History Main / NotTheNessie

** Also played straight, to a degree. Two old men keep trying to get a picture of Crusoe, but fail every time. So they fake it by putting a boat upside down in the water to produce the famous picture of the neck sticking out of the water. Interestingly, as they're faking it, the real one was right on the other side of a tree, in good view if they could've seen it.

We don't see this trope much today, but submarine masquerading as Nessie to scare people away is the solution offered in a number of older films that feature that world famous lake monster. Variations include robot Nessies, paper mache monsters, and other counterfeits but the most often encountered version is a submersible ship, with a gargoyle head attached to give that scary sea serpent effect.

There are two sources of this trope: the most well-known fake Nessie photo in history was, in fact, a toy submarine with a monster head; the other that the ''Nautilus'' from ''TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea,'' was initially misidentified as a sea monster.

* Played with in ''DinosaurKing''. It's not a submarine, it's an Amargasaurus. As per the trope, the real Nessie shows up at the end.

* Lest we forget, in the original ''[[Creator/JulesVerne 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea]]'', many early accounts of the ''Nautilus'''s attacks speculated that it was a giant narwhal. Certainly the UrExample of this trope in fiction, as nobody was writing about submarines before Verne.

* One short story featuring ''TheSaint'' had the detective investigating a murder supposedly caused by the monster. Turns out it was just a hoax to cover up the real murderer... who ends up killed by the real Nessie in the end!

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' had an identical plot.

* ''ScoobyDooAndTheLochNessMonster'' gives us ''three'' Nessies: a robotic submarine version, a less sophisticated (but still somehow totally convincing in appearance) "parade float" version, and the real monster. The real one looks exactly like the impostors.

* The Monster Lake episode of ''InspectorGadget'' had a [[HumongousMecha robotic]] Loch Ness monster.

* ''ScoobyDoo and the Loch Ness Monster'' gives us ''three'' Nessies: a robotic submarine version, a less sophisticated (but still somehow totally convincing in appearance) "parade float" version, and the real monster. The real one looks exactly like the impostors.

* Comedian Bill Hicks once mused that the Loch Ness Monster was a submarine, driven by Bigfoot.

* ''Series/{{Stingray}}'', a TV series that had actual sea monsters in it, sent Troy Tempest and his crew to Loch Ness, where they found Nessie was a robot, built in the 1940s and put through its paces to again, encourage tourist travel to the loch.

* ''{{Stingray}}'', a TV series that had actual sea monsters in it, sent Troy Tempest and his crew to Loch Ness, where they found Nessie was a robot, built in the 1940s and put through its paces to again, encourage tourist travel to the loch.
* ''{{The X-Files}}'' episode "Quagmire" has Mulder and Scully investigating reports of a lake monster. In one scene the owner of the local tourist trap is shown faking some monster footprints, whereupon he gets eaten by the ''real'' monster, a large alligator. Of course, this being the X-Files, we see at the end there really is a giant serpent in the lake.

* Lest we forget, in the original ''[[JulesVerne 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea]]'', many early accounts of the ''Nautilus'''s attacks speculated that it was a giant narwhal. Certainly the UrExample of this trope in fiction, as nobody was writing about submarines before Verne.

It wasn't a lake monster at all, but a disguised submarine.

There are two sources of this trope: the most well-known fake Nessie photo in history was, in fact, a toy submarine with a monster head; the other that the ''Nautilus'' from ''TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea,'' was initially misidentified as a sea monster.

This is a sub-trope of the ScoobyDooHoax; the specific solution of a strangely-decorated submarine sets it off as a variant peculiar to that highland lake monster.

** Also played straight, to a degree. Two old men keep trying to get a picture of Crusoe, but fail every time. So they fake it by putting a boat upside down in the water to produce the famous picture of the neck sticking out of the water. Interestingly, as they're faking it, the real one was right on the other side of a tree, in good view if they could've seen it.

* ''{{Gargoyles}}'' had an identical plot.

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* Zoo education director John Shields once pranked some Nessie-hunting colleagues by planting the doctored carcass of an elephant seal, recently expired of natural causes at Flamingo Park Zoo, on the shore of Loch Ness.

* ''ScoobyDoo and the Loch Ness Monster'' gives us ''three'' Nessies: a robotic submarine version, a less sophisticated (but still somehow totally convincing in appearance) "parade float" version, and the real monster. The real one looks exactly like the impostors.

** ''{{Gargoyles}}'' had an identical plot.

* ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' uses this one in the fourth case of the first game, with a creature named "Gourdy" being spotted in Gourd Lake. The monster's "head" that was captured on a photo was actually an inflatable Steel Samurai being blown along by the air tank that some idiot (Read: Larry Butz) was using to inflate it.
* Played straight, then subverted in ''MegaManStarForce 2''. Geo goes to a foreign country where there is a legend of a monster called Messie. it is a submarine, but the director making money off of a 'Search of Messie' show runs into Hyde, who offers him a sea monster EM partner, Plesio, which he uses to become Plesio Surf.

* The NewspaperComic ''AlleyOop'' is about a time traveling cave man named Alley Oop. A few years ago, Alley's pet dinosaur Dinny tagged along for one adventure, and the pair wound up in medieval Scotland. Suffice it that the Scots have remembered Dinny's visit ever since.

* Lest we forget, in the original ''[[JulesVerne 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea]]'', many early accounts of the ''Nautilus'''s attacks speculated that it was a giant narwhal. Certainly the UrExample of this trope in fiction, as nobody was writing about submarines before Verne.

<<|SpeculativeFictionTropes|>>

We don't see this trope so much today, but submarine masquerading as Nessie to scare people away is the solution offered in a number of older films that have that world famous lake monster as part of the plot. Variations include robot Nessies, paper mache monsters, and other counterfeit fakes but the most often encountered version seems to be specifically a submersible ship, with appropriate gargoyle head attached to give that scary sea serpent effect.

It would almost seem that in these instances, the writers and producers were sheepish, to have the Loch Ness Monster be real in the world of the film. Why this would be, why a sub with a monster head riveted onto it is so often used as the answer to the enigma of Loch Ness, none can say... though having a handy way to write off a SpecialEffectsFailure might be part of the solution; a cheesy special effect suddenly is justified, when it turns out it was SUPPOSED to be fake all along.

There are almost certainly two sources of this trope: one being the fact that the most well-known fake Nessie photo in history was, in fact, a toy submarine with a monster head; the other being the ''Nautilus'' from ''TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea,'' which is initially misidentified as a sea monster.

This probably is a sub-trope of the ScoobyDooHoax; the seemingly specific solution of strangely-decorated submarine sets it off as a variant peculiar to that highland lake monster. It should also be said that it's probably a discarded trope; recent takes on the Loch Ness Monster more often have her as a living creature of some sort, a development that suggests concealment of bad special effects may in fact have been reason for popularity of the trope as the rise of cheap, effective CGI in recent years makes this unnecessary. Recent efforts on the SciFiChannel, however, may somewhat undermine this theory.

* ''The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes'' is probably the defining version of this trope. In this film, the Great Detective's brother, Mycroft, is directing top-secret development of Britain's first submarine in Loch Ness; an attached prop monster head keeps the local gentry fooled into thinking it's the beastie. Given, of course, that it's just a prop in a studio water tank, the first appearance of this thing still scared the haggis out of this troper when he first saw it.
* The ''Series/VoyageToTheBottomOfTheSea'' episode "Secret of the Loch". The Seaview not only finds a navigable underwater passage into the Loch, but a Soviet -- ah, I mean, [[HammerAndSickleRemovedForYourProtection Enemy]]-- submarine there, pretending to be the monster. And based on what the model work was like, doing a rather bad job of it. Some may feel quite cheated to find out Nessie was a submarine in this one and, on considering how often "Voyage" had REAL sea monsters on the show, then feel REALLY cheated.
* ''ScoobyDoo and the Loch Ness Monster'' gives us ''three'' Nessies: a robotic submarine version, a less sophisticated (but still somehow totally convincing in appearance) "parade float" version, and the real monster. The real one looks exactly like the impostors.
* ''The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove'' from The MagicalWorldOfDisney TV show involves an {{Expy}} of Loch Ness and Nessie; when a teacher thinks he saw the local monster and is ridiculed as a result, three of his kid students try to help his case by building a fake monster. Ultimately, it turns out that what the teacher had seen was actually smuggler's boat.
* ''{{Stingray}}'', a TV series that had actual sea monsters in it, sent Troy Tempest and his crew to Loch Ness, where they found Nessie was a robot, built in the 1940s and put through its paces to again, encourage tourist travel to the loch.
* And an inversion of this trope is found in the film ''The Water Horse''. Nessie -- or Crusoe, as she's called here -- gets shelled by the British Army. Well, they thought she ''was'' a submarine!
** Also played straight, to a degree. Two old men keep trying to get a picture of Crusoe, but fail every time. So they fake it by putting a boat upside down in the water to produce the famous picture of the neck sticking out of the water. Interestingly, as they're faking it, the real one was right on the other side of a tree, in good view if they could've seen it.

** ''{{Gargoyles}}'' had an identical plot.
* One short story featuring ''TheSaint'' had the detective investigating a murder supposedly caused by the monster. Turns out it was just a hoax to cover up the real murderer... who ends up killed by the real Nessie in the end!
* ''{{The X-Files}}'' episode "Quagmire" has Mulder and Scully investigating reports of a lake monster. In one scene the owner of the local tourist trap is shown faking some monster footprints, whereupon he gets eaten by the ''real'' monster, a large alligator. Of course, this being the X-Files, we see at the end there really is a giant serpent in the lake.
* ''Series/TheGoodies'' follows the basic outline, but the monster is only shown to be fake ''long'' after it's captured, when a zookeeper talks about breeding it with another captured sea monster. A real Nessie also hatches from an egg after the zookeeper tried to kill himself in shame.
* ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' uses this one in the fourth case of the first game, with a creature named "Gourdy" being spotted in Gourd Lake. The monster's "head" that was captured on a photo was actually an inflatable Steel Samurai being blown along by the air tank that some idiot (Read: Larry Butz) was using to inflate it.
* Played straight, then subverted in ''MegaManStarForce 2''. Geo goes to a foreign country where there is a legend of a monster called Messie. it is a submarine, but the director making money off of a 'Search of Messie' show runs into Hyde, who offers him a sea monster EM partner, Plesio, which he uses to become Plesio Surf.

* The NewspaperComic ''AlleyOop'' is about a time traveling cave man named Alley Oop. A few years ago, Alley's pet dinosaur Dinny tagged along for one adventure, and the pair wound up in medieval Scotland. Suffice it that the Scots have remembered Dinny's visit ever since.
* Done on ''SeaHunt,'' naturally enough, although it was only supposed to be a generic "sea serpent," and not Nessie herself.
* This example takes place in Minnesota rather than Scotland, but on an episode of ''Little House on the Prarie'' the children of Walnut Grove fabricate an Expy of Nessie to frighten Mrs. Oleson into leaving an old woman's lakeside house alone after the former tried to take it from the latter.
* In the ''Series/DoctorWho'' serial 'Terror of the Zygons', the Fourth Doctor and his current companions arrive in Scotland and trace an alien signal to Loch Ness, where strange things have been happening recently. Don't worry, it's not Nessie... it's just a giant plesiosaur-shaped cyborg that provides food for the Zygons. Much more sensible.

<<|SpeculativeFictionTropes|>>

* ''{{Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea}}'', in the episode "Secret of the Loch". The Seaview not only finds a navigable underwater passage into the Loch, but a Soviet -- ah, I mean, Enemy -- submarine there, pretending to be the monster. And based on what the model work was like, doing a rather bad job of it. Some may feel quite cheated to find out Nessie was a submarine in this one and, on considering how often "Voyage" had REAL sea monsters on the show, then feel REALLY cheated.

* ''TheGoodies'' follows the basic outline, but the monster is only shown to be fake ''long'' after it's captured, when a zookeeper talks about breeding it with another captured sea monster. A real Nessie also hatches from an egg after the zookeeper tried to kill himself in shame.

* And an inversion of this trope is found in the recent film ''The Water Horse''. Nessie -- or Crusoe, as she's called here -- gets shelled by the British Army. Well, they thought she ''was'' a submarine!

* ''{{Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea}}'', in the episode "Secret of the Loch". The Seaview not only finds a navigable underwater passage into the Loch, but a Soviet -- ah, I mean, Enemy -- submarine there, pretending to be the monster. And based on what the model work was like, doing a rather bad job of it.
** This troper felt quite cheated to find out Nessie was a submarine in this one and, on considering how often "Voyage" had REAL sea monsters on the show, then felt REALLY cheated.

* In the DoctorWho serial 'Terror of the Zygons', the Fourth Doctor and his current companions arrive in Scotland and trace an alien signal to Loch Ness, where strange things have been happening recently. Don't worry, it's not Nessie... it's just a giant plesiosaur-shaped cyborg that provides food for the Zygons. Much more sensible.

* ''AceAttorney'', to my great shame, uses this one in the fourth case of the first game. The 'Nessie' head that was captured on a photo was actually an inflatable Steel Samurai being blown along by the compressor that a nearby idiot (Read: Larry Butz) was using to inflate it.

* Lest we forget, in the original ''[[JulesVerne 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea]]'', many early accounts of the ''Nautilus'''s attacks speculated that it was a giant narwhal.

* ''The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove'' from The MagicalWorldOfDisney TV show involves an {{Expy}} of Loch Ness and Nessie; when a local teacher thinks he saw the local monster and is ridiculed as a result, three of his kid students try to help his case by building a fake monster. Ultimately, it turns out that what the teacher had seen was actually smuggler's boat.

* ''The Strange Monster of Strawberry Cove'' involves an {{Expy}} of Loch Ness and Nessie; in this one, various papier-mâché props of the creature are made by the meddling kids to drum up tourism. As occasionally happens in these sorts of films. In this story, the real monster shows up at the end to give the villain his comeuppance.