Riley: What is that smell?
Huey: Clean air. My guess is we'll get used to it eventually.
Riley: I hope so, this place stinks.
If there’s a threequel
trope that trumps them all it’s the too obvious sign that you’ve run out of steam on your characters otherwise known as The Fish Out of Water.
—> Cole Abaius for
Film School Rejects
A character is placed in a situation completely unfamiliar to them. Humor and/or tension is created as the character adapts —
or doesn't.
Naturally,
Fish Out Of Water have a danger of becoming awkward the longer a show runs.
Specific variants:
There are many examples of fictional works using this as their main premise:
Anime and Manga
- Full Metal Panic!
- Kappa Mikey, who features an American cartoon actor in a Japanese anime show after winning a contest. It is even explained that Mikey got his nick name because of the Kappa, literally a Fish Out Of Water.
Comic Books
- Double Happiness. Being Chinese-American, Tom didn't fit in back in Boston. Then he moves in with relatives in San Francisco's Chinatown, and he doesn't fit in with them either.
- In Bizenghast, Edrear and Edaniel go to by a present for Dinah. Since Edrear has only ever left the Mausoleum for work, he knows nothing about human society. Because of this, Edaniel managed to get him in a skirt as part of his human disguise. Edrear also asked for directions to a store that was directly behind him(although this may be more to do with the fact that he is illiterate) and apparently put a quarter in a mailbox to see if a gumball came out.
Comic Strips
- The original premise of the long-running newspaper comic strip Blondie was that Dagwood was a trust fund baby disowned by his family and forced to live a salaryman's life. While the premise never explicitly changed, it has eroded significantly over the years and is lost on most modern readers.
Films
- The Blind Side: Michael, when he first arrives at his new private religious school, and when the Tuohys first invite him into their home.
- Crocodile Dundee
- The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres featured premises which were the exact inverse of one another. The former was about country folks living in the city while the latter was about city folks living in the country.
- Being There. Chance The Gardener - who lived his whole life inside a townhouse and only knew of the outside world through television - adapts so quickly, and appears to be someone who knows what he's doing, that in the novella no one realizes he was this in the first place.
- Enchanted
- In The Loop: All of the the British characters in the US, but especially the hapless Simon Foster.
Literature
Live-Action TV
- Northern Exposure
- Men in Trees, which, admittedly, is just a lame attempt to bring back the charm of Northern Exposure by crossing it with Sex in the City.
- Due South
- Its About Time, 60's sitcom where astronauts travel to prehistoric times. In the final season, the astronauts return to the present with a caveman family.
- 55 Degrees North (at least for its first series)
- Hard Time On Planet Earth
- Life On Mars
- also its sequel, Ashes To Ashes, to a lesser extent.
- Phil Of The Future (The entire Diffy family)
- McCloud
- Teal'c in Stargate SG-1
- Farscape for most of the series run, though the "fish" character changed over time.
- The FX Reality Show 30 Days, from the guy who did Super Size Me pits different people, and occasionally the narrator himself, into living the titular number of days in a different enviroment then they're used to. Often these people will be placed at the opposite end of a controversial issue than where they were from to learn about the other side of an issue.
- Dieter, the German immigrant in Killinaskully regularly finds himself flummoxed by the bizarre goings on in the titular village. However, this seems to be less because Dieter is the Only Sane Man and more just that his own cloudcuckooland is so different from those of Ireland.
- The non-X-Series transgenics in Dark Angel, specifically Joshua at the beginning of season 2.
Webcomic
- Everyone in Earthsong is like this.
- Mentl, a street musician from our world who finds himself in a world of Medieval Fantasy in The Challenges Of Zona. He adapts fairly quikly due to his meeting and falling in love with the title character and his musical knowledge and ability giving him magical powers although there are still a few bumps here and there.
Web Series
Western Animation
- Fry in early Futurama; he adapted surprisingly quickly. Other characters go through similar experiences, including his 20th century girlfriend and Zoidberg, a hideous lobster alien who serves as the company physician but understands practically nothing about Earth culture or human physiology.
- Starfire in Teen Titans
- My Gym Partner's a Monkey, with a human attending a school full of Funny Talking Animals.
- One such animal, Bull Sharkowski, is a literal Fish Out Of Water, and has to carry a headset filled with water in order to breathe.
Video and Computer Games
- Tidus in Final Fantasy X is a fish out of water as he is actually from an imaginary world. I don't know if this is intentional, but the only place he is comfortable in the new place is playing blitzball, an underwater sport.
