The
other UFO: Unidentifiable Furry Organisms.
Tall hairy humanoids who supposedly maintain a furtive existence in various remote corners of the world. "Bigfoot" and "Sasquatch" are different names for essentially the same entity, whose (ahem) stomping grounds are mostly in the
northwestern corner of the United States and the southwestern corner of Canada. The "Yeti" or "Abominable Snowman" is a variety found high in the
Himalaya Mountains — commonly depicted (whether due to associations with familiar Arctic animals like the polar bear, or just the "snowman" association) with white fur in fiction, although the local legends described it with red to brown hair. Other lesser known varieties turn up in world-wide folklore and history under an assortment of names, such as the "Skunk Ape" of the swamps of the
southeastern United States.
Common characteristics are said to include a extreme
shyness towards humans, a tendency to emit both horrible odors and unearthly noises, a
drooling mouth, frolicing in out-of-focus areas, and the unsurprising habit of leaving large footprints all over the place. Most scientific authorities regard these creatures as either
entirely imaginary or the fabrications of human pranksters, but like
lake monsters and the
Chupacabra and
unlike "out-and-out" fictional species such as the
Wendigo, BS&Y have devout believers in their existence. More Real Life information can be found at the
Other Wiki
. .
Despite it being 99.97% likely these creatures don't actually exist, depictions of them often turn up in popular culture...
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- In Ranma 1/2 the character of Pantyhose Tarou fell into the magic spring of the "Drowned Yeti, riding a bull and carrying a crane and an eel". It resulted in his transformation being a bull the size of a Yeti with an eel for a tail and crane wings.
Comics
- Tin Tin In Tibet features a Yeti.
- Marvel Comics Alpha Flight features a team member called Sasquatch, who is more-or-less the legendary beast.
- Originally, he was a scientist who got hit by gamma radiation, just like The Incredible Hulk, but got orange fur instead of green skin. A later retcon said he had inadvertently opened a gateway to the Realm of Great Beasts, giving him the power of a (fictional) First Nations demon.
- And even more recently a small tribe of "actual" Saquatches (Sasquatchii?) have been discovered, with the largest male being mistaken for a mindwiped Sasquatch (the superhero) and actually joining the team for a short time (until his Heroic Sacrifice).
- Marvel also has several forms of Abominable Snowmen, ranging from an offshoot of the Inhumans to people under a magical curse.
- Proof is a comic book series about a Bigfoot paranormal investigator that is very similar to Hellboy.
- In an issue of the Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, an assumed-to-be-malevolent alien force is causing the famous legendary creatures of the world to vanish; among them are the yeti and the sasquatch.
- In an issue of Woody Woodpecker, Woody goes with his (niece and nephew?) over to Asia to film the abominable snowman. His camera is taken by a band of thieves using the legend of the snowman to scare people into giving them gift to appease them. And then the real deal come along and scares the band away.
- In Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge story "The Lost Crown of Ghengis Khan", Scrooge Mcduck has to recover the titular crown from the hoard of a treasure-loving abominable snowman.
Film
- The Yeti is one of the 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; among his jobs are pounding in circus-tent pegs and playing a steam organ.
- A series of movies was made starring the swamp-dwelling southern version under the Boggy Creek title.
- Harry And The Hendersons is about an American family who hits a Sasquatch with their car and brings him home. It was later a short-lived TV series.
- Several movies made for the Sci Fi Channel center around Sasquatches, usually turning the creature into a bloodthirsty killer.
- The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor includes a sequence with Yetis.
- A really strange movie called They Call Him Sasquatch features a group of unlikely people going to hunt for the aforementioned lifeform. No, they do not parody the theme from Flipper.
- In Tenacious D's The Pick Of Destiny, Jables eats psychotropic mushrooms, and imagines he's Sasquatch's baby Sass.
Literature
- Lamb The Gospel According To Biff features a Yeti who is the Last Of His Kind.
- In the Discworld novel Thief of Time, our heroes encounter a yeti with the ability to press the Reset Button on its own death. It's a kind of troll, with thick fur. Since trolls are made of rock, this is hinted to be the insulating material stone-wool.
- Yetis also appear in Moving Pictures, where they lie down in the snow (camoflaged by their fur) and jump out at travellers. If the ones that encounter the thousand elephants making their way across the mountains have the Reset Button ability, it doesn't get mentioned. Maybe they were overwhelmed by the awesomeness of the scene.
- Harry Dresden encounter Yeti like creatures in Proven Gulity after stoming Arctis Tor.
Live Action TV
- Bigfoot "guest starred" in more than one episode of the Six Million Dollar Man.
- Bigfoot and Wildboy was a recurring segment in the 1970s children's program The Krofft Supershow, and a Spin Off from the season it made friends with Steve Austin.
- In Doctor Who, the second Doctor has dealing with robots disguised as Yeti. (As well as, briefly, a real Yeti.)
- Eerie Indiana: Marshall Teller often spots Bigfoot rooting around in his trash.
- Harry And The Hendersons TV series mentioned above
- In perhaps the ultimate aversion of this trope, The X-Files — a show which incorporated everything from human-alien hybrids to demonic possession to half-human half-tapeworms — never once did an episode on Bigfoot.
- In the official licensed comic book, there was one Bigfoot story. I recall the infamous "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" episode did feature Mulder watching the Patterson footage of an alleged female sasquatch.
- In The Invisible Man, the invisibility gland was taken from the Sasquatch who had developed it in order to hide in the forest of America. To be fair, the main character was pretty shocked at this revelation as well.
- In The Mighty Boosh, there is a tribe of female yeti that live in the woods in England. IIRC, the episodes plotline was just a Gender Reversed version of the original yeti myth.
- Here Come the Brides featured a Bigfoot hoaxer.
- Bigfoot and other north american fuzzy walkers appear in several episodes of Lost Tapes.
Real Life
- See above. Tracks are often found, which are always revealed to be the work of pranksters when proper investigation is done.
- The most famous Sasquatch video evidence is the so-called "Patterson-Gimlin Film", which indisputably depicts either a Sasquatch or a man in a hairy suit.
- The old 1970s show In Search Of had an episode dedicated to the legend of Bigfoot.
- The Weekly World News was a supermarket tabloid which often ran Bigfoot stories.
- Fake videos of these guys are common fare on You Tube.
Tabletop Games
- Sasquatches appear in the Shadowrun role-playing game, where they are peaceable and sentient beings capable of flawlessly imitating sounds.
- Some version of the Dungeons And Dragons Monster Manual include Yeti as potential encounters.
- Deadlands uses both Sasquatches and Skunk Apes. The former are one of the few non-evil supernatural entities in the setting, while the latter are more malicious. This hasn't stopped one of them from developing a taste for cigars rolled from Cuban tobacco, though.
Theme Park
Video Games
- Darkstalkers features a Sasquatch.
- More like it features Sasquatch, a Bigfoot that has attacks more like a Yeti.
- Final Fantasy VI has Umaro, a Yeti who can be used as a airship pilot.
- Yetis can be found in Warcraft games, either in forested or snowy areas.
- The adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road involves a search for a Sasquatch that had escaped from a traveling freak show.
- It is possible to play as Bigfoot in Tony Hawk's Underground 2.
- Bigfoot turns up in an expansion pack for The Sims 2
- One of the obstacles in Kings Quest V a Yeti which you have to hit in the face with a pie.
- There's another one in Kings Quest III which you simply have to avoid.
- SkiFree is a Windows 3.1 game which at the higher skill levels inevitably ends with your skier being eaten by a Yeti.
- Spelunky features a yeti which can chain-throw you to death easily. Someone made fanart pairing this yeti and the ''SkiFree'' yeti.
- A pair of peaceful Yeti are characters in The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
- A yeti-like creature called Abomasnow makes an appearance in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Actually, he's an animated Evergreen tree.
- Monster Rancher 2 had the Jill and its wild variety, the Bighand.
- Yeti show up as an enemy group in Guild Wars Factions.
- You can have keep Yeti and Bigfoot in your zoo in Zoo Tycoon.
- Yetis appear in World Of Warcraft, usually in snowy or mountainous areas (altho there's some living in the rather tropical Feralas too). They come in white-furred and more Bigfoot-like brown-furred variants.
- Biggafoot from Banjo-Tooie, who has a single big foot.
- The first game in the Ben Jordan Paranormal Investigator series evolves around finding the Skunk Ape in the Everglades.
- A cyclopean Yeti is encountered multiple times in Overlord II, usually smashing down obstacles in it's way. It normally won't attack the Overlad, unless he starts killing baby seals. Later on it's met in the Empire Arenas, where after smashing the place down the player is given the option of subduing it and keeping it caged up as a pet or killing it and making it into a rug.
- In Backyard Hockey, there is a Yeti team.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Bigfoot appears in an episode of Futurama; the episode ends with a parody/homage to the Patterson film mentioned above.
- Did we mention that said episode ("Spanish Fry") had the Omicron Persei VIII aliens Lrrr and Ndnd getting off on said beast's existence and having mad, passionate sex right in front of him?
- Monsters Inc has a scene where the banished heroes meet their fellow exile, now known as the
Adorable Agreeable Abominable Snowman in Nepal.
- There's offhand reference to bigfoot, who was supposedly friends with the Yeti in the past, and was also banished.
- Jonny Quest TOS episode "Monster in the Monastery". A group of Yeti threatening a small village turn out to be enemy agents in costumes. At the end of the episode all of the agents are found dead, killed by a real Yeti.
- The Real Adventures series had a twenty-or-so feet tall viking warrior yeti preserved alive in a glacier.
- The Abominable Snow Beast/Bumble from Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.
- In a Christmas episode of American Dragon Jake Long Jake and his friends try to get a baby Sasquatch back to his family before various enemies find it first.
- Bigfoot shows up in A Goofy Movie.
- An episode of Goof Troop has Goofy and Pete encountering an unusual depiction of Bigfoot which has antlers. Made more unusual by the fact that it's female.
- A Sasquatch is among the jury-members putting humanity on trial in an episode of Captain Planet And The Planeteers.
- Classic Looney Tunes shorts would sometimes star the Abominable Snowman, a hulking furry giant who would "adopt" fuzzy animals like Bugs Bunny and literally smother them with adoration. He would always call his new pet "George." (This is a Shout Out to the origin of the character: Lon Chaney Jr.'s portrayal of Lennie in Of Mice And Men.)
- Roswell Conspiracies is a show which posits that most of the monsters of human myth are actually different species of aliens living in the hidden corners of the Earth. The Yeti are portrayed as one of the more benevolent groups. Their leader is named Tiyet.
- The Backyardigans had two Yetis in different episodes: Pablo in the appropriatedly-named episode "The Yeti" (althought he looked more like himself wearing white winter gear) and Tyrone in "Fly Girl" (which looks more like a Yeti than Pablo did).
- The Angry Beavers' Daggett was taught in the art of stealth by "Big Butt". He was really a big hairy Canadian.
- The Secret Saturdays' Fiskerton is described as a "cat-gorilla", but he looks like pure Bigfoot.
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force has an episode where Master Shake moves in with Dirtfoot, basically Bigfoot with one big eye and one big foot.
- In Venture Bros there is an episode where Brock goes camping, and meets the Bionic Man and his true love, Sasquatch. In a later episode he stays for a while at their house.
Other
