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"Enough is ENOUGH! I have HAD IT with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane! Everybody strap in! I'm about to open some fuckin' windows."

Snakes on a Plane is a 2006 action horror film directed by David R. Ellis that, more than most movies you'll find, does pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) becomes an accidental witness to a murder of a prosecutor by international gangster Eddie Kim and his men. As he then gets hunted by Kim, the FBI puts him under the escort of agent Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) as he flies from Hawaii to California to testify. Kim and the gangsters come up with an unusual method of trying to bring the plane down: they unleash motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane during the flight to try and bring it down before it gets to California. In the process of saving the day, lots of reptilian ass is to be kicked.

The film turned out exactly as ludicrous as the premise and title sound, and it reveled in its So Bad, It's Good-ness. When the studio wanted to give it a serious title (Pacific Air Flight 121) and turn it into an Action Horror film, Jackson suggested they change it back when the absurd title gained popularity online and became a huge online meme. The studio responded by angling their action horror idea far more towards Black Comedy, refilming several scenes to add new lines (including the now-infamous page-topping quotation) and having the rating bumped up from PG-13 to R to accommodate the newfound audience. While the hype failed to translate into large-scale box office success, Snakes on a Plane did ultimately make a profit.


Snakes on a Plane provides examples of these motherfucking tropes (on this motherfucking site):

  • Aerosol Flamethrower: Flynn uses one made by Claire to ward off snakes as he turns the plane's A/C back on.
  • All for Nothing: Flynn warns Sean against doing anything heroic by pointing out that if he gets killed before he can testify against Eddie Kim, then all the deaths that have already occurred will have been pointless.
  • Animal Assassin: The titular snakes are this. Unable to assassinate a witness to a murder through more conventional means, Eddie Kim arranges for a crate of venomous snakes to be placed on the plane the witness is being transported on. The latch opens at the appropriate time, cue one of Samuel Jackson's most memetic lines.
  • Anyone Can Die: Well, except Neville Flynn and his charge. Honestly, it could be argued that there wasn't enough death in the film. Out of the twenty named characters on the plane, only eight die.
  • Arc Words: "Do as I say and you live."
  • Armor Is Useless: Mentioned in the article, armor is often only useful when concealed. The witness is bitten by a snake that had escaped notice and turns out to be wearing body armor.
  • Artistic License – Biology: Snakes in reality act NOTHING like the motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane. Then again, the pheromones and stuff, so it's also Artistic License – Chemistry. There's also a picture of a Scarlet King snake (which can also be seen sneaking its way into a handbag in one of few shots that uses real snakes and not CG ones) when the expert is looking through the world's most dangerous snakes - when it isn't venomous in real life, though the filmmakers were likely hoping it looked similar enough to a coral snake to fool most viewers.
  • Artistic License – Physics:
    • When Flynn and Claire are trying to pull the aircraft out of dive, the controllers show the plane going from 1344 feet to 591 feet in three seconds. This gives it a descent of 15,000 feet per minute, which would mean it has too much energy to be leveled off before it can hit the water.
    • Flynn tells the other passengers to hold their breaths before he shoots out the windows to depressurize the interior of the plane. Doing so would in fact cause lung overexpansion injuries (which is why scuba divers are taught to never hold their breaths).
  • Ascended Meme: Seemingly out of nowhere, the internet pounced upon the pitch and made it a Memetic Badass of a movie. With a proven audience, the obvious thing to do was to make it.
  • Asshole Victim: Paul, the obnoxious dog-hating businessman.
  • Bad People Abuse Animals: Paul the businessman was an arsehole through and through. When the snakes started attacking people, he callously threw Mercedes's dog to one of the snakes in an effort to distract them. He justified his actions by saying anyone would have done it and telling the devastated Mercedes that it was just a dog. For this act, Paul gets a satisfying and well-deserved death of being slowly crushed by a python until he's bleeding from his orifices. All the while, the snake is staring at him and beginning to swallow him whole.
  • Bait-and-Switch: At the very end of the movie, when the plane safely lands, Sean is about to exit the plane but one last snake appears suddenly, latching onto his chest. Neville thinks fast and shoots the snake dead... but hits Sean in the chest in the process. It briefly seems as if the whole movie was for nothing until it's revealed that Sean was wearing a bulletproof vest and is just fine.
    Neville: Stings like shit, huh?
    Sean: Yeah!
  • Beast in the Building: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The film involves a convoluted scheme to kill the protected witness to a mobster's crime by using snakes to ground his plane mid-flight.
  • Becoming the Boast: All those flight hours Troy logged? They were on a PS2 game. Nevertheless, he's able to land the plane without killing anyone who didn't already die by snake.
  • Belly-Scraping Flight: Although the plane doesn't actually touch the water's surface, the near-fatal dive that Claire and Flynn have to pull up from comes so close that the jet's backwash sends up huge sprays of water in its wake.
  • Big Bad: While the snakes themselves are the focused-on threat, it is international gangster Eddie Kim who unleashed the motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane to kill Sean and Flynn, so as to Leave No Witnesses to his murder of the prosecutor working on his case.
  • Big Damn Heroes: The martial artist pulls this to save Mercedes twice, the first time by giving her and her dog a piggyback to safety, and the second by throwing a snake out the window when it wraps itself around her neck during the climax.
    • One of the flight attendants goes to look for the young mother and her baby when she hears the baby crying after the rest of the passengers have moved to the front of the plane and saves their lives at the cost of her own.
  • Bizarre Alien Senses: Several shots depict the snakes' POV with distorted, streaky monochrome, although it's unclear if the images are meant to incorporate vipers' thermographic senses or just snakes' meager eyesight.
  • Book Ends: "What was the first thing I ever said to you?"
    • The movie begins and ends with sweeping shots of sunny beaches accompanied by a pop song.
  • Bowdlerization:
    • FX had "monkey-fighting snakes" on a "Monday-to-Friday plane", followed by "freaking windows".
    • And that's not even HALF of it! For one, there's mention of a "Thai princess".
  • Black Dude Dies First: Averted since all four black characters (Flynn, Three Gs, Troy, and Big Leroy) manage to survive.
  • Camping a Crapper: The Out with a Bang and Groin Attack victims are attacked in the airline's lavatory.
  • Camp Straight: The male flight attendant. Turns out he didn't make up his girlfriend.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The cobra drawing one of the little boys does in the middle of the movie which he uses to identify the snake that bit his brother at the end.
  • Closest Thing We Got:
    • While there was a doctor on the plane, he was killed in the initial wave of snakes, so their only equivalent medical 'expert' is a woman who lived in an area populated by snakes as a child and therefore learned what to do in case of snakebites.
    • Troy is not a pilot, but when both pilots are killed by motherfucking snakes, he is forced to land the motherfucking plane. Flynn even tells Mission Control this.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Flynn's "Enough is enough" rant. See the quotation above.
  • Commonality Connection: Claire and Flynn are both intelligent, competent people in unglamorous jobs who recognize these qualities in each other immediately and strike up a friendship.
  • Complexity Addiction:
    • The fact that the snakes come from all over the world tips the FBI to a guy associated with Eddie Kim who'd been busted a few times for illegally importing snakes. He may have been trying to make it harder to match an anti-venom, but if the guy had kept them to North American species, he might have been harder to track down.
    • The outright insane plan to unleash hundreds of motherfucking snakes inside of a motherfucking plane, spray pheromones so they will become hostile, and hope they kill the witness among the passengers somehow. Kim roars that he has run out of options when one of his goons questions the idea, but even the In-Universe pointing out that it's Crazy Enough to Work is full of befuddlement.
  • Continuous Decompression: The result of "open[ing] some fuckin' windows"; it is made clear that Flynn and Troy have to get the plane down as fast as possible.
  • Convenient Decoy Cat: Inverted. The luggage inspection dogs detect the snakes, but the handlers think they're just barking at a hissing cat and move on. Come to think of it, the bad guys may have planted that cat there for that purpose.
  • Crash Course Landing: In the final act Troy, who only knows how to fly because of a video game, has to take the controls and land a jumbo jet for real in LAX. It's shakier than desired, but it works.
    Flynn: All praises to the Playstation!
  • Crazy Enough to Work: Pointed out by numerous characters. There's no way anyone would see this coming, and as Flynn himself points out, the snakes don't even have to bite the witness. They can just as easily cause the plane to crash by getting in the wiring.
  • Death in the Clouds: An attempted assassination on a plane, with absurd amounts of overkill.
  • "Die Hard" on an X: As the Honest Trailer for the original Die Hard facetiously puts it, this film is "Die Hard in a plane... with snakes!"
  • The Dreaded: Eddie Kim is nominally an "alleged" mobster, but in reality, his criminal reputation is so well-known and feared that even random civilians are shown to regard him with terror. When the passengers learn that Kim is responsible for releasing the snakes, the Jerkass businessman, who's not even from America, immediately assumes that everyone on the plane is doomed.
  • Everyone Has Standards: When Paul tries to deter the python by feeding it Mercedes's dog, much to the young woman's anguish. You can hear a man in the background yelling "Why did you do that!?" in disgust.
  • Evil Brit: While not exactly evil, Hate Sink Paul has a snobby, upper-class British accent.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: This movie has snakes. Those snakes are on a plane. There's your premise. A shining example of this trope, which was the main reason Samuel L. Jackson was involved.
  • Expy: According to the novelization, Mercedes is a hotel heiress, which, coupled with her love of tiny dogs, makes her an obvious one of Paris Hilton.
  • Eye Scream: Two in fact, a woman is bitten in the eye and a man is sprayed in the eyes with poison causing foam to pour from them.
  • Foreshadowing: Early in the film, it's established that Three Gs dislikes being touched and is a bit of a germaphobe. Later in the film, when the air goes off in the plane, he's the one to snap and almost shoots Neville.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus:
    • At one point in the movie, a person picks up a snake and throws it into an oven in the airplane galley, then hits a random button and cooks the snake. Pause right as the finger is about to hit the button, and you'll see the button actually reads "Snake."
    • After Flynn "opens some fucking windows", when the python (which had previously eaten the British businessman) gets sucked out, you can see a human-shaped bulge in it.
  • Genre Savvy: After hearing that Eddie Kim is connected with police corruption on the news, Sean figures that calling the cops about what he saw would just get him killed. It doesn't stop Kim from eventually tracking him down, but it likely delayed it. As Flynn notes, it was the smart thing to do.
  • Girlfriend in Canada: The very effeminate air steward mentions his girlfriend a couple of times. No one buys it. But subverted at the end, when his very real, very hot girlfriend shows up at the end and he kisses her passionately enough to kill all doubt.
  • Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex: After the plane lands the Camp Straight air steward calls his girlfriend (her legs presently wrapped around his waist) "his little cowgirl" and says he's going to get her home right away.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: The poor cat that was right next to the snake cage is the first thing to be eaten by them and we only get an approaching snake's POV and then we switch to a shaking cage and the cat's agonized yowling.
  • GPS Evidence: After the people on the plane send pictures of the snakes they could capture and Dr. Price points out that it's a bunch of snakes so varied that there's no way the hospitals will get enough antivenom for all, Hank Harris, the FBI Agent that is Flynn's contact on the mainland, points out that Eddie Kim has a home in California and probably contacted a local illegal snake wrangler to get them. Dr. Price then helps point out the location of the best illegal snake wrangler in the area and, sure enough, he has enough antivenom to help the victims and documentation that provides ironclad proof that Kim ordered the attack.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: While Eddie Kim is the instigator of the snake attack on the plane, he's offscreen for a majority of the film, with the snakes themselves and the threat of the plane crashing being the primary threats. However, considering he created a mountain of evidence against himself in his botched plan, he basically guaranteed himself the death penalty regardless.
  • Groin Attack: Victim number 3 learns the hard way why you should NOT use the toilet when there are motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane.
    "Fucking snake, get off my dick!"
  • Hand Wave:
    • The entire plot rests on Kim having apparently exhausted every normal option in trying to kill Sean.
    • Sanders explains that they overlooked the snakes during their pre-takeoff scan of the plane because they were cold-blooded and matched their body temperature to that of their surroundings.
    • The snakes' aggressive behavior is attributed to the giveaway leis having been sprayed with pheromones.
      Neville: Well, that's good news. Snakes on crack.
  • Hates Being Touched: Three Gs is a germaphobic who carries around hand sanitizer, and he expects his entourage to ward off people who try to casually touch him. He can suppress it when it comes to signing autographs or hitting on hot ladies, though.
  • Hate Sink: Being a killer-animal story, there's Paul, a businessman who is obnoxious for the sake of being obnoxious and only exists so the audience can cheer when he dies. In contrast, Triad leader Eddie Kim (the guy who put the motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane) is Put on a Bus as there's no believable way to put him on the plane after takeoff.
  • He Knows Too Much: Kim goes after Sean, who witnessed him killing a man.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: The flight attendant who gets bitten while rescuing the baby. Arguably, she saves three lives: the baby's, the mother's, and the little boy whose bite wound the mother knew how to extract the venom from.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: The guy who supplied the snakes to Kim gets bitten by one of his own snakes. Harris forces a confession out of him by taking his sweet time supplying the anti-venom.
    • Eddie Kim is also subject to this, being that his plan to assassinate Sean with a plane full of snakes, for being the witness to a single murder, if he simply let Sean go, he might have got some jail time, if it even stuck with how connected he is, but because of the mass murder of at least 50 passengers, and the fact that said plan was almost definitely terrorism, he is heavily implied to have got the death penalty.
  • I Call Him "Mister Happy": After the snakes are unleashed, a guy heads to the bathroom and says: "How's my big boy?" to uh, himself. The very large poisonous snake in the toilet is just fine, thank you.
  • I Know Mortal Kombat: Kenan Thompson's character (Troy) is called upon to land the plane after all of the snakes have been eradicated. He's been playing a PSP flight simulator throughout the trip, and he says he got his training from it... even though his brother has the high score. Also, he doesn't do an expert job, to say the least.
  • Impending Doom P.O.V.: Used a lot.
  • Improbable Infant Survival: Even if it takes a Heroic Sacrifice or two to maintain this trope. Although one kid did get bitten, albeit not killed.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Claire has one with her fellow flight attendants.
  • Is There a Doctor in the House?: Both the 'doctor' and 'pilot' variations of this question are asked in the film; unfortunately, the doctor had already been killed by the snakes when they had a chance to ask the question, and the only 'pilot' had only 'flown' on a flight simulator before now.
  • It's the Only Way:
    • Lampshaded: The villain releases a bunch of motherfucking snakes onto a single motherfucking plane to catch one kid who may have been the witness to the murder he committed. One of his lackeys questions whether or not it was all worth it, and he responds, "Don't you think I've exhausted every other option?!"
    • On the heroic side, Agent Flynn tells the plan to his superiors at the FBI, to which they respond, "What kind of insane plan is that?"
  • Just Plane Wrong:
    • There's a staircase separating First Class. The aircraft is a 747-400, and the staircases had been discontinued at that point.
    • The young couple who do it in the bathroom first disable the smoke detector so they can smoke a joint. Doing that on a plane causes an alarm to go off.
    • There's a blackout in the plane when the power goes out. All planes have emergency lights on battery power that come on automatically.
    • The controllers refer to "19,000 feet" when the actual expression they would use is "flight level, one-niner zero".
    • Air traffic controllers never give pilots instructions on how to fly their planes.
  • Karmic Death: Paul threw Mercedes's chihuahua at a python so it would eat it and lose interest but Paul becomes the only victim of the python and he gets a much slower death than the dog. Paul gets constricted, is slowly crushed until he can fit in the python's mouth, and not only is Paul still alive during this process, he is still in the digestion process when the snake is sucked out of the window. At least the chihuahua has the quicker death since it was far smaller and more fragile than Paul, hopefully, it was killed before being eaten.
  • Kick the Dog: A quite literal example appears when the motherfucking snakes are let loose on the motherfucking plane and one businessman throws Mercedes's Chihuahua into their path so that he can deter the snake and stop it from going after them. Made especially bad as the dog in question had earlier saved its owner by driving the snakes away from her while she was unconscious. Have a nice Karmic Death, buddy!
  • Kingpin in His Gym: Crime boss Eddie Kim is shown practicing karate while ordering the titular plan. It doesn't really mean anything to the plot.
  • Leg Focus: Tiffany wears a short skirt, which is subtly emphasized when she's introduced walking next to her fellow flight attendant Claire, who's wearing pants.
  • Lovable Sex Maniac: Rick makes some fairly perverted comments, but he does get some audience respect for managing to survive his first encounter with the snakes and being willing to try to keep flying the plane despite an arm swelling up from venom.
  • Mile-High Club: The first victims on the plane are a young couple who try to have sex in the bathroom. Two of the flight attendants overhear the snakes attacking them and think it's just really aggressive foreplay.
  • Mistaken for Gay: The film's only plot twist.
  • The Mockbuster: The Asylum's Snakes on a Train. Totally not kidding. Then you have Cats on a Plane.
  • Mortal Wound Reveal: At first Flynn thinks his partner's having a panic attack due to his fear of snakes, but the dying man gestures to his chest and Flynn opens his shirt to reveal a bite.
  • Nice Guy: Neville Flynn can be brusque when the situation demands it, but in general, he's a friendly person with a disarming sense of humor.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Eddie Kim might still have managed to get off at the trial if the only crime they could definitively pin on him was the murder Sean witnessed, but by unleashing the snakes he starts a chain of events that gives the FBI everything they need to charge him with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder and have him tried for a death sentence.
  • One-Liner:
    • Other than the infamous "Enough is enough! I have had it with these muthafuckin' snakes on this muthafuckin' plane!", there's also Flynn's "ALL PRAISES TO THE PLAYSTATION!"
    • "WHO'S YOUR DADDY NOW BITCH!?"
    • "Great, snakes on crack!"
  • Orifice Evacuation: We see a snake leaving a dead passenger's mouth. For added irony, the man was the only doctor on the plane.
  • Oscar Bait: Played for Laughs during the MTV Movie Awards:
    Samuel L. Jackson: I'm here tonight to present the award everyone's been waiting for: best movie. This award holds a special place in my heart because next year I'll be winning it for Snakes on a Plane. Now I know, I know that sounds cocky, but I don't give a damn. I'm guaranteeing that Snakes on a Plane will win best movie next year. Does not matter what else is coming out. New James Bond... no snakes in that! Ocean's Thirteen... where my snakes at? Shrek the Third... green, but not a snake. No movie shall triumph over Snakes on a Plane. Unless I happen to feel like making a movie called Mo' Motha-fuckin' Snakes on Mo' Motha-fuckin' Planes.
  • Pac Man Fever: A console flight sim isn't complex enough to teach anyone how to fly a plane. A game like Microsoft Flight Simulator might, but there aren't really any flight games on consoles sophisticated enough to simulate real flight; it would be the equivalent of learning how to drive with Grand Theft Auto V.
  • Perfect Poison: Averted. Dr. Price, the herpetologist who helps the heroes, explains that snakes have venoms of all different levels of potency, from death sentences if not dealt with quickly down to those that can be endured with some orange juice and sleeping off the side-effects. He makes clear, however, that if the wrong kind of anti-venom is administered to deal with the bites, this will definitely kill the patient, so knowing what snakes are on board is crucial.
  • Post-Climax Confrontation: After the motherfucking plane lands, it turns out there's one motherfucking snake left, which didn't get sucked out when Samuel L. Jackson opened the fucking windows. It bites the witness on the chest, but luckily he was wearing a bulletproof vest, so he isn't hurt.
  • Product Placement:
    • Taken to an absurd extreme, from the slow-motion drinking of Red Bull in the opening sequence to the Pepsi bottle careening toward the camera on a steward's cart.
    • Forget that, there's one shot where someone opens their MacBook laptop, causing the entire Apple logo to fill the screen for a solid three seconds.
    • "All praises to the PlayStation!" (Though previously, Flynn also asked if Troy played in Xbox instead)
    • Averted with the flight simulator Troy mentions as it doesn't exist.
  • Pushed at the Monster: When the snakes start to overwhelm the coach section of the plane, the irritable businessman throws Mercedes's chihuahua at a large anaconda to buy him time to escape. Everyone else is horrified at this. He stands still justifying what he did and the anaconda starts to eat him.
  • Rage Breaking Point: "Enough is ENOUGH! I have HAD it with these MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES on this MOTHERFUCKING PLANE!"
  • A Rare Sentence: Claire cannot believe she has to ask the passengers if any of them can fly a plane.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: Dr. Steven Price, a snake expert whom Flynn's partner consults for help, while slightly annoyed at being forced to miss seeing Antiguan racers hatch, immediately grounds himself to the reality of the situation and the danger the passengers are in once he's up to speed. His advice is delivered calmly yet seriously, he's able to obtain pictures of virtually every snake species on the plane in order to secure the proper anti-venom for each, and he knows exactly who Kim must have contracted to supply him with the snakes.
  • Recurring Extra: Besides the prominent characters and scores of victims, there are half a dozen or so uncredited characters (an older man in a collared shirt, a younger man in a black and yellow shirt, three or four women in summer clothing etc.) managing to barely survive the snake attacks alongside the core cast without ever talking to them or being asked to help with anything more than stacking a luggage barricade.
  • Red Herring: One of the passengers is an Asian guy with tattoos and a suspicious arm wound, he looks like he'd be the kind of guy Eddie Kim would employ. But, it turns out he's just another passenger in danger like the rest of them. He even saves someone from a snake with his bare hands.
  • Refuge in Audacity: The villain's plan: it's such a ridiculous plan, who would ever have seen it coming, believed it, or safeguarded against it?
    "Don't you think I exhausted every other option?!"
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: But they're not the only ones in this movie who are...
  • Retirony: Two stewardesses are on their last flight. It's pretty much a given that the one who specifically mentions that they put off retiring for one last flight is going to die. The other one is planning on retiring to go to law school (as opposed to outright retiring). She lives.
    • To be fair, the one who was outright retiring never mentions this fact until after being bitten and is unlikely to survive.
  • Rule of Cool: The entire premise of the movie.
  • Satellite Character: Agent Flynn's partner Sanders has far less screen time, dialogue, and characterization, and most of the information about him comes from Flynn discussing their partnership.
  • Sexy Stewardess: Tiffany and Claire both certainly qualify.
  • Sex Signals Death: Among the innocent passengers on the plane are a young couple who are all over each other before the plane even takes off. Guess who dies first.
  • Ship Tease: Flynn and Claire have a few very friendly chats, and they agree to a date at the end of the movie.
  • Shown Their Work: For as ridiculous as the film's premise is, practically everything Dr. Price says regarding snake biology and characteristics is textbook. Snakes are particularly shy creatures that won't just attack anything in sight without provocation. Neither will one single type of anti-venom work against all types of snake bites.
  • Signature Line: If it's not obvious by now...
    "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I have HAD it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane!"
  • Snakes Are Sinister: Exaggerated with a full plane full of them and many close-up shots of them attacking. There's also an enforcement of the trope: By default, snakes are shy and defensive, they wouldn't bite unless provoked. The pheromones, however, agitated them to the point that they're attacking anything in sight, making the snakes in this movie very sinister.
  • The Sociopath: Eddie Kim, a crime boss who is willing to massacre a plane with vicious snakes to eliminate one witness. He also makes his entrance into the plot by killing a district attorney who was investigating his crimes with little to no regard about the possibility of being witnessed and pummeling a heavy bag with martial arts moves... which is stuffed with some random goon that pissed him off. He's actually quite a surprisingly straight example of a villain from a comedy film.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Mortality: In full effect. Start with Out with a Bang, followed by Retirony, followed by the man who throws a dog at the snakes.
  • Static Stun Gun: Flynn uses one to stun numerous motherfucking snakes as he makes his way through the motherfucking plane. Given the chaos that's going on, a normal gun would've been a terrible idea. Unfortunately, the batteries run out.
  • Stealth Pun: The chick of the first couple to be killed has a pretty impressive rack. When they are attacked by snakes, one of them bites her on the nipple. The species of snake that bit her was apparently a 'milk snake'.
  • Suck Out the Poison: Maria gargles olive oil and attempts to suck out the poison from one wound. At least she makes an incision over the blister where he was bitten. Then played for laughs when one of Three Gs's friends points out that he got bit on the ass and everybody is too grossed out to help him.
  • Terrified of Germs: The rapper is very much so.
  • Terrifying Pet Store Rat: Plenty of actual venomous snakes appear on camera, but also a number of harmless milk snakes and a corn snake.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: As ridiculous as it sounds to use snakes for the deed, Eddie Kim's plan still is to destroy a 747 full of passengers to take out one guy.
  • Together in Death: Among the passengers are a pair of newlyweds flying back from their honeymoon. They get bitten around the same time and die in each other's arms.
  • Trapped-with-Monster Plot: One of the most exaggerated examples ever conceived.
  • Uncertain Doom: An Indian woman in pink who avoids being bitten on her feet early on by bringing up her feet and sitting on them at the right moment isn't seen being bitten by the snakes, but doesn't appear to be among the crowd of surviving passengers.
  • Universal Poison: Averted, impressively enough, in many senses. Dr. Price makes mention that there are many types of snake venom, from ones that are mild enough that you can sleep off the effects to those that are a death sentence, but the most complicated part is that if you apply the wrong kind of anti-venom to try to cure them, that is what will definitely kill the patient, so knowing which snakes are onboard is an absolute must.
  • Unsatisfiable Customer: When Paul the businessman is told that First Class is unavailable, he complains that he won't be able to reach his meeting on time. The stewardess snarks that the plane will arrive at the same time regardless of his seating arrangements. Mercedes is a bit better, though she asks if Coach is safe.
  • Unusual Euphemism:
    • The TV broadcast version gave us this line:
      Flynn: Enough is enough! I have HAD IT with these monkey-fightin' snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane! Everybody strap in; I'm about to open some freaking windows!
    • And, even more weirdly, "Son of a Basque!"
  • Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Eddie Kim, the gangster who released the snakes, disappears completely from the film after releasing said eponymous limbless reptiles onto the aforementioned fixed-wing aircraft. But it's mentioned that, in their hunt to find the antivenom, the authorities gathered enough evidence to charge Eddie with multiple murders and attempted murders for the whole flight... to the point that his only choices after trial will be either the needle or the gas chamber. The novelization actually has him tortured to death by a sexy, sadistic Triad assassin sent by his superiors. She chains him to a hotel bed and threatens to inject him with pure cobra venom, albeit after doing things to him that she claims will have him begging for the venom before she's through.
  • Voodoo Shark: The snakes being so vicious is explained by pheromones, which still raises questions.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
    • One passenger is terrified of flying and is only on the plane because his newlywed wife wanted to go to Hawaii.
    • The other FBI agent with Flynn is ophidiophobic. And man-oh-man is he ever in the wrong movie.
    • The cramped conditions after the passengers retreat to First Class cause Three Gs's germophobia to spiral to the point that he briefly endangers everyone on board by snatching Flynn's gun.
  • Your Days Are Numbered: The crate that is full of the snakes is a time-release crate, with the countdown timer set for 2:00:00 (2 hours). Once the timer on the crate reaches 0:00:00, the crate opens and the snakes are free to slither around and start to go on a rampage throughout the plane.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The antivenom's been secured, the snakes have been blocked out of first-class, the A/C is supplying air again, they're in the home stretch to LA, and the pilot is ...dead. Hope someone can fly a plane.

Enough is ENOUGH! I've had it with these monkey fighting tropes in this Monday-to-Friday article! Everybody press the 'Back' button! I'm about to open some new freaking pages.

 
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TV Edits of Movie Swearing

To comply with standards and practices, harsher swear words will often be removed or altered in TV versions of movies, especially on network channels. Sometimes, the results are unconvincing or downright bizarre.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (54 votes)

Example of:

Main / Bowdlerise

Media sources:

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