that cut them in such a fashion that kicks off the episode.
16* AdmiringTheAbomination: Like Creator/SteveIrwin and [[Series/TheJeffCorwinExperience Jeff Corwin]] before him, Jeremy clearly has a lot of respect and admiration for all of the fish that he catches, including those that have been demonized by humans and the media.
17* AllMythsAreTrue: Played with. A major theme in the series is different cultures around the world have developed their own monster stories based on the fish and other aquatic animals they lived with.
18* AlwaysABiggerFish: Bonus points for literally being about fish. Jeremy believes or at least hopes there are larger versions of the fish he has caught.
19* AnArmAndALeg:
20** Jeremy has encountered several people who have had limbs amputated due to attacks either by the fish he's searching for, or by other animals that live in the area. He's also heard stories of people who didn't survive such incidents.
21** During a trip to Cambodia, Jeremy saw many amputees, likely victims of landmines planted by the Khmer Rouge.
22* ArmourIsUseless: Inverted. The arapaima's piranha-proof scales make it invulnerable, allowing to to eat piranhas.
23* BadassTeacher: One of Jeremy's previous occupations prior to ''River Monsters'' was as a biology teacher.
24* BearsAreBadNews: An episode in Alaska showed Jeremy having an unnerving run-in with a grizzly, as mentioned in Revolvers Are Just Better below.
25* BerserkButton:
26** Don't splash around with piranhas because they will go into feeding frenzy mode.
27*** Don't introduce arapaima to their home either or, in a desperate effort to survive their worst nightmare and competitor invading, the piranhas will attack and eat ''anything and anyone.''
28** Don't place a shiny, fluttering object within the visual range of a goliath tigerfish. That shine signals "prey here, come kill and eat me" to a tigerfish. A young girl paid for this mistake with her life.
29** Don't place dead bodies into a river occupied by goonch or sareng/tapah catfish. They will gain a taste for human flesh.
30** Don't swim into or attack the offspring of a giant snakehead or the parents ''will'' personally find and kill you gruesomely. See MamaBear below.
31** Don't try to net or hook an arapaima and stand in its way. It will ram you as it fights back. Ditto for tarpon.
32** Never try to lasso a caiman from a boat at night. One episode showed a research team doing this and the result was spectacular.
33** When Jeremy loses a fish he nearly always lets a few ClusterFBomb loose.
34** Do not ''ever'' show up at an African tribe at the same time as the chief's brother goes missing. The villagers were ready to stone Jeremy to death, blaming him for the disappearance.
35** Do not fish for a sareng/tapah catfish in India or the Hindu gods will curse your fishing trip with suck. Likewise, do not bathe in their habitat or they will go after you.
36* BewareMyStingerTail: The three giant species of freshwater stingrays. But for Jeremy, the real problem is them being TheJuggernaut and being nearly or even completely immobile.
37%%* BlessedWithSuck: This will happen if you fish for sareng/tapah.
38* BigDamnHeroes: Meta example: Jeremy clearing the alligator gar's reputation saved it from extermination in the nick of time.
39** While shooting an episode, Jeremy and the rest of his crew rescued a man who'd been stranded on a desert island for 60 hours.
40* BigFreakingSword: The sawfish has one attached to its face that also doubles as a metal detector/radar, allowing it to literally saw through other fish even without seeing them.
41* BloodyMurder: The longfin eels Jeremy investigated in one episode have poisonous blood.
42* BornInTheWrongCentury: Several episodes feature monstrous fish close to extinction (or actually extinct), you can't help but wonder if Jeremy Wade wouldn't be more at home at an earlier age, when these creatures were at their peak.
43* BulletTime: The series is fond of interspersing slow-motion segments to add dramatic effect to certain scenes.
44* TheCameo: Jeremy himself made a guest appearance in the MadeForTV movie ''Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys'' which aired at the culmination of Animal Planet's "Monster Week" in May 2014.
45* CatchPhrase: "Fish on!", Jeremy's signal that he's got a fish on the line, especially a big one.
46* TheCatfish: Including several literal species of catfish.
47** One episode focused on the various kinds of catfish Jeremy has encountered during his travels.
48* ClusterFBomb:
49** Jeremy can let fly with a barrage of cussing when he loses a fish, especially one he's been fighting for a while or lost after searching for a long time.
50** Jeremy lets loose with one of these when trying native fishing techniques in one episode, actually having been encouraged to cuss out and insult the fish while trying to catch it by one of the locals teaching him. The result borders on SugarWiki/FunnyMoments.
51** Another time he got stabbed in the back of the hand by the pectoral spine of a catfish, eliciting quite a few bleeps from Jeremy in response.
52* CunningLinguist: Jeremy Wade seems to speak a truly baffling amount of foreign tongues, considering he is seen traveling all over the world and speaking to locals without a translator.
53* DeathFromAbove:
54** In one episode, Jeremy and his film crew were nearly hit by lightning when caught out during a sudden thunderstorm. One of the crew actually had a headache and was nearly knocked unconscious, suggesting he might have taken a peripheral hit from the strike.
55** Inverted when predators attack from below.
56* DeathOfAChild: Several episodes involve the deaths of young children, who are much more vulnerable to attack because of their small size, inability to swim, or naivete to the dangers that might lurk in local rivers. The most infamous was a girl bitten in half and partially eaten by a goliath tigerfish.
57* DeathOfAThousandCuts: He describes death by {{piranha|Problem}} using almost this exact term. Pretty accurate when dozens, if not hundreds, of fish with tiny razor-sharp teeth are chomping on you.
58* DeathWorld:
59** The Amazon.
60** The Congo.
61** The Fitzroy. It's overrun with crocodiles, sharks, stingrays, and sawfish. While not mentioned, cone snails, box jellyfish, and sea snakes can also be found in the lower reaches. On top of this, the place itself is trying to kill you via extreme tidal conditions that can leave you stranded, drastic temperatures, and annual flash floods that increase the depths dramatically. Jeremy called the Fitzroy a "predator soup".
62* {{Defictionalization}}: Several of Jeremy's exploits involving tackling InUniverse "mythological" monsters and either proving them real or proving real evidence for their inspirations.
63** In Season 5, he provides a rational explanation that some sightings of the Loch Ness Monster could be due to Greenland Sharks that have come up into the loch from the sea to feed on spawning salmon, though he fails to demonstrate that Greenland sharks actually do this. Greenland sharks have been observed entering freshwater in the St. Lawrence River, but evidence for them doing so in Loch Ness is currently lacking.
64** Also in Season 5, he investigates two mythical Japanese river monsters; the giant catfish that causes earthquakes is debunked as just a large catfish that becomes very agitated because its SuperSenses let it sense incoming earthquakes, but the Kappa is probably the Japanese Giant River Salamander, which grows big enough to, at least in theory, ''eat children'' (though there are no actual reports of this happening).
65** In Season 8, he theorizes that the Lusca, a Caribbean sea monster described as a giant hybrid of shark and octopus, may in fact be "just" a giant octopus whose silhouette when swimming has led to the mistaken perception of it having a shark's head.
66* DentedIron: Jeremy's tough as nails, but has sustained some serious injuries while filming the show. A leaping arapaima hit him in the chest and bruised his heart, and while trying to land a Mekong River freshwater ray, he pulled so hard on the line that he tore one bicep.
67* {{Determinator}}: Jeremy's response to a Colombian stingray breaking his rod (but not his line) was to grab the line and haul the creature up towards the boat with his bare hands.
68* DeviousDolphins: The Amazon river dolphins. They eat piranhas, gang up on bull sharks, often are battle-scarred, and have caused serious injuries or even deaths. River dolphins actually have a fearsome reputation among locals as river-based members of TheFairFolk for precisely this reason.
69* TheDreaded:
70** The goliath tigerfish is considered an evil spirit by locals (hence the title "Demon Fish"). Jeremy calls it "the most horrific yet perfect killing machine in all the world's rivers" and "the ultimate river monster", combining the deadliest features from every other river monster he has tackled.
71** The vundu catfish is feared enough a god has been shaped after it.
72** The sareng catfish is so revered by the Hindus that it is said anyone who tries to catch it is doomed to fail. Even Jeremy falls prey to the curse. At least until the last episode.
73* EatenAlive: For many species Jeremy investigates, the worst part isn't that they're predators, it's that they're ''pack hunters'', allowing them to substitute numbers for individual strength and butcher humans who fall into their feeding frenzies. Piranhas, eels and Humboldt squid all fall into this category.
74* EndangeredSpecies: A lot of them. In nearly every episode Jeremy laments the fact river monsters worldwide are on the verge of extinction, since they have almost nothing going for them to work against human pressure; bad or nonexistent PR, slow breeding rates, position at top of food chain, favoured food supply due to large size, habitat requirements that work against development...
75** Special mention goes out to the kaluga sturgeon, the biggest thing Jeremy ever tried to catch, which is almost extinct to the point he was prohibited from angling for them.
76** "The day the last monster dies is the day the river dies too. And when that happens, we're not far behind."
77* EverythingTryingToKillYou: The Fitzroy River, to the point the river itself is lethal. See DeathWorld above.
78* FiendishFish: Pretty much the point of the show. Jeremy Wade tries to hunt down the aquatic creatures responsible for RealLife accidents, human deaths and/or legends around the globe. And you'll soon find out that many, ''many'' fishes can be dangerous, intentionally or not.
79* FluffyTheTerrible: The freshwater puffer fish. It's an absurdly adorable little fish with a harmless-sounding name whose cuteness goes through the roof when it shows off its trademark ability to inflate itself into an almost completely spherical ball for defense. It's also got a bite like a snapping turtle and its skin and organs contain one of the strongest poisons in the animal kingdom.
80* FoodChainOfEvil: Everyone knows piranha eat people, but arapaima eat piranha! So do dolphins, incidentally. Also the episode's titular Demon Fish will have a go at crocodiles if given the chance. Crocs also pose a hazard in fishing, but not as much as hippos, which have goring tusks, a habit of charging like a boar on land, surprising speed and agility in the water, and the jaw strength to snap a croc ''in half!'' There is a very good reason the crocodiles give the hippos a wide berth, even if they are herbivores. Jeremy even managed to catch a giant stingray that may have been a close relative of the one that got [[Series/CrocodileHunter Steve Irwin]], but he still won't pick a food fight with wild bears.
81* GentlemanAdventurer: Well, it ''is'' a TV series about a very polite, calm, cultured scientist traveling the world hunting nightmarish river creatures for the sake of science and amusement.
82* GentlemanAndAScholar: Jeremy Wade is a NiceGuy and a veteran biologist.
83* GhostCity: One episode had Jeremy visit the Ukrainian city of Pripyat, a city that was abandoned following the UsefulNotes/{{Chernobyl}} nuclear accident and has been deserted and left to rot for nearly 30 years.
84* GiantSquid:
85** In Season 8, he hypothesizes that the mysterious Lusca of the Caribbean may actually be an undiscovered species of giant octopus living in the Blue Holes, a twenty-plus foot giant that would be more than capable of devouring humans, based on the predatory skill of smaller species.
86** Another Season 8 episode has him investigating "El Diablo Rojo" from the Mexican coast, which turn out to be Humboldt Squid -- one of the largest and most vicious predatory squids around, and who travel in deadly packs that can easily butcher humans. No fatalities have ever been attributed to these squid, but divers who encounter them regard them with very real caution.
87* GoingNative: Jeremy goes to great lengths to ingratiate himself with local populations and often employs native fishing techniques alongside his own modern methods. He also frequently reminds viewers that, no matter what country you go to, the locals are far more knowledgeable about their home environments than you are and maintaining good relations with them can provide a treasure trove of information on many different subjects.
88** It's even pointed out that native fishermen wouldn't use a particular technique for multiple generations if it didn't work, as is showcased in several episodes. Jeremy agrees.
89* GoneHorriblyRight: Some of the strangest and most disturbing situations are actually the result of introduced species that adapt far better than expected to a new environment -- the pacu, the snakehead, and numerous others are fairly harmless in their native habitat, but removed from their normal food sources and predators, their behavior and threat level alter dramatically, in some cases going from the bottom of the food chain to apex predator. The snakeheads seem to be causing little trouble as of 2015, but the pacu, on the other hand...
90* GonnaNeedMoreX: Played straight in the giant freshwater stingray episode when Jeremy hooks into one so big that it starts towing the boat he's in. The stingray later ends up snapping a heavy-duty saltwater fishing rod designed to handle '''marlin'''!
91* {{Gorn}}: Several episodes have shown images of people with horrific injuries inflicted by the fish Jeremy's searching for. Exaggerated in a couple of the South American episodes showing autopsy photos of human bodies half-eaten by piranhas and candiru-acu.
92** One especially horrific case was the injury description of a man who was nearly eaten by a caiman. His torso was completely torn open and all his internal organs were hanging out of his body, covered in muck. The scars are still present when the episode was filmed.
93** It does go a bit overboard sometimes, to [[HilarityEnsues humorous effect]]. A good example is the episode about the sea lamprey, which has rapid-fire-edit clips of people screaming and thrashing and being dragged through the water like Film/{{Jaws}} himself was attacking them when the fish in question is a skinny four-foot eel-like critter that suctions onto prey and pokes a small hole in it to drink blood. Admittedly, this is based more on the fact that people who are attacked by lamprey have the problem of trying to yank the slimy, wriggling parasite off whilst, at the same time, struggling to stay afloat.
94* GreatWhiteHunter: Jokes about sharks aside, Jeremy Wade is essentially a TechnicalPacifist, fish-based version of the trope.
95* GroinAttack:
96** In the first episode of the third season, the Pacu he was after has been known to do this in New Guinea, where it is an invasive species. Indeed, it does so with such frequency that the locals have taken to referring to the fish[[note]]which feeds on seeds and actual nuts in its native Amazon waters[[/note]] as "the ball-cutter".
97** The candiru; a parasitic catfish that normally targets the gills of other fish, but has been known to embed itself in the genitals of luckless humans relieving themselves in South American waterways [[note]]The story told of the candiru that was allegedly extracted from a man's penis is inconsistent with what is actually shown. There is only one recorded instance of a candiru being removed from a human, and it is certainly not a regular occurrence. Moreover, studies have shown that these fish are not attracted to the scent of urine. [[/note]].
98** One caller to a radio talk show in New Zealand recalled an incident where a longfin eel bit a guy in the groin. This nearly happens to Jeremy himself as he takes several nips to his inner thighs perilously close to his unmentionables.
99** One episode had a tale of a South American boy who was castrated by a Golden Dorado.
100* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe: The M. O. of the goliath tigerfish and the barracuda.
101* HeWhoMustNotBeSeen: Several episodes have had peoples' faces blurred out, most notably Ukrainian military personnel manning checkpoints in Chernobyl.
102* HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure: A biologist Jeremy talks to in Ukraine doing research on the long-term effects of the Chernobyl disaster says that the amount of radiation released when the plant exploded was several hundred times that released by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
103* IdiotBall: In the wolf fish episode, Jeremy points out a storm cloud some distance away that apparently had passed them by. Immediately after noting that tropical weather can be [[TemptingFate unpredictable]], Jeremy, his crew, and his guide stop so the guide can get some fish for eating. They stop on a flat island, in the middle of a river, with all sorts of equipment. The sound guy gets struck by lightning.
104* [[ImplacableMan Implacable Fish]]: The Giant Snakehead: a creature capable of surviving ''getting shot with a harpoon to the mouth from point blank range, then driving the back end through the attacker's head, killing him''.
105** Jeremy spent 25 years on the trail of a huge tigerfish and 20 on the trail of a piraiba big enough to eat a small person. He got both of his wishes.
106** Then there was the sareng/tapah, the goonch's equally ferocious cousin. He failed to catch one in season four, something Jeremy thinks might be attributed to its holy nature, as anyone who tries to catch it will be cursed with bad luck. Come the final episode five years later and he finally lands it.
107* InsistentTerminology: In one episode, Jeremy constantly refers to a woman killed by a stingray as 'the honeymoon bride'.
108* {{Kappa}}: Investigated during an episode on Japan's river monsters. Jeremy comes to the conclusion that the most likely candidate to have inspired the myth is the Japanese giant salamander, a predatory amphibian that can reach sizes equivalent to ''a twelve year old human boy'', which makes it more than large enough to ''swallow babies and small children whole''.
109* KillerRabbit:
110** Freshwater pufferfish. No, really. The poison is the least of your concerns with them; their bite is very brutal, capable of severing arteries or removing appendages in humans.
111** Pacific halibut are part of the flatfish family -- which means their defining feature is that they spend the vast majority of their time flat on the seabed waiting for prey to come to them. But they're so big and strong that they can easily drag an unprepared fisherman from their boat to their death in the icy waters. They're so dangerous that traditional Inuit fishhooks are actually designed to ''avoid'' hooking all but the smaller specimens.
112* LandDownUnder: Jeremy has been to Australia on three occasions (once for bull sharks, once for a saw fish and once for a relatively rare type of shark that was only recently identified). Not as often as you'd think though given Australia's reputation, but the continent just don't have much in the way of the big river systems to generate the diversity found elsewhere.
113* LightningBruiser: Nearly every river monster in the show. Special note regarding arapaima, which grow to 10 feet long and 500 pounds but launch themselves several yards into the air when provoked to ram their human attackers, sometimes to fatal effect. They also have piranha-proof armored scales as mentioned above in Armor is Useless.
114* MasterOfAll: Jeremy describes the goliath tigerfish as this. It deserves that reputation. Jeremy Wade claims it to have the bloodthirsty habits of a piranha, more fearsome teeth than the payara, the cunning of the Wels Catfish, and the physical strength of the Piraiba, added with the mobility of an arapaima and a tougher bony head than an alligator gar.
115* MamaBear:
116** The giant snakehead (especially the female) embodies this trope, attacking anything that threatens the young. There was a case where a fisherman harpooned a female snakehead in the head by pretending to threaten her offspring. She responded by driving the other end of the harpoon into the man's skull, killing him.
117** Don't wade into an arapaima nest either if you want to avoid being hit by several hundred pounds of solid bone and muscle. Coincidentally, an angry parent arapaima gained the identity of the "Water Mama", a freshwater mermaid said to drag people to an underwater doom.
118* MightyGlacier: Fresh water stingrays and other large flatfish like halibut; they can grow to enormous sizes and their body shape means that when caught they can create enough suction to essentially cement themselves to the riverbed/sea floor and stop moving. Several of Jeremy's longest catches have been stingrays, with the short-tailed river stingray taking over three hours to haul in (by comparison, it took only two hours for Jeremy to bring in a large bull shark).
119* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: Piranhas, the payara (image above), red-bellied pacu, golden dorado, and most horrifically the goliath tigerfish.
120* NatureDocumentary: Sadly, it's one of the few examples of this type of show that Animal Planet aired on a regular basis during its time. Ironically, this might explain its high popularity as well.
121* NeverSmileAtACrocodile: Jeremy has had to contend with several varieties of crocodiles as well as alligators and caimans during his travels, and has met and heard stories of people who have been attacked by them as well.
122* NuclearMutant: {{Subverted|Trope}} - while the Wels Catfish Jeremy caught in "Atomic Assassin" is irradiated (it was ''swimming in the cooling pond for the Chernobyl Nuclear Powerplant''), it's actually ''underweight'' for its age, on account of all the radiation it absorbed.
123* {{Omniglot}}: Jeremy is fluent in Portuguese, and conversant in French and Spanish. Other episodes have seen him speaking passable Hindi and Russian.
124* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: In general, Jeremy will usually release whatever monster he's fishing for back into the wild once he's caught it and shown it off to the cameras. There are three exceptions to this rule:
125** In "Demon Fish", the native villagers who had given him a good luck charm prior to catching the titular creature ( particularly large Devil Tigerfish) felt that the fish was a gift from the gods and wanted to keep it for food. After Jeremy determined that the fish was unlikely to survive, he acquiesced.
126** In the episode where he faced villagers who almost stoned him to death due to believing that he was responsible for the disappearance of the Chief's brother, he gave over all the fish he caught to them due to an ongoing famine. It should be noted that while all of the fish was technically theirs to begin with (he caught the fish using the native's traps) he fully admitted that he was making an exception to his normal rules here.
127** In "Atomic Assassin", he agreed to catch an irradiated, mutant Wels Catfish from the Chernobyl Nuclear Powerplant's cooling pond for the Ukranian government.
128* OrificeInvasion:
129** In "Amazon Flesheaters", Jeremy interviews a man who claims to have had an [[UnderStatement unpleasant encounter with a candiru]] and [[{{Squick}} shows video of the removal surgery]].
130** In one episode, a caller to a radio talk show in New Zealand recalled witnessing a longfin eel entering through the backside of a sheep and devouring its internal organs until the sheep died.
131* PermaStubble: Jeremy can often be seen with varying degrees of this, particularly when he's spent days out in remote places where personal grooming isn't exactly practical.
132* PetTheDog: The episode about the Goliath Tigerfish. After failing to catch a tigerfish ''three times'', he requested a good-luck fetish, slept with it under his pillow, and caught a tigerfish the next day. Jeremy planned to let it go, but was told by his native companion that the fish was a gift from God, and the neighboring village was going through hard times to boot. After several minutes of wrestling with different facets of his morality, he decided to let the tigerfish go only if it was well enough to recover. It wasn't, which disappointed him, but the ecstatic reception he got when he hauled it back to the village probably more than made up for it.
133* PiranhaProblem: An episode was devoted to them.
134** They've also popped up almost constantly in episodes shot in South America, and Jeremy frequently references them in other episodes as well. In several South American episodes he's noted that his real piranha problem is that they're always stealing his bait.
135* PopUpTrivia: ''River Monsters: Unhooked''; reruns of past episodes with this trope added to them.
136* PrimalFear: The show is built on [[TheCatfish man-eating beasts]] that frequently live in a watery DeathWorld.
137* PsychoElectricEel: One episode centers around Jeremy trying to find one big enough to fatally electrocute someone. Not only does he succeed, he finds ''a swarm of at least 20 other electric eels'' in the same, extremely unlikely location. And in only half an inch of water.
138* PunBasedTitle: "Death Ray."
139* RammingAlwaysWorks: Why white sturgeon, tarpon, and arapaima are dangerous. They are all large, heavily muscled fish that launch themselves out of the water at attackers, the fish equivalent of a battering ram. Jeremy was hit square in the chest by an arapaima and took months to completely recover.
140* {{Retool}}: In Season 8, the show's focus shifts from freshwater fish to marine life, though with several episodes that either still focus on freshwater fish or end up back in the rivers as a part of the investigation.
141* RevolversAreJustBetter: When fishing in Alaska, the guide accompanying Jeremy carries a [[HandCannon massive]] revolver for defense against bears; they later end up having to fire a warning shot when a bear approaches the group after having stolen a salmon Jeremy had hooked.
142* SeaMonster: Season 8 investigates both real and mythological ones, like the Lusca.
143* TheScapegoat:
144** A rather grim example: In one episode, Jeremy visits the Congo to catch a reputed killer fish. Not long after he arrives, the village chief's brother goes missing. Since the locals believed that there's a cause for everything, they soon concluded that Jeremy had something to do with his disappearance. Luckily for Jeremy, the chief's brother makes a belated return later into the night, for if he hadn't come back, the villagers were going to ''stone Jeremy to death''.
145** Often, Jeremy discovers a fish's bad reputation is often a case of it being blamed for attacks committed by other river creatures such as crocodiles or sharks or simple unfortunate accidents. The alligator gar nearly went extinct because of this, as people blamed it for attacks by actual alligators and built a giant "electrical gar destroyer" to wipe it out of existence.
146* SceneryPorn: Many locales Jeremy has visited have breathtaking sights, but possibly none more so than Kaieteur Falls, a massive 741-foot waterfall in Guyana he visited at the finale of the last fourth season episode, complete with dramatic aerial footage.
147* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: After catching a massive Wels catfish in a river in Spain, Jeremy had planned to hold it in the water until it had fully recovered, but when it started to move he ended up racing for the shore anyway.
148* ShoutOut: One episode had a scene showing piranhas attacking swimmers at a South American beach, the scene being a direct imitation of the beach attack scene in ''Film/{{Jaws}}''.
149** In another ''Film/{{Jaws}}'' reference, while leaving a harbour in southern France filled with yachts and megayachts that dwarfed the boat he was on, he drily commented that sometimes when you go fishing you really do wish you had a bigger boat.
150* SinisterStingrays: Jeremy's tackled two giant species of stingray which caused attacks with their barbed tails: the Giant freshwater stingray of southeast Asia in one episode and the Short-tailed river stingray of Argentina in the other. Though like most other animals on the show, Jeremy does treat the animals with respect and dignity and the show does the same, showing them as animals living their lives rather than monsters. The Giant Freshwater episode even has the one Jeremy catches give birth.
151* StockNessMonster: Averted in the fifth season's special episode on Lock Ness; Jeremy, early on, attends a historical museum in Glasgow and notes that while the plesiosaur is the iconic form for "Nessie", the fact that it was an air-breather makes it highly unlikely that it wouldn't have been seen discovered by now, given how much activity goes on and around the lake in the modern era. Furthermore, as a scientist who has been studying Loch Ness notes further on into the films, Loch Ness itself didn't exist until glaciers gouged it out of the rock some ten thousand years ago -- making it far too young to house surviving megafauna from the Mesozoic era. By the episode's end, all of the evidence that Jeremy has gathered, including testimony from actual locals who purport to have seen Nessie and invariably describe as simply "a large hump" rather than the iconic long-necked or snake-like form, leads him to conclude that the Loch Ness Monster (or at least some sightings of it) is most likely a rare sighting of a Greenland Shark that has swum up into the loch in pursuit of salmon. Greenland sharks don't habitually live in fresh water the way bull sharks do, but have been recorded [[https://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Animals/Archives/2009/Rare-Finds.aspx in the St. Lawrence River]], making this at least possible.
152** Wade also investigated the somewhat less famous Lake Iliamna Monster of Alaska, which is said to be a giant fish with a shark-like tail and a habit of ramming boats. The conclusion at the end of the episode is that it's most likely a large sturgeon.
153* StoneWall: The main obstacle Jeremy faces when dealing with stingrays isn't actually the stingers, but instead that the things ''refuse'' to move, using their bulky but flat bodies to effectively suction themselves to the riverbed. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-tailed_river_stingray Short-Tailed River Stingray]] in particular took ''2 hours'' for Jeremy to land, the longest of any catch on the show, and even then he was unable to properly reel it up and instead had to resort to effectively dragging it onto a beach.
154* SwallowedWhole:
155** Jeremy has investigated several reports of this, usually with gigantic catfish such as the goonch, piraiba, and wels ending up being the prime suspects.
156** In one episode, he hypothesized that some disappearances in South America could have been the result of people being preyed upon by green anacondas, snakes large enough to swallow a person whole.
157* ThreateningShark: Not as often as you might think, since the show is about freshwater animals. Bull sharks, which are one of the few species of sharks that can live in fresh water, do show up in several episodes.
158* TitleDrop: Jeremy often does this during the opening narration for each episode, followed by a graphic showing the name of that episode in case you didn't catch it the first time.
159* UsefulNotes/UkrainiansWithDepletedUranium: Jeremy had to pass through several checkpoints manned by Ukrainian military personnel in the Chernobyl episode.
160* WorldOfBadass: Aside from the monster fish, Jeremy sometimes encounters fellow badass fishermen and naturalists.
161** In the Nile Perch episode, two of the veteran fishermen are crocodile attack survivors and one survived a hippo attack. One of the crocodile victims had his leg amputated and was still fishing.
162** In "Killer Torpedo", he met a man who had been shot, bitten by an eel, lost a leg to gangrene, and various other injuries.
163** In "Jungle Terminator", he met a tribe (the Matis) whose fishermen held an electric eel barehanded without apparent injury, possibly due to having tiny amounts of frog poison in their bodies from a ritual the night before the eel fishing was done.
164* WorthyOpponent: Half of the show's premise, the other half being ParanoiaFuel.
165
166----
167->Fish on!
168

Top