It's a twister with teeth!
"...I know you're scared. I'm scared too. They're sharks. They're scary. No one wants to get eaten. But I've been eaten. And I'm here to tell you it takes a lot more than that to bring a good man down. A lot more than that to bring a New Yorker down. Let's go show them what it means to be a hero. Let's go show them what it means to be a New Yorker! Let's go kill some sharks!"
— Fin
The Sharknado is back, and this time it's taking a bite out of the Big Apple.
Fin and April are on their way to New York to visit Fin's sister and family, but the plane hits turbulence in the form of a Sharknado, and April is injured after a shark bites off her hand. Now it's up to Fin to save the city of New York from this twister with teeth, and maybe patch up things with his former best friend, who married Fin's sister.
The movie premiered on Syfy on July 30th, 2014.
RiffTrax did a live riffing of the movie on July 9, 2015.
Followed by Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!.
Tropes appearing in Sharknado 2: The Second One
- Air Jousting: Fin vs. a shark in the middle of the Sharknado.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Skye's heavily implied to have liked Fin in the past, but was never able to get around to tell him. When they reunite in the present, she kisses Fin on the lips to finally make her feeling clear to him. However, it's too late at this point as Fin's now with April, which Skye accepts, and they move on.
- Always a Bigger Fish: A tunnel worker gets eaten by a Sewer Gator, which is about to kill his partner as well. Then a shark is washed into the tunnel and chomps on the gator.
- An Arm and a Leg: April gets her hand bitten off at the beginning of the movie.
- Apathetic Citizens: Despite the events of the previous movie being public knowledge and news stations citing how strange the weather is and the dangers involved, most people are still going about their business in the streets, going to work and baseball games in the freezing cold, etc.
- This is also implied with emergency services. Whenever someone asks Fin what to do he tells them to contact the police, fire department, national guard, etc - even though with the citywide nature of this event they would probably already be well aware.
- Artistic License – Physics: A certain large round object dislodged by the storm just keeps rolling and rolling.
- When the plane is surrounded by sharks, their relative positions in the air don't change much, even though the plane still has some of its engines running and should be traveling much faster.
- The entire back-door wall of a New York subway car instantly disintegrates from the impact of a single shark and a few hundred gallons of water.
- All Fin does to secure the rope by which the taxi's occupants get to safety is to toss most of it over a wall-mounted flagpole, then tie the end he'd retained a grip on to the person swinging across. There's no indication that the other end was anchored to anything at all.
- Freon doesn't magically make everything cold by exploding. It is (or at least was) used as a refrigerant in refrigerators and air conditioners because it's a heavy, inert gas with a high heat capacity. The AC's compressor liquefies it and gets it really hot, then passes it through a stream of outside air to cool it off, so that when it's expanded back to normal pressure it gets far colder than when it started out. This can be done with any gas. (Theoretically, if the freon were stored under high pressure in liquid form it would get colder when released and allowed to expand, but the same can be said for, say, propane.)
- As Himself: There are many celebrity cameos in the film, and this can also be seen in the credits.
- Badass Bystander: Every person still alive in New York was going around killing sharks.
- Batman Cold Open: The airliner sequence.
- Batter Up!: Fin and co. take baseball bats with them when they leave the baseball game. Brian takes a comically oversized one with him. Harland McGuinness uses one to knock a shark out of the park. One of the characters references this trope when taking a bat.
- B-Movie: Like the original, it revels in that fact.
- Big Applesauce: The setting of the movie.
- The weather maps depict the shark-storm covering most of the Northeast, yet nobody breathes a word about what might be happening in any other cities or the surrounding countryside.
- Bilingual Bonus: In the end, the word "Fin" is seen on the wall of a skyscraper. A fin is a part of a shark and the name of one of the characters, and it means "end" in some languages.
- Bland-Name Product: Yolo B' Us.
- Bloody Hilarious:
- Brick Joke: April's engagement ring returns, along with the gun she'd been holding, in the gullet of the shark that bit her arm off.
- During the closing credits, Fin finally gets that slice of New York pizza he wanted.
- Kelly Ripa has a scene where she shows off her brand new high heel shoes, which come in handy at the end when a shark is flung into the studio and she kills it by stepping on its head with one of her heels.
- The Cameo: The film has countless cameos throughout its run-time, including Jared Fogle and Daymond John.
- Wil Wheaton and Kelly Osbourne appear in the opening sequence.
- Billy Ray Cyrus as a doctor.
- Al Roker and Matt Lauer of the Today show actually appear quite a bit in the movie as themselves, with Al and Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel giving reports on the weather.
- Andy Dick as a cop.
- Kurt Angle as a fire chief.
- Possibly the most random one of all — Biz Markie as Vinny the pizza shop owner.
- The Naked Cowboy appears in Times Square.
- Casting Gag: Judd Hirsch as a taxi driver.
- Celebrity Survivor: The various celebrities who play themselves help kill the sharks.
- Chainsaw Good: Fin's preferred sharknado-fighting weapon.
- Character as Himself: The credits include "Sharknado as itself".
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The flashy red heels Kelly Ripa shows off early in the movie. She uses them to stab a shark to death.
- Two characters get ingredients for the flamethrowers in one scene and use the weapons in the climax.
- Crash Course Landing: Fin had to land the plane when both pilots were killed; at least one engine was destroyed, there are several holes in the plane, and there are sharks flapping around.
- Crazy-Prepared: One Badass Bystander has a car boot full of assault rifles which they make use of in the film's climax.
- Death by Cameo: About half of of the people making cameos die off.
- Death by Materialism: While Daymond John was running from the Statue of Liberty's head, he accidentally dropped his suitcase full of money and stopped to pick it up. Big mistake.
- Denser and Wackier: And you thought the first one was cartoony!
- Department of Redundancy Department: The title. By the way, it was chosen by the fans.
- Forceful Kiss: Skye plants a passionate kiss on Fin's lips moments after they reunite in the present as her way of finally showing that she always liked him when they were younger. Unfortunately for Skye, Fin informs her that he's not single.
- Foreshadowing: The garbage collectors are discussing bowling when the obligatory large rolling object turns up.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: On a great white. Lengthwise, no less.
- Handicapped Badass: April goes full-on Ash Williams by putting a circular saw on the stump of her arm.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Skye sacrifices herself ensuring the connection between the freon tanks and the triggering mechanism stay connected. Played with in that she survives that, but is then blown into the air and eaten by a shark.
- Hollywood Healing: Just a few hours after getting her hand bitten off, April managed to get herself dressed, get to the hotel, and sawed a shark in half with a hand saw.
- Ignored Expert: Fin goes on TV to warn the city of New York about the sharknado. People don't buy it at first, despite the same thing having happened in LA the previous year.
- It's a Small World, After All: The Taxi takes them to Times Square where they can buy anything they need. Fin's friend just happens to run a pizza shop there.
- Improvised Weapon: The super soakers loaded with lighter fluid to make makeshift flamethrowers.
- Incest Subtext: Probably unintentional, but the way she playfully teases her daughter Mora in Times Square about her short skirt, pulling it back down herself; and the way she is pressing herself against her daughter's back on the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, Ellen and Mora's level of closeness can seem a little creepy.
- Indy Escape: From the head of the Statue of Liberty
- Infodump: Provided by Fin on the plane, first thing.
- Informed Ability: Ellen, twice. First when they talk about how she always "sticks to the plan", then again later when they say that she takes martial arts and runs in marathons. She displays absolutely none of these qualities in the movie.
- Jumping the Shark: Referenced in-universe after Fin walks across the backs of sharks to get off a cab trapped by the flood.
- Just Plane Wrong: No pilot in their right mind would get off the controls during landing procedures when their copilot is incapacitated - even if they are being chewed on by a shark lodged through the cockpit window. It fits this movie perfectly, though.
- Kill It with Fire: Tried with the sharknadoes and not only does it fail, but it causes the sharks falling on New York to catch on fire. MMMM, that's going to be a lot of nice roast sharks for dinner tonight.
- Lampshade Hanging: Along with other Fourth Wall-breaking tropes, notably averted. The actors, somehow, manage to play the entire movie perfectly straight, and the result is ridiculously entertaining. However, there is one small exception: once when Fin leaves the taxi, the driver says he'd like to play the main character if there's ever a film made based on Fin's life. Fin says he wants to play the role himself, to which the driver says it's probably for the best.
- Leno Device: As mentioned above, Matt Lauer and Al Roker. Special mention goes to the fact that Roker makes an effort to get Lauer to say the word "sharknado".
- Made of Iron: Fin. Getting electrocuted (even if grounded), thrown into the sharknado by an explosion, and Air Jousting with the sharks before riding another down until it was impaled on the lightning rod of the building he was blown off of doesn't even leave a scratch.
- Meaningful Name: Skye. Guess what she's carried off into when she dies?
- Monumental Damage: The Statue of Liberty lost her head. Again.
- The Sharknadoes are on a collision course with the Empire State Building. You don't see the damage, but it's implied it had some damage from the exploding freon tanks, too.
- Sharks rain down on Citi Field and Times Square.
- Not shown, but a radio news clip reveals that the sharknado destroys the U.N. building upon first hitting Manhattan.
- New York City Subway: "Nobody messes with a Mets fan on the 7 train!"
- No Animals Were Harmed: In the credits, it's said that no sharks were harmed and later the "no animals were harmed" stock message appears.
- Product Placement: It's pretty obvious that Citibank and Subway were major sponsors for this movie. Especially the former.
- Punny Name: The protagonist is named Fin.
- Rousing Speech: Fin steps up on top of a fire truck to give one to the surviving New Yorkers. Getting to cut a great white in half in the middle of said speech probably helped make it all the more rousing.
- Rule of Cool: Logic, physics, and any sense of realism were obviously thrown right into the trash can when they were making this movie. The only rule they used was Rule of Cool.
- Self-Deprecation: One of the radio weather reports is from "WTHS: Asylum". "THS" is urban slang for Small Name, Big Ego.
- Sewer Gator: A alligator in the New York Sewer tried to eat the maintenance man only to get eaten by the shark.
- Shout-Out: The opening sequence is a combination of Snakes on a Plane and The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "Nightmare at 20,000 feet" ...with sharks.
- The pilot's name is Bob Wilson - the same as William Shatner's character in "Nightmare".
- Additionally, the opening shot of the airplane tailfin in the cloud references Airplane!, as does the pilots discussing their onboard meals (no one ate the fish this time; more like vice versa). Not to mention having Ted Striker at the controls.
- In a later scene, April mentions that the shark that ate her hand was actively coming at her as if it knew who she was. Jaws: The Revenge, anyone?
- While maybe not intentional, April's metal saw hand shares a similar look and similar effect (Total destruction) to the Metal Blade from Mega Man 2.
- April placing a power tool on the stump of an arm lost to the threat of the movie is an obvious Shout-Out to Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn.
- Fin visits his best friend, Martin Brody, who has the same name as the hero on Jaws. His wife is Ellen Brody.
- Vaughn and Skye swinging above the sharks references the Death Star chasm scene in A New HopeSkye: (Kisses Vaughn) For luck.
- The Statue of Liberty is decapitated and her head sent down a Manhattan Street just like in Cloverfield.
- Fin and Martin both end up thinking of Frogger upon realizing that Fin will have to jump across the shark's backs to escape the top of the taxi.
- The great white Fin kills while standing atop the fire engine is cut in half by its own momentum, like Raiju from Pacific Rim.
- Sky Scraper Messages: Right before the credits, a skyscraper with the word "Fin" on it is seen.
- Spoofs "R" Us: There are bags labeled "YOLO B US", in the same font as the real business, carried by the protagonist and the woman following him in a rooftop scene.
- The Stinger:
- Fin gets his slice of New York Pizza.
- After the credits have rolled, the pilots are seen exchange a few words in the cockpit of a plane.
- Stock Sound Effects: At one point of the film, the "emergency vehicle" snippet that can also be heard for example in Grand Theft Auto is played.
- Think of the Censors!: Played for laughs when the taxi driver says "Oh sh-ark".
- Took a Level in Badass: April is Not Completely Useless in this film, especially once she fits herself with a circular saw prosthetic.
- Turbine Blender: Happens to a shark during the opening sequence on the plane.
- Unlucky Childhood Friend: Skye, who dated Fin when they were younger.
- Vasquez Always Dies: Skye goes out via Heroic Sacrifice, while April survives.
- Weirdness Magnet: The first film could have been an isolated incident, but it happens to Fin again?
- We Sell Everything: An NYC bodega with Super Soakers and lighter fluid on the same endcap.
