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Life, uh, finds a way.

"Oh, yeah. 'Oooh, ahhh.' That's how it always starts. But then later there's running, and, um... screaming."
Dr. Ian Malcolm, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, neatly summarizes each of the movies in the series.

Scientists discover the ability to bring extinct animals back to life via a complex cloning process. To make a profit off this technology, the InGen company decides to build a theme park featuring living dinosaurs.

Unfortunately, when an inciting incident leads to the majestic creatures breaking free, humanity begins to learn the hard way that nature cannot be controlled, and their continued attempts to do so may lead them closer to their own extinction…

The 1990 book Jurassic Park was written by Michael Crichton, while the 1993 movie was directed by Steven Spielberg, with paleontologist Jack Horner serving as the main dinosaur consultant throughout the series. Both were insanely popular then and are considered modern classics now, and the film spawned five sequels. They also considerably increased public interest in dinosaurs, which had been renewed in the 1970s and 1980s by the "Dinosaur Renaissance" in paleontology. The movie's portrayal of dinosaurs as intelligent, fast, and agile cemented the Renaissance view of them in people's minds and put the earlier popular conception of slow and stupid overgrown lizards to rest.

While the second film shared the name of the second book The Lost World: Jurassic Park, it had a wildly different storyline, mostly due to characters that originally died in the first book coming back. Jurassic Park III came out several years later. While neither rose to the 'classic' status of the first film, both were fairly well received. The same basic story exists in all of the films, only separated by what characters are involved and certain action scenes.

A fourth cinematic installment was in Development Hell for more than a decade - it was even considered that it would not come about after Michael Crichton's death in 2008. But it all worked out, and the fourth film, titled Jurassic World, was released in 2015. A fifth film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, came out in June 2018. The sixth film, Jurassic World Dominion, roared its way into theaters on June 10th, 2022. A seventh film is currently in development and is scheduled to come into theaters on July 2nd, 2025 with Gareth Edwards to direct.


Works in the Jurassic Park / Jurassic World franchise include:

    open/close all folders 
    Books 

    Films 

    Comic books 
  • Jurassic Park (1993)
  • Jurassic Park: Raptor (1993)
  • Jurassic Park: Raptors Attack (1994)
  • Jurassic Park: Raptors Hijack (1994)
  • Return To Jurassic Park (1995-1996)
  • The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
  • Jurassic Park: Redemption (2010)
  • Jurassic Park: The Devils in the Desert (2011)
  • Jurassic Park: Dangerous Games (2011-2012)

    Pinball games 

    Tabletop games 
  • Jurassic Park Game (1993)
  • Jurassic Park: Dinosaur Escape Card Game (1993)
  • Jurassic Park Electronic Battling Raptors Game (1996)
  • The Lost World Jurassic Park Game (1996)
  • Jurassic Park III: Island Survival Game (2001)
  • Jurassic Park III: The Spinosaurus Chase Game (2001)
  • Monopoly: Jurassic World (2015)
  • UNO: Jurassic World (2017)
    • UNO Attack: Jurassic World (2018)
  • Jurassic Park: Danger! Adventure Strategy Game (2018)
  • Jurassic World: The Boardgame (2018)
  • Unmatched: Jurassic Park (2019)
  • Jurassic World The Legacy of Isla Nublar (2022)
  • Jurassic World Miniature Game (2022)

    Theme park attractions 
  • Jurassic Park Discovery Center
  • Camp Jurassic
  • The Flying Dinosaur
  • Pteranodon Flyers/Canopy Flyers
  • Raptor Encounter
  • Dino-Soarin'
  • Triceratops Discovery Trail
  • JP Extinction/Project Evilution
  • Jurassic World: The Ride

    Video games 

    Western animation 

This franchise provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 
    A-K 
  • Aborted Arc: In both novels, the idea that dinosaurs might have made it onto the mainland is brought up early on, before being ignored once people arrive on the islands. One could argue it happened a second time in the movies, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ended with several dinosaurs being released onto the mainland, setting them up as the focus of it's sequel, only for Jurassic World Dominion to focus on a new story with the released dinosaurs being Demoted to Extra.
  • Adapted Out: Most of the early games (i.e. the ones released for Nintendo and Sega systems) stripped most of the cast leaving only Dr. Grant (and sometimes a velociraptor) to take the spotlight. Some of the games did feature original characters, though.
  • Adaptational Badass:
    • In the Sega Master System game, instead of trying to escape the island, Grant is called to fight and capture the dinosaurs. At the end of the game, he defeats the Tyrannosaurus rex and the park is allowed to open as planned.
    • Both human female characters in the first film are more capable than their counterparts in the book. In the book, Ellie is mostly passive and stays out of the action; in the film, she is involved just as much as the men around her and even calls out Hammond when he tries to imply he should take a dangerous mission because of his gender. Lex meanwhile was a pre-pubescent in the book and little more than The Load. The film ages her up to her teens and gives her computer skills key to getting the survivors out alive.
  • Adaptation Distillation: Pretty much all of the sequences from the two novels (mostly the first one) find their way into the movies in some way or another, albeit under slightly different circumstances.
  • Adaptation Personality Change:
    • In the original book, Gennaro the lawyer ends up turning into The Lancer for Alan Grant, and he even punches out a Velociraptor! The film turns Gennaro into a Dirty Coward that gets eaten by a T. rex whilst sitting on a toilet, by way of fusing him with Ed Regis, who is exactly like Gennaro in the film.
    • John Hammond in the original book is The Scrooge (Faux Affably Evil who maintains an air of niceness until Malcolm peels it away and the disaster sets in) and a tyrant who shortchanges people (giving fat programmer Dennis a reason to betray him, though it's clear they were both assholes), has a Never My Fault mentality, and then suffers Karmic Death. The film turns Hammond into a kindly old man who truly thinks that what he's doing is a good idea (which it isn't), and one result of the change is that Dennis comes off as more of a Jerkass for betraying him!
  • Alternate Continuity: The games and comics take place in their own continuity, despite a few being advertised as official continuations of the story.
  • All Men Are Perverts: Each of the first four films has at least one male character who flirts openly or outright states that their motivation behind doing certain things is to score with the ladies. In Jurassic Park, it's Ian. He gets better by The Lost World, so the trope goes to Nick. Jurassic Park III has Billy. Owen takes up the mantle in Jurassic World.
    Ian: I'm always on the lookout for a future ex-Mrs. Malcolm.
  • Amusement Park of Doom:
    • Isla Nublar definitely qualifies. Isla Sorna (in the film continuity, at least) is more of a Wildlife Preserve of Doom.
    • Possibly tempting fate, a (traditional) amusement park was built to cash in on the mantra of the film.
  • Arc Words: "Life finds a way."
  • Artifact Title: Only the first film takes place at Jurassic Park, on Isla Nublar. Justified in the book because the Costa Rican Air Forcenote  destroys Isla Nublar after the survivors escape. This does not happen in the films, howevernote . This allowed the franchise to return to Isla Nublar and rebuild the park in its fourth entry, Jurassic World.
  • Artistic License – Biology:
    • The type of cloning utilized in the series requires the use of a living germ cell to insert the genetic material into; preferably the germ cell comes from a member of the same species, although a closely related species can also work. However, since non-avian dinosaurs have been completely extinct for tens of millions of years, finding a compatible germ cell host, even in the event of viable DNA, is incredibly unlikely, probably impossible.
    • The use of frog DNA itself, to the extent it is explained in the film, is a major instance of artistic license: why use frogs when many other animals have a much greater evolutionary proximity to dinosaurs? (To facilitate the plot twist, obviously.) The book averts this by asserting that multiple different animals were used to complete the dinosaurs' gene sequences (mostly reptilian and avian DNA), but the film attempts to simplify it by leaving it at frog.
    • Enforced by the animator who, in his own words, decided to "throw physics out the window and create a T. rex that moved at sixty miles per hour even though its hollow bones would have busted if it ran that fast".
    • In the first novel (and in later instances of the franchise), it's explained that the dinosaurs have been genetically modified so they can't produce the essential amino acid lysine, so that they would be unable to survive in the wild if they escaped since they have to rely on provided lysine supplements in captivity. The only problem with this? An essential amino acid is specifically an amino acid that can't be produced by the body; no animal can produce lysine naturally anyway. So how do animals in real life get lysine? From food, which is exactly what the dinosaurs end up doing by the end of the novel (and in the films, by the second movie).
    • The dinosaurs are cloned by moving the developing embryos into surrogate eggs to develop, synthetic plastic-based eggs in the novel, unfertilized emu and ostrich eggs in the film. This is called somatic nuclear cell cloning, and it's actually impossible with animals that lay eggs, hence why no birds or reptiles have ever been cloned. The franchise completely glosses over this seemingly insurmountable hurdle.note 
    • The second novel ends with it being discovered all the dinosaurs are infected with prions because the predators have been eating tainted sheep meat and spreading it around. As far as we have been able to tell, only mammals are capable of contracting prion-based diseases. Similarly, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis has the dinosaurs being capable of catching rabies, another mammal-only illness, although it's handwaved in Jurassic World: Evolution as being due to a genetic weakness in their immune systems.
    • The third movie has a similar issue in a one-off scene where Eric says he collects T. rex urine because the smell wards off the smaller predators. Dinosaurs are reptiles, and therefore almost certainly did not have watery urine as depicted in the film like mammals do (more likely they had semi-solid uric secretions).
    • The films frequently give the dinosaurs only single infants (the Tyrannosaurus pair and Stegosaurus herd in The Lost World, a Triceratops in Fallen Kingdom, and Blue the Velociraptor in Dominion). One offspring per litter is the standard only among large mammals; birds and reptiles almost universally have multiple, if not many, young per clutch, something also commonplace among non-avian dinosaurs, as proven by fossils of dinosaur nests. For giant dinosaurs, this should be especially true because the chicks would be tiny at hatching and having just one tiny baby be difficult for adults to keep track of.
    • Many of the more menacing dinosaurs, like the Velociraptor, Spinosaurus, Pyroraptor, Giganotosaurus, and even the herbivorous Therizinosaurus are given reptilian slit eyes to exaggerate their scariness. However, in reality, slit eyes tend to be prevalent only among predators (usually small ones at that) which hunt in dim light and low to the ground; among living dinosaurs (birds), only the highly specialized skimmers have slit eyes (they hunt right on the water's surface, and have slit eyes to cut out the blinding glare of the sun reflecting off the waves).
    • The second novel has a throwaway sequence where we're told InGen fed the dinosaur hatchlings goat milk as baby food, which the characters agree is a good choice. This is yet another instance of the franchise equating dinosaurs with mammals, which have evolved specifically to be able to digest milk (and even then only as infants in all mammals except humans). Dinosaurs are reptiles and would not be able to process milk; feeding them milk is as silly as feeding a baby lizard or baby bird milk.
  • Artistic License – Paleontology:
    • Dilophosaurus was actually taller as a man and around 23 feet long. The individual in the film was made a juvenile so that it doesn't take away from the raptors or the T. rex (however, most other media afterwards have ignored this explanation, treating this size as the adult form). The venom the Dilophosaurus has in the film as well as the frill are completely fictional.
    • In reality, Velociraptor mongoliensis was only a few feet tall. To be fair, the raptors in the film were modelled after the larger dromaeosaurid Deinonychus (Michael Crichton used the name Velociraptor instead simply because he thought it sounded better), which at the time was considered by paleontological consultant Gregory S. Paul to be a member of the genus Velociraptornote  This is also why Grant's dig site in Montana is able to find Velociraptor, which have only ever been found in Asia.
    • Though awesomely enough, shortly after the film's release a new genus called Utahraptor was discovered, which is somewhat close to the film's raptors (twice as big). It was originally going to be named Utahraptor spielbergi, but it ended up being called Utahraptor ostrommaysorum, after lawyers threatened the team (but who wouldn't want a dinosaur named after them though???).
    • Discussed and intentionally invoked. InGen had to extrapolate from the decayed DNA, on top of some intentional alterations to the genetic code. Dr. Wu wanted to take it even further by altering the dinosaurs into basically what visitors would expect based on existing pop-cultural depictions of dinosaurs. He believed visitors wouldn't be satisfied with dinosaurs that were so different from what they imagined. Hammond insisted they keep the current ones on the basis that it wouldn't be honest to show something different than real dinosaurs. The novels discussed the fact that they weren't actual dinosaurs — just abominations of nature with genetic material from obsolete organisms that couldn't survive in the real world.
    • There's also the fact that, even though "Jurassic Park" sounds cool, the most emblematic dinosaurs of the franchise (the Tyrannosaurus rex, the Velociraptors and the Spinosaurus) lived during the Cretaceous, not the Jurassic.
    • The first film made great efforts to avert this trope as much as possible, and much media attention during production was paid to how Jurassic Park would feature the most scientifically-accurate dinosaurs ever committed to film. While there was some Rule of Cool involved, the depiction of most of the animals was nonetheless based on what was the most current research available, and in some cases might have been the first exposure the general public had to the newest theories. However a criticism of the subsequent films as the series dragged on is that of this effort and attention to detail has been ignored, and the dinosaurs began to be portrayed increasingly outlandish generic movie monsters.
    • The prologue in Jurassic World: Dominion depicts a Giganotosaurus killing a Tyrannosaurus rex in the Cretaceous Period. This wouldn't be a problem if Giganotosaurus and T. rex weren't separated between two continents and 30 million years (with all current fossil evidence suggesting large carnosaurs and large tyrannosaurs never coexisted). Many other animals in the background also did not coexist in real life due to separations in time and/or place.
    • T. rex in the films' universe have really poor eyesight, so much that they can't see someone at all if they are holding still. While we can't tell for sure from the fossils if this was true, most predators have excellent eyesight, and the few that don't rely heavily on some other sense (such as smell or hearing), so holding still likely wouldn't do any good even if they couldn't see you. The T. rex in the films also have to kill their prey with more than one bite and frequently have their opponents shrug off their jaws, when it's well-known among anyone with knowledge about dinosaurs that Tyrannosaurus has one of the most powerful bite forces in the animal kingdom. Although given Rexy in Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous was able to kill a Tarbosaurus with a single bite to the neck, it is more likely that the tyrannosaurs in the films just weren't using the full strength of their jaws.
    • The title of Universal Studios Japan's Pteranodon-themed coaster is The Flying Dinosaur, which is inaccurate, as Pteranodons were not dinosaurs — they were a form of flying reptiles.
    • Most of the animals featured in the series are well-known dinosaurs, but the odds of finding amber-preserved mosquitos with the blood of every famous Mesozoic animal is probably very unlikely, since the geological formations from which most of these species are known generally are not also geological sites that preserve amber. Considering the scarcity of the fossil record, it's more likely that most of the DNA they could recover would be from completely unknown species.
    • Nearly all of the animals depicted are uniformly or primarily brown or grey shades, with a few exceptions, because they were intentionally created to be scarier, darker looking animals, despite the fact most evidence points to many, if not the majority of, dinosaurs being vibrantly coloured and/or patterned.
    • Every film has the issue of giving the herbivorous dinosaurs the wrong foot-shape and number of toes, giving all of them a generic elephantine foot-shape when in many cases the anatomy was much more complex (for example, sauropods front feet would have left reverse horseshoe-shaped footprints and usually either had only one or zero claws). Many also borrow the elephant's wrinkly, grey skin, despite the fact we know from direct evidence that most large herbivorous dinosaurs would've been covered in pebbly, scaly skin, and almost certainly would've been much more brightly patterned than large mammals.
    • Several films give different carnivorous animals boxy skulls that resemble that of Tyrannosaurus, such as Ceratosaurus, and even non-dinosaurs like Dimorphodon and Dimetrodon. The Acrocanthosaurus of the Jurassic World Evolution games also suffers the same issue.
    • An extremely common issue is also presenting the animals as being either far too large or far smaller than the normal size range of the species as known from the fossil record. The Dilophosaurus is the most infamous, but there are numerous other examples, such as all three pterosaur species (Pteranodon, Dimorphodon, and Quetzalcoatlus) having wingspans far larger than normal, the Mosasaurus appearing as large as a blue whale, both Nasutoceratops and Sinoceratops portrayed as the same size as the much larger Triceratops, and all the dromaeosaur species shown (Velociraptor, Pyroraptor, and Atrociraptor) being depicted as larger than humans when all three were much smaller.
    • The Parasaurolophus are correctly depicted as quadrupedal in the first film, but later installments forget this and make them bipedal, though Dominion would occasionally show them as quadrupedal again. The Corythosaurus from the third film also suffer the same problem.
    • The Ankylosaurus in the films are depicted with spikes and pointed beaks, instead of flattened osteoderms and wide beaks.
    • The Jurassic World films have a habit of adding crocodilian features (namely rows of scutes down their back, lipless jaws, and slit pupils) to certain predators to make them more fearsome-looking, despite the complete lack of any evidence of such features in life. Specifically, this afflicts the Baryonyx, Mosasaurus, and Giganotosaurus (as well as the fictional Indominus and Indoraptor).
  • Artistic License – Physics: In several of the films, Pteranodon is depicted as being able to pick up full-grown humans with their feet. Leaving aside the issue that there's no evidence that any known pterosaur species could grab things with their feet in a manner similar to birds or bats, Pteranodon was very lightly-built (being a flying animal and all) and it's extremely unlikely that it would be able to takeoff holding a struggling object that weighs considerably more than its entire body. Only the absolute biggest pterosaurs like Quetzalcoatlus (which weighed up to 250kg and was the size of a giraffe) perhaps could, but they would have used their beaks. The original novel averts this, as a large Cearadactylus isn't even able to get off the ground with a small child.
  • Ascended Extra: Gerry Harding, the chief veterinarian from the first film, plays a major role in the Telltale Games game. Ironic, since he also played a major role in the book, but was Demoted to Extra in the movies.
  • Asshole Victim: John Hammond in the first book, as well as Dennis Nedry in the first movie and book. Donald Gennaro in the first movie. Peter Ludlow and Dieter Stark in the second movie. Lewis Dodgson in the second novel. Vic Hoskins in Jurassic World. Ken Wheatley, Gunnar Everslav, and Eli Mills in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
  • Awe-Inspiring Dinosaur Shot: The series treats dinosaurs as a wonderful spectacle on several occasions and emphasis is put on the sauropods to achieve this effect. The Establishing Series Moment of the Brachiosaurus in the first film is the best example, with Stegosaurus in The Lost World and Apatosaurus in Jurassic World eliciting a similar effect. On a more thrilling perspective, there's also the Mosasaurus in the fourth film eating a shark and its eating habits shown to a large audience who are wowed by the event.
  • Back from the Dead: Robert Muldoon in the Topps comic series. In the new IDW comic series, Peter Ludlow from The Lost World. Ian Malcolm in the second novel, though he was a case of Never Saw the Body.
  • Badass Bookworm: Alan Grant in Jurassic Park, Jack Thorne in The Lost World.
    • Grant might be the most Badass character in the whole first novel, killing three Velociraptors only with his wits, among other things.
      The girl saw the dying Velociraptors and quietly said: "Whoa!"
  • Behind the Black: The T. rex's out of nowhere materialization at the end of the first film is perhaps the most prominent example of all time. It's certainly the biggest...
    • ...and she keeps it up in Fallen Kingdom, managing to get the drop on a Carnotaurus, and later, Eli Mills without so much as a hint to her approach.
  • Being Watched: Muldoon and his "raptor sense". It's too late when he's killed by a raptor ambush, in the movie. In the book, he survives by backing into a pipe where they couldn't climb in after him. Somehow, he survived in one of the comics. He and the raptors knew each other so well that they were essentially just playing around.
  • Big Bad: Lewis Dodgson, in the books and in the first and sixth movies. The I. rex in the fourth movie. Eli Mills in the fifth film.
  • Big Good: John Hammond in the first and second movies, Simon Masrani in the fourth movie, Benjamin Lockwood in the fifth movie and in an ensemble together Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm in the sixth movie which is said to be the franchise's Grand Finale.
  • Black and Nerdy: Arby in the The Lost World novel, Ray Arnold in the first movie, and Franklin in the fifth.
  • Bloodless Carnage: Unlike the novels, the films almost universally make use of this trope when not using Gory Discretion Shots. Characters will be shown being viciously mauled or ripped apart by dinosaurs on-screen, but blood will always be limited to a few stray droplets at most. Fallen Kingdom uses possibly the most egregious example in the franchise; a character has their arm torn off on-screen, but somehow their stump isn't gushing rivers of blood or even dripping.
  • Breakout Villain: The T. rex and Velociraptor have been featured in every Jurassic Park-related feature to date, and they are by far two of the most popular dinosaurs in the media thanks to Jurassic Park.
  • Broad Strokes: The SNES game for the first film uses the character designs and plot points from the movie but also includes several things that were only in the book, like dinosaurs boarding the automated ship to the mainland and Dr. Grant having to infiltrate the raptor nest.
    • The Telltale game Jurassic Park: The Game falls into this category in the main film series according to director Colin Trevorrow.
    • Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is largely considered canon but includes a few plot points and depictions of scenes from the live-action films which are at odds with the big screen productions, which has led some fans to suggest that the kids are Unreliable Narrator's.
  • Canon Foreigner: The Dino Defender in Jurassic Park III: Dino Defender and Jurassic Park III: Danger Zone! has not been mentioned outside of the games.
  • Bus Crash: The Spinosaurus in the third film was one of the few dinosaurs that were classified as extinct by an image in the Dinosaur Protection Group website. Although this may not be exactly true if the Spino in Camp Cretaceous is the same one as in the film.
  • Carnivores Are Mean: If the species eats meat, chances are very good it'll be a serious menace to humans. Even small species that would have almost certainly have been harmless to anything bigger than a rat in real life like Compsognathus and Dimorphodon are vicious Killer Rabbits. The one time this is somewhat averted is the Ceratosaurus in Jurassic Park III, and even then it's only because the characters are covered in dung at the moment and it's warded off by the smell.
  • The Centerpiece Spectacular: All five films have an attack that signifies things have gone down, involving a death of the cast and destruction of vehicles.
    • The first is the T. rex attack on the two cars that gets Gennaro killed.
    • The second is the combined T. rex attack that destroys all the equipment, and claims Eddie.
    • The third is the first Spinosaurus encounter that destroys the plane and gets the mercs killed.
    • The fourth is the breakout of the Indominus rex from her enclosure, involving the deaths of two park workers, a totaled truck, and a close call for Owen.
    • Kind of late in the fifth film but there's the dinosaur stampede after Maisie releases them that results in several SUVs being demolished and Mills being torn apart and devoured by Rexy. As Malcolm points out, this is the event that finally brings about what the previous 4 movies were trying to avoid all along—the release of the dinosaurs into the modern world.
  • Character Exaggeration: In the film Jurassic Park (1993), Ian Malcolm was a comical Deadpan Snarker. In the original novel, he was a much more serious character, although he did have some humorous moments — such as dismissing the argument comparing reviving dinosaurs to using cloning to save the California Condor by pointing out the obvious fact that condors don't eat people. Although, perhaps as a nod to this change, while delirious from drugs and severe injury in the sequel novel, The Lost World, he temporarily takes on a talkative, wisecracking persona similar to his movie one, although much more over-the-top.
  • Chekhov's Gun: A couple in the first novel and movie; a considerable number in the second novel; the most egregious being Kelly's gymnastics in the second film. The frog DNA is the most consistent one across the literature and film.
  • Chekhov's Hobby: One in each of the first three movies. Lex is savvy with computers. Kelly mentions being cut from the the gymnastics team. Billy has experience in base jumping.
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Every sequel has created contrasts between the preceding Theropod and Velociraptor antagonists.
    • The original Tyrannosaurus rex, Rexy, was a solitary creature who killed for food. The first Velociraptors only numbered 3 and went out of their way to kill.
    • The Lost World Rexes are a family who continues to attack the heroes when they take the child. The Raptors are a decent sized pack who only attack when their territory is invaded.
    • 3's theropod is a Spinosaurus who contrasts not only by being a different species but also by being aquatic and having its climatic showdown taking place in the water. The Velociraptors have a distinct reason to hunt down the heroes beyond food, one of them stole eggs from a nest.
    • Jurassic World's theropod is the hybrid Indominus Rex who is notably smarter than the others and convinces the raptors to work with it. Interestingly it dies being dragged into water.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Hammond is noticeably more corrupt and uncaring in the book, where he suffers a Karmic Death. The movie version is more Walt Disney-esque (well, Walt Disney's charming public persona at any rate). It helps a lot that he was played by Richard Attenborough. The Lost World has Hammond's evil, greedy nephew. Additionally, Lewis Dodgson, head of research of InGen's rival company Biosyn, precipitates the plot of the first book/movie by hiring the disgruntled Dennis Nedry to steal embryos for him... then goes to Isla Sorna to do the job himself in the second novel. He finally returns to the film canon in Jurassic World Dominion where he attempts to control the world's food supply by breeding genetically modified locusts that will eat any crops other than those manufactured by Biosyn.
  • Death by Adaptation: Muldoon survives the novel, but is killed by the raptors in the film. Gennaro was spared by the first novel, but his film character was merged with some aspects of the novel's Ed Regis and so he caught Regis' death in the film. The second novel revealed that Gennaro died of dysentery on the way back to America.
  • Death World: The dinosaur-filled islands themselves. Isla Sorna is even part of an island chain known to Costa Rican locals as "Las Cinco Muertes" (the five deaths).
  • Deconstruction: The franchise can be seen as a deconstruction of Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever. It shares many thematic similarities with King Kong, while playing it a lot more realistic and dark.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Shortly after Arnold realizes that he needs Nedry in order to get the park back online, Nedry is attacked and killed by the Dilophosaurus. Eddie being eaten and the trailers/radio being destroyed by the Tyrannosaurs in the second film also qualifies. In both cases, the one person who could fix things and provide a relatively quick/easy means of calling for help has been brutally killed off, driving home the point that the survivors are now stranded on a dinosaur-infested island with virtually no means of escape.
  • Determinator: Life itself. Life finds a way to bypass the safeguards against propagation and self-preservation, namely sexual isolation and lysine dependency.
  • Devoured by the Horde:
    • The second film, The Lost World: Jurassic Park had a scene taken from the original Jurassic Park novel, where a small child is attacked and nearly eaten by a pack of Compsognathus.
    • The same film had one of the hunters from InGen killed by a compy pack later on.
    • Another character, Dunbar, is eaten by a family of T Rexes. The mother breaks his leg, and the babies finish him off.
  • Digital Head Swap: Possible Trope Codifier for stunt effects, CGI was used to put an actress' head on a double's body.
  • Dirty Coward: Ed Regis, who abandons the Hammond children in a car with the door open to save his own ass when the T. rex shows up and gets eaten for his trouble. Donald Gennaro takes on the role in the movie, despite having been very much the opposite in the book.
  • Disaster Dominoes: This tends to happen a lot, but the most prominent example is the first film. In the middle of a raging storm, Nedry turns off the power, stealing dinosaur embryos. Already bad. This allows the dinosaurs outside of the raptors to escape, and Alan and co. are trapped outside the T. rex pen, and thus the Dilophosaurus to kill Nedry, preventing him from fixing the power (which was only supposed to be off for fifteen minutes or so. The solution requires them to reset the power, setting the raptors free... and the raptor pen is between the humans and the circuit breakers needed to reactivate the power.
  • The Dog Bites Back: Dennis Nedry's motivation for betraying InGen to Biosyn was how poorly he was treated by Hammond and InGen supervisors. He was given incredibly broad objectives (e.g. "Design a feeding system. Period.") in the name of secrecy and then ordered to work uncompensated overtime to fix the errors caused by his inadequate instructions.
  • Dynamic Entry: Frequent with the large carnivores, like Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus, as well as the Velociraptors.
  • Eaten Alive: Too many times to count, with Zara's demise possibly being the most memorable instance.
  • Fantastic Nature Reserve: The park.
  • Fat Bastard: In the films, a fat (or chubby) guy seems to be nearly as much a bane to the existence of everyone as the dinosaurs themselves. There's Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park, and then Vic Hoskins in Jurassic World.
  • Fat Idiot: Along with the type just described previous, this type also seems to be a curse in the films. Dennis Nedry was shown to both this and the previous type, then there was Carter (Dieter's assistant) in Lost World, and then the I. rex compound's security guard comes off as being this in World.
  • Finagle's Law: Something will always inevitably go wrong and set Theropods loose and free to snack on humans, and the heroes will try their hardest to escape a similar fate.
  • Foreshadowing: The Dilophosaurus is mentioned to be able to spit blinding venom at its prey. It proves to be effective against Nedry.
  • For Science!: The motivation of InGen's geneticists, and Ian Malcolm's main beef with them.
  • Fossil Revival: By way of fossilized mosquitoes, well-preserved enough in amber to still have recoverable dinosaur DNA.
  • Frankenstein's Monster: The Indominus Rex, Indoraptor, and Scorpius rex (AKA E750) are a trio of genetically created hybrid dinosaurs that (at least arguably for the first two) became bloodthirsty monsters because of the mistreatment and abuse they received from their uncaring creator Dr. Wu.
  • From Bad to Worse:
    • In the first movie, The situation is bad enough with most of the dinosaurs including the park's Tyrannosaurus Rex running wild and the main characters have no way to contact the main land. Then the pack of Velociraptors led by the particularly aggressive "Big One" get loose...
    • In general, the movies love the "frying pan -> fire" approach. Interestingly, in all four movies there's at least one instance where it involved Velociraptors making things worse — in the first, as noted, the bad situation gets worse when everyone realizes the raptors, already noted as very intelligent and cunning, are loose. In the second, the camp is attacked by two Tyrannosaurs at once and the entire Redshirt Army runs for the hills... directly into a colony of raptors, which makes short work of the survivors. In the third, the troupe is lost on the island and has no way of knowing where they are, and things only get worse when another colony of raptors starts tracking them throughout the island after one of them steals raptor eggs. In the fourth, semi-trained raptors are used to hunt the Indominus rex, only for the I. rex to recruit them when she's found. And that's not getting into all the times they run with the "our machinery is messing up/our vehicle has been disabled when suddenly the T. rex/Spinosaurus shows up to make things worse" angle.
    • From The Lost World:
      Dr. Ian Malcolm: Mommy's very angry.
      • ...and then Daddy T. rex showed up on the doorstep.
    • The novel talks about the From Bad to Worse phenomena being a consequence of chaos theory. It's even given the status of a scientific theory, named after Ian Malcolm. When modeling chaotic systems, Malcolm tended to include a nonlinear equation that included a point where a small change in input would cause a sudden and dramatic change in output, and often not for the better. In other words, he essentially included a mathematical Oh, Crap! into his models. Hammond's scientists don't believe the Malcolm Effect applies to living systems, but they're, of course, dead wrong.
    • Jurassic World: So you created an Omnicidal Maniac Mix-And-Match Monster that can think and it got loose on you. Can't get any worse than that right? Dead wrong! Turns out it can release other dangerous animals to wreak havoc in its name. Oh, and it can communicate with your trained Velociraptors, too!
  • Giant Flyer: The various pterosaurs that feature as background characters. The Pteranodons get A Day in the Limelight in III. They also feature very prominently in Jurassic World. The "giant" in case is exaggerated, as every pterosaur species featured in the films are much bigger than they would've been in real life.
  • A God Am I: The scientists of InGen and the creators of Jurassic Park operate under this mentality, especially scientists like Henry Wu and mercenaries like Vic Hoskins. They believe that an extinct animal has no rights, and continuously try to exploit the dinosaurs for their own personal gain. This never works out in their favor and often leads to their deaths, as proved by the multiple attempts to create a dinosaur theme park that all fail oh so spectacularly.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: This is the films' favorite way to kill off characters, especially when it involves smaller dinos which would generally be messier to show (and even when it's shown, Bloodless Carnage will always be in effect). They generally have the characters be yanked (or trip) offscreen, or pan/cut away from the attack, and then have said doomed character give out a horrifying scream to indicate they've been killed. Specifically:
    • Jurassic Park (1993):
      • The first film opens with a Dead-Hand Shot of Jophrey the worker being dragged away by the Velociraptor.
      • The feeding of the Velociraptor pack with the bull combines this with Take Our Word for It; the foliage in the pen obscures everything, the violence, the blood, the dinosaurs, and the cattle, leaving only the characters' horrified reactions, the raptors' screeching, the sounds of flesh-rending, and the mangled harness that's lifted back up after it's over to let the audience know that these are truly monstrous predators.
      • Nedry's death is conveyed by the Jeep he's in shaking wildly, and a shot of the phony shaving cream can containing the stolen embryos being buried in the mud running down the hillside. This directly contrasts with his death in the novel, which is described in excruciating detail.
      • Although Muldoon's death is mostly obscured through the bushes, there's a Freeze-Frame Bonus wherein you can see that the raptor has his head in her mouth.
      • Arnold is killed off-screen by the escaped Velociraptor, but the only indication of his death is his severed arm falling on Ellie as double Bait-and-Switch jump-scare. His body is never seen, but consider what happened to just one of his arms... Notably, his death would've been shown, but a hurricane destroyed the set before it could be filmed (although it would've been another "scream and cut-away" death).
      • When Ellie and Muldoon discover Gennaro's remains after he was killed by the Tyrannosaurus, the body parts are kept just out of the camera, although considering how far away Ellie and Muldoon are from one another as they identify the pieces of the body, it was extremely violent.
      • Downplayed with the T. rex killing and eating the Gallimimus. The actual kill is shown clearly on-screen, but it cuts to Alan and the two kids reacting in morbid curiosity as she starts to messily tear into the carcass.
        Tim: Look at how much blood...
    • The Lost World: Jurassic Park:
      • The movie opens with a little girl who is mobbed and apparently mauled by a swarm of Compsognathus after wandering away from her family. However, it cuts away right as they get aggressive and pounce on her, showing her parents hearing her screaming in the distance. We're assured later on that she was injured, but managed to survive the attack.
      • Dieter Stark falls behind a log, which obscures the view of the pack of Compsognathus killing him. We hear him scream as the water in the stream turns red. Later on, Roland Tembo comments that all they found of him were "just the parts they didn't like."
      • Robert Burke panics when a snake slithers down his shirt and runs right into the jaws of the mother Tyrannosaur that had been chasing him. He screams in terror as it lifts him out of view and bites down, making the waterfall he was hiding behind run red for a moment.
      • Many of the InGen hunters are picked off by Velociraptor in the tall grass, but the violence is totally obscured by the grass, so you only see the wiggling of the dinosaurs' tails as they tear into the unfortunate victims. It then cuts to Malcolm and his group, who hear the sound of people screaming and raptors screeching in the distance.
      • We're told that the crew of the Venture are "all over the place" in the ship's wheelhouse, but all we see is the helmsman's severed hand.
      • Sarah is able to escape from two attacking raptors by pitting them against one another. One eventually gains the upper hand on the other and starting ripping into its neck, but it's kept in shadow and offscreen, with only the losing raptor's tail moving more limply indicating it's being killed.
      • The "Unlucky Bastard" civilian who is caught and killed by the bull T. rex in San Diego. The tyrannosaur drags him behind a car before it starts to dig in, so we don't actually have to see anything gory.
      • The bull tyrannosaur also eats a pet dog, but it only shows the dog cowering in its doghouse, cuts away to something else, and when it cuts back it shows the dinosaur with the dog's chain in its mouth, and the doghouse dangling from it.
      • Peter Ludlow foolishly tries to recover the baby tyrannosaur himself, following its cries into the hold of the Venture and trying to corner it for a minute, unaware that its father is walking into the hold right behind him until the baby runs past him and he sees it. The adult snaps his leg with its teeth as he tries to escape and uses him as live prey to teach its baby how to hunt, and the baby pounces on and kills him just out of frame as the adult proudly looks on the scene and Ludlow screams in agony.
    • Jurassic Park 3:
      • Nash, the mercenary pilot, is pulled out of the plane by the Spinosaurus and it waves him around a bit before dropping him to the ground. He tries scrambling away but the spinosaur pins him down with one foot and reaches down to bite his head off, with its other foot coming into frame, out of focus, just in time to hide the actual bite. When it rises up again a moment later to roar at the other characters, Nash's blood is on its snout.
      • Cooper is the Spinosaurus's first victim, but it cuts away right as it chomps on him.
      • Billy is mobbed by the Pteranodon and violently pecked and clawed at as he floats downriver, but most of the violence is obscured by him be plunged under the water, which quickly turns red with his blood, and then he drifts behind a rock and out of view. Subverted at the end when it turns out he survived and got rescued, although he was badly mauled.
      • Zigzagged with Udesky. He's horribly mauled to the point of being crippled and mute by the Velociraptor, but it's almost all off-screen and indicated only by his screaming. However, his death by Neck Snap is shown on-screen, probably because, although it's violent, it's also a bloodless death.
    • Jurassic World:
      • The first death is of one of the Paddock 11 workers, whose demise is mostly shown by him being grabbed by Indominus rex and lifted up offscreen, with his screams and crunching noises being heard over the radio. When Nick (the supervisor) looks back after opening the door to escape, we see I. rex with the worker partially in her mouth, and although the view is brief and mostly blocked by trees, we see her pulling the man's legs off.
      • A live piglet is snatched up and eaten by one of the Velociraptor, but it's quickly pulled offscreen so its fate is left unseen.
      • As a Mythology Gag to the first film, the T. rex is fed a live goat. However, it cuts to a group of tourists crowding around the window, therefore blocking anything violent from being seen by the actual audience.
      • The security guard that was supposed to be watching the I. rex becomes her second victim when she escapes, but the dinosaur snaps him up and pulls him out of view before she eats him, so that the only blood that's seen is a little red stained on the Indominus's teeth.
      • One of the ACU troopers killed during the jungle battle gets eaten by the I. rex. Although him being killed is obscured through tree branches and by the glare of sunlight coming down through the canopy, his blood rains down through the leaves. Another trooper is killed by being stomped on, but he's pushed into a river as it happens so nothing gory is seen or heard.
      • Exaggerated with the InGen Security Division, which are all picked off by the Velociraptor pack, but in every single case, the person is either dragged off-camera before being killed or we only see it from the perspective of their head-mounted camera, which cuts out right before they're killed.
      • The poor Ankylosaurus which is killed by the Indominus is apparently decapitated by the theropod, but it cuts away just as the I. rex breaks its neck, cutting to the expressions of horror on Zach & Gray's faces and the sounds of bone-crunching.
      • Although Zara technically dies entirely onscreen, the shot of her in the Mosasaurus' mouth is obscured by the Pteranodon who gets eaten with her.
      • Vic Hoskins' death. When Delta the Velociraptor suddenly shows up, he tries to get her to back down by holding up a hand. After a moment where it seems like she just might leave him alone, she chomps down on his hand. He screams. The next shot shows him being mauled by Delta, obscured by lab equipment on the corner of a wall, followed by a spatter of blood on a window next to them.
    • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom:
      • The two submersible pilots get eaten by the Mosasaurus when it turns out to be not as dead as they thought. However, right as the Mosasaurus sneaks up behind them, it cuts away to above the water, showing the lights of the sub going out.
      • Rexy is given a goat to eat to lure her into walking into an elevator lift, but the lights flicker right as she snaps it up, which, along with the bars of the lift, prevent the audience from being able to clearly see anything bloody.
      • Wheatley is violently killed by the Indoraptor, but the death is obscured by the metal bars of the cage it's in, as well as cutting away to show it only from a distance and out of focus right before it happens. This is combined with Bloodless Carnage, as the Indoraptor ripped his arm off and ate it on-screen right before this, but with only a tiny amount of red stained on its teeth.
      • Eversoll and three other bidders to the dinosaur black market are horribly killed by the Indoraptor, but it cuts to black right before it happens, with only the sound of Eversoll screaming in terror.
      • Two of Mills' mercenary goons are killed by the Indoraptor, but it rams them offscreen so that, again, you only hear them screaming to indicate they're being killed.
      • Another of Mills' mercenaries is trampled to death by the massive stampede of escaping dinosaurs at the end, but he falls just off-camera so viewers don't have to actually see him being stomped into meaty paste.
      • The ending briefly shows a surfer about to be eaten by the now-escaped Mosasaurus, but it cuts away before the two actually make contact (although considering how huge the mosasaur is, there probably wouldn't be much blood either way).
    • Jurassic World Dominion:
      • Blue is teaching her baby how to hunt with a rabbit, but the rabbit is snapped up by a wolf before they can get it, so the baby jumps on the wolf instead. The wolf chomping on the rabbit is obscured by a spray of snow, and it cuts away just as the baby raptor and wolf are tussling, instead showing Owen and Claire reacting in confusion to the sound of a wolf's yelp in the distance.
      • Delacourt gets his head bitten off by a juvenile Baryonyx, but it cuts between him screaming to just offscreen as it happens.
      • Similar to the Nedry example above, Dodgson is killed by a pack of Dilophosaurus, but it cuts away right as the dinosaurs spit on him and screech in his face, with his echoing scream as the screen turns black.
      • An unnamed poacher in the Amber Clave Market is chomped by the one-horned Carnotaurus while trying to put out his friend who's on fire, but it cuts away instantly after the dinosaur bites him.
      • The three members of the French Secret Service who were with Barry are killed by the trained Atrociraptor, but similar to the other raptor examples above, the raptors push them just offscreen before they kill them so that you only hear screaming and don't actually see nothing.
      • The Therizinosaurus swats a deer out of its way with its huge, razor-sharp claws, but the camera pans up so that we don't actually see the deer being violently thrown. The deer's carcass is shown later, but without too much blood and always keeping its face obscured.
      • In the extended cut, Blue attacks a pair of hunters that were shooting at her baby, but it cuts away just as she pounces on them in slow-motion.
  • Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks: In the SNES game, there's one room in the visitor's center that has shelves and shelves of flasks and test tubes. Neither they nor the room they're in serve any purpose to the story or the gameplay. You can't do anything in the room except look at the pretty bubbling chemicals.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The heads of Biosyn in the books: Steingarten in the first and Jeff Rossiter in the second.
  • The Greatest Story Never Told: The Telltale Games series takes place during and shortly after the events of the first film, from the perspectives of one minor film character and a whole bunch of new ones.
  • Greed: The whole series where the villains are motivated by Greed. They try to use the dinosaurs to get rich. It is also a recurring theme of the villains.
  • Green Aesop: Jurassic Park combines the Green Aesop with a Broken Aesop (or possibly a Fantastic Aesop). The initial emphasis of the first Jurassic Park (1993) seems to be on the hubris of resurrecting prehistoric lifeforms for the sole purpose of exhibiting them in a themepark, even comparing it to playing god. However, the park only collapses as a result of greed-motivated sabotage by The Mole pulling off an Inside Job that was successful largely because the owner cut corners everywhere on the park's security. After the dinosaurs destroy the park, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park the message changes to "let those animals live out their days in their natural environment and don't try to interfere", despite these animals not even being native to the islands and requiring active government quarantine because of how dangerous they are. While attempts to profit off them are still depicted as wrong, the heroes take a rather callous approach to causing human death to protect the dinosaurs.
  • Guns Are Useless: Strangely enforced — the first three films have a good number of guns, but no one ever seems to be able to effectively use them against dinosaurs (with the exception of a tranq gun in The Lost World. Averted somewhat in Jurassic World, as several dinosaurs are killed by lethal gunfire.
    • Jurassic Park: Muldoon is killed before having a chance to shoot anything, and Grant gets three shots off with his shotgun, misses and it jams as the Velociraptors attack. Foreshadowed earlier when the InGen workers fire uselessly at one of these same raptors while it's mauling one of their co-workers to death.
    • The Lost World: Jurassic Park: Possibly the most egregious use of this trope. A T. rex attacks a camp full of sleeping hunters. All of whom are well armed. Instead of raking it to death with a concentrated hail of bullets, they panic and run for their lives, some of them shooting their guns wildly in the air while fleeing the rampaging dinosaur. The only one who thinks to actually shoot his gun at the T. rex is Roland Tembo, but the cartridges of his elephant gun were secretly stolen by Nick Van Owen.
      • Eddie Carr's venom gun is this on a couple of instances: when the Stegosaurus charges after Sarah, Ian yells at him to shoot it; he doesn't want to because they're "just protecting their baby." Later, the T. rex pair attack him in his car (also "just protecting their baby"). He's quite willing to shoot them then, but since his gun picks that moment to get stuck on some netting, well... Nom-Nom!
    • Jurassic Park III: Armed mercenaries bring many weapons to the island, including an anti-tank rifle, but they're somehow defeated by a single dinosaur offscreen in a matter of seconds. The only thing that is ever used against any dinosaur of any kind (albeit successfully) is a flare gun.
    • Holds up in the book as well — Muldoon tranqs a T. rex with a rocket launcher (It Makes Sense in Context) but it doesn't take effect until a good bit later simply because he didn't have much idea of the right dosage. He points out that shooting the dinos wasn't very effective because of their biology. Most of the information he gives out is now known to be wrong, but at the time it made sense.
    • In Jurassic World, this trope is mostly avoided with park guards and soldiers being able to gun down several pterodactyls, but when Owen and his raptors confront the Indominus rex, it is once again in full effect: Owen's 45-70 lever rifle, which is capable of bringing down big game, can't even make the I. rex flinch with repeated shots, although the I. rex previously shrugged off a blow to the head from an Ankylosaurus club. Multiple point-blank shots to the face from a rapid-pump action shotgun have no effect and even a glancing blow from an anti-tank rocket launcher is only able to briefly knock her down without actually harming her.
    • In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, tranq darts loaded with carfentenil are used to immobilize several dinosaurs, including Rexy, but don't immediately neutralize Blue—who ends up getting nearly fatally shot as a result—and don't do squat against the Indoraptor—though it certainly does an awesome job acting like they do just to screw with someone. Owen also fires multiple times at the Indoraptor at point blank range with an assault rifle, but the bullets don't even penetrate its hide (realistically, even if the bullets don't pierce the skin, they'd still pass catastrophic kinetic energy into its body).
    • In Jurassic World: Dominion, this trope is again played straight to a silly degree. The French intelligence workers infiltrating the dinosaur black market are nearly all killed by the trained Atrociraptor pack because they seem to completely forget they're all holding guns in their hands that they could use to shoot the dinosaurs. This is especially egregious when Barry is trapped in the cabin of an abandoned boat and chooses to try and shoot the locked sunroof open rather than shoot into the open mouth of the dinosaur clawing its way in only about a foot in front of him. This is also used on a story-wide scale; despite all the dinosaurs running loose around the world, the movie never once brings up the idea of people just shooting the dinosaurs.
  • Improbable Infant Survival:
    • Pretty much played straight with Tim, Lex, Kelly, Eric, and any baby dinosaurs seen in the film series (baby Stegosaurus, baby T. rex, baby Pteranodons, stolen raptor eggs, etc.). The only real exception was that poor dog in the second movie and possibly the boy of the family that owned said dog who took a flash photo of the T. rex. Chances are, the boy and his parents were killed, though this is never shown explicitly in the movie. According to the final script, the T. rex smashes its head into the boy's bedroom, sniffs the entire family and goes on its way, leaving the kid and his understandably terrified parents completely unscathed. This part of the scene was either not shot or deleted for reasons unknown, and has not turned up in any releases of the film.
    • This is in the movies only. Sucks to be the baby that gets its face ripped off by compies in the first book. It extends past humans, too: when Tim tried to distract two Velociraptors that followed him and Lex by sending a baby raptor found in the InGen lab to them. The adult raptors immediately slaughtered the baby. This scene was roughly adapted for the screen... by an episode of Primeval.
      • The Lost World novel elaborates on this, saying that by basically being cloned and left to their own devices, most of the raptors were cannibalistic, lacked the maternal instinct of their ancestors, and saw their own offspring as just another prey item.
    • The little girl in the intro of the second movie was obviously seriously injured, judging by the mother's screams. Peter Ludlow points this out during his business meeting with InGen's Board of Directors and Hammond later mentions her to Malcolm. In both cases, the listening parties have to be assured that she survived.
    • Questionable at best in Jurassic World; we don't see any kids (besides Gray and Zach) being attacked onscreen, but the Pteranodons are shown attacking baby dinosaurs in an area where there were numerous children that could have gotten carried off as well. The I. rex also ate her infant sibling sometime prior to the film.
    • Played straight with Maisie in Fallen Kingdom, though psychologically, it's probably a whole other story.
    • Again played straight with Maisie in Jurassic World Dominion and also with Blue's offspring Beta in the same film.
  • In Name Only: The franchise's Velociraptors are infamous for not closely resembling their real life namesake. Their shape more resembles Deinonychus (which at the time of the original novel's writing, was considered by one paleontologist as a species of Velociraptor)note , while their size is on par with the largest known dromaeosaurs such as Utahraptor and Achillobator, both of which were unknown at the time of the first novel and film. Crichton himself even admitted he used the name because it was "more dramatic", and the novel's Velociraptor is Deinonychus in everything but name.
  • Ironic Echo: Towards the beginning of the first film, Ian heckles Alan and Ellie over "digging up dinosaurs" and mocks a T. rex roar to mess with them during the helicopter ride to the park. At the beginning of the second film, a random person on the train does the same thing to Ian over his media appearances following the incident, complete with a fake dinosaur roar.
  • Island of Mystery: Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the island chain that makes up "The Five Deaths" (of which Sorna is a part).
  • Just Desserts: Given this is a series involving man-eating dinosaurs, this trope is to be expected.
    • In the books, Lewis Dodgson gets devoured by infant T. rexes in the second novel, as do two of his henchmen, although one of them has a change of heart only to get violently killed by raptors anyway.
    • In the films, Nedry totally counts for this, while his book counterpart wasn't explicitly eaten by the dinosaur, just blinded and gutted by the creature while his remains were later eaten by a compy horde. Ludlow suffers Dodgson's fate, being crippled by a T. rex father and devoured by the son and Dieter Stark is slowly and painfully eaten alive by the very dinosaurs (compies) he sadistically tazed just for fun in The Lost World. In Jurassic World, Hoskins gets ripped to shreds by one of the raptors he sought to breed as a weapon, and becomes her dinner. Later, the Indominus Rex is dragged to her doom by the Mosasaurus. In Fallen Kingdom, Wheatley, who cruelly yanks teeth out of dinos' mouths while they're tranqued and helpless, gets horribly mauled to death when he tries to do it to the Indoraptor, while Mills, who murders his Benevolent Boss out of greed, is himself greedily devoured by Rexy and several other carnivores.
    • In the video game, Yoder and, depending on player actions, Nina get eaten by the T. rex at the end of the final episode. Could also count for Dr. Sorkin, since she takes a Face–Heel Turn and becomes an environmental extremist by releasing the Mosasaurus, only to have it eat her instead.
  • Justified Tutorial: Jurassic Park for the Sega CD contains information kiosks which play video footage of Robert T. Bakker, who explains various dinosaur behaviors, cluing the player in on how to deal with them when encountered.
  • Karmic Death:
    • A fair few people in the films (e.g., Nedry and Gennaro), although there are also undeserving victims (e.g., Muldoon, who was smart enough to realize that even having the raptors exist was a disaster waiting to happen). The trope is very evident in the novel, as not one of the responsible persons has thought of the consequences of reviving the largest predators ever to walk the Earth. All of them save two die horribly.
    • A notable example would be Stark, who callously tasers a compy just for the hell of it. Later, he is ambushed and killed by a horde of compies.
    • Ludlow in the second movie, Hoskins in the fourth movie, and Mills in the fifth movie — they are all killed by the very animals they hoped to exploit.
  • Kill All Humans/To Serve Man:
    • Tyrannosaurs and Velociraptors come running for the great taste of human!
    • In the first novel, the Tyrannosaurus appears to always be a step ahead of every move Grant and the kids make. So does the Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III.
    • Probably justified. In the raptor transport scene, it's being handled rather roughly. Mistreated animals often attack humans when they get loose. The attacks may be more about revenge than food.
    • The raptors in The Lost World novel were feral killers while the film version's raptors were defending their turf and taking advantage of the "moveable feast" passing through. The raptors in Jurassic Park III just wanted their eggs back and Owen's squad in Jurassic World were about as dangerous to human strangers as your standard big cat or crocodile...at least until Indominus facilitated their brief Face–Heel Turn.
    • After a diet of pre-killed great white sharks for the better part of her life, Mosasurus has probably learned that humans, while not exactly filling, are at least tasty after accidentally eating Zara; by Fallen Kingdom she's actively stalking surfers.
    • Actually discussed in the first novel. After some raptors try to attack the protagonists through their electrified enclosure, Malcolm mentions that lions and tigers typically only become man-eaters if they discover that humans are easy to kill, and wonders if the raptors made the same discovery at some point. Early on in the first novel, a worker is brought to the local doctor after being mortally wounded by the raptors, likely the way they learned human were easy prey.

    L-Z 
  • LEGO Genetics:
    • The main reason why the park fails — they used amphibian DNA, the closest thing possible to insert into the damaged DNA code without causing mutations. Except it did. The type of amphibian used can change sexes in unequal-gender conditions. In the first book, Dr. Wu's internal monologue states that, because 90+% of DNA is the same across all animals on Earth, he could freely mix-and-match whenever he needed to. The species on the island that are breeding are ones that included frog DNA to replace sequence gaps. Since just about everyone involved in the Park at the higher levels is grossly incompetent in some manner, this is just par for the course.
    • Taken to an extreme in a Jurassic Park-themed haunted house/scarezone from Universal's Halloween Horror Nights back in 2002, where a rogue InGen scientist is able to create gruesome half-human/half-dinosaur monstrosities by mixing some DNA together.
    • The trope name becomes a pun in Lego Jurassic World. Tutorials are accessed by finding DNA strands made out of Lego. Literally Lego genetics.
  • Leitmotif: The opening tune from the first film gets repeated a lot during the sequence involving the Velociraptors. And listen carefully for it in the sequels whenever someone even mentions the Velociraptors, especially if the topic is brought up before the raptors have even appeared.
  • Licensed Game: This thing was a merchandise monolith, and it was ripe for game adaptation; so it doesn't come as a surprise that there were so many. Ranging from the Zelda-like puzzler (with Wolfenstein 3D-like indoor sections) for the SNES, to a hard-as-nails shooter/platformer for the Genesis which also lets you play through the entire game as a raptor (the final boss is Dr. Grant!), to the technically innovative Jurassic Park: Trespasser, along with a few portable titles; the Game Gear version hilariously changes the ending so that Hammond's theme park becomes a success. As recently as 2011, a Telltale game was loosely based on the events of the film.
  • Licensed Pinball Tables: Three of them - a 1992 machine and a 2019 machine based on Jurassic Park (1993), and a third machine based on The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
  • Lighter and Softer: The novels don't hold back showing how horrific it is to be killed and devoured by a dinosaur, describing in disturbing detail of how characters are ripped apart, exsanguinated, disemboweled, Eaten Alive, or otherwise turned to ground beef, and not even afraid to have a baby being Devoured by the Horde. The films frequently resort to Improbable Infant Survival, Bloodless Carnage, and Gory Discretion Shot to maintain PG-13 ratings, and tend to have a much less cynical tone.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Malcolm's signature all-black ensemble. In the novel, he jokes about how his clothes are all grey and black, so he can get changed in the dark. He also said something about not wasting any time choosing what color to wear.
  • Living Motion Detector:
    • Tyrannosaurs, though only in the first movie. In the book, a paleontologist named Roxton theorized this was the case, and Grant acts on it to protect him and Lex from one. It's stated that all the park's dinosaurs have this problem, due to the frog DNA used to patch holes in their genetics.
    • This became a subject of discussion in The Lost World. It's pointed out that Grant was working off really bad data out of sheer desperation, as there really wasn't any other way for him to have gotten out of that situation alive. Levine, a more well-read genius, states that, "Roxton is an idiot. He doesn't know enough anatomy to have sex with his wife." The reason the T. rex didn't chow down on Grant and Lex was because the goat it had eaten moments before was enough to fill its appetite for several hours. Baselton isn't aware of this, and tries the same stunt with a hungry T. rex. While stealing eggs from its nest. It eats him whole.
  • Loose Canon: The three Jurassic Park Adventures young adult novels by Scott Ciencin are regarded as this.
  • Men Are the Expendable Gender:
    • Every human death in the film and novel is male.
    • Lampshaded with a comment from Ellie:
      Ellie: Dinosaur eats Man; Woman inherits the Earth.
    • Subverted in Jurassic World, which had the guts to brutally kill off Zara. Could also count as Take That! to Ellie's quote in the first film.
    • Also in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom a woman is one of the people eaten by the Indoraptor when it breaks into an elevator.
  • Misplaced Wildlife: Velociraptor bones in Montana. Acknowledged in The Lost World and in the novel.
  • Moral Disambiguation: The human bad guys get more ambitious and heinous in the Jurassic World movies than they were in the earlier Park movies, and the heroes get a little bit more concerned about the bigger picture besides their own survival. In particular, in The Lost World: Jurassic Park; Ian Malcolm only cares about the good guys getting back to civilization alive, and one of the other good guys is an unrepentant Eco-Terrorist, whilst the bad guys are only a couple steps away from being Villainy-Free Villains who are acting well within their legal rights. By contrast, Jurassic World Dominion sees Malcolm, Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler actively sticking their necks out by investigating BioSyn of their own initiatives, and trying to stop an existential threat to the planet; a threat which BioSyn unwittingly unleashed whilst the corporation was trying to engineer famine just to further their own greed.
  • Myth Arc: The films quietly hint at a deeper scheme in place for InGen, especially in a scene where Grant identifies the Spinosaurus (a dinosaur not on their list of cloned dinosaurs) and wonders what they're up to. Jurassic World doesn't clarify the extent of Wu's deal with Hoskins and the Masrani Backdoor also has a lot of cryptic tidbits about the timeline of the films.
  • Never Trust a Title: Many of the animals portrayed in this franchise are from the Cretaceous. Perhaps a better name would have been Mesozoic Park/World.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Paleontology example: Bob Bakker was name dropped in the first book and film, but got Expied into the character of "Robert Burke" in the second film. See Take That! below.
  • Non-Malicious Monster:
    • The dinosaurs aren't evil, just hungry and/or territorial. Except raptors — at least in the first book, where it's stated that they kill even when they are not hungry, just for pleasure, and sometimes they kill their own. This is later explained as the result of the raptors being bred artificially, thus lacking the social development they'd have gone through if raised in a natural environment, with the benefit of a parent and other peers teaching them proper dino social skills. In short, they were basically creating intelligent, sadistic sociopaths with sharp teeth and big claws.
    • The Spinosaurus from the third film also averts this as it moves far beyond simple hunting for hunger, seemingly taking a sort of sadistic glee in pursuing the protagonists all over the island, even though it has far more readily available and more nourishing prey all around it. More than once it ignores large food sources just to chase down the tiny humans. Marketing for the later films has implied that it was a prototype hybrid similar to the Indominus rex, which may explain this savagery.
    • The Indominus rex from the fourth film averts this entirely; she's specifically identified as a straight up malicious killer that attacks everything she sees just for fun and not food. Being a genetically engineered hybrid of multiple species of dinosaur and other animals specifically intended to be a new, scarier dinosaur, it's no surprise they created an actually villainous dinosaur. She even kills Owen's raptors and murders an entire herd of Apatosaurus without taking a bite.
    • Downplayed with the Indoraptor in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. It does not reach the level of sadism the Indominus did and is shown to kill for food and not sport. Doesn't mean he will be quick about it and not enjoy it a bit.
  • Non-Indicative Name: In-universe example: the park is called "Jurassic" despite the fact that several of the dinosaurs didn't live in that period (such as the T. rex and the raptors that lived in the Cretaceous period). Presumably "Triassic Park" or "Cretaceous Park" just don't have the same ring to them.
  • Obliviously Evil: Practically every dinosaur in the franchise. What, did you think T. rex knew she was harming people by eating them? She was just hungry! Did the Dilophosaurus realize it was wrong to blind and maul Nedry? Of course not, it was hungry and curious! Did the Pteranodon stop to question how morally sound it was for her to snatch up Eric Kirby? No, because she was too busy thinking about what a tasty take-out meal he'd be for her kids! The only real aversions would probably be the raptors and the Spinosaurus, who take almost sadistic glee in killing and eating people. The Indominus rex in the fourth film also averts this, and is the closest in the franchise to being a straight up evil dinosaur. It kills everything and everyone around it for sport (for example, it slaughters an entire herd of Apatosaurus without eating a single one), and appears to take great pleasure in causing chaos and death throughout the park. Downplayed with the Indoraptor who does hunt for food and eats its prey but still is very sadistic about it.
  • Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Jurassic Park > The Lost World (: Jurassic Park in the movie) > Jurassic Park III > Jurassic World
  • One-Steve Limit:
    • There was Robert Muldoon in the first film/novel and Robert Burke from the second film.
    • In the second film the boy who witnessed the T-Rex drink out of his swimming pool was named Benjamin. In the third film, Amanda's boyfriend was Benjamin "Ben" Hildebrand. In "Fallen Kingdom", Hammond's old partner and Big Good of the film was Benjamin Lockwood.
    • In the first novel, the park's public relations manager was Ed Regis. In the novel's sequel Eddie Carr was the assistant to Doc Thorne. He was the group's tech expert in the Film of the Book.
    • In the first novel there was John Alfred Hammond and John Arnold.
    • In the third film, Dr. Grant's protege was named Billy Brennan. In the video game, one of the major characters is named Billy Yoder.
  • Peek-a-Boo Corpse: In both versions, a hand falls on Ellie and they both think the man the limb belongs to is alive ... until they turn around.
  • Playful Hacker: Dennis Nedry. "Uh uh uh, you didn't say the magic word!" Even has signs of this in the book with "wht_rbt.obj".
  • Phlebotinum Dependence: The dinosaurs are deliberately deprived of lysine. It doesn't work.
  • Prehistoric Monster: The franchise as a whole zigzags it. Predators tend to be extraordinarily aggressive and have an insatiable urge to kill humans on sight (even those much smaller than humans, like Dimorphodon and Compsognathus), especially the dromaeosaurs, while herbivores tend to be seen as majestic and passive. It's also played completely straight with the prehistoric locusts in Dominion, which nobody objects to complete eradication of because they are consuming the world's food crops.
  • Raptor Attack: Trope Maker and Trope Codifier.
  • Reaction Shot: A wild Raptor appeared!
  • Recycled Soundtrack: Not in the movies themselves, but the trailers for both Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park reuse music from Backdraft.
  • Revision: Why the T. rex in Jurassic Park "couldn't see" people standing still. The second novel explains why she probably could, and why she didn't chow down on the immobile buffet.
  • Roar Before Beating: Each movie has at least one scene that exists pretty much just to show off the dinosaurs (the "Ooh, aah" part of Malcolm's above quote), usually set to the main theme.
  • Rule of Scary: Boy howdy, this is in full effect, particularly with the Dilophosaurus and the hybrids, the latter of which outright invoke it.
  • Running Gag: Oft overlooked, but phones in-universe always tend to be the center of misfortune and chaos; in each film they manage to directly, or at least indirectly, cause mayhem in some form or another.
  • Scavengers Are Scum: Averted in the books, which go out of their way to point out how important scavengers are to the ecosystem, all the way down to finding creatures who can live off of and further process the not-very-thoroughly-digested mountains of waste the giant herbivores leave behind. Mostly averted in the films (the few that bother to mention them) with the Procompsognathids. They aren't depicted as any more "evil" than the rest of the dinosaurs, though this is in keeping with the general trend of attempting to portray the dinosaurs as animals, instead of monsters. The Compys actually manage to look fairly cute, and give a dose of Laser-Guided Karma to one rather nasty character in The Lost World.
  • Scenery Porn: It was filmed in Hawaii.
  • Schizo Tech: The level that genetic engineering technology has reached in the franchise could very well be described as centuries beyond that of the modern world's. Cloning technology has reached the point to where humans can produce dinosaurs, alter their genes even more by splicing them with DNA from other creatures, and produce a perfectly viable animal. Despite that, all other technology that we see is more or less equal to that which was present at the time that the then current books and films were made, and the march of technology has only ensured that they look even more antiquated. Downplayed in Jurassic World, which aims for a more futuristic look and displays greater levels of technological sophistication in things outside of genetics.
  • Science Is Bad: Stronger in the books than the movies, though not as strong as some of Crichton's later novels.
  • See No Evil, Hear No Evil: It fails in the first movie, and it's lampshaded in The Lost World book.
  • Sequel Logo in Ruins: The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom feature more weathered logos compared to their immediate predecessors to mirror how much Darker and Edgier they are.
  • Shout-Out: The male raptors of the second and third films bear similar designs to Talon with tiger stripes and head feathers, respectively.
  • Sound-Only Death: Pretty much every casualty. Averted with Gennaro in Jurassic Park, Eddie in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and the mercenaries in Jurassic Park III.
  • Spiritual Successor: To Westworld, another Michael Crichton work about an amusement park built around unusual or unique attractions — robots instead of dinosaurs — that outgrow their design, ensuing chaos and murder.
  • Starring Special Effects: The first film may well be the Trope Codifier, particularly in the case of the larger dinosaurs. Keep in mind that the effects still hold up fairly well despite the film being made in 1993.
  • Stay in the Kitchen: Hammond to Ellie in the first book/movie. Although in the movie, it was more well-meaning chauvinism (saying he, not her, should be risking his life to get the power back on) instead of being a jerk. Ellie, who is a healthy, athletic young woman (whereas Hammond is an elderly man) notes how dumb this is: "We'll discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back."
  • Super-Persistent Predator: Goes between subverting and using quite a lot in both the novel and film. In the second novel, it is mentioned that the raptors, born without a pack mentality and "code" due to no pre-existing raptor to teach them on Site B, are cruelly intelligent and kill for sport — and often kill each other over food.
    • Overall the films subvert this with the raptors as little of the behavior is "predatory". Grant has concluded by the start of "III" that InGen created a sentient species, foreshadowing that most of that movie's raptors problems aren't about food at all. They're about the raptors trying to recover an offspring egg one of the humans is carrying. This is human cost-benefit behavior.
  • Take That!: A bit of a Genius Bonus: The Robert Bakker Expy gets killed, and the technical advisor was Jack Horner, who feuded with Bakker over dinosaur biology.
    • Real life Bob Bakker, however, is said to have loved the scene. Specifically, Bakker and Horner at the time were not just rivals, but on opposite sides of the T. rex as predator (Bakker) vs. scavenger (Horner) debate. After seeing his expy nom'ed by the T. rex, Bakker called up Horner and triumphantly announced, "I told you it was a predator."
    • The Take That! goes further in the book. The main characters discuss the T. rex not being able to see motionless objects and animals (something that was tried in the first film, to no avail). One of them calls the paleontologist who proposed this "an idiot".
  • The Taming of the Grue: Over the course of the franchise the Velociraptors have gotten this treatment. They were outright villains in the first two movies, but got a slight Anti-Villain treatment the third. By the time Jurassic World came out, they were treated more as anti-heroes, and one, named Blue, was a straight-up hero.
    • Rexy the Tyrannosaurus rex has also been hit with this. In the original novel, she was very much an antagonist, relentlessly hunting down Alan Grant and the children to the point of leaving behind a dinosaur she'd just killed when she noticed they were nearby. She got a similar treatment in the first movie, and the fact that she saves them from the raptors is treated more as a lucky coincidence than anything else. Come Jurassic World, she's deliberately used to defeat the Indominus Rex, and in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom she once again returns to eat the human villain, while leaving the heroes alone.
  • Terror-dactyl: Pterosaurs are depicted as monstrous creatures throughout the franchise.
    • The Lost World: Jurassic Park has a single Pteranodon appearing in the end credits. It doesn't show any aggressive behaviour, but its design is terribly inaccurate - it has pointed, leathery wings, and it perches on a tree bipedally.
    • Jurassic Park III has an aviary full of aggressive, predatory Pteranodons that attack the protagonists. They have teeth (even though the name Pteranodon literally means "toothless wing"), smooth skin, are able to grab people with their feet, and seem to nest in a birdlike manner. At least they walk quadrupedally.
    • 'Jurassic World has slightly different Pteranodons that show some of the same inaccuracies (grasping feet, smooth skin), but at the same time they have small crests, showing they're females, and are shown plunge-diving in the water. They are accompanied by another species of pterosaur, Dimorphodon, which is oversized, also hairless, and has a box-shaped head that looks more like a theropod dinosaur than the real animal. Both species are depicted as irrationally aggressive, attacking humans in swarms.
    • Jurassic World: Dominion introduces Quetzalcoatlus to the franchise. Design-wise, it's the most accurate of the pterosaurs in the franchise (quadrupedal on ground, covered in fuzzy pycnofibres, no grasping feet, correct body proportion), but it's still oversized and aggressive, attacking a plane that's about the same size it is.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Anyone who would (a) follow a Velociraptor into dense forest, regardless of how well-armed they might be; (b) run headlong into a field of tall grass in which God knows what might be lurking — after having been briefed that this was near a raptor nesting site; (c) knowingly steal raptor eggs for profit before even knowing if they'll make it off the island alive; or (d) thinks that they can automatically give commands to a raptor that it has taken someone else years of imprinting, bonding, and establishing himself as "alpha" to said raptor (who, by the way, has been dropping hints that she wants to kill this particular TDTL person) to be able to do (and very tenuously, at that), probably has a subconscious death wish.
    • And all of these are outdone by the latest instance of TDTL in this series: going into a mutated and supposedly tranquilized raptor's cage to ...wait for it...try to claim one of its teeth for a trophy! Hooo boy, does this ever take the cake! The raptor in question even flashes a smirking look at the camera as if to say "What an idiot" before granting its victim a mercilessly brutal mauling.
  • Trauma Conga Line: Blue the Velociraptor becomes a mix between this and Determinator.
    • Jurassic World: She looses all her pack mates and later survives a fight with the Indominus Rex.
    • Camp Cretaceous: She gets trapped under a truck and ends up saving the teenagers by fighting the Scorpius Rex.
    • Fallen Kingdom: She survives alone for 3 years on the island as the last of her kind before it is destroyed by the volcanic eruption, gets shot, almost dies from blood loss, gets captured and escapes an explosion before then fighting the Indoraptor to defend Owen.
  • Tropical Island Adventure: The series takes place on two fictional tropical Costa Rican islands known as Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna.
  • Villainous Rescue: Seen in the first film, one of the most iconic moments of the franchise. Grant, Sattler, and the kids are cornered by the Velociraptors, who are just about to attack when the T. rex comes out of nowhere and slaughters them.
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?:
    • Really, what could possibly happen if you were to let giant animals you know nothing about inhabit an entire island and show them as part of a theme park? (And rely entirely on automation to keep it safe?) Surely they wouldn't bite anyone if they had the chance.
    • In the book, every one of Hammond's department leads realize that their containment methods are inadequate since they were planning on slow, stupid animals. They even give him a range of possible solutions, from equipment upgrades to modifying the dinosaur genetics to make them slow and stupid but he blows them off.
    • Or at least he does to their face. Later on, they discover that he'd ordered a stash of stronger weapons and hidden them in a secret bunker that some of the highest level folks in the park didn't know about. Perhaps he planned on telling them if he ever thought it was serious enough, but by the time he was at all worried it was too late.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
    • Vince Vaughn's character Nick from The Lost World disappears from the film before the T. rex makes it to the city. His disappearance is never explained. It's possible that he just got the hell out and never looked back.
    • It's never mentioned what happened to the dinosaurs on Isla Nublar after the events of the first movie. In the book, they were all killed by Costa Rican Air Force, but in the movie ... they were just left free? In the second film, it is implied that everyone expected the dinosaurs to die by themselves after a short time, them being lysine dependant and all that.
      • The junior novelization also mentions Alan internally lamenting that the dinosaurs "would have to be destroyed", thus, one can assume this does indeed happen. Of course, keyword here being junior, that's probably because it omits the discussion about the lysine contingency.
      • The fourth film confirms that at least the original T. rex survived, and she currently lives in the new park. The rest, however, are unaccounted for (except for Clever Girl and her pack, who we know are dead).
    • In a deleted scene in the second film, we see Ludlow addressing the InGen board about the lawsuits associated with the deaths of Nedry, Muldoon, Gennaro, and others. He also mentions the costs of dismantling the Isla Nublar facility.
      • Any "dismantling" of Isla Nublar seems to have been either handwaved or retconned by the third movie — at least in the JP III novelization, which mentions both islands as being populated by dinosaurs and declared no-fly zones. Udesky briefly mentions it in film, but gets shouted down before receiving any confirmation.
    • Jurassic World takes place on the first island, which is now under the management of the Masrani Corporation along with any surviving dinosaurs.
    • In the first film, we never actually learn why the Triceratops got sick, as Ellie's theory is disproven before the storm hits. She's shown picking up smooth stones off the ground, though, alluding to the correct theory she eventually figures out in the novel.
    • Nedry's can of dinosaur embryos. Spielberg even thought that the sequel would pick up on that, but Michael Crichton chose another path. It eventually was picked upon in Jurassic Park: The Game or in Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous.
    • Several species (Ouranosaurus, Monolophosaurus, Parasaurolophus Lux and Tarbosaurus) which did not appear in the movies but made their debuts in Camp Cretaceous, it is unknown if they survived past the events of Fallen Kingdom.
      • Mamenchisaurus and Junior the T. rex have yet to return since their first appearances in The Lost World, the same applies to Corythosaurus which first appeared in Jurassic Park III. It also remains to be seen if Pachycephalosaurus which was last seen in Jurassic World survived past Fallen Kingdom.
      • It’s unknown what the final fate of Pearl, Olive, Dot and Agnes the Brachiosaurs which were first identified in Evolution of Claire novel is as its unknown if they were among the rescued dinosaurs in Fallen Kingdom.
  • A Winner Is You: Many Jurassic Park games don't bother with endings and just show players a lame and often lazy cutscene of the hero escaping the dinosaurs' island.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Played straight with the reactions of everyone to the mere mention of Velociraptors—at least in the first three films.
    • Jurassic Park: When Alan and co. find out that Hammond and Wu bred raptors, and then later, when Muldoon and Ellie discover than shutting the park's entire power grid has allowed said raptors to get loose into the park.
    • The Lost World: Jurassic Park: The two stranded teams learn that they'll have to hike through a raptor pack's nesting area in order to reach the abandoned village and call for help.
    • Jurassic Park III: The group discovers that they're in the middle of raptor territory when hiking toward another abandoned facility. Another one pops up later when Alan learns that Billy stole two of the raptors' eggs.
    • Jurassic World seemingly averts this with Owen managing to tame four raptors...barely. It ultimately gets subverted about halfway through with The Reveal that I-rex is part raptor.
  • The Worf Effect:
    • The raptors. They kill Muldoon the Great White Hunter in the first film and almost all of Ludlow's Mooks in the second ... which would probably make it all the more embarrassing that they are defeated by Lex and Timmy in the first film, and Kelly in the sequel.
    • The T. rex, after dominating the first two films, is rather implausibly killed by the Spinosaurus early on in the third film. The Spinosaurus itself is driven away by a flare gun and not seen again for the remainder of the movie. Some rumors persisted that earlier versions of the film would have had the Spinosaurus return for the ending and a final battle with the army.
      • The T. rex in the third film is a sub-adult male. It's obviously much smaller than any of the previous T. rex examples. The Spinosaurus has also been retroactively implied to be a prototype hybrid.
      • Something of an Author Filibuster, as the paleontological consultant, Jack Horner, not only believed that the T. rex was a scavenger, not a predator, but held a personal animosity toward the species. Guess which large, meat-eating dinosaur he thought was much more awesome?
    • The infamous example from the third film receives a Take That! in the fourth, where a Spinosaurus skeleton is displayed in the visitor's main courtyard, and as the T. rex (the same T. rex from the first film, no less) makes her entrance for the final showdown with the Indominus rex, she barrels straight through the Spinosaurus skeleton, smashing it to bits.
    • The Indominus proves to be a walking Worf Effect, managing to kill off 6 Apatosaurs, one Ankylosaurus, a good portion of a rather well-armed ACU containment team, two raptors, and nearly killing a mature T-rex. It takes the T-rex and a lone raptor working together just to tire the thing out.
      • And then the Mosasaurus delivers a Worf Effect of her own, dragging the Indominus into her tank without much effort.
  • The Worm Guy: Alan Grant in the first installment, Dr. Levine in the second novel, Sarah Harding in the second installment, and Owen Grady in the fourth film.

Alternative Title(s): Jurassic World

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Jurassic World (F You)

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