History Main / GreatWhiteHunter

* [[{{Deconstruction}} Deconstructed]] in the 1966 family film ''Maya,'' which is actually about a quest to save a sacred white elephant. The young protagonist of the story journeys to India to meet his father, who lives on a plantation in the country and supposedly lives this trope. When he gets there, however, he finds that all the cages are empty of animals and have fallen to rust and disrepair. Gradually, the truth comes out....and it proves to be quite ugly. The boy's father was indeed known as a great hunter until he was clawed by a tiger, which traumatized him so much that he has devolved into a DirtyCoward who can no longer bring himself to hunt true wild game and now only uses his gun to kill small, weak, or tamed animals out of spite (such as when, without provocation, he shoots a tamed cheetah that his son had befriended). Eventually, though, the father redeems himself by rescuing his son, another boy his age, and a baby elephant from being eaten by a pack of tigers in the aptly named "Valley of the Tigers."

* [[{{Deconstruction}} Deconstructed]] in the 1966 family film ''Maya,'' which is actually about a quest to save a sacred white elephant. The young protagonist of the story journeys to India to meet his father, who lives on a plantation in the country and supposedly lives this trope. When he gets there, however, he finds that all the cages are empty of animals and have fallen to rust and disrepair. Gradually, the truth comes out....and it proves to be quite ugly. The boy's father was indeed known as a great hunter until he was clawed by a tiger, which traumatized him so much that he has devolved into a DirtyCoward who only uses his gun kill small, weak, or tamed animals out of spite (such as when, without provocation, he shoots a tamed cheetah that his son had befriended). Eventually, though, the father redeems himself by rescuing his son, another boy his age, and a baby elephant from being eaten by a pack of tigers in the aptly named "Valley of the Tigers."

Despite his title, not always white....and [[TedBaxter not always all that great, either]].

* Sean Mercer (JohnWayne) in the movie ''{{Hatari}}''.

* Remington in ''TheGhostAndTheDarkness''. The story is based on a real event, but the character is fiction. Val Kilmer's character, the railroad engineer, was actually an [[BadassBookworm experienced tiger hunter]] and did the hunting himself.

[[AC:TruthInTelevision]]
* TruthInTelevision: Jim Corbett was a hunter, conservationist and naturalist who hunted and killed tigers and leopards that had turned man-killers. Between 1907 and 1938, Corbett tracked and killed at least a dozen man-eaters. It is estimated that the combined total of men, women and children these twelve animals had killed was in excess of 1,500. His very first success, the Champawat Tiger in Champawat, alone was responsible for 436 documented deaths. He also shot the Panar Leopard, which allegedly killed 400 after being injured by a poacher and thus being rendered unable to hunt its normal prey. Other notable man-eaters he killed were the Talla-Des man-eater, the Mohan man-eater, the Thak man-eater and the Chowgarh tigress. However, one of the most famous was the man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag, which terrorised the pilgrims to the holy Hindu shrines Kedarnath and Badrinath for more than ten years. A TV movie starring Jason Flemyng was made in 2005.

** Except the traditional 'White Hunter' usualy had a great respect for the animals he was killing. Irwin's total disregard for even basic safety made his death-by-harmless-animal strangely ironic.
*** [[YourMileageMayVary YMMV]]. He was always pointing out the dangers of what he was doing, noting the various ways he could be injured or killed, and exhorting everyone who hadn't been working with dangerous animals since childhood not to try what he was trying.
*** A great deal of Irwin's recklessness seems to have been simply [[BigHam for the cameras]]. Several behind-the-scenes looks showed that there was a great deal more concern for safety than was typically portrayed on his shows.

** Who do you think Quint from ''{{Jaws}}'' was based on?

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* Wildly subverted by Commander [=McBragg=] from ''TennesseeTuxedoAndHisTales''. As his name suggests, he was very sure of his skills and conquests, but they didn't always play out nicely as described them.
* Victor Quartermaine, Wallace's gun-toting rival in ''WallaceAndGromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit''. His name is even a ShoutOut to Allan Quatermain.

* TheGoonShow featured [[DirtyCoward Major Bloodnok]] who occasionally added this to his usual job of parodying MightyWhitey in general.

* TheGoonShow featured [[DirtyCoward: Major Bloodnok]] who occasionally added this to his usual job of parodying MightyWhitey in general.

** Who do you think Quint from {{Jaws}} was based on?

* Wilson from ErnestHemmingway's ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber''.

* The Sniper from ''TeamFortress'' is meant to be a version of this, except that he hunts people instead of animals.

* Once again in the water, before they thought it was safe to go back in, was the Robert Shaw character Sam Quint from the original ''{{Jaws}}''. Particularly notable is the fact that he is a Great White Hunter that... (wait for it) ...HUNTS A GREAT WHITE!

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/allan_quatermain_swayze.jpg
[[caption-width:333:Allan Quatermain, the archetypal Great White Hunter]]

* Theodore Roosevelt. President, adventurist, conversationalist, big-game hunter, all-American hero.

* The Explorer's Society in ''{{Deadlands}}'' even lets player characters become {{Great White Hunter}}s. Of course, our herioc PCs can do this in good conscience because the "great whites" in question almost always have a taste for human flesh ("but what doesn't these days?").

* Mick "Crocodile" Dundee

* Similarly to the Freedom Beast example above, in the movie adaptation of ''Congo'', Captain Munro Kelly introduces himself to the team with the line "I'm your GreatWhiteHunter for this trip, though I happen to be black."

* Sean Mercer (John Wayne) in the movie ''Hatari''.

* John Wilson (Clint Eastwood) in ''White Hunter, Black Heart''.

* Wilson from Ernest Hemmingway's ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber''.

* Richard 'Dick' Kennedy from Jules Verne's ''Five Weeks in a Balloon''.

* ''The Mark & Brian Radio Program'' will occasionally do a sketch titled "The Great White Hunter" which parodies the trope with a GreatWhiteHunter who tries to be Great in the modern world (Pet shops & dog shows beware).

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* "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", by TheBeatles.

* Parodied in the Bob Hope film ''Call Me Bwana''. Bob Hope plays a New York writer who has passed off his uncle's memoirs of explorations in Africa as his own. Hope lives his false reputation as a great white hunter to the point of living in a Manhattan apartment furnished to look like an African safari lodge complete with sound effects records of African fauna. Based on his false reputation as an "Africa Expert", he is recruited by the United States Government and NASA to locate a missing secret space probe before it can be located by hostile forces.

*** If one includes the movie's DeletedScene that would have introduced him, Tembo is the ''real'' hero of the story and fuller character.

* Sanger Rainsford, the hunter who becomes General Zaroff's prey in ''Literature/TheMostDangerousGame''.