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The Characters page for the Carnosaur film series, see Carnosaur (Novel) for tropes corresponding to the Carnosaur novel characters
Humans
First Film
Dr. Jane Tiptree
"The earth was not made for us - she was made for the dinosaurs."
Played By: Diane Ladd
The main antagonist of the first film, a disillusioned geneticist working for the food company of Eunice corporation who has come to view humanity as a failure and plans to wipe the species out, while later letting her resurrected dinosaurs take back the planet.
- Adaptational Nationality: Her novel counterpart, Lord Darren Penward, was a British nobleman; Jane Tiptree is an American scientist.
- Adaptational Villainy: Darren Penward was already a nasty piece of work with misanthropic delusions, but Tiptree's methods and goals are even more depraved than what Penward did.
- Admiring the Abomination: She admires dinosaurs, especially her resurrected ones despite all the carnage they've caused. Even after being called out on her actions, she remains firm about her admiration for them being equal to her disdain for mankind.
- Bad Boss: Infected her own female subordinates with the virus she developed, callous to the suffering they would have before dying despite their loyalty.
- Big Bad: The main antagonist of the first film as her creation of the carnosaurs is what causes the events of the film and her Evil Plan puts everyone on Earth at risk lest she be stopped.
- Composite Character: Mixes Lord Penward's misanthropy and role as the Big Bad with Lady Jane Penward's gender, spiteful drive and name.
- Evil Plan: To wipe out humanity by infecting all women in the world with a virus that impregnates them with dinosaur embryos that will kill them upon developing then starve out the human race with the lack of females so dinosaurs can inherit the planet.
- Gendercide: Her plan to kill off humanity will start out by killing all females with the virus and then letting the males eventually die and leave no descendants.
- Gender Flip: She's a woman, Penward who acts as the novel's main antagonist, was a man.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Of the Carnosaur film series as a whole, despite dying before the first film ends, her experiments and resurrection of dinosaurs causes all the catastrophes and perils in the sequels.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Ends up infected with her own eaedly virus and is killed when her "child", the most physically developed infant dinosaur seen in the film, tears its way out of her guts.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Albeit that's pretty much her view on our kind, she herself is no better than it. While her dinosaurs do the killing, it's only because of her mad experiments that they do and her plan to commit planet-wide genocide on humanity proves she's depraved to extreme degrees and be far viler and more destructive than any of her dinosaurs could be.
- Kick the Dog: Lures fellow Eunice Corporation employee, Jesse Paloma, to her place where she tells him that his daughter supposedly is, after she went missing due to being killed by the Deinonychus unknown to everyone else, all so she could get rid of him by feeding him to the T. rex and trapping him inside a laser cage, showing no emotion as he has his hand cut off by the lasers before the carnosaur eats him.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Doesn't hesitates to spill the beans about her plans to Doc when held at gunpoint nor give up the antidote she made for the virus. She does follow it up by sending the T. rex after him.
- Mad Scientist: She resurrected dinosaurs with genetic splicing, created a virus that makes human women give birth to dinosaurs and planned to wipe out humanity so dinosaurs could rule the planet again. She's even mentioned in passing in the third film as a "brilliant, but troubled scientist".
- Misanthrope Supreme: Hates humanity as a whole, viewing them as a "disaster" and a "plague", seeking to have dinosaurs replace them all and wiping her own kind with a virus to do so.
- Posthumous Character: Carnosaur 3 has her mentioned in passing as a "brilliant, but troubled scientist" long after her death.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Used her connections with Eunice Corporation (where she worked at) to avoid repercussions from her escaped Deinonychus' attack.
- The Sociopath: She is cold, detached from human emotions and shows a lack of care about the consequences of her actions on other people. Her misanthropy further increases her lack of empathy and even her own loyal workers aren't safe from being mere guinea pigs or pawns in her schemes.
- Villain Has a Point: As the government conspiracy to use her virus to create a new society under the control of the USA proves, Tiptree wasn't exactly wrong when she asked Doc: "When has man ever been kind?"
"Doc" Smith
"I hate wildlife."
Played By: Raphael Sbarge
The first film's main protagonist, a security guard of the Eunice Corporation who eventually ends up discovering Tiptree's conspiracy and sets out to stop the mad geneticist.
- Badass Normal: Nothing more than a security guard with the normal training for the job, yet he becomes one of the main forces of good against Tiptree's plan and even kills the T. rex with help from Thrush.
- Forklift Fu: Employs a bobcat against the T. rex.
- He Knows Too Much: One of the reasons he's killed, the government plans to take Tiptree's research for their own ends but have to cover up everything about the dinosaur killing sprees and women giving birth to dinosaurs from the virus, thus to keep him silenced he's gunned down.
- The Hero Dies: At the end of the film he is executed by government agents right after killing the T. Rex in order to keep him silenced about the events of the film.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Has one before he turns over the dying T. rex so as to fully defeat it."I hate wildlife!"
Anne "Thrush"
Played By: Jennifer Runyon
A nature-loving girl who winds up involved in the dinosaur attacks when her friends are killed by the Deinonychus, she and Pascal develop a relationship through the film.
- Big Damn Heroes: When the Tyrannosaurus starts gaining the upper hand against Doc's bobcat, she comes in with another machine to distract and injure it so Doc can deliver the fatal blow.
- The Hero Dies: Like Doc she gets executed by government agents to keep her silenced about the events of the film.
- Kill It with Fire: If the agents that executed Doc didn't kill her with the gunshots, she was definitely finished off when they began burning all the evidence of the dinosaur incident.
- Nature Lover: Unlike Doc, she is fond of the wildlife and is worried about the developments of the land harming nature. This makes her come to blows with her fellow protagonist.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: She ends up infected by Tiptree's virus but Doc manages to retrieve a cure from Tiptree herself and delivers it to her after killing the T. Rex. too bad that both are immediately executed afterwards by government agents and their bodies are set on fire to keep them silenced.
Sheriff Fowler
"I just want some peace and quiet."
Played By: Harrison Page
The town's sheriff, who winds up involved in Tiptree's mess when he starts investigating the mass string of the Deinonychus' killings.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Gets impaled in the chest by the Deinonychus after fatally shooting it in the heart and getting close so as to inspect if it's truly dead, but gets the last laugh by shooting its head into pieces as a finishing blow before expiring himself.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Gets run through his chest by the Deinonychus's sickle claw after shooting it in the heart, he lives long enough to ensure the dinosaur doesn't survives by blowing its head off with his rifle before he bleeds out .
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He's level-headed enough to do mostly sensible things when the killings begin and when the Deinonychus reaches near his home he immediately mobilizes to kill it, succeeding albeit at the cost of his life.
- The Sheriff: The town's dutiful and kind sheriff who ends up as one of the main forces of good that investigates the mass string of killings caused by the Deinonychus.
The Dinosaurs
In General
- Adapted Out: Only the Tyrannosaurus (which more or less replaces the Tarbosaurus) and Deinonychus were adapted from the novel (and even the latter was replaced by Velociraptors in the sequels).
- Adaptational Dumbass: All the dinosaurs in the films are much dumber and reckless than their novel counterparts.
- Ambiguous Gender: Only the third film's T-rex's gender is known due to her laying eggs, the rest are all up in the air.
- Dumb Dinos: Some moments of thinking aside, the dinosaurs here are just mindless brutes with nothing but killing in their minds, a stark contrast to the slightly more nuanced portrayals in the novel.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Have DNA of their species taken from fossils mixed up with iguana, crocodile, albatross, pelican, ostrich, vulture and turkey DNA in addition to a template from a chicken's body. This results in the first Deinonychus's chick stage having feathers.
- Prehistoric Monster: Most of them are aggressive, irrational and hellbent on killing humans without provocation or much reason to.
Tyrannosaurus rex (first film)
- Adaptational Species Change: The main threat of the novel was a Tarbosaurus baatar, a close relative of the T. rex, while the latter was only represented by a pair of chicks that appear at the end to eat Lady Jane Penward. Here, the T. rex is the most major dinosaur threat.
- Age Lift: Is implicitly a fully grown adult here instead of a chick like its novel counterparts or the Tarbosaurus which was explicitly a juvenile.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Though not seen as sympathetic by any character in the film besides Tiptree in a twisted way, its final moments are played over somber music while it makes some really sad-sounding whines as it slowly dies from its injuries.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: Its portrayed with a very outdated upright kangaroo-like stance and a short scrawny tail; the real animal was known to not stand that way from before the film was released and its tail was much meatier and longer. Future specimens follow suit, given they all use the same animatronic.
- Composite Character: Has the role of the Tarbosaurus in the novel, but it is a Tyrannosaurus rex, like the pair of hatchlings that show up at the end of the novel.
- Fed to the Beast: Tiptree gave it this role, using the Tyrannosaurus as a man-eating evidence eraser to be rid of any witnesses to her plans.
- Gutted Like a Fish: Gets its belly cut open by Doc operating a Bobcat, leaving its innards hanging and subsequently bleeds to death.
- Terrifying Tyrannosaur: The largest and most dangerous dinosaur of Tiptree's creations. All the subsequent films have specimens as the climatic fights after all the other dinosaurs are dealt with.
- Use Your Head: Often used its head as a battering ram against either the walls containing it or against foes such as Doc's bobcat.
- Vocal Dissonance: For a T. Rex it has some high pitched belows instead of the expected roars.
Deinonychus
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Accidentally-Correct Writing: Though it's hard to see, as a baby it has a coat of chicken-like feathers thanks to the chicken DNA that was used to create it. This was several years before the idea that many dinosaurs had feathers naturally became scientific consensus. - Artistic License – Paleontology: Disregarding the lack of feathers beyond its hatchling stage (which wasn't well-known until much later after the film's release), the Deinonychus resembles less the animal it was based on and more a bipedal lizard with raptor-like features. Even for the time, it looks more skinny and lizard-like than most depictions of Deinonychus.
- Age Lift: It stays a chick much longer than its novel counterpart, notably is that its killing of the teenagers in the car was done by the adult Deinonychus in the novel while in the film it kills them as a juvenile.
- Chest Burster: The Deinonychus born from Tiptree's virus come out from women's bodies, tearing through their guts as they develop and killing them once ready to go out in the world.
- Enfant Terrible: Even as a baby the Deinonychus was a seriously bloodthirsty monster with a large bodycount. In fact, the first thing it did upon hatching was to kill and eat all the chickens near it before ripping the truck driver who went to investigate it apart.
- Feathered Fiend: Its hatchling stage has white feathers like those of chickens, yet it is still aggressive and bloodthirsty in that form as opposed to the usual depictions of feathered dinosaurs.
- Green and Mean: Green-colored and the most aggressive and bloodthirsty individual dinosaur of the film.
- The Heavy: Tiptree is the main villain but the Deinonychus is the main agent of killing as it is the one directly attacking people throughout the film and its rampage kickstarts the plot.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Even as a baby it was perfectly capable of overpowering and ripping fully grown humans apart in seconds.
- Put on a Bus: Despite Tiptree's Deinonychus-birthing virus being taken by the US government for their own purposes, Deinonychus wouldn't ever reappear after the first film, except in stock footage for the compilation movie Raptor.
- Raptor Attack: A scaly lizard-like raptor that shows an unrealistic amount of aggression and bloodthirstiness, in addition to being portrayed as somewhat intelligent. Surprisingly, it's shown with feathers as a baby.
- Taking You with Me: After being fatally wounded by Fowler's shotgun, it allows him to get close so as to impale him with its claw, it gets its head blown up in response.
Velociraptor
- Artistic License – Paleontology: It has all the issues of the Deinonychus in addition to cat-like slits, which the real animal was very unlikely to have due to its connection to birds.
- Expy: Blatant ones to the Velociraptors of Jurassic Park as big scaly raptors with cat-like slit eyes that are depicted as pack hunters and can even open doors like the other ones.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To the Deinonychus of the first film.
- Zerg Rush: Their main tactic is to rush at the opponent with numbers and overwhelm them before ripping them apart. Though they can perfectly hunt individually if need to.
Tyrannosaurus rex (second film)
- Disney Villain Death: It is killed when it gets pushed into an elevator's chasm by a forklift, though we do get to see the aftermath and the dinosaur dying from the impact.
- Stock Sound Effects: Unlike the first film's more unique rex roars, this one has recycled sounds from DeLaurentis' King Kong and Bowser.
- There Is Another: The second Tyrannosaurus rex in the trilogy after the first one's death indicated that the species was only cloned once.
Tyrannosaurus rex (third film)
- Non-Malicious Monster: Contrasting the other much more outright maliciously aggressive dinosaurs of the films, this T. rex is simply an overprotective and hungry mother trying to keep her brood safe while inside a confined space that only exacerbates her aggression.
- Mama Bear: While already plenty aggressive, once Jesse and Jake start destroying her eggs, she becomes twice as aggressive and ends up determined to kill them.
- Monster Is a Mommy: The one non-monstrous aspect of it is that she laid eggs and acts caring and fiercely protective over them.
- There Is Another: A third T. rex of unknown origins.
- Your Head Asplode: Is finally killed when the heroes throw a bomb into her mouth and blow her head up.
