"I do fear bears. They're giant, marauding, godless killing machines."
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Played for laughs in a Season 1 episode, where Simmons (a biochemist who's usually fearless to the point of recklessness around dangerous animals) gets alarmed at the mere possibility that there might be bears anywhere within the reach of the long-range scanner during a hike through the Canadian wilderness.
- All That: One skit has the crew smothering an unlucky Butt-Monkey reporter freezing in the tundra with honey to attract a nearby polar bear.
- Alone is a British survival show from 2023 in which the participants are dumped in the wilds of Canada, and the one who lasts longest gets a cash prize. The producers are keen to hype up the threat of bears.
- Angel: "Soul Purpose" is largely a series of nightmares experienced by Angel, who's being fed upon by a parasite. This includes a Squick-filled dissection scene involving, amongst other things, a completely random bear.
- Boy Meets World: As part of an Escalating War, one group of the main characters superglue the other main characters to their classroom seats, dowse them in honey and set a bear loose in the classroom. Given that the source of the bear is never explained, nor do they get in trouble for it, this one goes directly under Rule of Funny.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Pangs", an angry Native American spirit is locked in combat against Buffy, upon which he transforms into a large grizzly. Spike promptly blames Buffy and starts freaking out.
- The Colbert Report: Stephen Colbert is famous for his fear and hatred of bears or "godless killing machines" (one once killed everything he loved), so naturally the featured film clip for his interview with The National Parks director Ken Burns features a river filled with almost a dozen grizzlies.Colbert: That is the scariest film I've ever seen.
- CSI: One episode is famous for its use of the line "The bear could be considered a lethal weapon."
- Destination Truth: In one episode, while in Hokkaido, Josh and his team were dismayed to find out that besides being reputedly haunted the abandoned town they were visiting was certifiably full of bears. And unlike the last time they dealt with bears in Alaska they didn't have any guns with them, which led to a humorous scene where they go to a mega-mart and try to find improvised anti-bear weapons (eventually settling on a baseball bat). Luckily the only bear they encountered was a stuffed one in a school.
- One of the early episodes of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman had the title character getting trapped inside of a cabin due to a rabid grizzly.
- Game of Thrones:
- Locke's idea of entertainment is to throw Brienne into a bear pit with a wooden sword and no armour and see how long she lasts.
- Season 7 one-ups this with a bear wight menacing the characters.
- Ghosts (US): Flower was killed when a bear mauled her whilst tripping on hallucinogens at a music festival.
- An episode of Grimm featured a type of Wesen called Jägerbar ("Blind Idiot" Translation of "hunter-bear"). They are notable for being the most animal-like in their "woge" form, especially females, who look like ordinary bears. Traditionally, Jägerbar love to hunt, especially humans. Modern Jägerbar, though, have mostly abandoned this custom. Naturally, the episode features those who still follow it.
- The Haven episode "Fur" featured hunting trophy animals coming to life and attacking people, including a bear.
- In the Here Come the Brides episode "The Soldier," Captain Clancey is mauled by a grizzly bear while drunkenly stumbling home from his birthday party.
- In one episode of Highlander, Duncan McLeod is helping a fugitive Native American woman who has stolen the child of a white mine owner to replace her own child that died of poisoning from polluted water from the mine. During the night, a bear wanders into the log cabin in which they're sheltering.
- In How I Met Your Mother, Marshall is worried about being uninsured while looking for work and keeps coming up with worst-case scenarios about every situation, all of which include being attacked by a bear (well, a guy in a bad bear costume). The bad bear suit heightens the Rule of Funny, as does Marshall melodramatically screaming "NOT LIKE THIS" every time.
- The Incredible Hulk (1977): In the second pilot film "Death in the Family", David Banner, along with disabled heiress Julie Griffith and hobo Michael, are attacked by a bear as they try to cross through a river to avoid Julie's Wicked Stepmother and her goons. The bear ends up mostly trying to maul David, until the latter Hulks out and proceeds to fight off the bear. The fight ends with the Hulk lifting up the bear and throwing it far away from the group.
- I Shouldn't Be Alive:
- In "Trapped Under the Ice", the father and son duo, after surviving their canoe capsizing in ice water, have to face a forest full of bears, and it's as terrifying as it sounds, as they were practically defenseless.
- This happens in "Trapped On the Mountain" where the elk hunter gets mauled by a grizzly.
- The Jeff Corwin Experience:
- In a rather comical example, Jeff Corwin discovered that Asiatic black bears have really bad gas after eating a big meal.
- During an episode in Alaska, Jeff pointed out that if a grizzly bear felt threatened, there was no way he could outrun or out-climb it. He'd just become its dinner.
- Zig-zagged in Journey to the West (1996) with the second seasons' arc with the Black Bear Demon and the Holy Monk Jin-Chi. The Demon is introduced assaulting villages and civilians until Jin-Chi interrupts and defeats the Demon with his Holy Buddhist powers, but it turns out the Bear Demon is Jin-Chi's disciple; their Engineered Heroics act is for the Monk to extort prayer offerings and alms from the civilians. The Bear Demon turns out to be neutral, if somewhat misguided.
- Keep Breathing: One shows up in the second episode and devours the last of Liv's rations. It also shits on the beach, to rub it in.
- Inverted with David Letterman, who loves bears and was positively thrilled when Jack Hanna let him hold a pair of day-old cubs. In a more recent show, Hanna was recounting how he, his wife, and a family of hikers had a close encounter with a Mama Bear and her pair of two-year-old cubs (ironically just after shooting a PSA for the National Parks) and Letterman felt it would've been a shame if Hannah was attacked because it would have meant the possible death of the bear.
- On Longmire, one Victim of the Week was tied down in the forest, drugged and had meat tied to his body in order to attract a bear. The man was ripped apart by the bear and the seasoned cops and hunters who examined the scene considered it the most gruesome death they ever saw.
- In Lost, the castaways are attacked by polar bears (in a tropical Island of Mystery; it's that kind of show) on a couple of occasions.
- Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure: Mimmi offhandedly mentions that the Arctic marshmallow she's preparing (a dessert that requires mermaid magic to make) attracts polar bears with its scent. Evidently, a polar bear wouldn't complain about finding a mermaid in an ice hole.
- In the Married... with Children episode, "Bearly Men", Al and Bud go hunting with Peggy's father to prove their manliness. Al and Bud run into a bear (they hit it with a car). Thinking it dead, they take the bear home... only for it to wake up and escape into Chicago. Al, Bud, and Peggy's father then have to go after it.
- One of the terrors of the horrible Mirror Universe in The Middleman.Ivan Avi: I was born into an evil world. Skies choked with ammonia, seas full of benzine, baby farms! Random suffocations... bears...
- One episode of Monk had a bear show up... twice. Both times were plot-relevant.
- In Northern Exposure, Holling Vincouer was once mauled by a bear (whom he named Jesse) while hunting. While recovering, he claimed to have a nightmare where he was pursued by all the animals he had hunted in the past. The experience changed Holling; while he had sworn vengeance against Jesse (to the point where Jesse had become his personal Moby-Dick), he vowed never to hunt any animal other than Jesse except with a camera.
- Odd Squad: In "The Jackies", a bear manages to break into Oprah's dojo. Her instructor wisely makes a break for it. She decides to battle it head-on, and wins in under a minute with no signs of injury.
- Dwight from The Office wisely fears bears. He once went to see a movie about bear attacks, but mistakenly walked into Wedding Crashers, he stayed, because "bears attack when you least expect it."
- Prehistoric Park had this trope in effect in episode 2, with protagonist Nigel Marvin chased by a cave bear (he had stumbled into its cave). He even lampshades that this should not be happening, as he was under the belief that said bear was extinct at the time he was in.
- An episode of Reaper had Sam trying to get someone to sell their soul, and being chased out of the guy's property by a polar bear. Which had been delivered to the jerkass by the Devil. Andi in particular was amused. Sam was not.
- In the Ripping Yarns pilot episode "Tomkinson's Schooldays," all new students at Graybridge School must undergo a hand-to-hand fight with a grizzly bear.
- An episode of the Animal Planet series River Monsters filmed in Alaska had a run-in with a grizzly where it stole a salmon the host had hooked right off his line, then came back again. Only when the guide accompanying him fired a warning shot from the huge revolver he was carrying did the bear finally leave.
- Saturday Night Live:
- A sketch had an ursinologistnote . He decided to kill his wife by releasing the bear he was studying, who then proceeded to...pick up a gun from a table and shoot her. (Which the scientist blamed on "too much TV", but the bear was revealed to be the ursinologist's brother in disguise.)
- One sketch featured a world in which bears killed everyone and took on the role of humans.
- According to Scrubs, while unwanted pregnancy or STDs are not fun, "Losing a baseball scholarship because a bear ate your arm is a much worse consequence of sex." Probably true. This line immediately follows a flashback in which Elliott, having parked in the woods with her high school boyfriend, starts drizzling honey on him as part of foreplay when a ravenous bear comes and breaches the car, eating the poor guy's arm.
- In an episode of Starsky & Hutch, Starsky gets kidnapped by a psycho cult. Things go about as expected, and at one point whilst trying to escape he turns a corner and comes face to face with a bear. A very large bear. That he is supposed to fight. With a rock. Yeah.
- Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Enterprise have mentioned a similar creature on Vulcan called a seh'lat. The big ones are definitely bad news, as Archer and T'Pol learn when they have to evade one in the desert. Smaller ones can be kept as pets, but they have to be properly cared for, as discussed by Archer and T'Pol.T'Pol: You have Porthos.
Archer: Porthos doesn't try to eat me when I'm late with his dinner.
T'Pol: Vulcan children are never late with their seh'lats' dinner.
Archer: I can believe that. - Star Trek: Discovery introduces a creature that's described as a macroscopic version of a tardigrade — which is also known as the "water bear", and this creature is as large, powerful, and dangerous as a bear.
- Super Sentai and its adaptation Power Rangers have many mecha and Monsters of the Week being based on bears. A few notable are:
- In Ninja Sentai Kakuranger/Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers Season 3 the Yellow Ranger has the bear as their animal motif, having three mecha with the theme (two anthropomorphic, one not).
- Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger/Power Rangers Wild Force has the Rangers gain a pair of bear zords: a black bear and a polar bear, able to shoot beams of fire and ice respectively. The Bear Brothers turn out to be too powerful for the main megazord to use reliably, forcing the Rangers to find a stronger zord that could handle the bears' strength.
- Juken Sentai Gekiranger is a show about two competing schools of martial arts styled after animals. The evil school has Maku, one of the most ridiculously overpowered villains in the series. Even the other villains fear him. Guess what his power animal is? This character is adapted in Power Rangers Jungle Fury as Grizzaka, without any real changes.
- Surviving Disaster, a non-fiction surviving disaster show, has an episode on how to survive an avalanche — with a bear attack.
- A demonic-looking bear actually shows up in Teletubbies along with a similarly demonic-looking lion. The bear in the flying carousel, on the other hand, isn't scary at all.
- In The Terror, a group of British sailors try to chart a path through the Northwest Passage and find themselves hunted by a monster that takes the form of a polar bear called the Tuunbaq. It looks like a normal bear from a distance (and the crew initially assumes it to be one), but then it gets closer and reveals disturbingly humanlike face and unnatural long neck. It’s sadistic, uncannily fast, not happy about explorers encroaching on its land, and It Can Think.
- In one episode of That's My Bush!, George W. Bush buys a bear for protection against the angry mob outside. This is a bad move, as the bear picks up a bolt-action rifle and hunts him down — all so the show could end on a pun about the right to arm bears.
- Walker, Texas Ranger featured bears a number of times, Episode 173 featuring a particularly scary one.
