Line #45 Main/MokeleMbembe


1	[[quoteright:350:[[TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mokele_mbembe_attack_pathfinder_8.jpg]]]]
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3	The mokele-mbembe (derived from "mokèlé-mbèmbé", meaning "one who stops the flow of rivers" in the Lingala language of Central Africa, though the etymology of the creature is "rainbow" in some local languages) is one of the more famous cryptids in modern culture. It is usually depicted as a sauropod dinosaur native to the deep jungles of the Congo -- or of whatever fantasy equivalent is being used as a stand-in in works not set on Earth -- and as an amphibious animal that spends most of its time in lakes and rivers. It is typically presented as a reclusive relic of bygone times, having endured past the demise of other non-avian dinosaurs within a remote, isolated environment. Despite its immense size, it is often a very elusive animal.
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5	The reality is that the origins of the cryptid likely lay in a combination of colonialist European attitudes not understanding native Congo beliefs, seeing a prehistoric monster when something else entirely was described. At the time, a massive boom in public interest in prehistory was ongoing and racist attitudes at the time held Africa as the "Dark Continent" which had gone seemingly unchanged for millions of years. Such incorrect ideas held that if the people and life was so backwards and prehistoric, surely Africa as a kind of real life LostWorld was the best place to find a dinosaur. Close inspection indicates that before the 1920s, the tales and accounts told by natives were likely describing a combination of beliefs in water spirits and occasional sightings of rhinoceros. Both species of African rhinoceros, the black rhino and white rhino, do not typically live in the Congo; but did live in areas adjacent to it and fluke instances could result in individuals wandering in and giving the locals unfamiliar with them quite the scare. The first accounts claiming a dinosaur was afoot did not come from locals, but often from rich Europeans hoping to find fame and new big game.
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7	Past the 1920s however, the idea the beast was a dinosaur became predominant. Enough that savvy locals [[ExploitedTrope started to claim so as well]] with the express intent of drawing in money from adventure and fame seekers who'd need expensive guides and porters. Interest and sightings in the Mokele-mbembe largely died off by the 1950s, when intrigue in the prehistoric past left much of the public sphere. It wouldn't crop up again in any large capacity until the 1980s, and became popular in the 1990s concurrent with a new wave of dinosaur media.
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9	In the 1990s the Mokele-mbembe was arguably as popular a cryptid as Bigfoot and various lake monsters but, in the current day, its popularity and credibility have waned considerably. The colonialist history of the reports, sightings of even olden days being frequently conflated with other seemingly unrelated water monsters like the Dingonek, lack of sightings, and implausibility of an animal so large going undiscovered in the range it is have all taken their toll on credibility. The Congo was seen as mysterious, prehistoric place in the 1920s but a century later the region, its life, and its people are very well known and studied. Knowledge of the fossil record has also grown exponentially, and the implausibility of Sauropods going over 66 million years without leaving so much as a trace despite being one of the most readily fossilizing dinosaurs is another factor. For these and other reasons, virtually all scientists are unconvinced of this animal's existence, usually pointing to indigenous beliefs on aquatic deities and spirits. However, stories of the beast as a living sauropod are still pretty popular with creationists, and missionaries today continue to organize expeditions to search for the mokele-mbembe.
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11	At least some tales about the mokele-mbembe avert GentleGiantSauropod, instead portraying it as a XenophobicHerbivore with a particular hatred for hippopotamuses. Occasionally, it's depicted as a carnivore that hunts hippos and human explorers alike. These tales will sometimes reinterpret the beast as a sort of [[DragonsAreDinosaurs water dragon.]]
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13	Subtrope of AquaticSauropods, LivingDinosaurs, and OurCryptidsAreMoreMysterious. For the mokele's usual stomping grounds, see DarkestAfrica and the LostWorld. Compare StockNessMonster.
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15	!!Examples
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18	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
19	* ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheHauntsOfEvil'': Nobita's NightmareSequence has him and the gang getting attacked by a Mokele-Mbembe, which turns out to be a robot taking them to a theme park.
20	* ''Literature/GoblinSlayer'': A mokele-mbembe, resembling a sauropod with pink-purple plates running down its neck and spine, is encountered living in the rivers around the elf kingdom. It's stated to actually be [[OurHydrasAreDifferent young hydra; the extra heads have yet to grow and will come with age]].
21	* ''Anime/YuGiOhGORUSH'': The☆Mokeida Mbembe is a big dinosaur-like alien that resembles a bipedal sauropod wearing a space suit. He matches the cryptid in both name and appearance.
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24	[[folder:Comic Books]]
25	* ''ComicBook/{{Kaijumax}}'': One of the members of the kaiju gang the Cryptids is the Mokele-Mbembe. He can speak French (that being Congo's official language) and is suspected of being responsible for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster Lake Nyos disaster]]. He also wears a lifeboat as a little hat as a reference to Simon Adebisi from ''Series/{{Oz}}''.
26	* ''ComicBook/ThePunisher'': In the 1988 ''The Punisher War Journal'' series, the Punisher takes a "vacation" as the security guard for a cryptozoological expedition that is venturing into the Congolese jungle in search of the Mokele-Mbembe. Unknown to him, two hired guns have infiltrated the operation [[EvilPoacher to poach the dinosaurs]] for a billionaire oil tycoon. After a misunderstanding with ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}, he dispatches the poachers before they can hurt the dinosaurs, and the expedition members decide to keep quiet about the Mokele-Mbembe's existence to prevent more hunters from coming after them.
27	* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'': In the 1997 comic series story "At Least That Beast" (later reprinted in the 67th issue of ''Scooby-Doo: Where Are You?''), the gang are called to the Congo after hearing reports of the Mokele-Mbembe terrorizing a nearby diamond mine under the command of a witch doctor. It turns out to be a disguised mining machine controlled by the mine's owner (who also dressed up as the witch doctor), who had hoped to scare away his own workers and the nearby villagers so that he could keep all the diamonds for himself. The ending leaves it ambiguous whether a real Mokele-Mbembe actually exists, however.
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30	[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]
31	* ''Film/BabySecretOfTheLostLegend'': A couple of young scientists follow the myth of the mokele-mbembe and discover it to be based on a family of the last remaining sauropods living deep in the African jungle which, unlike the real-life kind, are also adept swimmers.
32	* ''Film/TheDinosaurProject'' revolves around a team of explorers from the British Cryptozoological Society going into the forests of Congo in search of the legendary cryptid called the mokele-mbembe, who later turns out to be an ''Elasmosaurus'' -- a kind of large, long-necked plesiosaur -- and one of several not-yet-extinct populations of dinosaurs living in the Congo Basin.
33	* ''Film/GodzillaKingOfTheMonsters2019'': One of the unseen Titans is the Mokele-Mbembe, although it's located in Sudan rather than the Congo. It has more focus in the novelization, where it's said to roughly resemble a cross between an elephant and a reptile, with a glowing green horn on its head, a lashing trunk, thousands of sharp teeth, and a whip-like tail fast enough to slice jets out of the air.
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36	[[folder:Literature]]
37	* ''Literature/CryptidHunters'': The conflict of the first novel revolves around the last known Mokele-Mbembe eggs, depicted here as elephant-sized sauropods. Unusually, the species is represented as being carnivorous.
38	* ''Literature/TarzanAlive'', a fictional biography by Creator/PhilipJoseFarmer, mentions the mokele-mbembe as just one of many LivingDinosaurs in Africa.
39	* ''Literature/SkinOfTheSea'': In ''Soul of the Deep'', the Mokele-Mbembe is a boat-destroying, man-eating monster that lives in the channel between the Oyo and Nupe kingdoms. According to legend, it sings every time it kills someone, and if it is ever killed, all the songs it ever sang will be released, creating one powerful song. [[spoiler:Simi, Folasade, and Olokun kill it and harvest the soul song so Esu can use it to bind the ajogun.]]
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42	[[folder:Mythology and Folklore]]
43	* The mokele-mbembe has enjoyed fairly consistent popularity among cryptozoological circles, which consider its existence plausible mainly because of the possibility of the Congolese jungle hiding even large animals -- although this isn't quite so reasonable an explanation nowadays, as equipment capable of tracking elephants in the jungles has consistently failed to turn up giant dinosaurs. The folkloric accounts that it's based on also aren't really as obviously describing a sauropod as they're often made out to be; in particular, the beast is often described with traits, such as carnivorous habits or horns, that real sauropods did not have.[[note]]Though some believers have claimed such traits could have evolved over time.. Despite the physical issues with a long necked animal having a big heavy horn on its head.[[/note]]
44	* The modern myth of the mokele is also associated with young-earth creationists, as non-avian dinosaurs surviving to the modern day is much more likely to happen if they only had to endure for a few thousand years than for tens of millions. Despite this not being the case at all, as the reported descriptions are so different from a prehistoric sauropod that if a dinosaur was behind them; it would have had to have changed significantly since the Cretaceous period.
45	* In addition to the mokele-mbembe, cryptozoological folklore populates the Congolese jungles with a number of other beings said to resemble dinosaurs, such as the emela-ntouka, said to resemble a one-horned ceratopsid, and the mbielu-mbielu-mbielu, said to resemble an apparently aquatic stegosaur. The kongamato is often said to resemble the flying non-dinosaurian pterosaurs, but most descriptions of the monster suggest that it's actually supposed to be [[BatOutOfHell a giant bat]], a saddle-billed stork, or even a freshwater stingray.
46	** The Emela-Ntouka especially is likely a case of the same folkloric being being divided into two different cryptids. Early reports give the animals an almost identical appearance and behavior.
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49	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
50	* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'': Mokele-mbembes are sauropod-like, amphibious dinosaurs that live in tropical lakes, swamps, and rivers; most are found deep within [[TheSavageSouth the trackless jungles of the Mwangi Expanse]]. Unlike common sauropods, mokeles are aggressive and carnivorous animals. Their hides are often covered in growths of moss and algae, [[StealthyColossus making them very stealthy for creatures their size]], and their remote habitats mean that they are often poorly known to civilized scholars, but local tribes are often all too familiar with the beasts.
51	* ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'': The Mokolé are [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent werereptiles]], whose forms can draw on all reptilian animals, living or extinct -- except for the snakes, who are the purview of the Nagah. There were once several distinct breeds of werereptiles and weredinosaurs, but ages of interbreeding caused all breeds but the Nagah to collapse into the modern Mokolé. They serve as the preservers of Gaia's memory and are divided into various "Streams" based on their homeland -- the Mokolé-mbembe are specifically the ones from Africa.
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54	[[folder:Video Games]]
55	* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'': Tropius, introduced in the [[VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire third generation]], takes partial inspiration from Mokele-Mbembe, being a modern day sauropod who lives in the tropical jungle.
56	* ''VideoGame/SenranKagura: Bon Appétit!'': The ending of Daidouji's story leads her to go searching for Mokele-Mbembe in the [[MisplacedWildlife Amazon rainforest]] in a quest to find and defeat a creature even mightier than a dragon.
57	* ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'': Mokele-Mbembe is a demon found in the series, described as a near-elephant sized beast associated with thunderstorms.
58	* ''VideoGame/SteppenwolfTheXCreaturesProject'': Meg Crimson, a reporter, goes to Africa to investigate the Mokele Mbembe as part of her documentary about cryptids.
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61	[[folder:Web Original]]
62	* ''Website/SCPFoundation'': [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1265 The Mesozoic Preserve]]: "Mokele-mbembe" is the name used by local tribes to refer to the sauropods living in an isolated area of the jungle. This is implied to be where African cryptid legends originate from.
63	* ''Website/SpecWorld'': The mokeles are a clade of sauropods adapted to an aquatic lifestyle, filling the niche of hippos in Spec's Africa. Their adaptations to this lifestyle have also led to them becoming very physically distinct from their terrestrial kind, and as a result are very crocodile-like in appearance.
64	* ''WebVideo/TierZoo'' covers them in an AprilFoolsDay video on {{cryptid\|Episode}}s. He considers them an S-tier animal and speculates that they're dinosaur players who managed to avoid the sweeping bans (that is, [[ColonyDrop the meteor that killed the dinosaurs]]) at the end of the Cretaceous period.
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67	[[folder:Western Animation]]
68	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretSaturdays'': The Mokele-Mbembe appears twice in the series; once in a vision in the second part of the pilot episode, and in the very last episode in person, where several under Argost's control are shown attacking cities, and then fleeing from the Grootslang after Argost is defeated.
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Context Main / MokeleMbembe