The third entry in the Sharknado franchise, following Sharknado 2: The Second One. It premiered on July 22, 2015.
A Sharknado strikes Washington D.C. and sharks start falling on the White House, so Fin must save the President. After this, he heads to Florida to join April and their daughter for summer vacation at Universal Studios Florida, meeting Nova and battling more sharks all along the East Coast. Yet another Sharknado hits Orlando when he arrives to find his family, with the threat of a shark hurricane on the horizon. It's up to Fin, April and Nova to stop the biggest shark-weather disaster yet.
Followed by Sharknado: The 4th Awakens.
Tropes:
- Abnormal Ammo: Nova uses mascara tubes for her shotgun.
- All Part of the Show: One of the characters kills a shark inside a studio room, with a cheering audience. Fin kills one on the proscenium of the Twister...Ride it Out attraction, and the guests applaud him when the lights come up.
- Amusement Park of Doom: Universal Studios turns into one in the midst of the sharknado. At one point, Fin and April have to deal with sharks and a runaway roller coaster at the same time.
- An Arm and a Leg: Lucas has nearly all his limbs bitten off by sharks.
- And I'm the Queen of Sheba: When Fin, Nova, and Lucas try to enter a military base, Fin introduces himself as Fin Shepard, a personal friend of the Commanding Officer and the hero who saved the day against the previous two sharknadoes. The guard says, "And I'm the Easter Bunny!" Fortunately, the Commanding Officer shows up.
- Artistic License – Biology:
- Like in the first film, a shark is able to survive in a swimming pool.
- Sharknado sharks live in the clouds surviving off birds.
- Nova claims that regular sharks don't eat birds. Many species actually do eat seabirds at the surface.
- While sharks have powerful jaws, it is doubtful they would be able to tear a space shuttle apart in real life.
- Also, in Real Life sharks are probably incapable of breathing in space.
- Ironically averted in that sharks actually are better-equipped to avoid Explosive Decompression than most vertebrates, having no swim bladder or lungs to rupture. But, hard vacuum still ought to boil their blood in their veins, so them surviving in orbit is still this trope.
- Artistic License – Physics:
- A shark that lands on a roller coaster track slides along it on its own momentum instead of being torn apart or falling through....several times.
- The impact of a few sharks shatters the base of the Washington Monument, and the tip is picked up by the storm, tipped upside-down, and dropped point-first into the White House. Apparently the Monument is made of balsa wood rather than stone in the Sharknadoverse.
- A wind is strong enough to lift Fin so he has to hold his car door and climb in, but any wind that strong would be pushing the car sideways, too.
- Somehow Gil manages to travel from a satellite in low Earth orbit to the Moon in a spacesuit with no propulsion.
- Also, Fin and April fall from near-Earth orbit inside a couple of sharks, and land within a few yards of one another, close enough to where they'd last left Nova and Claudia for those two to run right up to them without getting out of breath.
- As Himself: A long list of cameos appear in the credits. See The Cameo below.
- Back for the Dead: The Mayor of New York.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Well Sharks can anyways.
- Bling-Bling-BANG!: Fin's "Order of the Golden Chainsaw" is well, gold and fully operational.
- Bond Gun Barrel: The film begins with Fin carrying a chainsaw and shown through the jaws of a shark.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The film ends as a falling piece of space wreckage plummets toward April and the viewers get to decide if she lives or suffers Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome by voting on the movie's webpage.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Stopping the mega-sharkstorm requires that an old SDI satellite be re-activated, providing a handy excuse to send Fin and Gil into space.
- The Bus Came Back: Nova, who did not appear in the second movie, returns in this one. Fin and April's daughter, Claudia, also returns, though she's played by a different actress.
- Call-Back: When a shark collides with and damages the military plane Nova's flying, Fin takes over the controls for the emergency landing, reassuring her that he's done this before.
- President Mark Cuban tells Fin that he lost a close Friend in the New York Sharknado. Dragon's Den Co-Star Daymond John was Killed in the last movie.
- The Cameo:
- Mark Cuban (an independent who fundraises for Democrats) and far-right conservative pundit Ann Coulter as the President and Vice President, respectively.
- Chris Jericho as a roller coaster operator.
- Lou Ferrigno as a Secret Service agent.
- Stargate SG-1 star Christopher Judge (Tealc) as the "safest place on the planet" Secret Service agent.
- Frankie Muniz as a shark assassin.
- Kellita Smith as a military sergeant.
- George R. R. Martin gets eaten by sharks at a screening of "Shark Wedding".
- Jerry Springer is eaten by a shark stuck where the photo-op statue of Jaws is.
- Anthony Weiner as the head of NASA.
- The cast of Today make a return, once again reporting on the events in the movie.
- Kendra Wilkinson as the waitress Gilbert hits on.
- Holly Madison as a soldier.
- NASCAR drivers Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano both make appearances as themselves. After climbing out of their cars when a sharknado suspends the Daytona race, a shark falls on and eats Brad.
- Maryse as a security guard.
- Penn & Teller as Gilbert's two retired buddies.
- Genevieve Morton as a guest in the White House.
- A rather obscure one that only German fans of the movies would notice, but the two people on the rollercoaster that April asks about her daughter are Oliver Kalkofe and Peter Rütten, the hosts of what is essentially the German version of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
- Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, is interviewed on the news.
- Jedward also appear as passengers on the rollercoaster.
- Celebrity Casualty: Jared Fogle and George R. R. Martin are both killed by sharks.
- Celebrity Survivor: Several celebrities appear only to be killed, but as for survivors...
- The President of the United States picks up a shotgun and grenade and joins Fin in killing sharks.
- Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb from the Today show defend themselves from sharks by breaking wine bottles and stabbing them.
- Chainsaw Good: Par for the course for this series, but this one has a friggin lightsaber chainsaw.
- Cliffhanger: Just as the heroes celebrate their victory, they spot flying debris about to fall on April. The film then ends and the viewers are urged to vote on whether she lives or dies, with her fate to be revealed in the fourth film.
- Contrived Coincidence: At Universal Studios, the main cast all finds each other at the exact same time and place.
- Conveniently Close Planet: Gil makes it to the Moon - after all he's already in space, how much farther could it have been?
- Denser and Wackier: Much more so than the first two. In this one we get sharks in space!
- Dirty Old Man: Fin's father Gilbert, who hits on a waitress and Nova and even leers at Claudia, his own granddaughter.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Lucas loses all four of his limbs, but crawls forward and detonates a bomb with his chin to take out the sharks surrounding him.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Gilbert chooses to activate the Kill Sat knowing he wouldn't be able to make it back to Earth. He doesn't mind, as he felt dying in space would be awesome.
- Lucas stays behind in a sharknado to detonate a bomb to destroy it.
- Kill Sat: An old SDI satellite is activated and used to break up the massive sharknado that threatens the entire east coast.
- Lampshade Hanging: The absurdity of the entire franchise is brought up in an exchange.April: How can sharks breathe in space??Fin: How can they live in a tornado?
- Laser Blade: A chainsaw version.
- Made of Plasticine: Poor Lucas loses all four limbs, one by one, to shark bites and has to set off the Beast's "failsafe" self-destruct bomb with his chin.
- Monumental Damage: The Washington Monument, the White House, Daytona racetrack, and Universal Studios - Orlando get trashed on-screen. A report of sharks falling on Graceland is mentioned, and the Lincoln Memorial winds up with a great white in Abe's lap.
- Never Trust a Trailer: Many promos for the film hype up the scenes taking place in Washington DC, making it look like the climax of the film. This was probably done to avoid spoiling the actual climax in space.
- Pregnant Badass: April is pregnant and doesn't hesitate to take on the sharks. Then she goes into space and then experiences reentry without any astronaut training, doing so while giving birth inside a shark.
- Product Placement:
- Scenes in the Universal Studios pre-shark storm are pretty much extended commercials.
- Amusingly inverted for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, as there's not a trace of Potter-a-belia visible in the theme park scenes. Given how ubiquitous HP souvenirs and costumes are at Universal Orlando these days, it's definitely an intentional exclusion. Ditto, for Marvel Comics stuff, Simpsons material, Dr. Seuss, and pretty much every other franchise not unique to the park itself.
- Pretty self-explanatory for the NASCAR scene, if you're familiar with how sponsorship works in the sport.
- An Xfinity billboard is destroyed by a shark.
- There's also a Subway reference in the film, even though Jared Fogle's part was cut out.
- Scenes in the Universal Studios pre-shark storm are pretty much extended commercials.
- Put on a Bus: Fin and April's son Matt doesn't appear because he was deployed to the Middle East.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: The President of the United States joins the battle against the sharks.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: NASA has a satellite that can apparently shoot lasers that can dismantle a wall of sharknadoes that could destroy the entire eastern seaboard. If this technology could take down massive storms like these and prevent the loss of human life, why couldn't they have people stationed up there to take down regular hurricanes?
- Refuge in Audacity: Well... yeah. Considering the movie starts with the idea of sharks surviving in cloud cover by eating birds, there's really no where to go but more absurd.
- Rule of Cool: Fin's "Order of the Golden Chainsaw" trophy is not simply a trophy but in fact a fully operational, gassed-up and ready-to-go chainsaw.
- Shirtless Scene: Fin "just happens" to lose his shirt when he and Nova bail out into the lake at Universal Studios, emerging in Slo Mo as Mr. Fanservice.
- Shout-Out:
- Fin's father, an aging astronaut, goes to space, deals with an old satellite and ends up on the moon - not unlike Tommy Lee Jones in Space Cowboys.
- Lucas makes a joke about zombies to a military guard played by Kellita Smith, the woman who stars in Z Nation, which featured an episode with a Zombie tornado.
- One shark flies through the screen of a cinema. The film being shown there is Three-Headed Shark Attack, a product of the same company who made the Sharknado films.
- The entrance to the ride Twister...Ride it Out (based on the film Twister) can be seen briefly.
- Probably unintentional, but the lightsaber chainsaw can be seen as a reference to Red Dwarf episode "The Inquisitor", where Kryten uses a similar weapon.
- Take That!:
- George R. R. Martin's cameo and death was meant to mock fans who constantly bother him about finishing A Song of Ice and Fire before he dies. He also loses his head, something that is common in Game of Thrones.
- An Xfinity billboard gets splattered by a colliding shark. The company was actually a sponsor of the film.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Fin skewers one shark with a flung sword taken from its mounting on a White House wall placard.
- Title Drop: By Brad Keselowski...
- Tempting Fate: A Secret Service agent assures Fin and the President that the White House's bunker is impenetrable. He opens it only to find sharks inside and is eaten.
- Took a Level in Badass: Claudia. She was little more than The Load in the first film, but here she manages to stab a shark while on a roller coaster and takes down more with a machine gun later on.
- Ungrateful Bastard: On the radio, several people blame Fin for the previous sharknadoes and question why he and his family always survive.
- Vanity License Plate: The Beast's "SPR NOVA" ("Super Nova")
- Weirdness Magnet: Brought up in universe as a radio broadcast points out that Fin is in the middle of it again.
- Wham Shot: At the very end, April looks up to see space debris about to hit her...
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Or rather, your pregnant wife is in another great white.
