Tikis; it's almost as if they're alive.
Tikis are Polynesian carvings made out of stone or wood in humanoid form, sharing the name of the first man in Maori mythology. They represent deified ancestors, and are often used to mark the boundaries of sacred or significant sites. With their exaggerated expressions and intricate appearance, tikis tend to look quite creepy and fearsome — so it's not surprising that, in the realm of fiction, they're often portrayed as malevolent beings.
Expect these to pop up in Tropical Island Adventure settings, giving tourists and adventurers quite the fright. Compare Evil Mask, Living Statue, Artifact of Doom.
Examples
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Literature
- In the Bone Chillers entry, Tiki Doll of Doom, a young girl named Lucy receives a mysterious Tiki Doll as a gift from a distant aunt, which turns out to contain a vengeful tiki spirit who first haunts Lucy in her dreams, and later starts taking control of her life. The entire story revolves around Lucy trying to remove the Tiki Doll's presence from her life, culminating in the spirit in the doll actually manifesting into a physical form at the end of the book.
- The Twisted Tale of Tiki Island has the Tiki Eye, an evil artifact housing vengeful tiki spirits that is causing the island's curse, and evil Tiki Masks.
Live-Action TV
- This trope is a major plot point in all 3 episodes of The Brady Bunch story arc where they visit Hawaii. When the boys find a tiki (unearthed at the construction site that Mike was there to visit), all sorts of mishaps start happening to the group, e.g., Greg wiping out while surfing and Alice throwing her back during hula lessons. This prompts the boys to seek out the original burial ground where the tiki belongs. A creepy, 4-note musical phrase was played when it was shown.
- Gilligan's Island has the episode "Waiting for Watubi", where Skipper unearths a tiki idol which he is convinced will bring him bad luck and the cast disturb the resting place of a vengeful tiki god, and attempt to break the curse by invoking "The Great Watubi".
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy has the one-off monster Freaky Tiki.
Theme Parks
- The Enchanted Tiki Room has the Tiki Goddess of Disaster, Uh-Oa, who punishes Iago after he angers the Tiki Gods by trying to modernize the show and being insensitive.
- Mystic Manor has a room where a bunch of tiki statues come to life to attack the guests.
- In Volkanu: Quest for the Golden Idol at Lost Island Theme Park, a band of six thieves that stole the Ora Tika Idol that kept Volkanu sealed away were transformed into six Cursed Tiki Statues by the reawakened fire demon to serve as sentries to keep it out of the hands of the locals.
Video Games
- Crash Bandicoot: While most of the living tiki masks are allies of Crash and the other characters, a few are villainous. These include Uka Uka, the Evil Twin of the benevolent Aku Aku, who wants to rule the world, the four evil elemental masks revived by Uka Uka to serve as minions in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, and Tikimon in Crash Twinsanity (providing the page image), a gigantic Multi-Armed and Dangerous tiki statue that the Evil Twins sic on Crash and Cortex.
- Donald in Maui Mallard has the Big Bad Mojo Witch Doctor, who steals the idol statue of Shabum Shabum which protects the island the game is set on. There is also the Muddrake Gladiator, though in that case, it's actually a bunch of natives hiding behind and carrying a giant tiki mask, and the boss of The Sacrifice of Maui in the Genesis and PC version, a creepy tiki-snake thing.
- Donkey Kong Country Returns has the Tiki Tak Tribe, a large group of sentient tikis shaped like musical instruments with hypnotic abilities. Most of their mooks are drum-shaped, but their generals all take the form of other instruments. They hypnotize inhabitants of Donkey Kong Island to steal Donkey Kong's banana hoard to make more of themselves using squashed bananas, and sic said brainwashed inhabitants on Donkey and Diddy Kong as the bosses of each world.
- Kirby Super Star: Wham Bam Rock, the last opponent of The Great Cave Offensive, is a giant tiki giant who attacks Kirby when he's near towards exiting the cave. Originally, it lacked the tiki design in the original release before it was given in Super Star Ultra.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Armos, while having a more knight-like appearance in the series, are given a tiki design. They appear with two faces that have different attack patterns, with their crystals as the weak point.
- In The Messenger (2018), the second boss of the Picnic Panic DLC is a Tiki Totem Pole that summons flame, thunder, and tornadoes to attack The Ninja. It turns out the Emerald Golem was actually performing a ritual to stop the volcano from erupting.
- Pokémon Sun and Moon and Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon have the Guardians of Alola, four Legendary Pokémon in the shape of tikis. While they are cruel, lazy, and violent, they are known as "guardians" for a reason, and they come to the aid of the inhabitants when the Ultra Beasts are unleashed by Lusamine.
- In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, the Nabla Natives of Florana all wear Tiki masks with a Battle Boomerang. Their leader, an amnesiac Captain Qwark also utilizes these.
- Rayman 2: The Great Escape has the Guardians of the Four Masks of Polokus: Axel, Umber, Foutch, and Grolem 13, with Axel, Foutch, and Grolem 13 resembling giant flying torso-like tikis while Umber looks like a more traditional giant full-body one. Rayman must fight Axel, Foutch, and Grolem 13 to get their masks (though Grolem only appears in the PS2 version of the game, with his mask simply being given to Rayman by a Baby Globox instead in other versions of the game), but Umber is an aversion, as he just ferries Rayman across the lava river in his room when he jumps on his head, though you do need to jump off him quickly at the end before he fully sinks. The PS1 version explains this as Ly contacting Umber's spirit and convincing him to help Rayman.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom: Most of the Tikis are harmless, destructible objects, but Thunder Tikis explode when someone gets near them, harming the player character if they don't get out of the way in time.
- Spyro the Dragon:
- Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! features tikis as the enemies in Idol Springs.
- Averted with the tikis in Molten Crater in Spyro: Year of the Dragon, who are friendly, but played straight again with the tikis at Laua Island in Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly.
- Averted with Double Trouble (and his duplicates) from Skylanders, who wears a tiki mask but is one of the good guys.
- Agamo from War of the Monsters is a giant stone Living Statue with some tiki features, and is found fighting Living Lava monster Magmo in a volcanic tropical island resort city.
- Zuma's Revenge has tiki gods as the bosses of the game.
Webcomics
- Love and Capes has the Evil Brain use a tiki statue to try to pull a Grand Theft Me on the Crusader.
Web Original
- Neopets: Geraptiku is full of these, most notably, Potgatkerchi
, a TCG-exclusive demon... god... thing that protects the city.
Western Animation
- 2 Stupid Dogs: In the episode "Inside Out", after Little Dog bites the electric ball from the museum and gets shocked, the viewer is treated to a very freaky scene of a flashing background with electric lines coming down behind it, and a very scary tiki god-like head staring at them saying in a sinister voice "FOOLISH CANINE, I AM NOT YOUR FRIEND!" and laughing evilly.
- Camp Lakebottom has an ancient tiki deity that McGee and his friends accidentally unleash from an old tiki idol in "The Great Tiki Hunt", who initially seems nice, but soon gives the campers the "honor" of being his prey in the titular Great Tiki Hunt.
- In one episode of Kappa Mikey, Gonard and Guano find themselves facing a curse of bad luck after picking up a tiki artifact.
- Phineas and Ferb: In the Hawaiian Vacation Episode, Candace gets an ominous-looking tiki necklace with red eyes and its own ominous musical sting that appears to be bad luck throughout the episode. It's actually just saying her order at the hotel restaurant is ready.
- Scooby-Doo:
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! has the episode "A Tiki Scare is No Fair", which features the gang getting their Hawaiian vacation interrupted by a witch doctor in a tiki mask warning everyone away. As the story continues, he's joined by "Mano Tiki Tia", a mobile statue with a tiki face. Shaggy calls the latter a "freaky tiki" at one point.
- Aloha, Scooby-Doo! has the Wiki-Tiki, who is really Manu in disguise, and has an army of little tiki demons.
- Stōked has the episode 'Reef And That Evil Totem'. Reef took a totem and is effectively cursed.
- In Tak and the Power of Juju, Motiki dolls from the Juju Realm appear throughout the series after the episode "The Gift". Motikis are tiki cookie jar dolls from the Juju Realm that become feral destructive berserkers upon leaving the realm and attack anything they come across.
- Timon & Pumbaa has Bahuka in "Oahu Wahoo", a powerful talking tiki that only Timon can hear, who puts very little value on life, is deadly and vengeful, and overly demanding, threatening the life of anyone who even so much as questions their obedience to him. He ends up destroying the entire island when Timon throws him into the volcano, nearly killing him and Pumbaa in the process.
