An ecosystem of majestic morons.
The name ‘Dinosaurs’ literally translates as ‘Terrible Lizards’. In our world, they really are terrible. In fact they are absolutely useless. - Tagline
Dinosaurs: Terrible Lizards is a series of animated videos created by animator Joel Veitch and hosted on Rathergood
, depicting heavily stylized (and we mean HEAVILY stylized) dinosaurs living out their lives (or, well... trying to) in the style of a faux nature documentary.
Videos in this series include a initial test animation and a pilot episode; official episodes started being released in 2020. The current episodes are:
- "50 Shades of Graham": Graham the Stegosaurus is a loveable, good-natured, unstoppable juggernaut. When he joins a huge group of his own Stegosaurus kind, Spike the Triceratops leads an attack to see them off.
- "The Sky's The Limit": Janet the Tyrannosaurus is the most fearsome predator of the ancient world, and she has a family to feed. However, brute strength is not always the best strategy as Charlotte the Pterodactyl knows all too well.
A Netflix series based on Joel's shorts, Bad Dinosaurs, was revealed in a 2022 announcement. The animation will be produced by Able & Baker (which also did work for Love, Death & Robots), and directed by Simone Giampaolo. The series was released on March 28, 2024.
This web original provides examples of:
- Always a Bigger Fish: The pilot short spells it out in the narration: "But in the Mesozoic, sometimes the hunter becomes the hunted." Said while a fish grabs onto the Pterodactyl's beak. Then a crocodile grabs the fish, and the Ichthyosaur grabs the crocodile, putting a lot of strain on the Pterodactyl carrying all three of them mid-flight.
- Balloon-Bursting Bird: Or rather a Pterodactyl in "The Sky's The Limit". Janet, the mother T. rex, ends up being blown up like a balloon by a geyser, and Charlotte, the pterosaur she was trying to catch, perhaps realizing that she has a family to feed, pulls her over the pool she was hunting in earlier. Then Charlotte pops Janet's belly with her beak, dropping her into the pool and sending up some fish for her young to eat, in a similar manner to when Janet fell into the same pool earlier in the short.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: All sorts, but given the tone and style of the series it's very much intentional. The usual Anachronism Stew of Jurassic dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and Allosaurus coexisting with Cretaceous ones like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus is of course present.
- Curiously, a case of
Accidentally-Correct Writing: the Tyrannosaurus is depicted as being a half-feathered creature resembling a plucked turkey, Played for Laughs: but with certain fossil imprints showing that T. rex was mostly featherless and that the bare skin was likely not scaly, due to feathers and scales being mutually exclusive (feathers ARE modified scales), this reconstruction is surprisingly on-point for what is essentially a dino-themed shitpost.
- Curiously, a case of
- Behind the Black: In the test animation, the Allosaurus isn't even seen approaching the Apatosaurus - we see the latter's neck being trampled by the Triceratops herd, and then the Allosaurus is right there, chewing on the sauropod's tail without the herbivore even noticing.
- Big Head Mode: Allosaurus has a head so large that it drags on the ground, connected to its body by a neck to skinny to hold it up.
- Camera Abuse: The Ankylosaurus knocks a rock straight into the camera with its tail club in the pilot, breaking the screen.
- Cartoon Creature: Most of the dinosaurs, most notably the Triceratops that looks like a three-horned sweet potato, or the Pachycephalosaurus which is best described as a purple sausage with legs.
- Cephalothorax: The Stegosaurus.
- Description Cut: The narration talks about the many features that make the dinosaurs well-adapted to their environment... all the while juxtaposed with the idiotic behavior of the dinosaurs themselves.
- Double-Meaning Title: Terrible Lizards - not "terrible" as in the usual definition of "fearsome", but "terrible" as in "incredibly incompetent".
- Dumb Dinos: Exaggerated to comedic extremes. The dinosaurs are hilariously inept, tending to walk straight off cliffs, obliviously hinder one another, or recklessly blunder into trouble.
- Gentle Giant Sauropod: The Apatosaurus, whose neck is so long and floppy that it lies as limp as a piece of rope.
- Goofy Feathered Dinosaur: The Tyrannosaurus has feathers, and is a very inept predator. Then again, the featherless dinosaurs are equally goofy.
- Headbutting Pachy: The...
rather phallic-looking Pachycephalosaurus are described as using their heads to joust each other. Two of them are depicted charging at each other... and then passing each other by, leading to one of them running headlong across the landscape throughout the rest of the short and finally straight off a cliff. - Hyperlink Story: There are four different segments to the pilot short: the hunting Pterodactyl, the jousting Pachycephalosaurus, the Ankylosaurus trying to construct a nest, and the Stegosaurus dragging off an Apatosaurus and provoking a Triceratops. It all comes to a head when the Stegosaurus (with the Apatosaurus and Triceratops stuck on its back) tramples the Ankylosaurus nest, causing it to attack and knock the other dinos over, just as the Pachycephalosaurus is falling off the cliff above them. The latter crashes into the Pterodactyl carrying its load of fish, crocodile, and Ichthyosaurus and all of them crash-land on top of the rest. The short ends with an Allosaurus showing up and munching on the Apatosaurus' tail like in the test animation before a meteor wipes out everyone.
- Inflating Body Gag: In "The Sky's The Limit", the mother Tyrannosaurus lands mouth-first on a geyser, which fills her body with gas that causes her to float into the air like a blimp.
- Memetic Mutation: Before the comment section was sadly nixed by Youtube Kids, the comments on the pilot made plenty of jokes comparing the dinosaurs to Spore or calling the show "Ark: Survival Deformed".
- No-Sell: In "Fifty Shades of Graham", the Triceratops herd charges at the Stegosaurus gathering after Spike gets his lunch trampled on by accident. It doesn't end well for the Triceratops, and the Stegosaurus herd doesn't even flinch.
- Temper-Ceratops: The Triceratops are quite prone to attacking other dinosaurs for minor offenses, usually to their own undoing.
- Too Dumb to Live: Pretty much all the animals featured.
