Reptiles Are Abhorrent - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Reptiles are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom; wherefore their Creator has not exerted his powers to make many of them."

— Carl von Linné a.k.a. Carolus Linnaeus

"Like most humans I seem to have an instinctive revulsion towards reptiles."

— Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek, "Arena"

Just once, we'd like to see an evil organization with a fluffy hamster motif.

So, you're watching the series "Flopsy Flops and the Fuzzy Bunch" or whatever. The heroes include a dog, a cat, a mouse and blah. They have wonderful adventures and occasionally get into scraps with the bullies - an alligator and a Carolina Anole. Wait, what?

In works of fiction starring animals, mammals tend to be cast as the heroes while reptiles tend to be the Designated Villains, even if their species is totally innocuous in reality. In extreme cases, this can start to look like the animal equivalent of Fantastic Racism.

Mind you, this is not limited to animal fiction. Even in fiction where the world is entirely populated by humans or humanoids, the villains will be reptiles, reptiles with Applied Phlebotinum to make them more frightening, or reptile-evolved or reptile-themed. Snakes are especially popular in this department, and the Big Bad may have a whole snake obsession going on. He may even top things off by turning into a giant snake, if he wasn't one already The trope even turns up, if only by metaphor, in non-fiction; saying that someone is "a snake" or "cold blooded" (see below) is enough to get across that you're dealing with a nasty character.

This stereotype also gives a big boost in popularity for the mongoose, a cute furry fellow who seems to live to fight these embodiments of evil (contrast to real life, where a wild mongoose can be quite a mean little sucker capable of turning in its skin to bite anyone who picks it up—not that you should try to pick up a cobra, either!).

While this trope seems unfair to those of us who like all animals regardless, it's origins can be at least partially explained:

There are, of course, many Herpetophobes out there, justified or not. In fact, some people argue that humans are instinctively afraid of snakes as a survival mechanism, due to evolving in Africa around many species of poisonous snakes. Writers are quite keen to jump on any common fear in their audience.
Physically, reptiles are strange and unappealing. Their bodies are often cold, hard and scaley, while as mammals we tend to prefer things warm, soft and cuddly. Snakes in particular, with their legless bodies and unblinking eyes can seem just wrong to some people.
The most popular story in the world, The Bible, begins with a very strong condemnation of snakes. After the serpent tricks Eve into eating the Fruit of Knowledge, God curses snakes to crawl on their bellies and be hated by mankind. With the amount of influence the Bible has had on human culture over the last few thousand years, it's understandable that this would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This trope is fairly consistent... Except when it isn't. You see, most people think turtles are cute. They have a reputation for wisdom as well, therefore, turtles can be good guys. (We can only imagine Most Writers live in places that are crawling with vipers and devoid of snappers.) In addition, Frilled Lizards, with their cute habit of scampering around on their hind legs with their frill extended, and a handful of other cute lizards, such as Geckos, often get the same consideration.

This trope mostly applies to extant species. Nonetheless, it goes a long way in explaining why Dinosaurs Are Dragons in most of the older Western fiction that features them. It still factors in, however, if the writers are once again not bothering to read anything beyond their old biology textbooks. It's increasingly clear that, had non-avian dinosaurs been around during Carl von Linn's time, he'd probably classify them as something else entirely (the fact that there could be prehistoric animals that wouldn't fit into one or another of his little boxes never really occurred to him). Note that modern representations of dinosaurs look more like mammals or ostriches than the old-school "really big lizards". (It still seems a little unfair that birds — and, arguably, mammals — get their own class, but that's an issue well beyond the scope of this trope.)

And while this particular trope page is meant to cover real species for the most part, this trope can, of course, factor into how Your Dragons Are Different.

One of the most pervasive Animal Stereotypes, the title comes from a quote from Carolus Linnaeus, shown at the beginning of this page (you'd expect him to know better.)

As with What Measure Is A Non Cute, it should be noted that this view varies by culture. It is largely played straight, especially with snakes, by Europe and North America and a few other cultures. In many other parts of the world (particularly Asia), on the other hand, snakes are associated with various gods, as well as being seen as symbols of immortality and fertility. In quite a few Bollywood movies, cobras are a force for good, killing evil villains.

This is Always Chaotic Evil applied to reptiles. See also What Measure Is A Non Cute, The Farmer And The Viper, and Scaled Up. Compare Cats Are Mean, Feathered Fiend, Bug War, and Big Creepy Crawlies. Not to be confused with Why Did It Have To Be Snakes (though it factors into that of course). The reason why Snake People are often evil.

As you read the following examples, notice how often the animals aren't the real villains at all; they are only in the role because humans were being abhorrent.

Examples:

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Advertising

Totally averted with the Geico gecko. In fact, the CG mascot is so adorable and well-mannered that you won't mind the fact that he's representing just another evil, money-grubbing insurance company.

Anime

The anime Queen's Blade plays this straight with a snake doing nasty things to one of the main characters, and subverts it by turning it into Fetish Fuel! The owner of said snake, Echidna, wears the snake around her crotch in lieu of pants!
In the Kero Kero Chime anime, the snakes and hebizoku (snake tribe) are introduced as villains counter to the frogs and kaeruzoku (frog tribe). But, in a subversion, this turns out to all be a gigantic misunderstanding, and both sides are actually good "people".
Averted in the anime and video game adaptations of the book Brave Story. The reptilian Waterkin are one of the peaceful, civilized races of the world of Vision.
Subverted in the manga series Dorohedoro wherein the protagonist, Cayman, sports a reptilian head and (presumably) scales adorn the entirty of his body. Notably, this was because of a Bastard Wizard's experiements, but still. A valid subvertion in This Troper's eyes.
Twisted in Martian Successor Nadesico, where the Earth government refers to its enemies in the war as "Jovian Lizards" because of this trope, even though they only send Mecha Mooks into battle so most people don't actually know what they look like. In fact, they're actually humans.
The first set of baddies in Getter Robo was the evil Dinosaur Empire, who were, well... dinosaurs. Averted sometime later in the manga continuity, as there's also good Reptiles, and a few even piloted their own Humongous Mecha to help out the heroes.
The Pokemon anime features several, but the most prominent is the Ekans (later Arbok) owned by Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain Jessie of Team Rocket. However, this could qualify as a subversion; it is stated on several occasions that Pokemon have no moral alignment of their own (except Meowth, perhaps as a result of learning human speech), and just do what their trainers tell them — and, indeed, Ekans/Arbok is often seen relaxing happily with Ash's Pokemon when their respective trainers aren't trying to send each other blasting off. Arbok was later Put On A Bus and replaced by Seviper, a Jonas Quinn who is definitely more of a Jerkass who tried to eat several main characters before Jesse beat the shit out of it to capture it.
The Yu-Gi-Oh anime includes a set of Reptile monsters, but their only major appearance was in GX while being used by Big Bad Professor Viper or so he appeared to be until Yubel took over. Dinosaurs, however, appear on both sides; the original series has them being used by Card Carrying Villain Dinosaur Ryuuzaki/Rex Raptor, while the sequel series gives them to one of Judai's Sidekicks.
While the main characters of Keroro Gunsou are mostly alien frogs, there is an antagonistic enemy race of humanoid cobras known as Vipers.
Orochimaru from Naruto isn't helping with the whole image problem.
One Piece has the animal-themed Shichibukai, which usually play as villains. You have Sir Crocodile, Gecko Moria, and Boa Hancock, who might be an aversion since, despite being a horrible person, is very kind to the protagonist.
Eyeshield 21 has the Zokugaku Chameleons, with their linebacker, Habishira, having long arms like a chameleon's tongue.
- The much tougher, Affably Evil Hakushuu Dinosaurs are another example.
We can't quite be sure how Hayate no Gotoku feels about this trope. Machina's alternate form (we think) is a giant snake, and his first acts include nearly killing the main character and acting like an all around bad guy. But as of ch 255-ish, he's being more than friendly with the heroes, even jokingly (we think) asking Maria to marry him for her (and Sakuya's) hamburger-making skills.
Vicious in Cowboy Bebop is often compared to a snake or called cold-blooded. In addition to various snake metaphors, more examples of this trope come into play due to the fact that he is part of the Red Dragon Syndicate, which is named after another reptile (dragons count).
Beautifully subverted in Osamu Tezuka's Buddha, where a boy named Tatta and a family encounter a vicious cobra who happens to be protecting its eggs. The cobra and boy make a deal that the boy will sacrifice himself to the snake to be eaten so the snake can gain back its energy, and the parents can take most of her eggs to feed the family. The snake in question is depicted as not a villain, but simply an animal that wished to make a fair trade. In fact, the main message of Tezuka's work was that all life was precious, even snakes.
Most of the Arcobaleno have cute mammals or birds as their pets. What do the greedy Viper and Mad Scientist Verde get? A snake and an alligator, respectively. However, this is subverted by Reborn, one of the main protagonists, who has a cute shapeshifting chameleon named Leon.
"I am a snake. My skin is cold. I have no heart. I slither around, seeking prey with my tongue. And I swallow my favorites whole." As if Rukia hadn't made the connection several hundred chapters back, Ichimaru Gin himself gave this little monologue in Chapter 414.

Comic Books

The DCU and DCAU:
- When The Legion of Super Heroes comic began rebooting the characters as more alien and/or more racially diverse, they redesigned Projectra as coming from a race of sentient snakes, making her a rare heroic example in comics. She does state that she has run into prejudice before, and this is given as the reason she appears to strangers initially in a 'normal' appearance.
  - She was later mutated into a slightly more humanoid form and slipped into a mild Heroic BSOD due to horror at her appearance.
- Green Lantern Isamot Kol is an alien space cop who's basically a five-foot-tall lizard-man. He's got a surly demeanor, but is also a heroic Badass.
  - But in the same comic, the Orange Entity, a living embodiment of temptation and selfishness, takes the form of a giant snake.
- Kobra is a terrorist cult who uses a snake motif for their criminal activities. They later appeared as a cult in Batman Beyond. In their most notorious story, from "Batman Beyond", a few of them transformed themselves into snake people with the help of Splicer technology and... dinosaur DNA... And then they were going to throw a "Thermal Bomb" down a volcano (!?) to raise the temperature of the world (they are, of course, "cold blooded"), Kill All Humans, and take over the planet. Yeah.
  - The Checkmate arc plays with this. After the Rooks take out a major Kobra base they find a large nest of baby snake people. The Rooks decide to raise them.
- Speaking of snake-people in the DC Animated Universe who wanted to Kill All Humans, this trope is so pervasive in the DCAU that, by the time we get to the Back Story that involves a tribe of ancient dark magician snake-men who wished to destroy the Sun (?!) to take revenge on the humans in the Justice League episode, "Eclipse", you wind up wanting to see —just once— an evil tribe of fluffy bunnies instead. Just once.
  - Also, once Fridge Logic kicks in, you start to wonder a race of cold-blooded animals would want to destroy the sun...
  - They're already dead. I don't think they need the sun anymore.
  - There are yet more snake-men in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Chaos at the Earth's Core". As with their fellow DCAU snakemen, they're involved with hilariously (depending on your point of view) inaccurate dinosaurs and wish to Kill All Humans... And then, in a downright refreshing subversion, it turns out that they're just Mooks of an evil wizard * human* Big Bad; they're just Punch Clock Villains who are terrified of their boss.
- Killer Croc, one of Batman's most brutal enemies depending on who's writing for him, is a man with a bizarre skin condition that gives him the appearance and toughness of a crocodile. He has Crocodile-like habits in Batman The Animated Series as well. Although there's at least one continuity where he gets to go off and live in peace with Swamp Thing. Croc also sometimes appoints himself protector of sewer-dwelling homeless and runaways.
  - Current depictions of him have him behaving much more beast-like than before (he has grown a freakin' tail), due to a virus injected in him by Hush; now he's often engaging in cannibalism.
  - This is lampshaded in a backup story in Legends of the Dark Knight, where he realizes that as he's becoming stronger and tougher the more animalistic he gets, he's also losing his humanity. He kidnaps a scientist to try and reverse the changes, but when she reveals that there is no way, he loses what little self control he had left and eats her.
- Copperhead is another Batman villain who started out with a special suit that gave him snake-like flexibility and was later mutated into an actual snake-man. The snakeman version (with a silly snake-hat) appeared as a reoccurring enemy of the Justice League and a similar character was a one-off villain in Batman Beyond.
- Turtle Man is a rare example of a mean turtle. He's "the Slowest Man Alive" and is a minor enemy of The Flash. He was originally a joke villain, but later became a credible threat when he gained the power to drain speed from other objects, including the Flash himself. (He's still pretty silly, though.)
- And then, of course, there were the tommy-gun-toting alien alligator-men from the planet Punkus who fought Captain Marvel as part of the Monster Society of Evil. No, seriously.
  - The Captain Marvel Reboot applies this to arch-enemy Mr Mind, who was once an excellent subversion of What Measure Is A Non Cute in that he's a cute little cartoony caterpillar (to be fair, an alien caterpillar with Psychic Powers). Now he's a Snake. Ah. (Let's hope he was only controlling the snake.)
- And then there's Sobek the crocodile man from 52, who turns out to be the vessel of an Eldritch Abomination that hails from Apokolips that embodies famine. A bit of a subversion since the form he adopts in a later storyline is an anthropomorphic hyena — which still falls under What Measure Is A Non Cute/Scavengers Are Gross.
The Marvel Universe:
- In Spider-Man, Curt Connors's experiment to help people with missing limbs, like himself, caused him to transform into The Lizard, a monstrous reptile who detests all "warm-blooded" life (though it probably goes without saying that he doesn't like spiders either). In the well-loved '90s cartoon, he looked a great deal like a giant, very anthropomorphic Anole.
  - Komodo, who might count as a Distaff Counterpart of The Lizard, manages to be a complete aversion. She was Connors's lab assistant and stole some of the formula that turned Connors into the Lizard, perfected it (for herself, anyways) and used it to grow new legs. Even though the use of said legs requires she stay in her reptile form, she's still able to change back and forth (though being human means her legs go away), and in reptile form she suffers no desire to Kill All Humans.
- The latest revamp of Connors gives him the ability to activate the "lizard brain" of humans, encouraging them to act like reptiles. Apparently lizards are really sexually aggressive and mindlessly violent towards their own kind. Who knew?
- X-Men - The Starjammers have Ch'od, who is not only a large reptilian alien, but a jovial and pleasant one.
  - Lockheed is a good guy and a tiny powerhouse dragon-like alien.
  - Sauron is a mutant who turns into an evil "pterodactyl". He is a genuinely abhorrent specimen who wants to -of course- Kill All Humans.
  - Mutant? Even though Sauron's powers depend on him touching mutants for their energy, he isn't a mutant himself.
  - The latest batch of X-kids included Anole, another nice guy (although he looks far less threatening than many reptilian characters).
- Power Pack has The Snarks, which are evil, nasty lizards from Space — initially. Emperor Bhadsha, their current leader, is a swell guy who hoped to install genuine reforms to the government not to mention expand diplomatic relations and most of the race wasn't too bad. It was just Maraud and her group that was evil. (Sure the reform was government by Gladiator battle, but hey, less lethal than full scale war.)
- Fin Fang Foom the dragon (in gym shorts) is more of a big bully than anything. He often acts as a Captain Ersatz of Godzilla. The rest of Fin Fang Foom's race are pretty nice, he's just a Jerk Ass.
  - The same is true for Dragon Man. (Anyone else have Trogdor's Theme in their head?)
- And, of course, The Serpent Society, a whole brigade of snake-themed villains - some actually reptilian, others who just like the fashion statement - who are intertwined with the ancient evil artifact of eldritch reptile gods, the Serpent Crown.
- Viper is yet another snake-thematic villain.
- Subverted in Incredible Hercules; Delphyne, a Perky Goth Gorgon-Amazon, is a Punch Clock Villain who later switches sides out of love. And she's quite foxy, in the eyes of the hero (well his sidekick), despite being, well, a Gorgon.
  - Well, Amadeus Cho is the 7th smartest human on the planet.
Subverted in the short manga series "Monster Collection" (based on a card game of the same name) where one of the heroes is a sexy lamia (who is involved with most of the manga's Fan Service sequences) and the cavalry of the story's climax consist of a team of good-hearted humanoid lizards descended from dragons. The author even alludes to how unusual this is in one of the short comics at the end of one of the volumes.
The Movie prequel of Astro Boy has some Lizard Folk as the "Bad Guy". It's pretty clear they're really the good guys; you kinda figure that out the minute you find out they're lead by a Cute Monster Girl.

Disney Animated Canon Examples

The Rescuers features an entire association of Rescue Aid mice, a friendly cat who sings about keeping faith, and an extremely helpful dragonfly - but the alligators are the only mean animals in the movie. Huh. There's also a turtle in the Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits who help the heroes; he wears a Confederate cap. Make of that what you will.
- The Rescuers Down Under feature a Punch Clock Villain Goanna who still liked to terrorize smaller animals, as well as a bunch of man-eating crocodiles. There is also Frank, a good (if hyper) Frilled Lizard.
- Tellingly, none of the mean reptiles in either of the movies talk. And the crocodilians of both films seem to be rather useful at being the method of a Karmic Death...
Robin Hood has the Punch Clock Villain Sir Hiss. Oddly enough, he's a goofy Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain. Robin Hood also featured a more sympathetic reptile - Toby Tortoise, nerdy friend of Cheerful Child Skippy Rabbit.
- One of the villains is an axe wielding alligator, the other of two reptiles under the service of the Mammalian Prince John.
Kaa in The Jungle Book is another funny villain, but some viewers think he had definitely paedophiliac undertones to him ("Trussssst in me / Jussssst in me"). Note that this is entirely different from the book (see below).
- There's a whole chapter in the seminal Doorstopper, The Illusion of Life in which the authors go on and on about how they struggled to make both Kaa and Sir Hiss "cute" so that they wouldn't scare the women in the audience.
Disney's Peter Pan has the crocodile with the clock in its belly, who's hungry for Hook. You could make a good argument that his active pursuit of Hook, while Peter would rather just goof around with his gang, makes the crocodile the actual hero of the story.
In Disney's Aladdin, Jafar uses of snake motifs throughout the movie, and when he wants to amp up the evil, he turns into a giant snake.
Fantasia has "Dance of the Hours", in which the ballet-dancing hippopotami, pachyderms and ostriches are interrupted by caped alligators. The alligators' leader is a romantic swashbuckler type, but the rest of them seem to be lechers.
Disney's The Wild features a silly-looking snake among its protagonists, a pair of chameleons who want to be spies, and some intimidating-but-friendly sewer-dwelling alligators.
Enchanted has a shy turtle in Giselle's entourage of cute animals; he's so smitten with her he gets starry eyed and retreats into his shell when she kisses him. The transformation of the evil stepmother at the end is a definite example though.
The named characters in The Wuzzles were all obvious, easily identifiable Mix And Match Critters. Background characters were less-obvious mixes. But the thing is only the antagonists, Croc, Brat and Flizzard, sported any recognizably reptilian features. And aside from that, your guess is as good as ours what they were meant to be hybrids of. (Many fansites hold that they are, respectively, "half-crocodile/frog/lizard, half-dragon". Strange, given that all other Wuzzles were combinations of real animals.)
Borderline example in The Emperor's New Groove. Real snakes don't appear and nobody is Scaled Up, but Yzma uses her fair share of decorative snake motifs.
Both Averted and Played Straight in the series Brandy and Mr Whiskers. Lola Boa is a boa constrictor, but is also one of the nicest characters in the series and best friends with Brandy. The villain, however, is a dictator-esque gecko named Gaspar Le Gecko. Of course, there are times when Gaspar is on friendly terms with the main cast as well.
In Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers the one shot villain Sewer Nose is a deranged alligator who at least gains some sympathy points because he was driven nuts by being traumatized as a hatchling by being flushed down a toilet.
Averted in an episode of The Little Mermaid. The episode features a giant reptilian sea-monster named Simon who looks scary at first, but turns out that all he wants to do is make friends.
Averted in The Princess and the Frog. One member of the heroic comedy relief in the film is a fat trumpet-playing alligator named Louis. Mama Odie has a benelovent seeing-eye snake named Juju, though he seems to be The Chew Toy.
- Some of the "Friends From the Other Side" take on snake forms though. It's to be expected when your villain is Jafar reincarnated as a 1920s voodoo doctor
- Before meeting Louis, Tiana and Naveen encounter a group of sinister gators that fit this trope to a T.
The early footage from Tangled seems to indicate that the token cute animal sidekick du jour will be a chameleon. So there's another aversion for Disney.

Film

In Alligator, cute baby gator Raymond is flushed into Chicago's sewers and starts chowing down on pet corpses spiked with experimental growth hormone; so he isn't really mean, just hungry. Notable for being among the first of many, many Jaws rip-offs — and for being one of the best.
The first Anaconda film, just in case the audience isn't already unsettled by gigantic snakes trying to eat people, asserts that anacondas will regurgitate their still-living prey after swallowing them, just for the malicious pleasure of eating them again. This happens to the main antagonist of th first film.
Snakes on a Plane had snakes as the designated villains as well, and in this case they were riled up by a spray of pheromones. It gets to the point that Samuel L Jackson has had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane.
In the excellently titled Ssssssss, the Mad Scientist in the movie didn't mind snakes. As a matter of fact, he turned people into snakes for fun. (The people in question didn't share his enthusiasm.)
They aren't reptiles, but while we're on the subject of horror movies that assume we think crawling, scaly, swamp-dwelling animals are inherently scary: Frogs. Yes, Frogs. (And the frogs in question are of the little green hopping Rana pipens variety; so it isn't like they're poisonous or gigantic or anything. Naturally some reptiles also participate in the mayhem.) Just the title should do.
Don't forget that Godzilla was genuinely scary and evil in his first appearance. It was only later on that he became a hero.
- In general, nearly all the Kaiju are fish, reptiles, plants, or bugs. The only mammalian kaiju in the series are King Shisa and King Kong, and one of those is licensed to a different company.
The Very Loosely Based On A True Story Lake Placid has a giant, attacking, man-eating crocodile. This could be another case of Humans Are Bastards, though — after all, he didn't ask to be abandoned in a freezing cold Maine lake, did he?
And in a case of Humans Are Stupid, Primeval stars SUV-sized "Serial killer" Gustav, whose large kill record is largely due to idiot fishermen and similarly idiot photographers and big-game hunters. However, it's at least more factually accurate than the movie above.
Reptilicus is a giant, man-eating lizard-dragon-thing.
Crocodile has... yeah.
Kill Bill's villain team, the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad all had codenames based on lethally venomous snakes. Of course the main character was named after the most deadly snake (the black mamba).
Q was about an evil version of Quetzalcoatl, the ancient Aztec winged snake god. It's a fun movie, but it's also ridiculously Sadly Mythtaken (see below).
Dreamscape featured a little boy who suffered from nightmares about The Snake Man. The villain of the piece took on the hero by turning himself into The Snake Man.
Zathura A Space Adventure (which is basically Jumanji IN SPACE!) gives us the villainous Zorgons, reptilian aliens who are attracted to heat sources.
The original Star Wars films have very few reptilian sentients. Most of them are in the Cantina on Mos Eisley. The only exception is Bossk, a rather vicious Trandoshan bounty hunter. General Grievous was a Kaleesh, a reptilian species that are in war with the Huk, a mantid-like species. The Huk were the Invaders, and Grievous was very noble back then. The prequels have some other reptilian species, but none in a prominent role.
- From the "Call Me MISTER Binks" article (Radio Free WYHTL):
"I'm addressing, of course, the vicious, bigoted pattern of lizard-hate in the culture, and in the media.
The Phantom Menace doesn't just contain one species-ist character, it slurs the entire reptilian phylum."
Totally subverted in The Film Of The Book, Terry Pratchett 's Hogfather. Susan is utterly non-freaked out by the various creepy-crawlies the "tooth fairy" changes into. Heck, she likes those.
Enemy Mine uses a war between humans and a race of reptilian creatures in space. A human and an alien fighter pilot crash land onto a deserted planet, without recovery, and reconcile with each other over the course of years. So, nice aversion.
- The original novella also has this as the core story, although the ending differs quite a bit between the two; The film ends with an implied species-wide reconciliation; the novella ends with the acknowledgment that this simply won't be possible, at least in the immediate future — there's too much bad blood and too much prejudice, even though the war is over — and the formation of a colony for those among them who are willing to look past their differences and work together in a spirit of friendship.
In a "making of" documentary for The Film Of The Book Eragon, one of the people in charge of designing Saphira said, "We decided first of all, to make Saphira the dragon more likable. So we made her look more like a lioness instead of a reptile." Sigh...
In The Dark Crystal, the evil Skeksis look like lizards with some of the most repellent traits of vultures added for good measure.
Why did it have to be SNAKES?!
- Although, to be fair: Indy did admit he was freakishly scared of snakes, and this was ridiculed by other characters during the films.
A Cold War-era instructional film warned of the dangers of Hostile Intelligence Services (HISS), portrayed as an animated Smug Snake with a Lzherusskie accent.
Although clearly scaleless and unrelated to any real-world organism, the monsters from the Tremors films and series (or just their tongues) are frequently described as resembling reptiles of one sort or another.
Averted with Gamera who is a giant turtle that saves the world from evil.
- But that is just a clear example of Turtle Power.
- Played straight, however, with the villain Zedus, who is a giant frilled lizard/T-rex-like monster that eats humans.
- Also, there's the Gyaos. Giant bat-like reptilian monsters that also have a taste for human flesh.
In Conan The Barbarian, the primary antagonist Thulsa Doom is the leader of a snake cult. He can turn into a giant snake and even uses one as an arrow.
Averted in Kung Fu Panda, where Viper is the nicest of the Furious Five.
- Don't forget Oogway, (solitary tear rolls down troper's cheek) don't Forget Oogway.
Averted in Blueberry (AKA Renegade) during the final spirit battle. The forces of good are represented by black insects, while the forces of good include golden alligators.
Live And Let Die - Mr. Big/Dr. Kananga uses snakes to kill adversaries, either releasing one into their hotel room, or using one in an elaborate voodoo ceremony (pulled from a coffin full of snakes) - then there's his crocodile farm/heroin processing center.

Literature

The deceitful, tempting serpent from the Book of Genesis makes this Older Than Dirt. "Nah, you won't die if you eat that..."
- We-e-ell, since the warning said: "the very day you eat it you die", and that didn't happend, we can't help but wonder who is really the big fat liar here...
- Partially subverted on the Exodus when Moses turns his staff into a snake as a sign of God, then the Pharaoh's wizards do the same but Moses's snake devours them, again as a sign of God.
- Inverted later on when the Israelites are stricken with plague (divine punishment again) and a pillar with artistic snakes represented on it is set up to cure them (at God's command).
Reversed in Good Omens: The serpent, initially known as Crawly and later Crowley, is portrayed as not being all that bad. He's in fact a demon in name only and one of the protagonists who try to prevent Armageddon, despite retaining some snakelike qualities such as slitted pupils and a tendency to hiss even when in human form.
- It could be said that the subversion was brought on by God; who saw the trope coming, because he's God!
The Snake in The Little Prince could certainly qualify. He gets a Villain Song, "A Snake in the Grass," in the 1974 movie version.
Redwall. While the mammals are split between being good or evil, pretty much every single reptile or amphibian is a bad guy. In the first book, a snake is given a demon's name and likened to a giant, intelligent, evil monster akin to a dragon. In one of the later books, a desert-dwelling character keeps a pet sand lizard; "Get 'em when they're young and they're good likkle critters."
- Lampshaded hilariously by Something Awful, though it was in response more to the mustelids all being evil.
Uncomfortably applied in an issue of Ranger Rick, of all places. There was a short story in which Rick and his gang help an Ocelot in the Everglades and are menaced by an alligator, who was explicitly described as a villain. This was jarring considering it was the only time an animal filled the antagonistic role; usually Humans Are Bastards (and even then, they staunchly used the Humans Are Misguided subtrope). Even worse? The very next issue Rick and co. head back to Florida to help... alligators.
- Another, and thankfully more typical, issue had Boomer the Badger extremely unsympathetic to the plight of the Komodo Dragon and other un-cute endangered animals. After a round of nightmares in which Badgers had gone extinct, but would be brought back if Boomer could defend their right to exist, he realized his hypocrisy.
- Ranger Rick magazine also had a series of nonfiction books about animals and of those, one of the most beloved is The Unhuggables. It did all it could to discredit this trope (though it's telling that snakes get their own chapter to themselves) as well as Carnivore Confusion and (as you could probably guess from the so-close-to-being-the-Trope Namer-title) What Measure Is A Non Cute.
Averted in PG Wodehouse' Indiscretions of Archie with a tiny pet snake named Peter. He was immeasurably lovable.
Wild Cards has several reptilian characters, and most of them are good guys. Sewer Jack Robicheaux turns into an alligator, and as an alligator, Jack behaves pretty much as alligators do in nature; he'd really just like to be left alone to eat and sleep. Additionally, Jack is HIV+ and while he's an alligator, the virus does not advance in his body. The Lizard King, a superpowered Captain Ersatz of Jim Morrison, is a hero of the counterculture partly for his ability to project an illusion of himself as a giant cobra. Lamia was a former socialite who took a turn towards charity when she became a snake-woman.
A Series of Unfortunate Events has The Incredibly Deadly Viper, which is an intentional misnomer. The Baudelaires' herpetologist uncle gave it that name as a joke. Although it is large and terrifying in appearance with huge fangs and bulging eyes, it is sweet-natured, friendly, and as affectionate as a kitten. It was a frequent playmate of Baby Sunny. There were genuinely dangerous snakes in the uncle's estate as well, but he kept them caged and safely away from the children until the Big Bad showed up.
Rudyard Kipling's stories invoke only when applied to venomous snakes. In "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," a pet mongoose defends his masters' home against the deadly snakes that are everywhere. However, in the Jungle Books, Kaa the python is an incredibly Bad Ass Old Master, and he is one of the nobler and more intelligent characters in the entire series. He often shows off his century of age by coming up with intelligent solutions to the many problems that afflict his man-cub friend. In "Kaa's Hunting," the "poison people" seem more self-absorbed than anything, and even the mad cobra in 'The King's Ankus' isn't evil, just slightly insane. All told, it's understandable that Kipling would have show poisonous snakes in a lower light, since they are much more dangerous to humanity.
Raymond E. Feist's novel A Darkness at Sethanon introduces the Panthathians, a race of snake-men who worship a race of evil Precursors that will destroy the world if ever freed. Naturally they are attempting to do exactly that.
And then there's Harry Potter. The first book has the scene with the Boa Constrictor, who is a very nice guy. Then we learn that the mascot of Slytherin House is a snake and it pretty much goes downhill from there. Harry's ability to speak Parseltongue should come as a welcome subversion. After all, Dumbledore makes it clear that the ability isn't evil despite being stereotyped as such. Unfortunately, it's played for all the angst it's worth, as Harry hates this ability because it makes him so similar to Voldemort.
- And in book six, when Dumbledore tells Harry that he didn't completely trust the young Tom Riddle, because of the ways he stole from the other children at his orphanage, killed their pets, and lured them into caves to traumatize them, Harry adds, "And he was a Parselmouth." Of course, Dumbledore immediately responds to Harry's comment by pointing out that Harry is living proof that being a Parselmouth doesn't make you evil, and furthermore the fact that Riddle was an obvious Jerk Ass to his fellow orphans was much more troubling to him than the ability to chitchat with snakes.
  - Although we've also been told that after Voldemort tried to kill Harry in the 7th book, he lost his ability to speak Parseltongue, which he'd inherited from Voldemort. So...
- Worth mentioning that one of the bad guys is named Draco.
  - Of course it seems that the people in Draco's family name themselves after constellations, so it's probably more of that then being named after an actual dragon. Still though...
Jimmy's Boa is a very strong counter-example. Who couldn't help loving that big, wrinkly Steven Kellogg face?
Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series feature the reptilian AAnn who were originally all portrayed as Card Carrying Villains. In a later novel, he did introduce a group of outcast artist AAan who were quite kind to the series' protagonist after he'd lost his memory, to the point of offering to adopt him into their commune. Interestingly, the insectoid Thranx are the close friends and companions of humanity, making up one half of the titular Commonwealth.
- And let us not forget that Flinx, the main protagonist of most of the Commonwealth books, has as his companion Pip, the "Alaspanian Minidrag": a semi-sentient, fiercely loyal, extremely lethal flying serpent. Pip gets cover billing right up there with Flinx. Interestingly the sub titles of the books have Pip's name first, "A Pip and Flinx Novel/Story/Adventure".
- This trope becomes Reptiles Are Stupid in Foster's Spellsinger series, in which reptiles are the only air-breathing vertebrates that aren't intelligent tool-users. Except for the turtles and dragons, which of course get an exemption on grounds of popular appeal.
Both used and avoided in the novel Chester Cricket's Home, a sequel to A Cricket in Times Square. One of the residents of Chester's meadow, a water snake named Walter, realizes that many humans find him horrifying, a fact that he takes an inordinate amount of pride in. However, Walter is actually quite friendly and funny, if a bit of a wise guy at times.
- Incidentally, the earlier Cricket novel manages to avoid Cats Are Mean, and the hero of both books is an insect, so bravo to George Selden. (Now if only his immigrant human characters didn't speak in You No Take Candle...)
Both used and subverted by David Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean series. While the civilization most attuned to and appreciative of snakes, the Nyissans, are usually portrayed as a rather sinister, corrupt, and amoral people, eventually the chief eunuch Sadi becomes a rather amusing hero, and he brings his pet snake Zith, an intelligent, extremely lethal but extremely affectionate and endearing snake with almost cat-like habits. The only member of the party who doesn't take a shine to her is Silk, whose snake-phobia is more comical than rational. Zith's habit of curling up and sleeping in the bosom of Silk's love interest does not help this. Nor does how Silk finds out...
- For that matter, the Nyissan queen Salmissra becomes considerably more sympathetic and competent after she's turned from a woman into a gigantic, sentient, immortal cobra, probably because she no longer has to concern herself with unstable drugs to maintain her apparent youth.
There is a strange children's book called Gator Gumbo that partially subverts this. The main character is an old alligator that can no longer catch prey. The other animals taunt him over this. In the end, though he makes a batch of gumbo. The other animals refuse to help but want some. So they get get close enough and he sweeps them into the pot, cooks, and eats them. This is partially an aversion because all the nonreptiles are giant jerks and entirely unsympathetic characters. It probably qualifies as a Family Unfriendly Aesop as well — Don't be a jerk and never underestimate old people or they will destroy you.
Similar to the Disney's Aladdin, example, the Queen of Underland in The Silver Chair turns into a snake for the slight of intending to leave. Prince Rillian is glad of this, because it meant he wouldn't have to kill a woman.
In Jhegaala, Vlad finds out the hard way that his fellow humans associate reptilian familiars with Black Magic.
Subverted in the Italian folk tale "Biancabella and the Snake". The female snake Samaritana is the Mysterious Protector and Aloof Big Sister of the main character, the young noblewoman Biancabella; they have a fall-out after Biancabella reveals her bond to everyone when she had explicitely asked the girl to be her Secret Keeper, but when Biancabella gets married and goes after much misfortune (including the loss of her hands and eyes, courtesy of her husband's Wicked Stepmother), Samaritana helps her overcome her ordeals.
Subverted and averted in Finder's Stone trilogy first and last books. Saurials (reptilian humanoids) sometimes mistaken for lizardmen or demons, but turns out to cover lots of roles from great hero to wizard cool and decent enough to be Elminster's old friend to The Woobie. Not even a single one is outright evil (when not under control of some rotten pile of deity), visibly corrupted or as much as Well Intentioned Extremist (one was Lawful Anal before the story but got better and still has lots of suffering as a result). Which is more than can be said about most human characters with names.
Debora Chester's Alien Chronicles series has the Viis, who resemble giant frilled lizards. They're a despotic race that has enslaved various mammalian races, with the only other reptilian species being their allies instead. When the mammalian races leave to find a utopia, not even their Viis underclass allies go with them, and what becomes of the turtle-people is never said. The web page for the series even invokes this trope.
Largely averted in The Fantastic Flying Journey, in which the crocodiles and the python are portrayed sympathetically. The book does feature an aggressive spitting cobra and, in the sequel The Fantastic Dinosaur Adventure, a few of the carnivorous dinosaurs are antagonists, but the majority of reptiles are nevertheless good.
In Clive Barker's Abarat series, despite the archipelago of Abarat being home to a host of wildly different creatures, Finnegan Hobb is out to kill all dragons, even young ones, because one of them killed his bride. All dragons appearing on-page are unsympathetic (and ugly), while Hobb is depicted sympathetically, and none of the other characters have a problem with him basically wanting to commit genocide of a sentient species. Notable in that this unnuanced portrayal of dragons is rare in modern fantasy.
In Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series, a pair of WWII destroyers slip sideways into a timeline where dinosaurs were never wiped out and humans never evolved. Instead two other intelligent races did, one mammalian, one reptilian. Guess who the bad guys are?
Averted with the hertasi in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series.
In his Pellucidar series, Edgar Rice Burroughs created two reptilian species, the Snake People Horibs who are villains right out of central casting and the more nuanced Mahars who are telepathic, parthenogenic pterosaurs who start out ruling Pellucidar but are overthrown by the human hero. It later turned out they didn't realize humans were intelligent because they weren't telepathic.
Both used and inverted in Chess with a Dragon. On the one hand, the galaxy is populated by many dinosaur-derived alien races, any of which would be content to experiment on, enslave, and/or eat humans. On the other, mammalian races are an extremely rare fluke in this novel, hence most civilized species insist that Mammals Are Abhorrent.
The antagonists in Timothy Zahn's Conqueror trilogy, a reptilian race, start off the series with an apparently unprovoked attack by humans. Human communications were misinterpreted as a weapon, due to being harmful to the last stage of the race's existence, as a ghost-like entity that's vulnerable to electromagnetic radiation in the range used by tactical radios. Notably, both sides of the war aren't a united facade of good or evil.
Played very straight in The Book of Night with Moon by Diane Duane: it is revealed that humans' association of reptiles with evil (in the Book of Genesis and elsewhere) is due to the lizard people choosing to align with the power of evil; and the city of the sentient lizard people is a horrific World Half Empty which runs on systematic oppression and cannibalism. On the upside, the victory of the heroes give the lizard people a chance to choose a better path, and the lizard Ith becomes a sympathetic character.
- She does avert it in some of her Star Trek novels, where various reptilian aliens are simply treated as just another type of Starfish Alien.
The Dracomen are generally good guys in the Polity Series.
Subverted in the Night Watch series. At one point, the witch Alisa is taking a vacation to recover her powers, and is accompanied by a werecreature. When she asks what he turns into, he states that it is a lizard, impressing Alisa because werelizards are quite rare. He then embarrassedly clarifies that he becomes a herbivorous lizard (and a brightly coloured one at that), and that the only thing he is really used for is scaring children.
Occasional reptilian species show up in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Their alignments vary from author to author. Trandoshans, for example, are wholly amoral and psychopathic in the Bounty Hunter Wars, with cannibalism and slaving implied to come naturally to the whole species. Mind, everyone in the Bounty Hunter Wars books is wildly unheroic, but the Trandoshans more than about half of the others. But in the X Wing Series, while a Trandoshan bounty hunter killed a character's father, there are also some associated with the Rebellion, and the only universal trait is poor manual dexterity. Timothy Zahn's The Thrawn Trilogy introduced the Barabel, a reptilian race with tails, which respect Jedi. The New Jedi Order and Dark Nest Trilogy make the Barabel into a Proud Warrior Race.
- Maybe the one species which shows up often and is pretty much always bad is the Falleen, extremely humanlike "reptomammals" with date rape pheromones''. The first one written was the crime lord Prince Xizor; Falleen have been shown trying to kill Vader because he razed a portion of their planet, but otherwise they're pretty much universally criminal.
Harry Turtledove's books have The Race, which initially seem to be this trope perfectly personified, along with many other tropes related to villainy, but later they're revealed as being simply arrogant but chivalraic beings.
Robert E. Howard's stories of King Kull include the Serpent People, an ancient, pre-human species that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They were evil, dying out, yet determined to retake the world for their species. Among their magical talents was the ability to cast a glamour that made them seem human to observers. The illusion was so good in one story that Kull himself doubted (for all of a minute) his own existence. After which he killed the imposter. Death broke the spell, revealing the truth.
- A trope he shared with Lovecraft, for whom reptiles are a frequent source of horror, most notably in The Nameless City.
Played completely backwards in Brewster's Courage, a children's book about a black footed ferret who hears a Bayou blues band and moves to Louisiana. The first "person" to be nice to him is an alligator lady. The second is a cottonmouth snake. Mammals in general tend to be xenophobic jerkasses.
Both played straight and averted in Korney Chukovsky's children stories. In "Stolen Sun" a crocodile swallows the sun (just go with it) and it takes a bear to tear him apart and release it. In "Barmaley" another crocodile swallows the titular villain and rescues several people.
Subverted in A Night In The Lonesome October, where the black snake Quicklime is one of the Closers, fighting to prevent an invasion by Eldritch Abominations. A pretty nice guy, too.
Subverted and played straight in the Greenwater novels. Most of the races of the Greenwater at least appear reptillian, including a race stated as a primary enemy of the Ffolk/Humans in the area, but one of the main characters is a lost holy warrior /d143sz7 snake woman.
Villian.Net plays with this one; upon encountering Chameleon, apprentic supervillain Jake Hunter presumes the reptilian shapeshifter to be a fellow evil-doer. He is quickly disabused of that notion. However, over the course of the first book, Chameleon shows himself to have a nasty edge, being perfectly willing to kill, and seeking revenge rather than justice.
- However, the Hero.Com sister series portrays Chameleon in a more positive light, as a helpful mentor to the novice superhero protagonists.

Live Action TV

As stated elsewhere, you'd think Star Trek would be all about subverting this trope, but they usually play it straight as an arrow:
- Star Trek Enterprise introduces the Xindi, a set of related (somehow) species who each have evolved from a different species and yet are all at least vaguely humanoid. There's the (dolphin-like) Aquatics, human-like Primates, human-like (if hairier) Arborials, ant-like and scary-looking Insectoids, lizard-like and also scary-looking Reptilians, and the extinct and presumably birdlike Avians. You win no prizes for guessing which two species remained villains.
- Star Trek The Next Generation and Star Trek Deep Space Nine had the Cardassians, a very unpleasant race with distinctly reptilian features.
- The same can be said of the Hirogens in Star Trek Voyager.
  - Don't forget also about Chakotay's speech in "Scorpion." Wary of Janeway's plan to forge an alliance with the Borg, he tells her a version of the first story listed in the Myth and Legend section, attributing it as ancient legend of his tribe.
- Star Trek The Original Series had the Gorn, though he turned out to be a gladiator-slave. A non-canon compilation of outtakes distributed to the cast revealed he was a really nice guy.
  - The Gorn in that episode actually came out and said that they attacked the Federation settlement because it was encroaching on their space, and Kirk refuses to kill the Gorn commander he was forced to battle because he thought the Gorn probably attacked only because they felt threatened. So they aren't really treated as abhorrent, just very territorial.
  - Depending which you follow as 'canon' for Trek, in Star Fleet Battles at least, after the Cestus incident they opened diplomatic discussions with the Gorn, and found out the Gorn Confederation had a big pointy-eared problem the Federation knew only too well. And quickly became allies and friends.
- Apart from a bare handful of Cardassians who thought My Species Doth Protest Too Much, the only exceptions were some background characters in the movies, revealing that The Federation does have turtle-people and lizard-people amongst its citizens; they just don't do anything.
  - Maybe they need more sunlight?
- The modern novel continuity in the Star Trek Expanded Universe usually averts this trope, though. The Pahkwa-thanh, which are carnivores and resemble a cross between a komodo dragon and a featherless dromaeosaur, are friendly. In fact, they're members of the United Federation of Planets who have contributed much to medical science and medicine. Dr. Shenti Yisec Eres Ree from Star Trek Titan is a Pahkwa-thanh. The Rigelian Chelons and Saurians (who are, as the names suggest, the turtle-people and lizard-people mentioned above), are also prominant in the novels, and active Federation members. Indeed, we've seen a fair amount of actively heroic members. Ambassador Jetanien of Star Trek Vanguard is a Chelon, as was a particularly heroic member of the U.S.S Aventine crew in Star Trek Destiny. Saurian characters like Razka and Bazel have also done quite a bit for the Federation and its citizens. The Resaurians, meanwhile, are snake-people who are as varied as humans- some are friendly, some hostile. Even the Xindi-Reptilians have calmed down a bit in the novels; one served as Federation Secretary of Space Exploration as of the timeframe of early Star Trek The Next Generation.
We don't need any words — just one letter — V.
- More detail: The Sirians embody this trope, but more to the point, the show makers rely on it working on the audience. When they first appear, they are disguised as humans, and the fact that they are actually reptiles hidden behind Latex Perfection is treated as a revelation just as horrifying as their attempt to enslave all of humanity.
  - This editor believes that the only thing that would make the V remake worth it (since we already know the twist) would be if these Sirians actually resembled cute fluffy bunnies or kittens or something.
- Though it is subverted with Willie (Played by, surprisingly enough, Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund), a friendly reptilian alien who helps the human heroes stop the evil reptilian aliens.
Sesame Street intentionally avoids the trope, featuring friendly introductions to "scary" animals to assure the kids that they're not mean. There's a song about a friendly snake named Sammy. There is also one about an Alligator king and his seven sons; both song and alligators are pleasant.
There was a TV show wherein the good guy's car was called Viper, presumably because of how fast and deadly it is. Well, that and the fact the car was a Dodge Viper...
The Scarrans of Farscape.
- More obvious, the snake found in the wormhole "wall", which wants to eat just about anyone from another dimension although the ones that had the most encounters with it say it'll just mind its business.
Played with in Doctor Who. The Silurians and Sea Devils just wanted to take back their home, the Ice Warriors were more peaceful in later appearances, the Draconians weren't much worse than the humans, the Foamasi were trying to stamp out their crime syndicates...
Played straight and then subverted with the Unas in Stargate SG-1. When first introduced, the lizard-like Unas are unquestionably evil. This is, of course, because the only ones encountered are possessed by the Always Chaotic Evil Goa'uld (who, of course, are referred to as "snakes" by several characters, they're closer to eels). Later, the team finds un-possessed Unas, who are initially somewhat primitive and feral, but later show the capacity for honor and other virtues.
- However, there was also the first Big Bad, Apophis, whose Jaffa wore snake-themed armour, and he himself wore golden snake armour.
  - Justified though due to the fact that Apophis was based on the evil Egyptian serpent, Apep, who always tried to devour Ra.
  - One of the other system-lords' minions used eagle-headed armour.
In the CSI: Miami episode "Identity," a sunbathing woman is killed and swallowed (but for some reason not digested) by a boa constrictor. Once again, this is more a case of Humans are Bastards, as the snake had been illegally imported and died soon thereafter.
The Sleestak were the worst sentient villains in Land of the Lost. And the other villains? Well, they subverted Everythings Better With Dinosaurs by being carnivores who chased the cast... except for Dopey.
- But Enik the Altrusian was if not exactly good, not really evil either and had a code of honor.
The Crocodile Hunter existed to avert this trope, showing the audience how cool lizards, snakes, and of course, crocodiles could be.
The main Big Bads of Space Cases were the Spung, an Always Chaotic Evil (except for Elmira) race of bipedal reptiles.
In Babylon 5, the reptilian Drazi are certainly not Always Chaotic Evil and are rarely outright antagonists. On the other hand, they do serve as a thorn in the main characters' sides in most of their appearances, and eventually start attacking their neighbors before becoming complete Xanatos Suckers to the current Big Bad at the end of the Myth Arc.
- Then there's the Narn, who start out as bad guys but become more sympathetic—nay, downright heroic—with time.
  - Except Word of God states that the Narn are marsupials, not reptiles.
Kamen Rider Ryuki has Kamen Rider Ohja, which means King of Snakes. And Oh how evil he is.
A brief scene in the Davy Crockett mini-series featured Davy up against a few alligators.
Blatantly invoked in a recent Animal Planet series, "Fatal Attractions", during an episode about an animal hoarder who owned several Nile monitors and allowed them free reign of his apartment. The man died in his apartment and his body was discovered in a heavily decomposed state, with his pet lizards having fed upon the body. The show seemed to go out of its way to demonise the reptiles themselves (as well as the people who own them, rather than merely this specific Animal Hoarder), with no shortage of re-enactments featuring close-up shots of plotting, shifty-eyed lizards filmed in a sinister monochrome. The show also hypothesised that the monitors killed and preyed upon their owner like komodo dragons, a hunting strategy which nile monitors are not believed to engage in. It also perpetuated the myth that reptiles spread salmonella (reptiles are no more specifically prone to carrying salmonella than any other animal) and neglected to mention the far more likely possibility that the man simply died and was scavenged upon by his starving pets.

Magazines

An issue of New Scientist with a cover story about "Gaia's Evil Twin". The cover picture showed Gaia surrounded by "good nature"; green shoots, flowers, butterflies and doves, and Evil Gaia surrounded by "bad nature"; black roots, flies, carrion birds and of course, snakes. This did not reflect the actual story in any way.
- (Treebeard) "A science/nature magazine should know better!!!" (/Treebeard)

Music

The death metal band Nile get a lot of mileage out of this one, from serpents to crocodiles to the deliciously Lovecraftian 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lta-5A7TUmE prehuman serpent volk' to TURNING INTO A SNAKE.
There's a Playground Song based upon a Shel Silverstein poem called "I'm Being Swallowed by a Boa Constrictor", which exploits the fear of a snake being able to eat a person - backwards.
Oh, heck! He's up to my neck!
Oh, dread! He's up to my * GULP*
- Shel Silverstein also has a song / poem about an alligator visiting the dentist, in which the alligator is the hero and the dentist is a sadistic bully.
"Ah don't like spiduhs an' snakes..."
"R-A-T-T-L-E-S-N-A-K-E spells Rattlesnake!" Though the snake in question isn't scary in the song/game.
Raffi's "Alligator in the Elevator" plays with this trope. At first the narrator is frightened about being stuck in the elevator with the alligator, but they're friends by the end of the ride.
This trope is actively assaulted by Nick Cave's "Fable of the Brown Ape":
''The villagers found out that Farmer Emmerich was nurturing a serpent
And descended upon his farm, all rabid in their blindness
They dragged the snake outside, chopped it open with an axe
And the ground soaked in the milk of human kindness.''
The Church's unfair but rocking "Reptile" makes use of explicit Biblical symbolism.
''And I should have believed Eve.
She said we had to blow.
She was the apple of my eye.
It wasn't long ago.''
Never smile at a crocodile. Never tip your hat and stop to talk a while...
From The Downward Spiral we get the song "Reptile," which goes:
She splits herself wide open, to let the insects in
She leaves a trail of honey, to show me where she's been
She's got the blood of reptiles, just underneath her skin
Seeds of a thousand others, drip down from within
Many heavy metal bands ranging from Alice Cooper to Soundgarden to Symphony X use snakes as symbols of fear and thus translates to heavier music.

Myth and Legend

There's an old story (attributed to Aesop sometimes) about a woman (or sometimes a farmer) who finds a venomous snake shivering outside in the snow. It begs her to let it in so it does not freeze to death. She refuses, on the grounds that the snake will bite her and she'll die. The snake continues to plead, assuring her he will do no such thing, asking how he could possibly hurt the one who saved his life. So the kind hearted woman brings the snake in, and cuddles it to her breast by the fire. When the snake thaws out, it bites her anyway. As she lies dying, she asks the snake why he broke his word. The snake replies that it's just his nature; "Lady, you knew I was a snake when you let me in!" (Anyone order a Family Unfriendly Aesop?)
- This story survives even into the Old American South, starring kind-hearted Br'er Possum in place of the woman and Br'er Snake as himself. "You knowed I was a snake when you put me in yer pocket" . . .
Averted by a folk tale about a man who sees a snake trapped in a forest fire, and rescues her - she slides down around his neck, and he thinks she's going to kill him. But instead she tells him to take her to her father, the King of all the snakes, and to ask for the ability to understand animal speech. Both the princess snake and the King snake act completely honorably and follow through on all they have said; the tale ties into old folklore of ground-dwelling animals holding secret knowledge of the Earth. Their gift eventually makes the man rich and (in an odd way, to be sure) gets him into a less negative relationship with his wife (she dominated the weak-spined man something terribly until the animals convinced him to stand up to her... sorta).
- A variation of the tale has the youngest of three sons (who is of course considered stupid and useless by his family) set out on a quest to make his fortune. Along the way, he finds a snake that is going to be killed and give up his gold to save its life. The snake in return leads him to where the King of the Snakes lives and explains to the king about the son's act of kindness. The king offers the son a reward and the son, under the advice of the snake, asks for a magic watch which later turns out to have the ability to grant any request.
In "The Tortoise and the Hare," it's the turtle who is the hero, while the hare is a hot-shot braggart.
Interestingly enough, the Aztec serpent deity Quetzalcoatl was the god of knowledge and civilization, as well as the kindest member of the pantheon - and the only one who didn't demand human sacrifices.
Greek myths include examples and aversions:
- Asclepius and Hermes, whose symbols are adorned with snakes (one for Asclepius, two for Hermes). Also, Tiresias (prior to becoming a blind seer) was punished for killing two mating snakes by having his gender magically changed. (He grew to like it. And was eventually changed back - by the same way.)
- There's a subversion in the story of Melampus, who came across a dead mother snake with her offspring. He gave the mother a proper funeral and took care of her offspring, and in return they licked his ears clean and gave him the ability to understand the speech of animals.
- Played straight with a reptilian monsters, such as the Hydra, Echidna, Typhon, Python, the serpent that guards the Golden Fleece, the serpents that tried to strangle Hercules, the snake-legged Gigantes, and of course Medusa and the Gorgons. Even otherwise-mammalian hybrid monsters such as Cerberus and the Chimera were portrayed with snake tails or manes made of snakes.
Averted in the mythology of the Hawaiian islands, where, thanks to his bravery and kindness to the chief's daughter, the hyperactive but good-hearted gecko is awarded status as 'aumakua (spiritual protector) over all the islands of Hawai'i.
Averted in Australian Aboriginal mythology, where snakes are often presented as positive beings, especially the stories of the Rainbow Serpent, whose gigantic body slithering about the countryside created the rivers that bring vital water to the Sunburnt Country. They're also tasty.
Both averted and played straight in Egyptian mythology.
- The Asp or cobra is a symbol of protection and eternal life for the Pharaohs. The probably-legendary story of Cleopatra's suicide-by-asp illustrates its symbolic importance, as it spares Cleopatra the humiliation of being paraded into Rome and publicly executed by Octavius and thus protects the dignity of the Pharaonic line one last time.
- The crocodile-god Sobek is also not evil, although his cult grew out of the idea of pacifying the spirit of the dangerous Nile crocodile; he is most often portrayed as a protector and one who repairs the damage from evil deeds.
- Played dead-straight with the deadly Apophis, mortal enemy of Ra and swallower of the sun - a giant snake.
Hindu Mythology features examples:
- In the Mahabharata, Krishna when young is trapped by a many headed snake that poisoned the lake near his village with venom. He danced on its head until the poison is etched out of its system, not because he had to necessarily dance but because he was a Bad Ass. The snake then asks for his forgiveness. Also averted in that Krishna is The Avatar of Vishnu who sleeps on a many headed Alpha Snake named Adi Sesha whose many heads provide Vishnu shade and who is portrayed as gentle and good.
- Played straight in that the last of the Purus who survived the Mahabharata is killed by a snakebite. To be fair, he tried to put a snake around the neck of a saint who was meditating because he was ignored. So this is an instance of Karmic Death.
- Shiva, one of the primary Gods of the Hindu pantheon, is often depicted as surrounded by Cobras.
In Norse myth, the mighty Midgard Serpent, Jormugandr, is the mortal enemy of Thor and spawn of Loki. There's also Nidhoggr, the serpent who munches on Yggdrassil The World Tree's roots.
In Sumerian mythology, the world is made from the body of the primordial dragon-goddess Tiamat after she is killed by her much more human-like divine children. Also, the Trickster serpent who steals the secret of eternal life from Gilgamesh.
Most mythology surrounding Dragons in most Western and Middle-Eastern cultures; in fact, the medieval Western dragon or wyrm, a poison-spewing, slimy, fire-breathing, and/or virgin-munching abomination that spreads death and destruction wherever it goes and must be killed by a brave hero or outwitted by a clever, pure-hearted maiden, might well be the ultimate incarnation of this trope.
A semi-example of Scaled Up occurs in the Persian epic the Shah-nama. After the wicked king Azi Dahaka makes a bargain with Ahriman, giant snakes grow out of his shoulders and must be fed the brains of the king's subjects.
Fittingly averted by dragons of Far Eastern cultures, which are far less reptilian. The Chinese dragons is a divine keeper of wisdom and bringer of rain. Japanese dragons, however, are somewhat ambivalent; sometimes rampaging monsters to be defeated by a hero and sometimes benevolent and wise. See Orochi for an example of the destructive type of Japanese dragon; Our Dragons Are Different describes both types.
- Also used in the legend of Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari, where Orochi comes from and is the basis of Orochimaru in Naruto.
Islamic tradition has it that getting up to slay a snake is one of very few permissible reasons to interrupt one's prayers. It's even attributed heroic value; those who have slain snakes may earn entry into paradise. The large number of poisonous snakes in the Middle East is an obvious source for the sentiment.
A Japanese fairytale centers around a virtuous farmer who rescues a spider from a hungry snake. The spider later appears in the form of a young girl who eats cotton and uses the silk made from it to weave beautiful tapestries to make the man money. Unfortunately when the man realizes this and tries to help out by getting her more cotton to eat, he gets a bundle with another snake in it. This frightens the spider girl off and she is rescued by the moon and weaves him the clouds in the sky in gratitude.
One Beauty And The Beast fairy tale had a married woman who lamented her inability to have children. A kindly mother snake overhears this and lets the woman take one of her own baby snakes to raise. Said baby snake goes on to woo the princess and while the rest of the royal family fear that the snake is indeed dangerous, he treats the princess very well and she loves him very much. Of course, it then turns out that the snake was a human prince in disguise, so make of that what you will.
Very much averted in the religion of the Minoan civilasation, where the dominant goddess was the Snake Goddess. Also somewhat a fortunate example, as she avoided being demonized by cultures that didn't liked the minoans.

New Media

The Weebls Stuff flash animation, Badger Badger Badger has its single moment of terror surrounding the snake, who does seem pretty harmless, really.
ARGH! Ack! It's a snake! A snake! Oh, no! It's a snake!

Newspaper Comics

The Crocs in Pearls Before Swine; their usual (and futile) goal is to eat Zebra while speeking in ludicrous accents. The youngest one seems to be the least dedicated.
Aversion time: Walt Kelly's Pogo had Churchy LaFemme, a somewhat gullible turtle and not always outright heroic (though good-intentioned), as well as Albert, who ultimately does care about his friends even though he usually borrows money, food, or cigars from them. Occasionally he ends up swallowing one, but it's always played for laughs; they come back out again later. The same way they went in.

Professional Wrestling

Jake "The Snake" Roberts, whether in the WWF, WCW, or anywhere else, was generally portrayed as just as sleazy, slimy, and duplicitous as the reptiles he handled. He also loved to use his snakes to intimidate and/or humiliate his foes, and cleared the ring in at least one battle royal by letting loose an 8-foot boa constrictor and watching everybody scramble over the top rope trying to get away from it. (We'd love to know what the snake was thinking.)
"Stone Cold" Steve Austin also went by "The Rattlesnake," although it was because of his violent and unpredictable nature rather than because he was truly evil.
Having "Dragon" in one's name or nickname is an honor for every wrestler who's ever had it, from Ricky Steamboat on down.
Don't forget the Viper himself, Randy Orton.

Tabletop Games

Like it is with most tropes, Dungeons and Dragons has vast enough stores of monsters that it's all over the place with this one.
- Evil reptiles include chromatic dragons and yuan-ti. Many fiends have reptilian features, but that's quite common with fiends, as part of their mashup features (the balor, for example, has leathery wings and a face that combines the worst of ape and dog).
  - Not to mention Kobolds, small underground dwellers that were previously a type of goblin. Like goblins though, their supposedly Always Lawful Evil status is often subverted by sympathetic players. And then, there's Pun-Pun...
- Neutral reptiles include lizardfolk, who are more primitive than humans on a tech level and have a "reptilian dispassion", leading them to not really care as long as they're left alone.
- Good reptiles include metallic dragons and couatls (winged feathered serpents). It is notable, though, that very few celestial beings are noted as being reptilian, and there is not a specific race of such creatures (whereas there are several mammal and at least one avian species in the form of the guardinals).
  - Lillends are a race of Chaotic Good celestials with snake tails for lower bodies.
  - In 4th edition, Couatls seem to be a form of celestial.
- Now that Dragonborn are a player character race, they can be any alignment. But they're definitely Proud Warrior Race Guys.
The Yu-Gi-Oh card game has several sets of Reptile-type monsters that either affirm or subvert this; the Venoms (evil corrupting snakes with Naga-like "gods"), Aliens (patterned off of the reptilian humanoid and Roswell Gray alien theories, but no official word on their allegiance), the Gagagigos (flip-flopped between evil and good, but now officially evil), and the Worms (Light-Attribute, but horrendously ugly, and the enemies of the Dark-Attribute Ally of Justice monsters.
Oddly enough averted by Warhammer, whose Lizardmen are among the "good" races. Helps that they're the ones keeping Chaos in line. Hell, even their new army book which has them commit genocide a number of times (of course, it's Warhammer—who hasn't?) they're still shown as noble, brave defenders of the world who will do whatever it takes to protect it form chaos.
- The Slann, a minor race from Warhammer40000, are one of the few races that don't engage in vile brutality at the drop of the hat. Of course, this may explain why there are so few of them.
- Unless you're on their "to kill list" (Chaos, Skaven, Dark Elves), Lizardmen tend to leave you alone unless you disturb their home. They do have problems with communication as the ramblings of a Slann could have two completely different meaning depending on what Skink priest interprets the words.
- There's also Sotek, the Snake God of the Lizardmen (also the only one of their gods who isn't an Old One, though some believe him to have some connection with them). He answers their prayers for his assistance by sending living oceans of snakes at whoever happens to be attacking them. The same thing happened when the Skaven were driven out of Lustria, with some versions of the story saying Sotek himself took the form of a giant snake and chased the Skaven all the way across the ocean to the Southlands, where some say he's still hunting the rat-men down.
Magic: The Gathering also plays its reptiles all over the place. Lizards, crocodiles, and alligators are mostly represented by the Viashino, a reoccurring race. They range from brutish savages (even then, not actively evil) to your typical good-aligned Proud Warrior Race Guy (the more lizardy ones are the latter). Snakes were originally played pretty straight with cards like Serpent Warrior, but more recently the Orochi were powerful and noble, also PWRGs if a bit more hostile. Dragons have been in every alignment (including a genius dragon mad wizard scientist), but skew towards evil or instinct-driven. Turtles really haven't cropped up too much as characters. However, there aren't many heroic reptiles, nor are many in White, the most community-driven, justice-oriented, or stereotypically "heroic" color for cards.
One of the fictional series in "Cartoon Action Hour", "Warriors of the Cosmos", has a evil snake-human in the form Serpentina, but of course, that tabletop kisses the mouth of 1980s cartoons very hard.
The Champions superhero RPG had the ubiquitous VIPER criminal organization as well as reptile-themed villains.
- Such as King Cobra (formerly Dr. Timothy Blank), a Mad Scientist who discovered the Coil Gene, which mutates humans into super-powered reptilian creatures. He was his own first subject, of course. His goal is to turn every human in the world into reptiles... totally loyal to him, naturally. He's been a master villain in Champions for at least the last three editions of the game, probably longer.
Averted in Legend of the Five Rings with the Naga, an ancient race of snake-men who entered a magical slumber to save their dwindling numbers and wake up periodically to save the universe.
In the Ani-Earth Animal Superheroes setting for Mutants and Masterminds, it is specifically stated that reptiles tend to be villains, with snakes as evil masterminds, lizards as mid-level bad guys and crocodilians as dumb mooks. Freedom City's Big Bad, Overshadow, becomes Cobrashadow.
Subverted in tabletop RPG SLA Industries, the Shaktar are the most technologically and sociologically advanced species. They are also one of the very few "good" species. This is notable since this is a Crapsack World where the ruling Corrupt Corporate Executive engineered the mass genocide of almost every single sentient species.

Theater

The Cirque du Soleil show Mystere has two "Green Lizards" (dancers/balancers). They're rather cute and at worst are merely mischievous, scampering out into the audience at times, and appear on some of the show merchandise.
A turtle and a snake pop up among the critters in KA and are similarly benign.
Also, in Cirque du Soleil's Varekai, the character of the Betrothed initially has a reptilian appearance, green and crested. She changes shape though, and becomes more human as the show progresses.

Video Games

Let's hear it for Reptile! He's so abhorrent, he doesn't even need an actual name.
- Interestingly enough, the games consistently bill Reptile as an "evil" character, but his intended goal -rescuing his race from extinction- is actually pretty damned noble.
  - Well, when you work for Shao Kahn or other villains every time you appear, it's kinda a foregone conclusion you'll be rated as evil. That said, the fact that his motive is fairly altruistic, and that he constantly gets screwed over by his employers makes him an Anti Villain. Sympathetic, but still morally questionable.
  - This trope is probably the only thing keeping him from doing a Heel Face Turn.
- There's also Khameleon, who only wishes to save Reptile from Kahn's servitude and restore their extinct race with him.
The Donkey Kong Country has the apes saving their bananas from a gang of bullying crocodiles. Mind, the apes are also helped by a lot of other animals, including a friendly snake...
- In Donkey Kong 64, K. Lumsy is a Gremlin (reptile-like creature) that is locked up because he won't be mean and crush the "lovely little island, with lots of monkeys running around on it". He even (inadvertently) helps you move forward in the game.
Could Super Mario Bros be the best known instance of Turtles Are Mean?
- For the record, this wasn't clear in the American versions, they're based off the Kappa (a turtle-like monster) of Japanese folklore, making it Older Than Print at least. The more you know!
- Averted with the introduction of Yoshi, a dinosaur with shoes and a saddle.
- It must be that scales and rock hard skin is evil, because Yoshi's are made of RUBBER despite resembling dinosaurs and eating just about everything except you.
  - They're made of rubber? Then I guess they have no feelings, then.
- Later games, specifically the Paper Mario ones, have several Koopas which are pretty nice. There're even entire villages of them that help Mario out and think very poorly of the one huge Koopa who blocks a road. Mario even gets a Koopa in the games as a companion. On the other hand, there're several dragons in Thousand Year Door, one of which eats said good Koopas.
While not portrayed all that positively in the lore, good-natured and helpful Argonians do exist in the The Elder Scrolls Verse. Oblivion brought the Argonians somewhat closer to the played-straight end of this trope though, with the Blackwood Company in the Fighter's Guild storyline and the Shadow Scales in the Dark Brotherhood, although there's no shortage of good-aligned Argonians in that game either. Otherwise, the series plays this trope straight. The very first game in the series, Arena, had Lizardmen among the Always Chaotic Evil creatures you had to fight. There's also the snake-like Tsaecsi from the continent of Akavir, which have a sinister reputation in the background lore (although this may just be a case of Fantastic Racism). Finally, some of the Daedra in the franchise are reptilian in appearance.
- Word Of God implies that the Argonians are actually born as humans and only become reptilian over time by ingesting a drug from a tree they worship that acts as a narcotic.
- To be fair Argonians are the often the victims of Fantastic Racism, and the Shadow Scales were made to defend their homeland from invaders.
Despite the villains, the Hierarchy, being The Greys, Universe At War still manages to pull this. What skin is exposed on the mostly-armored Grunts is visibly scaly if you get a good look at it, and the Brutes are something between The Greys and some sort of humanoid predatory reptile.
The Bangaa in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance are pretty cool guys, and have some incredibly Bad Ass job abilities. However, the NPC Bangaa in the game are almost all soldiers and jailers in the employ of the evil government.
- Speaking of Ivalice, Vaan's adoptive father figure Migelo is a Bangaa. But, then you have Ba'gam'nan's all-Bangaa hit-squad after you. Tellingly they are common enemies while the cuter tribes Viera, Moogle, and Nu mou are not.
- It's worth noting that the bangaas are the race best integrated within the humes, hence why they're so common in the game. Contrast with the Seeqs who also appears as enemies and are treated like second-rate citizens.
The Reptilicus/Old Bryyonians in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, who'll attack you on sight. To be fair, though, the lore entries that you can scan on Bryyo imply that they were fairly nice guys at one point, but more or less turned "evil" after a schism broke out between the "primal" ways of magic and the "new ways" of science.
- And Ridley is a space dragon, as well as a complete monster who killed Samus' parents.
Rayman 2: The Great Escape averts this: Sssssam, a friendly snake who gives you a ride across the third level in the game.
- However, Sssssam is also a robot. Make of that what you will...
Subverted in Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura; the lizard people in the game, the Bedokkan, are introduced as a barbaric, primitive people who have captured an elf; the most obvious solution is to kill them all. However, with a bit of negotiation, you find that the Bedokkan are a peaceful-ish tribe of indigenous people with a threatened homeland, albeit one that is made up of 9-foot tall magic lizards.
The Lizalfos/Dinalfos in The Legend of Zelda series. Unfortunately, they're also Always Chaotic Evil. The armoured Sub Boss of Snowpeak Ruins in Twilight Princess also looks suspiciously reptilian. As for how it manages to survive in such a cold climate, eh... it's probably best if you don't think about it. Also the ropes (snakes).
- Oracle of Ages introduces the Tokay. Despite stealing your stuff, they're basically friendly. The NPC Vasu also has a pair of friendly snakes essential for transferring game data. Don't forget Dimitri, the friendly Dodongo. For some reason, his special power is swimming.
- In Twilight Princess, there is a light spirit that embodies the land of Lanryu, and it takes the form of ... a snake. This is especially odd when you consider that the previous spirits were a goat, a monkey and a bird.
- Chinese Zodiac referrence, maybe?
Star Fox 64, along with (ab)using several other Animal Stereotypes, plays this trope straight. One of the members of the evil rival group, Star Wolf, is a chameleon called "Leon". Not only that, but the boss characters for Corneria's secret path and Area 6 look reptilian in their avatars.
- According to the manual, the lizards are the native species of Venom and were enslaved by the evil Andross and his simian scientists.
- Of course, Leon is a bit more helpful in Star Fox Assault, when Star Wolf is your ally on the occasion.
Subverted in the third Halo game. The reptilian Elites join the humans in fighting the ape-like Brutes. Granted, the Elites were the primary foes of the first two games, but...
- The Elites were Proud Warrior Race Guys who at least respected the humans for their bravery (some even wanted the humans to join the Covenant); the Brutes are sadists and, well, brutes.
- Further subverted by the Grunts and Jackals. The nominally reptillian Grunts initially side with the Elites and their human allies. The Jackals, birds by virtue of bearing feathers, side with the Brutes.
Sly Cooper has both used this trope straight and adverted. In all three game, he helps in the form Bentley (a turtle), in the first game, he had to deal with Ms. Ruby (alligator). In the second game, he has problems with Dimitri (a lizard). In the third game, Dimitri helps the team out by becoming the team's frogman.
In Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, the main Mooks are frilled lizards. In the second game, however, a frilled lizard is the cook for Bush Rescue, and responds to Ty's surprise at seeing him with "Not all lizards are bad, you know!"
Lizardman from the Soul Calibur games, who was once a Spartan warrior named Aeon Calcos, but was later taken in by the Fygul Cestemus cult (who also created the golem Astaroth) and turned into a reptile.
- While Aeon reclaims his human memories, he makes efforts to not be seen during travels and only attacks those that may hold clues to Soul Edge (or if its related to Hephaestus, which triggers his primal rage). However, the corruption slowly eats away at his mind, erasing all human memories and leaving only a primal instinct and bloodlust, regressing to his Brainwashed And Crazy persona seen in the first Calibur. The Mook variety (all humans as well) seems to suffer the same ordeal, though they were never freed from the brainwashing to begin with. By the time of 4, they all are back to their murderous rampages.
X-Com: UFO Defense has the Snakemen aliens, who are best known for the Chrysallids that accompany them.
Averted, uh... maybe, in Suda 51's Flower, Sun, and Rain with the character Christina, a talking pink alligator that Toriko Kusabi keeps as a pet. Christina is harmless and friendly, and even mourns the death of the main character halfway through the game.
"Ayla no like Reptites! Ayla SMASH!"
- Interestingly it seems they just wanted to preserve their own culture and ways, but with both humans and reptites having primitive mentalities, could think of no other way. In the extra ending where the Reptites win because you abducted Ayla to take on Lavos, the game restarts with Crono as a Reptite and nothing else changed at ALL.
- In the DS remake, you can find a colony of reptites who are quite friendly.
- Averted somewhat in Chrono Cross with "Lord Viper" and his daughter — he is portrayed as a beneficent and well-loved governor (and former Four Star Badass), and Riddel (who wears a snake headband), is a kind and gentle Staff Chick Yamato Nadeshiko.
World of Warcraft: The Druids of the Fang in the Wailing Caverns dungeon. They are a group of formally beneficent druids corrupted by the Nightmare which is a manifestation of the will of the Old Gods within the Emerald Dream. Their totem animal, which all of them could transform into during combat, was a Viper. This was in addition to their hench-animals Deviate Vipers, Deviate Raptors, Deviate Alligators, etc. Oh, and did I mention their leaders names were Lord Pythas, Lord Serpentis, Lord Cobrahn, and Lady Anacondra? The expanded universe paints them in a slightly better light but none of this is seen ingame.
- Thoughout the game, players also encounter wind serpents, Quetzalcoatl-like winged snakes. These serpents are ALWAYS hostile to the player. However, the most obviously evil wind serpent is the father of them all, Hakkar the Soulflayer. Hakkar is either an offspring of or manifestation of the will of the Old Gods and corrupted the entire jungle troll nation and damn near destroyed it completely. His hobbies included eating the souls and drinking the blood of those captured by his troll followers or, baring that, his followers themselves.
  - Trolls of all subraces in World of Warcraft are frequently shown to have deep connections to reptiles. The troll racial mount is the raptor (yes, we know, just go with it), snake statues are a common motif of any large-scale trollish architecture, and a troll vendor in Orgrimmar sells a variety of snake vanity pets. In Warcraft III, the troll Shadow Hunter hero unit summoned Serpent Wards to attack his enemies.
- Wind serpents are not always hostile. Go check out Zul'drak and do the Har'koa quest line. Also worth noting is that trolls and tauren at the very least hold them to be somewhat sacred animals. As an example, Arikara, the tauren avatar of vengeance who probably would have gone on to kill Magratha for being a complete backstabbing jerkass (the implication is she lies to you when she tells you who its target is). There's even more nasty snakes in the expanded universe.
  - The snake loa was never given the opportunity to do anything bad given what we see. The wind serpent loa is a rather nasty fellow, but not completely unjustified. He/she (don't recall) decides to spend his eternity as now incorporeal being torturing and murdering the beings who betrayed him over and over for shiggles. Neutral presentation here, I guess. It does help you out, and they do sort of deserve it.
- The Naga are a powerful race of former elves transformed into snakes by an Old God. Guess how friendly they are? Warcraft generally tries to show everyone except demons as being fairly morally neutral depending on what their leaders choose to do, but Naga get very few instances where they aren't being total jerks for the hell of it.
  - Keep in mind that the elves who became the Naga were, prior to the War of the Ancients, the elite jerkasses of night elven society who actually caused the war by summoning demons to Azeroth in their hunger for more arcane power. So, they were pretty much all jerks BEFORE becoming snake-people.
- The trope is subverted in the Sholazar Basin zone, however. There's an escalating territorial war going on between the lizardy gorloc Oracles and the cuter, fuzzier Frenzyheart wolvar who are trying to take the Basin as their own. While neither is inevitably hostile to players (you get to choose which side you're on), most players adore the Oracles for their dopey friendliness while the Frenzyheart, no smarter (thus also averting Dumb Is Good), try to make you their slave, torment baby apes, and just generally wear their Jerkass hat.
Both played straight and subverted with Pokemon. There are several reptilian monsters in the games including snakes (Arbok, Ekans, and Seviper respectively), crocodiles (Totodile, Croconaw, and Feraligatr), and, of course, turtles (Squirtle, Wartortle, Blastoise, Torkal, Turtwig, Grotle, and Torterra) amongst others. The Hero-Character can capture and/or train ANY of these pokemon. Also, at least one or more villains are bound to have one of these in their team. Though, said reptile Pokemon are more along the lines of Punch Clock Villains in that they harbor no malice or evil towards their opponents.
- Especially notable with Team Rocket's Ekans, who can be seen palling around with Koffing, Pikachu, Squirtle, and other of Ash's pokemon whenever their trainers aren't trying to beat the piss out of one another.
Played with in Mass Effect, where one of the reptilian species, the krogan are almost universally JerkAsses - though they have a pretty darn good reason for it. The turians and salarians, who are also reptilian in outward appearance, are more lukewarm; most of them are either neutral or actually pretty good guys.
- The Drell in Mass Effect 2, identified as pseudoreptilians by the website, are an aversion, however. They're more like an entire race of Woobies. One of them is even a potential love interest!
  - It is stated in the game's codex that the turians are more avian than anything.
Subverted in Suikoden III. The Lizard clan are honestly just Proud Warrior Race Guys, they're capable of acting civil. However, since there's been much war between the Grasslands (which they're a member of) and the Zexen Confederacy, the Zexen people tend to think that they are abhorrent.
Averted in Brave Story: New Traveler for the PSP. The reptilian Waterkin are not only one of the peaceful, civilized races of the world of Vision but one of them is a main character on the player's party.
Subverted in the Sonic the Hedgehog series starting in Knuckles Chaotix. Vector the Crocodile and Espio the Chameleon, while really only working for whoever will pay them, are more or less always depicted as heroes.
- The early Sonic manga plays this trope almost as straight as that show. In a school of who knows how many students, all of the students are good, aside from the school bullies; Anton the Lizard and his cohort (Mad/Matt, his pet/brother, no-one's actually sure). The only saving graces are that he's nowhere near as much of a threat as Dr Eggman himself, and there's some murmurs of several of his traits being used by Uewaka for Sonic Heroes, which plays the trope about as straight as a circle.
Played mostly straight in the Crash Bandicoot series. While the human scientists were the scheming and callous baddies (invoking the Humans Are Bastards trope, as well), the mutated minions were the ones just doing the direct dirty work and nothing more...aside from Komodo Joe {a Komodo Dragon) and Dingodile (Whose dominant side isn't the one that takes up more of the name, that's for sure;
- Komodo Joe was said to run an illegal Cubic Zirconia fraud business, which had to be stopped, and the concepts released by the Crash Twinsanity developers showed that he would cheat Crash and Cortex out of Power Crystals while they ended up driving around a course in a car with no brakes.
- In the same game (and actually present in the game), Dingodile ends up hearing about the alleged treasure of the Evil Twins from Crash and Cortex, secretly follows them, makes base in the boiler rooms of the Academy of Evil, and ends up blasting Cortex out of said rooms when Cortex won't reveal where the treasure is to him (which is more a case of Cortex not understanding what he's asking for, anyway). He does appear in the handheld versions as a lackey of Cortex in Crash of the Titans, but it does seem that Cortex trusts him a lot less.
  - Komodo Moe, however, is an aversion; he's no more malicious to anyone else than Ripper Roo is.
How could you forget the Mega Man series, as it has three snake-based warriors. Namely Snake Man, Snake Man.EXE and Queen Ophiuca. The last one taking over the body of one of the main character's friends.
- Mega Man's mostly an aversion as all the animal-based robots are evil, no matter the animal they are based on. Including the Penguins!
The World Ends With You gives us Anguis and Draco Cantus, Megumi Kitaniji's Noise forms—a giant snake and a five-headed dragon, respectively. Fitting, considering his Jerk Ass nature. (And, incidentally, his fondness for snakeskin suits.)
In Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir, the Samarachans despise the yuan-ti, a race of snake-like beings. On several occasions, you end up having to fight yuan-ti. This is played with - you can create a yuan-ti for your party, and choose to make them not-evil. Averted when you go to hunt down a yuan-ti and they turn out to be quite benevolent.
In Jeanne d'Arc, the good guys are all mammalian (lions and dogs) while the bad guys are mostly reptilian.
Final Fantasy XI has a few different reptile enemies, and none are on any peaceful terms (Half the time because people did something stupid):
- The Lamiae are snake-women hybrids that routinely slay people and then raise the corpses to make an undead army.
- The Mamool Ja are lizardmen who had once paid tribute to The Empire of Aht Urhgan, but have since tried to destroy it.
- Poroggos are frogs that were able to walk due to magic, and actually were nice to the Tarutaru, thinking they were on good terms with the main races... too bad Windurst got scared of talking, magic-casting frogs and tried to kill them all. Now the Poroggos go around and hit adventurers with party-wiping magic.
- Quadav are turtle beastmen who actually had a nice life and weren't very nasty. This, of course, all went to hell when Bastok started taking and destroying the Quadav's homes so that the Republic could get more resources. Now the Quadav attack pretty much anyone they see, defending their homes with extreme prejudice.
Any time Orochi shows up, and whatever form he takes, he's bound to be trouble. He seems to be attracted to Crisis Crossovers, as well. That's not to say that's all he shows up in...
Far more often than not, when they're not player-controlled, the Sakkra are usually quite ready to attack others, in the Master of Orion series. Not helped any by their tendency to have the "Repulsive" racial trait, which severely limits communication and gives a negative modifier to diplomatic relations. Basically, you can't live with them, and if you slacked off on building a big fleet you can't kill them.
- Note that Repulsive, though, isn't limited solely to the reptilians. Custom races can also be given the trait, and the Silicoids (a rock-based race) have it by default.
Averted in Ultima Underworld, where the Lizardmen are as approachable as any other group in the Stygian Abyss. They seem a bit more alien than other races, however, as they (with the exception of the Grey Lizardmen) don't speak the player's language.
In Contra ReBirth your enemies this time are the Neo Salamander Army trying to take over the Earth in the past and wipe out the Contra forces retroactively, but it's also subverted with Plissken, one of the unlockable allies in your game who's a blue Salamander and is also Colonel Salamander, the leader of the entire army who changed his evil ways and joined Contra to do good, or for revenge.
And then, we have Terumi Yuuki, from BlazBlue. His drive is called "Ouroboros" and for the most part, is a set of snake-like chains that are thrown around to drastically increase his mobility. His finishing move involves summoning a giant snake.
The Breath of Fire series averts it with Deis, a goody naga sorcerer; but then plays it straight with Myria in 3 and her serpentine One Winged Angel form. There's also the demon Barubary/Barbaroi in 2, who's rather reptilic, down to his long and scaled tail.
City of Villains features an enemy group called the Snakes, based in Mercy Island. Unlike most enemy groups (which are at least humanoid), the Snakes are literally anthropomorphic snakes who worship a deity called Stheno and wish to reclaim Mercy Island for themselves. Arachnos ends up using them as a test for new Destined Ones to see if they really have what it takes to be a supervillain. They tend to view these Snakes more as pests than anything else...
- ...Until you get to Operative Grillo's story arc in Grandville. You know those low level Snakes you stomped on as a newbie? Snakes not only have a racial name (The S'lisur,) they're also descended from an Incarnate, which makes -every single S'lisur- partially an Incarnate. As in "Physical Embodiment of a God" incarnate. And that Incarnate is still alive. And she's PISSED that you've been killing her kids.
- Interestingly, Stheno was one of Medusa's sisters in Greek myth.
Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series is an aversion, he is definitely one of the heroes, the main one in fact. Also, consider Naked Snake AKA Big Boss, who was both a hero and a villain (sort of.) Liquid and Solidus were both somewhat villainous characters, but not without sympathetic motivations.
Played back and forth in the Everquest series. In the original, the reptilian Iksar are evil, but the amphibian Frogloks can be either good or evil. In Everquest II, the evil Frogloks have disappeared as a player character race, so they're now pure good, and the previously NPC Sarnak have become a PC Evil race... but the game also allows you to change from your starting alignment, so there are both good and evil Frogloks, Sarnak, and Iksar.
Age Of Wonders has the Lizard Men and the Draconians. Both are portrayed as savage and believing in survival of the fittest, but their alignment is neutral rather than evil.
While the Gorn in Star Trek doesn't play this Trope straight, the ones in Star Trek Online sure do, though it probably doesn't help that they've been conquered by the Klingons.
Subverted sort of in Starcraft by the semi-reptilian Protoss, who generally try to do the right thing.

Webcomics

Shaenon Garrity's strip2 Skin Horse subverts the trope. In a Mad Scientist's Lab full of strange and unfriendly creatures, there are a number of talking cobras who like hugs and behave like small, friendly children.
- And here's one being friendly and helping make peanut butter sandwiches. Isn't he just cute as heck?
Played with in Last Resort, depending on the species involved.
- The Vaeo family, being Zillans, are most obviously reptilian, but not necessarily any more evil/abhorrent than the other characters in the plot (and possibly justified in what evil behavior they DO have by virtue of running the whole damn show). Cypress in particular is given the most sympathetic treatment.
- Kendrils, however, are also obviously reptilian, and thanks to their general comparisons to Medusae, outright horrific.
- Vidians get a pass on this trope, thanks to their resemblance to eastern dragons / kirin.
Played straight and subverted in Terinu. The Galapados are gene-gineered reptile warriors designed to match humans for sheer agressiveness. However their leader is a happily mated male who woobies over his mate's pregnancy.
In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, Hibachi the Dragon is perfectly capable of being scary when he wants to be, but he's generally a very affable and decent guy.
Averted in the Crossworlds/Accidental Centaurs universe, which has a race of benevolent naga.
WTF Comics is based on EverQuest, so most of the reptilian Iksars are hostile. Straha Ironscale, one of the protagonists is a rare exception.
The main villains in The Challenges of Zona are the reptile race, the Urtts. However partially averted in that the Proud Warrior Race, the Erogenians has a clan, the Snake, made up largely of human-Urtt hybrids.
This is largely averted in Harkovast, where the reptilian Tsung-dao are shown to include both good and bad individuals.
10%+ has a minor snake character named Talinum, who first appeared in the court case on behalf of the recently-deceased mortician Latency. The prevalence of the trope meant that some people were suspicious about his motives, but thankfully the trope was averted.
In one arc of The Wotch, Anne and Robin turn into a snake and dragon respectively through changing the dimension they're in.

Web Original

Pretty much averted in the Whateley Universe. So far. Diamondback (19-foot-long naga) and Razorback (humanoid velociraptor) are two of the protagonists. Thuban (control freak who is turning into a dragon) looked suspicious at first, but is now dating one of the main characters. It does go the other way, also: Tearaway, who looked like he was half komodo dragon, was a supervillain who ate human flesh.
Pretty much averted in Darwin's Soldiers. In the entire continuty, there are at several reptilian protagonists: Dr. Keith Bailey (Austrialian Monitor Lizard), Neku (an unspecified lizard), Cale (chameleon), Neville Ivers (iguana), Sgt. Larry Masters (bushmaster) and Spc. Mitchell Crota (rattlesnake).
- However, played straight in the 3rd RP where some people visibly flinch around Sgt. Masters and Spc. Crota. Corporal Stern is mentioned as having a dislike for snakes.

Western Animation

Extremely evident in The Get Along Gang, as parodied above. Some episodes had a turtle (of course) joining the Gang. The Cartoon Over-Analizations blog described him as "the Furry equivalent of a Token Minority".
Played with in the animated Sam and Max Freelance Police' series, where one episode had the duo raising a baby alligator (which they named John, "cuz that's where they found him") with a great motherly affection that can only be given unto an adorable little cartoonish neo-natal alligator... until he became a huge primeval killing machine but they loved him so and he never hurt them. Even though they had to let him go to Florida to be with others of his kind, but he would always be "our special gator".
- Of course, Sam and Max are into Crazy Awesome stuff, so they'd probably love having a pet alligator even if it wasn't cute as a baby.
GI Joe's Big Bad enemy is a terrorist organization called Cobra. Enough said.
- But Snake Eyes is a subversion, he's a hero (and the most competent one).
The Wild Thornberrys: Eliza encountered reptiles from the gentle and friendly to the remorselessly carnivorous. But this was how the series treated every kind of animal.
Rugrats had Reptar — who was a good guy. Imagine a combination of Godzilla and Barney.
Fern Gully had a Goanna who wasn't evil, just hungry.
In Bravestarr, one of Big Bad Tex Hex's Quirky Miniboss Squad was a snake-like female humanoid named Vipra. However, it later turned out that Vipra was a member of a race of snake people seen throughout the show, who don't seem to act any differently than the other civilians. In fact, Bravestarr tried to help one in the episode where he lost his powers.
- Handlebar, the friendly proprietor of the local saloon, is a member of the same raceâ€”but the fact that he's a huge hulking galloot prevents him from looking very serpentine, even though he has the angular green face. Also, he has a moustache (hence his name).
Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars concerns an interplanetary war between the Toads and various mammalian species (of course). In one episode, a guy named Al Negator tries to get a job on Bucky's ship. As he's a shifty-looking reptile, the crew is generally suspicious. But Captain Bucky O'Hare hires him on anyway, making a big point of mentioning how he trusted the gunner Deadeye Duck, despite him being a pirate with somewhat questionable morals (and of course a duck). So it looks like a "beauty is on the inside" or "different doesn't mean bad" kind of Aesop... until Al betrays them, steals classified info, and sabotages the ship! So is the message "if they look evil, they are evil"?
- Partially subverted in another episode which introduces a race of ninja-esque iguanas, who despite their drive for conquering planets, find lying or deception completely unacceptable, regardless of the cause.
  - However, the Mammal/Non-Mammal divide was so severe that the ultimate defence system of the bad guys in one episode was an Anti-Mammal Forcefield around a planet. Eventually the good (mammalian) guys penetrated it using a robot.
  - Wait... couldn't they have sent Deadeye?
So how would you like to start an Internet Backdraft in a discussion board dedicated to a series for preschoolers? Head over to any Nickelodeon message boards and ask about the almost-banned Go Diego Go! episode "Cool Water for Ana Anaconda". To sum up the controversy, according to the many concerned parents of the show's young audience, it was totally irresponsible for the writers to show Diego and friends helping a snake. (And yet, the episodes where they rescue bears and mountain lions are A-OK. Huh.)
Speaking of kids shows, there's a child psychologist who warns parents against letting young children watch Dragon Tales because "they may get the idea that reptiles are okay to play with". Never mind that the series is set in a Magical Land, the dragons in question don't even look particularly reptilian, and the whole show is clearly a fantasy — that, by the way, intends to teach kids to embrace diversity. No Unfortunate Implications from the psychologist, no sirree.
The Swan Princess went both ways. Evil alligators, and a heroic turtle. (Also an Oirish puffin and a frog convinced he was a prince.)
Totally averted in the Russian animated adaptation of The Jungle Book, which is remarkably faithful to the source.
In the Transformers Headmasters episode "Rebellion on Planet Beest" (sic), the reptiles, amphibians, and fish on a planet of Petting Zoo People side with the Decepticons. It's up to the mammals to form a rebellion.
- And just about every one of the evil Predacons from Beast Wars that wasn't a arthropod or theropod transformed into a reptile.
  - Then again, Dinobot underwent a Heel Face Turn the first episode. Then again again (as has often been said) if they were still around today, many non-avian Theropods would likely be classified as something else entirely.
Averted in Kung Fu Panda, which has wise Old Master Oogway (a turtle), and Furious Five member Viper, who is as brave and honorable as any of her teammates. Furthermore, Viper is the first of the Five to accept Po into their number after becoming increasingly impressed with his tenacity — and then his cooking.
Averted in Little Bear. One of Little Bear's good friends is a friendly, brave little Garter Snake who guards Grandmother's garden. (Only thing is, he's called Nofeet. What self-respecting snake would answer to that?)
- Maybe he likes not having feet?
On Swat Kats, Dr. Viper is an Evilutionary Biologist villain and half-man, half-snake. Of course, everyone on that show is an anthropomorphic cat; he's then, I suppose, a third-man-third-cat-third-snake?
- Oh, he's got some plant in him too. A quarter human, a quarter cat, a quarter snake, and a quarter plant.
Subverted in an episode of Mission Hill in which a couple "rescues" a boa constrictor from a lab. At first, the parents think the snake has eaten their baby after it escapes from its cage (essentially an overturned laundry basket) and the baby's cries are heard. Turns out the snake only ate the baby monitor and is more curious towards the infant than malevolent. Furthermore, the baby isn't frightened of the snake and the couple adopts the snake as their new pet because of this.
Averted in two episodes of The Simpsons. In "Whacking Day", Bart and Lisa stop the annual beating of snakes, which are shown as being as deserving of compassion as any other animal (at the end they all slither away to the Born Free theme). In "Bart the Mother", the Bolivian Tree Lizards are reviled by everyone except Bart, but later hailed as the solution to the town's pigeon problem (although, as Lisa points out, the actual grasp of ecology here is questionable). There's another episode where Bart gets a pet python named Strangles, who — despite the name — is quite loving.
The clueless suburbanites in Over the Hedge apparently think turtles are too cute to be reptiles and (despite the whole having to crawl on land to lay their eggs thing) insist on identifying Verne as an amphibian, which bothers the hell out of him.
Usually played straight in Class of the Titans, except for the God of Harmony, who is a giant pink snake.
Played straight in the Tale Spin two-parter episode For Whom the Bell Klangs: the reptile Klang is trying to find a legendary superweapon and Take Over The World. To make him even more abhorrent, he is revealed to be, not a crocodile/alligator as he appears, but a giant snake. Shocking, considering that the rest of the population of the world are bipedal, anthropomorphic animals.
Subverted in All Dogs Go to Heaven with King Gator (Yes, that King Gator). He does try to eat Charlie and Anne-Marie at first (Mostly due to mice offering the two as a sacrifice to the massive reptile). However, after he hears Charlie's voice, he changes his mind finding the dog's voice to be beautiful. King Gator may be a big hungry reptile, but he never eats a fellow singer... even if it is of a different species.
- He also eats Carface (the Big Bad of the film) at the end of the movie.
In The Animals of Farthing Wood, the carnivorous members of the group (who have all made an oath not to eat each other) include Badger, Fox, Owl, Kestrel, Weasel and Adder. Although it was Weasel who seemed most tempted to break the oath and Kestrel who actually (accidentally) did so, guess which one nobody trusted?
- Although as the series went on Adder got a lot of Character Development.
  - Indeed, despite not being trusted, Adder soon became an Anti Hero and an Ensemble Darkhorse, and was one of the most loyal members of the group. She even assassinated the first Big Bad, Scarface, to save the other animals and so the traditional hero Fox wouldn't have to kill him.
  - More development comes in the third season in her short-lived "matehood" with Sinuous. When he is killed, it leaves a permanent mark. But how are we to know how much she is "positively" affected, since after Sinuous dies, she only comes in for a few seconds and she mopes about the rats killing Sinuous.
Averted in The Penguins of Madagascar. The character of Roger is a huge alligator who happens to be extremely friendly to the point where he thinks the best way to deal with bullies (Or bullying mice as the case may be) is to bake them muffins.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' anthro alligator Leatherhead is a villain in the first cartoon; all other versions of the canon play him much more sympathetically, but he does tend to have a nasty temper control problem that can make him a threat even to his friends.
- And obviously, TMNT likes to play with this trope, given the nature of its titular characters. Reptilian anthros are mostly good guys. The cartoon is a bit shakier about this as noted above. Then again, Leatherhead the alligator may be more a case of Carnivores Are Mean; not to get too graphic but a turtle's shell doesn't work so well against those jaws...
When an egg from a hatchery truck falls into the laps of the lazy duo Timon and Pumbaa, Pumba thinks he hatched the egg and decides to care for it, much to Timon's annoyance. When the egg yields a baby alligator, Pumba obliviously calls him Pumba Jr. Despite finding his jaws locked on Timon's tail (who thinks Pumba Jr. is a giant chicken), the alligator is a sweet, cute character who runs away in grief when he thinks Pumba doesn't love him.
Averted on Rupert, an animated series by Nelvana. In one episode, a snake needs help from Rupert and his friend Podgy when he is trapped. He promises no harm if they help him out. Rupert agrees to help, but Podgy wants nothing doing. Rupert rescues the snake and, true to his word, the snake does nothing to harm Rupert. And though he messes around with Podgy quite a bit for his early meanness, he doesn't hurt him and ends up saving both him and Rupert when they later end up in a sticky situation.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Two fused villains use a time scepter to transport the turtles in separate time periods for revenge. Leonardo is dropped in Miyamoto Usagi's universe and is attacked by two animal riders because of this trope. Leonardo himself invokes this trope when battling the ruthless Daimyo, Lord Hebi, a giant snake: "It's guys like you that give us honorable reptiles a bad name!"
Averted in The Simpsons, with Selma's affectionate pet iguna Jub Jub. She even considers it as something of a baby replacment for her.
Averted in Tom und das Erdbeermarmelade brot mit Honig where "The Crocodile", a character who depending on the plot seems to be a professional on a different field in every episode, is a really nice guy and actually helps the main character on several occasions.

Real Life

Komodo dragons have been known to engage in playful behavior and have even been shown to be able to learn to recognize zookeepers (IE: A Komodo dragon is less likely to attack a zookeeper he/she is familiar with rather than one who is newer to the job). Likewise, crocodiles and alligators do display some social behaviors and are known for their relatively wide range of communication with one another in both the verbal and non-verbal sense.
- Click here to see adorable baby Komodo Dragons and a zoo-raised Komodo Dragon being pat on the head and liking it!
Also take mommy gators, who will gently place their young into their jaws and safely guide them into the water.
- Sometimes they even end up assisting baby turtles who have the good luck to hatch at the same time as the baby 'gators.
An example of humans acting abhorrently to reptiles: there is the unfortunate 2007 news story of a man who showed off his snake, Popcorn, to educate and counteract fear of snakes. For the benefit of sensitive tropers who love animals, we'll put what happened in ye olde spoilervision: An as yet unidentified boy of about eight years announced, "I hate snakes!" and then stomped on the snake's head, [[Squick causing her a long and painful death; not to mention grief and monetary damage to her human, who had had Popcorn with him for over a decade.]]
Also, here's two articles about a seven-year-old Australian hellion who got bored at the zoo. Once again, for the benefit of sensitive tropers, we'll put what happened in spoilervision: He decided to climb over some fences and kill some rare reptiles and feed them to a crocodile. It also shows the dark side of Badass Normal, because among the animals killed was a 1.8 meter goanna, which by rights should have killed him rather than the other way around. Since, at age seven, he's not responsible for the things he does under Australian law, the zoo is thinking very seriously about suing the kid's parents, since he was, in theory, under their control at the time, and they should have been paying closer attention. Popular opinion (including mine) at the forum where I first found out about the story is that this is better than all three of them deserve, although being beaten to within an inch of their lives or possibly fed to a crocodile is getting there.
Well, it's different in the United Kingdom's dealing with the Anguis fragilis, a legless lizard that looks like snake. This lizard may be called a slowworm or blindworm, and since he Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, it's been illegal to intentionally kill, injure, sell or advertise to sell them, although there are currently no laws protecting their habitat.
A man who placed rubber replicas of reptiles in the road and recording the behavior of motorists. Among other things, he noted people going across lanes to hit the things, as well as several U-turns (in one case by an eighteen-wheeler) intended to run them over a second time. Perhaps the most notable incident was a policeman intentionally running over a rubber snake three times before finally getting out of his vehicle and pulling his gun on it.
- Well, it could have been a brown snake, which play this straight to a T.
The typical reaction to performer Erik Sprague. Granted it is KIND of weird to have yourself transformed into your favorite critter for the purposes of freakshow performance art, but some of the reactions he gets makes you wonder just how many Christians think Satan is gonna show up in the form of a reptile and tempt them to do something naughty. But at least they don't think he's gay.
A number of states in the U.S. are infamous for the so called "Rattlesnake Round Ups" held each year. Begun with the questionable justification of controlling local rattlesnake populations the events are now often supplied by snakes brought in from far and wide, often thousands in number. Their fate is usually to be confined without food or water for weeks or months before being slaughtered en masse for their skins and meat in a rodeo or carnival-like event for tourists and locals. There's no chance events would be allowed to continue so openly if the victims were birds or mammals, even varieties mostly used for food like turkeys or cattle.
Averted in this story about a small child befriending a 20-ft long python. Keep in mind that this is NOT a pet python, it's a wild one.
- Likewise, there's the weird-yet-touching story about a snake becoming best friends with a hamster.
  - This troper has seen two different snakes behave this way on TV. The other had a parakeet in the cage in addition to the hamster.
You'd be quite amazed how many people will react badly to the mere mention of a pet snake, much less the sight of one, even if said snake is no bigger than a pencil. They're fine with dogs, cats, birds, fish, maybe even turtles and lizards ... but snakes? Scream like a little girl and back away.
- Just to compound the What Measure Is A Non Cute errors, snake-hating people sometimes loathe rats as well, because a rat's naked tail looks a bit like a snake.
As a subversion, there's this remarkable story. A Costa Rican fisherman nursed an injured crocodile back to health, and...well, just see for yourself, because you really wouldn't believe me if I told you.
- Note: The video is real, but the croc is question almost certainly suffered permanent brain damage from the original injury, decreasing it's predatory behavior. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.
If you can manage it without losing a finger (or hand), snapping turtles can have oddly soft, pettable skin. Also, they are not very manueverable on land, so unless you are standing right in fron of them, they have to turn their entire body around to get at you. Baby snapping turtles are about as harmless and cute as any other baby turtle.
As a subversion, this trooper found the dedication the Shingleback rather touching.
David Attenborough's Life In Cold Blood is basically one big subversion of this trope.
The infamous Burundian crocodile Gustave has gotten a nasty reputation as a vicious man-eater who kills humans for sport. So far, he's had no human kills to his name since his upshot to fame, but he's been reported to have been going after hippos to feed himself.

Other

Some conspiracy theorists, such as David Icke, claim that people such as politicians and royalty are actually evil reptiles from the constellation Draco who are disguised as humans so they can take political control of Earth.
Any YouTube video of a pet snake being fed live rodents will usually receive a flood of inflammatory comments reprimanding the poster of the video for feeding the "cute" bunny/mouse to the "disgusting" snake. Expect several internet tough guys to make death threats, and a bunch of people hoping the snake dies. Never mind that snakes are living, breathing creatures just like rodents and they've gotta eat to survive too.
- Certainly it's not because feeding a live animal to another in an unnatural situation is abhorrent in and of itself. Frozen food DOES exist, you know.
  - Many if not most snake species will only eat live prey. Your spoilered solution is useless.
  - Many snakes kept as pets can grow used to eating reheated frozen mice. The Boston Aquarium feeds already dead mice to their baby anacondas.
  - And there's always a chance the live prey could attack your pet and cause serious damage. I will not risk my snake's safety just to be amused as it hunts down a mouse trapped in its tank with no chance of escape. A snake tank is not a natural setting and I have no illusions otherwise.
Apparently averted by early American Revolutionaries; who had no problem using the Timber Rattlesnake as a symbol for colonial unity. The vigilance implied by a never blinking animal and fact that the snake would only strike in self defense (and sometimes after a rather loud warning) were qualities even Ben Franklin approved of.
- The US Navy currently flies flags with a rattlesnake and the "Don't Tread on Me Motto" on all active duty vessels, and US Army Drill Sergeant ID Badges also feature a rattlesnake.
Contrary to Europe, India has an extremely different view of their serpents. Also known as the Land of the Snakes, citizens in India treat snakes with respect and awe and use them to represent guardians of temples and other sacred places. Some women even pour milk into cobra holes as a sign of good will (even though cobras don't like milk anyway). To them, the snakes protected their crops by eating the rats and mice who ate them. In fact, one of the mythological creatures of India are Nagas, usually half snake/human hybrids who symbolize primordial wisdom and protected bodies of water. Depicted as neighter good or evil, Nagas only attack humans when they fail to respect nature and ignorantly cause suffering in their environment.
Even we are not immune to this trope, it seems. Recently in the Animals page for HONF, several tropers (this one included) were extremely upset by a video of a monitor eating baby rabbits. To be fair, 1)seeing an animal eaten alive (and making noises!) is fairly Squicky, and 2) the general opinion was "those poor rabbits!" than "that horrible lizard!", but it's the same principle.
- Snakes and bigger lizards can at least swallow things whole. If you think watching a snake eat is disgusting, I hope you never have to watch a bird of prey eat.
  - I've seen birds of prey eat. I still find the prospect of having my body crushed and melted down by stomach acid while still alive a bit more terrifying.
- I place the fault on the owner who decided filming his pet lizard eating baby rabbits was a good idea.
- It's not a matter of the lizard eating the rabbit that's the problem. We don't feed our cats and dogs live food, so why should it be any different for a lizard or snake? In the wild, the prey has a chance to escape. Here, there is no chance. It is not natural. Since there are more humane alternatives, this is only done for the amusement of the owners. It is not the fault of the lizard. It is simple human sadism.
  - Except many pet snakes will not eat dead prey, so it is less cruelty to they prey and more of being nice to the predator.
  - The video depicts a goanna, a species of lizard that are carrion-eaters so there would be no problem with them eating already dead food. Also, as mentioned above, pet snakes can grow accustomed to eating reheated frozen mice.
- This troper feels rather the same watching Orcas hunt.
Averted in the Audio Story, produced in a Radio Production class, Culebras (Snakes) where the titular snakes are 4 adorably sounding babies and their loving mother