"Jaws" Attack Parody

A Stock Parody of the movie Jaws, typically involving a shark or any other creature that threatens a small-town community, killing off a large number of Red Shirt characters that appear. Expect an appearance by some or all of the following: exploding air tanks, ominous fins, a local politician or businessman insisting that nothing is wrong, someone who requires a bigger boat, and of course, low bass strings playing minor 2nds in the background when the creature appears. If the shark itself is singing the music, that goes under Silly Animal Sound. As many moments from the movie are iconic and easily recognizable, a Jaws reference can vary in length from a brief Stock Shout-Out to a Whole-Plot Reference.

Not to be confused with "Jaws" First-Person Perspective, which is specifically a video game trope.

Compare: Moby Schtick, Attack of the Killer Whatever, Super-Persistent Predator.

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Examples:

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• Charlie the Tuna: Bruce is introduced rearing up from an underwater cliff in the same position as the Jaws cover. He's even named for the production nickname for the shark animatronic, and is hinted to be the shark from the movie as well, being a Hollywood star.
• A Hostess commercial from the 90s had a shark mistake a fat woman on an inner tube for a Ding Dong. After knocking her out of the tube, it confusedly asked where the cream filling was.

Anime & Manga

• In Naruto, Kisame (who is associated with sharks and uses them in battle) is beaten using an attack that is based on a pressurized air explosion, much like the shark in the first Jaws. At the time, Kisame was inside a giant Water Shark Jutsu.

Asian Animation

• In Bread Barbershop, Bread has a poster in his barbershop that spoofs the Jaws poster, with the title of the film replaced with the word "Barber" and a pair of scissors replacing the shark.

Comic Books

• It wasn't a parody, but the UK Anthology Comic Action (no relation to Action Comics whatsoever) had a regular strip called "Hook-Jaw!" about a marauding monster-great white shark that for some reason only attacked bad guys. It was notoriously gory and was the subject of censors, who daubed it "The Sevenpenny Nightmare" (the cost of "Action" was 7pence per issue at the time) after its gory tone, and may even have led to the eventual demise of the comic as a whole.
• De Kiekeboes: In the story "Haaiman" a shark attacks a couple on a private boat. One of them even says: "It resembles a movie."
• The DC cover for The Powerpuff Girls story "Rain, Rain, Go Away" has the girls in the water with float devices on their arms as they are about to be attacked Jaws-style by the story's monster.
• Suske en Wiske: In the story "Het Kregelige Ketje" Manneken Pis falls in the sea and is attacked by a shark mimicking the "Jaws" poster. The animal even adds another wink by saying: "Maybe this will make me eligible for "the film"."

Comic Strips

• One FoxTrot strip has Paige idly humming the Jaws theme while standing by her locker. When she looks up, the nerdy boy with a crush on her has suddenly appeared right in front of her. She, of course, lets out a bloodcurdling scream.
• This◊ Garfield Sunday strip banner featured a Jaws parody.

Films — Animation

• While adrift in a lifeboat, the starving Miguel and Tulio from DreamWorks' The Road to El Dorado brighten when an exhausted seagull lands on the far end of an oar. However, before the two men can capture the bird, a shark breaks the surface, and devours the bird and half the oar in one bite. The shark is seen exactly as it appears on the Jaws movie poster. Technically, this is an in-house Shout-Out, since Steven Spielberg directed Jaws and is one founder of DreamWorks SKG.

Films — Live-Action

• There's a Jaws parody at the beginning of the film 1941 (1979), which even has the same actress as the beginning of Jaws (not to mention the same director) going skinnydipping, where she's "attacked" by a Japanese submarine.
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective features a scene in which Ace encounters a great white shark in a large aquarium tank, thinking he had found Snowflake, a dolphin. The setup is a reference to Brody's first direct meeting with the shark on the Orca, and what follows is a very silly parody of the original attack on the skinny dipping girl.
• The opening of Airplane! shows the plane's tail slowly and menacingly moving between the clouds, set to the Jaws theme tune.
• The 1978 B-movie Barracuda is basically a clone of Jaws involving a beachfront resort town being terrorized. Unlike the aforementioned Jaws or Orca however, this movie involves not one but several killer fish.
• The low-budget horror movie Blood Beach was about a killer creature that lurked beneath the sands of the beach and sucked beach goers into the sand.
• Done in the Dutch comedy Filmpje (1995) with Paul De Leeuw, when his character swims towards other beach guests, who immediately run in freight. The music during this scene is directly taken from "Jaws".
• One of the first shark-themed movies to appear after Jaws was the aptly-titled The Jaws Of Death.
• One of the posters◊ for The Meg copies the poster for Jaws by showing a shark chasing a diver... and then shows what's behind the shark. Namely, an even bigger shark.
• The film Orca: The Killer Whale is essentially Jaws with a killer whale instead of a shark. However, the only reason the killer whale killed people was for revenge after his mate and unborn child were killed.
• The parody horror movie Saturday the 14th manages to pull off a Jaws spoof coupled with a spoof of another famous horror movie by having a fin show up in a bathtub of a bathing girl, complete with a similar riff, only for the monster to rise and reveal an Expy of Creature from the Black Lagoon.
• Sharknado, unsurprisingly, contains multiple shout-outs to Jaws:
  • First, there's a moment when the characters feed a shark a scuba tank and then shoot the tank.
  • Nova's backstory includes the line "Six people went in the water that day, and one little girl came out", a reference to Quint's monologue about his near-shark experience in WWII.
  • And finally, "We're gonna need a bigger chopper!"

Live-Action TV

• A long sketch on The Carol Burnett Show was a Jaws parody involving a shark that attacked from your toilet.
• The Goodies. In a parody of the Cod Wars, the Goodies sic their giant killer cod on the Icelanders, with the obligatory circling fin and menacing Jaws music.
• The New Avengers episode "Gnaws". Giant rats in London's Absurdly Spacious Sewers.
• A shark gobbles up a Whammy and Tammy Whammette as they water ski on Press Your Luck. Another Whammy rides the fin of a shark as it swims by and gobbles up the contestant's score.
• The "Land Shark" sketches from the early run of Saturday Night Live, where the shark knocks on someone's front door (with the theme music playing in the background), usually passing himself off as a Candy-gram, then attacking them when they open the door.

Music

• The song "Baby Shark" started out as a campfire song about Jaws growing up and eating a swimmer, while another version starts by introducing a Jaws family. As the song became popular as a catchy children's song, the story shifted to a family of sharks hunting a school of fish who ultimately survive. The most popular version of the song by the South Korean company Pinkfong starts with chords reminiscent of the Jaws theme (though they're actually lifted from a song by Antonín Dvořák).
• Darryl Rhoades and the Hahavishnu Orchestra's "Surfin' Shark" uses the premise while parodying Jan & Dean's "Dead Man's Curve."

Print Media

• Atop this page is the cover of MAD Magazine issue 180, January 1976.
• Brazilian magazine Piauí had one that managed to do such a parody with the country's flag.◊
• After Australia II won the America's Cup in 1983 thanks to its winged keel, there was a parody poster of the keel sticking out of the water like a Jaws shark fin and the tagline: Just when the New York Yacht Club thought it was safe to go back to the water...

Theater

• Giant Killer Shark: The Musical. The writers bypassed the legal process of getting the rights to adapt Jaws by never making a direct reference to the film; for example, the characters live on "A Copyright-Protected Island".

Toys

• In the original 16-series issue of Wacky Packages from the mid-1970s they parodied Jaws. The sticker was "Gums", the world's oldest shark.

Video Games

• The large Flipwip in Levelhead is introduced by "GR-18, Meet The Flipwip" with music reminiscent of the Jaws theme.

Web Original

• Pops up in director Joe Nicolosi's Hell No: The Sensible Horror Film. The video, a fake trailer for a horror movie in which the characters make smart decisions, includes a clip in which the mayor of a small beach town is told there's a man-eating beast in the water. Cut to a "BEACH CLOSED" sign being hammered into the sand (and someone in the background yelling "You're gonna need a bigger sign!")

Western Animation

• The Action League NOW! episode, "Incident at Chlorine Lake" involves a trophy bass attacking people at a swimming pool. Bill the Lab Guy plans to study the Trophy Bass, and The Mayor unsuccessfully tries to convince everyone that the water is safe.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: The episode "Monster Hunt" is about the boys hunting a mysterious sea monster that is terrorizing the local lake. It was really Carl's pet turtle that he released into the lake and was later mutated by toxic waste from Jimmy's lab dumped by his father. Many scenes in the episode are pretty much directly remade from Jaws only animated and a lot less violent.
  • In "The Mighty Wheezers", the Jaws theme plays when Jimmy slips the Wheezers experimental pills in their sleep, with his signature hairdo acting as the fin.
• Black Dynamite had an episode about Black Jaws, who only had a taste for black people after eating any poor slaves that jumped ship before they even hit the water. It is the source of the black community's cultural fear of swimming.
• The Bob's Burgers episode "The Deepening". A movie with a similar plot was filmed in town years ago, and Mr. Fischoder buys the mechanical shart from the movie as a parkside attraction. The Belcher kids play with it and it turns on and falls on its side, sending it wriggling across the block. The residents treat is as if it were a real shark attacking, and it's up to Bob to stop it.
• An episode of Dexter's Laboratory had Dee Dee doing this (with her twin Girlish Pigtails serving as the shark fin) prior to attacking Dexter in the library.
• DuckTales (2017): The episode "Jaw$". The triplets go for a midnight swim in the money bin, and Dewey gets "eaten" by a golden shark. Then they team up with Webby, Lena, and Launchpad (who declares vengeance on the shark much like Quint), steal Donald's boat and try to lure in the shark with chum (in this case, treasure). After eating almost everyone, the shark eventually gets blown up from the inside.
• Family Guy: After Lois temporarily becomes single, your friendly-neighborhood sexual predator, Quagmire sings the Jaws theme as catchprase "gi-gi-gi-gi-giggity" in supermarket while pushing a shopping cart.
  • Also done with actual sharks on occasion, with the shark appearing the same as the movie poster.
• In Garfield's Feline Fantasies, Garfield tries to get at Jon's goldfish, only for the Jaws theme to start playing and for a shark to emerge from the fishbowl and scare Garfield.
• Two cartoon series appeared shortly after Jaws: DePatie-Freleng's Misterjaw and Hanna-Barbera's Jabberjaw.
• Mr. Bogus:
  • The first act of the episode "A Day At The Office" had Bogus getting chased by a shark that Mr. Anybody had added to the picture of the beachside setting.
  • This was subverted in the first act of the episode "Beach Blanket Bogus", as while a shark does start chasing after Brattus while he's surfing, the shark just winds up running into a rock and gets taken out of action before Brattus could even notice that he was being followed.
• Ozzy & Drix had a Whole-Plot Reference to the movie, with the ocean being Hector's stomach and the shark being a vicious tapeworm.
• The Simpsons:
  • In the episode "Itchy and Scratchy Land" a flashback shows the Simpsons at a beach where Homer scares everybody away with a fake dorsal fin on his back. When Bart does the same he believes him to be "Sharkboy" and runs away too. The music during this scene is a parody of "Jaws".
  • "Lisa's First Word": Homer and Marge consider buying a houseboat from the Sea Captain; his pitch is cut short by a shark, which he proceeds to fight. The shark looks identical to the one on the "Jaws" poster.
• This was the Plot Point of the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Clams", in which Mr. Krabs swears revenge on a clam that stole his millionth dollar, when he took SpongeBob and Squidward on a fishing trip in celebration of earning said dollar. Of course, Mr. Krabs summoned the clam in the first place by playing ominous music.
  • There's also "SpongeBob, Sandy and the Worm", in which Bikini Bottom is terrorized by an Alaskan bullworm, and Sandy goes after it because it ate her tail. It even includes a parody of Shaw's introduction from Jaws.

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