Line #20 NightmareFuel/TheLegendOfTarzan


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ape1.JPG]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350: Franchise/KingKong Has Nothing on Him!]]
3	Befitting the [[HungryJungle dangerous nature of the African rainforest]], ''The Legend of Tarzan'' expands upon a variety of nightmarish situations that comes with living in the wilderness unprotected from both monstrous animals and any range of geological and supernatural threats.
4	----
5	* The show's intro features a RoguesGallery montage, where Tarzan clashes with La and her leopardmen, Tublat and Colonel Staquait. There's also a brief glimpse of Mabaya, Booto, a leopard (who suspiciously resembles Sabor), Hista and a ''Tyrannosaurus rex'', as a reminder of how dangerous the jungle is.
6	* The first episode of the series, "Tarzan and the Race Against Time," shows Tarzan nearly dying a slow painful death from being bitten by a highly venomous spider. Not some climactic battle, not against some awesome enemy, or a HeroicSacrifice befitting a peak human specimen. Just a tiny arachnid bite would have done him in if not for help from Professor Porter -- a blatant case of realistic consequences that living in a jungle full of all sorts of deadly creatures will get you killed eventually on your own without aid, even if you're badass like Tarzan.
7	** In the same episode, Tarzan also hallucinates because of the spider venom in his system and runs in fear and nearly falls to his death due to a horrible vision of Clayton alive again trying to murder him with a rifle. Even long after the man's death, Clayton is still a source of fear for the King of the Jungle!
8	** Earlier in that episode, Terk fell into the dead tree stump where the spiders lived, and when she got out she was ''covered'' in them. When Tantor saw this, he panicked, grabbed her and dunked her in a pool of water to get the spiders off. Terk, naturally, reacted with annoyance and even flicked one spider off of her, assuring Tantor that he had nothing to fear about spiders. But this was ''before'' it was established how poisonous the spiders were. With hindsight, if one bite was bad enough, then being bitten by a whole swarm would have been '''certain death''' for Terk. Tantor might have saved her life by the ''narrowest'' of margins.
9	* In ''Lost Cub'', the episode highlights how leopards in general, [[TruthInTelevision like in real life]], are straight up monstrous predators in the jungle and are still as every bit of dangerous to Tarzan as Sabor. When Tarzan and his friends had to venture into leopard territory to return a lost cub, they were nearly mauled to death if not for timely help from the cub's mother.
10	** Before that, the cub upsets the local baboon youngling and brings the whole group to attack. Terk was chased back to the treehouse trying to protect the cub with baboons literally swarming all over it trying to kill them both until Tarzan arrived and scared them off.
11	* '''TUBLAT'''. He's every part of the KillerGorilla trope up to eleven and his personal history is the stuff of nightmares. He was once a member of Tarzan's gorilla family but was the animal equivalent of a violent psychopath who went around attacking other members of the family until Kerchak tried to stop him. Kerchak initially won, but Tublat struck back and nearly killed Kerchak if not for some timely intervention by a young Tarzan. Tublat was banished and lived his life in a cave, which is littered with the bones of large animals (it is ambiguous whether Tublat has killed and [[AscendedToCarnivorism eaten]] those animals or not). When Tarzan's ape family unknowingly went to Tublat's cave seeking shelter from a storm, he went about quickly and silently kidnapping all of the gorillas like some horror movie monster and throwing them in a hole to force them to follow him or die from starvation. Furthermore, Tublat is a straight up LightningBruiser, far too strong for even Tarzan to fight evenly and would have nearly killed him if not for Tarzan flinging himself and Tublat into a nearby river so Tublat could drown.
12	** Also, Creator/KeithDavid [[SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct delivers a spine-chilling vocal performance]].
13	** He later appeared again in ''Enemy Within'' where it's revealed he survived his drop off a cliff into a raging river, found another ape family, and killed their leader to take it over and use Gobu, one of its members, to lure in Tarzan under threat of death or mutilation of Gobu's family members.
14	** The general fact that Tarzan attempted to drown Tublat. Other than Sabor and Histah, who he did kill, Tarzan has not attempted to slay any of his other opponents. Tublat is that dangerous!
15	* Queen La herself is nothing to scoff at in the horror department. She's an ancient sorceress looking for a mate and normally that wouldn't be bad if not for her nasty tendency to kidnap and sacrifice people who displease and vaporize her leopard men minions for the [[DisproportionateRetribution slightest mistake]]. When she tried to execute Professor Porter for being an unsuitable mate she fell in mad love with Tarzan for rescuing him and then tried to murder Jane to keep Tarzan for herself. After her attempted murder was uncovered, La tried to kill Tarzan for rejecting her.
16	** Her next appearance involved a rebellion from her leopard men that ended with her literally melting into ashes after her staff, the source of her powers and immortal life, was [[DestroyTheVillainsWeapon destroyed]] while [[DyingCurse cursing Tarzan and his friends]]. Before that she tried to feed Tarzan and the leopard man who led the rebellion to some tentacled [[EldritchAbomination "THING"]] living under her city with a lair littered with the skeletons of men who displeased her in the past.
17	** Her final appearance, she came back as a literal EldritchAbomination ghost possessing bodies to get to Jane to use as a new body until she managed to possess Tarzan and tried to kill Jane while using Tarzan's body.
18	* Colonel Staquait is a fairly menacing example of a LawfulEvil ImplacableMan in the series, considering he hunts after Hugo and Hooft all for personally disobeying his order to burn down a village of women and children. He has a French Guillotine brought to the jungle just to have them decapitated as punishment and only left when he was convinced they died.
19	** In his next appearance, he found out Hugo and Hooft survived and came back to capture them and eventually Tarzan for stopping him last time, taking them to a HellholePrison where he tortures the prisoners and nearly would have executed Tarzan and his new friends unabated if not for a clever ruse by Jane and Dumont.
20	* Mabaya the [[CruelElephant rogue elephant]]. Formerly a normal elephant from Jabari's herd, ''[[SanitySlippage something]]'' happened that turned him into six tons of pure rage with [[RedEyesTakeWarning red, pupil-less eyes]] that charges at everyone in his path. [[WouldHurtAChild Including children]]. He's one of the few villains that Tarzan can't fight head-on, and even came close to crushing Tarzan to death before Tantor intervened. Not to mention he can't even speak due to his blind fury taking over his mental state.
21	** Even worse, ''nobody knows'' how Mabaya got this way, not even other elephants. Characters float theories such as genetics, poor upbringing or something he ate, but it could also just be that Mabaya snapped for ''no reason at all''.
22	** And this isn't something the show made up - ''[[TruthInTelevision rogue elephants exist]]''. They can go mad for many reasons, but their behavior is almost identical to how Mabaya portrays it, and individuals like the Elephant of Aberdare Forest show they can be deviously [[GeniusBruiser cunning]] on top of that. Not only are they incredibly destructive, it can be extremely tricky to hunt them down, which is why they're so feared.
23	** Tantor thinking he's turning rogue in ''The Rogue Elephant''. It's uncertain how much of it is genuine SanitySlippage or Tantor just [[LargeHam hamming it up]] due to his own hypochondria, but it's still very distressing to see such a gentle character take such a dark turn.
24	*** His fight with the leopards, while a SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome for him, is also a reminder of how powerful and dangerous an enraged elephant can be. If Tantor wasn't such a NervousWreck and ever had a reason to ''really'' cut loose, most of Tarzan's foes would be mulch.
25	* The diseased hippos in ''The Poisoned River''. As in RealLife, [[AngryAngryHippos hippos]] are depicted as vicious brutes who nearly capsize Tarzan's boat, eat Professor Porter, and force Tarzan to flee.
26	* '''Pellucidar'''. A hidden biome within the Earth's crust that contains all sorts of dinosaur predators and methane gas geysers. It's DeathWorld to modern animals and Tarzan is especially wary to go there until prodded by Jane and Professor Porter. The first time Tarzan went there, he barely escaped with his life, and one ''Velociraptor'' escaping there into the jungle in ''The Beast from Below'' was enough to put the whole jungle on edge. Terk herself was reduced to a NervousWreck after a confrontation with the raptor, which says a lot about Pellucidar's reputation.
27	* Hista. A gigantic [[SnakesAreSinister python]] that's large enough to swallow a gorilla whole, and is a very active and cunning hunter. There's a good reason he's treated as TheDreaded in-universe by the gorillas. His appearance, with [[RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver red and black scales]] and [[FangsAreEvil massive fangs]] adds some extra nightmare factor.
28	** His [[DynamicEntry first appearance]] makes it clear just how much of a threat he is, with the gorillas in a terrified stampede before he even appears on screen. And when he does, he’s ''enormous'', his head crashing through tree branches as he swings round and hisses threateningly at Kala.
29	** While relocating the gorillas to another part of the jungle, Moyo rashly leads the family into a tar pit, getting all of them stuck. [[FromBadToWorse And then Hista shows up]], [[SuperPersistentPredator having been following them all this time]]. The terrified gorillas never escaped him at all. Worse, they can’t run from him and he’s big enough to skirt the pit and pick off who he wants. Moyo’s expression as he realises he might have just fed the entire tribe to the python caps it all off.
30	--->'''Moyo:''' ''(horrified whisper)'' [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone What have I done...?]]
31	* The animals going insane in ''The Jungle Madness'' due to a subsonic frequency from the trading post radio station. All animals including Terk and Tantor are yelling for Tarzan to stop the ringing and try to kill him and Jane in a berserk frenzy. Jane and Tarzan all the while try to find Professor Porter with an ApocalypticLog he wrote detailing the events where he was chased by woodpeckers popping out of flowers like [[Film/{{Alien}} Chestbursters]] and being attacked by animals all the while in an effort to find the cause.
32	* The events of ''The Outbreak'' are fairly unsettling a real life situational sense. Tarzan confronts a group of sympathetic loggers who are cutting down trees in the jungle. Unfortunately, as the Professor warned would happen, their logging has dug up a particularly deadly microorganism deep in the soil into the air, getting the loggers and the director's daughter sick with a lethal disease. This isn't a fictional case. Real life developers and workers have gotten sick in foreign lands by recklessly digging up disease carrying toxic substances in the soil.
33	* Robert Canler can be unnerving to watch considering he appears as dashing OfficerAndAGentleman but is probably a textbook example of TheSociopath with few scruples other than genuine care for his oldest friend Jane. Tarzan immediately sees through Canler's act and warns Jane not to trust him but nobody believes him. It turns out Robert gave Jane a music box before she left London to eventually meet Tarzan which was actually a stolen British code machine that Robert slipped to Jane to get British intelligence off his trail. He was actually a double agent and spy who planned on selling the machine to Britain's enemies for a large profit (implied to be the Germans during World War I) and only went to Africa to get it back when Jane hadn't returned from Africa. He then tried to kidnap Jane to leave no witnesses, but was foiled.
34	** Considering the punishment for high treason in Great Britain during World War I being the gallows, it's clear that was the last time Jane ever saw her oldest friend.

Context NightmareFuel / TheLegendOfTarzan