Roy: But the rooster was determined to get it back with the aid of his trained dinosaurs! Orson: Trained dinosaurs? Where did the trained dinosaurs come from? Roy: Same place all those ninjas came from. — U.S. Acres, "The Name Game"
Well, it's true. Dinosaurs are cool. No exceptions. (Well, almost none.)
Since dinosaurs actually existed in the past, some writers like to throw them into their stories. In many cases, this makes no sense at all, but when dinosaurs show up, we're generally in the realm of awesome for the sake of awesome. Generally, the dinosaurs seen will be restricted to a few well-known types.
The essence of this trope is the presence of dinosaurs which are not ultimately critical to the plot. If the story would be essentially the same without dinosaurs, it's an example. On the other hand, if dinosaurs are integral to the premise, it's not an example.
Note that just because a series provides a reason for there to be dinosaurs does not mean it isn't an example of this trope. Sure, a dinosaur altmode might very well be a good idea for a Transformer, but the real reason for a dinosaur form is to appeal to young boys.
Despite the name of this trope, it can cover examples that are not technically dinosaurs. Other extinct reptiles, like pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, and dimetrodons would fall under this trope. And while it may be a stretch, since we don't have individual tropes for Everything is Better with Woolly Mammoths/Woolly Rhinos/Saber-tooth Cats/etc., these examples would get grouped here.
See also Dinosaurs Are Dragons and Somewhere, a Palaeontologist is Crying. Compare Dinosaur Media.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
The random and gratuitous dinosaurs are practically everywhere in the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z setting. "Fly home safely, and look out for rampaging dinosaurs!"
The hentai fantasy anime Dragon Knight 4: Wheel of Time has soldiers riding dinosaur-like creatures.
The Yu Gi Oh card game has a dinosaur type, the number of dinos expanded by Tyranno Kenzan in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. Dinosaur Ryuuzaki (Rex Raptor) uses a dinosaur-themed deck in the anime.
The Five Star Stories has dinosaurs on a few of the planets, which are inexplicably identical to various species that once roamed the Earth. The level of dinosaurs a planet has is actually a pretty good way to measure its age. The young planet Juno has quite a few, although they're now threatened by humans and other introduced mammal species; the older Delta Belune also has dinosaurs, but they're small and birdlike; Kallamity, supposedly the oldest inhabitable planet, doesn't seem to have any dinos at all.
In Steel Ball Run, Diego Brando becomes a Wereraptor after he gains a stand ability.
Dinosaur King isn't a strict example as it's focused completely on dinosaurs, not just throwing them in for Rule Of Cool. But consider this: In Japan it was preceded by an insect-battling game called Mushi King. Then the designers sat down to plan a spinoff and asked themselves "What's better than insects?" before concluding that Everything's Better with Dinosaurs.
Getter Robo. Just... Getter Robo. If there's room for a dinosaur at any given time, then they will be there. And it will be awesome.
Dinosaur mecha piloted by dinosaurs. YEAAAAAH
The School Festival arc in Mahou Sensei Negima! has the engineering club construct a robotic T. rex because it would make the festival parades that much more awesome. This fooled The Hero at first since it was so life-like. They occasionally go berserk (though no one is ever hurt), giving the author the opportunity to have the lead heroine slice off its head with her BFSsince it was a robot.
In Law of Ueki Plus the main characters ride into the Big Bad 's lair on aTyrannosaurus rex, destroying a tower and defeating a bunch of guards all in one fell swoop.
The island of Little Garden, which is populated by Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
Comics
In a classic example, DC did a good deal of war comics in the 60s. One was called "The War that Time Forgot". It was World War II... but there was an island full of giant apes, military test robots, an elite military unit called "The Suicide Squad" (related to the later DC group), circus acrobats, and, of course, dinosaurs.
Calvin and Hobbes gives us Tyrannosaurs in F-14s, as you can see on this page.
Gold Digger has a race of technologically advanced dinosaurs who serve as both a major source of archaeological finds for the scientists in the cast to dig up and the cause of a whole lot of bad events in ages past. They also made two dinosaur-esque races via genetic engineering, the Amonians and the Dragons, who both have regular characters in the cast.
Marvel 1602 had little dinosaurs running around Europe, including at least one seeming to be Carlos Javier's pet. Not to mention that the standard big dinos can be found in North America.
A Golden Age comic (1946's "Batman" #35) shows the original origin of the T. Rex trophy: a "souvenir" from an adventure Batman and Robin had on "Dinosaur Island," a Jurassic Park-style theme park with robotic dinosaurs (versus genetically-engineered ones).
Two Thousand AD had Flesh, a story about future cowboys going back in time and killing dinosaurs for their meat, which was then exported back to their own time. This was used to provide STOMPY DINOSAUR ACTION crossovers into both Judge Dredd and ABC Warriors. In the case of the latter, dinosaurs ended up on a terraformed dystopian Mars.
Major Bummer gave us Tyrannosaurus Reich. Can't believe that got a mention in the other wiki before getting here.
Dinosaur Bop / Wanda et les dinosaures (Wanda and the dinosaurs) is set in a comical (with realist drawings) post-apocalyptic world were humanity regressed at prehistoric age (but more like "American sixties in a prehistoric setting"). For no reason, dinosaurs are here anew, and are used as pets, food or... cars (but T. rex is still a predator and wreck poor Eddy's car).
The title character of Sláine has gone up against dinosaurs animated from amber.
Jason Fox has a major dinosaur obsession. He once sent an electronic message to the White House saying "increase dinosaur DNA research" over and over again.
The Tar Pits in Sin City feature dinosaur statues. Frank Miller said he put them there as an excuse to draw dinosaurs.
In All-Star Superman. the Subterranosaur are descendants of dinosaurs who escaped extinction by digging their way to the center of the Earth. Their leader is the Dino-Czar.
The villain in Neil Gaiman's Mr Hero: The Newmatic Man is Henry Phage, an immortal velociraptor at the head of a multidimensional corporation whose flagship product is the corruption of souls.
Xenozoic Tales features lots of dinosaurs. after an environmental apocalypse drove humanity into underground bunkers, humanity returns to the surface to find dinosaurs along with species from all prehistoric eras roaming around. The series came to be associated with the name "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs", just to make sure people understood the coolness.
And a non-mutated Gorosaurus in King Kong Escapes.
The 1951 film Two Lost Worlds is a Cowboy/Australian Pirate/Dinosaur movie (). It fits this trope well because the only dinosaurs are some stock footage from a previous dinosaur movie that menace some people the pirates maroon on an island. They could have easily been left out, or replaced with more normal dangerous animals.
The Ice Age films are generally accurate in depicting only animals which lived during the Ice Age, or at least after the dinosaurs died out. Guess, then, what the third film featured. Go on.
In D-War (a film very much driven by the Rule of Cool), the evil Buraki commands an evil army of dark warriors that ride big dinosaurs and fire barrages of fireballs.
Meet the Robinsons stars mind-controlled T. rex brought back from the past with a flying time machine by a bowler-hat-less bowler hat wearing guy surely deserves mention here.
The Star Wars 20th anniversary re-release inserts CGI beasts which vaguely resemble dinosaurs into various scenes in the movie, mostly in Mos Eisley.
This Time article on lessons from the 2009 Summer Movies shows that despite the success of the second Night at the Museum and Ice Age 3 (it says Up features dinosaurs - and it does have a giant bird), two other films with dinos, Land of the Lost and Year One, bombed.
Probably not a great example, but the 'Time Masheen' scene of Idiocracy, where World War II was depicted by two T-rexes fighting, one wearing an American flag, one wearing a Swastika.
Theodore Rex is quite possibly one of the few example that makes this trope worse then it should be.
An upcoming, untitled Pixar film will tell what would it be like if the astroid miss Earth, with dinosaurs and humans living together, even being able to communicate with humans.
In the Film of the BookJurassic Park, John Hammond decides to make a nature park of dinosaurs because kids love dinosaurs and he has the finances to bring these wonderful creatures to life for the enjoyment of everyone. In the novel he's an egomaniac that just wants to make tons of money from his dinosaur park.
The Fighting Fantasy gamebook Island of the Lizard King involved the reader trying to assassinate the king of a race of lizardmen. For no particular reason, one of said lizardmen is seen riding a Styracosaurus at one point.
Oh, what the hell: Necromancy practiced on human remains is forbidden on pain of death for wizards, but Harry needs a source of necromantic energy to avoid getting killed by the Negative Space Wedgie the bad guys are trying to claim for awesome godlike power. It's been previously established that animal remains leave thinner "psychic footprints" than human remains, but that the longer a thing's dead, the more powerful it is when it's finally raised. Harry puts two and two and two together and necromantically animates "Sue," the mostly-complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton at the Field Museum of Natural History. That's right, Zombie T. rex!
Actually it does get cooler when you remember the only thing holding the T. rex together is Harry's buddy and his one-man polka suit. Polka will never die!
He also does it in Codex Alera: turns out that aside from picking up hapless romans, Zergexpies, and elves, Alara also grabbed a few giant ground sloths and terror birds in it's day. They're bond creatures with the elves.
Arguably, Jules Verne's classic novel Journey to the Center of the Earth is an example of this trope. Most of the book is about really ambitious spelunking, the adventurers just happen to run into a few surviving prehistoric beasts in one section of caves. It makes that part of the book more exciting, but wasn't completely necessary to the plot. Of course none of the creature they meet are technically members of the superorder Dinosauria, they were mostly icthysaurs, plesiosaurs, and crocodilians. That makes this trope Older Than Radio.
Eric Garcia's series of noirish mysteries (starting with Anonymous Rex), which feature dinosaurs living in modern-day America, disguised as humans.
The recent science fiction story "Rejiggering the Thingamajig", published in Analog, stars an alien sentient T. Rex Buddihst. And it's awesome.
In the epic children's book Dinosaur vs. Bedtime, the titular dinosaur engages in ferocious battle with all manner of opponents. When faced with the likes of a pile of leaves, a bowl of spaghetti or talking grownups, DINOSAUR WINS! ROAR! But Dinosaur still has to face his greatest challenge: Dinosaur vs. Bedtime! Bedtime wins.
Steve Alten's Meg novels do this. The first scene of the first book, has a Tyrannosaurus get eaten by a Megalodon (giant presumed relative to the Great White Shark) whilst attempting to chase down Hadrosaurs in the shallow sea. Nevermind that Megalodon evolved almost 50 million years after the Dinosaurs went extinct.
Aleksandar iljak's (Croatian SF writer) story "Opal eyes" ("Oči boje opala") features a Wild west setting in a world where dinosaurs roam the plains. Also, the main character is a lesbian vampire gunslinger.
The Icemark Chronicles's third book has the enemy Basilea use 'Tri-Horns' as cavalry. Three guesses as to what they are.
Far-Seer is basically the story of Galileo if he was a T-Rex. It is indeed as awesome as it sounds.
The world in which the fantasy novel Ten-Ghost takes place has domesticated dinosaurs everywhere, and the less that domesticated variety prowling the wilderness, for seemingly no reason other than to have them.
Live Action TV
Primeval was advertised as being about dinosaurs despite none appearing in the first series. Presumablyhey thought saying it was about giant centipedes, dodos and flying lizards wouldn't draw in as many viewers.
What if Barney was green, female, Australian, much less obnoxious and actually likeable by people over 6? You'd have Dorothy the Dinosaur, one of the extended cast members of The Wiggles.
Top Gear recently had a car review that, for no apparent reason, incorporated dinosaurs into the usual shots of Clarkson driving the car, including one where he is briefly pursued by a tyrannosaurus. It's actually very well done for a series that doesn't really use special effects very much.
In the Doctor Who serial Invasion of the Dinosaurs*
The full title wasn't given until the second part, so to avoid spoiling the surprise
, London is under martial law in response to the dinosaurs that have been mysteriously appearing there, brought by a conspiracy, using time travel technology.
Torchwood had a chocolate-loving pterosaur as the team pet. Why not?
iCarly. Yeah. The episode where Carly almost moves to Yakima, where Spencer says to the granddad: "These are all the vitamins she needs to take. I only give her the ones shaped like dinosaurs." "...Why?" "...Dinosaurs are cool."
DANGER 5 revolves around the eponymous team's efforts to stop Hitler and the Nazis from taking all of Europe. Given the nature of the show, this involves facing various oddities including bullet-proof women and Nazi-controlled dinosaurs.
The Arms and Equipment Guide list several of them as possible mounts, and gives several examples on how to use them, like a Dwarven pike squad on the back of a triceratops.
Duplicated in Eberron, where Halflings use some of the smaller dinosaurs as mounts.
They can be found in 4th Edition as Behemoths and Drakes, and given Cadillacs and Dinosaurs style names—Macetail, Bloodspike, et cetera—apparently because while dinosaurs are cool, sciencyish names aren't fantasyish enough.
In 3rd and 3.5, you could play as dinosaur inspired player races called saurials.
They made a miniature of a Fiendish T-Rex. As if a T-rex wasn't enough, they slapped the Fiendish template on it.
Exalted, being a setting whose content is decided entirely by Rule Of Cool and Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot, has gigantic "Tyrant Lizards" that look remarkably like T. rex'es. Presumably due to Tyrannosaurus being Latin for "Tyrant Lizard". It also has the Dragon Kings, which are roughly human-sized sentient dinosaurs who wear armor, can learn to breathe fire, and have enormous crystal clubs with laser blades to hit you with if you piss them off.
Warhammer Fantasy's Lizardmen are a dinosaur race, their basic troops being "Saurus" and them using "Stegadons" and "Carnosaurs" as mounts and war engines. There are also "Cold Ones," Velociraptor-like things used by the Lizardmen and Dark Elves for cavalry. The beasts eat everything, so the Dark Elves cover themselves in poison to fool the lizards.
The Cold Ones are mentioned (literally or metaphorically) to be dragon-kin...the ones the Dark Elves use also are subterranean, can live in the cold climate of the Dark Elves' territory, and, IIRC, sweat poisonous goo, which might make them more of a freaky lizard-horse than a dinosaur.
A lot of Death Worlds in Warhammer 40000 are covered in dinosaur-esque creatures, and the Tyranids themselves are also somewhat dinosaur-y, at least in terms of teeth - the Termagaunts, especially, look like an odd cross between Armadillos, Zerg Hydralisks and Velociraptors.
It is worth noting that the Zerg Hydralisks (from Starcraft}) are probably inspired by Termagaunts (not the other way around). Meanwhile, Termagaunts look like a cross between Alien Xenomorphs and bugs from Starship Troopers.
Eldar Exodites dwell on lush, primeval worlds inhabited by saurian "dragons," which they joust on with laser lances.
Possibly explained in older literature. Death Worlds were likely worlds seeded by the mysterious Old Ones in the time before the Eldar started to record their history. Since the Lizardmen of Warhammer Fantasy were servants of the Old Ones, it's likely that worlds they settled would have dinosaur-like creatures 'imported' to those worlds.
Werewolf The Apocalypse has the Mokole, which are weredinosaurs. Technically, they're supposed to be werecrocodiles, but since they serve as Gaia's Memory, their battle form can include body parts of any reptile from Earth's history.
That's only if you don't count the velociraptors, allosauruses and other made up fantasy dinosaurs in the game.
In Pathfinder, druids can take dinosaurs as animal companions, as can clerics with the Saurian domain. Cavaliers can also ride dinosaurs if they choose a beastrider archetype, and there's even a special druid archetype called "Saurian Shaman" which is basically a mechanical version of this, They do anything related to dinosaurs better than the same non-dinosaur-related actions (such as summoning, wild empathy, and wild shape).
Theme Parks
Ellen's Energy Adventure at EPCOT, which is about power sources, contains an extended sequence involving dinosaurs. This in itself was based on the Primevil World diorama at the Disneyland Railroad.
LEGO's Adventurers line couldn't pass up the chance to include a sub-line that brought its characters to a Lost World, where they had to stop the bad guys from capturing a prehistoric Anachronism Stew. The dinosaur figures were the standardTyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops and Stegosaurus. Many sets came with a "Pteranodon" figure as well, though that particular type of pterosaur may have actually been Geosternbergia.
Released around the same time was a line of easily buildable and reconfigurable dinosaur sets, simply titled Dinosaurs. Each model could be rebuilt into various other prehistoric animals with their spare parts, though these "extra models" were often too inaccurate for comfort.
The later action-oriented Dino2010/Dino Attack lines. Had mutated prehistoric critters that bore a very faint resemblance to their real-life counterparts, and although both lines were essentially the same, there were slight differences between the European and US releases: in the European Dino2010, the protagonists merely wanted to contain the beasts; while their US counterparts came equipped with guns instead of capturing equipment.
BIONICLE very nearly averted this trope. Rumors say they originally intended to introduce cybernetic dinosaurs, but that set line got canceled. However the dinosaurs themselves eventually ended up in official canon, and Word Of God says that a released model (Skirmix, a rock steed) was actually a close relative to these cyber-dinos.
The Bahrag, queens of Bohrok, look a lot like robotic theropods.
Then, there's LEGO's new venture into prehistoric themes: Dino, which features a similar approach as the above described Adventurers line: people packing serious gear going after dinosaurs. The dino figures themselves are without doubt the best LEGO has ever made, though unfortunately, these are stillJurassic Park-inspired, '80s or '90s-styled reptilian beasts.
As mentioned, quite a few Transformers have dinosaur altmodes. The Dinobots were some of the fans' favorites, and of course Grimlock became a classic nearly on par with Optimus Prime and Megatron.
Megatron himself got a dinosaur alt-mode in Beast Wars.
And who could ever forget Dinobot? Or his arguments with his rodent alter-ego? His greatest asset? Being a 'raptor with laser-firingeyes.
In the video game Transformers: War for Cybertron, Trypticon still has his Tyrannosaurus body design despite the game being set at the beginning of The Great War, millions of years before the Transformers knew about Earth and dinosaurs. Truly the awesomeness of dinosaurs transcends space and time.
Fall of Cybertron has the Dinobots making an appearance with their dino-modes.
Final Fantasy VI had a few dinosaurs as random encounters. It also has Dinosaur Island, a place which does not provide any plot or gameplay bonuses, but has a lot of tough fights which are good for levelling up.
Dragon Quest has the recurring Hackasaurus (or Battle Rex), an axe-wielding, fire-breathing tyrannosaurus. Dragon Quest VI, in particular, has Lizzie the Hackasaurus, whom you can get to join your team in a special encounter; in the DS remake, she's the only non-Slime you can recruit.
Despite taking place in the modern day, Dead or Alive 4 has an area populated entirely by dinosaurs.
Command & Conquer: The Covert Ops had a secret mini-campaign which involved dinosaurs, both fighting them and fighting as them.
Also don't forget that in Red Alert 2's expansion Yuri's Revenge, the first Soviet mission deals with time travel and you're accidentally sent back to the dinosaur period to fight off hordes of T. rexes. This of course includes the fate of the game's antagonist Yuri in the same campaign who after stealing the time machine from the Soviets tries to use it to "command and conquer" the world and all its history. Unfortunately for Yuri, the Soviets still had the command codes for the time machine and depleted all of its energy reserves to send Yuri back to the dinosaur era while he was gloating. Then Yuri lets off a Big "NO!" as a T. rex smashes through the time machine to devour him.
The first Tomb Raider game had dinosaurs and a T. rex as enemies for no particular reason other than Rule Of Cool, though an FMV later in the game implied that they were created by the Scion. The dinosaurs returned without explanation in Tomb Raider 3.
Tomb Raider 2 and its Gaiden GameGolden Mask both feature secret, difficult-to-reach battles with more T. rexes, the sole reason being that they were considered the coolest part of the first game.
Turok would just be another FPS if it didn't pit you against dinosaurs.
World of Warcraft has Raptors as fairly common animals (and mount for trolls), and gigantic T. rexes, called Devilsaurs, as a rarer sort. To be precise, they only appear in a few areas (Un'Goro Crater, where there are only about five of them at any given time; The Netherstorm, where a single Devilsaur rules over an eco-dome filled with raptors; Drak'Tharon Keep, with the optional boss King Dred; and Sholazar Basin, home of the rare-spawn King Krush). For being such enormous beasts they move like ninjas, and many players have had their adventure cut short by a sneak attack.
With the latest patch, Beast Mastery Hunters can tame one of these giants (although it inexplicably shrinks to a more manageable size in the progess). It's undoubtedly the coolest of the exotic class pets (although that isn't saying much when the competition consists out of prime choices like bugs and worms).
There are also Dragonspawn, bascially flightless dragons.
Guild Wars introduces a dinosaur-rich jungle in its Eye of the North expansion. Being a fantasy game, it includes feathered Raptor Assasins, Armor-plated ceratopsians with shoulder-horns, Tyrannosaurs, therapods with multiple heads and tails, and other bizarre reptiles.
The Super Mario Bros. series of games already had Bowser as some sort of dragon-dinosaur-turtle... thing, and then in Super Mario World along came Yoshi and his friends....
Not to mention the cute bruiser herself, Birdo.
Pokémon uses several dinosaur and related species-themed Mons over the years: Lapras (Plesiosaur), Aerodactyl (Pterosaur), Tyranitar (vaguely T.Rex-ish), Meganium (Diplodocus or other sauropods)), Groudon (also vaguely T.rex-ish), Torterra (an ankylosaur crossed with a tortoise), Cranidos/Rampardos (Pachycephalosaurs, not T. rex), Shieldon/Bastiodon (Triceratops or other ceratopses), Rhyperior (an ankylosaur crossed with a rhino), and Archen and Archeops (Archaeopteryx).
Oddly, most prehistoric Pokemon are part-Rock types, at least the ones that have to be reanimated from fossils. Even Aerodactyl, a pterosaur made of rock.
Now joined by Archen and Archeops, a basal bird/flying deinonychosaur Pokemon.
Another Source Mod, Jailbreak, has this as part of the premise: It's DinosaursvsRobots.
The Monster Hunter series features raptors as mooks. With the sequels and updates, you are getting a lot of dinosaurs (that happen to be changed slightly) that stand out. There may be odd hybrids and creatures that are outright dragons but the sheer number of dinos in the series is definitely worth looking through. That and the giant T-rex that Monster Hunter Tri introduces to you all.
Dwarf Fortress sends goblins after you. Survive long enough, and they come mounted on velociraptors (known in-game as Beak Dogs).
Chrono Trigger's dinos actually appear in 65 million BC (along with people, oddly inverting that trope) as well as in a 600 AD bonus dungeon (where millions of years of underground living have made them tough as nails).
Fur Fighters had the characters discover a whole advanced society of Dinosaurs living under the surface of the planet. The plotline had something about the Big Bad stealing the advanced technology and selling it for cash but it didn't really work out. Oh, and the heroes were on a popular children's TV show for some reason.
The Krogan from Mass Effect are vaguely dinosaur-like. The first Krogan you recruit as a party member is even named "Wrex."
In Mass Effect 3 you can do a Side Quest that provides an alien dinosaur's skull to some scientists to clone for the Krogans to ride into battle. Awesome.
Champions Online, being inspired by nearly every generation of comic books ever, has Monster Island - the western section of Monster Island is covered with raptor-sized "Teleiosaurus hatchlings" of various kinds, and the island is also home to the ginormous (30-40' tall) Teleiosaurus, a dinosaur egg several stories tall, and Mega-Terak - a ROBOT dinosaur.
Might have ended up that way but the story included a mustachioed T-Rex in a business suit who was so good at diplomacy that the writer had to protect us from his words lest we weep for joy, then sink into despair over our own hideousness and take our own lives as we rightly should.
Diesel Sweetiesposits that there are two types of people in the world: those who would travel back in time to get drunk with pirates, and those that would go back to see what color the dinosaurs really were.
In Irregular Webcomic!, the President of the United States is an Allosaurus, for no readily explained reason. (Apart from the fact that he's insanely popular.)
Dragon Cave includes spotted dinosaur eggs- dinosaurs apparently being, in the absence of the former Yoshis, the second best choice, since no lawyer can complain about real-life creatures. The end results are very chubby, cheerful-looking cartoonish Gentle Giants that wear shoes. Of course, this site presumably being set in medieval times with quite lax witchcraft-prosecuting policies, this is the least of their problems.
One of Yotam Perel's cartoons involved a man buying his wife a bouquet.
One of the most famous stories posted on the Current Events social board on GameFAQs is the Raptor Story. It starts off as an allegedly true, real-time first-person account by a poster who claims to hear his sister and her friends playing spin the bottle. However, when the author and his sister are about to kiss, the sister and her friends are inexplicably revealed to be velociraptors. In the biggest Unexpected Genre Change ever, the story then follows the author as he attempts to flee the dinosaur-filled city and defeat the person responsible for the dinosaurs...Barack Obama.
Lee in Source Fed loves dinosaurs. This little fact turned into a Running Gag of epic proportions.
Western Animation
Garfield and Friends used dinosaurs mostly to parody this trope, specially in "Us Acres" (the quote above comes from an episode where Orson started telling "Rumpelstiltskin" to the children, adding ninjas and such for them to keep interested, but Wade and Roy started changing the story to work in their respective characters' favors).
Dinosaucers. Perhaps most noteworthy in that both sides seemed to have a counterpart for each character, rather than each faction specializing in one particular type of dinosaur (Allosaurus/Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops/Styracosaurus, Apatosaurus/Brachiosaurus, Archaeopteryx/Pterodactyl, etc.)
Beast Boy in Teen Titans favours a T. Rex for sheer Awesome, but Impractical, because while it may look devastating, it doesn't fit under bridges, and it weighs too much for many floors to handle.
In Futurama: Bender's Game, Leela and Hermes are watching The Scary Door, this episode about a typical alien invasion being defeated by 'God's humblest of creatures'...The Tyrannosaurus Rex!
Leela: I can't believe Tivo suggested that piece of crap!
In one episode Fry sets out to enjoy the wonders of the year 3000, one being a T'Rex petting zoo. Pretty obvious what happens when he tries to feed it.
In an early episode of The Venture Brothers, Brock Samson, while in a Lotus-Eater Machine, and dreams that he is fighting flamethrower-wielding cowboys. Only, they're riding T. Rexes. Yet Brock, in his sheer awesomeness (and mainly because it's his dream) easily dispatches them.
Because sometimes just a guy in a mask isn't enough for Mystery Inc., the gang has faced dinosaurs (besides dragons, sea serpents, and the Loch Ness Monster) in What's New, Scooby-Doo? and more recently Scooby Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur.
