Characters / Tremors

Tremors Character Index
Tremors | Tremors 2: Aftershocks | Tremors 3: Back to Perfection | Tremors 4: The Legend Begins | Tremors 5: Bloodlines | Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell

Val McKee

Played by: Kevin Bacon

"Roger that Burt, and congratulations. Be advised, however, that there are two more, repeat, two more motherhumpers."

One of two general handymen living in Perfection during the first Graboid Invasion. Falling in love with seismologist Rhonda LeBeck, he went on to marry her and move away. Made much better investments of his "rights" to all Graboid merchandising, perhaps because of her influence.

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• Babies Ever After: He and Rhonda are revealed to have had a daughter.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Burt describes him in the sixth film as "the most brilliant underachiever I ever met." Amusingly, his daughter Valerie observes Rhonda often told her the same thing.
• Combat Pragmatist: Kind of necessary when facing carnivorous tunneling worm twice your size.
• Deadpan Snarker: "Oh sure, Earl; everybody knows about 'em, we just didn't tell you!"
• Deep South: Kevin Bacon plays Val with a noticeable Southern accent, and while Earl acts more like an old cowboy, Val totally fits the bill as a classic redneck.
• Disappeared Dad: His daughter Valerie hints at it in A Cold Day in Hell when she notes in response to Burt admitting he lost track of Val and Rhonda after the first film that Val's easy to lose track of. Later she describes him as more of a crazy uncle than a dad, and says he "barges in" to her life more than "drops in".
• Dork Knight: He's kind of childish and comes off as a bit of a dork, but he survives the first film and is instrumental in killing the last of the attacking Graboids.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Val's type includes attractive, curvy blondes with green eyes but ultimately falls in love with and marries Rhonda.
• Genius Ditz: For a guy who describes himself as not being an intelligent man, Val certainly gets the better of the Graboids' adaptive tactics.
• Guile Hero: He was the one who tricked the last Graboid (of the first film) by luring it to him, then throwing the dynamite behind it.
• Happily Married: To Rhonda, from what Earl says at the start of the second film.
• Hard Head
• Has a Type: Specifically, women with long blonde hair, big green eyes, world class breasts, ass that won't quit, and legs that go ALL THE WAY UP! Subverted in that the woman he ends up with has none of these.
• The Hero: Pretty much is this for the first film. This role would be passed on to Earl for the second film, then Burt for the rest of the series.
• Hidden Depths: See Indy Ploy.
• Indy Ploy: Ultimately he uses what he knows about the Graboids' fear of sound (which he learned earlier by accident) that kills Stumpy and saves everyone.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Val is the most immature and rude between him and Earl but he's still a good guy underneath.
• Ladykiller in Love: Val was something of a ladies' man and had a main type of woman he liked but comes to fall in love with Rhonda. He even gets rid of pictures of his old flames before giving a Big Damn Kiss to her.
• Manchild: Very smart and a good person at heart, but content to fritter away his talents as a handyman in the middle of nowhere, and judges women based on an insane mental checklist that seems to be based off Playboy centrefolds. The Graboid attacks make him grow up real fast.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Prior to the first Graboid.
• Put on a Bus: Doesn't return for any of the other films.
• Refusal of the Second Call: In the second film, it's said the owners of the Mexican oil field where the second Graboid incursion is happening tried to get his help, but he turned them down, clearing the way for Earl to become the lead.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: He's constantly losing to Earl.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: Along with Earl, just a couple of average handymen.
• Ridiculously High Relationship Standards: Val has a very specific idea of his dream woman, wanting someone who is blonde, has green eyes, is very busty, etc. (Something his partner Earl derides him for). Ironically, the woman he ends up with has none of those traits.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Earl bicker and criticize each other quite a bit, but they're nearly inseparable, at least in the first movie.
• The Watson: Rhonda may be the brains, but it's Val who pieces together the Graboid hunting methods when the group is stuck on the rock, and later that their pattern of attacks has them heading straight for Perfection.
• Would You Do It For A Scooby Snack?: Nancy tries to get Val and Earl to hang around Perfection a little bit longer (pre-Graboid) by offering them beer on top of their usual fees. The sing-song way she offers to throw the beer in smacks of this trope. Averted in that Val and Earl don't go for it, though Val's comments in the directly following scene imply it was a real temptation for the both of them.

Earl Bassett

Played by: Fred Ward

"Damn it Valentine, you never plan ahead, you never take the long view, I mean here it is Monday and I'm already thinking of Wednesday... It is Monday right?"

One of two general handymen living in Perfection during the first Graboid Invasion. Unlike his partner, Val, he didn't invest himself so wisely in the post-Graboid money-making schemes, and ended up nearly broke and desperately trying to start himself an ostrich farm to recoup his losses. An offer from a Mexican oil company to exterminate Graboids would lead to him finding love with Kate Reily and turning his fortunes around. Moved out of Perfection with her and is implied to have taken up on Grady's offer to set up a Graboid theme park, assuring him of a much steadier income.

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• Amazon Chaser: Earl's main type of woman is one who can take of herself in a crisis. Which is why he falls for Kate in the second film.
• Book Dumb: It's implied when Earl chastises Grady for not knowing geology terminology, and then referring to their seismograph as a "Seismojigger". He also doesn't know that the term for Graboids mutating into Shriekers is "metamorphosis". Could be an inversion, if he's read a lot about geology between the two films but hasn't actually heard its technical terms pronounced.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: He's pretty much in hiding by the time Grady finds him in the second film.
• Character Catchphrase: "Pardon my French" in the first movie.
• Cool Old Guy: Earl is the older of his and Val's duo by a good margin and is obviously the wiser of the two of them, acting quite a bit like an old cowboy in contrast to Val's rowdy redneck.
• Covert Pervert: A gentleman most of the time but takes a minute to take a look at Kate's butt in the second film.
• Happily Married: To Kate, after the second film.
• Hunter of Monsters: In the second movie, Earl and Grady are hired to take out a dangerous community of Graboids due to Earl's role in defeating them in the first movie and Grady's Ascended Fanboy status. They spend a lot of the movie leisurely sitting back and sending out remote-controlled trucks rigged with bombs and detonating them once the tunneling monsters swallow the trucks.
• Large Ham: He has occasional bouts of this.
  "You're hung up, I tell ya!"
  "That means we're stuck. That pisses me off!"
• My Greatest Second Chance: Earl starts out the second movie thinking he's blown any chance to make something of himself—having wasted what money he did get and living in obscurity. Grady convinces him the Graboid threat in Mexico is his big second chance. The third movie implies that they did find some success opening a theme park.
• Nice Guy: Earl is an ornery old guy at times, especially toward Val and Burt, but it's obviously in good humor and he's all heroic at the end of the day.
• Only Sane Man: Earl views himself as the most sane person in whatever group he's in, understandable when he's often around people like Val, Burt, and Grady.
• Put on a Bus: Doesn't return after the second movie. Characters in the third film mention he opened a Graboid theme park with Grady.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors: Frequently plays this against both Val and Grady. Tricks Grady into thinking that Rock beats Paper to run the gambit with the Shriekers.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: Along with Val in the first film, just a couple of average handymen.
• Shipper on Deck: For Val and Rhonda.
• Supporting Protagonist: In the first film, with the main protagonist being Val.

Rhonda LeBeck

Played by: Finn Carter

"That'd make them a couple of billion years old... and we've just never seen one until now. Right."

A seismologist doing readings in Perfection at the time of the first Graboid Invasion. Shares mutual chemistry with Val McKee and the two wed after the Graboids are slain.

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• Action Girl: Though mostly just the brains of the operation, when an pole-vaulting is called for...
• Babies Ever After: She and Val are revealed to have had a daughter.
• Brainy Brunette: A smart geologist with brown hair.
• Geek: The first time we meet her she's wearing suntan lotion on only her nose, and Technobabble like it's something everyone loves to talk about.
• Generation Xerox: A Cold Day in Hell has Rhonda's daughter Valerie have a role similar to her mother (a young unpaid scientific researcher and Plucky Girl who encounters Graboids and becomes an Action Survivor). The same thing happens to Alice (Val and Rhonda's daughter in the alternate continuity of the 2018 unaired reboot).
• Nerds Are Sexy: Val seemed to think so, despite his initial disappointment that she wasn't a curvaceous blonde sexpot.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Averted. As she exasperatedly reminds the others, she doesn't have the qualifications to tell them what the Graboids are or why they do the things they do.
• The Smart Guy: While she really doesn't know much about the Graboids, she does come up with some clever ways of fooling them.

Burt Gummer

Played by: Michael Gross

"Food for five years, a thousand gallons of gas, air filtration, water filtration, Geiger counter. Bomb shelter! Underground... God damn monsters."

The resident survivalist of Perfection Valley, Burt is the only character to appear in every installation of the franchise.

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• Action Dad: As of the fifth film. (Technically also in the first three and the series too, but he didn't know it at the time.)
• Actually Pretty Funny: In his first scene, Burt chuckles after Earl jokes about how his paranoid obsessions might give him a heart attack before he has a chance to survive World War III.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: A rare case of an In-Universe character having this reaction to another. His reaction in Tremors 3 and the TV series to finding government agents have been killed. In both cases, the government agents refused Burt's help and advice regarding the dangers that Graboids and Shriekers caused. In both cases, these government agents, who Burt notably does view as Scrappies, are killed. And in both cases, Burt comments that despite his antipathy with them, he doesn't feel that they deserved to die the way they did.
• Ambiguously Trained: The only in-depth details we know about Burt before the events of the first film is that he is a rabid gun-enthusiast with a lot of far right viewpoints (fears of Communist invasion, vocal skepticism of government oversight, etc). He has an encyclopedic knowledge of military lingo and the chain of command, is swimming in artillery diverse and powerful enough to kill a herd of elephants and then some, and has survived things that would have killed most soldiers (and has). While this could all point to him just being a Crazy Survivalist who was raised to prepare for Communist invasion during the Cold War, it's equally possible that he has seen time in the military.
• Anti-Hero: A hard-nosed, cantankerous, Crazy Survivalist and Gun Nut who is always against the threat of Graboids and the like.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: By and large averted with an absolute vengeance. Burt is always shown treating his weapons with the proper safety and respect necessary. In fact, in one interview, Michael Gross says that he's very proud of the fact that in-series, none of his character's firearms are ever pointed at or wielded against human beings. There are only two instances of errors across the entire franchise: the Gummers' flare gun being stored loaded in the first film, which can be written off as an understandable mistake on the writers' part, and Burt sniping a shrieker with an anti-tank rifle without knowing what was behind it in the second film, which can be written off as a literal do-or-die decision with the only gun he had left in addition to Burt saying he had explicitly armed up for hunting graboids, massive worms tunneling under layers of earth that require the penetrative capabilities of such a weapon to kill them, without expecting to be dealing with shriekers.
• BFG: Burt adheres to the philosophy of using the right tool for the job, and occasionally the job requires him to employ one of these. Most famously, he uses a William Moore & Company 8 gauge shotgun to score his first graboid kill in the first movie, a .50 Cal Grizzly Big Boar sniper rifle to atomize a shrieker in the second movie, and a truck-mounted flak cannon to mow down a small army of them in the opener of the third movie.
• Big Good: Of the franchise, as he's the most resourceful character in fighting the Graboids and the things they become in their bizarre life cycle.
• The Big Guy: In the first two movies his contributions to the plot are having a lot of firepower and the balls to use them.
• Blood Knight: Toward most lifeforms, Burt is just a blunt, grouchy old man. Toward graboid lifeforms, on the other hand, he's a very interested blunt, grouchy old man who has practically honed the focused extinction of their species to an art form. This first starts, and is most stark, in the second film, where Burt snaps almost completely out of a deep post-divorce depression as soon as Earl gives him the chance to blow up some precambrian worms.
• Breakout Character: His popularity saw him go from a minor character to a major one. Taking on a prominent role in all subsequent movies, as well as the TV series.
• Butt-Monkey: In the sequels, Burt undergoes some pretty big knock-downs, perhaps almost in counterpoint to his increasing profile in the series:
  • In Tremors 2, his wife dumps him, he falls into a state of deep depression, and he is ambushed (and nearly killed) by a swarm of Shriekers.
  • In Tremors 3, he blows up his own home — for what turns out to have been no reason — and is Swallowed Whole by a graboid.
  • In Tremors 5, he is caught at gun point and left to die in a survival cage. To survive, he ends up having to drink his own urine... and then, moments later, a big male lion wanders onto the scene and decides to toy with Burt, culminating in it urinating on him before it leaves.
  • In Tremors 6, he's on the verge of having all his assets seized by the IRS due to bankruptcy, and he's the only one left in Perfection; the entire town has cleared out, leaving just Burt and Travis left behind.
  • In Tremors 7, he's discovered living naked in a primitive hut on an small, remote, Polynesian island, having left America entirely out of disgust when he was told he needed to have a license to be allowed to install a sewer line to his house.
• Celibate Hero: Downplayed. He was married to Heather in the first film and had a fling with another woman, Jasmine Welker, that resulted in Travis. But he was left so heartbroken by Heather leaving him by the second film that he has no romantic interests at all across the later installments, focusing his entire reason for being around hunting graboids instead.
• Character Catchphrase: Almost Once per Episode, some variant on "I feel I was denied critical need-to-know information." He has another catchphrase that's less frequent but a perfect showcase of his ingenuity: "Just doing what I can with what I got."
• Comically Serious: Michael Gross stated in an interview that this was his approach to playing Burt, saying that the comedy in Burt was in how seriously he took himself, no matter how ridiculous he could be.
• Cool Old Guy: Burt is older than the rest of his castmates by a wide margin by the time of Shrieker Island, with his eccentricities only ramping up in direct relation to his age, and he's still the cleverest, best-prepared, most badass old kook around.
• Crazy-Prepared: Even before the Graboids, Shriekers, Ass Blasters, and Mixmaster mutants began showing up.
  Jodi: Uh, but do we have a lighter?
  Jack: Burt does.
  Burt: How do you know?
  Jack: Well, 'cause you're... Burt.
  Burt: (pulls a lighter out of his pocket) Damn right I am.
• Crazy Survivalist: A rare heroic version of the trope. Burt is at least mildly paranoid, firmly anti-government, and very big on preparing himself for a doomsday scenario through training, supplies and firepower. But he's also a hero who wants to help others survive, not simply looking out for number one.
• Disappeared Dad: Revealed to be a father in the fifth film to Travis with an one-time fling from his past.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Type IV to El Blanco in the first episode. Burt could easily kill El Blanco and claim self-defense, especially with their rep from the Dept. of the Interior demanding he do just that at a moment of crisis. But killing El Blanco would result in Perfection falling to real estate developers, which would make the valley undesirable to its current residents.
  Burt: El Blanco, don't make me do it!
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Tyler actually advises Burt to play up the trope when running his survivalist school, saying the students expect it anyway, and will eat it up.
• Everyone Has Standards: Probably falling close to the spirit of Even Nerds Have Standards — in the TV series, upon the government sending himself and his partner to a town dominated by UFO-worshippers, Burt finds himself in the rare position of being the skeptic and deriding someone else as a Conspiracy Theorist kook. Given that these people accuse him of being one of the proverbial Men in Black out to cover up the aliens when he tries to explain their signaling device has attracted a Graboid that is munching them down like popcorn, it's hard to disagree too much with his attitude.
  Burt: You people are nuts!
• Experienced Protagonist: By the sixth film, Burt is an experienced fighter and survivor against the threats of Graboids and others like it.
• Flanderization: Averted. He never becomes a caricature of himself. If anything, he begins to mellow and go from paranoid Gun Nut to Crazy-Prepared security expert.
• Gun Nut: This guy is crazy about guns, to the point that his bunker has a veritable Wall of Weapons. He was also the inspiration for the Full Metal Nutball archetype from Feng Shui 2.
• Handicapped Badass: He's revealed to be suffering from Graboid poisoning in the sixth film and struggles at times but still manages to be a big help in fighting the monsters. At the end, he is given a cure that gets rid of the poisoning.
• Heartbroken Badass: Downplayed. Heather isn't dead but her leaving him did and still does hurt him.
• The Hero Dies: The seventh film ends with Burt being killed in a Heroic Sacrifice to take out a genetically engineered super-graboid.
• Heroic BSoD: In-between the first two movies, his marriage ended following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He just couldn't function properly without a major threat out there, so Heather left him. When Earl called him up for help with the Graboids in Mexico, Burt is just lounging around his rec room depressed and watching TV.
• Hunter of Monsters: Burt Gummer spends most of the movies and TV episodes traveling around, killing dangerous creatures for a mixture of personal enjoyment, occasional profit, and to protect his neighbors and other acquaintances.
• Identical Grandson: He looks exactly like his great-grandfather, Hiram Gummer, by virtue of them both being played by Michael Gross.
• Ignored Expert: From the second film and onward, Burt has essentially become a Graboid expert and has enough skill to kill and/or pacify them when the need arises. Unfortunately, he is routinely kneecapped and barred from doing it outright, whether it's big game hunters who underestimate its lethality and intelligence, Obstructive Bureaucrats that threaten him with legal action, bleeding heart animal-rights activists who think that Graboids are peaceful creatures, or profiteers who see dollar-signs in capturing it alive.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Burt is curt, even blunt, bossy, and antisocial. But have no doubt that he does care for his fellow residents of Perfection Valley, and will risk life and limb to keep them alive and safe. Even that dickhead Melvin.
  • Also worth noting that, despite having far-right views and a Cold War-era hatred of the Russians, Burt has absolutely none of the racist or sexist opinions that are sometimes associated with those beliefs.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Subverted in the first film. The other heroes desperately try to warn him over radio that the Graboids are coming for him, only for him to scream "JESUS CHRI-" as the radio cuts out. The heroes hang their heads in sorrow... and then the gunfire starts. Cue one dead Graboid and two not-dead Gummers.
• Manly Facial Hair: The handlebar mustache really helps to accentuate Burt's legendary badassery.
• More Dakka: Burt's response to Graboid, Shrieker, and Ass Blaster incursions.
• Mysterious Past: Not much is known about Burt's life before the graboids, other than his early interest in guns and the romantic fling he had with Travis' mother. Word of God is conflicted on this, but his encyclopedic knowledge of guns, strategy, and military terminology and jargon heavily implies that Burt has a military past himself, possibly deeper than regular service if one factors in his knowledge and enormous distrust of government operations.
• No Body Left Behind: If the Graboid Queen eating him wouldn't leave a body, getting blown up by several explosives definitely destroyed him. His burial site is adorned by his surviving effects in lieu of a body.
• No Kill like Overkill:
  • Lampshaded several times by other characters.
    Jack: He doesn't mess around.
  • And also:
    Burt: Four pounds of C4 may be a bit... excessive.
  • And finally, Burt is on the receiving end of this in the final movie. In quick succession, he's eaten by a super-graboid, which then falls to its death into a massive spike pit, which is then blown up. In the end, Burt goes out the only way he could: utterly, needlessly, hilariously over-the-top.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Burt does have moments where he inadvertently made the situation worse, due largely to not having information that would have saved him from making those errors, such as trapping Shriekers in a building full of food stores, or blowing up his own home to prevent the Ass Blasters from getting to his own supply of MREs (learning only after the fact that excess food causes Ass Blasters to slip into a coma, not reproduce).
• Old Soldier: He's in his early seventies by the time of Tremors: Shrieker Island, which means he has quite a bit of practice killing the "god damn monsters".
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Anytime after the third movie the others feel Burt is getting too bossy, they (especially Nancy) will remind him that he needlessly blew up his own home during the first encounter with Ass Blasters. In fairness, he couldn't have known at the time that the ABs didn't reproduce by eating like their prior Shrieker life-cycle.
  Burt: What kind of supreme being would condone such irony?
• Properly Paranoid: He lives in a valley with prehistoric monsters and chemically induced mutations, so all that survivalist stuff comes in handy.
• Signature Headgear: His Atlanta Hawks baseball cap (with a notable switch to a Chicago Cubs cap on the last three films). The cap even ends up adorning his headstone.
• Took a Level in Badass: He was always handy with a weapon, but the first movie presented him with a Cold War-era mindset; all his survival plans relied on simply storing up lots of weapons and supplies in an isolated place and waiting for something to happen. The emergence of the Graboids threw off these plans, with the later collapse of the Soviet Union having an effect on him as well. After facing the Shriekers, though, he became a more pro-active survivalist.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: A combination of age, the toll of his lifestyle, and a steady sequence of misfortunes - especially losing Heather - shifts Burt into grouchier, much more antisocial person over the course of the movies, even while he never stops being heroic and ultimately good.
• Trademark Favorite Food: MREs, or Military Ready to Eat Meals. Justified that given his Crazy Survivalist and Crazy-Prepared nature, he eats the type of food that could help him last for years before getting spoiled.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Implied. Burt has had his strange affections for gun since middle school, having converted his BB gun to full auto early on.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Nancy defines her friendship with Burt as "frequently butting heads, but deep down, a good friend". Burt agrees with this sentiment.
• Worf Had the Flu: Poisoned by Graboid Venom way back in the third film, but wouldn't discover this until the sixth, when it had him at death's door and almost out of action.
• The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Subverting this trope was the intention behind him. The filmmaker's noted how in monster movies, the guy whose prepared normally ends up dying, so Burt was made to have that preparation pay off.
• Worthy Opponent: How Burt views El Blanco—calling him Rommel to his Patton. Cletus wonders if it's more like Moby Dick to his Ahab.

Heather Gummer

Played By: Reba McEntire

Burt's wife. She shows up in the first movie, and is never seen again. We're told that she left Burt because he couldn't adapt to life without the threat of the Cold War.

• Action Girl: She's just as skilled of a marksman and survivalist as Burt.
• Closer to Earth: She shared many of Burt's interests and views, but she was typically more realistic and a people person.
• Fiery Redhead: Downplayed. Heather is survivalist and Gun Nut redhead but is Closer to Earth than her husband.
• I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the sixth movie it's revealed she helped Travis' plan to reconnect with his father Burt by giving him an assault rifle that gets Burt's interest immediately.
• The One That Got Away: To Burt. He's a mess early on in the second movie without her, and the TV series contains occasional references to how he still longs for her (the passcode to his home is her name). In the fifth film he specifically admits he misses her on live camera when he's trapped in a cage and thinks he's about to die.
• Put on a Bus: She leaves Burt after the Cold War ends and is said to have gone to her sister's place.
• Southern Belle: Heather is way tougher and more hands-on than the typical example, but she's also quite motherly and much politer and more grounded than her shamelessly weird husband, all tied together by Reba McEntire's heavy Oklahoma accent.
• Team Mom: Obviously cares about the residents of Perfection in the first film, acts as a sort of balance for Burt's more extreme behaviors, and will offer up her own firearms to Val and Earl when they attempt to ride out for help.
• Women Are Wiser: Burt is clever and highly intelligent, but he's also a colossal eccentric, which Heather balances out as the conventionally wiser, more sociable of their marital unit in the first film. Tellingly, Burt becomes steadily, but exponentially nuttier and more antisocial after Heather leaves him.

Walter Chang

Played By: Victor Wong

The owner of Perfection's local store in the first film. He's killed by a Graboid after coining their moniker. A descendant of the Changs who founded the store when Perfection was founded as Rejection, a silver mining town in the 1800s, his niece inherits the store in the third film.

• Asian Store-Owner: A rural version, running a small market that has been in his family for generations.
• Cool Old Guy: A shrewd businessman (he buys a graboid tongue from Val and Earl and then charges for pictures with it) who volunteers supplies form his store to help Val and Earl try to get out of the valley.
• Eaten Alive: Graboid modus operandi, unfortunately.
• Skewed Priorities: Even as the other townspeople begin to realize the danger they're really in, Walter still wants to and focuses on giving the monsters a proper name.

Melvin Plug

Played By: Robert Jayne, P. J. Byrne (unaired reboot)

The perpetual thorn in Perfection’s side, he starts out as a ne'er-do-well kid in the first film, and graduates to a Jerkass land developer by the third film and throughout the TV series.

• Adaptational Ugliness: Melvin grows up to be decently suave and handsome in the third movie and the show, but in the unaired 2018 reboot pilot, he's short, slightly overweight, and bespectacled.
• Ambition Is Evil: In his first appearance, just an annoying kid. By the third film, he's a land developer, who Nancy points out in the TV series is trying to compensate for a lousy childhood by acquiring acreage.
• Bad Boss: In "Water Hazard," he is shown yelling at several employees for failing to meet impossible goals, and actually sends his plumber into a lagoon, at night, to fix a problem with an underwater fountain. Even if there wasn't a giant man-eating shrimp in there, that's a serious OSHA violation.
• Batman Gambit: Tries one in the first episode, using a device to get El Blanco's appetite to become insatiable, hoping that the increased danger from the Graboid will result in Burt having to kill it. His plan falls through, because Burt spots and destroys the device.
• Cassandra Truth: He tried to warn the residents of Perfection that the town was dying and the only economic future they had was to redevelop the valley. Come A Cold Day in Hell, and he turns out to have been exactly right: Perfection is reduced to a ghost town with only Burt and Travis living there. Everyone else had moved on, but without the money Melvin was offering them.
• Crying Wolf:
  • In the first film, he makes them think that he's being attacked by a Graboid, almost getting shot by Burt in the process.
    Burt: [holstering weapon] You came close. Too close. No more games.
  • Later he scares Earl with a basketball. Then, he's actually attacked by the Graboid. His scream elicits a response by Val and Earl that they're going to beat his ass. Then they see him up a pole with a tear in his pants, looking genuinely scared.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: From the first film to the end of the TV series, nobody likes him due to his extremely unpleasant personality.
  Earl: Hey, Melvin! You wanna make a buck? [as Graboid bait]
• Jerkass: There's a reason Burt refers to him as "the turd".
• Karma Houdini: Melvin has put the residents of Perfection in jeopardy on numerous occasions, including a scheme to make El Blanco so dangerous that they would have no choice but to kill the Graboid in self-defense, with the serious possibility that one or more people could have been eaten. He has never paid any serious price for his actions, always relying on Plausible Deniability to cover his butt.
• Parental Abandonment: Cut dialogue would have revealed that part of his jerkass behavior was due to his parents frequently leaving him behind while they went to Vegas on vacation. Nancy does state in series that he's compensating for a lousy childhood, which could mean that it's still considered canon.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: His view on life.
• Stupid Evil: His actions in "water hazard" are nothing but this.
  • 1.) He builds a golf-course with real grass and lagoons in a desert.
  • 2.) He steals water from the Perfection water tower to do it.
  • 3.) He leaves employees out to spin in the wind when they call on him for aid, even if he hired them to solve his problems, and needs their help.
  • 4.) His "brilliant" solution to get rid of the giant shrimp is to flood the lagoon it's in with diesel. Even if he had succeeded, he'd still have to clean up a massive fuel spill, and that's even more expensive and time-consuming than waiting a few weeks while the experts figure out a way to get the creature out of the pond safely.
• Villainous Gentrification: He would like nothing more than turn Perfection into a mini-mall-ridden suburb. The fact that it would require to break Federal endangered species protection laws (and/or letting a lot of people die in order for said breaking to happen) is nothing to him.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: He'd like nothing more than the town where he grew up to be wiped off the map, one way or another.

Nancy Sterngood

Played By: Charlotte Stewart (films), Marcia Strassman (series), Megan Ketch (Unaired reboot)

An old-time hippie who moved out to Perfection to rear her daughter Mindy alone, she is one of Perfection's primary business entrepreneurs after the first Graboid Invasion, specializing in Graboid merchandise.

• Granola Girl: Vegetarian, makes ceramic knicknacks in her kiln, and comments occasionally about some of her experiences in the Sixties.
• Heroic BSoD: On the verge of one when she learns that the Ass Blaster she sold to Sigmund and Ray is responsible for the deaths of at least two people. Burt helps bring her out of it.
• Hidden Depths: It's revealed in "Night of the Shriekers" that Nancy has a practical knowledge of bomb-making. She attributes it to some of her more extreme friends back in the Sixties.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: While she's still a hippie at heart, she's far less trusting of other hippies due to having been snookered by a fellow hippie named "Scarecrow" who strung her along and dumped her.
• Soapbox Sadie: Especially when defending the work of one scientist to try to train Shriekers for search and rescue ops.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: She defines her friendship with Burt as "frequently butting heads, but deep down, a good friend". Burt agrees with this sentiment.

Mindy Sterngood

Played By: Ariana Richards (films), Tinsley Grimes (series),

Daughter of Nancy Sterngood and one of the few kids living in Perfection.

• Children Are Innocent: In the first movie, where she's constantly bouncing around on a pogo stick.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father is never mentioned.
• History Repeats: She winds up romantically entangled with a "hippie" that was just stringing her along, like what happened with her own mother. Fortunately for her, she got wise to him far quicker than her mother did.
• Likes Older Men: In three different stories, no less. In Back to Perfection, Mindy has a major crush on Desert Jack, who is about fifteen years older than her. In Tremors the Series, she's dating an activist almost a decade older than her. In the unaired 2018 reboot, she has a crush on Val, who's about twenty years older than her.
• She's All Grown Up: In the third movie and the series.
• Took a Level in Badass: As shown in the third movie she knows exactly what to do when a graboid shows up.

Miguel

Played By: Tony Genaro

A rancher who appears in the first and third films. He survives the Graboids, but is killed by an Ass-blaster. After his death, his ranch goes to his niece, Rosalita.

• Action Survivor: Lives through the events of the first movie unscathed. Not so lucky in the third film.
• Badass Boast: In the third movie when he's armed up.

Miguel: The BLM man gave me permission to kill anything that represented a danger to my cattle. El lobo, el coyote, and el Graboid.

• Big "YES!": In the first movie after hearing Brut and Heather killed a graboid.
• MacGyvering: Miguel fashions a fishing rod out of a twig, some dental floss, and a piece of bent metal to retrieve Burt's radio from his vehicle without stepping off the rock and into El Blanco's waiting jaws.
• My Greatest Failure: Burt views Miguel's death this way, believing if he'd taken a shot sooner, the Ass Blaster wouldn't have killed him.
• Noodle Incident: When the authorities arrive at Perfection he nervously protests that if this is about his cousin he hasn't seen the man in months.
• Oh, Crap!: Offscreen in the third movie, when he hears Burt's warning alarm, he instantly goes scrambling to his roof and empathetically stats this when Burt calls to check on him.
• Sacrificial Lion: He is killed off to show dangerous the Ass-Blasters are.
• Taking a Third Option: In the first movie as the others debate who should do a Heroic Sacrifice, Miguel suggests sending Walter's miniature tractor out to distract the graboids by putting something on the gas pedal.

Nestor Cunningham

Played By: Richard Marcus

A quiet Redneck type who lived in Perfection at the time of the first Graboid Invasion, which he didn't survive. Apparently a good friend of Burt's.

• Chekhov's Gun: His moonshine became a vital resource in the first encounter with Ass-Blasters in the third film.
• Miles Gloriosus: Initially claims if a Graboid comes after him, he'll just hit it with a five-pound pickaxe. When they actually show up, he's quick (if smart) to run off for survival while Val ends up having to do just that to save Rhonda, and spends his last moments dealing with a Graboid panicking and trying to find higher ground before being unceremoniously eaten.
• Too Dumb to Live: Tried to hide from a Graboid that had just toppled his trailer by sitting on an old tire. While he was understandably too panicked to think of anything better, it worked about as well as you'd expect.

Edgar Deems

Played By: Sunshine Parker

An elderly fellow and possibly the first person to encounter the Graboids.

• The Alcoholic: Earl comments that he must have been pretty darn drunk when they first spot him on top of an electrical tower.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Climbed up onto an electrical tower to escape the Graboids. It worked, but they waited below for days, preventing him from coming down. He eventually died of thirst.
• Dead to Begin With: The first time we see Edgar, Val and Earl first assume that he's drunk and afraid or unable to climb down the tower on his own. When Val climbs up to help him, he discovers that the man is dead.
• Loyal Animal Companion: A deleted scene and the original script show he has a donkey named Justine.

Old Fred

Played By: Michael Dan Wagner

• Off with His Head!: For reasons unknown, the Graboids devour all but his head.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Sadly, he gets Eaten Alive too soon.

Dr. Jim & Megan

Played By: Conrad Bachmann (Jim) and Bibi Besch (Megan)

A physician and his wife who'd planned to build a home in Perfection. A nighttime Graboid attack put a sad end to that idea, as well as to the couple and their station wagon.

• Buried Alive: Megan hides in the station wagon after her husband is yanked to his death, but the sounds of the engine, radio and horn attract the Graboid and it pulls the vehicle completely under, with Megan inside.
• Happily Married: They sit under the stars, giddily talking about the house that they're building.
• Hope Spot: After her husband is pulled underground, Megan manages to make it to the station wagon, only for it to be pulled underground after she finally gets it started.
• Nice Guy: Both are affable and professional when looking at Edgar's body.
• No-Sell: When Jim is grabbed from underground, Megan tries to keep him from sinking with a two-by-four from the pile of building supplies, but it snaps in his hands as he's pulled under.

Graboids

Your standard/American Graboid.

Giant monster worms that burrow under the ground. Graboids hatch from eggs, tunnel through the soil, and consume anything that makes noise or vibrations, though they will spit out anything that they cannot digest.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • Graboids hunt by sensing vibrations, so large explosions will send them running temporarily, as the blast wave physically hurts them.
  • Though Graboids can tell to an extent what they're eating and expel items they perceive as dangerous (for example, observing one Graboid die to a pipe bomb taught the survivors not to swallow them), they do generally have to eat something to understand that it is dangerous, being unable to see what the item is beforehand. Remote-detonated explosives are consistently effective in killing Graboids, since they can be set off as soon as they're swallowed but before the Graboid expels them.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Graboids hunt by sensing vibration, but Shriekers and Ass-blasters rely on thermal sensors instead. They're mostly cartilaginous, so they have no bones. They use three snake-like tongues that combine Nested Mouths with Combat Tentacles to grab prey and pull it into their maws. Exaggerated with the African variety seen in the fifth film. They've grown internal skeletons, they secrete formic acid from their mandibles so they can burrow through rocky soil, and their "grabbers" have become symbiotic organisms, allowing them to detach from the Graboid and hunt independently.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction: As revealed over the course of the films. They start as an egg roughly the size of a football, from which hatch smaller Graboids nicknamed "Dirt Dragons" when discovered; these are pack hunters until they grow larger, then become lone predators. Eventually, a Graboid dies to release about three or four Shriekers, terrestrial pack-hunters who roam and multiply asexually by eating food. If they survive long enough, Shriekers mature into flying Ass-blasters, which disperse to asexually lay eggs and start the cycle over. Tremors 5: Bloodlines reveals that this only applies to the North American version. In Africa, they have developed a strange, quasi-eusocial reproductive society, with one or more Graboid "queens" leading packs of Ass-blasters, though it seems the Ass-blasters are still responsible for carrying the eggs to new breeding grounds. Also, they seem to have skipped the Shrieker stage.
• Covers Always Lie: Most of the movie covers imply that the tongues themselves are the monsters.
• Evil Smells Bad: Not evil, but characters in the first and fourth movies have noted that the Graboids smell terrible.
• Extreme Omnivore: Averted. Despite being huge ambush predators that can swallow humans whole, Graboids will spit out anything that they cannot digest, or anything that past experience has taught them was dangerous.
• Immune to Bullets: Not exactly, but you need Crazy Survivalist levels of ammunition to do the job. Also, the fact they are typically buried deep below the ground means they have natural shielding against bullets.
• It Can Think: Contrary to their appearance, they are scary intelligent, first shown with how they're willing to wait out prey for as long as possible, to later creating traps and even pretending to be distracted by noises to try and get the drop on prey. Official materials reveal that they're classified as cephalopods, justifying their intelligence as cephalopods are some of the smartest real-life invertebrates and can perform similar problem solving skills to the Graboids.
• Metamorphosis: Every Graboid becomes several Shriekers, which then later become Ass-blasters.
• Our Dragons Are Different: They're called "dirt dragons" in Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.
• Sand Worm: While not technically worms, the most iconic form does resemble one and they in fact played a big role in reimagining the predatory roles of such creatures.
• Sense-Impaired Monster: As primarily tunneling animals, they have no eyesight and hunt prey with highly attuned vibrational sensing. Characters are at points able to avoid detection by standing totally still, preventing the worms from pinpointing their exact location (although the worms will eject their long feeding tentacles to sweep the area in an attempt to find them), or trick the worms into attacking inanimate objects, simply because they give off vibrations. This also comes with a Logical Weakness: because they have such sensitive hearing, they experience physical pain from noises that are too loud, like explosions.
• Super-Persistent Predator: They have incredible patience, being more than willing to wait out their victims once they're trapped. They won't stop pursuing someone until that person dies through other means (such as poor Edgar Deems), escapes them in a way they can't follow, or they hear sufficiently strong vibrations nearby that might be easier prey.

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