|
|
|
|
|
Never Smile at a Crocodile
|
No, you can't get friendly with a crocodile
Everyone knows that sharks are bad news. They make the sea a scary, dangerous place. However, they live (mostly) in the sea, so that means rivers and lakes are safe. Right?
Enter the Crocodile!!
Crocodiles in fiction (as well as alligators, gavials, and other close relations) tend to be huge, green monsters always looking for the next meal, lurking in rivers, swamps and sometimes in castle's moats. They have a powerful bite, and hard skin which make them hard to hurt. Furthermore, they're reptiles, which tends to make them even more despicable if possible.
The trope is sometimes subverted by making the croc a comedic glutton or a Cool Pet.
See also Threatening Shark, Shark Pool and Reptiles Are Abhorrent.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
Comicbooks
- Batman - Killer Croc. Depending on the Writer, he's a man with a serious skin disease which make him look very reptilian or a full-blown crocodile man.
- One early Cattivik story involves a large Nile Crocodile attempting to eat the eponymous character, but without much success.
- Another aversion is Albert from Pogo.
- Seemingly every story featuring Corrupt Hicks set in a bayou has them raise alligators as a way to dispose of evidence (Jonah Hex, The Punisher...)
- Tintin:
- In Tintin in the Congo, Tintin is tied up by The Heavy over a river and left to be eaten by crocodiles. Later the two have a confrontation and fall over a cliff into a river. Tintin is saved by the back of a hippopotamus, but The Heavy lands in the water and is eaten by crocodiles.
- In Prisoners of the Sun, Tintin and the Captain come across a river. Tintin believes it to be full of logs, which, of course, are all alligators.
- In Tintin and the Picaros, the amnesiac Captain Haddock wanders into a swamp, attracting the attention of an alligator. It silently approaches...and then is attacked by an anaconda, allowing the captain to get out.
- The Vault of Horror: The story "That's a 'Croc'" involves man-eating crocodiles who are provided a steady supply of victims by a crazed zookeeper. When he climbs into the crocodile pit, expecting his beloved crocs to protect him from the angered townspeople, they promptly make a meal of him too.
- Averted well not really in 52 by Sobek, the gentle Big Eater humanoid crocodile experiment who quickly befriends Black Adam's family.
Films — Animated
- In The Rescuers, the main villain possesses two pet gators. In the sequel, the climax includes several crocodiles. And a waterfall.
- The Lion King: Averted in the first movie, where the only crocodiles who appear are part of a musical number. Played straight in the sequel, where Kovu and Kiara are in danger of being eaten by crocodiles.
- Subverted with Louie the alligator in The Princess and the Frog. All he wants to do is play jazz, but of course the humans only see a giant gator trying to get close to them (never mind that it's playing a trumpet). Played straight with the other bad alligators.
- Ben Ali Gator and his retinue in the "Dance of the Hours" segment of Fantasia. Not very vicious, but a bit of a lech.
- Subversion: the original Big Lipped Alligator Moment from All Dogs Go to Heaven. When the gargantuan alligator is about to devour the hero, he's surprised by his voice and spares him. He even gets to eat the Big Bad later.
- In The Swan Princess, Swan Lake has many flowers, but Jean-Bob the frog wants to fetch the flowers in the middle of the lake, past two hungry alligators, to give to Odette. If she finds that he's risked his life to give them to her, he reasons, she'll be impressed and kiss him, and then he will turn into a prince.
- The same alligators pose a real threat later, when Odette's friends must free her and Bromley from the dungeon below Swan Lake.
- The crocodile from Peter Pan actually made a brief cameo in the 1960 Disney animated short Goliath II.
- The first animal Mad Madam Mim turned into during the Wizard Duel from The Sword in the Stone is a pink crocodile.
- One of the animals Gus the raincloud made in ''Partly Cloudy'' is a crocodile.
- Yzma secretly owns a pit full of crocodiles beneath Kuzco's palace in The Emperor's New Groove.
- Captain Crocodile from Robin Hood.
- The title character of Megamind has crocodiles living inside his lair.
- The villain of The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through The Mists appears to be a giant crocodile named Dil who for some reason actually hates her partner-in-crime, Icky, who is a prehistoric seagull. At the end of the film, Dil finally gets fed up with Icky, and as a result she kicks him away, only to end up being chased away by an angry plesiosaur shortly afterwards.
- Another prehistoric crocodile appears in The Great Longneck Migration, where it almost eats an inattentive Littlefoot. Fortunately, another sauropod rescues him. Later, it tries to eat Littlefoot's friends, but it fails yet again.
- Before finally settling on a beaver, Tramp from Lady and the Tramp actually wants an alligator at a zoo to get Lady's muzzle off her face. He realizes what a bad idea it is just in time.
- In The Thief And The Cobbler, Zigzag tames One-Eye's crocodiles when he's thrown into a pit with them the first time, but once his evil plan fails and he has nothing to give the crocodiles, they eat him.
- See "Literature" below for Peter Pan.
Films — Live-Action
- Several B-movies involving large crocodiles haunting sewers or mountain lakes, especially Lake Placid.
- Alligator is basically Jaws, but with a giant alligator.
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: The climax of the movie has the villain devoured alive by crocodiles.
- In the 007 movie Live and Let Die, we have James Bond about to be fed alive to crocodiles. Of course nobody stays there to watch him die so James simply runs across the water, using their backs as stepping stones, and escapes to shore!
- Trope comes to play again in Octopussy, as Bond and a bad guy are attacked by a crocodile when their fight becomes waterbound.
- After the tourist boat crashes in Hatchet, one of the tourists is attacked by an alligator.
- Australian film Rogue has bunch of tourists getting stranded on small islet in the middle of a river and being under attack by huge crocodile. There's even the trope naming song playing during the end credits.
- Crazy hotel owner in Eaten Alive feeds customers to his pet crocodile Rocky.
- Dark Age has a giant crocodile terrorizing Australian outback.
- The MacGuffin in Romancing The Stone is temporarily lost when a crocodile swallows it along with Big Bad's hand.
- The titular monster in DinoCroc was a mix of Sarcosuchus (an extinct species of large crocodilian) and an unspecified dinosaur. In practice it was basically a Spinosaurid dinosaur that swam like a crocodile.
- When the monsoon floods Alan's house in Jumanji, the protagonists are attacked by a crocodile, so Alan fights it and miraculously survives. It's sucked out into the street when the front door is broken up and swims past Carl and Aunt Nora, scaring them to no end.
- In Adaptation, John Laroche is killed by an alligator that comes out of nowhere.
- The Chinese film Million Dollar Crocodile features a giant man-eating crocodile swallowing a purse full of money, á la Kangaroo Jack.
Gamebooks
Literature
- Peter Pan has the large sea crocodile who ate Captain Hook's hand (and a clock) and now is looking for the rest of the dish. The Trope Namer is a Cut Song from the Disney version, which showed up in a Disney Sing-Along Songs video (specifically Volume 6: Under the Sea).
- In the film Hook manages to kill it and turns it into a clock tower, and it still gives him nightmares ("Tick-tock tick-tock, Hook afraid of an old dead croc!"). In the end, it manages to fall on Captain Hook and eats him whole.
- The Croc shows up in the Disney version as well, but unlike the book, where the croc is singlemindedly vicious towards Hook, the Disney Croc is content to simply mess with Hook, though as the ending shows, he will happily take a bite out of Hook if the opportunity presents itself.
- In the novel Amazon at one point the heroes have to face two colossal caimans in a lake.
- Blacksad: The hired killer in the third book is a gavial.
- The Enormous Crocodile, by Roald Dahl.
- The Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut in Rudyard Kipling's Second Jungle Book story "The Undertakers". The accompanying poem "A Ripple Song" demonstrates what happens when you don't watch out for concealed crocs.
- Also in Just So Stories, a crocodile pulls the baby elephant's nose (thereby creating its trunk) in "The Elephant's Child".
- One of the Alex Rider novels, Crocodile Tears, has the villain force Alex to hang from a bar while a group of crocodiles wait below, ready to eat Alex when he eventually tires and drops.
- Earlier than that, in Skeleton Key a gang of black-marketeers attempt to blackmail the Big Bad, so he tricks them into crashing their plane into a swamp, where they are attacked by crocodiles.
- In Carl Hiaasen's Tourist Season, several characters are eaten by a North American crocodile named Pavlov.
- Crocodile Beat
- Averted in Lyle, Lyle Crocodile
- Averted in Zack's Alligator
- In Discworld, Pyramids, when the gods of Djelibeybi manifest and start brawling in the streets, a crowd of dismayed priests gather to argue about what's going on. Whenever one of them says anything that might give offense to any of the gods, the rest throw the injudicious speaker into the river to be eaten by crocodiles.
- Offler the Crocodile God is probably an aversion; he's no worse than the other gods on Discworld. His worshipers keep a baby alligator pool in their temple.
- A crocodile is more or less the main antagonist in The Reaction, the twelfth book of the Animorphs series. Though it's really three different threats - the first croc Rachel has to save a kid from, the croc DNA which she is lamentably allergic to, and then the fully-grown crocodile she expels from her body and has to fight at the end. The fight with it ends up being brutal, even Rachel can't beat it. Fortunately Ax shows up, and quickly cuts the thing in half.
- Much to their horror, Stephanie and Lula have to deal with a drug dealer's pet alligator Mr. Jingles in Sizzling Sixteen.
- The gamebook Quest for the Cities of Gold: The protagonist ends up in the Florida swamps at one point, and while exploring along with an Indian boy they end up attacked by alligators. The boy escapes, while the protagonist time-travels his way out of there.
Live-Action TV
- In an episode of The X-Files, Mulder and Scully were hunting The Stock Ness Monster but it turned out to be just an everyday, run of the mill killer crocodile, but at the end of the episode, it is revealed that the monster is real, but it's not a threat.
- In an episode of Bones, the heroes found the Victim of the Week by finding a foot inside a gator in the Florida Everglades.
- In Red Dwarf, Ace Rimmer's Nazi enemy has a crocodile for a pet, keeping it on his lap and stroking it affectionately, parodying Blofeld's Right-Hand Cat. He throws it at Ace and jumps out of the plane they're on, but Ace overpowers it and proceeds to "surf" on it in free fall.
Mythology
- In Egyptian Mythology, Sobek is a complex example. He could be quite benevolent at times, but also quite vengeful and brutal at other times. Egyptologists consider this to be that fact that he was associated with the Nile, which both provided water and irrigation but could also flood and drown people. Modern portrayals, however, mostly cast him as the villain.
- There is also the demoness Ammit, who had the head of a crocodile (amongst a lion's mane & frontquarters and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus). Her job was to devour souls found unworthy of eternal life when weighed against the feather of Ma'at.
- Another Egyptian gem: the werecrocodile.
- The Wani in Japanese lore are huge sea dragons resembling crocodiles. The daughter of Ryuujin Otohime reverted to her Wani form after giving birth to the emperor.
- In some Aztec myths, the world was made from the corpse of a gigantic crocodile-like monster who ate Tezcalipoca's leg.
- One piece of Christian imagery is people attacked by a crocodile — the crocodile representing Hell, and its victims sinners.
- Alternate translations of the Old Testament depict both Moses and the Pharaoh's priests turning their staffs into crocodiles, not snakes.
Newspaper Comics
- The Far Side occasionally subverts this. In one strip, a bunch of crocodiles gather around a little old lady who feeds them rats, making it clear that they are her beloved pets. In another one, a crocodile visits a therapist because he's been eating the little birds that perch on him, and he knows that's not normal behavior for a crocodile. In yet another strip, a crocodile/alligator appears outside a couple's house, and the wife is more concerned with figuring out whether it's an alligator or a crocodile.
Tabletop RPG
- The various editions of Dungeons & Dragons have had both regular size and giant crocodiles.
- Module U2 Danger at Dunwater. The PCs can encounter ordinary crocodiles as wandering monsters in the marshes. It's possible that the PCS may be sent to kill a giant crocodile that's been threatening the lizard men.
- Module EX1 Dungeonland. If the PCs go around the Pool of Tears, they'll be attacked by a giant crocodile.
- The darklord of the Wildlands, an African-flavored Ravenloft domain, is a gigantic crocodile.
- Some of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying System games had crocodiles.
- Stormbringer had both small and large crocodilians. The PCs could encounter them if they went through "The Hall of Risk" adventure in the Stormbringer Companion supplement.
- Call Of Cthulhu had crocodiles of all sizes. They could be encountered as wandering monsters in the "Valley of the Four Shrines" adventure in The Second Cthulhu Companion supplement.
- The Freedom City sourcebook for 2E Mutants & Masterminds, Freedom's Most Wanted, includes The Alien-Gator is an advanced alien stranded in the Florida Everglades who has turned savage and bestial after long mistreatment by humans.
Video Games
Western Animation
- Phineas and Ferb's Doof had two crocs, both named Susan, though they were not seen again.
- Croc, the main villain on The Wuzzles.
- On Futurama, as Fry and Leela jump a lunar ridge on a lunar rover, crocodiles underneath snap at them. Wearing air helmets. Don't ask what the point is, it's just funny.
- Subverted in a later episode, where crocodiles are docile house pets to the sewer mutants.
- One episode of Two Stupid Dogs involved the dogs, a Tarzan impersonator and a robotic crocodile, plus many attempts to avoid it while swinging across the chasm.
- In the pilot episode of Johnny Bravo, Johnny managed to wrestle and beat a live crocodile while trying to hit on a woman. That was before Badass Decay came along....
- Jonny Quest has at least two examples:
- "Treasure of the Temple". While being pursued along an underground river, the Quest team is attacked by crocodiles. Race Bannon has to fight one to rescue Jonny.
- Turu the Terrible. While traveling along a jungle river, a boat is attacked by crocodiles. They're kept off only by gunfire.
- In Archer, when Lana and Archer are protecting an oil pipeline in the middle of the Everglades from a radical environmentalist, it's revealed that Archer is afraid of being eaten by crocodiles, and of course one attacks them, their boat capsizes and they lose all their weapons and are stranded on the oil rig in the middle of no where waiting for the croc to eat them.
- In The Simpsons, when the whole town is brainwashed and forced to join a cult, Marge tries to leave, but has to overcome a lot of obstacles, including hounds, mines and a river full of crocodiles.
- Averted in the episode 'Kill the Alligator and Run.' The eponymous alligator, named Captain Jack, is quite docile, friendly, and loved by the locals. His death due to Homer's stupidity causes trouble for the family in Florida.
- In one episode of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Penelope is standing on a floor whose halves slowly separate. Below is a crocodile eager to devour her.
- Lest we forget the aversion with Wally Gator from Hanna-Barbera.
- A reoccurring character from My Gym Partner's a Monkey is a nerdy crocodile who keeps showing up after the Jungle Man episode.
- Averted in Sitting Ducks by Aldo, the protagonist's best friend. Of course almost all the other Alligators play this completely straight, and devour the ducks from Ducktown whenever they can. It's Aldo's refusal to do this, and his forbidden friendship with Bill that forms the central plot of the series.
- Also averted with Roger from The Penguins of Madagascar.
- And averted yet again with Gummy, owned by Pinkie Pie. He's actually an alligator, and he's too small to bite anyone (though he tries enthusiastically) as he doesn't have his teeth. Yet.
- Also averted with Rover in the Hub's Pound Puppies 2010.
Real Life
- Only six of the twenty-three species of crocodilians are a threat to humans. None the less, of all the world's large predatory animals, crocodilians are responsible for killing more humans than any other. As opposed to sharks, which typically attack humans in cases of mistaken identity, or predatory mammals such as lions which resort to maneating in times of desperation, crocodiles are indiscriminate and view humans as a natural food source. One prehistoric relative of the modern day Nile Crocodile, Crocodylus anthropophagus, earned its name because its bite marks have been found on fossils of ancient hominids, indicating that it preyed on them.
- Australia, land of Everything Trying to Kill You, has the saltwater crocodile, the largest living reptile in existence. It can be found 200 miles out at sea. Yes, it eats sharks.
- Their population goes beyond Australia. Lolong, the largest and longest specimen in captivity (as of 2012) at over 20 feet was caught in the Philippines. There are possibly larger ones loose out there. Sleep tight, kids!
- The Florida Everglades. There are stories that alligators finished off some of the survivors of the once-infamous Flight 401 crash
 , and at least one Urban Legend that local Seminole Indians once "introduced" some overly-bold Klansmen looking to pound some "Injuns" to the local gators.
- Gustave, a semi-legendary crocodile in Africa who may have killed upwards of 300 people. And Nile crocodiles in general, really. Because they were revered by ancient Egyptians for thousands of years, and it was punishable by death to even touch one, the crocs got wise, and are now one of the few species of animals that will deliberately stalk, hunt, and eat humans with direct intent as opposed to incidentally. Essentially, the Egyptians smiled at the crocodiles for so long, the crocs are smiling back.
- Deinosuchus, a 40-foot-long alligator of ancient times.
- And don't forget Sarcosuchus Imperator!
- Aegisuchus, the largest land predator EVER. 70 FEET long.
- There are several Urban Legends regarding gators in the sewers.
- In prehistory, crocodiles and their relatives were far more diverse, and some even more threatening. We have the terrestrial "boar-croc" Kaprosuchus; the terrestrial Sebecids, able to compete with theropod dinosaurs (and surviving up until far more recently); the Raiusuchians, who invented the Tyrannosaurus rex look while dinosaurs were still chasing bugs (and even came close to it in size); the marine Metriorhynchids, of whom one of them was nicknamed "Godzilla" for good reason... Add to that animals that made their living as giant browsers and filter-feeding whales far before those existed, and you have an incredibly impressive and diverse group.
- The Spinosaurid group of dinosaurs sufficiently evoke the crocodilian imagery: their heads and jaws are remarkably similar to those of crocodiles, and paleontologists agree that a significant part of their diet consisted of very large cretaceous fish. One genus's name, Suchomimus, even means "crocodile imitator".
- By that token, mosasaurs and to a lesser extent pliosaurs superficially resembled fully aquatic oceanic crocodiles, although they weren't even Archosaurs.
- There were a form of fully aquatic crocodiles, Metriorhynchids, with one even being nicknamed Godzilla.
- Anyone ever heard of Joe Ball, The Alligator Man?
|
|
