Film / The Lost World: Jurassic Park

All spoilers for Jurassic Park (1993) will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Something has survived.

"Oh, yeah. 'Oooh, ahhh,' that's how it always starts. But then later there's running and, um...screaming."

— Ian Malcolm

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is the 1997 sequel to Jurassic Park (1993) and the second film in the eponymous movie franchise, directed like its predecessor by Steven Spielberg.

After the abandonment of Isla Nublar following the events of the first film, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) invites Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) for a visit, and reveals that there is a second island with dinosaurs, which served as a breeding ground for the park. When Malcolm learns that Hammond has already mounted an expedition to explore the island and sent over Malcolm's palaeontologist girlfriend Sarah (Julianne Moore) in advance, he heads out to the island to retrieve her. There they discover that the InGen executives have launched their own expedition to bring back some of the dinosaurs to recoup their losses from the first venture. Things quickly take a downturn as both parties lose their communications and have to find a way to get off the island alive.

And it only gets worse when one of the dinosaurs is brought back to San Diego...

The film is loosely based on The Lost World by Michael Crichton, though it takes even less from its source material than the first film did. It also borrows some plot points (in addition to the title) to Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.

Followed by Jurassic Park III.

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Don't go into the long list of tropes in The Lost World: Jurassic Park!

A - F

• Abandoned Area: the InGen facility in the center of Isla Sorna—complete with familiar front doors and a mural depicting Jurassic Park.
• Action Girl: Kelly Malcolm becomes this during the climactic fight within the island interior, using gymnastics to become the first and currently only person to kill a full-grown adult Velociraptor unarmed by knocking it over, managing to get it impaled.
  Ian: The school cut you from the team?
• Adaptation Deviation: The film differs from the novels far more than the original movie did, keeping only Sarah and Malcolm as the same characters, a basic plot of two different teams on Isla Sorna, and pasting in a small number of scenes here and there, while changing nearly everything else about the story.
  • The story in the novel is initially kicked off by a string of dinosaur corpses suddenly washing up on Costa Rica. This led to the reveal near the end that the dinosaurs were suffering from a prion epidemic that was killing them off. The film omits this plot point so the event that kicks off the story is a rich family on vacation accidentally choosing Site B as a rest stop, resulting in the daughter being mauled by a pack of Compsognathus, which was borrowed from an early scene in the first novel.
  • Because, unlike the novel, Hammond actually survives the events of the first film, Malcolm's motivation for going to Isla Sorna was changed from a rescue mission of a wealthy palaeontologist that went missing on the island to Hammond sending them to the island to prevent InGen from ransacking the dinosaurs. Malcolm is also more willing to go to Site B in the novel, while only the fact his on-and-off girlfriend is already there persuades him in the film.
  • The antagonists of the novel are agents of BioSyn. Possibly because their role in the preceding movie was drastically reduced and their name never mentioned, the film changes it to InGen, which in the novel had already gone bankrupt. All the BioSyn characters are therefore omitted and replaced by original characters.
  • The BioSyn expedition was much smaller in the novel, made up of only three people, while the InGen expedition made up of a very large group in the film. This is probably because the novel went for a more practical approach to retrieving dinosaurs, just collecting their eggs, while the film goes for the more dramatic approach of lassoing full-grown dinosaurs.
  • The novel is far more introspective and filled with much discussion about dinosaurs, technology, natural forces, and man's role in nature (the main character is Ian Malcolm, what did you expect?). The film, similar to the first movie, cuts out a lot of the rambling probably it's not as interesting to watch as it is to read.
  • The setup to get the baby T. rex into the trailer is totally different in the film from the novel. In the novel, Dodgson accidentally steps on the baby's leg while stealing eggs from the nest, and Malcolm and the others later come across it. They tell Eddie to kill it because a broken leg is a mortal wound in the wild, but he doesn't have the stomach to do it and brings it back to the trailer against everyone else's wishes instead. In the film, Roland uses the baby as bait to attract its father, its broken leg is unexplained (a deleted scene would have shown Ludlow tripping and falling on the infant), and it is willingly brought to the trailer by Sarah and Nick.
  • The film cuts out a number of dinosaur sequences from the novel, such as the chameleon-like Carnotaurus, the raptors attacking the High Hide, the Maiasaura herd, the hamster ball raptor rescue, and the Tyrannosaurus parents defending their nest. It then invents a number of new sequences, such as a massive dinosaur stampede, a man being mauled to death by a pack of Compsognathus, the T. rex attack on the camp, most of the InGen team being slaughtered by raptors in the grasslands, and the entire last act.
  • The entire last act was invented for the movie. Initially, the film ended more similar to the novel, with the characters just barely escaping the island as a pack of raptors and a flock of Pteranodon overrun the worker village. Spielberg insisted on a climax featuring the Tyrannosaurus, where the adult male escapes and runs loose through the streets of San Diego.
  • A minor difference: in the novel the female T. rex is described as being larger, while the male is scrawny due to spending his time caring for their nest instead of hunting. In the film, the two are the same size (although their colourations are different—mainly, the female is brown and the male is green).
  • Another minor difference, Malcolm is depicted with a limp and walking with a cane because of his injuries from the first novel. The film initially followed this depiction in an early script, but ultimately chose not to include it.
  • The film implies that the abandoned worker village is where the raptors live, and an Apatosaurus skeleton is close by to it. This therefore combines two locations from the novel: the raptors had a nest at a river bend where large dinosaurs that died from the prion infection would beach at, providing them with ample food, but it was almost on the other side of the island from the village, which was instead the lair of the Carnotaurus. The raptors did eventually attack the surviving characters at the village, though, which is probably where placing them in the village came from.
• Adaptation Distillation: The movie keeps the novel's basic premise and some of its characters, but is otherwise very different. Key characters from the novel like Doc Thorne, Richard Levine, Arby and Lewis Dodgson are omitted from the movie. John Hammond (still dead in the book's continuity), Roland Tembo, Nick van Owen, Peter Ludlow, Dieter Stark, and Ajay do not appear in the novel. Eddie Carr and Doc Thorne are merged, as are Kelly and Arby. Dodgson's Big Bad role is effectively taken by Ludlow (both even die the same way).
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: Sarah Harding has the same surname as Gerry Harding, a member of the Park's staff in the first movie. In the novel, she's strongly implied to his daughter, but in the movie it's not explained or remarked upon, possibly because Gerry Harding's role in the movie is so small (it's larger in the novel) that reminding the audience of his existence would just be confusing.
• Adaptational Heroism: The InGen hunter team is considerably less villainous than the Biosyn hunters they were based on from the novel.
• Adaptational Wimp: The novel's version of Sarah is considerably smarter and more competent than the screen iteration, not to mention physically powerful.
• Adapted Out:
  • The villainous Biosyn antagonists in the novel, Dodgson, Baselton, and King, are completely taken out and technically replaced by InGen mercenaries, and while various traits of each are passed on to Ludlow, Burke, and Ajay, respectively, by and large these characters do not correspond to those in the novel and are not nearly as malicious.
  • One of the more notable dinosaur omissions are the Carnotaurus, colour-changing predators made out to be The Dreaded to even the Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. It's notable because Crichton specifically created them just for the film (because he was curious to see how the film would portray their camouflaging abilities), although their exclusion is probably justified because their role in the novel was very minor. Tie-in games did include them, though, complete with their camouflaging abilities.
• Aesop Amnesia: InGen completely ignore the lessons of Jurassic Park:
  Ian: [to Ludlow] Five years of work and a hundred miles of electrified fence couldn't prepare the other island. Did you think a couple of dozen Marlboro men were going to make a difference here?
• Anger Born of Worry: Malcolm is not happy about Sarah's solo trip to Isla Sorna and becomes even less thrilled when he learns that Kelly tagged along.
• Animal Stampede: The film shows a variety of dinosaurs stampeding while being chased by InGen hunters.
• Animal Wrongs Group: Nick's stated to be ex-Greenpeace, and it's implied he was on the militant side that boarded ships.
• Answer Cut: When Sarah and Malcolm retrieve the baby T. rex and go looking for the adult male that's running loose through the city, Sarah asks Malcolm how they're going to locate the animal. Malcolm, semi-seriously, says they'll simply "follow the screams". Cut to a woman screaming in terror.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  Sarah: [to Ian] I've worked around predators since I was twenty years old. Lions, jackals, hyenas … you.
• Artistic License – Geography: The runaway ship smashing into the dock makes for a great image, but in real life you wouldn't be able to get into San Diego Bay without someone at the wheel, and definitely not by going from the open ocean to the harbor in a straight line; there's a few little things like the Silver Strand State Beach and the Coronado peninsula in the way. And then during the iconic shot of the T-Rex roaring while looking out over downtown San Diego, it would have had to have teleported completely across the bay.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Stark zaps a compy for no good reason. The others don't take too kindly to that...
  • Ludlow gets eaten by the baby rex that he abducted.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: A squad of San Diego cops show up in response to the T. rex rampage — and pull an about-face when they actually see the rex.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Stark zaps a compy with a cattle prod early on. It come back to bite him (literally) when the compies kill him.
• Bald of Evil: Roland is also one of the film's villains, albeit one of the Noble Demon variety.
• Base on Wheels: The trailers used by Malcolm's team.
• Bilingual Bonus: After Stark chases off the compies that attacked him, he can be heard muttering angrily in Swedish as he walks away. It's pretty easy to guess the sentiment even if you don't understand the actual words, which boil down to "fucking lizards".
• Bloodless Carnage:
  • When Eddie is yanked in half and Carter gets repeatedly stomped into the ground, there's no gore to be seen. Later avoided when Tembo's dinosaur expert panics from a snake and runs right into the T. rex — the waterfall everyone is hiding in becomes blood red.
  • Similarly played straight with the "Unlucky Bastard", we see him get chomped on but again, no blood or gore.
  • Averted when Dieter Stark gets mauled by compies— he leaps over a fallen tree trunk to try to get away, the compies leap after him, the camera pans down to the stream... and a slowly but surely growing cloud of blood.
  • When the baby T. rex pounces onto Ludlow and starts tearing into him, one would expect to see blood and other parts to go flying into the air. Ditto for the hunters who get taken down and devoured by the raptors in the long grass. Doesn't happen in either scene.
• Book Ends: The British girl's encounter with the Compsognathus in the opening sequence gets an echo in the denouement as Ludlow approaches the baby T. rex and speaks to it much as a child would. "Oh, there you are!" But the innocent girl's fate is one-upped: The baby and its father kill the greedy Ludlow.
• Bring It Back Alive: The goal of the InGen hunters.
• Brick Joke: Eddie Carr chastises Ian for banging the satellite phone in an attempt to get it to work. A minute later, while Ian is meeting Nick van Owen, Eddie is fiddling with the phone and starts banging it. Also counts as a Funny Background Event.
• Buffy Speak:
  • Roland Tembo has quite a bit of trouble with the pronunciation of the dinosaurs' names.
    [Chasing dinosaurs on the game trail]
    Tembo: You're coming up on a…
    [Flips through his dinosaur guide]
    Tembo: A Pachy … a pachy … oh, hell. Uh, the fathead with the bald spot. Friar Tuck! ^note  A Pachycephalosaurus.
  • And later it seems like his team is having fun with his explanations:
    Hunter: Say again, Roland, a what?
    Tembo: [Throws the guidebook away] The one with the big red horn. Pompadour. Elvis! ^note A Parasaurolophus.
• By Wall That Is Holey: Sarah, Ian, and Nick somehow survive a dual-trailer RV falling around them as they dangle off a cliff edge. Even with the front windshield smashed open you'd figure something in the vehicle would hit them on its way down…
• Call-Back:
  • When Ian, Nick, and Eddie are searching for Sarah, they call out her name repeatedly. At one point, Nick shouts out "Sarah Harding!", leading to a sarcastic response from Ian. Later on, when he, Kelly, and Sarah are searching the abandoned center for Nick, Ian calls out for him, at one point shouting "Nick van Owen!"
  • Ludlow spends basically the entire movie comparing himself to Hammond, saying that he will succeed where Hammond failed. When the T. rex escapes from the ship and begins wreaking havoc in San Diego, Ian says to him, "Now you're John Hammond."
• Calling the Old Man Out: Hammond's greedy nephew, Ludlow, during the deleted board meeting scene, calls out Hammond as a "born-again naturalist" who is allowing InGen to go bankrupt in order to keep the dinosaurs from being exploited; he then has the nerve to say he doesn't enjoy speaking unfavorably about his own uncle.
• Captain Obvious:
  • Sarah when the parent T. rexes show up at the trailer.
    Sarah: This isn't hunting. They're here for their infant.
  • There's also this exchange not too long after:
    Roland: Our communications equipment's been destroyed and if your radio and satellite phone were inside those trailers that went over the cliff—
    Ian: They were.
    Roland: Then we're stuck here, ladies and gentlemen. And stuck together, thanks to you people!
• Casual Danger Dialog:
  • Ian does this several times, most notably when the T. rexes are about to attack the trailers:
    Ian: Mommy's very angry.
  • And speaking from experience minutes later:
    Ian: Hang on, this is gonna be bad.
  • When Eddie arrives to try and pull his compatriots out of the dangling trailers, he asks them what they want. Ian, Nick, and Sarah all go into full sarcasm mode and order food, like he's a waiter.
    Eddie: Rope, OK. Anything else you want?
    Ian: Yeah, three double cheeseburgers with everything.
    Nick: No onions on mine.
    Sarah: And an apple turnover!
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: At the end of the bull T. rex's rampage throughout San Diego, the US Army arrives on the scene after a bunch of cops showed up earlier before immediately retreating when they discovered what they were really dealing with. However, because the animal has already been contained in the ship with its youngling, they are tasked with guiding it back to Isla Sorna instead of just killing it with a bazooka.
• Chekhov's Gun: Subverted with the insta-kill neurotoxin Eddie brings along. He tries to raise the gun with the toxin in it to shoot the T. rex pair while he is pulling the mobile lab trailer up from the cliff's edge, but the gun's barrel gets tangled in a net and Eddie gets killed.
• Chekhov's Lecture: Sarah describes her ongoing debate with Dr. Robert Burke regarding the parental habits of T. rex as a nurturing parent (she says) and not a "natural rogue who would abandon its young" (he says). She gets proven horribly correct. Later, she points out that moving the baby caused the T. rex to redefine its territory and that it now views the humans as a threat and will use its superior olfactory senses to track them down until they leave the island (or it eats them all), with which Burke disagrees. Guess who lives and who is killed horribly when the T. rex does everything Sarah said it would … because Sarah was dumb enough to continue carrying around a jacket covered in the blood of said T. rex's infant!
• Combat Parkour: Kelly uses her gymnastic skills to kill one of the Velociraptors.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Sarah, as she straight up tells Ian that he's never around when she really needs him and right now, she doesn't.
• Composite Character:
  • The precocious twelve-year-old Kelly and black Child Prodigy Arby, Levine's pupils, were merged into the single character of Kelly, Malcolm's daughter.
  • The movie version of Sarah Harding is a mix between the book version of Sarah (animal behaviorist who was an ex of Ian's) and Richard Levine (naive, impulsive paleontologist whose preemptive trip to Isla Sorna convinces Ian to organize a rescue expedition and whose dumb decisions constantly put the team in greater danger).
  • The rugged, badass Dr. Jack Thorne and his younger (but very capable) employee, Eddie Carr, were similarly combined into the movie's relatively mousy Eddie, while Book!Eddie's physical appearance was transferred to new character Nick van Owen.
  • Dodgson's antagonistic role is effectively taken by Ludlow (both even die the same way).
• Convenient Cranny: Ian, Sarah, Kelly, and Burke hide from the rampaging T. rexes in a convenient cave behind a waterfall, where the huge dinosaur can't reach far enough inside to eat them. However, Burke panics when a (supposedly) poisonous snake slips into his clothing and gets nabbed.
• Creator Cameo:
  • The character credited as "Unlucky Bastard" that the T. rex eats is David Koepp, assistant screenwriter to Michael Crichton in the first movie and screenwriter of the second.
  • Steven Spielberg's reflection can be seen in the TV screen at the end, when Ian and Kelly are watching the news. He's eating popcorn.
• Credits Gag: In the credits, the name of a character (played by David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for the movie) devoured by the T. rex in front of the video store is given as "Unlucky Bastard".
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Features some of the most violent deaths by dinosaur in the series, with special mention going to Eddie Carr being pulled in half by a pair of T.rexes and Dieter Stark being swarm-munched to death by a pack of compies.
• Crowd Panic: During the T. rex rampage in San Diego. Even includes a few Japanese guys.
• Cub Cues Protective Parent:
  • Sarah gets very close to a baby stegosaurus, but when it is spooked by the noise of her camera, its parents attack her.
  • When Sarah and Nick bring the injured baby rex to the trailer, its cries bring mommy and daddy rex, just as Kelly figures.
• Darker and Edgier: This one is remembered as the most violent of the franchise, notably for being the film with the highest body count and the most violent death scene (at least until Jurassic World came along, anyway). Oddly enough, at the same time it tries to be funny far more frequently than either its predecessor or sequel, mostly since Malcolm takes the reins as the main protagonist, making for some weird Mood Whiplash. On a further note, this was the only film in the entire franchise to have gotten the 14A rating in Canada instead of the PG rating until Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which was then bumped down to PG for the home release.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Roland Tembo. He finds Ludlow's general ignorance annoying. Here are two examples:
    "This is a game trail, Mr. Ludlow. Carnivores hunt on game trails. Do you want to set up a base camp or a buffet?"
    "Come on, let's get this movable feast underway!"
  • And of course about half of Ian Malcolm's dialogue. Of course, after the events of the last movie, it takes on a much darker tone.
    Sarah: I'll be back in five or six days.
    Malcolm: No, you'll be back in five or six pieces.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Eddie Carr (being a Composite Character with an assistant of his that performs a similar Heroic Sacrifice in the book) is dismembered and devoured by T-rexes instead of Velociraptors, making his death somewhat closer to the book's George Baselton's than that of his novel counterpart.
  • Oddly enough, an object: the entire Base on Wheels (in the book the same situation with the T. rexes and the cliff occurs, but only the front part of the RV is destroyed and the characters even use the trailer as a shelter for a while before venturing to find a way off the island).
  • Everybody killed during the T. rex's rampage in San Diego (no similar scene happens on the novel). This includes Ludlow (in the novel, Dodgson died in a similar scene).
• Death by Cameo: The Unlucky Bastard is played by screenwriter David Koepp.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Tim and Lex, now four years older, only get cameos in the third scene and are not mentioned again.
  • The Velociraptors were the most memorable antagonists in the previous film. Here, they're just dangerous obstacles.
• Devoured by the Horde:
  • The opening scene was taken from the original Jurassic Park novel, where a small child is attacked and nearly eaten by a pack of Compsognathus.
  • Dieter, Roland's lieutenant and one of the hunters from InGen, is killed by a compy pack later on.
• Different World, Different Movies: There's a poster for a film version of King Lear starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. This might be a Shout-Out to the fact that the original Jurassic Park film is considered a major reason that Last Action Hero, which featured a sequence of Schwarzenegger as Hamlet, failed at the box-office as it did. There's also a Jack and the Beanstalk movie starring Robin Williams and a surfing movie starring Tom Hanks.
• The Dog Bites Back: Dieter zaps a Compsognathus with a cattle prod, just for the hell of it. Later, when he stumbles off a cliff and gets separated from the others, he's eaten alive by a huge swarm of them.
• Door Fu: Ian Malcolm uses a door as a shield against a Velociraptor.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Roland Tembo, the chief hunter on InGen exec Peter Ludlow's expedition, instantly makes it clear that while they're on the island, Roland is in charge (or Ajay and then Stark when he's not around), not his employer. Mostly because Ludlow is so stupid that he tries to set up camp on a game trail. In a variation from how this trope is usually played, Ludlow is fine with this once it's pointed out to him.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Ludlow goes from giddy as a kid on Christmas to taking a pull from his flask every other scene after the dinosaurs destroy his team's base camp, leaving them stranded on the island.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: When the RV trailers go over the cliff, they immediately go up in a massive billowing fireball. This is in spite of them being electric solar-powered vehicles...
• End of an Age: On a meta level for the franchise. This is the last entry in the series to be based on a Michael Crichton novel, to have a screenplay by David Koepp, and to be directed by Steven Spielberg. After this movie, control over the franchise passes, for better or for worse, into different hands. It's also the last installment that features an original score by John Williams, and Richard Attenborough as John Hammond.
• Entitled Bastard: Peter Ludlow views all the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna as his company's personal property and disregards the wishes of his uncle John Hammond to go after them. It goes about as well for him as you'd expect.
• Escaped Animal Rampage: A Tyrannosaurus rex is taken back to San Diego with the intention of putting it in a zoo, but it escapes before its captors can do so. Earlier in the film, the InGen team's camp is completely trashed by the dinosaurs released by Hammond's team.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Similarly to Nedry in the last film, even Ludlow has enough sense *not* to mess with the island's Velociraptors. The expedition specifically intended to stay on Isla Sorna's exterior and not head into the interior and risk entering their territory.
• Extinct Animal Park: The human antagonists aim to recreate Jurassic Park in San Diego by capturing dinosaurs roaming free on Isla Sorna. They insist they will be better prepared with more secure facilities this time. The protagonists oppose this idea, both because the original park's creators said the same thing and look how that turned out, and because they believe the animals should be left in peace. The antagonists do succeed in bringing a T. rex to San Diego (with heavy casualties) but it ends up breaking free and going on a rampage, after which Ingen finally gives up on the idea of a dinosaur theme park.
• Faux Affably Evil: While Peter Ludlow's deference to Roland and his relatively light-handed treatment of the hired mercenaries in his employ may seem to qualify him for Affably Evil status, the first scene he appears in makes it clear he is a stock Corrupt Corporate Executive who has been plotting for years to usurp control of InGen from his uncle John Hammond. He also unapologetically admits to slandering Dr. Malcolm's reputation in the public eye to discredit his expose of the original Jurassic Park incident. Ludlow's priorities become clear in the final act, when he insists on capturing Papa rex and his baby and bringing them back to the mainland which sets in motion the T. rex rampage through San Diego.
• Five-Man Band: Ian Malcolm, Sarah Harding, Nick van Owen, Eddie Carr, and Kelly form a team to do research on the dinosaurs and prove how peaceful they are on the island. However, the team comes into conflict with Ludlow's hunters.
• Flippant Forgiveness: Ian Malcolm tells Peter Ludlow, "When you try to sound like Hammond, it comes off as a hustle. I mean, it's not your fault. They say talent skips a generation. So, I'm sure your kids will be sharp as tacks."
• Follow the Chaos: How Malcolm finds the T. rex that's rampaging through San Diego: "Follow the screams." Cue woman screaming.
• Foreign-Language Tirade: Malcolm gets an earful in Spanish when he tries to contact the boat that brought his team to the island but accidentally gets a woman who thinks he's somebody named Enrique.
  Kelly: Boy, is she mad at you.
  Malcolm: I feel sorry for that guy Enrique.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend:
  • The only movie in the franchise to avert this trope. Eddie, Ajay, and Dieter all get posthumously mentioned, with varying degrees of reverence/respect in Eddie and Ajay's cases.
  • During the deleted board meeting scene, Ludlow mentions wrongful death suits/settlements resulting from the deaths of Ray Arnold, Donald Genarro, and Robert Muldoon in the previous film while early in the film proper, Malcolm briefly mentions "the deaths of 3 people" at one point.

G - L

• Gadgeteer Genius: Eddie Carr and Jack "Doc" Thorne, who didn't make it to the movie. See Composite Character above.
• Glory Seeker: Roland. Having hunted everything the modern world has to offer, he now wants to test himself against the greatest predator in history, a T. rex. He's even willing to forego his fee just for the opportunity.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Most of the deaths in this film—save for Eddie and the "Unlucky Bastard" of course. See Bloodless Carnage.
• Great White Hunter: Roland Tembo, a rare modern example.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Both sides have reasonable explanations for what they're doing on the island, despite the flaws in their logic, there's a few designated heroes and designated villains, and ultimately both the research team and mercenaries join together to just get off the island alive.
• Guile Hero:
  • John Hammond is a Xanatos Speed Chess master in this film, countering his conniving nephew Ludlow's every move despite only being present in two scenes.
  • Nick Van Owen is not afraid to play dirty with Peter Ludlow and his hired mercenaries.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The gruesome demise of Eddie Carr, ripped in two by two T. rexes.
• Headbutting Pachy: The scene with the pachycephalosaurus getting captured shows it ramming into the side of a jeep. This not only caused the jeeps door to torn in half, but also sent the man inside flying out at the other side of the jeep. This shouldn't be possible since (hopefully) like most of the other vehicles used by Ludlow's Team they were intentionally modified to help them against the dinosaurs. Possibly Justified because the dinosaurs in that universe are bred/created to have audience-pleasing traits.
• He Didn't Make It: Ajay. Roland does not take it well.
• Helpless Kicking:
  • Burke is hiding from the Tyrannosaurus in a cave behind a waterfall, when a snake falls on his neck. In a panic, he leaves the hiding spot and is caught by the dinosaur. Though his death happens off-screen, he is shown being lifted off the ground, his legs flailing violently, before the waterfall is tinged red with his blood.
  • During the T. rex's rampage through San Diego, it lifts a man by the torso. The victim screams and flails his legs helplessly before the dinosaur finally closes its jaws, killing him.
• Heroic BSoD: Roland experiences one after learning of Ajay's death. He rejects a job offer from Peter Ludlow and says he's going to leave his life of hunting behind, having seen too much death by this point.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Eddie Carr; doubles as a Despair Event Horizon since he was the only one who could probably have repaired the hunters' damaged radio equipment.
• "Hey, You!" Haymaker: Kelly shouts "Hey you!" at a raptor threatening Malcolm to distract it before sending it flying out of a window a split-second later with a well-timed gynamstics kick.
• Hidden Depths: Roland Tembo. Although working for InGen, he shows concern for the safety of Kelly, and his own crew, and at the end seems to realize he's been on the wrong side.
  Peter Ludlow: I remember the people who help me, Roland. There's a job for you at the park in San Diego, if you want it.
  Roland Tembo: No thank you. I believe I've spent enough time in the company of death.
  • A deleted scene shows Roland picking a fight with an obnoxious diner making unwelcome advances on a waitress.
    Roland Tembo: You, sir, are no gentleman.
• Homage: The encounter with the Stegosaurs is staged like the Stegosaurus scene from King Kong (1933), only these dinosaurs here are hostile only because the humans approached their baby, and they're not shot at with guns.
• Hypocrite:
  • Played with for Ian: upon learning that Sarah is already at Site B, he is perfectly willing to jeopardize the lives of two people (whom he was about to stop from even going on the expedition) in order to ensure her safety. This is immediately after Ian tells Hammond to stop selfishly risking the lives of others for his own ends. Upon retrieving her, however, he spends the rest of his time trying to get them off the island ASAP, and he does make at least token efforts to convince Eddie and Nick that staying any longer is not a good idea.
  • Sarah Harding repeatedly fails to heed her own advice. She chastises the others in her group about the importance of observing without interacting shortly after almost getting herself killed attempting to pet an infant Stegosaurus. She chastises Nick for his terrible idea to bring the infant Tyrannosaurus back to the trailer, then shuts up and helps him do it. After this inevitably ends in disaster, she proceeds to explain the dangers of the bull rex tracking the group with its powerful olfactory sense, but brings the jacket coated in the infant's blood with her as they flee. Sarah has a bad habit of telling off others for things she then proceeds to do anyway.
• Idiot Ball: Sarah Harding manages to blow off every single one of Ian's warnings, as well as several of her own, throughout the movie, even after people have actually started dying. Ian gets rightly pissed when she didn't bother masking her trail when she brings the injured T. rex baby to the trailer. Also, at the beginning when she tells Ian that she would rather stay on the island alone than leave with him, despite knowing the dangers.

  Malcolm: I'll tell you what you need, you need a good...antipsychotic.

• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Isla Sorna and the nearby islands are collectively known as Las Cinco Muertes — or, in English, "The Five Deaths." It's said that fishermen have gotten too close to the islands and never returned.^note In the novel, it's indicated that the name has a mythological basis; the fact these islands really did become home to monstrous beasts is mostly coincidental.
• Ignored Expert:
  • Roland Tembo earns his Ensemble Dark Horse rep by averting this hard, giving Peter Ludlow an earful for suggesting that they set up base camp on a game trail where carnivores hunt.
    Roland: This is a game trail, Mr. Ludlow. Carnivores hunt on game trails. Do you want to set up base camp or a buffet? [...] Peter. If you want me to run your little camping trip, there are two conditions. Firstly, I'm in charge. And when I'm not around, Dieter is. All you need to do is sign our checks, tell us we're doing a good job and open your case of Scotch when we've had a good day. Second condition, my fee. You can keep it. All I want in exchange for my service is the right to hunt one of the Tyrannosaurs. A male, a buck only. How and why are my business. Now if you don't like either of those conditions, you're on your own. So go ahead, set up base camp right here [on a game trail], or in a swamp or in the middle of a rex nest for all I care. For I have been on too many safaris with rich dentists to listen to any more suicidal ideas. Okay?
    Peter: ...Okay!
  • Malcolm has to deal with Sarah ignoring every one of his warnings about how friggin' dangerous an island filled with dinosaurs is. Especially since he remembers the body count on the last one and was mere feet away when Genarro was devoured.
• Improbable Infant Survival:
  • The little girl somehow survives the compy attack in the beginning of the movie, mentioned in an exposition scene soon after that her family and their crew were able to get to her in time. Nobody else who crosses the little buggers' path is so lucky.
    • The deleted boardroom scene includes a picture of her face post-attack, where she’s shown to be badly bruised and covered in bandages. So she didn’t get away completely unscathed.
  • Kelly survives the island relatively unscathed. At one point, she's smart enough to seek shelter elsewhere, quietly, before the trailers are attacked.
  • The infant T. rex also survives no fewer than three abductions and is ultimately reunited with its parents and returned to the island.
• Informed Ability:
  • We're told that Dr. Harding is an expert at surviving away from civilization in the midst of animal predators. Yet she plays with a baby Stegosaurus (even after it starts making noises) right next to its parents, goes along with a plan to bring the baby T. rex into their trailer, and walks around with T. rex blood on her clothes without thinking of the consequences.
  • Justified when the T. rex tracks the fleeing humans to their camp. In a conversation between Sarah and Dr. Burke, we discover that the tyrannosaur has a sense of smell second only to the turkey buzzard, which will allow them to track the humans across the island to address the perceived threat to their offspring. The T. rex's established sense of smell allows it to find them shortly after, but once it pokes its head into Kelly and Sarah's tent, it can't find them so long as they lie perfectly still and don't make a noise. The scent it's been following was the infant blood on the jacket hanging over their heads, which is masking their scent; this gives them an opportunity to escape and survive.
• Instant Sedation: Subverted when InGen's mooks accidentally give the T. rex too much sedative, causing it to go into cardiac arrest. In their attempts to save the dinosaur they gave it enough stimulant to kill a rhino, which causes it to wake up and spend the next thirty minutes trashing San Diego. Odds are, had it not been sedated again, it would have kept trashing the place for quite possibly days until it either burned through the stimulants in its blood, suffered a heart attack, or somebody applied a sufficient level of firepower to the problem.
• Jungles Sound Like Kookaburras: Kookaburras can be heard on Isla Sorna, which is supposed to be west of Costa Rica.
• Karma Houdini: Nick Van Owen (who was responsible for the deaths of multiple people on the island) and Roland Tembo (who shot the Buck Rex with the tranquiler that allowed Ingen to take it off island and end up rampaging through San Diego) both disappear from the final act of the movie and neither are seen facing any sort of comeuppance for their actions.
• Karmic Death: Stark shocks a compy for no reason early on. They get their revenge later.
  • Peter Ludlow plans to capture live dinosaurs from Isla Sorna and bring them to the mainland. In the end, he tries to recapture the baby tyrannosaur himself but the tables are turned and the young tyrannosaur's father injures him so that he can be used to teach the baby how to hunt.
• Kidnapped from Behind: In the infamous "Don't go into the long grass!" scene, the protagonists and the InGen hunters are chased into tall grass by the T. rex. Velociraptors start quietly picking them off without the rest of them knowing and continue doing so for a while before the survivors realize what's going on and run for it.
• Killer Rabbit: Compies. Small, carnivorous, attack in packs, and don't fear humans.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Roland, after witnessing the death of almost the entire InGen crew, including his best friend Ajay, and very nearly losing his own life, wants nothing more to do with the venture despite managing to bring down the Buck T. rex, and turns Ludlow's job offer down flat. Averted with Ludlow himself, however.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • Ian's line: "Oooh, ahhh. That's how it always starts. But later there's running, and screaming."
  • Only once in the entirety of the film does anyone point out that white Ian Malcolm's daughter is black (Nick, to Eddie: "Do you see any family resemblance here?").
• Laser-Guided Karma: Stark exists almost entirely for this purpose, shocking a compy with a cattle prod in his first appearance only to get brought down by a pack of them midway through the film.
  • Not only is Peter Ludlow killed by the baby tyrannosaur at the end of the movie, his leg is broken by the adult to do so. It's not made clear in the final film, but a deleted scene (of which some still photos exist) shows that the baby tyrannosaur's leg was accidentally broken by Ludlow himself while he was stumbling around drunk after the successful hunt earlier in the film.
• Little Miss Badass: Kelly, when she uses gymnastics to take out a raptor.
• Little Stowaway: Kelly (a Composite Character of Kelly and Arby from the novel version).
• The Load: Kelly for most of the beginning, though she becomes more helpful later in the film.
• Looking a Miffed Animal in the Mouth: Eddie has a side view of the open, roaring jaws of a Tyrannosaurus rex as he desperately tries use his jeep to pull up the mobile base that the rexes had knocked over a cliff.
• Lost in the Maize: "DON'T GO INTO THE LONG GRASS!" Naturally, they do, and Hilarity Ensues. The clip from the Reaction Shot entry, which comes from this scene, is priceless.

M - R

• Malicious Slander: Peter Ludlow in the backstory, as he is revealed to have given the order for InGen to wage a campaign of this on Ian Malcolm after he breaks his nondisclosure agreement and goes public regarding the original Jurassic Park incident. The end of the movie makes it clear that Malcolm will get the last laugh, however.
• Mama Bear and Papa Wolf:
  • The two T. rexes in The Lost World (novel and movie) will not let anyone hurt or kidnap their babies.
    Malcolm: Mommy's very angry.
  • The Stegosaurus parents try to attack Sarah after seeing her as a threat to their baby.
  • Malcolm and Sarah themselves are this to Kelly. It's particularly shown during the raptor attack where Malcolm grabs a stick to distract the first attacking raptor while Sarah quickly recovers from having just been jumped by that raptor and hustles Kelly into the nearest building just as two more raptors show up.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Bowman deserve a mention. They manage to save Cathy by driving off an entire swarm of compies (well Mr. Bowman does, anyway, with some help from his yacht crew), then proceed to sue the crap out of InGen for their daughter's pain and suffering.
• Match Cut: The screaming mother seeing her mauled daughter in the prologue is matched up with a shot of Malcolm yawning in a subway station, with the train "drowning out" the scream. It even features an ad behind him making it seem as if he's in the same jungle as Isla Sorna's.
• The Millstone: Carter: he listens to music while his companion is getting mauled to death and screams at the top of his lungs when he sees the T. rex, alerting it to where everyone else is. Even if he didn't have to keep watch, nonchalantly listening to some music with headphones and zoning out in a predator-filled jungle? Bad idea.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Kookaburras are heard, even though these birds are native to Australia and the characters are supposed to be in Costa Rica. The film was shot in Australia, however.
• Monster Munch: When the T. rex gets loose in San Diego, there's a brief scene of a random civilian getting munched on when he tries to get into a locked store. He's the film's screenwriter, David Koepp, credited as "Unlucky Bastard".
• My God, What Have I Done?: Ludlow goes through this when he witnesses the T. rex escape into San Diego, knowing it is entirely his fault.
• Mythology Gag: Ludlow's death is a direct copy of Dodgson's death in the book: wandering right into a family of T. rexes.
• Newscaster Cameo: CNN reporter Bernard Shaw appears as himself reporting on the return of the papa rex and his infant to Isla Sorna.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Nick van Owen and the novel's version of Eddie Carr — their decision to help the injured T. rex infant by bringing it back to camp with them leaves everybody hopelessly screwed over from that point on.
  • Nick does it again when he sabotages the InGen camp, resulting in the freed dinosaurs stampeding and destroying a lot of equipment, greatly reducing everyone's chances of getting off the island alive. It also tips off Roland that there are another group of humans on the island.
  • Nick does it yet again when he removes the slugs from the shells Roland's elephant gun is loaded with, leaving Roland unable to fire on the T. rex when it attacks the camp at night. If he hadn't done that, Roland probably would've been able to neutralize the rex before it could massacre half the team, chase the humans into velociraptor territory, and wreak all the havoc that was yet to come. Moreover, it was all for nothing anyway as Roland just finds another weapon and hunts the rex with that instead, but the second time he uses a non-lethal weapon, which results in the animal being taken to San Diego, where it causes even more destruction. The whole rage-against-the-hunter thing (a noble cause but horribly misplaced on an island like Isla Sorna) led to nothing but a lot of senseless loss of life.
  • Malcolm's insistence on rushing to "save" Sarah ensures that the equipment is neither ready nor entirely functioning, which is why Eddie is forced to come along (aside from curiosity about the dinosaurs).
• Noble Demon: Roland Tembo, the film's secondary antagonist, is your classic Great White Hunter with a harsh but fair moral code. He is willing to nanny Peter Ludlow's ill-advised invasion of Isla Sorna, but he bears the protagonists no ill will and ultimately parts ways with Ludlow.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Ludlow, though he tries to get in on the action anyway despite his abject cluelessness.
• Non-Malicious Monster: The Tyrannosaurs. While they're still very dangerous, the film casts them in a sympathetic light, particularly since they're spending the whole movie in Mama Bear and Papa Wolf mode.
• Nothing Is Scarier: What killed everyone on the Venture, anyway?
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: InGen spent four years keeping the incident on Isla Nublar hush-hush, to the point of offering generous (or what it felt passed for generous) payoffs to the visitors and/or workers who survived and spinning misinformation about the deaths of those not so fortunate, smearing anyone who violated the nondisclosure agreement and spoke the truth (such as Ian Malcolm), and making sure the general public didn't know about any resurrected dinosaurs until it was ready for them to. The bull rex's rampage through San Diego puts a brutal end to that, revealing to the entire world that dinosaurs live again.
• Not His Sled: The last act is probably where the film diverges the most from the novel. In the novel, the sequence with the raptors in the workers' village is the climax and the story ends with the characters leaving the island. However, the film goes on for another half hour, with the bull Tyrannosaurus escaping from containment and going on a rampage through San Diego.
• Oh, Crap!
  • Kelly gets one when Sarah and Nick bring the baby rex into the trailer, realizing that the noise will likely attract something worse. Eddie and Malcolm then get her up in the "high hide", with Malcolm reassuring her that they're safe...until they hear a certain Mighty Roar. Malcolm in particular looks ready to piss his pants, having heard that roar before and knowing exactly what's coming.
  • Mama and Papa T. rex retrieve their infant and gently put it out of harm's way … then ROAR AND CHARGE FULL-SPEED at the trailers. Malcolm and Sarah's reaction is understandable.
    Malcolm: Hang on, this is gonna be bad.
  • Sarah when she realizes that she has failed to follow proper camping protocol by leaving candy wrappers strewn around the tent and worst of all, her jacket with the baby rex's wet blood hanging above their sleeping bags.
  • Ludlow gets a whole series of these later on, starting the moment the Venture repeatedly fails to respond to the harbor master's radio calls (this one coupled with a Screw This, I'm Outta Here). It continues once the T. rex escapes its confinement.
• 1-Dimensional Thinking: When the hunters are running from the Tyrannosauruses and later the Velociraptors, they all run together in a group and in a single direction, even though it would be more sensible to try splitting up so that somebody in the group could either escape pursuit or lead the dinosaurs away from the others.
  • It's somewhat justified in both cases: One, the T.rex chased them into a narrow ravine with no side exits sans the Convenient Cranny that it ends up pulling Burke out of. In the other instance, the men panicked and split up, making it easier for the raptors to pick them off.
• Only in It for the Money: Nick freely admits this:

  Nick: Noble was last year. This year I'm getting paid. Hammond's check cleared. Or I wouldn't be going on this wild goose chase.

• Police Are Useless: At one point during the T. rex's rampage, the police (complete with an animal control unit) arrive on the scene... and promptly turn tail and speed off the way they came. One can assume that either they didn't believe that a dinosaur was tearing up San Diego or they were just poorly briefed on the situation. Later, the Army shows up after the T. rex has just been contained in the ship by Ian and Sarah, who probably would have the firepower to deal with a rampaging 5-ton predator.
• Poor Communication Kills: When Malcolm and Eddie discover that the baby Tyrannosaurus' parents are searching for their offspring, Malcolm attempts to warn Sarah and Nick at the trailer via their satellite phone. Unfortunately, neither Nick and Sarah bother to pick up, forcing Malcolm to rush there on foot. He gets only just before mommy and daddy T. rex show up and attack the trailer. Had either of them just picked up the phone, all of this could have been avoided and Eddie might have survived.
• Product Placement: Mercedes Benz vehicles were used by Malcolm and company, and Sarah takes a picture with a Nikon camera (even stating the brand name out loud). Then, after the scene shifts to San Diego, we see a Southern California S & L branch, a Starbucks coffee shop, a Burger King ad on a bus, a Blockbuster video store, a Chevron gas station, a Unocal 76 gas station…
• Psychopathic Manchild: In a surprising twist, Peter Ludlow is revealed to be one of these after arriving on the island. He treats the invasion of Isla Sorna like a vacation and the dinosaurs like a kid's Christmas toys. His deference to Roland Tembo is not unlike a child's deference to their parents (so long as the child is getting what they want) and when the base camp is overrun, he reacts with all the confusion and entitlement of a child stunned to find himself not getting his way for the first time.
• Takes Ten to Hold: Ludlow's mercenaries try to do this to a Parasaurolophus. Being one of the larger hadrosaurs, both on Isla Sorna and in real life, the animal easily lifts at least three mercs off the ground and several feet into the air, before being brought down by having its hind legs tripped out from underneath it.
• Quickly-Demoted Leader: Ludlow is established in his very first scene as the movie's Big Bad but when he next appears his Dragon quickly seizes operational control from him as it is obvious to the both of them that he has no idea what he is doing. Dieter Stark also falls victim to this thanks to the bad luck of being given command just before Nick and Sarah sneak into the base camp and free all the dinosaurs. His boss's reaction to coming back to a base camp literally on fire?
  Roland Tembo: That's the last time I leave you in charge.
• Quizzical Tilt: During its rampage in San Diego, the bull T. rex tilts its head sideways when Ian and Sara use the infant T. rex to lure its daddy back to the docks. Just as Ian had predicted earlier, its expression just screams "You two again?"
  Ian: [As he and Sarah are taking back the baby] You know, when the adult sees that it's us, once again with his baby, he's gonna be like "You?!", ah, with some angry recognition.
  Sarah: Who knows, maybe he'll just be glad to see us.
• Red Herring: As Malcolm and the team arrive on Isla Sorna, Eddie introduces his ace weapon, a poison dart gun with venom so potent the animal will be felled almost instantly. The gun never ends up getting used, because the barrel gets caught in some netting at a pivotal moment, and Eddie gets eaten. The gun then goes over a cliff and is destroyed in an explosion.
• Ramming Always Works: The T. rexes decide to ram the Base on Wheels off a cliff after they get their baby back.
• Redshirt Army: The bad guys show up with a fairly large one. Surprisingly, while it's always obvious that they're there as cannon fodder, they make it through quite a bit of the movie unscathed before dying wholesale within the span of a few minutes.

S - Z

• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Malcolm in the film's backstory, as it is revealed that he was the only survivor of the original Jurassic Park incident who broke his nondisclosure agreement and went public to expose InGen. Film villain Peter Ludlow countered with a campaign of Malicious Slander that has made Malcolm a laughingstock in the public eye, but the film's climax vindicates Malcolm resoundingly.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Virtually every time and everywhere a T. rex shows up, everyone except for a select few badasses turns tail and runs for their lives despite many of them being heavily armed. Especially noticeable in San Diego, though that's of course entirely justified, given the situation.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Played with at one point between Peter Ludlow and Nick Van Owen when the former tries, repeatedly and without success, to rally the mercenaries under his employ to get up and get moving only to be interrupted by the latter who gets everyone up without even really trying. The scene makes it clear that despite his hand in stranding them there, the mercenaries respect the "manly" Van Owen much more than they do the Non-Action Big Bad Ludlow.
• Self-Disposing Villain: Ludlow dies while trying to reclaim the infant T. rex one last time.
• Sequel Logo in Ruins: The film was advertised with a more weathered version of the Park's shield logo.
• Sequel: The Original Title: The franchise title and subtitle were reversed for this film. Jurassic Park III decided for Numbered Sequels instead. The fourth film, Jurassic World, averts both of these altogether with a Word Sequel, as do Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World Dominion.
• Serial Escalation: The sequel massively ups the amount of dinosaurs, action sequences, and body count from the first film. The first film had one Tyrannosaurus? This film has a whole family of T. rex! The first film has three raptors picking off a small handful of characters? This film has at least a dozen slaughtering a large expedition group!
• Shout-Out:
  • The San Diego sequence has several Japanese businessmen among others running for their lives from the T. rex, a clear tribute to Godzilla films.
  • There's probably no way to prove or disprove that, but T. rex in San Diego might also be a reference to a short SF story Paleontology: An Experimental Science published in 1974. Its plot involved reconstituting dinosaurs from DNA preserved in fossilized bone and skin fragments… and it ended with the reconstructed ''Tyrannosaurus'' getting loose in San Diego. It might also be a reference to another short story involving dinosaurs recreated from DNA that predated Jurassic Park, Robert Silverberg's Our Lady of the Sauropods. In this story, the resurrected dinosaurs were isolated on the "Dino Island" (which was actually a space station) "after that unfortunate San Diego event with the Tyrannosaur" … which itself was a reference to aforementioned Paleontology: An Experimental Science.
  • Roland Tembo and Nick van Owen (who's a son of a bitch). Someone is a Warren Zevon fan…
    • The lyrics to Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner are referenced further in the deleted scene that introduces Roland. His friend Ajay finds him "in Mombassa, in a bar room drinking gin."
  • The arrival of the spooky empty ship in San Diego is a homage to the similar sequence in Dracula, although it's anyone's guess which (if any) of the film versions they had in mind.
  • Before his urban rampage, King Kong was brought to the U.S. by a ship named Venture.
  • While helping set the baby's leg, Nick refers to Sarah as "Dr Quinn."
  • While wandering through a neighborhood, the T. rex scratches its jaw, something that most theropods in stop-motion films like King Kong and the original The Lost World were animated to do.
• Smug Snake: Ludlow is too much of a stiff-upper-lip type to smirk very often, but he is clearly one of these, disregarding his uncle's wishes to leave Site B untouched and bullishly seizing control of InGen from him, effectively setting up a chess match between them that ends with Ludlow as rex chow and Hammond having obtained the documentary evidence he needs to rally the public's support for declaring Site B off-limits to human interference. Malcolm even calls him on it at one point; unfortunately, Ludlow is too smugly sure of himself to listen.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • In the novel, InGen has declared bankruptcy after the death of its CEO and the violent failure of Jurassic Park and is defunct by the events of the sequel. The film has them in rough financial straits, but still very much functional, and act as the main antagonists of the movie to put themselves back in the green.
  • The dinosaurs in the novel were found to be dying out due to all being infected by prions after the predators fed on tainted sheep meat and spread the sickness around. This plot point is completely absent here, with the ending instead showing the dinosaurs' triumphant survival on Isla Sorna against all odds. It's also more realistic, since dinosaurs would be immune to prions (which only affects mammals, and even then only a small number of them).
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Roland mentions that, since the Rex just fed, he won't be hunting for a while. 'Just fed' meaning Eddie's horrible death, and Malcom is accordingly angry; "You might show a little more respect, the man saved our lives by giving his." Roland calmly retorts that his—Eddie's— problems are over.
• So Proud of You: When the baby rex gets its first kill against Ludlow, daddy rex watches with a look that says "That's my boy!"
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Following the original film, InGen tried to cover up the Isla Nublar incident. Of all the survivors, Malcolm was the most incensed and tried to expose them, but he was only one man against an international corporation. Ludlow was able to use their resources and influence to kneecap Malcolm's career and reputation (and Malcolm didn't help his case by having violated the NDA he signed before going to the island).
  • The loss of Isla Nublar understandably financially crippled InGen and left them on the verge of bankruptcy in the years since and they've been desperate for income. A deleted boardroom scene also confirms the families of John Arnold, Robert Muldoon, and Donald Gennarro received wrongful death settlements.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Robert Burke fills a similar niche to that of George Baselton from the novel. Both are the resident scientists for the villainous teams, and both get eaten by a T. rex as a result of incorrect scientific assumptions: Burke because he panics about a venomous snake(Micrurus alleni, the Costa Rican coral snake) being more dangerous than T. rex, (though granted, the snake did slither into his shirt), and Baselton because he thought T. rex vision was based on movement.
• Take That!:
  • There's a notable shot at paleontologist Robert T. Bakker. Quick history lesson: Dr. Bakker has been a longtime rival of Dr. Jack Horner, the Jurassic Park series' official paleontological consultant. Horner is well known for having an Awesome Ego (he proudly states that he was the inspiration for Dr. Grant), and always seemed to be in a perpetual state of bickering with Dr. Bakker, even on the pettiest of speculative topics (such as the T. rex's eyesight, which there is currently no way of actually studying). And thus in The Lost World, Dr. Bakker gets his very own Captain Ersatz, a bumbling poser named Burke who gets scared out of hiding by a snake, right into the jaws of a T. rex. But Bakker loved the scene, and even said to Horner (a proponent of the "rex as scavenger" theory), "I told you T. rex was a hunter!"
  • Ludlow, during his satellite videoconference with the InGen stakeholders:
    Ludlow: The city of San Diego is already famous for its animal attractions: the San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld, the San Diego Chargers…
• Take This Job and Shove It: Roland Tembo finally has enough of Ludlow after losing his best friend Ajay to Velociraptors, and delivers a subdued but firm one of these to him, telling him he's "spent enough time in the company of death".
• Tempting Fate: After Nick and Sarah bring the baby rex back to the trailer, Kelly visibly panics and pleads with Ian to take her somewhere safe. He and Eddie take her up in the high-hide, understanding that she is scared that the cries of the baby rex will likely bring other dinosaurs to its location. There, at a safe height, she tearfully reveals she remembers all the scary stories Ian told her about his experiences on Isla Nublar. Feeling responsible, Ian attempts to assuage her fears, saying that none of that is going to happen as they are in a completely different situation. Cue the most awesome and beloved apex-predator roars in cinematic history.
• Time for Plan B: After Peter Ludlow's mercenaries arrive, Nick Van Owen reveals he was not sent just as a photographer, but as Hammond's "backup plan".
• This Way to Certain Death: An attempt at averting this for the InGen hunting party goes wrong. "DON'T GO IN THE LONG GRASS! NOT IN THE LONG GRASS!" No one listens.
• Title Drop: Hammond refers to Isla Sorna as a "Lost World".

• Too Dumb to Live: Every death in the movie except for Eddie Carr's Heroic Sacrifice and the San Diego civilians (who had no way to know or defend themselves from an angry T. rex.)
  • The boy with his camera should be a LOT more terrified that a giant hulking T. rex is outside his house, one that just got done eating his dog! Even worse, his camera agitates the T. rex. One can only hope his stupidity didn't get him and his family killed.
  • Peter Ludlow tries to capture the baby T. rex after the carnage of the San Diego rampage, while its father is nearby. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
  • Dieter Stark just walks off into a dinosaur-infested forest, alone and far further away from his companions than necessary, to relieve himself. He gets mauled to death by a flock of compies.
  • Ajay, the guy yelling the already-mentioned "DON'T GO INTO THE LONG GRASS!" ...then goes into the long grass anyway.
  • Carter, the headphones-wearing Hispanic guy also falls under this category by screaming like an idiot and alerting the T. rex to the presence of everyone else in the camp. Not to mention wearing headphones with loud music while on an island full of wild dinosaurs!

• Two Girls to a Team: There are only two females amongst a moderate-sized cast of males, across either team sent to the island: Sarah and Kelly.
• Understatement: When the Tyrannosaurs come back for their baby, one of them knocks over a car.
  Ian Malcolm: Mommy's very angry.
• Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: Eddie's equipment gets sent out into the field early before any of it gets stress-tested, thanks to Malcolm getting them moving three days ahead of schedule and it's anyone's guess whether this would have made a difference against the T. rexes as it did in the novel. ^note  In the book, Thorne's insistence on the mobile lab's trailers being able to handle high loads of force and stress led to only half of it falling over the cliff after the rexes attacked and he was able to rescue Sarah and Ian without needing to noisily winch them back up to solid ground. Subverted with the neurotoxin gun, which Eddie desperately tries but fails to use before the rexes tear him in half.
• Ungrateful Bastard: When their camp and vehicles are destroyed by the T. rexes, the InGen team help the protagonists with resources and intelligence vital to getting off the island, despite the fact that they sabotaged them and destroyed their camp. Nick immediately picks a fight with one of them and later stole the bullets from Roland's gun, which later resulted in Roland being unable to shoot the Tyrannosaurus when they attack the camp.
• The Unpronounceable:
  Roland: Pachy … pachy … oh, hell. The fat head with the bald spot. Friar Tuck!^note He's trying to say "Pachycephalosaurus".
• The Usurper: John Hammond reveals that his nephew Peter Ludlow, the film's main villain, is one of these. After years of scheming, the film's opening scene gave Ludlow the leverage he needed to seize control of InGen from Hammond.
• Viewer-Friendly Interface: The tie-in platformer game's prologues to each chapter has rather cool computer screens that display information, location, video feed, and files of each character, such as the migration of a Compy tribe, a Human Hunter hacking into the InGen database for his briefing, a Velociraptor tracking a hunter, a T. rex storming into the InGen base, and Sarah Harding running for her life.
• Villain Has a Point: While Ludlow is a jerkass to Malcolm during his introductory scene, he also isn't technically wrong when he points out that Malcolm did violate the NDA he signed before the Isla Nublar Incident. InGen was legally within its rights to retalaite for the breach of contract (even if Ludlow took the retaliation into Malicious Slander territory).
• Villainous Rescue: The villains help Ian and the others to escape the island after all their equipment is destroyed.
• Villainy-Free Villain: The InGen corporation are intended to be a ruthless Mega-Corp who arrive to strip-mine Isla Sorna of its dinosaurs for profit. While it's perfectly legal for them to recapture a group of animals they themselves bred and to attempt to recoup their losses, the creators expect the viewer to gloss over this by simply making them out to be massive Jerkasses, even going so far as to deceptively edit the film to make some characters even more unpleasant.
• Wham Line:
  • Audiences got extremely quiet when the iconic roar of the Tyrannosaurus rex is heard for the first time, coming from the incredibly angry parents of a kidnapped baby T. rex.
  • After the ''T Rexes went back into the jungle with their baby, The group thought they're safe, that is, until Malcolm notices something out the window:
  Malcolm: Hang on. This is gonna be bad.
  (Cue the T Rexes ramming the trailers)
  • Slightly after that, when the protagonists' group and InGen group unite to find a way off the island by trekking to the radio station, located deeper within the island. However, Ludlow notes there's one major obstacle they have to face if they're to reach communications.
  Roland: What is the problem?
  Ludlow: Velociraptors
• Wham Shot:
  • Cathy Bowman meeting a Compsognathus.
  • The group in the trailer is cornered by not one, but 2 T. rexes, making this movie's Rex problem a lot more serious.
  • Of the Bait-and-Switch variety during the "Long Grass" scene. Immediately after Ajay warns the hunters against going into the field, we see a moonlit behind shot of three raptor heads silently poking just above the grass. The overhead shot that comes next shows at least ten trails homing in on the group.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Malcolm gives one right back at Sarah when she repeatedly pokes fun at him for being afraid of returning to Jurassic Park. Considering the absolute hell that Malcolm and the other park-goers went through in the first film, it's completely understandable that he'd be terrified of going anywhere near dinosaurs again. And his various warnings come across as kinda funny until you remember that they stem from the violent deaths of Robert Muldoon, Ray Arnold, Dennis Nedry, and Donald Gennaro on Isla Nublar.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The Robert Bakker Expy gets killed when his aversion to snakes get him eaten by the T. rex. Worse, the snake was a completely harmless milk snake, which is Hollywood's stock coral snake expy.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Despite only appearing in two scenes, John Hammond is playing one of these with his nephew, The Usurper Peter Ludlow, the whole time. He counters Ludlow's seizing control of InGen from him by speed-rushing a team to the island before him, and counters Ludlow's small army of mercenaries with one very cunning Guile Hero.
• You Do Not Want To Know: When Eddie asks Malcolm what's going on back at the trailer, Malcolm tells him, "You're a lot happier not knowing."
• "You!" Exclamation: Malcolm predicts that the rampaging rex will react his way upon seeing its child with Malcolm and Harding.
• Zerg Rush: The compies use this move, turning poor Stark into…
  Ian Malcolm: Did you find him?
  Roland Tembo: Just the parts they didn't like.

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