"There are creatures science refuses to recognize...but if new technology makes us question what is real...If OUR EYES SEE IT...IF OUR CAMERAS CAPTURE IT...DOES IT EXIST? ENTER A REALM WHERE FACT meets FICTION....SCIENCE meets LEGEND...WHERE NIGHTMARES COME TO LIFE...DO YOU BELIEVE?"
— Opening narration before episode titles.
Animal Planet's version of The Blair Witch Project, Lost Tapes is a Mockumentary series which asks "What If? there really are monsters like Bigfoot, the Chupacabra and other beasties out there?" Each episode starts with a disclaimer pointing out that it's merely "inspired by the possibility that hidden creatures exist". Normally the monsters aren't actually shown, save for glimpses of CG, Props or Costumes. To justify its airing on Animal Planet, the series laces its footage with factoids about real animals supposedly related to the featured monster. Sometimes this is in an attempt to lend an air of plausibility to the scenario, other times the factoids end up being scarier than the film.
The series ran for three seasons from 2008-2010.
This series has examples of:
- 13 Is Unlucky:
- In "Wendigo", by the 13th day Lane's two friends Vincent and April have disappeared and were eaten by the Wendigo and Matthew's transformation into the Wendigo is completed.
- In "Jersey Devil", the myth talks about the Jersey Devil being born a deformed 13th child.
- Action Girl: Elise of the Enigma Corporation, to survive three supernatural monster attacks you have to be a Badass. And in Q: The Serpent God.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- Bobo the Monterey Bay Monster, a creature that's always been described in accounts of his sightings to have never harmed any people, is depicted as a people eating carnivore implied to be responsible for a sizable number of sailor disappearances in Monterey Bay.
- Quetzalcoatl, a god famously known to have a strong distaste for human sacrifices being made in his name, is depicted as a bloodthirsty monster who can explicitly be summoned via human sacrifice, although this might be more due to research failure or artistic license.
- The Dover Demon; in Real Life, sightings of it almost always ended with it running away from the human witness. In the show, it mauls all of the main characters in a messy and almost sadistic way.
- Alpha Bitch: Annabel Lilith is a rare goth example who appears in Hellhound. Needless to say, she doesn't last very long...
- Ambiguously Evil:
- The Skinwalker in the titular episode. She kills a farmer's sheep, and steals its lamb. Since Skinwalkers are created by murdering a family member, it is by definition evil, but in the episode, never actually threatens the protagonists.
- At the end of "Hellhound", Nora is seen petting the titular animal, hinting that they may have been working together, or are at least very familiar.
- Ambiguously Human:
- Nora Callarman from Hell Hound. The epilogue notes that no record of her enrollment at the university (or her existence) was ever found and so her true identity was a mystery. For what it's worth, The Other Wiki claims that she might be a ghost.
- The titular creature of "Wendigo". It's not made clear whether it's a human with Wendigo Syndrome, or whether the transformation was supernatural. Though those teeth sure as hell didn't look human...
- Adapted Out: The Jersey Devil lacks a long neck here though it does still have a dog like appearance in its face.
- Animalistic Abomination: The Hellhound and the Owlman (if one doesn't consider it a Humanoid Abomination).
- Animal Wrongs Group: Two animal rights activists in "Megaconda" break into a factory to get evidence of exotic animals being kept prisoner there, and one ends up devoured by the titular creature. They at least come across as better than many examples of Animal Wrongs Groups, having nothing to do with the escape of the giant snake.
- Apocalyptic Log :The formula for the series, but actually only applies to about half the episodes.
- Artistic License – Biology:
- The flimsy justification given for rapid shape shifting of the Werewolf, a cursory situation of amphibian/insect metamorphosis and the minor changes of the Mandrill.
- The Anaconda is an aquatic snake that can barely sustain its own weight outside of water, much less move and attack. The Megaconda episode takes the same route as the famous movies, making the giant anaconda into an arboreal creature, attacking from above and moving overland with incredible speed.
- Artistic License – Paleontology:
- The Megalania of Death Dragon is surprisingly well depicted if in the wrong habitat. It helps that Megalania has a close relative living today (referenced above).
- During Thunderbird, mention is made of pterosaurs, "giant birds of prey that lived 115 million years ago". Pterosaurs are not birds. More of a missed opportunity, but why reference pterosaurs at all, when Argentavis magnificens (aka the Giant Teratorn) was an actual bird, with a wingspan of about seven meters, that lived just 6 million years ago?
- Also from Thunderbird, the titular creature is shown behaving like a shrike (impaling its prey on branches). It is also presented as a living specimen of an azhdarchid, the pterosaur equivalent of storks.
- The Monster of Monterey Bay is portrayed as an snake-necked elasmosaurid with a taste for humans. Real-life elasmosaurids are believed to have had very rigid necks with limited mobility, and if alive today even the largest elasmosaurids probably wouldn't be interested in humans due to being poorly built for such prey and instead preferring small fish and invertebrates.
- Asshole Victim: The Evil Poacher in Bigfoot, Ken Tobar in Megaconda, Tyler in Oklahoma Octopus, and Annabel Lilith in Hell Hound. You won't feel sorry for any of them, this is a fact.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Given the general format of the series, you'd be forgiven for assuming that the title creature of "Bigfoot" is the episode's antagonist, especially given that the other Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti episodes from across the series all use their cryptid as genuine monsters. Nope! The villain of the episode is a poacher who's been stalking and threatening the park ranger protagonist, and in fact Bigfoot is watching over her in return for her protecting the local wildlife and kills the poacher when he tries to attack her at the end of the episode.
- "White River Monster" opens with a family in the woods as the daughter points out a duck floating by on the nearby White River. Her parents ask where her little brother is and she says she doesn't know as the music builds ominously, obviously suggesting that he's about to be eaten by the titular monster. Then he jumps out and startles them. As the parents are scolding him, we hear a splash of water and the daughter says that something in the river just ate the duck.
- "Beast of Bray Road" uses one of these for a commercial transition: after establishing that the titular monster is roaming around and has already killed most of the other characters, the cameraman protagonist tries to make a break for it, screaming for help, until he comes across a car. He gets in and tries to find the keys, then the glass of the driver's side window is shattered, then the series' Eye Catch appears. One commercial break later, we learn that it wasn't the Beast, but the leader of the militia group featured in the episode who smashed the window, now royally pissed at the cameraman for trying to run away.
- Badass Normal:
- Conner and Mooney they've got nothing really special but training and Connor fought off a vampire with nothing but a pointed piece of wood. What makes it truly badass is the Strigoi ran away from Connor when it had been shown to easily overpower other adult males.
- Firefighter Trevor Andrews from Lizardman as well. Fights and kills the titular Lizardman armed with a small hatchet and the only light being the flashlight on his helmet.
- The pregnant mom from "Jersey Devil". She drove away the titular beast hassling her kids by hitting it with a block of wood!
- Dennis Redding from the Vampire episode not only holds off one of them, if only for a brief moment, after it breaks the basement door off its hinges, manages to run past all three of them to get back to his family, and then kills one of the vampires via an improvised Wooden Stake to the heart!
- Barrier-Busting Blow: At one point in Vampire, the titular monster manages to twice bust a hole through a large wooden surface in its efforts at catching its prey, with the first time being when it bursts through a wall its hiding behind to grab onto the exterminator, and the second time being when it bursts a hole through the door to a bedroom that the family its been trying to hunt is trying to hole themselves up in side. This second time leads to its demise when the father grabs onto a sharpened piece of wood from the resulting wreckage and uses it as an Improvised Weapon to stab the monster to death.
- Based on a Great Big Lie: While most of the monsters have some sort of mythical, folklore, or historical basis stretching back decades or centuries, the Oklahoma Octopus is believed to have no such basis (the lakes in which it said to inhabit are manmade and didn't exist until the 1950s, and many Oklahoman citizens who've been asked about the matter since the episode's airing have admitted to have never even remotely heard of such a creature until being asked in the time since the episode's airing). Even the drowning death of the boy used as "evidence" in the episode was a completely unrelated incident. The earliest known reference to the octopus dates to only 2006, in a blog post
that expresses skepticism that it actually is an octopus.note - Believer Fakes Evidence: the episode covering the Dover Demon has a set of hoaxers attempting to create a hoax based around the cryptid in question to celebrate an anniversary of its sighting; this being Lost Tapes, the actual Dover Demons shows up.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Bigfoot is depicted as a Gentle Giant, but don't you dare mess with his human friend. You WILL regret it. That poacher learned that the hard way...
- Big Bad: A respectable number of episodes have an explicit main villain that's in some way responsible for the trouble to unfold in said episodes. For specific examples...:
- The Poacher from Bigfoot is responsible for stalking and trying to kill the ranger and is also the primary culprit behind the illegal black bear hunting that the ranger's been investigating.
- The Owlman from Death Raptor has spent multiple years in America trying to claim a sacrifice ever since a young girl it previously tried to claim as such back in its native homeland in England (named Hazel Van Lear) traveled to America to escape from it when she was younger. And by the time of the present day events of the episode focusing upon it now willing to try to settle for claiming the young Su Ann Mills instead after getting tired of waiting.
- Ken Tobar from Megaconda is an unscrupulous man who privately runs a black market poaching ring from within what he passes off as a textile shop. And it is the efforts by an Animal Wrongs Group to find evidence to expose his criminal activity that lead to the titular snake escaping from activity and wrecking havoc.
- Nora could potentially qualify as the main villain of the episode Hellhound due to her being shown at the very end to be interacting with the titular beast in a manner that implies the two at the very least being familiar, if not directly in league, with each other.
- Sophie in Werewolf is the titular monster who's bloodthirsty killing spree leads to the investigation that serves as the episode's central plot.
- Charles Weatherly in Poltergeist is the titular spirit, having stuck around to continue wrecking havoc after brutally murdering his family and subsequently killing himself.
- Matthew in Wendigo: American Cannibal is the lost hiker who ends up turning into the titular monster after getting hungry enough to resort to killing and eating his friends in a desperate attempt to survive.
- Lucas Marzo in Q: The Serpent God is the leader of the cultists trying to summon the titular god.
- The Reptilians in their respective episode serve as a group of villainous monsters acting upon an as of yet unknown Evil Plan against humanity, and are not above resorting to murder to prevent those who discover their presence amongst humanity from potentially putting a stop to their nefarious agenda.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Bigfoot, the Honey Island Swamp Monster AKA "Swamp Creature" (who is depicted as semi-reptilian), and the Fouke Monster AKA "Southern Sasquatch", who has the personality of a Grizzly Bear. There's also the Yeti, who is just as bloodthirsty as the Sasquatch. The Devil Monkeys may qualify.
- Big Budget Beef-Up: The Second series appears to be this, with a greater reliance on practical effects and more visible 'hidden' creatures. Sometimes, the monsters have a full 2 minutes of screen time, over the 10-seconds of the previous season.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Deathcrawler and Alien both feature arthropodal organisms. The first is a 3 foot long centipede, while the other is a wasp-like organism about the size of a softball. Also, "Death Worm", showcasing the Mongolian Death Worm.
- Bittersweet Ending: Lizardman. Lizardman kills the reporter and the cameraman, but one of the firefighters manages to kill it and he and his partner get out alive.
- Werewolf. The werewolf, Sophia Montero, kills the reporter Austin Pace, but the two detectives manage to kill her and end her killing spree. However, they are both traumatized by the case, and eventually resign from the force.
- Chupacabra. Ava Ramirez is returned to her relatives in Nogales after being rescued by Border Patrol agents, but she is heavily traumatized after witnessing the Chupicabra kill both of her parents and will probably have nightmares about it for the rest of her life.
- Jersey Devil. The Stark family escapes from the woods after being pursued by the Devil, but it kills Cooper, their dog.
- The season three episodes that feature Enigma Corporation agents Elise Mooney and Noel Connor, as usually they are the only ones to make it out of their missions alive.
- Black Dude Dies First: Mexican Survey team in Death Crawler, in this case, get bitten to death by 3ft centipedes. Subverted in Alien but...see below.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: In keeping with the legend, there's still no clue as to the Mothman's motives.
- Came Back Wrong: A popular theme in several episodes, like Wendigo.
- Cannibal Larder: The very last episode has such a scene, set deep underneath New York in one of the city's many uncharted subterranean tunnels, featuring numerous missing persons wrapped up in plastic after having been asphyxiated. It's a bit unusual since while it has all the hallmarks of a Cannibal Larder, the culprits technically aren't cannibals since they aren't actually human.
- Catchphrase: Narrator: "Do They Live Among Us?"
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Ken Tobar in Megaconda, who's involved in illegal wildlife trading.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Captain Bach, having an alien parasite inside her, having to go through so much pain before dying when it emerges.
- Chest Burster: How the alien emerges in its episode.
- Chupacabra: The first cryptid of the series examined. It is the Southwestern version of the creaturenote opposed to the more bizarre South American and Caribbean version.
- Crapsack World: Since all the episodes seem to take place in the same universe, this means that the world is infested with monstrous supernatural beings, a large majority of which eat people for lunch.
- Creepy Child: Su Ann Mills from the Owlman episode, although she's only this way due to the trauma of getting an up-close and personal encounter with the Owlman himself...Su Ann: It knows you're here to stop it.
And it's coming back to stop you. - Deadline News: Happens in Lizard Man, when the Intrepid Reporter and her cameraman are killed and partially devoured by the monster.
- Death by Irony:
- The Poacher in Bigfoot dies when he falls into his own trap.
- Ken Tobar in Megaconda is eaten by one of the animals he plotted to make a quick buck off of.
- Tyler in Oklahoma Octopus impersonated a sea monster to pick on one of the girls, then gets eaten by a sea monster.
- Annabel Lilith in Hellhound mocks Nora for believing in monsters, only for a monster to indirectly cause her demise.
- A non-villainous one, but the cast of Dover Demon had wanted to film a hoaxed documentary for the titular monster. Then the REAL Dover Demon shows up...
- Lucas Marzo in Q: The Serpent God was killed by the very god he summoned
- Deconstruction: Alien posits that an extraterrestrial is most likely to be a primitive parasite, not an intelligent being.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Mooney grabbing an Aztec dagger, just used to kill a friend of hers then use it to lure in and stab Quetzalcoatl. She and Conner then proceed to drive it off with an onslaught of machine gun fire.
- Documentary Episode: The Mothman episode used a different format, as government agents question a witness about the Mothman in 1966.
- Doing In the Wizard: Most of the monsters have naturalistic explanations that work up to a point. Except when noted below.
- Don't Look Back: Seeing the Hellhound three times means a quick, untimely death. Unfortunately, most of the Goth teens saw it twice before finishing their faux ritual when it attacks again.Nora: Severin? Severin? (sad) You looked.
- Downer Ending: Many of the episodes feature this.
- Death Worm. Both of the men, Greg and Benton are killed by the Worm.
- Death Crawler Karen and Jonah are both killed by the giant centepedes.
- Monster of Monterey Sharon is attacked and more than likely eaten by a plesiosaur that knocked her overboard by ramming her boat.
- Dude, Not Funny!: In "Oklahoma Octopus", nobody is amused by Tyler's fake drowning pranks.
- The Ending Changes Everything: Frequent. Especially in "Hellhound", when it is revealed in the last few minutes that Nora may or may not be human, and may or may not have been in league with the titular beast.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: Despite the series' name, this is actually Subverted...most of the time. Many episodes end with at least one survivor, and at least one has all the viewpoint characters survive, and in one case, the Cryptid saved the point-of-view character. Season 3 seems to be doing more of this, as so far, only four survivors so far the entire season, and two of those were sole survivors, the other two were Connor and Mooney...three times.
- Evil Gloating: Ken Tobar does a fairly brief example of this after discovering the camera left behind by the activists in Megaconda, clearly pleased that he can potentially dispose of the footage and keep his crimes in the dark. The titular monster eats him before he even has the chance.
- Evil Poacher: Featured in two episodes, none live to see the end.
- Bigfoot features a nameless poacher as the Big Bad, hunting down black bears and both threatening and sexually harassing the park ranger when she tries to stop him. Bigfoot, who is fond of the ranger, doesn't like that...
- Ken Tobar, the Greater-Scope Villain of Megaconda, combines this with Corrupt Corporate Executive and is trafficking animals and products made from them illegally. He meets his end when one of said animals both escapes and gets hungry.
- Expy: Tim in Devil Dragon is one of Steve Irwin, which makes his death Harsher in Hindsight for some, though these days he resembles Survivorman.
- Fate Worse than Death: Wendigo. Matthew, after resorting to cannibalism to survive, is cursed as a Wendigo forever. Roaming the woods and eating anything and everyone he comes across.
- Failed a Spot Check: Happens to the exterminator in the Vampire episode after he only just notices the Vampires hiding in the walls, giving the one that camouflaged itself inside an old sofa the right opportunity to pounce and attack the exterminator when he least expects it.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: the actual events of each episode are often interrupted by talking heads and other edutainment-type segments, which will sometimes give you a heads-up as to what's about to happen in the main plot. For example, Thunderbird is momentarily interrupted to provide some basic statistics for sports injuries; one of the three kids who make up the cast of the episode falls off his skateboard and breaks his leg shortly after this.
- Gainax Ending: ...if you're lucky. Skinwalker is the most optimistic ending. No one hurt, cute baby lamb saved, son goes to college, and changes major to study Native American mythology.
- Genre Savvy:
- The lead diver in "Kraken" repeatedly tells the film crew in tense situations to "Put the camera down" and help save crewmen from the monster. Of course, he insists on sending people down to retrieve the people already attacked. Twice. Honor Before Reason or Idiot Ball. You decide.
- Connor and Mooney are, enough to know that when entering a dark, spooky room, it's a bright idea to have your gun ready to fend off monsters. They're also smart enough not to trust someone coming with a more 'logical' explanation and actually double check what's going on, they even don't fall for the old 'clothing switch' disguise the Strigoi tries on them. Justified because the Enigma Corporation are specially trained to deal with the unexplained. Also, likely the reason they've lived through three supernatural monster attacks.
- Also shown in Q: The Serpent God when Mooney realizes that if an ancient dagger brought Quetzalcoatl into the world, odds are its your best chance of taking him out.
- Being Genre Savvy doesn't help the reporter in Monster of Monterey— she wisely tethers herself to her boat while on deck (as real solo sailors do), attempts to call for help on the radio, refuses to investigate an abandoned boat with blood on the deck alone, and decides Screw This, I'm Outta Here, attempting to sail to shore while her boyfriend calls the Coast Guard. Unfortunately, before the Coast Guard can arrive the monster collides with the boat again, and her tether isn't short enough to keep her from being knocked into the water and eaten.
- Nora in Hellhound.Annabelle: I knew I shouldn't have let you in.Nora: (firm retort) It isn't me you should be worried about.
- Ernest Tybee in "Devil Monkey" is smart enough not to leave a local legend completely out of the equation.
- Gentle Giant: Bigfoot. He's depicted as a docile creature (possibly Truth in Television; Bigfoot is rarely reported to get violent towards the people who encounter him) who seems to develop a fondness for the protagonist. Enough to save her from a poacher, no less.
- The Ghost: of all the cryptids featured in the series, only the Thunderbird is never seen outside of the talking heads segments, only indicated to be anywhere near the characters by the sounds it makes and their reactions to it. Even the other little-seen monsters get motion-blurred or staticky shots, only one small part of them visible, or shadows being cast, but the Thunderbird only appears in pitch black nighttime.
- Ghostly Goals: The ghost in Poltergeist seems to be type A. Horrifyingly subverted as the climax reveals that it was just screwing with the protagonists and is actually a type B.
- Giant Flyer: The Death Raptor (Owlman), Mothman (proposed to be one-and-the-same), the "Cave Demons" (Giant Bats, implicit Vampires), Thunderbird (Implicit Pterosaur) and Jersey Devil. Quetzalcoatl is also able to fly.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Chupacabra, Mothman, Hell Hound, Dover Demon—usually a variety of natural eyeshine found in most nocturnal/twilight active animals.
- Government Conspiracy:
- Strongly implied by the Mothman episode, as a witness is questioned by governmental The Men in Black.
- Some of the cryptid encounters are, in the epilogue, revealed to have been covered up by the government of the nation involved. Alien is the most clear as all records of the event where taken by the government. Zombie may feature one: after the two survivors escape, the city destroys the building and never files a report on the event.
- The epilogue of Yeti reveals that the ship carrying it is redirected to Plum Island, which hosts a government facility that studies biological specimens and is itself already the subject of conspiracy theories.
- Reptilian, which is practically a love letter to the conspiracy theories of David Icke, complete with the government confiscating all the footage and then closing down the task force at the end of the episode.
- Not just Americans, either—after Q: The Serpent God, the Mexican government posthumously convicted the cult leader of all the murders and considered the case closed. No mention of what happened to the monster appears in any reports, and they had the abandoned train depot where the events took place burned to ground for good measure.
- The militia group featured in the Beast of Bray Road episode think this is at work, that the government is coming to get them and covertly killing their fighters in the woods, but it's really just the titular monster. The leader of the group believes up to the very end that it's federal agents doing all this and holds one of the protagonists at gunpoint to demand that they leave, and then the Beast attacks him, too. It's only after this, in the epilogue, that the government raids the woods to find out what happened.
- Guns Are Worthless: Averted, While many of the victims are either too shocked to just shoot the monsters or are unarmed at the time, most of the creatures lack bullet immunity (with the exception of the blatantly supernatural creatures such as Q and the Skinwalker). Even the supernatural Strigoi was harmed enough by gun fire to retreat for a brief moment.
- Guns Do Not Work That Way: For some odd reason, the MP5 that Elise often uses acts like a shotgun rather than a submachine gun: it fires once, and there is even the sound of a slide being racked between each shot.
- Happy Ending: Skin Walker is one of the rare upbeat endings. So is Bigfoot, since the titular monster only attacks the human antagonist of the episode. Heck even Thunderbird qualifies as there aren't any reported human deaths.
- Harmful to Minors: It's strongly implied that the little girl in Chupacabra witnessed her parents being killed by the titular monster.
- Hate Sink: Several episodes feature at least one incredibly despicable Jerkass or similarly loathsome human. You can't hate a cryptid, but you can hate terrible human beings.
- Hell Hound: Such a creature serves as the focus of one episode, in which it takes the form of a bloodthirsty red eyed rottweiler which can both directly kill people with its claws and fangs and indirectly cause people's deaths via a curse that's activated in the event the people in question look directly at it three times.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Death Raptor climaxes with the elderly Hazel calmly walking out and letting herself be killed instead of the Owlman's original target, a little girl. She also believed the thing followed her there from England, so she felt responsible for it.
- In Alien a doctor tells the nurse to run while he tries to hold off the creature with acid...too bad she doesn't listen well enough.
- Ernest Tybee in Devil Monkey tells the female reporter to run, whilst he holds off the creatures... too bad it doesn't work
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- A Poacher/Stalker is stuffed into one of his own traps courtesy of Bigfoot.
- Megaconda ends with Ken Tobar being killed by the titular creature... which he's implied to have had smuggled in to the country.
- Hope Spot:
- Happens twice in Monster of Monterey. First, once Sharon and her boyfriend Charles mutually agree that she needs to get the Hell out of dodge and leave the bloodstained and apparently attacked abandoned vessel Kahuna for the Coast Guard to investigate and stay out of the water for her own safety just in case whatever's responsible just so happens to be an animal swimming about nearby, it looks as if perhaps Sharon will be able to leave the area without further trouble by unfurling her ship's sails and allowing the wind to send her away to safety while she stays inside the interior of her boat where she'll have no chance of getting easily knocked overboard in the event the monster tries to ram her boat once more. But then the halyard sail gets briefly jammed and she's forced to get into a disadvantageous position that allows her to be easily knocked overboard when the monster rams her boat for the third and final time. And after she's been both knocked overboard and subsequently forced to undo her safety tether in order to avoid getting impeded in efforts to swim to the stern ladder, it briefly looks as if perhaps she'll be able to still get back aboard her boat and to safety...only for the wind to pick up and fill her boat's now fully unfurled sails and cause the boat to pick up enough speed to prevent her from being able to reach it in time, leaving her doomed to be caught by the creature as the boat goes floating away without her.
- The Yeti episode contained a particularly cruel example—our heroes evade the titular monster just long enough to get to the locked gate and desperately call out for a passing worker to unlock it for them. He's just about to do so...and then sees the Yeti, which caught up to them and runs as fast as he can, leaving the gate locked and the protagonists helpless.
- Rather fittingly, there's another in the requisite Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti episode of the previous season, "Southern Sasquatch": after Levi and Corbin are killed by the Fouke Monster, Matthew finally finds his way back to the hunting blind they'd been at earlier in the episode where he'll be safe. However, he finds that the monster has already ripped down half the rope ladder leading up to it, which he was barely able to climb even when it was intact and so can only scream for help and then vainly try to reach what's left of it as the monster closes in to kill him, too.
- Horde of Alien Locusts: Alien is implied to be working to reproduce enough to create a large swarm of its kind at the end.
- Humanoid Abomination:
- With ape-men being the exception, almost any human-like cryptid is like this in some way, shape or form. The Owlman and Mothman are the most notable examples.
- And Nora from Hellhound. Maybe.
- Special mention goes to the Wendigo, which starts out as one of the campers seen at the beginning but turns into the monster.
- Idiot Ball:
- The 3 cops in Zombies apparently are unfamiliar with the titular creatures, despite having witnessed their feral-like behavior, inability to die from long falls, bullets or even be affected by tasering, etc. And this is all after discovering a voodoo shrine.
- The ATF agents in "Devil Monkey". Not only do they ignore strange animal calls, blood, odd footprints, a clearly traumatized and terrified victim who warns them repeatedly that they should leave, and even mangled human bodies, they dismiss it when one of them is struck from behind by something, and continue to "investigate" despite all of this as if there is nothing unusual going on, and predictably end up killed by the titular creatures for it. The Sheriff has this to a lesser extent as, instead of blasting the damn thing with a shotgun, He turns around to tell the reporter to flee and then gets jumped. However he gains some sanity points, as he is Genre Savvy enough to not leave the local legend completely out of the equation and at least tries to hold the creature off.
- Improbable Infant Survival: They won't be killed, but they sure as hell are getting traumatized by the experience. The vampire at least tried to avert this by going for the child first, even if it ultimately failed.
- Intrepid Reporter: Several, though the early ones were documentarians. They usually don't make it through with their story or lives intact.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Lots of these monsters seem to think humans are tasty. The Wendigo is a human who's got this idea." When was the last time... that you had something to eat?"
- Jerkass:
- Tylor Shuman, in Oklahoma Octopus. He insists on playing pranks faking drowning that nobody thinks is funny, then when he gets called out on his crap he throws a fit and steals the canoe to leave his friends stranded out in the middle of the lake all night. It would almost be a Karmic Death when the titular monster drags him to his death... except it basically means he helps it eat Bruce Delroy and Ruthie Simple as well.
- Annabelle from Hell Hound. Hey, fake Wiccan, why don't you take the real Wiccan seriously?
- Just Desserts: Unsurprisingly, a lot of the bad guys get eaten in this series.
- The Jersey Devil: The famed New Jersey cryptid serves as the focus of one episode, in which it attacks a family (including a pregnant mother) when the family in question comes rushing into its territory after their dog gets loose and runs into the forest where it lives.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Combined excellently with Karmic Death in Megaconda; Ken Tobar, the episode's Greater-Scope Villain, discovers the camera the activists left behind and takes a moment to do some Evil Gloating now that he can get rid of the footage and ensure that his crimes will never be discovered. Then the Megaconda itself starts slithering up to him...
- Killed Offscreen: being a low-budget Found Footage series, many deaths occur off-screen. Many of them are indicated as taking place in some way—namely the character screaming in pain or terror as the one with the camera runs away—but special mention should go to "Dover Demon" which has probably the straightest example of this in the series. As shit starts going down, Chad and Shannah split up from Glenn to try and find their injured friend Royce more quickly, and Glenn is shown taking out a switchblade to defend himself from the Dover Demon. A few scenes later, Chad and Shannah trip over something which turns out to be Glenn's jacket, now bloodied from a deadly encounter with the Demon.
- Knight of Cerebus: The show was already terrifying and dark, but when these creatures show up things get INTENSE.
- The Owlman is one the most darkest examples of this trope, not only can it think, it spends the entirety of its episode psychologically torturing, and attempting to kill and DEVOUR a little girl.
- The Southern Sasquatch was a violent creature that mauled three innocent and grown men to death. When the cryptozoologists say it's one of the most dangerous creatures featured on this show, you are dealing with one horrid monster. To top it off, the end of the episode has the last survivor finally getting back to the hunting blind shown earlier, where he'll be safe, only to find that the sasquatch has already torn down the rope ladder and all he can do is scream for help and vainly try to reach the remaining part of the ladder as it closes in to kill him.
- The Dover Demon is a more subtle example, but it is the first creature to kill ALL the humans involved with its episode, that and the fact we know nothing about it, and it kills the characters in the most sadistic way possible.
- The Wendigo takes the cake, it's episode was voted the darkest and scariest episode in the entire series due to its practical effects, great acting, and its portrayal of an absolutely terrifying and realistic monster.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Bigfoot features an Evil Poacher getting brutally attacked and killed by the creature while trying to attack and kill a ranger that the bigfoot had come to appreciate and respect. Similarly, Oklahoma Octopus has the very first victim be a Jerkass who plays mean spirited fake drowning pranks on his friends and chooses to spitefully try to abandon them in the center of the creature's home lake when they call him out for his jerkassery.
- Late to the Tragedy: A few episodes have the protagonists discovering... something unpleasant having happened, with Monterey Monster in particular featuring protagonist Sharon Novak coming across a boat that the titular Stock Ness Monster has already attacked, and becoming understandably frightened after seeing the blood of some of the boat's crew members splattered over the side of the boat.
- Lizard Folk: Lizardmen and the Swamp Monster are reptilian (even if the later is covered in hair).
- Mama Bear: The above, plus the odd human who, in one instance—drives off a monster with a two by four to save her kids—while pregnant.
- Maniac Monkeys: In Devil Monkey, the titular cryptid is a monkey-like monster with a savage bloodthirsty streak a mile wide that viciously attacks all who enter its territory.
- Matchlight Danger Revelation:
- In "Wendigo", one of the rescue team sees a figure in the dark growling and crawling toward her in the cave. It isn't until she lights a flare does she realizes how close the Wendigo is and runs off screaming.
- In "Dover Demon", one victim showed off the night vision on his camera to his friends, which illuminates the background, revealing that the Dover Demon is watching them from the trees behind them.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In "Wendigo", it's left ambiguous whether Matt's really turning into a wendigo or just going insane. More broadly, basically all of the cryptids have some level of ambiguity to them just because of what they are and efforts are made to provide reasonable explanations even if those sometimes fall flat. Stand-out examples include "Q: The Serpent God," (is it just some unknown animal, or is it really Quetzalcoatl?) "Jersey Devil," (is it an individual of some fundamentally mundane species or is it some immortal demon?) and "Zombies" (they use enough varied zombie tropes to leave it ambiguous as to if they're magical or "scientific" in the way they function).
- Meaningful Name: Mooney is one letter off from Looney, and has the same meaning of someone crazy. It used to denote someone that saw things that weren't real. Doubles as a Stealth Pun given her profession.
- Monster Is a Mommy: Swamp Monster and White River Monster. Mama Bear applies in both instances, even though the later is a fish.
- MST: Kobuddy Decided that this show deserved to be MST'd. Seems to be a continuing series.
- Negative Continuity: The first two seasons never showed true continuity. The Third season averts this, introducing the Enigma Corporation, which reappears three times throughout the season. Every episode is more of less self-contained in any case, and even the Enigma Corporation episodes never refer to the events of the others they appear in.
- Never Found the Body: Several episodes end with the victims' bodies never being found, with Monterey Bay Monster explicitly mentioning how the luckless protagonist's underwater camera attached to her life vest was the only thing that the Coast Guard was able to find over the course of their thorough search for her after her attack by the titular monster.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: in Alien the surviving medical staff woman panics and breaks quarantine, allowing an extremely venomous, softball sized parasitoid wasp-like alien to escape into the wild after it killed 3 people. The ending implies that the wasps are capable of asexual reproduction to boot.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Some of the creatures are largely this trope.
- Many of the creatures are only menacing the protagonists because they're predators that are simply looking for a meal. The Monterrey Monster, Chupacabra, Thunderbird, Megaconda and Death Crawlers qualify in this regard.
- The Yeti and Devil Monkey are implied to simply be territorial and royally ticked off.
- The Alien, of all things, is also one of these; unlike most portrayals of alien sightings, this one is simply a parasite that was going through its typical lifespan. The talking heads segments also point out that animals in general will become more aggressive when trapped or cornered because they have no other options, which is exactly what happens when the hospital that the episode takes place in goes into lockdown after the alien properly shows itself.
- A couple of the animals, like the Honey Island Swamp Monster and the White River Monster are depicted as parents who were NOT pleased with the fact that someone decided to mess with their nests.
- Subverted with the more supernatural creatures, including the Owlman (implied to be a demonic entity), the Skinwalker (implied to be a shapeshifter)and the Werewolf (implied to be a shapeshifting Serial Killer). The Hellhound is the exception; it is one of the only implicitly supernatural monsters in the series that has no deaths directly attributable to it (the other is the Skinwalker).
- Double subverted with the Mothman and the Bigfoot. The former is depicted as menacing and possibly more intelligent than it appears and the latter has shades of It Can Think. However, they were depicted as being neutral and fairly docile respectively.
- Nothing Is Scarier: In the first season. In the second, this is combined with Practical FX, Surprise Scares and gore. While it's debatable how well it works most of the time, the few episodes people do consider to be genuinely terrifying usually make use if it to down right unnerving effects. (Heck, the Skinwalker episode generates creeps by having the voice of the protagonist's wife call him out of nowhere.)
- Ominous Owl: The Owlman, naturally. Not only is he speculated to be a demon, the viewpoint characters actually retrieve a pellet (regurgitated undigested foodstuff) from the creature containing a human jawbone.
- Only Sane Man:
- Ernest Tybee in Devil Monkey as he is Genre Savvy enough to not leave a local legend completely out of the equation and at least tries to hold the creature off (and would've succeeded if he hadn't turned round), instead of simply doing nothing, like the ATF agents.
- The lead diver in "Kraken" repeatedly tells the film crew in tense situations to stop filming and help save crewmen from the monster. Probably why he survived when everyone else didn't.
- Glenn in Dover Demon, unlike Chad, takes the possibility of the Dover Demon seriously and tries to warn the others about the risk they are taking, mentioning that he's heard rumors of it being hostile to outsiders, trying to investigate the strange claw marks and footprints he finds (whereas Chad just thinks it's just more good ambience for their prank), and even calls out Chad when he demands they split up to look for Royce. Even then, he takes out a pocketknife to defend himself, not that it does him much good apparently, but still...
- The Omniscient: The Owlman somehow figures out that the researchers were looking for it, and Su Ann implies that it knew all along...
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Hazel Van Lear in "Death Raptor" spends almost all of her screen time teetering on the edge of hysterics, at best, but becomes The Stoic the minute she starts her Heroic Sacrifice.
- Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: With this show being ostensibly about found footage of people experiencing traumatic encounters with various cryptids and other supernatural creatures, it's only natural that a sizable number of cryptids, both famed and lesser known, are amongst the creatures encountered by the luckless victims the lost footage centers around.
- Our Demons Are Different: Hellhound, Skinwalker, and Jersey Devil. Each one has its own unrelated explanation, few of which are natural (if one is given at all). The Dover Demon, despite its name, is just not explained. Given how Weird it is, that makes perfect sense. A Strigoi is featured as well, and, unlike the first Vampire, it doesn't have a logical explanation, it's apparently supernatural.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The titular Death Dragon is basically a Komodo Dragon with the mass of a polar bear. Then there's Quetzalcoatl, who could be called dragon-like in appearance, but may be a bit more than that.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: A murderous variant of a poltergeist appears in season 3. No natural explanation is provided.
- Our Vampires Are Different: In the first season, large, vampiric/semi-predatory bats implied to be the basis for the olitiau cryptid are featured with some ties to vampirism. In the second season, a true vampire is seen—as a savage, nocturnal ape-like predator with a vaguely bat-like face that sleeps in an old house, killed the way normally depicted, stabbed through the heart (with a Wooden Stake for good measure). A second species of Vampire introduced in the third season, the Strigoi, is far more human in appearance...unless its shapeshifting into an animal form (it prefers a black dog) and is far more supernatural. The epilogue implied that after he jumps Mooney, she proceeds to kick his ass through the truck windshield. But what do you expect when a vampire jumps an Action Girl these days?
- Our Werewolves Are Different: One episode devotes it to the Skin Walker, which is accurate to the legend. In The Beast of Brey Road episode a "dog man" clings to a more classic visual design. The actual Werewolf, however, is much closer to the original legends, being a human who turns into a beast when the full moon is out (even when the moon isn't visible to them).
- Our Zombies Are Different: A combination of types. Created by Voodoo toxins (Type V), Flesh eaters (Type F) with a slow gait and NASTY lunge, they are also Type P (implied to be the Parasite subtype) that acts pretty quickly for an infection. The episode gains bonus points for having the writer of World War Z on as a guest commentator. But it loses points for shamelessly conflating traditional vodun zombi beliefs with Romero-style shambling cadavers, in a way that implies the former also portray them as contagious flesh-eaters. Artistic License – Religion or Rule of Scary or Both?
- Papa Wolf: Dennis Redding from Vampire defends his wife, himself, and his son from a rampaging vampire, even managing to successfully kill it via a makeshift Wooden Stake to the heart.
- People in Rubber Suits: The Vampire, Lizardman, Bigfoot, Skunk Ape, Swamp Monster, and Dover Demon are all clearly portrayed by actors in costumes (with several other smaller vaguely humanoid cryptids being portrayed via CGI).
- Perky Goth: An entire group of incredibly upbeat and perky goth teens are amongst the characters featured in "Hellhound".
- Police Are Useless: The two ATF agents from Devil Monkeys are so stupid and oblivious to the more and more blatant signs of the presence of the Devil Monkeys to the point they seem borderline suicidal. Subverted by the local sheriff who accompanies them, who, while also ignoring the signs, is Genre Savvy enough never to take a local legend out of the equation.
- Pregnant Badass: The mother defending her children from the titular monster in "Jersey Devil" with only a large piece of wood. And that's just before she went into labor.
- Prehistoric Monster: Monster of Monterey (elasmosaur), Bear lake Monster (mosasaur-like animal), Devil Dragon (Varanus priscus aka Megalania), Thunderbird (pterosaur) and White River Monster (Xiphactinus). Death Crawler has giant centipedes compared to ancient ones that grew to massive sizes as well (6-feet to the 3-feet monsters featured).
- Private Military Contractors: The season 3 recurring "Enigma Corporation" are an organization of military operatives tasked with investigating and dealing with the cryptids and supernatural monsters causing trouble for humanity.
- Psycho Electric Eel: The Mongolian Death Worm acts like a combination of this and piranha, but in sand.
- Red Shirt: Don't get too attached to any Enigma Corporation agent who isn't Noel Connor or Elise Mooney.
- Reality Warper: The Wendigo; it bends time, space and reality to its will so that no matter where you run it will always find you.
- Reptilian Conspiracy: The last episode, "Reptilians," is based around the titular creatures arranging raves where teenagers disappear, and higher-ups in the police confiscate and destroy all the footage at episode's end.
- The Reveal: The werewolf is the girl the suspected killer brought home. She was hunting him.
- Ripped from the Headlines: "The Monster of Monterrey" is inspired by the Kaz II mystery.
- Sand Worm: Not epic in size, but the Mongolian Death Worm more than makes up for its relatively small size (about as thick as human large intestines) with Acidic Spit and Electrical currents like the electric eel.
- Sadly Mythtaken:
- Q is portrayed as demanding human sacrifices, when the Aztec god was one of the few that didn't. They do get points, though, for pointing out that the Aztec Calender is cyclical, which isn't surprising as the episode is obviously based on (if not totally ripped off of) the old monster movie of the same name. Although considering one of the first things he does after getting summoned is to kill the very cultists who'd summoned him in the first place, it's entirely possible he may very well have been just as averse to human sacrifices as he is in the original myths, and gotten angry enough at his apparent worshippers to punish them for their stupidity.
- A number of the cryptids in the series are also depicted in a manner inconsistent with the original legends:
- The Chupacabra is mentioned early in the episode as sometimes being described as resembling a gryphon. No such description has ever been applied to the creature prior to this show. That being said, the one that actually does get depicted does get accurately depicted as the North American/Mexican version of the creature is described to be (albeit, with a taste for humans instead of exclusively livestock).
- The Monster of Monterey is depicted as a plesiosaur-like creature that preys on humans. The "real" monster of Monterey Bay is very different: it's said to have saggy brown skin, large pink eyes and a vaguely human-like face. Also, it has never been recorded attacking people.
- Most sightings of the Thunderbird describe, well, birds (with eagles and condors being the birds that they're most popularly portrayed as resembling), not the pterosaurs that the series suggests.
- The "Alien" episode is fabricated whole-cloth for the series; while there have certainly been alleged sightings of insectoid aliens, none of them are said to be parasitic like the one in the show.
- The White River Monster is portrayed as a fish, despite one of its defining features in the original stories being that it has three-toed feet
- The Dover Demon is portrayed killing its human witnesses, despite all eyewitness reports claiming it fled from them. It also has grey skin, rather than the rosy skin it was reported to have. In fact, the creature as depicted her looks more like a typical Grey alien.
- The "Yeti" episode perpetrates the common misconception of the titular creature having white fur when the creature is reported to have reddish-brown fur. The talking heads segments even point this out when the creature in the actual plot of the episode explicitly doesn't have such fur.
- “Hellhound” equates Garm from Norse Mythology with folktales of ghostly black dogs despite having nothing in common.
- Scare Chord: One usually plays when one of the monsters appears on screen, most often as a Drone of Dread, before a clearer reveal of it later, to let you know to look around for a glimpse of it.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The frozen corpse of a yeti is thawed, and turns out to be not a corpse after all
- Sea Monster: Several different kinds.
- Stock Ness Monster in Monster of Monterrey, as a people-eating plesiosaur. Bear Lake Monster is more like a Semi-Aquatic Mosasaur.
- White River Monster has a giant fish implicitly defending its brood identified as a descendant of Xiphactinus.
- Giant Squid or...Octopus, really, in Oklahoma Octopus. Kraken has a proper Giant Squid—albiet, one bigger than previously encountered—with eye lenses the size of softballs.
- Serkis Folk: Monterey Bay Monster, Chupacabra (Via Infra-Red), Megaconda, Mothman, small Dover Demons and the Kraken.
- Shapeshifting:
- The Skinwalker, true to the legends about it, is capable of shapeshifting into whatever animal or humanoid form it desires.
- The Werewolf has a VERY mild version of this in that, after spending the majority of every month as an ordinary human, it unwillingly transforms into a vicious wolf-like monster on the night of a full moon.
- Matt transforms slightly when he finally becomes a Wendigo. Though he still looks somewhat-human, those teeth definitely do not.
- The Strigoi is able to transform into various animals, it prefers a black dog.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode Zombies has the police send in a paramilitary team to investigate a large building (in this case, a boarding house) which turns out to be full of flesh-eating zombies following a crime involving cannibalism. That sounds pretty familiar...
- One of the animal rights activists in "Megaconda" is killed in a way very evocative of a xenomorph, of all things, being grabbed by it from above and pulled out of sight into the darkness. The snake's pseudo-arboreal behavior also makes it into more an equivalent of the one from Anaconda than a real one.
- Sinister Deer Skull: In its episode, the Wendigo is depicted as a human body donning torn bloody clothes and a deer skull for a head.
- Skin Walker: One episode devoted to the legend of this creature, with the one shown capable of the usual shapeshifting as well as also being able to flawlessly imitate the voices of its intended victims' loved ones so as to draw them towards it.
- Special Effect Failure: being a low-budget series, this is practically a given, but sometimes it works to the show's benefit, if not in the way the people making it might have intended. This usually boils down to the practical effects for various monsters being very obviously fake.
- In Chupacabra, when the creature attacks the Mexican family trying to cross the border into the United States, it's very obvious that it's playing the same few clips over and over again, especially of the little girl stopping for a second to look back and screaming in the exact same way multiple times.
- In "Devil Dragon", when Tim is suffering badly from the megalania-inflicted blood poisoning and almost hopelessly lost, it's rather obvious that the actor is just walking in a narrow circle to make it look like he's moving further through the forest than he actually is.
- The Dover Demon costume used by the hoaxers in the episode of the same name is an in-universe example, looking absolutely nothing like the Demon either in the episode itself or in the actual reports of the creatures.
- Stalker without a Crush: Bigfoot in the episode of the same name is a benign example toward the human woman he developed an attachment towards. The Owlman is a less benign example.
- Stealth Mentor: The series is a way Animal Planet gets to get in Strange Animal Facts, as a framing story. You'll learn about, for example, pleiosaurs and living fossils in Monterey Monster and coyote behavior in Skin-Walker.
- Super-Persistent Predator:
- Southern Sasquatch. Though, he's justified in doing so when you really think about it: at first, he just seemed curious about the hunters, and watched them from a distance. Then someone shot at him (or just flat-out shot him), and he viewed them as a threat that he needed to chase out of his territory. Later,he was forced (in his eyes) to kill them, since they simply just wouldn't leave.
- Justified in Devil Dragon since that is how Komodo Dragons hunt. Also justified in Kraken as it knew there were more tasty treats on the boat and it was big enough to eat multiple people and still be hungry for more.
- Justified with the Wendigo as well, as its mentioned a Wendigo never gets full and must eat nonstop.
- The Owlman is specifically stated to be sentient, possibly a demon, and is attacking the characters so that they can't prove its existence.
- In Oklahoma Octopus, it's implied that there may be more than one creature, meaning that one human wasn't going to feed all those hungry beaks.
- The Jersey Devil is clearly a solitary creature, with the abandoned house being the center of its territory. It tried to chase the humans out, but they ran right into its house. After it tried entering the house to smoke them out, it was driven away by the pregnant mom, only increasing its rage. Additionally, it can fly. If it really wanted to kill them, it would have flown after their car. Instead it just watches them leave, implying that they've passed the border of its territory and it no longer sees them as a problem. Given the Back Story of the Jersey Devil, pregnant women may be its Berserk Button.
- Justified with the zombies as well, since that's how they both hunt and spread the disease.
- Tempting Fate: Many times, a character makes mention of how things will go well for them, with several of them even stating the classic "I'll be right back" line...only for things to go horribly wrong for them in some fashion or whether when the creature the episode is focusing upon comes into the picture.
- Tentacled Terror: The Oklahoma Octopus and Kraken are both menacing underwater predators that use their tentacles to terrifying effect as they hunt their prey.
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: the vampires featured in the premier episode of Season 2 cross-over with this concept—they're portrayed more as humanoid animals with a resemblance to bats and lack any supernatural abilities or other "seemingly human" traits (in contrast to Season 3's strigoi, which is explicitly supernatural down to having shapeshifting abilities) and one of them creeps into a bedroom from out of the closet while their main nest is in the house's basement. If anything, they're more like supersized, very dangerous pest animals.
- This Bear Was Framed: a recurring result of episodes after Season 1, to preserve the series' conceit that no one but the in-universe witnesses knows what really happened. While technically everyone who dies in each episode was (usually) killed by an animal of some kind, the official story attributes them to mundane animals since others won't believe that a cryptid or mythical creature did it.
- Southern Sasquatch and Wendigo: American Cannibal both have the deaths officially attributed to bear attacks, and in spite of rather clear video evidence to the contrary with the latter.
- White River Monster has the authorities blame the attacks on alligators, which the show says only rarely appear in the area but that's good enough for them to ignore the survivor's pleas to dredge the river to try and find more proof.
- Inverted with Beast of Bray Road where the militia is convinced that it must be one or more federal agents killing their fighters, but it really is an animal; they even think that an agent with a government-issue combat knife could make the results look like an animal attack. It's then played straight in the epilogue where the government attributes all the deaths to ordinary wolves.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- About 80% of the victims literally fall under this category. Two of the most shameful are the ATF agents in "Devil Monkey". Not only do they ignore strange animal calls, blood, odd footprints, a clearly traumatized and terrified victim who warns them repeatedly that they should leave, and even mangled human bodies, they dismiss it when one of them is struck from behind by something, and continue to "investigate" despite all of this as if there is nothing unusual going on, and predictably end up killed by the titular creatures for it. The Sheriff has this to a lesser extent as, instead of blasting the damn thing with a shotgun, He turns around to tell the reporter to flee and then gets jumped. However he gains some sanity points, as he is Genre Savvy enough to not leave the local legend completely out of the equation and at least tries to hold the creature off.
- How about our divers in Kraken (except the captain), who begin with violating the Cardinal Rule of Diving: Never dive alone!! from the get go. After the first guy goes in... by himself... and becomes a snack for the giant squid, what is the group's next move? Why, to send the girl in... by herself. True, given that the thing ripped the ship apart at the end and was implied to have sunk the wreck they were trying to raise at the beginning, it was probably a moot point. But that still doesn't change the fact that these supposedly experienced divers/treasure hunters were acting like total amateurs from the start.
- Averted in Monterey Monster. The protagonist doesn't fall for any of the Idiot Balls like trying to board the other ship after seeing blood trails on it or going back in the water to fix her prop. She tells her boyfriend to call the Coast Guard, and adopts the proper Screw This, I'm Outta Here attitude, and goes to raise sails. Unfortunately, she's knocked into the water by something jolting her ship, and she's unable to catch up to the drifting boat. Talk about Yank the Dog's Chain.
- Justified in Thunderbird; the cast of that episode was a group of terrified preteen boys, so of course they're going to make dumb decisions.
- Pretty much everyone besides Nora in Hellhound, but Annabel deserves a special mention.
- Together in Death: Chad and Shannon Hurliss, the married couple's fate in "Dover Demon". Also, Karen and Jonas in "Death Crawler".
- The Unreveal: Occurs often. The series purposefully leaves many things ambiguous to the viewer regarding the creatures. Where did the Dover Demon come from? No one knows and no one ever finds out. And if we were able to find out, would we want to? Furthermore, many of the monsters—especially in Season 1—are barely shown, relying more on Nothing Is Scarier and only giving brief, blurry glimpses at best or showing it too close to the camera so that you know something is there but can't see it clearly.
- Urban Legend: Most of the monsters featured are the subjects of popular real life 'legends' often believed to be true despite being demonstrably false in real life. Naturally, in the universe of this show, said legends turn out to be all too nightmarishly real.
- Voice Changeling: The wendigo, skinwalker, and poltergeist featured prove capable of altering their voice as needed for the sake of luring their prey (in the case of the former two) or torturing their would-be victims (in the case of the latter).
- Weirdness Magnet: Our intrepid Enigma Corporation employees just can't catch a break. First they fight zombies in New Orleans, then they encounter a strigoi and then an Aztec god. Can't get much worse than that, can it? Justified, the Enigma Corporation specializes in investigating the unexplained, naturally they're Weirdness Magnets. Doesn't that make them into the weirdness magnetized since they are the ones going out and looking for these things?
- Wendigo: This monster serves as the focus of one of the episodes. As per the original legends, it Was Once a Man before the act of engaging in cannibalism caused it to be transformed into a quite literally inhuman monster.
- Wham Line:
- Two from "Death Raptor"; first from Su Ann...
Su Ann: It knows you're here to stop it. And it's coming back to stop you.- ...and second from Hazel:
Hazel: It wants the little girl because she's young and vulnerable... but so is an old woman.- This line from the epilogue of "Hellhound", which throws everything about the episode's protagonist into question...
Narrator: There was no record of Nora Callerman being enrolled at the university. Her true identity remains a mystery.- From Wendigo:
- Wham Shot:
- "Werewolf" had a particularly shocking example; the suspected Serial Killer is suddenly attacked and the girl he was planning to kill starts snarling like an animal and barking—she was the real werewolf. The suspect was her intended victim.
- At the end of "Hellhound", we have Nora petting the titular monster.
- What Did You Expect When You Named It ____?: Skinwalker takes place in...Skinwalker Ranch.
- Western Terrorists: The militia lead by Brian Cavanaugh in The Beast of Bray Road. They mistakenly believe that the creature killing their members are covert Federal agents. They are all killed by the beast before they can carry out their anti-government plans however.
- Xenomorph Xerox: The Alien has a surprisingly large amount in common with the xenomorphs. While it largely looks more like a small parasitic wasp than the humanoid form taken by the xenomorph, it is born via getting implanted in a live victim before then hatching by bursting through said victim's chest. And the entire situation that the characters that encounter it find themselves in unfolds very similarly to the events of the original Alien1979 film.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Particularly in the first season, a lot of stories end like this as part of the horror.
- Episodes 3 and 6 (Monster of Monterey and Devil Dragon) are particularly bad, the former because the protagonist actually avoids any and all Idiot Ball behaviour (letting the proper authorities handle the problem, instead of trying to solve it herself) and only dies because the monster knocks her out of her boat, the latter because of how sympathetic a character he was and the fact it turns out he gets brought down and eaten a mere quarter-mile away from the village he had been desperately trying to reach.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Q does this to his would-be cult. Once he has the needed sacrifices, he kills them all.
