In cartoons, however, whales are usually drawn as blue/gray square-headed toothy creatures with wide mouths, halfway between a sperm whale and a baleen whale. And, of course, they will have a very noticeable blowhole, more often that not shooting a veritable water fountain from their back. Sperm whales in Real Life have the square heads you often see on cartoon whales, but their eyes aren't so close to their mouth like the baleen whale, their blowhole is located on the left side of the snout instead of the top of the head, and they have narrow jaws with small lower jaws and lack upper teeth.
This is a common way to depict a Monster Whale or Space Whale. For other stock cartoon depictions that combine real things, see Cartoon Cheese, Cartoon Penguin, and Stock Beehive.
Some prehistoric whales did vaguely resemble this trope, at least in terms of having a blocky sperm whale-like head with big teeth on both jaws.
Although they are also cetaceans, dolphins, porpoises, belugas, and narwhals are spared of these stock depictions.
Examples:
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Advertising
- Fudgie the Whale
, an ice cream cake design from the Carvel's chain is a cartoony whale with a square head.
- An early-1970s variant of Cap'n Crunch cereal was "Vanilly Crunch". The mascot was Wilma the Whale.
- The mascot of the clothing brand Vineyard Vines is a pink cartoon whale, with a square head and giant smile.
Anime & Manga
- Downplayed with Laboon from One Piece, whose head is a little more rounded than usual but otherwise fits the image to a T.
Comic Books
- Little Lulu: In a comic story, Lulu goes to the beach with Alvin. The mischievous little boy flies with a parasol to the sea, landing on a small, black island and making a very worried Lulu swim towards the place. They decide to stay for a while, because there are adults still angry with Alvin's pranks, but Lulu can't fix the parasol on the island, which seems made of rubber. The "island" emerges in pain, revealing itself as a huge, black sperm whale (much alike Monstro), that swims desperately to the beach and gets stuck. Lulu and Alvin fall on the sand; she picks his hand and they run among the crowd that gathers to see the poor stuck animal.
- Waldo Whale from the Chilly Willy comic is a blue, blocky whale with teeth on both jaws.
Comic Strips
- The Far Side usually depicts whales as sperm whales with upper teeth.
Films — Animation
- Nimona: This is one of the titular character's forms, which she uses to crash through any opposition, including the floor.
- Pinocchio: Monstro the Whale fits this trope to a T. Its appearance combines features of both sperm whales and blue whales, such as a square head with two rows of teeth, a dorsal fin and throat grooves. Later portrayals simplify its body shape from cylindrical to drop-shaped.
- Samson and Sally: While an otherwise-savvy movie about the lives of sperm whales, the art style simplifies them into having rounded, teardrop-shaped bodies with no dorsal fins, and they can appear as a bluish black color, albino white, and some sort of black-and-white variant. While piebald whales can technically exist, it's rarely to neatly-organized, easily-repeatable patterns like the white mask-like facial markings over Sally's and Samson's pod leader's face.
- The sperm whales in Shark Tale are depicted with high bulbous foreheads and teeth in both the upper and lower jaws. The orcas suffer an even worse case of Artistic License but then that's to be expected in an animated film with fin-walking wrasse fish and mobster sharks.
Toys
- A Dot-to-Dot Kids' Game has a whale that, when the dots are connected, has a blocky shape.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem: Downplayed. During the ocean boat trip to the Ship Level, Ayane spots a whale with a gray thin body and three glowing eyes.
- Chipper & Sons Lumber Co.: A duo of whales, Smoothie and Phil, can be found playing chess underwater. One is grey and one is blue, both have large squarish heads.
- Dora The Explorer Dora Saves The Mermaids: The whale is blue and blocky.
- Freddi Fish: Fluke the Whale in The Case of The Hogfish Rustlers of Briny Gulch is a blue whale with a square head.
- Hungry Shark Evolution depicts Moby Dick as a toothy, square-headed whale.
- Kirby Super Star: Downplayed. Fatty Whale, a boss that first appears in The Great Cave Offensive, is a dark blue whale with baleen and a wide grin. However, he is compact and rounded, and lacks a square-shaped head.
- Super Mario Bros.: Whales are typically depicted as squared, blocky creatures with small tails growing from their trailing sides, such as in Super Mario Bros. 2, or as rounded, teardrop-shaped animals, such as Paper Mario 64. Regardless of the type, they're always blue or purple in color.
- Pokémon: the Wailord evolutionary family can be described as the cross between a blue whale and a zeppelin. Both Pokemon also possess baleens shaped like a single Tooth Strip.
Web Animation
- From Homestar Runner, there's the Drive-Thru Whale, mascot of the Blubbo's fast food chain, who resembles a blue sperm whale with large, flat teeth.
Websites
- Twitter / X's no-longer-used "Fail Whale" — a cartoon illustration attached, for no particular reason, to service-failure messages — was a stock cartoon whale, albeit a bit more rounded than many cartoon whales.
Western Animation
- Bubble Guppies: White Whale from "X Marks the Spot!" is a blocky whale with a toothy mouth.
- Family Guy: In "Peter Problems", the beached whale Peter tries to save with a forklift is gray, blocky, and toothy.
- Heckle and Jeckle, along with Dimwit Dog, encounter a monster whale in "Fishing By the Sea." The whale leaps out of the ocean, beats its chest and does a Tarzan yell.
- The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: Downplayed with Bubbie the Whale. She's a light blue whale with baleen features and a wide grin, but she is shaped more like a teardrop than a square.
- The Little Mermaid (1992): A whale modeled after Monstro appears in the episode "Resigned to It". Sebastian flosses the teeth of the massive behemoth by using a strand of seaweed. Because of its length, it ends up tickling his gums, causing him to suck in Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian, releasing them with a powerful sneeze.
- Whale from Magic Adventures of Mumfie is a grey-blue whale who is square-shaped.
- Moby Dick was a Saturday morning cartoon series from 1967 produced by Hanna-Barbera. Moby Dick is drawn as a huge, high-forehead white whale that befriends the scuba-diving boys Tom and Tub, and rescues them from the dangers of the deep Once an Episode.
- The Octonauts: In episodes where sperm whales make an appearance, they're somewhat depicted this way (high forehead, wide mouth) due to the cutesy, kid-friendly animation. To the show's credit, the teeth are only shown in the lower jaw, unlike other cartoon examples.
- PAW Patrol: The baby whale who appears in various episodes has a slightly square-shaped body with greyish-blue skin. The same applies to her mother, only she's completely gray and has bluish spots.
- Peg + Cat: In "The Allergy Problem", a whale accidentally swallows Peg, Cat, and Ramone. She looks like a solid gray, slightly blocky whale.
- Phineas and Ferb: Agent W is usually depicted realistically, but in his first appearance, he's depicted as a sperm whale with its eyes too close to its mouth.
- The baby whale of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Helter Shelter" was a simple circular shape with whale tail and two big eyes.
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The whale in "Scooby's Night With a Frozen Fright" is drawn as resembling a sperm whale, despite being kept in a marine park.
- The Simpsons: In "Simpsons Bible Stories", when Goliath II (Nelson Muntz in Bart's dream) spits out the skeleton of the whale that swallowed Jonah, the skull is square-shaped.
- SpongeBob SquarePants has Pearl, a gray whale with a square head. Justified since Word of God says she's a sperm whale.
