* CreatorBacklash: During interviews later in his career, PeterBenchley claimed he came to regret writing the original novel when he learned that the worldwide fear of sharks he felt his book and the film version created had led to massive shark overfishing that was driving several species close to extinction. He became a vocal ocean conservation activist to make up for it, and remained so until his death.
* {{Defictionalization}}: In 2010 when the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheik experienced killer shark attacks it pretty much used the plot of Jaws as its guide, including denying the problem, resisting closing the beaches, reluctantly closing them after a near shore attack, killing the wrong shark and declaring it the right one despite clear evidence to the contrary, re-opening the beaches with a fanfare declaring them safe, then having more attacks take place. After that the shark simply left of its own accord, perhaps it was GenreSavvy enough to know what came next in film.
* EnforcedMethodActing: Inadvertently done. To simulate the attack on Chrissie Watkins, two underwater ropes were tethered to Susan Backlinie that would be pulled to and fro. Unfortunately, one of the lines was pulled too hard, breaking a rib. Those screams of pain and terror are real.
** Initially, they weren't getting the reaction shot Spielberg wanted from Susan Backlinie when the shark first grabs Chrissie, so they did a take where they didn't tell her when it was going to happen. That's the take that went into the movie.
* FakeAmerican: Quint is played by an Englishman.
* OldShame: The movie's popularity turned the book into this for Peter Benchley. The movie set off a wave of paranoia about going to the beach as well as a renewed spate of shark-hunting that drove various species almost to the point of extinction. Benchley lamented that he would never have written the book had he actually ''known anything about sharks'' and that they weren't like the monster about which he had written.
* TheRedStapler: Inverted. Beach attendance dropped significantly after this movie.
* ThrowItIn:
** "You're gonna need a bigger boat."
** Also, the shooting star as Brody loads his revolver on the boat.
** The footage of the Shark rolling on top of the shark cage wasn't planned, but was far too awesome not to use. And is why Hooper [[spoiler: ended up surviving.]]
* TroubledProduction: An unusual case; it seems that the more troubled the production of each film was, the better it turned out. The original film barely even got made at all due to the numerous troubles they had with the weather and the mechanical shark, yet is easily the best of the series. The second had a massively problematic start, but things eventually smoothed out during filming, and it ended up a decent film. The third's production problems were mostly limited to the challenges of working in 3-D, and the resulting film was... pretty bad. ''The Revenge'' had the smoothest production of all the ''Jaws'' films by far -- and yet it ended up the absolute worst film.