Film / Riddick

Riddick is a Sci-Fi action film in The Chronicles of Riddick series, released in September 2013.

Following the events of The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), perennial badass Riddick has been betrayed by the Necromongers and left for dead on a desolate, arid planet covered in deadly monsters. His only apparent way off is to activate a beacon that will draw mercenaries to him like vultures to a corpse.

One ship brings a more lethal and violent type of mercenary, while the other brings a man whose hunt for Riddick is more personal than claiming a bounty. Oh, and a deadly storm is coming that will annihilate them all if they don't get off-world.

The film stars Vin Diesel as Riddick, Katee Sackhoff as mercenary Dahl, Batista as mercenary Diaz and Karl Urban in flashback as Necromonger commander Vaako.

Watch the first trailer here and the second trailer here.

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This film provides examples of:

• Acquired Poison Immunity: Riddick has to get through a narrow pass to get out of the desert into the fertile grasslands beyond. The pass houses a muddy pool with a poisonous scorpion creature that paralyzes its prey. He captures a younger, smaller creature, and extracts the poison. He tests it on a young desert dog first, then injects himself with small doses until he's built up an immunity.
• Action Girl: Dahl is a seasoned mercenary and sniper, and beats up an attempted rapist.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Riddick's alien animal isn't (quite) a dog, but everyone calls it that. It acts very dog-like by playing fetch, "pointing" at hazards like a hunting dog, and attacking Riddick's enemies. Justified from showing that these animals do have pack-like (as in, wolf) behavior early in the film. The creature actually resembles a hyena or African Wild Dog, which are both pack hunters and capable of being domesticated.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Riddick slays the scorpion creature in the mud pool, only for a much bigger stinger to rise out of the mud.
• Ambiguously Bi: Dahl insists she doesn't "fuck guys," but later flirts with Riddick. To be fair to Dahl, her assertion that she doesn’t fuck guys was directed at the lecherous Jerkass Santana, so it’s possible she was just being facetious.
• And the Adventure Continues: At the end, Riddick gives one last goodbye to the surviving mercs, gets a ship from them and plans to head to Furya. In the director's cut, Riddick returns to the Necromongers, kills Krone in revenge and discovers Vaako did not betray him after all. The film then ends with Vaako apparently now in the Underverse, and Riddick seemingly preparing to journey there to find Vaako and the way to Furya.
• Anti-Villain: Boss Johns is after Riddick, but his grudge is quite personal, since he wants to know what happened to his son on M6-117 and if Riddick killed him. He also views Riddick as a dangerous, murdering savage. After learning that his son was a murderous junkie, he keeps his promise to Riddick and they leave on good terms.
• Armor Is Useless: Riddick's knives cut through Necromonger armor like tissue paper. Most of the mercs also ditch their armor for most of the film. The only armor that seems to work at all are Riddick's vambraces.
• Asshole Victim: Santana acts like such a stupid, malicious asshole throughout the film that he had his ironic death coming to him, and none of the characters mourn him. Lampshaded with a Visual Gag when Santana's head falls off his shoulders to reveal the words FAIR TRADE, written by Riddick on the locker he was laying against in Santana's own blood, into the box he intended to store Riddick's head in, with the very blade he attempted to kill Riddick with - all just as Riddick promised would happen.
• Attempted Rape: Santana tries to rape Dahl after acting like a lecherous scumbag towards her earlier. She beats him up and paints the room with his blood.
• Autocannibalism: Riddick guts a large scorpion-creature. It looks like it's going to stagger after him regardless, but decides to just eat its spilled entrails instead. Even Riddick is disgusted.
• Avenging the Villain: Mercenary Boss Johns wants to avenge the death of his son in Pitch Black at Riddick's hands rather than collect Riddick's bounty. After Riddick saves his life and tells him how much of a scumbag his son was, Boss Johns rescues Riddick from the monsters in turn and honors their earlier arrangement.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: At the start, Riddick is crowned as the new Lord Marshal by the Necromongers after he killed Zhylaw. The Necromonger host bows down in the throne room after Riddick is fitted with his new suit of armor.
• Back-to-Back Badasses:
  • Two of Santana's mercs try this against Riddick. It fails, as Riddick is able to kill one and get away without the other noticing.
  • Later, Boss Johns and Riddick do it with far more success against the monster hordes.
• Badass Boast:
  • Riddick is becoming somewhat of a specialist in this, frequently announcing up front who he's going to kill and how.
  • Santana when he first lands on the planet, shouting to a hiding Riddick that he's going to put his head in a box. He ends up regretting this.
• Badass Decay: In-Universe. Riddick believes this is what happened to him once he became Lord Marshal of the Necromongers.
  Riddick: Somewhere along the way I lost a step, got sloppy, dulled my own edge. Maybe I went and did the worst crime of all. I got civilized.
• Bait-and-Switch: Several of these.
  • Santana warns a merc not to touch the Schmuck Bait. It turns out to be a harmless piece of metal — then the merc takes a few steps and treads on the Bear Trap. Two of them.
  • There's a big deal about the lock on the power nodes being booby-trapped. Turns out Riddick hasn't touched it; it's just a Batman Gambit to make them take off the explosive lock so he can get at them.
  • Riddick predicts that Boss Johns will betray him. However Johns looks like he's going to pick up a wounded Riddick and carry him, but he just turns him over and takes his power node, running back to the gunship. Then John comes through after all.
• Batman Gambit: Riddick sets one up by painting the words "Fair Trade" on a locker holding the power nodes for both merc ships. The mercs assume that Riddick somehow broke in to the locker and stole them, so he could trade one for a ship of his own to leave the planet. They open the locker and find the nodes still in there, but leave the locker open. This is exactly what Riddick hoped they'd do, as it allowed him to sneak in and steal the nodes.
• Bear Trap: The merc station has six massive bear traps (about three times the size of an average one) which Riddick leaves buried to thin out Santana's men. Two of the traps get one merc, so they sweep the area and collect the remaining four.
• Bed Full of Women: After Riddick has been crowned the new Lord Marshal of the Necromongers, he's seen lounging in the Marshal's private quarters where there's a bed full of royal consorts.
• Beef Gate: The pool where Riddick meets the first monsters. He has to acquire an immunity to their paralyzing poison bites before he has any hope of beating the predator.
• Benevolent Boss: Johns is a capable, relaxed leader. Contrast Santana.
• Bilingual Backfire: Santana tries to insult Dahl in Spanish. She immediately beats his face in when she hears it.
• Bizarre Alien Locomotion: During the scene where Boss Johns and Riddick are fighting off a horde of Fearsome Critters, one of them rolls towards Riddick like a hoop snake before unraveling to attack.
• Black Comedy Rape: A rare male against female example. Santana tries to rape Dahl, but it's later shown that she easily kicked his ass. It's treated as a lighthearted nuisance rather than a supreme act of evil because she's stronger than him.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Whereas The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) was pared down to a PG-13 rating for its theatrical version, this film goes the opposite way, with several extremely-gory shots (including half of a man's head being decapitated in full detail), full-frontal female nudity and constant profanity.
• Booby Trap: Santana rigs up an explosive charge to the locker with the power nodes so Riddick can't just steal them.
• Brick Joke:
  • Remember how one of the mercs mentioned that it's "four-men hunt" job? Count how many people leave the planet.
  • Riddick gives Santana five seconds once they throw down. Dahl repeats this after Riddick kills him ridiculously fast.
• Bring It: Riddick tries this on the Necromonger officer trying to kill him. Instead, he grabs a couple of gravity rifles and collapses the entire cliff edge Riddick is using for cover.
• Bring My Brown Pants: One of the mercs mention that he "dropped some mud."
• Broken Pedestal: Riddick forces Boss Johns to accept that his son was an immoral junkie.
• Bullying a Dragon: Santana and most of his men are pretty cocky towards Riddick, thinking he'll be easy prey for them. He even announces that he's going to put Riddick's head in a box, prompting the latter to nickname him "box boy" later on.
• Butch Lesbian: Dahl, who also mixes this trope with Lipstick Lesbian.
• Call-Back:
  • When the scorpions wake up due to the rainstorm, Riddick says to the other mercenaries, "Like I said, it ain't me you gotta worry about now," echoing the words he said in Pitch Black.
  • When the emergency transponder scans Riddick, the readout indicates that the bounty on him is worth twice as much if he's dead, whereas in Pitch Black, it is explained that the bounty is worth twice as much if he's alive. Also qualifies as a Brick Joke.
  • In the same sequence, the readout identifies him as "Richard B. Riddick: Escaped Convict; Murderer", which is how he personally introduces himself in Pitch Black.
  • A mercenary claims that "It should've been a four-man hunt, tops" for Riddick, an idea that Riddick found insulting in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004).
  • Dahl finds that the morphine was taken from the merc station and notes that it's usually the first thing to go. One of the first things Johns did in Pitch Black after the crash was take the morphine supplies from the Hunter-Gratzner.
  • The scene showing Riddick hiding in plain sight on top of one of the mercenary ships echoes a similar scene in Pitch Black where Riddick is seen sitting in the distance on one of the survivors' chairs while they are preoccupied.
  • Riddick gets knocked unconscious by a rifle butt to the face, in a sequence very similar to Pitch Black. When he wakes up, he's chained up in a very similar manner to how he was shackled in Pitch Black.
  • Riddick reaching out for a female character while she's unaware of him, then, instead of hurting her, stealing a personal item and slipping off unnoticed. In Pitch Black he takes a lock of hair, in this case he takes her makeup case (to make use of the mirror).
• Continuity Cameo: Karl Urban's appears as Lord Vaako for about two minutes in a flashback. Much of his part, such as it was, was left on the cutting room floor and is restored in the Director's Cut.
• Canine Companion: The desert dog cub who escapes from his pen is rescued by Riddick during his second encounter with the poisonous scorpion in the water, and matures to be a smart companion for Riddick.
• Cardboard Prison: Apparently, Riddick's penchant for escape is so well known that the bounty on his head now pays more dead than alive. Even Riddick is a little surprised when he learns this.
• Cat Scare: In-Universe with Why Didn't I Think of That? when one of the mercs deliberately makes a loud noise when Santana is opening a possibly booby-trapped door.
• Chainsaw-Grip BFG: Seen in the heavy stun-guns carried by the second merc crew.
• Character Title: Riddick
• Chekhov's Skill: Riddick chose the long and painful road to Acquired Poison Immunity instead of just climbing past the pool. He needs that venom resistance when the monsters are everywhere. He also becomes virtually immune to horse tranq darts, needing to be shot four times before he stays down.
• Chiaroscuro: Much like Pitch Black, the last third of the film becomes this after the rainstorm begins, featuring scenes like Riddick partly covered in shadow while chained up, Boss Johns and Riddick fighting the serpents in the darkness, and the flashes of lightning that reveal the hordes of scorpions attacking.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Santana and most of his men are untrustworthy, and constantly try to backstab both Riddick and Johns when they attempt to do things such as recovering the nodes.
• Combat Pragmatist: Krone, who instead of closing up to Riddick who still has a knife, decides to shoot the cliff they are on so it will collapse and hopefully kill Riddick that way.
• Continuity Nod: When the Necromonger captain tries to kill Riddick, he screams, "You keep what you kill", a common mantra of the Necromongers and constantly mentioned in the previous film.
• Cool Bike: The mercenaries' hoverbikes.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: The mercenary crews discover that Riddick had apparently stolen one of the ship's warp cores, as the locker it was placed in has the words "FAIR TRADE" scrawled in blood on it. It turns out that this is just a ploy by Riddick for Santana to open the locker.
• Dead Guy on Display: Riddick hangs up Falco in his cave lair, dressed as himself, as a diversion.
• Deadly Bath: Dahl takes a sink bath while topless and gets stalked, slasher-movie style, by both Riddick and Santana.
• Dead Man's Trigger Finger: Riddick forms an Enemy Mine alliance with two Bounty Hunters, Boss Johns and Diaz, riding on their hoverbikes to retrieve the power cells for the spacecraft that can take them off the planet. But once they've done so, Diaz knocks out Boss John and tries to kill Riddick, only to get a blade in the face. His pistol continues to fire, shooting up one of the hoverbikes. Boss John informs Riddick he's no intention of riding with him now that they've got the nodes... until Riddick points out that Diaz sabotaged John's hoverbike first, intending to abandon him out there. So they both have to fight their way on foot past hordes of lethal alien creatures.
• Deadpan Snarker: Riddick sometimes says these to the others, such as when Johns tells him he's not getting any weapons while retrieving the nodes. Later Riddick just watches as he shoots some creatures after his bike crashes. While Johns is angry about it, Riddick states he would've covered him, but didn't have a weapon to do it with.
• Death Mountain: Riddick ends up on a rocky spire, fighting off a horde of creatures with his bare hands.
• Death of a Child: If you count Riddick's dog that Santana kills.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: Riddick beats the first scorpion creature by goading it into biting his leg then decapitating it.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: Dahl's sniper rifle comes with optional "Barium Shells" for long-range radioactive target tracking, "Stab Shock", and "Explosive Tip" rounds. When Lockspur asks which one she wants to knock out Riddick, she asks for the Horse Tranq rounds. Even then it takes several to take him down.
• Disposable Woman: Upon landing on the planet, Santana orders a female bounty (who is implied to have been used as a sex slave by the crew) to be let loose, because she is using too much cargo weight and Riddick is worth more than her. As she runs away, Santana casually shoots her in the back, leaving her to bleed out and die in front of a hidden Riddick.
• Distress Call: With no other means to escape the planet with a deadly storm approaching, Riddick deliberately scans himself in the outpost, which recognizes him and alerts nearby mercenaries to his presence. He manages to attract two groups of them.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Santana is shouting to Riddick that he's going to put his head in a box. One merc thinks he's overdoing the Badass Boast.
  "Got to bait the trap a little."
  "Well, no need to aggravate Riddick anything more than, you know..."
  "Anything more than bringing his head in a box would?"
• The Dreaded: Riddick, to all the mercs who aren't complete idiots.
• Dwindling Party: Lampshaded by Riddick when he's trying to strike a bargain with the mercs.
  Riddick: Three down. Six down. Nine down. You get where I'm going with this.
• Enemy Mine: The mercenaries are left with no choice but to work with Riddick in order to survive on the planet. Though it takes two of the men getting killed by some hostile creatures, and another one by Riddick before they wise up to him telling them he's not what they should be worried about.
  Diaz: Yeah, let's cut him loose.
• Establishing Character Moment: Right after landing, Santana tells Luna to let loose their female prisoner, on the rationale that they'll be running heavy with both her and Riddick. Then he shoots her in the back, explaining that he was growing attached to her. To rub salt in the wound, moments later it's shown that he only intends to take Riddick's head as proof of the bounty, meaning his original reasoning was just to trick Luna.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The father of Johns from the first movie comes looking for Riddick, wanting answers and revenge.
• Even the Rats Won't Touch It: The MRE Riddick finds at the mercenary base, see below.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Riddick's "dog" is disturbed at the approach of rain. Riddick tells it there's nothing to worry about, goes to pet it...then realises from its tense body that he'd better start worrying.
• Evil Laugh: Riddick comes up with one; even though he's chained up, everyone is rightly freaked out.
• Exact Words: Riddick tells Santana that when his chains come off, he's going to kill him within five seconds, using that machete the latter is holding. And he ends up doing exactly that. Made more unbelievable by the fact that he only uses his one free leg to do it with.
• Excrement Statement: When Riddick tries to feed a disgusting MRE that smells awful to his pet dog, the dog responds by peeing on it.
• Expy Coexistence: The Mud Demons bear a strong resemblance to the Xenos from Escape from Butcher Bay.
• Extended Disarming: A different version of this trope when the mercenaries walk towards Riddick for a pow-wow, with all sides tossing aside their weapons as they do so.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: The mud-scorpions have large black eyes on their pincer-tails, allowing them to aim their attacks while the rest of them is submerged, and giving these appendages a disturbingly skull-like appearance.
• False Reassurance: When Santana is fretting over the bomb code having possibly been changed, he asks Diaz for his opinion. Diaz insists he's good... while slowly backing away.
• Fanservice: There's various amounts of nudity in the film. The Lord Marshal's consorts are naked in bed, mercenary Dahl (Katee Sackhoff) is topless when she washes herself, and Riddick himself has a Shirtless Scene when he's looking at the planet's moon in the buff.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In a flashback near the beginning of the film, Vaako describes the Necromongers' conquest of the Furyans, and recalls that individual warriors often managed to kill dozens (if not hundreds) of Necromongers, even when reduced to fighting without weaponry, and battled upon mountains of bodies before they finally fell to the overwhelming numbers of the horde. Come the climax, we find Riddick fending off an endless succession of scorpion monsters atop a mountain with nothing but his bare hands, in what seems to be a Last Stand... until he's unexpectedly rescued.
  • When Riddick brings up the topic of his bounty, Diaz knows exactly how much he's worth (from memory) and says the number almost as if he were in awe. Later, he gets greedy and tries to murder Johns and Riddick when their backs are turned (and was going to try to kill the others, too) so he can have the bounty all to himself.
  • Riddick claims that Johns will fold like his son and leave him to die the moment he gets the chance. He's wrong.
• A Friend in Need: As in previous movies, Riddick responds instantly when his friends (or pets) are in danger. As in previous movies, all he gets for this is to watch them die.
  • No Riddick, Johns isn't about to leave you to die.
• Genius Bruiser:
  • As always, Riddick is by far the most cunning character in the film. He's also the toughest.
  • Vargas looks just as tough as the rest of the bounty hunters, but also knows a lot about thermodynamics and such, lecturing the rest on how ships need their own power nodes.
• Genre Blind: Falco deems an 11-man crew overkill for Riddick, claiming he's "just one man". He's considered an idiot for it, and predictably dies.
• Ghost Planet: Played with. At first, this seems to be the case, with Riddick finding nothing but dangerous creatures. Then he gets to the valley and his dog finds a golf ball, from which he discovers that there's a merc outpost on the otherwise empty world.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Near the end of the film Riddick attempts to do this to the creatures pursuing him after he loses his spear. It doesn't work as well as well for obvious reasons, and he's soon nearly overpowered by a big creature.
• Gunship Rescue: Just as Riddick is about to be overpowered by the creatures, Johns arrives in his ship and blasts them all.
• Hate Sink: Santana is a mean-spirited, sexist moron, killer, and would-be rapist who Riddick and the others all (appropriately) treat as a low-rent hack. He exists to be hated by the audience so that we're pleased when Riddick humiliatingly and awesomely kills him at the movie's midpoint. Nobody even mentions him after this.
• A Head at Each End: More like part of a head at each end: the scorpion-creatures have eyes on their pincer-tails, but fang-filled jaws in their actual heads.
• Heal It With Fire: Riddick heals a stab wound to the chest with a volcanic rock.
• Here We Go Again!: Upon landing on the desolate planet, all Riddick can say is:
  Riddick: Don't know how many times I've been crossed off the list and left for dead. Guess when it first happens the day you were born, you kinda lose count. So this. This ain't nothing new.
• Hero Antagonist: Boss Johns, unlike Santana, is a pretty chill, levelheaded guy who is good to his crew. He's not hunting Riddick for the (substantial) bounty, but rather wants to hold Riddick accountable for the death of his son, but eventually comes to realize what kind of man his son really was and that Riddick wasting him was justified if not outright deserved. Riddick, who otherwise proves calculating and savvy throughout the film, actually pegs Johns wrong when he thinks he'll betray him in the end, as unlike Diaz, not only does he stick with Riddick the whole way through, he saves Riddick and refuses to leave him behind when he otherwise could have when he had no real reason to do so, and Riddick and he ultimately part on good terms.
• Hot Consort: The Lord Marshal has multiple gorgeous consorts who may or may not be his spouses, falling somewhere between polygamy and concubines.
• Hotter and Sexier: There's more nudity than in previous installments, including from Riddick himself.
• A House Divided: While the two mercenary groups aren't exactly friends, Riddick manages to sow the seeds of mistrust between them after writing "fair trade" on the locker where the mercs were keeping their ship's node. Johns suspects Riddick may have managed to get the key from Santana, took a node, and rigged it with a new combination. Santana doesn't believe them, but then tries to force Dahl to open it instead, causing both groups to draw their weapons on each other.
• Idiot Ball: Riddick pulls a gambit to get the mercs to open the locker containing the nodes, making them think he already has so they'll disarm the bomb. While this gambit works, it really shouldn't have. If they were smart, the mercs would have immediately put the bomb back on, as they had just proven Riddick hadn't managed to disarm it. As best, Riddick might have learned the combination from his perch on the roof window, but he'd still need to get the key and disarm the bomb unseen.
• I Gave My Word: Johns returns to save Riddick from the creatures after retrieving the power cell, much to his surprise.
• Incompatible Orientation: Dahl professes to be a lesbian, though it might just be to get Santana to drop his advances. Santana ignores her and continues to act like a lech, ending with a rape attempt compounded with the words "You know Dahl, we do have one thing in common. I don't fuck guys either."
• In-Series Nickname: Santana dubs the leader of the rival mercenary team "Too Late" because he was second to land (and therefore has no claim on Riddick's bounty). The nickname also averts any Walking Spoiler reveal. Riddick dubs Santana "Box Boy" (see Badass Boast).
• In the Blood: Riddick mentions this about Boss Johns, saying they will see if he is as much of coward as his son was. He's not.
• Ironic Echo: Riddick jokingly asking Dahl to straddle him before Santana attempts to decapitate him is later played seriously when she straddles him during the extraction from the cliff at the end of the film.
• Jerkass: Santana proves himself to be a stupid, stubborn tool throughout the film. He releases and then shoots a female prisoner just because she's dead weight. He's rude to Boss Johns and his team, tries to rape Dahl, and refuses any help or advice until he's forced to because of his own ineptitude and malicious stupidity. Not even his own men like him all that much. Oh, and he kills Riddick's dog.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Santana rightly points out that, however improbably good Riddick is, it's still rather unlikely that Riddick could have stolen his bomb key from around his neck, disarmed the bomb, stolen the nodes, put back and rearmed the bomb, then returned the key, all without once being noticed. The seeds of doubt are still planted, though, so he ends up playing into Riddick's gambit anyway.
• Jump Scare: Moss does it when Santana is attempting to open the locker, by slamming his hand down on the table nearby as the latter nervously tries to use his key on the lock.
• Just in Time: Boss Johns and the rest of the mercenaries show up to blow away the attacking scorpions just as Riddick is about to be overrun near the end of the film.
• Karmic Death: Santana boasts that he's come to collect Riddick's head in a box to get the bounty on his head. He ends up getting killed by Riddick in the same way due to killing Riddick's pet dog.
• Kick the Dog: Santana releases a female prisoner because she's too much cargo weight for his spaceship and not worth enough. When she runs away, he callously shoots her in the back. Ostensibly he does this to save weight, but as Santana was only planning to take back Riddick's head, it's clear he does this For the Evulz.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Luna, Dahl, and Johns all prove themselves to be pretty decent people, and survive with Riddick to the end of the movie. Santana and Diaz are scumbags, and so they die horribly (at Riddick's hands).
• The Last Man Heard a Knock...: Alone on the planet with only his Loyal Animal Companion for company, Riddick sees his "dog" chewing on something. It's a golf ball.
• Left for Dead: The Necromonger who collapses the edge of the cliff with Riddick on it leaves without making sure the latter is truly dead. Lampshaded later on by Riddick himself (as seen above).
• The Load: Santana, the leader of the first mercenary group, can be counted on to always make the wrong decision in every situation.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: Including a bible.
• Lonely at the Top: Riddick as Lord Marshall — he's under constant threat of assassination because he won't accept their fate, yet worries that Better Living Through Evil will make him soft.
• Machete Mayhem: Santana is carrying a shiny machete that he plans to decapitate Riddick with. Riddick ends up using it on him in that exact way, using only his foot to balance and throw it.
• Made of Iron: Riddick, of course. In the first half-hour of the film, he survives falling off a cliff, pulls himself to a pool of water with a broken leg, resets said leg (and then welds a makeshift brace to it by putting screws into his own leg), gets into several fights with desert dogs and scorpions and gives himself an immunity to the latter's poison.
• Major Injury Underreaction: In the director's cut, one of Riddick's Necromonger consorts tries to kill him by stabbing him in the heart through the back (between the fourth and fifth rib). He just takes the knife out, catches her, calmly explains to her that she stabbed between the fifth and sixth rib instead, hitting a body cavity, and then he kills her and sits on his throne to eat some fruit with that same blade.
• Malicious Misnaming:
  • How Santana expresses his disdain for Johns
    Johns: My name is...
    Santana: Too Late. Your name's Too Late.
  • Bites him in the ass later:
    Santana: My name is...
    Riddick: Box Boy.
• Master of Your Domain: When the des'rt dogs pursue the wounded Riddick, he hides underwater in a pool of poisonous water. He slows down his own heartbeat to calm down and go unnoticed.
• Mook Horror Show: The second act is focused on the mercenaries trying to capture Riddick, with Riddick essentially taking the role of the murderer in a horror film.
• Mythology Gag: As mentioned above, the Mud Demons look almost identical to the Xenos from Escape from Butcher Bay, since they are both carnivorous, two-legged, scorpion-like aliens.
• Never Found the Body: During Riddick's first assault, two mercs are killed and a third goes missing. In this case, the mercs are smart enough to know this means the third is dead, as Riddick isn't one to take hostages.
• Nice Guy: Luna couldn't be more out of place in this setting if he tried. Johns is a less blatant example.
• No-Sell: Riddick has no reaction at all when one of his concubines stabs him with a rather large knife. He instead corrects her on the fine art of getting between the right ribs.
• Off-the-Shelf FX: The flightstick for one of the ships is clearly a Saitek X52 Joystick.
• Off with His Head!:
  • Santana threatens to do this to Riddick. It happens to him instead, or the top half of his head anyway.
  • Riddick does this to various creatures with an improvised spear.
  • Krone does this to a Necromonger mook with a gravity gun.
• One-Man Army: Riddick himself naturally. It seems to be In the Blood, as Vaako mentions that when they wiped out the Furyian race each one managed to take out roughly 130 of the necromongers, some while unarmed.
• Only a Flesh Wound: One of the scorpions literally shrugs off being disemboweled by Riddick.
• Percussive Maintenance: When Johns pulls out a fold-up mapping device, he has to flick one of the panels a couple times to get it to load properly.
• Pet the Dog: Riddick finds an abandoned desert dog pup, and keeps and cares for him so he can test the scorpion venom on him. When the dog breaks free and follows Riddick, he keeps the growing creature as a pet and shares his food with him.
• Precious Puppies: The desert dog puppy is rather cute, and Riddick quickly takes a liking to the loyal creature.
• Pre-emptive Declaration: Riddick is chained up and about to be killed. He predicts the mercenaries will release him from his chains, whereupon he'll kill Santana with his own blade within five seconds, the mercs will end up dead, and he'll end up screwing Dahl. Johns and Luna end up living through it, but he has the rest down pat.
• Punny Name: Possibly unintended, but Dahl ~ "doll".
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • Riddick has contempt for rapists, as in Assault on Dark Athena. When Santana gets on top of Dahl to rape her, he grabs his knife as if preparing to intervene, even though this would signal his presence. It turns out he didn't need to anyway, as she can easily beat up Santana.
  • It's heavily implied that the female prisoner was being used as a Sex Slave as well. Luna is taken aback that she thinks he's going to rape her, showing that he's a nicer guy than the rest.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Santana and Johns' leadership styles contrast quite significantly. As in, Johns isn't a complete fucking idiot.
• Royal Harem: The Lord Marshal's consorts, which Riddick suspects are really just there to make him let down his guard and kill him in his sleep. They are one of the reasons he steps down from being the Lord Marshal, and seeks a way to return to Furya.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Santana's female prisoner pretty much only exists to showcase how much of a scumbag he is.
• Sand Worm: The scorpion creatures are a variation, in that they are active in muddy water and dormant when it's dry. Once the rain hits, it's a Zerg Rush.
• Savage Wolves: A wounded Riddick wakes up after being left for dead on a barren planet by the Necromongers. He is quickly sighted by a pack of alien wolf/dog creatures who pursue him. Subverted later on when he discovers a lone pup, whom he eventually raises to become a loyal companion.
• Sensor Suspense: Cyclops, a high-tech sensor device employed by the mercs that links up with several motion sensors and provides an accurate image whenever one of them is triggered. Riddick has his dog steal one of the sensors then pounds it on the ground, causing the Cyclops to go haywire and forcing the mercs to shut it off until they can replace the stolen sensor.
• Self-Surgery: Twice in the film. When Riddick first wakes up after falling from the cliff, Riddick resets his broken leg and fashions a makeshift brace out of his armor (along with inserting the screws into his own legs!), and later cauterizes a chest wound by jamming a volcanic rock into it.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: We don't actually see Riddick "balls deep" in Dahl.
• Shirtless Scene: Riddick strips down at night to find his animal side again. He climbs up a cliff and looks at the moon, showing his torso.
• Shout-Out:
  • Riddick rising out of the pool after the desert dogs leave in the opening (with his head slowly rising up from the water) is eerily reminiscent of Apocalypse Now.
  • A subtle nod towards xXx (Triple X) as Johns, Riddick and Diaz ride their bikes towards the cache of power cells Riddick rides over a ravine filled with scorpion monsters. In mid air he pulls a free style motocross seat grab superman move in slow motion.
• Silence Is Golden: Riddick doesn't talk very much until the half of the movie.
• Silent Credits: Averted with the theatrical version. Played straight with the director's Cut version.
• Single-Biome Planet: Subverted. Riddick spends the first part of the movie stranded in a desert, and it seems like it covers the entire planet. Later he discovers a grassy valley beyond a rock formation.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Riddick never bothers with them, and neither do most of the mercs once they get stuck into chasing him down. Slightly averted in the case of Luna, who wears light armour over a sleeveless shirt. While not really a wimp, he's certainly the least mercenary-like.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: The difference between the first and second bounty hunters. Santana's group is a bunch of rough and rowdy types, while Boss Johns' group are professional and wear matching uniforms.
• Smug Snake: Santana. He really underestimates Riddick and the other mercs and when he tries to rape Dahl, he gets one hell of a beatdown.
• Space Western: Is more similar to this, unlike the Sci-Fi Horror of the first film and the Space Fantasy of the second film. After being left for dead on a hostile world, Riddick uses the fact that he's still a wanted criminal to attract the attention of two groups of bounty hunters, who end up needing his help to fight the alien monsters that live on the planet. Boss Johns' group even resemble police and wear badges, making them seem more official and their relationship with Santana's crew, who resemble more traditional bounty hunters, a variation of Jurisdiction Friction.
• The Starscream: Vaako views Riddick as unworthy of the Necromonger leadership, and arranges to get rid of him by promising to show him the way to Furya, but then betraying him by dumping him on a random barren planet. Interestingly he doesn't want the crown for its own sake, but to acquire the Lord Marshal's transcendent abilities from the Underverse. Given that Vaako was this to the previous Lord Marshal, it shouldn't be a surprise. The director's cut of the film reveals that Vaako didn't betray Riddick, and was honestly intending on sending him to Furya in exchange for the crown, but Vaako's own Dragon took matters into his own hands and betrayed Riddick instead.
• A Storm Is Coming: Riddick sees the distant rain with dread, as aquatic monsters are coming along with it, just like with the eclipse in the first movie.
• Sword over Head: Santana tries it twice in an attempt to decapitate Riddick. The first time, he's thwarted by the sound of the scorpions coming out en masse during the rainstorm, and during the second, Riddick kicks him in the torso, which causes the sword to fly up and stick in the ceiling of the outpost.
• Tempting Fate:
  • When a second team arrives, one of the mercs keeps complaining that it's overkill, and they only need "four guys tops" to deal with Riddick. His colleague lampshades how wrong he is, and repeats it after they start dying.
  • Lockspur gets impaled through the wall after saying the attacking creatures aren't that hard to kill.
• Time Skip: One that is very easy to miss. When Riddick first gets past the scorpion creatures an into the plains, his dog is just a puppy. By the next scene, said puppy is fully grown, indicating that Riddick has been traveling for a while.
• Those Two Guys: Falco and Nunez have a conversation about Riddick's actions and the merc's tactics.
• Token Good Team Mate: Luna, the fresh newbie on Santana's squad, is young, awkward, innocent, and devoutly religious. Moss also refuses to shoot the Riddick's "dog". Santana and Diaz are both treacherous and sadistic, so as a whole they're the "bad guy" group of the film.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Of the "here are the bounty hunters who die and here are the plot twists you can expect" variety.
• Trick-and-Follow Ploy: Boss Johns does this with Riddick's dog, shooting it with a tracker round so it will run to familiar ground (Riddick's lair). Turns out Riddick has anticipated this and is using the dog as a distraction so he can infiltrate their base while half the mercs are away.
• Underestimating Badassery: Falco has no clue about Riddick's exploits, and seem confused that so many men would be needed to capture a single individual, to the point of Tempting Fate by asking Nunez about it.
• Villain Cred: The merc are impressed with Riddick's balls when he suddenly appears out in the open, walking toward their camp for a pow-wow. The trope is lampshaded by Riddick to Vaako in the Directors Cut.
  Riddick: They say you lost your nerve, Vaako, after that big swing and a miss.
  Vaako: Is that what they say?
  Riddick: Now what are you gonna do to get that cred back? What's the big play? Something splashy.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Riddick's various attempts to build up his immunity to the poison.
• Walking Spoiler: Boss Johns, who is the father of the younger Johns from Pitch Black. His identity isn't spoiled until he drops a Wham Line halfway through the film, yet several online sites (including IMDB and this wiki) often spoil his name and his apparent purpose for tracking Riddick.
• Weapon Across the Shoulder: Dahl carrying her sniper rifle out of the spacecraft. Thanks to her tight-fitting top, the position has the added advantage of emphasizing Katee Sackhoff's breasts.
• Weaponized Exhaust: Riddick uses the bottom thruster of one of the hoverbikes to fry several scorpion creatures.
• Wham Line:
  • The second mercenary captain reveals his name to Santana after he takes charge.
    Boss Johns: The name is Johns.
  • At the end of the director's cut, Riddick inquires about Vaako's fate to one of the Lord Marshal's consorts.
    Riddick: Vaako. Is he alive or dead? One word response.
    Consort: Both.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Moss calls out his boss on hitting Riddick while he's chained up, as they're supposed to be a more upstanding merc group.
• What You Are in the Dark: Perhaps the only time in this movie Riddick is flat out wrong is when he says Johns will leave him to die if he gets the chance. In contrast to what his son (and Riddick himself in the original) would have done, Johns refuses to abandon him when the opportunity presents itself.
• With My Hands Tied: Riddick kills Santana with only a single foot unchained.
• Worst Aid: Played with. Riddick is stabbed in the chest by one of the scorpion creatures, leaving its broken spike in the wound. He pulls it out, then immediately puts it back so he doesn't bleed out. He cauterizes the wound later.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • Santana has no problem hitting Dahl and trying to rape her, even though she's a member of another mercenary crew. Subverted, in that she beats him up a few seconds later and brushes the incident off.
  • The director's cut reveals that Krone, having apparently usurped the Necromonger leadership, has scarred the face of one of the consorts similarly to his own. Riddick is not amused..
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Riddick states this was his reason for killing Johns back on M6-117, as he was disgusted that Johns would try to kill Jack to distract the creatures.
• You Leave Him Alone!: When the leader of the second merc crew becomes fed up with how Luna's crew abuses and takes advantage of his kind nature, he angrily shouts at the Scary Black Man yelling at him to "Leave the boy alone."
• You Will Be Spared: At the end of the director's cut, Riddick confronts Krone as he's praying in the Lord Marshal's private chambers, having taken up Riddick's former post after betraying Riddick and leaving him for dead. Riddick promises to kill Vaako first and Krone second if he tells him where he can find Vaako. Krone launches into a long-winded rant instead of answering him, prompting Riddick to kill him ahead of schedule.

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