See Underwater Index for tropes concerning their environment.
Tropes
Categories:
- Aquatic Hadrosaurs: The outdated portrayal of hadrosaur (duck-billed) dinosaurs as water-dwelling animals.
- Aquatic Sauropods: The outdated portrayal of sauropod (long-necked) dinosaurs as water-dwelling animals.
- Artistic License – Marine Biology: Factual inaccuracies about marine life in a work of fiction that make the story work better.
- The Catfish: An individual of a game animal species, usually a large fish, that is a legendarily difficult catch.
- Clamshell Currency: Shelling out in seashells.
- Clamshells as Mouths: Clams and other bivalves being depicted with the shells as jaws for speaking and eating.
- Clam Trap: Giant clams that snap closed on people who approach them, like living beartraps.
- Clingy Aquatic Life: When a character comes out of a body of water with an aquatic animal or plant stuck to them.
- Electric Jellyfish: Jellyfish that shock people with electricity instead of being venomous.
- Fiendish Fish: Dangerous, sometimes outright evil, fish.
- Fish People: Fish-like humanoids.
- Foul Waterfowl: Aquatic birds, especially geese, depicted as aggressive and/or dickish.
- Flying Seafood Special: Flying sea creatures.
- Frog Men: Frog-like humanoids.
- Funnel-Mouthed Cephalopod: An octopus or squid portrayed with a nozzle-like mouth, generally based on the real creatures' syphon.
- Funny Octopus: Octopi as comic and funny creatures.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Outsized, dangerous crabs.
- Giant Squid: Gigantic squid as sea monsters.
- Instant Leech: Just Fall in Water!: Whenever a character accidentally falls into a body of water, especially a stagnant one such as a swamp or pond, and comes to discover a leech — or more — attached to them somewhere.
- Jumping Fish: The presence of fish indicated by having one or more fish literally "jumping" out of a source of water (lake, river, etc.), especially when the characters suggest looking for food.
- Kraken and Leviathan: Gigantic deep sea monsters that are known for attacking ships.
- Legendary Carp: Carps in media, especially ones that pay homage to Japanese history, having mystical properties.
- Makara: A sea monster from Hindu Mythology.
- Mellow Mantas: Manta rays are portrayed as gentle and graceful.
- Mobile Fishbowl: When an aquatic character brings water with them when traveling out of water.
- Monster in the Moat: A monster that lives in a castle moat.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: Crocodilians depicted as evil man-eaters.
- No Cartoon Fish: When everything is drawn in a cartoony style except fish.
- Painful Pointy Pufferfish: Fictional pufferfish seen stabbing things with their spikes.
- Pelican Package Pouch: When a pelican's throat pouch is used to hide and/or carry things.
- Penguins Are Ducks: Penguins given attributes of ducks, because most people are more familiar with ducks.
- Penny-Pinching Crab: Crabs portrayed as stingy, greedy and money-obsessed.
- Perplexing Pearl Production: Pearls that are created quickly and without flaws, and by any sort of bivalve.
- Pike Peril: Pike portrayed as evil or vicious.
- Piranha Problem: Piranhas portrayed as far more vicious than they are in reality.
- Playful Otter: Otters portrayed as genial beasts always up for games.
- Polar Bears and Penguins: Penguins and polar bears co-existing in the same place.
- Polar Penguins: Penguins are used as a visual shorthand for cold climates.
- Psycho Electric Eel: Electric eels portrayed as much more powerful/dangerous than they really are.
- Puzzling Platypus: Platypi's supposed chimerical nature played up as extremely puzzling or nonsensical.
- Quacking Up: Humorous or lighthearted depictions of ducks.
- Red Live Lobster: Uncooked crustaceans in animation are colored red.
- Sea Aping: A fictional brand of sea monkeys.
- Sea Hurtchin: When urchins seem to exist only to hurt people with their spines.
- Seahorses Are Dragons: Seahorses associated with or tied to dragons, often Eastern dragons.
- Seahorse Steed: Seahorses portrayed as the underwater equivalent of actual horses.
- Sea Serpents: Giant, serpentine sea monsters.
- Semiaquatic Species Sailor: Semiaquatic Funny Animals such as ducks, otters, and seabirds tend to take up nautical professions.
- Sewer Gator: Alligators that have been flushed down the toilet and end up living in the sewers down below the streets.
- Shark Fin of Doom: A shark's dorsal fin sticking above the water as an iconic image.
- Shark Man: A character who's half-man, half-shark.
- Shark Pool: A body of water filled with any variety of unpleasant creatures, including but not limited to sharks
- Slippery as an Eel: Eels depicted as sly, conniving, and untrustworthy creatures.
- Super-Powered Shrimp: A creature based on a shrimp, typically one of the more eccentric species enhanced in some way according to the media it appears in.
- Swans A-Swimming: Swans in fiction are elegant, gentle creatures.
- Swordfish Sabre: Fish rostrums used to deal damage to something/one, either by the fish itself or a third party.
- Tailfin Walking: A cetacean, fish, or pinniped walking upright on its tailfins.
- Tentacled Terror: Cephalopods, jellyfish, and just anything with tentacles being portrayed as alien and terrifying.
- Terrestrial Sea Life: Sea creatures interacting with humans on land.
- Threatening Shark: Sharks portrayed as evil, vicious man-eaters.
- Turtle Island: Turtles big enough to be mistaken for islands or even whole continents.
- Wise Old Turtle: Turtles being portrayed as wise and intelligent.
