Characters / Maneater

The Game:

Main Characters

The Shark

The Shark

The player character, a female bull shark that seeks to cause as much chaos as possible within the coastal city of Port Clovis. Armed with her teeth, fins, and brains, she takes the bite to them and the rest of the local area.

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• Always a Bigger Fish: It's heavily implied that Dakuwaqa, the shark god is even more badass than she is, but thankfully they don't appear in the base game. In-game, one of the shark's goals is focused around becoming the big fish by taking out the apex predators of each biome and curbing the overpopulation plaguing the beaches.
• Ambiguously Evil:
  • Scaly Pete believes the shark is overtly evil and demonic in nature, whereas, the shark is portrayed as being a natural predator.
  • It's assumed the shark wants revenge for her mother's death and her own scarring when in reality, sharks have no parental care and the baby would have just been left to fend for herself.
  • Another example is Kyle's presumed death; while the shark was on fire, she unintentionally knocked off a fuel panel while flailing around in pain and was more interested in getting back into the water. The resulting gas combined with the flames caused an explosion.
  • Her maneating started out as a necessity; the narrator points out the shark bit off Pete's hand because she was trying to free herself and she only ate the hand because it was the only source of food available.
  • Eating other animals is also natural, even if it was enhanced by mutation. The shark is still attacking humans though, so she still has to be fought and killed.
• Ambiguous Situation: The shark's intelligence is also debatable. Trip's narration talks about the Maneater as though she's intelligent and sentient, while according to Pete the shark is Ax-Crazy and a Sea Monster who kills people.
• Animal Motifs: Despite being an animal herself, the narrator also draws parallels between the bull shark and wolves, occasionally referring to her as "the sea wolf."
• Artistic License – Biology: The playable shark exhibits many abilities and behaviors that are unseen in bull sharks and even sharks in general — many of which are acknowledged by the narrator.
  • Sharks do not possess sonar or the ability to sit still, as they need to keep moving to survive. Flavor text on the loading screen exposits that some species of sharks have spiracles, which let them breathe while sitting still, but bull sharks do not possess them.
  • The shark is supposed to be a bull shark, but the in-game model shares more traits with Great Whites.
  • Bull sharks also seldom grow over 13 feet (almost 4 meters). As an Adult the Maneater is a respectable 3.5 meters long, but as an Elder she grows to 6.5 meters — rivaling the largest of great white sharks in size — and as a Mega she grows to a massive 9 meters (almost 30 feet). In the Truth Quest DLC, she grows to be 10 meters (around 32.8 feet) in length.
  • Bull sharks can't breach the surface but Great Whites are known to do so when hunting.
  • The Shark has a tendency to roar when hurt or attacking as a Shout-Out to Jaws, but real-life sharks lack vocal cords.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: After defeating the Apex Sperm Whale she becomes the new Apex Predator in Port Clovis and unlocks a passive benefit that, if equipped, will prevent smaller predators from attacking her.
• Atomic Superpower: As a flimsy reasoning for her absurd mutations, the shark may have been affected by all the nuclear waste being dumped into the waters, which effectively granted her superpowers and bizarre abilities. The Atomic set takes this up a notch by making her literally harness atomic energy for her most extreme mutation yet, glowing green all over, having dorsal fins that look like they originally belonged to Godzilla and even gain the power to spew out an atomic Death Ray to utterly annihilate prey.
• Ax-Crazy: The Shark relentlessly kills numerous humans, fish, whales, and reptiles — all in an effort to avenge her dead mother.
• The Bad Guy Wins: She eventually manages to get revenge on Pete at the end of the base game.
• Best Served Cold: Ripped from its mother prematurely by Pete and was only able to bite his hand off in retaliation for scarring her. By the time they met again, she's much more of a threat and their third and final meeting definitely puts her in an even greater position to get revenge once and for all.
• Big Eater: The shark is notably voracious and has several biomes' worth of creatures to whet her insatiable appetite. After grabbing a creature of equal or smaller size and reducing its health enough, the Maneater will begin to swallow them tail-first. As a Mega, she is able to swallow most other creatures whole — even creatures as large as great white sharks and orcas — leaving naught but a cloud of blood behind. Creatures larger than herself are torn into bite-sized chunks of meat.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: The Bio-Electric set gives her glowing blue tentacles.
• Bioweapon Beast: The interest that Horzine Special Projects expresses in recovering the Maneater's corpse should it display any "interesting" mutations corroborates Kyle LeBlanc and Trip Westhaven's speculation that the purported Mega shark that ate Pierre LeBlanc's father and the Maneater are the product of clandestine military experiments. This is supported by the "Truth Quest" DLC, which shows the military has a top-secret facility creating animals with the four different mutation sets.^note Great White Sharks with the Electric mutation, Orcas with the Shadow mutation, Sperm Whales with the Bone mutation, and all three variants combined with the Atomic mutation.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The Shadow Set gives her black corneas with purple sclera.
• Breath Weapon: The Atomic Body enables the Shark to charge and fire a beam of green atomic energy from her jaws.
• Casting a Shadow: The Shadow Body lets her briefly transform into a toxic cloud of darkness, an ability dubbed Shadow Form.
• Create Your Own Villain: Pete, not content with merely killing her mother, takes his knife and gives her a deep cut across her body instead of just disposing of her in the water or killing her outright. In response, the shark lashes out and takes his hand with her into the water, acquiring both a taste for human flesh and a deep hatred for humanity in the process, growing up into an ocean beast who'd terrorize the beaches with extreme prejudice.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: The Bio-Electric set gives her eerie blue eyes.
• Dark Action Girl: She's a female bull shark that goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against humans.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Her mother is killed and she's ripped from the womb and horrifically scarred on the fin by a sadistic sharkhunter.
• Death Glare: The bull shark's default expression is an angry glare, even as a pup, when viewed in the profile page.
• Dented Iron: The two biggest injuries of her life stick with her - the first being a large and barely healed scar from Pete’s knife when she was just born, and a massive and more fresh burn scar on the side of her face from being covered and ignited by gasoline (also by Pete).
• Determinator: Gunshots, harpoons, dynamite, and other predators can't stop her from seeking revenge on Scaly Pete.
• Eating the Enemy: The Shark's main response to problems is to gorge herself on them — which is also how she regains health.
• Elemental Eye Colors: The bull shark's eye colors change based on her equipment.
  • The Bio-Electric set gives her Creepy Blue Eyes.
  • The Bone set gives her white Skintone Sclerae with Exotic Eye Designs that matches the rest of her skin color.
  • The Shadow set gives her Black Eyes of Evil.
  • The Atomic set gives her eerie green eyes.
• Expy: To the various sharks in Jaws. There are too many similarities to list.
• Emo Teen: Invoked by the Narrator when the bull shark reaches the teen stage, claiming that we can expect poor decision-making and angst from the shark.
• Empowered Badass Normal: She starts out as a relatively normal bull shark, but as the game progresses she begins to develop strange mutations and grows into a nine-meter-long "Mega" as a result of consuming mutagens. Truth Quest lets her grow even bigger and unlocks the "Atomic" mutation.
• Extreme Omnivore: She'll be eating license plates, signs, fish, turtles, humans, boats, and even mutagens.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The Bone set is the Fighter, the Bio-Electric set is the Mage, and the Shadow set is the Thief. The Bone set offers plenty of protection and the ability to take on hunter boats with ease like an aquatic battering ram, the Bio Electric set focusing on paralyzing and rendering prey helpless with repeated electrical shocks, and the Shadow set focused around bleeding prey out with venom and draining health from them like a vampire when they're bitten.
• Finishing Move: Successfully consuming prey has her pull some excessive and downright flashy executions on both animal and humans. In the case of humans, she makes it a point to sometimes tear them up alligator-deathroll style, chomp their legs then lower body off before actually killing them with a bite to the torso, and toss them in the air and catch them in her jaws if skimming the surface.
• Flying Seafood Special: Downplayed, but present. She very much does need water to survive and will eventually asphyxiate if caught on land, but as she grows she becomes capable of taking bigger leaps and double jumps on top of having a larger lung capacity to venture on land and air for longer. Suddenly, after becoming a Mega, humans aren’t even safe in the middle of land when the shark can come flying from the water and take prey back with her after a land rampage.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Goes from a small pup eating groupers to a monstrous menace capable of taking on the strongest apex predators and sinking entire ships with ease.
• Gaia's Vengeance: The Narrator will refer to the bull shark as being such on occasion, calling her "nature's vengeance," particularly when attacking humans.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Clenching a victim in her mouth and then tail slapping them allows her to punt prey into other targets at high speeds, whether dispatching a scuba diver by launching him into the side of a boat, or grabbing a big ocean predator like another shark and splattering a human with its body.
• Hidden Depths: One of her hobbies, unrelated to her hunger or vengeance, is uncovering new landmarks and collecting license plates.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: The fact that the bull shark's sonar ability highlights all humans in the same red aura as other threats like Hunters and Alligators implies this. Tellingly, the bull shark's mother's sonar will highlight humans in blue similar to turtles, implying that humans are just another source of food to her, unlike her daughter who was a victim of some serious abuse by human hands.
• Hungry Menace: She's a man-eating shark that eats all sorts of prey, from baby sea turtles to adult sperm whales.
• Instant Armor: The Bone Set's special ability enables the Maneater to manifest an ossified exoskeleton covering her entire body, turning her ramming attacks into a razor-sharp Spin Attack.
• It Can Think: According to Trip's narration, at least, the Maneater is highly intelligent, capable of introspection and self-care. Of course, being a shark, some of her knowledge is a bit... off. She apparently believes there are 80 states in the United States (with the Narrator lampshading her logic with "#SharkMath").
  • Another sign of her intelligence is her final battle with Scaly Pete, where she manages to figure out how to take out Pete's warship with its own torpedoes.
• It's Personal: She is hunting Pete because he killed her mother and scarred her.
• Lightning Bruiser: By the time she reaches Mega status, the Maneater is a nine-meter-long leviathan capable of outswimming and ripping apart any other creature in the ocean — with the various mutations making her even more formidable.
• Made of Iron: She survives a lot of dangerous situations that a normal shark wouldn't be able to live through, which the Narrator comments on in "Truth Quest".
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Being a shark, this is expected. However, various evolutions allow the Maneater to make its jaws even more terrifying: the Bio-Electric set electrifies the shark's bites, the Bone set has massive chompers that are more similar to ancient Megalodon jaws than modern day sharks, and the Shadow set has snaggleteeth that are comparable to vampire fangs.
• Mutual Kill: After one last battle against Scaly Pete, Pete decides to blow himself up before the shark can consume him, killing both of them in the process and sinking his battleship to the depths of the ocean. However, she survived Pete's explosion.
• Noisy Nature: She roars when attacked or attacking — something that real-life sharks can't do, but which was popularized by Jaws.
• Not Quite Dead: The bull shark survives Pete's attempted Mutual Kill, which leads directly into Truth Quest.
• No Name Given: She doesn't have a name, simply being referred to by the narrator as "the bull shark."
• Nuclear Mutant: The "Atomic" mutation from Truth Quest gives her glowing green-tipped black scutes and jagged fins, Tainted Veins, a hammerhead-like cephalofoil, a combination of abilities from the other three sets, and a Breath Weapon.
• Pet the Dog: Despite chomping down on whatever human she feels like eating, and having a grudge against Scaly Pete, she is actually quite docile in her Grottos.
• Poisonous Person: The Shadow Set gives the shark a sleek black Gigeresque exoskeleton when fully upgraded, a vampiric bite, and the ability to expel clouds of poison.
• Population Control: She's found herself in this position while growing up, with the narrator frequently noting that certain invasive aquatic species have no business living in the environment they've found themselves in (Muskellunge, originally native to lakes in the northern United States and Canada), have overpopulated their waters thanks to a lack of predators (Catfish, who are absurdly common and crowded inside Port Clovis), are actively harming the environment with their feeding habits (Parrotfish overfeeding on coral, sea turtles overgrazing plantlife, etc.), or any combination of the previous problems. Half of the shark's mission involves hunting down and curbing these troublesome species to draw out the regional apex predators, while also conducting a little bit of environment repair, with the missions named Population Control to boot.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The Shark stops at nothing to kill the man who ripped her out of her mother.
• Scars Are Forever: Even by the time she's an Elder, she still has a scar on her dorsal fin and right side from when she was just a baby.
• Sea Monster: Over the course of the game the Shark grows to 30 feet and develops mutations that help her destroy anything in her path. In "Truth Quest" she becomes even more powerful — growing to 10 meters and attaining the Atomic mutation, which turns her into a scaly beast with a nuclear-powered Breath Weapon.
• Shock and Awe: The Bio-Electric Set gives the Shark bioluminescent Combat Tentacles on her head, back, and fins; as well as the ability to electrify her bites, shoot bolts of lightning from her tail, and even turn into lightning.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The Bone Set gives the Shark an ossified exoskeleton that makes her look similar to a Dunkleosteus.
• Superior Successor: Her mother, although dangerous, was a normal shark. The Maneater not only becomes bigger than her mother, but also develops powers.
• Super-Persistent Predator: She stops at nothing to get revenge on Pete for scarring her as a pup. Not even an explosion will stop her.
• Supporting Protagonist: The Shark is the main character but the entire story is revolved around Scaly Pete, the antagonist. He killed the Shark's mother for attacking a beach and then threw her child in the river after she bit his right hand off. From there, the Shark starts growing, mutating, and hunting humans, bringing Scaly Pete back to finish what he started.
• Tail Slap: One of her methods of attack includes slapping an enemy or object with her tail. It doesn't do much damage but it does have the chance of knocking back the enemy, giving you some breathing room. On the other hand, combining the tail slap after snatching something with your jaws will deal huge damage to the victim when they crash into an object - and to whoever else may have been in their way.
• Threatening Shark: The Maneater is a colossal bull shark either descended from an escaped military bioweapons project or metamorphosed by chronic exposure to mutagens, and is willing to ravenously devour anything and anyone that crosses her path.
• Two-Faced: At the start of the game, Pete marks her with a scar to recognize her. Later, Kyle and Pete burn the other half of her face.
• Vampiric Draining: The Shadow Set's crooked array of needlepoint fangs allow the Maneater to regain health simply by biting opponents, without having to fully devour them.
• Villain Protagonist: Both she and her mother are man-eating sharks that actively hunt humans. Even disregarding the utter bastards of hunters that she ends up taking out along the way, she's more than capable (and actively encouraged) to slaughter plenty of civilians unrelated to her trauma.
• You Killed My Mother: The very reason why the bull shark wants to kill Scaly Pete.

The Narrator

Trip Westhaven

Voiced by: Chris Parnell

Trip Westhaven is the narrator of the reality TV show Maneater, which chronicles the battles between sharks and shark-hunters. By the time of "Truth Quest" his show was cancelled and he was fired for both getting people killed and showing it on-camera, becoming a live-streaming Conspiracy Theorist determined to prove that the government is in league with alien invaders.

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• Admiring the Abomination: Despite the fact that the bull shark is a known maneater, Trip still seems awed by the bull shark, her prowess, and her strange evolutions. This has been amplified in the "Truth Quest" DLC, where Trip considers the shark his champion and ally in overthrowing the supposed New World Order.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Becomes this in "Truth Quest" as part of his Sanity Slippage, believing that insectoid aliens have infiltrated the US government and military, are planning to instigate a New World Order, and that the Shark is aware of this and working to stop them. Even in the main game, he comments that Port Clovis' founders were Freemasons, and thus probably members of the Illuminati.
• Deadline News: Invoked when Trip quickly assures the Antolini crime family that footage of one of their body-dumping grounds won't be used in the final cut of the show.
• Deadpan Snarker: Trip's running commentary on the Shark's actions routinely snarks about just about everything, but puts a particular emphasis on the debilitating impact that pollution and other destructive human activities have on the environment.
• Everyone Has Standards: He criticizes how polluted Port Clovis has become and often points out how trigger-happy the Hunters are.
• Green Aesop: Invoked and averted. Trip ends the show by positing that there may be a lesson to learn from all the death and destruction on the show, then cheerfully admits that a Green Aesop isn't what his viewers tune in for and tells them to tune in next time for more human- and shark-killing action.
• Ignored Expert: Trip occasionally suggests far more intelligent ideas for dealing with the Shark than any of the actual bounty hunters and military personnel employ, like hunting the Shark from the air or simply closing the beaches until the Shark wanders off looking for food elsewhere.
• I Need A Drink: He'll occasionally mention wanting some alcohol in his commentary.
• Have a Nice Death: Courtesy of the narrator, dying nets you a half-somber half-sarcastic commentary about the shark's fate with different quips based on the context of her death, or who got the killing blow in.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his snark at her expense and even the occasional insult, Trip does seem to care for the bull shark to an extent, with his narration offering her advice during her journey and being her Mr. Exposition. Notably, when the shark enters a Grotto, his comments usually point out how it seems to help her.
• Lack of Empathy: Occasionally when seeing a human getting torn to bits by the shark, he can’t help but dryly point out some facts about how rare shark attacks are or how the human kill count versus sharks is much higher (leaving the bullshark with a lot of catching up to do to even the score). He flat out admits in some moments that, while someone is being Eaten Alive, he’s glad he brought cameras to record their deaths. Presumably this attitude ended up getting his show cancelled after the uncensored carnage that unfolded on camera.
• Lemony Narrator: Trip provides commentary on the various people, places, and easter eggs in and around Port Clovis, and is harshly critical of the destruction the people of Port Clovis have wrecked upon the environment.
• Mr. Exposition: He exposits a lot about the background of Port Clovis and its associated Landmarks, particularly the local MegaCorp Sunshine Solutions.
• No Name Given: In the main game he remains unnamed even when closing out the show, only revealing his name in the trailer for the DLC.
• No Sympathy: Trip is remarkably callous towards his fellow Questers being eaten by the Maneater in the "Truth Quest" DLC — even snarking that a couple of them probably deserved it.
• Parental Issues: He apparently has two sons named Steven and Jerry, with the latter being lazy and refuses to work.
  • Given that Trip is voiced by Chris Parnell who also voices another character named Jerry who is also unemployed and somewhat lazy, this may be a subtle case of Actor allusion.
• Pet the Dog:
  • If the bull shark loses the fight against Rosie, the Apex Alligator, Trip will comment that the shark showed plenty of "heart" even if she lost.
  • At younger stages (Pup and Teen), if the bull shark is losing a fight, Trip will remind her that she will be safe in her Grotto.
  • Trip eventually grows fond enough of the shark to occasionally refer to her as "our shark."
  • Rather than referring to her exclusively as a "maneater," something that Pete firmly believes her to be, the Narrator instead refers to the player shark as "the [bull] shark".
  • Trip will sometimes scold the bull shark when she eats the contents of a mutagen box, criticizing her diet for needing 'supplements' and encouraging her to eat healthier.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: If the shark frequently loses fights, Trip will complain about her lack of combat prowess. If she's killed by an alligator he'll lament her being eaten by someone's future leather handbag, and if she's killed by a hammerhead shark he'll ask how she could possibly lose against something with such a disproportionately small mouth.
• Replacement Goldfish: Invoked. Should the bull shark die, Trip will occasionally ask during the game over screen if he can get "a new maneater."
• Sanity Slippage: In Truth Quest, witnessing the bull shark's evolutions, watching her eat so many people and take down the terrifying Apex predators seems to have done a number on his sanity... which was compounded by having his Maneater show cancelled, leading to him immersing himself in radical conspiracy theories. In the stinger of "Truth Quest" he doubles down on this by drinking ayahuasca for 90 days straight until he has a psychotic breakdown, and divorces his second wife when she and his son try to stage an intervention.
• The Storyteller: Of a sort, as he's the narrator of an in-universe TV show about sharks killing people and people killing sharks.
• Sympathy for the Devil: He seems to sympathize with the Maneater's Dark and Troubled Past to an extent despite being fully aware of her crimes.
• Tinfoil Hat: Trip is shown wearing one in the opening cutscene of "Truth Quest" while stalking the marine biologist who assured him that the Maneater's bizarre mutations were just the result of radiation from the derelict nuclear power plant and industrial effluent.

The LeBlancs

Pierre LeBlanc/Scaly Pete

One of the main characters and the foremost authority in shark catching. He was raised by his World War II veteran father, who taught him to be a shark hunter and in turn began his own career of killing the animals. He ultimately takes the shark from her mother and leaves her for dead... but fate has other plans.

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• Always Someone Better: Pete's dad was even better than him, or at least is alluded to be.
• An Arm and a Leg: Right after he scars the baby shark after ripping her out of her mother, she bites off his right arm. As an adult, she later bites off his right leg.
• Animal Motifs: Sharks; he's a famous shark hunter, his nickname is "Scaly Pete" (as in shark scales), he wears a necklace of shark teeth and he has 2 tattoos of sharks, one on his forearm and a bigger one on his chest. His father's boat has a shark mouth design and after Kyle's death, Pete himself develops shark-like attributes: such as extreme aggression and a relentless drive to kill the man-eater.
• Expy: Of controversial shark hunter Vic Hislop and Quint from Jaws. One of the game's many references to Jaws points out that Pete now has a "bigger boat".
  • Both he and Vic hunt sharks for no reason than to lessen the population.
  • Both he and Vic take great pride in their work and don't seem to understand the opposing side.
  • On Quint's side of things, his boat is very similar to the Orca.
  • His father shares Quint's backstory of being a vet from a historic battle in World War II, in his case the Battle of Guadacanal.
• Cool Boat: For his final confrontation with the Shark, Pete outfits an old World War II ship with armor, torpedos, and other illegal-for-civilian-use augmentations.
• Create Your Own Villain: The baby shark had no real attachment to her mother (most sharks don't) but neither was she interested in revenge until Pete casually scarred her just so he could recognize her when she was bigger. The first thing the baby shark does is bite his hand off in self-defense and it escalates from there. Later on, Pete goes a bit nutty and tries contaminating the ocean with pollutants to kill the shark, but this just turns a zone of Port Clovis' waterways into a mutagen-rich area, the same mutagen responsible for making the shark abnormally large and superpowered.
• Dirty Old Man: He admits he finds the rich women who go to the beach attractive. It's implied that he spies on them with binoculars and is actually banned from the area.
  Pete: "You can see a lot with some good binoculars."
• Egomaniac Hunter: His issue is that, on some level, he needs to show sharks who's boss, and escalates further and further to destroy his Animal Nemesis.
• Face Death with Dignity: Has absolutely no problem staring down a 30-foot-long shark trying to eat him. He even seems to enjoy it, if his final line is to be believed.
• "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: Pete's last words before detonating explosives in a (failed) attempt at Taking You with Me are 'Laissez les bons temps rouler!'^note Let the good times roll!
• Fiery Redhead: He has greying red hair and is shown to have problems with anger.
• Freudian Excuse: His hatred of sharks stems from his father being killed by a purported "Mega" shark. When Kyle dies in a boat explosion, Pete loses it and devotes himself to the shark's death.
• Generation Xerox: Like his father, Scaly Pete continues the family tradition of hunting sharks before he is killed by one as well.
• Gratuitous French: He regularly speaks Cajun French.
• Handicapped Badass: Was still extremely capable of hunting and wounding the shark with both an arm and leg missing.
• Hero Antagonist: Contrary to his actions in the game, he's still hunting a pair of man-eating sharks that have actively been devouring humans.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Contaminating a section of the ocean with "fish food" (poison) only serves to turn an area into a Mutagen-rich zone and increasing the shark's size and superpowers.
• Hook Hand: After the Maneater bites off his hand he replaces it with a prosthetic claw.
• Irony: One of Pete's tattoos is a mermaid with a banner reading "Forget me not." Mermaid tattoos can symbolize protection from the sea but when Pete scars a female bull shark pup after killing her mother, things become personal for the shark, who bites off Pete's arm and eats his hand. Things only get worse for Pete from there.
• It's Personal: After Kyle's death, Pete blames the shark for his son's death and devotes himself to killing her, no matter the cost.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While it's largely motivated by his own bias towards sharks, he is right to fight the maneater and he's right that the maneaters can only be killed.
• Jock Dad, Nerd Son: The dynamic between him and his son, essentially. Scaly Pete is an experienced, tough-as-nails, shark hunter while Kyle is an aspiring marine biologist. To no surprise there's a fair bit of tension between them, with Pete openly sneering both at what Kyle is studying and his struggles to adjust to boat life while Kyle frequently berates his father for his needless brutality and obsessive desire to hunt down sharks. That said, the entire reason Kyle is working with his father is in the hopes he can grow closer to him, while Pete privately hopes that his son's university plans work out well for him.
• Lack of Empathy: He deliberately scars a newborn shark pup just so he can recognize her later, an act so cruel that both the Narrator and Kyle comment on it (and Kyle brings it up a second time). He also doesn't care that the camera crew aboard his boat is killed in the second fight with the bull shark once she returns for revenge. Pete later poisons an entire section of the ocean, and assaults the second camera crew that attempts to stop him from attacking the Maneater in his final showdown with her. He's also not very affectionate with his son, insulting his sharkhunting skills and claiming Kyle "couldn't catch s[censor bleep]t in a diaper" despite Kyle taking the position in an attempt to get some "father-son bonding."
• Lineage Comes from the Father: His father was a great shark hunter, with a huge beard and a hook for a hand. Things that Pete would inherit as he continues to hunt the player.
• Made of Iron: He loses an arm, a leg, and survives an explosion that was intended to kill the man-eater.
• Mutual Kill: After one last battle against the man-eater, he decides to blow himself up before the shark can consume him. Killing each other in the process and sinking the battleship to the depths of the ocean.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name is "Pierre LeBlanc", though everyone refers to him as "Scaly Pete".
• Outliving One's Offspring: He dies not long after Kyle does.
• Papa Wolf: Scaly Pete does love his son and prioritizes his safety over his boat.
• Pet the Dog: Despite his gruff relationship with his son, he genuinely cares about him, hoping that he graduates college and finds a path in life that doesn't involve shark hunting.
• Ragin' Cajun: He's an experienced shark hunter who speaks with a thick Cajun accent.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: After Kyle's death, Pete develops a vendetta against the maneater and openly plans to pollute the ocean to kill her. When the crew tries to convince him to leave well enough alone, he ignores them and threatens them off his boat.
• Sanity Slippage: After Kyle gets blown away, he starts obsessing over the shark in an attempt to get back at it. He clearly is no longer thinking straight by the time he takes out his father's boat.
• Taking You with Me: A terrifying, massive, murderous shark is about to eat him and, in an act of defiance, he blows himself up along with the shark.
• Tattoo as Character Type: He has multiple nautical tattoos on his body:
  • A rose honoring his father.
  • A mermaid with a banner reading "Forget me not", likely referencing Kyle's mother. Mermaid tattoos also symbolised protection from the sea.
  • A harpoon going through a shark's mouth, referencing his career as a shark hunter.
  • A dagger stabbing a swallow, referencing his sailing experiences.
  • A dagger stabbing a rose, suggesting a personal story behind this tattoo as it usually symbolises the duality of human life. If a conclusion had to be made, it's likely referencing his relationship with Kyle as Kyle states the two have not bonded much due to Pete focusing on his career. Pete does love Kyle but doesn't know how to express it properly to him.
  • The most prominent tattoo is of a pair of great white sharks paired with a boat and banner reading "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep". This tattoo is in reference to his pride about killing sharks, as the phrase is about the peacefulness of being buried at sea. This acts as a bit of foreshadowing, as Pete dies by blowing up his own ship to kill both himself and the shark. Both figures are involved in a cycle of revenge that only ends with their corpses sinking to the bottom of the ocean, achieving the peace that revenge would never bring them.
• Two-Faced: Pete is scarred by the same inferno that burns the Shark, leaving the left side of his face, neck, shoulder, and chest covered in horrific burn scars.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: After losing his hand, he starts wearing only his fishing overalls.
• You Killed My Father: The deaths of his father and his son in the jaws of sharks motivated Scaly Pete to go on a crusade against all sharks.

Kyle LeBlanc

Kyle is on his father's boat as a deckhand over the summer, where the two hope their relationship will grow.

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• Ambiguous Situation: One question that remains unanswered is whether Kyle actually died or is still alive. Even the show is unsure, with the chyron touting a hashtag questioning whether he could've survived.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • Kyle is none too happy hearing his dad claim that his grandfather saw and chased down a Megalodon. He even states point-blank that his father was little when he saw his grandfather be killed by a "Mega" and that it was probably a regular shark.
  • He also questions why his father felt the need to mutilate a shark pup after Pete callously scars the future Maneater so he can recognize her later.
• Morality Pet: Kyle was the reason why his father had some redemptive qualities despite his behavior. When Kyle seemingly dies in a boat explosion, Pete becomes determined to kill the shark and resorts to poisoning the ocean to kill the man-eater.
• Never Found the Body: It's widely assumed that he died in the explosion while trying to put out the flames on Pete's boat. However, his body is never found, there's no blood in the water, and the shark retreats from the explosion, appearing to have consumed him or to have eaten his remains. The show uses #WheresKyle to indicate the possibility that Kyle may have survived the explosion as well. However, the narrative shows no confirmed evidence of Kyle's death and Pete firmly believes the shark ate him.
• Not Quite Dead: His name appears in one of Trip's research notes for Truth Quest, implying he may have survived the explosion.
• Only Sane Man: Clearly wants his dad to stop his shark hunting and just hang out with him.
• Out of Focus: Despite being his father's deckhand, he really doesn't get much characterization beyond being a disappointment to his dad.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The sensitive guy to his father's manly man.
• Token Good Teammate: He has some genuine concern for his father's increasingly worse injuries and wishes to save the boat his dad had. He also expresses disapproval of his father scarring a newborn baby shark just so he can recognize and hunt it when it's older. It's just too bad he gets blown away by the explosion.

Minor Characters

Apex Predators

One apex predator exists in each region of Port Clovis. They are visually distinct form the rest of their species, showing they have fought their way to the top of their respective food chains.

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In General

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• Added Alliterative Appeal: They're all introduced with the narrator offering them such a moniker.
• Always a Bigger Fish: They are the "apex" of their foodchain and serve as this for all the other predators in the area. The Maneater, in turn, is this for them once it manages to gain enough power to defeat them.
• Ax-Crazy: They're all unusually aggressive and vicious.
• Badass Normal: They're all capable of fighting against a superpowered shark and almost winning, despite not having any superpowers of their own.
• Berserk Button: The bull shark being on their territory and eating their prey seriously ticks them off.
• Boss Battle: They serve as the boss for any given area, and are only unlocked after quest-specific requirements have been fulfilled.
• Eating the Enemy: How the Maneater defeats them—and how they defeat the Maneater.
• Eye Scream: Some of the Apex have 'prosthetics' that are obviously not meant to be eyes in the first place...
• Killed Off for Real: Justified, as the Maneater devours them just like any other creature.
• King Mook: Most are bigger and stronger versions of normal enemies.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: A noticeable number of them have red eyes, and they're all much stronger and tougher than the lesser members of their species.
• Scars Are Forever: They all have physical scars, presumably from previous fights prior to encountering the man-eater.
• Sea Monster: They're all massive, scarred, and vicious creatures who are as monstrous as the bull shark.
• Tail Slap: Just like the bull shark, they can use their tails as weapons to smack you around.
• To Serve Man: The fact that Hunters can be found in most of the cities of Port Clovis ready to hunt down sea creatures implies that these apex predators are just as guilty of attacking people as the bull shark.
• Unique Enemy: They are visually distinct from the rest of their species, and once the bull shark defeats them, they don't respawn.

Apex Alligator

An American Alligator that used to be a tourist attraction.

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• Added Alliterative Appeal: Trip introduces her as "the bayou brawler".
• The Bad Guy Wins: Rosie is a highly aggressive alligator and also a former tourist attraction. The fact that no humans are ever found in Rosie's swamp, not even Hunters, heavily indicates that all of the Bayou's citizens decided it was safer to leave the area—-or they were killed and eaten by alligators before they got the chance...
• Dark Action Girl: If her name is anything to go by, Rosie is a female and she's highly aggressive. She's also tough enough to give an adult Maneater trouble.
• Famed In-Story: As a former show animal, she's one of the few named characters in the game's storyline.
• Handicapped Badass: For some unknown reason, Rosie is missing her right front leg. It doesn't make her any less lethal.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The game text will say "Rosie" but an ad showing a much younger baby Rosie spells her name "Rosy".
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Implied, Rosie's aggression, missing leg, and scars around her mouth suggests that she didn't have a great time as a show animal. Before the events of the game, Rosie was able to break out and terrorize the Bayou by eating people and the local wildlife (including other alligators).
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: While Rosie is an alligator, she is a vicious predator who escaped from being a tourist attraction.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: She is highly aggressive from years of abuse and fighting.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The response her 'escape' invoked in the bayou's citizens.
• Starter Villain: She can be the first apex predator for the Maneater to defeat if the latter choose to complete the Fawtick Bayou region at the beginning of the game.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: She still has a bow tied around her neck when she was a tourist attraction. It's even on the pile of inflated Rosie the Alligator dolls.
• To Serve Man: The fact that Rosie used to be a tourist attraction and that Fawtick Bayou has plenty of signs warning about its dangerous alligators, along with Rosie's natural aggressiveness, hints that Rosie may have killed and eaten people before—especially since no humans are ever found in the bayou despite homes and transport being available.
• Tragic Monster: Rosie was bred in captivity to be a show animal and her body is damaged (missing leg and scars around the mouth) from decades of abuse from alligator wrestling. At one point, she was able to escape from captivity, seemingly kill her captors, and became the apex predator of the bayou.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Zig-Zagged.
  • Despite the actual location being long since abandoned, Dead Horse Lake still has an advertisement for "Big B's Swamp Tours", the man smiling broadly while holding a baby alligator with a familiar red ribbon tied around its neck, encouraging people to "Come see Lil' Miss Rosy". Baby Rosie looks a lot happier than the apex predator found in the game proper.
  • However, this is more likely to be a case of advertising liberties, Rosie was the star attraction and the organisation needed to bring in customers by making it look like she's happy to see people. Alligator wrestling is seen by many as cruel and abusive towards alligators, such actions explain why Rosie escaped and terrorized the bayou.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Despite being highly aggressive and vicious, one of the bayou tourist spots the Maneater can find is a pile of inflated Rosie the Alligator dolls, implying she was quite popular.
• Wrestler in All of Us: The Narrator refers to her as the "bayou brawler" and signs located near her enclosure promote gator wrestling.

Apex Barracuda

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• Added Alliterative Appeal: Trip calls it "the needle-toothed nightmare".
• Fiendish Fish: It is a huge and bloodthirsty barracuda.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Apex Barracuda is very fast and much tougher than its unmutated and lesser kind.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: It's the smallest of the Apex but still gives the Maneater a tough battle despite its size.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Its eyes are an unnatural red color.
• Starter Villain: Most likely the first apex predator to be eaten by the Maneater.

Apex Mako

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• Added Alliterative Appeal: The Narrator refers to it as "the sultan of speed" in its introductory cutscene.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Invoked by the Narrator, who claims that for drama the viewers should imagine that the locals imported a Mako Shark to protect their properties.
• Eye Scream: Having been struck by golf balls, a couple ended up lodging themselves in its eye sockets, rendering it blind.
• Lightning Bruiser: Like the Apex Barracuda, the Apex Mako is very fast and hits hard. Being a shark, it's also going to give a much harder fight compared to previous prey.
• Starter Villain: One of the first apex predators that the Maneater can defeat.
• Threatening Shark: As an apex, it is the biggest and strongest mako.

Apex Hammerhead

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• Threatening Shark: As an apex, it is the biggest and strongest hammerhead.

Apex Great White

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• Take That!: The Achievement for defeating the Apex Great White takes a swipe at Jaws, which popularized great whites as the ocean's most formidable predators.
• Threatening Shark: As an apex, it is the biggest and strongest great white.

Apex Orca

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• Big Fancy House: Its enclosure is a large and brightly colored aquarium, compared to the more bland and natural environments of the other Apexes. Unfortunately it's both abandoned and in disrepair ever since its escape.
• Death Glare: Its default expression is a furious glare.
• Large and in Charge: No other predators are found within her enclosure, and the Apex Orca attacks the Maneater on sight, implying that it eats any other predators nearby.
• Monster Whale: It is significantly larger than other orcas encountered in game.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Its eyes are red and it's very hostile to the Maneater.
• Super-Persistent Predator: It will follow the Maneater into the sewer pipes if she tries to flee from the fight through them.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Invoked by the Narrator, who says upon the Maneater's defeat by the Apex Orca that it mainly wants to devour her liver.
• Tragic Monster: Could be this, since it was an orca taken against its will and imprisoned. Mitigated since wild orcas are also aggressive, but one forced into captivity is still tragic. It's worth noting that this orca has a floppy fin, which is a sign of depression in real life orcas.

Apex Sperm Whale

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• Albinos Are Freaks: It's the only Albino apex predator and is extremely aggressive—the fact that it has multiple harpoons sticking out of it implies that it may have been targeted by Hunters for attacking humans at some point. Its introductory cutscene also has it destroying a ship.
• Fat Bastard: It has a noticeable gut and is one of the toughest fights in the base game.
• Large and in Charge: One of the largest animals and dwarfs the Apex Orca.
• Monster Whale: Fittingly, it is the largest sperm whale encountered.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Another notable Apex with red eyes.
• Shout-Out: As an albino sperm whale festooned with harpoons, it is a nod to the titular whale of Moby-Dick.
• Slasher Smile: Its expression in its introductory cutscene is disturbingly reminiscent of this, especially considering the Apex Sperm Whale is preparing to kill and eat the Maneater.

Bounty Hunters

• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: The second hunter boss, Bobbie Bojangles, is a bartender introduced chugging a bottle of beer. Upon realizing the shark is there, she clumsily drops it into the water and fumbles around the bottom of her skiff, then holds up a trumpet thinking it's her gun.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Invoked, in the most literal way with their inevitable ending. For all the increasingly larger, more deadly boats and sophisticated anti-shark tech they throw at you, once their vessel goes down and they're desperately swimming away, Bounty Hunters can be killed in a matter of seconds no matter what their health is because they're still humans and you're a gigantic shark with a 4000 PSI bite pressure. While they're counted as defeated once their boat is destroyed, you can still catch the fleeing elite bounty hunters and deal with them as you see fit, enacting revenge if they gave you a lot of trouble.
  • The Infamy Level 1 Hunter, Bayou Willy, attacks you with a harpoon gun on a jetski, the least protected craft in the game outside the inflatable unicorn; a single breach can drag him off to a watery grave. Justified, as Willy started off as a gator hunter, and while alligators can lunge out from the water or leap straight up to catch overhead prey like birds, they tend not to breach in the same way sharks do.
• Blood Knight: Pookie Paul was expelled from the Coast Guard after an incident involving an exploding moonshine still, and seeks to "redeem" himself with gratuitous acts of violence against sharks. His flavor text quote has him screaming "THAT SHARK IS GONNA DIE! 'CAUSE I'M GONNA KILL IT!"
• Bounty Hunter: All of them are looking to score a bounty by slaying the Maneater, being a mix of amateur Port Clovis locals, professional Egomaniac Hunters, Coast Guard officers, and Navy officers.
  • Averted with the Truth Quest bosses, as they're all Naval officers exclusive to Plover Island's surrounding area and are likely just trying to stop the Shark from causing too much chaos at the base.
• Egomaniac Hunter: Bayou Willy was an alligator hunter before he decided to move on to bigger prey, while Butcher Boy Brady is Scaly Pete's rival in the shark hunting business and constantly looking to one-up him.
• Flunky Boss: Every Hunter has their own progressively more dangerous fleet of backup that they try to coordinate to overwhelm the Shark with sheer numbers.
• The Goomba: Scuba hunters, who are dropped off at boats in later infamy levels. Aside from giving you another angle of attack to worry about on top of the attack boats, they're effectively neutralized once they're in your jaws and can be eaten quickly or thrown as human projectiles to splatter enemy hunters. Elite scuba hunters are a fair bit faster and hit harder, but can also be rendered helpless once bitten or thrown out of sight.
• Government Conspiracy: Commander Percy Metcalf is in league with Horzine Special Projects, a top-secret government R&D outfit that Kyle LeBlanc and later Trip Westhaven speculate is responsible for the purported Megashark that killed Scaly Pete's dad and the Maneater's mutations — supported by his dossier stating he's been ordered to recover the Maneater's body if it shows any "interesting" features.
• Laborious Laziness: Coast Guard Ensign Tyler Dixon wants to kill the Maneater hoping it'll buy him a few extra weeks of layabout time, and his flavor text has him state he wants the shark dead before it's time for his afternoon nap.
• The Queenpin: Mama Maybelle is a high-ranking member of the Anatoli crime syndicate, and her two "failsons" are fought in side missions.
• Retired Badass: Captain Robert Brunlett is a Navy veteran rumored to have been a monster-hunter, and boasts that he didn't live through the Battle of Innsmouth just to be taken down by some shark.
• Shock and Awe: Starting with Commander Percy Metcalf, the Hunters outfit their ships with military technology that creates an electrified barrier around their ships, constantly damaging the Maneater unless they're destroyed.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Higher-lever bounty hunters will toss dynamite and air tanks off their ships in the hopes of blowing up the shark. The shark can grab these in her mouth and return them to the sender with a tail whip.
  • The strongest two ships in Truth Quest fire torpedos not to dissimilar to the ones fired by Scaly Pete in his second fight that can be grabbed and tail whipped all the same. Thank god that they do.

Truth Quest Final Boss

The Atomic Leviathan is an irradiated Mosasaurus created by Site P's experimentations, which Trip claims is the result of Project M.O.L.O.C.H.

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• Added Alliterative Appeal: The Narrator dubs it "the beast of the bottomless pit".
• Boss Rush: Once it gets low on health it summons one of each Irradiated Apex Predator (Irradiated Electric Great White, Irradiated Shadow Orca, and Irradiated Bone Sperm Whale) to back it up.
• Breath Weapon: Due to having the Atomic mutation, it can fire beams of green energy from its jaws.
• Kraken and Leviathan: Its name is the "Atomic Leviathan".
• Large and in Charge: The largest and most powerful of the beasts, and it can command other Irradiated Apex Predators.
• Nuclear Mutant: It is a Bioweapon Beast imbued with the Atomic mutation through Site P's experiments, but proved too powerful for them to control and escaped captivity.
• Prehistoric Monster: It is a Mosasaurus — making it the largest animal in the game — and possesses the Atomic Mutation, covering it in black and glowing green scutes and spikes.
• Spike Shooter: It can fire homing radioactive spikes, which the Shark can grab and throw right back at it.

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Other Characters

Dakuwaqa

A shark god that is implied to have had a sinister effect on Port Clovis.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Whether the Hunters managed to kill it or not isn't mentioned, but its cult still seems to be active.
• Appease the Volcano God: Trip claims that some Port Clovians performed an "experiment" that involved giving it animal sacrifices.
• The Ghost: It's briefly mentioned in the main game that a cult in Port Clovis once worshipped it, but otherwise doesn't appear in the game at all.
• Godzilla Threshold: Trip mentions that a branch of Hunters was formed just to deal with it.
• No Name Given: Just barely averted. Its name only appears once throughout the whole game.
• Religion of Evil: One of Trip's notes in the Truth Quest announcement trailers mentions that there's a "shark cult." Paired with the fact that Dakuwaqa is explicitly mentioned to be a "shark god," and that some people decided that it would be a good "experiment" to give it animal sacrifices...
• Sea Monster: A shark god sounds pretty horrifying.
• The Unfought: It doesn't appear in the base game but its "shark cult" is mentioned in one of Trip's research notes in the Truth Quest announcement trailer, though it ultimately doesn't appear in the DLC.
• Threatening Shark: It's a terrifying shark god.

Minor Characters

The Bull Shark's Mother

The bull shark's mother who is killed by Scaly Pete in the game's prologue.

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• Action Mom: Even while pregnant, she's capable of destroying shark hunter ships.
• Badass Normal: She's implied to be an Apex predator by the Narrator and even while pregnant manages to destroy three shark hunter ships and attempts to attack Scaly Pete.
• Character Death: She's killed by Scaly Pete for attacking people.
• Decoy Protagonist: At first, it appears the game is building up this shark to be the titular Maneater, but she dies after the game's first tutorial. The rest of the game follows her now-orphaned daughter.
• Monster Is a Mommy: She happens to be pregnant.
• Small Role, Big Impact: She's the mother of one of Port Clovis' most vicious Sea Monsters but dies during the game's prologue. In fact, it's her death that sets the bull shark on her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Threatening Shark: She is the bull shark's mother and has a kill count to prove it.
• To Serve Man: She kills at least 10 people in the prologue. Unlike her daughter, though, it's implied that the bull shark's mother doesn't make a habit of attacking and eating humans. Notably, her sonar gives civilian humans a blue aura, while her daughter gives humans a red aura, indicating that unlike her daughter, she doesn't see the civilians as a threat and only sees them as food.