[[quoteright:339:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/20130712__130713ae-sharknado_5254.jpeg]]

->''"[[BreadEggsBreadedEggs Sharks. Tornado. Sharknado]]. Enough Said!"''
-->-- '''{{Tagline}}'''

Disasters come in [[ApocalypseHow many forms]] -- but none quite like this.

A series of freak tornadoes hits the California coast, causing widespread destruction around Los Angeles.

Nothing new, right?

But when said tornadoes start throwing hundreds of sharks around the city, [[HilarityEnsues that's where things get interesting]].

''Sharknado'', directed by Anthony C. Ferrante, was a viral hit upon release on Creator/{{Syfy}} on July 11, 2013, with the film receiving over five million views spread over its first three showings on TV as well as attention from celebrities such as Creator/WilWheaton and Creator/CoryMonteith ([[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaE9IKgVAAA1Mkg.jpg it was the subject of the latter's final two tweets before his death]]).

Syfy immediately contracted Creator/TheAsylum to make a sequel, the title of which was chosen with a Twitter contest. (The winner? ''[[ShapedLikeItself Sharknado 2: The Second One]]''.) The sequel was released around a year after the original film, and further installments then became an annual event -- each one being co-produced by The Asylum and Syfy Films, premiering on the Syfy channel, and roughly corresponding with the Creator/DiscoveryChannel's Shark Week -- until the series concluded with its sixth installment in 2018. Though the original film was not explicitly a comedy, keeping at least a façade of seriousness despite its ridiculous plot, the sequels were [[DenserAndWackier more openly comedic in nature]].

Five sequels to ''Sharknado'' were ultimately produced:
* ''Film/Sharknado2TheSecondOne'' (July 30, 2014)
* ''Film/Sharknado3OhHellNo'' (July 22, 2015)
* ''Film/SharknadoThe4thAwakens'' (July 31, 2016)
* ''Film/Sharknado5GlobalSwarming'' (August 6, 2017)
* ''Film/TheLastSharknadoItsAboutTime'' (August 19, 2018)

Three SpinOff films were also produced:
* ''Lavalantula'' (July 25, 2015)
* ''Sharknado: Heart of Sharkness'' (October 6, 2015)
* ''2 Lava 2 Lantula!'' (August 6, 2016)

On July 10, 2014, the original film received a much-needed skewering performed and simulcast live in theaters by the Podcast/{{Rifftrax}} team. An EndlessRunningGame for [[UsefulNotes/IOSGames iOS]] called ''Sharknado: The Video Game'' was released the same year.

The film crossed over into [[ComicBook/ArchieComics Riverdale]] with the 2015 comic ''Archie vs. Sharknado'', which takes place at the same time as ''Sharknado 3''.
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!!Tropes associated with the ''Sharknado'' films as a whole:

* AnimalsLackAttributes: None of the sharks have claspers, even though half of them are presumably males.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology:
** Sharks have no trouble surviving on land and in the air, [[spoiler: or in space in the third film]].
** These sharks can suck you down their gullet, like snakes.
** And they like hanging around near the surface where waterspouts can reach them, even though the rain that precedes tornadoes ought to make the shallows taste unpleasantly-fresh to them. Some sharks from the later films (frilled sharks, goblin sharks, sawfishes) have no business hanging around near the surface at all.
** And let's not forget that the sharks in these films seem to be ''suicidally violent'' towards humanity in particular, jumping out of the water and through windows to kill people way before their behavior can be blamed on the weather making them irritable.
** So many different ''species'' of sharks had never had any business schooling together in the first place. And they never, ever take a bite out of ''each other'', even though large predatory sharks preying on smaller ones is routine in nature.
** A human SwallowedWhole by a shark has no business not suffocating within two or three minutes, yet characters who are cut out of shark carcasses invariably bounce back after ''much'' longer delays.
* ArtisticLicensePhysics: A shark being driven towards you by (strangely slow) tornado force winds will conveniently fall out of the sky if you shoot it.
** Tornado winds strong enough to tear buildings to pieces are apparently incapable of doing anything worse to sharks than piss them off.
** Calf-high water is deep enough to hold an infinite number of sharks, which will then proceed to bite your legs off.
** Tornadoes and floods can selectively sweep up hundreds of sharks of various species, while leaving every other sort of sea life behind. The sharks surely couldn't have eaten them all!
** The main threat a person would face from a shark in a hurricane would be the possibility of getting hit by half a ton of fish traveling at over a hundred miles an hour - which is no more or less dangerous than any other half-ton piece of debris flying around in the hurricane.
* AsHimself: Al Roker of the ''Today'' show appears in this capacity in every film except the first.
* BMovie: Unashamedly so.
* ChainsawGood: Fin's signature weapon.
* CrazyPrepared: Fin is this from the start, and his whole family becomes this as the series progresses.
** Fin's catchphrase is "semper paratus."
** Nova takes it up to eleven between films one and three, chasing sharknados in an armed and armored mobile laboratory and founding a ''global all-female cult'', the Sharknado Sisterhood, to guard against and find the means to stop them.
* DeathByCameo: A ''lot'' of celebrities have jumped on the franchise bandwagon by lining up to become shark chow.
* DenserAndWackier: The first film seemed to be set in a somewhat realistic world. The sequels establish that the franchise is not in a realistic world, as they get increasingly cartoonish and over the top. The plots of the sequels involve a shark god, a character being turned into a cyborg by her mad scientist father, sharks in space, and flaming, electrified, and nuclear sharknados.
* DoNotTouchTheFunnelCloud: Apparently, it's perfectly safe even to ''enter'' the funnel cloud, provided you happen to be a ThreateningShark.
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: [[SarcasmMode Gee, I wonder what the movie is about?]]
* ExcusePlot: When they even bother to ''have'' a plot, it's this. [[RuleOfFunny Who cares?]] There's ''sharks flying around in tornadoes!''
* FlyingSeafoodSpecial: TheMovie
* ForgottenFallenFriend: Little to no emotion is wasted on anyone's death regardless of how close they are.
* MadeOfIron: The sharks. For example: one is thrown onto the sidewalk in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater. It ''bounces'' hard enough to break a large divot out of the pavement, then goes on its way, gnashing and wriggling, apparently unharmed.
* MadeOfPlasticine: The humans. Even the smaller sharks can easily take off limbs or heads with a single nip.
* MonumentalDamage: To the point where the fifth film may have been moved overseas because there weren't any U.S. monuments ''left'' to trash.
* MorePredatorsThanPrey:
** Thousands of sharks swept up by waterspouts, and not ''one'' harmless species in the lot. Even the plankton-eating whale shark from the second film kills somebody by ''landing'' on them.
** The high proportion of great whites is particularly egregious, considering there's ''really'' only a few thousand on the entire planet.
* MST3KMantra: {{Invoked|Trope}} by the ''cast and crew'' in interviews.
--> '''Tara Reid''': It is silly, and there's only a certain amount of barriers you could go into. You can't take it so seriously when it's absolutely the sharks flying in the sky. It's so out there that it's actually really funny.
* NoisyNature: Some of the sharks make a strange, scratchy grunting sound. Only two of the more than 400 species of shark make any sort of vocalization, and the two that do make an audible "bark" (by burping!) are much too small to play the ThreateningShark in these films.
* {{Portmantitle}}
* PunnyName: The hero of a film series about sharks is named [[StealthPun Fin]]. And his father and young son are named Gil.
* RainOfSomethingUnusual: This is the main subject of the films. A freak storm causes it to rain live sharks (and, oddly enough, no other kind of fish). The second movie sets some of its flying sharks ''on fire'' to ramp up the weirdness, and the fourth adds variants with other things (oil, hail, radiation, boulders, cows).
* RisingWaterRisingTension: The first two films and the fourth all feature streets flooded by the sharknado disasters, making it all too easy for sharks to attack people even after they land. Also, making it all too easy for StockFootage of actual floods to be passed off as part of the story.
* RuleOfCool: Pretty much everything about these movies happens for this reason, especially when it comes to explosions, catastrophes, and sharks killing celebrities or being chainsawed spectacularly.
* RunningGag: ''Something'' big and round can be counted on to get torn loose by the storms and sent rolling through the streets, smashing stuff. As of film #5, it's been done with [[spoiler: two ferris wheels, the Statue of Liberty's head, a gigantic ball of twine, and a giant metal globe with most of the Shepherds ''inside'' it]].
* ScreamingWoman: April started out as mostly this, but evolved into more of a ScreamingWarrior as of the second film. Either way, Tara Reid's yelling is very distinctive. And distinctively grating. [[StylisticSuck Which is the point, probably.]]
* SerialEscalation: The more movies get made, the more over-the-top and nonsensical they get.
* StylisticSuck: The cast and crew outright admit that the premise is silly and impossible to take seriously...so they don't, intentionally making these flicks SoBadItsGood.
* SuperPersistentPredator: Even self-preservation doesn't seem to be enough to stop these killing machines from trying to devour every human in sight. Even when thrown from the ocean, dropped from hundreds of feet, set on fire or ''in space'', they can think of nothing but attacking humans.
* ThreateningShark: ''And how''.
* WeirdWeather:
** The films center around perhaps one of the most ridiculous examples of this trope, multiple tornadoes full of nothing but ''sharks'', which are still alive and lethal even after many hours of being aloft. Notably, ''nothing'' else gets picked up by the tornadoes, including other sea life or other objects along their paths. Unless, of course, it's a piece of debris fated to squish a bit character or take a celebrity cameo's head off.
** The tie-in book ''How To Survive A Sharknado'' goes even farther, rating sharknadoes as merely one of ''dozens'' of kinds of monster-related weather phenomena or other natural catastrophes ... most of them from Creator/TheAsylum's other B-movies.


!!Tropes associated with the first ''Sharknado''

* OneDimensionalThinking: No one being chased by the rolling dismounted Ferris wheel thinks to run sideways.
* AbortedArc: The first half of the film builds up UST between Fin and Nova. This goes out the window when Matt and April are introduced with Nova's attention turned to Matt and Fin reconciles with April.
* ActionGirl: Nova is not afraid to use a shotgun when needed.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: A few sharks land in a swimming pool. The chlorine can't exactly be good for them.
* ArtisticLicenseGeography: The German dub of a radio transmission early in the movie mentions that the Sharknado will desert "the entire state of Los Angeles".
* ArtisticLicensePhysics: Apparently, throwing [[ImprovisedWeapon home made]] [[StuffBlowingUp bombs]] is sufficient to destroy a tornado by "neutralizing the air temperatures."
** It is totally possible to fly a helicopter to within throwing distance of a funnel cloud, without experiencing turbulence or even a particularly strong breeze. This one is especially noticeable because they had explicitly stated earlier in the movie that they wouldn't be able to fly away in such weather.
** Hurricanes just plain ''cannot'' hit Los Angeles, unless they're assuming the planet decided to try rotating the other way for a change. This one is {{Hand Wave}}d down to global warming.
*** Well, ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vytJbTcHzKs Film Theory]]'' says otherwise, and one did hit…in ''1858'', but all the circumstances required for a "sharknado" to happen all at once is admittedly '''''infinitesimally low'''''.
** When your boat gets sucked into a tornado with you still standing on it, you won't fall down or even have trouble standing.
* ArtisticLicenseShips: The trawler in the opening scene changes between a trawler and a yacht constantly.
* BatterUp: Baz carries a baseball bat around with him at all times.
* BetaCouple: Nova and Matt, probably.
* BilingualBonus: The movie ends with the word "Fin" which is Spanish and French for "End", forming a pun.
* BloodyHilarious: Pretty much any time the sharks take out a human, and ''most'' times when it's the other way around.
* ChainsawGood: [[RuleOfCool Fin manages to use one to cut a shark in half as it falls on him]]. He also enters a shark's mouth chainsaw-first and cuts his way out not only being unharmed himself [[spoiler: but with Nova as well, not even touched by said chainsaw]]. [[MST3KMantra It's best not to think how this is possible]].
* ChairmanOfTheBrawl: George grabs a bar stool when the characters venture out of Fin's bar. He soon uses it to club a shark.
* CoolCar: The gang steal a heavily modified four wheel drive vehicle from a movie prop company when Fin's own car breaks down.
* CoolOldGuy: George.
* CrazyPrepared:
** Fin keeps [[TwoShotsFromBehindTheBar a pistol and a shotgun behind his bar]] as well as huge amounts of shotgun shells in his car.
** He also keeps ''rappelling gear'' in his vehicle, apparently just in case he needs to descend from an elevated highway onto a school bus stuck in shark-infested flood waters.
* CreditsGag: Rather than stating "The End" the credits start with "Fin", which is French and Spanish for (The) End. This is both for the obvious association of fin and sharks. But "Fin" is also an old cliche for ending art films and other high culture fare. Most would probably agree that this film does not fall under that category. The pronunciation of fin in French is closer to "fan"; in Spanish the letter "i" always sounds like "ee" in "free", so it sounds like "feen". So they don't sound like the English word "fin", but that's hardly the biggest error the movie commits.
* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:Nova is swallowed by a shark. She gets better.]]
* DudleyDoRightStopsToHelp: Fin takes the time to rescue a busload of schoolkids. [[ImprobableInfantSurvival Their teacher is the only one to die.]]
* DullSurprise: April.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: After you have seen the next few movies, you'll note this one is much shorter on the celebrity cameos and deaths, and seems to take itself at least half-seriously. That's because this was expected to be a one-off concept, and ended up being a surprise hit. It's also the only one where the ''storm'' does significantly more damage than the sharks for most of the movie.
* EveryCarIsAPinto: Fin's car spontaneously explodes after developing a fuel leak. Partly helped by the ammunition he kept in there.
* ExcusePlot: What, exactly, was Fin's original intention when he found Matt and Claudia?[[note]]To take them further inland and to safety[[/note]]
* TheExsNewJerkass: Fin Shepard's ex April has a new boyfriend named Collin whose ''first line of dialogue'' establishes him as a complete {{Jerkass}} with nothing but contempt for Ian.
-->'''Collin (in the smarmiest voice imaginable):''' Oh, Shepard. I should've figured it was you.
* GaiasVengeance: Global warming is presented as the cause of the disaster. The fin fishermen's gratuitous slaughter of sharks ''might'' suggest this trope as well, except it's a dropped plot-thread that's never picked up again.
* GiveMeASword: April passes Fin his chainsaw by kicking a cart the chainsaw is on toward him, just in time for him to fend off a shark.
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Matt's friend Luellyn watches as a shark is flung by the tornado right towards their friend Bobby, and he shoves Bobby out of the way, getting fatally squashed himself. [[ForgottenFallenFriend No one cares.]] [[SenselessSacrifice His sacrifice didn't amount to much]], though, as Bobby gets killed not long afterwards in a ''Jaws'' ShoutOut. And then a shark falls on his body. ]]
** [[spoiler:George dies saving a dog trapped in a car. [[ForgottenFallenFriend And no one cares.]]]]
* ImprobableAimingSkills: Fin takes out several falling sharks that are falling from several hundred feet with a pistol.
* ImprovisedWeapon: The heroes use quite a few, including a bar stool and an oxygen tank.
* InformedFlaw: Everyone talks about how Fin was a bad father who didn't care about his family, but his clear PapaWolf and ChronicHeroSyndrome tendencies combined with April and Claudia's constant ItsAllAboutMe attitude causes this to ring hollow.
* {{Jerkass}}: April's new boyfriend. [[spoiler: He doesn't last long.]]
* KillItWithFire: Fin's solution to the sharks landing in the pool of the retirement home is to douse it in kerosene and light it up.
* LampshadeHanging: Baz remarks about how, of all the possible ways Los Angeles could've been devastated - earthquakes, riots, plagues, aliens - ''sharks'' were such a ridiculous option that they'd never crossed his mind.
* TheLoad:
** Even Matt's background friends who get killed off during the climax were more useful than Claudia ever was during the whole movie.
** April, too, had virtually nothing to contribute to the group, apart from whining, for the entire film.
* MonumentalDamage: The Santa Monica Pier is, of course, the first thing destroyed. Later, [[spoiler: the bus driver is smashed by the HOLLYWOOD sign.]] A falling shark cracks the pavement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.
* MsFanservice: Nova. She's introduced wearing a bikini and is only slightly more modestly dressed throughout the rest of the film. Later films have her clad in [[HellBentForLeather tight leather]].
* PapaWolf: Fin goes to rescue his (teenage/adult) children and is admonished by his ex-wife and her boyfriend for turning up when it's not his day. Of course, April forgives him for this when [[spoiler: her boyfriend becomes shark food.]]
* RomanticFalseLead: Nova. The movie focuses more on her than April, making one wonder why he would get back with his ex-wife.
* ScarsAreForever: Nova has scarring from a prior shark attack of which she was the SoleSurvivor.
* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: Nova's weapon for the duration of the film. It's probably the most effective thing against the sharks.
* ShoutOut: [[Film/{{Jaws}} Nova states that "We're gonna need a bigger chopper," Fin and Baz take out a shark by tossing a propane cylinder in its mouth and shooting it early in the shark attack on the pier, and Bobby dies the same way as Quint does minus a machete to stab the shark with.]]
** Her recounting of her childhood shark encounter ends just like Quint's account of the ''Indianapolis'''s sinking, too.
*** That scene also resembles the "how I learned there's no Santa" scene from ''Film/{{Gremlins}}''.
* StockFootage: There are several shots where the sharks are brought to life from footage ripped right from a shark documentary.
** Including some shots that are ''hilariously'' inappropriate to what's actually going on on-screen, like the one where a shark that's supposed to have been flung into a swimming pool by the waterspout still has a couple of remora tagging along, not even adhering to it but just swimming alongside. Not to mention some where the angle of the shot suggests that the camera was underneath the street itself.
** It's also obvious by the cars, lettering on signs, etc that the montage of the gang driving through a "flooding LA" is cut with stock footage of monsoon-devastated Asian countries. Possibly justified in that there would be no stock footage of LA flooding available anyway.
** Many stock beach and city skyline shots are used, even though many of them lack storm clouds or surfable waves.
* TwoShotsFromBehindTheBar: Fin keeps a pistol and a shotgun behind his bar [[CrazyPrepared just in case]].
* VillainBall: The shark-fin fisherman and his client can think of nothing better to do, when their boat is being battered by flying sharks and storm debris and its crew is getting eaten alive, than shoot at ''each other''.
* WeatherControlMachine:
** Less of a machine and more like using propane bombs to destroy a tornado.
** In-universe, the clerk in the convenience store believes that the whole thing is happening because the government has one of these.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: None of the characters on the fishing boat appear again, or are referenced again, or are acknowledged in any way after the opening titles. [[spoiler: Until the 6th movie.]]
* [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes Why Did It Have To Be Sharks?]]: Nova really hates sharks, due to a childhood incident. [[spoiler: Being swallowed whole by one doesn't help.]]
* WorstNewsJudgmentEver: Only three items are on the ticker under the incessant [[spoiler: ([[DeadlineNews well, almost]])]] newscasts, one of them Fin's rescue of the school bus, another is four reported missing from a Santa Monica bar (presumably because Fin, Nova, Baz and George left Fin's bar without a word of explanation), and a third is the landslide in Beverly Hills that wrecked Colin's house.
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