Film / Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

You don't just play Jumanji. Jumanji plays you.

"The goal for you, I'll recite in verse:
return the jewel and lift the curse.
If you wish to leave the game,
you must save Jumanji and call out its name."

— Nigel Billingsley

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a 2017 film, directed by Jake Kasdan and belated sequel to Jumanji (and its Spiritual Successor Zathura). It stars Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas and Bobby Cannavale.

Four Ordinary High School Students receive detention in the form of cleaning out a basement that has laid untouched since The '90s; among the detritus they find a vintage gaming console... that plays a not-so-vintage game. Each selects a character, and upon hitting "start", they find themselves Trapped in Another World, playing The Game Come to Life — and not the game they expected, either:

• Awkward honor student Spencer Gilpin (Alex Wolff) becomes Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Johnson): Archaeologist - International Explorer.
  • Skills◊: Fearless. Climbing. Speed. Boomerang. Smoldering Intensity.
  • Weaknesses: None.
• Jerk Jock Anthony "Fridge" Johnson (Ser'Darius Blain) is shrunk down into Franklin "Mouse" Finbar (Hart): Expert in Carrying Weapons and Zoology.
  • Skills◊: Zoology. Weapons Valet.
  • Weaknesses: Cake. Speed. Strength.
• Book Dumb Instagrammer Bethany Walker (Madison Iseman) turns into Professor Shelly Oberon (Black): Cartographer - Archaeologist - Curvy Genius
  • Skills◊: Cartography. Archaeology. Paleontology.
  • Weaknesses: Endurance.
• Shrinking Violet Martha Kaply (Morgan Turner) becomes Ruby Roundhouse (Gillan): Fighter - Killer of Men.
  • Skills◊: Karate. T'ai Chi. Akido. Dance Fighting.
  • Weaknesses: Venom.

Together, the four heroes must recover a mysterious jewel called the "Jaguar's Eye" and return it to its rightful place on a jaguar statue to complete the game before they lose all three of their lives. If that wasn't enough, evil mercenary Russel Van Pelt plans to get the jewel for himself, and if he succeeds before the heroes do, then it's game over.

Trailer #1, Trailer #2

A direct sequel called Jumanji: The Next Level was released on December 13, 2019.

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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle provides examples of:

• The Ace: The avatar Smolder Bravestone. His game stats even state that he literally has no weaknesses.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene:
  • Spencer, Fridge and Bethany (Martha is elsewhere at the time) realising Alex has been stuck in Jumanji for twenty years, and breaking the news to him.
  • The scene of Alex and Bethany opening up to each other and talking about their lives back at home before the final level. At the same time, Spencer and Martha admit their feelings for each other.
• Actionized Sequel: Not that the original was without action, but this one has much more of an adventure focus.
• Actor Allusion:
  • This is not the first time that a character played by Karen Gillan is put in a situation where the warning is "never blink". Here it's the snake staring contest in the bazaar compared to the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who ("Flesh and Stone" — also taking place in the jungle).
  • Bethany says "Class is in session" when Martha is inspired enough to ask her for pointers on how to flirt, alluding to Jack Black's role in School of Rock. This line is also almost the same as a lyric from the climactic song in the same film: "Class is in session"/"Recess is in session".
  • Tim Matheson's casting as Old Man Vreeke might be a nod to his role in the TV movie of Sometimes They Come Back.
• Adam Westing: Dr. Bravestone seems to have been written specifically for Dwayne Johnson; he's fast, he's strong, he's famous around the world for his adventures, and he has "Smoldering Intensity" listed as an actual Skill he possesses. Meanwhile, his Weaknesses are listed as "None".
• Adventures in Comaland: When they first get sucked into the game, Bethany suggests that the video game system electrocuted all of them and that everybody was sharing the same coma dream to explain what's really happening. Martha quickly lampshades the absurdity of the theory.
  Martha: Together? We're all in a coma together?
• Affectionate Parody:
  • The real-world group are the typical cast of a High School comedy.
  • The characters of Jumanji are typical cast of an action film.
  • The Jumanji video game is a parody of an action RPG, complete with cutscenes, Non Player Characters, and a Golden Ending.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: While not exactly begging, when Van Pelt corners the team the first time and demands the jewel, Spencer tells him they just want to go home. Van Pelt is sticking to the script though.
• Alliterative Name: Ruby Roundhouse and Franklin "Mouse" Finbar.
• All-Stereotype Cast: Invoked and then yanked out and stuffed in the wrong sockets. The cast of your standard High School comedy are transformed into the heroes of a standard action movie — as the opposite characters. Hilarity Ensues.
• Anachronism Stew: Mostly, the video game and console. It seems like a mix of tropes and styles of different generations of console mixed together.
• Angry, Angry Hippos: Bethany's first death in the game consists of a hippo emerging from the river behind her and eating her alive right in front of her friends. This is in-universe Artistic License – Biology: real hippos, while known to be territorial and dangerous, are strictly herbivorous.
• Animal Stampede: It wouldn't be a Jumanji movie without one. This time, it's a horde of man-eating rhinos chasing the heroes through a canyon.
• Apologetic Attacker: Spencer/Dr. Bravestone, due to a combination of being the strongest character in the game, but at heart still an awkward nerd.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Shortly before being dropped off by Nigel, Bethany tells Martha she has reason to be upset because she split up with Noah, ended up in the body of a man, and cannot find her phone.
  • The first four deaths we see in the game. Bethany is eaten by a hippo, Martha is shot, Spencer is pushed off a cliff by Fridge, and Fridge... eats a piece of cake (which causes him to explode).
• Ascended Fridge Horror:
  • Spencer deduces that the teens could probably die for real in Jumanji if they lose all their lives. Fridge isn't happy to hear the "might" part and asks why Spencer, a video game expert, doesn't know for certain. Spencer has to point out he's never been stuck in a video game and has to make educated guesses.
  • Alex doesn't react well when he learns that he's been in the game for twenty years, and that he's known as the "kid who disappeared."
  • The mark "Alan Parrish was here" notifies the kids that other people have gotten trapped in the game over the years.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: While rhinos and hippos are very dangerous and deadly animals, they are herbivores. In the game world of Jumanji, both of them eat humans. Although hippos have been known to eat impalas, so it's not entirely implausible. May also be an in-universe example on the part of the former, seeing as the rhinos in the original film never showed any apparent interest in eating anyone (even if they still caused a lot of destruction). It's also an Informed Attribute for the rhinos, as they kill Fridge by trampling rather than eating him.
• As You Know: "As you know better than anyone" appears in an expository letter given to Spencer/Bravestone by Nigel.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Spencer has a moment of this after Martha's first death. He starts explaining that the tattoos on their wrists represents the amount of lives they have left, and gets distracted by his avatar's huge arms before Fridge gets him back on track.
• Audience Shift: The first film is rated PG and skewed towards a younger set, given that the main story is directly lifted from the children's storybook. This sequel, however, aims a little higher with older protagonists and a well-earned PG-13 rating. Despite this, it is not Darker and Edgier, as it is outwardly comedic in tone and is more than happy to hang a few lampshades alongside the perilous scenes.
• Awesome McCoolname: Subverted with Franklin "Moose" Finbar. Fridge even says when selecting his character that he sounds like a badass. Then it turns out the nickname is actually "Mouse", and if you look carefully when he selects the character, the second "o" is actually a highly stylized "u".
• Back from the Dead: Every single one of the main protagonists are resurrected, which is justified due to the realm of Jumanji following video game logic, meaning the avatars have three lives each. Bethany only dies once, however, due to transferring one of her lives to a dying Alex Vreeke.
• Badass Biker:
  • Several of Van Pelt's henchmen.
  • Spencer at the end, when he steals one of the motorbikes and uses it to get to the top of the jaguar statue to put the jewel back in it.
• Baffled by Own Biology: While Bethany is in the game avatar of Dr. Sheldon Oberon, she doesn't even realize she's having a... situation.... around Alex until Fridge points it out to her.
  Bethany: (looks down) Oh my god, these things are crazy!
• Bag of Holding: Fridge/Mouse's backpack, which holds weapons (like Bravestone's boomerang) and tools much larger than the backpack should be able to hold, such as a comically large pair of bolt cutters.
• Bait-and-Switch: The game's second level calls itself "The Mighty Roar", and due to Jumanji's jungle motif, one would assume that it's going to send out a lion or other predator at the players. Then it turns out that said roar is coming from the motorcycles of a biker gang.
  Fridge: What is this game?!
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Ruby Roundhouse, the only female avatar, wears a small, midriff-exposing halter top. Martha Kaply, the girl who chose her, would never think of wearing anything similar and mentions how impractical such an outfit is in the jungle. By comparison, the three male avatars all wear full shirts (though Bravestone's is sleeveless).
• The Beastmaster:
  • Van Pelt has control over the animals of Jumanji, although it seems to be limited in range and not an absolute.
  • Fridge discovers that his zoology skills actually give him limited control over an elephant, especially when carrying the jewel.
• Beauty Breeds Laziness: Discussed and downplayed with Bethany and Martha, when Bethany is sitting around trying to get reception for her phone when she is supposed to be helping the other three in detention. While Spencer and Fridge are fine with Bethany sitting things out, she doesn't actively flirt with them. Punished when she gets sucked into the Jumanji game as "an overweight middle-aged man" and has to help in order to survive.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: The other avatars get dirty and sweaty throughout the adventure, but Ruby always looks untouched, whether she's been in a fight or dragged behind a motorcycle.
• Belly-Scraping Flight: The helicopter clips several trees on its way to the canyon, scrapes the canyon's floor when it initially descends into it, and finally has this trope actively imposed upon it by the rhinos, who jab upwards to tag its undercarriage repeatedly with their horns.
• Berserk Button: Fridge does not take kindly to Spencer calling him a dumbass. At all. He pushes Spencer off a ledge for it, costing Spencer one of his lives.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: A major source of comedy here. The film takes a sledgehammer to the typical stereotypes and narrative tropes associated with both action-adventure games and high school comedies and leaves little unscathed, but it's all in great fun.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Martha is a timid pushover in the real world, but falls into the role of Fiery Redhead "killer of men" with enthusiasm.
• Big Bad: Russell Van Pelt.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • When Van Pelt and his mooks have the four pinned down at the bazaar, Alex launches a smoke bomb and comes to their rescue, getting them out of there safely.
  • In the climax, Van Pelt has a gun to Bethany's head and demands the jewel from Spencer who protests that he doesn't have it. Suddenly, Fridge rides in on an elephant that takes out all the jaguars and distracts Van Pelt long enough to for Bethany to free herself.
• Big Damn Kiss: Parodied. When Spencer and Martha proclaim their love to each other in the game, their avatars kiss, but because of their inexperience, it's the most clumsy and unpleasant-looking kiss of all time. It's played straight later when they kiss in real life.
• Big "NO!":
  • When Bethany looks at her reflection to see Professor Shelly Oberon, an overweight middle-aged man. Extra points for Jack Black and Madison Iseman both screaming at once.
  • Bethany again when Fridge kills Spencer by pushing him off a cliff.
  • Martha, when Spencer loses his second life to a jaguar.
• Big "OMG!": Three times by Fridge, and a variant later, also by Fridge.
  • Fridge when Spencer is sucked into the game console.
  • Fridge again after Bethany is attacked and eaten by a hippo in the first level.
  • A variant; this time with Fridge exclaiming "Oh, my goodness!" when the group narrowly avoids the arrow trap in the tunnels.
  • Fridge again just before the albino rhinos trample him to death.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • Spencer when Fridge tells him Martha is obviously crushing on him.
  • Spencer, Martha, and Alex when Fridge tells them he accidentally dropped the jewel out of the helicopter.
• Big Word Shout: Nigel tells the group that "they must save Jumanji and call out its name". Bethany remembers this and urges the others to do it after initially forgetting they have to. Cue them all yelling "JUMANJI!"
• Big "YES!":
  • Bethany when Spencer puts the Jaguar's Eye back into the statue after Martha gets it to him.
  • Fridge does five in a row when the group gets out of Jumanji and he sees he's back in his real body.
• Bishie Sparkle: Referenced when Bethany is teaching Martha how to flirt so the team can pass the Transportation Shed level:
  Bethany: Eyes big. Now sparkle.
  Martha: Sparkle?
  Bethany: Like an anime character. Now sparkle.
• Bittersweet Ending: Invoked. Everyone gets out of the game and beats it, complete with a Golden Ending. Fridge is still kicked off the football team, however, though he gains more confidence in his intellectual abilities. But this means when Alex returns to when he played the game, thus undoing the bad timeline for his family, he's a married man and a father by the time he sees the kids in present 2016. This also means he and Bethany can't be a couple due to the age difference and No Yay potential, which she sadly accepts, though she is touched that he named his daughter after her.
• Black Dude Dies First: Inverted. Fridge is the sole black character in the foursome (in real life and in the game), yet he is the last of them to lose his first life (after accidentally eating cake). The first one of the group to die is Bethany... who is played by Jack Black. However, of the four, Fridge is the first to lose his second life.
• Black Is Bigger in Bed: Despite his avatar being about two feet shorter than him (by his own admission), Fridge is relieved to see that he is still the same size in the trouser department.
• Bloodless Carnage: The main characters' avatars, and several NPCs, die onscreen, but the only blood you'll see is during Ruby Roundhouse's deaths, when she explodes into a few vaguely blood-like droplets. Though this could be considered a relatively accurate representation of deaths in early '90s video games.
• Book Ends:
  • The story begins with a teenager giving Jumanji no respect since it's just a board game. The story ends with teenagers repaying Jumanji for all the trouble it put them through by dropping a bowling ball on it.
  • Spencer and Fridge pass the old and decrepit Vreeke house on the way to school at the beginning and see Alex's bitter father there. At the end, the group see the house again, which never fell into disrepair and is now decorated for Christmas. Alex's father is still there, but is now a grandfather, as Alex returned to the real world and became a father.
• The Breakfast Plot: The four main characters, and how they are brought together, are very reminiscent of The Breakfast Club. Spencer is a nerd, Fridge is a Jerk Jock, Bethany is a Phoneaholic Teenager with traces of the Alpha Bitch, and Martha is a Shrinking Violet. They all knew of each other before, but only Spencer and Fridge knew each other personally, and they all end up meeting doing the same detention. They're then forced to work together, first in the detention and then in Jumanji, if they are to get out of the game alive. The Breakfast Club is further referenced with the principal telling the four that they should think about who they are and who they want to be, much like Vernon does, and tells them that if they don't finish removing the magazine staples for their detention in one day, they have to come back on Saturday (the day The Breakfast Club takes place on). For a further reference, the surname Johnson appears as that of a main character in each film: Brian in The Breakfast Club, Fridge in this film.
• Brick Joke:
  • During detention, Fridge asks why the school needs a bowling ball. He later uses that bowling ball to destroy Jumanji.
  • During the game, Fridge's weakness to cake. It's mentioned once before the second level and doesn't come into play again until the middle of the third level.
  • After the peeing scene, Spencer warns the others to be careful, as he doesn't want anyone to twist an ankle. Later, as Martha is attempting the Supermodel Strut Bethany taught her, Fridge remarks that it looks like Martha twisted her ankle.
  • Nigel repeats to the players at the beginning of the game "if you wish to leave the game, you must save Jumanji, and call out its name." All of them dismiss this due to Nigel's expositional repetition. So when they actually save Jumanji, they initially forget they have to call out its name until Bethany remembers the rhyme.
• Bugs Herald Evil: Van Pelt controls all wildlife on the island because of he stole the jewel of Jumanji. The first thing he does with his newfound power? Take all the bugs in his vicinity into his body. At one point he kills one of his men with a scorpion which crawled out of his mouth.
• Bullying a Dragon: Fridge/Mouse decides that shoving someone with the physique and strength of Dwayne Johnson off of a cliff just to be a dick in retaliation for being called a name, in a game where characters can respawn twice before being Killed Off for Real, is a good idea. Spencer/Bravestone stares him down with a Death Glare... and gently reminds Fridge that he will push back if it happens again. Unfazed, however, Fridge tries to shove Spencer again, to no avail, then slaps him across the face. Spencer takes the slap with a bored look, punches Fridge into the wall next to them with barely any effort, holds him over the edge of the cliff that Fridge had pushed Spencer off of moments earlier, then hauls him back in and says that wasting lives is no option and that they need each other in order to get out of the game.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Mouse is frequently abused and put in bad situations. He's also the only avatar to have more than one weakness, and has the least number of strengths.
  • Dr. Oberon isn't much better, as he is the first to get killed in both films, despite having different players each time. In The Next Level, he gains a weakness to sun and sand in the desert-based game.
  • The fact that Fridge mans both of these characters at different points means he qualifies as well, with the added insult to injury of being an athlete in real life while generally being a weakling in the game.
• Calling Your Attacks: Spencer does this while playing Street Fighter V. He later does the same thing when fighting as Bravestone.
• The Cameo: An uncredited Tim Matheson and Colin Hanks as Old Man Vreeke and Adult Alex respectively.
• Captain Obvious:
  • During the "Mighty Roar" level:
    Spencer: Those guys have huge guns!
    Fridge: Oh, really? Is that what those are, Spencer?
  • It happens again, with Bethany this time, during the third level. Mistakenly believing it's a staring contest, she volunteers herself. At the end of the level, after Fridge defangs the snake, Bethany says, "I guess it wasn't a staring contest."
• Chairman of the Brawl: At one point while Martha is attacking the two guards outside the transportation shed, she picks up a wooden chair and whacks one of the guards with it, knocking him down and breaking the chair apart.
• Character Development: All the teenagers end up in game avatars just about the complete opposite of their actual personalities. Each one ends up appreciating the particular skills their character DOES possess (to varying degrees) and end the game better for it.
  • Spencer is not a natural leader, but as Bravestone, he learns to not be such a pushover and be more assertive.
  • Fridge is an athlete who fears that being a poor student will get him kicked off the football team which is the only thing he feels he is good at. Therefore, he takes advantage of his childhood friendship with Spencer to get him to do his homework for him. As Finbar, the smallest and weakest character in the game, he comes to learn that he doesn't have to be the biggest and strongest, but figures out how to apply what he is good at to new situations. He also learns a strong lesson in the value of supporting his friends.
  • Martha is averse to being social or outgoing, and mocks her teacher at the prospect of physical education. As Ruby, she learns to enjoy new experiences and put herself out there, and that being comfortable with your body is fun and empowering.
  • Bethany is self-centered and obsessed with social media and appearances, but as Shelly, she learns to take others into account and live off the grid for a while.
• Chekhov's Gag: Spencer's Crazy-Prepared paranoia about life. When Alex nearly dies from a mosquito bite, Spencer is the only one who knows how to do CPR, which ends up saving Alex due to the game allowing Bethany to transfer a life to him.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Subverted with the missing piece of the map. Alex turns out to be the missing piece of the team, but the actual missing piece of the map is never found nor does it impact the heroes' ability to complete the game.
  • It is revealed that when a character dies with the jewel, they re-spawn with the jewel still in their possession. Martha/Ruby exploits this game mechanism by deliberately allowing herself to be killed while holding the jewel so that she can get it away from the Big Bad and bring it to Spencer/Bravestone when she respawns.
  • Martha/Ruby's weakness to venom, which allows her to pull a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Played straight when Fridge questions why a bowling ball is present in the basement they are tasked to clean. He finds a use for it at the end of the movie. As in, he uses it to smash the Jumanji console.
  • Mosquitoes. One bites Martha right before she asks why she's wearing her Fanservice outfit soon after arriving in Jumanji. Another one bites Spencer later on in the game, shortly before the characters find out their strengths and weaknesses. These turn out to be Alex's weakness, and after one bites him later, he nearly dies.
  • Many of Van Pelt's henchmen use motorbikes to pursue the characters in some of the levels, and in the climax, Spencer commandeers one and uses it to ride to the top of the jaguar statue so he can put the jewel back in.
  • The elephant statue that appears in the final level of the game is seen earlier during the cutscene Nigel narrates. When it appears again, Spencer starts climbing as instructed to earlier, only to lose his second life when he falls out of the tree upon being startled by a squirrel, and a jaguar attacks him.
  • Spencer's fear of squirrels.
  • Elephants. When they discover the elephant piece in the snake basket at the bazaar, they are told to climb upon seeing an elephant, which Spencer does towards the end when the group finds the elephant statue, but it costs him one of his lives when he falls after seeing a squirrel and attacked by a jaguar. Fridge later tames an actual elephant and uses it in a Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Chekhov's Gunman: When the four teens begin the game, they're unable to select one of the five provided character profiles. This comes up later when it's revealed that the fifth character is Alex, who took that slot back in 1996, and he's still in the game playing.
• Chekhov M.I.A.: Alex gets sucked into the game in 1996, and joins Spencer, Fridge, Martha, and Bethany at the bazaar when he saves them from Van Pelt, becoming the group's fifth member.
• Chekhov's Skill: Fridge's skill in football comes in very handy in "The Defenders" level when he comes up with a plan to get around the trap of the torch-lit path leading to the jaguar statue.
• Combat Pragmatist: In the climax, Van Pelt has a gun held to Bethany's head, but after Fridge causes a Big Damn Heroes moment, Bethany gets out of Van Pelt's grip by biting his hand.
• Company Cross References: Several references to Sony products appear throughout the film. For example, Spencer plays Street Fighter V on a PlayStation 4 and has posters of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and The Last Guardian in his room, both of which are PlayStation exclusives. Bethany's phone is also Sony-branded, probably an Xperia.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The opening sequence directly sets up that the film is a sequel to the 1995 film, with the board game (in 1996) transforming itself into a video game cartridge to catch the attention of a teenager who dismisses it for his home console.
  • The elephant token in the snake basket is Alan's game token from the first movie, as Alan Parrish himself said:
    Alan Parrish: The elephant was mine. You're playing the game I started in 1969. I'm gonna have to play.
  • Alex being stuck in Jumanji for 20 years and not knowing of the current year is similar to Alan, who was stuck in Jumanji for 26 years, and they both have a moment of emotional breakdown.
  • Spencer, Bethany, Fridge, and Martha needing their missing piece in order to continue the game, which is similar to how Alan, Peter, and Judy needed Sarah to continue theirs.
  • The Big Bad is Van Pelt, just like the original film. Just as the game updated itself to draw in new victims, it updated Van Pelt from hunter to mercenary.
  • The players are sucked into the game in a similar effect to how Alan was, and when they return it's also similar.
  • The tree house the cast takes refuge in was built by Alan Parrish.
  • Alex remarks that while trying to complete the canyon level, he was shot down by a plane being flown by monkeys and lost his second life. In the original film, the monkeys drove cars and motorcycles.
  • Before the crew is told to seek a past player, they get an elephant statue — the game piece chosen in the original movie by Alan, who was also sucked into the game years prior.
  • The Jaguar's Eye jewel is an enormous green gemstone, not unlike the green orb in the center of the original board game. And just like that game, the players win by getting to the end of the path and shouting "Jumanji!"
  • Upon shouting "Jumanji!", the Jaguar's Eye emits a massive, dome-shaped surge of green energy. The camera quickly zooms out, revealing that for that short moment, the dome of energy, along with the winding path that the players took to the giant jaguar statue, resembles the board game's original layout.
  • Alex returns to his own time upon the game being finished, creating a new timeline where he never disappeared, just like Alan did.
• Contractual Genre Blindness: While Van Pelt has the power to take the stone by force, he's limited by the game to demand it.
• Cool Shades: Alex dons them during his Let's Get Dangerous! moment. He then loses them via a Glasses Pull when the helicopter is damaged.
• Coquettish Lip Biting: Discussed and subverted, to hilarious effect. When Bethany teaches Martha to flirt in order to get past the guards, this becomes part of her training. But with Bethany stuck in Dr. Shelly's body and Martha being an awkward nerd who isn't actually attracted to the guards, they both just end up looking ridiculous.
  Bethany: A nibble goes a long way, girlfriend.
• Cosmic Retcon: Finishing the game and freeing Alex returns him to 1996, and he lives to the present day to meet the four teens as an adult with a family.
• Cowardly Lion: Spencer. He starts off as a socially awkward nerd who gets spooked very easily. Even when he ends up in the body of Smolder Bravestone and gets a Heroic Build, Super-Strength, Super-Speed, and Super-Reflexes, he is still a Lovable Coward and his first reaction to danger is usually to start running. Part of his Character Development is learning to be braver than he originally was, which he eventually does.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Played with. Alex gets stung by a mosquito, his weakness, and begins dying. Bethany begins administering CPR in a desperate life-saving attempt, but she only has a vague idea of the proper technique, and she's clearly doing it wrong. It works anyway, because attempting CPR at all transfers one of her extra lives to Alex. The situation wasn't one that would require CPR in the first place, but all the characters are panicking teens, and it's a video game anyway.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: The skin beneath Van Pelt's eyes is shadowed, making him look like he's dying. A flashback shows that he didn't have them before stealing the Jaguar's Eye.
• Cue the Falling Object: After Martha/Ruby Roundhouse kicks the ass of the two guards of the transportation shed and confidently walks away, their sun shelter, damaged in the fight, crashes down behind her.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Spencer/Dr. Bravestone versus the mooks in the bazaar. From the moment it begins he's in complete control of the fight.
• Curse Cut Short: Fridge is in the middle of a loud "SHI—" when he is sucked into the game.
• Damsel in Distress:
  • Played with. In the climax, Van Pelt has Bethany at his mercy, with a gun to her head. However, she is still in the body of a man at this point.
  • Martha gets a moment in the final level, when, while fighting off the henchmen in the final level, she ends up being dragged behind a motorcycle by her ankle and unable to do anything about it until Spencer comes to her rescue.
• Damsel out of Distress: While Martha is fighting the guards at the transportation shed, Spencer runs out to assist her. Mere feet from the door, he stops and stares at her kicking the guys' butts all over the place before giving a "yeah, she's got this" nod and heading back inside.
• Dance Battler: Played with. Ruby is listed as this, but her actual fighting style is more like fighting while music plays rather than combining dancing and fighting.
• Darker and Edgier: This film is heavy on action, peril, and violence compared to the lighthearted PG-rated original (as well as the children's book that the films are based upon). There's also a fair amount of swearing.
• Dark Is Evil: Van Pelt. He is the Big Bad, dresses in dark clothing, always seem to be seen in shadow, and has a black vulture as a Non-Human Sidekick.
• Deader than Dead: The avatars each have three lives, and can regenerate twice throughout the game. If they lose their third life, however, they're dead for real. This almost happens to Alex Vreeke, but Bethany transfers her second life to him to prevent that from happening.
• Dead Hat Shot: After Bethany is chomped on by the Hippo and dragged into the river, all that remains is Shelly's hat, floating on the water. Since they're in a video game, though, she respawns.
• Deadpan Snarker: Martha and Fridge. Sometimes Spencer and Bethany have their moments, too.
• Death as Game Mechanic: Players who lose a life while inside the Jumanji game world drop from the sky when they respawn. Martha exploits this to hand off the MacGuffin to Spencer on her way down.
• Death Glare: Spencer gives Fridge one of these after Fridge pushed him off a cliff. Understandable, he had just cost Spencer one of his lives.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: In the climax, Ruby deliberately allows herself to die from a snake bite because she'll respawn in the sky while still holding the jewel, allowing her to hand it off to Spencer at the top of the statue while in freefall.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Or Guy, in this case. Bethany takes a shine to Alex, but when the game is over, Alex ends up being sent back to 1996. By the time the teens encounter him again, he's in his mid-adulthood, and a father. As an acceptable consolation, he named his daughter after Bethany, since she saved his life after the near-death mosquito experience.
• Disability Superpower: Of the mundane variety. After being separated from her phone, Bethany finds herself being a lot more open with people, particularly Alex. She says it's like her other senses being heightened.
• Disney Villain Death: Generally Inverted. Whenever an avatar dies and then respawns, they fall out of the sky toward the ground and land uninjured (even though they don't stick the landing the first few times). However, it's played straight with Spencer's first death when he's pushed off a cliff. (Perhaps the game considered that one to be a Bottomless Pit.)
• Disproportionate Retribution: Spencer calls Fridge a dumbass after the second level. Fridge doesn't like this, so he pushes Spencer off a cliff. Spencer respawns moments later, and Fridge knew this would happen, but it's still pretty excessive — not to mention wasting one of Spencer's lives. Everyone calls Fridge out for this.
• Distracted by My Own Sexy: The first thing Fridge does in Mouse's body is check the size of his penis.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Bethany tells Martha (as Ruby) to do this in order for the rest of the party to sneak into the transportation shed. She fails spectacularly, but it does stall for time, and when a radio suddenly turns on, it allows Ruby's special strength of "dance fighting" to kick in and she easily overpowers the guards.
  • Dr. Bravestone has "smoldering intensity" as one of his "Strengths". He doesn't appear to have full control over when he "smolders" but it clearly has an effect on Bethany when he does. However, it's never used to resolve any of the challenges or encounters they have during the game.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Nigel begged Van Pelt to put the jewel back where he found it after stealing it from the jaguar statue, but "once he had it in his grasp, he could never let it go". Sounds a lot like alcoholism or drug addiction, especially since Van Pelt is implied to be Drunk On Power.
• Ear Ache: When Spencer is reluctant to jump down the waterfall to escape the motorcycle henchmen, Fridge, who is on his back, twists his ear and causes him to lose balance.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Bethany and Martha both do this to Spencer-in-Bravestone's-body. Bethany also gives Alex a long look up and down after first meeting him, to the point that it makes the latter visibly uncomfortable.
• Empty Piles of Clothing: After Fridge is transported out of Jumanji, Mouse's backpack is left behind. When Spencer picks it up, it's completely empty, presumably because it's only Mouse who can retrieve items from it.
• The End... Or Is It?: Despite Fridge smashing the Jumanji console with a bowling ball, the drums after the credits suggest that Jumanji is still out there.
• Establishing Character Moment: One for all five main characters.
  • Alex has two. He first dismisses Jumanji's board game form so he can continue playing Twisted Metal in his room by himself, while claiming no one plays board games any more. He later saves the others at the bazaar and effortlessly guides them through the traps in the sewers.
  • Spencer is introduced playing Street Fighter V in his room, narrating every attack he makes, finishing off Fridge's homework, awkwardly asking Fridge if he wants to hang out that weekend and being startled by a squirrel by the Vreeke house. He's a hardcore gamer who's intelligent but lonely, easily startled and a bit of a doormat (at first).
  • Bethany stages a waking up selfie for her Instagram page, makes a video call during a quiz in class (after finishing it), complains about having no reception during detention and refuses to help the others because "she's too pretty". She's a vain Phoneaholic Teenager with Skewed Priorities, but is also more intelligent than she first appears.
  • Fridge has Spencer do his homework for him, tells his mother that Spencer has been tutoring him to get his grades up, mocks him for wearing a raincoat when it's not raining, and refuses Spencer's offer to hang out that weekend before hitching a ride to school with a girl, ditching Spencer in the process. Despite the fact he has known Spencer since the seventh grade, they used to be friends but now Fridge basically uses Spencer for his own ends because he feels football is the only thing he's good at (as he himself says later in the movie). He's an arrogant Jerk Jock who is secretly insecure about his intelligence.
  • Martha is first seen refusing to participate in gym class before listing the reasons why she thinks it's pointless (getting Spencer's admiration) and sarcastically calls Bethany out for not helping the others during detention. She's a judgemental loner who isn't afraid to say what's on her mind despite (by her own admission) not being good at talking to others.
  • Jumanji itself also gets one. When Alex dismisses its original board game format so he can carry on playing his video game, it transforms itself into a video game so that Alex will get sucked into it when he decides to play it, establishing how enticing and dangerous it is.
• Everyone Can See It: Fridge casually tells Spencer that Martha is very obviously interested in him and mocks him for not noticing.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Not quite as excessive as the first movie, which spawns perils with each turn, but the world inside Jumanji is just as dangerous. Not minutes after arriving in Jumanji, Bethany ends up eaten by a hippo of all things just from standing near the lake. Alongside wildlife, our heroes likewise have to contend with mercenaries and booby traps as well. There's also the fact that their avatars have weaknesses as well, which, if they have some very direct one such as cake or venom, will kill them in one hit. This ends up especially sucking for poor Alex because his weakness is mosquitoes. And since he's in a jungle setting, it's not hard to see why he would be a little paranoid. Indeed, he nearly loses his last life when one manages to bite him.
• Evil Evolves: Doubles as Technology Marches On. Jumanji transformed itself from a board game to a video game to continue to lure people to play it.
• Exact Words: Spencer's Wham Line to Van Pelt. He can't give Van Pelt the jewel, because he doesn't have it on his person. Fridge does.
• Face–Heel Turn: Van Pelt used to be Bravestone's partner before they became enemies when Van Pelt stole the Jaguar's Eye.
• Falling into the Plot: In-universe, this is how the Jumanji video game starts — all the players drop down from the sky and land in a field in the middle of the jungle. We see this happen from Spencer's point-of-view.
• Feathered Fiend: A vulture becomes Van Pelt's pet and scout.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Spencer and Fridge had been drifting apart as friends in high school. Martha was a loner, while Bethany was in the popular, selfish crowd. After the events of the game, they are shown growing into their own social group, to the confusion of their classmates.
• Fisher Kingdom: The four protagonists become the Awesome McCoolname avatars they chose when starting up the game. Obviously, hi-jinks ensue — none of the avatars are remotely like the players who selected them. This was likely purposeful; "A game for those to seek to find a way to leave their world behind."
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In order to escape the mercenaries shooting at them, Martha realizes they need to jump into the water below. She charges off the cliff yelling "Jump" but, as soon as she clears the edge, you hear her give a shriek of pain and she's the only one who tumbles head over heels into the water. When they reach the shore, it's revealed that she's been shot.
• Flat Character: The NPCs, including the main antagonist. Not only do they have limited range of conversation, their backstories or motivations are never expounded on.
• Foul First Drink: While at Alex's treehouse, Spencer and Martha eagerly try the margaritas Alex made since they're technically old enough to drink alcohol while trapped in Jumanji, but after one sip, they decide not to finish them.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Alex's father warns Spencer that "this world swallows up kids like you", referring to how his son disappeared, and hints at Spencer, Fridge, Martha, and Bethany getting sucked into Jumanji.
  • If you look closely in some shots, you can see that the school's mascot is a jaguar. In Jumanji, the objective is to get the Jaguar's Eye gemstone to the statue of the same name and in the final level, in order to get to said statue, they have to deal with actual jaguars.
  • When the group is sitting in the principal's office after being given detention, they are sitting in a row of five chairs, with an empty chair between Spencer and Fridge. Spencer and Fridge later have a big falling-out, with Fridge killing Spencer in a moment of rage and Spencer costing one of Fridge's lives in a Heroic Sacrifice. It also sets up how the group will later be joined by a fifth member, in the form of Alex.
  • When Bethany respawns after being eaten alive by a hippo, she mistakenly calls it a rhino before Fridge corrects her (thanks to his avatar’s zoology expertise). The group have to deal with a rhino stampede after stealing the helicopter from the transportation shed.
  • Spencer says he thinks they have to save Jumanji if they want to get out of the game, and Martha gives him an awed look. Later, it's revealed she has a crush on him.
  • The boy at the bazaar tells the characters that "The missing piece is not what you think." It turns out not to be the missing piece of the map, but the fifth player, Alex, who was already inside the game and who saves them from Van Pelt's men not long after this.
  • Spencer has repeatedly used the metaphor "spreading like wildfire" in several of his papers, including ones he wrote for Fridge, which is how Fridge's history teacher realized that Spencer was helping Fridge cheat. In the climax, he traps several jaguars with a flamethrower so they can't come after him.
  • When the characters are selecting their avatars, Fridge finds that he can't select Seaplane McDonough. This is because his character was chosen by Alex in 1996, and he's still stuck in the game trying to get out, so his character is still in use.
  • At the bazaar, Spencer catches the black mamba before it can bite Martha. In the climax, after the jewel goes flying, Martha has to walk through a pit filled with snakes to retrieve it, and this time, she makes use of her weakness to venom by forcing a snake to bite her, causing her to die and respawn with the jewel out of the Big Bad's reach.
  • The message in the third level instructing the players: "When you see me [an elephant], begin the climb." This is one of the objectives of the game's final level.
  • In Spencer's room, you can see a poster for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Spencer would eventually have to emulate Nathan Drake's moves from that game, such as the use of a grappling hook.
  • The guards at the Transportation Shack wear vests made of rhinoceros-skin. In the next scene, the team has to deal with a rhino herd.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: Jumanji shapeshifts into a console game (and subsequently becomes the console itself) when Alex rejects its board game form as boring.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: The Central Theme; each high school archetype is transformed into the opposite action hero archetype.
• Free-Sample Plot Coupon: The party is given the Jaguar's Eye at the very beginning of the game.
• Gender-Blender Name: "Shelly" is a name commonly used as both a feminine and masculine name in modern times, also contributing to Bethany's shock that Shelly was male. She didn't realize it was short for Sheldon.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Played with. Spencer and Fridge are male, Martha and Bethany are female, though Bethany ends up in a man's body in Jumanji. Averted later when they are joined by Alex.
• The Generation Gap: Nineties kid Alex, compared to Spencer and the others from the New Tens — Alex has no clue about mobile phones aside tech gadgets, thinks about different celebrities, and of course uses different slang.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: Van Pelt really has no motivation for his actions. It's justified since he's solely created to be a generic threat to inconvenience the heroes in a '90s-style video game where engaging plot was a secondary concern. He cannot even truly be said to be the Big Bad. That would be Jumanji itself.
• Genre-Busting: A Video Game Movie about a non-existent game meets Action Comedy — the shortcomings of video game movies are filled with action comedy tropes, and the shortcomings of action comedies are filled by video game tropes.
• Genre Savvy:
  • Spencer is fully aware of video-game tropes and knows most of the rules regarding what to do... most of the time.
  • Alex takes it up to eleven where it's revealed he survived in Jumanji alone thanks to his gamer skills.
• Genre Shift: Both this film and the original share Coming of Age Story elements, but the original borders on being an outright Horror story, while this one much more heavily leans toward Action Comedy.
• The Ghost: We never see Bethany's boyfriend, Noah, who she split up with shortly before the events of the film, but she mentions him several times throughout the film. According to Spencer's comment during gym class, he's a football player like Fridge.
• Gilligan Cut: At one point, Spencer tries to convince Fridge to get on his back, much to Fridge's annoyance, insisting that he would rather die. Cut to Fridge on Spencer's back, fleeing from Van Pelt's goons.
• Glasses Pull: After a shot from one of Van Pelt's goons damages the helicopter Alex is flying, he pulls off his Cool Shades as he struggles to control it.
• God-Mode Sue: Invoked and Played for Laughs with "Dr. Smolder Bravestone", an Adventurer Archaeologist who is strong, fast, handsome, and charismatic (he has "Smoldering Intensity" as a skill), and even has Super-Strength in a setting where no-one else does. His weaknesses are listed as "None". The other characters quickly lampshade on seeing Spencer's stats that his character is by far the best. Fall damage and jaguars do manage to kill him, however.
• Graceful Landing, Clumsy Landing: As Smoulder Bravestone, Spencer always lands on his feet after respawning. The others have far less dignified experiences with it, such as Martha and Bethany landing on Fridge whenever they respawn.
• Gretzky Has the Ball: When Martha tries to make a simulated sports call, she gets everything wrong that she possibly could.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Zoology turns out to be really useful, as it allows Mouse to defang a Black Mamba and tame an elephant.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: Alex had one when he came across Spencer, Fridge, Martha, and Bethany at the bazaar, as he realized he was no longer on his own in Jumanji with only NPCs for company.
• Hellish Horse: Fridge worries that he will be chased by an enormous killer zebra due to his avatar's lack of speed. Luckily, no zebra appears during his stay in Jumanji.
• Here We Go Again!: Defied Trope. Unlike the original, the teens don't just bury the Jumanji game somewhere. Instead, on remembering that it's still out there, they destroy it. Time will tell if it actually sticks.
• Heroes Gone Fishing:
  • The opening scene shows people jogging on the beach where the Jumanji game washed up, including Alex's dad, who finds the game and brings it home.
  • Alex and Spencer are introduced playing video games in their respective bedrooms.
  • After escaping from the bazaar, the group are seen chilling out in Alex's tree house before they head off to the transportation shed.
  • At the end, Bethany invites her friend, Lucinda, to go on a nature hike in the summer and she is quite shocked by the invitation.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Played for Laughs. Seeing that Fridge has two lives left, Spencer tosses him out of the helicopter to distract the rhinos while they retrieve the jewel. Fridge is not amused.
  • Played straight later when Bethany gives one of her lives to Alex to save him.
  • And at the end, Martha sacrifices her second life in order to get the jewel to Spencer.
• Hidden Depths: Pretty much the moral behind the entire story, as each kid finds out something about themselves they never knew:
  • Spencer is braver than he thought.
  • Fridge is more intelligent than he thought.
  • Bethany is more resourceful and empathetic than she thought.
  • Martha is more outgoing than she thought.
• High-Dive Escape: At "The Mighty Roar", the quartet escape from the bikers by jumping off the cliff into the pool below the waterfall.
• Homework Slave: Not so much a direct bullying example as much as a peer pressure example, but jock Fridge convinces him former childhood friend Spencer to write an essay for him so that he can focus on athletics — an act that gets the two thrown in detention.
• Honorable Elephant: Fridge tames an elephant that helps the group in fighting Van Pelt.
• How Do I Shot Web?: The characters can't always control their avatars' skills. Bethany has it the easiest — she's the only one who can read the map — but Martha is shocked the first time she does acrobatic flips as Ruby Roundhouse, Fridge keeps getting annoyed and incredulous when he spontaneously spouts off trivia about nearby animals, and as for Bravestone's smoldering intensity...
  Martha: So can you control when you do that, or does it just happen naturally?
  Spencer: [with a suddenly deeper voice] It just happens naturally. [smolders intensely]
• Human Pack Mule: Mouse is explicitly good at being a valet, so he holds onto the various objects the group has. He even calls himself "Backpack guy" at one point.
• "I Can't Look!" Gesture: Bethany after Fridge is trampled to death by the rhino stampede.
• I Choose to Stay: After winning the game, Spencer wants to stay as Bravestone and never return to the real world, then asks Martha to stay in the game with him. Martha convinces him to leave the game once she does it.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Or rather, I Know Street Fighter. Spencer uses his moves as Zangief in SFV to fight Van Pelt's mooks as Dr. Bravestone.
• Immortality Field: Downplayed. Instead of colliding with the real world like in the first film, Jumanji remained as a separate world that follows Video Game logic. It gives the players three Video-Game Lives each as a form of limited Resurrective Immortality. However, in Jumanji where Everything Is Trying to Kill You and most of them were given Weaksauce Weaknesses, this seems like a fair trade-off.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
  • Van Pelt fires his gun at Nigel three times when Nigel steals the jewel from him, but misses each time and Nigel is able to flee into the woods.
  • During "The Mighty Roar" level, the motorcycle henchmen unleash several bullets and missiles on the heroes, but they only manage to shoot Martha during the High-Dive Escape. Even then, she only ends up with one bullet in her body.
  • Subverted later when the guards open fire on the helicopter with missiles when it flies out of the transportation shed, as they miss at first but then hit it and cause enough damage to prevent it from going up or down until Spencer is later able to repair it.
• I Owe You My Life: Alex to Bethany after she uses her second life to save him after he gets bitten by a mosquito and almost dies. At the end of the film, we find out that in gratitude because of this trope, Alex named his daughter after Bethany.
• It Can Think: While it was heavily implied that Jumanji was sentient in the original film, this one outright confirms it. When Alex tosses the board game aside in favor of playing his video games, the game transforms itself into a video game console. Not only was this essentually the evolution of Jumanji, the game consciously made a decision in order to attract potential victims.
• It's All About Me: Bethany at first. Thanks to Character Development, she grows out of it.
  Teacher: You're aware there are other people in the world, right?
• It's All My Fault: Spencer tries to take the blame when he and Fridge are busted for Spencer doing Fridge's assignment. He claims he made Fridge have him write his essay. No-one buys it, and Fridge is annoyed.
• It Won't Turn Off: When the game system with the Jumanji cartridge in it starts going crazy after the four students press Start, Spencer goes as far as to unplug the system, but it sucks them in anyway.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • When the kids get sucked into the game, Bethany's first reaction after freaking out over being in an overweight male avatar is to freak out over not having her phone. When the others call her out on her Skewed Priorities, Bethany retorts this is the perfect time to have it, as she could use it to contact someone for help.
  • On a more personal level, Bethany comments that Martha already dismissed her as a bad person based on nothing but the typical high-school clichés, and that they don't even know each other so she shouldn't be so quick to judge. Martha actually concedes the point.
• Jerk Jock: Fridge is this at the beginning. Thanks to Jumanji, he grows out of it.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Fridge. He is a Jerk Jock who forces Spencer to do his homework, looks down on him, and appears to be a bit arrogant — as in, when his Berserk Button is pushed by Spencer, he pushes Spencer off a cliff. However, he's still fundamentally a good person and a good friend to Spencer nonetheless, and in Jumanji, he pulls through for the others numerous times, rouses Spencer by telling him You Are Better Than You Think You Are, and he saves the others in a Big Damn Heroes moment by riding in on an elephant.
  • Bethany too, as while she is at first pretty shallow, uncaring, and self-absorbed, she proves she too has a nicer side, as she coaches Martha in flirting techniques, proves to be a Shipper on Deck for Spencer and Martha, and gives one of her lives to save Alex from certain death.
• Jungle Drums: They're back, and the players quickly catch on that they mean something bad is about to happen.
• Jungle Opera: The entire setting of Jumanji is based on this trope including such staples as death traps, wild animals, a crowded marketplace, a waterfall, and a giant animal totem complete with jeweled eye.
• Jungles Sound Like Kookaburras: When Spencer first arrives in the jungle and is looking around, the distinctive cries of kookaburras can be distinctly heard. Of course, the fictional land of Jumanji features wildlife from all over the globe, so kookaburras might actually be native.
• Just Eat Gilligan: The in-game story would've probably been over and done with if Nigel just went directly for the Jaguar statue and returned the jewel after swiping it from Van Pelt instead of writing a letter to Dr. Bravestone and having his team do it for him, allowing Van Pelt to mobilize his men and have time to prepare obstacles for the player characters. Then again, it's an Excuse Plot in a video game meant to set a goal for the characters to reach. It does make it clear that the skills of all five players are required for success.
• Kaizo Trap: Alex almost dies to a mosquito after escaping the rhino ravine.
• Karmic Death:
  • Fridge gets his comeuppance for shoving Spencer off of a cliff out of spite — and costing Spencer one of his lives — when Spencer forces a Heroic Sacrifice on him by tossing him out of a helicopter and to the mercy of some rhinos, leading to Fridge losing one of his own lives. Granted, it wasn't so much out of spite as it was for distraction to get the jewel back but Fridge was the one who dropped it in the first place and given his jerkassery up to this point, he pretty much had it coming.
  • Also, he mocks Spencer for having allergies and dies from eating cake, which is Mouse Finbar's weakness and may allude to some sort of food allergy.
• Karmic Transformation:
  • Fridge, an arrogant Jerk Jock, is transformed into the weak, slow, Plucky Comic Relief.
  • Bethany, a vain, self-absorbed teenager, is transformed into an older, overweight man.
  • Spencer and Martha, both nonathletic introverts, are transformed into a charismatic Ace and Action Girl who are forced to come out of their shells in order to protect the rest of the party.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Bethany and Fridge are both in the middle of talking to the others when they die for the first time. In particular, in Fridge's case, he is cut off by exploding because he ate a piece of cake.
• Kilroy Was Here: When taking refuge in an old abandoned treehouse, the teens find a sign saying "Alan Parrish Was Here". They have no idea who that is, but they assume he was someone else who got sucked into the game.
• Kiss of Life: Parodied. Alex is on the verge of losing his last life after being stung by a mosquito (his character's weakness) and Bethany tries to save him by administering CPR. However, by doing so, she ends up transferring one of her own lives to him, although she finds that this works too.
• Knight of Cerebus: The comedic tone of the film is significantly dampened whenever Van Pelt comes on screen.
• Kryptonite Factor: Each character (except for Smolder Bravestone) has a listed Weakness in their profile; should those weaknesses come up (and of course they do), they tend to die in seconds.
  • One of Mouse's numerous weaknesses is "cake". As in, when Fridge (playing as Mouse) accidentally eats some, he explodes. Luckily, each character gets three lives.
  • Ruby Roundhouse's weakness is venom. In the final level, Martha (playing as Ruby) deliberately gets bitten by venomous snakes in order to die and respawn out of reach of the Big Bad, taking the Jaguar's Eye with her.
  • Seaplane's weakness is mosquitoes. Alex, playing as Seaplane, is bit by a mosquito after escaping the ravine and nearly dies.
• Let's Get Dangerous!:
  • Spencer effortlessly beats up the goons at the bazaar, all while Calling His Attacks, repairs the helicopter in flight to get them away from the Rhino Rampage, and rides up to the jaguar statue on a motorbike to get the jewel up to the top.
  • Fridge defangs the black mamba, comes up with a plan to get them past the Schmuck Bait of the final level of the game, and causes a Big Damn Heroes moment with an elephant.
  • Martha tries to invoke Distracted by the Sexy on some guards so the others can sneak into the hangar, but when a radio starts playing "Baby, I Love Your Way", she starts dancing and beats up the guards with ease. She later does the same thing in the final level.
  • Martha's own LGD moment provides Alex with enough confidence to pilot the helicopter. He looks up with determination, says, "Seaplane McDonough, reporting for duty. Let's go, people!", dons a pair of Cool Shades, and pilots the helicopter through the canyon and a Rhino Rampage.
  • Bethany manages one where, while the others are panicking over Alex being bitten by a mosquito and passing out, she does CPR on him and manages to transfer one of her lives to him. She and Alex also fend off Van Pelt in the climax to stop him from getting the jewel while Spencer and Martha are going after it.
• Lighter and Softer: The sequel is softer in tone compared to the more horror-lite elements and depressing tone of the first film, with more emphasis on the "Freaky Friday" Flip hijinks of the teens, plenty of good-natured chiding of the plot, and deaths that are largely Played for Laughs.
• Lightning Bruiser: Smolder Bravestone's stats make him out to be the strongest and fastest out of all the playable characters.
• Like Father, Like Son: Alex reveals to Bethany that his real self in 1996 is a full-on metalhead, and that he wants to be a drummer, like his dad.
• Little "No": Van Pelt in the climax when he realizes Martha will give the Jaguar's Eye to Spencer as she respawns, and thus get it back to the statue.
• The Load: Fridge, for the most part, when the group is sucked into Jumanji. His character is the smallest, slowest and weakest in the game, he has the fewest strengths and the most weaknesses, and at one point it's played literally, when Spencer picks up Fridge and runs with him in the second level to get them away from Van Pelt's henchmen. He spends a lot of time complaining, costs one of Spencer's lives in a moment of rage after his Berserk Button is pushed, and accidentally drops the jewel out of the helicopter in the canyon scene. On the other hand, he makes very good use of the strengths he does have, which helps out the group a few times, especially in the final level.
• MacGuffin Escort Mission: The objective of the video game. The heroes must return the Jaguar's Eye jewel to a very large jaguar statue.
• MacGuffin-Person Reveal: The party is told to look for a "missing piece" and they initially assume that it's the missing piece of their map. They later realize that Alex, who joins their party in the sewer, is the "missing piece" that completes their team.
• Male Restroom Etiquette: Fridge and Spencer tell Bethany (who is in a male body) most emphatically that you do not look at another man's penis while they are peeing.
• Man, I Feel Like a Woman: First defied and inverted when Bethany becomes the male Sheldon Oberon — she says she's been dreading the prospect of checking out her new equipment. As the movie goes on, she starts to get used to things, or at least isn't so disturbed. Then, in the end, played... sort of straight. When she's back in her own body, she grasps her own chest and whispers, "I missed you."
• May–December Romance: Played with, but one-sided, in the case of Bethany and Alex. Bethany is the one enamored with Alex despite their age difference.
• May It Never Happen Again: It starts with Spencer discovering the game in a room in his school (and it transforming into a videogame when Alex originally decides not to play because it's a tabletop one) and ends with Fridge smashing the cartridge and console with a bowling ball to prevent anybody from playing again.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Smolder Bravestone" is played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Also, the name Bravestone is made up of the words “bravest one”. His avatar is meant to be the bravest one, and part of Spencer’s Character Development is learning to be more courageous.
  • Also, the beautiful redheaded female character is named "Ruby Roundhouse" which is a type of kick used in many martial arts, which she is very good at. Her real name, Martha, sounds similar to the Spanish word for kill, matar, which fits well given that her avatar, Ruby Roundhouse, is called a “killer of men”.
  • Alex. Alex is short for Alexander, a Greek name meaning "protector/defender of men". Appropriate, given that the first thing we see Alex do in Jumanji is pull off a Big Damn Heroes moment that saves the others from Van Pelt and allows them to escape from the bazaar, after which he protects them from a series of traps in the underground passages. He also protects Spencer in the final level by distracting the jaguars as a diversion, offers his life in place of Bethany's when she is taken hostage — even though it's his last life, which Bethany herself gave him — and even trying to attack Van Pelt to protect Bethany.
• Medium Awareness:
  • The four teens are confused when they find themselves watching a cutscene.
  • Unlike the other NPCs, Van Pelt seems to be at least somewhat aware that he's in a game because he says "Game Over" at one point when he thinks he's about to win, and doesn't seem surprised at Martha's death and respawn but more that he can't stop her getting away with the jewel.
• Megaton Punch: Spencer manages to punch someone so hard they go flying into the sky, through a roof.
• Metafictional Title: Jumanji is the name of the game the characters get sucked into. It's also the name of the game world.
• Metagame: Happens in-universe. Once everyone gets familiar with the basic rules of the game, they start abusing its logical loops. Most prominently, the finale openly hinges on how exactly respawn mechanics operate, allowing Martha to pass the jewel to Spencer mid-air.
• Midair Repair: After the helicopter is damaged by gunfire and unable to ascend, Spencer climbs onto the roof to reconnect the control arm to the rotor.
• Mineral Macguffin: The player characters have to return the giant emerald eye to the jaguar statue to lift the curse on Jumanji.
• Misplaced-Names Poster: On the poster where the four leads are in the water, only Karen Gillan's name is lined up with her image. And on the poster where the leads are standing in the jungle, none of the names match up. They are standing one person to the right of where their name is above them. The names don't match up on the poster at the top of the page, either.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Although the majority of the game's animal threats are African in origin, the jaguars are South American, the squirrel is North American, and the orangutans Alex mentions are from Indonesia and Malaysia. Its sequel The Next Level adds an anaconda.
• Monster-Shaped Mountain: The end goal of the game is the summit of an enormous, jaguar-shaped mountain.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The end of the cutscene shows Van Pelt shooting at a fleeing Nigel and ordering his henchmen to bring him back the jewel and to kill anyone who tries to stop them, then it abruptly cuts back to Nigel in his jeep cheerfully giving the jewel to a shocked Spencer.
  • The whole gang laugh at Fridge's incident with the rhinos. Right before Alex gets bitten by a mosquito. He swats it casually, no big deal. Then everyone remembers mosquitoes are Seaplane's weakness. And Alex passes out.
• Morphic Resonance: The game console form Jumanji takes is not too dissimilar from an old Atari 2600 with wood-paneling and a large gemstone attached to the top of the machine. The game's original form was a wooden board game with that same gemstone embedded in the center of the board.
• Mosquito Miscreants: Mosquitoes are a weakness of Seaplane McDonough. One of them could have killed Alex if Bethany had not given up her extra life for him.
• Mr. Exposition: Nigel is a deliberately over-the-top version of this: as an NPC, he's actually incapable of any interaction that doesn't involve telling the players what they should be doing.
• Mr. Fanservice: While not wearing a revealing outfit like Ruby, Smolder Bravestone is buff, wears a very tight short-sleeved shirt, and one of his skills is based on his looks.
• Ms. Fanservice: Played for Laughs:
  • Ruby Roundhouse's outfit is based upon Lara Croft's early tank top and short-shorts. Martha's not too happy about it and even points out how inappropriate it is.
    Martha: Why am I wearing this outfit in a jungle? Tiny, little shorts and a leather halter top. I mean, what is this?
  • Humorously averted with Bethany, who believed that Professor Shelly Oberon is going to be a sexy scientist based around the "curvy genius" wording. Turns out, he's a "curvy genius" in the form of Jack Black.
• My Beloved Smother: Spencer has one, as she tells him rapid-fire in his opening scene not to forget to take his EpiPen to school, that the world is a terrifying place, to be careful of everything, and that she loves him more than life itself.
• Mythology Gag: There are a few nods to other works about Jumanji:
  • The board game becoming a cartridge is similar to how it became Zathura in the original books, after falling into the hands of a boy who wasn't interested in a jungle game.
  • The words "A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind" appear in the green circle in the middle of the screen by swirling into view in two phases, just like the clues on the board game version in the 'toon (and not like the clues in the original film, where the effect was more like the words were floating up from beneath the surface of murky waters and the entire sentence appeared at once.)
  • There is a trader, reminiscent of the animated series character, Trader Slick. There's also an NPC called Nigel; Tim Curry (Trader Slick's VA), has also played a character called Nigel who went adventuring in Africa.
  • The green emerald that Van Pelt wants, which gave him the power to control Jumanji's animals, sounds reminiscent of the dice from the animated series episode "No Dice", where the dice, once taken into the game, glowed red and repelled all the animal threats in the game.
  • The characters find themselves in Alan Parrish's tree-house at one point, which was also in the animated series.
  • In the cartoon, one of the ways to get sucked into the game is if you treat Jumanji badly, it will suck you in out of spite. Alex gave it a unique insult, so it found a unique way to entrap him.
• The Napoleon: Fridge as Mouse Finbar, due to how, by his own admission, he is about two feet shorter than his real self.
• Narnia Time: The best way to describe the time flow in the game. Months can pass by in the game while it may be years on the outside for other players, but you'll always come home to exactly the time you were in before getting sucked in the game.
• Nature Tinkling: Spencer, Fridge, and Bethany all relieve themselves in the jungle, with Bethany having to be instructed on how to do so in a male body.
• Neck Snap: Spencer takes out one of Van Pelt's henchmen at the bazaar with one of these.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Humorously subverted. Bethany assumed her avatar, Shelly Oberon, was this thanks to the description of "curvy genius". She lets out a Big "NO!" when she sees what her avatar really looked like.
• Neural Implanting: Implied, as the players becoming their avatars gives them the assigned knowledge and skill set at appropriate times in the game. They are notably confused when it happens, and they otherwise retain all their real-world personality quirks and hang-ups.
• Never My Fault: Fridge blames Spencer for getting him kicked off the football team for cheating, despite the fact that Fridge was the one who asked Spencer to help him cheat with his homework in the first place.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Upon meeting Alex, our heroes must follow him through an underground level to escape Van Pelt and his henchmen, which includes crossing a wooden plank over a pool filled with hungry crocs.
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: A variant; Martha first defers from playing the game because she wants to finish their detention and get it over with so they don't have to come back the next day. Bethany snarks that Martha doesn't know how to have fun. Chagrined, Martha puts down the stapler remover and chooses a character.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Van Pelt has a vulture which acts as a scout for him.
• Noodle Incident: Spencer never reveals what happened that makes him so insistent that Bethany "aim" when she is learning how to urinate as a man. Apparently, it's not a story for mixed company.
• Not Hyperbole: When it's said that Fridge's avatar's weakness is cake, it doesn't mean that he has an uncontrollable sweet tooth. Eating cake makes him explode.
• Not the Intended Use: Martha deliberately exploits her "venom" weakness and lets herself get killed by a snake so that she can get the Jaguar's Eye to Spencer, far above her, when she respawns and falls from the sky.
• No, You: After Bethany loses her first life to a hippo that came out of a river, Fridge and Spencer have this exchange:
  Fridge: Oh, my God! You better get in there and go save her!
  Spencer: I'm not getting in there! You get in there!
  Fridge: I'm not going anywhere! I got a backpack on. You don't get in water with a backpack. Everybody knows that!
• Odd Friendship: The kids are pretty different from each other, but eventually become good friends over the course of completing the game.
• Offscreen Breakup: Bethany split up with her boyfriend, Noah, shortly before the events of the film, and she's feeling quite upset about it, which actually causes her detention (for having a phone conversation about it having finished a test in class).
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Martha at the beginning while talking to her gym coach, after saying she doesn't want to end up as one. Doubles as a That Came Out Wrong moment.
  • Spencer gets one when he gets called to the main office and discovers that Fridge's history teacher figured out that Spencer has written Fridge's essay.
    Spencer: Is it getting hot in here?
  • All four of them when they first get sucked into Jumanji.
  • Bethany when she realizes that she ended up in an overweight male avatar. Eventually, she comes to grips with it.
  • Martha, Fridge, and Spencer when Bethany loses her first life to a man-eating hippo. Then after she respawns, Martha gets another one when she sees that a whole herd is coming after them.
  • All four of them when several of Van Pelt's motorcycle goons show up in the second level armed with machine guns and missile launchers.
    Fridge: What is this game?!
  • At the end of "The Mighty Roar", Fridge, Bethany, and Spencer when Martha reveals she has been shot, before she explodes into a red cloud.
  • Martha when she realizes Fridge has eaten cake by accident, which is one of his weaknesses.
  • All four of them at the bazaar when Spencer removes the basket lid and the black mamba strikes.
  • All four of them when Van Pelt's henchmen come across them at the bazaar.
  • Martha when she realizes the others want her to flirt with the guards to get inside the transportation shed. (Her fear coming from the fact that she has never flirted before and finds it difficult talking to guys.)
  • Fridge, when he notices the henchmen approaching the transportation shed after the five have made it inside.
  • Fridge when he accidentally drops the jewel out of the helicopter. Obviously, the others are not happy when they find out moments later.
  • Fridge has one when the albino rhinos start coming towards him, when Spencer uses him as a distraction to retrieve the jewel after Fridge accidentally dropped it out of the helicopter.
  • Alex, after the canyon scene when he swats a mosquito on his neck that had just bitten him, and then remembers they are his weakness and he is on his last life. Bethany, Martha, and Spencer then get one when Alex passes out moments later.
  • Towards the end, while climbing, Spencer gets spooked by a squirrel and falls out of the tree he was in, then sees a jaguar standing right above his head. He dies right after.
  • All of them when Bethany points out the henchmen approaching again during "The Defenders" as Fridge is outlining his plan to get to the jaguar statue.
  • The henchman dragging Martha behind his bike in "The Defenders" level has one right before Spencer whacks him with a tree branch.
  • Also a subverted one. Fridge starts to have one as the elephant charges at him, before he braces himself and orders it to stop, which it does.
  • Van Pelt, accompanied by a Little "No", when he sees that Spencer and Martha have gotten the Jaguar's Eye away from him and are about to put it back in the statue.
  • The gang quickly learns to recognize that whenever the Jumanji drums start to play, something bad is about to happen.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Played straight most of the time, as pretty much every antagonistic thing in the game can immediately cost the players a life.
• One-Hit Kill: While some things in the game won't do it, it's played dangerously straight with anything that's a particular weakness of a player character.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Fridge's real name is Anthony Johnson, but only his mom and history teacher call him that.
• Overnight Age-Up: Once they're sucked into the game, the teens are turned into the adult avatars they chose when they started playing.
• Orbital Shot: Used during the Big Damn Kiss at the end.
• Pac Man Fever:
  • Justified in that the Jumanji game is frozen as a 1990s game console because it was started by Alex back in 1996 and it can't morph into anything else until that game session is completed. As such it features the primitive trappings of a mid-'90s Action-Adventure RPG which are all but nonexistent in 2017 gaming. This forces ubernerd Spencer to function as Mr. Exposition for all the outdated video game tropes the group encounters: limited lives, looping dialogue, railroad plot, random puzzles, etc.
  • Averted for when Alex and Spencer are shown playing video games, and they're actual video games appropriate to the time period. Alex is playing Twisted Metal in 1996, and Spencer is playing Street Fighter V in 2017, and they're using PlayStation controllers to play (this movie was made by Sony, after all). The console that Alex pops the Jumanji cartridge into isn't any real console, but this is likely intention in the name of Bland-Name Product; the console's appearance still matches the aesthetics of numerous early '80s consoles, such as wood grain paneling and large controller ports.
• Panthera Awesome: The Jaguar Shrine is aptly protected by jaguars.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: Bethany. The first thing we see her do (as part of her Establishing Character Moment) is stage a "waking-up" selfie for her Instagram page, she makes a phone call during a quiz (after finishing it) which gets her sent to detention because the other students are still doing the quiz, is seen on the phone again while jogging in gym class, complains that she has no reception during the detention before being sucked into the game, and freaks out in the game when she realizes she doesn't have her phone. Part of her Character Development is learning to overcome this.
• Please Wake Up: When Alex nearly dies from a mosquito bite, Spencer begs him to wake up and quickly recites how to do CPR. Bethany saves Alex by transferring her extra life, subverting the trope.
• Plot Tailored to the Party: Justified. Jumanji is built to utilize each character's skills and has at least one moment where a specific skill is required to continue.
• Poison Mushroom: Fridge is very hungry, and so he eats some bread-like food advertised as "rations". It's only after he eats it that he is told that it is cake, which is his player character's weakness. Cue him exploding.
• P.O.V. Cam: Seen when the characters first arrive in Jumanji, as the camera follows Spencer in the body of Bravestone running through thick jungle foliage before going over the edge of a cliff, dropping through the sky and landing in the jungle.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: After her flirtation attempt at the transportation shack goes awry, Martha decides to beat up the guards instead. A radio begins playing "Baby, I Love Your Way" and, remembering one of Ruby's skills is dance fighting, she asks the guards, "Do you guys like to dance?"
• Present-Day Past: "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" didn't come out until 1997, one year after Alex was sucked into the game, but he drops a reference to it anyway.
• Product Placement:
  • Spencer plays Street Fighter V on a PlayStation 4 and his room is covered with posters for games like Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and The Last Guardian, both of which are PlayStation exclusives. Ruby Roundhouse's Leitmotif is also played on a Sony boombox. Alex Vreeke is also playing a PlayStation in the 1996 prologue. Have we mentioned this movie was made by Sony yet?
  • Instagram appears at the beginning when Bethany takes her "walking up" selfie", and Bethany references it in the game too.
• Psycho Knife Nut: One of Van Pelt's henchmen in the bazaar sequence, who attacks the group by hurling knives at them and almost kills Fridge with one.
• Punched Across the Room: At the bazaar, Spencer gleefully discovers that Smolder's strength lets him punch people through walls, into the sky, through stone pillars, etc.
• Raging Stiffie: Bethany, in Oberon's body, gets an erection after she hugs Alex. Spencer and Fridge have to point it out to her.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: All of the teachers and principal when they bust the kids for their various misconducts. For example, Bethany and Martha's teachers give them a chance to stop their offenses, and give them detention only when they refuse to relent. The principal in particular tells them You Are Better Than You Think You Are before escorting them to detention. Considering that Bethany and Martha mouthed off to their teachers, and Fridge coerced Spencer into writing his essay, two days of detention aren't that bad of a punishment. Fridge actually gets the worst punishment by also getting kicked off the football team, but that's because he cheated by coercing an ace student to help him.
• Red Is Heroic:
  • Played very straight with Ruby Roundhouse. Her first name is a red gemstone, she has red hair, and the top part of her outfit is red. The screen detailing her strengths and weaknesses is also outlined in red letters.
  • Played with in Bethany's case early on, as her real self wears a red top, but she is still self-absorbed at this point and her good side comes out later in Jumanji while she's in the body of Shelly Oberon.
• Red Right Hand: After stealing the jewel, Van Pelt's left eye turns green as a side effect.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Martha as Ruby Roundhouse. She asks why she's wearing such a revealing outfit in the jungle, and later asks Bethany for her jacket so she can cover herself up.
• Rescue Romance: Bethany starts crushing on Alex after he saves them from Van Pelt. He starts returning her feelings after she saves him in turn.
• Resurrection Teleportation: Martha sacrifices one of her lives in order to respawn away from a horde of venomous snakes she gets trapped in while traversing the final level, "The Defenders".
• Reveling in the New Form:
  • Spencer, who has been transformed into the video game character Dr. Smolder Bravestone, is initially the only one to be happy with his character's body once he gets past the shock, marveling at his huge muscles. He comes close to not going back in order to stay this way.
  • Double Subverted with Bethany, who gets stuck in the overweight, middle-aged, male body of Dr. Shelly Oberon. Her initial reaction is a Big "NO!", but she gets fascinated by one particular part of Dr. Oberon's anatomy when it comes time to go to the bathroom.
• Revision: The nature of Jumanji's Reset Button changes from the first movie to this one, as Judy and Peter don't have any memories of Alan, Sarah, or playing the game, while the kids this time around remember everything. The game is shown to send everyone back to when they first played the game, and the first film explicitly indicates that the timeline has not yet caught up to the point where Judy and Peter would have played the game, as evidenced by Sarah and Alan invoking Set Right What Once Went Wrong to save Judy and Peter's parents.
• Rhino Rampage: Occurs when the heroes' helicopter loses vertical control and ends up in a ravine. Many rhinos run after the helicopter and repeatedly bash it until Spencer manages to fix it. Then immediately afterwards, Fridge manages to drop the Jaguar's Eye and the rhinos end up guarding it. In order to get the Jaguar's Eye back, Spencer sacrifices Fridge's second life by tossing him out of the helicopter to cause the rhinos to rampage toward him.
• Rhymes on a Dime:
  • When the characters first encounter Nigel, he recites the goal of the game to them like this, even saying he will say it in verse.
  • The boy at the bazaar also speaks like this when he tells the characters about their next challenge.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: After the heroes win the game, they create a new timeline where everything is like Alex never disappeared from reality, but Spencer, Fridge, Bethany, and Martha retain their memories from the original timeline. In Alex's case, since he's been stuck in the game since 1996, he has no memory of the original timeline, only second-hand information from the other four.
• Rule of Three:
  • Each of the characters has three lives in the game.
  • Nigel says that if they want to leave the game, they must save Jumanji and call out its name, saying it three times.
  • Alex attempts the transportation shed level three times, though he attempted the first two alone before the others joined him, and lost a life on each attempt. He is ultimately successful on his third attempt, as he now has the others with him.
  • Characters get stung by mosquitoes three times. First Martha, then Spencer, then Alex. Which are his weakness, and he's on his last life.
• Running Gag:
  • Spencer can't control when he smolders. Similarly, Bethany and Martha swooning over said smolder, and Fridge getting annoyed by it.
  • Fridge getting freaked out by his encyclopedic knowledge of animals.
  • Bethany's amazement and intrigue over having a penis.
  • One of the players forgetting that they are in a video game and attempting to talk to a NPC as if they are a real person by saying something which doesn't trigger any of the NPC's pre-programmed responses, prompting the NPC to give them a confused look before repeating their opening line when their A.I. script loops back to the beginning.
• Say My Name:
  • Bethany when Martha jumps off the cliff to escape from the bikers. Bethany herself then jumps, followed by Spencer and Fridge moments later.
  • Martha when Fridge, in a moment of anger after Spencer presses his Berserk Button, pushes Spencer off a cliff to his death.
  • Martha does it again when Spencer is trying to fix the helicopter in mid-flight, while hanging on to it by his bare hands.
  • Fridge when Spencer loses his second life to a jaguar.
  • Bethany when Spencer respawns after being killed by a jaguar.
  • Bethany again when Van Pelt overpowers Alex in the climax.
• Scared of What's Behind You: Soon after first landing in Jumanji, Martha has an Oh, Crap! reaction to the hippo behind Bethany before it attacks and eats her.
• Scary Scorpions: Van Pelt commands a scorpion to sting and kill one of his henchmen when the latter failed to find the main characters.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Alex refuses to play Jumanji ("Who plays board games anymore?") and plays a video game instead. Jumanji turns itself into a video game overnight. Upon seeing the change, Alex immediately plays it, never questioning the fact the game just changed itself.
  • Subverted at the end. Upon seeing the straight path to the jaguar statue be lit up by the torches running down its sides, everyone immediately concludes it's a trap, and they can't just walk down it.
• School Forced Us Together: The main characters already knew of each other, but only two of the main characters (Spencer and Fridge) actually knew each other. They all meet serving the same detention.
• Screwball Squirrel: Downplayed. A squirrel appears in the final level of Jumanji but it does not attack Spencer when he tries to go out of bounds by climbing the trees. The squirrel simply scares Spencer into falling back to the ground before he is mauled by a jaguar, costing him one life.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Bethany references the trope with this line: "Why can't we just leave, stop the game, without doing all this stuff?!" Because they have to Win to Exit, quitting the game isn't an option.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Fridge got Spencer to do his homework because he needed to improve his grades in order to stay on the football team. When his history teacher figures out what is going on, the other punishment Fridge gets for cheating is losing his spot on the football team.
• Sequel Escalation:
  • This time around, all the players get sucked into the game at the beginning, because it now takes place inside the Jumanji world. As a result, instead of relying on outside help to get them out, they have to Win to Exit.
  • The original film was more about having to deal with each encounter as it happens, which gradually piles on throughout the movie. This film reflects video games in the increasing difficulty of each encounter as you get closer to the end. So the solution to every event in the original is just "run away", and once they regroup they just roll the dice again. The video game version relies more on strategy and teamwork, with each level getting harder than the previous one and "Bravestone" can't just One-Man Army his way to the finish. The fact that the players are also in Jumanji with video-game avatars and multiple lives also allows for sequences that are much crazier.
• Sewer Gator: A bunch of crocodiles attack the party when they try to cross a gap with a plank in an underground sewer escape level.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Bethany tells Martha she once wore a bikini to school. It got her sent to the principal's office.
• Signature Move: Spencer/Smolder performs a "Rock Bottom" slam, one of The Rock's signature wrestling moves, on one of the Faceless Goons.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Two examples in the final scenes.
  • Spencer is dressed in looser, less conservative clothes, reflecting his newfound confidence.
  • Bethany, conversely, is dressed much more modestly (compared to her midriff-baring getup earlier in the film), showing how she's learning to move beyond appearances.
• Sixth Ranger: Played with. The group of four eventually gains a fifth member in the form of Alex/Seaplane McDonough. However, he actually started playing the game twenty years before them.
• Skyward Scream: To end the game, the entire party shouts the word "Jumanji" out to the sky after placing the Jaguar's Eye back into a gargantuan jaguar statue.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Bethany gets detention for starting a video call after she finishes a quiz, in the middle of class. As the teacher points out, she may have finished, but it's rude and disruptive to the other students.
  • Martha gets annoyed when the rest of the teens decide to hook up an old game to a monitor rather than focus on their detention, especially since they were going to have to return the next day if they didn't finish cleaning out the basement. The only reason why she agrees to play the game is because Bethany mocks her.
  • Justified with the NPCs; they have to follow their programming to the letter, down to rhyming all their clues, rather than explain things better. The teens get annoyed when Nigel only repeats scripted words to them rather than answering their questions.
  • Played with. Bethany is horrified to see that her avatar, Shelly Oberon, is an overweight, middle-aged man, then asks where her phone is. While in the middle of the jungle. And despite it coming across as this trope, Bethany has a good point when she points out that she can at least use her phone to try and get help.
• The Smurfette Principle: Played with. While two of the players are female, the game only provides one female avatar while providing four male avatars.
• Snakes Are Sinister: The highly venomous black mambas are among the hazards in Jumanji.
• Soft Reboot: Beyond the "real-world" setting of the fictional Brantford, New Hampshire, and the appearance of Alan Parrish's makeshift cabin in the game world, which imply continuity with the 1995 film, the film has no connection to the first film beyond the premise of people getting trapped in Jumanji, and has an entirely new cast.
• So Last Season: When Alex finds the game in its board game form, he dismisses it, saying that nobody plays board games anymore. The game decides to up its level by transforming itself into a video game upon seeing Alex playing one.
• Solve the Soup Cans: In the market, the party must solve a riddle involving a venomous snake in a basket in order to receive clues for their quest. The correct answer was to remove the snake's fangs, which Fridge finds out by tapping into the knowledge of his player character, Mouse.
• Something Only They Would Say: Everyone is suspicious when they see each other as their avatars for the first time. In particular, Fridge can't wrap his head around Spencer's transformation into a guy with tree trunks for arms, but when Spencer freaks out at the sound of a bird as he did at the start of the film, Fridge says "Yeah, that's Spencer."
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Martha's "dance fighting" scenes are set to Big Mountain's cover of "Baby, I Love Your Way", a mellow love ballad.
• Stating the Simple Solution:
  • Spencer tries to unplug the console when it starts tossing sparks. The game turns on regardless.
  • Upon arriving in the jungle, Bethany tries to find her phone so that she can call for help or send a distress signal. Obviously, she doesn't have her phone.
  • Fridge points out how Nigel could probably just drive them to the Jaguar statue.
  • In the climax, the path to the Jaguar statue seems to be an obvious trap. Since Spencer's character is a climber, he decides to climb over the path using the trees and avoid the trap. A squirrel then scares him into falling and getting mauled by the jaguars on the path. Spencer realizes that the trees count as "out of bounds" and they need a strategy to get through the path unharmed.
• Stealth Sequel: It seems to be a Continuity Reboot, then, later on, it's revealed Alex moved into Alan Parrish's old home within the game.
• Stepford Smiler: Bethany before they get sucked in the game is putting on a show of being a savvy, sophisticated social media it girl. She made the phone call during her quiz because her boyfriend has just broken up with her. When arguing with Martha later, she reveals that she's actually feeling a lot of pain about the breakup. Martha points out that hiding all her feelings only makes her seem aloof and disinterested in others.
• The Stinger: After the credits, Jumanji's drums begin to pound again... even though the game was destroyed...
• Strong Family Resemblance: Downplayed. As seen when Bethany is driven to school by her mother, Bethany's mother looks essentially like an older version of her, as they are both blonde and have the same shape to their eyes.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Fridge explodes after eating a piece of pound cake, because cake is one of his avatar's weaknesses.
• Stumbling in the New Form: All four kids are initially uncomfortable with their avatar bodies. Bethany, as a girly-girl, is particularly freaked out about becoming male (especially when she has to pee!).
• Suddenly Always Knew That: Fridge's avatar gives him extensive zoology knowledge, which freaks him out when he starts reciting facts about the hippo that ate Bethany.
  Fridge: [speaks casually] That was a hippo. They're omnivorous. They're fast as a horse over short distances, and they have the bite force of 8100 newtons. [freaks out] How do I know this?!
• Suddenly Shouting: Fridge's line to Spencer when he points out that he doesn't have his Clarityn and he's allergic to almost everything: "Oh, no. You got allergies, Spencer, huh? I don't have the top two feet of my body!"
• Supermodel Strut: Bethany attempts to teach Martha how to strut in order to flirt with the guards. Success could be described as "mixed", at best.
• Swallowed Whole: Bethany is eaten by a hippo immediately after discovering she is in the body of an overweight middle-aged man. This doesn't stop the hippo from swallowing her whole, and she respawns a few seconds later decidedly not wanting to talk about what just happened to her.
• Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: Martha loses her first life in this fashion. It's only after the group escapes Van Pelt's goons via High-Dive Escape that she realizes she's been shot and her avatar disintegrates.
• Take Me Instead: When Van Pelt has Bethany at his mercy in the climax, Alex says these very words to Van Pelt, despite knowing full well he only has one life left. Van Pelt doesn't take the bait.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Spencer laments that his doing Fridge's homework is the worst thing that could happen to him. One press of the start button later...
  • Spencer says that it probably doesn't matter what characters they pick. They all get the ones most counterintuitive to their personalities.
  • This is basically what caused Alex to get sucked into the game himself, as his dad found the board game on the beach at the start of the film and gives it to him. Alex open the box, sees that it is a board game, and discards it, saying aloud, "Who plays board games anymore?" The sentient Jumanji transforms itself into something more "current".
  • Cake is one of Fridge's avatar's weaknesses. After accidentally eating some, he asks afterwards if he looks OK, and expresses relief that everything is fine. He then explodes and loses one of his lives seconds later.
• Thanks for the Mammary: Played with. The group realize they can access their player stats when Spencer presses his "enormous left pec". When it's Martha's turn the guys seem eager to watch her press her left breast, and Fridge even offers to do it for her. She ends up hiding the action with her arm to keep it from their sight.
• That Came Out Wrong: Martha says this when she gets in an argument with her gym teacher about how pointless gym class is. At the end of the argument, she says she doesn't want to waste her life as a gym teacher, before she remembers who she is talking to. The next we see her is in the principal's office, waiting with the other kids who got detention.
• That's What She Said: At the transportation shed, Bethany says she still can't see the jaguar statue on the map, which is weird because it's the most important thing in Jumanji, and it's huge, causing Fridge to drunkenly say, "That's what she said!" and start laughing.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Mouse shouts, "Zoology, bitch!" when he saves the group by riding in on an elephant.
• Three-Point Landing: As expected in a team that contains The Ace and an Action Girl, both Bravestone and Roundhouse deliver these a few times in the movie, usually when they land after respawning.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: This movie changes the system of Time Travel established by the original. In Jumanji, when the game ended, time completely reset back to the point the first character entered, such that in the new timeline, the characters who'd entered decades later had no memory of the original timeline. They didn't remember having played the game or meeting the other characters at all. In this movie, when the game ends, the first character again goes back to his original entry point, but now the later-entering characters have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, so that they still retain knowledge of the game and the first character. This could actually be because of the evolving form of Jumanji — board games are always swept clean to be reset and re-played, but video games have save points.
• Toilet Humour: Bethany, in Shelly Oberon's body, played by Jack Black, has to be taught how to pee as a man, and loudly voices how awesome it is to have a penis.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • Jumanji is a lot more generous as a video game than it was as a board game. The board game version actually seems far more vindictively sadistic and cruel, and seems to be actively trying to prevent the players from ending the game. The video game Jumanji, while occasionally feeling like a troll, gives all the players additional skills and multiple lives, generates NPCs that give hints, and the hazards the player must overcome are within the realm of what one would expect from a linear RPG. Jumanji may simply be limited by its chosen medium, but it's noteworthy either way.
  • Also applies to Fridge and Bethany. At the beginning of the movie, they're portrayed as a fairly standard Jerk Jock and Alpha Bitch, respectively; but they learn the errors of their ways throughout the course of the game, and become close friends with the others by the end.
• Too Proud for Lowly Work: Bethany refuses to help the others remove the magazine staples in detention because, in her own words, she’s “too pretty”. She’s more concerned with the lack of reception on her phone because Beauty Breeds Laziness.
• Totally Radical: Alex's use of outdated slang as well as referencing Cindy Crawford quickly clues the party in that he is Alex Vreeke, the boy who went missing in 1996.
• Trailers Always Lie:
  • A few of the more memorable lines from the trailer aren't actually in the film. Also, the character select screen that appears in the trailer is different from the one used in the actual film — notably, Finbar's nickname really is listed as "Moose" in the trailer version, whereas in the film it says "Mouse" and Fridge just misread it.
  • Alex is digitally inserted into a few shots that occur earlier than his introduction allows for, presumably to get Nick Jonas some more exposure.
• Tranquil Fury: Fridge and Spencer when Spencer respawns after Fridge pushes him off a cliff. Fridge tells Spencer not to call him a dumbass, to which Spencer tells Fridge not to push him, as he can and will push back.
• Trapped in Another World: Unlike the first film, which did pull people into the game, but only if they landed on a certain square; otherwise, the game would spew out dangers with each turn. This movie instantly has the characters sucked into the Jumanji world once they start the game. It could also be considered a version of Trapped in TV Land.
• Troperiffic: The movie bathes in using archetypes portrayed in genres ranging from from high-school stories to action video games, with its characters squarely fitting into well-established roles (such as Ruby Roundhouse being an Action Girl and Bravestone being The Ace) as well as the extensive use of video game mechanics such as Welcome to Corneria, Poison Mushroom, Solve the Soup Cans, Video-Game Lives, and character status screens, among others.
• True Companions: In-Universe. In Jumanji's backstory, Dr. Bravestone saved Mouse Finbar from a warlord in the Peruvian jungle, and the two have been inseparable ever since.
• Twice Shy: Spencer and Martha have an unspoken attraction for each other even before the fateful detention and are completely unaware of the other's affections.
• Two-Fisted Tales: The in-game story is one. Extraordinary super strength from the adventurous, muscular protagonist, Ace Pilots, exotic locations, ancient ruins, mystical treasures, it's all there.
• Two Girls to a Team: Averted in the game — Ruby Roundhouse is the only female PC — but played straight with the students, as Bethany is a teenage girl even when she's in Shelly's adult male body.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The helicopter sequence. Every level prior was basically a Beat 'em Up Escort Mission, with the fighters protecting the support. Then a one-in-a-million shot damages the rotors, keeping the chopper from flying more than a few feet above the ground, so they have to maneuver around obstacles they can't go over until Bravestone makes repairs; a Vertical Scrolling Shooter. There's even an Advancing Wall of Doom in the form of stampeding rhinos, and the canyon they're trapped in keeps them from escaping left or right.
• The Unreveal:
  • Alex tells the others that mosquitoes is one of his weaknesses, implying he has more than one, but we don't find out what they are.
  • The missing piece of the map is never found either.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Alex is nowhere near as freaked out as you'd expect when a board game magically transforms itself into a video game overnight.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Alex's father is unknowingly responsible for Alex becoming trapped in Jumanji, as he brought his son home the game from where he found it on the beach, and Alex dismissed it because it was a board game, causing it to turn into a video game cartridge and entrap him when he decided to play it.
• Video Credits: In a way — all the main actors and one secondary are shown next to icons representing the characters (the squirrel that scares Spencer, the hippo and snake that kill Shelly and Ruby, a mouse that is Fridge's nickname, the helicopter Alex flies, the scorpion that is Van Pelt's symbol, and a jeep next to Nigel).
• Video-Game Lives: Jumanji is a video game now, so each character gets three, symbolized by three tally marks tattooed on the inside of their left wrists. The players aren't sure what'll happen if they hit zero, but given the possibilites, they don't want to find out. They are apparently transferrable between party members, used when Bethany uses one of her lives to resurrect Alex after he dies due to a mosquito bite.
• Vile Vulture: Van Pelt has a pet vulture that acts as his scout.
• Violation of Common Sense: Ruby sacrifices her own life since she has one to spare, because resurrected players always fall from the sky, and because they never lose items when they die.
• Voices Are Not Mental: When the heroes are transformed into their avatars, their voices change to that of their avatars.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Jumanji board game transforms into a video game upon being rejected by Alex, in order to draw him in.
• Water Is Dry: After the obligatory jump down a waterfall into a pool below and swimming out, the protagonists are completely dry only a couple scenes later, including their precious paper map. Certainly justified by the video-game environment.
• The Watson: Fridge, Martha, and Bethany don't know much about video games, allowing Spencer to explain various game mechanics to them and, by proxy, audience members unversed in video games.
• We Are Not Going Through That Again: At the end, the kids suddenly hear Jumanji's drums again. Smash Cut to them crushing the console with a bowling ball.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Fridge and Alex's avatars have some ridiculously fatal ones. Fridge's avatar explodes from eating cake, and Alex's avatar can be felled by a single mosquito bite.
• Welcome to Corneria: The party quickly realizes that since the people in the Jumanji game are non-player characters, they only say lines that the game designed them to say.
  • Nigel, the off-road vehicle driver at the very beginning, repeats his initial lines several times when the party members try to ask him questions.
  • The cake salesman constantly shouts "Rations! Get your rations!"
  • The boy at the market that directs Bravestone to the snake room.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • In-Universe, Smolder Bravestone and Russell Van Pelt used to be partners before Van Pelt became obsessed with finding the jewel and stealing it from the Jaguar's Eye.
  • Spencer and Fridge too. They knew each other since the seventh grade, but then Fridge started using Spencer for his own ends because he felt he couldn't do his own homework, resulting in the two drifting apart (to the point that, in the game, each of them costs the other one of his lives). Unlike with Bravestone and Van Pelt, though, their friendship is rekindled through the Character Development of both of them.
• Wham Line:
  • An in-universe one for Alex, when the teens reveal to him he's been trapped in the game for not a few months, but twenty years. Cue a silent but obvious breakdown as he takes it in.
  • "Alan Parrish was here."
  • One from Spencer/Bravestone when faced with Van Pelt.
    Spencer: I can't give you the jewel! ...Because I don't have it!
  • Said by Bethany: "Where's Alex?"
• What a Drag: In the final level, Martha is fighting off the henchmen before she ends up being caught behind of their motorbikes by her ankle and dragged along the path, unable to free herself. Spencer saves Martha by whacking the henchman in the face with a tree branch, causing the bike to crash and allowing Martha to untangle her leg.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • The teachers and principal have a very good reason to be angry with the kids for their insolence or breaking school rules. Fridge gets the worst of it since he was coercing his childhood friend to do his homework, and he gets kicked off the football team.
  • The team gets mad at Fridge for pushing Spencer off a cliff and wasting one of his lives. Spencer calls him out for it after he respawns, and later on has to sacrifice one of Fridge's lives to retrieve the jewel.
  • Bethany calls out Martha for always judging her when Bethany has just undergone a breakup and was sucked into a video game where she just died. They then analyze each other's flaws, and Bethany tells her, "You're a total babe. Own it."
  • Alex gives one to himself for hiding in the jungle and being afraid to finish. Bethany comforts him.
• What Year Is This?: Played with, when the others ask Alex what year he thinks it is. It turns out he believes it's still 1996, and he's horrified when he learns he's been trapped in the game for over 20 years. Then it turns out that it's a little more complicated than that. Jumanji always ejects the players at pretty much the exact time they started the game, so he really didn't lose a second of his life despite however long he was actually there.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Part of the "Freaky Friday" Flip. Awkward nerds Spencer and Martha turn into smoking hot ass-kickers, while popular leaders Fridge and Bethany turn into the support crew. Downplayed in that Spencer and Martha initially freak out about this, and Martha's No Social Skills aren't erased. Fridge tries to assert his authority over Spencer, only for the Jack of All Stats to take the slap without flinching, then punches Fridge off his feet and into a wall without even trying.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Jumanji finds some very creative ways to confront the players with their specific weaknesses.
  • Fridge's weakness to cake comes into play when the very first food item he eats in the bazaar happens to be pound cake. He then explodes!
  • Alex's weakness is getting bit by mosquitoes. Too bad he's stuck in a tropical jungle infested with them.
  • And then played literally when Martha, who is weak to venom, has to enter a pit full of snakes to retrieve the jewel.
• A Winner Is You: On completion of the Jumanji game, you get a thanks and a handshake.
• Win to Exit: Four teens are sucked into a video game version of Jumanji, and have to complete the game in order to get out.
• A Wizard Did It: A lot of nonsensical elements in the movie can be justified with "they're in an old-school video game".
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Since he has an army, and more firepower, you'd expect Van Pelt could just kill the kids and take the jewel from their corpses whenever he corners them. But the game rules seem to dictate that he must take the jewel from the players while they live.
• The Worm That Walks: Russel Van Pelt seems to have become this as a result of removing the Jaguar's Eye. Multiple scenes have insects and arachnids either entering or exiting his body. When the players clear the game, his human body evaporates in the purifying wave, leaving behind a pile of bugs and vermin that scatter in the aftermath.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Spencer realizes that the straightforward path to the Jaguar statue is a trap, so he interprets the clue "when you see the elephant, start the climb" to mean that they should start climbing out of bounds upon seeing an elephant statue. He gets scared by a squirrel and falls out of the tree, where a jaguar promptly kills him.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • Played straight when the group make it out of the canyon unscathed, but Fridge accidentally drops the jewel out of the helicopter and loses his second life in a Heroic Sacrifice so Spencer can retrieve it.
  • Subverted later when Alex says how big a deal it is for him to finally make it through the canyon, only for a mosquito to bite him and almost die from it. Luckily, Bethany saves him by giving him her second life.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: Alex thinks he's been in the game for a few months. When the teens realize this, they break it to him that it's been twenty years. While technically true, Alex gets ejected exactly when he started playing it, meaning he likely didn't even lose those few months he thought he did.
• You All Look Familiar: Some of the enemies look very similar to each other to represent cut-and-pasted assets in the game. In particular, the guards at the transportation shack differ only by their beards.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • The principal gives this speech to the teens, telling them that they're not bad kids despite their misconduct, before taking them down to the basement to clean it out.
  • Bethany tells Martha that she shouldn't be ashamed of her looks and she should own them.
  • Before the climax, Spencer tells Fridge that he doesn't feel he can finish the game, because he only has one life left. Fridge gives him a speech to the effect of this trope to inspire him.
• You Have Failed Me: Van Pelt kills one of his underlings when the heroes escape into a sewer. With a scorpion stored in his mouth, no less.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
  • Bethany's teacher has this reaction when the teen made a video call during a quiz.
  • Fridge when he sees the strengths and weaknesses screen for his avatar.
  • Bethany says this word-for-word during the second level when trying to outrun the biker gang and she and Martha end up at the edge of a cliff. They all have to perform a High-Dive Escape to get away, though Martha is shot and loses her first life.
• Your Head Asplode: Mouse's whole body explodes after he eats cake.
• You're Insane!: Bethany shouts "Are you out of your mind?" when Martha shouts at the others to jump off the cliff to escape the motorcycle goons.

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♫ Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games
We got everything you want, honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey, we got your disease... ♫

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