Fiendish Fish

"If you yell 'barracuda!', people are gonna go, 'huh? what?'. But if you yell 'shark!', we'll have a panic on our hands on the fourth of July."

— Mayor Vaughn, Jaws

When you think about dangerous fish, you would probably think sharks, or maybe piranha in river waters. But that's not to say other fish can't be threatening, creepy, or outright terrifying. For example, the goofy-looking catfish can grow to be absolutely humongous and can be more than strong enough to drown human adults if they so wish.

Understandably quite frequent in Under the Sea settings, where they can make quite the basic enemy to be faced, especially in video games. They may also be one of the hazards of an Eldritch Ocean Abyss, some of which may be alien enough to cross over into an Animalistic Abomination.

Super-Trope to:

• Painful Pointy Pufferfish
• Pike Peril
• Piranha Problem
• Psycho Electric Eel
• Sinister Stingrays
• Slippery as an Eel
• Threatening Shark

Examples of these should go on their respective pages.

See also Swordfish Sabre, which can be wielded by fish or man, and Sea Monster. Compare Feathered Fiend ("general" evil bird trope), Never Smile at a Crocodile, Devious Dolphins, Monstrous Seal, Monster Whale, Wily Walrus, Giant Enemy Crab, Sea Serpents and Tentacled Terror for scary non-fish aquatic animals.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• 3×3 Eyes: During the protagonists raid on the hideout of the Hyoma Clan beneath a biological research facility, an aquarium in the room suddenly breaks to release a ferocious giant scorpion fish who tries to assault Yakumo repeatedly, even leaping out of the shallow water. Yakumo manages to kill it with Tu Zhao, voicing his dislike for raw fish.
• Karakuri Circus: The cavern system near Kuroga Village has a giant underground lake that hosts the local god, a gigantic river fish who tries to attack Masaru while he makes his way out of the lake.
• Rave Master: Kawara of the Onigami gang uses an enormous, horned fish as his mount. The fish has sharp teeth and even tries to eat Haru in one bite.
• Toriko: While most of the aquatic threats are giant sharks, there are also some dangerous fish, especially in the waters of the Gourmet World. Area Six includes truly rare and dangerous exemplars, including a giant one similar to a pufferfish with an entire fortress (cannons included) on its body.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Fish are a distinct creature type in-game, and many grow huge and monstrous — the Devouring Deep, Dandân and Fleet Swallower are all good examples of this.
    "Catch good today. Start replacing crew tomorrow." Faysal al-Mousa, fisher captain, Flavor Text for Dandân.
  • While leviathans — some of the largest monsters in the seas — are a distinct creature type, some, such as Kiora's Dambreaker and the Stormtide Leviathan, resemble monstrous fish of immense size.

Comic Books

• Supergirl: In The Death of Luthor, Jerro tells Kara the story of a sea monster which attacked Atlantis long ago. Said monster looked like a Megalodon-sized cross between a catfish, an anglerfish and a dolphinfish.

Comic Strips

• Scary Gary: At one point Leopold prepares a "dose" of Carnivorous Offensive Venomous Insatiable Dragonfish to pour in the jar he keeps Travis (' living head) in.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami:
  • There are fish zombies, but they're small and unable to do more than flop, above water.
  • A very toothy, ugly deep sea fish is described:
    A tiny deep sea fish investigated the probe from up close, startling Ami by filling the screen with a set of fangs that even Rabixtrel would have envied.
• The Flight of the Alicorn: The rivers and swamps of the Impenetrable Lands teem with "jagugars", carnivorous fish three times a pony's length that will devour anything that falls into the water with them.
• Prehistoric Earth: Amongst the animals rescued for the titular park are the carnivorous prehistoric fish Hyneria and Dunkleosteus, all of which prove to be understandably dangerous creatures for the rescue team to deal with in their efforts at getting them brought to the park.
• Prehistoric Park Reimagined: Many of the larger carnivorous prehistoric fish encountered prove understandably dangerous animals over the course of the rescue team's (thankfully successful) efforts at rescuing them for the titular zoo. In particular, Drew is very nearly killed (or at least maimed) by a four member school of dunkleosteus, Leon very narrowly avoids getting his arm bitten off by an onychodus, and Alice is forced to very hurriedly flee from an incoming hungry eusthenodon that proceeds to very briefly try to continue chasing her, Drew, and Adrian on land before having to return to the water. And while the megapiranha, prehistoric lepisosteus, and several smaller prehistoric sharks prove not quite as immediately dangerous on their initial encounters, they are nonetheless creatures that are treated carefully by the rescue team and park staff.

Films — Animation

• Finding Nemo features the barracuda that ate Nemo's mother and all the other eggs, which unlike other marine animals is presented as a purely animalistic monster with no lines or anthropomorphic characteristics.
• Padak has a ZigZagged example in Tank 3's Fishes, some like Anago and the Master aren't nice nor cute-looking, but they're still shown as capable of talking with Padak.

Films — Live-Action

• Austin Powers: Played for Laughs. Dr. Evil asked his henchmen for a Shark Pool with Frickin' Laser Beams attached to their heads, but they had to settle for "ill-tempered mutant seabass". He gets his wish in later movies, however.
• Barracuda is a Jaws ripoff, released in 1978, featuring a far lesser-known species of predatory fish.
• Beneath features a rowboat full of teens that comes under assault from a gigantic and very hungry freshwater catfish.
• Devil Fish is another Jaws ripoff that replaces the shark with a nondescript mutant fish-cephalopod hybrid.
• In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Xenk the paladin's introductory scene has him retrieving a tabaxi kitten alive from the gullet of a tremendous fish and returning the child to its parent.
• For Those In Peril: The small fishing community has a legend that the devil once took the form of a huge red fish and swallowed up all the village's children. The protagonist becomes convinced that his brother, who was lost at sea, has been swallowed by this fish. He starts going on increasingly delusional and self-destructive forays into the ocean to hunt for it. In the end, he appears on the beach with his brother and the carcass of a colossal red fish.
• Frankenfish is a monster movie set in Louisiana about a group of oversized mutant snakeheads terrorizing a small village and fishing community in the bayou.
• King Kong (2005): In a deleted scene included in the extended cut, the rescue party are attacked by Piranhadon, a giant carnivorous fish living in the mangrove swamps of Skull Island. Basically a giant lungfish with teeth like a piranha.
• Leonard Part 6 features a stealth assassin fish.
• Life of Pi: During Pi's dream sequence, he imagines a hybrid of an anglerfish and a squid rising from the depths.
• The Phantom Menace: Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Jar Jar run into a series of huge aquatic predators on the oceans of Naboo, including a crab-fish hybrid known as an Opee See Killer, and a cave-dwellling Colo Claw Fish, both of which have More Teeth than the Osmond Family. However, they're food for the even larger Sando Aqua Monster.
• Snakehead Swamp is a Syfy Channel Original Movie that features mutant snakeheads as killer fish.

Literature

• Dark Gods: What the titular "Black Man with a Horn" is implied to be. "He" moves amongst groups of walking catfish, "he" leaves behind vaguely fin-shaped footprints, people tend to describe him as a "black man" (walking catfish have black skin) wearing a snorkel or a gasmask, implying some kind of kindship. One would think that "he" has a humanoid shape would make "him" a Fish Person, but the implication that "he" is really some kind of Puppeteer Parasite means that this (probably) isn't the case.
• Dido Twite: One of the books features nasty fish that eat anything that gets into the water.
• The Future is Wild describes the lurkfish, a massive gar-like swamp predator with frond-like growths for camouflage and the power to shock its prey into submission like an electric eel.
• Humanx Commonwealth: In For Love of Mother-Not, some of the kidnappers Flinx is pursuing over a huge lake on Moth are gobbled up — with their two-man watercraft — by a gargantuan fish called a penestral. Flinx's wilderness-savvy companion remarks that the fifteen-meter penestral, while good-sized for its kind, would rate as only a mid-range predator in the sea-sized lakes farther north: the real challenge there is fishing for oboweir, a species that eats penestrals.
• The Kane Chronicles: In The Red Pyramid, the inner part of the House of Life is surrounded by a moat filled with highly aggressive, meat-eating tigerfish.
• James Bond: Bond seems to keep running into barracudas that are out to get him in specific whenever his adventures bring him in contact in the ocean.
• Killer Species: Book 2 introduces the Muraecudas, a genetically-engineered hybrid of Moray eel, reef shark and barracuda, made for hunting the invasive lionfish that have been causing damage to the local reef ecosystem off the Florida coast. However, they're also dangerous to humans, sending at least one boy to the hospital after biting him.
• Lensman features the Fishes of the Greater Deep; an intelligent, technology-using species against which the amphibian Nevians, themselves humanity's adversary for the duration of the novel, are fighting an ongoing war. Costigan and his fellows tangle with them briefly, but mostly as a consequence of being caught in the middle.
• A Memoir by Lady Trent: The swamps of Mouleen are home to a species of predatory fish that Isabella labels "fangfish", which live in large schools, go into feeding frenzies at the smell of blood and can strip a grown human to the bone in minutes. In the end, it's revealed that these fish are in fact the infant form of the local dragon species.
• Redwall features several species of fish treated as dangerous due to their size relative to the Talking Animal characters. These are mostly pike and eels, although Doomwyte features a wels (a kind of catfish) living in an underground pool considered an oracle by Korvus Scurr and his snake advisor Sicariss. In truth, Sicariss only pretends that she can talk to the wels due to the fish constantly moving its mouth and rising near the surface after associating the crow's presence with food (as he regularly throws in small reptiles and amphibians). The wels then gets in a fight with an adder and loses.
• In We Dont Eat Our Classmates, a children's book, Walter the goldfish tries to eat Penelope the baby T. rex.

Live-Action TV

• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has the Wyrm from the Sundering Seas. Despite its name, it doesn't have anything serpentine in its nature, and is more an amalgamation of different species of fishes. Nevertheless, the Wyrm is a giant and aggressive sea creature which is infamous for its habit of attacking ships viciously.
• Prehistoric Planet Season 2 has a section in the episode "Oceans" featuring Xiphactinus, a fish the size of a modern great white with an appetite to match. They start off attacking a bait ball being harassed by a flock of Hesperonis before deciding the Hesperonis are better prey, and when the birds fail to satisfy they turn on and kill some of the weaker Xiphactinus.
• In River Monsters, Jeremy Wade tries to hunt down the aquatic creatures responsible for Real Life accidents, human deaths and/or legends around the globe. And you'll soon find out that many, many fish can be dangerous.
• Sea Monsters has Nigel exploring the seven most dangerous seas in history. Two of the species he encounters are giant killer fish, Dunkleosteus and Xiphactinus.
• Walking with Monsters features the giant carnivorous fish Hyneria, which is portrayed as a Prehistoric Monster in its quest to hunt down our amphibian ancestors. It's an apex predator which is large enough to eat sharks whole, and powerful enough to drag itself onto a beach in pursuit of prey like a killer whale.

Music

• Koronba: In "Kuromaguro ga Tonde Kuru", the singer (Koronba 4gou) is killed by flying bluefin tuna and the spikes of yellowfin tuna.

Tabletop Games

• The Dark Eye: Snapfish, also called brabacudas, are marine fish that can grow to seven feet of length and live in large schools. They're aggressive predators, and easily spurred into feeding frenzies by creatures falling into the water or by the smell of blood. Their flesh is toxic to boot, so they're not useful as food.
• Dungeons & Dragons features, among assorted water-dwelling monsters, oversized versions of common fishes (including eels, gars and pikes), as well as afancs (whale-sized fish capable of creating whirlpools by swimming in tight circles), territorial ramfish with curling horns and vermes (freshwater predators large enough to eat an ox whole).
• Exalted: The armored terror (that's the actual in-universe name) is a thirty-foot-long carnivorous fish covered in armor-like scales and provided with a beaklike pair of fangs easily capable of severing limbs. It normally hunts fish in shallow water, but it's perfectly happy to go after boats and people. Physically, it sounds a lot like an oversized Dunkleosteus.
• Middle-Earth Role Playing: The waters of the world are home to many dangerous, predatory fishes, such as Carnantor, huge and aggressive marine eels; tenacious pike capable of reaching seven feet in length; Sarnúmeni, freshwater predatory eels coated in venomous barbs; giant wels catfish known for attacking boats; and Red Jaws native to subterranean waters, which use bioluminescent markings to lure prey to devour in a frenzy of blood.
• Pathfinder:
  • Numerous giant versions of mundane fishes exist, including giant gars and amphibious swamp barracudas capable of pursuing their prey on land.
  • Warm, shallow seas are home to armored dunkleostei, which can rapidly open their mouths to suck prey into their shearing jaws.
  • Tizheruks are long-bodied freshwater fish up to fifteen feet long. Their flesh is almost entirely transparent, making them excellent ambush predators — odds are you won't see one until its jaws are already closing on you.
• Rifts: The air fish of Wormwood are monstrous, airborne and very aggressive fishes used as minions and attack dogs by the forces of the Unholy, which they serve willingly and eagerly.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay:
  • Reik eels are immense eels found in the Reik river that can reach ten feet in length. They're carnivorous, but only attack humans when their elvers are threatened. As Reik eel elvers are considered a delicacy and subjected to a lively fishing trade, such attacks end up being extremely common and entirely capable of ending the lives of overconfident fishermen.
  • In Bretonnia, the river Sannez is home to a large population of carnivorous fish with a taste for human meat and a tendency to devour anyone who falls into the water. The local humans, for their own, have a taste for carnivorous fish meat, and have developed a habit of using their own hands as lures — it's a highly effective method, as it goes, as long as you can spare a finger or five.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The Idoneth Deepkin are very fond of using deep sea creatures as either mounts or beasts of war. Special mention goes to the Kelpie-like Deepmares (used as mounts) and Brain Barnacles (used as ammunition to eat the brains of their enemies.)

Video Games

• In Balloon Fight, flying too close to the surface will attract the Balloon Fish, a monstrous fish that will gobble up anything that comes in its range.
• Bomberman 64: The boss of the Blue Resort stage is Leviathan, a giant purple fish who swims after the player's raft and attempts to crush him with an armored tentacle protruding from its forehead.
• Card City Nights: The card "Demon Fish"◊ depicts an evil-looking fish.
• Chantelise: They have Palette Swap versions of red, yellow, blue, and green, and appear in multiple places, mainly in the Aquan Ruins:
  • In the first area, the Wetlands, there's red and yellow fish in the water, that are part of the Kill Enemies to Open lock on the next area.
  • In the Silent Church, a fish about as long as Elise is tall, must be fought to get Silver Gauntlets from the treasure chest revealed after. The fish is revealed after breaking all the candles.
• Contra: Shattered Soldier has the Jinmengyo, a giant coelacanth-like alien monster with a humanoid face.
• Criminal Case: The Conspiracy features the Demon Fish, a Living Relic who survived for centuries inside an underground cistern until an earthquake brought them back to the surface, infesting the flood waters of the neighborhood of Maple Heights. Apart from their freaky appearance, the female Demon Fish are also extremely poisonous and, since they were considered an extinct species until recently, said poison has no cure until the police department manages to find one.
• Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze features several fishes, such as the Finleys, as enemies that damage the Kongs on contact.
• In Drawn to Life, the boss of the beach-world is a giant fish called the Angler King. Not only does it fly around at great speeds, have very sharp teeth, and very much wants to eat the player, it also has a spout on it's back it uses to create more evil fish. These fish resemble fish-bones and are made of shadow; they chase you throughout the fight, and are also common elsewhere in the water areas.
• Dwarf Fortress: In one update, an ill-thought out rule caused carp to become terrifying, almost indestructible monsters.^note The update made it so that any form of exercise increased a character's physical strength. The carp spent all their time swimming. Swimming counted as exercise.
• The Elder Scrolls: The aptly named slaughterfish are highly aggressive predators that can grow to six feet in length and will readily attack humans. They're extremely widespread, and their resistance to pollution means that they can be found in almost every body of water in the world — and they often hunt in groups, of course. At one point, Lake Rumare was home to such a large population of the things that swimming in it was tantamount to suicide.
• Eastern Exorcist has a Fish Demon monster larger than boats as a boss you fight on a bridge, who leaps in and out the water trying to chomp on you. It's invincible while attacking, but in it's attempt at pouncing the F Ish Demon occasionally strands itself on the bridge, allowing you a few hits. Repeat until it's dead.
• The Epic Battle Fantasy series has the Fishes, a family of fish-shaped robots which appear in the fourth and fifth games. They are found primarily in industrial areas, such as the Waste Disposal Plant and the Iron Fortress. EBF5 added a few additional quotes when first encountering them:
  NoLegs: *not sure if I can eat this type of fish*
  Lance, regarding Jet Fish: This is an older model. It was discontinued when engineers decided it was a bad idea to give robot fish machine guns. There's a funny story about that...
  Lance, regarding Steam Fish: Ah yes, the classic flying fish model. This was a very popular design back in the days of airships and steam power.
• EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist The mbenga that populate the rivers of the savanna stage are as ferocious as any other rampaging animal, given the frenzy effect that the bracelet is having on all the wildlife within range of it. Thankfully, they become docile and swim off after getting the sense knocked back into them.
• Far Cry 4 takes place in the Himalayan country of Kyrat, so you don't have to worry about getting attacked by sharks. Instead, the rivers are occupied by massive Goliath Tigerfish(also known as Demon Fish), which violently bite Ajay Ghale any time he comes near them, and can actually kill him unless he punches and stabs them off. The Tigerfish are so violent, they even made their way into Far Cry Primal (where they're addressed as "bitefish"), Far Cry 5 and Far Cry: New Dawn. And that's not even getting into the mugger crocodiles... Then again, Tigerfish are a purely African fish, so what they're doing in a Himalayan country is anyone's guess. A more accurate fish to place in Kyrat might have been the equally dangerous but actually Nepalese goonch catfish.
• In Feeding Frenzy, the ocean is basically a giant hellhole where every single fish that is bigger than you are wants you dead and in their bellies — not that different from Real Life oceans, mind you — and you yourself have to gobble hapless, smaller fishes to grow bigger than the rest.
• Frogger's Journey: The Forgotten Relic: The Leviathan is a giant fish living in the River that sends a huge rainstorm to Kabohti after Frogger unwittingly steals the Crest of Poseidon for Mohan. Frogger has to go defeat it in a boss fight in order to stop the storm.
• Kirby has the Blipper and their variations, one of the most common underwater enemies in the series. They're little more than fishes with diving goggles, and usually do harm Kirby on contact. There is also Fatty Puffer, a boss in Kirby's Return to Dream Land, which is a spikeless blowfish.
• The Legendary Starfy, being set mostly underwater, has several fish species acting as enemies.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask:
    • Gyorg, the boss of the Great Bay Temple, is a giant purple fish with a scary set of huge teeth. It is responsible for the murkiness and the dangerous warming of the Great Bay waters, threatening the local Zora population.
    • The Desbreko, a large skeletal fish that's effectively the King Mook of Skullfish and will hang on to Link and not let go for a while upon biting him.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: The waters of the Great Sea are overrun by Gyorgs (smaller specimens of the Majora's Mask boss), which have a tendency to charge at the King of Red Lions to knock Link down onto the waters and attack him more easily.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
    • Morpheel, the boss of the Lakebed Temple, is a disgusting mix of a cyclopean eel and a coelacanth with anemone-like tentacles around its maw to boot.
    • Skullfish are series-recurring enemies resembling skeletal fish with jaws bristling with sharp teeth. They're generally entirely skeletal besides the usual Glowing Eyelights of Undeath, but the ones in this game still have some sort of fleshy core inside their ribcages. They are, of course, highly aggressive.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Craniocs are large cetacean creatures with enlarged foreheads that aim to charge at Link. They have an X mark in said foreheads, indicating that it's their weak points (Link can perform a forward charge to attack them, but it consumes a large part of his Oxygen Meter so it's risky).
• Magical Fisher Agnes: The aquatic enemies include the Demon Fish, whose description states that "it just swims there... menacingly".
• Monster Hunter:
  • Monster Hunter (2004): The fish-like Piscine Wyvern, Plesioth, is a very aggressive monster that will bring you harm, be it on land with the hip checks (which have an inconsistent hitbox) or from water while it shoots water beams. Its fellow Piscine Wyverns Cephadrome, which inhabits the deserts, focuses on ambushing its enemies from the sandy underground.
  • Monster Hunter Frontier: The game and its updates and expansions feature several Piscine Wyverns, such as Lavasioth, Goruganosu and Aruganosu. The former one would make its main series debut in Freedom Unite.
  • Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): Most fish in the game are pleasant and friendly, including the ones you can fight rather than just fish. Not so much with the Sharqs and Catfish who will attack you on sight. And most definitely not the Delex, shark-like enemies that dwell in the sands and will become a major hindrance in both the Sandy Plains and the Great Desert (and subsequently in the Old Desert in the fourth generation).
  • Monster Hunter: World:
    • Jyuratodus is a Piscine Wyvern that dwells in swamps and attacks with mud, not unlike Barroth. The Iceborne expansion introduces Beotodus, which dwells in snowy mountains and attacks with snow. Both are also aggressive monsters that will attack you either on sight or with little provocation.
    • The Catfish make a return but are now known as Gajau and will jump out of the water to get you.
• Monster Sanctuary has Brawlish, a muscular, amphibious fish. According to the journal, there's a popular folktale about a man who caught a Brawlish that beat and bruised him, then destroyed his house when he tried to fry it.
• Ōkami has the Dead Fish, a Youkai that looks like a carp wearing a kimono. Unusually, they are found only on land, and are able to fly thanks to their huge fins. They are said to be the spirits of women who drowned themselves into the sea. There is also Whopper, a monstrous catfish that swallowed the reflection of the moon in Agata Forest and swallowed Kokari's dog Ume whole.
• Pokémon:
  • Gyarados is a ferocious, long-bodied fish so powerful that it can level cities, and is renowned for its extremely bad temper. Gold/Silver/Crystal features a Red Gyarados (most are blue) rampaging in the aptly-named Lake of Rage. In the game, a red Gyarardos evolves from a golden Magikarp.
  • Whiscash are known for being intensely territorial catfish Pokémon that can cause earthquakes stretching over a three mile radius, and are known to eat just about anything.
  • Gorebyss don't look particularly ferocious, but they are known for being cruel Pokémon who hunt by stabbing their prey with their long mouths and sucking out their bodily fluids.
  • Wishiwashi are, individually, very small and weak fish. However, they have the ability to school together in sync to form a giant, powerful fish-like monster still visibly composed of individual fishes. School Form Wishiwashi are very powerful, enough so to be known as the Demon of the Sea. Even Gyarados flee from these things!
  • Basculin are bass-like fish with powerful jaws and violent attitudes; water bodies where they settle are quickly emptied of other living things, and they're known as "the thugs of the lake". They also fight incessantly among each other, as red-striped and blue-striped Basculin detest one another.
  • Arrokuda and Barraskewda from Pokémon Sword and Shield are barracuda-like fish who, when hungry, will react violently to every movement in their vicinity. Arrokuda will bite anything that resembles food, while Barraskewda will just propel itself with its tail and try to pierce its prey.
  • Believe it or not, the fossil Pokemon Dracovish and Arctovish. They are chimeras with a cartoon Dunkleosteus head on a stegosaur and plesiosaur body respectively, and their powerful signature move Fishious Rend, which doubles in power if they go first or if the opponent switches, reflects the real-life Dunkleosteus's notorious bite force. Dracovish even gets the Strong Jaw ability to make its Fishious Rend even more powerful, to the point of competitive notoriety.
  • Chi-Yu is a Legendary Pokémon that takes the form of a small goldfish made out of lava with jade beads surrounding its eyes. Don't let its adorable appearance fool you as it is in fact an ancient evil born out of raw envy that melts everything it can come across into lava. It is also an incredibly strong Pokémon with a monstrous Special Attack further boosted by its ability that reduces the Special Defense of all the surrounding Pokémon.
• Splatoon: Introduced in Splatoon 2, the co-op Salmon Run mode is all about fighting through wave after wave of dangerous Salmonids to protect Inkopolis/Splatsville and collect golden Power Eggs.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Cheep Cheeps are the basic underwater enemies throughout the franchise, looking like round red fishes with feathered pectoral fins and a yellow mowhawk-like dorsal fins.. They have many, many subspecies and some individuals acted as bosses in the series, like Cheepskipper in New Super Mario Bros. and the Big Cheep Cheep in Paper Mario: Sticker Star.
  • Mario Party 10: The first boss minigame of Whimsical Waters is Mega Cheep Chomp's Shell Shock, which features a giant Cheep Chomp. The Cheep Chomp will face a player selected at random, and each player is given three green Koopa shells to fire at the Cheep Chomp to damage it within a time limit. However, every time the Cheep Chomp is hit, it will turn clockwise to face the next player, and once time runs out, whichever player it is facing will get attacked and lose points, so players must choose if they want to save their shells so as to avoid being the unlucky victim. After this, the cycle repeats until the Cheep Chomp's health is reduced to zero.
• In Pronty, almost all the enemies and a large number of bosses are fish-themed, and looks absolutely deformed with the large amounts of bionic implants embedded all over their flesh. Including the Rakshaha, Lamina, Chattertooth (both Silver and Gold), Mother Whale, and the like.
• Sunless Sea, in addition to the expected Threatening Sharks, has "regular" fish baddies, namely the Beloved and the Behemoustache. Beloved are rather inoffensive flatfishes that only attack as retaliation, and the Behemoustache are slightly more aggressive, looking like giant fishes with huge teeth and mostly an amazing looking moustache that entrances everyone who looks at it because of its sheer magnificence.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • The Balloon Fish from Balloon Fight appears in the Summit stage in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (despite it being based on Ice Climber), swallowing every fighter that stays in the water for too long and instantly KOing them.
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl has the Feyesh, an enemy in The Subspace Emissary mode that is a goldfish with a giant, single eye for a head and electric tentacles.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: There are some fish-like enemies that seem to be floating in the air, like Gully.
• Zoo Tycoon: In Zoo Tycoon 2: Marine Mania, female blue marlin are large and fierce enough to pose a threat to baby pilot whales and leatherback turtles.

Webcomics

• Phantomarine: Cheth, pre-Fracture. There's a reason why they call him the Bonefish.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Yokoka wrestles a giant koi-catfish in a river (between pages, though it was later depicted in a Q&A strip), which is then cooked and eaten by the party.

Western Animation

• In Central Park, Season 1 "A Fish Called Snakehead", Owen sings "Hell-Fish" to his family to explain what a snakehead is and how it can ruin the ecosystem of the lake by eating the other species there.
• The Loud House: Discussed "A Novel Idea" when Lincoln pretends the fish in the dentist's office is a savage beast to pass the time.
• My Goldfish is Evil has Admiral Bubbles, a goldfish who's also an evil mastermind.

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