Monsters with a huge number of teeth.
This is a simple and common trope, playing on a natural fear of toothy predators. There are three common kinds of teeth you will see on a big scary thing: flat, triangular shark-teeth; conical teeth similar to those of crocodiles; or ridiculously pointy needle teeth like a deep-sea fish. The monster's mouth will often be so crammed with teeth that half of them should break off with every bite. The teeth are usually all of the same type.
Also see Phlegmings — the lines of drool often seen between the teeth. When the teeth are arranged in a ring rather than opposing jawlines, that's a Lamprey Mouth. BewareVagina Dentata. Stop by Cheshire Cat Grin for a less toothy but still creepy variation. Often found in conjunction with Threatening Shark and Never Smile at a Crocodile.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Krory the quasi-vampire Exorcist of D. Gray-Man may look like he has Cute Little Fangs when his mouth is closed (and that only in the manga), but when he moves his lips, the result is a distinctly inhuman array of shark/crocodile-like fangs.
Grell Sutcliff the Shinigami from Black Butler doesn't seem to have a greater than human amount of teeth, but his/her teeth are all fangs, which isn't the case for the other shinigami or even the demons seen in the series.
Tokomon of Digimon Adventure, in an unexpected way given it's coming from an otherwise Ridiculously Cute Critter. Tokomon's teeth are a direct nod to the Digimon virtual pets that the show was based on. All the child Digimon from the virtual pet keychains were adorable little monsters that revealed incongruous amounts of pixelated teeth when they ate or got mad at their owners.
The Tamagotchi virtual pets that preceded Digimon did the same thing with their young forms.
Berserk is absolutely full of these. It's no wonder that Berserk's creator, Kentaro Miura, takes so long to release chapters when he has to draw each and every single tooth on pages full of literally dozens of creatures.
Vampires in Hellsing (especially the OVA and Manga) generally have teeth like sharks...it is only when Alucard fully activates the Cromwell Initiative and essentially becomes an Eldritch Abomination that this trope really starts getting fulfilled. A lot.
The titular warriors from Claymore gain these when they're dangerously close to liberating their powers enough to become demons.
The Tsuyoshi family in Great Teacher Onizuka — those short friendly people with shark teeth.
The Misago from Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou has lots of sharp carnivorous teeth. She's good and kind-hearted and only uses them to eat fish, but most people freak out after seeing her scary dentition.
In Naruto the Kyuubi's mouth is set in a permanent snarl revealing a massive number of teeth larger than the titular character. At times, the only thing that can be seen of the demon are two red eyes and gleaming teeth. Finally, it appears to be common for Hidden Mist shinobi to file their teeth to resemble a shark's, though this may be restricted to Seven Swordsmen and their aspirants. Then again, given the other sharklike traits of some of those characters, it's possible that their teeth are naturally that way.
Ratman of...well, Ratman does this when he gets angry or excited. Normally, he can function fine with his mouth closed, and it looks just like a helmet. But when he opens it for whatever reason, its enough to give one of his friends recurring nightmares.
In Baccano, one of Christopher Shoulder's most distinguishing features is that his mouth is filled with what appear to be shark teeth. Combined with his red eyes and archaic mode of dress, most people assume that he's some sort of vampire.
Averted, since those teeth were just a part of Harribel's hollow mask. When she uses her Resurrección, the mask vanishes and her now visible mouth and teeth are clearly normal.
Lots and lots of flesh rending teeth appear to be the most defining characteristic for the mysterious invading Eldritch Abominations in "Hakaijuu". Special mention goes to the one that not only has numerous teeth-studded mandibles but hundreds of three-fingered hands with smaller mouths in each finger tip that it uses to strip the flesh from unlucky highschool students.
Baikinman (and by default, his brothers Aokinman and Akakinman) from Anpanman. Teeth should not begin to look like that. His teeth are so prominent that they actually disort into shapes to form vowels when he speaks! Baikinman's an alien, so there's at least a bit of justification. Females of his species don't have this style of teeth, and two other males of the species (Baikinsennin and Mushibaikinman) have different looking teeth (Baikinsennin's are normal teeth, and Mushibaikinman's are simular to Baikinman's, but he only has five forming his mouth).
Comic Books
Parallax from the Green Lantern continuity has a few sets of these, forming the shape of the Sinestro Corps symbol with his throat as the hole. It's freakier looking than it sounds. Also a few Sinestro Corpsmen themselves, including Tri-Eye, who has three wide-ass mouths and teeth on the edges of all three faces, and Maash, who has three entire heads piled on top of each other.
The Corinthian in The Sandman. Though his eye-teeth are usually just straight, smaller copies of the teeth in his mouth, spinoffs and fanart tend to make them pointed. Also Azazel — a lord of hell who appears as a black void filled with eyes and disembodied teeth.
Some images of the The Joker show his (non-pointy) teeth as being so long, it looks as if the chemical he'd gotten dumped in must've given him ever-growing dentition like a rodent's, as well as weird coloration. This is noticeable in Tim Sale's art (The Long Halloween and Dark Victory in particular), though certain panels exagerate this more than others. Here's a noticeable example.◊
The alien symbiotes from Spider-Man. Spidey himself didn't get this effect when he was wearing the black suit, but Venom, Carnage and basically anyone else "wearing" a symbiote is going to develop these.
Interesting note: Venom didn't start out with this either. Todd Mc Farlane originally drew him with a mouth that was toothy, but mostly human-looking (at least as much as the Joker's). Then Erik Larsen, who hated the character, was assigned to draw him, and started giving him a drooling monster mouth and an Overly Long Tongue, supposedly to avoid getting bored.
Most "good" symbiotes don't have the mouth. If they develop one, run.
In The Orc's Treasure, by Kevin J Anderson, all Orcs are distinguished by the impossible overabundance of pointy teeth. Many of them have teeth protruding through parts of their lips or cheeks.
Phil Foglio is fond of this trope in his artwork .
In the Myth Adventures comics he depicts Aahz this way. Even in the novels, Aahz is described more than once as dropping his smile when he wants to put people at ease.
The grins the Jägermonsters (and occasionally some of the Sparks) have in Girl Genius
Elves from Amulet. When their mouth is closed it's no big deal, but when they open it to eat something, brrrrr!
Any time Rob Liefeld draws someone grimacing, as seen here: "How many teeth are in a mouth? Like a billion, right? I’ll just draw a billion, all the same size and shape."
In the same article, example 27, Liefeld makes the opposite, but equally weird mistake: He somehow draws the Red Skull, a villain whose entire motif is that his head is a human skull, with only 17 teeth in the entire mouth, all of them incisors.
Max of Sam & Max stands out from other fictional rabbits by way of his pointy teeth.
Evil Ernie
An unusual example: Frank Miller in his more recent projects such as Sin City and Holy Terror have characters being punched the jaw, resulting in losing copious numbers of teeth. Which evidently grow back almost instantly; if someone gets punched more than once, he'll lose more teeth than he had in his mouth originally.
The Dominators, a humanoid alien race from DC Comics, are distinguished by an abundance of long, sharp teeth.
Film
The titular Xenomorphs from the Alien series had enough teeth to outfit a second, smaller mouth. Their appearance was all the more nightmarish for having a variety of different teeth, looking almost like a fanged human.
In Prometheusthe Deacon that bursts out of the Engineer's chest at the end has a jaw very much like a Goblin Shark's.
Played with in X 2 Xmen United, whose version of Nightcrawler had a mouthful of fangs that were something between humanlike and sharklike, rather than merely pointed eyeteeth as in the comics. Fortunately Nighty's a pretty cool guy when he's not under mind control.
In the Coneheads movie, Beldar demonstrated how many teeth coneheads have when he went to the dentist to get them capped... all four rows of them. And he can open his mouth reeeeeeally wide.
Fizzgig from The Dark Crystal is a little furball who looks innocent until he opens his mouth, and then he becomes mostly teeth.
Shark teeth aplenty in the monsters from Feast. Particularly at the end of the first movie, where you can actually see how many of them Heroine #2 smashes out with a rifle butt.
One of the V. rex dinosaurs in Peter Jackson's King Kong remake had a distorted upper jaw that made room for still more gigantic teeth, probably due to some old facial injury.
The title vampire character Count Yorga, though oddly when he bites his victims he only leaves the usual tiny pinprick bites.
"Jeff", the 600 foot alien worm from Men In Black II who lives in New York's subway stations and makes his first appearance by munching on one of the subway trains.
The Chtorran worms in David Garrold's The War Against The Chtorr novels may have been a homage to the sandworms of Dune.
William Sleator's novel Singularity had a creature coming through a Portal Pool from another universe. It was visible from this universe long before it arrived, and the only part of it that was visible was its huge mouthful of teeth. The main character, in fact, spent a whole year waiting for the creature to arrive, knowing only its toothy appearance.
The titular Clock Roaches in Stephen King's The Langoliers. The TV version depicted them (poorly) with three rows of alternately rotating teeth, like a cross between an excavation drill and Pac-Man.
Rifters Trilogy contains deep-sea fish like this, but their teeth are so brittle that when one tries to bite a person's arm off, the teeth shatter.
Agrajag in Life, the Universe and Everything has a patchwork body and a vast array of teeth. Lampshaded, in that Agrajag's excessive and deliberately unpleasant teeth don't all quite fit nicely into his mouth, resulting in them lacerating his lips and mouth. There are some sticky black plasters covering the nastier wounds.
The Witches in the children's series 'The Doomspell Trilogy' have four jaws each full of nasty sharp pointy teeth. (For an artist's impression, see the example in the New Media category.) They were also full of symbiotic spiders.
S. Petersen's Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters is packed with teeth. Big, nasty teeth! Let's see who's the champ in the dental department, shall we?
The byakhee has back-pointing narrow fangs like a snake's, and plenty of 'em.
The Deep One's teeth are crocodile-like, extra-sharp, and appear to come in multiple rows.
The dhole's teeth are rooted in several extensible jaw-like structures, and are about as big as the human silhouette on the size-comparison diagram. The teeth, not the jaw-like structures.
The flying polyp has two mouths of crocodile-type teeth. At least, two mouths visible in the picture. The one you encounter may have more.
The formless spawn has several rows of oversized teeth, which best resemble human incisors. Which is kinda creepy in itself.
The Hound of Tindalos has a lot of crocodilish teeth, but should probably be disqualified because it's the tongue you really have to worry about.
The Servitor of the Outer Gods' mouth would look good on a deep-sea angler.
Bzzzt! Sorry, Mr. Shoggoth, you should've submitted a pic where you had lots of teeth, not lots of eyes. Better send that one in to a different contest.
Shub-Niggurath has a half-dozen mouths of crocodile teeth showing, presumably with more on the back. If she has a back. Maybe this is her back in the pic. Who can tell?
Ghouls, ghasts, hunting horrors, shantaks and Ithaqua get consolation prizes. Not bad teeth, guys, but not nearly enough to hold your own against such tough competitors.
Lots of other oogey-boogeys in that book, but whatever the heck they've got, it sure ain't teeth.
And the winner is ... the Dhole! Not least, because it's probably eaten most of the other contestants by now.
Phil Foglio's covers for the Donning-Starblaze illustrated editions of the Myth Adventures books depict Aahz this way. Even in the novels, Aahz is described more than once as dropping his smile when he wants to put people at ease.
In Going Postal one of the things the post office sign instructs you not to ask about are "Huje Green Things With Teeth," possibly a Noodle Incident as none ever actually show up here. Later, Anghammarad, a twenty-thousand-year-old golem, remembers that in his day it was "Do Not Ask Us About Saber-Tooth Tigers, Tar Pits, Huge Green Things With Teeth, Or The Goddess Czol." When asked "you had huge green things with teeth back then?" he answers "Bigger. Greener. More Teeth."
When Magicians (read: Demon Summoners) in David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon summon their demons, they try to outdo each other by making their demons look as menacing as possible. One common area of embellishment is in the mouth, where they try to cram as many teeth as possible inside. It should also be noted that these imaginary forms are also the way they keep demons under control. A demon in his (uncontrollable) true form is terrifying in itself, but for other reasons.
The Beetleborgs episode Buggin Out featured a gnat-like monster named Kombat Gnat who had several teeth like this and the power to shrink. This particular episode was a satire of David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. Flabber brings a drawing of a teleportation device to life and he tests it out. Kombat Gnat flies into the machine and their dna gets merged. This causes Flabber to slowly turn into Kombat Gnat — starting out with cute little vampiric fangs, then developing antennae and a row of razor sharp teeth like this.
The Leviathans on Supernatural, when they reveal their "true" face. Essentially their entire head is occupied by mouth.
An interstitial on MTV 2 featured a hoard of superhero parodies, including Too Many Teeth Man, whose power is obvious.
Myth And Legend
Manticores. Those things have three rows of metal teeth. Fortunately they don't exist. What was that sound?
In traditional Eastern European Vampire folklore, vampires tend to have double rows of razor-sharp, strong-as-iron teeth used for chewing through wood, soil, flesh, bone, and organs.
Some just have hollow, sharp tongues, and few don't have anything sharp in their mouths, and take blood magically without even physically puncturing the victim's body.
Some versions of the Japanese urban legend the Kuchisake-Onna have her Glasgow Grin full of lots and lots of sharp, pointy teeth.
The Tyranids, partly inspired by the Xenomorphs from Alien, have ridiculous numbers of teeth, somewhere between the dinosaur type and the needle type.
Tyranid Rippers seem to be composed of nothing but teeth. The basically unusable nature of the teeth is justified because they are nothing but weapons - Tyranid battle organisms do not have digestive systems, and are expected to simply throw themselves into pits of digestive juices after the battle. Assuming they survive, of course.
Then you have the Squigs of Warhammer Fantasy (as well as 40k, though far less prominent). Ironically, Squigs are not only edible themselves, but described as delicious — moist and flavorsome, combining the taste of smoked ham with the lightness of young chicken. One breed of Squig is actually known as the "facebiter/face-eater squig". A common orc contest of toughness and bravery has the Orcs try to eat a live squig, without using their hands, before it eats them. According to some early 40k sources, the Squigs are actually Tyranids created with Ork base genetic material; the Orks found the Squigs and adopted them into their culture sensing their inherent "Orky" nature. This was forgotten, though it may serve as the ultimate foundation for the Biovores and their rumored nature as Ork gene-infused Tyranids.
Then there are the Orcs/Orks, who in either setting use "teef" as money. Teef are acquired by either using your own, or ripping out someone else's. Don't worry, they grow back. In the 40k fluff, there are various "tribes" of Orks that have different genetic quirks (usable in game through several fan expansions). One of them is the Bad Moonz, who not only have more teeth than average but also regrow them at an increased rate. As such, they're they richest Orks around and always have the most snazz.
Chaos' Legions of Hell just wouldn't be proper daemons if some of them didn't have more teeth than a dentition textbook, usually sticking out at odd and possibly noneuclidean angles.
The supplement Tome of Magic contains the Tooth Beast: is essentially a bear literally coated in teeth. Rather than skin, it has gums. See it here.◊ It has teeth for eyes, and is wrong.
Dungeons and Dragons: Book of Vile Darkness - The Whirlwind of Teeth. The caster can create an opaque area of swirling energy taking the form of roaring, screeching mouths full of teeth
The 3.5 Edition Monster Manual IV introduces the Fang Golem, a construct made entirely from teeth and fangs of various animals. It resembles a four-legged beast covered in ivory spikes, with a whirling tunnel of pointy death for a mouth.
Lunar dragons in Dragon Mech sport enormous toothy maws.
The Legion of Everblight from Hordes in the Iron Kingdoms setting. It has warbeasts with no eyes, ears or noses. Just mouths full of large, sharp teeth.
One adventure for Paranoia had a table of descriptions for the various robots. For the Doberbot, the entry first lists the weapon, 16" long teeth, then under description: "You don't know, all you see are the teeth."
In the Scarred Lands, one of the fallen titans was Gaurak the Glutton - an obese and monstrously ravenous deity who was said to have devoured everything on the once verdant moon. After his defeat by the titan's children, the gods, every one of his hundreds of teeth were pulled out and thrown across the destroyed world, taking on the form of mountains, obelisks, and trees which currenlty taint the surrounding land.
Time Splitters: "Shoot anything with teeth bigger than its face!"
Pretty much every monster in the Amiga/Atari/C64/MS-DOS game Weird Dreams had lots and lots of very large teeth. According to The Other Wiki, the author had a dental phobia.
As if the entire concept of X-Com's Chryssalids aren't nightmarish enough, someone decided to give their research entry images permanent, toothy smiles.
Decarabia from Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Imagine a starfish's hungry mouth staring straight at you. Imagine that mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth. Now, imagine said starfish hurtling at you at approximately 80 MPH.
The Rifle Demons in the Disgaea series have mouths full of large, pointy, and perpetually visible teeth. They tend to get a lot of emphasis in their team attack portraits.
Baraka from Mortal Kombat II has a mouth full of pointy teeth, as do other Tarkatan. His teeth in his first appearance were acryllic nails glued to a cheap Nosferatu mask.
The Protopets from Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando. Give a tribble the jaws and personality of a Great White Shark, and you've got a pretty close approximation.
A few mutants in Resident Evil, particularly in the later stages of G-virus infection.
The Gaets in Tales Of Legendia are easily among the toothiest monsters in the Tales Series, all of their various species having a huge mouthful of large, perpetually visible teeth of either the shark-like triangular or pointy needle variety.
Just in case you didn't figure out Chancellor Cole was an Evil Chancellor before then in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, the last you see of him before he explicitly outs himself as one is him flashing an evil grin full of pointed, shark-like teeth.
The Thresher Maws in Mass Effect are described in the Codex as "abominations of tentacles and teeth." They're even scarier.
The Shadow Broker.
Turians - somewhat-reptilian humanoids with exoskeletons and bony spikes sticking out of their bodies - are an unusual generally-benevolent example. (Probably scared the bejeezus out of the poor humans who first encountered them in the First Contact War, though.)
Fuzzles from Odd World. They start out looking tiny cute little furballs, until they go into attack mode where they become rabid and reveal their mouth filled to the brim with razor sharp teeth.
Night Of Wallachia from Melty Blood has a lot of extremely sharp teeth.
The Hebby Repp and Sudo Neku dream eaters in Kingdom Hearts 3 D have a mouthful of pointy triangular teeth, kept in a constant smile, though it's purely for cuteness. The Tyranto Rex, on the other hand, has a mouthful of perpetually visible fang-like teeth that make it look more then slightly intimidating.
True Ogre from the Tekken series has a couple of fangs on his lips, along with the set of fangs in his mouth, which are attached to gross, elongated gums. It's as if he has a mouth within a mouth.
Demitri Maximoff from Darkstalkers has lots of sharp teeth, as prominently shown in the Night Warriors OVA.
Visual Novels
The dragon in Dra Koi grows masses of fangs when she launches a beam attack from her human form.
The yellow salamander from Chapter 16 had double rows of sharp fangs. Nightmare fuel, literally: it appeared in a character's nightmare, and it symbolized the house fire that killed his entire family.
Coyote's etherial form is a mishmash of teeth, eyes and night sky.
Zimmy; she's nominally human, but her teeth resemble a shark more than a person.
Ominous connotations are averted by the friendliest badger spirit you'll ever meet.
Florence Ambrose of Freefall has these, but she struggles to keep them hidden, as long as she remembers, since humans tend to react badly to them. Example: Snap!
Orcs in Dominic Deegan have tusks and fanged maws, which becomes more obvious when they are pissed. Unusually, orcs are vegetarians, and the hard, pointed teeth are for cracking open the extremely tough root vegetables of their homeland.
The Mihrrgoots from Spacetrawler have very wide mouths completely filled with sharp teeth.
Werewolves in Bloody Urban have these, even in human form.
Zerglings in Nerf NOW!! are normally portrayed as adorable, but they're shown as having lots and lots of sharp teeth whenever they stare down something they're planning to fight with (or play-fight with.)
Family Guy once had a cutaway gag about this trope, featuring the Osmond family with buck teeth.
A majority of monsters from Courage the Cowardly Dog, notably the weremole and the giant alien worm from the episode "Tulip's worm". Even Courage himself, especially in the theme song.
Every single monster from Mega Babies.
The bulldog from the classic Tex AveryChilly Willy cartoon "The Legend of Rockabye Point".
Chowder, in an episode of the TV series, in a horror moment that would make Flapjack proud.
The different version of him shown in Decepti-Con Job is far less horiffying.
Transformers Prime brings us the Scraplets. Two feet tall... with mouths that make up about a third of that height. They make a sound like a chainsaw revving when they open their jaws. According to Bulkhead, they bite their way into a mechanoid and then eat them alive from the inside out.
The Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland was originally going to have these, but they were later changed.
The actual Osmond family is one tooth short of qualifying for this trope and a paradox at the same time.
Only some animals have a single tooth type like the majority of toothy fictional creatures: sharks are one example, with rows and rows of triangular teeth.
Sharks. Not only do they have a complete set of choppers, but they have multiple replacement sets growing right behind the first set. This is because when you eat like a shark, you go though teeth fast. Their skin is actually made of millions of microscopic teeth called "dermal denticles", each one a tiny version of the ones in their mouths. Shark skin can be used as sandpaper. Evolutionarily speaking teeth, scales, feathers, hair, and bone* which is odd, since shark skeletons aren't made of bone, just cartilage are all variants of the same process.
Special mention goes to the extinct "shark" (now appearently revealed to be a ratfish, but still closely related enough) Helicoprion which did not lose the teeth in its lower jaw, instead keeping all of them in a deadly whorl of teeth, though appearently most of said teeth were hidden in the jaw, like an internal chainsaw. Let's also give it up for C. Megalodon. Imagine a large Great White Shark. Now triple its size. Or just look at this photo.◊
Crocodiles and alligators. Their teeth are not designed for cutting or grinding but are designed for grabbing and holding. So they're shaped more like dull rail road spikes that are driven into your limbs so they can rip chunks off of you when they spin their bodies.
Piranhas.
Most kinds of bony fishes, especially the predatory ones, have teeth on their tongues, in their throat, and hanging from the roofs of their mouths, not just along the jawline.
Several predatory dinosaurs, as well as some herbivores who had several thousand teeth in their mouths. Dental battery indeed. Say hello to Masiakasaurus.
Not to mention Pelecanimimus, which, in contrast to its later, toothless relatives, had 220 teeth.
While Tyrannosaurus rex might not've had a jaw that freaky, the tooth size more than makes up for it. Including the part firmly rooted inside a skull designed for crushing bone, which had possibly the greatest bite force of anything on the continent at that time, the Rex's teeth could be a foot long.
And it had 50 of them.
Angler Fish, the evil bastards. In fact just about every other abyssal fish (except for pelican eels) has enormous needle-like teeth too. Teeth like this are very bad for biting and chewing, but are excellent at skewering and thus trapping a fish on the first bite. * Now pass that Brain Bleach.
One species, Neoceratias spinifer, whom Tim Flannery nicknamed the "Pincushion Sea Devil", has lost her glowing lure probably because her teeth glow in the dark.
According to Blue Planet: Seas of Life, another deep-water fish called the fangtooth has the biggest teeth in the entire animal kingdom in relation to its body. Its mouth is always at least partway open because its mouth is of insufficient size to contain them closed.
Lampreys have a sucker that is full of sharp teeth. And they use it to latch on to a fish, so they can suck on its blood, until said fish dies.
Moray eels have a second "Pharyngeal jaw" that is essentially a real-life Xenomorph inner mouth. [1]◊.
While it's not the same structurally, the extinct lobopod ''Opabinia regalis'' has a mouth "under its chin" - and a tubular proboscis thing tipped with claws that extends from the front of its head and looks an awful lot like a pair of jaws on a trunk.
Goblin Shark also have a Xenomorph jaw that extends out to grab hold of prey. They seem Ugly Cute and harmless, with their huge duck-billed nose, until — oh the horror! Mostly found in the waters of ancient Japan.
Just in case you were wondering, that's not a joke. They're found in the waters of Japan and although they aren't very common in the modern day, it's believed they were once more numerous.
During the Age of Dinosaurs they were.
Tapeworms use their "hooks" to grasp the intestines of potential hosts.
Opossums have more teeth than any other land mammal; 50 teeth in something that size is really saying something◊.
The Real Life kings of the trope though, are snails, who have several thousandpairs of teeth. Terrifying, no?
