Narrator: A powerful superhero with the amazing ability to talk to fish and swim. It's SEMEN!
Seaman: That's SEAMAN!
Seaman: That's SEAMAN!
The Marine Marvel. The Water Warrior. The Aquaman of every Super Team. They are always Aquaman, including the ones that aren't.
Making a hero of this type isn't that hard, though not all of them have to be exactly the same. Most have the usual Combo Platter Powers, including Super-Strength and being able to survive being shot at with bullets thanks to living with the intense pressures of rock bottom. They have Super Swimming Skills, or at least Super Not-Drowning Skills, capable of outpacing even the fastest of sea cheetahs. They can talk to sea life, though the specifics of how this power works — be it mind controlling all life in the ocean or just being able to verbally speak with fish at Sea World — differ between examples. Some of the more powerful examples have Making a Splash powers, making them a Person of Mass Destruction in their element. Their arsenal includes the Prongs of Poseidon and repurposed harpooning technology they found on sunken ships. Many examples also share characteristics with the Lord of the Ocean, most examples drawing inspiration from the likes of Poseidon and Neptune from Classical Mythology.
Their origins can vary just as much. They could have been humans who were mutated from a freak accident involving fish-DNA, a race of humans from Atlantis who evolved to adapt to the abyss's extreme pressure, alien Fish People who found a home in our oceans, an envoy of a Token Aquatic Race that joined the hero's party, Apparently Human Merfolk that just happened to evolve adjacent to humanity, a Semiaquatic Species Sailor and so on.
While not mandatory to the trope, 9 out of 10 heroes based around this trope are used as Joke Characters. When you have a team of heroes who fight alien monsters or stop wars or keep nukes from being dropped onto populated cities, a character whose powers include being a really good swimmer and talking to your fish tank aren't exactly useful. But when you need to rescue the crew of the RMS Titanic or find out why an endangered sea turtle won't mate and keep the species from dying out, then This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman!
Compare Electric Black Guy. See also The Cape, The Cowl, Captain Geographic, Captain Patriotic, Propaganda Hero, Shark Man, Token Wizard, Unscaled Merfolk, and Water Is Womanly.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Being the diverse industry that it is, there are plenty of pro-heroes in My Hero Academia who specialize in ocean rescue and crime fighting. The biggest examples displayed are Oki Mariner Crew, a naval-themed Super Team of heroes that Froppy joins as part of her internship, led by the Sea Rescue Hero: Selkie.
Comic Books
- The Boys: Subverted. The Deep is very clearly themed after Aquaman and Namor, as he is an aquatic themed super (he wears an old-school diving helmet at all times) with the moniker "King of the Deep". But the work actually shows how most of this is just marketing. In terms of his abilities, while he has Super-Strength and Super-Toughness, he never shows any ocean-specific abilities like Super Swimming Skills, Super Not-Drowning Skills, or Speaks Fluent Animal, and he even has the ability of Flight. This is made even more apparent when American Consolidated make a new team after the fall of The Seven and he is rebranded into a completely different hero with zero aquatic theming. Also, while The Deep is treated by his team as the Butt-Monkey and a Joke Character, he's actually more of the Only Sane Man because he's the Token Good Teammate (relatively speaking). That pragmatism is why he ends up being the Sole Survivor of The Seven.
- DC Comics:
- If Namor the Sub-Mariner was the Trope Maker, then Arthur Curry, a.k.a. Aquaman is the Trope Codifier. Being the half-human son of Queen Atlanna of Atlantis, he would eventually become king and use his extraordinary powers to protect both species from anything that would threaten them, becoming a member of the Justice League of America. He's so popular, most (though not all) examples of this trope were deliberately made to be Stock Parodies of Aquaman, for better or for worse.
- Aqualad, later Tempest (Garth), was first introduced in the 1960s as Aquaman's sidekick. However, it is only when he becomes a founding member of the original Teen Titans (in 1964) that he becomes the team's "token water-based hero" since his teammates are younger counterparts to the adult Justice League: Robin to Batman, Donna Troy to Wonder Woman, Speedy (Roy Harper) to Green Arrow and Kid Flash (Wally West I) to Flash. Later incarnations through the years sometimes include him as the token aquatic hero.
- Lagoon Boy (La'gaan) is an Erik Larsen creation during his 1990s run in Aquaman. Hailing from Atlantis, he has the typical powers (underwater breathing and aquakinesis), but looks more like an aquatic superperson, with green scales, large fins on his head, and can inflate like a puffer fish — a state that imbues him with great strength. In the comics, he was a member of Young Justice, and even joined the Titans East.
- DC's Aquaman had its share of evil alternate counterparts, especially from Earth-3's Crime Syndicate of America. An evil version appears in Trinity (2008) with the name Barracuda, with fish face and blue skin. Another version that is more of a mirror counterpart to Aquaman is Sea King: debuting at the end of the crossover Trinity War, he looked like Aquaman's edgier 1990s look
, albeit with a purple outfit and a two-pronged harpoon hand.
- Black Manta is a supervillain with inconsistent origins (a child raised as a slave by pirates, an autistic child experimented on by Arkham Asylum's medical staff, or a mercenary out to avenge his father) who holds a particular animosity toward Aquaman. He's a regular human who wields Powered Armor that allows him to traverse the oceans as well as any Atlantean and fires Eye Beams from its iconic visor. Being the arch nemesis to a member of the Justice League has given him enough clout among supervillains to be a part of their Big Bad Ensemble, including the Legion of Doom, the Secret Society of Super Villains, the Injustice League, and the Suicide Squad.
- King Shark is a recurring supervillain who is a recurring nemesis of Aquaman. Son of the Hawaiian god Kamo, King Shark is a recurring enemy to Aquaman, eventually being recruited by Amanda Waller as the Suicide Squad's recurring frogman.
- Nautical Enforcement of Macrocosmic Order, or N.E.M.O, is a Sinister Spy Agency composed of various aquatic supervillains who intend on taking over the world through its ocean, making them a recurring threat to Aquaman and his fellow trope examples.
- Another member from Aquaman's rogue gallery, Ocean Master, is usually slotted into the water-based villain whenever there is a Legion of Doom-esque team-up against the Justice League. He controls water using his scepter. In one example, during Rock of Ages, Joker mocks him for wearing a "fish mask", although, to be fair, during the arc, he was wearing a black costume with a stylized manta ray on the chest.
- Following Crisis on Infinite Earths, the All-Star Squadron had Neptune Perkins, an obscure Golden Age of Comic Books character who in his original appearance was just a marine biologist who needed to spend time in the ocean due to a sodium deficiency, reinvented as a descendent of Arthur Gordon Pym and a member of an aquatic race he discovered at the Pole, to provide a fill-in for the Ret-Gone Golden Age Aquaman.
- Aquarus from Invincible was one of the original members of the Guardians of the Globe before Omni-Man slaughtered all of them. He is presented as an anthropomorphic fish patiently waiting for something to happen.
- Marvel Comics:
- Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner qualifies as a Trope Maker, having been originally written as a superhero before being made out as more of an Anti-Hero. He's the half-human, half-Atlantean and mutant son of the Queen of Atlantis, having been raised to be its ruler. This usually pits him against humanity, whom he sees as an existential threat to his underwater kingdom, though he isn't above working alongside heroes like the Fantastic Four.
- Namorita Prentiss, Namor's cousin, was made part of the founding members of teen hero group The New Warriors, in the early 1990s, and fit the slot of a water-based hero, akin to her famous cousin. During a time, she actually sported a more scaly, blue-skinned look — which emphasized her Atlantean origin.
- As part of Alpha Flight, Canada's premier superhero team, there is Marrina, a green-skinned alien whose alien egg was dumped on Earth's oceans. Her abilities — which are due to her alien genetic makeup — include amphibian physiology, with webbed hands, resistance to oceanic pressure, underwater breathing, etc. Bonus points: she was also married to Namor at one point.
- Besides Namor, the Golden Age Marvel Universe also had Peter Noble, a.k.a. the Fin, a Naval officer who inexplicably had superhuman strength and the ability to survive underwater.
- Amphibian from Squadron Supreme appears as a redhead human when on the surface, but, if he spends too much time under deep oceanic pressure, his body adapts to it and changes to a form more resistant to such pressure.
- The Supreme Power version of Amphibian is a girl who was born as a fishlike mutant and abandoned in the woods by her parents. She somehow survived, growing up in the water as a feral Wild Child. Although she eventually formed a bond with Doctor Spectrum, her upbringing rendered her an extreme anti-social mute. Basically, the Squadron Supreme Amphibian is an Expy of Aquaman, where this one is a Corrupted Character Copy.
- In The Red Ten, a murder-mystery involving expies of the Justice League, there is Chinese heroine Mazu, who made a pact with ocean deities to gain aquakinetic powers.
- In the '90s, Nautika served as the token water-based hero for Stormwatch. After a mission went bad and she and her husband ended up as hostages on Gamorra Island, she retired.
- In Robert Liefeld's Youngblood (Image Comics), Riptide is the water-based heroine. Despite some preview art in comic magazines of the late-80s, she only made her début in Youngblood (Vol. 1) #1, in the "B-Side" story. Her belated backstory was only revealed during Youngblood: Judgment Day: during a drowning accident, she was given powers by a Sea Witch. However, her backstory is an actual fabrication, inserted into a Reality-Altering Book by her father.
- Coming two years after Namor and eight months before Aquaman is Canada's Iron Man, no relation to the Silver Age Marvel character. The last member of a mutated human subspecies, he lived in a sunken palace until the coming of World War II where he did battle with Nazis.
Films — Live-Action
- DC Extended Universe: The half-human half-Atlantean Arthur Curry/Aquaman (played by Jason Momoa), of course. Appearing for the first time in a cameo in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, he became a founding member of the Justice League in the eponymous film, then had his own solo adventure to claim the throne of Atlantis in Aquaman, then another adventure in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: King K'uk'ulkan, better known as "Namor" to humanity (played by Tenoch Huerta), is King to a race of Apparently Human Merfolk that had evolved from survivors of the Mayan race via a vibranium-infused plant. He is the only one of his kind that can breathe air, he has Super-Strength comparable to the Hulk, can fly via wings on his ankles, and is so beloved by his people, he is worshipped as though he were a God (which he might be since Gods do in-fact exist in the MCU). He is portrayed as an Anti-Villain in his premier appearance in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, trying to create an alliance with Wakanda out of the mutual threat of the rest of the world declaring war on them over their stock in vibranium.
Live-Action TV
- The Deep from The Boys is a member of Vought's #1 Super Team The Seven. He possesses gills under his arms that make him amphibious and he can telepathically communicate with all marine life. While he's an utter champion in the water and his telepathic abilities have a lot of applications if used effectively, he is constantly belittled by his teammates, underutilized by his profit-centric masters and the celebrity life he was raised in has done little for his self-esteem. The fact that he's an idiot who uses his position to solicit sex from unwilling women and animals doesn't exactly endear him either.
- Mark Harris is the titular hero of the short-lived nautical TV series Man from Atlantis. He's an amnesiac "water-breathing man" that Dr. Elizabeth Merrill discovers and nurses back to health after finding him on the beach. His unique abilities — the ability to breathe underwater, his Super-Strength, Super-Speed, and Super-Senses — lead to him being recruited by the US Navy to carry out missions for them before joining the Foundation for Oceanic Research. In the pilot movie, it's implied that he was created by the series' Big Bad Mr. Schubert in an effort to create a race of water-breathing humans, or at least strives to make them with Mark as a template.
- Odd Squad: William Ocean is a villain whose overall goal is to flood the entire planet with water. He has a team consisting of three adults in costumes of various aquatic life — Seahorse Tanya, a lobster henchman, and a starfish henchman, all of whom defect from his side because of how he mistreats them. He traps his opponents in forcefields made of water and has an aquarium for an Underwater Base, but cannot swim.
Puppet Shows
- Stingray: Aqua Marina is a humanoid princess of Pacifica. She's a tailless mermaid capable of breathing in water or in air. She gets rescued from the clutches of King Titan and becomes a valuable ally to the heroes, Troy Tempest and Phones. Though she cannot speak, she can make herself understood, and often guides the Stingray around the seas, exploiting shortcuts and dodging hazards.
Tabletop Games
- Sentinels of the Multiverse: The hero Tempest is a member of the aquatic alien race the Maerynians. In addition to the standard powers of strength, toughness, and talking to fish, he has potent Weather Manipulation powers, with a particular speciality in lightning.
- Elemental HERO Ocean from Yu-Gi-Oh! is a Monster from the Elemental HERO Archetype that evokes the trope, sporting a fishing spear and a dolphin-theme costume.
- Mutants & Masterminds:
- Freedom City: Theseus, king of Altantis, joined the original Freedom League back in the Silver Age under the name Sea King. His daughter Thetis later joined the Next Gen under the name Neried. Both have the usual array of Aquaman powers, and Thetis can also turn into water.
- The Halt Evil Doer! setting has Aquarius, the king of Atlantis, who takes Namor's Heel–Face Revolving Door to extremes as a member of the Psychotic Seven, a group of ends-justify-the-means heroes who everyone else sees as delusional villains. He's also descended from Captain Nemo.
Video Games
- City of Villains: Captain Mako is one of the patrons of Arachnos. Born Gideon Ray, he had biological defects since his birth, making him look physically monstrous, as in looking like a shark with sharp teeth and having gills, forcing his parents to abandon him to an orphanage where he was badly mistreated until he had enough and killed many of its residents, and disappearing from the said orphanage, later joining a pirate gang soon after. Over time, Gideon started to look like a humanoid mako shark, which coincided with his growing reputation as a vicious butcher and earning the moniker of Mako before Lord Recluse found his pirate gang and inducted Mako as his top assassin. He is based in the appropriately named Sharkhead Isle and is identified by his feral nature, using his claws as his primary melee weapon, and his brutal efficiency as an assassin. His footsoldiers are also themed after aquatic subjects, with his personal enforcer going by Barracuda.
- Freedom Force: Fisherman Hank Waters and a child stoaway gain aquatic superpowers and forms after being exposed to Energy X during a raging storm, transforming them into Man O'War and the Sea Urchin.
- In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Finizen is a Water-type dolphin-esque Pokémon that evolves into a similar dolphin named Palafin, their only difference is a heart on the latter's chest. However, Palafin's true powers emerge when they are switched in, switched out, then returned to the field. That is when they become a Superman-like character named Palafin Hero Form. Being a Water-type Pokémon, they can learn offensive Water-type moves, including their Signature Move Jet Punch, which always strikes first.
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Among Ben's original 10 aliens is Ripjaws, a humanoid anglerfish whose species hails from the planet Pisciss. His main thing is being able to breathe underwater and swim fast through it. In later series, Ben usually has a token aquatic alien among his forms, such as Jetray in Alien Force, Water Hazard in Ultimate Alien, and Overflow from the reboot.
- Neptunia from Darkwing Duck is an ally of the titular hero, having been a regular fish who was mutated into a fish-person by pollutants in St. Canard's harbor, and eventually joining the temporary Super Team named the Justice Ducks.
- In the Duck Dodgers episode "Till Doom Do Us Part", Roboto forms the Legion of Duck Doom out of Duck Dodgers’ Rogues Gallery in order to destroy him once and for all. The singular exception to this is Black Eel, an Expy of the Aquaman villain Black Manta, who has a vendetta against the Aquaman-like Sea Man. While he has a harpoon gun, he seems to be utterly useless when out of the water.
- The Fairly OddParents!: In "Power Pals!", Timmy wishes for a group of super friends and gets the titular team consisting of various DC parodies. Their Aquaman parody, Wet Willy, is useless outside of water due to his power being summoning sea creatures.
- The Life and Times of Juniper Lee: "Sealed With A Fist" features the superhero team H.A.T.E. (Heroes Against Terrible Evildoers). Being a parody of well-known superheroes, they have their own Aquaman allusion named Fishmonger, whose uselessness on land is an obvious reference to Aquaman's reputation as the most useless superhero in the Justice League.
- The Loonatics Unleashed episode "A Creep in the Deep" has Adolpho as the Big Bad. He's a dolphin that can transform into a Super Mode armored fish-man. His Evil Plan is to sunder the "air-breather" civilization, reshaping the whole of Acmetropolis into an underwater Sea World. He's not only a speedy cetacean but has some amount of telepathy as well, commanding other marine organisms to serve his purposes.
- Mr. Nimbus from Rick and Morty is the King of Atlantis and Rick's nemesis, the entirety of Earth's oceans qualifying as his territory. He's presented as a campy, hammy fish-man with Making a Splash powers and can "control the police", having the ability to mind control police officers called in to arrest him.
- Mermista from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is the current reigning monarch of Salineas and is a member of the Princess Alliance. Reflecting her tropical Kingdom, its runestone — the Pearl — grants her a variety of magical abilities, including Making a Splash powers, the ability to turn her legs into a fish tail, breathing underwater and talking to seagulls.
- The Super Best Friends from South Park are a Super Team comprised of various religious figures, including Jesus, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Krishna, Lao Tse, the Prophet Muhammed, and Moses. The only exception to this pattern is Seaman and his sidekick Swallow, an Aquaman expy and his pet bird. While he is treated as an equal member of the team, he is also the butt of a lot of "semen" jokes because of his name.
- Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy are a semi-retired superhero duo from SpongeBob SquarePants. They are either humans whose powers allow them to breathe underwater or they're Apparently Human Merfolk, with their own grab-bag of swimming-based super-moves, the ability to summon sea-life to help them, and a variety of gadgets and gizmos to help fight evil. In "Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V", it's revealed that they were once a part of a Super Team that protected the seas named The International Justice League of Super Acquaintances, and even then Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy were the only ones with a clear aquatic theme to them.
- The The Super 6 roster included Super Scuba, who dealt with underwater cases.
- Aquaman is a member of the titular Superfriends from the Superfriends. He is infamous for being an Adaptational Wimp and having powers too situational when compared to other members of the Superfriends, being the reason why contemporaries of the trope are portrayed as Joke Characters.
- Aqualad from Teen Titans is a hero from Atlantis who helps the Titans fight Trident, a narcissistic fish-man who creates a clone army with the intent of taking over the world. He is made an honorary member of the Titans and becomes a member of the Titans East.
- Tom Slick is a 1967 Jay Ward cartoon series about a race driver and his roadies (Marigold and Gertie) who compete in various races and vehicles. The third episode is "Send In A Sub," which has Tom Slick compete in an underwater race of submersibles. Tom's principal rival, Baron Otto Matic, has made an alliance with the Queen of the Deep, Sonya Nar, in which he'll split the winning with her if she can eliminate Tom Slick from the race. Sonya lives in an undersea complex and has ugly little lackeys that do her bidding.
- The Venture Bros.:
- One of the members of the original Team Venture was Otto Aquarius, the half-human, half-Atlantean retired hero. After Dr. Venture's death and the Team disbanded, Otto became a Jehova's Witness and is the only one who hasn't aged thanks to his Atlantean genetics.
- A lab accident involving an experimental gene-splicer resulted in Dr. Douglas Ong and his brother Charles being mutated with aquatic DNA, the former becoming the heroic Dr. Dugong and the latter becoming the infamous Kingpin and Level-10 supervillain Wide Wale. While the former had his DNA spliced with benign sea creatures like seals and starfish, Wide Wale has bits of whale and shark in him, his daughter Sirena inheriting his mutant genes as an Apparently Human Merfolk.
- In Young Justice (2010), the team's founding members include a blond, dark-skinned Aqualad whose real name is Kaldur'ahm ( also the son of Black Manta in this continuity). Like his comic book counterpart, he has underwater breathing, water manipulation abilities and shows a strong eel motif (since he can generate electricity). He is the most prominent water-based hero in the series, despite the appearance of other Atlanteans like him.
