History Main / PiranhaProblem

** Another strip has a scientist being attacked by the results of one of his experiments - a crossbreed between pirahnas and flying fish.

%%* ''WesternAnimation/FindingNemo'': "I'm a piranha! They're from the Amazon!"%%ZCE, quotes are not examples.

* ''Series/{{Wednesday}}'': After Pugsley is [[StuffedIntoALocker bullied]] by the high school boys' swim team, Wednesday retaliates releasing two bags full of pirahnas into the school swimming pool during their practise. The captain of the swim team is subjected to a GroinAttack and Wednesday gets expelled.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}'': Young Tantor mistakes a swimming Tarzan for a piranha, only to be told that [[MisplacedWildlife piranhas don't live in Africa]]. This then completely derails the elephants' conversational topics: "There are no piranhas in Africa." "Don't tell the kid that! Of course there are piranhas in Africa!" "No, she's right, they're native to South America..." That said, it's probably for the best to avoid thinking too hard about [[FridgeLogic how African elephants could even know that piranhas or the Americas existed in the first place]].

* ''Series/{{Cliffhanger}}'': One episode the PluckyGirl reporter dangling six inches over a stretch of the Amazon river teeming with piranha.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E4TheFaceOfEvil The Face of Evil]]", the Test of the Horda is a land-dwelling version. Hordas are small preadtors which resemble long, armoured fish with large heads. Although they only crawl around slowly, they can strike quickly and ten of them can devour a human's arm in seconds. Those submitted to the Test would be put on a board above a pit of Hordas. The board would be pulled into the walls with a boulder attached to a rope. The criminal would have to ShootTheRope with a crossbow, stopping the board and saving his or her life.

* Creator/JacquesCousteau: In one special concentrating on the Amazon River, a diver hand-feeds a chicken leg to piranha. As the divers joke afterwards, the piranha did not bite the hand that fed them, but the one that filmed them with the cameraman getting a single bite on his knuckle that didn't require any real medical attention.

* ''Series/{{QI}}'': In the "Killers" episode of the "K" season, Stephen discusses the Pacu fish. From Papua New Guinea and a relative to the piranha, it eats seeds and nuts. It also goes for a different kind of nut, hence its nick name of the "Ball-cutter fish", which goes for the gonads if you are swimming naked near it. There are two recorded deaths by castration from this fish.

** Jemery doubted this until he dipped a dead duck in a piranha infested river for a few moments. When he pulled it out, the submerged part had been devoured all the way to the internal organs. However, piranha are by nature opportunistic feeders, so of course they'll go after a carcass. Later in the episode, Jeremy jumps into a pool that had been filled with piranha and spent several minutes up to his chest in the water, and exits unharmed. In the ''River Monsters: Unhooked'' commentary, he says that shooting that scene was one of the least pleasant things he'd ever done on the show and had wanted to get out of the water much sooner, but the director wouldn't let him.

* ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'': Piranimon is a ferocious fishlike Digimon that snares other creatures with its fishhook-like tail to drag underwater and devour with its crushingly strong bites. They attack in schools, and not a single scrap of data is left of their prey when they're done feeding.

* ''Franchise/DocSavage'': In ''Land of Long Juju'', the Island of Long Juju sits in a river surrounded by tiny flesh-eating fish that can strip the flesh off a human in seconds. (The fish is never specifically said to be piranha, thereby averting MisplacedWildlife, as piranha are not native to Africa.)

* ''WesternAnimation/TimonAndPumbaa'': One episode has the main duo visit the Amazon river, where Pumbaa warns of "flesh-rending piranhas"... ''after'' they've taken a dip in said river. Cue the two of them getting chased by a giant piranha [[UpToEleven with a chainsaw]]. [[ChekhovsGun At the end of the episode]], after the duo narrowly escapes capture by a pair of boas via a SchmuckBanquet, they trick the boas into plummeting into the Amazon... where the piranhas are lying in wait. [[BrickJoke Including the one with the chainsaw!]]

** And of course, the remake, ''Film/Piranha3D''!

* ''The Literature/{{Discworld}} Atlas'', in its description of S'Belinde, mentions that the B'Ware River is home to particularly viscious piranahs, and quotes an explorer who sadly lost most of his extremities before realising that even piranahs wouldn't be able to bite their way through [[IndestructibleEdible dwarf bread]].

* ''Manga/ShonanJunaiGumi'': Hazuki Misato has a tank full of piranhas at her apartment, which Eikichi doesn't find out until he's already stuck his hand in. They end up biting his face too.

* ''Comicbook/{{Aquaman}}'': The comic book explanation for Aquaman's hook hand is that his real hand was eaten by piranhas. Considering this is the guy who commands fish, that had to be {{retcon}}ned so that he doesn't command, he just suggests.

** As always, the standard unit of hungriness in piranhas is stated to be one cow: "These little fish have been know to skeletonize a cow in less than 2 minutes."[[note]]"Now ''there's'' a vivid thought!"[[/note]] Of course, the strip has a [[EverythingsBetterWithCows cow]] note this fact.

* According to Music/{{Yello}} and their song "Great Mission", both [[TheAmazon The Amazonas]] and the town of Manaus are "full of piranhas".

Piranhas provide an alternative to sharks for the SharkPool, where the villain will always walk in with a bloody dripping leg of lamb or chicken, dip it in the tank for two seconds, and then remove it to show a bare bone.

* Piraniant from ''VideoGame/{{Temtem}}'', as its name suggest, is a giant piranha that uses its huge jaws to attack.

* What's worse than a swarm of normal piranhas? How about a school of giant piranhas! Meet ''[[http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/m/megapiranha.html Megapiranha]]'', a meter long fish that lived 10 million years ago in the interior sea that is now the Amazon River. However, it's only known from a few teeth that seem to have characteristics of both the famous carnivorous ones and the herbivorous pacu (a piranha relative), so whether it would have been dangerous is unknown. Considering its contemporaries were animals like the 32-foot caiman ''Purussaurus mirandai'', though, it likely occupied the same niche and status as modern piranha do.

* ''Franchise/DocSavage'': In ''Land of Long Juju'', the Island of Long Juju sits in a river surrounded by tiny flesh-eating fish that can strip the flesh off a human in seconds. (The fish is never specifically said to be piranha, thereby averting MisplacedWildlife, as piranha are not native to Africa).

* On ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'' when Cory and Topanga are honeymooning at a tropical resort this is used as a background gag heard over the P.A. system: "Attention guests, will the couple who left their dog in the piranha tank please come claim his collar?".

--->'''Agnes''': Oh, piranha aren't dangerous. That's a myth. It's [[SnakesAreSinister the snakes]] you have to watch.

* ''Webcomic/TheNonAdventuresOfWonderella'': Averted; Hitlerella throws Wonderella into a piranha tank, but Wonderella's inedible, so [[http://nonadventures.com/2010/10/09/two-gentlemen-of-piranha/ instead they make small talk]].

* In ComicBook/TheBatmanAdventures: Mad Love'', ComicBook/TheJoker comes up with a DeathTrap he calls "Death of a Hundred Smiles" that involves feeding Batman to a tank full of piranha. However, he abandons as unworkable because he he couldn't get the piranhas to smile. He is not pleased when Harley comes with a way to make the plan work.

* In the ''Anime/SpeedRacer'' episode "Crash in the Jungle," the villain threatens to lower Trixie and Spritle into a tank of piranhas, then demonstrates how dangerous they are by throwing a lion into the tank. The lion is reduced to bones in seconds.

* ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'' has BubblegloopSwamp, the water of which is infested with piranhas that take your health away anytime you entered the water. The only way to safely traverse the water was to wear wading boots, or have Mumbo Jumbo turn you into an alligator (because piranhas are afraid of alligators). There's even a piranha-like enemy found in various areas of the game called Chump.

In RealLife, the viciousness of a piranha school is not nearly as pronounced as media exaggerations would have you believe. When they're not hungry or are asleep, they flee from anything that disturbs them. Their famous schooling behavior is not done to attack prey, but to protect themselves from predators like caimans, giant river otters, and freshwater dolphins. Piranhas are omnivores and mostly carrion-eaters and rarely attack bigger animals, they may eat smaller animals but are in general very cautious when dealing with something that might attack back. Piranhas are also very shy and are as much afraid of humans as any other fish and would swim away if a human (or any other large animal) drops into water near them. Pet piranhas are even known to hide when humans are around, but they may bite larger animals particularly wounded or dying ones.

* In ''Manga/DragonBall'', Ninja Murasaki [[WalkOnWater ran across a pond]] to get away from Goku. Goku was about to swim across when Murasaki [[WhatAnIdiot warned him there were piranha]]. Goku didn't know what piranha were, so Murasaki threw a large fish in the water to demonstrate. Understanding, Goku simply [[InASingleBound jumped over the water]].

* ''VideoGame/ThePunisher'' features piranha tanks that you can use to threaten enemies into giving you info by holding them just a few inches from the water's surface. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from dunking your victims -- Frank sticks the enemy's head in for a few seconds and pulls it out, revealing that most of the guy's face has been eaten off.