Chase Stops at Water

"The Bumble has one weakness, and I know it."

You're in a jungle or in the wilderness, and you're being chased by monsters or wild beasts like dinosaurs, wolves, or big cats. And somehow, by luck, you find a body of water, jump in it, and they stop chasing after you. Hopefully you don't encounter other dangers while you swim to safety, like crocodiles, strong currents, or realizing that your pursuers do know how to swim.

The pursuers may be afraid of water, or they may not know how to swim. In fantasy settings, supernatural pursuers such as ghosts or demons may not be able to touch water for magic-related reasons.

In video games, this can be justified with Super Drowning Skills at play for non-amphibious and non-aquatic enemies where the water acts as a deterrent to them and they cannot swim, preventing them from chasing you without drowning themselves in the process.

In Real Life, depending on the animal, it's possible they won't chase you into water. However, if you're being chased by hound dogs, bears, or other large mammals, they can swim. Moreover, with dogs, they may be able track you when you get back on land.

Related to Cannot Cross Running Water for supernatural creatures. Subtrope to Try and Follow.

---

Examples:

Films — Animation

• Justified in Big Hero 6, when the car chase ends when the heroes' car falls into the bay because Yokai assumes they must have died. It's only because of Baymax's flotation function that they are all able to get out safely.
• In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), Rudolph, Hermie, and Yukon Cornelius are being chased by the Abominable Snow Monster when they come to the edge of the water. Cornelius cuts an ice floe as a makeshift raft and floats out to sea, while the Abominable falls into the water.
  Yukon Cornelius: Observe the Bumble's one weakness; the Bumble sinks!
• Double subverted and lampshaded in Storks. While Tulip and Junior try to escape the wolf pack, they use a makeshift raft to try to get away... only for the wolves to form a wolf boat and a wolf submarine. The chase only ends when the duo go over a waterfall, and the wolves (logically) fail to form a wolf plane, falling into the water unable to catch up.
  Tulip: I didn't know wolves could form a submarine! I've never seen that before in nature shows.

Films — Live-Action

• Inverted in Back to the Future Part II when Marty tries to use the futuristic hoverboard over a body of water, only for his board to stall right in the middle. His pursuers reveal that hoverboards don't work on water without extra power (which, of course, they have). Thus the protaginist can't cross the water, while the antagonists can.
• In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Katniss and the other protagonists are being chased by wild monkeys, but stopped chasing them not because they were afraid of the beach, but because they were programmed not to go beyond a certain point. They were like the fog and the birds which couldn't pass a certain point via an invisible wall.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:
  • The first Nazgûl the Hobbits meet pursues them to the Bucklebury Ferry, but quickly reins in his horse when Frodo jumps onto the barge. This is a hint at their supernatural nature; as undead, they hate crossing rivers.
  • Later, Frodo (carried on a horse by Arwen) is again violently chased by Nazgûls, but because Arwen is able to reach the Bruinen River, the Nazgûls cannot pursue them further; Arwen then also magically summons the Bruinen River to literally wash the Nazgûls away.
• A variation is seen near the very end of The Lost World: Jurassic Park when Ludllow spots Malcolm and Sarah carrying the infant rex and chases them aboard InGen's cargo ship. When he spots Sarah and Malcolm running out of the ship's cargo hold, he resumes his chase and demands they tell him where the baby rex is. When they jump overboard and swim away from the ship, Ludllow decides to ignore them, and goes into the cargo hold where he finds the baby rex and where papa rex corners Ludllow and watches his offspring makes its first kill.
• This happens in Piranhaconda when Jack is being chased by both the Piranhacanda and a henchman with a gun, Jack jumps into a waterfall and swims to safety.
• Subverted in Predator: Dutch seemingly escapes the titular alien hunter when he falls into a river and down the Inevitable Waterfall... only for the creature to jump into the river right after him. Then double-subverted: the mud of the riverbanks covers Dutch, masking his body heat from the Predator's thermal vision, so the river helped him escape after all.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark: In the opening scene, Indiana Jones is Chased by Angry Natives who only stop their pursuit when he reaches the river, where he escapes in a seaplane.
• Resident Evil: The Final Chapter: Everyone jumps into a giant pit full of water to escape a pack of Cerberus, and the few that fall in with them can't swim, apparently because their decayed zombie bodies lack natural buoyancy. However, the rest of the pack just run around the edge of the pit and attack once they climb out the other side.
• Romancing the Stone: When Juan helps Joan and Jack escape from Zolo's troops in his truck, they run into a small river (very calm, but just big enough to be impassable by land vehicle). Juan activates "Lupe's escape," an automatic ramp that lets them jump to the other bank while the soldiers are stuck behind them.

Literature

• Subverted in "The Call of Cthulhu". When Johansen and Briden reach the ship, there is a Hope Spot where the narrator compares the Great Old One to Polyphemus cursing Odysseus' ship as it sails away. But then, he describes how Cthulhu was bolder than the old Cyclops of legend, as he enters the water to give pursuit to the fleeing boat, to the horror of its occupants.
• In God-Emperor of Dune, Siona and her rebel cadre are pursued by fierce creatures called "D-Wolves" that catch and kill almost everyone in the party. Siona alone escapes by swimming across a river; the D-Wolves stop at the water's edge, not because they cannot swim but because they were trained to go no further.
• In The Lord of the Rings, the Nazgûl are brought up short at the Ford of Bruinen when Frodo crosses it. He and the Witch-King yell at each other across the river, and when the Ringwraiths actually try to cross, they're swept away by the enchanted river. This scene is shown in most faithfully in the Ralph Bakshi movie adaptation, with Arwen getting to argue with the Ringwraiths in the Peter Jackson version.
• In Lord Ullin's Daughter by Thomas Campbell, Lord Ullin's daughter and her lover that she has eloped with are on the run from Lord Ullin and pay the ferryman to bring them across Loch na Keal despite the raging storm. Lord Ullin and his men, chasing them, are forced to stop on the shore, but it's All for Nothing because the storm is too strong and the ferry carrying the lovers capsizes and sinks.
• Midnight Sun (2020): Discussed. When hunting James, Edward notes that he will lose track of his quarry if he reaches water, being a vampire, James could emerge "five miles down the coast, or in Japan." Subverted, however, because James instead eludes Edward by stealing a small aeroplane.
• Occurs twice in Watership Down:
  • Shortly after leaving Sandalford Warren, the renegade party of rabbits venture through a wood to a small creek. Hazel wants to cross it, but the other rabbits are truculent. That is, until they hear a dog approaching. Then, every rabbit crosses the creek, leaving the dog to sniff around mindlessly on the other side.
  • Hazel and the refugees from Efrafa are fleeing the merciless forces of General Woundwort. They have come to a creek with a boat launch, and pile into the boat. Its mooring rope is old and mildewed, and it breaks just as Bigwig hops aboard. The General's rabbits are loathe to pursue, as the boat is drifting downstream about as fast as any rabbit can swim.

Live-Action TV

• Played with in The Borrowers. When George is running away from Mild-Eye, carrying a tin containing the Borrowers which Mild-Eye desperately wants, George suddenly finds his path blocked by a fast-flowing river. Mild-Eye tries to taunt him into handing over the tin, saying "that's no way out, it's cold and deep". George manages to slip behind him, and in his confusion, Mild-Eye falls into the river.
• Smallville: The first time Clark meets Bart Allen, he tries chasing him. Bart is surprised that there's actually someone in existence who can try. Bart loses Clark by running on water, which Clark is not fast enough to do.

Video Games

• Some ARK: Survival Evolved carnivores (such as Terror Bird) are hesitant about fighting in water, while others (such as Megalodons) obviously can't follow you onto land. A few, however (such as Sarcos and Baryonyxes), are more than willing to hunt you both on land and in water.
• Dungeon Crawl: If you play an aquatic or levitating character, it is often possible to escape land-bound monsters by heading for deep water.
• EverQuest II features an inversion: aquatic creatures are hard-coded to give up chasing you if you swim out of water onto land. Normal creatures will follow you into the water, though.
• Minecraft: Endermen take damage when coming in contact with water, and will be unable to follow the player if they go into a river, ocean, or any body of water, instead they will stand on the shore and stare at you.
• Pikmin: Insectoid enemies such as Sheargrubs drown in water and will stop chasing you when you get in the water. Unfortunately averted with your Pikmin, whom will also drown if they are not blue but will happily follow you to their watery graves.
• Super Mario Odyssey: If you throw Cappy at a dog on the beach in the Seaside Kingdom, it'll chase after you to return your hat. But if you enter the water, the dog lets go of your hat and gives up the chase.
• Valheim:
  • Subverted with just about every enemy, who will swim out after you if you try to swim away, and given how strongly the game discourages swimming, you'll likely drown before/just as they catch you.
  • Surtlings take enormous amounts of damage when in contact with water. They spawn naturally in the Swamp biome, which is filled with water. This leads to players digging out the ground beneath their spawn points so they die as soon as they spawn, leaving behind coal and cores.

Webcomics

• Justified in The Order of the Stick, as the heroes and their allies have the ability to Walk on Water thanks to magic, while orcs chasing them don't. Even if the orcs were inclined to swim after them, they would be too slow to catch up. Then Elan manages to diffuse the situation.

Western Animation

• Subverted and Played for Laughs in the Brandy & Mr. Whiskers episode "Class Dismissed". Brandy and Mr. Whiskers are chased by a hungry panther and decide to try and escape by crossing a river with a log and removing the log. To their surprise, the panther is a Super-Persistent Predator who immediately tries to swim across the river, but is luckily stopped when the river reveals to be the end of a waterfall that washes the panther away.
  Brandy: Okay, how glad am I that panthers can't swim... [sees panther swimming across river] Wow, he's good.
• Carmen Sandiego: Shadowsan's chase for the young escaping heroine in "Becoming Carmen Sandiego" ends after she uses a boat, forcing him to remain on the docks of V.I.L.E. Island. A later episode reveals that his halt was completely intentional.
• Subverted in the Futurama episode "The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz". Leela, Fry, and Bender flee a flock of bloodthirsty penguins. Bender breaks off a section of ice for them to escape on, but the penguins are obviously only momentarily delayed before diving into the water and continuing the chase.
  "Oh, right, they can swim. It's all coming back to me now."
• The Simpsons: In "Simpson Safari", when the Simpson clan is in Africa and being chased by a giant hippo, Homer insists that they get in a boat and go in the river because hippos are scared of water. Lisa points out that hippos aren't scared of water, but the hippo does stop and cower away when it gets close to the shore.
• Played for Laughs in the South Park episode "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers" when the boys, currently doing a Lord of the Rings roleplay, are being chased by fifth graders. Cartman suggests travelling over a shallow river since fifth graders can't stand water. Despite the other boys openly finding the theory stupid, they follow. The fifth graders actually do screech to a halt at the river, since they don't wanna get their bikes wet, much to the gang leader's chagrin.
• In one Teen Titans (2003) episode, the Titans and Larry end up encountering a vicious Notzilla over the course of their time in the bizarre dimension they've ended up in. The beast proceeds to chase them throughout the bizarrified Jump City until the heroes eventually reach a boat and start sailing across the sea between the city and the tower where Titans Tower is located, at which point the last we see of the Notzilla is the sight of it roaring in rage on the Jump City shore in a way indicating that it (rather ironically, considering the nature of the monster it's based upon) can't swim.
• Total Drama: In "Phobia Factor", Trent has to face his fear of mimes when he gets chased by one. He runs away, with the mime in hot pursuit, and jumps off the dock into the waters surrounding the island. The mime prepares to jump in too, but stops when Trent points out that his makeup will run. The mime walks away in defeat and Trent earns a point for his team for conquering the day's challenge.

Real Life

• Many animals will often head straight for water if they're being chased by predators, in the hopes that whatever is pursuing them will just leave them alone. Examples are:
  • Chevrotains, a kind of ungulate native to Africa and Asia. It's actually inspired mythology of the regions to depict them as Trickster figures by how they hide.
  • Kangaroos. However, there is also a history of them, typically adult males, drowning animals that follow them into the water.
  • This can fatally backfire if the water body contains hippos, which are so violently territorial they will kill (and sometimes even eat) anything they consider an intruder, be it cheetahs, lions, antelope, or humans. Only a rhino or elephant stands a chance against them... (not counting humans of course).
  • Capybara do this, but as their top predator is the jaguar, which is a major aversion of Cats Hate Water, the chase doesn't typically stop there. Though the capybara still have the advantage as they're faster and more agile swimmers than jaguars and can also hold their breath longer, so the chase usually does stop in the water, eventually.

---