WMG / Tremors

Burt Gummer is immortal.

During the first film, Burt states that he chose to live in Perfection because it was geographically isolated and specifically that he chose where his house is for the same reason. Cut to the fourth film and we see an apparent ancestor of Burt's named Hiram, who says that he's chosen a spot on a hill on which to build a house which is heavily implied to be the same spot his "great-grandson" lives on later.

Simply put, Hiram Gummer kept on living, and due to being really old has had his memory fade so that he doesn't remember the Graboids (or Dirt Dragons, whatever), only that there's some terrible danger to be paranoid of. Over the decades he's likely projected that fear onto the Communists and even the U.S. Government, thinking those were the real threats.

• Supporting fact: Burt is the only character in the whole series to survive being swallowed by a Graboid.
  • Until the fifth movie, that is.

Advertisement:

El Blanco is a Mixmaster mutant.

There is no true correlation between albinism and sterility, and the number of Graboids in the world is so tiny that the odds of one having even one of these mutations, never mind two, is bound to be astronomically small. It's far more likely that when El Blanco was just a "dirt dragon" larva, he wandered into one of the secret lab's ventilation ducts and was exposed to Mixmaster, which contaminated his genes with those of some non-Graboid organism (perhaps a white lab rodent?) with a conventional life cycle. When he grew to Graboid size, these genes became incorporated into his new form, altering his color and eliminating his capacity to produce shriekers.

Ass-blasters aren't hermaphroditic, and Messerschmitt is male.

We know that shriekers are able to breed parthenogenetically, because we've seen it happen. It's likely that Graboids are either asexual or self-fertilizing, as every Graboid (except El Blanco) that lives long enough gives "birth" to shriekers, even Graboids which hatched out alone. But it's almost unheard-of for complex multicellular life forms to forego sexual recombination completely — there's too much evolutionary advantage to be had in creating varied offspring — so it's plausible that at least one stage of the Graboid life cycle would reproduce sexually.

In the third movie, the ass-blaster that killed Miguel was examined after death, and found to be carrying eggs. These eggs must've been produced very quickly after it metamorphosed from its shrieker form, as the entire film takes place over only a few days; however, this isn't out of line with how rapidly the Graboid species appears to grow at all stages of life (fast metabolism). Presumably, it — rather, she — would've flown off to lay them as soon as she'd eaten enough to sustain her for her journey. The other ass-blasters' ravenous attacks may have been spurred on by that same drive to migrate and disperse eggs.

Advertisement:

And yet, the one ass-blaster to survive the films, the captive Messerschmitt, opts to return to Perfection upon escaping, rather than flying off to lay eggs after consuming the thieves who stole it in Vegas. No mention is made, in "Blast From The Past", of the risk that it might lay eggs; once identified as Sigmund & Ray's animal, it's referred to as "he" throughout. What's more, all other Graboids or shriekers that appear in the TV series — even the ones purchased for research — are derived from wild-caught specimens, not Messerschmitt. Were ass-blasters capable of parthenogenesis, you'd think that Sigmund & Ray would have an ample supply of eggs to sell to interested researchers ... and that we'd see larval dirt-dragon models in Jodie's store, as well as other life stages, since these would've been observed when Messerschmitt's eggs hatched.

Advertisement:

Conclusion? Messerschmitt really was rightly referred to as "he", hence had never laid eggs, and had flown all the way to Perfection in hope of finding other ass-blasters — i.e. fertile females — still there. His picky eating habits were as much a result of his having sex on his mind, rather than food, as of having been spoiled by Sigmund & Ray. The fact that he's male, and doesn't have to fly long distances to seek a place to lay eggs, may even explain why he fell into a "food coma" in the first place: he didn't have the use for all those excess calories that a female ass-blaster would, so took a nap rather than flew off to find a nesting site. Nancy and Mindy are only alive today because it was him, not one of the females, that spotted their body heat on the rooftop.

Cheer up, Burt. You really did need to blow up your bunker: eating MREs would've only put the male ass-blasters to sleep, whereas the females would've scattered across the state and spread the Graboid menace beyond Perfection Valley, with no granite barriers to confine them.

• Ever heard of the Whiptail Lizards? All of them are females, and while they simulate mating they lay eggs, and the ensuing offspring is an exact copy of its mother. It's possible for Graboids be either genderless or at least an all-female species that reproduces via parthenogenesis.
  • Yes, I have. I never said it was impossible for them to be fully asexual, only that it would mean forfeiting a major evolutionary advantage to become so.

All the theories Val, Earl and Kate about the Graboids were true.

They were an experiment, made by aliens, sent to Earth before the Cambrian Age.

Graboids are a species of Pokémon.

It has three stages of evolution, going from an Onix-alike to a raptor to a flying raptor. I'm thinking ground/bug type, pure bug for the shriekers and bug/flying for the assblasters. Of course, there are some more intersting (and less reviled) type combinations out there, but these seem to fit the best.

As for how the Graboids got into Perfection Valley is anyone's guess *Cough Arceus Cough* But all I'm saying is: Wouldn't it be fun if somewhere in southern Orre, there were a few fossil pokémon with a certain lifecycle?

As a final piece of evidence, I'll let you chew on this: El Blanco is a Shiny graboid.

• Mind=Blown

Graboids are alien life forms.

In the second movie Kate finds a Graboid fossil in Precambrian rock where the only other forms of life were single cell organisms. The Graboid and their life cycle are to complex to have been from that time. They probably came from space as an egg and brought the single cell organisms with them.

The "free-moving tentacles" in Tremors 5 weren't what Burt thought they were.

Rather, they're the shrieker stage of the African variant of the species. The New World versions' second phase of the life cycle look like wingless versions of the egg-laying stage, but in Africa the middle stage of development resembles the Graboid stage instead, slimmed down for greater mobility aboveground.

Graboids appear due to underground anomalies

It's established that they're Precambrian life forms. You'd think there'd be evidence of them throughout history, but (seemingly) there isn't. That's because the modern graboids aren't descendants of the original Precambrian graboids, they are the Precambrian graboids. They died out during the Great Oxygenation Event, which is why there presumably weren't any graboids eating dinosaurs, for example, but there are still fossils of them. The graboids that appeared in Perfection and other places arrived there via anomalies (from Primeval) that appeared underground.

El Blancos' infertility

As mentioned above, the chances of a creature being Albino and infertile at the same time are astronomicaly slim. So what I was thinking is that at no point in a Graboids lifecycle does it seem to undergo any sort of genetic sharing, every stage just produces the next asexually. This means that genetic weaknesses could become a real threat to the graboid species. So to counteract this Graboids evolved a sort of failsafe whereby any member who's genetics vary too much from the norm will be rendered infertile to prevent damaging mutations from being passed on the the next generation. Mutations such as missing tongue-tendrils or poor hearing would then simply vanish.

In a future film, every surviving character and actor would be Back for the Finale

Not only would we find out how Val, Earl and Rhonda have been for example, but also have plenty of stories to tell about graboids. Of course, some of them would probably die for drama. Of course it seems slim due to how big of Stars both Kevin Bacon and Reba McEntire are.