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Mythical creatures of mystery, fish, whales, or turtles (there's a definite preference for turtles over any other animal) big enough to be mistaken for islands or even continents have shown up in Myth And Legend for thousands of years. They are often portrayed as being so large and ancient that soil and plantlife (but rarely ever animal life) have grown on its back, sometimes being so ancient that it contains something so rare that the hero (or villain) must marvel at it or try to obtain it. Often the hero gets only a brief opportunity to marvel at its existence, before it decides to set out and dive deep underwater, leaving the protagonist high and dry, or wet and drowning if he doesn't manage to get off in time.
A subtrope of That's No Moon.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- El Doradimon from Digimon Savers is one of these.
- Digimon Tamers has Ebonwumon (aka Xuanwumon). He's got two heads that speak independently. And is a god. And is freakin' awesome.
- One of the One Piece movies is set on one.
Comics
- The Authority: Infinite City, the place where all the Jenny incarnations that have passed are placed, is a city on the back of a giant turtle.
Card Games
- The Yu-Gi-Oh Trading Card Game has a card aptly called the Island Turtle, which, also aptly, has an high defense for a card of its level
- In Magi Nation, the underwater civilization of Orothe builds many of their cities on the backs of giant sea turtles, although they're mostly mermaids and the turtles themselves stay submerged.
- Magic The Gathering has the Island Fish Jasconius
 , based on the fish from Saint Brendan's legend under Oral Tradition.
Films
- Happens in the first of the 1990s Gamera movies.
- In the 1984 fantasy classic, The Neverending Story, there is a giant turtle Morla who lives in the Swamps of Sadness.
Literature
- Taken to extremes in Discworld: the Great A'tuin the star turtle carries four less-giant elephants on its back, who in turn carry the Discworld itself on their backs, and swims through space. A Turtle Planet, if you like.
- There's also a parody in Jingo: Leonard dismisses sailors' tales about giant turtles being mistaken for islands as obvious myths, on the grounds that "you don't get giant turtles that small".
- Tolkien's poem "Fastitocalon" in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil fits this trope perfectly.
- A humongous sea snail in one of the later Doctor Dolittle books.
Mythology
- The mythologies of several Native American cultures tell of a giant tortoise that rose out of the sea when animals needed land to live on.
- Some current-day Native Americans prefer to use "Turtle Island" instead of "North America".
- One of the most famous early examples would be the island in the tales of Sindbad The Sailor, which he discovered was on the back of a whale. Before they realize what it is, the crew find many rare fruits and plants on the surface. Due to the fact that he's possibly the unluckiest man of his time, his entire crew manages to escape (the only time they ever, however), and he gets left behind when the whale submerges and is lost at sea for years.
- The Legend Of Saint Brendan had a similar monster called Jasconius.
- The Leviathan (or, sometimes, the Kraken) is occasionally portrayed as such. One of the original myths of the Kraken was that it was simply a giant monster that would sleep at the surface for so long that plants would grow on it and ship crews would mistake it for an island. Anyone unfortunate enough to light a fire while ashore would wake the Kraken, which would then submerge and pull the ship down with it.
- Russian folk tales have the Wondrous Whale Fish for this role.
- Indian (Subcontinent Indian, not Native American Indian) Mythology has it that the world is carried on the backs of four elephants which in turn are carried on the back of a turtle named Akupara. This was likely the inspiration for Great A'Tuin and Torterra.
- Aztec Mythology told that the land was created from the corpse of Cipactli, a gigantic crocodile. The gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, who normally hate each others' guts, teamed up to kill the monster. Cipactli stayed at the bottom of the sea, so Tezcatlipoca lowered his foot to lure it to the surface. After getting it bit clean off, the two gods turned into snakes and strangled Cipactli, thus forming the North American continent
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons examples:
- Al-Qadim setting. The Zaratan, a huge turtle (200-350 feet across) with rock outcroppings on its shell and flippers that looked like small reefs. When asleep on the surface, it could be mistaken for a floating island.
- 1E Oriental Adventures setting adventure Mad Monkey Vs. Dragon Claw. An uninhabited island is actually a huge dragon turtle (100 yards across) sleeping on the ocean's surface.
Video Games
- At least one of the Golden Axe games has a village on the back of a giant turtle, and it actually swims across the sea as you make your way through the level.
- The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask has a giant friendly turtle of an island who takes Link to a dungeon in the middle of a maelstrom. He shows up in the Super Smash Bros Melee level based on the area, too.
- The Pokémon Torterra is a smaller land variation.
- The Groundshaker boss in Kingdom Hearts II is a huge The Heartless, land version, to the point of having a small forest on its back.
- In an early sequence in Skies Of Arcadia, Vyse and Aika briefly mistake the enormous arcwhale Rhaknam for an island. To be fair, it was pretty foggy at the time.
- Secret Of Mana features an island (which you never have to visit) that is allegedly a turtle's back. It certainly looks like it from an overhead view, but nothing ever comes of this fact. (Possibly related is the turtle that the heroes of the distant prequel, Seiken Densetsu 3, use.)
- Rune Factory Frontier has the aptly-named Whale Island. It gets bonus points for being in the sky.
- Not as important as in the other examples, but, in We ♥ Katamari, you can roll up a few of them in As Large As Possible 5, the Bird & Elephant level. They're called "Giant Sea Turtles".
- In King's Bounty: The Legend, a scientist (the would-be king of the humans who gave up his throne for science, no less) hypothesizes that the world rests on the back of a giant turtle. He also remarks on how ludicrous an opposing hypothesis that says the world is a giant sphere orbiting a sun in a large void. He's right.
Web Original
Western Animation
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